Page:From Rome to Rationalism (1896).djvu/11

Rh must first learn independently that the first cause was capable of prevision, if they are proved to have been caused at all. Thus it appears that no specific argument can be drawn from the complexity of organic structures, or from the order and harmony of the inorganic world. After reading Paul Janet’s classical work on the subject, “Les Causes Finales,” I came to the conclusion that it was quite useless, apart from the influence of evolution.

I now come to the argument which did support my Theistic beliefs for a considerable period—the metaphysical argument. Uneducated people are frequently heard to remark that they think of God mainly as the maker of the universe; their mind recognizes its insufficiency, and postulates a creator to explain its existence. It seemed to me that this position was confirmed on deeper philosophical inquiry, and that thus, even admitting the great world to be the necessary outcome of a primitive nebula, whose condensation sufficiently explained its structure and its contents, still we were bound to recognize a higher principle beyond the nebula—the author of its existence, its properties, its motion and primitive disposition. Thus what was lost in teleology was more than compensated. I could not enthuse with special emphasis over the marvels of the microscope and telescope, for I knew too well the secular process of development that explained them; but the whole world seemed now to testify to a higher power, the grain of sand as eloquently as the starry universe, and I thought I had here a firm basis of Theistic belief which no progress of science would ever disturb. However, I felt I had not yet reached the deepest roots of the argument, and doubt and misgiving periodically took possession of me. When one is engaged in ministerial and professorial work in London it is difficult to find an opportunity for the severe task of honestly and thoroughly examining the bases of belief. Last summer the rectorship of a small college in the country was offered to me, which afforded me the necessary leisure and retirement. It was then that I finally abandoned all hope of finding a basis for Theistic belief.

The metaphysical argument, or argument from causality, is frequently formulated in an obviously sophistical manner, just as the principle of causality itself is often a mere tautology. In its improved form the principle runs, “Whatever begins to exist has a cause,” and consequently the non-eternity of the world would have to be proved before the principle could be applied. I was at one time under the impression that the non-eternity of the world could be proved, but I soon came to recognize in the argument an ingenious play upon words, such as are notoriously common in scholastic philosophy. In endeavouring to widen the application of the principle, Leibnitz discovered that it really sprang from a deeper and more universal principle, “There is nothing without a sufficient reason,” and this became the basis of the Theistic