360 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



well that the whole of Givenness is my Givenness, whether 

 immediately perceived or conceptually transformed, that all 

 sensations are mine, and all feelings and all concepts and 

 categories. All of this " is ' : with regard to me, and I 

 properly " know " nothing else about it. In so far critical 

 subjective idealism is quite right. But to adhere to this 

 idealism implies the renunciation of understanding altogether, 

 at least in three fields of phenomenality. There are three 

 regions of phenomenality which never will form part of any 

 true system of Givenness, unless the bounds of idealism are 

 broken. But they only can be broken with regard to the 

 fact of something which " is ' not exclusively with respect 

 to the Ego, 1 just as from a room with windows of ground- 

 glass we may perceive the " fact " that there is something 

 outside without knowing in any way what it is. 



Thus we are able at least to approach the realm of that 

 which alone deserves the name of truth with regard to being. 

 The word " truth " in this sense, of course, signifies something 

 very different from what is called so in logic and mathe- 

 matics, logical and mathematical truth being only the validity 

 of relations with regard to a subject. 2 



1 0? course, even the words "something" and " is" are only used figura- 

 tively in this connexion. If not, the "Absolute" would not be absolute. 

 This book is not the place for any attempt to pursue this problem further. 



' Logical and mathematical truth is certainly " absolute " as to its validity 

 so long as there exists a subject like the human mind (comp. the very suggestive 

 address delivered before the Third International Congress for Philosophy, 

 Heidelberg, 1908, by J. Royce). But it falls to the ground with the existence 

 of the subject, and for this reason, though "absolutely true," it is not 

 " absolute truth" metaphysically. In modern philosophy the theory of 

 validity has overshadowed the theory of being. 



