303 
XX. One other passage of Mr. Spencer's which AgeTieralde . 
we cannot forbear quoting, from its intrinsic value fence of that 
in relation to our subject : — position. 
There is a “ consideration which should not be overlooked — a consideration 
which students of science more especially need to have pointed out. Occu- 
pied as such are with established truths, and accustomed to regard things not 
already known as things to be hereafter discovered, they are liable to forget 
that information, however extensive it may become, can never satisfy inquiry. 
Positive knowledge does not and never can fill the whole region of possible 
thought. At the uttermost reach of discovery there arises, and must ever 
arise, the question — What lies beyond ? . . . . Throughout all future 
time, as now, the human mind may occupy itself, not only with ascertained 
phenomena and their relations, but also with that unascertained something 
which phenomena and- their relations imply. Hence, if knowledge cannot 
monopolize consciousness, if it must always continue possible for the mind to 
dwell on that which transcends knowledge, then there can never cease to be 
a place for something of the nature of Keligion ; since Keligion under all 
forms is distinguished from everything else in this, that its subject-matter is 
that which passes the sphere of experience.” 
This may well suffice to dispose of the appeal of the mere 
Naturalist to reason. But we are by no means content tb 
leave the subject where the hereditary unreason 
of a self-satisfied collector of details might be apt an N ap|gjf tJ 
to intrench itself, viz., in the assumption that he but to 
is practical, and strong in his facts. The facts are 
also ours ; they are common property, invaluable, though they 
may need a great deal of sifting. It may be convenient to 
opponents to forget that the Christian Philosophy asserts a 
complete plan or scheme of distribution in all nature, only 
that it claims to have also the clue to that which “ lies 
beyond," and so is more, not less, complete than other philo- 
sophy. 
XXI. Creation, according to its very idea, in the Christian 
Philosophy, is a projection into finite being from Him who 
essentially is. Any other conception might easily 
J *' -i . i ° . Some rela- 
become pantheistic, and so, involving a contradic- tion of tie su- 
tion. Finite being, whether merely phenomenal, ^nominal* 16 
or also active, still stands, however, in some rela- stm con * 
j * ' tiniie 
tion to the Supreme. Not that God is ever person- 
Thomists. A translation of the Contra Gentiles of Aquinas, long partially 
prepared, and compared with the tracts Contra Averroistas and de Potentid , 
may yet appear as a contribution to the great work of Theistic defence, if 
the present writer should ever be at leisure to complete it. Meanwhile, it is 
right to point attention in this direction. (See the Complutensian Questions 
of the school of St. Thomas, on the Eight Books of Aristotle’s Physics.) 
