ART. II.--_Theism_--_Desiderata in the Theistic Argument._ It is a philosophical commonplace that all human questioning leads back to ultimate truths which cannot be further analysed, and of which no other explanation can be given than that _they exist_. Every explanation of the universe rests and must rest on the inexplicable. The borders of the known and the knowable are fringed with mystery, and all the data of knowledge recede into it by longer or shorter pathways. Thus, while it is the very mystery of the universe that has given rise to human knowledge, by quickening the curiosity of man, it is the same mystery which prescribes a limit to his insight, which continues to overshadow him in his researches, and to girdle him, in his latest discoveries, with its veil. In wonder all philosophy is born; in wonder it always ends: and, to adopt a well-known illustration, our human knowledge is a stream of which the source is hid, and the destination unknown, although we may surmise regarding both. But the mystery which thus envelopes the origin and the destination of the universe is not absolutely overpowering; nor does it lay an arrest on the human faculties in their efforts to understand that universe as a whole. Man strives to penetrate farther and farther into the shrine of nature, and records in the several sciences the stages of his progress. These sciences are of necessity inter-related and dependent. Each section of human knowledge has a doorway leading into these on either side, and one which opens behind into the region of first principles. Separate inquirers may content themselves with their special region of phenomena and its laws, which they seek to understand more perfectly and to interpret more clearly, and never so beyond their own domain. It is by such division of labour and concentration of aim that the achievements of modern science have been won. But it is only by forsaking the narrow region, and, without entering the borderland of some new science, receding behind it, and contemplating it from a distance, that its value as a contribution to our knowledge of the universe can be discerned. Each of the sciences has its own ideal, but the goal of universal science is the discovery of one ultimate principle which will be explanatory of all observed phenomenon. And the speculative thinker has a similar aim. The perennial question of philosophy is the discovery of the central principle of Existence, its haunting problem is the ultimate explanation of the universe of being. The universe--what is it? whence is it? whither is it tending? can we know anything beyond the fleeting phenomena of its ever unfolding and ever varying history? Is its source, and therefore its central principle, accessible to our faculties of knowledge?