The Philosophy of Herbert Spencer

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Chapter II. Laws Of The Unknowable

R. SPENCER introduced his _ philosophy

about ten years ago by the publication of his “First Principles.” The volume is divided into two parts: the “Laws of the Unknowable,” and the “Laws of the Knowable.” Part I aims to determine,the true sphere of all rational investigation, and, by so doing, to save the speculative mind from wasting its strength upon barren and essentially insoluble problems. The conclusion reached is that we can know nothing but phenomena, and their relations of coexistence and succession. Reality lies beyond the reach of our faculties, and is essentially unknowable.

When this work first appeared it was received with considerable applause, even by religious thinkers. Mr. Spencer admitted the reality of religion, and insisted upon the existence of God. To be sure, God, as the essential reality of the universe, must be unknowable ; but still, as such reality, Mr. Spencer insisted upon the Divine existence as the most fundamental datum of science, as well as of religion, In this respect the work was an agreeable change upon the open war, and scarcely undisguised atheism, of such men as Comte. It had, too, an aspect of humility. It set a limit to. many extravagant speculations by declaring the limited nature of our faculties. These things moved many theologians to look upon the work as a flag of truce sent out from a hitherto hostile camp; and they failed to see that the concessions to religion amounted to absolutely nothing, while the demands from it were such as to render true piety impossible. Mr. Spencer’s “reconciliation” was effected by the destruction of one of the parties, and his peace was that of death. A God who must always remain x for thought and conscience has no more religious value than a centaur or a sea-serpent. Not that Mr. Spencer intended this result when he introduced this Trojan horse; but such is, nevertheless, the outcome of the doctrine. In its religious aspects this theory of nescience is as_pernicious as any in all speculation ; more so, even, than the hardy, old-fashioned atheism, because it is’ more decorous in appearance, and more specious in argument, while the two are identical in the final result. The first is a precipice, bold and naked, over which one may plunge if he chooses, but not unconsciously; the second is the same precipice covered over with snow, not strong enough to save one from the abysses, but powerful by its seeming safety to lure one to destruction.

In passing to an examination of Mr. Spencer's reasoning I must bespeak the readers’ patience. The discussion will lead us into many metaphysical recesses; and the country through which we take our way is surely as dry as Sahara, if, indeed, it be not full as barren.

This know-nothing doctrine is as old as philosophy, but the philosophy of the doctrine has changed with time. Formerly the difficulty was external, now it is internal. “We cannot know any thing,” the old skeptics used to say, “because as much, and as good, evidence can be brought against any proposition or belief as for it; and hence the mind must remain in eternal balance between two opinions.” But the fault was in the evidence, not in the mind. If there were any reality to know, the mind was clearly competent to apprehend it; but is there any reality to know? This was the question with them; and they held that in every case the contradictions of the testimony so embarrassed the jury as to render necessary the Scotch verdict —not proven.

Now, all this has changed. The difficulty is no longer external, but internal. The criticism of fact has been exchanged for the criticism of faculty. The nescientist no longer inquires whether reality exists, but contents himself with the humbler question, whether we have any faculties for knowing it, supposing it to exist? As the result of his inventory, mental limits have been discovered, and all knowledge of the real is said to be beyond them. The grounds of nescience are much more fundamental than the old know-nothings dreamed. By the constitution of the mind itself we are forever prohibited from reaching reality. Phenomena are all we know; and these, when analyzed to the bottom, can never give us things as they are, or “things in themselves.” Between appearances, or things as we know them, and the hidden reality behind them, an impassable gulf is fixed.

