which the existence
is to each a fact beyond all others the most certain, is yet a thing
which cannot be known at all; knowledge of it is forbidden by the very
nature of human thought." (pp. 65, 66).

Mr. Spencer does not seem to expect that any man will be shaken in his
conviction by any such argument as that. When a man is conscious of
pain, he is not to be puzzled by telling him that the pain is one thing
(the object perceived) and the self another thing (the perceiving
subject). He knows that the pain is a state of the self of which he is
conscious. Consciousness is a form of knowledge; but knowledge of
necessity supposes an intelligent reality which knows. A philosophy
which cannot be received until men cease to believe in their own
existence, must be in extremis.

Mr. Spencer's conclusion is, that the universe--nature, or the external
world with all its marvels and perpetual changes,--the world of
consciousness with its ever varying states, are impressions or
phenomena, due to an inscrutable, persistent force.

As to the nature of this primal force or power, he quotes abundantly and
approvingly from Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Mansel, to prove that it
is unknowable, inconceivable, unthinkable. He, however, differs from
those distinguished writers in two points. While admitting that we know
no more of the first cause than we do of a geometrical figure which is
at once a circle and a square, yet we do know that it is actual. For
this conviction we are not dependent on faith. In the second place,
Hamilton and Mansel taught that we know that the Infinite cannot be a
person, self-conscious, intelligent, and voluntary; yet we are forced
by our moral constitution to believe it to be an intelligent person.
This Mr. Spencer denies. "Let those," he says, "who can, believe that
there is eternal war between our intellectual faculties and our moral
obligations. I, for one, admit of no such radical vice in the
constitution of things." (p. 108). Religion has always erred, he
asserts, in that while it teaches that the Infinite Being cannot be
known, it insists on ascribing to it such and such attributes, which of
course assumes that so far forth it is known. We have no right, he
contends, to ascribe personality to the "Unknown Reality," or anything
else, except that it is the cause of all that we perceive or experience.
There may be a mode of being, as much transcending intelligence and
will, as these transcend mechanical mo