Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/348

oppo: a theory which, though it shrinks on its speculative side from no severity of critical analysis, yet on its practical side finds the source of its constructive energy in the deepest needs of man, and thus recognizes, alike in science, in ethics, in beauty, in religion, the halting expression of a reality beyond our reach, the half-seen vision of transcendent Truth." (p. 288-9.)

On these passages my first criticism is that they exemplify the process described at the outset—the spearing of an effigy which is alleged to be the reality. For when the doctrine represented as mine is compared with the doctrine which is actually mine, it becomes manifest that Mr. Balfour's spear does not touch it at all. Nowhere have I either directly or indirectly denied that out of the "depths of unfathomable mystery there may. . . emerge the certitudes of religion;" and it would be wholly inconsistent with my expressed views were I to deny that there may. The conclusion that by the nature of our intelligence, we are forever debarred from forming any conception of the Reality which lies behind Appearance, has the inevitable corollary that we can assign no limits to the possibilities within it. This I have not only implied, but long ago asserted. Witness the following passage:—

"Though I have argued that, in ascribing to the Unknowable Cause of things such human attributes as emotion, will, and intelligence, we are using words which, when thus applied, have no correspending ideas; yet I have also argued that we are just as much debarred from denying as we are from affirming such attributes; since, as ultimate analysis brings us everywhere to alternative impossibilities of thought, we are shown that beyond the phenomenal order of things, our ideas of possible and impossible are irrelevant."—Nineteenth Century, July, 1884.

After thus showing that I am unharmed, because untouched, by Mr. Balfour's thrust, I might leave the matter without further remark. But remembering that, much more important than the personal question is the impersonal question lying behind, it seems proper that I should make a counter-attack; for, in opposition to my supposed negation, Mr. Balfour places not only an affirmation but something more than an affirmation. Against my wrongly-assumed assertion that there may not emerge, he does not simply put the assertion that there may emerge, but he unobtrusively puts the assertion that there does emerge. This substituted statement, which he tacitly makes, is a totally different one; and while I admit the may I demur to the does. Without pausing to ask what is the evidence that there does, it will suffice if I examine the proposition itself, and see whether it is a thinkable one—whether the terms in which it is expressed have real meanings, or are merely symbols having no meanings corresponding to them.

Thinking, truly so called, implies mental representation of the