§ II.—CHAPTER I.

COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS.

IN the course of our previous argument we have assumed that nature everywhere presents an aspect of ORDER. This we were quite warranted in doing from the universal testimony of Science; and on this assumption our argument advanced directly to its conclusion. Mind was found entitled to stand at the head of nature as its only valid explanation. With a view, however, to the complete exhibition of the theistic doctrine, it is necessary to return to the minor premiss of our syllogism, and unfold it at length. It is only by a detailed exposition of the fact of order, as it reveals itself in manifold forms in nature, that we can fully show “that there is an all-powerful, Wise, and Good Being, by whom everything exists.”

We begin our illustrative survey with the most general and comprehensive phenomena that can engage us; those, namely, disclosed by astronomy. The celestial arrangements are at once the most simple and the most magnificent of which we have any knowledge—the most independent, and at 84the same time the most widely influential, of all others. Astronomical science, above every other, has enlarged and transformed our conceptions of the universe. Has the grand utterance of ancient piety, “The Heavens declare the glory of God,” lost anything of its meaning in the light of modern discovery? Or have the ever-expanding disclosures of the telescope only added to it a depth and grandeur of meaning hitherto inconceivable? We will endeavour in this chapter to find an answer to these questions.

The general character of our solar system may be said to be now familiar to the common intelligence. It is composed, so far as has hitherto been discovered, of eight planetary bodies of what is called first-class magnitude, surrounding the sun at different distances, with a comparatively numerous group of smaller bodies circling between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Previous to the year 1845 there were only reckoned four of these lesser bodies; but, on the 8th of December of that year, a fifth member of the group was discovered by Hencke; and, since then, yearly observation has been adding to their number.⁴⁴⁴⁴   Up to the present date no fewer than thirty-two of these smaller bodies have been discovered, chiefly through the labours of an English observer, Mr Hind. It is, moreover, only a few years since the last we know of the larger order of planets was discovered. Previously, Uranus was supposed to be the outermost of our system; but, in the year 1846, the independent calculations of two students⁴⁵⁴⁵   Leverrier and Adams. conducted almost simultaneously to the discovery of another planetary body removed far beyond the orbit of Uranus, and circling round 85the sun in about double its year. The extent of the solar system was thus immensely augmented. Before, it was calculated to embrace a portion of space not less than three thousand six hundred millions of miles in diameter. But now this vast tract has been to our view nearly doubled. Almost twice the distance of Uranus, another world has been found attached to our system, and revolving in the warmth of our sun.

But the solar system, stupendous as it is, occupies only a small portion of the expanse of space. Even to the eye, that space is seen to be peopled with a multitude of starry bodies, of a character quite different from those that move around our sun; and the telescope brings into view not merely thousands, but millions of these bodies. The great zone of the Milky Way, which has in all ages arrested attention from its peculiar appearance, is found, on the application of the telescope, to verify the conjecture of an ancient philosopher, and to be nothing else than a pathway of stars, so densely crowded as to be separately indistinguishable to the unaided eye. These countless orbs Science teaches us to regard as suns similar to our own, with attendant planetary trains, although actual traces of these latter can scarcely be said to be yet discovered. Every bright and twinkling point above us, that seems to stand as a mere brilliant gem in the nocturnal crown of our earth, is probably the luminous centre of a system often far exceeding that to which we belong. For, shining as many of the stars do, with a brilliancy greatly more intense than that of our sun 86(Sirius is reckoned equal to sixty-three suns), it is only a likely inference that they irradiate and control much vaster systems.

