APRIL 4, 1884. ] 
SPENCER’S PHILOSOPHY OF THE 
UNKNOWABLE. 
An examination of the philosophy of the unknowable, 
as expounded by Herbert Spencer. By WILLIAM 
W. Lacy. Philadelphia, Benjamin F. Lacy, 
1883. 4+4+235p. 8°. . 
Tuts is a work that will interest the student 
of our American civilizatioh more than the 
student of philosophy. A man of extraordi- 
nary keenness and vigor of thought, plainly 
a born speculator, but utterly ignorant con- 
cerning some of the most elementary matters 
of physical science, devotes more than two 
hundred pages of close and ingenious argu- 
ment to the task of refuting Mr. Spencer’s 
well-known doctrine of the unknowable. The 
dead horse is flogged with a persistence that 
astonishes the reader, who has so often, ere 
this, seen the hopeless task tried without suc- 
cess. For the unknowable is once for all beyond 
the reach of harm, in the unapproachable re- 
gions of the unmeaning; and nothing that we 
ean do or say has any sort of effect on its 
blessed repose. One might as well hunt snarks 
as to refute this portion of the Spencerian phi- 
losophy. If any refutations had or could have 
any value for the purpose, we could find enough 
of them in Mr. Spencer’s own writings to con- 
tent anybody. Quite recently, for example, 
at the close of an essay on the future of reli- 
gion, Mr. Spencer has assured us that the 
‘scientific man’ is possessed of an ‘‘ analysis 
of knowledge, which, while forcing him to ag- 
nosticism, yet continually prompts him to im- 
agine some solution of the great enigma which 
he knows cannot be solved;’’ and that this 
same man, ‘‘ though suspecting that ‘ explana- 
tion’ is a word without meaning when applied 
to this ultimate reality, yet feels compelled to 
think there must be an explanation.’’ So that, 
to turn Mr. Spencer’s confession into Saxon, 
his knowledge makes him feel pretty sure that 
he is talking nonsense about the unknowable, 
and yet forces him to keep on talking this non- 
sense. And this state of soul it is which the 
doctrine of the unknowable expresses; and 
the said doctrine is for Mr. Spencer not only 
very deeply religious, but also the last word 
of philosophy. Of course, when a man can 
put all this into print, over his own name, he 
has really done as much as any living crea- 
ture can do in the way of refuting his own 
doctrine of the unknowable; and we can only 
thank him for his trouble. But surely we are 
absolved from writing books about this aspect 
of Mr. Spencer’s views, at all events, however 
much his other views may be worth study or 
acceptance or refutation. Such passages being 
SCIENCE. 
417 
no new thing in Mr. Spencer’s books, we 
therefore look with very languid interest on 
lengthy refutations like the present one, for we 
are convinced that some doctrines can well take 
care of themselves. Moreover, in its form, 
this refutation belongs to the past age of con- 
troversy, the age that culminated in Mill’s 
‘Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s phi- 
losophy,’ —a time of far narrower range in 
philosophic study than our own, — a time whose 
problems were fewer and Jess fruitful, — a time, 
in short, when to read one or two books, and 
to show great ingenuity in close logical fighting, 
might have made any one a match in certain 
questions for eVen a great scholar and thinker 
like Mill. Such discussions we no longer de- 
sire. We read more in philosophy, we go to 
school to more teachers, we think of more 
problems; or else we have to be content to 
rank as mere amateurs in philosophy. Our 
author, like many other students of Spencer 
in this country, must, for all that we here see, 
be classed among the amateurs. Philosophy 
seems to mean to him a very few problems and 
lines of thought. If it were not so, how could 
he be content with such a form and range as 
this for his book? —a mere disputation, close, 
generally logical in form (save in the portions 
that touch upon physical science), abstract, 
dry, ingenious, laborious, but in outcome 
almost utterly fruitless. 
Yet we said that the book ought to interest 
the student of our American civilization ; 
and so it ought. Here is a man of no small 
native power, of no small application: he goes 
to the trouble, and doubtless to the expense, 
of printing this elaborate disputation of a 
purely theoretical question; he appeals, and 
can expect to appeal, only to a few, viz., to 
the special students of philosophy ; he appeals 
to them with all the quiet assurance of a man 
who knows what he is about. There is a self- 
confidence in his manner, but there is no 
merely pretentious display of knowledge in his 
book. His style is Spencerian, — Spencerian 
with a bit more of vigor, and without a bit 
less of accuracy in form. The work is that of 
a mature thinker who has considered long and 
well. Now, however, this man has occasion 
to talk of the first law of motion. This law 
puzzles him. If a boy, he tells us, sets a ball 
going by hitting it with a bat, he himself is 
quite able to see why the ball is pushed by the 
bat so long as the bat is in contact with it, 
but thereafter he is perplexed. Why does 
the ball keep on moving? ‘* Motion, in the 
absence of propulsion, is inconceivable ;’’ that 
is, when the ball ceases to be pushed, it ought 
