NATURE 



[August 6, 1891 



gitimacy of this conclusion. Now we distinguish further, 

 but no longer divide. We distinguish between the mate- 

 rial substance of the body and the energy of molecular 

 motion during life ; and, further, between the molecular 

 motion of the grey matter of the cerebral hemispheres 

 and the concomitant manifestation of consciousness. 

 But although consciousness is distinguishable from mole- 

 cular energy (and the distinction is absolute), it is not, so 

 far as positive science can say, divisible therefrom. No 

 physicist holds that the special modes of energy — we 

 mean the particular groupings and interactions of energy 

 — which characterize the functioning of a man's brain, 

 escape from the molecules at death, and henceforward 

 persist divorced from matter. We cannot, however, add 

 that no psychologist holds an analogous doctrine con- 

 cerning consciousness. But we contend that no psycho- 

 logist is justified on positive grounds in holding such a 

 view. That something called soul or spirit escapes from a 

 man's body at death, and henceforward persists, divorced 

 alike from matter and energy, is a view to which positive 

 science as such gives no support. It is held by those 

 who hold it on quite other grounds. The conclusion to 

 which positive science points (and we include among 

 positive sciences psychology, which deals with conscious- 

 ness as existent) is that consciousness, though distin- 

 guishable from energy, is known only in association with 

 certain forms of energy in organic tissues. 



But this is a conclusion which is ignored by the Trog- 

 lodyte. He professes to give us a " philosophy of evolu- 

 tion " which he himself describes as " the first perhaps 

 which accepts without reserve the data of modem 

 science." His theory of a Transcendental Ego ; his sug- 

 gestion that " matter is an admirably calculated machinery 

 for regulating, limiting, and restraining the conscious- 

 ness which it encases " ; his conception of a graduated 

 immortality, from that of an amoeba up to that of man ; 

 his attempted rehabilitation of the view that force-atoms 

 are monads " endowed with something like intelligence, 

 and thus enabled to keep their positions with respect to 

 one another"; all this, and much besides, seems to us 

 completely off the lines of modern scientific advance. 



But it may be said that such conceptions, though un- 

 necessary for positive science, may be necessary for a 

 philosophy which endeavours to go beyond and get 

 behind science. In reply to this we can only say that 

 we regard such conceptions as not only unnecessary to 

 positive science, but unwarrantable intrusions into her 

 domain. They form part of a different scheme of 

 thought. The muddling together of positive and meta- 

 physical conceptions is provocative of nothing but 

 confusion and bad temper. 



The introductory chapters of his first book, in which 

 the author attempts to hound on positive science from 

 agnosticism, through universal scepticism, to a gloomy 

 pessimism, seem to us laboured and inconclusive, though 

 there are incidental positions here and elsewhere with which 

 we are in complete accord. With dogmatic Agnosticism 

 and the Cult of the Unknowable (capital letters indis- 

 pensable) we have but little sympathy. But this is no 

 necessary part of the attitude of positive science, which 

 seems to us briefly as follows. In the first place its fol- 

 lowers take their start from the measurable and verifiable 

 base-line of perceptual experience, from the ordinary 

 NO. I 136, VOL. 44] 



facts of daily observation ; and they utterly refuse, at this 

 stage of the inquiry, to listen to the metaphysicians who 

 hoot from their cloud-land, " But you haven't yet proved 

 the existence of matter, or explained how it is possible to 

 perceive or know anything at all." Starting, then, from 

 the base-line of perceptual experience, they analyze 

 phenomena, digging down by wise abstraction and the 

 ignoring of unessentials, to deeper and deeper concepts, 

 until they arrive at those universal abstracts which can- 

 not be got rid of in thought without reaching nonentity. 

 Happy they who in this procedure escape the analyst's 

 fallacy — the supposition that the results of abstraction 

 have a fuller reality than the phenomena with which they 

 started. The analyst needs often to be reminded that 

 the perceptual rose, with its delicate scent, its rich colour, 

 its soft petals, is certainly not less real than the vibrating 

 molecules which remain to his thought when, as physicist, 

 he has stripped it of all its own peculiar charms. 



Thus positive science in its deepest analysis brings us 

 down to matter, and energy, and consciousness. If a 

 number of metaphysical questions are intruded at all 

 sorts of stages during this process, the result will be such 

 confusion as the Troglodyte unconsciously exemplifies in 

 his chapter on scepticism, a chapter in which some 

 stress is laid on, and some capital made out of, the false 

 psychological conclusion that conceptions cannot be de- 

 rived from experience. Should the author ever come to 

 grasp that the law of psychogenesis is one and indivi- 

 sible, and sweeps through perceptual and conceptual pro- 

 cesses alike, he will have to rewrite much of the " Riddles 

 of the Sphinx." But, as he himself tells us, "the minds 

 of most men are fortresses impenetrable to the most 

 obvious fact, unless it can open up a correspondence with 

 some of the prejudices within." 



When positive science has dug down to basal concep- 

 tions, then, and not till then, in logical order (but, of 

 course, far earlier in historical order) arises the question, 

 " But how does it all come about ? What is the origin 

 and meaning of it?" We quite agree with the Troglo- 

 dyte that this question must arise in the mind of every 

 man in so far as he is a thinking man. The question, 

 " How does it all come about .?" however, presents two 

 faces. It may mean, " How can we explain the fact of 

 knowing?" And the solution of this problem is, we 

 agree with Mr. Shadworth Hodgson in maintaining, the 

 true business of philosophy. But even supposing that 

 philosophy explains in some sense the process of know- 

 ing, there still remains the question in its further aspect,. 

 " But how does it all come about?" To this question, 

 positive science as such answers, or should answer, 

 humbly, and with no parade of capital letters, " I do 

 not know." 



And is that the end of the matter ? So far as positive 

 science at present goes. Yes. But man, the questioner, 

 still remains ; and Reason, true to her first impulse, still 

 demands an explanation. Of the explanation afforded 

 by revelation this is not the place to speak. But, quite A 

 apart from the fact of revelation, the explanation said to 

 be revealed still stands as a product of the human mind. 

 And he is a bold man, if not a foolish, who, having re- 

 gard to the past history of human thought on the ques- 

 tion, lightly sets aside the conception of a Causa causarum 

 to whom we may attribute symbolically all the higher 



