012. II. The Cosmological Argument.

II. The Cosmological Argument. This argument requires the truth of three things: the principle of causation; the dependence of the cosmos: the inadequacy of the forces of nature to its formation. Only with the truth of each can the argument furnish any proof of theism. With the truth of each the proof is conclusive.

1. Validity of the Law of Causation.—It is the doctrine or law of causation that every phenomenon or event must have a cause. Mere antecedence, however uniform, will not answer for the idea of cause. There must be a causal efficience in the antecedence; an antecedence with which the phenomenon or event must result, and without which it cannot result. Such is the idea of causation in which the cosmological argument is grounded. Certain postulates of the principle will be subsequently stated in order to set it in the clearest light. The principle of causation is a truth of the reason; a self-evident truth; a truth which one may speculatively deny, but the contrary of which he cannot rationally think. The principle is practically true for all men; true in mechanics, in chemistry, in the laws of geology, in the science of astronomy, in the conservation of energy. As a self-evident or necessary truth, it needs no proof; it needs only to be set in the clear light.

“Now, that our belief in efficient causation is necessary can be made plain. Let any one suppose an absolute void, where nothing exists. He, in this case, not only cannot think of any thing beginning to be, but he knows that no existence could come into being. He affirms this—every man in the right use of reason affirms it with the same necessity with which he affirms the impossibility that a thing should be, and not be, contemporaneously. The opposite, in both cases, is not only untrue, but inconceivable—contradictory to reason. Such is the foundation of the principle, ex nihilo nihil fit. But if a phenomenon is wholly disconnected from its antecedents, if there be no shadow of a causal nexus between it and them, we may think them away, and then we have left to us a perfectly isolated event, with nothing before it. In other words, it is just as impossible to think of a phenomenon which stands in no causal connection with any thing before it as it is to think of an event, or even of a universe, in the act of springing into being out of nothing. Futile is the attempt to empty the mind of the principle of efficient causation; and were it successful, its triumph would involve the overthrow of all assured knowledge, because it would be secured at the cost of discrediting our native and necessary convictions.”^[113] The special point of value in this citation is in setting the idea of an event in the clear light of absolute isolation from cause. No man who is true to rational thought can think the possibility of such an event. That he cannot is because the idea of efficient causation is a necessary idea. No axiom of geometry asserts for itself a profounder necessity of thought.

^[113]Fisher:Supernatural Origin of Christianity, pp. 543, 544.

Hume vainly attempted to explain the idea of causation as arising from the observation of invariable sequence in the processes of nature.^[114] This would give its genesis in experience, and deprive it of all intuitive character. The interpretation contradicts the original necessity. If the idea had no deeper origin, thinkers could easily free their minds from the conviction of its necessary truth. This they cannot do. Nor has invariability of succession any thing to do with the origin of the idea. Back of all observation of the uniformity of events, and on occasion of any individual fact, there is present to thought the necessary principle that every event must have a cause. Uniformity of succession may condition the knowledge of a particular cause, but cannot condition the idea of efficient cause. This arises immediately and necessarily on the observation of the most isolated event. “The discovery of the connection of determinate causes and determinate effects is merely contingent and individual—merely the datum of experience; but the principle that every event should have its causes is necessary and universal, and is imposed on us as a condition of our human intelligence itself.”^{[115] [114]} Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding, sec. vii;A Treatise of Human Nature, book i, sec. xiv.

^[115]Hamilton:Metaphysics, p. 534.

Brown professedly finds a deeper origin of the idea of cause than that given by Hume, but equally eliminates from his doctrine all necessity of the idea.^[116] Beyond any observed uniformity of succession, there is the broader idea that under the same conditions the past has been, and the future will be, as the present. But so long as the principle of causation is omitted nothing of real value is added to the doctrine of Hume. Nor is there, apart from the omitted principle of causation, any ground for this hypothetic extension of the idea of invariable sequence.^{[117] [116]} Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect.

