The Problems of Philosophy

Bertrand Russell was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. His primary
interest was in the foundations of mathematics, and his three-volume Principia Mathematica (written
with Alfred North Whitehead) is the classic attempt to carry out the programme of deriving the whole
of mathematics from a set of simple, self-evident truths. He also wrote widely on other areas of
philosophy, and published a large number of writings on social and moral issues.

John Skorupski is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, and author of
English-Language Philosophy 1750–1945 (1993) and John Stuart Mill (1989).
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Problems of Philosophy
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
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in the UK and in certain other countries Introduction © John Skorupski 1998
First published 1912
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Contents

Introduction by John Skorupski

Preface

1 Appearance and Reality

2 The Existence of Matter

3 The Nature of Matter

4 Idealism

5 Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description

6 On Induction

7 On Our Knowledge of General Principles

8 How A Priori Knowledge is Possible

9 The World of Universals

10 On Our Knowledge of Universals

11 On Intuitive Knowledge

12 Truth and Falsehood

13 Knowledge, Error, and Probable Opinion

14 The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge

15 The Value of Philosophy

Appendix: Foreword to the German Translation

Bibliographical Note

Further Reading

Index
Introduction

BERTRAND RUSSELL (1872–1970) wrote this celebrated introduction to philosophy in 1911 and
published it in January 1912. It has been read by generations of students of philosophy—in and out of
universities—ever since. The book belongs to one of Russell’s most fertile philosophical periods. In
1910 he had completed the long and wearying technical work required for Principia Mathematica, his
great collaborative work with A. N. Whitehead and one of the cornerstones of modern mathematical
logic. He said that his ‘intellect never quite recovered from the strain’; yet on questions of general
philosophy he evidently experienced a new release of freshness and vigour. Though the book is
written as a popular introduction—Russell called it his ‘shilling shocker ’—it advances definite views
and introduces thoroughly new ideas, for example on truth. It does so crisply, undogmatically,
unobtrusively, with luminous clarity. It certainly deserves its continued popularity.
Russell does not deal with all the problems of philosophy. As he explains in the preface, he
confines himself to those about which he thinks he can be positive and constructive. The upshot, given
his interests at the time, is that the book is mainly concerned with epistemology—the branch of
philosophy which investigates what we can be said to know or reasonably believe. Russell also comes
to some striking conclusions, on the basis of this investigation, about the ultimate kinds of things
there are. He does not deal with ethics or with a range of classical questions concerning mind and
action, such as the nature of the self or the question of free will. But something of his ethical outlook
is conveyed in what he has to say about the character and value of philosophy—a topic which recurs
throughout the book and gets a final chapter to itself.

Sense-data, physics, and instinctive belief

Russell begins with an analysis of perception. Appearances are relative: a table looks different from
different angles and in different lights. But we do not think the table itself changes. So Russell
postulates what he calls ‘sense-data’. They are ‘things that are immediately known in sensation’, ‘of
which we are immediately aware’ (p. 4); they change, though the table doesn’t. In introducing them,
Russell also distinguishes between an act or state of awareness and its object. A state of awareness is
mental, its object may or not be mental. This leads to a first important turning point. For with this
distinction to hand (and it will be important throughout the book), Russell might have concluded that
when you perceive the same table from different angles or in different lights, the object of your
awareness is the same though the experiences you have, which constitute your awareness of it, differ.
He could have held that the object of your awareness is the table, not the way it looks. He does not
take this view; he makes the way it looks to you the object of your awareness, and he takes this object,
the sense-datum, to be mental in the sense that it is private to your mind and would not exist if you did
not.
What then is the relation between sense-data and physical objects? Physical objects cause sense-
data; it is the aim of physics to tell us whatever we can know about them. What we can know about
them and the physical space and time they occupy, Russell eventually concludes in Chapter 3, is only
their relational structure, not their intrinsic nature. But first he raises a more basic question—’if the
reality is not what appears, have we any means of knowing whether there is any reality at all? And if
so, have we any means of finding out what it is like?’ (p. 6). It is logically possible, he thinks, that I
and my experiences and thoughts are all that exists. But the commonsense belief in matter is
instinctive and leads to the simplest systematic view, so we may accept it, even though we recognize
the logical possibility that it is false (pp. 10–11).
Russell proceeds to draw a moral:
All knowledge, we find, must be built up upon our instinctive beliefs, and if these are rejected, nothing is left. But among our instinctive
beliefs some are much stronger than others, while many have, by habit and association, become entangled with other beliefs, not really
instinctive, but falsely supposed to be part of what is believed instinctively.
Philosophy should show us the hierarchy of our instinctive beliefs, beginning with those we hold most strongly, and presenting each as
much isolated and as free from irrelevant additions as possible.… There can never be any reason for rejecting one instinctive belief
except that it clashes with others; thus, if they are found to harmonize, the whole system becomes worthy of acceptance.
It is of course possible that all or any set of our beliefs may be mistaken, and therefore all ought to be held with at least some slight
element of doubt. But we cannot have reason to reject a belief except on the ground of some other belief. (pp. 11–12)

Two points stand out about Russell’s method, as exemplified here.

1. It makes essential appeal to the rational authority of instinctive belief. Russell is not simply
inferring to the simplest hypothesis, instinctive or otherwise. In chapter 6, where he discusses
induction, he does not mention inference to the simplest hypothesis (or ‘best explanation’) as a
method of inference at all. The inductive principle which he there states on p. 37 could not allow us to
infer from sense-data to physical objects; it could only allow us to infer to correlations among sense-
data.
In this respect his method belongs to a very British tradition in philosophy, notably represented in
the nineteenth century by the ‘commonsense’ school of Thomas Reid and also by John Stuart Mill
(who lived just long enough to be Russell’s godfather). So it is interesting to note how Russell’s
position, as against his method, differs from theirs. Like Russell, Reid had affirmed the authority of
instinctive belief and the instinctive character of the belief in matter. However, he had also very
penetratingly criticized the notion that the ‘immediate’ objects of perception are sense-data, or in his
word, ‘ideas’. The view he took was the one which I said Russell might have taken, given his
distinction between an act of awareness and its object. Reid’s analysis of perception is very powerful
and many philosophers would be inclined to take his as against Russell’s side on this.
Mill too agreed on the authority of instinctive belief. Like Russell in this book (Ch. 11) and Reid
earlier he regarded memory beliefs as instinctive and so accepted them as authoritative. But unlike
Reid and Russell he argued that belief in matter is not instinctive. It results from the ‘habit and
association’ Russell allows for in the passage above. On these grounds Mill denied that there was any
reason to accept the existence of matter, if it is conceived as a non-mental cause of sensations. Matter
should instead be analysed as the permanent possibility of sensation—a position much like one
Russell himself was later to adopt, though only temporarily.
2. But why should we agree with Russell (and Reid and Mill) that if a belief is instinctive it is
rationally authoritative? Russell does not raise this question, even though he agrees that the fact that a
belief is instinctive does not entail that it is true. His attitude is the same as Reid’s and Mill’s: if we do
not accept the rational, though defeasible, authority of instinctive beliefs then no belief at all can be
justified. Against an absolute sceptic nothing can or needs to be said.
This may be right so far as it goes, but it leaves a philosophical mystery. Let P be some procedure,
acceptable to Russell, for refining and systematizing our instinctive beliefs. Then he is committed to
the thesis that an instinctive belief which survives P is a reasonable belief. What makes that belief
reasonable? Is it just that we instinctively believe it? One might surely hope to shed further light on
this obviously important connexion between ‘instinctiveness’ and reasonableness, by a philosophical
examination of these concepts. But Russell, like Mill and Reid before him, makes no attempt to do so.
Idealism: knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description
The criticism of idealism (Russell defines it on p. 19) is a recurring topic of Problems of Philosophy.
Idealism is represented in various places in the book by Berkeley, Kant, and Hegel—very different
philosophers whom Russell deals with in very different ways. Some of Berkeley’s arguments are
efficiently dispatched in Chapter 4. Russell returns to his distinction between a mental act and its
object and (surprisingly perhaps, given his own endorsement of ‘sense-data’) deploys it against
Berkeley in pretty much the way Reid did (pp. 21–2). Further, one of Berkeley’s central arguments for
idealism says that ‘we cannot know that anything exists which we do not know’ (p. 22). But as Russell
notes, ‘The word “know” is here used in two different senses’ (p. 23). There is knowledge that
something is the case, knowledge of truths, such as my knowledge that Paris is the capital of France;
and there is knowledge of things as against truths. Russell calls this latter kind of knowledge
acquaintance. For example I know Paris, that is, I am acquainted with it. I don’t know Brasilia, even
though I know that it is the capital of Brazil. As Russell says, we certainly can and do know that there
exist objects that we do not know, i.e. that there are objects with which we are not acquainted.
This is a good point to make about idealism, though as Russell says it only deals with one of many
arguments for idealism, and it is not particularly novel. In the next chapter, however (Ch. 5), the
discussion takes a novel turn. Russell introduces the notion of knowledge by description. I can be said
to know an object by description, if I know that it uniquely satisfies a description, For example I know
that Brasilia uniquely satisfies the description ‘capital of Brazil’, so I know it by description even
though I do not know it by acquaintance. Knowledge by description, unlike knowledge by
acquaintance, is reducible to knowing truths. Russell says that we are acquainted only with objects ‘of
which we are directly aware, without the intermediary of any process of inference or any knowledge
of truths’ (p. 25). This is an important part of his epistemology—call it thesis X. On the analysis so far
the only items of which we can strictly speaking be said to be aware, and with which we can therefore
be acquainted, are our sense-data and ourselves (pp. 27–8). So I can’t really be acquainted with Paris,
only with sense-data of it. Now Russell adds another important thesis, about the connexion between
acquaintance and understanding:

Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents

with which we are acquainted, (p. 32)
Call this thesis Y. It follows that we can only make judgements about objects with which we are
acquainted, thus, so far, only about ourselves and our sense-data. Even this would be impossible,
however, were these the only items with which we were acquainted. For to make a judgement about an
item is to predicate something of it, and to do that I must be acquainted with the something which is
predicated. Russell calls these things which are predicated universals. A very important and novel part
of his vision is that universals can be relations of any number of places. Properties are just the special
case of one-place relations. There can also be two-place relations like a loves b, three-place relations
like a gives b to c, four-place relations like a is further away from b than c is from d, and so on.
It follows by X that we must be directly aware of universals. So Russell’s complete list of what we
are directly aware of comprises ourselves, our sense-data, and universals. Of these, only universals
are public; only they are possible objects of more than one person’s acquaintance. This view, together
with X and Y, leads Russell to very peculiar conclusions about what we can talk about. For example it
leads him to the conclusion that we cannot affirm any propositions about Bismarck. For consider ‘B
was an astute diplomatist’, where ‘B’ is the object which is Bismarck. Only Bismarck himself is able
to judge that. The best we can do is describe such propositions—e.g. ‘the proposition asserting,
concerning the actual object which was the first Chancellor of the German Empire, that this object
was an astute diplomatist’ (p. 31). Having produced such a description we can judge that the
proposition which uniquely satisfies it is true. Only because the universals which enter into such
descriptions are public are we able to communicate. Every other object of our acquaintance is private
to us.
We would not be forced to the strange conclusion that only Bismarck is acquainted with Bismarck
if we gave up either X or Russell’s restrictive doctrine of what we can be said to be directly aware of.
Isn’t a person talking to Bismarck ‘directly aware’ of Bismarck? Again, on any ordinary sense of
what I can be said to be acquainted with, I am acquainted with Paris but not Brasilia. Certainly this has
some connexion with facts about my awareness. I’m acquainted with Paris because I’ve been there, not
asleep but conscious of my environment. Y has some plausibility if we combine it with this ordinary
notion of acquaintance. Consider, for example, the statement ‘The longest-lived of men is not yet
born’. I may judge that to be true. In an important sense, however, it is not a judgement about the
actual object which is the longest lived of men. For suppose that Fred, whom I know well, is in fact
going to be the longest-lived of men. Then my judgement is false; but still it was not a judgement
about Fred—that is, I wasn’t judging, in an obviously false way, of Fred that he is not yet born. On the
other hand, I certainly can make judgements about Fred, in this sense—whereas other people, born
centuries ago, could not, though they could have judged that the longest-lived of men was not yet
born. What then must hold for a person to be able to make judgements about Fred? Must that person
be acquainted with Fred? And if so in what sense? These questions ramify in a surprising way and
continue to puzzle philosophers.

Self-evidence, the a priori, and the world of universals (Chapters 6–11)

From Chapter 6 onwards Russell examines how we know general principles. First he argues that the
inductive principle itself can neither be proved nor disproved by experience; if known, it must be
known by its ‘intrinsic evidence’ (p. 38). Nor is induction the only general principle known in this
way. Chapter 7 adds that fundamental logical principles are also intrinsically evident, or ‘self-
evident’—indeed in Russell’s view they have a greater degree of self-evidence than induction. Russell
uses the traditional term ‘a priori’ to denote the knowledge we have of general principles based
purely on their self-evidence or the self-evidence of principles from which we deduce them. He
means that we can know them prior to, or independently of, the evidence furnished by experience,
though he agrees that experience may be necessary for us to become aware of them. Nor are logical
principles the only ones we know a priori. So are those of ethics (the doctrine of what is intrinsically
desirable) and arithmetic.
In Russell’s usage ‘a priori’ does not coincide with ‘self-evident’. For on the one hand some a
priori principles are not self-evident, they are only deducible from principles which are. On the other
hand, he also classes as self-evident truths which merely state what sense-data are given to the knower.
Moreover, since he thinks memory is direct awareness of past sense-data, these self-evident truths will
include truths about sense-data given in memory. Knowledge of such truths, together with a priori
knowledge of self-evident principles of logic, arithmetic, and ethics, is also said to be ‘immediate’ or
‘intuitive’. All other knowledge is ‘derivative’.
There are deep difficulties with this notion of ‘immediate’, ‘intuitive’, or ‘self-evident’ knowledge
which Russell never properly clears up, though he makes some attempt to do so in Chapters 11 and
13. He suggests that
two different notions are combined in ‘self-evidence’… one of them, which corresponds to the highest degree of self-evidence, is really
an infallible guarantee of truth, while the other, which corresponds to all the other degrees, does not give an infallible guarantee, but
only a greater or less presumption. (p. 68)

Later he explains:
We may say that a truth is self-evident, in the first and most absolute sense, when we have acquaintance with the fact which corresponds
to the truth. (p. 79)

Now as Russell uses the term ‘acquaintance’, we can only be said to be acquainted with an object or
fact if the object exists, or the fact obtains. So if I am acquainted with the fact to which my belief
corresponds then of course it follows that my belief is true. But how can I tell whether I am acquainted
with it or only seem to be?
Consider my knowledge of my present sense-experience. The following points are plausible. (i) It
is not inferred from my knowledge of something else, but consists simply in ‘immediate’ awareness
of that sense-experience. (ii) If I am aware of having a certain sense-experience then I am having that
sense-experience. (iii) If I seem to be aware of having a certain sense-experience then I am aware of
having it. This is the ideal example, for Russell, of ‘immediate’ or ‘intuitive’ knowledge in the first
sense. But now compare the case of memory. (i) My knowledge of my past sense-experience need not
be inferred from my knowledge of something else. (Of course in some cases it may be. For example I
may have forgotten having a certain experience but infer that I did have it from a diary entry.) (ii) If I
remember having a certain sense-experience then I did have that sense-experience. If I did not have the
experience then I only seem to remember having it. But at just this point the analogy breaks down. We
cannot say: (iii) If I seem to remember having a sense-experience then I did have it. I may with full
conscientiousness and sincerity seem to remember something without really remembering it. Russell
acknowledges the point on p. 66.
What about the case of a priori knowledge? How is such a priori knowledge possible? This is a
question famously raised by Kant. Russell agrees with Kant that not all a priori knowledge is
‘analytic’ (p. 46), contrary to the empiricists. And implicitly he goes further than Kant in holding that
not only mathematics but logic itself is not analytic. For he agrees that purely logical deduction can
give new knowledge (p. 44—a point that Mill had stressed). But Russell rejects Kant’s attempted
explanation of the possibility of non-analytic a priori knowledge. In essence he argues that while
Kant’s explanation would show why, say, it is necessary that we believe that 2 + 2 = 4, it doesn’t
explain why it is necessary that 2 + 2 = 4 (p. 49).
With Kant and empiricism dispatched the way is clear for Russell’s own answer: our a priori
knowledge is immediate or intuitive knowledge of universals and the relations which hold between
them. (Those relations are of course also universals.) His theory, he says with an air of innocence, is
Plato’s theory ‘with merely such modifications as time has shown to be necessary’ (p. 52). On pp. 54–
5 Russell neatly argues that anyone who tries to deny the existence of universals must at least
acknowledge the relational universal of resemblance. So every proposition must contain universals;
but not every proposition must contain particulars. Propositions about the relations between
universals contain only universals, and our knowledge of these can be a priori. ‘All a priori
knowledge deals exclusively with the relations of universals’ (p. 59).
Yet on one thing the empiricists were right. It cannot be known a priori that anything exists (p. 41).
So ‘all our a priori knowledge is concerned with entities which do not, properly speaking, exist,
either in the mental or in the physical world’ (p. 50). Russell, like other philosophers at the turn of the
century, is led to distinguish between existence and ‘subsistence’, or ‘being’ (pp. 56–7).
This is a picture which certainly differs both from the empiricists and from Kant. But it presents
obvious and very serious difficulties which Russell does not deal with (difficulties over and above the
mystifying distinction between existence and being). One question is this: why can’t all propositions
about universals be known a priori? ‘All men are mortal’ is a universal proposition and thus consists
exclusively of universals. But Russell would agree that it can be known only by induction. So it is not
a priori—why not? Why is induction necessary at all if we have immediate access to the world of
universals and of relations between them? How can it be that some of these relations are knowable a
priori and some not?
Another question concerns our alleged direct awareness of universals. In the case of memory, as
we saw, there is a difference between the experience of remembering and the thing remembered.
Because this is so I can have an experience as of remembering without actually remembering. Where
the remembering is genuine, it involves some form of linkage or transmission from the object
remembered to the experience of remembering. What about universals? Here too the universal of
which I am aware is distinct from my act of awareness. Apparently it must follow that I can have an
experience as of being aware of a universal without being aware of it. And also that there must be
some form of linkage or transmission from a universal of which I really am aware to my awareness
of it.
What that linkage could be is a mystery, especially as we are talking about linkage with a world of
timeless being. An even deeper mystery is this: how could acquaintance with some timelessly
subsistent entities give me knowledge of truths about the existent world; for example, the knowledge
that since I am a man, I will die? But even if these questions can be answered, Russell will only have
shown how it is that a priori knowledge is self-evident in the second, presumptive sense, not in the
first, absolute sense. This is because, as in the case of memory, there must be room for a distinction
between seeming to be aware of a relation between universals and actually being so aware. Now if we
accept (as is plausible) that seeming to remember something does give a presumptive and defeasible
warrant for holding that it happened, we can perhaps also accept that seeming to be aware of a relation
between universals gives a presumptive warrant for holding that it obtains. But this, though by no
means worthless, does not show that logic and arithmetic have the absolute certainty that Russell
wanted them to have. It remains open to an empiricist to argue that this kind of ‘a priori’ warrant can
be overturned by experience, just as the presumptive evidence of memory can be.

The Nature and Value of Philosophy

Passing over the distinctive theory of truth and judgement offered in Chapter 12 (see the suggested
further reading) and the discussion of Hegel in Chapter 14—both of which interestingly deploy
Russell’s ideas about relations—we turn finally to Russell’s view of the nature and value of
philosophy.
He does not see it, as Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle came to see it, as an activity inherently
distinct from science. Both philosophy and science must start from instinctive beliefs and evidence
and develop from them a conception of the world. The difference is that philosophy is more
concerned with criticism than evidence; specifically, with the critical review of our claims to
knowledge (p. 87). But constructive criticism, as against absolute scepticism which leads nowhere,
must begin from something which is at least provisionally accepted as knowledge.
Philosophy aims at knowledge but its value lies largely in its uncertainty. It liberates the mind from
small preoccupations. Contemplation of the universe fosters greatness of soul; but philosophies
which ‘assimilate the universe to Man’ (p. 92) cannot do that—they are really a form of self-assertion.
Clearly Russell’s idea of the value of philosophy is tied up with his instinctive realism about
physics and universals. Also connected with this instinctive realism is his style; a certain attractive
literal-mindedness, an absence of the self-ironies and allusiveness or evasiveness which are so
evident in other influential twentieth-century philosophical styles. It is interesting that Wittgenstein
disliked Russell’s Problems of Philosophy intensely—so intensely as to strain the friendship between
them. He had technical objections to Russell’s theory of judgement, and great philosophical distaste
for Russell’s play with ‘self-evidence’ and his notion of Platonic facts knowable a priori. But his
deepest, temperamental, objection was to the style and one might say the ethical attitude which the
book expresses, particularly in its last chapter, which Wittgenstein especially disliked.
Wittgenstein’s technical objections shook Russell very deeply indeed. And it was Wittgenstein’s
conception of philosophy as a self-dissolving activity—a conception very different from Russell’s—
that came to dominate analytic philosophy in the middle part of the century. Yet though his legacy
remains pervasive, it is no longer dominant. On the other hand Russell’s views in this book, both in
many of their details (including versions of his theory of judgement), but also in his general
conception of philosophy as the critical analysis of instinctive beliefs and scientific hypotheses, are
strongly supported by many philosophers today. Those views are also, as we noted, firmly in a
British tradition of doing philosophy. So this is an introduction written from one—but only one—
resilient perspective in philosophy, by its greatest twentieth-century representative. One couldn’t
reasonably ask for more.
Preface

IN THE FOLLOWING PAGES I HAVE CONFINED myself in the main to those problems of philosophy in
regard to which I thought it possible to say something positive and constructive, since merely
negative criticism seemed out of place. For this reason, theory of knowledge occupies a larger space
than metaphysics in the present volume, and some topics much discussed by philosophers are treated
very briefly, if at all.
I have derived valuable assistance from unpublished writings of G. E. Moore and J. M. Keynes:
from the former, as regards the relations of sense-data to physical objects, and from the latter as
regards probability and induction. I have also profited greatly by the criticisms and suggestions of
Professor Gilbert Murray.
1912

Note to Seventeenth Impression

WITH REFERENCE to certain statements on pages 23, 42, 76, and 77, it should be remarked that this
book was written in the early part of 1912 when China was still an Empire, and the name of the then
late Prime Minister did begin with the letter B.
1943
1
Appearance and Reality

