64 ME, J. HASSELL 



the assertion that " God is unknowable '' is false. In deal- 

 ing with the subject^ it will be necessaiy in the first place 

 to consider what is involved in the terms ^^knowable" and 

 '^ unknowable/^ 



The word '' hiowahle " is, as all are aware, an adjective 

 derived from the verb " to know," and this means — 1st, " to 

 perceive with certainty " ; 2nd, " to distinguish " ; and 3rd, 

 "■to recognise." Thus, then, by the '"knowable " is meant that 

 which is capable of being discovered or recognised, ascertained 

 or understood. The ^' unlcnowahle ," therefore, is that which 

 cannot be discovered or recognised, understood or ascer- 

 tained. It will be necessary to keep prominently before the 

 mind these definitions when examining Mr. Spencer^s argu- 

 ments by which he strives to prove that, if there be a God, 

 He must of necessity be to man the '^Unknowable." In 

 the second place, it will be necessary to show the fallacy with 

 which Mr. Spencer starts, and on which he bases his argu- 

 ment to prove that God is the " Unthinkable " and the 

 " Unknowable." 



Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his First Princiijles, ch. ii. " Ulti- 

 mate Religious Ideas," asserts that the human mind cannot 

 form an adequate idea of the world as a whole — that is, the 

 mind cannot have a conception of the world, — a conception 

 properly so called, but only what he terms a symbolic con- 

 ception. He says : — 



" When on the sea-shore we note how the hulls of distant vessels are 

 hidden below the horizon, and how of still remoter vessels only the upper- 

 most sails are visible, we realise with tolerable clearness the slight curvature 

 of that portion of the sea's surface which lies before us. But when we seek 

 in imagination to follow out this curved surface as it actually exists, slowly 

 bending round until all its meridians meet in a point eight thousand miles 

 below our feet, we find ourselves utterly baffled. We cannot conceive 

 in its real form and magnitude even that small segment of our globe 

 which extends a hundred miles on each side of us ; much less the globe as a 

 whole. What conception, then, do we form of it i the reader may ask. 

 That its name calls up in us some state of consciousness is unquestionable ; 

 and if this state of consciousness is not a conception, properly so called, 

 what is it? The answer seems to be this: — We have learnt by indirect 

 methods that the earth is a sphere ; we have formed models approximately 

 representing its shape and the distribution of its parts ; generally, when the 

 earth is referred to, we either think of an indefinitely-extended mass beneath 

 our feet, or else, leaving out the actual earth, we think of a body like a 

 terrestrial globe ; but, when we seek to imagine the earth as it really is, we 

 join these two ideas as well as we can, and such perceptions as oureyes give us of 

 the earth's surface we couple with the conception of a sphere. And thus we 

 form of the earth, not a conception, properly so called, but only u symbolic 

 conception." * 



* FirM Principle-^, 2iid ed., ehiipter ii. pp. 25, 2G. 



