346 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Similarly with the logical incongruities more and more conspicuous 

 to growing intelligence. Passing over the familiar difficulties that 

 sundry of the implied divine traits are in contradiction with the divine 

 attributes otherwise ascribed — that a god who repents of what he has 

 done must be lacking either in power or in foresight ; that his anger 

 presupposes an occurrence which has been contrary to intention, and 

 so indicates defect of means — we come to the deeper difficulty that 

 such emotions, in common with all emotions, can exist only in a con- 

 sciousness which is limited. Every emotion has its antecedent ideas, 

 and antecedent ideas are habitually supposed to occur in God : he is 

 represented as seeing and hearing this or the other, and as being emo- 

 tionally affected thereby. That is to say, the conception of a divinity 

 possessing these traits of character necessarily continues anthropo- 

 morphic ; not only in the sense that the emotions ascribed are like 

 those of human beings, but also in the sense that they form parts of a 

 consciousness which, like the human consciousness, is formed of suc- 

 cessive states. And such a conception of the divine consciousness is 

 irreconcilable both with the unchangeableness otherwise alleged and 

 with the omniscience otherwise alleged. For a consciousness consti- 

 tuted of ideas and feelings caused by objects and occurrences can 

 not be simultaneously occupied with all objects and all occurrences 

 throughout the universe. To believe in a divine consciousness, men 

 must refrain from thinking what is meant by consciousness — must 

 stop short with verbal propositions ; and propositions which they are 

 debarred from rendering into thoughts will more and more fail to sat- 

 isfy them. Of course, like difficulties present themselves when the will 

 of God is spoken of. So long as we refrain from giving a definite 

 meaning to the word will, we may say that it is possessed by the Cause 

 of All Things, as readily as we may say that love of approbation 

 is possessed by a circle ; but, when from the words we pass to the 

 thoughts they stand for, we find that we can no more unite in con- 

 sciousness the terms of the one proposition than we can those of the 

 other. Whoever conceives any other will than his own must do so in 

 terms of his own will, which is the sole will directly known to him — 

 all other wills being only inferred. But will, as each is conscious of it, 

 presupposes a motive — a prompting desire of some kind : absolute in- 

 difference excludes the conception of will. Moreover, will, as imply- 

 ing a prompting desire, connotes some end contemplated as one to be 

 achieved, and ceases with the achievement of it : some other will, re- 

 ferring so some other end, taking its place. That is to say, will, like 

 emotion, necessarily supposes a series of states of consciousness. The 

 conception of a divine will, derived from that of the human will, in- 

 volves, like it, localization in space and time : the willing of each end, 

 excluding from consciousness for an interval the willing of other 

 ends, and therefore being inconsistent with that omnipresent activity 

 which simultaneously works out an infinity of ends. It is the same 



