Ontology or the Theory of Being Part 23

(_f_) We may distinguish also between the _real_ end (_finis_ "_qui_" or "_cujus_", and the _personal_ end (_finis_ "_cui_"). The former is the good _which_ the agent desires, the good for the sake of _which_ "_cujus_"

_gratia_) he acts. The latter is the subject or person _to whom_ he wishes this good, or _for whom_ he wishes to procure it. Thus, a labourer may work to earn _a sustenance_ for _himself_ or also for _his family_. The real and the personal end are never willed separately, but always as one concrete good.

(_g_) The distinction between a _princ.i.p.al_ end and an _accessory_ end (motivum "_impulsivum_") is obvious. The former can move to act of itself without the latter, but the latter strengthens the influence of the former. A really charitable person, while efficaciously moved to give alms by sympathy with the poor, may not be uninfluenced by vanity to let others know of his charity.

(_h_) Finally we may note the theological distinction between the _natural_ end, and the _supernatural_ end, of man as a rational and moral agent. The former is the end _due_ to man's nature, the latter is an end which is gratuitous and undue to his nature. G.o.d might not have created the world or man, and in this sense even the natural end of man is a gratuitous gift of G.o.d; but granted that G.o.d did decree to create the world and man, an end corresponding to man's nature and powers was due to him: the knowledge, service and love of G.o.d as known to man by the light of natural reason. But as a matter of fact G.o.d, in His actual providence, has decreed for man an incomparably higher and purely gratuitous end, an end revealed to man by G.o.d Himself, an end entirely undue not only to man but to any and every possible creature: the Beatific Vision of the Divine Essence for ever in heaven.

108. CAUSALITY OF THE FINAL CAUSE; RELATION OF THE LATTER TO EFFICIENT, FORMAL, AND MATERIAL CAUSES.-We can best a.n.a.lyse the influence of the final cause by studying this influence as exerted on conscious and intelligent agents. The final cause has a positive influence of some sort on the production, happening, actualization of effects. What is the nature of this influence? The final cause exerts its influence by being _a __ good_, an apprehended good; it exerts this influence on the appet.i.te of the agent, soliciting the latter to perform certain acts for the realization, attainment, possession, or enjoyment of this good. But it must not be conceived as the _efficient cause_ of this movement of the appet.i.te, nor may its influence be conceived as _action_. An efficient cause must actually exist in order to act; but when the final cause, as an apprehended good, exerts its influence on the appet.i.te _it is not yet actual_: not until the agent, by his action, has realized the end and actually attained it, does the end, as a good, actually exist. We must distinguish between the end _as attained_ and the end _as intended_, between the _finis in executione_ and the _finis in intentione_. It is not the end as attained that is a final cause; as attained it is an effect pure and simple. It is the end as intended that is a final cause; and as intended it does not yet actually exist: hence its influence cannot be by way of _action_. Perhaps it is the _idea_ or _cognition_ of the intended end that exerts the peculiar influence of final cause? No; the _idea_ or _cognition_ of the end actually exists, no doubt, in the conscious agent, but this is only a condition, a _conditio sine qua non_, for the apprehended good, the final cause, to exert its influence: _nil volitum nisi praecognitum_. It is not the cognition of the good, however, that moves the agent to act, it is not the idea of the good that the agent desires or strives for, but the good itself. It is the good itself, the known good, that exerts the influence, and this influence consists in the _pa.s.sive inclination_ or _attraction_ or _tendency_ of the appet.i.te towards the good: a tendency which necessarily results from the very presence of the good (not really or physically of course, but representatively, mentally, "_intentionally_," by "_esse intentionale_"; cf. 4) in the agent's consciousness, and which is formally the actualization of the causal power or influence of the final cause. "Just as the efficient cause influences by acting," says St. Thomas,(504) "so the final cause influences by being yearned for and desired".

Looked at from the side of the agent that undergoes it, this influence is a _pa.s.sive yielding_: this next becomes an _active_ motion of appet.i.te; and in the case of free will a deliberate act of intending the end, followed by acts of choosing means, and finally by acts commanding the executive faculties to employ these means.

Looked at from the side of the final cause, the influence consists in an _attraction_ of appet.i.te towards union with itself as a good. The matter cannot be a.n.a.lysed much further; nor will imagination images help us here any more than in the case of efficient causality. It must be noted, however, that the influence of the final cause is the influence not of a reality as actual, or in its _esse actuale_, but of a reality as present to a perceiving mind, or in its _esse intentionale_. At the same time it would be a mistake to infer from this that the influence of the final cause is not _real_. It is sometimes described as "intentional" causality, "_causalitas intentionalis_"; but this must not be taken to mean that it is not real: for it is not the "_esse intentionale_" of the good, _i.e._ the cognition of the good, its presence in the mind or consciousness of the agent, that moves the latter's appet.i.te: it is the apprehended good, apprehended _as real_, as possible of actual attainment, that moves the agent to act. The influence may not be _physical_ in the sense of being productive of, or interchangeable with, or measurable by, corporeal energy, or in terms of mechanical work; nor is it; but it is none the less real.

