of matter and mind, as the means of escaping both from the objections to materialism, and from the objections to subjective idealism: but what they set up in place of each of these theories is simply the assertion that, from a phenomenal point of view, they are both true, while from the point of view of reality, we cannot establish either of them. Thus there are two independent ways of looking at the world, each of which claims the whole field of existence for itself and is, therefore, absolutely opposed to the other. Each of them, indeed, has its usefulness for certain purposes of science, the one as a principle of physics, and the other as a principle of psychology, but neither can finally vindicate itself as the truth to the exclusion of the other. We are, therefore, in the presence of an immoveable difference which defies reconciliation; and the absolute reality which lies beyond these opposites, must for ever baffle our understanding, though, as Mr. Spencer holds, it is presupposed in the very nature of consciousness. Hence we may regard the world either as a connected system of motions in matter, or as a connected system of modes of consciousness, and from either of these hypotheses important scientific results may be derived: but we can neither decide for one of the alternatives to the exclusion of the other, nor can we rise to any higher point of view which would embrace them both. ‘See then our predicament,’ says Mr. Spencer, ‘we can explain matter only in terms of mind: we can think of mind only in terms of matter. When we have pushed our explanation of the first to the farthest limit, we are referred back to the second for a final answer, and when we have got the final answer of the second, we are referred back to the first[1].’
There is a superficial plausibility in this view, but it is difficult to conceive one which is fundamentally more incoherent. It ‘splits the world in two with a hatchet.’ It breaks up consciousness into ‘two consciousnesses,’ which are somehow united, though there is no logical way from the one to the other: and it fails altogether to explain the actual combination of the two in our daily experience. For, just because Mr. Spencer makes the difference of mind and matter absolute, he can admit the unity only in the form of an abstract ‘One’ in which all difference is lost. At the beginning of his First Principles, he lays down the logical doctrine, that thought is essentially the limitation of an infinite or unconditioned being, a being of which we have only a ‘dim consciousness,’ as that which is presupposed in all definite apprehension either of the object or of the subject. But the unity thus presupposed is unknowable,
- ↑ Principles of Psychology, i, p. 627, § 272.
