THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 /
 
 
 LECTURES ON PHILOSOPHY.
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS MAGUIRE, 
 
 PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY ; 
 FELLOW AND TUTOR, TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. 
 
 To fjiev $$1 OVTU irp&Tfpa \eyerai leal Sffrepa' ra 8 Kara <j>vcriv, offa 
 epSe'xeTot flvai avtv &\\wv, e:e?fa 5^ avev eKtivuv /j.j)- fi Statpecrei 
 6 Tl\dTtaf. A xi. 
 
 LONDON : 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, AND CO. 
 
 1885.
 
 DUHLIN : 
 
 PRINTED AT THE UNIVBUSITY PRE89, 
 BY POXSONHY AND WELDRICK.
 
 B 
 
 . ser, 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 r I ^HE following LECTURES are intended for 
 Students in Logics and Ethics in Trinity 
 College. They are all grounded on the fact 
 familiar to anyone that understands Plato or 
 Hegel, that all knowledge involves two opposite 
 elements never separate, and always distinct. 
 This is seldom seen even by professed mental- 
 ists. Until it is, Philosophy is impossible. The 
 Student must cry vovv ^ 
 
 9, TRINITY COLLEGE, 
 September 21, 1885, 
 
 1178075
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. SOME FACTS RELATING TO PERCEPTION, . . i 
 
 II. THE WILL, 43 
 
 III. MATERIALISM, 75 
 
 IV. ETHICS FOUNDED ON END ; ARISTOTLE, BUTLER, 106 
 V. TRANSITION FROM ANCIENT TO MODERN PHILO- 
 SOPHY ; DESCARTES, LEIBNIZ, . . . .124 
 
 VI. KANT, 142 
 
 VII. HEGEL AND PROFESSOR WEBB, . . . .186 
 
 VIII. PSYCHOLOGY, 200 
 
 IX. J. S. MILL, 219 
 
 X. AGNOSTICISM : H. SPENCER, F. HARRISON, 
 
 S. ROWE BENNET, 223 
 
 XI. MOTION : DR. STONEY, THE DUKE OF ARGYLL, 
 
 AND PROFESSOR ROMANES, .... 246
 
 I. 
 
 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, AND THEIR 
 SIGNIFICANCE. 
 
 \6yov Travr'bs a.px&P-*vov So/ccct juo XP*^ ftven T^V apx^l" a,va/ji<(>iff- 
 
 THE CHAIR which I have the honour of hold- 
 ing takes its title from Moral Philosophy. 
 None, however, of my predecessors have kept 
 within the limits of ethical research, but have 
 more or less indulged in metaphysical specu- 
 lation. I shall deal similarly with my trust. 
 For, even though usage were against such devi- 
 ation, Moral Philosophy whether we regard it 
 as the crowning result of all inquiry, or a mere 
 branch of Natural History can, in my opinion, 
 be safely approached only by the narrow track 
 of Metaphysics. 
 
 This will be seen from the following con- 
 siderations : Kant has told us there are three 
 questions which Philosophy ought to answer : 
 
 What can I know ? 
 What ought I to do ? 
 What may I hope ?
 
 Professor Huxley, who is no mystic, points 
 out that the answers to the two last resolve 
 themselves into the answer to the first What 
 can I know ? ' For rational expectation and 
 moral action are alike based upon beliefs ; and 
 a belief is void of justification unless its subject- 
 matter lies between the boundaries of possible 
 knowledge, and unless its evidence satisfies the 
 conditions which experience imposes as the 
 guarantee of credibility.' Hume, p. 48. It will 
 also be seen from this that it is implied that 
 there is, or ought to be, some criterion to 
 distinguish truth from falsehood, mirage from 
 reality. 
 
 This being so, the basis of the structure is not 
 far to seek. Every system of philosophy rests 
 ultimately on the theory it holds with regard to 
 Perception. This is seen pre-eminently from the 
 ancient Schools : Epicureans, Stoics, and Aca- 
 demics, who were nothing if not ethical, discuss 
 minutely the rationale of Perception. The very 
 word perception is a Stoic technicality older than 
 Christianity. The facts and language of all 
 other branches of knowledge, including Moral 
 Philosophy, rest on the facts and language of 
 Perception, and the facts of Perception may be
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 3 
 
 dealt with largely, without absorption in the 
 polemics of Ethics and Theology. 
 
 The difficulties which beset the giving a correct 
 account of the state of our consciousness are so 
 great, that professed thinkers, like Comte, and 
 professional writers, like Dr. Maudsley, hold that 
 introspection cannot yield materials for a scientific 
 structure. On the other hand, G. H. Lewes has 
 pointed out that internal states surpass external 
 states in vividness ; and a doctor, even though 
 the extreme of scientists, would accept an intelli- 
 gent patient's account of what he felt the previous 
 night. I ask no more, for I want no more. I 
 shall accordingly in this Lecture consider the 
 obvious facts of which the fact of Perception is 
 made up, and point out their obvious conse- 
 quences. I shall as much as possible avoid 
 technicalities, and ask you merely to bear in 
 mind the simplest description of being in this 
 room at this moment. You are now here, and 
 you can see the wall. You are accordingly in 
 secure possession of complete and perfect con- 
 sciousness. The importance of this fact will, I 
 trust, be clear before I have done. Recollect, 
 all I want is : you know you are here now, seeing 
 colour or hearing sound. This state, as a whole, 
 
 B 2
 
 4 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 is termed consciousness, or mind, or knowledge, 
 or experience ; any of them will do ; no pitfalls 
 need be apprehended. 
 
 Consciousness is thus analyzed by Professor 
 Huxley : 
 
 ' When a red light flashes across thjs field of 
 vision, there arises in the mind an " impression 
 of sensation" which we call red. It appears to 
 me that this sensation, red, is a something which 
 may exist altogether independently of any other 
 impression, or idea, as an individual existence. 
 It is perfectly conceivable that a sentient being 
 should have no sense but vision, and that he 
 should have spent his existence in absolute dark- 
 ness, with the exception of one solitary flash of 
 red light. That momentary illumination would 
 suffice to give him the impression under con- 
 sideration ; and the whole content of his con- 
 sciousness might be that impression ; and, if he 
 were endowed with memory, its idea. 
 
 * Such being the state of affairs, suppose a 
 second flash of red light to follow the first. If 
 there were no memory of the latter, the state 
 of the mind on the second occasion would simply 
 be a repetition of that which occurred before. 
 There would be merely another impression.
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 5 
 
 * But suppose memory to exist, and that an 
 idea of the first impression is generated ; then, 
 if the supposed sentient being were like our- 
 selves, there might arise in his mind two alto- 
 gether new impressions. The one is the feeling 
 of the succession of the two impressions, the other 
 is the feeling of their similarity. 
 
 1 Yet a third case is conceivable. Suppose two 
 flashes of red light to occur together, then a 
 third feeling might arise which is neither suc- 
 cession nor similarity, but that which we call 
 co-existence. 
 
 ' These feelings, or their contraries, are the 
 foundation of everything that we call a relation. 
 They are no more capable of being described 
 than sensations are ; and, as it appears to me, 
 they are as little susceptible of analysis into 
 simpler elements. Like simple tastes and smells, 
 or feelings of pleasure and pain, they are ulti- 
 mate irresolvable facts of conscious experience-; 
 and, if we follow the principle of Hume's nomen- 
 clature, they must be called impressions of rela- 
 tion. But it must be remembered, that they 
 differ from the other impressions, in requiring 
 the pre-existence of at least two of the latter. 
 Though devoid of the slightest resemblance to
 
 6 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 the other impressions, they are, in a manner, 
 generated by them. In fact, we may regard 
 them as a kind of impressions of impressions ; or 
 as the sensations of an inner sense, which takes 
 cognizance of the materials furnished to it by the 
 outer senses ' (ib. pp. 68, 69). 
 
 We find thus two kinds of ingredients in our 
 mature experience, sensations and their relations. 
 
 As to the nature of sensations I shall again 
 quote Professor Huxley : 
 
 ' For example, I take up a marble, and I find 
 it to be a red, round, hard, single body. We call 
 the redness, the roundness, the hardness, and the 
 singleness, "qualities" of the marble; and it 
 sounds, at first, the height of absurdity to say 
 that all these qualities are modes of our own con- 
 sciousness, which cannot even be conceived to 
 exist in the marble. But consider the redness, to 
 begin with. How does the sensation of redness 
 arise ? The waves of a certain very attenuated 
 matter, the particles of which are vibrating with 
 vast rapidity, but with very different velocities, 
 strike upon the marble, and those which vibrate 
 with one particular velocity are thrown off from 
 its surface in all directions. The optical apparatus 
 of the eye gathers some of these together, and
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 7 
 
 gives them such a course that they impinge upon 
 the surface of the retina, which is a singularly 
 delicate apparatus, connected with the termination 
 of the fibres of the optic nerve. The impulses of 
 the attenuated matter, or ether, affect this appa- 
 ratus and the fibres of the optic nerve in a certain 
 way; and the change in the fibres of the optic 
 nerve produces yet other changes in the brain ; 
 and these, in some fashion unknown to us, give 
 rise to the feeling, or consciousness, of redness. 
 If the marble could remain unchanged, and either 
 the rate of vibration of the ether, or the nature of 
 the retina, could be altered, the marble would 
 seem not red, but some other colour. There are 
 many people who are what are called colour- 
 blind, being unable to distinguish one colour 
 from another. Such an one might declare our 
 marble to be green ; and he would be quite as 
 right in saying that it is green, as we are in de- 
 claring it to be red. But then, as the marble 
 cannot, in itself, be both green and red at the 
 same time, this shows that the quality " redness" 
 must be in our consciousness and not in the 
 marble. 
 
 ' In like manner, it is easy to see that the 
 roundness and the hardness are forms of our
 
 8 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 consciousness, belonging to the groups which we 
 call sensations of sight and touch. If the surface 
 of the cornea were cylindrical, we should have a 
 very different notion of a round body from that 
 which we possess now ; and if the strength of the 
 fabric, and the force of the muscles, of the body 
 were increased a hundredfold, our marble would 
 seem to be as soft as a pellet of bread crumbs 
 
 ' But it may be said, the marble takes up a cer- 
 tain space which could not be occupied, at the 
 same time, by anything else. In other words, the 
 marble has the primary quality of matter, exten- 
 sion. Surely this quality must be in the thing, 
 and not in our minds ? But the reply must still 
 be : whatever may, or may not, exist in the thing, 
 all that we can know of these qualities is a state of 
 consciousness. What we call extension is a con- 
 sciousness of a relation between two, or more, 
 affections of the sense of sight, or of touch. And 
 it is wholly inconceivable that what we call ex- 
 tension should exist independently of such con- 
 sciousness as our own ' (Des Carles}. 
 
 To our Berkeley is due the credit of having 
 shown that sensation has no meaning except for 
 a consciousness, just as x+y written on a wall 
 has no meaning except for an intelligence. I do
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 9 
 
 not ask you to accept all Berkeley's conclusions ; 
 I am not discussing the rival claims of Collier, 
 who stands to Berkeley much in the same light 
 as Wallace does to Darwin, but the glory of 
 Berkeley is ours ; his common-place book shows 
 that his philosophy was the direct product of 
 his reading for Fellowship here. But this is a 
 mere literary question. What I am concerned 
 with is, one element of mature consciousness 
 sensation is so far accounted for. 
 
 The other element, Relation, is not so easily 
 disposed of. I shall accept, as above suspicion, 
 Professor Huxley's statement that ' co-existence 
 and succession are mental phenomena, not given 
 in the mere sense-experience.' Mr. James, of 
 Harvard, is equally satisfactory. He holds that 
 * the functions of comparison and memory are 
 already at work in the first beginning of sensa- 
 tion, and that the simplest changes of sensation, 
 moreover, involve consciousness of all the cate- 
 gories time, space, number, objectivity, cau- 
 sality.' Mind, xiii. p. n, -n. In fact, Mr. James 
 ' hopes that the reader will not understand him 
 to profess adhesion to the old atomic doctrine 
 of association, so thoroughly riddled of late by 
 Professor Green.' ib. From these adverse ad-
 
 IO SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 missions we may conclude that relations are 
 non-sensational. In other words, that there is in 
 sensation an element which is not sensation. 
 
 I recollect, when an undergraduate, hearing 
 translated, amid scarcely suppressed laughter, 
 the passage from the Phaedo, where of three men 
 the second is shorter than the first and taller 
 than the third. So in the Republic, the fourth 
 finger is shorter than the middle and longer than 
 the little. The point is this : in each case neither 
 bulk nor pattern is altered, yet the second member 
 in each set sustains opposite relations. Here 
 Kant comes to the rescue. Kant has proved, 
 once for all, that the element in experience which 
 imposes relations comes from the understanding. 
 Observe, I do not use the word in the specific 
 sense of Kant, but as including the Categories 
 and Forms, as I wish to avoid the mysticism 
 which clings to the word Form. Kant has 
 proved this in the best possible way by showing 
 that without the formal elements the sensational 
 datum would be unintelligible. Here is the 
 leading passage on the point. I give it from 
 Mr. Mahaffy's translation : 
 
 ' The pure concepts of the understanding, 
 if they quit objects of experience and would
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. I I 
 
 refer to things in themselves (noumena), have no 
 signification whatever. They serve, as it were, 
 only to spell phenomena, that we may be able to 
 read them as experience ; the principles which 
 arise from their reference to the sensible world 
 only serve our understanding for empirical use. 
 Beyond this they are arbitrary combinations, 
 without objective reality, and we can neither 
 cognise their possibility a priori, nor verify their 
 reference to objects, or make it intelligible by 
 any example; because examples can only be 
 borrowed from some possible experience, con- 
 sequently the objects of these concepts can be 
 found nowhere but in a possible experience. 
 
 ' This complete (though to its originator unex- 
 pected) solution of Hume's problem preserves 
 therefore to the pure concepts of the understand- 
 ing their a priori origin, and to the universal laws 
 of nature their validity, as laws of the under- 
 standing, yet so that their use is limited to 
 experience, because their possibility depends 
 solely on the reference of the understanding to 
 experience ; but not by deriving them from ex- 
 perience, but by deriving it from them, a com- 
 pletely reversed mode of connexion which never 
 occurred to Hume ' (Pro/eg. 31).
 
 I 2 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 But Kant's doctrine must be taken with an 
 express proviso. Kant was misled by Locke's 
 doctrine that simple ideas were the lowest terms of 
 consciousness what he calls 'the original,' a word 
 which has been pertinaciously confounded with 
 'origin' by Cousin, Mill, and others. Were it 
 not that the sensibility is stimulated by the thing 
 in itself, nothing could save Kant from the merest 
 subjective Idealism. But it will be seen on 
 consideration that both Locke and Kant were 
 misled by that object of Hegel's immortal 
 hate, Abstraction. Each of them considered that 
 there was a minimum sensibile which was mani- 
 pulated by the understanding Kant more, and 
 Locke less. But the true account of the matter 
 is, that there is no separate sensation ; each sen- 
 sation is the result of certain relations, which 
 relations remaining the same, the sensation re- 
 mains the same. And so of all sensations. The 
 sensation, therefore, as it may be the result of 
 anything, may be objective. According to Locke 
 and Kant, it can only be subjective, and cannot 
 be objective in any sense worth talking about 
 
 And now to my task. One of the oldest 
 descriptions of perception is about the best. It 
 is that of Aristotle. Aristotle's statement is,
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 13 
 
 alcrOdvecrOai, ye avayKcuov ro8e rt /cat TTOV ical vvv. 
 That is, we perceive the present somewhat as both some- 
 where and now. As to roSe, I may remark that 
 the particle Se always implies a /xev somewhere, 
 expressed or understood ; so ro8e means this blank 
 which is opposed to, but connected with, the 
 speaker. Hence, roSe is anything before me, 
 and it is presented as both somewhere and now. 
 Both Somewhere and Now is my text, and I hope 
 to show you that there is something- in it. 
 
 ITov somewhere denotes a point in space 
 where the corners of blocks of dimension meet 
 the junction of solid right angles. Now Space 
 is not limited or bounded by any other space. 
 Mill's notion, that a piece of music might be 
 imagined as ending space, would only prove 
 that the music distracted our attention from the 
 endless addibility of space ; just as a square in 
 Euclid to a person of extravagant imagination 
 might suggest a band. The parts of space are 
 outside each other, and the objects in space are 
 outside each other. That is, the parts and their 
 contents are related to each other in the way of 
 outsidedness. But they could not be outside 
 each other if they were not equally related to a 
 
 * An. post, I. xxxi., i.
 
 14 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 subject to which they are not outside a subject 
 of which outsidedness to anything is not a possi- 
 ble attribute ; which by its synthetic action con- 
 stitutes that relation, but is not determined by it. 
 Space is thus grasped as one, and as such is an 
 object only to a Mind. Now the mind which has 
 the whole of space for its object, in other words, 
 so far as it is a subject for space, is not space, 
 and therefore not in space in any way, not even 
 as a point. It is therefore spaceless. 
 
 So of Now the present. Now is a score in 
 time puncto tempore, as Lucretius says and 
 time is given us though a series. The Now has 
 the past on the one side and the future on the 
 other. But Time is not limited or bounded by 
 any time, and ' the relation of events to each 
 other as in Time implies their equal presence to 
 a subject which is not in Time.' So, as before, 
 Time is one whole, which is an object for a 
 subject. That subject, consequently, which has 
 the whole of time for its object, cannot be itself 
 in time, and so is timeless. 
 
 I must point out that I do not require any 
 mysticism with regard to Space and Time. All 
 that is asked is what any intelligent child can 
 see, viz., that space does not end space, or time 
 end time.
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 15 
 
 Once more ; take any series. A series has no 
 meaning except for a subject which is not a 
 series. The members of every series must be 
 regarded as simultaneous, that is, as a whole. 
 If there is a relation between A and B 
 even a relation of succession A and B, while 
 in relation, must be simultaneous. James Mill, 
 who is no mystic, allows that a succession of 
 feelings is very different from a feeling of suc- 
 cession. Aristotle has pointed out that time is 
 not of the essence of geometrical demonstration. 
 John Mill admits an admission which is fatal to 
 his philosophy that the mind is something more 
 than a series, or that it is a series which takes 
 cognizance of itself. This latter view is an 
 absurdity. The parts of a series must be held 
 simultaneously, and that which holds several 
 things simultaneously cannot keep dropping 
 them successively. That thing, which clamps a 
 series, is not a series. 
 
 But if the subject, qua subject, is not in space 
 nor in time, and is not a series, Materialism is 
 cut up by the roots. It seeks to explain that 
 which must be non-extended by that which is 
 extended, while that which is extended has no 
 meaning except for that which is non-extended.
 
 1 6 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 Materialism is thus in the strictest sense a 
 hysteron-proteron the cart before the horse. 
 
 What, then, is the immaterial subject ? Kant, 
 I will be told, has proved it to be a mere logical 
 subject, and no substance. But here again Kant 
 corrupts the youth. Kant took the common 
 Logic as the type to which Metaphysic structure 
 was to conform. There is a subject in Logic, so 
 there must be a subject in Metaphysics. The 
 ego, therefore, must be thinned down to a logical 
 subject. But if we take substance to mean that 
 which is steadfast amid change the one among 
 the many the ego is most surely a substance ; 
 and it not only is steadfast, but sees itself to be 
 steadfast amid change. Call it what you will 
 Mind Soul Spirit the immaterial subject is 
 as much a matter of fact as this desk before me. 
 In one sense it is more so, if the expression be 
 allowed ; for without some subject the facts of 
 common-sense and of science can have no exist- 
 ence. The subject, then, to use Plato's test, 
 being compared with the object, is Trporepov 
 <vcrei, prior in substantive order. 
 
 I shall recapitulate in Professor Green's own 
 words : 
 
 ' If by nature we mean the object of possible
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. I 7 
 
 experience, the connected order of knowable facts 
 or phenomena and this is what our men of 
 science mean by it when they trace the natural 
 genesis of human character then nature implies 
 something other than itself as the condition of its 
 being what it is. Of that something else we are 
 entitled to say positively that it is a self- distin- 
 guishing consciousness, because the function 
 which it must fulfil in order to render the rela- 
 tions of phenomena, and with them nature, pos- 
 sible is one which, on however limited a scale, 
 we ourselves exercise in the acquisition of expe- 
 rience, and exercise only by means of such a 
 consciousness. We are further entitled to say of 
 it, negatively, that the relations by which, through 
 its action, phenomena are determined are not re- 
 lations of it not relations by which it is itself 
 determined. They arise out of its presence to 
 phenomena, or the presence of phenomena to it ; 
 but the very condition of their thus arising is that 
 the unifying consciousness which constitutes them 
 should not itself be one of the objects so related. 
 The relation of events to each other as in time 
 implies their equal presence to a subject which is 
 not in time. There could be no such thing as 
 time if there were not a self-consciousness which
 
 I 8 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 is not in time. As little could there be a relation 
 of objects as outside each other, or in space, if 
 they were not equally related to a subject which 
 they are not outside ; a subject of which outside- 
 ness to anything is not a possible attribute ; 
 which by its synthetic action constitutes that 
 relation but is not itself determined by it. The 
 same is true of those relations which we are apt 
 to treat as independent entities under the names 
 matter and motion. They are relations existing 
 for a consciousness which they do not so condi- 
 tion as that it should itself either move or be 
 material' (Pro/. Eth. pp. 54, 55). 
 
 If a second coup-de-grace be not a contradiction, 
 it is easily given. The follower of Hume denies 
 causation ; causation is only sequence. The 
 relation then, if any, which subsists between 
 sensation and memories will be, on their own 
 showing, one of sequence only. This is stated 
 by Professor Huxley with his usual clearness : 
 
 ' If we analyze the proposition that all mental 
 phenomena are the effects of products of ma- 
 terial phenomena, all that it means amounts 
 to this that whenever those states of conscious- 
 ness which we call sensation, or emotion, or 
 thought, come into existence, complete investi-
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. I 9 
 
 gation will show good reason for the belief that 
 they are preceded by those other phenomena of 
 consciousness to which we give the names of 
 matter and motion. All material changes ap- 
 pear, in the long run, to be modes of motion ; but 
 our knowledge of motion is nothing but that of a 
 change in the place and order of our sensations ; 
 just as our knowledge of matter is restricted to 
 those feelings of which we assume it to be the 
 cause' (Hume, pp. 80, 81). 
 
 If this be so, extension and motion would 
 accompany thought, and thought certain exten- 
 sion and motion. So clear is this, that George 
 Henry Lewes to avoid it flies in the face of Hume 
 by proclaiming that there is a nexus between 
 cause and effect, and the very best nexus too, 
 that of identity. But if Hume's view be sound, 
 there cannot be even sequence, for sequence 
 implies a permanence past which it moves. A 
 march past passes something. The universe is 
 not even a rope of sand. A rope implies some 
 continuity ; there is none for you. Sand implies 
 cohesion : cohesion is an absurdity. 
 
 In a word, Professor Green has shown for 
 ever, that without substance and cause Hume's 
 Philosophy is impossible, and with them untrue. 
 
 c 2
 
 2O SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 I need hardly remind you that to suppress Sub- 
 stance and Cause is the motive of Hume's Philo- 
 sophy. 
 
 Of course I am prepared to be told that I 
 have ignored the relativity of knowledge. Let 
 us hear Frederic Harrison : 
 
 ' The truly relative conception of knowledge 
 should make us habitually feel that our physical 
 science, our laws and discoveries in Nature, are 
 all imaginative creations poems, in fact which 
 strictly correspond within the limited range of 
 phenomena we have before us, but which we 
 never can know to be the real modes of any ex- 
 ternal being. We have really no ground what- 
 ever for believing that these our theories are the 
 ultimate and real scheme on which an external 
 world (if there be one) works, nor that the exter- 
 nal world objectively possesses that organized 
 order which we call science. For all that we 
 know to the contrary, man is the creator of the 
 order and harmony of the universe, for he has 
 imagined it' 
 
 So Shadworth Hodgson : * From the vanity of 
 speculation there is no refuge but in acquiescing 
 in its relative nature, and accepting truth for what 
 it is.' And a friend of mine put it thus to me in
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 2 I 
 
 conversation : ' Hegel's Philosophy is, no doubt, 
 a very fine thing, but Hegel's Philosophy is as re- 
 lative to Hegel as Sambo's would be to Sambo.' 
 
 Now the relativity of knowledge means two 
 very different things. In one sense, it is an 
 eternal truth in every meaning of the word. In 
 the other, it is a quibble which would be rejected 
 in a burlesque. 
 
 In the first sense, it means that there is no 
 abstract knowledge. Knowledge does not fall in 
 masses, like aerolites from the sky. Knowledge 
 is an expression of the relation which must pre- 
 vail between subject and object someone to 
 know, and something to be known. In this sense 
 the one term implies the other, and one no more 
 exists without the other than one end of a stick. 
 In this sense, the subject is no more modified by 
 the object than the concave is oppressed by the 
 convex. 
 
 But what the objectors mean is, that the object 
 is altered by the subject. At least, altered so 
 far, that we are hopelessly immured within our 
 own ideas. 
 
 In this other sense, which is the bulwark of 
 agnosticism, Relativity was formulated by Pro- 
 tagoras man is the measure of all things.
 
 22 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 Variety of taste is proverbial, as well as variety of 
 habits savage and civilized. The straight stick 
 bent in the pool, and the pigeon's neck, are 
 more than familiar. * Seeing the signal wrong,' 
 is stereotyped, and ' the eye looks squarely.' 
 Dreams are true to the dreamer, and may act 
 on others, as when a dreamer upsets a candle 
 and fires a town. Helmholtz wishes to show that 
 geometrical axioms must vary according to the 
 kind of space inhabited. And the truths which 
 such statements contain have been systematized 
 as follows : 
 
 Most writers hold that there are, prior to our 
 consciousness, two things a subject and an 
 object not correlatives, as explained above, like 
 concave and convex, but physically and numeri- 
 cally as distinct as the man that bowls and the 
 man that bats. These two things next affect 
 each other, and the result is consciousness, i.e. 
 all we know or may know. To the whole, con- 
 sciousness, the one factor, the subject, con- 
 tributes so largely, and its contributions so 
 disfigure the contributions of the object, that 
 we cannot possibly tell how much is due to 
 either we cannot appropriate the items. We 
 may imagine what we please, but we cannot
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 23 
 
 possibly know what it is that brings subject and 
 object into connexion, and so the only resource 
 is either agnosticism or blind belief. 
 
 The old theory of the interaction of the two 
 Entities was mechanical. Locke, for instance, 
 in the Essay tells us bodies act on us by impulse ; 
 and this was the view of the Epicureans. As 
 Professor Caird has pointed out, the impulse 
 theory is a circle; the process is material be- 
 cause the object is material ; and the object is 
 material because the process is material. One 
 of my predecessors, Professor Abbott, has shown 
 in Hermathena, that Locke held that our ideas 
 accompanied certain movements in the body by 
 the will of God. In other words, Locke's theory 
 is a kind of Pre-established Harmony or analogy. 
 But the mechanical theory gradually has given 
 way to what may be called the chemical, that is, 
 that the new compound generated by the interac- 
 tion of the two elements is all we know. The 
 curtain is the picture. Behind the curtain either 
 there is something unknown or unknowable ; or 
 there may be something, although we have no 
 particular reason for believing that there is ; or 
 there may be nothing. 
 
 These various theories, all of which agree in
 
 24 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 maintaining that we only know the resultant, or 
 the quasi-resultant, are generally coupled with 
 the doctrine formulated by Heraclitus, of perpe- 
 tual flux, a notion which is confounded with certain 
 physical theories, such as what Mr. Barlow calls 
 the Ultimatum of Physics the swing of infinite- 
 simal atoms. This would make no practical dif- 
 ference in psychology ; what Brown would call a 
 state, we should now call an aspect of oscilla- 
 tion ; but the veil would be unlifted still. 
 
 Physiology, as popularly understood, appears 
 to confirm this view. In this way: in place 
 of the common-sense objects which we talk of 
 hearing and seeing, physiology is supposed to 
 teach that the last-known antecedent in sensa- 
 tion is a certain state of the nervous system. 
 Hence, when I say I see the moon, I really am 
 affected by a state of my own nervous system, 
 though that system may be, and is, stimulated 
 into action by light, which is finally en rapport 
 with the solid moon. Helmholtz shows that the 
 object of perception is a great deal more than 
 the actual stimulus. In fact Helmholtz has been 
 hailed by the Kantians as an ally. They allege 
 him to have given an experimental proof that 
 there are a priori elements in the object. To this
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 25 
 
 the ultra sensationists reply, that Helmholtz has 
 only proved that the object is mainly built up of 
 absent sensations. But it is all one. In sensation 
 they include relation, and they must include it, 
 as without relation even chaos is impossible. 
 Helmholtz' s view is really all in favour of the 
 anti-materialistic position that consciousness in 
 perception is an integral whole that is, it con- 
 sists of relations which are unalterable. 
 
 But what does physiology really say ? My 
 friend, Professor Cleland, in his lecture on the 
 relation of Brain to Mind, states that, 'so far 
 as is at present known, a nervous system has no 
 constant connexion with anything of the nature 
 of consciousness ; nor for its completeness as a 
 physical mechanism does it seem necessary that 
 it should.' His conclusion is remarkable: 
 
 ' Has, then, the energy the conservation of which 
 has become one of the greatest laws for the physi- 
 cist a larger circuit here than the mere material 
 universe ? That is a startling question to present 
 itself; but once presented, I see no escape from 
 answering it in the affirmative. It does not seem 
 to have generally occurred to thinkers to track 
 sufficiently in detail the steps, physical and men- 
 tal, from the stimulation of a sense-organ to the
 
 26 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 operations of mind and brain consequent on sen- 
 sation, so as to see that there is a transition-point 
 where such a question is inevitable. But the in- 
 exorable question having been raised, there are 
 only two alternatives : at this transition-point, 
 either the physical results of the action in the 
 nerve-cells amount to the same sum as they 
 would in the case of the same action in cells un- 
 connected with the mind, or they amount to a 
 smaller sum : if to the same sum, then the change 
 in the mind is a something which, while brought 
 about by physical energy, is yet additional to the 
 constant quantity, and to that extent transgresses 
 the physicist's law in a region external to his do- 
 main ; if to a smaller sum, then the difference is 
 transformed from physical to psychical energy, 
 and the bridge looms vaguely between the physi- 
 cist's and that other territory. But it is difficult 
 to imagine that the former alternative can be true, 
 seeing that at any moment, without change of 
 external circumstances, the volition can initiate 
 physical operations leading to movements of the 
 body, and similarly can stop the same, and must, 
 therefore, start the brain-changes which are its 
 own necessary accompaniment. According to the 
 reading of the mechanism of sensation to which
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 2J 
 
 this argument forces me, and which I put for- 
 ward with all the diffidence which so startling a 
 result suggests, a certain minute amount of energy 
 in the production of sensation quits the physical for 
 the psychical world, instantaneously to return again 
 in the excitation effected by the sentient mind on the 
 substance of the brain. While, as already said, the 
 statement that thought is a form of physical 
 energy cannot possibly convey any meaning, it 
 is not only possible, but apparently necessary to 
 admit that thought and physical energy are mu- 
 tually convertible ; nor will this statement long 
 continue after all, perhaps, to wear a startling 
 aspect to those who grasp that Spirit is the one 
 substratum of everything. 
 
 ' It must also be observed that as soon as it is 
 appreciated that mental action is either prior or 
 subsequent to the physical change with which it is 
 immediately associated, the important admission 
 must follow that there is an element of mental 
 existence independent of the body, namely, that 
 on which the nerve-change acts in the case of 
 sensation, and from which that volition comes 
 whose action is linked with the brain. In that 
 sphere, and not in the shape of potential vibra- 
 tions laid past in nerve-cells, I believe it is that
 
 28 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 latent memories are stored ; and I know not how 
 much else there may be within it' (Relation of 
 Brain to Mind}. If this be so, ' the production 
 of sensation' means that the physical antecedent 
 and the psychical consequent are united in the 
 causal nexus. 
 
 There is another argument which seems to 
 favour the relativity of knowledge. Take the 
 case put by Brown. If we were all always blind, 
 astronomy would be a kind of chemistry ; we 
 should find that at certain seasons the tempera- 
 ture altered. Suppose such beings suddenly 
 endowed with sight. What I say is, that no 
 access of knowledge, however great it be, will 
 ever supersede anything but theory. Newton 
 supersedes Ptolemy ; that is, he supersedes Pto- 
 lemy's theories, but he cannot supersede Ptolemy's 
 facts. As another of my predecessors, Dr. Mac- 
 Ivor, has put it : a child, a man, and an angel 
 may join in the same prayer without the superior 
 knowledge of the man nullifying the thoughts of 
 the child, and so of the angel. Plato has, in my 
 opinion, given a truer account of the progress 
 of knowledge than most of the moderns ; we see 
 more and more of the universe through the 
 medium of the senses, but in the progress of
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 29 
 
 knowledge the data of the senses become of an 
 importance that lessens with every step. In a 
 word, we see better and better that the universe 
 consists of relations. Relations are unalterable. 
 The relation of the dream to the dreamer is as 
 true as the relation of the Newtonian system to 
 the material cosmos. ' Seeing a signal wrong' 
 is as scientific and philosophical as seeing it 
 right; but the right seeing has in itself wider 
 relations. So, Newtonianism has wider relations 
 than dreaming. Fuller knowledge will always 
 compel us to alter the theories we build upon a 
 limited basis, but it is the theory only will be 
 altered, not the basis, without which it could not 
 have been built. With Hutchison Sterling, I do 
 not believe that what I call a piece of wire may 
 be a leech to an inhabitant of the moon. I know 
 less about iron than some present, but the re- 
 lations which constitute my knowledge of iron 
 will be part of the notion iron to Omniscience. 
 The variety of moral judgments only proves that 
 the same overt act has more relations than one, 
 and the geometers of different kinds of space 
 must see the relations appropriate to the par- 
 ticular space in which they move. The familiar 
 jingle, that the Infinite alone can know the in-
 
 3O SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 finite, amounts to this, and to this only, that as 
 any one thing is related to everything else, 
 Omniscience alone knows everything, while we 
 know but a small fraction, but the fraction is 
 part and parcel of what Omniscience knows. In 
 other words, we know some of the relations 
 which constitute the object for Omniscience, 
 and we know them as universal and neces- 
 sary. It is the unalterableness of relations that 
 gives support to physical science ; it is this 
 that, to use Professor James's graphic image, 
 enables her 'to hump her strong back' against 
 the phantoms around her. It is the unalterable- 
 ness of relations that explains why we credit a 
 single experiment, and gives meaning to the con- 
 servation of Force and to Causality. Physical 
 science postulates the uniformity of relations, and 
 is therefore justified in taking for granted the 
 constant element. A billiard-player does not 
 weigh the ball after each stroke, because the 
 weight does not vary ; but card-players use fresh 
 packs. It is rather ungrateful, then, on the part 
 of certain Physicists to turn round and deny the 
 postulates by which they work. Professor James, 
 who is never dull, tells us the transcendental-ego- 
 business is like interrupting a geographer by
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 3 I 
 
 telling him every five minutes that he forgets to 
 talk about Space. The reply is at hand : the 
 geographer ought not to be interrupted until he 
 denies the existence of space, or says he knows 
 nothing about it. It is the unalterableness of 
 relations that gives us as a fact at this moment 
 the universe that crushes the materialist and the 
 agnostic. So far as the materialist and the 
 agnostic argue, they work with relations. Now, 
 Subject and Object are abstractions from the in- 
 tegral whole consciousness : they are the widest 
 relations of the universe ; but to suppose that 
 one acts in any way on the other is as absurd as 
 if a geographer taught that the earth was the 
 joint production of the North and South Poles. 
 But, because our knowledge consists of relations, 
 for that reason, to call our knowledge relative is 
 a dull pun. 
 
 Herbert Spencer attempts to explain what 
 Kant calls the a priori portion of consciousness 
 by heredity. According to Spencer and his fol- 
 lowers, the experience we ourselves acquire is 
 variable ; but the experience transmitted by in- 
 numerable ages of ancestry human and other- 
 wise is invariable, that is, necessary. This 
 might account for the persistence or obtrusive-
 
 32 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 ness of notions, just as a hypochondriac cannot 
 help fancying himself a parrot or an hour-glass. 
 But this is not Kant's necessity. Necessity to 
 Kant means not only that we have the idea as a 
 matter of fact, but that as a part and parcel of 
 the idea we see that it could not be otherwise. 
 It is not our having, but its being, that is con- 
 cerned. In a word, Spencer does not account 
 for constitutive necessity, i.e. the cognizance of 
 the unalterableness of relations. In short, the 
 relativity of knowledge, in the sense in which it is 
 used to support agnosticism, is an absurdity. It 
 is an attempt to account for the whole by some- 
 thing outside the whole. We can show the rela- 
 tion of parts to parts, but to suppose we can 
 thus deal with the whole is a fallacy of composi- 
 tion. It is well put by Professor Caird : 
 
 ' To proceed from sense to consciousness, and 
 to explain consciousness by sense, is a gigantic 
 hysteron-proteron ; for it is only in relation to con- 
 sciousness that sense, like every other object, 
 becomes intelligible. And in the same way, to 
 explain time and space psychologically or phy- 
 siologically, is to explain them by phenomena 
 which are known only under conditions of time 
 and space. The "physiologist of mind" who
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 33 
 
 asserts that mind is essentially a function of the 
 material organism, may be fairly met by the 
 objection of Kant that his explanation is tran- 
 scendent. To go beyond the intelligence to ex- 
 plain the intelligence, is to cut away the ground 
 on which we ourselves are standing. So, again, 
 when the psychologist applies the law of associa- 
 tion to the genesis of mind, he is obliged to 
 presuppose a fixed and definite world of objects 
 acting under conditions of space and time upon 
 the sensitive subject, in order by this means to 
 explain how the ideas of the world and of himself 
 may be awakened in that subject And this is to 
 suppose that the world exists, as it can exist only 
 to mind, before the process whereby associations 
 are produced. The necessity, which is at the 
 basis of our consciousness of objects, is thus 
 interpreted as the result of the repeated actions 
 of these objects upon the subject; or, in other 
 words, the theory is stated in terms of the con- 
 sciousness it pretends to explain. Nor is the 
 theory improved, as an ultimate explanation of 
 the intelligence and the intelligible world, when 
 the process of association is protracted, as it is 
 by Mr. Spenser and others, through an indefinite 
 series of generations, or even when the present 
 
 D
 
 34 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 consciousness of men is regarded as the result of 
 a gradual adaptation of a race of the animals to 
 its circumstances, and which has been going on 
 for millions of ages. If it were proved to-morrow 
 that man is developed from an Ascidian ancestor, 
 it would still remain certain that the conscious- 
 ness which makes us men is independent of time 
 and development ; and the Darwinian theory, 
 like every other intelligible view of things, pre- 
 supposes time and space, and all the forms of 
 thought that are necessary to an intelligible 
 experience' (Kant, pp. 3989). 
 
