olution, on the
theatre of history, of the problem--What degree of perfection can
humanity, under the most favorable conditions, attain, without the
supernatural light, and guidance, and grace of Christianity?[38] "Like
their own goddess Athene the people of Athens seem to spring full-armed
into the arena of history, and we look in vain to Egypt, Syria, and
India, for more than a few seeds that burst into such marvellous growth
on the soil of Attica."[39]

[Footnote 38: It has been asserted by some theological writers, Watson
for example, that no society of civilized men has been, or can be
constituted without the aid of a religion directly communicated by
revelation, and transmitted by oral tradition;--"that it is possible to
raise a body of men into that degree of civil improvement which would
excite the passion for philosophic investigation, without the aid of
religion... can have no proof, and is contradicted by every fact and
analogy with which we are acquainted." (_Institutes_, vol. i. p. 271;
see also Archbishop Whately, "Dissertation," etc., vol. i. _Encyc.
Brit._, p. 449-455).

The fallacy of the reasoning by which this doctrine is sought to be
sustained is found in the assumption "that to all our race the existence
of a First Cause is a question of philosophy," and that the idea of God
lies at the end of "a gradual process of inquiry" and induction, for
which a high degree of "scientific culture" is needed. Whereas the idea
of a First Cause lies at the beginning, not at the end of philosophy;
and philosophy is simply the analysis of our natural consciousness of
God, and the presentation of the idea in a logical form. Faith in the
existence of God is not the result of a conscious process of reflection;
it is the spontaneous and instinctive logic of the human mind, which, in
view of phenomena presented to sense, by a necessary law of thought
immediately and intuitively affirms a personal Power, an intelligent
Mind as the author. In this regard, there is no difference between men
except the clearness with which they apprehend, and the logical account
they can render to themselves, of this instinctive belief. Spontaneous
intuition, says Cousin, is the genius of all men; reflection the genius
of few men. "But Leibnitz had no more confidence in the principle of
causality, and even in his favorite principle of sufficient reason, than
the most ignorant of men;" the latter have this principle within them,
as a law of