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a term to hide our ignorance, — and some of the reasoning 
which Hamilton put forward to establish his ^^Law of the 
Conditioned is accepted. As, therefore, neither Science nor 
Religion can arrive at absolute truth, it is contended that the 
reconciliation between them must be made by each admitting 
that its explanations are only proximate, and not ultimate, 
and that the Universe displays, in all its phenomena, the 
existence of an Unknown Power, which Power must remain 
to us for ever inscrutable. 
[In saying that the Power manifested in the Universe 
is Unknown and Unknowable,^^ Mr. Spencer seems to 
hint that his conception of the Supreme Being may rise as 
much above Personality as Intelligence and Will rise above 
mere mechanism. This is very startling. Mr. Spencer may 
have a conception of God higher than that which satisfied 
men like Moses and St. John, although this staggers belief ; 
but, inasmuch as he denies to man both Conscience and Will, 
thus degrading man to a position lower by far than any they 
attributed to him, it becomes simply incredible that Mr. 
Spencer^s conception of God can be so incomparably exalted.] 
Part II. of First Principles is devoted to The 
Knowable.^^ Philosophy is first defined as the unification 
of knowledge, the gathering up into one extended logical 
conception of all truths contributed by each one of the 
Sciences. But a point of certain knowledge is needed as a 
Datum from whence to start, and a provisional Datum is 
found in the assertion of consciousness that subject and 
object both exist. All the objective facts which consciousness 
gives us are then resolved into our subjective conceptions of 
Space, Time, Matter, Motion, Force. These five are further 
resolved into one higher generalisation, viz., the Persistence 
of Force.^^ Thus the ^^Persistence of Force is shown to be 
the only objective fact to whose existence consciousness 
testifies. The reasoning which proves this seems very strong. 
Thus the Persistence of Force forms a solid rock of certain 
truth in the midst of a fluid and changing universe. It is 
then shown that from this Persistence of Force ’’ there 
follows of necessity the continuance and the precision of 
natural law, i.e., there follows what the Duke of Argyll calls 
The Reign of Law ’’ and the Unity of Nature.’’^ The one 
law of our Globe, the Correlation of the Physical Forces,^^ 
is then traced in its multiplied results. Up to this point, if 
there be a break in the reasoning, I am unable to discover 
it. The Correlation is applied to Astronomy, Geology, 
vegetable growth, and then — without any break — to the 
growth of animals, the growth of man, to all mental changes. 
