Of THE UNITY OF THOUGHT. 699 



of method or of philosophical treatment can be preserved. 

 It is, accordingly, rather a unity of method than a unity 

 of knowledge which we have gained, and it would be 

 more correct to call the formal task of philosophy a 

 unification of thought than a unification of knowledge. 



Knowledge itself, i.e., the ever extending mass of 

 facts, phenomena, and processes which present themselves 

 to the human mind, retain their multiplicity, their differ- 

 ence of aspects, and it is only a way of contemplating 

 and arranging them according to some general scheme 

 suggested by mechanical and geometrical relations that 

 has been given to us. By it we arrive at a definite 

 order of ideas, at a unifying Thought. 



Spencer thus deals only with abstractions and regu- 

 larities, what we call the laws of things and events, but 

 not with the endless variety in which these regularities 

 present themselves in the actual world. The contingent 

 and the individual are notions with which Spencer does 

 not deal. As Lotze would express it, Spencer only 

 studies the world of fixed relations, the endless repetition 

 of definite connections in space and time. The world of 

 things, in its endless variety, in its numberless instances 

 and examples, that which is of practical interest to us, 

 receives little recognition, nor does the higher philos- 

 ophical question as to the significance, the meaning and 

 value, of this world receive more. In this respect 

 Spencer is an Agnostic, a true man of science. He is 

 a scientific philosopher; yet his philosophy is not at 

 the same time a philosophy of the sciences, it is not a 

 theory of knowledge such as, from different points of 

 view, was contemplated by Kant in Germany and by 



