which we need demand. Now, whatever be its validity, certainty as a fact exists, and no fact is a more sure one for each of us than that of his own continued personal identity. No conviction is more constantly and uniformly acted on by us. As full and complete a practical acquiescence is given to the conception, "self exists," as to the belief that "a series of states of consciousness exists;" and were any one to refuse this practical acquiescence, then, unable to act, discourse, or reason, he would be shut up in his sterile and solitary direct thought.

Self-exist

ence implied

in "cer

tainty "itself.

The refuta

tion of Nes

cience not to

be evaded on

But what is this certainty of which they speak? Is it itself a thought? And if so, what does one thought know about another thought? and which thought of the two is it which has the knowledge? Thoughts are not permanent, but progressive. To say that thought exists is itself a figure of speech. It really means, "something exists which thinks." To know is not to be knowledge, but to acquire and possess it. To have implies two factors, not one alone. Certainty, again, without an "I" who is certain, is as impossible as doubt without a doubter. As before observed, however, it will perhaps be rejoined that all the foregoing objections to Agnosticism are only possible on account of the exigencies of language; and though it is impossible for advocates of nescience to enunciate verbally their principles, yet that language. these principles are none the less true for all that, and that it is grammar, and not reality and reason, which reduces them to this impotence. To this it may be once more replied that the spoken word is but the expression of the mental concept; and that there is nothing which can be clearly and distinctly perceived which cannot be articulately expressed and conveyed to other minds by language good and sufficient for the purposes to which it is applied. What was said in the opening of this paper, however, demonstrates to what this objection amounts. It amounts simply to the assertion that fundamental truth is what can neither be conceived by the mind nor expressed by words, and consequently

the ground of the inadequacy of

that everything on this subject which can be either said or thought is necessarily and inevitably fundamentally untrue. In other words, Nescients are thus again reduced to absolute scepticism by another road; and, indeed, that inevitable gulf yawns to receive them by whatever path they seek to escape from their position, save and except that one road which they refuse to follow, and to follow which is to vindicate the truth and validity of human reason. Thus I venture to think the real scope and meaning of the philosophy of nescience may be made plain. Denying the necessary validity and objective truth of our cognitions of "self" and "not-self," Nescients. may logically be reduced to one present thought, and rendered incapable, logically, of attack or defence, uncertain whether reason and memory may not be the most baseless of chimeras, their whole life "a dream within a dream," or even their very consciousness the sport of a deceptive and malignant demon. Such indeed is, I venture to believe, the necessary ultimate outcome of the philosophy of all those who, following the example of Descartes, abandon the high road of philosophy, properly so called, for the lonely by-paths of individual eccentricity. Let them grant, on the other hand, that our spontaneous belief in our own existence is the perception of a real, objective truth, which is made evident to our minds by its own intrinsic light, and the silly cavils which "common sense" justly despises are at once annihilatel.

The value, then, of the nescient philosophic doubts, as put forth by Professor Huxley and his school, may, I venture to think, be shown to be nil-first, because they are not real doubts, but merely verbal ones; and, secondly, because they contradict the primary and fundamental dicta of consciousness itself.

Something further, however, may yet be urged.

Even what is called "necessary truth" is, in fact, conceded by some Agnostics;* and they would generally admit that

It admits of "no doubt that all our knowledge is a knowledge of states of consciousness."-Professor Huxley: Lay Sermons,' p. 375.

A further

What the
word
"thought"
implies.

66

to each one who thinks, while he thinks, the proposition thought is," is a necessary truth. I maintain, howconsequence. ever, that this proposition can be proved to carry with it (if it is to have any meaning) a store of objective truth, amply sufficient to establish the validity of all first truths. I further maintain that it is impossible intelligently to utter the monosyllable "thought" without thereby laying implicitly the foundations of the whole of philosophy, a whole system of universal and necessary truth. For the word "thought," intelligently uttered, must at the very least contain the conception of "existence,” and involve a psychological judgment which, explicity evolved, is the judgment "thought is." But a "judgment" has no meaning without both a "subject" and an "object," and the first of these two words is meaningless without the conception of an "Ego" and "its states,” and the term "object" necessarily carries with it the conception of the "non-Ego-actual or possible." Again, the exclamation thought," since it necessarily involves the conception of existence or being, carries with it, by necessary correlation, the conception "not being;" and this, again, necessarily involves "relation" and the principle of contradiction, and therefore the idea "truth;" and "truth" is meaningless, unless we accept the co-existence of "objective being" and "an intellect," together with a relation of conformity between the two. For "truth" is nothing else but a relation of con"truth" is. formity between some existence and some being that knows such existence. To say that anything is true, as, e.g., that "Mr. Disraeli is our Prime Minister," is to assert a conformity between the mental judgment so expressed and the really existing external facts signified by that proposition.

