nature and limits. For, as regards the point in question, the difference is wholly irrelevant. No abstraction (whatever its origin) is in the end defensible. For they are, none of them, quite true, and with each the amount of possible error must remain unknown. The truth asserted is not, and cannot be, taken as real by itself. The background is ignored because it is assumed to make no difference, and the mass of conditions, abstracted from and left out, is treated as immaterial. The predicate, in other words, is held to belong to the subject essentially, and not because of something else which may be withdrawn or modified. But an assumption of this kind obviously goes beyond our knowledge. Since Reality here is not exhausted, but is limited only by our failure to see more, there is a possibility everywhere of unknown conditions on which our judgment depends. And hence, after all, we may be asserting anywhere what is but accidental.
We may put this otherwise by stating that finite truth must be conditional. No such fact or truth is ever really self-supported and independent. They are all conditioned, and in the end conditioned all by the unknown. And the extent to which they are so conditioned, again is uncertain. But this means that any finite truth or fact may to an indefinite extent be accidental appearance. In other words, if its conditions were filled in, it, in its own proper form, might have disappeared. It might be modified and transformed beyond that point at which it could be said, to any extent, to retain its own nature. And however improbable in certain cases this result may be, in no case can it be called impossible absolutely. Everything finite is because of something else. And where the extent and nature of this “something else” cannot be ascertained, the “because” turns out to be no better than “if.” There is nothing finite which is not at the mercy of unknown conditions.
