“ Ultimate Religious Ideas” 
[September, 
5i2 
and is the cause of the cause, then the cause is controlled, 
but the cause put as an abstraction for the absolute is the 
absolute and uncontrolled. The absolute, the infinite, the 
cause — each can exist as separate conceptions of a definite 
whole. It is not because the conceptions are several that 
they are contradictory to the conception that the infinite 
absolute exists by itself, and afterwards manifests itself as a 
cause of phenomenal effefts ; for this, say what may be 
said, is what the cause amounts to, — in other words, a 
Creator. 
The notion of the infinite becoming what it was not from 
the first is an arbitrary assumption, because it is impossible 
for human thought to penetrate the absolute as such, the 
infinite as such, or the cause as such. Conceive an infinite 
absolute which is itself the cause of all effects, then we have 
an absolute comprehending within itself all which the human 
mind can conceive as attributes, and which constitutes within 
itself “the all of all.” To say the absolute is not absolute 
because it is infinite, and that the cause is not omnipotent 
and omniscient because effects proceed from it, is mere idle- 
ness.; and to say that if omnipotence “is uncaused that 
there need be no cause for anything” may be logic, but it 
certainly is not sense. All these confusions arise because 
the finite intelligence is not equal to an infinite conception. 
Without analysis we present the synthesis — God. We know 
things are caused, — Science proves the faCt ; our perceptions 
of phenomena apply them as faCts ; we trace effects to 
cause, cause to cause, still we cannot get beyond an exist- 
ence in consciousness. That we cannot conceive how an 
initiating cause came into being is no proof that it was 
caused, nor is it any proof that it was uncaused ; we only 
know that a cause exhibited in effedts exists, but when we 
find effedts we also find something outside them. Our facul- 
ties being finite cannot carry us to the beyond, but it does 
not follow that there is no beyond. All this is thinkable ; 
we are merely unable to fathom the unfathomable. We see 
mind, and we are told we know “ its beginning in time.” 
This is exadtly what we do not know, nor the genesis of 
substance, nor of force. We may form conceptions of them, 
and judged by our perceptions both mind and force are 
uncaused, and we only arrive at some analysis by means of 
our reason. We conceive mind is not force because mind 
diredts it, and that matter (in its received sense) is not a 
cause because force impels it. Mind must have preceded 
force, as force must have preceded substance, and without 
intelligence there could be no mind ; then intelligence must 