But not only has Science taught us to see in the starry firmament unnumbered repetitions of simple systems resembling our own; it has, moreover, disclosed binary systems, and even triple and quadruple, and higher combinations, all entering into the scheme of the stellar universe. The mind is thus not only transported in space far beyond our system; the magnitudes and distances with which it makes us familiar are not only enlarged beyond all our powers of imagination—the nearest star (α Centauri) being not fewer than twenty millions of millions of miles away from us, or about seven hundred times farther removed from our sun than the planet Neptune;—we are further introduced into wholly new orders of worlds, marked by the most wonderful diversities. What strange and interesting changes alone must result from the simplest of the combinations which we have mentioned! If we suppose, as it is allowable to do, that each of the suns in such a system has its attendant planets, how novel the physical conditions! how singular the complexities of relationship which they must present! “Besides passing through the varying climates of a year, depending on its revolution around its own luminary, every planet of either system must undergo the changes of another cycle, whose course is the great period of the Binary system, and which at one of its terms must subject it to the influence of two suns virtually in contact! And as to the movements of 87bodies acted on by forces so strange and fluctuating, we can have little other idea except that it is a sequence or succession of bouleversements, the virtual periodic overthrowing by each sun of the independence of the system established by the other, which again is to recover itself in so far during the years leading to their elongation.”⁴⁶⁴⁶   NICHOL’S Architecture of the Heavens, p. 217. If we add to these considerations the well-ascertained fact of the diversity of colour which distinguishes not a few of the double stars,⁴⁷⁴⁷   Struve records that in at least one hundred and four binary systems the two stars exhibit the complementary colours—that is, the colour of one constituent belongs to the red or least refrangible end of the spectrum, while that of the other belongs to the violet or most refrangible extremity.—Ibid., p. 218. we shall derive a still more striking impression of the peculiarities of Existence to be found in the stellar spaces—peculiarities doubtless increasing in novelty and intricacy with the ascending complexity of the starry groups. In the language of Sir John Herschel, “it may be easier suggested in words than conceived in imagination what a variety of illumination two stars—a red and a green, or a yellow and blue one—must afford a planet circulating around either; and what cheering contrasts and grateful vicissitudes—a red and a green day, for instance, alternating with a white one and with darkness—must arise from the presence or absence of one or other, or both, from the horizon!”

But all this even by no means exhausts the extent of view or variety of cosmical life which the telescope has revealed to us. We are enabled, by the light of recent astronomy, 88to penetrate to still vaster depths and hitherto unimagined worlds. In various quarters of the heavens the telescope has discovered patches of dim hazy light, now well known by the name of Nebulæ. Some of these were from the first recognised to be dense clusters of stars, only rendered indistinct and nebulous from their immense remoteness; others, however, were supposed to possess a quite distinct character—to be portions of diffused gaseous matter incapable of being resolved by any telescopic power, but, as was conjectured, in the course of being condensed into separate stars. And so generally did this view prevail for a while, that an hypothesis was built upon it to explain the whole course of cosmical creation. Many of the phenomena, however, upon which this hypothesis rested, have been found to lose their supposed character of distinction under the application of Lord Rosse’s magnificent telescope, so recently brought to the service of astronomy. Nebulous masses, previously irresolvable, have been at once resolved by it. What had seemed only dim patches of twilight haze, as yet unformed into suns, are discovered to be already systems of countless suns glowing with ancient fire.

The great conclusion to which these nebulous phenomena everywhere point is, that the starry firmament of which our system is a part, is only a member of innumerable galaxies of firmaments that people the tracts of space. The millions of suns that shoot towards us their arrowy light from such immeasurable distances, and the millions of systems attached to them, are after all, as it were, an insignificant portion of 89the suns and systems that actually exist. Beyond the limits of our sidereal firmament, and with what spaces of desert and trackless gloom intervening we cannot in the feeblest degree imagine, there lie other firmaments, it may be far vaster and grander than our own. Looking out far beyond the milk-white girdle of our own galaxy, we are transported into regions where other galaxies lie all around, some of them of the most strange and marvellously impressive shapes. “Improbable as it must have seemed,” says Dr Nichol,⁴⁸⁴⁸   Architecture of the Heavens, p. 94. “previous to discovery by unimpeachable observation, the spiral figure is characteristic of an extensive class of galaxies. Majestic associations of orbs, arranged in this winding form—branches, as above, issuing like a divergent geometric curve from a globular cluster,—these rise up on all sides as the telescope journeys onward, supplanting shapes formerly imagined to be most simple, because of their obscurity.” Unexhausted marvels thus crowd upon us as we penetrate into space; for, after all that the telescope has even now revealed, we know not what may still lie beyond. When we remember that, in order to enable us to see anything by the telescope or otherwise, light must reach us from it, may there not be firmaments so immeasurably distant as to be beyond our utmost powers of vision? So distant are some of the ascertained nebulas that their light is not supposed to reach us in less than fifty thousand or sixty thousand years. How true may it be, then, that there may be many starry shores in the sea of 90immensity, bright with a beauty of their own, no ray from which ever shines on us.

