84 comic rin Loxopnr. [pt. i. 



tiv- but to regard them either as self-determined, which leads 

 us finally to Hegeliam, or as not determined at all, which is 

 inconceivable. Mr; Mill's .statement is either nonsense, or 

 else it tacitly postulates that Absolute Existence which it 

 overtly professes to ignore. It is as impossible, therefore, to 

 ignore as it is to deny Absolute Existence. Without assum- 

 ing Something independent of consciousness, it is impossible 

 for either Idealism or Positivism to state the theorem in 

 which it is sought either to impugn or to ignore the existence 

 of anything beyond consciousness. 



The suicide to which Idealism or Positivism is inevitably 

 driven is further exhibited in the following citation from Mr. 

 Spencer. After reminding us that all the arguments which 

 go to demonstrate the relativity of knowledge set out by 

 assuming objective existence, he goes on to say : " Not a step 

 can be taken towards the truth that our states of conscious- 

 ness are the only things we can know, without tacitly or 

 avowedly postulating an unknown Something beyond con- 

 sciousness. The proposition that whatever we feel has an 

 existence which is relative to ourselves only cannot be 

 proved, nay, cannot even be intelligibly expressed without 

 asserting, directly or by implication, an external existence 

 which is not relative to ourselves. When it is argued that 

 what we are conscious of as sound has no objective reality 

 as such, since its antecedent is also the antecedent to what 

 we are conscious of as jar, and that the two consequents, 

 being unlike one another, cannot be respectively like their 

 common antecedent ; the validity of the argument depends 

 wholly on the existence of the common antecedent as some- 

 thing that has remained unchanged while consciousness 

 has been changing. If, after finding that the same tepid 

 water may feel warm to one hand and cold to the other, 

 it is inferred that warmth is relative to our own nature and 

 our own state, the inference is valid only supposing the 

 activity to which these different sensations are referred, is 



