and secret of most complex and interesting
phenomena. It has always been of the greatest importance in the history
of mankind. It has been able to hold its own in face of the attacks of
science. It must contain an element of truth. All religions, however,
assert that their God is for us not altogether cognisable, that God is a
great mystery. The higher their rank, the more do they acknowledge this.
It is by the flippant invasion of this mystery that the popular
religiosity offends. It talks of God as if he were a man in the next
street. It does not distinguish between merely imaginative fetches into
the truth, and presumably accurate definition of that truth. Equally,
the attempts which are logically possible at metaphysical solutions of
the problem, namely, theism, pantheism, and atheism, if they are
consistently carried out, assert, each of them, more than we know and
are involved in contradiction with themselves. But the results of modern
physics and chemistry reveal, as the constant element in all phenomena,
force. This manifests itself in various forms which are interchangeable,
while amid all these changes the force remains the same. This latter
must be regarded as the reality, and basis of all that is relative and
phenomenal. The entire universe is to be explained from the movements of
this absolute force. The phenomena of nature and of mental life come
under the same general laws of matter, motion, and force.

Spencer's doctrine, as here stated, is not adequate to account for the
world of mental life or adapted to serve as the basis of a
reconciliation of science and religion. It does not carry us beyond
materialism. Spencer's real intention was directed to something higher
than that. If the absolute is to be conceived at all, it is as a
necessary correlative of our self-consciousness. If we get the idea of
force from the experience of our own power of volition, is it not
natural to think of mind-force as the prius of physical force, and not
the reverse? Accordingly, the absolute force, basis of all specific
forces, would be mind and will. The doctrine of evolution would
harmonise perfectly with these inferences. But it would have to become
idealistic evolution, as in Schelling, instead of materialistic, as in
Comte. We are obliged, Spencer owns, to refer the phenomenal world of
law and order to a first cause. He says that this first cause is
incomprehensible. Yet he further says, when the question of attributing