Mr. Spencer claims that the power the universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable; that space and time are wholly incomprehensible; that matter, in its ultimate nature, is as absolutely incomprehensible as space and time; that all efforts to understand the essential nature of motion do but bring us to alternative absurdities of thought; that it is impossible to form any idea of force in itself, and equally impossible to comprehend either its mode of exercise or its law of variation; that we are unable to believe or to conceive that the duration of consciousness is infinite, and equally unable to know it as finite, or to conceive it as finite; and that the personality of which we are each conscious, and of which the existence is to each a fact beyond all others the most certain, yet is a thing which cannot truthfully be known at all: knowledge of it is forbidden by the very nature of thought. All this is perfectly consistent with his theory of knowledge. This is the point to which David Hume, his master, conducted the human mind in its search for truth. But Spencer is not logical; he had a theory of being that contradicted his theory of knowing. So he reasons first one way and then another. He says, elsewhere in his First Principles, that common sense asserts the existence of a reality; that objective science proves that this reality cannot be what we think it; that subjective science shows why we cannot think of it as it is, and yet are compelled to think of it as existing; and that in this assertion of a reality utterly inscrutable in nature, religion finds an assertion essentially coinciding with her own. That we are compelled to regard every phenomenon as a manifestation of some power by which we are acted upon. That though omnipresence is unthinkable, yet as experience discloses no bounds to the diffusion of phenomena, we are unable to think of limits to the presence of this power, while the criticisms of science teach us that this power is incomprehensible. Analyzing the above declarations, we find that Mr. Spencer knows there is an ultimate reality. Then it has being. It acts upon us. Then it has the attribute of action. All phenomena are manifestations of it. Then it has power. All phenomena are manifestations of an inscrutable power, by which we are acted upon. Then it has causal energy. We are unable to think of limits to the presence of this power. Then it is omnipresent. So the unknowable, inscrutable something has being, power, activity, causal energy, and omnipresence. But how are we to grasp these universal, transcendental attributes of the unknowable, with an intelligence incapable of receiving anything but simple, separate, unrelated, broken impressions and manifestations? It takes as much mind to believe in the unknowable, with the attributes of power, activity, being, causal energy, and omnipresence, as to believe in a self-existent God, with the attributes of power, wisdom, justice, truth, and love.