II. Positive evidence for the Christian view.

II. The a priori bar with which Agnosticism would block the way to the knowledge of God being thus removed, we may proceed to inquire how it stands with the theistic postulate of the Christian view, in respect of the positive evidence in its behalf. It has been shown that, if the Christian view be true, it must, up to a certain point, admit of verification by reason. The doctrine of God's existence must be shown to be in accord with reason, and to be in harmony with amid corroborated by the facts of science and of the religious history of mankind. Science, indeed, has not for its object the determination of anything supernatural. Yet in its inquiries--dealing as it does with laws and forces, and with the widest generalisations of experience--it must come to a point at which the questions with which religion and philosophy deal are forced upon it, and it has to take up some attitude to them. The facts which it brings to light, the interpretations which it gives of these facts, cannot but have some bearing on the hypotheses we form as to the ultimate cause of existence. If it does not cross the borderland, it at least brings us within sight of truths which do not lie within its proper sphere, and points the way to their acceptance.

1. I may begin with certain things in regard to which it is possible to claim a large measure of agreement. And--

(1) It may be assumed with little fear of contradiction, that if the idea of God is to be entertained, it can only be in the form of Monotheism. The Agnostic will grant us this much. Whatever the power is which works in the universe, it is one. "As for Polytheism," says a writer in Lux Mundi, "it has ceased to exist in the civilised world. Every theist is, by a rational necessity, a monotheist."1 The Christian assumption of the unity and absoluteness of God--of the dependence of the creamed universe upon Him--is thus confirmed. It is to be remembered that this truth, preached as a last result of science and of the philosophy of evolution, is a first truth of the Biblical religion. It is the Bible, and the Bible alone, which has made Monotheism the possession of the world. The unity of God was declared on the soil of Israel long before science or philosophy had the means of declaring it.1 Through Christianity it has been made the possession of mankind. On the soil of paganism we see reason struggling towards this idea, striking out partial glimpses of it, sometimes making wonderful approximations to it, hut never in its own strength lifting itself clear away from Polytheism to the pure conception of the one spiritual God, such as we find it in Christianity, still less making this the foundation of a religion It is through Christianity, not through philosophical speculation, that this truth has become the support of faith, a light to which the investigations of science themselves owe much, and a sustaining principle and power in the lives of men.2

(2) This Power which the evolutionist requires us to recognise as the origin of all things is the source of a rational order. This is a second fact about which there can be no dispute. There is a rational order and connection of things in the universe. Science is not only the means by which our knowledge of this order is extended, but it is itself a standing proof of the existence of this order. Science can only exist on the assumption that the world is not chaos, hut cosmos--that there is unity, order, law, in it--that it is a coherent and consistent whole of things, construable through our intelligence, and capable of being expressed in forms of human speech. And the more carefully we examine the universe, we find that this is really its character. It is an harmonious universe. There is orderly sequence in it. There is orderly connection of part and part. There is that determinable connection we call law. There is the harmonious adjustment of means to ends, which again are embraced in higher ends, till, in the nobler systems, the teleological idea is extended to the whole system.3 In many ways does Mr. Spencer express in his writings his trust that this Power of which he speaks--inscrutable as he proclaims it to be--may be depended on not to put him, as the authors of the "Unseen Universe" phrase it, "to intellectual confusion."1 To give only one instance--he bids the man who has some highest truth to speak, not to be afraid to speak it out, on the ground that "it is not for nothing that lie has in him these sympathies with some principles, and repugnance to others. . . . He, like every other man," he says, "may properly consider himself as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the Unknown Cause; and when the Unknown Cause produces in him a certain belief, he is thereby authorised to profess and act out that belief. For to render in their highest sense the words of the poet--

'Nature is made better by no mean, But Nature makes that mean; o'er that art Which roll cay adds to Nature, is an art Which Nature makes.'

