396 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. iil 



environment, tlie word " intelligence " has no meaning what- 

 ever, and to employ it is simply to defy logic and insult 

 common-sense. In ascribing intelligence to unembodied 

 Spirit, we are either using meaningless jargon, or we are 

 implicitly surrounding unembodied Spirit with an environ- 

 ment of some kind, and are thus declaring it to be both 

 limited and dependent. The assumption of disembodied 

 intelligence, therefore leaves the fundamental difficulty quite 

 untouched. 



Thus in default of all tenable a priori support for the 

 anthropomorphic hypothesis, it must be left to rest, if it is to 

 be entertained at all, upon its ancient inductive basis. In 

 spite of the difficulties encompassing the conception, we may 

 fairly admit that if the structure of the universe presents 

 unmistakeable evidences of divine contrivance or forethought, 

 these evidences may be received in verification of the hypo- 

 thesis which ascribes to God a quasi-human nature. And 

 thus the possible establishment of that hypothesis must 

 depend upon the weight accorded to the so-called "evidences 

 of design." 



From the dawn of philosophic discussion. Pagan and 

 Christian, Trinitarian and Deist, have appealed with equal 

 confidence to the harmony pervading nature as the surest 

 foundation of their faith in an intelligent and beneficent 

 Euler of the universe. We meet with the argument in the 

 familiar writings of Xenophon and Cicero, and it is forcibly 

 and eloquently maintained by Voltaire as well as by Paley, 

 and, with various modifications, by Agassiz as well as by the 

 authors of the Bridge water Treatises. One and all they 

 challenge us to explain, on any other hypothesis than that of 

 creative design, these manifold harmonies, these exquisite 

 adaptations of means to ends, whereof the world is admitted 

 to be full, and which are especially conspicuous among the 

 phenomena of life. Until the establishment of the Doctrine 

 of Evolution, the glove thus thrown, age after age, into the 



