1 30 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



have a cause,&quot; &quot; every change must be a change of some state,&quot; and &quot; every 

 state must be a state of some subject or substance &quot;. Of course, such principles 

 will not of themselves unlock the secrets of science by telling us whether this 

 and that event, or change, or state, have any underlying agencies, or causes, 

 or substances in common, or how many of the latter there are in the world of 

 sense experience altogether. Yet positivists and phenomenists appear to think 

 that something like this should be expected from those principles. For, not 

 rinding in the latter the key to any new positive information about nature, they 

 proclaim that &quot; substance,&quot; &quot; power,&quot; &quot; force,&quot; &quot; efficiency,&quot; &quot; purpose,&quot; etc. 

 in a word, all such objects of thought as lie beyond the ken of the senses 

 are &quot; occult &quot; and &quot; unknowable,&quot; and should therefore be discarded. 1 But as 

 a matter of fact these objects are not &quot; occult &quot; to the intellect of Positivists any 

 more than of Scholastics. The former, despite their disclaimer of agnosticism, 

 know just as much, or as little, about such objects of thought, as the latter : they 

 discourse about &quot; substances &quot; and &quot; causes &quot; and &quot; forces &quot; and &quot; faculties &quot; no 

 less than the latter : and we are all alike guided, in our ascent to such thought- 

 objects from the data of sense, by the scholastic principle that from the operations 

 of things we judge of their natures : operari sequitur esse ; qualis est operatio 

 talis est natura. 



But positivists pretend to be able to &quot; explain &quot; the universe without calling 

 in the aid of any &quot; hyperphysical &quot; entity 2 we shall see presently with what 

 effect, and blame Scholastics for not discarding the &quot; antiquated &quot; metaphysics 

 of &quot; substance &quot; and &quot; accident,&quot; of &quot; faculty,&quot; &quot; power,&quot; and &quot; force,&quot; in the 

 philosophy of external nature. They have tried unsuccessfully, of course 

 to deliver human reason from the supposed bondage of theology and meta 

 physics, by eliminating from their system of thought all such &quot; Scholastic &quot; 

 notions. We my be pardoned if we hesitate to exchange the &quot; antiquated &quot; 

 system for the teaching of those later philosophers who resolve all reality into 

 &quot; states &quot; or &quot; phases &quot; or &quot; processes,&quot; while denying that there is any sub 

 stance or agent of which these are the states, phases, or processes ; or into a 

 transient &quot; flow &quot; of sensations in the individual s consciousness, while denying 

 that there is any permanent mind other than the said flow of sensations, or any 

 abiding, substantial ego, or individual, to experience and interpret these sensations, 

 and thus to remember past experience and to expect and anticipate future ex 

 perience. The fact is that this phenomenist philosophy has made itself unin 

 telligible by &quot; divesting the human mind of its most fundamental conceptions &quot; 3 

 or, rather, by pretending to accomplish such a hopeless task : for it really 

 smuggles into its explanations, at every turn, under the mask of a new termin 

 ology of course, the very conceptions it pretends to dispense with. 



In opposition to the traditional philosophy of those so-called 

 &quot;occult&quot; causes, Mill boldly proclaimed that he would deal only 

 with causes which were themselves &quot; phenomena,&quot; i.e. entities 

 which would be in themselves perceptible by the senses : &quot; I pre- 



1 Cf. I. E. RECORD, April, 1910: &quot; Some Current Phases of Physical Theories,&quot; 

 p. 403 ; January, 19 10 : &quot; The New Knowledge and its Limitations,&quot; p. 27. 

 3 Cf. I. E. RECORD, April, 1910, ibid. 

 3 WARD, Naturalism and Agnosticism, i., p. 65. Cf. I. E. RECORD, ibid., p. 400. 



