192 INFINITY ETERNITY THE UNTHINKABLE. 



tion regarding force, similarly unconditional, well 

 illustrate these subtle methods of seeking ingress into 

 the innermost secrets of nature. With the ancient 

 philosophers all this was a sort of intellectual disport- 

 ment. In our day the progress of more exact science, 

 both by experiment and observation, has brought us 

 into direct contact with these problems, and very 

 especially with that which regards the origin and 

 nature of force of that invisible but momentous power 

 or powers on which depend alike the great motions of 

 the universe and the most minute atomic or molecular 

 actions of matter itself. But here, again, human 

 thought has hitherto been baffled in its struggle with 

 the inscrutable ; and where not ending with a reductio 

 ad absurdum has been compelled to halt upon sub- 

 ordinate laws, and terms provisional only, to express 

 the unknown that lies beyond. 



The word Unthinkable has been well applied of late 

 to denote some of the objects and speculations of which 

 I have been speaking. Another phrase, familiar from 

 recent controversy, shows the fashion of language still 

 employed to veil our ignorance. This is the Uncon- 

 ditioned Absolute, a cumbrous conjunction of words, 

 whether theologically or otherwise applied, and ex- 

 pressing no truth which a simpler phrase might not 

 have conveyed. 1 To go thus back to the scholastic 



1 Sir W. Hamilton has sought to give the character of a ' law of 

 mind ' to these relations of the intellect with the conceivable or condi- 

 tioned, and the inconceivdbk or unconditioned. The infinite and absolute 

 come under the latter head as unthinkable to our reason. Admitting the 

 distinction, it adds but little to what we knew before. 



