 section 11 of three essays on religion this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org three essays on religion by John Stuart Mill argument from the general consent of mankind before proceeding to the argument from marks of design which as it seems to me must always be the main strength of natural theism we may dispose briefly of some other arguments which are of little scientific weight but which have greater influence on the human mind than much better arguments because they are appeals to authority and it is by authority that the opinions of the bulk of mankind are principally and not unnaturally governed the authority invoked is that of mankind generally and especially of some of its wisest men particularly such as were in other respects conspicuous examples of breaking loose from received prejudices Socrates and Plato Bacon Locke and Newton Descartes and Leibniz are common examples it may doubtless be good advice to persons who in point of knowledge and cultivation are not entitled to think themselves competent judges of difficult questions and bid them content themselves withholding that true which mankind generally believe and so long as they believe it or that which has been believed by those who pass for the most eminent among the minds of the past but to a thinker the argument from other people's opinions has little weight it is but second hand evidence and merely admonishes us to look out for and weigh the reasons on which this conviction of mankind or of wise men was founded accordingly those who make any claim to philosophical treatment of the subject employ this general consent chiefly as evidence that there is in the mind of man an intuitive perception or an instinctive sense of deity from the generality of the belief they infer that it is inherent in our Constitution from which they draw the conclusion a precarious one indeed but comfortable to the general mode of proceeding of the intuitive philosophy that the belief must be true though as applied to theism this argument begs the question since it has itself nothing to rest upon but the belief that the human mind was made by a God who would not deceive his creatures but indeed what ground does the general prevalence of the belief in deity afford us for inferring that this belief is native to the human mind and independent of evidence is it then so very devoid of evidence even apparent has it so little semblance of foundation in fact that it can only be accounted for by the supposition of its being innate we should not expect to find theists believing that the appearances in nature of a contriving intelligence are not only insufficient but are not even plausible and cannot be supposed to have carried conviction either to the general or to the wiser mind if there are external evidences of theism even if not perfectly conclusive why need we suppose that the belief of its truth was the result of anything else the superior mind to whom an appeal is made from Socrates downwards when they professed to give the grounds of their opinion did not say that they found the belief in themselves without knowing from whence it came but ascribed it if not to revelation either to some metaphysical argument or to those very external evidences which are the basis of the argument from design if it be said that the belief in deity is universal among barbarous tribes and among the ignorant portion of civilized populations who cannot be supposed to have been impressed by the marvelous adaptations of nature most of which are unknown to them I answer that the ignorant in civilized countries take their opinions from the educated and that in the case of savages if the evidence is insufficient so is the belief the religious belief of savages is not belief in the God of natural theology but a mere modification of the crude generalization which ascribes life consciousness and will to all natural powers of which they cannot perceive the source or control the operation and the divinities believed in are as numerous as those powers each river fountain or tree has a divinity of its own to see in this blunder of primitive ignorance the hand of a supreme being implanting in his creatures an instinctive knowledge of his existence is a poor complement to the deity the religion of savages is fetishism of the grossest kind ascribing animation and will to individual objects and seeking to propitiate them by prayer and sacrifice that this should be the case is the less surprising when we remember that there is not a definite boundary line broadly separating the conscious human being from inanimate objects between these and man there is an intermediate class of objects sometimes much more powerful than man which do possess life and will these the brute animals which in an early stage of existence play a very great part in human life making it the less surprising that the line should not at first be quite distinguishable between the animate and the inanimate part of nature as observation advances it is perceived that the majority of outward objects have all their important qualities in common with entire classes or groups of objects which comport themselves exactly alike in the same circumstances and in these cases the worship of visible objects is exchanged for that of an invisible being supposed to preside over the whole class this step in generalization is slowly made with hesitation and even terror as we still see in the case of ignorant populations with what difficulty experience disabuses them of belief in the supernatural powers and terrible resentment of a particular idol chiefly by these terrors the religious impressions of barbarians are kept alive with only slight modifications until the theism of cultivated minds is ready to take their place and the theism of cultivated minds if we take their own word for it is always a conclusion either from arguments called rational or from the appearances in nature it is needless here to dwell upon the difficulty of the hypothesis of a natural belief not common to all human beings an instinct not universal it is conceivable doubtless that some men might be born without a particular natural faculty as some are born without a particular sense but when this is the case we ought to be much more particular as to the proof that it really is a natural faculty if it were not a matter of observation but of speculation that men can see if they had no apparent organ of sight and no perceptions or knowledge but such as they might conceivably have acquired by some circuitous process through their other senses the fact that men exist who do not even suppose themselves to see would be a considerable argument against the theory of a visual sense but it would carry us too far to press for the purposes of this discussion an argument which applies so largely to the whole of the intuitional philosophy the strongest intuitionist will not maintain that a belief should be held for instinctive when evidence real or apparent sufficient to engender it is universally admitted to exist to the force of the evidence must be in this case added all the emotional or moral causes which incline men to the belief the satisfaction which it gives to the obstinate questionings with which men torment themselves respecting the past the hopes which it opens for the future the fears also since fear as well as hope predisposes to belief and to these in the case of the more active spirits must always have been added a perception of the power which belief in the supernatural affords for governing mankind either for their own good or for the selfish purposes of the governors the general consent of mankind does not therefore afford ground for admitting even as in hypothesis the origin in an inherent law of the human mind of a fact otherwise so more than sufficiently so amply accounted for the argument from consciousness there have been numerous arguments indeed almost every religious metaphysician has one of his own to prove the existence and attributes of god from what are called truths of reason supposed to be independent of experience Descartes who is the real founder of the intuitional metaphysics draws the conclusion immediately from the first premise of his philosophy the celebrated assumption that whatever he could very clearly and distinctly apprehend must be true the idea of a god perfect in power wisdom and goodness is a clear and distinct idea and must therefore on this principle correspond to a real object this bold generalization however that a conception of the human mind proves its own objective reality Descartes is obliged to limit by the qualification quote if the idea includes existence close quote now the idea of god implying the union of all perfections and existence being a perfection the idea of god proves his existence this very simple argument which denies to man one of his most familiar and most precious attributes that of idealizing as it is called of constructing from the materials of experience a conception more perfect than experience itself affords is not likely to satisfy anyone in the present day more elaborate though scarcely more successful efforts have been made by many of Descartes successors to derive knowledge of the deity from an inward light to make it a truth not dependent on external evidence a fact of direct perception or as they are accustomed to call it of consciousness the philosophical world is familiar with the attempt of cousin to make out that whenever we perceive a particular object we perceive along with it or our conscious of god and also with the celebrated refutation of this doctrine by sir William Hamilton it would be a waste of time to examine any of these theories in detail while each has its own particular logical fallacies they labor under the common infirmity that one man cannot by proclaiming with ever so much confidence that he perceives an object convince other people that they see it too if indeed he laid claim to a divine faculty of vision vouchsafed to him alone and not making him cognizant of things which men not thus assisted have not the capacity to see the case might be different men have been able to get such claims admitted and other people can only require of them to show their credentials but when no claim is set up to any peculiar gift but we are told that all of us are as capable as the prophet of seeing what he sees feeling what he feels nay that we actually do so and when the utmost effort of which we are capable fails to make us aware of what we are told we perceive this supposed universal faculty of intuition is but the dark lantern of the spirit which none see by but those who bear it and the bearers may fairly be asked to consider whether it is not more likely that they are mistaken as to the origin of an impression in their minds then that others are ignorant of the very existence of an impression in theirs the inconclusiveness in a speculative point of view of all arguments from a subjective notion of deity to its objective reality was well seen by Kant the most discriminating of the a priori metaphysicians who always kept the two questions the origin and composition of our ideas and the reality of the corresponding objects perfectly distinct according to Kant the idea of the deity is native to the mind in the sense that it is constructed by the mind's own laws and not derived from without but his idea of speculative reason cannot be shown by any logical process or perceived by direct apprehension to have a corresponding reality outside the human mind to Kant God is neither an object of direct consciousness nor a conclusion of reasoning but a necessary assumption necessary not by a logical but a