COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



hand, upon the modern dynamical view of things, 

 any given group of phenomena is explained by 

 a reference to some antecedent group of phe- 

 nomena, while all phenomena alike are regarded 

 as the sensible manifestations of a divine Power 

 immanent in the Cosmos. It becomes desirable, 

 therefore, to inquire whether on the new view 

 there is any ground for assuming, as was neces- 

 sarily assumed on the old view, that the divine 

 Power works by methods analogous to human 

 methods. The question which we have to answer 

 is not whether there exists a God. As was clearly 

 shown in the first part of this work, and as will 

 presently be still more emphatically reiterated, 

 our Cosmic Philosophy is based upon the affir- 

 mation of God's existence, and not upon the de- 

 nial of it, like irreligious Atheism, or upon the 

 ignoring of it, like non-religious Positivism. The 

 question which we have now to answer concerns 

 the existence of a Hmited personal God, who is 

 possessed of a quasi-human consciousness, from 

 whose quasi-human volitions have originated 

 the laws of nature, and to whose quasi-human 

 contrivance are due the manifold harmonies ob- 

 served in the universe. Is this most refined and 

 subtilized remnant of primitive anthropomor- 

 phism to be retained by our Cosmic Philoso- 

 phy, or is it to be rejected ? And if it is to be 

 rejected, what are the grounds which justify us 

 in rejecting it ? 



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