In
particular, I reflect that, as a matter of fact, the theistic theory is
born of highly suspicious parentage,--that Fetichism, or the crudest form
of the theory of personal agency in external nature, admits of being easily
traced to the laws of a primitive psychology; that the step from this to
Polytheism is easy; and that the step from this to Monotheism is necessary.
If it is objected to this view that it does not follow that because some
theories of personal agency have proved themselves false, therefore all
such theories must be so--I answer, Unquestionably not; but the above
considerations are not adduced in order to _negative_ the theistic theory:
they are merely adduced to show that the human mind has hitherto
undoubtedly exhibited an undue and a vicious tendency to interpret the
objective processes of nature in terms of its own subjective processes; and
as we can see quite well that the current theory of personal agency in
nature, whether or not true, is a necessary outcome of intellectual
evolution, I think that the fact of so abundant an historical analogy ought
to be allowed to lend a certain degree of antecedent suspicion to this
theory--although, of course, the suspicion is of a kind which would admit
of immediate destruction before any satisfactory positive evidence in
favour of the theory.[30]
'But what is 'the satisfactory positive evidence' that is offered me?
Nothing, save an alleged subjective incapacity on the part of my opponent
adequately to conceive of the fact of cosmic harmony as due to physical
causation alone.
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