^[117]Mill’s doctrine substantially that of Hume and Brown:Logic, book iii, chaps, xxi, xxii. The idea of cause is not completed without the element of adequacy. The notion of efficiency must rise into the notion of sufficiency. Any deficiency of cause would leave the whole surplus of result as utterly unaccounted for as if there were no cause. Hence the necessity of thought for efficient causation equally requires an adequate cause—a cause which shall account for the entire effect. This principle has important implications. Could the eternity of matter and the eternal activity of its forces be proved beyond question, and could the nebular cosmogony, as it respects the formation of material orbs, be equally proved, these facts would fall infinitely short of a sufficient account in causation for life in its manifold forms, or for mind with its large rational and moral endowments. The idea of causation is complete only with the idea of an original cause. Mostly, the term ultimate is here used for the expression of the idea, but we prefer the term original. There is no cause which satisfies the idea of causation in a concatenation of causes, or in a series of natural events. However long the series, each event is as much an effect as a cause. However long the chain, the first link is as really an effect as any intermediate or even the last link, and equally requires a cause. But a beginning can have no cause under a law of mediate causation. There is still the necessity for an original, self-efficient cause; a cause having forward relation to effects, but no backward relation to cause. The cause which satisfies our necessary idea must stand back of all events in the chain of mediate causes, and in absolute independence of them. “When we speak of a cause then, and of the idea of a cause which we have in our minds, the question to be decided is. Does this idea demand finality, or is it satisfied by an infinite chain and series of causes? We assert, then, that this idea demands finality; and adopting the maxim, ‘Causa causae, causa causati,’ we say that if a cause goes back to a further cause, then the first of these two causes is not a true and real cause, and does not satisfy the idea of a cause in our minds; and so on through ever so long a chain, until we come to a cause which has no further cause to which it goes back. That is our interpretation of the idea of cause, and we say that any other interpretation of the idea is a false one, and sets up a counterfeit cause instead of a real and true one. Let us examine what we do in our minds, in conceiving the idea of cause. First we go back for a cause; the natural want and όρεξις is a retrogressive motion of the mind. But just as the first part of the idea of cause is motion, so the last is a rest; and both of these are equally necessary to the idea of cause. And unless both of these are fulfilled in the ultimate position of our minds, we have not the proper idea of causation represented in our minds; but a law of thought is violated, that law which we obey in submitting to the relation of cause at all.”^{[118] [118]} Mozley:Faith and Free Thought, p. 20.

Eternity of being is an inevitable implication of the principle of causation. If being is a reality, being must have been eternal. Nothing can be no cause. Hence an antecedent nothingness would mean the origin of being and of the universe from nothing. This is impossible in fact, and impossible in thought. Being must have been eternal. “The idea of causation applied to this universe, then, as has been said, takes us up to an Eternal, Original, Self-existing Being. For ‘how much thought soever,’ says Clarke, ‘it may require to demonstrate the other attributes of such a Being, . . . yet as to its existence, that there is somewhat eternal, infinite, and self-existing, which must be the cause and original of all other things—this is one of the first and most natural conclusions that any man who thinks at all can form in his mind. . . . All things cannot possibly have arisen out of nothing, nor can they have depended on one another in an endless succession. . . . We are certain therefore of the being of a Supreme Independent Cause; . . . that there is something in the universe, actually existing without, the supposition of whose not-existing plainly implies a contradiction. ‘Kant agrees with Clarke up to this point in the argument. He coincides with him in the necessity of an ultimate or a First Cause, as distinguished from an infinite chain of causes. ‘The reason,’ he says, ‘is forced to seek somewhere its resting point in the regressus of the conditional. . . . If something, whatever it may be, exists, it must then be admitted that something exists necessarily. For the contingent exists only under the condition of another thing, as its cause, up to a cause which exists not contingently, and, precisely on this account, without condition, necessarily. This is the argument whereon reason founds its progression to the original Being. . . . I can never complete the regression to the conditions of the existing, without admitting a necessary being. . . . This argument, though certainly it is transcendental, since it rests upon the internal insufficiency of the contingent, is still so simple and natural that it is adapted to the commonest intelligence.’”^{[119] [119]} Mozley:Faith and Free Thought, pp. 39-31.

