510 “ Ultimate Religious Ideas." [Septembei, 
the same difficulties under new aspects ‘arise.’ We are 
compelled to make assumptions, which assumptions cannot 
be represented in thought.” “We cannot think at all about 
the expressions of the eternal world without thinking, ol 
them as caused,” nor “ carry out an enquiry concerning 
them without accepting the hypothesis of a first cause.” 
“ To think of the first cause as finite is to think of it as 
limited,” and “implies a conception beyond its limits. . If 
limited there is something outside of it.” “ This something 
must have no first cause, must be uncaused.” “ If we admit 
there can be something uncaused there is no reason to 
assume a cause for anything.” The assumption must be 
infinitude. “ It must be independent ” — an implication of 
necessity implies dependence — “if the presence, of uny 
other existence is necessary ” ; “there can be nothing in it 
which determines change, and nothing which prevents 
change. ” “ If it possesses anything which implies restraints 
or necessities it is not ‘a first cause.’ ” “Thus a first cause 
must be in every sense perfect, complete, total, including 
within itself all power, transcending all law, or absolute.’ 
In our search we arrive at “ the hypothesis of a first cause, 
and we have no alternative but to regard this first cause as 
infinite and absolute.” These reasonings and results, we 
are told are illusive, and “ are merely symbolic conceptions 
of an illogical order.” ... . 
If every fact is to be proved by rigid logical formularies, 
then God, Intelligence, Perception, Conception, Phenomena, 
the Universe in its multitudinous grandeur, Galaxies, 
Systems of Suns and Worlds are all illusions. We dwell 
in a paradise of nothingness— a consciousness creating its 
own impressions, the alpha and omega of all things. Apply 
the reasonings of Mr. Spencer to the most trivial fact it is 
non-existent :* all becomes the necessity of nothingness. 
The arguments concerning the absolute, adopted so far as 
they serve Mr. Spencer’s illustrations, are those used by 
Dean Mansell (“ Limits of Religious Thought ”) in his 
comments on Sir Wm. Hamilton. He says (for the full 
argument the reader is referred to this work) : — The “ three 
conceptions, the Cause, the Absolute, the Infinite, all equally 
indispensable, do they not imply contradictions to each other 
when viewed in conjunction as attributes of one and the 
same being?” Such is the proposition in its nakedness. 
The difficulty throughout the whole argument appears in 
* Archbishop Whately’s amusing study in logical metaphysics, viz., ques- 
tioning the existence of Napoleon, may be studied with profit. 
