IXTELLECTUAL ANTECEDENTS OF SCIENCE 243
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They must be true objectively as well as subjectively, and
must be laws of " things " no less than laws of " thought."
They must be seen to be necessarily true everywhere and
everywhen, quite independently of any or of every mind.
If such be the case, the same laws must apply to the most
common circumstances of every-day life as well as to the
highest matters of philosophy. They must also be no mere
blind mental processes, the result of any faculty such as
instinct, or be due to any kind of non-rational impulse.
Their influence must be seen in daily life, in actions
resulting from definite and certain intellectual first principles
and necessary and evident truths, to which the competent
philosopher can always trace them. This does not mean
they are evident as such principles and truths to the mind of
every man who uses them, but that their truth is completely
evident without reflexion. In vain will the village grocer
try to persuade the farmer's wife that if from sixteen ounces
of tea two ounces be removed the rest is none the less equal
to a pound. She will be quite sure such is not the case,
though she may be quite guiltless of the knowledge of a
single axiom. Similarly, if a labourer has given the whole
of his week's wages to his wife, he will be quite sure no
part of them is still in his pocket, though he never heard
a word about any first principles. The intellectual light of
such first principles illuminates the intellect of every sane
man, be he civilized or savage. Not, most certainly, that
savages and ignorant men can know such principles as
abstract truths. But those principles, none the less, reveal
themselves to the mind in the concrete facts of every-day
life as practical motives for judging and acting. It is true
we cannot explain how these truths became thus practically
apprehended in the objects and actions of our constant
experience, but we are and must be ignorant of "how"
anything, which is for us ultimate, is whatever it may be.
244 THE GROUNDWORK OF SCIENCE
The "that" must ever be final. The "how" can never be
so, for the answer to every " how " must be a " that."
The first and most important of these principles is the
perception of the reality of existence that what we perceive
to exist evidently does in truth so exist. This is often
expressed by the formula, " A is A," a formula which to some
persons appears utterly trivial, but which, nevertheless, lies at
the basis of all our knowledge, and is a fundamental certainty
without which no science could even begin to be.
Another principle is that known as " the excluded middle,"
which affirms that any given thing must either be or not be,
closely allied with which is that great regulative principle to
which we have already adverted,* and which is called " the
principle of contradiction" the principle, namely, that nothing
can, at one and the same time, both be and not be.
Now it has been strangely objected against this law of the
universe, that it is but a law of grammar, or, at most, of logic.
It has been saidf to be but "a verbal convention," not
possessing "objective validity."
But the objector might be (as, in fact, he was) asked
"whether, if he had lost an eye, he would still remain, after
that loss, in the very same condition as he was in before ? "
If anyone does not see the objective impossibility of such
a thing in all places and at all times i.e., if he does not
apprehend the application of the law of contradiction then
he either does not understand the question, or his mental
condition is pathological.
Men may pretend to doubt such principles, their own exist-
ence, or the objectivity of mathematical truths. But their
practice demonstrates their unfailing confidence in them on
each occasion as it arises as when cheated by false accounts,
personally injured, or busied with some serious investigation.
* See ante, p. 105.
t See Nature hi Dec. loth, 1891, and Feb. nth, 1892.
They must be true objectively as well as subjectively, and
must be laws of " things " no less than laws of " thought."
They must be seen to be necessarily true everywhere and
everywhen, quite independently of any or of every mind.
If such be the case, the same laws must apply to the most
common circumstances of every-day life as well as to the
highest matters of philosophy. They must also be no mere
blind mental processes, the result of any faculty such as
instinct, or be due to any kind of non-rational impulse.
Their influence must be seen in daily life, in actions
resulting from definite and certain intellectual first principles
and necessary and evident truths, to which the competent
philosopher can always trace them. This does not mean
they are evident as such principles and truths to the mind of
every man who uses them, but that their truth is completely
evident without reflexion. In vain will the village grocer
try to persuade the farmer's wife that if from sixteen ounces
of tea two ounces be removed the rest is none the less equal
to a pound. She will be quite sure such is not the case,
though she may be quite guiltless of the knowledge of a
single axiom. Similarly, if a labourer has given the whole
of his week's wages to his wife, he will be quite sure no
part of them is still in his pocket, though he never heard
a word about any first principles. The intellectual light of
such first principles illuminates the intellect of every sane
man, be he civilized or savage. Not, most certainly, that
savages and ignorant men can know such principles as
abstract truths. But those principles, none the less, reveal
themselves to the mind in the concrete facts of every-day
life as practical motives for judging and acting. It is true
we cannot explain how these truths became thus practically
apprehended in the objects and actions of our constant
experience, but we are and must be ignorant of "how"
anything, which is for us ultimate, is whatever it may be.
244 THE GROUNDWORK OF SCIENCE
The "that" must ever be final. The "how" can never be
so, for the answer to every " how " must be a " that."
The first and most important of these principles is the
perception of the reality of existence that what we perceive
to exist evidently does in truth so exist. This is often
expressed by the formula, " A is A," a formula which to some
persons appears utterly trivial, but which, nevertheless, lies at
the basis of all our knowledge, and is a fundamental certainty
without which no science could even begin to be.
Another principle is that known as " the excluded middle,"
which affirms that any given thing must either be or not be,
closely allied with which is that great regulative principle to
which we have already adverted,* and which is called " the
principle of contradiction" the principle, namely, that nothing
can, at one and the same time, both be and not be.
Now it has been strangely objected against this law of the
universe, that it is but a law of grammar, or, at most, of logic.
It has been saidf to be but "a verbal convention," not
possessing "objective validity."
But the objector might be (as, in fact, he was) asked
"whether, if he had lost an eye, he would still remain, after
that loss, in the very same condition as he was in before ? "
If anyone does not see the objective impossibility of such
a thing in all places and at all times i.e., if he does not
apprehend the application of the law of contradiction then
he either does not understand the question, or his mental
condition is pathological.
Men may pretend to doubt such principles, their own exist-
ence, or the objectivity of mathematical truths. But their
practice demonstrates their unfailing confidence in them on
each occasion as it arises as when cheated by false accounts,
personally injured, or busied with some serious investigation.
* See ante, p. 105.
t See Nature hi Dec. loth, 1891, and Feb. nth, 1892.