66

What

Quite lately* indeed truth has been defined as "the equivalence of the terms of a proposition," but this definition seems a defective one. When a proposition is declared to be true, it is not its "terms" only which are referred to, but what those

* See Lewes's 'Problems of Life and Mind,' vol. ii. p. 88.

terms denote, and the conformity existing between the interrelations of the things so denoted as they actually exist externally and the mental judgment verbally expressed respecting them. If reference is not expressly made to the truth of a true proposition, its truth none the less consists in that conformity, and reposes not on the "terms" but the objective realities they denote. There is no equivalence between the terms "Mr. Disraeli" and "England's Prime Minister," and there is no truth between "London Bridge" and "a way across the river Thames." There is, however, equivalence in what is denoted by the terms, and there is truth in the proposition, "London Bridge is a way across the river Thames:" that is to say, the objective facts conform to the mental judgment so expressed concerning them-in other words, in the relation between objective existences and the intellect.

truth.

To return, however, to our argument: every Nescient will admit that the real existence of a present actual "Necessary" state of consciousness is an absolute and necessary truth to that consciousness; so much so, that no malevolent being, however powerful, could in this deceive. Were our existence made up of a succession of shifting deceits, yet that a thought or feeling exists at the moment we actually experience its existence, is what, by universal consent, is beyond question. That "a state of consciousness is," is therefore a "necessary truth." But as to "truth," we have just seen its implications; and with regard to the word "necessary," it can have no meaning, except we apprehend "causation," together with " possibility" and "impossibility," revealing to us a difference between actual being and merely possible being, as also between the necessary and contingent categories of actual being.

tics' assertion

invalidit

If, then, the above proposition, " a state of consciousness is," is necessarily true, it follows that a whole world of The Agnosnecessary truth is thereby and therein implied. If, on the contrary, it be asserted that these implications, or any of them, are untrue or invalid deny. not objectively true-then the proposition is unmeaning, and

plies many

truths they

we can not affirm that a demon could not deceive us as to the existence of a passing thought. If however we cannot so affirm, then the Agnostics are wrong (for they, the Agnostics, say that to this extent there is certainty), and we are landed in utter scepticism. If they choose the other horn of the dilemma, and assert the necessary impotence of thought or of language, then, as we have seen, they thereby assert that everything which can be thought or said is necessarily uncertain; and this, again, implies certainty; so that the Agnostics are inextricably inclosed in a vicious circle. They cannot even speak interrogatively; they cannot say, "How do you know that thought is not self-existent ?" for the use or implication of one personal pronoun ipso facto removes them from their own chosen position, and lands them in that world of objectivity and reality they would so insanely and so inconsequently disown.

Logical consequences.

We come now to the last matter which it is here suggested should be pressed upon Agnostics. It is the result and outcome of the foregoing observations-namely, that they (the Agnostics) are logically driven to admit and accept the following affirmation, under pain of utter scepticism:

That our persuasion and spontaneous belief as to the exist ence of a continuously enduring self underlying the changing series of phenomena we term "states of consciousness" valid, and the results of a true perception of our own objective existence. We are forced to admit that the thinking being I call myself at this moment is substantially one and identical with the agent who carried on the long series of acts and endurances I call my past life. We are driven to affirm that we have indeed a direct intuition of passing modifications, but that we have a no less clear, no less certain intuition of a mysterious, substantial unity, which reason tells us, if we can be certain of anything, is due to a peculiar faculty of perceiving truth, which faculty we term the intellect. I say "of perceiving truth," for if what is perceived as necessarily true (not merely passively unthinkable)