_, so
there is a difference between the idea of a mysterious thing towards
which apprehension or awe is felt, and the conception of God. Granted
that man believed in his own spirit or double, and attributed similar
immaterial motor powers as a cause for the wind and waves, and so forth;
granted that he at last "refined" this into the belief in one Spirit
whose power was necessarily great and varied--the origin is still
unexplained. How did man get the idea of a personal spirit or double--no
such thing, _ex hypothesi_ existing? How did he get to formulate the
idea of a _God_ when he had simplified his group of many spirits into
one?

If man is created with a consciousness of his own inner-self, _as a
self_, he is able naturally to imagine a like self in other beings; if
he has an idea of God innate in him, he can assimilate the truth when it
is at last presented to his mind; and that is why he feels that it _is_
a refinement; a rising from the lower to the higher (because from
falsehood to truth), to let the many gods give place to the One God. If
the idea of God has been obscured, and the power of its apprehension
deadened, the man can only grope about helplessly, fashioning this
explanation of nature and that--all more or less false, but all dimly
bearing witness to the two absolute facts, that there is an inner
non-material self, and an external non-material God.

If then there are insuperable difficulties in connecting thought with
matter by any process of unaided development, there are also great
difficulties, even when thought in a rudimentary form is given, in
conceiving it developed into man's reason, or man's religious belief, by
any known process of "natural" causation.

CHAPTER VIII.

_FURTHER DIFFICULTIES REGARDING THE HISTORY OF MAN_.

There are, however, some other matters connected with the history of man
on the globe, unconnected with psychological development, but which
demand notice, as making the argument against an undesigned, unaided
development of man a cumulative one. It is urged that whatever may be
thought of the connection of man with the animal creation, at any rate
the received Christian belief regarding the origin of man--especially
his late appearance on the scene--is contrary to known facts, and that
we have to mount up to a vast geologic antiquity to account for what is
known from exhumed remains in caves and lake dwellings, and the like.

Now no one pretends that the histor