104 
universe, but tbe most ordinary phenomena of our daily 
existence, are capable of being thus reduced to a metaphysical 
absurdity. The infinite, as Mr. Spencer and Dean Mansel tell 
us,* is impossible to be conceived ; and this, as we have seen, 
is as true of the infinitely little as of the infinitely great. But 
the infinitely little meets us every day. It is impossible for 
a clock to strike without the distance between the hands and 
the point fixed for its striking being gradually reduced to zero, 
i.e. becoming by degrees infinitely small. And the moment 
at which that point is reached is also an infinitely small period 
of time. Therefore, as the hand of the clock reaches the 
appointed hour, we have a non-existent portion of space 
between the hand and the point for a non-existent portion of 
time. Yet we shall hardly be persuaded by the most in- 
genious metaphysician to reckon the striking of a clock as 
utterly unthinkable.” 
12. The same maybe said of motion. Though the motions 
of a railway train and of the earth on which it moves are of 
course not absolute but relative, nevertheless it is a fact that a 
railway train traverses a certain portion of the earth’s surface 
in a certain time. But we can only conceive of its doing so 
by resorting to the expedient of supposing it to describe in- 
definitely small portions of space in indefinitely small periods 
of time; that is to say, according to metaphysicians, non- 
existing portions of space in non-existent portions of time. 
Metaphysically, this is an absurdity. Practically, it is a fact, 
and he would be regarded as a madman who attempted to 
persuade us that we ought to act upon the hypothesis that 
it was not, or, which is perhaps more exactly a parallel case, 
that we ought to dismiss all considerations of motion from our 
minds as “ unthinkable.”! 
13. But Mr. Spencer is not dismayed by the portentous 
dimensions he has assigned to “ the Unknowable.” He pro- 
ceeds to inquire, after having proved that we can know 
nothing — or rather, as he prefers to put it, that “ we cannot 
know the ultimate nature of that which is manifested to us” 
— he proceeds to ask, tf What can we know ? ” (p. 127.) And 
he concludes : “ Our postulates are — an Unknowable Power ; 
the existence of knowable likenesses and differences among 
the manifestations of that Power ; and a resulting segrega- 
tion of the manifestations into subject and object” (p. 157). 
* First Principles , ch. ii. ; Bampton Lectures , lect. ii. 
+ It may be remarked that Newton’s method of fluxions, the foundation 
of the methods of the differential and integral calculus, used in all modern 
scientific research, proceeds upon a similar metaphysical absurdity. Physical 
science, therefore, is clearly “ unthinkable.” 
