^ LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
A PLAIN ARGUMENT 
 FOR GOD 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE STUART FULLERTON 
 
 PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 4LIFOR 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 1889 
 
/. It 
 
 F f 
 
 GENERAL 
 
 Copyright, 1889, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 
 
TO THE MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 NIY DEAR FRIEND 
 
 BENJAMIN BARTIS COMEGYS, JR., 
 
 THIS LITTLE BOOK 
 IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I HAVE long been of the opinion that 
 the argument for God, as it is usually pre- 
 sented, gives but little satisfaction to the 
 vast mass of thoughtful men and women 
 who approach the subject with an earnest 
 desire to satisfy not only the demands of 
 the intellect but also of the heart. The 
 language used is so far removed from that 
 of common life as to be not readily intelli- 
 gible. Some of the arguments put forward 
 seem to the plain man little better than 
 metaphysical quibbles, and if he assents to 
 them it is rather because he already agrees . 
 with their conclusion than because he sees 
 their force. The one argument which does 
 appeal to him as simple and natural is pre- 
 sented in such a way as to lead him to a 
 God, not present and living, but of the 
 past. 
 
6 Preface. 
 
 This, however, is not at all what he has 
 meant by the word God. To him the word 
 has signified a Being in a close personal 
 relation to him, a Father of Spirits, " who 
 is not far from every one of us." The 
 reasoning does not assure him of the ex- 
 istence of the God in whom he has been 
 accustomed to believe, and he has a tortur- 
 ing sense that either he has not grasped 
 the arguments or the foundations of his 
 belief will not bear too much investigation. 
 
 Now it is with a conviction that the 
 argument for God's existence can be stated 
 simply and plainly, and in a way to appeal 
 to a thoughtful mind unaccustomed to 
 following the reasonings of the schools, 
 that this little book has been written. It 
 has grown out of three lectures on the sub- 
 ject delivered before the Churchwoman's 
 Institute in Philadelphia in the spring of 
 1888. The lectures, which many seemed 
 to find helpful, were delivered to an intelli- 
 gent but a popular audience; and in pre- 
 paring my thoughts upon the subject for 
 
Preface. j 
 
 publication I have had such an audience in 
 view. My endeavor throughout has been 
 to make my thought clear to all persons of 
 fair intelligence who read with any degree 
 of attention and reflection. 
 
 As, however, I have to some degree left 
 the beaten track in the endeavor to employ 
 plain and simple language, where it is cus- 
 tomary to use what may be called technical 
 terms, I have laid myself open to mis- 
 understanding on the part of those who 
 rest rather in words than in the thought 
 they represent. In the interests of clear- 
 ness and directness this was unavoidable. 
 I ask, therefore, that my readers try to get 
 a clear view of my thought itself before 
 passing judgment on the argument that 
 follows. 
 
 GEORGE STUART FULLERTON. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 
 January, 1889. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Common Argument . . .11 
 
 II. The Search for Mind . . . . 23 
 
 III. God in Nature 44 
 
 IV. The Witness of Literature . . 62 
 V. Theism or Pantheism, . . . 75 
 
 VI. The Reign of Law in Nature . . 86 
 VII. The Eternity of Matter and the Doc- 
 trine of Evolution . . . . 99 
 VIII. Conclusion 107 
 
A 
 
 PLAIN ARGUMENT FOR GOD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 The Common Argument. 
 
 IF we take up what seems the simplest 
 and most natural argument for the exist- 
 ence of God, as we find it presented in 
 most books on the subject, we will see that 
 it argues about as follows : 
 
 Things are constantly happening in the 
 -world about us. As I look from my win- 
 dow at the autumn landscape, the withered 
 leaves on the trees are now moving and 
 now at rest. In a moment the motion be- 
 comes more noticeable, and two or three 
 loose their hold upon the twigs and fall to 
 the ground. Now they are followed by 
 
12 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 many more, and those that have fallen flut- 
 ter here and there, collecting in, sheltered 
 corners or whirling about each other in 
 little eddies. Why has this happened ? 
 From my window I have seen only the 
 landscape and the leaves : the motion 
 seems to have begun and ended without 
 any reason at all. 
 
 But, if I ask even a child why the leaves 
 moved, he answers at once, " Because the 
 wind blew." If I ask him whether they 
 could move if the wind did not blow, he 
 answers without hesitation, " No." As to 
 this particular event, the motion of the 
 dead leaves, his mind is quite made up, 
 it could not have ta,ken place without some 
 cause. Very likely with this answer he 
 stops thinking about the matter, but his 
 answer has made me reflect. If the wind 
 is the cause of the motion of the leaves, 
 what is the cause of the wind ? Could 
 the wind begin to blow without any reason 
 any more than the leaves could move with- 
 out any reason ? And if there must be 
 
The Common Argument. ij 
 
 some cause why the wind began to blow, 
 what was the cause of that cause ? and the 
 cause of that one ? and of that one ? And 
 if everything that happens must have some 
 cause, must we not, to explain just why 
 the leaves moved as I looked at them, go 
 back and back either without end, or until 
 we find some cause which differs from 
 other things in being the very first, and in 
 not needing a cause at all ? 
 
 Now, if we go to men of science, we 
 find that they always assume that anything 
 that happens must have some cause, even if 
 they do not know what that cause is. In 
 their examination into the secrets of nature 
 they are always looking for causes of what 
 they see, and until they find them they do 
 not pretend to understand what they see. 
 And they are not satisfied with tracing out 
 the causes of things for a little way and 
 then stopping, but they always hold that 
 the last cause which they have found has 
 its cause too, and that the search for causes 
 should never be given up. 
 
/^ A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 Some men, indeed, go so far as to say 
 that this chain of causes is really endless, 
 and that there can be no first cause, for 
 that, like the motion of the leaves, would 
 have to be explained by some cause be- 
 fore it. 
 
 Now the argument, which I am discuss- 
 ing, for the existence of God accepts all 
 that is said about the necessity that what- 
 ever happens should have its cause, and 
 that cause its cause, and so on ; but it 
 insists that this chain of causes cannot be 
 really endless,- but must end in a First 
 Cause, which is God ; and this it does on 
 the ground that unless we assume a First 
 Cause, we have really no cause at all, but 
 only a series of effects or results, all of 
 which are uncaused. 
 
 Having arrived at this point the argu- 
 ment in question goes on to say that 
 everything that happens must have some 
 sufficient cause. We know that if we 
 wish to produce anything we must go 
 about it in the right way, and, if we see 
 
The Common Argument. 15 
 
 anything happen, we do not simply assume 
 any cause at all, but some cause that we 
 think would naturally produce such a re- 
 sult. When the leaves moved, I explained 
 it by the blowing of the wind, because I 
 knew that the blowing of the wind is a 
 cause which would naturally make the 
 leaves move. And if I see a house in pro- 
 cess of building, I never suppose that the 
 blowing of the wind is building the house, 
 because, from all I know of the wind and 
 the house, it seems to me absurd to sup- 
 pose that the former could produce the 
 latter. What shocks the mind of a grown 
 person in reading such tales as the " Ara- 
 bian Nights" is simply the disregard of 
 this truth, that causes and effects should 
 be properly proportioned to each other. 
 How the rubbing of a lamp should com- 
 pel a spirit to obey us we cannot see, nor 
 how a few words pronounced by way of a 
 charm should change a human being into 
 a dog or an ape into a human being. 
 When we say all this is improbable, we 
 
1 6 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 mean that the causes given do not natu- 
 rally produce the effects ascribed to them, 
 and the sense of unreality this brings into 
 our minds spoils our pleasure in the read- 
 ing. It is only the child, who has no clear 
 notion of what is natural, and who cannot 
 therefore have any clear notion of what is 
 unnatural, that is not repelled by such 
 improbabilities. 
 
 It is for this reason that causes must 
 be proportioned to effects that I always 
 assume a builder to explain the building of 
 the house ; and if the plan of the house is 
 particularly original and ingenious, I natu- 
 rally infer that this is due to unusual abil- 
 ity and ingenuity on the part of its author. 
 Every one reasons in this way about com- 
 mon things ; and, to use a famous old 
 illustration, no one, finding a watch in a 
 desert place, would suppose that it had 
 any other cause than the mind and hands 
 of some watchmaker, the only thing we 
 know capable of making a watch. If 
 everything that happens must have a suf- 
 
The Common Argument. // 
 
 ficient cause, we say, then the cause as- 
 sumed, when the thing in question shows 
 plan, must be a reasonable one, a mind, as 
 the only thing capable of planning. Other- 
 wise, you fall into the absurdities of the 
 "Arabian Nights;" for is it more absurd 
 to assume that a brazen horse can rise into 
 the air through a man's mounting it, than 
 to assume that a thing that shows plan can 
 be brought about by a creature incapable 
 of planning? 
 
 If, now, we look at the world about us, 
 do we not find on every side evidences 6T 
 adaptation and apparent purpose? Are 
 not means fitted to ends through the whole 
 domain of nature? and can we open our 
 eyes without having forced on our atten- 
 tion mechanisms of the most marvellous 
 intricacy and complexity ? Which is the 
 more remarkable in its structure and work- 
 ings, a watch or a human body ? And if 
 we find that a human body is not, con- 
 sidered in itself alone, a complete thing at 
 all, but like a watch without its key, quite 
 
1 8 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 useless, unless we suppose it in relation to 
 the other things in nature, food, water/ air, 
 all of which it needs in order to subsist 
 and be serviceable; and if we then pass on 
 to the reflection that everything in nature 
 is in this way related to the whole of 
 nature, as a part of it, so that we must 
 look upon nature as a unit, a harmonious 
 whole, full of meaning and plan and pur- 
 pose ; if we do this, and then go back to 
 the cause of all this, must we not infer 
 that there is but one First Cause, wise as 
 well as powerful, who is the Author of this 
 harmonious plan, and the source of all its 
 workings ? 
 
 But there is one further step in the 
 argument. Suppose that in looking about 
 in the world we find, not only that things 
 seem very wisely adapted to attain their 
 ends, but that they seem on the whole to 
 work together for good : that the ends for 
 which nature seems to strive appear to be 
 good ends. And suppose that from such 
 an observation of nature we turn away 
 
The Common Argument. 19 
 
 with the conviction that the system of 
 things as a whole is good, and contains a 
 certain moral order or plan. Now, if it is 
 reasonable to argue that, when the things 
 we see indicate a plan, we may infer as 
 their cause a Mind, is it not reasonable to 
 argue further that, when the things we see 
 indicate not only a plan but a good plan, 
 I mean morally good, we may infer as 
 their author a Good Mind? That is to 
 say, may we not infer such a Being as we 
 mean when we use the word God ? 
 
 With this ends the famous " Argument 
 from Design," as it is called, to prove the 
 existence of God. 
 
 You will notice that the argument thus 
 stated has two main divisions. The one 
 argues from what happens to a First Cause, 
 without inquiring as to the character of 
 that cause. The other passes from the 
 nature of what is to be explained, the 
 world, to the nature of the First Cause as 
 intelligent and good, and so comes to a 
 God. The argument is an old one, and 
 
2o A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 has had the assent of many great minds. 
 It should be carefully weighed by every 
 one.. 
 
