REESE LIBRARY 
 
 ; 1 1 1-: 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS 
 
" Nach cwigcn, chrnen, 
 Grossen Gesetzen 
 Miisscn wir alle 
 Unseres Dascins 
 Kreise vollenden. 
 
 Nur allein der Mcnsch 
 
 Vermag das Unmogliche; 
 Er unterschcidct, 
 
 Wahlet und richtet; 
 Er kann dcm Augenbliclc 
 Dauer verleihen. 
 
 Er allein darf 
 
 Den Guten loknen, 
 
 Den Bosen strafen, 
 
 Heilen und retten ; 
 
 AUes Irrende, Schweifendc 
 
 Nutzlich verbinden." 
 
 GOETHE, "Das Gottliche. 
 
MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDREW SETH, M.A., LL.D. 
 (i 
 
 PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCXCVII 
 
3 3 M3 
 
 76 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE title of this volume may seem disproportioned 
 to its contents. A systematic discussion of "man's 
 place in the cosmos " would obviously involve the 
 whole range of science and of metaphysics. These 
 essays make no pretence to be such a discussion. 
 Nevertheless it is not unadvisedly that the title of 
 the first paper has been extended to the volume as 
 a whole, and thus used to indicate the general char- 
 acter of its contents. The papers of which it is com- 
 posed were written within the last six years, and are, 
 in the first instance, a criticism of some of the more 
 significant contributions to philosophy which have ap- 
 peared during that period. They cannot, therefore, 
 be taken as a series, in which there is a systematic 
 progress from the earlier essays to those which follow. 
 
Vi PREFACE. 
 
 But it will be found that they are all, at bottom, treat- 
 ments of the same theme, man's relation to the forces 
 of nature and to the absolute ground of things, or, in 
 the words of the title, man's place in the cosmos. The 
 books or pamphlets criticised were originally selected 
 for criticism because of their bearing upon this funda- 
 mental question, in which all vital interest in philoso- 
 phy centres. And whatever the starting-point of the 
 discussion may be, the main concern of every essay is 
 to enforce the same view of the world and of man. 
 
 That view I have described in one of the papers as 
 humanism, in opposition to naturalism; in another 
 reference, it might be described as ethicism, in opposi- 
 tion to a too narrow intellectualism. Man as rational, 
 and, in virtue of self-conscious reason, the free shaper 
 of his own destiny, furnishes us, I contend, with our 
 only indefeasible standard of value, and our clearest 
 light as to the nature of the divine. He does what 
 science, occupied only with the laws of events, and 
 speculative metaphysics, when it surrenders itself to 
 the exclusive guidance of the intellect, alike find un- 
 intelligible, and are fain to pronounce impossible he 
 acts. As Goethe puts it in a seeming paradox, Man 
 alone achieves the impossible. But inexplicable, in a 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 sense, as man's personal agency is nay, the one per- 
 petual miracle it is nevertheless our surest datum 
 and our only clue to the mystery of existence. 
 
 This position is maintained in several of the essays 
 against the lower monism of the naturalistic systems. 
 In the long essay entitled "A New Theory of the 
 Absolute," it is defended against the Spinozism which 
 permeates Mr Bradley's statement of metaphysical 
 monism. This essay emphasises, on the one hand, the 
 necessary limitations of human insight and, on the 
 other hand, the validity or practical truth of our human 
 rendering of the divine. Such a view of the cosmos 
 must rest ultimately, I think, upon a conviction of the 
 absolute value of the ethical life. For there is no such 
 thing as a philosophy without assumptions. Every 
 idealistic theory of the world has for its ultimate pre- 
 miss a logically unsupported judgment of value a 
 judgment which affirms an end of intrinsic worth, and 
 accepts thereby a standard of unconditional obligation. 
 
 On account of this unity of contention, the essays 
 have been brought together, in the hope that they may 
 serve a useful purpose. The paper on Professor Hux- 
 ley's " Evolution and Ethics " appeared in ' Blackwood's 
 Magazine/ three of the others in the 'Contemporary 
 
Vlll PEEFACE. 
 
 Keview,' and the short paper on " The Use of the Term 
 ' Naturalism,' " in the ' Philosophical Eeview.' To the 
 editors and proprietors of these Keviews I am indebted 
 for their courtesy in sanctioning this republication. 
 The essays are republished without substantial alter- 
 ation, but I have availed myself of the opportunity of 
 revision, and have also reinserted a few passages which 
 had been omitted, in order to bring the treatment 
 within the ordinary compass of re view -articles. The 
 second part of the essay on " The ' New ' Psychology and 
 Automatism," though written in 1892 as an integral 
 part of the discussion, is now printed for the first 
 time. It gives the question a wider range, and will 
 be found, I hope, to make the treatment more com- 
 plete. Mechanism in physiology, " presentationism " 
 in psychology, materialism and sheer pantheism in 
 philosophy, may be regarded as different aspects of 
 the same preconception the denial of the presence of 
 a real cause at any point in the sequence of events. 
 
 I desire in conclusion to express my thanks to my 
 colleague, M. Charles Sarolea, for his kindness in read- 
 ing the proofs and making many helpful suggestions. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, February 1897. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 MAN S PLACE IN THE COSMOS 
 
 PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN ... 1 
 
 THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES 
 
 AN INAUGURAL LECTURE, OCTOBER 1891 ... 34 
 
 THE " NEW " PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM 
 
 (a) MUNSTERBERG'S ANALYSIS OF WILL ... 64 
 
 (6) KNOWLEDGE AND ACTIVITY . . . .114 
 
 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE 
 
 MR BRADLEY'S ' APPEARANCE AND REALITY ' . . 129 
 
 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS . . . .226 
 
 NOTE A. THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM" . . 289 
 
 NOTE B. THE LEGITIMACY OF THE ARGUMENT FROM CON- 
 SEQUENCES . 304 
 
MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 
 
 pEOFESSOE HUXLEY'S Eomanes Lecture .on 
 -*- " Evolution and Ethics " deservedly attracted a 
 large amount of attention on its appearance. That 
 attention was due not only to the importance of the 
 subject handled and the reputation of the lecturer, 
 but quite as much to the breadth and scope of the 
 treatment, to the nobility of tone and the deep human 
 feeling which characterised a singularly impressive 
 utterance. Popular interest was also excited by the 
 nature of the conclusion reached, which, in the mouth 
 of the pioneer and prophet of evolution, had the air 
 of being something like a palinode. Criticisms of the 
 lecture appeared at the time by Mr Leslie Stephen 
 in the ' Contemporary Eeview/ and by Mr Herbert 
 
2 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 Spencer in a letter to the ' Athenaeum ' ; l and many 
 discussions appeared in theological quarters. But the 
 subject as a whole was pediaps dismissed from public 
 attention before its significance had been exhausted, 
 or indeed properly grasped. Professor Huxley's argu- 
 ment and the criticisms it called forth illuminate most 
 instructively some deep -seated ambiguities of philo- 
 sophical terminology, and at the same time bring into 
 sharp relief the fundamental difference of standpoint 
 which divides philosophical thinkers. The questions 
 at issue, moreover, are not merely speculative ; already 
 they cast their shadow upon literature and life. The 
 opportunity of elucidation is therefore in the best sense 
 timely, and no apology seems needed for an attempt 
 to recall attention to the points in dispute and to ac- 
 centuate their significance. 
 
 The outstanding feature of Professor Huxley's argu- 
 ment is the sharp contrast drawn between nature and 
 ethical man, and the sweeping indictment of " the 
 cosmic process " at the bar of morality. The problem 
 of suffering and the almost complete absence of any 
 
 1 The Eomanes Lecture was delivered on the 18th May 1893, and 
 published shortly thereafter. Mr Spencer's letter appeared in the 
 * Athenaeum ' of August 5, and Mr Leslie Stephen's article in the ' Con- 
 temporary Keview ' of August 1893. The present paper was published 
 in 'Blackwood's Magazine,' December 1893. 
 
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 3 
 
 relation between suffering and moral desert is the 
 theme from which he starts, and to which he con- 
 tinually returns. " The dread problem of evil," " the 
 moral indifference of nature," " the unfathomable in- 
 justice of the nature of things " this is the aspect of 
 the world which has burned itself deeply into the 
 writer's soul, and which speaks in moving eloquence 
 from his pages. The Buddhistic and the Stoic at- 
 tempts to grapple with the problem are considered, 
 and are found to end alike in absolute renunciation. 
 " By the Tiber, as by the Ganges, ethical man admits 
 that the cosmos is too strong for him ; and, destroying 
 every bond which ties him to it by ascetic discipline, 
 he seeks salvation in absolute renunciation " (p. 29). 
 Is the antagonism, then, final and hopeless, or can 
 modern science and philosophy offer any better re- 
 conciliation of ethical man with the nature to which 
 as an animal he belongs, and to whose vast uncon- 
 scious forces he lies open on every side ? As Pro- 
 fessor Huxley puts the question himself in his open- 
 ing pages Is there or is there not " a sanction for 
 morality in the ways of the cosmos " ? Man has 
 built up " an artificial world within the cosmos " : 
 has human society its roots and its justification in 
 the underlying nature of the cosmos, or is it in 
 
4 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 very truth an " artificial " world, which is at odds 
 with that nature and must be in perpetual conflict 
 with it ? The Stoic rule -which places virtue in " fol- 
 lowing nature" is easily shown to be a phrase of 
 many meanings, and to demand qualification by refer- 
 ence, first, to the specific nature of man, and then to 
 a higher nature or guiding faculty within the mind of 
 man himself. But the modern ethics of evolution 
 apparently claim to have bridged the gulf and to have 
 made the ethical process continuous with the cosmic 
 process of organic nature, they claim, in short, to 
 exhibit the ethical life as only a continuation, on 
 another plane, of the struggle for existence. If this 
 claim is well founded, and the two worlds are really 
 continuous, then the maxim, " Follow nature," will 
 have been proved to be, after all, the sum and sub- 
 stance of virtue. 
 
 It is against this naturalisation of ethics that Pro- 
 fessor Huxley protests in the strongest terms. He 
 readily allows that the ethical evolutionists may be 
 right in their natural history of the moral sentiments. 
 But " as the immoral sentiments have no less been 
 evolved, there is, so far, as much natural sanction for 
 the one as the other. . . . Cosmic evolution may teach 
 us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may 
 
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 5 
 
 have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to 
 furnish any better reason why what we call good is 
 preferable to what we call evil, than we had before " 
 (p. 31). That is to say, the origin of a belief and the 
 validity of a belief, or the origin of a tendency and the 
 ethical quality of that tendency, are logically two dis- 
 tinct questions. But the evolutionist is apt to make 
 the answer to the first do duty as an answer to the 
 second also, because he has in reality no standard of 
 appreciation to apply to any phenomenon except that 
 of mere existence. " Whatever is, is right," or at all 
 events, " Whatever is predominant, is right," is the 
 only motto of the consistent evolutionist. This is 
 embodied in the phrase " survival of the fittest," which 
 is used illegitimately, as we shall see to effect the 
 transition from the merely natural to the ethical world. 
 In opposition to such theories, Professor Huxley con- 
 tends that the analogies of the struggle for existence 
 throw no light on the ethical nature of man. 
 
 Cosmic nature is no school of virtue, but the headquarters 
 of the enemy of ethical nature (p. 27). Self-assertion, the 
 unscrupulous seizing upon all that can be grasped, the 
 tenacious holding of all that can be kept, . . . constitute 
 the essence of the struggle for existence. . . . For his suc- 
 cessful progress as far as the savage state, man has been 
 
6 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 largely indebted to those qualities which he shares with the 
 ape and the tiger (p. 6). 
 
 So far is this struggle from explaining morality that 
 
 the practice of what is ethically best what we call good- 
 ness or virtue involves a course of conduct which, in all 
 respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the 
 cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self- 
 assertion, it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting 
 aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the 
 individual shall not merely respect, but shall help, his 
 fellows. ... It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of ex- 
 istence. . . . Laws and moral precepts are directed to 
 the end of curbing the cosmic process and reminding the 
 individual of his duty to the community, to the protection 
 and influence of which he owes, if not existence itself, at 
 least the life of something better than a brutal savage. 
 
 In short, "social progress means a checking of the 
 cosmic process at every step, and the substitution 
 for it of another which may be called the ethical 
 process." This leads up to the characteristic call to 
 arms with which the address concludes : " Let us 
 understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of 
 society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, 
 still less in running away from it, but in combating 
 it" (pp. 33, 34). 
 
 Such is the logical framework of the lecture. It 
 is obvious that the important points of the treat- 
 
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 7 
 
 merit are : (1) The emphasis laid upon the division 
 between man and nature, which a reviewer in the 
 ' Athenseum ' 1 called " an approximation to the Paul- 
 ine dogma of nature and grace " : and (2) the mood 
 of militant heroism, not untouched, however, by stoi- 
 cal resignation, which naturally results from contem- 
 plation of the unequal struggle between the microcosm 
 and the macrocosm. 
 
 Before proceeding to consider the consistency of 
 Professor Huxley's argument and the ultimate ten- 
 ability of his position, I wish to say, in regard to 
 the first point, how timely, it seems to me, is his 
 insistence on the gulf between man and non -human 
 nature ; how sound is the stand he takes upon the 
 ethical nature of man as that which is alone of sig- 
 nificance and worth in the "transitory adjustment of 
 contending forces," which otherwise constitutes the 
 cosmos. Whether the breach is to be taken as abso- 
 lute or not, it is at least apparent that if man with 
 his virtues and vices be included simpliciter and with- 
 out more ado in a merely natural order of facts, we 
 inevitably tend to lose sight of that nature within na- 
 ture which makes man what he is. The tendency so 
 to include man has become a settled habit in much of 
 
 1 July 22, 1893. 
 
8 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 our current literature. I need not speak of the docu- 
 ments of so-called Naturalism, with their never-end- 
 ing analysis of la bte Jmmaine analysis from which 
 one would be slow to gather that any such qualities 
 as justice, purity, or disinterested affection had ever 
 disturbed the brutish annals of force and lust. But in 
 other quarters, even where the picture is not so dark, 
 the fashion still is to treat man as a natural product, 
 not as the responsible shaper of his destiny, but, 
 void of spiritual struggles and ideal hopes, as the 
 unresisting channel of the impulses which sway him 
 hither and thither, and issue now in one course of 
 action, now in another. This literature is inartistic, 
 even on its own terms, for, blinded by its material- 
 istic fatalism, it does not even give us things as 
 they are. The higher literature never forgets that 
 man, as Pascal put it, is nobler than the universe ; 
 and freedom (in some sense of that ambiguous term) 
 must be held to be a postulate of true art no less 
 than of morality. But besides being bad art, litera- 
 ture of this sort has a subtly corrosive influence upon 
 the ethical temper. For the power of will, as Lamen- 
 nais said, is that in us which is most quickly used 
 up : " Ce qui s'use le plus vite en nous, c'est la 
 volonte." Hence the insidious force of the sugges- 
 
PROFESSOK HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 9 
 
 tion that we do not will at all, but are merely the 
 instruments of our desires. For this is to justify, 
 or at least to excuse, every passion on the ground 
 of its "natural" origin. This temper of mind is 
 found invading even more serious writers, and it is 
 traceable ultimately to the same confusion between 
 the laws of human conduct and the workings of 
 nature in the irresponsible creatures of the field. 
 M. Eenan, it will be remembered, delicately excuses 
 himself in his ' Souvenirs ' rallies himself, as we 
 may say on his continued practice of chastity : 
 
 I continued to live in Paris as I had lived in the semi- 
 nary. Later, I saw very well the vanity of that virtue as 
 of all the rest. I recognised in particular that nature cares 
 not at all whether man is chaste or not. I cannot rid my- 
 self [he says elsewhere in the same volume] of the idea that 
 after all it is perhaps the libertine who is right, and who 
 practises the true philosophy of life. 
 
 Many will remember, too, how Matthew Arnold 
 took up this parable when he discoursed in America 
 011 the cult of the great goddess Lubricity, to which, 
 as he said, contemporary France seemed more and 
 more to be devoting herself. After much delicate 
 banter and much direct plain-speaking, Mr Arnold 
 turns upon M. Eenan and cuts to the root of the 
 fallacy in a single sentence. " Instead of saying that 
 
10 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 nature cares nothing about chastity, let us say that 
 human nature, our nature, cares about it a great 
 deal." And when we meet the same fallacy invad- 
 ing our own literature, the same answer will suffice. 
 I think it may be worth pointing out a notable in- 
 stance in a novel widely read and highly praised 
 within the last few years. Mr Hardy's ' Tess of the 
 D'Urbervilles ' is unquestionably a powerful work, 
 but it suffers, in my opinion, both artistically and 
 ethically, from this tendency to assimilate the moral 
 and the natural. To smack of the soil is in many 
 senses a term of praise ; but even rustic men and 
 women are not altogether products of the soil, and 
 Mr Hardy is in danger of so regarding them. What 
 I wish, however, to point out here is the pernicious 
 fallacy which underlies a statement like the follow- 
 ing. Tess, after she has fallen from her innocence, 
 is wont to wander alone in the woods, a prey to 
 her own reflections, "terrified without reason," says 
 the author, by "a cloud of moral hobgoblins." 
 
 It was they [he continues] that were out of harmony 
 with the actual world, not she. Walking among the sleep- 
 ing birds in the hedges, watching the skipping rabbits on a 
 moonlit warren, or standing under a pheasant-laden bough, 
 she looked upon herself as a figure of guilt intruding into 
 the haunts of innocence. But all the while she was making 
 
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 11 
 
 a distinction where there was no difference. Feeling her- 
 self in antagonism, she was quite in accord. She had been 
 made to break an accepted social law, but no law known 
 to the environment in which she fancied herself such an 
 anomaly. 
 
 The implication of such a passage is that the "ac- 
 cepted social law " is a mere convention, and that 
 the deeper truth, "the actual world," is to be found 
 in the hedgerows and the warrens. To satisfy an 
 animal prompting without scruple or hesitation, and 
 without the qualms of a fantastical remorse, is only 
 to fulfil the law of nature, and to put one's self 
 in harmony with one's surroundings. The shallow- 
 ness of such revolt against "accepted social laws" 
 is too apparent to need further exposure. A con- 
 vention truly, in one sense, the moral law in ques- 
 tion is ; but upon this convention the fabric of 
 human society and all the sanctities of the family 
 rest. He must be strangely blinded by a word who 
 deems this sanction insufficient, or who would pit in 
 such a case a " natural " impulse against a " social " 
 law. 
 
 In view of pervasive misconceptions and fallacies 
 like these, it is eminently salutary, I repeat, to have 
 our attention so impressively recalled by Professor 
 Huxley to the idea of human life as an imperium 
 
 OF THB 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
12 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 in imperio a realm which, though it rises out of 
 nature, and remains exposed to the shock of natural 
 forces, requires for its laws no foreign sanction, but 
 bases them solely on the perfection of human nature 
 itself. For, even though Professor Huxley's way of 
 stating the opposition should prove ultimately unten- 
 able, the breach between ethical man and pre-human 
 nature constitutes without exception the most im- 
 portant fact which the universe has to show ; and for 
 a true understanding of the world it is far more vital 
 to grasp the significance of this breach than to be 
 misled by a cheap desire for unity and system into 
 minimising, or even denying, the fact. 
 
 It is time, however, to examine Professor Huxley's 
 position and arguments more closely. His critics have 
 not been slow to remark upon the ambiguity lurking 
 in the phrase " cosmic process," which occurs so often 
 throughout the lecture, in antithesis to the ethical 
 process to the moral and social life of man. And 
 they point with one accord to Note 19 as containing, in 
 effect, a retractation of his own doctrine by Professor 
 Huxley himself. " Of course, strictly speaking," we 
 read in the note, " social life and the ethical process, in 
 virtue of which it advances towards perfection, are part 
 and parcel of the general process of evolution." As Mr 
 
PEOFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 13 
 
 Spencer pointedly asks, " If the ethical man is not a 
 product of the cosmic process, what is he a product 
 of ? " Or as Shakespeare expressed it in the often- 
 quoted lines 
 
 " Nature is made better by no means 
 But nature makes that means : so, o'er that art, 
 Which you say adds to nature, is an art 
 That nature makes." 
 
 If the cosmic process be understood in the full latitude 
 of the phrase, this is, indeed, so obvious, and the critic's 
 victory so easy, that it is hard to believe Professor 
 Huxley's position rests altogether on a foundation so 
 weak. The term " nature," and still more an expres- 
 sion like " the cosmic process," may be taken in an all- 
 inclusive sense as equivalent to the universe as a whole 
 or the nature of things ; and if so, it is obvious that 
 human nature with its ethical characteristics is em- 
 braced within the larger whole. The unity of the 
 cosmos in some sense is not so much a conclusion 
 to be proved as an inevitable assumption. Professor 
 Huxley apparently denies this unity in the text of his 
 lecture, and is naturally obliged to reassert it in his 
 note. This constitutes the weakness of his position. 
 The part must be somehow included in the process of 
 the whole ; there is no extra-cosmic source from which 
 
14 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 a revolt against the principles of the cosmos could draw 
 inspiration or support. 
 
 Now the strength of the evolutionary theory of ethics 
 lies in its frank recognition of the unity of the cosmos ; 
 and in this it is, so far, at one with the philosophical 
 doctrine of Idealism to which it is otherwise so much 
 opposed the doctrine which finds the ultimate reality 
 of the universe in mind or spirit, and its End in the 
 perfecting of spiritual life. But each of these theories 
 exhibits the unity of the world in its own way. The 
 way taken by the ethical evolutionists is to naturalise 
 morality, to assimilate ethical experience to nature, 
 in the lower or narrower sense in which it is used to 
 denote all that happens in the known world except the 
 responsible activities of human beings. And it is 
 against this removing of landmarks that Professor 
 Huxley, rightly, as it seems to me, protests. For 
 though Mr Spencer and Mr Leslie Stephen may be 
 technically in the right, inasmuch as human nature 
 is unquestionably part of the nature of things, it is 
 the inherent tendency of their theories to substitute 
 for this wider nature the laws and processes of that 
 narrower, non-human world, to which the term nature 
 is on the whole restricted by current usage. 
 
 This tendency is inherent in every system which 
 
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 15 
 
 takes as its sole principle of explanation the carrying 
 back of facts or events to their antecedent conditions. 
 And, as it happens, this is explicitly formulated by Mr 
 Stephen, in his article in the ' Contemporary Eeview,' 
 as the only permissible meaning of explanation : " To 
 'explain' a fact is to assign its causes that is, give 
 the preceding set of facts out of which it arose." But 
 surely, I may be asked, you do not intend to challenge 
 a principle which underlies all scientific procedure, and 
 which may even claim to be self-evident ? I certainly 
 do not propose to deny the formal correctness of the 
 principle, but I maintain most strongly that the cur- 
 rent application of it covers a subtle and very serious 
 fallacy, for the true nature of the cause only becomes 
 apparent in the effect. Now, if we explain a fact by 
 giving " the preceding set of facts out of which it 
 arose," we practically resolve the fact into these ante- 
 cedents that is to say, we identify it with them. When 
 we are dealing with some limited sphere of phenomena, 
 within which the facts are all of one order say, the 
 laws of moving bodies as treated in mechanics there 
 may be no practical disadvantage from this limited in- 
 terpretation of causation. But when we pass from one 
 order of facts to another say, from the inorganic to 
 the organic, or, still more, from animal life to the self- 
 
16 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 conscious life of man the inadequacy of such explana- 
 tion stares us in the face. For " the preceding set of 
 facts," which we treat as the cause or sufficient explan- 
 ation of the phenomenon in question, is ex hypothesi 
 different from the phenomenon it is said to explain ; 
 and the difference is, that it consists of simpler ele- 
 ments. To explain, according to this view, is to reduce 
 to simpler conditions. But if the elements are really 
 simpler, there is the fact of their combination into a 
 more complex product to be explained, and the fact of 
 their combination in such a way as to produce precisely 
 the result in question. And if we choose to take the 
 antecedent conditions, as they appear in themselves, 
 apart from the all-important circumstance of the pro- 
 duction of this effect, we have, no doubt, a " preceding 
 set of facts/' but we certainly have not, in any true 
 sense, the cause of the phenomenon. We have elimi- 
 nated the very characteristic we set out to explain 
 namely, the difference of the new phenomenon from 
 the antecedents out of which it appears to have been 
 evolved. Hence it is that, in the sense indicated, all 
 explanation of the higher by the lower is philosophically 
 a hysteron proteron. The antecedents assigned are not 
 the causes of the consequents ; for by antecedents the 
 naturalistic theories mean the antecedents in abstraction 
 
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 17 
 
 from their consequents the antecedents taken as they 
 appear in themselves, or as we might suppose them to 
 be if no such consequents had ever issued from them. 
 So conceived, however, the antecedents (matter and 
 energy, for example) have no real existence they are 
 mere entia rationis, abstract aspects of the one concrete 
 fact which we call the universe. The true nature of 
 the antecedents is only learned by reference to the 
 consequents which follow ; or, as I put it before, the 
 true nature of the cause only becomes apparent in 
 the effect. All ultimate or philosophical explanation 
 must look to the end. Hence the futility of all 
 attempts to explain human life in terms of the 
 merely animal, to explain life in terms of the inor- 
 ganic, and ultimately to find a sufficient formula for 
 the cosmic process in terms of the redistribution of 
 matter and motion. If we are in earnest with the 
 doctrine that the universe is one, we have to read 
 back the nature of the latest consequent into the 
 remotest antecedent. Only then is the one, in any 
 true sense, the cause of the other. 
 
 Applying this to the present question, we may say 
 that, just as within the limits of the organic world 
 there may be exhibited an intelligible evolution of 
 living forms, so within the moral world we may 
 
 B 
 
18 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 certainly have an evolution of the moral sentiments 
 and of the institutions which subserve ethical conduct. 
 But as, in the one case, we must start with the fact of 
 life that is to say, with the characteristic ways of 
 behaving which are found in living matter and which 
 are not found in dead matter so, in the other case, 
 we must carry with us from the outset the charac- 
 teristics or postulates of moral experience namely, 
 self-consciousness, with the sense of responsibility, and 
 the capacity for sympathy which is based on the 
 ability to represent to one's self the life and feelings 
 of another. Such an evolution within the moral sphere 
 does not justify us in presenting morality as an " evolu- 
 tion " from non-moral conditions that is, in resolving 
 morality into non-moral elements. And this Mr Leslie 
 Stephen seems to admit in an important passage of the 
 article already referred to. " Morality proper," he says, 
 " begins when sympathy begins ; when we really desire 
 the happiness of others, or, as Kant says, when we 
 treat other men as an end, and not simply as a means. 
 Undoubtedly this involves a new principle no less than 
 the essential principle of all true morality." I cannot 
 but regard this as an important admission, but at the 
 same time I am bound to say that, till I met this 
 unexpected sentence of Mr Stephen's, I had supposed 
 
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 19 
 
 that the admission of " a new principle " was precisely 
 what the evolutionists were, of all things, most anxious 
 to avoid. 
 
 It seems to me, therefore, that though Professor 
 Huxley may have put himself technically in the wrong 
 by speaking of " the cosmical process," his contention 
 is far from being so inept as a verbal criticism would 
 make it appear. It is really directed against the sub- 
 mergence of ethical man in the processes of non-ethical 
 and non-human nature ; and if any justification is to 
 be sought for the use of the phrase, we may find it in 
 the tendency inherent in the evolutionary method of 
 explanation the tendency already explained to sub- 
 stantiate antecedents in abstraction from their conse- 
 quents, and thus practically to identify the cosmos 
 with its lowest aspects. If the evolutionists do not 
 make this identification in their own minds, they are 
 at least singularly successful in producing that impres- 
 sion upon their readers. 
 
 On another important point connected with, and 
 indeed involved in, the foregoing, Professor Huxley, 
 by an unguarded statement, laid himself open to a 
 pretty obvious and apparently conclusive rejoinder. 
 "The cosmic process," he says in one place, "has no 
 sort of relation to moral ends." But " the moral indif- 
 
20 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 ference of nature," even in the restricted sense of the 
 term, cannot be maintained so absolutely. Nature 
 undoubtedly puts a premium upon certain virtues, 
 and punishes certain modes of excess and defect by 
 decrease of vitality and positive pain. As Mr Stephen 
 says : " That chastity, temperance, truthfulness, and 
 energy are on the whole advantages both to the 
 individual and the race does not, I fancy, require 
 elaborate proof, nor need I argue at length that the 
 races in which they are common will therefore have 
 inevitable advantages in the struggle for existence." 
 But if so, then it would seem that cosmic nature is 
 not, as it was represented, "the headquarters of the 
 enemy of ethical nature " ; to a certain extent it may 
 even be regarded as a " school of virtue." The sphere, 
 however, in which this holds true is a comparatively 
 limited one, being substantially restricted to temper- 
 ance, in the Greek sense of the word that is to say, 
 moderation in the indulgence of the animal appetites, 
 to which may, no doubt, be added, with Mr Stephen, 
 energy. But nature, as distinct from that human 
 nature which organises itself into societies and adds 
 its own sanctions to the moral ideal which it is con- 
 tinually widening and deepening non-human nature 
 seems to have no sanctions even for such fundamental 
 
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 21 
 
 virtues as truthfulness, justice, and beneficence, still 
 less for the finer shades and higher nobilities of char- 
 acter in which human nature flowers. And even in 
 regard to the list of virtues cited, it might be argued 
 that cosmic nature sanctions and furthers them only 
 when we deliberately restrict our survey to the present 
 stage of the evolutionary process the stage during 
 which man has grown to be what he is on this planet. 
 Within this limited period nature, through the struggle 
 for existence, may be said to have favoured the evolu- 
 tion of the morally best. But it is no intrinsic quality 
 of the struggle to produce this result. Here, it appears 
 to me, we strike upon the deeper truth which prompted 
 Professor Huxley's somewhat unguarded statement, and 
 we are under an important obligation to him for the 
 exposure of what he appropriately calls " the fallacy of 
 the fittest." 
 
 Fittest [he writes] has a connotation of " best " ; and 
 about best there hangs a moral flavour. In cosmic nature, 
 however, what is "fittest" depends upon the conditions. 
 Long since, I ventured to point out that if our hemisphere 
 were to cool again, the survival of the fittest might bring 
 about, in the vegetable kingdom, a population of more and 
 more stunted and humbler and humbler organisms, until 
 the "fittest" that survived might be nothing but lichens, 
 diatoms, and such microscopic organisms as those which 
 give red snow its colour; while, if it became hotter, the 
 
22 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 pleasant valleys of the Thames and Isis might be unin- 
 habitable by any animated beings save those that nourish 
 in a tropical jungle. They,- as the fittest, the best adapted 
 to the changed conditions, would survive (p. 32). 
 
 Mr Spencer has been forward to emphasise his agree- 
 ment with this position, and has recalled attention to 
 an essay of his own, twenty years old. in which he 
 makes the same distinction: 
 
 The law is not the survival of the "better" or the 
 " stronger," if we give to these words anything like their 
 ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are 
 constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in 
 which they are placed ; and very often that which, humanly 
 speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival. Superiority, 
 whether in size, strength, activity, or sagacity, is, other 
 things equal, at the cost of diminished fertility ; and where 
 the life led by a species does not demand these higher 
 attributes, the species profits by decrease of them, and 
 accompanying increase of fertility. This is the reason why 
 there occur so many cases of retrograde metamorphosis. . . . 
 When it is remembered that these cases outnumber all 
 others, it will be seen that the expression " survivorship of 
 the better " is wholly inappropriate. 1 
 
 Out of the mouth of two such witnesses this point 
 may be taken as established. But if so, I entirely fail 
 to see where, on naturalistic principles, we get our 
 standard of higher and lower, of better and worse. 
 
 1 Essays, vol. i. p. 379, " Mr Martineau on Evolution." 
 
PKOFESSOK HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 23 
 
 If changed conditions of life were to lead to the de- 
 humanising of the race, to the dropping one by one 
 of the ethical qualities which we are accustomed to 
 commend, whence the justification for pronouncing 
 this process a " retrograde metamorphosis " ? There 
 can be no other sense of better or worse, on the theory, 
 than more or less successful adaptation to the con- 
 ditions of the environment, and what survives is best 
 just because it survives. The latest stage of the process 
 must necessarily, therefore, be better than all that went 
 before, from the mere fact that it has maintained itself. 
 Mere existence is the only test we have to apply, and 
 at every stage it would seem that we are bound to 
 say, Whatever is, is right. But this is tantamount to 
 saying that, when the theory of evolution is taken in 
 its widest scope, it is not really legitimate to say that 
 nature abets or sanctions morality; since the result 
 of further evolution or, to speak more properly, of 
 further cosmical changes might be to dethrone our 
 present ethical conduct from its temporary position 
 as the fittest, and to leave no scope for what we 
 now regard as virtue. The k type of conduct which 
 would then succeed, and which would so far have 
 the sanction of nature on its side, we should be con- 
 strained, it seems to me, to pronounce superior to 
 
24 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 the conduct which, from our present point of view, 
 seems to us better ; because the latter, if adopted, would 
 in the altered circumstances set us at variance with 
 our surroundings, and so fail. Failure or success 
 in the struggle for existence must, on the theory, be 
 the sole moral standard. Good is what survives ; evil 
 is what once was fittest, but is so no longer. Thus, 
 our present good may become nay, is inevitably be- 
 coming evil, and that not, as might be contended, 
 in the sense of merging in a higher good. We have 
 no guarantee that the movement of change, miscalled 
 evolution, must continue in the line of past progress : 
 it may gradually, and as it were imperceptibly, assume 
 another direction a direction which our present moral 
 ideas would condemn as retrograde. Yet, none the 
 less, the mere fact of change would be sufficient to 
 convert our present good into evil. 
 
 Such, I must insist, is the only logical position of 
 a naturalistic ethics. But an important outcome of 
 the recent discussion has been to show that the most 
 prominent upholders of the theory do not hold it in 
 its logical form. Mr Spencer, as we have seen, has 
 strongly insisted that survival of the fittest does not 
 mean survival of the better, or even of the stronger ; 
 and Mr Stephen tells us that the struggle for existence, 
 
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 25 
 
 instead of being the explanation of morality, " belongs 
 to an underlying order of facts to which moral epithets 
 cannot properly be applied. It denotes a condition 
 of which the moralist has to take account, and to 
 which morality has to be adapted, but which, just 
 because it is a ' cosmic process/ cannot be altered, 
 however much we may alter the conduct which it 
 dictates." Surely this comes very near to admitting 
 Professor Huxley's contention, that our moral standard 
 is not derived from the struggle for existence, but 
 rather implies its reversal, substituting for selfishness 
 sympathy for others, and, in Mr Stephen's own words, 
 "the sense of duty which each man owes to society 
 at large." Mr Spencer speaks of an " ethical check " 
 upon the struggle for existence: it is our duty, he 
 says, " to mitigate the evils " which it entails in the 
 social state. " The use of morality," says Mr Stephen, 
 "is to humanise the struggle, to minimise the suffer- 
 ings of those who lose the game, and to offer the prizes 
 to the qualities which are advantageous to all, rather 
 than to those which serve to intensify the bitterness 
 of the conflict." But this is neither more nor less than 
 to say that, as soon as man becomes social and moral, 
 he has to act counter to the leading characteristics of 
 the struggle for existence. He becomes animated by 
 
26 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 other ideals, or, to speak more strictly, he then first be- 
 comes capable of an ideal, of a sense of duty, instead of 
 obeying without question- the routine of animal impulse. 
 But if this is so, I still ask the evolutionist who 
 has no other basis than the struggle for existence, how 
 he accounts for the intrusion of these moral ideas and 
 standards which presume to interfere with the cosmic 
 process, and sit in judgment upon its results ? This 
 question cannot be answered so long as we regard 
 morality merely as an incidental result, a by-product, 
 as it were, of the cosmical system. It is impossible 
 on such a hypothesis to understand the magisterial 
 assertion by itself of the part against the whole, its 
 demands upon the universe, its unwavering condem- 
 nation of the universe, if these demands are not met 
 by the nature of things. All this would be an in- 
 congruous, and even a ludicrous, spectacle if we had 
 here to do with a natural phenomenon like any other. 
 The moral and spiritual life remains, in short, unin- 
 telligible, unless on the supposition that it is in reality 
 the key to the world's meaning, the fact in the light 
 of which all other phenomena must be read. We must 
 be in earnest, I have already said, with the unity of the 
 world, but we must not forget that, if regarded merely 
 as a system of forces, the world possesses no such 
 
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 27 
 
 unity. It acquires it only when regarded in the light 
 of an End of absolute worth or value which is realised 
 or attained in it. Such an End-in-itself, as Kant called 
 it, we find only in the self-conscious life of man, in the 
 world of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness which he builds 
 up for himself, and of which he constitutes himself a 
 citizen. If it were possible to consider the system of 
 physical nature apart from the intelligent activities and 
 emotions of rational beings, those worlds on worlds, 
 
 " Rolling ever 
 From creation to decay," 
 
 would possess in themselves no spark of the value, 
 the intrinsic worth, which we unhesitatingly assert 
 to belong, at least in possibility, to the meanest human 
 life. The endless redistribution of matter and motion 
 in stupendous cycles of evolution and dissolution would 
 be a world without any justification to offer for its 
 existence a world which might just as well not have 
 been. 1 But if we are honest with ourselves, I do not 
 
 1 Without encumbering the main argument by inopportune discus- 
 sion; one may perhaps ask in a note in what sense even existence could 
 be attributed to a system of unconscious forces a material world per 
 se. We cannot perform the abstraction required of us in conceiving 
 such a system. Nature refuses to be divorced from the thoughts and 
 feelings of her children and her lords, and we need not be subjective 
 idealists to hold the literal truth of ,the poet's words that " in our life 
 alone does Nature live." 
 
28 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 think we can embrace the conclusion that the cosmos 
 is a mere brute fact of this description. The demand 
 for an End-in-itself that is, for a fact of such a 
 nature that its existence justifies itself is as much 
 a necessity of reason as the necessity which impels us 
 to refund any phenomenon into its antecedent con- 
 ditions. And further, unless we sophisticate ourselves, 
 we cannot doubt that we possess within ourselves 
 in our moral experience most conspicuously an in- 
 stance and a standard of what we mean by such 
 intrinsic value. As Carlyle has put it in one of his 
 finest passages, 
 
 What, then, is man ! What, then, is man ! He endures 
 but for an hour, and is crushed before the moth. Yet in 
 the being and in the working of a faithful man is there 
 already (as all faith, from the beginning, gives assurance) 
 a something that pertains not to this wild death-element 
 of Time ; that triumphs over Time, and is, and will be, 
 when Time shall be no more. 
 
 This conviction of the infinite significance and value 
 of the ethical life is the only view-point from which, 
 in Professor Huxley's words, we can " make existence 
 intelligible and bring the order of things into harmony 
 with the moral sense of man." And it is impossible 
 to do the one of these things without the other. To 
 understand the world is not merely to unravel the 
 
PEOFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 29 
 
 sequence of an intricate set of facts. So long as we 
 cannot " bring the order of things into harmony with 
 the moral sense of man," we cannot truly be said to 
 have made existence intelligible: the world still re- 
 mains for us, in Hume's words, " a riddle, an enigma, 
 an inexplicable mystery." 
 
 What, then, is Professor Huxley's final attitude? 
 The lecture breathes throughout the loftiest temper 
 of ethical idealism. It is the writer's keen sense of 
 the superiority of ethical man to non-ethical nature 
 that prompts him to pit Pascal's "thinking reed" in 
 unequal struggle against the cosmic forces that en- 
 velop him; and the noble words at the close stir the 
 spirit by their impressive insistence on the imperish- 
 able worth of human effort inspired by duty. Yet 
 this unflinching conviction does not lead Professor 
 Huxley to what seems the legitimate conclusion from 
 it namely, that here only, in the life of ethical en- 
 deavour, is the end and secret of the universe to be 
 found. It serves but to accentuate the stern pathos 
 of his view of human fate. His ultimate attitude 
 is, theoretically, one of Agnosticism; personally and 
 practically, one of Stoical heroism. Substantially the 
 same attitude, it appears to me, is exemplified in the 
 Pieligion of Humanity the same despair, I mean, of 
 
30 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 harmonising human ideals with the course of the 
 universe. The Religion of Humanity rightly finds in 
 man alone any qualities which call for adoration or 
 worship ; but it inconsistently supposes man to de- 
 velop these qualities in a fundamentally non-ethical 
 cosmos, and so fails to furnish a solution that can be 
 accounted either metaphysically satisfying or ethically 
 supporting. But we must bear in mind, I repeat, the 
 principle of the unity of the world. The attitude of 
 the -Agnostic and the Positivist is due to the separa- 
 tion which they unconsciously insist on keeping up 
 between nature and man. The temptation to do so is 
 intelligible, for we have found that nature, taken in 
 philosophical language as a thing in itself nature 
 conceived as an independent system of causes cannot 
 explain the ethical life of man, and we rightly refuse 
 to blur and distort the characteristic features of moral 
 experience by submerging it in the merely natural. 
 We easily, therefore, continue to think of the system 
 of natural causes as a world going its own way, ex- 
 isting quite independently of the ethical beings who 
 draw their breath within it. Man with his ideal 
 standards and his infinite aspirations appears conse- 
 quently upon the scene as an alien without rights in 
 a world that knows him not. His life is an unex- 
 
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 31 
 
 plained intrusion in a world organised on other prin- 
 ciples, and no way adapted as a habitation for so 
 disturbing and pretentious a guest. And the conse- 
 quence is that he dashes his spirit against the steep 
 crags of necessity, finds his ideals thwarted, his aspira- 
 tions mocked, his tenderest affections turned to instru- 
 ments of agony, and is driven, if not into passionate 
 revolt or nerveless despair, then at best into stoical 
 resolve. Some such mood as this appears also in much 
 of Matthew Arnold's poetry, and is to my mind the 
 explanation of its insistent note of sadness. 
 
 " No, we are strangers here, the world is from of old, . . . 
 To tunes we did not call, our being must keep chime." 
 
 It is powerfully expressed in the famous monologue 
 or chant in " Empedocles on Etna," with its deliberate 
 renunciation of what the poet deems man's " boundless 
 hopes " and " intemperate prayers." It inspires the 
 fine lines to Fausta on " Eesignation," and reappears 
 more incidentally in all his verse. But calm, as he 
 himself reminds us, is not life's crown, though calm 
 is well ; and the poet's " calm lucidity of soul " covers 
 in this case the baffled retreat of the thinker. We 
 have, in truth, no right to suppose an independent 
 non-spiritual world on which human experience is in- 
 
32 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. 
 
 congruously superinduced. If we are really in earnest, 
 at once with the unity -of the world and with the 
 necessity of an intrinsically worthy end by reference 
 to which existence may be explained, we must take 
 our courage in both hands and carry our convictions 
 to their legitimate conclusion. We must conclude that 
 the end which we recognise as alone worthy of attain- 
 ment is also the end of existence as such the open 
 secret of the universe. No man writes more pessi- 
 mistically than Kant of man's relation to the course 
 of nature, so long as man is regarded merely as a 
 sentient creature, susceptible to pleasure and pain. 
 But man, as the subject of duty, and the heir of 
 immortal hopes, is restored by Kant to that central 
 position in the universe from which, as a merely 
 physical being, Copernicus had degraded him. 
 
 To a certain extent this conclusion must remain a 
 conviction rather than a demonstration, for we cannot 
 emerge altogether from the obscurities of our middle 
 state, and there is much that may rightly disquiet 
 and perplex our minds. But if it is in the needs of 
 the moral life that we find our deepest principle of 
 explanation, then it may be argued with some reason 
 that this belongs to the nature of the case; for a 
 scientific demonstration would not serve the purposes 
 
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 33 
 
 of that life. The truly good man must choose good- 
 ness on its own account ; he must be ready to serve 
 God for naught, without being invaded by M. Eenan's 
 doubts. As it has been finely put, he must possess 
 "that rude old Norse nobility of soul, which saw 
 virtue and vice alike go unrewarded, and was yet not 
 shaken in its faith." l This old Norse nobility speaks 
 to us again, in accents of the nineteenth century, in 
 Professor Huxley's lecture. But because such is the 
 temper of true virtue, it by no means follows that 
 such virtue will not be rewarded with "the wages 
 of going on, and not to die." 
 
 1 K. L. Stevenson, Preface to 'Familiar Studies of Men and Books.' 
 
THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 1 
 
 "VTOU will not find it wonderful if my feelings are 
 
 deeply stirred in appearing before you to-day for 
 
 the first time in my new capacity. There is no honour 
 
 1 An Inaugural Lecture on assuming the duties of the Chair of Logic 
 and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh, October 26, 1891. 
 
 The Lecture is printed exactly as it was delivered, and the nature of 
 the occasion will perhaps be held to excuse the personal references 
 with which it opens. The general survey of the philosophical field 
 which it undertakes, and the philosophical point of view indicated in 
 the concluding pages, seem to give it a useful place in the present vol- 
 ume. But to prevent misconception, it may be well to append here 
 the Prefatory Note which accompanied it on its original appearance : 
 " The title of this Lecture may seem to promise too much. The Lec- 
 ture does not profess to deal with the circle of the philosophical 
 sciences, but only with the subjects traditionally associated with a 
 Chair of Logic and Metaphysics in Scotland. Moreover, as the occasion 
 demanded, it is addressed not so much to the expert as to the large 
 general public interested in philosophy." 
 
PRESENT POSITION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 35 
 
 or privilege which I could possibly esteem higher than 
 to teach philosophy in my own alma mater, and in the 
 capital of my native land to teach, moreover, in the 
 Chair which, through the lustre of its occupants for 
 half a century, is, in the mind of the country (I think 
 I may say it without offence) in some respects the most 
 famous of Scottish philosophical Chairs. All this is 
 ^deeply gratifying. But it also lays a heavy responsi- 
 bility upon him who succeeds to such great traditions. 
 He who did not feel diffident at stepping into the place 
 of these eminent men would be unworthy of the trust 
 committed to him. I am deeply sensible of my own 
 deficiencies, but I hope, if it is granted me, to live and 
 learn. 
 
 It is also a very gratifying experience to join as a 
 colleague those who were the guides of one's youth. 
 All are not here ; but of the seven Professors of the 
 Arts curriculum in my time only two have been re- 
 moved by death. One, the genial and universally 
 beloved Kelland, passed away in the ripeness of his 
 years. The other leaves an untimely gap, which 
 speaks of recent loss and a common sorrow. One 
 whose welcome to-day would have sounded with 
 peculiar pleasantness in my ears, the generous and 
 high-souled Sellar, has gone from us too soon; and 
 
36 THE PRESENT POSITION OF 
 
 to those who knew him, his loss seems not less but 
 greater as the days go by. 
 
 All the more is it matter of heartfelt satisfaction to 
 me that no such painful gap exists in connection with 
 my own Chair that I succeed my honoured and be- 
 loved teacher while he is yet among us in full health 
 and in the unimpaired vigour of his powers. Long 
 may he live to counsel us wisely and inspire us by his 
 example, and to embody in literary form the ripe 
 results of a life's reflection. In these circumstances, 
 and in his presence, it is not for me to pronounce any 
 eulogy upon his thirty-five years of strenuous and 
 fruitful work in this university, or to attempt to sum 
 up his happily unfinished achievement. But I will 
 at least record a little of what I personally owe to him. 
 He taught me to think ; and in the things of the mind 
 that is the greatest gift for which one man can be in- 
 debted to another. Seventeen years ago I entered the 
 Junior Logic class of this university, with a mind 
 opening perhaps to literature, but still substantially 
 with a schoolboy's views of existence ; and there, in 
 the admirably stimulating lectures to which I listened, 
 a new world seemed to open before me. What the 
 student most needs at such a period is to be intellectu- 
 ally awakened. The crust of custom has to be broken, 
 
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 37 
 
 and the sense of wonder and mystery stirred within 
 him. He should not be crammed with ready-made 
 solutions of difficulties he has never been made to feel. 
 Eather should he be sent "voyaging through strange 
 seas of thought alone." He has to be induced to ask 
 himself the world-old questions, and to ponder the 
 possible answers. Above all, the listener should be 
 made to feel that the questions of which the Professor 
 speaks are not merely information which he communi- 
 cates that they are to him the most real things in the 
 world, the recurring subjects of his deepest meditation. 
 All this his students found realised in Professor Eraser's 
 teaching. His sympathetic exposition enabled us to 
 catch the spirit of the most diverse systems, while 
 his searching criticism prevented us from resting in 
 any of those facile solutions which owe their simplicity 
 to the convenient elimination of intractable elements. 
 The sense of mystery and complexity in things, which 
 he brought so vividly home to us, inspired a wise dis- 
 trust of extreme positions and of systems all too perfect 
 for our mortal vision. This union of dialectical subtlety 
 with a never-failing reverence for all that makes man 
 man, and elevates him above himself, lives in the 
 memory of many a pupil as no unworthy realisation 
 of the ideal spirit of philosophy. I shall count myself 
 
38 THE PRESENT POSITION OF 
 
 happy if, with his mantle, some portion of his spirit 
 shall be found to have descended upon his successor. 
 I hope that, in the days to come, the dingy but famous 
 class-room will be distinguished as of old by searching 
 intellectual criticism and impartial debate, not divorced 
 from that spirit of reverence and humility which alone 
 can lead us into truth. 
 
