think this in face of the statement on page 11 that "phenomenal manifestations of this ultimate energy can in no wise show us what it is?" Surely that which is described as the substratum at once of material and mental existence, bears toward us and toward the Universe, a relation utterly unlike that which electricity bears to the other physical forces.
Persistent thinking along defined grooves, causes inability to get out of them; and Mr. Harrison, in more than one way, illustrates this. So completely is his thought molded to that form of phenomenalism entertained by M. Comte, that, in spite of repeated denials of it, he ascribes it to me; and does this in face of the various presentations of an opposed phenomenalism, which I have given in the article he criticises and elsewhere. Speaking after his lively manner of the Unknown Cause as "an ever-present conundrum to be everlastingly given up," he asks—"How does the man of science approach the All-Nothingness?" Now M. Comte describes Positivism as becoming perfect when it reaches the power to "se représenter tous les divers phénomènes observables comme des cas particuliers d'un seul fait général...considérant comme absolument inaccessible, et vide de sens pour nous, la recherche de ce qu'on appelle les causes, soit premières, soit finales;"[1] and in pursuance of this view the Comtean system limits itself to phenomena, and deliberately ignores the existence of anything implied by the phenomena. But though M. Comte thus exhibits to us a doctrine which, performing "the happy dispatch," eviscerates things and leaves a shell of appearances with no reality inside; yet I have in more than one place, and in the most emphatic way, declined thus to commit intellectual suicide. So far from regarding that which transcends phenomena as the "All-Nothingness," I regard it as the All-Being. Everywhere I have spoken of the Unknowable as the Ultimate Reality—the sole existence: all things present to consciousness being but shows of it. Mr. Harrison entirely inverts our relative positions. As I understand the case, the "All-Nothingness" is that phenomenal existence in which M. Comte and his disciples profess to dwell—profess, I say, because in their ordinary thoughts they recognize an existence transcending phenomena just as much as other people do.
That the opposition between the view actually held by me and the view ascribed to me by Mr. Harrison, is absolute, will be most clearly seen on observing the contrast he draws between my view and the view of the late Dean Mansel. He says:—
Of all modern theologians, the Dean came the nearest to the evolution negation. But there is a gulf which separates even his all-negative deity from Mr. Spencer's impersonal, uncouscious, unthinking, and unthinkable energy.
It is quite true that there exists this gulf. But then the propositions forming the two sides of the gulf are the opposites of those which Mr.
- ↑ "Système de Philosophic Positive," vol. i, pp. 5, 14.
