First Principles



                    by Herbert Spencer



                         1820-1903



                          Part I



                     The Unknowable



                        Chapter 1



                   Religion and Science



1. We too often forget that not only is there "a soul of goodness 

in things evil," but very generally also, a soul of truth in things 

erroneous. While many admit the abstract probability that a falsity 

has usually a nucleus of verity, few bear this abstract probability 

in mind, when passing judgment on the options of others. A belief 

that is proved to be grossly at variance with fact, is cast aside 

with indignation or contempt; and in the heat of antagonism scarcely 

any one inquires what there was in this belief which commended it to 

men's minds. Yet there must have been something. And there is reason 

to suspect that this something was its correspondence with certain 

of their experiences: an extremely limited or vague correspondence 

perhaps, but still, a correspondence. Even the absurdest report may 

in nearly every instance be traced to an actual occurrence; and had 

there been no such actual occurrence, this preposterous 

misrepresentation of it would never have existed. Though the 

distorted or magnified image transmitted to us through the 

refracting medium of rumour, is utterly unlike the reality; yet in 

the absence of the reality there would have been no distorted or 

magnified image. And thus it is with human beliefs in general. 

Entirely wrong as they may appear, the implication is that they 

originally contained, and perhaps still contain, some small amount 

of truth.



Definite views on this matter would be very useful to us. It is 

important that we should form something like a general theory of 

current options, so that we may neither over-estimate nor under-

estimate their worth. Arriving at correct judgments on disputed 

questions, much depends on the mental attitude preserved while 

listening to, or taking part in, the controversies; and for the 

preservation of a right attitude, it is needful that we should learn 

how true, and yet how untrue, are average human beliefs. On the one 

hand, we must keep free from that bias in favour of received ideas 

which expresses itself in such dogmas as "What every one says must 

be true," or "The voice of the people is the voice of God." On the 

other hand, the fact disclosed by a survey of the past that 

majorities have usually been wrong, must not blind us to the 

complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely 

wrong. And the avoidance of these extremes being a pre-requisite to 

catholic thinking, we shall do well to provide ourselves with a 

safeguard against them, by making a valuation of opinions in the 

abstract. To this end we must contemplate the kind of relation that 

ordinarily subsists between opinions and facts. Let us do so with 

one of those beliefs which under various forms has prevailed among 

all nations in all times.



2. Early traditions represent rulers as gods or demigods. By their 

subjects, primitive kings were regarded as superhuman in origin and 

superhuman in power. They possessed divine titles, received 

obeisances like those made before the altars of deities, and were in 

some cases actually worshipped. Of course along with the implied 

beliefs there existed a belief in the unlimited power of the ruler 

over his subjects, extending even to the taking of their lives at 

will; as until recently in Fiji, where a victim stood unbound to be 

killed at the word of his chief himself declaring, "whatever the 

king says must be done."



In other times and among other races, we find these beliefs a little 

modified. The monarch, instead of being thought god or demigod, is 

conceived to be a man having divine authority, with perhaps more or 

less of divine nature. He retains, however, titles expressing his 

heavenly descent or relationships, and is still saluted in forms and 

words as humble as those addressed to the Deity. While in some 

places the lives and properties of his people, if not so completely 

at his mercy, are still in theory supposed to be his.



Later in the progress of civilization, as during the middle ages in 

Europe, the current opinions respecting the relationship of rulers 

and ruled are further changed. For the theory of divine origin there 

is substituted that of divine right. No longer god or demigod, or 

even god-descended, the king is now regarded simply as God's 

vicegerent. The obeisances made to him are not so extreme in their 

humility; and his sacred titles lose much of their meaning. Moreover 

his authority ceases to be unlimited. Subjects deny his right to 

dispose at will of their lives and properties, and yield allegiance 

only in the shape of obedience to his commands.



With advancing political option has come still greater restriction 

of monarchical power. Belief in the supernatural character of the 

ruler, long ago repudiated by ourselves for example, has left behind 

it nothing more than the popular tendency to ascribe unusual 

goodness, wisdom, and beauty to the monarch. Loyalty, which 

originally meant implicit submission to the king's will, now means a 

merely nominal profession of subordination, and the fulfilment of 

certain forms of respect. By deposing some and putting others in 

their places, we have not only denied the divine rights of certain 

men to rule, but we have denied that they have any rights beyond 

those originating in the assent of the nation. Though our forms of 

speech and our State-documents still assert the subjection of the 

citizens to the ruler, our actual beliefs and our daily proceedings 

implicitly assert the contrary. We have entirely divested the 

monarch of legislative power, and should immediately rebel against 

his or her dictation even in matters of small concern.



Nor has the rejection of primitive political beliefs resulted only 

in transferring the power of a autocrat to a representative body. 

The views held respecting governments in general, of whatever form, 

are now widely different from those once held. Whether popular or 

despotic, governments in ancient times were supposed to have 

unlimited authority over their subjects. Individuals existed for the 

benefit of the State; not the State for the benefit of individuals. 

In our days, however, not only has the national will been in many 

cases substituted for the will of the king, but the exercise of this 

national will has been restricted. In England, for instance, though 

there has been established no definite doctrine respecting the 

bounds to governmental action, yet, in practice, sundry bounds to it 

are tacitly recognized by all. There is no organic law declaring 

that a legislature may not freely dispose of citizens' lives, as 

kings did of old, but were it possible for our legislature to 

attempt such a thing, its own destruction would be the consequence, 

rather than the destruction of citizens. How fully we have 

established the personal liberties of the subject against the 

invasions of State-power, would be quickly shown were it proposed by 

Act of Parliament to take possession of the nation, or of any class, 

and turn its services to public ends, as the services of the people 

were turned by Egyptian kings. Not only in our day have the claims 

of the citizen to life, liberty, and property been thus made good 

against the State, but sundry minor claims likewise. Ages ago laws 

regulating dress and mode of living fell into disuse, and any 

attempt to revive them would prove that such matters now lie beyond 

the sphere of legal control. For some centuries we asserted in 

practice, and have now established in theory, the right of every man 

to choose his own religious beliefs, instead of receiving State-

authorized beliefs. Within the last few generations complete liberty 

of speech has been gained, in spite of all legislative attempts to 

suppress or limit it. And still more recently we have obtained under 

a few exceptional restrictions, freedom to trade with whomsoever we 

please. Thus our political beliefs are widely different from ancient 

ones, not only as to the proper depositary of power to be exercised 

over a nation, but also as to the extent of that power.



Nor even here has the change ended. Besides the average opinions 

just described as current among ourselves, there exists a less 

widely-diffused opinion going still further in the same direction. 

There are to be found men who contend that the sphere of government 

should be narrowed even more than it is in England. They hold that 

the freedom of the individual, limited only by the like freedom of 

other individuals, is sacred. They assert that the sole function of 

the State is the protection of persons against one another, and 

against a foreign foe; and they believe that the ultimate political 

condition must be one in which personal freedom is the greatest 

possible and governmental power the least possible.



Thus in different times and places we find, conceding the origin, 

authority, and functions of government, a great variety of opinions. 

What now must be said about the truth or falsity of these opinions? 

Must we say that some one is wholly right and all the rest wholly 

wrong; or must we say that each of them contains truth more or less 

disguised by errors? The latter alternative is the one which 

analysis will force upon us. Every one of these doctrines has for 

its vital element the recognition of an unquestionable fact. 

Directly or by implication, each insists on a certain subordination 

of individual actions to social dictates. There are differences 

respecting the power to which this subordination is due; there are 

differences respecting the motive for this subordination; there are 

differences respecting its extent; but that there must be some 

subordination all are agreed. The most submissive and the most 

recalcitrant alike hold that there are limits which individual 

actions may not transgress  limits which the one regards as 

originating in a ruler's will, and which the other regards as 

deducible from the equal claims of fellow-citizens.



It may doubtless be said that we here reach a very unimportant 

conclusion. The question, however, is not the value or novelty of 

the particular truth in this case arrived at. My aim has been to 

exhibit the more general truth, that between the most diverse 

beliefs there is usually something in common,  something taken for 

granted in each; and that this something, if not to be set down as 

an unquestionable verity, may yet be considered to have the highest 

degree of probability. A postulate which, like the one above 

instanced, is not consciously asserted but unconsciously involved, 

and which is unconsciously involved not by one man or body of men, 

but by numerous bodies of men who diverge in countless ways and 

degrees in the rest of their beliefs, has a warrant far transcending 

any that can be usually shown.



Do we not thus arrive at a generalization which may habitually guide 

us when seeking for the soul of truth in things erroneous? While the 

foregoing illustration brings home the fact that in opinions seeming 

to be absolutely wrong something right is yet to be found, it also 

indicates a way of finding the something right. This way is to 

compare all opinions of the same genus; to set aside as more or less 

discrediting one another those special and concrete elements in 

which such opinions disagree; to observe what remains after these 

have been eliminated; and to find for the remaining constituent that 

expression which holds true throughout its various disguises.



3. A consistent adoption of the method indicated will greatly aid 

us in dealing with chronic antagonisms of belief. By applying it not 

only to ideas with which we are unconcerned, but also to our own 

ideas and those of our opponents, we shall be enabled to form more 

correct judgments. We shall be led to suspect that our convictions 

are not wholly right, and that the adverse convictions are not 

wholly wrong. On the one hand, we shall not, in common with the 

great mass of the unthinking, let our creed be determined by the 

mere accident of birth in a particular age on a particular part of 

the Earth's surface, while, on the other hand, we shall be saved 

from that error of entire and contemptuous negation, fallen into by 

most who take up an attitude of independent criticism.



Of all antagonisms of belief the oldest, the widest, the most 

profound, and the most important, is that between Religion and 

Science. It commenced when recognition of the commonest uniformities 

in surrounding things, set a limit to all-pervading superstitions. 

It shows itself everywhere throughout the domain of human knowledge; 

affecting men's interpretations alike of the simplest mechanical 

accidents and the most complex events in the histories of nations. 

It has its roots deep down in the diverse habits of thought of 

different orders of minds. And the conflicting conceptions of Nature 

and Life which these diverse habits of thought severally generate, 

influence for good or ill the tone of feeling and the daily conduct.



A battle of opinion like this which has been carried on for ages 

under the banners of Religion and Science, has generated an 

animosity fatal to a just estimate of either party by the other. 

Happily the times display an increasing catholicity of feeling, 

which we shall do well to carry as far as our natures permit. In 

proportion as we love truth more and victory less, we shall become 

anxious to know what it is which leads our opponents to think as 

they do. We shall begin to suspect that the pertinacity of belief 

exhibited by them must result from a perception of something we have 

not perceived. And we shall aim to supplement the portion of truth 

we have found with the portion found by them. Making a rational 

estimate of human authority, we shall avoid alike the extremes of 

undue submission and undue rebellion  shall not regard some men's 

judgments as wholly good and others as wholly bad; but shall, 

contrariwise, lean to the more defensible position that none are 

completely right and none are completely wrong. Preserving, as far 

as may be, this impartial attitude, let us then contemplate the two 

sides of this great controversy. Keeping guard against the bias of 

education and shutting out the whisperings of sectarian feeling, let 

us consider what are the a priori probabilities in favour of each 

party.



4. The general principle above illustrated must lead us to 

anticipate that the diverse forms of religious belief which have 

existed and which still exist, have all a basis in some ultimate 

fact. Judging by analogy the implication is, not that any one of 

them is altogether right, but that in each there is something right 

more or less disguised by other things wrong. It may be that the 

soul of truth contained in erroneous creeds is extremely unlike 

most, if not all, of its several embodiments; and indeed if, as we 

have good reason to assume, it is much more abstract than any of 

them, its unlikeness necessarily follows. But some essential verity 

must be looked for. To suppose that these multiform conceptions 

should be one and all absolutely groundless, discredits too 

profoundly that average human intelligence from which all our 

individual intelligences are inherited.



To the presumption that a number of diverse beliefs of the same 

class have some common foundation in fact, must in this case be 

added a further presumption derived from the omnipresence of the 

beliefs. Religious ideas of one kind or other are almost universal. 

