UCSB LIBRARY 
 
 V S
 
 PERSONAL IDEALISM 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 EIGHT MEMBERS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 HENRY STURT 
 
 LONDON : MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED. 
 1902
 
 IDOLA THEATRI
 
 IDOLA THEATRI 
 
 A CRITICISM 
 
 OF OXFORD THOUGHT AND THINKERS 
 
 FROM THE STANDPOINT OF 
 
 PERSONAL IDEALISM 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY STURT 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 I 9O6 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 PREFACE 
 
 I HAVE received much help from friends in pre- 
 paring this book : the President of Corpus and 
 Mr. W. H. Fairbrother of Lincoln College have 
 read and criticised the chapter on T. H. Green ; 
 Mr. R. R. Marett of Exeter College has read four 
 chapters in manuscript and the whole book in proof, 
 and has made numberless valuable suggestions. 
 My general obligations to Prof. Stout and Mr. 
 Canning Schiller are sufficiently apparent. In the 
 chapter on German Idealism I am indebted to 
 several living writers, in particular to Dr. Hutchison 
 Stirling, the Master of Balliol, Prof. John Watson, 
 Dr. McTaggart, and Prof. J. B. Baillie ; though it 
 will be noticed that my view of Hegel is widely 
 different from theirs. And it is proper to take this 
 opportunity of acknowledging with gratitude my 
 debt of instruction to the Oxford thinkers whom 
 the book criticises. I should like to be permitted 
 to assure Mr. Bradley and Prof. Bosanquet that 
 dissent from their opinions has never obscured my 
 perception of the value of what they have done for 
 British philosophy.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PASSIVE FALLACY 
 
 1. The prime mistake of philosophy is the Passive Fallacy, which 
 
 ignores the kinetic and dynamic character of experience. 8 
 
 2. The predisposing cause of it is the separation of the student from 
 
 active life, 9 
 
 3. aggravated in modern times by the growth of the material of study, 
 
 and by academicism. 1 1 
 
 4. It has been reinforced in cosmology by the reaction from regard- 
 
 ing concrete facts as real to regarding laws as real, 12 
 
 5. in religion by the reaction from polytheism, 13 
 
 6. in the mental sciences by faculty-psychology. 14 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE IDOLS OF THE THEATRE 
 
 I. The Idols of the Theatre, Intellectualism, Absolutism, and Sub- 
 jectivism, concur with the Passive Fallacy. 1 5 
 
 2. Intellectualism, which is the over-emphasis on intellect, exempli- 
 fied by the Socratic identification of virtue with knowledge, and 
 by the Platonic Theory of Ideas, 1 5 
 
 3. culminates in Panlogism. It fails worst when ignoring the voli- 
 tional element of personal experience. 1 7 
 
 4. Absolutism rejects personality in favour of the Absolute, and thus 
 cuts away as its own foundation, so far as that rests on ordinary 
 personal reasoning. i
 
 IDOLS. INTELLECTUALISM 
 
 PAGE 
 
 5. It is to be explained through mysticism, being the analogue in 
 
 philosophy of mysticism in religion. 19 
 
 6. In contemporary thought it is often tinged with pessimism. 2 1 
 
 7. When fully consistent it views the Absolute as a featureless 
 neutrum ; but usually makes some concession to finite exist- 
 ence. 22 
 
 8. It is closely related to pantheism. 24 
 
 9. Subjectivism, which is the over-emphasis on the subjective side of 
 experience and culminates in Solipsism, springs naturally from 
 the defective hold upon reality caused by over-passivity of life ; 25 
 
 IO. while, as a theory, it is caused by defective philosophic analysis, 
 which fails to see that intuitive knowledge of objects is con- 
 tained in our experience from the first. 26 
 
 II. If held consistently it is incompatible with activity, because it is 
 
 objects mainly that stimulate us to action. 27 
 
 12. The Idols are to be criticised hereinafter mainly as ignoring per- 
 sonality and volition. 27 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 INTELLECTUALISM 
 
 >><iWO ^W* **""> U'lKTU*' 
 
 I. Thorough-going Intellectualism is impossible so long as philo- 
 sophic synthesis starts from the individual : 29 
 
 2. it is by starting from the Absolute that Hegel can be thoroughly 
 
 intellectualist. 29 
 
 3. In Cosmology intellectualism gives a wrong account (a) of things, 
 
 as regards (i.) their alienness from spirit, 30 
 
 4. (ii.) their reality, 31 
 
 5. (iii.) their independence, 32 
 
 6. (iv. ) their dynamic character ; 33 
 
 7. (6) of change and time ; 34 
 
 8. (c) of history, desiring to absorb it in science, 35 
 
 9. whereby energy and human freedom are ignored ; 35 
 
 10. (a?) of persons. 37 
 
 ii. In Psychology intellectualism fails most evidently in its treatment 
 
 of sensation 38 
 
 12. and of volition. 39 
 
 13. In Logic intellectualism limits its purview to abstract science, 
 
 ignoring the connection of knowledge with personal life, 42 
 
 14. and thus gives a wrong account (a) of the interest of knowledge, 44 
 
 15. even that due to mere curiosity ; 47 
 
 16. (i>) of the morphology of knowledge ; 48 
 
 17. (c) of intelligibility ; 49
 
 ABSOLUTISM 
 
 1 8. (J) of truth; 50 
 
 19. (e) of the main functions of knowledge ; 53 
 
 20. (/) of the ideal of knowledge. 5 
 
 21. In Ethics while rightly distinguishing moral institutions from in- 
 dividual character, and emphasising the importance of social 
 loyalty, it wrongly puts social loyalty above conscientiousness. 57 
 
 22. Strictly consistent intellectualism must misinterpret social loyalty 
 
 as merely intellectual participation in the social system, 61 
 
 23. and conscientiousness as mere recognition of intellectual neces- 
 sity : 62 
 
 24. it denies the freedom of the will. 64 
 
 25. In Politics it magnifies the state at the expense of the individual, 65 
 26. and ignores reform. 66 
 
 27. In Art-Philosophy the consistent panlogism that represents art 
 
 as a category of Absolute Thought has no support in Britain. 69 
 
 28. Prof. Bosanquet's intellectualism tends to ignore the dynamic and 
 
 productive character of art. 7 1 
 
 29. In Philosophy of Religion it explains God and religion too exclu- 
 sively with reference to knowledge. 75 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 ABSOLUTISM 
 
 I. The Absolute is conceived by most thinkers, not as a neutrum, 
 
 but under the form of some finite experience. So 
 
 2. Mr. Bradley, reacting against Hegel who conceives the Absolute 
 
 as pure thought, Si 
 
 3. and protesting against his exclusion of volition and sensation, 82 
 
 4. conceives it under the form of feeling. 84 
 
 5. He thus makes it irrational, which accounts for the negative and 
 
 destructive tendency of his dialectic, 86 
 
 and for the failure of his feeling-absolutism as a principle of logical 
 
 explanation and classification : 87 
 
 to this adoption of the impracticable idolon of feeling- Absolutism 
 
 is due his irremediable scepticism. 88 
 
 8. The impracticability of Feeling- Absolutism is illustrated by Mr. 
 Bradley's treatment of our ontological conceptions, which he 
 discredits by comparison with the non-relational Absolute ; 90 
 
 9. though his objections to the relational form are fallacious. 91 
 
 10. Space and Time, e.g., Mr. Bradley condemns because they are re- 
 lational, which only means that they are conceptions of the 
 human intelligence : 92
 
 ABSOLUTISM 
 
 PAGE 
 
 II. their true defence is that they are valid for all the purposes for 
 
 which we need them, and that they are indispensable. 94 
 
 12. No less indispensable a conception is personality ; 95 
 
 13. it is also the supremely valuable, the standard of value and the 
 source of authority in valuation : but the absolutist treats it as 
 an illusion, 96 
 
 14. and denies its separateness from the impersonal environment, 97 
 
 15. or, as Mr. Bradley does, discredits its reality because it has no 
 
 sharply defined edges, 98 
 
 1 6. is not immutable, 100 
 
 17. and, above all, is relational. The reply is that relation is essen- 
 tial to personal experience, and personal experience is the 
 standard of reality and intelligibility. 101 
 
 1 8. The impotence of feeling-absolutism for explanation is exemplified 
 in Psychology, where Mr. Bradley is reduced to the standpoint 
 of ' phenomenalism. ' 1 04 
 
 19. In Logic Mr. Bradley impugns knowledge for its partialness, 106 
 
 20. and separation of content from existence, 108 
 
 21. and thus, having no means to distinguish error from truth, 1 1 o 
 
 22. suggests regress upon a utilitarian criterion. 112 
 
 23. In Morals and religion feeling-absolutism subverts established doc- 
 trine and can suggest no other. 113 
 
 24. Morality Mr. Bradley attacks for being relational and therefore 
 unreal, adducing in support various practical and theoretical 
 difficulties which he declares to be insoluble except by absorp- 
 tion of morality in the Absolute. 116 
 
 25. Along with the moral, Mr. Bradley's Absolute also includes the 
 immoral : by thus affirming their final compatibility he shocks 
 the moral sense. 1 1 8 
 
 26. Feeling-absolutism is capable of explaining the nistis of morality : 119 
 
 27. but its precept to realise the Absolute cannot be applied practi- 
 cally ; while Mr. Bradley's formula of self-realisation is incon- 
 sistent with his metaphysics. 121 
 
 28. In Philosophy of Religion feeling - absolutism must fail, for, 
 whereas religion is dynamic and assumes the perfect goodness 
 of God, 123 
 
 29. absolutism treats the world as static, and feeling-absolutism re- 
 gards the object of religion as partly evil. 125 
 
 30. Realising the practical dangers of consistently absolutist reli- 
 gion, 127 
 
 31. Mr. Bradley interprets religion as consciously self-deceiving faith 
 
 in the perfection of the world. 128 
 
 32. Dissatisfaction with ordinary pantheism, apparently, has induced 
 Mr. Bradley to regard God as an appearance of the Absolute :
 
 SUBJECTIVISM. GERMAN IDEALISM xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 but this makes God's ' appearance ' unintelligible except as an 
 imperfect human conception of the Absolute. 129 
 
 33. Feeling-Absolutism does justice to no side of religion but the 
 
 emotional. 132 
 
 34. Judged by Mr. Bradley's own test, the outcome of feeling- 
 absolutism is barren, since it lessens our appreciation of life. 133 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SUBJECTIVISM^. 
 
 I. Subjectivism has two forms (a) solipsistic and (b) impersonal, 
 
 (b) being derived from (a), which is unpopular, 138 
 2. but concurs with egoistic hedonism, 139 
 3. with the self- regarding interpretation of art, 140 
 4. with the vindication of thought's independence against sensa- 
 tionalism, 141 
 5. and with the ambition to create one's own universe. 142 
 6. Fichte, who takes this last view, forgets that morality presupposes 
 
 belief in the objectively real. 143 
 
 7. More popular at present is (b) impersonal subjectivism which 
 
 affirms that the universe is subject : 143 
 
 8. its advantage lies in affirming the spirituality of the universe ; 
 though it cannot explain the universe's mode of existence, or 
 process ; 144 
 
 9. its fatal difficulty lies in explaining the relation of finite selves to 
 
 the world-self. 146 
 
 10. The subjectivist standpoint is seldom maintained consistently. 146 
 
 II. In Hegel, and still more in his English borrowers, the sub- 
 jectivism is often not clearly definable as individual or im- 
 personal. 147 
 12. Rejection of subjectivism does not imply acceptance of dualism. 149 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 \GERMAN IDEALISM 
 
 ^H. .ff 
 
 ^^MwUMMN*^ WBWBMMBBm** 1 ***-' 
 
 I. The contemporary development of thought at Oxford attaches 
 
 itself closely to German Idealism. 151 
 
 2. The Kantian doctrines that have had influence on modern 
 thought are (a) his vindication of a spiritual philosophy, based 
 on a better analysis of experience 153 
 
 3. and resulting in the demonstration of the Ego's contribution to 
 
 knowledge, 155
 
 GERMAN IDEALISM 
 
 4. (^) his partial surrender to the lower-categories philosophy, and 
 
 (<) his illusion ism. 156 
 
 5. Fichte in systematising Kant selected as fundamental his principle 
 
 of self-consciousness. 156 
 
 6. The idealism of Fichte and his successors was purely speculative 
 
 in its interest ; 158 
 
 7. but its development was furthered by the need of moral faith and 
 
 by the unsettledness of politics, of literature 159 
 
 8. and of the German universities which in their system tend to the 
 
 development of extreme views in ways unfamiliar to England. 1 60 
 9. Discarding noumena Fichte undertakes to develop the whole of 
 
 our experience from ' I am I ' ; 1 66 
 
 10. appearing in his earlier period to start from the individual ego, 
 
 in his later period from the world-ego, 168 
 
 11. though it is possible to harmonise the utterances of his two periods. 170 
 12. Schelling, carrying on the idealist development, attempted to 
 
 ' deduce ' nature also from the ego ; 171 
 
 13. subsequently regarded the philosophy of nature as co-ordinate 
 
 with the philosophy of mind ; 175 
 
 14. and, later, tried to deduce both from the neutral identity of 
 
 subject and object. 175 
 
 15. Philosophic truth he held to be apprehended by a peculiar 
 
 intuition. 177 
 
 16. Hegel completes and systematises Schelling's identity-philosophy. 179 
 17. His standpoint, that Reality is Absolute Thought which is the 
 
 identity of subject and object, is justified by the Phenomenology 180 
 1 8. and developed in the Encyclopedia; 182 
 
 19. which is primarily an outline of the philosophical sciences, 183 
 
 20. but is also, and has been mainly understood as, an account of 
 
 the self-development of the Absolute, 185 
 
 21. and contains all his significant work. 187 
 
 22. Of the three divisions of the Encyclopedia Logic, dealing with 
 
 pure thought, is the most important as containing the method 
 
 of the whole system, 191 
 
 23. and as exhibiting its most successful application ; 193 
 
 24. its success being mainly due to its parallelism to the actual stages 
 
 of consciousness. 194 
 
 25. The Philosophy of Nature which is an indispensable part of the 
 
 system, shows the absurdity of explaining nature deductively. 197 
 26. The Philosophy of Spirit illustrates the unsuitability of Hegel's 
 
 dialectic to the mental and moral sciences, and his distortion of 
 
 fact. 198 
 
 27. Faults in Hegel are his passivity in logic and ethics, 199 
 
 28. his anti-personalism, 20 1 
 
 29. his treatment of the philosophical sciences from the panlogist- 
 
 absolutist, not the psychological, standpoint, 202
 
 T. H. GREEN 
 
 PAGE 
 
 30. as shown especially in his neglect of volition. 204 
 
 31. Good points in Hegel are his speculative power, reliance on 
 
 reason, and avoidance of solipsism. 204 
 
 32. His practical tendency is enlightened reactionism. 206 
 
 33. Though Hegel's influence is strong in England, Anglo- Hegelians 
 have never adopted Hegel's whole system, because of his anti- 
 empiricism : 207 
 34. by attempting to adopt it partially they have sacrificed philosophic 
 
 consistency. 209 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 T. H.^REEN 
 
 I. Green's intellectualism and subjecitvism, neither of which is really 
 
 congenial to him, are due to German influence. 211 
 2. Beginning with an interest in the vindication of spiritual experi- 
 ence, 2 I 2 
 3. in reaction against the prevailing influence of Mill, 213 
 4. and not finding materials for such vindication either in Greek 
 
 philosophy, 2 1 5 
 
 5. or in the eighteenth century, 2 1 6 
 
 6. or in contemporary orthodoxy, 2 1 7 
 7. he was led to take up the ideas of German idealism, then tardily 
 
 permeating Oxford ; 218 
 
 8. though his debt to Kant and Hegel is more general than specific. 220 
 
 9. His critical writings attack the traditional English philosophy 
 
 from the German standpoint. 221 
 
 10. His constructive work is limited to the Prolegomena to Ethics 
 
 and the Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation ; 
 
 which latter does not call for criticism. 222 
 
 II. The Prolegomena to Ethics, which only in part corresponds to its 
 
 title, 223 
 
 12. proposes to vindicate for ethics the spirituality of the world and 
 
 of man 223 
 
 1 3. by analysing, in the Kantian manner, knowledge in its simplest act. 225 
 14. From this analysis Green argues that knowledge implies (a) a 
 
 spiritual relating-principle in the knower, 227 
 
 15. (6) a spiritual principle or eternal consciousness constituting the 
 
 relations of the real world known ; 228 
 
 1 6. so that reality is an unalterable system of relations. 229 
 
 17. Hence he infers that man (a) is a reproduction of the eternal 
 
 consciousness, and (b) is free. 231 
 
 1 8. The static intellectualism of this metaphysic prevents Green from 
 
 giving a satisfactory account (a) of God as intelligent and holy, 232
 
 GREEN. MR. BRADLEY 
 
 PAGE 
 
 19. (6) of the world as a sphere of moral action, and 235 
 
 20. (c) of man (i.) as son of God, 237 
 
 21. (ii.) as creature of change, 239 
 
 22. (iii.) as stimulated to action, 240 
 
 23. (iv.) as free. 242 
 
 24. Subjectivism in both its forms is equally contrary to his deepest 
 
 convictions ; 244 
 
 25. but its solipsistic form appears in what he says of perception, 245 
 26. and its impersonal form is traceable in his doctrine of the 
 
 Spiritual Principle in Nature, 246 
 27. a doctrine which does not really establish either the objective 
 
 reality of nature, 248 
 28. or the spirituality of nature, as basis for his doctrine of the 
 
 Sonship of Man. 250 
 29. Subjectivism also appears in his account of moral action, as a 
 
 quest of self-satisfaction 253 
 
 30. which is inconsistent with his own emphasis on objective interest, 254 
 
 31. with his account of God's moral quality, 256 
 
 32. and with his doctrine of man's virtue as a reproduction of God's. 257 
 
 33- We may question whether his metaphysic would not have been 
 
 revised if he had lived longer. 258 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 / 
 
 MR. OF. H..' BRADLEY 
 
 I. Mr. F. H. Bradley, starting from Hegel, has ended near to 
 
 Spinoza. 260 
 
 2. His Ethical Studies, which proposes to introduce Hegelianism 
 
 into British ethics 261 
 
 3. adopts, while declining the Hegelian system, many Hegelian 
 
 principles, 262 
 
 4. in particular the concrete universal. 262 
 
 5. Its main ethical doctrine, "my station and its duties," overlooks 
 
 the individual's function in choosing and fashioning his career. 264 
 6. Its concluding mysticism points forward to Appearance and 
 
 Reality. 265 
 
 7. His Principles of Logic shows the influence of the passive fallacy, 
 and of intellectualism and feeling absolutism, which are really 
 incompatible. 266 
 
 8. His intellectualism appears in his doctrine that all judgment is 
 
 abstract, 268 
 
 9. even the singular judgment of sense, 269 
 
 10. on which point he is confuting the sensationist logicians by 
 
 borrowing from Hegel ; 270
 
 MR. BRADLEY 
 
 11. but thus makes the concrete particular inaccessible to 
 
 thought, 271 
 12. and conflicts with his own account of perception as our point of 
 
 contact with reality. 272 
 13. He ignores the active and creative side of judgment, 273 
 14. as in his treatment (a) of the Disjunctive Judgment, 273 
 15. (b) of the Quantity of Judgments, and 275 
 16. ' (c) of the Modality of Judgments. 277 
 17. His theory of inference, while making for a spiritual interpreta- 
 tion of reasoning, 279 
 1 8. ignores the element of purpose and plan, 280 
 19. as in his explanations (a) of individuality of synthesis. 281 
 20. (b) of universality, 282 
 21. (c) of identity, and 284 
 22. (d) of likeness in connection with analogy. 285 
 23. He obliterates the distinction between deduction and induction, 287 
 24. and supposes that reasoning processes are valid so far as they are 
 
 self-developing, non-selective, 289 
 25. and copy reality, 291 
 26. a mistake peculiarly obvious in the case of active inferences. 293 
 27. He adopts absolutism from Hegel inconsistently with his recogni- 
 tion of the finite individual, 294 
 28. and uses it (a) to explain the nisus of thought, 297 
 29. (b) to confute the sensationists by attacking the perceptive judg- 
 ment for its partialness, and 298 
 30. (c) to define the categorical judgment ; 300 
 31. and yet," unlike Hegel, he would include feeling in the Absolute 
 
 and in knowledge, 301 
 
 32. which conflicts with his own intellectualist metaphysic and logic. 302 
 
 33. In Appearance and Reality Mr. Bradley fails to prove the Absolute 
 by his arguments (a) that finite existence is imperfect, (b) that 
 
 we have a universal criterion ; 304 
 
 34. his assumption of it, which is covered by the term 'appearance,' 
 
 being due to mysticism. 306 
 
 35. His Absolute is a featureless blank, the element of feeling absorb- 
 ing every other : 307 
 
 36. it therefore accords with Mr. Bradley's criterion of self-contradic- 
 tion as used strictly, though not as used otherwise, 310 
 
 37. e.g. as used by Hegel ; 313 
 
 38. and it cannot be used as a measure of degrees of truth and 
 
 reality. 314 
 
 39. Mr. Bradley's tendency to pessimism prevents him from making 
 
 the best of his Absolute, 3 1 5 
 
 40. and impairs our conviction of its reality. 316 
 
 41. The Subjectivism of Appearance and Reality. 317 
 
 42. Its literary affinities. 319
 
 PROF. BOSANQUET 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 PROFESSOR BOSANQUET 
 
 I. Prof. Bosanquet, a typical Anglo-Hegelian, rejects the Dialectic 
 
 and the Absolute, 322 
 
 2. while sympathising with the speculative outcome of Hegelianism. 323 
 3. His work, as exemplified by his Logic, is influenced by intellec- 
 
 tualism and subjectivism, and generally by the Passive Fallacy ; 
 
 which is shown in his view of reality and knowledge. 324 
 4. His intellectualism prevents him from recognising that thought 
 
 (a) is bound up with our other vital functions, 326 
 
 5. (b) evolves, 327 
 
 6. (c) is purposive, 328 
 
 7. (d) operates on perceptual data. 330 
 
 8. His subjectivism, which is, on the whole, of the impersonal type, 332 
 
 9. though sometimes inclining to the individualist, 334 
 
 10. appears in his doctrine (a) of truth, and 335 
 
 li. (b) of the self-determination of thought. 336 
 
 12. He exemplifies the impossibility of modernising Hegel. 337 
 
 INDEX . . .339
 
 ABBREVIATIONS 
 
 A.R.= Appearance and Reality. By F. H. Bradley. 1893. 
 
 E.S. = Ethical Studies. By F. H. Bradley. 1876. 
 
 L.H. = The Logic of Hegel. Translated from the Encyclopedia by 
 
 W. Wallace. Second edition. 1892. 
 P.G. = G. W. F. Hegel's Phanomenologie dcs Geistcs. Zweite 
 
 Auflage. 1841. 
 
 P.L. = The Principles of Logic. By F. H. Bradley. 1883. 
 P.M. = Hegel's Philosophy of Mind. Translated by W. Wallace. 
 
 1894. 
 P.R. = Hegel's Philosophy of Right. Translated by S. W. Dyde. 
 
 1896.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 AT the cost of an appearance of egoism I had 
 better tell plainly how I came to write this book : 
 the history of its origin will make the best intro- 
 duction to its meaning. 
 
 Beginning philosophy as an undergraduate twenty- 
 two years ago, I adopted at once the idealism 
 currently taught in the University : it seemed to be 
 what was wanted to vindicate personality and the 
 spiritual world against the lower-categories philo- 
 sophy of the materialists and sensationists. Never- 
 theless, before long I came to feel, in common, I 
 believe, with not a few of my contemporaries, that 
 the teaching we got was hardly strong enough in 
 the explanation of definite problems. Some such 
 thought, I remember, haunted me in hearing, for 
 example, the logic lectures of the late Lewis Nettle- 
 ship. He told us elaborately and often what know- 
 ledge was not, but, having thus awakened expecta- 
 tion, did little to satisfy it : we seemed to be always 
 on the verge of a great secret which our teacher 
 would never disclose. T. H. Green, whose Pro- 
 legomena to Ethics I read somewhat later, was much 
 
 I B
 
 TWENTY-ONE YEARS AGO 
 
 more definite than Nettleship : but even his great 
 doctrine of the Spiritual Principle, though it gratified 
 religious aspiration, did not seem to be clearly 
 reasoned out ; nor could any one be sure how far it 
 would go in explaining the religious consciousness. 
 Meanwhile, no open-minded student, I am certain, 
 was quite at ease about the attitude of the Oxford 
 idealists to modern science. A book such as 
 Herbert Spencer's Data of Ethics, though palpably 
 deficient in philosophic culture, appeared to contain 
 much that was based on the impregnable rock of 
 experience. And yet to all the new ideas that 
 Spencer represented Green's attitude was merely 
 negative. He pointed to facts which the biological 
 moralists left out, but never tried to assimilate their 
 many valuable contributions to moral theory. This 
 want of receptivity, together with its own limited 
 explanatory power, cast upon the Oxford philosophy 
 of 1885 a suspicion of reactionism and unreality 
 which even an eager disciple could scarcely ignore. 
 
 In course of time the movement which began 
 with Green produced its crop of literature Mr. 
 Bradley 's Ethical Studies and Principles of Logic 
 in 1876 and 1883 respectively, Mr. Bosanquet's 
 Logic in 1888, Mr. Bradley's Appearance and 
 Reality in 1893, an< ^ finally Prof. Wallace's Lectures 
 and Essays in 1898 I omit the numerous works 
 of commentary and historical exposition. To 
 the later books of this series as they successively 
 appeared one turned with hope to find the defects 
 of the former teaching made good : one looked
 
 PHILOSOPHIA LANGUENS 
 
 for a new and comprehensive synthesis which 
 would show adequate appreciation of personal life, 
 together with assimilation of scientific ideas so far 
 as they bore on philosophy. But, the more the out- 
 come of the idealist movement developed, the less 
 prospect there appeared that these hopes would be 
 fulfilled. The three writers I have mentioned repre- 
 sent differently toned adaptations of Hegel, Mr. 
 Bradley a quasi-mystical or Spinozistic Hegelianism, 
 Profs. Bosanquet and Wallace a Hegelianism of the 
 left and of the right respectively. The two former 
 speak respectfully of evolutionary science, without 
 attempting to assimilate its methods and results. 
 None of them gives adequate recognition to the 
 deepest facts of personal life ; Mr. Bradley, indeed, in 
 his latest work takes a decisively anti-personal line. 
 Wallace's book is a learned and brilliant failure in 
 construction. Messrs. Bradley and Bosanquet offer 
 syntheses of a certain kind ; Wallace almost makes 
 us despair of one. 
 
 The net result for Oxford of this remarkable 
 literature, which together with much exegetical work 
 of a similar tendency shows the highest speculative 
 quality, was that philosophy went down seriously in 
 academic consideration from the position which it 
 held at Green's death. The man of average calibre 
 and it is he who exemplifies most unmistakably 
 the vitality of current ideas took more and more to 
 commentating : an Alexandrian period threatened to 
 set in. To avert such a calamity, the joint volume 
 which afterwards appeared as Personal Idealism
 
 4 PERSONAL IDEALISM, PRAGMATISM CH. 
 
 was projected six years ago : its aim was to revive 
 a flagging interest by developing and defending the 
 principle of personality from many individual points 
 of view. Of the essays there included, one by Mr. 
 Canning Schiller startled the world by its advocacy 
 of a principle which might have been traced already 
 in the work of Prof. William James and of several 
 continental writers, and has now become famous 
 under the names of Pragmatism and Humanism. 
 This essay, " Axioms as Postulates," appears to me 
 to have opened a new chapter in British thought. 
 
 To different minds the pragmatist or humanist 
 movement doubtless makes a different appeal : to 
 mine its value lies in its recognition of personal 
 striving, and its suggestion of a philosophy of the 
 future which will treat personal striving as the 
 central fact of our experience. I emphasise personal, 
 to make a distinction from impersonal cosmic striv- 
 ing, such as that of Schopenhauer, which leads 
 to a philosophic outcome utterly different. Such 
 a philosophy of striving, which in a classification 
 of philosophies is a form of Voluntarism, might be 
 made to combine what is true in the Oxford ideal- 
 ism of the last thirty years with a recognition of the 
 results of modern biology and anthropology. On 
 the one hand it would take over and strengthen the 
 main position of T. H. Green's argument against 
 the naturalism of his day, by which he showed that 
 our higher activities in knowledge and morality 
 exhibit a principle incapable of being resolved into 
 what, in his language, is "merely natural." On the
 
 AND VOLUNTARISM 
 
 other hand, it would adopt the doctrine of evolution 
 with its formulae of adaptation to environment, 
 struggle for existence, and survival of the fittest ; 
 and it would apply this doctrine to our highest 
 activities, always with the understanding that here 
 we are on a plane above biology, and that the striving 
 which is the mainspring of the selfs development 
 is increasingly conscious and purposeful as the 
 development proceeds. 
 
 Such a form of voluntarism can hardly fail to 
 commend itself to those who hold firmly both to 
 idealism and to evolution. The evolutionist must 
 either explain the self as a product of its material 
 surroundings, or must hold that it makes its own 
 characteristic contribution to the world's process. 
 The first alternative is forbidden by idealism : and 
 one who accepts the second has implicitly accepted 
 voluntarism ; he must regard the self as a force able 
 to play its own part in striving with the world. 
 For such a world-view Hegelianism supplies no sub- 
 stitute. The late Prof. Ritchie's attempt to exhibit 
 Hegel as the ' truth of Darwin ' only shows more 
 plainly the impossibility of identifying the non- 
 dynamic, self-contained thought - development of 
 dialectic with the dynamic interaction of self and the 
 world which is commonly assumed by scientific men. 
 
 Concurrently with the conviction that the future 
 of philosophy lies with voluntarism there came to 
 me a better understanding of my early want of 
 whole-hearted accordance with T. H. Green and 
 of my dissatisfaction with his successors. With in-
 
 IDOLOCLASM CH. 
 
 creasing definiteness I seemed to detect the opera- 
 tion of certain fallacies which prevented them from 
 appreciating just those facts of personality and 
 evolution on which my suggested synthesis is based. 
 And thus I was led in the interest of clear thinking 
 to disentangle these fallacies ; to look into their 
 historical filiations, to ascertain what consequences 
 they logically involve, and what consequences they 
 do actually involve in the writings of some leading 
 Oxford thinkers. 
 
 This investigation concluded, the question arose 
 whether the result was worth giving to the world. 
 Could any common good be looked for from the 
 publication ? Rightly or wrongly, I thought it 
 could, mainly because of the opposition which the 
 pragmatist or humanist movement has encountered 
 from a large and powerful body within the Univer- 
 sity and outside it. The indignation with which 
 Mr. Bradley and the Hegelians have greeted the 
 advent of Pragmatism shows that the Idols of the 
 Theatre criticised in the following pages possess an 
 importance not merely historical, and that they 
 have to be driven from the field before voluntarism 
 can get a fair hearing. 
 
 The task of elucidating these fallacies seems all 
 the more worth attempting, since many who are in- 
 terested in philosophy have extremely vague notions 
 of the origin and real tendencies of the school now 
 dominant among us. This is due to the fact that 
 devotion to classical antiquity in Oxford has some- 
 what obscured the importance of the history of
 
 IDOLOCLASM 
 
 modern thought. Few of our junior students, and 
 not all of their teachers, understand clearly the rela- 
 tion of contemporary work to the great German 
 idealists, and, so far, are hardly in a position to 
 estimate its value. I believe that these Idols of the 
 Theatre are thoroughly uncongenial to our national 
 habit of mind ; and that when they are seen in their 
 true light they will cease to gather the allegiance 
 of the rising generation.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PASSIVE FALLACY 
 
 i. THE Proton Pseudos, the besetting temptation 
 of philosophy, not only in the present but in every 
 other age, is the inclination to overlook the kinetic 
 and dynamic character of human experience. That 
 men are changing, dynamic beings interacting with 
 the world of changing forces in which they live, has 
 always been recognised by common sense : but the 
 philosophic thinker is ever tempted to forget it. 
 His tendency all through has been to overlook the 
 element of activity in the human self; and to regard 
 the world at large as mutable only through defect 
 and infirmity, or even as static in reality beneath its 
 appearance of change. This I call the Passive 
 Fallacy. 
 
 Where the passive fallacy has sway it must 
 vitiate in some measure every part of the system of 
 thought. Omit the dynamic element, and how 
 can we form just conceptions of reality, substance, 
 relation, and cause ; or of matter and material 
 phenomena in general ; or of the human self ; or of 
 God ? Still more fatal is this omission in the 
 detailed treatment of the mental and moral sciences.
 
 CH. ii A DISEASE OF EDUCATION 9 
 
 No static view of morality and art can represent 
 them truly : and even logic which, for reasons that 
 will appear later, has lent itself most easily to the 
 passive fallacy, must need a deep reform if intel- 
 lectual operations are themselves activities and 
 demand to be studied in their general connection 
 with active life. 
 
 2. Over and above the concurrent causes to 
 be mentioned presently, the great predisposing 
 cause of the passive fallacy is the separation of the 
 student from active life. The influences making 
 for separation are so many and various that they 
 must be indicated rather briefly. 
 
 In a normal life and in normal conduct study and 
 action go intimately together : study is undertaken 
 mainly in preparation for immediate action. The 
 simpler the example we select, the more plainly 
 will it illustrate this point, as when we examine the 
 bank of a brook in preparation for jumping across 
 it. But even in primitive societies a certain sever- 
 ance of study from action arises in consequence of 
 the natural division of labour, as when there grows 
 up a select body of counsellors distinct from the 
 mass of fighting men. Later, with the rise of a 
 system of education, a scholar - class comes into 
 being whose business is preponderantly study. It 
 is among this specialised class mainly that we find 
 the tendency to ignore activity : the passive fallacy 
 might be described as a disease of education. 
 
 Even in the ancient world we can see this 
 tendency clearly enough. It begins in exaggeration
 
 io THE PREACHER'S FALLACY CH. 
 
 of that independence of utility which is so necessary 
 and salutary to the student. Where society is fully 
 organised the sedentary student is just as practically 
 useful as the hodman ; but it is essential to his full 
 utility that he should not always be considering 
 what is useful. He should let himself be carried 
 along by scientific curiosity, and only keep half an 
 eye on the question whether practice will benefit. 
 And yet mischief arises if he let himself be carried 
 along too fast and too far, and if that half-an-eye 
 be withdrawn from utility. The hypertrophy of 
 scientific curiosity is not a common fault ; but the 
 student, at least, must be on guard against it. 
 
 A fault in the same direction, very evident in 
 Plato and in all minds of the finest temper, is 
 exaggeration of the unworldly spirit's detachment 
 from the world : this we might call the Preacher's 
 Fallacy in philosophy. It is part of the business 
 of moral exhortation to tell men not to be too keen 
 on worldly pursuits. The philosopher is generally a 
 preacher too, or, at least, can hardly keep himself from 
 preaching : disgusted with the abounding futility 
 and vulgarity of the life of politics and commerce, 
 he is tempted to proclaim as a counsel of perfection 
 complete withdrawal into the quiet of the Academic 
 grove: ilfautcultiver noire jar din. Closely allied to 
 this is the passivism which belongs to the alliance of 
 philosophy with religious devotion. The retirement 
 to contemplate the eternal ideas which closes the 
 life of Plato's Guardians has much in common with 
 the eremitism of India and of Christianity.
 
 ii THE WEAK SIDE OF SPECIALISATION u 
 
 3. These influences are strengthened in modern 
 times by the increasing specialisation and isolation 
 of educational men. In the ancient world education, 
 and study generally, was a simple affair compared 
 to what it has since become : we can see this by 
 comparing the Hellenic education, so direct and 
 practical in all its features, with any ideal that could 
 be suggested now. Modern civilisation has grown 
 so complex in its needs that it is inexpedient to 
 check scientific curiosity at any point : the mere 
 efHux of time has created an enormous volume of 
 record which has to be learnt to make existing 
 society intelligible : the extinct languages of ancient 
 civilisation have to be painfully acquired, and an 
 adequate culture also implies the learning of two 
 or three modern ones. All this growing burden of 
 learning tends to cut the educator off from participa- 
 tion in general society ; meanwhile the temptation 
 to the preacher's fallacy has hardly diminished, 
 and the devotional severance of contemplation from 
 action has been strengthened by the Christian anti- 
 thesis between the secular and spiritual lives. 
 
 In endowed academic societies, such as our 
 ancient universities, where the encouragement that 
 is given to branches of study has ceased to bear 
 any definite relation to their utility, there are well- 
 known influences which aggravate the effects of the 
 segregation of the educating class. The temptation 
 to forget that studying is a preparation for living, 
 the professional prejudice that makes the educator 
 ignore the subordinateness of his own function, the
 
 12 ACADEMICISM. PASSIVIST CH. 
 
 conservatism that persists in educational methods 
 which have ceased to be fruitful, the preoccupation 
 with mere technique, the narrowness of minutely 
 specialised scholarship, the morbid interest in abstruse 
 and difficult bits of antiquarianism, the slavish admira- 
 tion of antiquity and incapacity for discovering 
 contemporary genius, the over-estimation of docility 
 and of erudition, the limitation of ' knowledge ' to 
 the knowledge of other men's performances, the 
 mental parasitism that lives upon commentating, 
 the impossible fastidiousness that regards un- 
 productivity as a mark of true culture, the critical 
 ingenuity that ends by criticising its own head off 
 all this anti - practical sort of spirit is greatly 
 fostered by the close out-of-the-worldliness of an 
 ancient seat of learning. The passive fallacy reaches 
 its fullest growth in a climate of academicism. 
 
 4. It is the Passive Fallacy then, which I take 
 to be the great enveloping condition predisposing 
 speculative men to an over-static interpretation of 
 experience : and in each of the main departments of 
 thought it so happens that the fallacy is reinforced 
 by reaction against the crudely natural way of 
 looking at things. Take first cosmology. Primitive 
 man sees around him a world of things in continual 
 change ; of the rules by which the changes come 
 to pass he understands but little. Science, however, 
 depends on the discovery of uniformities in the flux 
 of phenomena ; in the eye of science a law is vastly 
 more important than its concrete examples. From 
 the earliest times thinkers have been wont to concen-
 
 n COSMOLOGY AND THEOLOGY 13 
 
 trate attention upon the uniformities, to emphasise 
 them as the true , realities, and to speak slightingly 
 of the mutable concrete facts as unreal. So must 
 we explain the tendency to regard nature as a fixed 
 system of laws, and as being in its essence statical, 
 however it may appear to change. And this 
 tendency has survived to our day, though reflection 
 ought to bring us back to see that it is the concrete 
 facts which count, and that laws are constructed to help 
 us in understanding the concrete past and present, and 
 in predicting and managing the future. 
 
 5. The principle that laws are more real than 
 their embodiment extends beyond the sphere of the 
 interpretation of nature ; it applies no less to re- 
 ligion. In the dynamic view God is to be regarded 
 as an energy continuously manifested ; in the static 
 view the fixed rules of divine action alone are real. 
 Thus it has become usual to apply to God every 
 epithet expressing permanence: in Him there is no 
 variableness nor shadow of turning. Here we can 
 see reaction against polytheistic conceptions of 
 deity. The savage discerns no fixity in his gods 
 beyond a prevalence of very human passions, 
 and credits them with constant intermeddling in 
 mundane affairs. When men's religious conceptions 
 grow refined they tend to pass to the other extreme ; 
 a conception of deity such as that of Aristotle was 
 doubtless influenced by reaction from the surround- 
 ing polytheism. So potent has the static prejudice 
 grown that to attribute change to God will seem 
 almost pagan.
 
 14 PASSIVIST PSYCHOLOGY CH. n 
 
 6. In the mental sciences, or, to speak more 
 specifically, in logic and ethics, the passive fallacy is 
 helped by the clear severance which early analysis 
 makes between human faculties. In the pre- 
 scientific view, a view to which, as purified by reflec- 
 tion, thought is destined to return, each man is one 
 being, and thinks and acts as one. The first step 
 of science is to make distinctions and demarcations. 
 Nothing can exceed the separateness of Plato's 
 treatment of the human faculties : and vast as the 
 advance in psychology has been since Plato's day, 
 we have been more ready to refine and multiply his 
 distinctions than to rise to a standpoint transcend- 
 ing them. In logic, particularly, the intellect has 
 been treated as separable from conation, and the 
 sedentary prejudice of academic minds has caused 
 them all through the history of logical study to 
 illustrate intellectual operations from the receptive 
 rather than the creative intelligence. It will be the 
 task of logic in the future to correct this mistake of 
 early system- making, to re-establish the unity of 
 human life, and to prove that logical functions and 
 concepts are moulded and penetrated every way by 
 conative experience.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE IDOLS OF THE THEATRE 
 
 i. THE Passive Fallacy, though a general pre- 
 disposing cause of failure, is not alone accountable 
 for what is unsatisfactory in contemporary thought : 
 the full explanation lies with certain more special 
 tendencies which I call Intellectualism, Absolutism, 
 and Subjectivism. These tendencies, though differ- 
 ing in their specific character and not springing 
 directly from the Passive Fallacy, harmonise with 
 it so far that in their ultimate results they are in- 
 consistent with the adequate recognition of per- 
 sonality, more especially on its volitional side. 
 These are the Idola Theatri, the fallacious dogmata 
 philosophiarwn, which my work is primarily in- 
 tended to controvert. In the present chapter I 
 will offer brief definitions and illustrations of them 
 before entering upon detailed criticism. 
 
 2. Of the three idola the most important and 
 oldest in European thought is Intellectualism. It 
 comes from that over-emphasis upon intellect which 
 is natural to intellectual men, more especially to 
 those who are spectators rather than participants 
 in the active life of their society. The intel- 
 
 15
 
 16 NAIVE INTELLECTUALISM CH. 
 
 lectualist can only be defined in the most general 
 terms as one who attempts to explain everything 
 in terms of thought or reason, to the neglect of 
 other sides of our experience, more particularly of 
 sensation and volition. 
 
 Intellectualism has not been elaborated as a 
 thorough-going system till modern times, but we 
 can draw from ancient philosophy examples of its 
 influence, which are the more instructive because 
 unsophisticated. Such a one is the Socratic dictum 
 that virtue is knowledge, worked out so thoroughly 
 by Plato. Here we have a mistake natural and 
 excusable at a time when science was young, and 
 when nobody could say to what results it might not 
 lead. Were ignorance but once dispersed, men 
 thought with naive optimism, virtue would come 
 easy to all. The long line of Hellenic thinkers, 
 who from Plato downwards made this identification 
 of virtue with knowledge, may severally have 
 attached to it various shades of meaning ; but they 
 were certainly attributing to intellect functions 
 which are now generally admitted to be volitional. 
 
 Another Platonic philosopheme, the Theory of 
 Ideas, illustrates in its bearing on logic and 
 metaphysic the anti - sensational side of intel- 
 lectualism : its epistemological outcome is to deny 
 to sense - perception its function of furnishing the 
 material of knowledge ; and, as regards meta- 
 physic, it reduces to nonentity matter so far as it 
 is sensuously revealed. What the true meta- 
 physical interpretation of matter may be is still
 
 in WHEN FULLY SYSTEM ATI SED, PANLOGISM 17 
 
 under debate ; but the Platonic extrusion of sensa- 
 tion from knowledge has no support from modern 
 epistemology. 
 
 3. It was not till the last century that 
 intellectualism reached its systematic completion 
 in Panlogism, a Weltanschauung which makes a 
 thorough-going attempt to explain all elements of 
 the self and the objective world as forms of 
 thought. In the only fully worked -out system 
 of this kind, the Hegelian, the panlogism is 
 monistic, that is, all things in heaven and earth 
 are the parts of One Thought or Subject, within 
 which are included even the human selves whose 
 separate existence ordinary pluralism affirms. 
 
 In a chapter devoted mainly to Hegel I will 
 review panlogism in its full and definitive expression : 
 the chapter immediately following the present one 
 will criticise the philosophic results of such intel- 
 lectualist and panlogist principles as have been 
 adopted by Oxford thinkers. The outcome of my 
 criticism will be that intellectualism, though far 
 from successful in other directions, fails most 
 decisively in so far as it ignores the volitional 
 element of personal experience. In ethics, one 
 may venture to say, its failure is widely recognised : 
 it is tolerably plain that any one who reduces all 
 striving to thinking cannot explain so conative an 
 experience as morality. In logic, the discipline on 
 which the intellectualist school has spent most of its 
 force, the failure is less apparent, but, I believe, not 
 less real. If thinking is in normal cases not
 
 i8 ABSOLUTISM DENIES PERSONALITY CH. 
 
 separated from active doing, it cannot be ade- 
 quately explained by an non-conative philosophy. 
 
 4. The second idolon, Absolutism, is even 
 more opposed than the first to the principle of 
 personality : for, whereas intellectualism denies 
 the substantive existence of certain important 
 elements of the self, absolutism denies the validity of 
 personal experience altogether. It may be defined 
 as consisting in the assertion of an absolutely 
 perfect and changeless Being which includes within 
 itself all individualities that ever existed or will 
 exist, which is more real and more certainly known 
 than the persons and things of our phenomenal 
 world, and is the complete reconciliation and 
 solution of all the theoretical and practical diffi- 
 culties that beset human experience. 
 
 From the personal idealist's standpoint the fatal 
 fault in absolutism is just its assertion of the priority 
 of the Absolute to the person. We attack this 
 assertion best by raising the question how the 
 absolutist gets his knowledge of the Absolute. 
 Three ways are conceivable, by direct mystic 
 illumination, by identity of the philosopher's reason 
 with the world-reason, by ordinary reasoning. To 
 the first way no thinker with whom we have to deal 
 makes any pretension. The second is claimed by 
 Hegel (cf. infra, chap. vii. 27), but is totally at 
 variance with present-day ideas and is barred for a 
 thinker such as Mr. Bradley by his doctrine of the 
 disparateness of the absolute intelligence from the
 
 in IT SPRINGS FROM MYSTICISM 19 
 
 human. There remains the third, which is used 
 by Mr. Bradley and our contemporaries generally. 
 But, when a man uses ordinary reasoning to establish 
 the Absolute, he is evidently assuming the reality 
 and validity of the rational human mind and of the 
 forms whereby it operates : and, when he starts, as 
 Mr. Bradley, for example, starts, from facts of 
 ordinary experience, he is evidently assuming that 
 these facts are known at least as certainly as the 
 Absolute to which he advances from them. A 
 personal reasoner whose conclusions discredit per- 
 sonality is cutting the ground from under his own 
 feet. 
 
 5. The explanation of absolutism is reached 
 through mysticism ; it is the analogue in philosophy 
 of mysticism in the sphere of devotion. Mysticism 
 is an ever - recurring concomitant of strong de- 
 votional feeling, though not an invariable one : for 
 we find cases where devotion deepens into prostra- 
 tion and worship into a sense of worthlessness 
 before God, without leading on to mysticism ; there 
 is nothing of the sort in Bunyan, to take a familiar 
 example. And yet the history of Protestant 
 theology shows how readily this intense devotion 
 takes on a mystical form. Mysticism appears when 
 the worshipper becomes eager, not merely for inter- 
 course with God as in ordinary prayer, but for 
 absorption or annihilation in God ; the mystic is 
 eager to surrender his personal will and judgment 
 to the divine. And this primary characteristic of 
 mysticism implies two others belief that the
 
 20 THE NON-RELIGIOUS MYSTIC CH. 
 
 worshipper may have direct communion with 
 God by channels other than those of ordinary 
 mundane intercourse, and conviction that the 
 mystical knowledge of God is more valuable and 
 more certain than any mundane knowledge. 
 
