The Unification of Knowledge Impossible. 15 



Driven back from the attempt to reach unity from 

 the side of the absolute, are we left without any hope 

 of combining the different elements and separate parts 

 of truth in one consistent and organic whole ? Must 

 we abandon in despair all endeavour after the unifica- 

 tion of knowledge ? From Heraclitus to Mr Herbert 

 Spencer there has been a succession of philosophers 

 who have looked for the unifying principle, not in 

 oneness of being, or in the self-revelation of the abso- 

 lute, but in the process of ceaseless change. The present 

 state of knowledge is especially favourable to such a 

 doctrine. Knowledge proceeding from the cognition 

 of individual things, strives towards unification by 

 combining the many in one through unity of law. 

 The rapid development of experimental science, re- 

 vealing order everywhere, has impressed all minds 

 with a sense of the universality of law, and prepared 

 the way for a philosophy claiming to have discovered, 

 in a law governing all change, the principle of that 

 complete unification of knowledge which has been 

 sought so ardently. 



The problem then is, to find one unifying principle 

 actually operative over the whole extent of being and 

 of mutation. The principle sought must embrace the 

 immeasurable spaces of the material world, and govern 

 every thrill of each atom, and every movement of the 

 entire mass : it must be seen in operation at the first 

 moment, when the universe emerges into the field of 

 thought, and must regulaite the entire course of change 



