FROM THE EVOLUTION PHILOSOPHY. 11 



asserting that any part v of the unknown is unknowable. 

 To which, besides other answers, it is sufficient to say that 

 even if the possibility of such an illumination be conceded, 

 the concession does not disprove the proposition sought to 

 be maintained ; for in the case supposed we could not be 

 said to know what is unknowable in any proper sense of 

 knowing. The feat of having finally comprehended the 

 incomprehensible would have been accomplished not by any 

 resident forces of the human mind, not by any power of the 

 intellect, but by some extra-mental agency. Or again, 

 some ultra skeptic might say that we do not know anything \ 

 at all, and hence cannot know that anything is unknowable./ 

 But the argument in support of absolute and universal 

 ignorance defeats the very purpose for which it is here 

 specifically made. For he who is endowed with such superla- 

 tive stupidity is, on the one hand, estopped from denying 

 that there may be an unknowable aspect of things, and, on 

 the other hand, he cannot prove his own supreme ignorance 

 so long as he is committed to the doctrine that nothing at 

 all can be known. Moreover, the theory, if at all tenable, 

 can be maintained only by arguments that are suicidal; for 

 any evidence offered in its support would of itself disprove 

 the proposition to be demonstrated. Its strongest proof, in 

 a word, constitutes its strongest refutation. 



Turning now from this long but necessary digression, 

 let us see how far we have advanced in our undertaking. 

 Almost at the very outset it became apparent that in 

 attempting to construct a theory of life we can have no 

 choice but to accept our mind, on the one hand, and our 

 terrestrial and extra-terrestrial environment, on the other, 

 as the only available implements and materials, so to speak, 

 for the purpose. From the nature of the case, however, 

 the mind must play the chief role; for it is the medium 



