CHAPTER IV. 



PHENOMENON AND NOUMENON. 



Summing up the results of the foregoing dismission, we have 

 seen that neither the test of truth proposed by Hume, nor 

 that proposed by Kant, can be regarded as valid, considered 

 by itself ; but that, when fused together in the crucible of 

 modern psychologic analysis, the two can be regarded as 

 making up a criterion of truth adequate to all the needs of 

 intelligent beings. It has been proved that, since the series 

 of our conceptions is but the register of our experience, 

 perfect congruity of experience must generate in us beliefs 

 of which the component conceptions can by no mental effort 

 be torn apart. Whence it follows that, if relative truth be 

 defined as the correspondence between the order of our con- 

 ceptions and the order of phenomena, we have this for our 

 test of truth : — When any given order among our conceptions 

 is so coherent that it cannot be sundered except by the 

 temporary annihilation of some one of its terms, there must 

 be a corresponding order among phenomena. And this state- 

 ment, while it expresses the fundamental theorem of what is 

 known as the experience-philosophy, recognizes also a germ 

 of truth in the Kantian doctrine of necessity. When, in a 

 future chapter, the exposition of the Doctrine of Evolution 

 shall have advanced so far that we may profitably considei 



