The modern objection to this line of proof be gan with Kant, who declared it to be an appli cation of the principle of causality beyond the bounds set by nature as an intellectual prin ciple given man for the knowledge of empirical objects. The sensational school, which Kant was opposing, have also denied the application of causality to reach beyond experience on various grounds. Mill was chiefly influenced by the com plexity of the investigation, and particularly by the difficulties created by the existence of pain and sin. Spencer, who has carried this school to its natural results and combined a developed theory of evolution with sensationalism, has based his objections upon the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, which makes such a con ception as that of a first cause essentially unin telligible. In a more popular form the objection is raised against the idea of God that it is in capable of proof, by which is meant such proof as is given to the propositions of natural science, experimental and tangible proof.
It has sometimes been claimed that the idea of God is innate in the soul. If by this is meant that every man has by nature the idea of one infinite person, the claim is manifestly false, for the existence of polytheism at once disproves it.
But if it be meant that there are innate in the mind certain principles, such as that of causation, which impel the mind to look up from phenomena to their source, and that the examination of all the phenomena belonging to this sphere will finally give to man the knowledge of God, the proposition in this sense is true. The argument is thus mingled of a priori and a posteriori elements. The former are necessary as the rational foundation of the argument, the latter to give it contents and to lead it to the concrete result of the being of God.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Among the numerous excellent Bibliography. Among the numerous excellent treatises of recent times upon theism may be mentioned as the best: Orr, Christian View of God and the World (London, 1897) ; Flint, Theism, (London, 1886) ; id., Anti-Theistic The ories (Edinburgh, 1884) ; Martineau, A study of Religion (Oxford, 1888) ; Harris, Self-Revela tion of God (New York, 1887) ; Fiske, Through Nature to Cod (Boston, 1899).