XLIV. Second Memoir on the Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy. By 

 W. Whewell, D.D., Master of Trinity College, and Professor of Moral 

 Philosophy. 



[Read November 13, 1848.] 



31. In the course of 1844 I had the honour of reading before the Philosophical Society a 

 Memoir On the Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy ; and this Memoir has since been printed in 

 the Society's Transactions. The Fundamental Antithesis of which I then treated, is that which 

 is expressed in various ways : — for instance, by speaking of Things and Thoughts ; of Sensations 

 and Ideas ; of Fact and Theory ; of Experience and Necessary Truth ; of the Objective and 

 Subjective Elements of our Knowledge. I endeavoured to make it apparent that all these are, 

 at bottom, the same antithesis, and that this antithesis is an antithesis of inseparable Elements ; — so 

 inseparable, that the opposed terms cannot, either of them, be applied absolutely and exclusively in 

 any case. 



32. To give value to the exposition of this antithesis, it must be used in the expression of 

 philosophical truth. The antithesis may be looked upon in the light of a Definition by which we 

 are to enunciate one or more Propositions. In this, as in other cases, the Definition gives meaning 

 to the Proposition, the Proposition gives reality to the Definition. The Definition saves the 

 Proposition from being vague or ambiguous ; the Proposition saves the Definition from being 

 arbitrary or empty. 



In the Memoir just referred to, I have already used the fundamental antithesis in stating views 

 respecting the reality and the developement of human knowledge. But I would wish to be allowed 

 to pursue the subject a step further, and to express in a more general and distinct form than I have 

 there done, a general truth in the history of science, which I have there stated in a partial and 

 imperfect manner. 



33. The general Truth of which I speak may be thus expressed : — that the Progress of 

 Science consists in a perpetual reduction of Facts to Ideas. Portions are perpetually trans- 

 ferred from one side to another of the Fundamental Antithesis : namely, from the Objective to 

 the Subjective side. The Center or Fulcrum of the Antithesis is shifted by every movement 

 which is made in the advance of science, and is shifted so that the ideal side gains something from 

 the real side. 



34. I will proceed to illustrate this Proposition a little further. Necessary Truths belong to 

 the Subjective, Observed Facts, to the Objective side of our knowledge. Now in the progress of 

 that exact speculative knowledge which we call Science, Facts which were at a previous period 

 merely Observed Facts, come to be known as Necessary Truths ; and the attempts at new advances 

 in science generally introduce the representation of known truths of fact, as included in higher and 

 wider truths, and therefore, so far, necessary. 



3-5. We may exemplify this progress in the history of the science of Mechanics. Thus the 

 property of the lever, the inverse proportion of the weights and arms, was known as a fact before 

 the time of Aristotle, and known as no more ; for he gives many fantastical and inapplicable reasons 



