64 
As preliminary to tliis task_, let it be distinctly understood 
that our clear understanding of the mode in which any fact 
came into consciousness by no means robs that fact of its 
validity and its authority. If only it he a fact of conscious- 
ness, — a primary deliverance of consciousness, — we are com- 
pelled to take it on its own credentials, and we have no right 
to go behind it, and inquire by what authority it presumes to 
dictate to us. If it be a king de facto it must be obeyed, and 
any reference to its antecedents with the view of showing its 
unfitness to rule is quite inadmissible. We may prove it to 
be of plebeian origin, but if it has become a structural element 
of our mental being we have no choice but to permit its 
domination over us. Mr. Spencer most distinctly allows, and 
most vigorously contends for the truth of this proposition, with 
regard to the Logical Laws. If his Philosophy has proved any- 
thing it has certainly proved this, — that those Laws of thought, 
— those Logical Laws which determine how all our reasoning 
shall be carried on, are not, as they seem to be, primary and 
original creations in us, but are rather the slow elaborations 
and co-ordinations of much humbler elements of Mind, which 
elaborations have been carried on through unnumbered 
organisms, have steadily acquired stability, range, precision ; 
have been handed down in ever-increasing complexity from 
one generation to another, until they have at length taken their 
places as elements not to be dislodged from our mental 
structure. No part of his system is more satisfactory than his 
proof of this proposition, though, as it extends over the whole 
of 920 pages,* it is impossible to show its full force in the present 
paper. Nevertheless, although the genesis of those Laws is, 
as Mr. Spencer holds, most conclusively proved, yet he shows, 
in reasoning of remarkable beauty and power, f that our 
knowledge of their origin militates nothing whatever against 
their authority over us, inasmuch as we can never learn any- 
thing as to the way by which they came to that authority, 
without assuming their validity over and over again. The 
very reasoning by which we demonstrate their untrust- 
worthiness has, as its necessary foundation, the assumption 
that they are trustworthy. Mr. Spencer, therefore, as a wise 
man, rejects the conclusion arrived at /by a long process of 
reasoning, in favour of that simple and straightforward verdict 
which is given by consciousness. He proclaims as distinctly 
* Principles of Psychology, vols. i. and ii., up to end of ‘^Special 
Analysis,” p. 297. 
t “ General Analysis,” in vol. ii. of Principles of Psychology, pp. 305 489. 
