The Distinction between Mind and Its Objects/On some Points in the Metaphysic and Logic of the New Realism

by Bernard Bosanquet

APPENDIX.

ON SOME POINTS IN THE METAPHYSIC AND LOGIC OF "THE NEW REALISM."

I.

Metaphysic and Epistemology.

Since, by the courtesy of the Publications Committee, I am permitted to subjoin an Appendix to my Lecture, I feel that I ought to say a word in explanation of the footnote on p. 11.

As I hope the Lecture has shown, I sympathise strongly in many respects with the New Realism. More particularly I welcome the criticism of "the crude brickbat notion of physical object,"^[1] and what I hope will prove to be the rectification of some current views of implication^[2]; and, of course, the points in which the authors seem at one with Professor Alexander. And I can see that they are at home in regions of science which I cannot enter.

On the other hand, I am compelled to hold, that in questions of first principles they have not really made their own the standpoint and intention of modern metaphysical theory.^[3] This suggestion I must illustrate far too briefly. For I shall give greater space, perhaps, than it merits, to a study which only supports this opinion in a secondary degree, and which I pursued in the first instance because of what seemed to me its intrinsic interest, and the kinship of the authors' view with an old tenet of my own. The subject of this study, which follows the present section, is "Logical Priority." If anything in its argument is sound, the authors' doctrine is no doubt in some degree shown to require modification, but is indicated, at the same time, to contain an important element of unrecognised truth.

The centre however, of the six authors' polemic directed, as I understand, against the Idealism of to-day, is concerned with the fundamental position which it is held to assign to Epistemology.^[4] This impeachment is indicated in the Introduction (p. 16, where Epistemology is significantly coupled with Psychology), and under the title "The Emancipation of Metaphysics from Epistemology" forms the subject of Mr. Walter Marvin's Essay which stands first in the volume. His principal thesis, I take it, is this: "The first and most prominent tenet of the criticist may be stated thus: Inasmuch as all sciences are cases of knowledge the science which investigates knowledge as such is fundamental, and is, both in fact and in right, a critique of all science." (P. 51.) Compare "There must be a science prior to all others, even to Logic, which shows the possibility of knowing." (P. 60, cf. Green, cited below p. 57.) This polemic I suppose to be connected with the attitude taken up in such a statement as the following (Introduction, p. 20). "The Idealist is wont to reason that all philosophy and all science must be built upon the one fact that nobody can make any unchallengeable assertion about anything except his having an immediate experience."

The whole meaning I take to be that the Idealist or Criticist is a subjectivist, and starts from "Knowledge" (how it should be knowledge I cannot conceive) as a jumping-off place to get across a gap to reality. The possibility of this miracle he is concerned to demonstrate by a science dealing with knowledge as such [it would be just not as such, I should have thought] and prior to his theory of Reality. A theory, on the other hand, which, treating of first principles of Reality, includes in its treatment an account of cognition and truth, is not, as I understand the question, epistemology in this incriminated sense. If I am wrong in my understanding of the polemic, of course my immediate criticism of it ceases to apply. But my account of modern speculative philosophy, I venture to think, remains the only true one.

The priority alleged to be assigned to Epistemology, I suppose, is taken as connected with the priority which the Idealist ("Criticist") is believed to ascribe to immediate experience. He begins from his own mind, and has to bridge a gulf to reality.

