56 Prof. Ernst Hae'ckel. 



of anything ; for then it would be, as such, knowable. Can we not 

 see that " unknowability " is not a thing, but an adjective word, simply 

 descriptive of our ignorance, and exists nowhere but in our minds ; 

 when, therefore, it is applied to the objective world it is a misty an- 

 thropomorphism ; and as the basis of a philosophy an intellectual fog 

 plainly derived from theology ? 



Therefore the positivists— as, for instance, Mr. Frederic Harrison 

 in the Religious Discussions with Mr. Spencer— cleared Comte from 

 this fog, and all the monists and clear objective scientists have done 

 the same. That was " the parting of the ways " between them and the 

 Spencerians, and there is no danger of those ways ever uniting again, 

 for they all see that the Spencerian philosophy as " a monistic sys- 

 tem, hosed upon this unknowable reality," as Dr. Janes repeats it, is a 

 hopeless duality. The limitations of our faculties are modestly ac- 

 knowledged, but they in no wise prove that the law of correlation has 

 an exception or a limit, much less that it ends in ^an entical " Un- 

 knowable," or leaves room for that, or for any one of the countless 

 varieties of spooks which have led up to that pseudo-idea. But those 

 limitations do prove that all our knowledge is "relative" to our- 

 selves, and "subjective and hypothetical," as the doctor states, and 

 that "atoms" are not only "hypothetical," but extremely dubious, as 

 he quotes from Prof. Haeckel, doubtless for the enlightenment of our 

 atomic friend. Dr. Eccles, who often in these lectures trots out those 

 submicroscopic spooks, as though they were realities. 



These remarks clear up Dr. Janes's quotations, and do much also to 

 relieve the terror which the thunder of Dr. Eccles's adjectives, so for- 

 midable, but unnecessary, might otherwise inspire. Certainly, I have 

 not (as he says) misunderstood Mr. Spencer. I have used the very 

 words quoted and used by Dr. Janes, and which are taken from the 

 close of Mr. Spencer's First Principles, his Psychology (pp. 200, 504, 

 627 and 469, 475, 487, third English edition), and his own articles 

 printed in his Discussion with Mr. Harrison. Certainly Spencer says 

 mind is a "phenomenal process," is "co-rolatcd with nerve changes," 

 but not causally correlated with them and the world, l)ut " flows," as 

 do " all tilings," from the " infinite eternal unknowable energy." Not 

 a friend or opponent of Mr. Spencer fails to understand this posi- 

 tion. As a friend, :\rr. Fiske gives us from it The Unseen World 

 and The Idea of God, and Mr. Harrison, as an opponent, makes this 

 whole unknowable energy, power, substance, and entity religiously 

 absurd ; but neitlicr misunderstand him nor it ; nor do T, or you, or 

 Dr. Eccles. We all take what Mr. Spencer says in this regard for 

 what we think it is worth. There is no misunderstanding, but a dif- 

 ference as to facts, judgment, and conclusions. Whether the mind is 



