86 LESSONS FROM NATURE. [CHAP. III. 



provisional assumptions, having been carried out to all their conse 

 quences, and these consequences proved to be congruous with one 

 another and with the original assumptions, these original assumptions 

 are justified; and if, finally, I assert, as I have repeatedly asserted, 

 that the terms in which I express my assumptions and carry on my 

 operations are but symbolic, and that all I have done is to show that 

 by certain ways of symbolizing, perfect harmony results invariable 

 agreement between the symbols in which I frame my expectations, and 

 the symbols which occur in experience I cannot be blamed for inco 

 herence. Lastly, should it be said that this regarding of everything 

 constituting experience and thought as symbolic has a very shadowy 

 aspect, I reply that these which I speak of as symbols are real re 

 latively to our consciousness ; and are symbolic only in their relation 

 to the ultimate reality.&quot; 



So much for Mr. Spencer s reply, which I have been 

 Rejoinder to anxious to represent completely and in extenso. And 



1 reply no doubt, as might be expected in a thinker of his 

 repute, the incoherence referred to must be attributed less to 

 him than to the unfortunate system he adopts. But inco 

 herence there none the less really is ; and if such incoherence 

 results, as he says it does, from his theory of consciousness, 

 so much the worse for that theory. We who are absolutely 

 certain that our intellect has the power (however and whence- 

 soever obtained) of knowing both mind and matter as real, 

 objective, persisting existences, are not driven into any such 

 inconsistency and incoherence; and if incoherence of the 

 mind be, as Mr. Spencer himself asserts it to be, a necessary 

 consequence of his system, it amounts, in fact, to a reductio 

 ad absurdum of that system itself. 



Before however considering that climax of negation, Mr. 

 Need of a Spencer s denial of the objective validity of our 

 ^eylffi very perception of &quot;difference&quot; itself, it will be 



positions. 11 , . ,, 



well to review carefully, and in some detail, one or 

 two of his anterior assertions and inferences with regard to 

 the mind, and its relation to existences external to it. 



Indeed, Mr. Spencer s views, as expressed by him in his 

 Hisobserva- Psychology, merit a more careful exposition, 



tions on the XI,_.L J.T, -\ 



relativity of tftat tne reader may be able to estimate fairly his 



our feelings, j i f .1 . n 



denial ol the truth of what our faculties tell us. 