If I am right in taking this to be the true bearing and intention of the Realist's criticism as directed, say, against those of us who acknowledge a special debt to Hegel, I must hold that the conclusion is inevitable. The popular conception of "psychological idealism" (Wallace's phrase of repudiation) has in this criticism been insufficiently distinguished from the attitude of what Hegel calls Logic, Green Metaphysics, and Mr. Bradley, I think, the study of first principles. What at once amazed me in the polemic before us was the continual collision between its statements, and passages which crowded into my mind in which Green, Wallace, and Mr. Bradley—to mention no more than these—seemed most sharply and in their whole aim and method to dissociate themselves from what I understand by Epistemology.^[5] According to my understanding and conviction, the whole movement from Hegel downwards, and most explicitly Green's contribution to the movement in England, was a revolution against psychological idealism and epistemology, having much in common with what the realists are now more emphatically attempting. My view of the situation was expressed in 1885, when I said that the plan of the great masters has been handed over to be carried out piecemeal by the journeymen; and I still believe this view to be sound. If I could transfer, for example, into this Appendix a couple of pages from Wallace's "Introductory Essays" to Hegel's "Philosophy of Mind,"^[6] I really think that further discussion would be needless. The speculative philosopher or metaphysician, so far as I know, assumes nothing, absolutely nothing, except that, in thinking, he has to satisfy his theoretical want. "But as to what will satisfy, I have of course no knowledge in advance. . . . The method clearly is experimental."^[7] It is really an extraordinary thing that one should meet with such a statement as that which I cited from Introduction, p. 20, about the unchallengeable assertion. Is it not the well-worn and familiar doctrine of speculative philosophy, from Plato and Hegel downwards, that certainty comes at the end of thought or cognition and not at the beginning; as the result of science and metaphysic and not as their foundation? Is it perhaps contended that we must have it in the beginning if we are to have it in the end? If so, we are confronted with one of the worst of logical vices, which I will call "Foundationism," and I must admit that I have suspected our authors of harbouring it.^[8] But consider for instance Mr. Bradley's Knowledge of the Absolute—I presume the only propositions which he would consider unchallengeable; the result of a laborious enquiry into first principles.^[9] As regards what we early come to believe in on good grounds, being only our present experience—"his having an immediate experience"—Mr. Bradley's argument against Solipsism^[10] seems to me to annihilate the suggestion as far as he is concerned. For it consists in pointing out that we are convinced of the existence of other centres of experience on the same grounds and with the same right as of our own.

But you believe, it may be rejoined (see citation above from p. 60), that there is a science prior to all others, even to Logic, which has for its task to show the possibility of knowing. T. H. Green seems to have anticipated this suggestion, and it will be worth while to consider it under his guidance. And then, after this most imperfect study of the point, space will compel me to break off.

Green^[11] certainly regarded it as coming within his task to answer the question "how knowledge is possible." This, he pointed out, "is not to be confused with a question on which metaphysicians are sometimes supposed to waste their time. "Is knowledge possible?" "Metaphysics is no such superfluous labour." It is, he continues, a theory of the system of things which (system) renders it possible for things to be accounted for on the supposition of their relation to each other. He contrasts this enquiry in the main with psychology and plainly also with any theory of knowledge which is possible without a theory of the thing known. It is the same distinction which Mr. Bradley implies in his reference, which I always took to be contemptuous, to " Epistemology."^[12] Wallace (l. c.) adopts precisely the same attitude.^[13]

Green intended, beyond any reasonable doubt, a rehabilitation of Logic and Metaphysics as against Psychology and Theory of Knowledge considered as independent sciences. He proceeds, as we all do, not by prior assumptions of premisses for demonstration—a method, I should contend, impossible for a sound logician, and Green was an exceedingly sound one—but by trying to construct a conception which would most completely harmonise with the facts^[14] and so afford the completest theoretical satisfaction. Of course, he did not deny the existence of externality, not even of unconscious externality.^[15] He held, however the conviction, in which I agree with him, that you could not have a world without consciousness as its centre. Here, I am glad to understand, the new realist primarily differs because he supposes any view like Green's to be an unwarranted assumption ab initio. He leaves, so to speak, a fighting chance for such a doctrine, after the nature of the world has been considered.^[16] This I think is fair, and I should, for myself, accept that issue; and I believe that modern metaphysic, and Green's method, is with me.

