In speaking of the First Cause as "independent," he says, "but it can have no necessary relation within itself. There can be nothing in it which determines change, and yet nothing which prevents change. For if it contains something which imposes such necessities or restraints, this something must be a cause higher than the First Cause, which is absurd. Thus, the First Cause must be in every sense perfect, complete, total, including within itself all power, and transcending all law." We cannot criticize this better, and mark how curiously truth and error are mixed in it, than by so parodying it that only truth shall be stated. The First Cause possesses within himself all possible relations as belonging to his necessary ideals. Hence, change, in the exact sense of that term, is impossible to him, for there is nothing for him to _change to_. This is not invalidated by his passing from inaction to action; for creation involves no change in God's nature or attributes, and so no real or essential change, which is here meant. But he is the permanent, through whom all changes become. He is not, then, a _simple_ unit, but is an organized Being, who is ground for, and comprehends in a unity, all possible laws, forms, and relations, as necessary elements of his necessary existence,--as endowments which necessarily belong to him, and are conditional of his pure independence. Hence, these restraints are not "imposed" upon him, except as his existence is imposed upon him. They belong to his Self, and are conditional of his being. So, then, instead of "transcending all law," he is the embodiment of all law; and his perfection is, that possessing this endowment, he accords his conduct thereto. A being who should "transcend all law" would have no reason why he should act, and no form how he should act, neither would he be an organism, but would be pure lawlessness or pure chaos. Pure chaos cannot organize order; pure lawlessness cannot establish law; and so could not be the First Cause. As Mr. Spencer truly says, "we have no alternative but to regard this First Cause as Infinite and Absolute." And now having learned, by a true diagnosis of the mental activities, that the positions we have gained are fixed, final, irrevocable; and further, that they are not the "results" of "reasonings," but that first there was a seeing, and then an analysis of what was seen, and that the seeing is _true_, though every other experience be false; we _know_ that our position is not "illusive," but that we stand on the rock; and that what we have seen is no "symbolic conception of the illegitimate order," but is pure truth. For the further consideration of this subject, the reader is referred back to our remarks on that passage in Mr. Mansel's work, which Mr. Spencer has quoted.