Page:The optimism of Butler's 'Analogy'.djvu/27

Rh it, recognize how much lies beyond what they now cover. They see what they see with perfect validity of judgement; and in seeing it, they see it to be the tiny portion of a larger pattern. They can follow the threads, until they pass out of sight. They are, as it were, looking, and they know it, at a little bit of a picture of which the rest is hidden by a curtain. They see that the colours and curves before their eyes are related to masses and harmonies behind the curtain. The arrangement of colours itself announces this. The curves and lines cry out for that which corresponds and balances. They cannot be understood for what they are, without, at the same time, bearing witness to that which would interpret them, if it were not hidden.

It is not, then, that our faculties fail us; rather, it is their triumphant certainty of apprehension which recognizes the partial character of what is disclosed. It is not the confusion and jumble of what is seen which causes the difficulty; but, on the contrary, its intense coherence, its infinite consistency, its convincing intelligibility. Butler therefore absolutely repudiates the Agnostic argument for our ignorance. If we were wholly without knowledge, we could not say that there was an unknowable world. It is partial ignorance, not total ignorance, from which he argues. For, indeed, 'total ignorance would preclude all argument for or against.' His position is that we know enough of reality to know that we imperfectly comprehend it. It is our knowledge which sets itself its own frontiers by virtue of what it already knows. It knows when it touches its limit; and it knows that what is beyond its present limit is of the same character as that which is within.

And, for that very reason also, Butler finds himself bound to reject the Positivist conclusion, which claims complete knowledge of that which falls inside those limitations. For that which is inside is bound up with that which is outside, as a part is in a whole; and, therefore, it itself cannot be judged and interpreted in isolation.