I 



THE WORLD-PROCESS GUIDED BY INTELLIGENCE. 3/1 



we could think such things as unconscious purpose 

 or impersonal reason, even if all canons of valid 

 thinking did not forbid us thus gratuitously to 

 multiply entities, which no experience can. suggest, 

 there would be no room for them, in our world. 

 Whatever intelligence, therefore, is. found to be 

 active in the world must be due to the action of 

 some real beingf. 



But we do find in the world manifold traces of an 

 intelligent purpose which is not that of any known 

 intelligence. Intelligent observation of the course 

 of events strongly suggests that there is '' a Provi- 

 dence that shapes our ends, rough hew them how 

 we will." And even strict science is forced to re- 

 cognize this in the Evolution of the world. Here 

 we have all things tending persistently and con- 

 stantly in a single and definite direction. This ten- 

 dency of things goes on while as yet no one had 

 discovered it, it goes on although no one consciously 

 aims at it, nay, in spite of the constant opposition of 

 a large portion of the conscious intelligence of the 

 world. But the idea that this constant tendency is 

 due to any of the known intelligences of the world 

 refutes itself as soon as it is stated ; to suppose that 

 atoms and amcebas could, at the time when they 

 were the hiofhest individuals in the world, direct its 

 process towards the development of individuals in 

 association (ch. viii.) is absurd. We have, therefore, 

 in the world-process the working of an intelligence 

 which not only guides the actions of the unconscious 

 material existences, but overrules those of the con- 

 scious intelligences. The only possible inference 

 from the fact of the constant and definite tendency 

 of the world-process is that it is purposed by the 

 intelligence of a real bein^, of a God, who, though 



