338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



entertained. It will suffice if I take the conceptions which have 

 arisen in races that have entertained the system of religious 

 beliefs Mr. Balfour defends. Without dwelling on the contrasts 

 between the conceptions of God current in early Hebrew times 

 and those current in later Hebrew times, and without dwelling 

 on the contrasts between the highly anthropomorphic ideas which 

 prevailed in mediaeval days throughout Europe and those less 

 anthropomorphic ones which prevail in our days, it will suffice to 

 name, side by side, the diverse conceptions existing among our- 

 selves at present. There is the conceived divine character which 

 most Protestants and all Catholics imply by the belief in an eter- 

 nal hell ; and there is that widely different one implied in the fol- 

 lowers of Maurice, who reject that belief. There are the views of 

 Trinitarians and Unitarians, so definitely unlike ; and there are 

 two other widely unlike views that of the Quakers, and that of 

 their fellow Christians who laugh at them for believing that the 

 Christian ideal must be conformed to. Now, if from the " depths 

 of unfathomable mystery " the conception of " a rational Author " 

 of "the ordered system of phenomena" has emerged into human 

 consciousness, there arises in the first place the question How 

 come there to have so emerged the different conceptions which 

 men have entertained from early days when God was said to have 

 appeared to various persons, down to our late days when the- 

 ophany is nonsense ? Then, seeing that many of these concep- 

 tions are in direct antagonism, there arises the question How 

 are we to decide which must be rejected ? And once more, if out 

 of all of them one only has truly emerged, in what manner shall 

 we identify it ? To all which unanswerable inquiries add one 

 more. Assuming that the conception of " a rational Author," as 

 existing in Mr. Balfour and those who are on the same high plane 

 of thought, is the only true one, then, if possession of this concep- 

 tion is to be shown, it is requisite that there should be specified 

 some mentally-representable traits which constitute it. And if 

 the asserted traits are unrepresentable if being, as they must be, 

 abstractions of human attributes existing unlocalized and multi- 

 plied by infinity, they are unthinkable then the assertion of 

 their existence becomes nothing but the blank form of a thought 

 expresses a pseud-idea. 



A kindred result is reached if, not content with the word 

 " emerges," we try to imagine a process answering to that word. 

 The word implies some medium out of which some existence 

 previously concealed gradually appears at first vaguely and at 

 last distinctly. Can Mr. Balfour say that, apart from any im- 

 pressions given to him in the course of education and subsequent 

 culture, such a representable emergence has taken place in him ? 

 If so, one implication is that his mind differs, not in elevation 



