Were he to define the meaning of the word Nature,--a word so often used in a vague, indefinite sense,[287]--he would find that his idea bears a close resemblance to that of the German school,[288] who speak of the first being as the _Indifference of the different_,--a certain vague, undetermined, inexplicable entity, possessing no distinctive character or peculiar attributes, whose existence is necessary, but not as a living, self-conscious, and active being, while it is the cause of all life and intelligence and activity in the universe; in short, a mere abstraction of the human mind.

To some such cause, if it can be called a cause, Mr.Holyoake ascribes all the phenomena of the universe; or he leaves them utterly unaccounted for, and takes refuge in an eternal series of derived and dependent beings, without attempting to assign any reason for their existence.

He undertakes to account for nothing.

He leaves the great problem unsolved, and discards it as insoluble.

"Mr.
Harrison demanded of me, where the first man came from?
I said, I did not know; I was not in the secrets of Nature." "I cannot accept, says one, the theory of progressive development, it is so intricate and unsatisfying." "If something must be self-existent and eternal, says another, why may not matter and all its properties be that something ?" "The Atheist holds that the universe is an endless series of causes and effects _ad infinitum_, and therefore the idea of a _first_ cause is an absurdity and a contradiction."[289] In short, the eternity of the world is assumed, the origin of new races is left unexplained, and no account whatever is given of the order which everywhere exists in Nature.