Grant that among all men who have passed a certain stage of 

intellectual development there are found vague notions concerning 

the origin and hidden nature of surrounding things, and there arises 

the inference that such notions are necessarily products of 

progressing intelligence. Their endless variety serves but to 

strengthen this conclusion: showing as it does a more or less 

independent genesis  showing how, in different places and times 

like conditions have led to similar trains of thought, ending in 

analogous results. A candid examination of the evidence quite 

negatives the supposition that creeds are priestly inventions. Even 

as a mere question of probabilities it cannot rationally be 

concluded that in every society, savage and civilized, certain men 

have combined to delude the rest in ways so analogous. Moreover, the 

hypothesis of artificial origin fails to account for the facts. It 

does not explain why under all changes of form, certain elements of 

religious belief remain constant. It does not show how it happens 

that while adverse criticism has from age to age gone on destroying 

particular theological dogmas, it has not destroyed the fundamental 

conception underlying those dogmas. Thus the universality of 

religious ideas, their independent evolution among different 

primitive races, and their great vitality unite in showing that 

their source must be deep-seated. In other words, we are obliged to 

admit that if not supernaturally derived as the majority contend, 

they must be derived out of human experiences, slowly accumulated 

and organized.



Should it be asserted that religious ideas are products of the 

religious sentiment which, to satisfy itself, prompts imaginations 

that it afterwards projects into the external world, and by-and-by 

mistakes for realities, the problem is not solved, but only removed 

farther back. Whence comes the sentiment? That it is a constituent 

in man's nature is implied by the hypothesis, and cannot indeed be 

denied by those who prefer other hypotheses. And if the religious 

sentiment, displayed constantly by the majority of mankind, and 

occasionally aroused even in those seemingly devoid of it, must be 

classed among human emotions, we cannot rationally ignore it. Here 

is an attribute which has played a conspicuous part throughout the 

entire past as far back as history records, and is at present the 

life of numerous institutions, the stimulus to perpetual 

controversies, and the prompter of countless daily actions. 

Evidently as a question in philosophy we are called on to say what 

this attribute means; and we cannot decline the task without 

confessing our philosophy to be incompetent.



Two suppositions only are open to us; the one that the feeling which 

responds to religious ideas resulted, along with all other human 

faculties, from an act of special creation; the other that it, in 

common with the rest, arose by a process of evolution. If we adopt 

the first of these alternatives, universally accepted by our 

ancestors and by the immense majority of our contemporaries, the 

matter is at once settled: man is directly endowed with the 

religious feeling by a creator; and to that creator it designedly 

responds. If we adopt the second alternative, then we are met by the 

questions  What are the circumstances to which the genesis of the 

religious feeling is due? and  What is its office? Considering, as 

we must on this supposition, all faculties to be results of 

accumulated modifications caused by the intercourse of the organism 

with its environment, we are obliged to admit that there exist in 

the environment certain phenomena or conditions which have 

determined the growth of the religious feeling, and so are obliged 

to admit that it is as normal as any other faculty. Add to which 

that as, on the hypothesis of a development of lower forms into 

higher the end towards which the progressive changes tend, must be 

adaptation to the requirements of life, we are also forced to infer 

that this feeling is in some way conducive to human welfare. Thus 

both alternatives contain the same ultimate implication. We must 

conclude that the religious sentiment is either directly created or 

is developed by the slow action of natural causes, and whichever 

conclusion we adopt requires us to treat the religious sentiment 

with respect.



One other consideration should not be overlooked  a consideration 

which students of Science more especially need to have pointed out. 

Occupied as such are with established truths, and accustomed to 

regard things not already known as things to be hereafter 

discovered, they are liable to forget that information, however 

extensive it may become, can never satisfy inquiry. Positive 

knowledge does not, and never can, fill the whole region of possible 

thought. At the uttermost reach of discovery there arises, and must 

ever arise, the question  What lies beyond? As it is impossible to 

think of a limit to space so as to exclude the idea of space lying 

outside that limit. so we cannot conceive of any explanation 

profound enough to exclude the question  What is the explanation of 

that explanation? Regarding Science as a gradually increasing 

sphere, we may say that every addition to its surface does not bring 

it into wider contact with surrounding nescience. There must ever 

remain therefore two antithetical modes of mental action. Throughout 

all future time, as now, the human mind may occupy itself, not only 

with ascertained phenomena and their relations, but also with that 

unascertained something which phenomena and their relations imply. 

Hence if knowledge cannot monopolize consciousness  if it must 

always continue possible for the mind to dwell upon that which 

transcends knowledge, then there can never cease to be a place for 

something of the nature of Religion; since Religion under all its 

forms is distinguished from everything else in this, that its 

subject matter passes the sphere of the intellect.



Thus, however untenable may be the existing religious creeds, 

however gross the absurdities associated with them, however 

irrational the arguments set forth in their defence, we must not 

ignore the verity which in all likelihood lies hidden within them. 

the general probability that widely-spread beliefs are not 

absolutely baseless, is in this case enforced by a further 

probability due to the omnipresence of the beliefs. In the existence 

of a religious sentiment, whatever be its origin, we have a second 

evidence of great significance. And as in that nescience which must 

ever remain the antithesis to science, there is a sphere for the 

exercise of this sentiment, we find a third general fact of like 

implication. We may be sure, therefore, that religions, even though 

no one of them be actually true, are yet all adumbrations of a 

truth.



5. As, to the religious, it will seem absurd to set forth any 

justification for Religion, so, to the scientific, it will seem 

absurd to defend Science. Yet to do the last is certainly as needful 

as to do the first. If there exist some who, in contempt for its 

follies and disgust at its corruptions, have contracted towards 

Religion a repugnance which makes them overlook the fundamental 

truth contained in it; so, there are others offended to such a 

degree by the destructive criticisms men of science make on the 

religious tenets they hold essential, that they have acquired a 

strong prejudice against Science at large. they are not prepared 

with any reasons for their dislike. they have simply a remembrance 

of the rude shakes which Science has given to many of their 

cherished convictions, and a suspicion that it may eventually uproot 

all they regard as sacred; and hence it produces in them an 

inarticulate dread.



What is Science? To see the absurdity of the prejudice against it, 

we need only remark that Science is simply a higher development of 

common knowledge; and that if Science is repudiated, all knowledge 

must be repudiated along with it. The extremest bigot will not 

suspect any harm in the observation that the Sun rises earlier and 

sets later in summer than in winter. but will rather consider such 

an observation as a useful aid in fulfilling the duties of life. 

Well, Astronomy is an organized body of kindred observations, made 

with greater nicety, extended to a larger number of objects, and so 

analyzed as to disclose the real arrangements of the heavens and to 

dispel our false conceptions of them. That iron will rust in water, 

that wood will burn, that long kept viands become putrid, the most 

timid sectarian will teach without alarm, as things useful to be 

known. But these are chemical truths: Chemistry is a systematized 

collection of such facts, ascertained with precision, and so 

classified and generalized as to enable us to say with certainty, 

concerning each simple or compound substance, what change will occur 

in it under given conditions. And thus is it with all the sciences. 

They severally germinate out of the experiences of daily life. 

insensibly as they grow they draw in remoter, more numerous, and 

more complex experiences; and among these, they ascertain laws of 

dependence like those which make up our knowledge of the most 

familiar objects. Nowhere is it possible to draw a line and say  

here Science begins. And as it is the function of common observation 

to serve for the guidance of conduct; so, too, is the guidance of 

conduct the office of the most recondite and abstract results of 

Science. Through the countless industrial processes and the various 

modes of locomotion it has given to us, Physics regulates more 

completely our social life than does his acquaintance with the 

properties of surrounding bodies regulate the life of the savage. 

All Science is prevision; and all prevision ultimately helps us in 

greater or less degree to achieve the good and avoid the bad. Thus 

being one in origin and function, the simplest forms of cognition 

and the most complex must be dealt with alike. We are bound in 

consistency to receive the widest knowledge our faculties can reach, 

or to reject along with it that narrow knowledge possessed by all.



To ask the question which more immediately concerns our argument  

whether Science is substantially true?  is much like asking whether 

the Sun gives light. And it is because they are conscious how 

undeniably valid are most of its propositions, that the theological 

party regard Science with so much secret alarm. They know that 

during the five thousand years of its growth, some of its larger 

divisions  mathematics, physics, astronomy  have been subject to 

the rigorous criticism of successive generations, and have 

notwithstanding become ever more firmly established. They know that, 

unlike many of their own doctrines, which were once universally 

received but have age by age been more widely doubted, the doctrines 

of Science, at first confined to a few scattered inquirers, have 

been slowly growing into general acceptance, and are now in great 

part admitted as beyond dispute. They know that scientific men 

throughout the world subject one another's results to searching 

examination; and that error is mercilessly exposed and rejected as 

soon as discovered. And, finally they know that still more 

conclusive evidence is furnished by the daily verification of 

scientific predictions, and by the never-ceasing triumphs of those 

arts which Science guides.



To regard with alienation that which has such high credentials is a 

folly. Though in the tone which many of the scientific adopt towards 

them, the defenders of Religion may find some excuse for this 

alienation, yet the excuse is an insufficient one. On the side of 

Science, as on their own side, they must admit that short-comings in 

the advocates do not tell essentially against that which is 

advocated. Science must be judged by itself; and so judged, only the 

most perverted intellect can fail to see that it is worthy of all 

reverence. Be there or be there not any other revelation, we have a 

veritable revelation in Science  a continuous disclosure of the 

established order of the Universe. This disclosure it is the duty of 

every one to verify as far as in him lies; and having verified, to 

receive with all humility.



6. Thus there must be right on both sides of this great 

controversy. Religion, everywhere present as a warp running through 

the weft of human history, expresses some eternal fact; while 

Science is an organized body of truths, ever growing, and ever being 

purified from errors. And if both have bases in the reality of 

things, then between them there must be a fundamental harmony. It is 

impossible that there should be two orders of truth in absolute and 

everlasting opposition. Only in pursuance of some Manichean 

hypothesis, which among ourselves no one dares openly avow, is such 

a supposition even conceivable. That Religion is divine and Science 

diabolical, is a proposition which, though implied in many a 

clerical declamation, not the most vehement fanatic can bring 

himself distinctly to assert. And whoever does not assert this, must 

admit that under their seeming antagonism lies hidden an entire 

agreement.



Each side, therefore, has to recognize the claims of the other as 

representing truths which are not to be ignored. It behoves each to 

strive to understand the other, with the conviction that the other 

has something worthy to be understood; and with the conviction that 

when mutually recognized this something will be the basis of a 

reconciliation.



How to find this something thus becomes the problem we should 

perseveringly try to solve. Not to reconcile them in any makeshift 

way, but to establish a real and permanent peace. The thing we have 

to seek out is that ultimate truth which both will avow with 

absolute sincerity  with not the remotest mental reservation. There 

shall be no concession  no yielding on either side of something 

that will by-and-by be reasserted; but the common ground on which 

they meet shall be one which each will maintain for itself. We have 

to discover some fundamental verity which Religion will assert, with 

all possible emphasis, in the absence of Science; and which Science, 

with all possible emphasis, will assert in the absence of Religion. 

We must look for a conception which combines the conclusions of both 

 must see how Science and Religion express opposite sides of the 

same fact: the one its near or visible side, and the other its 

remote or invisible side.



Already in the foregoing pages the method of seeking such a 

reconciliation has been vaguely shadowed forth. Before proceeding, 

however, it will be well to treat the question of method more 

definitely. To find that truth in which Religion and Science 

coalesce, we must know in what direction to look for it, and what 

kind of truth it is likely to be.



7. Only in some highly abstract proposition can Religion and 

Science find a common ground. Neither such dogmas as those of the 

trinitarian and unitarian, nor any such idea as that of 

propitiation, common though it may be to all religions, can serve as 

the desired basis of agreement; for Science cannot recognize beliefs 

like these: they lie beyond its sphere. Not only, as we have 

inferred, is the essential truth contained in Religion that most 

abstract element pervading all its forms, but, as we here see, this 

most abstract element is the only one in which Religion is likely to 

agree with Science.



Similarly if we begin at the other end, and inquire what scientific 

truth can unite Science with Religion. Religion can take no 

cognizance of special scientific doctrines; any more than Science 

can take cognizance of special religious doctrines. The truth which 

Science asserts and Religion indorses cannot be one furnished by 

mathematics; nor can it be a physical truth; nor can it be a truth 

in chemistry. No generalization of the phenomena of space, of time, 

of matter, or of force, can become a Religious conception. Such a 

conception, if it anywhere exists in Science, must be more general 

than any of these  must be one underlying all of them.



Assuming, then, that since these two great realities are 

constituents of the same mind, and respond to different aspects of 

the same Universe, there must be a fundamental harmony between them, 

we see good reason to conclude that the most abstract truth 

contained in Religion and the most abstract truth contained in 

Science must be the one in which the two coalesce. The largest fact 

to be found within our mental range must be the one of which we are 

in search. Uniting these positive and negative poles of human 

thought, it must be the ultimate fact in our intelligence.



8. Before proceeding let me bespeak a little patience. The next 

three chapters, setting out from different points and converging to 

the same conclusion, will be unattractive. Students of philosophy 

will find in them much that is familiar and to most of those who are 

unacquainted with modern metaphysics, their reasonings may prove 

difficult to follow.



