THE pride of reason frequently acquires a most pernicious ascendency over a mind which is accustomed to find the difficulties of science yield to its persevering enquiries. And there seems to be sometimes a fatal tendency, in a philosophizing spirit, gradually to remove from consideration, and at last to deny, the existence of any final cause.* Now this is an error against which the student of natural philosophy cannot be too much upon his guard.
If scepticism be the fruit of ignorance, the enquiries of an ingenuous mind will soon detect and expose it. If it appear invested with the character of impurity and licentiousness, the very vices and turn of thought, by which it is accompanied, afford sufficient warning of its dangerous nature. But when the insidious poison is infused into the cup of science; when the hand which prepares it is one which has long led the enquirer through the pleasing intricacies of philosophy, and lifted for him the veil which covers the face of nature; it then comes recommended with such authority, that its most noxious ingredients are eagerly imbibed.
* A philosopher’s religion-neutral term for God. Technically, a Final Cause is the purpose or aim of an action, or the end towards which a thing naturally develops. Theologically, this is God, the Being that gives purpose, meaning and completeness to everything. Chevallier’s sense of holy wonder was shared by a famous neighbour among the northeast coalfields, the civil engineer George Stephenson: see The Grand Mechanic.