Whether this
is so or not, there are at least in nature a multitude of facts bearing
that character, and this is sufficient for the argument."
Sec. 19. We now come to the last of the arguments which, so far as I know,
have ever been adduced in support of the assertion that there can be no
other cause of our intelligence than another and superior Intelligence. The
argument is chiefly remarkable for the very great prominence which was
given to it by Sir W. Hamilton.
This learned and able author says:--"The Deity is not an object of
immediate contemplation; as existing and in himself, he is beyond our
reach; we can know him only mediately through his works, and are only
warranted in assuming his existence as a certain kind of cause necessary to
account for a certain state of things, of whose reality our faculties are
supposed to inform us. The affirmation of a God being thus a regressive
inference from the existence of a special class of effects to the existence
of a special character of cause, it is evident that the whole argument
hinges on the fact,--Does a state of things really exist such as is only
possible through the agency of a Divine Cause? For if it can be shown that
such a state of things does not really exist, then our inference to the
kind of cause requisite to account for it is necessarily null.
"This being understood, I now proceed to show you that the class of
phaenomena which requires that kind of cause we denominate a Deity is
exclusively given in the phaenomena of mind,--that the phaenomena of matter
taken by themselves, (you will observe the qualification taken by
themselves) so far from warranting any inference to the existence of a God,
would, on the contrary, ground even an argument to his negation.
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