86 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



be, or whence experience can possibly derive this 

 infallibilit)^ of evidence, but assumes, on the contrary, 

 that the infallibility of the evidence, could this once 

 be certainly got, is immediate and underived — to 

 such a science it must seem that we can have no 

 verifiable assurance of any existence but the Whole ; 

 that is, the aggregate of particulars hitherto actual 

 or yet to become so. Thus the very method of nat- 

 ural science tends to obliterate the sense of the 

 transcendent, of what lies beyond the bounds of 

 possible experience, or at least to destroy its credit 

 at the bar of disciplined judgment. In this way the 

 method brings its too eager votaries to regard the 

 Sum of Things as the only reality. 



On this view, the outcome of the scientific method 

 might seem to be restricted to that form of panthe- 

 ism which I have named atheistic. Most obviously 

 the inference would be directly to materialism, the 

 lowest and most natural form of such pantheism ; 

 subtler reasoning, however, recognising that in the 

 last resort experience must be consciousness, sees a 

 truer fulfilment of the empirical method in the sub- 

 jective idealism which states the Sum of Things as 

 the aggregate of the perceptions of its conscious 

 members. But beyond even this juster idealistic 

 construction of atheistic pantheism — beyond either 

 form of atheistic pantheism, in fact — the method of 

 natural science would appear to involve consequences 