Not as adventitious, therefore, will the wise man regard the faith that is in him."2 Who does not see in these remarkable sentences that, notwithstanding his reiteration of the words "Unknown Cause," "Unknowable," Mr. Spencer's latent faith is that this Power which works in the world and in men is a Power working according to rational laws and for rational ends--is on this account an object of trust--we might almost add, a source of inspiration? But now, if this is so, can the conclusion be avoided that the Power on which we thus depend rationally is itself rational? It is knowable at least thins far, that we know that it is the source of a rational order--of an order construable through our intelligence. If now it is asserted that the source of this rational order is not itself rational, surely the proof rests, not on him who affirms, but on him who denies.3 If Mr. Spencer replies, as he does reply, that it is an " erroneous assumption that the choice is between personality and something lower than personality, whereas the choice is rather between personality only something higher," amid asks--"Is it not just possible that there is a mode of being as much transcending intelligence and will, as these transcend mechanical motion?"4--the answer (not to dwell on the utterly disparate character of the things compare d) is ready--this higher mode of being cannot at least be less than conscious. It may be a higher kind of consciousness, but it cannot be higher than consciousness. Nor is there the slightest ground for the assumption that there can be anything higher than self-conscious intelligence or reason.1 If we find in the universe an order congruous to the reason we have in ourselves, this is warranty sufficient for believing, till the contrary is proved, that the Power which gives rise to this order is not only Power, but Intelligence and Wisdom as well.

(3) Again, this Power which the evolutionist compels us to recognise is the source of a moral order. Butler, in his Analogy, undertook to prove that the constitution and course of things are on the side of virtue. His argument is sometimes spoken of as obsolete, but it is not so much obsolete as simply transformed. It is a new-fashioned phrase which Matthew Arnold uses when lie speaks of a "Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness," but it means just what Butler meant, that the make and constitution of things in the universe are for righteousness, and not for its opposite. Right eons conduct works out good results for the individual and for society; vicious conduct works out bad results. But what I wish to point out at present is the new support which this view receives from the theory of agnostic evolution, which is supposed by many to overthrow it. No philosophy, which aims at completeness, can avoid the obligation resting on it of showing that it is capable of yielding a coherent theory of human life. The construction of a system of ethics, therefore, Mr. Spencer justly regards as that part of his work to which all the other parts are subsidiary. The theological basis of ethics is rejected; utilitarianism also is set aside as inadequate; and in room of these the attempt is made to establish the rules of right conduct on a scientific basis by deducing them from the general laws of evolution. You find a Power evolving itself in the universe. Study, says Mr. Spencer, the laws of its evolution: find "the naturally revealed end towards which the Power manifested throughout evolution works"; then, "since evolution has been, and is still, working towards the highest life, itfollows that conforming to these principles by which the higher life is achieved, is furthering that end."1 And when a system us constructed on this basis, what is the result? Why, that we are simply back to the old morality�to what Mr. Spencer himself calls "a rationalised version of the ethical principles" of the current creed.2 The ethical laws which are deduced from the observations of the laws of evolution are identical with those which Christian ethics and the natural conscience of man in the higher stages of its development have always recognised.3 What is the inference? These principles were not originally gained by scientific induction. They were the expressions of the natural consciousness of mankind as to distinctions of right and wrong, or were promulgated by teachers who claimed to have received them from a higher source. In either case, they were recognised by man as principles independently affirmed by conscience to be right. And now that the process of evolution comes to be scientifically studied, we are told that the principles of conduct yielded by it, in light of the end to which evolution naturally works, absolutely coincide with those which spring from this "work of the law" written in men's hearts. What else can we conclude, assuming that the evolutionist is right in his deduction, but that the universe is constructed in harmony with right; that the laws which we have already recognised as of binding authority in conscience are also laws of the objective world; that the principles of right discovered in conscience, and the moral order of society based on these principles, are productions of the one great evolutionary cause, which is the Force impelling and controlling the whole onward movement of humanity? There is certainly nothing lucre to conflict with, but everything to support the view that the Power which is above all, and through all, and in all things, is not only Intelligence and Wisdom, but also an Ethical Will. At least, to most persons who dispassionately study the subject, I think it will appear reasonable that a Power which has an ethical end must be an ethical Power. If, further, this ethical end embraces, as Mr. Spencer seems to believe, the highest perfection amid happiness of man,4 it is still more difficult to conceive how it should have a place in the nature of things unless the Supreme Power were itself benevolent and good. It is not, it should be remembered, as if this ethical end were an after-thought or accident. It is, according to the theory, the final and supreme goad to which the whole process of evolution for count- less millenniums has been working up, and only when it is reached will the ripest fruit of the whole development be gathered. But how is this possible, except on a teleological view of things; and what teleology can yield a moral result which does not postulate at the other end a moral cause? Mr. Spencer may deprecate as he will the imposing of moral ideas generated in our consciousness upon the Infinite which transcends consciousness. But it is only his own arbitrary denial of consciousness to the Absolute, and his arbitrary assumption that there can be no kindredship between that absolute consciousness and our own, which prevents him from drawing the natural conclusion from his own premises. But if to Mr. Spencer's definition of the Absolute, as "an Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed," we add, as I think we are entitled to do, the predicates of infinite Intelligence and of Wisdom, and of Ethical Will, we have all the fundamental theistic positions affirmed.

