In other words, if we can prove that the
order of existence to which Mind belongs, is so essentially different from
that order, or those orders, to which all else belongs, as to render it
_abstractedly impossible_ that the latter can produce the former--if we can
prove this, we have likewise proved the existence of a Deity. But this is
just the point in dispute, and to set out with a bare affirmation of it is
merely to beg the question and to abandon the discussion. Doubtless, by the
mere act of consulting their own consciousness, the fact now in dispute
appears to some persons self-evident. But in matters of such high
abstraction as this, even the evidence of self-evidence must not be relied
upon too implicitly. To the country boor it appears self-evident that wood
is annihilated by combustion; and even to the mind of the greatest
philosophers of antiquity it seemed impossible to doubt that the sun moved
over a stationary earth. Much more, therefore, may our broad distinction
between "cogitative and incogitative being"[5] not be a distinction which
is "legitimated by the conditions of external reality."
Doubtless many will fall back upon the position already indicated, "It is
as repugnant to the idea of senseless matter, that it should put into
itself sense, perception, and knowledge, as it is repugnant to the idea of
a triangle, that it should put into itself greater angles than two right
ones.
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