 It is, I believe, only through the mysticism of 
 religion that we can understand the forms of it that 
 have little or no express connection with religion. 
 Mystics of this latter kind have a "passion for the 
 whole," what Amiel calls F dblouissement de Finfini, 
 which need not spring consciously from religion, 
 but seems inexplicable without reference thereto. 
 What should cause a man's thoughts to go out 
 towards the Universe so strongly as to make him 
 slight the persons and affairs of daily finite exist- 
 ence, except a sentiment of reverence and admira- 
 tion for the Universe akin to the sentiment of 
 religion ? Amiel's Journal (pathetic memorial of a 
 wasted life) is the classical document of the less 
 religious form of mysticism, though in his case 
 there was religion enough to make his mind 
 easily intelligible " fai trop longtemps errt, chercht; 
 je me trompais ; tout est bien, mon Dieu menveloppe" 
 And a thinker of Amiel's type helps us to understand 
 the still less religious mysticism of Mr. F. H. Bradley. 
 
 The absolutist, so far as his world-theory means 
 something real to him and is not merely the facile 
 adoption of a current fashion of thought, must have 
 a tinge of mysticism in his nature ; but he need not 
 be a mystic in practice. A native attraction to the 
 Whole makes it congenial for him to postulate an-
 
 in THE PESSIMISTIC MYSTIC 21 
 
 all-inclusive Infinite Being, but he does not desire 
 union with it ; he does not countenance any of the 
 devotional practices, Eastern or Western, by which 
 men have sought for union. Nor, again, is he wont 
 to claim a special channel of knowledge of the 
 Absolute. Altogether, the Absolute stands for him 
 rather as a principle of philosophic explanation. He 
 may assert that all finite persons and things are 
 melted down in the Absolute ; but what he rather 
 means is that all the theoretic difficulties incident to 
 finite existence disappear when the Absolute is 
 postulated. For convenience of terminology I shall 
 always use the ' Absolute ' in this sense as the 
 theoretic analogue of the ' God ' or ' Brahma ' of 
 practical mysticism. 
 
 6. In its best and freshest form mysticism is a 
 positive centripetal force, inspiring a conviction of 
 the essential goodness of the universe. An opti- 
 mistic mystic or absolutist such as Plotinus is 
 impatient of personality just because its conditions 
 belong to that finitude which to his mind produces 
 all deficiency and evil by hindering us from 
 blending our lives with the life of the Whole. 
 Spinoza, too, the god - intoxicated philosopher, 
 represents an absolutism of the optimistic type, in 
 temperament, if not in logical theory. But the 
 absolutism which makes more figure in contem- 
 porary thought, perhaps just because it is more 
 subtle and tortuous, is pessimistic or, at least, 
 tinged with pessimism. The moving thought in 
 it is not so much the 'love of God,' intellectual
 
 22 PANTECTIC ABSOLUTISM CH. 
 
 or devout, as the recoil from man. It is mainly 
 repulsion from actual life because of its failure, evil, 
 perplexity, transitoriness, and unsatisfied longing 
 that drives this kind of absolutist towards the One- 
 and-All. Weariness of the bustle of affairs ; con- 
 tempt for conventional ambitions ; revolt against 
 the evil of the world, its cruelty to oneself in 
 particular ; the wounded pride of intellect which, 
 because it cannot understand everything, would 
 have it that no one can understand anything ; 
 tedium of the shifting scenes of history which 
 grow meaningless when interest flags ; and above 
 all, in these latter days, despair of satisfying 
 emotional and sensuous claims in the cabined and 
 confined existence which is what most civilised 
 workers are asked to make the best of any of these 
 rebuffs will disgust a sensitive man with life, and 
 drive a thinker for solace to an imagined union with 
 the Perfect that is free from all limitation and evil. 
 
 7. If followed through consistently the absolu- 
 tist line of thought results in melting down all finite 
 predicates and individualities into a featureless 
 unity. Various literary expressions of it are 
 familiar to every one : 
 
 " They reckon ill who leave me out; 
 
 When me they fly, I am the wings ; 
 I am the doubter and the doubt, 
 
 And I the hymn the Brahmin sings." 
 
 or this phrase from Amiel : 
 
 " Once more I come upon the fathomless abyss, the 
 silent and melancholy cavern, where dwell Die Mutter, 
 where sleeps that which neither lives nor dies, which has
 
 in QUALIFIED BY 'APPEARANCES' 23 
 
 neither movement nor change, nor extension, nor form, 
 and which lasts when all else has passed away." 
 
 Effective as this may be in small quantities for 
 poetry and fine writing, no one can make much of it 
 philosophically. It may be parodied, and at the 
 same time accurately described, by enumerating 
 heterogeneous things till one is tired ("ships and 
 shoes and sealing-wax and cabbages and kings "), 
 and saying that the Absolute both is and is not 
 all these and everything else. Its sole advantage 
 for thought is that it gratifies the unifying or 
 monistic instinct which makes us desire to see the 
 world as the manifestation of a single principle. 
 Thus few people care seriously about pure 
 ' pantectic ' absolutism. All modern forms of 
 absolutism that have been worked out systemati- 
 cally are modified by concessions to finite exist- 
 ence. On the one hand, they view the Absolute 
 under the form of some element of human experi- 
 ence, such as thought, or will, or feeling ; on the 
 other hand, they concede a certain half-reality to 
 individual persons and things. The latter kind of 
 concession is embodied in the Doctrine of Appear- 
 ances, which asserts that the Universe, as it really 
 is, is one, infinite, changeless, all - inclusive, and 
 perfectly harmonious ; but that, as it appears, it is 
 multiplex, finite, mutable, partial, and discordant : 
 as it appears, the One Reality is split up into 
 independent, finite, and mutable consciousnesses, 
 experiences, and phenomenal facts which have, as 
 it were, a provisional and unreal existence.
 
 24 'ALL IS GOD' AND 'GOD IS ALL' CH. 
 
 8. Mysticism and absolutism are evidently 
 akin in some degree to Pantheism, but the exact 
 relation is not very easy to define. In strict logic 
 a mystic or absolutist must also be a pantheist ; for 
 the assertion that ' God is all ' implies its converse, 
 ' All is God.' I think, however, that there are 
 many people who come to pantheistic views by a 
 different road, and would hardly be willing to accede 
 to systematic absolutism. These are commonly 
 people of religious and enthusiastic character who 
 are filled with conviction of the all-pervasiveness of 
 God, and are so appreciative of the goodness of 
 things that they cannot bear to treat anything as 
 alien to God. If pantheism means no more 
 than this, it is evidently not irreconcilable with 
 orthodox theism : it would come into direct con- 
 flict only with the deistic religion which regards 
 the Deity as distinctly separate from the universe. 
 This vague form of pantheism is undoubtedly 
 the commonest, and history shows its influence 
 upon the best intellects of literature and specula- 
 tion. Without this generous warmth pantheism 
 seems to differ from absolutism merely in lack 
 of cogency. The faith that ' God is all ' takes 
 its power, as we have seen, from the centripetal 
 attraction of mysticism, but what is there to draw 
 one to affirm that ' All is God ' ? To one who 
 starts with ' All is God ' what is the gain, 
 except a satisfaction to the monistic instinct, in 
 affirming every stick and stone to be a piece of 
 the Deity ?
 
 in PHILOSOPHIC AND NATURAL SUBJECTIVISM 25 
 
 9. Our third idolon, Subjectivism, is the 
 tendency to over-emphasise the subjective side of 
 experience. In the ancient world thinkers tended 
 to disregard the subjective : in the modern the 
 tendency has been reversed ; thinkers have tended 
 to forget that the objective side is no less necessary 
 than the subjective to human experience. The 
 culmination of the tendency is Solipsism, where 
 the object is merged entirely in the subject, and 
 language is used which would preclude the reality 
 even of other selves. 
 
 Subjectivism is more artificial than the two idola 
 of which I have just spoken : it is more an affair 
 of the schools, and is rooted less deeply in human 
 nature. Nevertheless, there is something in human 
 nature that answers to it, a natural subjectivism 
 without which the subjectivism of systematic specu- 
 lation would probably never have been thought of. 
 It springs from the defective hold upon reality 
 noticeable in men who do not participate much in 
 the active business of life. Naturally it is most fre- 
 quent in those who have not started their career, 
 more especially in the finer spirits who love to 
 dream of something better than what the common 
 bustling world seems likely to afford them. Like 
 the Prince in Tennyson's poem, times come upon 
 such a one when he seems " to move among a 
 world of ghosts, and feel himself the shadow of a 
 dream." Among us in Europe this feeling is com- 
 monly dispelled by contact with the world ; but, in 
 the more passive East, what is here a phase of
 
 26 THE INTUITION OF OBJECTIVITY CH. 
 
 youth seems there to last on into serious philosophy. 
 It is one of the commonplaces of Eastern thought 
 to put the question for debate, ' Suppose life is all 
 a dream.' 
 
 10. Without some natural backing of this 
 kind, subjectivism would hardly maintain itself. 
 But as a definite philosophic theory it arises from 
 a defect of analysis. The reconstructive sceptic, of 
 whom Descartes is the type, anxious to seek truth 
 unencumbered by the questionable accumulations 
 of the past, turns his thought inwards and asks : 
 What is there that I can be certain of? and 
 answers : Nothing but that I exist and am a 
 conscious being. The philosophic starting-point 
 of subjectivism, then, is the proposition that the 
 individual mind has direct knowledge of nothing 
 beyond its conscious states. But, in limiting know- 
 ledge thus, an oversight is made leading to the 
 gravest consequences : even in the lowest grade of 
 consciousness that we can study definitely by intro- 
 spection, we take for granted that certain of our 
 conscious states reveal the presence of objects ; in 
 other words, we have from the first an intuition of 
 objectivity. Nor is this primitive intuition an 
 illusion which further experience dispels ; all pro- 
 gress depends upon it. This is so even with 
 progress in self-knowledge, which appears least 
 connected with the objective world : for what we 
 are is mainly what we can do ; and apart from the 
 world in which we are placed and on which we 
 operate, we can do nothing. Moreover, one ought
 
 in SUBJECTIVISM DENIES ACTIVITY 27 
 
 not to forget the confirmation which our intuitive 
 postulation of objects receives from the realisation 
 of anticipation. We anticipate that we shall find 
 to-morrow the world of objects which we know 
 to-day ; and this anticipation comes true. As soon 
 as we accept the starting-point that offers itself 
 naturally, we are led right away from subjectivism. 
 
 ii. Subjectivism is so difficult a world-view 
 and so unattractive to the Western temperament 
 that it is not adopted except for special the- 
 oretic reasons, and is very seldom held consistently. 
 Descartes' motive plainly was to clear away medi- 
 sevalism and get room for science ; Berkeley's to 
 refute the materialists; Fichte's to make Kantianism 
 systematic; John Mill's to strike a blow at intuitionism 
 and the obscurantists by deriving everything from 
 sensation. And none of them makes much pretence 
 of maintaining the subjectivist position beyond what 
 is required by the purpose which he has in view. 
 But if subjectivism were held consistently it would 
 be quite incompatible with activity. In normal 
 cases sustained activity is dependent upon stimulus ; 
 there must be something interesting in the environ- 
 ment to provoke us to continued exertion. Secondly, 
 when we act, we must have something to act upon. 
 Failing an environment to be changed by our efforts 
 we beat the void in vain. A thinker must forget 
 activity before he can regard solipsism as a possible 
 view of the world. 
 
 12. Such I take to be the contemporary Idols
 
 28 THE IDOLS VERSUS PERSONALITY CH. in 
 
 of the Theatre, to the influence of which we must 
 attribute the prevalent failure to do justice to the 
 most important fact in our experience, personality, 
 and to the most important element in personality, 
 volition. The criticism in the three chapters follow- 
 ing deals mainly with these two points : the rest of 
 what I shall have to say will touch upon the non- 
 recognition of sensation, of objectivity in general, 
 and of material existence. And matter and the 
 objective world in general, though not belonging 
 directly to personality, are at least all-important 
 conditions of personal life as we know it.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 INTELLECTUALISM 
 
 i. IT is not till Hegel that intellectualism comes 
 to the uncompromising assertion that Reality is 
 thought and nothing but thought : previous to 
 him it is always qualified by partial recognition of 
 elements not identical with thought. In Plato, for 
 example, sensation and sensuous phenomena are 
 allowed to possess a half-reality : in Kant, though 
 neither sensation nor volition gets its due, the 
 existence of both is recognised to a considerable 
 degree. And the reason is that, so long as the 
 philosopher starts in his synthesis from individual 
 experience, he cannot fail to take account of factors 
 which are other than intellectual. Pleasure and 
 pain, volitional strength and weakness, emotion, the 
 givenness of perceptive experience, its dynamic 
 character, its quantity, and the qualitative differ- 
 ences of its species are all hard to reduce to forms 
 of thinking. This or the other of them may have 
 been intellectualised, but no one who pays even 
 moderate regard to the individual can intellectualise 
 them all. 
 
 2. But Hegel can regard all experience as 
 
 29
 
 30 PANLOGISM STARTS FROM THE ABSOLUTE CH. 
 
 thought because he starts, not with the individual, 
 but with the Absolute. From this standpoint the 
 considerations which forbid us to treat all experi- 
 ence as intellectual can either be ignored or be 
 treated as dependent upon the accidental limitations 
 of finite existence. 
 
 " Let us imagine a harmonious system of ideal contents 
 united by relations, and reflecting itself in self-conscious 
 harmony. This is to be reality, all reality ; and there is 
 nothing outside it " (A.R. p. 170). 
 
 This quotation from Mr. Bradley sums up Hegel's 
 position : in other words, the Universe is a Thought, 
 of which everything we know is a determination. 
 Following good authority I have called this ex- 
 treme intellectualism, the reduction of everything 
 to intellect, or reason, or thought, by the term 
 Panlogism. 1 Without being accepted in its entirety 
 by anybody this Weltanschauung has had great 
 influence upon contemporary thought at Oxford. 
 It will be most instructive if I criticise intellectualism 
 so far as possible in its panlogistic form, touching 
 especially on points which occur in Oxford thinkers. 
 Beginning with Cosmology, I will attempt to show 
 that it gives a distorted account of all the main 
 facts of experience. 
 
 3. The panlogist cannot give any reasonable 
 account of Things : his position compels him to 
 deny more or less explicitly various generally 
 accepted characteristics of thinghood. One of 
 
 1 " Daher kann die Lehre Hegels mit vollem Recht als Panlogismus 
 bezeichnet werden " (Ueberweg. Grundriss, 9th ed. iv. p. 46).
 
 REALITY MORE OR LESS' 
 
 these characteristics is Alienness from spirit. Every 
 form of idealism claims that by deeper insight this 
 alienness may be transcended, and that matter is 
 ultimately to be regarded as a form of spirit ; but 
 every one, except the panlogist, will admit that, at 
 any view -point short of ultimate, things are not 
 spiritual : they persist stubbornly in their own mode 
 of existence. This gulf between the spiritual exist- 
 ence of persons and the non- spiritual existence of 
 things must be ignored by the panlogist. So far as 
 he is faithful to his theory he must describe things 
 in terms of thought : things are thoughts solidified 
 or petrified or, to change the metaphor, self- dis- 
 guised in otherness. 
 
 4. The panlogist account of the Reality of 
 things follows from what has just been said. The 
 doctrine that things are thought leads on to the con- 
 sequence that things are real just because they are 
 thought and in proportion as they are thinkable. 
 Hence the paradox of Degrees of Reality. The 
 plain man holds that, if a thing has objective reality, 
 it has it once for all, whether its intellectual content 
 be rich or meagre, clear or obscure : Shakespeare's 
 pen was not less real than the dramas which he 
 wrote with it. And in our ordinary dealing with 
 things we proceed on the principle that, though 
 reality implies a minimum of intelligibility, it is not 
 proportionate to intelligibility. A man judges his 
 pen to be real because he sees it and feels it in his 
 hand : it does not become more real to him if he 
 happens to learn that its point is iridium and under-
 
 32 'THINGS BASED ON EACH OTHER' CH. 
 
 stands the chemical properties of that rare metal. 
 On the other hand, the apprehension of a thing's 
 reality may be strengthened without increase in its 
 intelligibility. If the man were to swallow his pen, 
 for example, its reality would come home to him 
 with added force, though he could not say it had 
 more intelligibility. In short, we must hold that 
 there is such a thing as crude fact, due to the 
 affection of our sensibility and the resisting of our 
 will. For crude fact, however, there can be no 
 place in the panlogist scheme. 
 
 5. Again, the intellectualist does not do 
 justice to the Independence of things. It is 
 generally admitted that nothing can be absolutely 
 independent, and that 'unrelated existence' amounts 
 to a self-contradiction : but this truth needs supple- 
 menting with the corresponding truth that there is 
 no such thing as absolute dependence. Everything 
 has its own quality, without which there would be 
 nothing for relations to attach themselves to. It is 
 this truth which the intellectualist is in the habit of 
 ignoring : he speaks as if a thing were nothing 
 apart from its place in a logical system ; as if the 
 relations in which it stands gave it all its being. 
 Similarly, he greatly over - estimates the logical 
 plasticity of things, i.e. the degree to which they 
 can be transformed by reading meaning into them. 
 His position is often illustrated by the way in which 
 a distant object, say a landscape, can be transformed 
 and unfolded by prolonged scrutiny. The fact is 
 undoubted, but too much is built upon it. The
 
 iv THE DENIAL OF POWER 33 
 
 distant prospect has always its own quality of line, 
 colour, and shading which sets limits to the meaning 
 that can be read into it : the interpretative process 
 needs data which it does not create. 
 
 6. The independence and logical implasticity 
 of things leads us to notice the most important 
 of all the qualities ignored by intellectualism, their 
 Dynamic Character, i.e. their power of exercising 
 force and opposing resistance. The neglect of this, 
 and the analogous neglect of human energy and 
 will, is a grievous hiatus in many philosophies, in- 
 tellectualist and otherwise. In Mill's 'permanent 
 possibilities of sensation' no less than in Hegel's 
 account of material things as thought petrified, and 
 in Green's account of nature as a tissue of relations 
 constituted by a universal consciousness, there is no 
 hint of the fact that man is an embodied force who 
 is surrounded by other forces acting upon him and 
 upon each other and limiting his activity in every 
 direction, but capable of being made subservient to 
 his purposes. 
 
 Thinghood is an indispensable category of ex- 
 perience, and the panlogist having deleted it from 
 its proper place is moved to restore it in another 
 where it has no business. One of the best-known 
 Hegelian shibboleths (Dr. Stirling calls it the 
 "Secret of Hegel") is the 'concrete universal.' If 
 taken seriously the phrase must mean that the concep- 
 tion of a stone has as much thinghood as the stone 
 itself is popularly credited with. Ordinary men 
 
 suppose that the objective material world consists 
 
 D
 
 34 THE DENIAL OF CHANGE CH. 
 
 of stones and things like stones : the Hegelian 
 asserts, much in the spirit of mediaeval realism, that 
 conceptions alone have real substantiality. 
 
 7. The panlogist denial of the dynamic 
 element of the world involves the denial of Change ; 
 for change is unmeaning except as a manifestation 
 of power. And this leads on to a denial which 
 is still more famous, the denial of the reality of 
 Time : for time has meaning only in reference to 
 change ; it is a schematic form whereby men express 
 the fact or possibility of continuous change. The 
 thoroughly consistent panlogist must stand simply 
 on the position that reality is changeless and time- 
 less : while a thinker such as Prof. Bosanquet would 
 qualify that position by admitting the invincible 
 obstinacy of our impression that things change, so 
 that -men would require, as it were, an additional 
 sense if they are to see behind time ; but he also 
 would insist on its ultimate unreality. 
 
 It is well known how hard a question this of 
 time is for panlogistic thinkers, more especially for 
 those who adopt the conception of development. In 
 Hegel's Logic the transition from category to category 
 is a sort of timeless process, and yet it has some 
 reference to time ; for he elsewhere uses the dialectic 
 to explain history. The difficulty of reconciling the 
 reality of development with the unreality of time is 
 so acute that Dr. McTaggart admits that here is a 
 contradiction at present insoluble, and can only urge 
 that one more synthesis may remain as yet undis- 
 covered which will resolve the last and most per-
 
 iv HISTORY ABSORBED IN SCIENCE 35 
 
 sistent of the contradictions inherent in experience 
 as viewed by the Hegelian (Studies in the Hegelian 
 Dialectic, ch. v.). 
 
 8. Denying, as he does, the reality of time 
 the panlogist must give a very strange account of 
 History, using that term for a series of events or 
 happenings. Nothing ever happens to the panlo- 
 gist : he believes the whole series of events to exist 
 really as a Totum Simul, which somehow insists 
 upon coming into view piecemeal : he reduces 
 happening to logical colligation. The event ' Smith 
 left home yesterday ' is put by him upon the same 
 plane as the step of reasoning ' Then the angle FOR 
 is greater than the angle PRQ.' In neither case is 
 there really any event ; only a logical step necessi- 
 tated by what precedes and necessitating what 
 succeeds. 
 
 " History," says Prof. Bosanquet, " in the sense of the mere 
 record of remembered fact, would seem to have for its 
 ideal to disappear into systems of hypothetical judgment, 
 in which complete ground should do duty for cause and 
 effect, and the relation of time should disappear " (Logic, 
 i. p. 276). 
 
 9. The capital objection to resolving any sort of 
 history, either of man or of nature, into science is 
 that thereby its dynamic element is ignored. We 
 may understand an earthquake thoroughly, and yet 
 we can never treat any historical convulsion as 
 equivalent to a chain of theorems. 
 
 To the resolution of human history into science 
 there is a further difficulty which Prof. Bosanquet in 
 some measure appreciates. By his phrase "in the
 
 36 THE DENIAL OF FREEDOM CH. 
 
 sense of the mere record of remembered fact" he 
 wishes to emphasise a distinction of history in 
 the sense of a mere record of the past (such as a 
 series of astronomical observations) from the history 
 that treats of human action. " What we mean by 
 history," he goes on to say (ibid. p. 277), "is the 
 revelation of man's nature in action and intelligence." 
 To reduce such history " to a science like abstract 
 mechanics or abstract economics " is, he says with 
 perfect truth, " repugnant to our feelings and incon- 
 ceivable to our understanding." Thus it is plain 
 that Prof. Bosanquet has in a measure seized the 
 point of our distaste for the intellectualisation of 
 human history ; but the remedy he proposes is in- 
 effective : 
 
 " If we consider . . . that all nexus is within an indi- 
 viduality, we shall see that history may be received into 
 the intelligible unity of knowledge without sacrificing its 
 concrete import and characteristic significance. This 
 could only be destroyed if we insisted on determining 
 within what whole or system we should find the facts of 
 history to be necessarily related." 
 
 In other words, the reluctance "to absorb history 
 in science" is regarded by Prof. Bosanquet as 
 justifiable only if that science is one of the type of 
 mechanics. If, however, the science were one of a 
 higher type the absorption would be justified. 
 
 But this distinction of Prof. Bosanquet's has not 
 really met the objection to absorbing history in 
 science: he offers 'to heal our hurt too slightly.' 
 Human action, I must point out, exhibits the 
 qualities both of energy and of freedom. Freedom,
 
 iv PANLOGISM AND PERSONALITY 37 
 
 we may remark parenthetically, does not mean 
 absence of system : a good human life is a free 
 effort and yet might be systematic throughout ; it 
 is a new system which the man made as he went 
 along. Now, as dynamic, human history is neces- 
 sarily temporal ; in regard to it the relation 01 time 
 can never disappear. As free, human history can 
 never disappear into any system of hypothetical 
 judgment, and, in regard to the human history 
 which is still in the future, complete ground can 
 never do duty for cause and effect ; the reason being, 
 not that human history is devoid of system, but that 
 the system which it exhibits in its progress is new 
 and therefore unpredictable. Altogether, the absorp- 
 tion of history in science is not merely an unattain- 
 able but a false ideal. 
 
 10. In speaking of history I have been led to 
 criticise by anticipation, the attitude of the panlogist 
 to Personal Life : it is in regard to this that his 
 theory breaks down most decisively. In a world of 
 static thought-contents there is no room for persons 
 whose life is a process of willing and striving : and 
 thus the tendency of panlogism is always to treat 
 personal existence as something of an illusion. We 
 shall see later how the panlogistic tendency gene- 
 rally is to absorb the individual into his social or 
 political environment. Very significant is the 
 attitude of some Anglo- Hegelians to the question of 
 human existence after death. Regarding person- 
 ality almost as a necessary evil they do not want it 
 prolonged beyond the minimum limit : the most
 
 38 THE DEDUCTION OF SENSATION CH. 
 
 that they can bid us look forward to is absorption in 
 the Universal Reason. A denial of personal immor- 
 tality is one of the shibboleths of panlogism. 
 
 ii. We come now to consider intellectualism 
 in its relation to the various philosophic disciplines. 
 First in order I would take Psychology : in which 
 the difficulties of intellectualism centre round sensa- 
 tion and volition. 
 
 On the principles of panlogism a thorough treat- 
 ment of psychological facts is impossible. No one in 
 recent years has attempted to panlogise psychology ; 
 and, as knowledge advances, the enterprise grows 
 more unpromising. It is in the case of Sensation 
 that the difficulties reach perhaps their highest point. 
 
 Science can account so little for the character- 
 istics of Sensation that in this province the psycho- 
 logist is compelled to describe rather than to 
 explain : very sparingly may he indulge in deduc- 
 tion. But the panlogist must be deductive or 
 nothing; and thus Hegel treats 'sensibility' as a 
 necessary stage in the self-development of spirit in 
 the following style : 
 
 " Sensibility (feeling) is the form of the dull stirring, the 
 inarticulate breathing, of the spirit through its uncon- 
 scious and unintelligent individuality, where every definite 
 feature is still ' immediate,' neither specially developed 
 in its content nor set in distinction as objective to subject, 
 but treated as belonging to its most special, its natural 
 peculiarity" (P.M. p. 21). 
 
 The special senses are deduced in the most 
 cursory way as follows :
 
 iv 'PHENOMENALISM' 39 
 
 " The senses form the simple system of corporeity 
 specified, (a) The ' ideal ' side of physical things breaks 
 up into two because in it, as immediate and not yet 
 subjective ideality, distinction appears as mere variety 
 the senses of definite light, and of sound. The ' real ' 
 aspect similarly is with its difference double : (b) the 
 senses of smell and taste, (c) the sense of solid reality, of 
 heavy matter, of heat and shape" (P.M. p. 23). 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say that in England no 
 one has attempted to follow up these attempts to 
 deduce sensation. Those who sympathise with 
 Hegelianism accordingly take one of two courses. 
 They either say in general terms that ' thought 
 must always be understood to contain its own 
 material,' and leave the matter so ; or they fall back 
 on what Mr. Bradley calls ' phenomenalism.' This 
 phrase simply means that in psychology we are to 
 give up metaphysical presuppositions and inves- 
 tigate from the standpoint of ordinary common- 
 sense. Some thinkers add to this a proviso that all 
 the results so obtained are utterly provisional and 
 fragmentary, and that we may some day look for a 
 higher synthesis in which they will be transformed. 
 
 12. A glance at the contents-table of any 
 standard text - book of psychology will show that, 
 when sensation has been left out of account, a large 
 portion of the remainder deals with Volition in its 
 various forms. The results of modern psychological 
 analysis justify us in affirming with greater con- 
 fidence than ever that in volitional experience there 
 is an element which cannot be reduced to any of 
 the other recognised elements of mind, and certainly
 
 40 'WILLING IS THINKING CH. 
 
 not to thought. To thought, however, it must, on 
 panlogistic principles, be reduced ; or, to speak 
 strictly, must be regarded as a development from 
 thought. " The will is a special way of thinking ; 
 it is thought translating itself into reality ; it is the 
 impulse of thought to give itself reality " (P.R. 
 p. n). In the Encyclopedia volition is explained 
 under the division of " Mind Practical," developing 
 out of " Theoretical Mind " and developing into 
 " Free Mind." 
 
 Volition is the psychological heading which has 
 received most attention from Mr. F. H. Bradley. 
 There are several strands of thought in Mr. Bradley's 
 writings, and his advocacy of the Absolute is better 
 known than his intellectualism : but, after all, 
 intellectualism seems to be more fundamental with 
 him. His explanation of will is a characteristic 
 modification of Hegel's. Hegel says that "will is a 
 self-realisation of the Idea" ; Mr. Bradley says that 
 " will is the self-realisation of an idea." Here is the 
 statement in full ; the general impression it leaves is 
 that it consists of Hegelian doctrine transmuted 
 into terms which make it applicable to the individual 
 mind : 
 
 " It is will when an idea produces its existence. A feature 
 in present existence, not in harmony with that and 
 working apart from it, gives itself another existence in 
 which it is realised and where it is both idea and fact. 
 And will is not a faculty or a separate kind of phenomenon. 
 It is merely one special result of general laws and con- 
 ditions, the main law of individuation with its branches, 
 Blending and Contiguity (Redintegration). If an idea
 
 iv SELF-REALISING IDEAS 41 
 
 works itself out ideally and subject to identity the 
 process is thought. If, on the other hand, it produces 
 fact in which its character and existence are no longer 
 discrepant, the process is will " (" On Pleasure, Pain, and 
 Volition," in Mind, No. 49, p. 25). 
 
 This is one way in which Mr. Bradley puts it, 
 and he has, I believe, never retired from the 
 position, though in other statements he expresses 
 himself in rather different terms. But all along he 
 ignores the element of decision in volitional action, 
 and, ignoring this element, cannot explain why one 
 idea realises itself and another does not. Every 
 day we have, each of us, scores of ideas which we 
 merely ' entertain ' and do not act upon : of some of 
 these unacted ideas everything may be said which 
 Mr. Bradley says of acted ideas. They may be 
 ideas which are not in harmony with present ex- 
 istence, or ideas of a change with which I feel 
 myself one ; they may even be ideas of a change 
 which I want. But unless I decide to make the 
 change the ideas will not realise themselves. The 
 facts that can be adduced in the contrary sense 
 consist of little more than some cases of the non- 
 voluntary action of thought on body, such as the 
 watering of the mouth at the suggestion of food, 
 and the inclination which people of weak nerves 
 feel when looking over a precipice to throw them- 
 selves down. But introspection is enough to show 
 that such automatic or quasi-automatic cases are 
 quite different from the fully conscious decision 
 which Mr. Bradley tries to explain by them.
 
 42 PHILOSOPHIAM LOGICAE MANCIPAVIT CH. 
 
 13. The one side of personal experience in 
 which the intellectualist has achieved a certain 
 measure of success is Knowledge : it would be a 
 pity were the case otherwise, since it is to logic that 
 he has sacrificed, or, as Bacon would say, enslaved, 
 the rest of philosophy. But even this success has 
 been very partial. The intellectualist has kept in 
 view only one kind of knowledge, and that not the 
 most important or typical, the knowledge of abstract 
 science : and through this onesidedness he has 
 failed in explaining abstract science itself, and has 
 left unanswered the most interesting and pressing 
 questions about the nature of knowledge and its 
 function in the totality of human life. 
 
 A typically intellectualist view of knowledge is to 
 be found in an essay on the " Goal of Knowledge " 
 by Prof. J. H. Muirhead (in Mind, N.S., No. 24, 
 p. 476 sq.). 
 
 " We may," he says, " describe the end of knowledge 
 as a concept or mode of apprehending the world in which, 
 as in the developed organism, the processes of differentia- 
 tion and integration have been brought to completion in 
 a fully articulated system of coherent judgments." And 
 he continues : " Knowledge may thus be said to aim in the 
 first place at its own expansion. It seeks to embrace 
 reality in all its parts or details. It aims in the second 
 place at explanation. It seeks to understand the relation 
 of the parts to one another, and to the whole to which 
 they belong. Its ideal may thus be schematised as a 
 whole of clear and distinct parts related to one another 
 in such a way that the mind can pass from any one 
 along the lines of judgment and inference to any other, 
 with the result that the whole is seen to be reflected into 
 every part, and every part to contain the whole. Whether
 
 iv GEOMETRY AS TYPE OF SCIENCE 43 
 
 the world can ever thus be reduced to complete trans- 
 parency is a question with which we need not trouble 
 ourselves at present ; it is sufficient to note not only that 
 all science proceeds upon the assumption that it can, but 
 that those sciences which are most advanced, and which 
 as ' deductive ' are commonly taken as the types of com- 
 pleteness and certainty, really do to a certain extent 
 exhibit these characteristics. Thus geometry aims in the 
 first place at exhausting and in the second place at 
 proving the interconnection of the properties of the 
 figures with which it deals, and it would not be difficult 
 to throw the knowledge we derive from it as to any 
 particular figure, e.g. the triangle, into a form which would 
 exhibit the properties of the figure as such and of each of 
 the separate species of it (if it has species) as necessary 
 deductions from its own nature and as thus inherently 
 related to one another through their common relation to 
 the whole whose properties they are." 
 
 Professor Muirhead is, of course, not alone in his 
 admiration for the geometrical form of knowledge. 
 Geometry is constantly quoted by intellectualist 
 logicians as the type of science : it is, as we see, 
 regarded by them as consisting of a systematic 
 arrangement of fixed abstract concepts linked 
 together by connections of the utmost stringency. 
 Nor is it the matter only which is regarded as giving 
 it superiority to ordinary concrete knowledge : it is 
 superior also in the motives with which it inspires 
 the student. The ideal geometrician, so the in- 
 tellectualist would suggest, is one who works 
 entirely from intellectual curiosity, as indifferent 
 to utility as Aristotle's God absorbed to all eternity 
 in the study of his own perfection. 
 
 Now the fault of such a view of knowledge is
 
 44 WHY IS KNOWLEDGE INTERESTING? CH. 
 
 that it fails to show the connection with the rest 
 of personal life. It is not as though Prof. Muir- 
 head, like Hegel, were speaking of knowledge as 
 impersonal, that is, as it exists for an absolute 
 consciousness : in the manner of English logicians, 
 it is finite knowledge with which he deals. But, 
 if knowledge is a personal affair, it must arise 
 out of the needs, be moulded by the affections, 
 and penetrated by the general principles of per- 
 sonal life. 
 
 14. This is the more plainly evident the 
 deeper the questions we raise about knowledge. 
 The deepest of all relates to its Interest: before 
 the question whether a piece of information is 
 intelligible or true there comes the question, ' Is it 
 interesting?' If it is not interesting, if it does not 
 make any sort of appeal, it is simply ignored ; the 
 question of its truth never arises. 
 
 Before this most fundamental of logical questions 
 the intellectualist is almost helpless ; his stock phrase 
 is 'the love of knowledge for its own sake.' Unless 
 this is to be understood as a bare tautology man 
 is interested in knowledge because he is interested 
 in knowledge it must mean that the pursuit of 
 knowledge is to be explained through the sentiment 
 of purposeless curiosity. Now mere curiosity cer- 
 tainly does play a considerable part in knowledge, as 
 people find who have to teach children ; but it is 
 very inadequate as a complete explanation. 
 
 The most obvious and most important motive to 
 the acquirement of knowledge is the direct utility-
 
 iv UTILITY, SELF-ASSERTION 45 
 
 interest. On this we hardly need enlarge. The 
 least smattering of anthropology is enough to show 
 that man's impulse to learn about things comes 
 first from his need to further the life of self and 
 family : curiosity, though not wanting in primitive 
 man, is a very subordinate motive and cannot stir 
 him to any prolonged or strenuous exertion. And 
 this primitive connection of need with knowledge is 
 never broken : a look round our friends is enough 
 
 o 
 
 to convince us that men's intellectual interests 
 go mainly in the same line as their professional 
 occupations. Nor is this a matter of regret : when 
 knowledge is quite cut off from utility it is always 
 in danger of sinking into dreamy dilettantism. 
 
 Beside the direct utility-interest there is an 
 indirect utility-interest which shades off from it by 
 fine gradations. As having reference not merely 
 to self but to family and friends, utility is not a 
 vulgar principle but a noble one, consecrating all 
 that is connected with it. For a prosperous man 
 the details of his profession gather interest by many 
 subtle associations from home, wife, children, 
 dependants, and the circle of beneficent activities 
 which professional success renders possible. If 
 the profession ceases to be lucrative, interest in 
 learning about it declines in a way which can not 
 be adequately accounted for on crudely mercenary 
 grounds. 
 
 There is, moreover, in knowledge an element of 
 self-assertion which intellectualism can take no 
 account of. In forming a body of knowledge, par-
 
 46 THE SENTIMENTAL MOTIVE CH. 
 
 ticularly knowledge which is in some measure due 
 to discovery, there is something of the same grati- 
 fication as in making an active career. And this is 
 so even in cases where no practical use is made of 
 the knowledge. 
 
 A loftier motive of study which intellectualism 
 is inclined to claim, but to which it has no right, is 
 the sentimental. What this means may be illus- 
 trated by a case which often happens, the case 
 of a man who is engaged on some commercial 
 pursuit, say banking, and yet feels attracted to 
 some academic line of research, say the history of 
 ancient Greece. For such a case both the utili- 
 tarian and intellectualist explanations fail us : the 
 motive of study is a sentiment towards the old 
 Greek civilisation, which certainly brings no material 
 profit, and yet is not a matter of mere thinking. 
 Such a spirit in the student is nothing exceptional, 
 though for the sake of clearness I have taken my 
 illustration from the amateur. An interest in history, 
 which is not professionally dry-as-dust, is an interest 
 in persons, their characters and fortunes : the story 
 of the past is a poor thing if it does not unroll a 
 drama before us. Sentiment is the mainspring of 
 all antiquarianism. It is even at the bottom of the 
 study of nature : the lore of earth and its children 
 never rouses the true scientific ardour except in the 
 breast of one who can invest natural objects with 
 a quasi -personality. Students of this type cannot 
 fairly be claimed by intellectualism as followers of 
 knowledge for its own sake. Love is something
 
 iv MERE CURIOSITY 47 
 
 more than curiosity ; and the sentimental feeling just 
 exemplified is love in a weaker and less personal 
 form. 
 
 15. When these are subtracted from the sum 
 of motives inducing men to study there is left the 
 mere Curiosity of which the intellectualists have 
 made so much. The accumulation of knowledge 
 from the pleasure of gratuitous intellectual exercise 
 is common enough, but its meaning is distorted in 
 the intellectualist view, because it is taken out of 
 its proper context and subordination. The taste for 
 gratuitous exercise of the mind is closely parallel 
 to that for gratuitous exercise of the body. After 
 a period of rest the mens sana craves for one as 
 much as the corpus sanum for the other : in both 
 there is a surplus of energy to be dissipated. But 
 we must remember that the surplus would never 
 have been there but for the pre -existence of an 
 organisation which has grown strong by being used 
 for working. This is the subordinateness in the 
 1 love of knowledge for its own sake ' which the in- 
 tellectualist ignores. He commits the paradox of 
 assuming that the knowledge-interest which starts 
 from utility and has reference all through to utility, 
 to self-assertion, and to sentiment, ought in its 
 maturity to divorce itself from these connections, 
 and suffice to itself and sustain itself as a love of 
 intellectual gymnastic. He suggests that the 
 accomplished but amateur mathematician unendingly 
 working out intricate and useless problems is the 
 type of epistemonic satisfaction.
 
 48 MORPHOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE CH. 
 
 1 6. The interest, then, which pushes men on 
 to seek knowledge is a much more dynamic affair 
 than intellectualism recognises. This causes the 
 intellectualist to go astray in his treatment of the 
 Forms of Knowledge : he is too prone to describe 
 knowledge as an arrangement of static forms. Prof. 
 Bosanquet adopts as the keynote of his treatment 
 a comparison made by the late Alfred Robinson 
 between the forms of judgment and the forms of 
 flowers or plants (Logic, i. p. vii.) ; but he interprets 
 it in the spirit of Aristotle rather than in that of 
 Darwin: though his " Morphology of Knowledge" 
 speaks often of development, he never rises above 
 the static point of view. This absence of dynamic 
 reference has very unfortunate results for the in- 
 telligibility of his presentation. If we arrange the 
 various judgments in ascending order of complexity, 
 as Prof. Bosanquet does, we ought to justify the 
 arrangement by regarding them as progressively 
 successful attempts by the subject to understand his 
 environment and himself. Apart from this reference 
 to an effort to understand, it is unintelligible why 
 there should be just these forms, and why from one 
 the subject should pass over into another. Any 
 of Prof. Bosanquet's transitions will illustrate this 
 latter point. We begin, he says, with the Judg- 
 ment of Quality and pass upward to a slightly more 
 definite type, the Demonstrative Judgment. But 
 why should the mind pass upward ? Why not stay 
 where it was ? The need for dynamic explanation 
 is perhaps most strikingly evident in the case of
 
 iv WHAT IS INTELLIGIBILITY? 49 
 
 the Judgments of Measurement, called by Prof. 
 Bosanquet ' divergent ' species of judgment. For, 
 hearing that they are divergent, we ask at once why 
 they diverge. Why should the mind run off, so to 
 speak, upon a side-path and invent these curious 
 forms ? The obvious answer, from which, however, 
 Prof. Bosanquet is excluded, is that they are in- 
 valuable helps to us in our task of understanding 
 and mastering reality. 
 
 17. Missing as it does the most essential char- 
 acteristic of the whole thought-process, intellectualism 
 cannot explain either the conceptions or the func- 
 tions which are fundamental to knowledge. One 
 of these conceptions, Interest, has been dealt with 
 by anticipation in a recent section : the other two 
 are Intelligibility and Truth. 
 
 In objecting to intellectualism that it can give 
 no account of Intelligibility, I am not making the un- 
 reasonable demand that intelligible thinking should 
 be reduced to something else. Thought is an 
 ultimate fact, and intelligible thinking is just think- 
 ing in the full sense of the term. But a theory of 
 knowledge ought to give an explanation of the dis- 
 tinction between the intelligible and the unintelli- 
 gible ; and I contend that this cannot be done 
 without reference to our active life. In the phan- 
 tasmagoria of a dream we have an example of 
 unintelligibility ; trees talk and turn into men, we 
 ourselves get strangely confused with other people. 
 Now why is all this unintelligible ? ' Because it is 
 inconsistent ' is the only answer that intellectualism
 
 So TRUTH CH. 
 
 can give us. But inconsistent with what? The 
 question takes us right beyond intellectualism : no- 
 where can we find a criterion of consistency save 
 in the nature and activity of man himself. What- 
 ever a man can do and be in acting out the normal 
 purposes of his life is intelligible. And this is the 
 standard of intelligibility. 
 
 1 8. Let us now consider Truth. It has been 
 the aim of preceding sections ( 14 sq.) to show the 
 primacy of the conception of Interest. Before we 
 ask of any statement ' Is it true ? ' we ask, tacitly 
 or explicitly, ' Is it relevant or interesting ?' If in 
 the course of discussion a totally irrelevant state- 
 ment is made, we ignore it and think ill of the 
 maker : we do not consider its truth at all. This 
 subordinateness of truth to interest has a very im- 
 portant influence upon our conception of truth. 
 According to the current definition, which the in- 
 tellectualist endorses, truth is the correspondence 
 of thought with fact. But this current definition 
 contains an implication which intellectualism must 
 exclude ; for every one recognises that thought can 
 never correspond completely with concrete fact. 
 In the first place, complete correspondence is im- 
 possible ; and, secondly, even if it were possible, it 
 would be useless. We only seek for correspondence 
 so far as is necessary to satisfy the interest which 
 prompted us to start upon that particular line of 
 inquiry. The need or interest which prompts us 
 is a sort of interrogation, and the information which 
 satisfies us is a sort of answer.
 
 iv IN COMMON LIFE AND IN SCIENCE 51 
 
 In ordinary or non-scientific inquiry the amount 
 of correspondence necessary to constitute truth is 
 extremely variable. Being very hungry we ask for 
 bread. If we are told that there is bread in the 
 cupboard, and go to look, we treat the answer as 
 true if we find in the cupboard something near 
 enough to satisfy our want. We do not care if 
 what we find does not answer to the technical 
 definition of bread, but should rather be called 
 'damper.' On the other hand, we should treat the 
 answer as false if the person to whom we addressed 
 the inquiry told us, knowing we were hungry, that 
 there was bread in the cupboard, and we found a 
 loaf there which from some accident had been 
 rendered uneatable. 
 
 In scientific inquiry the correspondence is closer, 
 because scientific purposes cannot otherwise be 
 satisfied ; but the principles which determine the 
 correspondence remain the same. In the first place 
 it is always some definite line of interest that we 
 pursue. The scientist does not research into the 
 nature of bread in general, but sets out to solve 
 some definite problem, such as the nutritive effici- 
 ency of bread as compared with other common 
 foods, or its digestibility, or the amount of nitrogen 
 in it, or its power of resisting putrefaction. This 
 limitation of the extent of inquiry is not duly 
 kept in view by intellectualism. Prof. Bosanquet's 
 dictum "The ultimate and complete judgment 
 would be the whole of Reality predicated of itself" 
 (Essentials of Logic, p. 41) implies that the function
 
 52 RELEVANCE AND TRUTH CH. 
 
 of any finite judgment is to contribute to the 
 "ultimate and complete" judgment, and, therefore, 
 that no judgment can include too much. For the 
 intellectualist logician scientific inquiry must be an 
 indiscriminate voracity for definition. 
 
 Moreover there is an intensive limitation. When 
 the scientist has made his results precise enough to 
 satisfy his line of interest he ceases to strive for 
 further precision. Some investigations into the 
 nature of bread are obviously more exacting than 
 others, but hardly ever should we require the same 
 nicety as is needed, say, for an astronomical obser- 
 vation. Often researches are made more precise 
 than they need be, partly from pride of good work- 
 manship, partly in order that later investigators, 
 possibly with other interests in view, may build 
 upon them with confidence. 
 
 All these considerations on the subordination 
 of truth to relevance or interest are superficially 
 obscured by the prevalence of a kind of literature 
 peculiar to an age of diffused popular knowledge. 
 I refer to compendia of the character of encyclo- 
 pedia-articles which undertake to tell us everything 
 about some familiar topic. Books " All about 
 Bread " or " All about the Sun " have the appear- 
 ance of viewing their object-matter from the stand- 
 point of absolute omniscience. But the appearance 
 is superficial : what the compiler really does is to 
 think of the lines of general interest and to collect 
 information about them from specialists. Any one 
 purchaser is not likely to find more than part of the
 
 iv THE FUNCTIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 53 
 
 work interesting : der Vieles bringt wird Manchem 
 etwas bringen. The only person who is quite 
 interested all through is either the inquisitive child, 
 or that by-product of civilisation, the merely desultory 
 reader. The more naturally written and more 
 naturally instructive kind of work is the monograph. 
 
 19. In the foregoing strictures on intel- 
 lectualism I have been dealing with matters which 
 are in some degree of common interest, and on 
 which I have been able to make frequent appeal to 
 common sense. But the Functions of Knowledge, 
 judgment, inference, and supposal, which fall to be 
 considered next, are matters rather beyond the 
 ordinary layman's ken. There is consequently no 
 common opinion to appeal to, and the following 
 arguments against established views will labour 
 under the disadvantages that attend unlooked-for 
 innovation. To prove a new theory of logical 
 functions would need a long and very elaborate 
 digression, and thus I must be content with stating 
 the matter briefly, to show that so important a 
 subject has not been overlooked. 1 
 
 Well, then, the established account of judgment 
 and the other epistemonic functions overlooks the 
 intimate connection between thought and action. 
 Judgment hitherto has been identified rather with 
 the passive recognition of existing facts than with 
 the active execution of purposes. Passive recogni- 
 tion may be exemplified by a judgment such as 
 
 1 The passage following is condensed from a paper called " The Logic 
 of Pragmatism" in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, N.S. vol. iii.
 
