Now I
cannot open my eyes without perceiving such a principle everywhere
characterising the collective operation of general laws. Universally I
behold in nature, order, beauty, harmony,--that is, a perfect _correlation_
among general laws. But this ubiquitous correlation among general laws,
considered as the cause of cosmic harmony, itself requires some explanatory
cause such as the persistence of force and the indestructibility of matter
cannot conceivably be made to supply. For unless we postulate some one
integrating cause, the greater the number of general laws in nature, the
less likelihood is there of such laws being so correlated as to produce
harmony by their combined action. And forasmuch as the only cause that I am
able to imagine as competent to produce such effects is that of intelligent
guidance, I accept the metaphysical hypothesis that beyond the sphere of
the Knowable there exists an Unknown God.[25]
'If it is retorted that the above argument involves an absurd
contradiction, in that while it sets out with an explicit avowal of the
fact that the collective operation of general laws follows as a necessary
consequence from the primary data of physical science, it nevertheless
afterwards proceeds to explain an effect of such collective operation by a
metaphysical hypothesis; I answer that it was expressly for the purpose of
eliciting this retort that I threw my argument into the above form.
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