COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



wholly incapable of representing in thought. In 

 the second place, granting that the universe was 

 made from nothing by an external agency, we 

 are compelled to ask whence came this agency ? 

 We must either admit for it another extrinsic 

 cause still further back, and so on forever ; or 

 we must regard it as self-existing, in which case 

 we are again brought face to face with the same 

 ultimate difficulties which attend upon the athe- 

 istic hypothesis. For, as Mr. F. W. Newman 

 pbserves, " a God uncaused and existing from 

 eternity is quite as incomprehensible as a world 

 uncaused and existing from eternity." Which 

 conception is the more likely to be true, I re- 

 peat, does not for the present concern us. What 

 we have now to notice is merely the incapa- 

 city of the human intellect for realizing either 

 the one or the other. In spite of their great 

 apparent diversity, the atheistic, pantheistic, 

 and theistic hypotheses all contain, in one form 

 or another, the same fundamental assumption. 

 Sooner or later they all require us to conceive 

 some form of existence which has had neither 

 cause nor beginning ; and to do this is impos- 

 sible. 



Nevertheless, in spite of the impossibility of 

 conceiving it, this fundamental assumption is 

 one which we are compelled to adopt, unless 

 we abstain from theorizing altogether upon the 



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