Now the farther we travel into
this region of unrealisable ideas, the less trustworthy is the report that
we are able to bring back. The method is in a sense scientific; but when
even scientific method is projected into a region of really
super-scientific possibility, it ceases to have that character of undoubted
certainty which it enjoys when dealing with verifiable subjects of inquiry.
The demonstrations are formal, but they are not real.
'Therefore, looking to this necessarily suspicious character of the
scientific train of reasoning, and then observing that, even if accepted,
it leaves the fact of cosmic harmony unexplained, I maintain, that whatever
probability the phenomena of nature may in former times have been thought
to establish in favour of the theory as to an intelligent Author of nature,
that probability has been in no wise annihilated--nor apparently can it
ever be annihilated--by the advance of science. And not only so, but I
question whether this probability has been even seriously impaired by such
advance, seeing that although this advance has revealed a speculative
_raison d'etre_ of the mechanical precision of nature, it has at the same
time shown the baffling complexity of nature; and therefore, in view of
what has just been said, leaves the balance of probability concerning the
existence of a God very much where it always was. For stay awhile to
contemplate this astounding complexity of harmonious nature! Think of how
much we already know of its innumerable laws and processes, and then think
that this knowledge only serves to reveal, in a glimmering way, the huge
immensity of the unknown.
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