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not represent attributes of other beings as well as of ourselves. 
If I see an animal perform actions of a certain character, I am 
justified in drawing the conclusion that they are the results of 
intelligence, although I am only acquainted by actual experience 
with human intelligence. I infer justly that the animal mind 
possesses in these respects an intelligence similar to my own. 
If, then, I can conceive of an imperfect form of intelligence, and 
reason on the fact, why may I not attribute our highest powers, 
freed from the imperfections with which they exist in man, to 
God ? To assert that such an act is merely to manufacture a 
gigantic Lord Shaftesbury is not to appeal to reason, but to the 
worst feelings of our nature. 
101. Nothing more clearly shows the impotency of this 
philosophy to grapple with the difficulties in which it is 
involved than the necessity it is under to use language which 
contradicts the truth of its own assumptions. Our author 
endeavours to apologise for the practice : “ In so far as we 
speak,” says he, “ of a purpose in the universe, we are clearly 
conscious that we are expressing ourselves subjectively, and 
that we only express by it what we seem to recognize as the 
general result of the co-operation of the entire powers of the 
world.” 
102. In one word, all such expressions are blinds to enable 
us to impose on ourselves. A purpose in the universe is no 
purpose. It exists only in a delusive fancy of our subjective 
selves. Numbers of similar conceptions made use of by this 
philosophy can only exist as attributes of personality, and are 
utterly inapplicable to an impersonal something, whether we 
designate it Universe or God. 
103. Yet our author writes as follows: — “The general 
deduction from the existence of the universe appears to be, as 
a whole, the most varied motion or the greatest abundance of 
life; this motion or life specialized as one developing itself 
morally as well as physically, struggling outwards and upwards, 
and even in the decline of the individual only preparing a new 
uprising.” 
104. Such language is a plain stultification of the principles 
on which this philosophy is based. Still more remarkable is 
the following passage: — “From our standpoint the object of 
the terrene development seems much nearer its attainment now, 
when the earth is filled by men and their works .... than 
many thousands of years ago, and when she was still exclusively 
occupied by mollusca and cretacea, to which fish were added 
later, then the mighty saurians with their allied species, and, 
finally, the primeval mammals, yet without man.” 
