Anthropomorphism [pp. 120-144]

THE PRINCR TON RE VIE W.
the original Novg of the Ionian mechanicist down to the present
day, the theist has argued that the legitimacy, order, adaptation,
and harmony of the cosmos are, and can only be, the products of
intelligence. The agnostic denies the validity of the inference.
He admits the self-existent First Cause, the Force, unique and
unified, acting through phenomena. But he simply denies the
fact that the laws of nature are, like printed words and sentences, indicia of mind.
At this point of the argument the theism of our day has met
the agnostic attack fairly and thoroughly, and against the more
superficial science of the laboratory it has set up the deeper
science of metaphysical analysis. It is impossible, within the
limits of the present discussion, even to attempt an outline of the
theistic defence of the reduction of natural law to divine thought.
I can only refer to such a work as that masterpiece of analysis,
Ulrici's "Gott und die Natur," as an illustration of the scholarship of scientific Christianity.
Yet there are some misconceptions presented by agnosticism
in this part of the argument which bear so directly upon the
question of psychomorphism that it may be well briefly to refer
to them.
* The agnostics invariably confuse the teleological and the cosmological arguments. The former is not designed to prove,
primarily, the existence of a First Cause. That is the function
of the cosmological argument. The teleological argument, as
distinct from the etiological, simply attempts to prove that
intelligence controls the universe. That is all that it is intended
to prove. The objection, therefore, that it is only a "carpenter
theory" is entirely irrelevant.
Further, the teleological argument is designed to prove only
the fact, not the nature, of the controlling intelligence. Hence
the objection that from a finite universe we cannot argue to an
infinite mind is also irrelevant. It is not so argued. The argument from the simple existence of a finite universe to the exist.
ence of the infinite First Cause is entirely distinct from this. Here
we argue simply from an ordered finite universe to an intelligent
Cause. The argument would be equally true if the universe
were formed by a demiurge or an eon. But the cosmological
argument would reason to an infinite First Cause behind that
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