s subjective relations necessarily reflecting those
external relations of which they themselves are the product[14].

'Sec. 5. The next step, however, was to mitigate the severity of the
conclusion that was liable to be formed upon the utter and hopeless
collapse of all the possible arguments in favour of Theism. Having fully
demonstrated that there is no shadow of a positive argument in support
of the theistic theory, there arose the danger that some persons might
erroneously conclude that for this reason the theistic theory must be
untrue. It therefore became necessary to point out, that although, as
far as we can see, nature does not require an Intelligent Cause to
account for any of her phenomena, yet it is possible that, if we could
see farther, we should see that nature could not be what she is unless
she had owed her existence to an Intelligent Cause. Or, in other words,
the probability there is that an Intelligent Cause is unnecessary to
explain any of the phenomena of nature, is only equal to the probability
there is that the doctrine of the persistence of force is everywhere and
eternally true.

'As a final step in our analysis, therefore, we altogether quitted the
region of experience, and ignoring even the very foundations of science,
and so all the most certain of relative truths, we carried the
discussion into the transcendental region of purely formal
considerations. And here we laid down the canon, "that the value of any
probability, in its last analysis, is determined by the number, the
importance, and the definiteness of the relations known, as compared
with those of the relations unknown;" and, consequently, that in cases
where the unknown relations are more numerous, more important, or more
indefinite than are the known relations, the value of our inference
varies inversely as the difference in these respects between the
relations compared. From which canon it followed, that as the problem of
Theism is the most ultimate of all problems, and so contains in its
unknown relations all that is to man unknown and unknowable, these
relations must be pronounced the most indefinite of all relations that
it is possible for man to contemplate; and, consequently, that although
we have here the entire range of experience from which to argue, we are
unable to estimate the real value of any argument whatsoever. The
unknown relations in our attempted induction being wholly indefinite,
both in respect of their numbe