 That reminds me that you will expect to hear from 
 a new Professor some indication of the view he takes 
 of his subject, and of the present outlook in connection 
 with it. Anything that can be said on an occasion like 
 the present must necessarily be of a very general char- 
 acter, but even so it may have a certain interest and 
 usefulness. 
 
 The discipline of the Chair, then, seems to me to 
 be of a threefold character logical, psychological, 
 and metaphysical or philosophical in the strict sense. 
 That is to say, we study, in the first place, the nature 
 of the reasoning process, or, to be more accurate, the 
 nature of proof or evidence the conditions to which 
 valid reasoning must conform. In the second place, 
 we study, introspectively and otherwise, the pheno- 
 mena of consciousness. We bring observation and 
 experiment to bear upon those internal facts which are 
 
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 39 
 
 for each of us the only facts immediately present to us, 
 the facts through which we know all other facts. We 
 try to analyse and lay bare the inmost nature of those 
 functions of knowing, feeling, and willing which lie 
 " closer to us than breathing, nearer than hands or 
 feet," which constitute, in fact, our very life, the ex- 
 pression of the self in time. In the third place, we 
 study, under the title of philosophy proper, the two- 
 fold question of Knowing and Being. On the one 
 hand, we investigate human knowledge as to its con- 
 stitutive notions and its scope or validity ; we discuss 
 the question of the possibility of knowledge, as it is 
 called, or the relation of knowledge to reality. This is 
 what is termed Epistemology or Theory of Knowledge. 
 On the other hand, so far as the discussion has not 
 been already anticipated, we approach those questions 
 as to the ultimate nature, the origin and destiny, of all 
 that is, which have occupied the speculative intellect 
 of mankind from the dawn of history, and will occupy 
 it till its close. These may be embraced under the 
 special title of Metaphysics, both Epistemology and 
 Metaphysics falling under the wider designation of 
 Philosophy. 
 
 These three lines of training the logical, the psycho- 
 logical, and the philosophical are cognate, and the 
 
40 THE PRESENT POSITION OF 
 
 first two are in a measure introductory or propaedeutic 
 to the third. Both logic and psychology, at all events, 
 if we go beneath the surface, lead us into the very 
 heart of philosophical difficulties ; and most treatments 
 of either subject involve a tissue of metaphysical as- 
 sumptions, of which the writer is, in all probability, 
 either quite unconscious or only half aware. But 
 though the subjects are thus cognate and continuous, 
 and so fitly combined under one Chair, the discipline 
 they afford has in each case a character of its own. 
 Logic gives a training almost purely abstract or formal, 
 comparable in some respects with the mental discipline 
 of mathematics a training in clearness of thinking, in 
 accuracy of definition, in appreciation of what is meant 
 by demonstration or proof. Psychology brings us face 
 to face with a concrete subject-matter the actual facts 
 of mental life. It views these facts, partly in them- 
 selves, but largely in their connection with material con- 
 ditions and accompaniments. So far as it approaches 
 these facts by the ordinary methods of observation 
 and experiment, classifying them and endeavour- 
 ing to resolve complex phenomena into their simplest 
 constituents or causes, so far it affords a scientific 
 discipline comparable to that gained, say, in the study 
 of one of the natural sciences. And if it often lacks 
 
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 41 
 
 the exactness of the sciences of external nature, it has 
 the advantage, as compared with them, of cultivating 
 fresh powers of mind through the attitude of " reflec- 
 tion" or introspection which it is forced to take up. 
 Self-observation or introspection is by no means so easy 
 as the observation of a foreign object. We can more 
 easily analyse a substance in a phial before us than we 
 can analyse the exact nature of what passes at any 
 moment in our own mind. Hence Psychology, which 
 incessantly calls for the exercise of this faculty, and 
 sharpens and perfects it by constant use, was justly 
 praised by Hamilton as one of the best gymnastics of 
 the mind. Philosophy carries us into a more difficult 
 region; for here we deal not with any particular de- 
 partment of fact, but with the ultimate principles of 
 knowledge and the ultimate constitution or meaning 
 of the cosmos as such, including the prior question 
 whether we are justified in speaking of a cosmos or 
 orderly unity at all. These are questions of supreme 
 and intimate concern to us all, seeing that they embrace 
 the question of man's place and destiny in relation to 
 the system of things. He to whom they have no voice 
 must be either less or more than man. And I fail to 
 see how any one can lay claim to a liberal education 
 who is ignorant of what has been thought by the great 
 
42 THE PRESENT POSITION OF 
 
 minds of the past upon these subjects, or who is un- 
 acquainted with the elements of the problems as they 
 face us to-day. The rudiments of such a knowledge 
 are necessary, were it for nothing else, to enable any 
 one to take an intelligent part in the incessant discus- 
 sion and conflict of opinion which is so marked a feature 
 of the present time. 
 
 This threefold discipline may be justified, therefore, 
 in a liberal curriculum, whether we look at it, from the 
 formal side, as a discipline of mental powers otherwise 
 untrained as the cultivation of one whole side of 
 human nature or, on the concrete side, as a communi- 
 cation of knowledge of singular importance and inter- 
 est. And its permanent value seems to me so high 
 and unimpeachable, in both these respects, that it needs 
 no defence at my hands. A defence is generally a con- 
 fession of weakness. In offering such for philosophy, 
 " we do it wrong, being so majestical." 
 
 I turn, therefore, by preference, to say a little about 
 the present outlook in the three departments to which 
 reference has been made, and the way in which it 
 seems to me that a philosophical Professor should 
 shape his work at the present time. Logic I will pass 
 over lightly almost with a word because, of the 
 three, its discussions are most technical in character. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 43 
 
 It appeals, therefore, least to a general audience. More- 
 over, if we penetrate beneath the surface and examine 
 the foundations on which it rests, we are immediately 
 involved in difficult questions of general philosophy; 
 and it becomes impossible to maintain a rigid distinc- 
 tion between Logic and Epistemology and Metaphysics. 
 For that reason the very conception or definition of 
 the science has long been matter of keen debate, and 
 at present the aspect of things is confessedly chaotic. 
 The activity, however, in the higher theory of logic has 
 of late been great both in this country and in Germany. 
 I need only refer to the important treatises of Lotze, 
 Sigwart, and Wundt in Germany, and of Bradley 
 and Bosanquet in this country, not to speak of the 
 more distinctively English work of Jevons, Venn, and 
 others. The chaos, moreover, if at first bewildering, 
 is not of the kind which should be disheartening to 
 the serious student. It is of the kind which portends 
 and accompanies growth, and bears in it the promise 
 of future order. Evidently, however, such discus- 
 sions do not lend themselves to exoteric exposition; 
 they belong to the labours of an advanced class of 
 metaphysics. 
 
 The other aspect of Logic is the elementary doctrine 
 which has so long formed part of the curriculum of 
 
44 THE PRESENT POSITION OF 
 
 educated Europe the ordinary formal logic, originally 
 based upon Aristotle, to- which has come to be added 
 some discussion of the theory of scientific method and 
 the conditions of inductive proof. It has been the 
 fashion of late with many philosophers to sneer at the 
 logic of the schools ; but this is only justifiable, as it 
 seems to me, when extravagant claims are made on its 
 behalf. No doubt the ordinary logic depends on many 
 uncriticised assumptions; its analysis of the process 
 of thought is often superficial ; it cannot stand as a 
 coherent philosophical doctrine. All this is granted. 
 The whole discipline is essentially of an elementary 
 and propaedeutic character ; it is a continuation, in a 
 more abstract form, of the grammatical training re- 
 ceived at school. But just this circumstance, that it 
 continues and attaches itself to the studies of the 
 school, gives it a peculiar claim to stand as the gate- 
 way of the philosophical sciences ; whilst, on the other 
 hand, the very defects and ambiguities which dis- 
 cussion reveals in many of its conceptions form an 
 excellent stimulus to the opening mind, and introduce 
 the student insensibly to important psychological and 
 metaphysical problems. The formal mechanism may 
 certainly, in great part, be relegated with advantage to 
 text-book work and tutorial instruction. But even 
 
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 45 
 
 this is not to be despised ; I have always found it an 
 admirable test in picking out the really clear-headed 
 members of a class. Here there are no cloudy phrases 
 in which to take refuge ; the issue is as clear and defi- 
 nite as in a mathematical proposition, and inaccuracy of 
 mind is tracked remorselessly down. In view of these 
 merits, which the study undoubtedly possesses, I can- 
 not share the contempt frequently expressed for the 
 logic of the schools. Its names and distinctions, more- 
 over, have entered so largely into the thought, and 
 even the familiar language, of the civilised races, that 
 a certain acquaintance with its forms and processes 
 may well be demanded in the interests of historical 
 culture. 
 
 It is not so long since a somewhat similar contempt 
 for Psychology was current in the leading idealistic 
 school of this country. The horror of the true-blue 
 experientialist for what he calls " metaphysics " was 
 amply repaid by the tone of condescension and in- 
 difference which the idealists adopted towards "em- 
 pirical psychology." Misled by a name, they visited 
 upon the head of an unoffending science the inade- 
 quacies of Empiricism as a philosophical theory. Be- 
 cause the chief cultivators of psychology in England 
 had been of the Empiricist persuasion, and had fre- 
 
46 THE PRESENT POSITION OF 
 
 quently confounded the limits of psychology and meta- 
 physics, the transcendentalists tabooed the science as 
 beneath the notice of a philosopher. Hence a state 
 of unnatural division and mutual distrust a distrust 
 rooted in both cases largely in ignorance. To-day the 
 situation is greatly changed. Psychology has become 
 more scientific, and has thereby become more con- 
 scious of her own aims, and, at the same time, of 
 her necessary limitations. Ceasing to put herself 
 forward as philosophy, she has entered upon a new 
 period of development as science ; and in doing so 
 she has disarmed the jealousy, and is even fast con- 
 quering the indifference, of the transcendental philo- 
 sopher. For whatever be the bearing of these 
 psychological investigations upon philosophy be 
 their importance in that connection great, or be it 
 small it is at least certain that in the near future 
 no philosopher will speak with authority, or will 
 deserve so to speak, who does not show a competent 
 acquaintance with the best work in psychology. 
 
 The marvellous activity displayed just at present 
 in the department of psychology constitutes, indeed, 
 to an expert perhaps the most notable feature in the 
 state of the philosophical sciences. In Germany and 
 France, in America, and now in England, there may 
 
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 47 
 
 almost be said to be a " boom " in that direction. 
 In Britain the study of psychology is a native 
 growth, and it had long flourished in the hands of 
 the Associationists, such as Hartley, James and John 
 Mill, and Professor Bain. But before such a school 
 was heard of by name, the works of Hobbes, Locke, 
 Berkeley, and Hume had brilliantly exemplified the 
 national genius in that direction. As already indi- 
 cated, however, the British thinkers of the past were 
 far from keeping their psychology unadulterated. 
 Betraying frequently an insular ignorance of the 
 great metaphysical systems of ancient Greece and 
 modern Europe, they gave us, in general, psychology 
 and philosophy inextricably intermingled. The im- 
 pulse towards a differentiation of provinces came 
 from Germany, where the clearer formulation of aims 
 and methods may be regarded as one beneficial 
 result of the training which the German intellect 
 has enjoyed at the hands of Kant and succeeding 
 thinkers. But the influence of Germany upon psy- 
 chological investigation has not been limited to this 
 formal or methodic stimulus. There has been much 
 good work done there in psychology since the time 
 of Kant. The psychology of Herbart and his fol- 
 lowers is in many respects the more elaborate counter- 
 
48 THE PRESENT POSITION OF 
 
 part of English Associationism ; and artificial as his 
 constructions often seem,^ it is acute and able work, 
 which no modern student of the subject can afford 
 to neglect. The names of Lotze and Wundt repre- 
 sent work at once brilliant and patient on independent 
 lines, and bring before us also the close connection 
 between psychology and physiology, which is the 
 distinguishing mark of most recent investigation in 
 this department. Some of Lotze's most characteristic 
 work was contained in the book he called 'Medical 
 Psychology ; ' and ' Physiological Psychology ' is the 
 name Wundt gives to his important treatise. Psy- 
 chology, physiology, and physics meet in the great 
 works of Helmholtz on ' Sensations of Tone ' and 
 ' Physiological Optics.' Another mark of recent in- 
 vestigation is the potent influence exerted on psy- 
 chology, as on all other departments of knowledge, 
 by the conception of evolution. Wherever life is 
 met with, there the psychologist now finds material 
 for illustrating and enlarging his science. The old 
 meaning of ^f%?) has been revived, and the begin- 
 nings of a comparative psychology have come into 
 being. The observation of abnormal mental develop- 
 ments, such as insanity, hysteria, the hypnotic state, 
 and similar phenomena, forms another field assiduously 
 
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 49 
 
 cultivated by modern observers, especially in France, 
 where, no less than in Germany and America, there 
 is a large amount of psychological activity among 
 the younger men. 
 
 All these influences may be said to meet and come 
 to fruition in the best English work of the last few 
 years such work, I mean, as Mr Ward's masterly 
 treatise in the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica,' and the rich 
 and stimulating volumes published a year ago 1 by 
 Professor James of Harvard. Such work may not 
 unreasonably be taken as marking the new departure 
 that has been achieved in psychology the critical 
 maintenance of a purely psychological standpoint, 
 the wider range of material, the more minute and 
 experimental analysis. 
 
 For one of the most striking results of the rap- 
 prochement between psychology and physiology just 
 referred to has been the attempt to introduce experi- 
 ment into psychological science. Starting from the 
 experiments of Weber and the more extended psycho- 
 physical researches of Fechner, but taking a wider 
 scope, there has sprung up a new line of inquiry, 
 which, under the name of Experimental Psychology, 
 sometimes aspires to the dignity of a separate dis- 
 
 1 In 1890. 
 D 
 
50 THE PRESENT POSITION OF 
 
 cipline, and looks back with no little condescension 
 upon the observational and descriptive science with 
 which we are familiar. Wundt has been the leader 
 of this movement, and Leipzig its great centre; but 
 it is now widely spread in Germany, and has been 
 enthusiastically taken up in America, where every 
 well- equipped college aims at the establishment of a 
 psychological or psycho-physical laboratory. England 
 shows some disposition to follow in the wake. At least 
 the University of Cambridge has voted a small sum for 
 the same purpose, and the younger generation of Oxon- 
 ians are found deserting the philosophy of Green to 
 work in the laboratories of Freiburg, Leipzig, and 
 Berlin. 
 
 Let me say at once, to prevent misconception, that 
 I think the experimental psychologists magnify their 
 office overmuch. The field of experiment is necessarily 
 limited ; it is limited to those cases where we are able 
 to manipulate the physical and physiological processes 
 which condition mental facts. The facts of sensation, 
 the phenomena of movement, and the time occupied 
 by the simpler mental processes, constitute, therefore, 
 practically the whole accessible area. Within these 
 limits, moreover, the results are often so contradictory 
 as to leave everything in doubt ; where definite results 
 
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 51 
 
 are obtainable, their value is often not apparent. 
 Finally, many of the results are of a purely physio- 
 logical nature, and are only by courtesy included in 
 psychological science. These are the serious deductions 
 which I think require to be made by a dispassionate 
 observer of all this eager work. But the appetite for 
 facts is a healthy symptom, and the whole movement 
 is one which every student of psychology must take 
 note of. We need not look for light from this quarter 
 upon the problems of philosophy and the deeper 
 mysteries of being ; but it is impossible that so much 
 patient ingenuity should be devoted to analysing the 
 substructure of our mental life without ultimately im- 
 portant effects upon our knowledge of the psychological 
 mechanism. 
 
 A collateral effect of this scientific development of 
 psychology has been an immense increase of detail- 
 work. Already it is becoming more and more the 
 practice for psychologists to publish elaborate mono- 
 graphs on special phenomena, or on comparatively 
 small departments of the subject. The number of 
 psychological journals has also largely increased. One 
 result of this is obvious. As psychology becomes in- 
 creasingly scientific in character, and as the literature 
 of the subject becomes more and more voluminous, 
 
52 THE PRESENT POSITION OF 
 
 the severance between philosophy and psychology 
 must necessarily become more pronounced for it will 
 become impossible for the same man to do original 
 work in both departments. From the point of view 
 of philosophy there might seem to be a certain ad- 
 vantage in this, as effectually preventing any further 
 confusion between the two spheres and sets of prob- 
 lems. But this advantage is more apparent than real. 
 For psychology, as the science of mental life, must 
 always stand to philosophy in a more intimate rela- 
 tion than any of the other sciences can. If the divorce, 
 then, be carried so far that the philosopher and psy- 
 chologist are no longer on speaking terms, the old 
 evils will recur ; for a critical severance of provinces can 
 be effected and maintained only by one who is familiar 
 with both departments, even though his original work 
 should lie only in one. It is to be hoped, therefore, that 
 the psychologists of the future will all be trained in 
 philosophy, and the philosophers in psychology. With 
 this view, and in the present situation of affairs, I can- 
 not help adding that it seems to me extremely desir- 
 able, in a great university like this, that there should 
 be a third man connected with the philosophical de- 
 partment a Lecturer or Assistant-Professor specially 
 charged with the teaching of psychology in its most 
 
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 53 
 
 recent developments. Such work would lie, of course, 
 largely with Honours students ; for psychological de- 
 tail could not profitably replace to the Passman that 
 introduction to the problems of philosophy and the 
 history of thought which the retention of the Chair in 
 a liberal curriculum is meant to ensure. 
 
 To Philosophy, then, we come in the last place. It 
 is by philosophy that this Chair and others like it in 
 the Scottish universities must ultimately justify their 
 existence ; and it is to the inbred Scottish bent towards 
 philosophy that the public interest felt in them is due. 
 The outlook here is not discouraging. Within the 
 present century, as is well known, Comte promulgated 
 his law of the three stages, representing metaphysics 
 as a disease of childhood, like measles, which the race 
 was in the act of outgrowing. And since then, Comtian 
 and other influences have undoubtedly produced in 
 many quarters a positivistic or agnostic attitude of 
 mind, which gives itself great airs of finality from 
 time to time in our newspapers and reviews. But 
 metaphysics shows no inclination to die, by way of 
 obliging these prophets of her decease. It is sufficient 
 answer to their vaticinations to point to the marked 
 revival of interest in philosophical discussion within 
 recent years. There was a period, perhaps, when 
 
54 THE PRESENT POSITION OF 
 
 philosophical interest languished ; but there has seldom 
 been a time when people were more anxious than they 
 are at present to listen to any one who has anything 
 to say. For indifferentism here, as Kant says, can be, 
 in the nature of the case, no more than a temporary 
 phase of feeling. " It is in reality vain to profess 
 indifference in regard to such inquiries, the object of 
 which cannot be indifferent to humanity." 
 
 Apart from indifference, there was a time when the 
 vast strides made by science more especially by the 
 natural sciences in the third quarter of the present 
 century fascinated men's attention, and diverted it 
 from the problems which lie beneath and behind all 
 science. But the very progress of science has brought 
 men face to face once more with ultimate questions, 
 and has revealed the impotence of science to deal with 
 its own conditions and presuppositions. The needs of 
 science itself call for a critical doctrine of knowledge 
 as the basis of an ultimate theory of things. The idea 
 entertained in some quarters that all difficulties would 
 be solved by a scientific conception like that of evolu- 
 tion, has been found illusory, inasmuch as that concep- 
 tion itself requires a philosophical interpretation before 
 it can throw any light at all upon the metaphysical 
 question. History is not philosophy, and nothing is 
 
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 55 
 
 explained merely by being thrown back in time. 
 Evolution notwithstanding, the old questions all re- 
 appear in a slightly altered form. They are brought to 
 light again by the very success of science in dealing 
 with her own problems. 
 
 Philosophy is first, then, at the present day, a doctrine 
 of knowledge ; and as such the critic of scientific cate- 
 gories, to purge us of bad metaphysics. For the sweep- 
 ing away of bad metaphysics is not the least important 
 part of the philosophical task, and there is no meta- 
 physics so bad as the metaphysics of the physicist or 
 biologist when, in the strength of his own right arm, 
 he makes a raid into philosophical territory. This 
 critical office of Philosophy must also be extended to 
 the metaphysical systems of the past. And in this 
 connection we have one of the richest parts of the 
 training afforded by a philosophical Chair ; for here the 
 teacher must constitute himself the historian of thought, 
 and, with a wise admixture of sympathy and criticism, 
 introduce his hearers to the typical thinkers of the 
 world 
 
 " The dead but sceptred sovrans who still rule 
 Our spirits from their urns." 
 
 But this critical, and to a certain extent negative, 
 work is not all. Philosophy must finally endeavour to 
 
56 THE PRESENT POSITION OF 
 
 be itself critically constructive, or, if that is a contra- 
 diction in terms, it must endeavour to be constructive 
 without forgetting its own critical strictures. The 
 criticism of past philosophies, therefore, should not 
 be purely negative. Truly light -giving and helpful 
 criticism should seek to lead the learner, through the 
 very consciousness of defects and inconsistencies in the 
 systems examined, to a truer statement of the problem, 
 and a more adequate solution. In this way, the systems 
 of the past become so many stepping-stones on which 
 we rise to fuller and clearer insight. And if, at the 
 end, a completed system should still prove beyond our 
 reach, the philosophical teacher will at least seek to 
 indicate the general lines upon which an ultimately 
 satisfactory theory must move. 
 
 I have only time here to mention one or two points 
 on which I think that a true philosophy should lay 
 stress, and on which it should lay special stress at 
 the present time. The first is the necessity of a 
 ideological view of the universe. Trendelenburg, the 
 eminent German Aristotelian, devotes one of the most 
 interesting of his essays to illustrating what he calls 
 the fundamental difference or antithesis between philo- 
 sophical systems, the difference, namely, between the 
 teleological and the mechanical point of view. Whether 
 
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 57 
 
 an exhaustive classification of systems is possible on 
 this basis or not, I believe with him that the antithesis 
 he signalises is fundamental for philosophy ; and there 
 is nothing of which I am more profoundly convinced 
 than that philosophical truth lies, in this case, alto- 
 gether with the teleological point of view. Any system 
 which abandons this point of view lapses thereby from 
 philosophy to science. 
 
 The word teleology acts upon some people like a red 
 rag upon a bull, from its association with certain old- 
 fashioned arguments which explained particular pheno- 
 mena from their supposed adaptation to external ends, 
 more especially from their adaptation to the require- 
 ments and conveniences of man. This paltry mechan- 
 ical teleology was never at any time convincing to 
 strong and sincere thinkers, and after being riddled by 
 modern science, it may be held as finally beaten off the 
 field. Its unsatisfactory character arose in great part 
 from its taking facts in isolation, and then endeavour- 
 ing artificially to fit them together in the relation of 
 means and end. The philosophical teleology of which 
 I speak concerns itself only with the End of the whole 
 evolution. It concentrates itself upon the proof that 
 there is an End, that there is an organic unity or pur- 
 pose binding the whole process into one and making it 
 
58 THE PRESENT POSITION OF 
 
 intelligible in one word, that there is evolution and 
 not merely aimless change. For it is only when con- 
 templated in the light of a realised idea that any one 
 speaks of a series of changes as steps in an evolution. 
 A speculation which does not see that evolution spells 
 purpose has not made clear to itself the difference 
 between progress and aimless variation. Such specu- 
 lation rests ultimately on a purely mechanical view of 
 the universe. 
 
 Let us try, therefore, in a sentence or two, to illu- 
 minate by contrast these two opposite points of view. 
 The mechanical view explains the universe as a col- 
 location of mere facts so many real existences which 
 just happen to be there. They are not there to ex- 
 press any idea, meaning, or purpose : they have no 
 further significance ; they simply are. Every change in 
 these facts is completely determined by its immediate 
 antecedents, acting as a blind vis a tergo. A cause 
 may thus be assigned for every change, but a reason 
 can be given for none ; for where there is no question 
 of realising any idea or purpose, all change must be 
 entirely motiveless. One collocation of facts is just 
 as good as another. The mechanical explanation of 
 things is thus a constant looking backward ; the teleo- 
 logical or philosophical explanation, a looking forward 
 
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 59 
 
 to the end or ultimate purpose which is being realised 
 to the reason of the whole development, which is 
 also in the deepest sense its cause. 
 
 The mechanical explanation of any phenomenon is 
 not false in itself. Nor need there be any quarrel 
 between the causal and the teleological view of things, 
 for they move upon different planes. The mechani- 
 cally causal view only becomes false, when it professes 
 to be a complete explanation of any phenomenon, and 
 therefore, by implication, a philosophy of the universe. 
 True, under certain limitations, as science, it is false 
 when it puts itself forward as philosophy. Mechanical 
 explanation is a proyressiis in infinitum, which can 
 ultimately explain nothing. In the last resort, causce 
 efficientes pendent afinalibus; the complete explanation 
 of anything is only reached when we are able to view 
 it in the light of a purpose, of which it forms an in- 
 tegral part or element. Philosophy, therefore, stands 
 or falls with the possibility of discovering a reasonable 
 meaning or end in the universe. Every true phil- 
 osophy is in this sense an attempted theodicy the 
 vindication of a divine purpose in things. 
 
 The antithesis of teleology and mechanism is, as you 
 perceive, substantially the old opposition of Idealism 
 and Materialism more strictly expressed. And it is 
 
60 THE PRESENT POSITION OF 
 
 equally obvious that while the mechanical view, 
 through looking ever backward, finds an explanation 
 of things in reducing them to their lowest terms, and 
 presents us, for example, with matter and motion as 
 philosophical ultimates, the teleological or idealistic 
 view seeks the true explanation of the lower in the 
 higher, of which it is the germ. For if the lower 
 carries in it the promise and potency of the higher, 
 then it must involve no less than a falsification of 
 the facts to substantiate the lowest terms as indepen- 
 dent self-existent facts, out of relation to the ultimate 
 term in which we read the meaning of the whole de- 
 velopment. That, however, is precisely what is done 
 by all materialistic and quasi-materialistic systems. 
 
 If philosophy, then, is the indication of an end, 
 meaning, or purpose in the universe, what has phil- 
 osophy to say, finally, as to the nature of the End ? 
 Here again, it seems to me that philosophy has to 
 wage unsparing battle against certain tendencies of 
 our time. As it defends the truth of teleology in 
 spite of former abuses of the principle, so it has to 
 champion the truth underlying the old view which 
 made man the centre of the universe. In a material 
 aspect, man is but an atom or a point in the system 
 of things, and we smile when we read in Cicero of 
 
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 61 
 
 the heavenly redile who nightly lights the candles 
 of the sky for our mortal comfort and convenience. 
 But the Copernican view of the universe is pressed 
 too far when we are invited, on the strength of it, 
 to efface ourselves before the immensities of external 
 nature. Much current thought is naturalistic at heart 
 that is to say, it makes human nature only a part 
 of nature in general, and seeks, therefore, to explain 
 away the most fundamental characteristics of intelli- 
 gence and moral life. As against this naturalistic 
 tendency, philosophy must be unflinchingly human- 
 istic, anthropocentric. 
 
 Not to man as a creature specially located upon 
 this earth, but to man and all creatures like him 
 who are sharers in the life of thought, and called 
 thereby to be authors of their own perfection to 
 man as rational all things are relative. To him the 
 creation looks ; for him all things are made. This is 
 the imperishable grandeur of Hegel's system that he 
 has given such sonorous utterance to this view, and 
 expressed it with such magnificent confidence. I can- 
 not always emulate his confidence, nor can I adopt 
 as perfectly satisfactory his universalistic mode of 
 expression. The achievements of the world -spirit 
 do not move me to unqualified admiration, and I 
 
62 THE PRESENT POSITION OF 
 
 cannot accept the abstraction of the race in place of 
 the living children of men. Even if the enormous 
 spiral of human history is destined to wind itself at 
 last to a point which may be called achievement, what, 
 I ask, of the multitudes that perished by the way? 
 " These all died, not having received the promises." 
 What if there are no promises to them ? To me the 
 old idea of the world as the training-ground of indi- 
 vidual character seems to offer a much more human, 
 and, I will add, a much more divine, solution than this 
 pitiless procession of the car of progress. Happily, 
 however, the one view does not necessarily exclude 
 the other : we may rejoice in the progress of the race, 
 and also believe in the future of the individual. 
 Nature's profusion and nature's waste will doubtless 
 be urged against us, when we plead for the rights 
 of the individual life. But these are objections which 
 every theodicy has to meet. I do not wish to minimise 
 them : on the contrary, they appeal to me with painful 
 force. But the possibility of any theodicy depends on 
 our being able to show that nature and nature's ways 
 of working are not the last word of creation. Nature 
 is non-moral, indifferent, and pitiless; but man is 
 pitiful, and human nature flowers in love and self- 
 
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 63 
 
 denial, in purity and stainless honour. If these have 
 no root in the nature of things, then indeed 
 
 " The pillared firmament is rottenness, 
 And earth's base built on stubble." 
 
 But we do well, as Goethe teaches in one of his finest 
 poems, to recognise in such attributes of human-kind 
 our nearest glimpse into the nature of the divine. 
 The part is not greater than the whole ; and we may 
 rest assured that whatever of wisdom and goodness 
 there is in us was not born out of nothing, but has 
 its fount, somewhere and somehow, in a more perfect 
 Goodness and Truth. 
 
THE "NEW PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 I 1 
 
 T. 
 
 ALL who take an intelligent interest in the movement 
 of contemporary thought whether it be philos- 
 ophy more strictly so called, or the advance of science 
 are aware of the great activity which has been shown 
 of late years in the department of psychology. Till 
 within the last half century or thereabouts, psychology 
 had been an appanage of the philosophers ; and it can- 
 not be said that they neglected this province of their 
 dominion. In this country in particular in England 
 and Scotland psychology has formed the bulk of our 
 philosophic treatises ; and Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, 
 Hume, Hartley, Dr Thomas Brown, and the Mills, 
 
 1 An Address to the Edinburgh University Philosophical Society, 
 November 9, 1892. 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 65 
 
 Beid, Stewart, and Hamilton, must always remain 
 among the classics of the science. But it may be 
 admitted that their work often shows a crossing of 
 interests and of points of view. Questions of logic and 
 theory of knowledge were mixed up with the more 
 properly psychological inquiry. And, at other times, the 
 investigation was subordinate to the establishment of 
 some metaphysical theory. The distinguishing note of 
 most recent psychology has therefore been insistence 
 on the separation of psychology from philosophy, and on 
 the maintenance of a purely psychological standpoint. 
 In psychology, it is argued, we have a realm of pheno- 
 mena, a moving world of causes and effects, which it is 
 our business to investigate in the ordinary scientific way, 
 with all the resources of observation and experiment. 
 Imitating the example of physics, we have to reduce 
 this world of complex phenomena to its ultimate con- 
 stituents and the laws of their interaction, and we have 
 to do this without any arridre pe?iste as to the bearing 
 of our results on the ultimate problems of philosophy. 
 
 No advice could be more excellent ; disinterestedness 
 is the very watchword of science. But it seems to me 
 that a good many of those who talk most loudly of " the 
 new psychology " are exposed to the usual danger of re- 
 action. The rise of this "scientific" psychology, as it 
 
 E 
 
66 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 also calls itself, is connected with the great develop- 
 ment of science, especially, of the natural sciences, which 
 has marked the present century. The growth of biology 
 and physiology has naturally reacted powerfully upon 
 the whole conception and method of psychological in- 
 vestigation. And it is worth observing that the general 
 scientific movement referred to coincided, especially in 
 Germany, with a revulsion against the idealistic specu- 
 lation which marked the beginning of the century. 
 Probably the two were partly connected as cause and 
 effect, the hunger for hard facts and patient detail- work 
 being a healthy protest of the human spirit against 
 over-hasty and over-confident attempts at universal 
 synthesis. Any way, the new psychology, as I have 
 said, has its roots in this movement. And therefore its 
 absorbing concern was and is to keep itself clear of 
 metaphysics, and of every hypothesis which it imagines 
 to savour of that region of mysteries. To a large class 
 of scientific and would-be scientific thinkers, metaphysics 
 is what clericalism is to the French Liberal : it is the 
 enemy, to be fought at all points. These two character- 
 istics of this militant psychology its renunciation of 
 metaphysics and its affiliation to biology are concisely 
 put by Eibot, one of its standard-bearers : " The new 
 psychology differs from the old in its spirit it is not 
 metaphysical. It differs in its aim it only studies 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 67 
 
 phenomena. It differs in its methods it borrows them 
 as far as possible from the biological sciences. Con- 
 sequently the sphere of psychology specifies itself; it 
 has for its subject nervous phenomena accompanied by 
 consciousness." l 
 
 I am far from asserting that this distrust is without 
 historical justification. Natural explanations i.e., 
 regulated sequences and coexistences of phenomena 
 are what every science has to seek in its own 
 sphere ; and, accordingly, science justly regards as 
 suspect the explanation of any phenomenon by the 
 immediate causality of a metaphysical agent. The 
 interjection of such a causality into the empirical 
 connections which she seeks to unravel, she treats as 
 a form of ignava ratio. "It makes the investigation 
 of causes a very easy task," says Kant, " if we refer 
 such and such phenomena immediately to the unsearch- 
 able will and counsel of the Supreme Wisdom, whereas 
 we ought to investigate their causes in the general 
 mechanism of matter. This is to consider the labour 
 of reason as ended, when we have merely dispensed 
 
 1 ' La Psychologic Allemande,' Introduction. Ribot's deliverance dates 
 from 1879, but precisely the same position is formulated in the open- 
 ing and closing sentences of one of the most recent manuals on the sub- 
 ject, Ziehen's ' Introduction to the Study of Physiological Psychology.' 
 If the polemic against metaphysics is not always so marked, it is because 
 the enemy is supposed to have been beaten off the field. 
 
68 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 with its employment." l In the old psychology, this 
 otiose method of explanation, by means of the soul 
 and its faculties, was no doubt often resorted to. 
 Hence, in shaking the dust of metaphysics off their 
 feet, the new psychologists accepted from Lange 2 as 
 their badge the somewhat paradoxical motto " Psycho- 
 logy without a soul." As Kibot puts it triumphantly : 
 " The soul and its faculties, the great entity and the 
 little entities, disappear ; and we have to do only with 
 internal events, events which, like sensations and 
 images, are translations (so to speak) of physical events, 
 or which, like ideas, movements, volitions, and desires, 
 translate themselves into physical events." 
 
 In this respect, however, the new psychology was not 
 so original as it perhaps imagined. The attempt to 
 dispense with a soul had been systematically made by 
 Hume and the Associationists long before the second 
 half of the nineteenth century. It was not simply the 
 determination to discard the soul that stamped the new 
 movement ; the second and more characteristic feature 
 was the affiliation of psychology to physiology and to 
 general biological science the study of the facts of 
 consciousness consistently and exclusively in correla- 
 
 1 Werke, vol. iii. p. 468 (ed. Hartenstein). 
 
 2 Geschichte des Materialismus, vol. ii. p. 381. 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 69 
 
 tion with the organic facts of nerve and brain. This 
 method of explanation was declined, as we know, by 
 Locke and Hume ; and it has been made matter of 
 reproach against a modern associationist like Mill, that 
 he held by the old psychological method and went on 
 " exactly as he might have gone on if he had lived in 
 the days of Aristotle, ... at a time when a new method 
 highly fertile in fact and of more fruitful promise was 
 available." l The physiological method, in short, is the 
 distinguishing mark, and "physiological psychology" is 
 the term very generally given to the recent develop- 
 ments of " psychology as a natural science." It is to be 
 noted also that in speaking of the conditions of mental 
 states (and it is agreed that the discovery of conditions 
 constitutes scientific explanation) writers of this way of 
 thinking have exclusively physiological conditions in 
 view. Professor James tells us, for example, that he 
 has " treated our passing thoughts as integers, and re- 
 garded the mere laws of their coexistence with brain- 
 states as the ultimate laws for our science ; " 2 and Mr 
 Shadworth Hodgson defines psychology as " that posi- 
 tive and special science which takes its stand upon the 
 results of physiology and biology, and studies the phen- 
 
 1 Maudsley, Physiology of Mind, p. 76. 
 
 2 Principles of Psychology, Preface. 
 
70 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 omena of sentience and consciousness in connection 
 with their proximate conditions in individual living 
 organisms." l 
 
 Let me say at once that it is far from my intention 
 to object to this intimate linking of the psychological 
 and the biological. It may be taken as a postulate 
 generally admitted, that our mental life is at every 
 point physiologically conditioned ; and the physiologi- 
 cal method of study does indeed promise, as its vot- 
 aries say, to be most fruitful in its application. It 
 alone furnishes the basis for introducing experiment 
 into mental science ; and though it can only lay siege, 
 as it were, to the outworks of the mental citadel, to the 
 phenomena of sense-perception and movement and a 
 few of the simpler aspects of the mental processes, yet 
 the amount of patient detail-work accumulated in these 
 departments, and the light thrown on other departments 
 by the scientific study of abnormal mental states in 
 their physiological relations, are already enriching the 
 science in no ordinary degree, and transforming the very 
 look of our psychological text-books. The philosopher 
 would be singularly cross-grained who did not welcome 
 this accumulation of material, and who did not congrat- 
 ulate himself that all this detail-work was taken out of 
 
 1 Mind, vol. xi. p. 489 (October 1886). 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 71 
 
 his hands by those who, from their training and apti- 
 tudes, can do it so much better. But he will reserve 
 to himself, as philosopher, the ultimate verdict on the 
 validity and sufficiency of the theory on which physi- 
 ological psychology proceeds. For it is the most in- 
 defeasible function of philosophy to act as critic of the 
 sciences. The philosopher has to examine the concep- 
 tions which each science accepts without criticism, and 
 on which it proceeds in working out its results ; he has 
 to point out the limits or conditions within which the 
 conception or theory holds true. In other words, he 
 has to restrain the ardour of the specialist who would 
 build upon his results a philosophic theory of the uni- 
 verse, by showing that the results which the investiga- 
 tion seems to establish are really involved in the 
 conceptions or standpoint from which it started, and 
 are therefore in no sense to be accepted as an indepen- 
 dent proof of the theory. I propose to show that this 
 is pre-eminently the case with the main thesis of the 
 " new " psychology at least in the hands of its most 
 advanced representatives. In abjuring the soul and 
 limiting itself to the concomitance of physical and 
 psychical events, it is really dominated by a very 
 definite theory which dictates the character of its 
 results beforehand. 
 
72 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 The result supposed to be proved, it had best be 
 stated at once, is the complete parallelism of the bodily 
 and the mental the denial, therefore, of any real 
 causality to consciousness, which remains the inert 
 accompaniment of a succession of physical changes 
 over which it has no control. In a word, the result is 
 the doctrine of human automatism. The doctrine of 
 conscious automatism has been ventilated a good deal 
 since 1870, or even earlier, by Mr Shadworth Hodgson, 
 Professor Huxley, Professor Clifford, and others ; but, 
 though no doubt definitely embraced by a few, it is 
 safe to say that by the most it has been rather talked 
 about, and toyed with, than fully conceived, much less 
 believed. The doctrine has, however, been recently 
 expressed with great clearness and force by Dr 
 Munsterberg, who is perhaps the ablest and most 
 stirring of the younger generation of physiological 
 psychologists, and one whose theories have attracted 
 considerable attention both in England and on the 
 Continent. He teaches in the most unequivocal 
 fashion that consciousness is simply, as he calls it, 
 a " Begleiterscheinung," a concomitant phenomenon, 
 or inactive accompaniment of a series of mechanical 
 changes. 
 
 Miinsterberg's work, which has appeared in a sue- 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 73 
 
 cession of pamphlets since the year 1888, takes largely 
 the form of a polemic against Wundt's doctrine of 
 Apperception. Wundt's ' Physiologische Psychologic/ 
 first published in 1874, still remains, in its later 
 editions, the most authoritative work on the subject ; 
 and the psychological laboratory established by him 
 in Leipzig in 1879, as the first of its kind, is still 
 probably the chief centre of experimental work. 
 But, although he may thus fairly be called the father 
 of the whole movement, inasmuch as he has organised 
 experimental psychology and induced the world to 
 accept it as a new science, Wundt has never lent his 
 countenance to the automatist conclusions which the 
 young bloods are now drawing from their experimental 
 labours. His doctrine of Apperception is far from 
 clear, and its precise meaning has given rise to con- 
 siderable controversy, but it seems to imply a function 
 of subjective selection or central initiative analogous 
 to what Dr Ward calls Attention ; and this is apparently 
 in harmony with the general philosophical position 
 which the author has elaborated in his recently pub- 
 lished ' System of Philosophy.' But, be that as it may, 
 it is at any rate certain that Wundt has been attacked 
 by the upholders of thorough-going mechanism as an 
 inconsistent and retrograde thinker for attributing 
 
74 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 activity to the Subject. So much by way of explana- 
 tion was necessary for the right understanding of 
 Mlinsterberg's work. His first pamphlet in this con- 
 troversy was ' Die Willenshandlung,' an analysis of the 
 act of will, published early in 1888. This was followed 
 in 1889-90 by three instalments of ' Contributions to 
 Experimental Psychology/ in which, after an eluci- 
 dation of principles, he endeavoured, by a series of 
 carefully devised experiments, to assimilate the apper- 
 ceptive process to the type of reflex action and thus 
 reduce the whole conscious action to a play of asso- 
 ciation. In 1891 he published an introduction to the 
 study of psychology, 1 in the course of which we get 
 a re-statement of his own position. The standpoint 
 does not vary throughout the different expositions, and 
 therefore, though illustrating freely from all, so far as 
 they throw light upon my points, I will draw chiefly 
 from the first and fullest statement that contained 
 in his very acute analysis of the act of will. 
 
 The ' Willenshandlung ' is divided into three parts, 
 the first treating of the voluntary act as " movement- 
 process " (B&wegungsvorgang) ; the second treating of it 
 
 1 ' Ueber Aufgaben und Methoden der Psychologic,' 1891. A fourth 
 instalment of the ' Contributions to Experimental Psychology ' has since 
 appeared. 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 75 
 
 as a phenomenon or appearance in consciousness (Be- 
 wusstseinserscheinuny) ; and the third, which is intended 
 to combine the results of the preceding parts, consider- 
 ing the act of will in its totality as " conscious move- 
 ment" (bewusste Bewegung). Mlinsterberg makes a 
 start from the well-known saying of Kant : " That my 
 will moves my arm is no whit more intelligible to me 
 than if any one were to tell me that it could hold back 
 the moon in its orbit." He accepts the problem as thus 
 indicated : How does my will move my arm ? The 
 first part of his treatise deals with the voluntary act 
 exclusively from the physiological side, and analyses it 
 into a series of movements. We may say analyses it 
 necessarily into a series of movements, for the succession 
 of bodily movements, whether visible movements of the 
 limbs or molecular movements of the nerves and brain, 
 are all of the process that could by any possibility be 
 seen ; and reduction to processes which are intelligible 
 in the sense of being pictorially presentable, is the pos- 
 tulate of explanation which he lays down. 1 There is 
 not much that is peculiar to Miinsterberg in this first 
 section ; the same has been vividly put by many 
 writers, 2 and in a sense this purely physical explana- 
 
 1 Zuriickfiihrung auf anschaulich verstanclliche Vorgange, p. 10. 
 
 2 Never better perhaps than by Lange, ' Geschichte des Materialismus,' 
 
76 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 tion is true from the physiological side, though I think 
 it is possible to show that/ even from the physiological 
 standpoint, it is not the whole truth. Meanwhile it is 
 
 vol. ii. p. 370. The passage has been often quoted, but may do duty 
 again: "A merchant is sitting comfortably in his easy -chair, and 
 would find it hard to say with what the greater part of his Ego is 
 occupied whether with smoking, sleeping, reading the newspaper, 
 or digestion. Suddenly the servant enters with a telegram which 
 runs 'Antwerp, Jonas and Company failed.' 'Tell James to put 
 the horses to.' The servant flies. The master has sprung to his feet, 
 completely sobered ; some dozen paces through the room, down to his 
 office, instructions given to the confidential clerk, letters dictated, 
 telegrams despatched, then into the carriage. The horses pant ; he 
 visits the bank, the exchange, his business friends. Before an hour 
 is over, he throws himself again into his easy -chair with the sigh, 
 ' Thank heaven, I have secured myself against the worst : now let 
 me consider further. ' A splendid occasion for a picture of the soul. 
 Terror, hope, feeling, calculation ruin and victory compressed into 
 one moment. And that all aroused by a single idea ! What does 
 not the human consciousness comprise ! 
 
 " Softly, let us look at our man as an object in the material world. He 
 springs up, why ? His muscles contract in the appropriate way. Why 
 so ? They were moved by an impulse of nervous force which discharged 
 the stored-up stock of elasticity. Whence this impulse? From the 
 centre of the nervous system. How did it arise there ? Through the 
 . . . soul. The curtain falls, the salto mortale is made from science 
 to mythology." On the contrary, Lange proceeds, " we must trace back 
 the physical series of causes through the brain to the first occasion of 
 the whole sudden movement without taking any account whatever of 
 the so-called consciousness. Or let us take it in the opposite direction. 
 What came into the man ? The picture of certain strokes with blue 
 pencil upon a white ground. Certain rays of light fell upon the retina, 
 rays which in themselves do not develop more vital force in their vibra- 
 tions than other light-rays. The vital force for the propagation of the 
 impact is ready in the nerve as that for muscular contraction in the 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 77 
 
 enough to note the purely mechanical point of view 
 and the explicit reduction of all physiological facts to 
 physico-chemical processes. Passing to the more char- 
 muscles : it can be discharged by the infinitely weak impact of the light- 
 wave only as the elastic forces of the powder- cask are set free by the 
 glimmering spark. But how comes it, then, that just these lines pro- 
 duce in this man just this effect ? Every answer which falls back here 
 upon ideas and the like is as good as no answer at all. I wish to see 
 the channels, the paths of the vital force, the extent, the mode of propa- 
 gation, and the sources of the physical and chemical processes from which 
 the nervous impulses proceed which call into activity, and that precisely 
 in the manner required for springing to one's feet, first the musculus 
 psoas, then the rectus femoris, the vasti, and all the co-operating com- 
 pany. I wish to see the far more important nervous streams which dis- 
 tribute themselves to the organs of speech, the muscles of breathing, 
 producing command, word, and call, and which, by way of sound-waves 
 and the auditory nerves of other individuals, renew tenfold the same 
 performance. I will, in a word, make a present for the time being of the 
 so-called psychical action to the pedants of the schools, and will have 
 the physical action which I see explained by physical causes." In like 
 manner, Miinsterberg concludes that, "from the physiological stand- 
 point there must correspond to every centrally initiated movement a 
 complex of centripetal stimuli ; and in these stimuli acting from with- 
 out, taken together with the existing structure and condition of the 
 nervous mechanism, must lie the absolutely sufficient causes for the 
 necessary occurrence of the definite act of will." Innumerable past 
 stimuli in the life of the individual and the race are stored up as poten- 
 tial energy in the nervous mechanism. Hence the sound-waves of a 
 spoken word (on which, as in the case put by Lange, action follows) may 
 represent "scarcely a millionth part of the joint-causes which bring 
 about that particular movement in the hearer." But the mechanical 
 determination by the joint-causes is as absolute here as in the case of 
 the simplest reflex (pp. 17-20). It is, indeed, the avowed "postulate " 
 of the whole investigation that the act of will shall be explained " als 
 Mechanik der Atome" (p. 9). 
 
78 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 acteristic psychological analysis, contained in the second 
 part of the treatise, we find- that Mlinsterberg is at some 
 pains at the outset to define the problem he sets himself. 
 It is purely a problem of empirical psychology, and does 
 not raise the metaphysical question as to the ultimate 
 ground of phenomena or as to how consciousness exists 
 at all. In that connection, Mlinsterberg seems to indi- 
 cate that he regards Will, conceived as Schopenhauer 
 conceived it, to be the most probable metaphysical 
 hypothesis. His present investigation, however, has to 
 do only with Will as a conscious fact ; it seeks " only to 
 establish the conscious phenomena which are peculiar 
 to the act of will" (p. 56). "Wherein consists the 
 content of our inner experience, empirically given to 
 each of us, which we designate will " (p. 60). Or, again, 
 " For our investigation, limited as it is to facts, the will 
 is a phenomenon like other phenomena ; and accordingly 
 we have only to ask in what it consists, what regularly 
 precedes it in consciousness, and what follows it " (p. 61). 
 This strictly empirical character of the inquiry has one 
 important consequence. 
 