This form of nescience began with Kant. He taught that there are forms of thought and sensibility in the mind which determine the form of our knowledge, something as a mold gives shape to a casting. The matter of any thing, as an iron ball, is one thing ; the form is quite another. So the content, or matter of our knowledge, is given by the thing ; but the form, which is entirely different, is given by the mind itself. And as the same matter can be molded into a thousand different forms, can be round, square, triangular, etc. : so the same external reality can take on different shapes, according as it is cast in different mental molds. Hence all our knowledge is a composite, of which the two factors are, the external thing, and the internal form. What the thing is apart from this form, or what it is “in itself,” is, and must be—to use the established phrase — “unknown and unknowable.” Moreover, as it is conceivable that other orders of intelligence should differ from the human, we can never be sure that our knowledge has universal validity. We think things ‘in the relation of cause and effect, of substance and attribute, etc. ; but these relations are cnly forms of our thought, and correspond to no reality in the thing. We cannot help assenting to the so-called intuitions, not because they represent the universal truths of the universe, but because they constitute the skeleton of the mind itself. They uphold the mind and give law to its tendencies ; but so far from revealing reality to us, they rather lead us away from it. Their very necessity stamps them as mental forms, and their utterances become untrustworthy in proportion as they are sure. Hence our knowledge is of phenomena only, and is true only for us; at least, we can never be sure that it is true for other orders of being. The windows of the human mind are of stained glass, and the inhabitant within is forever cut off from the white light of reality beyond.

These are the essential features of the Kantian theory; and the doctrine of relativity, upon which Mr. Spencer relies for the support of his view, is but a degraded form of the same. This later form of the doctrine, as it appears in the works of Hamilton, Mansel, and Spencer, has far less logical and metaphysical value than the earlier form as taught by Kant. In Kant’s works, one commonly finds both good 3 sense, and good logic. The arguments are not merely logical, but real. We may not admit their validity, but at the same time we feel that they have a genuine momentum, and are not a logical play on words. Indeed, if Kant could have saved his system from Idealism, it would have been well-nigh impregnable. But in passing to the relativity philosophy, one is sensible of a marked change in this respect. There seems to be a kind of intellectual shuffling going on; a playing fast and loose with words, as the “absolute,” “¢ infinite,” “conditioned,” ‘unconditioned,’ etc. There is an air of jugglery and thimble-rigging over the whole. This makes one regard many ot the conclusions as he does the celebrated one, that each cat has three tails, or that the minute-hand of a watch can never overtake the hour-hand ; to disprove them may be difficult, but to believe them is impossible. We certainly see the ghost according to programme; but we cannot rid ourselves of the conviction that concave mirrors and magic lanterns are at the bottom of the show. Kant shows us real existences fighting, the relativist shows us shadows. These indulge in the most dazzling fence, and cleave each other through and through; but no blood is drawn, and nobody is hurt.

Armed with a knowledge of our mental limits, Mr. Spencer, following in the wake of Hamilton and Mansel, proceeds to charge all our familiar conceptions with involving contradictions and intellectual hari-kari. A further analysis of our faculties reveals to his searching gaze a pack of intellectual impostors who, by some hocus-pocus, have contrived to shuffle themselves into such universal acceptance, that most men regard them as necessary truths. But these villains are usurpers nevertheless; and having the bad taste to contradict our philosopher, they very naturally excite his wrath. He at once brands them as “pseud-ideas,” keeps them just long enough to give evidence against themselves—which is assumed to be the only true evidence they can give—and then turns them out of doors. We notice that they are continually smuggled in to help the prosecution, but are forbidden to say a word for the defense. This is the last feather. After being convicted of harboring “ pseud-ideas,” the mind feels the propriety of being humble For the present our only hope is that, as these necessary truths, a@/zas pseud-ideas, are such liars, they may have lied when they spoke against themselves. The authority for this summary ejection seems to be that these truths cannot be pictured by the imagination, and hence are “unthinkable,” and “ inconceivable.” The test of the knowable is its ability to come before the representative faculty. Whatever can do this may be admitted to the rank of reality; whatever cannot thus appear is banished into the outer darkness of illusions and “ pseud-ideas.”

