Page:Journal of Speculative Philosophy Volume 17.djvu/67

58 a compliment to the former by adopting its methods and results, and at the same time forever silence all who claim that we have absolute knowledge. For, notice how this theory is also compelled to assume the form of Relativity. According to it, in the form we are considering, all knowledge is, through a nervous organism, constructed through evolution from the lowest form of life, or from matter. Accordingly, it must be conditioned by the state and quality of the organism, and cannot represent or copy objective existence. It is therefore relative to the subject. But since, according to the realistic assumptions of the theory, there is objective existence, this must remain forever unknown and unknowable. To know it would be possible only through the contradiction of a feeling not relative to the subject. This, then, is the position of that form of the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge which is probably most widely influential at present. All knowledge is derived from feeling ; feeling is conditioned upon the existence of external objects, and expresses the way in which the sentient subject is affected by them, and not what they are in themselves. All knowledge is through feeling, and all feeling is relative. Such are its dogmas.

What we intend in this paper is to examine into the theory of the Relativity of Knowledge in so far as it bases itself upon the fact of the relativity of feeling to a subject. Were we to examine it exhaustively in its relations to the theory of evolution, with which in its fourth form it is connected, it would be necessary to ask how the scientific theory of evolution, by hypothesis an exact and correct statement of a universal law, is compatible with any such supposed origin of knowledge. But we pass over this for the present, and will inquire simply into the mutual relations of the two parts of any sensationalistic theory of the relativity of knowledge.

That we may have the work thoroughly before us, it must be noticed, first, that Relative here signifies subjective as opposed to objective, phenomenal as opposed to ontological. It denotes an imperfection of thought, not its essence. Secondly, this theory in its present form is not a psychological theory. It does not simply state certain facts regarding the method in which we get to know the world, but claims to be a Philosophy, and so gives epistemological conclusions regarding the knowableness of Being,