 Nevertheless, I should like any fair- 
 minded man, who has already been a be- 
 liever in God, and has felt His presence 
 in the world, to ask himself whether this 
 reasoning just satisfies the demands of his 
 religious nature. Has it made God any 
 more real to him, to have followed the 
 argument? Quite apart from the fact that 
 an important part of the argument, the 
 inference to a. First Cause on the ground 
 that the series of causes cannot be con- 
 ceived as endless, is not unhesitatingly ad- 
 mitted by every one, quite apart from this 
 fact, and supposing the argument faultless 
 in every particular, does it not still set God 
 at the end of a vista which puts Him out 
 of the present religious experience of the 
 man who is seeking Him ? Suppose some 
 one to whom he should present this argu- 
 ment were to say, " I admit all that. I 
 believe God created the world and set 
 
The Common Argument. 21 
 
 nature in motion, but I believe that there 
 His contact with the world ceased. There 
 is no evidence that He is now in personal 
 relation with me. His action is of the 
 past, and not of the present." How could 
 our argument for God answer this? If 
 our champion should try to answer it by 
 pointing to God's goodness as seen in the 
 world to-day, would not his opponent at 
 once suggest that, according to his own 
 arguments, to prove God the author of 
 this goodness he must go back to a First 
 Cause, and infer that this First Cause is 
 good ? And would not this be in fact ad- 
 mitting that the only provable cause of 
 anything is a God acting in the past? and 
 a very distant past at that? 
 
 There have been men who have argued 
 in just the spirit of this objection concern- 
 ing God and His relation to the world. 
 Their reasonings have not been regarded 
 as satisfactory to the religious nature of 
 man, nor have their results been widely 
 accepted. The teaching of the Church, 
 
22 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 taking that word in the broadest sense 
 possible, has always been Theistic, while 
 this view of things is Deistic. I had not 
 intended to use in this discussion any of 
 those words which belong more properly 
 to the schools than to the language of 
 common .life, but it is convenient to use 
 these two, as they mark an important dis- 
 tinction, and one which we will do well to 
 keep in mind. I shall try to make their 
 meaning quite plain. Both words have 
 the same derivation from the word God, 
 but one is from the Greek word and one 
 from the Latin. Both words are used in 
 somewhat varying senses, but one sense in 
 which they have been used, and the sense 
 in which I shall use them, distinguishes 
 between them in this way. Both the 
 Deist and the Theist are believers in a 
 God in some sense of the term, but the 
 Deist believes in a God only as First 
 Cause, as source of things, while the 
 Theist believes in a God as also preserver 
 and governor of things, a God now re- 
 
The Common Argument. 23 
 
 vealed in nature and now and always in 
 personal relation to man. Of course it fol- 
 lows, that it is only upon the latter view, 
 the Theistic, that religion, in any proper 
 sense of the term, is possible. There can 
 be no communion with God, if God is in 
 no present relation with the world in 
 which one lives. 
 
 Now, if you have followed with care the 
 argument for God with which this chapter 
 has been taken up, you must see that, 
 standing as it does, it proves what the 
 Deist holds, but it does not seem to go on 
 to prove what the Theist wishes to believe. 
 I hope you will not for a moment under- 
 stand me to say that the writers who have 
 brought it forward, and who still bring it 
 forward, are not Theists, and perhaps very 
 earnest Theists. But I am quite willing to 
 say, and I think you will agree with me in 
 saying, that they are Theists, not because 
 of their argument, but in spite of it. 
 They are Theists, I suppose, because the 
 world in which we live is always offering 
 
24. A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 to one whose eyes, like the wise man's, 
 are in his head, a much more natural and 
 simple argument for God, and one which 
 does not go back for a sight of God to the 
 creation of the world and the beginnings 
 of time. Of this argument I will speak in 
 the following chapters. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Search for Mind. 
 
 BEFORE asking ourselves whether we 
 can find God in nature, and, if so, how, 
 it would be well to have a clear idea of 
 what we are looking for when we seek 
 Him there. If we do not, must not our 
 search be a random one ? and may it not 
 possibly turn out to be conducted on a 
 quite false and fruitless method? If by 
 the word God I do not mean a thing that 
 can be seen with the eyes or touched 
 with the fingers, a material thing, and 
 if nevertheless I look through nature for 
 God with the methods of physical science, 
 which are adapted to finding material 
 things, must not my search, however thor- 
 ough, be necessarily fruitless ? And if, 
 after searching for God in this way, I fail 
 to find Him, does that give me the right to 
 say that I am now certain He does not 
 
 3 
 
26 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 exist? Until I have some notion of what 
 it is that I mean by the word God, I am in 
 no position to prove either that He exists 
 or that He does not, for I have no idea in 
 what direction to turn for my proofs. 
 
 Now, without going into disputed points, 
 but confining ourselves to what all reason- 
 able men will admit, we may safely say 
 thus much: by the word God we at least 
 signify a Mind, a Person ; and the ques- 
 tion whether God can be found in nature 
 is at bottom the question whether mind is 
 revealed in nature, a mind which is yet 
 not your mind or mine, but something 
 much greater and more comprehensive; 
 but, still, always a mind. If, then, the 
 search for God is a search for mind, we 
 must conduct it as we usually conduct the 
 search for minds, and in no other way. It 
 is with the question of how we commonly 
 conduct this search for minds, and what 
 we mean when we say we have found one, 
 that this chapter is concerned. 
 
 It is now admitted on all hands that the 
 
The Search for Mind. 2j 
 
 minds with which infants appear upon this 
 mortal stage have been much overrated, 
 not merely by their mothers, as is perhaps 
 natural, but by the world at large. The 
 little creature which blinks and stares with 
 its face towards the light is commonly sup- 
 posed to see objects much as we do ; and 
 when it jerks about in its aimless way its 
 small arms and legs, it is supposed to have 
 a fair knowledge of what they are and of 
 the fact that they belong to it. When it 
 starts at hearing a sound, we are apt to 
 imagine that the sensation has to it some- 
 what the same significance that it has to 
 us, who have heard sounds and connected 
 them with objects around us for many 
 years. This reputation for intelligence 
 would seem to have been gained some- 
 what as the stupid man gained his repu- 
 tation for profound wisdom, by a policy of 
 strict silence. The students of mind in 
 children are beginning to find out that it 
 is about as well founded as that, and that 
 the mental furniture of a very young in- 
 
28 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 fant is scanty to a degree which we have 
 not heretofore suspected. They are begin- 
 ning, too, to give us some account of the 
 growth of what, starting in such poverty, 
 may end in the wealth of knowledge and 
 wisdom of a Newton or a Kant. 
 
 It will not take a great deal of reflection 
 to show any one that their statements are 
 reasonable, and that a mind beginning to 
 feel and to think must begin in a very 
 small way. I will take an illustration and 
 see if I cannot make this clear. As I 
 write, there is lying on my desk before me 
 an apple. I say this, although I have not 
 touched it, or smelt it, or tasted it. I have 
 only seen it. Moreover, I see it only from 
 the one side, so that I only see a small 
 part of what I could see if I were to turn 
 it over and around and look at every part 
 of it. And when I call it an apple, I have 
 some notion that if I were to cut it in two 
 I should see white instead of red, with a 
 little black or brown in the centre where I 
 believe the seeds to be. Just notice how 
 
The Search for Mind. 29 
 
 much more is in my mind about the apple 
 than what I actually see. I actually see 
 only a little patch of red color of a certain 
 shape, and I supply from my past experi- 
 ence of apples all the rest, the idea that 
 if I were to turn it round I could see the 
 other parts of it, the idea of the white 
 flesh, the idea of the seeds. Is it reason- 
 able to suppose that I could have supplied 
 all this if I had not had any past experi- 
 ence of apples ? And when we go on to 
 the touch qualities of the apple, its hard- 
 ness and smoothness, its weight, and all 
 the rest; and from these to the taste and 
 the smell, how is it that as soon as I see 
 that little patch of red color on the table 
 in front of me I think of all these, and 
 connect them with the apple ? Hardness 
 is not anything like color, nor is weight, 
 nor is taste, nor any of the rest. I certainly 
 do not see them. Why do I believe them 
 there? Is it not because, although these 
 qualities are all unlike each other, yet I 
 have always found in my past experience 
 
jo A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 that they are grouped in nature, and that 
 when I can see the color I can if I choose 
 feel the hardness or weight, or smell or 
 taste the apple ? If all my life I had only 
 seen objects and never touched them, 
 would I have any reason to believe that 
 in addition to the sensation of color I now 
 experience I could also have experiences 
 of touch and taste and smell ? And if the 
 idea of an apple is made up of all these 
 experiences together, could I, in the case 
 I have supposed, get any true idea of an 
 apple at all by just seeing one before 
 me? 
 
 Now suppose an infant in its nurse's 
 arms brought close up to my desk, and 
 placed in front of the apple so that it can- 
 not help seeing its color. Suppose that it 
 is still so young that it has not had much 
 experience of the fact that when certain 
 sensations of color enter its small mind, 
 certain sensations of touch can be made to 
 enter too, that is, that things seen can 
 also be touched. Will not in such a case 
 
The Search for Mind. ji 
 
 the sensation of color stand quite by itself 
 and disconnected from any thought of any 
 further experience ? And if the child is to 
 have any notion of an apple as we know 
 apples, with all their different qualities, 
 must not this knowledge grow up grad- 
 ually, from an experience in which one 
 sensation accompanies another again and 
 again until the mind learns to connect 
 them, and learns to expect to find them 
 always together? This reasoning is ap- 
 plied also to the child's knowledge of its 
 own body, and it is held that it is un- 
 reasonable to suppose that an infant knows 
 that the little white object that it sees in 
 front of its face when it waves its hand 
 about, is its hand, that is, a thing that can 
 be touched as well as seen, and can touch 
 as well as be touched. As soon as we see 
 a hand we of course think of all this, but 
 we do this because we have had a long ex- 
 perience of hands, and this experience the 
 infant has not had. 
 
 From all this it is evident that when 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
32 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 sensations first come to the mind of an 
 infant they do not mean much. It does 
 not know what they signify. And it is 
 evident, too, that the growth of its mind 
 means not only the having of more and 
 more sensations, but also a discovery of 
 their meaning, that is, a discovery of the 
 fact that they are connected in certain 
 fixed ways which will allow the mind 
 to make inferences from sensations now 
 present to sensations which are not now 
 present. A burnt child, it is said, dreads 
 the fire, and this simply means that a child 
 which has once seen the fire and felt it 
 knows when it sees it another time, and 
 without having to feel it again, that this 
 particular sensation of color and form may 
 be followed by a sensation of quite a dif- 
 ferent kind, which it is particularly anxious 
 not to have. The sensation, you see, has 
 gained a meaning, because it has become 
 connected with another sensation. It is 
 now known that the fire which is seen can 
 burn. So it is that the child connects feel- 
 
The Search for Mind. jj 
 
 ing with feeling, until what was at first a 
 mere string of disconnected and unmean- 
 ing sensations grows into an orderly and 
 meaning-full world of things. 
 
