102 
u Canst thou by searching find out God ? ” asks Job.* “No 
man hath seen God at any time,” says the Apostle St. John.f 
St. Paul tells us that God “ dwells in the light that no man 
can approach unto,” and adds, that “ no man hath seen,” or 
“ can see Him.” J Our quarrel with Mr. Spencer, and still 
more with those who profess to expound Mr. Spencer's prin- 
ciples, and who, like disciples in general, are neither so 
cautious nor so reverent as their teacher, is that in conse- 
quence of this inability to comprehend God we are in effect 
exhorted to dismiss Him altogether from our thoughts. § 
6. Now Mr. Herbert Spencer himself, as well as Dean 
Mansel, whom he quotes, has taught us that this incapacity 
for forming abstract conceptions extends, not only to what 
they call the “ Infinite and Absolute,” but to everything else 
whatsoever. || Thus, then, to be consistent, we must also 
dismiss from our minds as utterly inscrutable and impene- 
trable, and therefore as out of the sphere of all practical action, 
everything whatsoever that exists, including ourselves. We 
are as incapable of forming conceptions of space, of time, of 
being, of man, of self, as we are of God. And yet the pro- 
position that we should regard all these things as practically 
non-existent, as “ transcending intuition ” and being “ beyond 
imagination,” could not be made outside a lunatic asylum. 
What right, then, have we to select the idea of God' out 
of a thousand other ideas equally unthinkable, If and say that 
while we will do our best to ascertain what can be known 
about all the others, we will leave that, and that only, utterly 
out of our calculations ? 
7. It will not be difficult to bring proofs from Mr. Herbert 
Spencer's work of the statement we have just made. Mr. 
Spencer does not attempt to conceal the facts. All he does is, 
* Job xi. 7 ; Cf. xxxvi. 26 ; xxvii. 23. f St. John i. 18 ; vi. 46. 
t 1 Tim. vi. 16 ; Cf. Rom. xi. 33, 34. 
§ I say “ in effect,” because no sane person would ever try to think about 
what he believed to be “ unthinkable,” to concern himself with that whose 
essence consisted in the fact that it was unknown ( see p. 2, note 3), or to 
take any heed whatever of an “ Ultimate Cause which cannot be mentally 
realised at all. ,, (See last page, note.) 
|| See First Principles, ch. iii., on Ultimate Scientific Ideas ; and Mansel, 
Bampton Lectures, lect. iii. 
Mr. Spencer (Appendix, p. 580) pours all the vials of his contempt on 
Professor Birks for representing him as saying that we cannot conceive ideas 
of these things. Be says it is the realities, not the ideas, which cannot be 
conceived. To conceive a reality is rather a formidable affair. It is, in fact, 
equivalent to creating it. But what is the meaning of “ unthinkable ” ? 
Surely it is equivalent to “ unable to conceive ideas of.” And, if our 
ideas do not correspond to the reality, they are not really ideas of it at all. 