 54 INFERENCE IS DYNAMIC CH. 
 
 Prof. Bosanquet is wont to quote as typical, ' Here's 
 a table ' {Essentials of Logic, p. 41) ; and the opposed 
 form by an expression of active resolve, ' I'll bring 
 a table.' The reasons for preferring the active 
 judgment as the typical form are twofold. First, 
 the recognitive judgment is obviously subsidiary to 
 something beyond it : we should not say ' Here's a 
 table ' unless we had some purpose in view for 
 which the table would be helpful. Secondly, it 
 is impossible to imagine how we can understand 
 things so as to form judgments about them unless 
 we can act. Even in its simplest form judgment 
 deals with systematic contents ; and how can we 
 get to understand what system is except by acting 
 systematically ? 
 
 If this view of judgment is sound, a great change 
 is needed in accepted explanations of the other 
 functions of knowledge. Deductive Inference will 
 be, primarily, the process by which, having formed 
 a plan, we reason to the details necessary for its 
 realisation ; Inductive Inference will be the inven- 
 tion of a plan to meet a situation which calls upon 
 us for action. The cogency of a deduction with 
 reference to any detail will depend on the indis- 
 pensableness of that detail to the execution of the 
 plan. The static inferences of abstract science, 
 which are the examples ordinarily alleged to illus- 
 trate the inferential function, are, in truth, only 
 intelligible through the active or dynamic forms. 
 Most notable of all, perhaps, is the change in the 
 place to be assigned to Supposal. Prof. Bosanquet
 
 iv THE GOAL OF KNOWLEDGE 55 
 
 is expressing the orthodox intellectualist view when 
 he says : "I contend that supposal is rather the 
 intrusion of a non : logical feature into cognition than 
 a logical attitude " (Knowledge and Reality, p. 44). 
 The view of thought-functions just expounded 
 requires us, on the contrary, to hold that supposal 
 is essential to cognition just because it is essential 
 to discovery and creation. In every real 'step 
 forward ' there must be a hypothetical forecasting 
 of the result of the step. On the dynamic view it 
 is in steps forward that knowledge is most truly 
 exemplified ; and thus the supposal attitude must 
 have a permanent, not accidental, place in cognition. 
 20. We are now in position to turn back and 
 criticise Prof. Muirhead's account of the Goal of 
 Knowledge, which seems to me to summarise all the 
 errors of the intellectualist view. He told us, it will 
 be remembered, that the ideal to which the man of 
 knowledge aspires is the reduction of the universe 
 to a condition of complete transparency, so that 
 knowledge may reach the condition of a fully articu- 
 lated system of coherent judgments, each one of 
 which implies all the rest. Now, if we take this 
 seriously, we must assume that what Prof. Muirhead 
 looks forward to is the power of complete pre- 
 diction applied as much to persons as to physical 
 phenomena. By taking the trouble to make the 
 calculations we shall know what the Poet Laureate's 
 next effusion will be before it is written, and what 
 the amount of Mr. Carnegie's next benefaction 
 before it is donated. We shall know the moral
 
 56 GEOMETRICAL OMNISCIENCE CH. 
 
 successes and failures of our neighbours and our- 
 selves years beforehand with the certainty of the 
 Nautical Almanac. 
 
 But how absurdly chimerical and dreary this 
 ' goal ' of knowledge strikes us when set forth in 
 definite terms ! It is only fair to the intellectualist 
 school to doubt whether they are much in earnest 
 with it. About this very passage of Prof. 
 Muirhead's essay the late Prof. Ritchie, who 
 sympathised with it strongly, wrote, "It is not a 
 prospect 2J\y finite mind can enjoy or suffer. It is 
 nevertheless the ideal of complete knowledge." l 
 Now, is such language really applicable to any 
 ' goal ' in the natural sense of the term ? Surely 
 a goal is something that you try to get, hope to 
 get, and expect to like when got. But Prof. 
 Muirhead's goal of knowledge would seem to be 
 a state the attainableness of which we need not 
 trouble ourselves to discuss, and the agreeableness 
 of which is utterly problematical. Can all this be 
 anything more than a roundabout way of admitting 
 that the intellectualist goal of knowledge is not an 
 object of human endeavour at all ; but is a con- 
 ception which some thinkers deem themselves 
 bound to believe in, though it involves the negation 
 of all that is most valuable and interesting in the 
 world ? Its dreariness is due to its attempt to 
 assimilate creative human action to the behaviour 
 of lifeless nature, in which elements actually 
 or potentially knowable and calculable do no 
 
 1 MS. note pe ties nos.
 
 VERSUS THE HUMAN IDEAL 57 
 
 more than enter into more or less complex 
 combinations. 
 
 If we were challenged to produce our own ideal 
 of knowledge we ought, I think, first to lay it down 
 that the ideal must in any case be human. And 
 in determining it we must put into the forefront the 
 distinction between the active and passive sides of 
 experience, a distinction which is no less important 
 in this sphere than elsewhere. In some processes of 
 acquiring knowledge we are docile, receptive, using 
 our initiative but little ; in others, especially where, as 
 in literary composition or in planning and scheming, 
 we are exercising creative power, initiative is at 
 its maximum. In the human ideal of knowledge 
 ('ideal' not 'goal,' for 'goal' implies finality) the 
 more active kind of knowledge should prevail and 
 the less active kind be subordinate. This con- 
 sideration should weigh with educators. No one 
 needs a universal education : Browning's Gram- 
 marian who "decided not to live but know" was 
 a foolish pedant, like Goethe's Faust before he took 
 his regenerating plunge into life. The ideal for 
 each man is to do as much creative thinking as he 
 gets opportunity for, and to have acquired by 
 docility as much instruction-knowledge as will help 
 in the creative function. 
 
 21. Of the influence of intellectualism in morals 
 there is less to be said, because so much less 
 has been done in England by way of ethical con- 
 struction from this standpoint. In T. H. Green the
 
 58 MORAL INSTITUTIONS CH. 
 
 intellectualist influence is more apparent on the 
 metaphysical than on the ethical side : Mr. Bradley 's 
 Ethical Studies is not in the form of a systematic 
 treatise. But, even so, we have enough to show 
 the tendency of intellectualism on certain cardinal 
 points of ethical interpretation. 
 
 A good result of the Hegelian panlogism for 
 ethics has been to bring out the significance of 
 moral institutions as distinguishable from individual 
 character. Though institutions take effect and have 
 value only by their influence on individual character, 
 we must, to understand morality, take account of 
 something beyond character. The fact is that men 
 and women, as combined and co-operating in institu- 
 tions, exhibit a different quality from what can be 
 discerned in the individuals : we cannot collect the 
 quality, so to speak, by scrutinising the individuals 
 one by one. The fact will be rendered plainer by 
 instancing other corporate institutions less subtle 
 and momentous than those of morality. Take such 
 cases as our national games. A foreigner could 
 never understand cricket and the cricketing spirit 
 by converse with individual athletic Englishmen : 
 he must see the game in action, and to understand 
 it all round must learn to play himself, however 
 badly. The significance of institutions is very apt 
 to be underrated by extreme individualism. 
 
 Again, the Anglo- Hegelian movement has done 
 good so far as it has taught Englishmen that their 
 traditional preoccupation with the individual has 
 made them overlook to some extent a most impor-
 
 SOCIAL LOYALTY 59 
 
 tant virtue, Social Loyalty. The life of social 
 loyalty is one which is lived in sympathy with what 
 Hegel calls the ethos of one's people ; a sympathy 
 without which it is impossible to be a good citizen. 
 In the sphere of public life a man imbued with 
 the national ethos will show the best qualities of 
 patriotism, faith in the mission of his race, affection 
 for national virtues and admiration for the heroes 
 who embody them, adoption of the national modes 
 of thought even when conscious of their limita- 
 tions, devotion to national customs and institutions, 
 anxiously reverential handling of the established 
 order on occasions of reform. In the smaller sphere 
 of social relations a man of the common ethos exhibits 
 a quality which does not figure much in moral 
 science, but is well-known colloquially as ' decent.' 
 The decent man is kindly and tolerant, never 
 offends much against the popular standard of morals, 
 and makes no excessive fuss about popular vices. 
 Such is social loyalty, which has transformed and, 
 in some degree, absorbed the more primitive loyalty 
 of personal allegiance. In civilised life personal 
 loyalty can hardly come to its best unless the leader 
 be regarded as embodying or supporting a valuable 
 social principle. 
 
 But high as social loyalty must rank, I believe 
 that a sound moral theory will put Conscientious- 
 ness still higher. This may be somewhat obscured 
 by the associations of the term ' conscientious,' 
 which rather suggests a crabbed, motive-fingering 
 spirit, with too much introspection to be vigorously
 
 60 'SITTLICHKEIT 5 AND 'MORALITAET' CH. 
 
 useful ; it may even remind us of the crankiness 
 of the 'conscientious objector.' But, in the sense 
 in which I use it, a ' conscientious ' man is one 
 who trusts his own moral judgment, who lives not 
 merely by the routine of respectability or by social 
 sympathy, but is the self-reliant helmsman of his 
 own course. The term is meant to include the 
 active, forward-looking part of conduct no less than 
 the introspective and retrospective. In this sense, 
 surely, conscience is the higher side of virtue : for 
 sometimes it is necessary that conscience should 
 conflict with loyalty, and override it. And here 
 comes the mistake of panlogism : it is character- 
 istic of panlogistic moralists that they reverse the 
 relative value of these two elements of moral 
 experience. Hegel's preference of Sittlichkeit over 
 Moralitdt is the keynote of his ethical views so far 
 as they apply to practice. Mr. Bradley's advocacy 
 of station-and-duties as the supreme ethical formula, 
 set off with a great deal of fine invective against the 
 hyper-conscientious and the individualist, is nothing 
 but an anglicisation of the same principle. Hegel's 
 ethical preference follows immediately from his 
 metaphysic. Both the individual and society have 
 to be explained somehow as elements of the static 
 cosmos of thought-contents which is the truly real. 
 But society as an organised, relatively permanent 
 system can be explained as an element of such 
 a cosmos much more easily than the individual, 
 because it may be regarded more easily as a 
 thought-content or concrete universal. It is there-
 
 iv CHESSMAN MORALITY 61 
 
 fore to be regarded in all cases as higher and 
 more real. 
 
 22. The Social Loyalty that comes in for 
 eulogy in Mr. Bradley's Ethical Studies is a virtue 
 that we recognise at once : but the question must be 
 put whether the consistent intellectualist is entitled 
 to that version of it. Truly interpreted, that loyalty 
 should, as I hold, be something active ; it should be 
 the passionate affirmation and active fulfilment of 
 principles which are recognised as commanding 
 devotion. But the pure intellectualist, if he is con- 
 sistent, must interpret social loyalty intellectually : 
 only by an amiable inconsistency can he recognise 
 the element of devotion. He must think of society 
 merely as a system of very intricate relations, some- 
 thing like an enormous game of chess where human 
 being's are the chessmen. To see what social 
 
 o 
 
 loyalty means we have only to imagine the chess- 
 men conscious. The person devoid of social loyalty, 
 the social slave in fact, will be like the piece who 
 submits to his moves without thought or interest : 
 the patriot will understand his moves in their rela- 
 tion to the great game in which he shares, and will 
 feel keen satisfaction in the understanding. By 
 such an interpretation of social loyalty the intel- 
 lectualist gets rid incidentally of social discontent. 
 As no reasonable chessman would wish to be queen 
 rather than pawn (since the intellectual satisfaction 
 from the game is as great for one as for the other), 
 so no good citizen will fret to be a gilded youth 
 instead of a chimney-sweeper.
 
 62 IS CONSCIENCE CONSTRUCTIVE? CH. 
 
 " One place performs like any other place 
 the proper service every place on earth 
 was framed to furnish man with " 
 
 (quoted in .S. p. 183). 
 
 There can be no radicalism in a good pawn. 1 
 
 23. Let us turn now to the more serious mis- 
 interpretation of Conscientious Action. The critical 
 and constructive activity of Conscience is of two 
 kinds. On the one hand we are active as working 
 in the stream of empirical change and circumstance ; 
 we choose among alternative courses, repel tempta- 
 tions to error, and guard against our natural inclina- 
 tion to follow the line of least resistance. This 
 day-by-day business of moral work is always fatally 
 ignored by the theorist of the static view. But 
 just now I want to speak of that other and more 
 inward kind of conscientiousness which consists in 
 the choice and development of principles of action. 
 Reasonable action implies a consistent developmentof 
 principles in accordance with the agent's needs and 
 moral judgment. In explaining this development 
 there are two opposite mistakes to avoid ; one is the 
 parody of libertarianism which represents the develop- 
 ing action of the agent as an exercise of arbitrary 
 caprice ; the other is that static-intellectualist view 
 of morals which represents the agent as watching 
 quietly while the principles spontaneously evolve in 
 virtue of their own immanent principle of growth. 
 
 1 I am not attributing all the views just criticised to Mr. Bradley ; but he 
 is in harmony with their spirit when he writes, " The non-theoretical person, if 
 he be not immoral, is at peace with reality " (E.S, p. 166). I wish I could 
 think this optimistic statement true. Is the Russian moujik a theoretical person, 
 or is he immoral ? Nearer home Mr. Bradley might have learned much if he 
 had ever dropped into conversation with such a person as a London 'bus-driver.
 
 iv OR IS IT PURELY SEDENTARY? 63 
 
 The sit-still-and-watch-it-grow doctrine of con- 
 scientious action is really involved in Mr. Bradley's 
 explanation of volition as the self-realisation of an 
 idea : but it may be illustrated in detail from Prof. 
 Bosanquet's Psychology of the Moral Self. Prof. 
 Bosanquet raises the question, Does will involve 
 desire ? and in the course of discussing it says : 
 
 " We may point out that in some cases where volition is 
 most deliberate, the element of desire seems most con- 
 spicuously absent. When, for instance, we approach a 
 very important decision, such as changing our residence 
 or profession, or taking a particular line in any kind of 
 policy, for which we have weeks or months in which to 
 prepare, in such cases as these we can hardly be said to 
 verify [i.e. observe the presence of] desire. Our decision 
 is more like a necessity gradually revealing itself." 
 
 Further on he says of a case of decision : 
 
 " The actual feeling accompanying the decision, or act of 
 will, might be more like that of being absorbed in an 
 idea than like that of giving effect to desire ; it would be 
 a sort of necessity, following from the circumstances, and 
 taking shape in your decision. When," continues Prof. 
 Bosanquet, " I am asked the reasons for supporting certain 
 measures, I may answer that I desire them or am averse 
 to them ; but the fundamental answer would seem to be, 
 ' because they agree with, or are contrary to, all my ideas 
 on the subject.' In the first case there is simply desire or 
 aversion ; in the second there is the conception of a system 
 of ideas working themselves out into a consistent whole " 
 (pp. 79 sq.}. 
 
 I do not mean to say that there are no facts in 
 our experience to support this analysis of Prof. 
 Bosanquet's. Men who have irrevocably settled 
 upon a general course of action, more especially 
 men in middle life who know their own minds,
 
 64 TO THE INTELLECTUALIST CH. 
 
 develop their characteristic purposes so steadily and 
 yet so pliably that conduct almost seems to ' work 
 itself out ' spontaneously. But a deeper analysis 
 will show that the steady pressure of the agent's 
 volition is there and cannot be relaxed for a moment. 
 Such cases, however, are not really typical ; we 
 must study rather those spiritual crises in which 
 purposes originate. And here the element of 
 volitional decision stands out too plainly to be 
 ignored. 
 
 24. This leads us to consider the attitude of 
 intellectualism to Free- Will. After centuries of 
 debate free-will still remains the crucial problem of 
 philosophy : not only in ethics, but in every other 
 branch of thought, sound views are hopeless if we 
 misunderstand human volition. I know that it is 
 rather the fashion to assume that the question will 
 never be settled decisively ; but, however that may 
 be, it is at present involved in quite gratuitous 
 difficulties : there is no justification for the common 
 Hegelian dilemma which requires us to choose 
 between the indeterminism of idiocy and the ' soft ' 
 determinism which quite absurdly arrogates to itself 
 the title of a doctrine of freedom. What the agent 
 really does in moral choice may be illustrated from 
 the arts. Suppose that the poet has written half his 
 ode, and is thinking about the remainder. Now 
 this remainder neither grows of itself, nor ought its 
 character to be determined by the mere caprice of 
 the poet. It may be determined capriciously ; but 
 in that case the ode will be a very bad one ; a good
 
 iv FREE-WILL IS A 'LINGERING CHIMERA' 65 
 
 poem has impressed upon it a unity of character 
 that gives its component parts a fitness above 
 caprice. So it is with the development of moral 
 principles : the agent makes the system of their 
 development and makes them develop according 
 to the system. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to point out that a pan- 
 logistic philosophy must either deny free-will out- 
 right, or make a show of satisfying the libertarian 
 instinct by some empty phrase. What Mr. Bosan- 
 quet thinks on the subject is plain from the extracts 
 in the preceding section : Mr. Bradley in his Ethical 
 Studies stands simply upon Hegelian ground ; while 
 in Appearance and Reality (p. 435) he treats free- 
 will roundly as "a mere lingering chimera," which 
 no self-respecting writer can any longer be called 
 upon to treat seriously. All this is just as we might 
 have expected. What is less familiar is that T. H. 
 Green also is not a libertarian in any intelligible 
 sense : as we shall see later (chap. viii. 23), his 
 freedom of the will is merely Kantian and noumenal. 
 
 25. For Political Philosophy a few words will 
 suffice. As we have already seen, Hegel's exalta- 
 tion of the State is to be explained by the fact that 
 it can be regarded more easily than the individual 
 as a thought-content or concrete universal. The 
 following extract indicates his estimate of its value 
 and functions : 
 
 " The State, which is the realised substantive will, having 
 its reality in the particular self-consciousness raised to 
 
 F
 
 66 'THE STATE IS ALWAYS PERFECT' CH. 
 
 the plane of the Universal, is absolutely rational. This 
 substantive unity is its own motive and absolute end. In 
 this end freedom obtains its highest right. This end has 
 the highest right over the individual whose highest duty 
 in turn is to be a member of the state" (P.R. p. 240). 
 
 The state, he continues in further passages, is "the 
 embodiment of reason" (p. 242), "the march of 
 God in the world " (p. 247), " the embodiment of 
 concrete freedom " (p. 248). 
 
 " This Universal principle [i.e. the state, otherwise termed 
 " the self-conscious ethical substance "], with all its evolu- 
 tion in detail, is the absolute aim and content of the 
 knowing subject, which thus identifies itself in its volition 
 with the system of reasonableness " (P.M. p. 131). 
 
 In the same spirit Mr. Bradley affirms that by 
 merging into so divine and perfect an existence as 
 the "social organism" the individual will find his 
 whole end, "self-realisation, duty, and happiness 
 in one" (.S. p. 148). This then is the political 
 doctrine which the Anglo- Hegelians suggest for our 
 acceptance when they bid us "close our Bentham 
 and open our Hegel." 
 
 26. The fatal flaw about this political philo- 
 sophy is that it leaves no room for the criticism and 
 reform of existing states by individuals. Hegel 
 does indeed from time to time speak of bad or 
 imperfect States ; but he does not make it clear 
 how the individual can set up to criticise an institu- 
 tion which gives him all his value and reality. 
 Questions of practical reform he never touches on. 
 The same difficulty occurs to one in reading Prof. 
 Bosanquet's Philosophical Theory of the State, an
 
 iv WHERE THEN DOES REFORM COME IN? 67 
 
 interesting book which provokes the wish that the 
 author had relied less on Hegel and more on his 
 own experience of social work : he might have 
 strengthened it considerably by ampler recognition of 
 what may be called Charity Organisation principles, 
 which one would not have expected to be absent 
 from Prof. Bosanquet's mind. Surely self-reliance 
 and personal initiative are all important in the 
 making, managing, and reforming of states. The 
 neglect of the imperfections of existing states is the 
 main point of a criticism of the book by Mr. Sidney 
 Ball: 
 
 " The general effect of Mr. Bosanquet's treatment is to 
 suggest that, in as much as the idea of a state is realised 
 wherever there is a state, any particular state is entitled 
 to rather more than the credit it gets from answering the 
 idea of a state at all. Does not," he continues, " the 
 argument itself demand that more stress should be laid 
 on the partial character of the realisation of the ideal 
 attained by any actual community ? " ("Current Sociology" 
 in Mind, N.S., No. 3 8, pp. 158 
 
 The England of King Stephen and the England 
 of to-day are both ' states.' Prof. Bosanquet says 
 that for purposes of theoretical investigation one 
 may be assumed to be about as good as another, 
 "just as the nature of life is represented pretty 
 nearly as well by one living man as by another" 
 (Philosophical Theory of the State, p. 251). This 
 seems to be a highly disputable assumption. Does 
 the Hottentot represent the "nature of life" pretty 
 nearly as well as the cultured Englishman ? And 
 is it a matter of indifference which of the two we
 
 68 'SOCIAL LOGIC' 
 
 take for any purpose of theoretical investigation ? 
 However, this is quite a minor objection : the point 
 I wish to emphasise is that, though Prof. Bosanquet 
 recognises different sorts of states, he does not tell 
 us anything about the agencies which transform the 
 lower into the higher, except so far as " social logic " 
 (a very significant phrase) is occasionally referred 
 to (p. 315). Or would Prof. Bosanquet argue that, 
 just as discovery is an accident of knowledge (Logic 
 i. p. 8), so reform is a negligeable accident of politics ? 
 In their neglect of political improvement and 
 the agencies which cause it, the Anglo- Hegelians 
 are much more to blame than Hegel, because they 
 disregard the light of knowledge which he did not 
 enjoy : the static modes of thought to which they 
 cling have quite been superseded by modern 
 science. That Hegel is a thoroughly 'static' 
 philosopher is superficially covered by his varnish 
 of dialectical development. When we scratch this 
 off we find that the only real development he 
 believed in was one which led up to his own system 
 and the Prussian constitution. But, thanks to 
 Darwin, we know now that even the Prussian con- 
 stitution cannot be final. As political organisation 
 is relative to the individuals organised, and as there 
 is no finality about individual development, there 
 can be no finality about political development : 
 change and adaptation, in other words continuous 
 reform, is essential to the efficiency of the modern 
 state. These considerations are so trite that I 
 should be ashamed to adduce them had they not
 
 iv ART AS HEGELIAN CATEGORY 69 
 
 been systematically neglected. In object-lessons of 
 political improvement we have a huge advantage over 
 Hegel : even the man in the street can tell us that 
 reforms come less by ' social logic ' than by personal 
 criticism and agitation. Not a breath of our 
 stirring English political life passes through Prof. 
 Bosanquet's pages. As a corrective to our old 
 national^ individualism, represented most strikingly 
 by Herbert Spencer, Prof. Bosanquet's Hegelian 
 preference for the state has a justification : but in 
 trying to bend the stick straight he has bent it 
 much too far the other way. 
 
 27. On the Philosophy of Art there is little to 
 be said, and of what I am going to say the most part, 
 I fear, might be regarded as not strictly relevant. A 
 consistent panlogism should exhibit art as a stage in 
 the development of the thought-absolute, and this 
 is what Hegel does in the half-dozen pages of the 
 Encyclopedia where he explains Art as a category 
 developing out of the State and developing into 
 Revealed Religion. 
 
 " As this [final] consciousness of the Absolute first takes 
 shape, its immediacy produces the factor of finitude in 
 Art. On one hand, that is, it breaks up into a work of 
 external common existence, into the subject which pro- 
 duces that work, and the subject which contemplates and 
 worships it. But, on the other hand, it is the concrete 
 contemplation and mental picture of implicitly absolute 
 spirit as the Ideal. In this ideal, or the concrete shape 
 born of the subjective spirit, its natural immediacy, which 
 is only a sign of the Idea, is so transfigured by the 
 informing spirit in order to express the Idea, that the
 
 70 DIALECTIC ART-PHILOSOPHY CH. 
 
 figure shows it and it alone the shape or form of Beauty" 
 (PM. p. 169). 
 
 His Vorlesungen uber Asthetik, in which alone his 
 detailed views have been preserved, are not a mere 
 expansion of the concise sections of the Encyclopedia : 
 the influence of the deductive method is always 
 felt ; but it does not appear much upon the surface, 
 and the whole subject is treated with immense 
 wealth of concrete illustration and free reference to 
 historical development, sensuous material, and per- 
 sonal activity. An even more elaborate and more 
 systematic treatment of art was made by his pupil, 
 F. T. Vischer, whose great work, Die Kunst (4 
 vols.), follows the strict Hegelian arrangement of 
 numbered sections in distinctive type followed by 
 explanatory " Zusatze." 
 
 From the task of criticising the panlogist art- 
 philosophy I am fortunately exempt : it has no 
 followers among us, and may even be said to be 
 practically unknown except to readers of Prof. 
 Bosanquet's History of ^Esthetic. It is significant 
 that Hegel's Vorlesungen have never been translated 
 into English : while of Vischer Prof. Bosanquet 
 sadly remarks : 
 
 " There is much in his works that would be of interest 
 to the reader to-day, could it be disengaged from his 
 formal dialectic and from the huge bulk of his volumes. 
 But there is not much, I should imagine, which cannot 
 now be obtained from other sources, and I therefore cannot 
 help fearing that this colossal monument of real knowledge, 
 capacity, and industry will have little effect on the future 
 course of aesthetic science " (History of ^Esthetic, p. 400).
 
 iv PROF. BOSANQUET ON BEAUTY 71 
 
 Prof. Bosanquet does not praise Vischer too highly : 
 he was in addition a man of literary skill and bright 
 sympathetic intelligence. But no gifts would suffice 
 I believe, to make a ' dialectic ' philosophy of art 
 persuasive and interesting to Englishmen. 
 
 28. At this point, perhaps, I ought to stop ; 
 but for the sake of illustrating my standpoint in 
 relation to art, I should like to offer a little criticism 
 of certain views of Prof. Bosanquet's, though I 
 know that they are considerably removed from 
 consistent intellectualism. He has so much recog- 
 nition of emotion in art, of personal expression, of 
 the workman's sympathy with the qualities of his 
 material, in short, so much of the traditions of 
 English art-criticism, that the question is always 
 suggesting itself whether his real sympathies are 
 not more akin to those of his critic than to the 
 Hegelianism on which he supposes himself to stand. 
 Another difficulty is that most of his writing is 
 history, not constructive theory. His great work is 
 not even a history of art-philosophy, but a history 
 of the philosophy of the beautiful : it deals less with 
 art than with feelings, or emotions, or sentiments 
 which are anterior to art as a productive process. 
 I do not remember that Prof. Bosanquet explicitly 
 sets forth the relation of art to this anterior con- 
 sciousness, or even gives a definition of art itself. 
 His doctrine of art can only be got at by inference 
 from the History of ^Esthetic and elsewhere. 
 
 Prof. Bosanquet gives as his definition of beauty 
 " that which has characteristic or individual expres-
 
 72 THE EMOTIVE THEORY OF ART CH. 
 
 siveness for sense-perception or imagination, sub- 
 ject to the conditions of general or abstract expres- 
 siveness in the same medium" {History of ^Esthetic, 
 p. 5). His view of art I gather to be the following : 
 beauty is in one way the antithesis of the object of 
 science. In science, or knowledge optimi juris, we 
 have a thought-content expressed in purely rational 
 form : in our experience of beauty, on the other 
 hand, we have a thought-content expressed in the 
 form of feeling. Our beauty-experience may have 
 concrete embodiment, either as natural beauty or 
 as artificial beauty, the latter being objects of art. 
 The productive process of art is motived by 
 emotion. When a man feels emotion and expresses 
 it immediately and crudely the result is ordinary 
 emotional demonstration. When-, however, the 
 expression is reflective, methodical, suited to the 
 medium, and, generally, infused with reason so far 
 as the matter allows, the result is art (" On the 
 Nature of ^Esthetic Emotion" in Mind, N.S., No. 
 
 10, P. I55). 
 
 The critic might raise many points of objection 
 
 to this doctrine, which may or may not summarise 
 accurately what Prof. Bosanquet thinks : but the one 
 I wish to emphasise now is that it tends to ignore 
 both in beauty and in art the dynamic element which 
 these experiences have through their connection 
 with human 'making.' In the highly specialised 
 conditions of modern civilisation, when artists tend 
 to form a class within the community, it is true that 
 the passive attitude of artistic admiration is much
 
 iv IGNORES 'MAKING' 73 
 
 commoner than the active. And thus we lose sight 
 of the fact that the active form is really more 
 typical : the sentiment of beauty attaches primarily 
 to things man makes or understands the making of. 
 I doubt if this reference to making is absent from 
 even the most passive-seeming exclamation, ' How 
 beautiful.' Suppose it to be uttered by a merely 
 non-performing connoisseur as he looks at a sunset. 
 Fully to understand his mental attitude we must 
 remember that beneath its passivity it is penetrated 
 by experiences of production ; the sunset will prob- 
 ably suggest pictures seen. Even if it does not, if 
 no thought of Claude or Turner crosses his mind, 
 yet he would hardly appreciate the view unless its 
 lines and tints were attached to an apperceptive 
 system of ideas which has been formed in his mind 
 by contact with artists and works of art. Savages 
 have no appreciation of scenery. 
 
 I do not know if the foregoing criticisms really 
 make against Prof. Bosanquet or only against the 
 hypothetical intellectualist, whom, indeed, we con- 
 stantly meet face to face in philosophical discussion. 
 But in regard to the philosophy of art as distin- 
 guished from that of the beautiful, Prof. Bosanquet 
 says enough in his essay on the " Nature of /Esthetic 
 Emotion " to lay himself open to the reproach of 
 neglecting the dynamic side of this experience. 
 His words are : " I suggest as the most fundamental 
 and universal feature, from which all the common 
 characteristics of aesthetic emotion may be deduced, 
 the simple fact that it is expressed" (p. 156). Now
 
 74 ART IMPLIES 'MAKING' CH. 
 
 putting aside the highly disputable question whether 
 the root- impulse of art can be described as an 
 emotion, let us consider whether this term 'ex- 
 pression ' sufficiently recognises the fact that art 
 necessarily implies making. Suppose a concrete 
 example ; say that a man receives bad news which 
 causes him grief, on the first shock of which he 
 expresses emotion by bursting into tears. This 
 weeping, it will be agreed on all hands, is not art ; 
 though Prof. Bosanquet would be hard driven to 
 distinguish it from art on the strict letter of his 
 definition. But now suppose that the shock has 
 passed, and that the mourner sets to expressing his 
 grief in various ways. I contend that you cannot 
 qualify any of these expressions as artistic except 
 in so far as the expression involves making some- 
 thing in a particular spirit which must simply be 
 called ' artistic ' because it is not further definable. 
 Expression alone, however reasonable and reflective, 
 will not give us art. Expression of grief may cause 
 the mourner to say prayers, or to make up old 
 quarrels, or to wear crape, or to give alms, or to 
 cease going to dinner-parties, or to order a monu- 
 ment from the stone-mason ; but he will not be a 
 jot nearer to the artist. A classic example of a 
 work of art which took its origin in the sorrow 
 of bereavement is, of course, Tennyson's In 
 Memoriam ; but it would be a totally inadequate 
 account of the poem as an artistic effort to describe 
 it as expressing emotion. One may raise the ques- 
 tion, indeed, whether the emotion connected with
 
 iv KNOWLEDGE AND RELIGION 75 
 
 art is emotion caused by the object and then 
 expressed in art, or whether it is not rather 
 emotion generated by the success or failure of 
 the artistic process ; as when we speak of a 
 painter's joy in his work, or despondency in 
 failure. The place of emotion in art can be 
 illustrated by the simplest example. The prehistoric 
 cave-man is interested for obvious reasons in mam- 
 moth ; he expresses this interest with the ultimate, 
 indefinable spirit we call ' artistic ' by making the 
 beast's outline on a bone ; succeeding in his effort, 
 he is pleased and shows the work to friends. In- 
 terest, artistic making, emotion of success is the 
 normal sequence of the artist's experience. You 
 can reduce the making neither to the interest that 
 goes before it, nor to the emotion that follows. 
 
 29. In the Philosophy of Religion our criticism 
 of intellectualism must be that it bases religion too 
 exclusively on the facts of knowledge. From these 
 facts it deduces the existence of a Being who may, 
 certainly, be called superhuman, but cannot justly 
 be called divine. 
 
 An attempt may be made to base religion upon 
 any or all of the three main facts of knowledge : that 
 the world is intelligible, that man has intelligence, 
 and that there is a medium of communication which 
 enables the human intelligence to understand the 
 world. All three facts were present to Plato's mind 
 when he described the Idea of the Good as " that 
 which imparts truth to the known and the power
 
 76 GOD AS RELATING-CONSCIOUSNESS CH. 
 
 of knowing to the knower" and is the medium of 
 understanding, as light is the medium that makes 
 the visible world radiant to the seeing eye (Rep. vi. 
 508). Modern epistemological analysis may have 
 deepened and defined the intellectualist conception 
 of God ; but it can hardly advance in comprehen- 
 siveness upon the outline sketched in this passage 
 of the Republic. 
 
 An argument for the existence of God based 
 on the intelligibility of the objective world is 
 formulated by T. H. Green in connection with his 
 " Spiritual Principle." In a review of John Caird's 
 Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, written 
 two years before his death, he protests against 
 basing a philosophy of religion merely upon 
 " introspective inquiry " ; the true basis is " an 
 investigation of the objective world and the source 
 of the relations which determine its content" 
 (Works, iii. 143). 
 
 " To assume, because all reality requires thought to con- 
 ceive it, that therefore thought is the condition of its 
 existence, is, indeed, unwarrantable. But it is another 
 matter if, when we come to examine the constituents of 
 that which we account real the determinations of things 
 we find that they all imply some synthetic action 
 which we only know as exercised by our own spirit. 
 Is it not true of all of them that they have their being in 
 relations ; and what other medium do we know of but a 
 thinking consciousness in and through which the separate 
 can be united in that way which constitutes relation ? 
 We believe that these questions cannot be worked out 
 without leading to the conclusion that the real world is 
 essentially a spiritual world, which forms one inter-related
 
 iv THE 'CRYSTAL SPHERE' 77 
 
 whole because related throughout to a single subject " 
 (Works, in. 145). 
 
 One form of the proof of God from the con- 
 nection which brings subject and object together 
 has been adduced by Dr. Edward Caird in his 
 Evolution of Religion : 
 
 " Subject and object are the extreme terms in the 
 difference which is essential to our rational life. Each of 
 them presupposes the other, and therefore neither can be 
 regarded as producing the other. Hence, we are com- 
 pelled to think of them both as rooted in a still higher 
 principle, which is at once the source of their relatively 
 independent existence and the all-embracing unity that 
 limits their independence. This principle, therefore, may 
 be imaged as a crystal sphere that holds them together, 
 and which, through its very transparency, is apt to escape 
 our notice, yet which must always be there as the con- 
 dition and limit of their operation. To put it more 
 directly, the idea of an absolute unity, which transcends 
 all the oppositions of finitude, and especially the last 
 opposition which includes all others the opposition of 
 subject and object is the ultimate presupposition of our 
 consciousness. Hence we cannot understand the real 
 character of our rational life or appreciate the full com- 
 pass of its movement, unless we recognise as its necessary 
 constituents or guiding ideas, not only the ideas of object 
 and subject, but also the idea of God. The idea of God, 
 therefore meaning by that, in the first instance, only the 
 idea of an absolute principle of unity which binds in one 
 ' all thinking things, all objects of all thought,' which is at 
 once the source of being to all things that are, and of 
 knowing to all beings that know is an essential principle, 
 or rather the ultimate essential principle of our intelligence, 
 a principle which must manifest itself in the life of every 
 rational creature. Every creature, who is capable of the 
 consciousness of an objective world and of the conscious- 
 ness of a self, is capable also of the consciousness of God.
 
 78 INADEQUACY OF A THEOLOGY CH. 
 
 Or, to sum up the whole matter in one word, every 
 rational being as such is a religious being " (Evolution of 
 Religion, i. 67 sq.}. 
 
 It is no part of my present business to say whether 
 a true conception of God should include the element 
 of relating-consciousness (as advocated by Green) 
 and the element of unity-of-subject-and- object (as 
 advocated by Dr. Edward Caird) ; prima facie there 
 seems no reason why it should not. What I have 
 to point out is that from these elements, taken 
 separately or together, we can get no adequate con- 
 ception of God. To a Relating- Consciousness as 
 such or to a Unity-of-subject-and-object the name of 
 ' God ' cannot properly be applied, any more than to 
 the Great First Cause of the eighteenth-century 
 deists. A Being, to deserve that name, must possess 
 at least intelligent agency and exercise moral prefer- 
 ence : that which lacks those qualities may be a First 
 Cause or a Spiritual Principle or an Absolute, but is 
 not ' God ' in any natural sense of the term. And it 
 goes without saying that an epistemological argument 
 which has proved the existence of a being necessary 
 for the human act of knowledge, has not thereby 
 proceeded a step towards proving the existence of a 
 Being with moral qualities. That must be proved 
 by an additional argument based on ethical grounds. 
 I could hardly desire an apter quotation for illus- 
 trating my present criticism than the final words of 
 my extract from the Evolution of Religion, " E very- 
 rational being as such is a religious being." To 
 such a dictum the obvious answer is that man
 
 iv BASED UPON KNOWLEDGE ALONE 79 
 
 cannot be religious merely in virtue of possessing a 
 minimum endowment of intelligence : for, at this 
 rate, none are irreligious but the beasts, and perhaps 
 not all of them. Dr. Caird allows religious quality 
 much too easily both to the Supreme Being and to 
 man. 
 
 In philosophy of religion there is a vast amount of 
 unclear thinking which would never be tolerated in 
 any other province of science, and would be extremely 
 annoying if it were not so easy to account for. Few 
 people write on this subject unless they are religious- 
 minded ; and to such people certain beliefs have 
 grown so instinctive that they can hardly be brought 
 to realise the need of justifying them by argument. 
 Hence an immense amount of illegitimate assump- 
 tion : an intensely religious consciousness like T. 
 H. Green's glides absent-mindedly over chasms 
 hopelessly impassable to mere logic. Nor can we 
 leave out of account the traditional attitude of men, 
 determined to obscurity on religious matters by 
 many converging influences : our natural hopes and 
 fears and dim aspirations in a matter immensely 
 important, yet difficult to the clearest - sighted, 
 priestcraft, dogma, superstitious intolerance, the 
 thraldom of custom, the prestige of ancient cere- 
 mony, the reverential tenderness for holy things, 
 many influences of many degrees of value have had 
 their share in hindering free and logical inquiry. 
 But for this I doubt if it would ever have been 
 needful to expose the inadequacies of the intel- 
 lectualist philosophy of religion.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 ABSOLUTISM 
 
 i. IF my attempt to define Absolutism and 
 assign its causes was successful (chap. iii. 4-8), 
 it is a theory that is founded deep in human nature 
 and is likely to recur continually in various forms. 
 The philosophies of India, the Neo-Platonists, 
 mediaeval scholastics who took Averroes for their 
 master, churchmen of pantheistic leaning such as 
 Nicholas of Cusa, heretics of the Renaissance such 
 as Giordano Bruno, the race of religious mystics 
 such as Eckhart and Jacob Behmen, together with 
 Spinoza, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, von 
 Hartmann, and, most interesting of all to us, Mr. 
 F. H. Bradley, profess an absolutism variously 
 tinged by personal idiosyncrasy and by reaction 
 against various antagonistic principles. 
 
 If we accept literally what the most thorough- 
 going absolutists say about the Absolute, we should 
 conceive it as a perfect neutrum, the undifferentiated 
 substrate of all determinate existence. But the 
 only recommendation of such a view is that it 
 enables us to view the universe as the manifestation 
 
 of a single principle : except for this a neutral 
 
 80
 
 CH. v REACTION AGAINST HEGEL Si 
 
 Absolute is an utterly vapid conception. To 
 become attractive it must lose its impartiality and 
 be tinged predominantly with some special element 
 of our experience. To Hegel in his revolt against 
 the Schellingian ' night in which all cows are black/ 
 the element of thought appeared supremely im- 
 portant : in his Absolute all non-intellectual elements 
 are, not so much combined with Thought, as 
 swallowed up in Thought : feeling and volition have 
 no proper place there. Schopenhauer's Absolute 
 is predominantly Will. Mr. F. H. Bradley, in 
 reaction from Hegel's intellectualism, lays most 
 stress on Feeling ; in illustrating the nature of the 
 Absolute he refers most frequently to the immediacy 
 of sentience and the self-abandonment of strong 
 emotional experience. 
 
 2. Though the Hegelian absolutism has had 
 many able adherents among Oxford thinkers, it is 
 now quite eclipsed by Mr. Bradley's. As a rule my 
 criticisms will hold good only of the theory which 
 he advocates ; though on some points what I have 
 to say applies to absolutism in every form. 
 
 We understand Mr. Bradley best, I think, by 
 regarding his metaphysic as a reaction against 
 Hegel's. According to Hegel the universe is a 
 process of thought throughout ; first, thought by 
 itself in its primal unity ; secondly, thought in 
 alienation from itself as nature ; thirdly, thought 
 returned back into itself from its alienation enriched 
 and enhanced in the form of spirit. The highest 
 
 category of spirit, he tells us, the crown and con- 
 
 G
 
 82 'THE ABSOLUTE 
 
 summation of the whole long process, is philosophy 
 emphatically a thought-category. The following 
 paragraph, the last of the Encyclopedia, represents 
 faithfully the panlogistic tone of the whole work : 
 
 " The third [and last] syllogism is the Idea of philo- 
 sophy, which has self- knowing reason, the absolutely- 
 universal, for its middle term : a middle, which divides 
 itself into Mind and Nature, making the former its 
 presupposition, as process of the Idea's subjective activity, 
 and the latter its universal extreme, as process of the 
 objectively and implicitly existing Idea. The self-judging 
 of the Idea into its two appearances characterises both as 
 its (the self-knowing reason's) manifestations : and in it 
 there is a unification of the two aspects : it is the nature 
 of the fact, the notion, which causes the movement and 
 development, yet this same movement is equally the 
 action of cognition. The eternal Idea, in full fruition of 
 its essence, eternally sets itself to work, engenders and 
 enjoys itself as absolute Mind " (P.M. p. 1 97). 
 
 It is the action of cognition (Thdtigkeit des 
 Erkennens], according to Hegel, that makes the 
 universe what it is throughout : according to Mr. 
 Bradley such a doctrine misses out essential features 
 of reality. 
 
 3. As elements of reality that cannot be 
 identified with thought, Mr. Bradley mentions in 
 various places Feeling and Volition (e.g. A.R. p. 
 182). But it is plain from the tenour of the whole 
 book that he takes much more account of feeling 
 than of volition : the latter he is wont to reduce to 
 a form of thought by explaining it as the self- 
 realisation of an idea. Nor is there any sufficient 
 evidence in any of Mr. Bradley's writings that
 
 v MUST INCLUDE FEELING.' 83 
 
 he appreciates either on the intellectual or the 
 moral side the really characteristic features of 
 volitional experience. For feeling, on the other 
 hand, he has plainly a very strong appreciation : to 
 reduce it to thought is not merely impossible but 
 intolerable to him. Here is a characteristic passage 
 of protest : 
 
 " Let us suppose the impossible accomplished ; let us 
 imagine a harmonious system of ideal contents united by 
 relations, and reflecting itself in self-conscious harmony. 
 This is to be reality, all reality ; and there is nothing 
 outside it. The delights and pains of the flesh, the 
 agonies and raptures of the soul, these are fragmentary 
 meteors fallen from thought's harmonious system. But 
 these burning experiences how in any sense can they be 
 mere pieces of thought's heaven ? For, if the fall is real, 
 there is a world outside thought's region, and, if the fall is 
 apparent, then human error itself is not included there. 
 Heaven, in brief, must either not be heaven, or else not 
 all reality. Without a metaphor, feeling belongs to 
 perfect thought, or it does not. If it does not, there is at 
 once a side of existence beyond thought. But if it does 
 belong, then thought is different from thought discursive 
 and relational. To make it include immediate experience, 
 its character must be transformed. It must cease to 
 predicate, it must get beyond mere relations, it must reach 
 something other than truth. Thought, in a word, must 
 have been absorbed into a higher intuition" (A.R. pp. 
 1 70 sq.}. 
 
 If Mr. Bradley cared to express this matter in 
 baldly logical terms, he would say, I think, (a] that 
 feeling is so precious to us that we cannot bear to 
 think it wanting in the Absolute ; and (b) that 
 feeling is so precious in itself that the Absolute 
 cannot do without it. The former proposition is
 
 84 THE ABSOLUTE AS CONCEIVED CH. 
 
 implied in passages of Appearance and Reality too 
 numerous to mention ; the latter which is of less 
 familiar import seems to be the upshot of such a 
 passage as the following : 
 
 " The Absolute does not want, I presume, to make eyes 
 at itself in a mirror, or, like a squirrel in a cage, to 
 revolve the circle of its perfections. 1 Such processes must 
 be dissolved in something not poorer but richer than 
 themselves. And feeling and will must also be trans- 
 muted in this whole, into which thought has entered. 
 Such a state would possess in a superior form that 
 immediacy which we find (more or less) in feeling ; and 
 in this whole all divisions would be healed up. It would 
 be experience entire, containing all elements in harmony. 
 Thought would be present in a higher intuition ; will 
 would be there where the ideal had become reality ; and 
 beauty and pleasure and feeling would live on in this 
 total fulfilment. Every flame of passion, chaste or carnal, 
 would still burn in the Absolute unquenched and un- 
 abridged, a note absorbed in the harmony of its higher 
 bliss" (A.R. p. 172). 
 
 4. Such considerations, and others, perhaps, 
 which it is hardly profitable or possible to dis- 
 entangle, have determined Mr. Bradley, not merely 
 to include feeling in the Absolute, but also to 
 conceive the Absolute under the form of feeling. 
 This is what Mr. Bradley means by ' thought 
 being absorbed in a higher intuition.' The 
 "higher intuition" is not feeling as we know it, 
 but it has the immediacy of feeling. The doctrine 
 is repeated in many passages of Appearance and 
 Reality of which two examples will suffice. The 
 
 1 I take this to be a well-merited jibe at the ' self-engendering, self- 
 enjoying ' of Hegel's absolute Mind.
 
 UNDER THE FORM OF FEELING 85 
 
 first puts the matter shortly. " Feeling supplies us 
 with a positive idea of non-relational unity. The 
 idea is imperfect, but is sufficient to serve as a 
 positive basis" (A.R. p. 530). We learn elsewhere 
 that the " idea is imperfect," because, whereas mere 
 feeling is below distinctions, the Absolute is above 
 them. The second passage is fuller : 
 
 " The Reality . . . must be One, not as excluding 
 diversity, but as somehow including it in such a way as 
 to transform its character. There is plainly not anything 
 which can fall outside of the Real. . . . This Absolute 
 is experience, because that is really what we mean when 
 we predicate or speak of anything. It is not one-sided 
 experience, as mere volition or mere thought ; but it is a 
 whole superior to and embracing all incomplete forms of 
 life. The whole must be immediate like feeling, but not, 
 like feeling, immediate at a level below distinction and 
 relation. The Absolute is immediate as holding and 
 transcending these differences" (A.R. pp. 241 sq^. 
 
