he necessary qualities and movements
being attributed to the atoms, the conclusion was that nothing else was
required in order to explain the world. With this may be compared the
view of Empedocles (fifth century) that love and hate (in modern phrase,
attraction and repulsion) are the creative forces of the world. The
simplicity of this scheme has commended it to many minds in modern as in
ancient times. Man, it is said, can know nothing outside of phenomena,
and, so far as regards the origin of things, it is as easy to conceive
of an eternal self-existent mass of matter as of an eternal
self-existent deity. The nobler part of man, it is held, is not thereby
surrendered--reason and all high ethical and spiritual ideals have grown
naturally out of the primordial mass. In such systems there is often the
hypothesis of an original force or life resident in matter, and this
force or life, being credited with all that has issued from it, may be
regarded as having the elements of personality, and in that case becomes
practically a deity. Such a deistic materialism approaches pantheism
nearly.

GENERAL SURVEY OF THE THEISTIC DEVELOPMENT

+1009+. The theistic conceptions of men have followed the general line
of social development. All systems and shades of thought are faithfully
reflected in the various ideas that men have formed for themselves of
the gods. Human nature is the highest thing known to men, and their
conception of supernatural forces has been based on ideals derived from
experience. The sphere of divine activity has been determined for men by
their systems of physical science; the moral character of the gods is a
reflection of human ethical conceptions; the internal activity of the
deity in man's mind is defined by man's spiritual experience.

+1010+. From the earliest times the extent to which the gods were
supposed to intervene in human affairs has been fixed by scientific
observation, by the knowledge of natural law--the gods have been called
on to intervene only when it was necessary because ordinary powers
failed. When finally the conception is reached that all nature is
governed by natural law, the theistic view assumes that the deity works
through ordinary natural means, and the supposition of particular
interventions is rejected by the mass of scientific thinkers. It was
natural in early times to suppose that reward and punishment were
administered by the deity in this world in accordance with the
prin