ABSTRACT
What is metaphysics? One may use the word variously. I use it to refer to the study which seeks to clarify our conceptions of the absolute, necessary, strictly universal, infinite, or perfect. These terms are not synonymous; but they all have this in common, that they transcend empirical evidence, in any normal meaning of ‘empirical’. No experiment can show that there is, or is not, anything absolute, necessary, strictly universal, infinite, or perfect. That we find no exceptions to a law establishes not the slightest rational presumption that none ever will be found by any cognitive being. Some of the Greeks took the stars to be absolute in relation to all lesser things, that is, wholly unaltered by changing relations to these things; but this they could not possibly have had cogent empirical grounds for doing. Nor, I should suppose, could cosmology as an empirical science ever prove, or give any reason for holding, that the cosmos is infinite in space. Or again, we may have evidence that a certain thing is a ‘perfect’ specimen, in some loose sense. However, ‘perfect’ in the strict metaphysical sense means not merely, as measured by this or that concept or standard, but (in some way), by any legitimate concept or standard. It means good, not simply for this or that purpose, but—in whatever way, if any, this can be so—for every possible purpose. No such thing could be empirically detected. The mystic may perhaps experience the Perfect reality, but he cannot ‘observe’ it, in the sense of an empirical science.