Our argument, however, cannot dispense with these chapters, and the 

greatness of the question at issue justifies even a heavier tax on 

the reader's attention. Though it affects us little in a direct way, 

the view we arrive at must indirectly affect us all in our relations 

 must determine Our conceptions of the Universe, of Life, of Human 

Nature  must influence our ideas of right and wrong, and therefore 

modify our conduct. To reach that point of view from which the 

seeming discordance of Religion and Science disappears, and the two 

merge into one, must surely be worth an effort.



Here ending preliminaries let us now address ourselves to this all-

important inquiry.



                        Chapter 2



                 Ultimate Religious Ideas



9. When, on the sea-shore, we note how the hulls of distant vessels 

are hidden below the horizon, and how, of still remoter vessels, 

only the uppermost sails are visible, we may conceive with tolerable 

clearness the slight curvature of that portion of the sea's surface 

which lies before us. But when we try to follow out in imagination 

this curved surface as it actually exists, slowly bending round 

until all its meridians meet in a point eight thousand miles below 

our feet, we find ourselves utterly baffled. We cannot conceive in 

its real form and magnitude even that small segment of our globe 

which extends a hundred miles on every side of us, much less the 

globe as a whole. The piece of rock on which we stand can be 

mentally represented with something like completeness: we are able 

to think of its top, its sides, and its under surface at the same 

time, or so nearly at the same time that they seem present in 

consciousness together; and so we can form what we call a conception 

of the rock. But to do the like with the Earth is impossible. If 

even to imagine the antipodes as at that distant place in space 

which it actually occupies, is beyond our power much more beyond our 

power must it be at the same time to imagine all other remote points 

on the Earth's surface as in their actual places. Yet we commonly 

speak as though we had an idea of the Earth  as though we could 

think of it in the same way that we think of minor objects.



What conception, then, do we form of it? the reader may ask. That 

its name calls up in us some state of consciousness is 

unquestionable; and if this state of consciousness is not a 

conception, properly so called, what is it? The answer seems to be 

this:  We have learnt by indirect methods that the Earth is a 

sphere; we have formed models approximately representing its shape 

and the distribution of its parts; usually when the Earth is 

referred to, we either think of an indefinitely extended mass 

beneath our feet, or else, leaving out the actual Earth, we think of 

a body like a terrestrial globe; but when we seek to imagine the 

Earth as it really is, we join these two ideas as well as we can  

such perception as our eyes give us of the Earth's surface we couple 

with the conception of a sphere. And thus we form of the Earth not a 

conception properly so called, but only a symbolic conception.*



<* Those who may have before met with this term, will perceive that 

it is here used in quite a different sense.>



A large proportion of our conceptions, including all those of much 

generality, are of this order. Great magnitudes, great durations, 

great numbers, are none of them actually conceived, but are all of 

them conceived more or less symbolically; and so, too, are all those 

classes of objects of which we predicate some common fact. When 

mention is made of any individual man, a tolerably complete idea of 

him is formed. If the family he belongs to be spoken of, probably 

but a part of it will be represented in thought: under the necessity 

of attending to that which is said about the family, we realize in 

imagination only its most important or familiar members, and pass 

over the rest with a nascent consciousness which we know could, if 

requisite, be made complete. Should something be remarked of the 

class, say farmers, to which this family belongs, we neither 

enumerate in thought all the individuals contained in the class, nor 

believe that we could do so if required; but we are content with 

taking some few samples of it, and remembering that these could be 

indefinitely multiplied. Supposing the subject of which something is 

predicated be Englishmen, the answering state of consciousness is a 

still more inadequate representative. Yet more remote is the 

likeness of the thought to the thing, if reference be made to 

Europeans or to human beings. And when we come to propositions 

concerning the mammalia, or conceding the whole of the vertebrata, 

or concerning all organic beings, the unlikenesses of our 

conceptions to the realities become extreme.



Throughout which series of instances we see that as the number of 

objects grouped together in thought increases, the concept, formed 

of a few typical samples joined with the notion of multiplicity, 

becomes more and more a mere symbol; not only because it gradually 

ceases to represent the size of the group, but also because, as the 

group grows more heterogeneous, the typical samples thought of are 

less like the average objects which the group contains. 



This formation of symbolic conceptions, which inevitably arises as 

we pass from small and concrete objects to large and to discrete 

ones, is mostly a useful, and indeed necessary, process. When, 

instead of things whose attributes can be tolerably well united in a 

single state of consciousness, we have to deal with things whose 

attributes are too vast or numerous to be so united, we must either 

drop in thought part of their attributes, or else not think of them 

at all  either form a more or less symbolic conception, or no 

conception. We must predicate nothing of objects too great or too 

multitudinous to be mentally represented, or we must make our 

predications by the help of extremely inadequate representations of 

them.



But while by doing this we are enabled to form general propositions, 

and so to reach general conclusions, we are perpetually led into 

danger, and very often into error. We mistake our symbolic 

conceptions for real ones; and so are betrayed into countless false 

inferences. Not only is it that in proportion as the concept we form 

of any thing, or class of things, misrepresents the reality, we are 

apt to be wrong in any assertion we make respecting the reality; but 

it is that we are led to suppose we have truly conceived many things 

which we have conceived only in this fictitious way; and then to 

confound with these some things which cannot be conceived in any 

way. How we fall into this error almost unavoidably it will be 

needful here to observe.



From objects fully representable, to those of which we cannot form 

even approximate representations, there is an insensible transition. 

Between a pebble and the entire Earth a series of magnitudes might 

be introduced, severally differing from adjacent ones so slightly 

that it would be impossible to say at what point in the series our 

conceptions of them became inadequate. Similarly, there is a gradual 

progression from those groups of a few individuals which we can 

think of as groups with tolerable completeness, to those larger and 

larger groups of which we can form nothing like true ideas. Thus we 

pass from actual conceptions to symbolic ones by infinitesimal 

steps. Note next that we are led to deal with our symbolic 

conceptions as though they were actual ones, not only because we 

cannot clearly separate the two, but also because, in most cases, 

the first serve our purposes nearly or quite as well as the last  

are simply the abbreviated signs we substitute for those more 

elaborate signs which are our equivalents for real objects. Those 

imperfect representations of ordinary things which we make in 

thinking, we know can be developed into adequate ones if needful. 

Those concepts of larger magnitudes and more extensive classes which 

we cannot make adequate, we still find can be verified by some 

indirect process of measurement or enumeration. And even in the case 

of such an utterly inconceivable object as the Solar System, we yet, 

through the fulfilment of predictions founded on our symbolic 

conception of it, gain the conviction that this stands for an actual 

existence, and, in a sense, truly expresses certain of its 

constituent relations. So that having learnt by long experience that 

our symbolic conceptions can, if needful, be verified, we are led to 

accept them without verification. Thus we open the door to some 

which profess to stand for known things, but which really stand for 

things that cannot be known in any way.



The implication is clear. When our symbolic conceptions are such 

that no cumulative or indirect processes of thought can enable us to 

ascertain that there are corresponding actualities, nor any 

fulfilled predictions be assigned in justification of them, then 

they are altogether vicious and illusive, and in no way 

distinguishable from pure fictions.



10. And now to consider the bearings of this general truth on our 

immediate topic  Ultimate Religious Ideas.



To the primitive man sometimes happen things which are out of the 

ordinary course-diseases, storms, earth-quakes, echoes, eclipses. 

From dreams arises the idea of a wandering double; whence follows 

the belief that the double, departing permanently at death, is then 

a ghost. Ghosts thus become assignable causes for strange 

occurrences. The greater ghosts are presently supposed to have 

extended spheres of action. As men grow intelligent the conceptions 

of these minor invisible agencies merge into the conception of a 

universal invisible agency; and there result hypotheses concerning 

the origin, not of special incidents only, but of things in general.



A critical examination, however will prove not only that no current 

hypothesis is tenable, but also that no tenable hypothesis can be 

framed.



11. Respecting the origin of the Universe three verbally 

intelligible suppositions may be made. We may assert that it is 

self-existent; or that it is self-created; or that it is created by 

an external agency. Which of these suppositions is most credible it 

is not needful here to inquire. The deeper question, into which this 

finally merges, is, whether any one of them is even conceivable in 

the true sense of the word. Let us successively test them.



When we speak of a man as self-supporting, of an apparatus as self-

acting, or of a tree as self-developed, our expressions, however 

inexact, stand for things that can be figured in thought with 

tolerable completeness. Our conception of the self-development of a 

tree is doubtless symbolic. But though we cannot really represent in 

consciousness the. entire series of complex changes through which 

the tree passes, yet we can thus represent the leading traits of the 

series; and general experience teaches us that by long continued 

observation we could gain the power of more fully representing it. 

That is, we know that our symbolic conception of self-development 

can be expanded into something like a real conception; and that it 

expresses, however rudely, an actual process. But when we speak of 

self-existence and, helped by the above analogies, form some vague 

symbolic conception of it, we delude ourselves in supposing that 

this symbolic conception is of the same order as the others. On 

joining the word self to the word existence, the force of 

association makes us believe we have a thought like that suggested 

by the compound word self-acting. An endeavour to expand this 

symbolic conception, however, will undeceive us. In the first place, 

it is clear that by self-existence we especially mean an existence 

independent of any other  not produced by any other: the assertion 

of self-existence is an indirect denial of creation. In thus 

excluding the idea of any antecedent cause, we necessarily exclude 

the idea of a beginning. for to admit that there was a time when the 

existence had not commenced, is to admit that its commencement was 

determined by something, or was caused, which is a contradiction. 

Self-existence, therefore, necessarily means existence without a 

beginning; and to form a conception of self-existence is to form a 

conception of existence without a beginning. Now by no mental effort 

can we do this. To conceive existence through infinite past-time, 

implies the conception of infinite past-time, which is an 

impossibility. To this let us add that even were self-existence 

conceivable, it would not be an explanation of the Universe. No one 

will say that the existence of an object at the present moment is 

made easier to understand by the discovery that it existed an hour 

ago, or a day ago, or a year ago; and if its existence now is not 

made more comprehensible by knowledge of its existence during some 

previous finite period, then no knowledge of it during many such 

finite periods, even could we extend them to an infinite period, 

would make it more comprehensible. Thus the Atheistic theory is not 

only absolutely unthinkable, but, even were it thinkable, would not 

be a solution. The assertion that the Universe is self-existent does 

not really carry us a step beyond the cognition of its present 

existence; and so leaves us with a mere re-statement of the mystery. 



The hypothesis of self-creation, which practically amounts to what 

is called Pantheism, is similarly incapable of being represented in 

thought. Certain phenomena, such as the precipitation of invisible 

vapour into cloud, aid us in forming a symbolic conception of a 

self-evolved Universe; and there are not wanting indications in the 

Heavens, and on the Earth, which help us in giving to this 

conception some distinctness. But while the succession of phases 

through which the visible Universe has passed in reaching its 

present form, may perhaps be comprehended as in a sense self-

determined; yet the impossibility of expanding our symbolic 

conception of self-creation into a real conception, remains as 

complete as ever. Really to conceive self-creation, is to conceive 

potential existence passing into actual existence by some inherent 

necessity, which we cannot. We cannot form any idea of a potential 

existence of the Universe, as distinguished from its actual 

existence. If represented in thought at all, potential existence 

must be represented as something, that is, as an actual existence: 

to suppose that it can be represented as nothing involves two 

absurdities  that nothing is more than a negation, and can be 

positively represented in thought, and that one nothing is 

distinguished from all other nothings by its power to develop into 

something. Nor is this all. We have no state of consciousness 

answering to the words an inherent necessity by which potential 

existence became actual existence. To render them into thought, 

existence, having for an indefinite period remained in one form, 

must be conceived as passing without any external impulse into 

another form; and this involves the idea of a change without a cause 

 a thing of which no idea is possible. Thus the terms of this 

hypothesis do not stand for real thoughts, but merely suggest the 

vaguest symbols not admitting of any interpretation. Moreover, even 

were potential existence conceivable as a different thing from 

actual existence, and could the transition from the one to the other 

be mentally realized as self-determined, we should still be no 

forwarder: the problem would simply be removed a step back. For 

whence the potential existence? This would just as much require 

accounting for as actual existence, and just the same difficulties 

would meet us. The self-existence of a potential Universe is no more 

conceivable than the self-existence of the actual Universe. The 

self-creation of a potential Universe would involve over again the 

difficulties just stated  would imply behind this potential 

universe a more remote potentiality, and so on in an infinite 

series, leaving us at last no forwarder than at first. While to 

assign an externa1 agency as its origin, would be to introduce the 

notion of a potential Universe for no purpose whatever.



