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Herbert Spencer 153 



and persistent self known to us by its acts, as the author of 

 our volitions and the subject of our feelings and cognitions, 

 then we might equally deny that Mr. Spencer has, or ever 

 can have, any knowledge of any friend, as, e.g., of Professor 

 Tyndall. If by Professor Tyndall is to be understood a 

 plexus of sensible accidents — an entity ' qualitatively differ- 

 entiated in each portion that is separable by thought ' — then 

 Mr. Spencer may ' know something ' about Professor Tyndall, 

 ' and may eventually know more.' But if the name is taken 

 to mean the underlying something which is now speaking, 

 now silent, now on the Alps, now at the Royal Institution, at 

 one time a boy, at another a man, which has a certain 

 expression of face, a certain habit of dress, a certain mode of 

 carriage, a certain cast of thought — then Mr. Spencer knows 

 ' nothing about it, and never can know anything about it,' 

 since he can never know his friend but by and through some 

 act, were it only by action on the retina of Mr. Spencer or by 

 some active impressions on his auditory nerves. But we 

 have said Mr. Spencer is hardly clear in this matter, and, we 

 may add, he is hardly consistent. He is not so, because if 

 there is one prominent feature of his teaching, it is the 

 supreme certainty borne in on us of the existence of what he 

 calls the absolute and unmodified ' Unknowable.' Yet all that 

 Mr. Spencer brings against ovir consciousness of the Ego may 

 be brought against his Unknowable. If everything that we 

 know is a form of the Unknowable, then the Unknowable is 

 modified, and the absolute or unmodified Unknowable is an 

 absurdity. Similarly, that we cannot know the Ego except 

 as * qualitatively differentiated ' is most true, but it is true 

 for the very simple reason that it never exists except in some 

 state. A qualitatively undifferentiated Ego is a pure ab- 

 surdity and an impossibility. No great wonder, then, that 

 our intellects do not apprehend it. But an attempt to deny 

 our knowledge of the substantial Ego, without at the same 



