of an unconscious Mind or Will. The
philosophical argument of Mr. R. B. Haldane in _The Pathway to
Reality_,[1] and the purely biological argument of Dr. John Haldane in
his two lectures on _Life and Mechanism_, and still more recently the
brilliant and very important work of M. Bergson, _L'Evolution
Creatrice_ have, as it seems to me, abundantly shown that it is as
impossible as ever it was to explain even the growth of a plant without
supposing that in it and all organic Nature there is a striving towards
an end. But the argument from design, though it testifies to purpose
in the Universe, tells us nothing about the nature of that purpose.
Purpose is one thing; benevolent purpose is another. Nobody's estimate
of the comparative amount of happiness and misery in the world is worth
much; but for my own part, if I trusted simply to empirical evidence,
{62} I should not be disposed to do more than slightly attenuate the
pessimism of the Pessimists. At all events, Nature is far too 'red in
tooth and claw' to permit of our basing an argument for a benevolent
deity upon a contemplation of the facts of animal and human life.
There is but one source from which such an idea can possibly be
derived--from the evidence of our own moral consciousness.

Our moral ideals are the work of Reason. That the happiness of many
ought to be preferred to the happiness of one, that pleasure is better
than pain, that goodness is of more value than pleasure, that some
pleasures are better than others--such judgements are as much the work
of our own Reason, they are as much self-evident truths, as the truth
that two and two make four, or that A cannot be both B and not B at the
same time, or that two straight lines cannot enclose a space. We have
every right to assume that such truths hold good for God as well as for
man. If such Idealism as I have endeavoured to lead you to is well
founded, the mind which knows comes from God, and therefore the
knowledge which that mind possesses must also be taken as an imperfect
or fragmentary reproduction of God's knowledge. And the Theist who
rejects Idealism but admits the existence of self-evident truths will
be equally justified in assuming that, for God as well as for man, two
and two must make {63} four. We have just as much right to assume that
our moral ideas--our ideas of value--must come from God too. For God
too, as for us, there must exist the idea, the ultimate category of the
good; an