Herbert Spencer professes to be carrying out, a step farther, the doctrine put into shape by Hamilton and Mansel, viz., "the philosophy of the Unconditioned." In other words, he carries that doctrine forward to its rigidly logical consequences, and utters the last word which Hamilton and Mansel dare not utter--"Apprehensible by us there is no God." The Ultimate Reality is absolutely unknown; it can not be apprehended by the human intellect, and it can not present itself to the intellect at all. This Ultimate Reality can not be _intelligent_, because to think is to condition, and the Absolute is the unconditioned; can not be _conscious_, because all consciousness is of plurality and difference, and the Absolute is one; can not be _personal_, because personality is determination or limitation, and the Infinite is the illimitable. It is "audacious," "irreverent," "impious," to apply any of these predicates to it; to regard it as Mind, or speak of it as Righteous.[327] The ultimate goal of the philosophy of the Unconditioned is a purely subjective Atheism. [Footnote 327: "First Principles," pp. 111, 112.] And yet of this Primary Existence--inscrutable, and absolutely unknown--Spencer knows something; knows as much as he pleases to know. He knows that this "ultimate of ultimates is _Force_,"[328] an "_Omnipresent Power_,"[329] is "_One_" and "_Eternal_."[330] He knows also that it can not be intelligent, self-conscious, and a personality.[331] This is a great deal to affirm and deny of an existence "absolutely unknown." May we not be permitted to affirm of this hidden and unknown something that it is _conscious Mind_, especially as Mind is admitted to be the only analogon of Power; and "the _force_ by which we produce change, and which serves to symbolize the causes of changes in general, is the final disclosure of analysis."[332] [Footnote 328: "First Principles," p. 235.] [Footnote 329: Ibid., p. 99.] [Footnote 330: Ibid., p. 81.] [Footnote 331: Ibid., pp. 108-112.] [Footnote 332: Ibid., p. 235.] 3. We advance to the review of the third fundamental principle of Hamilton's philosophy of the Unconditioned, viz., that the terms infinite and absolute are names for a "mere negation of thought"--a "mental impotence" to think, or, in other words, the absence of all the conditions under which thought is possible.