practical necessity imposed by the reality of the moral law duty is a fact of consciousness thou shalt is a command issuing from the recesses of our being and not to be accounted for by any impressions derived from experience and this command requires a commander though it is not perfectly clear whether Kant's meaning is that conviction of a law includes conviction of a law giver or only that a being of whose will the law is an expression is imminently desirable if the former is intended the argument is founded on a double meaning of the word law a rule to which we feel it a duty to conform has in common with laws commonly so-called the fact of claiming our obedience but it does not follow that the rule must originate like the laws of the land in the will of a legislator or legislators external to the mind we may even say that a feeling of obligation which is merely the result of a command is not what is meant by moral obligation which on the contrary supposes something that the internal conscious bears witness to as binding in its own nature and which God in super adding his command conforms to and perhaps declares but does not create conceding then for the sake of the argument that the moral sentiment is as purely of the mind's own growth the obligation of duty as entirely independent of experience and acquired impressions as Kant or any other metaphysician ever contended it may yet be maintained that this feeling of obligation rather excludes then compels the belief in a divine legislator merely as the source of the obligation and as a matter of fact the obligation of duty is both theoretically acknowledged and practically felt in the fullest manner by many who have no positive belief in God though seldom probably without habitual and familiar reference to him as an ideal conception but if the existence of God as a wise and just lawgiver is not a necessary part of the feelings of morality it may still be maintained that those feelings make his existence 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 libnits 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 but optimism prior to belief in a god and as the ground of that belief seems one of the oldest of all speculative delusions nothing however i believe contributes more to keep up the belief in the general mind of humanity than this feeling of its desirableness which when clothed as it very often is in the forms of an argument is a naive expression of the tendency of the human mind to believe what is agreeable to it positive value the argument of course has none without dwelling further on these or on any other of the a priori arguments for theism we will no longer delay passing to the far more important argument of the appearances of contrivance in nature end of section 11 section 12 of three essays on religion this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org three essays on religion by John Stuart Mill the argument from marks of design in nature we now at last reach an argument of a really scientific character which does not shrink from scientific tests but claims to be judged by the established canons of induction the design argument is wholly grounded on experience certain qualities it is alleged are found to be characteristic of such things as are made by an intelligent mind for a purpose the order of nature or some considerable parts of it exhibit these qualities in a remarkable degree we are entitled from this great similarity in the effects to infer similarity in the cause and to believe that things which it is beyond the power of man to make but which resemble the works of man in all but power must have been made by intelligence armed with a power greater than human i have stated this argument in its fullest strength as it is stated by the most thoroughgoing assertors a very little consideration however suffices to show that though it has some force its force is very generally overrated Paley's illustration of a watch puts the case much too strongly if i found a watch on an apparently desolate island i should indeed infer that it had been left there by a human being but the inference would not be from marks of design but because i already know by direct experience that watches are made by men i should draw the inference no less confidently from a footprint or from any relic however insignificant which experience has taught me to attribute to man as geologists infer the past existence of animals from coprolites though no one sees marks of design in a coprolite the evidence of design in creation can never reach the height of direct induction it amounts only to the inferior kind of inductive evidence called analogy analogy agrees with induction in this that they both argue that a thing known to resemble another in certain circumstances call those circumstances a and b will resemble it in another circumstance call it c but the difference is that in induction a and b are known by a previous comparison of many instances to be the very circumstance on which c depends or with which it is in some way connected when this has not been ascertained the argument amounts only to this that since it is not known with which of the circumstances existing in the known case c is connected they may as well be a and b as any others and therefore there is a greater probability of c in cases where we know that a and b exist then in cases of which we know nothing at all this argument is of a weight very difficult to estimate at all and impossible to estimate precisely it may be very strong when the known points of agreement a and b etc are numerous and the known points of difference few or very weak when the reverse is the case but it can never be equal in validity to a real induction the resemblances between some of the arrangements in nature and some of those made by man are considerable and even as mere resemblances afford a certain presumption of similarity of cause but how great that presumption is it is hard to say all that can be said with certainty is that these likenesses make creation by intelligence considerably more probable than if the likenesses had been less or then if there had been no likenesses at all this mode however of stating the case does not do full justice to the evidence of theism the design argument is not drawn from mere resemblances in nature to the works of human intelligence but from the special character of those resemblances the circumstances in which it is alleged that the world resembles the works of man are not circumstances taken at random but are particular instances of a circumstance which experience shows to have a real connection with an intelligent origin the fact of conspiring to an end the argument therefore is not one of mere analogy as mere analogy it has its weight but it is more than analogy it surpasses analogy exactly as induction surpasses it it is an inductive argument this i think is undeniable and it remains to test the argument by the logical principles applicable to induction for this purpose it will be convenient to handle not the argument as a whole but some one of the most impressive cases of it such as the structure of the eye or of the ear it is maintained that the structure of the eye proves a designing mind to what class of inductive arguments does this belong and what is its degree of force the species of inductive arguments are four in number corresponding to the four inductive methods the methods of agreement of difference of residues and of concomitant variations the argument under consideration falls within the first of these divisions the method of agreement this is for reasons known to inductive logicians the weakest of the four but the particular argument is a strong one of the kind it may be logically analyzed as follows the parts of which the eye is composed and the co-locations which constitute the arrangement of those parts resemble one another in this very remarkable property that they all conduce to enabling the animal to see these things being as they are the animal sees if any one of them were different from what it is the animal for the most part would either not see or would not see equally well and this is the only marked resemblance that we can trace among the different parts of this structure beyond the general likeness of composition and organization which exists among all other parts of the animal now the particular combination of organic elements called an eye had in every instance a beginning in time and must therefore have been brought together by a cause or causes the number of instances is immeasurably greater than is by the principles of inductive logic required for the inclusion of a random concurrence of independent causes or speaking technically for the elimination of chance we are therefore warranted by the cannons of induction in concluding that what brought all these elements together was some cause common to them all and in as much as the elements agree in the single circumstance of conspiring to produce site there must be some connection by way of causation between the cause which brought those elements together and the fact of sight this I conceive to be a legitimate inductive inference and the sum and substance of what induction can do for theism the natural sequel of the argument would be this sight being a fact not precedent but subsequent to the putting together of the organic structure of the eye can only be connected with the production of that structure in the character of a final not an efficient cause that is it is not sight itself but an antecedent idea of it that must be the efficient cause but this at once marks the origin as proceeding from an intelligent will I regret to say however that this latter half of the argument is not so inexpungable as the former half creative forethought is not absolutely the only link by which the origin of the wonderful mechanism of the eye may be connected with the fact of sight there is another connecting link on which attention has been greatly fixed by recent speculations and the reality of which cannot be called in question though it's adequacy to account for such truly admirable combinations as some of those in nature is still and will probably long remain problematical this is the principle of the survival of the fittest this principle does not pretend to account for the commencement of sensation or of animal or vegetable life but assuming the existence of some one or more very low forms of organic life in which there are no complex adaptations nor any marked appearances of contrivance and supposing as experience warrants us in doing that many small variations from those simple types would be thrown out in all directions which would be transmittable by inheritance and of which some would be advantageous to the creature in its struggle for existence and others disadvantageous the forms which are advantageous would always tend to survive and those which are disadvantageous to perish and thus there would be a constant though slow general improvement of the type as it branched out into many different varieties adapting it to different media and modes of existence until it might possibly in countless ages attain to the most advanced examples which now exist it must be acknowledged that there is something very startling and prima facia improbable in this hypothetical history of nature it would require us for example to suppose that the prime evil animal of whatever nature it may have been could not see and had at most such slight preparation for seeing as might be constituted by some chemical action of light upon its cellular structure one of the accidental variations which are liable to take place in all organic beings would