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Updated: June 21, 2025
He describes the so-called a priori proof, as formulated by Clarke. But without denying its force, he does not like to lay stress upon it. He dreads 'ontology' too much. He therefore considers that the argument at once most satisfactory to the philosopher and most convincing to ordinary men is the argument from design.
We are entirely relieved, therefore, by their own admission or assumption, from the necessity of discussing the more general problem of Ontology; the problem, whether we can prove the existence of any being, properly so called, from a mere series of phenomena, a succession of appearances.
What matters the machinery of ideas, but as enabling philosophy to cope successfully with ontology? Philosophy is a huge wheel which has been revolving for ages; early metaphysicians hung their finely spun webs on its spokes, and metaphysicians of the nineteenth century gaze upon and renew the same pretty theories as the wheel revolves.
But whatever a person's opinion may be on this point of Ontology, the force he is really urged by is his own subjective feeling, and is exactly measured by its strength.
Do not imagine that I understand what has passed commonly under that name metaphysical pneumatics, for instance, or ontology. The first are conversant about imaginary substances, such as may and may not exist.
He does not know, then, the illustrious Say, the nature of a science; or rather, he knows nothing of the subject which he discusses. Say's example has borne its fruits. Political economy, as it exists at present, resembles ontology: discussing effects and causes, it knows nothing, explains nothing, decides nothing.
The critical school turned against its masters, who were already sinking into speculative theology again, quite forgetting that its great leader had introduced a new epoch with a struggle against ontology; and losing themselves in the heights of non-existence, just as if they had never taken their start from the thesis, that no created mind can comprehend the nature of the Being that is behind all phenomena.
Under this would apparently fall the explanation of 'reality' which leads to a doctrine upon which he often insists, and which is most implicitly given in the fragment called Ontology. He there distinguishes 'real' from 'fictitious entities, a distinction which, as he tells us, he first learned from d'Alembert's phrase Êtres fictifs and which he applies in his Morals and Legislation.
The critic's trouble over this seems to come from his taking the word 'true' irrelatively, whereas the pragmatist always means 'true for him who experiences the workings. 'But is the object REALLY true or not? the critic then seems to ask, as if the pragmatist were bound to throw in a whole ontology on top of his epistemology and tell us what realities indubitably exist.
It was broken by the philosopher. "Is that all you wanted my opinion about, Miss May?" he asked, with his finger between the leaves of the treatise on ontology. "Yes, I think so. I hope I haven't bored you?" "I've enjoyed the discussion extremely. I had no idea that novels raised points of such psychological interest. I must find time to read one."
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