ABSTRACT
The dominant meaning of reason, as it is considered in this book, is the power and function of grasping necessary connections. That such connections exist there is no doubt. None of the empiricist theories we have discussed, however sceptical, denies this; the old empiricism of Mill, which reduced necessity to association, is now dead. The present issue among philosophers is not whether necessity exists, but how much of the world is subject to its sway. Does it link only the components of our own arbitrary definitions, as the more extreme of the positivists maintain, so that the only necessity in the world will occur in such tautologies as ‘all bachelors are unmarried’? Or does it link genuinely diverse characters presented in our experience, such as colours, sounds, shapes, and sizes, and if so, how generally? Or does it extend still further to the things and events that are presumed to exist in nature, whether we experience them or not? Or, lastly, does it include the whole universe in its domain, as the Hegelians think, so that to a reason fully developed the world would be a system in which every thing and event was caught in one vast web of necessity? This is the problem that any philosophic defence of reason must ultimately face, and we must now indicate our line of answer to it.
