SECT. 6.] Objective Treatment of Logic. 271 



to be all that is meant by objective/ and since universal 

 accordance is attainable in the case of the notoriously fic 

 titious, our fundamental distinction between fact and con 

 ception, and our determination that our terms shall refer to 

 what is objective rather than to what is subjective, may with 

 some degree of strain be still conceived to be tenable even here. 



5. But when we come to the case of disputed phe 

 nomena the difficulty re-emerges. A supposed planet or 

 new mineral, a doubtful fact in history, a disputed theological 

 doctrine, are but a few examples out of many that might be 

 offered. What some persons strenuously assert, others as 

 strenuously deny, and whatever hope there may be of speedy 

 agreement in the case of physical phenomena, experience 

 shows that there is not much prospect of this in the case of 

 those which are moral and historical, to say nothing of theo 

 logical. So long as those who are in agreement confine their 

 intercourse to themselves, their facts are accepted as such, 

 but as soon as they come to communicate with others all 

 distinction between fact and conception is lost at once, the 

 facts of one party being mere groundless conceptions to 

 their opponents. There is therefore, I think, in these cases 

 a real difficulty in carrying out distinctly and consistently 

 the account which the Materialist logician offers as to the 

 reference of names. It need hardly be pointed out that 

 what thus applies to names or terms applies equally to 

 propositions in which particular or general statements are 

 made involving names. 



6. But when we step into Probability, and treat this 

 from the same material or Phenomenal point of view, we can 

 no longer neglect the question which is thus presented to us. 

 The difficulty cannot here be rejected, as referring to what is 

 merely temporary or occasional. The intermediate condition 

 between conjecture and fact, so far from being temporary 