at some time or other produce a variety that could see in some imperfect manner and this peculiarity being transmitted by inheritance while other variations continued to take place in other directions a number of races would be produced who by the power of even imperfect sight would have a great advantage over all other creatures which could not see and would in time extirpate them from all places except perhaps a very few peculiar situations underground fresh variations supervening would give rise to races with better and better seeing powers until we might at last reach as extraordinary a combination of structures and functions as are seen in the eye of man and of the more important animals of this theory when pushed to this extreme point all that can now be said is that it is not so absurd as it looks and that the analogies which have been discovered in experience favorable to its possibility far exceed what anyone could have supposed beforehand whether it will ever be possible to say more than this is at present uncertain the theory if admitted would be in no way whatever inconsistent with creation but it must be acknowledged that it would greatly attenuate the evidence for it leaving this remarkable speculation to whatever fate the progress of discovery may have in store for it i think it must be allowed that in the present state of our knowledge the adaptations in nature afford a large balance of probability in favor of creation by intelligence it is equally certain that this is no more than a probability and that the various other arguments of natural theology which we have considered add nothing to its force whatever ground there is revelation apart to believe in an author of nature is derived from the appearances in the universe their mere resemblance to the works of man or to what man could do if he had the same power over the materials of organized bodies which he has over the materials of a watch is of some value as an argument of analogy but the argument is greatly strengthened by the properly inductive considerations which establish that there is some connection through causation between the origin of the arrangements of nature and the ends they fulfill an argument which is in many cases slight but in others and chiefly in the nice and intricate combinations of vegetable and animal life is of considerable strength end of section 12 section 13 of three essays on religion this is the LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org three essays on religion by John Stuart Mill Theism section five part two attributes the question of the existence of a deity in its purely scientific aspect standing as is shown in the first part it is next to be considered given the indications of a deity what sort of deity do they point to what attributes are we warranted by the evidence which nature affords of a creative mind and assigning to that mind it needs no showing that the power if not the intelligence must be so far superior to that of man as to surpass all human estimate but from this to omnipotence and omniscience there is a wide interval and the distinction is of immense practical importance it is not too much to say that every indication of design in the cosmos is so much evidence against the omnipotence of the designer for what is meant by design contrivance the adaptation of means to an end for the necessity for contrivance the need of employing means is a consequence of the limitation of power who would have recourse to means if to attain his end his mere word was sufficient the very idea of means implies that the means have an efficacy which the direct action of the being who employs them has not otherwise they are not means but an encumbrance a man does not use machinery to move his arms if he did it could only be when paralysis had deprived him of the power of moving them by volition but if the employment of contrivance is in itself a sign of limited power how much more so is the careful and skillful choice of contrivances can any wisdom be shown in the selection of means when the means have no efficacy for what is given to them by the will of him who employs them and when his will could have bestowed the same efficacy on any other means wisdom and contrivance are shown in overcoming difficulties and there is no room for them in a being for whom no difficulties exist the evidences therefore of natural theology distinctly imply that the author of the cosmos worked under limitations that he was obliged to adapt himself to conditions independent of his will and to attain his ends by such arrangements as those conditions admitted of and this hypothesis agrees with what we have seen to be the tendency of the evidence in another respect we found that the appearances in nature point indeed to an origin of the cosmos or order in nature and indicate that origin to be design but do not point to any commencement stillness creation of the two great elements of the universe the passive element and the active element matter and force there is in nature no reason whatever to suppose that either matter or force or any of their properties were made by the being who was the author of the collocations by which the world is adapted to what we consider as its purposes or that he has power to alter any of those properties it is only when we consent to entertain this negative supposition that there arises a need for wisdom and contrivance in the order of the universe the deity had on this hypothesis to work out his ends by combining materials of a given nature and properties out of these materials he had to construct a world in which his design should be carried into effect through given properties of matter and force working together and fitting into one another this did require skill and contrivance and the means by which it is affected are often such as justly excited how wonder and admiration but exactly because it requires wisdom it implies limitation of power or rather the two phrases express different sides of the same fact if it be said that an omnipotent creator though under no necessity of employing contrivance as such as man must use thought fit to do so in order to leave traces by which man might recognize his creative hand the answer is that this equally supposes a limit to his omnipotence for if it was his will that men should know that they themselves and the world are his work he being omnipotent had only to will that they should be aware of it and genius men have sought for reasons why god might choose to leave his existence so far a matter of doubt that men should not be under any absolute necessity of knowing it as they are of knowing that three and two make five these imagined reasons are very unfortunate specimens of causistry but even did we admit their validity they are of no avail on the supposition of omnipotence since if it did not please god to implant in man a complete conviction of his existence nothing hindered him from making the conviction for short of completeness by any margin he chose to leave it is usual to dispose of arguments of this description by the easy answer that we do not know what reasons the omniscient may have had for leaving undone things which he had the power to do it is not perceived that this plea itself implies a limit to omnipotence when a thing is obviously good and obviously in accordance with what all the evidences of creation imply to have been the creatus design and we say we do not know what good reason he may have had for not doing it we mean that we do not know to what other still better object to what object still more completely in line of his purposes he may have seen fit to postpone it but the necessity of postponing one thing to another belongs only to limited power omnipotence could have made the objects compatible omnipotence does not need to weigh one consideration against another if the creator like a human ruler had to adapt himself to a set of conditions which he did not make it is as unphilosophical as presumptuous in us to call him to account for any imperfections in his work to complain that he left anything in it contrary to what if the indications of design prevent a thing he must have intended he must at least know more than we know and we cannot judge what greater good would have had to be sacrificed or what greater evil incurred if he had decided to remove this particular plot not so if he be an omnipotent if he be that he must himself have willed that the two desirable objects should be incompatible he must himself have willed that the obstacle to his supposed design should be inseparable it cannot therefore be his design it will not do to say that it was but that he had other designs which interfered with it for no one purpose imposes necessary limitations on another in the case of a being not restricted by conditions of possibility omnipotence therefore cannot be predicated of the creator on grounds of natural theology the fundamental principles of natural religion as deduced from the facts of the universe negative his omnipotence they do not in the same manner exclude omniscience if we suppose the imitation of power there is nothing to contradict the supposition of perfect knowledge and absolute wisdom but neither is there anything to prove it the knowledge of the powers and properties of things necessary for planning and executing the arrangements of the cosmos is no doubt as much in excess of human knowledge as the power implied in creation is in excess of human power and the skill the subtlety of contrivance the ingenuity as it would be called in the case of a human work is often marvellous but nothing obliges us to suppose that either the knowledge or the skill is infinite we are not even compelled to suppose that the contrivances were always the best possible if we venture to judge them as we judge the works of human artifices we find abundant defects the human body for example is one of the most striking instances of artful and ingenious contrivances which nature offers but we may well ask whether so complicated a machine could not have been made to last longer and not to get so easily and frequently out of order we may ask why the human race should have been so constituted as to grovel and wretchedness and degradation for countless ages before a small portion of it was unable to lift itself into the very imperfect state of intelligence goodness and happiness which we enjoy the divine power may not have been equal to doing more the obstacles to a better arrangement of things may have been insuperable but it is also possible that they were not the skill of the demi-elgis was sufficient to produce what we see but we cannot tell that this skill reached the extreme limit of perfection compatible with the material that employed and the forces it had to work with i know not how we can even satisfy ourselves on grounds of natural theology that the creator foresees all the future that he foreknows all the effects that will issue from his own contrivances there may be great wisdom without the powerful seeing and calculating everything and human workmanship teaches us the possibility that the workman's knowledge of the properties of the things he works on may enable him to make arrangements admirably fitted to produce a given result while he may have very little power for seeing the agencies of another kind which may modify or counteract the operation of the machinery he has made perhaps the knowledge of the laws of nature on which organic life depends not much more perfect than the knowledge which man even now possesses some other natural laws would enable man if he had the same power over the materials and the forces concerned as he has