Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/253

] statements: first, the absolutely or objectively unknowable is for us nothing, nothing but a problem without an answer; second, the relatively unknowable of consciousness and will is subjectively given to us as a constituent of our reality.

Those who deny dogmatically the possibility of an unknowable do so on the ground that it is absurd to assume a knowledge of the possibility of that which cannot be known. But there is no real contradiction here, for to conceive a limit to knowledge is not to overstep that limit.

Thirdly, there are philosophers who not only posit an unknowable, but attempt to determine its relation to the known. Kant furnishes the best example of this abuse of the conception, when he calls the noumena causes of our perceptions, intelligible entities, etc. On the other hand, he opens the way for a skepticism destructive to science by his dogmatic denial that relations hold good of noumena, and that space and time, and consequently change, belong to things-in themselves. Kant forgets that in our changing states of consciousness we have an example of real change; for however representative our perceptions may be with reference to external things, as conscious states they are precisely what they seem, and their relations are real.

From the Kantian doctrine that relation and thought are identical, Hegel passed to the statement that reality and thought are identical. Against this "absolute objectivism" M. Fouillée argues, first, that it is by no means certain that all reality is intelligible, and second, that not all relations are forms of thought proper; the most fundamental ones are sensitive and volitional. Absolute separation and absolute identification of thought and reality are alike undemonstrable. The only defensible attitude towards the unknowable is purely negative. We may posit a noumenal world existing independently of all relations, but in so far as we claim to know it, it does not exist. "The great metaphysical x at the outskirts of the objective universe being once assumed, let us beware of changing our hypothesis into a thesis, and of setting out from the unknown to cast suspicion on the validity of the known."

A survey of 'the theory of the non-transmission of acquired character, of the germ-plasm and the continuity of life, of natural selection and the rival theories of evolution and special creation,' and a few conclusions drawn therefrom. Evolution is a theory of