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his elbow during the entertainment, will insist on taking as your standpoint of observation, not the mental attributes o man, but the physical basis of these attributes, you will not only kill the will as a real existence, but you will also kill intellect, poetry, music, truth, and all ranks and differences of thought and sentiment. In a word, you will destroy every 'category' of the mind, and will leave nothing in the Universe but a dead hulk, a barren desert of matter and motion; and as even these are known only through the senses, they too may be denied, for there is no reason why the Universe should exist in reality as the particular constitution of our senses makes it appear to us.

Such is the chaos into which the world would fall were it looked at from the Materialistic point of view. To get its harmonies (and, after all, these harmonies, whether they are brought out of matter or spirit, are about all the truth we can ever hope to reach in this life), it is evident that we must not look at what can be theoretically questioned or denied, but at what must be practically believed. I am bound to believe in the existence of the external world, and in my search for truth to build on it as on a real and solid foundation, although philosophers may deny that it has any real existence in itself. I practically believe in the difference between virtue and vice, magnanimity and meanness of spirit, self-sacrifice and selfishness, although Materialists, reducing them all alike to the vibrations of indifferent molecules, are logicaliy bound to deny any real difference between them. I practically believe in the real existence of intelligence, beauty, music, poetry, and truth, although these, too, like the rest, may all be resolved into the movements of unmeaning cells and forces. In the same way, therefore, I am bound to believe in the real existence of will, although Materialists affirm that it is only the shadow and accompaniment of molecular motion in nervous centres. If, then, the harmony of the mind demands a cause for the visible Universe, and if the only experience I have of cause is the

mental act of will, it is evident that I am bound, by the necessity of the mind, to regard the Universe as the effect of an intelligent Will or Deity. Not that I know that the Deity has a real existence, any more than I know that the external world has a real existence; all I know is that I am so constituted that to give harmony to the mind, I must believe in His existence, otherwise all my consolidated beliefs would fall into chaos and ruin. Nor do I feel it incumbent on me to explain how a will or mind can be the cause of the world. I do not know how one unit of matter can attract another while repelling it, nevertheless I am compelled to believe it. I do not know how the mind is united with the matter of the brain and its molecular activity. It is not connected by the relation of cause and effect in the scientific sense, for that demands equivalence between the two terms, and mind can have no equivalence either in nature or force with brain substance. It is enough that I must believe in the fact of the connexion. I do not know how my will can be the cause of my bodily movements, it is enough that I should believe the fact. So, too, in the same way, it is enough that I should believe in the Deity without explaining how He is the Cause of Things.

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Besides, as the material Universe depends for its existence on the constitution of our minds, it is not necessary that I should account for matter, but only for that on which matter depends, viz., mind; and that an intelligent mind should be the cause of an intelligent mind is not impossible to realise.

But we still have to ask, if real causation involves the idea of will, what is that scientific causation which is equally authoritative? In reply, I would say, that the relation of antecedent and consequent which constitutes what is called scientific causation, although a necessary relation, is not a relation of cause and effect at all. To make this clear, let us imagine the Universe in process of evolution from its nebulous condition onward through the formation of stars and planets,. down to the appearance of animals and plants and man. Now,

in the language of Science, the forces at work in the world of yesterday are said to be the causes of the forces seen in the phenomena of to-day, which forces are in turn the causes of the phenomena of to-morrow. That is to say, the same quantity of matter and motion in the world of to-day was there yesterday, and will be to-morrow, only under changed forms. To say, therefore, that the world of yesterday, to day, and to-morrow are connected by a necessary bond called causation, is simply to say that they are connected by the necessity there is of the same quantity of force remaining the same, in spite of changes of form. At bottom, it amounts to nothing more than the necessary but identical proposition that two and two always make or cause four, or that four is always the result or effect of two and two or their equivalents. This is no more a case of real causation than if you took a piece of clay in one shape and squeezed it into another, and then again into a third, and called the first shape the cause of the second, and the second of the third. The truth is, the term cause, as used in Science, is merely a convenient expression, it is not a philosophical one. Scientific causes are only orderly effects. The stone thrown into the air falls to the ground. Why? Because the attraction of gravitation brings it down, that is to say, only because all other things are seen to fall under the like circumstances. But to the question why things should fall at all, why gravitation should take part in the system of things at all, no answer can be given but that so it stands in the will of God. Were still further proof needed that scientific causation is not real causation, it would be found in the fact that Science uses the words cause and law interchangeably. For example, when the law of gravitation was discovered, many movements of the heavenly bodies that had hitherto been inexplicable were said to be explained, so that if a stone fell to the ground and the cause was asked, it was said to be gravitation. It is the same at the present time when any new law is discovered; for it enables us to assign causes to whole groups of previously

obscure effects. If cause and law are in Science thus interchangeable, it is evident that scientific causation is not real causation at all; for what has the mere order of phenomena to do with the real causation of them?

CHAPTER III.

A CONFUSION OF PLANES.

AVING shown in the last chapter that Comte cannot

logically get rid of the Deity, I now proceed to the second division of the subject, and shall endeavour to show that, even if he could get rid of Him, he could not make Humanity the object of human worship. That Humanity is not the natural object of Religion, and by no logical artifice can be made so, will become apparent if we glance at the religions of the world historically. No one, I presume, will deny that in Fetischism the object of worship was not the star, animal, or stone, as such, but the star, animal, or stone, as believed to be the seat of some indwelling will or spirit, which will or spirit was the real object of worship. So, too, in Polytheism it was not the thunderbolt, the tempest, or the fire that was the real object of prayer and propitiation, but the invisible will of Jove, Neptune, or Vulcan, believed to be behind these phenomena and controlling them. And, as we all know, the God of Monotheism is not anything visible or tangible, but is that great Mind and Will that presides over the destinies of the Universe. If, then, the various historical religions have had as objects of worship those invisible Beings that transcend the sphere of experience, it follows that, logically, the object of any future religion must lie in the same plane of the transcendental and invisible. Even Spencer, the most inexorable of realists, admits this when he says that, if knowledge cannot monopolise consciousness, if it must always continue possible for the mind to dwell upon that which transcends knowledge, then there can never cease to be a place for something of the nature of Religion; since Religion, under all its forms, is distinguished

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