CHAPTER II.

KNOWLEDGE AND AGNOSTICISM.

3. What Knowledge is.

Knowledge implies a subject knowing and a reality known (objec tive or subjective). The knowledge is the relation between them. Both a subject knowing and a reality known are essential to knowledge; if either is wanting, knowledge is impossible. This is the first law of thought.

Knowledge is always the knowledge of reality. This is of its essence; if it is not the knowledge of reality, it is not knowledge. The validity or reality of knowledge is essential in the idea of knowledge. Knowledge is the intellectual equivalent of some reality.

The act of the mind in knowing is a primitive act incapable of analytical definition. It cannot be explained any more than light can be illuminated. It is the inexplicable act by which the mind takes up a reality into itself in an intuition, an apprehension, an idea, in some intellectual equivalent, and knows it. We can declare the conditions, physiological or others, under which knowledge arises; we can analyze the processes by which the mind attains it. But the mental act itself by which an object, external and unknown, suddenly stands clear and definite within the intelligence, remains a mystery. And all physiological facts as to its connection with molecular action of the brain leave it as mysterious as ever.

What knowledge is, is known in the act of knowing and known only in the act of knowing. That it is knowledge is also known in the act of knowing. My certainty of a reality is simply my consciousness of knowing, which, whether attended to or not, is essential in every act of knowledge. "I know that I know" means no more than "I know.” Otherwise every act of knowledge would be conditioned on an act preceding and knowledge would fail in a vain regression along an infinite series.

4. Agnosticism.

Agnosticism is the doctrine that the human intellect in its normal exercise is untrustworthy and incompetent to attain knowledge; and

that therefore knowledge is impossible to man. The doctrine has also been known in philosophy by the names Pyrrhonism, Nihilism and Universal Skepticism.

It is not the denial of the possibility of knowledge in a particular case for lack of evidence, or on account of the limitation of the human mind. In affirming that man's knowledge is real we do not affirm that it is omniscience. Reality may exist known to minds of a superior order, but entirely beyond the range of the human mind in its present development. It is one important aim of philosophy to determine the necessary limits of human knowledge and so to prevent the waste of intellect in vain attempts to know the unknowable.

Agnosticism is a denial that the human intellect is trustworthy; it is the consequent denial that man is competent to attain knowledge within the range of his faculties and in the normal exercise of all his powers. He may have necessary beliefs in accordance with which he must think; but he can never have confidence that his necessary belief is trustworthy or that by any intuition or any reasoning he attains knowledge of reality.

It follows that a partial agnosticism necessarily involves complete agnosticism, and is therefore self-contradictory and untenable. If at one point the intellect is found to be false and untrustworthy, that is the discovery at that point of a falsity and untrustworthiness which discredit the intellect at every point and invalidate all that is called knowledge. For example, if the intellect in the normal exercise of its powers persistently and necessarily believes a certain self-evident principle or axiom, and yet with equal persistence and necessity believes another self-evident principle contradictory to the first, it is exposed as false and self-contradictory and discredited in all its action. The agnostic may assert a partial agnosticism while admitting the reality of knowledge in other particulars; but it is only because he has not thought far enough to see the reach of his denial. The partial necessitates the complete agnosticism.

5. The Reality of Knowledge.

This topic is sometimes designated "The Validity of Knowledge," and the discussion is of the question "Is Knowledge Valid?" But validity is of the essence of knowledge; invalid knowledge is no knowledge. The question, therefore, resolves itself into this: "Is knowledge real? Does man know anything?" This form of statement clears away irrelevant matter and holds attention to the precise point in question.

I. The reality of knowledge is a primitive datum of consciousness

underlying and conditioning all human experience and essential ia all human intelligence.

1. The reality of man's knowledge of himself and his environment is a primitive datum of consciousness. This is implied in the first law or primordial postulate of thought: knowledge implies a subject knowing and an object known, and is the relation between them. When I say knowledge is real, I simply formulate in thought the primitive consciousness, “I know." But this primitive consciousness, “I know,” declares alike, "It is I who know," and "I know something." Thus the primitive datum of consciousness that knowledge is real involves, as of the essence of knowledge, the reality of the Ego or subject knowing, and the reality of the object known; for if either is unreal the knowledge does not exist; and thus it involves the reality of the knowledge in its essential significance. In every act of knowledge, man's knowledge of himself as knowing is an essential element, and without this there can be no knowledge. Thus his whole conscious activity in experience is a continuous revelation of the man to himself. It is the same with the object known. In every moment of consciousness man finds himself knowing something that is not himself. The existence of an outward object is a datum in all his consciousness; and his whole conscious experience is a continuous revelation to him of the outward reality; and if this is not real all knowledge vanishes. H. Spencer says, "The co-existence of the subject and object is a deliverance of consciousness which, taking precedence of all analytic examination, is a truth transcending all others in certainty."

