406 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. hi. 



early Aryan mythology, down to the multiform Manicha^ism 

 of later times, may be seen the innumerable vestiges of her 

 fruitless attempts to reconcile the fact of the existence of 

 evil with the hypothesis of the infinite power and bene- 

 volence of a personal Deity. 



It is not for the theologian to seek to stifle such objec- 

 tions by telling us that, in raising them, we are blasphe- 

 mously judging of the character of the Deity by human 

 standards. Nor is it for him to silence us by pointing to 

 the wondrous process of evolution as itself the working out 

 of a mighty Teleology of which our finite understandings 

 can fathom but the scantiest rudiments.^ As we shall see 

 in the fifth chapter, the process of evolution, when reve- 

 rently treated with the aid of such scientific resources as 

 we possess, and when disencumbered of anthropomorphic 

 hypotheses, leads us in the way of no such fearful dilemma 

 as the one by which we are now encountered. It is 

 theology alone which drives us to the brink of this 

 fathomless abyss, by insisting upon the representation of 

 the Deity as a person endowed with anthropomorphic at- 

 tributes. If goodness and intelligence are to be ascribed 

 to the Deity, it must be the goodness and intelligence of 

 which we have some rudimentary knowledge as manifested 

 in humanity : otherwise our hypothesis is resolved into 

 unmeaning verbiage. " If," as Mr, Mill observes, " in 



of eternity, cotild but follow the laws of curvature, measure, and proportion. " 

 Essmjs, Philosopliical and Theological, pp. 163, 164. In this way Mr. Mar- 

 tinsau preserves the quasi-human character of God in the only way in which 

 (as I maintain) it can be preserved, — namely, by sacrificing his Omnipotence. 

 In seeking to escape from Mr. Spencer's doctrine of the Unknowable, Mr. 

 Martineau succeeds only in positing, in his "objective datum," an ulterior 

 Unknowable, by which God's power is limited, and which ex hypotliesi is not 

 divine. This brings us directly back to Ormuzd and Ahriman. See Mr. 

 Spencer's remarks. Fortnightly Review, Dec. 1873 ; vol. xiv. N.S. pp. 

 726—728. 



^ For by taking such ground as this, ho would virtually abandon his 

 anthropomorphic hypothesis, and concede all that is demanded by the Cosmist. 

 For this conception of teleology implied in tho process of evolution, set 

 Huxley, Ciiti^ues and Addresses, p. 306. 



