8 THE AIM AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 



everywhere the greatest confusion " confusion that can only 

 be removed by the frank recognition of another type of 

 Objectivity which we may call Objective subsistence. If we 

 think of the number 100, or of TT, or of the tangent to an 

 ellipse it must be recognised that the object of our thought has 

 a priority to our thinking, that entitles it to be called Objective 

 in the same sense as existents must be called Objective. Such 

 objects of thought present themselves as features of experience 

 which must be "reckoned with," and are not subject to our 

 caprice. They* may not be obvious to untrained inspection 

 any more than the finer details of a microscopic section are, 

 but when once envisaged by the competent mental eye they are 

 observed to have their peculiar features as a matter of fact, 

 quite apart from the observation. In Mr. Kussell's forcible 

 phrase such " subsistents " must be " discovered in just the 

 same sense in which Columbus discovered the West Indies " : 

 they are Objective subsistents. 



Attention should, perhaps, be called to the fact that the 

 foregoing use of the term Objective differs from the technical 

 use of the same term recently introduced into Philosophy by 

 Meinong and his school. (Meinong's works, Ueber Annahmen, 

 1902, and Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psycho- 

 logic, 1904, have been the subject of reviews and discussions by 

 Mr. Kussell, in Mind, N.S., Nos. 50, 51, 52 and 56). In the 

 complete " Theory 'of Objects " an object (Gegenstand, " an 

 object of discourse ") is either an Objekt or an Objektiv. Thus 

 (to borrow one of Mr. Kussell's examples) if I pronounce the 

 judgment " There was no disturbance," although I deny the 

 existence of a certain Objekt a disturbance at a particular 

 time and place I yet assert something positive, namely, the 

 fact that there was no disturbance. This fact is the Objektiv of 

 the judgment. So, if I assert that " A is the father of B," my 

 judgment concerns the JJbjekte, A, B, and . the relationship 

 between them, while the Objektiv of the judgment is, once 

 more, the fact of relationship asserted. 