 The Absolute in short is an immediate, non- 
 relational, divisionless, distinctionless, all-inclusive, 
 unitary experience, of which feeling gives us an 
 adumbration. Thus there are two main points in 
 Feeling-Absolutism. Firstly, it asserts the Absolute 
 to be more real and more certainly known than the 
 Person ; secondly, it conceives the Absolute under 
 the form of Feeling. 
 
 What I think of the general assertion of the 
 Absolute's priority to the human person the reader 
 is sufficiently aware (cf. supra, chap. iii. 4). But, 
 if we are to choose among absolutisms, there is a 
 good deal to be said for Mr. Bradley 's. Its merit 
 is that it does include the feeling-element a tang of
 
 86 THE BRADLEIAN ABSOLUTE CH. 
 
 devilry, a fling of fury and disgust, a passionate 
 deviation from the just line of beauty and truth, in 
 short, the flesh. Mr. Bradley is quite right in 
 throwing Hegel over : the Hegelian universe is 
 a wretchedly tiresome, bloodless affair. Hegel 
 ("purest exemplar of inner and outer Prosa"), saw 
 no value in sensation and emotion ; and philosophers 
 (always a little behind the world) are now generally 
 agreed that a fair place must be found for both in 
 any synthesis that will satisfy our nature. 
 
 5. But in conceiving his Absolute under the 
 form of feeling, Mr. Bradley has set himself at a 
 fatal disadvantage as compared with Hegel. To 
 put it plainly, the Bradleian Absolute is irrational, 
 we must even say anti-rational. I know that Mr. 
 Bradley would protest that it is super-rational ; but 
 protestation is vain in scientific argument. We 
 know one form of reason, and one only, the human. 
 If Mr. Bradley had taken the line of certain 
 theologians and maintained simply that the 
 Absolute's reason is diverse from man's, he would 
 have made it non-rational ; he would have posited 
 a mere negation or privation. But he has gone 
 beyond this ; he has deliberately selected the least 
 rational element of human experience and told us 
 that it typifies the mind of the Absolute. This 
 changes the privative into the contrary : instead of 
 merely non-rational he makes the Absolute anti- 
 rational. 
 
 Thus it is not strange that the dialectical chapters 
 of the first book of Appearance and Reality have a
 
 v IS IRRATIONAL AND SCEPTICAL 87 
 
 merely negative or destructive result : they con- 
 tribute nothing to the intelligibility of the Absolute. 
 Here again Mr. Bradley contrasts unfavourably 
 with Hegel, who, beginning with the more abstract 
 elements of experience professes to make them, by 
 disclosing their inner contradictions, develop con- 
 tinuously till they lead up to the perfection of the 
 Absolute. With Mr. Bradley, on the other hand, 
 there is no development ; the principle of self- 
 opposition or negativity is in his hands an instru- 
 ment not of explanation but of destruction. He 
 takes up every element of the world, abstract or 
 concrete, proves that it is riddled and ruined with 
 self-contradictions ; and yet asserts that it ultimately 
 comes to rest, we know not kow, in the Absolute. 
 Thus, whereas Hegel's Absolute is rendered, or 
 meant to be rendered, supremely intelligible by- 
 virtue of its absorption of the finite, Mr. Bradley's 
 Absolute is rendered the more unintelligible the 
 more it absorbs : there can be no continuity 
 between the finite and the Bradleian Infinite. 
 Most significant is the favourite metaphor which 
 Mr. Bradley chooses to express the salto mortale 
 whereby the finite passes into infinity ; it is " suicide " 
 (A.R. pp. 170, 207, 361). The Absolute is a Mettus 
 Curtius abyss into which appearances successively 
 jump and disappear. 
 
 6. The same point may be illustrated by 
 comparing Mr. Bradley's Absolute with Hegel's as 
 a basis for explaining and classifying 'appearances.' 
 Though no sort of Absolute is a good principle of
 
 88 A FEELING-ABSOLUTE CANNOT CLASSIFY CH. 
 
 explanation, a panlogist Absolute is less bad than a 
 sensuous one. Arranging things according to their 
 degree of rationality gives some sort of classification, 
 as in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion, which has at 
 least the merit of an early attempt to systematise a 
 vast and difficult field of knowledge. The doctrine 
 of Degrees of Truth and Reality, which is indis- 
 pensable to give absolutism any scientific utility, is 
 not out of place in Hegel. But the case is very 
 different with Mr. Bradley : a Feeling- Absolute 
 affords no possibility of classification. While the 
 One Real, the Infinite Whole, has non-relational 
 immediacy, every piece of finite existence is subject 
 to the relational form and is therefore condemned 
 as self-contradictory. And when this is said, what 
 more is left to say ? It is true that Mr. Bradley 
 does adopt from Hegel the doctrine of Degrees of 
 Truth and Reality ; but, as I hope to show later 
 (chap. ix. 38), he has no right to it. Moreover, he 
 does not and cannot make the slightest use of it. 
 
 " To survey the field of appearances, to measure each by 
 the idea of perfect individuality, and to arrange them in 
 an order and in a system of reality and merit would be 
 the task of metaphysics " (A.R. p. 489). 
 
 Very true : but it is a task the metaphysician will 
 never accomplish so long as the Feeling-Absolute is 
 the standard of perfect individuality. 
 
 7. All this has prepared us to understand the 
 scepticism which pervades Appearance and Reality, 
 from the destructive criticism of " Appearance " at 
 the beginning to the chapter of " Ultimate Doubts "
 
 'RATIONAL; THEREFORE UNREAL' 89 
 
 at its close : the Feeling- Absolutism to which Mr. 
 Bradley has committed himself is an idolon that 
 precludes all systematic explanation. We should 
 note, too, that Mr. Bradley 's scepticism is of a 
 peculiarly hopeless and incurable type : the common 
 sceptic argues that nothing is to be trusted because 
 everything is irrational ; but, according to Mr. 
 Bradley, everything is to be distrusted just so far 
 as it is rational. His argument is that the very 
 essence of thought consists in what he calls the 
 separation of content from existence, that is, in a 
 diremption of the immediacy which characterises the 
 One Reality. No truth, therefore, is quite true ; if 
 truth were quite true it would cease to be truth 
 {A.R. chap. xv. passim). Now though scepticism is 
 not altogether bad, and some forms of scepticism 
 are justifiable and useful, I hold that such a scepti- 
 cism would by itself condemn the Weltanschauung 
 which necessitates it. It has nothing in common 
 with the negative doubt that finds philosophy un- 
 convincing, but confesses itself impotent to suggest 
 an explanation of its own. Mr. Bradley's is a posi- 
 tive scepticism that denies truth everywhere, a 
 reasoned conviction that all reasoning must be false. 
 So positive is it that some of the closest students 
 of Mr. Bradley's work are left uncertain how he 
 manages to find room for the constructive elements 
 of his philosophical position. 1 
 
 1 Such appears to be the view of Mr. L. T. Hobhouse when he writes of 
 Appearance and Reality, " While every one admits the force of the negative 
 dialectics, such constructive conceptions as remain seem scarcely at home " 
 ( Theory of Knowledge, p. viii. ).
 
 90 A SHORT WAY WITH ONTOLOGY CH. 
 
 8. I propose now to illustrate the impractica- 
 bility and anti - scientific tendency of feeling- 
 absolutism by a survey of the various branches of 
 philosophy. 
 
 We come at once to the root of the matter in 
 Mr. Bradley's treatment of such ontological concep- 
 tions as substance and attribute, quality and relation, 
 space and time. The decisive passages are con- 
 tained in the chapters of Appearance and Reality 
 on "Substantive and Adjective" and on " Relation 
 and Quality " : the principles there enunciated serve 
 him with no substantial modification throughout. 
 His method is to test these conceptions by reference 
 to the perfect experience which is the One Reality. 
 A perfect experience is one which is immediate and 
 non-relational without the defects of the immediate 
 experiences we actually have: it is a block-experience 
 like pure sensation and strong emotion, but raised 
 to a higher plane by including the higher elements 
 which human sensation and emotion do not possess. 
 This may seem a vague account of an experience 
 which is to serve as criterion for the most solidly- 
 founded facts of our life ; but nothing exacter can 
 be had. Mr. Bradley's perfect experience, as some- 
 thing not to be found in rerum natura, can only be 
 described by somewhat distant analogies. Now, 
 whatever else such a block-experience may be and 
 do, it clearly excludes the form of relation. All the 
 ontological conceptions which he reviews involve 
 relation ; therefore they are radically unsound. 
 Such is Mr. Bradley's short way with ontology.
 
 v 'RELATIONS ARE UNINTELLIGIBLE' 91 
 
 9. If, as Mr. Bradley holds, the One Reality 
 which is perfect excludes relation, it follows that 
 relational experience must be imperfect. The really 
 vital point of Mr. Bradley's condemnation of current 
 ontological conceptions is his attack on the rela- 
 tional form. If he proves his contention that quali- 
 ties are unintelligible either with relations or without 
 them, then his sceptical position is established. But 
 if, as I believe, his attack is quite ineffective, his 
 other doubts and difficulties can count for little. 
 
 It is surprising, when Mr. Bradley's arguments 
 on this head are reduced to their simplest form, into 
 how small a compass they go. They are reducible 
 to two. The first is that, because quality and rela- 
 tion depend each upon the other, they are therefore 
 self-contradictory. Now such an argument hardly 
 deserves serious consideration, 1 though Mr. Bradley 
 puts it in the forefront and lays great stress upon it. 
 It is the commonest fact of experience that two 
 objects, neither of which can stand alone, stand well 
 enough when one supports the other : there is no 
 self-contradiction in the mutual support whereby two 
 playing-cards are made to stand upon a table. The 
 other argument is that two terms A and B cannot 
 be conceived as connected by a relation R, because 
 in that case you need other relations R t and R, to 
 connect R to A and to B, and so ad infinitum. 
 But this has plausibility only if we take the most 
 
 1 Such has, however, been accorded it by Prof. Stout in his "Alleged 
 Self-Contradictions in the Concept of Relation ; a criticism of Mr. Bradley's 
 Appearance and Reality, pt. i. ch. iii.," in Proceedings of the Aristotelian 
 Society, N.S. vol. ii.
 
 92 PERSONALITY JUSTIFIES RELATION CH. 
 
 crassly material view of relation and term, and think 
 of them as substances independent of consciousness, 
 in the way that common people think of bread and 
 cheese. From that anti-philosophical point of view 
 it certainly is rather hard to imagine how term com- 
 bines with relation, how cheese sticks to bread, 
 without an infinity of intercalated links. Get rid, 
 however, of crude materialistic prejudice, and the 
 difficulty ceases to exist. In our personal experience, 
 which I hold to be the norm of reality, we always 
 have unity - with - diversity (Mr. Bradley's great 
 desideratum) made up of terms combined with rela- 
 tions. ' Relation ' corresponds to what Prof. James 
 calls the transitive aspect of mind, and ' term ' to 
 the substantive. In actual personal experience we 
 never have purely transitive or purely substantive 
 states, but always a combination of the two ; and 
 that is the fundamental reason why term and rela- 
 tion are inseparable. From this primary mode of 
 existence of relations and terms we may advance 
 to their existence in the objective world. To con- 
 ceive their existence outside our minds should be 
 no difficulty to those who, like Mr. Bradley, regard 
 reality as experience : relation will be the transitive, 
 term the substantive aspect of the One Real 
 Experience. We shall see later ( 17) that the 
 relational form is an essential feature of personality, 
 and that our judgment upon its validity depends 
 upon the degree to which we accept the reality and 
 validity of personal experience. 
 
 10. Armed with his fundamental doctrine of
 
 MR. BRADLEY'S ATTACK ON SPACE 93 
 
 the viciousness of the relational form, Mr. Bradley 
 makes short work of our ontological conceptions. 
 Any one who adopts his just-stated conclusions " will 
 have seen that our experience, where relational, is 
 not true ; and he will have condemned, almost with- 
 out a hearing, the great mass of phenomena" (A.R. 
 p. 34). It will be enough to show how he deals 
 with Space (A.R. chap. iv.). The problem of space, 
 says Mr. Bradley, is merely " a peculiar form of the 
 problem " of Relation and Quality. " Space is a 
 relation which it cannot be ; and it is a quality or 
 substance which again it cannot be " (p. 36). The 
 relational form is vicious, and yet space cannot do 
 without it : being indissolubly bound up with the 
 relational form space must share its condemnation. 
 Such is Mr. Bradley's position. The argument by 
 which he reaches it is a little obscured by the ex- 
 tremely antithetical form of his statement, but what 
 it conies to is this. If you view space internally it 
 breaks up, subdivide it as you will, into parts joined 
 by relations : we never come upon a solid piece of 
 space. But we cannot say that space is a mere 
 relation ; otherwise we should have the absurdity 
 that a relation between two spaces would be a rela- 
 tion between two relations. In our conception of 
 space, solid space is an element, and relation is an 
 element ; and yet each element eludes us when we 
 try to lay hand on it. Again, when space is viewed 
 externally, a similar difficulty arises. "When taken 
 itself as a unit, it passes away into the search for 
 an illusory whole" (p. 37). In other words, you
 
 94 MR. BRADLEY'S ATTACK ON TIME CH. 
 
 can never imagine yourself on the outside of space ; 
 you can never see it as self-contained : let it be as 
 vast as you will, it is always related to some space 
 beyond it. Once again it is never a solid piece ; 
 and yet it is always more than a relation. 
 
 Exactly the same line of attack is taken against 
 Time ; and in both cases we feel that Mr. Bradley's 
 argument might have been made much shorter. 
 He has only got to prove that space and time must 
 be conceived relationally, that is, that they are not 
 capable of being presented in an immediate indi- 
 visible block-experience such as he will recognise as 
 alone fully real ; and then they are swept away in the 
 general condemnation of the relational form. And 
 with this shorter argument the grounds of condem- 
 nation would have become more manifest. Space 
 and time are thought-entities, rather than feeling- 
 entities : their defect, on Mr. Bradley's view, is just 
 that they are made and used by human intelligence. 
 
 ii. From this defence of Time and Space 
 against Mr. Bradley, a defence that might easily 
 be adapted so as to apply to other conceptions of 
 like nature, it should not be inferred that I wish to 
 affirm their ultimate validity and to argue that they 
 hold good absolutely. The obvious fact is that 
 they are human conceptions, relative to human 
 faculties and purposes, and not valid beyond them. 
 An absolute consciousness has doubtless its 
 appropriate categories or cosmological conceptions ; 
 but we cannot tell what they are, except that they 
 must be different from ours. Our conception of
 
 AND ON PERSONALITY 95 
 
 Time, for example, is evidently inappropriate to 
 an Absolute Being ; we cannot imagine him as 
 beginning or ending, or as continually in change or 
 continually at rest, or as alternating between 
 change and rest. But this is no slur on Time 
 as a human conception. And, just as we answer 
 Mr. Bradley, we should answer the antinomies 
 of Kant. We should concede to Kant that we 
 cannot imagine time either ending or going on 
 for ever ; that we cannot imagine ourselves either 
 dividing time infinitely, or coming upon an atom 
 of time : but then no human being wants, or ever 
 will want, either to get to the end of time, or to 
 divide it into infinitely small parts. The conception 
 of time is adequate for everything that we want to 
 do with it. Mr. Bradley himself writes, and cannot 
 help writing, in terms of these common cosmological 
 conceptions in every line of his book ; and by so 
 doing tacitly admits their practical sufficiency. 
 
 12. The absolutist's scepticism about the 
 conceptions just dealt with is a trifle compared with 
 his sceptical treatment of a conception that may be 
 counted either as cosmological or as psychological, 
 the conception of Personality. Though personality 
 is much more than indispensable to practical conduct, 
 it is at least that. It might indeed be argued that 
 the conception is nothing original, but a product of 
 comparatively late and artificial conditions : for it is 
 a commonplace of historians that it was much less 
 definitely held in the ancient world than in the 
 modern, and that it was strengthened by the sense
 
 96 'PERSONALITY ILLUSORY; BECAUSE CH. 
 
 of responsibility fostered by Roman law and personal 
 religion. But, on the other hand, though personality 
 is in one sense a product of progress, we should be 
 entitled to argue that it is also a cause, and that the 
 growth of the conception has been a most powerful 
 civilising agency. Certain it is that personality now 
 has become a necessary of life ; and that, were it 
 seriously weakened, civilised society, even as an 
 economic structure, would fall to pieces. 
 
 13. But, of course, personality is a great deal 
 more than this. It is the best element in our 
 experience in the sense that a good human person 
 is the best thing we know, and that the qualities 
 which make him good belong essentially to what we 
 call his personality. As the supremely valuable it 
 acts as our main standard of valuation. I cannot 
 illustrate this better than from my friends the 
 enemy. All through Mr. Bradley 's Appearance 
 and Reality and Prof. Bosanquet's Logic we find 
 individuality used as a term appropriate to what is 
 higher: reality is "individual" (e.g. A.R. p. 149), 
 truth is "individual" (e.g. Logic, i. p. 3). But what 
 does anybody know of individuality apart from 
 his acquaintance with it in human individuals ? 
 Moreover, not merely is personality the standard of 
 value which we commonly use ; the human person 
 is also the source of authority in all valuation. 
 Analyse valuation to its ultimate terms and we see 
 that, in the last resort, it is what Bentham disliked 
 so much, ' ipsedixitism ' : we cannot appeal to any 
 external authority to override the personal affir-
 
 v NOT SEPARATE FROM ENVIRONMENT' 97 
 
 mation. I have tried to prove this in regard to 
 art, 1 and it is no less true of morality and know- 
 ledge. Liberty of conscience, right of private 
 judgment, and justification by faith are simply 
 expressions of the same principle in another field. 
 Mr. Bradley himself, with his fine heretical instinct, 
 is often more than half upon the same side. But 
 all this goes by the board before the absolutist's 
 denunciation. Personality and its individual 
 separateness is to him the veil of Maya, das radical 
 Bo'se, the source of evil and illusion. 
 
 14. When he comes to specific criticism the 
 absolutist's injustice to personality naturally takes 
 the form of denying its separateness from the 
 impersonal environment. We find this, where we 
 emphatically ought not to find it, in Prof. Bosan- 
 quet. But the fact is that Prof. Bosanquet, though 
 he never professes acceptance of the Absolute, and 
 indeed often uses expressions which preclude the 
 Absolute, drops frequently into Hegelian phrase- 
 ology and allows himself to be dominated by 
 Hegelian prejudice. Certain expressions in his 
 Psychology of the Moral Self (pp. 9 sq.} show the 
 anti-personal bias very plainly. He compares the 
 soul to a crystal forming in a solution according to 
 the chemical " affinities and cohesions " of its 
 material. Now our reluctance to accept a physical 
 analogy of this kind is not to be got over by 
 sneering at it as a piece of selfish exclusiveness, as 
 an attempt " to keep a little mystic shrine within 
 
 1 See "Art and Personality" ( 28 sy.) in Personal Idealism. 
 
 H
 
 'A LAST REFUGE FOR FREEDOM 
 
 the individual soul, which may be sacred from 
 intrusion and different from everything else," or as 
 " a little trick " "to get a last refuge for freedom by 
 shutting out the universe." It is a statement of 
 plainest fact to say that a soul is more separate 
 from its environment than a crystal from its solu- 
 tion. And the judgments of value, which are con- 
 nected with the self, and are not connected with the 
 crystal, are not to be dismissed as mere sentiment- 
 ality. But Prof. Bosanquet ignores them and makes 
 a merit of it: he claims that "it has always been 
 the most spiritual philosophy that has been most 
 audacious in simply taking the soul as an operation 
 or appearance within the universe, incapable of 
 being cut off from other operations and appear- 
 ances." "There is," he continues, "nothing to be 
 afraid of in finding that the operative content, 
 the actual being, of the soul comes from the en- 
 vironment." But in this levelling audacity Prof. 
 Bosanquet is just illustrating the old truth that an 
 exaggerated spiritual monism is but a step from 
 materialism. Prof. Haeckel calls himself a monist 
 too, and will have it that the moneron has arisen 
 by "spontaneous generation from inorganic nitro- 
 carbonates" (Riddle of the Universe, p. 377), and 
 that there is no break in the upward development 
 from the moneron to man. He would endorse 
 every word of my quotations from Prof. Bosanquet 
 with the merely verbal alteration of ' material ' for 
 1 spiritual.' 
 
 15. Mr. Bradley could hardly adopt the
 
 v 'THE SELF LACKS BOUNDARY' 99 
 
 position that the "operative content of the soul 
 comes from the environment," because it would 
 seem that in his view finite souls are really 
 the only spiritualities in that environment. His 
 Absolute is not, like the Urgrund of Jacob Behmen, 
 an all -supporting spiritual existence out of which 
 personalities rise momentarily as waves upon the 
 sea : it is probably in the end nothing but the 
 aggregate of finite souls. 1 His method is rather 
 to confuse the boundaries of the self, and he argues 
 that, take the self in any sense you will, you cannot 
 show how it is demarcated from the not-self. But 
 this argument must be met by the consideration 
 adduced already in reference to time and space, that 
 he is subjecting the conception to tests it was never 
 meant to bear. Many of Mr. Bradley 's ' aporiai ' 
 would disappear, I believe, on careful scrutiny ; 
 but, even if we granted that they all held good, we 
 should be none the worse. The work that the 
 conception of selfhood does for us does not require 
 that it should have sharply defined edges. We 
 know that a volitional decision is closer to the self 
 than a tooth-ache, a tooth-ache than an aching 
 tooth, and the aching tooth than the drug which 
 soothes it. But it is not important to determine 
 exactly how far, if at all, each of these is part of 
 the self. And, in any case, I do not see how 
 exactitude in the matter is attainable without some 
 sense-organ that men do not possess. We enjoy 
 exactitude in matters only that come under the 
 
 1 On this difficult point in Mr. Bradley's metaphysic, see infra, chap. ix. 41.
 
 ioo 'THE SELF UNREAL; BECAUSE CH. 
 
 scrutiny of our exact senses ; but to perceive the 
 soul we have no sense-organ at all. And indeed 
 Mr. Bradley 's argument that definite boundary is 
 essential to reality might be turned against many 
 things beside the human soul. If it is valid, what 
 is there that is real ? In nature certainly no 
 definite boundaries can be perceived, and the more 
 exact and powerful our scientific instruments 
 become, the more blurred do the edges of things 
 appear. All minute scientific observation is 
 approximate within a limit of error, and is taken 
 by the method of averages with a mean variation. 1 
 Nothing is absolutely precise except abstractions 
 such as those of the mathematical sciences. 
 
 16. And, as abstractions alone are perfectly 
 precise, so abstractions alone are perfectly un- 
 changing. It is a commonplace of Absolutism to 
 contrast the motionless perfection of the great 
 Totum Simul with the mutability of phenomena. 
 Thus it is quite in order that Mr. Bradley should 
 support his attack upon the self by pointing to its 
 mutability. But why should it not be mutable ? 
 The self becomes none the less real by changing, 
 provided that it do not change too fast. A self 
 that was extremely mutable would certainly cease 
 to deserve the name of self, because it could no 
 longer perform the functions of a self. But why 
 should it be absolutely fixed ? One of Mr. Bradley 's 
 arguments is that " if you take an essence which 
 
 1 For a good example see Prof. E. W. Scripture on the measurement 
 of the diameter of a coin (JVew Psychology, pp. 43 sqq.}.
 
 v MUTABLE AND RELATIONAL' 101 
 
 can change, it is not an essence at all " (A.R. p. 
 80). But this has quite a medieval ring. Unless 
 we propose to rehabilitate some form of scholastic 
 realism, why should essence be essentially immu- 
 table ? The essence of a thing may be defined as 
 those elements of it which are most important from 
 the view-point of some purpose or function. Thus 
 the essence of a thing may alter either from inward 
 change, or from change of purpose or function. 
 Various obiter dicta of Mr. Bradley suggest that he 
 would not object very seriously to this definition. 
 But, if so, the self shares the quality of mutability 
 with everything else in the world. Neither from 
 its mutability nor from its indefiniteness of boundary 
 is Mr. Bradley entitled to argue that the self is 
 appearance and not reality. 
 
 17. But, after all, these matters of indefinite 
 boundary and mutability are but subordinate counts 
 in Mr. Bradley's indictment. His "mortal objec- 
 tion " to the self is that it exhibits once more " the 
 old puzzle as to the connection of diversity with 
 unity " (A.R. p. 103), in other words, that it is 
 subject to the relational form. This it shares with 
 every form of appearance ; for " reality, as it com- 
 monly appears, contains terms and relations, and 
 indeed may be said to consist in these mainly " 
 (A.R. p. 107). In terming this a ' mortal objec- 
 tion,' Mr. Bradley is quite right from his own point 
 of view. The relational form is a fundamental and 
 essential characteristic of personality : deny its 
 validity and you deal a mortal stroke at the validity
 
 102 PERSONALITY IS THE CRITERION CH. 
 
 and reality of personal experience. And Mr. 
 Bradley is right from my point of view in extending 
 the application of the relational form to every kind 
 of " reality as it commonly appears." A personal 
 idealist must hold an anthropomorphic cosmology : 
 he must treat the relational form as valid of the 
 real world just because it is essential to personal 
 experience. A philosopher who finds fault with 
 the existence of the relational form in rerum natura 
 is judging by a standard of intelligibility which is 
 other than the personal. 
 
 The question of the validity of the relational 
 form is therefore identical with the question what is 
 to be our standard of reality and intelligibility. Is 
 it to be personal experience, or is it to be some 
 other principle, such as the Feeling - Absolute ? 
 Mr. Bradley would admit that personality has 
 strong prima facie claims. " The self," he con- 
 fesses, "is no doubt the highest form of experience 
 which we have" (A.R. p. 119). Then why ask for 
 anything higher ? Volition, which I hold to be the 
 most characteristic function of personality, gives us, 
 according to Mr. Bradley, an " intense feeling of 
 reality" (A.R. p. 115). Then why not accept it 
 as truly real? Because, answers Mr. Bradley, "it 
 is with you as with the man who, transported by 
 his passion, feels and knows that only love gives 
 the secret of the universe" (A.R. p. 115 sq.). But 
 I reply that the cases are not parallel. We learn to 
 distrust the love - transport because on cool con- 
 sideration the conviction that we know the great
 
 v OF REALITY AND INTELLIGIBILITY 103 
 
 secret passes away ; there are things that the erotic 
 revelation does not explain, cool consideration for 
 one of them. The principle of personality, on 
 the other hand, does not evaporate in disillusion ; 
 it does explain, if not everything, at least the most 
 important part of most things and the most im- 
 portant things. No it does not, rejoins Mr. 
 Bradley ; it does not show us how " to understand 
 diversity in unity" (A.R. p. 112). I reply that 
 it does, so long as you do not ask to be ' shown 
 how ' in the most coarsely material manner ; so 
 long as you do not think of mental contents as 
 separate like marbles and ask to be shown by what 
 links they can be joined into a unity. That central 
 puzzle of terms and relations, unity-with-diversity, 
 the One and the Many, which worries you to 
 death, is all the time being solved within your own 
 breast : solvitur cogitando is the answer to Mr. 
 Bradley's apparently multiplex but really simple 
 difficulty. If this is so, we can meet several of 
 Mr. Bradley's heaviest charges with a direct 
 negative. " The self-apprehension of the self as 
 one and many" is "at last the full answer to our 
 whole series of riddles" (A.R. p. 108) ; "in this 
 intuition " you do " possess a diversity without 
 discrepancy" (ibid.)] and it is a valid "claim on 
 the part of the self, not only to maintain and to 
 justify its own proper being, but, in addition, to 
 rescue things from the condemnation" which Mr. 
 Bradley has passed upon them (A.R. p. 103). The 
 Self is the standard of intelligibility ; and, when
 
 104 A FINAL CRITERION IS UNPROVABLE CH. 
 
 Mr. Bradley looks elsewhere, we may say, using 
 his own quotation from Strauss, that " he partly 
 does not know what he wants, and partly does 
 not want what he knows." 
 
 To all this there is the obvious answer that I 
 have been indulging in sheer assertion, and that I 
 have never proved my master principle. Well, 
 I freely admit it. I hold that such a principle 
 must in the first instance be taken on trust : a 
 standard of reality and intelligibility cannot be 
 established by the ordinary mediate processes of 
 proof; it can only justify itself by success in ex- 
 plaining the world. For the effective establishment 
 of the principle of personality we need a whole 
 system of philosophy, which, needless to say, has 
 not yet been written. Such a system, were it 
 completed, would prove that the principle of 
 personality can explain. But meanwhile there is 
 the preliminary task of proving that the rival 
 principle of feeling-absolutism fails in explanation : 
 to this I address myself in the following sections 
 and in a later chapter devoted to detailed examina- 
 tion of Mr. Bradley 's work. 
 
 1 8. To show how little Feeling - Absolutism 
 avails for explanation we must pass the various 
 philosophical disciplines in quick review and esti- 
 mate what it has done in each. The task of 
 criticism is rendered monotonous by the uniformly 
 negative character of the achievement. It is indeed 
 hard to see how anything positive could be hoped
 
 v ABSOLUTISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 105 
 
 for : when once the partial is condemned for its 
 partialness, but declared to be somehow absorbable 
 in the Absolute, there is nothing more to be added 
 about it except a course of variously flavoured 
 negations. 
 
 Some of the negations which bear on psychology 
 we have made acquaintance with in the preceding 
 discussion of the Self. But in any positive psycho- 
 logical interpretation Mr. Bradley takes up very 
 different ground. Recognising, as it would appear, 
 the impossibility of getting a psychology from the 
 view-point of the Absolute he advocates the method 
 of " Phenomenalism " (which is not easy to dis- 
 tinguish from common - sense), and argues con- 
 vincingly against those who want to have " no 
 division at all between psychology and meta- 
 physics" ("Defence of Phenomenalism in Psy- 
 chology " in Mind, N.S. No. 33, p. 26). Treating 
 psychology in this ' phenomenalist ' way, Mr. 
 Bradley makes free use of concepts previously 
 riddled with contradictions. We find an example 
 in the very central position of all his psychology, 
 the formula indeed into which his whole psycho- 
 logical doctrine might be condensed, " Volition is 
 the self-realisation of an idea" ("On Active 
 Attention " in Mind, N.S., No. 41, p. 27 et saepe al. ). 
 It must seem strange that so riddled and crazy a 
 concept as self should be usable as the very pivot of 
 all psychology; though Mr. Bradley might defend 
 its use by his great distinction between what is true 
 and what works ; or, in other words, between meta-
 
 106 ABSOLUTISM AND KNOWLEDGE CH. 
 
 physical or ultimate truth and scientific or half-truth 
 which is obtained by " legitimate fictions " and " con- 
 venient falsehood," and consists of "explanations 
 that truly explain" but are not "true explanations" 
 (" Defence of Phenomenalism," pp. 30, 32, 35). 
 However, legitimately or illegitimately, Mr. Bradley 
 does get forward ; and thus provokes us to ask why 
 the standpoint of phenomenalism should not prevail 
 yet more widely, and why the process of meta- 
 physical adjustment, which is to result in ultimate 
 truth as the absolutist understands it, should not in 
 all cases be postponed till the Greek Kalends. 
 
 19. Just because the fundamental position of 
 the feeling-absolutist is the rejection of the general 
 form of thought, it is upon Knowledge that the 
 brunt of his scepticism falls. Mr. Bradley has 
 made no small contribution to the theory of 
 knowledge ; but it was done at a time before his 
 later metaphysical views had gained complete 
 possession of his mind (cf. P.L. p. vii.). In 
 Appearance and Reality the discussions that touch 
 upon knowledge generally take the form of attacks 
 upon its validity : knowledge is indicted both for 
 its partialness and for what Mr. Bradley calls its 
 separation of content from existence. Into both 
 lines of attack he throws himself with energy : if it 
 be true that he has reached his present position by 
 a recoil from Hegel, it is not strange that he should 
 be specially severe upon the more distinctively 
 intellectual side of our experience.
 
 v 'PARTIAL; THEREFORE FALSE' 107 
 
 The first of these lines of attack is appropriate to 
 Absolutism in every form : he who holds that the 
 Absolute alone is real is committed to the position 
 that every human judgment is partial and so far 
 false. No judgment can include everything ; and 
 the mere fact of leaving anything outside its scope 
 may be regarded as fatal to its truth. " Every 
 truth, because incomplete, is more or less erroneous" 
 (A.R. p. 536). This doctrine of the Conditionality 
 of Truth, which is set in a foremost place in Appear- 
 ance and Reality and may be found substantially in 
 the Principles of Logic, goes with the general tend- 
 ency to discredit personal experience : if certainty 
 belongs to any item of our personal experience, 
 then the claim of the Absolute to override person- 
 ality disappears. But the plausibility of the doctrine 
 is due to a confusion between the conditionedness 
 and the conditionality of a judgment. If a man 
 stands close to a large fire for some time, he will 
 judge that he has a certain feeling to which he will 
 probably give the term ' hot.' Such a judgment 
 stands in an infinite complex of conditions. The 
 man, the subject of the judgment, is conditioned 
 by all the environment that makes any difference 
 to him, and it is hard to say what part of the 
 environment makes no difference : he would not 
 exist, nor would the fire exist, without the world 
 they stand in. Thus the judgment, like every 
 other, is conditioned, simply because its content is 
 a piece of the world. Nevertheless, it is quite 
 unconditional ; there is no hypothetical element in
 
 io8 'RELATIONAL; THEREFORE FALSE' CH. 
 
 it. Its verbal expression may be ambiguous ; but 
 as it is formed in the judger's mind it is categorical 
 and certain. It is the expression of an unquestion- 
 able immediate experience ; its circumstant condi- 
 tions make no difference to its truth. Whether a 
 judgment is conditional can only be settled by 
 examination in each case : but it is only the 
 exigencies of a metaphysical theory that can make 
 us refuse to recognise the unconditionality of that 
 vast mass of judgments on which is based our 
 general knowledge of the world. 
 
 20. The other line of attack upon knowledge, 
 that it involves a separation of content from exist- 
 ence, is on rather a different footing ; it belongs to 
 Feeling - Absolutism alone, perhaps only to Mr. 
 Bradley's version of it. Expressed in simplest 
 terms it comes to no more than the old difficulty 
 about the relational form : in Mr. Bradley's 
 terminology a non-relational block-experience unites 
 content with existence, while a relational experience 
 separates them. If my previous vindication of the 
 relational form is sound, there is no need to defend 
 knowledge on this score. Two remarks only may 
 be added. The first relates to Mr. Bradley's 
 psychological history of the matter, which runs as 
 follows. In the beginning, as one may say, below 
 the level of thought content and existence are one, 
 that is, consciousness is sub - relational ; when 
 thought arises, it causes a "diremption of feeling's 
 unity " and consciousness becomes relational (A.R. 
 p. 460) ; at a higher stage the diremption is healed,
 
 v SEVERING CONTENT FROM EXISTENCE 109 
 
 so that content and existence are reunited with the 
 higher elements somehow preserved in the fusion, 
 and consciousness becomes super- relational (ibid.\ 
 Now of these three stages the first two only have 
 any claim to be historical : the consciousness of the 
 oyster is, or is supposed to be, sub-relational ; the 
 human consciousness is relational ; the third or 
 super-relational stage is a mere dream. And this 
 leads on to my second remark, which deals with the 
 same point more with reference to terminology. 
 Terminology is always a matter of secondary im- 
 portance, so long as the meaning is clear : and it is 
 quite clear what the stages are that Mr. Bradley 
 means to refer to in what he says of the ' union of 
 content with existence.' All the same I must beg 
 leave to point out that this terminology is not 
 justified by correspondence with anything that 
 actually happens. Of super-personality no one, of 
 course, knows anything. Of pure sensation we 
 have no direct knowledge : but in mental states that 
 approach it, such as the spasm of tooth-extraction, 
 what happens is that we simply feel and don't 
 think ; on such occasions we are not, more than at 
 any other time, uniting content with existence. The 
 philosopher at his best unites content with exist- 
 ence just as much or just as little as the oyster 
 or the Absolute. ' Uniting content with existence ' 
 is a purely fanciful term for the sub-relational stage 
 of consciousness ; Mr. Bradley could just as well 
 have called it ' abracadabrant ' or 'runcible,' or any 
 other word that Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll
 
 no FEELING-ABSOLUTISM CANNOT CH. 
 
 might suggest. His history of the primal union, 
 subsequent diremption and final redintegration of 
 content with existence, if taken literally, is nothing 
 but a fairy-tale. 1 
 
 In Mr. Bradley's presentation his two lines of 
 attack upon knowledge tend to blend into one. 
 " The whole of finite being and knowledge consists 
 vitally ... in the alienation of the two aspects of 
 existence and content" (A.R. pp. 448, cf. 455 sg.). 
 In Mr. Bradley's phrase, finitude involves ideality 
 (cf. A.R., index s.v. "finite, ideality of"); and 
 every act of knowledge, insomuch as it is partial 
 and finite, must also be 'ideal.' 
 
 21. An awkward result of Mr. Bradley's 
 doctrine of the inevitable falsity of truth is that he 
 is left with no means of distinguishing it from error. 
 Everything that Mr. Bradley says about error in 
 his chapter in Appearance and Reality (chap, xvi.), 
 must be said on his own principles about truth. 
 Turning over the pages of that chapter we find the 
 following statements: " Error is the same as false 
 appearance or ... it is at any rate one kind of 
 false appearance" (p. 187); "error ... is content 
 made loose from its own reality, and related to a 
 reality with which it is discrepant" (p. 188) ; " error 
 . . . is self-contradictory" (ibid.) ; "error is truth, it 
 is partial truth" (p. 192); "the point of error . . . 
 
 1 It is remarkable what a mythological tone Mr. Bradley's psychology 
 occasionally takes. In his account of Activity mental contents expand them- 
 selves, contract themselves, transcend limits, oscillate, waver and struggle 
 with each other in the dim chambers of the mind, conquer and are defeated, 
 till we are reminded of the ghostly battles of the jins in the Arabian Nights. 
 See especially A.R. pp. 96 sqq.
 
 v DISTINGUISH ERROR FROM TRUTH in 
 
 lies in ... insistence on the partial and dis- 
 crepant " (p. 194); "the one-sided emphasis of 
 error . . . will contribute, we know not how, to 
 the harmony of the Absolute" (p. 195); "error is 
 truth which it is supplemented" (ibid.}. Now we 
 have learned Mr. Bradley's lesson to very little 
 purpose if we do not see that his principles compel 
 us to say all these things about truth. Every true 
 statement, because partial, is, to some extent, false 
 appearance or one kind of false appearance ; is 
 content made loose from its own reality ; is dis- 
 crepant with reality ; is in some degree self-contra- 
 dictory ; is partial error ; insists on the partial 
 and discrepant ; is one-sided ; needs supplementa- 
 tion and yet contributes, we know not how, to the 
 harmony of the Absolute. The quotations I have 
 made are but representative selections from a much 
 greater stock which Mr. Bradley offers. But, let 
 him multiply definition and exhaust ingenuity as he 
 will, he can do no more than assure us that truth 
 and error differ in degree, he can never tell us how 
 to measure the degree. Here are two statements : 
 ' one and one are two,' ' one and one are three.' On 
 feeling-absolutist principles we are justified in saying 
 no more than that both are partially true and also 
 partially false ; that both need rearrangement to 
 make them harmonise with reality ; and that, if we 
 could view them both "from the Absolute's point of 
 view" (A.R. p. 184), we should know which was 
 the truer ; but that if we got to that point of view 
 we ourselves " would have been transmuted and
 
 H2 DECLINING UPON UTILITY CH. 
 
 destroyed" (ibid.} and thought itself would have com- 
 mitted suicide (A.R. pp. 170, 361). 
 
 22. Of course no one can sit down with such 
 an impotent conclusion ; we must have some 
 criterion to work with. Mr. Bradley would protest 
 against the sort of efficiency-criterion that a prag- 
 matist would advocate, but is he not paving the 
 way for one much lower ? One of the things I find 
 hardest to accept from Mr. Bradley is his antithesis 
 between what works and what is true. The tone in 
 which he speaks of modern science rather reminds 
 one of the tone in which some upper-class people 
 are wont to speak of retail trade, as something 
 absurd and undignified though eminently useful. 
 For the solid results which the scientific men have 
 to show he entertains sincere respect ; but the 
 " mere working ideas " of science he treats with 
 contemptuous toleration as " convenient false- 
 hoods," " necessary and legitimate fictions," " half- 
 truths," "useful nonsense" (A.R. p. 451 et al.). 
 On the other hand, ultimate truth, truth " from the 
 Absolute's point of view" (A.R. p. 184), truth 
 that corresponds to "the idea of perfect Reality" 
 (A.R. p. 401) is treated as immeasurably superior 
 to science, and yet is credited with nothing desirable, 
 neither with lux nor with fructus. Now am I an 
 alarmist in thinking that all this threatens the 
 approach of a most insidious and dangerous fallacy ? 
 It is notorious what has happened in ethics to Dr. 
 McTaggart and Prof. Taylor ; how from the unsub- 
 stantial heights of the Absolute they have tended to
 
 v ABSOLUTISM AND MORALITY 113 
 
 lapse to the lower categories, Dr. McTaggart in 
 particular to a somewhat outspoken variety of 
 hedonism. May not the same thing happen in 
 logic ? Will not the next logician of the school 
 draw his distinction between absolute and practical 
 truth ? Will he not relegate absolute truth to a 
 purely honorary or noumenal station, and, practi- 
 cally abandoning Mr. Bradley's superfine position, 
 base effective truth on coarse utility ? It may 
 sound improbable ; and yet it is quite consistent 
 with the history of Absolutism. 1 
 
 23. It is in the field of Morals and Religion 
 that absolutism cuts most sharply against convic- 
 tions that plain men hold tenaciously. Though this 
 is evident from the merest inspection of Appearance 
 and Reality, it is not so universally admitted as it 
 ought to be. One meets occasionally with naive 
 admirers of Mr. Bradley (admirers, surely, rather 
 than readers) who put us out of countenance by 
 affirming that Mr. Bradley is really orthodox at 
 bottom, and that what he says really means some- 
 thing quite harmless and ordinary, as that the 
 universe is an organic whole, or that the finite can 
 never comprehend the infinite. For the sake of the 
 simple-hearted, then, I will turn over one of Mr. 
 Bradley's chapters and set down a few of the more 
 notable passages. In his chapter on "Goodness" 
 we read that " the ultimate truth of morality or 
 religion" is a "common prejudice" (p. 402); that 
 
 1 See Prof. Pringle-Pattison's Hegclianism and Personality, passim. 
 
 I
 
 114 'GOODNESS IS RADICALLY VICIOUS' CH. 
 
 "goodness" exhibits "a contradictory character," 
 insomuch as " it tends to pass beyond itself, and, if 
 it were completed, it would forthwith cease properly 
 to be good" (p. 409); that "goodness" has "a 
 radical vice" (p. 414) ; that "goodness is a subordi- 
 nate and, therefore, a self-contradictory aspect of the 
 universe " (p. 420), that the views of " the popular 
 moralist " are " a blind tangle of bewilderment and 
 error " (p. 420) ; that " virtue is ... a pursuit of 
 what is inconsistent and therefore impossible" 
 (p. 421); that certain difficulties of moral science 
 cannot be solved till "goodness is degraded to an 
 appearance" (p. 423); that "goodness, as such, is 
 but an appearance which is transcended in the 
 Absolute " (p. 429) ; that " considered either theo- 
 retically or practically, ' Free Will ' is ... a mere 
 lingering chimera," which " no writer, who respects 
 himself, can be called on any longer to treat . . . 
 seriously" (p. 435); that the result of goodness as 
 inner morality is that "that which professes itself 
 moral would be the same as mere badness, if it did not 
 differ, even for the worse, by the addition of hypo- 
 crisy" (p. 436);* that virtue "pursues the unmeaning" 
 (p. 437) ; that " religion is ... forced to maintain 
 unreduced aspects . . . and . . . exists ... by a kind 
 of perpetual oscillation and compromise " (p. 440) ; 
 that "an inner discrepancy . . . pervades the whole 
 field of religion," which "we are tempted to 
 exemplify ... by the sexual passion," so that "its 
 
 1 Mr. Bradley adds at the foot of the page, "We may note here that our 
 country, the chosen land of Moral Philosophy, has the reputation abroad of 
 being the chief home of hypocrisy and cant."
 
 'GOD CANNOT EXIST' 115 
 
 dogmas must end in one-sided error, or else in 
 senseless compromise" (p. 443) ; that, " like morality, 
 religion is not ultimate, it is a mere appearance, and 
 is therefore inconsistent with itself" (p. 444) ; that, 
 "short of the Absolute, God cannot rest, and, 
 having reached that goal, he is lost and religion 
 with him " (p. 447) ; that " God is but an aspect, and 
 that must mean but an appearance, of the Absolute " 
 (p. 448), and, finally, that " the God which could 
 exist would most assuredly be no God " (p. 449). 
 If we traversed the remaining twenty-six chapters 
 and appendix of Mr. Bradley's book we might gather 
 an even more pungent anthology. 
 
 I admit that the foregoing quotations do not 
 look so bad in their context as when they stand 
 nakedly alone. Then again we must allow for 
 Mr. Bradley's attitude : he is fond of saying strong 
 things in metaphysics "with a view to astonish 
 common sense and petrify his enemies " (P.L. 
 p. 139). And to astonish common sense is quite 
 a useful function in its place. The ethical and 
 religious prejudices of the British middle-classes 
 should not be treated with excessive respect : it 
 does the smug, respectable philistine good to be 
 shaken up roughly by Mr. Bradley's vigorous hand. 
 But, when all allowances are made, it is plain, not 
 merely that Mr Bradley will not harmonise with 
 any form of orthodox moral philosophy and religion 
 ever current in civilised Europe, but that his prin- 
 ciples preclude him from offering any constructive 
 account of morality and religion at all.
 
 Ii6 FROM THE WORLD'S IMPERFECTION CH. 
 
 24. The main ground of Mr. Bradley's attack 
 upon the reality of morals is the old anti-rational 
 one of separation of idea from existence. 
 
 " Goodness," he says, " is the verification in existence of 
 a desired ideal content, and it thus implies the measure- 
 ment of fact by a suggested idea. Hence both goodness 
 and truth contain the separation of idea and existence, 
 and involve a process in time. And, therefore, each is 
 appearance, and but a one-sided aspect of the Real " 
 (A.R. p. 402). 
 
 Of this whole matter I fear the reader is now 
 heartily tired, and indeed I have nothing more to 
 say than has been said already. We can only 
 admit Mr. Bradley's charge that morality is an 
 affair of human intelligence, not of feeling merely, 
 and abide the consequences. 
 
