COMMON BASIS OF EMPIRICISM AND RATIONALISM 45 



are wholly constituted by fragrance, whiteness, etc., and relations 

 with particular fires, etc., then to predicate wax of the thing is an 

 absolutely unmotived procedure. The very fact that definition 

 simply adds one universal to another, makes it impossible to 

 pass logically from any concept, however low in the hierarchy 

 it may be, to the particular. If reason deals only with the 

 universal, and the senses yield only the particular, the two worlds 

 must remain absolutely unrelated. 



To put the difficulty in perhaps clearer form, we may say that 

 the observations of sense-perceptions are invariably expressible 

 as particular judgments, such as, This wax is white, or, The fire is 

 hot, or again, The wax melts now that it is near the fire. These 

 judgments are existential in the sense that they imply the exist 

 ence of their subjects; they are contingent, inasmuch as no neces 

 sary ground for their truth is given; and, as merely contingent, 

 and hence not invariably true, they convey no information about 

 reality. They are not, properly speaking, knowledge at all, and 

 cannot become such unless they can be shown to be the necessary 

 outcome of the real nature of things. For example, the fact of 

 the melting of a piece of wax when heated becomes knowledge 

 only when it is shown to be the necessary result of the universal 

 nature of wax so to act under such circumstances. But how is 

 this to be accomplished? 



Furthermore, those subordinate universal judgments, from 

 which the contingent truths of sense are conceived more directly 

 to spring, must themselves be established as valid. For instance, 

 the law that all w T ax melts when heated demands explanation 

 as a result, let us say, of the specific constitution of wax. For 

 such a law is obviously conditional in its significance; it is the 

 expression of a relation between possible contingencies; and con 

 sequently it cannot describe the ultimate nature of reality. The 

 statement of a relation, to become truth, must be seen to spring 

 from the attributes of substance itself. The conditional proposi 

 tion must be deduced from some final necessary truth which is 

 at once universal and existential. This truth must be universal, 



