erbert Spencer. Its characteristic is
its repudition of both theology and metaphysics as pseudo-sciences, and
its high esteem for science. That esteem is not disturbed by the
confession that "noumenal causes,"--that is, the actual reality of
things,--are unknown; for we can still lay claim to valid knowledge of
the laws of phenomena. Having acknowledged that natural things as known
are merely phenomena, positivism treats them in all respects as if they
were realities; and it rejoices in the triumphant progress of the
natural sciences as if it were a veritable growth of knowledge. It does
not take to heart the phenomenal nature of known objects. But, having
paid its formal compliments to the doctrine of the relativity of all
knowledge, it neglects it altogether.

Those who understand Kant better carry his scepticism further, and they
complete the divorce between man's knowledge and reality. The process of
knowing, they hold, instead of leading us towards facts, as it was so
long supposed to do, takes us away from them: _i.e._, if either
"towards" or "away from" can have any meaning when applied to two realms
which are absolutely severed from one another. Knowledge is always
concerned with the relations between things; with their likeness, or
unlikeness, their laws, or connections; but these are universals, and
things are individuals. Science knows the laws of things, but not the
things; it reveals how one object affects another, how it is connected
with it; but what are the things themselves, which are connected, it
does not know. The laws are mere forms of thought, "bloodless
categories," and not facts. They may somehow be regarded as explaining
facts, but they must not be identified with the facts. Knowledge is the
sphere of man's thoughts, and is made up of ideas; real things are in
another sphere, which man's thoughts cannot reach. We must distinguish
more clearly than has hitherto been done, between logic as the science
of knowledge, and metaphysics as a science which pretends to reveal the
real nature of things. In a word, we can know thoughts or universals,
but not things or particular existences. "When existence is in question
it is the individual, not the universal, that is real; and the real
individual is not a composite of species and accidents, but is
individual to the inmost fibre of its being." Each object keeps its own
real being to itself. Its inmost secret, its reality, is something that
cannot appear in