ON MIND AS UNKNOWABLE 



light. There is little need to labor this truth. 

 The whole of language is framed for the convenience 

 of the materialist, and every term in which we 

 speak of mind is a metaphor from the material. 

 Compare, for instance, the two meanings of the 

 word spirit. That the essence of mind is not only 

 unknowledge, but unthinkable and inexpressible 

 by language, all languages demonstrate. 



But it is evidently not enough to establish the 

 sceptical or agnostic conclusion, and to rest con- 

 tent therewith. If mind, as known to us, and 

 matter, as known to us, are only phenomenal ex- 

 pressions of underlying realities, can we say aught 

 of that which they express? Must we remain 

 content with a dualism only one whit less unsatis- 

 factory than those of the past? Is there no final 

 synthesis towards a true monism? The answer is 

 that mind and matter as we know them, or the 

 spiritual and the non-spiritual, or that of which 

 consciousness is the manifestation, and that of 

 which mud or diamonds or lips or eyes are the 

 manifestation, are the correlative expressions of 

 one reality, which has been "nicknamed God" 

 (as a Roman Catholic priest once said) ; which has 

 been apotheosized as Nature by the pantheists and 

 pantheistic poets ; which St. Paul calls unspeakable, 

 and Spencer named unknowable, but the eternal 

 existence of which is, in the last resort, our one 

 indefeasible certainty. 



