ence can penetrate or human thought infer, we can
perceive no evidence of God, yet we have no right on this account to
conclude that there is no God. The probability, therefore, that nature is
devoid of Deity, while it is of the strongest kind if regarded
scientifically--amounting, in fact, to a scientific demonstration,--is
nevertheless wholly worthless if regarded logically. Notwithstanding it is
as true as is the fundamental basis of all science and of all experience
that, if there is a God, his existence, considered as a cause of the
universe, is superfluous, it may nevertheless be true that, if there had
never been a God, the universe could never have existed.

Hence these formal considerations proved conclusively that, no matter how
great the probability of Atheism might appear to be in a relative sense, we
have no means of estimating such probability in an absolute sense. From
which position there emerged the possibility of another argument in favour
of Theism--or rather let us say, of a reappearance of the teleological
argument in another form. For it may be said, seeing that these formal
considerations exclude legitimate reasoning either for or against Deity in
an absolute sense, while they do not exclude such reasoning in a relative
sense, if there yet remain any theistic deductions which may properly be
drawn from experience, these may now be adduced to balance the atheistic
deductions from the persistence of force. For although the latter
deductions have clearly shown the existence of Deity to be superfluous in a
scientific sense, the formal considerations in question have no less
clearly opened up beyond the sphere of science a possible _locus_ for the
existence of Deity; so that if there are any facts supplied by experience
for which the atheistic deductions appear insufficient to account, we are
still free to account for them in a relative sense by the hypothesis of
Theism. And, it may be urged, we do find such an unexplained residuum in
the correlation of general laws in the production of cosmic harmony. It
signifies nothing, the argument may run, that we are unable to conceive the
methods whereby the supposed Mind operates in producing cosmic harmony; nor
does it signify that its operation must now be relegated to a
super-scientific province. What does signify is that, taking a general view
of nature, we find it impossible to conceive of the extent and variety of
her harmonious processes as other than pro