Horsed upon this test of knowledge, Mr. Spencer gallops gayly out of the @ priorz country, but, like the famous John Gilpin, is carried farther than he cares to go, before he dismounts. Can any thing be more mocking to an exact thinker, than this claim that nothing shall be admitted to the rank of knowledge, which cannot come before the representative faculty ? What is the image of force? or of cause ? of law? or of existence? Yet these, anda multitude of other ideas, all absolutely without the imagination, do constantly enter into the exactest reasonings, each keeping its own place without any danger, nay, without any possibility, of being confounded with any other. Now are we to claim that all knowledge into which these “unthinkable ideas” enter is only illusion? If we do, then science, as well as religicn, must vanish into the dreams of night. This test of Mr. Spencer’s reduces all knowledge to the scale of sensation, and makes science itself impossible. For observation and experiment constitute a very small portion of scientific knowledge. The greater part is only inference from observed facts, and depends upon the validity of our belief in causation. Science deals with forces, and causes, and laws, and space, and time ; these words are forever upon its lips. But what does the imagination know about forces, and causes, and laws? All these ideas are utterly without the imagination, and are strictly inconceivable, in the sense that no mental image can be formed of them. It follows, then, that science, which is built entirely upon these ideas, is blank illusion, and must be content to vanish, along with religion, into the abysses of the unknowable.

If involving unthinkable ideas warrants the banishment of religion, it also warrants the repudiation of science. If Mr. Spencer insists upon this test we need go no further. Sensation is the measure of knowledge, and his philosophy falls to the ground. Mr. Spencer has mowed down the “ pseud-ideas” without mercy; but in his enthusiasm has, unfortunately, mowed off his own legs. After we have gone further into Mr. Spencer’s work, we shall not be surprised at any thing in the way of contradiction ; but at present it seems strange that he should have adopted such a test without perceiving that it tells as powerfully against science as against religion. Besides, too, it is plainly false ; the conceivable, in his sense of the word, does not comprise all the knowable; indeed, the most certain knowledge we have is what Hamilton has most happily termed the “unpicturable notions of the intelligence.’ Mr. Spencer says large numbers are inconceivable ; but that does not shake our faith in our calculations. Great magnitudes fail of an adequate conception, but our knowledge is none the less sure. The infinity of space baffles and breaks down the imagination, but is an assured fact of the understanding. Self-existence, Mr. Spencer says, is an inconceivability of the first magnitude, and all ideas into which it enters must be sentenced to perpetual imprisonment in the unknowable; yet we have no surer piece of knowledge than that there is self-existence somewhere. Whenever the intellect is steadied and focussed for exact statement, it affirms, with the utmost certainty, that all we see finds its support and reality in an existence within it, or beyond it, which is self-centered and abiding. The truths of the understanding are not the truths of the imagination ; and it is the neglect of this fact which lies at the bottom of Kant’s antinomies, Hamilton’s contradictions, and the general assortment of inconceivabilities which Mr. Spencer tries to saddle upon our reason.

A good illustration of the value of this test, is given in his criticism of the atheistic, pantheistic, and theistic theories of the origin of the universe.

Mr. Spencer believes that there is a tone of truth even in the falsest creed, and that every creed, if ana-’ lyzed, would be found to agree in something, even with its seeming contradiction. “To doubt this would be to discredit too profoundly the average human intelligence.” Hence, if we should lay aside from the various creeds all that is peculiar to each, and find that in which they all agree, this common article of faith would possess the very highest claim to our acceptance. Accordingly he summons the atheist, pantheist, and theist, in turn, to appear for examination.

Between atheist and theist, it would seem a hopeless task to look for common ground ; something like harmonizing yes and no in some higher unity. But great is logic, and Mr. Spencer proves equal to the task. The result of the examination is the proof 3 that “not only is no current hypothesis tenable, but also that no tenable hypothesis can be framed.” The “soul of truth,” existing in these diverse statements, turns out to be that none of the parties know any | thing about the matter. This is what they have always been trying to say, but were never able to enunciate it until Mr. Spencer helped them. Anomnipresent mystery behind the universe, unexplained and unexplainable, is the ultimate religious truth in which all conflicting creeds agree.

