The hypothesis, or fundamental postulate, in question is, _If there be a personal God, He is not immediately concerned with natural causation_. It is assumed that _qua_ 'first cause,' He can in no way be concerned with 'second causes,' further than by having started them in the first instance as a great machinery of 'natural causation,' working under 'general laws.' True the theory of Deism, which entertains more or less expressly this hypothesis of 'Deus ex machina,' has during the present century been more and more superseded by that of Theism, which entertains also in some indefinable measure the doctrine of 'immanence'; as well as by that of Pantheism, which expressly holds this doctrine to the exclusion _in toto_ of its rival. But Theism has never yet entertained it sufficiently or up to the degree required by the pure logic of the case, while Pantheism has but rarely considered the rival doctrine of personality--or the possible union of immanence with personality.[49]
Now it is the object of this book to go much further than any one has hitherto gone in proving the possibility of this union. For I purpose to show that, provided only we lay aside all prejudice, sentiment, &c., and follow to its logical termination the guidance of pure reason, there are no other conclusions to be reached than these. Namely, (_A_) That if there be a personal God, no reason can be assigned why He should not be immanent in nature, or why all causation should not be the immediate expression of His will. (_B_) That every available reason points to the inference that He probably is so. (_C_) That if He is so, and if His will is self-consistent, all natural causation must needs appear to us 'mechanical.' Therefore (_D_) that it is no argument against the divine origin of a thing, event, &c., to prove it due to natural causation.
After having dealt briefly with (_A_), (_B_) and (_C_), I would show that (_D_) is the most practically important of these four conclusions. For the fundamental hypothesis which I began by mentioning is just the opposite of this. Whether tacitly or expressly, it has always been assumed by both sides in the controversy between Science and Religion, that as soon as this that and the other phenomenon has been explained by means of natural causation, it has thereupon ceased to be ascribable [directly] to God. The distinction between the natural and the supernatural has always been regarded by both sides as indisputably sound, and this fundamental agreement as to ground of battle has furnished the only possible condition to fighting. It has also furnished the condition of all the past, and may possibly furnish the condition of all the future, discomfitures of religion. True religion is indeed learning her lesson that something is wrong in her method of fighting, and many of her soldiers are now waking up to the fact that it is here that her error lies--as in past times they woke up to see the error of denying the movement of the earth, the antiquity of the earth, the origin of species by evolution, &c. But no one, even of her captains and generals, has so far followed up their advantage to its ultimate consequences. And this is what I want to do. The logical advantage is clearly on their side; and it is their own fault if they do not gain the ultimate victory,--not only as against science, but as against intellectual dogmatism in every form. This can be routed all along the line. For science is only the organized study of natural causation, and the experience of every human being, in so far as it leads to dogmatism on purely intellectual grounds, does so on account of entertaining the fundamental postulate in question. The influence of custom and want of imagination is here very great. But the answer always should be to move the ulterior question--what is the nature of natural causation?