OF THE THEORY OF PROBABILITIES. 51 



gether arbitrary, it may be replied that no mental act can be so. 

 Why and how facts and ideas correspond is no doubt one of the 

 great questions of philosophy ; but the answer to it is surely to 

 be developed from the consideration, that man in relation to the 

 universe is not spectator ah extra, but in some sort a part of that 

 which he contemplates, and that the rebus avolsa ratio, which is 

 in truth the fundamental postulate of nominalism, is therefore 

 inconcessible. The thoughts we think are, it is true, ours, but 

 so far as they are not mere error and confusion, so far as they 

 have anything of truth and soundness, they are something and 

 much more. The veritas essendi (to recur to the language of the 

 schoolmen) is the fountain from whence the veritas cognoscendi 

 is derived. The meaning which these phrases were intended 

 to convey is expressed in more modern language by Leibnitz 

 in the passage which I have cited in the note*. In every science 

 the fact and the idea correspond because the former is the reali- 

 zation of the latter, but as this realization is of necessity partial 

 and incomplete or rather because in the same fact are simulta- 

 neously realized a variety of separate ideas, separate, that is, as 

 we conceive them this correspondence is but imperfect and 

 approximate. It is only when in thought we remove the action 

 of disturbing causes to an indefinite distance, that we can con- 

 ceive the absolute verification of any a priori law. Only on the 

 horizon of our mental prospect earth and sky, the fact and the 

 idea, are seen to meet, though in reality the atmosphere is 

 everywhere present. Everywhere it surrounds and interpene- 

 trates the 777 fj,e\cuva on which we stand ; making it put forth 

 and sustain all the numberless forms of organization and of life. 

 The indefinitely prolonged series of trials, which enters into 

 the ordinary statement of the fundamental principle of the theory 

 of probabilities, is analogous to the infinite and infinitely smooth 

 horizontal plane, which would enable us to verify the first law of 

 motion. 



3. The simple negative notion of the absence of disturbing 

 forces is perpetually confounded with that of a tendency inherent 



* C'est Dieu qui est la derniere raison des choses, et la connaissance de Dieu 

 n'est pas moins le principe des sciences, que son essence et sa volonte" sont les 

 principes des dtres. [Erdniann, p. 106.] A little further on he adds : C'est sanc- 

 tifier la philosophic, que de faire couler ses ruisseaux de la fontaine des attributs de 

 Dieu. 



42 