 It is well known [he proceeds] that modern psychology 
 designates as sensations the ultimate irreducible .constitu- 
 ents into which the content of consciousness (Bewusstseinsin- 
 Tialt) may be analysed; ascribing to sensations a quality, 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 79 
 
 an intensity, and a tone of feeling which expresses their 
 relations to consciousness. But, if sensation is the element 
 of all psychical phenomena, and if, on the other hand, the 
 will, so far as we are concerned with it, is only a pheno- 
 menon of consciousness (Bewusstseinserscheinung), it follows 
 necessarily that the will too is only a complex of sensations. 1 
 
 Having thus marked out his goal beforehand, Miin- 
 sterberg proceeds to the actual analysis of the facts. 
 He analyses first what he calls the inward activity of 
 will i.e., the voluntary guidance of the train of thoughts 
 in the form of attention; and secondly, the outward 
 activity of will in bringing about muscular contractions. 
 Under the first head, then, the question is, " Wherein 
 consists the inner activity in the direction of the cur- 
 rent of our ideas ? or, more precisely, what must be 
 the nature of the feelings present in consciousness, 
 if they are to produce in us the feeling of inward 
 freedom, of active will ? " This more precise way of 
 putting the question, it will be observed, is not without 
 significance for the nature of the answer which it is to 
 elicit. Let us get to the details, however. Four cases 
 of the inward directive activity of will are analysed by 
 
 1 Page 62. The italics are Miinsterberg's own. It need hardly be 
 pointed out that this astonishing invocation of "modern psychology" 
 begs everything which is afterwards put forward as proved. Wundt 
 criticises the assumption. ' Philosophische Studien,' vol. vi. p. 382 et 
 seq. We shall return to it in discussing the theory as a whole. 
 
80 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 Miinsterberg : (a) the case of voluntary recollection or 
 trying to remember ; (b) the exercise of choice between 
 different ideas presented, the concentration of attention 
 upon one of these and its retention in the field of con- 
 sciousness to the exclusion of the others ; (c) the case 
 of logical thinking or reasoning, in which we pass along 
 a definite and apparently self-directed path from prem- 
 isses to conclusion; and (d) the case of simple atten- 
 tion to an idea or percept which presents itself in con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 The analysis is most ingenious in the case of 
 voluntary recollection and logical thinking. How is 
 voluntary recollection distinguished from involuntary 
 reminiscence ? If a fact a has been connected in 
 experience with &, and the appearance of b calls up 
 in consciousness the idea of a, I do not attribute to 
 myself any voluntary action in the matter; I take 
 it as an instance of the ordinary play of association. 
 
 On the other hand, when I cannot remember a, when I seek 
 it in my memory, recall to myself the place where I saw it, 
 the connection in which I heard it, and when at last a actu- 
 ally emerges in consciousness, then it was plainly my will (we 
 say) which dragged to light the object of my search (p. 64). 
 
 How does the case stand, however, when more closely 
 analysed ? 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 81 
 
 If I try to remember a, if I seek it in my memory, a is 
 of course* not itself present in consciousness, but what I do 
 perceive does unquestionably correspond in content with a. 
 So long as I have not found a, I feel, it is true, only an x, 
 but I feel this a? in a series of relations, such that x can be 
 only a and nothing else. I try to remember a word. In 
 doing so, I see in memory the passage where I read the 
 word, I remember the moment at which I heard it, I know 
 exactly, too, the meaning of the word ; but the word itself 
 is not present to me. At last it rises in consciousness. 
 Can it be denied that that word was already given in its 
 full content (vollinlialtlicli gegeben) in the series of ideational 
 relations which I remembered 1 ? No doubt it was repre- 
 sented in consciousness by entirely different qualities; it 
 was given in its relations to other things, whereas it is 
 afterwards distinguished by its own characteristics. But 
 the two states of consciousness coincided with one another 
 as to their inner meaning (p. 67). 
 
 The only peculiarity, accordingly, which Mtinsterberg 
 is prepared to admit in this process as contrasted with 
 a case of involuntary association is that " the clear con- 
 sciousness of the idea a was preceded by another state 
 of consciousness which, in respect of its content, al- 
 ready contained the idea ." He italicises this as the 
 standing mark of voluntary control of our ideas. 
 Eeasoning is distinguished, he argues, by the same 
 characteristic. The premisses already contain the con- 
 clusion, or, to put it more pointedly, the whole process 
 of thought is determined from the outset by the idea 
 
 F 
 
82 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 of the end to be reached. In the second case mentioned 
 above, where several ideas are presented, and we pur- 
 posely retain one of them, a, the same thing manifestly 
 holds. "Here," says Miinsterberg, "there is no need 
 to prove that this a was in consciousness beforehand. 
 The reasons why just a and not b remained in con- 
 sciousness are admittedly only the occasions or motives 
 of the voluntary act ; they are left therefore unnoticed 
 here, the remaining behind is itself the achievement 
 of the will (das Zurilckbleiben sellst ist die Willens- 
 leistung)" The same line of argument explains his 
 fourth case, the case of simple attention to any idea 
 presented in consciousness. " In the first moment in 
 which a sensation emerges in us, the perception appears 
 involuntary, because the a was till then preceded by a 
 not-a ; in the second moment, however, it appears to us 
 as intentionally retained, just because we were already 
 conscious of it in the preceding first moment." 
 
 The solemnity with which this is propounded as a 
 serious account of the facts in question would be too 
 impudent if it stood alone; but Miinsterberg hastens 
 to supplement it by reference to the bodily sensations 
 which usually accompany acts like attention and selec- 
 tion or efforts of thought and memory. He cites the 
 admitted fact that there are feelings of innervation in 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 83 
 
 the sense-organ, when ideas of that particular sense 
 are present in consciousness for any length of time. 
 Whenever there is a strain of attention, other sensa- 
 tions are usually present, such, for example, as feelings 
 of tension in the skin of the head and the knitting 
 of the brow in trying to remember or in thoughtful 
 consideration. Nor are such feelings confined to the 
 head ; they may be traced all over the trunk, and even 
 in the extremities. Miinsterberg does not hold, how- 
 ever, that such feelings of innervation necessarily 
 accompany all voluntary activity. In reasonings or 
 calculations that proceed without any particular diffi- 
 culty, for example, they are not observable ; but just 
 in these processes, he hastens to add, we are not 
 specially conscious of our voluntary activity. It is 
 only in subsequent reflection that we class them as 
 acts of will, and in so doing, we fall back upon the 
 criterion already signalised namely, the pre-existence 
 of the idea in the preceding moment of consciousness. 
 He concludes the first part of his psychological in- 
 vestigation thus : 
 
 The inner will has thus shown itself on analysis to be a 
 very complicated group of ideas (ein sehr mannigfaltiges 
 Vorstellungsgebilde), composed of certain definite series of 
 ideas plus feelings of innervation. Nothing unknown, 
 
84 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 nothing which stands over against the ideas as something 
 heterogeneous, has been found, as we saw, in the first group 
 of ideas or sensations ; it only remains, therefore, to ask 
 whether any mysterious element is concealed in these 
 innervation processes. Should these also be found to be 
 a mere complex of sensations, the inner will would then be 
 reduced to a series of sensations, each one of which is of 
 the same order as blue, hard, sweet, or warm (p. 73). 
 
 The consideration of the feelings of innervation cannot, 
 however, be conveniently separated from the external 
 action of the will upon the body, and so we pass to the 
 second head of this psychological investigation. The 
 stock example will suffice I lift an object with my 
 hand. 
 
 But the result of this experiment is usually a very poor 
 one : the feeling of will which I seek (die gesuchte Willens- 
 empfindung) I cannot discover in myself. I perceive just 
 a slight feeling of tension in the head. For the rest, I 
 am only conscious that I actually execute the movement 
 viz., bending the joints of the elbow and hand. I feel 
 no special impulse to the movement, lying in time between 
 the theoretical intention and the practical execution of it. 
 It is quite different, however [he proceeds], when I do not 
 simply have the intention of lifting an object, and carry this 
 out, but slowly analyse the movement for myself, and direct 
 my attention to the individual parts of the bendings. Now 
 I really perceive more than the actually executed move- 
 ments ; the bending in the elbow is now preceded by the 
 feeling of a peculiar impulse. It is not a general feeling 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 85 
 
 of exertion, but a quite specific impulse, which is different 
 for every movement, and plainly stands in relation to the 
 special performance intended. 
 
 What, then, has analysis to say of these feelings of 
 innervation which immediately precede the movement, 
 and seem to be its cause ? Miinsterberg turns round 
 triumphantly to apply his former criterion. What we 
 call impulse in the case of muscular contraction is 
 simply the circumstance that the idea of the effect to 
 be produced precedes the effect as actually produced. 
 The feeling of innervation is just the memory-idea of 
 the movement anticipating the movement itself. 
 
 There has been much discussion as to the precise 
 nature of the so-called feelings of innervation ; but, 
 as Wundt, who had formerly held an opposite theory, 
 has explicitly accepted this view of them as the one 
 most consonant with the present state of our knowledge 
 of the subject, there is no need to reproduce here the 
 arguments which go to establish the position. It 
 commends itself by its naturalness and simplicity. 
 When we are on the point, say, of making a stroke 
 at a ball, we have a premonitory feeling of the energy 
 which we are about to expend ; it seems to flow forth 
 toward the limb which we are about to use. One 
 theory, formerly a good deal in evidence, explained 
 
86 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 this feeling as due to an immediate consciousness of 
 outgoing energy ; but this physiological difficulties in 
 the way of such a conception are great. It is not 
 necessary here to decide whether an immediate con- 
 sciousness of effort is or is not possible; but, in any 
 case, this theory leaves unexplained the specific char- 
 acter of the feeling in question. For it is to be ob- 
 served that it is a premonitory feeling of the exertion 
 of that limb, not merely a general consciousness of 
 virtue going out from us. This is satisfactorily ex- 
 plained by supposing, as Miinsterberg does, that it 
 is due to the reproduction in memory of previous 
 movements of the same nature. 
 
 Plainly, however, Miinsterberg's theory of the feelings 
 of innervation may be accepted, without admitting that 
 this sequence of memory-image and actual perception 
 constitutes, as he contends, the differentia and suffi- 
 cient explanation of the voluntary act. But it will 
 be observed how ingeniously Miinsterberg has reduced 
 all cases of voluntary action internal and external 
 to examples of the same phenomenon, namely, to cases 
 of an idea or perception A preceded by a the same 
 idea in a different form. " The feeling of innervation," 
 as he puts it, "is an anticipated idea of the actual 
 movement" (p. 88). Exactly the same analysis 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 87 
 
 applies to those voluntary actions which do not end 
 in a muscular contraction but aim at the production 
 of some effect in the external world. 
 
 When I move my finger, not in order to practise the differ- 
 ent movements, but to write something down; when I 
 contract the muscles of my organs of speech, in order to 
 make a communication to somebody; when I bend my 
 arm in order to greet a passer-by, in all these cases I 
 perceive in the first stadium the more or less distinct, 
 more or less clearly represented, idea of the end ; and in 
 the second stadium I have a sensation of (ich empfinde) the 
 end as attained. That alone is the type of the external 
 act of will (p. 89). 
 
 However complicated the action is, extending possibly 
 over a longer period of time (a journey, the erection of 
 a building), it may always be resolved into the ultimate 
 end in view and the subordinate actions which have to 
 be performed in order to attain that end. In the pro- 
 cess of execution, the ultimate end falls temporarily 
 into the background, and the subordinate actions or 
 means become, each in turn, in a definite series, the 
 proximate end before the mind. And, step by step, the 
 same analysis holds good : the end is first present as 
 idea, then as a perception of accomplished fact. Mtin- 
 sterberg goes on courageously to apply his analysis 
 to the usually received distinction between desire and 
 
88 
 
 will. " In order that the desire of an attainable object 
 pass into the corresponding act of will, neither more 
 nor less requires to be added than just the carrying 
 out of the desire, so that the idea of the end may l>e com- 
 pleted ~by the perception of its attainment!' " The liveli- 
 est feeling of practical freedom cannot alter the fact 
 that the will itself is nothing more than the perception 
 (frequently accompanied by associated sensations of 
 tension in the muscles of the head) of an effect at- 
 tained by the movement of our own body, along with 
 an antecedent idea of the same effect drawn from 
 imagination i.e., in the last resort from memory ; 
 this anticipated idea being given as feeling of inner- 
 vation, when the effect is itself a bodily movement, 
 " A theory of the soul does justice, therefore, to the whole 
 field of psychical phenomena, if it assumes, as the only 
 function of the soul, sensation characterised by quality, 
 intensity, and tone of feeling ; a definite group of sensa- 
 tions we call will" (p. 96). * 
 
 This is the conclusion of the second part of the 
 investigation. The first, or purely physiological, part, 
 reduced the phenomenon to a series of reflex move- 
 ments ; the second, or purely psychological, part, has 
 reduced it to a series of sensations. The third, or 
 
 1 The italics are Miinsterberg's. 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 89 
 
 psycho-physical, parfc, investigates the relation of these 
 two series to one another. We cannot believe that 
 the two series are quite independent, and if we are 
 driven to suppose that the one is conditioned by the 
 other, there can be little hesitation in settling which 
 is the conditioning factor. The psychical series is dis- 
 continuous, constantly interrupted by perceptions which 
 are shot inexplicably into its midst, without the possi- 
 bility of causal explanation from the foregoing train 
 of ideas ; there are many bodily functions which, so 
 far as we know, are not represented in consciousness. 
 These and similar considerations make the psychic 
 series unfit to be the explaining factor, and accordingly 
 Miinsterberg reaches the conclusion that "the series 
 of conscious phenomena is conditioned by the regular 
 course of material occurrence." This leads to the 
 inquiry, What are the processes in the sensory-motor 
 apparatus which correspond, when inwardly contem- 
 plated, to the sensational complex called a volition? 
 Mtinsterberg's results are reached in the course of 
 an interesting, and in some respects brilliant, discussion 
 as to the localisation of brain-function. It is beyond 
 our interest to follow him in his detailed criticism of 
 different theories. His own positions are mainly two : 
 (1) that there are no specifically motor centres; and 
 
90 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 (2) that perception and memory are connected with 
 the same material substratum; or, to put it otherwise, 
 that ideas of sensation and the corresponding ideas 
 of memory are connected, not with different parts of 
 the brain, but with the same set of material processes 
 differently excited. There is much to be said for these 
 conclusions. Whether the will is analysable into sen- 
 sations and ideas or not, it is at least inseparable from 
 them, and therefore we may reasonably conclude that 
 the centres concerned in voluntary movement cannot 
 be separated physiologically from the sensory regions 
 of the brain. Similarly, it may be argued that in per- 
 ception and memory the same brain- tracts are excited, 
 the liveliness and strength of the impression being 
 greater when its stimulus proceeds from its peri- 
 pheral end-organs than when it is conducted by fibres 
 of association from other parts of the cortex. 
 
 On the physiological truth of these hypotheses I do 
 not feel competent to decide, nor is it necessary for 
 my purpose to do so. It is with Miinsterberg's appli- 
 cation of them that we are concerned. " Every ganglion 
 of the cerebral cortex," he resumes, " is thus end-organ 
 of a centripetal path but every ganglion is also the 
 initial organ of a motor path. Motor centres do not 
 exist, therefore, or, more properly, every centre is sen- 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 91 
 
 sory and motor at once ; every motor impulse has its 
 source in a sensory stimulus, and every sensory stimu- 
 lation presses on into a motor path" (pp. 141, 142). 
 What happens in consciousness, then, when a response 
 to stimulus takes place ? At first, nothing precedes 
 the movement except the sensation or perception which 
 causes its discharge. The movement, in other words, 
 " goes off," in a purely reflex way, through the force of 
 the incoming stimulus. But as soon as the movement 
 actually takes place, consciousness has something new 
 before it namely, the feeling of movement produced 
 in the contracted muscle. This feeling of movement 
 follows, therefore, immediately upon the perception 
 of the stimulus which discharged the movement; and 
 the sensory excitation of the central ganglion which 
 corresponds to this feeling of movement becomes 
 connected accordingly by an association - path with 
 the first excitation, which gave the impulse to the 
 movement. 
 
 If, now, this process is several times repeated, the con- 
 nection becomes so close that the first excitation inevitably 
 calls forth the second, directly by the path of association, 
 before it has time to be produced by the actual contraction 
 of the muscle. Psychologically expressed, that is as much 
 as to say, the perception of the stimulus must call forth by 
 association the memory-idea of the corresponding sensation 
 
92 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 of movement, before that sensation itself is produced by the 
 actual execution of the movement. The former process takes 
 place by the shorter way of the association-paths in the 
 hemisphere ; the latter requires first to be conducted to the 
 muscle, the inertia of the muscle has to be overcome, the 
 contraction to be actually produced, the sensory nerve to be 
 affected, and the sensory stimulus conducted back to the cor- 
 tex. All this occupies an appreciable time, and the sensory 
 stimulus arrives accordingly considerably later. And now 
 we see clearly why our feeling of innervation precedes the 
 perception of the actual movement. In it, as the constant 
 signal of movement, a signal that is also the actual counter- 
 part of the movement, we involuntarily believe that we see 
 the movement's cause. This is the type of voluntary action, 
 from which all other forms may be developed (p. 145). 
 
 Take, for example, an act of choice. Here we have, 
 let us say, two stimuli, both alike in strength, but 
 incapable of combination in a common reaction. At 
 first no motor reaction can result, but each stimulated 
 ganglion rouses the centres which are connected with 
 it by association-paths ; and now it is not an opposition 
 of stimulus against stimulus, but on both sides there 
 collect the associations won by former experiences. 
 In the first place, naturally, there is the associated 
 idea of the movement corresponding to the stimulus. 
 If this is stronger upon the one side than upon the 
 other, or if it rouses more pleasurable feelings upon the 
 one side than upon the other, then the corresponding 
 movement will result. This is the type of any act 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 93 
 
 of choice ; but there may be indefinite complication, 
 both in the nature of the stimulus and in the mass 
 of associations brought to bear upon it. Still, however 
 great the complication may be, the sensory stimuli 
 with their associated ideas constitute the sufficient 
 and only verifiable cause of the resultant movement ; 
 or, as he puts it in another place, "the act of will 
 is the motor discharge of sensory excitation, whether 
 it be the sensation of a single stimulus or a world of 
 internally and externally combined ideas. As soon 
 as the sensory excitation-complex, the conscious con- 
 tent of ideas, is there, the movement is necessarily 
 given too " (p. 156). And thus the only psychical 
 criterion of the will remains what it was found to be 
 at the end of the psychological section namely, that 
 before the perception of the actual result, the idea of 
 the result is present in consciousness. 
 
 We have the theory now pretty fully before us, and, 
 as has been indicated, there is much in the physiological 
 analysis that is freshly put and that claims consider- 
 ation. It seems important to remember, alike in 
 physiology and psychology, that the sensory centre 
 in the brain, the central ending of the sensory nerve, 
 does not constitute a terminus, and, consequently, that 
 there is no such thing as passive sensation, sensation 
 
94 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 which is simply received without producing further 
 effects. All consciousness is impulsive. If the 
 stimulus received does not find an immediate vent in 
 movement, it irradiates other brain-tracts in the form 
 of association. The phenomena of imitation, sugges- 
 tion, and many other considerations, reinforce this 
 conception of the dynamic quality which all sensations 
 and ideas possess. Miinsterberg, however, has skil- 
 fully woven these truths into the texture of a precon- 
 ceived theory. In the very act of emphasising move- 
 ment and the dynamic aspect of ideas, he eliminates 
 altogether the notion of action or activity. Ideas 
 " go off " or explode, as it were, in movement of their 
 own accord. There is first the idea of the movement, 
 as in contemplation ; and secondly, the perception of 
 the movement, as executed. In other words, there is a 
 series of happenings somehow passing before us, but no 
 real activity, no real actor in the whole affair. In all 
 so-called action, we only seem to act ; a sequence of 
 ideas exhausts the phenomena of will. The conscious 
 subject is reduced to an inactive spectator of these 
 psychological happenings, which are themselves the 
 inert accompaniments of certain transformations of 
 matter and energy. There results, in fact, as indicated 
 at the outset, the doctrine of conscious automatism in 
 the most unqualified sense of the words. 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 95 
 
 Xow, I do not hesitate to say that this conclusion 
 is in the strictest sense incredible ; no amount of so- 
 called " evidence " in its favour would avail to make 
 it even momentarily believable. But as the theory 
 airs itself with a great deal of confidence, and troubles 
 a good many minds, I will endeavour to show that 
 such results are not reached by any cruel "logic of 
 facts," but are all involved in a few erroneous psycho- 
 logical presuppositions, perhaps I ought to say one 
 fundamental prejudice, by which the analysis is vitiated 
 from the outset. This prejudice may be called Pheno- 
 menalism, or perhaps best Presentationism ; Wundt 
 calls it in one place Intellectualism. It is the fore- 
 gone conclusion that the conscious life is analysable 
 without remainder into ideas or presentations. Evi- 
 dently, if phenomena or objects of consciousness are 
 alone to be accepted as facts, then all real activity on 
 the part of the subject is necessarily eliminated; the 
 subject remains only nominally, as a static impersonal 
 condition of the series of events. If we insist upon 
 phenomenalising the act of will, doubtless all the 
 phenomena in the case are the ideas that precede and 
 the perceptions that follow, with perhaps some feelings 
 of tension in the head thrown in. But does it not 
 require some effrontery to offer us these antecedent, 
 concomitant, and sequent ideas as an account of the 
 
96 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 volition itself. To attempt to analyse a volition into 
 ideas is about as hopeful as trying to reduce miles and 
 furlongs to pounds avoirdupois ; there is no common 
 denominator. In the course of such analysis, the real 
 fact of volition is necessarily dropped ; it is overlaid 
 by the mass of antecedents, concomitants, and sequents 
 which acute introspection enables us to discover. But, 
 as M. Fouillee says, the physiological psychologists 
 might fill volumes with their analysis of the sensations 
 which accompany the voluntary act, without touching 
 the essence of the act itself. 1 
 
 The result of analysis infected with this phenomenal- 
 istic prejudice is necessarily a Panphenomenalism essen- 
 tially similar to that of Hume. There is the same 
 elimination of all real causality : sequent ideas are all. 
 And if, in deference to a quasi -Kantian theory of 
 Knowledge, the Self or subject is apparently retained, 
 this seeming difference from Hume is only skin-deep. 
 For, as Miinsterberg tells us twice over, " the subject 
 in question is entirely impersonal ; " 2 it is the static 
 or logical condition of consciousness in general. The 
 individual self is reduced, as with Hume, to groups 
 and sequences of ideas ; it is an object in consciousness 
 
 1 Revue philosophique, vol. xxxii. p. 238. 
 
 2 Aufgabe cler Psychologie, pp. 99 and 130. 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 97 
 
 an object, presumably, for this impersonal spectator- 
 subject. 
 
 I pointed out in passing how entirely Miinster- 
 berg's psychology was dominated by this phenomenal- 
 istic point of view. It appears, incidentally, in the 
 very expressions he uses, as a reference to the passages 
 already quoted abundantly shows. In his equation of 
 phenomenon with fact, in the constantly repeated use 
 of the term Inhalt or content, it is presupposed that 
 objects or presentations in consciousness are the only 
 elements that will be allowed to stand as real. At 
 times, Mlinsterberg speaks, even more naively, of " the 
 sensation of will," of which he is in quest. This recalls, 
 even verbally, Hume's famous expedition into his own 
 interior, in order to discover the perception of the Self. 
 Show me the impression from which the idea is derived, 
 says Hume, and because no particular impression can 
 be found, the idea is pronounced a fiction ; the Self is 
 resolved into a bundle of perceptions. Show me the 
 sensation to which the word " will " corresponds, says 
 Miinsterberg, and finding a number of accompanying 
 sensations, he mistakes these for the act of will itself, 
 and concludes roundly, as we saw before, that " the 
 will is only a complex of sensations." But this 
 conclusion depends, on Mlinsterberg's own showing, 
 
98 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 upon two all -important " ifs." If sensation is the 
 sole element of all psychical phenomena, and if the 
 will is only a phenomenon in consciousness, then, 
 and only then, does it follow necessarily that the 
 will is resolvable into a complex of sensations. In 
 support of the first " if," Miinsterberg, as we have 
 seen, has nothing to offer but a vague reference to 
 " modern psychology." Wundt, in criticising his specu- 
 lation, 1 justly censures this attempt to clothe an as- 
 sumption with the air of an accepted truth, and to 
 cover it with the aegis of " modern psychology." 
 Wundt's own phraseology has wavered in his different 
 editions, and its looseness may be partly responsible, 
 as Dr Ward suggests, 2 for the extreme conclusions of 
 his followers. Perhaps in view of these conclusions, 
 he now explicitly disavows the resolution of all con- 
 sciousness, including feeling and will, into sensational 
 elements. Sensations, he holds, are the ultimate ele- 
 ments of " those conscious contents which we refer to 
 external objects " that is to say, of our perceptions or 
 presentations. Whether this revised statement is un- 
 exceptionable or not, such a position is at least in- 
 telligible ; but it contains no warrant for identifying 
 
 1 Philosophische Studien, vol. vi. p. 382 et seq. 
 ' 2 In an article in ' Mind,' January 1893. 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 99 
 
 feeling and will with any presentation or combination 
 of such. 
 
 There is, in fact, no distinction more fundamental 
 to a sound psychology than that between the feeling- 
 directed activity, which, under all its forms, from the 
 simplest act of attention and response to stimulus, may 
 be summarised as Will, and the content or matter with 
 which that activity deals. Doubtless the two cannot 
 be separated ; each is an abstraction without the other. 
 But one thing at least is certain, that to resolve the 
 fact of conscious experience into a sequence of presen- 
 tations or conscious phenomena is to omit the vital 
 characteristic of all consciousness. It is to offer us 
 a machinery without any motor force; and when we 
 mildly point out the omission, we are met by the 
 ready but somewhat brazen retort, that the machinery 
 is self-acting. Wundt comments acutely on the way in 
 which this " intellectualistic " psychology substantialises 
 ideas or presentations, treats them as if they were 
 things or entities that could independently exist and 
 interact. Even when it is admitted that presenta- 
 tions have an existence only in and for consciousness, 
 so that the unity of consciousness is acknowledged to 
 be their necessary complement or point of reference, 
 the ideas still seem to stand over against the conscious- 
 
100 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 ness to which they are referred, and to carry on their 
 evolutions independently. Consciousness, according to 
 this way of thinking, becomes a mere form inclusive 
 of a certain matter, but without influence upon it: it 
 is regarded as purely speculative or contemplative ; an 
 eye (shall we say ?) contemplating the movement, or, 
 to be strict and to avoid metaphor, merely an ideal 
 point of unity. Metaphor or no metaphor, the result 
 of this way of looking at things is obvious. The whole 
 weight is thrown upon the objects the ideas or pheno- 
 mena, thus quasi -independently conceived and the 
 recognition of the subject becomes an empty acknow- 
 ledgment. It is entirely denuded of activity, all action 
 being refunded into the play of presentations. 1 
 
 1 Dr Ward has very aptly called attention ('Mind,' xii. 50) to a current 
 form of words which favours this habit of thought viz., the way we 
 have of speaking of " conscious states " in abstraction from the activity 
 of the conscious subject whose states they are. We get into the habit 
 of thinking of the " states " " phenomena " is another word as if they 
 existed separately, as if they interacted and established relations be- 
 tween themselves, evolving in course of time the idea of the subject. 
 But, in strictness, we have no right to speak of a state as conscious ; 
 in so doing we are making an entity of it, and conferring upon an 
 abstraction attributes which it can possess only as an element in the 
 activity of a unitary conscious being. Dr Ward declaims with justi- 
 fiable warmth against the confusion in which our psychological nomen- 
 clature is involved. Even the favourite term " states of consciousness," 
 of which " conscious states " may be supposed an abbreviation, is open to 
 a similar objection. Consciousness, as the form of the word proclaims, is 
 
101 
 
 For this assumption, however, there is an entire ab- 
 sence of warrant. A psychology which aims at keeping 
 in touch with fact must strenuously resist this subtle 
 tendency to reduce everything to knowledge. Experi- 
 ence is, in this reference, a wider term than knowledge ; 
 and feeling and will are inexpugnable and irreducible 
 features of experience. Knowledge, feeling, and will 
 are three aspects of experience inseparable aspects, it 
 may be freely admitted but none of them can be ex- 
 pressed in terms of the others ; no one of them can be 
 reduced to simpler elements, no one of them can, 
 properly speaking, be defined or explained otherwise 
 than by pointing to the living experience in which it 
 is exemplified. Miinsterberg's position here is rather 
 inconsistent ; he denies will as more than a complex of 
 sensations, but he contrives to smuggle in feeling by 
 calling it an attribute which every idea possesses. He 
 follows Wundt in saying that every sensation, in addi- 
 
 an abstraction ; it is the quality or characteristic of a subject or con- 
 scious being. States are states of the conscious being, then, not states 
 of consciousness. This is not a mere piece of verbal purism. A great 
 deal of vague thinking thinking that has not faced an inevitable 
 issue and made up its mind clearly finds a convenient refuge under 
 the quasi-abstract term consciousness. People make no scruple about 
 admitting or postulating a transcendental unity, a unity of conscious- 
 ness, who would think their reputation for modernity at stake if they 
 were taxed with upholding a soul or subject as a real being. 
 
102 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 tion to its intensity and its quality (as touch or taste, 
 red or blue, and so forth), also possesses a tone of feel- 
 ing, or, as Professor Bain puts it, an emotional side; 
 and to this third aspect of sensation, curiously enough, 
 he allows that there is no material counterpart. 1 
 
 This statement is curious, not in itself, of course, but 
 as coming from Miinsterberg. There can be no ma- 
 terial counterpart, in Mtinsterberg's sense, just because 
 feeling is not itself an object, phenomenon, presentation, 
 or stimulus, but the attitude of the subject towards a 
 given stimulus the relation of the stimulus to the life 
 of the individual as a whole. This subjective apprecia- 
 tion cannot, in the nature of the case, be represented in 
 objective terms. Feeling, as Dr Ward says after Ham- 
 ilton, is something subjectively subjective. If we are 
 to be strict, we do not know feeling ; for knowledge is 
 of objects, of phenomena, and feeling cannot be pheno- 
 menalised. We experience feeling, and we know about 
 it by its results ; but, using the term in this sense, we 
 know only the causes, accompaniments, and consequents 
 of feeling. It may be said that we remember our feel- 
 ings and emotions, and that we must know them at the 
 time, in order to remember. But we remember feeling 
 only in the sense that, when the ideas which caused or 
 
 1 Willenshandlung, p. 137. 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 103 
 
 accompanied it are recalled, they are recalled with the 
 same tone of feeling ; in other words, we re-experience 
 in a fainter degree the feeling which we then felt. It 
 is this characteristic of feeling that explains its frequent 
 neglect by psychologists. For feeling cannot be recalled 
 or considered, except in connection with its objective 
 causes or accompaniments : in recording the facts, 
 therefore, the psychologist is apt to forget the sub- 
 jective tinge of the ideas or presentations, and to 
 report upon them in an impersonal way, as, so to 
 speak, ideas-in-themselves. But it was only in virtue 
 of what I have called the subjective tinge that the 
 ideas were his ideas at all, and had any relation to his 
 life. As they presented themselves, they were felt to 
 be either a furtherance or a hindrance to the vitality of 
 the subject, to be either relevant to the dominant in- 
 terests of the individual or discordant. Interest and 
 desire are the result in the one case, indifference or 
 repulsion in the other. And it can hardly be too 
 strongly emphasised that the dynamic efficacy of ideas 
 is entirely excited through the feeling subject. Ideas 
 have hands and feet, as Hegel finely said, and how 
 often are we told that ideas move the world. It is 
 true, or at least we hope so. But every one must ac- 
 knowledge that to speak in that way is to use a vivid 
 
104 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 metaphorical shorthand. Ideas entertained tend to pass 
 into action; a plan conceived and cherished tends to 
 execute itself; but, as Fichte long ago said, the real 
 force is not in the ideas, but in the will of the person 
 who adopts them as his. So, when psychologists like 
 Miinsterberg attribute the whole march of the conscious 
 life to the dynamic influence of idea upon idea, it is 
 well to remember again that this is at best a conven- 
 ient shorthand. Ideas in themselves are pale and in- 
 effective as the shades of Homeric mythology ; they are 
 dynamic only as they pass through the needle's eye of 
 the subject. It is the subject which acts upon its 
 appreciation of the stimulus, and the emotional atti- 
 tude of welcome or repulse is what is meant by feeling. 
 In its earliest and simplest forms, such an emotional 
 wave passes immediately into the appropriate motor 
 response. The food is clutched or somehow absorbed, 
 the disagreeable intrusion is evaded, edged away from, 
 as far as the powers of the being admits of. Feeling, 
 thus conceived, and allied thus closely with action, 
 forms what may be called the driving-power in all life. 
 Here we strike upon the roots of individuation, and 
 when we say that, is it going too far to add, upon the 
 fundamental characteristic of real existence ? In this 
 connection I am confident that, whether we look at the 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 105 
 
 matter psychologically or physiologically, we are shut 
 up to the conclusion that all action of living beings was 
 originally feeling-prompted, and that what we call re- 
 flex action is everywhere a secondary product, a de- 
 graded form of purposive action. We know that many 
 actions at first performed voluntarily, actions learned 
 with effort by repeated forth-puttings of concentrated 
 attention, become by degrees habitual, and are performed 
 automatically without attention i.e., without any need 
 for express volition to come into play at all. Great 
 part of the detail of our daily life is handed over to 
 mechanism in this way, and psychologists and physiolo- 
 gists have not been slow to emphasise the beneficent 
 operation of this fact. It is, indeed, the very condition 
 of progress, that aptitudes once acquired should estab- 
 lish themselves as definite tendencies within our mental 
 and physical organism definite co-ordinations of stim- 
 ulus and response which do their work without our 
 active superintendence. The powers of intelligence and 
 will the powers of personality, if I may so speak 
 are thus set free for new tasks and further achieve- 
 ments, till these in turn are, as it were, built into the 
 structure of the Self. Only thus is the spirit fitted to 
 advance upon its endless path. But mechanism is 
 thus, in every sense, posterior to intelligence and 
 
106 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 will; it is a means created and used by will. In a 
 strict sense, will creates the reflex mechanism to which 
 it afterwards deputes its functions. 
 
 Mechanism, in fact, here as everywhere, is a means, 
 something secondary ; it is impossible to conceive it as 
 something primary, existing on its own account, much 
 less as carrying in it the explanation of the higher con- 
 scious and voluntary processes. Intelligent volition is 
 not reflex action grown complicated, and so become 
 conscious of itself. That is precisely to invert the 
 true relation an inversion that would be ludicrous, 
 if it were not disastrous. Eeflex action is purposive 
 action grown unconscious or sub-conscious, according 
 to the economy of nature, because consciousness is 
 no longer necessary to its proper performance. It 
 is not to be supposed, of course, that this takes 
 place within the life-history of the individual human 
 being, or of any highly developed organism. In such 
 an organism, many reflex paths, many co-ordinations 
 of stimulus and response, are doubtless fixed ; they 
 have been established in the long process of race- 
 evolution, and in virtue of their establishment that 
 evolution has proceeded. But follow the process as 
 far back as we may, all analogy points to the same 
 conclusion namely, that feeling - prompted action, 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 107 
 
 i.e., action which is germinally purposive, germin- 
 ally voluntary, is the Trporepov <f>vo-i, the first in the 
 order of nature. In the lowest organisms, the reaction 
 upon stimulus may be so simple and uniform as to 
 wear to an observer the appearance of a mere mechan- 
 ical reflex. But this is, if I may so speak, to make the 
 creature a mere outside ; it forgets, as this mechanical 
 psychology is constantly forgetting, that wherever there 
 is life, there is unity. Every organism is a unity, and 
 resumes itself as a unity. Feeling is the inward ex- 
 pression of this unity ; and, to my mind, it is not doubt- 
 ful that the movement of attraction or repulsion, which, 
 to us and from the outside, may seem a simple reflex, is 
 to be interpreted rather as the total response of a ger- 
 minal consciousness, as the expression of the being's 
 likes and dislikes. 
 
 Physiology, so long as it remains pure physiology, is 
 perhaps debarred from taking account of feeling or 
 consciousness as such. The psychical in all its forms 
 lies outside the scope of physiological methods. But 
 the self - preservative, recuperative, self-adaptive ten- 
 dencies of organisms and organic tissue are the 
 physiological way of expressing the same fact. Such 
 a mode of expression is imperfect and mythological, 
 perhaps, and one can understand that many physi- 
 
108 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 ologists, supposing it to be put forward as an ex- 
 planation of the facts, grow impatient and fall back 
 upon a purely mechanical theory of vital function. 
 But these expressions are in no sense explanations, as 
 science uses that term ; they are rather finger-posts to 
 the unexplained; they merely name or indicate the 
 fundamental characteristic of life as such, which 
 differentiates it from mechanism or what seems to 
 us to be mechanism. Life is the presupposition of 
 physiology, the fact on which its existence is based, 
 a fact which it has simply to accept, as all the other 
 sciences have to accept their own presuppositions. Its 
 explanations move within the fact of life, and cannot 
 be used to explain that fact itself, or, in other words, 
 to explain it away. Yet that is, in substance, what a 
 purely mechanical physiology tries to do. 
 
 Physiology, for the last fifty years, has been dominated 
 by a reaction against what is called vitalism. The 
 older investigators were in the habit of calling in 
 " vital force " as a deus ex machina to account for any 
 phenomena which baffled their powers of natural 
 explanation. Vital force, conceived as extraneously 
 interfering with otherwise mechanical processes, was 
 evidently a hypostatised entity of the worst type, and 
 it was accordingly discarded by scientific physiology 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 109 
 
 as part of the baneful legacy of metaphysics. Mechani- 
 cal explanation, or, in other words, the resolution of 
 physiology into physics, became the watchword and 
 ideal of the best workers. But they did not observe 
 that they were in danger of throwing away the child 
 with the bath, as the Germans say. After all, physiology 
 is not physics ; living matter behaves differently from 
 dead matter. What is the difference and the basis of 
 the difference ? In rendering mechanically intelligible 
 the inter-relation and interaction of this and the 
 other part of the bodily structure, physiologists tend 
 to forget that all such mechanical arrangements are 
 arrangements in the service of life, arrangements per- 
 fected in the living being (in all probability) by the 
 responsive and self-adaptive action of its living ancestors 
 in the course of ages. Picrposiveness is the notion upon 
 which physiology is built, and it is worked into the 
 whole theory of development ; yet it is a notion entirely 
 alien to the blind vis a tergo of mechanism as such. 
 The more clearly a physiologist realises what pure 
 mechanism means, and the more fully he grasps the 
 import of the facts he has to deal with, the more ready 
 will be his acknowledgment that to call them mechani- 
 cal is at best an analogy. They belong to a different 
 order of facts ; life and purpose govern them from one 
 
110 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 end to the other. A self-acting and self-regulating 
 machine is only by an abuse of language spoken of as 
 a machine at all. 
 
 It is in vain therefore that many psychologists at the 
 present time outdo the physiologists in the glibness 
 with which they talk of nervous currents and explosions 
 of nervous energy and paths of least resistance. The 
 appearance of explanation conveyed by the use of the 
 expression "path of least resistance" is in the last degree 
 illusory. We are transferring an expression which has 
 a perfectly definite and intelligible meaning in physics 
 or mechanics to a sphere where the conditions are 
 quite different, and where we are, moreover, almost 
 quite ignorant as to the nature of what actually takes 
 place. Path of least resistance means, in such a case, 
 simply the particular reaction which we find the 
 stimulus, as a matter of fact, to produce. We have no 
 right to go further than this. The use of the physical 
 phrase implies, however, that what takes place is pre- 
 cisely the same as the selection of a channel made by 
 a rill of water trickling down a hillside. This is to 
 make the living being simply a network of pathways 
 through which the energy of external nature takes its 
 course soaks in, and oozes out again. But this is not 
 a true account even of the humblest organism. Such a 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. Ill 
 
 representation totally ignores the unitary character of 
 the organic and sentient being. We are misled, in 
 short, by words like currents, and energy, and least 
 resistance. What do we mean by nerve currents ? 
 Nerve currents cannot be treated in this isolated 
 fashion, as if they took place in vacuo, or in an 
 indifferent medium ; they take place in a living 
 individual, and apart from the unity of that indi- 
 vidual they are mere abstractions. A nerve cur- 
 rent is a physiological process, which, originally and 
 normally, means central stimulation and appropriate 
 central reaction. You cannot separate either the 
 appreciation of the stimulus or the reaction upon it 
 from the organism as a whole. To speak psycho- 
 logically, it is the living being, as a unity, that is aware 
 of the sensation and responds to it. There is no need 
 here to revive any hypothesis as to the specific seat of 
 the soul, or to conceive any point of convergence in the 
 brain for the multitudinous nerves of sensation and 
 motion. However the nervous system acts, the unity 
 of consciousness, as we experience it every moment, is 
 proof sufficient of the fact that it does act as a unity. 
 Every living being is a similar individuate unity. 
 Abnormalities, as when the removal of the higher 
 centres gives rise to the establishment of independent 
 
112 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 unities (in the spinal cord, for example), are no argu- 
 ments against what is here contended for ; they rather 
 go to prove that even the mutilated organism, so long 
 as it lives at all, reconstitutes itself into a kind of unity. 
 
 A living being, then, is, at the very least, a centre of 
 sensation and reaction ; and when sensation is so used, 
 it means not only intellectual awareness of some pres- 
 ence, but also a subjective drawing to, or away from, 
 the intruder. This second element of feeling proper is 
 the condition in virtue of which the sensation as know- 
 ledge calls forth the reaction as will. The appetitive 
 is the first phase of consciousness. And however the 
 growth of the intellectual life and of volitional self- 
 control may emancipate us from the promptings of the 
 moment, it is to the end through feeling that the whole 
 process of our life goes on. It is in feeling that we 
 assert our individuality, give expression to our prefer- 
 ences and distastes. Feeling leads each of us to select 
 from the infinite of the knowable and do-able, that 
 little world of interests and habits which differentiates 
 us one from another, and gives to each his peculiar 
 point of outlook upon the universe. 
 
 The necessity of taking feeling first has led us in 
 appearance away from our specific theme. But it is 
 only in appearance, for it was impossible to separate 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 113 
 
 the treatment of feeling and will, and what has been 
 said of the one applies mutatis mutandis to the other. 
 The presentationists endeavoured to make feeling a 
 relation between ideas, instead of the relation of ideas 
 to the subject of them. If the subject has identified 
 itself, as we say, with certain ideas or interests, then 
 any idea which conflicts with these ideas will result 
 in pain or displeasure to the subject. But here, as 
 always, it is not the relations of ideas as such rela- 
 tions, as it were, in the phenomenal plane but rela- 
 tion to a subject, that constitutes the fact of feeling. 
 Similarly with volition. Volition is the action of a 
 subject, and as such, it cannot be phenomenalised. 
 But this is just what the phenomenalists, from Hume 
 to Mtinsterberg, insist on doing. They resolve voli- 
 tion into a sequence of presentations ; first, an idea, 
 then a perception (as we have seen Miinsterberg put 
 it), but no intervening fiat, no power, no real action, 
 nothing corresponding to what we mean by volition 
 just the one first, and the other second. The answer to 
 be made to this ingenious theorem has been indicated 
 already. To ask to know the will as a presentation is 
 to ask to know it as it is not. The phenomena which 
 Miinsterberg offers us are very likely all the phenomena 
 in the case, or if there are more, the others are like unto 
 
 H 
 
114 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 them. But his whole investigation is a petitio principii. 
 The heading of the psychological section of his treatise 
 runs, " The Will as a Phenomenon in Consciousness " ; 
 and that we may be in no doubt as to his meaning, he 
 says in his preface : " It might also run The Will as 
 Idea (der Wille ah Vorstellung)." The will as idea 
 that is the whole theory in a nutshell. No enemy 
 could have put the case more conclusively against 
 Mlinsterberg than he has done himself in these 
 words, which are, nevertheless, the key - note of his 
 whole inquiry. 
 
 II. 
 
 But this Presentationism or Phenomenalism, as has 
 been already hinted, is not a new doctrine. It is a 
 motive which has been widely influential in the history 
 of philosophy. Let us generalise our conclusions, there- 
 fore, and enforce them by historic example. Activity, 
 as Berkeley long ago said, is not an idea, or anything 
 like an idea, though doubtless activity is involved in 
 the existence of any idea, seeing that ideas exist only 
 for a subject, or, to be more exact, seeing that ideas, 
 from the psychological point of view, are in every case 
 just activities of some subject. But because, in the 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 115 
 
 nature of the case, action cannot be made a pres- 
 entation of, cannot be held up as an object in the 
 mental field of view, this theory proposes to efface 
 activity altogether. In saying this, we are not attrib- 
 uting to the Presentationists a conclusion which they 
 disclaim. All real action, all real causality, is elimin- 
 ated from their account of the universe as known. 
 Causality is reduced, as with Hume, to mere sequence. 
 We ourselves do not act we only seem to ourselves 
 to act; in reality, we merely look on at happenings. 
 Mlinsterberg suggests that the real agent in all these 
 sequences, including the events which we mistakenly 
 attribute to our own agency, may be, as Schopenhauer 
 conceived, a unitary unconscious will. To this extent, 
 therefore, he differs from Hume : he does not leave us 
 with a purely sceptical phenomenalism. He is pre- 
 pared to admit will or force, in this sense, as ultimate 
 metaphysical reality and sole cause. But such an ad- 
 mission has no bearing on our contention, so long as the 
 psychological reality of the individual Will is denied. 
 
 It must be admitted unreservedly that, if to know 
 means to have a presentation before us, then we do 
 not and cannot know the fact of our volitional activity. 
 In this sense, we can only know the motives which led 
 to it and the changes which followed upon it in the 
 
116 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 phenomenal field. I am not advocating this usage, for 
 I admit that it sounds -absurd to say that we do not 
 know our own activity, our own existence. All I would 
 urge is that, if the associations of " knowledge " with the 
 objective, the presentable, the phenomenal, are ineradi- 
 cable, then we shall be obliged to fall back upon some 
 other term to express the acquaintance which the sub- 
 ject has with his own activity. This is exactly the 
 position which Berkeley took up, when he corrected 
 his first impulse to resolve the Self into a procession 
 of ideas. In his suggestive distinction between " ideas " 
 and "notions," he anticipates and combats the Pan- 
 phenomenalism of Hume and of such theories as we 
 have been considering. 
 
 There can be no idea formed [he says] of a soul or spirit ; 
 for all ideas whatever being passive and inert, cannot re- 
 present unto us by way of image or likeness that which 
 acts. A little attention will make it plain to any one that 
 to have an idea which shall be like that active principle of 
 motion and change of ideas is absolutely impossible. Such 
 is the nature of Spirit or that which acts, that it cannot be 
 of itself perceived, but only by the effects which it pro- 
 duceth. ... So far as I can see, the words will, soul, 
 spirit, do not stand for different ideas, or in truth for any 
 idea at all, but for something which is very different from 
 ideas, and which, being an Agent, cannot be like unto or re- 
 presented by any idea whatsoever, though it must be owned 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 117 
 
 at the same time that we have some notion of soul, spirit, 
 and the operations of the mind, such as willing, loving, 
 hating inasmuch as we know or understand the meaning 
 of the words. 1 
 
 In a later section he formally repeats the distinction 
 in the same terms 2 and adds : " I will not say that the 
 terms idea and notion may not be used convertibly, if 
 the world will have it so ; but yet it conduceth to clear- 
 ness and propriety that we distinguish things very 
 different by different names." And with his accus- 
 tomed fine - edged irony, he remarks that " much 
 scepticism about the nature of the soul " has arisen 
 " from the opinion that spirits are to be known after 
 the manner of an idea or sensation." "It is even 
 probable that this opinion may have produced a doubt 
 in some, whether they had any soul at all distinct from 
 their body, since, upon inquiry, they could not find 
 they had an idea of it." 3 The modern doctrine of 
 automatism lends fresh point to this shaft of sarcasm. 
 
 1 Principles of Human Knowledge, section 27. 
 
 2 Section 142. "We may not, I think, strictly be said to have an 
 idea of an active being or of an action, although we may be said to 
 have a notion of any mind and its acts about ideas inasmuch as I 
 know or understand what is meant by these words. What I know, 
 that I have some notion of." 
 
