KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. xxxix facturing districts of the kingdom. At the same era, it was, that the schools for popularising science began to be established. This coincidence in time, has afforded unluckily, a colour for ascribing to philosophy the spirit of misrule and irreligion, which then took possession of many minds, previously docile and pious. Nor will any one deny, that if under the pretence of expounding to students the elements of mechanical or astronomical science, the teacher shall insidiously undermine the principles of natural and revealed religion, and promote the desire, too common, alas! of emancipating the conscience from the control of an Omniscient Witness, and an Unerring Judge; he may render the school of philosophy a pesthouse of morals. Even those pseudo-philanthropists, who, reviling the doctrines of faith, and renouncing the powers of a world to come, pretend, by human sanctions and expedients, to erect a kingdom of virtue and happiness in this world, should beware of placing such scorners in the chair of philosophy, lest by loosening the frame work of society, they bring down a second fearful crash of atheism and crime : "Grave ne rediret seculum Pyrrhæ Nova monstra questum."-HOR. : But certainly, the science of the Newtonian school, taught in the spirit of its illustrious author, is propitious to man in every rank of life, promoting his piety as a Christian, his kindness as a master, and his fidelity as a servant. That all knowledge is in every case and in every degree a good, and ignorance the parent of every evil, are popular maxims of the day; and seem, at first sight, to be equally sound in theory, and safe in practice. But they cannot be received without much modification. With knowledge, responsibility increases, and failing fulfilment, guilt; "For by the law is the knowledge of sin. Nay," says a great master of morals, "I had not known sin but by the law." Knowledge is therefore an essential element of criminal purpose and criminal action. It may communicate power indeed; but if power be so imparted to a malignant being, that knowledge will become the parent of evil. This consequence has been enforced with great felicity of illustration in the story of Caliph Vathek, a philosophical romance, which clearly shows how increase of knowledge in a wicked mind, may merely aggravate misery and vice. This is also the great moral of Goethe's Faust, and the Manfred of Byron; two of the most powerful personifications of the workings of unhallowed knowledge, ever imbodied by genius. They who know the most, Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth, The tree of knowledge is not that of life."-BYRON. . Even in our daily experience, we learn to our cost, that the most knowing of our acquaintances, are not always either the safest or the best. Knowledge, in its ordinary acceptation, is power; and it is nothing more. It is a weapon which may effect good or evil, according to the intention with which it is wielded. It gives force and permanence to despotism, whether of the many, or the few. There is no doubt another and a better sense in which knowledge may be taken, but one too seldom implied in philosophical disquisition,-the knowledge of the Being and Will of God, as conveyed in the Scriptures. This knowledge likewise confers power, but not the power of doing evil. The consciousness of a superintending Omnipotence must restrain criminal desire, and promote virtuous principle. It is therefore devoutly to be wished, that the strenuous, and in general laudable efforts, now making to diffuse knowledge and its concomitant power among the people, should be made conducive to the welfare of mankind at large. When the streams formerly pent up in narrow channels on elevated land, and there accessible to only a few SOUND AND UNSOUND PHILOSOPHY EXEMPLIFied. xli vigorous minds, are drawn off in numerous rills to irrigate the lower levels of society; the prudent Philanthropist, in spreading the refreshing waters over the thirsty soil, will be careful in its distribution. He will not inundate his fields at random, lest he sap the vigorous roots, and loosen the tender ones altogether. The system may, in fact, be judged by its fruits; for if its leading partisans be men of turbulent or dissolute lives, it may be deemed pernicious. The objects, order and changes of the material system may be contemplated through the medium of either an insane* or a sound philosophy, according as they are considered to be the offspring merely of certain developing forces miscalled Nature, or as the creation and ordinances of the one living and true God. The first plan of study sedulously conceals or even seeks to efface the many features of wisdom and goodness impressed on his works; the second diligently deciphers them as the best and highest lessons of philosophy. Thus the Système du Monde of Laplace, leaves the mind afloat in a dark and viewless void; while Newton's Principia