 In all that Mr. Bradley has to allege against the 
 full reality of moral experience this point alone has 
 strict relevance ; and this excuses me from discuss- 
 ing his numerous other difficulties, theoretical and 
 practical. As helping to prove that morality is 
 only appearance Mr. Bradley alleges that goodness 
 is always the adjective of something not itself (A.R. 
 p. 410) ; that goodness is desire for perfection and, 
 when perfection is reached, desire and therefore 
 goodness ceases (ibid.) ; that in moral goodness it is 
 impossible to harmonise completely self-assertion 
 and self-sacrifice and impossible to dispense with 
 either (A.R. pp. 414 sqq.) ; that the morality of 
 conscience leads to self-sufficiency and self-will 
 (A.R. pp. 430 sqq.) ; that it is impossible to draw 
 a precise boundary between moral goodness in the
 
 v TO THE ABSOLUTE'S PERFECTION 117 
 
 proper inward sense and good things like beauty, 
 physical strength and courage, which are more or 
 less akin to goodness (A.R. p. 437) ; that evil is 
 made by and is necessary to the existence of good- 
 ness, so that " morality itself, which makes evil, 
 desires in evil to remove a condition of its own 
 being" (A.R. p. 202). These difficulties have 
 been worked out elaborately by Prof. Taylor in 
 his Problem of Conduct, and a great many added 
 ranging in seriousness from " the impossibility of 
 ever finally removing the possibility of a deep- 
 seated antagonism between the competing claims 
 of fulness and harmony of individual satisfaction 
 and social width or comprehensiveness " (p. 388), 
 down to the ocular discomfort of pursuing philo- 
 sophical studies by artificial light. All of them are 
 declared to be solved by the Absolute, and indeed 
 to prove that the Absolute exists to solve them ; 
 but their general effect must be decidedly depressing 
 to any reader who is not fortified with a consider- 
 able experience of life. 
 
 It is no part of my business to unravel these 
 sinister enigmas, which indeed rather suggest to 
 me Mr. Bradley's own phrase, "a blind tangle of 
 bewilderment and error : " my business lies in 
 proving that absolutism multiplies difficulties and 
 settles none. But I cannot help thinking that 
 Mr. Bradley and Prof. Taylor are taking a dia- 
 metrically wrong path to prove the existence of a 
 perfect Reality. It avails nothing for their purpose 
 to lay out all the theoretical puzzles, practical diffi-
 
 u8 THE MELTING-TOGETHER CH. 
 
 culties, and incurable miseries of the world we live in. 
 You cannot prove that the New Jerusalem is golden 
 by throwing mud at your own dwelling-place. The 
 true method seems precisely opposite : we should 
 rather prove that the world has goodness enough to 
 entitle us to argue for the ultimate removal of all evil. 
 25. The denial of full reality to moral good- 
 ness, so that it can find place within the Absolute 
 only in a transmuted form, involves the assertion 
 that moral evil has a share of ultimate reality and 
 is to be similarly transmuted into the Absolute, 
 which itself is neither moral nor immoral but 
 "super-moral" (A.R. p. 202). This union of 
 contraries to form the all-inclusive perfection is a 
 cardinal point with Mr. Bradley ; truth and error, 
 beauty and ugliness are melted together in just the 
 same way. But no other conjunction gives us the 
 same shock as that of morality and immorality, 
 because the moral and the immoral are opposed in 
 a way that truth and error, beauty and ugliness are 
 not. Immorality in the strict sense means a bad 
 direction of the will ; and the good will is so dia- 
 metrically opposed to the bad will in our personal 
 experience that it shocks the moral sense to be told 
 that both are to be rearranged into compatibility in 
 the perfect Reality. 
 
 The justification which Mr. Bradley alleges for 
 the final preservation of immorality is that bad men 
 may subserve good ends : that " Heaven's design 
 . . . can realise itself as effectively in ' Catiline or 
 Borgia ' as in the scrupulous or innocent " (A.R.
 
 OF GOOD AND EVIL' 119 
 
 p. 202). This is hardly relevant ; for a bad man 
 viewed as an instrument, possibly an unconscious 
 instrument, is different from a bad man viewed 
 from the inside, so to speak, that is, with reference 
 to the direction of his will. But Mr. Bradley's 
 doctrine does appeal to us, I admit, on a rather 
 different ground, the sense we have that many 
 personal qualities and characters which the common 
 standard condemns could hardly be suffered to 
 disappear without leaving the world poorer. Such 
 a quality as unsociability surely it has a certain 
 use in keeping the crowd at a distance and enabling, 
 say, an artist to do work which intruders would 
 have spoilt. Even Catiline and Borgia, and still 
 more Benvenuto Cellini and Napoleon, possessed 
 elements of character much more interesting than 
 we find in commonplace, third-rate, virtuous people. 
 I suppose the solution of the difficulty is that in 
 such cases we must distinguish the good elements 
 of character from the will, which was bad. In 
 common phrase they were bad men, but had a 
 great deal of good in them. 
 
 26. Let us now see what ethical explanation 
 Feeling- Absolutism has to offer in recompense : we 
 shall find, I think, that its interpretative powers are 
 slight indeed. There is one explanation which it is 
 capable of supplying, though Mr. Bradley never 
 puts it forward as prominently as he should, the 
 explanation of what we may call the moral nisus, or 
 the impulse which urges us on to do and suffer in 
 the sphere of morality. " Morality," says Mr.
 
 120 THE NISUS OF MORALITY CH. 
 
 Bradley, " is the identification of the individual's will 
 with his own idea of perfection" (A.R. p. 431). 
 But why, we ask, is perfection attractive ; what 
 makes us strive to attain it? It really is not 
 enough to answer, " We do not know and we do 
 not care" (E.S. p. 57). How much a more 
 definite answer is needed is brought home to us 
 by the hedonism of Prof. Taylor's more systematic 
 work : in the Problem of Conduct it is the desire 
 for pleasure that first sets man upon the path 
 that ends in the Absolute. But a certain doctrine 
 of Mr. Bradley 's, which we could have wished to 
 see him develop more systematically, proves that 
 there is no necessary connection between absolutism 
 and hedonism. In the Principles of Logic we find 
 a most important though slightly mysterious logical 
 function which critics have treated very sceptically. 
 It appears in the alleged axiom that "all suggested 
 ideas . . . are real, unless they are excluded " 
 (p. 385), which is explained as "the striving for 
 perfection, the desire of the mind for an infinite 
 totality . . . which moves our intellect to appropriate 
 everything from which it is not forced off" (p. 451). 
 Now this impulse to self-development, so Mr. 
 Bradley teaches us, is not confined to thought, but 
 is found also in the realm of practice: 
 
 " This double effort of the mind to enlarge by all means 
 its domain, to widen in every way both the world of 
 knowledge and the realm of practice, shows us merely 
 two sides of that single impulse to self-realisation, which 
 most of us are agreed to find so mystical " (p. 452).
 
 ABSOLUTE-REALISATION 
 
 Here then, it seems to me, flung out by the way 
 in the course of an alien discussion, is Mr. Bradley's 
 answer to the question what leads us to strive 
 towards perfection : it is the effort of the finite to 
 expand itself to the infinite. 
 
 As no Oxford philosopher has thought fit to 
 develop this doctrine, it would hardly be relevant to 
 spend time in criticising it. It is enough to say that, 
 just as Prof. Bosanquet finds himself unable to verify 
 in his experience the impulse to affirm the unopposed 
 (infra, chap. ix. 28), so I do not verify in my own 
 experience the impulse to expand to the Absolute. 
 Nothing impels man to seek for cosmic harmony 
 and inclusiveness. If moral experience be repre- 
 sented, in accordance with Mr. Bradley, as a desire 
 for good, that good must be a ' human ' good, as 
 Aristotle said long ago. 
 
 27. From all this it is evident that the ethical 
 formula of Feeling-Absolutism should be realisation 
 of the Absolute so far as lies in human power. But 
 such a formula can never be applied practically, for 
 no form of human action that can be suggested will 
 bring us to the super- moral and super-relational 
 state. Getting drunk, or suspending reason by 
 other forms of excitement, will annihilate or at least 
 diminish the ' separation of content from existence ' : 
 but this is to sink below the relational form, not to 
 transcend it. 
 
 This is so obvious that Mr. Bradley adopts for 
 his ethical formula, not Absolute-realisation, but 
 self-realisation. To it he gives a meaning that is
 
 122 SELF-REALISATION en. 
 
 practical to some extent, though characteristically 
 invalidated in the end by an incurable discrepancy. 
 Self-realisation, he says, is the attainment of per- 
 fection, that is, of individuality ; and perfection 
 or individuality " consists ... in both harmony 
 and extent" (A.R. p. 414). According to Mr. 
 Bradley's rather unfamiliar definitions ' harmony ' 
 means systematising and refining to the utmost 
 every element of one's character, a process which 
 in common language is self-assertion : while to 
 ' extend ' the self means widening to the uttermost 
 the end pursued, which, again in common language, 
 is self-sacrifice. Here then we have " two great 
 divergent forms of moral goodness" (A.R, p. 415). 
 Though their conflict is but partial, in the end they 
 are hopelessly divergent (ibid.]. The "radical vice 
 of all goodness " points to its transcendence in the 
 Absolute. 
 
 The reader knows already what I think of this 
 1 transcendence,' so I delay no longer over it. My 
 point just now is that Mr. Bradley's formula of self- 
 realisation makes a hopeless divergence or dis- 
 crepancy between his ethics and his metaphysics. 
 For let us suppose the impossible accomplished ; 
 let us imagine a human character which is perfectly 
 harmonious or perfectly self-assertive and also 
 extended to the uttermost or utterly self-sacrificing, 
 which combines in one rounded individuality all the 
 admirable qualities of Park Lane, La Trappe and 
 an Oxford common-room how are we a micro- 
 millimetre nearer to super-morality and trans-
 
 ABSOLUTISM AND RELIGION 123 
 
 cendence of the relational form ? The human self 
 in its furthest conceivable expansion is nothing like 
 super-personality. So grave a discrepancy can only 
 be explained, like most speculative discrepancies, 
 by historical considerations. Mr. Bradley has kept 
 on the self-realisation formula from the period when 
 his allegiance to Hegel was closer than it is now, 
 and has not observed its want of coherence with his 
 newer metaphysics of the Feeling-Absolute. 
 
 28. In entering upon criticism of the feeling- 
 absolutist treatment of Religion we must be careful 
 to keep in view the facts to be accounted for. 
 Some remarks of Mr. Bradley 's on the hedonist 
 interpretation of morality are very apt in this 
 connection. 
 
 " The fact [to be accounted for]," he says, " is the moral 
 world, both on its external side of the family, society, and 
 the State, and the work of the individual in them, and 
 again, on its internal side of moral feeling and belief. The 
 theory which will account for and justify these facts as a 
 whole is the true moral theory ; and any theory which 
 cannot account for these facts may, in some other way, 
 perhaps, be a very good and correct theory, but it is not 
 a moral theory " (E.S. p. 82). 
 
 Keeping close to the line of Mr. Bradley's require- 
 ments we may say that in philosophy of religion the 
 facts to be accounted for are the ' religious world,' 
 both on its external side of the actual religious institu- 
 tions of our country, and the work of the individual 
 in them ; and again on its internal side of religious 
 feeling and belief. The theory which will account
 
 124 A NON-RELIGIOUS THEORY CH. 
 
 for and justify these facts is the true theory of 
 religion : while a feeling-absolutist theory which 
 can neither justify nor account for them may be a 
 very good and correct theory in its way, but it will 
 not be a religious theory. 
 
 Now I would venture to lay it down that no 
 theory of religion can justify or account for religion 
 which overlooks its dynamic aspect, its part in 
 furthering the active life and improvement of the 
 world. To serious men religion is an intensely 
 practical affair. This is recognised even by people 
 not naturally religious : ' if God did not exist it 
 would be necessary to invent him.' The mass of 
 childish superstitions, unrealities, and pomposities 
 that have attached themselves to our European 
 religion conceal its practical character very super- 
 ficially : any one with religious insight gets beneath 
 them at once. A mind whose interest is taken up 
 with these exterior futilities has no real claim to be 
 considered as religious : there is strictly no such 
 thing as dilettante religion. 
 
 Moreover, it seems essential to the full efficiency 
 of religion that the object of it, i.e. God, should be 
 regarded as perfectly good, according to the ideas of 
 the worshipper. We know that in savage gods 
 there is a considerable admixture of devilry ; but 
 that is at a stage before religion has become fully 
 implicated with morals : the evolution of religion 
 consists largely in refining out these primitive 
 elements, an interesting process which we see going 
 on in Plato's Republic. This, I suppose, is what
 
 'WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT' 125 
 
 justifies the tremendous struggles that have been 
 made for religious reformations : the religious con- 
 sciousness feels itself paralysed by the prevalence 
 of any conception of the divine character that is 
 lower than the best. 
 
 29. Now it is plain that feeling-absolutism 
 negates both these elementary conditions of a 
 religious theory. All forms of absolutism assert 
 a static universe, the improvement of which is 
 "nonsense, unmeaning or blasphemous" (A.R. p. 
 501) ; and feeling-absolutism resolves the antithesis 
 between God and Devil. Superficially, both these 
 negations are obscured in Mr. Bradley's presenta- 
 tion. Consistently, he ought to stand on the simple 
 affirmation of the eternal and immutable perfection 
 of the Absolute and of the world as an integral part 
 of it : he ought to maintain that, both as a whole 
 and as " immanent alike through every region of 
 appearances " (A.R. p. 487), the Absolute always 
 was, is, and always will be perfect. Nor does Mr. 
 Bradley ever say anything expressly contradicting 
 this. But, on the other hand, the sceptical treat- 
 ment of finite experience all through the book 
 conveys the impression that the Absolute cannot be 
 perfect now when every region in which it appears 
 is now infected, riddled, and ruined with falsity 
 and self-contradiction. And this impression is 
 strengthened by the quasi-eschatological language 
 into which Mr. Bradley often drops : in the 
 Absolute " all divisions would be healed up, it would 
 be experience entire" (A.R. p. 172; italics mine
 
 126 THE SUPREME BEING CH. 
 
 and so foil.) ; "the entire reality will be merely the 
 object thought out," it " will be feeling that is 
 satisfied completely" (A.R. p. 182); "in ultimate 
 Reality, all existence and all thought and feeling 
 become one" (A.R. p. 412). All these expressions 
 of futurity are perhaps merely rhetorical : in any 
 case, they may be reconciled by Mr. Bradley's 
 Doctrine of Appearances ; Reality as it appears is 
 imperfect, but as it is it is perfect : and, moreover, 
 he would say that time itself is but an unreal 
 appearance ; what will be perfect, is really perfect 
 now. All the same we get an impression, which 
 greatly palliates the static character of Mr. Bradley's 
 universe, that the perfection of the Absolute is 
 somehow an affair of the millenium. 
 
 In regard to the second point, that his object of 
 religious devotion is in part immoral, false, and 
 ugly, Mr. Bradley would plead the Doctrine of 
 Degrees of Truth and Reality, a doctrine which, as 
 I shall argue later, he has borrowed illegitimately 
 from Hegel : he would say that this bad element 
 in the Absolute is so small in quantity and so 
 thoroughly transmuted as to be quite unobjection- 
 able. But here we are justified in applying a 
 ' simple dilemma.' If the bad element is both 
 infinitesimally small and infinitely transmuted it can- 
 not ' preserve ' or represent the immense amount of 
 immorality, falsity, and ugliness which has existed, 
 exists, and will exist in the universe ; and to pre- 
 serve and represent this actual badness is just the 
 purpose for which the absolute badness is postu-
 
 v AS GOD AND DEVIL 127 
 
 lated : if, on the other hand, the bad element in the 
 Absolute is appreciably large, the Absolute ceases 
 to be an appropriate object of religious devotion. 
 There are certain spheres in which the absolutist 
 resolution of antitheses becomes outrageous. A 
 sincere artist may believe, or let himself be talked 
 into admitting, that art is a form of appearance, and 
 that the One-and-Whole Reality is ugly as well as 
 beautiful. But religion loses its practical efficacy 
 as soon as we let ourselves be persuaded that the 
 Supreme Being is diabolic as well as divine. 
 
 30. These, however, are preliminary considera- 
 tions. So far we only know that, in any case, 
 Mr. Bradley 's theory of religion cannot be religious; 
 the theory itself we have not yet come to. Before 
 we state and criticise it we may make the further 
 preliminary remark that in formulating his theory 
 Mr. Bradley has apparently been influenced by 
 perception of the dangers that beset consistent 
 absolutism. To the consistent absolutist religion is 
 simply an emotional affirmation of the absoluteness 
 of the Absolute, an affirmation that the One-and-All 
 is both perfect and all-inclusive. Now, if this be 
 held merely as a pious opinion not meant for 
 common use, no great harm will come of it. But 
 mix it up with any degree of fanaticism, and strange 
 results ensue. Passion clears the reason, though 
 narrowing its range ; and the religious absolutist 
 who really means business soon finds himself travel- 
 ling along a logical path leading to momentous 
 consequences. If the Absolute is all-inclusive, he
 
 128 QUIETIST OR ANTINOMIAN CH. 
 
 argues, it includes me ; my will is part of the will 
 of the Absolute : if the Absolute is perfect, always 
 has been, always will be perfect, nothing that any 
 part of it can do will change it. Thus runs the 
 short and simple argument of such a faith, and 
 history shows where it comes out. In Mr. Bradley 's 
 phrase " it idly dreams its life away in the quiet 
 world of divine inanity, or, forced into action by 
 chance desire, it may hallow every practice, how- 
 ever corrupt, by its empty spirit of devotion " (A.R. 
 p. 444). In other words, the removal of personal 
 responsibility leads to Quietism or Antinomianism, 
 according to the temperament of the devotee. 
 
 31. Such are the dangers which seem to 
 have weighed with Mr. Bradley. The theory of 
 religion which he adopts does avoid them, but at 
 the cost of a considerable deviation from the strict 
 principles of absolutism : 
 
 " The central point of religion," he says, " lies in what is 
 called faith. . . . Its maxim is, Be sure that opposition 
 to the good is overcome, and nevertheless act as if it 
 were there. . . . This inner discrepancy . . . pervades 
 the whole field of religion. We are tempted to exemplify 
 it, once again, by the sexual passion. A man may believe 
 in his mistress, may feel that without that faith he could 
 not live, and may find it natural, at the same time, 
 unceasingly to watch her. Or, again, when he does not be- 
 lieve in her, or perhaps even in himself, then he may desire 
 all the more to utter, and to listen to, repeated professions. 
 The same form of self-deception plays its part in the 
 ceremonies of religion " (A.R. pp. 442 sq.}. 
 
 To put it shortly, Mr. Bradley holds that religion 
 means " making believe " that the world is made
 
 v A MAKE-BELIEVE RELIGION 129 
 
 perfect in the Absolute, while knowing it is not 
 and acting accordingly. It is in affirming that 
 opposition to the good does really exist that Mr. 
 Bradley seems to be inconsistent with absolutism. 
 The inconsistency could only be removed by 
 arguing that the opposition is itself an unreal appear- 
 ance. This would transform ' faith ' into certainty, 
 but would introduce all the dangers of Anti- 
 nomianism and Quietism. 
 
 Now, though Mr. Bradley's faith-religion is not 
 altogether static, it is very far from recognising 
 adequately the dynamic quality of religious belief; 
 while as a description of actual religion current at the 
 present or at any time in the past, it can only be set 
 down as grotesque. It reduces religion to a farce 
 of conscious self-deception, to a weak-minded game 
 of Let's Pretend. The faith which is and has been 
 an indispensable element of religion is faith in the 
 perfect goodness of God, not faith that " the whole 
 and the individual are perfect and good " (A.R. p. 
 443). With this low view of religion it is natural 
 for Mr. Bradley to intimate that " the pathology of 
 the religious consciousness " would be a gruesome 
 study : 
 
 " The man who has passed, however little, behind the 
 scenes of the religious life must have had his moments of 
 revolt. He must have been forced to doubt if the bloody 
 source of so many open crimes, the parent of such inward 
 pollution can possibly be good " (A.R. p. 444). 
 
 32. If Mr. Bradley's theory had stopped at 
 this point its meaning would have been plain 
 
 K
 
 I 3 o GOD 'APPEARS' CH. 
 
 enough : but he has chosen to make a further 
 
 o J 
 
 development in it which considerably increases the 
 labour of his critic. In most religious philosophies, 
 Spinoza's or von Hartmann's for example, pantheism 
 is a simple alternative to theism, and it is assumed 
 that the two ways of conceiving God are mutually 
 exclusive. But some motive, whether a lingering 
 regard for traditional views, or dissatisfaction at the 
 shallowness of the ordinary pantheistic substitutes 
 (cf. A.R. p. 551), has induced Mr. Bradley to what 
 looks like a compromise between theism and pan- 
 theism. The details of it are all obscure ; but 
 somehow theism is to be retained as an element in 
 pantheism, and God is to be regarded as a wavering 
 appearance of the Absolute. God, argues Mr. 
 Bradley, really appears, in fact is the most real of 
 all appearances (A.R. p. 449) ; and yet he is in 
 unstable equilibrium, so that he " tends always to 
 pass beyond himself : he is necessarily led to end in 
 the Absolute, which for religion is not God " (A.R. 
 
 p. 446). 
 
 Now any such compromise as this evidently 
 raises more difficulties than it solves : above all 
 there is the difficulty how Mr. Bradley conceives 
 the being of God. We get some help on the point 
 by recalling his dictum that "the God which could 
 exist \i.e. stand as an individual and ultimate reality] 
 would most assuredly be no God," and by com- 
 paring with it his definition of religion. Religion 
 in general he defines as "a fixed feeling 'of fear, 
 resignation, admiration, or approval, no matter
 
 v BUT, HOW? 131 
 
 what may be the object, provided only that this 
 feeling reaches a certain strength, and is qualified 
 by a certain degree of reflection" (A.R. p. 439); 
 and religion, " in its highest sense," is " devotion to 
 the one perfect object which is utterly good" (A.R. 
 p. 440). Now, can the " one perfect object " be 
 anything but the Absolute ? Thus, if Mr. Bradley 
 would not repudiate what seems to be the inevitable 
 consequence, his compromise of pantheism and 
 theism amounts to no more than retaining God as 
 an inadequate conception of the Absolute. I know 
 that many expressions of Mr. Bradley 's are hard to 
 reconcile with this. 
 
 " There is nothing more real," he protests, " than what 
 comes in religion : to compare facts such as these with 
 what is given to us in outward existence, would be to 
 trifle with the subject" (A.R. p. 449). 
 
 But in what sense can Mr. Bradley maintain 
 that God is a ' fact ' or ' appears.' We know how 
 a tooth -ache appears (as individual sufferers we 
 know too well) ; we know how a stick, a stone, 
 how a finite self 'appear.' But how does God 
 ' appear ' ? We search the familiar pages in vain. 
 The finite particulars just enumerated appear in 
 virtue of possessing a definite existence that 
 reveals itself in the here and how. But this sort of 
 existence is expressly excluded all through the 
 sections of Appearance and Reality dealing with 
 religion. We are driven then to conclude that Mr. 
 Bradley recognises the existence of God only as an 
 inadequate human conception. But, in that case,
 
 132 COSMIC EMOTION CH. 
 
 the outcome of his compromise is quite trifling ; if, 
 indeed, I am right in thinking that a compromise 
 was ever seriously intended. The reason which has 
 made me devote so much space to it is that it does 
 throw some light on a great question. Mr. 
 Bradley 's attempt to retain God as an appearance 
 of the Absolute shows how a powerful mind recog- 
 nises that mere pantheism does not satisfy the 
 religious consciousness ; while his failure effectively 
 to retain God illustrates the difficulty of com- 
 promising theism with pantheism. 
 
 33. This too prolonged examination of Mr. 
 Bradley's theology will, I fear, make an unsatis- 
 factory impression on the reader. One reason of 
 dissatisfaction, certainly, will be that I have seemed 
 to deal in a narrow analytical spirit with a mood of 
 cosmic emotion. I might urge in justification that 
 Mr. Bradley invites all the rigour of the game : 
 
 " That a man should treat of God and religion," he says, 
 " in order merely to understand them ... is to many 
 of us in part unintelligible, and in part also shocking. 
 And hence English thought on these subjects, where it has 
 not studied in a foreign school, is practically worthless " 
 (A.R. p. 450). 
 
 At present I am not trying to do more than under- 
 stand the religious consciousness, and certainly do 
 not wish to plant myself upon traditional English 
 views. But to what an 'empty result the abuse of 
 hard analysis leads we may see from the history of 
 Spinozistic criticism. Drawn out in systematic 
 form Spinoza comes to nothing more than blank 
 materialism : but the critic who does not look
 
 v A GUAGE OF SUCCESS 133 
 
 beyond system will never know why multitudes 
 have found the Ethics a source of spiritual refresh- 
 ment. 
 
 So it may be with Mr. Bradley. His recognition 
 of the emotional demand is really the best thing in 
 his feeling -absolutist theology. And yet we must 
 beware of giving way upon this side too much. 
 The worst thing that can happen to religion is that 
 it should be regarded as an emotional luxury, or, in 
 the common French phrase, as an adorable delusion. 
 Better than that a belief like Attwater's in the Ebb- 
 Tide: "religion is a savage thing like the universe 
 it illuminates ; savage, cold, and bare, but infinitely 
 strong." But I do not see why we may not some 
 day hit on a religious synthesis which will satisfy 
 the human demand, not merely on the emotional, 
 but also on the volitional and intellectual sides. 
 
 34. This finishes my review of the results, or 
 want of results, of the feeling-absolutist standpoint 
 in philosophy. One or two departments have to be 
 left out for want of documents. Political philosophy 
 is not touched, and art gets little more from Mr. 
 Bradley than a back - handed slap in passing. 
 " Beauty is not really immediate, or independent, or 
 harmonious in itself . . . like all the other aspects 
 this also has been shown to be appearance " (A.R. 
 p. 466). It is time therefore to draw to a close 
 and to guage the success of feeling-absolutism by a 
 standard that its author himself would recognise. 
 
 I suppose that even the least practical of
 
 134 WHAT CAN FEELING-ABSOLUTISM CH. 
 
 absolutist philosophers would admit that his meta- 
 physic must make some difference to life. In the 
 case of a thinker such as von Hartmann it is used 
 as the basis of all the principles of conduct. And 
 even where conduct is thought of least, as by Mr. 
 Bradley, 1 there must be something positive to show, 
 if it be only in the way of emotion, some enhance- 
 ment to our appreciation of man and the world as a 
 manifestation, however imperfect, of the One Per- 
 fection. That Mr. Bradley would assent to this 
 contention may be inferred from the last words of 
 Appearance and Reality. 
 
 41 We may fairly close this work," he says, " by insisting 
 that Reality is spiritual. There is a great saying of 
 Hegel's, a saying too well known, and one which without 
 some explanation I should not like to endorse. But I 
 will end with something not very different, something 
 perhaps more certainly the essential message of Hegel. 
 Outside of spirit there is not, and there cannot be, any 
 reality, and, the more that anything is spiritual, so much 
 the more is it veritably real." 
 
 Spirituality is surely something great and noble, 
 and an increased appreciation of the world as 
 spiritual would be no barren outcome to a system of 
 philosophy. The same kind of thought is expressed 
 even more strikingly in a very recent utterance of 
 Mr. Bradley : he is arguing there against the alleged 
 one-sidedness of personal idealism. 
 
 " Philosophy," he says, " always will be hard, and what it 
 promises, even in the end, is no clear theory nor any 
 complete understanding or vision. But its certain reward 
 
 1 Cf. his sharp repudiation of the function of "teacher or preacher" 
 (A.R. p. 450).
 
 v ATTRIBUTE TO REALITY? 135 
 
 is a continual evidence and a heightened apprehension of 
 the ineffable mystery of life, of life in all its complexity 
 and all its unity and worth " (" On Truth and Practice " 
 in Mind, N.S., No. 51, p. 335). 
 
 Here, then, something like a clear issue is raised. 
 Philosophy ought to do all this for us ; but how 
 can it, in the form adopted by Mr. Bradley ? I 
 would maintain, on the contrary, that Mr. Bradley 
 brings us no nearer to believing that reality is 
 spiritual, and certainly puts us farther from appre- 
 ciating life for its mystery, complexity, unity, and 
 worth. For consider what we mean by 'spiritual.' 
 Does not the word derive its whole meaning from 
 human life as contrasted with nature, and from the 
 higher parts of human life as contrasted with the 
 lower ? Conceive of gods and angels as we will, we 
 must, to call them spirits, conceive of them as 
 kindred to the human spirits that we know. To 
 Reality as a whole the ordinary thinker can 
 attribute spirituality only in some rather remote 
 meaning. Now, does Mr. Bradley's philosophic 
 message enable him to attribute spirituality to the 
 world in anything more than some vague pantheistic 
 sense ? The 'relational form is essential to spiritual 
 experience as we know it, and attacks upon the 
 relational form make up the main staple of Mr. 
 Bradley's twenty-seven chapters. Every argument 
 in Appearance and Reality which is meant to prove 
 that the Absolute is super-relational, super-personal, 
 and super-divine should also prove that it is super- 
 spiritual.
 
 136 THE FEELING-ABSOLUTIST LESSENS CH. 
 
 When we turn to his more recent formulation of 
 the outcome of philosophy it is even plainer that 
 Mr. Bradley 's feeling - absolutism defeats his own 
 intentions. I assent most heartily to the dictum 
 that philosophy's reward is a " heightened appre- 
 hension of the ineffable mystery of life, of life in all 
 its complexity and all its unity and worth." But 
 how are we induced to appreciate the worthiness of 
 life by becoming convinced that every element of it 
 is infected, riddled, and ruined with falsity and self- 
 contradiction ? And where in Appearance and 
 Reality, or in any other writing of Mr. Bradley, is 
 there a single sentence which teaches us to appre- 
 ciate the unity of life ? Are we not told on almost 
 every page that every element of it is incurably self- 
 discrepant and full of jarring discords ? Nor does 
 Mr. Bradley's method help us to appreciate the com- 
 plexity of life. For consider under what circum- 
 stances complexity is appreciable. A blind tangle, 
 as of a mass of string which we cannot unravel, may 
 baffle and annoy us, but we certainly never appre- 
 ciate it We only appreciate complexity when it is 
 systematic, and we see that the purpose of the 
 system could not be carried out more simply. Mr. 
 Bradley's writings can only convince us of a bad 
 sort of complexity in life : it is his interest to 
 aggravate tangles, not to unravel them. On the 
 same principle we may deny that Mr. Bradley helps 
 us to appreciate life's mystery. What is mystery ? 
 We are familiar with the term as equivalent to 
 mystification, or even as a euphemism for muddle ;
 
 v OUR APPRECIATION OF REALITY 137 
 
 but these meanings we are entitled to neglect in 
 the present context. Mystery in the higher sense, 
 which is what Mr. Bradley means, implies contact 
 with something magnificently great but only in part 
 revealed to us : we may know enough of it to be 
 sure that it is great, but on what lines its greatness 
 is carried out we cannot tell for certain. This 
 unique experience of awe and wonder does fall to 
 the personal idealist ; for in the human self we have 
 a principle which reveals much and gives lofty 
 thoughts of that which is beyond revelation. But 
 how can it be claimed by Mr. Bradley ? He tells 
 us nothing to make us appreciate the things that 
 we know, while the feeling-analogues by which he 
 strives to give us a notion of the Absolute do not 
 impress us. Our life, it seems, is nothing great 
 and leads to nothing in which we can recognise 
 greatness. The mystery of life, in short, goes the 
 same way as its complexity, unity, and worth ; and 
 if we do not lose spirituality too, that is only because 
 the world is as much spiritual as unspiritual on the 
 principles of Feeling-Absolutism.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SUBJECTIVISM 
 
 i. THERE are two forms of Subjectivism one 
 springing from the other, and showing all through 
 its development clear traces of its origin, and yet 
 working out very differently for metaphysics : we 
 may call them respectively Solipsistic and Imper- 
 sonal Subjectivism. Solipsistic or Individual Sub- 
 jectivism is prior in origin : the other is the 
 derivative, artificial, Hegelian form, which regards 
 the world as constituted, not by the individual con- 
 sciousness, but by an absolute world-spirit. It is 
 summed up in the phrase that the universe is to be 
 viewed as subject. 
 
 The two forms of subjectivism enjoy very 
 different degrees of popularity. At present nearly 
 every thinker is anxious to avoid what is generally 
 spoken of as the abyss of solipsism. It is well 
 understood that, if we start with assuming that the 
 self is limited in the first instance to its conscious 
 states, we shall have much difficulty in explaining 
 how it gets outside them. And to suppose that 
 each of us passes his existence in a closed sphere, 
 cheered and deluded by a phantasmagoria of things 
 
 138
 
 CH. vi SUBJECTIVISM AND HEDONISM 139 
 
 and persons which have no reality, is not only very 
 ridiculous but also paralysing to the active powers. 
 These considerations make themselves felt even 
 where they are not fully realised. Hence it is that 
 subjectivism counts for much less than either intel- 
 lectualism or absolutism. It is, however, not with- 
 out its own appeal : it deserves a discussion, though 
 not a long one. 
 
 2. One of the most important, because most 
 natural, tendencies with which solipsistic subjectivism 
 does concur is egoistic hedonism. There always 
 has been, perhaps always will be, a hedonistic school 
 or tendency in ethics. Now in proportion as plea- 
 sure is more sensuous and less ideal, so much the 
 less it needs objective reference : we can imagine, 
 sometimes experience, states of strong pleasure in 
 which our knowledge of, and concern for, the ob- 
 jective sphere sinks to a minimum. Thus a theory 
 which makes such pleasure the end of conduct not 
 merely concurs with, but draws us towards, a soli- 
 psistic metaphysic. In this way must we explain 
 the historical connection of sensationist hedonism 
 with solipsism. There is a further connection in 
 that such a metaphysic affords a sort of salve to 
 conscience. The thorough-going subjectivist need 
 take no trouble to consider other people, because 
 they do not really exist. This might be illustrated 
 by Max Stirner's impudent book Der Einziger und 
 sein Eigentkum, the purport of which is to show 
 that Fichte's philosophy justifies us in behaving just 
 as we like : ' Cannot the ego, which creates the
 
 140 SUBJECTIVISM IN RELATION TO ART CH. 
 
 universe, do what it will with its own ? ' No wonder 
 that contemporary anarchism, quite divorced from 
 sentimental philanthropy, has found an evangelist in 
 Stirner. 
 
 3. Another example of subjectivist theory closely 
 akin to the preceding, though far less important, 
 deserves mention for the sake of Walter Pater. 
 There is a view of art, frequently met with at the 
 present day l which regards it as a form of self- 
 regarding enjoyment ; so that a man may be a 
 consummate artist, or at least a consummate con- 
 noisseur, who is entirely wrapt up in his own aesthetic 
 sensations. One would hesitate to say that Pater 
 held exactly this : but he certainly gives us to 
 understand that artistic culture is definable as a 
 susceptibility to delicate sensations, and that the 
 business of criticism is to analyse them. 
 
 " The aesthetic critic," he says, " regards all the objects 
 with which he has to do, all works of art, and the fairer 
 forms of nature and human life, as powers or forces pro- 
 ducing pleasurable sensations, each of a more or less 
 peculiar and unique kind. This influence he feels, and 
 wishes to explain, analysing it, and reducing it to its 
 elements. . . . Our education becomes complete in 
 proportion as our susceptibility to these impressions 
 increases in depth and variety " (Renaissance, p. xi.). 
 
 Taken literally, Pater's definitions of art and 
 criticism reduce them to the level of perfumery. 
 His metaphysic, what we hear of it, is in the same 
 solipsistic tone. 
 
 1 It is implied in many passages of Prof. A. E. Taylor's Problem of Con- 
 duct, e.g. p. 382.
 
 vi AND TO THE INDEPENDENCE OF THOUGHT 141 
 
 " Experience, already reduced to a swarm of impressions, 
 is ringed round for each one of us by that thick wall of 
 personality through which no real voice has ever pierced 
 on its way to us, or from us to that which we can only 
 conjecture to be without. Every one of those impressions 
 is the impression of the individual in his isolation, each 
 mind keeping as a solitary prisoner its own dream of a 
 world." 
 
 Few have had a gift of artistic appreciation more 
 sincere and comprehensive than Pater's : if he had 
 striven for system as he strove for style he must 
 have come to see that art is an objective interest no 
 less than morality. There is really all the difference 
 between the genuine artistic experience and the 
 selfish enjoyment which reaches a sufficient pitch of 
 aesthetic delicacy to be mistaken for something better. 
 
 4. Among tendencies of a rather higher order 
 which concur with solipsistic subjectivism is the 
 intellectualist impatience of regarding thought as 
 dependent on anything outside itself. This must 
 be viewed as largely a counter-attack upon the 
 school which treats thought as a product of sensa- 
 tion or a 'slave of the passions.' The language we 
 meet with in Anglo- Hegelian writers about the self- 
 determination of thought, though borrowed from 
 Hegel, has a wider meaning than he gave to it. 
 It is to be understood as vindicating against sen- 
 sationism the dignity of the most dignified function 
 of our nature. 
 
 Sympathetic as we may feel towards such a vin- 
 dication, we cannot help observing that it overshoots 
 its mark. To preserve the dignity of thought by
 
 142 CREATING ONE'S OWN UNIVERSE CH. 
 
 separating it from everything else is like preserving 
 the dignity of a king by cutting him off from inter- 
 course with lower mortals : isolation in either case 
 is fatal to efficiency. It is no weak concession to 
 the lower categories to recognise that thought must 
 co-operate with other functions, sensation included, 
 to form the structure of human experience. 
 
 5. But that is a controversy which is passing 
 into the background ; what follows has a more con- 
 temporary interest. There is an extreme form of 
 Voluntarism which is not content that man should 
 bear part in moulding in his world, but would have 
 him create it altogether. This Fichtean line of 
 thought we find implied, I believe, in Mr. Canning 
 Schiller. If it be so, my comment once more must 
 be that a good tendency has overreached itself. 
 The power of man, at least, has always the limita- 
 tion that it cannot create something out of nothing ; 
 there must exist material for his faculties to act 
 upon. And no less necessary is it that his material 
 should have definite qualities of its own. The 
 proverb that we cannot stick soft butter on a hook 
 applies here : we can do nothing with objects unless 
 they have definite qualities ; and, as definite, they 
 must limit our activity. To this, I suppose, Mr. 
 Schiller might reply that, though reality has definite 
 qualities, we cannot be sure what they are, and that 
 it is therefore a good methodological assumption to 
 suppose that reality is perfectly plastic : for by trying 
 in all directions we are likely to obtain what we 
 want. To this I should rejoin that we ought not to
 
 vi MORALITY PRESUPPOSES OBJECTIVITY 143 
 
 try in all directions ; that would be spending our 
 strength at random : we must try in certain selected 
 directions ; which implies that something in the 
 world of objects is fixed, provisionally at least. 
 Moreover a methodological assumption is not a 
 metaphysical truth : we may not know exactly what 
 the limits are ; but unless limits exist, our very 
 trying is futile. 
 
 6. Fichte is the great exemplar of a meta- 
 physician who would create his own universe ; and 
 how unconvincing he is ! Much as we may admire 
 the loftiness of his purpose, his attempt to conjure 
 objectivity into existence by force of the practical 
 reason is absurd ; because morality, more than any 
 other experience, presupposes a recognition of the 
 objective. Though psychology tells us that our 
 belief in objective reality comes primarily from our 
 experience of physical resistance, it ought to be 
 added that our higher activities, morality in par- 
 ticular, entirely confirm the primitive belief. The 
 plain man, at least, has seen long ago that the most 
 essential thing in good conduct is a benevolent 
 interest in one's fellow-creatures. These we do not 
 create in order to love ; we love them because they 
 are there, and lovable. It is only an immoralist, 
 like Stirner, who can afford to work out a sub- 
 jectivist ethic consistently. 
 
 7. Though no one now stands by the Fichtean 
 Weltanschauung, ' The Ego is all,' plenty of support 
 is forthcoming for the inversion of it adopted by
 
 144 'THE ALL IS EGO.' HOW DOES CH. 
 
 Schelling and Hegel, 'The All is Ego.' The 
 Anglo - Hegelians have made Impersonal Sub- 
 jectivism one of the dominant tendencies of 
 contemporary thinking. 
 
 Hegel's impersonal subjectivism is summed up in 
 the well-known phrase that the universe is to be 
 viewed as subject, which can only mean that the 
 existence and process of the universe are to be 
 regarded as analogous to that of the solipsistic 
 human subject. Well as this promises in com- 
 parison with solipsism, we shall find that it does 
 very little towards rendering the universe as a 
 whole intelligible ; while in relation to finite selves 
 it fails utterly. 
 
 8. The main recommendation of impersonal 
 subjectivism to British thinkers has been that it 
 improves upon materialism. The aspiration of 
 metaphysic is to demonstrate that the universe is 
 spiritual, that is, of kindred nature to what is 
 highest in man. Its spirituality is flatly denied by 
 materialism, whereas impersonal subjectivism in 
 some sense affirms it. 
 
 Here, however, the merit of the theory ends. 
 Let us consider how far impersonal subjectivism is 
 effective in helping us to understand the existence 
 and process of the universe. Can we say that 
 by viewing it as a solipsistic subject we understand 
 better the universe's Mode of Existence? The 
 mode of existence of the human subject, the only 
 one we know directly, is conditioned throughout by 
 its commerce with objects : its thought, volition,
 
 vi THE ALL-EGO EXIST OR PROCEED? 145 
 
 feeling-tone, sensitive and emotional experience are 
 penetrated by objective reference, a reference which 
 is of course excluded in the case of the Absolute 
 Subject. If there is a state of the human subject's 
 existence in which the higher faculties are exercised 
 without objective reference, it is when we are 
 sitting quite still in the dark thinking of ourselves. 
 But even here we can usually discern an implicit 
 reference to objects ; for we do not usually review 
 ourselves in a systematic way except with reference 
 to some line of conduct, as in moral self-examina- 
 tion. However, it is just possible to think away 
 the objective reference, to imagine oneself sitting in 
 the dark self-absorbed indefinitely. But, if this be 
 counted as a higher activity, it certainly tends to 
 pass into a lower one, into the blank stupor of the 
 oriental mystic. It really gives us no help in 
 realising the life of a Subject who is universal. 
 
 Still more inexplicable is the Process of the 
 Absolute Subject. The human subject proceeds by 
 action, for the most part, upon persons and things 
 objective to him : even in cases where we may be 
 said to act upon ourselves, as in overcoming our 
 own reluctance to some course of action, it is objec- 
 tive interest that motives us. But the Absolute 
 Subject must eternally act upon itself for the sake 
 of itself, and proceed from one state of itself to 
 another state of itself, in virtue of its intrinsic 
 faculty of self-caused movement. Hegel, at the 
 close of the Encyclopedia, tells us that " the eternal 
 Idea, in the full fruition of its essence, eternally
 
 146 WHAT ROOM FOR FINITE SELVES? CH. 
 
 sets itself to work, engenders and enjoys itself as 
 absolute Mind." But do these ultra-reflexive phrases 
 convey any real meaning ? 
 
 9. All these speculations on the "absolute Mind" 
 are unsubstantial and remote, whether they be right 
 or wrong : a difficulty of impersonal subjectivism 
 that comes home to us more nearly attaches to the 
 account that it gives of the relation between the 
 Absolute Subject and the finite subjects included 
 therein. Finite selves undoubtedly exist ; the most 
 impersonal of absolutists cannot argue otherwise : the 
 difficulty is to explain their mode of existence within 
 the Absolute. In the experience of the human 
 subject there is nothing, except possibly the pheno- 
 mena of double personality (quite ignored by 
 Hegelianism), to suggest how one self can exist 
 within another. This lack of direct experience is 
 fatal. As soon as the Hegelian comes to make any 
 definite statement about the relation of human selves 
 to the Absolute Self he is driven to one of two 
 courses : he must either let his Absolute Self fade 
 to an almost nominal existence which does not 
 interfere with the subordinate selves at all ; or he 
 must merge the finite selves in that which includes 
 them. Hegel, in his strictly scientific works at least, 
 takes the latter course. Anglo- Hegelians tend to 
 the former : their Absolute is a constitutional 
 monarch who reigns but leaves his subjects to 
 manage their own affairs. 
 
 10. Subjectivism, both individual and imper- 
 sonal, is, when consistently developed, a very differ-
 
 vi INCONSISTENCIES OF SUBJECTIVISTS 147 
 
 ent thing from what we actually find in the pages 
 of its eminent exponents. Fichte discovers very 
 early that his fundamental ' I ch bin Ich' logically 
 requires the existence of other individual egos, 
 of a sensuous external world, and of an Absolute 
 Ego, popularly called God. In his Science of Rights, 
 to mention one example of detailed exposition, he 
 begins with a perfunctory recognition of subjec- 
 tivist principle, but soon finds himself on a plane 
 indistinguishable from common sense, except for 
 an irritating pretence of deduction. The surprising 
 thing is that he should have thought it worth while 
 to keep up the pretence. Did he really think that 
 from ' I am I ' one could deduce the regulations of 
 cattle-pasturing and of punishment by pillory in the 
 ideal state? Nor is Hegel much more faithful to 
 his Absolute Ego ; he is always slipping down on 
 to the plane of the finite selves. Outside the Ency- 
 clopedia we generally find ourselves moving pretty 
 much in the familiar world, with the Absolute Subject 
 vaguely suspended over it. 
 
 ii. In much of Hegel's work the subjectivism 
 is not of either type definitely ; it appears rather as 
 a general preference for the subjectivist line of 
 interpretation. A good example of this is his treat- 
 ment of art, which, he says, arises from man's need 
 of ^^-expression. It is this indefinite subjectivism 
 which appears most in contemporary Oxford thought. 
 In some points of philosophic theory there are 
 traces also of the influence of the individual subjec- 
 tivism of the sensationist school. Green's ethical
 
 I 4 8 INDEFINITE SUBJECTIVISM CH. 
 
 theory, in which morality is a particular form of the 
 desire for self-satisfaction ; the current explanation 
 of morality by the formula of self-realisation in 
 which moral goodness is the identification of the 
 individual with his wider self (i.e. society), and moral 
 evil the retraction of the individual into his narrower, 
 individual self, together with Prof. Bosanquet's expla- 
 nation of art as the expression of subjective emotion, 
 are instances of the mixed kind of treatment I am 
 referring to. There are many curious pieces of 
 subjectivist doctrine in Mr. Bradley. Among them 
 may be mentioned his well - known doctrine of 
 volition, though he applies the strange principle 
 of ' immanent development ' not to selves (ought 
 there to be any selves in Mr. Bradley' s philosophy ?) 
 but to ideas ; which, however, have not the excuse for 
 their extraordinary behaviour which Hegelian ideas 
 can offer, not being determinations of an Absolute 
 Idea. A more important example is his doctrine that 
 Reality is experience, which plainly seems derived 
 from Schelling's 'Alles ist Ich ' (cf. infra, chap. ix. 
 41). In Prof. Bosanquet's Logic there is a strong 
 subjectivist influence which most students find 
 peculiarly difficult and elusive, because they never 
 know whether his 'self-determination of thought' 
 refers to thought individual or to thought absolute. 
 The former assumption is checked by the reflection 
 that human thought never is or can be self-deter- 
 mined in the way that Prof. Bosanquet speaks of ; 
 while the latter is contrary to Prof. Bosanquet's 
 evident disbelief in anything of the nature of a
 
 vi MUST WE ACCEPT DUALISM? 149 
 
 supra-human Absolute Subject (cf. infra, chap. x. 
 
 "). 
 
