164 BULLETIN OF THE 



explanations is necessarily illimitable, and as necessaYily beyond the 

 grasp of human comprehension. Do what we will we cannot escape 

 the inexorable logic of fact, — the certainty of conviction that the 

 ultimate must in the nature of things be forever the unintelligible, 

 the inexplicable, the inscrutable ; — that (paradoxical as it may 

 sound) no explanation can be accounted final until it has been pur- 

 sued backward to the unexplainable. 



And this furnishes an additional objection to the kinematic 

 scheme, — that it leaves a vast domain — a phantasmagoria of incon- 

 sequent motions — still to be explained ; — that however irrational or 

 inexplicable its last postulate, it does not attain to that simplicity 

 of inherent, inscrutable, attribute of power, which must ever be the 

 test of final resolution. 



He who supposes, therefore, " that the information of the senses 

 is adequate (with the aid of mathematical reasoning) to explain 

 phenomena of all kinds," who refuses to admit " that there are 

 physical operations which are — and ever will be incomprehensible 

 by us," betrays a very imperfect idea — no less of the impassable 

 limitations of finite intellect, than of the fathomless profundity of 

 nature's system.* He who thinks that by formally repudiating the 

 mysterious, and confidently discarding the unknown, he thereby 



higher we ascend, it will be the more simple. - - - And as each step in 

 the procedure carries us from the more complex to the more simple, and 

 consequently nearer to unity, we at last arrive at that unity itself, — at that 

 ultimate cause, which as ultimate cannot again he conceived as an effect." 

 (Lectures on Metaphysics : lect. in, p. 42, of Am. edition. 8vo. Boston, 

 1859.) 



Says Herbert Spencer, " It obviously follows that the most general 

 truth not admitting of inclusion in any other, does not admit of interpre- 

 tation. Of necessity therefore, explanation must eventually bring us down 

 to the inexplicable. The deepest truth which we can get at must be unac- 

 countable." (First Principles. 2d edition, 1869: part i, chap. 4, p. 73.) 



*Prof. James Challis, in an essay "On the Fundamental Ideas of 

 Matter and Force in Theoretical Physics," maintains that when there is no 

 apparent contact between bodies, " it must still be concluded that the press- 

 ing body although invisible, exists, — unless we are prepared to admit that 

 there are physical operations which are and ever will be incomprehensible 

 by us. This admision is incompatible with the principles of the philosophy 

 I am advocating, which assume that the information of the senses is ade- 

 quate — with the aid of mathematical reasoning — to explain phenomena of 

 all kinds." L. E. D. Phil. Mag. June, 1866: vol. xxxi, p. 467.) 



