But though Mr. Spencer accepts this doctrine, he has not left it where he found it. The world is indebted to him for having advanced the argument to a higher and grander conclusion--a conclusion which changes the philosophical aspect of the whole question, and involves the profoundest consequences. Hamilton and Mansel bring us, by their inexorable logic, to the result that we can neither know nor conceive the Infinite, and that every attempt to do so involves us in contradiction and absurdity; but having reached this vast negation, their logic and philosophy break down. Accepting their conclusions as far as they go, Mr. Spencer maintains the utter incompleteness of their reasoning, and, pushing the inquiry still farther, he demonstrates that though we cannot grasp the Infinite in _thought_, we can realize it in _consciousness_. He shows that though by the laws of thinking we are rigorously prevented from forming a _conception_ of that Incomprehensible, Omnipotent Power by which we are acted upon in all phenomena, yet we are, by the laws of thought, equally prevented from ridding ourselves of the _consciousness_ of this Power. He proves that this consciousness of a Supreme Cause is not _negative_, but _positive_--that it is indestructible, and has a higher certainty than any other belief whatever. The Unknowable, then, in the view of Mr. Spencer, is not a mere term of negation, nor a word employed only to express our ignorance, but it means that Infinite Reality, that Supreme but Inscrutable Cause, of which the universe is but a manifestation, and which has an ever-present disclosure in human consciousness. Having thus found an indestructible basis in human nature for the religious sentiment, Mr. Spencer next shows that all religions rest upon this foundation, and contain a fundamental verity--a soul of truth, which remains when their conflicting doctrines and discordant peculiarities are mutually cancelled. In the lower and grosser forms of religion this truth is but dimly discerned, but becomes ever clearer the more highly the religion is developed, surviving every change, and remaining untouched by the severest criticism.