These are the necessary ideas of causation: efficiency, adequacy, originality; and these ideas require for the satisfaction of thought an eternal being as the ground of dependent existences.^[120]

^[120] Porter:The Human Intellect, pp. 569-592; Hamilton:Metaphysics, lects. xxxix, xl; McCosh:Intuitions of the Mind, pp. 238-244; Cousin:History of Modern Philosophy, lect. xix; Bishop Foster:Theism, pp. 167-250; Diman:The Theistic Argument, lect. iii; Mozley:Faith and Free Thought, pp. 3-48; Randies:First Principles of Faith, part ii; Calderwood:Philosophy of the Infinite, chap. vii.

2. Dependence of the Cosmos.—At an earlier day contingency was mostly used instead of dependence for the expression of the same idea. Leibnitz proceeded a contingentia mundi to the proof of the divine existence. We use the word dependence as now preferable. The question of dependence is mainly the question of a temporal origin of the cosmos. Whatever begins or becomes is dependent upon a sufficient cause for its existence. This truth is determined by the principle of causation. Science verifies the dependence of the cosmos. A summary statement of facts will show this.

We begin with man. The human race is of recent origin. The proof is in geology and paleontology. Remains of man and traces of his agency are found only in a very recent geological period; and the principles of the science determine the impossibility of an earlier existence.

We proceed with the lower forms of life, animal and vegetable. Science traces their history, classifies their orders, and marks their succession in the times of their appearance. Through these successions science reaches a beginning of life, and back of it an azoic state, and a condition of the world in which the existence of life was impossible. The nebular cosmogony, the latest and, scientifically, most approved theory, finds a beginning of worlds. When we speak of the nebular cosmogony as, scientifically, the most approved theory, we mean simply as an order of world-formations. Many would see in it the method of the divine working instead of the working of purely natural forces. The theory starts with the assumption of a vastly diffused fire-mist as the primordial condition of the matter out of which the solar system and the universe were formed. By the radiation of heat and the force of gravitation this mass was subject to a process of condensation. To this is added a rotary motion as upon an axis. The rapidity of this motion caused many diremptions—one, of a mass sufficient for the solar system. This mass was subject to the same laws as the original whole, and in process of time dropped off a fragment which formed itself into the remotest planet; and thus successively all the planets were formed. In this same order the universe was formed. This is the theory. It is simple in idea, however difficult of any rationale on purely natural grounds. If the theory be true, all matter once existed in a worldless state; so that there must have been a beginning, not only of all living orders and of life itself, but a beginning of worlds and systems of worlds.

We reach a beginning in another mode. Cosmical facts arise in an order of succession. This is a truth of science. It is in the facts which conclude the time-origin of the succession in cosmos; in cosmogony; in geology; in evolution. All cosmical theories which assume to build the cosmos through primordial forces of nature must admit an order of succession in cosmical facts. This succession postulates a beginning. It gives us successive measures of time, not in equal but in veritable periods of limited duration. These, however numerous and extended, can never compass eternity. The cosmical past must be finite in time. There was a beginning of all things. In all beginning there is dependence. A beginning is an event which must have a cause. All that begins or becomes is thus dependent. This includes all that constitutes the cosmos from the lowest forms of physical order up to man; for the dependence upon causation lies not only in an original beginning, but equally in all new beginnings and in all higher becomings.

