THE
THEISTIC CONCEPTION OF
THE WORLD.
_AN ESSAY
IN OPPOSITION TO CERTAIN TENDENCIES
OF MODERN THOUGHT._
BY B. F. COCKER, D.D., LL.D.,
PROFESSOR OF MENTAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN;
AUTHOR OF "CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY."
"Science discloses the method of the world, but not its cause; Religion,
its cause, but not its method."--MARTINEAU.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
PREFACE.
The present volume was announced in the preface to "Christianity and
Greek Philosophy" as nearly ready for publication under the title of
"Christianity and Modern Thought."
Several considerations have induced the author to delay its appearance,
the most influential of which has been the desire to await the
culmination among a class of self-styled "advanced thinkers" of what
they have been pleased to call "the tendency of modern thought." No
extraordinary sagacity was needed to foresee the issue, or to predict
that it must soon be reached. The transition has been rapid from
negative criticism of the Christian religion to direct assault upon the
very foundation of all religion--the personality and providence of God.
Distrust of a supernatural revelation, and denial of all authority to
the teaching of the sacred Scriptures, has been succeeded by doubt of
the existence of God in the proper import of that sacred name. The
Theistic postulate is degraded to the rank of a mere hypothesis, which
is pronounced inadequate to explain the universe. A "law-governed
Cosmos, full of life and reason," eternal and infinite, must now take
the place of a personal God, the Creator and Ruler of the universe. This
is the "New Faith" which is to supersede the Old.
The question, "Are we still Christians?" has received a final answer in
the words of Strauss: "If we would speak as honest, upright men, we must
acknowledge we are no longer Christians."[1] And in giving this answer
he is confident he speaks in the name of a large and rapidly increasing
number of men who once believed in the truth of Christianity--"The We I
mean no longer counts only by thousands."[2] The further question, "Have
we still a Religion?" (understanding by religion "the recognition and
veneration of God, and the belief in a future life") is also answered in
the negative. Religion "is a delusion, to abolish which ought to be the
endeavor of every man whose eyes are open to the truth."[3] The only
question which now remains for the speculative intellect is, "What is
our conception of the Universe?"--the conception which henceforth must
take the place of a personal God. The answer of Strauss is explicit, and
in his estimation final: "The conception of the Cosmos, instead of that
of a personal God as the finality to which we are led by perception and
thought, or as the ultimate fact beyond which we can not proceed, ...
assumes the more definite shape of matter infinitely agitated, which, by
differentiation and integration, develops itself to ever higher forms
and functions, and describes an everlasting circle by evolution,
dissolution, and then fresh evolution."[4]
This may be called pantheism or atheism, materialism or idealism, just
as we please; Strauss has no solicitude about mere names. "If this be
considered pure, unmitigated materialism, I will not dispute it. In
fact, I have always tacitly regarded the contrast so loudly proclaimed
between materialism and idealism (or by whatever term one may designate
the view opposed to the former) as a mere quarrel about words. They have
a common foe in the dualism which pervaded the conception of the world
throughout the Christian era, dividing man into body and soul, his
existence into time and eternity, and opposing an eternal Creator to a
created and perishable universe."[5]
The end is reached at last--no soul, no God, no providence, no
immortality! We have waited for a culmination, and now we are called
upon to look, "not into the golden Orient, but vaguely all around into a
dim, copper firmament pregnant with earthquake and tornado." Or, rather,
we are called to look into an abyss, and, "shouting question after
question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, receive no answer" save "the
Everlasting No." It only remains for us to listen to Strauss's _De
Profundis_ and retire. "The loss of the belief in providence belongs,
indeed, to the most sensible deprivations which are connected with a
renunciation of Christianity. In the enormous machine of the universe,
amid the incessant whirl and hiss of its jagged iron wheels, amid the
deafening crash of its ponderous stamps and hammers, in the midst of
this whole terrific commotion, man--a helpless and defenseless
creature--finds himself placed, not secure for a moment that on some
imprudent motion a wheel may not seize and rend him, or a hammer crush
him to powder. This sense of abandonment is at first something awful.