One more observation bearing on my primary thesis in this section. I find on p. 171 a reference thus worded: "the argument (Bradley's) that any and all diversity, and so any and all relations of any and all terms are self-contradictory." Cf. the axiom about relations, taken seemingly as peculiar to realists, p. 477. I must think that here insufficient study of a great writer is revealed. In the first place diversity is present, according to Mr. Bradley as I read him, both in primary feeling and in the Absolute. In the next place, his attitude to relational diversity is really, it seems to me, quite simple. He, of course, so far from rejecting all diversity, was one of the first who fought for and established the principle of identity in diversity in English philosophy. It was his great contention. His books are full of it. What he in principle refuses to accept I understand to be bare conjunction^[17] that is, the bringing together of differents, without mediation by any analysis of their conditions satisfactory to thought. Very likely no such analysis is ultimately and completely satisfactory. But every science, surely, in daily practice, demands all of it that can be offered, and rejects relatively bare conjunctions, that is, such conjunctions as are presented by empirical observations. Is there any man of science, who, in his daily work, and apart from philosophical controversy, will accept a bare given conjunction as conceivably ultimate truth? (See Professor Hobson's address, cited below, p. 68.)

II.

Logical Priority.

I find some difficulty in reconciling with each other, and with the traditional rules of Formal Logic, the statements with regard to Implication through which the definition of Logical Priority is applied, in the work before us, to different cases. I think that there is at least a primâ facie obscurity which is worth pointing out. My predisposition is favourable in one sense to the new Realists. For I am inclined to think that the most obvious difficulty which I shall indicate arrives from their recognition of a point in which the traditional rules of implication are at fault, in a way to which I have frequently drawn attention. On the other hand, if I am right, the doctrine of Logical Priority would be in some degree affected.

I take into consideration three passages in the book which seem to me to agree; and also two passages, continuous with the first and third of the three, which seem to me to introduce a different point of view, inconsistent with that of the former passages and with itself, though, I am convinced, containing an important truth.

The three passages first mentioned are (a) p. 45, from the words "First, one science," to p. 46, ending with the words "required quantity of arsenic"; (b) p. 112, "It is important" down to "the premises be false"; and (c) pp. 204-5, "Logical priority may be defined" down to "although conversely, not."

The two passages which I contrast with these are (d) p. 46, "Much of mathematics" down to the words on the same page "mechanics and physics must be false"; and (e) on p. 205, the sentence beginning "Thus, à propos" and ending "pure mathematics (arithmetic)." See also pp. 220 and 225, which suggest an empirical basis for the doctrine of (d) and (e).

Passages (a) and (c) state the doctrine of Logical Priority,^[18] and point out its application, in perfect agreement with each other, and consistently with the traditional rules of Formal Logic. Here is passage (a): " By Logical Priority is meant that relation which holds between a proposition and its necessary condition. Thus if A implies B, but B does not imply A, then B is the necessary condition of A; for A's truth depends upon B's truth. That is, should B prove to be false, A must be false; and though A be false, yet B may prove true; for we are saying merely that A's truth is a sufficient condition of B's truth, and are not maintaining that it is the only condition, or a necessary condition. For example, let us assume it to be true that if the tissues of a man's body absorb a certain amount of arsenic, he must die; that there is no preventing cause either known or unknown. Then evidently for it to be true that this man's body has absorbed such an amount of arsenic, it must be true that the man is dead; whereas the mere fact of his death does not prove that many another possible cause is not the actual cause. In short, 'The man is dead' is logically prior to the proposition, the tissues of his body have absorbed the required quantity of arsenic." (This is the whole of passage (a). Passage (c) is much more general, but contains nothing to clash with it.)

Every one sees at once that we are here dealing with the relation of antecedent to consequent in a normal hypothetical judgment, where implication is stated according to the traditional rule which governs all implication and conversion in Formal Logic. Truth of antecedent implies truth of consequent; truth of consequent does not imply truth of antecedent. It is the same view of implication which admits plural or alternative causes,^[19] as indeed the above passage insists.

If we now extend our consideration to passage (b) (p. 112), we see that, though the writer does not remark upon the question of Logical Priority, yet he treats precisely the same implications as holding good, in accordance with the ordinary rule, between the pair of premisses of a syllogism and its conclusion. The truth of the two premisses implies that of the conclusion. The truth of the conclusion does not imply that of the two premisses. In this respect conclusion is to premisses as consequent to antecedent. It is "the implied," the necessary condition of their truth. They are "the implier." It is clear then that by this definition, applied through this statement of implications, the conclusion of every syllogism is logically prior to its premisses.

