NO EVIDENCE FOR THE UNKNOWABLE. 2 7, 



the facts suggest it, but they can never suggest that 

 it should be unknowable. 



For the fact that the unknown persists in spite of 

 the advance of knowledge is insufficient to prove 

 it unknowable ; it is a phenomenon which must 

 persist until knowledge is completed and the un- 

 known is exhausted. Nor can we lay serious stress 

 upon Mr. Spencers argument that the circle of 

 " surrounding nescience " grows with every advance 

 of science. Not only is the truth of this statement 

 doubtful, but its importance is slight. For a finite 

 unknown can never grow into an infinite unknow- 

 able, and even its growth is due only to the mis- 

 taken practice of explaining the more known by 

 means of the less known. If we work down the 

 pyramid of knowledge, and regard the lower know- 

 ledge as the deeper, we shall necessarily find that 

 the lower layers are more extensive. 



§ 5. But there is no real warrant for the assert- 

 ion that either our thought or its objects display 

 an inherent necessity to plunge into an infinite 

 process, the only plea which could to some extent 

 excuse Agnosticism. 



There is no infinite process implied in the exist- 

 ence of things, for existence is the highest category 

 of the Real, and a thing cannot be more than a fact. 

 Prima facie, therefore, there is no need to go 

 beyond the fact ; a harmonious fact is as final to 

 knowledge as it is to action. Its existence needs 

 no explanation. If, therefore, a fact is asserted to 

 be inharmonious or incongruous, the burden of 

 proof lies with those who are not satisfied with 

 things as they find them, and the unknown and un- 

 satisfactory element has to be demonstrated in each 

 case. And in an imperfectly-evolved world such 



