-

Our

probably are a great many relations which | trated than by quoting the words in which we have not faculties enabling us to con- this favorite doctrine is expressed by Sir ceive. All this is quite true, and a most William Hamilton. Speaking of important truth. But the metaphysical knowledge of matter he says: "It is a distinction is quite different. It affirms name for something known — for that that if we knew things in every one of the which appears to us under the forms of relations that affect them, we should still extension, solidity, divisibility, figure, be no nearer than before to a knowledge motion, roughness, smoothness, color, of "things in themselves." "It is proper heat, cold," etc. "But," he goes on to to observe," says Sir W. Hamilton, "that say, "as these phenomena appear only in had we faculties equal in number to all conjunction, we are compelled by the the possible modes of existence, whether constitution of our nature to think them of mind or matter, still would our knowl- conjoined in and by something; and as edge of mind or matter be only relative. they are phenomena, we cannot think If material existence could exhibit ten them the phenomena of nothing, but must thousand phenomena, if we possessed ten regard them as the properties or qualities thousand senses to apprehend these ten of something that is extended, figured, thousand phenomena of material exist- etc. But this something, absolutely and ence, of existence absolutely and in itself in itself i.e., considered apart from its we should then be as ignorant as we are at phenomena — is to us as zero. It is only present." The conception here is that in its qualities, only in its effects, in its there is something to be known about relative or phenomenal existence, that it things in which they are not presented as is cognizable or conceivable; and it is in any relation to anything else. It affirms only by a law of thought which compels that there are certain ultimate entities in us to think something absolute and unnature to which all phenomena are due, known, as the basis or condition of the and yet which can be thought of as hav- relative and known, that this something ing no relation to these phenomena, or to obtains a kind of incomprehensible reality ourselves, or to any other existence what to us." The argument here is that beever. Now, as the very idea of knowledge cause phenomena are and must be the consists in the perception of relations, "properties or qualities of something this affirmation is, in the purest sense of else," therefore we are "compelled to the word, nonsense - that is to say, it is think" of that something as having an a series of words which have either no existence separable from any relation to meaning at all or a meaning which is self- its own qualities and properties, and that contradictory. It belongs to the class of this something acquires from this reasonpropositions which throw just discredit ing a "kind of incomprehensible reality"! on metaphysics - mere verbal proposi- There is no such law of thought. There tions, pretending to deal with conceptions is no such necessity of thinking nonsense which are no conceptions at all, but empty as is here alleged. All that we are comsounds. The "unconditioned," we are pelled to think is that the ultimate constitold, "is unthinkable: " but words which tution of matter, and the ultimate source are unthinkable had better be also un- of its relations to our own organism, are speakable, or at least unspoken. It is unknown, and are probably inaccessible altogether untrue that we are compelled to us. But this is a very different conto believe in the existence of anything ception from that which affirms that if we which is "unconditioned" in matter did know or could know these ultimate with no qualities in minds with no truths we should find in them anything character in a God with no attributes. standing absolutely alone and unrelated Even the metaphysicians who dwell on to other existences in the universe. this distinction between the relative and the unconditioned admit that it is one to which no idea can be attached. Yet, in spite of this admission, they proceed to found many inferences upon it, as if it had an intelligible meaning. Those who have not been accustomed to metaphysical literature could hardly believe the flagrant unreason which is common on this subject. It cannot be better illusLectures, vol. i., p. 145.

It is, however, so important that we should define to ourselves as clearly as we can the nature of the limitations which affect our knowledge, and the real infer ences which are to be derived from the consciousness we have of them, that it may be well to examine these dicta of metaphysicians in the light of specific instances. It becomes all the more important to do so when we observe that the language in which these dicta are expressed generally implies that knowledge

which is "only relative" is less genuine | can be thought of or conceived as neither or less absolutely true than some other a cause nor a consequence, but solitary kind of knowledge which is not explained, and unrelated. On the contrary, all that except that it must be knowledge of that which has no relation to the mind.

remains unexplained is the nature and
cause of its relations its relations on
the one hand to the elements out of which
vegetable vitality has combined it, and
its relations on the other hand to the still
higher vitality which it threatens to de-
stroy. Its place in the unity of nature is
the ultimate object of our search, and
this unity is essentially a unity of rela-
tions, and of nothing else.
That unity
everywhere proclaims the truth that there
is nothing in the wide universe which is
unrelated to the rest.

