12 From Matter to Man. 



cannot rid himself of himself in his philosophy. If 

 he disclaims making the universe, he at least foists it 

 upon his deities. But if men fashion their own deities 

 — their invariable practice to-day as hitherto — it 

 follows that they also construct their own universes. 

 For, translating their philosophy into intelligible 

 language, the universe is to them exactly what they 

 understand and state it to be, and it cannot to man 

 at any time ever be anything else. 



The myth of a First Cause obviously originated in 

 that confusion of ideas, common to past ignorance 

 and perpetuated by present pedantry, which con- 

 founds the philosophical first cause with the scientific 

 or cosmical first causes ; the linear hypotheses of 

 beginnings and ends with the true cyclic facts of 

 unending evolution and devolution. [What man is 

 really anxious to ascertain is, not who the Causer of 

 tHe laws of the universe is, for the Causer would have 

 to explain his ozvn origin and existence, but what the 

 laws themselves are. 



Finally, as a check to much scientific, theologic, 

 and metaphysical nonsense, it should be distinctly 

 understood in both science and philosophy that to 

 seek for the origin of ultimates.is as unscientific and 

 unphilosophical as in religion it is blasphemous. 



Section 2. The Unknowable as a First Cause : — 

 ^[The doctrine of the Unknowable is of modern 

 origin, the product ot agnosticism, its inventor Mr 

 Herbert Spencer. Vlt comprises three phases: — (1) 



