Reason and Redemption [pp. 409-437]

432 REASON AND REDEMPTION. [July,
one which cannot be held on the principles of consistent rationalism. This last point, is indeed, the cruv of the whole
controversy with the Agnostics. In the meanwhile, it is curious to notice how in the rhythmical oscillations of Unbelief
extremes are constantly found meeting. The past and present, the East and West, the object and the subject, Materialism and Idealism, Positivism and Pantheism; thus obtain an
unlooked for reconciliation. But, if we are not greatly in error, it is a reconciliation on the verge of a common and irretrievable ruin.
Having now seen where Mr. Spencer's conclusion carries us,
it would be easy to show, by an independent examination, that
his premises are equally unwarrantable. For this there is not
room within the limits of the present article. No one can
open First Principics, however, and especially the first five
chapters, ad a~erturam /ibri, without discovering that the
whole doctrine of the Unknowable (which underlies the system of the so-called Positivism, in all its forms) is based upon
the reasonings of three other thinkers. Comte, on his first
page, assumed the doctrine, without proof, as one of his fund amental postulates.~' Mr. Spencer, on his part, accepts the
doctrine on the proof furnished him by the late Mr. Mansel,$
and by Sir W. Hamilton; and they got it, as all the world
knows, from the Critiqz~c of P~re Rcason.++ If the Kantian
structure, then, is unsound, so of necessity is the Spencerian,
which is the substratum of the greater part of the current
Agnosticism. Now, nothing is plainer than that Mr. Spencer
himself, in his effort to establish his own realistic scheme, has
virtu~lly receded from the ground taken by Kant and Hamilton,~ and thus abjured the very principle of the argumentation, by which alone he has ventured to defend his own position, as to the inscrutable nature of the Power manifested in
the world; of the ultimate Reality; of that mysterious Existence which has symbolized itself in matter and mind. Mr
*See Comte, Posi~ioe?/zi1osop/~, chapter i; Bohn.
~See First Principles, pp. io8-iso; 47, 49, 50, 53, ~S, 59, 6o, 63, 6~ 66 67,
43, 46. See, too, especially, pp. 39-42 and p. 55'.
++ See, for instance, Kant, Critijue oXi)llre Aeas&n, p. 311 Bohn.
~first Pcinciples, pp. 87-89.