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It lies in the complete suppression of all explanation of the noumenal object in terms borrowed from the language of sensation. And that is our last word. We must, by setting aside the mechanical theory, free ourselves from a too narrow conception of the constitution of matter. And this liberation will be to us a great advantage which we shall soon reap.
That God reposed alone through all the past eternities, but roused some day and sent forth a shout, or six successive shouts, and spoke things out of nothing into "noumenal" existence, were absurd enough, to use Mr. James's nervous English, "to nourish a standing army of Tom Paines into annual fatness."
Only by coming to grips with this psychological problem is it possible to appreciate the points at issue in the Christological question and to judge between catholic and monophysite. Kant distinguished the noumenal from the phenomenal ego. The former he regarded as an idea, the latter as a reality in time. The distinction corresponds roughly to that between person and nature.
To take their conceptions literally, they have thought the movement of matter to be something existing outside our eye, our hands, and our sense; in a word, something noumenal, as Kant would have said. The proof that this is their real idea, is that movement is presented to us as the true outer and explanatory cause of our sensations, the external excitement to our nerves.
For practical purposes, it must be admitted that the inward possession of such a noumenal libertine does not amount to much for people whose actual existence is made up of nothing but definitely regulated phenomena.
As from the relativity of knowledge we cannot know things in themselves, but only symbolical representations of such things, therefore things in themselves are absolute to consciousness: but analysis shows that we cannot conceivably predicate Difference among things in themselves, so that we are at liberty, with due diffidence, to predicate of them No-difference: hence the noumena of the schoolmen admit of being collected into a summum genus of noumenal existence; and since, before their colligation noumena were severally absolute, after their colligation they become collectively absolute: therefore it is legitimate to designate this sum-total of noumenal existence, "Absolute Being."
The actual, the existence of the noumenal as well as of the external world, even the existence of our own body, makes itself known to us through revelation alone; the understanding comprehends relations only; the certainty that a thing exists is attained only through experience and faith.
The pure and the practical reason are the faculties of man for dealing with these two worlds respectively, the phenomenal and the noumenal. The world which is the object of scientific investigation is not the actuality itself. This is true in spite of the fact that to the common man the material and sensible is always, as he would say, the real.
Sir William Hamilton, following Reid, asserts a natural Realism, or noumenal existence within the phenomenal; but he utterly denies that either of these authenticates the Infinite and Absolute. He and his disciple, Dr.
The belief which this datum of consciousness constitutes has a higher warrant than any other belief whatsoever. In short, the absolute or noumenal, according to Spencer, though not known as the phenomenal or relative is known, is so far from being for knowledge a pure blank, that the phenomenal, which is said to be known, is in the strict sense inconceivable without it.
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