But if the influence of a final cause really reaches to the effect of the agent's actions only through the medium of the latter's appet.i.te, and therefore through a link of "intentional" causality, does it not at once follow that the attribution of final causality to the domain of unconscious and inorganic activities, can be at best merely metaphorical?

The attribution to such agencies of an "_appet.i.tus naturalis_" is intelligible indeed as a striking and perhaps not unpoetic metaphor. But to contend that it is anything more than a metaphor, to claim seriously that inanimate agencies are swayed and influenced by "ends,"-is not this really to subst.i.tute mysticism and mystery for rational speculation and a.n.a.lysis?

Mechanists are wont to dismiss the doctrine of final causes in the physical universe with offhand charges of this kind. They are but too ready to attribute it to a mystical att.i.tude of mind. Final causes, they say, are not discovered in inanimate nature by the cold, calculating, unemotional a.n.a.lysis to which reason submits its activities, but are read into it by minds which allow themselves to be prompted by the imagination and emotions to personify and anthropomorphize inanimate agencies. The accusation is as plausible as it is unjust. It is plausible because the attribution of final causes to inanimate nature, and of an "appet.i.tus _naturalis_" to its agencies, _seems_ to imply the recognition of conscious, mental, "intentional" influence in this domain. But it really implies nothing of the sort; and hence the injustice of the charge. What it does imply is the existence of a genuine _a.n.a.logy_ between the nature and natural activities of physical agencies on the one hand and the appet.i.te and appet.i.tive activities of conscious agencies on the other. The existence of this a.n.a.logy is absolutely undeniable. The orderly, invariable and uniformly suitable character of physical activities, simply forces our reason to recognize in physical agencies _natures_ which tend towards their development, and which by their activities attain to what is _good_ for them, to what _perfects_ them. In other words we have to recognize that each by its natural line of activity attains to results that are good and useful to it _just as if_ it apprehended them as such and consciously tended towards them. The a.n.a.logy is there; and the recognition of it, so far from being a "mystic" interpretation of facts, is an elementary logical exercise of our reasoning faculty. The scholastics emphasized their recognition of the a.n.a.logy by calling the _nature_ of an unconscious agent,-the principle of its active tendencies towards the realization of its own perfection-an "_appet.i.tus naturalis_": an expression into which no one familiar with scholastic terminology would venture to read any element of mysticism.(505)

Every separate agency in nature has a uniform mode of activity; by following out this line of action each co-operates with all the others in maintaining the orderly course of nature. These are facts which call for explanation. They are not explained by the supposition of mechanists that these agencies are mere efficient causes: efficient causality does not account for order, it has got simply nothing to do with order or regularity. Consequently the last word of the mechanical philosophy on the fact of order in the universe is-Agnosticism. In opposition to this att.i.tude we are far from contending that there is no mystery, or that all is clear either in regard to the fact of _change_ or the fact of _regularity_. Just as we cannot explain everything in _efficient_ causality, so neither can we explain everything in _final_ causality. But we do contend that the element of order, development, evolution, even in the physical universe, can be partially explained by recognizing in its several agencies a _nature_, a principle of development, a pa.s.sive inclination implanted in the very being of these agencies by the Intelligent Author of their being.

In conscious agencies this inclination or tendency to actions conformable or _connatural_ to their being is not always in act; it is aroused by conscious cognition, perception, or imagination of a _good_, and operates intermittently. In unconscious agencies it is congenital and constantly in act, _i.e._ as a tendency, not as actually operative: for its actual development due conditions of environment are required: the seed will not grow without a suitable soil, temperature, moisture, etc. In conscious agencies the tendency, considered ent.i.tatively or as a reality in them, is an _accidental form_; in unconscious agencies it is their _forma substantialis_, the formative substantial principle, which determines the specific type to which their nature belongs.(506)

In all agencies the inclination or appet.i.te or tendency to action arises from a form; an elicited appet.i.te from an "intentional" form, a natural appet.i.te from a "natural" form: _Omnis inclinatio seu appet.i.tus consequitur formam; appet.i.tus elicitus formam intentionalem, appet.i.tus naturalis formam naturalem_. The scholastic view that final causality pervades all things is expressed in the aphorism, _Omne agens agit propter finem_: Every agency acts for an end.

