There are proud enthusiasts who conclude that, by advancing in knowledge and the useful arts, man will soon be able to command nature, and become independent of it. It is singular to observe how every mind paints a golden age for the future destinies of our world, and each mind colours that age with its own hues. The golden age of the philosopher is an anticipated period in which man shall be able to control all, and yet be controlled of none. But the philosopher forgets one most important element in his calculation and that is, that in very proportion as society becomes more artificial, it becomes more reticulated, and the destinies of every one portion more connected with those of every other, and that the snapping of one link in this network may throw the whole into inextricable confusion. In short, both the regular and the contingent pervade nature, and we cannot free ourselves from the one or the other; and man, whether in his lesser or wider spheres, whether in the ruder or more civilized states of society, is made to fall in with very much the same proportion of both.
James McCosh, The Method of the Divine Government, Physical and Moral, Third Edition, Sutherland and Knox (Edinburgh: 1852) p. 173. McCosh was arguably the last major figure in what we call today, 'Scottish Common Sense Philosophy'. He spent some time in Belfast at Queen's College (now Queen's University), but in the 1860s was invited by the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) to become its president. He was one of Princeton's most effective presidents; the college had had a very rocky nineteenth century, beginning with student riots over Stanley Stanhope Smith's attempts to secularize it, continuing with student riots over Ashbel Green's attempt to re-theologize it, nearly shutting down due to low enrollment under James Carnahan, then, as it was slowly improving, hit by the Civil War (almost a third of its students had been from Southern states). McCosh turned most of it around, cultivated one of the premier faculties in the United States, established the doctorate program, massively expanded enrollment, and established features of collegiate life that were copied elsewhere for the next fifty years. In 1888, he resigned the presidency and became a philosophy professor until his death in 1894. McCosh's The Method of the Divine Government is one of the better nineteenth-century discussions of design arguments and their implications.
