34 ULTIMATE EELIGIOUS IDEAS. 



form; and tins involves the idea of a change without 

 a cause— a thing of which no idea is possible. Thus 

 the terms of this hypothesis do not stand for real 

 thoughts; but merely suggest the vaguest symbols in- 

 capable of any interpretation. Moreover, even were 

 it true that potential existence is conceivable as a different 

 thing from actual existence; .and that the transition from 

 the one to the other can be mentally realized as a self-deter- 

 mined change; we should still be no forwarder: the prob- 

 lem would simply be removed a step back. For whence the 

 potential existence? This would just as much require ac- 

 counting for as actual existence; and just the same difficul- 

 ties would meet us. Respecting the origin of such a latent 

 power, no other suppositions could be made than those above 

 named — self-existence, self-creation, creation by external 

 agency. The self-existence of a potential universe is no 

 more conceivable than we have found the self-existence of 

 the actual universe to be. The self-creation of such a poten- 

 tial universe would involve over again the difficulties here 

 stated— would imply behind this potential universe a more 

 remote potentiality; and so on in an infinite series, leaving 

 us at last no forwarder than at first. While to assign as the 

 source of this potential universe an external agency, would 

 be to introduce the notion of a potential universe for no pur- 

 pose whatever. 



There remains to be examined the commonly-received or 

 theistic hypothesis— creation by external agency. Alike in 

 the rudest creeds and in the cosmogony long current among 

 ourselves, it is assumed that the genesis of the Heavens and 

 the Earth is affected somewhat after the manner in which a 

 workman shapes a piece of furniture. And this assumption 

 is made not by theologians only, but by the immense ma- 

 jority of philosophers, past and present. Equally in the 

 writings of Plato, and in those of not a few living men 

 of science, we find it taken for granted that there is 

 an analogy between the process of creation and the process 