From our a.n.a.lysis of final causality it will be seen that the "end"

becomes a cause by exercising its influence on the agent or efficient cause, and thus initiating the action of the latter. We have seen already that material and formal causes exercise their causality dependently on the efficient cause of the change or effect produced by the latter. We now see that the final cause, the end as _intended_, determines the action of the efficient cause; hence its causality holds the primacy as compared with that of the other causes: it is in this sense the cause of causes, _causa causarum_.(507) But while the end _as intended_ is the starting point of the whole process, the end _as attained_ is the ultimate term of the latter. Hence the scholastic aphorism: _Finis est primus in intentione et ultimus in executione_. And this is true where the process involves a series of acts attaining to means subordinate to an end: this latter is the first thing intended and the last attained.

The final cause, the end as intended, is extrinsic to the effect. It is intrinsic to the efficient cause. It is a "_forma_" or determinative principle of the latter: a _forma intentionalis_ in conscious agents, a _forma naturalis_ in unconscious agents.

109. NATURE AND THE LAWS OF NATURE. CHARACTER AND GROUNDS OF THEIR NECESSITY AND UNIVERSALITY. SCIENTIFIC DETERMINISM AND PHILOSOPHIC FATALISM.-By the term _nature_ we have seen that Aristotle and the scholastics meant the essence or substance of an agent regarded as inner principle of the latter's normal activities, as determining the bent or inclination of these, and therefore as in a real sense their final cause.

Hence Aristotle's definition of _nature_ as _a certain principle or cause of the motion and rest of the thing in which that principle is rooted fundamentally and essentially and not merely accidentally_.(508) The scholastics, recognizing that this _intentio naturae_, this subjection to finality, in _unconscious_ agencies must be the work and the index of intelligence, in other words that this _a.n.a.logical_ finality in inanimate things must connote a _proper_ finality, a properly purposive mode of action, in the author of these things, conceived this _nature_ or _intentio naturae_ as the impression of a divine art or plan upon the very being of all creatures by the Creator Himself. Hence St. Thomas's profound and well-known description of _nature_ as "_the principle of a divine art impressed upon things, in virtue of which they move towards determinate ends_". Defining _art_ as _the just conception __ of external works to be accomplished_,(509) he observes that nature is a sort of art: "as if a s.h.i.+p-builder were to endow his materials with the power of moving and adapting themselves so as to form or construct a s.h.i.+p".(510) And elsewhere he remarks that nature differs from art only in this that the former is an intrinsic, the latter an extrinsic, principle of the work which is accomplished through its influence: so that if the art whereby a s.h.i.+p is constructed were intrinsic to the materials, the s.h.i.+p would be constructed by nature as it actually is by art.(511)

Such, then, is the teleological conception of the nature of each individual agency in the universe. When we speak of "universal _nature_,"

"external _nature_," "physical _nature_," "the course of _nature_," "the laws of _nature_," etc. we are using the term in a collective sense to signify the sum-total of all the agencies which const.i.tute the whole physical universe; and furthermore in all such contexts we usually understand by _nature_ the world of _corporeal_ things as distinct from the domain of _mind_ or _spirit_.

The proof of this view,-that the agencies of the physical universe are not merely efficient causes, but that they act under the influence of ends; that they have definite lines of action which are natural to them, and whereby they realize their own individual development and the maintenance of the universe as a _cosmos_; that by doing so they reveal the influence of _intelligent purpose_,-the proof of this view lies, as we have seen, in the fact that their activities are regular, uniform, and mutually useful, or, in other words, that they are productive of _order_ (110). Bearing this in mind let us inquire into the various meanings discernible in the very familiar expressions, "laws of nature," "physical laws," "natural laws".(512)

We may understand firstly by a law of nature this innate tendency we have been describing as impressed upon the very being of all created things by the Creator. It is in this sense we speak of a thing acting "naturally,"

or "according to the _law_ of its nature," or "according to its nature,"

when we see it acting according to what we conceive to be the end intended for it, acting in a manner conducive to the development of its own individuality, the preservation of its specific type or kind, and the fulfilment of its role in the general scheme of things. What this "natural" mode of action is for this particular kind of thing, we gather from our experience of the regular or normal activity of things of its kind. Thus, we say it is a _law_ of oxygen and hydrogen to combine in definite proportions, under suitable conditions, to form water; a _law_ of all particles of matter in the universe to tend to move towards one another with a definite acceleration; a _law_ of living organisms to reproduce their kind. This usage comes nearest to the original meaning of the term _law_: a precept or command imposed on intelligent agents by a superior. For we conceive this natural tendency impressed on physical agencies by the Creator after the a.n.a.logy of a precept or command. And we have good reason to do so: because _uniformity of conduct_ in intelligent agents is the normal result of their obedience to a law imposed upon them; and we see in the activities of the physical universe an _all-pervading feature of regularity_.

