26 MODERN DIFFICULTIES 



whatsoever. Those who try to know spiritual real- 

 ities, submitting to the conditions of such knowledge, 

 and employing the spiritual methods by which alone 

 they can successfully be examined, they are the only 

 ones who are competent to judge concerning the 

 knowability of spiritual things. Such people claim to 

 know them.^ 



Ill 



We now come to the other aspect of naturalism — 

 its insistence upon a purely mechanical method of in- 

 terpreting all knowable realities. The fallacies which 

 vitiate such a position are most clearly exhibited by 

 the indirect method of positively defining for ourselves 

 the proper function, range, and methods of sciences, 

 and their real limitations. 



Like any other primary conception of the human 

 mind, the idea signified by the term "knowledge" 

 escapes definition, because it is unique, and definition 

 involves a comparison of what is defined with other 

 things. Where there is no basis of comparison there 

 can be no definition in the strict sense of that term. 

 But we have no difficulty in identifying knowledge in 

 practice, and it can be described with sufficient prac- 

 tical accuracy as the attainment of a rationally justifi- 

 able certainty concerning reality. Its content is never 

 exhaustive, or adequate to reality, but if this content is, 

 so far as it goes, in working accord with the real, it 



1 The philosophical form of agnosticism defended by Herbert 

 Spencer has been considered in the author's Being and Attributes of 

 Cod, ch. ii. Many references are there given. 



