1 physics. On this occasion, Maclaurin has remarked, "that of all sort of causes, final causes are the most clearly placed in our view;—and that it is difficult to comprehend, why it should be thought arrogant to attend to the design and contrivance that is so evidently displayed in nature, and obvious to all men ;-to maintain, for instance, that the eye was made for seeing, though we may not be able either to account mechanically for the refraction of light in its coats, or to explain how the image is propagated from the retina to the mind.” *—It is Newton's own language, however, which alone can do justice to his sentiments on the present subject. "The main business of natural philosophy is to argue from phenomena, without feigning hypotheses, and to deduce causes from effects till we come to the very first cause, which certainly is not mechanical; and not only to unfold the mechanism of the world, but chiefly to resolve these and such like questions: Whence is it that Nature does nothing in vain; and whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world?-How came the bodies of animals to be contrived with so much art, and for what ends were there several parts? Was the eye contrived without skill in optics, and the ear without knowledge of sounds? "* In multiplying these quotations, I am well aware that authorities are not arguments; but when a prejudice to which authority alone has given currency is to be combated, what other refutation is likely to be effectual? After all, it were to be wished that the scholastic phrase final cause could, without affectation, be dropped from our philosophical vocabulary; and some more unexceptionable mode of speaking substituted instead of it. In this elementary work, I have not presumed to lay aside entirely a form of expression consecrated in the writings of Newton, and of his most eminent followers; but I am fully sensible of its impropriety, and am * Account of Newton's Philosophical Discoveries, Book I. Chap. II. not without hopes that I may contribute something to encourage the gradual disuse of it, by the indiscriminate employment of the words ends and uses to convey the same idea. Little more perhaps than the general adoption of one or other of these terms is necessary, to bring candid and reflecting minds to a uniformity of language as well as of sentiment on the point in question. It was before observed, with respect to anatomists, that all of them, without exception, whether professedly friendly or hostile to the inquisition of final causes, concur in availing themselves of its guidance in their physiological researches. A similar remark will be found to apply to other classes of scientific inquirers. Whatever their speculative opinions may be, the moment their curiosity is fairly engaged in the pursuit of truth, either physical or moral, they involuntarily, and often perhaps unconsciously, submit their understandings to a logic borrowed neither from the schools of Aristotle nor of Bacon. The ethical system (for example) of those ancient philosophers who held that Virtue consists in following Nature, not only involves a recognition of final causes, but represents the study of them, in as far as regards the ends and destination of our own being, as the great business and duty of life.* The system, too, of those physicians who profess to follow Nature in the treatment of diseases, by watching and aiding her medicative powers, assumes the same doctrine as its fundamental principle. A still more remarkable illustration, however, of the influence which this species of evidence has over the belief, even when we are the least aware of its connexion with metaphysical conclusions, occurs in the history of the French Economical System. Of the comprehensive and elevated views which at first suggested it, the title of Physiocratie, by which it was early distinguished, affords a strong presumptive proof; and the same thing is more fully demonstrated, by the fre Ἐγὼ δέ τι βούλομαι· καταμαθεῖν τὴν φύσιν, καὶ ταύτῃ ἕπεσθαι. EPICTET. quent recurrence made in it to the physical and moral laws of Nature, as the unerring standard which the legislator should keep in view in all his positive institutions.* I do not speak at present of the justness of these opinions. I wish only to remark, that, in the statement of them given by their original authors, it is taken for granted as a truth self-evident and indisputable, not merely that benevolent design is manifested in all the physical and moral arrangements connected with this globe, but that the study of these arrangements is indispensably necessary to lay a solid foundation for political science. The same principles appear to have led Mr. Smith into that train of thinking which gave birth to his inquiries concerning National Wealth. "Man," he observes in one of his oldest manuscripts now extant, "is generally considered by statesmen and projectors as the materials of a sort of political mechanics. Projectors disturb Nature in the course of her operations in human affairs; and it requires no more than to let her alone, and give her fair play in the pursuit of her own designs."-And in another passage: "Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. All governments which thwart this natural course; which force things into another channel; or which endeavour to arrest the progress of society at a particular point, are unnatural, and to support themselves are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical." + Various other passages of a similar import might be quoted, both from his Wealth of Nations, and from his Theory of Moral Sentiments. This doctrine of Smith and Quesnay, which tends to "Ces loix forment ensemble ce qu'on appelle la loi naturelle. Tous les hommes et toutes les puissances humaines doivent être soumis à ces loix souveraines, institutées par l'être supreme: elles sont immuables et irréfragables, et les meilleures loix possibles; et par conséquent, la base du governement le plus parfait, et la règle fondamentale de toutes les loix positives; car les loix positives ne sont que des loix de manutention relatives à l'ordre naturel evidemment le plus avantageux au genre humain."-QUESNAY. † Biographical Memoirs of Smith, Robertson, and Reid, p. 100. simplify the theory of legislation, by exploding the policy of those complicated checks and restraints which swell the municipal codes of most nations, has now, I believe, become the prevailing creed of thinking men all over Europe; and, as commonly happens to prevailing creeds, has been pushed by many of its partisans far beyond the views and intentions of its original authors. Such too is the effect of fashion, on the one hand, and of obnoxious phrases on the other, that it has found some of its most zealous abettors and propagators among writers who would, without a moment's hesitation have rejected, as puerile and superstitious, any reference to final causes in a philosophical discussion. II. Danger of confounding Final with Physical Causes in the Philosophy of the Human Mind. HAVING said so much upon the research of Final Causes in Physics, properly so called, I shall subjoin a few remarks on its application to the Philosophy of the Human Mind ;-a science in which the just rules of investigation are as yet far from being generally understood. Of this no stronger proof can be produced, than the confusion between final and efficient causes, which perpetually recurs in the writings of our latest and most eminent moralists. The same confusion, as I have already observed, prevailed in the physical reasonings of the Aristotelians; but since the time of Bacon, has been so completely corrected, that, in the wildest theories of modern naturalists, hardly a vestige of it is to be traced. To the logical error just mentioned it is owing, that so many false accounts have been given of the principles of human conduct or of the motives by which men are stimulated to action. When the general laws of our internal frame are attentively examined, they will be found to have for their object the happiness and improvement both of the individual and of society. This is their Final Cause, or the end for which we may presume they were destined by our Maker. But, in such cases, it seldom happens, that, while Man is obeying the active impulses of his nature, he has any idea of the ultimate ends which he is promoting; or is able to calculate the remote effects of the movements which he impresses on the little wheels around him. These active impulses, therefore, may, in one sense, be considered as the efficient causes of his conduct; inasmuch as they are the means employed to determine him to particular pursuits and habits; and as they operate (in the first instance, at least) without any reflection on his part on the purposes to which they are subservient. Philosophers, however, have in every age been extremely apt to conclude, when they had discovered the salutary tendency of any active principle, that it was from a sense or foreknowledge of this tendency that the principle derived its origin. Hence have arisen the theories which attempt to account for all our actions from self-love; and also those which would resolve the whole of morality, either into political views of general expediency, or into an enlightened regard to our own best interests. I do not know of any author who has been so completely aware of this common error as Mr. Smith. In examining the principles connected with our moral constitution, he always treats separately of their final causes, and of the mechanism (as he calls it) by which nature accomplishes the effect; and he has even been at pains to point out to his successors the great importance of attending to the distinction between these two speculations.—“In every part of the universe, we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce; and in the mechanism of a plant or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species. But in these, and in all such objects, we still distinguish the efficient from the final cause of their several motions and organizations. The digestion of the food, the circulation of the blood, and the secretion |