Page:Journal of Speculative Philosophy Volume 17.djvu/72

Rh know that something is, if we have absolutely no knowledge what that something is? Can we know that an Absolute is, if we don't know what Absolute means? 2. Is it possible to know the existence of anything which is ex hypothesi out of relation to consciousness, and, further, know that this is the Absolute? 3. Is it possible to refer the whole content of consciousness to something which is beyond consciousness? Since the relative is so only as referred to an Absolute, can such a ratio between that which is in consciousness and that which is out of it be discovered as to demonstrate the relative character of the former? All these questions must, I conceive, be answered in the negative. As to the first, the predication of existence of an Unknowable seems to he a psychological impossibility. If there be any meaning in the assertion that X is, I confess I cannot see it. When it is said that something is, it is meant that something is. The predication must be of something; it cannot be of a pure Non-entity, like the Unknowable. The subject must mean something before it can be said either to be or not to be, or have any other intelligible proposition regarding it made. And so, as matter of fact, it is only as Mr. Spencer identifies his Unknowable with an Absolute, and thus takes advantage of the popular connotations of the word, that he is able to say that the Unknowable is; it is only as he smuggles some degree of qualification, however slight, into the subject that he can make it the subject of a proposition.

The question as to the possibility of knowledge of anything beyond consciousness, while presenting, since unknowable, the same difficulties to an affirmative answer as the question just considered, must, in addition, be answered negatively, on grounds of self-consistency. To say that something beyond consciousness is known to exist, is merely to say that the same thing is and is not in consciousness. Its special characteristic is to be out of consciousness; but, so far as it is known to exist, it is in and for consciousness. To suppose otherwise is to suppose that consciousness can in some way get outside of or "beyond" itself, and be conscious of that which is not in consciousness — a proposition as absurd as that a man can stand on his own shoulders, or outstrip his shadow. If we go further and give to the Absolute any positive signification, if it becomes anything more than the blank negation of all determinate relations, the bare is, which nevertheless is a qualiti-