 The history of consciousness is another absur- 
 dity. Here, again, Professor Caird puts the point 
 clearly : 
 
 ' Observation of the genesis of knowledge or, 
 what is the same thing, observation by the mind 
 of its own genesis, is the crowning absurdity of 
 speculation : for there is nothing to observe, 
 unless the observer puts his own developed con- 
 sciousness in the place of the undeveloped con- 
 sciousness he is observing. And if he does thus 
 introduce his developed consciousness, all he can 
 possibly examine is the reciprocal dependence of 
 its elements. He cannot possibly trace back 
 knowledge to faculties or elements, which have a
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 35 
 
 character independent of their relation in know- 
 ledge. We have no standing-ground outside of 
 the universe of thought, from which we can deter- 
 mine the factors that produce it. * The mind is 
 its own place,' its place includes everything 
 knowable, and, therefore, as no one did more 
 than Kant to show, it is impossible to explain 
 it by going out of itself (Kant, p. 374). 
 
 Yet the genesis of consciousness receives ap- 
 parent support from Natural History. Here we 
 have more or less complex specimens of ani- 
 mality existing side by side. But it must not be 
 forgotten that an animal is in the popular sense 
 of the word an individual. We cannot find a 
 sensation by itself as we do a jelly-fish on the 
 shore. But even in Natural History, G. H. Lewes 
 observes, 'it is clear that we should never rightly 
 understand vital phenomena were we to begin 
 our study of Life by contemplating its simplest 
 manifestations in the animal series ; we can 
 only understand the Amoeba and the Polypus 
 by a light reflected from the study of man ' 
 (Study of Psychology, 94). 
 
 Mr. T. Davidson, in my opinion, rightly points 
 out the weak point in Locke's Essay. 
 
 ' Unfortunately, however, he adopted an utterly 
 
 D 2
 
 36 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 false method of procedure, and one which the 
 experience of ages might have shown him was 
 futile. Instead of taking one act of knowledge 
 and placing it under his mental microscope or in 
 his mental crucible, he began in the old way with 
 what, without any authority, he assumed to be 
 the factors of knowledge, and tried to see whe- 
 ther he could not, by making these unite or in- 
 terpenetrate, produce perception and knowledge. 
 These factors were not only fully organized pro- 
 ducts of the very act he was trying to explain, 
 but they were the results of one unacknowleged 
 and most incorrect dismemberment of that act. In 
 other words, Locke, instead of analyzing thought 
 to find out its factors, undertook to construct 
 thought out of what, without scientific analysis, 
 he supposed to be its factors. It was just as if, in 
 order to find out the nature of wine, he had said 
 to himself : " Wine is a red liquid ; led me see how 
 water and red ink must be put together in order 
 to make wine." He said : " Knowledge is the 
 effect produced upon a sensitive tablet partly by 
 external things and partly by itself. Let me see 
 how this effect is produced." How it was pro- 
 duced he never did see and never could see, and 
 his conclusion was : Knowledge is made up of
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 37 
 
 ideas of sensation and ideas of reflection ' (Mind, 
 Oct. 1882). 
 
 This states the case too favourably for Locke. 
 For it is easy to procure a jug of water and a 
 bottle of red ink each of them distinct but we 
 cannot obtain sensation or reflexion in separate 
 vessels ; we cannot bring them together ; and if 
 we could they would produce nothing. They are 
 the creatures of abstraction. My illustration 
 would be, Locke tried to make wine by com- 
 bining redness and fluidity. 
 
 The condemnation of Locke carries the con- 
 demnation of all psychology that is, as a basis 
 for philosophy. In other words, the student 
 of philosophy may pass at once from Plato to 
 Hegel. Have, then, Aristotle, the Stoics, the 
 Schoolmen, and the modern psychologists, from 
 Des Cartes to Spencer, lived in vain ? Not at 
 all. They have thrown light on the natural 
 history of man a process which involves time. 
 When I was a child I spoke as a child. Such is 
 everyone's experience. If the earth was once 
 an incandescent mass, it is clear that the first 
 organism was posterior to that incandescence. 
 The scientist, or quasi-scientist not science 
 hereon waxes jubilant. You must admit there
 
 38 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 was a time when you did not exist. But this is 
 the old confusion between a series and a know- 
 ledge of that series. A series is relation to a 
 consciousness only, and the cognizance of that 
 series is consciousness. The terms of any and 
 every relation must be simultaneous. No one 
 term is before the other or behind it. 
 
 In a word, ' an animal organism which has its 
 history in time gradually becomes the vehicle of 
 an eternally complete consciousness.' Conscious- 
 ness itself can have no history, for consciousness 
 is the universe. The vehicle of consciousness 
 the nervous system has a history, but that his- 
 tory presupposes the consciousness, which must be 
 non-temporal and non-serial, that is, eternal and 
 immutable. The immutable, in the act of con- 
 sciousness, incorporates the series, and, in the act, 
 the series becomes simultaneous, not in the chill 
 of petrification, but in the clear expanse of higher 
 being. Why the mutable co-exists with the im- 
 mutable requires no explanation ; if we mean by 
 an explanation of the universe a part outside 
 the whole. The Hegelian explanation is really 
 an analysis of the universe itself: it makes ex- 
 plicit what is implicit in thought. Plato's sur- 
 passing genius has shown by his formula that
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 39 
 
 the universe is one and many. Physical science, 
 or natural history, points out various relations 
 between parts of the Many, but they presuppose 
 the One. Thus Huxley's imaginary being sees 
 the vivid flash against a background of dark- 
 ness that is, he has space, time, and a series 
 a complete consciousness, always if, and only if, 
 he views it as a whole. 
 
 If he views it as a whole. That is, if it is the 
 spontaneous consciousness of man the same in 
 the negro as in Hegel. Of the consciousness of 
 animals we know little ; G. H. Lewes has given 
 excellent reasons against appealing to the psy- 
 chology of lower organisms (Study of Psychology, 
 pp. 9199). He then asks, Has the dog a 
 priori Forms ? On Kantian principles, the 
 answer is easy : the dog may know distance 
 between two objects, and yet have no idea of 
 space, as necessary and universal. But the point 
 is quite immaterial. The organism of the dog 
 approaches the organism of man, but is far in- 
 ferior to it as a medium for the inspection of the 
 universe. Both organisms of man and dog find 
 their place in the universe of which they are part 
 of that universe which dimly discloses itself 
 to man. The human organism may be the first
 
 4O SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION, 
 
 instrument which reveals the universe as a whole, 
 and the inferior organism may be the specimens 
 of the more rudimentary vehicle. They may be 
 as Galileo's optic tube is to its most modern de- 
 scendant. Be this so or not, the universe reveals 
 itself to man as a whole. And that is all I 
 require 
 
 With the answer to one objection I will con- 
 clude. Surely, it will be said, thought does not 
 make fact ; thought conforms to fact, but fact 
 does not conform to thought. Is it not, as was 
 
 actually said to Hutchison Sterling, nonsense 
 
 to say that granite is thought ? In one sense, the 
 man that used the strong language is right the 
 stimulus is not the nervous system. But the uni- 
 verse, of which the nervous system is the vehicle, 
 and the block of granite is a part, is essentially 
 thought. For this reason : Nature is a process 
 of continual change, and as such is relative in the 
 true sense of the word to something not a series 
 to a subject to the spirit. We know even now 
 that the universe is a whole, but to know it in its 
 wholeness requires omniscience to know as we 
 are known. 
 
 One sentence, and I have done. What I wish 
 to convey is, that the statement that this page is
 
 AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE. 4! 
 
 now before me contains that which, in the most 
 literal sense, inverts the position of the Materi- 
 alist, puts physical science in her proper place, 
 and forces the agnostic from the solitude of his 
 own reflexions into the larger world he professes 
 to ignore. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 THE REV. W. HAYDEN. 
 
 This Lecture has been criticized by the Rev. W. Hayden.* 
 I have been told that until the publication of his Criticism 
 Mr. Hayden's friends were unaware of his capacity for meta- 
 physics. Their last state calls trumpet-tongued for sympathy. 
 
 1. Mr. Hayden's title-page is misleading. I did not lec- 
 ture on Perception, but on some facts the simplest of 
 Perception. Any fact will do. Mr. Hayden's title-page will 
 serve my purpose as well as the morning stars singing for 
 joy. From this fact or facts I deduce inferences as to the 
 nature of the Universe. Mr. Hayden dwells on the psy- 
 chology of the process, and imagines it concerns me. I 
 might as well take his title-page, and give a lecture on 
 paper-making and printing. 
 
 2. Mr. Hayden, still harping on psychology, mourns over 
 my 'tacit approval' and my ' frank acceptance' of Professor 
 Huxley's doctrine, p. 12. I quoted Professor Huxley as 
 'above suspicion,' because anyone must see that Professor 
 Huxley's statement would not err on the side of transcen- 
 dentalism. So I quote Professor James. That is, I take the 
 statement that is likely to be most adverse to my conclusions, 
 and from them draw my own conclusions, all the same. It 
 
 * Professor Maguire on Perception. By the Rev. \V. Hayden, 
 S. J., Dublin. M. H. Gill & Son. 1883.
 
 42 SOME FACTS OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 used to be considered that there was some logic in the verse, 
 ' Out of thy own mouth I judge thee, thou wicked servant.' 
 
 3. Mr. Hayden tells us that ' when a vessel floats upon the 
 water, the water has to it the relation of outsidedness, inde- 
 pendently of the mind,' p. 13. If Mr. Hayden means by 
 'the mind' some particular individual, say himself, he is 
 quite right ; but this is psychology da capo. If, on the other 
 hand, Mr. Hayden means 'all mind,' the position is atheis- 
 tical. The members of the Society to which Mr. Hayden 
 belongs are remarkable for what is called in theatrical circles 
 ' quick change.' The supernumerary, who impressed us in 
 one scene with his gravity as a cardinal, in the next is 
 dancing with all the verve of a man-of-war's man. But I 
 believe this is the first time on which an ecclesiastic figures 
 as an atheist. Aquinas teaches that the First Matter was 
 created, Sttmma I., XLIV. ii. The note is instructive 'Ex 
 hoc articulo refelluntur omnes haeretici qui voluerunt mate- 
 riam a Deo factam non esse,' vol. i., p. 382, ed. Paris, 1882. 
 It may be alleged that Plato held that Matter was coeternal. 
 This view is founded on a misconception of the Timzeus, 
 which the old Academy rightly compared to a diagram, 
 Aristotle, De Caelo, 279, b 32; Simplic, 488, b 15 ; what we 
 call an allegorical description. Aquinas says the creation of 
 the prima materia is by emanation, ' a qua quidem emanatione 
 nee materia excluditur,' I. XLIV. ii. Emanation is of course 
 Neo-Platonic, Plot., Enn. III. 8, 9 ; though with the Neo- 
 Platonists it is plainly metaphorical, and is only one amongst 
 other metaphors. Their emanation has nothing to do with 
 time, V. i. 6. Aquinas holds that in ex nihilo fieri, ex denotes 
 order only, XLV. i., apparently order in time, for the illustra- 
 tion is ex mane fit meridies. 
 
 4. In p. 14 Mr. Hayden takes Plato's Trporfpov <f>vo-i, as 
 referring to design, whereas it, as Aristotle tells us, Met. A. xi., 
 refers to logical order. But logical order is for Plato, and 
 all philosophers, not psychologists, the highest law. In a 
 word, if we have nothing but psychology, we can only escape 
 temporarily from materialism by shrinking into subjective 
 idealism.
 
 II. 
 
 THE WILL: IN REFERENCE TO DR. HENRY 
 MAUDSLEY'S 'BODY AND WILL.' 
 
 THE year which has passed since I first addressed 
 you has been, I rejoice to say, fruitful in philo- 
 sophy. Besides many treatises on the doctrines 
 of Kant, one by our Professor Abbott, we have 
 had the Prolegomena Ethica of the late Pro- 
 fessor Green ; a treatise on Logic by his editor, 
 Mr. Bradley, and a notable volume of Essays by 
 various writers, under the auspices of Professor 
 Caird. But we have something more comforting 
 still. Professor Robertson, in this year's volume 
 of Mind, laments that Psychology has not fulfilled 
 the expectations of her admirers, and Mr. James 
 Ward, of Cambridge, has in the same journal en- 
 deavoured to reconcile the respective claims of 
 Psychology and Philosophy an effort which can 
 have only one result. And, amongst other events, 
 ' the friends of Ideas' must congratulate themselves 
 on the appointment of Mr. Wallace the translator
 
 44 THE WILL I IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 of Hegel to the Whyte's Chair of Moral Philo- 
 sophy in Oxford ; and the appearance in Mind of 
 Hutchison Sterling-, the Scholarch of Thought 
 wherever English is spoken, is ample warrant that 
 Empiricism will not have it all its own way in the 
 London Journal of Psychology. And the present 
 year has given us the first volume of the works of 
 St. Thomas Aquinas, with the sanction of His 
 Holiness the present Pope, Leo XIII., who has 
 authorized the teaching of Thomism in the col- 
 leges. The effects of the revival of Scholasticism 
 cannot be overrated. The present age is de- 
 voted to the philosophy and science of Becoming, 
 while the Schoolmen have elaborated what we 
 want most the philosophy of Being, and the study 
 of Aristotle must involve that of Plato. The gain 
 to Philosophy is sure. 
 
 But Empiricism dies hard. Dr. H. Maudsley, 
 in his Body and Will, has made a systematic attack 
 on the spiritual side of Human Nature ; and it is 
 the metaphysics of his book which I propose to 
 examine in this day's lecture. I hasten to add that 
 Dr. Maudsley' s professional experience and posi- 
 tion lend an interest to the argument, which is the 
 result of ten years' lectures and addresses ; and as 
 he declares, in his Preface, that his Essay will not
 
 DR. MAUDSLEY'S * BODY AND WILL.' 45 
 
 be in vain, if it serve to bring home to mental 
 philosophers the necessity of taking account of 
 certain facts, the 'mental philosopher' is justi- 
 fied in dealing with the same facts from his own 
 point of view that is to say, in discussing Dr. 
 Maudsley's argument, we need not fear being 
 warned off the preserve of the specialist. The 
 book is written for our good. In that spirit let us 
 accept it. 
 
 Dr. Maudsley's Essay* is divided into three 
 parts Will in its metaphysical aspects ; Will in 
 its physiological, social, and evolutional relations ; 
 and Will in its pathological relations. It is with 
 the first part chiefly I propose to deal. No one 
 questions Dr. Maudsley's full competence to handle 
 the physiology or the pathology of the question. 
 
 First, to show my own views : 
 
 In the first lecture which I gave here on Percep- 
 tion, the argument is brief: That, to which all 
 space, all time, and all series are wholes, cannot be 
 itself spatial, temporal, or serial ; but as, in com- 
 prising Space, Time, and Series as wholes, it eo 
 
 * Body and Will, being an essay concerning Will in its meta- 
 physical, physiological, and pathological aspects, by Henry 
 Maudsley, M.D. London: Kegan Paul. 1883.
 
 46 THE WILL : IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 ipso distinguishes itself as self self is immaterial 
 or spiritual. Mind, accordingly, is that which cog- 
 nises itself; while Nature the series has no self; 
 it only exists as object in relation to subject 
 to Mind. 
 
 To translate this into the language of action : 
 the agent as acting, or will, is not the serial into 
 which his act deploys. But, so far as his will is not 
 serial, his will is not subject to the serial law of 
 antecedence and consequence. His will is so far 
 free of that law, and so far free. That is briefly : 
 the non-empirical portion of man is not empirical ; 
 therefore free from empirical incidents. This may 
 be called the metaphysical or transcendental free- 
 dom of man. 
 
 This is the only question for the Metaphysician. 
 Does Sequence cover the whole field of thought, or 
 is it merely an abstraction which cannot exist by 
 itself? Is it only in Alice's Wonderland that the 
 grin exists without the cat ? 
 
 Nearly twenty years ago, I pointed out that the 
 question was embarrassed by metaphor the pest 
 of metaphysics. The statement ran thus : 
 
 ' Two Idola Theatri notions out of place have 
 mainly, if not wholly, caused the prevalent confu- 
 sion. These Idola are the legal notion of Freedom
 
 DR. MAUDSLEY'S 'BODY AND WILL.' 47 
 
 in at least two different senses, and the mechanical 
 notion of Impulse ; and this latter has gradually 
 widened into the more general notion of Physical 
 Causation. 
 
 * For the legal metaphor Plato has paved the 
 way. The Republic is one long comparison of the 
 Individual to the Body Politic. Plato, besides, de- 
 scribes the soul of the tyrant the vicious man as 
 filled with the very essence of slavery. Hence, the 
 comparison of virtue to freedom was natural. 
 
 ' The significations of the word free which bear 
 on the present question are two. The first denotes 
 the condition of the Slave as opposed to that of the 
 Free Man. The second denotes mere exemption 
 from penalties, either at the hands of the State, or 
 of the individual. 
 
 ' The term freedom in the first sense connoted 
 the following notions, all of which are excluded 
 from the term servitude. The law looked on the 
 Freeman as the ultimate root and source of certain 
 proceedings of which it took cognizance, and which 
 it accordingly imputed to him. The Slave, on the 
 other hand, had no locus standi ; he was held to be 
 the mere conduit of his master's intentions. Even 
 when the Slave fell under the power of the State, 
 his master's intention was either expressed or pre-
 
 48 THE WILL : IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 sumed. His master handed him over to the public 
 authority. Freedom, therefore, in this sense, de- 
 notes merely the imputability of actions ; and the 
 metaphor, so restricted, is harmless enough. But 
 no system of ethics, not even extreme necessita- 
 rianism, denies the ethical imputability of actions to 
 the agent. What the extreme necessitarian denies 
 is the justice of legal punishment, and not the 
 moral reference of the action to the agent, with its 
 moral consequences of praise and blame. 
 
 ' But freedom has another signification. Every 
 law is really an alternative. Every law says, " Do 
 or suffer," "Forbear or suffer." Now, the Sove- 
 reign is subject to no alternatives. Every moment 
 of the Slave's wretched life is subject to alterna- 
 tives, either positive or negative, which emanate 
 from his master's caprice. The Freeman has, at 
 least, some portion of his time unbroken by positive 
 alternatives. But, as the Slave generally obeys the 
 command, and escapes the penalty, extrinsic influ- 
 ence is the prominent portion of the notion sla- 
 very. The Slave is not as the Freeman he is not 
 free. But free in this sense is quite different from 
 free in the former sense ; for the Slave may prefer 
 disobedience : in which case he will suffer the pe- 
 nalties of default. But in this sense the Slave is
 
 DR. MAUDSLEY'S 'BODY AND WILL.' 49 
 
 morally free. Prometheus, chained to the rock, 
 defies the Autocrat of the universe. Even Omni- 
 potence cannot be conceived as bending the will, 
 save by infusing motives which the reason of the 
 agent adopts as his own. 
 
 ' The two distinct meanings were mixed together 
 in the controversies which arose out of the doctrine 
 of Original Sin. On the one hand, Sin was to be 
 imputed to man ; man was, consequently, a source 
 of action, and therefore free. On the other hand, 
 metaphysical hypotheses as to the nature of the 
 Deity excluded even the Promethean choice of 
 obedience or disobedience. Man was, therefore, 
 less free in the second sense than the Slave ; and, 
 therefore, according to the first sense, not respon- 
 sible. The confusion was, and is still, increased by 
 a misconception of mechanical Impulse. 
 
 ' A billiard ball, for example, would be con- 
 sidered as totally passive. Yet the weight of the 
 ball is not only an antecedent to the beginning of 
 motion, but also an antecedent which continues to 
 act after the stroke is given. But, as the weight of 
 the ball is constant, while the stroke is variable, 
 the stroke is the only thing to be practically con- 
 sidered. In this way the analogy of Impulse is 
 rather against than in favour of the extrinsic neces-
 
 5<3 THE WILL : IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 sity of human action. But, as the stroke appears 
 to be the sole agent in the case, the supposed 
 analogy excludes the alternative of Freedom in the 
 second sense, and consequently Responsibility in 
 the first. 
 
 ' On the other hand, in the case of Motion, 
 there is really an analogue to the outward motive. 
 A mouse cannot move a train, but an engine can. 
 Yet still the analogy fails in the most important 
 point ; for, to make it complete, the body moved 
 should have a power of refusing to move at all 
 according to circumstances. But, whenever the 
 question of circumstances is raised, the reason 
 must be appealed to. A thousand points of re- 
 semblance will not conceal the real diversity of a 
 rational and self-conscious agent and an irrational 
 and unconscious object.' * 
 
 The result, so far, is that the term Freedom is 
 a metaphor a metaphor, too, that may mislead : 
 while the analogies of mechanical, of chemical, 
 and of physical phenomena, are positively mis- 
 leading. Metaphor, then, and false analogies must 
 be discarded, and facts alone considered. 
 
 The ground being cleared of metaphor, the 
 
 * The Platonic Idea, pp. 136-139.
 
 DR. MAUDSLEY'S ' BODY AND WILL.' 51 
 
 facts of the case are pretty clear : hear Professor 
 Huxley : ' When people introduce Calvinism into 
 science, and declare that man is nothing but a 
 machine, I do not see any particular harm in their 
 doctrine, so long as they admit that which is a 
 matter of experimental fact namely, that it is a 
 machine capable of adjusting itself within certain 
 limits.' 
 
 Hear Dr. Ward, the great Roman Catholic meta- 
 physician . ' I am walking for health's sake in my 
 grounds on a bitterly cold day. My strongest pre- 
 sent desire is to be back comfortably in the warm 
 house ; but I persistently refuse to gratify that 
 desire ; remembering the great importance of a 
 good walk, not only for my general health, but 
 for my evening's comfort and my night's sleep. 
 Plainly, according to the Jesuit definition' [* Po- 
 tentia libera est ea quce, positis omnibus requisitis ad 
 agendum, potest agere et non agere? quoted p. 42*]] 
 ' my will acts with perfect freedom. My present 
 action is resistance to my strongest present desire ; 
 and I have full proximate power to abstain, if I 
 choose, from the continuance of this action, by re- 
 solving to go indoors. But no less plainly this act 
 
 * Dublin Review, April, 1879. 
 E 2
 
 52 THE WILL : IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 is free, according to that definition of Free-will 
 which we ourselves set forth' [_ l Libertas est ea indiffe- 
 rentia activa agentis, qua, positis omnibus ad agendum 
 requisitis, potest agere et non agere? quoted from F. 
 Palmieri, p. 42]. ' My soul and body, co-operating 
 as blind causes, generate my preponderating spon- 
 taneous impulse towards going indoors ; while my 
 soul, acting as an originative cause, generates my 
 continued resistance to that preponderating sponta- 
 neous impulse. 
 
 ' Conversely. I am sitting over the fire, with a 
 novel in my hand ; and my strongest present desire 
 is to continue in my present position. I remember, 
 indeed, that nothing in a small way can well be 
 worse for me, and that I shall pay dearly for my 
 self-indulgence. Video meliora proboque : deteriora 
 sequor, and I stay just as I am. Here again, ac- 
 cording to the Jesuit definition, I am undeniably 
 free ; for I am entirely able, without any further 
 requisita ad agendum, either to continue my self- 
 indulgent action or to abstain from it. And here 
 again my freedom is equally manifest, according to 
 our own definition of freedom. True, indeed, my 
 soul is not at this moment acting as an originative 
 cause ; but it has the proximate power of so acting 
 if it pleases.'
 
 DR. MAUDSLEY'S ' BODY AND WILL.' 53 
 
 Hear his opponent, Shadworth Hodgson : 
 * Freedom means the action and reaction of motives 
 on each other within the mind, not fettered by 
 external constraint, but free to exert each its own 
 kind and degree of energy.' * 
 
 ' Hear Hutchison Sterling : * That only is free 
 which is amenable to its own laws.' And lastly 
 Hegel : * The genuinely free-will is conscious to 
 itself that its own content is absolutely firm and 
 fast, and knows it, at the same time, to be tho- 
 roughly its own.' These, amongst a cloud of wit- 
 nesses. The sum is, that man has a power of 
 action in spite of all external motives. That is to 
 say, man is not wholly a machine. It is obvious, 
 that the smallest amount of this power suffices to 
 raise the controversy, and, I may add, to settle it. 
 In other words, if man, under any circumstances, 
 for ever so brief a moment, can attach himself to 
 one force stimulus or motive rather than another, 
 the battle is won. Selection is not direction. No 
 one, as yet, has argued that a bullet selects the 
 bull's-eye : the man selects his rifle, and takes his 
 aim. He selects some nervous and muscular agen- 
 cies out of innumerable. The only fact required is 
 I deliberate with a view to selection. 
 
 * Mind, April, 1880.
 
 54 THE WILL : IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 Dr. Maudsley begins by describing the Will as 
 an immaterial entity in a material world, the events 
 of which it largely determines : and having alluded 
 to the relation of motives to the Will, he proceeds 
 to say : 
 
 ' The initial difficulty is the capital one 
 namely, the conception, in any degree, of a power 
 in nature so extraordinary, coming from an un- 
 known without, having no genesis but an au- 
 togenesis, deriving its subsequent energy from 
 nothing but itself, subject to no laws of growth, 
 though manifestly growing in the individual with 
 his mental growth ; a power which, notwithstanding 
 that it works as a part of nature, is not of the same 
 kind nor has anything in common with anything 
 else there is without sympathy, affinity, or re- 
 lationship with the things which it works in and 
 upon. It is not entirely right to describe it as 
 supernatural since it thus works naturally and 
 constantly in the events of the world : supernatural 
 it is in the primal source and perpetual renewal of 
 its energy, inscrutably unnatural in the mode of 
 its union with the natural.' Pp. 2-3. 
 
 If any of my hearers recollect the principle 
 which underlay the Lectures I delivered here last 
 year, the difficulty is not peculiar to Will. The
 
 DR. MAUDSLEY'S * BODY AND WILL.' 55 
 
 Universe, as following 1 the teaching of Plato and 
 Hegel, I endeavoured to point out, consists of the 
 inseparable union union through antagonism of 
 TO ov and TO <f>aLv6[jivov of the Universal and the 
 Particular of Permanence and Sequence : and the 
 whole problem of the Will is the same antithesis 
 transferred from Metaphysics, or Cognition, to 
 Ethics, or Practice. The extraordinary thing would 
 be, if we had two Universes, in place of one, and it 
 is this apparently that Dr. Maudsley imagines he 
 requires I say imagines, for no one, if he thinks, 
 can think two Universes. He cannot think of a 
 streak of Sequence separated by an impassable 
 chasm from a state of Permanence, without the 
 chasm becoming a bridge. Each in thought im- 
 plies the other as certainly as the concave of the 
 circle implies the convex. 
 
 The experimentalist is apt to assume that all 
 he requires for his work is the Law of Sequence. 
 On looking at the matter more closely, we see 
 that Sequence is surreptitiously translated into 
 Causation. Now, such Sequence is an abstraction : 
 it is an abstraction of order in place or in time ; 
 but in experimental language it means Causation 
 stolen, mutilated and disguised. Mere Sequence 
 is per se unintelligible ; to quote from a criticism of
 
 56 THE WILL I IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 the Flux of Heraclitus, whose view was practically 
 that of Hume : 
 
 * The several distinctions Antecedent, Conse- 
 quent, and Indifference appear sharp enough. But 
 the clearness of the analysis is more verbal than real. 
 The notions Antecedent, Consequent, and Indiffer- 
 ence, are essentially relative relative not only inter 
 se, but also with regard to the antecedents and con- 
 sequents of other orders. Every antecedent is a 
 consequent relatively to the preceding link in the 
 chain ; and so, conversely, the consequent. But the 
 relativity of phenomena does not stop here. Every 
 distinct sequent in each order may be considered 
 as a phenomenon, which yields on resolution, as be- 
 fore, its complete set of sequents ; and each of these 
 may be subjected to a fresh analysis, which presents 
 a similar result, and so on to infinity. Hence the 
 Heraclitean doctrine, that all things are in a state of 
 flux. The doctrine is not that a state of flux is a 
 superficial aspect of phenomena, which involves a 
 substantial residuum. The doctrine is, that flux and 
 existence are coextensive, and properly, not meta- 
 phorically, identical. Flux is not an abstract de- 
 scription of all-things ; all-things, on the contrary, 
 is an abstract description of flux. Flux is the real 
 essence; all-things, its mental analysis and synthesis.
 
 DR. MAUDSLEY'S 'BODY AND WILL.' 57 
 
 With this doctrine Plato does not quarrel, save 
 as a statement of the whole truth. The doctrine of 
 Heraclitus is true ; but it is not, in Plato's opinion, 
 the whole truth. 
 
 ' Such being, in Plato's eyes, the meaning of the 
 sensual hypothesis, his criticism is obvious. Every 
 sensation is a portion of an infinite sequence, which 
 exists only during the collision of opposite sequents, 
 antecedent and consequent, and of which it is the 
 inevitable result. Such words as Permanence and 
 Unity denote merely that the antagonism of con- 
 traries, antecedent and consequent, is apparently, 
 but not really, prolonged by the intervention of a 
 new train of sequents, each infinitely resolvable as 
 before. The so-called subject the percipient 
 psychic principle is essentially flux ; the so-called 
 object is essentially flux, and nothing more. All 
 sensations all modes of consciousness are but 
 ripples on the stream. That the law of antecedence 
 and consequence binds sensible phenomena Plato 
 admits, but he denies that it can be evolved from 
 the sensual hypothesis. Strictly speaking, on that 
 hypothesis the bare observation of physical sequence 
 is, in Plato's opinion, impossible. A sequence in- 
 volves succession; succession involves number; and 
 number, unity. Now, unity implies at least a pro-
 
 58 THE WILL : IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 visional nucleus of permanence somewhere ; but 
 analysis show that every member of each series is, 
 in the strictest sense, infinitely resolvable. Analy- 
 sis sublimates into flux the guasz-permanence of the 
 subject, of the organ, and of the extra-organic ob- 
 ject : subject, organ, and object, alike melt away in 
 the same potent solvent In the absence of unity, 
 the percipient subject is an indefinite series of se- 
 quences, infinitely resolvable as before. Man is 
 literally the creature of the moment a chance 
 formation of drift. On its most favourable showing, 
 the hypothesis confines reality to the perception of 
 transition ; but, in strictness, there can be neither 
 transition to observe, nor anyone to observe it. In 
 the absence of unity, there is neither subject nor 
 object, neither permanence nor transition, neither 
 reality nor semblance. The result is nihilism, the 
 negation of metaphysical substance and of every 
 consequent result.'* 
 
 In brief, Sequence is not Causation. But the 
 Humist is loud in his wail, if one hints that Causa- 
 tion is anything more. The wail rises to a shriek, 
 if we assume that the effect resembles the Cause. 
 Yet, in spite of this, the Materialist, to destroy 
 
 * Platonic Idea, pp. 13-16.
 
 DR. MAUDSLEY'S ' BODY AND WILL.' 59 
 
 thought, invests the nervous antecedent with causal 
 power; it causes thought, and thought is a mere 
 secretion. If not, what is meant by dwelling on 
 the neural prerequisites of thought ? The process 
 is thus described by Dr. Maudsley : 
 
 * As the higher modes of consciousness unques- 
 tionably rest on the lower modes, we may properly, 
 in trying to get to the nearest approach of con- 
 sciousness to molecular motion, take for considera- 
 tion the simplest mode of sensation that we ever 
 experience. Now it is certain that a sensation that 
 appears to consciousness to be perfectly simple is 
 sometimes a compound of more simple sensations, 
 none of which it really resembles ; these more 
 simple sensations are, in their turn, compounds of 
 still more elementary sensations; and the elements 
 of these, if not themselves, lie beneath the threshold 
 of consciousness, contributing to the excitation 
 which, when it reaches a certain height or a certain 
 complexity, oversteps the threshold. In every 
 conscious state there are thus at work conscious, 
 sub-conscious, and infra-conscious energies, the 
 last as indispensable as the first. We descend in 
 our analysis of consciousness to the very borders of 
 molecular motion to the place where the two 
 aspects of being meet and seem to coalesce ; for,
 
 6O THE WILL I IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 on the one hand, where sensation actually expires, 
 the continuance of a connected reflex movement 
 shall prove the persistence of molecular motion ; 
 and, on the other hand, the experiments of physio- 
 logy prove a definite measurable period of molecu- 
 lar commotion, known as the "excitatory stage," 
 to precede invariably the excitation of the sensation. 
 Moreover, the same stimulus which when applied 
 to the nerve suffices ordinarily to excite a sensation 
 will not raise the "excitatory stage" into con- 
 sciousness, but will leave it in the state of latent 
 stimulation, if the temperature of the nerve be 
 lowered a few degrees ; so that a few degrees of 
 temperature make all the difference between soul 
 and not-soul in a process otherwise exactly the 
 same. Here are combinations of infra-conscious 
 energies to produce a sub-conscious or an elemen- 
 tary conscious state, and thereafter combinations of 
 elementary consciousness to produce a conscious 
 result that does not resemble any of them ; not 
 otherwise than as chemical elements combine to 
 form a compound with new properties. What 
 reason can be given why these infra-conscious 
 factors of the period of latent stimulation may not 
 resemble or be actually molecular movements ? 
 And if they be so, are they so only up to the
 
 DR. MAUDSLEY'S ' BODY AND WILL.' 61 
 
 moment when the spark of nascent consciousness 
 appears, and do they then instantly take on a new 
 character?' P. 103-4. 
 
 Criticism is obvious: if 'rest on' does not 
 involve causal action, and does not imply causal 
 similarities, the materialistic doctrine comes down 
 by the run. We have, moreover, the decisive 
 argument in reserve, that the history of an indi- 
 vidual structure, or brain, assumes all the problems 
 of metaphysic ; it takes for granted Space, Time, 
 Cause, Relation, and Substance. With a batterie de 
 cuisine like this, a very poor artiste can serve up a 
 Universe at a moment's notice. But where did he 
 get the batterie? From Metaphysics, and from 
 nowhere else. 
 
 From Metaphysics, or Philosophy, if you will. 
 For Psychology professes only to give us the his- 
 tory of an individual consciousness. Philosophy or 
 Metaphysics, on the other hand, deals with the 
 science of the possibility of consciousness in gene- 
 ral : Psychology gives the reproduction through the 
 individual nervous organism of that consciousness 
 which the consciousness of the individual presup- 
 poses. It is now one hundred and one years since 
 Kant's immortal Kritik has appeared. The dis- 
 tinction between Psychology and Metaphysic ought
 
 62 THE WILL : IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 to be now as general as the casing air. Dr. 
 Maudsley ignores it altogether, and looks to Psy- 
 chology alone for light. 
 
 But, suppose we invest matter with causal 
 efficiency, what becomes of your immaterial con- 
 sciousness? Material Neurosis produces, and not 
 merely precedes, Psychosis, and both are material. 
 
 The reply is, at hand. The psychosis Con- 
 sciousness at once apprehends the Universe, of 
 which Neurosis is a fraction not only is, but must 
 be a fraction and in the light of consciousness the 
 material Cosmos shrivels as a scroll, and the periods 
 of astronomy and geology are a watch in the night. 
 The marvels revealed by the microscope and tele- 
 scope are not nothing, but they are not everything, 
 and, like Psychology, exist on the data of Meta- 
 physics. And the progress of physical science 
 lessens our conception of the mysteriousness of the 
 material Cosmos, for the spectroscope has shown 
 I quote Dr. Haughton* that the physical order of 
 things is ' composed of the same simple substances, 
 and those very limited in number.' 
 
 To what do enlightened Materialists look as 
 the ideal of knowledge ? That, as is supposed in 
 
 * Earth-Moon System. S. Haughton. Salem. 1882, p. i.
 
 DR. MAUDSLEY'S ' BODY AND WILL.' 63 
 
 thought- reading, there should be a visible and out- 
 ward register of the thought, a psychometer, as 
 Dr. Maudsley suggests. What then ? Would it 
 not merely prove what Professor Huxley so clearly 
 and candidly points out, that wherever we find 
 thought we should always find some mode of Exten- 
 sion and Motion. But this would not identify the 
 two. Castor and Pollux can hardly mean that 
 Pollux is Castor, x + y is not x = y. 
 
 As to * temperature making soul,' I ask Dr. 
 Maudsley, Does the stethoscope make the heart ? 
 To the non-materialist the whole body is merely an 
 instrument which discovers the Universe a panto- 
 scope ; and a scientist must admit that the in- 
 strument must be fit, if you want to use it. Heat 
 does not make soul, but it may make or mar effi- 
 ciency. 
 
 There is only one point of Dr. Maudsley' s phy- 
 siology which I except to, and that on the authority 
 and reasoning of other physiologists. It is this : 
 the movements of a decapitated frog look purpo- 
 sive, while the decapitation destroys, according to 
 Dr. Maudsley, intelligent design and will (p. 107). 
 But my friend, Professor Cleland, states the case 
 thus, quoting Professor Ferrier's Functions of .the 
 Brain :
 
 64 THE WILL I IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 ' " When a drop of acetic acid is placed on the 
 thigh of a decapitated frog, the foot of the same 
 side is raised, and attempts made with it to rub the 
 part. On the foot being amputated, and the acid 
 applied as before, the animal makes a similar at- 
 tempt, but failing to reach the point of irritation 
 with the stump, after a few moments of apparent 
 indecision and agitation, raises the other foot, and 
 attempts with it to remove the irritant. This ex- 
 periment has been appealed to by Pfliiger (who 
 made it) and others as a proof of psychical or 
 intelligent action on the part of the spinal cord." 
 (Op. '/., p. 20.) I accept Pfliiger's conclusion as 
 not only that of a physiologist of the highest autho- 
 rity, but as being, on examination of the merits, 
 obviously correct. Dr. Ferrier dissents from it. 
 He simply asserts that "it is an established fact 
 that adapted actions, such as intelligence would 
 also dictate, are capable of being called into play 
 through our spinal cord entirely without conscious- 
 ness." That is an allegation rather than a fact, 
 and one would like to know on what foundation " it 
 is established." He proceeds to point out very 
 properly that a reflex action is not necessarily con- 
 fined to the side on which the irritation is applied, 
 and that continuance of the irritation may bring the
 
 DR. MAUDSLEY'S ' BODY AND WILL.' 65 
 
 other leg into play by associated reflex action. No 
 one will doubt this ; but the action of the second 
 limb ought, on that principle, to be exactly similar 
 in kind to that of the first, in which case it would 
 not cross the middle line, but would scratch the 
 spot symmetrically corresponding on its own side 
 with the point of irritation.' * 
 
 I ask, as a benighted Mentalist, is it not rather 
 unscientific to assume that decapitation destroys 
 purpose, when the question is, do the facts as 
 alleged prove or disprove purpose? 
 
