8o The Evolution Hypothesis. 



resisting, affecting, operating, is co-extensive with our 

 knowledge of the external world. That something 

 we know as independent of our consciousness of it. 

 Its existence is not commensurate with our cognition : 

 our thinking does not create it, nor does the cessation 

 of our thought annihilate it. It exists at the instant 

 when we cognize it; it remains in existence at the 

 moment when our cognition of it ceases. This is the 

 whole content of consciousness so far as it bears 

 primary testimony to the existence of external things, 

 In subsequent acts of cognition we add to this experi- 

 ence : we are again conscious of the same object ; we 

 re-cognize it as the same. Hence we form a second- 

 ary judgment as to its perpetuity. It has been : it 

 is. But consciousness has no knowledge it can have 

 none as to the antecedent existence of the object 

 before our cognition of it, or its continuance in the 

 future. It has been : it is. But if we ask, How long 

 has it been ? How long shall it continue to be ? 

 Consciousness cannot answer, for it has no means of 

 knowing. Its primary deliverance is limited to an 

 affirmation of the existence of an external object, or if 

 the word be preferred, the existence of force, as some- 

 thing independent of the mental act, not originated 

 by the act of perceiving, nor ceasing with the cessa- 

 tion of that act. Further than this consciousness 

 cannot go. 



But Mr. Spencer argues that " the assertion of an 

 existence beyond consciousness is itself an assertion 



