BOOKS.
A DIALOGUE ON THE PROOFS OF THEISM.* WE are not surprised to find Father Clarke apologising for the singular readiness with which the sceptic of these dialogues gives way to the arguments of his believing interlocutor. The • The Existence of God. A Dialogue, in Three Chapters. By Richard F. Clarke, 8.7., formerly Fellow and Tutor of at, John's College, Oaford, London Catholio Troth Society. 12£7, present writer, who by no means needs convincing on most of the great questions argued in this little book, would certainly have stood out much longer than Cholmoley against some of the positions which Saville takesnp ; nor is he at all disposed to con- cede that all of them are valid in any sense. For our own part, we are amazed at the relatively light stress laid upon the moral as distinguished from the purely metaphysical argument for the existence of God, and still more amazed that no weight is attached to one aspect of the case which has always seemed to us of the utmost significance,—we mean the argument from free-will, to those who believe in free-will, for that has always seemed to us absolutely fatal to materialistic, or atheistic, or naturalistic, or fatalistic, or pantheistic solutions of the problem of the universe. No mere causal process, even though the ultimate cause were an anima mundi, could account for a breach in the strict continuity of the law of causation, for the production of a will which is at liberty to take any of several lines of action, instead of simply to transmit the energy which it had received from the producing agencies to which it owed its birth. Of course, this argument would have no weight whatever for a necessarian, who would deny the fact on which the argument is founded. But that is precisely why we attach so much importance to the moral foundation of Theism. A necessarian who denies free- will, of course denies in every true sense the possibility of sin.. What a man cannot help, he cannot properly be blamed or punished for doing or omitting to do. The whole drama of the conscience is an illusion,—the whole language of praise and blame, and remorse and penitence, is a tissue of deception and confusion, if the existence of any power of choice be a chimera. And hence, to our minds, it will depend on the confidence placed in the attestations of the moral faculty, whether a man believes that sin and remorse and penitence are realities or not.. If he can escape the force of those attestations, he may be a necessarian ; and though to be a necessarian by no means implies being an atheist, yet it fills up, in our opinion, the one utterly impassable gulf between the implications of the con- science and a materialistic or naturalistic explanation of the universe. You cannot ascribe the causation of a will which has a real power to choose between different alternatives, to any conceivable chain of causes and effects each link of which transmits,—as natural causes transmit—only the force re- ceived. The law of causation breaks down the moment you come to a cause which is even partially free, and there- fore any man who believes himself,—of course within limits,— a free agent, must ascribe his existence ultimately to a true person, to a creator, and not to mere forces, however complex and various. And it will depend on the reality of the con- science how strong an impression this argument makes upon the mind of the inquirer. To one who feels that there is no. such thing as self-knowledge in the world, unless the conviction that he could have done right when he did do wrong, or that he might have done wrong when he did do right, be a solid con- viction, it is absolutely impossible to believe in a cause of all. things which is not personal, and indeed something more than personal, creative. But to one who can really persuade himself that he is nothing but an embodiment of the long train of physical and mental causes by which he was produced, it will be, we imagine, perfectly easy to ascribe the existence of the whole universe to causes which, however grand they be, are in no true sense distinguishable from their effects. However, to our astonishment, Father Clarke passes by this most important. of all the arguments against a naturalistic or materialistic cause of all things, in silence, and when he treats the argument from conscience, treats it only in relation to its revelation of a law- giver, and not at all in relation to the blow which it gives to the theory that human life may be a mere inevitable manifestation of necessary forces.
