Mind," I criticised Mr. Spencer's Transfigured Realism as being too absolute.[1] I then stated my own philosophical position to be that, "our scientific conceptions within have a good working correspondence with an (assumed) reality without—we having no means of knowing whether the absolute correspondence between them be great or small, or whether there be any absolute correspondence at all." To that I adhere; and, whilst I accept the doctrine of an Unknown substratum, I can not assent to the doctrine that the Unknowable is the Absolute Reality. But I am quite aware that he holds it, nor have I ever said that he did not. On the contrary, I granted that it might be the first axiom of science or the universal postulate of philosophy. But it is not a religion.[2]
I said then, and I say still, speaking with regard to religion, and from the religious point of view, that the Metaphysician's Unknowable is tantamount to a Nothing. The philosopher may choose to say that there is an Ultimate Reality which we can not conceive, or know, or liken to anything we do know. But these subtleties of speculation are utterly unintelligible to the ordinary public. And to tell them that they are to worship this Unknowable is equivalent to telling them to worship nothing. I quite agree that Mr. Spencer, or any metaphysician, is entitled to assert that the Unknowable is the sole Reality. But religion is not a matter for Metaphysicians—but for men, women, and children. And to them the Unknowable is Nothing. Sir James Stephen calls the distinctions of Mr. Spencer "an unmeaning play of words." I do not say that they are unmeaning to the philosophers working on metaphysics. But to the public, seeking for a religion, the Reality or the Unreality of the Unknowable is certainly an unmeaning play of words.
Even supposing that Evolution ever could bring the people to comprehend the subtlety of the All-Being, of which all things we know are only shows, the Unknowable is still incapable of supplying the very elements of Religion. Mr. Spencer thinks otherwise. He says, that although we can not know, or conceive it, or apply to it any of the terms of life, or of consciousness, "it leaves unchanged certain of the sentiments comprehended under the name of religion." "Whatever components of the religious sentiment disappear, there must ever survive those which are appropriate to the consciousness of a Mystery!" Certain of the religious sentiments are left unchanged! The consciousness of a Mystery is to survive! Is that all? "We are not concerned," says he, "to know what effect this religious sentiment will have as a moral agent!" A religion without anything to be known, with nothing to teach, with no moral power, with some rags of religious
