I THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN II this obvious conclusion. Philo's sifting, inquisitive disposition' suffers, he suggests,' from too luxuriant a fertility which suppresses [his] natural good sense by a profusion of unnecessary scruples and objections'. At this point we are told 'Philo was a little embarrassed and confounded', as if this shaft of Cleanthes had gone home; and for the interpretation of the Dialogues this little dramatic touch is of some significance. The statement of Cleanthes is, to a considerable extent, Hume's own criticism, as ‘a practical man of common sense', of the speculative difficulties which he makes it his business to raise. As he is reported to have said on a memorable occasion: Though I throw out my speculations to entertain the learned and metaphysical world, yet in other things I do not think so differently from the rest of the world as you imagine.' We find, as a matter of fact, in the concluding section of the Dialogues when, after the departure of Demea, Philo talks with Cleanthes as one man with another, that he states his frank acceptance of the argument from design in terms as strong and unqualified as those of Cleanthes himself. But for the present while he hesitated in delivering an answer, luckily for him, Demea broke in upon the discourse, and saved his countenance'. This diversion leaves Philo free to develop his sceptical and naturalistic vein in Parts IV to VIII, some of the most characteristic sections of the work. He elaborates the difficulty of stopping in the causal regress. 'A mental world, or universe of ideas, requires a cause as much as does a material world or universe of objects.' If we say that the different ideas which compose the reason of the Supreme Being fall into order, of themselves and by their own nature, ' why is it not as good sense to say that the parts of the material world fall into order, of themselves and by their own nature?' 2 It may be permissible in science 'to explain He claims this title for himself in the concluding section. 2 Part IV. particular effects by more general causes', but it cannot be satisfactory to explain a particular effect by a particular cause, which was no more to be accounted for than the effect itself '. 1 He returns to elaborate the contention that Thought is only one of a number of powers or energies in nature, whose effects are known, but whose essence is incomprehensible '. 'In this little corner of the world alone, there are four principles, Reason, Instinct, Generation, Vegetation.' The world resembles a living creature, an animal or a vegetable, perhaps more than it resembles a machine, and if Cleanthes demands the Cause of our great vegetative or generative faculty, we are equally entitled to ask him the Cause of his great reasoning principle.' For, after all, 'reason, in its internal fabric and structure, is really as little known to us as instinct or vegetation.' 2 In a striking paragraph Hume anticipates the evolutionary view of the gradual perfecting of organic adjustments through the progressive modification of more primitive forms. If we survey a ship, what an exalted idea must we form of the ingenuity of the carpenter, who framed so complicated, useful, and beautiful a machine? And what surprise must we feel, when we find him a stupid mechanic, who imitated others, and copied an art, which, through a long succession of ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections, deliberations, and controversies, had been gradually improving? Many worlds might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out much labour lost many fruitless trials made and a slow, but continued improvement carried on during infinite ages in the art of world-making.' Applied to the human eye, as developed from the pigment spots of lower creatures, this is the argument urged by Huxley and others against Paley and his Almighty Watchmaker. And in another 1 Concluding words of Part IV. 2 Part VII. 3 Part IV. I NATURALISTIC CRITICISMS 13 section, in which he elaborates a modern version of the old Epicurean hypothesis' of the origin of the world 'from the eternal revolutions of unguided matter', Hume turns the tables upon the ordinary teleological theory by a statement of the modern view of adaptation and the consequent survival of the fittest. It is in vain to insist upon the uses of the parts in animals or vegetables and their curious adjustment to each other. I would fain know how an animal could subsist, unless its parts were so adjusted? Do we not find, that it immediately perishes whenever this adjustment ceases, and that its matter corrupting tries some new form.' 1 Hence even the old Epicurean hypothesis, he adds, ' though commonly, and I believe, justly, esteemed the most absurd system that has yet been proposed,' may be made with a few alterations to bear a faint appearance of probability. For himself, Philo is made to say that he is attracted by the ancient theory of a world-soul, and were he obliged to defend any speculation, he esteems 'none more plausible than that which ascribes an eternal inherent principle of order to the world'.2 But the truth is 'we have no data to establish any system of cosmogony. Our experience, so imperfect in itself, and so limited both in extent and duration, can afford us no probable conjecture concerning the whole of things.' This, says Philo, is the topic on which I have all along insisted. Each disputant triumphs in his turn,' 'but all of them on the whole prepare a complete triumph for the Sceptic.' 