Hence the Hellenic mind, in its objective and spontaneous phase, did not conceive the gods as the architects of the world, but as stones of the great structure. Nature was living, self-existent, the all-fruitful mother; the gods her children. Certain oriental theosophies, with theological or pantheistic theories of creation, had indeed been introduced into Greece, but they had never been naturalized, or become even fairly intelligible to the ·native sunny naturalism. And so the earliest speculative and scientific thought was as remote as possible from anthropomorphism, or any conscious conflict with it. It rose to do what had hitherto been undone, find a rational theory of the origin and being of the universe. It never dreamt of utilizing the gods as creators, but turned to seek in Nature the secret of her existence, the common cause of the system which comprehended both gods and men. And so the earliest philosophic thought was physical and mathematical, looked for the universal cause successively in water, air, fire, number or harmony. Only as the conception of order became deeper did the necessity of assuming mind as its one adequate cause begin to appear. Anaxagoras was the first to see and state this necessity; but so little did he understand his own principle that both Plato † and Aristotle ‡ had to complain of the imperfect and inconclusive way in which he applied it. Once the explanation had been suggested, it seemed * * "Diogenes Lært.," ii. 6. "Phædo," i. 97. "Metaph.," lib. i. 4, 12. so obvious and sufficient, that Aristotle compared the appearance of Anaxagoras among the older philosophers to the rising up of a sober man to speak in a company of tipplers.* Plato, alive to the beauty and order of the world, made it in a still more eminent degree the work of mind, fashioned by divine handicraft after a divine archetype, the plan or idea of the eternal Artist. And the end of creation was as divine as the idea, the diffusion of the goodness which is God's or God. In Aristotle, though his theology is much more fluid and less determinable than Plato's, yet mind, reason, is as necessary to the being of his universe, and the good as certainly its end. In one point his is the more scientific Theism-its conception of God's relation to the world and mode of action in it. He suggests, in a remarkable passage, that possibly the truth may lie in uniting the ideas of transcendent and immanent relation. The general of an army represents the one, the order or discipline he creates. the other, and as in the army, so in the world, the Supreme Good may be conceived as a distinct being and as the collective and inherent order, which secures the good of the whole. In that Aristotelian analogy there lay the germ of a Theism that might have saved religious thought from falling into the hard and shallow Dualism, which has caused much bewildered conflict in the past, and continues to cause no less in the present. * Ib., lib. i. 3, 16. +"Timæus," iii. 28. "Metaph.," lib. xi. 10. The Theism that thus emerged was philosophic and scientific, not religious, an attempt to explain the universe, not to create a religion. Its god was not Zeus. Plato's deity stood ethically far above the Olympian, was too good to be jealous of any being,* so good as to desire the perfect goodness of all. Aristotle's, as the causal and controlling principle, created order and happiness: Οὐκ ἀγαθὸν πολυκοιρανίη· εἷς κοίρανος. Neither was victorious over the puzzle of personality. Plato came nearest victory, but he glides out of personal into impersonal modes of thought and speech with an ease and unconsciousness that greatly perplex a modern Theist. The theistic idea was in each case determined by the cosmic. Plato, ideal, artistic, conceived the world as a structure made after an eternal model, and so its creator was a Anμiovpyós, a great artificer or mechanic. Aristotle, realistic, scientific, conceived the world as an organic whole, the realization of an immanent energy, and so his creator is the unmoved mover of all things. Both believed an ordered nature to be inexplicable without an ordering mind, and this mind became to later thought more personal, more capable therefore of religious use, and akin to the gods. Once this process was complete, the faith that had been so generated easily turned back to seek support in the very phenomena that had suggested it, and so in Cicero the Theism of * "Timæus," iii. 29, 30. "Metaph.," lib. xi. 10; "Iliad,” ii. 204. antiquity claims the harmonies of earth and heaven as proving its right to be-"Quæ contuens animus, accipt ab his cognitionem deorum, ex qua oritur pietas; cum conjuncta justitia est, reliquæque virtutes."* The technic or handicraft theory as to the origin of things, with its proof of a Maker, was thus no creation of religion, but of science. And the science had no religious proclivities, was not of the spurious apologetic sort, was simply doing its best to master the secret of the universe, and doing it with a cordial and unconcealed antagonism to the religion of the day that ought to delight certain modern scientists. This theory of pagan thought was passed on to Christianity. The culture of the early Apologists and Fathers was pagan, and their Theism, so far as scientific, Hellenic rather than Hebrew. Proofs of the Being of God were unnecessary things to the Jew, most necessary things to the Greek, and so men who had to prove His existence had no help but to apply to the latter. technic proofs came the idea of a technic action. They were the basis of such similes as And with the relation and the creation suggests the Creator as a lyre both the man who made and the man who plays it. This method of proof the more speculative Fathers and Schoolmen, like Augustine and Anselm, disdained; and preferred necessities of thought to probable inferences of reason, the ground of "De Nat. Deor.," ii. lxi. + Gregory Nazianz., "Orat.," xxviii. 6, p. 499. their preference being an entirely opposed conception of God's relation to the world. But the technic theory was too precise, intelligible, and useful to be allowed altogether to die out. And when modern science began to open its eyes to the wondrous mechanism of the heavens and the beautiful structures of earth, apologetic Theism, borrowing and developing the premisses, the theological and teleological conceptions of the "Timæus" and the "De Natura Deorum," defined and defended its position by a bewildering multitude of proofs. A divine law of compensation seemed to be at work. The science which with the one hand undermined the ancient faith, seemed with the other to clear for it a vaster and more stable foundation. The Royal Society of England contributed not only to develop science, but also to create a "Natural Theology" which once bade fair to be the rival of revealed. Boyle and Derham prepared the way for Paley, who reasoned from design to a Designer in terms and on principles which seemed those of invincible common sense. And since then Bridgewater and Burnett Treatises have appeared, and done the utmost that can be done on these lines to prove the Being, power, wisdom, and goodness of God. The argument from design was valid enough so long as the old technic conception of Nature stood. If the world was a machine whose fittest analogue was a watch, then a maker was inevitable, construction impossible without a constructor. But the logical and popular |