"Les preuves de Dieu métaphysiques sont si éloignées duraisonnement des hommes, et si impliquées, qu'elles frappent peu;et quand cela serviroit à quelques-uns, ce ne seroit que pendantl'instant qu'ils voient cette démonstration; mais, une heure après,ils craignent de s'être trompés. Quod curiositate cognoverint,superbiâ amiserunt."
—Pensées de Pascal, II, xv. 2.
A question which every author ought to ask of himself before he sendsforth his work, and one which must occur to every thoughtful reader, isthe inquiry, Cui bono?—what justification has one for treating thesubject at all, and why in the particular way which he has chosen? Tothe pertinency of this question to the present treatise the author hasbeen deeply sensible, and therefore cannot forbear a few prefatory wordsof explanation of his object and method.
In accounts of the theistic argument, as in the history of philosophy ingeneral, it has been customary to pass over a space of well-nigh tencenturies of the Christian era in silence, or with such scanty andunsympathetic notice as to make silence the better alternative. Largelythrough the influence of such treatment as this, we moderns have almostforgotten at times that during this period there lived men inferior tonone in history in endowments of mind and influence on succeedinggenerations, and that there then took place some of the most significantand far-reaching intellectual conflicts in the history of thought. "WithCicero," says Professor Stirling, "we reached in our course a mostimportant and critical halting-place.... We have still ... to wait thosethousand years yet before Anselm shall arrive with what is to be namedthe new proof, the proof ontological, and during the entire interval itis the Fathers of the Church and their immediate followers who, inrepetition of the old, or suggestion of the new, connect thinker[Pg 10] withthinker, philosopher with philosopher, pagan with Christian."[1] Toattempt to account for even one of the details of thought during thisperiod cannot be without its advantages.
For Christianity gave a