THE FINITUDE OF KNOWLEDGE. 27 



the ultimate fact, will It stray beyond it into the 

 shadowy region of fiction. 



But if the argument concerning the infinite pro- 

 cess of thoucrht cannot be reo^arded as more than a 

 mistaken metaphor from Space, the argument which 

 follows rises to a positive fallacy from the same 

 source. 



Mr. Spencer says : ^ *' To think of the First 

 Cause as yf/2z/^ ( = limited in power) is to think of 

 it as limited. To think of it as limited, necessarily 

 implies a conception of something beyond its limits ; 

 it is absolutely impossible to conceive a thing as 

 bounded ( = limited in space), without conceiving a 

 region surrounding its boundaries." 



We have ventured to emphasize by the use of 

 italics the curious transition from finite to bou7ided 

 by means of the ambiguous middle term, limited, 

 for it is on this that the argument depends. 

 Boundaries are, of course, frankly spatial, and Space 

 is, of course, in some sense infinite (ch. ix., § 2 ff.). 

 But the limited is used not merely In a spatial sense, 

 but also, more widely, in a sense to which spatial 

 analogies no longer apply. Every boundary is a 

 limit, but not every limit Is a boundary. Limits 

 exist In thoughts and feelings as well as in Space, 

 When the stupidity of a sensational novel reaches 

 the limits of his endurance, Mr. Spencer does not 

 perceive a black line on the paper. Or again, a 

 process of Inference Is limited by Its premisses and its 

 conclusion, but these are neither straight lines nor 

 crooked. Again, it Is not one of the difficulties of a 

 limited liability company that it Is necessarily sur- 

 rounded by an infinite ocean of liabilities. It Is not 

 true, then, that in thouorht a limit, necessarllv and 

 1 "First Principles," p. 37. 



