Page:The optimism of Butler's 'Analogy'.djvu/47

Rh it turns out to be singularly concrete and near and practical. It is, he tells us, the power to 'know how the world was made, and the operation of the elements: the alterations of the turning of the sun, and the change of seasons: the circuits of years, and the positions of stars: the natures of living creatures, and the furies of wild beasts: the violence of winds, and the reasonings of men: the diversities of plants, and the virtues of roots: and all such things as are either secret or manifest' (Wisd. vii). Wisdom has shown him, moreover, that 'the principal things for the whole use of man's life are water, fire, iron, and salt, flower of wheat, honey, milk, and the blood of the grape, and oil, and clothing' (Ecclus. xxxix). Herein lies his intellectual delight. It is Natural Science that is his mistress. Knowledge is, for him, above all things progressive. It draws all things one way, according to a practical determination of the will; it goes through from end to end, sweetly ordering all things. It makes of the universe a co-ordinate scheme which can only be understood in its entire sum. All is allotted, measured, fixed, correlated. Each minute detail finds its own peculiar justification by virtue of its coherent relationships, working out to the one harmonious consummation. This is his Ideal of Truth, and it is obviously Butler's also.

And so, too, for this ancient philosophy, the Ideal presented in the sphere of Nature is identical with the moral Ideal. This Wisdom ordereth a man's life according to the same law by which it determines all else. The moral law is the human equivalent of the coherence which knits the universe into unity of purpose; and this same Wisdom, which teaches the circuits of the sun, gives to the man, into whose soul it enters, knowledge of judgement and law, by 'which to frame his life in righteousness, and to execute judgement with an upright heart. She leads him soberly in all his ways; so that his works are acceptable, and he is worthy to sit in his father's seat'.