tanding the exulting tone in which these questions are put, and
which seems to imply that in their proposer's opinion they are
unanswerable, they may, I think, be very summarily disposed of. Whatever
other comments might be made on the conduct of an architect who should
build in the complex manner suggested, surely the very last thing said
would be that he did not know how to build in simpler wise. His having
actually built a palace would be decisive proof of his knowing how to
build a palace; and of all queer reasons for questioning his possession
of that much architectural knowledge, about the queerest would be the
fact of his having built, not a palace only, but a hut and cottage in
addition. And if, adopting a still more complicated style, he should
begin by so constructing a hut that, if left to itself, it would draw up
brick and mortar from the earth, and grow into a cottage, and then go on
growing and adding storey to storey till it became a palace, this surely
would be a proof not of less, but of infinitely more, architectural
knowledge than if he had commenced and completed the palace with his own
hands. Not unwarrantably, perhaps, may Mr. Lewes, reflecting that his
own and every other human organism's genesis has consisted of at least
three stages, oval, foetal, and infantine, wonder why he was not
formed all at once, 'as Eve was mythically affirmed to be taken from
Adam's rib, and Minerva from Jupiter's head,' and why he was not brought
forth full dressed in an indefinitely expansible suit of clothes. Not
quite inexcusably, perhaps, might he conceive the reason to be some mere
whim or humour of his Maker, though there might be more gratitude in
conjecturing that the triple process was adopted for the purpose of
assisting biological enquirers like himself in their special researches.
From so practised a logician, however, about the very last thing to have
been here expected was that he should suggest creative 'ignorance and
incompetence' as the only apparent alternative to denying a Creator
altogether, as if incapacity for a comparatively easy process were a
likely reason for choosing one greatly more difficult. It might have
occurred to Mr. Lewes that, if there were any absurdity in the choice,
the Being who made him and bestowed on him the faculty of perceiving the
absurdity, could not have failed himself likewise to perceive it and
consequently to avoid it.

Of divine power, the measure or measurelessness is