Page:On an Evolutionist Theory of Axioms.djvu/25

18 But there is one short general criticism which seems enough, and would have explained beforehand without such an examination of details that the evolutionist theory must end in self-contradiction.

There is an elementary principle on which we should expect all philosophies to agree, which is that thought cannot question the validity of its own presuppositions or even try to establish them without self-contradiction.

Now it is evident that the evolutionist theory violates » this principle, whether we consider the account given in it of the supposed criterion of all truth, inconceivableness of the opposite, or the account of those primary laws of thought which have just been spoken of.

The mistake is of the more elementary character when the attempt to establish the laws of thought, or a general criterion, is made by help of the reasonings of a special science, for that of course must presuppose the general laws and the criterion.

But this is precisely the use here made of biology.

The reasonings of biology would collapse if it did not assume for instance the principle of contradiction, it is futile therefore to prove its objective validity by biology.

As to the criterion itself, which is to shew that a cognition is of the highest rank (its 'unsurpassable validity,' etc.), the principles of biology cannot depend on it since biology has to establish it. Hence either they have not the highest rank, which involves the absurdity that the criterion of cognitions of the highest rank is shown to be a valid criterion by appealing to cognitions which are not of the highest rank: or else the principles of biology have the highest rank, and then it turns out that there are some absolute truths which are not derived from the criterion, and, what is still worse, that evolution has altogether forgotten to explain their origin, thus leaving the old problem so far from being solved that it is not even attempted.