 Suppose further that the child has by 
 this time gained some acquaintance with 
 its own body and with the things about it. 
 It knows its own hand now when it sees 
 it : it knows that this is a thing that can 
 be touched as well as seen, and that can 
 touch other things which can be seen. 
 Now it discovers that the hand is a thing 
 of a different kind from the apple. Both 
 can be seen and touched, but when the 
 apple is touched by anything the result is 
 not just the same as when the hand is. 
 One may cut into the apple or crush the 
 apple, and it makes little difference, but if 
 one cut into the hand or crush the hand it 
 matters very much. The one object is by 
 no means so important to the child's mind, 
 nor so closely connected with its mind, as 
 is the other. When the apple is cut there 
 is no pain, and when the hand is cut there 
 
34 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 is pain. When the apple is seen to roll 
 against some other object and touch it, the 
 child only sees it, that is, it has only a 
 sensation of sight; but when its hand is 
 seen to touch another object, the child not 
 only sees it but feels it; it has an added 
 sensation of touch. By remembering such 
 experiences and comparing them the child 
 gradually learns that this particular object, 
 its own body, is an object with which are 
 somehow connected pleasure and pain, and 
 even the possibility of knowing about 
 other objects and.of acting upon them by 
 its will, as all these things are not con- 
 nected with other objects. Though it is 
 quite unable to put the information into 
 words, it is finding out that its body is an 
 object with which is somehow connected a 
 mind. 
 
 But in the world about the child are 
 a number of objects which are more or 
 less like its own body. Its nurse and its 
 mother have bodies like its own, and these 
 it can see as it sees its own. As it comes 
 
The Search for Mind. jj 
 
 to know more and more about things, it 
 learns to distinguish these from the other 
 things about it and to class them as things 
 of a kind with its own body. And as it 
 finds in its own experience that certain 
 states of mind, say pains or pleasures,, are 
 always present when its body goes through 
 certain motions or is affected in certain 
 ways, and learns to connect these states of 
 mind with these bodily actions or condi- 
 tions ; so, when it sees the same actions or 
 conditions in the bodies of its nurse and 
 mother, it at once calls up in memory 
 these states of mind and connects them 
 in thought with these other bodies too. 
 The child first observes, you see, that 
 when its own body is injured there is a 
 feeling of pain, and then goes on to the 
 belief that when certain other bodies which 
 are like its own are similarly injured, here, 
 too, the injury is not like an injury done 
 to a chair or table, but results in pain, 
 that is, it affects a mind. Not that the 
 child sees or feels the pain itself, or can 
 
j<5 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 by any possibility be made to see or feel 
 directly this other mind ; 'but it interprets 
 what it does see, and the most natural in- 
 terpretation of what it sees is, that there 
 is revealed by these other bodies a some- 
 thing like what it experiences in connection 
 with its own body, a mind with its sen- 
 sations. 
 
 Keep in mind the fact that all that the 
 child can know of these other minds is 
 what it can read into them by interpreting 
 the motions of their bodies, their gest- 
 ures, their facial, expressions, their words. 
 It can never directly perceive any mind 
 but its own. It must guess the mind from 
 the body. Perhaps another illustration 
 will serve to make this more clear. 
 
 Suppose a child to see for the first time 
 a smile upon its mother's face. Now a 
 smile is surely not anything like the feel- 
 ing of love that prompts a smile. No one 
 can see a feeling of love, and one can see 
 a smile. The one is in the mother's mind, 
 and the other is on the mother's face. 
 
The Search for Mind. 37 
 
 How is the child to know what the smile 
 that it sees means ? How can it tell that 
 this expression indicates a thing so unlike 
 itself, and a thing which must always re- 
 main unseen ? Is there any other way for 
 it to discover the meaning of the smile 
 than to notice some time when it is smiling 
 itself what feeling prompts a smile, and 
 then, having learned from its own body 
 the meaning of this new action, to inter- 
 pret the smile by this same feeling when 
 it sees it in another body ? But if a child 
 could grow up without ever having had 
 in. any degree at all the feeling of love, 
 could it ever form any idea at all of the 
 meaning of expressions of love on the 
 part of those about it ? It would still see 
 the bodily actions, and the expressions of 
 the face, and hear the words, but would 
 not the whole language of affection be as 
 totally beyond it as is a message in cipher 
 to a man who has lost the key ? Remem- 
 ber, the feeling itself in the mind of an- 
 other we can never see as we see the 
 
38 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 face of another. We must call it up in 
 memory to connect it with this or that 
 other body; and how can we call up in 
 memory what we have never felt? It is 
 quite impossible to explain to a man who 
 has always been blind what a color is, and 
 this is because, although he can hear our 
 explanations very well, there is in his ex- 
 perience nothing that he can call up in 
 response to the words, which would truly 
 correspond to what is in our minds when 
 we speak them. To get at our thought, 
 since he cannot see it directly, he must in- 
 terpret our words in thoughts of his own; 
 and he fails, because when we speak of 
 colors he cannot call up in his memory 
 any sensations of color, and the words 
 remain mere words to him. He will never 
 find out what is in our minds when we 
 utter them. 
 
 This fact, then, is sufficiently clear : that 
 when a man says that another man's mind 
 is revealed to him by his words and ac- 
 tions, he can only mean that he observes 
 
The Search for Mind. jp 
 
 such and such motions in the other man's 
 body, and, having learned from his own 
 body what thoughts and feelings accom- 
 pany what bodily actions, he interprets in 
 this language learned from himself what 
 he sees, and thus builds up for himself in 
 his imagination a picture of the other 
 man's mind. No one gets nearer to an- 
 other mind than this his own picture of 
 it. As he interprets what he sees 'in the 
 other body well or ill, his knowledge of 
 the other mind will be true and com- 
 plete, or false and incomplete. If he does 
 the work very well he will have a good 
 accurate knowledge of the other mind ; 
 but, however accurate, it is always his 
 own picture of it that he has, and nothing 
 else. 
 
 Now it is not only to the knowledge of 
 other men's minds that we come in this 
 way, but to the knowledge of all minds 
 whatever. Indeed, it is to just this experi- 
 ence that we refer when we use the phrase 
 " another mind" at all. Why do I believe 
 
4.0 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 that a dog has a mind, unless because I 
 have seen in his actions what is best inter- 
 preted by my own experience of hope, or 
 fear, or anger, or love ? Why do I speak 
 of one horse as more intelligent than an- 
 other, unless because I see in his actions 
 something more analogous to actions of 
 my own ? Why do I say that it is doubt- 
 ful whether a sponge has a mind at all, un- 
 less because I see in it so little that is like 
 my experience of my own body, that I 
 find almost nothing that needs interpreta- 
 tion in terms of thought and feeling and 
 will ? In none of these instances do I see 
 any mind at all directly and immediately. 
 The -nature of my reasoning is precisely 
 the same in all cases. Where I find traces 
 of what I have learned to regard as indica- 
 tions of thought or feeling or will, I infer 
 mind ; and I try to build up for myself as 
 good an idea as I can of what the mind 
 is like. Upon the indications will depend 
 my opinion as to whether the mind is a 
 wise one or a weak one, a clear one or a 
 
The Search for Mind. 4.1 
 
 dim one. For me these bodily indications, 
 and they alone, are the index of another 
 mind. Other minds can be reached only 
 through these. 
 
 I spoke a little while ago of bodies as 
 " revealing" mind. The meaning of this 
 word is now, I hope, unmistakable. Of 
 course it cannot mean that we find mind 
 on the surfaces of bodies, as we find 
 colors; nor in bodies, as the seeds are in 
 an apple. The most foolish man will 
 hardly expect to see his friend's mind as 
 he sees his friend's wig. Nor do we mean 
 that the minds are the bodies, for then 
 why should we single out these particu- 
 lar bodies, as bodies with minds, and dis- 
 tinguish them from bodies without minds ? 
 and why should we class them with our 
 own bodies, which we certainly distinguish 
 from our minds ? No ! when we speak of 
 bodies as revealing mind, we simply mean 
 that we observe in them certain signs or 
 marks which experience of our bodies has 
 taught us to recognize as signs of thought 
 
4.2 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 or feeling or will, and that we can build up 
 a picture of these minds by interpreting 
 these signs. 
 
 As it happens, we have been building 
 up in this way ideas of other minds all our 
 lives, so that the process has become very 
 rapid and easy, so rapid and so easy that 
 we never think of the steps of the process 
 at all, but, like the practised reader, who 
 is absorbed in the thought of his book and 
 hardly notices the letters, pass on at once 
 from the signs to the things signified, and 
 seem to have at once before us the com- 
 plete thought of another mind. Never- 
 theless, rapid or slow, conscious or uncon- 
 scious, this is the process we actually go 
 through with every time we find another 
 mind. This is what we mean when we 
 speak of finding a mind; and it will easily 
 be seen that a search for a mind, which 
 starts out with the supposition that it is to 
 be sought for in some other direction, 
 perhaps as an object immediately perceived 
 in the world around us, is very likely to 
 
The Search for Mind. 4.3 
 
 be a disappointing search. Quite as dis- 
 appointing as the one in which Swift's 
 worthy persevered for so many years, 
 the search for a method of extracting sun- 
 beams from cucumbers. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 God in Nature. 
 
 I HOPE it is quite clear from the reason- 
 ing of the last chapter, that when we say 
 we have found a mind we never mean that 
 we have seen one directly or touched one. 
 And I hope it is equally clear that we look 
 for minds of all kinds in just the same 
 way, by interpreting the signs of mind 
 that we see in bodies, and thus building up 
 some idea of the minds revealed by those 
 bodies. In the last chapter I referred, in 
 illustration of this latter point, only to 
 cases in which the mind inferred is inferior 
 to the mind of man, as in the dog or the 
 horse. But there is no reason at all why 
 we should not in just the same way infer 
 higher minds if we find anywhere in our 
 experience the marks or signs which can 
 best be interpreted as revealing higher 
 minds. When a child stands before his 
 
God in Nature. 4.5 
 
 father and listens to his words, he cer- 
 tainly gains some notion that his father 
 has a mind, and a mind superior to his 
 own. He knows very well that he can- 
 not entirely comprehend that mind, nor 
 know all that there is to be known about 
 it, but he knows well enough that the 
 play of feature that he sees, and the words 
 he hears, indicate mind, and a mind higher 
 and broader than his mind. 
 
