ANTHROPOMORPHIC THEISM 



fusion of ideas, and amid such a chaos of termi- 

 nology, is this whole argument, so far as con- 

 cerns theism, unsuspectingly reared. Strip the 

 phrase " law of nature " of this inherent ambi- 

 guity, substitute for it the equivalent phrase, 

 " order of sequence among certain phenomena,'* 

 and the anthropomorphic inference so confi- 

 dently drawn from it at once disappears. 



Viewed in close connection with the Doctrine 

 of Evolution, this scholastic argument from the 

 Law to the Lawgiver lands us amid strange and 

 terrible embarrassments. For what is a law, in 

 the sense in which the word is used by legis- 

 lators ? It is a set of relations established by 

 the community, or by some superior mind re- 

 presenting and guiding the community, in cor- 

 respondence with certain environing circum- 

 stances. Certain phenomena of crime, for ex- 

 ample, tend to detract from the fulness of life of 

 society, and to balance these phenomena a cer- 

 tain force of public opinion is embodied in an 

 edict prescribing due punishments for the crimes 

 in question. Or — slightly to vary the defini- 

 tion and make it more comprehensive — a law 

 is the embodiment of a certain amount of psy- 

 chical energy, directed towards the securing of 

 the highest attainable fulness of social life. Now 

 if, on the strength of an ambiguous terminology, 

 we proceed to regard the " laws " of nature as 

 edicts enjoined upon matter and motion by a 

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