Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/575

 562. J. M. BIGG : have no existence apart from consciousness is not bound to deny the positive truth of any scientific theory which fur- nishes the best available explanation of the phenomena it purports to explain. In fact, it is just positive truth which he will allow to such an hypothesis ; i.e., he regards it as a necessary moment in the process by which the human mind comes by the knowledge of the essential unity of the cosmos. Its verification consists in this necessity. Such verification may be called transcendental as distinguished from empiri- cal verification. At the same time he will certainly deny the absolute truth of all such hypotheses. The scientific Pegasus is a noble animal, and his rider extremely bold ; but " post equitem sedet atra cura " ; Nemesis rides on the croup in the shape of the metaphysician, and will not be shaken off no matter how rough the pace may be. Metaphysics, in fact, is related to physics, as physics is related to experience. The ideal world of physics satisfies the metaphysician as little as the world of sense-perception satisfies the physicist. His procedure is of the simplest kind, and consists in merely pointing out that an idea is an idea and therefore relative to consciousness, and that by consequence the entire body of scientific hypothesis has only a relative validity. Those who think otherwise he shows to be still in the bondage of Scho- lasticism to be in fact no better than those mediaeval thinkers who mistook the connotation of a common term for a real essence residing in things. In short, he pushes the principle of conceptualism to its logical issue. By degrees a dim per- ception of his meaning dawns upon the scientific mind, and therewith the half-suspicion that he may be right. Accord- ingly an attempt is made to meet him half-way. Hence arise two schools of scientific thinkers. Both agree in admitting the relativity of scientific theory ; but, while one denies the power of the human mind to reach absolute truth, the other joins hands with those who are only just emerging from the realism of common sense in order to find the abso- lute in that of which nothing in particular can be said. The first school virtually admits that science is an illusion, and erects its own speculative incapacity into a standard of human faculty. The second differs but by a hair's-breadth from the first, and that difference is not on the side of logic. This poor caput mortuum, this absolute, this unconditioned, which it is sought to purge of all subjective elements, after all, it must be admitted, exists, and on this admission the metaphysician pounces with avidity. ' You tell me,' he says, ' that the absolute and the relative are wholly hetero- geneous, yet you predicate of both this same attribute, exist-