THE NATUBE OF TRUTH. 529 only for the remark that the whole which, as he puts it, " is no genuine whole," is as much a genuine whole as any that this theory will admit ; for it is a characteristic of the theory that its views as to the nature of whole and part are quite different from those adopted by the school to which Mr. Joachim belongs. Mr. Joachim's objection to this view comes to this : that if A is independent of B, A cannot be related to B ; that, consequently, if the facts are independent of experience, they cannot be experienced, and nothing at all can be known. Thus he says (p. 42) : "Green- ness is, for the theory, an ultimate entity in the nature of things, which has its being absolutely in itself. How, under the circum- stances, greenness can yet sometimes so far depart from its sacred aloofness as to be apprehended (sensated or conceived) ; and how, when this takes place, the sensating or conceiving subject is assured that its immaculate perseitas is still preserved these are questions to which apparently the only answer is the dogmatic reiteration of the supposed fact." Mr. Joachim alleges that the plain man is on his side. I have been tempted to ask some plain man what he thought greenness was, but have been restrained by the fear of being thought insane. Mr. Joachim, however, seems to have been bolder. Considering the difficulty of finding a really plain man nowadays, I presume he asked his scout, who apparently replied : " Well, sir, greenness is to me the name of a complex fact, the factors of which essentially and reciprocally determine one another. And if you, sir, choose to select one factor out of the complex, and to call it greenness, I will not dispute about the term, for I know my place, sir ; but as thus isolated, your greenness is an abstraction, which emphatically, in itself and as such, is not there nor anywhere." At least, this is what I gather from the opinion of the plain man reported on p. 42. "Who shall say," he concludes, "that /mis the insight of a lying prophet, while yours bears the divine stamp of truth ? " The answer to this question would require a whole treatise ; for the present, therefore, I will confine myself to Mr. Joachim's contention : that mine is the insight of a lying prophet, while his bears the divine stamp of truth. It is evident that the apparent force of Mr. Joachim's argument lies in the use of such phrases as "sacred aloofness," in which he assumes that if greenness is independent of experience, it cannot be related to experience. For I do not maintain that greenness, or anything else, has any " sacred aloofness " ; I contend merely that there is such a thing, having various relations, among others rela- tions of being perceived. Mr. Joachim's argument, in fact, depends upon the assumption that, in any complex, the constituents of the complex are nothing ; i.e., you cannot find an entity A, and say " A 1 It may be objected that Mr. Joachim's position does not depend on mere " insight," since he has a criterion for deciding between rival in- sights. My reply is that his criterion is established by assuming his view on a logically prior question, and that this assumption is unsup- ported by the criterion to which it leads.
