44 THE MISUSE OF METAPHORS IN 



base knowledge on the unknowable with Herbert Spencer 

 which is about the maddest of all the projects pro- 

 pounded to suffering mankind ? 



But it is easier and more profitable to examine our 

 assumptions than to work miracles, and, in particular, to 

 see whether some metaphor has not been playing us false. 

 Perhaps knowledge is not an edifice ; perhaps it is not 

 built by the external addition of idea to idea ; nay, per- 

 haps it has no "foundation." There are things in the 

 world which have no "foundations." The roots of a 

 plant are not precisely its "foundations," nor the feet of 

 an animal. Plants and animals are organisms, and every 

 part of them both rests upon and sustains every other part. 

 Perhaps there is no elephant to hold up the world of ideas, 

 and no tortoise to support the elephant. Knowledge may 

 be like the solar system an equipoise of elements which 

 sustain one another. Ideas may have meaning only in 

 their relation to each other, and relativity may not be a 

 defect. The realm of relations may be the native element 

 of human reason. Reason may not need a TTOV trrta. In 

 its own thought-element it may rest on its wings, like 

 the albatross. 



Such, in fact, is the most significant of all the discoveries 

 of modern Epistemology that an idea is an idea, and a 

 judgment is true or false, in virtue of their relation to a 

 system of ideas or judgments ; that their certainty rests 

 not in themselves, but in the system of knowledge of which 

 they are a part ; and that their certainty grows as the system 

 of knowledge expands. The truth of this view is illus- 

 trated in any ordinary discussion, or whenever the validity 

 of any idea is challenged. Do we not at once bring up 

 some other idea to the defence of that which is challenged, 



