68 ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS. 



absolutists. But now, what is the corollary from this doc- 

 trine, as bearing on the consciousness of self? The mental 

 act in which self is known, implies, like every other mental 

 act, a perceiving subject and a perceived object. If, then, 

 the object perceived is self, what is the subject that per- 

 ceives ( or if it is the true self which thinks, what other self 

 can it be that is thought of? Clearly, a true cognition of 

 self implies a state in which the knowing and the known are 

 one — in which subject and object are identified; and this 

 Mr Hansel rightly holds to be the annihilation of both. 



So that the personality of which each is conscious, and 

 of which the existence is to each a fact beyond all others the 

 most certain, is yet a thing which cannot truly be known 

 at all: knowledge of it is forbidden by the very nature of 

 thought. 



§ 21. Ultimate Scientific Ideas, then, are all representa- 

 tive of realities that cannot be comprehended. After no 

 matter how great a progress in the colligation of facts and 

 the establishment of generalizations ever wider and wider 

 — after the merging of limited and derivative truths in 

 truths that are larger and deeper has been carried no matter 

 how far; the fundamental truth remains as much beyond 

 reach as ever. The explanation of that which is explicable, 

 does but bring out into greater clearness the inexplicable- 

 ness of that which remains behind. Alike in the external 

 and the internal worlds, the man of science sees himself in 

 the midst of perpetual changes of which he can discover 

 neither the beginning nor the end. If, tracing back the 

 evolution of things, he allows himself to entertain the hypo- 

 thesis that the Universe once existed in a diffused form, he 

 finds it utterly impossible to conceive how this came to be so; 

 and equally, if he speculates on the future, he can assign no 

 limit to the grand succession of phenomena ever unfolding 

 themselves before him. In like manner if he looks inward, 

 he perceives that both ends of the thread of consciousness 



