202 W. L. COURTNEY, ON THE SCEPTICISM OF KANT. 
possessing qualities of its own. But now observe that, as applied 
to the Divine Artificer of the universe, this analogy is wholly 
inadequate. According to the hypothesis of creation, both the 
material and the form afterwards impressed upon that material 
come from oneand the same source. We can hardly conceive of 
the Almighty first making an indifferent matter, and then showing 
His skill by bending that alien matter to His purposes. In sucha 
case there can be no opposition between matter and form, except 
ona Manichean supposition that matter exists independently of the 
will of God, and is capable of interfering with His volitions. And 
there is still another point. In the case of the human artificer, 
we say that his adaptation of an alien material is very clever and 
ingenious. If we apply the same argument to the works of 
creation, we may be entitled to say that the Divine Artificer is 
extremely clever, or extremely ingenious, but hardly that He is 
omnipotent. All that the analogy will give us is an increase of 
intensity in the attribute, but not that universality of power, or 
that universality of knowledge, which we accept as the character- 
istics of Divinity. This, so far as I can see, is the meaning of 
KKant’s attack on the ordinary use of the design argument in nature, 
but of course the point to which I am referring needs far more 
comment and illustration than I have at present space to bestow. 
I would only add that there is nothing in Kant’s argument, in 
my judgment, which militates against that large and comprehen- 
sive design in this world for which the scientific name is evolution, 
because the assumption on which it rests is by no means founded 
on human analogies, but begins by the supposition that matter 
contains within itself the promise and potency of future develop- 
ment. 