But, then, what avails it to have recourse to an illusion? Our wish is
impotent to refashion the world; the understanding clearly shows that it
indeed is such a machine. But it is not merely this. We do not only find
the revolution of pitiless wheels in our world-machine, but also the
shedding of soothing oil. Our God [the world-machine] does not, indeed,
take us into his arms from the outside, but he unseals the well-spring
of consolation within our own bosoms.... He who can not help himself in
this matter is beyond help, is not yet ripe for our stand-point."[6]
There is a weighty and solemn lesson in this illustration of the
"tendency of modern thought"--a lesson which even Strauss intended to
teach the age, viz., that there is no discernible _via media_ between
"the Old Faith and the New"--between the belief in a personal God and
the impersonal All. The "New Faith" must at last be the faith of all who
reject _providence_, that providence which is pre-eminently revealed in
history, instituting a kingdom of God upon earth by a supernatural
guidance and grace.
The issue, now so sharply and clearly defined, between _a God and no
God_, has determined a change in the plan of our work, and justifies, we
trust, the attempt we have made to restate and defend "The Theistic
Conception of the World."
Those who have done me the honor to read "Christianity and Greek
Philosophy" will detect in the present volume a radical change of views
concerning the concepts Time and Space. This change of position is the
result of patient reconsideration of this branch of the discussion, and
we allude to it here simply to guard against the charge of unconscious
inconsistency. The views presented in this volume must stand or fall on
their own merits.
The author has to acknowledge many obligations to his friend, Dr.
Bernard Moses, for material aid rendered in getting this work through
the press.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, _July, 1875_.
CONTENTS.
Page
CHAPTER I.
THE PROBLEM STATED 13
CHAPTER II.
GOD THE CREATOR 27
CHAPTER III.
THE CREATION 56
CHAPTER IV.
CREATION.--THE GENESIS OR BEGINNING 97
CHAPTER V.
CREATION: ITS HISTORY 127
CHAPTER VI.
CONSERVATION.--THE RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD 172
CHAPTER VII.
CONSERVATION.--THE RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD 202
CHAPTER VIII.
PROVIDENCE OF GOD IN HUMAN HISTORY.--THE RELATION OF
GOD TO HUMANITY 244
CHAPTER IX.
SPECIAL PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER 292
CHAPTER X.
MORAL GOVERNMENT.--ITS GROUNDS, THE CORRELATION BETWEEN
GOD AND MAN 344
CHAPTER XI.
MORAL GOVERNMENT.--ITS NATURE, CONDITION, METHOD, AND
END 366
"To such readers as have reflected on man's life; who understand that
for man's well-being Faith is properly the one thing needful; how with
it martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and the
cross; and without it worldlings puke up their sick existence by suicide
in the midst of luxury: to such it will be clear that for a pure moral
nature, the loss of religious belief is the loss of every thing.
"All wounds, the crush of long-continued destitution, the stab of false
friendship and of false love, all wounds in thy so genial heart, would
have healed again had not its life-warmth been withdrawn.
"Well mayest thou exclaim, 'Is there no God, then; but at best an
absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside
of his universe and seeing it go?' 'Has the word Duty no meaning; is
what we call Duty no Divine messenger and guide, but a false earthly
phantasm made up of desire and fear?' 'Is the heroic inspiration we name
Virtue but some passion; some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the
direction others profit by?' I know not; only this I know, If what thou
namest Happiness be our true aim, then are we all astray. 'Behold, thou
art fatherless, outcast, and the universe is--the Devil's.'"--CARLYLE.
THE THEISTIC
CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD.
CHAPTER I.
THE PROBLEM STATED.
