428 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [FT. in. 



actions conform to law, what is there left for God to do ? * 

 If not formally repudiated, is he not thrust back into the 

 past eternity, as an unknowable source of things, which is 

 postulated for form s sake, but might as well, for all practical 

 purposes, be omitted ? 



The reply is that the difficulty is one which theology has 

 created for itself. It is not science, but theology, which has 

 thrust back Divine action to some nameless point in the 

 past eternity and left nothing for God to do in the present 

 world. For the whole difficulty lies in the assumption of 

 the material universe as a &quot; datum objective to God,&quot; and in 

 the consequent distinction between &quot;Divine action&quot; and 

 &quot; natural law,&quot; a distinction for which science is in nowise 

 responsible. The tendency of modern scientific inquiry, 

 whether working in the region of psychology or in that 

 of transcendental physics, is to abolish this distinction, and 

 to regard &quot; natural law &quot; as merely a synonym of &quot; Divine 

 action.&quot; And since Berkeley s time the conception of the 

 material universe as a &quot; datum objective to God &quot; is one 

 which can hardly be maintained on scientific grounds. It is 

 scientific inquiry, working quite independently of theology, 

 which has led us to the conclusion that all the dynamic 

 phenomena of Nature constitute but the multiform reve 

 lation of an Omnipresent Power that is not identifiable with 

 Nature. And in this conclusion there is no room left for 

 the difficulty which baffles contemporary theology. The 

 scientific inquirer may retort upon the theologian : Once 

 really adopt the conception of an ever-present God, without 

 whom not a sparrow falls to the ground, and it becomes self- 



1 &quot;Illos omnes Deum aut saltern Dei providentiam tollere putant, qui res 

 et miracula per causas naturales expl leant aut intelligere student.&quot; Spinoza, 

 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, vi. Opera, iii. 86. &quot;Oy yp -fiveixwro TOVS 

 tfivffiKovs Kal /xeTecopoAeV^os r6re KaXovpfvovs, &s fls alrias d\6yovs Kal Svvdueis 

 a7rpo*/07?TOus Kal KaT^vayKaff/j-eva irddrj SiarpifiovTas r6 dftov.&quot; Plutarch, 

 Nikias, cap. 23. The complaint, it will be seen, is the same in modern that 

 it was in ancient times. Compare Plutarch, Perikles, cap. 6; Cicero, Tusc, 

 Disp. L 13, Opera, ed. Nobbe, torn, via, p. 299. 



