no MYSTICISM AND LOGIC 



ii 



If the notion of the universe and the notion of good 

 and evil are extruded from scientific philosophy, it may 

 be asked what specific problems remain for the philos- 

 opher as opposed to the man of science ? It would be 

 difficult to give a precise answer to this question, but 

 certain characteristics may be noted as distinguishing 

 the province of philosophy from that of the special 

 sciences. 



In the first place a philosophical proposition must be 

 general. It must not deal specially with things on the 

 surface of the earth, or with the solar system, or with 

 any other portion of space and time. It is this need of 

 generality which has led to the belief that philosophy 

 deals with the universe as a whole. I do not believe 

 that this belief is justified, but I do believe that a philo- 

 sophical proposition must be applicable to everything 

 that exists or may exist. It might be supposed that this 

 admission would be scarcely distinguishable from the 

 view which I wish to reject. This, however, would be 

 an error, and an important one. The traditional view 

 would make the universe itself the subject of various 

 predicates which could not be applied to any particular 

 thing in the universe, and the ascription of such peculiar 

 predicates to the universe would be the special business 

 of philosophy. I maintain, on the contrary, that there 

 are no propositions of which the " universe " is the sub- 

 ject ; in other words, that there is no such thing as the 

 " universe." What I do maintain is that there are 

 general propositions which may be asserted of each 

 individual thing, such as the propositions of logic. This 

 does not involve that all the things there are form a whole 

 which could be regarded as another thing and be made 