 Is it not a matter of every-day experi- 
 ence that some of the men we meet im- 
 press us with a sense of our own mental 
 inferiority ? Why is this, except that we 
 see in their words and actions what will 
 necessitate a recognition of higher minds 
 than our own? All men may be born 
 free, but they are certainly not born equal 
 in mental ability any more than in physi- 
 cal stature; and yet, just as the abler man 
 builds up for himself an idea of the inferior 
 mind, so the inferior man builds up for 
 himself an idea of the higher mind, and 
 recognizes that it is above him. And as a 
 
4.6 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 man of less ability can do this with respect 
 to the mind of a Newton, so he could do 
 it with respect to the mind of some being 
 higher than man if he found anywhere 
 indications of that mind as he finds indica- 
 tions of mind in another man's body. If I 
 were to meet somewhere a being differing 
 as much from man in the one direction as 
 do the horse and the dog in the other, and 
 if a careful observation of the actions of this 
 being were to show me that these actions 
 are analogous with those by which my own 
 mental states are expressed, but that they 
 are more complex than my actions, and 
 differ from them somewhat as my actions 
 differ from those of the lower animals, if 
 my observation were to show me all this, 
 would not I naturally and at once assume 
 that this being possessed a mind ? Would 
 not I think of this mind as like mine, in so 
 far as it was a mind, but different from 
 mine in being higher ? Differences in the 
 signs to be interpreted of course necessi- 
 tate differences in the interpretation. 
 
God in Nature. 4.7 
 
 And if, after I had met the being of 
 which I have spoken, I should meet an- 
 other being whose actions put him still 
 higher in the scale, should I not set to 
 work to build up for myself an idea of his 
 mind, reasoning in the same way, and 
 making my idea of his mind different from 
 my idea of the former one, according to 
 the differences that I find in the actions to 
 be interpreted? There is only one limit 
 that can be set to this way of reasoning, 
 and that is this : The ground upon which 
 I go in my reasoning always is, as you 
 have seen, that I have found in my own 
 experience of my body that certain signs 
 in the body always signify certain states of 
 mind, and when I see such signs or some- 
 thing like them in another body, I infer 
 such states of mind or something like 
 them in another mind. Now, as the signs 
 which I see in another body differ more 
 and more from the signs of which I have 
 learned the meaning in my own, I infer 
 that the mental states differ correspond- 
 
48 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 ingly. And if the difference should go 
 to such a point that the marks seen in 
 another body should not resemble at all 
 the signs that I have come to look upon 
 as a revelation of mind, then, of course, I 
 should have no reason at all to infer a 
 mind like mine, or anything like it. But 
 up to this limit the reasoning holds good ; 
 wherever I see signs of mind I may infer 
 mind, and my belief as to the character of 
 the mind may justly rest upon the nature 
 of the signs. 
 
 Now to apply this argument to God. 
 From the earliest times thoughtful men 
 have been impressed with the fact that 
 nature reveals a Mind, as well as minds. 
 When we look about us we discover minds 
 of many orders in men and the lower ani- 
 mals, each revealed by that little mass of 
 organized matter that we call an animal 
 body. But, as I have suggested in the 
 first chapter, when we come to examine 
 one of these bodies more closely we find 
 that it is not really an independent thing at 
 
God in Nature. 4.9 
 
 all, but only a part of the great system of 
 nature, and bound to all other things by 
 natural laws. The body in question must 
 depend for its subsistence upon the other 
 things around it. It was produced from 
 them, and after it is dissolved its particles 
 will be scattered to them again. Birth and 
 growth, and decay and death, are a part of 
 the general plan of things in nature ; and 
 this particular body belongs to that plan 
 and must obey its laws. In order that this 
 body might live and move at this present 
 moment, the forces of nature must have 
 been active before its birth, and these 
 forces must themselves have depended 
 upon other forces obeying natural laws ; 
 and so we might go to every part of the 
 great world of things and find that had 
 this particular body been different even in 
 one little point, perhaps all its past causes 
 would have had to be different, and all 
 other bodies would have had to be dif- 
 ferent too. The very words " a system of 
 nature" indicate that things do not exist 
 
 5 
 
jo A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 in the world each for itself, but that the 
 universe has in it something analogous to 
 a human body, in that all its parts have 
 relation to all its other parts, and gain 
 their significance through their place in 
 the system. 
 
 While I reason in this way I must recog- 
 nize that my own body is a part of this 
 system, and that my own mind is too. If 
 another body strikes against my body I 
 feel a pain in my mind, and if it had not 
 struck against it I would not have felt the 
 pain. And when I strike another man's 
 body I feel pretty sure that, if he has any 
 mind at all, I can cause a pain in that 
 mind. Minds and living bodies and other 
 bodies all together form one system of 
 things, which, taking the word in its 
 widest sense, I can call nature. 
 
 Here at once there arises in my mind 
 a very natural question. What kind of a 
 thing is this one being of which I find 
 myself to be a part, and which I know as 
 nature ? In one respect I know it is like 
 
God in Nature. 57 
 
 my own body, in that it is composed of 
 parts knit together into a system. But 
 is it like my body in another thing, and 
 a very important thing, does this vast 
 organism reveal Mind in the same general 
 way in which my body reveals mind, and 
 other men's bodies reveal mind ? Is a 
 Mind revealed by the whole of nature, as 
 minds are by some of its parts ? And can 
 we by interpreting the signs of Mind as 
 seen in the whole of nature gain some just 
 idea of the attributes of that Mind ? The 
 problem, you see, is precisely similar to 
 the one that meets us every time that we 
 see the body of another man. Shall we 
 infer mind ? and if so, what kind of a 
 mind? So here; shall we infer Mind? 
 and if so, what kind of a Mind? The 
 mass of reflective men in all ages are 
 impelled to answer : " Yes, the world is 
 full of reason, and plan, and marvellous 
 adaptation ; we may infer Mind, and we 
 cannot set limits to its powers." 
 
 Now, to ask a man, who has expressed 
 
52 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 this conviction, to show us this Mind, in 
 any other way than to point out the marks 
 which reveal it, is manifestly just as absurd 
 as it would be to ask him to point out the 
 mind of another man. He can show you 
 the body of the man, and he can show 
 you how reasonably the body acts, but 
 more than this he cannot do, and more 
 than this you cannot expect of him. It 
 seems fair to ask you to be as just to the 
 great Mind of which we are speaking, as 
 you are to other minds, and to content 
 yourself with evidence of the same nature. 
 The question is simply, whether the sys- 
 tem of things as a whole indicates reason, 
 or does not. If you decide that it does, 
 does this not end the matter? 
 
 But you may object, and rightly, that 
 there is still some ambiguity in the phrase 
 " to reveal mind," insomuch as the phrase 
 is often used in two quite distinct senses. 
 Sometimes we say that a watch reveals 
 mind, when we do not mean at all that 
 the watch has the mind, but that the 
 
God in Nature. jj 
 
 watchmaker, who made it, has. In one 
 sense of the word "reveal," the watch 
 reveals mind, and in another sense, the 
 watchmaker does. In which of these 
 senses does nature reveal mind? as a 
 something that leads one to infer mind 
 in a something else that has preceded it 
 or is connected with it? or as a something 
 that reveals mind directly through itself, 
 as a man's body reveals his mind? Let 
 us see. 
 
 How do we come to believe that such a 
 thing as a watch reveals mind at all ? We 
 certainly do not come to the belief by 
 observing that the actions of the watch are 
 like our own actions, and then inferring 
 that they have the same meaning as ex- 
 pressions of mind. We reason in this 
 way about the watchmaker, but not about 
 the watch. About the watch we reason 
 as follows: We know by experience that 
 our own bodies can act upon other things 
 about us, and change their character and 
 arrangement. We know, too, that we can 
 
 5* 
 
5^ A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 form a plan in our minds of the way in 
 which we would like to arrange the bodies 
 around us, and can then, through the 
 actions of our bodies, impress upon them 
 this plan. When we observe the bodies of 
 other men, we see that things acted upon 
 by their bodies seem to be arranged ac- 
 cording to plan too, or, to speak more 
 strictly, seem to be arranged as they are 
 arranged after we have acted upon them 
 through our bodies and impressed upon 
 them the plan in our minds. For instance, 
 if I find it inconvenient to shelter myself 
 from the rain in a hollow tree, and form an 
 idea of some other shelter which would 
 be better, and then make a frame of poles 
 and cover it with thatch, I know very well 
 that the arrangement of the poles and the 
 straw is somehow connected with the plan 
 in my mind, and realize that if the plan 
 had been different the structure would 
 have been different. And when I observe 
 the body of another man going through 
 the motions of building a similar structure, 
 
God in Nature. 55 
 
 and at last see the completed hut, I can- 
 not help seeing that the result is of the 
 same sort as what I brought about myself. 
 When I realize this, I cannot help thinking 
 that the thing indicates a plan in his mind, 
 since a similar thing was the expression of 
 a plan in mine. I never think of connect- 
 ing the plan immediately with the hut, 
 but with the man who built it ; and when 
 I say the hut indicates plan or purpose, 
 I mean only that it has marks about it 
 which would lead me to suppose, even if 
 I should find it now ready made and in a 
 desert, that it has had a certain connection 
 with a human body, and that that human 
 body has had in the mind connected with 
 it a plan of the hut. 
 
 So that there is this very important 
 difference between the two senses of the 
 word in which the watch and the watch- 
 maker can be said to " reveal" mind. In 
 the case of the man, we can say that mind 
 is revealed as directly and immediately as 
 it is possible for another mind to be re- 
 
56 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 vealed; and that this revelation does not 
 imply any other object existing before the 
 man, in which the mind is revealed, but 
 it is revealed here and now in him. In 
 the case of the watch, some other object 
 is implied, in which the mind is more 
 immediately revealed, and to which the 
 watch refers us. In every case our ulti- 
 mate reference is to the more immediate 
 revelation of mind as we find it in the 
 man. Objects which reveal mind as the 
 watch does, are simply objects which we 
 recognize as having a certain connection 
 with objects that reveal mind as men do. 
 I ask, then, in which of the two senses 
 of the word does nature as a whole reveal 
 mind ? If it really reveals mind at all it 
 must be in one of the two senses, for there 
 are only these two. If nature reveals 
 mind as a watch does, you must mean by 
 this that you are able to go back from 
 what you see now to something else that 
 reveals mind more immediately and di- 
 rectly, just as to explain the watch you go 
 
God in Nature. 57 
 
 back to the revelation of mind in the 
 watchmaker. But have we any reason to 
 believe that by going back farther and 
 farther we will find mind revealed more 
 directly than we do in the world as we see 
 it now? Can we expect, passing from 
 present nature, which we regard as only 
 the watch, the mindless object arranged by 
 mind, to come to a something which will 
 stand before us as showing mind in this 
 higher sense? Surely nature, this great 
 complex of which we ourselves are a part, 
 is quite as wonderful and as full of reason 
 to-day as it has ever been in the past. 
 Surely there is no ground to expect that 
 by going back we will ever find a time 
 when we can say : " Now I have passed 
 from the watch to the watchmaker, and 
 here I may stop in my search for mind." 
 And if the Mind which is revealed in 
 nature is as immediately revealed here and 
 now as it can be anywhere else or at any 
 other time; if, that is, we regard all nature, 
 in all times, as revealing Mind in the same 
 
58 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 way, and not as referring us back to some- 
 thing else, should we not look upon na- 
 ture, not as we do upon the watch, but 
 rather as we do upon the watchmaker? as 
 we do upon the man standing in front of 
 us, and now revealing his present mind 
 through words and actions ? Why should 
 we look upon the world as an automaton, 
 whose connection with mind is not of the 
 present but of the past? Is not Reason 
 now active about us as well as in us ? 
 Why banish it from the world in which 
 we live? 
 
