138. TRUTH OF CONTINGENT JUDGMENTS ABSOLUTE.

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The

elementary thought-objects conceived by intellect, in and through

the immediate data of direct consciousness, are therefore real ;

nor is their reality transformed or disfigured in any unascertain-

able manner by any subjective intellectual factors in the process

whereby they become related to intellect, and revealed or mani

fested to intellect, as objects of knowledge. Now, those

thought-objects (and the more complex generic and specific con

cepts reached by synthesizing them) are employed to interpret

(1) the domain of our immediate sense experience (the " material "

universe, inorganic and organic, including the self as organic) ;

(2) the domain of consciousness, mind, sense, and intellect,

revealed by intellectual reflection (the self as a conscious, mental,

cognitive being or reality) ; and (3) the suprasensible or intelli

gible realities, and aspects of reality, involved in those two do

mains (i.e. the world of our mediate, inferential experience :

things not immediately or intuitively apprehended whether by

sense or by intellect : inferred realities : the natures and causes

of things immediately experienced : suprasensible relations :

laws of nature : ultimate efficient and final causes : the First

Cause : Necessary Being). But conception is the abstract

intellectual apprehension or representation of what is given or

intellect, because they have its limitations and are conditioned by its de facto con

stitution, because it is conceivable that intellects of another order would have other

modes of apprehending reality, Kantists seem to think they have ground for infer

ring that these human modes of conception come between the intellect and reality,

necessarily transfigure the reality apprehended, and are therefore not modes whereby

the intellect apprehends reality at all, but are rather modes whereby the intellect is

prevented from apprehending reality ! Kantists, of course, will maintain that this

conclusion of theirs is the legitimate and only possible issue of an inquiry into the

conditions under which intellect gets its objects. But we have seen that on the

one hand the method of procedure which issues in this phenomenism is vitiated by

a gratuitous assumption that prejudges the whole investigation, the assumption that

mind cannot apprehend the extramental ; and that on the other hand the whole

inquiry overreaches and contradicts itself by adopting and assuming as valid the

distinction between a real self and a real non-self in a real domain which is declared

in the same breath to be absolutely unknowable (cf. 59).

1 Chaps, vi., vii., xii.

220 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

presented in the concrete in direct consciousness. The abstractly

conceived objects, or thought-objects, are identical (quoad rem,

not quoad modum) with the intuitively apprehended data of direct

consciousness. Let us therefore consider how it is that when an

individual uses those concepts aright, i.e. when he forms a true

judgment, that which he apprehends through such a judgment

and such concepts not merely \sfor him, and relatively to him,

as it appears to him, but is really and absolutely and independently

of him as it is represented by him : so that, being really and

absolutely so, it must appear similarly to, and be represented

similarly by, all other human minds if they conceive and judge

aright, and must be so even for all other possible intelligences if

they apprehend aright.

Let us take first the concrete, contingent, singular judgments,

whereby we assert the existence, and interpret the nature, of any

material or sense datum any portion of " material " reality. A

man plucks a rose, holds it in his hand, smells it, and says, "This

something which I see and feel and smell is a reality distinct

from my conscious perception of it, is really external to myself,

has the real scent which I smell, the real redness which I see,

the real texture which I feel, the real size, shape, position, which

I both see and feel ". Assuming that these judgments are really

true, what is the meaning of saying that their truth is absolute, that

what they assert is really so not merely for him but for all men

and all minds ? Or in order that this be so, in what sense must

these judgments be understood? Asserting that the scent,

colour, texture, size, shape, position, are externally real, is not

asserting that these qualities as perceived are independent of an

organic factor internal to him as perceiver ; it is, however, assert

ing that they have an external reality which is independent of

this organic factor, which persists even when unperceived, and

which appears in the same way to all normal perceivers, inasmuch

as the influence of the internal organic factor is the same in all

other normal perceivers as in the actual individual normal per

ceiver : not that the external reality of the qualities is asserted

merely to consist in their appearing thus to all normal perceivers,

but rather to involve their capacity of so appearing and revealing

their reality to human minds through the actualization of this

capacity. Understood in this sense the assertion that such

sense qualities are externally real is true absolutely, and not

merely relatively to any individual mind which makes the

RELATIVIST THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE 221

assertion, for it means that their reality is known by the human

intellect partially to consist in appearing as external scents,

colours, textures, volumes, shapes, positions, etc., to the normal

perceiver. Nay, it is true for all possible intelligences : for it

does not imply that it is any function of these qualities to appear

thus to intelligences of another order, not subserved by human

sense organs; 1 but it does imply that whatsoever intelligence

apprehends the nature of their reality, of the human subject,

and of their mode of apprehension by the human subject, must

likewise see that it is a part and function of their reality to

appear as they do to the normally constituted human subject.

