ce to the fundamental postulate of religions,--a
misconception which used to be more current than it is now. He cannot
fairly be described as a materialist. He is no more a materialist than
he is a theist. He is, in the strictest sense of the word, an agnostic.
He was the most conspicuous example of the _thing_ before Huxley
invented the _word_. The misconception was shared by no less a man than
the late Benjamin Jowett, the well-known master of Balliol College,
Oxford, who, in one of his published "Letters," says: "I sometimes think
that we platonists and idealists are not half so industrious as those
repulsive people who only 'believe what they can hold in their hand,'
Bain, H. Spencer, etc., who are the very Tuppers of philosophy." It is
hard to see how the law of evolution and other generalizations of an
abstract kind with which Mr. Spencer's name is associated can be held in
anybody's hands. Letting that pass, however, Mr. Spencer has himself
suggested that, since the system of synthetic philosophy begins with a
division entitled the "Unknowable," having for its purpose to show that
all material phenomena are manifestations of a Power which transcends
our knowledge,--that "force as we know it can be regarded only as a
Conditioned effect of the Unconditioned Cause"--there has been thereby
afforded sufficiently decided proof of belief in something which cannot
be held in the hands. It is, indeed, absurd to apply the epithet
"materialist" to a man who has written in "The Principles of
Psychology": "Hence, though of the two it seems easier to translate
so-called matter into so-called spirit than to translate so-called
spirit into so-called matter (which latter is, indeed, wholly
impossible), yet no translation can carry us beyond our symbols."

III.

Any exposition of the "Synthetic Philosophy" must, of course, begin with
the volume entitled "First Principles." In the first part of this
preliminary work the author carries a step further the doctrine of the
Unknowable put into shape by Hamilton and Mansel. He points out the
various directions in which science leads to the same conclusion, and
shows that in their united belief in an Absolute that transcends not
only human knowledge but human conception lies the only possible
reconciliation of science and religion. In the second part of the same
book Mr. Spencer undertakes to formulate the laws of the Knowable. That
is to say, he essays to state the ultimate principl