us, and allow each one the full right of examining and judging for himself; that we should do this not only with all the meekness and tenderness of Christians, but with all the candor and liberality of philosopherswhose common aim should be be to encourage investigation and to advance the cause of truth.

LECTURE VI.

ON SECOND CAUSES.

ARE SECOND CAUSES EFFICIENT CAUSES?

By second causes, in this question, are intended causes which owe their existence, and consequently their powers, to the Great First Cause. Whatever be their nature or their influence, they derive all from God, and cannot act but in subordination to his will. In this sense, all created existences are second causes, so far as their agency is concerned in the changes which take place either in the material or spiritual world. Whether they are really and truly efficient, effecting what they seem to effect, is the question. Two opinions on this subject have prevailed. Antecedently to the days of Descartes, Bishop Stillingfleet remarks, there was but one. then, all the world believed, whether philosophers or vulgar, what the great mass have done since-that second causes were efficient causes, the real producers of the changes found in constant conjunction with them. Nor can it be doubted that this statement is substantially correct, since the same fact is admitted by Professor Stewart and others. We know it was the opinion of Aristotle and of Cicero, among the ancients-of Bacon, Locke, Newton, Boyle, among the moderns. Even Descartes himself did not in the main depart from this long

Till

received doctrine, though in some of his speculations he laid the foundation for a new theory. As he could not conceive how matter could act upon mind, nor created mind upon matter, he asserted, “that all motion comes immediately from God, and that it is a mode in matter, but not in God." According to Stillingfleet, he was afraid to speak out, lest he should make God the soul of the world. But not so his followers. Malebranche, and others of the same school, eagerly seizing upon this hint, presently carried their doctrine so far as to affirm that second causes have no efficiency in the production of sensation, and of course none in the changes which occur in the physical objects around us. They contended that God was the efficient cause in both cases, and, in short, the only efficient cause in the universe.

This doctrine soon became prevalent throughout Europe, and, with some modification, makes a part of the metaphysical systems of Clarke, Butler and Berkeley. It is a prominent feature in the speculations of Reid, Stewart and Beattie, though the first often seems to contradict himself upon this article-a circumstance the more remarkable, as he evidently made this subject a matter of much study and reflection. Professor Stewart has noticed this inconsistency, and Professor Beazely has animadverted upon it in terms of unmeasured severity. "The chain of natural causes," Dr. Reid observes, "has not unfitly been compared to a chain hanging down from heaven: a link that is discovered supports the link below it, but it must itself be supported, and that which supports it must be supported, until we come to the First Link, which is supported by the throne of the Almighty." And the general doctrine which this comparison illustrates, if it illustrate anything, is expressed in the following sentence: "Every natural cause must have a cause, until we ascend to the First Cause, which is uncaused, and which operates not by necessity, but by

will." Here the efficiency of natural causes seems to be distinctly recognized, and the writer talks like Lord Verulam, or one of the philosophers of olden time. Were he, indeed, the advocate of the intrinsic power of second causes, I know not how he could have expressed himself with more clearness and precision. We give this statement not so much to show the inconsistency of the writer, as how ready men are to relapse into plain common sense notions, in spite of their philosophy, whenever their philosophy departs from the unbiased voice of nature. The most wakeful caution is seldom sufficient to protect a man against relapses of this sort. It is not to be doubted, however, that Dr. Reid, notwithstanding these occasional aberrations from his system, was a strenuous advocate for the new theory, namely, That second causes have no power, but are to be regarded as the mere antecedents or signs of change, the efficiency never being in them, but in the immediate agency of God. The only exception which he or Professor Stewart makes to this sweeping universality, is in the case of voluntary action, where they suppose the mind acts as the immediate and direct efficient, both in the production of volition and in those mental and bodily changes which instantly follow it. Here, they say, man is an efficient cause. In every other case, throughout the physical and moral world, God is the sole efficient. Do you ask for the proof of man's efficiency in voluntary action? They answer, our own consciousness; by which they mean that such is our mental constitution, that every man is irresistibly led to refer his voluntary actions to his own inherent powers, and to regard himself as the only true and proper efficient in the case.

But here Dr. Reid demurs, not being quite certain of this. We are certain only, he says, of our volition, and the consequent bodily or mental change; we are not certain that our volition was the efficient cause of that

change it may have resulted from the immediate agency of God.

He would probably limit his doctrine of creature efficiency to the single fact of volition, and contend that here, and here only, have we evidence that man is truly an agent, or an efficient cause. But why this solitary exception? The theory would certainly be more simple, and perhaps more plausible, without it. Why not go the whole length with Malebranche, and others of that school, and say that "God is the immediate producer of all change, of all absolutely; and every event in the universe is at once accounted for, and accounted for on one and the same principle? But neither Reid nor Stewart will for a moment consent to this, because they perceive that such a doctrine would instantly sweep away every vestige of created power—that is, active power-and with it, according to their principles, all our notions of moral responsibility. They did well, therefore, to pause at a point which, according to them, threatened to overturn the foundations of virtue, and to set men loose from those ties which bind them as moral beings to one another, and to the throne of their Creator.

But a question here may well be asked, on the score of consistency, can these writers deny the efficiency of second causes in the physical world, and maintain it in the moral? What are the facts in the case? Why, in both worlds, we perceive a train of antecedents and consequents, a train alike uniform and invariable, and we directly perceive nothing more. But because we cannot persuade ourselves that this uniformity and invariableness take place without any ground or reason, we recognize in every change a cause, and the fact of its operation, though we remain profoundly ignorant of the modus. Nothing is seen by us in either train, but the phenomena, and the order in which they arise; and though we always connect with them two things which