As Archimedes demanded only one fixed point in order to move the world,
so Descartes desired to find one certain and indubitable principle upon
which he could plant his feet and lift himself out of the universal
doubt which environed him. He found it in the proposition--I exist. This
for me is the most direct, immediate, and certain of all intuitions. I
can not doubt, I can not deny my own existence. Whatever else I doubt, I
can not doubt that I, the doubter, exist. This I that thinks, that is
conscious, is the fundamental _reality_.[7]
I see around me a plurality of personal existences who are
self-conscious and self-manifesting beings--beings who think and feel,
and display their activities in time and space, as I do; and I can no
more doubt their existence than I can doubt my own. This combination of
the content of external perception with that of internal perception
gives the immediate consciousness of external _reality_.[8]
Besides these personal existences analogous to my own, there are other
objects which exist in relation to my corporeal organism--relations of
position, distance, and direction, which are purely objective. These
existences offer resistance to my muscular effort to displace them in
space, and defy all my mental effort to reduce them to the category of
subjective phenomena. These objects have specific properties or exist in
certain conditions which, in their mutual relation with my sensitive
organism, produce in me certain vital affections, as heat, light, color,
and sound. These affections presuppose a force or energy outside of my
consciousness, and distinct from myself. Thus I am constrained to
believe that the earth on which I tread, the heavens that shine upon me,
the forms and movements which surround me, are not vain shadows, unreal
phantoms of my own creation, but real entities. The totality of
existence called the universe is for me a _reality_.
The phenomena of the universe are in ceaseless flow and change. Bodies
are aggregated and dissolved. Plants are evolved from germs, they live
and grow, then decay and perish. Animals and men are born and developed
to maturity, then they sicken and die. The earth itself is in constant
change. The storms of heaven, the erosion of the atmosphere, the gnawing
of the tidal wave, the mountain torrent, the flowing river, the
earthquake and the volcano, are perpetually changing the aspect of the
globe. There is perpetual _genesis_, ceaseless _becoming_, incessant
_change_.
Beneath all these changes there is an enduring "something." There are
abiding constants as well as fleeting changes; enduring realities as
well as unstable phenomena. The same forms and relations, the same
forces and laws, the same analogous functions, and the same archetypal
ideas, remain amid all individual changes. There is an enduring
_substance_ which is the subject of all these changes. There is a
permanent force, or _power_, which is the cause of all change. There are
constant numerical proportions, determinate geometrical forms, specific
ideal archetypes, and special ends, which give the law of all change.
The universe is not a mere aggregation of phenomena, a mere concourse of
things in time and space with accidental resemblances: it is a _unity_,
a cosmos, a harmonious whole, both in its contemporaneous and successive
history.
So much is and always has been known, with more or less clearness and
distinctness by all men, and known by a spontaneous and immediate
intuition. This intuition, like every intuition, even the commonest
intuition of sense, has had a gradual development both in the
consciousness of the individual, and in the consciousness of the race.
It has always been immanent in human thought even when not articulately
expressed in human language. To the native common-sense of our race, the
world is a reality, not a dream; to the universal reason of mankind the
universe is a harmony, not a chaos. Men have instinctively apprehended
some ideal relations, some causal connection, some adaptation and
purpose in nature, and they have always had some intuition, however dim
and shadowy, of an _all-pervading unity_, and an _ultimate causative
principle_.
But when the universe has become the object of _reflective_ thought,
when man has attempted a colligation of the individual facts, and an
ideal construction and rational interpretation of the phenomena, when he
has sought to grasp the manifoldness and diversity of nature in a higher
unity of thought, and, above all, when he has attempted to pass beyond
phenomena and their relations, and form a conception of _the absolute
reality and ultimate cause_--then it is that difficulties have arisen
and questions have presented themselves which have perplexed the
discursive reason, and taxed the genius of the ablest thinkers of every
age.
1. First of all, there have arisen the fundamental questions: Has the
universe always existed, or had the Cosmos, with its changes and
constants, its forces and laws, its forms and relations, a _Beginning_?
Is its present condition but one link in an endless chain, one phasis in
a series of changes, which had no beginning and shall have no end? Is
the universe limited both in space and duration, or is it unlimited,
unbeginning, and endless?
2. If the universe had a beginning, what is the ἀρχῆ--the originant,
causative Principle in which or from which it had its beginning? How are
we to conceive aright that First Principle of all existence and of all
knowledge? is it material or spiritual, intelligent or unintelligent?
3. What conception are we to form of the nature and mode of that
beginning? Was it a pure supernatural Origination--an absolute creation?
or was it simply a Formation out of a first matter or first force--an
artistic, architectonic, demiurgic creation? Was that beginning
determined by necessity or by choice? Was it an unconscious emanation
from, or a necessary development of, the First Principle; or was it a
conscious forth-putting of power for the realization of a foreseen,
premeditated, predetermined plan--a _mental_ Order.
