y their combined action. And forasmuch as the only cause that I am
able to imagine as competent to produce such effects is that of intelligent
guidance, I accept the metaphysical hypothesis that beyond the sphere of
the Knowable there exists an Unknown God.[25]

'If it is retorted that the above argument involves an absurd
contradiction, in that while it sets out with an explicit avowal of the
fact that the collective operation of general laws follows as a necessary
consequence from the primary data of physical science, it nevertheless
afterwards proceeds to explain an effect of such collective operation by a
metaphysical hypothesis; I answer that it was expressly for the purpose of
eliciting this retort that I threw my argument into the above form. For the
position which I wish to establish is this, that fully accepting the
logical cogency of the reasoning whereby the action of every law is deduced
from the primary data of science, I wish to show that when this train of
reasoning is followed to its ultimate term, it leads us into the presence
of a fact for which it is inadequate to account. If, then, my contention be
granted--viz., that to human faculties it is not conceivable how, in the
absence of a directing intelligence, general laws could be so correlated as
to produce universal harmony--then I have brought the matter to this
issue:--Notwithstanding the scientific train of argument being complete in
itself, it still leaves us in the presence of a fact which it cannot
conceivably explain; and it is this unexplained residuum--this total
product of the operation of general laws--that I appeal to as the logical
justification for a system of metaphysical teleology--a system which offers
the only conceivable explanation of this stupendous fact.

'And here I may further observe, that the scientific train of reasoning is
of the kind which embodies what Mr. Herbert Spencer calls "symbolic
conceptions of the illegitimate order."[26] That is to say, we can see how
such simple laws as that action and reaction are equal and opposite may
have been self-evolved, and from this fact we go on generalising and
generalising, until we land ourselves in wholly symbolic and--a paradox is
here legitimate--inconceivable conceptions. Now the farther we travel into
this region of unrealisable ideas, the less trustworthy is the report that
we are able to bring back. The method is in a sense scientific; but when
even scientific method is proje