Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/194

Rh exist a fact behind or beyond p, namely x, such that x explains p by standing to p in the known relation R, — say, the relation of cause to effect, or of logical condition to consequent, or of teleological explainer to that whose sense or meaning it explains. And, in general, the relation R is such as to require x to be of another type than p. Now, in case a, b, c, etc., are data of experience, then the x which stands to any one of them in the relation R does not, by hypothesis, belong, in general, to the series a, b, c, etc. Hence, in general, it must be transcendent.”

I reply, in the usual idealistic fashion: What do you mean by this relation R? I care not how you know that such a relation is necessary, or must exist. This your knowledge may be a human convention or a primal “intuition.” That here concerns us not. What I ask is, how you express to your mind the nature of this relation R, whatever it is, and wherever it may exist or be known to exist. Do you or do you not mean, by this relation R, a relation which you at once conceive as capable of being presented to you in some possible experience? You say: “The relation is real.” You mean something by the assertion, and something said to be well known to you. For the relation R is by hypothesis especially clear to you. You are so sure of it that you use it to prove the presence of that otherwise unknowable and transcendent x and you define x as that which stands in the relation R to any fact p of our experience. Is not, then, this relation R clear to you just because, however it is supposed to be realised, a possible experience could present to you the known situation