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Those in the line between one species and another supposed to be derived from it he may be bound to provide; but as to "an infinite number of other varieties not intermediate, gross, rude, and purposeless, the unmeaning creations of an unconscious cause," born only to perish, which a relentless reviewer has imposed upon his theory, rightly enough upon the atheistic alternative, the theistic view rids him at once of this "scum of creation."
To this question, then, let us next address ourselves. From the theistic pleading which we have just heard, it is abundantly manifest that the formal conditions of a metaphysical teleology are present: the question now before us is as to whether or not any actual evidence exists in favour of such a theory.
If you stick to purely physical terms like stars, there is no whole. If you call the whole mental, then the so-called whole, instead of being one fact with the parts, appears rather as the integral reaction on those parts of an independent higher witness, such as the theistic God is supposed to be.
In Ancient Sex Worship we read, "As the male genital organs were held in early times to exemplify the actual male creative power, various natural objects were seized upon to express the theistic idea and at the same time point to those points of the human form.
The beginning of the world lies outside the region of the knowable, atheism is no better grounded than the theistic hypothesis, and if Comte asserts that a blindly acting mechanism is less probable than a world-plan, he is conscious that he is expressing a mere conjecture which can never be raised to the rank of a scientific theory.
Under the influence of Rome, however, other tendencies came in to give a rather different significance to the theistic argument. For Rome had become the chief center of the later schools of Greek philosophy, and under the shadow of the seven hills rather than in the Athenian groves and porticoes were found the disciples of Pyrrho, of Zeno and of Epicurus.
But we are confident that, if a derivative hypothesis ever is established, it will be so on a solid theistic ground. Meanwhile an inevitable and legitimate hypothesis is on trial an hypothesis thus far not untenable a trial just now very useful to science, and, we conclude, not harmful to religion, unless injudicious assailants temporarily make it so.
To this thoroughly theistic conception he joined the scientific deduction which he had already been led to draw, that the animal species of each geological age, or even stratum, were different from those preceding and following, and also unconnected by natural derivation.
The leaders of the movement have been both able and absolutely devoted to the theistic cause; but they have not revealed the highest qualities of leadership, especially that quality which exalts above the leader himself the principles and the cause which he advocates.
Greece stands alone in its artistic creation of divine forms. Rome rather resembles the Hebrews in its sobriety of theistic creations, and particularly is like the Chinese in the purpose to make religion subservient to the interests of the family and the State; Roman religion, like Chinese, might be described as a body of public and private ceremonies to which gods were attached.
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