So beautiful is all this orderly coherence, so satisfying to some of our intellectual needs, that many minds are inclined to doubt if anything more can be said of the universe than that it is a Reign of Law, an endless aggregate of coexistences and sequences. When we say that one star attracts another star, we do not really know that there is any pulling in the case; all we know is that a piece of cosmical matter in the presence of another piece of matter alters its space-relations in a certain specified way. Among the coexistences and sequences there is an order which we can detect, and a few thinkers are inclined to maintain that this is the whole story. Such a state of mind, which rests satisfied with the mere content of observed facts, without seeking to trace their ultimate implications, is the characteristic of what Auguste Comte called Positivism. It is a more refined phase of atheism than that of the guests at Baron d'Holbach's, but its adherents are few; for the impetus of modern scientific thought tends with overwhelming force towards the conception of a single First Cause, or Prime Mover, perpetually manifested from moment to moment in all the Protean changes that make up the universe. As I have elsewhere sought to show, this is practically identical with the Athanasian conception of the immanent Deity.[3] Modern men of science often call this view of things Monism, but if questioned narrowly concerning the immanent First Cause, they reply with a general disclaimer of knowledge, and thus entitle themselves to be called by Huxley's term "Agnostics." Thirty-five years ago Spencer, taking a hint from Sir William Hamilton, used the phrase "The Unknowable" as an equivalent for the immanent Deity considered _per se_; but I always avoid that phrase, for in practice it invariably leads to wrong conceptions, and naturally, since it only expresses one side of the truth. If on the one hand it is impossible for the finite Mind to fathom the Infinite, on the other hand it is practically misleading to apply the term Unknowable to the Deity that is revealed in every pulsation of the wondrously rich and beautiful life of the Universe. For most persons no amount of explanation will prevent the use of the word Unknowable from seeming to remove Deity to an unapproachable distance, whereas the Deity revealed in the process of evolution is the ever-present God without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground, and whose voice is heard in each whisper of conscience, even while his splendour dwells in the white ray from yonder star that began its earthward flight while Abraham's shepherds watched their flocks. It is clear that many persons have derived from Spencer's use of the word Unknowable an impression that he intends by means of metaphysics to refine God away into nothing; whereas he no more cherishes any such intention than did St. Paul, when he asked, "Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor?"--no more than Isaiah did