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352 J. ELLIS MCTAGGART : difficulties. We are led to the conclusion that there exist certain laws certain conjunctions of Universals which do not require explanation, but are themselves the basis from which everything else can be explained. These ultimately valid Judgments I should propose to call Laws of Nature. 1 Not all Judgments of Necessity are Laws of Nature. Many of them are merely subordinate and derivative, and can be deduced from others. But the existence of those Judgments which are not Laws of Nature is only possible on the supposition that there are others which are Laws of Nature, and from which the subordinate Judgments can be deduced. Nor, again, is it meant that we can know these Laws of Nature a priori. We know a priori by the dialectic that there must be such laws, and that all Universal Judgments must be deducible from them. But what they are can only be known to us empirically and by induction, and so can never be known with absolute certainty. This of course does not make the existence of the category any less certain a priori. This point is important, as Hegel's assertion, that we know a priori that there are such Laws, seems sometimes to have led to the impression that he supposed that we could deduce the Laws themselves by pure thought. The real state of the case may be illustrated by the lower categories. The category of Quantum tells us that everything must have a definite magnitude. This is certain a priori, although we can never find out the magnitude of any particular thing except by an empirical process of measuring, into which it is always possible that some small inaccuracy has crept. Our result is, then, that there exist certain laws in the universe which are not merely analytic, which are not deducible from others, and which are not mere generalisa- tions from instances, although they can only become known to us by generalisation from instances. The first two points would, I suppose, be almost universally admitted. Few people would be disposed to deny that it is impossible that every truth should rest on another without any being ulti- mate. And, in the present day at least, it would be gener- ally allowed that it is impossible to reduce all our knowledge to merely analytic propositions. But it is sometimes asserted that general laws have no objective validity at all. All that is really objective, it is said, is the various Individuals, together with the qualities which 1 See Mill's Logic, book iii., chap, iv., section 1. For Hegel's nomenclature in this triad see Note F.