The savage has a stronger belief in bad spirits than in good ones. "The same high mental faculties which first led man to believe in unseen spiritual agencies, then in fetishism, polytheism, and ultimately in monotheism, would infallibly lead him, as long as his reasoning powers remained poorly developed, to very strange superstitions and customs. Many of these are terrible to think of: such as the sacrifice of human beings to a blood-loving god, the trial of innocent persons by the ordeal of poison, of fire, of witchcraft, etc.; yet it is well occasionally to reflect on these superstitions, for they show us what an infinite debt of gratitude we owe to the improvement of our reason, to science, and to our accumulated knowledge."[65] As Sir J. Lubbock has well observed: "It is not too much to say that the possible dread of unknown evil hangs like a thick cloud over savage life, and embitters every pleasure. These miserable and indirect consequences of our highest faculties may be compared with the incidental and occasional mistakes of the instincts of the lower animals."
The belief, then, of the existence of an Omnipotent God came with the development of the mental faculties; and although there does exist such a belief in the minds of men whose conscience is in a normal condition, still there are temptations to unbelief, and these have led men to atheism. I cannot think of an atheist unless I associate in my thoughts the words:
"The ruling passion, be it what it may—
The ruling passion conquers reason still."
The atheist has decided not to believe in the existence of a God, unless he can see Him and understand Him; in other words, the finite would comprehend the infinite. Following the logical method of reasoning of an atheist, the simple fact of seeing God in no way ought to prove his existence. For when you say you see a person, and that you have not the least doubt about it, I answer, that what you are really conscious of is an affection of your retina. And if you urge that you can check your sight of the person by touching him, I would answer, that you are equally transgressing the limits of fact; for what you are really conscious of is, not that he is there, but that the nerves of your hand have undergone a change. All you hear and see and touch and taste and smell are mere variations of your own condition, beyond which, even to the extent of a hair's-breadth, you cannot go. That anything answering to your impression exists outside of yourself is not a fact, but an inference, to which all validity would be denied by an idealist like Berkeley, or by a skeptic like Hume.[66]
Thomas Cooper[67] said:
"I do not say—there is no God;
But this I say—I know not."
Mr. Bradlaugh says: "The atheist does not say, 'There is no God'; but he says, I know not what you mean by God; I am without idea of God; the word 'God' is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. I do not deny God, because I cannot deny that of which I have no conception, and the conception of which, by its affirmer, is so imperfect that he is unable to define it to me."
Austin Holyoake[68] says: "The only way of proving the fallacy of atheism is by proving the existence of a God."
If it is logical proof that is wanted, there is plenty. The following arguments, although not all meeting my approbation, are still of interest:
The Ontological Argument has been presented in different forms. 1. Anselm,[69] Archbishop of Canterbury (1093-1109), states this argument thus: We have an idea of an infinitely perfect being. But real existence is an element of infinite perfection. Therefore an infinitely perfect being exists; otherwise the infinitely perfect, as we conceive it, would lack an essential element of perfection.