PHILOSOPHY
339
reasons would be in duty bound to show more general convincing-
ness. Causation is indeed too obscure a principle to bear the weight
of the whole structure of theology. As for the argument from
design, see how Darwinian ideas have revolutionized it. Conceived
as we now conceive them, as so many fortunate escapes from almost
limitless processes of destruction, the benevolent adaptations which
we find in Nature suggest a deity very different from the one who
figured in the earlier versions of the argument.
1
The fact is that
1
It must not be forgotten that any form of disorder in the world might, by the design
argument, suggest a God for just that kind of disorder. The truth is that any state of things
whatever that can be named is logically susceptible of teleological interpretation. The ruins
of the earthquake at Lisbon, for example: the whole of past history had to be planned exactly
as it was to bring about in the fullness of time just that particular arrangement of débris
of masonry, furniture, and once living bodies. No other train of causes would have been
sufficient. And so of any other arrangement, bad or good, which might as a matter of fact be
found resulting anywhere from previous conditions. To avoid such pessimistic consequences
and save its beneficent designer, the design argument accordingly invokes two other prin-
ciples, restrictive in their operation. The first is physical: Nature’s forces tend of their own
accord only to disorder and destruction, to heaps of ruins, not to architecture. This principle,
though plausible at first sight, seems, in the light of recent biology, to be more and more
improbable. The second principle is one of anthropomorphic interpretation. No arrangement
that for us is “disorderly” can possibly have been an object of design at all. This principle is
of course a mere assumption in the interests of anthropomorphic Theism.
When one views the world with no definite theological bias one way or the other, one sees
that order and disorder, as we now recognize them, are purely human inventions. We are inter-
ested in certain types of arrangement, useful, æsthetic, or moral, — so interested that whenever
we find them realized, the fact emphatically rivets our attention. The result is that we work
over the contents of the world selectively. It is overflowing with disorderly arrangements
from our point of view, but order is the only thing we care for and look at, and by choosing, one
can always find some sort of orderly arrangement in the midst of any chaos. If I should throw
down a thousand beans at random upon a table, I could doubtless, by eliminating a sufficient
number of them, leave the rest in almost any geometrical pattern you might propose to me,
and you might then say that that pattern was the thing prefigured beforehand, and that the
other beans were mere irrelevance and packing material. Our dealings with Nature are just
like this. She is a vast plenum in which our attention draws capricious lines in innumerable
directions. We count and name whatever lies upon the special lines we trace, whilst the other
things and the untraced lines are neither named nor counted. There are in reality infinitely
more things “unadapted” to each other in this world than there are things “adapted”; infinitely
more things with irregular relations than with regular relations between them. But we look for
the regular kind of thing exclusively, and ingeniously discover and preserve it in our memory.
It accumulates with other regular kinds, until the collection of them fills our encyclopædias.
Yet all the while between and around them lies an infinite anonymous chaos of objects that
no one ever thought of together, of relations that never yet attracted our attention.
The facts of order from which the physico-theological argument starts are thus easily
susceptible of interpretation as arbitrary human products. So long as this is the case, although
of course no argument against God follows, it follows that the argument for him will fail to
constitute a knockdown proof of his existence. It will be convincing only to those who on
other grounds believe in him already.
340THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
these arguments do but follow the combined suggestions of the
facts and of our feeling. They prove nothing rigorously. They only
corroborate our preexistent partialities.
If philosophy can do so little to establish God’s existence, how
stands it with her efforts to define his attributes? It is worth while
to look at the attempts of systematic theology in this direction.
Since God is First Cause, this science of sciences says, he differs from all
his creatures in possessing existence a se. From this “a-se-ity” on God’s part,
theology deduces by mere logic most of his other perfections. For instance,
he must be both necessary and absolute, cannot not be, and cannot in any
way be determined by anything else. This makes Him absolutely unlimited
from without, and unlimited also from within; for limitation is non-being;
and God is being itself. This unlimitedness makes God infinitely perfect.
Moreover, God is One, and Only, for the infinitely perfect can admit no
peer. He is Spiritual, for were He composed of physical parts, some other
power would have to combine them into the total, and his aseity would thus
be contradicted. He is therefore both simple and non-physical in nature.
He is simple metaphysically also, that is to say, his nature and his exist-
ence cannot be distinct, as they are in finite substances which share their
formal natures with one another, and are individual only in their material
aspect. Since God is one and only, his essentia and his esse must be given
at one stroke. This excludes from his being all those distinctions, so familiar
in the world of finite things, between potentiality and actuality, substance
and accidents, being and activity, existence and attributes. We can talk, it
is true, of God’s powers, acts, and attributes, but these discriminations are
only “virtual,” and made from the human point of view. In God all these
points of view fall into an absolute identity of being.
This absence of all potentiality in God obliges Him to be immutable.
He is actuality, through and through. Were there anything potential about
Him, He would either lose or gain by its actualization, and either loss
or gain would contradict his perfection. He cannot, therefore, change.
Furthermore, He is immense, boundless; for could He be outlined in space,
He would be composite, and this would contradict his indivisibility. He
is therefore omnipresent, indivisibly there, at every point of space. He is
similarly wholly present at every point of time, — in other words eternal.
For if He began in time, He would need a prior cause, and that would
contradict his aseity. If He ended, it would contradict his necessity. If He
went through any succession, it would contradict his immutability.
He has intelligence and will and every other creature-perfection, for we
have them, and effectus nequit superare causam. In Him, however, they are