THE DOCTRINE OF THE UNKNOWABLE. 437 
holding that, while thus ‘‘the momentum of thought inevitably carries us beyond 
conditioned existence to an unconditioned existence,” ‘‘that ever persists in us 
as the body of a thought, we give it no shape;” and, in another place, he holds 
that we cannot shape it into a thought. 
Here may be included also the doctrines of Kant on this subject, which 
seem to have been adopted by Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Mansel, and to 
the ultimate conclusion of which, of an Unknowable, Mr. Spencer subscribes, while 
rejecting his argument. He found substantially the same self contradiction in 
thought when approaching the Absolute that we have seen in Sir William Hamil- 
ton and Mr. Mansel, the opposing factors of which he presented as natural. anti- 
nomies, between which thought expires before reaching a conception concerning 
the absolute. 
That all such self-contradictions must be false, seems self-evident. It is 
hardly believable that the mind contains within itself the elements of self-de- 
struction ; and we ought to find for the Absolute,as for the Infinite, some reason- 
able explanation. In the first place, it must be observed, as a truth taught by all 
these dinguished philosophers, that alleged Being, without aspects by which 
it may be known, cannot be held by the mind to be Being at all; but it 
is necessarily held to be nonenity. Man has no guide in philosophy 
save his own reason; from its dicta there is no appeal. Hence, when it is 
attempted to present to his conception Being without relations, character- 
istics, aspects, or attributes by which it may be known, the conditions of con- 
sciousness leave him no choice; he must declare such attempted representation 
of Being to be nothing. The doctrines here quoted from the most distinguished 
thinkers of modern times abundantly illustrate this fact. 
Yet that there is Absolute Being, without relations,is recognized by most 
‘philosophers and by all of mankind who have projected thought into these alti- 
tudes. Its existence is recognized by the four great thinkers whom we have quot- 
ed, although their misapplication of the laws of reason and their consequent self- 
contradictions present a conception of it which the mind must regard as not Be- 
ing at all but as nonenity. What then can be presented as Absolute Being? If 
we adopt the old idea of the unity of Nature we shall find that it helps us toa 
reasonable conception; it presents us all Being as the Absolute, which is also nec- 
essarily conceived to be the Infinite. It is being taken as a whole, and hence is 
not a supreme or chief being, not the active aspect or the passive aspect of Nature, 
not the energy it n.anifest nor the substance upon which energy is exerted. It 
is both; it is all. As such it is infinite and without relations to other being, for 
there is no ot’ er between which and itself there can be a relation even of differ-. 
ence. It is thus necessarily self-existent,and self-regulative. Asa whole ‘it is in- 
dependent, while its parts are dependent upon the whole. It is true that man’s 
conceptive powers will not embrace so stupendous a whole, but he must and al- 
ways has conceived that there issucha whole. Relations are the characteristics 
of its parts, and its parts are reliable symbols of the whole, for a part can only 