IS THERE ANY KNOWLEDGE in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it? This
question, which at first sight might not seem difficult, is really one of the most difficult that can be
asked. When we have realized the obstacles in the way of a straightforward and confident answer, we
shall be well launched on the study of philosophy—for philosophy is merely the attempt to answer
such ultimate questions, not carelessly and dogmatically, as we do in ordinary life and even in the
sciences, but critically, after exploring all that makes such questions puzzling, and after realizing all
the vagueness and confusion that underlie our ordinary ideas.
In daily life, we assume as certain many things which, on a closer scrutiny, are found to be so full
of apparent contradictions that only a great amount of thought enables us to know what it is that we
really may believe. In the search for certainty, it is natural to begin with our present experiences, and
in some sense, no doubt, knowledge is to be derived from them. But any statement as to what it is that
our immediate experiences make us know is very likely to be wrong. It seems to me that I am now
sitting in a chair, at a table of a certain shape, on which I see sheets of paper with writing or print. By
turning my head I see out of the window buildings and clouds and the sun. I believe that the sun is
about ninety-three million miles from the earth; that it is a hot globe many times bigger than the
earth; that, owing to the earth’s rotation, it rises every morning, and will continue to do so for an
indefinite time in the future. I believe that, if any other normal person comes into my room, he will
see the same chairs and tables and books and papers as I see, and that the table which I see is the same
as the table which I feel pressing against my arm. All this seems to be so evident as to be hardly worth
stating, except in answer to a man who doubts whether I know anything. Yet all this may be reasonably
doubted, and all of it requires much careful discussion before we can be sure that we have stated it in
a form that is wholly true.
To make our difficulties plain, let us concentrate attention on the table. To the eye it is oblong,
brown, and shiny, to the touch it is smooth and cool and hard; when I tap it, it gives out a wooden
sound. Any one else who sees and feels and hears the table will agree with this description, so that it
might seem as if no difficulty would arise; but as soon as we try to be more precise our troubles
begin. Although I believe that the table is ‘really’ of the same colour all over, the parts that reflect the
light look much brighter than the other parts, and some parts look white because of reflected light. I
know that, if I move, the parts that reflect the light will be different, so that the apparent distribution of
colours on the table will change. It follows that if several people are looking at the table at the same
moment, no two of them will see exactly the same distribution of colours, because no two can see it
from exactly the same point of view, and any change in the point of view makes some change in the
way the light is reflected.
For most practical purposes these differences are unimportant, but to the painter they are all-
important: the painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the colour which
common sense says they ‘really’ have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear. Here we
have already the beginning of one of the distinctions that cause most trouble in philosophy—the
distinction between ‘appearance’ and ‘reality’, between what things seem to be and what they are. The
painter wants to know what things seem to be, the practical man and the philosopher want to know
what they are; but the philosopher ’s wish to know this is stronger than the practical man’s, and is
more troubled by knowledge as to the difficulties of answering the question.
 To return to the table. It is evident from what we have found, that there is no colour which pre-
eminently appears to be the colour of the table, or even of any one particular part of the table—it
appears to be of different colours from different points of view, and there is no reason for regarding
some of these as more really its colour than others. And we know that even from a given point of
view the colour will seem different by artificial light, or to a colour-blind man, or to a man wearing
blue spectacles, while in the dark there will be no colour at all, though to touch and hearing the table
will be unchanged. This colour is not something which is inherent in the table, but something
depending upon the table and the spectator and the way the light falls on the table. When, in ordinary
life, we speak of the colour of the table, we only mean the sort of colour which it will seem to have to
a normal spectator from an ordinary point of view under usual conditions of light. But the other
colours which appear under other conditions have just as good a right to be considered real; and
therefore, to avoid favouritism, we are compelled to deny that, in itself, the table has any one
particular colour.
The same thing applies to the texture. With the naked eye one can see the grain, but otherwise the
table looks smooth and even. If we looked at it through a microscope, we should see roughnesses and
hills and valleys, and all sorts of differences that are imperceptible to the naked eye. Which of these is
the ‘real’ table? We are naturally tempted to say that what we see through the microscope is more real,
but that in turn would be changed by a still more powerful microscope. If, then, we cannot trust what
we see with the naked eye, why should we trust what we see through a microscope? Thus, again, the
confidence in our senses with which we began deserts us.
The shape of the table is no better. We are all in the habit of judging as to the ‘real’ shapes of
things, and we do this so unreflectingly that we come to think we actually see the real shapes. But, in
fact, as we all have to learn if we try to draw, a given thing looks different in shape from every
different point of view. If our table is ‘really’ rectangular, it will look, from almost all points of view,
as if it had two acute angles and two obtuse angles. If opposite sides are parallel, they will look as if
they converged to a point away from the spectator; if they are of equal length, they will look as if the
nearer side were longer. All these things are not commonly noticed in looking at a table, because
experience has taught us to construct the ‘real’ shape from the apparent shape, and the ‘real’ shape is
what interests us as practical men. But the ‘real’ shape is not what we see; it is something inferred
from what we see. And what we see is constantly changing in shape as we move about the room; so
that here again the senses seem not to give us the truth about the table itself, but only about the
appearance of the table.
Similar difficulties arise when we consider the sense of touch. It is true that the table always gives
us a sensation of hardness, and we feel that it resists pressure. But the sensation we obtain depends
upon how hard we press the table and also upon what part of the body we press with; thus the various
sensations due to various pressures or various parts of the body cannot be supposed to reveal directly
any definite property of the table, but at most to be signs of some property which perhaps causes all
the sensations, but is not actually apparent in any of them. And the same applies still more obviously
to the sounds which can be elicited by rapping the table.
Thus it becomes evident that the real table, if there is one, is not the same as what we immediately
experience by sight or touch or hearing. The real table, if there is one, is not immediately known to us
at all, but must be an inference from what is immediately known. Hence, two very difficult questions
at once arise; namely, (1) Is there a real table at all? (2) If so, what sort of object can it be?
It will help us in considering these questions to have a few simple terms of which the meaning is
definite and clear. Let us give the name of ‘sensedata’ to the things that are immediately known in
sensation: such things as colours, sounds, smells, hardnesses, roughnesses, and so on. We shall give
the name ‘sensation’ to the experience of being immediately aware of these things. Thus, whenever
we see a colour, we have a sensation of the colour, but the colour itself is a sense-datum, not a
sensation. The colour is that of which we are immediately aware, and the awareness itself is the
sensation. It is plain that if we are to know anything about the table, it must be by means of the
sensedata—brown colour, oblong shape, smoothness, etc.—which we associate with the table; but, for
the reasons which have been given, we cannot say that the table is the sensedata, or even that the
sensedata are directly properties of the table. Thus a problem arises as to the relation of the sensedata
to the real table, supposing there is such a thing.
The real table, if it exists, we will call a ‘physical object’. Thus we have to consider the relation of
sensedata to physical objects. The collection of all physical objects is called ‘matter ’. Thus our two
questions may be restated as follows: (1) Is there any such thing as matter? (2) If so, what is its nature?
The philosopher who first brought prominently forward the reasons for regarding the immediate
objects of our senses as not existing independently of us was Bishop Berkeley (1685–1753). His Three
Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists, undertake to prove
that there is no such thing as matter at all, and that the world consists of nothing but minds and their
ideas. Hylas has hitherto believed in matter, but he is no match for Philonous, who mercilessly drives
him into contradictions and paradoxes, and makes his own denial of matter seem, in the end, as if it
were almost common sense. The arguments employed are of very different value: some are important
and sound, others are confused or quibbling. But Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the
existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity, and that if there are any things that
exist independently of us they cannot be the immediate objects of our sensations.
There are two different questions involved when we ask whether matter exists, and it is important to
keep them clear. We commonly mean by ‘matter ’ something which is opposed to ‘mind’, something
which we think of as occupying space and as radically incapable of any sort of thought or
consciousness. It is chiefly in this sense that Berkeley denies matter; that is to say, he does not deny
that the sensedata which we commonly take as signs of the existence of the table are really signs of the
existence of something independent of us, but he does deny that this something is non-mental, that it is
neither mind nor ideas entertained by some mind. He admits that there must be something which
continues to exist when we go out of the room or shut our eyes, and that what we call seeing the table
does really give us reason for believing in something which persists even when we are not seeing it.
But he thinks that this something cannot be radically different in nature from what we see, and cannot
be independent of seeing altogether, though it must be independent of our seeing. He is thus led to
regard the ‘real’ table as an idea in the mind of God. Such an idea has the required permanence and
independence of ourselves, without being—as matter would otherwise be—something quite
unknowable, in the sense that we can only infer it, and can never be directly and immediately aware of
it.
Other philosophers since Berkeley have also held that, although the table does not depend for its
existence upon being seen by me, it does depend upon being seen (or otherwise apprehended in
sensation) by some mind—not necessarily the mind of God, but more often the whole collective mind
of the universe. This they hold, as Berkeley does, chiefly because they think there can be nothing real
—or at any rate nothing known to be real—except minds and their thoughts and feelings. We might
state the argument by which they support their view in some such way as this: ‘Whatever can be
thought of is an idea in the mind of the person thinking of it; therefore nothing can be thought of
except ideas in minds; therefore anything else is inconceivable, and what is inconceivable cannot
exist.’
Such an argument, in my opinion, is fallacious; and of course those who advance it do not put it so
shortly or so crudely. But whether valid or not, the argument has been very widely advanced in one
form or another; and very many philosophers, perhaps a majority, have held that there is nothing real
except minds and their ideas. Such philosophers are called ‘idealists’. When they come to explaining
matter, they either say, like Berkeley, that matter is really nothing but a collection of ideas, or they
say, like Leibniz (1646–1716), that what appears as matter is really a collection of more or less
rudimentary minds.
But these philosophers, though they deny matter as opposed to mind, nevertheless, in another sense,
admit matter. It will be remembered that we asked two questions; namely, (1) Is there a real table at
all? (2) If so, what sort of object can it be? Now both Berkeley and Leibniz admit that there is a real
table, but Berkeley says it is certain ideas in the mind of God, and Leibniz says it is a colony of souls.
Thus both of them answer our first question in the affirmative, and only diverge from the views of
ordinary mortals in their answer to our second question. In fact, almost all philosophers seem to be
agreed that there is a real table: they almost all agree that, however much our sensedata—colour,
shape, smoothness, etc.—may depend upon us, yet their occurrence is a sign of something existing
independently of us, something differing, perhaps, completely from our sensedata, and yet to be
regarded as causing those sensedata whenever we are in a suitable relation to the real table.
Now obviously this point in which the philosophers are agreed—the view that there is a real table,
whatever its nature may be—is vitally important, and it will be worth while to consider what reasons
there are for accepting this view before we go on to the further question as to the nature of the real
table. Our next chapter, therefore, will be concerned with the reasons for supposing that there is a real
table at all.
Before we go farther it will be well to consider for a moment what it is that we have discovered so
far. It has appeared that, if we take any common object of the sort that is supposed to be known by the
senses, what the senses immediately tell us is not the truth about the object as it is apart from us, but
only the truth about certain sensedata which, so far as we can see, depend upon the relations between
us and the object. Thus what we directly see and feel is merely ‘appearance’, which we believe to be a
sign of some ‘reality’ behind. But if the reality is not what appears, have we any means of knowing
whether there is any reality at all? And if so, have we any means of finding out what it is like?
Such questions are bewildering, and it is difficult to know that even the strangest hypotheses may
not be true. Thus our familiar table, which has roused but the slightest thoughts in us hitherto, has
become a problem full of surprising possibilities. The one thing we know about it is that it is not what
it seems. Beyond this modest result, so far, we have the most complete liberty of conjecture. Leibniz
tells us it is a community of souls; Berkeley tells us it is an idea in the mind of God; sober science,
scarcely less wonderful, tells us it is a vast collection of electric charges in violent motion.
Among these surprising possibilities, doubt suggests that perhaps there is no table at all.
Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking
questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just
below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life.
2
The Existence of Matter

IN THIS CHAPTER we have to ask ourselves whether, in any sense at all, there is such a thing as matter. Is
there a table which has a certain intrinsic nature, and continues to exist when I am not looking, or is
the table merely a product of my imagination, a dream-table in a very prolonged dream? This
question is of the greatest importance. For if we cannot be sure of the independent existence of
objects, we cannot be sure of the independent existence of other people’s bodies, and therefore still
less of other people’s minds, since we have no grounds for believing in their minds except such as
are derived from observing their bodies. Thus if we cannot be sure of the independent existence of
objects, we shall be left alone in a desert-it may be that the whole outer world is nothing but a dream,
and that we alone exist. This is an uncomfortable possibility; but although it cannot be strictly proved
to be false, there is not the slightest reason to suppose that it is true. In this chapter we have to see why
this is the case.
Before we embark upon doubtful matters, let us try to find some more or less fixed point from
which to start. Although we are doubting the physical existence of the table, we are not doubting the
existence of the sense-data which made us think there was a table; we are not doubting that, while we
look, a certain colour and shape appear to us, and while we press, a certain sensation of hardness is
experienced by us. All this, which is psychological, we are not calling in question. In fact, whatever
else may be doubtful, some at least of our immediate experiences seem absolutely certain.
Descartes (1596–1650), the founder of modern philosophy, invented a method which may still be
used with profit—the method of systematic doubt. He determined that he would believe nothing which
he did not see quite clearly and distinctly to be true. Whatever he could bring himself to doubt, he
would doubt, until he saw reason for not doubting it. By applying this method he gradually became
convinced that the only existence of which he could be quite certain was his own. He imagined a
deceitful demon, who presented unreal things to his senses in a perpetual phantasmagoria; it might be
very improbable that such a demon existed, but still it was possible, and therefore doubt concerning
things perceived by the senses was possible.
But doubt concerning his own existence was not possible, for if he did not exist, no demon could
deceive him. If he doubted, he must exist; if he had any experiences whatever, he must exist. Thus his
own existence was an absolute certainty to him. ‘I think, therefore I am,’ he said (Cogito, ergo sum);
and on the basis of this certainty he set to work to build up again the world of knowledge which his
doubt had laid in ruins. By inventing the method of doubt, and by showing that subjective things are
the most certain, Descartes performed a great service to philosophy, and one which makes him still
useful to all students of the subject.
But some care is needed in using Descartes’ argument. ‘I think, therefore I am’ says rather more
than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we were quite sure of being the same person today as
we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as
the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular
experiences. When I look at my table and see a certain brown colour, what is quite certain at once is
not ‘I am seeing a brown colour ’, but rather, ‘a brown colour is being seen’. This of course involves
something (or somebody) which (or who) sees the brown colour; but it does not of itself involve that
more or less permanent person whom we call ‘I’. So far as immediate certainty goes, it might be that
the something which sees the brown colour is quite momentary, and not the same as the something
which has some different experience the next moment.
Thus it is our particular thoughts and feelings that have primitive certainty. And this applies to
dreams and hallucinations as well as to normal perceptions: when we dream or see a ghost, we
certainly do have the sensations we think we have, but for various reasons it is held that no physical
object corresponds to these sensations. Thus the certainty of our knowledge of our own experiences
does not have to be limited in any way to allow for exceptional cases. Here, therefore, we have, for
what it is worth, a solid basis from which to begin our pursuit of knowledge.
The problem we have to consider is this: Granted that we are certain of our own sense-data, have
we any reason for regarding them as signs of the existence of something else, which we can call the
physical object? When we have enumerated all the sense-data which we should naturally regard as
connected with the table, have we said all there is to say about the table, or is there still something else
—something not a sense-datum, something which persists when we go out of the room? Common
sense unhesitatingly answers that there is. What can be bought and sold and pushed about and have a
cloth laid on it, and so on, cannot be a mere collection of sense-data. If the cloth completely hides the
table, we shall derive no sense-data from the table, and therefore, if the table were merely sense-data,
it would have ceased to exist, and the cloth would be suspended in empty air, resting, by a miracle, in
the place where the table formerly was. This seems plainly absurd; but whoever wishes to become a
philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.
One great reason why it is felt that we must secure a physical object in addition to the sense-data, is
that we want the same object for different people. When ten people are sitting round a dinner-table, it
seems preposterous to maintain that they are not seeing the same tablecloth, the same knives and forks
and spoons and glasses. But the sense-data are private to each separate person; what is immediately
present to the sight of one is not immediately present to the sight of another: they all see things from
slightly different points of view, and therefore see them slightly differently. Thus, if there are to be
public neutral objects, which can be in some sense known to many different people, there must be
something over and above the private and particular sense-data which appear to various people. What
reason, then, have we for believing that there are such public neutral objects?
The first answer that naturally occurs to one is that, although different people may see the table
slightly differently, still they all see more or less similar things when they look at the table, and the
variations in what they see follow the laws of perspective and reflection of light, so that it is easy to
arrive at a permanent object underlying all the different people’s sense-data. I bought my table from
the former occupant of my room; I could not buy his sense-data, which died when he went away, but I
could and did buy the confident expectation of more or less similar sense-data. Thus it is the fact that
different people have similar sense-data, and that one person in a given place at different times has
similar sense-data, which makes us suppose that over and above the sense-data there is a permanent
public object which underlies or causes the sense-data of various people at various times.
Now in so far as the above considerations depend upon supposing that there are other people
besides ourselves, they beg the very question at issue. Other people are represented to me by certain
sense-data, such as the sight of them or the sound of their voices, and if I had no reason to believe that
there were physical objects independent of my sense-data, I should have no reason to believe that
other people exist except as part of my dream. Thus, when we are trying to show that there must be
objects independent of our own sense-data, we cannot appeal to the testimony of other people, since
this testimony itself consists of sense-data, and does not reveal other people’s experiences unless our
own sense-data are signs of things existing independently of us. We must therefore, if possible, find,
in our own purely private experiences, characteristics which show, or tend to show, that there are in
the world things other than ourselves and our private experiences.
 In one sense it must be admitted that we can never prove the existence of things other than ourselves
and our experiences. No logical absurdity results from the hypothesis that the world consists of
myself and my thoughts and feelings and sensations, and that everything else is mere fancy. In dreams
a very complicated world may seem to be present, and yet on waking we find it was a delusion; that is
to say, we find that the sense-data in the dream do not appear to have corresponded with such physical
objects as we should naturally infer from our sense-data. (It is true that, when the physical world is
assumed, it is possible to find physical causes for the sense-data in dreams: a door banging, for
instance, may cause us to dream of a naval engagement. But although, in this case, there is a physical
cause for the sense-data, there is not a physical object corresponding to the sense-data in the way in
which an actual naval battle would correspond.) There is no logical impossibility in the supposition
that the whole of life is a dream, in which we ourselves create all the objects that come before us. But
although this is not logically impossible, there is no reason whatever to suppose that it is true; and it
is, in fact, a less simple hypothesis, viewed as a means of accounting for the facts of our own life,
than the common-sense hypothesis that there really are objects independent of us, whose action on us
causes our sensations.
The way in which simplicity comes in from supposing that there really are physical objects is
easily seen. If the cat appears at one moment in one part of the room, and at another in another part, it
is natural to suppose that it has moved from the one to the other, passing over a series of intermediate
positions. But if it is merely a set of sense-data, it cannot have ever been in any place where I did not
see it; thus we shall have to suppose that it did not exist at all while I was not looking, but suddenly
sprang into being in a new place. If the cat exists whether I see it or not, we can understand from our
own experience how it gets hungry between one meal and the next; but if it does not exist when I am
not seeing it, it seems odd that appetite should grow during non-existence as fast as during existence.
And if the cat consists only of sense-data, it cannot be hungry, since no hunger but my own can be a
sense-datum to me. Thus the behaviour of the sense-data which represent the cat to me, though it
seems quite natural when regarded as an expression of hunger, becomes utterly inexplicable when
regarded as mere movements and changes of patches of colour, which are as incapable of hunger as a
triangle is of playing football.
But the difficulty in the case of the cat is nothing compared to the difficulty in the case of human
beings. When human beings speak—that is, when we hear certain noises which we associate with
ideas, and simultaneously see certain motions of lips and expressions of face—it is very difficult to
suppose that what we hear is not the expression of a thought, as we know it would be if we emitted the
same sounds. Of course similar things happen in dreams, where we are mistaken as to the existence of
other people. But dreams are more or less suggested by what we call waking life, and are capable of
being more or less accounted for on scientific principles if we assume that there really is a physical
world. Thus every principle of simplicity urges us to adopt the natural view, that there really are
objects other than ourselves and our sense-data which have an existence not dependent upon our
perceiving them.
Of course it is not by argument that we originally come by our belief in an independent external
world. We find this belief ready in ourselves as soon as we begin to reflect: it is what may be called an
instinctive belief. We should never have been led to question this belief but for the fact that, at any rate
in the case of sight, it seems as if the sense-datum itself were instinctively believed to be the
independent object, whereas argument shows that the object cannot be identical with the sense-datum.
This discovery, however—which is not at all paradoxical in the case of taste and smell and sound, and
only slightly so in the case of touch—leaves undiminished our instinctive belief that there are objects
corresponding to our sense-data. Since this belief does not lead to any difficulties, but on the contrary
tends to simplify and systematize our account of our experiences, there seems no good reason for
rejecting it. We may therefore admit—though with a slight doubt derived from dreams—that the
external world does really exist, and is not wholly dependent for its existence upon our continuing to
perceive it.
The argument which has led us to this conclusion is doubtless less strong than we could wish, but it
is typical of many philosophical arguments, and it is therefore worth while to consider briefly its
general character and validity. All knowledge, we find, must be built up upon our instinctive beliefs,
and if these are rejected, nothing is left. But among our instinctive beliefs some are much stronger
than others, while many have, by habit and association, become entangled with other beliefs, not
really instinctive, but falsely supposed to be part of what is believed instinctively.
Philosophy should show us the hierarchy of our instinctive beliefs, beginning with those we hold
most strongly, and presenting each as much isolated and as free from irrelevant additions as possible.
It should take care to show that, in the form in which they are finally set forth, our instinctive beliefs
do not clash, but form a harmonious system. There can never be any reason for rejecting one
instinctive belief except that it clashes with others; thus, if they are found to harmonize, the whole
system becomes worthy of acceptance.
It is of course possible that all or any of our beliefs may be mistaken, and therefore all ought to be
held with at least some slight element of doubt. But we cannot have reason to reject a belief except on
the ground of some other belief. Hence, by organizing our instinctive beliefs and their consequences,
by considering which among them is most possible, if necessary, to modify or abandon, we can
arrive, on the basis of accepting as our sole data what we instinctively believe, at an orderly
systematic organization of our knowledge, in which, though the possibility of error remains, its
likelihood is diminished by the interrelation of the parts and by the critical scrutiny which has
preceded acquiescence.
This function, at least, philosophy can perform. Most philosophers, rightly or wrongly, believe that
philosophy can do much more than this—that it can give us knowledge, not otherwise attainable,
concerning the universe as a whole, and concerning the nature of ultimate reality. Whether this be the
case or not, the more modest function we have spoken of can certainly be performed by philosophy,
and certainly suffices, for those who have once begun to doubt the adequacy of common sense, to
justify the arduous and difficult labours that philosophical problems involve.
3
The Nature of Matter

IN THE PRECEDING CHAPTER we agreed, though without being able to find demonstrative reasons, that it
is rational to believe that our sense-data—for example, those which we regard as associated with my
table—are really signs of the existence of something independent of us and our perceptions. That is to
say, over and above the sensations of colour, hardness, noise, and so on, which make up the
appearance of the table to me, I assume that there is something else, of which these things are
appearances. The colour ceases to exist if I shut my eyes, the sensation of hardness ceases to exist if I
remove my arm from contact with the table, the sound ceases to exist if I cease to rap the table with
my knuckles. But I do not believe that when all these things cease the table ceases. On the contrary, I
believe that it is because the table exists continuously that all these sense-data will reappear when I
open my eyes, replace my arm, and begin again to rap with my knuckles. The question we have to
consider in this chapter is: What is the nature of this real table, which persists independently of my
perception of it?
To this question physical science gives an answer, somewhat incomplete it is true, and in part still
very hypothetical, but yet deserving of respect so far as it goes. Physical science, more or less
unconsciously, has drifted into the view that all natural phenomena ought to be reduced to motions.
Light and heat and sound are all due to wave-motions, which travel from the body emitting them to
the person who sees light or feels heat or hears sound. That which has the wave-motion is either ether
or ‘gross matter ’, but in either case is what the philosopher would call matter. The only properties
which science assigns to it are position in space, and the power of motion according to the laws of
motion. Science does not deny that it may have other properties; but if so, such other properties are
not useful to the man of science, and in no way assist him in explaining the phenomena.
It is sometimes said that ‘light is a form of wave-motion’, but this is misleading, for the light which
we immediately see, which we know directly by means of our senses, is not a form of wave-motion,
but something quite different—something which we all know if we are not blind, though we cannot
describe it so as to convey our knowledge to a man who is blind. A wave-motion, on the contrary,
could quite well be described to a blind man, since he can acquire a knowledge of space by the sense
of touch; and he can experience a wave-motion by a sea voyage almost as well as we can. But this,
which a blind man can understand, is not what we mean by light: we mean by light just that which a
blind man can never understand, and which we can never describe to him.
Now this something, which all of us who are not blind know, is not, according to science, really to
be found in the outer world: it is something caused by the action of certain waves upon the eyes and
nerves and brain of the person who sees the light. When it is said that light is waves, what is really
meant is that waves are the physical cause of our sensations of light. But light itself, the thing which
seeing people experience and blind people do not, is not supposed by science to form any part of the
world that is independent of us and our senses. And very similar remarks would apply to other kinds
of sensations.
It is not only colours and sounds and so on that are absent from the scientific world of matter, but
also space as we get it through sight or touch. It is essential to science that its matter should be in a
space, but the space in which it is cannot be exactly the space we see or feel. To begin with, space as
we see it is not the same as space as we get it by the sense of touch; it is only by experience in infancy
that we learn how to touch things we see, or how to get a sight of things which we feel touching us.
But the space of science is neutral as between touch and sight; thus it cannot be either the space of
touch or the space of sight.
Again, different people see the same object as of different shapes, according to their point of view.
A circular coin, for example, though we should always judge it to be circular, will look oval unless
we are straight in front of it. When we judge that it is circular, we are judging that it has a real shape
which is not its apparent shape, but belongs to it intrinsically apart from its appearance. But this real
shape, which is what concerns science, must be in a real space, not the same as anybody’s apparent
space. The real space is public, the apparent space is private to the percipient. In different people’s
private spaces the same object seems to have different shapes; thus the real space, in which it has its
real shape, must be different from the private spaces. The space of science, therefore, though
connected with the spaces we see and feel, is not identical with them, and the manner of its connexion
requires investigation.
We agreed provisionally that physical objects cannot be quite like our sense-data, but may be
regarded as causing our sensations. These physical objects are in the space of science, which we may
call ‘physical’ space. It is important to notice that, if our sensations are to be caused by physical
objects, there must be a physical space containing these objects and our sense-organs and nerves and
brain. We get a sensation of touch from an object when we are in contact with it; that is to say, when
some part of our body occupies a place in physical space quite close to the space occupied by the
object. We see an object (roughly speaking) when no opaque body is between the object and our eyes
in physical space. Similarly, we only hear or smell or taste an object when we are sufficiently near to
it, or when it touches the tongue, or has some suitable position in physical space relatively to our
body. We cannot begin to state what different sensations we shall derive from a given object under
different circumstances unless we regard the object and our body as both in one physical space, for it
is mainly the relative positions of the object and our body that determine what sensations we shall
derive from the object.
Now our sense-data are situated in our private spaces, either the space of sight or the space of touch
or such vaguer spaces as other senses may give us. If, as science and common sense assume, there is
one public all-embracing physical space in which physical objects are, the relative positions of
physical objects in physical space must more or less correspond to the relative positions of sense-data
in our private spaces. There is no difficulty in supposing this to be the case. If we see on a road one
house nearer to us than another, our other senses will bear out the view that it is nearer; for example,
it will be reached sooner if we walk along the road. Other people will agree that the house which
looks nearer to us is nearer; the ordnance map will take the same view; and thus everything points to
a spatial relation between the houses corresponding to the relation between the sense-data which we
see when we look at the houses. Thus we may assume that there is a physical space in which physical
objects have spatial relations corresponding to those which the corresponding sense-data have in our
private spaces. It is this physical space which is dealt with in geometry and assumed in physics and
astronomy.
Assuming that there is physical space, and that it does thus correspond to private spaces, what can
we know about it? We can know only what is required in order to secure the correspondence. That is
to say, we can know nothing of what it is like in itself, but we can know the sort of arrangement of
physical objects which results from their spatial relations. We can know, for example, that the earth
and moon and sun are in one straight line during an eclipse, though we cannot know what a physical
straight line is in itself, as we know the look of a straight line in our visual space. Thus we come to
know much more about the relations of distances in physical space than about the distances
themselves; we may know that one distance is greater than another, or that it is along the same straight
line as the other, but we cannot have that immediate acquaintance with physical distances that we have
with distances in our private spaces, or with colours or sounds or other sense-data. We can know all
those things about physical space which a man born blind might know through other people about the
space of sight; but the kind of things which a man born blind could never know about the space of
sight we also cannot know about physical space. We can know the properties of the relations required
to preserve the correspondence with sense-data, but we cannot know the nature of the terms between
which the relations hold.
With regard to time, our feeling of duration or of the lapse of time is notoriously an unsafe guide
as to the time that has elapsed by the clock. Times when we are bored or suffering pain pass slowly,
times when we are agreeably occupied pass quickly, and times when we are sleeping pass almost as if
they did not exist. Thus, in so far as time is constituted by duration, there is the same necessity for
distinguishing a public and a private time as there was in the case of space. But in so far as time
consists in an order of before and after, there is no need to make such a distinction; the time-order
which events seem to have is, so far as we can see, the same as the time-order which they do have. At
any rate no reason can be given for supposing that the two orders are not the same. The same is
usually true of space: if a regiment of men are marching along a road, the shape of the regiment will
look different from different points of view, but the men will appear arranged in the same order from
all points of view. Hence we regard the order as true also in physical space, whereas the shape is only
supposed to correspond to the physical space so far as is required for the preservation of the order.
In saying that the time-order which events seem to have is the same as the time-order which they
really have, it is necessary to guard against a possible misunderstanding. It must not be supposed that
the various states of different physical objects have the same time-order as the sense-data which
constitute the perceptions of those objects. Considered as physical objects, the thunder and lightning
are simultaneous; that is to say, the lightning is simultaneous with the disturbance of the air in the
place where the disturbance begins, namely, where the lightning is. But the sense-datum which we call
hearing the thunder does not take place until the disturbance of the air has travelled as far as to where
we are. Similarly, it takes about eight minutes for the sun’s light to reach us; thus, when we see the sun
we are seeing the sun of eight minutes ago. So far as our sense-data afford evidence as to the physical
sun they afford evidence as to the physical sun of eight minutes ago; if the physical sun had ceased to
exist within the last eight minutes, that would make no difference to the sense-data which we call
‘seeing the sun’. This affords a fresh illustration of the necessity of distinguishing between sense-data
and physical objects.
What we have found as regards space is much the same as what we find in relation to the
correspondence of the sense-data with their physical counterparts. If one object looks blue and
another red, we may reasonably presume that there is some corresponding difference between the
physical objects; if two objects both look blue, we may presume a corresponding similarity. But we
cannot hope to be acquainted directly with the quality in the physical object which makes it look blue
or red. Science tells us that this quality is a certain sort of wave-motion, and this sounds familiar,
because we think of wave-motions in the space we see. But the wave-motions must really be in
physical space, with which we have no direct acquaintance; thus the real wave-motions have not that
familiarity which we might have supposed them to have. And what holds for colours is closely
similar to what holds for other sense-data. Thus we find that, although the relations of physical
objects have all sorts of knowable properties, derived from their correspondence with the relations of
sense-data, the physical objects themselves remain unknown in their intrinsic nature, so far at least as
can be discovered by means of the senses. The question remains whether there is any other method of
discovering the intrinsic nature of physical objects.
 The most natural, though not ultimately the most defensible, hypothesis to adopt in the first
instance, at any rate as regards visual sense-data, would be that, though physical objects cannot, for
the reasons we have been considering, be exactly like sense-data, yet they may be more or less like.
According to this view, physical objects will, for example, really have colours, and we might, by
good luck, see an object as of the colour it really is. The colour which an object seems to have at any
given moment will in general be very similar, though not quite the same, from many different points
of view; we might thus suppose the ‘real’ colour to be a sort of medium colour, intermediate between
the various shades which appear from the different points of view.
Such a theory is perhaps not capable of being definitely refuted, but it can be shown to be
groundless. To begin with, it is plain that the colour we see depends only upon the nature of the light-
waves that strike the eye, and is therefore modified by the medium intervening between us and the
object, as well as by the manner in which light is reflected from the object in the direction of the eye.
The intervening air alters colours unless it is perfectly clear, and any strong reflection will alter them
completely. Thus the colour we see is a result of the ray as it reaches the eye, and not simply a
property of the object from which the ray comes. Hence, also, provided certain waves reach the eye,
we shall see a certain colour, whether the object from which the waves start has any colour or not.
Thus it is quite gratuitous to suppose that physical objects have colours, and therefore there is no
justification for making such a supposition. Exactly similar arguments will apply to other sense-data.
It remains to ask whether there are any general philosophical arguments enabling us to say that, if
matter is real, it must be of such and such a nature. As explained above, very many philosophers,
perhaps most, have held that whatever is real must be in some sense mental, or at any rate that
whatever we can know anything about must be in some sense mental. Such philosophers are called
‘idealists’. Idealists tell us that what appears as matter is really something mental; namely, either (as
Leibniz held) more or less rudimentary minds, or (as Berkeley contended) ideas in the minds which,
as we should commonly say, ‘perceive’ the matter. Thus idealists deny the existence of matter as
something intrinsically different from mind, though they do not deny that our sense-data are signs of
something which exists independently of our private sensations. In the following chapter we shall
consider briefly the reasons—in my opinion fallacious—which idealists advance in favour of their
theory.
4
Idealism

