44 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



merely relative, do not really belong to the wax. They are not 

 essential to it. If we would discover the real nature of wax, 

 we must look to some other source than sense-perception, for 

 its real nature is just what remains constant through all changes 

 and in all relations. This nature, of course, is given only in the 

 concept of wax as a modification of extended substance. Now 

 what we thus find to be true of the wax is true of the whole 

 world of sense-perception. However far we go in our observa 

 tions, we find only a multipicity of particular qualities which 

 are never fixed but always changing and relative. But the real 

 world, in the thought of the rationalist, is the unity which under 

 lies this multiplicity, which is not subject to change, and to which 

 all relations are external. It is the world of conceptual universals 

 the world of reason, as opposed to the world of sense. In a 

 secondary sense, the world of particulars may, indeed, be said 

 to be real, since it must have substance, the eternally existent, 

 for its ground; and its illusoriness vanishes in so far as we can 

 exhibit it as thus grounded. But this is just the task of reason, 

 to seek the ground; and rational knowledge is precisely the 

 knowledge of things as grounded. 



How, then, are the two functions of rational thought and sense- 

 perception connected? Or, ontologically stated, how is the world 

 of the particular and the contingent related to the world of con 

 ceptual universals? While rational concepts may, in some sense, 

 form a logical system among themselves, culminating in the con 

 cept of substance, what way is there of getting out of the system 

 to the particulars of sense-perception? All that we learn from 

 perception is the changing qualities and relations of particular 

 objects. Sense is utterly incompetent to reveal the unversal. We 

 may know through the understanding that wax is a modification 

 of extended substance ; but how are we to identify this particular 

 piece of hard, white, fragrant material, which melts when near 

 the fire, as such a modification of extended substance? We may 

 assume that the concept wax is a true predicate of all particular 

 pieces of wax; but if these particular pieces, so far as particular, 