 3 Section 137. The preceding section is also so aptly expressed, 
 especially with reference to the subsequent argument of Hume, that I 
 
118 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 Berkeley's proposed use of idea in this restricted or 
 specific sense is equivalent to that of the modern terms 
 presentation, phenomenon, or object ; and it will be 
 observed how he expressly defines mind and spirit as 
 " that which acts." It must be for ever impossible to 
 phenomenalise an action ; we cannot objectify the 
 subjective function as such. In his own words, that 
 which acts cannot be itself perceived, but only by the 
 effects which it produceth. But are we to conclude, 
 therefore, that there is no activity in the case, that 
 there is no active subject at all ? Surely not. On the 
 contrary, it is in activity or the will that we, as it 
 were, lay hold upon reality and have immediate 
 assurance of it. And if, as already said, the associa- 
 tions of " knowledge " are too narrow to permit of its 
 application here, we must even fall back upon some 
 
 cannot forbear reproducing it here. " It will perhaps be said that we 
 want a sense (as some have imagined) proper to know substances withal, 
 which, if we had, we might know our own soul as we do a triangle. 
 To this I answer that, in case we had a new sense bestowed upon us, 
 we could only receive thereby some new sensations or ideas of sense. 
 But I believe nobody will say that what he means by the terms soul 
 and substance is only some particular sort of idea or sensation. We 
 may therefore infer that, all things duly considered, it is not more 
 reasonable to think our faculties defective, in that they do not furnish 
 us with an idea of spirit or active thinking substance, than it would 
 be if we should blame them for not being able to comprehend a round 
 square." 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 119 
 
 such phrase as "immediate assurance," "immediate 
 experience," or " self-feeling." 1 
 
 There is, after all, a certain justification for the 
 narrower use of the term knowledge. For is it not 
 the case that knowledge, in its very nature, brings with 
 it a species of foreignness ? Of course we all see clearly 
 enough that there is another, and, I admit, a more im - 
 portant sense, in which knowledge may truly be said 
 to be just the overcoming, the banishing, of this strange- 
 ness. The knower and his knowledge, as Aristotle 
 said, are in a sense one. When we have thoughts, says 
 Hegel, we recognise in nature's inner heart only our 
 own reason, and feel at home there. " Spirit has the 
 certainty which Adam had when he saw Eve. 'This 
 is flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone.' " No one, I 
 say, will question that in this sense knowledge means 
 unity, appropriation, the breaking down of the middle 
 wall of partition. But that is without prejudice to the 
 other and more subtle aspect of the case which I desire 
 to emphasise. Knowledge, in its very nature, implies 
 difference. What we know is an object, something held 
 
 1 The last phrase is used by Mr Bosanquet (Logic, vol. i. p. 77) in a 
 passage in which he also speaks of "the immediate feeling of my own 
 sentient existence that goes with " any act of perception. " Immediate 
 experience" is used by Mr Stout in contrast to cognition or "discrim- 
 inative thinking," 'Analytic Psychology,' Bk. I. c. i., and Bk. II. c. i. 
 
120 THE 
 
 as it were at a distance from us, something opposite to 
 us. What we know is in fact always something different 
 from ourselves. The knower and the known are never 
 in this sense one, even in the limiting case of psycho- 
 logical introspection. It is often said that here the 
 observer and the observed are one and the same ; 
 but the statement is not literally true. All intro- 
 spection, it has been more truly said, is really retro- 
 spection ; it is a post-mortem examination. When I 
 know a state, that state has already ceased to exist 
 as a living pulse of thought and feeling. It belongs to 
 the past. I recognise it as having been mine ; but it is 
 different from the present psychologically-minded self, 
 intent upon its examination. 1 The case of introspec- 
 tion has been mentioned, because there, if anywhere, 
 it might be said that there was an identity of knowing 
 and being. But, as we have just seen, it is not so. 
 Knowing and being are not identical ; they cannot help 
 being different. The fact is, we are face to face here 
 with a constant characteristic of knowledge, and if, as 
 we are apt to do, we take knowledge as exhaustive of 
 
 1 So Professor Sully and Professor James. The latest expression of 
 this fact is perhaps to be found in Mr Stout's 'Analytic Psychology.' 
 vol. i. p. 159 : " The immediate experience of any moment is never at 
 that moment an object of thought." 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 121 
 
 experience, a far-reaching vista of consequences soon 
 appears. We may interpret the characteristic in the 
 relativistic sense which is so popular in agnostic and 
 positivistic theories. We may say, knowledge never 
 gives us the real thing; we are always going round 
 about things, and always baffled with their mere out- 
 sides. We know only phenomena; reality, whether 
 of the self or the not-self, is beyond us. This is one 
 line of thought which meets us in certain forms of 
 Kantianism and Neo-Kantianism, in Hamilton, and 
 in Spencer. Or, if we do not take this line, we fall 
 into what I may call an Absolute Phenomenalism. In 
 this case, we spurn the unknown and unknowable 
 mystery of the relativists; we see that it is absurd 
 to speak as if knowledge were constructed merely to 
 baulk us. So far all seems well ; but we have not 
 really escaped the consequences of accepting know- 
 ledge as our ultimate. For we dissolve the universe 
 altogether into objects or phenomena; all things and 
 all finite persons, including ourselves, are merely 
 objects in experience. And thus, in another way 
 than the agnostic, we as surely deprive men and things 
 of reality ; for mere objects are not real, they are halves 
 craving completion. And that completion they do not 
 get from the addition of a universal self. That uni- 
 
122 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 versal self has itself no nerve of reality about it, if it is 
 taken merely as the unifying self of knowledge. It is 
 simply the formal unity of a spectacular process of 
 phenomena. There is no warrant, on the theory, for 
 understanding this self in any other way. 
 
 If, then, we are to lay hold upon reality and lift our- 
 selves out of the flux of phenomena, we must do so by 
 a species of assurance different from knowledge, as 
 knowledge has just been analysed and explained. 
 Now, we have no such certainty of any reality, save 
 the reality of self-existence. We know other things 
 and other persons ; no sane person at least doubts that 
 we do. But we do not immediately feel or experience 
 their existence ; they are oilier beings, and their exist- 
 ence is a hypothesis to explain certain phenomena of 
 our own experience. And though the hypothesis is 
 infinitely probable, it is theoretically open to doubt. 
 Similarly, if we try to build even upon our own exist- 
 ence as known, that existence tends to melt away into 
 a dreamlike succession of phenomena passing before an 
 inactive spectator, and the result is, that we fail to 
 find reality anywhere. Existence resolves itself into 
 a magic-lantern march of pictures, but, as Fichte says, 
 without anything of which they are the pictures. It 
 is not in knowledge, then, as such, but in feeling and 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 123 
 
 action, that reality is given. In saying this, I do not 
 for a moment mean to do what I said before was im- 
 possible, to divorce any of the three aspects of experi- 
 ence from the others : the being who feels and acts 
 must also know. Knowledge may even be said, with 
 some truth, to be the pre-condition of the other two. 
 But the immediate certainty of real existence attaches 
 not to what is known in the knowledge, but to the 
 accompanying awareness of subjective activity in the 
 knowing act and the tinge of subjective feeling in 
 connection with it. Knowledge is itself from this 
 point of view an activity of the subject, and, as such, 
 it will serve perfectly well as a basis of certainty. It 
 is when the element of activity in knowledge is left 
 out of sight, and attention is concentrated on the 
 content or object of knowledge, that we enter upon 
 a false path, and end in the self -contradictory notion 
 of a knowledge which is nobody's knowledge, and a 
 knowledge of nothing. But knowing is not a colour- 
 less or impersonal function as it were a series of 
 happenings in vacua. Every cognitive act is suffused 
 with feeling, and in virtue of this suffusion it is felt 
 by me as mine, by you as yours. In knowing any 
 object, therefore, whether a thing in the external world 
 or a state of his own mind, the knowing subject pos- 
 
124 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 sesses, in this element of feeling, an immediate assur- 
 ance of existence there and then. 
 
 This certainty is, in the first instance, in the moment 
 of acting, a pure immediacy, a mere awareness. After 
 action, and to the psychological observer, it must be 
 mediated by knowledge and reflection i.e., the changes 
 are presented or represented in consciousness, and with 
 them comes the feeling of self-origination, from which 
 remembered conjunction springs the reasoned convic- 
 tion of our active causality. But the reflective asser- 
 tion of the psychologist depends entirely upon the 
 immediate feeling the sense of living, as we might 
 call it which went with the action originally. I feel 
 the activity, the experience, at the moment, and in 
 virtue of this immediate accompanying feeling, I after- 
 wards acknowledge it as mine. 
 
 It was not, therefore, without reason that Fichte 1 
 eventually returned to this primal certainty, as the 
 sole means of escape from a limitless scepticism. 
 Descartes's cogito, though intended to embrace the 
 volitional aspect of consciousness, laid stress, designedly 
 or not, upon the intellectual ; and the result was, that 
 the real activity of the subject was discarded by his 
 immediate successors. The content of consciousness 
 
 1 The reference is to his treatise on c The Vocation of Man. ' 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 125 
 
 became everything; the subject a mere empty vessel 
 or form for the content. And in Spinoza, accordingly, 
 we get a system or procession of idece, or modes of 
 thought, and a parallel procession of ideata, the cor- 
 responding modes of extension. The identity of in- 
 tellect and will is one of Spinoza's central doctrines, 
 and he presents us accordingly with a system in which 
 real activity, or real causality, has as little place as it 
 has in Miinsterberg's. His parallelism of modes of 
 thought and modes of extension is, in fact, the very 
 doctrine of Automatism which we have had under 
 consideration. And it results from the very same 
 considerations from exclusive attention to the intel- 
 lect, to the knowledge-content of the mind. Scan the 
 history of philosophy as we may, we shall find the same 
 cause everywhere producing the same effect, now in a 
 more materialistic form, now in the guise of Idealism ; 
 but whether the automatism be materially or ideally 
 conceived, matters practically not one jot. With the 
 elimination of real causality from the course of things, 
 the world is emptied of real meaning ; it is reduced to 
 a spectacular sequence of happenings, which have no 
 raison d'etre, seeing that all is absolutely predeter- 
 mined from the outset. There is no life or reality 
 in the show which passes before us ; for the nerve 
 
126 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 of reality is furnished solely by the conviction of our 
 own activity, our own real causality. 
 
 And with the conviction of real activity, it is to 
 be noted, goes the belief in an end or aim which the 
 action is to realise. It is upon purposive, idea-guided 
 action that Fichte takes his stand as the ultimate 
 certainty. The idea is present to me, he says, not 
 as a Naclibild or copy, an after -picture of an inde- 
 pendent reality, but as a Vorbild, a fore-picture, an 
 ideal or purpose, which does not yet exist, but which 
 I have myself to make real. In the ingenious cari- 
 cature which Miinsterberg offers us, he does not deny 
 that this is the fundamental characteristic of voluntary 
 action ; but, in accordance with his .presuppositions, he 
 denies the reality of the nexus between the conception 
 and its execution. It is undeniable that the one is 
 before the other, but the first has no influence or 
 efficacy in bringing about the second; for the whole 
 train of happenings, he expressly tells us, is independ- 
 ent of our consciousness. 1 The whole train is driven, 
 in fact, a tergo by a Schopenhauerian dynamo-machine 
 in the background. 
 
 1 Die Willenshandlung, p. 3. The bodily and the mental series, 
 he says, are " zwei verschiedene Erscheinungsformen desselben 
 einheitlichen, von unserem Bewusstsein unabhaugigen, wirklichen 
 Geschehnisses. " 
 
THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 127 
 
 The same line of thought which leads to the elimina- 
 tion of real activity from the course of things, thus 
 leads necessarily to the denial of purpose everywhere. 
 And it is noteworthy, in this connection, that Spinoza 
 is the most embittered opponent of any doctrine of 
 teleology or final causes. To Spinoza, as to Mlinster- 
 berg, all determination is mechanical, a tergo or from 
 the past ; the notion of self-determination in view of 
 ideas, determination a fronte or by the future, was 
 inconceivable to him. The human being was to 
 Spinoza as completely determined, and determined in 
 the same way, as a stone propelled through the air. 
 We do not know whether there is anywhere ' such 
 purely mechanical causality as Spinoza took for granted 
 in the case of the stone ; but we do know that that is 
 not the mode in which the actions of conscious beings 
 are determined. The causality of the future, or of the 
 ideal, is coterminous at least with the confines of life. 
 All action of living beings, I have argued, is originally 
 purposive that is to say, in a wide sense, voluntary 
 directed more or less clearly by the creature towards 
 some aim. Only if this is so, is action in any sense 
 an action of the creature itself, and not, in Mlinster- 
 berg's language, "a phenomenal phase of the unitary 
 happening " which goes on in the creature irrespective 
 
128 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 
 
 of its feelings or desires. With the acknowledgment 
 of purposive action, the wjiole process of things acquires 
 a new aspect. It is no longer a motiveless procession 
 of appearances, or, as Professor James well puts it, the 
 dull rattling off of a chain forged ages ago. It is an 
 evolution which is real at every point. And if it has 
 seemed, in the course of this exposition, that knowledge 
 and ideas have been depreciated at the expense of the 
 will, they are here restored to their rightful function 
 as the necessary conditions of selection or choice, the 
 springs of all activity, and so the guiding star of all 
 advance. But ideas in themselves are nothing, and the 
 analysis of knowledge as knowledge can never give us 
 reality. If we were to recast Descartes's formula, in 
 the light of all that has come and gone in philosophy 
 since his day, not Cogito ergo sum but Ago ergo sum 
 is the form his maxim would take. 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 1 
 
 I. 
 
 fTlHEEE can be little doubt among those qualified 
 to judge, that Mr Bradley's 'Appearance and 
 Eeality' is the most important metaphysical work 
 which has appeared in England since the publication 
 of Green's ' Introduction to Hume ' in 1874. It is so, 
 in my opinion, not because its conclusions are likely 
 to become assured possessions of philosophical thought, 
 but because of the intrepidity of the treatment and the 
 singularly stimulating quality which belongs to all that 
 Mr Bradley writes. 
 
 1 Appearance and Reality : a Metaphysical Essay. By F. H. Bradley, 
 LL.D. (Glasgow), Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. London: Swan 
 Sonnenschein & Co. 1893. The criticism which follows appeared as 
 two articles in the ' Contemporary Review ' of November and Decem- 
 ber 1894. 
 
 I 
 
130 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 The author modestly says in his preface that his 
 book does not design to be permanent. It is his 
 contribution to the sceptical discipline of the English 
 mind, from which he is not without hopes of seeing 
 " a rational system of first principles " emerge. And 
 it is true that the book is hardly likely to take its 
 place as a classical treatise in the literature of the 
 subject. The highly abstract character of most of 
 the discussion, suggesting at times a delight in logic 
 for logic's sake, the unadorned dryness (for the most 
 part) of the style, and the seemingly deliberate per- 
 versities of manner which mar it at times, forbid 
 such a destiny. But the brilliant dialectic of which 
 the book is full, the thoroughness and sincerity witli 
 which it sifts the most vital questions, its ruthless 
 criticism of conventional solutions, ensure for Mr 
 Bradley's latest volume an important influence upon 
 the thought of his contemporaries. 
 
 Mr Bradley's courage is also to be commended in 
 publishing a book which throughout deals avowedly 
 and in set terms with " the Absolute." What a shock 
 to the precisians of Agnosticism and the puritans of 
 the empirical tradition ! This particular bogy, so 
 potent in the middle of the century, has apparently 
 lost its terror even for the English mind. As soon as 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 131 
 
 men began to reflect a little on what was meant by 
 the term, it became evident that the ultimate object 
 of philosophy always is, and must be, the Absolute. 
 Mr Bradley's remarks, in his short Introduction, on the 
 unavoidableness of metaphysical inquiry, the necessity 
 of a new metaphysic for each fresh generation, and the 
 utility of even an imperfect knowledge of the Absolute, 
 may be commended to the candid reader who is still 
 unconvinced, or perhaps a confirmed sceptic, on those 
 points. 
 
 The chapters of destructive criticism, which form 
 the first part of the book, are largely in Hegel's 
 manner, and the influence of Hegel is unquestionably 
 predominant throughout. But in spite of this general 
 indebtedness, the book is distinguished by an independ- 
 ence of style and treatment not usual with followers 
 of this master, or indeed of any master. But Mr 
 Bradley has always insisted on calling his soul his own. 
 Whatever else this volume may be, and whatever criti- 
 cisms we may have to make upon it, it is certainly no 
 easy reproduction of another man's thoughts: in the 
 sweat of his own brow its author has conceived and 
 executed it. 
 
 This independence of treatment will prove of good 
 omen, it may be hoped, for the future of philosophical 
 
132 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 discussion among those who may be regarded, in a 
 general way, as carrying on the traditions of Green 
 arid representing the influence of Hegel, or at least 
 of German Idealism, in British philosophy. In this 
 connection, Mr Bradley's book may be said, perhaps, 
 to mark the close of the period whose beginning was 
 signalised, twenty-three years ago, by the publication of 
 Green's work already mentioned. When we think of 
 the Hamilton - Mill controversy in the sixties, it is 
 obvious that serious study of the Critical Philosophy 
 and German Idealism had yet to begin. Only the 
 outworks of the Kantian scheme had been mastered 
 even by the accredited leaders of British thought ; 
 while Hegel, or at least his strangely refracted image, 
 was simply the philosophical "bogy-man," useful to 
 frighten back the unwary wanderer into the fold of 
 Empiricism or the Philosophy of the Conditioned. Yet 
 Hegel was probably the richest mind that had been 
 devoted to philosophy since Aristotle, and, whatever 
 judgment may be passed on his system as a logical 
 whole, had done more than any other man to mould 
 the thought of the century in all the humanistic 
 sciences. 
 
 The publication of Dr Hutchison Stirling's ' Secret of 
 Hegel/ in 1865, first removed the reproach of ignorance 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 133 
 
 and indifference, or worse, from British philosophy. It 
 was published in the same year as Mill's ' Examination 
 of Hamilton,' and in the noisy, multitudinous echoes of 
 that controversy, the accents of the new voice were 
 partly drowned. But they penetrated, like tidings of 
 a land that is very far off, to ears fit to receive them. 
 While Mr Spencer's philosophy gradually established 
 itself as the persuasion of the average man, the 
 majority of serious thinkers in England were devot- 
 ing themselves to the study of Kant and Hegel ; 
 and Green's 'Introduction' was the first noteworthy 
 symptom of this new direction of thought at the 
 universities. The movement thus inaugurated has 
 been growing in volume since then, and, as was to be 
 expected, it has somewhat changed its character ; and 
 Mr Bradley's book may perhaps be found in this 
 respect to mark the end of the period of absorption 
 or assimilation. During these Lehrjalire, English 
 writers have repeated too anxiously, and with too 
 minute exactitude, the formulae of a foreign master, 
 treating them rather as oracles of truth than as 
 utterances of finite wisdom, and showing too great a 
 reluctance to submit them to legitimate criticism. 
 But of late a calmer and more critical tone has been 
 noticeable, and a more catholic spirit has shown itself. 
 
134 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 Other names have claimed attention, such as Lotze on 
 the one hand, and SchQpenhauer on the other (to 
 mention only these two). As Mr Bradley puts it 
 in his preface, " the present generation is learning 
 that to gain education a man must study in more 
 than one school." And the result of this wider range 
 can hardly be other than to diminish the somewhat 
 partisan zeal of the so-called neo-Hegelian party for 
 the ipsissima verba of Hegel's theory, and to set them 
 upon a more independent handling of the subject itself, 
 in accordance with the genius of their own time and 
 nation. Then the Lelirjalire and the Wanderjahre will 
 be ended and the Meisterjahre will begin. For dis- 
 ciples, as Bacon puts it in a well-known passage, do 
 owe unto masters only a temporary belief and a sus- 
 pension of their judgment till they be fully instructed, 
 and not an absolute resignation or perpetual captivity. 
 Though Germany once possessed the hegemony of 
 Europe in matters philosophical, that time is past 
 and the fact that it once existed constitutes no reason 
 why we should remain in perpetual tutelage to German 
 masters. "I have a high opinion," says Mr Bradley 
 in his preface, "of the metaphysical powers of the 
 English mind ; " and his book is conceived throughout 
 in the spirit of intellectual freedom. 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 135 
 
 The author describes his work in the preface as " a 
 critical discussion of first principles." " The chief need 
 of English philosophy," he tells us, " is a sceptical study 
 of first principles, and I do not know of any work which 
 seems to meet this need sufficiently." The object of 
 his own work is, therefore, " to stimulate inquiry and 
 doubt " doubt or scepticism being understood to mean 
 not doubt or disbelief in any particular tenets, but " an 
 attempt to become aware of and to doubt all precon- 
 ceptions." This is in Mr Bradley's mind and not 
 without good reason the first and all-important con- 
 dition of sound work in metaphysics. The short Intro- 
 duction puts unanswerably the necessity and the utility 
 of metaphysics. As it is impossible to abstain from 
 thought about the universe, " the question is merely as 
 to the way in which this should be done. . . . Meta- 
 physics takes its stand on this side of human nature, 
 this desire to think about and comprehend reality. 
 And it merely asserts that, if the attempt is to be 
 made, it should be done as thoroughly as our nature 
 permits." On the second count, he maintains, as we 
 have seen, that even a " miserably incomplete " know- 
 ledge of the Absolute must have its usefulness. But 
 in a passage of characteristic frankness and force he 
 contends that, even if metaphysics has no positive 
 
136 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 results, it would still be highly desirable that it 
 should continue to be studied : 
 
 There is, so far as I can see, no other way of protecting 
 ourselves against dogmatic superstition. Our orthodox 
 theology on the one hand, and our commonplace material- 
 ism on the other (it is natural to take these as prominent 
 instances) vanish like ghosts before the daylight of free 
 sceptical inquiry. I do not mean, of course, to condemn 
 wholly either of these beliefs ; but I am sure that either, 
 when taken seriously, is the mutilation of our nature. 
 Neither, as experience has amply shown, can now survive 
 in the mind which has thought sincerely on first principles. 
 That is one reason why I think that metaphysics, 
 even if it end in total scepticism, should be studied by a 
 certain number of persons. 
 
 But, while thus insisting on the indispensable func- 
 tion of metaphysical inquiry, Mr Bradley is not the 
 man to magnify his office as metaphysician unduly. 
 And in the Meredithian extracts from his note-book 
 which conclude the preface, he characteristically turns 
 the shafts of his irony against his own occupation. 
 "Metaphysics," it is there written, "is the finding of 
 bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to 
 find these reasons is no less an instinct." From the 
 other glimpses vouchsafed into this note -book, its 
 aphoristic treasures would appear to be of a highly 
 various and piquant description. They cannot but 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 137 
 
 awaken an unchastened curiosity in the heart of many 
 students, which it is to be hoped the owner of the note- 
 book may take measures to satisfy. 
 
 Mr Bradley starts with a threefold general definition 
 of metaphysics. "We may agree, perhaps, to under- 
 stand by metaphysics an attempt to know reality as 
 against mere appearance, or the study of first prin- 
 ciples or ultimate truths, or again the effort to com- 
 prehend the universe, not simply piecemeal or by 
 fragments, but somehow as a whole." These three 
 definitions are plainly intended to be taken as equi- 
 valent, but, though the third is probably the most 
 satisfactory of the three, it is the first which gives 
 the title to Mr Bradley 's volume, and it is the con- 
 trast between appearance or, as he calls it here, 
 "mere appearance" and reality that explains the 
 two parts into which it falls. The first book, entitled 
 " Appearance," is a sceptical or destructive criticism of 
 the phenomenal world as inherently self -contradictory 
 and incomprehensible, and therefore, in Mr Bradley's 
 use of the word, unreal. The second book, entitled 
 " Eeality," though also abounding in negative criticism 
 of obnoxious "preconceptions," is the constructive 
 complement of Book I., intended to describe the nature 
 of the Absolute, in which the contradictionsof pheno- 
 
138 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 mena must be somehow reconciled or overcome. It 
 is important at the outlet, for the understanding of 
 Mr Bradley 's argument, especially in its negative or 
 sceptical aspect, to note the equivalence, or at least 
 interchangeableness, of these different formulations of 
 the metaphysician's task, even though his procedure 
 and conclusions should turn out to be unduly dominated 
 by the first. Keality is used by Mr Bradley through- 
 out in the sense of ultimate reality, so that reality and 
 the absolute are convertible terms, and he means by 
 both " the universe " comprehended " somehow as a 
 whole." Appearance, on the other hand, is applied to 
 the whole of the phenomenal world. Appearances, 
 of course, exist, as he repeatedly tells us, but they are 
 not real, in the sense of being independent, self-con- 
 tained and self-explanatory. We fall into hopeless 
 contradictions if we attempt to take them so. Every 
 finite or phenomenal fact betrays its character of 
 " mere appearance " by the " ragged edges " which 
 stamp it as a part torn out of its context. The self- 
 contradiction of the part taken as the whole, the 
 phenomenal taken as the real, is most obvious in the 
 infinite progress upon which it launches us a species 
 of treadmill exercise, best exemplified in the case of 
 such notions as time, space, and causation. 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 139 
 
 The contradictions of the finite are, accordingly, the 
 theme of Mr Bradley's First Book, in which he sets out 
 to criticise the chief " ideas by which we try to under- 
 stand the universe." Taking up, first, the popular 
 scientific proposal to find the reality of the world in 
 the primary qualities, he has little difficulty in showing 
 that the line of thought which undermines the reality 
 of the secondary qualities can be used with equal 
 effect against the primary. The primary qualities 
 cannot be conceived or presented without the second- 
 ary ; and, further, we cannot think of extension with- 
 out thinking at the same time of a " what " that is 
 extended. Extension is, therefore, simply the abstrac- 
 tion of one element from the rest, from which it is 
 in reality inseparable an abstraction scientifically 
 convenient, but metaphysically indefensible, when it 
 puts itself forward as an ultimate account of things. 
 
 The distinction of "substantive and adjective" 
 the grouping of the world's contents into things and 
 qualities is next taken up (chap, ii.) and declared 
 to be "a clear makeshift." If we lay stress on the 
 unity of the thing, then the plurality of its attributes 
 is in no way explained ; they lie side by side in mere 
 distinctness one from another, as so many independent 
 coexistences. 
 
140 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 The whole device is a clear makeshift. It consists in 
 saying to the outside world, " I am the owner of these my 
 adjectives," and to the properties, " I am but a relation, 
 which leaves you your liberty." And to itself and for itself 
 it is the futile pretence to have both characters at once. 
 . . . The thing with its adjectives is a device for enjoying 
 at once both variety and concord. But the distinctions, once 
 made, fall apart from the thing, and away from one another, 
 and our attempt to understand their relations brought us 
 round merely to an unity, which confesses itself a pretence, 
 or else falls back upon the old undivided substance which 
 admits of no distinctions (p. 23). 
 
 The next chapter (chap, iii.) analyses the ideas of 
 quality and relation. Qualities depend upon the 
 relation of things to one another; unrelated reals 
 would be qualityless. But, on the other hand, 
 "nothings cannot be related;" "relations must de- 
 pend upon terms, just as much as terms upon rela- 
 tions." Consequently, all thinking that moves by 
 the machinery of terms and relations is pronounced 
 to be "a makeshift, a device, a mere practical com- 
 promise, most necessary, but in the end most inde- 
 fensible." For there is the same attempt to bring di- 
 versity into the unity of the thing, an attempt which 
 proves impossible except by dividing the thing alto- 
 gether into an endless process of relations. Hence, 
 " our experience when relationed is not true ; " and 
 
A NEW THEOKY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 141 
 
 any one who has grasped the principle of this chapter, 
 we are told, " will have condemned, almost without 
 a hearing, the great mass of phenomena." Mr 
 Bradley proceeds, however (in the next five chapters), 
 to apply his principle more in detail to the cases of 
 " space and time," " motion and change," " causation " 
 and ''activity." In a time-honoured and somewhat 
 well-worn argument, the aspects of discreteness and 
 continuity in space are sceptically opposed to one 
 another, and the conclusion reached that " space 
 vanishes internally into relations between units which 
 never can exist." Precisely the same argument holds 
 of time ; hence, both are not real, but " contradictory 
 appearances." The problem of change 
 
 points back to the dilemma of the one and the many, the 
 differences and the identity, the adjectives and the thing, 
 the qualities and the relations. How anything can possibly 
 be anything else was a question which defied our efforts. 
 Change is little beyond an instance of this dilemma in 
 principle. ... It asserts two of one, and so falls at once 
 under the condemnation of our previous chapters. . . . 
 Change, upon any hypothesis, is impossible. It can be no 
 more than appearance (pp. 45-47). 
 
 So with causation. If you resolve cause into identity, 
 you eliminate the very fact to be explained the 
 difference of the effect from its cause. For surely the 
 
142 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 very problem of causation " consists in the differences 
 and in their sequence in time." In fact, 
 
 it is the old puzzle how to justify the attributing to a subject 
 something other than itself, and which the subject is not. 
 If " followed by B " is not the nature of A, then justify 
 your predication. If it is essential to A, then justify, first, 
 your taking A without it ; and in the next place show how, 
 with such an incongruous nature, A can succeed in being 
 more than unreal appearance" (p. 57). 
 
 Activity is condemned because " nothing can be active 
 without an occasion, and what is active, being made 
 thus by the occasion, is so far passive." Hence, " it is 
 certain that activity implies finitude, and otherwise 
 possesses no meaning." It cannot, therefore, be an 
 ultimate principle of explanation. Chap. viii. deals 
 with " things," but the preceding argument has " under- 
 mined and ruined " any meaning we can attach to the 
 term. " The thing is a thing only if its existence goes 
 beyond the now and extends into the past;" but "it 
 does not appear how this relation of sameness can 
 be real." "The identity of a thing lies in the view 
 you take of it." "We seem driven to the conclusion 
 that things are but appearances." 
 
 So far, therefore, "our facts have turned out to be 
 illusory," but we have been dealing up to this point 
 with " the inanimate," and in order to complete his 
 
A NEW THEOKY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 143 
 
 argument Mr Bradley goes on in the next two chapters 
 (chaps, ix. and x.) to criticise the claims of the Self 
 to reality. In the first he passes in review different 
 meanings of the self, and in the second he concludes 
 that the self simply presents "the old puzzle as to 
 the connection of diversity with unity." It will be 
 necessary to return upon various points in these im- 
 portant chapters, but we must first have Mr Bradley's 
 main line of thought before us and the conclusion 
 at which he arrives. It is sufficient, therefore, for the 
 present, to note his verdict on the self, and the ground 
 on which the verdict is explicitly based. "The con- 
 sciousness of personal identity," he curiously says, 
 " may be supposed to have some bearing on the reality 
 of the self." Most people are probably benighted 
 enough to think it has. 
 
 But to my mind [proceeds Mr Bradley] it appears to be 
 almost irrelevant. Of course the self, within limits and up 
 to a certain point, is the same. ... As long as there re- 
 mains in the self a certain basis of content, ideally the same, 
 so long may the self recall anything once associated with 
 that basis. . . . This, of course, shows that self-sameness 
 exists as a fact, and that hence somehow an identical self 
 is real. But, then, the question is how ? The question is 
 whether we can state the existence and the continuity of a 
 real self in a way which is intelligible, and which is not 
 
144 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 ruined by the difficulties of previous discussions. Because, 
 otherwise, we may have found an interesting fact, but most 
 assuredly we have not found a tenable view about reality. 
 . . . The end of metaphysics is to understand the uni- 
 verse, to find a way of thinking about facts in general which 
 is free from contradiction. . . . It is this, to repeat it 
 once more, on which everything turns. The diversity and 
 the unity must be brought to the light, and the principle 
 must be seen to comprehend these. But the self is so far 
 from supplying such a principle, that it seems, when not 
 hiding itself in obscurity, a mere bundle of discrepancies. 
 Our search has conducted us again, not to reality, but mere 
 appearance (pp. 113, 120). 
 
 The two short chapters on "Phenomenalism" and 
 " Things in Themselves," which conclude the First Book, 
 add nothing to this argument. They are rather of the 
 nature of appendices, which deal effectively with these 
 two phases of philosophic theory, as attempts either 
 to evade the philosophical problem altogether, or to 
 solve it by doubling it. As I am in complete agree- 
 ment with Mr Bradley 's arguments in these pages, 
 there is the less need to dwell upon them here. So I 
 pass at once to the opening chapters of the Second 
 Book, dealing with "The General Nature of Eeality," 
 and containing the counter -stroke to the preceding 
 negative polemic. 
 
 The first position taken up is at once important, for 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 145 
 
 it alone enables a start to be made. Phenomena have 
 been condemned as self-contradictory, but what is thus 
 rejected as appearance admittedly still exists. " It 
 cannot bodily be shelved and merely got rid of, and, 
 therefore, since it must fall somewhere, it must belong 
 to reality." Eeality, therefore, " must own," and some- 
 how include, appearance ; it cannot be less than appear- 
 ance. But whereas appearances, taken as real, proved 
 self-contradictory, the absolute or ultimate reality must 
 be " such that it does not contradict itself. This is our 
 first criterion a criterion which has been implicit 
 in all the preceding negative criticism." Accordingly... 
 we may say, concludes Mr Bradley, that 
 
 everything which appears is somehow real in such a way as 
 to be self-consistent. . . . Appearance must belong to 
 reality, and it must, therefore, be concordant and other than 
 it seems. The bewildering mass of phenomenal diversity 
 must hence somehow be at unity and self -consistent ; for it 
 cannot be elsewhere than in reality, and reality excludes dis- 
 cord. Or again, we may put it so ; the real is individual. 
 It is one in the sense that its positive character embraces 
 all deficiencies in an inclusive harmony (p. 140). 
 
 In short, " reality must be a single whole " " a single 
 system." In his second chapter Mr Bradley supple- 
 ments this "formal and abstract" definition of the 
 Absolute by identifying existence with "experience," 
 
 K 
 
146 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 laying down the position, almost in Berkeley's lan- 
 guage, that existence has no meaning apart from 
 sentient experience. " There is no being or fact out- 
 side of that which is commonly called psychical 
 existence." Any supposed fact, other than this, "is 
 a vicious abstraction whose existence is meaningless 
 nonsense, and is not possible." If we combine this 
 with the former position, " our conclusion, so far, will 
 be this, that the Absolute is one system, and that its 
 contents are nothing but sentient experience. It will, 
 hence, be a single and all-inclusive experience, which 
 embraces every partial diversity in concord." Finally, 
 Mr Bradley proceeds to ask whether we really have a 
 positive idea of an Absolute, thus defined as " one com- 
 prehensive sentience ; " and he answers that, while we 
 cannot fully realise its existence, its main features are 
 drawn from our own experience, and we have also 
 a suggestion there of the unity of a whole embracing 
 distinctions within itself. This we have in "mere 
 feeling or immediate presentation," where we experi- 
 ence as an undifferentiated whole, what we afterwards 
 proceed, in the exercise of relational thought, to analyse 
 into the known world of self and not -self, with all 
 its manifold objects and distinctions. Combining this 
 primitive experience of felt unity with the later ex- 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 147 
 
 perience of known diversity, we can recognise the 
 latter as a transitional stage, and reach the idea of 
 a higher experience in which thought shall, as it 
 were, return to the immediacy of feeling. "We can 
 form the general idea of an absolute intuition in which 
 phenomenal distinctions are merged; a whole become 
 immediate at a higher stage without losing any rich- 
 ness." This view of the Absolute is developed and 
 enforced in the immediately following chapter on 
 "Thought and Keality" (chap, xv.) which, in various 
 aspects, is one of the most important in the book. As 
 such, it will claim our attention in the sequel ; but it 
 is enough, in the meantime, to note a little more fully 
 the nature of the results arrived at. The position 
 reached is simply this, that "the relational form is a 
 compromise on which thought stands and which it 
 develops. It is an attempt to unite differences which 
 have broken out of the felt totality" (p. 180). It is 
 essentially an attempt to pass beyond itself and to 
 recapture this immediate unity. But, both in theory 
 and in practice, the attempt proves unsuccessful on 
 the basis of thought or relation ; it resolves itself 
 into the infinite progress. Thought's own ideal, there- 
 fore, can be reached only by passing beyond thought. 
 For us " this completion of thought beyond thought " 
 
148 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 necessarily "remains for ever an other." Still " thought 
 can form the idea of an apprehension, something like 
 feeling in directness, which contains all the character 
 sought by its relational efforts" "a total experience 
 where will and thought and feeling may all once more 
 be one," and where consequently the distinction between 
 thought and its object between subject and predicate 
 is likewise transcended. 1 
 
 We have now before us one complete phase of Mr 
 Bradley 's position and argumentation, and it is time, 
 therefore, to investigate critically the legitimacy of the 
 method and the value of the conclusion. Mr Bradley 
 started, as we saw, with two somewhat different defini- 
 tions of the Absolute ; and, in like manner, his criticism 
 throughout the First Book seems to rest upon two some- 
 what different principles. The one condemns pheno- 
 mena because they are fragmentary ; no object of 
 experience is by itself a res completa, an independent 
 and self-contained individual, strong in solid singleness, 
 self-explaining, harmonious and all-inclusive. What- 
 ever fact we take proves to be infected by external 
 relations, and so carries us beyond itself, and ultimately 
 brings in the whole context of the universe. Thus 
 1 See pp. 160, 172, 179, 181. 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 149 
 
 activity transforms itself into passivity, because we 
 cannot think of activity as (so to speak) a mere bolt 
 from the blue an unconditioned fiat out of a blank 
 eternity. The beginning of the activity of anything 
 depends, for our thinking, upon a stimulus from beyond 
 the nature of the thing itself ; and the thing, therefore, 
 is quite as much passive as active. This argument may 
 be applied all round. Thought cannot rest in any finite 
 individual, but is carried beyond it in an infinite pro- 
 gress. So with any portion of space or time in which 
 we arbitrarily and momentarily rest ; so with things, so 
 last of all with the finite self. For I do not imagine 
 that those who insist most strongly on the reality of the 
 self, and hold that " it provides us with a type by the 
 aid of which we may go on to comprehend the world/' 
 are at all inclined to assert its reality in Mr Bradley's 
 sense of all-inclusive self-sufficience. Obviously, the self 
 of any individual, in the determinations of its character 
 and the occasions of its activity, carries us beyond the 
 self, just as in the case of things which are not selves. 
 The self cannot be torn from its environment except by 
 a process of violent abstraction ; and the environment, 
 if we are to be exact, must be ultimately extended so 
 as to include all time and all existence. To my mind, 
 it requires no argument to establish the position that 
 
150 A NEW THEOKY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 there can be only one individual as a res completa, and 
 consequently, in Mr Bradley's sense, only one reality, 
 namely, the Absolute or the universe as a whole. To 
 fail to realise this is to fail to rise to the light of reason 
 at all ; it is, in Spinoza's phrase, to remain at the stage 
 of "imagination," with its blind substantiation of the 
 individuals of sense just as we find them, or seem to 
 find them. 
 
 In this whole line of argument, therefore including 
 his admirable exposure of the fallacy of a plurality of 
 independent reals Mr Bradley is certain to meet with 
 hearty acquiescence in most quarters that are worth 
 considering. But this line of argument does not seem 
 sufficient of itself to justify the sweeping condemnation 
 of phenomena as " mere appearance," " illusion," " self- 
 contradictory appearance," "irrational appearance," 
 " essentially made of inconsistencies," and the other 
 terms of excommunication in which Mr Bradley in- 
 dulges. Because a thing is not the Absolute, and never 
 pretended to be, it seems a little hard to "ruin" its 
 character by a string of bad names like this. And, as 
 a matter of fact, the " ruin " in which Mr Bradley in- 
 volves the phenomenal is more properly the consequence 
 of a second line of argument, which is on the whole 
 more prominent throughout the First Book. This argu- 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 151 
 
 ment is neither more nor less than the complete dis- 
 crepancy of the One and the Many the impossibility 
 of realising at all in thought any kind of identity in 
 diversity. The passages quoted in the earlier part of 
 this essay illustrate sufficiently the constant recur- 
 rence of this idea. At the very outset, in dealing with 
 substantive and adjective, it is referred to as " the 
 old dilemma." If you predicate what is different, you 
 ascribe to the subject what it is not ; and if you predi- 
 cate what is not different, you say nothing at all (p. 20). 
 The dilemma is, in truth, as old as the early Greek 
 nominalists and sceptics who denied on these grounds 
 the possibility of predication altogether, except in the 
 form of an identical proposition. To say that " Socrates 
 is good," would be to say the thing that is not; for 
 " Socrates " and " good " are not the same, but different. 
 "Socrates" is one idea, and "good" is another. "Socrates 
 is Socrates," and " good is good ; " but that the one should 
 be the other, is quite unintelligible. We are limited, 
 therefore, to the one kind of proposition which we 
 never make, A = A. Now, strange as it may seem, Mr 
 Bradley's First Book is, in essence, neither more nor less 
 than a restatement and re- enforcement of this sceptical 
 thesis. He adopts this logic of abstract identity 
 apparently without reserve, and because it brings him 
 
152 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 to a dead-lock, he pronounces the actual world to be 
 " unintelligible," " inconsistent," " self - contradictory," 
 " irrational," " untrue," " illusory." His multitudinous 
 repetitions seem designed to leave us in no doubt that 
 it is everywhere the same touchstone which he applies. 
 Thus, the conclusion of the third chapter, on " Eelation 
 and Quality," is, as we have seen, that a relational way 
 of thought is "a mere practical compromise, most 
 necessary, but in the end most indefensible." 
 
 We have to take reality [he continues] as Many, and to 
 take it as One, and to avoid contradiction. . . . But 
 when these inconsistencies are forced together, as in meta- 
 physics they must be, the result is an open and staring 
 discrepancy. . . . Our intellect, then, has been con- 
 demned to confusion and bankruptcy, and the reality has 
 been left outside uncomprehended (pp. 33, 34). 
 
 In the next chapter, " Space ... is a peculiar form 
 of the problem which we discussed in the last chapter, 
 and is a special attempt to combine the irreconcilable " 
 (p. 36). In the fifth chapter (in the passage already 
 quoted) the problem of change 
 
 points back to the dilemma of the One and the Many, the 
 differences and the identity, the adjectives and the thing, 
 the qualities and the relations. How anything can possibly 
 be anything else was a question which defied our efforts. 
 Change is little beyond an instance of this dilemma in 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 153 
 
 principle. . . . Change, it is obvious, must be a change 
 of something, and it is obvious, further, that it contains 
 diversity. Hence it asserts two of one, and so falls at once 
 under the condemnation of our previous chapters (p. 45). 
 
 So in the following chapter, on " Causation " : 
 
 If the sequence of the effect is different from the cause, 
 how is the ascription of the difference to be rationally 
 defended ? If, on the other hand, it is not different, then 
 causation does not exist, and its assertion is a farce (p. 55). 
 We assert something of something else. ... It 
 is the old puzzle, how to justify the attributing to a subject 
 something other than itself, and which the subject is not 
 (p. 57). 
 
 Having found things "go to pieces" when confronted 
 with this test, he finds the same result on applying it 
 to the self. 
 
 It is the old puzzle as to the connection of diversity with 
 unity. As the diversity becomes more complex and the 
 unity grows more concrete, we have, so far, found that our 
 difficulties steadily increase, and the expectation of a sudden 
 change and a happy solution, when we arrive at the self, 
 seems hence little warranted. . . . You may say that 
 we are each assured of our personal identity in a way in 
 which we are not assured of the sameness of things. But 
 this is unfortunately quite irrelevant to the question. That 
 selves exist, and are identical in some sense, is indubitable. 
 But the doubt is whether their sameness, as we apprehend 
 it, is really intelligible. . . . Does it give an experience 
 
154 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 by the help of which we can really understand the way in 
 which diversity is harmonised 1 (pp. 103, 104). 
 
 The self, as feeling, thrusts upon us, " in a still more 
 apparent form, the discrepancy that lies between 
 identity and diversity, immediate oneness and relation" 
 (p. 107). If, again, self-consciousness is proposed as 
 " a special way of intuition or perception," we are 
 forced to ask (supposing such a " self-apprehension of 
 the self as one and many " to exist) how it can " satisfy 
 the claims of understanding." "For the contents of 
 the intuition (this many in one), if you try to re- 
 construct * them relationally, fall asunder forthwith. 
 I am, in short, compelled to this conclusion, 
 even if your intuition is a fact, it is not an under- 
 standing of the self or of the world. It is a mere 
 experience" (p. 108). In whatever aspect the self is 
 taken, therefore, it does not teach us " how to under- 
 stand diversity or unity" (p. 112). What we want 
 is " a view . . . combining differences in one so 
 as to turn the edge of criticism" (p. 114), and this 
 we have not met with. The self, as will or volition, 
 leaves us involved in all "the old troubles as to 
 
 1 The italics in the passage last quoted are Mr Bradley 's own, and I 
 desire specially to call attention to the emphasis, as it corroborates my 
 contention and contains the key to Mr Bradley's position. 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 155 
 
 diversity in union with sameness " (p. 115). In com- 
 menting on the theory of Monads, towards the close 
 of his discussion, he repeats his old question : 
 
 Will it in the least show us how 1 the diversity can exist 
 in harmony with the oneness, (p. 118). . . . "We have 
 found so far [he says] that diversity and unity cannot be 
 reconciled. Both in the existence of the whole self in 
 relation with its contents, and in the various special forms 
 which that existence takes, we have encountered everywhere 
 the same trouble. We have had features which must come 
 together, and yet were willing to do so in no way that we 
 could find. In the self there is a variety, and in the self 
 there is an unity ; but in attempting to understand how, we 
 fall into inconsistencies which, therefore, cannot be truth 
 (p. 118). 
 
 The self, he finally concludes, does not yield us " any 
 defensible thought, any intellectual principle, ly which 
 it is possible to understand how diversity can be com- 
 prehended in unity. It is this, to repeat it once more, 
 on which everything turns. The diversity and the 
 unity must be brought to the light, and the principle 
 must be seen to comprehend these" (pp. 119, 120). 
 The short chapter on " Phenomenalism " adds two 
 further references to " the metaphysical problem of 
 the Many in One" (pp. 124, 125); and, in the last 
 chapter, things-in-themselves are found to " offer pre- 
 
 1 The italics are again Mr Bradley's own. 
 
156 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 cisely the old jungle in which no way could be found " 
 (p. 130). 
 
 I have multiplied these references, at the risk of 
 wearying the reader, in order to convince him, if he 
 needs convincing, of the uniform and persistent nature 
 of Mr Bradley 's demand. It seems to me, moreover, 
 that Mr Bradley's position here conditions the whole 
 nature of the results he arrives at later. For the logic 
 of abstract identity which he brings into the field 
 against phenomena is fatal in the end to his Absolute 
 also, reducing it, in spite of Mr Bradley's disclaimer 
 in spite of his sincere endeavour to avoid such a con- 
 summation to the undifferentiated unity of Spinoza's 
 Substance. According to this logic, each qualityless 
 point remains identical with itself (A = A), and so 
 does each unreferred quality, flying loose in the heaven 
 of abstraction (red is red, a is a, and b is 5). But the 
 living synthesis of fact the qualified thing, A that is 
 a, b, c, d, any number of differences, in unity this, if 
 not actually denied as in some sense existing, is yet 
 declared to be unintelligible, hopelessly contradictory. 
 But surely such an argument marks the very acme of 
 logical perversity. Such an argument, in truth, imports 
 into predication a meaning or intention of which predi- 
 cation never dreams. When we say "man is mortal," 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 157 
 
 or "the beech has a smooth stem," we do not mean 
 that the concept " man " is identical with the concept 
 " mortal," or that the two concepts " beech " and 
 " smooth - stemmed " are actually one and the same 
 concept. What we mean is that the reality, which 
 we have already qualified as "man" or "beech," 
 is further qualified as " mortal " or " smooth-stemmed." 
 All predication, in short, is about facts, not about 
 concepts except in the special cases where we 
 happen to be defining a word. Certainly every 
 concept or meaning remains itself, and only itself, 
 to all eternity. That at least is the convention on 
 which logic stands; our terms must bear the same 
 meaning throughout, otherwise all reasoning would be 
 impossible. The law of identity or of non-contradiction 
 means no more than this obviously indispensable con- 
 vention a convention which, if we are so minded, we 
 may truthfully describe as a fundamental and necessary 
 law of thought, so long as we see clearly its innocent 
 and unobtrusive meaning. The law of identity says 
 that, if we predicate mortality of man, we cannot also 
 predicate non-mortality ; it says that, if it is the nature 
 of the beech to be smooth - stemmed, it cannot also 
 be its nature to be rough-stemmed. But, as to the 
 nature of predication, or as to the possibility or impos- 
 
158 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 sibility of a thing existing as the unity of diverse qual- 
 ities, it gives no verdict one way or another. These 
 are questions of fact or of metaphysics which lie 
 beyond its scope. To proceed, therefore, on the 
 strength of the law of identity, to condemn the idea 
 of a thing possessing qualities, or, in general, the idea 
 of unity in diversity, as a contradiction in terms, is 
 logically a complete nerd/Baa-is et? aXXo <yevos. 
 
