Читать книгу An Appeal to the People in Behalf of Their Rights as Authorized Interpreters of the Bible - Catharine Esther Beecher - Страница 48

Table of Contents

In the widest sense of the word, cause signifies something as an antecedent, without which a given change will not occur, and with which it will occur. This is the leading idea in every use of this word.

Then there are two classes of causes; the first are necessary or producing causes, and the second occasional causes.

A producing cause is an antecedent which produces a given change.

Occasional causes are those circumstances which are indispensable to the action of producing causes.

[pg 045]

Thus, fire applied to powder is the producing cause of an explosion, while the placing of the two together is the occasional cause of it.

The idea of a producing cause is one which probably is gained when we first discover that our own will moves our own limbs and other things around us. When we will to move a thing, and find the intended change follows our volition to move it, then we can not help believing that our own mind produced this change. At the same time we gain the idea of power to produce this change, and the belief also that the thing changed had no power to refrain from the change.

Our only mode of defining the idea of a producing cause, of power and of want of power, is to refer to occasions when, by willing, we cause changes, and thus become conscious of the existence and nature of these ideas by experience.

So also we have no mode of defining our sensations but by stating the occasions in which we are conscious of them. For instance, whiteness is the sensation we have when we look at snow, and blackness is the sensation we have when we look at charcoal.

The same idea of causation and power in ourselves which we have when we make changes by our will, we always connect with any thing which by experiment and testimony we find, in given circumstances, to be an invariable antecedent of a given change. Our minds are so made, that whenever we find an invariable antecedent of a given change, we can not help believing that this antecedent produced the change, just as we believe our own will produces changes in our bodies and in things around us. And if any person [pg 046] were to talk and act as if lie did not believe this, be would be regarded as having “lost his reason.”

Moreover, whenever men, by frequent experiments, find that a given change is invariably preceded by a certain antecedent, they can not help believing that the antecedent has power to produce this change, and that the thing changed has no power to do otherwise. This idea of power and want of power always exists whenever men find an invariable antecedent to some change. It is by finding what are thus invariably connected as antecedents and consequents that men learn what are causes, and what are effects, and what are the powers of things around us.

Here, then, we have these as principles of common sense believed by all men, viz.:

1. Every change (in matter or mind) has a producing cause as an antecedent.

2. Every invariable antecedent of an invariable sequent is a producing cause, and the thing changed has no power to refrain from that change.

3. A producing cause, in appropriate circumstances, has power to make a given change.

Now every man, however unlearned, can judge for himself whether these principles of common sense exist in his own mind, as here set forth. For example, let any person take a magnet and discover, day after day, that when it is placed near a piece of iron it draws it to itself; let him find also, by testimony from others, that this is invariable and fails in not a single instance, and the inevitable result is a belief that the magnet is the cause of the moving of the iron, just as the mind is the cause of the movement of our bodies. So also there is a belief that the magnet, in given circumstances, [pg 047] has power to move the iron, as our will has power to move our body. So also there is a belief that the piece of iron, in the given circumstances, has no power to refrain from being thus attracted.

We see, then, that it is a universal fact, that when there is a change of any thing, or any new mode of existence, every sane man believes there is some producing cause of this change. Even the youngest child exhibits this principle as a part of its mental organization. And should a person be found who was destitute of a belief in this truth, so that he should talk and act as if things came into existence and were changing places and forms without any causes, he would be called insane, or a man who had “lost his reason.”

Our minds being endowed with this principle, we find the world around us to be a succession of changes which we trace back to preceding causes, until we come to the grand question, “Who, or what first started this vast system of successive changes?” Only two replies are conceivable. The first is that of the Atheist, who, contradicting his own common sense, maintains that, in some past period, all this vast system of organization and changes began to exist without any cause. The other reply is, that there is a great, eternal, self-existent First Cause, who himself never began to be, and who is the author of all finite existences. This being, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, we call God.

The next principle of common sense is that by which we gain a knowledge of the natural attributes of the Creator. It is this:

Design or contrivance to secure a given end, is proof [pg 048] of an intelligent designer, and the nature of a design proves the intention and character of its author.

The mind, as has been shown, is so formed that it can not believe that any existence can commence without some antecedent cause. The existence of unorganized matter, however, would be no proof that the cause was an intelligent mind.

But when any existence is discovered where there is an adjustment of parts, all conducing to accomplish some determinate end, no person can examine and understand its nature and adaptations without the accompanying belief that the cause of that contrivance was a mind endowed with the capacity of adjusting means to accomplish an end, and thus an intelligent mind.

Nor is it possible, when the object which any design is fitted to accomplish is clearly discovered, to doubt the intention of the designer. We can not help believing that it was the intention of the contriver to accomplish the end for which his contrivance is fitted.

As an example to illustrate the existence of these principles, even in the simplest minds, if a savage should find in the desert a gold watch, nothing could lead him to believe that it sprang into existence there without any cause. If he should open it and perceive the nice adjustment of the wheels and all its beautiful indications of contrivance, he could not believe that the mind of an animal, or that any but an intelligent mind constructed its machinery. If he should have all its movements explained to him, and learn how exactly all were fitted to mark the passage of time, it would be equally impossible to convince him that the contriver did not design it for such a purpose.

Very early childhood gives evidence of the existence [pg 049] of these principles. An interesting instance of this is recorded by a celebrated philosopher, who, to test the existence of these principles in the mind of his child, planted a bed with seeds arranged in the form of the letters which spelled the child's name. When the green symbols had sprung from the ground and were discovered by the delighted child, the father in vain endeavored to force his belief that the letters came without a cause and without a design. “No, father. Somebody planted them; somebody intended to have them come up and spell my name!” And thus infancy itself maintains the principles which are our guide to the Great Source of all finite existences.

Another principle of common sense lends us still further aid in arriving at the natural attributes of the Creator. It is this: