7. Waiving this, however, and falling back into the ordinary track of conceptions, I dispute the assertion that man cannot comprehend the Infinite; an assertion which usually relies on the incorrect notion of Thought being restricted to Imagination. That of which we can form no image is often said to be unthinkable; but this is to mistake the very nature of conceptions as symbols. "Certaines personnes," says Descartes, "sont tellement accoutumées à ne rien considérer qu'en l'imaginant, ce qui est une façon particulière de penser pour les choses matérielles, que tout ce qui n'est pas imaginable leur semble n'être pas intelligible."* The fact that we have the conception of the Infinite is indisputable, let its genesis be explained how it may. That we comprehend it is certain, since it is an idea which we employ with rigorous precision. We comprehend it as an operation. We comprehend it as we comprehend other abstract symbols. So that if the reader rejects my suggestion of its being not a quantity, but an operation on quantity, and if he declares it to be a symbol of the total Reality, the One Existent, he must still admit that it is comprehended as an abstract symbol, and that he knows Existence in knowing concrete existents. That we do not, cannot know all existents, is obvious. That we cannot know Existence in itself, out of all relation, is also certain. But does it exist in itself? and who knows this?

8. Setting aside this ancient difficulty respecting the Infinite, let us consider the other conception of the Absolute, which symbolizes the Universe or Living Whole, some parts of which are the known and knowable phenomena of our Cosmos. To say that we do not, cannot know all Existence, or all modes of Existence, is indisputable, but idle. We certainly know concrete existences, and also know the abstraction (Existence) by which we * DESCARTES, Discours sur la Méthode.

VOL. II.

17

Y

condense these in a symbol. The contention of those who declare the Absolute to be unknowable is, that beyond the sphere of knowable phenomena there is an Existent, which partially appears in the phenomena, but is something wholly removed from them, and in no way cognizable by us. This may be so; but we can never know that it is so. In any case, it is supremely indifferent to us, and nothing but the very wantonness of Speculation could lead men to occupy themselves with it. Yet, since Speculation has long occupied itself with the imaginary Noumena "impenetrably hidden behind Phenomena," and since these Noumena have been regarded as the veritable Reals, we may attempt a decisive discussion of the evidence on which this opinion rests. Clearly, if nothing can be known of Existence as it really is, only of its shadowy manifestation, the Absolute is altogether unknowable.

CHAPTER II.

THINGS IN THEIR ATTRIBUTES AND IN THEMSELVES.

9. KNOWLEDGE, in all its manifold varieties, is classification of virtual feelings. The feelings classified were distinguished among themselves by the unlikeness in their conditions, and grouped by the likeness in their conditions. Each was a product of like and unlike elements, for identity and diversity are the inseparable aspects of all feelings. We logically distinguish what we know to be incapable of real separation; and thus, according to our point of view, we regard things under one or the other aspect, according to the needs of the occasion. Science, which is the system of classified resemblances and differences, has thus two varying directions: 1°, the practical, which deals with the established classifications, accepting the distinctions useful for its immediate ends ; and, 2°, the theoretical, which seeks to unite the differences in some higher unity, classifying them according to their resemblances, and thus obliterating all those distinctions which are particular, and have no general significance. Of course the two tendencies converge and co-operate, but we may here consider each for itself. They converge and co-operate, for example, in Biology, although any individual biologist may chiefly follow one or the other. He may be an anatomist, dealing with the organism as a completed structure: he then describes. each organ, each tissue, each element as he finds it, and explains the connections of the parts. From his point of

view the distinction between nerve and muscle is capital; only anatomical inexperience could confound them, or assign the special characters of the one to the other. He sees and enumerates the differences between epidermis, crystalline lens, nails, hair, teeth, etc. His science, and the medical art founded on that science, depend on such distinctions being accurately noted. But another biologist, or this same one on another occasion, having to consider the organism from the point of view of Development, sets aside all these well-marked differences to pursue the accompanying masked resemblances. Dealing with the evolution of the organism, he shows how it became what it is: points out that nerve and muscle are identical in essential characters, and that epidermis, lens, nails, hair, teeth, etc., are but differentiations of one tissue. Not stopping here, he shows how the manifold varieties of the complex organism arise by successive differentiations from the homogeneous germinal membrane. His Analysis, going backward far enough, finds all the diversities of organic structure merged in identity; while, advancing forwards, Synthesis finds the primitive identity disappearing more and more in diversity. The structureless protoplasm and the complex organism are thus contrasted or identified, according to the point of view of concrete Observation, or of abstract Theory.

10. Here the question arises: Is either view to be accepted as that which alone represents the truth? Is the practical or the theoretical conclusion to be preferred? The principles of one school of philosophers would imply that the organism known in all its complex appearances is not the Real, but is simply a phenomenal transition stage of the deeper Real which does not appear; each differentiation noted by the morphologist has, underlying it, a substance of which it is the differentiation; and this never appears in its own reality; all the

visible diversities play over the surface of an invisible identity, which is the only Reality, because it only is permanent. The principles of the antagonist school imply that this invisible identity is an abstraction formed out of concrete phenomena, and then imagined to underlie them: it is not real, but ideal; the organism is the real.

We shall see presently in how far both these conclusions fall short of empirical justification. First, however, note this same twofold direction of inquiry in the great problem of Metaphysics. Here also the differences and antitheses which get established in experience are set aside, or brought prominently forward, according to the point of view. Here also Thought integrates what Sense differentiates. The intellect, having classified and distinguished, comes to accept its classifications and distinctions as reals. For example, the marked distinction between Object and Subject, Matter and Mind, Things and Thought, is unhesitatingly accepted by the practical intellect, which has to deal with established distinctions, since it operates on what lies ready to hand, instead of perplexing itself with what is not there. It deals with the actual products, not with the factors, real or imaginary, and calls objects by their assigned names, estimating symbols by their conventional values, so that to it the antithesis between Things and Thoughts is absolute. Not so the theoretical intellect, which is looking away from the actually there, seeking how it came there, -overlooking the product in the search after its factors; for it, the marked antithesis is no longer absolute, but Things are inseparably blended with Thoughts. Thus the one point of view regards things as if they had no history, and would have no future; takes them for what they are worth at the moment, and for the particular purpose. In truth, Things exist just so long as their conditions exist, whether that be a moment or a cycle.