Between the two hypotheses above stated there is, however, one material and vital difference, depending on the nature of man himself. The universe does not consist merely of insensate matter and force and automatic vitality; there happens to be in it the rational and consciously responsible being man. To attribute to him an origin from mere matter and force is not merely to attach to them a fictitious power and significance: it is also to reject the rational probability that the original cause must be at least equal to the effects produced, and to deprive ourselves of all communion and sympathy with nature. Further, wherever the "presence and potency" of human reason resides, there seems no reason to prevent our searching for and finding it in the only way in which we can know anything, in its properties and effects. The dogma of Agnosticism, it is true, refuses to permit this search after God, but it does so with as little reason as any of those self-constituted authorities that demand belief without questioning. Nay, it has the offensive peculiarity that in the very terms in which it issues its prohibition it contradicts itself. The same oracle which asserts that "the power which the universe manifests to us is wholly inscrutable" affirms also that "we must inevitably commit ourselves to the hypothesis of a first cause." Thus we are told that a power which is "manifest" is also "inscrutable," and that we must "commit ourselves" to a belief in a "first cause" which on the hypothesis cannot be known to exist. This may be philosophy of a certain sort, but it certainly should not claim kinship with science. Perhaps it may be well here to place in comparison with each other the doctrine of the agnostic philosophy as expounded by Herbert Spencer, and that of Paul of Tarsus--an older, but certainly a not less acute, thinker--and we may refer to their utterances respecting the origin of the universe.