ABSTRACT
The chief exponent of this view is H. Spencer. In his First Principles he undertakes to determine the boundaries between religion and science. St. Thomas bases his refutation on the certain principle that no cause can confer any perfection which it does not in some manner possess. In the analogical character of our knowledge of God lies the solution of the agnostic arguments enumerated at the beginning of this chapter. This is manifest as regards Kant's contention that we cannot attribute reason or will to God, inasmuch as both intelligence and appetition, are dependent for their exercise on sensible data. Personality affords another instance of a perfection predicated analogously of God and of man. The traditional definition of 'person' first given by Boethius declares the term to signify 'a concrete individual whose essential nature is rational'. The system of thought called modernism was an attempt to accept the postulates of Kantian philosophy without going the full length of religious agnosticism.
