AGNOSTIC METAPHYSICS. 303 



Mind," I criticised Mr. Spencer's Transfigured Realism as being too 

 absolute.* I then stated my own philosophical position to be that, 

 "our scientific conceptions within have a good working correspond- 

 ence 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 philos- 

 ophy. But it is not a religion.f 



1 said then, and I say still, speaking with regard to religion, and 

 from the religious point of view, that the Metaphysician's Unknow- 

 able 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 philos- 

 ophers working on metaphysics. But to the public, seeking for a re- 

 ligion, 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." "What- 

 ever components of the religious sentiment disappear, there must ever 

 survive those which are appropriate to the consciousness of a Mys- 

 tery ! " 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 powei', with some rags of religious 



* "Fortnightly Review," 1874, p. 89. 



f My words were that, " although the Unknowable is logically said to be Something, 

 yet the something of which we neither know nor conceive anything is practically noth- 

 ing." That is, speaking from the point of view of religion. 