If we now turn from the first bewildering view of these vast cosmical revelations to contemplate them more steadily, we find throughout all the august presence of ORDER. Even in those twilight regions, in which the telescope is our only guide, and among phenomena whose very existence it strugglingly essays to determine, we find ever, along with the mere fact of existence, indications of arrangement. Speaking of those most recent marvels of cosmical being, the spiral nebulæ, Dr Nichol testifies that, mysterious and bewildering as seem such shapes, they “have nothing in common with the fantastic creations of a dream. It is the essence of these nebulae that they are not formless, but, on the contrary, impressed indelibly by system on the grandest scale: clearly as a leaf, they have an organism; something has seized on their enormous volumes, and moulded them into a wonderful order.”⁴⁹⁴⁹   Architecture of the Heavens, p. 100.

Passing to our own galaxy, and the diversified phenomena which it presents, we can, in the nature of things, trace more distinctly the indications of system. Besides the motions to which we have already referred of multiple stars around one another, revealing such grand and peculiar varieties of order, it may now be said to be established that there is a general motion pervading our galaxy. So long ago as 1783, Sir William Herschel was impressed with the fact of our sun being in movement, and this fact has at length been amply verified. The sun’s course is found to be 91towards the constellation Hercules, and the rate even of his progress has been calculated. As there can exist no doubt that this solar motion is only a type of what prevails among the stars generally, we are thus led to the conclusion of a grand galactic movement. Whatever credit may be due to Professor Mädler’s conjecture, that the present position of one of the Pleiades (the star Alcyone) represents the apparent position of the common centre of force to the firmamental system, there cannot be any question that our sun and the other stars are revolving round such a distant centre. And this mighty movement, however we may more particularly regard it, is a vast harmonious one, shared in by the several orbitual systems. The subordinate movements of so much variety and complexity unite in the general procession, which sway, as with an instinct of brotherhood, all the members of the galaxy. There is no appearance of disorder or disruption. One vast government guides the whole.

As far as we can penetrate, therefore, and wherever we trace existence, we trace, at the same time, order. The discoveries of astronomy, in their widest and most marvellous bearings, are simply revelations of hitherto hidden harmonies.

And as we descend from these loftier stellar spaces—in which, with all we see, we still see so imperfectly—to the sphere of our own system, whose magnitudes and movements have been so accurately determined, we find the evidences of arrangement to multiply around us. This is only what we might expect. While travelling, by the help of the telescope, in regions so remote as those of stellar existence, we 92can but faintly note the special combinations which there exist. It is only far-off and partial glimpses of those higher mechanisms we can catch. Darkness still overhangs the bright route of the telescope. It is enough that what we do see everywhere speaks of order.

But in the contemplation of our own planetary system, we are not only able to mark the general presence of order,—we can note and appreciate, moreover, the several special conditions entering into the construction of the system, and on which, as well as on the great pervading energies of attraction and impulse, its maintenance depends. These conditions are all so many instances of arrangement. This has been recently so well shown by Dr Whewell in his Bridgewater Treatise, that nothing almost remains to be added to his impressive argument. We merely present one or two of its features.

