CH. ii. J&quot; ANTHROPOMORPHIC THEISM. 395 



and legislates, is simply to represent him as a product of 

 evolution. The definition of intelligence being &quot;the con 

 tinuous adjustment of specialized inner relations to special 

 ized outer relations,&quot; it follows that to represent the Deity 

 as intelligent is to surround Deity with an environment, and 

 thus to destroy its infinity and its self-existence. The 

 eternal Power whereof the web of phenomena is but the 

 visible garment becomes degraded into a mere strand in the 

 web of phenomena; and the Cosmos, in exchange for the 

 loss of its infinite and inscrutable God, receives an anomalous 

 sovereign of mythologic pedigree. 



Nor can the theologian find a ready avenue of escape 

 from these embarrassments in the assumption that there is 

 such a thing as disembodied intelligence which is not 

 definable as a correspondence between an organism and 

 its environment, and which is therefore not a product of 

 evolution. Experience does not afford the data for testing 

 such a hypothesis, and to meet it with denial would accord 

 ingly be unphilosophic in the extreme. That there may be 

 such a thing as disembodied or unemboclied Spirit will be 

 denied by no one, save by those shallow materialists who 

 fancy that the possibilities of existence are measured by the 

 narrow limitations of their petty knowledge. But such an 

 admission can be of no use to the theologian in establishing 

 his teleological hypothesis. For even granting the existence 

 af such unembodied Spirit, the moment we ascribe to it 

 intelligence we are using words to which experience has 

 assigned definite meanings, and we are not at liberty to play 

 fast and loose with these meanings. When we speak of 

 &quot;intelligence,&quot; we either mean nothing at all, or we mean 

 that which we know as intelligence. But that which we 

 know as intelligence implies a circumscribed and limited 

 form of Being adapting its internal processes to other 

 processes going on beyond its limits. Save as describing 

 such a correspondence between circumscribed Being and its 



