implication of some power that manifests itself, and by the words Ego and Non-ego respectively we mean the power that manifests itself in the faint forms, and the power that manifests itself in the vivid forms” (First Principles, § 44).
Now the proposition that an aggregate of vivid states of consciousness plus a power that manifests itself in them is independent of an aggregate of faint states plus a power that manifests itself in these is certainly not simple; while, if we try to decompose it into more elementary propositions, it seems impossible to obtain any which we can even suppose Mr. Spencer to regard as guaranteed by his criterion. For, since states of consciousness primâ facie imply a conscious self to which they are attributed, we cannot suppose Mr. Spencer to regard as inconceivable the negation of the independent existence of an external object so far as this is taken to be an aggregate of vivid states of consciousness; especially as he sometimes uses the term “existence beyond consciousness” as an equivalent for the independent non-ego. Are we to take, then, as the fundamental doctrine of Realism, established by the criterion, the proposition that the power manifested in the vivid states exists independently of the power manifested in the faint states? But again it seems impossible to suppose that Mr. Spencer regards the negation of this proposition as inconceivable, because, first, he holds that “it is one and the same ultimate reality that is manifested to us subjectively and objectively” (Princ. of Psych., § 273); and secondly he holds that this ultimate reality or Power “is totally and for ever inconceivable” and “unknowable” (First Principles, part i., chapter v.).
I cannot indeed reconcile these two statements—I should have thought that we could not reasonably attribute either unity or duality to a totally unknowable entity: but if either of the two is maintained, it surely cannot at the same time be maintained that the negation of two independent Powers is inconceivable.
I conclude, therefore, that Mr. Spencer’s Universal Postulate is inadequate to guarantee even the primordial datum of his own philosophy; and, on the whole, that—however useful it may be in certain cases—it will not, any more than the criteria before examined, provide the bulwark against scepticism of which we are in search. With this negative conclusion I must here end. In a later article, I hope to treat the problem with which I have been dealing in a somewhat more positive manner.
