Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/38

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We often say that the results of scientific observation and experiment, or the contents of the world of common sense, as known to men in their daily life, are typical examples of “empirically accredited facts.” These, as we add, belong to the “accessible realm.” These we cannot deny without “running counter to actual observation.” On the other hand, the contents of any religious faith, — assertions about God, about Immortality, or about the “Unseen World” in general, — these are typical examples of what we frequently regard as lying “beyond the range of human experience.” These, then, are “inaccessible” matters. What is in such regions fact “nobody amongst men can verify.” Equally, of course, a philosopher’s assertions about the Absolute, — as, for instance, an idealist’s Theory of Being, — are concerned with what “lies beyond all human experience”; and such theories attempt to “transcend the range of verifiable fact.” This contrast between the “empirical” and the “metempirical” realm is very familiar. It is apparently a fairly definite contrast. And to be sure, if you first define arbitrarily the limits of the collective whole called “human experience,” you may, with equal arbitrariness, define a realm of what is to be called “transcendent” or “inaccessible” fact, lying beyond this whole.

But what now concerns us is not an arbitrary classification of conceived ranges of knowledge, but a closer consideration of a very obvious and natural distinction between the two conceptions: (1) Of that which any man at any time experiences as present; and (2) Of the totality of the several facts that are, or that have been experienced by the various men. The question is: