ON THE DEVELOPED CONCEPTION OF GOD. 355 



which is not a phenomenal thing. Whether we include 

 the energy of the soul amongst the list, or exclude it as of 

 more ethereal sublimation, there is something deeper than 

 either it or them, and the source of both. Matter remains 

 merely one of the two most general modes or expressions 

 of a transcendent power, which may have other modes 

 manifested elsewhere and cognizable by superior faculties 

 or more numerous senses. Nay, even our phenomenal 

 matter, which, in our conception of it, is strictly relative 

 to our five senses, and about which it is supposed we 

 know everything, how might it not appear to beings in 

 one of the planets, with a sixth or seventh sense added 

 on to ours, and as informing to them as the eye is to us ? 

 Matter is not even a fixed and rigid thing in the eyes of 

 modern science. For we must radically change our 

 notion of it, Professor Tyndall tells us. The distinction 

 between organic and inorganic matter no longer holds, 

 says Professor Haeckel, and in " a certain sense matter is 

 itself alive," he further tells us. It is only known as a 

 theatre of forces, which are the real efficient powers, 

 affirms a third. But how can we endow with creative 

 power that of which the very notion is thus shifting and 

 illusory ? How can we make our metaphysical system 

 to depend on a conception that we cannot fix ? The 

 creative power of matter is taken away, because we do 

 not know what matter is, and the more we try to fathom 

 matter, the clearer becomes the conviction both that we 

 cannot know even it, and that there is something deeper 

 behind it. Matter, as far as we do know it, remains and 

 will remain what Kant reduced it to mere phenomena, 

 with something behind to support them ; and energy 

 remains phenomenal energy, with something beneath it 

 to make it efficient. Nor does the solid universe exist 

 merely as Hume conceived it a sheet of phenomena, 



