第22章

The Relativity of all Knowledge §22. The same conclusion is thus arrived at from whichever pointwe set out. Ultimate religious ideas and ultimate scientific ideas, aliketurn out to be merely symbols of the actual, not cognitions of it.

The conviction, so reached, that human intelligence is incapable of absoluteknowledge, is one that has been slowly gaining ground. Each new ontologicaltheory, propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to be untenable, has beenfollowed by a new criticism leading to a new scepticism. All possible conceptionshave been one by one tried and found wanting; and so the entire field ofspeculation has been gradually exhausted without positive result: the onlyresult reached being the negative one above stated -- that the reality existingbehind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown. To this conclusionalmost every thinker of note has subscribed. "With the exception,"says Sir William Hamilton, "of a few late Absolutist theorizers in Germany,this is, perhaps, the truth of all others most harmoniously re-echoed byevery philosopher of every school." And among these he names -- Protagoras,Aristotle, St. Augustin, Boethius, Averroes, Albertus Magnus, Gerson, LeoHebraeus, Melancthon, Scaliger, Francis Piccolomini, Giordano Bruno, Campanella,Bacon, Spinoza, Newton, Kant.

It remains to point out how this belief may be established rationally,as well as empirically. Not only is it that, as in the earlier thinkers abovenamed, a vague perception of the inscrutableness of things in themselvesresults from discovering the illusiveness of sense-impressions; and not onlyis it that, as shown in the foregoing chapters, experiments evolve alternativeimpossibilities of thought out of every fundamental conception; but it isthat the relativity of our knowledge may be proved analytically. The inductiondrawn from general and special experiences, may be confirmed by a deductionfrom the nature of our intelligence. Two ways of reaching such a deductionexist. Proof that our cognitions are not, and never can be, absolute, isobtainable by analyzing either the product or thought, or the process ofthought. Let us analyze each. §23. If, when walking through the fields some day in September, youhear a rustle a few yards in advance, and on observing the ditch-side whereit occurs, see the herbage agitated, you will probably turn towards the spotto learn by what this sound and motion are produced. As you approach thereflutters into the ditch a partridge; on seeing which your curiosity is satisfied-- you have what you call an explanation of the appearances. The explanation,mark, amounts to this; that whereas throughout life you have had countlessexperiences of disturbance among small stationary bodies, accompanying themovement of other bodies among them, and have generalized the relation betweensuch disturbances and such movements, you consider this particular disturbanceexplained, on finding it to present an instance of the like relation. Supposeyou catch the partridge; and, wishing to ascertain why it did not escape,examine it, and find at one spot a trace of blood on its feathers. You nowunderstand, as you say, what has disabled the partridge. It has been woundedby a sportsman -- adds another case to the cases already seen by you, ofbirds being killed or injured by the shot discharged at them from fowling-pieces.

And in assimilating this case to other such cases, consists your understandingof it. But now, on consideration, a difficulty suggests itself. Only a singleshot has struck the partridge, and that not in a vital place: the wings areuninjured, as are also those muscles which move them; and the creature provesby its struggles that it has abundant strength. Why then, you inquire ofyourself, does it not fly? Occasion favouring, you put the question to ananatomist, who furnishes you with a solution. He points out that this solitaryshot has passed close to the place at which the nerve supplying the wing-musclesof one side, diverges from the spine; and explains that a slight injury tothis nerve, extending even to the rupture of a few fibres, may by preventinga perfect co-ordination in the actions of the two wings, destroy the powerof flight. You are no longer puzzled. But what has happened? -- what haschanged your state from one of perplexity to one of comprehension? Simplythe disclosure of a class of previously known cases, along with which youcan include this case. The connexion between lesions of the nervous systemand paralysis of limbs has been already many times brought under your notice;and you here find a relation of cause and effect that is essentially similar.

Let us suppose you are led to ask the anatomist questions about some organicactions which, remarkable though they are, you had not before cared to understand.