Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/74

58 The only other point that seems worth mentioning is that the phrase, "the truth is for God alone," which figures so prominently in Mr. Watson's pages, occurs in the chapter of my book dealing with 'Hegelianism as an Absolute System,' and arises out of a reference to Lessing's well-known saying, "Did the Almighty, holding in his right hand Truth, and in his left Search after Truth, deign to tender me the one I might prefer,—in all humility, but without hesitation, I should request Search after Truth." Mr. Watson chooses to take the expression as an attempt "to introduce a radical incapacity for truth into the very centre of consciousness," as signifying, in short, that "existence, whatever it may be, is essentially different from what we conceive it to be." But it is plain from the whole context that "the truth" means simply perfect or completed knowledge, in contrast with the fragmentary and tentative knowledge which human beings actually possess. There is nowhere the vestige of a justification for interpreting the expression in the sense that human knowledge is not true of reality, so far as it goes.

From these specimens the candid reader will be able to gather how far Mr. Watson's article gives a trustworthy representation of the doctrines it professes to criticise. Instead, therefore, of profitless controversy on such a basis, I will take the liberty of appending here a few paragraphs in continuation of my four articles on Epistemology in this. When the articles were originally given as a course of Balfour Lectures in Edinburgh in the spring of 1891, these paragraphs followed immediately upon what has already appeared in the. They were omitted at the close of the last article, because the article already exceeded the usual length, and had reached a point at which its more immediate subject seemed concluded. But I am now inclined to regret their omission, because, by returning upon the general argument, I think they tend to place the scope of the whole inquiry in a clearer light, and to emphasize the precise nature of the conclusion reached. They might also have rendered impossible such misconceptions of the whole position as are disclosed in Professor Watson's article.

So far, it may be said, we have not got farther than the knowledge that a trans-subjective exists; that is to say, our trans-subjective world is merely Kant's thing-in-itself or Mr. Spencer's Unknowable,—an undetermined causal somewhat, 'a notion so imperfect,' according to Hume, 'that no sceptic will think it worth while to