It will be observed here that he is endeavoring to solve the First Antinomy of Kant, and that his argument in this place differs from Kant’s proof of the “Antithesis” in this, that while Kant proves that “The world [or universe] has no beginning,” etc., by the impossibility of the origination of anything in a “void time,” that Mr. Spencer proves the same thing by asserting it to be a “positive result of our mental structure,” and then proceeds to show that this is a sort of “inability” which has a subjective explanation; it is, according to him, merely the “substance of consciousness” objectified and regarded as the law of reality.
But how is it with the “Thesis” to that Antinomy, “The world has a beginning in time?” Kant proves this apagogically by showing the absurdity of an “infinite series already elapsed.” That our author did not escape the contradiction has already been shown in our remarks upon the “indestructibility of matter.” While he was treating of the unknowable it was his special province to prove that self-existence is unthinkable. (P. 31): He says it means “existence without a beginning,” and “to conceive existence through infinite past time, implies the conception of infinite past time, which is an impossibility.” Thus we have the Thesis of the Antinomy supported in his doctrine of the “unknowable,” and the antithesis of the same proved in the doctrine of the knowable.
We shall next find him involved with Kant’s Third Antinomy.
The doctrine of the correlation is stated in the following passages:
(P. 280): “Those modes of the unknowable, which we call motion, heat, light, chemical affinity, etc., are alike transformable into each other, and into those modes of the unknowable which we distinguish as sensation, emotion, thought: these, in their turns, being directly or indirectly re-transformable into the original shapes. That no idea or feeling arises, save as a result of some physical force expended in producing it, is fast becoming a common-place of science; and whoever duly weighs the evidence, will see that nothing but an overwhelming bias in favor of a preconceived theory can explain its non-acceptance. How this metamorphosis takes place—how a force existing as motion, heat, or light, can become a mode of consciousness—how it is possible for aërial vibrations to generate the sensation we call sound, or for the forces liberated by chemical changes in the brain to give rise to emotion—these are mysteries which it is impossible to fathom.” (P. 284): “Each manifestation of force can be interpreted only as the effect of some antecedent force; no matter whether it be an inorganic action, an animal movement, a thought, or a feeling. Either this must be conceded, or else it must be asserted that our successive states of consciousness are self-created.” “Either mental energies as well as bodily ones are quantitatively correlated to certain energies expended in their production, and to certain other energies they initiate; or else nothing must become something and something, nothing. Since persistence of force, being a datum of consciousness, cannot be denied, its unavoidable corollary must be accepted.”
On p. 294 he supports the doctrine that “motion takes the direction of the least resistance,” mentally as well as physically.
Here are some of the inferences to be drawn from the passages quoted:
1. Every act is determined from without, and hence does not belong to the subject in which it manifests itself.
2. To change the course of a force, is to make another direction “that of the least resistance,” or to remove or diminish a resistance.
3. But to change a resistance requires force, which (in motion) must act in “the direction of the least resistance,” and hence it is entirely determined from without, and governed by the disposition of the forces it meets.