228 METAPHYSICS 



metaphysics, it is no less difficult to do the same thing for the un- 

 doubtedly legitimate sciences of logic and mathematics. And in all 

 three cases the absence of definition merely shows that we are deal- 

 ing with branches of knowledge which are, so to say, still in the 

 making. It is not until the first principles of science are already 

 firmly laid beyond the possibility of cavil that we must look for 

 general agreement as to its boundary lines, though excellent work 

 may be done, long before this point has been reached, in the estab- 

 lishment of individual principles and deduction of consequences 

 from them. To revert to the parallel cases I have just cited, many 

 mathematical principles of the highest importance are formulated in 

 the Elements of Euclid, and many logical principles in the Organon 

 of Aristotle; yet it is only in our own time that it has become possible 

 to offer a general definition either of logic or of mathematics, and 

 even now it would probably be true to say that the majority of 

 logicians and mathematicians trouble themselves very little about 

 the precise definition of their respective studies. 



The state of our science then compels me to begin this address 

 with a more or less arbitrary, because provisional, definition of the 

 term metaphysics, for which I claim no more than that it may serve 

 to indicate with approximate accuracy the class of problems which 

 I shall have in view in my subsequent use of the word. By meta- 

 physics, then, I propose to understand the inquiry which used 

 formerly to be known as ontology, that is, the investigation into the 

 general character which belongs to real Being as such, the science, in 

 Aristotelian phraseology, of 6vra % OVTO.. Or, if the term " real " be 

 objected against as ambiguous, I would suggest as an alternative 

 account the statement that metaphysics is the inquiry into the general 

 character by which the content of true assertions is distinguished 

 from that of false assertions. The two definitions here offered will, 

 I think, be found equivalent when it is borne in mind that what the 

 second of them speaks of is exclusively the content which is asserted 

 as true in a true proposition, not the process of true assertion, which, 

 like all other processes in the highest cerebral centres, falls under 

 the consideration of the vastly different sciences of psychology and 

 cerebral physiology. Of the two equivalent forms of statement, the 

 former has perhaps the advantage of making it most clear that it 

 is ultimately upon the objective distinction between the reality and 

 the unreality of that which is asserted for truth, and not upon any 

 psychological peculiarity in the process of assertion itself that the 

 distinction between true and untrue rests, while the second may be 

 useful in guarding against misconceptions that might be suggested 

 by too narrow an interpretation of the term " reality," such as, e. g., 

 the identification of the " real " with what is revealed by sensuous 

 perception. 