Nor can we say that the argument which takes the ehief place in Father Clarke's little book seems to us satisfactory. It runs as follows
Everywhere arennd us we perceive effects following from causes. and causes producing effects. All the causes which fall within the range of our experience are at the same time both causes and effects. While they themselves produce some effect, they are also in their turn effects of some cause. They are called subordinate or dependent causes. There is a long series of them ; each member of the series is the effect of the preceding member and the cause of the member which follows it. Every cause of which we have any knowledge has double character. But our reason tells us that this string of causes and effects must be limited at both ends. We see the limit at one end in the ultimate effect, present to us. There is no doubt about that, and we cannot help a conviction that there must be a limit too at the other end, and that we cannot go on from one cause to. another in injinitum.'—' I do not quite see that. Why should there not be an infinite series stretching away into all eternity ?'—' Even if there were an infinite series, the difficulty would not be solved, for as every member of the series is a subordinate or dependent cause, the whole series would have the same character. A number of things each of which is essentially dependent in its character, cannot become independent by their being added together.'—' Why not ? A number of sticks, none of which can stand upright, can do so per- fectly well when there is a bundle of them.'—`I am afraid your com- parison will not help you. Your sticks are not essentially prone to fall. If any of them is straight enough and thick enough, it will stand perfectly well by itself, whereas all causes known to us are essentially unable to produce themselves, and therefore are dependent on a cause outside of themselves for their production. In order that the series should stand by iteetf and be independent of anything out- aide of itself, one member of it at least mast be perfectly independent and self.produced. Such a cause would not be a subordinate cause at all, and would therefore have no place in such a aeries of causes as we are speaking of.'—' I think I Bee that, but what is year con- elusion P'—' Why, that outside the long series of dependent subordi- nate causes which falls within the range of our experience (whether each a series could be infinite does not matter to our argument), outside of this, I say, there must be a cause which is neither subordinate nor dependent, but in every possible aspect independent and the primary cause of all the rest--in other words, the First Cause, or God."
That is only a scholastic way of saying, what we believe to be quite true, that man is unable to regard the energies which pro- duce, or seem to produce, temporary changes in the universe, as anything but outcomes of some permanent source of energy of a higher order than mere force, and more analogous to the human will than to physical energy of any kind. lint when, after
refuting the objection that the first cause, whatever it be, cannot be infinite, since it mast be regarded as limited by the very 'effects to which it gives birth, Saville goes on to argue that
this first cause must necessarily be absolutely without limitation, we do not feel at all impressed by the argument :—
" You have something more to show, my dear Saville, before you prove this First Cause to be God. You most show that it is not only supreme, but infinite.'—' I can do that without much difficulty. I suppose you mean by an Infinite Being one that has no limits, real
or possible P'—' Of course I All limits must be outside the thing limited, most they not P'—' Yes, they must.'—'And without these external limits limitation is impossible ?'—' I suppose so.'- ' Now tell me, can the First Cause have any limits F'—' Why not
Why, for the very reason that it is the First Cause, and existed previously to all else. There was nothing outside of it to limit it. From all eternity God was without any possible limitation, and there- fore infinite."
We should have preferred to say that if the first cause be God, it can have no external limit, but must display in a measureless degree those limits which are from within and not from without, —the limit of perfect holiness, the limits of the divine attributes. Hat then, that does not prove that the first cause is God ; and we do not see why it is abstractedly inconceivable that there -should be a multiplicity of co-existing first causes which limit each other, and which are co-eternal and without beginning. The ground for rejecting such a view is not, we imagine, that it is abstractedly impossible and inconceivable,—for the religion of Zoroaster practically embodied such a view, and the hypothesis of co-eternal powers at strife in the Universe as we see it, is in some respects easier to apprehend than the Christian view,— bat that the phenomena of the world, especially as explained by revelation, present a spectacle more easily reconciled with the existence of a single perfect first cause and of a number of im- perfect created beings of a lower order, than any such dualistic hypothesis. Yet, to our minds, it is by no means metaphysically impossible to admit any but a single first cause.
The best part of the book is, in our opinion, the very wise limits assigned to the argument from design, while the most unsatisfactory is the defence of eternal punishment in the last -chapter,—a chapter which is, we think, more likely to revolt than to convince the consciences of men. Not that we agree with the universalists, but that we regard Father Clarke'e pre- sentation of the case as in a very high degree offensive to the conscience. We must not, however, go into that thorny and interminable subject, and will conclude with what seems to us the best and most thoughtful passage in these dialogues,—a passage marked by great subtlety and yet a firm grasp of the point at issue :— " ' Every cause contains all the perfection of the effect, either aotnally or in this higher form. Nemo dat quad non habet. No cause can convey to its effect what it does not itself possess. But it may possess—often does possess—the perfection of the effect in some 'higher and nobler form. The efficient cause of the painting is the painter's mind, working through his skilful hand; as present on the canvas it lacks many of the perfections of the idea which he has conceived and elaborated. Not only