142 THE DATA OF PHILOSOPHY. 



phy; and the complete establishment of the congruity be- 

 comes the same thing as the complete unification of knowl- 

 edge in which Philosophy reaches its goal. 



.§ 41. What is this datum, or rather, what are these data, 

 which Philosophy cannot do without? Clearly one pri- 

 mordial datum is involved in the foregoing statement. 

 Already by implication we have assumed, and must for ever 

 continue to assume, that congruities and incongruities 

 exist, and are cognizable by us. We cannot avoid accept- 

 ing as true the verdict of consciousness that some mani- 

 festations are like one another and some are unlike one 

 another. Unless consciousness be a competent judge of the 

 likeness and unlikeness of its states, there can never be 

 established that " congruity throughout the whole of our 

 cognitions which constitutes Philosophy ; nor can there ever 

 be established that incongruity by which only any hypo- 

 thesis, philosophical or other, can be shown erroneous. 



The impossibility of moving towards either conviction or 

 scepticism without postulating thus much, we shall see even 

 more vividly on observing how every step in reasoning pos- 

 tulates thus much, over and over again. To say that all 

 things of a certain class are characterized by a certain attri- 

 bute, is to say that all things known as like in those various 

 attributes connoted by their common name, are also like in 

 having the particular attribute specified. To say that some 

 object of immediate attention belongs to this class, is to say 

 that it is like all the others in the various attributes con- 

 noted by their common name. To say that this object pos- 

 sesses the particular attribute specified, is to say that it is 

 like the others in this respect also. While, contrariwise, the 

 assertion that the attribute thus inferred to be possessed by 

 it, is not possessed, implies the assertion that in place of one 

 of the alleged likenesses there exists an unlikeness . Neither 

 affirmation nor denial, therefore, of any deliverance of rea- 

 son, or any element of such deliverance, is possible without 



