be so well learned as from comparative anatomy; that is, if we would understand physiology, and reason on the functions of the animal economy, we must see how the same end is brought about in other species. We must contemplate the part or organ in dif ferent animals: its shape, position, and connexion with the other parts; and observe what thence arises. If we find one common effect constantly produced, though in a very different way, we may safely conclude that this is the use or function of the part. This reasoning can never betray us, if we are but sure of the facts."*

The celebrated Albinus expresses himself to the same purpose in his preface to Harvey's Exercitatio de Motu Cordis. "Incidenda autem animalia, quibus partes illæ quarum actiones quærimus cædem atque homini sunt, aut certe similes iis; ex quibus sine metu erroris judicare de illis hominis liceat. Quin et reliqua, si modo aliquam habeant ad hominem similitudinem, idonea sunt ad aliquod suppeditandum."

If Bacon had lived to read such testimonies as these in favor of the investigation of final causes, or had witnessed the discoveries to which it has led in the study of the animal economy, he would, I doubt not, have readily admitted, that it was not altogether uninteresting and unprofitable, even to the physical inquirer. Such, however, is the influence of an illustrious name, that, in direct opposition to the evidence of historical facts, the assertion of the complete sterility of all these speculations is, to the present day, repeated with undiminished confidence, by writers of unquestionable learning and talents. In one of the most noted physiological works which have lately appeared on the Continent, Bacon's apophthegm is cited more than once with unqualified approbation; although the author candidly owns, that it is difficult for the most reserved philosopher always to keep it steadily in view, in the course of his inquiries.†

The prejudice against final causes, so generally avowed by the most eminent philosophers of France, during the eighteenth century, was first introduced into that country by Des Cartes. It must not, however, be imagined, that in the mind of this great man, it arose from any bias towards atheism. On the contrary, he himself tells us, that his objection to the research of uses or ends, was founded entirely on the presumptuous confidence which it seemed to argue in the powers of human reason; as if it were conceivable, that the limited faculties of man could penetrate into the counsels of Divine wisdom. Of the existence of God he conceived that a demonstrative proof was afforded by the idea we are able to form of a Being infinitely perfect, and necessarily existing; and

Letter by an anonymous Correspondent, prefixed to Monro's Comparative Anatomy. London, 1744.

"Je regarde, avec le grand Bacon, la philosophie des causes finales comme stérile: mais il est bien difficile à l'homme le plus réservé, de n'y avoir jamais recours dans ses explications."-Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l'Homme. Par M. le Senateur Cabanis. Tome. i. p. 352. Paris, 1805.

it has with some probability been conjectured, that it was his partiality to this new argument of his own, which led him to reject the reasonings of his predecessors in support of the same conclusion.*

To this objection of Des Cartes, an elaborate, and in my opinion, a most satisfactory reply, is to be found in the works of Mr. Boyle. The principal scope of his essay may be collected from the following short extract.

"Suppose that a countryman, being in a clear day brought into the garden of some famous mathematician, should see there one of those curious gnomonic instruments, that show at once the place of the sun in the zodiac, his declination from the equator, the day of the month, the length of the day, &c. &c. It would indeed be presumption in him, being unacquainted both with the mathemati cal disciplines, and the several intentions of the artist, to pretend or think himself able to discover all the ends for which so curious

Nullas unquam rationes circa res naturales a fine quam Deus aut natura in 118 faciendis sibi proposuit desumemus; quia non tantum debemus nobis arrogare ut ejus consiliorum participes nos esse putemus."—(Princip. pars. i. sec. 28.) "Dum hæc perpendo attentius, occurrit primò non mihi esse mirandum si quædam a Deo fiant quorum rationes non intelligam; nec de ejus existentia ideo esse dubitandum quod forte quædam alia esse experiar quæ quare, vel quomodo ab illo facta sint non comprehendo; cum enim jam sciam naturam meam esse valde infirmam et limitatam, Dei autem naturam esse immensam, incomprehensibilem, infinitam, ex hoc, satis etiam scio innumerabilia illum posse quorum causas ignorem; atque ob hanc unicam rationem totum illud causarum genus quod a fine peti solet in rebus physicis nullum usum habere existimo; non enim absque temeritate me puto posse investigare fines Dei."—(Meditatio Quarta.)

Among the earliest opponents of Des Cartes's doctrine concerning Final Causes, was Gassendi; a circumstance which I remark with peculiar pleasure, as he has been so unjustly represented by Cudworth and others, as a partizan, not only of the physical, but of the atheistical opinions of the Epicurean school. For this charge I do not see that they had the slightest pretense to urge, but that, in common with Bacon, he justly considered the physical theories of Epicurus and Democritus as more analogous to the experimental inquiries of the moderns, than the logical subtilties of Aristotle and of the schoolmen. The following passage is transcribed in Gassendi's own words, from his Objections to the Meditations of Des Cartes.

