Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/104

NOTES ON AKISTOTLE'S PSYCHOLOGY. 93 only in being understood and the perceived world in being per- ceived 'V Soul in short is the infinite and eternal of which things in space and events in time are but so many modes, and nature as known by us is the point of contact (as it were) of the universal with the individual soul. This point of view is to my thinking so far from being out of date that it is the only possible metaphysical basis of the Evolu- tion-hypothesis. That hypothesis, postulating as it necessarily does an eternal universe, is incompatible with the doctrine of relativity as commonly understood by English thinkers, yet that doctrine if limited to the assertion that existence means nothing more nor less than cognition is irrefragable. When Mr. Spencer says, " Should the idealist be right the doctrine of Evolution is a dream," I agree with him, understanding him to mean by the idealist a person who maintains that nothing exists but the in- dividual consciousness ; but I rejoin, should Mr. Spencer be right the doctrine of Evolution is equally a dream. The plausibility of Mr. Spencer's theory is entirely due to the assumption of the objective existence of space and time and of organism and environment. In the Psychology however he is compelled to give some account of the evolution of space and time as forms of consciousness. For this purpose he retains the assumption of their objective existence, the gist of his theory being that they are forms of the Non-ego, by which he means the absolute reality, which by somehow operating continuously upon successive gene- rations of conscious subjects have established congenital modifica- tions of mental constitution corresponding to them. Eventually, however, he discovers that space and time as in themselves are not "in the least like" space and time as we know them, and that the whole form and content of consciousness including the very organism and environment, through the interaction of which according to the earlier version of the theory conscious- ness is supposed to evolve, are products not indeed of Evolution, for that as an intelligible process and so relative to consciousness presupposes the existence of consciousness, but of some mysterious operation of the Unknowable Power of which nothing can be said but that it has " no kinship of nature with evolution ". 2 The theory of Evolution in the final form which Mr. Spencer gives it is indeed a dream ; it only becomes intelligible when with Aristotle and Hegel we regard the Power which it postulates as the immanent reason of the universe. 1 NCi/ 8e TTtpi ty-vxTJs . . , . f) 8' aicr6r](Tis ra aladrjTa (De An., iii. 8). The qualifying irais indicates no uncertainty in Aristotle's thought, but is in- tended to negative the doctrine of pure relativity held by Empedocles and others. See iii. 2 : dXX' oi Trportpot. (pv&ioKayoi K. r. X. a Principles of Psychology, 473-4.