284 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



extended to the conception of " things in themselves," 

 has dominated a large portion of German speculation 

 ever since Kant. It has never been really accepted 

 as a workable view either in England or in France. 

 It has indeed cropped up in English philosophy in 

 the " Unknowable " of Herbert Spencer, where it was 

 arrived at by a different line of reasoning, but — be it 

 noted — likewise in an attempt to reconcile science and 

 religion. 



Many of the arguments directed against Spencer's 

 position are merely reproductions of the polemics 

 directed nearly a century earlier against Kant. There 

 are, accordingly, some opponents who maintain that 

 it is illogical to speak of the existence of an unknown 

 thing if you really know nothing whatever about it, 

 for its existence can only be known to you through 

 some kind of property or relation. There are others 

 who maintain that this underlying ground or kernel of 

 reality, though unknown so far as the outer world is con- 

 cerned, is not unknown to us so far as our own subjective 

 or inner world is concerned ; for we ourselves are not 

 only a succession of sensations, but are conscious of 

 the connection, vmity, and continuity of that succession. 

 This view (which for a moment would pass through 

 an impracticable and untenable solipsism) is at once 

 expanded into the conception of a larger consciousness 

 which embraces other minds besides our own ; as we 

 exist and think to a large extent only in, through, and 

 with them. 



A third class of thinkers deny the correctness of 

 the whole reasoning, be it the older of Kant or the 



