DR. ACLAND ON THE PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN.*

* The Herniae Oration, 1855. By Henry W. Aclaud, M.D.. Oxon., Regius Pro-

fessor of Medicine in the University of Oxford. L3nd MaCMillan and Utr. 1565. " HISTORIANS," says Dr. Acland, at the opening of this valuable and interesting discourse, "quote Harvey as a notable instance of a philosopher who studied nature under the conviction that every arrangement in the natural world is the result of design, that every effect is intended, and has its purpose. It is this persuasion, says Whewell, which directed the researches and led to the discoveries of Harvey.'" Thus the question is raised—ought a student in nature to commence his inquiries with such a presumption on his mind as this ? Must it not interfere with their fidelity ? If he has been lucky enough to stumble on a great discovery, must not that have been in spite, not in consequence, of the dogma with which he started?

Dr. Acland feels that it behoves him as a personal admirer, no

leas than as an official eulogist of the great physician, fairly to examine this point.

He does not disguise the fact that some of the noblest guides to the careful investigation of physical facts have been very jealous of allowing any weight to final causes or to those apparent instances of contrivance which Paley supposes may be traced everywhere, and from which he would deduce such sacred con- clusions. Honestly and rightly Dr. Acland allows Lucretius to state his and his master's case in his own eloquent language, which is far from being merely eloquent or poetical, which has

much force of argument, and, moreover, which proceeds from a man apparently the champion of chance, really possessed by a

Roman love of order, and impatient of a mythology wherein he could see noNling but a contempt of order, physical and moral. But if the epicurean is a suspicious witness, what can be said of a firm Christian believer like Bacon ? He certainly denounced with vehemence that overlooking of physical causes which has been the effect of pursuing final causes, the peril of fancying that we have detected a law when we have only imagined an adaptation.

With as much force, with more modesty, the intense theist Descartes uses the memorable words (which Dr. Acland has quoted, p. 7), "Non enim absgue temeritate me puto posse investi- gare fines Dei." The lecturer goes on to a passage from Kant, equally reverent, indicating a profound reluctance to part with the argument from the beauty and order of creation which has

commended itself so much to the hearts of men, yet very dis-, tiuctly "refusing to acknowledge this beauty and order as amounting to a scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Will." Next Mr. Owen appears, confessing that the facts he has been adducing respecting the development of the skull of verte- brates,—" these and a hundred such force upon the contem- plative anatomist the inadequacy of the teleological hypothesis to account for the concordances," which he terms "special homo- logies." After a frank admission not merely of the authority of these men, but of the irresistible strength of the evidence, and the arguments by which their opinions are sustained, must not our orator take another step ? Must he not accept M. Comte's asser-

tion that the very notion of design is unscientific, that it is emana- tion ividente de rancknne suprimatie the'dlogique?

No! to this decision Dr. Acland demurs. His oration is an elaborate statement of the reasons which lead him to believe that warnings against the arrogant assumption of certain final causes, certain marks of design, are indispensable to • the sincerity of physical inquiries, and yet that the belief in a purpose, in a

designer, is not injurious but helpful to those inquiries, that the loss of it would be a fatal discouragement to them.

Bacon, Descartes, and Kant were all afraid to measure the Universe, or any portion of it, by the conceptions which they could form of final causes, just because they believed the thoughts of the Creator to be far above their thoughts. "None of them," as Dr. Acland expresses it, "disavowed design, though they doubted their

own powers of reading it." On the passage which he has extracted from Owen's Homologies he remarks :— " Here it is to be observed that the idea of contrivance for the sake of utility (ordinarily so called) is pronounced inadequate. The far more subtle suggestion is supported of a Creator working on a plan within self-imposed limits. Owen's archetype is not, however, an archetype in Plato's sense. Plato's ideal was the absolute form of every species, which existed only as a divine perfection, and expressed itself more or lees imperfectly in each individual of the species. Owen's archetype is the abstraction which can be made from all complex organisms of the same kind. But though the Professor in this work (of which it may be said that it spread in this country a profound interest in the minutest details of osseous structure in vertebrate animals, and therefore constitutes a veritable epoch in the annals of British Philosophic Anatomy) relinquishes the common hypothesis of Final causes, he yet advocates, though in a particular form no doubt, the idea of comprehensive plan or unity of design as well as mechanical skill in the works of Nature. And this idea is one with which, in some form or other, the philosophic observer of Nature cannot safely dispense without sacrificing all hope of attaining any conception at all of nature as a whole. For it is involved in the notion of Art, as a thing distinct from mere mechanical adaptation ; and it is only from considering the operation of the Artist's mind that our limited faculties can derive any conception of the work of Creation. Indeed Art in its highest sense is Creation. .It may, and often does, consist of an unexpressed subjective image—mechanical, or pictorial, or poetical. Tennyson's burning thoughts not yet rendered into musical verse, Raffaele's sense of beauty not yet embodied in a picture, Babbage's wheel and cog still existing only in his own ingenious mind, have each a subtle Being, though not objectively expressed. Each gives a faint refiexion of what we dimly, and perhaps incorrectly, conceive by analogy of the Ideas existing in the Supreme mind with respect to Its works and operations."

