We fail at
first to perceive that, from the very nature of this particular case, our
wherefore is deprived of the rational meaning which it had in all the
previous cases, where the possibility of a corresponding therefore was
presupposed. And failing fully to perceive this truth, our organised habit
of expecting an answer to our question asserts itself, and we experience
the same sense of intellectual unrest in the presence of this wholly
meaningless and absurd question, as we experience in the presence of
questions significant and rational.
THE END.
* * * * *
Notes
[1] The above was written before Mr. Mill's essay on Theism was published.
Lest, therefore, my refutation may be deemed too curt, I supplement it with
Mr. Mill's remarks upon the same subject. "It may still be maintained that
the feelings of morality make the existence of God eminently desirable. No
doubt they do, and that is the great reason why we find that good men and
women cling to the belief, and are pained by its being questioned. But,
surely, it is not legitimate to assume that, in the order of the universe,
whatever is desirable is true. Optimism, even when a God is already
believed in, is a thorny doctrine to maintain, and had to be taken by
Leibnitz in the limited sense, that the universe being made by a good
being, is the best universe possible, not the best absolutely: that the
Divine power, in short, was not equal to making it more free from
imperfections than it is.
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