NOTES 
65
even what we mean when we say 
so; but the 
limits of knowledge, slowly receding,
 yet 
never so far as to permit us to unveil the awful 
and impenetrable adytum of consciousness, or 
that of matter, must one day 
be suddenly 
widened by the forging of a new weapon. 
Huxley and Tyndall have prophesied this 
before I w
as born; 
sometimes in vague 
language, once or twice clearly enough; to me 
it is a source of the utmost concern that their 
successors should not always see eye to eye 
with them in this respect. 
Professor Ray Lankester, in crushing the 
unhappy theists of the 
recent Times contro-
versy, does not hesitate to say that Science can 
never throw any light on certain mysteries. 
Even the theist is j ustified in retorting that 
Science, if this be so,
 may as w
ell be dis- 
carded ; for these are problems which must 
 
ever intrude upon the human mind—upon the 
mind of the scientist most of all. 
To dismiss them by an act of w ill is at once 
heroic and puerile : courage is as necessary 
 
to progress as any quality that w
e possess ;  
and as courage is in either 
case required, the 
courage of ignorance (
necessarily sterile,  
though wanted badly enough when our garden 
was choked by theological weeds) is less 
desirable than the courage which embarks on 
the always desperate philosophical problem. 
Time and again, in the history of Science,  
a period has arrived when, gorged with facts, 
she has sunk into a lethargy of reflection 
accompanied by appalling nightmares in the 
shape of impossible theories.  Such a night-
mare now rides us ; once again philosophy 
 
has said its last word, and arrived at a dead-
lock.  Aristotle, in reducing to the fundamental 
contradictions-in-terms which they involve the 
figments of the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, the 
Platonists, the Pyrrhonists 
; Kant, in 
his 
reductio ad absurdam of the Thomists,
 the 
Scotists, the Wolffians,—all the warring brood, 
alike only in the inability to reconcile the 
ultimate antimonies of a cosmogony 
only 
grosser for its pinchbeck spirituality ; 
have,  
I take it, found their modern 
parallel in the 
ghastly laughter of Herbert Spencer, as fleshed 
upon the corpses of Berkeley and the Idealists 
from Fichte and H artman to Lotze and Tren-
delenburg he drives the reeking fangs of his im-
agination into the palpitating vitals of his own 
grim masterpiece of reconcilement, self-deluded 
and yet self-conscious of its own delusion. 
History affirms that such a deadlock is 
invariably the prelude to a new enlightenment: 
by such steps we have advanced, by such we 
shall advance.  The “horror of great darkness” 
which is scepticism must ever 
be broken by 
some heroic master-soul,
 intolerant 
of the 
cosmic agony. 
We then await his dawn. 
May I go one step further, and lift up my 
voice and prophesy?   I would indicate 
the 
direction in which this darkness must break. 
 
Evolutionists will remember that nature cannot 
rest.  Nor can society.  Still less the brain of man. 
“ Audax omnia perpeti 
   Gens human ruit per vetitum nefas.”* 
We have destroyed the meaning of vetitum 
nefas and are in no fear of an imaginary cohort 
of ills and terrors.
  H
aving perfected 
one 
weapon, reason, and found it destructive to all 
falsehood, we have been (some of 
us) a little 
apt to go out to fight 
with no other weapon.  
“FitzJames’s blade was sword and shield,
Ӡ 
and that served him 
against the murderous 
bludgeon-sword of the ruffianly Highlander he 
happened to meet; but he w ould have fared ill 
had he called a Western Sheriff a liar, or gone 
off Boer-sticking on Spion Kop. 
Reason has done its utmost; theory has 
glutted us, and the motion of the ship is a little 
trying; mixed metaphore—excellent in a short 
essay like this—is no panacea for all mental 
infirmities; we must seek another guide.   A ll 
the facts science has so busily collected, varied 
as they seem to be, are in reality all of the same 
kind.  If we are to have one salient fact, a fact 
for a real advance, it must be 
a fact of a 
different order. 
Have we such a fact to hand?  We have. 
First, what do we mean by a fact 
of a 
different order?  Let me take and example; the 
most impossible being the best for our purpose.  
The Spiritualists, let us suppose, 
go mad and 
begin to talk sense.  (I 
can only imagine that 
such would be the result. )  All their “facts” are 
proved.  We prove a 
world of spirits, the 
existence of G od, the immortality of the soul,  
etc.  But, with all that, we are not really one 
step advanced into the heart of the inquiry 
which lies at the heart of philosophy, “What is 
anything?” 
I see a cat. 
Dr. Johnson says it is a cat. 
Berkeley says it is a group of sensations. 
Cankaracharya says it is 
an illusion, an 
incarnation, or God, according to the hat he has 
got on, and is talking through. 
Spencer says it is a mode of the Unknow-
able. 
But none of them seriously doubt the 
fact 
that I exist; that a cat exists; that one 
sees the 
other,  All—bar Johnson—hint—but oh! how 
dimly!—at what I now know to be— true?—
no, not necesarily true, but 
nearer the truth.  
Huxley goes deeper in his demolition of 
Des-
cartes.  With him, “I see a cat,” proves “some-
 
* Horace, Odes, I. 3. 
† Scott, The Lady of the Lake.