The idea which is so beautifully expressed in these sentences is one with which we are all familiar. The very word POET contains it. But the notion of connecting Creation with "common mechanical skill" rather than with 'Infinite Art' has, Dr. Maud well remarks, prevailed greatly among us ever since Paley determined that a watch was a much more striking illustration of divine power than a stone.* Every effort to restore the older, grander, simpler conception is, we believe, a step in the deliverance of physical science and theology both from a heavy yoke. In an age of machinery, in a nation of mechanists, there is no fear that the watch will lose any dignity to which it is entitled. But for the sake of mechanism itself—that such grand inventions as the electric telegraph may not be defrauded of their wonder and mystery,—it is well that the Paleyan argument should be subjected to the rudest shocks, that no pains should be taken to shield it from any winds of heaven, that it should be left to sus- tain itself, if it can sustain itself, without the least extraneous aid. The last persons who have an interest in sustaining it are those who live only by a belief in God. To them this argument has been often a torment ; they have felt that their awe, and reverence, and faith have grown as they have ceased to rely upon it.

We do not therefore care greatly whether Dr. Acland has been successful or not in his polemic against Comte on the structure of the eye. We have no doubt that his statements were interesting to a professional audience ; they may have a value for us all. But if any flaws should be detected in them, that which we hold to be the principle of his oration will not be affected in the least. For (1) he has not answered Comte's main assertion that the belief in design is emanation de rancienne suprematie thiologigue. That charge to all intents and purposes Dr. Acland admits in the case of his own hero. He believes that Har- vey brought his belief of design with him. He derived it from the strong theological convictions of his age. It was not borrowed from his studies about the circulation of the blood. He had it before he entered upon them. And therefore (2) this is the real issue between the lecturer and Comte. It does not affect a par- ticular passage in the Frenchman's writings ; it affects the whole scheme of his philosophy. Theology, he thinks, was done with in a former age, to investigate the phenomena of the Universe is the business of our generation. He has much to urge for this view of things. That investigations of the physical world have assumed a position, and are pursued with a success to which there is nothing parallel in former days is true; that the dogmas and assumptions of theologians were great impediments to them in former days is also true. Dr. Acland denies neither of these positions. But when the next step is about to be taken, he interferes with his facts and phenomena. He finds that the belief which an illustrious man of science derived from theology, the belief that there is a purpose in Creation, and in all the minutest portions of it, was what gave the impetus, the energy to his researches. Without that conviction rooted and grounded in his mind, he would not have been able to persevere in his inquiries when they were most discouraging, to bear the obloquy of a new doctrine, when the world from religious or philosophical motives denounced it. His faith in a God who had a distinct mewling in what He created gave him the courage to acknowledge the facts of Creation, the fortitude to endure mere mortal censures,—a courage and fortitude which must have perished if that faith had deserted him.

Such we understand to be Dr. Aeland's opinion, and we think he has made it good. We doubt not for ourselves that in every scientific man there has been much more of this faith than he * A member of Paley's own University ; an eloquent, somewhat eccentric Fellow of Trinity, Dr. Ramadan, whose sermons are scarcay known to the present gene- ration, though it has produced very few at all like them in vigour and originality, made an early protest against the vulgarity of this comparison. He contrasts the poet who could find sermons in stones, with the divine who, if in °rowing a heath he pitched his foot against a stone, could draw no lesson from it, but if he lighted on a watch was full of wonder. Shakespeare, he suggests, "bad perhaps broken the stone, and found streaks of colour that might hare been taken front the tulip or the rainbow?' knew ; that Comte himself would have been a far less laborious thinker and systematizer than he was if some emanation from the old theological supremacy had not dwelt in him. And if we are rejoiced that eminent students of physics like Dr. Acland should make this confession so bravely, we are equally anxious that theologians should understand what it means, and should not turn it into any comfortable excuses for themselves, into a lazy conclusion that after all Science cannot dispense with them and their arguments. It can perfectly well dispense with them and their arguments ; they have often stood in its way, and checked its advances. .-What Dr. Acland would teach us is that it cannot dispense with GOD, that it needs a very much deeper faith in His purpose than divines often entertain to give its students strength and hope for their enterprises. if divines really believed what they are set to teach,—if they thought that a purpose for the destruction of all the disorders of the Uni- verse, for the preservation of that which is living and orderly in it had been revealed in Christ,—if they really looked to Him to accomplish that purpose for mankind,—they might give such a stimulus and interest to every investigation respecting the order of human life or of nature as would promise greater discoveries than were granted to Harvey, or even to Newton. They need not then build up a theory of revealed religion upon a theory of natural religion, or that upon certain observations of the fitness of natural things to our uses. God's revelation of Himself would be the ground of their zeal in asking for the secrets which the Scriptures say He has hidden from the sons of men that they might search them out. If divines had this belief, how ashamed they would be of any efforts they had ever made to cheek inquiry into nature, of any fears for the result of it.

We hail Dr. Acland's oration as a great demand from the side of science for this real and substantial faith. He expresses a modest wish in the outset of his lecture that the excellent President of the College of Physicians had undertaken his task. We are sure that he would have performed it admirably. But if Dr. Watson would have represented the most cultivated intellect of his noble profes- sion, Dr. Acland represents something more. His position in the University of Oxford enables him to show practically as well as in words how rancienne supreinatie thdologique, which that venerable University upholds, will be used for the injury of theology itself, if it is not made an instrument of promoting manly freedom of thought and investigation in all subjects human and natural.