Put the case to the judgment of Reason, once for all. If we agreed to accept Herbert Spencer's position, we should consent to deny that anything can be known of an Absolute. And the denial would proceed upon this maxim:—"whatsoever is inexplicable is also unknowable." Consider, now, what other ultimate truths would fall into the same tomb-like Category. We must silence all human utterance respecting all first grounds;—our own individuality;—and every object of reason which becomes inconceivable, when we attempt to define it by the processes of ordinary logic. All utterance respecting our own senses and sensations;—our own existence, as beings distinct from a world of beings and things really existing outside us.
In fine, we could never know that we know either anything or nothing; for, we should have silenced the deepest of all utterances,—the one upon which all truth and reason depend. We should have relegated our Mind along with our God, to the same abysmal gulf of the Unknowable. Henceforth, we could predicate of Mind nothing essential to purposes of knowledge,—and least of all essentials,—Veracity.
Mr. Mill closes his laborious endeavours to explain our natural belief in Mind as follows: "The truth is, that we are here face to face with that final inexplicability, at which, as Sir W. Hamilton observes, we inevitably arrive when we reach ultimate facts; and in general, one mode of stating it only appears more incomprehensible than another, because the whole of human language is accommodated to the one, and is so incongruous with the other, that it cannot be expressed in any terms which do not deny its truth. The real stumbling-block is perhaps not in any theory of the fact, but in the fact itself. The true incomprehensibility perhaps is, that something which has ceased, or is not yet in existence, can still be in a manner, present: that a series of feelings, the infinitely greater part of which is past or future, can be gathered up, as it were, into a single present conception, accompanied by a belief of reality. I think, by far the wisest thing we can do, is to accept the inexplicable fact, without any theory of how it takes place; and when we are obliged to speak of it in terms which assume a theory, to use them with a reservation as to their meaning."[113] Two pages further he ingenuously adds: "I do not profess to have adequately accounted for the belief in Mind." In other words, the perplexities remain on Mill's system as they do on all systems. But the Belief and the Fact remain likewise.
It is the same with our belief of other ultimate facts. We live an individual life,—we know not what. We see and perceive,—we know not how. Yet such are the facts, and we thoroughly believe and act upon them.
The pivot on which these and similar beliefs turn is a subject of the greatest interest and importance. On this same pivot turns our primary affirmative Argument for Natural Theism. To establish it will be the purpose of the next Chapter, and a succession of affirmative arguments, separate but convergent, will occupy the remainder of this Essay.
Corollary:—If any reader of these pages has felt the fascination of some one among the many materializing hypotheses now in vogue, let him remember that, in fair debate, Materialism can never have the slightest chance against Idealism.
All materializing theories labour under an enormous weight of unverified postulates. They set out from neither the most natural, nor yet the surest, sources of our knowledge. Naturally, we start from self-ness, and learn to put outer things and beings in opposition to our own primary self-consciousness.
In after life, when we ask why we are sure of any kind of knowledge; the primary truths upon which all our reasonings proceed, are always the presentations of our own mind.
If we proceed to analyse accepted relativities, we soon perceive that Mind enters into our facts, and also into our sense-presentations. In particular, an examination of the noblest of all senses—the sense of sight—will convince any careful analyst that such is undeniably the case. The reader may recal Mr. Mill's words,[114]—"I do not believe that the real externality to us of anything, except other minds, is capable of proof." "For ourselves," says Professor Fraser, "we can conceive only—(1) An externality to our present and transient experience in our own possible experience past and future, and (2) An externality to our own conscious experience, in the contemporaneous, as well as in the past or future experience of other minds"[115] In this view Mr. Mill (who quotes Fraser), entirely acquiesces, and in this same spirit he writes, "Matter may be defined, a Permanent Possibility of Sensation;"[116]—and adds that he can accept no other definition.