Page:Immediate Experience and Mediation.djvu/22

 him to them for a position entitling him to raise an intelligent doubt against them.

There are, it may be objected, within the texture of a science certain judgements, which hang together of themselves and are self-evident even when isolated from the context of mediation to which they belong. We apprehend two differents, x and y, inseparably and yet immediately cohering. The addition of 2 to 2 carries with it, without the interposition of a third term, the sum 4. Or, to take a better example—for there may be 4 without the addition of 2 and 2, and the cohesion of this x and y is thus imperfect—the equality of the two sides of a triangle immediately and yet necessarily implies, and is implied by, the equality of the subtended angles. Here, it may be said, we have an item of absolute truth within the texture of a science. And if the chief aim of science is the discovery and establishment of 'Laws of Nature', what are these but typical examples of the inseparable, reciprocal cohesion of two different elements, each of which finds its inevitable complement in the other? The 'Law', or the 'immediate' necessary cohesion, is discovered indeed and established by a process of mediation. But, once established, it can be lifted in thought clear of any context, and is thus apprehended as a self-contained item of absolute truth.

Yet, on closer inspection, the dream evaporates; there are no atomic absolute truths within the texture