Secondly, we transfer the term _law_ to _this result itself_ of the natural tendency of the being, of the convergence of its activities towards its end. That is to say, we call _the uniform mode of action_ of an agent a _law of nature_, a _natural_ or _physical law_. This usage, which is common in the positive sciences, implies a less profound, a more superficial, but a perfectly legitimate mode of apprehending and studying the changes and phenomena of the physical universe.

Thirdly, since the several agencies of the universe co-exist in time and s.p.a.ce, since they constantly interact on one another, since for the exercise of the natural activities of each _certain extrinsic conditions of relations.h.i.+p with its environment_ must be fulfilled, an accurate knowledge and exact formulation of these relations are obviously requisite for a scientific and practical insight into the mode of activity of any natural agency. In fact the physical scientist may and does take for granted the natural tendency and the uniformity of action resulting therefrom, and confines himself to _discovering and formulating the relations between any given kind of action and the extrinsic conditions requisite for its exercise_. Such, for instance, would be any chemical "law" setting forth the measure, and the conditions of temperature, pressure, etc., in which certain chemical elements combine to form a certain chemical compound. To all such formulae scientists give the t.i.tle of _physical laws_, or _laws of physical nature_. These formulae, descriptive of the manner in which a phenomenon takes place, setting forth with the greatest possible quant.i.tative exactness the phenomenal factors(513) that enter into and precede and accompany it, are laws in a still more superficial and still less philosophical sense, but a sense which is most commonly-and justly-accepted in the positive or physical sciences.

Before examining the feature and characteristic of _necessity and universality_ which enters into all these various conceptions of a "physical law" we have here to observe that it would make for clearness, and for a better understanding between physics and metaphysics, between science and philosophy, between the investigator who seeks by observation and experiment for the proximate phenomenal conditions and "physical" causes of phenomena, and the investigator who seeks for the ultimate real ground and explanation of these latter by speculative a.n.a.lysis of them, and by reasoning from the scientist's discoveries about them,-if it were understood and agreed that investigation into the scope and significance and ultimate ground of this feature of stability in the laws of physical nature belongs to the philosopher rather than to the scientist. We have already called attention to the fact that the propriety of such an obviously reasonable and intelligible division of labour is almost universally admitted in theory both by scientists and by philosophers; though, unfortunately, it is not always remembered in practice (100).

In theory the scientist a.s.sumes, and very properly a.s.sumes, that the agencies with which he deals are not capricious, unreliable, irregular, but stable, reliable, regular in their mode of action, that in similar sets of conditions and circ.u.mstances they will act uniformly. Without inquiring into the ultimate grounds of this a.s.sumption he premises that all his conclusions, all his inductive generalizations about the activity of these agencies, will hold good of these latter just in so far as they do act according to his general postulate as to their regularity. He then proceeds, by the inductive processes of hypothesis and experimental verification, to determine what agencies produce such or such an event, under what conditions they bring this about, what are all the phenomenal conditions, positive and negative, antecedent and concomitant, in the absence of any one of which this event will not happen, and in the presence of all of which it will happen.

These are, in accordance with his a.s.sumption, _determining_ causes of the event; the knowledge of them is from the speculative point of view extremely important, and from the practical standpoint of invention and applied science extremely useful. As a scientist he has no other knowledge in view: he aims at discovering the "how,"

the _quomodo_, of natural phenomena,-how, for instance, under what conditions and in what measure, water is produced from oxygen and hydrogen. When he has discovered all these positive and negative conditions his _scientific_ knowledge of the formation of water is complete.

But there are other questions in regard to natural phenomena to which the experimental methods of the positive sciences can offer no reply. They can tell us nothing about the _wider_ "how" which resolves itself into a "why." They can give no information about the ultimate causes, origins, reasons, or essences, of those phenomena. As Pasteur and other equally ill.u.s.trious scientists have proclaimed, experimental science is essentially positive, _i.e._ confined to the proximate phenomenal conditions and causes of things; it has nothing to say, nor has it any need or any right to say anything, about the ultimate nature, or first origin, or final destiny, of the things and events of the universe.

Yet such questions arise, and clamour insistently for solution.