 There is one fact bearing on the case of Motives 
 which I have not seen urged elsewhere. If it has 
 occurred to anyone else, I shall cheerfully acknow- 
 ledge his priority ; but Philosophy deals with what 
 is said, and not with who said it. 
 
 ' There is an essential difference between the 
 will and all mechanical forces in this respect. 
 Every physical motion is the resultant of all the 
 motive forces ; no one force is without its distinct 
 effect. In the province of the discursive faculty 
 there is an analogue to this. The arguments on 
 any one side are all real arguments, though their 
 combined result may be less than the sum on the 
 
 * Journal of Mental Science, July, 1883. 
 F
 
 66 THE WILL : IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 other side. Doubt is the exact analogue to a me- 
 chanical movement produced by different forces. 
 But in the sphere of the will there is no such 
 parallel. In all cases the question lies between one 
 of two extremes. It is true that the will may adopt 
 the mean course indicated by the intellect, but to 
 the will that mean is an extreme. All the motives 
 on one side are annihilated as soon as the will 
 issues its fiat, and this fact no mechanical theory 
 can account for.' * 
 
 In brief, the Materialistic doctrine is : the Will 
 is effectuated by motives, and motives are merely 
 phenomenal links in the endless chain of Cause 
 and Effect : or, rather, so the wise it call Ante- 
 cedence and Consequence. Waiving the identifica- 
 tion of Causation with Sequence, the question is : 
 Is Motive convertible with Phenomenon in the 
 chain of Sequence ? To this the most complete 
 answer I know is given by Professor Green, in his 
 Prolegomena Ethica ; and the key to the book is 
 found in the distinction between a Phenomenon as 
 a sensible event, determined by Causation, and the 
 same sensible event adopted by the agent as part 
 and parcel of his Good. As Aristotle says, Sensa- 
 tion is not a beginning of action 
 
 * Reviews, Dublin, 1867.
 
 DR. MAUDSLEY'S ' BODY AND WILL.' 67 
 
 ' ... to every action morally imputable, or of 
 which a man can recognise himself as the author, 
 the motive is always some idea of the man's perso- 
 nal good an idea absolutely different from animal 
 want, even in cases where it is from anticipation of 
 the satisfaction of some animal want that the idea of 
 personal good is derived. Now a motive so consti- 
 tuted, like the perception which answers to it in the 
 sphere of speculative intelligence, clearly admits of 
 being considered in seemingly opposite ways. Two 
 seemingly incompatible, yet equally true, sets of 
 statements may be made in regard to it : which, 
 however, are not really incompatible, because one 
 relates to the motive in its full reality, which is not 
 a sensible event, the other to a sensible event 
 implied in it (as sensation is implied in perception), 
 but which is not it. The sensible event or phe- 
 nomenon, implied in the motive, like every other 
 event, is determined by antecedent events accord- 
 ing to natural laws. The motive itself, though it 
 too is in its own way definitely determined, is not 
 naturally determined. It is constituted by an act 
 of self-consciousness which is not a natural event, 
 an act in which the agent presents to himself a 
 certain idea of himself of himself doing or him- 
 self enjoying as an idea of which the realisation 
 
 F 2
 
 68 THE WILL : IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 forms for the time his good. It is true that the 
 moral quality of this act, its virtue or its vice, 
 depends on the character of the agent. It is this 
 that determines what the kind of greatest personal 
 good, which under any set of circumstances he pre- 
 sents to himself, shall be. This character, in turn, 
 has had its history, just as a man's developed intel- 
 ligence, as it at any time stands, has had a history. 
 But, just as this latter history, though to call it a 
 history of an eternal consciousness would be a con- 
 tradiction, has yet taken its distinctive nature, as a 
 history of intelligence, from a certain action of an 
 eternal self-distinguishing consciousness upon the 
 processes of feeling ; so the history of human 
 character has been one in which the same con- 
 sciousness has throughout been operative upon 
 wants of animal origin, giving rise through its 
 action upon them to the specific quality of that 
 history. 
 
 * The view which it is sought to convey may be 
 made more plain by an instance. When Esau sells 
 his birthright for a mess of pottage, his motive, 
 we might be apt hastily to say, is an animal want. 
 On reflection, if by " motive" is meant that which 
 an action represents or expresses, the inner side of 
 that of which the action is the outer, we shall find
 
 DR. MAUDSLEY'S * BODY AND WILL.' 69 
 
 that it is not so. The motive lies in the presenta- 
 tion of an idea of himself as enjoying the pleasure 
 of eating the pottage, or (which comes practically 
 to the same thing) as relieved from the pain of 
 hunger. Plainly, but for his hunger Esau could 
 have no such motive. But for it, his presentation 
 of himself as a subject of pleasure could have taken 
 no such form. But the hunger is not the presenta- 
 tion of himself as the subject of pleasure, still less 
 the presentation of that particular pleasure as under 
 the circumstances his greatest good : and therefore 
 it is not his motive. If the action were determined 
 directly by the hunger, it would have no moral 
 character, any more than have actions done in 
 sleep, or strictly under compulsion, or from acci- 
 dent, or (so far as we know) the actions of animals. 
 Since, however, it is not the hunger as a natural 
 force, but his own conception of himself, as finding 
 for the time his greatest good in the satisfaction of 
 hunger, that determines the act, Esau recognises 
 himself as the author of the act. He imputes it to 
 himself, and it is morally imputable to him an act 
 for which he is accountable, to which praise or 
 blame are appropriate. If evil follows from it 
 whether in the shape of punishment inflicted by a 
 superior, or of calamity ensuing in the course of
 
 7O THE WILL I IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 nature to himself or those in whom he is inter- 
 ested he is aware that he himself has brought it 
 on himself. Hence remorse, and with it the possi- 
 bility of change of heart. He may " find no place 
 for repentance" in the sense of cancelling or get- 
 ting rid of the evil which his act has caused : but, 
 in another sense, the recognition of himself as the 
 author of the evil is, in promise and potency, itself 
 repentance' (pp. 98, 99). 
 
 If it be said that this merely passes on the diffi- 
 culty from the will to the character, the answer is, 
 just so. Esau's character, so far as it bears the 
 responsibility, is made up of separate acts, for each 
 of which he is accountable. How far accountable is 
 for Omniscience ; that he is accountable is patent 
 to himself and to the ordinary man. Guilty or not 
 guilty is a question of fact : the sentence is for 
 the Judge. And as the metaphysician is able to 
 see that the Will is not of Cause, so he is able to 
 see that psychologically each man is accountable, 
 though he cannot tell how far. 
 
 I need hardly point out to the student of Ethics, 
 how Professor Green's doctrine is the Socratic 
 tenet, ovSels eKatv *a/co9, which I have vindicated 
 elsewhere. It is simply this, that no one chooses 
 Evil as an end, though he may as a means. It is
 
 DR. MAUDSLEY'S * BODY AND WILL.' 7 1 
 
 that of Aristotle, when he tells us we choose the 
 means, but wish the end (Elk. N., in. i. 19). And 
 so Aquinas : ' Quinimo necesse est quod sicut Intel- 
 lectus ex necessitate inhseret primis principiis, ita 
 Voluntas ex necessitate inhaereat ultimo fini, qui 
 est beatitudo' (Summa i. Ixxxii. i.) 
 
 The distinction between a fact as phenomenon 
 and the same fact as motive disposes of cases like 
 the two bundles of hay. The Formula of choice 
 always is, Of the many things presented, unless I take 
 one, I get nothing, and I can take only one. The 
 Greeks, with their usual insight, put the question 
 thus To do, and not to do.* Then comes the re- 
 flection, We cannot have the whole. Next, We can 
 have a part, by taking a part. Lastly, Unless we take 
 a part, we get nothing. To describe this complex 
 process of formal logic as the same kind of move- 
 ment as the course of a rifle bullet almost justifies 
 Bolingbroke in saying that no man can deny that 
 he has Free Will without lying. At the same time, 
 we must see that liber um arbitrimn is a much better 
 expression than Free Will. Will and Motive are 
 related as Reason and Consequence, and not as 
 Cause and Effect, and ' moral decision ' expresses 
 all that is required. 
 
 * Aeschylus, Supp. 380.
 
 72 THE WILL : IN REFERENCE TO 
 
 The most extraordinary part of Dr. Maudsley's 
 book is his argument to show that the ego has ex- 
 tension. After stating that * sensation takes place 
 through an extended part of the body' a very 
 different proposition Dr. Maudsley asks us to con- 
 sider this : ' That the moment an individual has 
 said to himself / whether as / feel, or as / think, 
 or as /am he has enunciated his own limitation. 
 The very consciousness of the ego is the betrayal of 
 its limitation in time and space, and the proof of 
 its extension ; for it is impossible to say / without 
 positing a non-ego from which he is defined by limi- 
 tation' (p. 81). From which he is defined by nega- 
 tion, as he cannot distinguish himself from the 
 non-ego, except by saying, / am not the non-ego. 
 Further, he cannot distinguish himself from the 
 non-ego without distinguishing himself from the 
 whole of that non-ego by saying, / am none of the 
 non-ego ; and if the non-ego be spatial and temporal, 
 he must say, / am none of the non-ego, spatial or 
 temporal. According to Dr. Maudsley's logic, a 
 man accused of theft ought to defend himself by 
 saying, / am the thief. 
 
 Dr. Maudsley's philosophy rests on the principle 
 that ' intensely active molecules, imperceptible to 
 sense, veritablv extra-sensual, are the foundation of
 
 DR. MAUDSLEY'S ' BODY AND WILL.' 73 
 
 the properties of all visible matter.' Yet Clerk 
 Maxwell says, that the atoms appear either to have 
 been made, or to have come from some previous 
 break-up (Heat, p. 312). As some consolation, 
 Dr. Maudsley tells us to look forward to the day 
 when mind shall be known as invisible brain, and 
 brain as visible mind ; when psychology shall be 
 the most certain of sciences, propped on introspec- 
 tion and buttressed by observation. But in another 
 lecture I show that psychology, divorced from phi- 
 losophy, must end in subjective Idealism that is 
 to say, that there are as many worlds as there are 
 living things, each individual trundling his own 
 universe before him like a huge goitre. 
 
 We may say, that given a man's character and 
 circumstances, his conduct is given. But this is 
 just the fallacy of statistics. Statistics give the 
 result of similar or dissimilar causes, and, there- 
 fore, may be used to show the force of either. 
 e.g., the number of arrests for drunkenness may 
 be used to show the tendency to inebriety, or the 
 tendency to sobriety, or the vigilance, or the re- 
 verse, of the police. In the same way, a man's 
 character may agree with his circumstances, or 
 disagree, and it is precisely the latter view that the 
 fatalist leaves out. The word fatalism ought to
 
 74 THE WILL, ETC. 
 
 be used, as necessity has no meaning except for an 
 idealistic philosophy. The materialist or agnostic 
 has no weapon unless he filches it from idealism. 
 The meaning of the term necessity I discuss in an- 
 other Lecture. And I will sum up the gist of this 
 in a single question, Is a logical disjunctive a right 
 line ? When the pseudo-necessitarian proves that 
 it is, he has disproved the Freedom of the Will. But 
 not till then. 
 
 I have now concluded. My meaning is obvious. 
 Man has a power of resisting pressure from outside. 
 This is seen in Socrates, who disobeys the Thirty 
 and the Assembly, and in the private of the Buffs 
 who gets knocked on the head sooner than kneel to 
 a Mandarin.
 
 III. 
 
 MATERIALISM. 
 
 I. The Materialism of the Block. 
 
 IN the preceding Lectures I stated that That to 
 which a Whole was a whole was, eo ipso, itself 
 excluded from that whole. In more concrete lan- 
 guage, that to which nature is a series of never- 
 ending change cannot itself change. This notion 
 is due to the genius of Anaxagoras ; dray/oj d/>a, 
 eTrel TrdvTa voei, djaiyrj elixxt, iva Kparfj (Artstot. 
 de A. in. iv. 4). 
 
 In my first Lecture I stated that the simplest 
 fact of Perception crushes the materialist and the 
 agnostic. Of these the materialist may hold a 
 peculiar form of the doctrine called the Relativity 
 of Knowledge, while the agnostic stands or falls by 
 that doctrine in some shape or other. Any shape 
 will do, as the agnostic position is that we cannot 
 break through the lines of our consciousness, and 
 reach anything outside of it. A materialist need 
 not be an agnostic, but he may be one. And so
 
 76 MATERIALISM. 
 
 the agnostic may be a materialist, but he need 
 not. 
 
 I cited Professor Huxley to show that mate- 
 rialism simply means ' that whenever those states 
 of consciousness which we call sensation, or emo- 
 tion, or thought, come into existence, complete 
 investigation will show good reason for the belief 
 that they are preceded by these other phenomena 
 of consciousness to which he gives the names of 
 Matter and Motion' (Hiime, pp. 80, 81). 
 
 Materialism has assumed two shapes : That 
 which professes to explain everything by some 
 mode of solidity, like the atom ; or by some mode 
 of process, say reflex action. The one may be 
 termed the materialism of the Block : the other 
 the materialism of the Process. I shall merely 
 notice them so far as they profess to be substitutes 
 for metaphysics. 
 
 I. I quoted from Professor Huxley a passage 
 to show what materialism amounts to. I quote 
 Professor Huxley, not because I agree with him 
 in the main, but because I disagree with him ; 
 and his statements, therefore, may be used as 
 the admission of an opponent of the highest emi- 
 nence on the other side. 
 
 Materialism of the Block reduces evervthincr
 
 THE MATERIALISM OF THE BLOCK. JJ 
 
 ultimately to extension in three dimensions. In 
 ancient times the most notable form of the theory 
 was worked out by Epicurus. The Epicurean sys- 
 tem has received considerable attention in our day, 
 from its supposed affinity to the modern ultimatum 
 of the higher Physics atoms, molecules, and their 
 relations. I do not think it will be loss of time to 
 consider the views of Epicurus, before we pass judg- 
 ment on the claims of modern atomism to a place 
 in philosophy. Remember always, philosophy, not 
 science. 
 
 What may be called the psychological School 
 argues as follows : There is a separate thing 
 called an object ; and there is another separate 
 thing called a subject : These two by some reci- 
 procal action or movement produce or generate 
 all we know or can know. In this interaction, 
 if the subject dominate the object, the result is 
 idealistic. If, on the other hand, the object domi- 
 nate the subject, the result is materialistic. In 
 its most modern shape, materialism amounts to 
 this, that certain processes of certain combinations 
 of matter, i. e. extension and motion, eventuate in 
 a nervous system ; and that this nervous system, by 
 way of Reflex Action is either Sensation or the basis 
 of sensation in such a manner that the sensation is to
 
 78 MATERIALISM. 
 
 its basis, to revive the Platonic illustration, merely 
 the harmony of the instrument.* In other words, 
 materialism professes to explain what we call Con- 
 sciousness. Consciousness is thus only a shadow 
 of reality, and a very thin shadow too. My posi- 
 tion is that consciousness, in the sense of actual and 
 possible Thought, and the universe are convertible. 
 The materialistic position is that thought is a very 
 small section of the universe, and that it is no more 
 indispensable to the universe than a man's shadow 
 is required to enable him to walk and talk. The 
 materialist holds that it is as childish to say that 
 thought constitutes fact, as to make the shadow cry- 
 to the man, It was I that made you. 
 
 Another point to be premised : The general 
 view regarding the external world is that it is both 
 independent of us, and non-conscious. Professor 
 Abbott has pointed out that its independence is to 
 be distinguished from continued existence a dis- 
 tinction not attended to by J. S. Mill.f This is the 
 belief of the nineteenth century, but the earlier 
 creed was that it was independent but conscious 
 witness Fetichism and early poetry, mountains and 
 
 * The NewPhaedo, by G. H. Lewis. Blackwood, February, 1 884. 
 \Hermathena, No. vn., pp. 167, 168. Also 'Berkeley' 
 (Mill's Essays, Vol. iii.). Fortnightly Review, 59, p. 513.
 
 THE MATERIALISM OF THE BLOCK. 79 
 
 rivers are alive. That it was independent and 
 unconscious, was the view of Epicurus, which 
 he elaborated as follows : 
 
 The physics of Epicurus are a mere accident of 
 his philosophy, as his object, as stated by Lucre- 
 tius, was to crush all belief in anything beyond 
 empirical data. This view is confirmed by the 
 KU/HCU Ao'^cu, or Articles of his Creed, X. and XL 
 These are to the effect that debauchery would be 
 blameless if it freed us from our dread of the 
 supernatural ; and that if we had no fears we 
 should need no physics. The genuineness of the 
 remains preserved by Diogenes Laertius has been, 
 of course, denied. But, in my opinion, they are 
 genuine, because they are so much more exact 
 than their adaptations by Cicero or Lucretius. 
 
 The result of his physics is, in the words of Lucre- 
 tius, religio obteritur. Scholars are aware that the 
 meaning of the word religio is doubtful. But we 
 have one sure guide to its use the Roman Law. 
 Here the word is always applied to burying-ground, 
 locum religiosum facere, by burying a corpse in it, 
 so that we may suppose that religio implied fear of 
 the buried dead the laying apart the grave-yard, 
 secernere sacra profanis ; for, though cremation 
 was in use, the Romans always buried a portion of
 
 8O MATERIALISM. 
 
 the corpse, the os resectum. Now, Latin generally 
 says specifically what Greek says generally, so that 
 we may say that the object of Epicurus was to 
 eradicate all consideration for the supernatural as 
 a motive for action. To effect this, his Physics 
 were worked out thus : 
 
 The universe was resolvable into two elements : 
 the negative or the Void, and the positive or the 
 Atom. In the system of Democritus, to which Epi- 
 curus was largely indebted, the atoms appear as 
 tSe'ai the first occurrence, as far as I am aware, of 
 the word in philosophy to signify the formative or 
 prepotent element. The word dro^os is feminine, 
 and this is instructive, the full expression being 
 ?) aTo/xo9 ypapntj the sensible line incapable of 
 sub-division. Anyone who studies the early geo- 
 metry and arithmetic of the Greeks will see the 
 geometry of surfaces preceded arithmetic, and that 
 the unit was the line of one foot.* The atom, con- 
 sequently, was that portion of a line which was 
 presented as incapable of division. Epicurus, like 
 Berkeley, was thinking of the sensible line a 
 dividend and not of the process of division ab- 
 stracted from all divisible material, which might 
 
 * Plato, Polit., 266 b, and Prof. L. Campbell's Note.
 
 THE MATERIALISM OF THE BLOCK. 8 1 
 
 go on for ever. But as these elements, empty space 
 and lineal fragments, did not appear very promising 
 
 materials to create new worlds, 
 
 Epicurus made Weight an absolute quantity of the 
 atom, and gave the void an up and down. This being 
 done, the atoms must fall thick as autumnal leaves, 
 and their various adventures produced our present 
 universe. There may be no top overhead, and no 
 bottom under our feet, but there is an up and down 
 in the void all the same, and the rain of atoms rain- 
 eth every day. These contradictions being accepted, 
 according to the Canonic or organon of Epicurus, 
 nothing is real or true except an impression on the 
 senses which is either confirmed or not contradicted 
 by the deliverances of the other senses. On the 
 other hand, that is false which is either contradicted 
 or not confirmed by the deliverances of the other 
 senses. This accounts for what may appear strange 
 to the student of modern physics, that Lucretius 
 offers inconsistent explanations for the same phe- 
 nomena. Why not ? Unless the Canonic be vio- 
 lated, any physical hypothesis will subserve the 
 ethical end the eradication of Regard for the 
 Supernatural. 
 
 In the present day, the theory of Epicurus is 
 
 G
 
 82 MATERIALISM. 
 
 supposed to be a remarkable anticipation of the 
 modern doctrine of Atoms and Molecules. The 
 Molecule, according to Professor Tyndall, is a 
 group of atoms drawn together by chemical affi- 
 nity.* It is sufficient for my purpose to say that 
 the Molecule is a miniature Solar system, the 
 atoms being the attendant bodies in their per- 
 petual oscillation ; but there is no central sun. 
 It will be seen at once from this, that the Atoms 
 and Molecules in their ceaseless swing mean the 
 analysis of parts of the contents of Consciousness, 
 namely, Matter and Motion. The modern Atom is 
 not, like the Atom of Epicurus, a dark body out- 
 side and aloof from consciousness. The modern 
 Atom has, and must have, bulk and room to swing. 
 It therefore presupposes Space, Time, and Series ; 
 that is to say, Consciousness. Philosophy has 
 nothing to fear from the Molecular hypothesis. 
 Philosophy is as it was. 
 
 On the other hand, the Atom and Space as 
 figments, which, as Epicurus conceived them, lie 
 outside of Consciousness, are impossible monsters. 
 The Void is pure Quantity without Quality. The 
 Atom is all Quality and no Quantity. This is 
 
 * Longman's Magazine, No. I., p. 30.
 
 THE MATERIALISM OF THE BLOCK. 83 
 
 metaphysically impossible, for Quantity emerges 
 from Quality, as was seen by Plato and by Hegel. 
 
 Recollect, the modern Molecule is Consciousness 
 analyzed. The Atom, so called, is the Molecule 
 analyzed, and is thus Consciousness reanalyzed. 
 So far, so good : Molecular physics are inside the 
 pale of philosophy, recollecting always that physics 
 is only a general term for the analysis of the serial 
 element in Consciousness. The serial element can 
 apparently subsist alone, but its separate subsistence 
 is due to abstraction only, for Thought at once sees 
 that the serial is the correlative of an inevitable 
 non-serial. But the Atom of Epicurus and the 
 solid block of vulgar Materialism are outside the 
 pale, and are thus, in Kant's language, transcendent. 
 There cannot possibly be a greater error than to 
 suppose that Materialism receives support from 
 Kant's Ding-an-sich. This phrase, as pointed out 
 by a writer in Mind, should be translated The 
 thing-by-itself and not in itself ; the thing-by-itself 
 being opposed to the thing in relation to the sensi- 
 bility. 
 
 Kant was dominated by Aristotle. Aristotle in 
 his Metaphysics had laid down that Sensation was 
 produced by things which existed prior to Sensa- 
 tion, and were themselves devoid of Sensation 
 
 G 2
 
 84 MATERIALISM. 
 
 TCL v7TOKeLp.eva a Trotei rrjv a.lcrO'^criv, /ecu aivev ala-0TJ- 
 o-ew?, F v. The process of Sensation is essentially 
 one of motion. Psychologically, Aristotle supposes 
 that the senses are in the first instance stimulated : 
 the first effect of the stimulation ird0o<; is not 
 pure passivity. The object of perception produces 
 in the percipient a deprivation of the previous state, 
 and next, the indwelling qualities of the percipient 
 are thereby developed. We have here Kant's 
 Sensibility and the Ding-an-sich. We have in Kant 
 Aristotle's psychology turned into metaphysics 
 with the usual nemesis. The Ding-an-sich stimu- 
 lates the sensibility, and out springs the Form : 
 that is, in Aristotle's language, Sense is receptive 
 of Form without Matter (deA. n. xii. i) ; in a word, 
 Materialism as a philosophy receives no support 
 from either the Psychology of Aristotle or the 
 Critic of Kant. 
 
 The doctrine of Necessity is supposed to be a 
 rigid consequence of Materialism. Popular Athe- 
 ism, so far as it is argumentative, runs thus : 
 Things are necessary, because there is nothing but 
 Matter, and there is Matter because there is no- 
 thing but Necessity. Nothing, however, can be 
 more clear than that such an argument overturns 
 the doctrine it professes to support. ' Abstract
 
 THE MATERIALISM OF THE BLOCK. 85 
 
 ideas,' says Butler, ' can do nothing,' and the 
 Necessity so called would be hypothetic only ; that 
 is to say, given certain premises, certain results 
 follow : e. g. given the law of gravity and the 
 planets revolve ; given Napoleon, and the Sections 
 are disposed of. That is, in each case facts ensue 
 in consequence of an arrangement which is patent 
 to intelligence. But Necessity in the true sense 
 belongs to Mind alone. 
 
 The student of Metaphysics is constantly con- 
 fronted by the term Necessity, and its compounds, 
 substantives, adjectives, and verbs. I will accord- 
 ingly set before you in as concise a way as I can 
 the meaning of these words : 
 
 We know as a matter of experience that our 
 consciousness consists of contents, feelings, imagi- 
 nation, and ideas. Now with these contents we can 
 deal in three ways : they may be simply felt, ima- 
 gined, willed. They may be felt with an admix- 
 ture of thought, or they may be simply thought. 
 With the latter process alone is Philosophy con- 
 cerned. 
 
 The thought with which we are most familiar 
 in this country is of the second kind, namely, sen- 
 sations with an admixture of thought : that is, as 
 Hegel expresses it, ' we want to have in imagina-
 
 86 MATERIALISM. 
 
 tion a picture of that which is in the mind as a 
 thought or notion. But in thought there is no- 
 thing to be thought further than the notion itself, 
 Bacon, in his graphic language, compares those 
 who reject Logics to the Israelites who loathed 
 manna and yearned for the flesh-pots of Egypt ; 
 and so the mass of mankind, as far as experience 
 can trace back, hankers after the pictured images 
 of the fancy. But it is the business of philosophy 
 to translate into pure thought the emblematic or 
 symbolic picture. 
 
 We in Europe owe nearly everything to Greece. 
 In the Parmenides of Plato we find the problem of 
 Thought clearly stated. Is TO irav the aggregate 
 one, or many, or both ? and the result of the 
 discussion is, that it the aggregate universifas 
 rerum is one and many, because many means 
 a lot of ones, and these ones are so united as to 
 make a whole a one to thought. But if the 
 aggregate is the whole of things, there can be 
 nothing outside it to circumscribe it. It is there- 
 fore infinite, without bounds or limits. 
 
 It is also plain that that which is not dependent 
 on anything else is o,7roXeXty>ieVoi> disengaged 
 absolute. We thus see that a glance will free us 
 from the conundrums which certain writers make
 
 THE MATERIALISM OF THE BLOCK. 87 
 
 out of the two words Infinite and Absolute. So far 
 as these terms agree, they exclude anything else, 
 and include everything. So far as they differ, the 
 Infinite negates extrinsic dependence, while the 
 Absolute posits intrinsic independence. The one is 
 untrammelled ; the other is self-supporting. The In- 
 finite accentuates Matter, and the Absolute, Form. 
 In either aspect, TO trav must have some 
 principle of cohesion. The counter-position that 
 there is no universe but a collection of single 
 things is impossible to thought, for the single 
 things are given us in space, or in time, or in 
 both : in either case they are unified by their 
 frame, single or double space or time, or both. 
 But if this be so, we must reject the picture-image 
 that there is nothing but a rag- and bottle-shop of 
 odds and ends. 
 
 In the same way, we must discard the picture- 
 image of a Chaos. A Chaos is a something where 
 things follow without order. But observe, there is 
 sequence, as I have before pointed out. Sequence 
 is impossible without Unity somewhere. Chaos is a 
 picture for the imagination only. Let anyone take 
 Milton's Chaos, and, like Martinus Scriblerus, he 
 will discover all the categories. Thought therefore 
 the universe construed by thought has and
 
 88 MATERIALISM. 
 
 must have a principle of cohesion ; and so far as 
 the cohesion is intrinsic it is free. To use Hegel's 
 words, ' Freedom essentially implies a meeting of 
 elements now, and always, constituted by its own 
 laws, and so far necessary. Necessity in a popular 
 sense means determination from without only, as in 
 finite mechanics a body moves only when it is 
 struck by another body. This however is a merely 
 external necessity, not the real inward necessity 
 which is identical with freedom.' Wallace's Hegel, 
 
 P- 59- 
 
 So far, then, as thought is correlative with 
 
 things, thought sees the necessity, i. e. the inward 
 necessity of things. That is to say, it sees them 
 as they are, because obedient to law that is, to 
 thought. To put it in Kant's words, Thought is 
 apodictic, /'. t\ necessary and universal. 
 
 The position of those who impugn thought is 
 peculiar. In order to assail thought they use 
 thought, i. e. are guilty of logical felo de se. You 
 are doubtless familiar with Butler's chapter on 
 Necessity, An. i. vi. The necessity with which the 
 spiritual aspect of the universe is assailed is stolen 
 from Thought. Thought is what it is, and cannot 
 be otherwise than itself. The so-called necessi- 
 tarian parodies this as follows : Things are what
 
 THE MATERIALISM OF PROCESS. 89 
 
 they are because they are not themselves ; that is, 
 in other words, Thought is eviscerated of part of its 
 contents, and these, when pictured in imagination 
 as extrinsic, are supposed to dominate their origi- 
 nal sphere. You can easily see that empiricism 
 can yield no necessity. I find three billiard balls 
 in some position on a table ; that they are so is a 
 matter of fact. Why are they so ? The result 
 the necessary result of another matter of fact, 
 which falls back on TO awrroBerov. But Hume has 
 perhaps unwittingly shattered, as with an iron 
 mace, the necessity which observation furnishes. 
 This being so, we must choose between Empiricism 
 and Idealism. Empiricism in any and every shape 
 is to thought as pure a contradiction as plusminus 
 must be. 
 
 II. The Materialism of Process. 
 
 The crudest form of Materialism is that which 
 makes solidity in some shape the basis of thought. 
 To-day I treat of the Materialism of Process that 
 which makes Process the basis of Thought. And I 
 hope to show that Process is a more shallow mon- 
 ster than the elder brother the block. 
 
 The position of this the most fashionable form 
 of Materialism is that a series of certain "media-
 
 9O MATERIALISM. 
 
 nical and chemical facts, which is devoid of con- 
 sciousness, eventuates in a nervous system, and 
 that this nervous system either, of its own virtue, 
 secretes thought, or is its indispensable conco- 
 mitant. In Professor Huxley's admirable lan- 
 guage, Psychosis is always preceded by Neurosis. 
 You will recollect that Physicists and Scientists 
 generally accept Hume's position, that Causation 
 as anything more than sequence is pro tanto a 
 figment. If this view were pushed to the bitter 
 end, I could believe in the clearness of those who 
 accept with acclamation the doctrine of Hume. 
 What I object to is, that they invest matter with 
 causal power, for matter secretes thought, and in 
 this way subordinate mind to matter ; while they 
 reject causal power in any statement which empha- 
 sizes the presence of mind. But it is obvious, if 
 we accept Hume's view, thought is a fact on its 
 own basis, just as much as any matter block or 
 neurosis, as you will. If, on the other hand, we 
 accept the position Hume denied, thought holds 
 the keys. But in fact, as I pointed out long ago, 
 if there is only sequence, sequence is impos- 
 sible.* To use the illustration of Heraclitus the 
 
 * Lecture I. p. 15 ; Lecture II. p. 57.
 
 THE MATERIALISM OF PROCESS. 9 I 
 
 apostle of process a man cannot plunge twice 
 into the same river, for the best possible reason- 
 there is no man, no river, no plunge, no twice. 
 
 I take as my text Professor Huxley's description 
 of Protoplasm which he translates the physical 
 basis of life. I quote Professor Huxley because no 
 man writes more clearly, and to deduce one's own 
 views from the case of an opponent, has authority 
 for its use, which most people who oppose Professor 
 Huxley on religious grounds will perhaps accept. 
 
 Protoplasm is, he says, the scientific name of 
 the substance which he translates into the physical 
 basis of life. Before quoting from Professor Hux- 
 ley, it may be remarked that protoplasm takes for 
 granted the law of definite proportion, and all that 
 this no small postulate involves. Taking the laws of 
 chemistry for granted, his statement is as follows : 
 
 ' I suppose that, to many, the idea that there is 
 such a thing as a physical basis, or matter, of life 
 may be novel so widely spread is the conception 
 of life as a something which works through matter, 
 but is independent of it ; and even those who are 
 aware that matter and life are inseparably con- 
 nected may not be prepared for the conclusion 
 plainly suggested by the phrase, " the physical 
 basis or matter of life," that there is some
 
 92 MATERIALISM. 
 
 one kind of matter which is common to all living 
 beings, and that their endless diversities are bound 
 together by a physical, as well as an ideal, unity. 
 In fact, when first apprehended, such a doctrine as 
 this appears almost shocking to common sense. 
 
 ' What, truly, can seem to be more obviously 
 different from one another, in faculty, in form, 
 and in substance, than the various kinds of living 
 beings ? What community of faculty can there 
 be between the brightly-coloured lichen, which so 
 nearly resembles a mere mineral incrustation of 
 the bare rock on which it grows, and the painter, 
 to whom it is instinct with beauty, or the botanist, 
 whom it feeds with knowledge ? 
 
 * Again, think of the microscopic fungus a 
 mere infinitesimal ovoid particle, which finds space 
 and duration enough to multiply into countless mil- 
 lions in the body of a living fly ; and then of the 
 wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit, 
 which lies between this bald sketch of a plant and 
 the giant pine of California, towering to the dimen- 
 sions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig, which 
 covers acres with its profound shadow, and endures 
 while nations and empires come and go around its 
 vast circumference. Or, turning to the other half 
 of the world of life, picture to yourselves the great
 
 THE MATERIALISM OF PROCESS. 93 
 
 Finner whale, hugest of beasts that live, or have 
 lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, 
 muscle, and blubber, with easy roll, among waves 
 in which the stoutest ship that ever left dockyard 
 would founder hopelessly; and contrast him with 
 the invisible animalcules mere gelatinous specks, 
 multitudes of which could, in fact, dance upon the 
 point of a needle with the same ease as the angels 
 of the Schoolmen could, in imagination. With 
 these images before your minds, you may well ask, 
 what community of form, or structure, is there be- 
 tween the animalcule and the whale ; or between 
 the fungus and the fig-tree ? And, a fortiori, be- 
 tween all four ? 
 
 * Finally, if we regard substance, or material 
 composition, what hidden bond can connect the 
 flower which a girl wears in her hair and the blood 
 which courses through her youthful veins ; or, what 
 is there in common between the dense and resisting 
 mass of the oak, or the strong fabric of the tortoise, 
 and those broad discs of glassy jelly which may 
 be seen pulsating through the waters of a calm 
 sea, but which drain away to mere films in the 
 hand which raises them out of their element ? ' 
 
 Protoplasm is described thus : 
 
 ' Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, are
 
 94 MATERIALISM. 
 
 all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon and oxygen 
 unite, in certain proportions and under certain 
 conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid : hydrogen 
 and oxygen produce water : nitrogen and hydrogen 
 give rise to ammonia. These new compounds, like 
 the elementary bodies of which they are composed, 
 are lifeless. But when they are brought together, 
 under certain conditions they give rise to the still 
 more complex body, protoplasm, and this proto- 
 plasm exhibits the phenomena of life.' 
 
 But true to what he considers science, Professor 
 Huxley tells us that when he calls thought a pro- 
 perty of matter, all he means is, * that actually or 
 possibly the consciousness of extension and that 
 of resistance accompany all other sorts of con- 
 sciousness ' (Descartes). 
 
 In a word, Professor Huxley proclaims that 
 Materialism is really non- Materialism and explains 
 nothing. And G. H. Lewes, to bridge the chasm 
 between neurosis and psychosis, boldly robs Hegel 
 of his view, that the cause is in the effect, and 
 gains credit for his perspicacity at the expense of 
 his consistency. For, how can that which precedes 
 be identical with that which follows, both being 
 differenced in time ? Is one o'clock two o'clock ? 
 This to the Hegelian is a trifle light as air: to the
 
 THE MATERIALISM OF PROCESS. 95 
 
 mere empiricist the Hegelian notion is not merely 
 a white elephant, but a white elephant which tosses 
 and tramples his new driver 
 
 non inferiora secutus. 
 
 If you tell a materialist that the neurosis, on his 
 own showing-, merely precedes psychosis, he will 
 tell you probably to go dissect or work in a labo- 
 ratory. As far as can be gathered by one who 
 intends to do neither, the history of protoplasm is 
 as follows : It will be seen at a glance that it has 
 nothing to do with philosophy ; it belongs to phy- 
 siology psychology, if you will but the metaphy- 
 sician' s withers are unwrung. 
 
 Hunter, in his treatise on the nature of the 
 blood, supposed that new growths depended on 
 an exudation of the plasma of the blood : in the 
 blood, by virtue of its own plasticity, new vessels 
 formed, and so on. I wish to mark only the more 
 important steps. 
 
 Schwann supposed a structureless exudation, in 
 which granules either pre-existed or were formed, 
 and by aggregation grew into nuclei. Round these 
 singly a membrane gathered, and at length we had 
 a cell complete. 
 
 From this cell emerged protoplasm, as follows :
 
 96 MATERIALISM. 
 
 One school quashed the nucleus, and another the 
 membrane : so, kernel and shell being subtracted, 
 what was left was protoplasm. 
 
 Of protoplasm there are two conceptions : the 
 one is, that protoplasm requires a certain measure 
 or quantity ; the other is, that any quantity of 
 protoplasm is protoplasm still. Of the first, it 
 may be observed, that, like the law of definite 
 proportions, it surrenders the whole question. Mere 
 quantity can never show why it is such and such 
 a quantity, and no more and no less. If we adopt 
 the second, we find that protoplasm varies not only 
 from organization to organization, but from tissue 
 to tissue. Granting the likeness between a chicken 
 and Shakespeare, a good deal has been added 
 on. But the basis of the chicken has never been 
 given us in experience as identical with the basis of 
 Shakespeare. In other words, protoplasm, as iden- 
 tical, is an abstraction only ; while actual proto- 
 plasm is different in each kind, and is not uniform 
 in itself. As far as we know at present, life comes 
 from the egg ; but the egg varies from kind to 
 kind, and consists of different tissues. 
 
 Spontaneous generation could not, if proved, 
 alter the matter. Spontaneous generation would 
 amount to this, that life ensues on certain arrange-
 
 THE MATERIALISM OF PROCESS. 97 
 
 ments of molecules, cheese and turnip-juice being 
 the most potent evocators. What would this show, 
 save that cheese and turnip-juice were antecedents 
 of life, and the egg subsumed under a wider law, 
 leaving philosophy precisely where it was ? 
 
 Observation teaches us two things : protoplasm 
 alive differs from protoplasm dead ; and protoplasm 
 comes only of protoplasm alive. If this is so, 
 the empiricist must assume that living protoplasm 
 comes from dead protoplasm, which is contrary to 
 experience ; or he must postulate a blank time to 
 be filled up with his unscientific fancies. In this 
 blank, live protoplasm, we know not how, may 
 have come of the dead basis of life. I can put 
 anything I like on the off-side of the moon ; there 
 is no one to say me nay. It may, says Grote, have 
 been raining on the site of New York, while men 
 were fighting at Plataea ; but we have no evidence 
 either way. In a word, protoplasm is alive, and 
 the question is as it was before ; or protoplasm is 
 dead, and then experience is at fault. 
 