over some of those of inanimate nature to create organized beings not less wonderful nor less adapted to their conditions of existence than those in nature assuming then that while we can find ourselves to natural religion we must rest content with a creator less than almighty the question presents itself of what nature is the limitation of his power does the obstacle at which the power of the creator stops which says to it thus far shalt they'll go and no further lie in the power of other intelligent beings or in the insufficiency and refractoriness of the materials of the universe well must we resign ourselves to admitting the hypothesis that the author of the cosmos though wise and knowing was not all wise and all knowing and may not always have done the best that was possible under the conditions of the problem the first of these suppositions has until a very recent period being and in many quarters still is the prevalent theory even of christianity though attributing and in a certain sense sincerely omnipotence to the creator the received religion represents him as for some inscrutable reason tolerating the perpetual counteraction of his purposes by the will of another being of opposite character and of great though inferior power the devil the only difference on this matter between popular christianity and the religion of almost an araman is that the former pays its good creator the bad compliment of having been the maker of the devil and of being at all times able to crush and annihilate him and his evil deeds and councils which nevertheless he does not do but as i have already remarked all forms of polytheism and this among the rest are with difficulty reconcilable with the universe governed by general laws obedience to law is the note of a settled government and not of a conflict always going on when powers are at war with one another for the rule of the world the boundary between them is not fixed but constantly fluctuating this may seem to be the case on our planet as between the powers of good and evil when we look only at the results but when we consider the inner springs we find that both the good and the evil take place in the common course of nature by virtue of the same general laws originally impressed the same machinery turning out now good now evil things and often is still the two combined the division of power is only apparently variable but really so regular that we speaking of human potentiates we should declare without hesitation that the share of each must have been fixed by previous consent upon that supposition indeed the result of the combination of antagonist forces might be much the same as on that of a single character with divided purposes but when we come to consider not what hypothesis may be conceived and possibly reconcile with known facts but what supposition is pointed to by the evidences of natural religion the case is different the indications of design point strongly in one direction the preservation of the creatures and whose structure the indications are found along with the preserving agencies there are destroying agencies which we might be tempted to ascribe to the will of a different creator but there are rarely appearances of the recondite contrivance of means of destruction except when the destruction of one creature is the means of preservation to others nor can it be supposed that the preserving agencies are wielded by one being the destroying agencies by another the destroying agencies are unnecessary part of the preserving agencies the chemical compositions by which life is carried on could not take place without a parallel series of decompositions the great agent of decay in both organic and inorganic substances is oxidation and is only by oxidation that life is continued for even the length of a minute the imperfections and the attainment of the purposes which the appearances indicate have not the air of having been designed they are like the unintended results of accidents insufficiently guarded against or of a little excess or deficiency in the quantity of some of the agencies by which the good purpose is carried on or else they are consequences of the wearing out of a machinery not made to last forever they point either to shortcomings in the workmanship as regards its intended purpose or to external forces not under the control of the workman but which forces bear no mark of being wielded and aimed by any other and rival intelligence we may conclude them that there is no ground in natural theology for attributing intelligence or personality to the obstacles which partially thwart what seem the purposes of the creator the limitation of his power more probably results either from the qualities of the material the substances and forces of which the nature is composed not admitting of any arrangements by which his purposes could be more completely fulfilled or else the purposes might have been more fully attained but the creator did not know how to do it creative school wonderful as it is was not sufficiently perfect to accomplish his purposes more thoroughly we now pass to the moral attributes of the deity so far as indicated in the creation or dating the problem in the broadest manner to the question what indications nature gives of the purposes of its author this question bears a very different aspect to us from what it bears to those teachers of natural theology who are encumbered with the necessity of admitting the omnipotence of the creator we have not to attempt the impossible problem of reconciling infinite benevolence and justice with infinite power and the creator of such a word as this the attempt to do so not only involves absolute contradiction in an intellectual point of view but exhibits to excess the revolting spectacle of a jesuitical defense of moral enormities on this topic I need not add to the illustrations given in this portion of the subject to my essay on nature at the stage which our argument has reached there is none of this moral complexity grant that creative power was limited by conditions the nature and extent of which are wholly unknown to us and the goodness and justice of the creator may be all that the most pious believe and all in the work that conflicts with those moral attributes may be the fault of the conditions which left to the creator only a choice of evils it is however one question whether any given conclusion is consistent with known facts and another whether there is evidence to prove it and if we have no means for judging of the design but from the work actually produced it is a somewhat hazardous speculation to suppose that the work designed was of a different quality from the result realized still though the ground is unsafe we may with due caution journey a certain distance on it some parts of the order of nature give much more indication of contrivance than others many it is not too much to say give no sign of it at all the signs of contrivance are most conspicuous in the structure and processes of vegetable and animal life but for these it is probable that the appearances in nature would never have seemed to the thinking part of mankind to afford any proofs of a god but when a god had been inferred from the organization of living beings other parts of nature such as the structure of the solar system seem to afford evidences more or less strong in confirmation of the belief granting then a design in nature we can best hope to be enlightened as to what that design was by examining it in the parts of nature in which its traces are the most conspicuous to what purpose then do the expedience in the construction of animals and vegetables which excite the admiration of naturalists appear to tend there is no blinking the fact that they tend principally to no more exalted object than to make the structure remain in life and in working order for a certain time the individual for a few years the species or race for a longer but still a limited period and a similar though less conspicuous marks of creation which are recognized in an inorganic nature are generally of the same character the adaptations for instance which appear in the solar system consist in placing it under conditions which enable the mutual action of its parts to maintain instead of destroying its stability and even that only for a time vast indeed if measured against our short span of animated existence but which can be perceived even by us to be limited for even the feeble means which we possess of exploring the past are believed by those who have examined the subject by the most recent lights to yield evidence that the solar system was once a vast sphere of nebula or vapor and is going through a process which in the course of ages will reduce it to a single and not very large mass of solid matter frozen up with more than the Arctic cold if the machinery of the system is adapted to keep itself at work only for a time still less perfect is the adaptation of it for the abode of living beings since it is only adapted to them during the relatively short portion of its total duration which intervenes between the time when each planet was too hot and the time when it became or will become too cold to admit of life under the only conditions in which we have experience of its possibility or we should perhaps reverse the statement and say that organization and life are only adapted to the conditions of the solar system during a relatively short portion of the system's existence the greater part therefore of the design of which there is indication in nature however wonderful its mechanism is no evidence of any moral attributes because the end to which it is directed and its adaptation to which end is the evidence of it being directed to an end at all is not a moral end it is not the good of any sentient creature it is but the qualified permanence for a limited period of the work itself whether animate or inanimate the only inference that can be drawn from most of it respecting the character of the creator is that he does not wish his work to perish as soon as created he wills them to have a certain duration from this alone nothing can be justly inferred as to the manner in which he is affected towards his animate or rational creatures after deduction of the great number of adaptations which have no apparent object but to keep the machine going there remain a certain number of provisions for giving pleasure to living beings and a certain number of provisions for giving them pain there is no positive certainty that the whole of these ought not to take their place among the contravences for keeping the creature or its species in existence for both the pleasures and the pains have a conservative tendency the pleasures being generally so disposed as to attract to the things which maintain individual collective existence the pain so as to tear from such as would destroy it when all these things are considered it is evident that a vast deduction must be made from the evidences of a creator before they can be counted as evidences of a benevolent purpose so vast indeed that some may doubt whether after such a deduction there remains any balance yet endeavoring to look at the question without partiality or prejudice and without allowing wishes to have any influence over judgment it does appear that granting the existence of design there is a preponderance of evidence that the creator desired the pleasure of his creatures this is indicated by the fact that pleasure of one description or another is afforded by almost everything the mere play of the faculties physical and mental being a never ending source of pleasure and even painful things give pleasure by the satisfaction of