Now let us turn to passages (d) (p. 46) and (e) (p. 205). Passage (d) will give us all we want. Passage (e) merely confirms it.

It amounts to this. Mathematics are logically prior to Mechanics and Physics. [I shall represent Mathematics, in this argument, by Ma; Mechanics and Physics by Me.] That is to say, Ma does not imply the truth of Me, but Me does imply the truth of Ma. So (1) Me might be false (much of it^[20]) without Ma being false; but (2) if Ma were false, then Me would be false.

Here the general definition of Logical Priority is the same as that fulfilled by Consequent in relation to Antecedent and Conclusion in relation to Premisses, considered in accordance with the traditional rules of Formal Logic.

But we have to note that we are applying it to a different case. Me is "an explicit deduction" from Ma (this is specially necessary in order to make (2) hold good). That is to say, in this case the Logical Priority is that of Premisses to their Conclusion. And the same requirements of the definition of Logical Priority have to be satisfied in this case as were shown to be satisfied in the relations of Consequent to Antecedent and of Conclusion to Premisses. Thus Logical Priority is ascribed both to Premisses over Conclusion and to Conclusion over Premisses. Obviously, then, their relative implications must be differently stated to support these two conflicting pretensions to Priority; and we shall see how this is done.

For here it is asserted that (1) truth of Premisses (Ma) does not imply that of Conclusion (Me); but that (2) truth of Conclusion (Me) implies truth of Premisses (Ma); in other words, (see (1) and (2) on p. 64) that (1) Conclusion (Me) might be false, without Premisses (Ma) being false; and that (2) if Premisses (Ma) were false, the Conclusion (Me) must be false.

To affirm these implications of Conclusion and Premisses respectively is flatly to contradict the traditional rules of Formal Logic, which say that if the Consequent or Conclusion is false the Antecedent or one Premiss at least must be false, in other words, Truth of Antecedent or Premisses implies that of Consequent or Conclusion; but that the falsehood of the Antecedent or Premisses does not involve that of the Consequent or Conclusion, in other words, Truth of Conclusion or Consequent does not imply that of Premisses or Antecedent.

And these traditional rules were the foundation of ascribing logical priority to one case of implied proposition (Consequent or Conclusion) over its implier (Antecedent or Premisses).

Therefore it seems clear that the rules of implication by which Logical Priority is ascribed to Consequent and Conclusion over Antecedent and Premisses are in flat contradiction with those by which it is ascribed to Premisses of deduction over its Conclusion.

It is surprising, primâ facie, that Logical Priority should be ascribed to Consequent over Antecedent, and to Conclusion over Premisses. But the definition of Logical Priority, and also along with the rules of implication traditional and Formal Logic, leaves no escape.

On the other hand, to obtain what seems primâ facie more natural, the Logical Priority of the Premisses over Conclusion, we saw that rules were appealed to which defy the traditional rules of logical implication.

I will draw out the contrast between the two sets of rules.

1. Thus we have it alleged on one side, in support of Logical Priority of Premisses over Conclusion—of Ma over Me—that the truth of the Premisses in an "explicit deduction" need not imply that of the Conclusion—the truth of Ma need not imply that of Me; i.e., that the Conclusion can be false while the Premisses are true. On the other side, in showing the Logical Priority of Consequent and Conclusion over Antecedent and Premisses, the appeal was to the ordinary rule of Formal Logic, that truth of Premisses or Antecedent implies that of Conclusion or Consequent, i.e., that if Conclusion or Consequent is false Premisses or Antecedent cannot be true.

Here the traditional rule embodies only what seems the minimum essential to the existence of inference. If any nexus or inferential relation is to survive at all, implication must be admitted to hold from Premisses to Conclusion in an explicit deduction.