"Quod autem à physica consideratione rejicis usum causarum finalium, alià fortassis occasione potuisses recte facere: et de Deo cùm agitur verendum profectò, ne præcipuum argumentum rejicias, quo divina sapientia, providentia, potentia, atque adeò existentia, lumine naturæ stabiliri potest. Quippe ut mundun universum, ut cœlum et alias ejus et præcipuas partes præteream, undenam, aut quomodo meliùs argumentare valeas, quàm ex usu partium in plantis, in animalibus, in hominibus, in te ipso (aut corpore tuo) qui similitudinem Dei geris? Videmus profectò magnos quosque viros ex speculatione anatomica corporis humani non assurgere modò ad Dei notitiam, sed hymnum quoque ipsi canere, quod omnes partes ita conformaverit, collocavertique ad usus, ut sit omnino propter solertiam atque providentiam incomparabilem commendandus."-Objectiones Quinta in Meditationem IV. De Vero et Falso.

I do not know if it has been hitherto remarked, that Gassendi is one of the first modern writers, by whom the following maxim, so often repeated by later physiologists, was distinctly stated; "Licet ex conformatione partium corporis humani, conjecturas desumere ad functiones mere naturales." It was from a precipitate application of this maxim, that he was led to conclude, that a man was originally destined to feed on vegetables alone; a proposition which gave occasion to several memoirs by Dr. Wallis and Dr. Tyson, in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.

and elaborate a piece was framed: but when he sees it furnished with a style, with horary lines and numbers, and in short with all the requisites of a sun-dial, and manifestly perceives the shadow to mark from time to time the hour of the day, it would be no more a presumption than an error in him to conclude, that, whatever other uses the instrument was fit or was designed for, it is a sun-dial, that was meant to show the hour of the day.'

With this opinion of Boyle that of Newton so entirely coincided, that, according to Maclaurin, he thought the consideration of final causes essential to true philosophy; and was accustomed to congratulate himself on the effect of his writings in reviving an attention to them, after the attempt of Des Cartes to discard them from physics. On this occasion, Maclaurin has remarked, "that of all sort of causes, final causes are the most clearly placed in our view; and that it is difficult to comprehend why it should be thought arrogant to attend to the design and contrivance that is so evidently displayed in nature, and obvious to all men ;-to maintain, for instance, that the eye was made for seeing, though we may not be able either to account mechanically for the refraction of light in its coats, or to explain how the image is propagated from the retina to the mind."-(Account of Newton's Philosophical Discoveries, book i. chap. ii.) It is Newton's own language, however, which alone can do justice to his sentiments on the present subject.

"The main business of natural philosophy is to argue from phenomena, without feigning hypotheses, and to deduce causes from effects till we come to the very first cause, which certainly is not mechanical; and not only to unfold the mechanism of the world, but chiefly to resolve these and such like questions: 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?"-(Newton's Optics, Query 28.)

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?

* In the same essay, Mr. Boyle has offered some very judicious strictures on the abuses to which the research of final causes is liable, when incautiously and presumptuously pursued. An abstract of these, accompanied with a few illustrations from later writers, might form an interesting chapter in a treatise of inductive logic.

The subject has been since prosecuted with considerable ingenuity by Le Sage of Geneva, who has even attempted, and not altogether without success, to lay down logical rules for the investigation of ends. To this study, which he was anxious to form into a separate science, he gave the very ill-chosen_name of Teleologie; a name, if I am not mistaken, first suggested by Wolfius. For some valuable fragments of his intended work with respect to it, see the Account of his Life and Writings by his friend M. Prévost. (Geneve, 1805.)

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 Bacon. 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. 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

"Discite, O miseri, et causas cognoscite rerum,

Quid sumus, et quidnam victuri gignimur."-Persius.

Εγω δε τι βουλομαι· καταμαθείν την φυσιν, και ταύτῃ έπεσθαι.—Epictet. "Ces lois forment ensemble ce qu'on appelle la loi naturelle. Tous les hommes et toutes les puissances humaines doivent être soumis à ces lois souveraines, instituées par l'être supreme: elles sont immuables et irréfragables, et les meilleurs loix possibles; et par conséquent, la base du government le plus parfait, et la régle fondamentale de toutes les loix positives; car les loix positives ne sont que des loix de manutention relatives à l'ordre naturel evidemment le plus advantageux au genre humain."—Quesnay.

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 the globe, but that the study of these arrangements is indispensably necessary to lay a solid foundation for political science.

The same principles appear to have led Mr. Smith into that 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 23 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 endeavor to arrest the progress of society at a particular point, are unnatural, and to support themselves are obliged to be oppres sive and tyranical." (Biographical Memoirs of Smith, Robertson, and Reid, p. 100.) 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 tend 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 prevaling creed of thinking men all over Europe; and, as commonly happens to prevailing creeds, has been pushed by many of its partizans 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.

2.-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; 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