Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/95

 GREEN'S METAPHYSICS OF KNOWLEDGE. 83 The main argument by which Green answers the first of these questions I have already briefly stated. It may be expanded somewhat as follows. Mind makes nature ; but if it was my mind or your mind that so made it, nature would exist only so far as you or I understood it. It would come into being with our life, it would perish with our death, it would vary with our knowledge, it would be limited with our limitation. But nature is not so limited nor are the relations which constitute it thus variable. They form a " single unalterable all-inclusive system," and as such they imply the existence of a " principle of unity in relation," which cannot be other than universal spirit. The first question which this argument suggests to the sceptical critic is how do we arrive at the fact of there* being such a system of nature as is here described ? By hypothesis it cannot be known immediately, because it is owing to our not knowing it immediately to its not existing in its completeness in our own consciousness that we have to assume a consciousness in which it does so exist. If then we do not know this all-inclusive system immediately, on what evidence and by what process of inference do we arrive at it ? This question, natural though it may seem, is for some reason, the character of which I do not venture to conjecture, commonly treated by the Xeo-Kantians with a certain measure of impatience. Green has treated it not indeed with impatience, but with a brevity which, from the reader's point of view, is much to be regretted. His obser- vations on it are as follows (p. 30). " It would no doubt still be open to the sceptic to suggest that the validity of our conclusion depends upon there really being such an order of nature as the quest of knowledge supposes there to be, which remains unproven. But as the sceptic, in order to give his language a meaning, must necessarily make the same supposition as he can give no meaning to reality but the one explained his suggestion that there really may not be such an order of nature is one that conveys nothing at all." If this answer be accepted at all, it must certainly be accepted as adequate. No reply can be required to a ques- tion which has no meaning. But can this be seriously maintained ? Is it the case that reality only means and can only mean " determined by a single unalterable order of relations " (p. 17), and that therefore to enquire whether such a single unalterable order of relations really exists is non- sense ? It appears to me that in this matter Green has been led into eiTor by confounding the habitual practice with an' inevitable necessity of thought. It is most undoubtedly true that we regard nature as consisting of a uniform system, and