offerings were "the steam of slaughter, the dissonance of groans, and the flames of a desolate land" (Dialogue between "Eusebes and Theosophus," prose writings, page 300)? I deny that man has ever been in any way indebted to such a god, and I say moreover that such a deity never had any real existence, except in the base imaginations of ignorant and brutal men. But the next stage was from the material to the spiritual god. Many ages must have elapsed before this more elevating though equally absurd belief became to be accepted, even by a small minority of mankind. But the time eventually did come—a time which happily is now rapidly passing away—when intellectual men believed that the proposition of the existence of god could be demonstrated to all rational minds. Some said that god's existence was self-evident to every intelligent mind; others that Nature and men could not have come by "chance"; that they must have had a cause; some said that the harmony existing in the universe proved god's existence; others that everybody except fools "felt in their hearts" that there was a god. But these imaginary proofs did not always convince. At last there came forth philosophers who said that there was a mode of reasoning, the adoption of which "leads irresistibly up to the belief in god," and that that mode was called the mode à priori. Another school said that the à priori, or reasoning from cause to effect, was an altogether fallacious method, and that the only satisfactory mode of establishing god's existence was the à posteriori, or reasoning from effect to cause.

Another school said that taken singly neither of these modes of reasoning established the existence of deity, but that both taken together "formed a perfect chain" of reasoning that was quite conclusive on the point. Neither of these schools, however, showed how two bad arguments could possibly make one good one. But let me just briefly examine these arguments put forward so confidently by leading Theists. The first method—à priori—invariably takes the form of an attempt to establish what is called a "Great First Cause."

When it is said that there must be a "first cause" to account for the existence of Nature, such language, to say the least, shows a total misapprehension of the meaning of the word "cause," as used by scientific men. "First cause," as applied to Nature as a whole, remembering the definition I have given, is an absurdity. Cause and effect apply only to phenomena. Each effect is a cause of some subsequent effect, and each cause is an effect of some antecedent cause. The phenomena of the universe form a complete chain of causes and effects, and in an infinite regression there can be no first cause. Let me explain what I mean more fully. For instance, here is a chain; suppose it is to form a perfect circle, every link in which is perfect; now if you were to go round and round this chain from now to doomsday you would never come to the first link. It is the same in Nature. You can go back, and back, and back through successive causes and effects, but you will never come to a "first cause"; you will not be able to say "here is the end of Nature, and here the beginning of something else." There is no brick wall to mark the boundary line of Nature. You cannot "look through Nature up to Nature's God,"—the poet Pope notwithstanding—for Nature seems endless, and you can neither penetrate her heights nor fathom her depths. And I have one other word to say in reference to this à priori method, before finally disposing of it. It is this, that it is an altogether unscientific method. Man knows nothing whatever of cause except in the sense' that in the immediate antecedent of an effect. Man's experience is of effects; these he takes cognisance of; of these he has some knowledge, but of cause, except as a means to an end, he has none. But this brings me to the second mode of reasoning in proof of God's existence, the à posteriori and this has one advantage in its favor, and that is, that it is