EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



psychology ; whereas the physical sciences, such as 

 astronomy, are necessarily inferential and con 

 fined to phenomenal knowledge alone. The facts 

 immediately negative this conclusion, so that if we 

 were compelled to declare either mind or not- mind 

 to be the more unknowable, the palm would have 

 to be awarded to mind, as the present state of our 

 knowledge thereof clearly indicates. 



In the second place, the conclusion of the essen 

 tial unknowableness of mind again I use the 

 word essential in the great scholastic sense is 

 forced upon us by the infinitely complex character 

 of its manifestations. (In order to believe that, 

 say, the idea of the good is ultimate noumenal 

 reality, one must be wholly ignorant of its incal 

 culable antiquity and complexity in other words, 

 one must deny evolution.) Each year brings with it 

 more cogent evidence that, whatever we may know, 

 even phenomenally, of matter, we certainly know 

 hardly anything, even phenomenally, of mind. We 

 do not even seem to see our way towards any 

 such generalizations concerning phenomenal mind 

 as we have framed concerning phenomenal matter 

 such as the laws of gravitation or conservation. 

 While we are assured that the reality underly 

 ing not-mind is eternal, indestructible, uncreated, 

 we see consciousness daily and nightly arrested 

 (destroyed?) and recreated. We have hardly yet 

 asked whether this implies that the law of conser 

 vation is not universal, or whether, as I believe, it 

 must not be interpreted as showing that conscious- 



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