Page:Journal of Speculative Philosophy Volume 17.djvu/75

66 answer is ready. But, before giving it, we will state the objection more fully. It may be said that the objects we have supposed, the vibrations, etc., are, as known, themselves conditioned by the affection of the nervous organism through some other object, and so on indefinitely, so that, after all, our knowledge of them is entirely relative.

But any such objection, to be of value, must hold that this process goes on ad infinitum, as otherwise there would be something known not through feeling, and, therefore, not relative. But if it does go on ad infinitum, it is clear that we fall into our original difficulty: nothing will ever be known except the immediate feelings, and to refer them to anything existing out of or beyond themselves will be impossible. The mere fact that one feeling is the antecedent of another could never give any reason for asserting that that feeling was relative in comparison with an unknown object. To suppose that it could, is to suppose that a feeling may transcend its own relativity. Therefore, on this theory of the infinite regress, it can never be known that there is an absolute object, and, therefore, immediately present feelings can never be referred to such an object; i. e., can never be known to be relative. They become themselves absolute and absolutely known.

We conclude, therefore, that to prove the relativity of feeling is impossible without assuming that there are objects which are known not through feeling. In short, Sensationalism and the Relativity hypothesis again prove themselves utterly incompatible. The theory of the relativity of feeling, therefore, is so far from proving the subjectivity of our knowledge that it is impossible, except upon a theory which assumes that we do have objective knowledge.

The removal of a possible misapprehension and an objection are needed to complete the discussion of this point. It will perhaps be said that, since the relativity of feeling was known long before there was knowledge of what the objects really were, and that since now it is possible or probable, in some cases, that we do not really know the objective order, our account cannot be correct. But it must be noticed that this account does not depend for its correctness upon the question whether objects are really what we think they are, but simply upon the question whether the theory of the Relativity of Feeling does not assume and require that it is