"direction" is unconvincing, if not suicidal in
character. Assuming that direction may have occurred, the fact of
direction adds nothing to the qualities or possibilities of existence,
any more than the "directivity" of a chemist adds to the possibilities
of certain elements when he brings them into combination. Unless the
possibilities of the compound were already in the elements guidance
would be useless. And, in the same way, unless the capacity for
producing the universe we see already existed in the atoms themselves,
no amount of "direction" could have produced it. God simply takes the
place of the chemist bringing certain chemical elements in, of the
engineer guiding certain forces along a particular channel. But no new
capacity is created, and all that is done by either the chemist or the
engineer _might_ occur without their interference. Otherwise it could
not occur at all.

Now there is no denying that natural forces _do_ produce the phenomena
around us. That is undeniable. And whether there be a god or not this
fact remains quite unaffected. All that God can do is to set up certain
combinations. But this does not exclude the possibility of this
combination taking place without the operation of deity. In fact, it
implies it. Either, then, natural forces possess the capacity to produce
the universe as we see it, or they do not. If they do not, then it is
impossible for us to conceive in what way even deity could produce it.
If, on the other hand, they have this capacity, the argument for the
existence of deity loses its force, and the theist is bound to admit
that all that he claims as due to the action of deity might have
happened without him. The theists own argument, if logically pursued
ends in divesting it of all coercive value.

It is curious that the theist should fail to see that a much stronger
argument for the operation of deity would have been of a negative
character, to have proved that in some way God manifested an inhibitive
influence and thus prevented certain things occurring which would have
transpired but for his interference. Regularity, or "order" is, as we
have seen, the necessary consequence of the persistence of force. And so
long as natural forces continue to express themselves in the way in
which experience has led us to expect there is no need for us to think
of anything beyond. The principle of inertia is with us here, for if it
be true that force will persist in a given direction unl