 But this is not all. The vast majority of plants 
 and animals are systems of living beings, each of 
 which is alive. ' Life,' says Virchow, ' is the sum 
 of the joint action of all parts, of the higher or 
 vital ones as of the lower or inferior. There is no 
 
 H
 
 98 MATERIALISM. 
 
 one seat of life, but every truly elementary part, 
 especially every cell, is a seat of life.' This was in 
 1881, and though definitions in physiology change 
 more rapidly than bonnets, I read in the Report of 
 our Biological Association the other night (1882) 
 a similar statement by Professor Macalister : 'Every 
 particle of organism which contains independent 
 protoplasm is thereby independently alive ; and, 
 to adopt the grandiloquent language of modern 
 science, Man is a coalescence of aggregates of 
 symbiosis.' 
 
 What I wish to call your attention to, in the 
 descriptions of life by Virchow and Professor Mac- 
 alister is, that they bring you up to the notion 
 System or Whole. 
 
 Now, of systems there are, as Hegel tells us, 
 three kinds: in the first, the end is, outside; as the 
 end of a coffee-mill is to grind coffee. This is the 
 end in Mechanism. In the second, the parts are, 
 reciprocally, end and means. Water is the out- 
 come of certain gases combined, and the gases are 
 in turn the outcome of the water. This is the end 
 in Chemistry. In the third, the end is inside, as in 
 life, and pre-eminently in thought. 
 
 This being so, no aggregate of materials will 
 account for the end. The metal and glass of a
 
 THE MATERIALISM OF PROCESS. 99 
 
 watch are not the watch, neither are the wheels ; 
 but the glass and brass make the watch when 
 put together according to the thought of the 
 man who planned it. The chemical compound 
 involves its own end, but requires an initiative 
 from without. But the living system of living 
 beings contains its own end within, each part ex- 
 isting for the rest and for the whole. Observe the 
 word symbiosis ; the preposition crvv is a small word, 
 and yet it carries Space, Time, Cause, Substance 
 and Life. When the physicist has the universe to 
 conjure by, he can do a deal. But it is ungrateful 
 in him to quarrel with the postulates which enable 
 him to work. When any physical explanation of 
 thought is submitted to you, ask this question : 
 Does it presuppose any process in space or in 
 time ? If it does, it may be science or it may not. 
 But it is certainly not philosophy. 
 
 Take for example reflex action. I take the fol- 
 lowing description of it from the work of a most 
 eminent anatomist, who is at present professor of 
 anatomy, teaching anatomy the greater part of the 
 year : 
 
 ' The simplest idea of the use of the nervous 
 system is got from what is termed reflex action, 
 because that is uncomplicated with consciousness. 
 
 H 2
 
 IOO MATERIALISM. 
 
 In a reflex action an irritation is applied to a part, 
 and produces in a nerve a change of condition, 
 which is called an impression; this impression is 
 termed sensory or centripetal, and travels to the 
 nerve-centre with which the nerve is connected, and 
 thence it is reflected along some other nerve-fibre, 
 and takes a centrifugal course to a muscle or other 
 organ, which it stimulates to action. If the organ 
 so stimulated be a muscle, the nervous action is 
 excito -motor ; if it be a secreting cell, the action is 
 excito-secretory ; if it be an electric organ, such as 
 exists in various fishes, the nervous action excites 
 it to give a shock of electricity. But in every 
 case it is one description of change which, under 
 the name of an impression, passes up one nerve, 
 through the nerve-centre, and down another nerve 
 to reach the terminal organ ; while the effect pro- 
 duced depends on the intrinsic properties of that 
 organ.' * 
 
 From this we see that reflex action presupposes 
 Space, Time, and all the apparatus of Causality. 
 
 * ClelancTs Animal Physiology, pp. 178-179. For protoplasm, 
 I am indebted to Hutchison Stirling's Essays As Regards Pro- 
 toplasm, 1872.
 
 EXTERNAL THINGS. IOI 
 
 III. External Things. 
 
 External things are now admitted on all hands 
 to have a very insecure footing. The ancient Scep- 
 tics denied the veracity of perception on the double 
 ground that things are related, in the first place, to 
 each other, and, in the second, to our organs an 
 anticipation of the relativity of our day. Exten- 
 sion, say the modern Schoolmen, is only the exist- 
 ence, and not the essence of body. The pure 
 physicist will work with either Epicurus or Bosco- 
 vich ; and phenomenalists, like Brown, Mill, Bain, 
 and Huxley, glory in their position that extension 
 is mental. 
 
 But external things are reduced to their proper 
 position by the idealist. Sensible things, accord- 
 ing to Hegel, have correctness only, and not 
 truth. That is, the qualities of each separate 
 thing are ready to combine with those of their 
 neighbour, and what we call distinct and indepen- 
 dent qualities are in reality the joint relativities of 
 every thing. Qualities are thus ' relations in dis- 
 guise' relation writ small. 
 
 But, if this is true of each quality, so called,
 
 IO2 MATERIALISM. 
 
 singly, it is a fortiori true of qualities in combina- 
 tion. As I pointed out, things or collections of qua- 
 lities may have as a resultant a certain notion- 
 end purpose. The end is outside, as, suppose, a 
 key ; abolish locks, and keys are only so much old 
 iron, and so of all machinery. But if the end be 
 outside, the whole of the machine is only a means. 
 The notion, according to which the machine was 
 made, does not belong to the machine. 
 
 This was the view of things prevalent last cen- 
 tury. Man, according to one of Butler's views, 
 was a machine made for virtue. The material 
 world was a machine which God made, and the 
 end could only be realized on its destruction. In 
 chemistry we have the indifference of end and 
 means ; and it is not until we come to life that we 
 meet the true end. That is to say, in the living 
 thing each one of the parts exists for itself and for 
 the whole. This will remind us of Butler's notion 
 of a system. 
 
 In man considered as a vital organism, there 
 are two notions at work. The one notion is that of 
 End the particular form of life actualized in the 
 body. In this sense, for example, the whole 
 plant is the end of the organization plant. The 
 second notion is the particular body or complexus
 
 EXTERNAL THINGS. 1 03 
 
 of particles which are organic to that end. If then 
 we take man as an organism working to an end, 
 that end must be within. And if we judge of ends 
 according to their complexity, the most complex 
 adjustment of man is conduct. Hence conduct is 
 the end of man, and moral philosophy is the 
 ultimate aspect of man's knowledge. Conduct, of 
 course, includes social and political actions. 
 
 What of the Universe ? Has it an end ? It 
 is obvious that there cannot be any item over and 
 above the sum total. If then the Universe has an 
 end, it cannot be a machine merely, as the end 
 cannot be anything outside it. But if we hold, as 
 we must, that the universe consists of relations 
 related all and each to each other and to the 
 whole not related de facto merely but de jure we 
 must hold that the universe has an end. This 
 is admitted even by Professor Huxley : ( It is 
 necessary to remember that there is a wider teleo- 
 logy, which is not touched by the doctrine of 
 evolution, but is actually based on the fundamental 
 proposition of evolution.' It may be received 
 then that the universe contains an end. 
 
 But we can know something more. The end 
 cannot be evil. Why not ? Cannot we imagine 
 an all-powerful Demon using his omniscience and
 
 IO4 MATERIALISM. 
 
 omnipotence to gratify his malignity ? Milton's 
 Satan exclaims : 
 
 evil, be thou my good ! 
 
 Why may not God Almighty do the same ? Im- 
 possible, for the reason that evil is, as was seen by 
 Plato, virevavTiov TL a subcontrary to good. We 
 can imagine the Demon, but we cannot think him 
 out, for evil is at variance with itself as well as 
 with the good. Pirates, says Plato, hold together 
 so far as they are just, not so far as they are 
 unjust. Minus presupposes plus, but plus does 
 not presuppose minus, and an all-pervading minus 
 is an absurdity. Granting that we cannot see 
 the end in its fulness granting that no man is, 
 as Plato would say, wise, we are, for all that, 
 as completely justified in denying its badness as 
 if we did. Badness is putting a lower category 
 partially above a higher, and this ex vi termini 
 cannot be universal. 
 
 Now, if external things are mere relations to 
 each other, it follows that the aggregate is a re- 
 lativity, and being a relativity, it is eo ipso at last 
 related to something else. But that which is not 
 related to something else is related to itself, and 
 that which is related to itself is Spirit, the only
 
 EXTERNAL THINGS. 1 05 
 
 substratum. In other words, object qua object 
 is related to subject, but is not subject ; while 
 subject is object, and the highest object too. 
 
 Now, if subject be the ultimate referee, Ideal- 
 ism is the final aspect of Philosophy. But as object 
 preserves its equipoise, and both subject and object 
 are subsumed in the unity of thought, Philosophy 
 is not subjective idealism, which is a barren objecti- 
 fication of the subject. Philosophy is the absolute 
 Idealism, where subject and object in plenary dis- 
 tinctness are subsumed, but never lost, in a higher 
 unity.
 
 IV. 
 
 ETHICS FOUNDED ON END. 
 I. Aristotle. 
 
 THE chief point I wish to impress on you is the 
 difference between Philosophy and Psychology. 
 This distinction is so capital, that when it is per- 
 ceived one may say without exaggeration that 
 there is nothing else to see. It is briefly this : 
 Psychology is the counterpart of Physiology, and 
 deals with the facts of sentience as states of feel- 
 ing, but always as a branch of the history either 
 of the individual or of the race ; while Philosophy 
 treats of the principles which this history pre- 
 supposes which it is obliged to pre-suppose, be- 
 cause it cannot explain them, and because without 
 these its own special deliverances can neither be 
 construed nor understood. Psychology is the his- 
 tory of the individual development : Philosophy is 
 the analysis of the principles which underlie Psy- 
 chology and everything else. Psychology is the 
 history of a process : Philosophy assigns that pro-
 
 ARISTOTLE. IO7 
 
 cess its place in the grand Whole. To-day I wish 
 to point out how that distinction bears upon the 
 Ethics of Aristotle. 
 
 According to Plato, the empirical world con- 
 sisted of two constituents the sensitive elements 
 and the idea. These two existed x 6 */ ^ tnat ls 
 to say, were patent to different faculties. Aris- 
 totle took Plato's materials and used them in a 
 different way, and made them apparently more 
 precise. 
 
 In his First Philosophy, Aristotle considers the 
 constituents common to all actuality. These are 
 four Form, Matter, Moving Cause, and End : 
 tnat is to say, he breaks up the Idea into three, 
 viz., Form, Moving Cause, and End ; while Matter 
 represents the Indefinite of Plato, the pabulum 
 of the Senses, the determinable factor in the 
 Idea. 
 
 Each individual thing roSe TL is arvvoXov 
 the result of union between Matter and Form ; and in 
 organic things, Form includes Movement and End. 
 Each organic thing consequently has an End, and 
 therefore Man. It will be observed that End is the 
 correlative of Beginning : Beginning initiates move- 
 ment of some kind, and this movement eventuates 
 in End ; and End for the Will is good. The
 
 108 ETHICS FOUNDED ON END. 
 
 student of Kant will recollect his opening sen- 
 tence : * Nothing can be called good except a 
 Good Will.' That is to say, for Will the end is 
 Good, and for Will only. 
 
 This End is not the Utilitarian end, which is 
 pleasure of some kind attainable by the proper 
 means. The Aristotelian End, in things which 
 are distinct from this utility, is in the product, as 
 the end of weaving is the cloth ; while in other 
 things, of which the working, and not the product, 
 is the end, the end is energy, e*>e/>yeia movement 
 from possibility towards perfection ; and move- 
 ment so completed is perfection, the entelechy, 
 eVreXe'xeia, or end complete the actus immanens 
 of the schoolmen. Thus sight and hearing are 
 the energies and entelechies of the eye and ear. 
 The end of man is thus the completion of a work- 
 ing towards completion. In the organic world, 
 Soul V* U X^ * s tf 16 um ty f the three, Form, 
 Movement, End. The remaining constituent, 
 Matter, as opposed to Form, is crre/a^cris negati- 
 vity : there is in rerum natura no Matter pure or 
 devoid of all Form. On the other hand, Form 
 can exist pure without Matter that is to say, 
 Form has a separable existence yupunov. Now 
 Form includes Motion : we have, therefore, Form
 
 ARISTOTLE. IOg 
 
 moving Matter. And this is the result of analy- 
 sis : the Moving ; the Moved ; the Moving and 
 Moved ; the Moving and non-Moved. The Mov- 
 ing and not Moved is God vovs = voya-ts i/o^creajs. 
 
 Into the organised body Nous enters ab extra. 
 Man is a microcosm which subsumes all the 
 faculties of the other organisms : in addition to 
 these, Man has Nous. Nous is of two kinds, 
 active, and passive or receptive, Tra^n/cos. 
 
 Man, accordingly, so far as he has in him Not!?, 
 has in him to that extent Form, which includes 
 Motivity and End. Hence, then, Man contains 
 End, the proposition of the Ethics. 
 
 Nous is of two kinds active and passive 
 iraOrjTLKos. The latter is decomposible, the for- 
 mer not. In what relation Nous in each of us 
 stands to the absolute Novs the adus purus 
 God is not clear : that is to say, was Aristotle a 
 Pantheist, or did he hold the distinct existence of 
 the individual Soul. 
 
 Man, as we said, contains End, and End is 
 ap^rrj. This notion is familiar to the readers 
 of the Republic in the sense of efficiency the 
 common-sense notion of adaptation to an end or 
 work, found in a man, a horse, an organ of sense, 
 a vine-hook : that is to say, the end of Man is
 
 IIO ETHICS FOUNDED ON END. 
 
 inner working actus immanens which does not 
 pass into overt action or material result. 
 
 From Speusippus, the nephew and successor of 
 Plato, Aristotle took the notion that virtue is 
 evScu/Aoi>ta,5 e'pyacm/o? ; while happiness, accord- 
 ing to Speusippus, was ets reXeta eV rots Kara 
 <J>V<TLV e^ovcTLv, Clem. Al. Strom, n. , 418^. 
 
 From Xenocrates, the successor of Speusippus, he 
 took the notion that evSat/xovia was /crrjo-is, ib. 419*2. 
 
 In a well-known passage in the second book of 
 the Ethics, Aristotle states that ethical virtue is 
 one of three states of Soul. But, argues he, as 
 it is not Traflos, and as it is not 8iW/ug, it must be 
 eis. It is obvious that this reasoning depends 
 on the exhaustiveness of the division. But the 
 division is exhaustive. It is not 7ra#os recep- 
 tivity; it is not SiW/us, potentiality of action; 
 it is, therefore, eis, or relation in degree. That 
 is to say, if ethical virtue has to do with pleasure 
 and pain, virtue cannot consist of mere recep- 
 tivity of such affections ; nor can it consist of 
 mere potentiality of action, which would turn us 
 into conduits of mere action. It remains then 
 that it be !is, which is the abstract expression for 
 the concrete TO exei^ tavrov TTW?, that is, a relation 
 of the agent to his task. Simplicius, in his com-
 
 ARISTOTLE. I I I 
 
 mentary on the Categories, tells us that eft? admits 
 of degree, more or less. Hence, then, Virtue is 
 relation of degree between the Agent and his 
 task : hence the doctrine of the Relative Mean. 
 
 What we should call the Moral Faculty is a 
 species of Now?. Nous acts either as eVio-T^/A?; 
 or <j>p6vr)(TL<s. The former relates to the logical and 
 scientific conclusion ; the latter to the Practical Good. 
 Noeu/ and <f>povelv resemble sensible perception, in 
 having as their object reality, rwv OVTUV TI, while 
 aicr6dvea-0ai is never wrong. Novs essentially ad- 
 mits of TO op6to<s and TO ^ : that is to say, the 
 conceptions of <J>povetv and eVto-T^/aT/ are of necessity 
 either right or wrong, deA. in. iii. 3. 
 
 Not)?, we must remember, is the union of Form, 
 Efficiency, and End : hence, the eVe/oyeio, of Nov? is 
 &r/7, life. Nov? is thus the principle of individu- 
 ality in man, and is the source of the higher 
 pleasures. It is pleasure to perceive inherent 
 good, and existence is an intense good ; for exist- 
 ence is either Thought or Perception. Aristotle, 
 in language and sentiment, anticipates the famous 
 Cogito ergo sum of Descartes TO yap elvai yv rj 
 aicrOdvea-Oai r} voelv, E,. N. ix. , ix. 9. 
 
 Aristotle's theory of sensation is as follows: 
 Sensation is of the genus Motion or Passion, and of
 
 I 1 2 ETHICS FOUNDED ON END. 
 
 the species Change, de A. n. v. 7. We must 
 recollect that Genus and Species in Logic are 
 what Matter and Form are in his Philosophy, 
 Met. Z. xii. Change is defined as Alteration in 
 Quality, Phys. vn., 10. But Passion does not 
 express pure Passivity. It signifies, first, that the 
 object of perception produces in the percipient 
 an alteration of his previous state ; second, that 
 the immanent qualities of the percipient are there- 
 by evoked. The object brings about the first 
 change only : de A. n., vii., 9. In the first change 
 the mind is unlike its object ; in the final change it 
 is like it : Ib. u. v. 4, 12. This is the meaning of re- 
 ceiving Form without Matter : Ib. n., xii., i. Or as 
 he puts it in the Metaphysics, that which is in energy 
 comes of that which exists in potentiality through 
 the action of reality which is in energy, Met. viii. 
 If we recollect that, in Aristotle, Novs is the 
 highest faculty : that Sense, when excited by the 
 stimulus, protrudes its Forms ; that the stimuli 
 are things which pre-exist, i. e. are permanent and 
 independent of us, and are without sensation, 
 while they cause sensation, we can see the main 
 leatures of Kant's system, the Sensibility, the 
 Form of the Sensibility, the Thing-by-itself, and 
 the Faculty of Forms or Categories.
 
 ARISTOTLE. 113 
 
 Aristotle's criticism of the Platonic Idea is fatal 
 to his pretensions as a metaphysician. Coleridge's 
 remark that every man is born a Platonist or an 
 Aristotelean has more truth than epigrams in 
 general. The idealist can understand the empiri- 
 cist, but the empiricist gazes after him in vain with 
 
 white upturned wondering eyes 
 When he bestrides the lazy-puffing clouds 
 And sails upon the bosom of the air. 
 
 One can sympathise with Syrianus when he 
 commented on N. Aristotle's worst sins appear 
 concentrated in the Nicomachean Ethics, i., vi. 
 The argument may be conveniently arranged 
 thus: From section 2 to section 13 Aristotle 
 argues from Plato's principles, and from 13 to 
 the end he argues on his own principles that the 
 Good is not npaKTov ovSe KTVJTOV avOp^rra). But 
 of one sin, laid at his door by Liddell and Scott, 
 Aristotle is guiltless ; TO ^anvo^evov ayadov is not 
 the seeming good, but the empirical good thing in 
 course of presentation in space and time. To 
 <f)aiv6fjLvov ayadov is the minor of the Practical 
 Syllogism of the Seventh Book. Plato's Good, like 
 his Ideas, was transcendental in experience, con- 
 stituting it, and beyond it, and to some extent, but 
 never completely, grasped by man.
 
 I 14 ETHICS FOUNDED ON END. 
 
 II. Butler' s Two Methods. 
 
 The student of Butler is familiar with the passage 
 which describes ' the two ways in which the subject 
 of Morals may be treated.' The passage occurs in 
 the preface to the second edition of the Sermons 
 published in 1729, and is as follows: 'One be- 
 gins by inquiring into the abstract relations of 
 things ; the other, from a matter of fact, namely, 
 what the particular nature of Man is, in its several 
 parts, their economy, or constitution ; from whence 
 it proceeds to determine what course of life it is 
 which is correspondent to this whole nature. In the 
 former case the conclusion is expressed thus, that 
 Vice is contrary to the nature and reason of things ; 
 in the latter, that it is a violation or breaking in 
 upon our own nature. Thus they both lead us to 
 the same thing our obligations to the practice of 
 virtue : and thus they exceedingly strengthen and 
 enforce each other. The first seems the most direct 
 formal proof, and in some respects the least liable 
 to cavil and dispute : the latter is in a peculiar 
 manner adapted to satisfy a fair mind, and is more 
 easily applicable to the several particular relations 
 and circumstances in life' (Preface)* 
 
 * Tegg's edition, p. x.
 
 BUTLER. 115 
 
 I propose to show that both methods agree in 
 making- fitness the test of virtue ; fitness, in other 
 words, being the ultimate reason that Butler would 
 give for an action being right. This answer will 
 make clear what is otherwise somewhat confused, 
 and answer the objections of Butler's later critics, 
 Mr. Sidgwick and Professor Fowler. 
 
 The first method is taken from the system of 
 Clarke. It is briefly this : Things exist ; their rela- 
 tions, therefore, exist : things are therefore real, 
 and therefore their relations are real ; and things 
 and their relations are as they appear. Now, Vir- 
 tue and Vice are relations, and are therefore real. 
 Therefore the distinction between virtue and vice 
 is immutable. 
 
 In order to show how Clarke's views bear fruit 
 in Butler, I have reduced the system of the latter 
 to a few propositions : 
 
 I. Man has propensions, 
 
 II. These propensions seek their objects di- 
 rectly. 
 
 III. Man has a faculty which takes notice of the 
 direct action of these propensions, and as such it is 
 reflex. 
 
 IV. Some of these actions it perceives to be
 
 I 1 6 ETHICS FOUNDED ON END. 
 
 congruous with man's system ; some to be incon- 
 gruous. 
 
 V. Congruity involves approbation, and incon- 
 gruity disapprobation. 
 
 VI. Approbation and disapprobation are au- 
 thoritative. 
 
 VII. Authority is involved in the notion of re- 
 flex action, as contrasted with the unreflecting or 
 direct propension. 
 
 VIII. ' Congruities and incongruities are as 
 they appear.'* 
 
 IX. Therefore the congruities and incongru- 
 ities are real, and therefore the approbation and 
 disapprobation. 
 
 What I wish to call your attention to is, that 
 the proposition that congruities are as they appear 
 is not explicit in Butler, but traces of it appear in 
 all his writings. The following are reminiscences 
 of Clarke : The argument for the existence of God 
 from ' abstract reasonings,'f the ' intuitive proof 
 of the intent of nature,' J Moral government * falls in 
 with our natural apprehension and sense of things,' 
 ' the eternal and unalterable relations, the fitness 
 
 * Clarke's Attributes, prop. xii. 
 
 f Analogy, Introduction, p. xxviii, Tegg's edition. 
 
 \ 16. 1. in., p. 43- Ib - P- 35-
 
 BUTLER. I I 7 
 
 and unfitness of actions,'* ' the will of God is deter- 
 mined by what is fit, by the right and reason of the 
 case.'f 
 
 But the locus classicus in the last chapter of the 
 Analogy * I have argued on the principles of the 
 Fatalists which I do not believe ; and I have 
 omitted a thing of the utmost importance which I 
 do believe the moral fitness and unfitness of actions 
 prior to all will whatever.':}: And he continues : 
 ' Indeed, the principles of liberty, and that of moral 
 fitness, so force themselves upon the mind, that 
 moralists, the ancients as well as moderns have 
 formed their language upon it; and probably it 
 may appear in mine, therefore I have endeavoured 
 to avoid it.' 
 
 Again, in the Sermons we have : ' Everything is 
 what it is, and not another thing' (Pref. p. xxi); 
 ' the favour and disapprobation, which respectively 
 are due and belong to the righteous and the wicked, 
 and which therefore must necessarily be in a mind 
 which sees things as they really are ' (S. xv. p. 170). 
 These, and other passages are, I contend, only in- 
 telligible when referred to the Fitness of Clarke 
 when it is taken as being what it appears. This is 
 explicit in Clarke.]) 
 
 * Analogy, p. 54. J Tb. p. 249. || Attributes, prop. xii. 
 f Ib. p. 96. n. Ib. p. 249.
 
 I I 8 ETHICS FOUNDED ON END. 
 
 But this mode of thinking, which is really Pla- 
 tonic, is not to be confounded with the other 
 conception, or way of treating morals, which is 
 Aristotelian. The argument is from adaptation or 
 Final Cause TO ez/e'/ca ov. ' There is no doubt the 
 eye was intended for us to see with' (S. n. p. 15). 
 The argument from adaptation is often called the 
 'reason of the thing,' i.e. its purpose as gathered 
 from observation, the argument strengthening di- 
 rectly as complexity. For example : a Chubb' s 
 key shows adaptation more than a skeleton key. 
 The reason of the thing is appealed to in the 
 case of Compassion and in the case of Resent- 
 ment. * In each case it means purpose inferred 
 from use. But purpose inferred from use is fit- 
 ness as a matter of fact, and is thus quite distinct 
 from the a priori fitness of Clarke. Both are true. 
 
 In short, the ''second way ' is this : the object 
 of the moral faculty is conduct. The method is 
 a comparison of the conduct with the whole cha- 
 racter of the agent, f The details of the process 
 are set forth in a passage little known. It occurs 
 in the essay on Identity : ' As upon two triangles 
 being compared or viewed together there arises 
 to the mind the idea of similitude ; or upon twice 
 
 * Sermons, vi. and viii. f Diss. on Virtue^ p. 274.
 
 BUTLER. I I Q 
 
 two and four the idea of equality.'* Now compare 
 with this the passage ' Upon considering or view- 
 ing together our notion of Vice and that of Misery, 
 there results a third, that of ill-desert ; ' f and he 
 tells us expressly in the Analogy $. that the sense of 
 ill-desert is the explicit sanction of moral govern- 
 ment. That Butler did not change his views in 
 after life with regard to the distinct utility of each 
 method is plain, from the admirable Sermon before 
 the Lords, June n, 1747; while London had not 
 forgotten its panic at the approach of the High- 
 landers. In that civil government is treated as a 
 publication and as an enforcement of the Law of 
 Nature, and as a means to the end to which 
 ' the constitution of our nature carries us.' That 
 is, he dwells on the matter-of-fact fitness of man 
 for civil government. In his Charge to the Clergy, 
 in 1751, he recommends certain modes of beha- 
 viour 'as due to ourselves and to our religion. ' || 
 Another reason for holding that we see rela- 
 tions as they are is derivable from Butler's lan- 
 guage. His language is that of Locke. We have 
 ' perceptions ' of various moral phenomena. Now, 
 the student of Locke knows that perception means 
 
 *p. 263. + p. 95. II Ib. p. 271. 
 
 t P- 273. Sermons, p. 243.
 
 I2O ETHICS FOUNDED ON END. 
 
 the notice which the mind takes of its own opera- 
 tions, in which case it is passive* that is to say, 
 the mind does not modify or alter the perception. 
 Another trait of Locke's language is where we 
 are told to see what Resentment is when traced 
 up to its ' original,' /. e. to its natural and unso- 
 phisticated state. In fact, Locke's * original ' may 
 be always rendered, to borrow from arithmetic, 
 * when reduced to its lowest terms.' I may add 
 that Mr. Mill and M. Cousin have strangely con- 
 founded 'original' with * origin, 'f 
 
 But if we have perceptions of fitness as a 
 matter of fact, and if some propensions are fitter 
 for our own good, and some for the good of others, 
 it follows that Butler's ultimate rational is neither 
 egoistic nor altruistic, but solely that of fitness, 
 either a priori borrowed from Clarke, or infallibly 
 inferred from matter of fact. 
 
 Mr. Sidgwick, in his Methods of Ethics, says he 
 ' only differs with Butler when he asks himself, 
 " What among the precepts of our common con- 
 science do we really see to be ultimately reason- 
 able?" A question which he says Butler 'does not 
 seem to have put, and to which, at any rate, he has 
 
 * Essay, II. ix. i. 
 
 f Mill on Hamilton, p. 147. Cousin, Lectures, znd ser. vol. n, 
 xvi. p. 194.
 
 BUTLER. 121 
 
 given no satisfactory answer' (Preface, p. xii., 2nd 
 edition). The answer may be found in his Twelfth 
 Sermon, and elsewhere. In the Twelfth Sermon he 
 says : ' We are in a peculiar manner, as I may 
 speak, entrusted with ourselves, and therefore care 
 of our own interest, as well as of our conduct, par- 
 ticularly belongs to us' (p. 138). And in the official 
 passage on the nature of Virtue he tells us Prudence 
 is a virtue, because it is approved, and approved of 
 by the approving faculty, 17 So/a/iacra/of that which 
 approves with authority thereto the term being 
 borrowed from Athenian Law, where it meant ap- 
 proval on the merits. 
 
 The following passages, amongst others, show 
 what Butler is prepared to concede to Self-love : 
 
 ' No one can act but from a desire, or choice, or 
 preference of his own ' (p. xx). 
 
 ' All actions agree in this, that they both pro- 
 ceed from, and are done to gratify, an inclination 
 in a man's self (p. 116). 
 
 ' Our ideas of happiness and misery are, of all 
 our ideas, the nearest and most intimately important 
 to us ; that they will nay, if you please, that they 
 ought to prevail over those of order and beauty, 
 and harmony and proportion, if there should ever 
 be, as it is impossible there ever should be, any 
 inconsistency between them' (p. 128).
 
 122 ETHICS FOUNDED ON END. 
 
 ' We can neither justify this or any other pursuit 
 till we are convinced that it will be for our happi- 
 ness, or at least not contrary to it' (p. 128). 
 
 ' So far as the interests of virtue depend on the 
 theory of it being secured from open scorn, so far 
 its very being in the world depends on its appear- 
 ing to have no contrariety to private interest and 
 self-love' (p. 128). 
 
 Man ' would, in fact, and ought to, be more 
 taken up and employed about himself and his 
 own concerns, than about others and their inte- 
 rests ' (p. 137). 
 
 * We are in a peculiar manner, as I may speak, 
 entrusted with ourselves ; and therefore care of our 
 own interests, as well as of our conduct, particu- 
 larly belongs to us' (p. 138). 
 
 ' Nothing can be of consequence to mankind or 
 any creature but happiness ' (p. 142). 
 
 ' Every man in every thing he does naturally 
 acts upon the forethought and apprehension of 
 obtaining good or avoiding evil ' (Anal., part, u., 
 chap, ii., p. 22). 
 
 The fact is, Butler uses Self-love in two senses, 
 and these he carefully distinguishes. ' Self-love, 
 considered merely as an active principle leading us 
 to pursue our chief interest,' and Self-love consi- 
 dered merely as the desire of our own interest or
 
 BUTLER. 123 
 
 happiness ' (Anal. p. 83) may clash ; but so far as 
 they may clash, it is the latter only which may go 
 astray. 
 
 We may now answer Mr. Sidgwick's question, 
 What is Butler's ultimate rational ? It is approval, 
 i. e. a testing of the action by comparing it with the 
 capacities of the agent ; approval, meaning not 
 acceptance in the commercial sense of ' goods sent 
 on approval,' but in the sense pointed out, after 
 scrutiny. Self-love, then, like everything else, is 
 only right on scrutiny, and not before. 
 
 In his account of the authority of the approving 
 faculty, Epictetus is superior to Butler. He gives 
 a scientific reason why it approves ' of all the 
 faculties (except that which I shall soon mention), 
 you will find not one which is capable of contem- 
 plating itself, and consequently not capable either 
 of approving or disapproving.' What faculty is it ? 
 ' The rational faculty ; for this is the only faculty 
 that we have received which examines itself, and 
 ... all other faculties ' (Epict. Diatr. i., i. xx).
 
 V. 
 
 THE TRANSITION FROM ANCIENT TO 
 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 I . Un iversals. 
 
 WESTERN PHILOSOPHY begins with Thales. Down 
 to the time of Heraclitus, it was eminently objec- 
 tive. Heraclitus taught that all things were in a 
 state of perpetual flux travTa x^P^- But this flux 
 was an objective law of the universe, and not a 
 figment projected by our imagination on a blank. 
 Socrates was struck by the difficulty, how, if travra 
 X^pei, there can be eTrioTif/xiy. Philology has con- 
 firmed the view of the untutored Greek that eTrio-ri^Tj 
 is connected with um?/xi. This being so, the diffi- 
 culty to a Greek was how there could be stop or 
 stay in that which never stops or stays. Can there 
 be a halting-place in Niagara ? In opposition, then, 
 to the flux of Heraclitus, Socrates affirmed the 
 objectivity of yivr). To use the Greek metaphor, 
 he arrested the movement. That is, the yeVos was 
 a halt in the torrent. The Socrates yeVos was made
 
 UNIVERSALS. 125 
 
 more precise by Plato in his Idea. That is, 
 the objectivity of the universal, which was left 
 undefined by Socrates, was defined by Plato. 
 Aristotle differed with Plato in certain points, but 
 he agreed with Socrates and Plato as to the ne- 
 cessity of the universal element. And out of the 
 controversy which raged for centuries as to the 
 nature of universals, Modern Philosophy has 
 emerged thus : 
 
 Porphyry the Platonist, 232304, A.D., wrote 
 his Isagoge an introduction to the Categories 
 of Aristotle, which may be found in any edition 
 of the Organon. This treatise was known to the 
 mediaeval schoolmen in the translation of Boethius, 
 one of the last of the Neo-Platonists : his date is 
 470-425, A.D. 
 
 The passage in Porphyry is as follows : Aurt/ca 
 Trepl yev&v re /cat elBatv, TO fj,ev, etre v<f)<TT'r)Kv, etre 
 /cat iv /xovats i/ftAat? eTTtvotats /cetrat, etre /cat v^ecrTT)- 
 /cora, craJ/Aara ecrnv, f) dcrw/xara, /cat Trorepov ^a>pto"Ta, 
 fj iv rots ato^rots, /cat irepl raura u^ecrraiTa, Trapai- 
 TTJo-ofJiai Xeyetv, ySa^vrar^? ova"rj<s rrjs rotavr^s irpay- 
 /uaretas, /cat aXX-^s /xet^o^o? Seo/xeV^s e^eracrews. 
 
 Boethius translates thus : Mox de generibus et 
 spedebus illud quidem sive subsistant sive in solis nudis 
 intelledibus posita sint^ sive subsistentia corporalia sint
 
 126 ANCIENT AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 an incorporalia, et utrum separata a sensilibus an in 
 sensilibus posita et circa hcec consistentia dicere recusabo. 
 
 This passage is the text of the philosophy of 
 the schoolmen, from our countryman John Erigen 
 to St. Thomas Aquinas, whose philosophy still 
 dominates theology, and has received the sanction 
 of the present Pontiff. It may be confidently as- 
 serted that no passage in any writer, sacred or 
 profane, has evoked such intellectual activity as 
 this single sentence of Boethius. It is the Helen of 
 Logic. Scholasticism was evolved thus : Dionysius 
 the Areopagite is mentioned in Acts xvii. 34. To 
 this Dionysius are attributed certain Neo-Platonic 
 treatises which are appealed to in controversy of 
 the year A. D. 532. These treatises were translated 
 by John Erigen, and exercised very considerable 
 influence on mediaeval thought. The Areopagitic 
 writings blend Neo-Platonism with Christianity. 
 John Erigen was born about 800 or 810, and 
 died in 877, and from that date on, Christian 
 writers applied the doctrines of Plato and Aris- 
 totle with regard to the objectivity of knowledge 
 to the expositions of religion, natural and re- 
 vealed. 
 
 Let us now go back to the text of Porphyry. 
 In modern language it reads thus : Are the
 
 UNIVERSALS. I2J 
 
 Predicables subjective or objective ? Are they ma- 
 terial or immaterial ? and in either case do they 
 exist in Particulars, or apart from Particulars ? 
 This precise anticipation of scholasticism in its 
 various forms of Realism, Conceptualism, and No- 
 minalism presupposes, like modern psychology, 
 a Mind, like a trunk, to be packed on one side, and 
 commodities to pack it on the other. And this, I 
 need not remind you, is the view with which 
 Locke's Essay has made you familiar. 
 
 In Porphyry's division the possibility of the pre- 
 dicables existing solely in the intellect is the only 
 form which savours of Subjectivism. If the con- 
 stitutive framework of things exists only in our 
 intellect qua subject, the shapeless pulp which 
 serves as the matter of the universe will not detain 
 us long. This is easily seen in Kant. In Kant the 
 non-subjective cause of our sensations is unknown. 
 But the ancients had not reached this phase. 
 The Academics held that though something might 
 always be said on the other side, yet the prepon- 
 derance of opinion resulted in probability. And 
 even the Sceptics in their Ten and Five Tropes 
 did not argue against the objectivity of truth, but 
 insisted that the equivalence of the arguments 
 pro and con necessarily prevented the mind from
 
 128 ANCIENT AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 drawing a conclusion. Of course this was virtually 
 to assert that where argument precipitated, truth was 
 formed. But from the Conceptualism of the school- 
 men, and in some cases from their Nominalism, we 
 have reached this point : We have knowledge : 
 that knowledge is, at one side at least, subjective. 
 Is it anything more ? In other words, is know- 
 ledge anything more than the spectre of ourselves 
 projected on blank nothingness ? 
 
 II. Descartes. 
 
 Taking perception as the basis of classification, 
 the schoolmen may be classed accordingly. Accord- 
 ing to their view of the relation of the Universal to 
 particulars, the Universal was said to exist ante rem, 
 in re, post rem. Ante rem denoted the Platonists ; 
 in re the Aristotelians ; and post rem the rest. Those 
 whose key-note was /0s/ rem were either Nominalists 
 or Conceptualists. With Conceptualism, Subjectiv- 
 ism properly begins. If Universals are merely modes 
 of our human thinking, it is obvious we can place 
 no great reliance on philosophy, and not much 
 more on science. Physical science will, it is true,
 
 DESCARTES. I2Q 
 
 minister to our convenience, but that is not much. 
 But the important point in the history of philosophy 
 is that Conceptualism openly taught that universals 
 could and did exist only inside the four corners of 
 the human mind. That is to say, that the main 
 constitutents of the universe were mental modifi- 
 cations. It is curious that Conceptualism, as a 
 possibility of thought, is stated in the clearest 
 manner by Plato in the Parmenides. 
 
 The reaction against Scholasticism is due 
 mainly, to Descartes, 1596-1650. With regard to 
 the great question which divided the schoolmen, 
 Descartes held that universals arose from making 
 use of one and the same idea in thinking of all 
 individual objects, between which there subsists a 
 certain likeness ; and when we comprehend all the 
 objects represented by this idea under one name, 
 this term likewise becomes universal (Princ. Phil. 
 i. lix.). From this we may see that Descartes was 
 not a realist, and that he was accordingly prepared 
 to seek for truth within the limits of his own mind. 
 This being so, he proceeded as follows : 
 
 We are occasionally deceived by the senses, 
 for we dream. Can we then believe in anything ? 
 To answer this, he proceeded to discard every 
 opinion of which he could doubt ; and in this way
 
 I3O ANCIENT AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 reached the point, that though he could doubt of 
 the validity of every opinion whatsoever, yet that 
 he could not, while in doubt, doubt, and so deny, 
 that he, the doubter, existed while doubting. That 
 is, as he himself explained it, we are immediately 
 conscious of what takes place in us ; and when we 
 refer the thought to the mind the knowledge is ma- 
 nifestly certain, and it is the mind alone which is 
 conscious that it thinks, thinking including every 
 mental mode (Princ. Phil i. ix.); that is to say, it 
 includes intelligere entendre; velle ; imaginari ; sen- 
 tire sentir (ib.) Cogito, ergo sum is thus an intuition 
 of consciousness une connoissance intuitive (Lett. 
 124, vol. iii. 639, ed. V. Cousin]. 
 
