338 
death is, as a rule, physically painless. But the Christian 
philosophy, while eliminating Evil from Nature as constituted 
by God, (as indeed all philosophy and all science must, because, 
to suppose it as an aboriginal fact, is to suppose a destructive 
contradiction), perceives also, as Mr. Mill does not, that evil is 
under control, is transitional, and is not the end. 
That evil could be, is the very hypothesis of the existence of 
variable Force, Potentiality, or Moral agency itself, as morality 
and Christianity conceive it. But we do not stop 
Christian phi- there, as materialism does and must. We conceive 
nizes h it. rec ° g ' a f uture implied even in potentiality itself. If on 
the one hand we could suppose an unconscious 
mechanical universe ; on the other hand we see and own con- 
scious being capable of originating thought and action, and in 
thought and action freely conforming, or else refusing to 
conform, to the Eternal ideal of Good. It must be one or other. 
A universe of automata would not of course win praise as vir- 
tuous, or the opposite. A universe in which conscious agency, or 
alternative “ force,” i.e. power to choose action, (and not merely 
seem to do so, which is ridiculous), existed, might have virtuous 
agents and it might not. To be capable of so being a “ force,” and 
so ah interno capable of the good, and capable of declining the 
good, is all that our philosophy needs; and it is surely a very 
fanaticism of the mechanical that would assign “force,” i.e. phe- 
nomenal power, to a molecule or an atom, and deny it to a man. 
30. The uneducated and impatient, many who inquire in a 
merely wilful way as to the “origin of evil” should 
of the' c unedT" ask themselves, whether they think the Supreme Being 
able ultimately could originate free agents, or variable forces P Mr. 
Spenser says that if there be any Will, there can be 
no psychology. Well, but does the world seem to exhibit, in 
manifold phenomena, finite agency having apparently in itself an 
inscrutable alternative power of choosing and refusing? Is it 
“ scientific ” to treat these phenomena, as well as the prae-pheno 
menal postulate, as unreal ? To call upon us to manipulate the 
prae-phenomenal in the forms of post-phenomenal argument, is to 
mistake the first premiss. Any so-called “proof” could but 
push the a priori one step farther back. All that is possible 
for us is to gather phenomena , to come at length to the most 
primary, and perceive that there could not previously have been 
universal Nothing; and to be thus certain of the necessity of 
the prae-phenomenal. We may try to express that in the nearest 
suitable terms ; but after all it precedes ns. It is, — but it defies 
our forms. 
The philosopher knows that he has not to construct Nature ; 
he has with all humility to set to work to understand Nature. 
