THE RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE UNKNOWABLE. 783 



sympathy with man. Mr. Spencer meets the objection in advance in 

 his "First Principles." "Those who espouse this alternative posi- 

 tion," he says, " make the erroneous assumption that the choice is be- 

 tween personality and something lower than personality ; whereas the 

 choice is rather between personality and something higher. Is it not 

 just possible there is a mode of being as much transcending Intelligence 

 and Will as these transcend mechanical motion ? It is true that we 

 are totally unable to conceive any such higher mode of being. But 

 this is not a reason for questioning its existence ; it is rather the re- 

 verse. Have we not seen how utterly incompetent our minds are to 

 form even an approach to a conception of that which underlies all 

 phenomena ? Is it not proved that this incompetency is the incom- 

 petency of the Conditioned to grasp the Unconditioned ? Does it not 

 follow that the Ultimate Cause can not in any respect be conceived 

 by us because it is in every respect greater than can be conceived ? " 



Energy is a word that has a bad sound to many ears. We appre- 

 hend in it the idea of brute, of material force. Here, again, Mr. 

 Spencer is able to tell us that we let ourselves be carried away by the 

 analogy of muscular effort. But all the languages of civilized peoples 

 permit us to rise above this literal acceptation, and to interpret the 

 term in a larger sense, as implying mental and moral activities. If 

 the Universe, with its laws and harmonies, if man with his capacities 

 and aspirations, proceed from the same Energy, it must be that that 

 Energy contains in puissance whatever in our eyes goes to constitute 

 the grandeur of Nature and the glory of the human mind. Further, 

 as it should likewise include the germ of all its future, or even possi- 

 ble developments, it must necessarily represent a cause superior to all 

 its known effects — that is, to the finest and highest manifestations of 

 that which we regard as the rational order of things. 



Mr. Harrison finally declares that the Unknowable can never have 

 temples, rites, or ministers. We will not inquire here to what point 

 these are indispensable elements of religion. The ascetic school of 

 India, a fruit of the reaction against the excessive ritualism of the 

 Brahmans, has always dispensed with external worship. We can 

 easily conceive the religions of Mohammed and Confucius as without 

 mosques or pagodas. Buddhism probably had convents long before it 

 built temples. At Rome itself, seventeen centuries ago, there flourished 

 a sect already numerous, whose partisans and adversaries agreed in 

 saying that it had neither temples nor altars nor images.* So it was 

 regarded as atheistical. It must be acknowledged that the sect has 

 acquitted itself well since then. In any case, the affirmation of the 

 Comtist writer is already contradicted by the facts. Not only have 

 we Protestant theologians, more or less orthodox, who are endeavoring 

 to reconcile the doctrine of evolution with faith in the Christian 

 revelation, but we can point to liberal and even Unitarian congregations 



* Minutius Felix, Octav, pp. 10, 32. 



