to
God only. This fact is admirably illustrated by the distinguished
founder of the Boyle Lectureship;[128] and it is abundantly confirmed by
examples which have been furnished by more recent times. The author of
the "System of Nature," which appeared before the first French
Revolution, was an avowed and most reckless Atheist;[129] yet he
ascribes to Nature most of the attributes which are usually supposed to
belong to God, such as self-existence, eternity, immutability,
infinitude, and unity; and if the _intellectual_ and _moral_ attributes
may seem to be omitted, as they must be, to some extent, in any system
of Atheism, yet _thought_, _design_, and _will_, are expressly ascribed
to Nature.[130] And the only difference between the Theist and the
Atheist is said to be, that the latter ascribes all the phenomena of
Nature "to material, natural, sensible, and known causes," while the
former ascribes them to "spiritual, supernatural, unintelligible, and
unknown causes;" or, in other words, "to an _occult cause_."[131] It is
manifestly a matter of indifference whether this method of accounting
for the phenomena of Nature be called Atheism or Pantheism; in either
aspect it is essentially the same.

The more recent advocates of Atheism or Pantheism have often made use of
similar language. M. Crousse affirms that "all nature is _animated_ by
an internal force which moves it;" that this is the true _spontaneity_,
the _causality_, which is the origin of all sensible manifestations, for
"_mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet_;" that "matter, the most
cold and indifferent, is full of life, capable of engendering thought,
and containing mind in it, at least _potentially_;" and that, to every
man who has true insight, "the world feels, moves, speaks, and
thinks."[132] The author of "The Purpose of Existence" makes it his
grand object to show that "the evolvement of mind out of matter" is the
primary law and final cause of the universe; that "this process
commences with vegetation, extracting from matter the spirit of
vitality;" that "this spirit is preserved amid the decay of vegetables,
and transfused into animals, thus establishing the great
working-principle of Nature, that spirit is extracted from matter by
organized bodies, and survives their dissolution."[133] Of course, if
matter have the power of evolving intelligent and even immortal minds by
its own inherent properties and established laws, it will not be
diffic