8 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



ably this: that science (or philosophy) consists wholly of univer 

 sal and necessary propositions, a limited number of which are 

 self-evident and form a sufficient body of premises for the deduc 

 tion of the rest. The principal division between rationalists is 

 upon the question of the nature of the self-evident first principles. 

 For Hobbes (as a nominalist), these could be only arbitrary 

 definitions of terms to be employed. For the great mass of con 

 tinental rationalists, they are significant truths which are cog 

 nized by a special faculty of reason called intuition. For Leib 

 niz, they are again definitions; not of mere terms, however, but 

 of concepts. All, again, are agreed in declaring that observations 

 of matter of fact are invariably particular and contingent; and 

 furthermore that whereas universal propositions are conditional 

 in their import, 1 particular propositions are categorical and, as 

 such, existential i. e., imply the existence of their subjects. 

 Accordingly, the whole realm of truth is divided into twT&amp;gt; distinct 

 provinces, that of reason and that of sense-perception, the former 

 consisting of necessary implications, the latter of observed facts. 

 All rationalists are further agreed upon certain metaphysical 

 conclusions. If science is deductive, the world must be such as 

 to be knowable by means of deductive science. If knowledge is 

 to fall into series of logically consecutive propositions, the world 

 itself must be similarly ordered. As Spinoza puts it, the order 

 of thoughts and the order of things are the same. In other words, 

 the relation of premise to conclusion in the system of scientific 

 doctrine must everywhere exactly correspond to a relation of 

 cause and effect in the system of objective reality. From the 

 methodological standpoint, this means that all explanation or 

 proof of anything must be in terms of its causes knowledge of 

 its effects throws no light upon its nature at all. 2 The intuitional- 

 ists (or rationalists proper, as we may call them) proceed to a 



: Thus Hobbes maintains that political science (like geometry) is altogether 

 independent of the question, whether any such thing as a state (or a straight line) 

 has ever existed in the world or not. 



2 The reasoning from effects to causes, which Hobbes includes in his definition 

 of philosophy, is only an apparent exception; for such reasoning, he finds, is never 

 conclusive. 



