onstration from relative necessity presupposes that no adequate power interferes to prevent the sequence; under which state of things the relative becomes the absolute.

Necessity, widely conceived, is of two modes; the necessity to be and the necessity not to be. Each presents a fact unalterably connected with an antecedent fact. But negative necessity is commonly distinguished as impossibility. So also impossibility, widely conceived, is either impossibility to be or impossibility not to be, the latter of these being commonly called necessity. All this is taught by Aristotle.

Probability arises when an antecedent of possibility is certain to be completed into an antecedent of necessity in one or other of a plurality of ways, no one of which can be expected more than another, and when a given proportion of the possible alternative consequents have a common character. The consequent of probability is conceived of and asserted as having that character.

Contingency, as distinguished from possibility, is an indeterminate probability, the ratio of the chances not being settled. Both contingency and probability arise from a combination of necessity with possibility; for there is a general necessary consequent which must be realized in some one of a number of possible forms, called chances.

Let us note, also, that universal propositions respecting logical classes indicate laws of necessary sequence, while particular assertions set forth contingent sequence. Logical classes are creations of the mind, and have their chief use in the statement of laws of inference. Hence, the "quantity" of propositions should be explained as a secondary expression of necessity and contingency or, as logicians say, of modality.

14. Our general survey of the doctrine of belief has brought before us a number of fundamental conceptions, each of which should be assigned its proper place in a theory of knowledge. These conceptions mostly present themselves in pairs, and may be expressed antithetically. For example, conviction is either actualistic or hypothetical, the former of these being pre-eminently belief and knowledge, and the latter a preparatory and

ministerial kind of confidence. Then, actualistic conviction is either presentational or inferential; and inferential actualistic conviction is either apodeictic or problematic; the problematic being either in possibility or in probability. Hypothetical conviction is essentially inferential, and, like actualistic inference, is either apodeictic or problematic.

Necessity and possibility are the primary bases of inference. Probability and contingency result from a combination of these two bases. Necessity and impossibility are radically of the same nature with each other, and may be regarded as two aspects of the same thing.

Hypothetical conviction differs from actualistic inference in that the antecedent is supposed, and not presented as real; so that the consequent is only hypothetically asserted. The form and the sequence of thought are the same in hypothetical as in actualistic inference. Both modes of conviction alike relate to existence and non-existence; but, in the one, these are merely matters of conception; in the other, they are facts, or realities, or are believed to be such.

An hypothetical sequence becomes actualistic if the antecedent be asserted as real; this takes place in "hypothetical" and "disjunctive" syllogisms, which, therefore, are actualistic in their total operation.

Hypothetical assertion may be either individual or general, according to the character of its antecedent, or subject. All general principles are hypothetical sequences; and they are either necessary or contingent. They are expressed, in categorical assertion, either with the "must" and " may " of the "modal" proposition, or by the "all" and the some of the " pure proposition. "Quantity," universal and particular, is only an expression of modality.

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15. This exposition of the forms of thought employed in judgment seems plain enough. But clearly, if these forms have been rightly presented, they are not so many co-ordinate, independent, and ultimate modes of conception, but the diverse and variously related members of a system. They do not lie side by side like the panels of a door or the panes of a window;

they resemble rather the unequal branches of a genealogical tree, or the parts of a complicated machine.

Therefore, also, we say that Kant's twelve " categories cannot be accepted as furnishing an instructive tabulation of the ultimate forms of judgment. Had they been proposed as a primary and tentative enumeration of assertive modes of thought, with a view to the commencement of scientific analysis, they might not have been altogether worthless. But as the result of " an analysis of the elements of human reason," that table of categories, in four sets of three each, is an egregious blunder. It is not only founded on the false theory that judgment is the faculty which gives unity to our ideas by bringing them together under certain general forms of conception, but it fails to classify judgments according to their true differences. Mistaking the superficial for the fundamental, it is defective and misleading in the extreme, and is the beginning of an endless and hopeless confusion.

For the better exhibition of the truth concerning forms of judgment (or mental assertion) we shall subjoin to the present dissertation a table showing the different modes of belief or conviction and their relatedness to one another.