curiosity and the agreeable sense of acquiring knowledge and also that pleasure when experienced seems to result from the normal working of the machinery while pain usually arises from some external interference with it and resembles in each particular case the result of an accident even in cases when pain results like pleasure from the machinery itself the appearances do not indicate that contrivance was brought into play purposely to produce pain what is indicated is rather a clumsiness in the contrivance employed for some other purpose the author of the machinery is no doubt accountable for having made it susceptible of pain but this may have been a necessary condition of its susceptibility to pleasure a supposition which avails nothing on the theory of the omnipotent creature but is an extremely probable one in the case of a contriver working under the limitations of inexorable laws and indestructible properties of matter the susceptibility being conceded as a thing which did enter into design the pain itself usually seems like a thing undesigned a casual result of the collision of the organism with some outward force to which it was not intended to be exposed and which in many cases provision is even made to hinder it from being exposed to there is therefore a much appearance that pleasure is agreeable to the creator while there is very little if any appearance the pain is so and there is a certain amount of justification for inferring on grounds of natural theology alone that benevolence is one of the attributes of the creator but to jump from this to the inference that his soul or chief purposes are those of benevolence and that the single end and aim of creation was the happiness of his creatures it is not only not justified by any evidence but it is a conclusion in opposition to such evidence as we have if the motive of the deity for creating sentient beings was the happiness of the beings he created his purpose in our corner of the universe at least must be pronounced taking past ages and all countries and races into account to have been thus far an ignominious failure and if God had no purpose but our happiness and that of other living creatures it is not credible that he would have called them into existence with the prospect of being so completely baffled if man had not the power by the exercise of his own energies for the improvement of both himself and his outward circumstances to do for himself and other creatures vastly more than God had in the first instance done the being who called him into existence would deserve something very different from thanks at his hands of course it may be said that this very capacity of improving himself and the world was given to him by God and that the change which he will be there by and they will ultimately to affect in human existence will be worth purchasing by the suffering and wasted lives of entire geological period this may be so but to suppose that God could not have given him these blessings at a less frightful cost is to make a very strange supposition concerning the deity it is to suppose that God could not in the first instance create anything better than a bozgesman or an andaman islander or something still lower and yet was able to endow the bozgesman or the andaman islander with the power of raising himself into a newton or a fenolon we certainly do not know the nature of the barriers which limit the divine omnipotence but it is a very odd notion of them that they enable the deity to confer on an almost bestial creature the power of producing by a succession of efforts what God himself had no other means of creating such are the indications of natural religion in respect to the divine benevolence if we look for any other of the moral attributes which a certain class of philosophers are accustomed to distinguish from benevolence as for example justice we find a total blank there is no evidence whatever in nature for divine justice whatever standard of justice our ethical opinions may lead us to recognize there is no shadow of justice in the general arrangement of nature and what imperfect realization it obtains in any human society a most imperfect realization as yet is the work of man himself struggling upwards against immense natural difficulties into civilization and making to himself a second nature far better and more unselfish than he was created with but on this point enough has been said in another essay also referred to on nature these then are the net results of natural theology on the question of the divine attributes are being of great but limited power how or by what limited we cannot even conjecture of great and perhaps unlimited intelligence but perhaps also more narrowly limited than his power who desires and pays some regard to the happiness of his creatures but who seems to have other notions of action which he cares more for and who can hardly be supposed to have created the universe for that purpose alone such as the deity whom natural religion points to and any idea of God more captivating than this comes only from human wishes or from the teaching of either real or imaginary revelation we shall next examine whether the light of nature gives any indications concerning the immortality of the soul and a future life end of theism section five recording by sunny shields doha state of kata june 2011 section 14 of three essays on religion this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org three essays on religion by john stewart mill theism section six part three immortality the indications of immortality may be considered in two divisions those which are independent of any theory respecting the creator and his intentions and those which depend upon an antecedent belief on that subject of the former class of arguments speculative men have in different ages put forward a considerable variety of which those in the feeding of play too are an example but they are for the most parts such as have no adherence and need not be seriously refuted now they are generally founded upon preconceived theories as to the nature of the thinking principle in man considered as distinct and separable from the body and on other preconceived theories respecting death as for example that death or dissolution is always a separation of parts and the soul being without parts being simple and indivisible is not susceptible of this separation curiously enough one of the interlocutors in the feeding anticipates the answer by which an objector of the present day would meet this argument namely that thought and consciousness though mentally distinguishable from the body may not be a substance separable from it but a result of it standing in relation to it the illustration is Plato's like that of a tune to the musical instrument on which it is played and that the arguments used to prove that the soul does not die with the body would equally prove that the tune does not die with the instrument but survives its destruction and continues to exist apart in fact those moderns who dispute the evidences of the immortality of the soul do not in general believe the soul to be a substance per se but regarded as the name of a bundle of attributes the attributes of feeling thinking reasoning believing willing etc and these attributes they regard as a consequence of the bodily organization which therefore they argue it is as unreasonable to suppose surviving when that organization is dispersed as to suppose the color or odor of a rose surviving when the rose itself is perished those therefore who would deduce the immortality of the soul from its own nature have first approved that the attributes in question are not attributes of the body but of a separate substance now what is the verdict of science on this point it is not perfectly conclusive either way in the first place it does not prove experimentally that any mode of organization has the power of producing feeling or thought to make that prove good it would be necessary that we should be able to produce an organism and try whether it would feel which we cannot do organisms cannot by any human means be produced they can only be developed out of a previous organism on the other hand the evidence is well nigh complete that all thought and feeling has some action of the bodily organism for its immediate intercedent or accompaniment that the specific variations and especially the different degrees of complication of the nervous and cerebral organization correspond to differences in the development of the mental faculties and though we have no evidence except negative that the mental consciousness ceases forever when the functions of the brain are at an end we do know that disease of the brain disturbs the mental functions and that decay or weakness of their brain infebles them we have therefore sufficient evidence that cerebral action is if not the cause at least in our present state of existence a condition seen quite non of mental operation and that assuming the mind to be a distinct substance its separation from the body would not be as some have vainly flattered themselves and liberation from trammels and restoration to freedom but would simply put a stop to its functions and remind it to unconsciousness unless and until some other set of conditions supervenes capable of recalling it into activity but of the existence of which experience does not give us the smallest indication at the same time it is of importance to remark that these considerations only amount to defect of evidence they afford no positive argument against immortality we must beware of giving a priori validity to the conclusions of an a posteriori philosophy the root of all a priori thinking is that tendency to transfer to outward things a strong association between the corresponding ideas in our own minds and the thinkers who most sincerely attempt to limit their beliefs by experience and honestly believe that they do so are not always sufficiently on their guard against this mistake there are thinkers who regarded as truth of reason that miracles are impossible and in like manner there are others who believe the phenomenon of life and consciousness are associated in their minds by undeviating experience with the action of material organs think it an absurdity per se to imagine it possible that those phenomenon can exist under any other conditions but they should remember that the uniform coexistence of one fact with another does not make the one fact a part of the other or the same with it the relation of thought to a material brain is no metaphysical necessity but simply a constant coexistence within the limits of observation and when analyzed to the bottom on the principles of the associative psychology the brain just as much as the mental functions is like matter itself merely a set of human sensations either actual or inferred as possible namely those which the anatomist has when he opens the skull and the impressions which we suppose we should receive of molecular or some other movements when the cerebral activity was going on if there were no bony envelope and our senses or our instruments were sufficiently delicate experience finishes us with no example of any series of states of consciousness without this group of contingent sensations attached to it but it is as easy to imagine such a series of states without as with this accompaniment and we know of no reason in the nature of things against the possibility of its being thus disjoint we may suppose that the same thoughts emotions fillitions and even sensations which we have here may persist or recommence somewhere else under other conditions just as we may suppose that other thoughts and sensations may