hear, and if it was as meaningless as the Athanasian Creed, is was, for
that reason, quite as satisfying. It gave all the comfort of a religious
confession of faith, and it has been the parent of a whole host of more
recent apologies for God.

In itself the "Unknowable" was harmless enough. Its philosophic value
is not great, its scientific utility is nil. To say that everything
proceeds from an "Ultimate Reality" is not very helpful, and to follow
on with the declaration that we know nothing about it, and that it would
be of no use to us if we did, does not sound very encouraging. It
reminds one of the description of the horse that had only two
faults--one that it was hard to catch, and the other that it was no good
when it was caught. We repeat with all solemnity the formula that all
things proceed from an infinite and eternal energy, and that this is the
Ultimate Reality, and then find that in relation to any and every
question we are precisely where we were. Its acceptance in certain
religious circles, and its use later, may be taken as evidence of the
fact that what the pious mind longs for is not sense but satisfaction.

Still there remains cause for wonder that this "Unknowable" should ever
have been taken as affording foundation for the belief in deity. The
most extreme materialist or Atheist need not be in the slightest degree
disconcerted on being told things proceed from an "Infinite and Eternal
Energy." It is only what the Atheist has said, minus the capital
letters. He has affirmed his conviction, that all phenomena result from
the permutations of matter and force, which are eternal because no time
limit can be placed to their operations. And you do not add anything
material to the statement by printing it in capital letters. That the
Spencerian abstraction should have been taken as a substitute for deity
proves how desperate the situation is. Drowning men clutch at straws,
and a disintegrating deity hopes to renew his strength by the lavish
use of capital letters.

For, after all, what the theist needs is, not an eternal energy, but a
personality. An inscrutable existence will not do. There is no dispute
that something exists. There is no quarrel over mere existence. It is
with the nature of what exists and the mode of its operation that the
issue arises. The theist needs a special kind of energy, a special form
of existence, a special kind of "reality" if his case is to be
established. It will not do f