154 Herbert Spencer H 



time implicitly asserting that knowledge, is really an effort to 

 escape self-consciousness, which can be but very inadequately 

 represented by the conception of a man trying to jump away 

 from his own shadow. 



Before passing from our first point (the relation of Mr. 

 Spencer's philosophy to our perception of truth) there is 

 another matter which should not be passed over, namely, the 

 'law of contradiction.' One would have thought that this 

 law would have been fully admitted by Mr. Spencer, as it 

 has been by almost every other philosopher. It is strange 

 that any one should think that the law of contradiction is 

 derivative, or that it reposes on anything stronger and 

 more fundamental than itself Yet this is what Mr. Spencer 

 appears to do. That the same thing cannot both * be ' and 

 ' not be ' at the same time, and in the same sense {i.e. the 

 law of contradiction), we maintain to be an a "priori necessity 

 of thought — not negative, the mere result of a mental im- 

 potence, but given positively, and known to us by its own 

 evidence. If anything may both be and not be at the same 

 time, the whole world beyond conscious self-existence is at 

 once a chaos, and all argument unmeaning. Yet though 

 Mr. Spencer denies^ the validity, as an ultimate truth, of 

 the principle of contradiction, he unconsciously afiirms it. 

 He affirms it, moreover, in that which he represents to be 

 absolutely fundamental and ultimate, namely, our inability 

 to dissever certain conceptions. For, supposing we know 

 that we have tried to dissever such conceptions and failed, 

 how can we be certain that we have not at the same time not 

 tried and yet succeeded — except upon that very principle of 

 contradiction itself ? 



Leaving now the question of the relation of this philo- 

 sophy to our perception of truth, we may pass to our second 

 main point — namely, its relation to morality. In the first 



^ Psychology, vol. ii. pp. 424, 425, from ' But even ' to ' invalidity. ' 



