PHENOMENON AND NOUMENON 



as this Cosmic Philosophy, here sketched out, 

 is not adequate to supply our highest intellec- 

 tual needs. At the bottom of this objection, 

 as at the bottom of that persistent clinging 

 to ontological speculations (in spite of their 

 often - demonstrated worthlessness) which we 

 frequently meet with, there lies the vague half- 

 defined belief that in giving up our knowledge 

 of noumena or the Noumenon, we are leaving 

 for ourselves nothing but shadows. " We in- 

 crease the seeming unreality of that phenom- 

 enal existence which we can alone know, by 

 contrasting it with a noumenal existence which 

 we imagine would, if we could know it, be more 

 truly real to us." But we are led astray by the 

 unavoidable ambiguity of words. To make a 

 supposition which savours somewhat strongly 

 of hibernicism : even if we could know objects 

 apart from the conditions imposed upon them 

 in the act of knowing, such (so-called) know- 

 ledge would be utterly useless. This is admira- 

 bly illustrated in a passage from Mr. Spencer's 

 " First Principles " with which I will conclude 

 this chapter : — 



" The maintenance of a correspondence be- 

 tween internal actions and external actions, which 

 both constitutes our life at each moment and is 

 the means whereby life is continued through 

 subsequent moments, merely requires that the 

 agencies acting upon us shall be known in their 



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