The effect is finite; therefore with limited perfection; the First Cause is infinite, therefore without limitation, and hence all perfect. The perfection of the Infinite must then be conceived as transcending all limits. But since the First Cause must contain all perfection to infinity, it stands to reason that it cannot contain the perfection of the finite formally, that is as the finite does. Our conception of the perfection of the First Cause contains three elements: first, that the First Cause possesses whatsoever perfection the finite does; secondly, that its perfection is beyond all limits, or infinite; and thirdly, that we can only conceive that perfection analogically, that is, we conceive the First Cause as possessing all those perfections which its effects do, yet not in the degree or kind in which they do, but transcending their imperfection infinitely. We may aid ouselves by an illustration, which of course falls short of the reality. An artist preconceives his statue and fashions it after the idea he has formed in his mind. While the statue possesses a perfection which the artist gives it, still it is not the same in kind or degree as the perfection in the artist's mind; the artistic prototype is in the intellectual order, and its expression in the material, and the one excels the other in perfection as the ideal excels the physical. As from the statue, which is effect, we can argue back to the artist's conception, so from effects we can argue back to the First Cause and glean some notion of its perfection. In none of these three elements is there the contradiction which Mr. Spencer advocates. That the First Cause possesses whatsoever perfection its effects do, in this there can certainly be no repugnance; that the First Cause possesses them to infinity must be true, for it could not be the First Cause if it did not. And just here comes in Mr. Spencer's misconception. He, as well as Mr. Mansel, mistakes the negative conception of the First Cause, not holding the perfections of the finite as the finite does under limitations, with the positive conception of the infinite possessing these perfections transcendently. The act of the mind here is to first deny limitations to the infinite, that is, negative the negation, which restricts the finite, and so take away the imperfection which makes the finite to be what it is. It then conceives the infinite as possessing all these perfections, which are the positive element in the human mind's thought, and moreover so transcendently that these perfections must be conceived through analogy with finite effects. This, the proper conception of the First Cause, is free from all contradiction. Mr. Spencer only argues a contradiction when he confuses the negative with the positive concept, and so asserts that we conceive the infinite under the limitations of the finite.

Mr. Spencer's second misconception takes its source from the confusion of the inconceivable with the incomprehensible. The inconceivable, as he uses the term, means that which is contrary to reason;

but the incomprehensible should mean that which is above reason. Now the First Cause is undoubtedly incomprehensible in its own essence, and beyond the conception of the finite mind. No created intellect can adequately comprehend the infinite. But this is a very different thing from not apprehending it at all. It is certainly within the grasp of the finite intellect to conceive the infinite inadequately, but because it does not grasp the infinite fully, it does not follow that its conception is a contradiction. When Mr. Spencer cites Sir William Hamilton as enumerating various "thinkers of note," who have held and advocated this doctrine of the inconceivable, both make the fatal blunder of supposing these thinkers to mean inconceivable in its strict sense, whereas they really meant incomprehensible, that which is above human reason, not contrary to it. Mr. Spencer cannot adequately comprehend the tiniest mote that floats in a sunbeam, yet what comprehension he has of it is not contradictory because, forsooth, he does not grasp it in its totality.

After his elaborate attempt to convince the reader that the First Cause implies contradiction in its conception, that it is "rigorously inconceivable," and that any hypothesis respecting the ultimate cause is “even unthinkable," what is our surprise to find Mr. Spencer endeavoring to demolish his own painfully constructed argument in the latter half of his chapter on "The Relativity of All Knowledge." After having approvingly quoted Mr. Mansel and Sir William Hamilton in favor of his doctrine, he turns and repudiates their reasoning, telling us "that there remains to be stated a qualification, which saves us from that skepticism otherwise necessitated!" Plainly, then, Mr. Spencer admits that his doctrine of the inconceivable leads to a skepticism, the burden of which he is not willing to take on his own shoulders. Skepticism, he sees, ends in absurdity, and so would involve him in a selfstultification. But he must escape from this "intolerable contradiction," and so he substitutes "a qualification" which serves him as does a plank a drowning man. Mr. Mansel's and Sir William Hamilton's "propositions are imperfect statements of the truth, omitting, or rather excluding, as they do, an all-important fact." What, now, is this all-important fact which makes the foregoing argument "an elaborate suicide," as Mr. Spencer characterizes it, and, at the same time, saves him from the absurdity of skepticism? Let us listen to Mr. Spencer himself: "Besides that definite consciousness of which logic formulates the laws, there is also an indefinite consciousness which cannot be formulated." What this indefinite is we will let Mr. Spencer himself say. "The error" (namely, of philosophers, like Sir William Hamilton, who are bent on demonstrating the limits and conditions of consciousness)" consists in assuming that consciousness contains nothing but limits

