Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/237

Religion still the Key to History 227 if insensibly, yet surely, drawn towards a greater thinking self, as source and end. Ruskin said of Sainte-Beuve, that he never for a moment ad- mitted to himself the possibility of a True as well as an Ideal Spirit, or God.' It is precisely this which threw Sainte-Beuve out of touch with the people about him, and shut him out of the public heart. Spencer built on better foundations. His own conceptions might differ widely from those of English people. He might de- clare that '■ that which persists, unchanging in quantity but ever changing in form, under these sensible appearances which the Uni- verse presents to us, transcends human knowledge and conception — is an unknown and unknowable Power, which we are obliged to recognize as without limit in space and without beginning or end in time." ^ But if unknowable to him, this Power was not one with which he would lightly reckon as respects its influence on others. As Frederic Harrison said — and said rightfully— Spencer " looked to the unknowable environment behind the world of sense and knowledge as the sphere and object of religion." To the positivist, the unknowable environment is no less an admitted fact, but — to use Harrison's language again — " the only intelligible sphere of re- ligion must be the knowable ", and " the elements of the unknowable are immutably set in the canons of experience ". The church of the world stands nearer to Spencer. It disdains the dogma that the knowable is immutably measured by any form of human experience. The world in general rejects it. It is un- scientific. Who would have said, a century ago, that the voice of a friend speaking in Denver could be heard in New York, and recognized in every intonation as easily as if he were in the same room with him who is addressed? Who would have said, twenty years ago, that a ray of light could be so framed and directed as to light up the interior of the human body and show the skeleton within it? Who would have said, ten years ago, that there was a heat- producing mineral that never cooled? What canons of scientific experience brought within the range of probable assumption mar- vels like these? Surely it is but reasonable to expect that the common people will look at each new discovery of such a kind as fresh proof of an intelligent creator, and another step nearer to knowledge of what He is. The full power of such a belief is seldom felt by those who are themselves unaffected by it. For this cause, if for no other, the ' Letters to Charles Eliot Xorloi,. II. 13. - Aiitobiozrafhy, I. 652.