412 COSMIC FHILOSOPHY. [pt. hi. 



and religion find tlieir permanent reconciliation, and by tlie 

 assertion of which the mind is brought into a positive 

 attitude of faith with reference to the Inscrutable Power 

 manifested in the universe. The outcome of the present 

 argument is not Atheism or Positivism, but a phase of 

 Theism which is higher and purer, because relatively truer, 

 than the anthropomorphic phase defended by theologians. 



This all-important theorem in which science and religion 

 are reconciled, is neither more nor less than the theorem 

 which alone gives complete expression to the truth that all 

 knowledge is relative. In the first chapter of this work it 

 was elaborately proved that as soon as we attempt to frame 

 any hypothesis whatever concerning the Absolute, or that 

 which exists out of relation to our consciousness, we are 

 instantly checkmated by alternative impossibilities of thought, 

 and when we seek to learn why this is so, we are taught by 

 a psychologic analysis that, from the very organization of 

 our minds, and by reason of the very process by which 

 intelligence has been evolved, we can form no cognition into 

 which there do not enter the elements of likeness, difference, 

 and relation, — so that the Absolute, as presenting none of 

 these elements, is utterly and for ever unknowable. Trans- 

 lating this conclusion into more familiar language, we found 

 it to mean, first, " that the Deity, in so far as absolute and 

 infinite, is inscrutable by us, and that every hypothesis of 

 ours concerning its nature and attributes can serve only to 

 illustrate our mental impotence," — and, secondly, "that the 

 Universe in itself is likewise inscrutable; that the vast 

 synthesis of forces without us, which in manifold contact 

 with us is from infancy till the close of life continually 

 arousing us to perceptive activity, can never be known by 

 us as it exists objectively, but only as it affects our con- 

 sciousness." ^ 



These are the closely-allied conclusions which were reached 



* See above, vol L p. 15. 



