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Now, speaking quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and most unmistakable mark of madness is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic's theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way.
Now this proposition, which declares that every condition attained in the empirical regress must itself be considered empirically conditioned, contains the rule in terminis, which requires me, to whatever extent I may have proceeded in the ascending series, always to look for some higher member in the series whether this member is to become known to me through experience, or not.
From the foregoing and similar instances, we may see the importance, when a law of nature previously unknown has been brought to light, or when new light has been thrown upon a known law by experiment, of examining all cases which present the conditions necessary for bringing that law into action; a process fertile in demonstrations of special laws previously unsuspected, and explanations of others already empirically known.
What can be distinguished, it tells us, is separate; and what is separate is unrelated, for a relation, being a 'between, would bring only a twofold separation. Hegel, Royce, Bradley, and the Oxford absolutists in general seem to agree about this logical absurdity of manyness-in-oneness in the only places where it is empirically found. But see the curious tactics!
In all science we have to distinguish two sorts of laws: first, those that are empirically verifiable but probably only approximate; secondly, those that are not verifiable, but may be exact.
This is in some sense an empirical fact, but it would be hard to state it precisely, because "causal efficacy" is difficult to define. What can be known empirically about the matter of a thing is only approximate, because we cannot get to know the appearances of the thing from very small distances, and cannot accurately infer the limit of these appearances.
But if all that we perceive must be regarded as conditionally necessary, it is impossible that anything which is empirically given should be absolutely necessary.
It recalls the vision of my aunt, with a hand at each end of it, searching empirically for the level feeling for it, that is, with the creature's own legs before lifting the hanging-leaves, and drawing out the hitherto supernumerary legs to support them; after which would come a fresh adjustment of level, another hustling to and fro, that the new feet likewise might settle on elevations of equal height; and then came the snowy cloth or the tea-tray, deposited cautiously upon its shining surface.
To ask how, is at once to indicate an ultimate departure from the philosophical point of view; for the means to an end are different, and to be empirically determined. Now the constitution of Beauty can be only the means to the end of Beauty, that combination of qualities in the object which will bring about the end fixed by philosophical definition.
Again, Sir Martin Conway tells us: The laws of perspective can be deduced with certainty from mathematical first principles, the canon of proportions' could only be constructed empirically as the result of repeated observations. Nevertheless, once constructed, it can certainly be used as Duerer suggested. Its use has practically been superseded by the study of anatomy.
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