_How_ is it, or _why_ is it, that natural phenomena are uniformly linked to certain other phenomenal antecedents or "physical"

causes? Is it absolutely impossible, inconceivable, that this sequence should be found not to obtain in even a single individual instance? Why should there be such uniform "sequences" or "laws"

at all? Are there exceptions, or can there be exceptions to these "laws of physical nature"? What is the character and what are the grounds of the _necessity_ of these laws? Every living organism comes from a living cell-not from _any_ living cell, but from _some particular kind_ of living cell. But _why_ are there such kinds of cells? Why are there living cells at all? Whence their first origin? Again, granted that there are different kinds or types of living cells, _why_ should a particular kind of cell give rise, by division and evolution, to an organism of the same kind or type as the parent organisms? Why does it not _always_ do so?

Why are what biologists describe as "monsters" in the organic kingdom possible? And why, since they are possible, are they not as numerous as what are recognized as the normal types or kinds of living organisms?

Now these are questions in regard to which not only every professing physical scientist and every professing metaphysician, but every thinking man, _must_ take up some att.i.tude or other. A refusal to consider them, on the plea that they are insoluble, is just as definite an att.i.tude as any other; nor by a.s.suming this att.i.tude does any man, even though he be a specialist in some department of the positive or physical sciences, escape being a "metaphysician" or a "philosopher," however much he may deprecate such t.i.tles; for he is taking up a reasoned att.i.tude-we presume it is such, and not the outcome of mere prejudice-on ultimate questions. And this is philosophy; this is metaphysics. When, therefore, a physical scientist either avows or insinuates that _because_ the methods of physical science, which are suitable for the discovery of the _proximate_ causes of phenomena, can tell him nothing about _ultimate_ questions concerning these phenomena, _therefore_ there is nothing to be known about these questions, he is not only committing himself, _nolens volens_, to definite philosophical views, but he is doing a serious disservice to physical science itself by misconceiving and mis-stating its rightful scope and limits. He has just an equal right with any other man to utilize the established truths of physical science to help him in answering ultimate questions. Nay, he may even use the unverified hypotheses and systematic conceptions(514) of physical science for what they are worth in helping him to determine his general world-view. But his competence as a specialist in physical science does not confer upon him any _special_ qualification for estimating the value of these truths and hypotheses as evidence in the domain of ultimate problems. Nor can he, because he is a scientist, or even because he may go so far as to a.s.sert the right of speaking in the name of "science," claim for his particular interpretation the privilege of exemption from criticism; and this is true no matter what his interpretation may be-whether it be agnosticism, mechanism, teleologism, monism, or theism. These observations may appear elementary and obvious; but the insinuation of positivism and phenomenism, that whatever is not itself phenomenal and verifiable by the experimental methods of the physical sciences is in no wise knowable, and the insinuation of mechanists that their world-view is the only one compatible with the truths of science and therefore the only "scientific"

philosophy, justify us in reiterating and emphasizing even such obvious methodological considerations. Bearing them in mind, let us now examine the uniformity and necessity of the laws of physical nature.

Understanding by natural law the natural inclination or tendency of the creature to a definite line of activity, this law is of itself determining or necessitating. Moreover, it is absolutely inseparable from the essence of the creature. Granted that the creature exists, it has this tendency to exert and direct all its forces and energies in a definite, normal way, for the realization of its end. This _nisus naturae_ is never absent; it is observable even where, as in the generation of "monsters" by living organisms, it partially fails to attain its end. A law of nature, taken in this sense, is absolutely necessary to, and inseparable from, the created agent; it admits of no exceptions; no agent can exist without it; for it is identical with the very being of the agent

But the uniformity of action resulting from this natural tendency, the uniform series of normal operations whereby it realizes its end, is not absolutely necessary, inviolable, unexceptional. In the first place the Author of Nature can, for a higher or moral purpose, prevent any created agency supernaturally, miraculously, from actually exercising its active powers in accordance with its nature for the prosecution of its natural end. But apart altogether from this, abstracting from all special interference of the First Cause, and confining our attention to the natural order itself, we have to consider that for any physical agency to act in its natural or normal manner certain extrinsic conditions are always requisite: oxygen and hydrogen, for instance, will combine to produce water, but only under certain conditions of contact, pressure, temperature, etc. This general requirement arises from the fact already mentioned, that physical agencies co-exist in time and s.p.a.ce and are constantly interacting. These extrinsic conditions are, of course, not expressly stated in the formulation of those uniformities and quant.i.tative descriptions called "laws of nature" in the second and third interpretations of this expression as explained above. It is taken as understood that the law applies only if and when and where all such conditions are verified. The law, therefore, as stated categorically, does not express an absolutely necessary, universal, and unexceptional truth.

It may admit of exceptions.

