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And but for the help it has been supposed to give the belief in god, the "Unknowable" would only have ranked as a harmless speculation of no value to anyone or to anything. This is substantially admitted in a postscript to the 1899 edition of "First Principles." At the conclusion of the section entitled "The Unknowable," he says:
The most striking and apparently most stable theory of the last quarter of a century had been Sir William Grove's theory of the conservation of energy; and yet wherein is there any substantial difference between this recent outcome of modern amateur, and hence most sincere, science pointing as it does to an imperishable, and as such unchangeable, and as such, again, for ever unknowable underlying substance the modes of which alone change wherein, except in mere verbal costume, does this differ from the conclusions arrived at by the psalmist?
The third is the space of what we call life in all its forms, the area in which the transformation and redemption take place. The fourth is the ultimate unknowable, that is to say, that which follows on after life and receives the finished product of redemption.
And from the midst of that natal splendour, behind which was the Unknowable, the life came hitherward; from the midst of that nucleus undescribed, undescribable, there issued presently the primeval sigh that breathed the breath of life into all things.
He may be, and generally is, sadly in need of a woman friend, "some one to share his joys and sorrows with", but because he knows few women is no reason why he should stand afar off and adore the unknowable. "Friendly like" is what appeals to us all; and the bush-folk are only men, not monstrosities rough, untutored men for the most part.
If the difference here noted were all which Sir W. Hamilton has in view when he declares the Infinite to be unknowable and incogitable, we should accede to his opinion; but we apprehend that he means much more, and he certainly requires more to justify the marked antithesis in which he places himself against M. Cousin and Hegel.
So much thought; so much band-o-bast; so much dove-tailing and welding together of naval and military methods, signals, technical words, etc., and the worst punishment should any link in the composite chain give way. And then taking success for granted on the top of all this comes the Turk; "unspeakable" he used to be, "unknowable" now. But we shall give him a startler too.
Sometimes it seems to mean, meaningless; at others, self-contradictory or absurd; at others, inconceivable, i. e. that of which no conception or mental image can be formed; at any rate, it implies what is unknowable and untenable. The result is, so far as matter is concerned, that we know nothing about it.
Morality develops physiologically as the germ becomes the stem and the bud becomes the flower. As for religion it is the domain of the unknowable. That is not to assert that it is nothing. On the contrary it is something formidable and immense. It is the feeling that something, apart from all that we know, surpasses us and that we shall never know it.
In June 1884 he published an article upon the 'Unknown and the Unknowable' in the 'Nineteenth Century, declaring that Mr. Herbert Spencer's 'Unknowable' and Mr. Harrison's 'Humanity' were mere shadowy figments. 'Religion, he maintains, will not survive theology. To this, however, he adds, with rather surprising calmness, that morality will survive religion.
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