underlying and conditioning all human experience and essential in 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."

66

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 them;

we know them because they exist. I exist; therefore, being constituted capable of self-consciousness, I know myself in my own thinking and doing, and therein know personal being. The world exists; therefore, being constituted capable of perceiving outward objects, I know them when they are in my presence. God exists; therefore, being constituted capable of knowing God, I know him in His various manifestations.

5. It is sometimes claimed that real knowledge is that alone which is founded on experience. But the reality of knowledge, which is the condition of the possibility of experience, cannot be founded on experience. We may truly say, however, that the entire development of consciousness in the experience of human life is the continuous revelation of the Ego, the World and God. Kant admits that in our moral convictions we have content in consciousness for the idea of God already known as a necessary idea of Reason. God also reveals himself in the knowledge of universal principles and in all spiritual motives and emotions; for these bring us face to face with the absolute Reason in the fullness of its power, love and wisdom. In this sense we may say that we know the Ego, the world and God in experience.

It is commonly said and widely accepted as unquestionable, that physical science, being founded on observation and induction, is certain. knowledge; but that theological belief is only a faith which never becomes real knowledge. But physical science and religious knowledge are, as knowledge, the same in kind, differing only in their objects. The observation and experience on which physical science rests are self-evident, unproved and unprovable knowledge. The principles on which all the inductions and deductions of physical science rest are self-evident, unproved and unprovable knowledge; such are the principle that every beginning or change of existence has a cause, the principle of the uniformity of nature that the same complex of causes always produces the same effect, and the axioms of mathematics. And its verifications also are simply self-evident, unproved and unprovable knowledge by cumulative observation and experience, by persistence in which in the face of conscious fallibility and many mistakes, it attains what it rightly claims is real and indisputable knowledge. And this scientists call the scientific method; and because this knowledge has been attained in this method, they hold it for true in the face of unanswered objections and the utter inconceivableness of many of its conclusions; receiving it with all its inexplicable difficulties, as a learned professor of natural science has said, "without a wink." But the process of attaining theological knowledge is just the same. It rests on the trustworthiness of the self-evident and unproved primitive knowledge of observed facts and universal principles, just as physical

science does. It rests on the experience and observation of mental and spiritual phenomena as indisputable as the phenomena of sense, and essential and dominant factors in the whole history of man; phenomena which physical science confessedly fails to account for, and which it therefore most unscientifically ignores as beyond the pale of science. It also proceeds in its own sphere to verify its conclusions by cumulative observation and experience, and in the face of conscious fallibility and many mistakes attains to real knowledge. And it rightly holds it as real knowledge in the face of unanswered objections and unexplained mysteries. Thus physical science is founded in faith in the same sense in which theological knowledge is so founded; because its knowledge both of facts and of the universal principles underlying all its reasoning is self-evident, unproved and unprovable knowledge. And theological knowledge is founded in experience as really as physical science is.

We properly accept this knowledge both of the natural and the spiritual as real knowledge because its reality as knowledge is a primitive datum of consciousness, even if we rest on that as an ultimate fact. But theism gives also rational ground for the reality of knowledge. For theism affirms that God is the Absolute Reason, and the universe is the expression of the truths, laws and ideals of Absolute Reason and the progressive realization of the ends which reason approves as worthy. The constitution of the universe therefore expresses these archetypal principles of Absolute Reason. Theism also teaches that man is in the image of God; his reason, then, however limited, is the same in kind with the absolute Reason; and Reason whether in God or man is everywhere and always the same. Thus theism gives rational ground of the reality of human knowledge. It gives rational ground for a man's knowing the reality of his knowledge when he translates the facts of the universe even to the remotest space and time into his own intellectual and scientific forms, factual and rational; when he assumes that the necessary principles of his reason are not merely subjective and regulative of his own thinking, but are principles of reason everywhere and always the same, the laws of things as well as thought, and thus finds them in the constitution of the universe. It gives rational ground for the postulation of the correspondence of man's knowledge with the reality of nature, of the uniformity of nature which is the basis of scientific induction, of the identity of plan in it which is the basis of classification, analogy and systemization, and of the objective universality of the primitive principles of reason which regulate all thought. It gives rational ground of the reality of scientific knowledge in declaring the common origin of the universe and all beings in it in the power of God, the eternal Reason,