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on a rock which cannot be shaken, and provides an impregnable fortress 

 for all the doctrines which contain the philosophy of moral obligation. 

 (Applause.) 

 The meeting was then adjourned. 



REMARKS BY THE RIGHT HON. THE LORD O'NEILL. 



I look upon both this and the former paper contributed by Mr. Ground as 

 very valuable contributions to the literature of the Victoria Institute. In 

 the present one he seems to me to have quite correctly pointed out the 

 fallacy which pervades Mr. Herbert Spencer's system of psychology, namely, 

 his making the ego to be nothing but the aggregate of feelings and ideas, 

 existing at each moment. "Where or in what such ideas and feelings exist, 

 is a question to which Mr. Spencer does not supply us with a satisfactory 

 answer. He does not, of course, mean all ideas and feelings throughout the 

 universe, inasmuch as these consist of innumerable aggregates ; and if he 

 means those belonging to any one person, he is not consistent with himself, 

 inasmuch as, on his theory, there is no such thing as personality in any 

 intelligible sense of the word. His view would destroy the ego altogether. 

 For who can guarantee that the aggregate of ideas and feelings at any one 

 moment will be the same as at another ? In fact, this aggregate is ever- 

 varying. I may be thinking of one subject at one moment and of another 

 at another. I may be glad now, and sorry a few moments hence. In 

 short, my state, i.e., the aggregate of my ideas and feelings, may at any 

 instant be quite different, nay, opposite, to what it was at the instant imme- 

 diately preceding. Indeed, it is scarcely possible, on Mr. Spencer's prin- 

 ciples, to express oneself correctly on this subject. For when I say, " I may 

 be glad or sorry," or when I speak of the aggregate of my feelings, &c., an 

 ego distinct from those ideas and feelings is necessarily implied ; nor could I 

 express my meaning intelligibly without implying it. Mr. Spencer himself, 

 as Mr. Ground has observed, although his language is most carefully chosen, 

 cannot help, in one passage, speaking of " the subject of such psychical 

 changes," &c., although he does not admit that there is any subject in which 

 such changes could take place. In short, with all his ingenuity, he cannot 

 get over the fact that feeling cannot take place unless there be something 

 which feels, nor can thought be exercised unless there be something which 

 thinks. As well might we assert that there may be motion without any- 

 thing moving or being moved. Thus ideas and feelings necessarily imply 

 an ego which perceives and feels, and which, at the same time, is distinct 

 from perception and feeling, as being the subject of which these are states 

 or accidents. Well may Mr. Ground say that the fiercest assailant of 

 Berkeley appears here possessed of a double portion of his spirit. -In. fact, in 

 asserting that the ego is but an aggregate of ideas and feelings, he goes as far 

 as Hume, who did much to explode Berkeley's views (though such was not his 



