regions of space, and prolonged through many successive ages, such as the seasons, and the regular forms and periods of plants and animals. These indeed all the principles of order in respect of number, time, colour, and form are entitled to be called laws. But they are not original, they are derivative laws, not simple but composite, and the result of arrangements. We are thus enabled to connect the principle of order with the principle of special adaptation; for it is required in order to the existence of general order, that there should be adaptation upon adaptation, and these necessarily of a most ingenious and far-reaching character. We shall have occasion to return, as we proceed, to this subject, as serving to combine general law and special use in a higher unity.

SECT. II. THE ADJUSTMENTS ARE DESIGNED, AND NOT CASUAL. NATURE OF CHANCE.

The argument from design in behalf of the Divine existence, has sometimes been so stated as to make its main premiss a mere truism, and the whole argument a begging of the question. It sets out with the maxim, that whatever exhibits marks of design must have proceeded from a designing mind; but by exhibiting marks of design, is meant proceeding from a designing mind, and thus the whole ratiocination is nothing but the pompous repetition of the same proposition. When put

* As the arrangements needful are not only very numerous but very varied, it is proposed that the word adaptation or adjustment should be substituted for collocation-a phrase which seems to confine the arrangements to those of place, whereas they may also include time, number, active property, &c. As these adjustments are necessary even to the production of those uniform results which we call laws of nature, the proper distinction is not between the laws of matter aud the collocation of matter, but between the properties of matter aud the adjustments required in order to their beneficent action. See Method of Divine Government, Book II. chap. i. sect. ii. and iii., 4th edit.

in this way, the argument is easily repelled and turned against him who urges it. But it is not thus that it has been propounded by any skilful defender of religion.

The argument from final cause, properly understood, is derived from those concurrences and correspondences of agents to produce a given end, which everywhere fall under our notice. These mutual adaptations of different and independent powers are so numerous, so curious, and so beneficent, that they clearly shew that there has been an Intelligent Being arranging them beforehand. They cannot proceed from chance, and we therefore conclude that they must proceed from design.

And this leads us to inquire what is meant by the word Chance, what is usually meant by it, and what is the proper meaning of the phrase. A thousand errors have been lurking in the confused ideas afloat on this subject, and we must be allowed to say that we have seldom found the nature of chance thoroughly expounded, or the various meanings of the word distinctly stated. The ancient atheists argued that there was such a thing as chance, and ascribed to it the formation of the universe. Modern materialists and pantheists maintain that there is no such thing as chance, that there can be no such thing, and thence argue that there can be no traces of design, since all things proceed from a chain of physical or metaphysical causes. We are convinced that the one as well as the other of these parties is mistaken. We mean to shew, in opposition to the modern, that there is such a thing as chance, and, in opposition to the ancient, that there are adjustments in nature which cannot proceed from chance.

In maintaining, however, that there is really such a thing as chance, it is proper to announce that there cannot be chance in this sense, that there is an event without

a cause.

It is not necessary in the present day to institute any proof of this; there is no principle more firmly established or more universally admitted. There may be a difference of opinion as to the nature of cause and effect, and a still greater diversity of view as to the nature of the belief in causation, whether it is derived from internal or external sources, but there is none as to the law or the fact itself. It is admitted that in our world no event happens without a cause. In this sense chance does not exist. "There is no such thing as chance," says Hume. Some would say that it cannot so much as be conceived to exist.

But still there are senses, and these most important senses, in which there may be said to be chance in our world. The word chance, and the corresponding words accident, casualty, fortuity, may be used, and have an intelligible meaning when used in two different senses.

First, To use the language of Professor De Morgan, "the word chance, in the acceptation of probability, refers to events of which the law or purpose is not visible;" and elsewhere, "events do happen by chance, for they certainly do happen so that we can see no reason why they should not have been otherwise." In this sense, whether looking forward to the future, ever dimly seen, or to the present or the past as so far unknown, we may speak of chance, that is, of events of which we do not see the cause or purpose. As thus used, however, the word is significant merely of our ignorance, or rather of the necessary limits set to our knowledge. In this sense it can have no application to the Divine mind, which is ever cognizant, of the antecedents and consequents, of the intention and the issue, of all that has occurred, or that is occurring, or that will occur. As thus employed, the

* De Morgan on Probability, p. 23; and Theory of Probabilities in Ency. Metrop.

word can have no place for or against us in the argument which we are now advancing. The limit of our knowledge cannot settle the question as to whether the adjustments in nature are or are not designed.

Secondly, Things may be said to be casually related to each other when the relation between them is not that of cause and effect, nor designed by the person producing them. Every event has a cause, but every event is not causally connected with every other which may happen about the same time or place, or have some relation to it of property or number. This part of the truth is expressed by Mr. J. S. Mill,-" Facts causally conjoined are separately the effects of causes, and therefore of laws, but of different causes, and causes not connected by any law. It is incorrect, then, to say, that any phenomenon is produced by chance; but we may say that two or more phenomena are conjoined by chance, meaning that they are in no way related through causation, that they are neither cause and effect, nor effects of the same cause, nor effects of causes between which there subsists any law of co-existence, nor even effects of the same original law of collocation."* The meaning of the phrase, "law of collocation," and the use to which it may be turned in the theistic argument, as pointing to a designed adjustment in the original constitution of things, have already been noticed.

So much, then, for casual as distinguished from causal connexion. But casual connexion may also be opposed to contrived connexion. It is needful to illustrate this, for it is a position of great importance in our argument. An agriculturist, let us suppose, is using the means necessary to secure a crop from his ground. Every step which he takes must have a causal connexion with something going before and something coming after; to this

Mill's Logic, Book III. chap. xvii.

there can be no exceptions whatsoever. But among the many agencies he sets a-moving there will be some which have no discoverable mutual relation, while there will be others which very visibly have such a relation, which, we would have it observed, may either be casual or designed. Thus it may be by accident that he began to plough the land on the same day as he did the previous year; by chance that the two horses in a particular plough are of the same age; that his harrows, constructed by different makers, are painted the same colour; that the workmen employed by him have the same Christian name; and that he has precisely the same extent of land in crop as in the previous year. There may be many such relations and correspondences which persons of a particular turn of mind find pleasure in noticing, and this because they are purely casual. But there are other connexions which are not of this fortuitous character. It is not by accident that he begins his work about the same season as he did the previous year; that he has put two horses into his plough; that the ploughing has been followed by sowing and harrowing; that he has workmen engaged in tilling his ground, and a certain portion of his whole ground under cultivation. There is here an evident distinction between two sets of events, and this distinction does not arise from the one class having causes, whereas the others have not, nor from the two proceeding from altogether unconnected laws of collocation, but from the one being designed as a mean toward an end, and the other not being so designed, as having no reference to that end. This distinction between the concurrence of independent means intended to produce an end, and mere coincidences which promote no special end, is an all-important one in the argument from design or final cause.

According to these views we cannot speak of an event