 12. I would not have it supposed from all that 
 
 has just been said that the upshot of metaphysic 
 is dualism, and that I maintain the subject-object 
 form with which human thought works to be valid 
 for the world-consciousness : this would be carrying 
 anthropomorphism beyond its proper limits. It is 
 no part of my present undertaking to attempt to 
 determine the form of the world-consciousness : but 
 every one feels the unsatisfactoriness of a dualism 
 such as that of James Martineau, who held that over 
 against God there has from all time existed Matter, 
 the sole function of which it is to be object to the 
 divine consciousness. We have nothing in our 
 human experience to warrant such severance of 
 reality into two distinct parts. But the failure of 
 dualism does not prove the validity of subjectivist 
 monism. The simple truth seems to be that in 
 reference to a world-consciousness it is equally un- 
 satisfactory to say either that it is entirely subject 
 with itself as its own object, or that it is subject 
 with its object permanently over against it. I have 
 no sympathy with the gratuitous agnosticism of 
 Herbert Spencer, and still less with that of Dean 
 Mansel ; but it seems both right and wise to call 
 attention to the limits of human intelligence in a 
 matter that obviously transcends it. There are 
 many reasons for believing in a world-consciousness, 
 but nothing to make plain by what form of thought 
 it works : purely subjective is unsuitable ; so is
 
 150 MUST WE ACCEPT DUALISM? CH. vi 
 
 subjective -objective ; most unsuitable of all is 
 purely objective, if that term represents correctly 
 the Unconscious of von Hartmann. Other forms 
 of thought our minds are unable to suggest, still 
 less to substantiate.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 GERMAN IDEALISM 
 
 i. THE first half of my task, that of exhibiting our 
 contemporary idola in their systematic development, 
 is now finished ; there remains the second half, 
 which will consist in showing how they have in- 
 fluenced the work of certain Oxford thinkers. Were 
 it a matter of choice I would proceed to this directly : 
 but Oxford philosophy is so thoroughly saturated 
 with German ideas that a preliminary historical 
 digression is unavoidable. Two outstanding features 
 make the latter half of the nineteenth century a 
 well-defined period in British thought : one of them 
 is the influence of the biological ideas championed 
 by Herbert Spencer ; the other is an idealism which 
 has drawn its inspiration from Germany. With the 
 former I have at present no concern, since, in the 
 period with which I am dealing, biological writers 
 have acted on Oxford mainly by provoking an- 
 tagonism : but German Idealism has practically 
 captured the University. Its influence began with 
 Sir William Hamilton ( 1 788- 1 856), was strengthened 
 by H. L. Mansel (1820-71), was fully established by 
 T. H. Green (1836-82), and has been continued by
 
 152 THE GERMAN INVASION CH. 
 
 Messrs. Bradley, Caird, Bosanquet, and others down 
 to the present day. 
 
 Having regard to the previous character of 
 English thought, there can be no question that the 
 German invasion has been most salutary on the 
 whole : the teaching of Green and his successors 
 has enabled England to take its place in the general 
 march of European thought. Our home-bred 
 philosophy with all its earnestness and good sense 
 has been sadly lacking in depth and breadth of view : 
 the shop-keeping narrowness, which a continental 
 statesman remarked in other sides of our national 
 life, has left its mark upon our thinking. Before 
 the new influence came, too much was said of man 
 as a creature of pains and pleasures, too little of him 
 as a free creator of ideals ; too much of the human 
 mind as a wax tablet, too little of it as supplying 
 the formative principles of knowledge ; too much 
 of God as a moderately benevolent taskmaster, too 
 little of him as the fount of righteousness and truth. 
 There was but little of the philosophic spirit which 
 views the world as from a mountain-top : no pro- 
 fessed philosopher taught in the spirit of Plato as 
 the spectator of all time and existence. 
 
 The offset to all this gain has been a vast 
 extension of the influence of our three Idola. In- 
 tellectualism and subjectivism have always been 
 noticeable in British thought, but they have been 
 hugely reinforced from Germany : while absolutism, 
 previously a negligible quantity, has grown to the 
 height we find in Appearance and Reality. It is
 
 vii KANT AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT 153 
 
 the Hegelian influence just now that is predominant, 
 and it is the Hegelian system that combines the 
 three Idola in their most uncompromising form. 
 None of the English thinkers whom I am about to 
 criticise is fully intelligible out of relation to Hegel. 
 
 Thus it becomes necessary for me to attempt a 
 sketch of German Idealism however slight : the 
 reader will remember that its scope is strictly 
 limited to elucidating my criticism of Green and his 
 successors. 
 
 2. Fortunately we need not go further back 
 than Kant, and even he may be dealt with very 
 briefly. Unlike Hegel, he is far enough away from 
 us to make just appreciation easy : there are half-a- 
 dozen handbooks stating clearly and impartially his 
 position in the history of thought. Being able to 
 take for granted a diffused understanding of his 
 doctrine, I need only indicate those points which 
 seem vitally important for the criticism of the 
 English writers to be dealt with later. 
 
 The capital source of Kant's influence is that he 
 was the great vindicator of the spiritual view of the 
 world against the lower- categories philosophy of 
 the Age of Enlightenment. 
 
 " The eighteenth century," says Dr. Caird, " was the age 
 of individualism, of secularism, even, in a sense, of atheism. 
 It sought truth by dividing and isolating its parts, with 
 the result often that the spiritual unity of truth disappeared 
 in the process" (Critical Philosophy, i. 47). 
 
 It was Kant's work to vindicate knowledge, morality, 
 and religion from a new standpoint :
 
 154 THE KANTIAN METHOD CH. 
 
 " he alone saw how it was possible to unite the character- 
 istic ideas of the Enlightenment, and especially its rational 
 conceptions of the order and connection of finite ex- 
 perience, with a new vindication of those higher beliefs 
 which the Enlightenment had rejected (id. ib. i. 51). 
 
 " If we wish to describe Kant's position in a single 
 formula," says Paulsen, " we may say that he is at 
 once the finisher and conqueror of the Aufklarung." 
 All this has long since become commonplace ; 
 what is not quite so generally understood is the 
 nature of the method by which Kant effected his 
 vindication. We are usually told that the Kantian 
 method was entirely novel, a kind of philosophic 
 standing on one's head, compared with what went 
 before. 
 
 " The English student," says Adamson, " who has been 
 accustomed to the analytical and psychological method of 
 Berkeley and Hume or Mill . . . finds himself, as it were, 
 in a new world, when he is brought into contact with the 
 Kantian and post-Kantian speculations a world in which 
 at first sight all appears to be inverted or reversed " 
 (Fichte, pp. 105 sq.}. 
 
 I quite admit the unfamiliar impression that 
 these speculations make upon the English mind, 
 but doubt whether the method they employ is so 
 " radically divergent " from ours as Adamson 
 alleged, so far, at least, as they deal with the 
 same material and lead to any tangible result. 
 To say that the German method is metaphysical, 
 whereas the British is psychological, really means 
 no more than that the Germans have dealt more 
 with metaphysics, and the English more with 
 psychology. So far as the two nations have treated
 
 vii THE PRINCIPLE OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 155 
 
 the nature and contents of the human mind, they 
 follow, and can follow, one method only which will 
 lead to any fruitful results. The advance which 
 Kant has made upon Hume is simply due to 
 more exact and penetrating analysis of the human 
 experience which they both investigate. 
 
 3. Put shortly, the result of Kant's analysis, so far 
 as I believe it to have stood the test of criticism, is 
 that our experience, in addition to the element which 
 is given, contains an element which is contributed by 
 the mind itself. This consists, in general, of the 
 synthetic action whereby the mind combines its states 
 into a self-conscious unity ; and, more specifically, 
 of certain organising principles of unification, which 
 are implied in all experience and are essential to 
 experience as we know it. It was this principle 
 of self-consciousness that the atomistic prejudice of 
 Hume prevented him from discovering. His method 
 failed, not because of an excess of psychology, but 
 because its psychology was superficial. 
 
 Though Kant dealt elaborately with volitional 
 experience, that is, with the Practical Reason, no 
 less than with the Speculative, his work on that 
 side has had nothing like the same influence on 
 his successors : a faith-philosophy for that is what 
 his doctrine of the Practical Reason amounts to can 
 never have for science much more significance than 
 to indicate a point at which science for the present 
 is compelled to stop. The analysis of knowledge 
 was the work in which Kant gained all his real 
 success. His vindication of a spiritual view of the
 
 156 KANT'S SURRENDER. FICHTE CH. 
 
 world touches only the cognitive, not the conative, 
 side of our experience. 
 
 4. In regard to the conative side, indeed, he 
 made a virtual surrender to the lower -categories 
 philosophy that he set out to refute. To determinism 
 he conceded that all the human action which we 
 can understand is as much subject to the laws of 
 matter and motion as the path of a billiard-ball ; to 
 hedonism he conceded that all the motives which 
 fall under our cognition are motives of pleasure and 
 pain. It was only his distinction of noumenal and 
 phenomenal that preserved for the human ego a 
 ' noumenal ' freedom which, in some way not in- 
 telligible to our reason, makes itself operative in the 
 world of actual experience. 
 
 And, in regard even to the cognitive side, his 
 vindication is gravely impaired by what is called 
 by Kantians phenomenalism, but rather deserves 
 the name of illusionism. In the Critique of Pure 
 Reason, the treatise which contains all Kant's dis- 
 tinctive scientific ideas, human knowledge is always 
 of ' phenomena,' never of realities ; both the real 
 external world which is the source of the stimuli 
 of sense, and the real ego which is the source of 
 the categories, are essentially beyond the reach of 
 knowledge ; the world which we know is ' pheno- 
 menal of the unknown.' 
 
 5. From Kant we pass to Fichte, who begins 
 that period of German idealism with which we 
 are more directly concerned. By this time the 
 principles which Kant had been elaborating patiently
 
 vii AS SYSTEMATISING KANTIANISM 157 
 
 far away in Konigsberg had begun to spread in a 
 wonderful fermentation through the whole intel- 
 lectual life of Germany. We come now to a period 
 of excitement and exaltation when men were carried 
 away by philosophy and wrote books which are 
 interesting just because they reflect in some measure 
 the fervent intellectual life of the time. 
 
 With all his immense apparatus of terminology 
 and formal method, Kant was anything but a syste- 
 matic philosopher. From the first it was evident 
 that his doctrine was not tenable in the form in 
 which he left it ; the only question was which of 
 the many principles put forward by him was to be 
 regarded as predominant. Succeeding generations 
 are pretty well agreed that the most important of 
 his principles is that which he calls the ' synthetic 
 unity of apperception,' which means the function of 
 the self-conscious self in constituting its world. To 
 Kant himself this principle of self-consciousness was 
 less fundamental than his grand distinction of the 
 phenomenal from the noumenal ; but his preference 
 has been reversed by posterity. With true insight 
 Fichte selected self-consciousness as a starting-point 
 for his endeavour to reduce Kantianism to a per- 
 fectly logical articulation. A science, he held, 
 consists of logically consequent propositions resting 
 on a fundamental proposition which possesses in- 
 trinsic certainty. Such a proposition he thought 
 he could find in the self-evident statement ' I am I.' 
 It is the aim of Fichte's " Wissenschaftslehre " in its 
 earlier form to show that from this truth, which is
 
 158 A SPECULATIVE PERIOD CH. 
 
 implied in every human judgment, the whole uni- 
 verse can be logically deduced. 
 
 6. Before we proceed to speak of the way in 
 which Fichte attempted this very arduous task, it 
 will be worth while to pause a moment to consider 
 one or two points that are important in forming an 
 estimate of him and his successors. The first to be 
 noted is the intensely speculative character of the 
 movement now set on foot among the German 
 universities, in which Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and 
 a host of lesser men took part. By this I mean 
 that the interest which prompted those huge 
 idealistic constructions was nothing practical, in the 
 sense in which other speculative movements have 
 been practical ; it belonged neither to any work of 
 moral regeneration, nor to religious devotion, nor 
 to ecclesiastical propaganda, nor to the develop- 
 ment of systematic theology, nor to zeal for natural 
 science either as a means of increasing human 
 power and comfort or as a promising field for 
 curious inquiry, nor to any movement for political 
 or religious freedom, nor to revulsion against 
 anarchy and ill-regulated enthusiasm, nor to the 
 removal of the trammels that fetter the independ- 
 ence of the philosophic life, nor to the refuta- 
 tion of scepticism as endangering man's noblest 
 aspirations. The interest was intrinsically philoso- 
 phical in a way that the world had not seen 
 since Aristotle, except possibly in the best days of 
 scholasticism. Men thought that the universe could 
 be explained by a comprehensive system, and that
 
 vii THE NEED OF MORAL FAITH 159 
 
 it was immensely important that such a system 
 should be constructed. 
 
 7. But right though it is to insist upon the 
 independently speculative character of German 
 idealism after Kant onwards, the detachment must 
 not be regarded as absolute. The value of idealistic 
 philosophising as a corrective to moral scepticism 
 was perfectly recognised by Fichte. His Vocation 
 of Man (1800) deals in its first book with the 
 mental condition of " Doubt," and closes with a 
 picture, drawn with all the poignancy of a modern 
 problem-novel, of the man who finds that mechanical 
 determinism leads to a result which "contradicts all 
 the profoundest aspirations, wishes and wants of his 
 being " (Popular Works, i. 345). In later books of 
 the same work Fichte deals with " Knowledge" and 
 "Faith," with the result that "now the Eternal 
 World rises before him more brightly, and the 
 fundamental law of its order stands clearly and 
 distinctly apparent to his mental vision " (ibid. i. 441). 
 
 Again, though the philosophic interest of the 
 period was not dependent on the contemporary 
 political ferment, its development was certainly 
 promoted by political conditions : liberalism in 
 politics and in speculation naturally advanced hand 
 in hand. Kant was intensely radical in his quiet, 
 bloodless way ; his Metaphysic of Morality owes 
 its fame to the principles of liberty, equality, and 
 fraternity that he makes a pretence of deducing 
 from an empty ' categorical imperative ' : Fichte's 
 early professorial career was made difficult by his
 
 160 LIBERALISM; LITERATURE CH. 
 
 well-known liberal sympathies : Hegel disliked the 
 established order in Germany as much as anybody, 
 till he went with many another ' lost leader ' over 
 to the conservative reaction. The same spirit 
 of unrest which made the fortune of the tribe of 
 continental constitution - mongers predisposed men 
 to lend ear to philosophic theories which seem to 
 us in our cooler age to be utterly visionary and 
 hopelessly out of relation to fact. 
 
 Simultaneously there existed in Germany a great 
 amount of excitement that was purely intellectual. 
 Goethe and Schiller were, not merely contem- 
 poraries of Fichte, but residents of Weimar close to 
 Jena where Fichte held his first professorship : it 
 was also the bloom-time of the Romantic Move- 
 ment and the completion of the intellectual awaken- 
 ing of Germany. Men of genius were setting forth 
 on literary adventures, some of them to be crowned 
 with brilliant success. Excited with the memory of 
 recent triumphs and with the experiments which 
 were going on before their eyes, the public were 
 ready to lend an ear to new theories, theories of art, 
 of poetry, of the drama, of history, of theology, and 
 of literary criticism. 
 
 8. The German universities of that time were, 
 as they still are, so democratic and drawn from such 
 widely various social strata that they were certain to 
 share fully any contemporary agitation, and indeed 
 to intensify it with their youthful ardour. To realise 
 this needs a slight effort for us who know the historical 
 conservatism of Oxford and its character, then and
 
 vii THE GERMAN UNIVERSITY SYSTEM 161 
 
 for long afterwards, as representing the propertied 
 and ecclesiastical classes. In Germany there was 
 no identification of the universities with privilege. 
 Certainly the leaders of thought were democratic 
 enough in their origin : Kant was the son of a 
 strap-maker, Fichte of a ribbon-weaver, Schelling 
 of a country clergyman, Hegel of a minor govern- 
 ment official. Men of these antecedents at the 
 close of the eighteenth century were usually dis- 
 contented and prone to change ; their English 
 university contemporaries came from classes who 
 regarded intellectual innovations with hereditary 
 suspicion. 
 
 Apart from the temporary causes just enumerated 
 there have always been influences in the German 
 universities tending to favour extreme views. 
 It is commonplace in the learned circles of this 
 country that German scholars, though wonderfully 
 diligent and inventive, are not 'sound.' The cause 
 of this ' unsoundness ' is not traceable to anything 
 in the national character ; it must be due to certain 
 points in which their university system differs from 
 our own. 
 
 The first fact to be considered is that the 
 German university staff is more a class apart than 
 with us. The average professor is more of a 
 specialist in his work ; and his limited intellectual 
 outlook is not so much corrected by worldly ex- 
 perience. In our own universities the teachers are 
 men of good social culture, and are drawn from a 
 higher stratum than in Germany. Nor is the English 
 
 M
 
 162 TENDENCIES ENCOURAGING CH. 
 
 teacher in any way tied to university work ; he is in 
 demand for educational, ecclesiastical, and journal- 
 istic appointments ; he may enter the government 
 service in an important capacity. All this contact 
 with the great world at any rate discourages the 
 visionary spirit which is the antithesis of ' sound- 
 ness ' ; it makes for sobriety of judgment, respect- 
 ability, and a neutral attitude towards novel 
 speculations. 
 
 Another very important difference between our 
 country and Germany is the mode in which teachers 
 are appointed. In Oxford they are appointed 
 either by examination or with reference to the 
 results of examination. Success in these examina- 
 tions requires quickness in assimilation and in 
 criticism, a good judgment, and some literary skill ; 
 but, once through the ordeal, the successful com- 
 petitor finds himself practically at the head of his 
 profession. The German, on the contrary, wins 
 his way from the status of privat-docent or private 
 tutor to a professorship by a much more searching 
 struggle. Having no ' class ' to rely on, he must 
 either attach himself to some powerful coterie, like 
 Hegel's at Berlin, adopt their paradoxes, and prove 
 himself an able henchman ; or he must strike out a 
 noticeable line of his own. With a prepotent 
 influence like Hegel's in the ascendant independence 
 is impossible ; even a first-rate genius like Schopen- 
 hauer found himself totally extinguished. But, if 
 the conditions permit a freer line of action, the 
 better sort of aspirants will certainly adopt it. The
 
 EXTREME VIEWS 163 
 
 ambitious privat-docent makes his lectures as stimu- 
 lating as possible, and sets about producing a 
 striking book. Even when he has got his foot 
 upon the official ladder, the German cannot afford 
 to take things too easily. He is paid by the fees of 
 his pupils, and his income fluctuates with their 
 appreciation : there is, moreover, in the many 
 universities of German-speaking Europe a vast 
 gradation of posts offering wider or narrower 
 possibilities ; a very handsome income with a 
 position of European celebrity rewards the highest 
 success. In short, it 'pays' the clever German to 
 be as productive and original as he can. 
 
 Other differences between Germany and Eng- 
 land are due to our examination system, which, 
 with all its faults, has some most valuable results. 
 One result is that students are judged and classified 
 more for their intrinsic powers than for the com- 
 plexion of their opinions : in universities where 
 there are no class-lists, pupils are too much de- 
 pendent on the approval of their teachers. Another 
 result, most valuable though not generally recog- 
 nised, is that the teachers, as their turn comes 
 round to examine, are enabled to check each 
 other's teaching. For both these reasons the 
 English pupil is moderate in his discipleship and 
 the English teacher in his proselytising. The 
 German teacher, on the other hand, is securus 
 adversus collegas, and finds it conducive to his 
 personal advancement to make his following as 
 strong and enthusiastic as possible.
 
 164 FICHTE'S FAMOUS CH. 
 
 I am sorry to have delayed so long discussing 
 matters which may seem to be of extra-philosophic 
 interest ; but I am convinced that the prolific 
 system-making of Fichte and his successors cannot 
 be understood without regarding it as a product of 
 national excitement operating through academic 
 conditions quite unfamiliar to us. The working of 
 these conditions may be illustrated well enough from 
 Fichte's entry into public teaching. Fichte did not 
 take up philosophy till he was eight-and-twenty. 
 At that time he was a private tutor in extremely 
 bad circumstances, making a little money by an 
 occasional pupil, and half-starving the rest of his 
 time. He came to philosophical studies quite by 
 accident through being asked to coach a pupil in 
 Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, which at that time 
 (autumn 1790) he had never read. Thus he was 
 led to study Kant seriously, and two years later he 
 published a clever essay on religion which, being 
 anonymous, was generally mistaken for Kant's 
 own. This he followed up with a couple of rather 
 revolutionary political pamphlets. The result next 
 year (December 1 793) was an invitation to Jena, then 
 the most progressive of German universities, to fill an 
 extraordinary professorship left vacant by Reinhold's 
 transference to Kiel. Fichte appeared in Jena early 
 in 1 794, and delivered two courses of lectures. 
 
 " In both courses his success was immediate and pro- 
 nounced. The great hall was crowded to overflowing 
 when his public lectures were delivered, while the enthu- 
 siasm of his philosophic students soon made the technical
 
 INAUGURATION 165 
 
 terms of his system familiar words in academic circles and 
 in general literature. ' Since Reinhold left us,' writes 
 Forberg, then a privat-docent at Jena, ' his philosophy, at 
 least among us, is absolutely dead. Every trace of the 
 " Philosophy without Nickname " has been driven from the 
 heads of our students. They believe in Fichte as they 
 never believed in Reinhold. Doubtless they understand 
 him even less than they understood Reinhold, but they 
 believe all the more stubbornly for that very reason. Ego 
 and Non-Ego are now the symbols of the philosophers, as 
 Matter and Form were then'" (Adamson's Fichte , pp. 45 sq.\ 
 
 Now all this is quite strange to us. The call of Fichte, 
 an untried and unfriended man, to a brilliant centre 
 like Jena, merely because he had just published some 
 striking unorthodox essays, his warm reception, the 
 instantaneous collapse of his predecessor's coterie, 
 the excitement among the students, their enthusi- 
 astic acceptance of a new and difficult world-theory 
 with an elaborate terminology, the professor's 
 lectures printed in sheets as fast as delivered and 
 sold like evening newspapers, the speedy formation 
 of a band of thick-and-thin admirers, the respectful 
 admiration of some famous contemporaries like 
 Goethe, the angry hostility of others like Nicolai 
 and, eventually, Kant all this has no parallel in 
 Oxford history. The nearest thing to it is the early 
 period of the Oxford Movement, when Newman 
 swept scores of gifted men off their feet, when 
 Oxford residents who thought at all thought and 
 talked of nothing but the marvellous revival of 
 Anglican theology, when mighty contests shook 
 the convocation-theatre, and the appearance of a 
 new tract convulsed the ecclesiastical world.
 
 166 'A IS A' BECAUSE ' I AM I' CH. 
 
 Altogether, then, we are certain to misunder- 
 stand the German philosophy of this period if we 
 treat it, like Greek, or English, or the earlier German 
 philosophy, as the work of well-balanced though 
 exceptional intellects working under fairly normal 
 conditions. To get the proper point of view the 
 first consideration, certainly, is the historical develop- 
 ment to which I am just coming ; but the two matters 
 on which I have been enlarging have also great 
 importance. Many a worthy British student who 
 ' has closed his Bentham and opened his Hegel ' has 
 made the mistake of trying to understand his Hegel, 
 like Bentham, straight from the printed page ; and 
 has consequently fuddled himself much to no purpose 
 with the pure idea, categories, concrete universals, 
 and dialectic negativity. The fact is that Hegel is 
 totally unintelligible out of relation to his history 
 and to his intellectual and academic environment. 
 
 9. Let us proceed with Fichte : excellent 
 accounts of Fichte's doctrine are so accessible that 
 it is unnecessary to do more than state it very 
 briefly. He discarded the Kantian noumena quite 
 summarily as meaningless abstractions on the 
 ground that whatever is incapable of presentation 
 to consciousness has no existence at all. Thus 
 he makes himself free to develop his unification of 
 philosophy from the subjective standpoint. The 
 course of his argument is as follows. Every state- 
 ment, even the simplest such as 'A is A,' implies 
 a reference to, and therefore an assertion of, the 
 existence of the Ego : ' A is A ' only because ' I am
 
 vii 'POSITING' AND 'OPPOSITING' 167 
 
 I.' * I am I,' the most fundamental of all truths, 
 expresses the fundamental act whereby the Ego 
 posits its own being. 
 
 Having thus made his first and greatest step, 
 Fichte's difficulty is to get from the Ego to the 
 non-Ego without violating his own doctrine that 
 the whole of experience must be deduced from a 
 single principle. In the earlier statement of his 
 " Wissenschaftslehre " he does appear to commit 
 this violation. In addition to the primordial act, 
 whereby the Ego posits itself, Fichte assumes a 
 second act, not reducible to the first, whereby the 
 Ego ' opposits ' the non-Ego, which limits the Ego 
 and is limited by it. In a later statement of the 
 Wissenschaftslehre, however, he represents the act 
 of oppositing as essentially involved in positing : 
 
 Self-affirmation of the Ego is the primitive activity of 
 consciousness. But such primitive activity is in itself 
 but the ground of consciousness. The Ego, to be real, 
 must be aware of its own activity as affirming itself. 
 This becoming aware of its own activity Fichte calls 
 reflection ; and it is easily seen that the essential feature 
 of reflection is self-limitation of the Ego. But limitation 
 is negation ; the Ego becomes aware of its own activity 
 as positing only in and by opposition to self" (Adamson's 
 Fichte^ p. 1 60). 
 
 The dilemma in which Fichte stood is obvious : 
 if he makes the non-Ego something truly external 
 and opposed to the Ego, he assumes two primordial 
 principles instead of one ; if the non - Ego is 
 ' opposited ' by the Ego merely in order to bring its 
 own activity to self-consciousness, then he is com-
 
 168 'ACTIVITY' IN FICHTE CH. 
 
 mitted to a solipsistic position which is fatal to the 
 reality of all moral striving. 
 
 Having made, legitimately or otherwise, his salto 
 mortale from the Ego to the non-Ego Fichte has 
 no serious difficulty with the rest of his deductions. 
 Sensation, which might be regarded as presenting 
 difficulty, he explains as "the cancelled, repressed 
 activity of the Ego," which as cancelled and re- 
 pressed is felt as something foreign and external 
 (Science of Knowledge, Kroeger's trans, p. 197). 
 We must not forget the supreme importance of 
 activity in Fichte's system ; it is through activity 
 that he explains the act of oppositing which gives 
 us the non-Ego. Without an 'Anstoss,' a plane 
 of impact, activity would be infinite. " Thus the 
 practical activity of the Ego is the ground of the 
 ' Anstoss,' which renders intelligence possible " 
 (Adamson's Fichte, p. 177). In the same way 
 Fichte deduces the existence of a plurality of souls. 
 The Ego cannot become aware of itself as a free, 
 active being, without at the same time positing the 
 existence of other free and active beings. 
 
 10. We meet now with a question in the 
 interpretation of Fichte to which a straightforward 
 answer cannot be given. It is this : Is the Ego 
 from which all experience is deducible the individual 
 human Ego, or is it the absolute divine Ego ? A 
 point so obvious and fundamental as this would 
 have been settled, one would have thought, at the 
 very outset : nevertheless it is plain that Fichte 
 did not settle it. In the earlier statement of his
 
 vii INDIVIDUAL EGO, OR WORLD-EGO? 169 
 
 Wissenschaftslehre he speaks as though the Ego 
 were the individual ; the doctrine has, in fact, a 
 strongly solipsistic tone. As such it tends to 
 atheism, there being no logical place for God in any 
 solipsistic system : deplorable as was the outbreak 
 of intolerance which drove Fichte from his Jena 
 professorship, we cannot fail to see that those who 
 impeached him of atheism had plenty of matter to 
 adduce in justification. And yet it is certain from 
 contemporary letters and papers that Fichte even 
 at this early period never meant to be solipsist or 
 atheistic. 1 
 
 In his later writings, on the contrary, a strong 
 religious tone is manifest throughout ; they are in 
 fact penetrated by what would generally be called 
 religious mysticism. No doubt the religious spirit 
 was in Fichte all along, but it was not till his later 
 period that he found systematic room for it. The 
 difference may be seen by comparing the lectures 
 on the Vocation of the Scholar delivered in 1794 
 with those of a similar title delivered after the Jena 
 period. In the former he stands upon the level 
 of ordinary moral exhortation ; the Scholar should 
 work for society, he is the teacher and guide of the 
 human race, and so on. In the later lectures, on 
 the contrary, the Scholar assumes a quasi-religious 
 function ; he is one who has penetrated to the 
 Divine Idea which lies behind the natural world 
 and communicates the knowledge of it to others : 
 
 1 See the Memoir of Fichte (pp. 66 sqq.) prefixed to Smith's translation 
 of his Popular Works.
 
 170 FICHTE'S COSMOLOGY IN HIS CH. 
 
 the Scholar is, in fact, a mouthpiece of the Deity. 
 On the whole we are given to understand by the 
 later writings that the Ego is divine, not individual- 
 human. 
 
 n. Though it is obvious that Fichte's opinions 
 underwent great change as he advanced in life, it is 
 possible to reconcile his earlier and later periods. 
 His cosmological and religious speculations supple- 
 ment and complete his earlier system. The process 
 of the universe may be regarded as falling into two 
 divisions, first, from God to the human ego, secondly, 
 from the human ego to the world of experience 
 which we know ; it is the first division that was 
 treated by Fichte in his later period. 
 
 A conspectus of Fichte's cosmology is to be had 
 from his Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge, 
 published only four years before his death and 
 therefore representing his mature views. From it 
 we see that Fichte recognised the following stages 
 in the world-process : God who is absolutely one, 
 all-inclusive and unchangeable ; God manifesting 
 himself as consciousness in a dependent form of 
 existence ; consciousness recognising itself as a 
 power to which an unconditional imperative is 
 addressed; consciousness in the limited form we 
 call perception ; consciousness generating because 
 of its indefiniteness the notions of space and 
 matter; consciousness recognising itself as impul- 
 sive or instinctive and as exercising its power on 
 the material world ; consciousness generating the 
 notion of Time ; consciousness liberating itself
 
 vii TWO PERIODS. SCHELLING 171 
 
 from impulse in order to apprehend the impera- 
 tive and thus rising to the plane of pure thought ; 
 consciousness broken up into a multiplicity of indi- 
 vidual-egos ; the egos recognising, in order to 
 realise the imperative, that they live in a world 
 which is the same for all ; the conscious ego over- 
 coming in obedience to the imperative the resistance 
 of sensuous impulse and thereby entering into the 
 life of God. Thus Fichte seems to regard the 
 world-process as, in a sense, circular ; that is, as 
 starting from God and passing back into Him 
 through a process of alienation. I have given 
 the steps as Fichte enumerates them without the 
 transitions by which he deduces one from the other. 
 The fact is that these transitions, which seemed 
 then to the author's admirers flawless in their 
 logical severity, have fallen quite out of date with 
 us. So alien are they to contemporary modes of 
 thought that they seem hardly capable of being 
 intelligibly stated, still less of compelling assent to 
 their validity. 
 
 12. The development of German Idealism 
 now proceeds through Schelling. Though thirteen 
 years younger than Fichte, Schelling's philosophic 
 activity overlaps closely on. Fichte came to philo- 
 sophy somewhat late ; Schelling, a much more 
 precocious intelligence, started in his early student 
 days, and began publishing as soon as he had 
 anything to say. His earliest pamphlets date from 
 before Fichte's epoch-making inauguration at Jena 
 in 1794. As fast as Fichte published his doctrines
 
 172 SCHELLING'S NATURPHILOSOPHIE CH 
 
 Schelling took them up and developed them in 
 accordance with the character of his own mind ; his 
 first considerable publication appeared in the very 
 next year, 1795. This, indeed, was the manner 
 of Schelling's activity for about fifteen years, till 
 Hegel's predominance silenced him. It was a 
 hurrying and feverish time, and Schelling wrote for 
 what seemed to him the philosophic needs of the 
 day ; there is nothing slow, mature, deep-pondering 
 in his work of these years. His publications were 
 not so much books as over-grown pamphlets, diffuse, 
 suggestive, full of intellectual curiosity, easily and 
 cleverly written. Schelling went on and on, 
 caring little whence he started and whither he was 
 moving ; and in the end reached something like the 
 contrary of his original position. 
 
 The task which Schelling took up, and for which 
 he was specially qualified, was the philosophy of 
 nature. Fichte had no tincture of natural science 
 or artistic interest ; wrapped up in metaphysics, 
 ethics, and politics, he was content to leave nature 
 as a mere ' Anstoss ' to human activity. Schelling 
 was a totally different character : he was full of 
 artistic sympathies became, in fact, connected 
 closely both by intellectual and personal ties with 
 the leaders of German romanticism ; and his 
 writings show a wide, though superficial, know- 
 ledge of the experiments and speculations of the 
 great scientists of the day. Naturally he saw at 
 once the absurdity of leaving nature in the position 
 of a featureless plane of impact. Indeed the incon-
 
 vii HIS SUBJECTIVIST PERIOD 173 
 
 sistency of Fichte's position could be shown without 
 travelling outside his own principles. At the time 
 of his first writing on the philosophy of nature 
 Schelling was still in agreement with the Fichtean 
 subjectivism ; he still denounced the conception of 
 an objective realm outside consciousness, in the 
 sense either of the crude materialists or of the 
 Kantians, as the root of all fallacy. Apart, then, 
 from the proofs daily accumulating of the infinite 
 subtlety and complexity of nature, the idealist was 
 bound to advance beyond Fichte. As a part of 
 consciousness nature must have its own peculiar 
 character, and that character must be deducible 
 from the general character of consciousness. 
 
 A specimen of Schelling's work in this direction is 
 presented in his Ideen zu einer Philosophic der Natur, 
 published in 1797. A student of Hegel will be struck 
 with the disproportionately small amount of ' deduc- 
 tion ' that it contains. Schelling has drawn together 
 a great mass of information about combustion, light, 
 the atmosphere, electricity, magnetism, and so forth, 
 but is not perpetually, like Hegel, stopping to show 
 how each fact fits into his abstract metaphysical 
 scheme. For whole chapters together he remains 
 on the natural-scientific plane. But every now and 
 then he pulls up to tell us, for example, 
 
 " that the identical essence of Nature manifests itself on 
 one side necessarily as real unity, that is, in Matter, on 
 the other side as ideal unity, that is, in Light ; while the 
 An Sick is that of which Matter and Light are them- 
 selves merely the two attributes, and from which, as from 
 their common root, they proceed " (Werke, ii. p. 107).
 
 174 NATURE CO-ORDINATE WITH MIND CH. 
 
 In the years immediately following Schelling 
 produced a large quantity of writing on the same 
 topic ; Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Natur- 
 philosophie ( 1 799), with a concise Einleitung to the 
 work published separately the same year; Allgemeine 
 Deduction des dynamise hen Processes (1800), Ueber 
 den wahren Begriff der Natur philosophic (1801), 
 and Die vier edlen Metalle (1802). In addition to 
 these there is a great deal of Natur philosophic in 
 other writings of the same period dealing with 
 philosophy more generally. For the reader of the 
 present day the scientific speculations contained in 
 these works are mere curios, interesting only so 
 far as they throw light on the intellectual conditions 
 of the time. One point that strikes the reader is 
 Schelling's overweening reliance on the deductive 
 method. 
 
 " Those theories alone can be true," he says, " which are 
 established absolutely a priori ; for if the principles are 
 certain in themselves and nowhere need experience to 
 confirm them, they must be completely universal, and, as 
 nature can never contradict reason, must suffice for all 
 possible phenomena, known or unknown, present or future." 
 (Werke, iv. 530). 
 
 The other striking point is the extraordinarily 
 fantastic character of many of his results. We 
 shall notice this feature of German Naturphilosophie 
 again when we come to Hegel. Good examples 
 from Schelling are his doctrine, rigidly deduced from 
 a priori principles, that all material substances are 
 forms of iron (Werke, iv. 157), and that water is a 
 form of iron which has lost all its potencies (ibid.
 
 vii THE PHILOSOPHY OF IDENTITY 175 
 
 iv. 197). The treatise On the Four Noble Metals 
 reads as strangely as a medieval book of alchemy. 
 
 13. The most systematic and best-known work 
 of this period of Schelling is his System des transcen- 
 dentalen Idealismus (1800). In this he draws yet 
 further away from Fichte in making Naturphilo- 
 sophie not subordinate to, but co-ordinate with, 
 mental and moral science. 
 
 " At first he regarded the philosophy of nature as 
 simply the application of the conclusions reached in the 
 philosophy of knowledge to external phenomena ; but at 
 length he came to the conclusion that each led to the 
 same point by a different route, and hence that they were 
 co-ordinate branches of philosophy. Such a view, it is at 
 once evident, could not be final ; for, if philosophy is to 
 be a single system, there must be some principle to unite 
 these co-ordinate departments, and such a principle must 
 be one which shall reduce intelligence and nature to the 
 unity of a principle higher than either. At a later period 
 in his development this became plain to Schelling himself, 
 but at the period to which we have now come he was con- 
 tent to co-ordinate the two without seeking for a unity 
 combining both. This, then, is the view which prevails 
 in the Transcendental Idealism " (Watson's Spelling's 
 Transcendental Idealism, pp. 99 sq.}. 
 
 14. And now we come to the step which brings 
 Schelling to that Philosophy of Identity with which 
 his name is chiefly associated. 
 
 " Finding that neither the process by which nature advances 
 to intelligence (Naturphilosophie), nor the process by 
 which intelligence advances to nature (Transcendental- 
 Philosophic), yields that unity of both which a true instinct, 
 not to speak of his philosophical training, showed him to be 
 the goal of philosophy, he seeks for it in the abstract identity 
 or indifference of subject and object" (id. ibid, p. 208).
 
 I 7 6 THE LAW OF IDENTITY CH. 
 
 This is the System of Identity as set forth in 
 Schelling's Darstellung meines Systems der Philo- 
 sophic (1801), followed up by Fernere Darstellungen 
 next year. 
 
 I am taking it for granted on expert authority 
 that in passing to the present stage from that of the 
 Transcendental Idealism Schelling made a genuine 
 change in his opinions. He himself denied rather 
 passionately in the preface to his Darstellung that 
 he had changed at all (Werke, iv. pp. 107 sq.\ He 
 averred that he was now giving to the world in its 
 totality the same unaltered system, aspects of which 
 had been set forth in his earlier writings. However, 
 the matter is of no practical importance in the 
 present connection ; and we know that the pride 
 of self-consistency plays strange tricks with philo- 
 sophers no less than with politicians. 
 
 The Darstellung is thrown into the Spinozistic 
 form of propositions with corollaries, scholia, and 
 so on, a form which Schelling doubtless felt to be 
 peculiarly appropriate to a doctrine that is so 
 Spinozistic in its tendency. To quote the first 
 three or four propositions will show the tendency 
 of the work : 
 
 " i . By the term ' Reason ' I mean absolute reason or 
 reason in so far as it is regarded as the total indifference 
 of subjective and objective. 
 
 " 2. Outside of Reason there is nothing, and in it is 
 everything. 
 
 " 3. Reason is perfectly one and perfectly self-equal. 
 
 " 4. The highest law for the being of Reason and, as 
 Reason is all-inclusive, for all being is the law of identity."
 
 THE ORGAN OF PHILOSOPHY 177 
 
 The law of identity is, of course, the familiar A = A ; 
 and from this point Schelling speaks of the supreme 
 being, which is indifferently both subjective and 
 objective, as the Absolute Identity. From this 
 Absolute Identity Schelling proceeds to deduce in 
 strict form the fundamental qualities of the material 
 world. At 51 we read that ''The first relative 
 totality is matter " ; and shortly after we have the 
 deduction of gravity, light, magnetism, and the rest. 
 The deduction of mind, which should have followed, 
 is wanting. 
 
 15. The philosophic activity of Hegel joins 
 on to this period of Schelling ; but, before we pass 
 to him, a few words are necessary on Schell ing's 
 view of the organ of philosophical knowledge, this 
 being one of his main differences from Hegel. It is 
 treated of in his Philosophische Briefe of 1 796 as 
 Intellectual Intuition, and is described as follows : 
 
 " There dwells in us all a secret, wonderful faculty, by 
 virtue of which we can withdraw from the mutations of 
 time into our innermost disrobed selves, and there behold 
 the Eternal under the form of immortality ; such vision 
 is our innermost and peculiar experience, on which alone 
 depends all that we know and believe of a supra-sensible 
 world " ( Werke, i. p. 318). 
 
 Another aspect of the matter is given in Schel- 
 ling's remarks in his Transcendental Idealism on 
 what he calls the "organ of transcendental philo- 
 sophy" (Werke, iii. p. 350 sq.\ In transcendental 
 philosophy, he says, we are studying the subject, 
 which we perceive by means of inner sense. By 
 inner sense we perceive, not that which is con- 
 
 N
 
 I 7 8 A VISION OF THE FEW CH. 
 
 structed in the objective world (as in the case of 
 mathematics), but the constructive act of thought 
 itself. As the inner sense is introspective, the con- 
 structive thought which I observe must be thought 
 constructed or produced by myself, the observer ; 
 I must, therefore, be a free producer of thought before 
 I can observe the production. Hence all philo- 
 sophising is productive. 
 
 " The process by which philosophy carries on its in- 
 vestigations is thus in one way identical with that by 
 which the creations of art are evolved by the artist ; the 
 difference being that in the process of creation the artist 
 is immersed in his products, while the philosopher not 
 only produces his objects, but contemplates intelligence 
 in the act of producing them. Philosophy is thus an 
 aesthetic act of the productive imagination, demanding a 
 special effort and perhaps a peculiar faculty. No one 
 who fails or who is unable to perform that act can have 
 anything to say to philosophical problems, and it is not 
 to be wondered at that men who have overloaded their 
 memories with undigested facts, or who have come under 
 the influence of a dead speculation, destructive of all im- 
 agination, should have entirely lost this aesthetic organ " 
 (Watson's Schellings Transcendental Idealism, pp. 103 sq.}. 
 
 Hence it follows, as Schelling remarks (Werke, iii. 
 p. 351), that we must not expect to find the gift 
 for philosophy more widely diffused than the gift for 
 poetry. Schelling's view of the organ of philosophy 
 shares the well-known obscurity attaching to the 
 conception of inner sense ; but what is quite clear 
 is that he regards philosophy, not only as an im- 
 mediate vision, but as the vision which is the 
 privilege of the chosen few. On both these points 
 he is in opposition to the spirit of Hegel.
 
 vii HEGEL AND BRITISH THOUGHT 179 
 
 The further development of Schilling's thought 
 from this point onward does not concern us. It is 
 well known how the fantastic and theosophic element 
 in him increased ; while, on the other hand, he came 
 to see that a pantheistic Absolute Identity was but 
 a poor substitute for the personal God of orthodox 
 religion. But this last stage of Schelling is to be 
 regarded as reaction against Hegel, and has had 
 no influence upon English philosophy. 
 
 1 6. We now come to Hegel, who is both less 
 well understood among us and is also exerting a 
 much larger direct influence than his predecessors. 
 Both these facts compel a more extended treatment. 
 There are many able accounts of Hegelianism in 
 English, but they are written too much in the spirit 
 of discipleship to save me from troubling the reader 
 with the sections that follow. Nor, since Hegel is 
 still so much under controversy, can I venture to 
 take anything for granted. What we want just 
 now, and have not got, is a competent exposition 
 of Hegelianism written by some one who is not a 
 Hegelian. And what would be no less welcome is 
 an accurate delimitation of Hegel's influence in this 
 country, which is still too recent to have found a 
 historian. Green's debt to him is probably much 
 smaller than his debt to Kant ; but the years follow- 
 ing Green's death have seen a great growth of Anglo- 
 Hegelianism. Not to go beyond the writers whom 
 I intend to criticise, Prof. Bosanquet's philosophy 
 must be regarded as an adaptation from Hegel, and
 
 i8o HEGEL SYSTEMATISES SCHELLING CH. 
 
 Mr. Bradley's partly as adaptation, partly as reaction 
 in an opposite direction. 
 
 As Ueberweg puts it, " the philosophy of Hegel 
 is a transformed and developed version of Schelling's 
 system of identity" (Grundriss, 9th ed. iv. 53). 
 Hegel had just the qualities which Schelling lacked, 
 patience and the faculty of system ; he was the 
 organiser of the conquests of his predecessors. But 
 he paid a heavy price for system, a far heavier price, 
 indeed, than system usually costs. Prof. Bosanquet 
 remarks somewhere that no movement ever had 
 more human nature in it than German Idealism. 
 This may justly be said of the earlier stage of the 
 movement, but not of the later : Hegel crushed 
 out all the human nature before he had done ; 
 his vast pile of theory is quite inhuman in its dreary 
 formalism. 
 
 17. Dr. Hutchison Stirling is wont to enlarge 
 with his picturesque energy upon the "adamantine 
 hardness " of Hegel. Most of this is due to the 
 strangeness of his standpoint to the English reader, 
 who is by nature an empirical person and expects a 
 philosopher to explain the world as the plain man 
 knows it. Hegel, obscure as he may be in detail, 
 is clear enough in outline when we have got his 
 standpoint. He starts from the assumption, in- 
 herited from Schelling, that the only absolutely real 
 is the all-inclusive Being which is the identity of 
 subject and object : this Being he conceives under 
 the form of thought. According to the terminology 
 employed in the present book Hegel is a panlogistic
 
 vii THE PHENOMENOLOGY i8r 
 
 absolutist. The purport of his system may be 
 described either as a survey of the sciences from the 
 standpoint of the absolute thought ; or as an account 
 of the development of the absolute thought into its 
 various forms. 
 
 Hegel's first work, Die Phanomenologie des 
 Geistes, published in 1807, was meant both to justify 
 this standpoint and to signalise the author's difference 
 from Schelling. The story of Hegel's relations with 
 Schelling is well known. Like Fichte, a somewhat 
 needy private tutor with no definite prospects, he 
 came to Jena early in 1801 to assist Schelling in 
 defending and expounding the new philosophy. In 
 1803 Schelling left Jena; and Hegel, who by that 
 time had gained some footing of his own, drifted 
 apart from him. The preface of the Phenomenology 
 is full of bitter sarcasms against Schelling and his 
 conception of the Absolute. So bitter are they that 
 the difference between the two thinkers is easily 
 over-estimated. Hegel claims for his Absolute 
 that it is not an empty tautologous neutrum like 
 Schelling's, but the implicit synthesis of all the 
 development of the world. This, of course, is a 
 mere vision ; nobody can make anything into an 
 ' implicit synthesis of differences ' by talking about 
 it. The real purpose of the Phenomenology, which 
 Hegel with characteristic lack of definiteness never 
 makes plain in his two enormous prefaces, is to 
 justify as the only true standpoint for philosophy his 
 assumption that reality is Absolute Thought which 
 is the union of subject and object.
 