The fault or difficulty must be in the requirement opposed to the common rule. Yet it obviously embodies something that has a certain vraisemblance; and, indeed, the main point of the doctrine of logical priority as such. It does seem as if you could start with self-evident premisses, and get down by deduction, without strictly false premisses,^[21] to questionable conclusions—as is here asserted of Ma and Me respectively. Obviously the explanation lies in the difference between premissses which are bare conjunctions of empirical fact, and premisses which are restricted to facts analysed in respect of their conditions and scientifically mediated by conditioned affirmations. For the latter, the traditional rule—and something more as we shall see—remains true in the letter and in the spirit. The truth of the Premisses in the deduction warrants the Conclusion; and the falsehood of the Conclusion involves a falsity in the Premisses used in deduction. But if bare Conjunctions—unanalysed statements of so-called fact—are admitted as Premisses, the matter becomes ambiguous, and we see the vraisemblance of the new rule which is to support the logical priority of the premisses. Without a formal break in the deduction, without an assignable falsity in any premiss, we may have got from a region of self-evidence—say of arithmetical truth—to one of questionable results in any concrete science. And we may express our sense of what has befallen us in the extraordinary statement that the falsity of Conclusions in such a deduction would not involve the falsity of the Premisses—and so the truth of the Premisses does not involve the truth of the Conclusion. We must be testing the Conclusion by the ideal of science, and the later Premisses only by the standard of empirical fact. Bare Conjunction is thus introduced into the very nerve of inference,^[22] and not merely made the object of a precaution, as in the traditional rule which prohibits the retrospective inference from truth of Conclusion to that of Premisses, or of Consequent to that of Antecedent.

2. Then we have the further contradiction. In supporting the Logical Priority of Ma over Me it is laid down that falsehood of Premisses—of what comes first in an "explicit deduction," here Ma—involves falsehood of Conclusion, Me—of what comes last in the deduction; in other words, that truth of Conclusion implies truth of Premisses. The ordinary rule of course^[23] is that falsehood of Antecedent or Premisses does not affect truth of Consequent or Conclusion either way; in other words, that truth of Consequent or Conclusion implies nothing either way about Antecedent or Premisses.

We should note first, by way of digression, the relation of the two requirements of Logical Priority as applied in this same case. In the same "explicit deduction," falsehood of Conclusion is not to involve falsehood of Premisses, and falsehood of Premisses is to involve falsehood of Conclusion; in other words, the truth of the Premisses is not to imply the truth of the Conclusion, and the truth of the Conclusion is to imply the truth of the Premisses. Is not this very hard to believe? The explanation of the two rules being maintained together is surely that indicated above, p. 67. The former rule contemplates the admission of bare empirical conjunctions into the deductive chain. The latter implies the admission of only such precisely conditioned and exclusive Premisses as are rightly held—we shall see—to be implied in the Conclusions drawn from them. Thus we can at least see a meaning in denying the normal implication of truth of Conclusion in that of Premisses, if the former, as emanating from a bare conjunction, gives more than a scientifically conditioned inference would warrant. And we can also justify, in a limited sense, the implication from truth of Conclusion to truth of exclusive minimum Premisses. This is a new proposal, which I welcome.

But, returning from this digression, we have to note the contradiction with the ordinary rule, as stated in the last paragraph but one.