 Now Mr Bradley tells us that "a thing without 
 qualities is clearly unreal" (p. 130), and in his 
 chapter on "Phenomenalism" he proves that the 
 opposite attempt, to rest in qualities without a thing, 
 is equally untrue to reality. But his own doctrine is 
 that the attempt to think a thing with qualities, or, in 
 general, the attempt to think a unity in diversity, ends 
 in hopeless contradiction. It looks, therefore, as if 
 thought were brought face to face with an absolute 
 impasse. The whole force of his argument appears, 
 however, to rest on this illegitimate extension to reality 
 or experience of a law which holds true only of con- 
 cepts, as concepts, in the narrow sense just explained. 
 Eeality, it may be said boldly, is essentially a many-in- 
 one, and this holds true of any part of reality i.e., of 
 any existent fact. This, it seems to me, was the in- 
 sight that lent force and cogency to Hegel's life-long 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 159 
 
 polemic against the abstract understanding and its 
 vaunted law of non-contradiction. Against its abstract 
 identity he held up the concrete facts of experience: 
 there is nothing which is a mere one, an eternal self- 
 sameness. Identity only exists through difference, 
 unity through multiplicity. Such is the constant 
 thesis of the Hegelian philosophy, of which Mr 
 Bradley is one of the profoundest students; and it 
 was, I confess, a surprise to me to find the ancient 
 weapon of the sceptical schools so carefully furbished 
 up and so confidently brandished. All the more so, 
 because Mr Bradley himself, aliud agenda with the 
 atomic sensationalism of the English tradition in view 
 gives a most impressive statement of the true position, 
 and declares in his own emphatic way that "every 
 movement of our intellect rests wholly upon it," and 
 that the contrary opinion is founded upon "one-sided 
 and uncritical metaphysics," or " in short had no basis 
 but confusion and traditional prejudice" (pp. 349-351). 
 " There will be neither change nor endurance, and still 
 less motion through space of an identical body ; there 
 will neither be selves nor things, nor, in brief, any 
 intelligible fact, unless on the assumption that sameness 
 in diversity is real. Apart from this main principle 
 of construction, we should be confined to the feeling 
 
160 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 of a single moment." Now these " intelligible facts" are 
 the very facts paraded as unintelligible in Book I. 
 
 Hegel no doubt gave a dangerous opening to mis- 
 conception, when he spoke of the dialectic as exhibiting 
 itself in the conceptions of the " Logic." It is only by 
 a sustained use of metaphor that the appearance of 
 success is obtained ; for conceptions, as such, are pre- 
 cisely what do not " pass over " into their opposites. 
 The conception "One" never becomes the conception 
 " Many." What is true is, that every fact can be shown 
 to combine in itself these two aspects. It is in this 
 way that Hegel uses the nature of reality to explode, 
 and (by exploding) to unite, the fixed opposites of con- 
 ceptual thought. These opposites, it must be remem- 
 bered, are, and remain, opposites in the abstract world 
 of logic ; viewed, that is to say, simply as meanings, the 
 one remains just the opposite of the other. But this 
 opposition of the two as meanings, as concepts, tells 
 us nothing about the possibility or impossibility of a 
 fact to which, in different aspects, both shall be applic- 
 able. On that the nature of reality itself must decide : 
 we must appeal to experience. 
 
 In making this appeal, we have no need to go further 
 than the fact of our own existence, which is indeed 
 the key of the whole position. The self is very severely 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 161 
 
 handled by Mr Bradley, though he does admit at the 
 close that it is " no doubt the highest form of experience 
 which we have" (p. 119). His argument consists 
 largely in enumerating, and setting against one another, 
 different senses in which the term "self" has been, 
 or is currently, used. Some of these may be dismissed 
 as irrelevant that is to say, we may surrender them 
 at once to Mr Bradley's criticism as of no particular 
 interest. The remainder of his argument seems to me 
 to rest partly on the first line of thought viz., that 
 no self of which we have experience is an absolute, 
 perfect, or self-sufficient unity, which, again, may be 
 fully granted and partly on the practical difficulty 
 of precisely defining the amount of diversity which 
 shall be included within the unity of the individual 
 self. Here also many a point might be surrendered 
 to meet Mr Bradley's criticism. He reminds us, for 
 example, that " in the lifetime of a man there are 
 irreparable changes. Is he literally not the same 
 man if loss, or death, or love, or banishment has turned 
 the current of his life ? " (p. 79.) This is a question 
 of degree. The wrench may be so great as actually, 
 in the common phrase, to unhinge the mind; and in 
 that case, we admittedly cease to regard the man as the 
 same. His personality is altogether suspended; he 
 
 L 
 
162 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 is insane. So with " the strange selves of hypnotism," 
 to which Mr Bradley several times refers. Such ab- 
 normalities involve practical difficulties, just like the 
 "monsters" to which Locke so frequently recurs, or 
 the cases where it may be difficult to decide whether 
 an object belongs to the animal or the vegetable 
 kingdom. But they do not touch the question of 
 principle with which we are here concerned. It is 
 not necessary that a self should be an all-inclusive 
 whole ; nor is it necessary that we should be able, in 
 every case, to say what is a self and what is not a 
 self. It is enough if there is such a thing as self- 
 consciousness or personal identity at all. For that 
 self - consciousness is the living experience of unity 
 in diversity. 
 
 Now Mr Bradley admits that "of course the self, 
 within limits and up to a certain point, is the" same," 
 though, as we saw, he strangely treats this conscious- 
 ness of personal identity as " almost irrelevant." The 
 key to this utterance is found in the following page, 
 where he adds, " This, of course, shows that self- 
 sameness exists as a fact, and that hence somehow 
 an identical self must be real. But then the ques- 
 tion is how?" (p. 113.) To this I see no answer 
 save Lotze's retort in similar circumstances, that 
 
A NEW THEOEY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 163 
 
 such a question is as unreasonable, and as perfectly 
 impossible to satisfy, as the demand to know how 
 being is made. How there comes to be existence 
 at all, and how existence or experience in its basal 
 characteristics comes to be what it is these are 
 questions which, so far as one can see, omniscience 
 itself would not enable us to answer. The funda- 
 mental nature of experience may enable us to ex- 
 plain derivatively any special feature of experience; 
 but that fundamental nature itself must be learned 
 from experience and simply accepted. Now I main- 
 tain that unity in multiplicity, identity in diversity, 
 is just the ultimate nature of universal experience. 
 Such a unity or identity is lived or experienced in 
 every instance of self - conscious existence ; and it 
 cannot be other than a misleading use of language to 
 speak of our most intimate experience, the ultimate 
 bed-rock of fact, as unintelligible or contradictory. 
 The whole procedure of thought belies such a sup- 
 position; for, instead of stumbling over this unity 
 and identity as unintelligible, we proceed to make it 
 the measure or standard of the intelligibility of every- 
 thing else. The thing and its qualities is a mere 
 analogue of the self as a many in one ; all our terms 
 of explanation, all the categories of thought, are drawn 
 
164 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 in like manner from the life of the self. They either 
 reproduce it with more- or less fulness, or, if they 
 do not do this, then they express one or other of its 
 aspects. But it is our own fault if we choose to 
 substantiate these aspects, stated thus for the moment 
 in logical or ideal separation ; for they are never given 
 or experienced separately. On the contrary, their 
 concrete unity is the one fact behind which we cannot 
 go. Thought, when it occupies itself in dissecting its 
 own nature, is led into many a bog by the will-o'-the 
 wisp of a false subtlety by none more so than by 
 this phantasm of abstract identity. But thought, 
 which is directed on its object, and bent only on 
 learning more and more of the nature of things, never 
 seeks thus to overleap itself, and consequently finds 
 none of the unintelligibility of which Mr Bradley 
 complains. In truth, as Berkeley happily puts it, 
 philosophers are often indebted to their own pre- 
 conceptions "for being ignorant of what everybody 
 else knows perfectly well." 
 
 And seriously, according to the well-worn brocard, 
 if water chokes us what shall we drink ? If our own 
 existence is unintelligible to us, where are we likely 
 to find intelligibility ? If the one and the many 
 are as absolutely incompatible as they have been 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 165 
 
 represented, how are they to be brought together at 
 all ? In other words, if the criticism in the First Book 
 is really valid, it would seem to be equally fatal to the 
 construction of the Absolute attempted in the Second. 
 For the Absolute, we have seen, must " own " or include 
 appearances, and it must do so in such a way as to 
 exclude contradiction. It is to be "a single and all- 
 inclusive experience, which embraces every partial 
 diversity in concord " (p. 147). Doubtless this is our 
 ideal of what an Absolute should be ; but surely (to 
 quote Mr Bradley's own words) we have here "at 
 once upon our hands the One and the Many." This 
 Absolute " offers precisely the old jungle in which no 
 way could be found " ; and it is irrational to suppose 
 that a sheer contradiction will prove more amenable, 
 when multiplied to infinity, and housed in the Absolute. 
 An unkind critic might say, indeed, with some show 
 of reason, that Mr Bradley has the air of swallowing 
 at a gulp, in Book II., what he had choked over in the 
 successive chapters of Book I. For, if, as was insisted 
 in the case of the self, " the question is how," the Second 
 Book is full of the most ample acknowledgments that 
 the " how " remains as insoluble as ever. " Certainly 
 in the end," we are told, " to know how the One and 
 the Many are united is beyond our powers. But in 
 
166 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 the Absolute, somehow, we are convinced the problem 
 is solved" (p. 281). But this is the language of pious 
 conviction rather than of scientific demonstration ; and 
 though the attentive reader discerns plainly the author's 
 resolve that the Absolute has got to include all differ- 
 ences and solve all contradictions, he will be apt to 
 feel that the contradictions forced upon his notice 
 throughout the book have been handed back to him, 
 to digest as best he may. 
 
 In the end, this impression would not, I think, be 
 substantially incorrect ; and yet it would certainly not 
 be entirely just to Mr Bradley, for he certainly does 
 attempt in the Second Book to give in outline a theory 
 of the " how." What he would undoubtedly have us 
 regard as his real contribution towards a solution of 
 the difficulty, is to be found in the chapter on " Thought 
 and Eeality." He still maintains that the "contra- 
 diction " is insoluble on the level of relational thought ; 
 but founding in this chapter on the analogy of feeling, 
 as containing the immediate experience of a whole, 
 he throws out the idea of a supra-relational existence 
 of the Absolute, which shall, so to speak, fuse once 
 more, in an immediate unity, the differences which 
 the process of knowledge has shown were implicit 
 in the primitive undifferentiated unity of feeling. On 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 167 
 
 examination, however, it will be found, I think, that, 
 in the end, this theory meets the difficulty by abolish- 
 ing the differences. Instead, therefore, of being a real 
 solution, it is at bottom a reaffirmation of Mr Bradley's 
 fundamental preconception as to the incompatibility 
 of the One and the Many. Notwithstanding this, 
 the presentation of the theory is full of speculative 
 interest. 
 
 It is not a new thing in philosophy to attempt to 
 name, and even to conceive, the divine life in this way, 
 as a knowledge that is more than relational, that does 
 not proceed from part to part, but sees the whole in every 
 part, or rather sees all differences in unity, by a species 
 of immediate apprehension or intuition. So much may 
 be said to be a commonplace of philosophical theology. 
 And in the Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy of 
 Germany, as is well known, the doctrine of a per- 
 ceptive understanding or an intellectual intuition played 
 an important part. But what lends importance to this 
 fresh attempt to put a meaning into the phrase is the 
 independence of the treatment the way in which the 
 idea is seen to grow organically out of the author's 
 whole scheme of thought and also the deliberate 
 endeavour which is made really "to form the idea" 
 
168 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 of such an apprehension, even though only " in vague 
 generality." But, ungracious return as it may seem 
 for the metaphysical feast which Mr Bradley has 
 spread, the objection must still be urged that this 
 supra-relational reconciliation either remains, on the 
 one hand, altogether a name for " we know not what," 
 or, on the other hand, if we press the analogy of feeling, 
 as Mr Bradley frequently does, and endeavour to con- 
 struct, even in vague generality, the nature of the 
 absolute experience, the conviction is forced upon 
 us that this Absolute excludes contradiction, only 
 because it excludes all variety and difference. In the 
 former case, the diversity is acknowledged, but no 
 light is thrown upon the problem of combining Many 
 in One without contradiction. " In the end," says Mr 
 Bradley, "the whole diversity must be attributed as 
 adjectives to a unity which is not known" (p. 469). 
 Our assertion of a unity becomes then no more than 
 an expression of the faith that with God all things 
 are possible. In the latter case, finite existence is an 
 illusion, which ceases when the standpoint of the 
 Absolute is reached. 
 
 Finite existence is said to be harmonised, or, in Mr 
 Bradley's favourite expression, "transmuted" in the 
 Absolute ; but for transmuted, we also find such sinister 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 169 
 
 synonyms as "suppressed," "dissolved," "lost." In 
 one place, "transmuted and destroyed" are expressly 
 coupled ; while, in another, we are told that the " pro- 
 cess of correction " which finite existence undergoes in 
 the Absolute may " entirely dissipate its nature." 
 
 Of course, Mr Bradley protests in numerous passages 
 against this interpretation of his Absolute as a blank 
 or undifferentiated unity, like Spinoza's Substance or 
 Schelling's Neutrum, the night in which all cows are 
 black. And we may readily believe that he does not 
 mean simply to " merge " or " fuse " all distinctions into 
 an indistinguishable mass, but somehow to retain them, 
 in a richer form, in a single concrete experience. I 
 will go further, and say that one whole line of Mr 
 Bradley's thought the line in which he stands nearest 
 to Hegel leads him to emphasise the function of differ- 
 ence and the permanence of distinctions even within 
 the Absolute. But that line of thought is more than 
 neutralised by the Spinozistic or Schellingian tendency 
 which we are at present considering. The best of 
 intentions cannot avail him, therefore, against the 
 manifest destiny of this way of thinking. 
 
 In the very title of his book, Mr Bradley seems to 
 me to have started upon the road which leads to this 
 I, for " appearance " is certainly, on the whole, a 
 
170 A NEW THEOKY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 term of condemnation ; and, as we have seen, it is 
 frequently qualified throughout the first book, and 
 also in the second, as " mere appearance," and even 
 as " illusion." Appearance, therefore, takes on, whether 
 we will or no, the sense of illusory or unreal. 
 
 And it is to be observed that Mr Bradley is con- 
 sistent, to the end, in his refusal to tolerate difference. 
 The distinction of subject and predicate remains to 
 him a contradiction, an imperfection, and consequently 
 must disappear in the Absolute ; and, with it, the dis- 
 tinction of subject and object from which it is derived. 
 And that the last vestige of difference may be seen to 
 disappear from the pure aether of " all-pervasive trans- 
 fusion," we have the position pushed to its most 
 quixotic length in the sections of the concluding 
 chapter which remind us that "not even absolute 
 truth is quite true." It is not true, for the extra- 
 ordinary reason that it is only true of reality ; it is not 
 itself reality. The fatal "difference between subject 
 and predicate " remains, and therefore " even absolute 
 truth in the end seems thus to turn out erroneous " ! 
 I cannot but think that speculation is here upon an 
 entirely false track. What Mr Bradley really means, 
 I suppose, is to renew his famous, and in my view 
 important, protest against the identification of reality 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 171 
 
 with "an unearthly ballet of bloodless categories." 
 He is arguing against the tendency, observable in some 
 representatives of Hegelian thought, to overstate the 
 position and function of knowledge. Because know- 
 ledge (especially in its highest form as philosophy) 
 is in its own sphere, as Mr Bradley puts it, " utterly 
 all-inclusive " that is, because knowledge, if perfect, 
 may be said ideally to grasp or include every aspect 
 of reality these thinkers speak as if such knowledge 
 were the reality " bodily," as if the universe were 
 nothing but an intellectual process, a species of dia- 
 lectic. Against this tendency Mr Bradley rightly 
 urges, that " truth " or perfect knowledge is only one 
 aspect of the universe or of experience. "The uni- 
 verse is not known, and it never, as a whole, can be 
 known, in such a sense that knowledge would be the 
 same as experience or reality " (p. 547). " This general 
 character of reality is not reality itself " (p. 547). 
 Truth is not intellectually defective or limited, for the 
 idea of an unknowable may easily be shown to be 
 self-contradictory; it is not, therefore, "intellectually 
 corrigible " " it cannot be intellectually transcended." 
 Still there are other aspects of experience besides the 
 intellectual, and if we are to have reality " bodily," we 
 must "take in the remaining aspects of experience." 
 
172 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 But this sound and valuable contention is surely pre- 
 sented in a misleading, form, when Mr Bradley talks 
 of an " internal discrepancy " which belongs to truth's 
 proper character, and represents truth as achieving 
 its consummation "in passing beyond itself, and in 
 abolishing the difference between the subject and 
 predicate " (p. 547). For " in this passage the proper 
 nature of truth is, of course, transformed and perishes." 
 But this extinction of difference throws us back at once 
 on the distinctionless supra-essential one of mysticism, 
 in which all " details are utterly pervaded and em- 
 braced." The collapse of the distinction between 
 subject and predicate (or subject and object) means, 
 however, the extinction of self-consciousness altogether, 
 and throws us back upon the state of dull, diffused 
 feeling, which we suppose to be asymptotically ap- 
 proached in the lowest organisms, and from which 
 (in the same asymptotic fashion) we are accustomed 
 to derive the beginnings of conscious life. Here, there- 
 fore, extremes would meet with a vengeance, and the 
 highest become interchangeable with the lowest." 
 
 Dissatisfaction with the form of knowledge as such 
 seems to me, I must confess, chimerical ; and I am 
 sure that repudiation of it leads not to any higher 
 unity, but to the pit of undifferentiated substance out 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 173 
 
 of which Hegel dug philosophy. And I venture to 
 add that this is verified in Mr Bradley's own case. 
 On this whole side of his thought, he seems to me to 
 reproduce in essence, and often almost in expression, 
 the Spinozistic doctrine of " imagination," which re- 
 duces finite existence to a species of illusion. No 
 doubt there were two tendencies at strife in Spinoza 
 also. But his dominant thought is, " all determination 
 is negation " ; and therefore all determinations are de- 
 voured, like clouds before the sun, in the white light 
 of the unica substantia. But if finite experience is 
 illusory, and its distinctions simply disappear, then, 
 of necessity, the unity which we reach by the denial 
 of these distinctions is quite characterless ; we have 
 illusion on the one side, and, as the counter -stroke, 
 nonentity on the other. For does not Erigena tell us 
 at the end of a similar line of thought, " Deus propter 
 excellentiam non immerito nihil vocatur " a phrase the 
 piety of which seems to me with difficulty to conceal 
 its humour ? 
 
 Mr Bradley displays an extraordinary fertility in 
 metaphors to describe the consummation of finite ap- 
 pearance in the Absolute; but the nature of these 
 metaphors involuntarily confirms the view of his 
 Absolute which we have already arrived at on general 
 
174 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 principles. Appearances are merged, fused, blended, 
 absorbed, run together,, dissolved in a higher unity, 
 transformed, transmuted ; but to transform is found 
 to mean the same thing as to dissipate, and to trans- 
 mute is to " destroy " or to " suppress." To " embrace " 
 and " harmonise " self-consciousness by transmuting 
 and suppressing it as such (p. 183) recalls too vividly 
 the Roman method of pacification : ubi solitudinem 
 faciunt, pacem appellant. And if Spinoza's Absolute 
 has been called a lion's den, the description is at least 
 as applicable to Mr Bradley's. " All the content, which 
 the struggle has generated, is brought home and is laid 
 to rest undiminished in the perfect" (p. 244). Does 
 not this suggest the stillness of the grave ? Or when 
 we are told that " the finites blend and are resolved " 
 (p. 429); that "every finite diversity is supplemented 
 and transformed ; its private character remains and is 
 but neutralised by complement and addition " ; does it 
 not seem like saying " yes " and " no " in the same 
 breath ? How can a private character remain, if it is 
 neutralised ? Plus and minus are equivalent to noth- 
 ing; our result is a blank Schellingian Neutrum. 
 And Mr Bradley's statement, that " the theoretic ob- 
 ject moves towards a consummation in which all dis- 
 tinction and all ideality must be suppressed," is almost 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 175 
 
 verbally identical with Schelling's account of the ulti- 
 mate goal of the finite Ego. 
 
 The ultimate goal of the finite Ego is enlargement of its 
 sphere till the attainment of identity with the infinite Ego. 
 But the infinite Ego knows no object, and possesses, there- 
 fore, no consciousness or unity of consciousness, such as we 
 mean by personality. Consequently, the ultimate goal of 
 all endeavour may also be represented as enlargement of 
 the personality to infinity that is to say, as its annihil- 
 at'on. The ultimate goal of the finite Ego, and not only 
 of it but also of the Non-Ego the final goal, therefore, of 
 the world is its annihilation as a world. 1 
 
 The coincidence seems worth noting, because it in- 
 dicates that both thinkers are haunted by the same 
 ideal, the ideal against which Hegel protests. 
 
 So again, when talking of the finite self, Mr Bradley 
 uses a metaphor which, though he excuses its " mise- 
 rable inaccuracy," I cannot help regarding as exceed- 
 ingly significant in this connection. " Because I can- 
 not spread out my window until all is transparent, and 
 all windows disappear, this does not justify me in insist- 
 ing on my window-frame's rigidity. For that frame 
 has, as such, no existence in reality, but only in our 
 impotence " (p. 253). This seems to me as exact a re- 
 production as can well be imagined of the Spinozistic 
 
 1 Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie, 14. 
 
176 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 doctrine of imaginatio. The window-frames of the self 
 disappear or melt away, because in reality they do not 
 exist at all ; it is our impotence which causes us to 
 imagine this severance from others and from the source 
 of all. According to the metaphor by which Erdmann 
 illustrates Spinoza's system, wipe out from any spatial 
 surface the lines which mark it off into distinct figures, 
 and pure or empty space remains. Abolish, in like 
 manner, all window -frames, and "limited transpar- 
 encies " disappear, as Mr Bradley puts it, in " an 
 all-embracing clearness." But, as we know, the dis- 
 tinction of subject and object has disappeared with 
 the other distinctions of finite appearance ; and the 
 clearness, therefore, is not a vision seen by any self. 
 It is the viewless unity of the absolutely infinite 
 Substance. 
 
 On whatever line of metaphor or analogy we follow 
 Mr Bradley, the same result is arrived at the same 
 inherent tendency of his thought is revealed. This is 
 curiously seen in his recurring illustration from Love. 
 Thought, he says, desires "a consummation in which 
 it is lost." And he adds, by way of establishing such 
 a possibility, " does not the river run into the sea and 
 the self lose itself in love ? " (p. 173.) The river does 
 run into the sea, but so far is the self from losing it- 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 177 
 
 self in love, that it may be said therein to attain to its 
 intensest realisation not realisation in Mr Bradley's 
 equivocal sense of " disappearing " or " ceasing," but 
 realisation in the sense of intensest life and enjoyment 
 in that particular finite centre. So, again, Mr Bradley 
 tells us (p. 182) that, in feeling, thought, or volition, the 
 one reality is present in " a form which does not satisfy." 
 " In each it longs for that absolute self-fruition which 
 comes only when the self bursts its limits and blends 
 with another finite self." But the self never " bursts " 
 and " blends " in the way suggested. In all enjoyment, 
 in all fruition, there is the return of the self upon 
 itself, without which consciousness would be impossible. 
 What is meant by a self- fruition, in which the self 
 disappears ? I do not mean to deny that in extreme 
 sensual passion, and in the curiously allied mystical 
 straining to swoon, as it were, into Deity, this self- 
 deception is observable as to the goal pursued. But I 
 assert that, in both cases, the desire is self-contradic- 
 tory ; for of love, whether sexual or divine, the poet's 
 words (in another sense) are true, that its dearest 
 bond is "like in difference." If difference could be 
 abolished, whether as regards two human beings or 
 as regards a finite individual and its creative source, 
 " sweet love were slain " its very conditions would be 
 
 M 
 
178 A NEW THEOKY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 destroyed. Consciousness itself would be abolished, 
 existence would collapse into nothingness. 
 
 We come back, therefore, to our main contention. 
 There is no contradiction in the form of knowledge as 
 such, nor in finite experience merely on the ground 
 that it is in this form. On the contrary, knowledge 
 is rather, as Hegel said, the absolute relation ; and all 
 speculation which proceeds by repudiation of this form 
 is found historically to lead straight to the " abyss " of 
 the older mystics. Mr Bradley's speculation simply 
 repeats this lesson. Clearly, the finite is, in Mr Brad- 
 ley's phrase, essentially self-transcendent. That is as 
 much as to say, more simply, that our experience is 
 fragmentary ; and however much we enlarge it, it still 
 remains fragmentary. On all sides it seems to stretch 
 infinitely beyond itself. Knowledge, it cannot be denied, 
 is in our experience an infinite progress ; and if to have 
 this character is to be contradictory, then the charge 
 must be freely admitted. But it does not seem as if 
 this defect this contradiction were inherent in the 
 form of knowledge as such (the form of subject-object, 
 unity in difference) ; the cause lies rather in our finite 
 position, as that is determined in time and space. We 
 work along infinite radii from an individual locus, but 
 we cannot actually transport ourselves, as it were, to 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 179 
 
 the central hearth of the universe, from which we con- 
 ceive that all may possibly be seen resumed into unity 
 as a harmonious system. For an intelligence occupying 
 that standpoint, the contradictions of finite experience 
 might possibly disappear, without any abandonment of 
 the form of knowledge. / But what is quite plain is, 
 that we cannot by any possibility conceive the nature 
 of that insight. We cannot step out of the infinite 
 progress ourselves. So it is that in Spinoza's system 
 the two sides are never brought together. We may 
 transcend "imagination," and refuse to take facts in 
 isolation ; we may trace out endlessly the dependence 
 of any given fact upon the infinite series of its de- 
 termining causes (nay, upon an infinite number of such 
 converging series), but we never reach the absolute 
 Substance, the immanent cause of the whole. So from 
 the other side there is no process of self-determination 
 by which we can pass from Substance to its infinite 
 attributes, or from any attribute to its particular finite 
 modes. If we could really contemplate existence from 
 the point of view of the Absolute, doubtless the deriva- 
 tion of the finite world might not be so inexplicable; 
 but we never do reach that specular mount. When 
 we attempt to assume such a standpoint, the result is, 
 as with Spinoza, simply emptiness. Abstracting from 
 
180 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 the finite, we have nothing left within our grasp. So 
 it is again with Schelling.; and the side of Mr Bradley's 
 thought which we have been considering verifies this 
 experience afresh. 
 
 Moreover, an analysis of the arguments by which 
 Mr Bradley reaches his Absolute throws, I think, an 
 instructive light upon its nature, and upon the value 
 which the result can have for us. The Absolute is a 
 high-sounding title, and rouses proportionate expecta- 
 tions. Let us inquire whether these are satisfied ; let 
 us ask ourselves precisely how much Mr Bradley's argu- 
 ments suffice to establish. "Beality," he says, "must 
 be a single whole." " The character of the real is to 
 possess everything phenomenal in a harmonious form." 
 Absolute Eeality, therefore, " embraces all differences in 
 an inclusive harmony " (pp. 140, 143). " The standard " 
 is always "the same," and it is applied always under 
 the double form of inclusiveness and harmony" (p. 
 371). Now if this were advanced as a definition of 
 the Absolute, it would obviously be a true, though not 
 an exhaustive, definition. Taken as implying the ex- 
 istence of the Absolute, it might also be accepted as 
 the expression of an inextinguishable metaphysical 
 faith. But when the Absolute in this sense is thrust 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 181 
 
 upon us as "indubitably real," something which it is 
 actually impossible to doubt, the very excess of pro- 
 testation awakens suspicion as to how much the har- 
 mony and all-inclusiveness imply. And upon scrutiny, 
 it seems to me, I must confess, that the assertion re- 
 solves itself into something very like an identical 
 proposition. The mere consideration, it might be 
 urged, that the universe exists that Being is proves 
 that it is in some sense a harmony. All its aspects 
 co -exist, and the business of the universe goes on. 
 Then, as to the systematic unity of the real, I doubt 
 much, here too, whether what is really proved is not 
 unduly magnified by the nature of the terms employed. 
 Mr Bradley successfully disposes of the idea of a 
 plurality of reals ; for each real would in that case be 
 a universe by itself, or rather a bare unqualified point, 
 and plurality could never emerge. The mere co-exist- 
 ence of objects in Knowledge the fact that we are 
 able to pass from one object to another is sufficient 
 proof that they are not absolutely independent reals, 
 but exist as parts of one universe that is, exist, in 
 some sense, together. To suppose anything else would 
 be to imagine the continuity of existence to come, as it 
 were, suddenly to a stop in mecliis rebus. But does the 
 postulate that the universe is one, in this sense, carry 
 
182 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 us beyond the fact which it explains or names, the 
 fact that we are able to pass indefinitely from one fact 
 to other facts, reducing them to law as we proceed ? 
 Does it carry us beyond the infinite progress of finite 
 knowledge, and give us any real idea of an experience 
 which resumes the life of all the worlds in a central or 
 focal unity? I do not see that it does. Yet unity, 
 harmony, system, must mean more than the almost 
 tautologous result we have just considered, if their 
 presence or absence is to be of any vital concern to 
 men. 
 
 But it will be said that these formal and abstract 
 criteria must be supplemented by the further prin- 
 ciple that reality, existence of any kind, is one with 
 " sentience " or " sentient experience." Even if this 
 be granted, however, I do not see that Mr Bradley's 
 criteria enable us to pass from an aggregate of experi- 
 ence to " one comprehensive sentience " or " total 
 experience " (elsewhere spoken of as " an absolute 
 intuition," " an individual intuition ") in the sense of 
 a living, or, if I may so express myself again, a focal 
 unity. They do not guarantee unity or harmony, ex- 
 cept in the abstract and tautological sense already con- 
 sidered ; and the fact that all the varieties of sentient 
 experience coexist somehow, and are therefore com- 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 183 
 
 patible resulting even in a balance of pleasure on the 
 whole is by no means equivalent to the assertion of 
 a single Being by whom these experiences are felt as 
 a whole, and who enjoys the balance of pleasure which, 
 when " neutralised," " complemented," and " blended," 
 they may be supposed to yield. The notion of a single 
 life, in which and for which the experiences are organ- 
 ically related and unified, is derived by Mr Bradley 
 not from his criteria, but from the nature of the self ; 
 although, strangely enough, in the sections of his book 
 devoted to the self he does his best to disintegrate it 
 into a mere aggregate. To extend the analogy of the 
 self to the Absolute is probably inevitable, and I am 
 far from objecting to it; although, in the form in 
 which Mr Bradley presents the idea, it seems to come 
 dangerously near to the crude conception of a Welt- 
 seek, or soul of the world a fused aggregate or mass 
 of sentience. As a speculation, however, that might 
 pass, criticism in detail being reserved. But what I 
 cannot see is, how Mr Bradley can claim the result 
 as the immediate consequence of his criteria, and 
 how he can speak of it as absolutely "certain" and 
 "indubitably real." 
 
 This claim is repeatedly made by Mr Bradley, in 
 a piece of reasoning which is sufficiently remarkable 
 
184 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 to challenge examination. The argument is introduced 
 a great many times, almost in the same words, as 
 finally closing discussion ; and evidently great stress 
 is laid upon it. Curtly stated it is this " what is 
 possible and what a general principle compels us to 
 say must be, that certainly is" (p. 196); or still more 
 shortly, "what may be, if it also must be, assuredly 
 is" (p. 199). 1 "Here, as before, possibility is all we 
 require to prove reality" (p. 218). The first of these 
 passages is the concluding sentence of the chapter 
 on " Error " ; the second occurs in the chapter which 
 follows on " Evil " ; and the third in the chapter on 
 "Temporal and Spatial Appearance." In the next 
 chapter (chap, xix.), on " The This and the Mine," the 
 argument is again repeated in exactly the same way, 
 to clinch Mr Bradley 's position : " This consummation 
 evidently is real, because on our principle it is neces- 
 sary, and because again we have no reason to doubt 
 that it is possible " (p. 227). These four chapters deal 
 with recalcitrant facts or aspects of experience, which 
 an opponent might advance as inconsistent with the view 
 of the Absolute just expounded. In them, it must be 
 said that Mr Bradley treats the difficulties in question 
 somewhat lightly. He expressly repudiates the design 
 
 1 The italics in these two quotations are Mr Bradley's. 
 
A NEW THEOKY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 185 
 
 of " showing how " the facts are reconciled in the Abso- 
 lute, and limits himself to the suggestion of possibilities 
 which he seems sometimes not to take very seriously 
 himself. Having done so, he turns upon us with the 
 assertion that the abstract possibility is enough, for we 
 have behind us the general principle of a " must." The 
 Absolute must be all-inclusive and harmonious ; there 
 is nothing about which we cannot say that possibly 
 it may be included in the Absolute ; therefore every- 
 thing is included in the Absolute. I cannot see that 
 there is any real advance in the argument here. Un- 
 less we can "show how" i.e., give some reasonable 
 theory of the relation of these aspects to the Absolute 
 we may as well remain content with the first step : 
 the Absolute must be all-inclusive and harmonious, 
 though we are quite unable to see how. How far we 
 are from being able to see how, may be exemplified 
 from a passage in Mr Bradley's treatment of evil : 
 
 Our old principle may still serve to remove this objection. 
 The collision and the strife may be an element in some 
 fuller realisation. Just as in a machine the resistance and 
 pressure of the parts subserves an end beyond any of them, 
 if regarded by itself so at a much higher level it may be 
 with the Absolute. Not only the collision but that specific 
 feeling, by which it is accompanied and aggravated, can be 
 taken up into an all-inclusive perfection. We do not know 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
186 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 how this is done, and ingenious metaphors (if we could find 
 them) would not serve to explain it. ... Such a per- 
 fect way of existence would, however, reconcile our jarring 
 discords ; and I do not see how we can deny that such a 
 harmony is possible (p. 203). 
 
 This language is surely far more suggestive of pious 
 hope than of philosophic insight ; and yet Mr Bradley 
 proceeds in the very next sentence to conclude, " But 
 if possible, then, as before, it is indubitably real." The 
 reference here and repeatedly to " our old principle " 
 recalls us, however, to the precise meaning which we 
 found that principle must bear. It is simply the 
 principle that reality must be one. " It must be single, 
 because plurality contradicts itself " (p. 519). " Eeality 
 is one system, which contains in itself all experience " 
 (p. 536). " It must include and must harmonise every 
 possible fragment of experience " (p. 548). These 
 statements, taken from the recapitulatory and con- 
 cluding chapters of the volume, prove afresh that 
 the general principle, on which the whole is founded, 
 is so extremely general as to be of no avail in 
 " harmonising " experience in any vital sense. The 
 "conclusion is certain, and to doubt it logically is 
 impossible" (p. 518); but it is the perfectly abstract 
 conclusion or assumption already discussed, that ex- 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 187 
 
 istence is in some sense one, and does not fundament- 
 ally contradict itself, inasmuch as we see that " birth 
 proceeds and things subsist." We are forced, therefore, 
 to conclude that this argument, from necessity through 
 possibility to reality, is more specious than sound, 
 seeing that it passes from a unity and harmony which, 
 as necessary, are purely abstract, to a unity and har- 
 mony which, as real, are understood to imply the con- 
 crete " perfection " of a single Being, and to include the 
 "consummation" of "the main tendencies of our 
 nature" (p. 148). It is, to all intents and purposes, 
 an argument based on our ignorance of the possibilities, 
 coupled with the general conviction that things must 
 get along together somehow ; since it is plain that 
 existent fact contains all opposites within itself, and 
 still exists. This is certainly " a faith as vague as 
 all unsweet " ; but I greatly fear that all conclusions 
 about the universe which it is logically impossible 
 to doubt will be found, on examination, to partake 
 of a similar tautology, and to be of no more real value 
 in proving the universe a harmonious and perfect 
 system. 
 
 Lest I should seem to exaggerate the vagueness of 
 the result, I will add here a few quotations from Mr 
 Bradley's Second Book, a selection from a larger an- 
 
 /fa 
 
188 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 thology. These passages seem to me to bear out the 
 contention that, instead, of solving the contradictions of 
 the First Book, the Second Book is mainly devoted to 
 "laying them to rest in the Absolute" with a large 
 draft upon our metaphysical faith. "Somehow an 
 identical self must be real," said Mr Bradley in Book 
 I., " but then the question is how ? " And accordingly 
 the identical self was curtly dismissed, as riddled with 
 contradictions. But " somehow " is the very word 
 which has inscribed itself on page after page of Book 
 II., with an almost pathetic frequency of repetition. 
 Or, if the word itself does not occur, there is the 
 admission that " we do not know how " the reconcilia- 
 tion is effected ; but still " we may be sure " that the 
 reconciliation is a fact. 
 
 We may say that everything, which appears, is somehow 
 real in such a way as to be self -consistent (p. 140). 
 
 The bewildering mass of phenomenal diversity must hence 
 somehow be at unity and self -consistent (p. 140). 
 
 We know what is meant by an experience, which em- 
 braces all divisions, and yet somehow possesses the direct 
 nature of feeling (p. 160). 
 
 If we can realise at all the general features of the 
 Absolute, if we can see that somehow they come together in 
 a way known vaguely and in the abstract, our result is 
 certain (p. 160). 
 
 We cannot understand how in the Absolute a rich 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 189 
 
 harmony embraces every special discord. But, on the 
 other hand, we may be sure that this result is reached (p. 
 192). 
 
 As with error, even our one-sidedness, our insistence and 
 our disappointment, may somehow all subserve a harmony 
 and go to perfect it (p. 201). 
 
 Then follows the significant passage already quoted as 
 to the possibility of collision and strife being an element 
 in some fuller realisation : 
 
 We do not know how this is done. Such a perfect way of 
 existence would, however, reconcile our jarring discords (p. 
 202). 
 
 All differences, we have urged repeatedly, come together 
 in the Absolute. In this, how we do not know, all dis- 
 tinctions are fused, and all relations disappear (p. 203). 
 
 We do not know how all these partial unities come 
 together in the Absolute, but we may be sure that the 
 content of not one is obliterated (p. 204). 
 
 To explain time and space, in the sense of showing how 
 such appearances come to be, and again, how, without 
 contradiction, they can be real in the Absolute, is certainly 
 not my object. Anything of the kind, I am sure, is 
 impossible (p. 205). 
 
 Hence we are led to the conclusion that subject and 
 predicate are identical, and that the separation and the 
 change are only appearance. . . . They somehow are lost 
 except as elements in a higher identity (p. 220). 
 
 The plurality of presentations is a fact, and it, therefore, 
 makes a difference to our Absolute. . . . And the Universe 
 is richer, we may be sure, for all dividedness and variety. 
 
190 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 Certainly in detail we do not know liow the separation is over- 
 come. . . . But our ignorance here is no ground for rational 
 opposition. Our principle assures us that the Absolute is 
 superior to partition, and in some way is perfected by it (p. 
 226). 
 
 The collision is resolved within that harmony where 
 centre and circumference are one (p. 229). 
 
 We have no basis on which to doubt that all content 
 comes together harmoniously in the Absolute. . . . All this 
 detail is not made one in any way which we can verify. 
 That it is all reconciled we know, ~but how, in particular, is 
 hid from us (p. 239). 
 
 The Reality, therefore, must be One, not as excluding 
 diversity, but as somehow including it in such a way as to 
 transform its character (p. 241). 
 
 We laid stress [he says in his "Recapitulation" (p. 242)] 
 on the fact that the how ivas inexplicable. 
 
 The material world is an incorrect, a one-sided, and self- 
 contradictory appearance of the Real. ... In other words 
 it is a diversity which, as we regard il, is not real, but which 
 somehow, in all its fulness, enters into and perfects the life 
 of the Universe. But, as to the manner in which it is 
 included, we are unable to say anything (p. 266). 
 
 Certainly, in the end, to know how the one and the 
 many are united is beyond our power. But in the Absolute 
 somehow, we are convinced, the problem is solved (p. 281). 
 
 How these various modes come together into a single 
 unity must remain unintelligible (p. 457). 
 
 We have seen that the various aspects of experience 
 imply one another, and that all point to a unity which 
 comprehends and perfects them. And I would urge next, 
 that the unity of these aspect^ is unknown. By this I 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 191 
 
 certainly do not mean to deny that it essentially is ex- 
 perience, but it is an experience of which, as such, we have 
 no direct knowledge. . . . In the end the whole diversity 
 must be attributed as adjectives to a unity which is not 
 known (pp. 468, 469). 
 
 Mr Bradley's candour in this array of passages is 
 obviously beyond all praise, but they surely amount 
 precisely to the assurances of the mystic choir at 
 the end of ' Faust ' : " Das Unzulangliche, hier wird's 
 Ereigniss ; Das Uribeschreibliche, hier ist es gethan" Or 
 in plain prose, so far as the result is metaphysically 
 certain, it seems too vague to be of use ; where it offers 
 itself as more, it remains the expression of a deep- 
 seated faith, whose roots are ethico - religious and 
 aesthetical rather than purely intellectual. 
 
 II. 
 
 That brings us, however, to an important turning- 
 point in our investigation. It has been hinted more 
 than once that Mr Bradley's volume seems the product 
 of two conflicting tendencies or lines of thought. The 
 first of these, the Spinozistic or Schellingian tendency, 
 which is, on the whole, predominant, has been criticised 
 
192 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 in the preceding pages. It shapes, perhaps uncon- 
 sciously, the general view of the Absolute. In his 
 second line of thought, Mr Bradley stands much more 
 closely under the influence of Hegel. I propose, in 
 what follows, to examine this second line of thought, 
 and to consider the relation of Mr Bradley's theory as 
 a whole to the Hegelian philosophy, and also to the 
 limitations of human knowledge. 
 
 The Spinozistic tendency, I have said, is, on the 
 whole, the predominant tendency ; but the second line 
 of thought appears in some important chapters, and 
 also in the author's statement, towards the close, of 
 the purpose he had in view in writing the book. The 
 chapter which seems to me most fully to represent the 
 second point of view is that on " Degrees of Truth and 
 Eeality." According to the Spinozistic view, appear- 
 ance is throughout illusion ; and the nature of the 
 Absolute is to be reached by passing beyond appear- 
 ances to a wholly different mode of being. But this 
 Being, above or behind appearances, we naturally find 
 to be entirely predicateless, for in abstracting from 
 appearance we cut ourselves off from all positive know- 
 ledge. According to the second view, which I have 
 called for convenience the Hegelian, appearances are 
 not contrasted in a body with the Absolute, and 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 193 
 
 branded as untrue or illusory ; on the contrary, it is 
 recognised that, except in the world of appearances, 
 we have, and can have, no clue to the nature of the 
 Absolute. Attention is concentrated, therefore, in 
 Hegelianism upon the world of appearances, with the 
 result that this world is shown to be a graded or hier- 
 archical system. In this system as a whole, the Absolute 
 is said to be realised or revealed. But appearances only 
 become a safe guide, when regard is had to the sys- 
 tematic or hierarchical character of the revelation. 
 
 This doctrine of degrees belongs unquestionably to 
 the abiding essence of the Hegelian philosophy; and, 
 although we have seen that Mr Bradley's speculations 
 often convey another impression, it would appear from 
 his account of the purpose of his volume (given in the 
 concluding paragraphs) that this is the lesson his 
 pages were meant to enforce. The immense import- 
 ance of the Hegelian position, as against a twofold 
 error, could not in fact be more forcibly put than is 
 done by Mr Bradley in these sentences: 
 
 It is a simple matter to conclude . . . that the Eeal 
 sits apart, that it keeps state by itself and does not descend 
 into phenomena. Or it is as cheap, again, to take up 
 another side of the same error. The Keality is viewed, 
 perhaps, as immanent in all its appearances, in such a way 
 
 N 
 
194 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 that it is, alike and equally, present in all. 1 Everything 
 is so worthless on one hand, so divine on the other, that 
 nothing can be viler or can be more sublime than anything 
 else. It is against both sides of this mistake, it is against 
 this empty transcendence and this shallow Pantheism, that 
 our pages may be called one sustained polemic. The positive 
 relation of every appearance as an adjective to Eeality ; and 
 the presence of Eeality among its appearances in different 
 degrees and with diverse values this double truth we 
 have found to be the centre of philosophy (p. 551). 
 
 This view is most consistently maintained, as I have 
 indicated, in the chapter on "Degrees of Truth and 
 Eeality " (chapter xxiv.), and those that follow. It is 
 recognised as the ideal of a system of metaphysics " to 
 show how the world, physical and spiritual, realises by 
 various stages and degrees the one absolute principle " 
 (p. 359). In another place he sketches the task of a 
 " philosophy of Nature " thus : 
 
 All appearances for metaphysics have degrees of reality. 
 We have an idea of perfection or of individuality ; and, as 
 we find that any form of existence more completely realises 
 this idea, we assign to it its position in the scale of being. 
 And in this scale (as we have seen) the lower, as its de- 
 fects are made good, passes beyond itself into the higher. 
 The end, or the absolute individuality, is also the principle. 
 Present from the first, it supplies the test of its inferior 
 
 1 " As full, as perfect in a hair as heart," according to a line which 
 Hegelian writers are fond of putting in the pillory. 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 195 
 
 stages, and, as these are included in fuller wholes, the prin- 
 ciple grows in reality. Metaphysics, in short, can assign a 
 meaning to perfection and progress 
 
 though, as he immediately explains, there would, in 
 setting out the various kinds of material phenomena 
 " in an order of merit," be no reference to the scien- 
 tific questions of genesis and progress in time. 
 
 In a complete philosophy [he proceeds] the whole world 
 of appearance would he set out as a progress. It would 
 show a development of principle, though not a succession 
 in time. . . . On this scale pure Spirit would mark the. 
 extreme most removed from lifeless Nature. And, at each 
 rising degree of this scale, we should find more of the 
 first character with less of the second. The ideal of 
 spirit, we may say, is directly opposed to mechanism. 
 Spirit is a unity of the manifold in which the externality 
 of the manifold has utterly ceased (pp. 497, 498). 
 
 And in the opening of the final chapter he returns to 
 emphasise this hierarchical aspect of appearances : " In 
 the end no appearance, as such, can be real. But 
 appearances fail of reality in varying degrees ; and to 
 assert that one on the whole is worth no more than 
 another, is fundamentally vicious" (p. 511). 
 
