Know the Truth: A Critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation: Including Some Strictures Upon the Theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel and Mr. Herbert SpencerJones, Jesse Henry
Religion
Know the Truth: A Critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of Limitation: Including Some Strictures Upon the Theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer
2. As Mr. Spencer follows his teachers in the psychology of man's
faculties, so does he also in the use of terms. Like them, he employs
only such terms as are pertinent to the Sense and Understanding. So also
with them he is at fault, in that he raises questions which no Sense or
Understanding could suggest even, questions whose very presence are
decisive that a Pure Reason is organic in man; and then is guilty of
applying to them terms entirely impertinent,--terms belonging only to
those lower tribunals before which these questions can never come. For
instance, he always employs the word "conceive" to express the effort of
the mind in presenting to itself the subjects now under discussion. In
some form of noun, verb, or adjective, this word seems to have rained
upon his pages; while such terms as "infinite period," "infinitely
divisible," "absolutely incompressible," "infinitesimal," and the like,
dot them repeatedly. Let us revert, then, a moment to the positions
attained in an earlier portion of this work. It was there found that the
word conceive was _utterly irrelevant_ to any subject except to objects
of Sense and the Understanding in its work of classifying them, or
generalizing from them, so, also, with regard to the other terms quoted,
it was found that they not only presented no object of thought to the
mind, but that the words had no relation to each other, and could not
properly be used together. For instance, infinite has no more relation
to, and can no more qualify period, than the points of the compass are
pertinent to, and can qualify the affections. The phrase, infinite
period, is simply absurd, and so also are the others. The words infinite
and absolute have nothing to do with amount of any sort. They can be
pertinent only to God and his _a priori_ ideas. Many, perhaps most of
the criticisms in detail we shall have to make, will be based on this
single misuse of words; which yet grows naturally out of that denial and
perversion of faculties which Mr. Spencer, in common with the other
Limitist writers, has attempted. On the other hand, it is to be
remembered, that, if we arrive at the truth at all, we must _intuit_ it;
we must either see it as a simple _a priori_ idea, or as a logical
deduction from such ideas.
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