Among the most marked characteristics of our system is the luminous nature of its central body. Nowhere else, obviously, could light have been placed with equal advantage for diffusion throughout the entire system. Now, whence this light? It cannot be said that there is any necessary connection between the mere matter of the sun and its luminousness. According to the conjectures of astronomers, indeed, the heat and light of the sun are not supposed to reside in its mass, but in a coating or envelope which surrounds it. Why, then, should it come to pass that this coating of light should be, among the bodies of the system, confined to the sun, just where it is peculiarly adapted for use? The mere position of the sun cannot furnish any 93adequate explanation of this. Its position displays the fitness of the fact; but we are unable to recognise any necessity for the fact in the position. The only admissible conclusion is, that this was an express arrangement designed for the purpose which it so obviously serves. Newton was particularly impressed with the force of this conclusion. In the first of his famous series of letters to Bentley, he has expressed it with his wonted simplicity and force. Allowing that matter would collect into masses by the power of attraction, he believes that the sun and fixed stars might thus be formed, supposing the matter were of a lucid nature. “But how,” he continues, “the matter should divide itself into two sorts, and that part of it which is fit to compose a shining body should fall down into one mass and make a sun, and the rest, which is fit to compose an opaque body, should coalesce, not into one great body, like the shining matter, but into many little ones; or if the sun were at first an opaque body like the planets, or the planets lucid bodies like the sun, how he alone should be changed into a shining body, whilst all they continue opaque; or all they be changed into opaque ones, while he continued unchanged,—I do not think explicable by mere natural causes, but am forced to ascribe it to the counsel and contrivance of a voluntary Agent.”

The uniform character of the planetary motions presents striking evidence of order. We find these motions to be all in nearly circular orbits in the same direction, and in nearly the same plane. There is here surely the clear impress of arrangement. For to what can we attribute this 94uniformity, save to a uniform determination of original impulse? “There is but one circle; there are an infinite number of ovals. Any original impulse would give some oval, but only one particular impulse, determinate in velocity and direction, will give a circle. If we suppose the planet to be originally projected, it must be projected perpendicularly to its distance from the sun, and with a certain precise velocity, in order that the motion may be circular. . . . No one can believe that the orbits were made to be so nearly circles by chance, any more than he can believe that a target, such as archers are accustomed to shoot at, was painted in concentric circles by the accidental dashes of a brush in the hands of a blind man.”⁵⁰⁵⁰   Dr Whewell’s Bridgewater Treatise, pp. 154, 156. And this conviction is greatly heightened when we bring into view the further features of the planetary motions. For anything in the nature of the case that we can see, any one of the planets might have moved in a different direction, or in a different plane; but not one of them does so. It is not merely a single uniformity which characterises their motions, but they present exactly the same combination of uniformities. The inference seems irresistible, that such a combination of identical results could only spring from an identity of purpose.

But the proof of arrangement comes out most strongly when we contemplate the great end which these uniformities of planetary movement subserve in the maintenance of the system. Had a different determination been given to any one of the elements of this movement, it is demonstrable 95that the stability of the system would have been impaired. Had, for example, the orbits of the planets been of extremely varied eccentricity, instead of being, as they are, nearly circular—had they moved in different directions, or in different planes, it is undoubted that, under the existing law of gravitation, their mutual interferences would have terminated in confusion and destruction. Even as it is, the attraction of the planets upon one another, as well as upon the sun, results in a partial derangement, which, however insignificant over a given space of time, it was for a time supposed might, in the lapse of ages, end in breaking up the system. Under the influence of their mutual attraction, changes are actually going on in the motions of the planetary bodies; the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit is diminishing, the moon is approaching nearer the earth, and its motion in consequence becoming accelerated. So slight, indeed, is the course of these changes, and so vast the cycle in which they run, that they have been going on progressively from the earliest observations to our own times. Yet, if they were unlimited, it cannot be doubted that they would at length reach a climax of subversion and ruin. And for some time it was really uncertain whether our system might not thus be tending, from the inherent character of its constitution, to decay. Newton did not undertake to pronounce upon the question; but Lagrange and Laplace succeeded in showing that this partial derangement, extending over such lengthened periods, was yet only of limited operation. After reaching a certain stage, reaction ensues. The orbits do not continue to deviate in one direction; but they deviate periodically 96now in this, and now in the opposite direction. The planetary perturbations are not indefinitely progressive, long as they continue in one direction, but oscillatory. After reaching a certain height they return and correct themselves. And what chiefly deserves our attention is, that the special conditions of this periodical adjustment of the planetary system are those uniformities of movement which so prominently characterise the various bodies of the system. “I have succeeded,” says Laplace, “in demonstrating that whatever be the masses of the planets, in consequence of the fact that they all move in the same direction, in orbits of small eccentricity, and slightly inclined to each other, their secular inequalities are periodical, and included within narrow limits; so that the planetary system will only oscillate about a mean state, and will never deviate from it except by a very small quantity.”⁵¹⁵¹   Système du Monde, book iv. chap. ii. p. 226, quoted by Dr Whewell, p. 164.

