may legitimately furnish the
raw material for the development of axioms, from those which cannot,
since this would at once remove them to the category of the conceivable,
and he cannot exhaustively catalogue the axioms, since the process of
evolution which he puts forth as the sole and sufficient explanation of
their origin and growth is still going on. We therefore see that we are
justified in saying that conceivability is worthless as a test as to
whether an object of thought lies within the domain of the Knowable or
Unknowable. Further, should a theologian say to Mr. Spencer "To me, the
existence of God and his Infinite Love, Wisdom, and Power rank as
axioms," I do not see how, consistently with the above, he could deny
that these truths were valid to the theologian, even if they were not so
to his own mind. How completely we have placed Religion and Science upon
the same level is evident from our author's statement that "a religious
creed is definable as a theory of original causation" and from the fact
that a self-existent Universe is one of the three possible hypotheses
which he mentions in his argument.

Space forbids the criticism of Mr. Spencer's doctrine of the relativity
of knowledge and of the speculations concerning the Infinite and
Absolute based upon the writings of Hamilton and Mansel. I have been
restricted, also, to the negative side of the question, but so far as
inconceivability enters as a factor into the argument against Religion,
I contend that it has broken down; that so far as that element affects
the problem, Religion has as high credentials as Science.

THE BETTER PART.

BY WILLIAM ALLEN DROMGOOLE.

Some barks there are that drift dreamily down stream, ever near to the
shore where the waters are shallow. Some catch the current and go
bounding on with sweep and swirl until the river, placid at last, slips
into the tideless Everlasting. Some, alas! commanded by iron-hearted
Fate, are headed _up_ stream to fight--who dares call it Folly's
battle?--against the current which yields only to the invincible will
and the tireless arm. They lie who swear that life turns on mere
accident. There are no accidents in fate. The end is but a gathering of
the means; the means but byways to the end; and at the last fate is
master still, and we its victims are, as was _she_, my Claudia.

I am an old woman, childless and loveless; I know what it is to stand
alone with life's hollow corpses,--corpses