266 THE GEXESrS OF SPECIES. [Chap. 



could only conceive of its maker in watch terms, or else in 

 terms altogetlier inferior, tlie watch woukl plainly be right 

 in speaking of its maker as a, to it, inconcx^ivably perfect 

 kind of watch, acknowledging, at the same time, that this, 

 its conception of him, was utterly inadequate, although the 

 best its inferior nature allowed it to form. For, if, instead 

 of HO conceiving of its maker, it refused to ujake use of tliese 

 relative perfections as a makeshift, and so necessarily 

 thought of him as amorphous metal, or mere oil, or by the 

 help of any other inferior conception which a watch might 

 be imagined capable of entertaining, that watch would be 

 wrong indeed. For man can much more properly be com- 

 l)ared with, and has much more alliuity to, a perfect watch 

 in full activity than to a mere piece of metal, or drop of oi). 

 But the watch is even more in the right still, for its maker, 

 man, virtually Jias the cogged wheels, springs, escapements, 

 oil, etc., which the watch's conception has been supposed to 

 attribute to him ; inasmuch as all these parts must have 

 existed as distinct ideas in the human watclunaker's mind 

 before he could actually construct the ckx^k formed by him. 

 Nor is even this all, for, by the hypothesis, the watch thinks. 

 It must, thendbre, think of its maker as "a thinking being," 

 and in this it is absolutely/ and GOtnpletehj rUjht.^* li^ither, 

 therefore, the hypothesis is absurd, or it actually demon- 

 strates the very 2^ositlon it loas chosen to refute. Unques- 

 tionably, then, on the mere ground taken by Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer himself, if we are compelled to think of the First 

 Cause either in human terms ())ut with human imperfections 

 abstracted and human perfections carried to the highest con- 

 ceivable degree), or, on the other hand, in terms decidedly 

 inferior, such as those are driven to who think of Ilim, but 

 decline to accept as a help the term "personality," there 



'° In this criticism on Mr, Herbert Spencer, the author tinds he has 

 been anticipated by Mr. James Martineau. (See " Essays," vol. i., p. 

 208.) 



