266 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



the universe and our idea of it. But we have no proof 

 of this statement, and such an Absolute God is, as 

 Spencer pointed out, an Unknowable, and accord- 

 ingly no concern of ours. That part and these 

 aspects of the universe which have been grasped by 

 us may prove to contain the key to many of our 

 difficulties ; meanwhile we can only be humble and 

 admit that our idea of God, even in this restricted 

 sense, is still extremely incomplete : and in this 

 sense there is a God far greater than our present 

 idea and knowledge of God, only waiting to be 

 discovered. 



That which it is essential to establish is our way of 

 looking at the problem. The universe does come into 

 relation with our minds, and there, owing to the way 

 it and our minds are organized, generates an idea 

 which exerts an influence upon us. 



The external basis of the idea of God is thus con- 

 stituted by the forces operating in the universe. The 

 universe is a unitary whole, greater and more powerful 

 than ourselves, and its operations have resultants in 

 certain main directions — these are phenomena which 

 we constatate like any other phenomena. They, 

 and that other phenomenon of our contact with the 

 Universe and our exposure to the play of its forces, 

 give us our objective knowledge of God. The 

 rest of our idea of God, the inner component, depends 

 upon the mode of action of our minds. 



So far, then, we have shown that recent advance 



