He was regarded as the mediator between suffering humanity and the unknowable and inaccessible god of all being, who reigned in the ether.
This work is divided into two parts; the first intended to show that while ultimate metaphysical questions are insoluble they compel to a recognition of an inscrutable Power behind phenomena which is called the Unknowable; the second devoted to the formulation and illustration of the Law of Evolution.
This is illustrated by the difficulties inherent in the conception of Cause, Space, Time, Matter, Motion, the Infinite, and the Absolute, and by the" relativity of knowledge,"which precludes knowledge of the Unknowable, since" all thinking is relationing."Yet the Unknowable may exist, and we may even have an" indefinite knowledge "of it, positive, though vague and extralogical.
Hence both science and religion must come to recognize as the" most certain of all facts that the Power which the Universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable."Thus to be buried side by side in the Unknowable constitutes their final reconciliation, as it is the refutation of irreligion which consists of" a lurking doubt whether the Incomprehensible is really incomprehensible."Such are the foundations of Spencer's metaphysic of the Unknowable, to which he resorts in all the fundamental difficulties which he subsequently encounters.
Even this, however, understates the case, seeing that a really inscrutable Unknowable would destroy all confidence in the order of nature and render all knowledge entirely precarious.