lead our thoughts up to the Father of Light and Life. "The greatest benefit which the sublime science of astronomy can confer, is, to dissipate the fears occasioned by extraordinary celestial phenomena, and to destroy the errors resulting from ignorance of our true relations with nature, errors the more deplorable, as social order must repose solely on these relations. TRUTH and JUSTICE are its immutable laws." Such is the grand peroration of Laplace's masterly exposition of the system of the world, presented to his countrymen in the fourth year of the Republic. What a very different work would his eloquence have penned, if unchilled by the scepticism of that period, his bosom had been kindled by a spark of the diviner fire which sanc * “ Insanientis dum sapientia, Consultus erro."-HORAT. Carm. I. 31. D tified the soul of Newton! Let us now hear his conclusion of the whole matter. Elegantissima hæcce solis, planetarum, et cometarum, compages, non nisi consilio et dominio entis intelligentis et potentis oriri potuit. Hic omnia regit, non ut anima mundi, sed ut universorum dominus. Et hæc de Deo, de quo utique ex phenomenis disserere, ad philosophiam naturalem pertinet. "This most elegant system of sun, planets, and comets, could not have existed but by the will and command of an intelligent and powerful Being. He regulates all things, not as the soul of the world, but as the Lord of the universe. Him we see, only in his powers and attributes; him, we admire, in his most wise and excellent structure of things, in his final causes, and perfections; him we venerate and adore, in his government. We worship him as servants; for a God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else than fate and nature. From a blind metaphysical necessity, always and every where the same, no variation of things could proceed. The whole diversity of the Universe, in its several places and times, could only have arisen from the ideas and will of a selfexisting Being. And these are the conclusions concerning God, which flow from the phenomena of Nature, by the principles of Natural Philosophy." "The first end to which all wisdom or knowledge ought to be employed, is to illustrate the wisdom or goodness of the Father of Nature. Every science that is cultivated by men, leads naturally to religious thought, from the study of the plant that grows beneath our feet, to that of the host of heaven above us, who perform their stated revolutions in majestic silence amid the expanse of infinity. With reverential awe, every great or elevated mind will approach to the study of Nature, and with feelings of adoration and gratitude, he will receive the illumination that gradually opens upon his soul. It is not the lifeless mass of matter, he will then feel, that he is examining;-it is the mighty machine of Eternal Wisdom: the workman MORAL AND RELIGIOUS USES OF KNOWLEDGE. xliii ship of Him, in whom every thing lives, and moves, and has its being.' Under an aspect of this kind, it is impossible to pursue knowledge without mingling with it the most elevated sentiments of devotion;-it is impossible to perceive the laws of nature, without perceiving at the same time, the Presence and the Providence of the Lawgiver,and thus it is, that in every age, the evidences of religion have advanced with the progress of true philosophy; and that science, in erecting a monument to herself, has, at the same time, erected an altar to the Deity."-Alison. Negligent of these truths, it has become the fashion with several systematists to obliterate from their transcript of Nature, those traces of creative design which have been inscribed on every page of the original, for the delight and elevation of the student's mind. This is a deed of singular demerit, derogatory at once from the well-being of man, and the glory of God. Should the harmonious co-operation of the elemental powers, light, heat, and electricity, towards their manifold subjects, solid, liquid, and aeriform, be contemplated as the preconcerted wisdom of Heaven, this idea is scouted as fanatical. Are Final causes, or the purposes of individual being, no longer to be sought after soberly in physics, because, forsooth, in the infancy of science, phantasms were taken for realities in this delicate research? The same rule should make us renounce every scientific inference; because, in one shape or another, it may have been absurdly drawn before. Final causes, the conditions of existence, or the correlation of parts and functions, constitute the unceasing study of the genuine Naturalist, who investigates the principles of organic life. Because Galen, in his treatise de Usu Partium, has given unfounded fancies for final causes, is Cuvier to be denounced for inferring the shape and size of an unknown animal, its tribe, genus, and species, whether living or extinct, from a single fossil bone? In fact, final causes, or the mutual uses and subserviency of parts, are his sole guides in this intricate labyrinth. |