Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/593

 SPENCER. 571 matter, motion, and force, as also the first states of con- sciousness, and the thinking substance, the ego as the unity of subject and object, all represent realities whose nature and origin are entirely incomprehensible. (2) The subsump- tion of particular facts under more general facts leads ultimately to a most general, highest fact, which cannot be reduced to a more general one, and hence cannot be explained or comprehended. (3) All thought (as has been shown by Hamilton in his essay " On the Philosophy of the Unconditioned," and by his follower Mansel) is the estab- lishment of relations, every thought involving relation, difference, and (as Spencer adds) likeness. Hence the absolute, the idea of which excludes every relation, is entirely beyond the reach of an intelligence which is con- cerned with relations alone, and which always consists in discrimination, limitation, and assimilation — it is trebly unthinkable. Therefore : Religion and Science agree in the supreme truth that the human understanding is capable of relative knowledge only or of a knowledge of the rela- tive (Relativity). Nevertheless, according to Spencer, it is too much to conclude with the thinkers just mentioned, that the idea of the absolute is a mere expression for incon- ceivability, and its existence problematical. The nature of the absolute is unknowable, but not the existence of a basis for the relative and phenomenal. The considera- tions which speak in favor of the relativity of knowledge and its limitation to phenomena, argue also the existence of a non-relative, whose phenomenon the relative is ; the idea of the relative and the phenomenal posits eo ipso the existence of the absolute as its correlative, which mani- fests itself in phenomena. We have at least an indefinite, though not a definite, consciousness of the Unknowable as the Unknown Cause, the Universal Power, and on this is founded our ineradicable belief in objective reality. All knowledge is limited to the relative, and consists in increasing generalization ; the apex of this pyramid is formed by philosophy. Common knowledge is un-unified knowledge; science is partially unified knowledge; philos- ophy, which combines the highest generalizations of the sciences into a supreme one, is completely unified knowl-