self-evidence of those axioms which constitute the basis of Geometry.”

Now, it is quite true that “ultimate principles,” in the common understanding of the words, always assume the simplicity of geometrical axioms—(as for “self-evidence,” there is no such thing)—but these principles are clearly not “ultimate;” in other terms what we are in the habit of calling principles are no principles, properly speaking—since there can be but one principle, the Volition of God. We have no right to assume, then, from what we observe in rules that we choose foolishly to name “principles,” anything at all in respect to the characteristics of a principle proper. The “ultimate principles” of which Dr. Nichol speaks as having geometrical simplicity, may and do have this geometrical turn, as being part and parcel of a vast geometrical system, and thus a system of simplicity itself—in which, nevertheless, the truly ultimate principle is, as we know, the consummation of the complex—that is to say, of the unintelligible—for is it not the Spiritual Capacity of God?