There remains the commonly  received or theistic hypothesis  

creation by external agency. Alike in the rudest creeds and in the 

cosmogony long current among ourselves, it is assumed that the 

Heavens and the Earth were made somewhat after the manner in which a 

workman makes a piece of furniture. And this is the assumption not 

only of theologians but of most philosophers. Equally in the 

writings of Plato and in those of not a few living men of science, 

we find it assumed that there is an analogy between the process of 

creation and the process of manufacture. Now not only is this 

conception one which cannot by any cumulative process of thought, or 

the fulfilment of predictions based on it, be shown to answer to 

anything actual; but it cannot be mentally realized, even when all 

its assumptions are granted. Though the proceedings of a human 

artificer may vaguely symbolize a method after which the Universe 

might be shaped, yet imagination of this method does not help us to 

solve the ultimate problem; namely, the origin of the materials of 

which the Universe consists. The artizan does not make the iron, 

wood, or stone, he uses, but merely fashions and combines them. If 

we suppose suns, and planets, and satellites, and all they contain 

to have been similarly formed by a "Great Artificer," we suppose 

merely that certain pre-existing elements were thus put into their 

present arrangement. But whence the pre-existing elements? The 

production of matter out of nothing is the real mystery which 

neither this simile nor any other enables us to conceive; and a 

simile which does not enable us to conceive this may as well be 

dispensed with. Still more manifest becomes the insufficiency of 

this theory of things, when we turn from material objects to that 

which contains them  when instead of matter we contemplate space. 

Did there exist nothing but an immeasurable void, explanation would 

be needed as much as it is now. There would still arise the question 

 how came it so? If the theory of creation by external agency were 

an adequate one, it would supply an answer; and its answer would be 

 space was made in the same manner that matter was made. But the 

impossibility of conceiving this is so manifest that no one dares to 

assert it. For if space was created it must have been previously 

non-existent. The non-existence of space cannot, however, by any 

mental effort be imagined. And if the non-existence of space is 

absolutely inconceivable, then, necessarily, its creation is 

absolutely inconceivable. Lastly, even supposing that the genesis of 

the Universe could really be represented in thought as due to an 

external agency, the mystery would be as great as ever; for there 

would still arise the question  how came there to be an external 

agency? To account for this only the same three hypotheses are 

possible  self-existence, self-creation, and creation by external 

agency. Of these the last is useless: it commits us to an infinite 

series of such agencies, and even then leaves us where we were. By 

the second we are led into the same predicament; since, as already 

shown, self-creation implies an infinite series of potential 

existences. We are obliged, therefore, to fall back on the first, 

which is the one commonly accepted and commonly supposed to be 

satisfactory. Those who cannot conceive a self-existent Universe, 

and therefore assume a creator as the source of the Universe, take 

for granted that they can conceive a self-existent Creator. The 

mystery which they recognize in this great fact surrounding them on 

every side, they transfer to an alleged source of this great fact, 

and then suppose that they have solved the mystery. But they delude 

themselves. As was proved at the outset of the argument, self-

existence is inconceivable; and this holds true whatever be the 

nature of the object of which it is predicated. Whoever agrees that 

the atheistic hypothesis is untenable because it involves the 

impossible idea of self-existence, must perforce admit that the 

theistic hypothesis is untenable if it contains the same impossible 

idea.



Thus these three different suppositions, verbally intelligible 

though they are, and severally seeming to their respective adherents 

quite rational, turn out, when critically examined, to be literally 

unthinkable. It is not a question of probability, or credibility, 

but of conceivability. Experiment proves that the elements of these 

hypotheses cannot even be put together in consciousness; and we can 

entertain them only as we entertain such pseud-ideas as a square 

fluid and a moral substance  only by abstaining from the endeavour 

to render them into actual thoughts. Or, reverting to our original 

mode of statement, we may say that they severally involve symbolic 

conceptions of the illegitimate and illusive kind. Differing so 

widely as they seem to do, the atheistic, the pantheistic, and the 

theistic hypotheses contain the same ultimate element. It is 

impossible to avoid making the assumption of self-existence 

somewhere; and whether that assumption be made nakedly or under 

complicated disguises, it is equally vicious, equally unthinkable. 

Be it a fragment of matter, or some fancied potential form of 

matter, or some more remote and still less imaginable mode of being, 

our conception of its self-existence can be framed only by joining 

with it the notion of unlimited duration through past time. And as 

unlimited duration is inconceivable, all those formal ideas into 

which it enters are inconceivable; and indeed, if such an expression 

is allowable, are the more inconceivable in proportion as the other 

elements of the ideas are indefinite. So that in fact, impossible as 

it is to think of the actual Universe as self-existing, we do but 

multiply impossibilities of thought by every attempt we make to 

explain its existence. 



12. If from the origin of the Universe we turn to its nature, the 

like insurmountable difficulties rise up before us on all sides  or 

rather, the same difficulties under new aspects. We find ourselves 

obliged to make certain assumptions; and yet we find these 

assumptions cannot be represented in thought.



When we inquire what is the meaning of the effects produced on our 

senses  when we ask how there come to be in our consciousness 

impressions of sounds, of colours, of tastes, and of those various 

attributes we ascribe to bodies, we are compelled to regard them as 

the effects of some cause. We may stop short in the belief that this 

cause is what we call matter. Or we may conclude, as some do, that 

matter is only a certain mode of manifestation of spirit, which is 

therefore the true cause. Or, regarding matter and spirit as 

proximate agencies, we may ascribe the changes wrought in our 

consciousness to immediate divine power. But be the cause we assign 

what it may, we are obliged to suppose some cause. And we are 

obliged not only to suppose some cause, but also a first cause. The 

matter, or spirit or other agent producing these impressions on us, 

must either be the first cause of them or not. If it is the first 

cause the conclusion is reached. If it is not the first cause, then 

by implication there must be a cause behind it, which thus becomes 

the real cause of the effect. Manifestly however complicated the 

assumptions, the same conclusion must be reached. We cannot ask how 

the changes in our consciousness are caused, without inevitably 

committing ourselves to the hypothesis of a First Cause.



But now if we ask what is the nature of this First Cause, we are 

driven by an inexorable logic to certain further conclusions. Is the 

First Cause finite or infinite? If we say finite we involve 

ourselves in a dilemma. To think of the First Cause as finite, is to 

think of it as limited. To think of it as limited implies a 

consciousness of something beyond its limits: it is impossible to 

conceive a thing as bounded without assuming a region surrounding 

its boundaries. What now must we say of this region? If the First 

Cause is limited, and there consequently lies something outside of 

it, this something must have no First Cause  must be uncaused. But 

if we admit that there can be something uncaused, there is no reason 

to assume a cause for anything. If beyond that finite region over 

which the First Cause extends, there lies a region, which we are 

compelled to regard as infinite, over which it does not extend  if 

we admit that there is an infinite uncaused surrounding the finite 

caused; we tacitly abandon the hypothesis of causation altogether. 

Thus it is impossible to consider the First Cause as finite. But if 

it cannot be finite it must be infinite.



Another inference conceding the First Cause is equally necessary. It 

must be independent. If it is dependent it cannot be the First 

Cause; for that must be the First Cause on which it depends. It is 

not enough to say that it is partially independent; since this 

implies some necessity which determines its partial dependence, and 

this necessity, be it what it may, must be a higher cause, or the 

true First Cause, which is a contradiction. But to think of the 

First Cause as totally independent, is to think of it as that which 

exists in the absence of all other existence; seeing that if the 

presence of any other existence is necessary, it must be partially 

dependent on that other existence, and so cannot be the First Cause. 

Not only however must the First Cause be a form of being which has 

no necessary relation to any other form of being, but it can have no 

necessary relation within itself. There can be nothing in it which 

determines change, and yet nothing which prevents change. For if it 

contains something which imposes such necessities or restraints, 

this something must be a cause higher than the First Cause, which is 

absurd. Thus the First Cause must be in every sense perfect, 

complete, total: including within itself all power and transcending 

all law. Or to use the established word, it must be Absolute.



Certain conclusions respecting the nature of the Universe, thus seem 

unavoidable. In our search after causes, we discover no resting 

place until we arrive at a First Cause; and we have no alternative 

but to regard this First Cause as Infinite and Absolute. These are 

inferences forced on us by arguments from which there appears no 

escape. Nevertheless neither arguments nor inferences have more than 

nominal values. It might easily be shown that the materials of which 

the arguments are built, equally with the conclusions based on them, 

are merely symbolic conceptions of the illegitimate order. Instead, 

however, of repeating the disproof used above, it will be well to 

pursue another method; showing the fallacy of these conclusions by 

disclosing their mutual contradictions.



Here I cannot do better than avail myself of the demonstration which 

Mr. Mansel, carrying out in detail the doctrine of Sir William 

Hamilton, has given in his Limits of Religious Thought. And I gladly 

do this, not only because his mode of presentation cannot be 

improved, but also because, writing as he does in defence of the 

current Theology, his reasonings will be the more acceptable to the 

majority of readers.



13. Having given preliminary definitions of the First Cause, of the 

Infinite, and of the Absolute, Mr. Mansel says:  



"But these three conceptions, the Cause, the Absolute, the Infinite, 

all equally indispensable, do they not imply contradiction to each 

other, when viewed in conjunction, as attributes of one and the same 

Being? A Cause cannot, as such, be absolute: the Absolute cannot, as 

such, be a cause. The cause, as such, exists only in relation to its 

effect: the cause is a cause of the effect; the effect is an effect 

of the cause. On the other hand, the conception of the Absolute 

implies a possible existence out of all relation. We attempt to 

escape from this apparent contradiction, by introducing the idea of 

succession in time. The Absolute exists first by itself, and 

afterwards becomes a Cause. But here we are checked by the third 

conception, that of the Infinite. How can the Infinite become that 

which it was not from the first? If Causation is a possible mode of 

existence, that which exists without causing is not infinite; that 

which becomes a cause has passed beyond its former limits. * * *



"Supposing the Absolute to become a cause, it will follow that it 

operates by means of freewill and consciousness. For a necessary 

cause cannot be conceived as absolute and infinite. If necessitated 

by something beyond itself, it is thereby limited by a superior 

power; and if necessitated by itself, it has in its own nature a 

necessary relation to its effect. The act of causation must 

therefore be voluntary; and volition is only possible in a conscious 

being. But consciousness again is only conceivable as a relation. 

There must be a conscious subject, and an object of which he is 

conscious. The subject is a subject to the object; the object is an 

object to the subject; and neither can exist by itself as the 

absolute. This difficulty, again, may be for the moment evaded, by 

distinguishing between the absolute as related to another and the 

absolute as related to itself. The Absolute, it may be said, may 

possibly be conscious, provided it is only conscious of itself. But 

this alternative is, in ultimate analysis, no less self-destructive 

than the other. For the object of consciousness, whether a mode of 

the Subject's existence or not, is either created in and by the act 

of consciousness, or has an existence independent of it. In the 

former case, the object depends upon the subject, and the subject 

alone is the true absolute. In the latter case, the subject depends 

upon the object, and the object alone is the true absolute. Or if we 

attempt a third hypothesis, and maintain that each exists 

independently of the other, we have no absolute at all, but only a 

pair of relatives; for coexistence, whether in consciousness or not, 

is itself a relation.



"The corollary from this reasoning is obvious. Not only is the 

Absolute, as conceived, incapable of a necessary relation to 

anything else but it is also incapable of containing, by the 

constitution of its own nature, an essential relation within itself; 

as a whole, for instance, composed of parts, or as a substance 

consisting of attributes, or as a conscious subject in antithesis to 

an object. For if there is in the absolute any principle of unity, 

distinct from the mere accumulation of parts or attributes, this 

principle alone is the true absolute. If, on the other hand, there 

is no such principle, then there is no absolute at all, but only a 

plurality of relatives. The almost unanimous voice of philosophy, in 

pronouncing that the absolute is both one and simple, must be 

accepted as the voice of reason also, so far as reason has any voice 

in the matter. But this absolute unity, as indifferent and 

containing no attributes, can neither be distinguished from the 

multiplicity of finite beings by any characteristic feature, nor be 

identified with them in their multiplicity. Thus we are landed in an 

inextricable dilemma. The Absolute cannot be conceived as conscious, 

neither can it be conceived as unconscious; it cannot be conceived 

as complex, neither can it be conceived as simple: it cannot be 

conceived by difference, neither can it be conceived by the absence 

of difference: it cannot be identified with the universe, neither 

can it be distinguished from it. The One and the Many, regarded as 

the beginning of existence, are thus alike incomprehensible.



