it must remain for ever unknown and unknowable; the two latter maintain that by faith we can attain to a knowledge of God, and so pass on into an acceptance of Christianity. Still, in admitting the existence of the Absolute, Mr. Spencer seems to go far beyond all other Agnostics. An Absolute is, he thinks, necessarily postulated in the admission of the relative; since, however, all our knowledge is relative, and the Absolute is, by the very force of terms, an idea that excludes all relation, we cannot get beyond the knowledge of an Unknown Cause and a Universal Power, which is at the base alike of all science and of all religion. In virtue of his admission of an Absolute and a First Cause, he is usually claimed as approaching to Theism. It would seem, however, that all Mr. Spencer says is quite as consistent with Materialism as with Theism; just as the scholastic arguments for a First Cause and a Necessary Being may lead to Materialism or to Theism. And in Mr. Spencer's case the direction of his reasoning seems to be Materialistic throughout. Instead of his Agnosticism being considered as a halt on the way to Theism, it would more correctly be regarded as a halt on the way to Materialism. The Unknown and Unknowable source of phenomena may, metaphysically, just as well be matter as God; scientifically, the former alternative is simpler, and presents less difficulty. Mr. Spencer also departs from the Idealism of Hume and Huxley, and calls himself a "Transfigured Realist." He recognises an underlying support of our states of consciousness and an objective cause—a self and not-self; but they remain entirely inscrutable in their nature.
With the Agnostic school must be mentioned the Positivists, who are often, though inaccurately, confounded with them. From our present point of view, however, the two systems may be aptly associated. Auguste Comte, whose system has been widely adopted by French sceptics, starts from the empirical principles which we have described in the English school. All our knowledge is relative, and is confined to phenomena and their relations; to the inner essences, origins, and destinies of things we can never penetrate, and causes we know only as close associations of phenomena. Thus far the system is identical with the English system, and leads to the same Agnosticism in face of the higher problems. It differs in rejecting the introspective
