Such difficulties are insurmountable. Words which have gained their meanings from finite experience of finite objects of thought must inevitably falter and fail when we seek to apply them to that which is Infinite. But we do not mend matters by emptying terms taken from the inorganic world rather than from human personality. To designate the universal Power by some scientific term, such as Force, does not help us in the least. All our experience of force is an experience of finite forces antagonized by other forces. We can frame no conception whatever of Infinite Force comprising within itself all the myriad antagonistic attractions and repulsions in which the dynamic universe consists. We go beyond our knowledge when we speak of Infinite Force quite as much as we do when we speak of Infinite Personality. Indeed, no word or phrase which we seek to apply to Deity can be other than an extremely inadequate and unsatisfactory symbol. From the very nature of the case it must always be so, and if we once understand the reason why, it need not vex or puzzle us.
It is not only when we try to speculate about Deity that we find ourselves encompassed with difficulties and are made to realize how very short is our mental tether in some directions. This world, in its commonest aspects, presents many baffling problems, of which it is sometimes wholesome that we should be reminded. If you look at a piece of iron, it seems solid; it looks as if its particles must be everywhere in contact with one another. And yet, by hammering, or by great pressure, or by intense cold, the piece of iron may be compressed, so that it will occupy less space than before. Evidently, then, its particles are not in contact, but are separated from one another by unoccupied tracts of enveloping space. In point of fact, these particles are atoms arranged after a complicated fashion in clusters known as molecules. The word atom means something that cannot be cut. Now, are these iron atoms divisible or indivisible? If they are divisible, then what of the parts into which each one can be divided; are they also divisible? and so on forever. But if these iron atoms are indivisible, how can we conceive such a thing? Can we imagine two sides so close together that no plane of cleavage could pass between them? Can we imagine cohesive tenacity too great to be overcome by any assignable disruptive force, and therefore infinite? Suppose, now, we heat this piece of iron to a white heat. Scientific inquiry has revealed the fact that its atom-clusters are floating in an ocean of ether, in which are also floating the atom-clusters of other bodies and of the air about us. The heating is the increase of wave motion in this ether, until presently a secondary series of intensely rapid waves appear as white light. Now this ether would seem to be of infinite rarity, since it does not affect the weight of bodies, and yet its wave-motions imply an elasticity far greater than that of coiled steel. How can we imagine such powerful resilience combined with such extreme tenuity?
These are a few of the difficulties of conception in which the study of physical science abounds, and I cite them because it is wholesome for us to bear in mind that such difficulties are not confined to theological subjects. They serve to show how our powers of conceiving ideas are strictly limited by the nature of our experience. The illustration just cited from the luminiferous ether simply shows how during the past century the study of radiant forces has introduced us to a mode of material existence quite different from anything that had formerly been known or suspected. In this mode of matter we find attributes united which all previous experience had taught us to regard as contradictory and incompatible. Yet the facts cannot be denied; hard as we may find it to frame the conception, this light-bearing substance is at the same time almost infinitely rare and almost infinitely resilient. If such difficulties confront us upon the occasion of a fresh extension of our knowledge of the physical world, what must we expect when we come to speculate upon the nature and modes of existence of God? Bearing this in mind, let us proceed to consider the assumption that the Infinite Power which is manifested in the universe is essentially psychical in its nature; in other words, that between God and the Human Soul there is real kinship, although we may be unable to render any scientific account of it. Let us consider this assumption historically, and in the light of our general knowledge of Evolution.
IV
Religion's First Postulate: the Quasi-Human God
It is with purpose that I use the word assumption. As a matter of history, the existence of a quasi-human God has always been an assumption or postulate. It is something which men have all along taken for granted. It probably never occurred to anybody to try to prove the existence of such a God until it was doubted, and doubts on that subject are very modern. Omitting from the account a few score of ingenious philosophers, it may be said that all mankind, the wisest and the simplest, have taken for granted the existence of a Deity, or deities, of a psychical nature more or less similar to that of Humanity. Such a postulate has formed a part of all human thinking from primitive ages down to the present time. The forms in which it has appeared have been myriad in number, but all have been included in this same fundamental assumption. The earliest forms were those which we call fetishism and animism. In fetishism the wind that blows a tree down is endowed with personality and supposed to exert conscious effort; in animism some ghost of a dead man is animating that gust of wind. In either case a conscious volition similar to our own, but outside of us, is supposed to be at work. There has been some discussion as to whether fetishism or animism is the more primitive, and some writers would regard fetishism as a special case of animism; but it is not necessary to my present purpose that such questions should be settled. The main point is this, that in the earliest phases of theism each operation of Nature was supposed to have some quasi-human personality behind it. Such phases we find among contemporary savages, and there is abundant evidence of their former existence among peoples now civilized. In the course of ages there was a good deal of generalizing done. Poseidon could shake the land and preside over the sea, angry Apollo could shoot arrows tipped with pestilence, mischievous Hermes could play pranks in the summer breezes, while as lord over all, though with somewhat fitful sway, stood Zeus on the summit of Olympus, gathering the rain-clouds and wielding the thunderbolt. Nothing but increasing knowledge of nature was needed to convert such Polytheism into Monotheism, even into the strict Monotheism of our own time, in which the whole universe is the multiform manifestation of a single Deity that is still regarded as in some real and true sense quasi-human. As the notion of Deity has thus been gradually generalized, from a thousand local gods to one omnipresent God, it has been gradually stripped of its grosser anthropomorphic vestments. The tutelar Deity of a savage clan is supposed to share with his devout worshippers in the cannibal banquet; the Gods of Olympus made war and love, and were moved to fits of inextinguishable laughter. From our modern Monotheism such accidents of humanity are eliminated, but the notion of a kinship between God and man remains, and is rightly felt to be essential to theism. Take away from our notion of God the human element, and the theism instantly vanishes; it ceases to be a notion of God. We may retain an abstract symbol to which we apply some such epithet as Force, or Energy, or Power, but there is nothing theistic in this. Some ingenious philosopher may try to persuade us to the contrary, but the Human Soul knows better; it knows at least what it wants; it has asked for Theology, not for Dynamics, and it resents all such attempts to palm off upon it stones for bread.
Our philosopher will here perhaps lift up his hands in dismay and cry, "Hold! what matters it what the Human Soul wants? Are cravings, forsooth, to be made to do duty as reasons?" It is proper to reply that we are trying to deal with this whole subject after the manner of the naturalist, which is to describe things as they exist and account for them as best we may. I say, then, that mankind have framed, and for long ages maintained, a notion of God into which there enters a human element. Now if it should ever be possible to abolish that human element, it would not be possible to cheat mankind into accepting the non-human remnant of the notion as an equivalent of the full notion of which they had been deprived. Take away from our symbolic conception of God the human element, and that aspect of theism which has from the outset chiefly interested mankind is gone.