There is a sense (and it is the only sense in which the words have any meaning) in which we are all accustomed to say that we know a thing" in itself," when we have found out, for example, its origin, or its structure, or its chemical composition, as distinguished from its more superficial aspects. If a new substance were offered to us as food, and if we examined its appearance to the eye, and felt its consistency to the touch, and smelt its odor, and finally tasted it, we should then know as Let us take another example. Until much about it as these various senses modern science had established its methcould tell us. Other senses, or other ods of physical investigation, light and forms of sensation, might soon add their sound were known as sensations only. own several contributions to our knowl- That is to say, they were known in terms edge, and we might discover that this sub- of the mental impressions which they imstance had deleterious effects upon the mediately produce upon us, and in no other human organism. This would be know- terms whatever. There was no proof ing, perhaps, by far the most important that in these sensations we had any things that are to be known about it. knowledge "in themselves" of the exterBut we should certainly like to know nal agencies which produce them. But more, and we should probably consider now all this is changed. Science has disthat we had found out what it was "in covered what these two agencies are "in itself," when we had discovered farther, themselves;" that is to say, it has defor example, that it was the fruit of a tree. fined them under aspects which are Chemistry might next inform us of the totally distinct from seeing or hearing, analysis of the fruit, and might exhibit and is able to describe them in terms adsome alkaloid to which its peculiar prop-dressed to wholly different faculties of erties and its peculiar effects upon the body are due. This, again, we should certainly consider as knowing what it is "in itself." But other questions respecting it would remain behind. How the tree can extract this alkaloid from the inorganic elements of the soil, and how, when so extracted, it should have such and such peculiar effects upon the animal body, -these, and similar questions, we may ask, and probably we shall ask in vain. But there is nothing in the inaccessibility of this knowledge to suggest that we are absolutely incapable of understanding the answer if it were explained to us. On the contrary, the disposition we have to put such questions raises a strong presumption that the answer would be one capable of that assimilation by our intellectual nature in which all understanding of anything consists. There is nothing in the series of phenomena which this substance has exhibited to us -nothing in the question which they raise — which can even suggest the idea that all these relations which we have traced, or any others which may remain behind, are the result of something which

conception. Both light and sound are in the nature of undulatory movements in elastic media to which undulations our organs of sight and hearing are respectively adjusted or "attuned." In these organs, by virtue of that adjustment or attuning, these same undulations are "translated" into the sensations which we know. It thus appears that the facts as described to us in this language of sensation are the true equivalent of the facts as described in the very different language of intellectual analysis. The eye is now understood to be an apparatus for enabling the mind instantaneously to appreciate differences of motion which are of almost inconceivable minuteness. The pleasure we derive from the harmonies of color and of sound, although mere sensations, do correctly represent the movement of undulations in a definite order; whilst those other sensations which we know as discords represent the actual clashing and disorder of interfering waves. In breathing the healthy air of physical discoveries such as these, although the limitations of our knowledge continually haunt us, we gain nevertheless a trium

phant sense of its certainty and of its truth. Not only are the mental impressions, which our organs have been so constructed as to convey, a true interpretation of external facts, but the conclusions we draw as to their origin and their source, and as to the guarantee we have for the accuracy of our conceptions, are placed on the firmest of all foundations. The mirror into which we look is a true mirror, reflecting accurately and with infinite fineness the realities of nature. And this great lesson is being repeated in every new discovery, and in every new application of an old one. Every reduction of phenomena to ascertained measures of force; every application of mathematical proof to theoretical conceptions; every detection of identical operations in diverse departments of nature; every subjection of material agencies to the service of mankind; every confirmation of knowledge acquired through one sense by the evidence of another, every one of these operations adds to the verifications of science, confirms our reasonable trust in the faculties we possess, and assures us that the knowledge we acquire by the careful use of these is a real and substantial knowledge of the truth.

--

come from luminous bodies. This was a relation - but a relation of the vaguest and most general kind. As compared with this vague relation the new relation under which we know them is knowledge of a more definite and of a higher kind. Light and sound we now know to be words or ideas representing not merely any one thing or any two things, but espe cially a relation of adjustment between a number of things. In this adjustment light and sound, as known to sense, do "in themselves "consist. Sound becomes known to us as the attunement between certain aerial pulsations and the auditory apparatus. Light becomes known to us as a similar or analogous attunement between the ethereal pulsations and the optic apparatus. Sound in this sense is not the aerial waves "in themselves," but in their relation to the ear. Light is not the ethereal undulations "in themselves," but in their relation to the eye. It is only when these come into contact with a prearranged machinery that they become what we know and speak of as light and sound. This conception, therefore, is found to represent and express a pure relation; and it is a conception higher than the one we had before, not because it is either less or more relative, but because its relativity is to a higher faculty of the intellect or the understanding.

