o 



8 • AGNOSTICISM. 



result in some way modifies the principles from 

 which we started, and the method by which we 

 reached it. Thus, the application of the Historical 

 Method to biological science has not only been most 

 fruitful of results, but it has reacted profoundly 

 upon the method itself, and changed the whole 

 course of sociological inquiry. 



We cannot know, then, hoiv we know, except In 

 dependence upon what we know. The theory of 

 knowledge appears only from its practice, and it is 

 a prejudice to think that it can be prejudged. 



§ 15. And the Kantian separation of the form 

 and matter of knowledge is not only vicious on 

 general grounds, but the whole epistemological 

 standpoint is utterly irreconcilable with the modern 

 conception of the world as an evolution. The 

 Kantian theory of knowledge is able to assert that 

 the mind can never do certain things, because It 

 claims to have given an exhaustive account and a 

 complete classification of the powers and impot- 

 encies of the human mind. 



But how if the mind which it analyses have not 

 the dead fixity of an artificial machine, but be a 

 living organism with boundless capacities for de- 

 velopment ? How then, can any classification of 

 its faculties be complete or conclusive ? How can 

 one analyse the latent germs which have not yet 

 reached the surface .^ how foretell the future o^rowth, 

 * even,' of what yet lacks its full development ? 

 Why, even the impotencles of our minds may be 

 potentialities prescient of future powers ! And 

 these suggestions are so far from being unverified 

 analogies from other spheres of knowledge, that we 

 can already actually trace some startling changes 

 in the development of our categories. (Ch. ill, § 10.) 



