nd misrepresenting it. In addition to the service that
Spencer unwittingly rendered the current religion by his use of the
"Unknowable" (with which we deal fully later), a further help was given
by his destruction of an Atheism that had no existence. This remarkable
performance will be found in the first part of his "First Principles."
Respecting the origin of the universe, he tells us, there are three
intelligible propositions--although neither of these, on his own
showing, is intelligible. We may assert that it is self-existent, that
it is self-created, or that it is created by an external agency. All
three propositions, he proceeds to show, are equally inconceivable. The
noticeable thing about the performance is that Atheism is identified
with the proposition that the universe is self-existent. A very slight
acquaintance with the writings of representative Atheists would have
shown Mr. Spencer that "the origin of the universe" is one of those
questions on which Atheism has wisely been silent, and it has also
insisted that all attempts to deal with such a question can only result
in a meaningless string of words. To the Atheist, "the universe"--the
sum of existence--is a fact that no amount of reasoning can get behind
or beyond. To think of the universe as a whole is an impossibility;
while to talk of its origin is to assume, first, that it did originate,
and, second, that we have some means by which we can transcend all the
known limits of the human mind. The Atheist can say, and has said, with
Mr. Spencer himself--whose final statement of Agnosticism differs in no
material respect from Atheism, that in discussing the "origin of the
universe," we can only succeed in multiplying impossibilities of thought
"by every attempt we make to explain its existence." No one has pointed
out more clearly than Mr. Spencer that "infinity" is not a conception,
but the negation of one. The pity is that he did not realise that in
taking up this position he was on exactly the same level of criticism
that Atheists have pursued. For them the universe is an ultimate fact;
all that we can do is to mark the ceaseless changes always going on
around us, and to develope our capacity for modifying their action in
the interests of human welfare. Farther than this our knowledge does not
and cannot go; and it may be added that even though our knowledge could
go beyond the world of phenomena, such knowledge would not be of the
slightest possible valu