In the next place, when we come to examine these exceptions to uniformity, these failures or frustrations of the normal or natural activities of physical agencies, we find it possible to distinguish roughly, with Aristotle, between two groups of such "uniformities" or "laws". There are firstly those which, so far as our experience goes, seem to prevail _always_ (?e?), unexceptionally; and secondly, those which seem to prevail _generally_, _for the most part_ (?p? t? p???), though not unexceptionally. The former would be the outcome of active powers, energies, forces, _de facto_ present and prevalent always and everywhere in all physical agencies, and of such a character that the conditions requisite for their actual operation would be always verified. Such, for instance, would be the force of gravity in all ponderable matter; and hence the law of gravitation is regarded as all-pervading, universal, unexceptional. But there are other natural or normal effects which are the outcome of powers, forces, energies, not all-pervading, but restricted to special groups of agencies, dependent for their actual production on the presence of a great and complex variety of extrinsic conditions, and liable therefore to be impeded by the interfering action of numerous other natural agencies. Such, for instance, would be the natural powers and processes whereby living organisms propagate their kind. The law, therefore, which states it to be a uniformity of nature that living organisms reproduce offspring similar to themselves in kind, is a general law, admitting exceptions.

Operations and effects which follow from the nature of their causes are called natural (?a?? ??t?, ?a? ? ?at? s?e????).(515) Some causes produce their natural effects _always_ (t? ?? ??????? ?a? ?e? ???????a), others produce their natural effects _usually_, _as a general rule_ (t? ??

?p? p??? ?????e?a).(516) Operations and effects which are produced by the interfering influence of extrinsic agencies (t? ?a??? "violent," as opposed to natural), and not in accordance with the nature of their princ.i.p.al cause, are called by Aristotle _accidental_ (t? ?at? s?e????, t? ??de??e?a ?????s?a?); and these, he remarks, people commonly describe as due to chance (?a? ta?ta p??te? fas?? e??a? ?p? t????).(517)

All are familiar with events or happenings described as "fortuitous,"

"accidental," "exceptional," "unexpected," with things happening by "chance," by (good or bad) "luck" or "fortune".(518) There are terms in all languages expressive of this experience-_casus_, _sors_, _fortuna_, t???, etc. The notion underlying all of them is that of something occurring unintentionally, _praeter intentionem agentis_. Whether chance effects result from the action of intelligent agents or from the operation of physical causes they are not "intended,"-by the deliberate purpose of the intelligent agent in the one case, or by the natural tendency, the _intentio naturae_, of the mere physical agency in the other. Such an effect, therefore, has not a _natural_ cause; hence it is considered _exceptional_, and is always more or less unexpected. _Nature_, as Aristotle rightly observes,(519) never produces a chance effect. His meaning is, that whenever such an effect occurs it is not brought about in accordance with the natural tendency of any physical agency. It results from a collision or coincidence of two or more such agencies, each acting according to its nature. The hunter's act of firing at a wild fowl is an intentional act. The boy's act of coming into the thicket to gather wild flowers is an intentional act. The accidental shooting of the boy is the result of a coincidence of the two intentional acts. Similarly, each of all the various agencies which bring about the development of an embryo in the maternal womb has its own immediate and particular natural effect, and only mediately contributes to the general effect of bringing the embryo to maturity. As a rule these particular effects are favourable to the general effect. But sometimes the immediate ends do not subserve this ulterior purpose. The result is accidental, exceptional, a deviation from the normal type, an anomaly, a "monster" in the domain of living organisms.

Aristotle's a.n.a.lysis, correct so far, is incomplete. It a.s.signs no ultimate explanation of the fact that there are such encounters of individual natural tendencies in the universe, such failures in the subordination of particular ends to wider ulterior ends. As a matter of fact these chance effects, although not "intended" by the natures of individual created agencies, are not wholly and entirely unintended. They are not wholly aimless. They enter into the general plan and scheme of things as known and willed by the Author of Nature. They are known to His Intelligence, and willed and ruled by His Providence. For Him there can be no such thing as chance. Effects that are accidental in relation to created causes, effects that run counter to the nature or _intentio naturae_ of these, are foreseen and willed by Him and made to subserve that wider and more general end which is the universal order of the world that He has actually willed to create. It is only in relation to the natures of individual agencies, and to the limited horizon of our finite intelligences, that such phenomena can present the aspect of fortuitous or chance occurrences.

