CRITICISMS CORRECTED. 391 



table Power is the most certain of all truths. I have contended that 

 while, to the intellectual consciousness, this Power, though unknowable 

 in nature, must be ever present as existing, it must be, to the emotion- 

 al consciousness, an object to the sentiment we call religious ; since, in 

 substance if not in form, it answers to the creating and sustaining 

 Power toward which the religious sentiment is in other cases di-awn out. 

 Yet though in the most emphatic way I have represented this unknown 

 and unknowable Power as the object-matter of religion. Professor Birks 

 represents me as saying that the unknowableness of it is the object- 

 matter of religion ! Though I hold that an ultimate being, known 

 with absolute certainty as existing, but of whose nature we are in ig- 

 norance, is the sphere for religious feeling, he says I hold that the 

 ignorance alone is the sphere for religious feeling ! 



When in the first sixteen lines specifically treating of my views 

 these three cases occur, it may be imagined what an intricate plexus 

 of misrepresentations, misunderstandings, and perversions fills the 

 three hundred and odd pages forming the volume. Especially may 

 it be anticipated that the metaphysical discussions, occupying five 

 chapters, are so confused that it is next to impossible to deal with 

 them. I must limit myself to giving a sample or two from this part 

 of the work : one of them illustrating Professor Birks's critical fair- 

 ness, and the other his philosophic capacity. 



In his chapter on " The Reality of Matter," he says (page 111), 

 " The sense of reality in things around us, Mr. Spencer has truly said, 

 is one which no metaphysical criticisms can shake in the least " ; and 

 the rest of the ' paragraph is devoted to enlarging upon this proposi- 

 tion. The next paragraph begins " ' Permanent possibilities of sen- 

 sation ' is merely an ingenious phrase, to disguise and conceal a self- 

 contradiction " : sundry antagonistic criticisms upon this phrase being 

 appended. And then the opening words of the paragraph which suc- 

 ceeds are quoted from " First Principles." Now, since the refutation 

 of my views is the aim of the work ; and since both the preceding 

 and succeeding passages specifically refer to my work ; and since no 

 other name is mentioned every reader, not otherwise better in- 

 structed, will conclude that as a matter of course the phrase " perma- 

 nent possibilities of sensation " is mine ; and that the criticisms upon 

 it tell against me. Even were there evidence that this phrase, " per- 

 manent possibilities of sensation," expressed, or harmonized with, a 

 doctrine entertained by me ; yet, as the phrase is not mine, the quoting 

 it as mine would have been a literary misdemeanor. "What, then, must 

 be said of it when, instead of standing for any view of mine, it stands 

 for an opposite view ? Mr. Mill's expression, quoted by Professor Birks 

 as though it were my expression, belongs to a theory of knowledge 

 entirely at variance with that set forth and everywhere implied in 

 "First Principles"; and a theory which, where the occasion was 

 fit, I have persistently combated (see " Principles of Psychology," 