If now we examine the kind of knowledge respecting light and sound which recent discoveries have revealed to us, as compared with the knowledge which we And indeed, when we come to think of had of them before these discoveries it, we see that all kinds of knowledge were made, we shall find that there is an must take their place and rank according important difference. The knowledge to this order of precedence. For as all which we had before was the simple and knowledge consists in the establishment elementary knowledge of sensation. As of relations between external facts and compared with that knowledge the new the various faculties of the mind, the knowledge we have acquired respecting light and sound is a knowledge of these things "in themselves." Such is the language in which we should naturally express our sense of that difference, and in so expressing it we should be expressing an important truth. The newer knowledge is a higher knowledge than the older and simpler knowledge which we had before. And why? Wherein does this higher quality of the new knowledge consist? Is it not in the very fact that the new knowledge is the perception of a higher kind of relation than that which we had perceived before? There is no difference between the two kinds of knowledge in respect to the mere abstract It is the result of this analysis to estabcharacter of relativity. The old was as lish that, even if it were true that there relative as the new; and the new is as could be anything in the universe existing relative as the old. Before the new dis-out of relation with other things around coveries sound was known to come from it, or if it were conceivable that there sonorous bodies, and light was known to could be any knowledge of things as they

highest knowledge must always be that in which such relations are established with those intellectual powers which are of the highest kind. Hence we have a strictly scientific basis of classification for arranging the three great subjects of all human inquiry the what, the how, and the whence or why. These are steps in an ascending series. What things are, how they come to be, and for what purpose they are intended in the whole system of nature these are the questions, each rising above the other, which correspond to the order and the rank of our own faculties in the value and importance of their work.

From Miss Sophy King in Switzerland to Miss Williamson in Old Street, London, W.

so exist, it would be not higher knowl-
edge, but infinitely lower knowledge than
that which we actually possess. It could SOME
at the best be only knowledge of the
"what," and that too in the lowest con-
ceivable form - knowledge of the barest,
driest, nakedest existence, without value
or significance of any kind. And further,
it results from the same analysis that the
relativity of human knowledge, instead
of casting any doubt upon its authenticity,
is the very characteristic which guaran-
tees its reality and its truth. It results
further that the depth and completeness
of that knowledge depends on the degree
in which it brings the facts of nature into
relation with the highest faculties of
mind.

It must be so if man is part of the great system of things in which he lives. It must be so, especially if in being part of it, he is also the highest visible part of it the product of its "laws" and (as regards his own little corner of the universe) the consummation of its history.

"DEAREST MISS WILLIAMSON, — Your two letters have come flying through the ravines and over the waterfalls, and the sunlight on the plains and the half-way storms, and through all the freshness as well as the less agreeable whiffs from the village. We are very comfortably en camped at our hotel; mamma is wonderfully well for her. My father is in Scotland, but we are not lonely, and have found several friends here. Chief among them are your friends the Arnheims, who only went down to Interlaken this morning - we follow on Monday. Mr. Arnheim has an engagement to play at the concerts there. Fina, the little girl, has started up Nor can there be any doubt as to what wonderfully, and reaches her father's are the supreme faculties of the human shoulder. I told her I should be writing mind. The power of initiating changes in the order of nature and of shaping them from the highest motives to the noblest ends this, in general terms, may be said to include or to involve them all. They are based upon the ultimate and irresolvable power of will, with such freedom as belongs to it; upon the faculty of understanding the use of means to ends, and upon the moral sense which recognizes the law of righteousness, and the ultimate authority on which it rests. If the universe or any part of it is ever to be really understood by us if any thing in the nature of an explanation is ever to be reached concerning the system of things in which we live, these are the perceptive powers to which the information must be given — these are the faculties to which the explanation must be addressed. When we desire to know the nature of things "in themselves," we desire to know the highest of their relations which are conceivable to us: we desire, in the words of Bishop Butler, to know "the Author, the cause, and the end of them."*

* Sermon "On the Ignorance of Man."

to you, and she sent you her love and begged me to tell you that she mends her father's clothers now, and adds up the bills, and keeps all the money. She has grown very like her poor mother, whom I remember seeing at your lodgings in Old Street. I wonder if those very disagreeable people, her relations, are living near you still; that pompous Miss Ellis and the colonel, and the silent younger sister and the delightful old lady; and I wonder if you, too, are in your usual corner, where I can see you as plainly as I can see mamma in her chair on the terrace opposite. This is written from a broad green balcony overhung with clematis ; all the people come out of the diningroom and sit here to look at the mountains.