 Now the name which men have applied 
 to the Mind which is revealed in nature, 
 and in every part of nature, is God. And 
 the view of things which would look upon 
 the world as we do upon the watch, refer- 
 ring its revelation of mind to the past, as 
 I have shown is done by the argument 
 which we discussed in the first chapter, is 
 simply a view which puts God altogether 
 out of the present world, and lets us see in 
 the present world only the results of His 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 tn Nature. 
 
 former activity. But how near would you 
 feel to another man if you knew that you 
 could never get nearer to him than merely 
 to discover indications that at some past 
 time he had thought, or felt, or acted? 
 When one reads a book by a man long 
 dead it is not the same as when one sees 
 before him his friend, and speaks, and is 
 answered, knowing that mind reflects mind 
 as closely as mind can reflect mind. And 
 is it any more satisfactory for the soul that 
 cries out for God to be referred to the be- 
 ginnings of the world and a First Cause 
 of things? Can he get no nearer to the 
 Divine than that ? The arguments for 
 God as usually stated do not seem to bring 
 him any nearer, but, fortunately for man, 
 his inmost convictions are sometimes more 
 reasonable and more true than his attempts 
 to justify his convictions; and, in spite of 
 arguments, the religious mind has always 
 felt somehow much nearer to God. Men 
 have recognized in the daily experiences 
 of their own souls the present goodness 
 
60 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 of God. They have seen in the rich 
 beauty and admirable arrangement of this 
 great world what has made quite credible 
 to them the conception of a Mind so em- 
 bracing the whole of things as to contain 
 in its plan the fall of a sparrow or the 
 robing of a flower. If I should ask you 
 to abandon the groping for God in the dim 
 and distant past, or at least to supplement 
 it by looking for God in the present too, 
 I should not be asking you to accept a 
 new way of finding Him in the world. 
 I should only be asking you to make clear 
 to yourself the way in which you have 
 always found Him there: to realize that 
 the lack of clearness and consistency in 
 your thought has sometimes led you to be 
 much more unjust to the Mind in nature 
 than you have been to the little minds in 
 nature. That you should reason about 
 them in just the same way was well recog- 
 nized in the last century by that brilliant 
 scholar and charming gentleman Bishop 
 Berkeley, whose works deserve more atten- 
 
God in Nature. 61 
 
 tion than the men of our day allot them. 
 I cannot do better than to close this 
 chapter with a sentence from his gifted pen 
 on our knowledge of God and man : 
 
 " Hence it is plain that we do not see 
 a man, if by man is meant that which 
 lives, moves, perceives, and thinks as we 
 do, but only such a certain collection of 
 ideas* as directs us to think there is a dis- 
 tinct principle of thought and motion, like 
 to ourselves, accompanying and represented 
 by it. And after the same manner we see 
 God; all the difference is that, whereas 
 some one finite and narrow assemblage of 
 ideas denotes a particular human mind, 
 whithersoever we direct our view, we do 
 at all times and in all places perceive mani- 
 fest tokens of the Divinity, everything 
 we see, hear, feel, or anywise perceive by 
 sense, being a sign or effect of the power 
 of God ; as is our perception of those very 
 motions which are produced by men." 
 
 * By " ideas" Berkeley here means simply bodily 
 qualities. 
 
 6 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Witness of Literature. 
 
 I PROPOSE in the present chapter to give 
 a few extracts from literature to show that 
 the argument for God which I have given, 
 and the way of looking at God's relation 
 to the world which I have advocated, are 
 in no sense new or strange, but on the 
 contrary so natural that men have always, 
 though sometimes inconsistently and often 
 unconsciously, held to them and rested 
 upon them. I shall give a very few ex- 
 tracts, though I might give very many; 
 and I shall take them almost at random, 
 for in such a wealth of material it is hard 
 to choose. 
 
 The first are from the account given by 
 Xenophon of a conversation which Socra- 
 tes, the great pagan moralist, held with 
 Aristodemus the Little. It would seem 
 that this Aristodemus objected to offering 
 
T/ie Witness of Literature. 63 
 
 prayers and sacrifices himself, and ridi- 
 culed those who did offer them. Socrates 
 points out to him at length the evidences 
 of intelligence and of benevolent purpose 
 to be seen in the structure of man's own 
 body, and then the dialogue continues : 
 
 "'And do you think that you yourself 
 have any portion of intelligence?' ' Ques- 
 tion me, at least, and I will answer.' ' And 
 can you suppose that nothing intelligent 
 exists anywhere else? When you know 
 that you have in your body but a small 
 portion of the earth, which is vast, and a 
 small portion of the water, which is vast, 
 and that your frame is constituted for you 
 to receive only a^ small portion of each of 
 other things that are vast, do you think 
 that you have seized for yourself, by some 
 extraordinary good fortune, intelligence 
 alone which exists nowhere else, and that 
 this assemblage of vast bodies, countless 
 in number, is maintained in order by some- 
 thing void of reason ?' ' By Jupiter, I can 
 hardly suppose that there is any ruling 
 
64. A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 intelligence among that assemblage of 
 bodies, for I do not see the directors, as 
 I see the agent of things which are done 
 here.' ' Nor do you see your own soul, 
 which is the director of your body ; so 
 that, by like reasoning, you may say that 
 you yourself do nothing with understand- 
 ing, but everything by chance.' " 
 
 ******* 
 " ' Consider also, my good youth/ con- 
 tinued Socrates, ' that your mind, existing 
 within your body, directs your body as it 
 pleases ; and it becomes you therefore to 
 believe that the intelligence pervading all 
 things directs all things as may be agree- 
 able to it, and not to think that while your 
 eye can extend its sight over many furlongs, 
 that of the divinity is unable to see all 
 things at once, or that while your mind can 
 think of things here or things in Egypt or 
 Sicily, the mind of the deity is incapable of 
 regarding everything at the same time.' " 
 
 * I quote from Watson's version. Memorabilia, 
 Book I. chap. iv. 
 
The Witness of Literature. 65 
 
 It is sufficiently evident from this that 
 Socrates looked upon the mind in nature 
 as revealed after the same manner as the 
 mind connected with a human body, that 
 is, he believed it to be revealed as directly 
 as one mind can be revealed to another. 
 His conception is in perfect harmony with 
 the idea of God presented in the preceding 
 chapters, and we may see from his life that 
 he lived in the realization of an intimate 
 relation with the Divine. He was a pagan, 
 and seems also to have believed in the 
 gods of the popular mythology ; but it 
 would appear that this belief was subordi- 
 nate to his constant recognition of the all- 
 pervading Mind. He certainly believed in 
 a present God. 
 
 If we turn from pagan literature to Jew- 
 ish, we may almost take that bodily as 
 an illustration of the fact that men have 
 thought cf God as revealed at once in 
 nature, as ever present in the world, and 
 not to be found merely at the end of an 
 indefinite regress into the past. The whole 
 
 6* 
 
66 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 teaching of the Old Testament is of a God 
 in the closest and most intimate relation 
 to nature, and whose thought and purpose 
 can be read in the order and changes of 
 things. The book of the Psalms is full 
 of passages which give expression to this 
 thought in forms of the highest beauty. 
 Can any other view of God be reconciled 
 with the spirit of the one hundred and 
 fourth psalm ? 
 
 " He appointed the moon for seasons : 
 the sun knoweth his going down. 
 
 " Thou makest darkness, and it is night : 
 wherein all the beasts of the forest do 
 creep forth. 
 
 " The young lions roar after their prey, 
 and seek their meat from God. 
 
 " The sun ariseth, they gather themselves 
 together, and lay them down in their dens. 
 
 " Man goeth forth unto his work and to 
 his labor until the evening. 
 
 " O Lord, how manifold are thy works ! 
 in wisdom hast thou made them all : the 
 earth is full of thy riches. 
 
The Witness of Literature. 6j 
 
 " So is this great and wide sea, wherein 
 are things creeping innumerable, both 
 small and great beasts. 
 
 " There go the ships : there is that le- 
 viathan, whom thou hast made to play 
 therein. 
 
 " These wait all upon thee ; that thou 
 mayest give them their meat in due season. 
 
 " That thou givest them they gather : 
 thou openest thine hand, they are filled 
 with good. 
 
 "Thou hidest thy face, they are troub- 
 led : thou takest away their breath, they 
 die, and return to their dust. 
 
 " Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are 
 created : and thou renewest the face of the 
 earth. 
 
 "The glory of the Lord shall endure 
 forever: the Lord shall rejoice in his 
 works. 
 
 " He looketh on the earth, and it trem- 
 bleth : he toucheth the hills, and they 
 smoke. 
 
 " I will sing unto the Lord as long as I 
 
68 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 live : I will sing praise to my God while I 
 have my being. 
 
 " My meditation of him shall be sweet : 
 I will be glad in the Lord." 
 
 And would the trust and confidence of 
 the twenty-third psalm seem natural in one 
 who did not feel God very near to him ? 
 In the Hebrew scriptures, surely this view 
 of God as now seen through nature is to 
 be found. 
 
 And what shall we say to the teachings 
 of the New Testament from beginning to 
 end ? What can be plainer than this : 
 
 " And why take ye thought for rai- 
 ment? Consider the lilies of the field, 
 how they grow ; they toil not, neither do 
 they spin : 
 
 " And yet I say unto you, That even 
 Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed 
 like one of these. 
 
 " Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass 
 of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow 
 is cast into the oven, shall he not much 
 more clothe you, O ye of little faith ? 
 
The Witness of Literature. 69 
 
 " Therefore take no thought, saying, 
 What shall we eat? or, What shall we 
 drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be 
 clothed ? 
 
 " (For after all these things do the Gen- 
 tiles seek:) for your heavenly Father 
 knoweth that ye have need of all these 
 things." 
 
 This certainly does not read as if our 
 evidence for God directed us always to 
 the past, and away from the world that is. 
 Nor is St. Paul at the Areopagus less clear 
 in his teaching: 
 
 " God that made the world and all 
 things therein, seeing that he is Lord of 
 heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples 
 made with hands ; 
 
 " Neither is worshipped with men's 
 hands, as though he needed anything, see- 
 ing he giveth to all life, and breath, and 
 all things; 
 
 "And hath made of one blood all na- 
 tions of men for to dwell on all the face 
 of the earth, and hath determined the 
 
/o A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 times before appointed, and the bounds of 
 their habitation; 
 
 "That they should seek the Lord, if 
 haply they might feel after him, and find 
 him, though he be not far from every one 
 of us: 
 
 " For in him we live, and move, and 
 have our being; as certain also of your 
 own poets have said, For we are also his 
 offspring." 
 
 One cannot feel that he lives, and moves, 
 and has his being in that which he can 
 only reach by going back to the creation 
 of the world. The words denote the most 
 intimate relation between man's life and 
 God. 
 
