After all, some will say, if we grant your great, wise,
beneficent, designing Creator, the finite human mind has as little idea
of a self-existing God, as it has of self-existing matter and
self-existing law. _You_ postulate one great mystery, _we_ postulate two
smaller ones; and the two together really present less "unthinkableness"
to the mind than your one. That is so far plausible, but it is no more.
To believe in a GOD is to believe in One Existence, who necessarily (by
the terms of our conception) has the power both of creating matter,
designing the forms it shall take, and originating the tendencies,
forces, activities--or whatever else we please to call them--which drive
matter in the right direction to get the desired result. To believe not
only that matter caused itself, but that the different forces and
tendencies, and the aims and ends of development, were self-caused, is
surely a much more difficult task. It is the existence of such a
_variety_, it is the existence of a uniform tendency to produce certain
though multitudinous results, that makes the insuperable difficulty of
supposing _matter always developing_ (towards certain ends) to be
self-caused.
The advocates of "eternal matter" really overcome the difficulty, by
shutting their eyes to everything beyond a part of the problem--the
existence of simple matter apart from any laws, properties, or
affinities.
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