Herbert Spencer is not in fact consistent with himself, for in divers parts of his writings he calls the inscrutable Reality back of phenomena the one, eternal, ubiquitous, infinite, ultimate, absolute Existence, Power and Cause. “It seems,” says Father Dalgairns, “that a great deal is known about the Unknowable.” Chadwick, Unitarianism, 75—“The beggar phrase ‘Unknowable’ becomes, after Spencer’s repeated designations of it, as rich as Croesus with all saving knowledge.” Matheson: “To know that we know nothing is already to have reached a fact of knowledge.” If Mr. Spencer intended to exclude God from the realm of Knowledge, he should first have excluded him from the realm of Existence; for to grant that he is, is already to grant that we not only may know him, but that we actually to some extent do know him; see D. J. Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 22; McCosh, Intuitions, 186-189 (Eng. ed., 214); Murphy, Scientific Bases, 133; Bowne, Review of Spencer, 30-34; New Englander, July, 1875:543, 544; Oscar Craig, in Presb. Rev., July, 1883:594-602. D. Because we can know truly only that which we know in whole and not in part. We reply: (_a_) The objection confounds partial knowledge with the knowledge of a part. We know the mind in part, but we do not know a part of the mind. (_b_) If the objection were valid, no real knowledge of anything would be possible, since we know no single thing in all its relations. We conclude that, although God is a being not composed of parts, we may yet have a partial knowledge of him, and this knowledge, though not exhaustive, may yet be real, and adequate to the purposes of science. (_a_) The objection mentioned in the text is urged by Mansel, Limits of Religious Thought, 97, 98, and is answered by Martineau, Essays, 1:291. The mind does not exist in space, and it has no parts: we cannot speak of its south-west corner, nor can we divide it into halves. Yet we find the material for mental science in partial knowledge of the mind. So, while we are not “geographers of the divine nature” (Bowne, Review of Spencer, 72), we may say with Paul, not “now know we a part of God,” but “now I know [God], in part”_ (1 Cor. 13:12)_. We may know truly what we do not know exhaustively; see _Eph. 3:19—_“to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.” I do not perfectly understand myself, yet I know myself in part; so I may know God, though I do not perfectly understand him.