]52 
is “ The Absolute,” He cannot stand in relation to this world as its Creator ; 
for “ The Absolute ” has no relation towards anything. And so with regard 
to the term “ unconditioned.” If God is literally “ The Unconditioned ” — 
that is to say, is not limited in any way by any condition of relationship to 
others, He cannot be related to them as their Creator — He cannot be 
limited in any way. These words are applied again and again to God and 
creation, and we are led to the conclusion which Dr. Irons quotes : — “ The 
statement is made afterwards that ‘ the conditioned cannot proceed from 
the unconditioned,’ ” therefore, since all creation is “ conditioned,” and 
since God is “unconditioned,” creation cannot have proceeded from God, 
i.e. God is not the Creator. Now, I do not for a moment suppose that the 
writers of this book really wish to land their readersdn the conclusion that 
Almighty God is not the Creator,— indeed they deny this conclusion in 
one passage, p. 72, 4th ed. ; but if you take their technical philosophical 
terms and press them to their necessary results, you cannot escape the 
conclusion I have pointed out. There is another point where we come to 
the question about the “reality” of mind or matter. The writers ask 
whether the necessity of conceiving some “embodiment” does not show 
that there is a “ reality about matter which there is not about mind.” 
Isow, here again we have the material scientific conception carried into 
the immaterial world and producing a difficulty. What do they mean by 
the word “reality”? If by “real” you mean something capable of being 
investigated and analyzed, something of which the senses are cognizant, 
something the existence of which you can prove by scientific means, then 
no doubt mind is not “ real ” : but if you mean by “ real ” something 
which has an active and positive existence, then all the argument goes to 
show that mind is “real.” What I wish to show is that, all along the 
course of this argument, we are not only led towards many unsatisfactory 
conclusions, but we are landed in immense difficulties. At sec. 14 of the 
paper it is asserted that a continuity of necessity, not of causation, is 
implied. Of course it is ; the moment you have got material laws there is 
“ necessity, ’ as those laws will be invariable. As soon as you impress the 
laws of material science on a subject, you get the material “ necessity ” di- 
rectly. You cannot escape from that. Then, there is one word which 
rather puzzled me, and I want to know whether it is not possible that 
the word “ rationality ” is a misprint. It says at the end of sec. 15, “ Till 
the universe itself comes to an end though, we suppose, even then the 
law would remain the condition of all possible rationality.” I suppose 
Dr. Irons meant the condition of all possible material existence.” 
Dr. Irons.— My intention in that parenthetical remark was, that we could 
not be rational unless there was continuity as the condition of all possible 
rationality. We could not go on without it. We could not think unless 
there were some continuity as the condition of thought itself. 
Mr. Oxeniiam.— There are other places in which defects are alluded to, 
but I will only point to two cases, which appear to establish the truth of 