Here I make no doubt that the ordinary rule is wrong, in so far as it denies all implication of Premisses in Conclusion. Of course you may have the same Consequence implied by a number of alternative Antecedents and the same Conclusion proved by a number of alternative pairs of Premisses; and it may therefore be argued that it is impossible for the truth of the Consequent to imply that of any one Antecedent, or of the Conclusion to imply that of any one pair of Premisses. But this argument forgets that the appearance of non-reciprocal implication is here due to superfluous elements—bare conjunctions—in the numerous alternative Antecedents and pairs of Premisses, and that there most certainly is in every case some Antecedent, common to all the number, and some pair of Premisses, underlying all the alternative pairs, the truth of which is implied in the truth of the Consequent or Conclusion. In "If he is poisoned he is dead"—death does not imply poisoning, but it most certainly implies the features of poisoning which are essential to death, and common to all its modes. The appearance here of non-reciprocal implication is simply due to the fact that we take our rules from unscientific thought. In every Conclusion there is some pair of Premisses implied, in every Consequent some Antecedent; and reciprocally, as we saw, there is a strictly conditioned Conclusion implied in every explicit deduction in respect of every actual Premiss that can enter into it, and if there seems to be an opening for falsehood from true Premisses, it is because bare conjunction, that is, facts inadequately conditioned, have been admitted into the chain of reasoning. I therefore agree with Mr. Spaulding's account of the matter (pp. 225-6) except that what he takes as occasional fact, appears to me to be a truth of principle.

The strange contradiction between these rules by which the definition of Logical Priority is applied to different cases, is only to be accounted for when we observe that in each case there is in the proposition, admitted pro hac vice to be "the implier," superfluous matter, by which the true reciprocal implication is disguised, and tends to pass unnoticed. But through this implication, in principle always present, an element of the so-called implier—and that its operative element—is implied as well as implier.

And thus we see why our authors' tenets force upon us the curious result that Conclusion is logically prior to Premisses and also Premisses to Conclusion.

It is true, of course, as commonly taught, that the Premisses or Antecedent imply the Conclusion or Consequent, which is therefore a necessary condition of the others' truth, and so far logically prior to them. But it is also true, as is not commonly taught, that there must be in principle for every Consequent or Conclusion a common, minimum, and exclusive Antecedent or pair of Premisses, which the Conclusion or Consequent implies as a necessary condition of its truth, and therefore as so far logically prior to it. Here we see the relative justification of the puzzling doctrine which our authors appeared to maintain—that Antecedent and Premisses on the one hand, and Consequent and Conclusion on the other, are logically prior to each other, each to each. For each has in fact, with reference to the other, one of the two alleged features of logical priority, viz., that it is implied by the other, and is consequently a necessary condition of the other's truth. But the other and negative feature of logical priority, the total non-implication of the implier^[24] by the implied,^[25] is of course irreconcilable with the implication which appears on analysis to exist in both the cases we have discussed and which therefore must be reciprocal. It is this alleged negative feature (depending on the admission of irrelevancies into the implier^[26]) which is the cause of the contradiction between the two parts of our authors' doctrine. Without it, this doctrine I believe is both sound and consistent; and all that is necessary to bring its parts into explicit harmony is to substitute logical reciprocity, which can be ascribed to both sides in the antithesis, for logical priority which obviously cannot. The effect of such a modification on the theory of bare conjunction and a loose-knit universe I cannot here discuss.

