Even if man had always existed, however, we should not need to abandon the argument. We might start, not from beginning of existence, but from beginning of phenomena. I might see God in the world, just as I see thought, feeling, will, in my fellow men. Fullerton, Plain Argument for God: I do not infer you, as cause of the existence of your body: I recognize you as present and working through your body. Its changes of gesture and speech reveal a personality behind them. So I do not need to argue back to a Being who once caused nature and history; I recognize a present Being, exercising wisdom and power, by signs such as reveal personality in man. Nature is itself the Watchmaker manifesting himself in the very process of making the watch. This is the meaning of the noble Epilogue to Robert Browning's Dramatis Personæ, 252—“That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become my universe that feels and knows.” “That Face,” said Mr. Browning to Mrs. Orr, “That Face is the face of Christ; that is how I feel him.”Nature is an expression of the mind and will of Christ, as my face is an expression of my mind and will. But in both cases, behind and above the face is a personality, of which the face is but the partial and temporary expression.
Bowne, Philos. Theism, 104, 107—“My fellow beings act as if they had thought, feeling, and will. So nature looks as if thought, feeling, and will were behind it. If we deny mind in nature, we must deny mind in man. If there be no controlling mind in nature, moreover, there can be none in man, for if the basal power is blind and necessary, then all that depends upon it is necessitated also.” LeConte, in Royce's Conception of God, 44—“There is only one place in the world where we can get behind physical phenomena, behind the veil of matter, namely, in our own brain, and we find there a self, a person. Is it not reasonable that, if we could get behind the veil of nature, we should find the same, that is, a Person? But if so, we must conclude, an infinite Person, and therefore the only complete Personality that exists. Perfect personality is not only self-conscious, but self-existent. They are only imperfect images, and, as it were, separated fragments, of the infinite Personality of God.”
Personality = self-consciousness + self-determination in view of moral ends. The brute has intelligence and will, but has neither self-consciousness, conscience, nor free-will. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:76 sq. Diman, Theistic Argument, 91, 251—“Suppose ‘the intuitions of the moral faculty are the slowly organized results of experience received from the race’; still, having found that the universe affords evidence of a supremely intelligent cause, we may believe that man's moral nature affords the highest illustration of its mode of working”; 358—“Shall we explain the lower forms of will by the higher, or the higher by the lower?”
2. Man's moral nature proves the existence of a holy Lawgiver and Judge. The elements of the proof are:—(a) Conscience recognizes the existence of a moral law which has supreme authority. (b) Known violations of this moral law are followed by feelings of ill-desert and fears of judgment. (c) This moral law, since it is not self-imposed, and these threats of judgment, since they are not self-executing, respectively argue the existence of a holy will that has imposed the law, and of a punitive power that will execute the threats of the moral nature.
See Bishop Butler's Sermons on Human Nature, in Works, Bohn's ed., 385–414. Butler's great discovery was that of the supremacy of conscience in the moral constitution of man: “Had it strength as it has right, had it power as it has manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world.” Conscience = the moral judiciary of the soul—not law, nor sheriff, but judge; see under Anthropology. Diman, Theistic Argument, 251—“Conscience does not lay down a law; it warns us of the existence of a law; and not only of a law, but of a purpose—not our own, but the purpose of another, which it is our mission to realize.” See Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 218 sq. It proves personality in the Lawgiver, because its utterances are not abstract, like those of reason, but are in the nature of command; they are not in the indicative, but in the imperative, mood; it says, “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not.” This argues will.
Hutton, Essays, 1:11—“Conscience is an ideal Moses, and thunders from an invisible Sinai”; “the Atheist regards conscience not as a skylight, opened to let in upon human nature an infinite dawn from above, but as a polished arch or dome, completing and reflecting the whole edifice beneath.” But conscience cannot be the mere reflection and expression of nature, for it represses and condemns nature. Tulloch, Theism: “Conscience, like the magnetic needle, indicates the existence of an unknown Power which from afar controls its vibrations and at whose presence it trembles.” Nero spends nights of terror in wandering through the halls of his Golden House. Kant holds that faith in duty requires faith in a God who will defend and reward duty—see Critique of Pure Reason, 359–387. See also Porter, Human Intellect, 524.
Kant, in his Metaphysic of Ethics, represents the action of conscience as like “conducting a case before a court,” and he adds: “Now that he who is accused before his conscience should be figured to be just the same person as his judge, is an absurd representation of a tribunal; since, in such an event, the accuser would always lose his suit. Conscience must therefore represent to itself always some other than itself as Judge, unless it is to arrive at a contradiction with itself.” See also his Critique of the Practical Reason, Werke, 8:214—“Duty, thou sublime and mighty name, that hast in thee nothing to attract or win, but challengest submission; and yet dost threaten nothing to sway the will by that which may arouse natural terror or aversion, but merely holdest forth a Law; a Law which of itself finds entrance into the mind, and even while we disobey, against our will compels our reverence, a Law in presence of which all inclinations grow dumb, even while they secretly rebel; what origin is there worthy of thee? Where can we find the root of thy noble descent, which proudly rejects all kinship with the inclinations?” Archbishop Temple answers, in his Bampton Lectures, 58, 59, “This eternal Law is the Eternal himself, the almighty God.”Robert Browning: “The sense within me that I owe a debt Assures me—Somewhere must be Somebody, Ready to take his due. All comes to this: Where due is, there acceptance follows: find Him who accepts the due.”
Salter, Ethical Religion, quoted in Pfleiderer's article on Religionless Morality, Am. Jour. Theol., 3:237—“The earth and the stars do not create the law of gravitation which they obey; no more does man, or the united hosts of rational beings in the universe, create the law of duty.” The will expressed in the moral imperative is superiorto ours, for otherwise it would issue no commands. Yet it is one with ours as the life of an organism is one with the life of its members. Theonomy is not heteronomy but the highest autonomy, the guarantee of our personal freedom against all servitude of man. Seneca: “Deo parere libertas est.” Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 272—“In conscience we see an ‘alter ego’, in us yet not of us, another Personality behind our own.” Martineau, Types, 2:105—“Over a person only a person can have authority. … A solitary being, with no other sentient nature in the universe, would feel no duty”; Study, 1:26—“As Perception gives us Will in the shape of Causality over against us in the Non-Ego, so Conscience gives us Will in the shape of Authority over against us in the Non-Ego. … 2:7—We cannot deduce the phenomena of character from an agent who has none.” Hutton, Essays, 1:41, 42—“When we disobey conscience, the Power which has therein ceased to move us has retired only to observe—to keep watch over us as we mould ourselves.” Cardinal Newman, Apologia, 377—“Were it not for the voice speaking so clearly in my conscience and my heart, I should be an atheist, or a pantheist, or a polytheist, when I looked into the world.”
3. Man's emotional and voluntary nature proves the existence of a Being who can furnish in himself a satisfying object of human affection and an end which will call forth man's highest activities and ensure his highest progress.
Only a Being of power, wisdom, holiness,