Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/49

38 W. MITCHELL : another sense we do and must do both. The reason why criteria of actual truth have so often failed is that they have seldom had a true objective application given to them. This was the case with the Cartesian criteria which aimed at obviating contradiction, but they never could get beyond a subjective application. For the removal of objective contra- diction some transcendent principle had to be assumed either generally, as with Descartes, the perfection of God, or particularly, as with Spinoza, the agreement of the idea and its ideatum, and with Leibnitz, a pre-established harmony. Equally valueless for objective certainty are the criteria of necessity, universality and immediacy or ' apriority ' as mere characteristics of a cognition. If, in the first place, one says that he must believe so and so because of his own nature or because of the self-evident nature of the cognition, he satis- fies himself, but is quite unable to satisfy another till he show that this necessary perception of a cognition or perception of a necessary cognition is independent of him as a particular individual. He must, in short, somehow universalise either himself or the cognition. But, in the second place, that can- not be done by pointing to the universality of the conception ; for the physical evolutionist will inquire as to its origin and then point to the uniformity of the circumstances of human life as its cause, whether it be true or delusive. And, in the third place, the immediacy or ' apriority ' of a cognition equally fails to assure of objective validity. For, on the one hand, men differ in regard to the beliefs of which, nevertheless, each maintains that he has an intuitive or necessary know- ledge ; and, on the other hand, one can never know whether or not he is using absolutely a priori knowledge. As a matter of fact, most of our perfectly intuitive knowledge was demonstrative at onetime of our life ; and, us ;i matter of strong supposition if not of scientific demonstration, all our intuitive knowledge has had a similar history in the history of the race. Finally, all three criteria fail to give the trans- ference from idea to fact, from conviction to truth, from sub- jectivity to objectivity. I may talk of a moral law which I for my part ne itated or developed in me more, than I do the light of the sun, a law which I find in every one and which comes to me with a vividness and self-evidence that I cannot resist. But this alone will not prevent Hegel or Darwin from telling me that my inquiry should 1> where I leave off. I cannot pass from conviction to truth by using the criteria of the former. The real criteria of both may be the same, but that is just what I have to prove, and I cannot prove it from an individualistic standpoint.