41— HOW WE {;i:t knowledge through our 



SENSES. 

 Bv Ri:v. V. C. K<)i.i;(:. D.D.. B.A. 



The purpose of this paper is, not to tn- to add anything tO the 

 speculations (jf Psychology, but simply to state one of its funda- 

 mental questions in such a way as possibly to render the science in- 

 teresting to some of those to whom it mav have been hitherto un- 

 familiar. 



Philosophy has always concerned itself with questions regarding 

 knowledge, its character, its extent, and its validity. Modern aij- 

 vance in biology, and the continuously increasing differentiation of 

 all branches of knowledge, have not only tended to separate Psycho- 

 logy from Philosophy, but have fixed men's minds more and more 

 on the question " How do we come to know ? " rather than on the 

 question "What is the value of our knowledge?" But mankind is 

 too deeply interested in the results of these inquiries ever entirely 

 to drop the What and the Whether in favour of the How. Although, 

 therefore, the title of my paper begins with How — " how we get 

 knowledge through our senses " -yet I take it that the further ques- 

 tion is connoted, viz.. whether it is really knowledge that we get. 



Now, it is a familiar experience that in many matters by follow- 

 ing cut different lines of reasoning we can arrive, apparently with 

 logical ccgency, at diametrically opposite conclusions. For example, 

 from one point of view matter is indefinitely divisible : from another 

 point of view we seem to see that there must be limits to its divisi- 

 bility. Kant called these contradictions Antinomies, and considered 

 them to be part of the necessary conflict between the Reason and 

 the Understanding when trespassing on each others province. Be 

 the explanation what it may. a parallel experience meets us in in- 

 vestigating the origin of knowledge. On the one hand, all are agreed 

 that no knowledge comes to us without passing through the door- 

 way of sense, and the things of sense are purely phenomenal ; and 

 following out this line of thought solely, we seem to be drawn to the 

 conclusion that the world around us and we ourselves are all reducible 

 to mere passing j)ha.ses of infinitely varied vibrations. Vibrations of 

 what? you may ask. Of the unknowable, is the reply of the 

 phenomenalist : and thus we are stranded on the furthest shore of 

 philosophic scepticism. On the other hand, every one is conscious 

 of the citntinued existence of his own cognizing self: we can if we 

 like put this mental fact in the foreground, and thus come to inter- 

 pret all sense in terms of con.sciousness. Tf we pursue this line 

 solely, we are irresistibly landed in pure idealism, where matter has 

 no existence at all save as a phase of mind. 



It is obvious that both methods are not onlv possible, but 

 legitimate. If. then, their outcf)mes are diametrically opposite, it 

 follows, since contradictories cannot be true together, lhnt neither 



