INFINITY ETERNITY THE UNTHINKABLE. 193 



ages for the phraseology as well as substance of an 

 argument, is a poor homage to the ampler and more 

 exact knowledge of our own time. Lofty though the 

 aspirations of physical science now are, they more 

 readily recognise and acquiesce in the limitations im- 

 posed upon them, than do those metaphysical theories, 

 German or English, which end but in a labyrinth of 

 words. 



Yet when thus speaking of the practical limits of 

 human knowledge of those points in every science 

 where the infinite and unthinkable come in we must 

 not deny the existence of ulterior truths felt to be 

 such, though not comprehensible by reason. There is 

 more than mere paradox' in the .saying of a French 

 philosopher : ' La, oil finit le raisonnement, commence 

 la veritable certitude ; ' and Pascal lucidly, as always, 

 illustrates the impotence of reason to reach a truth 

 which must nevertheless be such. 1 What we feel as 

 wholly beyond the scope of thought does not lose its 

 reality by being so. Taking an instance just alluded 

 to, we can affirm that God is, though we know not 

 how or what He is. This ignorance, in fact, is denoted 

 by the very terms we use to express our adoration of 

 the Supreme Being. The words Infinite, Immortal, 

 Immense, Invisible, Incorporeal, Absolute, &c., do not 

 assert what is, but what is not. I have just turned up 



1 Pascal says that we neither conceive a line divided by an infinite 

 number of bisections, nor a section that cannot be divided ; but though 

 these contraries are both inconceivable, one of them must necessarily be 

 true. 