3. Inadequacy of Natural Forces to its Formation.—We must not under this head anticipate what belongs to the scope of the teleological and anthropological arguments, though all argument would be in proper order here. The inadequacy of the forces of nature to the formation of the cosmos appears the clearer and stronger in the light of these arguments. It is also true that they lift us to higher theistic conceptions than the cosmological argument. Still the distinction of these arguments is proper, and in the result profitable. But when this distinction is made it should not afterward be overlooked; nor should the cosmological be the subject of adverse criticism because it does not attain to all the revelation of God that is possible only to the three arguments. “It is only when we have completed and perfected the idea, and when we return to it with the results of further inquiry, that the idea of a first cause becomes clothed with religious significance. Yet, incomplete and unsatisfactory as is the mere abstract conception of a first cause, it is still an essential part of that complex and comprehensive reasoning on which, as we have seen, the argument for the divine existence rests; and it is a point of no small importance thus to ascertain, at the outset of our inquiry, that recent science, instead of dismissing the hypothesis, has supplied us with a striking evidence of the impossibility of excluding it from rational thought.”^{[121] [121]} Diman:The Theistic Argument, p. 97.

Mill, in his criticism of the “argument for a first cause,”^[122] really admits the principle of causation, though the admission is contradictory to the determining principles of his philosophy. What, then, is the cause in which Mill finds the origin of the cosmos? Not in any thing or being back of the cosmos or above it, but in matter and force as permanent elements in the cosmos, and as eternal existences. “There is in nature a permanent element, and also a changeable: the changes are always the effects of previous changes; the permanent existences, so far as we know, are not effects at all.” “There is in every object another and a permanent element, namely, the specific elementary substance or substances of which it consists and their inherent properties. These are not known to us as beginning to exist: within the range of human knowledge they had no beginning, consequently no cause; though they themselves are causes or con-causes of every thing that takes place.” “Whenever a physical phenomenon is traced to its cause, that cause when analyzed is found to be a certain quantum of Force, combined with certain collocations. And the last great generalization of science, the Conservation of Force, teaches us that the variety in the effects depends partly upon the amount of the force, and partly upon the diversity of the collocations. The force itself is essentially one and the same; and there exists of it in nature a fixed quantity, which (if the theory be true) is never increased or diminished. Here then we find, even in the changes of material nature, a permanent element; to all appearance the very one of which we were in quest. This it is, apparently, to which, if to any thing, we must assign the character of First Cause, the cause of the material universe.”^{[123] [122]} Three Essays on Religion, pp. 143-154.

^[123]Three Essays, etc., pp. 142-145. In this manner, fairly given in the citations from Mill, he attempts the refutation of the cosmological argument for the existence of God. It is regarded as a most skillful attempt. If he has found in matter and physical force a sufficient cause of the cosmos, then our proposition, that the forces of nature are inadequate to the formation of the cosmos, is not true, and this necessary link fails us; and with it the whole argument fails. It should here be observed that, if the cause of the cosmos which Mill offers is the true and sufficient one, it must answer for the cosmos not only in its purely physical plane, but also for all its wonderful adjustments, for all its forms of life, and for man himself with his marvelous endowments of mind. In a word, it must answer for all the requirements of the teleological and anthropological arguments as well as for the cosmological. Mill himself recognizes this implication, and makes some little attempt to meet its requirements, but with no confident tone or strength of logic. But we must not yet anticipate the teleological and anthropological arguments, though with them will come the most thorough refutation of Mill.

If any one should think that in all this contention Mill proceeds upon purely scientific grounds, and with rigid limitation to scientific facts, he would greatly err, and consequently accord to his reasoning a conclusiveness to which it has no rightful claim. Mill as really deals in metaphysics as ever did Plato or Anselm, Leibnitz or Kant. The eternity of matter and physical force, the conservation of energy, the eternal sameness of force in quantity and kind are no scientific facts empirically verified, but metaphysical notions, or deductions from assumed facts. For instance, if it be assumed that matter and force are the original of the universe as an orderly system, their eternity must be assumed, because they could not arise from nothing. This is precisely the method in which theism reaches the existence of an eternal being as the cause of the cosmos. When Mill admits the principle of causation he is in a region of thought as purely metaphysical as the theist when building upon that principle his argument for the divine existence. Hence we are right in denying to the argument of Mill that kind of certainty which scientific verities impart. The theory is open to an analytic testing. How is the world constructed by the operation of physical force? Through a process of change. There is a long succession of changes. The cause of each change is itself a previous change. “The changes are always the effects of previous changes.” This must be the process, if the theory is true. There is no spontaneity in physical causation; and every change must have its cause in a previous change. But trouble thus arises for the metaphysics of the theory. Such changes constitute a series; and for such a series there must be a first change. But the theory asserts, and consistently, that every change in the series is the effect of a previous change. There can be no first under such a law; and the theory falls helplessly into the unthinkable and self-contradictory infinite series. The principle of causation, and physical changes as the whole of causality, will not co-operate in the same theory, and the attempt to work them together must end in a destructive collision.

