conceptions of matter and force, of cause and effect, of law and order, which form the basis of all reasoning;" while, at Belfast, in 1874 it was opened by what may be fitly termed a sermon advocating the deliberate substitution of a religion of emotion for one of reason. Professor Huxley, some years ago,* bore witness to the needfulness of attending "to those philosophical questions which underlie all physical science; and he has again and again availed himself of his well-earned popularity to press upon his hearers metaphysical considerations, and to endeavour to make plain to them that the questions of really supreme importance are such as are philosophical.

starting

cannot be

In entering upon an inquiry which professes, as does this, to take nothing for granted unnecessarily Our need of a or without criticism, we must be careful that our point which starting-point, in our investigation of nature, shall gainsaid. be thoroughly satisfactory-containing truth which is absolutely unquestionable. Such a starting-point is supplied us by our passing mental states-the facts of consciousness itself. It is conceivable that the whole external world, and all existences external to ourselves, might be delusions, but everybody can see that while we actually have a feeling we must have it, and that no supernatural being could cause us to be thinking that which we at the same time do not think, or not to think anything while we are actually continuing to think it. Here, then, in consciousness itself we have a perfectly satisfactory starting-point, a firm rock which may serve as the corner-stone of a future edifice. Such an edifice we may find it possible to raise by inquiring into the activity of our own mind, by finding what it declares to be ultimate and certain truths (if it declares any to be such), by criticising the tests given as to such truths being certain and ultimate, and by examining the grounds on which we are, if at all, to accept such declarations as true, having, at the same time, seen what truth itself really is.

*Contemporary Review,' November 1871, pp. 443, 444.

The study of mind an experimental science.

This task may appear a difficult and tedious one, but after all it is one which comes strictly within the field of the experimental sciences, and is actually the most certain science of them all. Its inductions repose upon the most direct of observations, and its deductions are tested by experiments of the most decisive kind. Whether metaphysics" be or be not a cloud-land, this particular inquiry is at least to be made on firm ground, under a clear sky, and in bright sunlight. Before, however, entering upon the first inquiry, a preliminary caution may not be out of place. A widely extended discussion of philosophical quesThe two-dan- tions such as that which now obtains is manifestly to two dangers, the one, a “hasty dogmatism," the other, an "irrational scepticism." It is common enough to find writers (such, e.g., as Professor Clifford) speaking in so dogmatic a tone that the unwary are in danger of mistaking confident assertion for proof, while the many, ever prone jurare in verba magistri, are but too apt to adopt themselves the dogmatic style merely on the authority of their chosen masters. For such, a judicious scepticism is the necessary remedy.

gers of popular discussions.

Authority

open

More common, however, is the danger of "irrational scepticism." And here a word of explanation may be addressed to those who may be offended by this phrase, fancying (in spite of the concluding phrase of the last paragraph) that I may deem "scepticism" to be generally "irrational." But it is manifest that in philosophy, reason, and reason only, is and must be the supreme and ultimate arbiter. has no place For all those who are convinced that truth is pby. necessarily good, it is even wrong to accept anything whatever as true which has not been made evident to the intellect. For such, no authority, however venerable, no consequences, however calamitous, as long as they do not involve a contradiction, can or ought to stand in the be cured by way of pitiless logic in following out to their final results the processes of reason. As a consequence,

in philoso

Doubt only to

investiga

tion.

when any man has become a victim to

doubt, he has no

rational choice, as he has no duty, but to reason out his doubts to the end: to seek to escape them by diverting his attention, or to obscure them by calling up a cloud of emotion, is not only useless but blameworthy. As it is for an individual so is it for a people. And if, as in England in the present day, we see a generation restlessly seeking on all sides, in a night of doubt, for the first glimmerings of a coming dawn, surely hearty sympathy and ready aid are called for in favour of men who show by such restlessness and questioning how they are seeking to gain a knowledge of truth which was at least never lost through any act or deed of theirs.