T HE WORD ‘IDEALISM’ IS USED by different philosophers in somewhat different senses. We shall

understand by it the doctrine that whatever exists, or at any rate whatever can be known to exist, must
be in some sense mental. This doctrine, which is very widely held among philosophers, has several
forms, and is advocated on several different grounds. The doctrine is so widely held, and so
interesting in itself, that even the briefest survey of philosophy must give some account of it.
Those who are unaccustomed to philosophical speculation may be inclined to dismiss such a
doctrine as obviously absurd. There is no doubt that common sense regards tables and chairs and the
sun and moon and material objects generally as something radically different from minds and the
contents of minds, and as having an existence which might continue if minds ceased. We think of
matter as having existed long before there were any minds, and it is hard to think of it as a mere
product of mental activity. But whether true or false, idealism is not to be dismissed as obviously
absurd.
We have seen that, even if physical objects do have an independent existence, they must differ very
widely from sense-data, and can only have a correspondence with sense-data, in the same sort of way
in which a catalogue has a correspondence with the things catalogued. Hence common sense leaves us
completely in the dark as to the true intrinsic nature of physical objects, and if there were good reason
to regard them as mental, we could not legitimately reject this opinion merely because it strikes us as
strange. The truth about physical objects must be strange. It may be unattainable, but if any
philosopher believes that he has attained it, the fact that what he offers as the truth is strange ought not
to be made a ground of objection to his opinion.
The grounds on which idealism is advocated are generally grounds derived from the theory of
knowledge, that is to say, from a discussion of the conditions which things must satisfy in order that
we may be able to know them. The first serious attempt to establish idealism on such grounds was that
of Bishop Berkeley. He proved first, by arguments which were largely valid, that our sense-data
cannot be supposed to have an existence independent of us, but must be, in part at least, ‘in’ the mind,
in the sense that their existence would not continue if there were no seeing or hearing or touching or
smelling or tasting. So far, his contention was almost certainly valid, even if some of his arguments
were not so. But he went on to argue that sense-data were the only things of whose existence our
perceptions could assure us, and that to be known is to be ‘in’ a mind, and therefore to be mental.
Hence he concluded that nothing can ever be known except what is in some mind, and that whatever is
known without being in my mind must be in some other mind.
In order to understand his argument, it is necessary to understand his use of the word ‘idea’. He
gives the name ‘idea’ to anything which is immediately known, as, for example, sense-data are known.
Thus a particular colour which we see is an idea; so is a voice which we hear, and so on. But the term
is not wholly confined to sense-data. There will also be things remembered or imagined, for with
such things also we have immediate acquaintance at the moment of remembering or imagining. All
such immediate data he calls ‘ideas’.
He then proceeds to consider common objects, such as a tree, for instance. He shows that all we
know immediately when we ‘perceive’ the tree consists of ideas in his sense of the word, and he
argues that there is not the slightest ground for supposing that there is anything real about the tree
except what is perceived. Its being, he says, consists in being perceived: in the Latin of the schoolmen
its ‘esse’ is ‘percipï’. He fully admits that the tree must continue to exist even when we shut our eyes
or when no human being is near it. But this continued existence, he says, is due to the fact that God
continues to perceive it; the ‘real’ tree, which corresponds to what we called the physical object,
consists of ideas in the mind of God, ideas more or less like those we have when we see the tree, but
differing in the fact that they are permanent in God’s mind so long as the tree continues to exist. All
our perceptions, according to him, consist in a partial participation in God’s perceptions, and it is
because of this participation that different people see more or less the same tree. Thus apart from
minds and their ideas there is nothing in the world, nor is it possible that anything else should ever be
known, since whatever is known is necessarily an idea.
There are in this argument a good many fallacies which have been important in the history of
philosophy, and which it will be as well to bring to light. In the first place, there is a confusion
engendered by the use of the word ‘idea’. We think of an idea as essentially something in somebody’s
mind, and thus when we are told that a tree consists entirely of ideas, it is natural to suppose that, if so,
the tree must be entirely in minds. But the notion of being ‘in’ the mind is ambiguous. We speak of
bearing a person in mind, not meaning that the person is in our minds, but that a thought of him is in
our minds. When a man says that some business he had to arrange went clean out of his mind, he does
not mean to imply that the business itself was ever in his mind, but only that a thought of the business
was formerly in his mind, but afterwards ceased to be in his mind. And so when Berkeley says that the
tree must be in our minds if we can know it, all that he really has a right to say is that a thought of the
tree must be in our minds. To argue that the tree itself must be in our minds is like arguing that a
person whom we bear in mind is himself in our minds. This confusion may seem too gross to have
been really committed by any competent philosopher, but various attendant circumstances rendered it
possible. In order to see how it was possible, we must go more deeply into the question as to the
nature of ideas.
Before taking up the general question of the nature of ideas, we must disentangle two entirely
separate questions which arise concerning sense-data and physical objects. We saw that, for various
reasons of detail, Berkeley was right in treating the sense-data which constitute our perception of the
tree as more or less subjective, in the sense that they depend upon us as much as upon the tree, and
would not exist if the tree were not being perceived. But this is an entirely different point from the one
by which Berkeley seeks to prove that whatever can be immediately known must be in a mind. For this
purpose arguments of detail as to the dependence of sense-data upon us are useless. It is necessary to
prove, generally, that by being known, things are shown to be mental. This is what Berkeley believes
himself to have done. It is this question, and not our previous question as to the difference between
sense-data and the physical object, that must now concern us.
Taking the word ‘idea’ in Berkeley’s sense, there are two quite distinct things to be considered
whenever an idea is before the mind. There is on the one hand the thing of which we are aware—say
the colour of my table—and on the other hand the actual awareness itself, the mental act of
apprehending the thing. The mental act is undoubtedly mental, but is there any reason to suppose that
the thing apprehended is in any sense mental? Our previous arguments concerning the colour did not
prove it to be mental; they only proved that its existence depends upon the relation of our sense
organs to the physical object—in our case, the table. That is to say, they proved that a certain colour
will exist, in a certain light, if a normal eye is placed at a certain point relatively to the table. They did
not prove that the colour is in the mind of the percipient.
Berkeley’s view, that obviously the colour must be in the mind, seems to depend for its plausibility
upon confusing the thing apprehended with the act of apprehension. Either of these might be called an
‘idea’; probably either would have been called an idea by Berkeley. The act is undoubtedly in the
mind; hence, when we are thinking of the act, we readily assent to the view that ideas must be in the
mind. Then, forgetting that this was only true when ideas were taken as acts of apprehension, we
transfer the proposition that ‘ideas are in the mind’ to ideas in the other sense, i.e. to the things
apprehended by our acts of apprehension. Thus, by an unconscious equivocation, we arrive at the
conclusion that whatever we can apprehend must be in our minds. This seems to be the true analysis
of Berkeley’s argument, and the ultimate fallacy upon which it rests.
This question of the distinction between act and object in our apprehending of things is vitally
important, since our whole power of acquiring knowledge is bound up with it. The faculty of being
acquainted with things other than itself is the main characteristic of a mind. Acquaintance with objects
essentially consists in a relation between the mind and something other than the mind; it is this that
constitutes the mind’s power of knowing things. If we say that the things known must be in the mind,
we are either unduly limiting the mind’s power of knowing, or we are uttering a mere tautology. We
are uttering a mere tautology if we mean by ‘in the mind’ the same as by ‘before the mind’, i.e. if we
mean merely being apprehended by the mind. But if we mean this, we shall have to admit that what, in
this sense, is in the mind, may nevertheless be not mental. Thus when we realize the nature of
knowledge, Berkeley’s argument is seen to be wrong in substance as well as in form, and his grounds
for supposing that ‘ideas’—i.e. the objects apprehended—must be mental, are found to have no
validity whatever. Hence his grounds in favour of idealism may be dismissed. It remains to see
whether there are any other grounds.
It is often said, as though it were a self-evident truism, that we cannot know that anything exists
which we do not know. It is inferred that whatever can in any way be relevant to our experience must
be at least capable of being known by us; whence it follows that if matter were essentially something
with which we could not become acquainted, matter would be something which we could not know to
exist, and which could have for us no importance whatever. It is generally also implied, for reasons
which remain obscure, that what can have no importance for us cannot be real, and that therefore
matter, if it is not composed of minds or of mental ideas, is impossible and a mere chimera.
To go into this argument fully at our present stage would be impossible, since it raises points
requiring a considerable preliminary discussion; but certain reasons for rejecting the argument may
be noticed at once. To begin at the end: there is no reason why what cannot have any practical
importance for us should not be real. It is true that, if theoretical importance is included, everything
real is of some importance to us, since, as persons desirous of knowing the truth about the universe,
we have some interest in everything that the universe contains. But if this sort of interest is included, it
is not the case that matter has no importance for us, provided it exists, even if we cannot know that it
exists. We can, obviously, suspect that it may exist, and wonder whether it does; hence it is connected
with our desire for knowledge, and has the importance of either satisfying or thwarting this desire.
Again, it is by no means a truism, and is in fact false, that we cannot know that anything exists
which we do not know. The word ‘know’ is here used in two different senses. (1) In its first use it is
applicable to the sort of knowledge which is opposed to error, the sense in which what we know is
true, the sense which applies to our beliefs and convictions, i.e. to what are called judgements. In this
sense of the word we know that something is the case. This sort of knowledge may be described as
knowledge of truths. (2) In the second use of the word ‘know’ above, the word applies to our
knowledge of things, which we may call acquaintance. This is the sense in which we know sense-data.
(The distinction involved is roughly that between savoir and connaître in French, or between wissen
and kennen in German.)
Thus the statement which seemed like a truism becomes, when restated, the following: ‘We can
never truly judge that something with which we are not acquainted exists.’ This is by no means a
truism, but on the contrary a palpable falsehood. I have not the honour to be acquainted with the
Emperor of China, but I truly judge that he exists. It may be said, of course, that I judge this because
of other people’s acquaintance with him. This, however, would be an irrelevant retort, since, if the
principle were true, I could not know that any one else is acquainted with him. But further: there is no
reason why I should not know of the existence of something with which nobody is acquainted. This
point is important, and demands elucidation.
If I am acquainted with a thing which exists, my acquaintance gives me the knowledge that it exists.
But it is not true that, conversely, whenever I can know that a thing of a certain sort exists, I or some
one else must be acquainted with the thing. What happens, in cases where I have true judgement
without acquaintance, is that the thing is known to me by description, and that, in virtue of some
general principle, the existence of a thing answering to this description can be inferred from the
existence of something with which I am acquainted. In order to understand this point fully, it will be
well first to deal with the difference between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by
description, and then to consider what knowledge of general principles, if any, has the same kind of
certainty as our knowledge of the existence of our own experiences. These subjects will be dealt with
in the following chapters.
5
Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description

IN THE PRECEDING CHAPTER WE SAW that there are two sorts of knowledge: knowledge of things, and
knowledge of truths. In this chapter we shall be concerned exclusively with knowledge of things, of
which in turn we shall have to distinguish two kinds. Knowledge of things, when it is of the kind we
call knowledge by acquaintance, is essentially simpler than any knowledge of truths, and logically
independent of knowledge of truths, though it would be rash to assume that human beings ever, in
fact, have acquaintance with things without at the same time knowing some truth about them.
Knowledge of things by description, on the contrary, always involves, as we shall find in the course
of the present chapter, some knowledge of truths as its source and ground. But first of all we must
make clear what we mean by ‘acquaintance’ and what we mean by ‘description’.
We shall say that we have acquaintance with anything of which we are directly aware, without the
intermediary of any process of inference or any knowledge of truths. Thus in the presence of my
table I am acquainted with the sense-data that make up the appearance of my table—its colour, shape,
hardness, smoothness, etc.; all these are things of which I am immediately conscious when I am
seeing and touching my table. The particular shade of colour that I am seeing may have many things
said about it—I may say that it is brown, that it is rather dark, and so on. But such statements, though
they make me know truths about the colour, do not make me know the colour itself any better than I
did before: so far as concerns knowledge of the colour itself, as opposed to knowledge of truths
about it, I know the colour perfectly and completely when I see it, and no further knowledge of it
itself is even theoretically possible. Thus the sense-data which make up the appearance of my table are
things with which I have acquaintance, things immediately known to me just as they are.
My knowledge of the table as a physical object, on the contrary, is not direct knowledge. Such as it
is, it is obtained through acquaintance with the sense-data that make up the appearance of the table. We
have seen that it is possible, without absurdity, to doubt whether there is a table at all, whereas it is not
possible to doubt the sense-data. My knowledge of the table is of the kind which we shall call
‘knowledge by description’. The table is ‘the physical object which causes such-and-such sense-data’.
This describes the table by means of the sense-data. In order to know anything at all about the table,
we must know truths connecting it with things with which we have acquaintance: we must know that
‘such-and-such sense-data are caused by a physical object’. There is no state of mind in which we are
directly aware of the table; all our knowledge of the table is really knowledge of truths, and the actual
thing which is the table is not, strictly speaking, known to us at all. We know a description, and we
know that there is just one object to which this description applies, though the object itself is not
directly known to us. In such a case, we say that our knowledge of the object is knowledge by
description.
All our knowledge, both knowledge of things and knowledge of truths, rests upon acquaintance as
its foundation. It is therefore important to consider what kinds of things there are with which we have
acquaintance.
Sense-data, as we have already seen, are among the things with which we are acquainted; in fact,
they supply the most obvious and striking example of knowledge by acquaintance. But if they were the
sole example, our knowledge would be very much more restricted than it is. We should only know
what is now present to our senses: we could not know anything about the past—not even that there was
a past—nor could we know any truths about our sense-data, for all knowledge of truths, as we shall
show, demands acquaintance with things which are of an essentially different character from sense-
data, the things which are sometimes called ‘abstract ideas’, but which we shall call ‘universals’. We
have therefore to consider acquaintance with other things besides sense-data if we are to obtain any
tolerably adequate analysis of our knowledge.
The first extension beyond sense-data to be considered is acquaintance by memory. It is obvious that
we often remember what we have seen or heard or had otherwise present to our senses, and that in
such cases we are still immediately aware of what we remember, in spite of the fact that it appears as
past and not as present. This immediate knowledge by memory is the source of all our knowledge
concerning the past: without it, there could be no knowledge of the past by inference, since we should
never know that there was anything past to be inferred.
The next extension to be considered is acquaintance by introspection. We are not only aware of
things, but we are often aware of being aware of them. When I see the sun, I am often aware of my
seeing the sun; thus ‘my seeing the sun’ is an object with which I have acquaintance. When I desire
food, I may be aware of my desire for food; thus ‘my desiring food’ is an object with which I am
acquainted. Similarly we may be aware of our feeling pleasure or pain, and generally of the events
which happen in our minds. This kind of acquaintance, which may be called self-consciousness, is the
source of all our knowledge of mental things. It is obvious that it is only what goes on in our own
minds that can be thus known immediately. What goes on in the minds of others is known to us
through our perception of their bodies, that is, through the sense-data in us which are associated with
their bodies. But for our acquaintance with the contents of our own minds, we should be unable to
imagine the minds of others, and therefore we could never arrive at the knowledge that they have
minds. It seems natural to suppose that self-consciousness is one of the things that distinguish men
from animals: animals, we may suppose, though they have acquaintance with sense-data, never
become aware of this acquaintance. I do not mean that they doubt whether they exist, but that they have
never become conscious of the fact that they have sensations and feelings, nor therefore of the fact
that they, the subjects of their sensations and feelings, exist.
We have spoken of acquaintance with the contents of our minds as self-consciousness, but it is not,
of course, consciousness of our self: it is consciousness of particular thoughts and feelings. The
question whether we are also acquainted with our bare selves, as opposed to particular thoughts and
feelings, is a very difficult one, upon which it would be rash to speak positively. When we try to look
into ourselves we always seem to come upon some particular thought or feeling, and not upon the ‘I’
which has the thought or feeling. Nevertheless there are some reasons for thinking that we are
acquainted with the ‘I’, though the acquaintance is hard to disentangle from other things. To make
clear what sort of reason there is, let us consider for a moment what our acquaintance with particular
thoughts really involves.
When I am acquainted with ‘my seeing the sun’, it seems plain that I am acquainted with two
different things in relation to each other. On the one hand there is the sense-datum which represents
the sun to me, on the other hand there is that which sees this sense-datum. All acquaintance, such as
my acquaintance with the sense-datum which represents the sun, seems obviously a relation between
the person acquainted and the object with which the person is acquainted. When a case of acquaintance
is one with which I can be acquainted (as I am acquainted with my acquaintance with the sense-datum
representing the sun), it is plain that the person acquainted is myself. Thus, when I am acquainted with
my seeing the sun, the whole fact with which I am acquainted is ‘Self-acquainted-with-sense-datum’.
Further, we know the truth ‘I am acquainted with this sense-datum’. It is hard to see how we could
know this truth, or even understand what is meant by it, unless we were acquainted with something
which we call ‘I’. It does not seem necessary to suppose that we are acquainted with a more or less
permanent person, the same today as yesterday, but it does seem as though we must be acquainted with
that thing, whatever its nature, which sees the sun and has acquaintance with sense-data. Thus, in some
sense it would seem we must be acquainted with our Selves as opposed to our particular experiences.
But the question is difficult, and complicated arguments can be adduced on either side. Hence,
although acquaintance with ourselves seems probably to occur, it is not wise to assert that it
undoubtedly does occur.
We may therefore sum up as follows what has been said concerning acquaintance with things that
exist. We have acquaintance in sensation with the data of the outer senses, and in introspection with the
data of what may be called the inner sense—thoughts, feelings, desires, etc.; we have acquaintance in
memory with things which have been data either of the outer senses or of the inner sense. Further, it is
probable, though not certain, that we have acquaintance with Self, as that which is aware of things or
has desires towards things.
In addition to our acquaintance with particular existing things, we also have acquaintance with what
we shall call universals, that is to say, general ideas, such as whiteness, diversity, brotherhood, and so
on. Every complete sentence must contain at least one word which stands for a universal, since all
verbs have a meaning which is universal. We shall return to universals later on, in Chapter 9; for the
present, it is only necessary to guard against the supposition that whatever we can be acquainted with
must be something particular and existent. Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a
universal of which we are aware is called a concept.
It will be seen that among the objects with which we are acquainted are not included physical
objects (as opposed to sense-data), nor other people’s minds. These things are known to us by what I
call ‘knowledge by description’, which we must now consider.
By a ‘description’ I mean any phrase of the form ‘a so-and-so’ or ‘the so-and-so’. A phrase of the
form ‘a so-and-so’ I shall call an ‘ambiguous’ description; a phrase of the form ‘the so-and-so’ (in
the singular) I shall call a ‘definite’ description. Thus ‘a man’ is an ambiguous description, and ‘the
man with the iron mask’ is a definite description. There are various problems connected with
ambiguous descriptions, but I pass them by, since they do not directly concern the matter we are
discussing, which is the nature of our knowledge concerning objects in cases where we know that
there is an object answering to a definite description, though we are not acquainted with any such
object. This is a matter which is concerned exclusively with definite descriptions. I shall therefore, in
the sequel, speak simply of ‘descriptions’ when I mean ‘definite descriptions’. Thus a description will
mean any phrase of the form ‘the so-and-so’ in the singular.
We shall say that an object is ‘known by description’ when we know that it is ‘the so-and-so’, i.e.
when we know that there is one object, and no more, having a certain property; and it will generally
be implied that we do not have knowledge of the same object by acquaintance. We know that the man
with the iron mask existed, and many propositions are known about him; but we do not know who he
was. We know that the candidate who gets the most votes will be elected, and in this case we are very
likely also acquainted (in the only sense in which one can be acquainted with some one else) with the
man who is, in fact, the candidate who will get most votes; but we do not know which of the
candidates he is, i.e. we do not know any proposition of the form ‘A is the candidate who will get
most votes’ where A is one of the candidates by name. We shall say that we have ‘merely descriptive
knowledge’ of the so-and-so when, although we know that the so-and-so exists, and although we may
possibly be acquainted with the object which is, in fact, the so-and-so, yet we do not know any
proposition ‘a is the so-and-so’, where a is something with which we are acquainted.
When we say ‘the so-and-so exists’, we mean that there is just one object which is the so-and-so.
The proposition ‘a is the so-and-so’ means that a has the property so-and-so, and nothing else has.
‘Mr. A. is the Unionist candidate for this constituency’ means ‘Mr. A. is a Unionist candidate for this
constituency, and no one else is’. ‘The Unionist candidate for this constituency exists’ means ‘some
one is a Unionist candidate for this constituency, and no one else is’. Thus, when we are acquainted
with an object which is the so-and-so, we know that the so-and-so exists; but we may know that the so-
and-so exists when we are not acquainted with any object which we know to be the so-and-so, and
even when we are not acquainted with any object which, in fact, is the so-and-so.
Common words, even proper names, are usually really descriptions. That is to say, the thought in
the mind of a person using a proper name correctly can generally only be expressed explicitly if we
replace the proper name by a description. Moreover, the description required to express the thought
will vary for different people, or for the same person at different times. The only thing constant (so
long as the name is rightly used) is the object to which the name applies. But so long as this remains
constant, the particular description involved usually makes no difference to the truth or falsehood of
the proposition in which the name appears.
Let us take some illustrations. Suppose some statement made about Bismarck. Assuming that there
is such a thing as direct acquaintance with oneself, Bismarck himself might have used his name
directly to designate the particular person with whom he was acquainted. In this case, if he made a
judgement about himself, he himself might be a constituent of the judgement. Here the proper name
has the direct use which it always wishes to have, as simply standing for a certain object, and not for a
description of the object. But if a person who knew Bismarck made a judgement about him, the case is
different. What this person was acquainted with were certain sense-data which he connected (rightly,
we will suppose) with Bismarck’s body. His body, as a physical object, and still more his mind, were
only known as the body and the mind connected with these sense-data. That is, they were known by
description. It is, of course, very much a matter of chance which characteristics of a man’s appearance
will come into a friend’s mind when he thinks of him; thus the description actually in the friend’s
mind is accidental. The essential point is that he knows that the various descriptions all apply to the
same entity, in spite of not being acquainted with the entity in question.
When we, who did not know Bismarck, make a judgement about him, the description in our minds
will probably be some more or less vague mass of historical knowledge—far more, in most cases,
than is required to identify him. But, for the sake of illustration, let us assume that we think of him as
‘the first Chancellor of the German Empire’. Here all the words are abstract except ‘German’. The
word ‘German’ will, again, have different meanings for different people. To some it will recall
travels in Germany, to some the look of Germany on the map, and so on. But if we are to obtain a
description which we know to be applicable, we shall be compelled, at some point, to bring in a
reference to a particular with which we are acquainted. Such reference is involved in any mention of
past, present, and future (as opposed to definite dates), or of here and there, or of what others have
told us. Thus it would seem that, in some way or other, a description known to be applicable to a
particular must involve some reference to a particular with which we are acquainted, if our
knowledge about the thing described is not to be merely what follows logically from the description.
For example, ‘the most long-lived of men’ is a description involving only universals, which must
apply to some man, but we can make no judgements concerning this man which involve knowledge
about him beyond what the description gives. If, however, we say, ‘The first Chancellor of the
German Empire was an astute diplomatist,’ we can only be assured of the truth of our judgement in
virtue of something with which we are acquainted—usually a testimony heard or read. Apart from the
information we convey to others, apart from the fact about the actual Bismarck, which gives
importance to our judgement, the thought we really have contains the one or more particulars
involved, and otherwise consists wholly of concepts.
 All names of places—London, England, Europe, the Earth, the Solar System—similarly involve,
when used, descriptions which start from some one or more particulars with which we are acquainted.
I suspect that even the Universe, as considered by metaphysics, involves such a connexion with
particulars. In logic, on the contrary, where we are concerned not merely with what does exist, but
with whatever might or could exist or be, no reference to actual particulars is involved.
It would seem that, when we make a statement about something only known by description, we
often intend to make our statement, not in the form involving the description, but about the actual
thing described. That is to say, when we say anything about Bismarck, we should like, if we could, to
make the judgement which Bismarck alone can make, namely, the judgement of which he himself is a
constituent. In this we are necessarily defeated, since the actual Bismarck is unknown to us. But we
know that there is an object B, called Bismarck, and that B was an astute diplomatist. We can thus
describe the proposition we should like to affirm, namely, ‘B was an astute diplomatist’, where B is
the object which was Bismarck. If we are describing Bismarck as ‘the first Chancellor of the German
Empire’, the proposition we should like to affirm may be described as ‘the proposition asserting,
concerning the actual object which was the first Chancellor of the German Empire, that this object
was an astute diplomatist’. What enables us to communicate in spite of the varying descriptions we
employ is that we know there is a true proposition concerning the actual Bismarck, and that however
we may vary the description (so long as the description is correct) the proposition described is still
the same. This proposition, which is described and is known to be true, is what interests us; but we are
not acquainted with the proposition itself, and do not know it, though we know it is true.
It will be seen that there are various stages in the removal from acquaintance with particulars: there
is Bismarck to people who knew him; Bismarck to those who only know of him through history; the
man with the iron mask; the longest-lived of men. These are progressively further removed from
acquaintance with particulars; the first comes as near to acquaintance as is possible in regard to
another person; in the second, we shall still be said to know ‘who Bismarck was’; in the third, we do
not know who was the man with the iron mask, though we can know many propositions about him
which are not logically deducible from the fact that he wore an iron mask; in the fourth, finally, we
know nothing beyond what is logically deducible from the definition of the man. There is a similar
hierarchy in the region of universals. Many universals, like many particulars, are only known to us by
description. But here, as in the case of particulars, knowledge concerning what is known by
description is ultimately reducible to knowledge concerning what is known by acquaintance.
The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions is this: Every
proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are
acquainted.
We shall not at this stage attempt to answer all the objections which may be urged against this
fundamental principle. For the present, we shall merely point out that, in some way or other, it must
be possible to meet these objections, for it is scarcely conceivable that we can make a judgement or
entertain a supposition without knowing what it is that we are judging or supposing about. We must
attach some meaning to the words we use, if we are to speak significantly and not utter mere noise;
and the meaning we attach to our words must be something with which we are acquainted. Thus when,
for example, we make a statement about Julius Caesar, it is plain that Julius Caesar himself is not
before our minds, since we are not acquainted with him. We have in mind some description of Julius
Caesar: ‘the man who was assassinated on the Ides of March’, ‘the founder of the Roman Empire’, or,
perhaps, merely ‘the man whose name was Julius Caesar’. (In this last description, Julius Caesar is a
noise or shape with which we are acquainted.) Thus our statement does not mean quite what it seems
to mean, but means something involving, instead of Julius Caesar, some description of him which is
composed wholly of particulars and universals with which we are acquainted.
The chief importance of knowledge by description is that it enables us to pass beyond the limits of
our private experience. In spite of the fact that we can only know truths which are wholly composed
of terms which we have experienced in acquaintance, we can yet have knowledge by description of
things which we have never experienced. In view of the very narrow range of our immediate
experience, this result is vital, and until it is understood, much of our knowledge must remain
mysterious and therefore doubtful.
6
On Induction

