The assertion that reality for the
human mind is restricted to the positive facts of the sensible
order, is purely theoretic, and is any thing but a positive fact.
Principles are as really objects of science as facts, and it is
only in the light of principles that facts themselves are
intelligible. If the human mind had no science of reality that
transcends the sensible order, or the positive fact, it could
have no science at all. As things exist only in their principles
or causes, so can they be known only in their principles and
causes; for things can be known only as they are, or as they
really exist. The science that pretends to deduce principles
from particular facts, or to rise from the fact by way of
reasoning to an order that transcends facts, and in which facts
have their origin, is undoubtedly chimerical, and as against that
the positivists are unquestionably right. But to maintain that
man has no intelligence of any thing beyond the fact, no
intuition or intellectual apprehension of its principle or cause,
is equally chimerical. The human mind cannot have all science,
but it has real science as far as it goes, and real science is
the knowledge of things as they are, not as they are not.
Sensible facts are not intelligible by themselves, because they
do not exist by themselves; and if the human mind could not
penetrate beyond the individual fact, beyond the mimetic to the
methexic, or transcendental principle, copied or imitated by the
individual fact, it could never know the fact itself.
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