Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/18

Rh sensibly present is finite, is thereby only derivatively real, and thus is intrinsically conditioned by this Ground of all, which is thus, again, intrinsically the Unconditioned. Hence, though God therefore certainly is, he is forever unknown and unknowable: because to know is to think, to think is to condition, and to condition the Unconditioned is a self-contradiction.” In this way the so-called being of God was supposed to be saved at the cost of his essence; and the mysteries of traditional faith were held to be further preserved and vindicated, because, as it was announced, need was now shown, and a way made, for Revelation, since our human knowledge had been demonstrated incompetent.

In contrast to this attempted theistic Agnosticism, there appeared almost simultaneously, issuing from France through Comte, an Agnosticism openly atheistic. It was entitled Positivism, as restricting, its credence to the only things certain by “positive” evidence — the immediate and autocratic evidence of sensible experience. It said: “Let there be an end now, not only to theological, but to all metaphysical Entities quite as much; for all are alike the illusory products of mere abstraction and conjecture.” As the substitution of the “Ultimate Reality” for God had turned God into something unknowable, God — and the “Ultimate Reality” too, as for that — became, as the positivist justly enough observed, an affair of no more concern to us knowers than if he or it didn’t exist. So, let human life be organised without any reference to any “Reality” beyond phenomena, and let us confine our knowledge to its