 So much has been written on the famous Cogito 
 ergo sum that Prof. Bain wonders people have not 
 grown tired of trying to extract more sunbeams 
 from this overgrown cucumber. It has been called 
 a Syllogism ; but, as Hegel remarked, the man who 
 called it a Syllogism knew nothing about a Syl- 
 logism, except that it had an ergo in it. It is not, 
 says Descartes in the letter quoted, a work of your 
 reasoning, or a product of instruction. Here, at 
 all events, we have an intuition which is clear and 
 distinct, and this will furnish a criterion of other 
 notions. But we must see what Descartes meant
 
 DESCARTES. 131 
 
 by the familiar terms clear and distinct. Everything 
 in his philosophy rests on these two terms. 
 
 Clear is that which is present and manifest to 
 the mind which gives attention to it, just as we are 
 said to see objects clearly, when they are presented 
 to the eye, and when they stimulate it with sufficient 
 force, and it is disposed to regard them (Princ. 
 Phil. i. xlv.) 
 
 Distinct is that which is so precise and different 
 from all other objects as to comprehend in itself 
 only what is clear (z'<5.) That is to say, all that is 
 distinct is clear, but all that is clear is not neces- 
 sarily distinct. To take his own illustration, when 
 one feels intense pain, the knowledge which he has 
 of this pain is very clear, but it is not always dis- 
 tinct ; for men usually confound it with the obscure 
 judgment they form regarding its nature, and think 
 there is in the suffering part something similar to 
 the sensation of pain of which alone they are con- 
 scious (/<5.) xlvi. But, before we can fully see the 
 meaning of distinctness as a criterion, we must pro- 
 ceed to a further development of Cartesianism. 
 
 I exist, and when I think, amongst my thoughts 
 I have, or am capable of having, the idea of a su- 
 premely perfect being : this supremely perfect being 
 therefore exists. But it is one of the truths which 
 
 K 2
 
 1 32 ANCIENT AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 exist in the mind that anything existing cannot 
 have nothing for its cause. Therefore the idea of 
 the supremely perfect being cannot have nothing 
 for its cause : the idea is consequently caused in 
 us by supreme perfection. 
 
 For, causes work two ways, formaliter and emi- 
 neuter : formaliter, when the effect exactly repro- 
 duces the quantum of the cause : eminenter, when 
 the quantum of cause exists in a more eminent 
 degree than in the effect. Formaliter is a metaphor 
 from a seal exactly fitting into its impression : 
 eminenter signifies that the cause extends beyond 
 the effect is, in a word, too big for it. And this 
 is exactly the argument of St. Anselm. 
 
 St. Anselm, 1033-1 109, in his Proslogium argues 
 as follows : That a greater than which cannot be 
 thought concipi grasped cannot exist in the 
 mind i. e., my mind, only. For, if it did, a greater 
 is conceivable as existing beyond my mind. This 
 can be illustrated thus : a maximum line cannot 
 exist inside this room only : if it did, the line 
 which runs out beyond the room is larger than 
 the line cut off inside the room ; but that was the 
 maximum : Q. A. E. 
 
 But we have the idea of something a greater 
 than which cannot be thought: it therefore exists
 
 DESCARTES. 133 
 
 out of any mind, as the Schoolmen said, re, as we 
 say now, objectively. And this is the famous onto- 
 logical argument for the existence of God ; that is, 
 the correlate of the idea is real. 
 
 The argument was attacked in Anselm's own 
 time by Gaunilo, a monk, who was also the Count 
 of Montigni. His argument is the modern one, 
 that from an idea you cannot infer existence ; 
 for, said he, Anselm's argument would prove the 
 existence of a perfect island. But the most fierce 
 attack was made by Kant in his doctrine that ex- 
 istence was no part of an idea, but was a relation 
 between the idea and us. But Hegel has vindicated 
 the argument by showing that existence cannot be 
 severed from thought, meaning by thought, not the 
 pictured fancy, but the process of the universe. It is 
 idle to ask what guaranties thought, for thought is 
 the universe, and the universe is its own guaranty, 
 for it has, and can have, no alternative. And Des- 
 cartes, in the spirit of Hegel, says it is evident that 
 all that is true is something [truth being identical 
 with existence] (Meditat. F.) The words in brackets 
 are not in the Latin edition of 1641, but are taken 
 from the French edition of 1647. 
 
 I may remark that Kant's famous illustration of 
 the difference between the hundred actual dollars
 
 134 ANCIENT AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and the hundred possible dollars amounts merely 
 to this, that unlike experiences are unlike. The 
 propositions, I have 10 and / have not 10, differ 
 in have and have not, and not in the symbol ^10, 
 which is exactly similar in each case. They are, in 
 Kant's language, synthetic judgments a posteriori, 
 while the relation of thought and existence is 
 synthetic a priori. Those who talk loudly of Kant 
 having shattered for ever the Ontological and Cos- 
 mological arguments quite forget that his argument 
 depends on his technical distinction between the a 
 priori element and the subjectivity of the sensibility. 
 The criterion of the a priori element is Kant's con- 
 tribution to philosophy : the subjectivity of sense 
 is a false assumption. Deny it, and Kant's attack 
 on metaphysics comes to nought. But the fashion- 
 able procedure is to throw over Kant where he is 
 right, and to take him up where he is wrong. 
 
 Criticising the illustration, Hegel says, ' Can 
 there be anything pettier in knowledge than this ? 
 Above all, it is well to remember, when we speak 
 of God, that we have an object of another kind than 
 any hundred dollars, and unlike any particular 
 notion, conceit, or whatever else it may be styled. 
 The very nature of everything finite is expressed by 
 saying that its Being in time and space is discrepant
 
 DESCARTES. 135 
 
 from its Notion. God, on the contrary, ought to 
 be that which can only be thought as existing. 
 His Notion involves Being. It is this unity of the 
 Notion and Being that constitutes the notion of 
 God' (Logic, Encycl. 51, Wallace's Translation 
 p. 92). 
 
 To return to Descartes : In his Fourth Medita- 
 tion he thus describes his criterion of distinctness : 
 * Every clear and distinct conception is doubtless 
 something, and so cannot owe its origin to nothing, 
 but must of necessity have God for its author 
 God I say, who, as supremely perfect, cannot with- 
 out contradiction be the cause of any error, and 
 consequently it is necessary to conclude that every 
 such conception or judgment is true (Med. IV.}. 
 
 This passage is a complete answer to the 
 criticism, that Descartes fails to distinguish be- 
 tween subjective and objective certainty. Clear- 
 ness is the test of the one, and distinctness of the 
 other, though clearness may receive the imprima- 
 tur of distinctness. I may add that Locke uses 
 clear and distinct in the sense, as he tells us in 
 his Epistle to the Reader, of determinate. 
 
 As a point of literary interest, cogito ergo sum 
 occurs in almost identical expression in Aristotle 
 (E. N., ix. ix. 9).
 
 136 ANCIENT AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Starting then from cogito ergo sum, clearness and 
 distinctness become criteria when clearness is sub- 
 sumed in distinctness, and the latter is correlated 
 with the causality of God. The order of notions is : 
 a thing is distinct, it is therefore something ; there- 
 fore not from nothing ; therefore from God ; and 
 therefore true. 
 
 The value of the ontological argument is pre- 
 cisely this : subject and object thought and ex- 
 istence are inseparable moments of one process : 
 these two moments being combined in the one 
 process, the process is something more than the 
 moments it combines. Philosophically, the onto- 
 logical argument expresses the unity of thought 
 and existence : theologically, it proclaims that God 
 as the Supreme Spirit is revealed in and to the 
 Universe. Nature is a series, and is therefore 
 cognized by something which is not a series ; and 
 that by which Nature is cognized, must, in cog- 
 nizing Nature, cognize itself: that is, must be an 
 Eternal Spirit.
 
 LEIBNIZ. 137 
 
 III. Leibniz. 
 
 The ontological argument which Descartes used 
 to prove the existence of God is found also in 
 Leibniz. Leibniz was born in 1646, and died in 
 1716. His argument should be regarded like the 
 similar argument in Descartes, not as a contribu- 
 tion to theology, but as the basis of metaphysics 
 philosophy thought. As Hegel says : ' The ob- 
 jects of philosophy are, on the whole, the same as 
 those of religion. In both the object is Truth, in 
 the supreme sense that God, and God only, is the 
 Truth. In like manner, both religion and philo- 
 sophy treat of the finite worlds of Nature and the 
 human Mind with relation to each other and their 
 truth in God.' But he adds, that in dealing with 
 the objects of religion, and with truth as a whole, 
 the philosopher will have to show that philosophy 
 is capable of apprehending them from its own re- 
 sources. 
 
 Slightly to anticipate, all ideas, according to the 
 modern psychologist, are of subjective import. All 
 the ideas we have, says Locke, may be decomposed 
 into simple ideas of sensation and reflection. Next, 
 Kant makes the a priori constituents the sine qua
 
 138 ANCIENT AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 non of thought ; I have quoted what may be called 
 the locus classicus in my first lecture : it is from the 
 Prolegomena, section 30. But as these constituents 
 have no material save the impressions of the sensi- 
 bility, it is plain that the a priori apparatus of the 
 Kantian gives nothing more than the subjective 
 machinery of the Lockist, save that we have the 
 poor consolation of knowing that the range of the 
 Kantian constituents is not in itself limited to its 
 actual material. It is poor consolation to tell us 
 we have arms of precision when there is nothing to 
 hit. Then comes Hegel to rehabilitate the prin- 
 ciple which gave, and still gives, vitality to scho- 
 lasticism, that thought constitutes the essence of all 
 that is (Wallace's Hegel, p. 63). And this principle, 
 which is the abstract expression of cogito ergo sum 
 of the idea of the supremely perfect in Descartes, 
 will be found to be also the expression of the similar 
 argument in Leibniz. 
 
 According to Leibniz, we are in possession of 
 truths of two kinds a posteriori and a priori. The 
 first truths we have a posteriori are the immediate 
 apperception of our existence and of our thoughts ; 
 that is, our first experiences. The truths a priori 
 are identical propositions which are also imme- 
 diate. In the case of the first truths a posteriori,
 
 LEIBNIZ. 139 
 
 there is immediacy between the Understanding and 
 the Object; in the truths a priori there is imme- 
 diacy between the Subject and Predicate (Nouveaux 
 Essais, iv. ix. 2). 
 
 If we take the truths a priori, and analyze them, 
 we shall find that at each step back the proposi- 
 tion becomes wider and wider, until the last analysis 
 rests ultimately on what, to borrow from Lucretius, 
 maybe called the maximitas of God : in Hegel's 
 words, God must be simply and solely the ground 
 of everything (Wallace's Hegel, p. 62). 
 
 The second a priori argument is that God, if 
 he is possible, must exist. That is to say, in the 
 regress of analysis, every obstacle to existence 
 disappears, and in this way existence is found to 
 belong in the last analysis to the ultimate, unique, 
 necessary, and universal being. That is, where there 
 is no restriction from outside, possibility is para- 
 mount within. Again, to quote Hegel, the second 
 argument of Leibniz expresses the inseparability of 
 the thought of God from his being (ib. p. 92). The 
 two a priori arguments are found in Nouveaux 
 Essais, iv. x. 7, 8. 
 
 The a posteriori argument is as follows : Con- 
 tingent beings exist. Now, the Principle of the 
 Sufficient Reason demands, that when a contin-
 
 I4O ANCIENT AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 gent being is in a particular state, there must be a 
 particular and sufficient reason for its being in that 
 state rather than in any other. Hence, then, the 
 sufficient reason of everything contingent is the 
 necessary being of God. The Sufficient, or ultimate 
 reason of a series, must be out of the series, infinite 
 though it be (Monadologie, 37). The three proofs 
 are given in the same treatise (section 45). 
 
 The notion Sufficient Reason may be traced to 
 Archimedes. Archimedes used it to bridge the 
 chasm between Mathematics and Physics. Thus, 
 if the scales of a balance are exactly alike, and 
 equally weighted, they will not move ; for there is 
 no sufficient reason for their moving, and this is 
 sufficient reason why they keep in equilibrium. 
 
 The Sufficient Reason or Ground becomes in 
 Hegel's hands most fruitful. ' If we use the phrase 
 sufficient ground, the epithet is either otiose or of 
 such a kind as to carry us past the mere category 
 of Ground. The predicate is otiose and tautolo- 
 gical if it only states the capability of giving a 
 ground or reason ; for the ground is a ground only 
 in so far as it has this capability. If a soldier runs 
 away from battle to save his life, his conduct is 
 certainly unconformable to duty, but it cannot be 
 held that the ground which led him so to act was
 
 LEIBNIZ. 
 
 insufficient, otherwise he would have remained at 
 his post' (Encycl. 121, Wallace, p. 195). ' Leibniz 
 added the designation sufficient, in order to distin- 
 guish it sharply from the mechanical conception of 
 cause as an external activity or impulse. . . . Me- 
 chanical causes are not sufficient for unity, because 
 the final cause, as the unity of their determina- 
 tions, does not lie at the basis of mechanical causes. 
 Under the concept of sufficient cause, therefore, 
 Leibniz has conceived a cause that sufficed for this 
 unity, and therefore not a mere cause, but the 
 final cause. The definition of ground, as under- 
 stood by Leibniz, is the theological ground, which 
 is a category of the Begriff ' (Logic, vol. IL, Harris, 
 p. 81). That is, sufficient reason is final cause, and 
 final cause is the notion : the notion is development 
 into the idea the Absolute the truth the corre- 
 spondence of objectivity with the Notion the syn- 
 thesis of subjectivity and objectivity. 
 
 To recapitulate : Socrates posits the Universal : 
 the Universal sifted deposits the Ego as its counter- 
 part : the Ego for experiment is made the whole by 
 Descartes, Kant points out elements in the Ego 
 which have an objective import ; and, finally, Hegel 
 subsumes these elements of double aspect into the 
 whole Thought.
 
 VI. 
 
 KANT. 
 I. The Issue between Hume and Kant. 
 
 BEFORE we can get a clear view of the system of 
 Kant, we must place ourselves in the position of 
 Hume : his account of cognition is as follows : 
 
 In the first place, he confines himself strictly to 
 mental data ; the phenomena of nervous action he 
 commends to ' the anatomists,' while he holds that 
 the objective cause of our sensations is ' perfectly 
 inexplicable by human reason.' This being so, our 
 mental furniture is catalogued as follows : The 
 complex facts of mind are compounded of two 
 elements impressions or functions of the senses, 
 and their copies. These copies Hume calls ideas. 
 But as our universe is, as he expressly tells us, a 
 universe of the imagination only, it is obvious that 
 the copy differs from the impression in vividness 
 merely. The live lion in the Zoological Gardens 
 differs from the rival pair in Bombastes Furioso in 
 vivacity alone. The common heading of impres-
 
 THE ISSUE BETWEEN HUME AND KANT. 143 
 
 sions and ideas is Perception, a term which I stated 
 in my lecture on Butler to be borrowed from 
 Locke. Locke says in his official chapter, n. ix. i, 
 ' in bare naked perception the mind is passive ; ' 
 hence in Locke, Hume, and Butler, perception means 
 the unavoidable reception of a mental datum. 
 
 Between ideas and impressions there is this fur- 
 ther relation : the idea ought always be capable of 
 being tested by the impression, just as bank-notes 
 ought to be convertible into gold. Hence, if we 
 have any idea for which we cannot produce a cor- 
 responding impression or impressions, the idea, so 
 far as it is not convertible into impressions, must 
 be so far pronounced a figment. 
 
 But there are also relations between ideas ; so 
 that a relation may be called the copy of an im- 
 pression intervening between other copies of im- 
 pressions. 
 
 On relations our reasoning is founded, and con- 
 spicuous amongst relations is Cause and Effect. 
 The relation of cause and effect is of all re- 
 lations the most extensive, and it is the best 
 guaranty of reasoning. We infer a cause imme- 
 diately from its effect ; and such an inference is 
 not only a true species of reasoning, but the founda- 
 tion of all the others. It is quite plain that if the
 
 144 KANT. 
 
 supposed foundation is proved to be no foundation, 
 Chaos is come again. And Hume makes ready the 
 way, thus : 
 
 If we test the relation if we demand that it be 
 converted into impression we find that it cannot be 
 converted. If there is no original there can be no 
 copy. If, then, it is anything at all, it consists of 
 relations, and of some figment from within. What 
 relations ? The relations of 
 
 Contiguity ; 
 Succession ; and 
 Constant conjunction. 
 
 But as this is not what we mean by Cause, it fol- 
 lows that Cause derives its potency from something 
 internal besides, and this internal contribution Hume 
 takes to be custom. 
 
 That is to say, our reasoning has no objective 
 basis. For, though Hume makes our universe one 
 of imagination only, he allows greater objectivity, 
 /. e. vivacity, to the impression than to the idea, its 
 copy. From all this it follows that we are not only 
 prisoners for life in a very narrow oubliette, but that 
 the only gleam that lights our cell is positively 
 delusive. We live in a chaos of lawlessness, and
 
 THE ISSUE BETWEEN HUME AND KANT. 145 
 
 the only law we can impose is weaker than its 
 unruly subjects. The machine is not only not 
 stronger than its weakest part, but derives its 
 sole strength from the weakest part. Where all 
 is lawless there can be no law. 
 
 Kant was struck with this, and reasoned as 
 follows : The proposition we both deal with, Hume 
 and I, is, every effect must have a cause. Agreed. 
 The matter of fact, which is part of every case of causa- 
 tion, is contingent. It might have been otherwise. An 
 icicle hanging from a water-barrel might, for all we 
 know, be as formidable a weapon as a red-hot poker. 
 Agreed. Where, then, do we differ ? Is it not whence 
 comes the must ? Quite so, says Hume : I say, faute 
 de mieux, it comes from custom. Show me a 
 better, and I am yours. It is not custom, replies 
 Kant, but a category a function of the Understanding 
 which imprints on the data of the senses its own 
 necessity and universality. Hume might rejoin : 
 You, Kant, hold Locke's position, that we only 
 know our own ideas; Locke's faculties you call 
 Categories : what I call custom, and set down 
 to association, you appropriate to a Category, and 
 call it necessity. In each case the vinculum is 
 mental ; I call it imaginary ; you call it a priori ; I 
 don't see you have gained much, for you acknow-
 
 146 KANT. 
 
 ledge that, in the absence of impressions your 
 intuitions your Category 
 
 aequataque machina caelo 
 
 hangs idle. I say, where all is lawless there is no 
 law : you say, because all is lawless there must be 
 law. In the jargon of the Logicians, I say every 
 effect is post hoc : you say it \?> propter hoc. To be 
 more barbarous still, all propter, you say, is some 
 post : how do you propterise my post ? 
 
 To this I hold the Kantian, high and dry, 
 can make no reply : on the other hand, I hold 
 that Kant has provided us with a weapon, which 
 shatters, as the potter's vessel, Materialism and 
 Agnosticism. 
 
 II. Kanfs Reply. 
 
 Kant's reply to Hume may be put thus : The 
 question between us is not confined to Cause ; it 
 contains many other cases in pari materia, as I have 
 found in searching for my answer to you upon 
 Causality. But as Cause is, as you allow, the 
 foundation of all relations, and of our reasoning, 
 Cause may be taken as a test-case, and my answer 
 to you is, that whenever one perception is always 
 preceded by another, and the order is never re-
 
 KANT S REPLY. 147 
 
 versed, the Understanding stamps the antecedent 
 as Cause, and the consequent as Effect. Now, as 
 the hall-marks of the Understanding are Necessity 
 and Universality, the relation of Cause and Effect 
 bears the stamp of Necessity and Universality. 
 But the category is a function of Understanding, 
 and Understanding is nothing if not cognitive ; 
 hence the category is cognitive, necessarily and 
 universally ; and in this way my category 
 
 aequataque machina caelo 
 
 hoists us out of the mists of scepticism, and lands 
 us, high and dry, in the clear light of objectivity. 
 
 The following are the ingredients of Causality, 
 according to Kant : 
 
 I. Order in Time; mere before and after, e. g. 
 A B. 
 
 II. Combination in imagination ; mere com- 
 pounding, A before, but along with, B, e. g. A + B. 
 
 III. Manipulation in the Schema as invariably 
 and irreversibly Antecedent and Consequent. 
 
 IV. Translation by the Category of invariable 
 and irreversible Antecedence and Consequence into 
 Cause and Effect. 
 
 V. Unification by Apperception of the whole 
 process. 
 
 L 2
 
 148 KANT. 
 
 To reverse the process : 
 I. The unknown noumenon, ego, imposes, 
 II. Through the logical ego, 
 
 III. The Categories ; 
 
 IV. Through the Schema, on 
 
 V. The Form Time. 
 
 Now, the Form Time ripples past the Form 
 Space, and the Form Space frames the impressions 
 on the Sensibility : when the impressions on the 
 Sensibility are referred to the Form of Sensibility, 
 they are Kant's intuitions : when the same impres- 
 sions are referred to the Matter of the Sensibility 
 they are sensations, and when referred to the subject 
 they are Feelings (Introduction to the Metaphysics of 
 Morals, Abbott, p. 266). Here it is open to anyone 
 to call Kant's Understanding and its Categories 
 subjective, and we have Kant and Hume at one. 
 For there is no outward bond between Cause and 
 Effect, but an inward tie only. And yet Kant has 
 for ever rendered the philosophy of Hume impos- 
 sible. That is, we may find in Kant ample mate- 
 rials for refuting Hume. With Hume down come 
 all Psychologists, Positivists, and Agnostics, so far 
 as they rest on any rational basis. Observe, ma- 
 terials are to be found in Kant for answering Hume 
 and his progeny, but Kant cannot avail himself of
 
 KANT'S REPLY. 149 
 
 the answer. For, take away from Kant's Category 
 its sensible pabulum, and, according to Kant him- 
 self, it is nothing, as he expressly tells us in the 
 passage referred to in my first lecture. But to say 
 that, in the absence of pabulum the Category is 
 nothing, is to dogmatize in negation. The Category 
 is not nothing : it is not nothing, because it displays 
 the unmistakable characteristics, Necessity and 
 Universality. It therefore does not belong to Sub- 
 ject qua Subject merely, but is the law of Subject 
 and Object subsumed into the higher and fuller unity 
 thought. Cut Kant's Category loose from its 
 subjective holdings, and it is the Universe. 
 
 Kant's cumbrous machinery is purely technical ; 
 it is so technical that it stands or falls with certain 
 peculiarities of Kant's system. Kant's real contri- 
 bution to philosophy that which has made him im- 
 mortal is his Criterion Necessity and Universality. 
 But his doctrine of Faculties is another thing. We 
 have, according to Kant, two faculties, Sensibility 
 and Understanding. The characteristics of these 
 are opposite. We know not whence these faculties 
 come. Their origin is unknown to us, but it is pos- 
 sible they may spring from a common root. We 
 cannot then say whether the Sensibility is a casual 
 acquaintance, a relative, or a parasite. But this
 
 1 5O KANT. 
 
 we do know, that as long as we have the sensibility 
 with us we can only see the curtain from the inside, 
 and the Categories cannot help us, as they are 
 nothing in the absence of intuitions. But in spite of 
 all this, it would appear that Kant allowed the Cate- 
 gory in the case of Cause an Ultra-intuitional va- 
 lidity ; for he asks, "Is it absolutely necessary that, 
 granting all effects to be phenomena, the causality 
 of this cause, which cause is itself a phenomenon, 
 must belong to the empirical world?" (Mahaffy's 
 Kant, iii., 278). So that the technical difficulty of 
 confining the Category to empirical data, and at 
 the same time attributing causality to the Ding-an- 
 sich may be got over by considering the Category as 
 cognitive, and as it is a priori, necessarily and uni- 
 versally cognitive. But this is vindicating Kant 
 merely inside his own technicalities, and to a broader 
 view the understanding and sensibility would be one 
 subjective organ. 
 
 The fact, round which the battle rages, is simply 
 this : I feel cold : I go to the fire, and I get warm : 
 with the idolater in Isaiah, I say Aha, I am warm, I 
 have seen the fire. The man was an idolater, but 
 he was a metaphysician. He refers the change in 
 his condition to the fire. But, according to Hume, 
 if the idolater found that the fire only made him
 
 KANT S REPLY. 1 5 I 
 
 colder, he ought to find his surprise lessened by the 
 reflexion, though the fire had hitherto warmed him, 
 that was no reason why it should do so again. For 
 his mistake was ever to suppose that the fire did 
 anything at all that it either made him hot or 
 cold. 
 
 The view of the idolater in abstract language 
 would be : every change must have a cause. The 
 proposition relates in the first instance to the causal 
 nexus, and not in the first instance to our belief 
 concerning it. More fully thus : in thinking of any 
 change that takes place from A into B, we think as 
 part and parcel of the case, and as an indispensable 
 part and parcel of the case, that the whole change 
 from A into B must be referred to something say 
 X. It is implied in this that if the change may be 
 referred or not, according to circumstances, there is 
 no problem at all. Change must be referred. That 
 is the fact. Whence the must ? That is the ques- 
 tion. 
 
 The true account of the matter has, I think, 
 been given by Hutchison Stirling, following out a 
 hint of Hegel's. This is, that the rain is the cause 
 of the wetness, but it is the same water in the 
 wetness that it was in the rain. This Dr. Stirling 
 generalizes, and lays down that identity of force is
 
 I 5 2 KANT. 
 
 the true nexus, and G. H. Lewes saw this, and ac- 
 cepted identity of force, but he did not see that 
 such identity annihilated his empiricism. The 
 order of the notions is thus : Change, cause and 
 effect, identity of force, identity of substance ; and, 
 in spite of Mill, cessante causa, cessat et effectus is 
 the negative expression of the true doctrine from 
 the material side. Its expression from the ideal 
 side is this : Change implies something changeless, 
 and must do so. But Change from the material 
 side is an aspect of force, and force is an aspect of 
 motion. Now modern science not the scientist 
 is profoundly spiritual. Any candid scientist, who 
 does not want to turn his science into metaphysics, 
 will admit that Boscovich's theory of unextended 
 centres of force will suit modern physics. In other 
 words, extension even materially depends on the 
 non-extended. But Boscovich's central point may 
 be resolved into the collision of opposite forces 
 force as before implying identity and negation. 
 It is conceivable that opposing forces may produce 
 a centre of resistance, just as two men of exactly 
 equal strength, pushing from opposite sides a 
 swinging door, might, unless one gave way, be- 
 lieve it bolted. 
 
 Mill defines Cause as the Sum of conditions
 
 KANT S REPLY. 153 
 
 [positive and negative] on the presence of which the 
 effect unconditionally follows. Observe the word 
 unconditionally. Mill's Cause is Sequence + uncon- 
 ditionally. That is, Mill's cause is some sequence. 
 What sequence ? The history of the word uncondi- 
 tionally will show. 
 
 The Roman Lawyers called a contract pure when 
 there was no restriction attached to its performance, 
 e. g. an undertaking to pay five sesterces. On the 
 other hand, if the performance of the contract was 
 made to hinge on the happening of some event 
 independent of the contract itself, 'the contract was 
 binding sub conditione, e. g. a bet. If we do not meet 
 Caius in an hour, will you pay me Jive sesterces ? I 
 will. Here, meeting Caius within the time, fulfilled 
 the condition, and, in Scotch phrase, purified the 
 contract. But if the condition is fulfilled, the 
 transaction becomes pure or unconditional, so that 
 unconditional sequence is simply sequence and no- 
 thing more. 
 
 To the Humist, the uniformity of Nature is 
 merely a phrase covering a determinable number 
 of cases. Ninety-nine cases give no reason for in- 
 ferring anything of the hundredth, unless there is, 
 what the Humist denies, something over and above 
 the mere sequence. As a matter of fact, as Mill
 
 "154 KANT. 
 
 points out, to argue from mere sequence is super- 
 stition. If this is so, sequence is narrowed down to 
 some sequence, and some involves the question of 
 why some and not all, when, ex hypothesi, some and 
 all are merely different quantities of the very same 
 article ? What gives the some its peculiar charac- 
 ter? This neither the Scientist nor the Humist can 
 answer ; the oracles are dumb. 
 
 The source of Hume's philosophy is not far to 
 seek. Locke had laid down that the Simple Idea 
 was one uniform and uncompounded appearance 
 in the mind which is not distinguishable into dif- 
 ferent ideas, while the Complex Idea is made up of 
 several simple ones put together. That is to say, 
 the Simple Idea is an actual minimum in the mind. 
 But if the Simple Idea is one uniform and uncom- 
 pounded appearance, neither Hume nor anyone else 
 could discover in it a power of producing another 
 minimum. No one will object to x being x, but no 
 one can extract from x, pure and simple, the means 
 and matter of multiplication. Hence Hume falls 
 foul of Locke's doctrine of power. 'Mr. Locke, in 
 his chapter of power, says, that finding from ex- 
 perience that there are several new productions in 
 matter, and concluding that there must somehow 
 be a power capable of producing them, we arrive at
 
 KANT S REPLY. 155 
 
 last, by this reasoning, at his idea of power. But 
 no reasoning can ever give us a new, original, 
 simple idea ; as this philosopher himself confesses. 
 This, therefore, can never be the origin of that idea' 
 (Inquiry, vii., note). This being so, Hume sums up 
 his attack on Cause as follows : * Every idea is 
 copied from some preceding impression, or senti- 
 ment; and where we cannot find any impression, 
 we may be certain that there is no idea. In all 
 single instances of the operation of bodies or minds 
 there is nothing that produces any impression, nor 
 consequently can suggest any idea of power or 
 necessary connexion : but when many uniform in- 
 stances appear, and the same object is always 
 followed by the same event, we then begin to 
 entertain the notion of cause and connexion. We 
 then feel a new sentiment or impression, to wit, 
 a customary connexion in the thought or imagina- 
 tion between one object and its usual attendant ; and 
 this sentiment is the original of that idea which we 
 seek for. For as this idea arises from a number of 
 similar instances, and not from any single instance 
 it must arise from that circumstance in which the 
 number of instances differ from every individual 
 instance. But this customary connexion or transi- 
 tion of the imagination is the only circumstance in 
 which they differ. In every other particular they are
 
 156 KANT. 
 
 alike. The first instance which we saw of motion, 
 communicated by the shock of two billiard-balls (to 
 return to this obvious illustration), is exactly similar 
 to any instance that may at present occur to us; ex- 
 cept only that we could not, at first, infer one event 
 from the other, which we are enabled to do at present, 
 after so long a course of uniform experience' ($.). 
 
 If Cause cannot be upheld, it is idle to talk of 
 substance. 
 
 Whether Locke really was a phenomenalist is 
 more than doubtful. He compares man to a worm 
 shut up in the drawer of a cabinet. But the worm 
 has some room and verge. If the cabinet fell down, 
 like the walls of Jericho, the worm could connect his 
 previous experience with his new and wider range. 
 But Kant certainly took Hume's view of Locke, 
 and never questioned its truth. In a word, there 
 are in Kant two principles one true, the necessity 
 of Thought ; and one false, the subjectivity of Sense. 
 Kant claims to have added to Locke's view of 
 Sensation his own peculiar doctrine, that the senses, 
 as well as the understanding, could contemplate a 
 priori {Appendix i., Prolegomena, p. 125), that is, the 
 Sensibility impresses on its matter the a priori 
 characteristics of Necessity and Universality. 
 
 It is popularly supposed that Scientific Materi- 
 alism is supported by Kant's avowal, ' I grant by
 
 KANT S REPLY. 157 
 
 all means that there are bodies without us, that is 
 things which, though quite unknown to us as to 
 what they are in themselves, we yet know by the 
 representations which their influence on our Sen- 
 sibility procures us, and which we call bodies a 
 term signifying merely the appearance of the thing 
 which is unknown to us, but not therefore less 
 real' (Proleg. xii., remark 2). This refers to the 
 Ding-an-sich. What I consider to be the true 
 theory I will state by-and-by. 
 
 III. The Fourth Antinomy. 
 
 Kant's main lines are those of Aristotle. In 
 Aristotle, vovs is the Faculty of Principles, and ac- 
 cordingly, in Kant, Reason Vernunft is also the 
 Faculty of Principles. But, as usual, the meaning 
 of the words is changed. The change amounts to 
 this, that Reason is not merely formal in the sense 
 of abstraction of all contents, but also real in the 
 sense of generating Concepts of its own. 
 
 Now Reason, qua logical, gives us the three Syl- 
 logisms the Categorical, the Hypothetic and the 
 Disjunctive ; and so, in its real function, Reason 
 gives us Kant's three Ideas the Soul, the World,
 
 158 KANT. 
 
 God. That is to say, Kant's Idea is the Totality of 
 the conditions of that which is conditioned. 
 
 The student of the Common Logic is familiar 
 with the Extension and the Comprehension. This 
 again Kant uses with a change. The extension is 
 universality, and the comprehension is totality. It 
 will be recollected that Socrates stayed the Hera- 
 clitean Flux with yevrj, and in these yevr), as uni- 
 versals, Aristotle's Logic and Physics effected their 
 junction. The conception that a Series requires an 
 End reXo? is Aristotelian, and is the key to the 
 Ethics of Kant. 
 
 Kant's system may be roughly imaged as a 
 series of focussings. The Forms focus the Mani- 
 fold; the Categories focus the Forms; and the Cate- 
 gories in their turn, with reference to the subject, 
 are focussed by Apperception, and, with reference 
 to the object, by Reason. 
 
 Reason, in its logical function, gives us three 
 syllogisms the Categorical, the Hypothetic, and 
 the Disjunctive ; and in its real function Reason 
 gives us three correspondencies the unconditioned 
 of the Categorical totalized as a subject ; the un- 
 conditioned of the Hypothetic totalized as a series ; 
 the unconditioned of the Disjunctive totalized as a 
 system. To apply this :
 
 THE FOURTH ANTINOMY. 159 
 
 Reason, with regard to objects in a series, pro- 
 ceeds by means of the Hypothetical Syllogism. 
 
 If the Conditioned is given, all its conditions 
 are given. Amongst these conditions is included 
 the Unconditioned. So that, if the Conditioned 
 is given, the Unconditioned is given. This is 
 the major premiss. 
 
 But the Conditioned is given this is the minor. 
 
 Therefore the Unconditioned is given. It will 
 be observed that the major argues regressively ; if 
 the consequent is given, its antecedent is given, 
 and the purport of the antinomies is to show that 
 in no way can we cognize the Antecedent. 
 
 There are four antinomies corresponding to the 
 four main Categories Quantity, Quality, Relation, 
 Modality. Now, our sensible surroundings form a 
 series of sequents ; and so under each Category we 
 must seek for that Unconditioned Antecedent to 
 which regress will bring us. In the Hypothetic of 
 quantity, regress brings us to Unconditioned Quan- 
 tity : in that of quality, to Unconditioned Quality ; 
 in that of Relation, to Unconditioned Relation ; and 
 in that of Modality, to Unconditioned Modality. That 
 is to say, Regress gives us completeness of Compo- 
 sition ; completeness of Division ; completeness of 
 Origination ; and completeness of Dependence.
 
 1 6O KANT. 
 
 Now, take these four Completenesses; assert 
 each or deny each. This will give four assertions 
 and four denials in all ; pick any of the eight you 
 please, and Kant undertakes to prove its opposite. 
 That is to say, we cannot have, with regard to the 
 phenomenal series, the completeness of antecedence 
 which reason demands. In brief, a cosmical meta- 
 physic is impossible, and this is the indirect proof 
 of Transcendental Ideality (p. 316, Meiklejohn's 
 Translation). 
 
 Happily all the twelve Categories do not furnish 
 Cosmological Ideas, but only those in which regress 
 gives the several completenesses. Of the three Ca- 
 tegories of Modality, the contingent presupposes 
 the absolutely necessary that is, in every respect 
 unconditioned Necessity. And this is the serial 
 antecedent which we require (p. 260). 
 
 Professor Mahaffy, following Professor Monck, 
 found difficulties in the Fourth Antinomy, and these 
 I wish now to discuss. But it must be premised 
 that Kant considered the pro and con under each 
 Category valid, provided we hold that phenomena 
 are things by themselves (pp. 316, 313, 264). The 
 Antinomies are not men of straw, waiting for the 
 coup-de-grace at the pleasure of the master, like the 
 auditor in the Titsculans. In fact, Kant, in his
 
 THE FOURTH ANTINOMY. l6l 
 
 challenge to the philosophers, to be found in his 
 Appendix to the Prolegomena, p. 129, states that 
 every one of the eight opinions has been actually 
 held by some philosopher. Hegel irreverently terms 
 the antinomies sham demonstrations Schein. But 
 waiving the point of cogency, I submit that the 
 Fourth Antinomy is practically complete. 
 
 The Thesis or affirmative side of the Fourth 
 Antinomy runs thus : There exists an absolutely 
 necessary Being belonging to the world, either as a Part 
 or as the Cause of it. 
 
 The Antithesis or negative side is : There no- 
 where exists an absolutely necessary Being, either within 
 or without the world, as the Cause of it. 
 
 Briefly : 
 
 // exists somewhere : 
 
 It exists nowhere as a Cause. 
 
 The Antinomy will be seen to be practically 
 complete. If strictly stated, it would run somewhat 
 thus : Necessary existence is either in the world or 
 out of it. If in it, it is so either as a part or as its 
 Cause. If out of it, it is either out of all relation 
 to the world, or out of the particular relation of 
 Causality. But the supposition that it is out of all 
 relation is not discussed, because it is virtually 
 refuted in the discussion of the second alternative, 
 
 M
 
 1 62 KANT. 
 
 that it does not exist in the relation of Cause. That 
 is, if it is not related as Cause, it is not related at 
 all ; but it is not related as Cause, for, if it were, it 
 must be in the world. Nor can it be related to the 
 whole without being related to the parts of which 
 that whole is made up. It cannot coincide with the 
 whole without coinciding with some part, which part 
 in that case would become the paramount part, i. e. 
 more than a part, and so not a part. 
 
 The Antinomy may be set forth in strict form, 
 thus : 
 
 Thesis Necessary Existence exists somewhere ; 
 either 
 
 A, as a part ; or 
 
 B, as a cause. 
 