and conditions, to the entire neglect of that which is limited and conditioned; the abstraction of these conditions and limits is, by this hypothesis, the abstraction of them only; consequently, there must be a residuary in consciousness of something which filled up the outlines; and this indefinite something constitutes our consciousness of the non-relative or absolute. Impossible though it is to give this consciousness any quantitative or qualitative expression whatever, it is not the less certain that it remains with us a positive and indestructible element of thought." Mr. Spencer has been arguing with Sir William Hamilton that "to think is to condition;" hence, to think of the Absolute is to condition it, and thence arises the contradiction of a conditioned unconditioned. Mr. Spencer now asserts that there remains, in spite of this, a consciousness that there is some indestructible and positive element in thought, which rescues the mind from complete skepticism, notwithstanding the contradiction which the "laws of thought" force upon us. This positive element is an “indefinite something” which "constitutes our consciousness of the Absolute," and it suffers "no qualitative or quantitative expression whatever." Again he says: “The continual negation of each particular form and limit simply results in the more or less complete abstraction of all forms and limits, and so ends in an indefinite consciousness of the unformed and the unlimited." And this is the Absolute which is to save Mr. Spencer from the shipwreck of skepticism! A formless, vague abstraction, an indefinite consciousness of something! Mr. Spencer's Absolute is nothing more than the indeterminate idea of being, which he reaches in ascending the categories by successive abstractions from the particular until he gyrates upwards into the dizzy transcendental being, that “indestructible " element, that "positive" something, which remains in spite of all laws of thought! Truly, this is a wonderful generation, an evolution worthy of Mr. Spencer's acumen, more miraculous than spontaneous generation, from the indeterminate, indefinite, vague, formless concept of being in general to create an Absolute "in every sense perfect, complete, total; including within itself all power, and transcending all law!" This, then, is that “ultimate reality” behind all phenomena, that "infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed!" This is the mysterious reality which we are to regard as the cause of all things, and of which Mr. Spencer can only think with reverence and humility, if he thinks at all.

This is the transcendent infinite, for the mentioning of which as a conscious being, who cares for and loves the creatures of his own making, Mr. Spencer so bitterly castigates theologians. It seems singular that Mr. Spencer should fall into such an animated and vigorous speech over his unknowable, when, according to

his own teaching, it is like nothing in the waters under the earth, nor anything in the heavens above the earth, nor aught that is on the earth; of which all predi ation fails; which is neither conscious nor unconscious, being nor non-being, loving nor unloving, good nor bad; for all epithets alike are meaningless when applied to it. If, then, we should even call it a liar and a deceiver, where would be the impiety? If we should say that it is supremely evil, where the wrong, since our words have no meaning? If it has given us intellects to know the truth, and then forever withholds the truth from us, what wrong in cursing it for the deception it duly practices upon us, holding us but as its playthings and in implacable cruelty torturing us with an omnipresent riddle which we must ever seek to solve, and ever fail? Did Fijian or Indian ever torture his victim with more fiendish malice than this barbarous unknowable? This is the mystery, to keep which alive in man's grateful mind is the sole function of religion. This the object of adoration and reverence and belief (?), whence are to be drawn all consolations, all inspiration and aids to right-doing. The veriest fetich worshipper, who fancies his god to reside in the stick which his own hand has carved, renders a worship purer, more rational, higher, and more dignified a thousand times, incomparably, than all Agnostics together, who, in the arrogance of their conceit, would erect temples, richer than Solomon's, to this vague, formless, indefinite abstraction of their own vapid intellects.

Mr. Harrison has decidedly the advantage over Mr. Spencer in this matter of religious worship. He has accepted the latter premiss of the unknowable, and argued it out to its legitimate conclusion, wherein all religion evaporates into such rhetoric as Mr. Harrison wittily disperses over his pages. Mr. Harrison is logical at least, when he accepts the fatal doctrine of the unknowable, for it necessarily ends in that "ghost of religion," humanity! The flaw of both lies in the adoption of the absurdity which Mr. Spencer has laid down in the beginning, an utterly inconceivable god, which the human mind annihilates in its attempt to think of it. Neither humanity nor the unknowable can ever be the proper object of religious worship. Mr. Spencer rightly rejects Mr. Harrison's folly of humanity, and Mr. Harrison properly repudiates Mr. Spencer's absurdity of the unknowable. Both are simulacra, engendered by "persistent misconception along certain defined grooves ofthought." Reason, so far from being exalted, is debased by the acceptance of either. Man's only dignity consists in having come from God, who has created him to know Him, the Truth. And " I, for one, cannot think there is such a radical vice in the constitution of things" as to suppose that man's intellect was made to conceive the highest truth a lie.

VOL. XI.-21

SOME

THE WAGE QUESTION.

OME years ago, when the "labor question" had not nearly acquired the prominence it now has, a thoughtful writer declared that in the near future the chief contentions in society would not be so much about political institutions and civil rights as about the relations and respective rights of employers and employees. The present state of things in Europe and in this country fully verifies this prediction. The subjects about which the people, as a whole, are most deeply concerned are not political, but industrial. In England, and Scotland, and Ireland there has been an extension of the right of suffrage, yet this concession to a million or more of persons who previously had no voice in electing members of Parliament and shaping the political policy of Great Britain created only a slight ripple on the surface of public opinion and was accepted without excitement and without any special manifestation of gladness or rejoicing by the industrial classes, to whom it was extended.

They are more deeply concerned about their material condition, about the wages they receive and the securing of permanent and remunerative employment, than whether or not they have the right to vote at elections for members of Parliament or for county or municipal officers.

So, too, in Germany and in France, the majority of the people of those countries concern themselves far less about the political institutions under which they live than about the questions which immediately relate to their industrial condition and the securing of the largest and most certain return for their daily labor.

The same fact confronts us in this country. Convince the voter in the United States that the placing of any political party in power would add twenty-five cents per day to his wages without any increase of time or of the work he is required to do, and the popular vote would immediately turn in favor of that party.

It is plainly the industrial question, in one or another of its forms, that determines how both employers and employees, or, as they are commonly styled, capitalists and workingmen, shall cast their votes. The questions about duties on imports from foreign countries, about a tariff or a free-trade policy, the questions connected with our shipping and commercial interests, our railroads and our banking interests, our national debt and the manner of paying it, the questions about the rights and powers of corporate