A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II

E-text prepared by David Starner, Keith Edkins, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
REPRINTED WITH THE AUTHOR'S ADDITIONS FROM THE ATHENAEUM
SECOND EDITION EDITED BY DAVID EUGENE SMITH
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY ERNEST NAGEL
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
UNABRIDGED EDITION—TWO VOLUMES BOUND AS ONE
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC., NEW YORK
This new Dover Edition, published in 1954, is an unabridged republication of the Second Edition of 1915, with a new introduction by Professor Ernest Nagel.
Copyright 1954 by Dover Publications, Inc. Manufactured in the United States of America

ON SOME PHILOSOPHICAL ATHEISTS.
The language used by the two great geometers illustrates what I have said: a supreme and guiding intelligence—apart from a blind rule called nature of things —was an hypothesis . The absolute denial of such a ruling power was not in the plan of the higher philosophers: it was left for the smaller fry. A round assertion of the non-existence of anything which stands in the way is the refuge of a certain class of minds: but it succeeds only with things subjective; the objective offers resistance. A philosopher of the appropriative class tried it upon the constable who appropriated him : I deny your existence, said he; Come along all the same, said the unpsychological policeman.