which we learn and gradually attain to. And so our notion of the universe must be that confused mis-psychological one which I have so often spoken of—the universe is before us and we can describe it, and yet somehow or other we have yet got to apply the ideas and to know it.

And besides, this wrong antithesis between the ideas on the one side, and on the other the universe, not as confused matter of knowledge, but as already fact and objects to us, prevents any proper examination of the relation of the ideas to each other, and of their relative subordination and importance. Notions most heterogeneous, as 'duty', 'cause', 'space', have to be put into one category as belonging to the mind as against what does not belong to it, and this antithesis is looked at as so important that we are in danger of losing the proper notion of the relations among the things thus put together.

my

On Dr Whewell's book I have perhaps said enough. Space in view is something higher, more mental, than oxygen or carbon, time than space, cause and kind than time, and in this way there may be a continued succession, and a continued succession of antitheses: the mind may go on supplying higher and higher ideas; the universe, or fact, is not anything which receives the idea, but is that which the idea constitutes before us. And this is the same process as that which may be described as man's finding the ideas in the universe: the history of the ideas is alike the history of man's mental construction of the universe which his mind lives in, and of his analysis, ever evolving higher and worthier features, of the universe which he finds himself bodily in.

CHAPTER XII.

THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE.

ON the famous metaphor of knowledge being the interpretation of nature, of which Dr Whewell speaks—and warms in the speaking of it to the consideration of it as something more than a metaphor1-I will say a few words: for this reason, that I think the metaphor rightly employed is a most instructive means of illustrating the wrong psychology, and wrongly used it is a very great support of relativism.

Let us suppose that I, ignorant of Sanscrit, purchase a Sanscrit book, without the slightest knowledge of its title or subject. It has been the property of other people before me, and they, or some of them, know that it is an account of the campaign of Alexander in India: but this knowledge of theirs is nothing to me.

The reason why the consideration of this is important in respect of the wrong psychology, is the following: (1) that it gives us a good illustration of what is the meaning of the matter, or inform (unformed) matter, of knowledge, out of which we, by activity of the mind (superinducing form, if we like so to speak), make knowledge in perception: (which matter of knowledge Dr Whewell erroneously supposes to be things known already to a certain extent by a kind of inferior knowledge or sensation): and (2) that it is likely to show us the wrongness of the mis-psychological supposition of the independence, first, of the things perceived, and of our then, as such, perceiving them,

A stone lies before me: I see it. This is very well to de1 Hist. Scient. Ideas, Vol. I. p. 42.

but

scribe what we each of us do now: we know our Sanscrit if this manner of expression be used, as we shall find it continually used, in speaking of the manner of our coming to see things, or in giving a history of vision, it is just as if in relation to the book which I spoke of it should be said of me, He has got the history of Alexander's campaign before him he reads it. He has really got before him a bewildering chaos of lines and characters, out of which, as he learns, he makes out, or in which, if we prefer the expression, he gradually comes to perceive, what he then calls, or finds out to be what others call, a history of the campaign of Alexander. This is the manner in which we perceive or know anything, whether rudimentary or advanced: whether the supposed stone lying before us, or the mighty fact equally lying before us, of the earth's revolution round the sun. And the illustration from language is useful, because it is only by means of an illustration that the truth on the subject can come home to us. We cannot unsee the prospect before us. Dr Whewell has well described, in a passage which I lately quoted, how the draughtsman (as I will express it) unsees to a certain extent, i. e. by effort divests himself of certain habitual ways of vision or inference from vision: but we have got to unsee and unknow much further back than this, if we are in any way to attempt imaginatively to reconstruct our knowledge. The inform matter of knowledge of course cannot be conceived or imagined as inform, because the conception or imagination is so far giving it form, or making it actual knowledge: but we must remember that when we speak of the activity of the mind exerting itself in such a manner that there arises knowledge, it is upon this that we must suppose it exerting itself, or upon something in so far as it has this character, not upon something which has its form and character, so as to be known, already.

In the book, that which lies before me, independent of my understanding it, is a chaos of shapes and lines: that which lies before me, and I understand (supposing I understand it), is the history of Alexander's campaign. Our language, in our speaking of the universe and of our advancing knowledge of it, should follow this analogy., What lies before us men in the universe, independent of our or anybody's perceiving, who is

there that shall say? is there any meaning in saying that anything does? What lies before us, and we perceive, is the universe, or what we call the universe, in all its particulars.

But let it be observed (and the illustration is equally good for the showing us this), what we want to know, what is the real thing to be known, is what we do come to know, or advance more and more towards knowing: this inform matter of knowledge is not the thing in itself, or anything deserving the name of a substratum: knowing is superinducing form upon, i. e. thinking rightly about, this matter of knowledge, and it is merely incongruous to lament or to feel humbled because it cannot be known otherwise than by being thought rightly about. The characters are our road to the knowledge of the contents of the book. The notion of the thing in itself and the unknowable substratum seems to me to be as if, in the case of the book, instead of learning Sanscrit, I should occupy myself in thinking what the characters are independent of their being Sanscrit or a language. No knowledge lies that road.

And on the other hand, as the inform matter of knowledge is no thing in itself, so neither is the real thing in itself, the true object of knowledge (in this case the history of Alexander's campaign), something that the characters hide from us, but something which they guide us to. The coming to understand them is the coming to understand what is in them or what they contain―different as the knowledge of them is from the knowledge of this latter, the attaining to the one of these things is the attaining to the other.

This same fruitful metaphor may illustrate (for we must remember that it is all but illustration) something more about relativism. Using language similar to that of Sir William Hamilton on which I some time ago commented, we might say that there is a double relativeness in the knowledge which we have from the book of Alexander's campaign (the thing in itself or real existence): we know not it, but only a modification of it, viz. the knowledge or opinion which the writer of the book had of it: and we know this only through our knowledge of the Sanscrit language, as we know what we know only through our own special faculties.

Now of course there might exist an account of Alexander's

campaign in Greek written by a different person from the writer of my account of it, and another person might know that. He and I should then know Alexander's campaign differently, that is, should have, to a certain extent, different opinions about it. And what I want observed is, that there is no meaning in describing this state of things (and the parallel is exact with Sir William Hamilton's language) as our having two different relative knowledges of the history of the campaign, as our not knowing the history itself of the campaign, but only a modification of it—of course this is so, but it is simply because the knowledge is incomplete; and so far as we do know or as there is knowledge, what we do know is the history itself of the campaign, and nothing else. In the one case the one language and the one author's view, in the other case the other language and the other author's view, are successive stages on the road to some knowledge of the actual history, and we pass by them to this. The deceptiveness of the relativist view is in this, that it suggests that there is one sort of knowledge proper for people to whom one modification of existence is turned and who have one set of faculties, and another for another. But these, as the illustration illustrates to us, are only stages towards the attainment of the knowledge which is beyond them, which, so far as it is knowledge, is necessarily the same for all, and is unrelative.