exist under other conditions in other parts of the universe and in entertaining this supposition we need not be embarrassed by any metaphysical difficulties about a thinking substance is but a general name for the pedorability of attributes wherever there is a series of thoughts connected together by memories that constitutes a thinking substance this absolute distinction in thought and separability and representation of our states of consciousness from the set of conditions with which they are united only by constancy of co-commitments is equivalent in a practical point of view to the old distinction of the two substances matter and mind there is therefore in science no evidence against the immortality of the soul but that negative evidence which consists in the absence of evidence in its favour and even the negative evidence is not so strong as negative evidence often is in the case of witchcraft for instance the fact that there is no proof which will stand examination of its having ever existed is as conclusive as the most positive evidence of its non-existence would be for it exists if it does exist on this earth where if it had existed the evidence of fact would certainly have been available to prove it but it is not so as to the soul's existence after death that it does not remain on earth and go about visibly or interfere in the events of life as proved by the same weight of evidence which just proves witchcraft but that it does not exist elsewhere there is absolutely no proof a very faint if any presumption is all that is afforded by its disappearance from the surface of this planet some may think that there is an additional and very strong presumption against the immortality of the thinking unconscious principle from the analysis of all the other objects of nature all things in nature perish the most beautiful and perfect being as philosophies and poets alike complain the most perishable a flower of the most exquisite form and coloring grows up from a root comes to perfection a weeks or months unless only a few hours or days why should it be otherwise with man why indeed but why also should it not be otherwise feeling and thought are not merely different from what we call an animate matter but are the opposite pole of existence an analogical inference has little or no validity from the one to the other feeling and thought are much more real than anything else they are the only things which we directly know to be real all things else being merely the unknown conditions on which these in our present state of existence or in some other depend or matter apart from the feelings of sentient beings has but a hypothetical and unsubstantial existence it is a mere assumption to account for our sensations itself we do not perceive we are not conscious of it but only the sensations which we are said to receive from it in reality it is a mere name for our expectation of sensations or for our belief that we can have certain sensations when certain other sensations give indications of them because these contingent possibilities of sensation sooner or later come to an end and give place to others is it implied in this that the series of our feelings must itself be broken off this would not be to reason from one kind of substantive reality to another but to draw from something which has no reality except in reference to something else conclusions applicable to that which is only substantive reality mind or whatever name we give to what is implied in consciousness of a continued series of feelings is in a philosophical point of view the only reality of which we have any evidence and no analogy can be recognized or comparison made between it and other realities because there are no other known realities to compare it with that is quite consistent with it being perishable but the question whether it is so or not is there is integra untouched by any of the results of human knowledge and experience the case is one of those very rare cases in which there is really a total absence of evidence on either side in which the absence of evidence for the affirmative does not as in so many cases it does create a strong presumption in favor of the negative the belief however in human immortality in the minds of mankind generally is probably not grounded on any scientific arguments either physical or metaphysical but on foundations with most minds much stronger namely on one hand the disagreeableness of giving up existence to those at least to whom it has of the two been pleasant and on the other the general traditions of mankind the natural tendency of belief to follow these two inducements our own wishes and the general assent of other people has been in this instance reinforced by the utmost exertion of the power of public and private teaching rulers and instructors have at all times with the view of getting greater effect to their mandates whether from selfish or from public motives encouraged to the utmost of their power the belief that there is in life after death in which pleasures and sufferings far greater than on earth depend on our doing or leaving undone while alive what we are commanded to do in the name of the unseen powers as causes of belief these various circumstances are most powerful as rational grounds of it they carry no weight at all that what is called the consoling nature of an opinion that is the pleasure we should have in believing it to be true can be a ground for believing it is a doctrine irrational in itself and which would sanction half the misdevious illusions recorded in history or which mislead individual life it is sometimes in the case now under consideration wrapped up in a quasi scientific language we are told that the desire of immortality is one of our instincts and that there is no instinct which has not corresponding to a real object fitted to satisfy it where there is hunger there is somewhere food where there is sexual feeling there is somewhere sex where there is love there is somewhere something to be loved and so forth in like manner since there is the instinctive desire of eternal life eternal life therefore must be the answer to this is patent on the very surface of the subject it is unnecessary to go into any recondite considerations concerning instincts or to discuss whether the desire in question is an instinct or not granting that wherever there is an instinct there exists something such as that instinct demands can it be affirmed that this something exists in boundless quantity or sufficient to satisfy the infinite craving of human desires what is called the desire of eternal life is simply the desire of life and does there not exist that which this desire calls for is there not life and is not the instinct if it be an instinct gratified by the possession and preservation of life to suppose that the desire of life guarantees to us personally the reality of life through all eternity it's like supposing that the desire of food assumes that we shall always have as much as we can eat through our whole lives and as much longer as we can conceive our lives to be protracted to the argument from tradition or the general belief of the human race if we accept it as a guide to our own belief must be accepted entire if so we are bound to believe that the souls of human beings not only survive after death but show themselves as ghosts to the living for we find no people who have had the one belief without the other indeed it is probable that the former belief originated in the latter and that primitive men would never have supposed that the soul did not die with the body if they had not fancied that it visited them after death nothing could be more natural than such a fancy it is an appearance completely realized in dreams which in Homer and in all ages like homers are supposed to be real apparitions to dreams we have to add not merely waking hallucinations but the delusions however baseless of sight and hearing or rather the misinterpretations of those senses sight or hearing supplying mere hints from which imagination paints a complete picture and invests it with reality these delusions are not to be judged of by a modern standard in early times the line between imagination and perception was by no means clearly defined there was little or none of the knowledge we now possess of the actual course of nature which makes us distrust or disbelieve any appearance which is at variance with known laws and the ignorance of men as to what were the limits of nature and what was or was not compatible with it no one thing seemed as far as physical considerations went to be much more improbable than another and rejecting therefore as we do and as we have the best reason to do the tales and legends of the actual appearances of disembodied spirits we take from under the general belief of mankind in a life after death what in all probability was its chief ground and support and to private of even the very little value which the opinion of rude ages can ever have as evidence of truth if it be said that this belief has maintained itself in ages which have ceased to be rude and which reject the superstitions with which it once was accompanied the same may be said of many other opinions of rude ages and especially on the most important interesting subjects because it is on those subjects that the reigning opinion whatever it may be is most sedulously inculcated upon all who are born into the world this particular opinion moreover if it has on the whole kept its ground has done so with a constantly increasing number of dissensions and those equally among cultivated minds finally those cultivated minds which adhere to the belief grounded we may reasonably suppose not on the belief of others but on arguments and evidences and those arguments and evidences therefore are what it concerns us to estimate and judge the preceding are a sufficient sample of the arguments for a future life which do not suppose an antecedent belief in the existence or any theory respecting the attributes of the godhead it remains to consider what arguments are supplied by such slides or such grounds of conjecture as natural theology affords on those great questions we have seen that these lights are but faint that of the existence of a creator they afford no more than a preponderance of probability of his benevolence a considerably less preponderance that there is however some reason to think that he cares for the pleasure of his creatures but by no means that this is his sole care or that other purposes do not often take precedence of it his intelligence must be adequate to the contrivances apparent in the universe but need not be more than adequate to them and his power is not only not proved to be infinite but the only real evidence is the natural theology tend to show that it is limited contrivance being a mode of overcoming difficulties and always supposing difficulties to be overcome we have now to consider what imprints can legitimately be drawn from these premises in favor of a future life it seems to me apart from express revelation none at all the common arguments are the goodness of god the improbability that he would ordain the annihilation of his noblest and richest work after the greater part of its few years of life have been spent in the acquisition of faculties which time has not allowed him to turn to fruit and the special improbability that he would have implanted in us an instinctive desire of eternal life and doomed that desire to complete disappointment these might be arguments in a world the constitution of which made it possible without contradiction to hold it for the work of a being at once omnipotent and benevolent but they