nceive of nothing beyond Nature, distinct
from it, and above it.... The Theist, therefore, I leave; but while I go
with the Pantheist so far as to accept the fact of Nature in the
plenitude of its diverse, illimitable, and transcendent manifestations,
I cannot go further and predicate with the Pantheist _the unity of its
intelligence and consciousness_!"[275] He holds, therefore, that
self-existence is an attribute of Nature, that this attribute is so
majestic that it may be fairly held to include _all others_, and that,
while intelligence and consciousness exist, he cannot affirm their
_unity_ in Nature, or regard "Nature as a being, intelligent and
conscious." Whence it follows that he can give no other account of the
living, intelligent, active, and responsible beings which inhabit the
world, than that they came into existence, he knows not how, and that
they have the ultimate ground of their existence in a necessary,
underived, and eternal being, which is neither intelligent nor
self-conscious!

3. Secularism seeks to invalidate the proof from _marks of design_ in
Nature by attempting to show, either that it is _merely analogical_, and
can, therefore, afford no certainty, or that, if it were certain, it
could prove nothing, because, by an extension of the same principle, it
must prove too much.

Such is the pith and substance of Mr. Holyoake's argument in his
singular pamphlet entitled, "Paley refuted in his own Words." He first
of all endeavors to invalidate the proof from design by assuming that it
is a mere argument from _analogy_, and that at the best analogy can
afford no ground of _certainty_, although it may possibly suggest a
_probable conjecture_: "It may be said that _analogy_ fails to find out
God, and this must be admitted, it being no more than was to be
expected. The God of Theology being infinite, it is no subject for
analogy.... No conceivable analogy can prove a creation. Creation is
without an analogy.... No analogy can prove creation, because no analogy
can prove what it does not contain, namely, an example of
creation."[276] "Analogy, the specious precursor of reason, would
suggest the personality of the powers which awed and cheered man. Reason
sends us to facts as the only positive grounds of positive conclusions;
but in the childhood of intellect and experience, _likelihood_ is
mistaken for _certainty_, and _probability_ for _fact_. In the disturbed
reflection of man's image on the wall, as