od." But having got there, there
he would remain. He is left with God and nothing else, and with no
possibility of reaching anything else.

We land in the same dilemma if we pursue another road. Philosophers of
certain schools place existence in two categories. There is the world of
appearance (phenomena), and there is the world of reality or substance
(noumena). We know phenomena and their laws, they say, but no more. We
do not know, and cannot know, Substance in itself; and the theist
promptly adds that this unknown substance is but another name for God.
The philosopher also warns us against applying the laws of the
phenomenal world to noumena, reminding us that what we call "laws of
nature" have been devised to explain the world as it presents itself to
our consciousness. And to this we have the theological analogue in the
warning not to measure the infinite by the finite or to judge God by
human standards.

Now granting all this, let us see how the argument stands. The laws of
phenomena belong exclusively to the phenomenal world. Their application
and their validity are restricted to the world of phenomena. When we
leave this region we are in a sphere to which they are quite
inapplicable. What, then, can be meant by speaking of God as a "First
Cause"? Cause is a phenomenal term, it expresses the relations between
phenomena, and it has no meaning when applied to this assumed and
unknown reality. We are in the position of one who is trying to use a
colour scale in a world where vision does not exist. The theist is
trying, in a similar way, to use the conception of "cause," which is
created to express the relations between phenomena, in a world where
phenomena have no existence. Thus, when the theist, to use his own
words, has traced back an effect to a cause, and this to a prior cause,
and so on, till he has reached a "First Cause," what happens? Simply
this. At the end of the chain of phenomena the theist makes a mighty
jump and gains the noumenon. But between this and the phenomenon he can
establish no relation whatever. It cannot be a cause of phenomena
because on his own showing causation is a phenomenal thing. He has
worked back along the chain of causation, discarding link after link on
his journey. Finally, he reaches God and discards the lot. And here he
is left clinging with _no intelligible way of getting back again_. If on
the other hand, he relates God to phenomena he has failed to get what he
requires.