But it is time, turning from the man to his work, to proceed to the exposition of some of the fundamental principles of the Spencerian system of philosophy.
It is important, in the first place, to make clear the meaning which Mr. Spencer attaches to the word philosophy, as this will define for us the scope and purpose of his undertaking. By philosophy, then, to begin with a negative statement of his position, he does not understand an effort to solve the ultimate problem of the universe. He recognizes two categories—the Unknowable and the Knowable; and to the former of these, the proper domain of religion, he relegates all those final questions concerning Absolute Being, and the why and wherefore of the cosmos, which have largely absorbed the attention of the metaphysicians—questions which, owing to the conditions under which all our thinking has to be done, lie forever beyond the scope of human intelligence. The true subject-matter of philosophy, therefore, is not the problem of absolute cause and end, but of secondary causes and ends not—noumenal and unconditioned existence, but the manifestations of the noumenal in and through the conditioned and phenomenal. What, then, do we demand from philosophy? Not an explanation of the universe in terms of Being as distinguished from Appearance; but a complete co-ordination or systematic organization of those cosmical laws by which we symbolize the processes of the universe, and the interrelations of the various phenomena of which the universe, as revealed to us, is actually composed.[1] The old antithesis between common knowledge and what we call science, on the one hand, and philosophy on the other, forthwith disappears. They are not essentially unlike; their differences are differences of degree in generality and unification. "As each widest generalization of science comprehends and consolidates the narrower generalizations of its own division, so the generalizations of philosophy comprehend and consolidate the widest generalizations of science." Philosophy is thus presented as "the final product of that process which begins with a mere colligation of crude observations, goes on establishing propositions that are broader and more separated from particular cases, and ends in universal propositions. Or, to bring the definition to its simplest and clearest form: knowledge of the lowest kind is ununified knowledge; science is partially unified knowledge; philosophy is completely unified knowledge."[2]
Now, if philosophy is to undertake this complete unification of
