(ib. 483). There is no 'cause,' which is 'a faculty to effect something, superadded fancifully to what happens' (ib. 551, cf. 477-9). There is no logic, for logical thought is 'a complete fiction which never occurs in reality.' Its principles, the 'laws' of Identity and Contradiction, are 'fictions' and 'imperatives,' which apply only to figments and are not 'adequate to reality.' For 'identical cases' are a 'coarsening' fiction, created by a will to power that such they shall be. Logic, therefore, like mathematics, only holds good of assumed existences which we have created.' It is our attempt at making the actual world more calculable and more susceptible to formulation for our purposes' (aph. 512, 514, 516, etc.).

True, this estimate of the performances of the human intellect is not proved up to the hilt; and the ordinary philosopher is more likely to be horrified than convinced. But Nietzsche does not stand alone in it, and his conclusions have received independent confirmation from technical philosophers of the highest rank. Bergson's doctrine that science is an adaptation of reality to the needs of practice is a milder way of expressing the same judgment. Still closer is the parallelism between Nietzsche and Prof. Vaihinger's monumental study of the scientific function of fictions, which was written in 1875–8, though not published until 1911, under the name of 'The Philosophy of the As If.' For Vaihinger, the author of a great commentary on the 'Critique of Pure Reason,' had been led by his profound study of Kantian philosophy to the same conclusions as Nietzsche. And lastly, the various forms of 'pragmatism' which have sprung up in America and England, though they started independently and more immediately from the facts of psychology, biology and logic, represent a converging development.

There is then a great and growing consensus of authorities as to the facts. 'Knowledge,' 'truth,' 'logic,' nay, even ' perception,' are not in fact reproductions of the given, but operations on it, which variously and wondrously transform it. But what is to be the valuation of this fact? Is it necessary to infer that 'truth' is false, and knowledge' falsification? Is not this inference itself a valuation? Nay, does not this valuation destroy itself by destroying the distinction between true and false? If all 'truth' is fiction,' and we cannot know without feigning,

fiction ceases to be a term of abuse. Moreover, as an analysis of knowledge this usage is open to the objection that it is singularly inconvenient. For we do distinguish between the true and the false; and surely this distinction has a function and a meaning.

Is there, then, no alternative interpretation? There are to be found in Nietzsche suggestive hints that he was feeling his way towards such an alternative. They occur especially in a draft of the 'Will to Power,' which forms vol. xiv of the Collected Edition of his Works, but has unfortunately not been translated. It is not, however, easy to say whether they are isolated aperçus or the beginnings of a revaluation of the work of the mind' as good and true, nor how far Nietzsche was conscious of the discrepancy between them and his more usual valuations.*

But let us experiment with the suggestion that human activity may be a source of truth, and not of falsity. Granting that all knowledge involves human manipulation, that truth is essentially a valuation (aph. 507), that sensations do not occur, and that perceptions are already impregnated with valuations, because the original data were a chaos† and only such ideas could survive as were serviceable (aph. 508), that the whole cognitive apparatus is not directed upon knowledge' but upon the mastery over things (aph. 503), yet why should the inference be drawn that 'the world that concerns us at all is false' (aph. 616)? What sense is there in calling it 'false'? Is it not better to infer that a 'real' world that does not concern us at all must be false? Admittedly the whole 'worth of the world lies in our interpretation' (ib.); why not then radically change our attitude towards this

* Nietzsche is not rigorously consistent in applying his doctrine that science is fiction; for example, he bases his doctrine of the eternal recurrence' on the scientific principle of the conservation of energy (aph. 1063), without observing that the fictitious nature of the latter must hopelessly discredit it.

It is to be noted, however, that Nietzsche, like Kant and all philosophers before James and too many since, follows Hume in conceiving this 'chaos' as constituted by a profusion of atomic ideas' or 'images,' and not as a continuous flux. So he cannot see that, as the problem of knowing is not one of synthesis but of analysis, and as a continuum may be analysed in an indefinite number of ways, any method of introducing order into this chaos must be arbitrary and therefore false, if our interference as such involves falsification.

refutation of our prejudices, and welcome the facts, the risks of life and the adventure' of thought (aph. 929)? Instead of ignoring or resenting the facts, why not say, 'pleasure is no longer to be found in certainty but in uncertainty . . . in continual creativeness,' and use 'no longer the humble phrasing "it is all only subjective," but "it is all our work! let us be proud of it"' (aph. 1059), especially when we perceive that the classifying of an experience as 'subjective' or 'objective' is itself the product of a value-judgment?

