beforehand the materialistic
objection to a future life, and so to have raised the ulterior question
with which this paragraph opens.

We have seen in the Introduction that all first principles even of
scientific facts are known by intuition and not by reason. No one can
deny this. Now, if there be a God, the fact is certainly of the nature
of a first principle; for it must be the first of all first principles.
No one can dispute this. No one can therefore dispute the necessary
conclusion, that, if there be a God, He is knowable, (if knowable at
all) by intuition and not by reason.

Indeed a little thought is enough to show that from its very nature as
such, reason must be incapable of adjudicating on the subject, for it is
a process of inferring from the known to the unknown.

Or thus. It would be against reason itself to suppose that God, even if
He exists, can be known by reason; He must be known, if knowable at all,
by intuition[57].

Observe, although God might give an objective revelation of Himself,
e.g. as Christians believe He has, even this would not give knowledge
of Him save to those who believe the revelations genuine; and I doubt
whether it is logically possible for any form of objective revelation of
itself to compel belief in it. Assuredly one rising from the dead to
testify thereto would not, nor would letters of fire across the sky do
so. But, even if it were logically possible, we need not consider the
abstract possibility, seeing that, as a matter of fact, no such
demonstrative revelation has been given.

Hence, the only legitimate attitude of pure reason is pure agnosticism.
No one can deny this. But, it will be said, there is this vast
difference between our intuitive knowledge of all other first principles
and that alleged of the 'first of all first principles,' viz. that the
latter is confessedly _not_ known to all men. Now, assuredly, there is
here a vast difference. But so there ought to be, if we are here in a
state of probation, as before explained. And that we are in such a state
is not only the hypothesis of religion, but the sole rational
explanation as well as moral justification of our existence as rational
beings and moral agents[58].

It is not necessarily true, as J.S. Mill and all other agnostics think,
that even if internal intuition be of divine origin, the illumination
thus furnished can only be of evidential value to the individual subject
thereof. On the contrary, i