 Antithesis Necessary Existence exists nowhere, 
 either 
 
 A, out of the world ; or 
 
 B, in it. 
 
 A Nowhere out of the world admits of two 
 
 cases, viz: 
 
 , out of all relation (not discussed). 
 6, out of causal relation. 
 B Nowhere in the world admits of three 
 
 cases, viz : 
 
 0, in relation with one part. 
 6, in relation with each part (not discussed]. 
 c, in relation with the aggregate of parts.
 
 THE FOURTH ANTINOMY. 163 
 
 Kant tells us expressly that each thesis and 
 each antithesis represents opinions actually held by 
 some philosopher. If now we take the thesis as 
 containing the views of Descartes and Leibniz con- 
 cerning the relation of God to the world, the anti- 
 thesis is in answer to both. According to Descartes, 
 God is part of the world, as motion and this is 
 disposed of. Leibniz says in the Monadologie, * il faut 
 que la raison suffisante ou derniere soit hors de la 
 suite ou series de ce detail des contingences, quel- 
 qu' inftni qu' il pourroit etre,' 37. If we apply part 
 of the antithesis to Leibniz, we can see why Kant 
 does not discuss the general supposition, that neces- 
 sary existence does not exist out of the world in 
 other than causal relations. Because, if Necessary 
 Existence exist in any way not causal outside the 
 world, it would, according to Leibniz, be in contact 
 with the world ; for, according to him, the world is 
 a series, and a series in time. Now two existences, 
 separated only by blank time, are in this position, 
 that we cannot refute the assertion that they are 
 in contact in duration (N. E. II. xv.). That is, non- 
 causal existence out of the world is, for argumenta- 
 tive purposes, equivalent to existence in the world. 
 Then if existence be in the world, Leibniz' system 
 excludes existence with one part, B, a, and, so, 
 
 M 2
 
 164 KANT. 
 
 existence with each, B, b. The only necessity then 
 left is the infinity of process, B, c; but this, as 
 Kant says, is too small for the Reason, i.e. it is 
 incomplete, and Reason must have completeness. 
 
 What proves that Kant is referring to Leibniz is, 
 that Kant says we must place a Necessary Being in 
 a time at an infinite distance from any given mo- 
 ment, p. 305, Meik. Leibniz is thus turned against 
 himself. 
 
 In brief, the difficulties are due to this, that the 
 thesis and antithesis are not tabulated possibilities 
 of Thought, but opinions actually held. 
 
 IV. The Criterion. 
 
 The purpose of the three treatises of Kant was 
 to point out what he called the a priori element in 
 the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. If we ask 
 what Kant meant by a priori, the answer is some- 
 what thus : Kant takes his technical language 
 from Aristotle, and uses it in the worst possible 
 way, in an altered sense. A priori in Aristotle 
 meant, amongst other things, an argument from 
 principle to particular Met. A xi. ; and, as Kant 
 regarded the Logic of Aristotle as complete, a 
 priori would thus mean a principle presupposed.
 
 THE CRITERION. 165 
 
 Then, again, Logic speaks of the six transcen- 
 dentals that is, the predicables of all real exist- 
 ences, and of real existences only, that went beyond 
 the Categories. Kant calls his criticism transcen- 
 dental, because it is applicable to objects that are 
 both valid in experience, and have a further vali- 
 dity beyond experience. The Logicians termed the 
 copula pure, as it had no reference to time past or 
 future ; and pure in Kant means that which has 
 no empirical encrustation. And so on. But it 
 may be taken for granted that a Kantian term 
 originates with the Aristotelian Philosophy, and 
 thus its original meaning will throw the best light 
 on Kant's variations. 
 
 Kant published his first edition of the Kritik in 
 1781. In 1783 appeared his Prolegomena, which is 
 an outline of his Kritik; and in an answer to Garve, 
 which makes an appendix, he gives a sketch of his 
 system, hard to be misunderstood. It is translated 
 in Bohn's edition of the Prolegomena, and is given 
 in part in Professor Mahaffy's first volume, pp. 
 
 332-4- 
 
 Kant does not search outside consciousness for 
 his criterion. The criterion is found inside the 
 four corners of consciousness. Consciousness is 
 furnished by two cognitive faculties, Sense and
 
 1 66 KANT. 
 
 Understanding. In Kant's own words, ' there are 
 two stems of human cognition, sprung, both, it 
 may be, from a common but unknown root, namely, 
 sense and understanding, by the former of which 
 objects are given to us, and, by the latter, thought,' 
 page 137, Hutchison Stirling's Text-book to Kant. 
 If, then, the Sensibility and the Understanding 
 spring from one common root, as Kant allows to 
 be possible, it is obvious that we must be encased 
 for ever, like Agamemnon, * within the folds of 
 the slitless pall.' 
 
 On the other hand, if the Sensibility, as Kant 
 allows to be possible, be a parasite a fungoid 
 growth which twines around the Understanding, it is 
 obvious that the Understanding might still project 
 its Categories on a sensibility of a totally different 
 kind. In other words, the disciple of Kant, high 
 and dry, must hold that the material of know- 
 ledge would be in that case accidental only. 
 
 The contributions to consciousness are thus 
 sent in by the two conduits. This being so, what 
 criterion does Kant use ? That is to say, what 
 criterion does he use because he finds it inside con- 
 sciousness ? A criterion with a double aspect Ne- 
 cessity and Universality. These terms he explains 
 in his introduction to the second edition. If a pro-
 
 THE CRITERION. 167 
 
 position is ' thought together its necessity, then it is 
 a judgment a priori' ': ii. ib. p. 117. Observe, ne- 
 cessity does not here mean what it is persistently 
 mistaken for by Mill, Bain, and Herbert Spencer. 
 It does not mean indissoluble association. It does 
 not mean that a criterion is irrepressible or inevi- 
 table, like the persistent delusion of the hypochon- 
 driac. The necessity is constitutive. In thinking 
 that the judgment is so, we likewise think that 
 it could not be otherwise : that its contradictory 
 would be meaningless. And yet writers of emi- 
 nence tell us that Kant means a notion is true 
 because we cannot imagine its opposite, or con- 
 ceive, i. e. picture, its opposite. The world may 
 be ruled with little wisdom, but it seems to me 
 books are written with less. What we look to is, 
 the state of the judgment, and not our attitude 
 with regard to it. The other aspect of the crite- 
 rion is the consequence of the first. Universality 
 is the other aspect of Necessity. If a judgment 
 ' be thought in strict universality, or so that is, 
 that exceptions are impossible' it is the other as- 
 pect of the criterion. Observe, the judgment is 
 thought as impossible to be otherwise ; it is there- 
 fore thought as exceptionless. 
 
 If the criterion acts, it produces empirical
 
 1 68 KANT. 
 
 universality ; and it is the possibility that the 
 criterion is at work which gives its value to the 
 argument from universal consent. (Pro!. 6970.) 
 
 Before grappling with Hume, Kant distin- 
 guishes between two kinds of judgments. 
 
 In analytic judgments the attribute is thought 
 as explicitly contained in the subject. 
 
 In synthetic judgments the attribute is thought 
 as not contained in the subject, but joined thereto 
 as a predicate. 
 
 The difference between analytic and synthetic 
 is presentative, i.e. not argumentative. 
 
 In an analytical judgment, a concept is viewed 
 as a whole and posited as a subject : a portion of 
 this is extracted, and tacked on to the subject as 
 a predicate. 
 
 In a synthetic, the joinder by the understanding 
 of two distinct wholes, by means of a third, is the 
 essence of the mental position. 
 
 Unless these four terms, Necessary, Universal, 
 Analytic, Synthetic, be thoroughly understood and 
 kept in view, to read Kant is waste of time, and, 
 to talk of him, imposture.
 
 THE RATIONAL WILL. 169 
 
 M.The Rational Will. 
 
 Kant uses Will in three senses : as denoting 
 the rational, the preferring, and the animal Wills. 
 With the animal will we are not much concerned ; 
 it is the mere liking for one object of sensibility 
 rather than another. 
 
 The second is the sphere of that ill-chosen 
 expression Free-will in the popular sense, the 
 various senses of which I noticed last Term. 
 Will in the first sense is that which occasions the 
 greatest difficulty to the student of Kant, and 
 this I propose to treat of in connexion with the 
 rest of his system. 
 
 The faculty of reason is one, but its applica- 
 tions are twofold : that of the speculative and the 
 practical. The Speculative Reason determines 
 objects : that is to say it imposes its categories 
 on them if the word will be allowed it cate- 
 gorises them. The Practical Reason creates its 
 objects : it enlarges our knowledge by way of 
 enlarging the sphere of knowledge, but not by 
 adding to the contents of knowledge. But Reason, 
 creating its object, is another word for a will will- 
 ing an end ; for reason is causal, because it rules 
 the will.
 
 I7O KANT. 
 
 But if the reason is causal, it creates an end. 
 Hence Kant's first sentence in his Principles, that 
 nothing can be called good without qualification, 
 except a good will. For, the will is reason, i. e. 
 causal; it's end is rational, i.e. good; and it is 
 determined by reason only, i. e. the categorical 
 imperative. Everything else is good, proper aliud ; 
 the good will alone is good per se, for qua will, it 
 is so far good, because it wills good. 
 
 Again, the reason is causal ; it therefore presents 
 something to be done, irpaKTov rt. It is therefore 
 imperative. But the reason is necessary ; that is to 
 say, any opposite of the end or TTPOLKTOV TL is ex- 
 cluded ; it is consequently universal, that is to say, 
 exceptionless. Hence Kant's fundamental law of 
 morals act so that the maxim of the will can always 
 at the same time be used as a principle of uni- 
 versal legislation ; that is to say, catholicise the 
 maxim. 
 
 But the matter of the Speculative Reason is 
 furnished by the sensibility alone. Hence the 
 Practical Reason can furnish the Form only of 
 morality, not the Matter. Now nearly every writer 
 I know criticises Kant, as if he wished to build a 
 system of morals, not to point out the a priori or 
 apodeictic element in Ethics. That is, they hold
 
 THE RATIONAL WILL. 17 1 
 
 him to Matter as well as Form, when he only deals 
 in Form. 
 
 Again, the reason commands, and our will is 
 thereby subordinated thereto. Hence the notion 
 respect for the moral law. Kant's respect is like 
 the cuSws of the Euthyphro, with a tinge of Seos. 
 
 Again, the form is rational, consequently uni- 
 versal, and so imperative; and as imperative it 
 subordinates the will. Hence the only rational 
 motive for rational conduct is to obey the law for 
 the sake of the law only, i.e. as subordinate, to be 
 subordinate to the law. This is Kant's autonomy. 
 Conduct from any other motive is heteronomous ; 
 being heteronomous, it is not autonomous, and is 
 non-moral. 
 
 In his Principle that the reason qua causal wills 
 an end, Kant is on the same lines as Aristotle, who 
 posits an end as a necessity of reason, as the nega- 
 tion of an end would involve the absurdity of an 
 endless series of means. 
 
 But Kant would certainly reject his second 
 principle the consent of men ; for universal assent 
 may be an accident, unless objective validity be 
 the basis of the consensus. 
 
 From the subjective side there are two things 
 to be distinguished respect for the Law, and the
 
 172 KANT. 
 
 pleasure arising from the consciousness that we are 
 so determined. This latter state is produced by 
 the working of the a priori element on the sensi- 
 bility. The student of Kant must not forget that 
 imagination, according to him, was a working of 
 the inner noumenon on the sensibility through 
 the Categories that is, imagination is the action 
 of the ego, and passion of the sensibility. In the 
 same way the pleasure arising from virtuous con- 
 duct is the action of the Law on the sensibility. 
 But to take this pleasure for the proper motive to 
 morality is what Kant calls a vitium subreptionis. 
 Subreptio is the word used by Kant in his Dreams 
 of a Ghost-seer, 1766, for obscurer suggestions 
 probably suggested by Leibniz' doctrine of la- 
 tent modifications that is, the infinite degrees 
 between well-marked shades in the scale of being. 
 Happiness is relative to the sensibility only. 
 Hence the pursuit of the summum bonum has a 
 meaning only for a creature compounded of rea- 
 son and sensibility ; and in saying that bliss or per- 
 fect well-being is never attainable by a finite being, 
 Kant seems to make sensibility, and also particu- 
 lar sensibility, a necessary part of the notion of a 
 creature. In the Kritik of the Speculative Reason 
 it is not so, for there the possibility is suggested
 
 THE RATIONAL WILL. 173 
 
 of their distinctness, and the peculiarities of our 
 sensibility are, we are told, inexplicable, p. 89, 
 Meik. 
 
 It is obvious that a pure noumenon, quite des- 
 titute of sensibility, would be autonomous without 
 any perturbing causes. The naked sensibility 
 would likewise act without perturbation, and the 
 conflict arises only when the reason wills the re- 
 adjustment of sensible phenomena. It may be ob- 
 jected, that if the important postulates of Immor- 
 tality and God depend on the particular relation 
 which, as a matter of fact, prevails between our 
 particular sensibility and the reason, what would 
 become of them if a different sensibility were 
 joined on to our reason ? I raised the difficulty, 
 but I think it can be laid in this way : that as 
 the function of reason is to unify eWxris so the 
 function of all sensibility must be manifoldness 
 TToXXaTrXacriacr/xo?. Hence, thus, whenever there 
 is a sensibility, the subject must in its efforts at 
 readjustment employ the postulates as before ; it 
 must readjust, and, in readjusting, it, eo ipso, pos- 
 tulates ; and, if the subject must use them, the 
 attacks of Materialism are nil. 
 
 Kant takes for granted all through his ethical 
 treatises that the student is familiar with the
 
 174 KANT. 
 
 language and matter of his Kritik of Speculative 
 Reason. It will be well to run over the lines of 
 that system. 
 
 The Thing-by-itself is per se unknowable; but as 
 it would be absurd to suppose an appearance with- 
 out something that appears, the Thing-by-itself is a 
 necessity of reason ; it is so far voovpevov, an object 
 of the highest faculty, vovs. The appearance is phe- 
 nomenon. That which receives the phenomenon is 
 the Sensibility, and in receiving the phenomenon 
 the Sensibility is passive, and in protruding its 
 latent forms it is spontaneity or activity. But no 
 matter what may be the stimulus of our outer sense, 
 it would evoke the form space. No matter what 
 may stimulate the inner sense, it would evoke the 
 form time. But space is only conceived through 
 time; and the two senses, though united in one 
 object, are different in kind. If the phenomenon be 
 referred to the Form, it is the intuition ; if it is re- 
 ferred to the Matter, it is sensation ; if it is referable 
 only to the Subject, it is feeling. So far of the sen- 
 sibility : but it must be borne in mind that the 
 form Space and Time are not general notions, but 
 unique intuitions, and that the stimulus that causes 
 them to spring out from sensibility is not imagi- 
 nary. As far as regards the inner noumenon, its
 
 THE RATIONAL WILL. 175 
 
 action is spontaneous, and its function is to unify : 
 unifying through the Categories, it impresses its 
 unifying activity on the inner sense ; but between 
 the action of the pure reason and the passion or 
 receptivity of the pure sense, there intervenes a 
 middle term the schema which qua rational is 
 activity, and qua receptive is receptivity of action. 
 Hence, then, the schema is a rational rule for the 
 construction of intuitions in the line of time and 
 the field of space, in accordance with the functions 
 of the several Categories. The schema is not a 
 shape in the imagination, but a rule in the reason ; 
 it may be called a monogram of the reason. 
 
 In his Kritik, Kant divides his Logic into ana- 
 lytic and dialectic. The analytic is the sound 
 logic, the term being taken from Aristotle's plan 
 of evolving the science by analysing reasoning, 
 which is admitted to be sound. 
 
 Dialectic, on the other hand, relates to sckein 
 illusion and the term appears to be taken from 
 the disputes of the sophists. The student of Plato 
 need not be reminded that the term is used in the 
 Republic to denote the highest science, to which 
 all others are ancillary the discernment of truth 
 and reality, amid the disturbing illlusion of the 
 senses ; it is everts of ra TroXXa.
 
 176 KANT. 
 
 VI. The Postulates. 
 
 Kant, in a letter to Herz, February 21, 1772, 
 declares his object was to give * an explanation of 
 Theoretical and Practical Truth, so far as it is 
 derived purely from the understanding.' For 
 truth he afterwards substituted reason. Reason 
 as a faculty is one which has two diverse appli- 
 cations speculative and practical. Speculative 
 reason is that application of reason which deter- 
 mines or characterises objects when given from 
 elsewhere. Practical reason is that application of 
 the mind to the object it creates. In a word, the 
 speculative reason is Form : the Practical is Form 
 as well as Matter. The object of Kant, then, is to 
 investigate reason or the a priori faculty, so far as 
 it is applied to matter given' already, and so far 
 as it makes matter of its own. And as it is this 
 latter function of reason which rescues Kant from 
 Psychology and makes him the forerunner of 
 Hegel, it is this I shall to-day set before you. 
 
 The latter part of the Kritik of Pure Reason 
 prepares us for Kant's Ethics. There is an inex- 
 tinguishable desire in the human mind to find a 
 firm footing in some region beyond the limits of
 
 THE POSTULATES. 177 
 
 the world of experience. (P. R., p. 483, Meikk- 
 John's translation.) 
 
 The only way to this consummation is the 
 practical reason, and practical reason is the 
 spontaneous rearrangement of inner and outer 
 phenomena in accordance with ideas, with which it 
 compels empirical conditions to agree (p. 339, ib.). 
 In other words, practical reason rearranges experi- 
 ence according to ideas which are not empirical. 
 
 Of course, the outer and inner phenomena are 
 the results of the outer and inner noumena im- 
 pressing the sensibility. These phenomena are 
 stamped by the Category as cause and effect in 
 the chain of invariable and irreversible antece- 
 dence and consequence. 
 
 The chain of invariable and irreversible antece- 
 dence and consequence. But the practical reason 
 demands the rearrangement of the invariable and 
 the irreversible : there is, therefore, a stratum that 
 is not bound by this chain, which therefore qua not 
 bound, is free. 
 
 Observe the order of the moral ideas. The 
 practical reason declares I ought that is to say, 
 the practical reason represents a certain action as 
 necessary of itself. Now, necessity means in Kant 
 exceptionlessness. The practical reason, therefore, 
 
 N
 
 178 KANT. 
 
 requires conduct of such a nature that it admits of 
 no exception. Its exceptionless character proves it 
 of noumenal origin. Being- noumenal, it is not 
 bound by cause and effect ; it is therefore free it is 
 therefore moral. Necessary, noumenal, free, moral 
 more briefly, apodeictic therefore free, therefore 
 moral. 
 
 Kant's three moral postulates are Freedom, 
 Immortality, God. 
 
 It has been said again and again, usque ad 
 nauseam, that Kant makes these large demands, 
 simply because his system requires them ; but that, 
 as a matter of fact, we do not get things because 
 we want them. Professor Huxley, in his Hume, 
 attacks the postulate of immortality thus : 
 
 * It is remarkable that Hume does not refer to 
 the sentimental arguments for the immortality of 
 the soul which are so much in vogue at the present 
 day, and which are based upon our desire for a 
 longer conscious existence than that which nature 
 appears to have allotted to us. Perhaps he did 
 not think them worth notice. For indeed it is not 
 a little strange that our strong desire that a certain 
 occurrence should happen should be put forward as 
 evidence that it will happen. If my intense desire 
 to see the friend from whom I have parted does not
 
 THE POSTULATES. 179 
 
 bring him from the other side of the world, or take 
 me thither; if the mother's agonised prayer that 
 her child should live has not prevented him from 
 dying ; experience certainly affords no presumption 
 that the strong desire to be alive after death, which 
 we call the aspiration after immortality, is any more 
 likely to be gratified. As Hume truly says, "All 
 doctrines are to be suspected which are favoured 
 by our passions"; and the doctrine, that we are 
 immortal because we should extremely like to be so, 
 contains the quintessence of suspiciousness ' (p. 179). 
 
 But Kant is not so very easily caught. The 
 postulate Freedom is involved in that datum of 
 the reason which presents the act as exceptionless ; 
 for that which is exceptionless in form cannot be 
 modified by contingent matter, for that would be 
 a contradiction in terms. Therefore the subject, 
 being bound by the moral law, is, eo ipso, emanci- 
 pated from his physical chains. Freedom then is 
 the ratio essendi of the moral law. 
 
 But the other two postulates Immortality and 
 God are not given as conditions of the moral law. 
 If they were, they would be part and parcel of 
 the exceptionless Form. But they are conditions 
 of the exceptionless object of a will, which is 
 determined by the moral law that is to say, in 
 
 N 2
 
 ISO KANT. 
 
 willing the re-arrangement of experience in con- 
 formity to the moral law, I, eo ipso, make use of 
 endless time to actualise the Summum Bonum ; 
 because to actualise the Summum Bonum is the 
 necessary object of the will determined by the 
 Moral Law. Such actualisation is Holiness. But 
 Holiness is never actualised at any given period of 
 time ; therefore, at any given time it means only 
 a progress in infinitum ; but a progress in infinitum 
 in time is a time in infinitum, which is Immor- 
 tality. 
 
 Again, as to the postulate God, the Law com- 
 mands us to actualise the Summum Bonum. The 
 Summum Bonum is, consequently, possible, but it 
 is possible only in a universe which contains the 
 binding principle of the Summum Bonum. This 
 principle, therefore, not only sympathises with the 
 will as a law commanding, but also with the will as 
 obeying that law. The principle of connexion is thus 
 both intelligence and will ; it is therefore God. 
 
 Kant therefore calls Freedom, Immortality, and 
 God postulates, not because they bind the object, 
 which they do not, but because they bind the sub- 
 ject that is, the subject finds involved in the 
 notion of his obedience to the Moral Law Free- 
 dom, Immortality, and God.
 
 THE POSTULATES. l8l 
 
 Kant's theory of Ethics has been perpetually 
 misunderstood. As in the Kritik of Pure Reason 
 he wishes to point out the a priori element in our 
 cognitions ; so in the Kritik of the Practical Reason 
 he wishes to point out the a priori framework in 
 moral rules. Now rules are determinable accord- 
 ing to system. If the rule be modified by appeti- 
 tion, the rule is a maxim ; if it be purified of appeti- 
 tion, it is a law. The maxim binds the subject only; 
 while the law binds all rational beings. In each 
 case the rule is set by reason, and qua rational, the 
 rule must have the characteristics of rationality, 
 i. e. necessity, and therefore universality that is 
 to say, the rule, qua formal, must be universal. 
 But the matter is not rational ; the matter consists 
 of subjective facts ; so that a moral rule, according 
 to Kant, is appetite harmonised with reason by 
 reason, i. e. by universalising. In some cases the 
 maxim cannot be conceived as universal, in which 
 case it is a patent contradiction ; in others the 
 maxim universalised does not contradict itself, but 
 if made into a law, the act in that case would con- 
 tradict itself. But in all cases the nature of the 
 obligation remains the same it is rational, there- 
 fore universal. 
 
 A question remains What is a postulate of the
 
 1 82 KANT. 
 
 Practical Reason? Kant's contributions to the 
 armamentaria caeli are as follows : 
 
 To the Sensibility he has furnished the a priori 
 Forms, Space and Time ; and making Space and 
 Time a priori he considers is the originality of his 
 critical Idealism : not one, he declares, of the Ideal- 
 ists had even dreamt that ' the senses also could 
 intuite a priori : ' note, Prol., p. 125. 
 
 The Category is the result of the universalising 
 process of the Understanding. 
 
 The Idea is the result of the totalising tendency 
 of the Reason ; and this view is also that of Aris- 
 totle, e. g. where he argues that there must be an 
 end. (N. E. i. ii.) 
 
 And lastly, the Postulate arises from the total- 
 ising tendency of the Reason applied to the Sensi- 
 bility ; e. g. totalise time in reference to the moral self, 
 and we have immortality; totalise the universe in 
 relation to the moral self, and we have God that 
 is to say, in actualising the Summum Bonum in 
 adjusting the sensibility to the reason we have 
 already treated as true immortality and God ; 
 though as these totalisations are not padded with 
 intuitions, they do not of course affect the empirical 
 object : and, as they make use of the sensibility, 
 they do not affect the Ding-an-sich. But they are
 
 THE POSTULATES. 183 
 
 necessary and universal, and exert their necessity 
 and universality in the only possible way, *. e. in 
 affecting the subject. The subject, in moralising 
 the sensibility, finds that in such moralising it has 
 already employed the postulates, just as in walking 
 we have already employed nervous action : in a 
 word, Kant's postulates are necessities of the reason 
 have been used and are in use therefore they are. 
 But his critics, such as Mill, Spencer, Huxley, and 
 Sedgwick, insist on taking postulate as something 
 to be used infuturo t if attainable. Hinc illae la- 
 crimae. That Kant had nothing to learn from the 
 objections of later critics will be seen by his reply to 
 the criticisms of the ' very subtle and clear-headed 
 man, the late Wizenmann, whose early death is to be 
 lamented, in which he disputes the right to argue 
 from a want to the objective reality of its object, 
 and illustrates the point by the example of a man 
 in tove, who, having fooled himself into an idea of 
 beauty, which is merely a chimera of his own brain, 
 would fain conclude that such an object really exists 
 somewhere. I quite agree with him in this, in all 
 cases where the want is founded on inclination, which 
 cannot necessarily postulate the existence of its ob- 
 ject even for the man that is affected by it, much 
 less can it contain a demand valid for everyone,
 
 1 84 KANT. 
 
 and therefore it is merely a subjective ground of the 
 wish. But in the present case we have a want of 
 reason springing from an objective determining 
 principle of the will, namely, the moral law, which 
 necessarily binds every rational being, and there- 
 fore justifies him in assuming a priori in nature 
 the conditions proper for it, and makes the latter 
 inseparable from the complete practical use of rea- 
 son. It is a duty to realize the summum bonum 
 to the utmost of our power, therefore it must be 
 possible ; consequently it is unavoidable for every 
 rational being in the world to assume what is ne- 
 cessary for its objective possibility. The assump- 
 tion is as necessary as the moral law, in connexion 
 with which alone it is valid.' (n. p. 242, Abbott.) 
 
 The error in Kant's Ethics is the error of his 
 Metaphysics. He makes the sensibility subjective 
 only. We see it from the inside only. But like 
 all great thinkers, he has furnished us with the 
 means of correcting his mistake. He has dis- 
 covered the category. That is to say, he has 
 pointed out its characteristics Necessity and Uni- 
 versality. And, as these give us an objective 
 Universe not objective in Kant's sense not sub- 
 jectivo-objective, but objective-objective, the cum- 
 brous machinery of Forms, Schemata, Categories,
 
 THE POSTULATES. 185 
 
 and Ideas falls away, and leaves us face to face 
 with the opposites of Plato and Hegel the finite 
 and infinite the avra Ka.ff avra and ret yiyvo- 
 fjicva that which is relative to itself Spirit, and 
 that which is relative to something else Matter. 
 When this is seen there is nothing more to see.
 
 VII. 
 
 THE CRITERION IN THE HANDS OF HEGEL 
 -PROFESSOR WEBB. 
 
 SINCE my lecture on Kant, Professor Webb's 
 book, The Veil of ' Isis ; has appeared. It is a most 
 able and stimulating performance. But as the 
 criticism of Hegel, which closes the volume, is 
 directly at variance with the drift of my teaching 
 here and elsewhere, I should deem myself unworthy 
 the Chair I hold, if I declined to meet Professor 
 Webb on the ground which he has himself selected. 
 Any and every great work is open to misrepre- 
 sentation directly in proportion to its greatness. 
 Nothing is easier than to photograph a bit of the 
 Great Pyramid, and to show that the architecture 
 is not that of a villa in Rathmines. And so of 
 Hegel. Professor Webb has completely misunder- 
 stood him, and in misunderstanding he has mis- 
 understood Philosophy. But in saying this of 
 Professor Webb, I only say of my brilliant pre- 
 decessor what is equally true of Locke, Hume,
 
 THE CRITERION IN THE HANDS OF HEGEL. 187 
 
 Brown, Mill, Bain, Spencer, F. Harrison in a 
 word, of the whole British School. In brief, the 
 British School takes for its postulate and its axiom 
 that Psychology and Philosophy are identical. 
 That there is any distinction between them is a 
 notion which has never dawned upon the vast 
 majority of the educated people with whom I come 
 in contact. 
 
 Briefly but roughly to distinguish the two : 
 Psychology is a branch of Natural History, and 
 traces the progress of a particular mental develop- 
 ment from the cradle to the grave. It begins with 
 a datum of vast importance a universe, and that 
 universe already cut in two. In technical language, 
 it assumes as already in existence, an ego, a non- 
 ego, and their correlation. We find a box on one 
 side, and things to put in it on the other, and then 
 proceed quietly to pack. 
 
 Philosophy, on the other hand, analyses what is. 
 Amongst what is, it finds the data of the Psycho- 
 logist, but along with his data it finds others which 
 throw light on them, and reverse their position. 
 In strict language, it sees that Space with its con- 
 tents, Time with its contents, and an organisation 
 with its development, are but strata or portions of 
 the grand whole which Philosophy finds, but does
 
 1 88 THE CRITERION IN THE HANDS OF HEGEL. 
 
 not assume. But to take off one's glove, to give a 
 discourse on stitching, and to suppose that you 
 have then explained Human Nature is not more 
 ridiculous than to suppose that Psychology is 
 Philosophy. They are so far from being identical, 
 even in the loosest way as whole and part, that 
 the procedure of each is the reverse of that of the 
 other. Psychology, as history or science, works 
 with the order in time Genesis; Philosophy, as 
 thought, deals with the order in thought Being. 
 Philosophy is thus literally walking on your head. 
 The issue may be joined thus : Kant, in an- 
 swering Hume, brought into prominence what he 
 called the a priori element in human experience. 
 That element Hegel cut loose from its subjective 
 fastenings, and the universe, 
 
 self-balanced, on its centre hung. 
 
 Now Professor Webb from first to last has 
 never taken up the position of Philosophy. He is 
 a Psychologist always a Psychologist pure and 
 simple. He puts down the empty box on one side, 
 and a lot of things on the other, and asks, trium- 
 phantly, can we pack it. The bow of Ulysses not 
 only has never been bent, but it is a delusion to 
 suppose that it was made to be bent, or that it can
 
 PROFESSOR WEBB. 189 
 
 be bent at all. This we might bear; but then, 
 as Professor Webb most eloquently urges, perverse 
 Human Nature will continue to believe that the 
 bow can be bent. In a word, to anticipate, the 
 Psychologist who is nothing but psychologist is 
 the slave of abstraction. He assumes that different 
 aspects are isolated things, and then, because they 
 are isolated, he wants to bring them together. 
 Like Hesiod, he banishes the rebel spirits to the 
 other side of chaos, and then, because they are on 
 the other side, he asks why are they not on this. 
 
 But the philosopher finds consciousness already 
 given him as a whole, and unless it were so given 
 him, he could never make it one. For the best 
 reason that in that case there would be no mind, 
 no content, no anything. 
 
 I cannot be expected in a lecture to set forth 
 the philosophy of Hegel. Men must think, as 
 they must digest their food, for themselves. But 
 Hegel's purpose may be stated in a sentence, it 
 was to make explicit the concatenation of thought. 
 
 What is Thought ? To the British and French 
 Schools thought is an abstraction from that which 
 is the sole reality, sensation ; it is the smallest and 
 thinnest chip of the solid block. On the other 
 hand, to the Platonist and Hegelian the sensation,
 
 1 9O THE CRITERION IN THE HANDS OF HEGEL. 
 
 though not illusive, has less truth or reality than 
 the plenary reality or truth thought. In other 
 words, the sensation at its best has fewer relations 
 than thought at its best. A farthing is less than 
 a sovereign. This would be admitted, but it proves 
 too much : for sensation, unlike the farthing, has 
 not separate subsistence, but thought has. 
 
 What, then, is thought ? To answer this in 
 the briefest way presupposes a certain distinction, 
 which is quite unknown to the British School. It 
 may be familiar in so many words, like an answer 
 at an examination, but its purport is practically 
 unknown. 
 
 The distinction is: We have Sensations; we have 
 materialised Conceptions, which, though of universal 
 range, are isolated, such as Justice, Duty, and God. 
 These are connected only by a mere and, which 
 the Greeks denoted by re. But under these ma- 
 terialised isolated concepts there lies that which 
 characterises and connects them, and this, stript 
 of all pictorial imagery, is Thought * the diamond 
 net-work of the universe.' 
 
 An example may make this more clear. Sup- 
 pose we say, with Kant, that there are two Forms 
 of the Sensibility Space and Time, or that there 
 are three Ideas of the Reason the Soul, the
 
 PROFESSOR WEBB. IQI 
 
 World, and God, Hegel would not term these 
 thoughts unless the concatenation between them 
 was made explicit, and the evolution of all the 
 others from any given one was shown to be a 
 necessary process. Quocumque jeceris stabit is the 
 motto of the Hegelian. Any point of the universe 
 will do, and from that the whole may be evolved 
 by the necessary process of thought. In a word, 
 Hegel turns the improvised and (re) into must be. 
 
 What is ' the diamond net-work ' ? What is the 
 must be~! It is the thorough-going application of 
 Kant's Criterion, not only to the concept itself, 
 but also to its concatenation with the rest of the 
 universe. And Kant's Criterion, all would cry out, 
 is Necessity and Universality. I say advisedly, cry 
 out, for few very few understand these words 
 
 TroAAot fjifv vap6r)KO<f>opOL Ba/c^ot 8e re iravpoi. 
 
 This being so, we may listen to Professor 
 Webb's peroration : 
 
 ' How, then, have the promises of Hegel been 
 fulfilled? Has he exhibited the diamond net in 
 which the universe is held ? Has he given an ex- 
 position of God in His eternal essence? Has he 
 exhibited truth without her veil ? He has done 
 none of these things. He professes to have dis-
 
 THE CRITERION IN THE HANDS OF HEGEL. 
 
 played the diamond net in which the universe is 
 held ; but he has only shown that the universe is a 
 mere evanescence with no diamond net to hold it. 
 He professes to have given an exposition of God in 
 His eternal essence ; but he has only shown that 
 God in His eternal essence is a shadowy universal. 
 He professes to have exhibited the form of truth 
 without a veil ; but, like the Grecian painter, it is 
 only the veil itself that he has painted. And what 
 of the Sphinx enigmas of existence, and the prob- 
 lem of the painful earth ? Hegel solves the en- 
 igma by declaring there is no enigma to be solved. 
 He finds no difficulty in conceiving that things 
 may subsist without a substance, and originate 
 without a cause. He assumes the existence of our 
 sensations without inquiry as to where they come 
 from and how it is that they arise. He assumes 
 their co-existences, and their successions and their 
 laws without asking how the co-existences and 
 successions are determined by what power those 
 laws have been imposed. The logic of Hegel gives 
 no answer to the questions which cannot be evaded 
 by the philosopher any more than they can be 
 evaded by the common man. " Where am I, or 
 what ? From what cause do I derive my existence, 
 and to what condition shall I return ? Whose
 
 PROFESSOR WEBB. 1 93 
 
 favours shall I court, and whose anger must I 
 dread?" Hume asked himself these questions, 
 and professed himself to be confounded. Kant 
 asked them, and left reason trembling on the verge 
 of the abyss of necessity, which he regarded as the 
 ultimate support of all existing things' (Veil of his, 
 
 P- 303-4). 
 
 In reply, I say emphatically Hegel has done 
 all he has undertaken. The net- work is thought ; 
 God is thought; the truth behind the veil, so far 
 as the veil has meaning, is thought. If the pic- 
 torial thoughts of poetry be preferred to prose, 
 Idealism may be found complete in Tennyson's 
 Flower : 
 
 Flower in the crannied wall, 
 
 I pluck you out of the crannies, 
 
 I hold you here, root and all in my hand, 
 
 Little flower but if\ could understand 
 
 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
 
 I should know what God and Man is. 
 
 This may be put into the most meagre prose 
 * bald and naked,' thus : any one fraction of the 
 universe must give the rest ; because, not only the 
 things joined are necessary, but the joinder the 
 concatenation is necessary also, in Kant's sense. 
 
 What sense is that ? That is necessary which 
 is construed to thought in such a way that we 
 
 o
 
 194 THE CRITERION IN THE HANDS OF HEGEL. 
 
 know that it cannot be otherwise. As, for ex- 
 ample, a man who knows what a triangle is, is on 
 the way of knowing that its angles are equal to 
 two right angles ; or, as Aristotle puts it, that two 
 right angles are in its angles ; and, knowing this, 
 he likewise knows that they cannot but be equal to 
 two right angles. 
 
 It is a favourite quibble with the Empiricist to 
 say that the Idealist makes his own incapacity to 
 think otherwise a positive quality of things that 
 is, he objectifies his own impotence. 
 
 The answer is at hand. Necessity is not mere 
 negation, though, like all other notions, it involves 
 negation. Necessity is not one of contradictories 
 involving a mere blank as its opposite. Thought, 
 of which necessity is the law, has no opposite. It 
 is being analysed and stated constituted, as a Ro- 
 man Lawyer would say. Surely, if we know a 
 thing as it is, the more we know it as it is, the 
 more we see that its being consists in being what 
 it is, and in not being anything else. And we may 
 reduce the matter to absurdity : Newton knew more 
 of the physical Cosmos than an idiot ; but, accord- 
 ing to the Empiricist, he only suffered from more 
 intense impotence. Or, to put it in the plainest 
 terms, Newton was a greater fool than a gibbering
 
 PROFESSOR WEBB. 1 95 
 
 idiot. In Kant's language, Necessity is constitu- 
 tive and not regulative. 
 