IN ALMOST ALL OUR PREVIOUS DISCUSSIONS we have been concerned in the attempt to get clear as to our
data in the way of knowledge of existence. What things are there in the universe whose existence is
known to us owing to our being acquainted with them? So far, our answer has been that we are
acquainted with our sense-data, and, probably, with ourselves. These we know to exist. And past
sense-data which are remembered are known to have existed in the past. This knowledge supplies our
data.
But if we are to be able to draw inferences from these data—if we are to know of the existence of
matter, of other people, of the past before our individual memory begins, or of the future, we must
know general principles of some kind by means of which such inferences can be drawn. It must be
known to us that the existence of some one sort of thing, A, is a sign of the existence of some other
sort of thing, B, either at the same time as A or at some earlier or later time, as, for example, thunder
is a sign of the earlier existence of lightning. If this were not known to us, we could never extend our
knowledge beyond the sphere of our private experience; and this sphere, as we have seen, is
exceedingly limited. The question we have now to consider is whether such an extension is possible,
and if so, how it is effected.
Let us take as an illustration a matter about which none of us, in fact, feel the slightest doubt. We are
all convinced that the sun will rise tomorrow. Why? Is this belief a mere blind outcome of past
experience, or can it be justified as a reasonable belief? It is not easy to find a test by which to judge
whether a belief of this kind is reasonable or not, but we can at least ascertain what sort of general
beliefs would suffice, if true, to justify the judgement that the sun will rise tomorrow, and the many
other similar judgements upon which our actions are based.
It is obvious that if we are asked why we believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, we shall naturally
answer, ‘Because it always has risen every day.’ We have a firm belief that it will rise in the future,
because it has risen in the past. If we are challenged as to why we believe that it will continue to rise as
heretofore, we may appeal to the laws of motion: the earth, we shall say, is a freely rotating body, and
such bodies do not cease to rotate unless something interferes from outside, and there is nothing
outside to interfere with the earth between now and tomorrow. Of course it might be doubted whether
we are quite certain that there is nothing outside to interfere, but this is not the interesting doubt. The
interesting doubt is as to whether the laws of motion will remain in operation until tomorrow. If this
doubt is raised, we find ourselves in the same position as when the doubt about the sunrise was first
raised.
The only reason for believing that the laws of motion will remain in operation is that they have
operated hitherto, so far as our knowledge of the past enables us to judge. It is true that we have a
greater body of evidence from the past in favour of the laws of motion than we have in favour of the
sunrise, because the sunrise is merely a particular case of fulfilment of the laws of motion, and there
are countless other particular cases. But the real question is: Do any number of cases of a law being
fulfilled in the past afford evidence that it will be fulfilled in the future? If not, it becomes plain that
we have no ground whatever for expecting the sun to rise tomorrow, or for expecting the bread we
shall eat at our next meal not to poison us, or for any of the other scarcely conscious expectations that
control our daily lives. It is to be observed that all such expectations are only probable; thus we have
not to seek for a proof that they must be fulfilled, but only for some reason in favour of the view that
they are likely to be fulfilled.
Now in dealing with this question we must, to begin with, make an important distinction, without
which we should soon become involved in hopeless confusions. Experience has shown us that,
hitherto, the frequent repetition of some uniform succession or coexistence has been a cause of our
expecting the same succession or coexistence on the next occasion. Food that has a certain appearance
generally has a certain taste, and it is a severe shock to our expectations when the familiar appearance
is found to be associated with an unusual taste. Things which we see become associated, by habit, with
certain tactile sensations which we expect if we touch them; one of the horrors of a ghost (in many
ghost stories) is that it fails to give us any sensations of touch. Uneducated people who go abroad for
the first time are so surprised as to be incredulous when they find their native language not
understood.
And this kind of association is not confined to men; in animals also it is very strong. A horse which
has been often driven along a certain road resists the attempt to drive him in a different direction.
Domestic animals expect food when they see the person who usually feeds them. We know that all
these rather crude expectations of uniformity are liable to be misleading. The man who has fed the
chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views
as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.
But in spite of the misleadingness of such expectations, they nevertheless exist. The mere fact that
something has happened a certain number of times causes animals and men to expect that it will
happen again. Thus our instincts certainly cause us to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, but we
may be in no better a position than the chicken which unexpectedly has its neck wrung. We have
therefore to distinguish the fact that past uniformities cause expectations as to the future, from the
question whether there is any reasonable ground for giving weight to such expectations after the
question of their validity has been raised.
The problem we have to discuss is whether there is any reason for believing in what is called ‘the
uniformity of nature’. The belief in the uniformity of nature is the belief that everything that has
happened or will happen is an instance of some general law to which there are no exceptions. The
crude expectations which we have been considering are all subject to exceptions, and therefore liable
to disappoint those who entertain them. But science habitually assumes, at least as a working
hypothesis, that general rules which have exceptions can be replaced by general rules which have no
exceptions. ‘Unsupported bodies in air fall’ is a general rule to which balloons and aeroplanes are
exceptions. But the laws of motion and the law of gravitation, which account for the fact that most
bodies fall, also account for the fact that balloons and aeroplanes can rise; thus the laws of motion
and the law of gravitation are not subject to these exceptions.
The belief that the sun will rise tomorrow might be falsified if the earth came suddenly into contact
with a large body which destroyed its rotation; but the laws of motion and the law of gravitation
would not be infringed by such an event. The business of science is to find uniformities, such as the
laws of motion and the law of gravitation, to which, so far as our experience extends, there are no
exceptions. In this search science has been remarkably successful, and it may be conceded that such
uniformities have held hitherto. This brings us back to the question: Have we any reason, assuming
that they have always held in the past, to suppose that they will hold in the future?
It has been argued that we have reason to know that the future will resemble the past, because what
was the future has constantly become the past, and has always been found to resemble the past, so that
we really have experience of the future, namely of times which were formerly future, which we may
call past futures. But such an argument really begs the very question at issue. We have experience of
past futures, but not of future futures, and the question is: Will future futures resemble past futures?
This question is not to be answered by an argument which starts from past futures alone. We have
therefore still to seek for some principle which shall enable us to know that the future will follow the
same laws as the past.
The reference to the future in this question is not essential. The same question arises when we apply
the laws that work in our experience to past things of which we have no experience—as, for example,
in geology, or in theories as to the origin of the Solar System. The question we really have to ask is:
‘When two things have been found to be often associated, and no instance is known of the one
occurring without the other, does the occurrence of one of the two, in a fresh instance, give any good
ground for expecting the other?’ On our answer to this question must depend the validity of the whole
of our expectations as to the future, the whole of the results obtained by induction, and in fact
practically all the beliefs upon which our daily life is based.
It must be conceded, to begin with, that the fact that two things have been found often together and
never apart does not, by itself, suffice to prove demonstratively that they will be found together in the
next case we examine. The most we can hope is that the oftener things are found together, the more
probable it becomes that they will be found together another time, and that, if they have been found
together often enough, the probability will amount almost to certainty. It can never quite reach
certainty, because we know that in spite of frequent repetitions there sometimes is a failure at the last,
as in the case of the chicken whose neck is wrung. Thus probability is all we ought to seek.
It might be urged, as against the view we are advocating, that we know all natural phenomena to be
subject to the reign of law, and that sometimes, on the basis of observation, we can see that only one
law can possibly fit the facts of the case. Now to this view there are two answers. The first is that, even
if some law which has no exceptions applies to our case, we can never, in practice, be sure that we
have discovered that law and not one to which there are exceptions. The second is that the reign of law
would seem to be itself only probable, and that our belief that it will hold in the future, or in
unexamined cases in the past, is itself based upon the very principle we are examining.
The principle we are examining may be called the principle of induction, and its two parts may be
stated as follows:
(a) When a thing of a certain sort A has been found to be associated with a thing of a certain other
sort B, and has never been found dissociated from a thing of the sort B, the greater the number of
cases in which A and B have been associated, the greater is the probability that they will be associated
in a fresh case in which one of them is known to be present;
(b) Under the same circumstances, a sufficient number of cases of association will make the
probability of a fresh association nearly a certainty, and will make it approach certainty without limit.
As just stated, the principle applies only to the verification of our expectation in a single fresh
instance. But we want also to know that there is a probability in favour of the general law that things
of the sort A are always associated with things of the sort B, provided a sufficient number of cases of
association are known, and no cases of failure of association are known. The probability of the
general law is obviously less than the probability of the particular case, since if the general law is
true, the particular case must also be true, whereas the particular case may be true without the general
law being true. Nevertheless the probability of the general law is increased by repetitions, just as the
probability of the particular case is. We may therefore repeat the two parts of our principle as regards
the general law, thus:
(a) The greater the number of cases in which a thing of the sort A has been found associated with a
thing of the sort B, the more probable it is (if no cases of failure of association are known) that A is
always associated with B;
 (b) Under the same circumstances, a sufficient number of cases of the association of A with B will
make it nearly certain that A is always associated with B, and will make this general law approach
certainty without limit.
It should be noted that probability is always relative to certain data. In our case, the data are merely
the known cases of coexistence of A and B. There may be other data, which might be taken into
account, which would gravely alter the probability. For example, a man who had seen a great many
white swans might argue, by our principle, that on the data it was probable that all swans were white,
and this might be a perfectly sound argument. The argument is not disproved by the fact that some
swans are black, because a thing may very well happen in spite of the fact that some data render it
improbable. In the case of the swans, a man might know that colour is a very variable characteristic in
many species of animals, and that, therefore, an induction as to colour is peculiarly liable to error.
But this knowledge would be a fresh datum, by no means proving that the probability relatively to our
previous data had been wrongly estimated. The fact, therefore, that things often fail to fulfil our
expectations is no evidence that our expectations will not probably be fulfilled in a given case or a
given class of cases. Thus our inductive principle is at any rate not capable of being disproved by an
appeal to experience.
The inductive principle, however, is equally incapable of being proved by an appeal to experience.
Experience might conceivably confirm the inductive principle as regards the cases that have been
already examined; but as regards unexamined cases, it is the inductive principle alone that can justify
any inference from what has been examined to what has not been examined. All arguments which, on
the basis of experience, argue as to the future or the unexperienced parts of the past or present,
assume the inductive principle; hence we can never use experience to prove the inductive principle
without begging the question. Thus we must either accept the inductive principle on the ground of its
intrinsic evidence, or forgo all justification of our expectations about the future. If the principle is
unsound, we have no reason to expect the sun to rise tomorrow, to expect bread to be more
nourishing than a stone, or to expect that if we throw ourselves off the roof we shall fall. When we
see what looks like our best friend approaching us, we shall have no reason to suppose that his body
is not inhabited by the mind of our worst enemy or of some total stranger. All our conduct is based
upon associations which have worked in the past, and which we therefore regard as likely to work in
the future; and this likelihood is dependent for its validity upon the inductive principle.
The general principles of science, such as the belief in the reign of law, and the belief that every
event must have a cause, are as completely dependent upon the inductive principle as are the beliefs of
daily life. All such general principles are believed because mankind have found innumerable
instances of their truth and no instances of their falsehood. But this affords no evidence for their truth
in the future, unless the inductive principle is assumed.
Thus all knowledge which, on a basis of experience, tells us something about what is not
experienced, is based upon a belief which experience can neither confirm nor confute, yet which, at
least in its more concrete applications, appears to be as firmly rooted in us as many of the facts of
experience. The existence and justification of such beliefs—for the inductive principle, as we shall
see, is not the only example—raises some of the most difficult and most debated problems of
philosophy. We will, in the next chapter, consider briefly what may be said to account for such
knowledge, and what is its scope and its degree of certainty.
7
On our Knowledge of General Principles

WE SAW IN THE PRECEDING CHAPTER that the principle of induction, while necessary to the validity of all
arguments based on experience, is itself not capable of being proved by experience, and yet is
unhesitatingly believed by everyone, at least in all its concrete applications. In these characteristics the
principle of induction does not stand alone. There are a number of other principles which cannot be
proved or disproved by experience, but are used in arguments which start from what is experienced.
Some of these principles have even greater evidence than the principle of induction, and the
knowledge of them has the same degree of certainty as the knowledge of the existence of sense-data.
They constitute the means of drawing inferences from what is given in sensation; and if what we infer
is to be true, it is just as necessary that our principles of inference should be true as it is that our data
should be true. The principles of inference are apt to be overlooked because of their very
obviousness—the assumption involved is assented to without our realizing that it is an assumption.
But it is very important to realize the use of principles of inference, if a correct theory of knowledge
is to be obtained; for our knowledge of them raises interesting and difficult questions.
In all our knowledge of general principles, what actually happens is that first of all we realize some
particular application of the principle, and then we realize that the particularity is irrelevant, and that
there is a generality which may equally truly be affirmed. This is of course familiar in such matters as
teaching arithmetic: ‘two and two are four ’ is first learnt in the case of some particular pair of
couples, and then in some other particular case, and so on, until at last it becomes possible to see that
it is true of any pair of couples. The same thing happens with logical principles. Suppose two men are
discussing what day of the month it is. One of them says, ‘At least you will admit that if yesterday was
the 15th to-day must be the 16th.’ ‘Yes,’ says the other, ‘I admit that.’ ‘And you know,’ the first
continues, ‘that yesterday was the 15th, because you dined with Jones, and your diary will tell you that
was on the 15th.’ ‘Yes,’ says the second; ‘therefore to-day is the 16th.’
Now such an argument is not hard to follow; and if it is granted that its premisses are true in fact,
no one will deny that the conclusion must also be true. But it depends for its truth upon an instance of
a general logical principle. The logical principle is as follows: ‘Suppose it known that if this is true,
then that is true. Suppose it also known that this is true, then it follows that that is true.’ When it is the
case that if this is true, that is true, we shall say that this ‘implies’ that, and that that ‘follows from’ this.
Thus our principle states that if this implies that, and this is true, then that is true. In other words,
‘anything implied by a true proposition is true’, or ‘whatever follows from a true proposition is true’.
This principle is really involved—at least, concrete instances of it are involved—in all
demonstrations. Whenever one thing which we believe is used to prove something else, which we
consequently believe, this principle is relevant. If any one asks: ‘Why should I accept the results of
valid arguments based on true premisses?’ we can only answer by appealing to our principle. In fact,
the truth of the principle is impossible to doubt, and its obviousness is so great that at first sight it
seems almost trivial. Such principles, however, are not trivial to the philosopher, for they show that
we may have indubitable knowledge which is in no way derived from objects of sense.
The above principle is merely one of a certain number of self-evident logical principles. Some at
least of these principles must be granted before any argument or proof becomes possible. When some
of them have been granted, others can be proved, though these others, so long as they are simple, are
just as obvious as the principles taken for granted. For no very good reason, three of these principles
have been singled out by tradition under the name of ‘Laws of Thought’.
They are as follows:

(1) The law of identity: ‘Whatever is, is.’

(2) The law of contradiction: ‘Nothing can both be and not be.’
(3) The law of excluded middle: ‘Everything must either be or not be.’

These three laws are samples of self-evident logical principles, but are not really more
fundamental or more self-evident than various other similar principles: for instance, the one we
considered just now, which states that what follows from a true premiss is true. The name ‘laws of
thought’ is also misleading, for what is important is not the fact that we think in accordance with these
laws, but the fact that things behave in accordance with them; in other words, the fact that when we
think in accordance with them we think truly. But this is a large question, to which we must return at a
later stage.
In addition to the logical principles which enable us to prove from a given premiss that something
is certainly true, there are other logical principles which enable us to prove, from a given premiss,
that there is a greater or less probability that something is true. An example of such principles—
perhaps the most important example—is the inductive principle, which we considered in the
preceding chapter.
One of the great historic controversies in philosophy is the controversy between the two schools
called respectively ‘empiricists’ and ‘rationalists’. The empiricists—who are best represented by the
British philosophers, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume—maintained that all our knowledge is derived
from experience; the rationalists—who are represented by the Continental philosophers of the
seventeenth century, especially Descartes and Leibniz—maintained that, in addition to what we know
by experience, there are certain ‘innate ideas’ and ‘innate principles’, which we know independently
of experience. It has now become possible to decide with some confidence as to the truth or falsehood
of these opposing schools. It must be admitted, for the reasons already stated, that logical principles
are known to us, and cannot be themselves proved by experience, since all proof presupposes them. In
this, therefore, which was the most important point of the controversy, the rationalists were in the
right.
On the other hand, even that part of our knowledge which is logically independent of experience (in
the sense that experience cannot prove it) is yet elicited and caused by experience. It is on occasion of
particular experiences that we become aware of the general laws which their connexions exemplify. It
would certainly be absurd to suppose that there are innate principles in the sense that babies are born
with a knowledge of everything which men know and which cannot be deduced from what is
experienced. For this reason, the word ‘innate’ would not now be employed to describe our
knowledge of logical principles. The phrase ‘a priori’ is less objectionable, and is more usual in
modern writers. Thus, while admitting that all knowledge is elicited and caused by experience, we
shall nevertheless hold that some knowledge is a priori, in the sense that the experience which makes
us think of it does not suffice to prove it, but merely so directs our attention that we see its truth
without requiring any proof from experience.
There is another point of great importance, in which the empiricists were in the right as against the
rationalists. Nothing can be known to exist except by the help of experience. That is to say, if we wish
to prove that something of which we have no direct experience exists, we must have among our
premisses the existence of one or more things of which we have direct experience. Our belief that the
Emperor of China exists, for example, rests upon testimony, and testimony consists, in the last
analysis, of sense-data seen or heard in reading or being spoken to. Rationalists believed that, from
general consideration as to what must be, they could deduce the existence of this or that in the actual
world. In this belief they seem to have been mistaken. All the knowledge that we can acquire a priori
concerning existence seems to be hypothetical: it tells us that if one thing exists, another must exist,
or, more generally, that if one proposition is true, another must be true. This is exemplified by the
principles we have already dealt with, such as ‘if this is true, and this implies that, then that is true’, or
‘if this and that have been repeatedly found connected, they will probably be connected in the next
instance in which one of them is found’. Thus the scope and power of a priori principles is strictly
limited. All knowledge that something exists must be in part dependent on experience. When anything
is known immediately, its existence is known by experience alone; when anything is proved to exist,
without being known immediately, both experience and a priori principles must be required in the
proof. Knowledge is called empirical when it rests wholly or partly upon experience. Thus all
knowledge which asserts existence is empirical, and the only a priori knowledge concerning
existence is hypothetical, giving connexions among things that exist or may exist, but not giving
actual existence.
A priori knowledge is not all of the logical kind we have been hitherto considering. Perhaps the
most important example of non-logical a priori knowledge is knowledge as to ethical value. I am not
speaking of judgements as to what is useful or as to what is virtuous, for such judgements do require
empirical premisses; I am speaking of judgements as to the intrinsic desirability of things. If
something is useful, it must be useful because it secures some end; the end must, if we have gone far
enough, be valuable on its own account, and not merely because it is useful for some further end.
Thus all judgements as to what is useful depend upon judgements as to what has value on its own
account.
We judge, for example, that happiness is more desirable than misery, knowledge than ignorance,
goodwill than hatred, and so on. Such judgements must, in part at least, be immediate and a priori.
Like our previous a priori judgements, they may be elicited by experience, and indeed they must be;
for it seems not possible to judge whether anything is intrinsically valuable unless we have
experienced something of the same kind. But it is fairly obvious that they cannot be proved by
experience; for the fact that a thing exists or does not exist cannot prove either that it is good that it
should exist or that it is bad. The pursuit of this subject belongs to ethics, where the impossibility of
deducing what ought to be from what is has to be established. In the present connexion, it is only
important to realize that knowledge as to what is intrinsically of value is a priori in the same sense in
which logic is a priori, namely in the sense that the truth of such knowledge can be neither proved nor
disproved by experience.
All pure mathematics is a priori, like logic. This was strenuously denied by the empirical
philosophers, who maintained that experience was as much the source of our knowledge of arithmetic
as of our knowledge of geography. They maintained that by the repeated experience of seeing two
things and two other things, and finding that altogether they made four things, we were led by
induction to the conclusion that two things and two other things would always make four things
altogether. If, however, this were the source of our knowledge that two and two are four, we should
proceed differently, in persuading ourselves of its truth, from the way in which we do actually
proceed. In fact, a certain number of instances are needed to make us think of two abstractly, rather
than of two coins or two books or two people, or two of any other specified kind. But as soon as we
are able to divest our thoughts of irrelevant particularity, we become able to see the general principle
that two and two are four; any one instance is seen to be typical, and the examination of other
instances becomes unnecessary.1
 The same thing is exemplified in geometry. If we want to prove some property of all triangles, we
draw some one triangle and reason about it; but we can avoid making use of any property which it
does not share with all other triangles, and thus, from our particular case, we obtain a general result.
We do not, in fact, feel our certainty that two and two are four increased by fresh instances, because,
as soon as we have seen the truth of this proposition, our certainty becomes so great as to be
incapable of growing greater. Moreover, we feel some quality of necessity about the proposition ‘two
and two are four ’, which is absent from even the best attested empirical generalizations. Such
generalizations always remain mere facts: we feel that there might be a world in which they were
false, though in the actual world they happen to be true. In any possible world, on the contrary, we feel
that two and two would be four: this is not a mere fact, but a necessity to which everything actual and
possible must conform.
The case may be made clearer by considering a genuinely empirical generalization, such as ‘All
men are mortal’. It is plain that we believe this proposition, in the first place, because there is no
known instance of men living beyond a certain age, and in the second place because there seem to be
physiological grounds for thinking that an organism such as a man’s body must sooner or later wear
out. Neglecting the second ground, and considering merely our experience of men’s mortality, it is
plain that we should not be content with one quite clearly understood instance of a man dying,
whereas, in the case of ‘two and two are four ’, one instance does suffice, when carefully considered,
to persuade us that the same must happen in any other instance. Also we can be forced to admit, on
reflection, that there may be some doubt, however slight, as to whether all men are mortal. This may
be made plain by the attempt to imagine two different worlds, in one of which there are men who are
not mortal, while in the other two and two make five. When Swift invites us to consider the race of
Struldbrugs who never die, we are able to acquiesce in imagination. But a world where two and two
make five seems quite on a different level. We feel that such a world, if there were one, would upset
the whole fabric of our knowledge and reduce us to utter doubt.
The fact is that, in simple mathematical judgements such as ‘two and two are four ’, and also in
many judgements of logic, we can know the general proposition without inferring it from instances,
although some instance is usually necessary to make clear to us what the general proposition means.
This is why there is real utility in the process of deduction, which goes from the general to the
general, or from the general to the particular, as well as in the process of induction, which goes from
the particular to the particular, or from the particular to the general. It is an old debate among
philosophers whether deduction ever gives new knowledge. We can now see that in certain cases, at
least, it does do so. If we already know that two and two always make four, and we know that Brown
and Jones are two, and so are Robinson and Smith, we can deduce that Brown and Jones and
Robinson and Smith are four. This is new knowledge, not contained in our premisses, because the
general proposition, ‘two and two are four ’, never told us there were such people as Brown and Jones
and Robinson and Smith, and the particular premisses do not tell us that there were four of them,
whereas the particular proposition deduced does tell us both these things.
But the newness of the knowledge is much less certain if we take the stock instance of deduction
that is always given in books on logic, namely, ‘All men are mortal; Socrates is a man, therefore
Socrates is mortal.’ In this case, what we really know beyond reasonable doubt is that certain men, A,
B, C, were mortal, since, in fact, they have died. If Socrates is one of these men, it is foolish to go the
roundabout way through ‘all men are mortal’ to arrive at the conclusion that probably Socrates is
mortal. If Socrates is not one of the men on whom our induction is based, we shall still do better to
argue straight from our A, B, C, to Socrates, than to go round by the general proposition, ‘all men
are mortal’. For the probability that Socrates is mortal is greater, on our data, than the probability that
all men are mortal. (This is obvious, because if all men are mortal, so is Socrates; but if Socrates is
mortal, it does not follow that all men are mortal.) Hence we shall reach the conclusion that Socrates
is mortal with a greater approach to certainty if we make our argument purely inductive than if we go
by way of ‘all men are mortal’ and then use deduction.
This illustrates the difference between general propositions known a priori, such as ‘two and two
are four ’, and empirical generalizations such as ‘all men are mortal’. In regard to the former,
deduction is the right mode of argument, whereas in regard to the latter, induction is always
theoretically preferable, and warrants a greater confidence in the truth of our conclusion, because all
empirical generalizations are more uncertain than the instances of them.
We have now seen that there are propositions known a priori, and that among them are the
propositions of logic and pure mathematics, as well as the fundamental propositions of ethics. The
question which must next occupy us is this: How is it possible that there should be such knowledge?
And more particularly, how can there be knowledge of general propositions in cases where we have
not examined all the instances, and indeed never can examine them all, because their number is
infinite? These questions, which were first brought prominently forward by the German philosopher
Kant (1724–1804), are very difficult, and historically very important.
8
How A Priori Knowledge is possible