'A total suspension of judgement is here our only reasonable resource.' Amid all this fire of criticism and brilliant improvisation of vivid hypotheses, Cleanthes remains by his original thesis quite unmoved. He compliments Philo on the fertility of his invention—' So great is your fertility of invention, that 1 Part VIII (p. 428). Close of Part VI. And it may be noted that he repeats this as the most plausible view at the close of Part VIII, where this part of the argument reaches its conclusion. I am not ashamed to acknowledge myself unable, on a sudden, to solve regularly such out-of-the-way difficulties as you incessantly start upon me: though I clearly see, in general, their fallacy and error.' Looking at the subject practically, in short, as a matter for reasonable belief or disbelief, he invokes Philo's own serious and considered judgement against the 'whimsies' he has delivered, whimsies which he must be sensible' may puzzle but cannot convince us '.1 And this appeal is not in vain, for even before the final rapprochement, we find, in the significant chapter which follows, on the moral attributes of the Deity, that Philo makes this unreserved admission: Formerly when we argued concerning the natural attributes of intelligence and design, I needed all my sceptical and metaphysical subtilty to elude your grasp. In many views of the universe, and of its parts, particularly the latter, the beauty and fitness of final causes strike us with such irresistible force, that all objections appear (what I believe they really are) mere cavils and sophisms.' And this is more than confirmed in the frank give-and-take of the two disputants in the concluding section, where Hume seems to lay aside his sceptical mask and let us see for a few moments his individual belief on the great question in debate. Your spirit of controversy,' says Cleanthes in the opening of that section, 'joined to your abhorrence of vulgar superstition, carries you strange lengths, when engaged in an argument.' 'I must confess, replied Philo, that I am less cautious on the subject of Natural Religion than on any other; both because I know that I can never, on that head, corrupt the principles of any man of common-sense, and because no one, I am confident, in whose eyes I appear a man of common-sense, will ever mistake my intentions. You, in particular, Cleanthes, with whom I live in unreserved intimacy; you are sensible, that, notwithstanding the freedom of my conversation, and my 1 Close of Part VII. THE THEISTIC CONCLUSION 15 love of singular arguments, no one has a deeper sense of religion impressed on his mind, or pays more profound adoration to the Divine Being, as he discovers himself to reason, in the inexplicable contrivance and artifice of Nature. A purpose, an intention, a design strikes everywhere the most careless, the most stupid thinker; and no man can be so hardened in absurd systems, as at all times to reject it. . . . All the sciences almost lead us insensibly to acknowledge a first intelligent Author; and their authority is often so much the greater, as they do not directly profess that intention.' The suspension of judgement which he formerly advocated he now pronounces impossible. The existence of a DEITY is plainly ascertained by reason.' Inconsistent as it may appear with the general tenor of Hume's philosophy, there is no doubt that this conclusion is neither due to the literary art of the dialogue nor is it an insincere concession to public opinion. It is to be found in all his works in which the question is touched, and everywhere it is presented as the one sufficient foundation for rational religion as opposed to the 'superstition' which his soul loathed. Thus in a note appended to the Treatise he says: 'The order of the universe proves an omnipotent mind. Nothing more is requisite to give a foundation to all the articles of religion.'1 Similarly not long after, in a letter of 1744, he defines rational religion as 'the practice of morality and the assent of the understanding to the proposition that God exists'. In the Enquiry, in the important section 'Of a Particular Providence and of a Future State' he says (in the transparent disguise of an Epicurean philosopher) that 'the chief or sole argument for a divine existence (which I never questioned) is derived from the order of nature'. And again, the 'Natural History of Religion' opens with a distinction between two questions in regard to religion-its. 1 Book I, Part III, section 14, Green and Grose's edition, p. 456. |