We may consider this argument from two distinct points of view. First, we may take it as an effort to deduce the existence of God from a great number of facts, as the result of our knowledge of these particular facts; an effort to prove by experiment and observation an hypothesis which is proposed as a probable solution of the problem of the universe. We suppose that we begin without the idea of God. We acquire the knowledge of particular facts through sensation and reflection. By noting a great number of facts, and reflecting upon them, we ascend to general and abstract truths, and as a last result arrive at the conception of the being of God as the most universal truth, and the one which is the sum of all probabilities.
In the second place, we may take this argument as a method of manifesting the way in which the action of the first cause is shown forth in the universe. The idea of God is first affirmed, and the due explication of the facts of the universe is then demonstrated to be only an explication of the idea of God as first cause. The universe is shown to be intelligible in its cause, and apart from it to be unintelligible. Taken in this way the argument is identical with that which we are about to propose a little later.
Taken in the former sense, it is not a demonstration of the existence of God. Suppose that we can begin to reason without the idea of cause, and we can never establish its necessity by induction. Eliminate the idea of self-subsisting, necessary, eternal being, and suppose it unknown, unimagined; we can never rise above the particular, isolated sensations and perceptions of which we are conscious. If the facts which are called effects are intelligible in themselves, they imply no cause, and none can be proved from them. If they are not intelligible in themselves, they are from the first intelligible only in their cause, and the idea of cause is ultimate in the mind, antecedent to all knowledge of particulars, the first premised of every conclusion. It cannot then be proved as the conclusion of any syllogism; for all arguments start from it as the primitive idea and first principle of reason.
This method of argument belongs to that sceptical system of philosophy which came in vogue with the theology of Protestantism, and has been ever since working out its fatal results. It is the principle of disintegration, doubt, and denial, transferred from the domain of revealed dogma into the order of rational truths. Kant, the great master of this philosophy, and one of the principal chiefs of modern thought, carried out this philosophy to the denial of all possibility of science, and therefore of all [{299}] Scientific knowledge of God, immortality, and moral obligation. Having swept all natural and revealed truths out of the domain of pure reason, he made a feeble attempt to establish their authority in the sphere of practical reason. The individual man and the human race need the belief in God to keep them in the order required for their well-being. Therefore we may believe that there is a God. It is needless to say that these dictates of practical reason are not respected by those who carry out consistently and boldly the sceptical philosophy. The ravages made by the principle of scepticism among those who have cast off all traditional belief in Christianity are obvious to all eyes. But it is not so generally acknowledged that the same philosophy has had a wide and baneful influence over Christian theology. Some Christian writers would avowedly sweep away science to give place to faith, not reflecting that faith tumbles to the ground when its rational basis is removed. Others follow the method of a philosophy constructed upon that method, a method which is altogether unfit to be a medium of the rational explanation of Christian dogmas. Hence, there is a schism between theology and philosophy, leaving both these sciences in a mutilated condition. The manifest inadequacy of the common philosophical system brings it into contempt, and induces the effort to transfer the seat of all certitude and all true science to theology. Theology cannot make the first step without a basis of rational certitude for faith and for conclusions drawn from premises which are furnished by faith. Consequently her efforts to walk on air result to her discredit, and theology falls into contempt. This ends in adopting Kant's practical reason as the basis of religious belief. Philosophy and theology, as sciences of the highest order, are deserted. Religion is defended and explained on the ground of its probability and its utility. We cannot have science or make our belief intelligible. It is safe and prudent to follow on in the way the great majority of the wise and good have walked. Let us do so, and silence the questionings of the intellect. [Footnote 49] The language of scepticism! This is the mental disease of our day. Scepticism in regard to the doctrines of revelation; scepticism in regard to the dictates of reason! No doubt, if faith had full sway, and no false philosophy prevailed, theology would be sufficient by itself. For it contains in solution the true philosophy; and the simple, unsophisticated Christian intellect will take it up and absorb it naturally without needing to have it administered in a separate state. But where the mind has been sophisticated by false philosophy, it cannot take theology until the antidote of true philosophy has been given to it. Here is a lack in our English-speaking religious world. And this lack is, perhaps, the reason why some of the best writers speak so uncertainly of the rational basis of faith in revealed truths, and even in the truth of God's existence. While they affirm the certitude of their own inward belief, yet they acknowledge that they can only construct an argument which in philosophy is probable. That is to say, they have not a philosophy in which the ground of their inward certitude is expressed in a distinct formula, and by which they can make their readers conscious of a similar ground of certitude in themselves. They have no philosophy corresponding to their theology, and therefore, when they address the unbelieving or doubting world, they are at a loss for a bridge to span the chasm lying between it and themselves.
[Footnote 49: These remarks are not levelled against any approved system of Catholic philosophy, but only against those which are in vogue in the non-Catholic world, or among certain Catholic writers of a modern date.]
There is at present a laudable and [{300}] encouraging desire manifested by the leading thinkers and writers of different churches to bring out the great fundamental truth that God is the author of nature and revelation, in such a way as to stem the tide of scepticism. Guizot, who is among the most eminent, if not the very first, of the modern advocates of orthodox Protestantism, in the programme of a recent work in defence of revealed religion which he has published, expresses the opinion that the differences between his own co-religionists and Catholics are of minor importance compared to the great pending controversy with modern scepticism. This, with many other indications of a growing cordiality in earnest Protestants toward Catholics who are similarly earnest, makes us hope to receive from them as well as from the members of our own communion a respectful and candid hearing of what we have to say on this weighty subject.
And now, having done with the disagreeable task of criticism, we entreat of our readers, if they have found the preliminary treatment of the subject we are on abstruse and wearisome, to resume their courage and push on a little further up the ascent toward the summit of truth. The traveller, who struggles through thickets and over rocks toward the top of a mountain is well rewarded by the landscape which lies below and around him, lighted up by the radiance of the full orb of day. So, gentle reader, whether you are believer or sceptic, there is an eminence before us which we can attain, from which the fair landscape of natural and supernatural truth is visible as far as the outermost boundaries which fade away into the infinite. We wish to lead you to this eminence, and to show you this landscape lighted up with the radiance of the primal source of light, the idea of God, the self-luminous centre of the universe of thought. We wish to show you this idea of God in its absolute truth and certitude; clearly and distinctly visible in that horizon which is within the scope of the naked eye of reason, but whose boundaries are enlarged and its objects magnified by the aid of that gigantic telescope called faith.