ULTIMATE RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 31 



10. And now to consider the bearings of this general 

 truth on our immediate topic Ultimate Religious Ideas. 



To the primitive man sometimes happen tilings which 

 are out of the ordinary course diseases, storms, earth- 

 quakes, echos, eclipses. From dreams arises the idea of a 

 wandering double ; whence follows the belief that the dou- 

 ble, departing permanently at death, is then a ghost. 

 Ghosts thus become assignable causes for strange occur- 

 rences. The greater ghosts are presently supposed to have 

 extended spheres of action. As men grow intelligent the 

 conceptions of these minor invisible agencies merge into the 

 conception of a universal invisible agency ; and there result 

 hypotheses concerning the origin, not of special incidents 

 only, but of things in general. 



A critical examination, however, will prove not only 

 that no current hypothesis is tenable, but also that no tena- 

 ble hypothesis can be framed. 



11. Respecting the origin of the Universe three ver- 

 bally intelligible suppositions may be made. We may as- 

 sert that it is self -existent ; or that it is self-created ; or that 

 it is created by an external agency. Which of these suppo- 

 sitions is most credible it is not needful here to inquire. The 

 deeper question, into which this finally merges, is, whether 

 any one of them is even conceivable in the true sense of the 

 word. Let us successively test them. 



When we speak of a man as self-supporting, of an ap- 

 paratus as self-acting, or of a tree as self -developed, our ex- 

 pressions, however inexact, stand for things that can be 

 realized in thought with tolerable completeness. Our con- 

 ception of the self -development of a tree is doubtless sym- 

 bolic. But though we cannot really represent in conscious- 

 ness the entire series of complex changes through which 

 the tree passes, yet we can thus represent the leading fea- 

 tures of the series; and general experience teaches us that 

 by long continued observation we could gain the power to 



