was the gradual revelation of God answering to the growing needs and capacity of man. VIII. It follows from the point of view adopted in the foregoing essay that there can be no proofs, in the strict sense of the word, of the existence of God. Reason has for its subject-matter, the problem of essence, not of existence, the question, 'What is God?' not 'Is there a God? Proof can only mean verification _à posteriori_ of a truth already held. We approach the problem with an unreasoned consciousness of dependence on a Being or Beings who are to us invisible. This we interpret crudely, or leave uninterpreted. The belief may express itself in ancestor-worship, or nature-worship, or what not. But as our moral and intellectual nature develops, its light is turned back upon this primitive undefined belief. Conscience demands that God shall be moral, and with the belief that He is, there comes confidence and trust, deepening into faith and hope and love: the speculative reason demands that God shall be One, the immanent unity of all that is. And the doctrine of God, which is best able to satisfy each and all of these demands, persists as the permanent truth of religion. But neither conscience nor the speculative reason can demonstrate[138] God's existence. And it is always possible for men to carry their distrust of that which is instinctive so far as to assume that it is always false because they have found that it is not always true. Reason cannot prove existence. The so-called proof, _a contingentia_ (which underlies H. Spencer's argument for the existence of the Unknowable), is an appeal to that very consciousness of dependence which some people consider a weakness, and a thing to educate themselves out of. The appeal to the _consensus gentium_ can establish only the generality, not the strict universality, of religion. It will always be possible to find exceptions, real or apparent, to the general rule; while as for what is known as the _ontological_ argument, which on principles of reason would justify the instinctive belief, it requires a metaphysical training to understand it or at least to feel its force. There remain, however, the two great arguments from conscience and from nature, which are so frequently discussed in the present day.