BELIEFS AND EXISTENCES 185 



in ready-made, fixed, and finished form. The 

 rationalist had one notion of the reality, i.e., that it 

 was of the nature of laws, genera, or an ordered 

 system, and so thought of concepts, axioms, etc., 

 as the indicated modes of representation. The 

 empiricist, holding reality to be a lot of little dis 

 crete particular lumps, thought of disjointed sen 

 sations as its appropriate counterpart. But 

 both alike were thorough conformists. If &quot; real 

 ity &quot; is already and completely given, and if knowl 

 edge is just submissive acceptance, then, of course, 

 inquiry is only a subjective change in the human 

 &quot; mind &quot; or in &quot; consciousness,&quot; these being sub 

 jective and &quot;unreal.&quot; 



But the very development of the sciences served 

 to reveal a peculiar and intolerable paradox. 

 Epistemology, having condemned inquiry once for 

 all to the region of subjectivity in an invidious 

 sense, finds itself in flat opposition in principle and 

 in detail to the assumption and to the results of the 

 sciences. Epistemology is bound to deny to the 

 results of the special sciences in detail any ulterior 

 objectivity just because they always are in a proc 

 ess of inquiry in solution. While a man may not 

 be halted at being told that his mental activities, 

 since his, are not genuinely real, many men will 

 draw violently back at being told that all the dis 

 coveries, conclusions, explanations, and theories of 

 the sciences share the same fate, being the products 