 The devotional literature of the Chris- 
 tian church is pervaded with the same 
 spirit. This is well shown in the collects 
 in the Book of Common Prayer: 
 
 " O God, whose if ever-failing providence 
 ordereth all things both in heaven and 
 earth; We humbly beseech thee, to put 
 away from us all hurtful things, and to 
 
The Witness of Literature. ji 
 
 give us those things which are profitable 
 for us ; through Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 
 " O Lord, we beseech thee, let thy con- 
 tinual pity cleanse and defend thy Church ; 
 and, because it cannot continue in safety 
 without thy succor, preserve it evermore 
 by thy help and goodness ; through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord." 
 
 It is but natural to find the language of 
 worship expressing such a view of God, 
 for, as I have said before, religion, in any 
 true sense of the word, would hardly seem 
 possible to one who believed in a God in 
 no close relation to him and to the world. 
 The religious mind tends to regard nature 
 as did George Herbert : 
 
 " O sacred Providence, who from end to end 
 Strongly and sweetly movest! shall I write, 
 And not of Thee, through whom my fingers bend 
 To hold my quill? Shall they not do Thee right?" 
 
 Here nature is not separated from God as 
 a thing at a distance. God is found in and 
 through nature, giving nature meaning 
 
J2 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 and worth. It was thus that Coleridge 
 saw God in the world : 
 
 "Thou first and chief, sole Sovereign of the Vale, 
 O struggling with the darkness all the night, 
 And visited all night by troops of stars, 
 Or when they climb the sky or when they sink; 
 Companion of the Morning-star at dawn, 
 Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn 
 Co-herald : wake, O wake, and utter praise ! 
 Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth? 
 Who fill'd thy countenance with rosy light? 
 Who made thee parent of perpetual streams? 
 
 " And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad ! 
 Who called you forth from night and utter death? 
 From dark and icy caverns called you forth, 
 Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, 
 Forever shattered, and the same forever? 
 Who gave you your invulnerable life, 
 Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, 
 Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam? 
 And who commanded (and the silence came), 
 Here let the billows stiffen and have rest? 
 
 " Ye Ice-falls ! ye that from the mountain's brow 
 Adown enormous ravines slope amain, 
 Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty Voice, 
 And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge ! 
 
The Witness of Literature. 73 
 
 Motionless torrents! Silent cataracts! 
 Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven, 
 Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun 
 Clothe you with rainbows ? Who, with living 
 
 flowers 
 
 Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? 
 God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, 
 Answer ! and let the ice-plains echo, God ! 
 God ! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice, 
 Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds. 
 And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, 
 And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God! 
 
 " Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost ! 
 Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest ! 
 Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm ! 
 Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! 
 Ye signs and wonders of the element ! 
 Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!" 
 
 This is the view of nature held by the 
 religious mind, as I have said, in all ages. 
 It might be illustrated by countless cita- 
 tions, but I will give no more. Those who 
 have held it have not always clearly com- 
 prehended its significance, nor have they 
 seen that their formal reasonings were not 
 
 7 
 
7^ A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 always in sympathy with it. Nevertheless 
 they held it, and lived by it, and gained 
 great comfort from it, as do multitudes to- 
 day, who according to their formal argu- 
 ments have no right to such comfort at 
 all. It is one thing to have a belief, and 
 another to be able to put it into a formula 
 or reason about it. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Theism or Pantheism. 
 
 ALTHOUGH the religious literature of the 
 past and the present seems to testify to the 
 fact, that the way of finding God in the 
 world which I have presented is natural to 
 men, yet it is quite possible that when 
 you think about it you are at first repelled 
 by it. "You wish me to look upon the 
 world/' you say, " as revealing God, as a 
 man's body reveals his mind. Is not this 
 a strange conception, the world the body 
 of God ? Has God a body? Is the world, 
 then, God ?" I will answer this by making 
 clear what this view of God really implies, 
 and what it does not. 
 
 And first I must distinguish between 
 Theism and what is known as Pantheism. 
 When I explained the difference between 
 Theism and Deism, I said that theism be- 
 lieves in a God revealed in nature as not 
 
j6 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 merely Creator, but as Preserver and Gov- 
 ernor of things. I did not in any sense 
 call nature God, but spoke of God as re- 
 vealed in nature. I afterwards explained 
 at some length the way in which He is 
 revealed in nature, and showed that when 
 we say we find Him there, we mean we 
 find Him as we find another man's mind, 
 through the indications in his body. This 
 is theism. 
 
 The word pantheism is used very 
 vaguely and loosely, but when it has any 
 distinctive meaning at all, it means simply 
 the belief that nature is God. A consist- 
 ent pantheist is a man who holds, not that 
 one is to find God as a something distinct 
 from nature and seen through nature, but 
 that one is to look upon nature itself as 
 God. Evidently, such a man cannot think 
 that God is inferred from the whole of 
 things as his neighbor's mind is inferred 
 from the actions of his body. Evidently, 
 the whole argument which has to do with 
 the search for minds, and the application 
 
Theism or Pantheism. 77 
 
 of this reasoning to the search for God is 
 quite useless to the pantheist. He can see 
 a good deal of the world directly. If this 
 is God, then he can see God at once, and 
 needs no process of inference. But it fol- 
 lows that God is not, then, a mind or any- 
 thing like a mind, beyond his own and 
 revealed to it as minds are revealed. One 
 does not thus see other minds. More 
 than this : the emotions of love and ven- 
 eration, which naturally arise when one 
 mind feels itself in relation to another, 
 have no logical place in the mind of the pan- 
 theist. What one loves is a person, and if 
 one calls up in himself this emotion in the 
 presence of what he does not recognize as 
 anything like a person, in the plain com- 
 mon sense of that word, then he must 
 have deceived himself into having the 
 emotion through some unwarranted asso- 
 ciation of ideas with the words which he 
 is using, or through some want of clear- 
 ness in his thought. The very use of 
 the word God is likely to call up religious 
 
 7* 
 
j8 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 emotion, from the rich associations of the 
 word, and from what it naturally suggests 
 to the man who pronounces it. If the 
 pantheist keeps calling the world God, he 
 may educate himself into a very high 
 respect for the world, but after all it is 
 only the world, and the name does not 
 add anything to it. It does not imply the 
 discovery that the word God in its natu- 
 ral and common sense may properly be 
 applied to it. Some so-called pantheists 
 have, to be sure, been very religious men, 
 but they seem to have had a capacity, like 
 the four Jews under Nebuchadnezzar, of 
 thriving on very little. In so far as they 
 have really been pantheists, and not merely 
 somewhat inconsistent theists, they have 
 had no right to be religious at all in the 
 ordinary sense of the term. And in so far 
 as their thinking has given them a right to 
 what we call religion, it has been simply 
 some form of theism. 
 
 Lord Tennyson's little poem on " The 
 Higher Pantheism" presents a self-con- 
 
Theism or Pantheism. 79 
 
 tradictory title; for where this way of 
 thinking is really pantheism it is not 
 "higher," and where it is "higher" it is 
 not pantheism. It is the theistic element 
 in it which appeals to religious emotion. 
 
 " The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and 
 
 the plains, 
 Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns ? 
 
 " Is not the Vision He ? Tho' He be not that which 
 
 He seems? 
 
 Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live 
 in dreams?" 
 
 " Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with 
 
 Spirit can meet, 
 
 Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands 
 and feet." 
 
 The pantheist, if he is to be consistent, 
 and if he is to differ at all from the theist, 
 must repudiate this last couplet altogether, 
 or use the words in new and vague senses. 
 If God is simply the world and nothing 
 more, He cannot hear any more than a 
 
8o A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 dead body, nor can Spirit meet with Spirit 
 in any sense at all. What we are to speak 
 to in such a case is simply 
 
 " The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and 
 the plains," 
 
 and speaking becomes no longer desirable 
 or significant. Nor can we be much stirred 
 by reflection upon "the Vision of Him 
 who reigns" if we keep in mind that this 
 is simply saying over again what has been 
 said in the line just quoted, and adds 
 nothing at all to the thought. We are 
 tricked out of the emotion which properly 
 hovers around capital letters, and forget 
 for the moment that there is no such thing 
 as " reigning" after this fashion. 
 
 From all this it is evident that the view 
 of God which 1 have presented as reason- 
 able cannot in any proper sense of that 
 term be called pantheism. It is all the 
 difference between soul and no soul in the 
 system of things. This view does not say 
 that God is nature, but that God is seen 
 
Theism or Pantheism. 81 
 
 through nature in just the way that any 
 mind is revealed to any other mind. It 
 insists that one should use common jus- 
 tice in arguing about God, and ask oneself 
 at each step in the argument whether one 
 would argue in the same way about one's 
 fellow-man. The man who holds this 
 view distinguishes between the body of 
 his friend and the mind of his friend, and 
 realizes, that if he could be quite sure that 
 a mind had ceased to be connected with 
 that body, his attitude towards it would be 
 very different from what it is now. In like 
 manner, when he looks upon the world, he 
 believes that he finds revealed in it some- 
 thing analogous to the mind that is re- 
 vealed in his friend. He does not con- 
 found this with the world itself any more 
 than he confounds his friend's mind with 
 his body. It is this something which he 
 has inferred that he calls God, and it is 
 this that is the object of his religious emo- 
 tion. Should he come to believe that 
 there are not in the world marks of mind 
 
82 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 analogous to the marks of mind discovered 
 in a human body, he would have to con- 
 fess that he has no longer a God in the 
 sense in which he has all along used the 
 word. He does not in the least believe, 
 taking those words in their usual meaning, 
 that nature is God. I think I have made 
 sufficiently plain my answer to the ques- 
 tion whether this view does not make 
 nature God. 
 
 And now for the question, whether it 
 does not make the world as it were the 
 body of God, and whether this is not a 
 startling idea? It must be at once ad- 
 mitted that we are not accustomed to 
 talking in this way. We may go farther 
 and say that it is undesirable to talk in 
 this way. One may hold that the relation 
 of God to the world has in it something 
 analogous to the relation of man's mind to 
 his body, and yet one may hold at the 
 same time that the similarity is not so 
 close that it justifies one in applying to the 
 world this term. The word body has all 
 
Theism or Pantheism. 83 
 
 sorts of associations in our minds which 
 make us hesitate, very properly, to apply 
 it in this case. We think, when we use 
 the word, of a certain shape and structure, 
 and of certain functions, which belong to 
 our bodies as animal bodies, but which are 
 not found in the system of things taken 
 as a whole, and should not be associated 
 with that whole. The trouble here is in 
 the word and its associations. If we lay 
 the word aside, and keep in mind the 
 thought, that what is meant is simply that 
 God is revealed by the world as a whole 
 in a manner analogous to that in which 
 a man's mind is revealed by the little 
 mass of matter that we call his body, 
 there is nothing in the thought that is 
 startling or even new. The thought has 
 been realized dimly by many, and with 
 some clearness by a few. It is simply 
 the belief in a present God, and nothing 
 more. 
 
