The unity of nature,that is,has enabled monotheism to supersede polytheism,because it corresponds to the scientific view.(142)Yet,while saying this in general terms,he cannot reconcile it to his own theories;he still talks of 'laws of nature'counteracting each other;(143)he can speak of some things as 'uncaused';and of a 'permanent'and 'a changeable'element in nature,as though persistence was not a case of causation.He is willing,as we have seen,to assume that anything may be the cause of anything else.The universe is therefore ultimately a struggle between independent forces,and God becomes a being who has to struggle against antecedent or independent things.When science is regarded,not as a system of interdependent truths,where the value of every theory must be judged by the way in which it affects and is affected by all other ascertainable truth,but as an aggregate of purely empirical observations of the order of succession of otherwise unrelated facts,it is easy to introduce such conceptions as 'creation,'which virtually deny the continuity and reasonableness of the order generally,and tend to confuse,as his antagonists would say,Nature with a particular element in Nature;and to make noumena take a side in the struggle between phenomena.
Mill is thus able to hold that the adaptations 'in nature afford a large balance of probability in favour of creation by intelligence.'(144)It is,he grants,only a probability,and not strengthened by any independent arguments.It still remains to consider whether we can find reasons to believe that the creator is moral.He thinks that most 'contrivances'are for the preservation of the creatures,and that there is no reason for attributing the destructive agencies to one Being,and the preserving agencies to another.We may therefore give up Manichaeism,or a conflict between good and evil powers;but we may still have an uncreated at of things with which the good being must struggle.We must be content to believe in a Being of great but limited power --how limited we cannot even conjecture;whose intelligence may be unlimited though it may also be more limited than his power;who desires the happiness of his creatures but has probably other motives.If he shows benevolence,there are no traces of justice.(145)Of immortality we can learn nothing,unless from revelation.He denies that a revelation,conflicting with morality,can be divine;but this forces him to limit the power of the Deity.His God desires morality.How can we discover that he desires it?Can these vague surmises be helped by any direct revelation or miraculous intervention?Mill discusses the argument of Hume's essay and reaches,what I take to be the true conclusion,that the real question is whether we have independent reasons for believing in a Deity whose intervention is conceivable.(146)Considering that we have some reason for believing in such a being,he at last concludes that,in spite of most serious difficulties,historical and philosophical,we are 'entitled to say that there is nothing so inherently impossible or absolutely incredible in the supposition that the "extremely precious"gift of Christianity came from a divinely commissioned man as to preclude any one from hoping that it may be true.'He can go no further,for he sees no 'evidentiary value'even in the testimony of Christ himself.The best men are the readiest to ascribe their own merits to a higher source.Mill,of course,does not believe in the divinity of Christ;he holds that Christ himself would have regarded such a pretension as blasphemous;but it remains possible that 'Christ actually was what he supposed himself to be.a man charged with a special,express,and unique commission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue.'(147)Mill,we see,declared positivism to be reconcilable with theism.Comte himself,who declared atheism to be the most illogical form of theology,would have agreed that positivism does not disprove God's existence.But Comte would have said that an unverifiable hypothesis about an inconceivable being was simply idle or 'otiose.'Mill seems to treat the absence of negative proof as equivalent --not indeed to the presence of positive,but --to the existence of a probability worth entertaining.His theism,if so vague and problematical a doctrine can be called theism,is defended as neither self-contradictory nor inconsistent with fact.Now a theory which is self-contradictory is really no theory at all.Nor is a theory scientifically valuable simply because 'consistent'with facts.Atheory must have some definite support in facts.It must at lowest be not only consistent with the known facts,but inconsistent with some otherwise imaginable facts.If it fits every conceivable state of things,it can throw light upon none.
