It is well observed that Mr. Spencer's array of objects not knowable might at first sight seem appalling, not a few hoping that “theology,” veiling revealed truth, might perish, after so great a philosopher had pronounced any personal God unknowable.
But first, is it true that “time,” “space,” “earth,” “solar systems,” “universe,” “matter,” “wind,” “force,” “motion,” “self,” are unknowable? As to all these, his books are simply ingenious puzzles. Having quite bewildered himself, he lays his confusion down as the end of controversy for all mankind: “total ignorance,” “a choice between opposite absurdities,” “absolutely unknown,” “inconceivable,” &c. This jargon is the more welcome, because behind it all lies the burning desire to get rid of God as above all unknowable.
Secondly, were it true that all these things, so important in a thousand ways, are above the ken of man, the most ignorant believer has the assurance that he does know God, because He has revealed His mind in His word, Himself in His Son the Lord Jesus.
Mr. Spencer confounds reality of knowledge with power to explain and to prove it. One may be absolutely certain—certain of what he cannot demonstrate, as is the case with axiomatic truths. It is Mr. S.'s system that is unreal. He is as sure of time, space, &c., as all the world he dubs unphilosophic. His self-mystification which the fanatics of skepticism (his own school especially) regard as wisdom, is really his folly and shame, not without moral mischief in result if not in design. “Things did not make Time and Space. Before the hills they were; the birth-day of each separate world was a point, its birth-place a point in space. These two arenas of the universe are things but not body, things but not mind, things but not spirit. Space is the arena for bodies, forces, and motions. Time is the arena for events, including all thoughts, places, deeds, and records; all play of forces, birth of bodies, sweep of motions, and every phase of change” (Arthur, 178).
Not that the Agnostic excludes the study of origins like the Positivist; but he is averse to the Originator, and severs cause from will and intention, because it points to a First Cause, and this a Person. They are alike guilty of the fallacy, that “because a phenomenon is a thing, a thing is a phenomenon” (ib. 184), as with many others counted philosophers, who see not different orders of “laws” for different orders of agents, physical, moral or spiritual, temporal or everlasting. “So far from regarding that which transcends phenomena as the All-Nothingness, I regard it as the All-Being. Everywhere I have spoken of the Unknowable as the Ultimate Reality in the sole existence: all things present to consciousness being but shows of it. Mr. Harrison entirely inverts our relative positions. As I understand the case, the 'All-Nothingness' is that phenomenal existence in which M. Comte and his followers profess to dwell” (Sp. in Nineteenth Cent. No. 89, p. 6). Mr. A. says justly, “Positivism, to make man all in all, makes God a chimera, a fiction; Agnosticism, to make an Ultimate Reality an unknowable power all in all, makes man and nature a mere show, an All-Nothingness; Christianity makes God all in all, with nature a real world around man and under God Mr. Spencer formally rejects any imputation of intending his religion to call us to worship, or to bring in either spiritual comforts or moral strength. His expectation of making this supplant Christianity is grounded on his being able to make it appear that God is not a living Creator and Ruler of men, men, but that all things are mere shows of one being, itself a stream, an energy, a power, a substratum, or anything, so long as you admit that it has not personality or intelligence, or any of the attributes usually assigned to God.”
Mr. A. grapples fairly and conclusively with the Agnostic sophism about “motion” in his Chapter 2. 195-222, showing it to be a connecting link between mind and matter, and what motions are calculable, what not. Mr. S. of course knows and says, “motion is change of place"; but this is private and personal common sense: philosophically motion must be not only unknown but unknowable! What of motion in vegetation? in travel by sea or land? in the labors of peace or war? in the animal realm? in mechanics? in chemistry? in the fine arts? If Mr. Spencer dreams between “improbabilities of thought,” mankind lives in a constant activity of achievement, so much so that the Cosmos would be a chaos without true, however partial and imperfect, knowledge of motion. “The countless number of motions originated by men on any given day, pre-determined by them so as to harmonize with other motions, some their own, some proceeding from sources independent of them; these motions taken with their intercrossing's, their compoundings, their separations, and their fruitful effects, are demonstrations, surpassing any requirements of evidence, that the mind of man has some true knowledge of motion, and that he has over it the mysterious power of originating and stopping it, as well as that of guiding and bending it while in flight. That he knows it to perfection even a child would not say. That he does not know it at all, is too poor a saying to become an intelligent child” (pp. 204, 205).
