70 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



ceptions of a producing Creator, dwelling in his 

 peculiar quarter of space called Heaven, and its 

 mechanical theory of his communication with the 

 world by way of "miracle" alone — by way, that 

 is, independent or even subversive of the process 

 from means to end in Nature.^ 



But while thus marred by mechanical limitations, 

 deism must be allowed its relative merit too. This 

 lies in the judgment it passes upon the mechanical 

 method of sensuous theism. If in the interest of 

 distinguishing the Creator from the creation, God 



pomorphism " of which nowadays we hear so much complaint, consists 

 exactly in construing the nature and action of God in terms of our 

 se7tsuous life and its conditions. 



^ I must be understood here as reflecting only upon the popular 

 thaumaturgical conceptions of the supernatural. The genuine doctrine 

 of miracle has a speculative truth at its basis, profound and irref- 

 ragable : namely, that the causal organisation of Nature — the system 

 of evolution, ever ascending from cause to differing effect — can never 

 be accounted for in terms of the sensible antecedents alone, but 

 requires the omnipresent activity of a transcendingly immanent per- 

 sonal cause; and that the system of Nature is therefore in this sense a 

 Perpetual Miracle. But the natural order flowing from this Intelligible 

 Miracle is immutable, and irreconcilable with " miracle " in the usual 

 sense. [I would now add (1899) that this immanent personal cause 

 is, at closest hand to Nature, human nature; or, more generally, the 

 intelligences other than God, in cooperation with the remoter and 

 quite indirect causality of God as their Type and Ideal. The operation 

 of the non-divine causation in Nature is alone direct and efficient; the 

 divine causation is indirect and final only. But see, for the fuller 

 account of this, the essays on "The Limits of Evolution" and "The 

 Harmony of Determinism and Freedom."] 



