2/2 ESSAYS LV PHILOSOPHY 



determinable, and as they are not only unknown but 

 unknowable, so also must the Principle be regarded 

 as only the Unknowable. 



Or to put the case at its very best for theism, as 

 Mr. Fiske in his Idea of God has put it, the " qiiasi- 

 personality " of the Eternal Cause must remain the 

 object, not of a satedly convinced reason, or know- 

 ledge, but of a supported and comforted faith, — a 

 faith supported by such actual knowledge of the 

 apparent drift of things within the visible universe, 

 especially upon the surface of the earth and amid 

 things human, or preparatory for human history, as 

 to be a reasonable faith ; a faith, that is, of which we 

 may say that it accepts nothing contrary to reason as 

 interpretable by the light of experience. In the ascer- 

 tained absence of signs to the contrary, the flight of 

 Faith from the footing afforded by such actual signs 

 as arc favourable, her flight on wings of hope, is but 

 the natural operation of that gift in human nature 

 which supplements its gift of knowledge. Farther 

 than this, the strictest interpreters of the results of 

 evolution forbid us to go. On the evidence of such 

 results alone, we have no assurance that the quality 

 of reasonableness is anything more than phenomenal 

 and transitory, after all. What fatal possibilities are 

 there not in the infinite, when we essay to read it 

 only by the light of finite historical facts ! 



Now, this warning from these logicians, I repeat. 



