ANTHROPOMORPHIC THEISM 



sual passions, the emotions least worthy of rev- 

 erence, and intellectual shortcomings, such as 

 the liability to make mistakes and to be over- 

 reached, have been omitted from the concep- 

 tion of Deity. And the culmination of this 

 purifying process is to be seen in the Deity of 

 the modern metaphysician, which is little more 

 than an abstract embodiment of reason and 

 volition. But in spite of all this progressive 

 change in the form of the conception, its sub- 

 stance still remains the same. It is still the 

 human personality, however refined and ethe- 

 realized, which is appealed to alike as the source 

 and as the explanation of all phenomena. It is 

 the primitive fetishistic habit of thought, how- 

 ever modified by conflict with scientific habits, 

 which furtively leads us to regard volition as 

 supplying the nexus between cause and effect, 

 and to interpret the harmonious correspond- 

 ences in nature as results of creative contrivance 

 and indications of creative purpose. 



Such being the origin of the teleological hy- 

 pothesis, its apparent warrant is to be sought in 

 the facts above recounted with respect to the 

 evolution of intelligence. It is the complex and 

 organized correspondence of the mind with its 

 environment, which seems to furnish inductive 

 justification to the thinker who is predisposed 

 to see in nature the workings of a mind like his 

 own. Arranging and combining various experi- 

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