r and importance, as compared with the
known relations, it is impossible for us to determine any definite
probability either for or against the being of a God. Therefore,
although it is true that, so far as human science can penetrate or human
thought infer, we can perceive no evidence of God, yet we have no right
on this account to conclude that there is no God. The probability,
therefore, that nature is devoid of Deity, while it is of the strongest
kind if regarded scientifically--amounting, in fact, to a scientific
demonstration,--is nevertheless wholly worthless if regarded logically.
Although it is as true as is the fundamental basis of all science and of
all experience that, if there is a God, His existence, considered as a
cause of the universe, is superfluous, it may nevertheless be true that,
if there had never been a God, the universe could never have existed.

'Hence these formal considerations proved conclusively that, no matter
how great the probability of Atheism might appear to be in a relative
sense, we have no means of estimating such probability in an absolute
sense. From which position there emerged the possibility of another
argument in favour of Theism--or rather let us say, of a reappearance of
the teleological argument in another form. For it may be said, seeing
that these formal considerations exclude legitimate reasoning either for
or against Deity in an absolute sense, while they do not exclude such
reasoning in a relative sense, if there yet remain any theistic
deductions which may properly be drawn from experience, these may now be
adduced to balance the atheistic deductions from the persistence of
force. For although the latter deductions have clearly shown the
existence of Deity to be superfluous in a scientific sense, the formal
considerations in question have no less clearly opened up beyond the
sphere of science a possible _locus_ for the existence of Deity; so that
if there are any facts supplied by experience for which the atheistic
deductions appear insufficient to account, we are still free to account
for them in a relative sense by the hypothesis of Theism. And, it may be
urged, we do find such an unexplained residuum in the correlation of
general laws in the production of cosmic harmony. It signifies nothing,
the argument may run, that we are unable to conceive the methods whereby
the supposed Mind operates in producing cosmic harmony; nor does it
signify that its operation must now