When we turn from these special characteristics of the planetary movements to the great law expressed in all, and under which they all proceed, the same aptitude of appointment meets us. While it cannot be said that of all laws that of gravitation is the only conceivable one, the only one compatible with the maintenance of the system, it has yet been shown, in the clearest manner, that of all others this law is at once the most fitting and the most simple. It is owing alone to the particular measure of the attractive force that the planets return regularly in the same track, preserving with very slight deviations the same periods in their revolutions. Had this force varied otherwise 97than inversely with the square of the distance, this regularity in the orbits of the planets would have been entirely destroyed.⁵²⁵²   Dr Whewell’s Bridgewater Treatise, p. 220. It is remarkable, moreover, that this is the only law save that of direct distance (otherwise unsuitable) which is the same for spherical masses, such as the planets, and for the separate particles composing them. This is surely a significant and wonderful provision. The mind is filled with a solemn sense of simplicity as it contemplates the varied and beautiful operation of such a law, alike binding the dew into glistening gems, and holding the planets and the stars in their courses.

On the whole, we perceive everywhere among the celestial phenomena, adaptation. Order meets us wherever we turn our gaze. The old atheistic notion of chance has wholly disappeared before the discoveries of science. Everywhere, therefore, in the course of our survey, the theistic conclusion is impressively forced upon us. The agency of a mighty Mind, working in all this order, is irresistibly manifested. As of old, the “heavens declare the glory of God.” In the language of Newton, “Elegantissima hæcce compages solis, planetarum et cometarum (et stellarum) non nisi consilio et dominio Entis cujusdam potentis et intelligentis oriri potuit.”

In this conclusion we might rest securely on the grounds already laid down. It is irrefragable, on our general basis of reason. In reference, however, to certain objections which have been specially urged against it in this region, it deserves some further attention. Astronomy is the 98favourite sphere of the scientific materialist. Whatever sciences may still linger within the domain of theology, this is considered finally emancipated from its control. Those same facts which to the reverent mind of Newton were so irresistibly demonstrative of Divine power and wisdom, to the minds of others are only indicative of a vast necessity, which, unintelligent in its character, is by no means to be considered perfect in its working. And this antagonism of opinion, of ancient date, continues to live, and even to develop itself with clearer prominence than ever, in our present modes of thought.

According to the modern school of scientific materialists, the planetary and cosmical order is sufficiently explained by the law of gravity. It is simply the necessary result of this law, beyond which, as an explanation of the universe, we are not competent to go. This mode of explanation, if not distinctly announced by Laplace himself, has sought confirmation in the tone of his reasoning in different parts of the Système du Monde, and especially in his famous cosmogonic hypothesis. Laplace certainly discarded all notion of design in connection with the planetary mechanism as unphilosophical, and even ventured to point out in one instance, in regard to the motion of the moon, how it might have been, for the bestowal of light, more advantageously arranged.⁵³⁵³   Système du Monde, book iv. chap. v. p. 266.

M. Comte has however outstripped his master, and declares the inconsistency of astronomy not only with the doctrine of final causes, but with every idea of religion. He ridicules 99the grand sentiment of the Psalmist with which we set out, and pronounces that to minds “early familiarised with true philosophical astronomy, the heavens declare no other glory than that of Hipparchus, of Kepler, of Newton, and of all those who have aided in establishing their laws.” “No science,” he says, “has given more terrible shocks to the doctrine of final causes than astronomy. The simple knowledge of the movement of the earth must have destroyed the original and real foundation of this doctrine—the idea of the universe subordinated to the earth, and consequently to man. Besides, the accurate exploration of our solar system could not fail to dispel that blind and unlimited admiration which the general order of nature inspired, by showing in the most sensible manner, and in a very great number of different respects, that the orbs were certainly not disposed in the most advantageous manner, and that science permitted us easily to conceive a better arrangement by the development of true celestial mechanism since Newton. All the theological philosophy, even the most perfect, has been henceforth deprived of its principal intellectual function, the most regular order being thence consigned as necessarily established and maintained in our world, and even in the whole universe, by the simple mutual gravity of its several parts.”⁵⁴⁵⁴   COMTE, Philosophic Positive, tome ii. p. 36-38.

