But it is evident that the author rejects alike self-existence and creation; that the cosmos is self-existent, or that it is created by an independent, self-existent, and supercosmic creator. How, then, can he assert the existence of the cosmos, real or phenomenal, at all? The cosmos either exists or it does not. If it does not, that ends the matter. If it does, it must be either created or self-existent; for the author rejects an infinite series as absurd, and self-creation as only an absurd form of expressing self-existence. But as the author denies self-existence, whatever the subject of which it is predicated, and also the fact of creation, it follows rigorously, if he is right, that the cosmos does not exist. The author cannot take refuge in his favorite nescio, or say we do not know the origin of the cosmos, for he has positively denied it every possible origin, and therefore has by implication denied it all existence. A moment ago, we showed that he denied by implication all science or knowledge,
and now we see that, if held rigorously to his system as he explains it, he denies all existence, and, by implication at least, asserts absolute nihilism. Surely there is no occasion to apply to his new system of philosophy the reductio ad absurdum.
The author is necessarily led to the assertion that at least nothing is knowable by his doctrine, that all knowledge is relative. The Comtists restrict, in theory, all knowledge to sensible things, their mutual relations, dependencies, and the conditions and laws of their development and progress; but they at least admit that these may be objects of science and positively known. But our cosmic philosopher denies this, and asserts the relativity of all knowledge. We know and can know only the relative that is, only what is relative to the absolute, and relative to our own consciousness. In this he follows Sir William Hamilton, J. Stuart Mill, and the late Dr. Mansel, Anglican Dean of St. Paul’s. But relative knowledge is simply no knowledge, because in it nothing is known. The relative is not cognizable nor cogitable in and by itself, because it in and by itself, or prescinded from that to which it is relative, does not exist, and is simply nothing. What neither is nor exists is not cognizable nor cogitable. The relativity of all knowledge, then, is simply the denial of all knowledge. It is idle, then, for Mr. Spencer to talk of science. His science is only a laborious ignorance.
Mr. Spencer labors hard to prove the relativity of all knowledge. He either proves it or he does not. If he does not, he has no right to assert it; if he does, he disproves it at the same time. If the proof is not absolute, it does not prove it; if it is absolute, then it is not true that all knowledge is relative; for the proof
must be absolutely known, or it cannot be alleged. We either know that all knowledge is relative, or we do not. If we do not, no more need be said; if we do know it, then it is false, because the knowledge of the relativity of knowledge is itself not relative. The assertion of the relativity of all knowledge, therefore, contradicts and refutes itself. No man can doubt that he doubts, or that doubt is doubt, and therefore universal doubt or universal scepticism is impossible, and not even assertable. The same argument applies to the pretence that all knowledge is relative.
The relativists are misled by their dealing with the abstract and not the concrete. They regard all that is or exists either as relative or absolute. But both absolute and relative are abstract conceptions, and formed by abstraction from the concrete intuitively presented or apprehended. They exist, as St. Thomas tells us, only in mente, cum fundamento in re. There are no abstractions in nature or the cosmos, and there is and can be neither abstract science nor science of abstractions, for abstractions, prescinded from their concretes, are simply nullities. The absolute is, we grant, unknowable, and so also is the relative, for neither has any existence in nature, or a parte rei. They are both generalizations, and nature never generalizes. Whatever exists, exists in concreto, not in genere. Hence, the ens in genere of Rosmini is no ens reale, but simply ens possibile, like the reine Seyn of Hegel, which is the equivalent of das Nichtseyn; for the possible is only the ability of the real.
Now, because the abstract absolute is unknowable, unthinkable even, it by no means follows that the concrete, real and necessary being, cannot be both thought and known, or that
things cannot be both thought and known in their relations to it, without reducing it to the category of the relative. Sir William Hamilton says the absolute is the unconditioned, and is incogitable, because our thought necessarily conditions it. This would be true if the absolute is an abstraction or mental conception, but is false and absurd if applied to real, necessary, infinite, and self-existent being, which, as independent of us and all relation, is and must be the same whether we think it or not. The thought does not impose its own conditions and limitations on the object; certainly not when the object is real and necessary being, and in every respect independent of it. We cannot, of course, think infinite being infinitely or adequately, but it does not follow that we cannot think it, though finitely and inadequately. The human mind, being finite, cannot comprehend infinite being; but, nevertheless, it may and does apprehend it, or else Mr. Spencer could not assert the Infinite Something, which he says we are compelled to admit underlies the cosmic phenomena and is manifested in them. The human mind can apprehend more than it can comprehend, and nothing that is apprehensible, though incomprehensible, is unthinkable or unknowable, except in Mr. Spencer’s New System of Philosophy.
Sir William Hamilton says, in defending the relativity of all knowledge: “Only relations are cogitable. Relation is cogitable only in correlation, and the relation between correlatives is reciprocal, each is relative to the other. Thought is dual, and embraces at once subject and object in their mutual opposition and limitation.” This merely begs the question. Besides, it is not true. Relations are themselves cogitable only in the related; correlatives connote
each other, so that the one cannot be thought without thinking the other; but not therefore are all relations reciprocal, as the relation between phenomenon and noumenon, cause and effect, creator and creation. Here are two terms and a relation between them, but no reciprocity. When we think cause and effect, we do not think them as mutually opposing and limiting each other. The effect cannot oppose or limit the cause, or the creature the creator, for the creature depends on the creator and is nothing without his creative act, and the effect is nothing without the cause which produces and sustains it. The creature depends on the creator, but not the creator on the creature; the effect depends on the cause, but not the cause on the effect. There may, then, be relation without reciprocity.