 The questions at which Hume confessed himself 
 confounded appear to have troubled him very little. 
 All questions of nerves he * leaves to the anato- 
 mists.' The questions, What am I ? and Whence am 
 I ? may be left, so far as they are scientific ques- 
 tions, to ' the anatomists,' or, as we should call 
 them, the physiologists. They involve time and 
 sequence, and, in Hegel's system, belong to Na- 
 ture and not to Logic. Mr. Romanes has devoted 
 the dark days before Christmas to making greater 
 darkness, by endeavouring to evolve our conscious- 
 ness from that of animals. All such attempts 
 may, toties quoties, be crushed by Professor Caird's 
 unanswerable criticism : 
 
 ' To proceed from sense to consciousness, and 
 to explain consciousness by sense, is a gigantic 
 hysteron-proteron ; for it is only in relation to con- 
 sciousness that sense, like every other object, 
 becomes intelligible. And, in the same way, to 
 explain time and space psychologically, or phy- 
 siologically, is to explain them by phenomena 
 which are known only under conditions of time 
 and space. The "physiologist of mind," who 
 asserts that mind is essentially a function of the 
 
 o 2
 
 196 THE CRITERION IN THE HANDS OF HEGEL. 
 
 material organism, may be fairly met by the ob- 
 jection of Kant that his explanation is transcen- 
 dent. To go beyond the intelligence to explain 
 the intelligence, is to cut away the ground on 
 which we ourselves are standing. So again, when 
 the psychologist applies the law of association to 
 the genesis of mind, he is obliged to presuppose a 
 fixed and definite world of objects acting under 
 conditions of space and time upon the sensitive 
 subject, in order by this means to explain how the 
 ideas of the world and of himself may be awakened 
 in that subject. And this is to suppose that the 
 world exists, as it can exist only to mind, before 
 the process whereby associations are produced. 
 The necessity, which is at the basis of our con- 
 sciousness of objects, is thus interpreted as the 
 result of the repeated actions of these objects 
 upon the subject ; or, in other words, the theory 
 is stated in terms of the consciousness it pretends 
 to explain. Nor is the theory improved, as an 
 ultimate explanation of the intelligence and the 
 intelligible world, when the process of association 
 is protracted, as it is by Mr. Spenser and others, 
 through an indefinite series of generations, or even 
 when the present consciousness of men is regarded 
 as the result of a gradual adaptation of a race of
 
 PROFESSOR WEBB. 1 97 
 
 the animals to its circumstances, and which has been 
 going on for millions of ages. If it were proved 
 to-morrow that man is developed from an Ascidian 
 ancestor, it would still remain certain that the con- 
 sciousness which makes us men is independent of 
 time and development ; and the Darwinian theory, 
 like every other intelligible view of things, pre- 
 supposes time and space, and all the forms of 
 thought that are necessary to an intelligible ex- 
 perience.' 
 
 This criticism is unanswerable, if understood, 
 and cannot be met with anecdotes of dogs who 
 were admirable whist-players. Driven from his 
 Comparative Psychology, the Empiricist will fall 
 back on the genesis of human consciousness. The 
 answer is the same, and has been thus given by 
 Professor Caird, whom I cited in my first lec- 
 ture : 
 
 ' Observation of the genesis of knowledge, or, 
 what is the same thing, observation by the mind of 
 its own genesis, is the crowning absurdity of specu- 
 lation : for there is nothing to observe, unless the 
 observer puts his own developed consciousness in 
 the place of the undeveloped consciousness he is 
 observing. And if he does thus introduce his de- 
 veloped consciousness, all he can possibly examine
 
 198 THE CRITERION IN THE HANDS OF HEGEL. 
 
 is the reciprocal dependence of its elements. He 
 cannot possibly trace back knowledge to faculties 
 or elements which have a character independent 
 of their relation in knowledge. We have no stand- 
 ing-ground outside of the universe of thought from 
 which we can determine the factors that produce it. 
 "The mind is its own place;" its place includes 
 everything knowable, and, therefore, as no one did 
 more than Kant to show, it is impossible to explain 
 it by going out of itself.' 
 
 Yet the genesis of consciousness receives ap- 
 parent support from Natural History. Here we 
 have more or less complex specimens of animality 
 existing side by side. But it must not be forgotten 
 that an animal is in the popular sense of the word 
 an individual. We cannot find a sensation by 
 itself as we do a jelly-fish on the shore. But even 
 in Natural History, G. H. Lewes observes, * it is 
 clear that we should never rightly understand vital 
 phenomena were we to begin our study of Life by 
 contemplating its simplest manifestations in the 
 animal series ; we can only understand the Amoeba 
 and the Polypus by a light reflected from the study 
 of man.' 
 
 I shall conclude by suggesting a Short Way of 
 Dealing with Empiricists. Anyone now alive,
 
 PROFESSOR WEBB. 199 
 
 even though he knew the man who knew Harry 
 Jenkins, who saw the cartloads of arrows going- to 
 Flodden, must disclaim personal knowledge of the 
 Battle of the Boyne. In other words, he believes 
 that a lot of things went on before his time, and he 
 found himself brought into a world which he like- 
 wise believes was there before him : that is, he 
 finds his being subjected to pre-existing conditions 
 of Space and Time. If thus he is the outcome of 
 these conditions merely, he ought to avow himself 
 a Materialist, provided he has any capacity for 
 thinking, and any honesty two very, very bold 
 assumptions. ' Well, then, I am a Materialist, and 
 what of it ? ' Simply this, he must admit that, 
 like Aristotle's roSe TI, he is here and now. This 
 admits Space, Time, Sequence, Cause, Reality, 
 God. The Idealist asks no more. 
 
 In fact the question is Philosophy or . 
 
 Plato has shown long ago that in the absence of 
 the Rational element we cannot have even a Phi- 
 losophy of Semblance.
 
 VIII. 
 
 PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 EVERY teacher of an abstract subject must be 
 familiar with the following facts : One man will 
 see clearly a certain number of consecutive pro- 
 positions, say A, B, and C. Another will see D 
 and E, and so on. The clearness of the former 
 may be the greater of the two, but a hot iron will 
 not get him beyond C. Like the camel, nothing 
 will make him move, and he must be left where he 
 lies to perish in the parching sand. 
 
 This is the case with the psychologist. His 
 writings may bristle with technicalities in which 
 the propositions are marked with more than Ame- 
 rican emphasis. A huge volume reading for a 
 patriarch is written to prove that so-and-so is 
 wrong in calling a certain fact ^w-ception when 
 he should have termed it yk#/0-ception, or some 
 such inanity. And we have had to bear the his- 
 tory of infants how one said di t another do, and 
 a third dum, as if we lived in the days of Psamme-
 
 PSYCHOLOGY. 2OI 
 
 tichus, and the Medical Council had sanctioned 
 the Papyrus -Ebers. I shall notice some recent 
 defences of Psychology. 
 
 I. The periodical Mind is now in the tenth year 
 of its existence. The tone of its articles was 
 generally, with a few exceptions, that of advanced 
 Empiricism. In the number for January, 1883, 
 appears an article by the Editor Professor Croom 
 Robertson in favour of Psychology of Psycho- 
 logy as contrasted with Philosophy. 'Philosophy,' 
 says the writer, ' has not only to give the ultimate 
 analysis of things in abstract terms (of subjective 
 import), but must render account of the concrete 
 realities of every-day experience, which in the 
 truest sense are for us all,' p. 19. This looks 
 fair, but the trail of the serpent is over it all. 
 The words of subjective import conceal a time- 
 honoured fallacy. Knowledge being correlation 
 of subject and object, that which relates in any 
 way to the subject is subjective, and must be so. 
 But, as has been pointed out, usque ad nauseam, 
 Empiricists use the word subjective to mean that 
 an object is so transmuted and disfigured by the 
 action of the subject as to be past recognition. 
 When in this state it is ripe for explanation by 
 mechanical and chemical metaphor, da capo.
 
 2O2 PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 Butler long ago exposed the very same fallacy 
 lurking under words like selfish and self-love. Per- 
 haps it has been best put by Professor Bradley : 
 Self-love is a truism, a duty, or a sin. And so, 
 in Metaphysics, subjective involves a truism or an 
 absurdity. If every cognition be altogether sub- 
 jective, we could never know it to be subjective, 
 as subjective has no meaning unless contrasted with 
 objective. Volumes could not add a tittle to this, 
 and there I leave it. 
 
 One thing is consoling. It is clear from Pro- 
 fessor Robertson's article that in his opinion 
 Psychology has not advanced during the last 
 ten years. While deploring the fact, he wishes 
 to show that Psychology may to a certain extent 
 make common cause with Philosophy, but that 
 Philosophy, as such, is metaphysical, in facing a 
 problem that can be expressed in no terms of 
 physical science. It is ontological in seeking 
 to appreciate the ultimate meaning of whatever 
 can be said to be, ib. p. 19. 
 
 If this be so, science is not everything ; and if 
 science be not everything, the pretensions of the 
 scientist (not science) break down. Even the scien- 
 tist must admit that a part is less than the whole. 
 
 II. Another vindication of Psychology has ap-
 
 PSYCHOLOGY. 2 03 
 
 peared in Mind, for April 1883. It is by James 
 Ward, of Cambridge, and, like the Paper by Pro- 
 fessor Croom Robertson, contains many valuable 
 remarks, but leaves the question where it was. As 
 far as Philosophy is concerned the results are as 
 follows : 
 
 The facts of Physics and the facts of Psycho- 
 logy are alike facts of Psychology, because known 
 to somebody ; and Psychology deals from its own 
 point of view with the whole of experience. This 
 point of view is individualistic : we are not accord- 
 ingly bound to make this stand-point the centre of 
 philosophy, unless we hold it to be the right point 
 of view of philosophical speculation that the results 
 of psychology are what Kant calls Judgments of 
 Experience, that is judgments which are empiri- 
 cally true for everybody alike ; and, finally, that 
 the co-ordination of physical and psychical facts 
 may be best attempted by that form of Psychology 
 called Subjective Idealism. 
 
 But the mere phrase subjective idealism is a 
 surrender of the point at issue. If subjective ideal- 
 ism be possible, more is possible. Subjective Ideal- 
 ism must mean an idealism confined to a subject, 
 and a subject eo ipso posits an object as a necessary 
 development.
 
 2O4 PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 The question for the student of Philosophy is 
 Do we know anything more than a disk of imagina- 
 tion ? meaning by imagination actual or possible 
 presentation in space or time what Kant calls 
 finite. Now it is obvious that in dissecting this 
 disk we discover other constituents which cannot 
 be pictured, i. e. imagined under forms of space. 
 Imagination, therefore, does not coincide with 
 knowledge that is, we know or think what is not 
 imaginable. 
 
 I have been told over and over again in con- 
 versation that the Idealist postulates Thought in 
 the very same way as he asserts that the Materi- 
 alist postulates Matter. The answer is not far to 
 seek. The Idealist does not postulate Thought 
 because he finds it. A man does not postulate 
 his hat when it is on his head. He has got it on. 
 But how of the Materialist ? His Matter is a con- 
 tradiction it is active inaction ; his atom is a 
 monstrosity all hardness and no size ; and his 
 system is an inversion of all that gives coherence 
 to experience we have not space because we have 
 triangles ; but we have triangles //", and if only, we 
 have space. 
 
 But though the Materalist is dumb, yet I find a 
 reluctance amongst people I know to admit that
 
 PSYCHOLOGY. 2O5 
 
 the ultimate is Thought. People cling to an atom- 
 ism of some kind, forgetting that an atom has 
 meaning only when contrasted with its environ- 
 ment. The counter-thesis of the Idealist seems 
 so very shadowy and vicarious that it cannot do 
 duty for such indispensable girders as cause or 
 substance. But we must recollect that to the 
 Idealist Thought or intelligence is a complete pro- 
 cess of differentiation and integration, and that rest 
 or halt in such process is only the movement of 
 itself returning back upon itself; in strict language, 
 in making its own process its own object ^0170-19 
 voTJo-eus. But rest, or the non-motive element, is 
 not an atom visible or invisible it is not the un- 
 known of Herbert Spencer it is not the Ding-an- 
 sich of Kant. These and like figments strut and 
 fret their hour ; but so far as they mean anything, 
 they mean that there is something that is the 
 only thing that is related to itself, and that such 
 self-related element is Thought, while that which is 
 not related to itself, but only to something else, is 
 Nature, TO, (jxnvo^eva. That is to say, the Ding-an- 
 sich, if it is related to itself, is Thought, and in this 
 case is not an unknown tertium quid; and if it is re- 
 lated to something else it is Nature neither shell 
 nor kernel and therefore not a tertium quid. But
 
 2O6 PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 the absurdities of the unknowable are mild when 
 contrasted with the absurdity of certain scientists 
 not science who confound Kant's Ding-an-sich 
 with the material atom of Locke and his followers. 
 
 III. Professor W. James, who is one of the few 
 writers on Metaphysics who is not lugubrious, 
 furnishes his quota to Psychology in Mind, for 
 January, 1885. He supposes 'a feeling attached 
 to no matter and localised in no space, but left 
 swinging in vacuo, as it were by the direct execu- 
 tive fiat of a god. And let us also, to escape 
 entanglement with difficulties about the physical 
 or psychical nature of its object, not call it a feel- 
 ing of fragrance or of any other determinant, but 
 limit ourselves to assuming that it is a feeling of 
 q.' ib. p. 28. 
 
 It may be taken for granted that where a letter 
 is used in discussing a problem in Psychology or 
 Philosophy that there is every possibility of its 
 concealing a fallacy. The use of letters in algebra 
 seems to justify this use in other places. But a in 
 algebra means some quantity actually marked out 
 docketed and pigeon-holed and the essence of 
 quantity consists in its being so docketed and 
 pigeon-holed. It is so many feet, say of rope, 
 and so cut off actually or possibly from the rest.
 
 PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 But we cannot find a sensation by itself like a shell 
 on the sea-shore. A sensation per se has no mean- 
 ing : whether expressed or implied it always means 
 / feel this, or passively, and less correctly, this is felt 
 by me. Professor James simplifies the expression 
 by leaving out I and THIS. The simplicity will 
 be appreciated if we try and think of a room with- 
 out floor, or ceiling, or walls. / and this contain 
 all the metaphysician requires, as I have attempted 
 to show in my first lecture. 
 
 I quoted there a passage from Professor James 
 to the effect that all systems, like Hume's atomism, 
 had been ' riddled ' by the late Professor Green, 
 and Professor James allows that categories are 
 given along with sensation. ' When I say Objects 
 are wholly formed of associated and selected sen- 
 sations, I hope the reader will not understand me 
 to profess adhesion to the old atomic doctrine of 
 association, so thoroughly riddled of late by Pro- 
 fessor Green. The association of sensations of 
 which I speak presupposes comparison and me- 
 mory, which are functions not given in any one 
 sensation. All I mean is, that these mental func- 
 tions are already at work in the first beginnings 
 of sensation, and that the simplest changes of sen- 
 sation, moreover, involve consciousness of all the
 
 208 PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 categories time, space, number, objectivity, 
 causality. There is not first a passive act of sen- 
 sation proper, followed by an active production or 
 projection ('inference') of the attributes of objec- 
 tivity by the mind. These all come to us together 
 with the sensible qualities, and their progress from 
 vagueness and distinctness is the only process 
 Psychologists have to explain. What I mean to 
 say in the text is, that this process involves nothing 
 but association and selection, all new production of 
 either material or formal elements being denied.' 
 Mind, Jan., 1879, P- IJ > n - 
 
 In Mind for January, 1884, Professor James 
 gives his own view of the relation of feeling to 
 thought : * The Nominalists say that, when we 
 use the word man, meaning mankind, there is in 
 the mind nothing more than either a sound or a 
 particular image, plus certain ^tendencies which 
 those elements have to awaken an indefinite num- 
 ber of images of particular men, or of other images 
 (verbal or not) which "make sense" with mankind, 
 but not with any individual. These "tendencies" 
 are, however, for them mere physical facts, and not 
 modes of feeling the word as it is uttered. The 
 Conceptualists, on the other hand, see perfectly 
 well that at the very moment of uttering the word,
 
 PSYCHOLOGY. 2OQ 
 
 or even before uttering it, we know whether it is to 
 be taken in a universal or a particular sense ; and 
 they see that there is some actual present modifi- 
 cation of the mind which is equivalent to an under- 
 standing of the sense. But they call this modification, 
 or conceptual character of the word, an act of pure 
 intelligence, ascribe it to a higher region, and deem 
 it not only other than, but even opposite to, all 
 "facts of feeling" whatsoever. 
 
 'Now why may we not side with the Conceptual - 
 ists in saying that the universal sense of the word 
 does correspond to a mental fact of some kind, but 
 at the same time, agreeing with the Nominalists 
 that all mental facts are modifications of subjective 
 sensibility, why may we not call that fact a "feel- 
 ing" ? Man meant for mankind is in short a diffe- 
 rent feeling from man as a mere noise, or from man 
 meant for that man, to wit, John Smith alone. Not 
 that the difference consists simply in the fact that, 
 when taken universally, the word has one of 
 Mr. Gal ton's "blended" images of man associ- 
 ated with it. Many persons have seemed to think 
 that these blended, or as Prof. Huxley calls them, 
 "generic," images, are equivalent to concepts. 
 But, in itself, a blurred thing is just as particular 
 as a sharp thing; and the generic character of either
 
 2IO PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 sharp image or blurred image depends on its being 
 felt with its representative function. This function is 
 the mysterious plus, the understood meaning. But 
 it is nothing applied to the image from above, no 
 pure act of reason inhabiting a supersensible and 
 semi-supernatural plane. It can be diagrammatised 
 as continuous with all the other segments of the 
 subjective stream. It is just that staining, fringe 
 or halo of obscurely felt relation to masses of other 
 imagery about to come, but not yet distinctly in 
 focus, which we have so abundantly set forth. 
 
 ' If the image come unfringed it reveals but a 
 simple quality, thing, or event ; if it come fringed 
 it reveals something expressly taken universally or 
 in a scheme of relations. The difference between 
 thought and feeling thus reduces itself, in the last 
 subjective analysis, to the presence or absence of 
 "fringe." And this in turn reduces itself, with 
 much probability, in the last physiological analysis, 
 to the absence or presence of sub-excitements of an 
 effective degree of strength in other convolutions 
 of the brain than those whose discharges underlie 
 the more definite nucleus, the substantive ingre- 
 dient, of the thought in this instance, the word 
 or image it may happen to arouse.' 
 
 Professor James, at the beginning of the article
 
 PSYCHOLOGY. 2 I I 
 
 last cited, furnishes an apt illustration of what he 
 means 'our mental life, like a bird's life, seems to 
 be made up of an alternation of flights and perch- 
 ings. The rhythm of language expresses this, 
 whose every thought is expressed in a sentence, 
 and every sentence closed by a period,' p. 2. Now 
 the Hegelian or- the Platonist would answer this 
 by pointing out that the flights and perchings 
 are not alternative but concurrent that is to say, 
 that in thinking, if we think of flight, we must 
 think of non-flight, i.e. perching, and that this 
 gives us the fullest Notion Begriff Concept- 
 Flight. Till this is seen Philosophy is impossible. 
 It is just by assuming that rest and motion are al- 
 ternative states, and not opposite ingredients, that 
 Zeno attacks the fact of moving. Professor James 
 must see that uniting sensations by means of their 
 ' fringes' is more vague than to construct the uni- 
 verse out of oysters by platting their beards. 
 
 It may be said the order of Psychology is true, 
 for it is a fact. Why not then follow it in pre- 
 ference to walking on your head, and following 
 the order of thought ? 
 
 That order was laid down as early as Plato, and 
 the reason of it is eternal. A triangle presupposes 
 space, but the converse is not true, and the reason 
 
 p 2
 
 212 PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 why is, that such is the nature of the triangle; or, to 
 put it in another way, in understanding- what a 
 triangle is we have already seen that it must pre- 
 suppose space. And so of sensations : denying 
 that a sensation can exist in vacua, the Platonist 
 asserts that, so far as sensation has any meaning, 
 it presupposes space and time and all that is in- 
 volved in this admission. ' We may not,' as Pro- 
 fessor James says, ' date or locate ' our g., but not 
 the less it presupposes space and time. ' Date and 
 locate' are fallacious, because they imply a special 
 portion of space and time marked off from the rest; 
 whereas the real question is, Can we have a sensa- 
 tion without Categories ? These Kant considered 
 from the subjective side, and Plato from the ob- 
 jective, while Hegel subsumes both in the unity 
 of thought. Hamilton has almost ludicrously mis- 
 conceived the unity of the idealist as an abstract 
 blank : on the contrary, with each subsumption the 
 content of the concept becomes more full, and con- 
 sequently more diversified. 
 
 Now a ' Sensation with a fringe ' is more mis- 
 leading than a sensation on a bicycle. What is 
 meant is, that in sensation there is something more 
 definite and something less definite. But the Kan- 
 tian the Hegelian the Platonist, would all agree
 
 PSYCHOLOGY. 2 1 3 
 
 in this, that, whether more or less definite, the ob- 
 ject owes all its definiteness to a non-empirical 
 element, or in other words to an element which 
 is bigger than the function of the sense or senses. 
 The next step is that the bigger element is found 
 on examination to be inextricably concatenated 
 with something else, and so on until we arrive 
 at the inevitable result that 
 
 All are but parts of one stupendous whole. 
 
 If this is so, it follows that any one part cannot 
 be known in all its functions until we or some one 
 know all the other functions. But our ignorance 
 of the sum-total of functions does not nullify our 
 knowledge of some of the items. On the other 
 hand, our knowledge of the sum would no doubt 
 throw further light on what we do know, just as 
 the savage's knowledge of the wheel of a watch 
 would be increased but not nullified if he learned 
 watch-making. This is illustrated by the French 
 mats magis, which modifies by addition. I wish 
 to insist on this, as it puts an end to the popular 
 saw that the finite cannot grasp the infinite. Here 
 again etymology assists us. The Latin finis re- 
 presents two different Greek notions, reXos and 
 The two are different : Tre/aas is the me-
 
 2 1 4 PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 chanical termination or cessation, say by cutting : 
 Te'Xos is that which gives completeness and mean- 
 ing. Now, to say in Greek, TO areXes cannot com- 
 prehend TO aTreLpov is scarcely instructive; for a 
 match, if d/reX^s, will not light off the box or on it 
 But to say TO 7re7T/oao-/x,eVo^ cannot comprehend TO 
 aireipov is not true, for TO aireipov is a postulate of 
 TO irtTrepao-pevov. Read the Philebus. 
 
 Now Professor James, in Mind for April, 1884, 
 insists that what the Platonists call parts, or ab- 
 stractions from the whole, are things which have 
 existence after all the relations have been told off, 
 and that things on this existence may live, like the 
 winter bears, on their own fat, never entering rela- 
 tions at all, or, if entering them, entering possibly 
 an entirely different set of relations, />. 282. This is 
 the old fallacy of the empiricist from the days of 
 Epicurus down to Huxley, that we have a set of 
 sensible objects as distinct as billiard-balls, and 
 that the idealist, not content with this set of things, 
 insists that we know nothing of these objects until 
 we know the categories under which they are to be 
 docketed. Professor Huxley, in his Hume, illus- 
 trates Kant's view by supposing that we could 
 not know that a sparrow falls unless we know the 
 law of gravity. It may be granted at once that if
 
 PSYCHOLOGY. 2 I 5 
 
 we know a sparrow without categories, we do not 
 want categories at all, as a man drowning does not 
 want, in addition to his circumstances, a separate 
 law of specific gravity over and above them. But 
 the Idealist insists that categories are alike in- 
 volved in the fall of the single sparrow, and in 
 the 
 
 crash of matter, and the wreck of worlds, 
 
 though the two phenomena are of unequal extent. 
 Professor James is fond of illustrations, and his 
 illustrations are always so good that I feel some 
 diffidence in offering him one in return. Some- 
 body advertises his lime-juice as possessing the 
 property of being an excellent stimulant when 
 blended with spirits ; and so of Empiricism it 
 makes an excellent philosophy when blended with 
 Idealism. Professor James will see that it is all 
 in the blending. 
 
 IV. Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, in his Address to 
 the Aristotelian Society, has given an admirable 
 discourse on Method ; and justifies the retention 
 of the term Metaphysics. But 
 
 surgit amari aliquid : 
 
 he is influenced by the fallacy involved in the use 
 of the word subjective. Metaphysic describes only :
 
 2l6 PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 but it describes knowledge, and accordingly can 
 only register what it finds. It finds in the whole 
 Knowledge two members, Subject and Object, as 
 two essential correlatives, like the concave and the 
 convex. Now most moderns, influenced by what 
 Mill calls heteropathic results, that is to say, cases 
 where the effect is unlike the cause, suppose that 
 Subject and Object are two causes, and that their 
 interaction is heteropathic. If so, we cannot know 
 anything except as a result, transfigured and trans- 
 muted by heteropathic causation. But this is, as I 
 have frequently pointed out, an Idolon Theatri, an 
 application of chemistry to the Universe treating 
 the cosmos as a Chemical Compound. And this 
 brings us to a point, which must be insisted on. 
 
 Metaphysics or philosophy analyses the uni- 
 verse into Subject, Object, and their correlation. 
 Psychology, on the other hand, divides a parti- 
 cular consciousness, say of Robinson Crusoe, into 
 the me, and the not-me. Now to the Idealist 
 the Universe TO TTO.V is thought. Hence the 
 Subject of Metaphysics is a mind or me, and the 
 subject of Psychology is admitted on all hands to 
 be a me of some kind. Hence, the subjects of 
 both Philosophy and Psychology are supposed 
 identical. But in each case the order of notions
 
 PSYCHOLOGY. 2 I 7 
 
 is different : Psychology is Natural History, there- 
 fore is science, and therefore deals with Time. 
 Philosophy puts Time and Science in their proper 
 place. 
 
 Sir W. Hamilton's Natural Dualism, together 
 with his fierce polemic against Brown, is familiar 
 to my readers. Idealism settles the whole con- 
 troversy. To the Idealist the external world is 
 the negation of the internal. As it is admirably 
 put by Hutchison Stirling : ' On one side there 
 is the world of externality, where all is body by 
 body, and away from one another the boundless 
 reciprocal exclusion of the infinite object. On the 
 other side, there is the world of internality, where 
 all is soul to soul, and away into one another the 
 boundless reciprocal inclusion of the infinite sub- 
 ject. This even while it is true that, for subject 
 to be subject, and object object, the boundless 
 intussuscepted multiplicity of the single invisible 
 point of the one, is but the dimensionless casket 
 into which the illimitable Genius of the other must 
 retract and withdraw itself is the difference of 
 differences ; and certainly it is not internality that 
 can be abolished before externality.' Therefore 
 our knowledge of the negation Externality is 
 immediate. So far the Natural Realist is right,
 
 2 I 8 PSYCHOLOGY. 
 
 but he has confounded philosophy with psycho- 
 logy. From the psychological point of view, ex- 
 ternality is known by a mental act. So far the 
 Hypothetical Realist is right. 
 
 Of course Physiology need not detain us. To 
 describe ideas in ' brain-terms ' is quite legitimate. 
 So is to describe champagne in money-terms ; but 
 the money and the wine are two distinct things. 
 The insight and courage of George Henry Lewes 
 saved him from supposing that to emphasize the 
 antecedent does give us the consequent. The 
 clucking of the hen, however loud, is not the egg. 
 But Lewes did not see that in proclaiming the 
 identity of antecedent and consequent he had re- 
 nounced his empiricism. And it is the identity 
 without losing the diversity of Neurosis and Psy- 
 chosis in cognition of any kind that brings Physi- 
 ology and Psychology into their proper relation 
 with Philosophy. Cognition is thus one-and-many 
 the Platonic Idea : it is the union of distinct 
 opposites the Hegelian Notion.
 
 IX. 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 THE Daily Telegraph observed on some occasion 
 that John Stuart Mill was a man to whom Plato 
 in the largest sense of the word would have ac- 
 corded the term cro^o? or wise. It may be ob- 
 served that as Plato held that no man was o-o^ds, 
 he scarcely would have made an exception in 
 favour of Mr. Mill above all men, as I shall 
 attempt to show. 
 
 Mill, as you know, divides things into four 
 classes: Sensations; their causes, i.e. Bodies; 
 their recipients, i.e. Minds; and Relations {Log. 
 i. iii.). Bodies and Minds are otherwise unknown, 
 and the existence of body which is known only as 
 a cause is thus made dependent on the Principle 
 of Causality. 
 
 But the Principle of Causality is empirical only, 
 being mere Enumeratio Simplex. It only covers 
 observed or observable cases, and affords there- 
 fore no warrant for what we do not observe.
 
 22O JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 In his Examination of Hamiltori s Philosophy, 
 Mill defines Matter as the Permanent Possibility 
 of Sensation ; but as he does not admit that Sub- 
 stance is anything more than an empirical co- 
 existence of sensations, there cannot be anything 
 permanent. So much for the first word of the 
 famous definition. 
 
 Next, take the word possibility. We have no- 
 thing but sensations, i.e. actual subjective facts. 
 ' For we may say that every objective fact is 
 grounded on a corresponding subjective one; and 
 has no meaning to us (apart from the subjective 
 fact which corresponds to it), except as a name 
 for the unknown and inscrutable process by which 
 that subjective or psychological fact is brought 
 to pass' (Logic i. iii). There is consequently 
 nothing but the actual sensation ; and in the 
 absence of sensation there is mere vacuity, and 
 so in the absence of substance of some kind or 
 other, Possibility becomes impossible. So much 
 for the second word. 
 
 Lastly, sensation belongs essentially to the 
 subject, and not to the object ; and so the defini- 
 tion involves a cross reference, and reads as if 
 we defined money as a permanent possibility of 
 pleasure, instead of commodities. The famous
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 221 
 
 definition is thus on all fours with the less famous 
 notice in our tram-cars, that the punch is to be 
 used (presumably by the conductor) on payment 
 (presumably not by the conductor) of the fare. 
 
 Let us now turn to Mind. Mind, according to 
 Mill, is a series of feelings which is aware of itself 
 as past and future, i. e. a series which is aware of 
 itself as a series (Hamilton, xii.). Now a series, 
 as Aristotle pointed out (Phys. v. iii. 7), implies 
 the continuance of the earlier members ; and this 
 is quite distinct from a succession in time say, the 
 clock strikes twelve, each stroke of which is gone 
 for ever before the next comes into ken. But, 
 according to Mill, Mind ought only be a succes- 
 sion in time, Q., A. E. 
 
 We now come to the last of Mill's categories 
 Relations. Of these Mill gives the following ac- 
 count : ' To have feelings at all implies having 
 them either successively or else simultaneously. 
 Sensations or other feelings being given, succes- 
 sive and simultaneous are the two conditions to 
 the alternative of which they are subjected by 
 the nature of our faculties, and no one has been 
 able, nor need expect, to analyse the matter any 
 further ' (Log. i. iii.). 
 
 I need hardly point out that Mill, like Hume
 
 222 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 and Locke, assumes that a sensation is a minimum 
 incapable of reduction or analysis. 
 
 The result is, sensations come from nothing, 
 and are received by an impossibility, and from 
 this impossibility they receive the only framework 
 that gives them cohesion or coherence.
 
 X. 
 
 AGNOSTICISM HERBERT SPENCER AND 
 FREDERIC HARRISON. 
 
 oAAa TO <f>aiv6p.evov Trdvry <r6evei, ovvrep av (X6y. 
 
 THE Nineteenth Century for 1884 contains Papers 
 by several contributors on the nature of Religion. 
 Of these, the two most generally known are 
 Herbert Spencer and Frederic Harrison. These 
 two popular writers have come into collision, 
 although their views, as far as religion is con- 
 cerned, rest on a common basis. That the basis 
 is common to both is easily seen. And I hope 
 to show that the common basis is thorougly un- 
 sound. 
 
 All are agreed that the business of the philoso- 
 pher is to analyse consciousness. Now, of con- 
 sciousness, there can be only two possible theories. 
 The deliverances of consciousness may be believed 
 or they may not. If they may not, we may hold 
 with Mr. Harrison that 'we have no ground what- 
 ever for believing that these, our theories, are the
 
 224 AGNOSTICISM: 
 
 ultimate and real scheme on which an external 
 world (if there be one) works, nor that the ex- 
 ternal world objectively possesses that order which 
 we call science.' That is to say, we do not know 
 that there is an external world, and (a fortiori) we 
 do not know whether our consciousness either re- 
 sembles it or is in correspondence with it in any 
 degree. We may and ought to set our house in 
 order, but there is no use in looking out of the 
 windows, for there are either no windows, or they 
 open on thicker than Egyptian darkness. But the 
 Comtist deserves all honour for his heroism. He 
 does not make the darkness an excuse for not 
 working, but rather makes it the reason and mo- 
 tive of his work. 
 
 Mr. Spencer, on the other hand, holds that 
 there is an objective universe, but that it is un- 
 knowable. ' We are brought round to the con- 
 clusion reached by other routes, that behind all 
 manifestations, inner or outer, there is a power 
 manifested. Here, as before, it has become clear 
 that while the nature of this Power cannot be 
 known while we lack the faculty of framing even 
 the dimmest conception of it yet its universal pre- 
 sence is the absolute fact without which there can 
 be no relative facts. Every feeling and thought
 
 HERBERT SPENCER AND FREDERIC HARRISON. 225 
 
 being transitory nay, the objects amid which life 
 is passed, though less transitory, being severally 
 in course of losing their individualities, quickly 
 or slowly we learn that the one thing permanent 
 is the Unknowable Reality hidden under all these 
 changing shapes' {Principles of Psychology, vol. ii., 
 pp. 489-503, 2nd ed.). 
 
 In another place he puts it in a stronger way : 
 ' In the very assertion that all our knowledge, 
 properly so-called, is Relative, there is involved 
 the assertion that there exists a Non-relative. We 
 have seen how, from the very necessity of thinking 
 in relations, it follows that the Relation is itself 
 inconceivable, except as related to a real Non- 
 relative. We have seen that unless a real Non- 
 relative or Absolute be postulated, the relative 
 itself becomes absolute ; and so brings the argu- 
 ment to a contradiction. And on contemplating 
 the process of thought, we have equally seen how 
 impossible it is to get rid of the consciousness of an 
 actuality lying behind appearances ; and how, from 
 this impossibility, results our indestructible belief 
 in that actuality' {First Principles, p. 97, 4th ed.). 
 
 In a word, Mr. Harrison, holding that our con- 
 sciousness is entirely subjective, holds that the 
 religious emotion has no known objective counter- 
 
 Q
 
 226 AGNOSTICISM: 
 
 part ; but Mr. Spencer maintains that religion 
 has an objective counterpart, while that counterpart 
 is and must be unknown and unknowable. Both 
 agree in holding that our consciousness is not a 
 warrant for anything outside itself. In other 
 words, both hold in a certain form what is called 
 the Relativity of Knowledge. 
 
 In the first lecture I delivered here, I stated 
 that the relativity of knowledge means two very 
 different things. In the first sense, it is an eter- 
 nal truth, in every meaning of the word ; a truism, 
 if you will. In the second, it is a quibble which 
 would be groaned at in a burlesque. In the first 
 sense, it means that there is no such thing as 
 knowledge in the abstract. The relativity of 
 knowledge expresses the truth that, since rela- 
 tion must exist between subject and object 
 between that which knows and that which is 
 known in this sense, the one term implies the 
 other, and one can no more exist without the 
 other than the concave can exist independently 
 of the convex. But that the convex is correlative 
 to the concave, and so conversely, is no reason 
 why the concave is not real, or why the convex is 
 less so. If there is knowledge there must be a 
 correlation of subject and object, for the simple
 
 HERBERT SPENCER AND FREDERIC HARRISON. 227 
 
 reason that knowledge without such correlation is 
 quite unmeaning, and not merely a contradiction, 
 not merely a cipher, but an impossibility without 
 beginning, middle, or end. 
 
 And here I must quote from Hegel a vital 
 distinction, which apparently has not dawned upon 
 the British philosopher. ' The contents of con- 
 sciousness are merely felt, or felt with an admix- 
 ture of thought, or merely simply thought ' 
 (Wallace's Hegel, p. 4). 
 
 ' Thought will not be satisfied with anything 
 short of a proof that its contents or facts must 
 be so, and cannot be otherwise' (Ib. , p. i). The 
 meaning of this has not dawned upon the empiri- 
 cal school, and unless it has, they are not in a 
 position to criticise their opponents for a moment. 
 Mill quotes with approbation Kant's definition of 
 Necessity that of which the opposite is inconceiv- 
 able. The expression is open to misunderstand- 
 ing, as it may mean there may be an opposite, 
 but that we do not believe in the possibility of its 
 existence as a matter of fact. This is totally in- 
 correct. What Kant and Hegel (after Aristotle) 
 mean is, that an opposite cannot be so construed by 
 thought as to be consistent. It is therefore nihil 
 negativum, as a figure composed of two straight 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 AGNOSTICISM: 
 
 lines. But, in the pictorial images of the imagi- 
 nation, there is no limit to our powers of combina- 
 tion save the senses with their impressions. A 
 man born blind cannot combine colours ; but a 
 person with sight can combine colours, as long 
 as he does not outrage the laws of space. But in 
 thinking, pure or mixed necessity TO /AT) ei/8exo/j,e- 
 vov aXXw? X LV ' ls th e test f reality. No one can 
 make plus anything but plus, because it has no 
 consistency as anything else. 
 
 The distinction between thought and a pictorial 
 chaos will guide us well. Break up a sign-board, 
 or a painter's palette, and the fragments are, to a 
 certain extent, coherent. But break up thought, 
 that is, suppose it otherwise, and what have you ? 
 Simply nothing. If Romeo was cut out in little 
 stars, as Juliet wished, the fragments would be 
 something still, but thought broken disappears. 
 To say that on the disappearance of thought, 
 there may be something there, is like saying that 
 when one's money is gone, one may have some 
 money. This is the position of the agnostic. 
 
 We may now approach existence. The agnos- 
 tic will hardly contend that the reality of existence 
 consists in being non-existent. We may then as- 
 sert, with the Squire, that whatever is, is. But as
 
 HERBERT SPENCER AND FREDERIC HARRISON. 22Q 
 
 all parts of existence are related to every other, 
 we are justified in asserting, and not justified in 
 denying, that existence is one; that, in other words, 
 existence is a universe. 
 
 Recollect, this universe has for its opposite, not 
 an existent blank, but a non-existent unmeaning- 
 ness. There is no alternative the universe is. We 
 may look on this picture : but there is no that. 
 
 But if we know the universe as one, we know 
 the absolute ; for there is nothing outside it to 
 give it support or frame. It is therefore, in Plato's 
 phrase, avvrroderov, self-sustained. 
 
 It is also infinite ; for, as it is a universe, it has 
 nothing outside it to set its limits or bounds. This 
 was pointed out by Plato. Hegel has pointed out 
 the nature of the real infinite. The real infinite is 
 not a negation : but the finite is. The finite ne- 
 gates the infinite, and is therefore a true negation ; 
 but the infinite, in negating the finite, is the nega- 
 tive of a negation, and therefore a real affirmation. 
 
 Of this universe, one, absolute and infinite, all 
 the parts are correlated. This is seen more clearly 
 in proportion to our intelligence that is, the clear- 
 ness is directly as the intelligence. Archimedes, 
 seeing something of the celestial movements, gives 
 us an orrery ; Newton, seeing more, gives us
 
 230 AGNOSTICISM: 
 
 gravity, and so on. The most obstinate scientist 
 never imagines that any of his discoveries is unique; 
 if it were it would not be science, but a miracle. 
 
 Again, this One cannot be bad : because bad is 
 a contradiction of what is consistent. In this way 
 an omnipotent demon is a contradiction in terms ; 
 qua consistent he wills inconsistency which pre- 
 supposes consistency, and this as the motive of a 
 universe is absurd. 
 
