Mr. Spencer's system has no power to work with; and if the internal fact is not rejected, the system breaks down. And this is science; this is logic; this is evolution. It is hard to believe that Mr. Spencer is really serious. Is it not possible that this work is meant only as an elaborate satire upon the loose reasoning and baseless assumptions of much that calls itself science? The internal evidence in favor of this view is complete; while the opposing theory, that it is meant as a sober exposition of fact, is beset with insurmountable difficulties—it is positively incredible. We wait for Mr. Spencer's announcement that all this time he has been perpetrating a tremendous sarcasm. The air of gravity and reality with which the work has been invested, the pains with which it has been elaborated, the wide range of illustration, all will serve to raise it at once to the foremost place in the realm of satirical literature. It is to be hoped, for the sake of his own reputation, that Mr. Spencer will not keep the secret much longer. Sensational philosophy has never been able to escape nihilism. I have already shown that Mr. Spencer's doctrine of the unknowable can logically result only in idealism; it remains to show that the logical necessity of the experience-philosophy is nihilism. In its zeal to deny the existence of a knowing power which takes direct cognizance of external being, it has been forced to build up both says that nerve the mind and the external world, from the raw material of sensation. There is sensation, according to this doctrine, long before there is knowledge; and the final recognition of self and of an external world, is the residuum of countless sensations. But if this be so, then the deposit which is named self, has at least as good claim to substantial being as the deposit which represents the outer world. It is logically impossible to accept one and reject the other; and, in the attempt to do this, materialism has always tumbled into the bottomless pit of nothingness. Mr. Mill makes matter an affection of mind, and mind a product of matter. Both are denied substantial existence, and both go off into the void. Mr. Bain reduces mind to nerve-currents, and then currents and the outer world generally have only a hypothetical existence-indeed, are but "abstract names for our sensations and exist only in the mind that frames them.”* But inasmuch as nerve-currents are abstractions, the mind, which is the product of nerve-currents, is doubly an abstraction; and substantial existence disappears in the abysses. Mr. Spencer is in the true succession. He makes a desperate attempt, indeed, to save the world; but in his execution of self, or the ego, he handles the ax so awkwardly as to dispatch subject and object together, This is the historical stone which kills the two birds: "Either this ego, which is supposed to determine or will the * "Science and Intellect," p. 376. If it is act, is present in consciousness or it is not. not present in consciousness, it is something of which we are unconscious-something, therefore, of whose existence we neither have nor can have any evidence. If it is present in consciousness, then, as it is ever present, it can be at each moment nothing else than the state of consciousness, simple or compound, passing at the moment."—Vol. i, p. 500. Whenever Mr. Spencer becomes epigrammatic, he is apt to use arguments which cut both ways. I have always had some secret doubts about the peculiar feats of the Australian boomerang; and have quietly determined if I ever got hold of one, to practice a little with it, before yielding implicit credence to the stories one hears. But here is the clearest proof that boomerang arguments are possible. Let us apply this argument to the existence of the unknowable, and see how it lights on Mr. Spencer's own head. I manage the reasoning in this way: Either this unknowable, which is said to underlie phenomena, is present in consciousness or it is not. If it is not present, then it is something of which we are unconscious-something, therefore, of whose existence we neither have nor can have any evidence. If it is present in consciousness, it clearly cannot be unknowable, for that would involve the contradiction of supposing that a thing can be at the same time known and unknowable. In either case we must conclude that the unknowable is something of whose exist ence we neither have nor can have any evidence. My reasoning is as good as Mr. Spencer's. If he insists that we cannot think of phenomena without a substantial support, I reply that it is equally impossible to think of feelings without a substantial support. If the argument is good for one, it is good for both, and that, too, in whichever way it is taken.. But, says Mr. Spencer again and again, this argument of mine reduces to nonsense without the postulate of external existence. Undoubtedly; and it reduces to equal nonsense without the postulate of internal existence. But, he says, the terms used suppose objective existence. They do, indeed; but no more strongly than feeling and thought and consciousness suppose subjective existence. The argument which reduces mind to a string of feelings, reduces matter to a bundle of qualities. If subjective existence has no warrant, objective existence has none. also; and the void and formless nothing is all that is left us. But Mr. Spencer calls the "Universal Postulate" to his aid. This is, that we cannot help believing in an outer world, and so must accept it whether we can justify the belief or not. But the "Postulate" is another boomerang. We cannot help believing in an inner world-in the reality and identity of self, and in our self-determining power; and on the authority of the "Postulate," we must, therefore, conclude that this belief stands for a fact. It clearly will not do to be too free with the "Postulate." If it could be smuggled in at the back door, and be persuaded to affix the seal of reality to the outer world, and could then be kicked out before any further claims could be made upon it, it might do to send for it; but if it is to be free to all parties, it will be as likely to blaspheme as to bless. There is no help for it. Mr. Spencer's solid-looking sensational ground vanishes. from under his feet, and leaves him in the abysses. The loftiest tumbling, however, of the experiencephilosophy has probably been done over the intuitions. All our mental operations proceed upon certain assumptions. All reasoning, even that of the skeptic, necessarily proceeds in logical forms, and assumes the validity of logical laws. The argument brought to overthrow them implicitly assumes them, and owes all its value to the assumption. It were easier to escape from one's shadow, or for a bird to outsoar the supporting air, than for reason to escape from the dominion of logical laws. The law of causation, too, is the necessary postulate of all science, and the one which alone makes science possible. The transcendental philosopher assumes that these data are contributed by the mind itself; that, though not prior to experience, they do not derive their validity from it, but are intuitively known to be true. It is not taught that these are explicitly present, but only implicitly so, in every mental operation. The savage, the rustic, or the child, probably knows as lit |