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CHAPTER VII.
THE ANTI-RATIONALISTIC VIEW, OR SUPERNATURALISM.
This system differs in many respects from the other; but its philosophy is at bottom the same. It denies that by natural action there can be anything in Man which was not first in the senses; whatever transcends the senses can come to him only by a Miracle. And the Miracle is attended with phenomena obvious to the senses. Το develope the natural side of the theory it sets God on the one side and man on the other. However it admits the immanence of God in Matter, and talks very little about the laws of Matter, which it thinks require revision, amendment, and even repeal, as if the nature of things changed, or God grew wiser by experiment. It does not see that if God is always the same, and immanent in Nature, the laws of Nature can neither change nor be changed.[1] It limits the power of Man still further than the former theory. It denies that he can, of himself, discover the existence of God; or find out that it is better to love his brother than to hate him, to subject the Passions to Reason, Desire to Duty, rather than to subject Reason to Passion, Duty to Desire.[2] Man can find out all that is
- ↑ Leibnitz, in a letter to the Princess of Wales, Opp. phil. ed. Erdmann, Berlin, 1840, p. 746-7, amuses himself with ridiculing this view, which he ascribes to Newton and his followers; “according to them,” says he, “God must wind up his watch from time to time or it would stop outright. He was not farsighted enough to make a perpetual motion.”
- ↑ Some Supernaturalists admit that Man by nature can find out the most important religious truths, in the way set down before, and some admit a moral sense in man. Others deny both. A recent writer denies that he can find by the light of Nature ANY THEOLOGICAL TRUTH. Natural theology is not possible. See Irons, On the whole Doctrine of Final Causes, Lond. 1836, p. 34, 129, and passim. His introductory chapter on modern Deism is very curious.
sages in his works, do certainly look that way, others are of a quite spiritual tendency. See King's Life of Locke, Vol. I. p. 366, et seq., and his theological writings, passim.
