But it seems to me that in the last century there were no
sufficient data for rendering such a theory of things a rational theory;
for so long as the quality of self-existence was supposed to reside in
phenomena themselves, the very simplicity of the theory, as expressed in
words, must have seemed to render it inapplicable as a reasonable theory of
things. The astounding variety, complexity, and harmony which are
everywhere so conspicuous in the world of phenomena must have seemed to
necessitate as an explanation some one integrating cause; and it is
impossible that in the eighteenth century any such integrating cause can
have been conceivable other than Intelligence. Therefore I think, with Mr.
Fiske, that the atheists of the eighteenth century were irrational in
applying their single postulate of self-existence as alone a sufficient
explanation of things. But of course the aspect of the case is now
completely changed, when we regard it in all the flood of light which has
been shed on it by recent science, physical and speculative. For the
demonstration of the fact that energy is indestructible, coupled with the
corollary that every so-called natural law is a physically necessary
consequence of that fact, clearly supply us with a completely novel datum
as the ultimate source of experience--and a datum, moreover, which is as
different as can well be imagined from the ever-changing, ever-fleeting,
world of phenomena.
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