dentified and localized before
they are placed within such a uniformity they fall within the domain of
the psychological philosopher who can at least place them in their
relation to the other events in the experience of the individual who
observes them. Considered as having a residual meaning apart from the
law to which they have become exceptions, they can become the
subject-matter of the rationalist. It is important that we recognize
that neither the positivist nor the rationalist is able to identify the
nature of the fact or datum to which they refer. I refer to such
stubborn facts as those of the sporadic appearance of infectious
diseases before the germ theory of the disease was discovered. Here was
a fact which contradicted the doctrine of the spread of the infection by
contact. It appeared not as an instance of a law, but as an exception to
a law. As such, its nature is found in its having happened at a given
place and time. If the case had appeared in the midst of an epidemic,
its nature as a case of the infectious disease would have been cared for
in the accepted doctrine, and for its acceptance as an object of
knowledge its location in space and time as an event would not have been
required. Its geographical and historical traits would have followed
from the theory of the infection, as we identify by our calculations the
happy fulfilment of Thales' prophecy. The happening of an instance of a
law is accounted for by the law. Its happening may and in most instances
does escape observation, while as an exception to an accepted law it
captures attention. Its nature as an event is, then, found in its
appearance in the experience of some individual, whose observation is
controlled and recorded as his experience. Without its reference to this
individual's experience it could not appear as a fact for further
scientific consideration.

Now the attitude of the positivist toward this fact is that induced by
its relation to the law which is _subsequently_ discovered. It has then
fallen into place in a series, and his doctrine is that all laws are but
uniformities of such events. He treats the fact when it is an exception
to law as an instance of the new law and assumes that the exception to
the old law and the instance of the new are identical. And this is a
great mistake,--the mistake made also by the neo-realist when he assumes
that the object of knowledge is the same within and without the mind,
that nothing happens to