4. A supernatural Origination being assumed, then, from that first
initial act of absolute creation, has the process of formation been
gradual, continuous, and uniform--a progressive _Evolution_ from the
homogeneous to the heterogeneous, from lower to higher forms, according
to a changeless law of uniformity and continuity? or have there been
marked, distinct, and successive stages of formation--creative epochs
which may be called "new beginnings?" Is the historic unity of creation
a unity of Thought, an ideal consecution? or is it simply a physical
unity grounded in a material nexus--a genetic connection resulting from
the necessary action of physical causes?
5. What is the relation of the Creator to the existing creation? Is the
Deity, in any sense, immanent in, or does he dwell altogether apart
from, and out of all connection with, the universe? Has any finite thing
or being an independent existence? Have the forces of nature any reality
apart from the Divine efficiency? Did the Creator, in the beginning,
give self-being to the substance of the universe, and endow it with
properties and forces, so that it can exist and act apart from, and
independently of, the First Cause? or is God still in nature upholding
all substance, the power of all force, the life of all life, shaping all
forms, and organizing all systems? Is God not only the Creator but the
_Conservator_ of all things?
6. Is there any Ethical meaning, any moral significance in the universe?
Is the physical order of the universe subordinated to a moral order in
which freedom exists? Are there any indications that the existence of
moral personality is the end toward which all the successive changes of
nature have tended, and the progressive types of life have been a
preparation and a prophecy? Was the earth designed to be a theatre for
the development of moral character, the education and discipline of
moral beings? Does the course of history reveal "a power that works for
righteousness," and aims at the highest perfection of rational and free
beings? In a word, is there a _Providential_ Government of the world?
7. Does man stand in a more immediate relation to God than the things of
nature? Is each individual the charge of a providence, the subject of a
moral government, and the heir to a future retribution? Has man a
spiritual and immortal nature? Has he the power so to determine his own
action and character that he can justly be held accountable, and treated
as the proper subject of reward and punishment? In the final issue of
things, will every human being meet his righteous deserts, and be
rewarded or punished according to his works? In short, is man under
_Moral Government_?
These are the great, the vital questions of to-day. In one form or
another they have engaged the attention and stimulated the earnest
thought of the ablest and best of minds in past ages; and, whether from
the inherent demand of reason, or the promptings of instinctive
curiosity, they have a deeper hold on the mind of this, than of any
preceding age.
We approach the discussion of these questions with a profound conviction
of their magnitude and difficulty, and an oppressive foreboding that our
essay will be pronounced ambitious and vain. Their vastness seems to
defy our admeasurement, and their complexity and difficulty may defeat
our feeble efforts at solution. "The mer-de-glace of the Infinite is
covered with myriads of philosophic insects which have been carried up
there and lost." May we hope for any better fate? Do the problems permit
any solution at all?
Of one thing, at any rate, we are sure: these questions are native to
the human mind. They arise spontaneously in presence of the facts of the
universe. However much of human effort to solve these problems has ended
in failure and defeat, the human mind has never lost confidence in the
possibility of their ultimate solution, and humanity has never abandoned
them in despair.[9] A few impatient souls have plunged into Pyrrhonism
and taken refuge in universal skepticism; while others have sought to
organize nescience into a science. But patient, earnest souls have never
cast away their faith in the integrity of universal reason, and have
never ceased to believe that its ideas and laws are, in truth, the ideas
and laws of the universe. These problems are the great problems of all
philosophy, and all religion; and unless philosophy be a dream, and
religion an illusion, they are capable of such a solution as shall
satisfy the reason of man.[10] This conviction, which is common to the
mass of thoughtful men, will justify every attempt of philosophy to
attain to an ultimate unity of thought. The ultimate harmony of
physical, philosophical, and religious truth is the faith of all noble
minds.
The signs of the times are propitious. To-day the conflict between
reason and faith, science and religion, presents many hopeful
indications of an approaching conciliation. Candid men in both fields
are earnestly working, and patiently watching, and hourly catching
clearer glimpses of the everlasting harmony which pervades the universe
of being and of thought. Every, even the smallest, contribution made
with an honest purpose to give confidence and collimation to this
movement, will be welcome to all earnest minds. This may be our apology
for attempting a task that belongs to stronger intellects than ours.
