faith.[1] Now, how do these gentlemen help themselves? They simply declare that the existence of God is self-evident. Indeed! After the ancient world, at the expense of its conscience, had worked miracles to prove it, and the modern world, at the expense of its understanding, had brought into the field ontological, cosmological, and physico-theological proofs — to these gentlemen it is self-evident. And from this self-evident God they then explain the world: that is their philosophy.
Till Kant came there was a real dilemma between materialism and theism, i.e., between the assumption that a blind chance, or that an intelligence working from without in accordance with purposes and conceptions, had brought about the world, neque dabatur tertium. Therefore atheism and materialism were the same; hence the doubt whether there really could be an atheist, i.e., a man who really could attribute to blind chance the disposition of nature, so full of design, especially organised nature. See, for example, Bacon's Essays (sermones fideles), Essay 16, on Atheism. In the opinion of the great mass of men, and of the English, who in such things belong entirely to the great mass (the mob), this is still the case, even with their most celebrated men of learning. One has only to look at Owen's "Ostéologie Comparée," of 1855, preface, p. 11, 12, where he stands always before the old dilemma between Democritus and Epicurus on the one side, and an intelligence on the other, in which la con-
- ↑ Kant said, "It is very absurd to expect enlightenment from reason, and yet to prescribe to her beforehand which side she must necessarily take" ("Critique of Pure Reason," p. 747; V. 775). On the other hand, the following is the naive assertion of a professor of philosophy in our own time: "If a philosophy denies the reality of the fundamental ideas of Christianity, it is either false, or, even if true, it is yet useless." That is to say, for professors of philosophy. It was the late Professor Bachmann who, in the Jena Litteraturzeitung for July 1840, No. 126, so indiscreetly blurted out the maxim of all his colleagues. However, it is worth noticing, as regards the characteristics of the University philosophy, how here the truth, if it will not suit and adapt itself, is shown the door without ceremony, with, "Be off, truth! we cannot make use of you. Do we owe you anything? Do you pay us? Then be off!"
