ABSTRACT
1. We have now discussed the main conditions of knowledge, and have tried to show in what way a system of valid judgments, in other words scientific truth, may be built up from them. But we have to submit our hypothetical conditions to a further test. Certain conceptions pass current in our mental economy as solid and well-established truths. These conceptions not merely hold facts together by universal laws, but, as we shall try to show, distinctly attribute to them a certain nature or manner of existence. Now, though we have no doubt often enough used these conceptions in preceding chapters, we have not yet made our references to them explicit. We have been bent on explaining and justifying our knowledge of particular facts in the present or the past, of the wholes constituted by such particulars, and of the uniformities in their relations and occurrence. We have now to ask whether the factors of knowledge so far assumed will further explain such conceptions of the nature of things as we name matter, mind, substance, power, attribute, etc.