are not arguments in a world like that in which we live the benevolence of the divine being may be perfect but his power being subject to unknown limitations we know not that he could have given us what we so confidently assert that he must have given could that is without sacrificing something more important even his benevolence however justly inferred is by no means indicated as the interpretation of his whole purpose and since we cannot tell how far other purposes may have interfered with the exercise of his benevolence we know not if he would even if he could have granted us eternal life with regard to the supposed improbability of his having given the wish without its gratification the same answer may be made the scheme which either limitation of power or conflict of purposes compelled him to adopt may have required that we should have the wish although it was not destined to be gratified one thing however is quite certain in respect to God's government of the world that he either could not or would not grant to us everything we wish we wish for life and he granted some life that we wish or some of us wish for a boundless extent of life and that it is not grounded there's no exception to the ordinary modes of his government many a man would like to be a cruces or an augustus Caesar but has his wish is gratified only to the moderate extent of a pound a week or the secretarieship of his trades union there is therefore no assurance whatever of a life after death on grounds of natural religion but to anyone who feels it conducive either to his satisfaction or to his usefulness to hope for a future state is a possibility there is no hindrance to his indulging that hope appearances point to the existence of a being who has great power over us all the power implied in the creation of the cosmos or of its organized beings at least and of whose goodness we have evidence though not of its being his predominant attribute and as we do not know the limit either of his power or of his goodness there is room to hope that both the one and the other may extend to gratifying us this gift provided that it would really be beneficial to us the same ground which permits the hope warrants us in expecting that if there be a future life it will be at least as good as the present and will not be wanting in the best feature of the present life and provability by our own efforts nothing can be more opposed to every estimate we can form of probability than the common idea of the future life as a state of rewards and punishments in any other sense than that the consequences of our actions upon our own character and susceptibilities will follow us in the future as they have done in the past and present whatever be the probabilities of a future life all the probabilities in case of a future life are that such as we have been made or have made ourselves before the change such we shall enter into the life hereafter and that the fact of death will make no sudden break in our spiritual life nor influence our character any otherwise than as an important change in our mode of existence may always be expected to modify it our thinking principle has its laws which in this life are invariable and any analogies drawn from this life must assume that the same laws will continue to imagine that America will be wrought at death by the act of God making perfect everyone whom it is his will to include among his elect might be justified by an express revelation duly authenticated but it is utterly opposed to every presumption that can be deduced from the light of nature end of theism section six recording by sunny shields doha state of katha june 2011 section 15 of three essays on religion this is a libravox recording all libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org three essays on religion by john stewart mill theism section seven part four revelation the discussion in the preceding pages respecting the evidences of theism has been strictly confined to those which are derived from the light of nature it is a different question what addition has been made to those evidences and to what extent the conditions obtainable from them have been amplified or modified by the establishment of a direct communication with the supreme being it would be beyond the purpose of this essay to take into consideration the positive evidences of the christian or any other belief which claims to be a revelation from heaven but such general considerations as are applicable not to a particular system but to revelation generally may properly find a place here and are indeed necessary to give a sufficient practical bearing to the results of the preceding investigation in the first place then the indications of a creator and of his attributes which we have been able to find in nature though so much lighter and less conclusive even as to his existence than the pious mind would wish to consider them and still more unsatisfactory in the information they afford as to his attributes are yet sufficient to give the supposition of a revelation a standing point which it would not otherwise have had the alleged revelation is not obliged to build up its case from the foundation it has not to prove the very existence of the being from whom it professes to come it claims to be a message from a being whose existence whose power and to a certain extent whose wisdom and goodness are if not proved at least indicated with more or less a probability by the phenomena of nature the sender of the alleged message is not a sheer invention there are grounds independent of the message itself for belief in his reality grounds which though insufficient for proof are sufficient to take away all antecedent improbability from the supposition that a message may really have been received from him it is moreover much to the purpose to take notice that the very imperfection of the evidences which natural theology can produce of the divine attributes removes some of the chief stumbling blocks to the belief of a revelation since the objections grounded on imperfections in the revelation itself however conclusive against it if it is considered as a record of the acts or an expression of the wisdom of a being of infinite power combined with infinite wisdom and goodness and no reason whatever against it having come from a being such as the course of nature points to whose wisdom is possibly his power certainly limited and his goodness the real is not likely to have been the only motive which actuated him in the work of creation the argument of Butler's analogy is from its own point of view conclusive the Christian religion is open to no objections either moral or intellectual which do not apply at least equally to the common theory of daism the morality of the gospels is far higher and better than that which shows itself in the order of nature and what is morally objectionable in the Christian theory of the world is objectionable only when taken in conjunction with the doctrine of an omnipotent god and at least is understood by most enlightened Christians by no means imports any moral ubiquity and a being whose power is supposed to be restricted by real though unknown obstacles which prevented him from fully carrying out his design the grave error of Butler was that he shrank from admitting the hypothesis of limited powers and his appeal consequently amounts to this the belief of Christians is neither more absurd nor more immoral than the belief of daists who acknowledge an omnipotent creator let us therefore in spite of the absurdity and immorality believe both he ought to have said let us cut down our belief of either to what does not involve absurdity or immorality to what is neither intellectually self contradictory nor morally perverted to return however to the main subject on the hypothesis of a god who made the world and are making it head regard however that regard may have been limited by other considerations to the happiness of his sentient creatures there is no antecedent improbability in the supposition that his concern for their good would continue and that he might once or oftener give proof of it by communicating to them some knowledge of himself beyond what they were able to make out by their unassisted faculties and some knowledge or precepts useful for guiding them through the difficulties of life neither on the only tenable hypothesis that of limited power is it open to us to object that these helps ought to have been greater or in any way other than they are the only question to be entertained in which we cannot dispense ourselves from entertaining is that of evidence can any evidence suffice to prove a defined revelation and of what nature and what amount must that evidence be whether the special evidences of Christianity or of any other alleged revelation do or do not come up to the mark is a different question into which I do not propose directly to enter the question I intend to consider is what evidence is required what general conditions it ought to satisfy and whether they are such as according to known constitution of things can be satisfied the evidences of revelation are commonly distinguished as external or internal external evidences are the testimony of the senses or of witnesses by the internal evidences I meant the indications which the revelation itself is thought to furnish of its divine origin indications supposed to consist chiefly in the excellence of its precept and its general suitability to the circumstances and needs of human nature the consideration of these internal evidences very important but their importance is principally negative they may be conclusive grounds for rejecting a revelation but cannot of themselves warrant the acceptance of it as divine if the moral character of the doctrine of an alleged revelation is bad and perverting we ought to reject it from whomsoever it comes for it cannot come from a good and wise being but the excellence of the morality can never entitle us to ascribe them to a supernatural origin for we cannot have conclusive reason for believing that the human faculties were incompetent to find out moral doctrines of which the human faculties can perceive and recognize the excellence a revelation therefore cannot be proved divine unless by external evidence that is by the exhibition of supernatural facts and we have to consider whether it is possible to prove supernatural facts and if it is what evidence is required to prove them this question has only so far as i know been seriously raised on the skeptical side by Hume it is the question involved in his famous argument against miracles an argument which goes down to the depths of the subject but the exact scope and effect of which perhaps not conceived with perfect correctness by that great thinker himself have in general been utterly misconceived by those who have attempted to answer him dr. Campbell for example one of the acutest of his antagonist has thought himself obliged in order to support the credibility of miracles to lay down doctrines which virtually go the length of maintaining that antecedent improbability is never a sufficient ground for refusing credence to a statement if it is well attested dr. Campbell's fallacy lay an overlooking a double meaning of the word improbability as i have pointed out in my logic and still earlier in an editorial note to Bentham's treatise on evidence taking the question from the very beginning it is evidently impossible to maintain that if a supernatural fact really occurs proof of its occurrence cannot be accessible to the human faculties the evidence of our senses could prove this as it can prove other things to put the most extreme case suppose