Water is a definite and positive somewhat; the unknowable is an indefinite and inarticulate vacuity. With water for a first principle, the prospect is certain destruction in a general deluge. With the unknowable for a first principle, the prospect is sure imbecility in universal ignorance. It is better to be drowned in water than to have the light of intelligence put out in everlasting night. Mr. Spencer’s unknowable was a convenient receptacle into which to dump difficulties and troublesome problems; but, as a working hypothesis, it was not sufficient even to build the universe Mr. Spencer saw. In the process of constructing his system, Mr. Spencer gave to his unknowable nearly all the attributes which theologians give to a personal God. As we have already seen, when Mr. Spencer got through with drawing from his unknowable all that he had to have to give his system the order and show of reason, it was found that the unknowable part of the unknowable had about been scattered in the light of knowledge. For this same unknowable was found to have Being, Power, Activity, Causal Energy, and Omnipresence for attributes. Nothing more can come out of a first principle than what is contained in it. Out of water, nothing but water comes, and out of the unknowable, nothing but the unknowable comes. One can posit an acorn, under certain conditions of soil and sky, and get an oak; but the germ of the oak must be in the acorn, and the nutriment of the oak must be in the conditions before any oak can come out. It is the old truism, that “out of nothing, nothing comes.” No one ever attempts to account for anything without a first principle. The test of the reality and value of a first principle will be determined solely by its capacity to account for the facts which come out of it. It is because the unknowable fails to account for the facts of nature, and for self-consciousness, self-determination, and self-activity in man, who stands as the complete consummation and realization of nature, that it is not accepted as an adequate first principle. Matthew Arnold, in order to escape the objections which he had to taking a self-conscious, self-determining, personal God for a first principle, substituted “The Stream of Tendency, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.” But this sentence, when analyzed, reveals the fact that Matthew Arnold’s Stream has about the same essential elements the theologian supposes to reside in God. A stream has a source, a direction, and an end. Here, then, we have cause, means, and ultimate object. It is also said that the stream makes for something; here is self-determination. It is said to make for righteousness; here is the attribute of Justice, and justice can only be predicated of a person.