"The fundamental conceptions of Rational Theology being thus self-

destructive, we may naturally expect to find the same antagonism 

manifested in their special applications. * * * How, for example. 

Can Infinite Power be able to do all things, and yet Infinite 

Goodness be unable to do evil? How can Infinite Justice exact the 

utmost penalty for every sin, and yet Infinite Mercy pardon the 

sinner? How can Infinite Wisdom know all that is to come, and yet 

Infinite Freedom be at liberty to do or to forbear? How is the 

existence of Evil compatible with that of an infinitely perfect 

Being; for if he wills it, he is not infinitely good; and if he will 

it not, his will is thwarted and his sphere of action limited? * * *



"Let us, however, suppose for an instant that these difficulties are 

surmounted, and the existence of the Absolute securely established 

on the testimony of reason. Still we have not succeeded in 

reconciling this idea with that of a Cause: we have done nothing 

towards explaining how the absolute can give rise to the relative, 

the infinite to the finite. If the condition of causal activity is a 

higher state than that of quiescence, the Absolute, whether acting 

voluntarily or involuntarily, has passed from a condition of 

comparative imperfection to one of comparative perfection; and 

therefore was not originally perfect. If the state of activity is an 

inferior state to that of quiescence, the Absolute, in becoming a 

cause, has lost its original perfection. There remains only the 

supposition that the two states are equal, and the act of creation 

one of complete indifference. But this supposition annihilates the 

unity of the absolute, or it annihilates itself. If the act of 

creation is real, and yet indifferent, we must admit the possibility 

of two conceptions of the absolute, the one as productive, the other 

as non-productive. If the act is not real, the supposition itself 

vanishes. * * * 



"Again, how can the relative be conceived as coming into being? If 

it is a distinct reality from the absolute, it must be conceived as 

passing from non-existence into existence. But to conceive an object 

as non-existent, is again a self-contradiction; for that which is 

conceived exists, as an object of thought, in and by that 

conception. We may abstain from thinking of an object at all; but, 

if we think of it, we cannot but think of it as existing. It is 

possible at one time not to think of an object at all, and at 

another to think of it as already in being; but to think of it in 

the act of becoming, in the progress from not being into being, is 

to think that which, in the very thought, annihilates itself. * * *



"To sum up briefly this portion of my argument. The conception of 

the Absolute and Infinite, from whatever side we view it, appears 

encompassed with contradictions. There is a contradiction in 

supposing such an object to exist, whether alone or in conjunction 

with others; and there is a contradiction in supposing it not to 

exist. There is a contradiction in conceiving it as one; and there 

is a contradiction in conceiving it as many. There is a 

contradiction in conceiving it as personal; and there is a 

contradiction in conceiving it as impersonal. It cannot, without 

contradiction, be represented as active; nor, without equal 

contradiction, be represented as inactive. It cannot be conceived as 

the sum of all existence; nor yet can it be conceived as a part only 

of that sum."



14. And now what is the bearing of these results on the question 

before us? Our examination of Ultimate Religious Ideas has been 

carried on with the view of making manifest some fundamental verity 

contained in them. Thus far, however, we have arrived at negative 

conclusions only. Passing over the consideration of credibility, and 

confining ourselves to that of conceivability we have seen that 

Atheism, Pantheism, and Theism, when rigorously analyzed, severally 

prove to be wholly unthinkable. Instead of disclosing a fundamental 

verity existing in each, our inquiry seems rather to have shown that 

there is no fundamental verity contained in any. To carry away this 

conclusion, however, would be a fatal error, as we shall shortly 

see.



Leaving out the accompanying code of conduct, which is a 

supplementary growth, a religious creed is definable as a theory of 

original causation. By the lowest savages the genesis of things is 

not inquired about: only strange appearances and actions raise the 

question of agency. But be it in the primitive Ghost-theory, which 

assumes a human personality behind each unusual phenomenon; be it in 

Polytheism, in which such personalities are partially generalized; 

be it in Monotheism, in which they are wholly generalized; or be it 

in Pantheism, in which the generalized personality becomes one with 

the phenomena; we equally find an hypothesis which is supposed to 

render the Universe comprehensible. Nay, even that which is regarded 

as the negation of all Religion  even positive Atheism  comes 

within the definition; for it, too, in asserting the self-existence 

of Space, Matter and Motion, propounds a theory from which it holds 

the facts to be deducible. Now every theory tacitly asserts two 

things: first, that there is something to be explained; second, that 

such and such is the explanation. Hence, however widely different 

speculators disagree in the solutions they give of the same problem, 

yet by implication they agree that there is a problem to be solved. 

Here then is an element which all creeds have in common. Religions 

diametrically opposed in their overt dogmas, are perfectly at one in 

the tacit conviction that the existence of the world with all it 

contains and all which surrounds it, is a mystery calling for 

interpretation. 



Thus we come within sight of that which we seek. In the last 

chapter, reasons were given for inferring that human beliefs in 

general, and especially the perennial ones, contain, under whatever 

disguises of error, some soul of truth; and here we have arrived at 

a truth underlying even the rudest beliefs. We saw, further, that 

this soul of truth is most likely some constituent common to 

conflicting opinions of the same order; and here we have a 

constituent contained by all religions. It was pointed out that this 

soul of truth would almost certainly be more abstract than any of 

the creeds involving it; and the truth above reached is one 

exceeding in abstractness the most abstract religious doctrines. In 

every respect, therefore, our conclusion answers to the 

requirements.



That this is the vital element in all religions is further shown by 

the fact that it is the element which not only survives every change 

but grows more distinct the more highly the religion is developed. 

Aboriginal creeds, pervaded by thoughts of personal agencies which 

are usually unseen, conceive these agencies under perfectly concrete 

and ordinary forms-class them with the visible agencies of men and 

animals; and so hide a vague perception of mystery in disguises as 

unmysterious as possible. Polytheistic conceptions in their advanced 

phases, represent the presiding personalities in idealized shapes, 

working in subtle ways, and communicating with men by omens or 

through inspired persons; that is, the ultimate causes of things are 

regarded as less familiar and comprehensible. The growth of a 

Monotheistic faith, accompanied as it is by lapse of those beliefs 

in which the divine nature is assimilated to the human in all its 

lower propensities, shows us a further step in the same direction; 

and however imperfectly this higher faith is at first held, we yet 

see in altars "to the unknown and unknowable God," and in the 

worship of a God who cannot by any searching be found out, that 

there is a clearer recognition of the inscrutableness of creation. 

Further developments of theology, ending in such assertions as that 

"a God understood would be no God at all," and "to think that God 

is, as we can think him to be, is blasphemy," exhibit this 

recognition still more distinctly. It pervades all the cultivated 

theology of the present day. So that while other elements of 

religious creeds one by one drop away, this remains and grows ever 

more manifest, and thus is shown to be the essential element.



Here, then, is a truth in which religions in general agree with one 

another, and with a philosophy antagonistic to their special dogmas. 

If Religion and Science are to be reconciled, the basis of 

reconciliation must be this deepest, widest, and most certain of all 

facts-that the Power which the Universe manifests to us is 

inscrutable.



                        Chapter 3



                 Ultimate Scientific Ideas



15. What are Space and Time? Two hypotheses are current respecting 

them: the one that they are objective, the other that they are 

subjective. Let us see what becomes of these hypotheses under 

analysis.



To say that Space and Time exist objectively, is to say that they 

are entities. The assertion that they are non-entities is self-

destructive: non-entities are non-existences; and to allege that 

non-existences exist objectively is a contradiction in terms. 

Moreover, to deny that Space and Time are things, and so by 

implication to call them nothings, involves the absurdity that there 

are two kinds of nothing. Neither can they be regarded as attributes 

of some entity. Not only is it impossible to conceive any entity of 

which they are attributes, but we cannot think of them as 

disappearing, even if everything else disappeared; whereas 

attributes necessarily disappear along with the entities they belong 

to. Thus as Space and Time can be neither non-entities nor the 

attributes of entities, we are compelled to consider them as 

entities. But while, on the hypothesis of their objectivity, Space 

and Time must be classed as things, we find that to represent them 

in thought as things is impossible. To be conceived at all, a thing 

must be conceived as having attributes. We can distinguish something 

from nothing, only by the power which the something has to act on 

our consciousness. The effects it mediately or immediately produces 

on our consciousness we attribute to it, and call its attributes; 

and the absence of these attributes is the absence of the terms in 

which the something is conceived, and involves the absence of a 

conception. What, now, are the attributes of Space? The only one 

which it is possible to think of as belonging to it is that of 

extension, and to credit it with this is to identify object and 

attribute. For extension and Space are convertible terms: by 

extension, as we ascribe it to surrounding objects, we mean 

occupancy of Space; and thus to say that Space is extended, is to 

say that Space occupies Space. How we are similarly unable to assign 

any attribute to Time, scarcely needs pointing out. Nor are Time and 

Space unthinkable as entities only from the absence of attributes. 

There is another peculiarity, familiar to most people, which equally 

excludes them from the category. All entities actually known as 

such, are limited; and even if we suppose ourselves either to know 

or to be able to conceive some unlimited entity, we necessarily in 

so classing it separate it from the class of limited entities. But 

of Space and Time we cannot assert either limitation or the absence 

of limitation. We find ourselves unable to form any mental image of 

unbounded Space; and yet are unable to imagine bounds beyond which 

there is no Space. Similarly at the other extreme: it is impossible 

to think of a limit to the divisibility of Space; yet equally 

impossible to think of its infinite divisibility. And, without 

stating them, it will be seen that we labour under like impotences 

in respect to Time. Thus we cannot conceive Space and Time as 

entities, and are equally disabled from conceiving them as either 

the attributes of entities or as non-entities. We are compelled to 

think of them as existing, and yet cannot bring them within those 

conditions under which existences are represented in thought.



Shall we then take refuge in the Kantian doctrine? Shall we say that 

Space and Time are forms of the intellect,  "a priori laws or 

conditions of the conscious mind?" To do this is to escape from 

great difficulties by rushing into greater. The proposition with 

which Kant's philosophy sets out, verbally intelligible though it 

is, cannot by any effort be rendered into thought  cannot be 

interpreted into an idea properly so called, but stands merely for a 

pseud-idea. In the first place, to assert that Space and Time are 

subjective conditions is, by implication, to assert that they are 

not objective realities: if the Space and Time present to our minds 

belong to the ego, then of necessity they do not belong to the non-

ego. Now it is impossible to think this. The very fact on which Kant 

bases his hypothesis  namely that our consciousness of Space and 

Time cannot be suppressed  testifies as much; for that 

consciousness of Space and Time which we cannot rid ourselves of, is 

the consciousness of them as existing objectively. It is useless to 

reply that such an inability must inevitably result if they are 

subjective forms. The question here is  What does consciousness 

directly testify? And the direct testimony of consciousness is, that 

Time and Space are not within the mind but without the mind; and so 

absolutely independent that we cannot conceive them to become non-

existent even supposing the mind to become non-existent. Besides 

being positively unthinkable in what it tacitly denies, the theory 

of Kant is equally unthinkable in what it openly affirms. It is not 

simply that we cannot combine the thought of Space with the thought 

of our own personality, and contemplate the one as a property of the 

other  though our inability to do this would prove the 

inconceivableness of the hypothesis  but it is that the hypothesis 

carries in itself the proof of its own inconceivableness. For if 

Space and Time are forms of intuition, they can never be intuited; 

since it is impossible for anything to be at once the form of 

intuition and the matter of intuition. That Space and Time are 

objects of consciousness, Kant emphatically asserts by saying that 

it is impossible to suppress the consciousness of them. How then, if 

they are objects of consciousness, can they at the same time be 

conditions of consciousness? If Space and Time are the conditions 

under which we think, then when we think of Space and Time 

themselves, our thoughts must be unconditioned; and if there can 

thus be unconditioned thoughts, what becomes of the theory?



It results, therefore, that Space and Time are wholly 

incomprehensible. The immediate knowledge which we seem to have of 

them proves, when examined, to be total ignorance. While our belief 

in their objective reality is insurmountable, we are unable to give 

any rational account of it. And to posit the alternative belief 

(possible to state but impossible to realize) is merely to multiply 

irrationalities.



16. Were it not for the necessities of the argument, it would be 

inexcusable to occupy the reader's attention with the threadbare, 

and yet unended, controversy respecting the divisibility of matter. 

Matter is either infinitely divisible or it is not: no third 

possibility can be named. Which of the alternatives shall we accept? 

