es real
existence with it. But if he has been as unsuccessful as I in
assimilating the Hegelian re-editings of the Anselmian proof,[143] he
will have to say that though Logic may determine _what_ the system must
be, _if_ it is, something else than Logic must tell us _that_ it is. Mr.
Haldane in this case would probably consciously, or unconsciously, make
an appeal to Fact: the disjunction _is_ decided, since nobody can
dispute that now, as a matter of fact, _something_, and not nothing,
_is_. We must _therefore_, he would probably say, go on to admit the
Whole System in the desiderated sense. Is not then the validity of the
Anselmian proof the nucleus of the whole question between Logic and
Fact? Ought not the efforts of Mr. Haldane and his friends to be
principally devoted to its elucidation? Is it not the real door of
separation between Empiricism and Rationalism? And if the Rationalists
leave that door for a moment off its hinges, can any power keep that
abstract, opaque, unmediated, external, irrational, and irresponsible
monster, known to the vulgar as bare Fact, from getting in and
contaminating the whole sanctuary with his presence? Can anything
prevent Faust from changing "Am Anfang war das Wort" into "Am Anfang war
die That?"

Nothing in earth or heaven. Only the Anselmian proof can keep Fact out
of philosophy. The question, "Shall Fact be recognized as an ultimate
principle?" is the whole issue between the Rationalists and the
Empiricism of vulgar thought.

Of course, if so recognized, Fact sets a limit to the
"through-and-through" character of the world's rationality. That
rationality might then mediate between all the members of our
conception of the world, but not between the conception itself and
reality. Reality would have to be given, not by Reason, but by Fact.
Fact holds out blankly, brutally and blindly, against that universal
deliquescence of everything into logical relations which the Absolutist
Logic demands, and it is the only thing that does hold out. Hence the
ire of the Absolutist Logic--hence its non-recognition, its 'cutting' of
Fact.

The reasons it gives for the 'cutting' are that Fact is speechless, a
mere word for the negation of thought, a vacuous unknowability, a
dog-in-the-manger, in truth, which having no rights of its own, can find
nothing else to do than to keep its betters out of theirs.

There are two points involved here: first the claim that certain things
have rights that