IMMANUEL KANT IS GENERALLY REGARDED as the greatest of the modern philosophers. Though he lived
through the Seven Years War and the French Revolution, he never interrupted his teaching of
philosophy at Königsberg in East Prussia. His most distinctive contribution was the invention of what
he called the ‘critical’ philosophy, which, assuming as a datum that there is knowledge of various
kinds, inquired how such knowledge comes to be possible, and deduced, from the answer to this
inquiry, many metaphysical results as to the nature of the world. Whether these results were valid may
well be doubted. But Kant undoubtedly deserves credit for two things: first, for having perceived that
we have a priori knowledge which is not purely ‘analytic’, i.e. such that the opposite would be self-
contradictory; and secondly, for having made evident the philosophical importance of the theory of
knowledge.
Before the time of Kant, it was generally held that whatever knowledge was a priori must be
‘analytic’. What this word means will be best illustrated by examples. If I say, ‘A bald man is a man,’
‘A plane figure is a figure,’ ‘A bad poet is a poet,’ I make a purely analytic judgement: the subject
spoken about is given as having at least two properties, of which one is singled out to be asserted of
it. Such propositions as the above are trivial, and would never be enunciated in real life except by an
orator preparing the way for a piece of sophistry. They are called ‘analytic’ because the predicate is
obtained by merely analysing the subject. Before the time of Kant it was thought that all judgements of
which we could be certain a priori were of this kind: that in all of them there was a predicate which
was only part of the subject of which it was asserted. If this were so, we should be involved in a
definite contradiction if we attempted to deny anything that could be known a priori. ‘A bald man is
not bald’ would assert and deny baldness of the same man, and would therefore contradict itself. Thus
according to the philosophers before Kant, the law of contradiction, which asserts that nothing can at
the same time have and not have a certain property, sufficed to establish the truth of all a priori
knowledge.
Hume (1711–76), who preceded Kant, accepting the usual view as to what makes knowledge a
priori, discovered that, in many cases which had previously been supposed analytic, and notably in the
case of cause and effect, the connexion was really synthetic. Before Hume, rationalists at least had
supposed that the effect could be logically deduced from the cause, if only we had sufficient
knowledge. Hume argued—correctly, as would now be generally admitted—that this could not be
done. Hence he inferred the far more doubtful proposition that nothing could be known a priori about
the connexion of cause and effect. Kant, who had been educated in the rationalist tradition, was much
perturbed by Hume’s scepticism, and endeavoured to find an answer to it. He perceived that not only
the connexion of cause and effect, but all the propositions of arithmetic and geometry, are ‘synthetic’,
i.e. not analytic: in all these propositions, no analysis of the subject will reveal the predicate. His stock
instance was the proposition 7 + 5 = 12. He pointed out, quite truly, that 7 and 5 have to be put together
to give 12: the idea of 12 is not contained in them, nor even in the idea of adding them together. Thus
he was led to the conclusion that all pure mathematics, though a priori, is synthetic; and this
conclusion raised a new problem of which he endeavoured to find the solution.
The question which Kant put at the beginning of his philosophy, namely ‘How is pure mathematics
possible?’ is an interesting and difficult one, to which every philosophy which is not purely sceptical
must find some answer. The answer of the pure empiricists, that our mathematical knowledge is
derived by induction from particular instances, we have already seen to be inadequate, for two
reasons: first, that the validity of the inductive principle itself cannot be proved by induction;
secondly, that the general propositions of mathematics, such as ‘two and two always make four ’, can
obviously be known with certainty by consideration of a single instance, and gain nothing by
enumeration of other cases in which they have been found to be true. Thus our knowledge of the
general propositions of mathematics (and the same applies to logic) must be accounted for otherwise
than our (merely probable) knowledge of empirical generalizations such as ‘all men are mortal’.
The problem arises through the fact that such knowledge is general, whereas all experience is
particular. It seems strange that we should apparently be able to know some truths in advance about
particular things of which we have as yet no experience; but it cannot easily be doubted that logic and
arithmetic will apply to such things. We do not know who will be the inhabitants of London a hundred
years hence; but we know that any two of them and any other two of them will make four of them.
This apparent power of anticipating facts about things of which we have no experience is certainly
surprising. Kant’s solution of the problem, though not valid in my opinion, is interesting. It is,
however, very difficult, and is differently understood by different philosophers. We can, therefore,
only give the merest outline of it, and even that will be thought misleading by many exponents of
Kant’s system.
What Kant maintained was that in all our experience there are two elements to be distinguished, the
one due to the object (i.e. to what we have called the ‘physical object’), the other due to our own
nature. We saw, in discussing matter and sense-data, that the physical object is different from the
associated sense-data, and that the sense-data are to be regarded as resulting from an interaction
between the physical object and ourselves. So far, we are in agreement with Kant. But what is
distinctive of Kant is the way in which he apportions the shares of ourselves and the physical object
respectively. He considers that the crude material given in sensation—the colour, hardness, etc.—is
due to the object, and that what we supply is the arrangement in space and time, and all the relations
between sense-data which result from comparison or from considering one as the cause of the other
or in any other way. His chief reason in favour of this view is that we seem to have a priori
knowledge as to space and time and causality and comparison, but not as to the actual crude material
of sensation. We can be sure, he says, that anything we shall ever experience must show the
characteristics affirmed of it in our a priori knowledge, because these characteristics are due to our
own nature, and therefore nothing can ever come into our experience without acquiring these
characteristics.
The physical object, which he calls the ‘thing in itself’,1 he regards as essentially unknowable; what
can be known is the object as we have it in experience, which he calls the ‘phenomenon’. The
phenomenon, being a joint product of us and the thing in itself, is sure to have those characteristics
which are due to us, and is therefore sure to conform to our a priori knowledge. Hence this
knowledge, though true of all actual and possible experience, must not be supposed to apply outside
experience. Thus in spite of the existence of a priori knowledge, we cannot know anything about the
thing in itself or about what is not an actual or possible object of experience. In this way he tries to
reconcile and harmonize the contentions of the rationalists with the arguments of the empiricists.
Apart from minor grounds on which Kant’s philosophy may be criticized, there is one main
objection which seems fatal to any attempt to deal with the problem of a priori knowledge by his
method. The thing to be accounted for is our certainty that the facts must always conform to logic and
arithmetic. To say that logic and arithmetic are contributed by us does not account for this. Our nature
is as much a fact of the existing world as anything, and there can be no certainty that it will remain
constant. It might happen, if Kant is right, that to-morrow our nature would so change as to make two
and two become five. This possibility seems never to have occurred to him, yet it is one which utterly
destroys the certainty and universality which he is anxious to vindicate for arithmetical propositions.
It is true that this possibility, formally, is inconsistent with the Kantian view that time itself is a form
imposed by the subject upon phenomena, so that our real Self is not in time and has no to-morrow.
But he will still have to suppose that the time-order of phenomena is determined by characteristics of
what is behind phenomena, and this suffices for the substance of our argument.
Reflection, moreover, seems to make it clear that, if there is any truth in our arithmetical beliefs,
they must apply to things equally whether we think of them or not. Two physical objects and two other
physical objects must make four physical objects, even if physical objects cannot be experienced. To
assert this is certainly within the scope of what we mean when we state that two and two are four. Its
truth is just as indubitable as the truth of the assertion that two phenomena and two other phenomena
make four phenomena. Thus Kant’s solution unduly limits the scope of a priori propositions, in
addition to failing in the attempt at explaining their certainty.
Apart from the special doctrines advocated by Kant, it is very common among philosophers to
regard what is a priori as in some sense mental, as concerned rather with the way we must think than
with any fact of the outer world. We noted in the preceding chapter the three principles commonly
called ‘laws of thought’. The view which led to their being so named is a natural one, but there are
strong reasons for thinking that it is erroneous. Let us take as an illustration the law of contradiction.
This is commonly stated in the form ‘Nothing can both be and not be’, which is intended to express
the fact that nothing can at once have and not have a given quality. Thus, for example, if a tree is a
beech it cannot also be not a beech; if my table is rectangular it cannot also be not rectangular, and so
on.
Now what makes it natural to call this principle a law of thought is that it is by thought rather than
by outward observation that we persuade ourselves of its necessary truth. When we have seen that a
tree is a beech, we do not need to look again in order to ascertain whether it is also not a beech;
thought alone makes us know that this is impossible. But the conclusion that the law of contradiction
is a law of thought is nevertheless erroneous. What we believe, when we believe the law of
contradiction, is not that the mind is so made that it must believe the law of contradiction. This belief
is a subsequent result of psychological reflection, which presupposes the belief in the law of
contradiction. The belief in the law of contradiction is a belief about things, not only about thoughts. It
is not, e.g., the belief that if we think a certain tree is a beech, we cannot at the same time think that it is
not a beech; it is the belief that if the tree is a beech, it cannot at the same time be not a beech. Thus the
law of contradiction is about things, and not merely about thoughts; and although belief in the law of
contradiction is a thought, the law of contradiction itself is not a thought, but a fact concerning the
things in the world. If this, which we believe when we believe the law of contradiction, were not true
of the things in the world, the fact that we were compelled to think it true would not save the law of
contradiction from being false; and this shows that the law is not a law of thought.
A similar argument applies to any other a priori judgement. When we judge that two and two are
four, we are not making a judgement about our thoughts, but about all actual or possible couples. The
fact that our minds are so constituted as to believe that two and two are four, though it is true, is
emphatically not what we assert when we assert that two and two are four. And no fact about the
constitution of our minds could make it true that two and two are four. Thus our a priori knowledge,
if it is not erroneous, is not merely knowledge about the constitution of our minds, but is applicable
to whatever the world may contain, both what is mental and what is non-mental.
The fact seems to be that all our a priori knowledge is concerned with entities which do not,
properly speaking, exist, either in the mental or in the physical world. These entities are such as can
be named by parts of speech which are not substantives; they are such entities as qualities and
relations. Suppose, for instance, that I am in my room. I exist, and my room exists; but does ‘in’ exist?
Yet obviously the word ‘in’ has a meaning; it denotes a relation which holds between me and my
room. This relation is something, although we cannot say that it exists in the same sense in which I
and my room exist. The relation ‘in’ is something which we can think about and understand, for, if we
could not understand it, we could not understand the sentence ‘I am in my room’. Many philosophers,
following Kant, have maintained that relations are the work of the mind, that things in themselves
have no relations, but that the mind brings them together in one act of thought and thus produces the
relations which it judges them to have.
This view, however, seems open to objections similar to those which we urged before against Kant.
It seems plain that it is not thought which produces the truth of the proposition ‘I am in my room’. It
may be true that an earwig is in my room, even if neither I nor the earwig nor any one else is aware
of this truth; for this truth concerns only the earwig and the room, and does not depend upon anything
else. Thus relations, as we shall see more fully in the next chapter, must be placed in a world which is
neither mental nor physical. This world is of great importance to philosophy, and in particular to the
problems of a priori knowledge. In the next chapter we shall proceed to develop its nature and its
bearing upon the questions with which we have been dealing.
9
The World of Universals

AT THE END OF THE PRECEDING CHAPTER we saw that such entities as relations appear to have a being
which is in some way different from that of physical objects, and also different from that of minds
and from that of sense-data. In the present chapter we have to consider what is the nature of this kind
of being, and also what objects there are that have this kind of being. We will begin with the latter
question.
The problem with which we are now concerned is a very old one, since it was brought into
philosophy by Plato. Plato’s ‘theory of ideas’ is an attempt to solve this very problem, and in my
opinion it is one of the most successful attempts hitherto made. The theory to be advocated in what
follows is largely Plato’s, with merely such modifications as time has shown to be necessary.
The way the problem arose for Plato was more or less as follows. Let us consider, say, such a
notion as justice. If we ask ourselves what justice is, it is natural to proceed by considering this, that,
and the other just act, with a view to discovering what they have in common. They must all, in some
sense, partake of a common nature, which will be found in whatever is just and in nothing else. This
common nature, in virtue of which they are all just, will be justice itself, the pure essence the
admixture of which with facts of ordinary life produces the multiplicity of just acts. Similarly with
any other word which may be applicable to common facts, such as ‘whiteness’ for example. The word
will be applicable to a number of particular things because they all participate in a common nature or
essence. This pure essence is what Plato calls an ‘idea’ or ‘form’. (It must not be supposed that
‘ideas’, in his sense, exist in minds, though they may be apprehended by minds.) The ‘idea’ justice is
not identical with anything that is just: it is something other than particular things, which particular
things partake of. Not being particular, it cannot itself exist in the world of sense. Moreover it is not
fleeting or changeable like the things of sense: it is eternally itself, immutable and indestructible.
Thus Plato is led to a supra-sensible world, more real than the common world of sense, the
unchangeable world of ideas, which alone gives to the world of sense whatever pale reflection of
reality may belong to it. The truly real world, for Plato, is the world of ideas; for whatever we may
attempt to say about things in the world of sense, we can only succeed in saying that they participate in
such and such ideas, which, therefore, constitute all their character. Hence it is easy to pass on into a
mysticism. We may hope, in a mystic illumination, to see the ideas as we see objects of sense; and we
may imagine that the ideas exist in heaven. These mystical developments are very natural, but the
basis of the theory is in logic, and it is as based in logic that we have to consider it.
The word ‘idea’ has acquired, in the course of time, many associations which are quite misleading
when applied to Plato’s ‘ideas’. We shall therefore use the word ‘universal’ instead of the word ‘idea’,
to describe what Plato meant. The essence of the sort of entity that Plato meant is that it is opposed to
the particular things that are given in sensation. We speak of whatever is given in sensation, or is of
the same nature as things given in sensation, as a particular; by opposition to this, a universal will be
anything which may be shared by many particulars, and has those characteristics which, as we saw,
distinguish justice and whiteness from just acts and white things.
When we examine common words, we find that, broadly speaking, proper names stand for
particulars, while other substantives, adjectives, prepositions, and verbs stand for universals.
Pronouns stand for particulars, but are ambiguous: it is only by the context or the circumstances that
we know what particulars they stand for. The word ‘now’ stands for a particular, namely the present
moment; but like pronouns, it stands for an ambiguous particular, because the present is always
changing.
It will be seen that no sentence can be made up without at least one word which denotes a universal.
The nearest approach would be some such statement as ‘I like this’. But even here the word ‘like’
denotes a universal, for I may like other things, and other people may like things. Thus all truths
involve universals, and all knowledge of truths involves acquaintance with universals.
Seeing that nearly all the words to be found in the dictionary stand for universals, it is strange that
hardly anybody except students of philosophy ever realizes that there are such entities as universals.
We do not naturally dwell upon those words in a sentence which do not stand for particulars; and if
we are forced to dwell upon a word which stands for a universal, we naturally think of it as standing
for some one of the particulars that come under the universal. When, for example, we hear the
sentence ‘Charles I’s head was cut off’, we may naturally enough think of Charles I, of Charles I’s
head, and of the operation of cutting off his head, which are all particulars; but we do not naturally
dwell upon what is meant by the word ‘head’ or the word ‘cut’, which is a universal. We feel such
words to be incomplete and insubstantial; they seem to demand a context before anything can be done
with them. Hence we succeed in avoiding all notice of universals as such, until the study of
philosophy forces them upon our attention.
Even among philosophers, we may say, broadly, that only those universals which are named by
adjectives or substantives have been much or often recognized, while those named by verbs and
prepositions have been usually overlooked. This omission has had a very great effect upon
philosophy; it is hardly too much to say that most metaphysics, since Spinoza, has been largely
determined by it. The way this has occurred is, in outline, as follows: Speaking generally, adjectives
and common nouns express qualities or properties of single things, whereas prepositions and verbs
tend to express relations between two or more things. Thus the neglect of prepositions and verbs led
to the belief that every proposition can be regarded as attributing a property to a single thing, rather
than as expressing a relation between two or more things. Hence it was supposed that, ultimately, there
can be no such entities as relations between things. Hence either there can be only one thing in the
universe, or, if there are many things, they cannot possibly interact in any way, since any interaction
would be a relation, and relations are impossible.
The first of these views, advocated by Spinoza and held in our own day by Bradley and many other
philosophers, is called monism; the second, advocated by Leibniz but not very common nowadays, is
called monadism, because each of the isolated things is called a monad. Both these opposing
philosophies, interesting as they are, result, in my opinion, from an undue attention to one sort of
universals, namely the sort represented by adjectives and substantives rather than by verbs and
prepositions.
As a matter of fact, if anyone were anxious to deny altogether that there are such things as
universals, we should find that we cannot strictly prove that there are such entities as qualities, i.e. the
universals represented by adjectives and substantives, whereas we can prove that there must be
relations, i.e. the sort of universals generally represented by verbs and prepositions. Let us take in
illustration the universal whiteness. If we believe that there is such a universal, we shall say that things
are white because they have the quality of whiteness. This view, however, was strenuously denied by
Berkeley and Hume, who have been followed in this by later empiricists. The form which their denial
took was to deny that there are such things as ‘abstract ideas’. When we want to think of whiteness,
they said, we form an image of some particular white thing, and reason concerning this particular,
taking care not to deduce anything concerning it which we cannot see to be equally true of any other
white thing. As an account of our actual mental processes, this is no doubt largely true. In geometry,
for example, when we wish to prove something about all triangles, we draw a particular triangle and
reason about it, taking care not to use any characteristic which it does not share with other triangles.
The beginner, in order to avoid error, often finds it useful to draw several triangles, as unlike each
other as possible, in order to make sure that his reasoning is equally applicable to all of them. But a
difficulty emerges as soon as we ask ourselves how we know that a thing is white or a triangle. If we
wish to avoid the universals whiteness and triangularity, we shall choose some particular patch of
white or some particular triangle, and say that anything is white or a triangle if it has the right sort of
resemblance to our chosen particular. But then the resemblance required will have to be a universal.
Since there are many white things, the resemblance must hold between many pairs of particular white
things; and this is the characteristic of a universal. It will be useless to say that there is a different
resemblance for each pair, for then we shall have to say that these resemblances resemble each other,
and thus at last we shall be forced to admit resemblance as a universal. The relation of resemblance,
therefore, must be a true universal. And having been forced to admit this universal, we find that it is
no longer worth while to invent difficult and unplausible theories to avoid the admission of such
universals as whiteness and triangularity.
Berkeley and Hume failed to perceive this refutation of their rejection of ‘abstract ideas’, because,
like their adversaries, they only thought of qualities, and altogether ignored relations as universals.
We have therefore here another respect in which the rationalists appear to have been in the right as
against the empiricists, although, owing to the neglect or denial of relations, the deductions made by
rationalists were, if anything, more apt to be mistaken than those made by empiricists.
Having now seen that there must be such entities as universals, the next point to be proved is that
their being is not merely mental. By this is meant that whatever being belongs to them is independent
of their being thought of or in any way apprehended by minds. We have already touched on this
subject at the end of the preceding chapter, but we must now consider more fully what sort of being it
is that belongs to universals.
Consider such a proposition as ‘Edinburgh is north of London’. Here we have a relation between
two places, and it seems plain that the relation subsists independently of our knowledge of it. When
we come to know that Edinburgh is north of London, we come to know something which has to do
only with Edinburgh and London: we do not cause the truth of the proposition by coming to know it,
on the contrary we merely apprehend a fact which was there before we knew it. The part of the earth’s
surface where Edinburgh stands would be north of the part where London stands, even if there were
no human being to know about north and south, and even if there were no minds at all in the universe.
This is, of course, denied by many philosophers, either for Berkeley’s reasons or for Kant’s. But we
have already considered these reasons, and decided that they are inadequate. We may therefore now
assume it to be true that nothing mental is presupposed in the fact that Edinburgh is north of London.
But this fact involves the relation ‘north of’, which is a universal; and it would be impossible for the
whole fact to involve nothing mental if the relation ‘north of, which is a constituent part of the fact,
did involve anything mental. Hence we must admit that the relation, like the terms it relates, is not
dependent upon thought, but belongs to the independent world which thought apprehends but does not
create.
This conclusion, however, is met by the difficulty that the relation ‘north of does not seem to exist
in the same sense in which Edinburgh and London exist. If we ask ‘Where and when does this relation
exist?’ the answer must be ‘Nowhere and nowhen’. There is no place or time where we can find the
relation ‘north of’. It does not exist in Edinburgh any more than in London, for it relates the two and
is neutral as between them. Nor can we say that it exists at any particular time. Now everything that
can be apprehended by the senses or by introspection exists at some particular time. Hence the
relation ‘north of’ is radically different from such things. It is neither in space nor in time, neither
material nor mental; yet it is something.
It is largely the very peculiar kind of being that belongs to universals which has led many people to
suppose that they are really mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a
perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of
whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is ‘in our mind’. We have here the same
ambiguity as we noted in discussing Berkeley in Chapter 4. In the strict sense, it is not whiteness that is
in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word ‘idea’, which
we noted at the same time, also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in
which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an ‘idea’. Hence, if the ambiguity is not
guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an ‘idea’ in the other sense, i.e. an act of
thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its
essential quality of universality. One man’s act of thought is necessarily a different thing from
another man’s; one man’s act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same
man’s act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no
two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different
thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them.
Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts.
We shall find it convenient only to speak of things existing when they are in time, that is to say,
when we can point to some time at which they exist (not excluding the possibility of their existing at
all times). Thus thoughts and feelings, minds and physical objects exist. But universals do not exist in
this sense; we shall say that they subsist or have being, where ‘being’ is opposed to ‘existence’ as
being timeless. The world of universals, therefore, may also be described as the world of being. The
world of being is unchangeable, rigid, exact, delightful to the mathematician, the logician, the builder
of metaphysical systems, and all who love perfection more than life. The world of existence is
fleeting, vague, without sharp boundaries, without any clear plan or arrangement, but it contains all
thoughts and feelings, all the data of sense, and all physical objects, everything that can do either
good or harm, everything that makes any difference to the value of life and the world. According to
our temperaments, we shall prefer the contemplation of the one or of the other. The one we do not
prefer will probably seem to us a pale shadow of the one we prefer, and hardly worthy to be regarded
as in any sense real. But the truth is that both have the same claim on our impartial attention, both are
real, and both are important to the metaphysician. Indeed no sooner have we distinguished the two
worlds than it becomes necessary to consider their relations.
But first of all we must examine our knowledge of universals. This consideration will occupy us in
the following chapter, where we shall find that it solves the problem of a priori knowledge, from
which we were first led to consider universals.
10
On our Knowledge of Universals