If we say that Matter is infinitely divisible, we commit ourselves 

to a supposition not realizable in thought. We can bisect and re-

bisect a body, and continually repeating the act until we reduce its 

parts to a size no longer physically divisible, may then mentally 

continue the process. To do this, however, is not really to conceive 

the infinite divisibility of matter, but to form a symbolic 

conception not admitting of expansion into a real one, and not 

admitting of other verification. Really to conceive the infinite 

divisibility of matter, is mentally to follow out the divisions to 

infinity. and to do this would require infinite time. On the other 

hand, to assert that matter is not infinitely divisible, is to 

assert that it is reducible to parts which no power can divide; and 

this verbal supposition can no more be represented in thought than 

the other. For each of such ultimate parts, did they exist, must 

have an under and an upper surface, a right and a left side, like 

any larger fragment. Now it is impossible to imagine its sides so 

near that no plane of section can be conceived between them; and 

however great be the assumed force of cohesion, it is impossible to 

shut out the idea of a greater force capable of overcoming it. So 

that to human intelligence the one hypothesis is no more acceptable 

than the other; and yet the conclusion that one or other must agree 

with the fact, seems to human intelligence unavoidable.



Again, let us ask whether substance has anything like that extended 

solidity which it presents to our consciousness. The portion of 

space occupied by a piece of metal, seems to eyes and fingers 

perfectly filled: we perceive a homogeneous, resisting mass, without 

any breach of continuity. Shall we then say that Matter is actually 

as solid as it appears? Shall we say that whether it consists of an 

infinitely divisible element or of units which cannot be further 

divided, its parts are everywhere in actual contact? To assert as 

much entangles us in insuperable difficulties. Were Matter thus 

absolutely solid it would be  what it is not  absolutely 

incompressible; since compressibility, implying the nearer approach 

of constituent parts, is not thinkable unless there is unoccupied 

space among the parts.



The supposition that Matter is absolutely solid being untenable, 

there presents itself the Newtonian supposition, that it consists of 

solid atoms not in contact but acting on one another by attractive 

and repulsive forces, varying with the distances. To assume this, 

however, merely shifts the difficulty. For granting that Matter as 

we perceive it, is made up of dense extended units attracting and 

repelling, the question still arises  What is the constitution of 

these units? We must regard each of them as a small piece of matter. 

Looked at through a mental microscope, each becomes a mass such as 

we have just been contemplating. Just the same inquiries may be made 

respecting the parts of which each atom consists; while just the 

same difficulties stand in the way of every answer. Even were the 

hypothetical atom assumed to consist of still minuter ones, the 

difficulty would reappear at the next step; and so on perpetually.



Boscovich's conception yet remains to us. Seeing that Matter could 

not, as Leibnitz suggested, be composed of unextended monads (since 

the juxtaposition of an infinity of points having no extension could 

not produce that extension which matter possesses), and perceiving 

objections to the view entertained by Newton, Boscovich proposed an 

intermediate theory. This theory is that the constituents of Matter 

are centres of force  points without dimensions  which attract and 

repel one another in such wise as to be kept at specific distances 

apart. And he argues, mathematically, that the forces possessed by 

such centres might so vary with the distances that, under given 

conditions, the centres would remain in stable equilibrium with 

definite interspaces; and yet, under other conditions, would 

maintain larger or smaller interspaces. This speculation, however, 

escapes all the inconceivabilities above indicated by merging them 

in the one inconceivability with which it sets cut. A centre of 

force absolutely without extension is unthinkable. The idea of 

resistance cannot be separated in thought from the idea of something 

which offers resistance, and this something must be thought of as 

occuppying space. To suppose that central forces can reside in 

points having positions only, with nothing to mark their positions  

points in no respect distinguishable from surrounding points which 

are not centres of force  is beyond human power.



But though the conception of Matter as consisting of dense 

indivisible units is symbolic, and cannot by any effort be thought 

out, it may yet be supposed to find indirect verification in the 

truths of chemistry. These, it is argued, necessitate the belief 

that Matter consists of particles of specific weights, and therefore 

of specific sizes. The law of definite proportions seems impossible 

on any other condition than the existence of ultimate atoms; and 

though the combining weights of the respective elements are termed 

by chemists their "equivalents," for the purpose of avoiding a 

questionable assumption, we are unable to think of the combination 

of such definite weights, without supposing it to take place between 

definite molecules. Thus it would appear that the Newtonian view is 

at any rate preferable to that of Boscovich. A disciple of 

Boscovich, however, may reply that his master's theory is involved 

in that of Newton, and cannot indeed be escaped. "What holds 

together the parts of these ultimate atoms?" he may ask. "A cohesive 

force," his opponent must answer. "And what," he may continue, 

"holds together the parts of any fragments into which, by sufficient 

force, an ultimate atom might be broken?" Again the answer must be  

a cohesive force. "And what," he may still ask, "if the ultimate 

atom were reduced to parts as small in proportion to it, as it is in 

proportion to a tangible mass of matter  what must give each part 

the ability to sustain itself?" Still there is no answer but  a 

cohesive force. Carry on the mental process and we can find no limit 

until we arrive at the symbolic conception of centres of force 

without any extension.



Matter then, in its ultimate nature, is as absolutely 

incomprehensible as Space and Time. Whatever supposition we frame 

leaves us nothing but a choice between opposite absurdities.*



<* To discuss Lord Kelvin's hypothesis of vortex-atoms, from the 

scientific point of view, is beyond my ability. From the 

philosophical point of view, however I may say that since it 

postulates a homogeneous medium which is strictly continuous (non-

molecular), which is incompressible, which is a perfect fluid in the 

sense of having no viscosity, and which has inertia, it sets out 

with what appears to me an inconceivability. A fluid which has 

inertia, implying mass, and which is yet absolutely frictionless. so 

that its parts move among one another without any loss of motion, 

cannot be truly represented in consciousness. Even were it 

otherwise, the hypothesis is held by Prof. Clerk Maxwell to be 

untenable (see art. "Atom," Ency. Brit.).>



17. A body impelled by the hand is perceived to move, and to move 

in a definite direction; doubt about its motion seems impossible. 

Yet we not only may be, but usually are, quite wrong in both these 

judgments. Here, for instance, is a ship which we will suppose to be 

anchored at the equator with her head to the West. When the captain 

walks from stem to stern, in what direction does he move? East is 

the obvious answer  an answer which for the moment may pass without 

criticism. But now the anchor is heaved, and the vessel sails to the 

West with a velocity equal to that at which the captain walks. In 

what direction does he now move when he goes from stem to stern? You 

cannot say East, for the vessel is carrying him as fast towards the 

West as he walks to the East; and you cannot say West for the 

converse reason In respect to things outside the vessel he is 

stationary, though to all on board he seems to be moving. But now 

are we quite sure of this conclusion?  Is he really stationary? On 

taking into account the Earth's motion round its axis, we find that 

he is travelling at the rate of 1000 miles per hour to the East; so 

that neither the perception of one who looks at him, nor the 

inference of one who allows for the ship's motion, is anything like 

right. Nor indeed, on further consideration, do we find this revised 

conclusion to be much better. For we have not allowed for the 

Earth's motion in its orbit. This being some 68,000 miles per hour, 

it follows that, assuming the time to be midday, he is moving, not 

at the rate of 1000 miles per hour to the East, but at the rate of 

67,000 miles per hour to the East. Nay not even now have we 

discovered the true rate and the true direction of his movement. 

With the Earth's progress in its orbit, we have to join that of the 

whole Solar system towards the constellation Hercules. When we do 

this, we perceive that he is moving neither East nor West, but in a 

line inclined to the plane of the Ecliptic, and at a velocity 

greater or less (according to the time of the year) than that above 

named. And were the constitution of our Sidereal System fully known, 

we should probably discover the direction and rate of his actual 

movement to differ considerably even from these. Thus we are taught 

that what we are conscious of is not the real motion of any object, 

either in its rate or direction, but merely its motion as measured 

from an assigned position  either our own or some other. Yet in 

this very process of concluding that the motions we perceive are not 

the real motions, we tacitly assume that there are real motions. We 

take for granted that there is an absolute course and an absolute 

velocity and we find it impossible to rid ourselves of this idea. 

Nevertheless, absolute motion cannot even be imagined, much less 

known. Apart from those marks in space which we habitually associate 

with it, motion is unthinkable. For motion is change of place; but 

in space without marks, change of place is inconceivable, because 

place itself is inconceivable. Place can be conceived only by 

reference to other places; and in the absence of objects dispersed 

through space, a place could be conceived only in relation to the 

limits of space; whence it follows that in unlimited space, place 

cannot be conceived  all places must be equidistant from boundaries 

which do not exist. Thus while obliged to think that there is an 

absolute motion, we find absolute motion cannot be represented in 

thought.



Another insuperable difficulty presents itself when we contemplate 

the transfer of Motion. Habit blinds us to the marvellousness of 

this phenomenon. Familiar with the fact from childhood, we see 

nothing remarkable in the ability of a moving thing to generate 

movement in a thing that is stationary. It is, however, impossible 

to understand it. In what respect does a body after impact differ 

from itself before impact? What is this added to it which does not 

sensibly affect any of its properties and yet enables it to traverse 

space? Here is an object at rest and here is the same object moving. 

In the one state it has no tendency to change its place, but in the 

other it is obliged at each instant to assume a new position. What 

is it which will for ever go on producing this effect without being 

exhausted? and how does it dwell in the object? The motion you say 

has been communicated. But how?  What has been communicated? The 

striking body has not transferred a thing to the body struck; and it 

is equally out of the question to say that it has transferred an 

attribute. What then has it transferred?



Once more there is the old puzzle concerning the connexion between 

Motion and Rest. A body travelling at a given velocity cannot be 

brought to a state of rest, or no velocity, without passing through 

all intermediate velocities. It is quite possible to think of its 

motion as diminishing insensibly until it becomes infinitesimal; and 

many will think equally possible to pass in thought from 

infinitesimal motion to no motion. But this is an error. Mentally 

follow out the decreasing velocity as long as you please, and there 

still remains some velocity; and the smallest movement is separated 

by an impassable gap from no movement. As something, however minute, 

is infinitely great in comparison with nothing; so is even the least 

conceivable motion infinite as compared with rest.



Thus neither when considered in connexion with Space, nor when 

considered in connexion with Matter, nor when considered in 

connexion with Rest, do we find that Motion is truly cognizable. All 

efforts to understand its essential nature do but bring us to 

alternative impossibilities of thought.



18. On lifting a chair the force exerted we regard as equal to that 

antagonistic force called the weight of the chair, and we cannot 

think of these as equal without thinking of them as like in kind; 

since equality is conceivable only between things that are 

connatural. Yet, contrariwise, it is incredible that the force 

existing in the chair resembles the force present to our minds. It 

scarcely needs to point out that since the force as known to us is 

an affection of consciousness, we cannot conceive the force to exist 

in the chair under the same form without endowing the chair with 

consciousness. So that it is absurd to think of Force as in itself 

like our sensation of it, and yet necessary so to think of it if we 

represent it in consciousness at all.



How, again, can we understand the connexion between Force and 

Matter? Matter is known to us only through its manifestations of 

Force: abstract its resistance mediately or immediately offered and 

there remains nothing but empty extension. Yet, on the other hand, 

resistance is equally unthinkable apart from Matter  apart from 

something extended. Not only are centres of force devoid of 

extension unimaginable, but we cannot imagine either extended or 

unextended centres of force to attract and repel other such centres 

at a distance, without the intermediation of some kind of matter. 

The hypothesis of Newton, equally with that of Boscovich, is open to 

the charge that it supposes one thing to act on another through 

empty space  a supposition which cannot be represented in thought. 

This charge is indeed met by introducing a hypothetical fluid 

existing among the atoms or centres. But the problem is not thus 

solved: it is simply shifted, and reappears when the constitution of 

this fluid is inquired into. How impossible it is to elude the 

difficulty is best seen in the case of astronomical forces. The Sun 

gives us sensations of light and heat; and we have ascertained that 

between the cause as existing in the Sun, and the effect as 

experienced on the Earth, a lapse of eight minutes occurs: whence 

unavoidably result in us the conceptions of both a force and a 

motion. So that for assuming a luminiferous ether, there is the 

defence, not only that the exercise of force through 92,000,000 of 

miles of absolute vacuum is inconceivable, but also that it is 

impossible to conceive motion in the absence of something moved. 

Similarly in the case of gravitation. Newton described himself as 

unable to think that the attraction of one body for another at a 

distance, could be exerted in the absence of an intervening medium. 

