FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS OF AGNOSTICISM EXAMINED. 181 



uamely, as the only thing which actually exists, immutability 

 and eternity. 



Having', however, reached in thought the first link of 

 the phenomenal chain, will the true philosopher hold himself 

 at liberty to turn back without attempting to proceed further ? 

 Will he tranquilly conclude that he has ax^rived at the ultima 

 thule of the human intellect? Assuredly not. Contemplating 

 now the fix'st term of a series in which, on the assumption 

 that any philosophy at all is possible, and in fact that the 

 exercise of the intellect is anything more than a dream, 

 antecedents were severally related to their consequents in the 

 way of condition, he will ask, as a matter of course, ■" What 

 is it by which this first term was conditioned ? " Need it be 

 said that his reason would resent as an insult any equivoca- 

 tion in answer to this plain question, or any reply which 

 amounted to the assertion, '' Possibly nothing " ? He has 

 traced up through its m^eanderings, its varying phenomenal 

 indications, the stream of a persistent force ; he has reached 

 the spot where it begins : will he find it possible to doubt 

 that it issues from some spring ? If he continues to explox'e, 

 his imagination is now of necessity at fault, for it is only the 

 phenomenal which he can picture to his mind ; but his reason 

 will insist that a spring there must be. 



Yet, if he is to discover the spring, how is he to proceed ? 

 It will be observed that the relation indicated by the phrase 

 ^^conditioning antecedent'" was empirically determined. 

 Now let it, for the sake of argument, be granted that, so 

 long as an investigation can be pursued empirically, the dis- 

 covery of mere conditioning antecedents should fully satisfy 

 the philosophical inquirer; it is evident that, supposing him 

 to have arrived at a point where the sort of relation they imply 

 has in the nature of things ceased to be possible, — supposing 

 him, I say, to be now looking into the absolute emptiness of 

 what seems to be pure and simple Time, and finding that in 

 the vista of this retrospect he can discern no beginning, — it 

 will be his business to investigate the pretensions of a different 

 kind of relation, namely, one that here demands recognition, 

 and must apparently be assumed in order to account for that 

 succession in which (whether it be objectively or only 

 subjectively real matters not, so far as the necessity in ques- 

 tion is concerned) he perceived the relations of the other 

 kind. This, then, is what the true philosopher will do. 



Accordingly, he will find himself compelled to assume the 

 existence of something which bears to all other things, 

 whatsoever they may be, the relation of source or author. 