IN REGARD TO ONE MAN’S KNOWLEDGE at a given time, universals, like particulars, may be divided into
those known by acquaintance, those known only by description, and those not known either by
acquaintance or by description.
Let us consider first the knowledge of universals by acquaintance. It is obvious, to begin with, that
we are acquainted with such universals as white, red, black, sweet, sour, loud, hard, etc., i.e. with
qualities which are exemplified in sense-data. When we see a white patch, we are acquainted, in the
first instance, with the particular patch; but by seeing many white patches, we easily learn to abstract
the whiteness which they all have in common, and in learning to do this we are learning to be
acquainted with whiteness. A similar process will make us acquainted with any other universal of the
same sort. Universals of this sort may be called ‘sensible qualities’. They can be apprehended with
less effort of abstraction than any others, and they seem less removed from particulars than other
universals are.
We come next to relations. The easiest relations to apprehend are those which hold between the
different parts of a single complex sense-datum. For example, I can see at a glance the whole of the
page on which I am writing; thus the whole page is included in one sense-datum. But I perceive that
some parts of the page are to the left of other parts, and some parts are above other parts. The process
of abstraction in this case seems to proceed somewhat as follows: I see successively a number of
sense-data in which one part is to the left of another; I perceive, as in the case of different white
patches, that all these sense-data have something in common, and by abstraction I find that what they
have in common is a certain relation between their parts, namely the relation which I call ‘being to the
left of’. In this way I become acquainted with the universal relation.
In like manner I become aware of the relation of before and after in time. Suppose I hear a chime
of bells: when the last bell of the chime sounds, I can retain the whole chime before my mind, and I
can perceive that the earlier bells came before the later ones. Also in memory I perceive that what I
am remembering came before the present time. From either of these sources I can abstract the
universal relation of before and after, just as I abstracted the universal relation ‘being to the left of’.
Thus time-relations, like space-relations, are among those with which we are acquainted.
Another relation with which we become acquainted in much the same way is resemblance. If I see
simultaneously two shades of green, I can see that they resemble each other; if I also see a shade of
red at the same time, I can see that the two greens have more resemblance to each other than either has
to the red. In this way I become acquainted with the universal resemblance or similarity.
Between universals, as between particulars, there are relations of which we may be immediately
aware. We have just seen that we can perceive that the resemblance between two shades of green is
greater than the resemblance between a shade of red and a shade of green. Here we are dealing with a
relation, namely ‘greater than’, between two relations. Our knowledge of such relations, though it
requires more power of abstraction than is required for perceiving the qualities of sense-data,
appears to be equally immediate, and (at least in some cases) equally indubitable. Thus there is
immediate knowledge concerning universals as well as concerning sense-data.
Returning now to the problem of a priori knowledge, which we left unsolved when we began the
consideration of universals, we find ourselves in a position to deal with it in a much more satisfactory
manner than was possible before. Let us revert to the proposition ‘two and two are four ’. It is fairly
obvious, in view of what has been said, that this proposition states a relation between the universal
‘two’ and the universal ‘four ’. This suggests a proposition which we shall now endeavour to
establish: namely, All a priori knowledge deals exclusively with the relations of universals. This
proposition is of great importance, and goes a long way towards solving our previous difficulties
concerning a priori knowledge.
The only case in which it might seem, at first sight, as if our proposition were untrue, is the case in
which an a priori proposition states that all of one class of particulars belong to some other class, or
(what comes to the same thing) that all particulars having some one property also have some other. In
this case it might seem as though we were dealing with the particulars that have the property rather
than with the property. The proposition ‘two and two are four ’ is really a case in point, for this may
be stated in the form ‘any two and any other two are four ’, or ‘any collection formed of two twos is a
collection of four ’. If we can show that such statements as this really deal only with universals, our
proposition may be regarded as proved.
One way of discovering what a proposition deals with is to ask ourselves what words we must
understand—in other words, what objects we must be acquainted with—in order to see what the
proposition means. As soon as we see what the proposition means, even if we do not yet know
whether it is true or false, it is evident that we must have acquaintance with whatever is really dealt
with by the proposition. By applying this test, it appears that many propositions which might seem to
be concerned with particulars are really concerned only with universals. In the special case of ‘two
and two are four ’, even when we interpret it as meaning ‘any collection formed of two twos is a
collection of four ’, it is plain that we can understand the proposition, i.e. we can see what it is that it
asserts, as soon as we know what is meant by ‘collection’ and ‘two’ and ‘four ’. It is quite unnecessary
to know all the couples in the world: if it were necessary, obviously we could never understand the
proposition, since the couples are infinitely numerous and therefore cannot all be known to us. Thus
although our general statement implies statements about particular couples, as soon as we know that
there are such particular couples, yet it does not itself assert or imply that there are such particular
couples, and thus fails to make any statement whatever about any actual particular couple. The
statement made is about ‘couple’, the universal, and not about this or that couple.
Thus the statement ‘two and two are four ’ deals exclusively with universals, and therefore may be
known by anybody who is acquainted with the universals concerned and can perceive the relation
between them which the statement asserts. It must be taken as a fact, discovered by reflecting upon our
knowledge, that we have the power of sometimes perceiving such relations between universals, and
therefore of sometimes knowing general a priori propositions such as those of arithmetic and logic.
The thing that seemed mysterious, when we formerly considered such knowledge, was that it seemed
to anticipate and control experience. This, however, we can now see to have been an error. No fact
concerning anything capable of being experienced can be known independently of experience. We
know a priori that two things and two other things together make four things, but we do not know a
priori that if Brown and Jones are two, and Robinson and Smith are two, then Brown and Jones and
Robinson and Smith are four. The reason is that this proposition cannot be understood at all unless we
know that there are such people as Brown and Jones and Robinson and Smith, and this we can only
know by experience. Hence, although our general proposition is a priori, all its applications to actual
particulars involve experience and therefore contain an empirical element. In this way what seemed
mysterious in our a priori knowledge is seen to have been based upon an error.
It will serve to make the point clearer if we contrast our genuine a priori judgement with an
empirical generalization, such as ‘all men are mortals’. Here as before, we can understand what the
proposition means as soon as we understand the universals involved, namely man and mortal. It is
obviously unnecessary to have an individual acquaintance with the whole human race in order to
understand what our proposition means. Thus the difference between an a priori general proposition
and an empirical generalization does not come in the meaning of the proposition; it comes in the
nature of the evidence for it. In the empirical case, the evidence consists in the particular instances. We
believe that all men are mortal because we know that there are innumerable instances of men dying,
and no instances of their living beyond a certain age. We do not believe it because we see a connexion
between the universal man and the universal mortal. It is true that if physiology can prove, assuming
the general laws that govern living bodies, that no living organism can last for ever, that gives a
connexion between man and mortality which would enable us to assert our proposition without
appealing to the special evidence of men dying. But that only means that our generalization has been
subsumed under a wider generalization, for which the evidence is still of the same kind, though more
extensive. The progress of science is constantly producing such sub-sumptions, and therefore giving
a constantly wider inductive basis for scientific generalizations. But although this gives a greater
degree of certainty, it does not give a different kind: the ultimate ground remains inductive, i.e.
derived from instances, and not an a priori connexion of universals such as we have in logic and
arithmetic.
Two opposite points are to be observed concerning a priori general propositions. The first is that,
if many particular instances are known, our general proposition may be arrived at in the first instance
by induction, and the connexion of universals may be only subsequently perceived. For example, it is
known that if we draw perpendiculars to the sides of a triangle from the opposite angles, all three
perpendiculars meet in a point. It would be quite possible to be first led to this proposition by actually
drawing perpendiculars in many cases, and finding that they always met in a point; this experience
might lead us to look for the general proof and find it. Such cases are common in the experience of
every mathematician.
The other point is more interesting, and of more philosophical importance. It is, that we may
sometimes know a general proposition in cases where we do not know a single instance of it. Take
such a case as the following: We know that any two numbers can be multiplied together, and will give
a third called their product. We know that all pairs of integers the product of which is less than 100
have been actually multiplied together, and the value of the product recorded in the multiplication
table. But we also know that the number of integers is infinite, and that only a finite number of pairs
of integers ever have been or ever will be thought of by human beings. Hence it follows that there are
pairs of integers which never have been and never will be thought of by human beings, and that all of
them deal with integers the product of which is over 100. Hence we arrive at the proposition: ‘All
products of two integers, which never have been and never will be thought of by any human being,
are over 100.’ Here is a general proposition of which the truth is undeniable, and yet, from the very
nature of the case, we can never give an instance; because any two numbers we may think of are
excluded by the terms of the proposition.
This possibility, of knowledge of general propositions of which no instance can be given, is often
denied, because it is not perceived that the knowledge of such propositions only requires a knowledge
of the relations of universals, and does not require any knowledge of instances of the universals in
question. Yet the knowledge of such general propositions is quite vital to a great deal of what is
generally admitted to be known. For example, we saw, in our early chapters, that knowledge of
physical objects, as opposed to sense-data, is only obtained by an inference, and that they are not
things with which we are acquainted. Hence we can never know any proposition of the form ‘this is a
physical object’, where ‘this’ is something immediately known. It follows that all our knowledge
concerning physical objects is such that no actual instance can be given. We can give instances of the
associated sense-data, but we cannot give instances of the actual physical objects. Hence our
knowledge as to physical objects depends throughout upon this possibility of general knowledge
where no instance can be given. And the same applies to our knowledge of other people’s minds, or
of any other class of things of which no instance is known to us by acquaintance.
We may now take a survey of the sources of our knowledge, as they have appeared in the course of
our analysis. We have first to distinguish knowledge of things and knowledge of truths. In each there
are two kinds, one immediate and one derivative. Our immediate knowledge of things, which we
called acquaintance, consists of two sorts, according as the things known are particulars or
universals. Among particulars, we have acquaintance with sense-data and (probably) with ourselves.
Among universals, there seems to be no principle by which we can decide which can be known by
acquaintance, but it is clear that among those that can be so known are sensible qualities, relations of
space and time, similarity, and certain abstract logical universals. Our derivative knowledge of things,
which we call knowledge by description, always involves both acquaintance with something and
knowledge of truths. Our immediate knowledge of truths may be called intuitive knowledge, and the
truths so known may be called self-evident truths. Among such truths are included those which merely
state what is given in sense, and also certain abstract logical and arithmetical principles, and (though
with less certainty) some ethical propositions. Our derivative knowledge of truths consists of
everything that we can deduce from self-evident truths by the use of self-evident principles of
deduction.
If the above account is correct, all our knowledge of truths depends upon our intuitive knowledge.
It therefore becomes important to consider the nature and scope of intuitive knowledge, in much the
same way as, at an earlier stage, we considered the nature and scope of knowledge by acquaintance.
But knowledge of truths raises a further problem, which does not arise in regard to knowledge of
things, namely the problem of error. Some of our beliefs turn out to be erroneous, and therefore it
becomes necessary to consider how, if at all, we can distinguish knowledge from error. This problem
does not arise with regard to knowledge by acquaintance, for, whatever may be the object of
acquaintance, even in dreams and hallucinations, there is no error involved so long as we do not go
beyond the immediate object: error can only arise when we regard the immediate object, i.e. the
sense-datum, as the mark of some physical object. Thus the problems connected with knowledge of
truths are more difficult than those connected with knowledge of things. As the first of the problems
connected with knowledge of truths, let us examine the nature and scope of our intuitive judgements.
11
On Intuitive Knowledge

T HERE IS A COMMON IMPRESSION that everything that we believe ought to be capable of proof, or at
least of being shown to be highly probable. It is felt by many that a belief for which no reason can be
given is an unreasonable belief. In the main, this view is just. Almost all our common beliefs are
either inferred, or capable of being inferred, from other beliefs which may be regarded as giving the
reason for them. As a rule, the reason has been forgotten, or has even never been consciously present
to our minds. Few of us ever ask ourselves, for example, what reason there is to suppose the food we
are just going to eat will not turn out to be poison. Yet we feel, when challenged, that a perfectly good
reason could be found, even if we are not ready with it at the moment. And in this belief we are
usually justified.
But let us imagine some insistent Socrates, who, whatever reason we give him, continues to
demand a reason for the reason. We must sooner or later, and probably before very long, be driven to
a point where we cannot find any further reason, and where it becomes almost certain that no further
reason is even theoretically discoverable. Starting with the common beliefs of daily life, we can be
driven back from point to point, until we come to some general principle, or some instance of a
general principle, which seems luminously evident, and is not itself capable of being deduced from
anything more evident. In most questions of daily life, such as whether our food is likely to be
nourishing and not poisonous, we shall be driven back to the inductive principle, which we discussed
in Chapter 6. But beyond that, there seems to be no further regress. The principle itself is constantly
used in our reasoning, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously; but there is no reasoning
which, starting from some simpler self-evident principle, leads us to the principle of induction as its
conclusion. And the same holds for other logical principles. Their truth is evident to us, and we
employ them in constructing demonstrations; but they themselves, or at least some of them, are
incapable of demonstration.
Self-evidence, however, is not confined to those among general principles which are incapable of
proof. When a certain number of logical principles have been admitted, the rest can be deduced from
them; but the propositions deduced are often just as self-evident as those that were assumed without
proof. All arithmetic, moreover, can be deduced from the general principles of logic, yet the simple
propositions of arithmetic, such as ‘two and two are four ’, are just as self-evident as the principles of
logic.
It would seem, also, though this is more disputable, that there are some self-evident ethical
principles, such as ‘we ought to pursue what is good’.
It should be observed that, in all cases of general principles, particular instances, dealing with
familiar things, are more evident than the general principle. For example, the law of contradiction
states that nothing can both have a certain property and not have it. This is evident as soon as it is
understood, but it is not so evident as that a particular rose which we see cannot be both red and not
red. (It is of course possible that parts of the rose may be red and parts not red, or that the rose may be
of a shade of pink which we hardly know whether to call red or not; but in the former case it is plain
that the rose as a whole is not red, while in the latter case the answer is theoretically definite as soon
as we have decided on a precise definition of ‘red’.) It is usually through particular instances that we
come to be able to see the general principle. Only those who are practised in dealing with abstractions
can readily grasp a general principle without the help of instances.
 In addition to general principles, the other kind of self-evident truths are those immediately derived
from sensation. We will call such truths ‘truths of perception’, and the judgements expressing them
we will call ‘judgements of perception’. But here a certain amount of care is required in getting at the
precise nature of the truths that are self-evident. The actual sense-data are neither true nor false. A
particular patch of colour which I see, for example, simply exists: it is not the sort of thing that is true
or false. It is true that there is such a patch, true that it has a certain shape and degree of brightness,
true that it is surrounded by certain other colours. But the patch itself, like everything else in the
world of sense, is of a radically different kind from the things that are true or false, and therefore
cannot properly be said to be true. Thus whatever self-evident truths may be obtained from our senses
must be different from the sense-data from which they are obtained.
It would seem that there are two kinds of self-evident truths of perception, though perhaps in the
last analysis the two kinds may coalesce. First, there is the kind which simply asserts the existence of
the sense-datum, without in any way analysing it. We see a patch of red, and we judge ‘there is such-
and-such a patch of red’, or more strictly ‘there is that’; this is one kind of intuitive judgement of
perception. The other kind arises when the object of sense is complex, and we subject it to some
degree of analysis. If, for instance, we see a round patch of red, we may judge ‘that patch of red is
round’. This is again a judgement of perception, but it differs from our previous kind. In our present
kind we have a single sense-datum which has both colour and shape: the colour is red and the shape is
round. Our judgement analyses the datum into colour and shape, and then recombines them by stating
that the red colour is round in shape. Another example of this kind of judgement is ‘this is to the right
of that’, where ‘this’ and ‘that’ are seen simultaneously. In this kind of judgement the sense-datum
contains constituents which have some relation to each other, and the judgement asserts that these
constituents have this relation.
Another class of intuitive judgements, analogous to those of sense and yet quite distinct from them,
are judgements of memory. There is some danger of confusion as to the nature of memory, owing to
the fact that memory of an object is apt to be accompanied by an image of the object, and yet the
image cannot be what constitutes memory. This is easily seen by merely noticing that the image is in
the present, whereas what is remembered is known to be in the past. Moreover, we are certainly able
to some extent to compare our image with the object remembered, so that we often know, within
somewhat wide limits, how far our image is accurate; but this would be impossible, unless the object,
as opposed to the image, were in some way before the mind. Thus the essence of memory is not
constituted by the image, but by having immediately before the mind an object which is recognized as
past. But for the fact of memory in this sense, we should not know that there ever was a past at all, nor
should we be able to understand the word ‘past’, any more than a man born blind can understand the
word ‘light’. Thus there must be intuitive judgements of memory, and it is upon them, ultimately, that
all our knowledge of the past depends.
The case of memory, however, raises a difficulty, for it is notoriously fallacious, and thus throws
doubt on the trustworthiness of intuitive judgements in general. This difficulty is no light one. But let
us first narrow its scope as far as possible. Broadly speaking, memory is trustworthy in proportion to
the vividness of the experience and to its nearness in time. If the house next door was struck by
lightning half a minute ago, my memory of what I saw and heard will be so reliable that it would be
preposterous to doubt whether there had been a flash at all. And the same applies to less vivid
experiences, so long as they are recent. I am absolutely certain that half a minute ago I was sitting in
the same chair in which I am sitting now. Going backward over the day, I find things of which I am
quite certain, other things of which I am almost certain, other things of which I can become certain by
thought and by calling up attendant circumstances, and some things of which I am by no means
certain. I am quite certain that I ate my breakfast this morning, but if I were as indifferent to my
breakfast as a philosopher should be, I should be doubtful. As to the conversation at breakfast, I can
recall some of it easily, some with an effort, some only with a large element of doubt, and some not at
all. Thus there is a continual gradation in the degree of self-evidence of what I remember, and a
corresponding gradation in the trustworthiness of my memory.
Thus the first answer to the difficulty of fallacious memory is to say that memory has degrees of
self-evidence, and that these correspond to the degrees of its trustworthiness, reaching a limit of
perfect self-evidence and perfect trustworthiness in our memory of events which are recent and vivid.
It would seem, however, that there are cases of very firm belief in a memory which is wholly false.
It is probable that, in these cases, what is really remembered, in the sense of being immediately before
the mind, is something other than what is falsely believed in, though something generally associated
with it. George IV is said to have at last believed that he was at the battle of Waterloo, because he had
so often said that he was. In this case, what was immediately remembered was his repeated assertion;
the belief in what he was asserting (if it existed) would be produced by association with the
remembered assertion, and would therefore not be a genuine case of memory. It would seem that
cases of fallacious memory can probably all be dealt with in this way, i.e. they can be shown to be not
cases of memory in the strict sense at all.
One important point about self-evidence is made clear by the case of memory, and that is, that self-
evidence has degrees: it is not a quality which is simply present or absent, but a quality which may be
more or less present, in gradations ranging from absolute certainty down to an almost imperceptible
faintness. Truths of perception and some of the principles of logic have the very highest degree of
self-evidence; truths of immediate memory have an almost equally high degree. The inductive
principle has less self-evidence than some of the other principles of logic, such as ‘what follows from
a true premiss must be true’. Memories have a diminishing self-evidence as they become remoter and
fainter; the truths of logic and mathematics have (broadly speaking) less self-evidence as they become
more complicated. Judgements of intrinsic ethical or aesthetic value are apt to have some self-
evidence, but not much.
Degrees of self-evidence are important in the theory of knowledge, since, if propositions may (as
seems likely) have some degree of self-evidence without being true, it will not be necessary to
abandon all connexion between self-evidence and truth, but merely to say that, where there is a
conflict, the more self-evident proposition is to be retained and the less self-evident rejected.
It seems, however, highly probable that two different notions are combined in ‘self-evidence’ as
above explained; that one of them, which corresponds to the highest degree of self-evidence, is really
an infallible guarantee of truth, while the other, which corresponds to all the other degrees, does not
give an infallible guarantee, but only a greater or less presumption. This, however, is only a
suggestion, which we cannot as yet develop further. After we have dealt with the nature of truth, we
shall return to the subject of self-evidence, in connexion with the distinction between knowledge and
error.
12
Truth and Falsehood

OUR KNOWLEDGE OF TRUTHS, unlike our knowledge of things, has an opposite, namely error. So far as
things are concerned, we may know them or not know them, but there is no positive state of mind
which can be described as erroneous knowledge of things, so long, at any rate, as we confine
ourselves to knowledge by acquaintance. Whatever we are acquainted with must be something; we
may draw wrong inferences from our acquaintance, but the acquaintance itself cannot be deceptive.
Thus there is no dualism as regards acquaintance. But as regards knowledge of truths, there is a
dualism. We may believe what is false as well as what is true. We know that on very many subjects
different people hold different and incompatible opinions: hence some beliefs must be erroneous.
Since erroneous beliefs are often held just as strongly as true beliefs, it becomes a difficult question
how they are to be distinguished from true beliefs. How are we to know, in a given case, that our
belief is not erroneous? This is a question of the very greatest difficulty, to which no completely
satisfactory answer is possible. There is, however, a preliminary question which is rather less
difficult, and that is: What do we mean by truth and falsehood? It is this preliminary question which is
to be considered in this chapter.
In this chapter we are not asking how we can know whether a belief is true or false: we are asking
what is meant by the question whether a belief is true or false. It is to be hoped that a clear answer to
this question may help us to obtain an answer to the question what beliefs are true, but for the present
we ask only ‘What is truth?’ and ‘What is falsehood?’, not ‘What beliefs are true?’ and ‘What beliefs
are false?’ It is very important to keep these different questions entirely separate, since any confusion
between them is sure to produce an answer which is not really applicable to either.
There are three points to observe in the attempt to discover the nature of truth, three requisites
which any theory must fulfil.
(1) Our theory of truth must be such as to admit of its opposite, falsehood. A good many
philosophers have failed adequately to satisfy this condition: they have constructed theories according
to which all our thinking ought to have been true, and have then had the greatest difficulty in finding a
place for falsehood. In this respect our theory of belief must differ from our theory of acquaintance,
since in the case of acquaintance it was not necessary to take account of any opposite.
(2) It seems fairly evident that if there were no beliefs there could be no falsehood, and no truth
either, in the sense in which truth is correlative to falsehood. If we imagine a world of mere matter,
there would be no room for falsehood in such a world, and although it would contain what may be
called ‘facts’, it would not contain any truths, in the sense in which truths are things of the same kind
as falsehoods. In fact, truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs and statements: hence a world of
mere matter, since it would contain no beliefs or statements, would also contain no truth or falsehood.
(3) But, as against what we have just said, it is to be observed that the truth or falsehood of a belief
always depends upon something which lies outside the belief itself. If I believe that Charles I died on
the scaffold, I believe truly, not because of any intrinsic quality of my belief, which could be
discovered by merely examining the belief, but because of an historical event which happened two
and a half centuries ago. If I believe that Charles I died in his bed, I believe falsely: no degree of
vividness in my belief, or of care in arriving at it, prevents it from being false, again because of what
happened long ago, and not because of any intrinsic property of my belief. Hence, although truth and
falsehood are properties of beliefs, they are properties dependent upon the relations of the beliefs to
other things, not upon any internal quality of the beliefs.
The third of the above requisites leads us to adopt the view—which has on the whole been
commonest among philosophers—that truth consists in some form of correspondence between belief
and fact. It is, however, by no means an easy matter to discover a form of correspondence to which
there are no irrefutable objections. By this partly—and partly by the feeling that, if truth consists in a
correspondence of thought with something outside thought, thought can never know when truth has
been attained—many philosophers have been led to try to find some definition of truth which shall not
consist in relation to something wholly outside belief. The most important attempt at a definition of
this sort is the theory that truth consists in coherence. It is said that the mark of falsehood is failure to
cohere in the body of our beliefs, and that it is the essence of a truth to form part of the completely
rounded system which is The Truth.
There is, however, a great difficulty in this view, or rather two great difficulties. The first is that
there is no reason to suppose that only one coherent body of beliefs is possible. It may be that, with
sufficient imagination, a novelist might invent a past for the world that would perfectly fit on to what
we know, and yet be quite different from the real past. In more scientific matters, it is certain that there
are often two or more hypotheses which account for all the known facts on some subject, and
although, in such cases, men of science endeavour to find facts which will rule out all the hypotheses
except one, there is no reason why they should always succeed.
In philosophy, again, it seems not uncommon for two rival hypotheses to be both able to account
for all the facts. Thus, for example, it is possible that life is one long dream, and that the outer world
has only that degree of reality that the objects of dreams have; but although such a view does not seem
inconsistent with known facts, there is no reason to prefer it to the common-sense view, according to
which other people and things do really exist. Thus coherence as the definition of truth fails because
there is no proof that there can be only one coherent system.
The other objection to this definition of truth is that it assumes the meaning of ‘coherence’ known,
whereas, in fact, ‘coherence’ presupposes the truth of the laws of logic. Two propositions are
coherent when both may be true, and are incoherent when one at least must be false. Now in order to
know whether two propositions can both be true, we must know such truths as the law of
contradiction. For example, the two propositions, ‘this tree is a beech’ and ‘this tree is not a beech’,
are not coherent, because of the law of contradiction. But if the law of contradiction itself were
subjected to the test of coherence, we should find that, if we choose to suppose it false, nothing will
any longer be incoherent with anything else. Thus the laws of logic supply the skeleton or framework
within which the test of coherence applies, and they themselves cannot be established by this test.
For the above two reasons, coherence cannot be accepted as giving the meaning of truth, though it
is often a most important test of truth after a certain amount of truth has become known.
Hence we are driven back to correspondence with fact as constituting the nature of truth. It remains
to define precisely what we mean by ‘fact’, and what is the nature of the correspondence which must
subsist between belief and fact, in order that belief may be true.
In accordance with our three requisites, we have to seek a theory of truth which (1) allows truth to
have an opposite, namely falsehood, (2) makes truth a property of beliefs, but (3) makes it a property
wholly dependent upon the relation of the beliefs to outside things.
The necessity of allowing for falsehood makes it impossible to regard belief as a relation of the
mind to a single object, which could be said to be what is believed. If belief were so regarded, we
should find that, like acquaintance, it would not admit of the opposition of truth and falsehood, but
would have to be always true. This may be made clear by examples. Othello believes falsely that
Desdemona loves Cassio. We cannot say that this belief consists in a relation to a single object,
‘Desdemona’s love for Cassio’, for if there were such an object, the belief would be true. There is in
fact no such object, and therefore Othello cannot have any relation to such an object. Hence his belief
cannot possibly consist in a relation to this object.
It might be said that his belief is a relation to a different object, namely ‘that Desdemona loves
Cassio’; but it is almost as difficult to suppose that there is such an object as this, when Desdemona
does not love Cassio, as it was to suppose that there is ‘Desdemona’s love for Cassio’. Hence it will
be better to seek for a theory of belief which does not make it consist in a relation of the mind to a
single object.
It is common to think of relations as though they always held between two terms, but in fact this is
not always the case. Some relations demand three terms, some four, and so on. Take, for instance, the
relation ‘between’. So long as only two terms come in, the relation ‘between’ is impossible: three
terms are the smallest number that render it possible. York is between London and Edinburgh; but if
London and Edinburgh were the only places in the world, there could be nothing which was between
one place and another. Similarly jealousy requires three people: there can be no such relation that
does not involve three at least. Such a proposition as ‘A wishes B to promote C’s marriage with D’
involves a relation of four terms; that is to say, A and B and C and D all come in, and the relation
involved cannot be expressed otherwise than in a form involving all four. Instances might be
multiplied indefinitely, but enough has been said to show that there are relations which require more
than two terms before they can occur.
The relation involved in judging or believing must, if falsehood is to be duly allowed for, be taken
to be a relation between several terms, not between two. When Othello believes that Desdemona loves
Cassio, he must not have before his mind a single object, ‘Desdemona’s love for Cassio’, or ‘that
Desdemona loves Cassio’, for that would require that there should be objective falsehoods, which
subsist independently of any minds; and this, though not logically refutable, is a theory to be avoided
if possible. Thus it is easier to account for falsehood if we take judgement to be a relation in which
the mind and the various objects concerned all occur severally; that is to say, Desdemona and loving
and Cassio must all be terms in the relation which subsists when Othello believes that Desdemona
loves Cassio. This relation, therefore, is a relation of four terms, since Othello also is one of the
terms of the relation. When we say that it is a relation of four terms, we do not mean that Othello has
a certain relation to Desdemona, and has the same relation to loving and also to Cassio. This may be
true of some other relation than believing; but believing, plainly, is not a relation which Othello has
to each of the three terms concerned, but to all of them together: there is only one example of the
relation of believing involved, but this one example knits together four terms. Thus the actual
occurrence, at the moment when Othello is entertaining his belief, is that the relation called
‘believing’ is knitting together into one complex whole the four terms Othello, Desdemona, loving,
and Cassio. What is called belief or judgement is nothing but this relation of believing or judging,
which relates a mind to several things other than itself. An act of belief or of judgement is the
occurrence between certain terms at some particular time, of the relation of believing or judging.
We are now in a position to understand what it is that distinguishes a true judgement from a false
one. For this purpose we will adopt certain definitions. In every act of judgement there is a mind
which judges, and there are terms concerning which it judges. We will call the mind the subject in the
judgement, and the remaining terms the objects. Thus, when Othello judges that Desdemona loves
Cassio, Othello is the subject, while the objects are Desdemona and loving and Cassio. The subject
and the objects together are called the constituents of the judgement. It will be observed that the
relation of judging has what is called a ‘sense’ or ‘direction’. We may say, metaphorically, that it puts
its objects in a certain order, which we may indicate by means of the order of the words in the
sentence. (In an inflected language, the same thing will be indicated by inflections, e.g. by the
difference between nominative and accusative.) Othello’s judgement that Cassio loves Desdemona
differs from his judgement that Desdemona loves Cassio, in spite of the fact that it consists of the
same constituents, because the relation of judging places the constituents in a different order in the
two cases. Similarly, if Cassio judges that Desdemona loves Othello, the constituents of the judgement
are still the same, but their order is different. This property of having a ‘sense’ or ‘direction’ is one
which the relation of judging shares with all other relations. The ‘sense’ of relations is the ultimate
source of order and series and a host of mathematical concepts; but we need not concern ourselves
further with this aspect.
We spoke of the relation called ‘judging’ or ‘believing’ as knitting together into one complex
whole the subject and the objects. In this respect, judging is exactly like every other relation.
Whenever a relation holds between two or more terms, it unites the terms into a complex whole. If
Othello loves Desdemona, there is such a complex whole as ‘Othello’s love for Desdemona’. The
terms united by the relation may be themselves complex, or may be simple, but the whole which
results from their being united must be complex. Wherever there is a relation which relates certain
terms, there is a complex object formed of the union of those terms; and conversely, wherever there
is a complex object, there is a relation which relates its constituents. When an act of believing occurs,
there is a complex, in which ‘believing’ is the uniting relation, and subject and objects are arranged in
a certain order by the ‘sense’ of the relation of believing. Among the objects, as we saw in
considering ‘Othello believes that Desdemona loves Cassio’, one must be a relation—in this instance,
the relation ‘loving’. But this relation, as it occurs in the act of believing, is not the relation which
creates the unity of the complex whole consisting of the subject and the objects. The relation ‘loving’,
as it occurs in the act of believing, is one of the objects—it is a brick in the structure, not the cement.
The cement is the relation ‘believing’. When the belief is true, there is another complex unity, in
which the relation which was one of the objects of the belief relates the other objects. Thus, e.g., if
Othello believes truly that Desdemona loves Cassio, then there is a complex unity, ‘Desdemona’s love
for Cassio’, which is composed exclusively of the objects of the belief, in the same order as they had
in the belief, with the relation which was one of the objects occurring now as the cement that binds
together the other objects of the belief. On the other hand, when a belief is false, there is no such
complex unity composed only of the objects of the belief. If Othello believes falsely that Desdemona
loves Cassio, then there is no such complex unity as ‘Desdemona’s love for Cassio’.
Thus a belief is true when it corresponds to a certain associated complex, and false when it does
not. Assuming, for the sake of definiteness, that the objects of the belief are two terms and a relation,
the terms being put in a certain order by the ‘sense’ of the believing, then if the two terms in that order
are united by the relation into a complex, the belief is true; if not, it is false. This constitutes the
definition of truth and falsehood that we were in search of. Judging or believing is a certain complex
unity of which a mind is a constituent; if the remaining constituents, taken in the order which they
have in the belief, form a complex unity, then the belief is true; if not, it is false.
Thus although truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs, yet they are in a sense extrinsic
properties, for the condition of the truth of a belief is something not involving beliefs, or (in general)
any mind at all, but only the objects of the belief. A mind, which believes, believes truly when there is
a corresponding complex not involving the mind, but only its objects. This correspondence ensures
truth, and its absence entails falsehood. Hence we account simultaneously for the two facts that beliefs
(a) depend on minds for their existence, (b) do not depend on minds for their truth.
We may restate our theory as follows: If we take such a belief as ‘Othello believes that Desdemona
loves Cassio’, we will call Desdemona and Cassio the object-terms, and loving the object-relation. If
there is a complex unity ‘Desdemona’s love for Cassio’, consisting of the object-terms related by the
object-relation in the same order as they have in the belief, then this complex unity is called the fact
corresponding to the belief. Thus a belief is true when there is a corresponding fact, and is false when
there is no corresponding fact.
It will be seen that minds do not create truth or falsehood. They create beliefs, but when once the
beliefs are created, the mind cannot make them true or false, except in the special case where they
concern future things which are within the power of the person believing, such as catching trains.
What makes a belief true is a fact, and this fact does not (except in exceptional cases) in any way
involve the mind of the person who has the belief.
Having now decided what we mean by truth and falsehood, we have next to consider what ways
there are of knowing whether this or that belief is true or false. This consideration will occupy the
next chapter.
13
Knowledge, Error, and Probable Opinion

