But the argument--or rather the truism--in question is an attempt to do neither the one nor the other; it simply asserts the patent fact that, if God is omnipotent, and so had an unlimited choice of means whereby to accomplish the ends of "animal perfection," "animal enjoyment," and the rest; then the fact of his having chosen to adopt the means which he has adopted is a fact which is wholly incompatible with his beneficence. And on the other hand, if he is beneficent, the fact of his having adopted these means in order that the sum of ultimate enjoyment might exceed the sum of concomitant pain, is a fact which is wholly incompatible with his omnipotence. To a man who already believes, on independent grounds, in an omnipotent and beneficent Deity, it is no doubt possible to avoid facing this dilemma, and to rest content with the assumption that, in a sense beyond the reach of human reason, or even of human conception, the two horns of this dilemma must be united in some transcendental reconciliation; but if a man undertakes to reason on the subject at all, as he must and ought when the question is as to the _existence_ of such a Deity, then clearly he has no alternative but to allow that the dilemma is a hopeless one. With inverted meaning, therefore, may we quote Professor Flint's words against himself:--"The mind of man never shows itself so small as when it tries to measure the attributes ... of its Creator;" for certainly, if Professor Flint's usually candid mind has had a Creator, it nowhere displays the "littleness" of prejudice in so marked a degree as it does when "measuring his attributes."