to the sphere of
ethics not less. I daresay even the man in the street knows, quite as
certainly as the man in the schools, that a metaphysical proposition
underlies the doing of every moral act, even though it may never be
expressed. All thinking starts with an assumption of some kind, and
without an assumption thought is impossible. This is just as true of
the strictest scientific processes as it is of deductive reasoning, and
indeed it is interesting to watch the way in which within recent years
idealistic philosophy and empirical science have joined hands. Does
physical science, then, imply the doctrine of the Trinity? Yes,
unquestionably it does, after a fashion, for it starts with an
assumption which takes it for granted. Perhaps this would be news to
Professor Ray Lankester, and such as he, but I think I could convince
them that I am right if I had them face to face. To use the mind at
all we have to assume this doctrine even though we may not actually
formulate it. Christianity did not invent it; it clarified and defined
it, but in principle it is as old as the exercise of human reason.

+The basal assumption of thought.+--After making a comprehensive
assertion of this kind I suppose I am bound to justify it, and I do not
shrink from the task. I say that all thinking starts with an
assumption of some kind, and exact thought requires that that
assumption shall be the simplest possible, the irreducible minimum
beneath which we cannot get. Now when we start thinking about
existence as a whole and ourselves in particular, we are compelled to
assume the infinite, the finite, and the activity of the former within
the latter. In other words we have to postulate God, the universe, and
God's operation within the universe. Look at these three conceptions
for a moment and it will be seen that every one of them implies the
rest; they are a Trinity in unity. The primordial being must be
infinite, for there cannot be a finite without something still beyond
it. We know, too, that to our experience the universe is finite; we
can measure, weigh, and analyse it--an impossible thing to do with an
infinite substance. And yet if we think of infinite and finite as two
entirely distinct and unrelated modes of existence, we find ourselves
in an impossible position, for the infinite must be that outside of
which nothing exists or can exist; so of course we are compelled to
think of the infinite as ever active within the f