Page:Immediate Experience and Mediation.djvu/21

 distinctive form of unity thus exhibited by each department of being—upon the dominant character pervading the differences within it and their cohesion—we may formulate certain 'Axioms', condensing once more into isolated judgements truth for which the evidence is overwhelming. Such 'truths' are stable, not because they, as judgements, hang together of themselves, but because they are but the concentrated expression of a whole of knowledge. The science as a whole falls short, indeed, of absolute self-containedness. It is not a body of demonstrated truth completely self-evident; for complete self-evidence demands, as its inseparable complement, perfect mediation. If a science were a plurality of elements, each precisely and purely conceived, each intelligibly necessitating each and all, and necessitated by each and by all, then (but only then) the mediation would be perfect, and the whole thus constituted would eo ipso be immediately intelligible, transparent, or self-evident. Nevertheless, the evidence for such an axiom as that 'two straight lines cannot enclose a space' is clearly overwhelming. Deny it—even doubt it—and the whole of plane geometry comes tumbling about your ears; and who shall say where the wreckage will stop, or what department of our knowledge would survive? As with the 'Laws of Thought', so with such more special principles of reasoning, the would-be doubter will search in vain for a knowledge or experience which does not commit