EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



the study of the &quot;human understanding&quot; by the 

 Isis. 



If, now, we turn from Locke to one of his great 

 successors in the associationist school of psychology 

 to John Stuart Mill, whom no one will accuse of 

 mystical tendencies to Mill, the disciple of Auguste 

 Comte, than whom dogmatic materialism never 

 had a more persuaded exponent we find, in an 

 early chapter of his masterpiece, the System of 

 Logic, the clearest possible demonstration of the 

 fact that our knowledge of mind is, in reality, as 

 empirical and inferential as our knowledge of not- 

 mind. Spencer, as we have seen, held the same 

 opinion. It appears to me that serious and im 

 partial students of the more recondite psychic phe 

 nomena should not be lacking in appreciation of 

 the fact that the leading thinkers of the school 

 most opposed to their own in its methods and 

 traditions and underlying assumptions have united 

 in asserting that mind, as we know it, is not mind 

 as it is ; just as the idealists and, later, the phys 

 icists have shown that matter, as known to us, 

 is not matter as it is. 



If the reader is still unconvinced, let him inquire 

 as to the terms in which we think and speak of 

 mind. He will discover that they are terms of 

 matter. With fine confusion but in support of 

 my present contention that mind is really unknow 

 able we have spiritualists quoting the evidence 

 of spirit-photographs, thus suggesting that their 

 conception of spirit is of something that reflects 



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