121 
“ barrier ” instead of a necessity, seems to us, we say not 
irrational, but actually impossible. For, (as Anselm or 
Descartes would teach), we conceive of the Unconditioned even 
when we perversely refuse true relation to it, or communion 
with it. Or, (as Herbert Spencer says, when affirm- 
ing consciousness of the Absolute), “ Strike out First Princf- r ' 
the term unconditioned and the argument becomes ^’P- 88 - 
nonsense,” — “an elaborate suicide.” Our authors “strike it out.” 
Not having given their great logical powers to any, the 
least, consideration of the d priori, our authors not only 
establish nothing, but do not even suggest possibilities. 
47. The Reasonable, the Right, the absolute Good, — they 
have avoided as “metaphysical” — and yet religion Neglect of 
is their object ! Even their so-called “ immortality ” tte a priori. 
is (by their physical exposition of the “ Law of Continuity,”) 
really chained to the phenomenal, and dissociated, as far as 
appears, from personal life, and from all prephenomenal 
“ forces,” as well as from essential Reality. 
Immortality, interpreted as a mere law of physical continu- 
ance, would, according to our authors, be a holding on from the 
past, into existence in the present, and hereafter in the future. 
We are even told of Universes distinct from each other, often 
keeping parallel at times, or at least co-existing, and so admitted 
to be not dependent throughout on one rule of Continuity. They 
have “ luminiferous bridges” from world to world, but the con- 
nexion partly goes over the “bridges,” and partly runs on side 
by side. Contiguous Universes, — “ continuous ” here and there, 
per accidens, but essentially holding apart, except at the semi- 
invisible “bridges ” thus existed as we look backward and back- 
ward in eternity, and will exist forward and forward for ever ! 
Thus, instead of teaching us man’s desired Personal Immortality, 
this evades it altogether, ties us to such conditioned Universes 
before and behind, terminable and yet not terminable, at least 
thinning out till we lose the identity of self, which is to re- 
appear, if at all, after the “crash of worlds,” — having worked 
to some ether-bridge; — or else we lose our real self, our “Ego,” 
hopelessly, in world after world for ever ! 
Really to rest on such a Future would need a fanaticism of 
“Science ” (!) as well as a singular “ Faith,” at which we pause 
to take breath. 
48. The “ Heaven ” and “ Hell,” however, of these writers 
come on us with surprise, clashing as they do with 0 f Heaven 
their previous theories of thinner matter. Nor do and Hel1- 
they less strangely stand in contrast also with the solemn 
realities contemplated by our faith as Christians. (Here, con- 