 Yet, all through these chapters too, Mr Bradley is 
 still bent upon reaching an esoteric existence of the 
 Absolute, as suck, in contradistinction to its existence 
 
196 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 in the system of its appearances. And if this quest 
 does not lead him exactly to an " empty transcend- 
 ence," it lands him in an abyss of Brahmanic indiffer- 
 ence, which threatens to throw us back into the 
 " shallow Pantheism " from which the doctrine of 
 degrees was to deliver us. It prompts him to a series 
 of utterances which, though the qualification of an 
 " as such " may save them from the charge of direct 
 verbal contradiction, are still the expression of two 
 opposite philosophies. Thus, when he tells us (p. 486) 
 with the aid of italics, "The Absolute is its appear- 
 ances," and again, with the same aid (on p. 411), " The 
 Absolute is not its appearances," he may perhaps claim 
 with some reason to be enunciating two complementary 
 half-truths. But when he declares emphatically in an 
 eloquent passage (p. 550) 
 
 There is no reality anywhere except in appearance, and 
 in our appearance we can discover the main nature of real- 
 ity. ... It is, really and indeed, this general character of 
 the very universe itself which distinguishes for us the 
 relative worth of appearances. . . . Higher, truer, more 
 beautiful, better and more real these, on the whole, count 
 in the universe as they count for us 
 
 or, again (p. 430), "Whether anything is better or 
 worse does without doubt make a difference to the 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 197 
 
 absolute ; and certainly the better anything is, the less 
 totally in the end is its being overruled " ; and when 
 he yet says, at other times, that " The Absolute is per- 
 fect in all its detail, it is equally true and good through- 
 out " (p. 401) ; that, " viewed in relation to the Absolute, 
 there is nothing either good or bad, there is not any- 
 thing better or worse " (p. 411) ; that " we may even say 
 that every feature in the universe is absolutely good " 
 (p. 412) the burden of the contradiction threatens to 
 become excessive. We feel that we are losing our hold 
 upon the first view altogether, and drifting back into 
 the gulf of absolute indifference which the poets of 
 mysticism, Eastern and Western, have hymned. The 
 passages last quoted all occur, it is perhaps worth 
 noting, in . the chapter on Goodness, in which Mr 
 Bradley's zeal against what he calls "the common 
 prejudice in favour of the ultimate truth of morality 
 or religion" is perhaps not untinctured by counter- 
 prejudice. His anxiety to expose what he quaintly 
 calls "the radical vice of all goodness" betrays him 
 into expressions which seem to take all vital, meaning 
 out of his first set of phrases, and make the doctrine 
 of degrees itself an illusion, instead of reflecting, as 
 he says elsewhere, " the essential nature of the world." 
 The essential nature of the world for metaphysics 
 
198 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 turns out once more to be the identity in which all 
 distinctions vanish to which all things, therefore, are 
 the same. This is brought out, with almost startling 
 distinctness, in the description in this chapter of the 
 kind of consummation which the finite attains in the 
 Absolute : 
 
 In the Absolute everything finite attains the perfection 
 which it seeks; but, upon the other hand, it cannot gain 
 perfection precisely as it seeks it. For, as we have seen 
 throughout, the finite is more or less transmuted, and, as 
 such, disappears in being accomplished. This common des- 
 tiny is assuredly the end of the Good. The ends sought 
 by self-assertion and self-sacrifice are, each alike, unattain- 
 able. The individual never can in himself become a har- 
 monious system. . . . In the complete gift and dissipation 
 of his personality, HE, as such, must vanish ; and, with that, 
 the Good is, as such, transcended and submerged. . . . Most 
 emphatically no self-assertion nor any self-sacrifice, nor any 
 goodness or morality, has, as such, any reality in the Absolute 
 (pp. 419, 420). 1 
 
 Comment would but weaken the audacious irony 
 of phrases which make accomplishment tantamount to 
 disappearance, and interpret the "gift" of personality 
 
 i In this short passage it will be observed the phrase "as such" 
 occurs no fewer than four times ; it would be interesting to calculate 
 how often it occurs in the course of Mr Bradley's volume. It exactly 
 corresponds to Spinoza's quatenus, which has been described as the 
 magic formula which makes all things possible in his system. 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 199 
 
 as meaning the "dissipation" of the personality in 
 question. But it is plain that, if every aspect of finite 
 existence if all appearances, even the highest cease 
 or disappear, " as such," in the Absolute, and we have 
 no knowledge whatever of the Absolute as such, 
 in which it is said to be preserved (" transmuted," 
 "merged and recomposed," p. 306), then surely the 
 Absolute is for us, in the Kantian phrase, as good 
 as nothing at all. To say we know that it is ex- 
 perience, when it is not like any experience that we 
 know, does not seem greatly helpful. Mr Bradley 
 tells us himself that "an absolute experience for us, 
 emphatically, could be nothing" (p. 550); and again 
 he says more explicitly in a passage which has been 
 already quoted: "The unity of these aspects is un- 
 known. But this I certainly do not mean to deny, 
 that it essentially is experience, but it is an experience 
 of which, as such, we can have no direct knowledge. 
 . . . In the end the whole diversity must be attributed 
 as adjectives to a unity which is not Jcnoivn" (pp. 468, 
 469). 
 
 The last passage certainly carries us very near the 
 perilous verge of Agnosticism, if indeed it does not 
 take us well over it. What becomes of the sustained 
 polemic against "empty transcendence" (of which 
 
200 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 Agnosticism is the most accentuated expression) if 
 we are forced to admit that, though the Absolute en- 
 gulfs, and in engulfing harmonises, all we know, it 
 is itself not known ? We have no reason to suspect 
 either the good faith or the accuracy of the account 
 which Mr Bradley gives of the purpose of his book 
 Much of the polemic of the latter part of the book 
 is directed against empty transcendence and shallow 
 Pantheism ; and when this polemic is going on, and 
 Mr Bradley is insisting that the Absolute is its ap- 
 pearance (" there is no reality at all anywhere except 
 in appearance," p. 550), then he is also found teaching 
 the doctrine of degrees, and insisting that our scale 
 of worth discovers to us the main nature of reality. 
 But when he is engaged in his favourite occupation 
 of dissolving finite experience in contradictions, and 
 insisting that the Absolute is not its appearances, the 
 other half-truth seems entirely forgotten. In discard- 
 ing appearance, he falls back himself into an empty 
 transcendence which, by the very energy with which 
 it repudiates all the distinctions of finite existence, re- 
 duces all the aspects of experience to a dead level 
 of indifference, and thus strikes round once more into 
 that shallow Pantheism from which we were promised 
 a deliverance the Pantheism to which "nothing can 
 
A NEW THEOEY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 201 
 
 be viler or can be more sublime than anything else." 
 For empty transcendence and shallow Pantheism are 
 two sides of the same mistake, and although Mr Bradley 
 makes a strenuous effort, in his second or Hegelian line 
 of thought, to combat and disavow the error, he cannot 
 cut himself loose from the implications of his Spinoz- 
 istic logic. The result is, that what I have called the 
 Hegelian passages have the air of being more or less 
 inconsequent disclaimers in a book which, as a whole, 
 expresses an essentially Brahmanic attitude of mind. 
 
 Nevertheless, Mr Bradley seems to me to have 
 rendered a very important service to philosophy in 
 this book. I will endeavour shortly to indicate what 
 I consider that service to be. Mr Bradley has at- 
 tempted to supplement Hegel, or to make an advance 
 upon Hegel, in one important particular. Hegel's 
 philosophy is notoriously a philosophy of immanence, 
 and a vindication of the validity of knowledge. Its 
 polemical emphasis is directed against the agnostic 
 relativism of the Kantian " Critique," with its doctrine 
 of the thing-in-itself, and against the easy mysticism 
 of the Schellingian Identitatsphilosophie, which are 
 both expressions, in different directions, of an empty 
 transcendence. By exposing the impossible nature of 
 
202 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 the ideals which underlie these doctrines, and vindi- 
 cating the omnipresence of difference, as woven into 
 the very fibre of existence, Hegel closed one long 
 chapter of philosophical thought although his results 
 in this respect may doubtless not have been assimilated, 
 even yet, by many of our popular leaders of opinion. 
 But in reaction against this error, Hegel's gift of 
 forcible statement led him into expressions which 
 seem to imply a no less questionable extreme. In 
 preaching the truth that the nature of the Absolute 
 is revealed in the world of its appearances, not craftily 
 concealed behind them, he seems to pass to a sheer 
 identification of the two. Now it is unquestionably 
 true that the two aspects must be everywhere com- 
 bined : an Absolute which does not appear or reveal 
 itself, and an appearance without something which 
 appears, are correlative abstractions. But that is not 
 tantamount to saying that the appearance of the 
 Absolute to itself is identical with the appearance 
 which the world presents to the Hegelian philosopher. 
 Hegel, however, tends to put the philosopher in 
 the place of Deity, and literally to identify the 
 history of humanity with the development of the 
 Absolute. It was this aspect of the Hegelian system 
 which called forth Lotze's sarcastic reference to the 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 203 
 
 dialectical idyll of an Absolute whose spiritual evolu- 
 tion was confined to the shores of the Mediterranean. 
 I do not think the presence of this tendency in Hegel 
 can fairly be denied. It is an overstatement, as I hold, 
 and as I may partly be able to show, of a great truth ; 
 but, to my mind, the deification of humanity only re- 
 quires to be clearly stated, in order to condemn itself. 
 This aspect of the Hegelian system found an inadequate 
 counterpoise in the logical dialectic of the categories, 
 from which standpoint the time-process is reduced to 
 a projection of thought - distinctions in a series of 
 dissolving views, and the ultimate reality of existence 
 seems to be placed in a timeless system of abstract 
 conceptions. The logical strain in Hegelianism had 
 been showing some signs of vitality in England, when 
 Mr Bradley, in his ' Principles of Logic ' (1883), uttered 
 his memorable protest against the reduction of the 
 universe to an " unearthly ballet of bloodless categories." 
 Since then, it may be said to have fallen into the back- 
 ground, much as it did in Germany, and the school has 
 mainly devoted itself to the historical development of 
 God. Sometimes this is done, as it is by Hegel himself, 
 with an attempt, either unconscious or deliberate, to 
 keep out of view the ultimate implications of the 
 position, as bearing on the doctrine of the being and 
 
204 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 nature of God. At other times, the identification of 
 man with God is made with an under - current of 
 negative polemic, resulting in a phase of thought 
 which may fairly be described as Hegelian positivism. 
 If I read Mr Bradley aright, he has clearly realised 
 that neither of these positions can be entertained for 
 a moment, as literal and ultimate truth. Life is more 
 than logic, and God is more than man. The categories 
 that is to say, the structure of reason may be said 
 to constitute the essence of God, the ground-plan of the 
 world ; we can understand such a statement and recog- 
 nise the truth it expresses. But " neither gods nor men 
 are in very truth logical categories." And again, God 
 is in history without doubt ; but yet we trust He has 
 a richer outlook than He enjoys through any pair of 
 human eyes. Eealising, then, these twin defects of the 
 Hegelian position, Mr Bradley, in this volume, has made 
 a strenuous attempt to treat the life of the Absolute as 
 a reality. With the instinct of the true thinker, he 
 recalls us from a too narrow Humanism to an insight 
 into the vastness of the sustaining life that " operates 
 unspent " throughout the universe. This insight is no 
 doubt as simple as it is profound ; and it is sufficiently 
 strange that man should forget his position as a finite 
 incident in the plan of things, and measure himself 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 205 
 
 with the immeasurable Spirit of the Universe. Still 
 the fact remains, that the most elementary truths are 
 sometimes most easily forgotten, in the eagerness of a 
 polemic against some particular error. We become so 
 preoccupied with the ideas which we perceive to be 
 true in that particular reference, as against the error 
 we are combating, that we forget the essentially limited 
 nature of the truth we are defending. We forget the 
 limited sphere within which both affirmation and 
 denial have relevancy. Indeed, we become so jealous 
 on behalf of the truth for which we tight, that we 
 cannot brook the least criticism upon it. We con- 
 found in a common condemnation the man who denies 
 its legitimate truth, because he lags at the standpoint 
 of exploded error, and the man who, having got beyond 
 these controversial issues, calls attention to the modifi- 
 cations which the principle must submit to, before it 
 can be advanced as the absolute verity. 
 
 Elemental, therefore, as the truth is, the stress which 
 Mr Bradley lays, throughout his volume, upon the 
 necessarily superhuman character of the Absolute 
 its inexpressible and incomprehensible transcendence 
 of human conditions of being and thinking is a 
 salutary correction to a good deal of current specula- 
 tion. After all, if it comes to a question of reality, 
 
206 A NEW THEOEY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 the Absolute is the great and only Beality. We have 
 reality only within its -all - comprehensive bounds. 
 True, therefore, as it is, in the proper reference, to 
 say that the Absolute realises itself in human self- 
 consciousness, it becomes fundamentally absurd, if the 
 saying is taken to mean that the Absolute exists, so 
 to speak, by the grace of man, and lives only in the 
 breath of his nostrils. Is it not both absurd and 
 blasphemous to suppose that the Power which cradles 
 and encompasses all our lives is not itself a living fact, 
 and that it is reserved for man to bring the Absolute, 
 as it were, to the birth ? A moment's reflection con- 
 vinces us that it is so, and also that it must be essen- 
 tially impossible for a finite being to realise the manner 
 of that Absolute Life. 
 
 But Mr Bradley has not been content simply to 
 restore to us this fundamental insight. He is a meta- 
 physician, and his book, if not presenting a complete 
 system of philosophy, yet contains a pretty definite 
 theory of the Absolute. And the curious thing is that, 
 based as it is upon an important truth, and aiming at 
 correcting an undoubted defect in the Hegelian state- 
 ment, the theory turns out to be further from the truth 
 turns out, at all events, to be more misleading 
 than the theory it attempts to improve. But I perhaps 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 207 
 
 exaggerate the strangeness of the phenomenon, for the 
 result is, in the circumstances, inevitable, as soon as we 
 proceed to a constructive account of absolute expe- 
 rience. As water cannot rise higher than its source, 
 so our speculative grasp cannot transcend the experience 
 which is ours in this seed-plot of Time. The higher 
 may comprehend the lower, but how shall the lower 
 reach out to comprehend the higher ? Denying, there- 
 fore, that the life of the Absolute can be construed in 
 terms of our actual human experience, even in its 
 highest reaches, Mr Bradley is obliged, as we have 
 seen, to fall back upon the analogy of a lower life, out 
 of which our conscious experience seems to rise the 
 life of feeling. 
 
 It would be trite to dwell here on the ambiguities of 
 the term " feeling " and the varieties of usage in its 
 regard. It will be sufficient if we understand the 
 meaning Mr Bradley intends to convey. Mere feeling, 
 he would probably acknowledge, is a state which we 
 never actually realise, though we seem to approximate 
 to it at times, and conceive it to be approached asymp- 
 totically in the lowest forms of organic life. Never- 
 theless, it is not to be denied that feeling, in Mr 
 Bradley's usage, represents one feature one funda- 
 mental aspect of our actual experience. All our 
 
208 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 experience is rooted in the immediacy of perception; 
 and feeling names this .perceptual or immediate aspect, 
 as opposed to the conceptual or abstract world, which 
 we rear on the basis of inner or outer perception, and 
 offer as its explanation or interpretation. I foresee 
 the outcry that will be raised, in certain quarters, 
 against this way of stating the fact, and I hasten to 
 add that this in no way implies the separability of 
 these two aspects in actual experience. Our actual 
 perceptions are full of the distinctions of thought; 
 a state of pure perception, entirely without the 
 shaping presence of the conceptions of the under- 
 standing, can only be regarded as a Trpcorij v\r), a 
 vanishing-point or limitative conception, essentially 
 unrealisable within experience. The notion from which 
 empiricism started, that the object of perception is 
 given, as we perceive it, without any activity of thought 
 the notion that thought simply analytically assorts 
 the objects of which we thus passively become aware, 
 doing them up into classes and discovering their laws 
 of combination this complete severance of perception 
 from thought we are surely at liberty to treat nowadays 
 as an exploded fiction. But the amplest acknowledg- 
 ment of the victory of transcendentalism in this con- 
 troversy leaves the immediacy of perception untouched, 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 209 
 
 and leaves the difference as wide as ever between the 
 concrete world of fact, which reveals itself in percep- 
 tion (inner and outer), and the abstractions of con- 
 ception as such. 
 
 Conception deals wholly with dbstracta, with isolated 
 aspects or points of view. Such are the discrete or 
 abstract units which, from its very nature, it cannot 
 fuse into continuity, and the multiplicities which it 
 cannot resolve into unity. It can never, therefore, 
 express the facts of experience as they exist ; in trying 
 to do so, it inevitably falls into contradictions or an- 
 tinomies. It then proceeds, on the basis of its own 
 impotence, to impeach our whole experience as con- 
 tradictory, and no better than an illusion. But if its 
 impotence is perfectly intelligible is seen indeed to 
 be inevitable then experience itself can hardly be 
 called unintelligible. It may be unintelligible in a 
 technical use of the word ; in the sense that it cannot 
 be reduced to, or exhaustively expressed in, the abstrac- 
 tions which the isolating touch of understanding frames. 
 But this is merely to say that understanding is not itself 
 life, but a useful instrument in the service of life. In 
 the only reasonable sense of intelligibility, life or ex- 
 perience is itself the norm of intelligibility. We find 
 united there all the aspects which, merely by detecting 
 
 o 
 
210 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 and naming them, understanding tends to fix in isola- 
 tion and mutual repugnance. Take the typical instance 
 of unity and multiplicity, which furnished forth Mr 
 Bradley's whole First Book. The unity of the self and 
 its states is the sufficient, and the only possible, answer 
 to the so-called contradiction. True, you cannot name 
 unity and multiplicity, in the same indivisible moment 
 of time ; you must get your breath, as it were, after 
 articulating the one, before you go on to the other. 
 And what applies to the articulation of the words 
 applies to the mental thinking of the thoughts. If you 
 think of the unity of the Self, you necessarily pause 
 upon that aspect, before supplementing it by turning 
 round the eye of the mind to the other aspect, multi- 
 plicity. In conception, the mind takes a step, as it were, 
 from the one to the other, and so the two come to ap- 
 pear separate. Then dialectic supervenes, and tells us 
 that A is A, and, consequently, these two can never 
 be brought together; whereas we have simply looked 
 at one fact from two sides. That one fact our own 
 inmost experience exhibits the two sides indissolubly 
 united, and, accordingly, instead of calling this a con- 
 tradiction, we adopt it as the norm of all our ex- 
 planations. 
 
 All our experience, then, is rooted in the immediacy 
 
A NEW THEOKY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 211 
 
 of perception, and experience, from the perceptive side, 
 is a continuum in which we make distinctions. As we 
 do not "make" them in an arbitrary sense, we may 
 also be said to find them. They were not there for us 
 till we made them ; but, in making them, we hold our- 
 selves to be analysing more exactly what was implicit 
 in the presentation from the first to be acquiring, in 
 short, a fuller and truer knowledge of the fact. The 
 whole progress of knowledge appears, therefore, as the 
 breaking up of what is given as a vague mass of feeling 
 or undefined consciousness, which can hardly as yet be 
 described even as general awareness. Inasmuch as this 
 state is assumed to occur in the experience of some 
 individual creature, and to constitute the whole state 
 of the creature in question, it may be permissible to 
 speak of it (with Mr Bradley) as an undifferentiated 
 unity, an undivided whole. This inexhaustible back- 
 ground of " feeling " constitutes for us the being of the 
 world (including ourselves), and, in that sense, it is 
 the ultimate subject of all predication ; but, obviously, 
 it is only so far as it becomes determined or formed, 
 that we can say anything about it. In its character of 
 unexhausted remainder, it is not anything we actually 
 realise; it cannot itself be properly spoken of as ex- 
 perience, although it is that out of which all experience 
 
212 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 seems to arise. It is essentially a limitative concep- 
 tion, and, as such, it is the necessary implicate of our 
 experience ; but again, as such, it cannot be con- 
 structed within experience. We approach it per 
 mam negativam, only approximating towards it by 
 throwing out one determination after another; and, 
 if we examine our supposed realisation, we find 
 that we have merely thrown our negatives into a 
 positive form. 
 
 But what is itself describable only by negatives, and 
 what, if realisable, would mean a lapse into uncon- 
 sciousness, cannot be expected to throw any valuable 
 light upon the nature of an absolute experience. That 
 experience, as we have seen, is to be a whole in which 
 the distinctions elicited in the progress of knowledge 
 are again to be merged in such a way that thought 
 returns to the immediacy of feeling; but it is added 
 that, " in that higher unity no fraction of anything is 
 lost " (p. 182). We have already examined this notion, 
 and come to the conclusion that, though Mr Bradley 
 says, and is bound to say, that all the " richness," all 
 the distinctions, of the world we know are somehow 
 conserved for the Absolute, the main principle on which 
 his criticism depends points directly to the collapse of 
 all distinction whatever; and he seems himself con- 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 213 
 
 tinually impelled in that direction. Here we need 
 only add that, if the utter unity of feeling, out of 
 which our experience seems to take its rise, is an 
 utter unity into which all distinctions collapse, and 
 so a purely negative conception, it will be equally 
 negative when transferred to the other end of the 
 scale, and used to illustrate the transcendent unity 
 in which all the differences of finite experience are 
 resolved. In short, in the one case as in the other, 
 we are dealing with a limitative conception, which it 
 is sheerly impossible for us positively to construct, or, 
 in any true sense, to conceive. Our experience has 
 the stamp of incompleteness upon it; it has the ap- 
 pearance of moving from an unknown source to an 
 unknown goal. This incompleteness is expressed in 
 the two limitative conceptions we have had before 
 us, the unity below and the unity above experience, 
 the extreme of mere sense and the extreme of omni- 
 science. Within experience we may approximate to 
 one extreme or the other, but any attempt positively 
 to realise either leaves us baffled, with nothing in our 
 grasp. Beyond experience, in short, all is and must 
 be, for us, absolute emptiness ; and whatever " sail- 
 broad vans" we spread for flight, we drop at once 
 plumb down, like Milton's Satan, in a vast vacuity. 
 
214 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 It is impossible, therefore, to construct for ourselves, 
 even in outline or vague, generality, the nature of an 
 absolute experience. Our general descriptions are seen, 
 on examination, to be either purely formal, and, as I 
 have argued, identical propositions, or they are postu- 
 lates of faith, realised, we believe, somehow, but always 
 with this for an afterword, that the " how " is hidden 
 from us. And this is so for the simplest of all reasons, 
 because we are men and not God. We are ourselves 
 immersed in the process of the universe. We can 
 only live our own life, and see through our own eyes. 
 If we could do more, that would mean that we our- 
 selves had vanished from the universe ; the place which 
 had known us would know us no more, and there would 
 be, as it were, a gap created in the tissue of the world. 
 
 Take the crucial case of time. " If time is not un- 
 real," says Mr Bradley, "our Absolute is an illusion" 
 (p. 206). But, however " contradictory " we may find 
 the infinite progress to be, which time involves, can we 
 even adumbrate to ourselves what " a timeless reality " 
 would be ? I am quite certain, for my own part, that 
 the utmost we can attain is the idea of something 
 permanent in time, lasting unchanged through time ; 
 but that leaves us with all the difficulties of the infinite 
 series still on our hands. Mr Bradley 's suggestion 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 215 
 
 that there may be many time-series in the Absolute, 
 unrelated to one another, seems to me to throw no 
 light on the subject whatever. The notion of many 
 " times " seems to me one of these empty possibilities 
 inconceivable verbal combinations which Mr Bradley 
 elsewhere, I think, discourages. All our notions of 
 reality being drawn necessarily from our own experience, 
 and all our experience being in time, a timeless reality 
 remains for our minds as inconceivable as wooden iron. 
 Besides, the difficulty of passing from the timed to the 
 timeless remains just as great, whether the times be 
 many or one. 
 
 Mr Bradley's attempt to determine the Absolute " as 
 such " i.e., the Absolute as beyond or more than the 
 process of human experience has the unexpected re- 
 sult, therefore, which I indicated a few pages back. It 
 proves an unexpected vindication of the real strength 
 of the Hegelian position. The cloud of negations in 
 which the attempt involves us, the abstract and empty 
 character of the Absolute supposed to be reached, are 
 a fresh and involuntary confirmation of Hegel's wisdom 
 in refusing to step beyond the circle of knowledge and 
 the process of history. I have said, and I repeat, that 
 Hegel's identification of the Absolute with human ex- 
 perience is indefensible. Nevertheless, his refusal to 
 
216 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 seek the character of the Absolute elsewhere than in its 
 appearances i.e., in hurnan experience was entirely 
 justified. As we have no predicates save those drawn 
 from this experience, the attempt to determine the 
 Absolute, so far as it is something more than this 
 experience, necessarily throws us back upon the 
 purely indeterminate, and we drift easily towards the 
 doctrine of the Unknowable. Professor Eoyce has 
 already accused Mr Bradley of this tendency. 1 The 
 fruitfulness of Hegel's philosophy lay in his repudiation 
 of this barren search. The real is revealed in its ap- 
 pearances, and is not to be sought behind or beyond 
 them. Extension of experience will bring increased 
 and deepened knowledge of the Absolute : 
 
 " For all experience is an arch wherethrough 
 Gleams that untra veiled world whose margin fades 
 For ever and for ever when I move." 
 
 But as we shift our margin and enter that untravelled 
 world, however far we go, the new is still an extension 
 of the old on the same plane the plane of finite ex- 
 perience not a passage to another species of insight. 
 Along with this resolute correlation of the real with 
 its manifestations, there goes in Hegel the organisation 
 of the phenomenal world itself. Eelieved from an im- 
 possible quest, he devotes himself to the exposition of 
 
 1 Philosophical Review, vol. iii. p. 217. 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE 
 
 217 
 
 experience as the only possible revelation of the Abso- 
 lute for us, and he finds it to be not an indifferent 
 congeries, but a graded system. The significance of 
 this doctrine of degrees I have already dwelt on, in 
 commenting upon what seem to me two conflicting 
 lines of thought in Mr Bradley's book. The result 
 for Hegel of this doctrine, taken together with his 
 fundamental correlation of the real with its manifes- 
 tation, was, not unnaturally perhaps, a theory which 
 identified, or seemed to identify, the Absolute with the 
 culminating aspects of human experience in art, reli- 
 gion, the State, and philosophical system. The theory 
 is false only so far as it is taken to confine the Spirit 
 of the universe to these earthly tabernacles. So under- 
 stood, it cabins the spirit of man within a narrow and 
 self-sufficient positivism. It undermines the sentiment 
 of reverence, and dulls our sense of the infinite great- 
 ness and the infinite mystery of the world. But it is 
 profoundly true, so far as it asserts that, only by predi- 
 cates drawn from these spheres, can we determine the 
 Absolute at all, and that, moreover, such determination 
 is substantially, though doubtless not literally, true : 
 
 " So weit das Ohr, so weit das Auge reicht, 
 Du findest nur Bekanntes, das ihm gleicht, 
 Und deines Geistes hochster Feuerflug 
 Hat schon am Gleichniss, hat am Bild, genug." 
 
218 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 The dangers that lurk in any attempt to determine 
 the Absolute as such are well exemplified, I think, in 
 the negations to which Mr Bradley is driven. Thus 
 " morality cannot (as such) be ascribed to the " Abso- 
 lute " (p. 197). " Goodness as such is but appearance, 
 and is transcended in the Absolute" (p. 429). "Will 
 cannot belong as such to the Absolute " (p. 413). In 
 the Absolute even thought must "lose and transcend its 
 proper self" (p. 182). "If the term 'personal' is to 
 bear anything like its ordinary sense, then assuredly 
 the Absolute is not merely personal " (p. 531). " The 
 Absolute is not personal, nor is it moral, nor is it 
 beautiful or true" (p. 533). What is the inevitable 
 effect upon the mind of this cluster of negations ? 
 Surely it will be this : Either the Absolute will be 
 regarded as a mere Unknowable with which we have 
 no concern, or the denial of will, intellect, morality, 
 personality, beauty, and truth will be taken to mean 
 that the Absolute is a unity indifferent to these higher 
 aspects of experience. It will be regarded as non- 
 moral and impersonal in the sense of being below 
 these distinctions ; and our Absolute will then remark- 
 ably resemble the soulless substance of the materialist. 
 Nothing is more certain than that extremes meet in 
 this fashion, and that the attempt to reach the super- 
 human falls back into the infra -human. Now Mr 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 219 
 
 Bradley, of course, intends his unity to be a higher, 
 not a lower unity. " The Absolute is not personal, 
 because it is personal and more. It is, in a word, 
 super-personal" (p. 531). But he is not blind to the 
 danger that lurks in his denials. "It is better," he 
 even warns us, if there is a risk of falling back upon 
 the lower unity, " to affirm personality than to call the 
 Absolute impersonal." But there is more than a risk, 
 I maintain ; there is a certainty that this will be the 
 result. And therefore the conclusion deducible from 
 Mr Bradley's discussion seems to me to be that the 
 attempt, metaphysically, scientifically, or literally 1 to 
 determine the Absolute as such, is necessarily barren. 
 Where the definition is not tautologous, it is a com- 
 plex of negations, and if not technically untrue, it 
 has in its suggestions the effect of an untruth. Our 
 statements about the Absolute i. e., the ultimate 
 nature of things are actually nearer the truth when 
 they give up the pretence of literal exactitude, and 
 speak in terms (say) of morality and religion, apply- 
 ing to it the characteristics of our own highest experi- 
 ence. Such language recognises itself in general (or, 
 at least, it certainly should recognise itself) as pos- 
 sessing only symbolical truth, as being, in fact, 
 "thrown out," as Matthew Arnold used to say, at a 
 
 1 I use these for the moment as equivalent terms. 
 
220 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 vast reality. But both religion and the higher poetry 
 just because they give f up the pretence of an im- 
 possible exactitude carry us, I cannot doubt, nearer 
 to the meaning of the world than the formulae of an 
 abstract metaphysics. 
 
 Such a conclusion may be decried as Agnostic, but 
 names need frighten no one. The Agnosticism which 
 rests on the idea of an unknowable thing-in-itself 
 the Agnosticism which many of Kant's and Spencer's 
 arguments would establish is certainly baseless ; but 
 there are regions of speculation where Agnosticism is 
 the only healthy attitude. Such a region I hold to be 
 that of the Absolute as such. If it be objected that 
 the mere mention of such an Absolute is an acknow- 
 ledgment of the Thing-in-itself, I must allow myself 
 Mr Bradley's privilege, and simply " doubt if the ob- 
 jector can understand " (p. 183). It is, in a word, not 
 an Absolute -in -itself, but the Absolute -for -itself, of 
 which we are speaking. It is the nature of the 
 existence which the Absolute has or enjoys for 
 itself. This is incomprehensible, save by the Abso- 
 lute itself. Because it is incomprehensible by the 
 finite mind, it . does not, however, follow that such 
 an all-embracing experience is not a Eeality ; and the 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 221 
 
 denial of such a possibility would seem to be more 
 than presumptuous. So far, therefore, as the Hegelian 
 philosophy disregarded this wider outlook, and im- 
 plicitly identified the Absolute with the process of 
 finite experience, its scheme of things is out of pro- 
 portion, and the ineffable transcendence of the Absol- 
 ute as such required reassertion. But this reassertion 
 must not be construed to mean that our own existence 
 is a vain show which throws no light on the real 
 nature of things. Eightly Agnostic as regards the 
 nature of the Absolute as such, no shadow of doubt 
 need fall on our experience as a true revelation of the 
 Absolute for us. Hegel was right in seeking the 
 Absolute within experience, and finding it too ; for 
 certainly we can neither seek it nor find it anywhere 
 else. The truth about the Absolute which we extract 
 from our experience is, doubtless, not the final truth. 
 It may be taken up and superseded in a wider or fuller 
 truth ; and in this way we might pass, in successive 
 cycles of finite existence, from sphere to sphere of 
 experience, from orb to orb of truth. But even the 
 highest would still remain a finite truth, and fall 
 infinitely short of the truth of God. Such a doc- 
 trine of relativity in no way invalidates the truthful- 
 ness of the revelation at any given stage. The fact 
 
222 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 that the truth I reach is the truth for me, does not 
 make it, on that account, .less true. It is true, so far 
 as it goes ; and if my experience can carry me no 
 further, I am justified in treating it as ultimate, until 
 it is superseded. Should it ever be superseded, I shall 
 then see both how it is modified by being compre- 
 hended in a higher truth, and also how it and no other 
 statement of the truth could have been true at my 
 former standpoint. But "before the higher standpoint is 
 reached, to seek to discredit our present insight by the 
 general reflection that its truth is partial and requires 
 correction this is a perfectly empty truth which, in 
 its bearing upon human life, may easily come to have 
 the effect of an untruth. We hear much in denunci- 
 ation of the practice of testing truth by its supposed 
 consequences. And no doubt the argument is often 
 a weapon in the hands of obscurantism and timid con- 
 servatism. Yet, in the long-run, truth and life are not 
 dissevered, and there is a line of Goethe's which ex- 
 presses, with his usual calmness and breadth, the in- 
 sight of which the popular doctrine is a superficial 
 distortion, Was fruchtbar ist, allein ist wahr. 
 
 While Mr Bradley 's main thought, therefore, un- 
 doubtedly possesses a real importance as emancipat- 
 ing us from the too narrow humanism of a dogmatic 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 223 
 
 Hegelianism, the impression produced by his volume 
 upon an unbiassed mind will be, I fancy, to foster a 
 wise Agnosticism in regard to assertions about the 
 Absolute as such. Human experience, not as itself 
 the Absolute "bodily," but as constituting the only 
 accessible and authentic revelation of its nature to 
 us, is the true subject-matter of Philosophy. And 
 here, as Mr Bradley says, " the doctrine of degrees in 
 Eeality and Truth is the fundamental answer to our 
 problem " (p. 487). Mr Bradley, as we have seen, 
 acknowledges his special indebtedness to Hegel in this 
 part of his discussion; but, in its general form, the 
 doctrine is no exclusive property of any philosophical 
 school. Eather it has always been 
 
 " Der Volker loblicher Gebrauch 
 Dass jeglicher das Beste was er kennt, 
 Er Gott, ja seinen Gott, benennt." 
 
 We speak most truly, most in accordance with the 
 real nature of things, when we thus characterise the 
 Absolute in terms of the best we know. 
 
 But that Hegel has given systematic expression to 
 this old world -wisdom gives his system a place in 
 history quite beyond the brilliant but arbitrary specu- 
 lations of individual genius, and ensures for it an 
 abiding influence upon modern thought. It must be 
 
224 A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 acknowledged, however, that, in his hands, the doctrine 
 of degrees tends to assume, a too purely intellectual and 
 formalistic character. If we look simply at his own 
 methodic statement, the scale seems to resolve itself 
 into a series of repetitions of the fundamental formula 
 of the One and the Many. As we rise in the scale, 
 we get more comprehensive wholes wholes, too, which 
 include a more intricate complexity of detail, and which 
 embrace their detail in a more intimate union. We 
 have thus a series of types (different powers or Potenzeri) 
 of the same formula. But the realisation of this ab- 
 stract scheme possesses in itself no interest or import- 
 ance. It is the content of any experience which makes 
 it " higher " in any vital sense, and makes it of decisive 
 importance in an inquiry as to the meaning of experi- 
 ence as a whole. Hegel's results in this connection are 
 substantially true, just because they are based not upon 
 the mere application of a formula, but upon an implicit 
 reference to the content of experience and the judgments 
 of value which that legitimates. The formula itself is 
 derived, in fact, from the self-conscious life of man, and 
 to Hegel, in even a wider sense than to Kant, man in 
 his typical activities is an End-in-himself. 
 
 The life, that is to say, which is guided by the ideals 
 of Truth, Beauty and Goodness, and which partially 
 
A NEW THEORY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 225 
 
 realises these, possesses an absolute and indefeasible 
 worth. It is only in such judgments of value that we 
 can be said to possess "an absolute criterion." Mr 
 Bradley says in more than one place that we possess 
 such a criterion, but he also, like Hegel, confines him- 
 self too exclusively throughout his book to the in- 
 tellectual necessities of all-inclusiveness and internal 
 harmony, which, we found, did not carry us so far as 
 he supposed. Our idea of what the Absolute must be 
 is founded on the ideal necessities which our nature 
 compels us to acknowledge. But the ideal necessities 
 in question are not merely intellectual ; they are 
 sesthetical, ethical, and religious as well. For "we 
 must believe" (to quote Mr Bradley's own words) 
 " that reality satisfies our whole being ; our main 
 wants for Truth and Life, and for Beauty and Good- 
 ness must all find satisfaction " (p. 159). The 
 necessity of our belief is not due, however, to any 
 esoteric assurance on the point which we possess direct 
 from the Absolute. It is an absolute certainty in 
 the sense simply that it is an ultimate judgment on 
 our part. It represents our deepest conviction as to 
 absolute and relative worth a conviction which does 
 not admit of being supported, and therefore does not 
 admit of being assailed, by argument. 
 
 p 
 
ME BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS, 
 
 niHEEE is some danger that the philosophical import- 
 -*- ance of Mr Balfour's c Foundations of Belief ' may 
 be obscured by the very circumstances which gave 
 the book for a time such an extraordinary prominence. 
 The tide of reviews and criticisms, which flowed so 
 high in the weeks and months immediately following 
 its appearance, has, for the time at least, completely 
 ebbed ; and the volatile curiosity of the general public 
 has doubtless been transferred to other themes. But 
 the book appeals to deeper interests and a more per- 
 manent audience. To that audience I venture to 
 submit the following reconsideration of the subject. 
 The multifarious and divergent estimates of the book 
 may themselves serve, I think, by the very misap- 
 prehensions they reveal, to set its essential argument 
 in a clearer light. And in the second place, I de- 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 227 
 
 sire to call attention to an important change, an im- 
 portant advance, as it seems to me, in Mr Balfour's 
 philosophical position, since the publication of his 
 earlier volume. No critic, so far as I know, has 
 commented on this change, although it serves, in great 
 measure, to explain the conflicting judgments of Mr 
 Balfour's argument ; and the author himself seems 
 hardly aware that he has in any way shifted his 
 ground. But however insensible the advance may 
 have been, and however closely the two positions 
 may still seem at times to approach one another, the 
 difference between them, from the point of view of 
 philosophical construction, is vital. 
 
 Eeviews and criticisms always indicate the personal 
 equation of the reviewer. But in Mr Balfour's case 
 the divergence of the critical voices had in it some 
 of the elements of surprise. It was to be expected 
 that naturalists and theologians would judge the book 
 by different standards, and take diametrically opposite 
 views of its value.; and it is true that in general the 
 Naturalist denounced it as " a plea for supernaturalism," 
 or as "written in the interest of the powers that be 
 and the established creed." But theologians them- 
 selves were found as widely at issue with one another. 
 It would have been natural, again, to find reviewers 
 
228 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 of a Eadical tendency inclined to pick flaws in the 
 book, and those of a Conservative colour inclined to 
 bless it altogether. And no doubt such a stream of 
 tendency may be traced in some of the less important 
 notices of the daily and weekly press. But perhaps 
 the most acrid and unsympathetic notices that were 
 written appeared in the Tory columns of ' Blackwood ' 
 and the ' Saturday Eeview.' The contrast of opinions 
 was fairly typified in the titles given in the same 
 week to their articles by two of our prominent 
 weeklies. " Mr Balfour as a Christian " was the one 
 headline; "Mr Balfour the Sceptic" was the other. 
 Both are written avowedly from an orthodox Christian 
 standpoint ; yet the one finds " the last hundred pages 
 of the book," that is to say, the constructive sugges- 
 tions towards a provisional philosophy, "almost un- 
 readable." "We are supposed," says the critic, "to 
 be taught theories of ' beliefs and realities ' ; but we 
 find the beliefs qualified out of existence, and the 
 reality attenuated till it is slighter than a shadow." 
 The other reviewer is of opinion that Mr Balfour writes 
 in these sections of his book "with amazing fresh- 
 ness and interest"; and he concludes by saying that 
 " preachers will find much in it to repay their study, 
 and to contribute to their work." If we confine our 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 229 
 
 attention to theologians who write above their own 
 signature, Principal Fairbairn confesses to "deep 
 disappointment." "Pleasure turned to pain, as the 
 underlying philosophy was seen to be shifting sand 
 rather than solid rock; the farther the reading pro- 
 ceeded, the less satisfactory the argument appeared." 
 Professor Marcus Dods, on the contrary, declares 
 that " if Mr Balfour's volume is the result of his 
 enforced absence from the helm of the State, it is 
 a strong argument for the continuance of the Liberal 
 Government." He compares the book to Butler's 
 'Analogy,' and adds that "there are many who have 
 read the older master with dissatisfaction, who will 
 find in the teacher of to-day the conviction and help 
 they seek." 
 
 Looking at another part of the field, we find Mr 
 Alfred Benn, who writes in the main from the 
 Naturalistic standpoint, confidently recommending the 
 book to Eoman Catholic believers " as bringing water 
 to their mill." But Dr Barry, who is doubtless more 
 entitled to speak for the Eoman Catholic theologians, 
 pronounces, in the 'Dublin Eeview,' that "the foun- 
 dation is not true and will never stand." " Universal 
 doubt, rather than religious dogma, will gain by the 
 stroke that smites reason to the ground." " Montaigne 
 
230 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 had said all these things before, with infinite vivacity 
 and eloquence, but to the praise of a dissolving and 
 pernicious doubt rather than to the gain of Chris- 
 tianity." For Montaigne, the writer in 'Blackwood' 
 substitutes Pilate and Mephistopheles. " God forbid," 
 he ejaculates, " that religion should ever be led to rest 
 its case on pleadings like these ! " 
 
 In sum, it may be said that while many representa- 
 tives of the Churches accept the new champion with 
 acclamation, and without too narrow a scrutiny of his 
 weapons or methods of warfare, an important section 
 will have none of such a defender. They are more 
 afraid of what they take to be the sceptical premisses 
 of the book, than grateful for its orthodox conclusions. 
 " Non tali auxilio" they seem to say ; " we prefer to 
 fight with our own weapons, and take the chances of 
 the war." 
 
 Which of these two last-named parties is the better 
 advised, and what is the truth about the scepticism 
 which is said to pervade the book, and to defeat what 
 was avowedly the author's intention in writing it ? In 
 general, is there any explanation to be found in the 
 book itself of these contradictory estimates of its con- 
 tents and result ? If, as I am convinced, the volume 
 is much more than the tour de force of an eminent 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 231 
 
 statesman, and the wonder of a literary season, this 
 is a question which it will well repay us to consider. 
 I do not speak here of the classical graces and felicities 
 of the style, which have been on all hands sufficiently 
 acknowledged. Whether the argument, moreover, is in 
 all points consistent with itself, whether all the posi- 
 tions advanced are equally tenable, these are questions 
 on which we may easily differ ; but to fail to recognise 
 the vitality of the discussions, the mastery with which 
 the great philosophical debate is handled, is to show a 
 mind which either cannot rise above long-incrusted 
 prejudice, or cannot detach itself from the technical 
 shibboleths of its own philosophic sect. 
 
 What then, let us ask, does the book itself profess to 
 be ? It is an inquiry into " the foundations of belief," 
 and the sub-title (" Notes introductory to the Study of 
 Theology ") indicates at once the practical, or perhaps 
 one might rather say more broadly the human, interest 
 that underlies and prompts the investigation. Through- 
 out the book, nothing is more remarkable than the 
 spirit of intellectual detachment which it exhibits, the 
 perfect freedom, at times one might say the airy free- 
 dom, with which the discussion is conducted. Yet 
 we are made to feel that it has not been undertaken 
 
232 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 for the mere delight of dialectic fence. The book is in- 
 spired by a keen human interest, which breaks through, 
 from time to time, in passages of deep feeling or in- 
 dignant irony. The author conceives the spiritual 
 heritage of mankind to be endangered by certain cur- 
 rent assumptions of a would-be philosophic nature. 
 He submits these assumptions, accordingly, to scrutiny 
 (and with them the assumptions that underlie the 
 whole fabric of human knowledge), in order to discover 
 whether we are really under an intellectual obligation 
 to surrender the beliefs in question beliefs as to the 
 cause of the world and man's place in it, which form 
 the basis of all theological teaching, and which con- 
 stitute what may be called the spiritual view of the 
 world. 
 
 Mr Balfour's attitude, it will be seen from what has 
 been said, is to a large extent the same as when he 
 wrote his 'Defence of Philosophic Doubt' in 1879. 
 The fact that the earlier work is described, in a sub- 
 title, as " an Essay on the Foundations of Belief," indi- 
 cates the amount of ground which the two volumes 
 occupy in common ; and the second part of the present 
 work ("Some Eeasons for Belief") is largely a more 
 popular restatement of some of the criticisms contained 
 in ' Philosophic Doubt.' The motive of the two books 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 233 
 
 is also the same ; for, in his first publication also, the 
 avowed occasion of Mr Balfour's attack was the ag- 
 gressive attitude assumed towards religion by " ad- 
 vanced thinkers," who claimed to speak in the name 
 of science. But though the two books have much 
 in common, it would be a mistake to suppose that 
 Mr Balfour has, in the second, simply repeated, with 
 variations, the theme of the first. The many resem- 
 blances of the two volumes have fostered the impres- 
 sion that this is the case ; and I cannot but think that 
 injustice has been thereby done to the scope of the 
 argument in the 'Foundations of Belief.' 
 
 Under this impression, the sceptical criticism of 
 Empiricism and Transcendentalism, and the laudation 
 of Authority, assumed an undue importance, over- 
 shadowing what I take to be the substantive thesis 
 of the book and its more enduring contribution to 
 philosophical thought. Some have maintained, indeed, 
 that ' The Foundations of Belief ' is a misnomer (like 
 the chapter on snakes in Iceland), inasmuch as the 
 whole purpose of the book is to prove that belief has 
 no foundations. This, as I hope to show, is true of the 
 more recent argument only in a technical sense which 
 robs the assertion of its sting. But it might claim 
 to be a fairly accurate description of the position in 
 
234 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 which we are left at the conclusion of the earlier 
 volume. The ' Defence of Philosophic Doubt ' is really 
 an exposition of the purest scepticism. It is, accord- 
 ing to the author's own description, a piece of purely 
 destructive criticism, directed against the foundations 
 of scientific knowledge, or what claims to be such. The 
 argument is conducted, it is true, with an arribre pensfo 
 in the shape of " practical results " which it is supposed 
 to yield in the interests of religious truth. But the 
 actual conclusion drawn is, that both the creed of 
 religion and the creed of science are equally baseless, 
 in the sense of being "incapable of any rational de- 
 fence." Hence Mr Balfour concludes that "religion 
 is at any rate no worse off than science in the matter 
 of proof" (pp. 315-319). We have as much right 
 to believe the one as the other. " I am content to 
 regard the two great creeds by which we attempt to 
 regulate our lives as resting in the main upon separate 
 bases. So long, therefore, as neither of them can lay 
 claim to philosophic probability, discrepancies which 
 exist, or may hereafter arise, between them cannot be 
 considered as bearing more heavily against the one 
 than against the other" (p. 322). Both science and 
 theology have " claims on our belief," but these 
 claims are not to be construed as reasons. 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 235 
 
 Whatever they may be, they are not rational grounds of 
 conviction. ... It would be more proper to describe them 
 as a kind of inward inclination or impulse, falling far short 
 of or, I should perhaps rather say, altogether differing in 
 kind from philosophic certitude, leaving the reason, there- 
 fore, unsatisfied, but amounting, nevertheless, to a practical 
 cause of belief, from the effects of which we do not even 
 desire to be released (p. 317). 
 
 If it be objected tha't this " impulse " is not universal, 
 Mr Balfour rejoins that to build upon the universality 
 of the impulse would be to erect the impulse to believe 
 into a reason for believing, and so entirely to misread 
 the situation. The contention expressly is that there 
 is no reason for belief in either case ; and where the 
 impulse is wanting in any number of individuals, we 
 simply note its absence in their case, as we note its 
 presence in other individuals. But there can be no 
 argument in such a matter from one individual to 
 another. 
 
 I and an indefinite number of other persons, if we con- 
 template religion and science as unproved systems of belief 
 standing side by side, feel a practical need for both. . . . 
 But as no legitimate argument can be founded on the mere 
 existence of this need or impulse, so no legitimate argument 
 can be founded on any differences which psychological 
 analysis may detect between different cases of its manifesta- 
 tion. We are in this matter, unfortunately, altogether 
 outside the sphere of Reason (p. 320). 
 
236 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 Such passages are obviously a formulation of the purest 
 scepticism which can weU be conceived. To find their 
 parallel we must go back to Hume the Hume of the 
 ' Treatise/ who also concludes that 
 
 after the most accurate and exact of my reasonings, I can 
 give no reason why I should assent to it, and feel nothing 
 hut a strong propensity to consider objects strongly in that 
 view under which they appear to me. ... I may, nay, 
 I must yield to the current of nature in submitting to my 
 senses and understanding; and in this blind submission I 
 show most perfectly my sceptical disposition and principles. 
 ... If we believe that fire warms or water refreshes, it is 
 only because it costs us too much pains to think otherwise 
 (part iv. section 7). 
 
 Moreover, the earlier volume contains no indication, 
 or next to none, of the precise nature of the theological 
 beliefs by which the author would supplement the 
 creed of science. Mr Balfour apparently identifies 
 himself with "the ordinary believer" (p. 325). His 
 language seems to imply an uncriticised acceptance 
 of the traditional creed as a whole. It can hardly, 
 however, be argued with any plausibility that the 
 impulse to religious belief extends to the details of a 
 dogmatic scheme like that of historical Christianity. 
 Hence, the man who believes on such terms seems to 
 have no course open to him but unquestioning submis- 
 sion to authority and tradition. 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 237 
 
 The impression, therefore, produced by the earlier 
 volume and I think not unnaturally produced was 
 that it was essentially a new version of the often- 
 repeated attempt to aggrandise authority by sapping 
 the foundations of all rational certainty; an attempt, 
 therefore, to found religious faith upon intellectual 
 scepticism. Taken barely thus, and as historically 
 exemplified in writers like Pascal, Newman, and 
 Mansel, such an attitude obviously surrenders all 
 claim to rational criticism of the dogmas offered 
 for acceptance, and offers no safeguard against the 
 re -invasion of the grossest superstition. A more 
 dangerous defence of religious truth cannot, I think, 
 be imagined. And if this is supposed to be the sum 
 of Mr Balfour's contribution in the 'Foundations of 
 Belief,' I can understand Principal Fairbairn's "deep 
 disappointment " with the volume, and his comparison 
 of the author's method to that of "the blind Samson 
 who sacrificed himself, in order that he might the more 
 effectually bury the Philistines under the ruins of 
 their own temple." As Dr Barry puts it, " Universal 
 doubt, rather than religious dogma, will gain by the 
 stroke that smites Eeason to the ground." But, in 
 this respect, the two books do not appear to me 
 to stand upon the same level. It is not without 
 
238 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 significance that the title of the first has for its leading 
 word " doubt," while the* leading word of that of the 
 second is "belief." Although the later volume takes 
 up into itself the distinctive theses of the earlier, 
 and elaborates them in some cases with far greater 
 resources of irony and felicitous illustration (for 
 example, in Part III. on " Some Causes of Belief "), 
 the second work is undoubtedly to be understood, in 
 the main, as the constructive complement of the first. 
 Its principal line of argument, that from needs to their 
 satisfaction, is implied in a few phrases in the con- 
 cluding pages of the ' Defence of Philosophical Doubt ' ; 
 but it is here developed in such a way as to overshadow, 
 and, indeed, to place in a new light, the sceptical 
 argumentation with which it is associated. The first 
 and the last of the four parts into which the book is 
 divided are, in this respect, completely new, and could 
 almost be read perhaps, I might say, they would retain 
 their substantive value without the intervention of 
 the sceptical analysis contained in Parts II. and III. 
 At all events, when the argument of the volume is 
 considered as a whole, and in its logical sequence, 
 Mr Balfour's " scepticism " is seen to be of a strictly 
 limited and hypothetical character. If its scope has 
 been exaggerated, that is largely due to the influence 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 239 
 
 of an unfortunate terminology. But the majority of 
 the critics, coming to the book with the current idea 
 of the author's position derived from the previous 
 volume, were not prepared to catch the true perspective 
 of the argument. Those parts of it with which they 
 seemed to be already familiar bulked more largely in 
 their eyes than the more fundamental, but perhaps 
 more unassuming, line of thought upon which Mr 
 Balfour here depends for his positive conclusions. 
 
