Spencer’s theory of knowing is destructive, while his theory of being is constructive and transcendental. VIII. The intelligence, as the organ of truth, must be large enough to find truth and contain truth. No sane man would undertake to dig down a mountain with a toothpick. Mr. Spencer devoted page after page to the discussion of cause, time, space, force, and ultimate reality, while holding a theory of knowledge that made the very thought of these inconceivable. The very things that he labeled as knowable contained a substrate the mind could never get at. Knowable things, then, could not be known as they were; hence if they were known at all, must be known as they were not, which made the mind’s knowledge error. All who accept Mr. Spencer’s theory of knowledge are shut up to absolute ignorance or absolute error. If we are to know the truth of reality, of mind, of external existence, we must have knowing faculties up to the style of the truth we are to know. If we are to know light, we must have eyes capable of taking in the light, of analyzing it, and turning it into vision. The disposition to limit our power to know, by telling us, on the strength of Mansel and Hamilton and Kant, that all our knowledge is relative, is innocent enough when stripped of its seeming wisdom. It is true that we can know no more than our knowing faculties permit us. We cannot know more than we can know. We are not absolute and omniscient as to our capacity to know. All we can see is what we can see with our eyes. We cannot see with our fingers or with the back of our heads. All we can hear is what we can hear with our ears. We have no other organs with which to hear. All sounds that vibrate at the rate of sixteen times to the second up to thirty-eight thousand times to the second, we can hear. Whatsoever sounds vibrate at a lower rate than sixteen times to the second or at a higher rate than thirty-eight thousand times to the second, we cannot hear, because such sounds are not related to the ear. But the eye, being adjusted to and related to much finer wave lengths than the ear, can see waves that vibrate up as high as seven hundred and twenty-seven trillion times to the second. The eye cannot see waves shorter than seven hundred and twenty-seven trillion vibrations to the second, because such waves are not adjusted to the eye. The waves the ear cannot hear are not sound waves. The waves the eye cannot see are not light waves. There are no sound waves in the universe the ear cannot hear, provided they are near enough to come into contact with it. There are no light waves in the universe that the eye cannot turn into vision, if they strike the retina. Are we going to fall out with the eye, and discredit the beauty it does see, because it is not as large as the rim of immensity, and cannot see everything disclosed by the light of suns and stars at once? Are we to hold the ear in contempt after it takes in