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 their several parts? Was the eye contrived without skill in optics, and the ear without knowledge of sounds?"1 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 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. Newton here refers to the axiom of the Aristotelic Philosophy, that "Nature (or God) docs nothing in vain ;”—-oùðìv μάτην, οὐδὲν ἐλλειπῶς, περιττῶς, ἀργῶς, περίεργον, &c.-Ed. 1 Newton's Optics, Query 28. 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.1 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 frequent 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. 2 The same principles appear to have led Mr. Smith into that Discite, O miseri, et causas cognoscite rerum; Persius, [Sat. iii. v. 66, seq.] ̓Εγὼ δὲ τί βούλομαι ;—καταμαθεῖν τὴν φύσιν, καὶ ταύτῃ ἕπεσθαι. "Ces lois forment ensemble ce qu'on appele la loi naturelle. Tous les hommes et toutes les puissances humaines doivent être soumis à ces lois souveraines, instituées par l'être suprême: elles sont immuables et irréfragables, et les meilleurs loix possibles: et Epictetus, [Man. c. 46.] 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 évidemment le plus avantageux au genre humain."-Quesnay. 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."1 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 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. [SUBSECTION] 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; 1 Biographical Memoirs of Smith, Robertson, and Reid, p. 100. [Infra, vol. ix.] 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 an 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 everything 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 of the several juices which are drawn from it, are operations all of them necessary for the great purposes of animal life; yet we never endeavour to account for them from those purposes as from their efficient causes, nor imagine that the blood circulates, or the food digests, of its own accord, and with a view or intention to the purposes of circulation or digestion. The wheels of the watch are all admirably adapted to the end for which it was made, the pointing of the hour. All their various motions conspire in the nicest manner to produce this effect. If they were endowed with a desire and intention to produce it, they could not do it better. Yet we never ascribe any such intention or desire to them, but to the watchmaker, and we know that they are put into motion by a spring, which intends the effect it produces as little as they do. But though, in accounting for the operations of bodies, we never fail to distinguish, in this manner, the efficient from the final cause, in accounting for those of the mind, we are apt to confound these two different things with one another. When, by natural principles, we are led to advance those ends which a refined and enlightened reason would recommend to us, we are very apt to impute to that reason, as to their efficient cause, the sentiments and actions by which we advance those ends, and to imagine that to be the wisdom of Man, which, in reality, is the |