All this will presently appear in a still stronger light, when we have set forth the common characteristic of the modifications which the idea of God has already undergone, and the nature of the opposition between the old and the new knowledge with which we are now confronted. Upon this discussion we have now to enter, and we shall find it leading us to the conclusion that throughout all possible advances in human knowledge, so far as we can see, the essential position of theism must remain unshaken. III. _Sources of the Theistic Idea._ Our argument may fitly begin with an inquiry into the sources of the theistic idea and the shape which it has universally assumed among untutored men. The most primitive element which it contains is doubtless the notion of _dependence_ upon something outside of ourselves. We are born into a world consisting of forces which sway our lives and over which we can exercise no control. The individual man can indeed make his volition count for a very little in modifying the course of events, but this end necessitates strict and unceasing obedience to powers that cannot be tampered with. To the behaviour of these external powers our actions must be adapted under penalty of death. And upon grounds no less firm than those on which we believe in any externality whatever, we recognize that these forces antedated our birth and will endure after we have disappeared from the scene. No one supposes that he makes the world for himself, so that it is born and dies with him. Every one perforce contemplates the world as something existing independently of himself, as something into which he has come, and from which he is to go; and for his coming and his going, as well as for what he does while part of the world, he is dependent upon something that is not himself.