Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/93

56 verify our results, largely by sympathetic thought; while the scientific historian reconstructs the Napoleonic period by very elaborate processes of reasoning and observation. And so we project idea after idea out of the present into the past, the distant, and the future, holding each to be a fact there, gradually peopling our previously empty world, and extending its bounds in thought till we come to believe in the complicated immensity of the universe of reality.

But observe, once more, that all except the meagre present is reached indirectly, i.e. by means of inferences. These inferences no doubt are justifiable, as we all most certainly believe; but my present point is, that they must be justified; that nothing can be held to be a part of the inclusive experience of the Absolute until its existence is fully proven. Now, it is not the business of philosophy to prove the existence of individual facts; but, on the other hand, it is the business of philosophy to establish the truth of such principles as are indispensable for proving the existence of any and every individual fact not directly observed. Further, it is a commonplace of philosophy, that the principle of Causality is the supreme principle of the kind just described. Accordingly, wherever Professor Royce holds this principle to have validity, just there, and nowhere else, can he seek for the items of fact to set in the experience of the Absolute. Now, as readers of his second book, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, will remember, he holds that the principle of Causality is true in the outer world of our senses and of natural science, but is not true in the world of inner experiences, nor