Resumé.—Mr. Spencer’s results, so far as philosophy is concerned, may be briefly summed up under four general heads: 1. Psychology. 2. Ontology. 3. Theology. 4. Cosmology.
PSYCHOLOGY.
(1.) Conception is a mere picture in the mind; therefore what cannot be pictured cannot be conceived; therefore the Infinite, the Absolute, God, Essence, Matter, Motion, Force—anything, in short, that involves mediation—cannot be conceived; hence they are unknowable.
(2.) Consciousness is self-knowing; but that subject and object are one, is impossible. We can neither know ourselves nor any real being.
(3.) All reasoning or explaining is the subsuming of a somewhat under a more general category; hence the highest category is unsubsumed, and hence inexplicable.
(4.) Our intellectual faculties may be improved to a certain extent, and beyond this, no amount of training can avail anything. (Biology, vol. I, p. 188.)
(5.) The “substance of consciousness” is the basis of our ideas of persistence of Force, Matter, etc.
(6.) All knowing is relative; our knowledge of this fact, however, is not relative but absolute.
ONTOLOGY.
(1.) All that we know is phenomenal. The reality passes all understanding. In the phenomenon the essence is “manifested,” but still it is not revealed thereby; it remains hidden behind it, inscrutable to our perception.