“If we inquire more closely, this ir­rec­on­cil­abil­ity becomes still clearer. Kant says:—‘That which in the phænomenon corresponds to the sensation, I term its matter; but that which effects that the content of the phenomenon can be arranged under certain relations, I call its form.’ Carrying with us this definition of form, as ‘that which effects that the content . . . . can be arranged under certain relations,’ let us return to the case in which the intuition of Space is the intuition which occupies con­scious­ness. Can the content of this intuition ‘be arranged under certain relations’ or not? It can be so arranged, or rather, it is so arranged. Space cannot be thought of save as having parts, near and remote, in this direction or the other. Hence, if that is the form of a thing ‘which effects that the content . . . . can be arranged under certain relations,’ it follows that when the content of con­scious­ness is the intuition of Space, which has ‘parts that can be arranged under certain relations,’ there must be a form of that intuition. What is it? Kant does not tell us—does not appear to perceive that there must be such a form; and could not have perceived this without abandoning his hypothesis that the space-intuition is primordial.”

Now when Dr. Hodgson has shown me how that “which {233} effects that the content . . . . can be arranged under certain relations,” may also be that which effects its own arrangement under the same relations, I shall be ready to surrender my position; but until then, no analogy drawn from the ability of a dog to bite himself will weigh much with me.

Having, as he considers, disposed of the reasons given by me for concluding that, considered in themselves, “Space and Time are wholly in­com­pre­hen­sible” (he continually uses on my behalf the word “inconceivable,” which, by its unfit connotations, gives a wrong aspect to my position), Dr. Hodgson goes on to say:-

“Yet Mr. Spencer proceeds to use these inconceivable ideas as the basis of his philosophy. For mark, it is Space and Time as we know them, the actual and phenomenal Space and Time, to which all these in­con­ceiv­a­bil­i­ties attach. Mr. Spencer’s result, ought, therefore, logically to be—Scepticism. What is his actual result? Ontology. And how so? Why, instead of rejecting Space and Time as the inconceivable things he has tried to demonstrate them to be, he substitutes for them an Unknowable, a something which they really are, though we cannot know it, and rejects that, instead of them, from knowledge.”

This statement has caused me no little astonishment. That having before him the volume from which he quotes, so competent a reader should have so completely missed the meaning of the passages (§ 26) already referred to, in which I have contended against Hamilton and Mansel, makes me almost despair of being understood by any ordinary reader. In that section I have, in the first place, contended that the con­scious­ness of an Ultimate Reality, though not capable of being made a thought, properly so called, because not capable of being brought within limits, nevertheless remains as a con­scious­ness that is positive: is not rendered negative by the negations of limits. I have pointed out that—

“The error, (very naturally fallen into by philosophers intent on demonstrating the limits and conditions of con­scious­ness), consists in assuming that con­scious­ness contains nothing but limits and conditions; to the entire neglect of that which is limited and conditioned. It is forgotten that there is something which alike forms the raw material of definite thought and remains after the definiteness which thinking gave to it has been {234} destroyed”—something which “ever persists in us as the body of a thought to which we can give no shape.”

This positive element of con­scious­ness it is which, “at once necessarily indefinite and necessarily indestructible,” I regard as the con­scious­ness of the Unknowable Reality. Yet Dr. Hodgson says “Mr. Spencer proceeds to use these inconceivable ideas as the basis of his philosophy:” implying that such basis consists of negations, instead of consisting of that which persists notwithstanding the negation of limits. And then, beyond this perversion, or almost inversion, of meaning, he conveys the notion that I take as the basis of philosophy, the “inconceivable ideas” “or self-contradictory notions” which result when we endeavour to comprehend Space and Time. He speaks of me as proposing to evolve substance out of form, or rather, out of the negations of forms—gives his readers no conception that the Power manifested to us is that which I regard as the Unknowable, while what we call Space and Time answer to the unknowable nexus of its manifestations. And yet the chapter from which I quote, and still more the chapter which follows it, makes this clear—as clear, at least, as I can make it by carefully-worded statements and re-statements.

Philosophical systems, like theological ones, following the law of evolution in general, severally become in course of time more rigid, while becoming more complex and more definite; and they similarly become less alterable—resist all compromise, and have to be replaced by the more plastic systems that descend from them.

It is thus with pure Empiricism and pure Tran­scen­den­ta­lism. Down to the present time disciples of Locke have continued to hold that all mental phenomena are interpretable as results of accumulated individual experiences; and, by criticism, have been led simply to elaborate their in­ter­pre­ta­tions—ignoring the proofs of inadequacy. On the other hand, disciples of Kant, {235} asserting this inadequacy, and led by perception of it to adopt an antagonist theory, have persisted in defending that theory under a form presenting fatal inconsistencies. And then, when there is offered a mode of reconciliation, the spirit of no-compromise is displayed: each side continuing to claim the whole truth. After it has been pointed out that all the obstacles in the way of the experiential doctrine disappear if the effects of ancestral experiences are joined with the effects of individual experiences, the old form of the doctrine is still adhered to. And meanwhile Kantists persist in asserting that the ego is born with intuitional forms which are wholly independent of anything in the non-ego, after it has been shown that the innateness of these intuitional forms may be so understood as to escape the insurmountable difficulties of the hypothesis as originally expressed.

I am led to say this by reading the remarks concerning my own views, made with an urbanity I hope to imitate, by Professor Max Müller, in a lecture delivered at the Royal Institution in March, 1873.[27] Before dealing with the criticisms contained in this lecture, I must enter a demurrer against that interpretation of my views by which Professor Max Müller makes it appear that they are more allied to those of Kant than to those of Locke. He says:—