But now let us ask how much the forwarder we are if an intervening 

medium be assumed. This ether whose undulations according to the 

received hypothesis constitute heat and light, and which is the 

vehicle of gravitation  how is it constituted? We must regard it in 

the way that physicists usually regard it, as composed of atoms or 

molecules which attract and repel one another: infinitesimal it may 

be in comparison with those of ordinary matter, but still atoms or 

molecules. And remembering that this ether is imponderable, we are 

obliged to conclude that the ratio between the interspaces of these 

atoms and the atoms themselves is immense. Hence we have to conceive 

these infinitesimal molecules acting on one another through 

relatively vast distances. How is this conception easier than the 

other? We still have mentally. to represent a body as acting where 

it is not, and in the absence of anything by which its action may be 

transferred; and what matters it whether this takes place on a large 

or a small scale? Thus we are obliged to conclude that matter, 

whether ponderable or imponderable, and whether aggregated or in its 

hypothetical units, acts on matter through absolutely vacant space; 

and yet this conclusion is unthinkable.



Another difficulty of conception, converse in nature but equally 

insurmountable, must be added. If, on the one hand, we cannot in 

thought see matter acting upon matter through vacant space; on the 

other hand, it is incomprehensible that the gravitation of one 

particle of matter towards another, and towards all others, should 

be the same whether the intervening space is filled with matter or 

not. I lift from the ground, and continue to hold, a pound weight. 

Now, into the vacancy between it and the ground, is introduced a 

mass of matter of any kind whatever, in any state whatever; and the 

gravitation of the weight is entirely unaffected. Each individual of 

the infinity of particles composing the Earth acts on the pound in 

absolutely the same way, whatever intervenes, or if nothing 

intervenes. Through eight thousand miles of the Earth's substance, 

each molecule at the antipodes affects each molecule of the weight, 

in utter indifference to the fullness or emptiness of the space 

between them. So that each portion of matter in its dealings with 

remote portions, treats all intervening portions as though they did 

not exist; and yet, at the same time, it recognizes their existence 

with scrupulous exactness in its direct dealings with them.



While then it is impossible to form any idea of Force in itself, it 

is equally impossible to comprehend its mode of exercise.



19. Turning now from the outer to the inner world, let us 

contemplate, not the agencies to which we ascribe our subjective 

modifications, but the subjective modifications themselves. These 

constitute a series. Difficult as we find it distinctly to 

individualize them, it is nevertheless beyond question that our 

states of consciousness occur in succession.



Is this chain of states of consciousness infinite or finite? We 

cannot say infinite; not only because we have indirectly reached the 

conclusion that there was a period when it commenced, but also 

because all infinity is inconceivable  an infinite series included. 

If we say finite we say it inferentially; for we have no direct 

knowledge of either of its ends. Go back in memory as far as we may, 

we are wholly unable to identify our first states of consciousness. 

Similarly at the other extreme. We infer a termination to the series 

at a future time, but cannot directly know it; and we cannot really 

lay hold of that temporary termination reached at the present 

moment. For the state of consciousness recognized by us as our last, 

is not truly our last. That any mental affection may be known as one 

of the series, it must be remembered  represented in thought, not 

presented. The truly last state of consciousness is that which is 

passing in the very act of contemplating a state just past  that in 

which we are thinking of the one before as the last. So that the 

proximate end of the change eludes us, as well as the remote end. 



"But," it may be said, "though we cannot directly know consciousness 

to be finite in duration, because neither of its limits can be 

actually reached, yet we can very well conceive it to be so." No: 

not even this is true. We cannot conceive the terminations of that 

consciousness which alone we really know  our own  any more than 

we can perceive its terminations. For in truth the two acts are here 

one. In either case such terminations must be, as above said, not 

presented in thought, but represented; and they must be represented 

as in the act of occurring. Now to represent the termination of 

consciousness as occurring in ourselves, is to think of ourselves as 

contemplating the cessation of the last state of consciousness; and 

this implies a supposed continuance of consciousness after its last 

state, which is absurd.



Hence, while we are unable to believe or to conceive that the 

duration of consciousness is infinite, we are equally unable either 

to know it as finite, or to conceive it as finite: we can only infer 

from indirect evidence that it is finite.



20. Nor do we meet with any greater success when, instead of the 

extent of consciousness, we consider its substance. The question  

What is this that thinks? admits of no better solution than the 

question to which we have just found none but inconceivable answers.



The existence of each individual as known to himself, has always 

been held the most incontrovertible of truths. To say  "I am as 

sure of it as I am sure that I exist," is, in common speech, the 

most emphatic expression of certainty. And this fact of personal 

existence, testified to by the universal consciousness of men, has 

been made the basis of more philosophies than one. 



Belief in the reality of self cannot, indeed, be escaped while 

normal consciousness continues. What shall we say of these 

successive impressions and ideas which constitute consciousness? Are 

they affections of something called mind, which, as being the 

subject of them, is the real ego? If we say this we imply that the 

ego is an entity. Shall we assert that these impressions and ideas 

are not the mere superficial changes wrought on some thinking 

substance, but are themselves the very body of this substance  are 

severally the modified forms which it from moment to moment assumes? 

This hypothesis, equally with the foregoing, implies that the 

conscious self exists as a permanent continuous being; since 

modifications necessarily involve something modified. Shall we then 

betake ourselves to the sceptic's position, and argue that our 

impressions and ideas themselves are to us the only existences, and 

that the personality said to underlie them is a fiction? We do not 

even thus escape; since this proposition, verbally intelligible but 

really unthinkable, itself makes the assumption which it professes 

to repudiate. For how can consciousness be wholly resolved into 

impressions and ideas, when an impression of necessity imples 

something impressed? Or again, how can the sceptic who has 

decomposed his consciousness into impressions and ideas, explain the 

fact that he considers them as his impressions and ideas? Or once 

more, if, as he must, he admits that he has an impression of his 

personal existence, what warrant can he show for rejecting this 

impression as unreal while he accepts all his other impressions as 

real?



But now, unavoidable as is this belief, it is yet a belief admitting 

of no justification by reason: nay, indeed, it is a belief which 

reason, when pressed for a distinct answer, rejects. One of the most 

recent writers who has touched on this question  Mr. Mansel  does, 

indeed, contend that in the consciousness of self we have a piece of 

real knowledge. His position is that "let system makers say what 

they will, the unsophisticated sense of mankind refuses to 

acknowledge that mind is but a bundle of states of consciousness, as 

matter is (possibly) a bundle of sensible qualities." But this 

position does not seem a consistent one for a Kantist, who pays but 

small respect to "the unsophisticated sense of mankind" when it 

testifies to the objectivity of space. Moreover, it may readily be 

shown that a cognition of self, properly so called, is negatived by 

those laws of thought which he emphasizes. The fundamental condition 

to all consciousness, insisted upon by Mr. Mansel in common with Sir 

William Hamilton and others, is the antithesis of subject and 

object. On this "primitive dualism of consciousness," "from which 

the explanations of philosophy must take their start," Mr. Mansel 

founds his refutation of the German absolutists. But now what is the 

corollary, as bearing on the consciousness of self? The mental act 

in which self is known implies, like every other mental act, a 

perceiving subject and a perceived object. If, then, the object 

perceived is self, what is the subject that perceives? or if it is 

the true self which thinks, what other self can it be that is 

thought of? Clearly, a true cognition of self implies a state in 

which the knowing and the known are one  in which subject and 

object are identified; and this Mr. Mansel rightly holds to be the 

annihilation of both.



So that the personality of which each is conscious, and the 

existence of which is to each a fact beyond all others the most 

certain, is yet a thing which cannot be known at all, in the strict 

sense of the word.



21. Ultimate Scientific Ideas, then, are all representative of 

realities that cannot be comprehended. After no matter how great a 

progress in the colligation of facts and the establishment of 

generalizations ever wider and wider, the fundamental truth remains 

as much beyond reach as ever. The explanation of that which is 

explicable, does but bring into greater clearness the 

inexplicableness of that which remains behind. Alike in the external 

and the internal worlds, the man of science sees himself in the 

midst of perpetual changes of which he can discover neither the 

beginning nor the end. If he allows himself to entertain the 

hypothesis that the Universe originally existed in a diffused form, 

he finds it impossible to conceive how this came to be so; and 

equally, if he speculates on the future, he can assign no limit to 

the grand succession of phenomena ever unfolding themselves before 

him. In like manner if he looks inward he perceives that both ends 

of the thread of consciousness are beyond his grasp. Neither end can 

be represented in thought. When, again, he turns from the succession 

of phenomena, external or internal, to their intrinsic nature, he is 

just as much at fault. Supposing him in every case able to resolve 

the appearances, properties, and movements of things, into 

manifestations of Force in Space and Time; he still finds that 

Force, Space, and Time pass all understanding. Similarly, though 

analysis of mental actions may finally bring him down to sensations, 

as the original materials out of which all thought is woven, yet he 

is little forwarder; for he can give no account either of sensations 

themselves or of that which is conscious of sensations. Objective 

and subjective things he thus ascertains to be alike inscrutable in 

their substance and genesis. In all directions his investigations 

eventually bring him face to face with an insoluble enigma; and be 

ever more clearly perceives it to be an insoluble enigma. He learns 

at once the greatness and the littleness of the human intellect  

its power in dealing with all that comes within the range of 

experience, its impotence in dealing with all that transcends 

experience. He, more than any other, truly knows that in its 

ultimate nature nothing can be known.



                        Chapter 4



              The Relativity of all Knowledge



22. The same conclusion is thus arrived at from whichever point we 

set out. Ultimate religious ideas and ultimate scientific ideas, 

alike turn out to be merely symbols of the actual, not cognitions of 

it.



The conviction, so reached, that human intelligence is incapable of 

absolute knowledge, is one that has been slowly gaining ground. Each 

new ontological theory, propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to 

be untenable, has been followed by a new criticism leading to a new 

scepticism. All possible conceptions have been one by one tried and 

found wanting; and so the entire field of speculation has been 

gradually exhausted without positive result: the only result reached 

being the negative one above stated  that the reality existing 

behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown. To this 

conclusion almost every thinker of note has subscribed. "With the 

exception," says Sir William Hamilton, "of a few late Absolutist 

theorizers in Germany, this is, perhaps, the truth of all others 

most harmoniously re-echoed by every philosopher of every school." 

And among these he names  Protagoras, Aristotle, St. Augustin, 

Boethius, Averroes, Albertus Magnus, Gerson, Leo Hebraeus, 

Melancthon, Scaliger, Francis Piccolomini, Giordano Bruno, 

Campanella, Bacon, Spinoza, Newton, Kant.



It remains to point out how this belief may be established 

rationally, as well as empirically. Not only is it that, as in the 

earlier thinkers above named, a vague perception of the 

inscrutableness of things in themselves results from discovering the 

illusiveness of sense-impressions; and not only is it that, as shown 

in the foregoing chapters, experiments evolve alternative 

impossibilities of thought out of every fundamental conception; but 

it is that the relativity of our knowledge may be proved 

analytically. The induction drawn from general and special 

experiences, may be confirmed by a deduction from the nature of our 

intelligence. Two ways of reaching such a deduction exist. Proof 

that our cognitions are not, and never can be, absolute, is 

obtainable by analyzing either the product or thought, or the 

process of thought. Let us analyze each. 



23. If, when walking through the fields some day in September, you 

hear a rustle a few yards in advance, and on observing the ditch-

side where it occurs, see the herbage agitated, you will probably 

turn towards the spot to learn by what this sound and motion are 

produced. As you approach there flutters into the ditch a partridge; 

on seeing which your curiosity is satisfied  you have what you call 

an explanation of the appearances. The explanation, mark, amounts to 

this; that whereas throughout life you have had countless 

experiences of disturbance among small stationary bodies, 

accompanying the movement of other bodies among them, and have 

generalized the relation between such disturbances and such 

movements, you consider this particular disturbance explained, on 

finding it to present an instance of the like relation. Suppose you 

catch the partridge; and, wishing to ascertain why it did not 

escape, examine it, and find at one spot a trace of blood on its 

feathers. You now understand, as you say, what has disabled the 

partridge. It has been wounded by a sportsman  adds another case to 

the cases already seen by you, of birds being killed or injured by 

the shot discharged at them from fowling-pieces. And in assimilating 

this case to other such cases, consists your understanding of it. 

But now, on consideration, a difficulty suggests itself. Only a 

single shot has struck the partridge, and that not in a vital place: 

the wings are uninjured, as are also those muscles which move them; 

and the creature proves by its struggles that it has abundant 

strength. Why then, you inquire of yourself, does it not fly? 

Occasion favouring, you put the question to an anatomist, who 

furnishes you with a solution. He points out that this solitary shot 

has passed close to the place at which the nerve supplying the wing-

muscles of one side, diverges from the spine; and explains that a 

slight injury to this nerve, extending even to the rupture of a few 

fibres, may by preventing a perfect co-ordination in the actions of 

the two wings, destroy the power of flight. You are no longer 

puzzled. But what has happened?  what has changed your state from 

one of perplexity to one of comprehension? Simply the disclosure of 

a class of previously known cases, along with which you can include 

this case. The connexion between lesions of the nervous system and 

paralysis of limbs has been already many times brought under your 

notice; and you here find a relation of cause and effect that is 

essentially similar.