The grounds on which we rest the doctrine of final causes, and on which we consider it wholly untouched by the discoveries of science, have already been sufficiently explained. All, therefore, which demands our present attention 100 in this famous classical passage of atheism is, the assertion of the necessity and explanatory sufficiency of the law of gravity. Have we any right to regard this law as necessarily existent? Would it explain the phenomena in question even if it were?

Now, so far from our having any right to regard the law of gravity as necessarily existent, the truth is, that it is a mere assumption to speak of this law as existent by itself at all. We know the law in certain phenomena—in those orderly manifestations of which we have been speaking. It is the expression of the relation of these phenomena, but nothing more. It is the name by which we generalise and hold before our mind the action of these phenomena, but nothing more. To regard it for a moment, therefore, by itself, as a necessary power or property, to whose operation we can conceive the cosmical order to be owing, is simply to impose upon our imagination by a fiction; and if it is not so regarded, it amounts to nothing; it explains nothing. It simply assigns for the fact of the cosmical order, the fact; while yet our reason imperatively demands an explanatory origin of this fact.

But even if we allowed the necessary existence of gravity, it would not explain the whole order of phenomena before us. Even if we granted it to be an independent property working in matter, the position of the materialist would not be made good. So far, indeed, it may be admitted, according to the Laplacian cosmogony, that the simple operation of gravity would account for the successive formation of the planetary bodies, and their motion round a common centre; 101 yet how much would this still leave unexplained! Given the nebulous mass and the force of gravity, it is conceivable that, under the continued action of this force, the mass would be broken up and condensed into separate parts, each taking a necessary position and assuming a necessary motion. But, as has been urged, whence the existence of the nebulous mass itself? Whence the peculiar character which enabled it to separate and contract in the fitting way, and in no other? Whence the determinate velocity of the primitive movement, destined to such results, and no other? Whence, particularly, certain phenomena which do not lie in the plane of the planetary movements, nor proceed in the same course, although, according to the Laplacian view, all the generated motions must lie in the same plane, and be in the same direction?⁵⁵⁵⁵   When Laplace proposed his hypothesis, it was believed that not only the planets, but their satellites, all moved in the same direction, from west to east; “but since that time,” says Sir D. Brewster, “all the satellites of Uranus have been found to move in an opposite direction; and Mr Hind has very recently found that the satellite of Neptune also moves in the opposite direction; thus proving that the hypothesis is utterly incapable of explaining the celestial motions.”—More Worlds than One, p. 122. To such questions the theory gives no answer. Gravity, therefore, even if admitted to be the cause of the planetary order so far, entirely fails to account for that order as a whole. Even if necessary, it is inadequate as a source of explanation.

In truth, and in conclusion, the Laplacian cosmogony, while interesting as a speculation, and serving to point, as by a venturous aim, the path of knowledge beyond the existing order of things, is yet, no less than any other cosmogonic theory, wholly worthless as a final explanation of things. 102To suppose it for a moment to be such an explanation, were not merely to exalt man to be the interpreter, but the God of nature. It were to constitute his proud dreams the measure of existence in the most daring sense, and verily, with Comte, to make the heavens reflect his glory. The highest, which is also the most reverent reason, at once shrinks from and contradicts such pretensions. It allows the speculation for what it may be worth, but utterly disallows it as a final efficient explanation. Here, as everywhere, we can only rest in an original self-subsistent Mind, in which the whole cosmical order lives, and from which it ever proceeds. This, the conclusion in which the great intellect of Newton rested, is that which the common reason universally demands, and in which alone it can find satisfaction evermore.