effect of the

flict of

Now at the present time Englishmen are again and again called upon to treat as open questions the very first Bewildering principles of all reasoning, fundamental truths upon present conwhich the whole fabric of science reposes. And as opinion. but a small minority of the lecture-hearing, magazine-reading public can be supposed to have seriously taken up the study of philosophy, it follows that a certain number will fail to distinguish accurately between a healthy and an unhealthy scepticism. Not being accustomed to sound the depths of their own minds, and puzzled by the paradoxes of the sophists who now and again address them, some lose their hold upon all certainty and fall into a state of general doubt which is so undefined that it does not formulate itself in distinct propositions. Hence we too often encounter a vague and hazy scepticism, producing a languid and otiose state of mind which is, indeed, a symptom of incipient intellectual paralysis.

of stimulat

rough in

But since our object is to seek for certain positive truth, and to build up logically on such certain basis, it is Expediency needful to rouse attention, as far as may be, to this ing a thoenfeebling disease-a mental falling-sickness. In quiry. the presence of this evil it is surely well to try and drive such loiterers along the philosophic road, and to force on them an earnest and resolute questioning of themselves, so that they may know clearly that they do know what they know, and that they may not be persuaded unawares

out of their rational birthright. It is, of course, important that men should not be permitted to build upon a fancied knowledge which has not enough solidity to sustain the philosophical edifice; but it is certainly no less important that men should not be led to follow unsuspectingly an ignis fatuus till it plunges them into a quagmire of "universal doubt." To exaggerate our powers is dangerous, but to be possessed by a feeling of our utter impotence is fatal.

Now there is a school of philosophy (by courtesy so called) The Agnostic of considerable popularity, which is called by its philosophy. opponents the "philosophy of nescience"-a name, however, which its supporters would hardly disclaim. They would hardly disclaim it because some of them willingly style themselves "Agnostics," or "know-nothings;" meaning thereby that they know and can know nothing but appearances, and that nothing whatever can be really and absolutely known. Yet, very irrationally these know-nothings or Agnostics at the same time very confidently affirm that they, by their ignorance, absolutely and infallibly know that the healthy common sense of mankind has gone all wrong, and, what is more extraordinary still, that the greatest philosophers have perversely joined in accepting the commonsense delusions of the vulgar, and gone wrong too. Such philosophers have, indeed, agreed with the rest of mankind. in affirming the certainty of their own continued existence and that of their fellow-men, together with an external world, the shape, number, and extent of the parts of which they declare they can really and absolutely know, in so far as such parts can be brought under the observation of their senses.

The Agnostics form a section of that school (including Hamilton, Mansel, Mill, Lewes, Spencer, Huxley, and Bain) which asserts the relativity-i.e., the merely phenomenal character-of all our knowledge.

But every philosophy, every system of knowledge, must start Every philo- with the assumption (implied or expressed) that

sophy of

nescience stultifies it

self.

something is really "knowable "-that something is "absolutely true;" and by this Agnostic school it is

evidently taught that the doctrine of the "relativity of all our knowledge" is a doctrine which is really and absolutely true. But if nothing that we can know corresponds with reality, if nothing we can assert has a more than relative or phenomenal value, this character must also appertain to the doctrine of the relativity of all our knowledge. Either this system of philosophy itself is relative and phenomenal only, or it is absolutely and objectively true. But it must be merely phenomenal if everything known is merely phenomenal. Its value, then, can be only relative and phenomenal; that is, it has no absolute value, does not correspond with objective reality, and is therefore false. But if it is false that our knowledge is only relative, then some of our knowledge must be absolute; but this negatives the fundamental position of the whole philosophy. Any philosophy, then, which starts with the assertion that all our knowledge is merely phenomenal refutes itself, and is necessarily suicidal. Every assertor of such a philosophy must be in the position of a man who saws across the branch of a tree, on which he actually sits, at a point between himself and the trunk. If he would save himself he must refrain from destroying that which alone sustains him in his elevated position.

directly en

Waiving, however, this objection, it is proposed to examine here some of the assertions of the know-nothing Yet is to be philosophy, with a view of testing the validity of countered. its fundamental assertions and seeing how far some of its so-called "explanations" are really explanatory or instructive. This examination, however, is not undertaken with the barren purpose of refuting an irrational brain-puzzle, but with the hope and intention of bringing out clearly a primary fact of consciousness in its most important bearings, and so establishing a good starting-point for our whole treatise-a foundation revealed to us by the study of nature as it exists in us, in our own mind.

Before, however, consenting to enter the arena with the Agnostics, it will be well to notice shortly three preliminary