General indications which relate to the laws of organic life / by Daniel Pring.

  • Pring, Daniel, 1789-1859.
Date:
1819
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: General indications which relate to the laws of organic life / by Daniel Pring. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    4^ syllogism of this kind, viz. it must be allowed that the sea if* good, so is this which is usually denominated a house, therefore a house is the sea. This is in fact an assumption similar to that above; it is arguing the perfect identity of two things from an agreement in one single quality, while there is a vast difference in all the other properties which belong to and distinguish them. § 18. It appears then that the proposition, that all the pheno- mena in nature are produced and regulated by an universal mind, is founded upon the analogy between these productions of nattire and the productions of art,'in which latter we experience the in- fluence of mind to be concerned. This is the point of analogy: but the inference upon this ground of analogy is liable to the ob- jections before stated, the principal of which may be summed up in the two following: 1st. Mind produces volition: through this medium its con- ceptions or designings are executed ; and we have no experience of the efficacy of volition, except in its alliance with organic sub- stances. Hence there is a dissimilarity between the subjects on which the operation of mind, through volition, is experienved, and those on which such operation is supposed, and an argument of an analogy cannot well be founded on dissimilitude. 2nd. It is inferred that mind is necessary to produce regular phenomena, because those are disorderly wliich mind does not produce. At the same time it is affirmed that all phenomena are produced by mind: and if this is true, it must follow that no argu- ment can be founded on the contrast between regular and con- fused productions, or designed and chance productions, seeing that of the latter W£ can have no possible examples. § 19. But if we find that this exposition has no better success than to leave the point at issue still in doubt; if there are those who will assume the title of arbitrators, and substitute affirmation for proof, intending to carry the point by authority where some sort of choice appears to be allowed them; we must then confess that some further satisfaction is required; and, with a view to obtain it, we have only to recur to a principle of causation in order to put the present question upon the same footing as that upon which the principle itself stands. § 20. An act of causation, such an one to which may be at- tributed contrivance, cannot take place, it is said, unless regulated by a designing principle. But design itself, abstractedly, what is necessary to its existence? what but the ideas of those things with which it works, or for which it projects? and can these ideas pre- exist their objects? We have in truth no example of it. Where- cver \ve can contemplate the designing faculty, we perceive that the objects themselves must exist before the corresponding ideas can exist: that is to say, those things must first exist which furnish the analogies, or models of design. This experience obtains in that which we call invention, and is without an exception; have we then a right to conclude against it] If we allow it force, and con-
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