COSMIC THEISM 



not what we worship ; what we know is matter 

 of science ; it is only when science fails, and in- 

 telligence is baffled, and the Infinite confronts 

 us, that we cease to analyze and begin to wor- 

 ship. What men have worshipped, from the 

 earliest times, has been not the Known, but the 

 Unknown. Even the primeval savage, who wor- 

 shipped plants and animals, worshipped them 

 only in so far as their modes of action were 

 mysterious to him, — only in so far as they con- 

 stituted a part of the weird uninterpreted world 

 by which he was surrounded. As soon as he had 

 generalized the dynamic phenomena presented 

 by the plant or the animal, that is, as soon as it 

 became an object of knowledge, it ceased to be 

 an object of worship. As soon as the grander 

 phenomena of sunrise and sunset, storm and 

 eclipse, had been partially generalized, they were 

 no longer directly worshipped, but unseen 

 agents were imagined as controlling the phe- 

 nomena by their arbitrary volitions, and these 

 agents, as being mysterious, were worshipped. 

 So when polytheism began to give place to 

 monotheism, the process was still the same. 

 The visible and tangible world was regarded as 

 the aggregate of things which might be under- 

 stood ; but above and beneath all this was the 

 mysterious aspect of things — the Dynamis, the 

 Demiurgus, the Cause of all, the Ruler of all, 

 ■ — and this mighty Something was worshipped. 

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