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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY special genius of India. It dominates the life of every man, everywhere, until the sublime light of science dawns upon him, and dissipates the mist of ignorance, prejudice and superstition that has previously clouded his understanding. As long as he is not able to explain the multitudinous pheno mena of nature that surround, surprise and often terrify him, he rather helplessly than piously attributes their cause to some providential agency. Since his own life is actuated by motives, he imagines a Costnic Will behind the natural pheno mena which appear to be so well adapted and regulated for his benefit. Inside and outside himself, man finds an infinite variety of things advantageous to himself, for example, his physical organs and mental capacities, as well as the sun, air, water ctc. These useful things have been made neither by himself nor by any other man before. So, there must be a final cause for them all. The unscientific mind cannot conceive of such well regulated things happening by themselves, without a plan made and directed by an intelligent force, which by its very nature must be omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. He never stops to ask how did the final cause come into being. That would be irreligious.
Thus assumed by the ignorance of man, the hypothetical being (which might pass under any of the various denominations-God, Universal 272
