The Unknowable and the Knowable. 63 



is not, on Mr. Spencer's theory, the initial link in a 

 <ihain of successive causes and effects. It is the in- 

 scrutable power, the actuality revealed in that which 

 is seen. At each instant of time it is the present 

 reality, the something ever in process of manifesta- 

 tion, the underlying energy of which what we know 

 is the effect. 



To quantify these manifestations, and lay it down 

 as an axiom that their sum total has never been 

 greater or less, a supposition necessary to the Evolu- 

 tion Hypothesis, to fix the law of the production of 

 its effects by the absolute power ; to take it as a 

 fundamental principle on which to found a system of 

 philosophy that the mode of manifestation has been 

 and shall be for ever the same ; in other words, to 

 determine the law of the unconditioned, and to regard 

 it as necessarily operating thus and not otherwise, is 

 most evidently to transcend the capabilities of intelli- 

 gence : since on the one hand the conditions of thought 

 are taken to necessitate the acceptance of the ultimate 

 cause as wholly and for ever incomprehensible ; and 

 on the other, the totality of phenomenal effects cannot 

 be brought within the field of experience, whether in 

 co-existence or in succession. 



Yet this postulate is vital to Mr. Spencer's philo- 

 sophy. For if it be so that in the course of change, 

 from the first moment at which the knowable passes 

 into the view of thought onward, there has been any 

 modification of the relation subsisting between the 



