That for man there is nothing nobler, nothing higher, than to study the grinding laws which compel him; which laws are the summaries of natural methods which began in nothing, and have been for ever vacant of thought or purpose. We need have no anxiety concerning the influence of such a scheme; from its own incoherence it enfolds its intellectual death-warrant in its very form. But the philosophy of Spencer is of another order. It is a philosophy that scorns the idealism of Berkeley, and that with the fervour of conviction, indignantly repudiates ‘Materialism.’ He contends for the equal and independent reality of self and not-self, of subject and object, of mind and matter. He affirms that the ‘co-existence of subject and object is a deliverance of consciousness.... and is a truth transcending all others in certainty.’[4] Yet, in the progress of the philosophy, we discover that from matter in motion, and nothing else, the whole universe is supposed to arise; life emerges; and mind, in its most transcendent forms comes forth. And it is this fallacy pervading the philosophy that is the essence of its power. Repudiating ‘Materialism’ as philosophically untenable, it yet exists as a philosophy to endeavour to show that mind is an outcome of matter. [Footnote 4: _Principles of Psychology_, vol. i. p. 209.] Look at the problem it sets for solution. ‘Philosophy,’ says Spencer, ‘is _completely unified_ knowledge;’ and adds, ‘... a philosophy stands self-convicted of inadequacy, if it does not formulate the whole series of changes passed through by every existence.... If it begins its explanations with existences that already have concrete forms ... then manifestly they had preceding histories ... of which no account is given. And as such preceding ... histories are subjects of possible knowledge, a philosophy which says nothing about them falls short of the required unification.’[5] Then, on the very terms of the philosophy, we are to contemplate ‘the beginning’ with absolutely nothing anterior or unaccounted for. There must be no ‘concrete forms,’ no ‘preceding histories,’ to be encountered. Now observe, it is clearly recognised in this philosophy that the ultimate nature of all that constitutes the universe is infinitely beyond the reach of the human mind; that in their final nature time, space, matter, motion, rest, the transfer of motion, the exercise of force, the nature and operation of consciousness and thought, are all equally, that is, infinitely, inscrutable. Knowledge is inexorably limited to, and co-extensive with, phenomena; yet from these phenomena alone we are to obtain exhaustive accounts of their own origin and existence, in spite of the admitted inscrutable mysteries of which they are the manifestations. [Footnote 5: _First Principles_, pp. 541-42.]