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on pp. 75, 76 of his Trial of Theism, 1858. points," he says, "are to be noticed. Foster puts a strict, an arbitrary, and an absolute sense upon the word 'denial.' Next, that he introduces a false element into the argument-that of personal knowledge-which is forbidden to the atheist when he introduces it into reasoning. A single remark will show the fallacy of this assumption. It is quite true that we do not 'know' that God does not exist; it is also true that no theist knows that he does exist. If I ask a theist the question, Have you any actual knowledge through the senses that God exists? he will probably tell me that I am both ignorant and presumptuous. He will remind me that no man hath seen God at any time.' He will tell me that the existence of Deity is not a fact of the senses-that it is not a matter of knowledge, but a matter of revelation, or an argument from analogy-a logical inference or an intuition-or a feeling-or a question of probability, when we reason inductively from causes to effects-or a 'necessity of the intellect' when speculation tires on the wing, and thought has exhausted its utmost force. therefore, the theist is without the knowledge that God does exist, why should Foster demand of the atheist the knowledge that God does not exist? If the theist refuses the test of eyesight for his affirmation, why does he demand it of the atheist for his denial'? If the theist may use argument, why not the atheist? If the theist may reason and can reason only on the evidence of the intellect, why do Foster, Chalmers, and all divines demand from the atheist evidence of the senses? The case fairly stated stands thus: The theist says, all things considered-all present argument weighed—it is clear to me that God exists. The atheist says, all things

If,

considered-all present argument weighed-it appears to me that the infinite secret is beyond our finite powers to penetrate. Foster cannot be said to recognise this fact. He refutes our position by evading it; and those who do not know, or do not care to discern what it is, assume a question settled which indeed is not truly touched."

It often happens that even able and candid men attempt to refute arguments which they have failed to understand. Of this there could not be a clearer and more striking, almost startling, instance than these words of Mr Holyoake. It is impossible to read them without perceiving that, when he wrote them, he had not the most remote conception of what Foster meant or aimed at. He plainly did not perceive that Foster's argument was in no degree or respect directed against critical atheism against what Mr Holyoake calls "our position "--but entirely and exclusively against absolute or dogmatic atheism. Failing in some inexplicable way to perceive this, he naturally fell into those curious mistakes which he presents as criticisms.

Chalmers's restatement of Foster's argument is presented in the following passage: "To be able to say that there is a God, we may have only to look abroad on some definite territory, and point to the vestiges that are given of His power and His presence somewhere. To be able to say that there is no God, we must walk the whole expanse of infinity, and ascertain by observation that such vestiges are to be found nowhere. Grant that no trace of Him can be discerned in that quarter of contemplation which our puny optics have explored, does it follow that, throughout all immensity, a Being with the essence and sovereignty of a God is nowhere to be found? Because through our loopholes of communi

cation with that small portion of external nature which is before us, we have not seen or ascertained a God, must we therefore conclude of every unknown and untrodden vastness in this illimitable universe that no Divinity is there? Or because, through the brief successions of our little day, these heavens have not once broken silence, is it therefore for us to speak to all the periods of that eternity which is behind us, and to say that never hath a God come forth with the unequivocal tokens of His existence? Ere we can say that there is a God, we must have seen, on that portion of nature to which we have access, the print of His footsteps, or have had direct intimation from Himself, or been satisfied by the authentic memorials of His converse with our species in other days. But ere we can say that there is no God, we must have roamed over all nature, and seen that no mark of a Divine footstep was there; and we must have gotten intimacy with every existent spirit in the universe, and learned from each that never did a revelation of the Deity visit him; and we must have searched, not into the records of one solitary planet, but into the archives of all worlds, and thence gathered that, throughout the wide realms of immensity, not one exhibition of a reigning and living God ever has been made. . To make this out, we should need to travel abroad over the surrounding universe till we had exhausted it, and to search backward through all the hidden recesses of eternity; to traverse in every direction the plains of infinitude, and sweep the outskirts of that space which is itself interminable; and then bring back to this little world of ours the report of a universal blank, wherein we had not met with one manifestation or one movement of a presiding God. For man not to

know of a God, he has only to sink beneath the level of our common nature. But to deny Him, he must be a God himself. He must arrogate the ubiquity and omniscience of the Godhead."-Natural Theology, vol. i. b. i. ch. ii.

NOTE III., page 19.

PHYSICUS.

In A Candid Examination of Theism' by "Physicus," the argumentation in my previous volume has been subjected to a lengthened examination (see "Supplementary Essay II.," pp. 152-180). It is not, perhaps, very necessary, yet it may not be altogether undesirable, to make a few remarks on the criticisms with which I have been honoured.

Physicus has withdrawn his faith from theism and transferred it to the metaphysical physics expounded by Mr Herbert Spencer, but pronounced scientifically indefensible by such physicists as Sir W. Thomson, ClerkMaxwell, Balfour Stewart, Tait, &c. He manifestly desires to be impartial, but is far from very successful in this respect. Thus, at the very outset of his work he tells us that, "with the partial exception of Mr Mill, no competent writer has hitherto endeavoured, once for all, to settle the long-standing question of the rational probability of theism;" that "a favourite piece of apologetic juggling is that of first demolishing atheism, pantheism, materialism, &c., by successively calling upon them to explain the mystery of self-existence, and then tacitly

assuming that the need of such an explanation is absent in the case of theism-as though the attribute in question were more conceivable when posited in a Deity than when posited elsewhere ;" and that "another argument, or semblance of an argument, is the very prevalent one, 'Our heart requires a God; therefore it is probable that there is a God."" The first of these statements virtually pronounces incompetent all writers on natural theology, except Mr Mill and Physicus; the second ascribes to theism a mode of reasoning which it has never employed; and the third travesties the argument which it declares to be prevalent. Such errors are extremely common in the pages of Physicus. He is, nevertheless, an interest

ing writer.

His objections to the reasoning by which I attempt to show that on no plausible theory of the nature of matter can it be concluded to be self-existent, or anything more. than an effect, arise entirely from overlooking the hypothetical and disjunctive character of my argumentation. Thus, for example, he censures my having "adopted the absurd argument" by which Professor Clerk-Maxwell endeavours to show that atoms cannot have been made by any of the processes called natural, and thinks it relevant to assert that the atomic theory is probably not true. Why, my approval of Professor Clerk-Maxwell's argument is expressly stated to be conditioned by the supposition that the atomic theory of the ultimate nature of matter is true, while I have nowhere indicated that I myself adopt that theory or prefer it to others. The same remark applies to his criticism of the argument founded on the vortex-ring hypothesis of the origin of matter, as to which he has further failed to perceive that it rests on the idea of a perfect fluid. His notion that

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