Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/40

Rh have experienced as present to himself the fact b, and so on, — some of the various facts having been observed indeed by the same man (as a Galileo or a Faraday observed, each for himself, various physical facts), while different facts, in many cases, have been severally presented in the experience of different men. Now only such facts as belong to this body of ‘facts of experience’ are to be regarded as duly ‘accredited.’” The thesis thus stated, with various added provisos regarding the sorts of experience, or the types of observers whose facts are of enough importance or exactitude to count as sufficiently verified, represents a frequent interpretation of the meaning of the doctrine called empiricism. But it is obvious that, in this formulation, familiar though it be, the thesis simply contradicts itself. For it expressly asserts the existence of the various facts, ɑ, b, c, etc., while referring them, in general, to the experience of various observers, A, B, etc., whose existence is also regarded as “accredited.” But since A, by hypothesis, has never had present to his experience the experience of B, nor any observer the observations of another observer, it is plain that there is no one man who has personally experienced either the existence of all the several observers, A, B, etc., or the presence of their various facts, ɑ, b, c. Yet these existences and these various facts are, according to the thesis, “accredited facts,” in case the thesis itself is to be an accredited truth. And, nevertheless, according to the same thesis, no facts were to be regarded as “accredited” unless some man, A, or B, or some other, had verified them in his experience. The thesis, as stated, consequently asserts