But though a bodily form and substance similar to that of man, has long sinceceased, among cultivated races, to be a literally-conceived attribute ofthe Ultimate Cause -- though the grosser human desires have been also rejectedas unfit elements of the conception -- though there is some hesitation inascribing even the higher human feelings, save in idealized shapes; yet itis still thought not only proper, but imperative, to ascribe the most abstractqualities of our nature. To think of the Creative Power as in all respectsanthropomorphous, is now considered impious by men who yet hold themselvesbound to think of the Creative. Power as in some respects anthropomorphous;and who do not see that the one proceeding is but an evanescent form of theother. And then, most marvellous of all, this course is persisted in evenby those who contend that we are wholly unable to frame any conception whateverof the Creative Power. After it has been shown that every supposition respectingthe genesis of the Universe commits us to alternative impossibilities ofthought -- after it has been shown why by the very constitution of our minds,we are debarred from thinking of the Absolute; it is still asserted thatwe ought to think of the Absolute thus and thus. In all ways we find thruston us the truth, that we are not permitted to know -- nay are not even permittedto conceive that Reality which is behind the veil of Appearance; and yetit is said to be our duty to believe (and in so far to conceive) that thisReality exists in a certain defined manner. Shall we call this reverence? or shall we call it the reverse?
Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious. Through the printedand spoken thoughts of religious teachers, may everywhere be traced a professedfamiliarity with the ultimate mystery of things, which, to say the leastof it, is anything but congruous with the accompanying expressions of humility.
The attitude thus assumed can be fitly represented only by further developinga simile long current in theological controversies -- the simile of the watch.
If for a moment we made the grotesque supposition that the tickings and othermovements of a watch constituted a kind of consciousness; and that a watchpossessed of such a consciousness, insisted on regarding the watchmaker'sactions as determined like its own by springs and escapements; we shouldsimply complete a parallel of which religious teachers think much. And werewe to suppose that a watch not only formulated the cause of its existencein these mechanical terms, but held that watches were bound out of reverenceso to formulate this cause, and even vituperated, as atheistic watches, anythat did not venture so to formulate it; we should merely illustrate thepresumption of theologians by carrying their own argument a step further.
A few extracts will bring home to the reader the justice of this comparison.
We are told, for example, by one of high repute among religious thinkersthat the Universe is "the manifestation and abode of a Free Mind, likeour own; embodying His personal thought in its adjustments, realizing Hisown ideal in its phenomena, just as we express our inner faculty and characterthrough the natural language of an external life. In this view, we interpretNature by Humanity; we find the key to her aspects in such purposes and affectionsas our own consciousness enables us to conceive; we look everywhere for physicalsignals of an ever-living Will; and decipher the universe as the autobiographyof an Infinite Spirit, repeating itself in miniature within our Finite Spirit."The same writer goes still further. He not only thus parallels the assimilationof the watchmaker to the watch, -- he not only thinks the created can "decipher""the autobiography" of the Creating; but he asserts that the necessarylimits to the one are necessary limits to the other. The primary qualitiesof bodies, he says, "belong eternally to the material datum objectiveto God" and control his acts; while the secondary ones are "productsof pure Inventive Reason and Determining Will" -- constitute "therealm of Divine originality." * * * "While on this Secondary fieldHis Mind and ours are thus contrasted, they meet in resemblance again uponthe Primary; for the evolutions of deductive Reason there is but one trackpossible to all intelligences; no merum arbitrium can interchange the falseand true, or make more than one geometry, one scheme of pure Physics, forall worlds; and the Omnipotent Architect Himself, in realizing the Kosmicalconception, in shaping the orbits out of immensity and determining seasonsout of eternity, could but follow the laws of curvature, measure and proportion."That is to say the Ultimate Cause is like a human mechanic, not only as "shaping"the "material datum objective to" Him, but also as being obligedto conform to the necessary properties of that datum. Nor is this all. Therefollows some account of "the Divine psychology," to the extentof saying that "we learn" "the character of God -- the orderof affections in Him" from "the distribution of authority in thehierarchy of our impulses." In other words, it is alleged that the UltimateCause has desires that are to be classed as higher and lower like our own.*<fn* These extracts are from an article entitled " Nature and God,"published in the National Review for October, 1860, by Dr. Martineau.>
