without involving the destruction of all knowledge whatever.”
It will be seen from this statement that Dr. Mivart regards his opponents as having laid the basis of their systems on the quicksands of the most radical scepticism; for certainly, if the fact of a το ἐγω be called in question, all knowledge must go by the board, its containing subject being no better than a myth. Those casting a doubt upon the truth of this proposition are by themselves happily styled Agnostics, or know-nothings, and Dr. Mivart includes in the category such distinguished names as Hamilton, Mansel, Mill, Lewes, Spencer, Huxley, and Bain. These writers, one and all, have repeatedly asserted the relativity of our knowledge—i.e., its merely phenomenal character. They do not deny that we possess knowledge, but that we can predicate nothing as to its absolute truth. They claim, indeed, themselves to have sounded the whole diapason of human knowledge, but they regard it only as a mirage which appears real to the eye whilst beholding it, but is none the less a mirage in itself. Dr. Mivart tersely points out the absurdity of this principle of the agnostic philosophy by stating that either this knowledge is absolute—i.e., objectively valid—or has no corresponding reality outside of the mind, in which case it represents nothing—i.e., is no knowledge at all. Those, then, who insist upon the relativity of all knowledge are “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.” For if our knowledge be purely relative, we know it but relatively, and that relative knowledge of it is in turn relative, and so on ad infinitum. In
other words, if we assert of our knowledge that it is relative—i.e., purely subjective—we affirm an objective fact; for however much the facts of the mind be subjective in relation to the objects represented, they become objective in regard to the mind viewing them as the term point of knowledge; so that to affirm of all knowledge that it is purely relative is equal to affirming that the knowledge we have of that knowledge is not the knowledge thereof, but a similar modification of the mind having no business to look for anything beyond itself. This surely is a reductio ad absurdum; yet such threads and thrums are made the warp and woof of so-called scientific philosophy.
Professor Huxley is the most conspicuous champion of this universal nescience, and Dr. Mivart devotes himself at greater length to a review of his principles. Huxley says: “Now, is our knowledge of anything we know or feel more or less than a knowledge of states of consciousness? And our whole life is made up of such states. Some of these states we refer to a cause we call ‘self,’ others to a cause or causes which may be comprehended under the title of ‘not-self.’ But neither of the existence of ‘self’ nor of that of ‘not-self’ have we, or can we by any possibility have, any such unquestionable and immediate certainty as we have of the states of consciousness which we consider to be their effects.” This utterance is remarkable for the inaccuracies with which it abounds and for the crudeness of its author’s philosophy. The fact that we immediately apprehend consciousness in the light of passing states is proof that, mediately or by reflection, we view it altogether differently, and
this latter mode certainly affords a more certain and satisfactory knowledge. By reflection, then, or mediately, we regard those passing states as the product of something enduring and continuous of which we are in reality conscious, while experiencing those modifications described by Huxley as “passing states of consciousness.” When conscious of a state we are certainly conscious of that by which consciousness is had, or we would be forced to admit that nothing can be conscious, than which there could be no greater absurdity. The direct consciousness, therefore, which Huxley’s “passing states of consciousness” would describe, presupposes the consciousness of the organ of those “passing states”—a consciousness which stands in an à priori relation to these latter. The chief flaw in Huxley’s reasoning is that, as he confines consciousness to a mere modification, and admits no modified substance as an abiding essence, he must regard mind, so far as he knows it, as a modification of nothing modified.
We have not here followed out the exact line of argument pursued by Dr. Mivart, whose strictures on Huxley in regard to his absurd position must be attentively read in order to be appreciated; but we hope to have indicated enough to enable the reader to judge of the fitness of our neoterists to become the leaders of thought. Having established, then, the implied existence of self in consciousness, Dr. Mivart proceeds, in a chain of the most solid reasoning, to marshal around this central truth those having a direct dependence upon it, and from the admission of which Huxley had fondly hoped to escape by perverting the true data of consciousness. Memory is the corner-stone
of all knowledge outside of direct consciousness, and Dr. Mivart clearly shows that its testimony is constantly invoked by the most outspoken nescients, so that, in regard to its echoings, the choice is absurd between what it attests generally and the circumscribed field of operation to which Herbert Spencer seems anxious to confine it. But Dr. Mivart is satisfied in this chapter with having demonstrated the sufficiency of rightly understood consciousness to be the “starting point” of our knowledge of the objective, and properly dismisses the argument in these words:
“But it is hoped that the cavils of the Agnostics have been here met by arguments sufficient to enable even the most timid and deferential readers and hearers of our modern sophists to hold their own rational convictions, and to maintain they know what they are convinced they do know, and not to give up a certain and absolute truth (their intellectual birthright) at the bidding of those who would illogically make use of such negation as a ground for affirming the relativity of all our knowledge, and consequently for denying all such truths as, for whatever reason, they may desire to deny.”
To the casual thinker it may appear that the arguments of Dr. Mivart are somewhat antiquated as against the strongholds of modern error; but the fact additionally illustrates the slenderness of the resources with which error comes equipped to the fray, since, whenever there is question of first principles, truth can with the same weapons always assail the vulnerable point in the enemy’s armor. It is true that in point of detail the ground of conflict has shifted, and that those who once successfully opposed the errors of Voltaire, Diderot, or Volney, should they suddenly appear on the scene now,
would have to count themselves out of the fight; but with respect to principles and ultimate expressions, we find the Agnostics of to-day ranging themselves side by side with the Gnostics and Manicheans of old. So we believe that Dr. Mivart has done well, before approaching the details of the controversy, to knock the underpinning from the whole superstructure of modern error by exposing the falsity of its principles. At least the procedure is more philosophical and more satisfactory to the logical mind.