 Of course this should be expressed so 
 as to avoid misunderstanding. A rose by 
 
8/f. A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 any other name will quite possibly not 
 smell as sweet. The names given to 
 things affect very much our opinions of 
 the things. It is quite possible to arouse 
 in a mind opposition to views in them- 
 selves not at all calculated to arouse op- 
 position, by giving those views an unjust 
 or misleading name. The unthinking are 
 very apt to rest in the name, and not to go 
 on to a careful consideration of the thought 
 itself; and even the thinking man, who is 
 concerned chiefly with thoughts and not 
 words, may find it difficult to shake off the 
 associations which an unfortunate name 
 will call up. So avoid expressing this 
 view of God, and of His presence in the 
 world, in a way which will mislead your- 
 self and others. Avoid using words which 
 seem strange and unaccustomed. Of one 
 thing you may be quite sure, and that is, 
 that when this view is expressed in such a 
 way as to be really understood, it will 
 meet with no opposition from men of a 
 religious mind, who have always believed 
 
Theism or Pantheism. 85 
 
 just this, and have found God about them 
 in the world of to-day. If clearly appre- 
 hended, this view will be welcomed as 
 marking out theism from deism on the one 
 hand and pantheism on the other. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Reign of Law in Nature. 
 
 IT remains to consider in this and the 
 following chapter two or three objections 
 which it is supposed can be justly urged 
 from the point of view of modern science 
 against the argument for God. The first 
 is from the reign of natural law. 
 
 I have some distance back called atten- 
 tion to the fact that the marvels of the 
 "Arabian Nights," which seem so natural 
 and so absorbing to the mind of the child, 
 fail to interest the grown man, because 
 they seem unreal and unreasonable. He 
 regards them as unnatural and in their 
 nature incredible, and the flights of the un- 
 disciplined imagination no longer* please. 
 The view of nature as arbitrary and always 
 surprising, which is natural to a child with- 
 out much experience of nature, has given 
 place in the mind of an intelligent man to 
 
The Reign of Law in Nature. 8j 
 
 a view of nature as a system of things 
 having a certain fixed order and obeying 
 certain laws. Gradually there has emerged 
 from the chaos of his first unconnected ex- 
 periences a consciousness of regularity and 
 causal connection. He no longer looks 
 upon anything and everything as possible, 
 but he looks for what he has come to re- 
 gard as natural, and he looks for it 
 because he believes there are in nature 
 causes which would regularly produce it. 
 Where there are such causes he usually 
 believes the effect will follow without fail, 
 and where there are not such causes he 
 believes that it will not happen. The de- 
 scription of the way in which causes in 
 nature produce their effects he calls natu- 
 ral law, and he does not often expect any 
 natural law to have exceptions which may 
 not be explained through the action of 
 some other natural law. In other words, 
 he has grown to have a tendency to regard 
 the order of nature as fixed and invariable. 
 The childhood of the race resembles 
 
88 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 that of the individual in its way of look- 
 ing at nature. It is only little by little 
 that the view taken by science has come 
 to be accepted at all. Nature is so com- 
 plex and her forces so variously combined 
 that it is by no means easy to see that the 
 same causes always produce the same ef- 
 fects, and that the order of things is 
 throughout invariable. That there is an 
 order we can see easily enough, and that 
 in general causes and effects follow each 
 other according to rule, but it must be 
 confessed that we have not yet so meas- 
 ured and weighed and compared all things 
 as to be able to say, except by way of a 
 guess, that there are no exceptions to these 
 rules, but that all that happens happens 
 according to natural law and as a neces- 
 sary result of what has preceded it. Per- 
 haps the majority of men still hold that 
 the reign of law is not strictly universal, 
 and that a complete knowledge would re- 
 veal in nature what cannot be made to fall 
 under the dominion of law; but, on the 
 
The Reign of Law in Nature. 89 
 
 other hand, many minds have been so im- 
 pressed with what has been thus far gained 
 in the way of exact knowledge of causes 
 and effects, as to look forward with con- 
 fidence to a time when the increase of 
 knowledge will show that all things with- 
 out exception are bound by what has been 
 called natural necessity, and come and go 
 only according to the fixed methods known 
 as natural laws. Of course science, of 
 whose very essence it is to detect uniform- 
 ities and rules in nature, must assume, if 
 only as a working theory, that all things 
 come under law; but whether this view 
 taken by science is right or not is a ques- 
 tion which science cannot settle until 
 human knowledge is complete. 
 
 While men have been reducing the oc- 
 currences of nature as a whole to system 
 and discovering law, they have been dis- 
 covering that that little fragment of nature 
 which we call a man is not a merely arbi- 
 trary and lawless thing, but that he seems 
 at least to some degree to fall under the 
 
po A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 dominion of law like other things. His 
 body certainly acts and reacts like other 
 animal bodies, and the science of medicine 
 is based on the assumption that its ways 
 of acting will be regular and constant. If 
 there were not a certain sequence and plan 
 in the unfolding of his mind, no mental 
 science would be possible. And when we 
 consider that much discussed and quar- 
 relled over faculty, the human will, we 
 must all admit that we do not act towards 
 men as though we regarded this element 
 in them as purely arbitrary and subject to 
 no law at all. We use persuasion in hopes 
 of moving the will, and we threaten pun- 
 ishment in hopes of frightening it into 
 submission. We recognize certain mo- 
 tives as naturally inducing to certain ac- 
 tions ; and we often regard actions, at first 
 glance apparently inexplicable, as suffi- 
 ciently explained when we discover the 
 motives which must have influenced the 
 doer. When we say that it is natural that 
 a man should act in this way or that or 
 
The Reign of Law in Nature. p/ 
 
 choose this or that, we indicate by the 
 very use of the word " natural" that hu- 
 man actions are in some way to be ac- 
 counted for, and are to be looked upon 
 as at least in part natural results of what 
 has preceded. 
 
 There are some who believe that the 
 subjection of man's will to natural law is 
 only partial, and that the previous state of 
 his mind and the motives brought to bear 
 on it will not completely account for all 
 he chooses and does; on the other hand, 
 there are those who believe that what 
 seems inexplicable in men's actions is not 
 at all to be referred to a will free in such 
 a sense as to break the uniformities of 
 nature, but to be referred to our ignorance 
 of the forces which are actually working 
 within and around men. If we knew all, 
 they say, we could see that man's actions 
 are fixed and subject to law. Evidently 
 this dispute cannot be settled in the 
 present stage of our knowledge by an ap- 
 peal to observation, for man is so compli- 
 
$2 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 cated and intricate a being, that no one 
 yet knows with sufficient exactitude the 
 forces which are bound up in him to state 
 with any certainty whether their regular 
 action will account for all he does or not. 
 It will probably be long before the dispute 
 will be settled by an appeal to experience. 
 Now, I am not at all concerned just 
 here with the question whether they are 
 right who believe that the reign of natural 
 law in external nature and in man is uni- 
 versal and without exceptions, or they who 
 believe that the order of nature is not so 
 fixed that it cannot be and is not set aside 
 by something which does not fall into the 
 chain of causes and effects. This ques- 
 tion is a very interesting one in itself; but 
 I am now discussing the argument for 
 God, and what interests me here is the 
 question : How would it affect the argu- 
 ment for God, or "would it affect it at all, 
 if nature, including man, were found to 
 be subject to fixed and unvarying law? 
 Would it do away with God ? or necessa- 
 
The Reign of Law in Nature. pj 
 
 rily changeour^yiew of Him as in close 
 personal relations with us ? The question 
 is a living one, for there are many persons 
 who think that God is revealed as breaking 
 in upon the order of nature rather than as 
 acting in and through that natural order, 
 and who are inclined to believe that a view 
 which sees in all nature an unbroken reg- 
 ularity does away with God altogether. 
 
 In answering this question I will ask 
 you to keep clearly in mind the argument 
 for God as it has been presented. You 
 remember that it was said that we pass 
 from all nature to God very much as we 
 pass by inference from man's body and its 
 actions to man's mind. It was insisted 
 that the search for minds always takes 
 place in the same general way, whether 
 the mind sought be a small one or a very 
 great one. But if the reasoning which 
 leads us to infer man's mind and that 
 which leads us to infer God are in their 
 nature similar, any view of things which 
 applies equally to man's body and to the 
 
94. A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 whole of nature must affect the two argu- 
 ments in the same way. If such a view 
 makes it impossible to infer a God, it must 
 make it impossible to infer another man's 
 mind; and if it does not destroy the ar- 
 gument for human minds it should not 
 destroy the argument for God. 
 
 Now, if we have reason to think that the 
 laws of nature are uniform and invariable, 
 and everything happens according to natu- 
 ral necessity, then of course we have 
 reason to think that man is subject to 
 this natural necessity too. We must look 
 upon every word we- hear him utter and 
 every motion we see him make as a neces- 
 sary result of what has preceded, and in 
 no sense arbitrary or spontaneous. If we 
 knew all the natural forces at work in him 
 and around him, and had some skill in 
 computation, we could predict his words 
 and acts as we can predict that an egg will 
 be broken before we have seen it touch the 
 ground. Suppose all this to be so. Would 
 we think that this human body in front of 
 
The Reign of Law in Nature. 95 
 
 us, now speaking wisely and acting reason- 
 ably, does not reveal mind, merely because 
 there is nothing irregular and lawless in 
 these words and actions ? Would we 
 doubt that a long series of benevolent acts 
 indicated a kindly spirit, even if these acts 
 were persisted in with the greatest regu- 
 larity ? Does it follow, because the bodily 
 signs of a man's thought occur in an 
 orderly manner to be explained by refer- 
 ence to the general laws of the world, that 
 they are no longer signs of his thought ? 
 The argument which proved them to be 
 such is not at all affected by their being 
 constant and regular. 
 
 If we refer to our experience of men, 
 we do not find that that increasing knowl- 
 edge of human nature which leads us to 
 look upon the unknown element in men 
 as a diminishing quantity, and to have a 
 growing expectation that such and such 
 human actions will in general follow as a 
 consequence of such and such motives, 
 we do not find that this increasing knowl- 
 
pd A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 edge of human nature as a thing at least 
 to some degree subject to uniform laws has 
 had any tendency to make us believe that 
 men's bodies do not reveal their minds. 
 Nor do we any the less believe those 
 minds to be revealed as wise or unwise, 
 good or bad. 
 
 And when we observe those who have 
 gone over to the extreme view that every- 
 thing in man, without exception, is subject 
 to natural necessity, we find that even they 
 are not in the least inclined to give up a 
 belief in other men's minds as revealed 
 through their bodies. Such people marry 
 and are given in marriage like any one else. 
 They love their children, and believe that 
 they are loved by them in return. They 
 have their friendships and their intimacies 
 and their enmities like other people. They 
 do not hesitate to use persuasion with 
 their fellows, and when they prefer a re- 
 quest, they look for it to be granted. In 
 all this they do not see any infringement 
 of natural law, and they would maintain 
 
The Reign of Law in Nature. 97 
 
 that if it is found 'that one mind can be 
 revealed to another mind and in any way 
 influence its action, the description of the 
 way in which minds thus interact may 
 properly be called a natural law, and ac- 
 cepted as an undoubted truth. Their be- 
 lief seems in no way to change their 
 practical attitude towards those about 
 them, or to make their social relations 
 less close and intimate. 
 
