how tliou art avenged, for thy fiercest assailant is now pos- 

 sessed by a double portion of thy spirit. Evidently Mr. 

 Spencer here commits himself to a theory of the wildest 

 Idealism. He denies the existence of all substance of mind, 

 and asserts that there are in us only a fleeting succession of 

 transitory states ! Just as well he might deny the existence 

 of all substance of matter, and say that matter is nothing more 

 than a bundle of phenomena. John Stuart Mill asserted this, 

 but hitherto Mr. Spencer has been too wise. He can take up 

 this position if he likes, but he will know the fate which in that 

 case awaits him. Elsewhere he has many times said that 

 mind as distinct from all phenomena of mind is the one 

 existence of whose reality we can be most absolutely certain, 

 "is a truth transcending all others in certainty/'* In this 

 sentence, then, are two contradictions. He confounds sub- 

 stance with phenomena, which elsewhere he has carefully 

 distinguished ; and he denies, what he has in other places 

 asserted, that mind, as distinguished from its modifications, 

 exists. 



4. In the next sentence but one there is the same assump- 

 tion. There is not one particle more of reasoning. He simply 

 asserts that <f the entire group of psychical states which con- 

 stituted the antecedent of the action also constituted " (the 

 actor) " himself at that moment constituted his psychical 

 self, that is, as distinguished from his physical self." Now 

 here is a very clever and plausible sophism. We cannot say 

 point blank that Mr. Spencer's statement is false, but as he 

 means it, it is false. " The entire group of psychical states " 

 may be, perhaps, held to make up a man's " psychical self," 

 if within those " psychical states " that power of free-will 

 which rules them all is included. But Mr. Spencer means by 

 " psychical states" simply states of mind held in the bonds of 

 unvarying law, with all freedom of will shut out. Hence his 

 sentence, reasonably true in sound, is false in meaning, and 

 no fresh argument is adduced. It is one more petitio 

 principii. 



5. In the very next sentence he makes the same round 

 assertion, advancing no fresh argument. 



6. In the next sentence he makes a break as if about to go 

 on a new line of departure, and give us something more 

 worthy of his masterly dialectic. But it is only to continue 

 the same logical vice. He says : " Either the ego which is 

 supposed to determine or will the action is present in con- 



* Principles of Psychology, vol. i. p. 209. 



