their force by being pronounced inconceivable. The strictly empirical philosophy finds no grounds on which to admit the discussion of these ultimate terms; but having admitted them, it is not permitted to this philosophy to object to their validity, because they cannot be constructed in the imagination.

They are not presented as being within the range of experience. The imagination, from the nature of the power and from its dependence on the senses, is ruled out of the discussion of questions of ultimate being, since it is only of phenomena that it takes cognizance.

Another objection allied to this has much greater weight; indeed, if well taken. it must be admitted to be fatal to any theoretical explanations of the universe. This objection is that of the inherent contradiction in the terms involved. Reason can not reach conflicting conclusions and retain its force. The authority of reason is found in the ultimate coherence of its results. If any conclusion is not merely inconceivable but unknowable, it can carry no conviction to the mind.

Nor must we be allowed to make any appeal to intuition in these last and most difficult discussions of ultimate facts, save under the forms previously defined and adequately established in psychology. The range of intuition must first be settled, and the ideas properly referable to it, or it becomes a most convenient and most obscure way of cutting short inquiry that is not reaching a result satisfactory to us. Intuition, as an act of reason, yields certain