T HE QUESTION AS TO WHAT WE MEAN by truth and falsehood, which we considered in the preceding
chapter, is of much less interest than the question as to how we can know what is true and what is false.
This question will occupy us in the present chapter. There can be no doubt that some of our beliefs are
erroneous; thus we are led to inquire what certainty we can ever have that such and such a belief is not
erroneous. In other words, can we ever know anything at all, or do we merely sometimes by good
luck believe what is true? Before we can attack this question, we must, however, first decide what we
mean by ‘knowing’, and this question is not so easy as might be supposed.
At first sight we might imagine that knowledge could be defined as ‘true belief’. When what we
believe is true, it might be supposed that we had achieved a knowledge of what we believe. But this
would not accord with the way in which the word is commonly used. To take a very trivial instance: If
a man believes that the late Prime Minister ’s last name began with a B, he believes what is true, since
the late Prime Minister was Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman. But if he believes that Mr. Balfour was
the late Prime Minister, he will still believe that the late Prime Minister ’s last name began with a B, yet
this belief, though true, would not be thought to constitute knowledge. If a newspaper, by an intelligent
anticipation, announces the result of a battle before any telegram giving the result has been received,
it may by good fortune announce what afterwards turns out to be the right result, and it may produce
belief in some of its less experienced readers. But in spite of the truth of their belief, they cannot be
said to have knowledge. Thus it is clear that a true belief is not knowledge when it is deduced from a
false belief.
In like manner, a true belief cannot be called knowledge when it is deduced by a fallacious process
of reasoning, even if the premisses from which it is deduced are true. If I know that all Greeks are
men and that Socrates was a man, and I infer that Socrates was a Greek, I cannot be said to know that
Socrates was a Greek, because, although my premisses and my conclusion are true, the conclusion
does not follow from the premisses.
But are we to say that nothing is knowledge except what is validly deduced from true premisses?
Obviously we cannot say this. Such a definition is at once too wide and too narrow. In the first place,
it is too wide, because it is not enough that our premisses should be true, they must also be known.
The man who believes that Mr. Balfour was the late Prime Minister may proceed to draw valid
deductions from the true premiss that the late Prime Minister ’s name began with a B, but he cannot be
said to know the conclusions reached by these deductions. Thus we shall have to amend our definition
by saying that knowledge is what is validly deduced from known premisses. This, however, is a
circular definition: it assumes that we already know what is meant by ‘known premisses’. It can,
therefore, at best define one sort of knowledge, the sort we call derivative, as opposed to intuitive
knowledge. We may say: ‘Derivative knowledge is what is validly deduced from premisses known
intuitively.’ In this statement there is no formal defect, but it leaves the definition of intuitive
knowledge still to seek.
Leaving on one side, for the moment, the question of intuitive knowledge, let us consider the above
suggested definition of derivative knowledge. The chief objection to it is that it unduly limits
knowledge. It constantly happens that people entertain a true belief, which has grown up in them
because of some piece of intuitive knowledge from which it is capable of being validly inferred, but
from which it has not, as a matter of fact, been inferred by any logical process.
 Take, for example, the beliefs produced by reading. If the newspapers announce the death of the
King, we are fairly well justified in believing that the King is dead, since this is the sort of
announcement which would not be made if it were false. And we are quite amply justified in believing
that the newspaper asserts that the King is dead. But here the intuitive knowledge upon which our
belief is based is knowledge of the existence of sense-data derived from looking at the print which
gives the news. This knowledge scarcely rises into consciousness, except in a person who cannot read
easily. A child may be aware of the shapes of the letters, and pass gradually and painfully to a
realization of their meaning. But anybody accustomed to reading passes at once to what the letters
mean, and is not aware, except on reflection, that he has derived this knowledge from the sense-data
called seeing the printed letters. Thus although a valid inference from the letters to their meaning is
possible, and could be performed by the reader, it is not in fact performed, since he does not in fact
perform any operation which can be called logical inference. Yet it would be absurd to say that the
reader does not know that the newspaper announces the King’s death.
We must, therefore, admit as derivative knowledge whatever is the result of intuitive knowledge
even if by mere association, provided there is a valid logical connexion, and the person in question
could become aware of this connexion by reflection. There are in fact many ways, besides logical
inference, by which we pass from one belief to another: the passage from the print to its meaning
illustrates these ways. These ways may be called ‘psychological inference’. We shall, then, admit such
psychological inference as a means of obtaining derivative knowledge, provided there is a
discoverable logical inference which runs parallel to the psychological inference. This renders our
definition of derivative knowledge less precise than we could wish, since the word ‘discoverable’ is
vague: it does not tell us how much reflection may be needed in order to make the discovery. But in
fact ‘knowledge’ is not a precise conception: it merges into ‘probable opinion’, as we shall see more
fully in the course of the present chapter. A very precise definition, therefore, should not be sought,
since any such definition must be more or less misleading.
The chief difficulty in regard to knowledge, however, does not arise over derivative knowledge,
but over intuitive knowledge. So long as we are dealing with derivative knowledge, we have the test
of intuitive knowledge to fall back upon. But in regard to intuitive beliefs, it is by no means easy to
discover any criterion by which to distinguish some as true and others as erroneous. In this question it
is scarcely possible to reach any very precise result: all our knowledge of truths is infected with some
degree of doubt, and a theory which ignored this fact would be plainly wrong. Something may be
done, however, to mitigate the difficulties of the question.
Our theory of truth, to begin with, supplies the possibility of distinguishing certain truths as self-
evident in a sense which ensures infallibility. When a belief is true, we said, there is a corresponding
fact, in which the several objects of the belief form a single complex. The belief is said to constitute
knowledge of this fact, provided it fulfils those further somewhat vague conditions which we have
been considering in the present chapter. But in regard to any fact, besides the knowledge constituted
by belief, we may also have the kind of knowledge constituted by perception (taking this word in its
widest possible sense). For example, if you know the hour of the sunset, you can at that hour know the
fact that the sun is setting: this is knowledge of the fact by way of knowledge of truths; but you can
also, if the weather is fine, look to the west and actually see the setting sun: you then know the same
fact by the way of knowledge of things.
Thus in regard to any complex fact, there are, theoretically, two ways in which it may be known:
(1) by means of a judgement, in which its several parts are judged to be related as they are in fact
related; (2) by means of acquaintance with the complex fact itself, which may (in a large sense) be
called perception, though it is by no means confined to objects of the senses. Now it will be observed
that the second way of knowing a complex fact, the way of acquaintance, is only possible when there
really is such a fact, while the first way, like all judgement, is liable to error. The second way gives us
the complex whole, and is therefore only possible when its parts do actually have that relation which
makes them combine to form such a complex. The first way, on the contrary, gives us the parts and
the relation severally, and demands only the reality of the parts and the relation: the relation may not
relate those parts in that way, and yet the judgement may occur.
It will be remembered that at the end of Chapter 11 we suggested that there might be two kinds of
self-evidence, one giving an absolute guarantee of truth, the other only a partial guarantee. These two
kinds can now be distinguished.
We may say that a truth is self-evident, in the first and most absolute sense, when we have
acquaintance with the fact which corresponds to the truth. When Othello believes that Desdemona
loves Cassio, the corresponding fact, if his belief were true, would be ‘Desdemona’s love for Cassio’.
This would be a fact with which no one could have acquaintance except Desdemona; hence in the
sense of self-evidence that we are considering, the truth that Desdemona loves Cassio (if it were a
truth) could only be self-evident to Desdemona. All mental facts, and all facts concerning sense-data,
have this same privacy: there is only one person to whom they can be self-evident in our present
sense, since there is only one person who can be acquainted with the mental things or the sense-data
concerned. Thus no fact about any particular existing thing can be self-evident to more than one
person. On the other hand, facts about universals do not have this privacy. Many minds may be
acquainted with the same universals; hence a relation between universals may be known by
acquaintance to many different people. In all cases where we know by acquaintance a complex fact
consisting of certain terms in a certain relation, we say that the truth that these terms are so related has
the first or absolute kind of self-evidence, and in these cases the judgement that the terms are so
related must be true. Thus this sort of self-evidence is an absolute guarantee of truth.
But although this sort of self-evidence is an absolute guarantee of truth, it does not enable us to be
absolutely certain, in the case of any given judgement, that the judgement in question is true. Suppose
we first perceive the sun shining, which is a complex fact, and thence proceed to make the judgement
‘the sun is shining’. In passing from the perception to the judgement, it is necessary to analyse the
given complex fact: we have to separate out ‘the sun’ and ‘shining’ as constituents of the fact. In this
process it is possible to commit an error; hence even where a fact has the first or absolute kind of
self-evidence, a judgement believed to correspond to the fact is not absolutely infallible, because it
may not really correspond to the fact. But if it does correspond (in the sense explained in the
preceding chapter), then it must be true.
The second sort of self-evidence will be that which belongs to judgements in the first instance, and
is not derived from direct perception of a fact as a single complex whole. This second kind of self-
evidence will have degrees, from the very highest degree down to a bare inclination in favour of the
belief. Take, for example, the case of a horse trotting away from us along a hard road. At first our
certainty that we hear the hoofs is complete; gradually, if we listen intently, there comes a moment
when we think perhaps it was imagination or the blind upstairs or our own heartbeats; at last we
become doubtful whether there was any noise at all; then we think we no longer hear anything, and at
last we know we no longer hear anything. In this process, there is a continual gradation of self-
evidence, from the highest degree to the least, not in the sense-data themselves, but in the judgements
based on them.
Or again: Suppose we are comparing two shades of colour, one blue and one green. We can be
quite sure they are different shades of colour; but if the green colour is gradually altered to be more
and more like the blue, becoming first a blue-green, then a greeny-blue, then blue, there will come a
moment when we are doubtful whether we can see any difference, and then a moment when we know
that we cannot see any difference. The same thing happens in tuning a musical instrument, or in any
other case where there is a continuous gradation. Thus self-evidence of this sort is a matter of degree;
and it seems plain that the higher degrees are more to be trusted than the lower degrees.
In derivative knowledge our ultimate premisses must have some degree of self-evidence, and so
must their connexion with the conclusions deduced from them. Take for example a piece of reasoning
in geometry. It is not enough that the axioms from which we start should be self-evident: it is
necessary also that, at each step in the reasoning, the connexion of premiss and conclusion should be
self-evident. In difficult reasoning, this connexion has often only a very small degree of self-
evidence; hence errors of reasoning are not improbable where the difficulty is great.
From what has been said it is evident that, both as regards intuitive knowledge and as regards
derivative knowledge, if we assume that intuitive knowledge is trustworthy in proportion to the
degree of its self-evidence, there will be a gradation in trustworthiness, from the existence of
noteworthy sense-data and the simpler truths of logic and arithmetic, which may be taken as quite
certain, down to judgements which seem only just more probable than their opposites. What we
firmly believe, if it is true, is called knowledge, provided it is either intuitive or inferred (logically or
psychologically) from intuitive knowledge from which it follows logically. What we firmly believe,
if it is not true, is called error. What we firmly believe, if it is neither knowledge nor error, and also
what we believe hesitatingly because it is, or is derived from, something which has not the highest
degree of self-evidence, may be called probable opinion. Thus the greater part of what would
commonly pass as knowledge is more or less probable opinion.
In regard to probable opinion, we can derive great assistance from coherence, which we rejected as
the definition of truth, but may often use as a criterion. A body of individually probable opinions, if
they are mutually coherent, become more probable than any one of them would be individually. It is
in this way that many scientific hypotheses acquire their probability. They fit into a coherent system of
probable opinions, and thus become more probable than they would be in isolation. The same thing
applies to general philosophical hypotheses. Often in a single case such hypotheses may seem highly
doubtful, while yet, when we consider the order and coherence which they introduce into a mass of
probable opinion, they become pretty nearly certain. This applies, in particular, to such matters as the
distinction between dreams and waking life. If our dreams, night after night, were as coherent one
with another as our days, we should hardly know whether to believe the dreams or the waking life. As
it is, the test of coherence condemns the dreams and confirms the waking life. But this test, though it
increases probability where it is successful, never gives absolute certainty, unless there is certainty
already at some point in the coherent system. Thus the mere organization of probable opinion will
never, by itself, transform it into indubitable knowledge.
14
The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge

IN ALL THAT WE HAVE SAID HITHERTO concerning philosophy, we have scarcely touched on many matters
that occupy a great space in the writings of most philosophers. Most philosophers—or, at any rate,
very many—profess to be able to prove, by a priori metaphysical reasoning, such things as the
fundamental dogmas of religion, the essential rationality of the universe, the illusoriness of matter,
the unreality of all evil, and so on. There can be no doubt that the hope of finding reason to believe
such theses as these has been the chief inspiration of many life-long students of philosophy. This
hope, I believe, is vain. It would seem that knowledge concerning the universe as a whole is not to be
obtained by metaphysics, and that the proposed proofs that, in virtue of the laws of logic such and
such things must exist and such and such others cannot, are not capable of surviving a critical
scrutiny. In this chapter we shall briefly consider the kind of way in which such reasoning is
attempted, with a view to discovering whether we can hope that it may be valid.
The great representative, in modern times, of the kind of view which we wish to examine, was
Hegel (1770–1831). Hegel’s philosophy is very difficult, and commentators differ as to the true
interpretation of it. According to the interpretation I shall adopt, which is that of many, if not most, of
the commentators, and has the merit of giving an interesting and important type of philosophy, his
main thesis is that everything short of the Whole is obviously fragmentary, and obviously incapable
of existing without the complement supplied by the rest of the world. Just as a comparative anatomist,
from a single bone, sees what kind of animal the whole must have been, so the metaphysician,
according to Hegel, sees, from any one piece of reality, what the whole of reality must be—at least in
its large outlines. Every apparently separate piece of reality has, as it were, hooks which grapple it to
the next piece; the next piece, in turn, has fresh hooks, and so on, until the whole universe is
reconstructed. This essential incompleteness appears, according to Hegel, equally in the world of
thought and in the world of things. In the world of thought, if we take any idea which is abstract or
incomplete, we find, on examination, that if we forget its incompleteness, we become involved in
contradictions; these contradictions turn the idea in question into its opposite, or antithesis; and in
order to escape, we have to find a new, less incomplete idea, which is the synthesis of our original
idea and its antithesis. This new idea, though less incomplete than the idea we started with, will be
found, nevertheless, to be still not wholly complete, but to pass into its antithesis, with which it must
be combined in a new synthesis. In this way Hegel advances until he reaches the ‘Absolute Idea’,
which, according to him, has no incompleteness, no opposite, and no need of further development.
The Absolute Idea, therefore, is adequate to describe Absolute Reality; but all lower ideas only
describe reality as it appears to a partial view, not as it is to one who simultaneously surveys the
Whole. Thus Hegel reaches the conclusion that Absolute Reality forms one single harmonious
system, not in space or time, not in any degree evil, wholly rational, and wholly spiritual. Any
appearance to the contrary, in the world we know, can be proved logically—so he believes—to be
entirely due to our fragmentary piecemeal view of the universe. If we saw the universe whole, as we
may suppose God sees it, space and time and matter and evil and all striving and struggling would
disappear, and we should see instead an eternal perfect unchanging spiritual unity.
In this conception, there is undeniably something sublime, something to which we could wish to
yield assent. Nevertheless, when the arguments in support of it are carefully examined, they appear to
involve much confusion and many unwarrantable assumptions. The fundamental tenet upon which the
system is built up is that what is incomplete must be not self-subsistent, but must need the support of
other things before it can exist. It is held that whatever has relations to things outside itself must
contain some reference to those outside things in its own nature, and could not, therefore, be what it is
if those outside things did not exist. A man’s nature, for example, is constituted by his memories and
the rest of his knowledge, by his loves and hatreds, and so on; thus, but for the objects which he
knows or loves or hates, he could not be what he is. He is essentially and obviously a fragment: taken
as the sum-total of reality he would be self-contradictory.
This whole point of view, however, turns upon the notion of the ‘nature’ of a thing, which seems to
mean ‘all the truths about the thing’. It is of course the case that a truth which connects one thing with
another thing could not subsist if the other thing did not subsist. But a truth about a thing is not part of
the thing itself, although it must, according to the above usage, be part of the ‘nature’ of the thing. If
we mean by a thing’s ‘nature’ all the truths about the thing, then plainly we cannot know a thing’s
‘nature’ unless we know all the thing’s relations to all the other things in the universe. But if the word
‘nature’ is used in this sense, we shall have to hold that the thing may be known when its ‘nature’ is
not known, or at any rate is not known completely. There is a confusion, when this use of the word
‘nature’ is employed, between knowledge of things and knowledge of truths. We may have knowledge
of a thing by acquaintance even if we know very few propositions about it—theoretically we need not
know any propositions about it. Thus, acquaintance with a thing does not involve knowledge of its
‘nature’ in the above sense. And although acquaintance with a thing is involved in our knowing any
one proposition about a thing, knowledge of its ‘nature’, in the above sense, is not involved. Hence,
(1) acquaintance with a thing does not logically involve a knowledge of its relations, and (2) a
knowledge of some of its relations does not involve a knowledge of all of its relations nor a
knowledge of its ‘nature’ in the above sense. I may be acquainted, for example, with my toothache,
and this knowledge may be as complete as knowledge by acquaintance ever can be, without knowing
all that the dentist (who is not acquainted with it) can tell me about its cause, and without therefore
knowing its ‘nature’ in the above sense. Thus the fact that a thing has relations does not prove that its
relations are logically necessary. That is to say, from the mere fact that it is the thing it is we cannot
deduce that it must have the various relations which in fact it has. This only seems to follow because
we know it already.
It follows that we cannot prove that the universe as a whole forms a single harmonious system such
as Hegel believes that it forms. And if we cannot prove this, we also cannot prove the unreality of
space and time and matter and evil, for this is deduced by Hegel from the fragmentary and relational
character of these things. Thus we are left to the piecemeal investigation of the world, and are unable
to know the characters of those parts of the universe that are remote from our experience. This result,
disappointing as it is to those whose hopes have been raised by the systems of philosophers, is in
harmony with the inductive and scientific temper of our age, and is borne out by the whole
examination of human knowledge which has occupied our previous chapters.
Most of the great ambitious attempts of metaphysicians have proceeded by the attempt to prove that
such and such apparent features of the actual world were self-contradictory, and therefore could not
be real. The whole tendency of modern thought, however, is more and more in the direction of
showing that the supposed contradictions were illusory, and that very little can be proved a priori
from considerations of what must be. A good illustration of this is afforded by space and time. Space
and time appear to be infinite in extent, and infinitely divisible. If we travel along a straight line in
either direction, it is difficult to believe that we shall finally reach a last point, beyond which there is
nothing, not even empty space. Similarly, if in imagination we travel backwards or forwards in time,
it is difficult to believe that we shall reach a first or last time, with not even empty time beyond it.
Thus space and time appear to be infinite in extent.
Again, if we take any two points on a line, it seems evident that there must be other points between
them, however small the distance between them may be: every distance can be halved, and the halves
can be halved again, and so on ad infinitum. In time, similarly, however little time may elapse between
two moments, it seems evident that there will be other moments between them. Thus space and time
appear to be infinitely divisible. But as against these apparent facts—infinite extent and infinite
divisibility—philosophers have advanced arguments tending to show that there could be no infinite
collections of things, and that therefore the number of points in space, or of instants in time, must be
finite. Thus a contradiction emerged between the apparent nature of space and time and the supposed
impossibility of infinite collections.
Kant, who first emphasized this contradiction, deduced the impossibility of space and time, which
he declared to be merely subjective; and since his time very many philosophers have believed that
space and time are mere appearance, not characteristic of the world as it really is. Now, however,
owing to the labours of the mathematicians, notably Georg Cantor, it has appeared that the
impossibility of infinite collections was a mistake. They are not in fact self-contradictory, but only
contradictory of certain rather obstinate mental prejudices. Hence the reasons for regarding space and
time as unreal have become inoperative, and one of the great sources of metaphysical constructions is
dried up.
The mathematicians, however, have not been content with showing that space as it is commonly
supposed to be is possible; they have shown also that many other forms of space are equally possible,
so far as logic can show. Some of Euclid’s axioms, which appear to common sense to be necessary,
and were formerly supposed to be necessary by philosophers, are now known to derive their
appearance of necessity from our mere familiarity with actual space, and not from any a priori
logical foundation. By imagining worlds in which these axioms are false, the mathematicians have
used logic to loosen the prejudices of common sense, and to show the possibility of spaces differing
—some more, some less—from that in which we live. And some of these spaces differ so little from
Euclidean space, where distances such as we can measure are concerned, that it is impossible to
discover by observation whether our actual space is strictly Euclidean or of one of these other kinds.
Thus the position is completely reversed. Formerly it appeared that experience left only one kind of
space to logic, and logic showed this one kind to be impossible. Now, logic presents many kinds of
space as possible apart from experience, and experience only partially decides between them. Thus,
while our knowledge of what is has become less than it was formerly supposed to be, our knowledge
of what may be is enormously increased. Instead of being shut in within narrow walls, of which every
nook and cranny could be explored, we find ourselves in an open world of free possibilities, where
much remains unknown because there is so much to know.
What has happened in the case of space and time has happened, to some extent, in other directions
as well. The attempt to prescribe to the universe by means of a priori principles has broken down;
logic, instead of being, as formerly, the bar to possibilities, has become the great liberator of the
imagination, presenting innumerable alternatives which are closed to unreflective common sense, and
leaving to experience the task of deciding, where decision is possible, between the many worlds
which logic offers for our choice. Thus knowledge as to what exists becomes limited to what we can
learn from experience—not to what we can actually experience, for, as we have seen, there is much
knowledge by description concerning things of which we have no direct experience. But in all cases
of knowledge by description, we need some connexion of universals, enabling us, from such and
such a datum, to infer an object of a certain sort as implied by our datum. Thus in regard to physical
objects, for example, the principle that sense-data are signs of physical objects is itself a connexion of
universals; and it is only in virtue of this principle that experience enables us to acquire knowledge
concerning physical objects. The same applies to the law of causality, or, to descend to what is less
general, to such principles as the law of gravitation.
Principles such as the law of gravitation are proved, or rather are rendered highly probable, by a
combination of experience with some wholly a priori principle, such as the principle of induction.
Thus our intuitive knowledge, which is the source of all our other knowledge of truths, is of two
sorts: pure empirical knowledge, which tells us of the existence and some of the properties of
particular things with which we are acquainted, and pure a priori knowledge, which gives us
connexions between universals, and enables us to draw inferences from the particular facts given in
empirical knowledge. Our derivative knowledge always depends upon some pure a priori knowledge
and usually also depends upon some pure empirical knowledge.
Philosophical knowledge, if what has been said above is true, does not differ essentially from
scientific knowledge; there is no special source of wisdom which is open to philosophy but not to
science, and the results obtained by philosophy are not radically different from those obtained from
science. The essential characteristic of philosophy, which makes it a study distinct from science, is
criticism. It examines critically the principles employed in science and in daily life; it searches out
any inconsistencies there may be in these principles, and it only accepts them when, as the result of a
critical inquiry, no reason for rejecting them has appeared. If, as many philosophers have believed,
the principles underlying the sciences were capable, when disengaged from irrelevant detail, of
giving us knowledge concerning the universe as a whole, such knowledge would have the same claim
on our belief as scientific knowledge has; but our inquiry has not revealed any such knowledge, and
therefore, as regards the special doctrines of the bolder metaphysicians, has had a mainly negative
result. But as regards what would be commonly accepted as knowledge, our result is in the main
positive: we have seldom found reason to reject such knowledge as the result of our criticism, and we
have seen no reason to suppose man incapable of the kind of knowledge which he is generally
believed to possess.
When, however, we speak of philosophy as a criticism of knowledge, it is necessary to impose a
certain limitation. If we adopt the attitude of the complete sceptic, placing ourselves wholly outside all
knowledge, and asking, from this outside position, to be compelled to return within the circle of
knowledge, we are demanding what is impossible, and our scepticism can never be refuted. For all
refutation must begin with some piece of knowledge which the disputants share; from blank doubt, no
argument can begin. Hence the criticism of knowledge which philosophy employs must not be of this
destructive kind, if any result is to be achieved. Against this absolute scepticism, no logical argument
can be advanced. But it is not difficult to see that scepticism of this kind is unreasonable. Descartes’
‘methodical doubt’, with which modern philosophy began, is not of this kind, but is rather the kind of
criticism which we are asserting to be the essence of philosophy. His ‘methodical doubt’ consisted in
doubting whatever seemed doubtful; in pausing, with each apparent piece of knowledge, to ask
himself whether, on reflection, he could feel certain that he really knew it. This is the kind of criticism
which constitutes philosophy. Some knowledge, such as knowledge of the existence of our sense-data,
appears quite indubitable, however calmly and thoroughly we reflect upon it. In regard to such
knowledge, philosophical criticism does not require that we should abstain from belief. But there are
beliefs—such, for example, as the belief that physical objects exactly resemble our sense-data—which
are entertained until we begin to reflect, but are found to melt away when subjected to a close inquiry.
Such beliefs philosophy will bid us reject, unless some new line of argument is found to support
them. But to reject the beliefs which do not appear open to any objections, however closely we
examine them, is not reasonable, and is not what philosophy advocates.
 The criticism aimed at, in a word, is not that which, without reason, determines to reject, but that
which considers each piece of apparent knowledge on its merits, and retains whatever still appears to
be knowledge when this consideration is completed. That some risk of error remains must be
admitted, since human beings are fallible. Philosophy may claim justly that it diminishes the risk of
error, and that in some cases it renders the risk so small as to be practically negligible. To do more
than this is not possible in a world where mistakes must occur; and more than this no prudent
advocate of philosophy would claim to have performed.
15
The Value of Philosophy