It is obvious, at first thought, that the questions before us admit of
no loose and desultory treatment. Abysses are not to be concealed by
laurel screens, or chasms bridged by flowers of rhetoric. If we are to
reach any satisfactory conclusions, our procedure must be rigidly
systematic and logically exact. We must have a fixed point of departure,
and, if possible, a faultless method of advance. The fundamental
question must be determined. The central problem must be ascertained,
and we must deal with all correlative questions in their logical
connection with the one fundamental inquiry.
First of all, then, can we place that central problem clearly before
our mental vision? Amid the diverse questions which spontaneously arise
in presence of the diversified phenomena of nature, and the wonderful
evolutions of humanity, can we fix upon the _one_ question in which all
others are involved--the grand underlying problem which comprehends them
all?
A little reflection will make it apparent that the problem of all
problems is this--
_How shall we conceive aright the_ FIRST PRINCIPLE _and_ ORIGIN _of all
things, itself unoriginated and unbeginning, the source of all
beginnings? Or again, what is that_ FIRST PRINCIPLE _which, being
assumed, shall be found a sufficient explanation of the motion and
change, the order and adaptation, the life and feeling, the
consciousness and reason, we call, collectively, the universe_?
This is clearly the fundamental question on which all the others are
grounded, and in the solution of which they have their solution.
The universe presents itself to sense and sense-perception as a
perpetual genesis, "a vast aggregation and history of phenomena
conditioned in time and space which, by its diversity and mutability, is
disqualified from being regarded as independent and self-existent." To
our experiential knowledge, to our physical science in its highest
generalizations, the universe is a product, an _effect_. And it is an
effect for which the reason demands an explanation and a cause. It is a
manifoldness and diversity which the logical understanding is
ceaselessly endeavoring to reduce to a unity. Indeed, every movement of
thought, from the first rude attempt at classification on the simple
basis of resemblance, upward to the recognition of more profound ideal
relations and uniform laws, until its culmination in the highest
integration of reason, is but the effort of the mind to grasp the
individual facts of nature in a unity of thought, and interpret the
universe according to principles and ideas which the reason supplies.
The moment reflective thought is directed to the phenomenal world, the
questions spontaneously arise--Out of what does the phenomenal come? By
what agency or efficiency does it arise? Why does it present itself in
this order rather than another? Or, more specifically--What is the
abiding _reality_ which sustains the array of phenomena? What is the
invisible _power_ which effects all the changes we see around us? What
is that unseen _presence_ which determines the forms, relations, and
adaptations which every where present themselves to the reason of man?
In a word, _What is that ultimate principle--the last or remotest in the
order of analytic thought, the first in the order of being and of
reason--which sustains and moves and organizes and governs all_--that
fundamental, abiding PRIMUS which is everlastingly present behind the
scenery and changes of the world--_that which always was, and now is,
and ever shall be_ FIRST? Or if we permit ourselves to regard the
present order of things as a necessary out-birth from the past, still we
are compelled by a laborious effort of regressive thought to climb
upward through a series of changes to an absolutely FIRST of the series
conditioning all the other members, but itself unconditioned. Few will
now claim that this is the natural and adequate cosmical conception;
but, even under this mode of conception, we can not but feel that a
development without a beginning of the process, a series without a first
term, is impossible. "The absolute infinity of a series is a
contradiction _in adjecto_. As every number, although immeasurably and
inconceivably great, is impossible unless unity is given as its basis,
so every series, being itself a number, is impossible unless a first
term is given as its commencement." Therefore the question still
returns--What is that First Principle of all things?
In obedience to this demand of reason, or impelled by an innate
"wonder"--"the feeling of the philosopher"--men have in all ages
attempted an ideal construction and rational interpretation of the
universe.[11] The Mythologies, Cosmogonies, Philosophies, Religions of
the ancient world were the simple products of this innate tendency.