 Mr Balfour has himself also partly to blame for the 
 misconception. In the chapters on " Philosophy and 
 Eationalism " and on " Eeason and Authority," he has 
 devoted himself, with manifest relish, to the task of 
 exposing the ineptitude of much of the language habit- 
 ually indulged in by the devotees of pure reason. In 
 this part of the book he has given the reins to his 
 powers of epigram and irony, and he displays an almost 
 wilful pleasure in shocking the reader by the audacity 
 with which he tears to pieces the most respectable 
 commonplaces. The outcome of these chapters, taken 
 by themselves, appears to be a depreciation of reason 
 which verges on cynicism, and a corresponding glorifi- 
 cation of authority as the principle of coherence and 
 continuity in human life and society. The very choice 
 of the obnoxious term " authority " to designate the 
 
240 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 group of causes which Mr Balfour here opposes to 
 " reason " may be looked upon as part of the " delight 
 of battle " which so plainly inspires this section of the 
 book. The defence of authority might have been sup- 
 posed in these days to be limited to those whom Pro- 
 fessor James lately described with more force than 
 politeness as " the stall-fed officials of an established 
 Church." Yet, meeting it here in Mr Balfour's pages, 
 the exasperated critics, after the first impulse of in- 
 dignation, determined that it was the natural and 
 becoming attitude of the Tory leader, and communi- 
 cated this to the British public as the gist of the book. 
 It has to be added, however, in extenuation of this 
 misapprehension, that the chapters in question are so 
 brilliantly written, and, in spite of apparent paradoxes, 
 so full of the wisdom of life, that they cannot but 
 dwell in the memory of most readers, when they come 
 to give an account of the book. 
 
 But for my own part, sorry as I should be to miss 
 these brilliant and suggestive dissertations, taken as 
 such on their own merits, I am so far from regarding 
 them as the essence of the book that, looking merely to 
 the coherence of the main argument, I have sometimes 
 been inclined to echo Dr Barry's complaint that Mr 
 Balfour has interposed these sections " almost wan- 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 241 
 
 tonly, between his criticism of the Naturalist and his 
 apology for the Theologian." Such a drastic " cut " is, 
 of course, not seriously to be thought of. The author 
 in these chapters unquestionably advances positions 
 which are much too important to be treated merely as 
 incidents ; and their elimination would greatly alter 
 the character of the book. I refer especially to the 
 limitation of Eeason to conscious ratiocination, and 
 the treatment of Eationalism as undeveloped and in- 
 consequent Naturalism. Both these propositions, if 
 understood in the sense which has been commonly put 
 upon them, appear to me philosophically untenable, as 
 well as inconsistent with Mr Balfour's own argument. 
 But a closer examination of the sections in question, 
 in their relation to the rest of the book, has convinced 
 me that the general impression of their meaning is 
 largely a misapprehension, caused by Mr Balfour's 
 terminology, and that, when taken in their true in- 
 tention, they bear a much more harmless, indeed, a 
 perfectly defensible, sense. Without proposing to de- 
 fend his terminology, I am prepared, therefore, to do 
 more justice to the logical sequence of Mr Balfour's 
 thought than is implied in Dr Barry's stricture. But 
 I have no hesitation in saying that if it were necessary 
 to put upon these chapters the interpretation put by 
 
242 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 Dr Barry and many other critics, it would be impos- 
 sible to reconcile this part of the book with the con- 
 structive philosophy suggested in Part IV. This, as I 
 take it, is the explanation of the divergences of critical 
 opinion, to which reference was made at the outset. 
 Failing to detect the coherence between these two 
 parts of the book, the critic is, in a manner, obliged to 
 choose between them ; and, according as he chooses the 
 one or the other, he effects a corresponding change in 
 the centre of gravity of the volume. 
 
 A short review of the course of the discussion will, 
 I think, substantiate this view of the true perspec- 
 tive of the argument. It will at the same time fur- 
 nish evidence of the change which has, to some 
 extent unconsciously, effected itself in Mr Balfour's 
 own position. 
 
 The book is divided, it will be remembered, into 
 four parts, called respectively, " Some Consequences 
 of Belief," " Some Eeasons for Belief," " Some Causes 
 of Belief," and " Suggestions towards a Provisional 
 Philosophy." Mr Balfour begins, that is to say, by 
 drawing out the implications of Naturalism in the 
 domain of ethics and esthetics, and exhibiting the 
 general aspect which the world presents according to 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 243 
 
 " this theory of the non-rational origin of reason." The 
 substance of current morality, he points out, is taken 
 for granted by the naturalistic evolutionist, as it is, 
 curiously enough, by the most various schools of 
 moralists. But, in this case, there is a fundamental 
 " incongruity between the sentiments subservient to 
 morality and the naturalistic account of their origin." 
 Nature's sole aim, according to the theory, is the sur- 
 vival of the individual or the race in the struggle for 
 existence. There can be no ground, therefore, 
 
 for drawing a distinction in favour of any of the pro- 
 cesses, physiological or psychological, by which the indi- 
 vidual or the race is benefited. . . . We can hardly doubt 
 that the august sentiments which cling to the ideas of duty 
 and sacrifice are nothing better than a device of nature to 
 trick us into the performance of altruistic actions. ... It 
 is because, in the struggle for existence, the altruistic virtues 
 are an advantage to the family, the tribe, or the nation, but 
 not always an advantage to the individual; it is because 
 man comes into the world richly endowed with the inheri- 
 tance of self -regarding instincts and appetites required by 
 his animal progenitors, but poor indeed in any inbred in- 
 clination to the unselfishness necessary to the wellbeing of 
 the society in which he lives ; it is because in no other way 
 can the original impulses be displaced by those of later 
 growth to the degree required by public utility, that Nature, 
 indifferent to our happiness, indifferent to our morals, but 
 sedulous of our survival, commends disinterested virtue to 
 
244 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 our practice by decking it out in all the splendour which 
 the specifically ethical sentiments alone are capable of 
 supplying (pp. 16, 17). 
 
 In a world, indeed, in which we recognise that " our 
 conduct was determined for us by the distribution of 
 unthinking forces in pre-solar seons," the emotions with 
 which we are wont to contemplate virtuous actions 
 become entirely unmeaning. Moreover, there is the 
 same want of harmony " between the demands of the 
 ethical imagination and what naturalism tells us con- 
 cerning the final goal of all human endeavour " (p. 26). 
 " We desire, and desire most passionately when we are 
 most ourselves, to give our service to that which is 
 universal and to that which is abiding." But man, 
 according to Naturalism, is " no more than a pheno- 
 menon among phenomena, a natural object among 
 other natural objects. His very existence is an acci- 
 dent, his story a brief and transitory episode in the 
 life of one of the meanest of the planets ; " l and as this 
 lesson is driven home, " we may well feel inclined to 
 ask whether so transitory and unimportant an accident 
 
 1 Did space permit I would fain transcribe the whole of the striking 
 passage in which Mr Balfour depicts the ultimate issue of Natural- 
 ism a passage in which speculative imagination and intense human 
 feeling have combined to add a page of rare and moving eloquence to 
 English literature. 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 245 
 
 in the general scheme of things as the fortunes of the 
 human race can any longer satisfy aspirations and 
 emotions nourished upon beliefs in the Everlasting 
 and the Divine." We may expect, in short, in the case 
 of those holding the naturalistic creed, " that the more 
 thoroughly the intellect is saturated with its essential 
 teaching, the more certain are the sentiments violently 
 and unnaturally associated with it to languish or 
 to die." 
 
 The obvious objection that among the professors of 
 naturalism are to be found some of the most shining 
 examples of unselfish virtue, is met by the parable of 
 the parasites. " Biologists tell us of parasites which 
 live, and can only live, within the bodies of animals 
 more highly organised than they." Similarly, the 
 spiritual life of such men is " sheltered by convictions 
 which belong not to them but to the society of which 
 they form a part ; it is nourished by processes in which 
 they take no share." The argument based upon such 
 examples would not hold, therefore, of a society com- 
 pletely impregnated by naturalistic principles. 
 
 But the further and apparently more radical objec- 
 tion has been raised, that Mr Balfour has presented 
 the world with a caricature of Naturalism, even in its 
 purely theoretical aspect. He is fighting, it is said, 
 
246 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 with a man of straw, with a bogy of his own creation. 
 There are no Naturalists, in Mr Balfour's sense of the 
 term; existing Naturalists would disclaim, with one 
 accord, the creed which he puts in their mouth. The 
 disclaimer has, as a matter of fact, been made in many 
 quarters since the appearance of the volume, with con- 
 siderable display of indignation ; and I think we may 
 readily admit the sincerity of those who make it, 
 without concluding, on that account, that Mr Balfour 
 has been terrifying himself and his readers by a fancy 
 sketch. Tew persons take the trouble to connect their 
 various opinions into a coherent system of belief; 
 many points have commonly been left vague, others 
 have been qualified by inconsistent admissions. Hence 
 they fail to recognise the lineaments of a system which 
 they have never consciously surveyed as a whole, much 
 less embraced, and from which, when stated with rigor- 
 ous consistency and remorseless clearness, they shrink 
 with unaffected horror. But this constitutes no im- 
 peachment of Mr Balfour's method. Only by the 
 development of a system into all its consequences can 
 the true features of the system be discerned, and judg- 
 ment passed upon its adequacy. And, for my own 
 part, I cannot admit that Mr Balfour's picture is too 
 highly coloured. 
 
MR BALFOUE AND HIS CRITICS. 247 
 
 The distinction between Naturalism and Science has 
 also to be kept carefully in view at this point. Many 
 critics have fallen into the mistake of supposing that 
 Mr Balfour has a quarrel with Science, and that his 
 object is to discredit its methods and results. They 
 have accused him of identifying Naturalism and Science, 
 of treating the former creed as the inevitable inference 
 from scientific facts and theories, and of attributing it 
 accordingly to all scientific men. Many honest pro- 
 tests have been made, from the side of Science, against 
 this supposed identification. On the other hand, the 
 Naturalists, less ingenuously perhaps, have sedulously 
 fostered the same impression. As no one can seriously 
 hope to prevail in a contest with Science, they have 
 put it about that the whole attack is no more than 
 a display of dialectic fireworks, of which nobody is a 
 penny the worse. They have pursued in this their 
 accustomed tactics ; it has been long their practice to 
 seek shelter behind the segis of Science. But, on the 
 present occasion, it is not Mr Balfour 's fault if the 
 stratagem succeeds; he has denounced it in advance. 
 In concluding his criticism of " The Philosophic Basis 
 of Naturalism," he is at special pains to expose 
 
 the speculative, but quite illusory, title by which the empiri- 
 cal school have endeavoured to associate Naturalism and 
 
248 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 Science in a kind of joint supremacy over the thoughts and 
 consciences of mankind. . . . With empirical philosophy [he 
 says in a characteristic passage], considered as a tentative 
 contribution to the theory of Science, I have no desire to 
 pick a quarrel. That it should fail is nothing; other phil- 
 osophies have failed. Such is, after all, the common lot. . . . 
 But that it should develop into Naturalism, and then, on 
 the strength of labours which it has not endured, of vic- 
 tories which it has not won, and of scientific triumphs in 
 which it has no right to share, presume, in spite of its 
 speculative insufficiency, to dictate terms of surrender to 
 every other system of belief, is altogether intolerable. 
 Who would pay the slightest attention to Naturalism 
 if it did not force itself into the retinue of science, assume 
 her livery, and claim, as a kind of poor relation, in some 
 sort to represent her authority and to speak with her voice. 
 Of itself it is nothing. It neither ministers to the needs of 
 mankind, nor does it satisfy their reason (p. 135). 
 
 It is not with Science, or with scientific results as 
 such, that Mr Balfour has any quarrel. I do not 
 know any modern philosophical book which indicates 
 more unqualified acceptance of these results, or which 
 is more pervaded by the atmosphere of the most recent 
 science. It is the naturalistic interpretation of science 
 which he attacks, the attempt to make Science do duty 
 for philosophy, to substitute the history of a process 
 for a theory of its ultimate ground and source. There 
 is not a proposition of science, even the most material- 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 249 
 
 istic in seeming, which may not be unhesitatingly ac- 
 cepted, if combined with Bacon's acknowledgment of 
 " a divine marshal." And this is a question on which 
 Science, dealing only with secondary causes and the 
 sequences of phenomena, is necessarily dumb. 
 
 Having thus in Part I. reduced Naturalism to its 
 essentials, and developed it into its consequences, Mr 
 Balfour proceeds (in Part II.) to examine the philo- 
 sophic basis of the theory, and the rational justification 
 which it has to offer of its first principles. For such a 
 justification he naturally turns first to empirical phil- 
 osophy. He begins, however, by remarking most truly 
 upon the comparative neglect by all schools (at least 
 before Kant) of a philosophy of science, or, to put it 
 more broadly, of a theory of knowledge, and in par- 
 ticular upon the tendency of the empirical school to 
 substitute psychology for philosophy to deal "with 
 the origins of what we believe rather than with its 
 justification." "A full and systematic attempt, first 
 to enumerate, and then to justify, the presuppositions 
 on which all science finally rests, has, it seems to me, 
 still to be made." And he lays down the unquestion- 
 ably sound position that " no general theory of know- 
 ledge has the least chance of being successful, which 
 does not explicitly include within the circuit of its 
 
250 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 criticism, not only the beliefs which seem to us to be 
 dubious, but those also /which we hold with the most 
 perfect practical assurance/' "Nothing stands more 
 in need of demonstration than the obvious." 
 
 After effectively contrasting the common-sense view 
 of the world, based upon the immediate judgments of 
 perception, with the scientific account of material reality, 
 and contrasting both with the train of psychical se- 
 quences from which they are supposed to be deduced, 
 he proceeds to apply to empirical philosophy his test 
 of a satisfactory theory, securely grounded and firmly 
 concatenated. Does it admit of being stated "as a 
 series of premisses and conclusions, starting from those 
 which are axiomatic i.e., for which proof can be 
 neither given nor required and running on through a 
 continuous series of binding inferences until the whole 
 of knowledge is caught up and ordered in the meshes of 
 this all-inclusive dialectic network ? " 
 
 The argument proper is compressed here within 
 small compass, partly because Mr Balfour is able to 
 refer to his more detailed and technical treatment in 
 ' Philosophic Doubt,' partly because it is, in reality, so 
 easy to show that Hume's is the only legitimate con- 
 clusion that can be drawn from any philosophy " which 
 depends for its premisses in the last resort upon the 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 251 
 
 particulars revealed to us in perceptive experience 
 alone." As he pointedly says : 
 
 Nothing in the history of speculation is more astonishing, 
 nothing, if I am to speak my whole mind, is more absurd, 
 than the way in which Hume's philosophic progeny, a most 
 distinguished race, have, in spite of all their differences, yet 
 been able to agree, loth that experience is essentially as 
 Hume described it, and that from such an experience can 
 be rationally extracted anything even in the remotest de- 
 gree resembling the existing system of the natural sciences. 
 
 The whole fabric of the sciences depends upon the 
 principle of universal causation, but it is impossible 
 to extract from particular experiences anything more 
 than the habit of expecting 
 
 among sequences familiar to us in the petty round of daily 
 life the recurrence of something resembling a former con- 
 sequent, following on the heels of something resembling a 
 former antecedent. . . . When we come to the more com- 
 plex phenomena with which we have to deal, the plain 
 lesson taught by personal observation is not the regularity, 
 but the irregularity, of Nature. . . . This apparent ir- 
 regularity of Nature, obvious enough when we turn our 
 attention to it, escapes our habitual notice, of course, be- 
 cause we invariably attribute the want of observed uni- 
 formity to the errors of the observer. And without doubt 
 we do well. But what does this imply ? It implies that 
 we bring to the interpretation of our sense-perception the 
 
252 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 principle of causation ready-made. It implies that we do 
 not believe the world to be governed by immutable law, 
 because our experiences appear to be regular ; but that we 
 believe that our experiences, in spite of their apparent 
 irregularity, follow some (perhaps) unknown rule, because 
 we first believe the world to be governed by immutable law. 
 But this is as much as to say that the principle is not proved 
 by experience, but that experience is understood in the light 
 of the principle (pv- 132, 133). 
 
 With this important conclusion Mr Balfour passes 
 to the consideration of "Transcendental Idealism." 
 This chapter is printed by the author in smaller type 
 than the rest of the book, and the general reader is 
 recommended to omit it. I propose on this occasion 
 to claim the privilege of the general reader for a variety 
 of reasons. In the first place, the position which Mr 
 Balfour ' has himself assigned to it indicates that it 
 stands to some extent apart from the main argument 
 of the book, which is intelligible and sufficiently com- 
 plete without it. Moreover, it is limited, for the most 
 part, to a criticism of the idealistic theory as it appears 
 in the works of the late Professor Green. As a matter 
 of fact, I am in agreement with most of the criticisms 
 which Mr Balfour here makes upon Green's formulae. 
 But the weaknesses of Green's version of idealism 
 have (thanks largely to Mr Balfour's criticisms of 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 253 
 
 earlier date) come to be pretty widely acknowledged, 
 even by Idealists themselves, and his specific doctrines 
 do not occupy, therefore, the position of authority in 
 the school which they held when Mr Balfour began to 
 write. It may be said also, that in pressing his critical 
 advantage over Green, Mr Balfour, in this chapter, is 
 disposed to put out of sight the larger aspects of ideal- 
 ism, and to forget the real affinities of the idealistic 
 theory to his own constructive doctrines. I will try 
 to show, before I close, that these affinities have been 
 underestimated, both by Mr Balfour himself and by 
 his idealist critics. 
 
 In what follows, we enter upon the most question- 
 able part of Mr Balfour's speculations, a part in which 
 his use of terms has proved, and could hardly fail to 
 prove, misleading. The sections to which I refer, the 
 last two chapters of Part II. and the whole of Part III., 
 begin by drawing from the foregoing investigations the 
 ill-omened, and purely Humian, conclusion that " Cer- 
 titude is found to be the child, not of reason, but of 
 custom." " If this be true," continues Mr Balfour, " it 
 is plainly a fact of capital importance. It must re- 
 volutionise our whole attitude towards the problems 
 presented to us by science, ethics, and theology." 
 Obviously, we must refuse "arbitrarily to erect one 
 
254 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 department of belief (the scientific) into a lawgiver for 
 all the others." 
 
 Here Mr Balfour, for the moment, does not advance 
 beyond the attitude which he inculcated as the " Prac- 
 tical Eesult " of ' Philosophic Doubt.' Both creeds, he 
 there argued, the creed of Science and the creed of 
 Eeligion, being equally without rational foundation, 
 it is quite indefensible to make one the norm of the 
 other. Later on in the present volume, Mr Balfour 
 expressly discards the remedy which " consists in 
 simply setting up, side by side with the creed of 
 natural science, another and supplementary set of 
 beliefs which may minister to needs and aspirations 
 which Science cannot meet" (p. 186). He recognises 
 how impossible it is " to acquiesce in this unconsidered 
 division of the ' whole ' of knowledge into two or more 
 unconnected fragments" (p. 187), and accepts as a 
 necessary ideal, and one which, at least in part, he 
 attempts himself to realise, " the unification of all be- 
 lief into an ordered whole, compacted into one coherent 
 structure under the stress of reason " (p. 233). But, in 
 the sections we are considering, he continues to work 
 the earlier sceptical vein. This is exemplified in the 
 account of reason and rationalism which follows, certain 
 passages of which are among the most unguarded in 
 
ME BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 255 
 
 the book, and have given offence in quarters where, it 
 is certain, they were never intended to do so. Mr 
 Balfour, it will be remembered, repeatedly connects 
 rationalism and naturalism, treating the latter as the 
 logical outcome of the former, the former as merely 
 a half-way house to the latter, occupied by thinkers 
 too timid or too inconsequent to realise their proper 
 destination. " Naturalism," he says, " is the completed 
 product of Bationalism" (p. 173); again he speaks of 
 "rationalising methods and naturalistic results" (p. 
 174) ; " Eationalism," he repeats, " is the high road to 
 naturalism " (p. 175) ; " Eationalism is Naturalism in 
 embryo" (p. 185). 
 
 Now if Reason is used here in the large, philosophic 
 sense of the word, and if by Rationalism is understood 
 any system of thought which builds unreservedly upon 
 Reason, and involves no other organ for the appre- 
 hension of truth, then it must be admitted that these 
 propositions are among the most insidious and sub- 
 versive which it is possible to conceive. It must have 
 been such statements that Mr Benn had in view when 
 he recommended the volume to Roman Catholics as 
 bringing water to their mill. So interpreted, they 
 would compel us to class the systems of Plato and 
 Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, as Naturalism in embryo, 
 
256 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 because they build throughout upon the rational nature 
 of man, without feeling it necessary to invoke, without, 
 indeed, leaving any place for, the supernatural in the 
 ecclesiastical sense of the term. Mr Balfour explains, 
 however, at the outset that he proposes to "employ 
 the word in a much more restricted sense." He will 
 use it, he says, to indicate 
 
 a special form of that reaction against dogmatic theology 
 which may be said with sufficient accuracy to have taken 
 its rise in the Renaissance, to have increased in volume 
 during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and to 
 have reached its most complete expression in the Natural- 
 ism which has occupied our attention through the first 
 portion of these Notes (p. 168). 
 
 Even this definition, as it stands, is too wide, if we are 
 to acquiesce in the censures heaped upon Rationalism, 
 and in the account which Mr Balfour gives of its 
 necessary goal. For the definition would naturally 
 include the whole movement of modern thought 
 Descartes and Leibniz, as well as Hobbes and Hume, 
 Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, as well as Comte, Mill, and 
 Spencer. And, in that case, it cannot easily be dis- 
 tinguished from similar dicta of Newman and other 
 Catholic theologians. But, in point of fact, Mr Balfour 
 uses the term in a still more special and restricted 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 257 
 
 sense than his own definition might lead us to expect. 
 He understands by it, he says, " a view of the universe 
 based exclusively upon the prevalent mode of inter- 
 preting sense -perception" (p. 170); it involves "the 
 assumption that the kind of 'experience' which gave 
 us natural science was the sole basis of knowledge" 
 (p. 171). His definition would therefore apply, at 
 most, to the empirical or sensationalist philosophies; 
 and the course of the discussion makes it plain that 
 he has in view, not so much the systems of philoso- 
 phers, 1 as the body of thought occupied largely with 
 theological and social discussion, which arrogated to 
 itself, in the second half of the eighteenth century, 
 the prerogatives of reason and common-sense. To this 
 widespread movement in England and Germany a 
 movement characteristic of the eighteenth century, 
 though doubtless having its origin in an earlier period, 
 and continuing its influence into the present century 
 the name Eationalism, in a specific sense, is very 
 frequently applied in philosophical and theological 
 writing. It is the period which Hegelian writers 
 commonly designate as that of the Aufklarung or 
 Enlightenment. That these are the discussions and 
 
 1 " nationalists," he says, "as such, are not philosophers. e . They 
 judge as men of the world" (p. 171). 
 
 R 
 
258 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 this the temper of mind which Mr Balfour intends 
 to condemn, is proved, to my mind, beyond doubt, 
 by the chapter on "Kationalist Orthodoxy," which 
 concludes this part of the book. It has often been 
 remarked that the orthodox defenders of Christianity 
 were as completely under the influence of the domi- 
 nant spirit as its assailants. The presuppositions and 
 methods of both parties were the same. The attack 
 was delivered and the defence conducted with the 
 same weapons. Mr Balfour accordingly turns, in this 
 chapter, to the defenders of the faith, and condemns 
 unsparingly the inadequacy both of the systems of 
 " Natural Eeligion " and of the " Christian evidences " 
 which were then so much in vogue. By this method 
 of treatment, he declares, theology becomes 
 
 a mere annex or appendix to Science, a mere footnote to 
 history. . . . "We are no longer dealing with a creed whose 
 real premisses lie deep in the nature of things. . . . We are 
 asked to believe the Universe to have been designed by a 
 Deity for the same sort of reason that we believe Canter- 
 bury Cathedral to have been designed by an architect ; and 
 to believe in the events narrated in the Gospels for the 
 same sort of reason that we believe in the murder of Thomas 
 a Becket (p. 178). 
 
 Professor Wallace is one of the critics who censures 
 most severely Mr Balfour's dealings with Eeason and 
 
ME BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 259 
 
 Eationalism ; but in a chapter of his recent Pro- 
 legomena to Hegel's 'Logic/ entitled "Two Ages of 
 Keason/' he comments in a similar strain upon the 
 period and spirit in question, and even while em- 
 phasising the larger use of Eeason, his language ac- 
 knowledges the frequent appropriation of Eeason and 
 Eationalism (but especially of the latter) in a narrower 
 or lower sense : 
 
 The eighteenth century, it has been often said, was a 
 rationalising, unhistorical age. ... To simplify, to level, 
 to render intelligible and self -consistent, was the task of 
 enlightenment in dealing with all institutions. It was 
 assumed that the standard of adjudication was to be found 
 in the averagely educated and generally cultured individual 
 among the class of more or less " advanced thinkers " who 
 asked the questions and set up the aims. . . . They took 
 themselves as the types of humanity and what their under- 
 standings found acceptable they dubbed rational : all else 
 was a survival from the ages of darkness. 
 
 But, in course of time, he proceeds, 
 
 it was made apparent that intelligence, with its hard-and-fast 
 formulae, its logical principles, its keen analysis, was not deep 
 enough or wide enough to justify its claim to the august title 
 of reason. . . . There are more things in heaven and earth 
 than are heard of in the philosophy of the logical intellect. 
 
 This phrase, " the logical intellect," or, as he elsewhere 
 varies it, the " merely intellectual and abstract in- 
 
260 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 telligence," exactly covers the old Eationalism which 
 Mr Balfour attacks. Professor Wallace contrasts it 
 with " the Eeason of German Idealism," which he 
 describes as "intelligence charged with emotion, full 
 of reverence, reverent above all to the majesty of 
 that divinity which, much disguised and weather- 
 beaten, like Glaucus of the sea, resides in common 
 and natural humanity." But these words might have 
 been written as a description of the provisional phil- 
 osophy which Mr Balfour sketches in his concluding 
 chapters, and proposes to substitute for Naturalism and 
 abstract Eationalism. They dwell, at any rate, with 
 felicitous emphasis on its leading characteristics ; and, 
 on this showing, Mr Balfour's ' Suggestions,' no less 
 than German Idealism, might fairly be styled a doc- 
 trine of the larger Eeason. 
 
 In the substance of his contention, therefore, Mr 
 Balfour may claim to have powerful philosophical 
 support from a quarter sufficiently free from the sus- 
 picion of clericalism or supernaturalism ; and even 
 his terminology, when examined, is found not to stray 
 so far from common usage. Eationalism is, I think, 
 most commonly used in the hard and narrow sense 
 he attributes to it. At the same time, the usage is 
 undeniably open to misconception ; and it was a thou- 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 261 
 
 sand pities that it was not more carefully fenced about 
 with explanation. Moreover, what a man may safely 
 do often depends on his own past record. Mr Balfour's 
 antecedent reputation for scepticism (not undeserved, 
 as we saw) made it almost certain that, in his case, 
 an attack on Eationalism would be interpreted in the 
 worst sense. And when to this was added the glorifi- 
 cation of authority at the expense of reason, in the 
 chapters which immediately follow, this interpretation 
 became inevitable. 
 
 The dissertation on Authority and Eeason may be 
 best understood as a supplement to the criticism of 
 Eationalism which precedes it. After denying the 
 competency of the logical intellect to solve the phil- 
 osophical problem, Mr Balfour proceeds to show, by 
 reference to everyday experience, how few human 
 beliefs have been reached by a conscious process of 
 ratiocination in the minds of the individuals who hold 
 them. He amplifies, that is to say, the Humian dictum 
 quoted above, that certitude is the child not of reason 
 but of custom. The vast majority of our beliefs, of our 
 ethical, social, and religious beliefs in particular, are 
 in this sense without a logical substructure; they 
 have been generated in the individual by "custom, 
 education, public opinion, the contagious convictions 
 
262 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 of countrymen, family, party, or Church." Immense 
 tracts of human life thiis lie apparently altogether out- 
 side the purview of the abstract reason ; indeed, so 
 far from the mass of our fundamental beliefs de- 
 pending on the reasoned assent of the individuals 
 who entertain them, we know from history that 
 when men do begin to analyse their beliefs and 
 usages, their abstract theorising is apt to be purely 
 disintegrative in its tendency. Stated in this form, 
 Mr Balfour's contention is so obviously true that it 
 is difficult to imagine any one dissenting from it. But 
 he has chosen to express his meaning by opposing 
 Authority to Eeason, and contrasting its beneficent 
 and all - pervading influence with "the comparative 
 pettiness of the role played by reasoning in human 
 affairs." 
 
 To Eeason we are in some measure beholden, though 
 not, perhaps, so much as we suppose, for hourly aid in 
 managing so much of the trifling portion of our personal 
 affairs intrusted to ourselves by nature as we do not happen 
 to have already surrendered to the control of habit. By 
 reason also is directed, or misdirected, the public policy of 
 communities within the narrow limits of deviation per- 
 mitted by accepted custom and tradition. . . . (But) if 
 we are to judge with equity between these rival claimants, 
 we must not forget that it is Authority rather than Reason 
 to which, in the main, we owe, not religion only, but ethics 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 263 
 
 and politics ; that it is Authority which supplies us with 
 essential elements in the premisses of science ; that it is 
 Authority rather than Eeason which lays deep the foun- 
 dations of social life; that it is Authority rather than 
 Eeason which cements its superstructure (pp. 227-229). 
 
 Mr Balfour must have foreseen that round phrases 
 like these there would gather at once a hubbub of 
 excited and ill-informed controversy; and the love of 
 mischief would seem to have had some share in promp- 
 ting their use. Both the terms are, in this respect, 
 unfortunate. In the case of "Eeason," Mr Balfour 
 remarks, in a note, that the term is used "in its 
 ordinary and popular, not in its transcendental sense ; 
 there is no question here of the Logos, or Absolute 
 Eeason"; and the course of the discussion makes it 
 plain that he uses it as strictly equivalent to " reason- 
 ing," or conscious logical ratiocination. The two terms, 
 " reason " and " reasoning," sometimes cross and recross 
 one another several times in the course of the same page, 
 with no distinction between them. Now, this usage is 
 no doubt common among the older English thinkers ; 
 but it is certainly not the ordinary sense of the term 
 in recent philosophic writing. Eeason, if it does not 
 always explicitly convey a larger meaning, at least 
 constantly tends to assume that sense, and by no 
 
264 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 means only with thinkers of a transcendental cast. 
 Mr Balfour himself speaks of Naturalism as deposing 
 " Eeason from its ancient position as the ground of all 
 existence" (p. 75) ; he speaks of Eeason as "the roof 
 and crown of things " of the universe as " the creation 
 of Eeason" (p. 72), and of all things as working to- 
 gether " towards a reasonable end " (p. 83). Clearly, 
 when he uses these expressions, he has something more 
 in view than the "intellect," or "discursive reason," 
 which is only " permitted to have a hand in the simplest 
 jobs" (p. 72). It is the limited range of the latter which 
 he intends to contrast with the omnipresent action of 
 authority ; but by insisting, as he does repeatedly, on 
 the "non-rational" character of the causes which he 
 groups under that name, he conveys the impression 
 that they have no relation to Eeason in the larger 
 sense that they are really what he calls in one place 
 " utterances of unreason." 
 
 Then, again, the use of the term Authority in this 
 connection has even less excuse. It has no justification 
 in ordinary usage ; on the contrary, owing to the fixed 
 associations of the word, it is a use which invites mis- 
 conception. What are the causes which Mr Balfour 
 groups under this head? He enumerates them vari- 
 ously, but they include " custom, education, public 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 265 
 
 opinion" (p. 213), "the contagious convictions of 
 countrymen, family, party, or Church," and, not least, 
 " the spirit of the age," producing a certain " psycho- 
 logical ' atmosphere/ or ' climate,' favourable to the life 
 of certain modes of belief, unfavourable, and even fatal, 
 to the life of others " (p. 206). Habit, in the manage- 
 ment of our personal affairs, is also contrasted with 
 Eeason, as we have seen, in the same way as " accepted 
 custom and tradition," in the direction of the public 
 policy of communities ; and both are apparently in- 
 cluded under the head of authority. " Authority," he 
 says in the passage which most nearly approaches to a 
 definition " Authority, as I have been using the term, 
 is in all cases contrasted with Eeason, and stands for 
 that group of non-rational causes, moral, social, and 
 educational, which produces its results by psychic 
 processes other than reasoning" (p. 219). This ap- 
 pears to me to involve a complete departure from 
 ordinary usage. Newman, it is true, gives a similar 
 extension to the term in a note to his ' Apologia,' but 
 he acknowledges that he is using the word " in a broad 
 sense " ; and even there the reference seems to be, not 
 to the unconscious action of the forces referred to, but 
 to the conscious use of them as sanctions. Certainly 
 in ordinary usage the term is limited conveniently 
 
266 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 and intelligibly limited to the conscious adoption by 
 the individual of the beliefs of some other person, or 
 of some historical organisation, without personal exam- 
 ination of the beliefs in question. Mr Balfour refers 
 to this usage, which he distinguishes from his own. 
 He rightly points out that in this sense Authority 
 "becomes a species of Keason," but a reason which 
 can in no case furnish us with the foundation for a 
 system of belief, seeing that there is always involved 
 a prior reason for submitting individual belief and 
 conduct to the particular authority in question. But 
 however inconsistent it may be to appeal to Authority 
 as a logical foundation for a system of beliefs, the fact 
 remains that the term Authority has been appropriated, 
 by almost universal usage, to designate this attitude of 
 conscious submission on the part of the individual 
 reasoner ; and Mr Balfour can hardly fail, therefore, 
 to be misunderstood when he uses it in a sense so 
 widely different. He uses it to cover the manifold 
 forces that unconsciously mould the belief and con- 
 duct of the individual, his own training in the past, 
 his social environment, the historic life of the com- 
 munity and the race to which he belongs above all, 
 the influence of history. As it is put by a German 
 reviewer, otherwise sympathetic, who objects to the 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 267 
 
 misleading implications of the term Authority : " What 
 Mr Balfour says may all be covered by the proposition 
 that we men, in our higher spiritual life, are the pro- 
 ducts of history before we are its producers, and that 
 in this double relation of ours to history the weight is 
 permanently to be placed upon the first member, upon 
 our dependence on the historical factors which surround 
 and determine us." l 
 
 But if this is so, it disposes at once of the absolute 
 opposition supposed to exist between these two groups 
 of causes. Habits are, as it were, the deposits of 
 reason. An action is first performed consciously, 
 with minute supervision of every step or detail; but, 
 according to the beneficent provision of nature, the 
 action goes more smoothly the oftener it is repeated, 
 and the active supervision of consciousness is no longer 
 required. The action has become habitual, and the 
 higher energies of the living creature are set at liberty 
 for the performance of new tasks, the acquirement of 
 other dexterities. This applies to the humblest bodily 
 exercises ; but we have only to recall Aristotle's defini- 
 tion of virtue as a habit, to recognise that it holds 
 equally in the highest reaches of the ethical life. 
 Habit, being thus the creation of reason, cannot be 
 
 1 Professor Kaftan in the ' Preussische Jahrbiicher,' vol. Ixxxii. 
 
268 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 opposed to it as an alien force. And the same is true 
 of custom, tradition, public opinion, the spirit of the 
 age. They are non-rational, certainly, in the sense 
 that their determining influence over the individual 
 does not depend on a conscious process of ratiocination 
 on his part a progress from premisses to conclusion. 
 But customs and institutions are themselves originally 
 the product of the conscious activities of human beings. 
 They constitute, in their first intention, the objective 
 realisation of a rational system; and so long as they 
 continue to hold society together at all, they still are 
 this in their degree. Doubtless, no customs or institu- 
 tions are the adequate or final embodiment of Eeason ; 
 and hence they are subject to progressive modification, 
 or, if you like, rationalisation. In this way, the old 
 comes to be opposed to the new, and to be regarded as 
 a mere obstruction on the path of Eeason. But tra- 
 dition and custom are opposed to Eeason, only as the 
 good is opposed to the better. They have their birth 
 from Eeason originally, and they continue throughout 
 accessible to its transforming influence. 
 
 In fact, it does not seem too much to say that Mr 
 Balfour, continuing in these chapters his attack upon 
 the abstract, or, as he afterwards calls it, the "un- 
 assisted Eeason" of the rationalists, is really vindi- 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 269 
 
 eating, in his own way, that larger sense of Eeason, 
 characteristic of the present century, which recognises 
 that thought becomes formal and empty, just in propor- 
 tion as it cuts itself adrift from the historical develop- 
 ment of mankind. To take only the case of ethics, the 
 advance of historical study has long lifted us above the 
 notion of an abstract conscience, promulgating to all 
 men the same perfect moral law. The content of the 
 moral law grows every way from age to age. The 
 progress of man upwards, from " the ape and tiger " to 
 the civilisation of the present day with its altruistic 
 and humanitarian ideals this whole ethical process 
 with the customs and institutions in which it embodies 
 itself, its laws, its public opinion, its shifting but ever 
 deepening and widening ideals of honour and chivalry, 
 of heroism or saintly life, of justice and self-control 
 all this development can only be rightly understood 
 when regarded as the progressive revelation from 
 within of an ideal of goodness, which in itself is the 
 most real of realities. From this development we 
 derive the substance of the ethical code. If, like 
 Kant, we neglect to root the individual in the cor- 
 porate life of humanity, the categorical imperative 
 remains a form void of specific content a command 
 which refuses to translate itself into any concrete duty. 
 
270 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 In ethics, as in other spheres, the advance of specula- 
 tive thought since Kant has mainly consisted in sur- 
 mounting the abstract and unhistoric individualism of 
 preceding philosophy. Hence, as Professor Wallace 
 eloquently puts it, in its modern conception, "Phil- 
 osophy is not the work of abstract or ' unassisted ' 
 Reason. The pure reason of philosophers is a reason 
 which has been purified of dross, corruption, and 
 sluggishness by the discipline of the sciences, by the 
 heroism and conscientiousness of religion, by the fair 
 and noble intuitions of art; otherwise it is little 
 worth." 1 
 
 To this view of Reason, to this interpretation of the 
 historical process, Mr Balfour seems to be working his 
 way, even in those sections which appear at first sight, 
 owing to their unfortunate terminology, most uncom- 
 promisingly opposed to it. The sheer distinction be- 
 tween Reason and Authority, or, as we may agree to 
 put it, between Reason and History, is not in the end 
 adopted as true. It is employed as a weapon with 
 which to destroy Naturalism and the barren Rational- 
 ism whose offspring Naturalism is represented as being. 
 It is in this sense an argumentum ad hominem. If we 
 limit reason to the discursive intellect in its conscious 
 
 1 'Fortnightly Review,' April 1895. 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 271 
 
 exercise, and if we refuse to take a theistic view of man 
 and the world, then undoubtedly the beliefs and prac- 
 tices which fill out our life must appear as the products 
 of non-rational causes, just as our existence as living 
 and conscious beings is itself, on these terms, the 
 outcome of unreasoning material forces. But the 
 whole aim of the demonstration is to impress upon 
 the reader the necessity of the theistic postulate. 
 That this is the real significance of Mr Balfour's 
 argument, and the true place of this discussion in 
 the sequence of his thought, is proved by the account 
 he gives of it himself, in retrospect, in his concluding 
 chapter. The fundamental difficulty of Naturalism, 
 he says, the difficulty the book is designed to press 
 home, is 
 
 the ineffaceable incongruity between the origin of our beliefs, 
 so far as these can be revealed to us by Science, and the 
 beliefs themselves. This it was that, as I showed in the 
 first part of this Essay, touched with the frost of scepticism 
 our ideals of conduct and our ideals of beauty. This it was 
 that, as I showed in the Second Part, cut down scientific 
 philosophy to the root. And all the later discussions with 
 which I have occupied the attention of the reader, serve but 
 to emphasise afresh the inextricable confusion which the 
 naturalistic hypothesis introduces into every department of 
 speculation and practice, by refusing to allow us to penetrate 
 beyond the phenomenal causes, by which, in the order of 
 
272 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 Nature, our beliefs are produced. . . . When once we have 
 realised the scientific truth that at the root of every rational 
 process lies an irrational one ; that reason, from a scientific 
 point of view, is itself a natural product ; and that the 
 whole material on which it works is due to causes, physical, 
 physiological, and social, which it neither creates nor con- 
 trols, we shall be driven in mere self-defence to hold that, 
 behind these non-rational forces, and above them, guiding 
 them by slow degrees, and, as it were, with difficulty, to a 
 rational issue, stands that Supreme Reason in whom we 
 must thus believe, if we are to believe in anything (pp. 
 321-323). 
 
 The last sentences carry us already far into the 
 heart of Part IV., in which the author passes from 
 criticism to the more difficult task of construction. If 
 the preconception of Mr Balfour's misology and scepti- 
 cism still lingers in any reader's mind, it should be 
 effectually dispelled by his language here. He ex- 
 pressly denies " that the object aimed at in preceding 
 discussions is to discredit reason " (p. 246), and declares 
 that " the unification of all belief into an ordered whole 
 compacted into one coherent structure under the stress 
 of reason is an ideal which we can never abandon" 
 (p. 233). But, as he truly adds, " Eeason is not 
 honoured by pretending that she has done what, as 
 a matter of fact, is still undone"; "the best system 
 we can hope to construct will suffer from gaps and 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 273 
 
 rents, from loose ends and ragged edges. It does not, 
 however, follow from this that it will be without a 
 high degree of value." 
 
 If we have to submit, as I think we must, to an incom- 
 plete rationalisation of belief, this ought not to be because, 
 in a fit of intellectual despair, we are driven to treat Reason 
 as an illusion ; nor yet because we have deliberately resolved 
 to transfer our allegiance to irrational or non-rational inclin- 
 ation; but because Reason itself assures us that such a 
 course is, at the lowest, the least irrational one open to 
 us (p. 234). 
 
 What is this but an acknowledgment in fitting terms 
 of the incompleteness and imperfection of any finite 
 synthesis ? I do not understand, and I do not envy, 
 the state of mind of the thinker who is not prepared 
 to make a similar confession. 
 
 Proceeding, then, to "rationalise," to "unify," or 
 "co-ordinate," as far as may be, our various beliefs, 
 Mr Balfour begins by setting the Naturalistic theory 
 aside as inherently irrational. Naturalism had been 
 condemned, in the first part of the volume, because it 
 did not satisfy the demands of our ethical nature. 
 He here pronounces more generally that, inasmuch 
 as the Whole of which we desire a reasoned knowledge 
 includes human consciousness as an element, we must 
 
 s 
 
274 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 refuse to " regard any system which, like Naturalism, 
 leaves large tracts and aspects of that consciousness 
 unaccounted for and derelict as other than, to that 
 extent at least, irrational" (p. 250). Moreover, it was 
 shown in Part II. that the body of beliefs about the 
 material world which we take for granted in ordinary 
 experience, and which science presents us with in an 
 elaborated form, cannot themselves be exhibited as 
 a series of logical conclusions for which the particulars 
 of sense furnish the premisses. It had to be regarded 
 rather as an assumption which we found it necessary to 
 make in practical life ; as Mr Balf our here expresses him- 
 self, it is essentially the satisfaction of a need. Doubt- 
 less the belief in question possesses an " inevitable " and 
 " coercive " character not shared by other beliefs ; but 
 that constitutes no logical justification for erecting the 
 judgments of sense-perception into a norm or standard, 
 by which all other beliefs must be judged. To do so 
 would be to substitute "psychological compulsion for 
 rational necessity." Universality and necessity, as 
 here exemplified, may be "marks of the elementary 
 and primitive character of the beliefs," but hardly 
 "badges of pre-eminence." It is the plain dictate of 
 reason that our scheme, " though it be founded on the 
 last resort upon our needs, shall at least take account 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 275 
 
 of other needs than those we share with our brute 
 progenitors." And on this point Mr Balfour appeals 
 to the example of the great masters of speculation. 
 
 Though they have not, it may be, succeeded in supplying 
 us with a satisfactory explanation of the Universe, at least 
 the Universe which they have sought to explain has been 
 something more than a mere collection of hypostatised 
 sense-perceptions, packed side by side in space, and follow- 
 ing each other with blind uniformity in time (p. 243). 
 
 The argument from needs to their satisfaction, here 
 generalised, is the constructive principle on which 
 Mr Balfour depends, and furnishes, I think, the key 
 to a true understanding of the book. The author 
 himself recognises that the argument is one which 
 requires to be applied with great caution, if the wish 
 is not to be father to the thought ; and he apparently 
 lays no stress on this particular way of formulating it. 
 
 Whether this correspondence is best described as that 
 which obtains between a "need" and its "satisfaction," 
 may be open to question. But, at all events, let it be 
 understood that if the relation described is, on the one 
 side, something different from that between a premiss and 
 its conclusion, so, on the other, it is intended to be equally 
 remote from that between a desire and its fulfilment. That 
 it has not the logical validity of the first, I have already 
 admitted, or rather asserted. That it has not the casual, 
 wavering, and purely " subjective " character of the second, 
 
276 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 is not less true. For the correspondence postulated is not 
 between the fleeting fancies of the individual and the 
 immutable verities of an unseen world, but between these 
 characteristics of our nature which we recognise as that in 
 us which, though not necessarily the strongest, is the highest; 
 which, though not always the most universal, is neverthe- 
 less the best (pp. 247, 248). 
 
 Instead of further abstract debate as to the scope and 
 legitimacy of the argument, let us see how Mr Balfour 
 applies it. Its true nature will be best shown by the 
 concrete examples of its use, and we shall then be 
 better able to form a judgment as to its legitimacy. 
 It is first applied, in the intellectual sphere, to demon- 
 strate the implications or presuppositions of the scientific 
 view itself, or of the mere fact that we know. Mr 
 Balfour had already pointed out, in dealing with our 
 belief in the uniformity of nature, that this belief can- 
 not be proved by the facts, seeing that it is a postulate 
 implied in the very idea of investigating facts. In 
 these constructive chapters, he amplifies this thought 
 in a remarkably fresh and striking way. After 
 dealing instructively with some of the usual arguments 
 for Theism, he proceeds to push the question a stage 
 further back. But "something may also be inferred 
 from the mere fact that we know, a fact which, like 
 every other, has to be accounted for." And after some 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 277 
 
 luminous pages, in which he presses home the funda- 
 mental inconsequence of Naturalism, in requiring us 
 " to accept a system as rational, one of whose doctrines 
 is that the system itself is the product of causes which 
 have no tendency to truth rather than falsehood, or to 
 falsehood rather than truth," l he concludes : " I do 
 not believe that any escape from these perplexities 
 is possible, unless we are prepared to bring to the 
 study of the world the presupposition that it was the 
 work of a rational Being, who made it intelligible, and 
 at the same time made us, in however feeble a fashion, 
 able to understand it" (p. 301). Theism is thus a 
 "presupposition," "not only tolerated but actually 
 required by Science " (p. 321). It is " forced upon us 
 by the single assumption that Science is not an 
 illusion." As he put it before, we are "driven in 
 mere self-defence " to the belief in a Supreme Eeason 
 directing the apparently non-rational forces of nature ; 
 we "must" believe in Supreme Reason, "if we are 
 to believe in anything." But this admission, if once 
 made, cannot stand alone. If we " postulate a rational 
 God in the interests of Science, we can scarcely de- 
 
 1 One might say, indeed, that the very notion of truth is an inex- 
 plicable excrescence or inconsequence in a world where everything 
 simply is or happens. 
 