HAVING NOW COME TO THE END of our brief and very incomplete review of the problems of
philosophy, it will be well to consider, in conclusion, what is the value of philosophy and why it ought
to be studied. It is the more necessary to consider this question, in view of the fact that many men,
under the influence of science or of practical affairs, are inclined to doubt whether philosophy is
anything better than innocent but useless trifling, hair-splitting distinctions, and controversies on
matters concerning which knowledge is impossible.
This view of philosophy appears to result, partly from a wrong conception of the ends of life,
partly from a wrong conception of the kind of goods which philosophy strives to achieve. Physical
science, through the medium of inventions, is useful to innumerable people who are wholly ignorant
of it; thus the study of physical science is to be recommended, not only, or primarily, because of the
effect on the student, but rather because of the effect on mankind in general. Thus utility does not
belong to philosophy. If the study of philosophy has any value at all for others than students of
philosophy, it must be only indirectly, through its effects upon the lives of those who study it. It is in
these effects, therefore, if anywhere, that the value of philosophy must be primarily sought.
But further, if we are not to fail in our endeavour to determine the value of philosophy, we must
first free our minds from the prejudices of what are wrongly called ‘practical’ men. The ‘practical’
man, as this word is often used, is one who recognizes only material needs, who realizes that men
must have food for the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of providing food for the mind. If all
men were well off, if poverty and disease had been reduced to their lowest possible point, there would
still remain much to be done to produce a valuable society; and even in the existing world the goods
of the mind are at least as important as the goods of the body. It is exclusively among the goods of the
mind that the value of philosophy is to be found; and only those who are not indifferent to these
goods can be persuaded that the study of philosophy is not a waste of time.
Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge. The knowledge it aims at is the
kind of knowledge which gives unity and system to the body of the sciences, and the kind which
results from a critical examination of the grounds of our convictions, prejudices, and beliefs. But it
cannot be maintained that philosophy has had any very great measure of success in its attempts to
provide definite answers to its questions. If you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist, a historian, or
any other man of learning, what definite body of truths has been ascertained by his science, his
answer will last as long as you are willing to listen. But if you put the same question to a philosopher,
he will, if he is candid, have to confess that his study has not achieved positive results such as have
been achieved by other sciences. It is true that this is partly accounted for by the fact that, as soon as
definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called
philosophy, and becomes a separate science. The whole study of the heavens, which now belongs to
astronomy, was once included in philosophy; Newton’s great work was called ‘the mathematical
principles of natural philosophy’. Similarly, the study of the human mind, which was a part of
philosophy, has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of psychology.
Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions
which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at
present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy.
This is, however, only a part of the truth concerning the uncertainty of philosophy. There are many
questions—and among them those that are of the profoundest interest to our spiritual life—which, so
far as we can see, must remain insoluble to the human intellect unless its powers become of quite a
different order from what they are now. Has the universe any unity of plan or purpose, or is it a
fortuitous concourse of atoms? Is consciousness a permanent part of the universe, giving hope of
indefinite growth in wisdom, or is it a transitory accident on a small planet on which life must
ultimately become impossible? Are good and evil of importance to the universe or only to man? Such
questions are asked by philosophy, and variously answered by various philosophers. But it would
seem that, whether answers be otherwise discoverable or not, the answers suggested by philosophy
are none of them demonstrably true. Yet, however slight may be the hope of discovering an answer, it
is part of the business of philosophy to continue the consideration of such questions, to make us
aware of their importance, to examine all the approaches to them, and to keep alive that speculative
interest in the universe which is apt to be killed by confining ourselves to definitely ascertainable
knowledge.
Many philosophers, it is true, have held that philosophy could establish the truth of certain answers
to such fundamental questions. They have supposed that what is of most importance in religious
beliefs could be proved by strict demonstration to be true. In order to judge of such attempts, it is
necessary to take a survey of human knowledge, and to form an opinion as to its methods and its
limitations. On such a subject it would be unwise to pronounce dogmatically; but if the investigations
of our previous chapters have not led us astray, we shall be compelled to renounce the hope of
finding philosophical proofs of religious beliefs. We cannot, therefore, include as part of the value of
philosophy any definite set of answers to such questions. Hence, once more, the value of philosophy
must not depend upon any supposed body of definitely ascertainable knowledge to be acquired by
those who study it.
The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no
tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense,
from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his
mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to
become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are
contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find, as we saw in
our opening chapters, that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very
incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true
answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts
and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what
things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat
arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it
keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect.
Apart from its utility in showing unsuspected possibilities, philosophy has a value—perhaps its
chief value—through the greatness of the objects which it contemplates, and the freedom from
narrow and personal aims resulting from this contemplation. The life of the instinctive man is shut up
within the circle of his private interests: family and friends may be included, but the outer world is not
regarded except as it may help or hinder what comes within the circle of instinctive wishes. In such a
life there is something feverish and confined, in comparison with which the philosophic life is calm
and free. The private world of instinctive interests is a small one, set in the midst of a great and
powerful world which must, sooner or later, lay our private world in ruins. Unless we can so enlarge
our interests as to include the whole outer world, we remain like a garrison in a beleaguered fortress,
knowing that the enemy prevents escape and that ultimate surrender is inevitable. In such a life there is
no peace, but a constant strife between the insistence of desire and the powerlessness of will. In one
way or another, if our life is to be great and free, we must escape this prison and this strife.
One way of escape is by philosophic contemplation. Philosophic contemplation does not, in its
widest survey, divide the universe into two hostile camps—friends and foes, helpful and hostile, good
and bad—it views the whole impartially. Philosophic contemplation, when it is unalloyed, does not
aim at proving that the rest of the universe is akin to man. All acquisition of knowledge is an
enlargement of the Self, but this enlargement is best attained when it is not directly sought. It is
obtained when the desire for knowledge is alone operative, by a study which does not wish in advance
that its objects should have this or that character, but adapts the Self to the characters which it finds in
its objects. This enlargement of Self is not obtained when, taking the Self as it is, we try to show that
the world is so similar to this Self that knowledge of it is possible without any admission of what
seems alien. The desire to prove this is a form of self-assertion and, like all self-assertion, it is an
obstacle to the growth of Self which it desires, and of which the Self knows that it is capable. Self-
assertion, in philosophic speculation as elsewhere, views the world as a means to its own ends; thus it
makes the world of less account than Self, and the Self sets bounds to the greatness of its goods. In
contemplation, on the contrary, we start from the not-Self, and through its greatness the boundaries of
Self are enlarged; through the infinity of the universe the mind which contemplates it achieves some
share in infinity.
For this reason greatness of soul is not fostered by those philosophies which assimilate the
universe to Man. Knowledge is a form of union of Self and not-Self; like all union, it is impaired by
dominion, and therefore by any attempt to force the universe into conformity with what we find in
ourselves. There is a widespread philosophical tendency towards the view which tells us that Man is
the measure of all things, that truth is man-made, that space and time and the world of universals are
properties of the mind, and that, if there be anything not created by the mind, it is unknowable and of
no account for us. This view, if our previous discussions were correct, is untrue; but in addition to
being untrue, it has the effect of robbing philosophic contemplation of all that gives it value, since it
fetters contemplation to Self. What it calls knowledge is not a union with the not-Self, but a set of
prejudices, habits, and desires, making an impenetrable veil between us and the world beyond. The
man who finds pleasure in such a theory of knowledge is like the man who never leaves the domestic
circle for fear his word might not be law.
The true philosophic contemplation, on the contrary, finds its satisfaction in every enlargement of
the not-Self, in everything that magnifies the objects contemplated, and thereby the subject
contemplating. Everything, in contemplation, that is personal or private, everything that depends upon
habit, self-interest, or desire, distorts the object, and hence impairs the union which the intellect seeks.
By thus making a barrier between subject and object, such personal and private things become a
prison to the intellect. The free intellect will see as God might see, without a here and now, without
hopes and fears, without the trammels of customary beliefs and traditional prejudices, calmly,
dispassionately, in the sole and exclusive desire of knowledge—knowledge as impersonal, as purely
contemplative, as it is possible for man to attain. Hence also the free intellect will value more the
abstract and universal knowledge into which the accidents of private history do not enter, than the
knowledge brought by the senses, and dependent, as such knowledge must be, upon an exclusive and
personal point of view and a body whose sense-organs distort as much as they reveal.
The mind which has become accustomed to the freedom and impartiality of philosophic
contemplation will preserve something of the same freedom and impartiality in the world of action
and emotion. It will view its purposes and desires as parts of the whole, with the absence of insistence
that results from seeing them as infinitesimal fragments in a world of which all the rest is unaffected
by any one man’s deeds. The impartiality which, in contemplation, is the unalloyed desire for truth, is
the very same quality of mind which, in action, is justice, and in emotion is that universal love which
can be given to all, and not only to those who are judged useful or admirable. Thus contemplation
enlarges not only the objects of our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and our affections: it
makes us citizens of the universe, not only of one walled city at war with all the rest. In this citizenship
of the universe consists man’s true freedom, and his liberation from the thraldom of narrow hopes
and fears.
Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy: Philosophy is to be studied, not for the
sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be
true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our
conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination, and diminish the dogmatic
assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of
the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of
that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.
Appendix: Foreword to the German Translation1

T HIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN IN 1911, but since then my views on some of the subjects discussed here have
undergone a significant development. This development results almost entirely from the application
of a principle of which my friend Whitehead and I made use in Principia Mathematica. In that work
we presented grounds for the view that such objects as classes and numbers are merely logical
constructions. That is to say, the symbols for such objects have no denotation of their own, but there
is merely a rule for their use; we can define the meaning of a statement in which those symbols occur,
but what is meant includes no constituent which corresponds to these symbols. Thus we were led to a
new application of the principle called Occam’s Razor, according to which the number of entities is
not to be multiplied beyond necessity. Whitehead convinced me that the concept of matter is a logical
fiction of this superfluous type, i.e. a piece of matter can be treated as a system of connected events in
various parts of the space—time continuum. There are various methods of carrying this out between
which it is so far very hard to choose. Whitehead followed one way in his Principles of Natural
Knowledge and in his Concept of Nature; I followed another in my book Our Knowledge of the
External World. According to these presentations what is said about matter in Chapters 1 and 2 needs
changing, though not quite to the extent that might appear.
The same method and the same principle have led me to a further change. In the discussion of
knowledge in The Problems of Philosophy I assumed the existence of the subject and treated
acquaintance as a relation between subject and object. Now I regard the subject also as a logical
construction. The consequence is that one must give up the distinction between sensations and sense-
data; on this question I now agree with William James and the school of American realists. The
changes which as a result need to be made in my theory of knowledge are to be found in my Analysis
of Mind.
At the time when The Problems of Philosophy was written the general theory of relativity was not
yet known, and I had not yet sufficiently realized the importance of the special theory. I should have
chosen certain expressions differently if I had then taken account of relativity theory.1 But the
problems dealt with in this book are for the most part entirely independent of this theory and are in
general not decisively affected by it.
If I were to write this book now, I should be much less inclined to regard certain ethical statements
as a priori. I should have been able to say more about induction if I had been able to make use of Mr.
Keynes’s Treatise on Probability, which appeared later.
It seemed to me impossible to incorporate these changes in the text, because the views referred to
above are entirely dependent on the calculus of logic and can scarcely be presented so as to be
generally understood. Besides, they are more easily understood as changes in the theory presented
here than if they are explained on their own. I have therefore considered it better to leave the book as I
wrote it in 1911, but with these introductory remarks on the further investigations which indicate its
imperfections.
November 1924
Bibliographical Note

T HE STUDENT who wishes to acquire an elementary knowledge of philosophy will find it both easier
and more profitable to read some of the works of the great philosophers than to attempt to derive an
all-round view from handbooks. The following are specially recommended: PLATO: Republic,
especially Books VI and VII.

DESCARTES: Meditations.

SPINOZA: Ethics.

LEIBNIZ: The Monadology.

BERKELEY: Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous.

HUME: Enquiry concerning Human Understanding.

KANT: Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic.

Further Reading

i. Other works by Russell

The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967–9.
Mysticism and Logic, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1963. (Contains essays which develop the
themes of Problems of Philosophy.) Theory of Knowledge, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984
(Written in 1913 but only published after Russell’s death.) ii. Russell and his philosophical context
AYER, A. J., Russell, London: Fontana, 1972.
HYLTON , PETER, Russell, Idealism and the Emergence of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1990. (Very detailed account of Russell’s background, development and
influence.) PEARS, D., Bertrand Russell and the British Tradition in Philosophy, London: Fontana
1967. (Chs. 12 and 13 discuss the theory of truth Russell outlines in Problems of Philosophy and
Wittgenstein’s criticisms.) SKORUPSKI, JOHN, English-Language Philosophy 1750–1945, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1993.

iii. Other brief introductions to philosophy

HOLLIS, MARTIN, Invitation to Philosophy, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2nd edn., 1997.
NAGEL, T HOMAS, What Does it All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1987.
Index

The interrogations indicate places where a view is discussed, not asserted

absolute idea, 83
acquaintance, 22 ff., 33, 62–63, 69, 79, 97
with self?, 27 ff.
act, mental, 21
analytic, 46
appearance, 2, 6
a priori, 41–43, 45, 46 ff., 59 ff., 98
mental?, 49
arithmetic, 47, 48
association, 34, 36

being, 57
belief, 69 ff.
instinctive, 11, 12
Berkeley, George (Bishop), 4, 5, 6, 18, 20 ff., 41, 54, 55, 56
Bismarck, Prince Otto von, 30–32
Bradley, Francis Herbert, 54

Cantor, Georg, 85
causality, 35, 38, 47
China, Emperor of, 23, 42
classes, 97
cogito, ergo sum, 8. See Descartes coherence, 70–71, 81
colours, 2–3, 17, 18, 80
concept, 28
constituents, 73
constructions, logical, 97–98
contradiction, law of, 40, 46–47
correspondence of belief and fact, 70 ff.
correspondence of sense-data and physical objects, 10, 11, 15, 16–17, 19, 20
criterion, 81
critical philosophy, 46 ff.

deduction, 44
Descartes, René, 7–8, 41, 87
description, 24, 25, 26, 28 ff., 63
divisibility, infinite, 85
doubt, 7, 8, 11, 12, 87
dreams, 8, 10, 11, 63, 71
duration, 16

empiricists, 41–42, 49, 55

error, 63, 69 ff., 81, 88
excluded middle, 40
existence, 57
knowledge of, 7 ff., 33, 41
experience, extended by descriptions, 32, 86
immediate, 1, 7
facts, 79–80
falsehood, 69 ff.
definition of, 74
fiction, logical, 97

generalization, empirical, 43, 45, 61

geometry, 43, 47

hallucinations, see dreams Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 82 ff.

Hume, David, 41, 47, 54, 55

idealism, 19–24
defined, 19
grounds of, 19 ff.
idealists, 18
ideas, 20 ff., 56–57
abstract, 26, 55
innate, 41
platonic, 52–53
identity, law of, 40
induction, 33–38, 39, 44, 61, 97
principle of, 36–37, 39, 64, 86
inference, logical and psychological, 78
infinity, 85
innate ideas and principles, see ideas introspection, 26

Kant, Immanuel, 45–51, 85

knowledge, by acquaintance and by description, 23–32, 62–63
definition of, 76 ff., 92
 derivative, 63, 77–78
indubitable?, 1, 87
intuitive, 63, 64–68, 77, 78 ff., 86
of future, 33 ff.
of general principles, 39–45, 47, 62
of things and of truths, 23, 25, 62, 63, 84
of universe, 12, 82, 90
only of mental things?, 21 ff.
philosophical, 87, 90
theory of, 19, 98

laws, general, 35, 37, 41

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 5, 6, 18, 41, 54
light, 13–14
Locke, John, 41
logic, 39 ff., 53, 71, 85–86, 98

mathematics, 43, 47
matter, 4
existence of, 4–5, 7–12, 22
nature of, 13–18, 97
memory, 26, 66 ff.
mind, 4–5, 28
the only reality?, 5 (see also idealists) what is in the, 20 ff., 56
monad, 54
monadism, 54
monism, 54
motion, laws of, 34, 35

nature of a thing, 83–84

necessity, 43
numbers, 97

object of apprehension, 21–22

of judgement, 73–74
Occam’s Razor, 97

particular, 53
perception, 65–66, 67, 80
phenomenon, 48, 49
philosophy, value of, 89–94
 uncertainty of, 90, 91
physical objects, 4, 8, 9, 16, 17, 28, 29, 48, 62
Plato, 53 ff.
principles, general, 39–45
probability, 34 ff., 41
probable opinion, 81
proper names, 29 ff., 53
propositions, constituents of, 29–30

qualities, 50, 54, 55, 58

rationalists, 41, 49
reality, 2 ff., 6
relations, 15, 16, 17, 50–51, 54, 55, 56, 58 ff., 83–84, 97
multiple, 71–74
sense of, 73, 74
relativity theory, 98
resemblance, 55, 59

self, 8, 27, 28, 49

self-consciousness, 27
self-evidence, 64–68
degrees of, 67, 68, 80, 81
two kinds of, 79 ff.
sensation, 4, 48, 98
sense-data, 4, 6, 7, 9–11, 13, 15, 16–17, 25, 48, 79, 98
certainty of, 8–9
shapes, 3, 16
solipsism, 9–11
space, 14 ff., 85, 86
Euclidean and non-Euclidean, 85–86
physical; 14–16
Spinoza, Baruch, 54
subject, 73, 97

‘thing in itself, 48–49

‘thought, laws of’, 40, 49–50
Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists, 4
time, 16 ff., 49, 58–59, 85, 86
touch, 3
truth, 69–75
 definition of, 74

uniformity of nature, 35
universals, 26, 28, 52–57, 86
knowledge of, 58–63, 79

verbs, 54
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CLASSICS
A Very Short Introduction
 Mary Beard and John Henderson

This Very Short Introduction to Classics links a haunting temple on a lonely mountainside to the
glory of ancient Greece and the grandeur of Rome, and to Classics within modern culture – from
Jefferson and Byron to Asterix and Ben-Hur.

‘The authors show us that Classics is a “modern” and sexy subject. They succeed brilliantly in this regard… nobody could fail
to be informed and entertained – and the accent of the book is provocative and stimulating.’
John Godwin, Times Literary Supplement
‘Statues and slavery, temples and tragedies, museum, marbles, and mythology – this provocative guide to the Classics
demysties its varied subject-matter while seducing the reader with the obvious enthusiasm and pleasure which mark its writing.’
Edith Hall

www.oup.co.uk/vsi/classics
LOGIC
A Very Short Introduction
 Graham Priest

Logic is often perceived as an esoteric subject, having little to do with the rest of philosophy, and
even less to do with real life. In this lively and accessible introduction, Graham Priest shows how
wrong this conception is. He explores the philosophical roots of the subject, explaining how modern
formal logic deals with issues ranging from the existence of God and the reality of time to paradoxes
of self-reference, change and probability. Along the way, the book explains the basic ideas of formal
logic in simple, non-technical, terms, as well as the philosophical pressures to which these have
responded. This is a book for anyone who has ever been puzzled by a piece of reasoning.

This book is terrific.… It covers a lot of ground, but in a wonderfully relaxed and interesting way.’
Simon Blackburn, University of North Carolina
‘This is a delightful and engaging introduction to the basic concepts of logic. Whilst not shirking the problems, Priest always
manages to keep his discussion accessible and instructive.’
Adrian Moore, St Hug h’s Colleg e, Oxford

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ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
A Very Short Introduction
 Julia Annas

The tradition of ancient philosophy is a long, rich and varied one, in which a constant note is that of
discussion and argument. This book aims to introduce readers to some ancient debates and to get
them to engage with the ancient developments of philosophical themes. Getting away from the
presentation of ancient philosophy as a succession of Great Thinkers, the book aims to give readers a
sense of the freshness and liveliness of ancient philosophy, and of its wide variety of themes and
styles.

‘Incisive, elegant, and full of the excitement of doing philosophy, Julia Annas’s Short Introduction boldly steps outside of
conventional chronological ways of organizing material about the Greeks and Romans to get right to the heart of the human
problems that exercised them, problems ranging from the relation between reason and emotion to the objectivity of truth. I can’t
think of a better way to begin.’
Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicag o

www.oup.co.uk/vsi/ancientphilosophy
ARISTOTLE
A Very Short Introduction
 Jonathan Barnes

The influence of Aristotle, the prince of philosophers, on the intellectual history of the West is second
to none. In this book Jonathan Barnes examines Aristotle’s scientific researches, his discoveries in
logic and his metaphysical theories, his work in psychology and in ethics and politics, and his ideas
about art and poetry, placing his teachings in their historical context.

‘With compressed verve, Jonathan Barnes displays the extraordinary versatility of Aristotle, the great systematising empiricist.’
Sunday Times

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THEOLOGY
A Very Short Introduction
David F. Ford

This Very Short Introduction provides both believers and non-believers with a balanced survey of the
central questions of contemporary theology. David Ford’s interrogative approach draws the reader
into considering the principles underlying religious belief, including the centrality of salvation to
most major religions, the concept of God in ancient, modern, and post-modern contexts, the
challenge posed to theology by prayer and worship, and the issue of sin and evil. He also probes the
nature of experience, knowledge, and wisdom in theology, and discusses what is involved in
interpreting theological texts today.

‘David Ford tempts his readers into the huge resources of theology with an attractive mix of simple questions and profound
reflection. With its vivid untechnical language it succeeds brilliantly in its task of introduction.’
Stephen Sykes, University of Durham
‘a fine book, imaginatively conceived and gracefully written. It carries the reader along with it, enlarging horizons while
acknowledging problems and providing practical guidance along the way.’
Maurice Wiles, University of Oxford

www.oup.co.uk/vsi/theology
LITERARY THEORY
A Very Short Introduction
 Jonathan Culler

Literary Theory is a controversial subject. Said to have transformed the study of culture and society
in the past two decades, it is accused of undermining respect for tradition and truth, encouraging
suspicion about the political and psychological implications of cultural products instead of
admiration for great literature. In this Very Short Introduction, Jonathan Culler explains ‘theory’, not
by describing warring ‘schools’ but by sketching key ‘moves’ that theory has encouraged and
speaking directly about the implications of cultural theory for thinking about literature, about the
power of language, and about human identity. This lucid introduction will be useful for anyone who
has wondered what all the fuss is about or who wants to think about literature today.

‘It is impossible to imagine a clearer treatment of the subject, or one that is, within the given limits of length, more
comprehensive. Culler has always been remarkable for his expository skills, and here he has found exactly the right method
and tone for his purposes.’
Frank Kermode

www.oup.co.uk/vsi/literarytheory
1 Cf. A. N. Whitehead, Introduction to Mathematics (Home University Library).
1 Kant’s ‘thing in itself is identical in definition with the physical object, namely, it is the cause of sensations. In the properties deduced
from the definition it is not identical, since Kant held (in spite of some inconsistency as regards cause) that we can know that none of the
categories are applicable to the ‘thing in itself.
1 Made by Paul Hertz (Erlangen, 1926). The English original of this foreword, if there was one, is lost. This version is based on a
translation by Ibrahim Najjar and Heather Kirkconnell which appeared in Russell (the journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives) No. 17,
Spring 1975, pp. 27–9. It has been slightly revised by J. O. Urmson for inclusion here.
1 In a letter of 20 September 1966 to his editor at Oxford University Press, answering a question about the cover design of the book,
Russell wrote: ‘The most suitable cover for this volume, in my opinion, would be a picture of a monkey tumbling over a precipice and
exclaiming “Oh dear, I wish I hadn’t read Einstein.’” He added as a P.S.: ‘On no account should the monkey look like me.’