[ H ] 



From all this it appears that in those times philo- 

 sophers, poets, and men of science alike, tacitly 

 assumed the presence of a power in the mind which 

 would enable it, under favourable conditions, to tran- 

 scend experience and to discover under phenomena 

 an absolute truth, an entity which existed prior to, and 

 was the real cause of, the phenomena. Such truth 

 was far from being merely an intelligible way of 

 regarding reminiscences in connection with one 

 another ; it was somehow in existence, and was 

 equally the truth whether a mind perceived it or no. 

 Newton evidently felt confident that he was disclos- 

 ing such truth to the world, and it may have been 

 this feeling which prompted his celebrated assertion, 

 " Hypotheses non fingo." 



This assumption as to the nature of scientific truth 

 would not bear examination. Hobbes (1588-1679) 

 pointed out that all science rests upon sensation, and 

 that sensation is a change in the sentient organism, 

 not a reproduction of some quality inherent in the 

 external object and independent of the organism. 

 It follows at once from this that science cannot be 

 a knowledge of the absolute relations of external 

 objects inter se, but only a knowledge of relations 

 among sensations, that is to say, relations among the 

 consecutive changes of the sentient organism. From 

 this, again, Hobbes was led to his theory of the 

 association of ideas. Locke (1632-1704) afterwards 

 worked independently in somewhat the same direc- 



