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The physico-theological argument he forced to back, as it were, into the cosmological, and that into the ontological. Kant took the conceit out of all the three arguments; but, if this is what Phil. alludes to, he should have added, that these three, after all, were only the arguments of speculating or theoretic reason.
By this "physico-theological" argument he furnishes a welcome support to deism. While the finite mind perceives in the sensorium of the brain the images of objects which come to it from the senses, God has all things in himself, is immediately present in all, and cognizes them without sense-organs, the expanse of the universe forming his sensorium.
Thus the physico-theological is based upon the cosmological, and this upon the ontological proof of the existence of a Supreme Being; and as besides these three there is no other path open to speculative reason, the ontological proof, on the ground of pure conceptions of reason, is the only possible one, if any proof of a proposition so far transcending the empirical exercise of the understanding is possible at all.
They are theoretically insufficient and practically unnecessary. They have such high-sounding names the ontological argument, the cosmological, the physico-theological that almost in spite of ourselves we bring a reverential mood to them. They have been set forth with solemnity by such redoubtable thinkers that there is something almost startling in the way that Kant knocks them about.
The first is the physico-theological argument, the second the cosmological, the third the ontological. More there are not, and more there cannot be. I shall show it is as unsuccessful on the one path the empirical- as on the other the transcendental, and that it stretches its wings in vain, to soar beyond the world of sense by the mere might of speculative thought.
The physico-theological proof may add weight to others if other proofs there are by connecting speculation with experience; but in itself it rather prepares the mind for theological cognition, and gives it a right and natural direction, than establishes a sure foundation for theology.
For this fact there are many reasons. One may be, that on the continent in general there is a smaller number of those who, without being specialists in both realms, unite active religious interest and reasoning with a thorough study of those naturo-historical questions, while in Great Britain physico-theological studies have been for generations traditional and the object of interest for the majority of educated men.
Reason would be unable to satisfy her own requirements, if she passed from a causality which she does know, to obscure and indemonstrable principles of explanation which she does not know. According to the physico-theological argument, the connection and harmony existing in the world evidence the contingency of the form merely, but not of the matter, that is, of the substance of the world.
Nor can it injure the cause of morality to endeavour to lower the tone of the arrogant sophist, and to teach him that modesty and moderation which are the properties of a belief that brings calm and content into the mind, without prescribing to it an unworthy subjection. The chief momenta in the physico-theological argument are as follow: 1.
If we wish to prove the contingency of matter, we must have recourse to a transcendental argument, which the physico-theological was constructed expressly to avoid. We infer, from the order and design visible in the universe, as a disposition of a thoroughly contingent character, the existence of a cause proportionate thereto.
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