No sooner have we reached the conclusion that the only hypothesis whereby the general order of Nature admits of being in any degree accounted for is that it is due to a cause of a mental kind, than we confront the fact that this cause must be widely different from anything that we know of Mind in ourselves.  And we soon discover that this difference must be conceived as not merely of degree, however great, but of kind.  In other words, although we may conclude that the nearest analogue of the causa causarum given in experience is the human mind, we are bound to acknowledge that in all fundamental points the analogy is so remote that it becomes a question whether we are really very much nearer the truth by entertaining it.  Thus, for instance, as Mr. Spencer has pointed out, our only conception of that which we know as Mind in ourselves is the conception of a series of states of consciousness.  But, he continues, ’Put a series of states of consciousness as cause and the evolving universe as effect, and then endeavour to see the last as flowing from the first.  I find it possible to imagine in some dim way a series of states of consciousness serving as antecedent to any one of the movements I see going on; for my own states of consciousness are often indirectly the antecedents to such movements.  But how if I attempt to think of such a series as antecedent to all actions throughout the universe ...?  If to account for this infinitude of physical changes everywhere going on, “Mind must be conceived as there,” “under the guise of simple-dynamics,” then the reply is, that, to be so conceived, Mind must be divested of all attributes by which it is distinguished; and that, when thus divested of its distinguishing attributes the conception disappears—­the word Mind stands for a blank.’

Moreover, ’How is the “originating Mind” to be thought of as having states produced by things objective to it, as discriminating among these states, and classing them as like and unlike; and as preferring one objective result to another?’[25]

Hence, without continuing this line of argument, which it would not be difficult to trace through every constituent branch of human psychology, we may take it as unquestionable that, if there is a Divine Mind, it must differ so essentially from the human mind, that it becomes illogical to designate the two by the same name:  the attributes of eternity and ubiquity are in themselves enough to place such a Mind in a category sui generis, wholly different from anything which the analogy furnished by our own mind enables us even dimly to conceive.  And this, of course, is no more than theologians admit.  God’s thoughts are above our thoughts, and a God who would be comprehensible to our intelligence would be no God at all, they say.  Which may be true enough, only we must remember that in whatever measure we are thus precluded from understanding the Divine Mind, in that measure are we precluded from