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immortals; and his nature is not yet made up so as to show 
us what will be his ultimate place, — whether amidst those who 
shed kindly benefactions on the race, or those who, like evil 
angels, leave behind them a heritage of negation, unbelief, and 
despair. But if his system is to bear the impress of truth, its 
name must be changed. If he ‘will call it the Science of 
the Physical Laws,^^ it will remain as a most valuable monu- 
ment of learning and research. But it is no System of 
Philosophy It is no unification of knowledge. He must 
yield up that proud title. The device on the cover represents 
a terrible falsehood. That device is a number of crystals, upon 
which rests a bed of mould, out of which a flower springs ; on 
the lower branches a caterpillar is crawling upwards towards 
the fully developed blossom, on whose top a butterfly rests. 
Its meaning can only be that highly-developed organic life 
grows, without a break, from the properties and forces of 
mere inorganic matter. If the reasoning of this paper be 
correct, this has now been proved to be an untrue statement. 
Mr. Spencer may continue to use the device he has chosen, 
but, in that case, he seems to me like a knight who persists 
in quartering the arms of some great hero, after it has been 
shown that he has no manner of title thereto. 
In future papers I hope to show that the two other great 
deliverances of consciousness are similarly upheld by a sound 
philosophy, and that Mr. Spencer^s reasoning against them is 
weaker and more illogical than it has been shown to be on the 
present occasion. 
For the convenience of readers who may not be well 
acquainted with Mr. SpenceFs W orks, a short abstract of his 
First Principles is here subjoined. It is believed that this 
will greatly strengthen the argument of the preceding Paper 
by making evident that our assault has been directed against 
a central and all-essential part. It will be understood that 
no positive opinion is expressed as to the actual validity of 
Mr. SpencePs arguments save where objection is taken 
against him. 
Part I. of First Principles is devoted to The 
Unknowable.^^ Here Ultimate Religious Ideas and 
Ultimate Scientific Ideas are analysed, and are each 
shown to contain some underlying truth, some Unknown 
Reality,^^ of which Reality, however, they can be but imper- 
fect expressions. From this point we are made to rise to the 
conception that all our knowledge, and indeed all conceivable 
knowledge, is, not absolute, but only relative, — is really only 
