THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 337 
higher authority than the claim of infallibility made at 
times by certain religious organizations; for, as only 
the senses and the reason can be appealed to in support 
of the claims of the senses and the reason, the argument 
of science is of necessity reasoning in a circle. Science 
can give us no ground solid enough to bear the weight 
of belief. Belief must exist, and it may therefore rest 
on the innate needs of man and the philosophy which is 
built on these needs in accordance with the authority 
which the human soul finds sufficient. 
Balfour calls attention to the fact that human ex- 
perience is not in its essence objective. It consists only 
of varying phases of consciousness. 
These phases of consciousness at best 
only point toward truth. They are not 
truth itself. They vary with the vary- 
ing nerve cells of each individual creature on whom 
phases of consciousness are impressed, and again with 
the changes in the cells themselves. The tricks of the 
senses are well known in psychology, as is also the fail- 
ure of the senses as to material outside their usual range. 
Life is at best “in a dimly lighted room,” and all the 
objects about us are in their essence quite different from 
what they seem. This essence is unknown and unknow- 
able. We are well aware that we have no power to 
recognise all phases of reality. The electric condition 
of an object may be as real as its colour or its tempera- 
ture, and yet none of our senses respond to it. Our 
eyes give but an octave of the vibrations we call light, 
and our ears are dull to all but a narrow range in pitch 
of sound. P 
Likewise is reason to be discredited. The common- 
est things become unknown or impossible when viewed 
“in the critical light of philosophy.” Balfour shows 
that the simple affirmation “the sun gives light,” loses 
Human experi- 
ence not objec- 
tive. 
