304 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



The remaining reply which Dr. Hodgson makes runs thus: 



"But Mr. Spencer has a second argument to prove this inconceivability. It 

 is this : ' If Space and Time are forms of thought, they can never be thought 

 of; since it is impossible for any thing to be at once the form of thought and 

 the matter of thought.' . . . An instance will show the fallacy best. Syllo- 

 gism is usually held to be a form of thought. Would it be any argument 

 for the inconceivability of syllogisms to say, they cannot be at once the form 

 and the matter of thought? Can we not syllogize about syllogism? Or, more 

 plainly still — no dog can bite himself, for it is impossible to be at once the thing 

 that bites and the thing that is bitten." 



Had Dr. Hodgson quoted the whole of the passage from which he 

 takes the above sentence; or had he considered it in conjunction with 

 the Kantian doctrine to which it refers (namely, that Space survives 

 in consciousness when all contents are expelled, which implies that 

 then Space is the thing with which consciousness is occupied, or the 

 object of consciousness), he would have seen that his reply has none 

 of the cogency he supposes. If, taking his first illustration, he will 

 ask himself whether it is possible to " syllogize about syllogism," 

 when syllogism has no content whatever, symbolic or other — has 

 non-entity to serve for major, non-entity for minor, and non-entity for 

 conclusion — he will, I think, see that syllogism, considered as surviving 

 terms of every kind, cannot be syllogized about; the " pure form," of 

 reason (supposing it to be syllogism, which it is not), if absolutely 

 discharged of all it contains, cannot be represented in thought, and 

 therefore cannot be reasoned about. Following Dr. Hodgson to his 

 second illustration, I must express my surprise that a metaphysician 

 of his acuteness should have used it. For an illustration to have any 

 value, the relation between the terms of the analogous case must 

 have some parallelism to the relation between the terms of the case 

 with which it is compared. Does Dr. Hodgson really think that the 

 relation between a dog and the part of himself which he bites is like 

 the relation between matter and form? Suppose the dog bites his 

 tail. Now, the dog, as biting, stands, according to Dr. Hodgson, for 

 the form as the containing mental faculty; and the tail as bitten 



sentation, so far as we are affected by the said object, is sensation. That sort of intui- 

 tion which relates to an object by means of sensation, is called an empirical intuition. 

 The undetermined object of an empirical intuition, is called phenomenon. That which 

 in the phenomenon corresponds to the sensation, I term its matter'' (here, remem- 

 bering the definition just given of phenomenon, objective existence is manifestly referred 

 to), ' but that which effects that the content of the phenomenon can be arranged under 

 certain relations, I call its form ' (so that form as here applied, refers to objective exist- 

 ence). • But that in which our sensations are merely arranged, and by which they are 

 susceptible of assuming a certain form, cannot be itself sensation.' (In which sentence 

 the word form obviously refers to subjective existence.) At the outset, the ' phenome- 

 non' and the ' sensation' are distinguished as objective and subjective respectively ; and 

 then, in the closing sentences, the form is spoken of in connection first with the one and 

 then with the other, as though they were the same." 