16. Yet again, Perceptionalism teaches that general ideas are the product of generalization, and general principles of principiation, and that there is no exception to this rule. Principiation is the generalization of sequences, and it involves more than the generalization of ideas, for it pertains only to illative propositions and is accompanied by an hypothetical belief.

The law according to which principiation takes place is that which justifies "reasoning from example," and may be called the homologic principle. It is that the same (that is, an exactly similar) consequent may be inferred upon the repetition of an antecedent already known to have that consequent. This presupposes that the human mind can perceive, in individual cases, the relation between antecedent and consequent, and also what elements are essential to the antecedent.

Induction, or the generalization of "the laws of nature," is one species of principiation; the formulation of ontological

principles is another. Metaphysical and mathematical axioms are generalizations from the perception of absolute necessities in individual cases; these axioms are called self-evident because they are conceived and asserted with little consciousness of any mental process.

The doctrine that all things which exist are individuals, and that general objects and truths are forms of thought constructed from individual perceptions, was more definitely advocated by Locke than by preceding philosophers; but it has always commended itself to sober-minded thinkers. According to this view Reason is not the birthplace of general notions and principles, but rather the workshop where they are manufactured and stored. It is an endowment of mental strength manifested, first, in the clear penetrative apprehension of individual facts and relations, and then in the analysis, generalization, and logical development of the knowledge thus obtained. This conception of the Rational Faculty may be humbler than that of the Noûs of Plato, or the "Pure Reason" of modern Idealism; yet, if it be the true conception, it is noble enough for us, and to be preferred to even the most imposing philosophical myth.

These views of Reason and its objects consist with that distinction which many make between φαινόμενα and νούμενα, provided the former be taken to signify all observable actualities (including substances, powers, spaces, times, and relations), and the latter to signify all the objects of rational cognition or conception. For then voúueva, when they are individual, are simply paióueva rationally and clearly understood; and, when they are general, they are merely abstract conceptions derived from the perception of the pawóμeva. But, if by pawóμeva be meant only things whichc an affect the senses, and the implication be that no other are immediately perceived, and if by voúueva be meant the objects of rational conception, and the implication be that these are things of a different description from objects immediately perceived, then we discard both voúμeva and paióμeva as metaphysical fictions and the embodiments of error.

17. Finally, we claim that Perceptionalism is the basis of a reliable ontology. In other words, it introduces satisfactory

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theories concerning "the nature of things"-concerning the constitution of the Universe and concerning God. This success is the result both of the positive, and of the negative, doctrines of this system. Those who find the beginnings of knowledge in immediate presentational cognition build on a firm foundation; and when, in addition to this, they ignore all a priori assumptions of every kind, they may be confident that patient investigation will enable them to distinguish truth from falsehood.

Some ontological principles, obtained from our immediate perceptions, have been already mentioned, as, for example, that individuality is the necessary property of everything that exists, generality being ascribable only to certain thought-objects which have no existence. We have seen also that all things are subject to "conditions," so that the Universe is permeated with a network of necessary relations. And we have found that the Law of Conditions is the philosophical basis of possibility and impossibility, of necessity, contingency, and probability.

We now add that Perceptionalism obtains the categories, or supreme genera, of Being from the analysis of our immediate individual cognitions, these being the origin and ground of all human knowledge; and it proposes the following eight Categories, namely, Space and Time, Substance and Power, Action and Change, Quantity and Relation. All these, together with their negations, are perceived in connection with one's own spirit and one's own body; and nothing can be conceived of that is not either one of these or a combination of more than one; nor can anything exist except according to the nature and laws of these eight forms of entity.

Moreover, as these kinds of entity differ from one another, we cannot say that, because each is an entity, therefore there is only one mode of entity, or only one entity. In like manner those who perceive two forms of substance the spiritual and the material—and many separate individuals of each form, cannot allow either that there is only one substance or that there is only one kind of substance. When we think, in the general, either of entity or of substance, we think one thought; but the oneness of that thought does not prove that there is only