mental energy to think for themselves, to cry out that finality has
already been attained, and that any further search into the matter must
end in the destruction of Truth. But in raising such an outcry they
betray their ignorance of the very nature of Truth, which is that it can
never be destroyed: the very fact that Truth is Truth makes this
impossible. And again they exhibit their ignorance of the first
principle of Life--namely, the Law of Growth, which throughout the
universe perpetually pushes forward into more and more vivid forms of
expression, having expansion everywhere and finality nowhere.
Such ignorant objections need not, therefore, alarm us; and we should
endeavour to show those who make them that what they fear is the only
natural order of the Divine Life, which is "over all, and through all,
and in all." But we must do this gently, and not by forcibly thrusting
upon them the object of their terror, and so repelling them from all
study of the subject. We should endeavour gradually to lead them to see
that there is something interior to what they have hitherto held to be
ultimate Truth, and to realise that the sensation of emptiness and
dissatisfaction, which from time to time will persist in making itself
felt in their hearts, is nothing else than the pressing forward of the
spirit within to declare that inner side of things which alone can
satisfactorily account for what we observe on the exterior, and without
the knowledge of which we can never perceive the true nature of our
inheritance in the Universal Life which is the Life Everlasting.
What, then, is this central principle which is at the root of all
things? It is Life. But not life as we recognise it in particular forms
of manifestation; it is something more interior and concentrated than
that. It is that "unity of the spirit" which _is_ unity, simply because
it has not yet passed into diversity. Perhaps this is not an easy idea
to grasp, but it is the root of all scientific conception of spirit; for
without it there is no common principle to which we can refer the
innumerable forms of manifestation that spirit assumes.
It is the conception of Life as the sum-total of all its undistributed
powers, being as yet none of these in particular, but all of them in
potentiality. This is, no doubt, a highly abstract idea, but it is
essentially that of the centre from which growth takes place by
expansion in every direction. This is that last residuum which defies
all our powers of analysis. This is truly "the unknowable," not in the
sense of the unthinkable but of the unanalysable. It is the subject of
perception, not of knowledge, if by knowledge we mean that faculty which
estimates the _relations_ between things, because here we have passed
beyond any questions of relations, and are face to face with the
absolute.
This innermost of all is absolute Spirit. It is Life as yet not
differentiated into any specific mode; it is the universal Life which
pervades all things and is at the heart of all appearances.
To come into the knowledge of this is to come into the secret of power,
and to enter into the secret place of Living Spirit. Is it illogical
first to call this the unknowable, and then to speak of coming into the
knowledge of it? Perhaps so; but no less a writer than St. Paul has set
the example; for does he not speak of the final result of all searchings
into the heights and depths and lengths and breadths of the inner side
of things as being, to attain the knowledge of that Love which passeth
knowledge. If he is thus boldly illogical in phrase, though not in fact,
may we not also speak of knowing "the unknowable"? We may, for this
knowledge is the root of all other knowledge.
The presence of this undifferentiated universal life-power is the final
axiomatic fact to which all our analysis must ultimately conduct us. On
whatever plane we make our analysis it must always abut upon pure
essence, pure energy, pure being; that which knows itself and recognises
itself, but which cannot dissect itself because it is not built up of
parts, but is ultimately integral: it is pure Unity. But analysis which
does not lead to synthesis is merely destructive: it is the child
wantonly pulling the flower to pieces and throwing away the fragments;
not the botanist, also pulling the flower to pieces, but building up in
his mind from those carefully studied fragments a vast synthesis of the
constructive power of Nature, embracing the laws of the formation of all
flower-forms. The value of analysis is to lead us to the original
starting-point of that which we analyse, and so to teach us the laws by
which its final form springs from this centre.
Knowing the law of its construction, we turn our analysis into a
synthesis, and we thus gain a power of building up which must always be
beyond the reach of those who regard "the unknowable" as one with
"not-being."
_This_ idea of the unknowable is the root of all materialism; and yet no
scientific man, however materialistic his proclivities, treats the
unanalysable residuum thus when he meets it in the experiments of his
laboratory. On the contrary, he makes this final unanalysable fact the
basis of his synthesis. He finds that in the last resort it is energy of
some kind, whether as heat or as motion; but he does not throw up his
scientific pursuits because he cannot analyse it further. He adopts the
precisely opposite course, and realises that the conservation of energy,
its indestructibility, and the impossibility of adding to or detracting
from the sum-total of energy in the world, is the one solid and
unchanging fact on which alone the edifice of physical science can be
built up. He bases all his knowledge upon his knowledge of "the
unknowable." And rightly so, for if he could analyse this energy into
yet further factors, then the same problem of "the unknowable" would