METAPHYSICS AND THE OTHER SCIENCES 233 



long ago between the truths of reason and the truths of empirical 

 fact, a distinction which the Kantian trend of philosophical specu- 

 lation tended during the greater part of the nineteenth century to 

 obscure, while it was absolutely ignored by the empiricist opponents 

 of metaphysics both in England and in Germany. The philosoph- 

 ical consequences of a revival of the distinction are, I conceive, of 

 far-reaching importance. On the one side, recognition of the em- 

 pirical and contingent character of all general propositions estab- 

 lished by induction appears absolutely fatal to the current mechan- 

 istic conception of the universe as a realm of purposeless sequences 

 unequivocally determined by unalterable "laws of nature/' a result 

 which has in recent years been admirably illustrated for the Eng- 

 lish-speaking world by Professor Ward's well-known Gifford lectures 

 on "Naturalism and Agnosticism." Laws of physical nature, on the 

 empiristic view of applied science, can mean no more than observed 

 regularities, obtained by the application of the doctrine of chances, 

 regularities which we are indeed justified in accepting with con- 

 fidence as the basis for calculation of the future course of temporal 

 sequence, but which we have no logical warrant for treating as ulti- 

 mate truths about the final constitution of things. Thus, for exam- 

 ple, take the common assumption that our physical environment 

 is composed of a multitude of particles each in every respect the 

 exact counterpart of every other. Reflection upon the nature of 

 the evidence by which this conclusion, if supported at all, has to 

 be supported, should convince us that at most all that the state- 

 ment ought to mean is that individual differences between the ele- 

 mentary constituents of the physical world need not be allowed 

 for in devising practical formulae for the intelligent anticipation of 

 events. When the proposition is put forward as an absolute truth 

 and treated as a reason for denying the ultimate spirituality of the 

 world, we are well within our rights in declining the consequence 

 on the logical ground that conclusions from an empirical premise 

 must in their own nature be themselves empirical and contingent. 



On the other hand, the extreme empiricism which treats all know- 

 ledge whatsoever as merely relative to the total psychical state 

 of the knower, and therefore in the end problematic, must, I appre- 

 hend, go down before any serious investigation into the nature of 

 the analytic truths of arithmetic, a consequence which seems to be 

 of some relevance in connection with the philosophic view popularly 

 known as Pragmatism. Thus I should look to the coming regeneration 

 of metaphysics, of which there are so many signs at the moment, on 

 the one hand, for emphatic insistence on the right, e. g., of physics 

 and biology and psychology to be treated as purely empirical 

 sciences, and as such freed from the last vestiges of any domination 

 by metaphysical presuppositions and foregone conclusions, and on 



