598 APPLIED MATHEMATICS 



sciously, our likewise inherited concepts. Our problem cannot be 

 to quote facts before the judgment seat of our laws of thought, but 

 to lit our mental representations and concepts to the facts. Since 

 we attempt to express with clearness such complicated processes 

 merely by words, written, spoken, or inwardly thought, it might 

 also be said that we should combine the words in such wise as to 

 give the most appropriate expression of the facts, that the relations 

 indicated by our words should be most adequate for the relations 

 among the actualities. When the problem is enunciated in this 

 fashion, its appropriate solution may still offer the greatest difficulties, 

 but one knows then the end in view and will not stumble on self- 

 made difficulties. 



Much that is useless in the usage and in the bearing of the nature 

 of life is brought forth by a method of treatment which, being 

 useful in most cases, becomes through habit a second nature, until 

 one cannot set it aside when it becomes inapplicable somewhere. 

 I say that the adaptability goes beyond the point aimed at. This 

 happens frequently in the commonplaces of thought, and becomes 

 the source of apparent contradictions between the laws of thought 

 and the world, as well as between the laws of thought themselves. 



Thus, the regularity of the phenomena of nature is the funda- 

 mental condition for all cognition; thus comes the habit of inquiring 

 of everything the cause, the non-resisting compulsion, and we 

 inquire also concerning the cause, why everything must have a cause. 

 In fact people strove for a long time to determine if cause and effect 

 is a necessary bond or merely an accidental sequence, and if it did 

 or did not have a unique meaning to say that a certain particular 

 phenomenon was connected with, and a necessary consequence of, 

 a definite group of other phenomena. 



Similarly, something is said to be useful, valuable, if it satisfies the 

 needs of the individual or of humanity; but we go beyond the mark 

 if we ask concerning the value of life itself, if such it seem to have, 

 because it has no purpose outside of itself. The same happens when 

 we strive vainly to explain the simplest concepts, out of which all 

 others are built, by means of simpler ones still, to explain the simplest 

 fundamental laws. 



We should not attempt to deduce nature from our concepts, but 

 should adapt the latter to the former. We should not believe our 

 inherited rules of thought to be conditions preceding our more com- 

 plicated experiences, for they are not so for the simplest essentials. 

 They arose slowly in connection with simple experiences and passed, 

 by heredity, to the more highly organized being. Thus is explained 

 how synthetic judgments arise which were formed by our ancestors 

 and were born in us, and are in this sense a priori. Their great 

 power is also seen in this way, but not their infallibility. 



