EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



The word phenomenon, they say, refers only to the 

 appearances of objective things, and it is a misuse 

 of the term to speak of phenomena of mind, mind 

 being that to which phenomena are presented. 

 Herbert Spencer, we are assured, begs the whole 

 question by his illegitimate use of the word phe- 

 nomenon in two totally distinct and irreconcilable 

 meanings. 



Now when an ephemerid accuses an immortal of 

 confusion and incoherence, the chances are pretty 

 high that the critic has not fully acquainted himself 

 either through carelessness, incapacity, or lack 

 of desire with the object of his attack. Spencer's 

 use of the word phenomena, as applicable to what 

 we know both of matter and of mind, is a deliberate 

 and logical application of his conception of reality. 

 To him the reality of the perceiving mind and the 

 reality underlying that which it perceives are not 

 two realities, but one. To quote his own words, 

 the unknowable power of which all objective phe- 

 nomena are the manifestation is the same .power 

 that wells up in ourselves in the form of conscious- 

 ness. The ultimate reality, both of mind and 

 matter, is therefore one. 



It may be said, of course, that this is simply 

 cutting the Gordian knot. Apart from our wish 

 to arrive at a unity, what evidence have we that 

 the power underlying stars and trees and dust is 

 identical with the power that produces the con- 

 sciousness to which these things are made manifest ? 

 And if we take the adult human consciousness and 

 336 



