266 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



could only conceive of its maker in watch terras, or else in 

 terms altogether inferior, the watch would plainly be right 

 in speaking of its maker as a, to it, inconceivably perfect 

 kind of watch, acknowledging, at the same time, that this, 

 its conception of him, was utterly inadequate^ although the 

 best its inferior nature allowed it to form. For, if, instead 

 of so conceiving of its maker, it refused to make use of these 

 relative perfections as a makeshift, and so necessarily 

 thought of him as amorphous metal, or mere oil, or by the 

 help of any other inferior conception which a watch might 

 be imagined capable of entertaining, that watch would be 

 wrong indeed. For man can much more properly be com- 

 pared with, and has much more affinity to, a perfect watch 

 in full activity than to a mere piece of metal, or drop of oil. 

 But the watch is even more in the right still, for its maker, 

 man, virtually has the cogged wheels, springs, escapements, 

 oil, etc., which the watch's conception has been supposed to 

 attribute to him ; inasmuch as all these parts must have 

 existed as distinct ideas in the human watchmaker's mind 

 before he could actually construct the clock formed by him. 

 Nor is even this all, for, by the hypothesis, the watch thinks. 

 It must, therefore, think of its maker as " a thinking being," 

 and in this it is absolutely and completely right. Either, 

 therefore, the hypothesis is absurd, or it actually demon- 

 strates the very position it was chosen to refute. Unques- 

 tionably, then, on the mere ground taken by Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer himself, if we are compelled to think of the First 

 Cause either in human terms (but with human imperfections 

 abstracted and human perfections carried to the highest con- 

 ceivable degree), or, on the other hand, in terms decidedly 

 inferior, such as those are driven to who think of Him, but 

 decline to accept as a help the term " personality," there 



10 In this criticism on Mr. Herbert Spencer, the author finds he has 

 been anticipated by Mr. James Martineau. (See " Essays," vol i., p. 

 208.) 



