RETROGRESSIVE RELIGION. 453 



point, in agreement with him.* But for this reference it would not 

 have occurred to me to associate in thought Mr. Harrison's criticisms 

 with those of the Edinburgh Reviewer ; but now that comparison is 

 suggested, I am struck by the fact that Mr. Harrison's representations 

 of my views diverge from the realities no less widely than those of a 

 critic whose antagonism is unqualified, and whose animus is displayed 

 in his first paragraph. 



So anxious is Mr. Harrison to show that the doctrine he would 

 discredit has no kinship to the doctrines called religious, that he will 

 not allow me, without protest, to use the language needed for convey- 

 ing my meaning. The expression " an Infinite and Eternal Energy 

 from which all things proceed," he objects to as being " perhaps a 

 rather equivocal reversion to the theologic type ; " and he says this 

 because " in the Athanasian Creed the Third Person * proceeds ' from 

 the First and the Second." It is hard that I should be debarred from 

 thus using the word by this preceding use. Perhaps Mr. Harrison 

 will be surprised to learn that, as originally written, the expression ran 

 — " an Infinite and Eternal Energy by which all things are created 

 and sustained ; " and that in the proof I struck out the last clause be- 

 cause, though the words did not express more than I meant, the ideas 

 associated with them might mislead, and there might result such an 

 insinuation as that which Mr. Harrison makes. The substituted ex- 

 pression, which embodies my thought in the most colorless way, I 

 can not relinquish because he does not like it — or rather, indeed, be- 

 cause he does not like the thought itself. It is not convenient to him 

 that the Unknowable, which he repeatedly speaks of as a pure nega- 

 tion, should be represented as that through which all things exist. 

 And, indeed, it would be inconvenient for him to recognize this ; 

 since the recognition would prevent him from asserting that " none 

 of the positive attributes which have ever been predicated of God can 

 be used of this Energy." 



Not only does he, as in the last sentence, negatively misdescribe 

 the character of this Energy, but he positively misdescribes it. He 

 says — " It remains always Energy, Force : nothing anthropomorphic ; 

 such as electricity, or anything else that we might conceive as the 

 ultimate basis of all the physical forces." Now, on page 9 of the 

 essay Mr. Harrison criticises, there occurs the sentence — " The final 

 outcome of that speculation commenced by the primitive man, is that, 

 the Power manifested throughout the Universe distinguished as mate- 

 rial, is the same power which in ourselves wells up under the form of 

 consciousness ;" and on page 11 it is said that "this necessity we are 

 under, to think of the external energy in terms of the internal energy, 

 gives rather a spiritualistic than a materialistic aspect to the Universe." 

 Does he really think that the meaning of these sentences is conveyed 

 by comparing the ultimate energy to "electricity"? And does he 

 * " Knowledge," March U, 1884. 



