2 2 AGNOSTICISM. 



selves in possession of a good deal of knowledge 

 about the unknowable. Indeed it has been plaus- 

 ibly remarked, that, in the course of Mr. Spencer's 

 philosophy, we are afforded far more information 

 about the Unknowable than the combined efforts of 

 revelation and theology have yet given us concern- 

 ing God.* 



§ 4. And there is no way by which Agnosticism 

 can escape its fundamental contradiction. Either 

 the nature of the known does not justify the infer- 

 ence to an unknowable beyond, or, if it does, the 

 unknowable ipso facto becomes knowable. All that 

 any reasoning can ever prove is the unknown ; but 

 no valid process of thought will carry us from the 

 unknown to the unknowable. Agnosticism has 

 here mistaken the unknown for the unknowable, 

 and imagined that because the known could suo^g-est 

 the unknown, it could also suggest an unknowable 

 beyond itself 



But this is a paralogism. The known can sug- 

 gest the unknown, and there is nothing extraord- 

 inary in the existence of the latter, because know- 

 ledge is fragmentary, and reality points to realities 

 beyond it : we have problems that are not solved, 

 and facts that are not independent. But unsolved 

 problems are not on that account insoluble, nor are 

 unknown facts unknowable. Science may become 

 conscious of something beyond the knowm, because 



1 The Unknowable has a high character in Mr. Spencer's 

 philosophy. It is orderly and considerate in its habits, and 

 •always " conserves " the same amount of its various " manifesta- 

 tions" in the world. This is all the more estimable, as if it did 

 not do this, if e.g. it suddenly took to manifesting itself as mind, 

 instead of as matter, or vice versa, it might very easily make 

 knowledge impossible. 



