100 Herbert Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy. 



Dr. Maudsley, the distinguished physiologist, who is no 

 more than Spencer or Lewes a subjectivist or idealist who, 

 indeed, is commonly regarded as a materialist says : "After 

 all, the world which we apprehend when we are awake may 

 have as little resemblance or relation to the external world, 

 of which we can have no manner of apprehension through 

 our senses, as the dream-world has to the world with which 

 our senses make us acquainted ; nay, perhaps less, since 

 there is some resemblance in the latter case, and there may 

 be none whatever in the former. . . . The external world 

 as it is in itself may not be in the least what we conceive 

 it through our forms of perception and modes of thought. 

 No prior experience of it has ever been so much as possible ; 

 and therefore the analogy of the dreamer is altogether de- 

 fective in that respect " (Body and Will, p. 51). 



Now Mr. Spencer's conclusions from relativity are in or- 

 der. He says : " If, after finding that the same tepid water 

 may feel warm to one hand and cold to another, it is in- 

 ferred that warmth is relative to our nature and our own 

 state, the inference is valid, only supposing the activity to 

 which these different sensations are referred is an activity 

 out of ourselves, which has not been modified by our own 

 activities. 



" When we are taught that a piece of matter, regarded by 

 us as existing externally, can not be really known, but that 

 we can know only certain impressions produced on us, we 

 are yet, by the relativity of our thought, compelled to think 

 of a positive cause. The notion of a real existence which 

 generated these impressions becomes nascent. The momen- 

 tum of thought inevitably carries us beyond conditioned 

 existence to unconditioned existence ; and this ever persists 

 in us as the body of a thought to which we can give no 

 shape. ... At the same time that, by the laws of thought, 

 we are rigorously prevented from forming a conception of 

 absolute existence, we are, by the laws of thought, prevent- 

 ed from ridding ourselves of the consciousness of absolute 

 existence, this unconsciousness being, as we see, the obverse 

 of absolute existence " (First Principles, p. 396). 



The absolute existence, then, can be known only as it is 

 manifested in consciousness, only as it is colored and modi- 

 fied, so to speak, by the conditions of the organism. It can 

 not be identified with what we call matter, for that we know 

 only as a series of phenomenal manifestations, or, psycho- 

 logically speaking, only as the coexistent states of conscious- 



