It is not left us, however, arbitrarily to assume such a first principle as comports with the particular theory of life it is our purpose to establish. The first principle that corresponds to reality is already implicit in the facts, the origin, and purpose, and end of which we wish to know. The law of gravity is implicit in falling bodies, and in the revolving stars. The sunbeam is implicit in the growing tree. All that happens when one posits a first principle that is not implicit in the facts he is considering, is that his first principle will fail to account for the facts. Matthew Arnold had a perfect right to assume as a first principle, “The Stream of Tendency, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.” This looked poetic and impersonal, and in his esteem served him as a working hypothesis. It never seemed to occur to him that his principle implied the same elements and attributes the theologians regarded as uniting in God; the elements and attributes he was so anxious to get rid of. Herbert Spencer, with a theory to work out, and a particular system to buttress and bolster, devised and adopted a first principle that seemed to promise most to his peculiar views. This he had a right to do. But he had no right to take as a first principle the unknowable, with which to destroy the Christian’s God; and just as soon as he had accomplished this to his entire satisfaction, to turn deliberately and take nearly every attribute of the Christian’s God to bestow upon his unknowable. It is hardly to be supposed that Mr. Spencer, with malice aforethought planned the death of God in order to steal his attributes. The more charitable view is to suppose that at the outset his intention was to erect an absolutely new philosophic edifice, upon a new and original foundation. To do this, it was necessary to clear the ground of everything in sight. So in a high moment of philosophic self-confidence, he determined on the obliteration of all previous and time-honored first principles, that he might posit one of his own making and to his own liking. This was the destructive stage of his mental movement, and it did not occur to him that many of the elements he was clearing away in such wholesale fashion would be necessary to carry up his new philosophic temple. When he got through with the period of preparation, he had nothing to start with but a plain, simple, empty, unknowable. But it soon became evident that the unknowable must have some content, in order to support a decent and orderly structure. At this point he took the attributes of the Christian’s God, Being, Power, Activity, Causal Energy, Omnipresence, and filled up his empty unknowable with them. Then he proceeded with his work. II.