We readily grant that the relation of God to the existing order and economy of the world is mysterious; and we believe that no conceivable hypothesis can deprive it of this mysteriousness. There are numerous difficulties which arise from the imperfection of our knowledge and the limited range of our powers. We see through an obscure medium, and we know only in part. There are also difficulties peculiar to individual minds--intellectual, ethical, emotional difficulties--which are the products of a peculiar culture, or the offspring of certain theoretical prepossessions. Some of these difficulties may be relieved by the hypothesis of "unconscious intelligence," but on a further examination it will be found that this hypothesis is embarrassed with still greater difficulties and open to more serious objections both intellectual and moral. First, there is the difficulty of forming any conception of "_unconscious_ intelligence." This has been felt by the ablest minds. "The hypothesis," says Wallace, "has the double disadvantage of being both unintelligible and incapable of any kind of proof."[308] Mivart observes that the phrase will "to many minds appear to be little less than a contradiction in terms; the very first condition of an intelligence being that, if it know any thing, it should at least know its own existence."[309] Mr. Murphy tells us that this unconscious intelligence "adapts means to ends," "it presides over all vital actions, directing each action to its specific end."[310] But an intelligence adapting means to ends without any knowledge (consciousness) of either the ends to be secured or the means to be employed to secure the end surpasses all comprehension and all belief. We can readily believe, with Hamilton, that the human mind "exerts energies and is the subject of modifications" of which it is not immediately conscious, the combined results of which are manifested in the complex fact of consciousness. But to call that _intelligence_ which never had a perception, a thought, an emotion; which has no knowledge of self or of any thing else; in short, which is not and never was conscious, is to reduce philosophic terminology to chaos, and tantalize thought by meaningless words. An intelligent agent is one who _understands_, who distinguishes between subject and object, who knows things in their relations, who can unite the terms of a relation in thought, and judge of their congruity or incongruity, all of which are conscious operations. Intelligence is consciousness (conscientia = relational knowledge); unconscious intelligence is unconscious consciousness, unintelligent intelligence, which is a contradiction and an absurdity. Secondly, in endeavoring to find the mental stand-point of Mr. Murphy, in order that we may fairly estimate his hypothesis, we encounter the still more serious difficulty of conceiving how unconscious intelligence can exist apart from some _subject_ or substratum in which it inheres.