What now is the reason for involving atheist, pantheist, and theist, in a common condemnation? It is that they all postulate the inconceivable idea of selfexistence. Each view assumes either the creation or the Creator to be self-existent ; and hence all are equally untenable. “ Differing so widely as they seem to do, the atheistic, pantheistic, and theistic hypotheses contain the same ultimate element. It is impossible to avoid making the assumption of selfexistence somewhere : and whether that assumption be made nakedly, or under complicated disguises, it is equally vicious, equally unthinkable.”—P. 36.

I suspect that neither atheist, pantheist, nor theist would be seriously dismayed by this argument. For whether it be unthinkable or not, it is one of the strongest affirmations of the reason that there is self-existence somewhere ; the question between the theist and his opponents being, where that existence is to be found. It is in the material universe, say the atheist and pantheist. That cannot be, says the theist. The visible universe bears every mark of dependence; there must be some being apart from this, uncaused and independent. “Stop,” says Mr. Spencer, “if we admit that there can be something uncaused there is no reason to assume a cause for any thing.”—P. 37. “Those who cannot conceive a self-existent universe, and who therefore assume a creator of the universe, take for granted that they can conceive a self-existent Creator. The mystery which they recognize in this great fact surrounding them on every side, they transfer to an alleged source of this great fact, and then suppose they have solved the mystery.”—P. 35. “Lastly, even supposing that the genesis of the universe could really be represented in thought as the result of an external agency, the mystery would be as great as ever ; for there would arise the question, How came there to be an external agency ?”—P. 35. These statements would have some force if the law of causation committed us to the absurdity of an infinite series. If every thing must have a cause, then causes themselves must have eauses, and so on in endless regression. In that case it would be as well to break the chain in one place as in another; and it would be strictly true that “if there can be any thing uncaused, there is no reason to assume a cause for any thing.” But the law of causation commits us to no such absurdity as an infinite series of causes.

It is not existence, as such, that demands a cause, but a changing existence. Could the universe be brought to a standstill so that all change should cease, the demand for a cause would never arise. It is entrance and exit only that give rise to this demand, Whatever manifests them must have its cause, whatever does not manifest them can dispense with a cause. Mr. Spencer’s claim that “Did there exist nothing but an immeasurable void, explanation would be needed as much as now,” is a mistake, It is change that suggests causation, the changeless is independent and eternal. The dependent suggests the independent, and when the mind has reached that, it rests. Mr. Spencer himself believes this. He cannot rest in the phenomena of the visible universe, but insists upon a fundamental reality behind them as their abiding cause. And that, too, after telling us that, “If we admit there can be any thing uncaused, there is no reason to assume a cause for any thing.” Surely this fundamental reality is an intruder if the dictum be true. One or the other must leave forthwith, If the dictum goes, Mr. Spencer’s argument against a self-existent Creator falls to the ground; if the fundamental reality is discarded, the bottom falls out of his philosophy. And now, since the visible universe is but a vast aggregation of events, of entrances into and exits from existence, let the reader judge whether Mr. Spencer is justified in dismissing the atheistic, pantheistic, and theistic hypotheses as equally untenable ; or whether the theist is right in passing behind the seen and temporal to the unseen and eternal. Surely the suicidal proclivities of Mr. Spencer’s test of We have before found it mowing off its own legs, and here it insists knowledge should be restrained. upon biting off its own nose. For Mr. Spencer apparently believes that his “fundamental reality” is self-existent ; which assumption, by his own reasoning, makes the “fundamental reality” an “ untenable hypothesis,” involving “symbolic conclusions of the illegitimate order.” We surely are in a sad predicament here. We cannot call the “fundamental reality” uncaused, for Mr. Spencer says that, “If we admit that any thing can be uncaused, there is no reason to assume a cause for any thing.” But we cannot call it caused, for then it would not be the fundamental reality any longer. For the same reason we cannot call it dependent ; but we cannot call it independent, for that involves the idea of selfexistence, which would make it an “untenable hypothesis.” The beauty of the reasoning will perhaps be better appreciated if we see the arguments side by side.