If the First Cause of the universe is proved by its manifestations to be at once rational Intelligence and Ethical Will, there should be no excess of scrupulosity in applying to it the term "Personal." I have thus far reasoned on the assumptions of Mr. Spencer, and have spoken of his Ultimate Reality as he does himself, as "Power," "Force," "Cause," etc. But I cannot leave this part of the subject without remarking that Mr. Spencer is far from having the field of thought all to himself on this question of the nature of the Ultimate Existence. It was shown in last Lecture how, starting from a different point of view, the higher philosophy of the century--the Neo-Kantian and Neo-Hegelian--reaches, with a very large degree of certainty, the conclusion that the ultimate principle of the universe must be self-conscious. It is well known that the Personality of God was a point left in very great doubt in the system of Hegel.1 God was conceived of as the Absolute Reason, but the drift of the system seemed to point rather to an impersonal Reason which first becomes conscious of itself ill man, than to a selfconsciousness complete and perfect from the beginning. Whatever its other defects, the later Hegelianism has shaken itself clear of this ambiguity, amid affirms with emphasis that the principle at the basis of the universe is self-conscious.1 The other line of development--the Neo-Kantian--is, in the person of its chief representative, Hermann Lotze, explicitly theistic. I only notice here, that after a careful discussion of all the arguments against ascribing Personality to time Divine Being, on the ground that personality implies the limitation of the finite, Lotze arrives at this conclusion, diametrically the opposite of Mr. Spencer's--"Perfect personality is reconcilable only with the conception of an infinite Being; for finite beings only an approximation to this is attainable."2 It is interesting, further, to notice that even Neo-Spencerianism--if I may coin such a term--has come round, in tire person of Mr. Fiske, to a similar affirmation. "The final conclusion," he says, "is, that we must not say that 'God is Force,' since such a phrase inevitably calls up those pantheistic notions of blind necessity, which it is my express desire to avoid; but always bearing in mind the symbolic character of the words, we may say that 'God is Spirit.' How my belief in the personality of God could be more strongly affirmed without entirely deserting the language of modern philosophy and taking refuge in pure mythology, I am unable to see."3

2. It is now necessary to come to closer quarters, arid to ask whether the ordinary proofs for the existence of God, which have been so much assailed since the time of Kant, still retain their old cogency, arid if not, what modifications require to be made on them. The time-honoured division of these proofs--which have recently received so able a re-handling at the instance of Dr. Hutchison Stirling in his "Gifford Lectures"--is into the cosmological, the teleological, and the ontological, to which, as belonging to another category, falls to be added the moral. Besides these, Kant thinks, there are no others.1 This, however, must be taken with qualification, if the remark is meant to apply to the old scholastic forms in which these proofs have customarily been put. Not only is there no necessity for the proofs being confined to these forms--some of which are clearly inadequate--hut they are capable of many extensions, and even transformations, as the result of advancing knowledge, and of the better insight of reason into its own nature. I may add that I do not attach much importance in this connection to objections to these proofs drawn from Kant's peculiar theory of knowledge.2 If it can be shown that in the exercise of our reason as directed on the world in which we live--or on its own nature--we are compelled either to cease to think, or to think in a particular way,--if we find that these necessities of thought are not peculiar to individuals here and there, but have been felt by the soundest thinkers in all ages, and among peoples widely separated from each other,--we may be justified in believing that our reason is not altogether an untrustworthy guide, but may be depended on with considerable confidence to direct us to the truth.

