THE QUESTION STATED 



to stand for the whole of attainable philosophy 

 were partly based ? 



I state this dilemma as strongly as possible, 

 because it forcibly illustrates the omnipresence 

 of Mystery, — because it shows how, beneath 

 every physical problem, there lies a metaphy- 

 sical problem whereof no human cunning can de- 

 tect the solution. Practically, however, the ave- 

 nue of escape has sometime since been implicitly 

 indicated, — in the fifth and sixth chapters of 

 these Prolegomena. In the chapter on Causation 

 it was shown that, though we can in nowise con- 

 ceive matter as acting upon matter, yet, for the 

 purposes of common-sense, of science and of 

 philosophy, it is quite enough that one kind of 

 phenomenal manifestation is invariably and un- 

 conditionally succeeded by some other kind of 

 phenomenal manifestation. And in characteriz- 

 ing the Subjective and Objective Methods, we 

 saw that the truth of any proposition, for scien- 

 tific purposes, is determined by its agreement 

 with observed phenomena, and not by its con- 

 gruity with some assumed metaphysical basis. 

 For example, the entire Newtonian astronomy 

 — the most elaborate and finished scientific 

 achievement of the human mind — rests upon 

 a hypothesis which, if metaphysically inter- 

 preted, is simply inconceivable. The conception 

 of matter attracting matter through an inter- 

 vening tract of emptiness is a conception which 

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