I 



Herbert Spencer I39 



sistency, he lays down the necessity of primary undemon- 

 strable truths underlying the whole fabric of knowledge. 

 We cite with pleasure the following statements, which seem 

 to us to be as true and valid as they are admirably expressed. 

 In criticising ' Empiricism ' or ' Experientialism/ he says : — ^ 



'Throughout its argument there runs the tacit assumption that 

 there may be a philosophy in which nothing is asserted but what is 

 proved. It proposes to admit into the coherent fabric of its con- 

 clusions no conclusion that is incapable of being established by 

 evidence; and thus it takes for granted that not only may all de- 

 rivative truths be proved, but also that proof may be given of the 

 truths from which they are derived, down to the very deepest. The 

 consequence of this refusal to recognise some fundamental unproved 

 truth is that its fabric of conclusions is left without a base. Giving 

 proof of any special proposition is assimilating it to some class of 

 propositions known to be true. If any doubt arises respecting the 

 general proposition cited in justification of this special proposition, 

 the course is to show that this general proposition is deducible from 

 a proposition of still greater generality ; and if pressed for proof of 

 such still more general proposition, the only resource is to repeat the 

 process. Is this process endless % If so, nothing can be proved — 

 the whole series of propositions depends on some unassignable pro- 

 position. Has the process an end % If so, there must eventually be 

 reached a widest proposition — one which cannot be justified by show- 

 ing that it is included by any wider — one which cannot be proved. 

 Or to put the argument otherwise : — Every inference depends on 

 premises; every premise, if it admits of proof, depends on other 

 premises ; and if the proof of the proof be continually demanded, it 

 must either end in an unproved premise, or in the acknowledgment 

 that there cannot be reached any premise on which the entire series 

 of proofs depends. 



' Hence philosophy, if it does not avowedly stand on some datum 

 underlying reason, must acknowledge that it has nothing on which to 

 stand — must confess itself to be baseless.' 



But the question immediately arises, ' How are unproved 

 and unprovable self-evident truths to be sought?' Mani- 



^ Psychology^ vol. ii. p. 391. 



