NECESSARY TRUTHS— EFFECTS OF EXPERIENCE. 643 



1 know not whetlier Mr. Spencer would subscribe to 

 this or not ; — nor do I care, for there are mysteries which 

 press more for solution than the meaning of this vague 

 writer's words. But to me such an explanation of our 

 dilference-judgment is absolutely unintelligible. We now 

 find black and white different, the explanation says, he- 

 cause ive have ahvays have so found them. But why should 

 ■we always have so found them ? Why should difference 

 have popped into our heads so invariably with the thought 

 of them ? There must have been either a subjective or an 

 objective reason. The subjective reason can only be that 

 our minds were so constructed that a sense of difference 

 was the only sort of conscious transition possible between 

 black and white ; the objective reason can only be that 

 difference was always there, with these colors, outside the 

 mind as an objective fact. The subjective reason explains 

 outer frequency by inward structure, not inward structure 

 by outer frequency ; and so surrenders the experience- 

 theory. The objective reason simply says that if an outer 

 difference is there the mind must needs know it — which is 

 no explanation at all, but a mere appeal to the fact that 

 somehow the mind does know what is there. 



The only clear thing to do is to give up the sham of a 

 pretended explanation, and to fall back on the fact that 

 the sense of difference has arisen, in some natural manner 

 doubtless, but in a manner which we do not understand. 

 It was by the back-stairs way, at all events ; and, from the 

 very first, happened to be the only mode of reaction by 

 which consciousness could feel the transition from one term 

 to another of what (in consequence of this very reaction) we 

 now call a contrasted pair. 



In noticing the differences and resemblances of things, 

 and their degrees, the mind feels its own activity, and has 

 given the name of comparison thereto. It need not compare 

 its materials, but if once roused to do so, it can compare 

 them with but one result, and this a fixed consequence of 

 the nature of the materials themselves. Difference and re- 

 semblance are thus relations between ideal objects, or con- 

 ceptions as such. To learn whether black and white differ. 



