Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics: With Some of Their ApplicationsThornton, William Thomas
Philosophy
Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics: With Some of Their Applications
Thornton, William Thomas
Metaphysics; Utilitarianism
But although it be thus demonstrably certain that an author of the
universe exists, it does not follow that there is only one. As to this
no proof positive, only probabilities, can be adduced; but the
probabilities are of an amount all but equivalent to certainty. They are
forcibly urged by Mr. Mill. Many exactly uniform occurrences, he
observes, are more naturally referred to 'a single, than to a number of
wills precisely accordant.' But the classes of uniform occurrences being
exceedingly numerous, if there were a separate will for each class,
there would be equally numerous wills, and 'unless all these wills were
in complete harmony (which would itself be the most difficult to credit
of all cases of invariability, and would require beyond anything else
the ascendancy of a supreme Deity),' it would be 'impossible that the
course of phenomena under their government should be invariable.' Every
fresh appearance of resemblance extending through all nature 'affords
fresh presumption that the whole is the work, not of many, but of the
same hand, and renders it vastly more probable that there should be one
indefinitely foreseeing Intelligence and immoveable Will than that there
should be hundreds and thousands of such.'[50] I will not run the risk
of weakening this reasoning by expansion. Its obvious inference that,
there being a God, there cannot be more than one, could not be set forth
more irresistibly.
That the wisdom of the Creator cannot be less than the amount thereof
manifested in His works is a self-evident proposition, which none will
be hardy enough directly to dispute. There is, however, one critic, of
great ability and yet greater daring, who appears to doubt whether the
wisdom manifested in the universe is anything to speak of. Mr. Lewes'
faculty of veneration is, I suspect, but imperfectly developed, since
'the succession of phases which each (animal) embryo is forced to pass
through,' is sufficient to give its action pause. 'None of these
phases,' he remarks, 'have any adaptation to the future state of the
animal, but are in positive contradiction to it, or are simply
purposeless; _many_ of them have no adaptation even to its embryonic
state; whereas _all_ show stamped on them the unmistakable characters of
_ancestral_ adaptations and the progressions of organic evolution.'
'What,' he asks, 'does this fact imply?' 'There is not,' he continues,
'a single known example of an organism which is not developed out of
simpler forms. Before it can attain the complex structure which
distinguishes it, there must be an evolution of forms which distinguish
the structures of organisms lower in the series.... On the hypothesis of
a plan that pre-arranged the organic world' (by no means, however,
necessarily in types that could not change, but rather in types adapted
and calculated to change), 'nothing,' he considers, 'could be more
unworthy of a supreme intelligence than this _inability_ to construct an
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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