By the testimony, the words and the works of other men we know that human knowledge is always in like manner the knowledge of the subject knowing and an object known. I may say that the entire experience of mankind is the continuous revelation of these realities to the human consciousness, and that all human experience is conditioned on their real existence. Man lives in their presence and in every act of intelligence sees their reality. If, therefore, the primordial postulate on which human knowledge rests is false, all human knowledge vanishes away.

Thus it appears that the reality of knowledge is a primitive datum of consciousness underlying and conditioning all human experience and essential in all intelligence.

But, it will be said, this is not a demonstration of the reality of knowledge. The assertion is true. Knowledge cannot originate in reasoning, for reasoning presupposes knowledge. If we must prove everything we cannot prove or know anything. For the same reason

*Psychology, Vol. i. p. 209.

we cannot prove the reality of knowledge by reasoning. We can reason to what is unknown only from what is known. We cannot dive beneath all that is known and in the vacuum of total ignorance prove the reality of knowledge itself. We can reason only by the use of our own intellectual faculties. We cannot transcend these faculties to prove that they themselves are trustworthy. If one denies the reality of knowledge no proof can refute the denial. Every reason urged in proof of the reality of knowledge assumes that reality and derives all its force as an argument from the assumption. Every reason urged to prove that our intellectual faculties are trustworthy, can be a reason only because those faculties are trustworthy. It is therefore illegitimate and useless to attempt to prove the reality of knowledge or the trustworthiness of our intellectual powers. So far as this question is concerned, we do well to say with Goethe, "I have never thought about thinking." The speculation which entangles itself in this fruitless discussion merits the mockery of Mephistopheles in Faust: "I tell thee, a fellow who speculates is like a beast on a dry heath driven round and round by an evil spirit, while all about him lie the beautiful green meadows." *

Nor does it discredit the reality of knowledge that its evidence is not a demonstration. It is more than a demonstration; it is the very essence of knowledge itself; it is the primitive datum which underlies every demonstration and makes it possible. Man lives in the light of the knowledge of himself and of the world, and all his experience is the continual illumination of these realities.

Nor does it discredit the reality of knowledge that it is subjective, and that the mind itself contributes an element in the knowledge. If an intelligent being exists, he must be constituted with capacity of knowing; and when he reflects on himself, he must find in himself that original capacity, and the act of knowing must be the warrant and evidence of the power of knowing. No outward influence on a stick or stone can make it know, because it is not constituted with a capacity of knowing. It can be no objection to the reality of knowledge that knowledge is the act of a being constituted with the capacity of knowing and that it is by virtue of this constitution that the being knows. When the subjectivity of knowledge is urged against its reality, the absurd objection is flatly propounded that knowledge is impossible if there is an intelligent being who knows.

The primordial postulate is not from the beginning formulated in

*"Ich sag' es dir; ein Kerl der speculirt,

Ist wie ein Thier, auf dürrer Heide

Von einem bösen Geist im Kreis geführt,

Und rings umher liegt schöne grüne Weide."

the words, "knowledge is real," or "our intellectual faculties are trustworthy." It exists, rather, in every act of knowledge, as the man's unenunciated consciousness of himself as knowing, of an object known, and of the knowledge. It is a waste of intellect to carry the question through metaphysical discussion. This postulate which underlies all human experience, conditions all human knowledge, and is the primitive datum of all consciousness, admits of no debate. Knowledge begins with knowing; it reveals itself self-evident, as light reveals itself by shining. It originates as knowledge, the perpetual miracle of Minerva springing full-armed from the brain of Jupiter.

2. The reality of man's knowledge of the first principles which are regulative of all thought is a primitive datum of consciousness. Man finds himself unable to think in contradiction of them. They overarch and encompass his thinking like a luminous firmament, which enlightens but cannot be transcended or escaped. It is the knowledge of these principles underlying and conditioning all thinking, which makes it possible from any process of thought to conclude by inference in knowledge. Thus in the experience of life all thinking is a continuous revelation of these truths and of the reality of our knowledge of them. In a similar manner we come to the knowledge of truths which are obligatory on us as laws to the will.

3. I expect also to show, what I will merely indicate now, that the reality of our knowledge of God is a primitive datum of consciousness. Man being rational is so constituted that in the presence of God, and of his various manifestations of himself, he will know him; and he will know that he knows God in the act of knowing him. In thinking of himself and the beings about him, he comes in view of the absolute being. In knowing the universal principles and laws of reason which are regulative of all human thinking and doing, he comes to the knowledge of absolute Reason in which they are eternal in the fullness of wisdom and love. The development of man's consciousness of himself in his relation to the world, is the development of his consciousness of God. As in the experience of life, the unfolding consciousness of man is a continuous revealing to him of himself and of the outward objects of knowledge, so also it is a continuous revelation to him of God. The revelation is real to all; its right progress presupposes the normal development of man; its completeness, rightness and harmony will be proportioned to the completeness, rightness and harmony of the development of the man.

4. The realities which I have considered are the elements of the three objects of all human thought and knowledge, the Ego or person, the World, and God. These are not mere ideas spun and woven from the processes of our own minds. They do not exist because we know hem;