94 The Evolution Hypothesis. 



tory, being severally in course of losing their indivi- 

 dualities, quickly or slowly; we learn that the one 

 thing permanent is the Unknowable Reality hidden 

 under all these changing shapes." * 



Mutability is the law of the knowable ; persistence 

 in the realm of the known is only persistence of 

 change. And so into that region of darkness, of 

 which we are indefinitely conscious, where there is 

 neither before nor after, neither antecedent nor con- 

 sequent, neither greater nor less; where it is not 

 allowable for reason to predicate anything of any- 

 thing, we are sent to search for the persisting force. 

 Mistrusting our vision in the dim realm of the 

 inscrutable, we take the equivalents which Mr. 

 Spencer furnishes, and we write his fundamental 

 axiom with equal exactness in any of the forms, The 

 Unknowable Reality persists, or the Ultimate Cause 

 persists, or the Absolute Force persists. Having ex- 

 pressed our ultimate truth in this formula, we have, 

 according to Mr. Spencer, possessed ourselves of a 

 principle which unifies all concrete existences, and 

 compacts into one organic whole the divided limbs 

 of the entire body of actual or possible knowledge. 

 But of what value is a principle like this ? Will it 

 bear up a system of philosophy ? When we reach Mr. 

 Spencer's meaning of the term force, it is only to find 

 the signification utterly incomprehensible and wholly 



* Psychology, vol. II., 475. 



