AN EXCURSUS.

FIRST PRINCIPLES OF A PHILOSOPHY OF COMMON SENSE, SCIENCE, AND CHRISTIANITY.

CHAPTER I.

THE UNITY OF KNOWLEDGE.

The mind of man is a unit, harmonious in all its workings, and any division we make of its operations or of its products must be more like that of the connected limbs and members of one body than as separate and independent departments. All thought and all knowledge of any one man result from the various operations of the one mind, which must act in harmony or breed a discord fatal to all intellectual activity. We cannot put our Common Sense with its knowledge in one quarter of the brain, Science and scientific knowledge in a second, Philosophy and speculation in a third, Religion and faith in a fourth, and command them to live in separation for fear of clashing and disputes. It was on this line of separation that the Jesuits of a century or so ago conducted their great schools. Science and arts might be cultivated to any extent so long as theology was left alone: that was the sacred domain of the church and the clergy. If science overtrod the barrier, woe betide the scientist. And so when Galileo was tried by his sanctimonious judges, poor Descartes was in a pitiable plight, for he feared lest the philosophy that he was forming would be considered as overstepping his domain, and lead him into trouble. Those times are happily gone, and gone forever. Common sense, Science, Philosophy and Theology,

III.]

Knowledge the Operation of one mind. 159

if true, must merge by gradations, imperceptible perhaps, the one into the other, and all blend in one harmonious whole of human knowledge, and of human faith.

Common sense is human reason acting in the narrow field of daily experience, and common empirical knowledge, Science, is human reason ranging in wider fields of empiric phenomena, returning laden with ever-increasing stores of facts and figures, but still dealing only with phenomena. Philosophy is human reason attempting to combine and systematize into some satisfactory order, and on logical lines, all these products of research: and where links fail, she does not disdain a little speculation, in which special line she is apt to make mistakes. Religion in one sense is the human reason seeking to understand the first Cause of all, the destiny of all, and the corresponding duties resulting therefrom. True religion is a something which should run through the warp and woof of all intellectual life, helpful to healthy common sense, greeting with hearty joy every development of science as a contribution to the sum total of truth, as an added strength to the buttress of her own stronghold; forming the fundamental framework of true philosophy, and projecting far beyond them all, creating on sufficient and reasonable evidence a faith in the unseen and eternal. If religion cannot do this, in full light of common sense, of pure science and of merciless logic,-if she cannot live and thrive and bless as mistress of all intellect, then let her die and be buried as a useless thing out of sight forever.

CHAPTER II.

THE KNOWABLE AND THE UNKNOWABLE.

In order to know what belongs to each of these departments, or to find out whether are there two such antithises, or whether

160

What is Knowledge?

[LECT.

they are such as Mr. Spencer declares them to be, let us first ask, "What is knowledge ?" And that we may bring the subject out of the bewildering cloud-land of generalities and obscurities which serve often as a vail for poverty of logic, let us take a single concrete example. I have an article in my pocket that none of you know anything about, and I wish you to obtain some knowledge of it. No, I cannot now say that you know nothing about it, for you know that it exists: there is a something real of which you wish to know something more definite. That very first step of knowledge which provokes further enquiry removes it forever from the limbo of the unknowable. You can affirm its real existence, provided you believe the evidence of my word, and do not convict me of being a liar. Now how can you know anything more definite about it? The whole sum and substance of knowledge of any thing is linked together in one copula-point, and that point is the simple little word is. The first step, as you have seen, is simply to know that a thing Is, you affirm existence. And now to penetrate to the very outermost edge, down to the deepest depth of knowledge of that thing, you can do nothing more than find out and affirm what it is, and what it IS NOT. If I tell you what the article in my pocket is and what it is not, I exhaust all possible knowledge of it.

Observe here also a very common fallacy, that when you know what a thing is not, you have no real knowledge, only negation. Not so; every negation contains information and adds to your stock of knowledge of a thing. I can tell you what this thing in my pocket is by pure negations, by telling you only what it is not. Let us try. It is not paper. With that your conception of the thing becomes a little clearer, for all paper articles are excluded. It is not as broad as it is long. It is not square-cornered. It is not all of one material. It is not a useless toy. It is not unsuited to the

III.]

Three Laws of knowledge.

It is

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not a lead-pencil. It is not in need not in a position

It is not useless when

human hand. It is not a self-writer. It is It is not a quill pen. It is not a steel pen. of a constant dip in the ink bottle. to write when the ink is exhausted. the ink is replenished. Now, who doesn't know what the thing in my pocket is? With every negative statement your knowledge of the thing increased: you now know what it is, and surely can truly affirm that it is far enough from the unknowable. But you say those negative statements all implied an affirmative; and please tell me, can you find a negation that does not imply an affirmative piece of information? Once more, although you have a real knowledge of my fountain pen, yet there is a great deal more about it that you do not know. Your knowledge is correct as far as it goes, but it is not exhaustive. And all my efforts, and your efforts, and the efforts of all scientists combined, and philosophers added, and the faith of the credulous superadded, could not exhaust and reveal to me the whole sum of is and is not of that one little thing the pen with which I wrote this lecture. Now what have we found ?

1. The first step of all knowledge of any thing is—existence-it is.

2. The progress and sum of all knowledge of any thing is the accumulation of attributes or information as to what it is and what it is not, and

3. No matter how correct our knowledge may be, it is never exhaustive, in things great or small, by the powers of the human mind.1

These three rules of knowledge can be applied to every thing that comes within the range of thought. Let us apply them to Mr. Spencer's disquisitions on the "Unknowable" and the 1See also "The Validation of Knowledge," in Christian Philosophy Quarterly,

1883.

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Mr. Spencer's Description

[LECT.

"Knowable." He tells us that down at the foundation source of all phenomena there is a double something, a reality and a Power, but they are unknowable. Why! we may well ask surprised, how does he know anything about them if they are unknowable? And how does he come to write a bookful of information about them if he knows nothing about them? The very statement that there is a something there, and that it is a reality, and that it is a power, removes it forever from the regions of the unknown: we know something about it, for Mr. Spencer has told us.

But Mr. Spencer does not stop there. He tells us a great deal about the attributes of this fundamental Reality-Power; he tells us what it is and what it IS NOT, as though he knew a great deal about it; and if we accept all he says, we should know a great deal about it too. He begins with negations. This power is not a Creative Power. It is not a Conscious Power. It is not an intelligent Power. It is not a will-Power. It is not a First Cause. It is not a great many more things that I cannot stop to name. But do not these negations all contain positive statements? If Mr. Spencer's negations are true, must we not say that the fundamental Reality-Power out of which all this glorious universe has sprung, is an unconscious, non-creative, unintelligent, unvolitional, impersonal, blind force?

But Mr. Spencer does not stop at negations: he gives us a great deal of affirmative information too. He tells us, (1) that it is a power which gives rise to motion and is the fountain of all force; (2) that it is a power which, in the midst of vast development and variety, causes motion to be continuous, unbroken; (3) that it is a power which gives persistence to the forces of the universe; (4) that it is a power which maintains relations and persistence of relations among forces; (5) that it is a power which carries on a transformation and still keeps exact equilibration of forces; (6) that it is a power which gives direction to forces that they go like an arrow to the target and never miss