Neither shall I waste time at this stage by discussing in what sense it is permissible to speak of "proof" of so transcendent a reality as the Divine existence. We remember here the saying of Jacobi, that a God capable of proof would be no God at all; since this would mean that there is something higher than God from which His existence can be deduced. But this applies only to the ordinary reasoning of the deductive logic. It does not apply to that higher kind of proof which may be said to consist in the mind being guided back to the clear recognition of its own ultimate pre-suppositions. Proof in Theism certainly does not consist in deducing God's existence as a lower from a higher; but rather in showing that God's existence is itself the last postulate of reason--the ultimate basis on which all other knowledge, all other belief rests. What we mean by proof of God's existence is simply that there are necessary acts of thought by which we rise from the finite to the infinite, from the caused to the uncaused, from the contingent to the necessary, from the reason involved in the structure of the universe to a universal and eternal Reason, which is the ground of all, from morality in conscience to a moral Lawgiver and Judge. In this connection the three theoretical proofs constitute an inseparable unity--" constitute together," as Dr. Stirling finely declares, "but the three undulations of a single wave, which wave is but a natural rise and ascent to God, on the part of man s own thought, with man's own experience and consciousness as the object before him."1

(1) Adopting the usual arrangement, I speak first of the cosmological proof, which, from the contingency and mutability of the world,--from its finite, dependent, changeful, multiple character,--concludes to an infinite and necessary Being as its ground and cause. That this movement of thought is necessary is shown by the whole history of philosophy and religion. Kant, who subjects the argument to a severe criticism, nevertheless admits--"It is something very remarkable that, on the supposition that something exists, I cannot avoid the inference that something exists necessarily."2 The question then arises--Is the world this necessary Being? The cosmological proof on its various sides is directed to showing that it is not,--that it is not sufficient for its own explanation,--that, therefore, it must have its ground and origin in some other being that is necessary. Whatever exists has either the reason of its existence in itself, or has it in something else. But that the world has not the reason of its existence in itself--is not, in Spinoza's phrase, causa sui, is not a necessarily existing being--is shown in various ways.

i. By the contingency of its existence. --A necessary Being as Kant himself defines it, is one the necessity of whose existence is given through its possibility, i.e. the non-existence of which cannot be thought of as possible.3 But the world is not an existence of this character. We can think of its non-existence without contradiction--as, e.g., we cannot think of the non-existence of space and time. We think away all the contents of space and time, but we cannot think away space and time themselves.

ii. By the dependency of its several parts. --It is made up of finite parts, each of which is dependent on the others, and sustains definite relations to them; its parts, therefore, have not the character of self-subsistence. But a world made up of parts, none of which is self-subsistent, cannot as a whole be self-subsistent, or the necessary Being.1

iii. By its temporal succession of effects. --The world is in constant flux and change. Causes give birth to effects, and effects depend on causes. Each state into which it passes has determining conditions in some immediately preceding state. This fact, apart from the general proof of contingency, suggests the need of conceiving not only of a necessary ground, but likewise of a First Cause of the universe. The alternative supposition is that of an eternal series of causes and effects--a conception which is unthinkable, and affords no resting-place for reason. What can be more self-contradictory than the hypothesis of a chain of causes and effects, each link of which hangs on a preceding link, while yet the whole chain hangs on nothing?2 Reason, therefore, itself points us to the need of a First Cause of the universe, who is at the same time a self-existing, necessary, infinite Being.

It is, since Kant's time, customarily made an objection to this argument, that it only takes us as far as some necessary being--it does not show us in the least degree what kind of a being this is--whether,e.g., in the world or out of it, whether the world soul of the Stoics, the pantheistic substance of Spinoza, the impersonal reason of Hegel, or the personal God of the theist. This may be, and therefore the cosmological argument may need the other arguments to complete it. It will be found, however, when we go more deeply (in the ontological argument) into the conception of necessary being, that there is only one kind of existence which answers to this description, and with this more perfect conception the cosmological argument will then connect itself.

