AGNOSTIC EVOLUTION 155 



as to Spencer, the only rational alternative was that it 

 had been created ; and the name he gives to the Creator, 

 implying plurality or even infinity in unity, shows 

 that he regarded this Divine Being as infinite in 

 power and wisdom, and to him, therefore, known 

 only in part. It is satisfactory to find that the evo 

 lutionist philosopher is shut up by his own method 

 to the same conclusion with which we have so lono- 



o 



been familiar in the first verse of the Bible, though 

 he may decline to express it in the same terms, or to 

 admit the farther teaching of the book. 



But from this point the two authorities diverge. 

 The Bible goes on to give us much information 

 respecting God and His relations to man. Spencer 

 stops our way with the dictum that to human reason 

 the First Cause must be * wholly inscrutable. He 

 thus places us in the dilemma of being obliged to 

 commit ourselves to the existence of a First Cause, 

 which must in some way include the potentiality of 

 all things, but which we cannot even prove to exist. 



In this difficulty we may appeal from the agnostic 

 philosophy, not to revelation, but to natural science. 

 To science the universe presents phenomena ; but it is 

 not content to register phenomena. It holds that 

 behind every phenomenon there must be a cause, 

 and it is of the very essence of science to investigate 

 these causes. But how can causes be known ? Only 

 by their effects. We study the phenomena, and from 

 them we learn the nature and laws of their cause or 



