1 68 Contemporary Evolution. 



ceivability." Mr. Bain and Mr. Spencer also differ on the 

 same question ; Mr. Bain asserting " experience," and not 

 "inconceivability," to be the basis of certitude. The 

 " principle of contradiction " presents another point on 

 which they differ. Comte's teaching is repudiated with 

 apparent scorn by Mr. Spencer, while quite lately a wide 

 divergence* from the teaching of the last-named writer 

 has been introduced by his brother sensist, Mr. G. H. 

 Lewes, no less than from that of Mr. Mill.f 



In this their mutual destructiveness the negative philo- 

 sophers of our day but follow in the footsteps of their 

 predecessors of the last three centuries ; and were it not 

 that " while the grass grows the steed starves," and that 

 we need something positive, such systems might be left 

 unassailed to the action of their own mutually disinte- 

 grating influences. 



The curious objects presented to veneration by these 

 systems may claim a passing notice. 



We have first the "Unknowable" J as an object whereon 



* Thus, in his " Problems of Life and Mind," Mr. Lewes describes 

 "conceptions" as "symbols" (p. 191), and affirms that the "object 

 felt exists precisely as it is felt" (p. 192). Again (p. 420) he says 

 that what is " unpicturable " may be " conceivable," and he plainly 

 declares his dissent from Mr. Spencer's "transfigured realism." 



f As when Mr. Lewes asserts (p. 398) that the truths respecting 

 triangles are not generalisations but intuitions, and again (p. 424), 

 when he declares that "much" that Mill includes under induction 

 is either "intuition" or "description." 



J It is rather amusing to find how much is after all "known" 