As thus presented, the cosmological argument is a process of thought. I cannot leave it, however, without pointing out that it stands connected with a direct fact of consciousness, which, as entering into experience, changes this proof to some extent from a merely logical into a real one. Not to speak of the immediate impression of transitoriness, finitude, contingency, vanity, which, prior to all reasoning, one receives from the world,1 and which finds expression, more or less, in all religions, there is, at the very root of our religious consciousness, that "feeling of absolute dependence" which Schleiermacher fixes on as the very essence of religion:2 and which reappears in Mr. Spencer's philosophy in a changed form as the immediate consciousness of an absolute Power on which we and our universe alike depend. This feeling of dependence, so natural to man, and interweaving itself with all his religious experiences, is the counterpart in the practical sphere of the cosmological argument in the logical. Both need their explanation in something deeper than themselves, namely, in the possession by man of a rational nature, which makes him capable of rising in thought and feeling above the finite. And as, in the theoretic sphere, the cosmological argument presses forward to its completion in another and a higher, so in the religious sphere the rational nature of man forbids that this sense of dependence should remain a mere feeling of dependency on a blind Power. Religion must free, bless, inspire, strengthen men. From the first, therefore, the soul is at work, seeking in its depths, and in obedience to its own laws, to change this relation of dependence into a free and personal one.

(2) The second argument for the Divine existence is the teleological,--better known simply as the design argument. Kant speaks of this oldest and most popular of the theistic arguments with great respect; and the objections which he makes to it affect more its adequacy to do all that is expected from it than its force so far as it goes. It does not, he thinks,prove a Creator, but only an Architect, of the world; it does not prove an infinite, but only a very great Intelligence, etc.1 I may remark, however, that if it proves even this, it does a great deal; and from an intelligence so great as to hold in its ken the plan and direction of the universe, the step will not be found a great one to the Infinite Intelligence which we call God. But the argument, in the right conception of it, does more than Kant allows, and is a step of transition to the final one--the ontological.

A new argument against design in nature has been found in recent times in the doctrine of evolution. The proof we are considering turns, as every one knows, on the existence of ends in nature. In Kant's words: "In the world we find everywhere clear signs of an order which can only spring from design--an order realised with the greatest wisdom, and in a universe which is indescribably varied in content, and in extent infinite."2 In organisms particularly we see the most extraordinary adaptations of means to ends--structures of almost infinite complexity and wonderful perfection--contrivances in which we have precisely the same evidence of the adjustment of the parts to produce the ends as in human works of art.3 From this the inference is drawn, that a world so full of evidences of rational purpose can only be the work of a wise and intelligent mind. But this argument is broken down if it can be shown that what look like ends in nature are not really such, but simply results--that the appearance of apparently designed arrangements to produce certain ends can be explained by the action of causes which do not imply intelligence. This is what evolution, in the hands of some of its expounders, undertakes to do. By showing how structures may have arisen through natural selection, operating to the preservation of favourable variations in the struggle for existence, it is thought that the aid of intelligence may be dispensed with, and that a deathblow is given to teleology.1 The eye, for example, may have resulted from the gradual accumulation of small variations, each of them accidental, and arising from unknown laws in the organism, but each, as it arises giving to its possessor some slight advantage in the struggle for existence. It is a simple case of the survival of the fittest.Instead of the advantage resulting from a designed arrangement,the appearance of arrangement results from the advantage. In reality, the facts of evolution do not weaken the proof from design, but rather immensely enlarge it by showing all things to be bound together in a vaster, grander plan than had been formerly conceived. Let us see how the matter precisely stands.

