SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY iii 



the subject of predicates. It involves only the assertion 

 that there are properties which belong to each separate 

 thing, not that there are properties belonging to the 

 whole of things collectively. The philosophy which 

 I wish to advocate may be called logical atomism or 

 absolute pluralism, because, while maintaining that 

 there are many things, it denies that there is a whole 

 composed of those things. We shall see, therefore, that 

 philosophical propositions, instead of being concerned 

 with the whole of things collectively, are concerned with 

 all things distributively ; and not only must they be 

 concerned with all things, but they must be concerned 

 with such properties of all things as do not depend upon 

 the accidental nature of the things that there happen to 

 be, but are true of any possible world, independently of 

 such facts as can only be discovered by our senses. 



This brings us to a second charateristic of philo- 

 sophical propositions, namely, that they must be a 

 priori. A philosophical proposition must be such as can 

 be neither proved nor disproved by empirical evidence. 

 Too often we find in philosophical books arguments 

 based upon the course of history, or the convolutions of 

 the brain, or the eyes of shell-fish. Special and accidental 

 facts of this kind are irrelevant to philosophy, which must 

 make only such assertions as would be equally true 

 however the actual world were constituted. 



We may sum up these two characteristics of philo- 

 sophical propositions by saying that philosophy is the 

 science of the possible. But this statement unexplained 

 is liable to be misleading, since it may be thought that 

 the possible is something other than the general, whereas 

 in fact the two are indistinguishable. 



Philosophy, if what has been said is correct, becomes 

 indistinguishable from logic as that word has now come 



