38.] To some extent this source from which Empiricism draws is common to it with metaphysic. It is in our materialised conceptions, _i.e._ in facts which emanate, in the first instance, from experience, that metaphysic also finds the guarantee for the correctness of its definitions (including both its initial assumptions and its more detailed body of doctrine). But, on the other hand, it must be noted that the single sensation is not the same thing as experience, and that the Empirical School elevates the facts included under sensation, feeling, and perception into the form of general ideas, propositions or laws. This, however, it does with the reservation that these general principles (such as force), are to have no further import or validity of their own beyond that taken from the sense-impression, and that no connexion shall be deemed legitimate except what can be shown to exist in phenomena. And on the subjective side Empirical cognition has its stable footing in the fact that in a sensation consciousness is directly present and certain of itself. In Empiricism lies the great principle that whatever is true must be in the actual world and present to sensation. This principle contradicts that 'ought to be' on the strength of which 'reflection' is vain enough to treat the actual present with scorn and to point to a scene beyond--a scene which is assumed to have place and being only in the understanding of those who talk of it. No less than Empiricism, philosophy (§ 7) recognises only what is, and has nothing to do with what merely ought to be and what is thus confessed not to exist. On the subjective side, too, it is right to notice the valuable principle of freedom involved in Empiricism. For the main lesson of Empiricism is that man must see for himself and feel that he is present in every fact of knowledge which he has to accept. When it is carried out to its legitimate consequences, Empiricism--being in its facts limited to the finite sphere--denies the super-sensible in general, or at least any knowledge of it which would define its nature; it leaves thought no powers except abstraction and formal universality and identity. But there is a fundamental delusion in all scientific empiricism. It employs the metaphysical categories of matter, force, those of one, many, generality, infinity, &c.; following the clue given by these categories it proceeds to draw conclusions, and in so doing pre-supposes and applies the syllogistic form. And all the while it is unaware that it contains metaphysics--in wielding which, it makes use of those categories and their combinations in a style utterly thoughtless and uncritical. * * * * *