194 THE REV. J. H. BERNARD, D.D., ON THE 



because when speaking about man and his mind we tho- 

 roughly understand what we are talking about ; but in 

 speaking of the Mind of Deity we are dealing with something 

 of which we have no experience, and of which therefore we 

 have no right to predicate anything. The difficulty is real 

 and serious ; but let it be observed that even when we infer 

 the existence of another finite mind from certain observed 

 operations, we are making an inference about something 

 which is as mysterious an x as anything can be. Mind is not 

 a thing, as we have seen, that is subject to the laws and 

 conditions of the world of sense ; it is " in the world, but not 

 of the world." And so to infer the existence of the mind of 

 any individual except myself is a quite different kind of 

 inference from that by which, e:g., we infer the presence of 

 an electro-magnet in a given field. The action of the latter 

 we understand to a large extent ; but we do not understand 

 the action of mind, which yet we know from daily experience 

 of ourselves does produce effects in the outer world, often 

 permanent and important effects. Briefly, the action of mind 

 on matter (to use the ordinary phraseology, for the sake of 

 clearness) is — we may assume for our present purpose — an 

 established fact. Hence the causality of mind is a vera causa ; 

 we bring it in to account for the actions of other human 

 beings, and by precisely the same process of reasoning we 

 invoke it to explain the operations of nature. It is quite 

 beside the point to urge that in the latter case the intelli- 

 gence inferred is infinite ; in the former, only finite. All the 

 design argument undertakes to show is that mind — whether 

 finite or infinite it is beyond its province to say — lies at the 

 basis of nature. There is always a difficulty in any argument 

 which tries to establish the operation of mind anywhere, for 

 mind cannot be seen, or touched, or felt ; but the difficulty 

 is not peculiar to that particular form of argument with which 

 theological interests are involved. 



The real plausibility of this objection arises from a vague 

 idea, often present to us when Ave speak of infinite wisdom 

 or infinite intelligence, namely, that the epithet infinite in some 

 way alters the meaning of the attributes to which it is 

 applied. But the truth is that the word infinite, when applied 

 to wisdom or knowledge or any other intellectual or moral 

 quality, can only have reference to the number of acts of 

 wisdom or knowledge that we suppose to have been per- 

 formed. The only sense in which we have any right to 

 speak of infinite wisdom is that it is that which performs an 