that i actually saw and heard a being either of the human form or of some form previously unknown to me commanding a world to exist and a new world actually starting into existence and commencing a movement through space that has compound there can be no doubt that this evidence would convert the creation of worlds from a speculation into a fact of experience it may be said i could not know that so singular an appearance was anything more than a hallucination than my senses true but the same doubt exists at first respecting every unsuspected and surprising fact which comes to lighten our physical researchers that our senses have been deceived is a possibility which has to be met and dealt with and we do deal with it by several means if we repeat the experiment and again with the same result if at the time of the observation the impressions of our senses are in all other respects the same as usual rendering the supposition of their being morbidly affected in this one particular extremely improbable above all of other people's senses confirm the testimony of our own we conclude with reason that we may trust our senses indeed our senses are all that we have to trust to we depend on them for the ultimate premise even of our reasoning there is no other appeal against their decision than an appeal from the senses without precautions to the senses with all due precautions when the evidence on which an opinion rest is equal to that upon which the whole conduct and safety of our lives is founded we need to ask no further objections which apply equally to all evidence are valid against none they only prove abstract fallibility but the evidence of miracles at least to Protestant Christians is not in our own day of this code and description it is not the evidence of our senses but of witnesses and even this not at first hand but resting on the attestation of books and traditions and even in the case of the original eyewitnesses the supernatural facts asserted on their alleged testimony are not of the transcendent characters supposed in our example about the nature of which or the impossibility of their having had a natural origin there could be little room for doubt on the contrary the recorded miracles are in the first place generally such as would have been extremely difficult to verify as matters of fact and in the next place are hardly ever beyond the possibility of having been brought about by human means or by the spontaneous agencies of nature it is to cases of this kind that Hume's argument against the credibility of miracles was meant to apply his argument is the evidence of miracles consists of testimony the grounds of our alliance on testimony is our experience that certain conditions being supposed testimony is generally voracious but the same experience tells us that even under the best conditions testimony is frequently either intentionally or unintentionally false when therefore the fact to which testimony is produced is one the happening of which would be more a variance with experience than the false sort of testimony we ought not to believe it and this rule all prudent persons observe in the conduct of life those who do not are sure to suffer for their credibility now a miracle the argument goes on to say is in the highest possible degree contradictory to experience for if it were not contradictory to experience it would not be a miracle the very reason for it being regarded as a miracle is that it is a breach of a law of nature that is of an otherwise invariable and inviolable uniformity in the succession of natural events there is therefore the very strongest reason for disbelieving it that experience can give disbelieving anything but the mendacity or error of witnesses even though numerous and of fair character is quite within the bounds of even common experience that's a position therefore ought to be preferred there are two apparently weak points in this argument one is that the evidence of experience to which an appeal is made is only negative evidence which is not so conclusive as positive since facts of which there had been no previous experience are often discovered and proved by positive experience to be true the other seemingly vulnerable point is this the argument has the appearance of assuming that the testimony of experience against miracles is undeviating and indubitable as it would be if the whole question was about the probability of future miracles and unhaving taken place in the past whereas the very thing asserted on the other side is that there have been miracles and that the testimony of experience is not wholly on the negative side all the evidence alleged in favour of any miracle ought to be reckoned as counter evidence and refutation of the ground on which it is asserted that miracles ought to be disbelieved the question can only be stated fairly as depending on a balance of evidence a certain amount of positive evidence in favour of miracles and a negative presumption for the general course of human experience against them in order to support the argument under this double correction it has to be shown that the negative presumption against a miracle is very much stronger than that against a merely new and surprising fact this however is evidently not the case a new physical discovery even if it consists in the defeating of the well-established law of nature is but the discovery of another law previously unknown there is nothing in this but what is familiar to our experience we were aware that we did not know all the laws of nature and we were aware that one such law is liable to be counteracted by others the new phenomenon when brought to life is found still to depend on law it is always exactly reproduced when the same circumstances are repeated its occurrence therefore is within the limits of variation and experience which experience itself discloses but a miracle in the very fact of being a miracle declares itself to be a supercession not of one natural law by another but of the law which includes all others which experience shows to be universal for all phenomena burs that they depend on some law that they are always the same when there are the same phenomenal antecedents and neither take place in the absence of their phenomenal causes nor ever fail to take place when the phenomenal conditions are all present it is evident that this argument against belief in miracles had very little to rest upon until a comparatively modern stage in the progress of science a few generations ago the universal dependence of phenomena on invisible laws was not only not recognized by mankind in general but could not be regarded by the instructor as a scientifically established truth there were many phenomena which seemed quite irregular in their course without dependence on any known antecedents and though no doubt a certain regularity in the occurrence of the most familiar phenomena must always have been recognized yet even in these the exceptions which were constantly occurring had not by an investigation and generalization of the circumstances of their occurrence been reconciled with the general rule the heavenly bodies were from of all the most conspicuous type of regular and unbearing order yet even among them comets were a phenomenon apparently originating without any law and eclipses one which seemed to take place in violation of law accordingly both comets and eclipses long continued to be regarded as a miraculous nature and tended as signs and omens of human fortunes it would have been impossible in those days to prove to anyone that this supposition was antecedently improbable it seemed more comfortable to appearances than the hypothesis of an unknown law now however when in the progress of science all phenomena have been shown by indisputable evidence to be amenable to law and even in the cases in which those laws have not yet been exactly ascertained to lay in ascertaining them is fully accounted for by the special difficulties of the subject the defenders of miracles have adapted their argument to this altered state of things by maintaining that a miracle need not necessarily be a violation of law it may they say take place in fulfillment of a more recondite law to us unknown if by this it has only meant that the divine being in the exercise of his power of interfering within suspending his own laws guides himself by some general principle of rule of action this of course cannot be disproved and is in itself the most probable supposition but if the argument means that a miracle may be the fulfillment of a law in the same sense in which the ordinary events of nature are fulfillment of laws it seems to indicate an imperfect conception of what is meant by a law and of what constitutes a miracle when we say that an ordinary physical fact always takes place according to some invariable law we mean that it is connected by uniform sequence or coexistence with some definite set of physical antecedents that whenever that set is exactly reproduced the same phenomenon will take place unless counteracted by the similar laws of some other physical antecedents and that whenever it does take place it would always be found that its special set of antecedents or one of its sets if it has more than one has pre-existed now an event which takes place in this manner is not a miracle to make it a miracle it must be produced by a direct violation without the use of means or at least of any means which have simply repeated will produce it to constitute a miracle a phenomenon must take place without having been preceded by any antecedent phenomenal conditions sufficient again to reproduce it or a phenomenon for the production of which the antecedent conditions existed must be arrested or prevented without the intervention of any phenomenon antecedents which would arrest or prevent it in a future case the test of a miracle is was there present in the case such external conditions such second causes we may call them that whenever these conditions or causes appear the event will be reproduced if there were it is not a miracle if there were not it is a miracle but it is not according to law it is an event produced without or in spite of law it will perhaps be said that a miracle does not necessarily exclude the intervention of second causes if it were the will of god to raise a thunderstorm by miracle he might do it by means of wind and clouds undoubtedly but the wind and clouds were either sufficient when produced to excite the thunderstorm without other divine assistance or they were not if they were not the storm is not a fulfillment of law but a violation of it if they were sufficient there is a miracle but it is not the storm it is the production of the winds and the clouds or whatever link in the chain of causation it was at which the influence of physical antecedents was dispensed with if that influence was never dispensed with but the event called miraculous was produced by natural means and those again by others and so on from the beginning of things if the event is no otherwise the act of god then in having been foreseen and ordained by him as the consequence the forces put an action at the creation then there is no miracle at all not anything different from the ordinary working of god's providence for another example a person professing to be divinely commissioned cures a sick person by some apparently insignificant external application would this application administered by a person not specially commissioned from above have affected the cure if so there is no miracle if not there is a miracle that there is a violation of law end of theism section seven recording by sunny shield doha state of kata june 2011