On the general hypothesis of evolution, as applied to the organic world, I have nothing to say, except that, within certain limits, it seems to me extremely probable, and supported by a large body of evidence. This, however, only refers to the fact of a genetic relationship of some kind between the different species of plants and animals, and does not affect the means by which this development may be supposed to be brought about.On this subject two views may be held.2 The first is that evolution results from development from within; in which case,obviously, the argument from design stands precisely where it did, except that the sphere of its application is enormously extended. The second view is, that evolution has resulted from fortuitous variations, combined with action of natural selection, laying hold of and preserving the variations that were favourable. This is really, under a veil of words, to ask us to believe that accident and fortuity have done the work of mind. But the facts are not in agreement with the hypothesis. The variations in organisms are net absolutely indefinite. In the evolution of an eye, for example, the variations are all more or less in the line of producing the eye. When the formation of an eye has begun, the organism keeps to that line in that place. It does not begin to sprout an ear where the eye is being developed. There is a ground plan that is adhered to in the midst of the variations. Could we collect the successive forms through which the eye is supposed to have passed in the course of its development, what we would see (I speak on the hypothesis of the theory) would be a succession of small increments of structure, all tending in the direction of greater complexity and perfection of the organ--the appearance of new muscles, new lenses, new arrangements for adjusting or perfecting the sight, etc. But the mere fact that these successive appearances could be put in a line, however extended, would throw no light on how the development took place, or how this marvellously complex organ came to build itself up precisely after this pattern.1 The cause invoked to explain this is natural selection. Now the action of natural selection is real, but its influence may be very easily overrated. It is never to be forgotten that natural selection produces nothing. It acts only on organisms already produced, weeding out the weakest, and the least fitted structurally to survive, and heaving the better adapted in possession of the field.2 It is altogether to exaggerate the influence of natural selection, to attribute to it a power to pick out infallibly on the first appearance the infinitesimal variations in an organism which are to form the foundations of future useful organs, though, in their initial stage, they cannot be shown to confer any benefit on their possessors, and may be balanced or neutralised by fifty or sixty other variations in an opposite direction, or by differences of size, strength, speed, etc., on the part of the competitors in the struggle; and still more a power to preserve each of these slight variations till another and yet another of a favourable kind is added to it after long intervals, in a contest in which numbers alone are overwhelmingly against the chance of its survival.1 Taking the facts of evolution as they really stand, what they seem to point to is something hike the following:--

i. An inner power of development of organisms.

ii. A power of adjustment in organisms adapting them to environment.

iii. A weeding out of weak and unfit organisms by natural selection.

iv. Great differences in the rate of production of new species. Ordinarily, species seem to have nearly all the characters of fixity which the old view ascribed to them. Variation exists, but it is confined within comparatively narrow limits. The type persists through ages practically unchanged. At other periods in the geological history of the past there seems to be a breaking down of this fixity. The history of life is marked by a great inrush of new forms. New species crowd upon the scene. Plasticity seems the order of the day.2 We may call this evolution if we like, but it is none the less creation,--the production out of the old of something new and higher. All that we are called upon to notice here is that it in no way conflicts with design, but rather compels the acknowledgment of it.

The chief criticism I would be disposed to make upon the design argument, as an argument for intelligence in the cause of the universe, is that it is too narrow. It confines the argument to final causes--that is, to the particular case of the adaptation of means to ends. But the basis for the inference that the universe has a wise and intelligent Author is far wider than this. It is not the marks of purpose alone which necessitate this inference, but everything which bespeaks order, plan,arrangement, harmony, beauty, rationality in the connection and system of things. It is the proof of the presence of thought in the world--whatever shape that may take.1 As we saw in a former part of the Lecture, the assumption on which the whole of science proceeds--and cannot but proceed--in its investigations is, that the system it is studying is intelligible,--that there is an intelligible unity of things. It admits of being reduced to terms of thought. There is a settled and established order on which the investigator can depend. Without this he could not advance one step. Even Kant's objection, that this argument proved only an architect of the universe, but not a creator of its materials, is seen from this point of view to be invalid.2 The very materials of the universe--the atoms which compose it--show by their structure, their uniformity, their properties, their mathematical relations, that they must have a Creator; that the Power which originated them, which weighed,measured, and numbered them, which stamped on them their common characters, and gave them their definite laws and relations, must have been intelligent. I admit, however, that as the design argument presupposes the cosmological, to give us the idea of an infinite and necessary Being at the basis of theuniverse, so both of these arguments need the ontological, to show us in the clearest and most convincing manner that this Being and Cause of the universe is infinite, self conscious Reason.

