rine of absolute contingencies of Stuart Mill, the most consistent
and logical of the positivists. The supreme triumph of reason, the
analytical--that is, the destructive and dissolvent--faculty, is to cast
doubt upon its own validity. The stomach that contains an ulcer ends by
digesting itself; and reason ends by destroying the immediate and
absolute validity of the concept of truth and of the concept of
necessity. Both concepts are relative; there is no absolute truth, no
absolute necessity. We call a concept true which agrees with the general
system of all our concepts; and we call a perception true which does not
contradict the system of our perceptions. Truth is coherence. But as
regards the whole system, the aggregate, as there is nothing outside of
it of which we have knowledge, we cannot say whether it is true or not.
It is conceivable that the universe, as it exists in itself, outside of
our consciousness, may be quite other than it appears to us, although
this is a supposition that has no meaning for reason. And as regards
necessity, is there an absolute necessity? By necessary we mean merely
that which is, and in so far as it is, for in another more
transcendental sense, what absolute necessity, logical and independent
of the fact that the universe exists, is there that there should be a
universe or anything else at all?

Absolute relativism, which is neither more nor less than scepticism, in
the most modern sense of the term, is the supreme triumph of the
reasoning reason.

Feeling does not succeed in converting consolation into truth, nor does
reason succeed in converting truth into consolation. But reason going
beyond truth itself, beyond the concept of reality itself, succeeds in
plunging itself into the depths of scepticism. And in this abyss the
scepticism of the reason encounters the despair of the heart, and this
encounter leads to the discovery of a basis--a terrible basis!--for
consolation to build on.

Let us examine it.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] _Pragmatism, a New Name for some Old Ways of Thinking_. Popular
lectures on philosophy by William James, 1907.

[27] _Treatise of Human Nature_, book i., part iv., sect. vi., "Of
Personal Identity": "I never can catch _myself_ at any time without a
perception, and never can observe anything but the perception."

[28] Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, _Lectures on the History of the Eastern
Church_, lecture i., sect. iii.

[29] 1 Cor. i. 23.

[30] Gustave Flauber