In other words it implies that no intelligence apprehending their

reality aright could apprehend in them anything that would

contradict, or be incompatible with, this particular function of

their reality : and this is true absolutely.

The same is true of our concepts and judgments of all sense qualities

whether secondary or primary, of spatial and temporal relations, of externality

and real distinction from the individual perceiving and knowing self or Ego.

Any true judgment formulated by the individual human mind concerning

these, is, when understood in the sense just explained, true absolutely and

for all conceivable intelligences. Our conception of "externality" itself

involves the concepts of "extension," "space" and "relation": it is the

abstract intellectual apprehension of concrete, sensuously felt externality.

Our concepts of real unity, individuality, plurality, identity, and distinction or

otherness, are all derived from the data of direct sense consciousness, a and

are therefore " properly " applicable only to "sensible " or " material " reality :

but inasmuch as intellect apprehends them simply as modes of reality, in

abstraction from the sensuous modes of their manifestation in direct con

sciousness (76), it can apply them " analogically " to the positively supra-

sensible modes of being the reality of which it discovers as necessarily

implied by the reality of the data of sense. 3 Now the validity of all such

concepts (as distinct from the validity of our concepts of logical relations,

en fin rationis) consists in this, that they reveal modes of real being, modes

of reality ; and the truth of judgments in which they are rightly used means

that reality is as it is interpreted by means of them. It is not meant that all

1 It makes no assertion as to how realities apprehended by us through sense ap

pear to, or are apprehended by, intelligences not subserved by sense : nor have we any

positive and proper conception of the modes in which such intelligences apprehend

sense realities, or indeed suprasensible realities either.

3 Has intellect any immediate intuition (by reflection on its own processes) of

positively suprasensible or spiritual modes of reality, or are its apprehensions even

of its own processes, as objects, apprehensions through concepts the contents of

which are furnished by sense consciousness ? Cf. 71, 74, 77, 100, 114.

*Cf. Ontology, 26-8, 31, 34, 35, for the derivation of those concepts from the

domain of sense reality to the domain of intelligible reality, i.e. reality that is

immaterial negatively (by abstraction) or positively (in its actual mode of being).

222 THEOR Y OF KNO WLEDGE

conceivable intelligences (e.g. pure spiritual intelligences) must apprehend

reality only through such concepts and judgments, but only that by no con

ceivable intelligences could the realities which human intellects apprehend in

these ways be truly apprehended as contradictory of, or incompatible with,

what true human judgments represent these realities to be. Thus, all true

judgments asserting the existence, qualities, and nature of the real domain, or

any portion of the real domain, revealed to intellect through sense, are true

absolutely and for all intelligences.

And this is so even of contingent judgments which assert or imply the

actual existence of the objects interpreted through our concepts. A concept

is said to be valid when its object is an actual or a possible reality. If the

object of the concept is asserted, implicitly or explicitly, to exist actually,

then the concept (carrying this implicit judgment with it) will not be

valid, i.e. the judgment in which it is used will not be true, unless the

object of the concept does actually exist, and is not a mere possibility. Now

since intellect conceives the data of sense in the abstract, i.e. as to what they

are, and apart from their actual existence, this latter is not included in the

content of the abstract concept ; and furthermore, intellect can see that actual

existence is not necessarily involved in what they really are ; J in other words

it conceives and judges them to be contingent realities. Nevertheless when

it judges truly that suchior such a contingent reality does actually exist, this

contingent judgment is absolutely and necessarily true for all possible intel

ligences. In this sense the truth even of contingent judgments is " neces

sary," " absolute," " universal " ; it is not relative to any individual intelligence

but holds good necessarily and for all intelligences : " once true, true for

ever ". J