THE ALLEGED SCEPTICISM OF KANT. 197 
of a man walking to the horizon to find the extremest edge of the 
world, which, after all, is admitted to be round. [Illustrations are 
proverbially dangerous ; they are almost sure to fail you at the 
critical point: they serve to point Bishop Butler’s moral that the 
imagination is the source of every error that has led mankind 
astray. The argument should be turned just the other way. If 
we came to the edge of the world, we should know that it was not 
round. The very essence of the argument from design is that on 
all practical principles it is the evidence that a mind has been at 
work, not that a series which may go on to infinity must of neces- 
sity stop somewhere, “‘ which,” to use Euclid’s words, ‘‘is absurd.” 
But if a mind has been at work, it must have been a Mind of 
extraordinary grasp, depth, penetration and power. The argu- 
ment from design moreover does not stand alone. It points to a 
Great Being, but it does not solve the problem of His Nature. 
Then the assumption that the argument from design assumes an 
author who is “absolute” (p. 178), is, I may venture to contend, 
disposed of in my paper (‘‘ Considerations on the Unknowable of 
Modern Thought”) read before the Institute m 1883. (Vol. xvii, 
p- 98.) I have there contended that if by ‘‘absolute” we mean 
that which has no connection with anything else, the word is inap- 
plicable to a Creator of the world, and if we mean that which has 
no necessary connection with anything else, it involves at least an 
assurnption which we have no right to make, and which is at least 
in direct conflict with the words ‘‘God is Love.’’ Then we are 
told that if there be an intelligence at work in the creation of the 
world “it is merely a human one, and not divine.” ‘This, it must 
be presumed, means analogous rather to a human than a Divine 
Mind. Fora human mind most certainly could neither have con- 
ceived nor have carried ont the plan of creation. And the objec- 
tion moreover begs the question, for, except from phenomena, we 
have no means of arriving at any conclusions as to the nature of 
the Divine Mind. There appears to me no reason whatever why I 
should not ‘seriously conceive of God as having stamped certain 
things with qualities often contrary and conflicting,” and as having 
nevertheless been pleased to ‘‘overcome the difficulties of the 
material by skilful combination and adaptation.” That He did 
the one i order that He might do the other is an assumption of 
Dr. Courtney’s. It is equally possible that He did so in order that 
He might thereby stimulate His reasoning creatures to inquiry, and 
provide them with material for the exercise of their reasoning 
powers. Dr. Courtney then further makes a rather startling 
