Note 41 — Chapter VI · THE STUDY OF NATURE. FUNDAMENTAL POSITIONS.

This power must be further defined to be the soul of the world, the highest reason, a kind, beneficent, and philanthropic being; in short, deity. The universal belief and the universal worship of God prove this, as the Stoics think, beyond a doubt;41 still more accurate investigation confirms it. Matter can never move or fashion itself; nothing but a power inherent as the soul is in man can produce these results.42 The world would not be the most perfect and complete thing it is unless Reason were inherent therein;43 nor could it contain any beings possessed of consciousness, unless it were conscious itself.44 It could not produce creatures endowed with a soul and reason, unless it were itself endowed with a soul and reason.45 Actions so far surpassing man’s power could not exist, unless there were a cause for them in perfection equally surpassing man.46 The subordination of means to ends which governs the world in every part down to the minutest details would be inexplicable, unless the world owed its origin to a reasonable creator.47 The graduated rank of beings would be incomplete, unless there were a highest Being of all whose moral and intellectual perfection cannot be surpassed.48 Although this perfection belongs, in the first place, to the world as a whole,49 nevertheless, as in everything consisting of many parts, so in the world the ruling part must be distinguished from other parts. It is the part from which all acting forces emanate and diffuse themselves over the world,50 whether the seat of this efficient force be placed in the heaven, as was done by Zeno, Chrysippus, and the majority of the Stoics;51 or in the sun, as by Cleanthes;52 or in the centre of the world, as by Archedemus.53 This primary source of all life and motion, the highest Cause and the highest Reason, is God. God, therefore, and formless matter, are the two ultimate grounds of things.54