effects of nature. There is no danger to profound9 these mysteries, no sanctum sanctorum in philosophy. The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and contemplated by man: 't is the debt of our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay for not being beasts. Without this, the world is still as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth day, when3 as yet there was not a creature that could conceive there was a world. The wisdom of God receives small honour from those vulgar heads that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire his works. Those highly magnify him, whose judicious inquiry into his acts, and deliberate research into his creatures, return the duty of a devout and learned admiration.5 Therefore, or say Search while thou wilt; and let thy reason go, But unto reason can he e'er be known. The devils do know thee; but those damn'd meteors Build not thy glory, but confound thy creatures. Teach my endeavours so thy works to read, That learning them in thee I may proceed. Give thou my reason that instructive flight, Whose weary wings may on thy hands still light. Teach me to soar aloft, yet ever so, When near the sun, to stoop again below. Thus shall my humble feathers safely hover, And, though near earth, more than the heav'ns discover. And then at last, when homeward I shall drive, Rich with the spoils of nature, to my hive, There will I sit, like that industrious Hy, Till death abrupts them, and succeeding glory And this is almost all wherein an humble creature may endeavour to requite, and some way to retribute unto his Creator: for, if not he that saith, Lord, Lord, but he that doeth the will of the Father, shall be saved, certainly our wills must 9. ... profound] Edts. 1642 and the MSS. read, propound.-Ed. 1. ... sanctum sanctorum &c.] MS. L. reads, "salvation in philosophy."-Ed. The world &c.] In MS. L. this clause is thus: "The world was made not so much to be inhabited by men, as to be contemplated, studied, and known, by man."-Ed. 3. as it was before the sixth day, when] Edts. 1642 read, as it was before, at the first, when."-Ed. 4 Those highly] Those only, in MS. W.-Ed. 5.... and learned admiration.] The succeeding verses and concluding paragraph of the section are not in Edts. 1642, nor in the MSS. W. L. & R.-Ed. be our performances, and our intents make out our actions; otherwise our pious labours shall find anxiety in our graves, and our best endeavours not hope, but fear, a resurrection. SECT. XIV. There is but one first cause, and four second causes, of all things. Some are without efficient, as God; others without matter, as angels; some without form, as the first matter: but every essence, created or uncreated, hath its final cause, and some positive end both of its essence and operation. This is the cause I grope after in the works of nature; on this hangs the providence of God. To raise so beauteous a structure as the world and the creatures thereof was but his art; but their sundry and divided operations, with their predestinated ends, are from the treasury of his wisdom. In the causes, nature, and affections, of the eclipses of the sun and moon, there is most excellent speculation;7 but, to profound farther, and to contemplate a reason why his providence hath so disposed and ordered their motions in that vast circle, as to conjoin and obscure each other, is a sweeter piece of reason, and a diviner point of philosophy. Therefore, sometimes, and in some things, there appears to me as much divinity in Galen his books, De Usu Partium, as in Suarez's Metaphysicks. Had Aristotle been as curious in the inquiry of this cause as he was of the other, he had not left behind him an imperfect piece of philosophy, but an absolute tract of divinity. 8 SECT. XV.-Natura nihil agit frustra, is the only indisputable axiom in philosophy. There are no grotesques in nature; not any thing framed to fill up empty cantons, and unnecessary spaces. In the most imperfect creatures, and such as were not preserved in the ark, but, having their seeds and principles in the womb of nature, are every where, where the power of the sun is, in these is the wisdom of his hand discovered. firmeth, there is no such cause as that which they call the final cause.—See Carpenter, Philosophia Libera, Decad. iii, Exercit. 5.-Ed. 7.... 6 There is but one first cause, and four second causes, of all things.] Namely, efficient, material, formal, and final: to which, as Keck remarks in his note on this passage, Plato adds, for a fifth, exemplar or idea. See also Boethius De Consolatione, lib. iii, met. 9, and St. Augustine, lib. lxxxiii, quæst. 46. Mr. Nat. sometimes, and in some things,] Carpenter, in his Philosophia Libera, af- Not in MSS. W. & R.-Ed. most excellent speculation;] "and most sweet philosophy from MS. L.-Ed. Add, 8 Out of this rank Solomon chose the object of his admiration; indeed, what reason may not go to school to the wisdom of bees, ants, and spiders? What wise hand teacheth them to do what reason cannot teach us?9 Ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, whales, elephants, dromedaries, and camels; these, I confess, are the colossuses and majestick pieces of her hand; but in these narrow engines there is more curious mathematicks; and the civility of these little citizens more neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker. Who admires not Regio Montanus his fly beyond his eagle; or wonders not more at the operation of two souls in those little bodies than but one in the trunk of a cedar? I could never content my contemplation with those general pieces of wonder, the flux and reflux of the sea, the increase of Nile, the conversion of the needle to the north; and have studied to match and parallel those in the more obvious and neglected pieces of nature, which, without farther travel, I can do in the cosmography of myself. We carry with us the wonders we seek without us: there is all Africa and her prodigies in us. We are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies wisely learns, in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume. SECT. XVI. Thus there are two books from whence I collect my divinity. Besides that written one of God, another of his servant, nature, that universal and publick manuscript, that lies expansed unto the eyes of all. Those that never saw him in the one have discovered him in the other: this was the scripture and theology of the heathens; the natural motion of the sun made them more admire him than its supernatural 9 What wise hand teacheth &c.] This sentence is omitted in MS. L.