CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



involves details rather than principles, it is usually 

 considered necessary to deal with two questions, 

 which could be touched incidentally only under 

 the first section, but which must be fully met 

 before any attempt to delineate the divine nature 

 can be advantageously entered on. The first of 

 these questions may be put thus : Is the nature 

 of God accessible to investigation ? and the second : 

 If accessible to investigation, does it imply 

 personality, or such a character as admits per- 

 sonal relations to it on our part ? Both of these 

 questions must be answered affirmatively, before 

 we can be expected to take the pains of inquiring 

 into the divine attributes. If either of them is 

 negatived, such an inquiry ceases to be practically 

 urgent If the first is negatived, if it is settled 

 that the nature of God cannot be known, nothing 

 more can be done. We must be satisfied to 

 believe that there is a mysterious something called 

 God ; but as we can learn nothing about it, we 

 need not ask what duties we owe it. If the second 

 question is negatived, if it is decided that God 

 cannot be construed under personal relations, 

 nothing more need be done. If God is incapable 

 of demanding or receiving duties, the charac- 

 teristics of such a Being may be an object of 

 curiosity, but can have no interest for practical 

 religion. Now, both questions have been answered 

 in the negative, the first by the theory of Agnosti- 

 cism, or doctrine that God cannot be known ; and 

 the second by the scheme of Pantheism, or doc- 

 trine that the universe is God, and incapable of 

 personal relations towards us. These are really 

 the great questions of natural theology, when it 

 directs its attention specially to the nature as 

 distinguished from the Being of God. 



x. Is God Knowablet 



The negative of this question, so far as we have 

 to do with it here, is not made in an atheistic sense. 

 It is not alleged that the religions of the world 

 have been all in vain. A power behind the 

 world is admitted to exist, but it is declared 

 to be altogether inscrutable. This is the posi- 

 tion taken up by Mr Herbert Spencer. He 

 speaks of an 'Absolute Being,' an ' Unknown 

 Cause,' an ' Inscrutable Reality,' an ' Ultimate 

 Cause,' underlying all the phenomena of the 

 universe. Those phenomena themselves are 

 knowable, and they may all be resolved into 

 ' Force.' ' Force,' again, ' as we know it, can be 

 regarded only as a certain conditioned effect of 

 the unconditioned cause as the relative reality 

 indicating to us an absolute reality by which it 

 is immediately produced.' ' By the persistence of 

 force we really mean the persistence of some power 

 which transcends our knowledge and conception. 

 The manifestations, as occurring either in ourselves 

 or outside of us, do not persist ; but that which 

 persists is the unknown cause of these manifesta- 

 tions. In other words, asserting the persistence 

 of force, is but another mode of asserting an 

 unconditioned reality, without beginning or end.' 

 What this unknown cause or persistent force can 

 effect, may be gathered from what Mr Spencer 

 says when speaking of the duty of the man who 

 has attained to some new but unpopular truth : 

 ' He, like every other man, may properly consider 

 himself as one of the myriad agencies through 

 whom works the unknown cause ; and when the 



876 



unknown cause produces in him a certain belief 

 he is thereby authorised to profess and act out that 

 belief.' 



To many natural theologians, the doctrine of 

 the unknown cause, as thus stated, does not 

 appear to be perfectly consistent with itself. If 

 we can describe it as the source of, or even as 

 identical with that ' Force ' which produces all 

 the phenomena of experience ; if it is the author 

 of belief ' in conscious beings ; if, as appears, it can 

 confer a moral ' authorisation ' to ' profess and 

 act out belief/ it seems going too far to say that 

 ' the power which the universe manifests to us 

 is utterly inscrutable.' This may be true in the 

 same sense in which it may be true that ' in its 

 ultimate essence nothing can be known.' In that 

 sense we may be said not to know ourselves, nor 

 the external world, nor other human beings. Is 

 our neighbour, however, ' utterly inscrutable to 

 us,' because we can regard him only as the ' un- 

 known cause ' of certain phenomena physical and 

 moral, and cannot know him in his ' ultimate 

 essence ? ' Natural theologians, for the most part, 

 admit that they cannot know God in his ultimate 

 essence, that in that respect He is ' incomprehen- 

 sible.' But they affirm that, by careful obserra- 

 tion of the phenomena of nature, consciousness 

 and society, which, on Mr Spencer's shewing, are 

 all traceable to the unknown cause, they can 

 know his relations to themselves, and can adjust 

 their behaviour accordingly. 



This amount of knowledge seems to such theo- 

 logians to furnish, in the circumstances, a suffi- 

 cient basis for a life of religion, especially when 

 regard is had to the practical principle announced 

 by Mr Spencer, that ' where the unknown cause 

 produces in a man a certain belief, he is thereby 

 authorised to profess and act out that belief.' 

 They affirm that they are constrained to hold 

 such beliefs regarding the unknown cause as 

 require them to worship and obey him as a moral 

 ruler. They say that they cannot do otherwise than 

 attribute force to the exertion of will, and regard 

 will which has produced intelligences conscious 

 of duty as intelligent and moral. The only 

 answer which, on Mr Spencer's principle, seems 

 possible from his side, is, that these beliefs are 

 not rightly reached. And this is really the 

 answer he makes. He says that this interpreta- 

 tion of the unknown cause into intelligence and 

 will, is not only illegitimate, but inconceivable. 

 ' The analysis,' he says, ' of every possible (theo- 

 logical) hypothesis proves, not simply that no 

 hypothesis is sufficient, but that no hypothesis is 

 even thinkable.' Even were it thinkable, he denies 

 that it must necessarily be adopted. ' Is it not 

 just possible,' he says, 'that 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 reverse. It may be answered, however, that 

 a mode of existence which we are ' totally unable 

 to conceive ' can never be before our minds at all, 

 whether for affirmation or denial, and that if the 

 will and intelligence of the ' ultimate cause ' be 

 an inevitable belief on our part, we are not only 

 'authorised,' but compelled to 'profess and act 

 1 out that belief.' Accordingly, it seems necessary 

 | for Mr Spencer's argument to fall back upon his 