"The day the Arnheims were here they took me out for a long day in the mountains. Mr. Arnheim led the way, Fina and I followed: One cannot talk, but one goes on climbing ever through changing lights, from one height to another, higher and higher still. We left autumn at the foot of the mountain, and after a time found ourselves in summer and spring once more. Far above, striking the blue sky, hung winter snows and crystals, but round us was spring. A flood of fragrant Alpine flowers spread by every rocky ridge, along every Alp and plateau, rhododendrons crimson incandescent; violets and saxifrage, and light iris lilies with a

As for the autumn in the valley, it is a lovely and plentiful show; yellow crops not all reaped yet, bronzed ears and sheaves in the homestead, flax swinging from the galleries of the châlets, cut wood for winter piled against the outer walls. The roar of the torrent is in the air, and mingles with the pastoral sounds. All over Switzerland the rush of running water echoes, from the desperate streams that course in the valleys, to the sweet, high, mountain rivulets flashing their way to the plain.

delicate pale fragrance; mountain moss | time, against men, against winds and and wild azalea, all indescribably faint storms and seasons. There broods frozen and beautiful. It seemed as if our souls winter, eternally arrested on the summit. and senses were refreshed and purified by this calm ether, and able to receive the sacrament of nature, the outward sign and the inward grace. Far beyond one blazing slope of green and crimson studded flowers, and across the vast valley, rose the great might and silence of the mountain-chain, and higher still a line of clouds was striking sail in solemn rank and drifting towards the peaks. A sense of awe-stricken, all-embracing beauty, of all-enclosing power and mystery, came upon us as we stood together. I felt as if I had lived for years alone with Fina and her father. He, too, seemed to feel some of the same companionship, for he turned from her to me and said very gently,

"Fina will never forget our walk together, nor the wonderful things we have seen to-day. My old violin has often talked of it, but it never showed us what we have seen to-day.' And then with a half sigh, 'How her mother would have enjoyed it all!' he added.

A

"There is one solemn end to our terrace, the other clatters with knives and forks, and is within view of the narrow village street. A deep gutter has been cut in the centre of the road, crossed at intervals by foot-stones. The children, with their brown faces and white heads, sit swinging their bare legs over the water; they stand on the steps of the châlets, they peep from crazy balconies. that start from every corner, loaded with green and crimson flower-pots; and then there are figures everywhere climbing ladders, leaning from upper windows, as they do in German picture-books. horse led by a baby comes to drink at the trough at the corner of the road; a gocart rolls by, dragged by a pretty young mother-she has tied her child by a linen cloth to the shafts; the baker shuffles from beneath his gable, our host of the Bear appears for a moment in his doorway. Opposite is the country coffeehouse, with "Milk and Beer Shop" painted in rude letters over the doorway; and through the open lattice and behind the red curtains you see the country-folk refreshing themselves at wooden tables. Bowls piled with beautiful red and gold are set before them. It is only a feast of apples, but Paris himself might have plucked them. The Golden Age never produced a more sumptuous crop, blazing crimson and lighting the dark kitchen. Then, beyond all the clamor of the little village, the voices, the bleating of goats, the splashing of waters, you come upon "I don't know how to describe every- the little church, silent in its slated nightthing here. Life begins at dawn and cap, watching over the tranquil gravegoes on till starlight. The terrace itself yard where people lie asleep, as befits is rather a choking place, scented with good reformers, not beneath the shadow heavy perfumes, but through its green of the cross, but under strange taberwindows and delicate curtain of hanging nacles and devices, among weeds and tendril and white blossom, a great sight is flowers, with the rocks of the Fishhorns revealed. Rise, noble Eiger, with dizzy to bound the view, and the valley opening heights and battlements piled against to the westward.

"But though we all enjoyed our walk, it was too long. Mr. Arnheim was ill for two days, I am sorry to say; Fina and I have scarcely been beyond the green terrace of the hotel since then. I am not romantic as you know, and so I like sitting where I can see the road and the people passing. There go two Swiss maidens. I wish I could draw them for you. They seem to be carrying two of the mountains on their backs. I don't know whether they are going to set them down in sight of the new hotel or else where. Now our artist goes by. He is a Mr. Bracy, and staying in the hotel. He walks about with his head on one side, and his portfolio under his arm. Sketching in such a place as this seems to me a ludicrous process. You might as well attempt to sketch a sonata with a penny whistle as to set down the Eiger on one page and the Wetterhorn and its crown of cloud on another. There would be some sense in it if he were to draw that nice load of wood and its white horse.