Should the inquirer enter upon the question, How are these facts to be explained? he must consider how any further investigation is to be conducted, and what is the possible degree of validity of its conclusions. Remembering that he cannot transcend consciousness, he sees that anything in the shape of an interpretation must be {211} subordinate to the laws of consciousness. Every hypothesis he entertains in trying to explain himself to himself, being an hypothesis which can be dealt with by him only in terms of his mental states, it follows that any process of explanation must itself be carried on by testing the cohesions among mental states, and accepting the absolute cohesions. His conclusions, therefore, reached only by repeated recognitions of this test of absolute cohesion, can never have any higher validity than this test. It matters not what name he gives to a conclusion—whether he calls it a belief, a theory, a fact, or a truth. These words can be themselves only names for certain relations among his states of consciousness. Any secondary meanings which he ascribes to them must also be meanings expressed in terms of consciousness, and therefore subordinate to the laws of consciousness. Hence he has no appeal from this ultimate dictum; and seeing this, he sees that the only possible further achievement is the reconciliation of the dicta of consciousness with one another—the bringing all other dicta of consciousness into harmony with this ultimate dictum. * * * * *