In all that has been said in the preceding chapters respecting the two hypotheses of special creation and evolution, the existence and attributes of the Supreme Being have been assumed. The question of the existence and attributes of God has been reserved for discussion as an independent inquiry; and this inquiry it is now proposed to make, without any reference to the teachings of revealed religion, or to the traditionary beliefs of mankind. The simple idea of God, which I suppose to be capable of being reached as a philosophical deduction from the phenomena of the universe, embraces the conception of a Supreme Being existing from and through all eternity, and possessed of the attributes of infinite power and goodness, boundless, that is to say in faculties, incapable of error, and of supreme beneficence. While this idea of God corresponds with that which has been held from an early period under more or less of the influence exerted by teachings which have been accepted as inspired, or as authorized by the Deity himself, the question here to be considered is whether the same idea of God is a rationally philosophical deduction from the phenomena of the universe without the aid of revelation. In order to conduct this inquiry so as to exclude all influence of traditionary beliefs derived from sources believed to have been inspired, or from any authority whatever, let us suppose a man to have been born into this world in the full maturity of average human faculties, as they are found in well-disciplined intellects of the present age, but without any inculcated ideas on religious subjects. In the place of education commencing in infancy and carried on to the years of maturity, in the course of which more or less of dogmatic theology would have become incorporated almost with the texture of the mind, let us suppose that the mind of our inquirer is at first a total blank in respect to a belief in or conception of such a being as God, but that his intellectual powers are so well developed that he can reason soundly upon whatever comes within the reach of his observation or study. Let us further imagine him to be so situated that he can command at will the knowledge that science, as it now exists, could furnish to him, and that he is able to judge impartially any theories with which he meets. Such a person would be likely to deal rationally and independently with any question that might arise in the course of his investigations; and the fundamental question that would be likely to present itself to his mind would be, How came this universe and its countless phenomena to exist? Stimulated by an eager curiosity, but careful to make his investigations with entire coolness of reasoning, let us suppose that our inquirer first turns his attention to the phenomena of the solar system, and to what astronomy can teach him in regard to its construction. He finds it to consist of-- 1. The sun, a great central body giving forth light and heat.