(3) I come, accordingly, in the third place, to the ontological argument--that which Kant, not without reason, affirms to beat the foundation of the other two, and to be the real ground on which the inference to the existence of a necessary and infinitely perfect Being rests. It is an argument which in these days, owing largely to his criticism upon it, has fallen much into disrepute, though a good deal has also been done by able thinkers to rehabilitate it, and to show its real bearings. It must further be admitted that in the form in which it was wont to be put in the schools, the strictures which Kant makes on it are in the main just.11 In the earlier form, it is an argument from the idea of God as a necessary idea of the mind, to His real existence. I have, reasons Anselm, the idea of a most perfect Being. But this idea includes the attribute of existence.For if the most perfect Being did not exist, there could be conceived a greater than He,--one that did exist,--and therefore He would not be the most perfect. The most perfect Being,therefore, is one in the idea of whom existence is necessarily included. In this form the argument seems little better than a logical quibble, and so Kant has treated it. Kant grants the necessity of the idea--shows how it arises--names it The Ideal of Pure Reason --but argues with cogency that from an idea,purely as such, you cannot conclude to real existence. It would be strange, however, if an argument which has wielded such power over some of the strongest intellects were utterly baseless; and Dr. Hutchison Stirling has well shown that when we get to the kernel of Anselm,s thought, as he himself explains it,it has by no means the irrational character which might at first sight appear to belong to it.2 Anselm's form of the argument,however, it must now be observed, is neither the final nor the perfect one. Kant himself has given the impulse to a new development of it, which shows more clearly than ever that it is not baseless, but is really the deepest and most comprehensive of all arguments--the argument implied in both of the two preceding.

The kernel of the ontological argument, as we find it put, for example, by Prof. Green, is the assertion that thought is the necessary prius of all else that is--even of all possible or conceivable existence. This assertion is not arrived at in any a priori way, but by the strict and sober analysis of what is involved in such knowledge of existence as we have. If we analyse the act of knowledge, we find that in every form of it there are implied certain necessary and universal conditions, which, from the nature of the case, must be conditions of experience also, otherwise it could never be experience for us at all. Thus, any world we are capable of knowing with our present faculties must be a world in space and time,--a world subject to conditions of number and quantity,--a world apprehended in relations of substance and accident, cause and effect, etc. A world of any other kind--supposing it to exist--would be in relation to our thought or knowledge unthinkable. These conditions of knowledge, moreover, are not arbitrary and contingent, but universal and necessary. They spring from reason itself, and express its essential and immutable nature. Thus we feel sure that there is no world in space or time to which the laws of mathematics do not apply; no world possible in which events do not follow each other according to the law of cause and effect; no world in which the fundamental laws of thought and reasoning are different from what they are in our own. Mr. J. S. Mill, indeed, thought there might be worlds in which two and two do not make four; or in which events succeed each other without any causal relation. But in this he will get few to agree with him. In like manner, there are moral principles which our reason recognises as universally and unconditionally valid. We cannot conceive of a world in which falsehood would really be a virtue, and truth-speaking a vice. We hold it, therefore, for certain that reason is the source of universal and necessary principles which spring from its essence, and which are the conditions of all possible knowledge. But this, its own essential nature, reason finds reflected back from the world around it. A world does exist, constituted through these very principles which we find within ourselves,--in space and time, through number and quantity, substance and quality, cause and effect, etc.,--and therefore knowable by us, and capable of becoming an object of our experience. We arrive, therefore, at this--that the world is constituted through a reason similar to our own; that, in Mr. Green's words, "the understanding which presents an order of nature to us is in principle one with an understanding which constitutes that order itself."1 And that such a reason not only does, but must exist, I see not simply by inference from the existence of the world, which is the higher form of the cosmological argument, but by reflection on the necessary character of the principles of reason themselves. For whence these laws of thought--these universal and necessary conditions of all truth and knowledge--which I discover in myself; which my own reason neither makes nor can unmake; which I recognise to be in me and yet not of me; which I know must belong to every rational being in every part of the universe? They are necessary and eternal in their nature, yet they have not the ground of their existence in my individual mind. Can I conclude otherwise than that they have their seat and ground in an eternal and absolute Reason--the absolute Prius of all that is, at once of thought and of existence? It is but a further extension of the same argument when I proceed to show that thought is only possible in relation to an I, to a central principle of self-consciousness, which unifies and connects all thinking and experience.

