365 
Dean Hansel’s somewhat unhappy nomenclature in his discussion of what 
he termed “ regulative truth,” encouraged a similar way of speaking 
This is assuming that the “conditioned ” is all, and the unconditioned is 
no object of thought or knowledge, because it is not like the phenomenal 
subject to demonstration. It is pure petitio, that the knowable and the 
phenomenal are co-extensive. The process of argument, on the contrary, 
always implies impersonal reason, (except in the case of a man who would 
convince another of his own opinion, because it is his own opinion , and not 
because it is reasonable or right per se) : and if impersonal reason, as an 
abstraction, ultimately implies personal consciousness of Reason, there is 
an end to the ambiguous assertion as to the “ unknowable,” and the double 
sense of the term “unthinkable”; some & priori being indispensable to 
the entire Reasoning process, which no metaphysician could suppose to be 
carried on simply by means of “ collective terms,” bringing the phenomena 
into ideal relation — (as Mr. Mill seemed to say, § 19, &c.). 
To speak of the Eternal, and the First Cause, as “ unknowable,” while 
admitting His being, as Cause and Reason, as Mr. Spencer, and indeed his 
kind of “ science ” seems to do, (and speak even some Religio towards Him), 
is in the name of knowledge to deny the very ground and sine qn& non of all 
knowledge. It is one thing to say “ that we could not by searching find 
out God ” through mere argument ; and to say that we do not “ know” the 
Essential One, in whom alone we live and move and think. To say the 
latter is a contradiction in terms ; but we must not confound all know- 
ledge ” with formal conceptions.* 
Note C (§ 46). 
On Life; and Professor Tyndall’s Views of the Origin of Motion and 
Organisation . 
Professor Tyndall’s views, like Mr. Mill’s, are a kind of Reaction from 
imperfect Christian Philosophy. The tendency of Calvinistic Puritanism 
in all its forms — whether as found in the ancestry of Mr. Mill or Professor 
Tyndall, is to Rationalism ; as the more thoughtful of the “ Evangelical” 
leaders fully recognize. This may account in some degree for his sensi- 
tiveness under the rebukes administered to him in the name of Science at 
times, and in the name of Philosophy and Religion yet more frequently. 
But a thorough inquirer ought not to shrink from thoroughness on the part 
of those who differ from him. To conduct people to the edge of the pre- 
cipice of Atheism and prepare for the last leap, and then complain that 
some start back and say that it is a precipice, is scarcely fair ; but to 
complain of being persecuted, — “ begrimed ” and “ spattered,” as he calls 
it, is somewhat worse. 
* See Collegii Sancti Thomce Complutensis in octo Libros Physicorum 
Aristotelis Qucvstiones, 1719 ; and comp. S. Thomce Compendium Tcologicc. 
VOL. IX. 2 c 
