himself. They have been regarded as sound and conclusive by the wisest men, from Socrates to the present day. Of course the ar- gument on the principle of causation must be invalid to those who deny that there is any such thing as an efficient cause ; and the argument from design can have no force for those who deny the possibility of final causes.
Most of the objections to the conclusiveness of the arguments in question arises from a misapprehension of what they are intended to prove. It is often assumed that each argument must prove the whole doctrine of Theism ; whereas one argument may prove one element of that doctrine ; and other arguments different elements. The cosmological argument may prove the existence of a neces- sary and eternal Being ; the teleological argument, that that Being is intelligent ; the moral argument that He is a person possessing moral attributes. The arguments are not designed so much to prove the existence of an unknown being, as to demonstrate that the Being who reveals himself to man in the very constitution of his nature must be all that Theism declares him to be. Such writ- ers as Hume, Kant, Coleridge, and the whole school of transcen- dental philosophers, have more or less expressly denied the validity of the ordinary arguments for the existence of a personal God.