THE NATURAL AND THE ARTIFICIAL. 195 



these particles would collect, producing one solid motionless mass 

 in the centre of the universe. I have listened to this paper with 

 great interest and satisfaction. 



The CirAiRMAN. — There are two or three points in the paper to 

 which I desire to call attention. Oa the second page there is a 

 sentence which I think is of great importance: — "Human reason is 

 surely degraded by declaring the existence of God, or creation by 

 Divine power to be unthinkable." That is a point which you will 

 remember the late Charles Bradlaugh often used to call attention 

 to. He used to say, " I will not believe what I cannot conceive — ' 

 I cannot conceive God; therefore I will not believe in Him." Ab 

 first sight this seems very simple, but suppose we put it thus: 

 " I cannot conceive the nature of God ; but I can conceive that 

 there is a Being which we may rightly call God," then we see the 

 matter is quite different. It means " I conceive that a Being 

 exists whose nature I cannot fully comprehend," and this at once 

 saves you from the difficulty that he was in the habit of pro- 

 pounding. There are many things that exist that I cannot fully 

 understand, but I would not say they did not exist because I do 

 not understand them. I would rather say, "I am certain that 

 they exist, for I cannot get on without them; but why these exist, 

 or how they exist, is quite another matter." So we may say " I 

 conceive there is a God, but I cannot conceive the full nature of 

 God." That distinction will help us, perhaps, in considering that 

 subject. 



I note that the author defines " artificial " as a product of the 

 mind of man, and " natural " as constituting the attributes of the 

 Divine mind itself. 



Then on page 188 you have a case of an artificial product such 

 as a brick which is matter plus mind, evidently, and the question 

 rises whether the human heart, for instance, is matter plus mind. 

 Cases are given of a watch, a steam engine, and a type-writer. 

 Take the case of a type- writer, or of some automatic machine, 

 which I would prefer even to a type-writer, because in the case of 

 a type-writer a man's hand is manifestly used — but take an 

 automatic machine in the ordinary sense. Remember what it is — 

 it is simply compressed mind ; and in providing yourself with a 

 piece of chocolate out of an automatic machine you do not 

 annihilate mind. So with God — you do not annihilate God by 

 saying a tree brings forth beautiful fruit. " A telescope is a 