Beyond the circle of thought illuminated by Divine revelation, the first
movement of reflection was unmethodical and incomplete. Pursuing the
inquiries objectively, that is, in the realm of outward nature, and not
subjectively in the realm of reason, the human mind was perpetually
entangled with dualistic conceptions. There were contrarieties,
polarities, antagonisms, which the logical understanding could not
cancel. Hence we have, as an early, perhaps the earliest, form of
construction, an Oriental Dualism--as in the Adonis and Moloch of the
Phœnicians, the Isis and Osiris of the Egyptians, the Ormuzd and
Ahriman of the Persians, the Chaos and Love of Orpheus, the Plenum and
Vacuum (Matter and Space) of Democritus, and even some lingering taint
in the God and Necessity of Plato's "Timæus."
But all this was unsatisfactory to human reason, which is a _unity_, and
which makes its imperious demand that _absolute unity_ shall stand at
the fountain-head of being. It has never been able to rest in an
Ultimate which was not an Absolute--that is, a _unity_ which by its very
idea and conception is the negation of all plurality and mutability; a
_unity_ which is unconditioned, and yet which conditions all; an
"eternal constancy," the voluntary cause of all genesis and all
change.[12] It is a law of reason, under which alone it can maintain its
integrity, that the _First Cause must be_ ONE, _and not many_. An
absolute cause must be one in order to be absolute; two absolutes is a
contradiction. With more or less clearness, men in all ages have
apprehended that "the _First Principle must be one or nothing_."
This is tacitly conceded in all modern systems of thought. Büchner, the
materialist; Spencer, the dynamist; Hegel, the idealist; Cousin and
Coleridge, the spiritualists, know no divergence here. Atheism,
Pantheism, and Theism alike commence with unity at the fountain-head of
being--a unity which is incomposite, absolutely continuous, every where
present and eternal. Every system of philosophy is essentially an effort
to show how the universe that now is has been originated by, or evolved
out of, or has emanated from, a First Principle, an absolute Unity. To
determine whether this absolute First Principle can be known, and, if
known, how conceived and expressed aright, is the ultimate problem of
all philosophy and all religion.
All the answers which have been given, and, indeed, all which can be
conceived, are contained in the following four propositions:
1. _In the beginning was_ MATTER--matter as the original substance or
substratum, with its inherent, essential, and necessary attribute of
force; this alone is eternal and infinite. "No force without matter--no
matter without force." "Matter and its immanent force is immortal and
indestructible." "The world is unlimited and infinite."[13] Matter, with
its primary forces of attraction and repulsion, cohesion and affinity,
is fully adequate to the explanation of all the phenomena of the
universe, physical, vital, and mental.
2. _In the beginning was_ FORCE--force homogeneous but unstable, and
necessarily tending to differentiation and heterogeneity; splitting into
opposites, standing off into polarities, ramifying into attractions and
repulsions, light, heat, magnetism, and electricity; and mounting up
through the stages of physical, vital, and neural to the mental life
itself, with all its varied and endless phenomena, as revealed in the
languages, laws, institutions, arts, sciences, and religions of the
world. Force is "the ultimate of all ultimates," the "Absolute Reality,"
the "Unconditioned Cause."[14]
3. _In the beginning was_ THOUGHT--thought as an eternal process of
self-manifestation and self-actualization, which in its necessary
evolution reveals itself as force, and expresses itself in the varied
types of existence and laws of phenomena, natural and spiritual. "_The
Absolute Idea_," as a perpetual process, an eternal thinking, is the
supreme principle of all reality. "The idea of the Absolute Spirit
comprehends the entire wealth of the natural and the spiritual world; it
is the only substance and truth of this wealth, and nothing is true and
real except so far as it forms an element of its being."[15]
4. _In the beginning was_ WILL--an unconditioned Will as the indivisible
unity and perpetual differentiation of _Reason_ and _Power_ and _Love_.
This Unconditioned Will is the causative principle of all Reality, all
Efficiency, and all Perfection--a causative principle containing,
predetermining, and producing all the manifold forms and relations,
forces and laws of the universe in reference to a final purpose. This
_Absolute First Cause_ is a living personal Being, "from whom, in whom,
and to whom are all things."[16]
The first and second of these propositions coalesce with the creed of
_Atheism_, the third with the creed of _Pantheism_, the fourth is the
creed of _Theism_, and, as we hope to prove in subsequent chapters, the
only rational and adequate explanation of the facts of the universe.