Let us suppose you are led to ask the anatomist questions about some 

organic actions which, remarkable though they are, you had not 

before cared to understand. How is respiration effected? You ask  

why does air periodically rush into the lungs? The answer is that 

influx of air is caused by an enlargement of the thoracic cavity, 

due, partly to depression of the diaphragm, partly to motion of the 

ribs. But how can these bony hoops move, and how does motion of them 

enlarge the cavity? In reply the anatomist explains that though 

attached by their ends the ribs can move a little round their points 

of attachment; he then shows you that the plane of each pair of ribs 

makes an acute angle with the spine; that this angle widens when the 

sternal ends of the ribs are raised; and he makes you realize the 

consequent dilatation of the cavity, by pointing out how the area of 

a parallelogram increases as its angles approach to right angles: 

you understand this special fact when you see it to be an instance 

of a general geometrical fact. There still arises, however, the 

question  why does the air rush into this enlarged cavity? To which 

comes the answer that, when the thoracic cavity is enlarged, the 

contained air, partially relieved from pressure, expands, and so 

loses some of its resisting Power; that hence it opposes to the 

pressure of the external air a less pressure; and that as air, like 

every other fluid, presses equally in all directions, motion must 

result along any line in which the resistance is less than 

elsewhere; whence follows an inward current. And this interpretation 

you recognize as one, when a few facts of like kind, exhibited more 

plainly in a visible fluid such as water, are cited in illustration. 

Again, after being shown that the limbs are compound levers acting 

in essentially the same way as levers of iron, you would consider 

yourself as having obtained a partial rationale of animal movements. 

The contraction of a muscle, seeming before quite unaccountable, 

would seem less unaccountable were you shown how, by a galvanic 

current, a series of soft iron magnets could be made to shorten 

itself through the attraction of each magnet for its neighbours:  

an alleged analogy which especially answers the purpose of our 

argument, since, whether real or fancied, it equally illustrates the 

mental illumination that results on finding a class of cases within 

which a particular case may perhaps be included. Similarly when you 

learn that animal heat arises from chemical combination, and so may 

be classed with heat evolved in other chemical combinations  when 

you learn that the absorption of nutrient liquids through the coats 

of the intestines is an instance of osmotic action  when you learn 

that the changes undergone by food during digestion, are like 

changes artificially producible in the laboratory; you regard 

yourself as knowing something about the natures of these phenomena.



Observe now what we have been doing. We began with special and 

concrete facts. In explaining each, and afterwards explaining the 

general facts of which they are instances, we have got down to 

certain highly general facts:  to a geometrical principle, to a 

simple law of mechanical action, to a law of fluid equilibrium  to 

truths in physics, in chemistry, in thermology. The particular 

phenomena with which we set out have been merged in larger and 

larger groups of phenomena; and as they have been so merged, we have 

arrived at solutions we consider profound in proportion as this 

process has been carried far. Still deeper explanations are simply 

further steps in the same direction. When, for instance, it is asked 

why the law of action of the lever is what it is, or why fluid 

equilibrium and fluid motion exhibit the relations they do, the 

answer furnished by mathematicians consists in the disclosure of the 

principle of virtual velocities  a principle holding true alike in 

fluids and solids  a principle under which the others are 

comprehended.



Is this process limited or unlimited? Can we go on for ever 

explaining classes of facts by including them in larger classes; or 

must we eventually come to a largest class? The supposition that the 

process is unlimited, were any one absurd enough to espouse it, 

would still imply that an ultimate explanation could not be reached, 

since infinite time would be required to reach it. While the 

unavoidable conclusion that it is limited, equally implies that the 

deepest fact cannot be understood. For if the successively deeper 

interpretations of Nature which constitute advancing knowledge, are 

merely successive inclusions of special truths in general truths, 

and of general truths in truths still more general; it follows that 

the most general truth, not admitting of inclusion in any other, 

does not admit of interpretation. Of necessity, therefore, 

explanation must eventually bring us down to the inexplicable. 

Comprehension must become something other than comprehension, before 

the ultimate fact can be comprehended.



24. The inference which is thus forced on us when we analyze the 

product of thought, as exhibited objectively in scientific 

generalizations, is equally forced on us by an analysis of the 

process of thought, as exhibited subjectively in consciousness. The 

demonstration of the relative character of our knowledge, as deduced 

from the nature of intelligence, has been brought to its most 

definite shape by Sir William Hamilton. I cannot here do better than 

extract from his essay on the "Philosophy of the Unconditioned," the 

passage containing the substance of his doctrine.



"The unconditionally unlimited, or the Infinite, the unconditionally 

limited, or the Absolute, cannot positively be construed to the 

mind; they can be conceived, only by a thinking away from, or 

abstraction of, those very conditions under which thought itself is 

realized; consequently, the notion of the Unconditioned is only 

negative,  negative of the conceivable itself. For example, on the 

one hand we can positively conceive, neither an absolute whole, that 

is, a whole so great, that we cannot also conceive it as a relative 

part of a still greater whole; nor an absolute part, that is, a part 

so small, that we cannot also conceive it as a relative whole, 

divisible into smaller parts. On the other hand, we cannot 

positively represent, or realize, or construe to the mind (as here 

understanding and imagination coincide), an infinite whole, for this 

could only be done by the infinite synthesis in thought of finite 

wholes, which would itself require an infinite time for its 

accomplishment; nor, for the same reason, can we follow out in 

thought an infinite divisibility of parts. The result is the same, 

whether we apply the process to limitation in space, in time, or in 

degree. * * *



"As the conditionally limited (which we may briefly call the 

conditioned) is thus the only possible object of knowledge and of 

positive thought  thought necessarily supposes conditions. To think 

is to condition; and conditional limitation is the fundamental law 

of the possibility of thought. For, as the greyhound cannot outstrip 

his shadow, nor (by a more appropriate simile) the eagle outsoar the 

atmosphere in which he floats, and by which alone he may be 

supported; so the mind cannot transcend that sphere of limitation, 

within and through which exclusively the possibility of thought is 

realized. * * * How, indeed, it could ever be doubted that thought 

is only of the conditioned, may well be deemed a matter of the 

profoundest admiration. Thought cannot transcend consciousness; 

consciousness is only possible under the antithesis of a subject and 

object of thought, known only in correlation, and mutually limiting 

each other; while, independently of this, all that we know either of 

subject or object, either of mind or matter, is only a knowledge in 

each of the particular, of the plural, of the different, of the 

modified, of the phaenomenal. We admit that the consequence of this 

doctrine is,  that philosophy, if viewed as more than a science of 

the conditioned, is impossible. Departing from the particular, we 

admit, that we can never, in our highest generalizations, rise above 

the finite; that our knowledge, whether of mind or matter, can be 

nothing more than a knowledge of the relative manifestations of an 

existence, which in itself it is our highest wisdom to recognize aS 

beyond the reach of philosophy. * * *



"We are thus taught the salutary lesson, that the capacity of 

thought is not to be constituted into the measure of existence; and 

are warned from recognizing the domain of our knowledge as 

necessarily co-extensive with the horizon of our faith. And by a 

wonderful revelation, we are thus, in the very consciousness of our 

inability to conceive aught above the relative and finite, inspired 

with a belief in the existence of something unconditioned beyond the 

sphere of all comprehensible reality."



Clear and conclusive as this statement of the case appears when 

carefully studied, it is expressed in so abstract a manner as to be 

not very intelligible to the general reader. A more popular 

presentation of it. with illustrative applications, as given by Mr. 

Mansel in his Limits of Religious Thought, will make it more fully 

understood. The following extracts, which I take the liberty of 

making from his pages, will suffice.



"The very conception of consciousness in whatever mode it may be 

manifested, necessarily implies distinction between one object and 

another. To be conscious, we must be conscious of something; and 

that something can only be known, as that which it is, by being 

distinguished from that which it is not. But distinction is 

necessarily imitation; for, if one object is to be distinguished 

from another, it must possess some form of existence which the other 

has not, or it must not possess some form which the other has. * * * 

If all thought is limitation;  if whatever we conceive is, by the 

very act of conception, regarded as finite,  the infinite, from a 

human point of view, is merely a name for the absence of those 

conditions under which thought is possible. To speak of a Conception 

of the Infinite is, therefore, at once to affirm those conditions 

and to deny them. The contradiction, which we discover in such a 

conception, is only that which we have ourselves placed there, by 

tacitly assuming the conceivability of the inconceivable. The 

condition of consciousness is distinction; and condition of 

distinction is limitation. We can have no consciousness of Being in 

general which is not some Being in particular: a thing, in 

consciousness, is one thing out of many. In assuming the possibility 

of an infinite object of consciousness, I assume, therefore, that it 

is at the same time limited and unlimited;  actually something, 

without which it could not be an object of consciousness, and 

actually nothing, without which it could not be infinite. * * *



"A second characteristic of Consciousness is, that it is only 

possible in the form of a relation. There must be a Subject, or 

person conscious, and an Object, or thing of which he is conscious. 

There can be no consciousness without the union of these two 

factors; and, in that union, each exists only as it is related to 

the other. The subject is a subject, only in so far as it is 

conscious of an object; the object is an object, only in so far as 

it is apprehended by a subject: and the destruction of either is the 

destruction of consciousness itself. It is thus manifest that a 

consciousness of the Absolute is equally self-contradictory with 

that of the Infinite. To be conscious of the Absolute as such, we 

must know that an object, which is given in relation to our 

consciousness, is identical with one which exists in its own nature, 

out of all relation to consciousness. But to know this identity, we 

must be able to compare the two together; and such a comparison is 

itself a contradiction. We are in fact required to compare that of 

which we are conscious with that of which we are not conscious; the 

comparison itself being an act of consciousness, and only possible 

through the consciousness of both its objects. It is thus manifest 

that, even if we could be conscious of the absolute we could not 

possibly know that it is the absolute: and, as we can be conscious 

of an object as such, only by knowing it to be what it is, this is 

equivalent to an admission that we cannot be conscious of the 

absolute at all. As an object of COnsciousness, every thing is 

necessarily relative; and what a thing may be out of consciousness 

no mode of consciousness can tell us. * * *



"This contradiction, again, admits of the same explanation as the 

former, * * * Existence, as we conceive it, is but a name for the 

several ways in which objects are presented to our consciousness,  

a general term, embracing a variety of relations. The Absolute, on 

the other hand, is a term expressing no object of thought, but only 

a denial of the relation by which thought is constituted."



Here let me point out how the same general inference may be evolved 

from another fundamental condition to thought, omitted by Sir W. 

Hamilton and not supplied by Mr. Mansel;  a condition which, under 

its obverse aspect, we have already contemplated in the last 

section. Every complete act of consciousness, besides distinction 

and relation, also implies likeness. Before it can constitute a 

piece of knowledge, or even become an idea, a mental state must be 

known not only as separate in kind or quality from certain foregoing 

states to which it is known as related by succession, but it must 

further be known as of the same kind or quality with certain other 

foregoing states. That organization of changes which constitutes 

thinking, involves continuous integration as well as continuous 

differentiation. Were each new affection of the mind perceived 

simply as an affection in some way contested with preceding ones  

were there but a chain of impressions, each of which as it arose was 

merely distinguished from its predecessors; consciousness would be a 

chaos. To produce that orderly consciousness which we call 

intelligence, there requires the assimilation of each impression to 

others that occurred earlier in the series. Both the successive 

mental states, and the successive relations which they bear to one 

another, must be classified; and classification involves not only a 

parting of the unlike, but also a binding together of the like. In 

brief, a true cognition is possible only through an accompanying 

recognition. Should it be objected that if so there cannot be a 

first cognition, and hence there can be no cognition, the reply is 

that cognition proper arises gradually  that during the first stage 

of incipient intelligence, before the feelings produced by 

intercourse with the outer world have been put into order, there are 

no cognitions; and that, as every infant shows us, these slowly 

emerge out of the confusion of unfolding consciousness as fast as 

the experiences are arranged into groups  as fast as the most 

frequently repeated sensations, and their relations to one another, 

become familiar enough to admit of their recognition as such or 

such, whenever they recur. Should it be further objected that if 

cognition presupposes recognition, there can be no cognition, even 

by an adult, of an object never before seen; there is still the 

sufficient answer that in so far as it is not assimilated to 

previously-seen objects it is not known, and that it is known only 

in so far as it is assimilated