Before pa.s.sing on to deal, in our concluding section, with the great fact of order, let us briefly compare with the foregoing explanation of nature and its laws the attempt of mechanists to explain these without recognizing in the physical universe any influence of final causes, or any indication of a purposive intelligence. We have ventured to describe their att.i.tude as philosophic fatalism.(520) According to their view there is no ground for the distinction between phenomena that happen "naturally" and phenomena that happen "accidentally" or "by chance". All alike happen by the same kind of general necessity: the generation of a "monster" is as "natural" as the generation of normal offspring; the former, when it occurs, is just as inevitably the outcome of the physical forces at work in the particular case as the latter is the outcome of the particular set of efficient causes which do actually produce the normal result: the only difference is that the former, occurring less frequently and as the result of a rarer and less known conjunction of "physical" causes than the latter, is not expected by us to occur, and is consequently regarded, when it does occur, as exceptional. Now it is quite true that what we call "chance" effects, or "exceptional" effects, result just as inevitably from the set of forces operative in their case, as normal effects result from the forces operative in theirs. But this leaves for explanation something which the mechanist cannot explain. He regards a physical law merely as a generalization, beyond experience, of some experienced uniformity; and he holds that all our physical laws are provisional in the sense that a wider and deeper knowledge of the actual conditions of interaction among the physical forces of the universe would enable us to eliminate exceptions-which are all apparent, not real-by restating our laws in such a comprehensive way as to include all such cases. We may, indeed, admit that our physical laws are open to revision and restatement in this sense, and are _de facto_ often modified in this sense by the progress of science. But the important point is this, that the mechanist does not admit the existence, in physical agencies, of any law in the sense of a _natural inclination towards an end_, or in any sense in which it would imply intelligence, design, or purpose. On the contrary, claiming as he does that all physical phenomena are _reducible to mechanical motions of inert ma.s.ses, atoms, or particles of matter in s.p.a.ce_, he is obliged to regard all physical agencies as being, so far as their nature is concerned, wholly _indifferent_ to any particular form of activity.(521) Committed to the indefensible view that all qualitative change is reducible to quant.i.tative (11), and all material differences to differences in the location of material particles and in the velocity and direction of the spatial motion impressed upon each by others extrinsic to itself, he has left himself no factors wherewith to explain the actual order and course of the universe, other than the purely _indifferent_ factors of essentially or naturally h.o.m.ogeneous particles of inert matter endowed with local motion. We emphasize this feature of indifference; for the conception of an inert particle of matter subject to mechanical motion impressed upon it from without, is the very type of an indifferent agency.

What such an ent.i.ty will do, whether or not it will move, with what velocity and in what direction it will move-in a word, its entire conduct, its role in the universe, the sum-total of its functions-nothing of all this is dependent on itself; everything depends on agencies extrinsic to it, and on its extrinsic time-and-s.p.a.ce relations to these agencies; and these latter in turn are in the same condition as itself. Now is it conceivable that agencies of this kind, of themselves absolutely indifferent to any particular kind of effect, suitable or unsuitable, regular or irregular, orderly or disorderly, could actually produce and maintain the existing order of the universe? If they were themselves _produced by an All-Wise and All-Powerful Being_, and _definitely arranged_ in spatial relations to one another, and _initial mechanical motion in definite directions and velocities_ impressed on the different parts of the system, there is no denying that Infinite Wisdom and Power could, by Divine concurrence even with such indifferent agencies, realize and maintain a _cosmos_, or _orderly_ universe. Such _purely extrinsic finality_ (106) could, absolutely speaking, account for the existence of order, uniformity, regularity, system; though all the evidence furnished by the universe of our actual experience points to the existence of _intrinsic finality_ also as understood by Aristotle and the scholastics.

But the mechanist will not allow even extrinsic finality; he will not recognize in the actual universe of our experience any evidence of a Ruling Intelligence realizing a plan or design for an intelligent purpose; he denies the necessity of the inference from the data of human experience to the existence of a Guiding Intelligence. And what are his alternatives?

He may choose one or other of two.

He may restate in the more scientific and imposing terminology of modern mechanics the crude conception of the ancient Greek atomists: that the actual order of the universe is the absolutely inevitable and fatal outcome of a certain collocation of the moving ma.s.ses of the physical universe, a collocation favourable to order, a collocation which _just happened to occur_ by some happy chance from the essentially aimless, purposeless, indifferent and _chaotic_ motions of those material ma.s.ses and particles. We say "chaotic," for _chaos_ is the absence of _cosmos_; and _order_ is the fact that has got to be explained. In the concept of _indifferent, inert_ atoms of matter moving through s.p.a.ce there is emphatically no principle of order;(522) and hence the mechanist who will not admit the necessity of inferring an Intelligence to give these moving ma.s.ses or atoms the collocation _favourable to order_ is forced to "explain" this supposed collocation by attributing it to pure chance-the _concursus fortuitus atomorum_ of the ancient Greeks. When, however, we reflect that the more numerous these atoms and the more varied and complex their motions, the smaller is the chance of a collocation favourable to order; that the atoms and motions are supposed actually to surpa.s.s any a.s.signable number; that therefore the chance of any such favourable collocation occurring is indefinitely smaller than any measurable proportion,-we can draw our own conclusions about the value of such a speculation as a rational "explanation" of the existing _cosmos_. And this apart altogether from the consideration that the fact to be explained is not merely the _momentary_ occurrence of an orderly collocation, but the _maintenance_ of an orderly system of cosmic phenomena _throughout the lapse of all time_. No orderly finite system of mechanical motions arranged by human skill can preserve its orderly motions indefinitely without intelligent human supervision: the neglected machine will get out of order, run down, wear out, if left to itself; and we are asked to believe that the whole universe is one vast machine which not only goes on without intelligent supervision, but which actually made itself by chance!(523)

