Such being the intellectual
calibre of the man who elaborates this new system of scientific theology, I
confess that, on first seeing his work, I experienced a faint hope that, in
the higher departments of the Philosophy of Evolution as conceived by Mr.
Spencer and elaborated by his disciple, there might be found some rational
justification for an attenuated form of Theism. But on examination I find
that the bread which these fathers have offered us turns out to be a stone;
and thinking that it is desirable to warn other of the children--whether of
the family Philosophical or Theological--against swallowing on trust a
morsel so injurious, I shall endeavour to point out what I conceive to be
the true nature of "Cosmic Theism."
Starting from the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge, Mr. Fiske,
following Mr. Spencer, proceeds to show how the doctrine implies that there
must be a mode of Being to which human knowledge is non-relative. Or, in
other words, he shows that the postulation of phenomena necessitates the
further postulation of noumena of which phenomena are the manifestations.
Now what may we affirm of noumena without departing from a scientific or
objective mode of philosophising? We may affirm at least this much of
noumena, that they constitute a mode of existence which need not
necessarily vanish were our consciousness to perish; and, therefore, that
they now stand out of necessary relation to our consciousness.
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