sentiment surviving, mainly the consciousness of Mystery; this is, indeed, the mockery of Religion.
Forced, as it seems, to clothe the nakedness of the Unknowable with some shreds of sentiment, Mr. Spencer has given it a positive character, which for every step that it advances towards Religion recedes from sound Philosophy. The Unknowable was at first spoken of as an "unthinkable abstraction," and so undoubtedly it is. But it finally emerges as the Ultimate Reality, the Ultimate Cause, the All-Being, the Absolute Power, the Unknown Cause, the Inscrutable Existence, the Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed, the Creative Power, "the Infinite and Eternal Energy, by which all things are created and sustained." It is "to stand in substantially the same relation towards our general conception of things as does the Creative Power asserted by Theology.' "It stands towards the Universe, and towards ourselves, in the same relation as an anthropomorphic Creator was supposed to stand, bears a like relation with it, not only to human thought but to human feeling." In other words the Unknowable is the Creator; subject to this, that we can not assert or deny that he, she, or it, is Person, or Being, or can feel, think, or act, or do anything else that we can either know or imagine, or is such that we can ascribe to Him, Her, or It anything whatever within the realm of consciousness.
Now, the Unknowable, so qualified and explained, offends against all the canons of criticism, so admirably set forth in "First Principles," and especially those of Dean Mansel, therein quoted and adopted. The Unknowable is not unknowable if we know that "it creates and sustains all things." One need not repeat all the metaphysical objections arrayed by Mr. Spencer himself against connecting the ideas of the Absolute, the Infinite, First Cause, and Creator with that of any one Power. How can Absolute Power create? How can the Absolute be a Cause? The Absolute excludes the relative; and Creation and Cause both imply relation. How can the Infinite be a Cause, or create? For if there be effect distinct from cause, or if there be something uncreated, the Infinite would be thereby limited. What is the meaning of All-Being? Does it include, or not, its own manifestation? If the Cosmos is a mere show of an Unknown Cause, then the Unknown Cause is not Infinite, for it does not include the Cosmos; and not Absolute, for the Universe is its manifestation, and all things proceed from it. That is to say, the Absolute is in relation to the Universe, as Cause and Effect. Again, if the "very notions, beginning and end, cause and purpose, relative notions belonging to human thought, are probably irrelevant to the Ultimate Reality transcending human thought" (Spencer, "Nineteenth Century," p. 12), how can we speak of the Ultimate Cause, or indeed of Infinite and Eternal? The philosophical difficulties of imagining a First Cause, so admirably put by Mr. Spencer years ago, are not greater than those of imagining an
