‘In every step of religious argument we require the assumption, the belief, the faith, if the word is better, in an absolutely _perfect_ Being; in and by whom we are, who is omnipotent as well as most holy; who moves on the face of the whole world, and ruleth all things by the word of his power. If we grant this, the difficulty of the opposition between what is here called the natural and the supernatural religion is removed; and without granting it, that difficulty is perhaps insuperable. It follows from the very idea and definition of an infinitely perfect Being, that he is within us as well as without us,—ruling the clouds of the air and the fishes of the sea, as well as the fears and thoughts of men; smiling through the smile of nature as well as warning with the pain of conscience,—“sine qualitate, bonum; sine quantitate, magnum; sine indigentiâ, creatorem; sine situ, præsidentem; sine habitu, omnia continentem; sine loco, ubique totum; sine tempore, sempiternum; sine ullâ sui mutatione, mutabilia facientem, nihilque patientem.” If we assume this, life is simple; without this, all is dark.’[9] Evidently, then, though Bagehot held that the doctrine of evolution by natural selection gave a higher conception of the Creator than the old doctrine of mechanical design, he never took any materialistic view of evolution. One of his early essays, written while at college, on some of the many points of the Kantian philosophy which he then loved to discuss, concluded with a remarkable sentence, which would probably have fairly expressed, even at the close of his life, his profound belief in God, and his partial sympathy with the agnostic view that we are, in great measure, incapable of apprehending, more than very dimly, His mind or purposes:—‘Gazing after the infinite essence, we are like men watching through the drifting clouds for a glimpse of the true heavens on a drear November day; layer after layer passes from our view, but still the same immovable grey rack remains.’