must be kept constantly in view, and must be often reiterated. Any doctrine, therefore, which contradicts the facts of consciousness, or the laws of belief which God has impressed on our nature, must be false. If, therefore, it can be shown that there are certain truths which men are constrained by the constitution of their nature to believe, those truths are to be retained in despite of all the arts of Bophistry. If, therefore, it be a fact of consciousness that we our- selves are something, an etis^ a substance, and that we have power, that we can produce effects, then it is certain that there is such a thing as power, and efficient cause. If, moreover, it be an intui- tive and necessary truth that every effect must have a cause, that ex nihilo nihil fit, then it is absolutely certain that if the world began to be, it had an adequate cause of its existence out of itself. And, therefore, if the arguments to prove that the world is not self-existing and eternal be sound, the cosmological argument is valid and conclusive.
I%e Second Objection.
The other form of objection is directed not against the premises on which the cosmological argument is founded, but against the conclusion which Theists draw from them. It is admitted that something now exists ; that nonentity cannot be the cause of real existence; therefore, something must have existed from eternity. It is also admitted that a regressus ad infinitum, or an eternal series of effects, is impossible. There must, therefore, be an eternal, self-existing Being. This is all the cosmological argument fairly proves. It does not prove that this necessary Being is extramun- dane, much less that it is a personal God. It may be an eternal substance of which things mutable are the phenomena.^
The cosmological argument is not intended to prove all that The- ists hold to be true concerning God. It is enough that it proves that we must admit the existence of an eternal and necessary Being. Other arguments prove that that Being is self-conscious and intelligent. The argument, moreover, fairly proves that this Being is e^xtramundane ; for the principle of causation is that everything contingent must have the cause of its existence out of itself.
§ 3. The Teleological Argument. A. Its Nature. This argument also admits of being stated in a syllogistic form. Design supposes a designer. The world everywhere exhibits marks
1 See Strauss's Dogmatik, vol. i. p. 382.
216 PART I. — THEOLOGY. [Ch. U. - Theism.
of design. Therefore the world owes its existence to an intelligent author.
By design is intended, — (1.) The selection of an end to be attained. (2.) The choice of suitable means for its attainment. (3.) The actual application of those means for the accomplishment of the proposed end.
Such being the nature of design, it is a self-evident truth, or, even an identical proposition, that design is indicative of intelli- gence, will, and power. It is simply saying that intelligence in the effect imphes intelligence in the cause.
It is moreover true that the intelligence indicated by design is not in the thing designed. It must be in an external agent. The mind indicated in a book is not in the book itself, but in the author and printer. The intelligence revealed by a calculating machine, or any similar work of art, is not in the material employed, but in the inventor and artist. Neither is the mind indicated in the structure of the bodies of plants and animals, in them, but in Him who made them. And in like manner the mind indicated in the world at large must be in an extramundane Being. There is, in- deed, this obvious difference between the works of God and the works of man. In every product of human art dead materials are fashioned and united to accomplish a given end ; but the organized works of nature are animated by a living principle. They are fashioned as it were from within outward. In other words, they grow ; they are not constructed. In this respect there is a great difference between a house and a tree or the human body. But, nevertheless, in both cases, the mind is external to the thing pro- duced ; because the end, the thought, is prior to the product. As the thought or idea of a machine must be in the mind of the mech- anist, before the machine is made ; so the idea or thought of the eye must be anterior to its formation. " It is a simple and pregnant conclusion," says Trendelenburg,^ " that so far as design is realized in the world, thought as its ground has preceded it." And this thought, he goes on to say, is not dead, as a figure or model, it is connected with will and power. It is, therefore, in the mind of a person who has the ability and purpose to carry it out. He further says, " tiefsinnige Zweckmjissigkeit bewustlos und blind," cannot be imagined, i. e., a blind and unconscious adaptation of means to an end is inconceivable.
As the conviction that design implies an intelligent agent is in- tuitive and necessary, it is not limited to the narrow sphere of our 1 Log. Untersuchungen, 2d edit. Leipzig, 1862, vol. ii. p. 28.