CHAPTER I.

PRIMARY TRUTH INVESTMENTS.

THE natural introduction to any discussion of first principles is a statement of the terms of knowledge. Any writer on such themes is constantly making appeals to methods which he considers valid; and it is well for the reader to get these and know the writer's viewpoint. It clears the ground and saves time. Unless the processes of the human mind are brought to some unity of understanding, there is no protection against any sort of fanatical notion or interpretation. Knowledge is the truth perceived. It is the veritas cognitionis. The mind produces knowledge as the bee produces honey. The mind feeds and grows on its knowledge as the bee on its honey. That fact may be the open highway to endless being. At any rate, the truth apprehended is mandatory. We are never negatively related to any feature of it, and we are not authorized to pick out a piece and go with it, as a boy does with his bread and butter. A man can not refuse to know a thing

because it will not fatten his swine. The truth is not our servant-it is our destiny. All the meanings and consequences of human action depend on what the world is, and what man is. Life must get its character from the knowledge it has of the great realities which hedge it about. In a world of so vast and varied need as this, knowable things, even of a primary nature, are not unpractical. The spirit of man is enriched only as it interprets rationally the truths which have been put within its reach. Is it not worth while to search patiently for that to which we must surrender finally? There can be no compromise with the inner life of the world and the universe beyond it. The yearning to apprehend the real is universal. The common man quickly loses interest in the leisured student of abstraction who goes off into the fog and gets lost, but he never ceases to make the compelling inquiry about the main issue. "What kind of a world is this, and what am I, that I should fit into it in this way?" Sekese, the savage Kaffir, said to M. Ambrouseille: "I sat down upon a rock and asked myself sorrowful questions. I can not see the wind, but what is it? Who brings it, makes it blow, and roar, and

terrify me? Do I know how the corn sprouts? Yesterday there was not a blade in my field; to-day I returned and found some. Who can

have given to the earth the wisdom and the power to produce it? Then I buried my head in both my hands."

The savage daily walks along the edges of an invisible realm and becomes a perplexed questioner of the inner meaning of things. Whatever it is that launches him into being without his knowledge or consent, and lashes him, perhaps, with an untoward life, and takes him hence against his will, is no small affair to him. He may not suffer in his own state as keenly as the cultured man would under like circumstances, and he may not take any time off to think about it, but he is oppressed, nevertheless, with the dull feeling that at the bottom of his wild, rude state there exists a tremendous somewhat, which moves over about him, and underneath him, in a manner at times to put into him a nameless dread, and he bows down and propitiates. He crouches because he is haunted by his fears, being ignorant. The issue with this low man is knowledge. The issue with the race is knowledge.

13

Space and Time.

There are three outer conditions for the human mind in its pursuit of truth which are so nearly axiomatic in their nature as to need only a brief statement to be accepted. First, there must be

a place to put things-which is space. Second, there must be a now and a then-which is time. These truths are usually classed with our most primary apprehensions. They are truths of condition-not of matter or substance. Being essential, they have their ground in necessity. They are universals. They are the home of being, the substrate and undergirding of reality. In the forms of matter everywhere, and in the action of mind, they are so clearly elements of the first instance that any prolonged discussion of them is needless in these pages.

Connectedness.

The other outer condition of knowledge is connectedness. The possibility of knowledge hinges on the question of continuity or discontinuity in nature. A disconnected natural system could not furnish the conditions of knowledge. Unity and continuity must be at the bottom of things if the mind has any hope to win understandings.

We do not live in a disjointed universe. No stray worlds. No stray atoms. The law of the inverse squares is active through all the spaces. Light, heat, and electricity are only different modes of motion. Some of the folks in the science departments are now making a pretty good case `out of the proposition that rhythm is the master key of creation. Knowledge is not an extracted part of anything. Truth never breaks connectionis never static. The truth-getter may let go, but he can not carry off anything. That is, he may empty himself to the verge of being snuffed out, but he can not create an independency. To know ever so little is to have attachment to the system. Partial knowledge is not disaster. need not be mixed error. It may be wholly true, measured by the knowing capacity. It may be true to the vision of one mind and error to another. A star is a bright speck to a child, but that degree would not work well in an astronomical formula. Herein lies the truth of pragmatism. The rational nature of a limited experience is provided for. We could not, if we would, deal with the absolute verities, and we are not obliged. It is not in the nature of mind to apprehend, or in the nature of truth to be apprehended in change

It