THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 



337 



higher authority than the claim of infallibility made at 

 times by certain religious organizations ; for, as only 

 the senses and the reason can be appealed to in support 

 of the claims of the senses and the reason, the argument 

 of science is of necessity reasoning in a circle. Science 

 can give us no ground solid enough to bear the weight 

 of belief. Belief must exist, and it may therefore rest 

 on the innate needs of man and the philosophy which is 

 built on these needs in accordance with the authority 

 which the human soul finds sufficient. 



Balfour calls attention to the fact that human ex- 

 perience is not in its essence objective. It consists only 

 of varying phases of consciousness. 

 Human experi- These hases of consciousness at best 

 ence not objec- . _,, 



tive only point toward truth. They are not 



truth itself. They vary with the vary- 

 ing nerve cells of each individual creature on whom 

 phases of consciousness are impressed, and again with 

 the changes in the cells themselves. The tricks of the 

 senses are well known in psychology, as is also the fail- 

 ure of the senses as to material outside their usual range. 

 Life is at best "in a dimly lighted room," and all the 

 objects about us are in their essence quite different from 

 what they seem. This essence is unknown and unknow- 

 able. We are well aware that we have no power to 

 recognise all phases of reality. The electric condition 

 of an object may be as real as its colour or its tempera- 

 ture, and yet none of our senses respond to it. Our 

 eyes give but an octave of the vibrations we call light, 

 and our ears are dull to all but a narrow range in pitch 

 of sound. 



Likewise is reason to be discredited. The common- 

 est things become unknown or impossible when viewed 

 "in the critical light of philosophy." Balfour shows 

 that the simple affirmation " the sun gives light," loses 



. 



