When religion on the defensive declares herself opposed to reason, so much the worse for religion. She is thereby virtually surrendering at discretion, since to appeal to her only other resource--revelation--is to beg the whole subject in dispute. Similarly, the worse and still less excusable is it for science to declare herself irreconcileable with religion, for she, too, is thereby slighting reason. It is only by forsaking the single guide in whom she professes to trust, and blindly giving herself up to angry prejudice, that she can fail to discover the rational solidity of so much of every religion as consists of theism. For this, as we have seen, the argument from design abundantly suffices, although the only absolute certainty thence deducible be that the universe must have an author or authors fully equal to its original construction, its subsequent development, and its continued maintenance. Even if it be not inconceivable, notwithstanding that the chances to the contrary be many times infinity to one, that the mere restlessness of some utterly unintelligent force may have fabricated all material structures, and imparted to all their movements certain orderly successions, it is still manifestly impossible for unintelligence to have brought forth intelligence--for the speculative, critical, carping spirit of man to have been generated by that which has no speculation in its eyes, nor any eyes, to have speculation in; impossible, in short, for the creature to be more richly endowed than its creator. Since numerous embodied intelligences actually exist, they must have been preceded by intelligence capable of creating them and all other existing intelligences that have not eternally existed; and it is simply impossible that creative intelligence, whose creatures owe to it whatever intelligence they possess, should on any occasion have exhibited a want of intelligence which they are competent to detect.