Whatever involves the idea of self-existence, is an untenable hypothesis.

God involves the idea of selfexistence.

God is an untenable hypothesis,

Whatever involves the idea of self-existence, is an untenable hypothesis.

The fundamental reality involves the ideaof self-existence.

The fundamental reality is xo? an untenable hypothesis.

The logic is not the best, to be sure, but the generalship is of the very highest order. The only explanation I can think of is, that Mr. Spencer has one kind of logic for religious ideas, and another kind for his own—a view which the internal evidence seems to support.

As the result of his criticism of scientific and religious ideas, Mr. Spencer concludes that a “fundamental reality” underlies the universe, and that this is “unknown and unknowable.” Religion ends in mystery, science ends in mystery; and our highest knowledge is to recognize that this mystery is utterly inscrutable.

To prove that this mystery lies utterly without the limits of knowledge, Mr. Spencer appeals to the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, and offers the following argument :

“Tf, when walking through the fields some day in September, you hear a rustle some yards in advance, and on observing the ditch side where it occurs, see the herbage agitated, you will probably turn toward the spot to learn by what this sound and motion are produced. As you approach there flutters into the ditch a partridge, on seeing which your curiosity is satisfied—you have what you call an explanation of the appearances. The explanation, mark, amounts to this: that whereas throughout you have had countless experiences of disturbances among small stationary bodies, accompanying the movements of other bodies among them, and have generalized the relation between such disturbances and such movements, you consider this particular disturbance explained on finding it to present an instance of the like relation. Suppose you catch the partridge, and, wishing to ascertain why it did not escape, examine it, and find at one spot a slight trace of blood upon its feathers. You now wxderstand, as you say, what has disabled the partridge. It has been wounded by a sportsman—adds another case to the many cases already seen by you, of birds being killed or injured by the shot discharged at them from fowling-pieces. And in assimilating this case to other such cases consists your understanding of it. But now, on consideration, a difficulty suggests itself. Only a single: shot has struck the partridge, and that not in a vital place; the wings are uninjured, as are also those muscles which move them, and the creature proves by its struggles that it still has abundant strength.

Why, then, you inquire of yourself, does it not fly? Occasion favoring, you put the question to an anatomist, who furnishes you with a solution. He points out that this solitary shot has passed close to the place at which the nerve supplying the wing-muscles of one side diverges from the spine; and that a slight injury to the nerve, extending even to the rupture of a few fibers, may, by preventing a perfect co-ordination in the action of the two wings, destroy the power of flight. You are no longer puzzled. But what has happened ?—what has changed your state from one of perplexity to one of comprehension ? Simply the disclosure of a class of previously known cases along with which you can include this case. The connection between lesions of the nervous system and paralysis of limbs has been already many times brought under your notice; and here you find a relation of cause and effect that is essentially similar.’—P. 69. Mr. Spencer claims, justly enough, that all scientific explanations are of this order; they are but classifications of particular facts under one more general. Thus we explain the sinking of a stone, the floating of a cork, the fall of heavy bodies, the rise of a balloon, the flow of the rivers, the swell of the tides, and the motion of the planets, all, by referring them to the general fact of gravitation. This is the nature of all scientific explanations. But clearly such a process must come to an ultimate fact at last which cannot be included in any other, and so remain unexplained and unexplainable. “ For if the successively deeper interpretations of nature, which constitute advancing knowledge, are mere inclusions of special truths in general truths, and of general truths in truths still more general ; it obviously follows that the most general truth, not admitting of inclusion in any other, does not admit of interpretation. Manifestly, as the most general cognition at which we arrive cannot be reduced to a more general one, it cannot be understood. Of ne-

Review of Herbert Spencer. 4I cessity, therefore, explanation must inevitably bring us down to the inexplicable. The deepest truth we can get at must be unaccountable. Comprehension must become something other than comprehension before the ultimate fact can be comprehended.” —P. 73.