Naturally such an "explanation" of the universe does not commend itself to any man of serious thought, whatever his difficulties may be against the argument from the fact of order in the universe to the existence of an Intelligent Designer. Add to this the consideration that the mechanist theory does not even claim to account for the first origin of the universe: it postulates the existence of matter in motion. In regard to this supreme problem of the _first origin_ of the universe the att.i.tude of the mechanist is avowedly _agnostic_; and in view of what we have just remarked about the "chance" theory as an "explanation" of the _existing order_ of the universe, it is no matter for surprise that most mechanists reject this theory and embrace the agnostic att.i.tude in regard to this latter problem also. Whether the agnostic att.i.tude they a.s.sume be negative or positive, _i.e._ whether they are content to say that they themselves at least fail to find any satisfactory rational explanation of the _origin_ and _nature_ of the _cosmos_, or contend further that no rational solution of these problems is within the reach of the human mind, their teaching is refuted in Natural Theology, where the theistic solution of these problems is set forth and vindicated.

110. THE ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE; A FACT AND ITS IMPLICATIONS.-The considerations so far submitted in this chapter, as pointing to the existence and influence of final causes in the universe, will be strengthened and completed by a brief a.n.a.lysis of _order_ and its implications.

We have seen already (55) that the apprehension of order in things implies the recognition of _some unifying principle in what is manifold_. What, in general, is the nature of this principle? It is the _point of view_, the _standpoint_ from which the unifying arrangement or disposition of the manifold is carried out; in other words it is the _end_, _object_, or _purpose_, of the orderly arrangement. The arrangement, and the order resulting from it, will vary according to the end in view-whether, for instance, it be an arrangement of books in a library, of pictures in a gallery, of materials in an edifice, of parts in a machine. Hence St.

Thomas's definition of order as the due adaptation of means to ends: _recta ratio rerum ad finem_. When this adaptation is the work of human intelligence the order realized is _artificial_, when it is the work of nature the order realized is _natural_. Art is an extrinsic principle of order, nature implies indeed also an intelligent extrinsic principle of order, but is itself an intrinsic principle of order: the works of nature and those of art have this feature in common, that they manifest adaptation of means to ends.(524)

The _subordination_ of means to ends realizes an order which has for its unifying principle the influence of an _end_, a _final cause_. The group of _dynamic_ relations thus revealed const.i.tutes what is called _teleological_ order, the order of _purpose_ or _finality_. The realization or execution of such an order implies the simultaneous existence of _co-ordinated_ parts or members in a system, a realized whole with complex, co-ordinated, orderly parts, the principle of unity in this system being the _form_ of the whole. This realized, disposed, or const.i.tuted order, is called the _esthetic_ order (55), the order of co-ordination, composition, const.i.tution. In ultimate a.n.a.lysis, however, these two orders, the _teleological_ and the _esthetic_, having as respective unifying principles the _final_ cause and the _formal_ cause, are not two really distinct orders, but rather two aspects of one and the same order: we have seen that in the things of nature the intrinsic end or final cause of each is identical with its _forma substantialis_ or formal cause (108). But the final cause is naturally prior to the formal cause, and consequently the teleological order is more fundamental than the esthetic.

St. Augustine's definition of order as "the arrangement of a multiplicity of things, similar and dissimilar, according its proper place to each,"(525) reveals the _material_ cause of order in the multiplicity of varied elements, the _formal_ cause of order in the group of relations resulting from the arrangement or _dispositio_, and the _efficient_ cause of order in the agent that disposes or arranges them. The _final_ cause, though not directly mentioned, is implied in the fact that the place of each factor in the system is necessarily determined by the function it has to fulfil, the part it is suited by its nature to play, in contributing to the realization of the end or purpose of the arrangement.