ULTIMATE RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 37 



hypothesis is untenable if it contains the same impossible 

 idea. 



Thus these three different suppositions respecting the 

 origin of things, verbally intelligible though they are, and 

 severally seeming to their respective adherents quite ra- 

 tional, turn out, when critically examined, to be literally 

 unthinkable. It is not a question of probability, or credibil- 

 ity, but of conceivability. Experiment proves that the ele- 

 ments of these hypotheses cannot even be put together in 

 consciousness ; and we can entertain them only as we enter- 

 tain such pseud-ideas as a square fluid and a moral sub- 

 stance — only by abstaining from the endeavour to render 

 them into actual thoughts. Or, reverting to our original 

 mode of statement, we may say that they severally involve 

 symbolic conceptions of the illegitimate and illusive kind. 

 Differing so widely as they seem to do, the atheistic, the 

 pantheistic, and the theistic hypotheses contain the same 

 ultimate element. It is impossible to avoid making the 

 assumption of self -existence somewhere; and whether that 

 assumption be made nakedly, or under complicated dis- 

 guises, it is equally vicious, equally unthinkable. Be it a 

 fragment of matter, or some fancied potential form of mat- 

 ter, or some more remote and still less imaginable cause, our 

 conception of its self -existence can be formed only by join- 

 ing with it the notion of unlimited duration through past 

 time. And as unlimited duration is inconceivable, all those 

 formal ideas into which it enters are inconceivable ; and in- 

 deed, if such an expression is allowable, are the more incon- 

 ceivable in proportion as the other elements of the ideas are 

 indefinite. So that in fact, impossible as it is to think of the 

 actual universe as self -existing, we do but multiply impossi- 

 bilities of thought by every attempt we make to explain its 

 existence. 



§ 12. If from the origin of the Universe we turn to its 

 nature, the like insurmountable difficulties rise up before us 



