WHAT IS DARWINISM? 13 



untenable because it involves the impossible 

 idea of self-existence, must perforce admit that 

 the theistic hypothesis is untenable if it con- 

 tains the same impossible idea." (p. 38). The 

 origin of the universe is, therefore, a fact 

 which cannot be explained. It must have had 

 a cause ; and all we know is that its cause is 

 unknowable and inscrutable. 



When we turn to nature the result is the 

 same. Everything is inscrutable. All we 

 know is that there are certain appearances, 

 and that where there is appearance there must 

 be something that appears. But what that 

 something is, what is the noumenon which 

 underlies the phenomenon, it is impossible for • 

 us to know. In nature we find two orders of 

 phenomena, or appearances ; the one objective 

 or external, the other subjective in our con- 

 sciousness. There are an Ego and a non- 

 Ego, a subject and object. These are not 

 identical. " It is," he says, " rigorously im- 

 possible to conceive that our knowledge is a 

 knowledge of appearances only, without at the 

 same time conceiving a reality of which they 

 are appearances, for appearance without real- 

 ity is unthinkable." (p. 88). So far we can go. 

 There is a reality which is the cause of phe- 