278 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 cline to postulate a moral God in the interests of 
 Morality." And, in th'e light of this presupposition, 
 the whole process by which the ethical code and the 
 moral sentiments have been slowly developed appears 
 in a different setting, as "an instrument for carrying 
 out a divine purpose/' as a divine education of the 
 human race. 
 
 Such, without following them into details, are the 
 important conclusions which Mr Balfour reaches by 
 the method of argument he follows. When they are 
 thus stated summarily, and detached from some of 
 the discussions which accompany them, the philoso- 
 phical student can hardly fail to remark the striking- 
 resemblance of Mr Balfour's mode of argument to the 
 transcendental method of Kant, and the affinity of his 
 conclusions to those of Kant's idealistic successors. 
 In saying this, it is far from my intention to depre- 
 ciate the freshness and independence of Mr Balfour's 
 treatment; on the contrary, he has, I think, accom- 
 plished a remarkable feat in working his way from 
 a different starting-point, and to a large extent by a 
 different route, to this fundamental argument. And 
 he has made it doubly his own by clothing it in pel- 
 lucid English, which he who runs may read. It is the 
 transcendental argument stated with a luminous sim- 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 279 
 
 plicity, as it might have been stated by Hume, had 
 he returned in maturer life to the metaphysical medi- 
 tations of his youth. But the argument itself is in 
 substance identical with that which Kant patiently 
 dug from the d&yris of rationalism, and built into a 
 system, so palpably artificial in its details and so 
 cumbrously pedantic in its terminology, that the 
 philosophical world has been engaged ever since in 
 quarrelling over its interpretation. When we pene- 
 trate beneath the portentous phrases to the compara- 
 tively humble truth which they labour to express, 
 Kant's "objective unity of apperception," as the 
 supreme condition of the possibility of experience, 
 is simply the assertion that the idea of "a nature" 
 or a rational system is not a conclusion from particular 
 facts, but is involved, as a postulate or presupposition, 
 in there being any experience of facts at all. And 
 when, at the close of his investigation, he emphasises 
 the adaptation of phenomena to our faculty of cognition, 
 as proof of a harmony between sense and understanding, 
 that is to say, ultimately, a harmony between the world 
 and the mind; when he argues that this adaptation 
 justifies us in treating reality as everywhere rational- 
 isable, and therefore as if it were the product of a 
 supreme reason ; this, in more scholastic form, and 
 
280 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 with Kant's well-known reservation as to the merely 
 regulative character of -the Ideas of Eeason, is neither 
 more nor less than the argument from the mere fact 
 that we know. But to colligate Kant's different state- 
 ments, and to disengage what is central and vital in 
 his argument from its perplexing and useless integu- 
 ments, is a task which demands both philosophical and 
 exegetical skill. The English world has as yet failed, 
 for the most part, to grasp Kant's way of putting this 
 argument ; we shall be curious to see whether it proves 
 more accessible to Mr Balfour's presentation of it. 
 
 Mr Balfour himself does not seem to be aware how 
 closely the general attitude of mind he recommends in 
 Part IV. corresponds to the transcendental proof from 
 the possibility of experience. In the earlier part of 
 his work, he emphasises the impossibility of reaching 
 a satisfactory foundation by means of "inferences of 
 the ordinary pattern" (p. 186). He recognises that, 
 in his own argument, the relation between needs and 
 their satisfaction is "something different from that 
 between a premiss and a conclusion " (p. 248) ; and at 
 the close of the theistic argument which we have just 
 examined (from the mere fact that we know), he seems to 
 hesitate whether the term proof can be properly applied 
 to it. " Theism," he says, " whether or not it can in the 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 strict meaning of the word be described as proved by 
 Science, is a principle which Science . . . requires 
 for its own completion. . . . Our knowledge of that 
 system is inexplicable unless we assume for it a rational 
 Author " (p. 302). In such passages, it seems almost as 
 if the writer were feeling his way to a new point of 
 view, and were hardly aware of the strength of his own 
 method. It is unduly to disparage the nature of his 
 argument to contrast it with logical procedure, or to 
 hesitate to call it a proof. It implies, certainly, the 
 abandonment of the old ideal of a philosophical system, 
 " as a series of premisses and conclusions, starting from 
 those which are axiomatic i.e., for which proof can 
 neither be given nor required, and running on through 
 a continuous series of binding inferences, until the 
 whole of knowledge is caught up and ordered in the 
 meshes of this all-inclusive dialectic network" (p. 105). 
 If by premisses, in other words, we understand either 
 isolated intuitions or the particulars of sense, then it 
 may be said that the transcendental argument neither 
 starts from premisses nor arrives at a conclusion. Yet, 
 in a more vital sense, experience itself, as a concrete 
 fact demanding explanation, constitutes the premiss 
 from which we advance (or rather regress) to its im- 
 plied condition or explaining cause. The postulate or 
 
282 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 presupposition thus reached is, from one point of view, 
 a conclusion ; from another, it is the ultimate premiss 
 on which all our conclusions in a certain department 
 or, in this case, all conclusions whatever depend. If 
 we can speak, as Mr Balfour himself does, of the pre- 
 supposition as "actually required by science," as 
 " forced upon us by the mere assumption that Science 
 is not an illusion " as a necessary assumption, " if we 
 are to believe in anything" then it seems to me a 
 merely technical question, whether we agree to call the 
 process of reaching it an inference or not. We have, at 
 all events, the element of logical necessity in its most 
 unequivocal form. 
 
 The Kantian terms, postulates, presuppositions (im- 
 plications also, I think) are used from time to time by 
 Mr Balfour, either as nouns or verbs. As a general 
 term, postulate seems to me much the best. Need 
 and satisfaction are probably words of too every- 
 day a character to express a fundamental speculative 
 position ; they are too coloured by the associations of 
 life to express a philosophical meaning with precision. 
 No doubt the word " need " often appeals to us, just 
 by its breadth and simplicity, and in some connections 
 no word would seem so appropriate. But to many it 
 seems little more than a glorified wish ; and although 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 283 
 
 this is unjust, it cannot be denied that the associations 
 of the word are too predominantly emotional. Now 
 when we speak even of ethical or religious needs, it is 
 not only the emotional disappointment, the collapse of 
 hope and joy, that is referred to, but the fact that 
 the denial of the postulated reality inverts the whole 
 proportions of our life, irrationalises the whole scheme 
 of things presupposed by our ordinary experience. 
 The word postulate seems to express admirably both 
 this element of intellectual necessity in the argument, 
 and, at the same time, the subjective element, which 
 is undoubtedly also present. For universal scepticism 
 admits of no refutation ; a man must admit certain 
 aspects of experience before any argument can be 
 founded upon them. 
 
 But no nice question of terminology need affect our 
 sense of the importance and fundamental truth of the 
 argument itself. The acknowledgment of rational 
 necessity which it involves rather, I should say, 
 the insistence on rational necessity constitutes the 
 advance in Mr Balfour's thought on which I have 
 desired to lay stress. Although at times his phrase- 
 ology may waver, and we may catch the echo of 
 passages in ' Philosophic Doubt ' which identify 
 "needs" with " non - rational impulses," yet, on the 
 
284 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 whole, the difference of tone is marked. The needs 
 are here presented as the needs of reason itself. In 
 the case of the intellectual argument, this may perhaps 
 be allowed to be obvious. But it is no less so in 
 the case of the ethical. Whereas he had formerly 
 said "I and an indefinite number of other persons 
 feel a practical need for [ethical and religious beliefs], 
 but no legitimate argument can be founded on the 
 mere existence of this need or impulse. We are on 
 this matter, unfortunately, altogether outside the sphere 
 of Eeason," he now condemns the Naturalistic theory 
 as " irrational," and claims that his own is founded on 
 " the plain dictates of reason." From the former 
 standpoint, argument is impossible, and is admitted 
 to be so ; but in the present volume we are no longer 
 "outside the sphere of Eeason." The whole scheme 
 of construction implies that we have passed from 
 " psychological compulsion " to " rational necessity." 
 Mr Balfour may be said to be trying, throughout the 
 volume, to establish a definition of truth or of Keason 
 which shall be at once more comprehensive and more 
 self-consistent than that which limits it to the facts 
 and laws of physical Science. The truth, if fully 
 known, must include, he argues, a satisfactory ex- 
 planation of our ethical, sesthetical, and religious ideas 
 
MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 285 
 
 and sentiments. The self-styled truth that fails to 
 do this is a fragment which men have mistaken for 
 the whole a fragment, moreover, which cannot even 
 supply its own foundation. Such a system arrogates 
 to itself unjustly the august name of truth, for truth 
 cannot land us in an open contradiction between 
 equally fundamental constituents of our nature. But 
 if this is so, the appeal of the volume is not from 
 truth to authority but from a partial to a fuller truth, 
 from man conceived as mere abstract intellect to 
 human nature as a whole. 
 
 In his method, as I have said, Mr Balfour resembles 
 Kant, and, like Kant, he passes from the intellectual 
 to the ethical domain. But, in his conclusions, he 
 approaches more nearly the general position of Hegel. 
 In the metaphysical application of his thought, he 
 enforces the dependence of the subjective reason of 
 the individual on the objective reason of the historic 
 process, and recognises a cosmic or Absolute Reason as 
 the ground of the whole development. What dis- 
 tinguishes all three alike is (in one way of putting it) 
 the unwavering humanism of their point of view, as 
 opposed to the naturalism of those who would crush 
 the spirit of man by thrusting upon it the immensities 
 of physical nature, of infinite space and endless time. 
 
286 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 Mr Balfour, in some searching pages, has exposed the 
 fallacy of such a mode of argument : material grandeur 
 and moral excellences, as he well says, are incom- 
 mensurable quantities. And in the age-long debate 
 which has divided thinkers since the time of Democ- 
 ritus and Plato, this has been the essential import of 
 all the great idealistic systems Travrwv xprujudrtov 
 /jierpov avOpwTTos. This thesis, first formulated by 
 scepticism, is in point of fact, when properly inter- 
 preted, profoundly true. Our own nature is, from 
 the very circumstances of the case, the only measuring- 
 rod which we can apply to the universe. " A harmony 
 of some sort between our inner selves and the universe 
 of which we form a part is a tacit postulate," as Mr 
 Balfour says, "of every belief we entertain about 
 phenomena." Our intellect is, after all, as much ours 
 as any other part of our being, and in accepting the 
 account of science as true, the Naturalist is involun- 
 tarily postulating harmony, to that extent, between 
 himself and the universe. But why should this 
 harmony be limited to the intellectual activities of 
 sense-perception ? It is impossible to show that this 
 limitation is other than arbitrary, and that we have 
 not as good a right to use as our touchstone of reality 
 those inspirations of goodness which are the spur of 
 
MR BALFOUK AND HIS CRITICS. 287 
 
 all our endeavour, and those visions of beauty and 
 of harmonious truth which are a master-light of all 
 our seeing. Man must be anthropomorphic. What 
 we ask is simply that his anthropomorphism shall be 
 deliberate, consistent, and critical, instead of being un- 
 conscious, partial, and arbitrary. 
 
 But if, in these latter remarks, I have emphasised 
 the affinity of Mr Balfour's thought to these systems 
 of the larger Keason of which Hegel's is the most 
 convenient example, the affinity is obviously not to 
 be understood in any narrow or rigid sense. His 
 whole intellectual temper is different ; some might 
 say it is more sceptical, others might say it is more 
 human, by which I mean more cognisant of the limita- 
 tions of humanity. There is one important Hegelian 
 doctrine at least with which Mr Balfour is strenuously 
 at one the doctrine of " degrees of truth," the insight 
 that all truth is a matter of approximation, that no 
 error is wholly false and no finite truth is wholly true. 
 This doctrine, recently re-expounded by Mr Bradley 
 with so much force, is an integral part of Hegelian 
 thought, but a part strangely forgotten in the claim 
 of the system to represent absolute truth, to be indeed 
 the insight of the Absolute Being into his own essence 
 and history. The temper of Mr Balfour's book is 
 
288 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS. 
 
 well exhibited by contrast in a characteristic passage, 
 with which this long review may fitly close : 
 
 I like to think of the human race, from whatever stock 
 its members may have sprung, in whatever age they may be 
 born, whatever creed they may profess, together in the 
 presence of the One Reality, engaged not wholly in vain, in 
 spelling out some fragments of its message. All share its 
 being ; to none are its oracles wholly dumb. And if, both 
 in the natural world and in the spiritual, the advancement 
 we have made 011 our forefathers be so great that our in- 
 terpretation seems indefinitely removed from that which 
 primitive man could alone apprehend, and wherewith he 
 had to be content, it may be, indeed I think it is, the case 
 that our approximate guesses are closer to his than they 
 are to their common Object, and that, far as we seem to 
 have travelled, yet, measured on the celestial scale, our 
 intellectual progress is scarcely to be discerned, so minute is 
 the parallax of Infinite Truth. 
 
NOTE A. 
 THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM.' 
 
 ONE of the results of Mr Balfour's ' Foundations of 
 Belief has been to bring to light some serious, and 
 even remarkable, divergences of view as to the meaning 
 and precise application of current philosophical terms. 
 This was particularly the case in regard to the term 
 Naturalism, which is so prominent in Mr Balfour's 
 argument. Much of the criticism of the book took, in 
 fact, the form of an indignant repudiation of the 
 author's use of names. It may perhaps, therefore, 
 contribute to the fixing of philosophical usage in this 
 case, and in the case of some other terms frequently 
 conjoined with it, if, starting from Mr Balfour's defini- 
 tions, we examine his usage in the light of some of the 
 chief objections taken to it. 
 
 In his introductory chapter, Mr Balfour thus indi- 
 T 
 
290 THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM." 
 
 cates the system of thought against which his book is 
 directed : 
 
 Whatever the name selected, the thing itself is suffi- 
 ciently easy to describe. For its leading doctrines are that 
 we may know phenomena and the laws by which they 
 are connected but nothing more. " More " there may or 
 may not be, but if it exists we can never apprehend it; 
 and whatever the World may be " in its reality " (suppos- 
 ing such an expression to be otherwise than meaningless), 
 the World for us, the World with which alone we are con- 
 cerned, or of which we alone can have any cognisance, is that 
 World which is revealed to us through perception, and which 
 is the subject-matter of the Natural Sciences. Here, and 
 here only, are we on firm ground. Here, and here only, 
 can we discover anything which deserves to be described 
 as Knowledge. Here, and here only, may we profitably 
 exercise our reason or gather the fruits of Wisdom (p. 7). 
 
 In another passage he speaks of " the two elements 
 composing the naturalistic creed : the one positive, con- 
 sisting, broadly speaking, of the teaching contained in 
 the general body of the natural sciences; the other 
 negative, expressed in the doctrine that beyond these 
 limits, wherever they may happen to lie, nothing is, 
 and nothing can be, known " (p. 92) ; and again of " the 
 assumption that the kind of ' experience ' which gave 
 us natural science was the sole basis of knowledge," 
 and " the further inference that nothing deserved to be 
 
THE USE OF THE TERM " NATURALISM." 291 
 
 called Knowledge which did not come within the circle 
 of the natural sciences " (p. 171). " After all," he says 
 in another place, "Naturalism is nothing more than 
 the assertion that empirical methods are valid and that 
 no others are so " (p. 134). In these passages the 
 theory is defined by reference to its presuppositions or 
 method; when we look at the resulting body of doc- 
 trine, we find that the theory attempts " the impossible 
 task of extracting reason from unreason " (p. 301). It 
 involves the 
 
 deposition of Reason from its ancient position as the ground 
 of all existence to that of an expedient among other ex- 
 pedients for the maintenance of organic life ; an expedient, 
 moreover, which is temporary in its character and insig- 
 nificant in its effects. An irrational Universe which acci- 
 dentally turns out a few reasoning animals at one corner 
 of it, as a rich man may experiment at one end of his 
 park with some curious " sport " accidentally produced 
 among his flocks and herds, is a Universe which we might 
 well despise, if we did not ourselves share its degradation 
 (p. 75). 
 
 And, finally, the naturalistic catechism which he 
 elaborates at the conclusion of the first part of the 
 volume clearly identifies Naturalism with consistent 
 Materialism (pp. 83-85). 
 
 To the system whose substantive doctrines he thus 
 
292 THE USE OF THE TEEM "NATURALISM." 
 
 indicates, Mr Balfour applies throughout his volume 
 the term Naturalism. "" Agnosticism, Positivism, Em- 
 piricism," he says, "have all been used more or less 
 correctly to describe this scheme of thought, though 
 in the following pages, for reasons with which it is 
 not necessary to trouble the reader, the term which 
 I shall commonly employ is Naturalism." This pas- 
 sage and the usage it indicates have called forth em- 
 phatic disclaimers from the patrons or representatives 
 of the views which are here practically identified. 
 Each objects to be identified with any of the others, 
 and they all disclaim responsibility for the system of 
 doctrines attributed to them in common. Professor 
 Huxley, not unnaturally jealous for the honour of the 
 term which he invented, objected " to making Agnosti- 
 cism the scapegoat, on whose head the philosophic 
 sins of the companions with whom it is improperly 
 associated may be conveniently piled up " ; while Mr 
 Erederic Harrison, as a Positivist, is still more wroth 
 to find himself identified with the Agnostics, against 
 whom he has so often gone forth to war in the Ke- 
 views. "The passage just quoted," he says, "is a 
 coagulated clot of confusion and misstatement " from 
 which it is easy to see that Mr Harrison is very 
 angry indeed. Professor Wallace, on the other hand, 
 
THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM." 293 
 
 though himself accepting in the main an Idealism of 
 the Hegelian type, puts a lance in rest for Naturalism, 
 which he seems to think has been hardly treated in 
 being identified with its own extreme consequences. 
 " Its faults," he says, " spring from a creditable motive. 
 It is the desire to be honest, to say only what you 
 can prove, to require thorough continuity and con- 
 sistency in the whole realm of accepted truths. 1 
 Naturalism was a reaction from the follies of Super- 
 naturalism." 
 
 Naturalism [he says again] was at the outset and in es- 
 sence a negation, not of the supernatural in general, but of a 
 supernatural conceived as incoherent, arbitrary, and chaotic ; 
 a protest against a conception which separated God from 
 the world, as a potter from his clay, against the ignava 
 ratio which took customary sequences of events as needing 
 
 1 I cannot help remarking the striking similarity between this ac- 
 count of Naturalism and Professor Huxley's truly extraordinary 
 definition of Agnosticism as consisting essentially " in the application 
 of a single principle, which is the fundamental axiom of modern 
 science. Positively, this principle may be thus expressed : in matters 
 of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without 
 regard to any other consideration. And negatively : in matters of 
 the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are 
 not demonstrated or demonstrable." On this showing, we should all 
 desire with one accord to take service under the Agnostic flag, for 
 Agnosticism, so defined, is another name for intellectual honesty. 
 Similarly, on Professor Wallace's showing, no self-respecting person 
 would permit himself to be called anything but a Naturalist. 
 
294 THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM." 
 
 no explanation, and looked for special revelation from por- 
 tents and wonders. 1 
 
 Understanding Supernaturalism in this sense, Professor 
 Wallace regrets "that some recognition of the inner 
 aims of Eationalism and Naturalism is not vouchsafed," 
 and he would evidently prefer to rehabilitate the term 
 Naturalism and follow that banner, rather than be 
 suspected of any complicity with a discredited Super- 
 naturalism. To this Mr Balfour might easily retort 
 that his purpose was not an historical review of the 
 progress of opinion, but an attempt to deal directly 
 with current ways of looking at the universe, using 
 terms as nearly as possible in the sense which is most 
 general in philosophic usage, and which they tend to 
 bear in the vocabulary of educated people. And al- 
 though Naturalism, as a matter of etymology and his- 
 tory, may take its rise as merely the denial of an 
 external and arbitrary Supernaturalism, I think there 
 can be no reasonable doubt that the name has acquired 
 within the present century the signification which Mr 
 Balfour gives it, and that it has, indeed, of late been 
 gradually supplanting other terms as the most fitting 
 designation for the system of beliefs in question. 
 
 1 These quotations are from an article by Professor Wallace in the 
 ' Fortnightly Keview ' for April 1895. 
 
THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM." 295 
 
 Naturalism, in accepted phraseology, is a name appli- 
 cable to any system which, as Mr Balfour expresses 
 it, finds the metaphysical or permanent reality of the 
 universe in " the world which is revealed to us through 
 perception and which is the subject-matter of the 
 Natural Sciences." Naturalism is, therefore, practi- 
 cally identical with Materialism, though it may not 
 pretend to explain the origin of the phenomena of 
 consciousness from matter in motion, but may content 
 itself, in that regard, with a doctrine of concomitance. 
 In any case, the fundamental explanation the central 
 fact of the universe is to be found, according to the 
 theory, not in the phenomena of consciousness with 
 their rational and ethical implications, but in the 
 mechanical system of causes and effects of which con- 
 sciousness seems to be the outcome or accompaniment. 
 If that is so, any attempt to re-define Naturalism in 
 such a way that absolute Idealism might reasonably 
 be included under it, could only result in still further 
 confusing the issues. The " New Naturalism," of which 
 Professor Wallace constitutes himself the champion, 
 would have, as he says, " to repair the defects of the 
 Old." But when repairs are so extensive as to alter 
 the whole structure and outlook of the building, the 
 question as to the identity of the edifice becomes a point 
 
296 THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM." 
 
 of casuistry. Naturalism, in ordinary usage, is the anti- 
 thesis not merely of the Supernaturalism which finds 
 its support in supposed divine " interference," but also 
 of every spiritual or idealistic theory of the universe. 
 The wide influence of Mr Balfour's book must have 
 largely contributed to stereotype this use of the term ; 
 and, from the point of view of philosophical terminology, 
 I cannot regard this as other than a fortunate result. 
 
 As a standing designation, it is distinctly preferable 
 in point of accuracy to any of the terms which Mr 
 Balfour mentions as currently, but somewhat loosely, 
 in use as synonyms. The absence of God and im- 
 mortality from the Positivist scheme may well seem 
 to the ordinary man to leave no practical difference 
 between that doctrine and the theory of Naturalism. 
 Yet, from a philosophical point of view, the difference 
 is not unimportant. Though, in its denials, Positivism 
 makes common cause with Naturalism, its constructive 
 doctrine is borrowed from Idealism, or, if you like, 
 from Christianity. In the stress which Positivism lays 
 upon man, even to the extent of calling itself the 
 religion of Humanity, Positivism echoes the thought 
 of Pascal, that man the dying reed is greater than 
 the universe by which he dies, that there is no com- 
 mon measure for the immensities of the physical uni- 
 
THE USE OF THE TERM " NATURALISM." 297 
 
 verse and the spring of love, of thought, of reverence 
 that wells in a human heart. To this Positivism owes 
 its vitality, for the germ of the higher religions is this 
 sense of the truly infinite, the truly adorable, as re- 
 vealed in man alone. " Comtianism," Dr Hutchison 
 Stirling has aptly said, "bears to Hegelianism a re- 
 lation very similar to that of Mahometanism to Chris- 
 tianity" (Schwegler, p. 464). If we generalise the 
 statement, we may, I think, recognise in Positivism 
 an idealism manqutf an idealism with strange defects 
 and inconsistencies but still a doctrine in spirit and 
 intention widely removed from mere Materialism. It 
 is well, therefore, not to ignore this difference, but to 
 continue to use the term in a narrower and specific 
 sense, as applicable to the different sects which appeal 
 to Comte as their founder and claim to represent the 
 Eeligion of Humanity. 
 
 Naturalism seems also more accurately descriptive 
 than Agnosticism ; for the theory in question is essen- 
 tially a negative dogmatism, whereas Agnosticism, ac- 
 cording to its etymology and according to the intention 
 of the inventor of the term, is meant to convey only 
 an expression of ignorance, a balance of the intellect, 
 a refusal to pronounce upon ultimate problems either 
 in one sense or in another. "A plague o' both your 
 
298 THE USE OF THE TEEM "NATURALISM." 
 
 houses" is, in effect, the language held by Professor 
 Huxley to the partisans of Idealism and Materialism 
 alike, in his well-known essay " On the Physical Basis 
 of Life," in the essay " On Descartes," and in many 
 other places. 
 
 The materialistic position that there is nothing in the 
 world hut matter, force, and necessity is as utterly devoid 
 of justification as the most baseless of theological dogmas. 
 The fundamental doctrines of Materialism, like those of 
 Spiritualism and most other "isms," lie outside the limits 
 of philosophical inquiry, and David Hume's great service 
 to humanity is his irrefragable demonstration of what these 
 limits are. (Collected Essays, vol. i. p. 162.) 
 
 No doubt it is difficult constantly to keep oneself cor- 
 rectly balanced upon the razor-edge of agnostic ortho- 
 doxy. Professor Huxley tells us that, "the further 
 Science advances, the more extensively and consistently 
 will all the phenomena of Nature be represented by 
 materialistic formulae and symbols " ; and though he 
 enters his protest against the error of mistaking the 
 symbols for real entities, he admits, in doing so, that 
 it is a mistake only too easy to fall into. The Agnostic, 
 like David Hume, who is here invoked as patron of 
 the creed, is apt to reserve his denials for " divinity or 
 school metaphysics," while he views with something 
 
THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM." 299 
 
 like equanimity the materialistic conclusions drawn 
 from the advance of science. He is certain that he 
 knows nothing of spiritual realities or agents; theo- 
 retically, he should be equally certain of his ignorance 
 of reality or agency in the case of natural phenomena. 
 But, as he is constantly occupied with the latter, his 
 hand becomes subdued to what it works in. As man, 
 moreover, is not a creature of pure reason alone, the 
 senses assert their imperious sway over his practical 
 beliefs, and his position becomes indistinguishable from 
 Materialism pure and simple. Still, in spite of the 
 fatal facility with which the one may glide into the 
 other, we have in strictness no more right to identify 
 the two, than a naturalist would have to deny the 
 difference between two species because of the existence 
 of intermediate forms in which they continuously ap- 
 proach one another. Definition in such cases must be 
 by type. The typical Agnostic, like Huxley, is clearly 
 distinguished from the typical Materialist. It would 
 be an unjustifiable and quite unnecessary removal of 
 landmarks, therefore, to use the two terms indiscrimin- 
 ately. No one in these days will allow that he is a 
 Materialist ; but Naturalism supplies exactly the term 
 needed to enable us to surmount this verbal difficulty, 
 while Agnosticism may be conveniently retained to 
 
300 THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM." 
 
 designate the quasi-sceptical position which it etymo- 
 logically suggests. 1 
 
 The only legitimate objection to this use of the 
 term Naturalism is that urged by Professor Wallace. 
 Naturalism, in a certain context, appears as the an- 
 tithesis of Supernaturalism ; and he who attacks Natur- 
 alism may accordingly be supposed to do so in the 
 interest of "miracles" and other "supernatural" adjuncts 
 of theology. Some parts of the discussion in Mr 
 Balfour's concluding chapters certainly seem to favour 
 this view of his argument. But there are others which 
 suggest a larger interpretation, as where he expressly 
 discards what he calls " the common division between 
 ' natural ' and ' supernatural.' " 
 
 We cannot consent [he proceeds], to see the " preferential 
 working of Divine Power " only in those religious manifesta- 
 tions which refuse to accommodate themselves to our con- 
 ception (whatever that may be) of the strictly " natural " 
 order of the world ; nor can we deny a Divine origin to 
 those aspects of religious development which natural laws 
 seem competent to explain. The familiar distinction, in- 
 deed, between " natural " and " supernatural " coincides 
 neither with that between natural and spiritual, nor with 
 
 1 Empiricism may be disregarded in this connection, as a term which 
 is no longer much in popular use. It tends to become restricted to 
 the bloodless controversies of the schools, and even there it suggests, 
 perhaps, a more or less obsolete formulation of the issues. 
 
THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM." 301 
 
 that between " preferential action " and " non-preferential," 
 nor with that between phenomenal and noumenal. It is 
 perhaps less important than is sometimes supposed." 
 
 Quite in keeping with this is the fine passage which 
 follows on Inspiration, as " limited to no age, to no 
 country, no people" (pp. 330, 331). 
 
 But whatever Mr Balfour's personal attitude may be 
 towards the supernatural in the ordinary theological 
 sense of that word (and that is a matter which does 
 not concern us here), it is sufficiently plain that this 
 is not the kernel of the argument. Even when he 
 comes to deal with the central article of the Christian 
 faith, it is not on the extra-naturalness of certain 
 facts that the emphasis is laid, but upon the adapta- 
 tion of the doctrine to the needs of man upon what 
 might be called, therefore, in the highest sense, its 
 "naturalness." The antithesis which runs through 
 the volume, and which must impress itself upon any 
 candid reader, is not that between the natural and 
 a so-called supernatural, but between the natural and 
 the spiritual, between nature, as "revealed to us 
 through perception," and that higher nature in nature 
 which makes us men and gives us an earnest of the 
 Divine. This antithesis also has the sanction of usage 
 on its side. Both in theological and in philosophical 
 
302 THE USE OF THE TERM "NATURALISM." 
 
 writing, the natural and the spiritual are as currently 
 and intelligibly opposed lo one another as the natural 
 and the supernatural. The moral world of persons 
 is constantly contrasted with the natural world of 
 things. What other interpretation is to be put upon 
 Leibniz's " Kingdom of Nature and Kingdom of Grace," 
 upon Kant's opposition of the Sensible and the In- 
 telligible World ? " Nature," says Jacobi, " conceals 
 God. Man reveals God." "Man Supernatural" is 
 the title chosen by Professor Campbell Eraser for one 
 of his recent Gifford Lectures. " As a merely sentient 
 being man is wholly, or almost wholly, an event in 
 the orderly natural system. In his moral acts man 
 appears to exemplify that final principle on which 
 natural order ultimately depends." "Nature," says 
 Green, concluding his long argument for a spiritual 
 principle, "implies a principle which is non-natural" 
 (Proleg., p. 56). I quote these prominent expressions 
 of widely different thinkers, not because I regard 
 them all as equally sound, or any of them perhaps 
 as beyond criticism, but simply to prove how widely 
 current is the narrower sense of " Nature " which is 
 embodied in Mr Balfour's use of Naturalism. In not 
 one of the passages quoted is there the least sugges- 
 tion of the supernatural in the mechanical and external 
 
THE USE OF THE TERM " NATURALISM." 303 
 
 sense of popular theology. The contrast is substanti- 
 ally between the material and the ideal, the natural 
 and the spiritual. If we turn to the histories of 
 philosophy and their classifications of philosophical 
 doctrine, we find also that the usage is no innovation. 
 When Schwegler applies the term Naturalism to the 
 doctrine of Democritus, when Ueberweg uses it as an 
 equivalent to Materialism in his account of the French 
 Encyclopaedists, and describes in the same way the 
 transformation which the Hegelian system underwent 
 at the hands of Feuerbach, both apparently appeal to 
 accepted usage. No apology is offered for the intro- 
 duction of the term, nor does the reader feel that any 
 explanation is required of a terminology so appropriate. 
 The conjecture is permissible that Mr Balfour's usage 
 would also have been accepted without cavil but for 
 the sub-title of the volume, which seems to make the 
 whole discussion ancillary to the study of theology. 
 The air of England is charged with ecclesiasticism, and 
 this was sufficient to create an inveterate prejudice 
 in many minds, and to rouse in many more the sus- 
 picion of an arri&re pensfo. For there are many, un- 
 fortunately, who are more jealous of the encroachments 
 of the supernatural than alive to the conservation of 
 the spiritual truths of which it has been the vehicle. 
 
NOTE B. 
 
 THE LEGITIMACY OF THE ARGUMENT FROM 
 CONSEQUENCES. 
 
 MR BALFOUR'S general mode of procedure has been 
 unsparingly condemned in many quarters, on the 
 ground that his inquiry is avowedly undertaken in 
 the interest of certain beliefs as to the course of the 
 world and man's place in it. The motive of the in- 
 vestigation, it is said, discredits its results in advance. 
 It is not a disinterested quest of truth, but a piece of 
 special pleading in support of beliefs whose truth is 
 assumed without investigation, on the strength of 
 certain supposed "needs" of the individual and the 
 race. But the needs of the race, still more of the 
 individual, have no relevance, when the question is 
 one of the facts of existence. Proud man has long 
 enough indulged himself in this comforting but fatuous 
 course of reasoning, and imposed his own image upon 
 
THE ARGUMENT FROM CONSEQUENCES. 305 
 
 the world. Man's needs must bend before nature's 
 necessities. It is time for him to accept his true 
 place in the cosmic scheme. If science teaches us 
 our insignificance and evanescence, we have no option 
 but to accept that teaching, however wounding to our 
 pride or lacerating to our emotions it may be. 
 
 Thus, in familiar accents, with a measure of right 
 on their side, and a still greater measure of plausi- 
 bility, we can hear the devotees of "truth" exclaim. 
 And their indignation is naturally redoubled when Mr 
 Balfour, in the first part of his book, deliberately 
 proceeds to test the doctrines of "Naturalism" by 
 their consequences that is to say, by the consequences, 
 or supposed consequences, to morality and life of their 
 general adoption as a working creed. Here at least, 
 we can hear them say, is a method of polemic, which 
 it might have been supposed was obsolete. Mr Bal- 
 four himself admits that his procedure is not the 
 most logical, but he blandly adds that he has adopted 
 it in order to arrest the attention of "the general 
 reader." Could there be a more unblushing admission 
 or a more demoralising mode of argument ? 
 
 This line of objection, which rests upon the same 
 notion of truth, has even more show of reason than 
 the first; and it may be freely admitted that the 
 
 u 
 
306 THE LEGITIMACY OF THE 
 
 argument in terrorem, from the supposed consequences 
 of a doctrine, is peculiarly liable to abuse, and also 
 that it has frequently been idly invoked in the past. 
 Beliefs which were held to be essential to the religious 
 life or the stability of the social fabric have been 
 abandoned without any signs of injury to either, and 
 doctrines which were declared to strike at the roots 
 of both religion and society have become part of our 
 common teaching; and yet the heavens have not 
 fallen, as it was confidently prophesied they would. 
 Nothing, in short, is more wonderful than the power 
 of adaptation which experience shows man to possess 
 in the matter of belief. Yet while this is both true 
 and reassuring, we must remember that experience 
 only proves its truth within certain limits. Profound 
 as the changes of belief have been in the past, the 
 doctrines that have been from time to time abandoned 
 or embraced must still be pronounced to be concerned 
 with details, as compared with the fundamental issue 
 between Materialism or Naturalism and a spiritual or 
 idealistic view of man's place in the universe. This, 
 it may be fairly argued, is not an issue between 
 different forms of an ethical or social creed, but be- 
 tween belief and no-belief ; inasmuch as the material- 
 istic scheme affords no legitimate basis for ethical 
 
AKGUMENT FKOM CONSEQUENCES. 307 
 
 endeavour or ethical precept. No human society has 
 ever been based upon the conclusions of materialism, 
 and wherever this negative creed has become widely 
 spread among individuals (in cultivated society under 
 the Eoman empire, for example, or in the same circles 
 in France before the Eevolution) the result has been 
 visible in moral deterioration and social disintegration. 
 The teaching of experience, therefore, does not dis- 
 courage the application of the argument from conse- 
 quences in an ultimate resort, however much it may 
 cast ridicule upon misguided attempts to invoke this 
 ultima ratio for any of the changing forms in which 
 mankind have embodied their spiritual experience. 
 For the ultima ratio of every creed, the ultima ratio of 
 truth itself, is that it works ; and no greater condem- 
 nation can be passed upon a doctrine or system than 
 that, if it were true, human life, as it has been lived 
 by the best of the race, would cease to be reasonable, 
 or rather, would become a phenomenon whose emer- 
 gence it was impossible to explain. 
 
 This consideration tends also to rob the previous 
 objection of a good deal of its plausibility. " Truth " 
 has become in these days a kind of Juggernaut, whose 
 car is periodically dragged abroad in triumph by its 
 self-immolating worshippers. There is much question- 
 
308 THE ARGUMENT FROM CONSEQUENCES. 
 
 begging done under cover of devotion to " truth." The 
 ethical life has also its- certainties and its postulates ; 
 and a man is not necessarily evading truth, when he 
 rejects a creed, because it has no place within it for 
 those postulates of the ethical or spiritual life which to 
 him are the most fundamental certainties of all. Nor 
 is he convicted of prejudice, because he avows that the 
 defence of these postulates is the motive of his specu- 
 lative inquiry. Mr Balfour, as has been argued in the 
 preceding essay, may be said to be trying throughout 
 his volume to establish a definition of truth or of 
 Eeason, which shall be at once more comprehensive 
 and more self -consistent than that which limits it to 
 the facts and laws of physical science. But if this is 
 so, then the appeal of the volume is not from truth 
 to authority, or from truth to subjective cravings, but 
 from a partial and fragmentary truth to a fuller truth ; 
 and the argument may fairly claim to be judged on its 
 merits, without any importation of the odium anti- 
 theologicum. 
 
 PRINTED BT WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
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 Can the Old Faith Live with the New ? or, The Problem of 
 
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 The Psalmist and the Scientist ; or, Modern Value of the Reli- 
 gious Sentiment. Third Edition. Crown 8vo, 5s. 
 
 Spiritual Development of St Paul. Third Edition. Cr. 8vo, 5s. 
 The Distinctive Messages of the Old Religions. Second Edi- 
 tion. Crown 8vo, 5s. 
 
 Sacred Songs. New and Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. 
 MATHIESON. The Supremacy and Sufficiency of Jesus Christ 
 
 our Lord, as set forth in the Epistle to the Hebrews. By J. E. MATHIESON, 
 Superintendent of Mildmay Conference Hall, 1880 to 1890. Second Edition. 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 MAURICE. The Balance of Military Power in Europe. An 
 
 Examination of the War Resources of Great Britain and the Continental States. 
 By Colonel MAURICE, R.A., Professor of Military Art and History at the Royal 
 Staff College. Crown 8vo, with a Map, 6s. 
 
 MAXWELL. 
 
 A Duke of Britain. A Romance of the Fourth Century. 
 
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 Life and Times of the Rt. Hon. William Henry Smith, M.P. 
 
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 POPULAR EDITION. With a Portrait and other Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 Scottish Land-Names : Their Origin and Meaning. Being 
 
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 Meridiana : Noontide Essays. Post 8vo, 7s. 6d. 
 
 Post Meridiana : Afternoon Essays. Post 8vo, 6s. 
 
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 MELDRUM. 
 
 The Story of Margre*del : Being a Fireside History of a Fife- 
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 Grey Mantle and Gold Fringe. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
 MELLONE. Principles of Philosophical Criticism. By S. H. 
 
 MELLONK. In 1 vol. post 8vo. [In the press. 
 
 MERZ. A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury. By JOHN THEODORE MERZ. Vol. I., post 8vo, 10s. 6d. net. 
 
 MICHIE. 
 
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 Crown 8vo, with Illustrations. New and Cheaper Edition, Enlarged, 5s. 
 
 The Practice of Forestry. Crown 8vo, with Illustrations. 6s. 
 M1DDLETON. The Story of Alastair Bhan Comyn; or, The 
 
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 MIDDLETON. Latin Verse Unseens. By G. MIBDLETON, M.A., 
 
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 Is. 6d. 
 
 MILLER. The Dream of Mr H , the Herbalist. By HUGH 
 
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 With a Photogravure Frontispiece. Crown Svo, 2s. 6d. 
 
 MILLS. Greek Verse Unseens. By T. R. MILLS, M.A., late 
 
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 crown Svo. [In the press. 
 
William Blackwood and Sons. 21 
 
 MINTO. 
 
 A Manual of English Prose Literature, Biographical and 
 
 Critical: designed mainly to show Characteristics of Style. By W. MINTO, 
 M.A., Hon. LL.D. of St Andrews ; Professor of Logic in the University of Aber- 
 deen. Third Edition, Revised. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. 
 
 Characteristics of English Poets, from Chaucer to Shirley. 
 
 New Edition, Eevised. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. 
 
 Plain Principles of Prose Composition. Crown 8vo, Is. 6d. 
 The Literature of the Georgian Era. Edited, with a Bio- 
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 MOIR. Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith. By D. M. 
 
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 Another Edition, without Illustrations, fcap. 8vo, Is. 6d. 
 
 MOLE. For the Sake of a Slandered Woman. By MAKION 
 
 MOLE. Fcap. 8vo, 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 MOMERIE. 
 
 Defects of Modern Christianity, and other Sermons. By Rev. 
 
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 Agnosticism. Fourth Edition, Revised. Crown 8vo, 5s. 
 Preaching and Hearing ; and other Sermons. Fourth Edition, 
 
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 Belief in God. Third Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 
 
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 MONCREIFF. 
 
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 MONTALEMBERT. Memoir of Count de Montalembert. A 
 
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 MORISON. 
 
 Doorside Ditties. By JEANIE MORISON. With a Frontis- 
 piece. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 ^Eolus. A Romance in Lyrics. Crown 8vo, 3s. 
 There as Here. Crown 8vo, 3s. 
 
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 Selections from Poems. Crown 8vo, 4s. 6d. 
 
 Sordello. An Outline Analysis of Mr Browning's Poem. 
 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 
 
22 List of Books Published by 
 
 MORISON. 
 
 Of "Fifine at the Fair," "Christmas Eve and Easter Day, 
 
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 The Purpose of the Ages. Crown 8vo, 9s. 
 Gordon : An Our-day Idyll. 'Crown 8vo, 3s. 
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 Pontius Pilate. Paper, Is. 6d. ; cloth, 3s. 
 Mill o 3 Forres. Crown 8vo, Is. 
 Ane Booke of Ballades. Fcap. 4to, Is. 
 MUNRO. The Lost Pibroch, and other Sheiling Stories. By 
 
 NEIL MUNRO. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
 
 MUNRO. 
 
 Rambles and Studies in Bosnia- Herzegovina and Dalmatia. 
 
 With an Account of the Proceedings of the Congress of Archaeologists and 
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 F.R.S.E., Author of ' The Lake- Dwellings of Europe,' &c. With numerous Illus- 
 trations. Deiny 8vo, 12s. 6d. net. 
 
 Prehistoric Problems. With numerous Illustrations. Demy 
 
 8vo, 10s. net. 
 
 MUNRO. On Valuation of Property. By WILLIAM MUNRO, 
 
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 MURDOCH. Manual of the Law of Insolvency and Bankruptcy : 
 
 Comprehending a Summary of the Law of Insolvency, Notour Bankruptcy, 
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 Winding-up of Joint-Stock Companies in Scotland; with Annotations on the 
 various Insolvency and Bankruptcy Statutes; and with Forms of Procedure 
 applicable to these Subjects. By JAMES MURDOCH, Member of the Faculty of 
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 MURRAY. A Popular Manual of Finance. By SYDNEY J. 
 
 MURRAY. In 1 vol. crown 8vo. [In the press. 
 
 MYERS. A Manual of Classical Geography. By JOHN L. 
 
 MYERS, M.A., Fellow of Magdalene College ; Lecturer and Tutor, Christ Church, 
 Oxford. In 1 vol. crown 8vo. [In the, press. 
 
 MY TRIVIAL LIFE AND MISFORTUNE: A Gossip with 
 
 no Plot in Particular. By A PLAIN WOMAN. Cheap Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 By the SAME AUTHOR. 
 POOR NELLIE. Cheap Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 NAPIER. The Construction of the Wonderful Canon of Loga- 
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 Catalogue of Napier's Works, by WILLIAM RAE MACDONALD. Small 4to, 15s. 
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 LEAVES. Songs and Verses, Social and Scientific. By An Old 
 
 Contributor to 'Maga.' By the Hon. Lord NEAVES. Fifth Edition. Fcap. 
 8vo, 4s. 
 
 NICHOLSON. 
 
 A Manual of Zoology, for the Use of Students. With a 
 
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 Introductory Text-Book of Zoology, for the Use of Junior 
 
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William Blackwood and Sons. 23 
 
 NICHOLSON. 
 
 A Manual of Palaeontology, for the Use of Students. With a 
 
 General Introduction on the Principles of Palaeontology. By Professor H. 
 ALLEYNE NICHOLSON and RICHARD LYDEKKER, B.A. Third -Edition, entirely 
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 The Ancient Life-History of the Earth. An Outline of the 
 
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 On the "Tabulate Corals" of the Palaeozoic Period, with 
 
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 Synopsis of the Classification of the Animal Kingdom. 8vo, 
 
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 NICHOLSON. 
 
 Thoth. A Romance. By JOSEPH SHIELD NICHOLSON, M.A., 
 
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 A Dreamer of Dreams. A Modern Romance. Second Edi- 
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 NICOLSON AND MURE. A Handbook to the Local Govern- 
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 By J. BADENACH NICOLSON, Advocate, Counsel to the Scotch Education 
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 OLIPHANT. 
 
 Masollam : A Problem of the Period. A Novel. By LAURENCE 
 
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 Scientific Religion ; or, Higher Possibilities of Life and 
 
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 Episodes in a Life of Adventure; or, Moss from a Rolling 
 
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 Haifa: Life in Modern Palestine. Second Edition. Svo, 7s. 6d. 
 The Land of Gilead. With Excursions in the Lebanon. 
 
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 Memoir of the Life of Laurence Oliphant, and of Alice 
 
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 POPULAR EDITION. With a New Preface. Post 8vo, with Portraits. 7s. 6d. 
 
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 Annals of a Publishing House. William Blackwood and his 
 
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 Who was Lost and is Found. Second Edition. Crown 
 
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 Miss Marjoribanks. New Edition. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 The Perpetual Curate, and The Rector. New Edition. Crown 
 
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24 List of Books Published by 
 
 OLIPHANT. 
 
 Salem Chapel, and The Doctor's Family. New Edition. 
 
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 Chronicles of Carlingford. .3 vols. crown 8vo, in uniform 
 
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 Katie Stewart, and other Stories. New Edition. Crown 8vo, 
 
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 Katie Stewart. Illustrated boards, 2s. 6d. 
 
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 Sons and Daughters. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 Two Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. The Open Door 
 
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 OLIPHANT. Notes of a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy 
 
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 OSWALD. By Fell and Fjord ; or, Scenes and Studies in Ice- 
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 PAGE. 
 
 Introductory Text-Book of Geology. By DAVID PAGE, LL.D., 
 
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 Advanced Text-Book of Geology, Descriptive and Industrial. 
 
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 Introductory Text-Book of Physical Geography. With Sketch- 
 
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 PATERSON. A Manual of Agricultural Botany. From the 
 
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 PATRICK. The Apology of Origen in Reply to Celsus. A Chap- 
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 PAUL. History of the Royal Company of Archers, the Queen's 
 
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 PEILE. Lawn Tennis as a Game of Skill. By Lieut. -Col. S. C. 
 
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 PETTIGREW. The Handy Book of Bees, and their Profitable 
 
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 PFLEIDERER. Philosophy and Development of Religion. 
 
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 PHILLIPS. The Knight's Tale. By F. EMILY PHILLIPS, Author 
 
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 [For List of Volumes, see page 2. 
 
William Blackwood and Sons. 25 
 
 POLLARD. A Study in Municipal Government : The Corpora- 
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 Second Edition, Revised. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 POLLOK. The Course of Time : A Poem. By ROBERT POLLOK, 
 
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 PORT ROYAL LOGIC. Translated from the French; with 
 
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 POTTS AND DARNELL. 
 
 Aditus Faciliores : An Easy Latin Construing Book, with 
 
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 Aditus Faciliores Graeci. An Easy Greek Construing Book, 
 
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 POTTS. School Sermons. By the late ALEXANDER WM. POTTS, 
 
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 PRINGLE. The Live Stock of the Farm. By ROBERT O. 
 
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 PUBLIC GENERAL STATUTES AFFECTING SCOTLAND 
 
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 PUBLIC GENERAL STATUTES AFFECTING SCOTLAND, 
 
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 RAMSAY. Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century. 
 
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 RANJITSINHJI. The Jubilee Book of Cricket. By PRINCE 
 
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 RANKIN. 
 
 A Handbook of the Church of Scotland. By JAMES RANKIN, 
 
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 RANKINE. A Hero of the Dark Continent. Memoir of Rev. 
 
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26 List of Books Published by 
 
 ROBERTSON. The Early Religion of Israel. As set forth by 
 
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 ROBERTSON. 
 
 Orellana, and other Poems. By J. LOGIE ROBERTSON, 
 
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 ROBINSON. Wild Traits in Tame Animals. Being some 
 
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 ROSCOE. Rambles with a Fishing-Rod. By E. S. ROSCOE. 
 
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 ROSS AND SOMERVILLE. Beggars on Horseback : A Riding 
 
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 RUTLAND. 
 
 Notes of an Irish Tour in 1846. By the DUKE OP RUTLAND, 
 
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 RUTLAND. 
 
 Gems of German Poetry. Translated by the DUCHESS OF 
 
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William Blackwood and Sons. 27 
 
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