the one point of living, designing intelligence, they may, for aught he knows, differ in many other respects. And this we hold to be a sufficient answer to his argument, especially when it is combined with the consideration that the assumptions on which that argument is based are purely gratuitous, namely, that "every person is organized," and that there is no "thought distinct from an organization in which it is _generated_." By these assumptions, his theory connects itself with the grossest Materialism; and that subject has been sufficiently discussed in a separate chapter. But in truth we regard the whole discussion on organization as a huge and unnecessary excrescence on his argument, for he would have come to his point quite as effectually, and much more directly, had he said nothing at all about an organized being, and insisted merely on one, whether material or spiritual, possessing powers of intelligence, contrivance, and design; for it is evidently on the existence of such a being, and not on the arrangements or adaptations of his organic parts, that his main argument depends, namely, that such a being implies also a contriver, and that again another, and so on in an endless series. Whatever force belongs to his argument lies here: it consists, not in the evidence of design arising from material organization, but in the necessity of a cause adequate to account for a being possessing intelligence, purpose, and will. The existence of an endless series of such beings is impossible, and the supposition of it is absurd; and Mr. Holyoake himself admits a self-existent, underived, and eternal Being,--a being exempt, therefore, from all the conditions of time and causality to which others are subject,--while he ascribes the origin of intelligent, self-conscious beings to Nature, which is "neither intelligent nor self-conscious," rather than to God, the father of spirits, Himself a Spirit, infinite, omniscient, and almighty. He ascribes the existence of intelligent, self-conscious, personal moral agents to a power called _Nature_, which he cannot venture to call "a person," nor even "an animal being," and of which he "cannot predicate with the Pantheist the unity of its intelligence and consciousness." His theory, in so far as it is intelligible, seems to have a stronger affinity with Pantheism than he appears to suppose. Were he to define the meaning of the word Nature,--a word so often used in a vague, indefinite sense,[287]--he would find that his idea bears a close resemblance to that of the German school,[288] who speak of the first being as the _Indifference of the different_,--a certain vague, undetermined, inexplicable entity, possessing no distinctive character or peculiar attributes, whose existence is necessary, but not as a living, self-conscious, and active being, while it is the cause of all life and intelligence and activity in the universe; in short, a mere abstraction of the human mind. To some such cause, if it can be called a