ANTHROPOMORPHIC THEISM 



the very constitution of the thinking process 

 renders it impossible for us to assert similarity 

 between the phenomenon and the thing in it- 

 self Indeed a comparison between the various 

 phenomena of motion gives us good ground 

 for believing that there can be no such thing as 

 resemblance between the phenomena and their 

 noumenal cause. At the beginning of this work 

 it was shown that the objective reality underly- 

 ing the phenomena of heat, light, actinism, and 

 mechanical vibration cannot be held to resemble 

 one of these sets of phenomena more than an- 

 other, and accordingly cannot be held to resem- 

 ble any of them. And this conclusion, thus 

 forced upon us by concrete examples, is the only 

 one consistent with what we know of knowledge. 

 Obviously the phenomena cannot be held to be 

 like the objective reality without ignoring the 

 circumstance that the mind Is itself a factor in 

 the process of cognition. Now the Cartesians, 

 with more insight into the exigencies of the case 

 than Is shown by Mr. Adam, unflinchingly as- 

 serted that phenomenal effects are like noume- 

 nal causes, — that whatever is In the subjective 

 conception is also in the objective reality. As 

 a proposition in psychology, this is a denial of 

 the relativity of knowledge. As a canon of logic, 

 this is the proclamation of the subjective method. 

 Hence, though the metaphysician and the the- 

 ologian may adopt an anthropomorphic hypo- 

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