1 6 From Matter to Man. 



more civilised fashion that unreasoning fear and con- 

 sequent abject devotion ever shown by ignorant 

 humanity towards all strange, startling and inex- 

 plicable natural phenomena. The legitimate suc- 

 cessors of the vulgar superstitions of the past are 

 thus the intellectual intuitions of the present. After 

 the medicine-man the priest, after the priest the 

 metaphysician, after the metaphysician the agnostic, 

 after the agnostic the theosophist, after the theosophist 

 the pantaloon. 



II. The Cosmic Unknown, or the Force under 

 Phenomena: — The assumption by Mr Spencer of the 

 Unknowable as a First Cause has undoubtedly 

 arisen from a confusion of ideas. A first cause in 

 non-existence has been confounded with ordinary 

 every-day causes in existence, through logical in- 

 ability to comprehend the full meaning of that great 

 natural fact, the indestructibility of the constituents 

 of existence. 



By describing the Unknowable as a "force under 

 phenomena causing phenomena," Mr Spencer has 

 laid a mine to his own foundations, for the cause 

 of a phenomenon, according to all evidence, must 

 necessarily be the phenomenon's own antecedents 

 in other phenomenal forms. The fallacy of the 

 hypothesis, as well as the unwisdom of Mr Spencer's 

 mode of philosophising, may be illustrated in several 

 ways : — 



i. Mr Spencer or any thinker may, if he choose, 

 descant upon what he thinks unknowable, but he 



