s is not an easy idea
to grasp, but it is the root of all scientific conception of spirit; for
without it there is no common principle to which we can refer the
innumerable forms of manifestation that spirit assumes.

It is the conception of Life as the sum-total of all its undistributed
powers, being as yet none of these in particular, but all of them in
potentiality. This is, no doubt, a highly abstract idea, but it is
essentially that of the centre from which growth takes place by
expansion in every direction. This is that last residuum which defies
all our powers of analysis. This is truly "the unknowable," not in the
sense of the unthinkable but of the unanalysable. It is the subject of
perception, not of knowledge, if by knowledge we mean that faculty which
estimates the _relations_ between things, because here we have passed
beyond any questions of relations, and are face to face with the
absolute.

This innermost of all is absolute Spirit. It is Life as yet not
differentiated into any specific mode; it is the universal Life which
pervades all things and is at the heart of all appearances.

To come into the knowledge of this is to come into the secret of power,
and to enter into the secret place of Living Spirit. Is it illogical
first to call this the unknowable, and then to speak of coming into the
knowledge of it? Perhaps so; but no less a writer than St. Paul has set
the example; for does he not speak of the final result of all searchings
into the heights and depths and lengths and breadths of the inner side
of things as being, to attain the knowledge of that Love which passeth
knowledge. If he is thus boldly illogical in phrase, though not in fact,
may we not also speak of knowing "the unknowable"? We may, for this
knowledge is the root of all other knowledge.

The presence of this undifferentiated universal life-power is the final
axiomatic fact to which all our analysis must ultimately conduct us. On
whatever plane we make our analysis it must always abut upon pure
essence, pure energy, pure being; that which knows itself and recognises
itself, but which cannot dissect itself because it is not built up of
parts, but is ultimately integral: it is pure Unity. But analysis which
does not lead to synthesis is merely destructive: it is the child
wantonly pulling the flower to pieces and throwing away the fragments;
not the botanist, also pulling the flower to pieces, but building up in
his mind from those ca