 182 ARGUMENT OF THE PHENOMENOLOGY CH. 
 
 The argument of the book is that if we take the 
 common-sense position of the separation of subject 
 from object, and begin with the simplest or merely 
 sensuous form of the consciousness of objects, we 
 find inherent contradictions in it which drive us on 
 through successively higher forms of consciousness 
 till we at last find rest in that highest form in which 
 subject and object are one. Thus, as we learn from 
 the preface to the Wissenschaft der Logik, the work 
 forms a sort of introduction of the Hegelian system 
 comparable to the introductions of the Encyclopedia. 
 Hegel in the Phenomenology distinguishes three 
 main stages in the development of spirit, conscious- 
 ness, self-consciousness, and a third stage which is 
 subdivided into reason, spirit, religion, and absolute 
 knowledge. The main part of the work is devoted 
 to showing how each lower category proves self- 
 contradictory under criticism ; but, incidentally, 
 Hegel reviews a vast quantity of heterogeneous 
 matters, psychological, historical, and philosophical, 
 ranging from electricity to Stoicism, revealed re- 
 ligion, " physiognomik," and phrenology. The 
 treatment is utterly arbitrary and fantastic : in vital 
 passages the reasoning has hardly a show of 
 cogency : * a great display of facts is made, but no 
 attempt to interpret them for their own sake ; the 
 most vitally important are twisted this way and that 
 to suit the metaphysical system. 2 
 
 1 8. It was not till 1817, ten years after the 
 
 1 E.g. in the interpretation of 'sensuous certainty' in pp. 71-82. 
 
 2 A minor example is his treatment of Stoicism ; a more important his 
 treatment of religion.
 
 vii THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 183 
 
 Phenomenology, that Hegel gave complete expres- 
 sion to his philosophic views in the Encyclopedia, 
 most of the interval having been occupied by the 
 publication in successive parts of his Wissenschaft 
 der Logik. This latter work presents the general 
 method of the Hegelian treatment, and deals fully 
 with its most important application ; but in the 
 Encyclopedia logic appears in its proper position as 
 the first part of the system. How completely the 
 Hegelian system is represented by the Encyclopedia 
 we may see from the Propadeutik, a course of philo- 
 sophical instruction for the boys' school at Nurem- 
 berg where Hegel was headmaster from his leaving 
 Jena in 1806 to his appointment as professor at 
 Heidelbergin 1816. The first "Cursus" of this work 
 consists of " Rechts- Pflichten- und Religionslehre," 
 not distinctively Hegelian, and more edificatory 
 than philosophical ; the first part of the second 
 " Cursus " is a condensation of the Phenomenology ; 
 the second part of the second " Cursus " is logic ; 
 the first part of the third " Cursus " is " Begriffs- 
 lehre." But both logic and " Begriffslehre " are 
 summed up and included in the " Philosophische 
 Encyclopadie " with which the whole system of 
 instruction closes. Hegel lived fourteen years after 
 the publication of the Encyclopedia ; but he made 
 no theoretical advance upon it, contenting himself 
 with producing enlarged editions, or with applying 
 its principles to the interpretation of various con- 
 crete branches of knowledge. 
 
 19. The Encyclopedia, then, is in Wallace's
 
 184 AN OUTLINE OF THE SCIENCES AND CH. 
 
 words " the only complete, matured and authentic 
 statement of Hegel's philosophical system " (L.H. 
 p. ix) ; it is, moreover, incomparably better studied 
 than any other of his works. And yet it is very 
 difficult to make out what exactly it is meant for 
 and what its purpose is ; interpreters vary and 
 accuse each other of misrepresentation ; while some 
 one is always coming forward with a brand-new 
 theory of what Hegel really meant. As usual, we 
 get no help from the author himself; his intro- 
 ductory chapters do not introduce. Hegel (one 
 regrets to say it) had a mind which was essentially 
 unclear. Apparently he never said to himself at 
 the beginning of a piece of work, Why am I writing 
 this ? and, What is it that I propose to establish ? l 
 He moved half unconsciously, almost like a natural 
 force or current of public opinion, developing a line 
 of thought received from others, the termination 
 and consequences of which he never distinctly 
 realised. Our only hope is in the perusal of the 
 work itself in the light of its philosophical ante- 
 cedents. The title informs us that it is an " Ency- 
 clopedia of the philosophical Sciences in outline." 
 It is that, it is a presentation of those sciences from 
 the standpoint of the Thought-Absolute ; but it is 
 something much more, it is an account of the 
 self-unfolding of the Thought-Absolute. 
 
 1 A trivial illustration is afforded by his essay on the English Reform Bill 
 (Werke, xvii.), which was then agitating Europe. One may read fifteen or 
 twenty pages of this without learning its purpose or its bearing upon the 
 controversy. To volitional indeterminateness is due perhaps the intense 
 obscurity of much of Hegel's writing, particularly in his earlier period. The 
 reader is recommended to study the third chapter of the Phenomenology 
 (entitled " Kraft und Verstand, etc.") as a masterpiece of confused expression.
 
 vii THE STORY OF THE THOUGHT-ABSOLUTE 185 
 
 20. The latter meaning of the Encyclopedia 
 lies more upon the surface and has been much more 
 influential than the meaning which is announced on 
 the title-page. The whole form of the work is 
 genetic "Pure Being makes the beginning" 
 (L.H. p. 158) : by the operation of ' negativitat ' or 
 immanent self-opposition, category passes over into 
 category, thesis swings round into antithesis and 
 then coalesces with it to form synthesis, the 
 synthesis collapses into a unity in which its factors 
 are absorbed and so becomes a new thesis : thus the 
 movement proceeds till at the end of the Logic we 
 reach the final category of pure thought, i.e. the 
 absolute idea, which "in its own absolute truth 
 resolves to let the ' moment ' of its particularity . . . 
 go forth freely as Nature" (L.H. p. 379). In the 
 second and third sections of the Encyclopedia, the 
 Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Spirit, 
 the genetic form is still more apparent and is 
 thrown yet more into relief by Hegel's constant 
 appeal to the facts of science and history. Thus 
 it is not strange that leading interpreters have 
 regarded the Encyclopedia entirely in this light, as 
 an account of the successive stages of the self- 
 unfolding of the Absolute. 1 
 
 But a short consideration shows that the Encyclo- 
 pedia cannot be understood throughout in this way. 
 We have only got to look at the categories of 
 the Philosophy of Mind, such as 'recollection,' 
 ' imagination,' ' impulses and choice,' ' constitutional 
 
 1 Cf. M 'Gil vary, Principle and Method of the Hegelian Dialectic, part i.
 
 186 A CONFUSION OF STANDPOINTS en. 
 
 law,' ' external public law,' to assure ourselves that 
 Hegel never meant each single category of his 
 Encyclopedia to be taken as a state of the whole 
 world-spirit. Still more is this the case if we con- 
 sider the categories of the Philosophy of Nature ; 
 we cannot suppose that Hegel meant that the 
 whole is at one stage in its development spatial, or 
 electric, or chemical, or magnetic. 
 
 And there is something else pointing in the same 
 direction which must be mentioned, though it may 
 seem to be of too common-sense a character ; it is 
 the familiar argument that the Encyclopedia cannot 
 be understood genetically because in the Hegelian 
 view change is unreal. I know that this difficulty 
 is got over by the plea that the dialectic is a 
 development which is changeless ; but this is a 
 phrase into which I can put no meaning. The 
 Hegelian must take his choice : either change is 
 real, and then the problem will be to reconcile it 
 with the absolute perfection of the Absolute ; or it 
 is unreal, in which case there is no development. A 
 changeless development is not merely a ' difficult 
 conception ' ; it is downright nonsense. 
 
 We must conclude then that the Encyclopedia is 
 primarily what it says it is, an outline of the philo- 
 sophical sciences. The Logic, which lends itself 
 best to the other interpretation, is to be regarded as 
 Hegel's substitute for the old logic and metaphysics, 
 the former of which he regarded as effete, and the 
 latter as destroyed root and branch by the Kantian 
 separation of noumena from phenomena. Never-
 
 vii THE APPLICATIONS OF HEGELIANISM 187 
 
 theless it is certain that Hegel with characteristic 
 unclearness did not keep the two things distinct 
 in his mind, and in the Logic they are less distinct 
 than anywhere. He apparently drops into the 
 cosmic-developmental point of view when he makes 
 such statements as that "everything is a syllogism " 
 (L.H. p. 314). Certainly it is this interpretation 
 of the Encyclopedia which, right or wrong as it 
 may be, has been most important in the subsequent 
 history of Hegelianism. 
 
 21. Just as all that precedes the Encyclopedia 
 may be regarded as leading up to it, so all that 
 succeeds it may be regarded as applying in detail 
 the principles there enunciated. The concrete 
 applications of Hegelianism are much less important 
 than is commonly supposed. Not long ago such a 
 statement would have needed proof at length ; but 
 now it is sufficient to refer to Dr. M'Taggart's 
 Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, as showing con- 
 clusively that Hegel cannot be quoted to settle 
 contemporary philosophical problems. Nor should 
 we ever go to Hegel for illuminating criticism of 
 the facts of life and science. He never lights up 
 darkness with a happy phrase, never glances with 
 genial insight into a tangled problem ; human char- 
 acter did not interest him, and his science is as 
 fantastic as Schelling's, though much duller. There 
 is an immense mass of fact in Hegel, but it never 
 stands there in its own right ; its business is always 
 to illustrate the metaphysical system. A good 
 example of Hegel's treatment of fact is contained
 
 i88 A NEW VERSION OF PANTHEISM CH. 
 
 in his Philosophy of History. He offers copious 
 extracts from the standard text -books of Greek 
 and Roman history, but makes no sympathetic 
 attempt to understand the Greek genius, or the 
 Roman genius, for its own sake. " Greece is the 
 substantial which is at the same time individual " ; 
 " the Romans were bound up in that abstract under- 
 standing which pertains to fmiteness " these are 
 among the best of Hegel's characterisations. In 
 any case no present-day English university teacher 
 either of ancient or of modern history ever thinks 
 of appealing to Hegel ; he is neglected even by 
 those who make a speciality of the philosophical 
 treatment of the history of the ancient world. 
 
 Nor is Hegel pre-eminent in zeal for morals or 
 religion. We cannot say of him, as of Kant, that 
 the ultimate end of his philosophising was ethical 
 and religious. His religion is akin to the vague 
 emotional mood of pantheism, while in morals his 
 keynote is rather loyalty to the established order 
 than zeal for improvement. It is quite character- 
 istic that with Hegel religion is not man's supreme 
 apprehension of the supreme reality, but a category 
 of spirit transcended and absorbed in philosophy. 
 
 Hegel's claim to permanent philosophical import- 
 ance rests upon the fact that he has furnished a 
 peculiar and interesting version of pantheism. The 
 pantheist or absolutist tendency is so deeply rooted 
 in human nature, perhaps we ought to say so per- 
 manent an element therein, that Hegel's panlogistic 
 version of it will always have a claim to study.
 
 vii A PRINCE OF SYSTEM-MAKERS 189 
 
 And the Encyclopedia has some other notable 
 merits : it shows Hegel as the prince of system- 
 makers. 
 
 "In some men," says Prof. Wm. James, " theory is a 
 passion, just as music is in others. . . . Such men syste- 
 matise and classify and schematise and make synoptical 
 tables and invent ideal objects for the pure love of unify- 
 ing " (" Humanism and Truth once more " in Mind, N.S. 
 No. 54, p. 198). 
 
 Well, Hegel was like that ; and he systematised 
 and schematised, not merely with unexampled pains 
 and patience, but on a scale of cosmic vastness : he 
 took man and nature and God and history and all 
 the arts and sciences into the sweep of his abstract 
 system. His system too is original, original in its 
 total outcome, though the materials may have been 
 borrowed and adapted from this source or that. 
 Again, the system is very remote from common- 
 sense. This, of course, makes it good as an instru- 
 ment of education ; for the chief educational service 
 of philosophy is, I take it, to break up the crust of 
 custom and second-hand way of looking at things 
 that besets the average man. Finally Hegel, an 
 interested observer of political movements, managed 
 to bring his abstract system into connection with 
 the needs and tendencies of his time. Thus 
 Hegelianism, though primarily the most abstract of 
 philosophies, is connected with, and in some degree 
 represents, a certain way of viewing things that 
 is an appreciable corrective to bad influences of 
 social and intellectual life still unfortunately potent 
 among us.
 
 190 HOMO UNIUS LIBRI CH. 
 
 Altogether, then, it is not unfair to say that 
 Hegel is really a man of one book, the book in 
 which alone his system is authentically presented. 
 His case is totally different from that of a philo- 
 sopher like Plato. We could not spare one of the 
 immortal dialogues ; apart from their contribution 
 to knowledge, Plato's wit and wisdom, his person- 
 ality and individuality of genius receive a different 
 illustration in each of them. On the other hand, if 
 Hegel had never written the Encyclopedia how 
 many of us would read his other books ? The 
 tedious diffuseness of the Greater Logic robs it 
 of value ; for wherever Hegel is not concise he 
 is unendurable : the various applications of the 
 Hegelian system to fact are valuable as illustrations 
 of the system, not as illustrations of fact. It is 
 the empty schematism of the Shorter Logic that 
 shows Hegel at his best and briefest. 
 
 We shall not therefore be neglecting any vital 
 element of Hegelianism if we confine ourselves to 
 the Encyclopedia. And within that work all the 
 detail may be safely neglected in the present con- 
 nection as appealing to nothing beyond a purely 
 technical interest. It does not really matter much, 
 outside the technical circle, how Hegel works out 
 the dialectical transitions by which category passes 
 over into category, and whether Dr. McTaggart is 
 right or wrong in his extensive revisions of the 
 steps by which the transitions are made. The 
 great point is that the dialectical attempt should 
 have been made, and that Hegel should have
 
 THE LOGIC 191 
 
 thought that he had so far mastered the plan of 
 the world as to trace its development from Pure 
 Being to Absolute Spirit. 
 
 22. The three divisions of the Encyclopedia are 
 very unequal in interest and importance. No one 
 reads the Philosophy of Nature and few read the 
 Philosophy of Spirit ; but the Logic is a work 
 which the world could not well spare. The diffi- 
 culty is to understand what it is all about ; in other 
 words, what is the object- matter of the science 
 which Hegel calls ' logic.' He himself in his 
 obscurum-per-obscurius way defines logic as " the 
 science of the pure idea" (L.H. p. 30); or, the 
 system of pure reason, the realm of pure thought, 
 which realm is the truth as it is without external 
 covering in and for itself ( Werke, iii. p. 33). "One 
 may," he adds in popular language, "put the matter 
 thus, that the content of logic is the representation 
 of God as he is in his eternal essence before the 
 creation of Nature or of any finite spirit." This, of 
 course, is moonshine or metaphor. ' Pure idea,' 
 ' pure thought,' ' pure reason,' and ' truth in and for 
 itself are panlogistic figments. And how can 
 Hegel or any one claim to know what God was 
 before he created the world? We get help in 
 understanding the content of Hegelian logic by 
 considering that, if one is to set forth an Encyclo- 
 pedia of the philosophical sciences in the form of a 
 genetic story of the Absolute, then to each of the 
 sciences there must correspond a stage of the 
 Absolute. In the Philosophies of Nature and
 
 192 GOING BEHIND THE CREATION CH. 
 
 Spirit Hegel could find place for all the sciences 
 except logic and metaphysics. As these, or their 
 Hegelian substitute, would not go there, they were 
 correlated with a perfectly ' pure ' or ante-creational 
 stage of the universe. What Hegel thought of 
 current metaphysics and logic we learn from the 
 preface to the first edition of the Wissenschaft der 
 Logik. The former he regarded as destroyed root 
 and branch by Kant ; the latter still lingered but 
 grew ever more jejune and unreal. He desired 
 therefore to put forward a substitute for both in 
 accordance with the principles of the new ab- 
 solutism heralded in the Phenomenology. In place 
 then of the old logic which stated the general laws 
 of thought and of the old metaphysic which stated 
 the general laws of reality, he put forward a new 
 science which should contain the general principles 
 of both thought and reality arranged in a syste- 
 matically developmental form. When in the 
 Encyclopedia the sciences came to be expounded 
 under the form of the story of the development of 
 the Absolute, a stage in the Absolute had to be 
 postulated to correspond to this science of thought- 
 reality, the Absolute holding itself purely by itself 
 and not yet gone forth into the alienness of Nature. 
 There is in addition a formal or schematic reason 
 for postulating the ante - creational stage of the 
 Absolute. The mode of the Absolute's progress is 
 triadic throughout by thesis, antithesis, and syn- 
 thesis. Nature and spirit are obviously marked 
 out for antithesis and synthesis respectively. We
 
 vii PRESUPPOSITIONS OF HEGELIANISM 193 
 
 must therefore have a stage of thesis anterior to 
 both ; and this is the imaginary stage of ' pure 
 reason.' 
 
 The importance of ' logic ' in Hegel's eyes is 
 shown by the fact that he elaborated it in three 
 volumes (1812-16) before presenting it in the 
 condensed and definitive form of the Encyclopedia. 
 It is usual to justify this extended treatment by 
 pointing out that the Shorter Logic contains the 
 method of Hegel ; we might express the matter 
 otherwise by saying that it contains the presup- 
 positions of the whole system. Put shortly these 
 presuppositions are (a) that the universe may 
 be regarded as the self-development of a Single 
 Being or Absolute ; (b) that the Single Being is 
 thought ; (c) that thought in general, whether in 
 its absolute form or otherwise, has the quality of 
 developing by its own inner power ; (d) that the 
 development proceeds by self.- opposition, which 
 Hegel calls "negativitat"; (e) that the self-develop- 
 ment of the Absolute takes place as, and may be 
 presented as, a process from lower categories to 
 successively higher ones. These seem to be the 
 main presuppositions of the system contained in 
 the Encyclopedia : they involve many subordinate 
 ones ; but all receive their fullest and clearest 
 illustration from the Logic. 
 
 23. The Logic, moreover, is much the most 
 successful part of the Encyclopedia, so far as we 
 can speak of success in so strange an enterprise. 
 
 What the success amounts to is that, so long as we 
 
 o
 
 194 THE SUCCESS OF THE LOGIC CH. 
 
 can forget the actual world and keep ourselves from 
 asking what relation the abstract thought-movement 
 bears to actuality, we are carried along and feel 
 in some measure the force of that self-opposition 
 which is the nisus of the Hegelian universe. Several 
 reasons may be suggested for this. As I have 
 already said, the Logic is more definitely an account 
 of cosmic self-development than either of the two 
 following divisions : then, its very abstractness and 
 unsubstantiality makes us less inclined to check it 
 by reference to fact : further, abstractions like Pure 
 Being, Becoming, and Determinate Being which 
 form the early categories of the Logic are so 
 highly rarefied that we feel sojourn among them 
 unnatural and uncomfortable, and press on to some- 
 thing more concrete. What Hegel has done in the 
 Logic is to collect a vast number of abstract notions 
 from logic and metaphysics and arrange them in a 
 graduated scale ; and the industry and thoroughness 
 of the collection and the skill of the graduation 
 must always command our respect. The most 
 abstract of these notions such as Being and 
 Becoming are of rare and temporary use in 
 ordinary thinking : we are glad to escape from 
 them ; and Hegel leads us skilfully onward to 
 more familiar ground. 
 
 24. But the chief reason for the success of the 
 Logic is that its stages are, in the main, parallel to 
 the stages of actual consciousness. We see this by 
 reading the Logic in connection with the Pheno- 
 menology, and this is the reason which makes the
 
 vii ITS PARALLELISM TO CONSCIOUSNESS 195 
 
 Phenomenology indispensable to the understanding 
 of Hegel. 1 
 
 The Logic is divided triadically into the doctrine 
 of Being, the doctrine of Essence, and the doctrine 
 of the Notion. Being, says Hegel, is thought in its 
 immediacy, the notion implicit and in germ. It 
 corresponds to the division " Consciousness " in the 
 Phenomenology ; its categories, Quality (containing 
 being, being determinate, and being- for-self), Quantity 
 (containing pure quantity, quantum and degree), and 
 Measure are all appropriate to " Bewusstsseyn " as 
 described in the early sections of that work. Simi- 
 larly the third division of the Logic, that which deals 
 with the Notion, corresponds with the third division 
 of the Phenomenology. This third division of the 
 Phenomenology deals with that stage of conscious- 
 ness in which the ego is not only object to itself but 
 " object with the consciousness of the non-existence 
 of any other object ; it is sole object, all reality and 
 present existence" (P.G. p. 170). Consciousness 
 at this stage is regarded as constituting its object. 
 " The position taken up by the notion is that of 
 absolute idealism" (L.H. p. 287; cf. P.G. I.e.). 
 So far the parallelism is close enough ; but it is not 
 so close between the second division of the Pheno- 
 menology, Self -consciousness, and the second divi- 
 sion of the Logic, Essence ; though, ultimately, one 
 
 1 It is much to be regretted that no successful attempt has been made to 
 translate this work. Prof. Royce's translation, announced many years ago, 
 has never appeared. Mr. W. T. Harris abandoned his enterprise (begun in 
 the Journal of Speculative Philosophy} at an early stage. Novelli's Italian 
 translation is, if possible, harder to understand than the original. There is 
 nothing in French.
 
 196 IS HEGEL A 'CONCRETE' THINKER? CH. 
 
 seems to be derived from the other. ' Self-con- 
 sciousness ' is the realm of definite distinction in 
 which subject confronts object, and each subject is 
 conscious of its own identity in opposition to every 
 other. Similarly we read in the Doctrine of 
 Essence that " the terms in Essence are always 
 mere pairs of correlatives," that " Essence is Being 
 that has gone into itself," and that " reflection, or 
 light thrown into itself, constitutes the distinction 
 between Essence and immediate Being, and is the 
 peculiar characteristic of Essence itself" (L,H. 
 pp. 207 sq.\ Such expressions are hardly intel- 
 ligible unless we can interpret them in reference 
 to the facts of self -consciousness. But in the 
 further development of Essence, in various of the 
 categories subordinate to it, we have some difficulty 
 in tracing the reference. It would appear that 
 desiring to make the category of general application 
 Hegel interpreted it in a way much wider than its 
 original meaning. 
 
 The further one gets into the Logic the less 
 grows one's impression of its success. A vast deal 
 of nonsense is talked about Hegel, and one of the 
 weakest things commonly said is that he is a ' con- 
 crete' philosopher. If one may speak from one's 
 own experience, the closer Hegel gets to fact the 
 less interesting he becomes. Every one knows his 
 famous first triad of Pure Being, Nothing and 
 Becoming : what he says about them stimulates us 
 to much profitable thought on the meaning of these 
 highly - generalised abstractions. But how many
 
 vii THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 197 
 
 people know about the later and more concrete 
 categories of the Notion, or care about the logical 
 validity of the transitions whereby Hegel passes 
 from one to the other? Hegel's account of 
 1 chemism ' runs as follows : 
 
 " The not-indifferent (biassed) object has an immanent 
 mode which constitutes its nature, and in which it has 
 existence. But as it is invested with the character of 
 total notion, it is the contradiction between this totality 
 and the special mode of its existence. Consequently it is 
 the constant endeavour to cancel this contradiction and to 
 make its definite being equal to the notion " (L.H. 
 P- 340. 
 
 Now, this interests nobody : it is caviare to the 
 chemist, and not logic enough for the logician. 
 
 25. The Philosophy of Nature which is dealt 
 with in the second part of the Encyclopedia has been 
 called the partie honteuse of the Hegelian system : 
 unfriendly critics such as Riehl have amused them- 
 selves by making a collection of the more flagrant 
 absurdities which Hegel indulges in. The point 
 to insist on, however, is that it is an essential part 
 of the system : nothing has conduced more to the 
 misunderstanding of Hegel in this country than the 
 comparative inaccessibility of the Philosophy of 
 Nature. 1 Having taken up the position that the 
 sciences can be set forth dialectically from the 
 standpoint of the Absolute, Hegel only showed 
 proper courage in tackling the inevitable problem of 
 'deducing' Nature. The absurdities into which he 
 
 1 It is greatly to be desired, in the interest of a truer appreciation of 
 Hegel, that this remaining portion of the Encyclopedia should be translated 
 into English, preferably not from the prolix lecture-notes of the Werke but 
 as its author originally published it.
 
 198 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRIT CH. 
 
 fell may be palliated by the reflection that they were 
 common to the period. When Schelling had once set 
 the fashion, no self-respecting philosopher would be 
 satisfied unless he put forward his Naturphilosophie 
 with the rest. A mere enumeration of names and 
 dates will illustrate this. Oken's Lehrbuch der 
 Naturphilosophie, published in 1809, is a most 
 elaborate effort backed with much more scientific 
 knowledge than Hegel could claim. Steffens' 
 Grundziige der philosophischen Naturwissenschaft, 
 published in 1806, Windischmann's Begriff der 
 Physik (1802), and Idee der Physik (1805) are 
 books of a similar character. And there were 
 many others : J. J. Wagner, Nees von Esenbeck, 
 B. H. Blasche, I. P. V. Troxler, C. A. Eschen- 
 mayer, G. H. Schubert, J. E. von Berger, and, 
 above all, F. von Baader, are names of Hegel's 
 contemporaries who figure in histories of philosophy 
 as having tried their hands about this time at the 
 same queer line of philosophising. Hegel's scientific 
 absurdities, like Shakespeare's improprieties, are to 
 be laid, not so much to his own account, as to that 
 of his age. 
 
 26. The unsuitability of the dialectic method of 
 Hegel to natural science is obvious, and, at the 
 present time of day, need hardly be pressed home ; 
 but I think that people will come to see that his 
 method is hardly more suitable to those mental and 
 moral sciences which are treated in the Philosophy 
 of Spirit. Certain it is that no contemporary 
 thinker shows the least disposition to accept, say,
 
 vii HEGEL AND HISTORY 199 
 
 Hegel's account of Art as a category developing 
 out of Social Ethics and developing into Revealed 
 Religion : the transitions have not the slightest 
 touch of that cogency we welcomed in the earlier 
 part of the Logic. 
 
 On the whole the feeling of the average reader 
 over the Philosophy of Spirit will be, not pleasure 
 in seeing Hegel deal ably and convincingly with 
 concrete material, but irritation at seeing concrete 
 material so unsympathetically distorted. Some- 
 where in Dr. Caird's study of Hegel there is a 
 passage telling us that "more than most he laid 
 himself quietly open to the influences of the time 
 and the teachings of history." I grieve to differ 
 from so eminent an interpreter, but anything rather 
 than a sound historical method is suggested to my 
 mind by perusal of this last section of the Encyclo- 
 pedia. Everywhere fact is cited and the lessons of 
 fact ignored. Hegel's position in the movement of 
 German idealism alone enables one to comprehend 
 and pardon him : Hegel does not explain history ; 
 but history explains Hegel. 
 
 27. It will be seen that Hegelianism combines 
 all the mistaken tendencies against which the first 
 portion of this book is directed ; and thus no 
 enumeration of flaws will give an adequate concep- 
 tion of my difference from it. However, for the 
 sake of raising definite issues I will enumerate 
 points of objection. They apply for the most part 
 equally well to the English writers of the school. 
 
 First we may notice Hegel's static-intellectualist
 
 200 HEGEL'S PASSIVISM IN LOGIC CH. 
 
 view of knowledge : there is no recognition that 
 man ever does anything with his intelligence ; 
 according to Hegel he merely thinks with it, 
 recognising the fait accompli so far as he directs 
 intelligence to objects at all. In the case of the 
 highest form of knowledge, philosophy, Hegel's 
 passivity reaches its deepest depth, due no doubt 
 to the element of absolutism in him. Not merely 
 is the object of our knowledge a fixed unalterable 
 system ; but it is a system which discloses itself 
 without our exertion. In ordinary sciences, I sup- 
 pose Hegel would admit, we have to use raisonne- 
 ment and search hither and thither with hypothesis 
 and verification. But in philosophy Hegel keeps 
 his bitterest sarcasms for raisonnement and for those 
 who seek the truth by a method external to the 
 object (cf. e.g. P.G. pp. 36 sq.). The true method, 
 says Hegel, is one which identifies itself with its 
 subject-matter. 
 
 It was this belief that his method was one with 
 reality that gave him such intense self-confidence : 
 
 " Although I could not possibly think that the method 
 which I have pursued or rather which this system pur- 
 sues of itself might not be capable of much perfecting, 
 of much thorough revising in its details, I know, neverthe- 
 less, that it is the only true method. This is clear of 
 itself already from the fact that it is nowise distinct from 
 its object and content ; for it is the content in itself, it is 
 the dialectic that the content has within it, which moves the 
 content forward. It is clear that no treatment can pass 
 for scientific that does not go the gait of this method and 
 conform to its simple rhythm, for it is the gait of the subject- 
 matter itself" (Werke, iii. p. 39, tr. by Prof. M'Gilvary).
 
 AND IN ETHICS 201 
 
 Der Gang der Sache selbst is the keynote of Hegel's 
 doctrine of the relation of philosophy to its object. 
 Possibly counter-passages might be found in Hegel 
 to mitigate the paradox of that just quoted. But, 
 as it stands, it means that the true philosopher, such 
 as Hegel himself, is the passive organ of reality, the 
 mouthpiece of Deity in the words of Fichte, "not 
 I as an individual say this, but the Idea which speaks 
 through me " (Adamson's Fichte, p. 99). 
 
 The passivity of Hegelian ethics is equally 
 definite and equally repugnant to the best moral 
 consciousness of our age. For Hegelianism 
 morality is thought, not action : " the will is a 
 special way of thinking" (P.R. p. n). The world 
 at large regards as highest the moral advance of 
 the reformer : Hegel knows nothing higher than 
 social loyalty. " The wisest men of antiquity have 
 laid it down that wisdom and virtue consist in 
 living conformably to the customs of one's people 
 (P.G. p. 258). 
 
 28. Perhaps the most glaring fault of Hegel is 
 his anti-personalism, a way of thinking that has no 
 lack of followers in English universities. It is, of 
 course, essential to his absolutism that he should 
 regard all that the human spirit does, its morality, 
 art, and religion, not as the work of persons, but as 
 a manifestation of the Absolute Spirit. From this 
 impersonal treatment of the mental and moral 
 sciences comes that failure of interpretation which 
 is so patent in the last section of the Encyclopedia : 
 nothing but disaster can come from attempts to
 
 202 'THE PERSONAL = THE CONTINGENT' CH. 
 
 interpret art, for example, apart from the efforts of 
 artists. It is true that the difference between 
 subjective and objective is recognised by Hegel ; 
 but it is in a sense totally different from what the 
 words usually bear. For Hegel "subjective does 
 not mean the inner as opposed to the outer. It 
 means rather the particular, contingent, and capricious 
 as opposed to the universal, necessary, and reason- 
 able" (McTaggart, "Hegel's Treatment of the 
 Subjective Notion" in Mind, N.S. No. 22, p. 166). 
 Such, then, is the way in which Hegel views or 
 accounts for personality ; it is a sort of particularity 
 or accident. This accords with the arrangement 
 in the Logic where the categories of the Subjective 
 Notion, which are drawn from formal logic, are 
 subordinated to those of the Objective Notion, 
 which are drawn from natural science. There is, of 
 course, some slender justification for this. As 
 opposed to the solid reasonable precepts and 
 institutions of social life, the personal preferences 
 and revolts of individuals have an accidental and 
 capricious air. Hegelianism may claim it as a merit 
 that it has emphasised the collectivist side of life, 
 too much ignored in the England of the last genera- 
 tion. But to explain morality, art, and religion 
 without reference to personality is as foolish as to 
 explain the geological formation of the earth with- 
 out reference to the sun. 
 
 29. This leads us to consider the general 
 defects of Hegel's method in the mental and moral 
 sciences : they may be summed up by saying that
 
 vii HEGEL'S PSYCHOLOGY 203 
 
 Hegel studies these sciences from the standpoint of 
 the Absolute, whereas the true standpoint is the 
 psychological. The neglect of personality, just 
 mentioned, obviously belongs to this ; though it 
 has a significance reaching so far beyond scientific 
 detail that I gave it a place by itself. A matter 
 wide-reaching enough, and at the same time with 
 great influence upon detail, is Hegel's treatment of 
 sensation. For Hegel sensation must somehow be 
 a stage or element in the development of Absolute 
 Thought : unless he can so explain it, his whole 
 philosophy collapses. He grapples with the question 
 in an early section of the Phenomenology, and 
 comes to the conclusion, which no contemporary 
 psychologist would endorse for a moment, that 
 sensation gives us nothing but " Reines Seyn." If 
 Prof. Bosanquet is right in saying that in the inter- 
 pretation of the perceptive judgment lies " the root 
 of modern philosophy " (Knowledge and Reality, 
 p. 1 60), it would seem that Hegelianism is rotten 
 at the root. 
 
 Closely connected with his treatment of sensation 
 is Hegel's neglect of interaction with the physical 
 environment as a factor in the development of soul- 
 life : there can, of course, be no such interaction 
 from the standpoint of consistent Absolutism. This 
 cuts him off entirely from all that line of psychologi- 
 cal explanation which is connected with the name of 
 Darwin. Altogether, it is not too much to say that 
 Hegel's psychological speculations are quite destitute 
 of significance for the modern investigator.
 
 204 HEGEL ON VOLITION CH. 
 
 30. The last point which is worth mentioning 
 is Hegel's treatment of volition : as an intellectualist 
 he reduces willing and all volitional phenomena, 
 such as desire (cf. P.G. p. 126, and P.M. p. 53 sq.) y 
 to forms of epistemonic experience : as an absolutist 
 he merges all personal initiative in self-surrender to 
 the Absolute. In this he compares very unfavour- 
 ably with his predecessors, Fichte and Schelling, 
 who give us the impression that they tried to 
 survey the whole of experience and to furnish a 
 synthesis which should do justice to every side. In 
 both of them, as in Kant, there is a no inconsiderable 
 element of voluntarism : in Fichte it accounts for 
 the divergence between the earlier and the later 
 forms of his system : in Schelling there is an even 
 more methodical attempt to do justice to the practical 
 as distinguished from the intellectual side of life. 
 But Hegel tries nothing in this way : he has the air 
 of abandoning a province which he could not hold 
 effectively, and, for the sake of rounding off his 
 system, of leaving vast tracts of experience with a 
 merely nominal explanation. The omission is fatal 
 to his doctrine of morality, art, and religion. They 
 are indeed hardly recognisable in the account he 
 gives of them, wanting as it is in the elements of 
 personality and volition. 
 
 31. We come now to the kindlier task of 
 indicating the good points of Hegel, points which 
 largely account for his influence in England. The 
 first and greatest may be dismissed quite shortly ; 
 it is simply his speculative power, shown in his
 
 THE STRONG SIDE OF HEGEL 
 
 handling of material, in his width of outlook, and 
 in the homogeneity of his system. These three 
 elements of power are not always combined, but 
 Hegel happens to combine them : his mind moves 
 strongly and subtly in the most abstract regions 
 of thought ; his speculations are on a scale of 
 cosmic vastness ; and his system is thoroughly 
 integrated. It is this last characteristic, indeed, 
 which makes it impossible to modernise him. His 
 system is so utterly out of harmony with con- 
 temporary science, that no one now can accept it 
 in block ; but, if you omit or replace any important 
 element of it, the rest becomes unmeaning. 
 
 The next point has also been mentioned by- 
 anticipation ; it is Hegel's insistence that philosophic 
 truth is not a special intuition but entirely a matter 
 of reason. This undoubtedly is the only sound 
 position for an academic teacher : he must endeavour 
 to prove all things ; he cannot countenance a purely 
 personal illumination. Moreover, there is a good 
 democratic side to this predominance of reason : 
 philosophy becomes the common heritage of reason- 
 able beings, not a special gift like artistic excellence. 
 Here our sympathies go with Hegel, though some 
 will question whether sober experience is not, for 
 once, on the side of Schelling. 
 
 A good point of Hegel's and one that has had 
 great weight in England is his avoidance of solipsism, 
 which is the great difficulty of ordinary idealism, 
 and is felt acutely in Kant and Fichte. A monist 
 who starts from his individual consciousness is very
 
 206 AN ENLIGHTENED REACTIONARY CH. 
 
 hard pressed to get outside it. By Englishmen the 
 dangers of solipsism are realised with special keen- 
 ness from their experience of Hume and J. S. Mill. 
 Now, whatever difficulties Hegel's position of im- 
 personal or objective idealism involves, it does 
 escape this solipsistic one. If the monist starts 
 within a consciousness which is co-extensive with 
 the universe, the problem how to get outside it 
 disappears. 
 
 32. There is a good deal to be said, too, for the 
 practical tendency of Hegel, which may be described 
 as an enlightened reactionism. Hegel, like all his 
 intelligent contemporaries, began life as a liberal : 
 but towards middle life he settled down as an 
 enlightened conservative with two main antipathies, 
 one against the fanaticism of pietistic religion, the 
 other against the raw enthusiasm of reformers who 
 would upset the established social order and replace 
 it by Utopia. The former antipathy does not 
 concern us ; for it has found no echo in our country : 
 the latter accounts for a great deal of his present 
 influence. 
 
 The best side of Hegel's political conservatism is 
 its loyalty to the established order. That the world 
 is spiritual, that spirit is reasonable, that it is fully 
 realised and not unattainably ideal, that the individual 
 and personal are particular and capricious, are 
 philosophemes which in combination lead straight 
 to the position that the State is perfect. It is only 
 by the inconsistency of distinguishing after all the 
 rational from the actual (cf. the preface to the
 
 vii HEGEL'S ENGLISH FOLLOWING 207 
 
 Philosophy of Right) that Hegel escapes the abyss 
 of 'Whatever is, is right.' All this was not un- 
 congenial to the temper of an age recoiling from 
 the French Revolution. In our own day, too, in 
 England, now that our political constitution has 
 reached comparative equilibrium, there has been a 
 beneficent reaction of loyalty towards the State, 
 fostered in academic circles by the influence of 
 Hellenic studies. 
 
 Enlightened conservatism is an excellent thing, 
 and the Hegelian influence in this direction is 
 certain to do no harm among us ; but this should 
 not blind us to the essential falsity of the Hegelian 
 position. If we accept literally his doctrine that 
 spirit is perfectly realised, every thought of reform 
 is presumptuous and mischievous. The case is the 
 same as with advance in thought. If philosophy 
 is perfected and completely manifest in the Hege- 
 lian system, what more is left for thinkers to do ? 
 These questions were earnestly discussed in 
 German university life both among Hegel's pupils 
 and among his rivals. At that date it was not so 
 easy as it is now to take Hegel's assertions of 
 finality in a merely Pickwickian sense. 
 
 33. Though there is no definite Hegelian 
 school in England, as Mr. Bradley very rightly 
 protests, there is a very real Hegelian influence. 
 In some part this is due to the suitability of 
 the Hegelian spirit, just noticed, to the needs 
 of the time ; in part it is due to the notion, 
 which Dr. McTaggart has done much to dispel,
 
 2 o8 A LIMITED ALLEGIANCE CH. 
 
 that Hegel can be enlisted as an ally in certain 
 burning theological controversies ; J but mainly, I 
 think, the influence is an incident of the beneficent 
 permeation of England by Teutonic ideas. Men 
 took up Hegelianism twenty or thirty years ago 
 just because Hegelianism was 'going' at that 
 time. 
 
 The chapters that follow, dealing as they do 
 with the influence of fallacies that are predominant 
 in Hegel, are incidentally and partially a contribu- 
 tion to the study of Anglo - Hegelianism. In 
 preparation for these chapters, I may notice two 
 points. The first is that Anglo- Hegelianism has 
 never professed to take up the full Hegelian system. 
 The explanation of this doubtless lies in the diffi- 
 culty which people find in falling in with the 
 Hegelian view of the relation of philosophy to 
 experience. Hegel's interest is never, primarily, 
 in explaining experience, but in effecting a certain 
 form of metaphysical construction, for which he 
 has, as we have seen, to make considerable anti- 
 empirical assumptions. Into the full system of 
 these assumptions no Englishman can follow him. 
 I doubt if any thinker anywhere at this time of day 
 can seriously take up strict Hegelianism, cut off as 
 the thinking world is now from that historical 
 development which lent the system verisimilitude 
 in the eyes of its contemporaries. But in England, 
 at any rate, a philosopher has no chance of a 
 
 1 Cf. especially 257 of his Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, part of the 
 essay on " Hegelianism and Christianity."
 
 vii THE PERILS OF ADAPTATION 209 
 
 hearing unless he is on friendly terms with Experi- 
 ence : he need not be empirical, but he must not be 
 anti-empirical. Thus it is that Anglo-Hegelianism 
 is not a systematic and, perhaps, after all, not a 
 very deep - rooted affair. The average Anglo- 
 Hegelian never dreams of entangling himself in 
 the laborious complexity of the dialectic, though he 
 falls in with so many of the phrases and tendencies 
 of the system. He generally limits himself to 
 such opinions of Hegelian colour as are more or 
 less reconcilable with common sense. It is this 
 looseness and fluidity that makes the chief 
 difficulty in criticising Anglo-Hegelianism. 
 
 34. The other point, which might be illus- 
 trated freely from my chapters on Messrs. Bradley 
 and Bosanquet, is that the uncritical borrowing of 
 Hegelian ideas has involved an irremediable sacrifice 
 of philosophic thoroughness. The Hegelian system 
 is a wonderfully coherent whole : its author was no 
 man of insight by flashes : you cannot take part of 
 him and leave the rest. Consider the following 
 enumeration of Hegelian dogmas stated in their 
 briefest terms the universe is one thought ; the 
 world - thought develops dialectically ; man and 
 nature are stages of dialectic development ; sen- 
 sation and will are forms of thought ; notions are 
 concrete ; dialectic development is exemplified in 
 history ; the philosopher can formulate the world- 
 process. Every one of these dogmas is integral to 
 the system : replace it by anything else and you 
 have at once what Mr. Bradley would call "a blind
 
 2io THE PERILS OF ADAPTATION CH. vn 
 
 tangle of bewilderment and error." But this is the 
 mistake that Anglo- Hegelians have made: they 
 have attempted a patchwork of modern and Hege- 
 lian ideas. And by these inconsistencies they have 
 confused men's minds so much that many of the 
 younger race of students have lapsed into the fatal 
 conviction that philosophy leads no whither, have 
 given up thinking, and have taken to phrase-making 
 to archaeology.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 T. H. GREEN 
 
 i. MY criticism of leading contemporaries, to 
 which I come at last, does not attempt to do more 
 than trace the influence of the Idols of the Theatre 
 upon some of the best-known work of the writers 
 criticised : it does not for a moment set up to judge 
 these writers completely, still less to make an all- 
 round survey of contemporary thought. One of 
 the three selected, T. H. Green, is not a contem- 
 porary in the strict sense ; but I have felt justified 
 in treating him as such, because his school is still 
 strongly represented in the University. 
 
 The idols that beset Green's philosophy are, as 
 we shall see, Intellectualism and Subjectivism ; and, 
 strange to say, neither of them harmonises with his 
 personality or with his detailed treatment of ethical 
 and social problems. Even among our practical and 
 sensible race of English thinkers there are few who 
 have felt more strongly than Green that life is 
 striving, or have had a firmer grasp upon objective 
 reality. And yet it is certain that these convictions 
 have not told sufficiently upon the main structure of 
 his system : we shall find that he shows tendency 
 
 211
 
 212 THE IDOLA IN GREEN CH. 
 
 both to a static-intellectualist view of the world, 
 and also to ignore the truth that the objective side 
 of experience is co-ordinate with the subjective. 
 These errors in Green, so contrary to what we 
 might expect both from the details of his ethics 
 and from his personal history and character, can be 
 explained only by his submission to the influence 
 of German idealism. 
 
 2. Green, who came up to Oxford in 1855, 
 had, even as a schoolboy, laid himself open to the 
 best influences of his time. The intellectual torpor 
 of the eighteenth century still hung round the 
 isolated university ; but outside it was high summer. 
 Contemporary literature was full of moral and 
 religious aspiration : Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
 Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Emerson, and 
 Ruskin had been throwing out in fragments 
 ideas like those to which Green afterwards gave 
 systematic expression. And no less important in 
 his environment were the political philanthropists 
 and statesmen, of whom John Bright may be 
 specially mentioned as approaching Green's ideal of 
 a worker in the cause of society. 
 
 As Green's was a nature which, though capable 
 of much development, was incapable of radical 
 change, we can infer with sufficient assurance from 
 a survey of his printed work that religion and 
 morals were the staple of his meditations in the 
 youthful period when he was looking out for 
 guidance. Even his logical and epistemological 
 inquiries tend in this direction ; for they recur con-
 
 vni HIS SPIRITUAL HISTORY 213 
 
 tinually to the vindication of a unitary subject of 
 knowledge, as opposed to the ' loose and separate ' 
 sensationalism of Hume ; to the existence of a 
 system of objects which is known, as opposed to 
 subjectivism of the sceptics ; and to the creative 
 activity of the self in forming its world of experi- 
 ence, as opposed to the wax-tablet theory of Locke. 
 Certain facts and conceptions of morals and religion 
 a Central Source of all power, goodness, and 
 beauty, man's close dependence thereon yet free 
 control of his destiny, the immortality of the soul, 
 the brotherhood of mankind, the moral value of 
 common duties and relationships, the solidarity of 
 reason and virtue, the rights and duties of citizens 
 as partners in the greatest and strongest of moral 
 institutions such were the themes on which his 
 mind was bent, and for which he kept seeking 
 adequate formulation. 
 
 3. But the principles which held the field at 
 the University just then either gave small help for 
 his line of thought or tended in exactly the contrary 
 direction. For those who have grown up in the 
 triumph of the idealism which Green championed, 
 it will always be hard to realise that in the fifties 
 and sixties the most potent intellectual influence 
 at Oxford was that of John Stuart Mill, to whose 
 hedonism and sensationism there had allied them- 
 selves the biological ideas represented by the name 
 of Darwin. As we see from his elaborate criticisms 
 of Mill, Herbert Spencer, and G. H. Lewes, and 
 from the early sections of the Prolegomena, to be
 
 214 REACTION AGAINST MILL CH. 
 
 mentioned later, these were the tendencies which 
 Green, as the vindicator of spiritual experience, 
 made it his mission to oppose : and the subsequent 
 history of thought at Oxford shows the completeness 
 of his victory. 
 
 We must not forget, however, that Green was 
 considerably influenced, both in ethics and politics, 
 by the foes whom he overcame : instances of this 
 from the Prolegomena will meet us later. Indeed 
 no well-natured young man at that time could fail 
 to learn much from Mill, who had converted Oxford 
 really because what he offered was better than the 
 established ideas. True, utilitarianism was atheistic 
 or suspected to be such : but were people of fine 
 religious sentiment likely to be satisfied by the 
 agnostic dogmatism of theologians such as Mansel ? 
 The Utilitarians were zealous for improvement 
 social and individual ; Mansel used his witty pen 
 on behalf of the party of 'organised torpor.' And, 
 with all his vigorous polemic against Mill's theory 
 of Knowledge, Green could not fail to see that it 
 was a great advance on the traditional handbooks. 
 Mill's System of Logic (published in 1843) must 
 have come as an unspeakable refreshment to the 
 younger generation foredone with the aridities of 
 the Artis Logicae Rudimenta. Notwithstanding 
 the later reaction against his system, it is now 
 generally recognised that he did the inestimable 
 service of recalling logic to reality away from 
 the verbalism and formalist manipulation of the 
 degenerate Aristotelians.
 
 INFLUENCE OF GREEK STUDIES 215 
 
 4. We have, then, to suppose Green as a junior 
 student chafing against the predominance of the 
 lower - categories philosophy of the utilitarians, 
 sensationists, and biologists, 1 and looking round in 
 his intellectual environment for principles to refute 
 them. In estimating the educational influences to 
 which he was exposed, we must remember that the 
 higher instruction at Oxford had always been based 
 on writings of Aristotle, to which portions of Plato 
 had been added shortly before Green's matriculation. 
 
 " About the time that Green began to lecture in 
 Oxford," says Nettleship in his Memoir of Green, " the 
 study of Plato and Aristotle had lately entered on a 
 new phase. With an increased knowledge of German 
 philosophy, and especially of German history of philosophy, 
 working through men like Jowett and Pattison, it had 
 become (to use a current antithesis) less ' literary ' and 
 more ' philosophical.' In other words, their works had 
 begun to be treated less as instructive analyses or brilliant 
 criticisms of the commonplaces of culture, and more as 
 partial expressions of systematic views of human life and 
 the world." 
 
