40 AGNOSTICISM. 



thought " are combined with the matter. It can 

 re- arrange the factors in knowledge and show us 

 the logical connexions of its elements. But it can 

 do no more. It can bring to the surface what is 

 concealed in the depth, it can render explicit what 

 was implicit, but it can create nothing new. It can 

 neither account for the origin nor judge of the 

 ultimate validity of any actual bit of knowledge. 

 For to do so, it would have to cease to be *' im- 

 manent," to cease to deal with the logical elements 

 "implied in knowledge," and to- reach real facts. 

 But if it dealt with real facts,, actual instances of 

 knowledge, it would become a science like all others, 

 psychology or something of the sort, and would 

 cease to be the theory and criticism of all knowledge. 

 If, on the other hand, our theory of knowledge 

 claimed to deal with ultimate existences, it would, 

 like the Platonic theory of Ideas, become a meta- 

 physic.^ But of course it would be absurd to assert 

 that the series of logical elements, the ''a priori 

 forms of intuition and thought," such as Space and 

 Time, Cause, Substance, Interaction, etc., were actual 

 existences, and not abstractions '' implied in reality." 



1 T. H.Green in his-'< Prolegomena to Ethics " makes what looks 

 like an attempt to. do this, and comes very near asserting it. He 

 talks about a " metaphysic of knowledge," but does not venture, 

 like Hegel, to put it forward definitely as absolute metaphysic. 

 His ** spiritual principle implied in nature" is rather our means 

 for inferring the Absolute than the Absolute itself ; it does not 

 attain to the dignity of a hypostasized abstraction, although it 

 strongly suggests one, and remains an epistemological ambiguity. 

 Still it is often difficult to remember that all Green's statements 

 must be taken in an epistemological sense, especially when he 

 " theologizes," and declares that individuals are only parts of the 

 " eternal self-consciousness," a statement that ought not to mean 

 anything more than that they exemplify the use of the category 

 of self-consciousness. 