There are further testings. The theory is that matter and force are the first cause, and the original of the cosmos. Matter is concerned in the theory simply as the ground of force and the material with which it builds. Respecting this force there may be two suppositions: one, that it was eternally active; the other, that after an eternal quiescence it began its own activity. Against the former supposition there is this determining fact: the cosmical work of this force is wholly within the limits of time. As previously shown, the cosmos is of temporal origin; and therefore the building it could be only a work of time. The eternal activity of such a force and its formation of the cosmos only in time are inconsistent ideas. If we admit the eternity of force as a potentiality of matter, still it must have been quiescent in all the eternity anteceding its cosmical work.

It may be assumed that this force was eternally active, but operative as cosmical cause only in time. Assumption has large liberty, and in this instance needs the largest. The eternal activity of such a force and its production of cosmical results only in time are contradictory ideas. The new results could have no account in causation. A long preparatory process before any appearance of cosmical results may readily be conceded, but the notion of an eternal preparatory process is excluded as self-contradictory. If this force was eternally active without any cosmical production, it must have been eternally without tendency toward such production. How then could it move out upon a different line and begin its cosmical work? This would be a new departure which could have no account in physical causation. There remains to the theory the old notion of a fortuitous concursus of chaotic elements into cosmical forms.

Again, it may be assumed that the present universe is only one of an indefinite or infinite series. An indefinite series is such only for thought, and, however extended, is finite in fact, and still leaves us with an eternity anteceding the building of the first universe, which could have no beginning in physical force. An infinite series of universes is a contradiction—unthinkable and impossible. Hence, if cosmical causation is in physical force, that force must have begun its own activity. There is no spontaneity in physical force. This is too sure a truth, and too familiar, to meet with any contradiction. It is the truth of the inertia of matter. All activity of in physical force is absolutely conditioned on the proper conjunction or collocation of material elements. Mill recognizes this principle in the part which he assigns to collocation as a determining law of the action of force. When such a force is within the proper collocations it must act; when out of them it cannot act. We have seen that physical force, even if an eternal potentiality of matter, must have been eternally out of the collocations necessary to any cosmical work. How then could it ever get into such collocations? This getting in means some action. But the conditions necessary to the action are wanting. A cosmical beginning in such a force is impossible—as absolutely impossible as the springing of the universe out of nothing. And the attempt to find in matter and force the first cause and the original of the cosmos is an utter failure,

4. Theistic Conclusion.—The principle of causation remains true. Every event must have a sufficient cause. The universe is of temporal origin and its existence must have an adequate cause. There is no such cause in matter and physical force. The sufficient cause must have power in spontaneity; must be capable of self-energizing; must have an omnipotent will. These facts do not in themselves give us the plenitude of the divine attributes as necessary to the sufficient cause of the cosmos, but they do point clearly and strongly to the personality of this cause. Even the physical cosmos points to a rational intelligence as well as to a power of will in its cause. The principle of causation requires for the existence of the universe a personal God. Such a causation does not imply the quiescence of God anterior to his cosmical work. With an eternal activity in himself, it means simply a beginning of that form of agency by which he created the universe. There must have been such a beginning, whether the universe had its origin in the personal agency of God or in the forces of nature operating in the mode of evolution. The theistic conclusion is very sure, though not a demonstration. It cannot be strictly such, because with the axiomatic principle of causation we combine the dependence of the cosmos and the inadequacy of natural forces to its formation. These are not axiomatic truths, but truths which address themselves to the logical reason. Yet the theistic conclusion is in its certainty little short of a demonstration.