First Causes. 27 



enunciated by theists, agnostics or materialists is in 

 its essence identical. Thus, the orthodox usually 

 postulate a spirit as the origin of all things ; but, by 

 constituting it originless, they are merely clothing a 

 phantom of their own imagination with eternal 

 properties, and asserting the existence of an un- 

 makeable something which ever existed. Agnostics, 

 similarly, style their word-begotten Deity — " the 

 Unknowable Energy" — an unmakeable something 

 which ever existed, and " from which everything pro- 

 ceeds." Finally, materialists also postulate their first 

 cause — matter-in-motion — an unmakeable something 

 which ever existed. Hence, all three hypotheses are 

 equally valid as assertions or assumptions. But the 

 materialist claims this striking advantage over his 

 opponents, he demonstrates by actual experiment 

 what that elementary matter is, and what its forces 

 are, which form the constituents of his eternal some- 

 thing; while the orthodox and the agnostic detail 

 nothing and prove nothing, but begin their systems 

 with assumption, expound them by aberration, and 

 ratify them by reiteration. 



The absurdity of the orthodox position attains its 

 climax when its advocates reduce the origin of exist- 

 ence to an originator, creator, or spirit who tran- 

 scends all existence and intelligence ; who thus to 

 man neither exists nor is intelligible ; who as beyond 

 human thought is unthinkable, and as beyond human 

 knowledge is unknowable. Yet we, finite beings, are 

 to fathom not only the infinite but the ultra-infinite, 



