COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



trine of relativity. The footing upon which this 

 doctrine stands resembles too much the footing 

 upon which rest the demonstrated truths of 

 physical science, to admit of its being explicitly 

 rejected, unless by those bold spirits who, like 

 Hegel,^ do not scruple to hurl their anathemas 

 in the face of physical science itself It is none 

 the less quite possible for the doctrine to be at 

 the same time explicitly asserted and implicitly 

 ignored. Berkeley and Hume, Kant and Ham- 

 ilton, and Comte, have one and all asserted the 

 relativity of knowledge and the vanity of on- 

 tological speculation. But our philosophy is 

 not that of Kant, or Hamilton, or Berkeley, or 

 Hume, or Comte. It is not the philosophy of 

 Kant, for it denies that we can have any crite- 

 rion of truth save that which is furnished by per- 

 fect congruity of experience. At the same time 

 it differs in many respects from the experience- 

 philosophy which is associated with the name 

 of Locke ; since it denies that the subject is the 



^ Even Hegel, indeed, in the following passage, admits the 

 impossibility of knowing things in themselves : * * Das Ding-an- 

 sich als solches ist nicht Anderes als die leere Abstraction, von 

 dem man allerdings nichts wissen kann, eben daran weil es 

 die Abstraction von aller Bestimmung sein soil." — Logikt 

 ii. 127. The admission, however, is in Hegel's case utterly 

 fruitless, since he falls into the same inconsistency as Kant, 

 maintaining that we have a test of truth independent of expe- 

 rience, and thus setting up the Subjective Method, as will 

 appear in the next chapter. 



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