27 2 
Yet we can have no higher certitudes than these. If they are 
not certitudes, none other can be ; for unless they are such, 
experimental knowledge is impossible. 
19. But further : while this philosophy affirms that all our 
knowledge is the result of experience, and that we have only 
experience of phenomena, a modern form of it endeavours to 
escape from the difficulties in which it is encircled, by allowing 
that the experience mav not be that of the individual, but the 
inherited experience of" the race. Accordingly, it affirms that 
that portion of our knowledge which appears to transcend ex- 
perience is really the result of a transmitted experience, derived 
from a long line of ancestors. How this relieves us from the 
difficulty it is difficult to see. _ 
20. To deal with such a question adequately would render it 
necessary to discuss the relation between subject and okj ect * 
This alone might well occupy an entire volume.. Still, without 
entering into these depths, there are a few obvious facts which 
will be sufficient to test the truth of the position which this 
philosophy seeks to establish. 
21. First. The assertion that all our knowledge is phenomenal, 
and that we are incapable of arriving at any knowledge of 
universal objective validity, is absolutely suicidal. The most scep- 
tical philosophy would be still-born, unless there was some one 
truth which is not of this description,— viz., that which affirms 
the universal validity of its own assertions. Unless it was 
objectively valid, universal scepticism must be the result; 
otherwise it might be true in one part of the universe, and 
not true in another. So, again, the affirmation of our reason 
that one of two contradictory propositions must be false, must 
be a knowledge which transcends experience, and be universally 
valid. To affirm the contrary would destroy the basis on 
which even the most sceptical philosophy must rest. Again : 
it is affirmed bv a popular form of philosophy, that all pro- 
positions which transcend the phenomenal are unknowable ; 
into which region it banishes the conception of a God. It it 
be so, it follows that this proposition must possess a universal 
objective validity independent of the subject which affirms it. 
Some knowledge, therefore, must be attainable which transcends 
experience. Even Pyrrhonism is compelled to affirm that one 
truth exists which is universally valid,— viz., that all truth is 
impossible. . _ .. . . , 
22. When God is banished by this philosophy into the 
regions of the unknowable, it confounds under a common name 
a number of conceptions entirely distinct; and boldly affirms 
that they all alike transcend the powers of rational thought. 
