UNIFORMITY OF NATURE 105 



every one of them &quot; did most certainly outreach the boundaries 

 of observation as then and there obtained &quot; ; l and in the Empiri 

 cist philosophy, which reduces all knowledge to sense experience, 

 there is nothing to justify a single step beyond the present data 

 of the individual s sense consciousness. This philosophy recog 

 nizes no channel of knowledge beyond the senses, and reduces all 

 nature, all reality, to a mere flow of conscious sensations in the 

 individual mind. The step, therefore, beyond what is actually 

 observed in fact, the step beyond the contents of the present 

 transient moment of consciousness is, for the phenomenist, at 

 best a presumption, a &quot;hazard,&quot; a &quot;leap,&quot; 2 a speculation, about 

 the validity of which we may have a more or less strong expecta 

 tion, hope, opinion, probability ; but not certitude proper : at least, 

 not a scientific or reasoned certitude, for which any sufficient rational 

 grounds can be assigned (cf. 2 1 9). 



Idealist View. In the sensist philosophy there is room for 

 knowledge of individual ^a^/ or phenomenon alone ; for law, neces 

 sity, the universal, there is no logical place. In the Scholastic 

 doctrine, that the universe is dependent on the free-will of an 

 All-wise Creator and Ruler, there is an intelligible place for 

 physical or conditional certitude about the nature, activities, and 

 laws of physical agencies, conceived as subject to the will and 

 wisdom of that Creator. The idealist philosophy errs in, the op 

 posite extreme from sensism by attributing to the processes of 

 external nature an absolute, metaphysical necessity to which 

 they can have no real claim. The advocates of this philosophy 

 to which we have already called attention (cf. 215) prefer to 

 speak of the unity of nature, rather than its uniformity. They 

 tell us that &quot; the world must be conceived as a systematic totality, 

 with a thoroughgoing interrelation of parts . . . that nature is 

 a unity ... a system which remains identical with itself amidst 

 the unceasing changes of relations between its parts, and which, 

 by its own nature, necessitates and determines those changes &quot;. 3 

 And they assert this &quot; unity &quot; as a postulate or &quot; presupposition,&quot; 

 without which intelligible experience would be impossible. 4 



Now it is true, undoubtedly, that unless the world were a 

 harmonious system of interrelated elements, regular, uniform, con 

 sistent with itself throughout all its changes, we could not arrive 



1 VENN, Empirical Logic, p. 131. 



2 BAIN, Inductive Logic, book iii., chap, i., i. 



3 WELTON, Logic, ii., pp. 4, 5. 4 ibid. 



