COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



by formulas originally invented for describing 

 the other group, yet all that has been estab- 

 lished is this parallelism. When it comes to the 

 task of making the parallels meet, we are no 

 better off than Malebranche with his Occa- 

 sional Causes, or Leibnitz with his Preestab- 

 lished Harmony : nay, we are no better off than 

 the ancient Gnostics, with their " aeons " and 

 their " Demiurge." Rich as are the harvests 

 which science has obtained from these two fields, 

 the fence which divides them has never been 

 broken down ; and until the insuperable dis- 

 tinction between Subject and Object, between 

 the Conscious and the Unconscious, can be 

 transcended, it can never be broken down.^ 



But while the materialistic hypothesis is thus 

 irretrievably doomed, it is otherwise with the 

 opposing spiritualistic hypothesis. It is true 

 that we cannot directly translate Matter in terms 

 of Spirit, any more than we can translate Spirit 

 in terms of Matter. But we have seen that the 

 term " matter " does not stand for any real ex- 

 istence, but only for one of the modes in which 



^ [Spencer's final position, as stated in the First Principles 

 (loc. cit.), fully recognizes that the relations of matter and 

 mind are indeed ** inscrutable." But as to their probable cau- 

 sal relations (which Spencer here asserts), — these relations 

 ** are not profounder mysteries than the transformations of the 

 physical forces into one another." See Introduction, § 41 

 and note.] 



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