What is the defence for this apparently-circular process? Simply that it is a process of establishing _congruity_ among our symbols. It is finding a mode of so symbolizing the unknown activities, subjective and objective, and so operating with our symbols, that all our acts may be rightly guided—guided, that is, in such ways that we can anticipate, when, where, and in what quantity some one of our symbols, or some combination of our symbols, will be found. Mr. Sidgwick’s difficulty arises, I think, from having insufficiently borne in mind the statements made at the outset, in “The Data of Philosophy,” that such conceptions as “are vital, or cannot be separated from the rest without mental dissolution, must be assumed as true _provisionally_;” that “there is no mode of establishing the validity of any belief except that of showing its entire _congruity_ with all other beliefs;” and that “Philosophy, compelled to make those fundamental assumptions without which thought is impossible, has to justify them by showing their _congruity_ with all other dicta of consciousness.” In {249} pursuance of this distinctly-avowed mode of procedure, I assume provisionally, an objective activity and a subjective activity, and certain general forms and modes (Space, Time, Matter, Motion, Force), which the subjective activity, operated on by the objective activity, ascribes to it, and which I suppose to correspond in some way to unknown forms and modes of the objective activity. These provisional assumptions, having been carried out to all their consequences, and these consequences proved to be congruous with one another and with the original assumptions, these original assumptions are justified. And if, finally, I assert, as I have repeatedly asserted, that the terms in which I express my assumptions and carry on my operations are but symbolic, and that all I have done is to show that by certain ways of symbolizing, perfect harmony results—invariable agreement between the symbols in which I frame my expectations, and the symbols which occur in experience—I cannot be blamed for incoherence. On the contrary, it seems to me that my method is the most coherent that can be devised. Lastly, should it be said that this regarding of everything constituting experience and thought as symbolic, has a very shadowy aspect; I reply that these which I speak of as symbols, are real relatively to our consciousness; and are symbolic only in their relation to the Ultimate Reality.