First Causes. 21 



least assign some limits, conditions and functions, to 

 that which he at least knows to exist, or to be, or 

 which is, or whatever terms are applicable to the 

 identification of the thing. It is solely by this mode 

 of arguing from the known to the unknown that all 

 our progress in true science and philosophy hitherto 

 has been accomplished ; that ignorance and super- 

 stition have been dispelled ; that the great modern 

 doctrine of natural evolution has been discovered ; 

 and that everything worth knowing has been learnt. 

 Hence, to forsake this tried and trusted intellectual 

 highway for any retrograde mode of thought would 

 be a base capitulation of hard-won triumphs and a 

 backward step on the world's royal road. Con- 

 fessions of ignorance are only temporary ; man 

 recognises no ultimate goal to his knowledge. 



Mr Spencer's attempt to degrade the orthodox 

 First Cause, and to erect in its place an Unknowable 

 understood only by himself, and of which he is the 

 self-elected Melchizedek, may thus be regarded 

 as a failure. Instead of establishing a Supreme 

 Unknowable in the universe, he has only invented 

 a fetich, manipulated by himself, the essence of 

 whose attributes curiously resembles the preco- 

 cious child's definition of a snake, " Nothing with a 

 tail to it." 



After all, there is no great distinction between Mr 

 Spencer and a Japanese carver of Buddhas or an 

 Italian painter of Madonnas. The Eastern custom 

 has ever been to materialise their deities, the Western 



