COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



knowledging the presence of the mystery of 

 mysteries. Here religion must ever hold sway, 

 reminding us that from birth until death we are 

 dependent on a Power to whose eternal decrees 

 we must submit, to whose dispensations we 

 must resign ourselves, and upon whose con- 

 stancy we may implicitly rely/ 



Thus we begin to realize, more vividly than 

 theology could have taught us to realize, the 

 utter absurdity of atheism. Thus is exhibited 

 the prodigious silliness of Lalande, who in- 

 formed mankind that he had swept the heavens 

 with his telescope and found no God there, — 

 as if God were an optical phenomenon ! Thus, 

 too, we see the poverty of that anthropomor- 

 phism which represents the infinite Deity as 

 acting through calculation and contrivance, just 

 as finite intelligence acts under the limitations 

 imposed by its environment. And thus, finally, 

 we perceive the hopeless error of the Positivist, 

 who would give us a finite knowable, like Hu- 

 manity, for an object of religious contemplation. 

 The reasoning which demonstrates the relativ- 

 ity of knowledge, demonstrates also the failure 

 of all such attempts to bind up religion in sci- 

 entific formulas. 



The anthropomorphic theist, habitually 



^ [On the whole contrast between the point of view of 

 the foregoing text and the later stages of Fiske's thought, see 

 Introduction, III.] 



248 



