CHAP. XII.] CAUSES. 363 



and tenets of that religion the ritual of which is thus hinted 

 at. Mr. Darwin s conception of religion is, however, suffi 

 ciently definite. He tells us * that it consists &quot; of love, com 

 plete submission to an exalted and mysterious superior, a 

 strong sense of dependence, fear, reverence, gratitude, hope 

 for the future, and perhaps other elements.&quot; 



Let us apply this to the Unknown and the Unknowable. 

 &quot; Love &quot; for that of which we can by no possibility The Un _ 

 know anything whatever, and to which we may as knowable - 

 reasonably attribute hideousness and all vileness, as beauty 

 and goodness! &quot;Dependence&quot; on that of which treachery 

 and mendacity may be as much characteristics as are faith 

 fulness and truth ! &quot; Keverence &quot; for an entity, whose quali 

 ties, if any, may resemble as much all we despise as all 

 we esteem, and which, for all we know, may be indebted 

 to our faculties for any recognition of its existence at all ! 

 &quot; Gratitude &quot; to that which we have not the faintest reason 

 to suppose ever willingly did anything for us, or ever will ! 

 &quot;Hope&quot; in what we have no right whatever to believe 

 may not, with equal justice, be a legitimate cause for despair 

 as pitiless, inexorable, and unfeeling, if capable of any sort 

 of intelligence whatever. 



This is no exaggeration. Every word here put down is 

 strictly accurate, for if that which underlies all things is to us 

 the unknowable, then there can be no reason to predicate of 

 it any one character rather than its opposite. If, on the 

 other hand, we have any reason to predicate goodness rather 

 than malice, nobility rather than vileness, then let preachers 

 of the unknowable abandon their unmeaning jargon, for it is 

 no longer with the unknowable we have to deal, and we are 

 plunged at once into a whole world of as distinctly dogmatic 

 theology as can be conceived a theology the dogmas of 

 which are profoundly mysterious, while they are even more 

 trying, and at the same time more illuminating, to the 

 reason, than any others of the whole catena which logically 

 follow. 



* Descent of Man, vol. i. p. 63. 



