Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/458

440 knowledge, it must establish some ultimate proposition which includes and consolidates all the results of experience. It would obviously be infeasible in the space now at our disposal to follow Mr. Spencer step by step in the long and subtle argument by which this ultimate proposition is reached. We must content ourselves with the merest statement of results. Assuming, then, as we must ever continue to assume (for otherwise all thought would be impossible), that in the manifestations of the Unknowable in and through the phenomenal universe, congruities and incongruities exist and are cognizable by us, Mr. Spencer shows that in the last analysis all classes of likeness and unlikeness merge in one great difference—the difference between object and subject. "The profoundest distinction among the manifestations of the Unknowable," to quote his own words, "we recognize by grouping them into self and not-self." His postulates, therefore, are "an Unknowable Power; the existence of knowable likenesses and differences among the manifestations of that Power; and a resulting segregation of those manifestations into those of subject and object." From these postulates philosophy has to proceed to the achievement of its purpose as above set forth.

Pushing the argument through a consideration of space, time, matter, motion, force, the indestructibility of matter, and the continuity of force, Mr. Spencer at length reaches his ultimate dictum the—persistence of force; a dictum which possesses the highest kind of axiomatic certitude for two reasons: it constitutes the required foundation for all other general truths, and it remains stable and unresolvable—the one inexpugnable yet inexplicable element of consciousness. Force is thus, for Mr. Spencer, the ultimate conception, and the persistence of force furnishes the universal criterion of his system of thought. Of such persistence of force under the forms of matter and motion, all phenomena are necessary results. Eliminate this conception, and consciousness collapses. "The sole truth which transcends experience by underlying it, is thus the Persistence of Force. This being the basis of experience must be the basis of any scientific organization of experiences. To this an ultimate analysis brings us down, and on this a rational synthesis must build up."

The first deduction drawn from this ultimate universal truth is that of the persistence of relations among forces—otherwise, the uniformity of law; whence we pass to the necessary corollaries, the doctrines of the transformation and equivalence of forces, and of the rhythm of motion. Both these principles are shown to hold good throughout the whole range of phenomena, from the physical and chemical to the psychical and social. These