178 W. L. COURTNEY, M.A., LL.D., ON 
Shall we argue a contingentid mundi? Shall we say that 
because all things in this mortal sphere are mutually 
dependent, we must assume in the last resource some being 
who is independent? Shall we say that we—looking at the 
tact that we can only go back from effect to a cause which is in 
its turn an effect of some higher cause, and so on in infinite 
regress,—must, for our own peace of mind, arrive at a 
cause which is uncaused, a First Cause, a Free Cause? Per- 
haps this is the most ordinary, and to most minds a satisfac- 
tory, proof of God’s existence. And yet the logic of the 
understanding must condemn such procedure as illogical. 
To say that, because we only know of a ceaseless chain of 
causation, we must assume that somewhere or other there 
is a first or last link, where the chain ceases, is as though, 
despite our conviction that the world is round, we should 
yet walk to the horizon to find its extremest edge. To say 
that because the world is contingent, it must have an author 
who is absolute, is at once to deny that absoluteness we seek 
to prove, because at all events the world appears necessary 
to its author (Inasmuch as it exists) and therefore sets 
limits to his independent and self-contained existence. 
Shall we then fall back on the celebrated teleological 
argument, and say that because there are everywhere marks 
of design, there must have been a divine intelligence at 
work in the world’s creation? Yet here again Kant tells 
us that our conclusion is too large for our premises. Our 
argument may prove the likelihood of an Intelligence, but it 
is merely a human one and not divine. The adaptation of 
means to end, in the case of a machine, proves the existence 
of the inventor, because with certain materials given ready 
to the hand—materials which possess original properties, 
and therefore the possibility of their own usefulness—some 
one must have adapted them so skilfully in their mutual 
relations that they work out the designed “end we see. But 
to God, the materials with which He works are not given 
with certain original and unchangeable properties. He is 
supposed to have Himself given them, in the first instance, 
these natural forces and properties. Can we seriously con- 
ceive of God as having stamped certain things with qualities 
often contrary and conflicting, in order that afterwards He 
might show His skill in overcoming the difficulties of the 
material by skilful combination and adaptation 3 ? Or agai, 
can this line of argumentation ever prove the existence of 
Absolute Goodness in the Artificer? By seeing the relation 