 We Dublin men have had much, probably 
 enough, of Hamilton and Mansel. Herbert Spen- 
 cer quotes with approbation Hamilton's dictum, 
 ' to think is to condition,' a sentence which is 
 enough to show Hamilton's ignorance of the 
 higher or true thought. In the German philo- 
 sophy, a finite spirit is that which thinks subject 
 to space and time. But even time and space are 
 instances of the correlation of finite and infinite. 
 The instances given by Hamilton to prove his phi- 
 losophy of the conditioned are taken from things 
 in Space, Time, and Degree. The most hasty 
 reader of Aristotle well knows that Plato called 
 the infinite the undetermined Dyad, as bifurcating 
 to greater and less; but then to Plato quantity 
 was the nearest approach to pure thought. Hegel 
 treats the infinite given by expansion of number
 
 HERBERT SPENCER AND FREDERIC HARRISON. 23! 
 
 with scant respect. Kant, he says, describes it as 
 awful. He adds, the only really awful thing about 
 it is the awful wearisomeness of ever fixing, and 
 anon unfixing, a limit, without advancing a single 
 step. And this infinite of addition and subtraction 
 he terms the false infinite. But pure thought knows 
 no condition or limitation save position and nega- 
 tion, each involving the other unto perfection. 
 
 I may sum up : if we think a universe as unique, 
 independent, self- sustained, and intelligible as one, 
 infinite and absolute and if this intellectual aspect 
 is interfused with emotive warmth and colour, Reli- 
 gion is not of the unknown it is positive and 
 eternal. ' Agnosticism,' says Mr. Harrison, ' per- 
 fectly legitimate as the true answer of science to 
 an effete question, has shown us that religion is 
 not to be found anywhere within the realm of 
 cause' {Nineteenth C., 85, 496). It would not be 
 more ridiculous to say heraldry has shown that 
 religion is not to be found anywhere within the 
 realm of blue dragons. And this brings us to 
 the point on which Mr. Harrison and Mr. Spencer 
 agree, and which I hold to underlie any rational 
 Agnosticism that is. 
 
 Mr. Spencer and Mr. Harrison agree in this : 
 that our consciousness is subjective only. Mr.
 
 232 AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 Harrison says, ' all observation and meditation, 
 science and philosophy, bring us to the practical 
 belief that man is ever in the presence of some 
 energy or energies of which he knows nothing, and 
 to which, therefore, he would be wise to assign no 
 limits, conditions, or functions. This is, doubt- 
 less, what Mr. Spencer himself means. For my 
 part, I prefer his old term, the Unknowable. 
 Though I have always thought that it would be 
 more philosophical not to assert of the Unknown 
 that it is Unknowable. And, indeed, I would 
 rather not use the capital letter, but stick literally 
 to our evidence, and say frankly "the unknown" 
 (Nineteenth C., 85, p. 495). Mr. Spencer holds that 
 ' the activities constituting consciousness, being 
 rigorously bounded, cannot bring in amongst 
 themselves the activities beyond the bounds, which 
 therefore seem unconscious, though production of 
 either by the other seems to imply that they are 
 of the same essential nature ; this necessity we are 
 under to think of the external energy in terms of 
 the internal energy, gives rather a spiritualistic 
 than a materialistic aspect to the Universe: further 
 thought, however, obliging us to recognize the 
 truth that a conception given in phenomenal mani- 
 festations of this ultimate energy can in no wise
 
 HERBERT SPENCER AND FREDERIC HARRISON. 233 
 
 show us what it is' {Nineteenth C, 83, p. 10). That 
 is, Mr. Spencer holds that our consciousness comes 
 of something outside it; while Mr. Harrison's con- 
 sciousness is as if\\. came from energies extrinsic to 
 it. ' Our scientific conceptions within have a good 
 working correspondence with an (assumed) reality 
 without we having no means of knowing whether 
 the absolute correspondence between them be great 
 or small, or whether there be any absolute corre- 
 spondence at all ' {Fort. Rev., 1874, p. 89). 'To 
 that,' says Mr. Harrison, ' I adhere ; whilst I accept 
 the doctrine of an unknown substratum, I cannot 
 assent to the doctrine that the unknowable is the 
 absolute Reality' {Nineteenth C., 91, p. 357). 
 
 Now, whether we take the extra-consciousness 
 sort of a something to be an energy or a substra- 
 tum, actual to Mr. Spencer possible to Mr. Harri- 
 son it is plain that both take consciousness to be 
 heteropathic, that is, unlike its coefficients. I need 
 scarcely remind you that Mill points out that some 
 effects resemble their causes, while others are un- 
 like them (Log. iii.) Water is as unlike its com- 
 ponent gases as it is unlike its expression, H 2 O!. 
 But even the heteropathic effects are subject to the 
 composition of causes as to weight, and it is pos- 
 sible to resolve the heteropathic into its elements.
 
 234 AGNOSTICISM: 
 
 Besides the heteropathic may start a new series of 
 similar effects. But even inside chemistry, con- 
 ceptions have been much modified since Mill 
 wrote. Prof. Williamson purposes to apply the 
 mechanical term displace to chemical phenomena ; 
 and the chemistry of the mind, so popular in the 
 early part of this century, has been thoroughly 
 exploded by my immediate predecessor, Professor 
 Monck. From a scientific point of view to treat 
 consciousness as really heteropathic is unscientific. 
 ' There let him lay.' But Philosophy will have 
 her say, and that say is of no uncertain sound. 
 Causation is part of the correlated whole con- 
 sciousness, and to explain that whole by one of 
 its parts is to explain a chess-board by one of 
 its squares, cut out and glued outside it. But this 
 is not all ; you can cut out a square from the board, 
 and glue it on the back, but you cannot take one 
 jot or one tittle from thought without annihilating 
 the whole. Anyone can try. Begin with any fact 
 of consciousness, and we find in it the choir of 
 heaven and earth. Science, says the scientist, is 
 sequence. No, science, says the philosopher, is 
 sequence pregnant with cause and substance : and 
 these have baffled a greater than the agnostics of 
 our day Hume.
 
 HERBERT SPENCER AND FREDERIC HARRISON. 235 
 
 What does science say? Science, not the 
 scientist. Science, in Professor Huxley's admir- 
 able language, tells us that neurosis merely pre- 
 cedes psychosis. G. H. Lewes saw the difficulty, 
 and, to evade it, borrowed from Hegel his view 
 that the cause was in the effect. Granting this, 
 I believe that the final neurosis is the point where 
 science or consciousness in sequence is subsumed 
 by philosophy or consciousness in simultaneity ; 
 and that the true answer to the agnostic was given 
 by Plato, when he proved with geometrical pre- 
 cision that everything is finite and infinite, each 
 and both. What Plato had made objective Kant 
 made subjective, while Hegel made room for both 
 in the paramount unity of thought. 
 
 If it be thus, if this is so, why do men generally 
 believe in something mysterious behind all we 
 know, in something behind the veil of Isis the 
 incomprehensible spirit evoked by Faust the 
 thing-by -itself of Kant ; the unknowable of Her- 
 bert Spencer, the unknown of Frederic Harrison ? 
 The cause is the very prosaic one abstraction. 
 Analysing knowledge into Subject and Object, 
 we suppose that one can subsist apart from the 
 other. But a little reflection will show that subject 
 and object are correlatives : when we talk of the
 
 236 AGNOSTICISM : 
 
 object, we accentuate that which is known. And so 
 of the subject, we accentuate that which knows ; 
 and in this way we suppose something external 
 to all consciousness that is, an object dissevered 
 from its correlated subject ; but this (though pos- 
 sible to imagination) is impossible to thought. 
 Hume impugned the value of the ideas Sub- 
 stance and Cause ; but things may be set right 
 by considering Cause as Substance in action, 
 and Substance as Cause in reserve, while Being 
 is the meagre abstraction enfolding both. But 
 thought will see that that which thought has 
 joined, abstraction shall not set asunder, and 
 thought will show that agnosticism owes its pre- 
 carious existence to confusion of abstractions with 
 reality 
 
 Invalidique patrum referunt jejunia nati. 
 
 Published, November, 1884. 
 
 It may be said, ' surely Mr. Harrison and 
 Mr. Spencer have some reason for the faith that 
 is in them.' But that no one may be in doubt as 
 to what their metaphysical foundation is, I annex 
 the following extracts from the official papers in 
 the Contemporary. First, let us take Mr. Spencer's 
 objections :
 
 HERBERT SPENCER AND FREDERIC HARRISON. 237 
 
 ' Passing over the familiar difficulties that sun- 
 dry of the implied divine traits are in contradiction 
 with the divine attributes otherwise ascribed that 
 a god who repents of what he has done must be 
 lacking either in power or in foresight ; that his 
 anger presupposes an occurrence which has been 
 contrary to intention, and so indicates defect of 
 means ; we come to the deeper difficulty that 
 such emotions, in common with all emotions, can 
 exist only in a consciousness which is limited. 
 Every emotion has its antecedent ideas, and ante- 
 cedent ideas are habitually supposed to occur in 
 God : he is represented as seeing and hearing this 
 or the other, and as being emotionally affected 
 thereby. That is to say, the conception of a di- 
 vinity possessing these traits of character, neces- 
 sarily continues anthropomorphic ; not only in the 
 sense that the emotions ascribed are like those of 
 human beings, but also in the sense that they form 
 parts of a consciousness which, like the human con- 
 sciousness, is formed of successive states. And 
 such a conception of the divine consciousness is 
 irreconcilable both with the unchangeableness 
 otherwise alleged, and with the omniscience other- 
 wise alleged. For a consciousness constituted of 
 ideas and feelings caused by objects and occur-
 
 238 AGNOSTICISM : 
 
 rences cannot be simultaneously occupied with all 
 objects and all occurrences throughout the uni- 
 verse. To believe in a divine consciousness, men 
 must refrain from thinking what is meant by con- 
 sciousness must stop short with verbal proposi- 
 tions ; and propositions which they are debarred 
 from rendering into thoughts will more and more 
 fail to satisfy them. Of course like difficulties 
 present themselves when the will of God is spoken 
 of. So long as we refrain from giving a definite 
 meaning to the word will, we may say that it is 
 possessed by the Cause of All Things, as readily as 
 we may say that love of approbation is possessed 
 by a circle ; but when from the words we pass to 
 the thoughts they stand for, we find that we can no 
 more unite in consciousness the terms of the one 
 proposition than we can those of the other. Who- 
 ever conceives any other will than his own must do 
 so in terms of his own will, which is the sole will 
 directly known to him all other wills being only 
 inferred. But will, as each is conscious of it, pre- 
 supposes a motive a prompting desire of some 
 kind : absolute indifference excludes the conception 
 of a will. Moreover will, as implying a prompting 
 desire, connotes some end contemplated as one to 
 be achieved, and ceases with the achievement of it :
 
 HERBERT SPENCER AND FREDERIC HARRISON. 239 
 
 some other will, referring to some other end, taking 
 its place. That is to say will, like emotion, neces- 
 sarily supposes a series of states of consciousness. 
 The conception of a divine will, derived from that 
 of the human will, involves, like it, localization in 
 space and time : the willing of each end, excluding 
 from consciousness for an interval the willing of 
 other ends, and therefore being inconsistent with 
 that omnipresent activity which simultaneously 
 works out an infinity of ends. It is the same with 
 the ascription of intelligence. Not to dwell on the 
 seriality and limitation implied as before, we may 
 note that intelligence, as alone conceivable by us, 
 presupposes existences independent of it and ob- 
 jective to it. It is carried on in terms of changes 
 primarily wrought by alien activities the impres- 
 sions generated by things beyond consciousness, 
 and the ideas derived from such impressions. To 
 speak of an intelligence which exists in the absence 
 of all such alien activities is to use a meaningless 
 word. If to the corollary that the First Cause, con- 
 sidered as intelligent, must be continually affected 
 by independent objective activities, it is replied 
 that these have become such by act of creation, 
 and were previously included in the First Cause ; 
 then the reply is, that in such case the First Cause
 
 24O AGNOSTICISM I 
 
 could, before this creation, have had nothing to 
 generate in it such changes as those constituting 
 what we call intelligence, and must therefore have 
 been unintelligent at the time when intelligence 
 was most called for. Hence it is clear that the 
 intelligence ascribed answers in no respect to that 
 which we know by the name. It is intelligence out 
 of which all the characters constituting it have 
 vanished. 
 
 ' These and other difficulties, some of which are 
 often discussed but never disposed of, must force 
 men hereafter to drop the higher anthropomorphic 
 characters given to the First Cause, as they have 
 long since dropped the lower. The conception 
 which has been enlarging from the beginning 
 must go on enlarging, until, by disappearance of 
 its limits, it becomes a consciousness which tran- 
 scends the forms of distinct thought, though it for 
 ever remains a consciousness.' Nineteenth Century, 
 January, pp. 6-8. 
 
 Next let us take Mr. Harrison's statement : 
 ' One need not repeat all the metaphysical objec- 
 tions arrayed by Mr. Spencer himself against con- 
 necting the ideas of the Absolute, the Infinite, First 
 Cause, and Creator with that of any one Power. 
 How can Absolute Power create ? How can the
 
 HERBERT SPENCER AND FREDERIC HARRISON. 241 
 
 Absolute be a Cause ? The Absolute excludes 
 the relative; and Creation and Cause both imply 
 relation. How can the infinite be a Cause, or 
 create ? For if there be effect distinct from cause, 
 or if there be something uncreated, the Infinite 
 would be thereby limited. What is the meaning 
 of All-Being ? Does it include, or not, its own 
 manifestation ? If the Cosmos is a mere show 
 of an Unknown Cause, then the Unknown Cause 
 is not infinite, for it does not include the Cosmos ; 
 and not Absolute, for the Universe is its manifesta- 
 tion, and all things proceed from it. That is to 
 say, the Absolute is in relation to the Universe, as 
 Cause and Effect. Again, if the "very notions, 
 beginning and end, cause and purpose, relative 
 notions belonging to human thought, are probably 
 irrelevant to the Ultimate Reality transcending 
 human thought" (Spencer, Nineteenth Century, 
 p. 12), how can we speak of the Ultimate Cause, 
 or indeed of Infinite and Eternal? The philosophi- 
 cal difficulties of imagining a First Cause, so ad- 
 mirably put by Mr. Spencer years ago, are not 
 greater than those of imagining an Ultimate Cause. 
 The objections he states to the idea of Creation are 
 not removed by talking of a Creative Power rather 
 than a Creator God. If Mr. Spencer's new Creative 
 
 R
 
 242 AGNOSTICISM : 
 
 Power "stands towards our general conception of 
 things in substantially the same relation as the 
 Creative Power of Theology," it is open to all the 
 metaphysical dilemmas so admirably stated in First 
 Principles. Mr. Spencer cannot have it both ways. 
 If his Unknowable be the Creative Power and Ulti- 
 mate Cause, it simply renews all the mystification 
 of the old theologies. If his Unknowable be un- 
 knowable, then it is idle to talk of Infinite and 
 Eternal Energy, sole Reality, All-Being, and 
 Creative Power. This is the slip-slop of theo- 
 logians which Mr. Spencer, as much as any 
 man living, has finally torn to shreds.' Nineteenth 
 Century, September, 1884, pp. 358-9. 
 
 These, as anyone can see, are what Sir W. 
 Hamilton urged in the Edinburgh Review for 1829, 
 against any knowledge of the Absolute and the 
 Infinite. Their futility was seen by J. S. Mill. ' It 
 is surely possible to maintain that the Deity is 
 known to us only as he who feeds the ravens, 
 without supposing that the Divine intelligence 
 exists solely in order that the ravens may be fed,' 
 Hamilton, c. iv. Again, he asks, ' in what manner 
 is a possible existence out of all relation incom- 
 patible with the notion of a cause ? Have not 
 causes a possible existence apart from their
 
 HERBERT SPENCER AND FREDERIC HARRISON. 243 
 
 effects ? ' ib. c. vn. In fact the same kind of 
 objection was, as I have noticed, urged against 
 Anselm, and may be traced to the Megarics, 
 who held that distinct predicates were incom- 
 patible. They are all provided for in Hegel's 
 Aufhebung. Thought consists essentially of oppo- 
 site constituents, all of which are contained in dis- 
 tinctness, but in subordination, in the paramount 
 Notion which unites them. Thus he takes the 
 Infinite: The Infinite is not a negation of the 
 Finite, but the Finite negates the Infinite, and 
 so is the not-Infinite. The Infinite thus posits 
 itself as that which is not not-Infinite, and so in- 
 cludes the Finite as one of its constituents. That 
 determination is limitation, and therefore mutila- 
 tion, is a pun. 
 
 Take again the objections to a Creator : Here 
 again the scientific order in time is assumed to 
 control the logical order in thought ; 
 
 What God after better would build worse ? 
 
 may serve as the text of all such objections. That 
 they are not peculiar either to disbelief, or belief, 
 may be shown by the fact that they are common to 
 Sir William Hamilton, Dean Mansel, Mr. Spencer, 
 and Mr. Harrison. Yet what do they amount to ? 
 
 R 2
 
 244 AGNOSTICISM I 
 
 That at a certain point in Time God determined to 
 create, just as a man would determine to build a 
 new house. But what force has this, if, as every 
 Idealist holds, Time is only one aspect of the 
 Universe ? Time, like Space, is no separate thing. 
 It is one of the many constituents of a complex 
 whole, and to suppose the logical nexus subordi- 
 nate to time is as absurd as to suppose it is sub- 
 ordinate to glue. Mr. Spencer and Mr. Harrison 
 agree also in utterly ignoring the order, that is to 
 say the process, of Thought. 
 
 Since writing the above, a paper has appeared 
 in the Contemporary for July. It is by S. Rowe 
 Bennett, and reviews the opposing doctrines. It 
 does not allude to the metaphysical basis of Ag- 
 nosticism, but traces the views of Mr. Harrison, 
 Mr. Spencer, as well as of Mr. Matthew Arnold, 
 to a 'horror of Anthropomorphism,' p. 207. This, 
 being translated into philosophical language, 
 means that they will not apply the order of 
 Empiricism to Thought. And they are right. 
 If anyone does, and if he can think, he must be 
 a Materialist. We must be such stuff as stuff is 
 made of. But, as I have shown before, we cannot,
 
 HERBERT SPENCER AND FREDERIC HARRISON. 245 
 
 if we think, acquiesce in Materialism, because in 
 investigating the claims of Materialism we find 
 the order of Materialism inverted in the order of 
 Thought And it is this order that renders the 
 essays in the Nineteenth Century, from the meta- 
 physical point of view, so much waste paper.
 
 XI. 
 
 MIND AND MOTION DR. STONEY, THE DUKE 
 OF ARGYLL, AND PROFESSOR ROMANES. 
 
 THE subject of this lecture is Motion in its meta- 
 physical aspect, or as we may term it, the notion 
 Motion. That is, I wish to describe Motion, or 
 what it is we mean when we use the word. I do 
 not mean to inquire how we obtain the notion, or 
 whether it is made up of contributions from within 
 or without. In other words, I do not consider the 
 psychological aspect of Motion, but what it is, as 
 opposed to how it comes. 
 
 The reasons for selecting this topic are, that 
 Motion is the connecting link between Physics and 
 Metaphysics, and that it has in this aspect given 
 rise to an exact statement by Dr. G. J. Stoney, 
 describing the notion from the physical side. 
 
 In discussing the subject of this lecture, I have 
 had unusual advantages advantages which do not 
 often fall to the lot of a lecturer. The subject has,
 
 MIND AND MOTION. .247 
 
 as I have said, been discussed, from the physical 
 side, by a most eminent physicist, who has himself 
 largely added to the matter on which he treats. 
 His statement of the case is worthy of all praise, 
 and of the more sincere flattery of imitation ; the 
 propositions are numbered, and in each case the 
 reasons on which they severally rest are specifically 
 marked and pointed out. I cannot, I regret to say, 
 pretend to any authority in the department of phy- 
 sical research my knowledge on this point being 
 altogether second-hand but I am glad to say my 
 only difference with Professor Stoney is with refe- 
 rence to the question, What are the metaphysical 
 constituents of the notion Motion ? 
 
 Speculation for Europe and America begins 
 with Greece. The Greeks endeavoured to find 
 some principle which enters into and accounts for 
 all phenomena much in the way that, verification 
 apart, Newton's Law of Gravitation enters into and 
 accounts for the facts of Mechanics and Astronomy. 
 Amongst early Greek speculators, Parmenides laid 
 down that Unity was the fullest existence, while 
 Plurality never attained such rank, and formed 
 only a basis for probability. It must be borne 
 in mind that Motion KtV^o-ts according to Greek 
 thinkers would be a mode of Plurality the order
 
 248 MIND AND MOTION. 
 
 of ideas being in their logic, Plurality, Diversity, 
 Change, Movement. Zeno, the disciple of Parme- 
 nides, defended his master's position by developing 
 the absurdity of the consequences involved in the 
 fact or facts of Motion ; that is, his line of argu- 
 ment was Motion contains contradictions, there- 
 fore the idee mere Plurality is contradictory ; 
 therefore its opposite Unity which is not con- 
 tradictory is true, and real. 
 
 From Zeno's time to the present various efforts 
 have been made to answer his arguments to answer 
 them either by a common- sense appeal to facts, 
 such as walking about, which is as absurd as 
 Dr. Johnson's kicking a stone, or by showing that 
 some mathematical or logical fallacy lurked in his 
 reasonings. 
 
 But the fact is, that Zeno's argument rests on 
 the profound truth seen by Plato and developed by 
 Hegel, that all thinking is based on contradiction, 
 that is, in logical terms, to think affirmation is to 
 think negation, and to think negation is again to 
 think affirmation ; and this is the essence and 
 nexus of all intelligence whatsoever. 
 
 One of Zeno's most celebrated arguments was 
 the case of the arrow in flight. The arrow while 
 in flight rests, and this is so far true as to develop
 
 DR. STONEY AND PROFESSOR ROMANES. 249 
 
 the contradiction inherent in the notion. At any 
 given instant the arrow is opposite its own counter- 
 part in length, and might be pinned to the wall by 
 an instantaneous shaft at right angles to its course. 
 So also in the photograph of the galloping horse, 
 the horse for one instant must be in exact focus. 
 That is to say, in each case there is a point of rest or 
 identity relative to which motion or diversity takes 
 place. Motion, according to Aristotle, exists only 
 as in time, while what is at rest is apprehended by 
 not being moved (de An. in. i.), and this is the 
 statement of the empirical aspect of the case by 
 the greatest champion of empiricism. 
 
 But if rest is non-motion, it is evident that in 
 thinking of motion we must, if we make our thought 
 explicit, think of non- motion as the indispensable 
 and irrepressible correlative of motion. 
 
 In Plato, likewise, Rest is presupposed by 
 Motion, and the Hegelian aspect of the case is 
 explicit. In Greek metaphysics, Motion is a result of 
 Difference, and so Rest and Motion make up an Idea 
 in the strictest sense, one and many lv KCU TroXAd. 
 
 In Hegel the notion is evolved thus : Space or 
 Otherness must, like everything else, be negated, 
 and this necessary negation is Time ; and the in- 
 difference of Space and Time is Motion.
 
 250 MIND AND MOTION. 
 
 Kant's paradox is well known : the permanent 
 only is changed ; the changing itself suffers no 
 change, but only an alteration, that is, certain de- 
 terminations ceasing others begin. Meik., p. 140. 
 Better translated by Max Miiller : the permanent 
 only (substance) is changed, the changing itself 
 suffers no change, but only an alteration, certain 
 determinations ceasing to exist, while others begin, 
 p. 165. 
 
 As a general principle it is obvious that that 
 which is related to another cannot be explicitly 
 described without bringing in that other as part 
 and parcel of the description ; and so I venture 
 to think that everyone who sets down explicitly 
 what he means by Motion will find that Motion, 
 qua Motion, is relative to non-Motion. 
 
 I shall now read you these portions of Dr. 
 Stoney's pamphlet which approach the confines of 
 Metaphysics, and I think the result will be, that while 
 Dr. Stoney's view of Motion will be sufficient for 
 working the organon of the Physicist, yet that 
 Motion when analysed contains the negative 
 element insisted on by the Platonist and Hegelian 
 the notion containing the negative element, for 
 the best possible reason, that it is an essential and 
 inseparable part of its totality, though it may be
 
 DR. STONEY AND PROFESSOR ROMANES. 25! 
 
 discarded by the Physicist, who has other ends in 
 view. I give Dr. Stoney's own abstract : 
 
 ' Every phenomenon which a human being can 
 perceive may be traced by scientific investigation 
 to motions going on in the world around him. 
 This is obvious to every scientific man in regard 
 to such phenomena as those of colour and sound, 
 and these simpler cases were first adduced by the 
 lecturer. Dr. Stoney then pointed out that the 
 statement is also true of all other material pheno- 
 mena, and he specially dwelt on the pheno- 
 mena investigated in the science of Mechanics, 
 showing that all the quantities treated of in that 
 science, such as force and mass, prove, when the 
 investigation is pushed far enough, to be expres- 
 sible in terms of mere motion. He also showed 
 that the prevalent conviction that motion cannot 
 exist unless there is some "thing" to move will 
 not not stand examination. It proves to be a fal- 
 lacious conviction, traceable to the limited charac- 
 ter of the experience of motions which we and our 
 ancestry, from the first dawn of organized thought 
 on the earth, have had within reach of our senses. 
 This conviction accordingly has no authority with 
 respect to molecular motions and to some others 
 that have been brought to light by scientific study.
 
 252 MIND AND MOTION. 
 
 He also showed that the "thing" which in com- 
 mon experience moves proves in every case to be 
 nothing else than these underlying molecular mo- 
 tions, the transference of which from place to place 
 is the only kind of motion which common experi- 
 ence can reach, when unassisted by science. 
 
 ' The intermediate steps between the world ex- 
 ternal to our bodies and the brain, which take place 
 in our organs of sense and nerves, can also be 
 ascertained to be motions. And, finally, a change 
 consisting of motions takes place in the brain itself, 
 whereupon we become conscious of thought : i. e. a 
 change occurs within the brain which would be 
 appreciated as motions by a bystander who could 
 search into our brains while we are thinking, and 
 could witness what is going on there : while all the 
 time the change that we experience is thought. It 
 must be borne in mind that our brain is a part of 
 the external world to the bystander whom we have 
 supposed to be observing what is going on in it. 
 It thus appears that every phenomenon of the ex- 
 ternal world is reducible to motions and their modi- 
 fications, while all that is in the mind is thought. 
 
 ' Now this motion to which all other material 
 phenomena are reduced this motion as it exists in 
 nature, must be distinguished from man's concep-
 
 DR. STONEY AND PROFESSOR ROMANES 253 
 
 tion of motion, which, after all, is one of his 
 thoughts a very complex one, no doubt, but not part 
 of the external world. This particular conception in 
 our minds is one remote effect of the motion as it 
 exists outside us, and what we really know of that 
 external cause is, that it is a cause which does unfail- 
 ingly produce this effect if the intermediate appli- 
 ances of our senses and nerves are also present. 
 Motion, the cause, must no doubt stand in abso- 
 lutely rigorous relations to its effect, viz. our 
 conception of motion ; but it need not be like its 
 effect, the presumption being quite the other way. 
 The lecturer pointed out that, under these circum- 
 stances, the simplest and so far the most probable 
 hypothesis that can be advanced is the monis- 
 tic hypothesis, that this unknown cause is itself 
 thought ; and he pointed out that it is no objection 
 to this view that we are unconscious of all the 
 thought here supposed, for this is only to say that 
 it is external to that particular group of interlacing 
 and organized thoughts which we call our own 
 mind, just as the thoughts of the many millions 
 of our fellow-men and of all other animals are 
 external to our little group. 
 
 ' The lecturer accordingly recommended the 
 following hypothesis : (i) as consistent with every-
 
 254 MIND AND MOTION. 
 
 thing we know; (2) as the simplest hypothesis; 
 (3) as an hypothesis which dispels all the difficulties 
 that encumber the dualistic supposition that there 
 are two kinds of existence, viz. the hypothesis that 
 if a bystander were armed with adequate appliances 
 to ascertain what is going on in our brain while we 
 are thinking, then what we should experience to be 
 thought is itself the remote cause, with several 
 intermediate causes, of that change within the ob- 
 server's brain which determines his having that com- 
 plex thought which he would call perceiving some of 
 the motions in our brain in short, that what he 
 appreciates as motion we experience to be thought. 
 
 ' If this view be correct, it will follow that the 
 thoughts of which we are conscious are but a small 
 part of the thought going on even in our own brain, 
 and which would be seen by a beholder as motions, 
 the rest being unconscious cerebration, and as 
 much outside our consciousness as are the thoughts 
 of other people. We are led also to the conclusion 
 that the thought which is going on in the brains of 
 all the animals that exist is but the "small dust of 
 the balance" compared with what is going on 
 throughout the rest of the mighty universe.' 
 
 In reply to this we have a letter from the Duke 
 of Argyll :
 
 DR. STONEY AND PROFESSOR ROMANES. 255 
 
 1 To the Editor of " NATURE." 
 
 
 
 ' In your paper of the 5th you give a short ab- 
 stract of a recent lecture at the Royal Institution 
 by Mr. G. Johnstone Stoney, on the question 
 " How Thought presents itself among the Pheno- 
 mena of Nature." In this abstract I observe an 
 assertion which is quite new to me, and, I must 
 add, quite unintelligible. It occurs in the first 
 paragraph. The assertion seems to be that there 
 is an absolute distinction between molar and mole- 
 cular motion : there is no authority for the con- 
 viction that there must be some "thing" to be 
 moved. The conception of motion involves the 
 conception of matter as a necessary or inseparable 
 concomitant although the abstract idea of motion 
 may, in a sense, be separately entertained. Is 
 there any difference in this respect between molar 
 and molecular" motion ? A molecule is a group of 
 atoms, and an atom is only conceivable as an ulti- 
 mate particle of matter. I hope that some further 
 explanation may be given upon this point, which is 
 one of the highest interest and importance both as 
 a matter of physical and metaphysical speculation. 
 
 ' ARGYLL. 
 ' INVERARY, March 8.'
 
 256 MIND AND MOTION. 
 
 It may at once be conceded to Dr. Stoney, in 
 opposition to the Duke of Argyll, that no thing in 
 the ordinary sense of the word is needed for the 
 primary motions. That is, we need not imagine a 
 stake driven into the ground, and round which the 
 motion circles like a baited bull. And the relation 
 between molar and molecular motions is clearly 
 given by Dr. Stoney. But to show that a fixed 
 element, not thing, is necessary, let us take a common 
 instance: a train leaves Dublin at a certain hour, 
 and another leaves Kingstown at the same hour : 
 they will pass each other at some point, and this 
 point will toties quoties represent any and every 
 non-motive element in the idea of motion. 
 
 It will be said the point is imaginary. It is 
 imaginary in the sense that you will not fall over 
 it on a dark night. But in two other senses it is 
 not imaginary, and has not any relation to the 
 imagination. First, it cannot be depicted ; and, 
 second, it is most real. Why is it real ? Because 
 a point is an abstraction from a line, a line from 
 a surface, and surface from a solid ; and these are 
 all realities which have their being from rational 
 space. I submit, therefore, that the rational point 
 satisfies the exigencies of the Duke of Argyll, leav- 
 ing untouched the question of matter of fact, that all
 
 DR. STONEY AND PROFESSOR ROMANES. 257 
 
 extended bulks, whether molar or molecular, involve 
 at least three points in space, and they as a matter 
 of fact may be in motion from and for all eternity. 
 Motion is, as Plato put it, <j>opd TroOev TTOL from 
 point to point while in thought there is no physi- 
 cal iroOev Trot, but logical order only. The point 
 or points then, being constant and presupposed, 
 may be discarded by the physicist who records 
 the motion, i. e. that constituent of the notion 
 which is non-rest. Non-rest does not exist by itself, 
 because it cannot, as it has no meaning except as 
 relative to a point d'appui, and the non-mo- 
 tive element is always the logical prius of the 
 moving. A similar question occurs in Ancient 
 Philosophy ; Heraclitus laid down TTOLVTO. pelv, but 
 this physically is possible, while metaphysically it 
 involves the unthinkability of a series without unity. 
 Here it may be said, you make unthinkability a 
 test of reality : you argue from a deficiency in your- 
 self to something positive in rerum natura. Not 
 so. The unthinkability of motion without non- 
 motion arises from no incapacity in the thinker, 
 but solely from the essential property of thought, 
 that given one part the rest must follow. It is 
 surely not incapacity but capacity that enables us 
 to follow a demonstration. We follow it because
 
 258 MTND AND MOTION. 
 
 what we follow is there to be followed. It is not 
 incapacity but capacity which enables us to see that 
 a triangle, because it is a triangle, has angles equal 
 to two right. 
 
 Physicists may do without Metaphysics in the 
 sense of not explicitly employing them, but they 
 cannot do without them in the sense of rejecting 
 them. Dr. Stoney's views detached from his empi- 
 rical explanation of necessity is pure idealism, and 
 as such may be warmly welcomed by every meta- 
 physician. But any and every attempt to build 
 up a system of Metaphysics without a non-sensible 
 element must fail, whether we take the simple idea 
 of Locke, the impression of Hume, or the q of Pro- 
 fessor James. The apparent success of such at- 
 tempts is due to the fact that the authors use 
 unwittingly a non-sensible, i. e. an ideal, element, 
 and in this way build up their disguised idealism. 
 
 Professor Romanes, in his Rede Lecture, 1885, 
 published in Contemporary for August, has the 
 merit of seeing that Materialism is impossible, 
 because it makes the effect prior to its cause. 
 Spiritualism, he alleges, is not impossible but 
 unsatisfactory. Spiritualism is unsatisfactory be- 
 cause, he says, it is opposed to the whole momen- 
 tum of science. ' For if mind is supposed, on no
 
 DR. STONE Y AND PROFESSOR ROMANES. 259 
 
 matter how small a scale, to be a cause of motion, 
 the fundamental axiom of science is impugned. 
 This fundamental axiom is that energy can neither 
 be created nor destroyed that just as motion can 
 produce nothing but motion, so, conversely, motion 
 can be produced by nothing but motion. Re- 
 garded, therefore, from the standpoint of physical 
 science, the theory of Spiritualism is in precisely 
 the same sense as the theory of Materialism ; that 
 is to say, if the supposed causation takes place, 
 it can only be supposed to do so by way of 
 miracle,' p. 88. 
 
 * Spiritualism being thus unsatisfactory, and 
 Materialism impossible,' Professor Romanes asks, 
 ' Is there yet any third hypothesis in which we may 
 hope to find intellectual rest ? ' He says there is. 
 * If we unite in a higher synthesis the elements, 
 both of Spiritualism and Materialism, we obtain a 
 product which satisfies every fact of feeling on the 
 one hand, and observation on the other. We have 
 only to suppose that the antithesis between mind 
 and motion subject and object is itself pheno- 
 menal and apparent ; not absolute or real. We 
 have only to suppose that the seeming duality 
 is relative to our modes of apprehension, and, 
 therefore, that any change taking place in the
 
 26O MIND AND MOTION. 
 
 mind, and any corresponding change taking place 
 in the brain, are really not two changes but one 
 change/ pp. 889. 
 
 This passage really testifies to the truth of 
 Idealism Spiritualism. In the first place, Pro- 
 fessor Romanes only notices the scientific, physical, 
 psychological order. In this order there are two 
 changes in time: first, neurosis; second, psychosis. 
 As these are reckoned in time, and one is before 
 the other, they must so far be two TroXXa. But 
 then Idealism says the two must be subsumed as 
 one in the causal act itself to be in turn subsumed 
 in the all-devouring Notion Idea. And more 
 surely than the Revolution devours its children, 
 the order of Thought will devour the order of 
 Science. Both are true and real, for both are 
 facts. But applying Plato's test, we see that 
 Science presupposes Thought, while Thought not 
 only does not presuppose Science, but actually 
 inverts its order by employing that to which 
 Science owes its coherence Thought. 
 
 By ' the momentum of science' a rather vague 
 phrase Professor Romanes means the Conserva- 
 tion of Energy. Now the Conservation of Energy 
 has borne metaphysical fruit ; for it has shown that 
 heteropathic causation is not a cosmical law. It
 
 DR. STONEY AND PROFESSOR ROMANES. 26 1 
 
 has therefore left Positivism and Agnosticism with- 
 out a basis, as its very essence is that the effect 
 resembles the cause : motion produces nothing but 
 motion. But in another aspect it is purely meta- 
 physical, as it asserts that there is identity in diver- 
 sity one and many. And Professor Bain points 
 out that it furnishes the means of distinguishing 
 Causation from mere Concomitance, that is to say, 
 Causation implies a transfer of energy, while Con- 
 comitance does not. If this is so, what becomes of 
 Hume's reduction of Causation to Concomitance 
 the corner-stone of Empiricism and Positivism ? 
 Behold thy gods, O Israel ! 
 
 Dr. Stoney, in the full report of his lecture,* 
 gives a clear view of the scientific aspect of the 
 case, and this will give a clear view of the philo- 
 sophy of the case. In this instance the philoso- 
 phy of the case is the philosophy of the Universe. 
 
 ' A small part of what takes place in the outer 
 world affects my senses, and through them in- 
 directly affects me. 
 
 ' The result of a successful scrutiny of what is 
 
 * How Thought presents itself in Nature. Royal Institution, 
 February 6, 1885.
 
 262 MIND AND MOTION. 
 
 going on in the outer world may for convenience 
 be called the z part of the scientific explanation of 
 what I witness. 
 
 ' The result of a successful scrutiny of the 
 change which the z occasions within my organs 
 of sense would be the y part of the explanation. 
 
 ' The result of a successful scrutiny of the 
 changes that ensue along the associated nerves 
 would be the x part of the explanation. 
 
 ' And, finally, the result of a successful scrutiny 
 of the physical changes which this x produces with- 
 in my brain would be the w part of the explanation ; 
 and the explanation of the phenomenon from the 
 naturalist's point of view would be then complete. 
 
 ' The state of my own mind while I am witness- 
 ing what is going forward consists of sensations, 
 perceptions, and conceptions, or some combination 
 of these with reflections, reminiscences, associa- 
 tions, feelings, emotions, and so on, and may be 
 called the a part of the inquiry, as it is the known 
 part, known as fully before as after the investiga- 
 tion. 
 
 ' The whole of a scientific inquiry starts with 
 this a, and is concerned in discovering the 2, the y, 
 the *, and the w,' p. 18. 
 
 This is the scientific order, i. e. that of psycho-
 
 DR. STONEY AND PROFESSOR ROMANES. 263 
 
 logy, physiology, and cinetics. But if philosophy 
 be represented by <, <f) represents zyxwa as one 
 whole of coexisting and inseparable constituents, 
 any one of which is unintelligible without the 
 rest. 
 
 THE END.
 
 e?
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Form L9-75m-7,'61(C1437s4)444
 
 A A 000008607 4
 
 SI