Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/408

 394 H. w. GARB: organism in which consciousness develops. The perception* of time is given in every sensation, the knowledge of space in sensations of a particular kind, and matter is known only when a combination of sensations of sight and touch have occurred, and it is only when a certain comparatively advanced stage in the" order is reached that the percipient becomes aware of an order of existence independent of, prior to and the condition of the order of knowledge. Only if this order of knowledge is conceived as a real order is the question of the place in it of agency important. My first question The essential universality of knowledge seems to me to involve the impossibility of the knowledge of the particular as such, and such knowledge is supposed in this analysis. In my view knowledge isjjrganic from the first, its simplest element involving relations to the whole] [STpurely unrelated feeling (the note struck on the pianoforte in Mr. Hodgson's; illustration considered in abstraction from all relation) is not to me a something waiting to be related, it is simply nothing, its content is inexpressible in word or thought. My second question with regard to it is, is this analysis the ultimate 1 test of reality both for the order of knowing and for the I order of being? Is the truth or reality of a conception decided by an appeal to experience in Mr. Hodgson's sense ? Antinomies do not trouble Mr. Hodgson, the business of philosophy is not to bring harmony into a world of baffling contradictions but to see that our conceptions are legitimately derived from our perceptions. Take for illustration time and space, they involve a contradiction even to common- sense thinking, and to philosophy the conception of their reality in the absolute sense is fatal to the conception of unity. Has philosophy then only to analyse time and space perceptions with the object of finding out what they are known as, and must it accept that analysis as the ultimate decision as to the nature of their reality? If so then we have this dilemma, that experience asserts a contradiction of reality (e.g., a beginning in time which we must affirm and deny) and reason demands that the conception of reality shall be free from contradiction. It seems to me that any philosophy based on experience in this sense must lack both unity and consistency. It may be true that to ask questions the answers to which suppose a power of transcending experience is vain, and the answers void as necessarily based on an assumption, but to ask these questions is part of our nature and to endeavour to answer them has brought most of us to philosophy. Mr. Hodgson's philosophy has neither
 * then is, is there a real order of knowledge in this sense ?