266 SPECULATIVE SCIENCE 



than one gold bar from another, to be identical ? Not only is 

 the gold piece not the die, but no two coins are absolutely alike. 

 So our perceptions are not the things perceived, neither are the 

 perceptions of one thing the same in two men. But coin is that 

 which we can use, the die is no concern of ours and the identity 

 between the coins is sufficient for our use. So natural facts are 

 important to us only as they impress us ; with the things in 

 themselves we have no concern, and the impressions on various 

 men are so far alike as to render commerce possible. 



Therefore we may say nothing is true, in either sense. 

 Words can express no truth wholly, and again no impression 

 corresponds wholly with the fact ; and again we may say that 

 no man can honestly say that which is untrue, for if he say that 

 which he believes, his words express that which he perceives or 

 conceives. He may indeed use the words unskilfully, that is to 

 say, his words may convey to me some impression false to the 

 fact, yet to him the words may be true, as when a man awaking 

 says, I have not slept. He can but tell what is then in his mind, 

 and he truly tells this although he slept. He would be an un- 

 true witness if having slept unawares he, not remembering it, 

 said, ' I slept.' 



So again we may say that our senses never deceive us, for 

 given all the circumstances, the impression must be that which 

 it is. We might desire to leave out some of the circumstances, 

 as in trying to spear a fish we might desire to leave out the 

 refractive power of water, but our senses tell us all the fact. 

 They even tell us their own imperfection, the impression made 

 being partly the result of the fact and partly the result of our 

 own organism. In this sense every impression is true, being 

 the inevitable result of the whole complex circumstances. The 

 man who is colour-blind is not misled by his senses. His eye 

 tells him that to him a given surface is colourless, which is true, 

 although to another man this surface may be brilliantly coloured. 

 The one impression is no more true in this transcendental sense 

 than the other. 



This matter of truth and untruth has been thus sifted merely 

 to expose the folly involved in any hope of a criterion of absolute 

 truth. Let there be a criterion is it conceivable that we 

 should ever apply it with exactitude ? 



