434 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE, 
ness, besides distinction and relation, also implies likeness. Before it can become 
an idea, or constitute a piece of knowledge, a mental state must not only be known 
as separate in kind from certain foregoing states to which it is known as related by 
succession, but it must be known as of the same kind with certain foregoing 
states.’’ Not to quote unnecessarily, this doctrine is, that ideas, to beideas, must 
be classified; and he adds that ‘‘a true cognition is possible only through an ac™ 
companying recognition ”—that is, arecognition of preceding cognitions with which 
it may be classed. This Mr. Spencer foresees commits him to the absurdity of an 
unclassable first cognition, which is here held by him to be impossible ; in view of 
which, according to this doctrine, there can be no cognition at all, and thought 
and knowledge are shown to be impossible. But he endeavors to extricate him- 
self from this predicament by the argument ‘‘ that cognition proper arises gradually, 
that during the first stage of incipient intelligence, before the feelings produced 
by intercourse with the outer world have been put in order, there are no cogni- 
tions, strictly so-called; and that, as every infant shows us, these slowly emerge 
out of the confusion of unfolding consciousness as fast as the experiences are ar- 
ranged in groups.” Here it is sufficient to point out, that as no cognition can be 
according to this doctrine, until there is a preceding cognition sufficiently definite 
to class it with, the argument does not extricate him from the absurdity, however 
gradual the process may be. But the argument concerning the infinite, and the 
absolute as well, which he bases upon these fallacious premises, is: ‘‘ The First 
Cause, the Infinite, the Absolute, to be knownat all, must be classed. To be posi- 
tively thought of, it must be thought of as such or such—as of this or that kind. 
Can it be like in kind to anything of which we have sensible experience? Obvi- 
ously not. Between the creating and created there must be a distinction tran- 
scending any of the distinctions existing between any of the divisions of the cre- 
ated.”” This doctrine of the necessity of classification, as a prerequisite to cog- 
nition, is one of Mr. Spencer’s psychological doctrines, the validity of which will 
be examined in the proper place in these papers; suffice it to say for the present, 
that if it be true, we have noconception of Time nor Space, neither of which can 
be conceived as like any other thing in the universe. But inasmuch as we know 
certainly that we have conception of Time and Space, the argument does not prove 
that a conception of the Infinite is any less possible. 
In regard to these three doctrines upon this subject, it must be remarked that 
when we find our reasoning results in self-contradictions, it is not safe to conclude 
that reason is mendacious until we shall have proved that we have not erred in 
the application of itslaws. Such an occurrence should suggest to us the necessity 
of proving our process; as the school boy, when his multiplication fails to bring 
the answer laid down in his text book, proves his process by a division; and as he 
assumes that the error is in his process, and not in his book, so may we safely as- 
sume that the error is in our process and not in the constitution of the mind. 
If thus we find the doctrines of these great thinkers to be, upon this subject, 
contradictory and absurd, we may safely suspect that they have erred in their 