 I ask then, why, if the doctrine of the 
 uniformity of nature's methods does not 
 affect one's belief in the mind which is 
 revealed by that small part of nature 
 called a human body, it should affect one's 
 belief in the one great Mind revealed in 
 every part of nature ? Surely there is no 
 reason for this unjust discrimination in 
 favor of man. 
 
 Should it be said that this view would 
 at least destroy all belief in the efficacy of 
 prayer as influencing the order of events ; 
 I answer, not at all, unless it would also 
 destroy the possibility of believing that 
 
$8 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 one may ask a man a favor and have him 
 grant it because asked. If the latter can 
 be looked upon as natural, so can the 
 former. And in just the same sense. In 
 both cases it is simply a question of fact. 
 Are favors granted and prayers answered, 
 or are they not? What has the uni- 
 formity of nature to do with the ques- 
 tion? 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Eternity of Matter and the Doctrine 
 of Evolution. 
 
 JUST as in the last chapter it did not fall 
 within my purpose to decide whether the 
 reign of law is universal or subject to ex- 
 ceptions, so in the present chapter it does 
 not concern me to decide whether matter 
 and force are eternal or not, or whether 
 the doctrine of evolution is to be accepted 
 or not. I merely propose to consider 
 briefly how it would affect our argument 
 for God if these questions were to be de- 
 cided in the affirmative. This, I should 
 think, ought to be of interest even for 
 those who have little fear that the final 
 answers to the questions will be in the 
 affirmative. The White Knight had a 
 mouse-trap fastened to his saddle, as he 
 believed it would be very disagreeable to 
 have mice running about on the back of 
 
ioo A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 his horse, and yet he freely admitted that 
 it was highly improbable that mice should 
 be found in that peculiar situation. It was 
 well, he thought, to be quite secure. And 
 since the beliefs that matter and force are 
 eternal and indestructible, and that the 
 doctrine of evolution is to be accepted as 
 true, are sufficiently common beliefs in 
 our day, and many men believe that they 
 are gradually collecting evidence which 
 will prove these beliefs well grounded, it 
 would certainly be more agreeable for the 
 man who is watching the efforts to collect 
 such evidence to feel sure that, whatever 
 the event, it will not rob him of God, than 
 to fear that his belief can stand only in 
 case these investigators fail to establish 
 theirs. If he sees that the argument for 
 God remains whether these questions are 
 answered in the one way or the other, or 
 remain unanswered, he is not tempted to 
 look with sourness on sincere efforts to 
 increase human knowledge, and he can 
 await with patience and an open mind the 
 
The Eternity of Matter. 101 
 
 results of an honest inquiry. I shall try 
 in a very few words to show that the solu- 
 tion of these problems, most interesting in 
 themselves, is in no way of vital impor- 
 tance to the argument for God. 
 
 Stated plainly, the doctrine of the eter- 
 nity of matter and force means simply that 
 the system of things of which we are a 
 part has not had a beginning in time, but 
 has always existed, and passed through 
 its series of changes according to certain 
 uniform methods. The whole amount of 
 matter and force in the world is neither 
 increased nor diminished, but only under- 
 goes certain changes in form. As I have 
 already discussed the question whether 
 the uniformity and regularity of nature's 
 methods can affect the argument for God, 
 it remains only to inquire whether that 
 argument can be affected by the denial of a 
 beginning to this series of natural changes. 
 
 Now, it is evident that if a man's argu- 
 ment for God can find Him only as a re- 
 sult of a regress from effect to cause, and 
 
 9* 
 
IO2 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 from that to its cause, and so on up to the 
 cause which limits the whole series, that 
 is, only by going back to the creation of 
 things, it is evident that, if this is his 
 only way of arriving at God, in the denial 
 of a beginning of things he loses his God. 
 And since the deist, as I have shown, tries 
 to find God in just this way, he cannot 
 hold to the eternity of the world and go 
 on believing in God too. 
 
 But if, on the other hand, one finds God 
 in the world here and now, as does the 
 theist, and does not think it necessary to 
 go back to the past for evidence of his 
 existence, it is not easy to see how the 
 doctrine of the eternity of the world can 
 affect his belief. If the system of things 
 reveals God now and always, the answer 
 to the question how long the world has 
 existed will also be the answer to the 
 question how long God has been revealed 
 in the world, but it will have nothing to 
 do with the question whether He is re- 
 vealed there or not. I ask you again to 
 
The Eternity of Matter. zoj 
 
 reason about this great Mind with the 
 common sense and common justice that 
 you use in reasoning about men's minds. 
 Suppose we find in a man's walk and 
 conversation evidences of thought and in- 
 telligence. Would our discovery of the 
 fact that there had been indications of 
 thought in him for a long time in the 
 past make him seem less rational to us in 
 the present ? We can conceive, though of 
 course we cannot believe, that he did not 
 begin to reveal mind at a certain definite 
 time, but always existed much as he does 
 now. Would that at all affect the question 
 whether his mind is revealed ? Would 
 we not, if we came to such a belief con- 
 cerning him, simply add to our present 
 opinion that his mind is revealed, the 
 opinion that it always has been revealed? 
 And if the world has always existed, and 
 has always been full of evidences of reason, 
 does this not simply mean that there has 
 always been a revelation of God, and that 
 it has not merely dated from a certain 
 
104. A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 time in the past? If I insist that a mind 
 exists, and point in proof to plain indica- 
 tions of it, it can hardly be regarded as 
 a refutation of my position to maintain 
 that the series of indications is a much 
 longer one than I had supposed. We 
 have in our books on Logic a pet name 
 for refutations of this blundering nature. 
 And now to turn to the doctrine of 
 evolution and its significance for theism. 
 It is well to remember that evolution 
 means simply an unfolding. It is the 
 doctrine that what is has succeeded what 
 was according to certain uniform methods. 
 It does not imply that the later and higher 
 has been in the earlier and lower in any 
 strict sense of the word in; nor does it 
 imply that the high is not high, because 
 it has been preceded by the lower. We 
 all accept the fact that Sir Isaac Newton 
 began life as an almost bodiless, and 
 certainly almost mindless, human infant. 
 Our knowledge of what he was once 
 does not diminish our respect for what 
 
The Eternity of Matter. 105 
 
 he became later. And the theory that 
 the present condition of things has suc- 
 ceeded the past according to uniform law 
 should not in itself lessen our apprecia- 
 tion of what the world is now or of what 
 it has been. The world is what it is, 
 and the evolution question is but one of 
 method : How did the world get to be 
 what it is? 
 
 But whether there has been a gradual 
 unfolding of the system of nature accord- 
 ing to uniform methods, or whether there 
 have been breaks in its history, does not 
 the argument for God stand just the 
 same? If the evolutionist shows that 
 things are brought about with regularity 
 and by means nicely adjusted to attain 
 their ends, does this prove that nature no 
 longer reveals a mind? does it make things 
 look irrational ? The question, you see, 
 is after all one that has been answered 
 already in the decision that constancy and 
 uniformity in actions do not prevent their 
 being a revelation of mind. If the world 
 
106 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 reveals reason and the unfolding of nature 
 seems according to plan, then the fact that 
 we can observe uniformities and discover 
 laws proves only that God is not revealed 
 as arbitrary. It cannot prove that He is 
 not revealed at all. 
 
 There is, so far as I can see, only one 
 way in which the student of natural sci- 
 ence may refute our argument for God. 
 If he ever succeeds in proving that nature 
 is irrational, and that things do not reveal 
 mind, he will have answered the argument. 
 Whatever else he may succeed in proving, 
 unless he establish this, he leaves the argu- 
 ment untouched. 
 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 IN the foregoing pages I have tried to 
 make clear that the argument for God is 
 simply the natural argument for a mind 
 revealed ii\ the system of things, and I 
 have dwelt upon the fact that this argu- 
 ment is not to be regarded as subject to 
 objections which may not be urged with 
 equal force against the arguments for other 
 minds. Throughout I have insisted upon 
 the necessity of keeping in mind the anal- 
 ogy between the argument for God and 
 the reasoning which convinces us of the 
 existence of minds in other men. In the 
 light of this analogy, objections to the 
 argument from the reign of natural law, 
 from the eternity of the world, and from 
 the doctrine of evolution have been seen 
 to be quite aside from the point at issue. 
 
 And it will be well to remember that we 
 
io8 A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 may very possibly get help in any new 
 difficulties which may meet us in reflecting 
 upon the idea of God, if we will adhere 
 closely to this thought. If, for example, 
 we come upon some new problem which 
 we cannot solve, and which throws us into 
 confusion, it will be well to ask ourselves 
 whether a similar difficulty does not meet 
 us when we think about the revelation of 
 any mind to any other. If it does, and if, 
 nevertheless, we feel justified in going on 
 believing in other men's minds, we should 
 go on believing in God. This looking for 
 the difficulty in the case of human minds 
 may not solve the problem, but it will at 
 least show us that it is a much broader one 
 than we had thought, and it may strongly 
 incline us not to believe it incapable of 
 solution. 
 
 I will show what I mean by taking an 
 instance. You ask me: Where is this 
 God of whom we have been talking all 
 along? I answer: I will try to tell you, 
 just as soon as you have told me where I 
 
Conclusion. /op 
 
 will find the mind not the body, but the 
 mind of another man. Difficulties which 
 apply equally to every case in which one 
 mind is revealed to another cannot be 
 regarded as peculiarly objections to the 
 argument for God. 
 
 Now that my argument is finished, I 
 would say that all through this little book 
 I have used words in their usual senses, 
 and have remained upon what has been 
 called the ground of the common un- 
 derstanding. I have made use of such 
 phrases as " the world without us," " cause 
 and effect," " revealed in nature," " other 
 minds," and many more, without discuss- 
 ing them more than was necessary to 
 bring you to see the force of my argu- 
 ment. But the philosopher delights in a 
 microscopic analysis of just such phrases. 
 He would by no means think his task 
 finished if he should read what I have 
 written, and having gotten to the end, 
 should find that he agreed with its con- 
 clusions. He would in all probability set 
 
no A Plain Argument for God. 
 
 to work to write a much larger book than 
 mine, full of hair-splitting distinctions on 
 the subject of "self" and "not-self," and 
 queries as to how one mind can be con- 
 scious of another, or whether spirits can 
 be said to be anywhere at all. He would 
 certainly find many questions to ask, and 
 he would probably have to leave some of 
 them unanswered. 
 
 Into this debatable land it has been no 
 part of my purpose to penetrate. If the 
 reasoning of the previous chapters is good, 
 a further analysis may serve to make what 
 is dim and vague in it clear and exact, but 
 it cannot do away with any part of it. In 
 this reflection those who are not philoso- 
 phers may rest content. The interest of 
 most men in the argument for God is a 
 practical one and concerns common life. 
 For common life, the ground of the com- 
 mon understanding, if it is solid ground, 
 is good enough. 
 
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