Mr. Spencer’s argument proves an unexplainable, not an unknowable ; for, though we cannot give the rationale of that final fact, by the supposition, we know it as a fact. To return to our illustration, the essential nature of gravitation is a profound mystery ; but gravitation as a fact, the law of its variation, the truth that it includes all the particular facts mentioned, all these things science regards as established beyond question. Clearly, the incomprehensible may be known as a fact, and its laws and relations may also constitute a part of our most assured knowledge. Mr. Spencer’s conclusion is the extremely commonplace one, that argument and all explanation postulate something as their foundation or support. I admit most cheerfully that explanation must assume the unexplainable, or independent ; but I deny that this unexplainable is the unknowable. Our own existence is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, but that does not destroy the fact that we have a large knowledge of human nature. No more can Mr. Spencer argue from the mystery of the Divine existence, to our necessary ignorance of the Divine nature.

Mr. Spencer, however, has great faith in this argument, and advances it again in the following form:

“Every complete act of consciousness, besides distinction and relation, also implies likeness. Before it can become an idea, or constitute a piece of knowledge, a mental state must not only be known as not only separate in kind from certain foregoing states to which it is known as related by succession, but it must be known as of the same kind with certain other foregoing states. . . . In brief, a true cognition is possible only through an accompanying recognition. Should it be objected that, if so, there cannot be a first cognition, and hence no cognition, the reply is, that cognition proper arises gradually— that during the first stage of incipient intelligence, before the feelings produced by intercourse with the world have been put in order, there are no cognitions, strictly so called ; and that, as every infant shows us, these slowly emerge out of the confusion of unfolding consciousness as fast as these experiences are arranged into groups—as fast as the most frequently repeated sensations, and their relations to each other, become familiar enough to admit of their recognition, as such or such, whenever they recur. Should it be further objected, that if cognition presupposes recognition there can be no cognition even by an adult, of an object never before seen, there is still the sufficient answer, that in so far as it is not assimilated to previously-seen objects it is zo¢ known, and it zs known in so far as it is assimilated to them. Of this paradox the interpretation is, that an object is classifiable in various ways, with various degrees of completeness. An animal hitherto wznxown (mark the word), though not referable to any established species or genus, is yet vecognized as belonging to one of the larger divisions—mammals, birds, reptiles, or fishes ; or should if be so anomalous that its alliance with any of these is not determinate, it may yet be classed as vertebrate or invertebrate; or if it be one of those organisms of which it is doubtful whether the animal or vegetal characteristics predominate, it is still known as a living body; even should it be questioned whether it is organic, it remains beyond question that it is a material object, and is cognized by being recognized as such. Whence it is manifest that a thing is perfectly known only when it is in all respects like certain things previously observed ; that in proportion to the number of respects in which it is unlike them, is the extent to which it is unknown ; and that hence, when it has absolutely no attribute in common with any thing else, it must be absolutely beyond the bounds of knowledge.”—P. 79.

To the objection that if a true cognition implies recognition, there can be no first cognition, and hence no cognition, Mr. Spencer’s reply that cognition proper arises gradually, is entirely inadequate. If all cognition presupposes recognition, then a first cognition is a manifest impossibility. Recognition, being cognition over again, must of necessity follow upon cognition ; but cognition must also follow recognition; that is, each must follow the other, and hence both are impossible. But Mr. Spencer escapes from this dilemma by teaching that cognition proper arises gradually in childhood; and thus we get the raw material for future cognitions. But if cognition proper arises gradually in childhood, why may it not arise gradually in manhood as well? Mr. Spencer's answer to the objection is a good specimen of a favorite method with the associational psychologists. Whenever one of their fundamental assumptions is contradicted by the experience of manhood, it is easy to say that in infancy—a period of which any thing can be affirmed, since nothing is remembered—it was strictly true. This is certainly making the most of the early years. The “small child” is put into the associational mill, and after a little brisk grinding is brought out with a complete set of mental furniture. When the critic reaches the spot he is blandly told that the work is done, and the machinery put away. He is further warned that any search on his part will be useless ; as the traces of manufacture have been entirely obliterated.