SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE METHODS 



tlons may not correspond with the order of 

 phenomena. And this view of metaphysical 

 method is grounded upon the psychological 

 error, that in our transcendental or extra-sensi- 

 ble conceptions of Space, Time, Causality, etc., 

 we possess " innate ideas " endued with a valid- 

 ity quite independent of experience, so that 

 inferences logically deduced from such "innate 

 ideas" can afford to dispense with objective 

 verification.^ The results of these incompatible 

 teachings are written in history. In science 

 Descartes has been the forerunner of Euler, 

 D'Alembert, Lagrange, Laplace, Fresnel, Le- 

 verrier, and Helmholtz : in philosophy he has 

 been the forerunner of Spinoza and Male- 

 branche, Schelling, and Hegel. 



The subjective method, as laid down by Des- 

 cartes, has been carried out in metaphysics by 



1 *' The truth of a proposition is not given simply by show- 

 ing that it is a necessary consequence from some preced- 

 ing proposition ; that is only showing the logical operation 

 to have been irreproachable ; and an operation may be 

 accurately performed although its premises are inexact." 

 Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind, vol. i. p. 381. — Of 

 course Descartes, as a mathematician familiar with the process 

 of reductio ad absurdum^ would freely admit this. But he 

 would claim that there are sundry premises which, as being 

 framed a priori in accordance with the constitution of the 

 thinking mind, are not amenable to the jurisdiction of expe- 

 rience ; and that hence conclusions drawn from these pre- 

 mises need be submitted only to a logical test. 

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