The willingness to perform this last transvaluation of the meaning of Hume's discovery, that we make additions to our data out of our own resources, is the achievement of that form of pragmatism which is called 'humanism'; and, so far, it represents the final term in the development of this important line of thought. Yet it is a very simple and easy change of valuation, which gets philosophy out of difficulties that have tormented it for centuries, and dissipates the illusion of scepticism. It is only necessary to say truth is human, of course, knowledge is active, and a condition of life and power, and not a passive receptivity of 'impressions' and the reflecting of an alien reality. Very well then, so much the better, and thank God for that! For does it not make reality for us most hopefully human, too? Let us discard as useless and unwarranted the prejudice that truth ought to reflect, copy, reproduce a' given,' seeing that it plainly neither does nor can. If our truth is human, why not admit that our reality is so too, and that therefore our truth is adequate to it? Why assume that the world of our experience is not commensurate with our intelligence? Why labour to identify it with an 'absolute' reality that must for ever baffle and elude us? Let us not condemn ourselves to hopeless scepticism by wantonly defining 'truth' in such a way that no human mind can conceivably achieve it. Let truth include and sanction whatever operations we find necessary and most helpful in our knowing activities; nay, let a reference to its function, value and success in standing the various tests which we use to sift the 'true' from the competing 'false' be included in the very meaning of 'truth.'

It cannot, indeed, be contended that Nietzsche had quite reached this position, though it has been shown

·

that he sometimes gets very near it, and actually formulates the pragmatist criterion for testing truthclaims, viz., the success of their consequences (aph. 510). More frequently he does not emancipate himself completely from the prejudice, 'if due to our activity, then necessarily false.' This is why he is not strictly a pragmatist, despite his tendencies to humanism. He perceives the pragmatic nature of truth,' but he does not 'value' it as true, but as false. But, of course, the difference is much too fine to have been observed by the critics of pragmatism. Indeed, they not only class him as a pragmatist, but usually prefer to attribute his position falsely to strict pragmatism. For they can then declare that pragmatists are unscrupulous persons who think that any lie they find convenient may rightly be taken as 'true'; whereas, of course, it is of the essence of pragmatism tc show that, when an alleged truth or truth-claim works fully, no one is entitled to call it 'false.' It is not seen that the same assertion cannot be simultaneously a 'lie' and a 'truth' to the same person, and that everyone's beliefs are always for the time being 'true' to him. 'Truth,' consequently, is in fact plural, as Nietzsche sees (aph. 540), though it does not follow that consequently there can be no truth,' but only that it is still in the making.

Nietzsche's theory of knowledge, then, has all the instructiveness of a transition-form; he is still obsessed with the idea that it is wrong in our knowledge that it should not try to copy its data. But he expresses this prejudice so frankly and traces out the resulting paradoxes so boldly, that he is easily seen to have argued himself into a position which is arbitrary and untenable. This, indeed, seems to be the conclusion of the whole matter; in his theory of knowledge, as in his theory of morals, Nietzsche is immensely suggestive, and stimulates to further progress by his very errors. His work is everywhere incomplete and sometimes crude; but it is brilliant and intensely alive; and his career was cut short just as his powers were maturing.

F. C. S. SCHILLER.

Art. 8.-BRITISH PREFERENCE IN CANADA.

1. House of Commons Debates [Canada], 1897–1911. Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau.

2. Industrial Canada, 1901-1911. Published by the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, Toronto.

3. Canadian Manufacturers' Association: Reports of the Standing Committees, as submitted for consideration at the annual meetings, 1906-1911. Toronto.

WHAT may be regarded as the first chapter in the history of the British preference in Canadian tariffs came to an end in October 1911, when, after the election fought on the issue of reciprocity with the United States, the Laurier Government was defeated, and the Conservatives, who had been in opposition since 1896, came into power. From the time when the preferential clause was first made part of a Tariff Act in 1897, the policy embodied in this clause was continuously opposed by the Conservatives as an inroad on the national policy to which a Conservative Government committed the Dominion in 1879; and a second chapter in the history of the preference will open with the first revision of the tariff by the Borden Government. When this revision would be made, was, in the early weeks of the 1912-13 session of the Dominion Parliament, somewhat uncertain. In the session of 1911-12, the Borden Government carried through the House of Commons a Bill for the appointment of a permanent Tariff Commission-a Commission that was to make detailed and exhaustive enquiries before changes were made in the tariff. But owing to amendments made to it in the Senate, where the Liberals are in a majority, the Bill was abandoned. There was no intimation at the opening of Parliament in November last that the Tariff Commission Bill was to be re-introducted in the session of 1912-13. It is possible that the Government may make changes in the tariff without the aid of the proposed Commission; but, until the Minister of Finance announces these changes when the Budget is submitted to the House of Commons, it is unlikely that there will be any authoritative statement of its policy in regard to this much-debated question.

Surprise at this new departure in tariff policy was a s