argument does not distinguish God and the world, the latter does so,
assuming that independent reality can be attributed to the stages of a
process and to the purpose that dominates it.

[Sidenote: The Cosmological Proof of God.]

Sect. 89. The _cosmological_ proof of God approaches him through the
attribute of creative omnipotence. The common principle of causal
explanation refers the origin of natural events to similar antecedent
events. But there must be some _first cause_ from which the whole series
is derived, a cause which is ultimate, sufficient to itself, and the
responsible author of the world. Because God's function as creator was a
part of the Christian teaching, and because explanation by causes is
habitual with common sense, this argument has had great vogue. But in
philosophy it has declined in importance, chiefly because it has been
absorbed in arguments which deal with the _kind_ of causality proper to
a first cause or world-ground. The argument that follows is a case in
point.

[Sidenote: The Teleological Proof of God.]

Sect. 90. The _teleological_ proof argues that the world can owe its
origin only to an _intelligent first cause_. The evidence for this is
furnished by the cunning contrivances and beneficent adaptations of
nature. These could not have come about through chance or the working of
mechanical forces, but only through the foresight of a rational will.
This argument originally infers God from the character of nature and
history; and the extension of mechanical principles to organic and
social phenomena, especially as stimulated by Darwin's principle of
natural selection, has tended greatly to diminish its importance. When,
on the other hand, for nature and history there are substituted the
intellectual and moral activities themselves, and the inference is made
to the ideal which they imply, the teleological argument merges into the
ontological. But the old-fashioned statement of it remains in the form
of religious faith, and in this capacity it has had the approval even
of Hume and Kant, the philosophers who have contributed most forcibly to
its overthrow as a demonstration of God. They agree that the
_acknowledgment_ of God in nature and history is the sequel to a
theistic belief, and an inevitable attitude on the part of the religious
consciousness.

[Sidenote: God and the World. Theism and Pantheism.]

Sect. 91. Another group of ideas belonging to philosophical theology
consists o