seems to mean, meaningless; at others,
self-contradictory or absurd; at others, inconceivable, _i. e._ that of
which no conception or mental image can be formed; at any rate, it
implies what is unknowable and untenable. The result is, so far as
matter is concerned, that we know nothing about it. "Our conception of
matter," he says, "reduced to its simplest shape, is that of coexistent
positions that offer resistance, as contrasted with our conception of
space in which the coexistent positions offer no resistance." (p. 166).
Resistance, however, is a form of force; and, therefore, on the
following page, Spencer says, "that forces standing in certain
correlations, form the whole contents of our idea of matter."

When we turn from the objective to the subjective, from the external to
the inward world, the result is still the same. He agrees with Hume in
saying that the contents of our consciousness is a series of impressions
and ideas. He dissents, however, from that philosopher, in saying that
that series is all we know. He admits that impressions necessarily imply
that there is something that is impressed. He starts the question, What
is it that thinks? and answers, We do not know. (p. 63). He admits that
the reality of individual personal minds, the conviction of personal
existence is universal, and perhaps indestructible. Nevertheless that
conviction cannot justify itself at the bar of reason; nay, reason is
found to reject it. (p. 65). Dean Mansel says, that consciousness gives
us a knowledge of self as a substance and not merely of its varying
states. This, however, he says, "is absolutely negatived by the laws of
thought. The fundamental condition to all consciousness, emphatically
insisted upon by Mr. Mansel in common with Sir William Hamilton and
others, is the antithesis of subject and object.... What is the
corollary from this doctrine, as bearing on the consciousness of self?
The mental act in which self is known implies, like every other mental
act, a perceiving subject and a perceived object. If, then, the object
perceived is self, what is the subject that perceives? Or if it is the
true self which thinks, what other self can it be that is thought of?
Clearly, a true cognition of self implies a state in which the knowing
and the known are one--in which subject and object are identified; and
this Mr. Mansel rightly holds to be the annihilation of both. So that
the personality of which each is conscious, and of