THE TEST OF TRUTH 



and of the process of budding ; but the three 

 concepts are wholly disparate and refuse to 

 unite into a thinkable proposition. The hy- 

 pothesis had no other foundation than the vague 

 associations with the processes of vegetal life 

 which cluster about such a word as " root ; ** 

 and the fact that a scholar like Schlegel could 

 seriously found a theory of language upon such 

 a mere chaos of half-shaped conceptions shows 

 us how easy it is for highly educated men to 

 think in a very slovenly manner. But it like- 

 wise conclusively shows us that the assent of 

 philosophers in past ages, or of uneducated 

 people in our own age, to sundry unthinkable 

 propositions, is not to be cited as evidence that 

 there are minds which can think what is un- 

 thinkable. The building up of enormous the- 

 ories out of purely verbal propositions, which 

 do not correspond to any thinkable concatena- 

 tion of conceptions, has always been the beset- 

 ting sin of human philosophizing. It has been 

 known, since the Middle Ages, by the appar- 

 ently incongruous epithet of Realism, because 

 at that time it was most conspicuously illus- 

 trated in the famous theory that wherever there 

 is a general term there must be a real objective 

 thing corresponding to it, — a general Horse, 

 for example, in addition to all individual horses. 

 This single phase of the mental habit in ques- 

 tion might be cited as an all-sufficient answer 



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