282 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



knowledge of the existence of which presses itself ever 

 more and more upon the cultivated intellect, cannot be 

 the unknown, still less the unknou-aUe, because we cer- 

 tainly know it, in that we know for certain that it exists. 

 Nay more, to predicate incogrioscibility of it, is even an 

 actual knowledge of the mode of its existence. Mr. 

 Herbert Spencer says : l " The consciousness of an Inscru- 

 table Power manifested to us through all phenomena has 

 been growing ever clearer ; and must eventually be freed 

 from its imperfections. The certainty that on the one 

 hand such a Power exists, while on the other hand its 

 nature transcends intuition, and is beyond imagination, is 

 the certainty towards which intelligence has from the tirst 

 been progressing." One would think that the familiar and 

 accepted word " the Inscrutable " (which is in this passage 

 actually employed, and to which no theologian would 

 object) would have been a far better term than " the Un- 

 Jmowable." The above extract has, however, such a 



disqualification in the nature of x from being known. To say then that 

 the First Cause is wholly removed from our apprehension is not simply a 

 disclaimer of faculty on our part : it is a charge of inability against the First 

 Cause too. The dictum about it is this : ' It is a Being that may exist out 

 of knowledge, but that is precluded from entering within the sphere 

 of knowledge.' We are told in one breath that this Being must be in every 

 sense ' perfect, complete, total including in itself all power, and transcend- 

 ing all law ' (p. 38) ; and in another that this perfect and omnipotent One 

 is totally incapable of revealing any one of an infinite store of attributes. 

 Need we point out the contradictions which this position involves ? If 

 you abide by it, you deny the Absolute and Infinite in the very act of 

 affirming it, for, in debarring the First Cause from self-revelation, you 

 impose a limit on its nature. And in the very act of declaring the First 

 Cause incognizable, you do not permit it to remain unknown. For that 

 only ii unknown of which you can neither affirm nor deny any predicate ; 

 litre you deny the power of self-disclosure to the ' Absolute, ' of which there- 

 It re something is known ; viz., that nothing can be known !" 

 1 Loc. cit. p. 108. 