Mr. Spencer puts the case (First Principles, §17) of a ship sailing west, and the captain walking on it east, at the same rate of speed, compounding this compared motion yet further by the motion of the earth round its axis from west to east, hundreds of times faster; and this again by the motion of the earth in its orbit in the opposite direction sixty or seventy times faster than the last motion; and this finally by the motion of the solar system which carries the earth toward some point in the constellation Hercules. From all this Mr. Spencer infers that the captain is stationary, “though to all on board he seems to be moving.” How absurd is this quasi scientific trifling! “The illusiveness is not in the eyes of the people on board, but in the fog-signals of the philosopher. Sight reports a man moving from stem to stern, and a man then moving from stem to stern there is in reality. Sight tells the truth respecting him equally well as it tells it respecting the other men who sit still. Sight does not say that this motion of the man from stem to stern is the sum of all motion that affects the vehicle in which he is being carried—affects its relations to the surface of the earth, to the solar system, to the stellar universe. Sight has comparatively little part in these questions. It sees what it sees, reports it, and makes reason aware by its report that man is born to move under more power than he sees, and is led by those powers; and that where sight ends, these his relations, his interests, his means of knowing, are only at their starting-point. The man is motionless! because forsooth the ship goes west as fast as he goes east, and carries him with her. If stationary means motionless—and that would be the only relevant meaning in the present case—he would not be even stationary, but the opposite of stationary; for he is constantly changing places. If stationary means remaining over the same part of the earth's surface, then a pendulum is stationary, but not motionless; soldiers marking time are stationary, but not motionless; and a tree swaying is stationary, but not motionless.”
It is plain that the motions are all real motions; it is only Mr. Spencer's ideas which are illusive; and the only element of truth in the pretended proof is that the motions we see are not all that are taking place. He misuses the knowledge of the unseen to make out our nescience of the seen; whereas we ought rather to rise from the little we see to learn how much there is beyond our sight. But are these higher motions of which he speaks unknown to Mr. Spencer? He has no doubt of them whatever, any more than educated men in general. Is this “total ignorance”? Are they inconceivable? Or is not Mr. Spencer's philosophy, like many an ancient as well as modern system, a juggle of thoughts and words?
Mr. A. is not less cutting on Mr. Spencer's shallow criterion of knowledge, a mere ability to picture the form and color of an object in the imagination, as when a piece of rock is instanced, “its top, its sides, and its under surface, at the same time or nearly at the same time.” A geologist certainly would reckon all this with nothing “like completeness.” Nor can there be a plainer case of stultification than Mr. Spencer's attempt to show “self” unknowable. “If the object perceived be self, what is the subject of the perceiver?” As if the subject could not be its own object, pace Dean Mansell; as if men were not their own objects at every hour or moment they are not asleep. To those lost in their metaphysical reveries, this is held to be the annihilation of both subject and object; whereas consciousness of self is the commonest and surest of facts for the simple and the sage alike. Even the dullest of men knows that, if he knows little of aught else. To deny it leaves the fact as plain and constant and necessary as ever; it annihilates neither subject nor object, but only the claims of such as Mr. Spencer to expound a true philosophy, even in every day's personal experience.
Further, it is false “that all science is prevision,” that “an object is said to be little known when it is alien to objects of which we have had experience, and it is said to be well-known when there is great community of attributes between it and objects of which we have had experience;” and that “mind is unclassable and therefore unknowable.” God is thus radically excluded. Mr. Spencer can make himself known, and widely, by his written thoughts, as in a narrow circle by his words and ways; but God cannot reveal Himself! He is unknowable! The First Cause, the Infinite, the Absolute, to be known at all, must be classed (First Princ., 81). Then is He not the only true God, without the knowledge of Whom, by and in Christ, eternal life cannot be; Nothing remains for the sinner but the blackness of darkness forever. Into this, through unbelieving rejection of God's grace and truth, Mr. Spencer's self-confidence directly tends to plunge himself and his followers.
In Chap 4: 271-312 the question is discussed, “Is not all our knowledge Partial, and yet real?” Thus to state it goes far to an answer. Knowledge may be true as far as it goes, while much passes our measure; it is shown to be by instinct, by consciousness, by sense, by intuition, by science, by testimony. “Very different is the aspect assumed by partial knowledge when once its validity is admitted. We then cease to have any suspicion of being a sport of mocking somethings, or mocking nothings, which illude us with ideas that we are, that we think, that we know, and that our actions are pregnant with vast meanings and issues, whereas we are but infinitesimal fractions of an All-nothingness. We then feel ourselves to be a reality—a small but still a significant reality; girt round about on every hand by relations and beings, all realities possessing a significance ever ascending, the whole being embraced in the arms of one Infinite Life and Truth. Existence real, matter real, life real, mind real, force real, motion real, man real, God real; thought itself ceases to be idle phantasm, and the soul of man itself may look upwards and breathe a morning air that inspires him for an everlasting ascent” (iv. 304).
(To be continued.)