1. 371 ff.
2. See below on Logical Priority.
3. I should judge that their philosophical training, which is very likely more thorough than ours, or, say, than mine, e.g., in the detail of Kant, has not directed itself so much to the whole text and context, first of ancient, and secondly of quite recent metaphysic. There is no impropriety, I think, in saying this. It is a very natural difference; and I am absolutely certain, not from their writing alone, that it is the fact. Their training has enabled them to contribute very suggestive novelties to philosophy. That is more than most people have done.
4. I suppose that this is the "epistemological error which unites": "such writers as Fichte and Berkeley, Mr. Bradley and Professor K. Pearson." "New Realism" (p. 10). The polemic against the ascription of a fundamental position to Epistemology is directed against the "criticist" eo nomine (p. 50 note). But I gather that all of us who acknowledge a considerable debt to Hegel are lumped as "criticists," that is, I understand, as sharing with Kant an attempt to establish a fundamental science, consisting in Epistemology, and prior to Logic and Metaphysics. This identification seems to me quite exactly wrong.
5. See previous page. I repeat that I understand by Epistemology in the sense which I repudiate a theory of knowledge which is not simply a portion of a general theory of Reality. I do not, for instance, consider my own work in Logic to be Epistemological, and have never used the term or acquiesced in its use. I was careful to exclude the idea. Vol. i, pp. 2 and 3.
6. Pp. ciii-iv. Professor Alexander's point about the meaning of calling an object an idea, for instance, is here stated precisely as he states it. I do not think that in modern Metaphysic or Logic it has ever been in doubt. See, e.g., my "Essentials of Logic," p. 12, or Bradley on "what is sometimes called Idealism," "Appearance," p. 249.
7. Bradley, "Mind," 1911, p. 306.
8. "The New Realism," p. 93, and in many other passages. Cf. my "Logic," ed. 2, ii, 266 note and reff.
9. My own "Logic," such as it is, is of course an attempt to embody this view in a detailed system.
10. "Appearance and Reality," 254 ff.
11. "Works," i, 375 ff.
12. e.g., "Mind," 1900, p. 39 note. I think he uniformly insists that there can be no theory of knowledge except as part of and in connection with a complete theory of Reality, cf. e.g., "Mind," 1911, p. 337.
13. l.c. supra. Dr. McTaggart, I ought to admit, refers with interest to Epistemology; but his Idealism is certainly far from Subjectivism. See "Studies in Hegelian Dialectic," 120.
14. "Prolegomena to Ethics," sect. 82, 174.
15. "Works," i, 380; ii, 16. On the existence of Nature beyond finite perception, see Bradley, "Appearance," 273 ff.
16. P. 32.
17. "Appearance and Reality," p. 600, cf. 570 (ed. 2).
18. The doctrine is one apparently obvious to commonsense, and the definition might be borrowed from Aristotle, M. δ 11, 1019 a 2. πρότερα ὅσα ἐδέχεται εἶναι ἄνευ ἄλλων, ἐκεῖνα δὲ ἄνευ ἐκείνων μή.
19. Note that on p. 112 Causal Dependence is assumed to be reciprocal. And cf. p. 225.
20. This reservation can make no difference. The two requirements which follow from the logical priority of Ma to Me must obviously follow in respect of the same elements of Me, viz., those to which Ma is prior. And these elements of Me are determined by one of the requirements as results of an "explicit deduction" from Ma—results so strict that the falsity of the mathematical premisses Ma will involve their falsity. Thus you cannot account for the required possible falsity of Me while Ma is true, by supposing that some part of Me depends on a false premiss introduced into the chain at a point lower down than Ma.
21. These are forbidden by the argument of note 1, p. 64.
22. The point that a rational nexus is everywhere assumed by science as in principle possible would seem too obvious to be insisted on, were it not that some theorists seem inclined to accept the survival of bare conjunction in the outskirts of knowledge as representing a feature of the universe. This, I take it, is Mr. Spaulding's view (p. 220). It is, is it not? the doctrine of contingent truth. But can it be made consistent with the other part of his view? (see Digression, p. 70). I therefore cite from an authority who shares in many ways our authors' tendencies some evidence of the need which science recognises to postulate rational nexus, in principle, under every empirical observation. "The peculiarity of Geometry is that it became a purely rational science earlier and by more rapid stages than could be the case with other departments of physical investigation which have not yet emerged from the stage in which empirical observations form an essential element in the process of furthering our knowledge." "Geometry may be regarded as the type to which every science may be expected to conform at the distant time when it has become completely rational." "Just as Geometry has no need of further empirical fact, completely rationalised Physics and Chemistry, as ideal schemes, would contain within themselves every element which could be supplied by physical observation; and would no longer be dependent for their further progress on the work of experience." Professor Hobson's Address to Mathematical and Physical Society of University College, London, 1912.
23. This rule, we must remember, was relied on to establish the Logical Priority of the Consequent (and Conclusion) over Antecedent (and Premisses).
24. Say "poisoning." See p. 31
25. Say "death."
26. It was pointed out above, p. 67, how Mr. Marvin can maintain on this ground with some vraisemblance (p. 46) that the truth of the Conclusion need not be implied in that of the Premisses; just as it is commonly held on the same ground that the truth of the Premisses is not implied in that of the Conclusion.