would be an
arbitrary one, determined by personal bias, for the object being
indeterminate, its elements can be apperceived as forming all kinds
of unities. A theory is a form of apperception, and in applying it to
the facts, although our first concern is naturally the adequacy of
our instrument of comprehension, we are also influenced, more
than we think, by the ease and pleasure with which we think in its
terms, that is, by its beauty.

The case of two alternative theories of nature, both exhaustive and
adequate, may seem somewhat imaginary. The human mind is,
indeed, not rich and indeterminate enough to drive, as the saying is,
many horses abreast; it wishes to have one general scheme of
conception only, under which it strives to bring everything. Yet the
philosophers, who are the scouts of common sense, have come in
sight of this possibility of a variety of methods of dealing with the
same facts. As at the basis of evolution generally there are many
variations, only some of which remain fixed, so at the origin of
conception there are many schemes; these are simultaneously
developed, and at most stages of thought divide the intelligence
among themselves. So much is thought of on one principle -- say
mechanically -- and so much on another -- say teleologically. In
those minds only that have a speculative turn, that is, in whom the
desire for unity of comprehension outruns practical exigencies,
does the conflict become intolerable. In them one or another of
these theories tends to swallow all experience, but is commonly
incapable of doing so.

The final victory of a single philosophy is not yet won, because
none as yet has proved adequate to all experience. If ever unity
should be attained, our unanimity would not indicate that, as the
popular fancy conceives it, the truth had been discovered; it would
only indicate that the human mind had found a definitive way of
classifying its experience. Very likely, if man still retained his
inveterate habit of hypostatizing his ideas, that definitive scheme
would be regarded as a representation of the objective relations of
things; but no proof that it was so would ever be found, nor even
any hint that there were external objects, not to speak of relations
between them. As the objects are hypostatized percepts, so the
relations are hypostatized processes of the human understanding.

To have reached a final philosophy would be only to have
formulated the typical and satisfyi