66 PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
Let us, then, give up the standard of a priori conceivability, 
in view of its many historical failures, and adopé as possible that 
which is provisionally ascertained. The “ego” and the “cogito”— 
Cartesian starting points—have proved barren and irrelevant in 
Philosophy. True Philosophy is concerned with objectivity. The 
data of consciousness, mainly acquired in infancy or in the womb, 
are blind guides. Many an ego, whose brain was his cosmos, has 
run through his brief subjectivity, but the order of nature endures. 
The same facts are continually observed, verified, recorded, and 
rectified, but the observers change. Their intelligent observations 
add to the sum of knowledge. This is all the proof we need of 
objectivity, and all we will get. The insoluble difficulties of Phi- 
losophy have disappeared one by one since the happy thought of 
eliminating them by observation entered. The immortals are those 
who have successfully applied this method. It is only where ob- 
servation fails that the insolubility lingers. Beyond the sphere of 
the knowable it will continue, in spite of introspection. How mas- 
terful is fact in the presence of the most intricate mental subtle- 
ties. The ball leaves the bat, in spite of the inconceivability. 
Galileo’s plummet dropped from the moving mast strikes the deck 
and not the water, in spite of the inconceivability. The Earth re- 
turns in its orbit, to the second, in spite of the sun’s rapid fall 
through space, and of the inconceivability. Two opposed horses 
can pull no more than one, in spite of the inconceivability. The 
guinea and the feather dropped in the exhausted receiver strike 
the plate together, in spite of the inconceivability. The isochro- 
nous pendulum swings through the widest arc in the same time as 
through the smallest, in spite of the inconceivability. The minute 
hand overtakes the hour hand, in spite of the inconceivability. The 
magnet draws the iron with undiminished force through all pos- 
sible interpositions, in spite of the inconceivability. Could an ex- 
ception be found, the perpetual-motion “crank” would work a 
greater inconceivability, by the instant contrivance of a power- 
generating machine. 
We need not aspire, therefore, to remove any of the inconceiva- 
bilities of the external world. We must accept them as natural to 
the finite comprehension, as necessary to faculties which act by 
comparison, and above all as evidences of objectivity. On the 
other hand we should avoid that opposite error of the introspective 
