One group of philosophers affirms, in accordance with its teleological conception, that the whole cosmos is an orderly system, in which every phenomenon has its aim and purpose; there is no such thing as chance. The other group, holding a mechanical theory, expresses itself thus: The development of the universe is a monistic mechanical process, in which we discover no aim or purpose whatever; what we call design in the organic world is a special result of biological agencies; neither in the evolution of the heavenly bodies nor in that of the crust of our earth do we find any trace of a controlling purpose--all is the result of chance. Each party is right--according to its definition of chance. The general law of causality, taken in conjunction with the law of substance, teaches us that every phenomenon has a mechanical cause; in this sense there is no such thing as chance. Yet it is not only lawful, but necessary, to retain the term for the purpose of expressing the simultaneous occurrence of two phenomena, which are not causally related to each other, but of which each has its own mechanical cause, independent of that of the other. Everybody knows that chance, in its monistic sense, plays an important part in the life of man and in the universe at large. That, however, does not prevent us from recognizing in each "chance" event, as we do in the evolution of the entire cosmos, the universal sovereignty of nature's supreme law, _the law of substance_. CHAPTER XV GOD AND THE WORLD The Idea of God in General--Antithesis of God and the World; the Supernatural and Nature--Theism and Pantheism--Chief Forms of Theism--Polytheism--Triplotheism--Amphitheism--Monotheism--Religious Statistics--Naturalistic Monotheism--Solarism--Anthropistic Monotheism--The Three Great Mediterranean Religions--Mosaism--Christianity--The Cult of the Madonna and the Saints--Papal Polytheism--Islam--Mixotheism--Nature of Theism--An Extra-mundane and Anthropomorphic God; a Gaseous Vertebrate--Pantheism--Intramundane God (Nature)--The Hylozoism of the Ionic Monists (Anaximander)--Conflict of Pantheism and Christianity--Spinoza--Modern Monism--Atheism For thousands of years humanity has placed the last and supreme basis of all phenomena in an efficient cause, to which it gives the title of God (_deus_, _theos_). Like all general ideas, this notion of God has undergone a series of remarkable modifications and transformations in the course of the evolution of reason. Indeed, it may be said that no other idea has had so many metamorphoses; for no other belief affects in so high a degree the chief objects of the mind and of rational science, as well as the deepest interests of the emotion and poetic fancy of the believer.