First Causes. 13 



The Unknown Unknowable. (2) The Cosmic Unknow- 

 able or " the force under phenomena." (3) The Un- 

 knowable as an Infinite Energy. 



I. The Unknown Unknowable. — In Mr Spencer's 

 formula of an Unknowable, a First Cause, or an 

 Energy, is foisted upon the universe in such a way 

 that its very existence, as well as its nature, eludes 

 our comprehension. It is absolutely unintelligible, 

 and interminably unknowable. By this positive 

 assertion of the existence of an Unknowable, alone 

 with ordinary human unknowability of it, the doctrine 

 virtually involves the hypothesis of an Unknowable, 

 unknown to the ignorant mass of mankind generally, 

 but familiar in some incomprehensible fashion to the 

 superior intellectual perceptions of its inventor. 



The elements of this supercilious doctrine have 

 obviously been borrowed from Kant. That great 

 but misguided thinker declared that a Supreme 

 Creator was not an object to be known or proved, 

 in the strict sense of the term. He would "even 

 fear to know anything of his duties, his God and his 

 soul, convinced that if they were objects of his 

 knowledge, they must be in themselves illusions, 

 phenomena purely human" (how could they be 

 anything else?) "of his mode of seeing and con- 

 ceiving." 



The chief stumblingblock to intelligent men with 

 these paradoxes is, How are we to know if we don't 

 know? Is it because we don't know that we know? 

 Or, How are we as men to know, not as men, but as 



