assertions, all of which were individually derived from experience. This
is the position scientists as such, and believers in the theory of
naturalism, take up as to the possibility of the knowledge of truth to
the human mind. They are entirely consistent, therefore, when they
arrive ultimately at the agnostic position, and contend that our
knowledge must necessarily be confined to the world of experience, and
that nothing can be known of the world beyond. But they are
fundamentally wrong in overestimating the place of the sense organs, and
forgetting that while these have a part to play in life, they do not
constitute the whole of life.

A far more satisfactory theory is that of _Rationalism_. It
is a theory that admits that the human mind has some capacity for
working upon the data presented to it by the sense organs. Man is
no longer quite so helpless a creature as empiricism would make
him. He is able to weigh and consider the facts that are presented
to the mind. The method rationalism uses to arrive at truth is that
of logical deduction, and the test of truth is that the steps in the
process are logically sound. We may start from the data "All dogs
are animals" and "Carlo is a dog," and arrive very simply at the
conclusion "Carlo is an animal." The conclusion is correct because
we have reasoned in accordance with the laws of logic, with the laws
of valid thought. All logical reasoning is, of course, not so simple
as the example given, but it may be stated generally that when there
is no logical fallacy, a correct conclusion may be arrived at,
provided, too--and herein lies the difficulty--provided that the
premises are also true. These premises may be in themselves general
statements--how is their truth established? They may be, and often
are, the generalisations of the empirical sciences, and must then
possess the same degree of uncertainty that these generalisations