WHAT IS DARWINISM? 17 



perceiving subject). He knows that the pain 

 is a state of the self of which he is conscious. 

 Consciousness is a form of knowledge ; but 

 knowledge of necessity supposes an intelligent 

 reality which knows. A philosophy which can- 

 not be received until men cease to believe in 

 their own existence, must be in extremis. 



Mr. Spencer's conclusion is, that the uni- 

 verse — nature, or the external world with 

 all its marvels and perpetual changes, — the 

 world of consciousness with its ever varying 

 states, are impressions or phenomena, due to 

 an inscrutable, persistent force. 



As to the nature of this primal force or 

 power, he quotes abundantly and approvingly 

 from Sir WiUiam Hamilton and Mr. Mansel, to 

 prove that it is unknowable, inconceivable, 

 unthinkable. He, however, difiers from those 

 distinguished writers in two points. While 

 admitting that we know no more of the first 

 cause than we do of a geometrical figure which 

 is at once a circle and a square, yet we do 

 know that it is actual. For this conviction we 

 are not dependent on faith. In the second 

 place, Hamilton and Mansel taught that we 

 know that the Infinite cannot be a person, 

 self-conscious, intelligent, and voluntary; yet 



