262 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP 



knowledge of the existence of which presses itself ever 

 more and more upon the cultivated intellect, cannot be the 

 unknown, still less the unknowable, because we certainly 

 know it, in that we know for certain that it exists. Nay 

 more, to predicate incognoscibility of it, is even a certain 

 knowledge of the mode of its existence. Mr. H. Spencer 

 says : 3 " The consciousness of an Inscrutable Power mani- 

 fested to us through all phenomena has been growing ever 

 clearer; and must eventually be freed from its imperfec- 

 tions. The certainty that on the one hand such a Power 

 exists, while on the other hand its nature transcends intu- 

 ition, and is beyond imagination, is the certainty toward 

 which intelligence has from the first been progressing." 

 One would think, then, that the familiar and accepted word 

 "the Inscrutable" (which is in this passage actually em- 

 ployed, and to which no theologian would object) would 

 be an infinitely better term than " the unknowable." The 

 above extract has, however, such a theistic aspect that 

 some readers may think the opposition here offered super- 

 fluous ; it may be well, therefore, to quote two other sen- 

 tences. In another place he observes : 4 " Passing over the 

 consideration of credibility, and confining ourselves to that 

 of conceivability, we see that atheism, pantheism, and the- 

 ism, when rigorously analyzed, severally prove to be abso- 

 lutely unthinkable ; " and speaking of " every form of reli- 

 gion," he adds, 6 " The analysis of every possible hypothesis 

 proves, not simply that no hypothesis is sufficient, but that 

 no hypothesis is even thinkable." The unknowable is ad- 

 mitted to be a power which cannot be regarded as having 



very act of declaring the First Cause incognizable, you do not permit it 

 to remain unknown. For that only is unknown of which you can neither 

 affirm nor deny any predicate ; here you deny the power of self-disclosure 

 to the ' Absolute,' of which, therefore, something is known viz., that 

 nothing can be known ! " 



3 Loc. cit., p. 108. 4 Loc. cit., p. 43. 5 Loc. cit., p. 46. 



