Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/477

416 ing before the public with a theory somewhat startling in its departure from the ruling opinion, I had indulged the mere desire to stir up a sensation, and had omitted even an attempt to prove my main proposition. I have not been guilty of this negligence. On the contrary, I have argued the proposition of the eternity of each individual mind — that is, its genuinely self-active reality — in the most careful way, and in the only way that I can conceive of its being proved in. This I have done, in some sense, in every essay in the volume, but chiefly, of course, in the first, in the third, in the latter part of the fifth, and especially in the sixth. The argument, in brief, is simply that of taking up the problem of the reality and the source of knowledge, and, in face of the supposed evolutionary explaining of all a priori knowledge away by the cumulative force of hereditary habit massed through ages, proving with exact care that every human mind, and therefore by analogy every individual mind as such, does have and exercise this a priori knowledge. Supposing this to have been done (and I must refer readers to the book to test my proofs), the unavoidable meaning of the fact is that every mind possesses a spontaneous objective cognition, and is therefore a case of what, quoting the ever memorable expression used by the writer of the Fourth Gospel, I have called the possession of “life in itself.” This, I maintain, is the only intelligible meaning which anybody can attach to self-existence, independent being, and real freedom; as also it is the only intelligible meaning of knowing a priori.

My readers, I fear, have like my reviewer been somewhat misled by looking into my concluding essay for the most important proofs of my main position. But there I am dealing with a problem, or with problems, important and intricate, indeed, but still subordinate to this main one, and only auxiliary to my principal aim. I am there chiefly concerned with showing that if we are to have a moral