This argument, which has been called that of "Rational Realism," is one which in varied forms has been accepted by the deepest thinkers, and finds widespread acknowledgment in literature.2 It is not liable to the objection made to the Anselmic form, of involving an illicit inference from mere idea to real existence; but it has this in common with it, that the existence of an Eternal Reason is shown to be involved in the very thinking of this, or indeed of any thought. In the very act of thinking, thought affirms its own existence. But thought can perceive, not only its own existence, but the necessity of its existence--the necessity of its existence, even, as the prius of everything else. What is affirmed, therefore, is not simply my thought, but an Absolute Thought, and with this the existence of an Absolute Thinker; in the words of Dr. Harris, who has done much to give popular expression to this argument, of "an Absolute Reason energising in perfect wisdom and love" in the universe.1 I cannot but maintain, therefore, that the onto- logical argument, in the kernel and essence of it, is a sound one, and that in it the existence of God is really seen to be the first, the most certain, and the most indisputable of all truths.

We saw in connection with the cosmological argument that there was a direct fact of consciousness which turned the logical argument into a real one,--which translated, if I may so speak, the abstract proof into a living experience. It is worth our while to inquire, before leaving these theoretic proofs, whether there is anything of the same kind here; anything in actual religious consciousness which answers to that demonstration of a rational element in the world which -is given in the two remaining arguments. I think there is. I refer to that very real perception which mankind have at all times manifested of a spiritual presence and power in nature, which is the effect of the total unanalysed impression which nature in its infinite variety and complexity, its wondrous grandeur, order, beauty, and fulness of life and power, makes upon the soul. The more carefully facts have been examined, the more narrowly the history of religions has been scrutinised, the clearer has it become that underlying all the particular ideas men have of their deities,--underlying their particular acts of worship to them,--there is always this sense of something mysterious, intangible, infinite--of an all-pervading supernatural Presence and Power,--which is not identified with any of the particular phenomena of nature, but is regarded rather as manifested through them.2 It is this which Paul speaks of when he says that "the Eternal Power and Divinity" of God are manifested since the creation of the world in the things that are made.3 It is Max Muller's "perception of the infinite," Schleiermacher's "consciousness of the infinite in the finite," the sensus numinis of the older writers, Wordsworth's "sense of something far more deeply interfused"--

"Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man."1

Such a sense or perception of the Divine is the common sub- stratum of all religions, and the theory of religion which fails to take account of it is hike the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out.

But how is this sense of the Divine in nature--which is the stronghold of the theology of feeling--to be accounted for? It is certainly not the result of logical argument, and goes beyond anything that logical argument could yield. Yet it may easily be shown that rational elements are implicit in it, and that the rational elements involved are precisely those which the fore going arguments have sought explicitly to unfold. To under- stand the impression of the Divine which nature makes on man,- we have to remember how much the mind of man has already to do with nature. We have to do here with nature, not primarily as an objectively existing system of laws and forces, but as it exists for man as an object of actual knowledge and experience. And how has it come to be this to him? Not without help from the thinking mind which collates and connects the separate impressions made on it through the senses, and gradually reads the riddle of the universe by the help of what it brings to it out of its own resources. We speak of the immaturity of the savage mind, but there is an intense mental activity in the simplest conception which the savage (or the child) can form of the existence of nature, or of a world around him. He sees changes, but he finds the interpretation of these changes in the idea of causality which he brings to it from his own mind. He groups attributes and forms objects, but he does this through the mental law of substance and accident. He perceives the operation of vast forces in nature, but whence does he get the idea of force? He gets it from the consciousness of power within himself, and through this puts meaning into the scene of change and movement which he finds around him. Is it wonderful, then, that man, who has put so much of himself into nature, even when constructing it as an object of thought, should again receive back the reflection of his own spiritual image from nature--receive it back on a grander, vastly enhanced scale, proportionate to the greatness and immensity of the universe on which he looks, and should be filled with awe and reverence in presence of this Other-Self, and Higher-than-Self, as that of a Reason, Power, and Will essentially akin to his own, though infinitely greater? Reason does not create this sense of the Divine; it can only follow in its train, and seek to lay bare and analyse--as is done in the theoretic proofs--the rational elements which it involves.