THE TEST OF TRUTH 



perience will be a compound of subjective and 

 objective conditions; another thing to say, Here 

 is the pure a priori element in every experience, 

 the form which the mind impresses on the mat- 

 ter given externally. The first was an almost 

 inevitable conclusion ; the second was a fiction. 

 Psychology, if it can show us anything, can 

 show the absolute impossibility of our discrimi- 

 nating the objective from the subjective ele- 

 ments. In the first place, the attempt would 

 only be possible on the ground that we could, 

 at any time and in any way, disengage Thought 

 from its content ; separate in Feeling the object 

 as it is out of all relation to Sensibility, or the 

 subject as pure subject. If we could do this in 

 one instance, we should have a basis for the in- 

 vestigation. The chemist who has learned to 

 detect the existence of an acid by its reactions 

 in one case can by its reactions determine it in 

 other cases. Having experience of an acid and 

 an alkaloid, each apart from the other, he can 

 separate them when finding them combined in 

 a salt, or he can combine them when he finds 

 them separate. His analysis and synthesis are 

 possible, because he has elsewhere learned the 

 nature of each element separately. But such 

 analysis or synthesis is impossible with the ob- 

 jective and subjective elements of thought. 

 Neither element is ever given alone. Pure 

 thought and pure matter are unknown quantir 



73 



