Page:Idealism and the Theory of Knowledge.djvu/14

10. Mr. Andrew Lang in his book upon Myth and Ritual, tells us of a theological child, who described the creation of the world in the following terms: ‘God first made a little place to stand upon, and then he made the rest.’ So philosophers have often sought for some special criterion of truth, for some basal principle, like the Cogito ergo sum of Descartes, or for some datum or data of sense, as a foundation on which they might build their system. But the search is a vain one. For, when we examine any such principle we discover that it is only one aspect of things, which has no claim to be taken as prior to the other aspects of them, and which proves the others only in the same sense in which it is proved by them; and also that in being brought in relation to those other aspects, it is subject to re-interpretation. And, in like manner, when we examine any supposed datum of sense, we find that it is merely one appearance, which helps us to explain other appearances only as it is explained by them, and that its ultimate interpretation depends on the way in which it combines with all our previous consciousness of things. All that is certain about any such datum, in the first instance, is that it has an indubitable claim to be recognized as an element in the intelligible world; but how much truth there is in the first presentment of it we cannot tell, till we are able to think it together with the other elements of our experience. In other words, it must be interpreted so as to cohere with them, and they must be interpreted so as to cohere with it. But whether this will lead to its being explained, or to its being explained away, or, as is more likely, partly to the one and partly to the other, we cannot tell a priori. We cannot, therefore, take our stand on any one datum or principle taken by itself; for, taken by itself, it cannot be known for what it really is. We can only take our stand on the unity of the whole system, in which everything that claims to be a fact or a truth must find a place. Thus the idea that there are certain intuitions or perceptions which we can take for granted as prior to, and above all criticism, and which remain, in all the discourse of reason, as the fixed and immoveable basis of the whole edifice of science, involves a fundamental mistake. Indeed, the activities of the intuitive and the discursive reason can never be separated without making the former ‘blind,’ and the latter ‘empty.’ We always presuppose the unity of the whole in every determination of the parts in distinction from, and in relation to each other: and no element of the whole can be presented apart from the process whereby we distinguish and relate it within that whole. We are thus, throughout all our intellectual life, advancing from a confused, imperfectly differentiated, and