rom the object of that
conception, does it not follow that the conception which remains is, as I
have said, not theistic, but non-theistic?

Here my criticism might properly have ended, were it not that Mr. Fiske,
after having divested the Deity of all his psychical attributes, forthwith
proceeds to show how it may be dimly possible to reinvest him with
attributes that are "quasi-psychical." Mr. Fiske is, of course, far too
subtle a thinker not to see that his previous argument from relativity
precludes him from assigning much weight to the ontological speculations in
which he here indulges, seeing that in whatever degree the relativity of
knowledge renders legitimate the non-ascription to Deity of known psychical
attributes, in some such degree at least must it render illegitimate the
ascription to Deity of unknown psychical attributes. But in the part of his
work in which he treats of the quasi-psychical attributes, Mr. Fiske is
merely engaged in showing that the speculative standing of the
"materialists" is inferior to that of the "spiritualists;" so that, as this
is a subject distinct from Theism, he is not open to the charge of
inconsistency. Well, feeble as these speculations undoubtedly are in the
support which they render to Theism, it nevertheless seems desirable to
consider them before closing this review. The speculations in question are
quoted from Mr. Spencer, and are as follows:--

"Mind, as known to the possessor of it, is a circumscribed aggregate of
activities; and the cohesion of these activities, one with another,
throughout the aggregate, compels the postulation of a something of which
they are the activities. But the same experiences which make him aware of
this coherent aggregate of mental activities, simultaneously make him aware
of activities that are not included in it--outlying activities which become
known by their effects on this aggregate, but which are experimentally
proved to be not coherent with it, and to be coherent with one another
(_First Principles_, Sec.Sec. 43, 44). As, by the definition of them, these
external activities cannot be brought within the aggregate of activities
distinguished as those of Mind, they must for ever remain to him nothing
more than the unknown correlatives of their effects on this aggregate; and
can be thought of only in terms furnished by this aggregate. Hence, if he
regards his conceptions of these activities lying beyond Mind as
constituting knowledge of