88 THE RELATIVITY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE. 



cessively more complex cognition being the establishment 

 of some more involved connexion of such states, answering 

 to some more involved connexion of such agencies; it is 

 clear that the process, no matter how far it be carried, can 

 never bring within the reach of Intelligence, either the 

 states themselves or the agencies themselves. Ascertaining 

 which things occur along with which, and what things fol- 

 low what, supposing it to be pursued exhaustively, must 

 still leave us with co-existences and sequences only. If 

 every act of knowing is the formation of a relation in con- 

 sciousness parallel to a relation in the environment, then the 

 relativity of knowledge is self-evident — becomes indeed a 

 truism. Thinking being relationing, no thought can ever 

 express more than relations. 



And here let us not omit to mark how that to which our 

 intelligence is confined, is that with which alone our intelli- 

 gence is concerned. The knowledge within our reach, is the 

 only knowledge that can be of service to us. This mainten- 

 ance of a correspondence between internal actions and exter- 

 nal actions, which both constitutes our life at each moment 

 and is the means whereby life is continued through subse- 

 quent moments, merely requires that the agencies acting 

 upon us shall be known in their co-existences and sequences, 

 and not that they shall be known in themselves. If x and y 

 are two uniformly connected properties in some outer ob- 

 ject, while a and b are the effects they produce in our con- 

 sciousness ; and if while the property x produces in us the 

 indifferent mental state «, the property y produces in us the 

 painful mental state b (answering to a physical injury) ; 

 then, all that is requisite for our guidance, is, that x being 

 the uniform accompaniment of y externally, a shall be the 

 uniform accompaniment of b internally ; so that when, by 

 the presence of x, a is produced in consciousness, 5, or 

 rather the idea of b, shall follow it, and excite the motions 

 by which the effect of y may be escaped. The sole need is 

 that a and b and the relation between them, shall always an- 



