570 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 



the Materialist and Spiritualist controversy is a mere war of 

 words, in which the disputants are equally absurd — each 

 thinking he understands that which it is impossible for any 

 man to understand — he will perceive how utterly groundless 

 is the fear referred to. Being fully convinced that whatever 

 nomenclature is used, the ultimate mystery must remain the 

 same, he will be as ready to formulate all phenomena in 

 terms of Matter, Motion, and Force, as in any other terms; 

 and will rather indeed anticipate, that only in a doctrine 

 which recognizes the Unknown Cause as co-extensive with 

 all orders of phenomena, can there be a consistent Religion, 

 or a consistent Philosophy. 



Though it is impossible to prevent misrepresentations, 

 especially when the questions involved are of a kind that ex- 

 cite so much animus, yet to guard against them as far as may 

 be, it will be well to make a succinct and emphatic re-state- 

 ment of the Philosophico-Religious doctrine which per- 

 vades the foregoing pages. Over and over again it has 

 been shown in various ways, that the deepest truths we can 

 reach, are simply statements of the widest uniformities in 

 our experience of the relations of Matter, Motion, and 

 Force; and that Matter, Motion, and Force are but symbols 

 of the Unknown Reality. A Power of which the nature re- 

 mains for ever inconceivable, and to which no limits in Time 

 or Space can be imagined, works in us certain effects. 

 These effects have certain likenesses of kind, the most 

 general of which we class together under the names of 

 Matter, Motion, and Force; and between these effects there 

 are likenesses of connection, the most constant of which we 

 class as laws of the highest certainty. Analysis reduces 

 these several kinds of effect to one kind of effect; and these 

 several kinds of uniformity to one kind of uniformity. And 

 the highest achievement of Science is the interpretation of 

 all orders of phenomena, as differently-conditioned manifes- 

 tations of this one kind of effect, under differently-condi- 

 tioned modes of this one kind of uniformitv. But when 



