Hicks, in his Critique of Design-Arguments, 347–389, makes two arguments instead of one: (1) the argument from order to intelligence, to which he gives the name Eutaxiological; (2) the argument from adaptation to purpose, to which he would restrict the name Teleological. He holds that teleology proper cannot prove intelligence, because in speaking of “ends” at all, it must assume the very intelligence which it seeks to prove; that it actually does prove simply the intentional exercise of an intelligence whose existence has been previously established. “Circumstances, forces or agencies converging to a definite rational result imply volition—imply that this result is intended—is an end. This is the major premise of this new teleology.” He objects to the term “final cause.”The end is not a cause at all—it is a motive. The characteristic element of cause is power to produce an effect. Ends have no such power. The will may choose them or set them aside. As already assuming intelligence, ends cannot prove intelligence.
With this in the main we agree, and count it a valuable help to the statement and understanding of the argument. In the very observation of order, however, as well as in arguing from it, we are obliged to assume the same all-arranging intelligence. We see no objection therefore to making Eutaxiology the first part of the Teleological Argument, as we do above. See review of Hicks, in Meth. Quar. Rev., July, 1883:569–576. We proceed however to certain
1. Further explanations.
A. The major premise expresses a primitive conviction. It is not invalidated by the objections: (a) that order and useful collocation may exist without being purposed—for we are compelled by our very mental constitution to deny this in all cases where the order and collocation pervade a system: (b) that order and useful collocation may result from the mere operation of physical forces and laws—for these very forces and laws imply, instead of excluding, an originating and superintending intelligence and will.
Janet, in his work on Final Causes, 8, denies that finality is a primitive conviction, like causality, and calls it the result of an induction. He therefore proceeds from (1) marks of order and useful collocation to (2) finality in nature, and then to (3) an intelligent cause of this finality or “pre-conformity to future event.” So Diman, Theistic Argument, 105, claims simply that, as change requires cause, so orderly change requires intelligent cause. We have shown, however, that induction and argument of every kind presupposes intuitive belief in final cause. Nature does not give us final cause; but no more does she give us efficient cause. Mind gives us both, and gives them as clearly upon one experience as after a thousand. Ladd: “Things have mind in them: else they could not be minded by us.” The Duke of Argyll told Darwin that it seemed to him wholly impossible to ascribe the adjustments of nature to any other agency than that of mind. “Well,” said Darwin, “that impression has often come upon me with overpowering force. But then, at other times, it all seems—;” and then he passed his hands over his eyes, as if to indicate the passing of a vision out of sight. Darwinism is not a refutation of ends in nature, but only of a particular theory with regard to the way in which ends are realized in the organic world. Darwin would begin with an infinitesimal germ, and make all the subsequent development unteleological; see Schurman, Belief in God, 193.
(a) Illustration of unpurposed order in the single throwing of “double sixes,”—constant throwing of double sixes indicates design. So arrangement of detritus at mouth of river, and warming pans sent to the West Indies—useful but not purposed. Momerie, Christianity and Evolution, 72—“It is only within narrow limits that seemingly purposeful arrangements are produced by chance. And therefore, as the signs of purpose increase, the presumption in favor of their accidental origin diminishes.”Elder, Ideas from Nature, 81, 82—“The uniformity of a boy's marbles shows them to be products of design. A single one might be accidental, but a dozen cannot be. So atomic uniformity indicates manufacture.” Illustrations of purposed order, in Beattie's garden, Tillotson's blind men, Kepler's salad. Dr. Carpenter: “The atheist is like a man examining the machinery of a great mill, who, finding that the whole is moved by a shaft proceeding from a brick wall, infers that the shaft is a sufficient explanation of what he sees, and that there is no moving power behind it.” Lord Kelvin: “The atheistic idea is nonsensical.” J. G. Paton, Life, 2:191—The sinking of a well on the island of Aniwa convinces the cannibal chief Namakei that Jehovah God exists, the invisible One. See Chauncey Wright, in N. Y. Nation, Jan. 15, 1874; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 208.
(b) Bowne, Review of Herbert Spencer, 231–247—“Law is method, not cause. A man cannot offer the very fact to be explained, as its sufficient explanation.” Martineau, Essays, 1:144—“Patterned damask, made not by the weaver, but by the loom?”Dr. Stevenson: “House requires no architect, because it is built by stone-masons and carpenters?” Joseph Cook: “Natural law without God behind it is no more than a glove without a hand in it, and all that is done by the gloved hand of God in nature is done by the hand and not by the glove. Evolution is a process, not a power; a method of operation, not an operator. A book is not written by the laws of spelling and grammar, but according to those laws. So the book of the universe is not written by the laws of heat, electricity, gravitation, evolution, but according to those laws.” G. F. Wright, Ant. and Orig. of Hum. Race, lecture IX—“It is impossible for evolution to furnish evidence which shall drive design out of nature. It can only drive it back to an earlier point of entrance, thereby increasing our admiration for the power of the Creator to accomplish ulterior designs by unlikely means.”
Evolution is only the method of God. It has to do with the how, not with the why, of phenomena, and therefore is not inconsistent with design, but rather is a new and higher illustration of design. Henry Ward Beecher: “Design by wholesale is greater than design by retail.” Frances Power Cobbe: “It is a singular fact that, whenever we find out how a thing is done, our first conclusion seems to be that God did not do it.” Why should we say: “The more law, the less God?” The theist refers the phenomena to a cause that knows itself and what it is doing; the atheist refers them to a power which knows nothing of itself and what it is doing (Bowne). George John Romanes said that, if God be immanent, then all natural causation must appear to be mechanical, and it is no argument against the divine origin of a thing to prove it due to natural causation: “Causes in nature do not obviate the necessity of a cause in nature.” Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, 47—Evolution shows that the direction of affairs is under control of something like our own intelligence: “Evolution spells Purpose.” Clarke, Christ. Theology, 105—“The modern doctrine of evolution has been awake to the existence of innumerable ends within the universe, but not to the one great end for the universe itself.” Huxley, Critiques and Addresses, 274, 275, 307—“The teleological and mechanical views of the universe are not mutually exclusive.”Sir William Hamilton, Metaphysics: “Intelligence stands first in the order of existence. Efficient causes are preceded by final causes.” See also Thornton, Old Fashioned Ethics, 199–265; Archbp. Temple, Bampton Lect., 1884:99–123; Owen, Anat. of Vertebrates, 3:796; Peirce, Ideality in the Physical Sciences, 1–35; Newman Smyth, Through Science to Faith, 96; Fisher, Nat. and Meth. of Rev., 135.
B. The minor premise expresses a working-principle of all science, namely, that all things have their uses, that order pervades the universe, and that the methods of nature are rational methods. Evidences of this appear in the correlation of the chemical elements to each other; in the fitness of the inanimate world to be the basis and support of life; in the typical forms and unity of plan apparent in the organic creation; in the existence and coöperation of natural laws; in cosmical order and compensations.
This minor premise is not invalidated by the objections: (a) That we frequently misunderstand the end actually subserved by natural events and objects; for the principle is, not that we necessarily know the actual end, but that we necessarily believe that there is some end, in every case of systematic order and collocation. (b) That the order of the universe is manifestly imperfect; for this, if granted, would argue, not absence of contrivance, but some special reason for imperfection, either in the limitations of the contriving intelligence itself, or in the nature of the end sought (as, for