302 
imperceptible. Be it a single object, or the whole universe, any account 
which begins with it in a concrete form, or leaves off m a concrete form, is 
incomplete ; since there remains an era of its knowable existence nude- 
scribed. and unexplained. Admitting, or rather asserting that knowledge is 
limited to the phenomenal, we have, by implication, asserted that the sphere 
of knowledge is co-extensive with the phenomenal co-extensive with a 
inodes of the unknowable that can affect consciousness. Hence, wherever 
we find being so conditioned as to act on our senses, there arise the questions 
—how it came to be thus conditioned ? and how will it cease to he thus con- 
ditioned?” (First Principles, p. 278.) 
Ag*ain : — “ We cannot take even a first step without making 
assumptions; and the only course is to proceed 
with them as provisional until they are proved 
true by the congruity of all the results reached 
Extracts in 
proof of our 
position, as 
philosophical. 
(p. 552). 
Again :■ 
1 The philosopher, “being fully convinced that 
whatever nomenclature is used, the ultimate mystery must 
remain the same, he will be as ready to formulate all phe- 
nomena in terms of matter, motion, and force as m any other 
terms : and will rather anticipate that only m a doctrine whic. 
recognizes the Unknown Cause, as co-extensive with all orders 
of phenomena, can there be a consistent Religion or a con- 
sistent Philosophy ” (p.557). , , 
Again:— “ If we admit there is something uncaused, there 
is no reason to admit a cause for anything.” 
Now we are far from wishing to imply that this careful 
writer thinks the “theory of creation by external agency an 
adequate one,” or the idea of a self-existent Being c °^- 
ceivable,” but we point out that he shuts up himself and Mr. 
Darwin to the dilemma that without a Supreme cause an e- 
cedent to Phenomenal being, he has “ m „ • 
“A change without cause,” says Mr. Herbert Spencer, is 
a thing of which no idea is possible : ” and to our mind a phi- 
losopher who so speaks is not “far from the kingdom of 
God and we may be forgiven for adding that a revision o 
his Ontology (deeper and truer than in the quotation he gives) 
may ultimately lead him to see that the self- existence of the 
Supreme is not cc unthinkable. * 
* The Ontology of the schools, which is so often summarily dismissed by a 
tradition as to its uselessness, was really displaced by the impatienceyather than 
the reason of the Renaissance and the Reformation. The same inquiries as 
to pre-phenomenal being which were then discarded by 
are beino- vindicated now by reappearing in an avenging form amon & non 
Christian thinkers. Whatever the defects of the great 
Ontology will yet have to be examined, especially as it appears among the 