-Ed. 1 Who admires not &c.] Du Bartas celebrates the eagle and fly of Regio Montanus, in his Poem; 6me jour, 6me semaine.-Ed. 2. ... or wonders not more at the operation of two souls in those little bodies than but one in the trunk of a cedar?] That is, the vegetative; which, according to the common opinion, is supposed to be in trees, though the Epicureans and Stoicks would not allow any soul in plants; but Empedocles and Plato allowed them not only a vegetative soul, but affirmed them to be animals. The Manichees went farther, and attributed so much of the rational soul to them, that they accounted it homicide to gather either the flowers or fruit, as St. Augustine reports.-K. In MS. L. this clause is added; "or what wise man teacheth them to do, what nature cannot teach us?"-Ed. 3. ... expansed] Thus, in MS. W.; exposed, in Edts. 1642 and in MS. L.; expounded in MS. R.-Ed. station did the children of Israel. The ordinary effects of nature wrought more admiration in them than, in the other, all his miracles. Surely the heathens knew better how to join and read these mystical letters than we Christians, who cast a more careless eye on these common hieroglyphics, and disdain to suck divinity from the flowers of nature. Nor do I so forget God as to adore the name of nature; which I define not, with the schools, to be the principle of motion and rest, but that straight and regular line, that settled and constant course the wisdom of God hath ordained the actions of his creatures, according to their several kinds. To make a revolution every day is the nature of the sun, because of that necessary course which God hath ordained it, from which, by a faculty from that voice which first did give it motion, it cannot swerve.5 Now this course of nature God seldom alters or perverts; but, like an excellent artist, hath so contrived his work, that, with the self-same instrument, without a new creation, he may effect his obscurest designs. Thus he sweeteneth the water with a wood, preserveth the creatures in the ark,' which the blast of his mouth might have as easily created; -for God is like a skilful geometrician, who, when more easily, and with one stroke of his compass, he might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather do this in a circle or longer way, according to the constituted and forelaid principles of his art: yet this rule of his he doth sometimes pervert, to acquaint the world with his prerogative, lest the arrogancy of our reason should question his power, and conclude he could not.9 And thus I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose hand and instrument she only is; and therefore, to ascribe his actions unto her is to devolve the honour of the principal agent upon the instrument; which if with reason we may do, 4 did the children of Israel.] by the faculty of that voice &c."-Ed. MS. L. gives this very singular reading, did the wild Israelites."-Ed. 6.... with a wood,] See Exod. xv, 25. In MS. R. the words with a wood are omitted. Edts. 1672 and 78 read, word. -Ed. then let our hammers rise up and boast they have built our houses, and our pens receive the honour of our writings. I hold there is a general beauty in the works of God, and therefore no deformity in any kind of species or creature whatsoever. I cannot tell by what logick we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant, ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms; and having passed that general visitation of God, who saw that all that he had made was good, that is, conformable to his will, which abhors deformity, and is the rule of order. and beauty. There is no deformity but in monstrosity; wherein, notwithstanding, there is a kind of beauty; nature so ingeniously contriving the irregular parts, as they become sometimes more remarkable than the principal fabrick. To speak yet more narrowly, there was never any thing ugly or mis-shapen, but the chaos; wherein, notwithstanding, to speak strictly, there was no deformity, because no form; nor was it yet impregnate1 by the voice of God. Now, nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God. 3 SECT. XVII. This is the ordinary and open way of his providence, which art and industry have in a good part discovered; whose effects we may foretell without an oracle. To foreshew these is not prophecy, but prognostication. There is another way, full of meanders and labyrinths, whereof the devil and spirits have no exact ephemerides; and that is a more particular and obscure method of his providence; directing the operations of individual and single essences: this we call fortune; that serpentine and crooked line, whereby he draws those actions his wisdom intends in a more unknown and secret way: this cryptic and involved method of his pro 1... . nor was it yet impregnate] In Edts. 1642, these words are omitted. In MSS. W. & R. there is a blank instead of them ;-thus: "because no form by the voice of God."-Ed. 2 · for nature is the art of God.] Hobbes has adopted these very words in the first line of his introduction to Leviathan; or the Matter, Form, and Power, of a Commonwealth, &c.-Ed. 3. ... prognostication.] " ... a bare prognostication” in MS. L.—Ed. |