are the emotions, virtues, desires represented by him in the picture an imperfect realisation of his conception, but the spiritual thought comes out in material form, the mental picture takes a tangible and perishable shape. The per. factions of the picture are the effect contained in the ideal, not actually bat virtually, and in a higher degree. It is in this way that the perfections of all subordinate causes, that is, of all things which exist, are contained in the First Cause. There is not and cannot be anything worthy of our admiration in all things around us which is not present in Him who is the Cause of all. In God there are summed up all the glories, virtues, perfections, of all created things —only in an infinitely higher and more glorious form. He contains all these virtually, or to use the scholastic term, =inviter. How could the First Cause have imparted them to the effects of which He is the Cause, unless He possessed them Himself ? He possesses all the varied beauties of the material universe, not under their gross material form, but under one which comprises all that is beautiful and attractive in them, and banishes all their shortcomings and im- perfections and defects. Look at those clouds bathed in the golden light of the setting son. Look at the many-dimpled ocean at our feet. Glorious and beautiful as they are, their beauty is bat like a speck of dust compared with a noble mountain range, if it is placed side by side with the corresponding beauty in God.'—' I don't quite see,' remarked Cholmeley, ' how an Invisible, Immaterial Being can comprise these material beauties. Surely His Beauty would differ in kind from the beauty that catches our eye or delights our ear:'- ' Yes, it does differ in kind, but at the same time comprises it all. His cannot indeed be a material beauty, but the materiality is a defect, not an excellence. In God it is purged ot that defect, and thus its beauty is raised to a higher order. Even now, material beings as we are, it is not the gross matter that we admire. What is it oonveys to us the pleasure that we experience as we watch the scene before us? It is the rays of light reflected from Mond and sea and striking upon the eye. Surely it is not difficult to conceive that the same effects will be produced in us when we are face to face with Him who is the Source of all Light and all Beauty, end that His Divine Beauty will not only infinitely surpass but aleo include all those beauties which are at present tied down to matter as it were by an iron chain.'—' Yes; I think I see what you mean. But I still foal the force of the difficulty respecting cause and effect. I am not prepared to admit that a cause contains, either actually or virtually, all the perfection of its effect. Mill puts this very well, as it seems to me. He is discussing whether it is neoessary that mind should be produced by mind. He says " Apart from experience, and arguing on what is called reason, that la, on supposed self-evident*, the notion seems to be, that no causes can give rise to products of a more precious or elevated kind than themselves. But this is at variance with the known analogies of nature. How vastly nobler and more precious, for instance, are the higher vegetables and animals than the soil and manure out of which, and by the properties of which, they are raised up I The tendency of all recent speculation is towards the opinion that the development of inferior orders of existence into superior, the substitution of greater elaboration and higher organisation for lower, is the general rale of nature. Whether it is so or not, there are at least in nature a multi- tude of facts bearing that character, and this is sufficient for the argument." Now is not this true ? Look at the delicate and graceful form and rich glowing colours of a plant, which spring. of an ugly little seed, nourished by certain external influences none of which has in it any of the glories of the living plant. Here are perfections in the effect which certainly are not to be found in any of the pro- ducing causes. There is, moreover, the well-established doctrine of the survival of the fittest and the law of natural selection, which here upset the old landmarks, and among them this time-honoured doctrine of cause and effect.'—' I em glad you have mentioned this objection of Mill. It is the very one which I was myself going to bring forward. I should not like to say that it is a dishonest objection, but at all events it is a very shallow one. That little seed comprises within itself all that is required to enable it to develop the varied and graceful forms of the living plant. I do not say that all is already there in miniature, or that the process is a purely material one. But if you take into account, not only the material elements, but also the principle of life contained in it, the immaterial element which enables the seed to assimilate the materials from without, to utilise them and transform them into its own substance, you have present in the growing plant nothing which did not already exist radically or germinally in the seed which produced it. And as to the colours, good Mr. Mill forgets that the sun pours down upon it the brilliancy of its light, and that without that light it will be a pale sickly thing born soon to perish. As to the noble animals which are raised up out of soil and manure, they exist only in Mr. Mill's prolific: fancy."
That passage seems to us to put the argument from design in its true place, not to press it as Paley certainly presses it quite unduly, but to give it a spiritual exposition which raises it into a higher region than that of mere design. The beauty in the artist's imagination is essential to the beauty of his picture, and involves a design to produce that picture; but yet the beauty in his imagination is much more than design, it is an immanent power striving for utterance ; and so, too, the universe seems to ns to express with the necessary inadequacy of all finite things, much more than the divine intention to make the world what it is,—to a certain extent at all events, the divine nature and attributes, to which intention and purpose must be regarded as subordinate. Mach as we differ from many things in Father Clarke's last chapter, and greatly as we regret the omission of what seems to us a most essential branch of the theistic argu- ment, there is a good deal in these dialogues of which we can express our sincere admiration.
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