114 Herbert Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy. 



This philosophy does not make conceivability, much less 

 sensibility, the test of possibility. On the contrary, it recog- 

 nizes the fact that there are many motions of the universe 

 to which the dull senses of man make no response whatever. 

 There are a great number and variety of movements of 

 which sense-bound beings can take no cognizance. With 

 superior sensorial perceptions man would be able to discern 

 many of these movements which are now incognizable. 



" Indeed," says Tyndall in the Eeade Lectures on Kadiant 

 Heat, " the domain of the senses in Nature is almost infi- 

 nitely small in comparison with the vast region accessible 

 to thought which lies beyond them. From a few observa- 

 tions of a comet when it comes within the range of his tele- 

 scope, an astronomer can calculate its path in regions which 

 no telescope can reach ; and in like manner, by means of 

 data furnished in the narrow world of the senses, we make 

 ourselves at home in other and wider worlds, which can be 

 traversed by the intellect alone." 



And Lewes remarks to the same purport : " We do not 

 actually experience through feeling a tithe of what we 

 firmly believe and can demonstrate to intuition. The invisi- 

 ble is like the snow at the North Pole ; no human eye has 

 beheld it, but the mind is assured of its existence ; and is, 

 moreover, convinced that if the snow exists there, it has the 

 properties found elsewhere. Nor is the invisible confined 

 to objects which have never been presented to sense, al- 

 though they may be presented on some future occasion ; it 

 also comprises objects beyond even this possible range, be- 

 yond all practicable extension of sense." 



But however extended is man's knowledge, it is always 

 knowledge possessed under the conditions of knowing, 

 which include a relation between the me and the not-me, 

 and perception and thought according to the mental consti- 

 tution. 



As Mr. E. D. Fawcet says, Kant, who denied that the 

 mind could know things in themselves, " expressed himself 

 favorable to the view that a world of supersensuous beings 

 environs this planet, and that the establishment of commu- 

 nication with such beings is only a matter of time. Kant 

 indeed was far too acute not to see that a speculative agnos- 

 ticism (shutting out the possibility of absolute knowledge of 

 realities) can not possibly assert that there is no plane of 

 relative or phenomenal experience except that called the 

 physical world. Contrariwise, there may be innumerable 



