2/0 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



this cosmic impersonal or super-personal God, or else 

 by no God at all. But I confess that the logic of such 

 cries, whether agnostic or pantheistic, seems very- 

 queer to me. For what is the doctrine of evolution, 

 as it has now taken definite form at the hands of its 

 illustrious promoters, but the doctrine of the ever- 

 growing reasonableness of things .■' Human reason, 

 in short, in the stadium of its history which is char- 

 acteristic of our day, has arrived at a view of Nature 

 and natural processes that regards two great matters 

 as settled. In definitive opposition to the philosophy 

 sometimes called phenomenalism and sometimes pos- 

 itivism, of which Comte may be taken as the repre- 

 sentative, the evolutional view first insists that sound 

 reason presumes an Eternal Ground of things, distinct 

 from all phenomena, an Omnipresent Energy which 

 is their universal cause ; and then it shows, secondly, 

 by evidences the more convincing in proportion as 

 the minds considering them are more familiar with 

 detailed phenomena of every sort, that the manifesta- 

 tions of this Energy exhibit a steadfast march toward 

 the establishment of a world not of mere mechanical 

 and scientific rationality, but of that infinitely higher 

 rationality which we name justice and benevolence. 

 So far towards our desired goal, then, the settled 

 results of evolutional theory might seem to go. But 

 it is just at this point that the seeker after proofs of 

 God needs to observe a critical caution. The ordi- 