 Green, however, was not "one of those to whom 
 the products of the Greek genius have a unique 
 attraction or interest," and " it is probable that, if 
 he had been free to choose, he would not have spent 
 upon Aristotle so much of his force as a teacher." 
 It is true that 
 
 " the theory of life which found its final expression in 
 Aristotle appealed to him on its own merits, because it 
 
 1 The reader who wishes to learn more of the line of thought opposed to 
 Green, will find a clever example in Physical Ethics, published in 1869 by 
 Alfred Barratt, fellow of Brasenose. It is a fault of Nettleship's Memoir 
 that, though Green was a great borrower and controversialist, it says little 
 of the books and men who influenced him, either by attraction or repulsion.
 
 216 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CH. 
 
 was based substantially upon the same principles as his 
 own, the principle that the higher or rational nature in 
 man is that in which the impulse to knowledge and the 
 impulse to society have their common root ; that this is 
 what makes him most truly man and most like God ; and 
 that to promote the growth of this nature is the highest 
 service that he can render to his fellowmen " (Memoir in 
 Green's Works, vol. iii. pp. Ixx. sg.~). 
 
 But, helpful as Greek thought was to Green, his 
 was essentially a non-antiquarian mind, which could 
 not help seeking its work in carrying forward the 
 thought of its own age. His metaphysic is all 
 modern ; and the Aristotelian influence appears 
 most in certain features of his ethics and politics, 
 forming a valuable corrective to the individualism 
 of current theory and the laissez-faire practice of 
 the Manchester school to which he otherwise 
 adhered. 
 
 5. Nor was Green likely to go back to the 
 great British thinkers of the eighteenth century, in 
 the criticism of whom he afterwards made his reputa- 
 tion. The eighteenth century is the period which 
 illustrates our national limitations most acutely : the 
 flame of thought, never too strong, burnt low in 
 the spiritual gloom which hung over our universities 
 and polite society. Among those who led in intel- 
 lect religious experience had grown poor and cold. 
 Thinkers busied themselves round about religion 
 rather than with it. The age of evidence-makers 
 came in : in the former half of the century they 
 employed themselves in proving the Christian 
 theology by appealing to its inherent reasonable-
 
 vin THE ORTHODOXY OF 1858 217 
 
 ness, in the latter half by marshalling the external 
 testimony in its behalf. 1 The further the century 
 advances the less of interest is there in orthodox 
 religion. The Deistic controversy which spreads 
 through the early part of the century is not an 
 inspiring one ; neither side rises much above the 
 view of God as Great First Cause : but it is better 
 than the Paley period which succeeded it. The 
 moral philosophy of the eighteenth century is better 
 than its divinity ; but even at its best, as in Hume's 
 Inquiry, it is too much taken up with proving that 
 virtuous conduct, though not necessarily done for 
 the sake of happiness, leads unfailingly to happiness : 
 while at its worst, as in Paley's Moral and Political 
 Philosophy (published 1785), the very nature of 
 moral experience has been forgotten, and we are 
 down on the lowest level of prudential and classifi- 
 catory ethics. Nowhere in the eighteenth century 
 is there any philosophic effort to bring morality into 
 relation with the widest facts and speculations of 
 religion and metaphysics ; there is no subtlety of 
 moral psychology, no attempt to co-ordinate the 
 moral faculty with the faculties concerned in art and 
 knowledge. In short, there is no sustained effort 
 to see human nature as a whole and in its total 
 relation to God and the world. 
 
 6. Still less likely was it that Green would 
 get much help from contemporary orthodoxy, re- 
 presented by H. L. Mansel, then much the most 
 
 1 See Mark Pattison, " Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 
 1688-1750," in Essays and Reviews.
 
 2i8 DEAN MANSEL CH. 
 
 distinguished philosophical writer among Oxford 
 residents. The work of his which bears most on 
 Green's subjects is the Limits of Religious Thought 
 (1858), which, delivered as Bampton Lectures, made 
 great stir in the thinking world. Its thesis, only 
 too familiar in apologetic literature, is that, as 
 human reason is incapable of attaining unassisted 
 to a knowledge of God, we must rely entirely on 
 what Scripture tells us about Him. The usual 
 theological arguments for the imbecility of reason 
 are reinforced by Kantian principles, which had 
 recently been brought into vogue by Sir William 
 Hamilton. Mansel, carrying forward the Kantian- 
 Hamiltonian agnosticism, and availing himself of 
 the distinction, now worn threadbare, between the 
 speculative, and regulative uses of reason, proves to 
 his own satisfaction that we can form no conception 
 whatever of God, not even of his moral qualities. 
 Such an argument, even if its logical issue is not 
 atheism, as Mr. Goldwin Smith argued with some 
 plausibility, 1 certainly puts a most humiliating barrier 
 between God and man, and deprives us of all stand- 
 ing-ground for criticising the moral value of creeds 
 offered for our acceptance. It is not strange that 
 Mansel's school is now extinct in Oxford, and that 
 another thinker, i.e. Green himself, has been pre- 
 ferred before him as the philosopher cherished of 
 Anglican theologians. 
 
 7. At the most critical period in his mental 
 
 1 See the cutting criticism in his Rational Religion and the rationalistic 
 Objections of the Bampton Lecturer for 1858.
 
 via INFLUENCE OF GERMANY 219 
 
 development, Green, as a Balliol undergraduate, had 
 the good fortune to come under the influence of 
 Jowett. " At this time," says Jowett's biographer, 
 writing of the period 1854-60, "he still encouraged 
 the ablest of his pupils in the study of Hegel " 
 {Life, vol. i. 261). No doubt it was by Jowett 
 that Green was introduced to German philosophy, 
 and he must have realised quickly that principles 
 were to be found there of which English philosophy 
 stood greatly in need. These principles he made it 
 his work to naturalise in Oxford. Not that the 
 German influence on the University begins with 
 Green. Mansel's writings are largely influenced by 
 Kant, and show some acquaintance with Fichte and 
 Hegel : Jowett's intellectual curiosity had led him 
 to take interest in German idealism. But Mansel 
 had assimilated only the negative side of Kantianism ; 
 while Jowett's writing, before he devoted himself 
 finally to classical interpretation, deals mainly with 
 theology. Green was the first to use German ideas 
 effectively in the criticism of English philosophy 
 and in forming a system of his own. 
 
 If it seem strange that German ideas had taken 
 so long to establish themselves among us, the 
 explanation must be sought partly in our general 
 ignorance of the language, partly in the backward 
 intellectual conditions of the isolated and unre- 
 formed university, partly in the distraction of other 
 interests. The formation of a new Anglican 
 theology on the one side, and, on the other, reform, 
 social, political, ecclesiastical, and academic, had
 
 220 GREEN'S RELATION TO HEGEL CH. 
 
 engrossed the very few thinking minds whose 
 energy was not absorbed by regular tutorial duties. 1 
 8. It would be interesting to discuss the 
 question, if it fell within my scope, what relation 
 exactly Green's philosophy bears to German 
 thinkers, more especially to Hegel ; a question con- 
 cerning which great differences of opinion exist 
 among competent judges. 2 In his earlier essays on 
 "The Philosophy of Aristotle" (1866) and on 
 <l Popular Philosophy in its relation to Life" (1868) 
 a Hegelian tone is noticeable, more strongly in the 
 earlier than in the later. Subsequently he seems to 
 have turned towards Kant, and to have got more and 
 more out of sympathy with Hegelianism as time went 
 on. Towards the end of his life he remarked to 
 Henry Sidgwick, "I looked into Hegel the other 
 day, and found it a strange Wirrwarr" 3 The fact 
 is that though Green, like Hegel, was for ever pre- 
 occupied with the spiritual side of the universe, he 
 could not agree with Hegel's tacit assumption of the 
 Absolute as the basis of all his philosophising. He 
 
 1 The level of philosophic study in Oxford during the first half of the nine- 
 teenth century may be gauged by the performances of two of our professors, 
 R. D. Hampden (afterwards Professor of Divinity and Bishop of Hereford), 
 White's Professor of Moral Philosophy, 1834-36, and his successor, William 
 Sewell, 1836-41. Hampden published A Course of Lectures introductory to 
 the Study of Moral Philosophy in 1835, which is inoffensive and quite 
 colourless. Sewell published a little book on Christian Morals in 1840, 
 which is extremely silly and highly sacerdotal. Neither work shows know- 
 ledge of anything later than Aristotle. Up to Mansel's election in 1859 the 
 series of Oxford philosophical professors might be envied for its decent 
 obscurity by the least progressive university in Spain. 
 
 2 Prof. Case agrees with common opinion in classing Green as a Hegelian ; 
 Prof. James Ward, so I gathered from a recent conversation, regards the Hege- 
 lian element in him as slight or non-existent. It seems to me that though 
 Green owed much to Hegel and still more to Kant, his position is too indi- 
 vidual to allow him to be termed a follower of either. 
 
 3 Sidgwick, "The Philosophy of T. H. Green," in Mind, N.S. No. 37, p. 19.
 
 CRITICISM OF MILL 221 
 
 thought that the Spiritual Principle ought to be 
 established by an inductive analysis of the facts of 
 consciousness and of Nature (vide supra, chap, i v. 29). 
 Obviously he borrowed from Hegel the general 
 idea that the universe is spiritual throughout ; but 
 his attitude to German Idealism is best expressed 
 by his well-known phrase, "It must all be done- 
 over again." 
 
 9. In his critical writings Green arms himself 
 with German principles when he attacks the tradi- 
 tional English philosophy and the modifications of 
 it recently brought into vogue by John Mill, 
 Herbert Spencer, and the Comtists. To the sen- 
 sationist dictum, nihil in intellectu quod non prius in 
 sensu, Leibnitz had added the proviso, nisi intel- 
 lectus ipse : the enforcement of this proviso is the 
 sum and substance of Green's criticism of sensa- 
 tionist and biological philosophy. Having learnt 
 from Kant what is the nature of the contribution 
 which the mind itself makes to our experience, he 
 shows that this contribution is ignored or tacitly 
 assumed by his opponents. Mill in his Examination 
 of Hamilton (p. 231, ist ed.) admits it as a final 
 inexplicability that the mind "which ex hypothesi is 
 but a series of feelings should be aware of itself as 
 a series." In the Prolegomena to Ethics, Green 
 retorts this inexplicability on Mill with endless 
 variations of statement : a succession of changes 
 can never generate a consciousness of change ( 
 !8, 35, 84). And this is typical of his whole criti-
 
 222 THE PROLEGOMENA CH. 
 
 cism. The self, the objective world, the pure per- 
 ceptions and conceptions, the ideas of reason, these 
 are what he challenged his opponents to explain, 
 and condemned them for not explaining. 
 
 10. Green was not one of those philosophers 
 who come early into full possession of their powers, 
 and, having launched their novelty on the world, 
 remain with little more to say. Whether from 
 indolence and intellectual irresolution, or influenced 
 by the excessively critical atmosphere of his Univer- 
 sity, or from pressure of college duties, he went 
 through a very long preliminary training before he 
 roused himself to put forth constructive work of his 
 own. Dying at the age of forty-five, he left no 
 construction save what we find in the Prolegomena 
 and the Lectures on Political Obligation, and even 
 of the latter work the main bulk is critical. The 
 Political Obligation may for present purposes be 
 left aside. It represents Green's first-hand experi- 
 ence strengthened and purified by Greek ideals. 
 The main thesis is simply the truth (which needed 
 enforcement more at that time than now) that the 
 state is not only a liberty -and -property defence 
 association, but a moral institution in the highest 
 sense of the term. 
 
 Thus it is the Prolegomena to Ethics only which 
 calls for detailed criticism. I shall treat it less as a 
 historical document than as a living contemporary 
 book : in spite of the march of theory it still repre- 
 sents an extant and not unimportant philosophic
 
 ITS SCOPE 223 
 
 tradition ; and it is likely to be accepted in its main 
 positions by many of the junior students who are 
 wont to use it as an introduction to the higher 
 branches of speculation. 
 
 ii. The title, Prolegomena to Ethics, though 
 probably indicating with accuracy the design with 
 which Green started, hardly corresponds with the 
 execution. Just before Green's arrival at the 
 University, Mansel had published his well-known 
 Prolegomena Logica, which was "intended as an 
 inquiry into that which in the order of nature is 
 prior to Logic ; though in the order of time it is of 
 later scientific development" (p. i). Logic, accord- 
 ing to Mansel's definition, was the traditional 
 Formal Logic, and the inquiries of his Prolegomena 
 discuss for the most part the relations between logic 
 and psychology. In the same way, we may con- 
 jecture, Green intended to discuss the metaphysical 
 and psychological questions preliminary to ethics in 
 the narrower sense ; but found, when he came to 
 the psychological part, that he was led on into the 
 main body of the subject. In any case the present- 
 day reader would say without hesitation that only 
 about a third of the book can be regarded as prole- 
 gomena ; the rest deals with ethics in the accepted 
 sense, and there are few of the headings of an 
 ordinary ethical manual which the book leaves 
 untouched. 
 
 12. The part of Green's book, then, which 
 corresponds strictly to the title " Prolegomena," 
 does not extend much beyond the first hundred
 
 224 A VINDICATION OF SPIRIT CH. 
 
 pages ; and it is these pages, comprising the first 
 book on the " Metaphysics of Knowledge " and the 
 first chapter of the second book on the " Freedom 
 of the Will," that contain the metaphysical basis of 
 ethics which is the main object of my present 
 criticism. Their design is to vindicate the spirit- 
 uality of the world and of man in opposition to the 
 current naturalism. English culture just then was 
 subjected to the full tyranny of the lower categories: 
 the true and distinctive character of intellectual and 
 moral experience was ignored by the authorities 
 highest in repute. Physicists, biologists, physio- 
 logists, sensationists, positivists were busy ex- 
 plaining spiritual experience in terms of matter and 
 motion, or by categories hardly less alien to spirit. 
 In his introductory chapter Green shows what must 
 result from the excursion of scientific men beyond 
 their proper boundaries, and from reducing ethics to 
 a province of natural science ( 2). 1 The " pheno- 
 mena of moral life " will be explained as having 
 been moulded by " evolution and descent " out of 
 animal susceptibilities and sympathies ( 5) ; man's 
 supposed freedom of action will become a special 
 case of determination ; and freedom, like chance, 
 will be recognised as " merely a verbal substantia- 
 tion of the abstraction of our ignorance " ( 6) ; the 
 " practical or preceptive part " of morals will then 
 be abolished, since, " to a being who is simply a 
 result of natural forces, an injunction to conform to 
 their laws is unmeaning " ( 7). Viewed from the 
 
 1 The reference is to 2 of the Prolegomena, and so for the rest of this chapter.
 
 vni BASED ON ANALYSIS OF KNOWLEDGE 225 
 
 standpoint of "modern enlightenment," moral ex- 
 hortation therefore will be recognised as a form of 
 pious fraud ( 8). This last conclusion, however, 
 not to mention those which preceded it, is " of a 
 kind to give us pause," and, as Green remarks, 
 suggests a reconsideration of the premisses which 
 led to it. Let us, he says, retrace our steps a little. 
 The naturalistic philosopher has just explained 
 himself as a natural force resulting from other 
 natural forces : but is it credible or conceivable 
 that a merely natural force should thus rise to 
 articulate expression and give so elaborate an 
 account of its own existence? If science affirms 
 that in our world and our personal existence there 
 is nothing but matter, motion, and sensation, does 
 not the very fact that men have science prove the 
 existence in them of an intellectual principle which 
 is neither material nor sensational ? And thus, when 
 we have established by an analysis of man's intel- 
 lectual experience the existence in him of a principle 
 more than natural, the way will then be open to 
 prove that the same principle in man has yet 
 another form of expression, i.e. the experience 
 which we call moral ( 8). 
 
 13. Thus it is primarily by analysis of know- 
 ledge that Green hopes to establish a basis for a 
 spiritual view of morals. In so doing he was 
 acting, and acting consciously, in accordance with 
 Kant ( 8, n). There is indeed much simi- 
 larity between Kant and Green both in their diffi- 
 culties with the lower-categories philosophy and in 
 
 Q
 
 22 6 THE INFLUENCE OF KANT CH. 
 
 their mode of fighting it. Kant had accepted the 
 doctrine of the sceptics as so far convincing that he 
 gave up hope of finding any empirical foundation 
 for morality. It was for this reason that he thought 
 himself compelled to attempt to deduce the attri- 
 butes of the moral law from the barest necessary 
 quality of reason as such, i.e. its quality of acting 
 according to law. "If all matter is removed from 
 the law, that is, every object that is capable of 
 determining the will, nothing is left but the mere 
 form of a universal system of law " (Watson's 
 Philosophy of Kant, p. 265). Reverence for this 
 bare form, according to Kant, is the root of morals. 
 Now Green, like Kant, was immensely impressed 
 by the strength of the naturalists' argument, by the 
 multitude of their array, and by their hold upon 
 ' culture ( 2) ; he concedes much ground to them ; 
 he fights almost forlornly as with his back against 
 a wall. The spiritual moralist at the present day 
 takes a bolder line : he feels entitled to accept moral 
 experience at its face-value ; he assumes that the 
 onus of proof rests with those who deny the 
 validity of principles which everybody acts upon. 
 But Green doubted if he could afford to do this : 
 he thought it wiser to take lower ground ; he would 
 not assume anything that the naturalists could 
 dispute ; he would start, not with any of the higher 
 powers of our intelligence, but with " the simplest 
 perception of sensible things" ( 64). 1 The naturalist 
 
 1 Green's analysis of perception, which is delayed till his second chapter, 
 ought, as a matter of arrangement, to have come at the beginning of 
 his first.
 
 viii GREEN'S ANALYSIS OF KNOWLEDGE 227 
 
 may dispute our possession of the higher powers, 
 but must concede at least the exercise of perception 
 ( 65). For when he asserts that " all the so-called 
 functions of the soul " are conditioned by matter 
 and motion, he implies that matter and motion are 
 objects of perceptive knowledge. If they were not 
 objects of knowledge he could not know that 
 consciousness is conditioned by them ( 9). Thus 
 the most material of materialists must admit that 
 to some extent men have knowledge of facts. An 
 adequate analysis of knowledge even in its simplest 
 act will prove, so Green argues, the existence, both 
 in the knowing subject and in the object, of a 
 spiritual principle which is the basis of moral 
 experience. 
 
 14. Green's analysis of knowledge I will now 
 attempt to give in brief outline. The task has its 
 difficulties, because, owing doubtless to want of 
 final revision, the argument of the early chapters 
 of the Prolegomena is not altogether easy to follow : 
 I can only hope I have fallen into no serious mis- 
 representation. After my statement of Green's 
 views will come the criticism I have to make on 
 them : but the reader as he goes along cannot fail 
 to notice the static-intellectualist bias of Green's 
 treatment. It is doubtful if any such analysis could 
 do what Green expects of it : the basis of practice 
 can hardly be disclosed by a study of cognition. 
 Still less can this be looked for when knowledge is 
 interpreted with neglect of all its dynamic and 
 purposive implications.
 
 228 THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLE CH. 
 
 Green makes his beginning from the irrefutable 
 proposition that every one, save the inarticulate 
 sceptic, must admit that to some degree we know 
 facts. Taking the statement 'I know this fact ' he 
 asks us to fix attention first upon the ' I know.' 
 The being who can say ' I know ' must experience 
 more than a succession of unrelated sensitive experi- 
 ences : in order to form knowledge experiences must 
 be definitely related to each other ; for, otherwise, 
 they would not form " the connected system called 
 the world of experience " ( 80), nor would they, 
 apart from their relational quality, be the experi- 
 ence that we know them for ( I2). 1 Now this 
 relational element in knowledge implies a relating 
 Principle which cannot be resolved into a mere 
 succession : it implies a Principle which distinguishes 
 itself from the sensitive changes of the subject, and 
 by combining them into a connected experience 
 establishes relations between them (32). If we 
 call the merely sensitive series of changes a 
 ' natural ' series, then the appropriate and safest 
 epithet for the combining Principle is ' spiritual ' 
 ( 54). The sharp antithesis between ' natural ' and 
 ' spiritual ' marks the radical difference between 
 change and consciousness of change. Thus an 
 analysis of knowledge discloses the existence of a 
 Spiritual Principle in the knower. 
 
 15. Next let us turn to consider what is im- 
 
 1 There is some very doubtful reasoning in this section, more especially in 
 connection with the illustration of the engine-driver. This compels me to 
 make selection from what Green says, instead of reproducing his argument 
 entire.
 
 IN THE KNOWER AND THE KNOWN 229 
 
 plied in ' a fact.' Fact, as the real, implies fancy 
 or illusion as the unreal ( 14). Not that anything 
 existing is entirely unreal : even the wildest fancy 
 has a certain realness of its own ( 12, 22, 23); 
 and yet it has not the precise quality of realness 
 that we attribute to fact. Now fancy can only be 
 distinguished from that which is not fancy by a 
 criterion ; and thus ' fact ' implies a criterion of 
 fact. This criterion must be a conception of the 
 objective system of the world with which we com- 
 pare our judgments as we make them ( 1 3). Now 
 just as the mental contents of an intelligent con- 
 sciousness cannot consist of ' loose and separate ' 
 sensations, so the world-system cannot consist of 
 unrelated elements : as being a system it must 
 contain relations, which are as real as anything 
 else ( 20). But relations once more, imply a relat- 
 ing Principle ( 27), which constitutes the unity of 
 the world ( 28), just as a spiritual principle con- 
 stitutes the unity of each individual human intelli- 
 gence. Such a Principle must be of quality 
 analogous to our own intelligence ( 29, 52) ; 
 for that is the only relating principle we know at 
 first - hand : to it also the term ' spiritual ' is 
 appropriate. Thus does Green prove a Spiritual 
 Principle in nature that is known, parallel in its 
 function to the spiritual principle in the human 
 intelligence that knows. 
 
 1 6. Though, as I hope to show later, the fore- 
 going argument is faulty as tending too much to 
 subjectivism, yet many people are disposed to accept
 
 230 ARE THINGS RELATIONS ONLY.-' CH. 
 
 it who would decline to follow Green in his further 
 definition of the world - system or nature. This 
 further definition stands too conspicuously in the 
 Prolegomena and is too well known to be omitted 
 from my outline ; but it is hardly essential to his 
 main argument, and is also expressed with some 
 uncertainty by its author. Arguing from the 
 position that every reality must indispensably con- 
 tain a relational element, so that if the relations be 
 thought away nothing remains of which anything 
 can be said, Green seems to proceed to the further 
 position that reality must consist entirely of rela- 
 tions. And, moreover, since "whatever anything 
 is really it is unalterably " ( 24) nature must be 
 regarded as "a single and unalterable system of 
 relations" ( 21). To this the obvious objection 
 has been made that relations are inconceivable apart 
 from elements which are related. But as a fact 
 Green himself is not unaware of this objection : 
 when he is using stricter language he speaks of the 
 world as "a single and eternal system of related 
 elements" ( 14), not "relations." And later on 
 he quotes an imaginary objector as saying " we 
 cannot reduce the world of experience to a web 
 of relations in which nothing is related " ( 42). 
 By considering various passages (e.g. 28, 50, 
 53) we can see that Green would have had little or 
 no interest in affirming that relations are all in all ; 
 his interest lay in affirming, as against the 
 materialists, that relations are indispensable ; and 
 against the sensationists, that there is no such
 
 viii THE DOCTRINE OF REPRODUCTION 231 
 
 thing as given, simple sensations. A much more 
 serious objection might be made against Green's 
 conception of the world - system as consisting of 
 unalterable relations. But of this we will speak 
 presently. 
 
 17. Thus, according to Green, does the 
 analysis of knowledge result in assuring us of a 
 spiritual principle in man upon the one hand, and, 
 upon the other hand, of a precisely parallel Spiritual 
 Principle in nature. Upon this result he bases the 
 two cardinal doctrines of his ethical system. The 
 first of these doctrines is that the spiritual principle 
 in man is a reproduction of the spiritual principle 
 in nature, which Green usually terms the Eternal 
 Consciousness. In later criticisms (infra, 20, 28, 
 32) we shall see how much obscurity attends this 
 Doctrine of Reproduction : Green never faced its 
 difficulties, and never even marshalled his reasons 
 in support of it. Sometimes he speaks as though 
 the doctrine were self-evident ; " taking all the facts 
 of the case together, we cannot express them other 
 wise" ( 82). It is only by putting together various 
 incidental remarks that we learn what Green con- 
 sidered the ' facts ' to be. Most important among 
 them undoubtedly is the attribute of timelessness 
 which Green regarded as common to the Eternal 
 and the human consciousnesses ( 18, 74) ; another 
 is the unifying quality which belongs to both ( 71) ; 
 and thirdly there is the consideration that, if the 
 human consciousness does not spring from the 
 divine, we have to postulate a pre - established
 
 232 FREEDOM. THEISM CH. 
 
 harmony to account for the correspondence be- 
 tween the order of nature and our conception of it 
 
 ( 19, 33). 
 
 His second cardinal doctrine drawn from the 
 analysis of knowledge is that man is a Free 
 Cause. "In virtue of his character as knowing 
 . . . we are entitled to say that man is, according 
 to a certain well-defined meaning of the term, a 
 free cause " ( 74). A cause which is unfree, Green 
 explains, is one which stands in relations of in- 
 variable determination ; and as the human con- 
 sciousness is a source of relations it cannot be 
 subject to them, and therefore cannot be determined 
 as merely natural causes are. It is therefore a free 
 cause. 
 
 1 8. Though the foregoing is not the whole of 
 Green's metaphysic, it is the most important part 
 of it ; and at this point we may not unfairly pause 
 to measure his success. Green's intention was to 
 justify the metaphysical presuppositions of Christian 
 theism the existence of a moral Deity to whom 
 the human spirit is akin, and human freedom in 
 moral action. The sum of my criticism is that, by 
 viewing the world as static, and by confining his 
 analysis of human experience to the element of 
 knowledge statically understood, he remains at an 
 immeasurable distance from Christian theism, and 
 can furnish no sort of satisfactory theoretic basis for 
 religion and morality. 
 
 It is one of the oddest things in the Prolegomena
 
 AND THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 to Ethics that Green after his proof of the Eternal 
 Consciousness or spiritual principle in nature should 
 have supposed that he had demonstrated theism. 
 It needs no argument to show that even if Green's 
 proof of a universal relating consciousness were 
 successful he has done nothing towards proving 
 either the intellectual or the moral qualities which 
 are essential to our conception of God. A relating 
 consciousness even in the highest sense of the term 
 is not the same as God. 
 
 But even as a principle of relation Green's 
 Eternal Consciousness is not established upon the 
 highest level. Every one knows how levels of 
 relation differ : introspection shows our personal 
 consciousness acting as a relating principle with 
 various degrees of power. Occasions on which our 
 minds are dominated by strong interest supply 
 examples both of the stronger and of the weaker 
 forms of relation. Objects lying outside the focus 
 of interest, as, for example, our own respiration and 
 the firelight when we are engaged upon an ab- 
 sorbing game of chess, are in a certain sense related 
 to the objects within the focus and to each other, 
 since they are all present to our single conscious- 
 ness. But the relations attaching to these outlying 
 objects are much weaker than those between the 
 sequence of acts by which the chess-player attempts 
 to checkmate his adversary. The relation which is 
 generated by the execution of purposes is the best 
 and strongest kind of relation ; and thus we may 
 say that relation par excellence is teleological. On
 
 234 THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS CH. 
 
 the other hand, relation is weak when thoughts 
 succeed each other at random, as in dreamy 
 purposeless reverie. 
 
 Now the Eternal Consciousness as described by 
 Green is not teleological : it is not said to unify the 
 world because of some pervading purpose, but 
 merely because every part of the world must be 
 regarded as present to it. For all that we are told 
 to the contrary, the relations constituted by the 
 Eternal Consciousness might be of the weakest 
 kind, as weak as those constituted by a conscious- 
 ness which merely feels. That a feeling- con- 
 sciousness suffices to constitute relation we learn 
 from passages of the Prolegomena. " Feeling," 
 Green says, "constitutes the unity of the individual 
 soul. The individual animal is not merely one for 
 us, who contemplate the connection between the 
 members organic to its life. It is one in itself, as no 
 material atom or material compound is, in virtue of 
 the common feeling through which, if one member 
 suffer, all the members suffer with it" ( 119). 
 Thus feeling, he continues, constitutes individuality, 
 though it does not " amount to the full individuality 
 of man" ( 120). But, since elements which are 
 held in conscious unity and belong to an individual 
 must thereby stand in relations, it is obvious that 
 relation can be constituted by a consciousness which 
 does not rise to the level of self- consciousness. 
 Moreover, it would not be easy to say how low 
 down in the scale of consciousness we might go 
 before we came to an organism which could not be
 
 IS NOT INTELLIGENT OR HOLY 
 
 235 
 
 said to constitute relation between its sentient parts: 
 even the consciousness of the oyster, which we may 
 assume for the sake of argument to be purely 
 sensitive, must be admitted to be a principle of 
 relation. Hence I do not see why a non-purposive 
 universal relating consciousness should necessarily 
 be of higher quality than the oyster's. Such a sug- 
 gestion Green of course would have repelled with 
 horror : he always speaks of the Eternal Conscious- 
 ness as possessing in absolute plenitude all the 
 predicates that we can conceive to belong to a 
 subject. We have, however, to take account, not 
 of what Green wanted the universal relating con- 
 sciousness to be, but of what his argument entitles 
 it to be. 
 
 It follows from this that a universal relating 
 consciousness can make no approach to holiness. 
 Holiness in human experience is an active quality, 
 a consecration of one's powers and faculties to a 
 perfectly good system of purposes. Its primary 
 condition is therefore wanting in the Eternal 
 Consciousness. And thus it would be superfluous 
 to recapitulate the argument of Mr. Balfour that a 
 bare principle of unity is " no fitting object of either 
 love, reverence, or devotion." l 
 
 19. In regard to the World of Nature the 
 business of the ethical metaphysician is to show 
 that it is adapted for a sphere of moral action. 
 Some philosophers have attempted to prove a much 
 closer adaptation than others ; but the irreducible 
 
 1 Foundations of Belief, part ii. chap. ii. 3. Cf. H. Sidgwick's Lectures, p. 13.
 
 236 WHAT ROOM FOR MORAL ACTION? CH. 
 
 minimum is that moral action is at least possible in 
 the realm of nature. Now Green's static intel- 
 lectualism precludes him from even this. This is 
 plain at the outset if Green really meant to reduce 
 Nature to a web of relations, which is doubtful. 
 For, as energy is surely more than a relation, re- 
 duction of Nature to relations must exclude all 
 energy from it, and thereby make it unfit as a field 
 upon which moral energy can operate. But this 
 objection need not be pressed : in any case it is 
 included in what follows. For, if Green is right in 
 his contention that " whatever anything is really it 
 is unalterably" ( 25), there can be no question of 
 energy : however things may seem to move, they 
 must in reality be perfectly static. Now a perfectly 
 static Nature is no sphere for moral endeavour. 
 Much endeavour is expended on attempting to 
 ameliorate the material conditions of human life 
 Green himself did a good deal in the city of Oxford. 
 But how did he reconcile his practical philanthropy 
 with his doctrine of the unalterableness of the real ? 
 This doctrine is put forward so plainly and pro- 
 minently in the Prolegomena that it is impossible to 
 explain it away ; but, needless to say, Green was 
 never alive to the absurdities I have deduced from 
 it. He thought it was necessitated by his analysis 
 of knowledge, and never went on to consider how 
 far it was tenable for ethics. It is only one instance 
 of the difficulties into which he puts himself by adop- 
 tion of Kantian views. Kant's doctrine of the ultimate 
 unreality of time is harmless because of his distinc-
 
 THE SONSHIP OF MAN 237 
 
 tion between the phenomenal and the noumenal : 
 time is real for phenomena, and it is phenomena 
 alone that count effectively. Green rejects the 
 great Kantian distinction ; he will not hear of the un- 
 reality of the world we know : and yet he keeps to 
 the unreality of time or change which is absolutely 
 inexpellable from human or phenomenal experience. 
 Possibly Hegel also may have influenced him to 
 adopt the static view ; though the Hegelian denial 
 of change is bound up with a panlogism which 
 Green never seriously contemplated adopting. 
 
 20. We have now to criticise Green's meta- 
 physic and psychology of the human self. It was a 
 matter of deepest interest to him to vindicate what 
 a Christian theist would call the Sonship of Man ; 
 and he believed that he made a basis for this by 
 arguing that human consciousness is a reproduction 
 of the Eternal Consciousness under the limitations 
 of the human body. But in* his account of this 
 reproduction there are at least two very serious 
 difficulties. The first concerns the act of reproduc- 
 tion. I admit that every theory of the Sonship of 
 Man leaves it at bottom a mystery ; Green is not to 
 be blamed because he cannot tell us how it comes 
 to pass : but his view of the timelessness of the 
 Eternal Consciousness introduces a quite special 
 difficulty. How is it possible that the Eternal 
 Consciousness should perform an act of reproduction 
 which by hypothesis leaves itself quite unchanged ? 
 It is only another aspect of the same difficulty that 
 for a universal relating consciousness there is no
 
 238 THE EMPIRICAL AND CH. 
 
 motive to reproduce itself in man. It may be that, 
 as Green puts it, " the old question why God made 
 the world has never been answered nor will be " 
 ( 100) : but the question becomes a little less 
 unapproachable if we think of God as a source of 
 energy. We may not know why He made the 
 world ; but, since it is proper to power to display 
 itself, the making of the world is appropriate to a 
 God of power. But a static Deity, a changeless 
 consciousness whose function it is to be the sus- 
 tainer of changeless relations, cannot be imagined to 
 reproduce itself in finite consciousnesses or otherwise. 
 The second difficulty lies in understanding what 
 it is that is reproduced. If it is only the 'synthetic 
 unity of apperception,' then that has no significance 
 for morals : if it is the empirical self, there is an 
 unbridgeable chasm between the reproducer and the 
 reproduced ; for one is timeless and the other a 
 creature of time. This difficulty drives Green to 
 the strange position that, though man's conscious- 
 ness is single and indivisible, it "cannot be com- 
 prehended in a single conception. In seeking to 
 understand its reality we have to look at it from 
 two different points of view ; and the different con- 
 ceptions that we form of it, as looked at from these 
 different points, do not admit of being united, any 
 more than do our impressions of opposite sides of 
 the same shield" ( 68). But in this passage Green 
 surely is using an illustration that does not illus- 
 trate. There is no difficulty whatever in uniting 
 into one simultaneous presentation our tactual im-
 
 via THE TIMELESS SELVES IN MAN 239 
 
 pressions of the two sides of the same shield : our 
 visual impressions cannot be so united, because our 
 eyes are so set in our heads that we can only look 
 at the two sides alternately. The visual impres- 
 sions, however, can be united, in the sense of being 
 joined on to one another successively, by running 
 the eye from one side of the shield over to the 
 other across the rim. But no process of juncture 
 is possible with Green's two conceptions of human 
 consciousness. On the one side there stands the 
 undoubtedly real empirical self which Green, with 
 gratuitous concession to naturalism, speaks of as "a 
 function of the animal organism " ( 67) ; on the 
 other there is the alleged timeless reproduction of 
 the Eternal Consciousness. Green should show us 
 how to join the one on to the other ; but the 
 passage just quoted is in substance an admission 
 that they are incompatible. 
 
 21. The incompatibility between these two 
 conceptions of the human self, the empirical and 
 the timeless, is indeed so acute that it ends in the 
 former, which is real, being practically ousted by 
 the latter, which is unreal. Green always treats the 
 timeless self as alone significant for ethics, and 
 relegates the empirical self to the ambiguous posi- 
 tion of a passive "vehicle" for the other ( 67). 
 It is this doctrine of Green's, that the human self 
 in its reality is changeless, that has come in for the 
 sharpest censure at the hands of his critics. 1 By it 
 
 1 E.g. Prof. A. E. Taylor, Problem of Conduct, chap. ii. ; Mr. Schiller, 
 Humanism, p. 212; and Mr. Bradley, A.R., p. 114.
 
 240 A 'PSYCHOLOGICAL MONSTER' CH. 
 
 he has laid himself open to the formidable accusation 
 of having created an " epistemological monstrosity " 
 or "psychological monster"; and it certainly does 
 lead him to say some absurd things, as that human 
 self-consciousness has no beginning in time, " because 
 it never was not" ( 114). It is Kant's influence, 
 as usual, that has led him astray. The exigencies 
 of system made Kant put an absolute separation 
 between the ' I think ' and the manifold of sense. 
 Now Green, arguing against the naturalists and 
 their conception of consciousness as an ever-chang- 
 ing stream, rightly insists that the synthetic sweep 
 of mental vision which surveys the stream of events 
 must be something more than a portion of them. 
 And as time is correlative to the stream of change, 
 consciousness may be spoken of as neutralising time 
 ( 65). So far Green is in accord with facts. But, 
 unfortunately, Kant's example led him on to make 
 an absolute separation between the synthetic con- 
 sciousness and the empirical stream, and to say that 
 the synthetic consciousness is changeless or out of 
 time entirely. This outrage upon facts is not really 
 demanded by his system. His point that a con- 
 sciousness of change differs from a process of change 
 would have been sufficiently established by pointing 
 out the relative timelessness of the act of knowledge. 
 22. From this treatment of the empirical self 
 we are led on to speak of the difficulties attending 
 Green's view of the motives impelling men to 
 action. His main formula, which he develops at 
 great length, is that the motive to action is in
 
 vni THE MOTIVES OF ACTION 241 
 
 every case the agent's conception of a good which 
 will give him self-satisfaction on the whole (book II. 
 chap. i. passim]. This is the Summum Bonum, 
 and the point on which Green insists most positively 
 is that it cannot be sensuous. 
 
 " The motive in every imputable act for which the agent is 
 conscious on reflection that he is answerable, is a desire 
 for personal good in some form or other ; and, however 
 much the idea of what the personal good for the time 
 is may be affected by the pressure of animal want, this 
 want is no more a part or component of the desire than 
 is the sensation of light or colour, which I receive in look- 
 ing at this written line, a component part of my conception 
 in reading it" ( 91). 
 
 This accords with his treatment of the empirical 
 self in respect of cognition ; where he argues that, 
 because there is in human nature a principle which 
 is more than animal, it follows that man who is 
 capable of knowledge "is not an animal, not a link 
 in the chain of natural becoming, in part any more 
 than at all " ( 79). 
 
 If Green had stopped at this point his position 
 would have been consistent though absurd : both 
 knowledge and action would have been cut off from 
 sense-experience altogether ; and, on this doctrine, 
 hunger would be no part of the motive which causes 
 a tramp to steal a loaf of bread. But it is plain that 
 the summum bonum as thus denned is an empty form, 
 quite incapable of influencing concrete human action. 
 Green in some degree recognised this, and in one 
 passage, making gratuitous concession to naturalism, 
 
 attributes all the "content," all the "filling" of 
 
 R
 
 242 GREEN ON FREEDOM CH. 
 
 active self-consciousness to the impulses of "sentient 
 and appetitive life" ( 120). Thus it is plain that 
 Green wished to find a place for sense-experience 
 in the motives impelling men to action, but equally 
 plain that he never reached an adequate formula. 
 In his anxiety to make a clear distinction between 
 animal want and human motive, he first adopts an 
 interpretation of the summum bonum which cuts 
 them entirely asunder ; and then, in an indefinite 
 fashion, tries to bring them together again. 
 
 We may note in passing how, when Green comes 
 to speak of desire, he forgets his doctrine of the 
 changelessness of the self derived from analysis of 
 knowledge. The general form of human motive, 
 he argues, is self-satisfaction, that is, every action 
 is motived by desire. Hence it follows that every 
 action, at least so far as successful, involves a change 
 in the acting self change from a less satisfied to a 
 more satisfied state. 
 
 23. In his treatment of freedom Green chal- 
 lenges criticism to the full. So far my criticism has 
 mainly taken the form of the cross-examination 
 which brings forward neglected facts and asks how 
 the theory accounts for them. But moral freedom 
 was one of the problems which Green explicitly 
 undertook ; and, as the requirements of the moral 
 consciousness on this head are well recognised, 
 we have a plain and admitted issue before us. It 
 does not augur well for his success that he drew 
 so much on Germany : the intellectualism of the 
 great German idealists inclines them against free-
 
 vin A MERELY FORMAL FREEDOM 243 
 
 will. Kant's freedom, confined as it is to the 
 noumenal sphere, is quite nugatory ; and Hegel, 
 with his substitution of logical for mechanical neces- 
 sity, advocates a ' soft ' determinism which is no 
 more satisfactory to the moral consciousness than 
 the ' harder ' and more outspoken variety of the 
 mechanicians. 
 
 The freedom which Green establishes by his 
 analysis of knowledge must be described as merely 
 formal. His argument runs as follows. The human 
 consciousness, as a reproduction of the Eternal, is 
 a source of relations and therefore not subject to 
 them ; and, as time is a relation, it is a condition of 
 time and not conditioned by it ( 74). But pheno- 
 menal determination is essentially a time-process ; 
 its meaning is just the invariable sequence of one 
 phenomenal event upon another ( 75). Thus the 
 human consciousness cannot be subject to pheno- 
 menal determination ; it is "not a link in the chain 
 of natural becoming" ( 82); it stands outside 
 the casual sequence of phenomena. Such is his 
 very Kantian refutation of determinism : so far 
 he makes little, if any, advance upon 'noumenal 
 freedom.' 
 
 But, when Green came to explain desire, this 
 purely formal treatment had to be somewhat modi- 
 fied. He must have felt the difficulties attending 
 the conception of a timeless satisfaction of desire : 
 he had to study the question recognising that the 
 human self works and is worked upon in the 
 empirical world. His conclusions, however, are
 
 244 SUBJECTIVISM IN GREEN CH. 
 
 entirely negative. He merely insists, on the one 
 hand, against the pleasure -and -pain determinists 
 that human motives, even when connected with 
 physical wants, are not the same as animal motives, 
 which ought more properly to be called instincts or 
 impulses ( 91, 120) : on the other hand against 
 liberum arbitrium indifferentiae (a quite unwarranted 
 perversion of true libertarianism) he argues that all 
 actions are, in a sense, necessary, and that there is 
 no such thing as unmotived willing ( 99, 1 10). 
 Here he stops. He understands in some degree 
 the demand of the moral consciousness for freedom 
 to create ideals and freedom to carry them into 
 practice ; but he offers nothing to satisfy it. There 
 is nothing satisfactory in such static-epistemological 
 formulae as that man is free " in virtue of his char- 
 acter as knowing " ( 74), or as self-distinguishing 
 ( 82), or as self-objectifying ( 112). And, when 
 he comes to treat of active doing, it is evident that 
 he believed in true free-will ( 107), just as he be- 
 lieved in theism ; but it is equally plain that he 
 never found an adequate philosophic formula for 
 it. Some of his expressions even seem to surrender 
 the case to the determinists ( 87).* 
 
 24. The idol of Subjectivism, the influence of 
 which on Green's works I will now attempt to trace, 
 is, in both its forms, really as much alien as intel- 
 lectualism to his deepest convictions. Solipsism is 
 one of the standard objects of his polemic : his 
 
 1 Cf. the criticism in Sidgwick's Lectures, pp. 15 sqq.
 
 vni HIS TREATMENT OF PERCEPTION 245 
 
 sober and practical spirit had no kinship with the 
 philosophy of shadows. He always protested that 
 his " idealism which interprets facts as relations 
 and can only understand relations as constituted 
 by a single spiritual principle" has nothing in 
 common with the Humian " reduction of facts to 
 feelings." 
 
 " Its very basis is the consciousness of objectivity. 
 Its whole aim is to articulate coherently the conviction of 
 there being a world of abiding realities other than, and 
 determining, the endless flow of our feelings. The source 
 of its differences from ordinary realism lies in its being 
 less easily satisfied in its analysis of what the existence 
 of such a world implies " ( 37). 
 
 With the Hegelian or impersonal subjectivism 
 parts of the Prolegomena have, as we shall see 
 presently, no small affinity. But, on the other hand, 
 his main ethical doctrine looks in quite another 
 direction ; in its recognition of finite existence 
 generally and the rights of the individual human 
 subject the tendency of the Prolegomena is quite 
 irreconcilable with Hegelianism. 
 
 25. In spite of Green's desire for a philosophical 
 theory which should recognise to the full the trans- 
 subjective existence of objects, there is a very strong 
 solipsistic turn in his treatment of Perception. In 
 the passage dealing with this topic ( 58-65) he is 
 preoccupied with the thought that the object of 
 knowledge has no existence independent of con- 
 sciousness. In pressing this point he uses expres- 
 sions which give us to understand that the object 
 perceived is never outside the consciousness of the
 
 246 THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLE CH. 
 
 perceiver. 1 He argues that, though perception is 
 connected with sensation, which is explicable by 
 external impact, it is mere confusion to identify the 
 perceived object with the exciting cause of sensa- 
 tion, and that this confusion leads to an extrusion 
 of the perceived object from consciousness ( 59). 
 He seems to pass from the proposition that objects 
 can only exist for consciousness to the proposition 
 that objects can only exist in consciousness. And 
 thus he never makes it clear in what sense, if any, 
 the object is more than a 'thing in our minds,' or 
 what objectivity is beyond being a special character- 
 istic of the contents of our subjective world. 
 
 26. The motive which induced Green to treat 
 perception in this solipsistic way was to disprove the 
 existence of anything objective which is not spiritual, 
 and thereby to forestall objections to his well- 
 known doctrine of the Spiritual Principle in Nature. 
 It is in this latter doctrine that he makes approach 
 to the Impersonal Subjectivism of Hegel. The 
 steps by which he reaches it have already come 
 under our notice, and it will be enough to recapitu- 
 late them briefly. Reality, he says, can have no 
 other meaning but that of a system of relations ; 
 nature, therefore, is, not an aggregate of things-in- 
 themselves, but a system of relations. Now rela- 
 tions imply a relating-consciousness : " it is only for 
 
 1 Green remarks ( 60) that we can speak with propriety neither of "out- 
 side " nor of " inside " consciousness, since these are relations and, conscious- 
 ness being the source of relation, the relation of externality cannot exist between 
 the individual consciousness and anything else. But by such reasoning we 
 could prove that the individual consciousness can stand in no relations at all ; 
 whence it would follow that we could say nothing about it.
 
 vni IN NATURE. A HEGELISM? 247 
 
 a thinking consciousness that such relations [as 
 we find in nature] can subsist" ( 51). And, 
 therefore, as it is obvious that only a small part 
 of nature is at any given time present to finite 
 consciousness, it follows that the relations of the 
 totality of nature are constituted by a cosmic or 
 Eternal Consciousness. This is the Spiritual 
 Principle in Nature. 
 
 It will conduce to the understanding of this 
 doctrine if we inquire what is its relation to Hegel ? 
 Hegel says that nature is part of the Universal 
 Subject ; Green says that nature as relational is 
 constituted by the Universal Subject. But what 
 exactly does this last mean ? It is impossible to 
 give a perfectly confident answer, because Green 
 never states clearly how the Universal Subject 
 or Spiritual Principle is related to nature ; but 
 apparently he meant that nature is constituted as a 
 reality by its presence to the Universal Conscious- 
 ness. To speak in popular language, for Hegel 
 nature is real because part of God's mind ; for 
 Green nature is real because present to God's mind. 
 Close as this seems to Hegel, it is not Hegelianism; 
 here, no less than elsewhere, I doubt the common 
 classification which reckons Green as a member of 
 that school. In the most Hegelian passage of the 
 Prolegomena where he speaks of "the concrete 
 whole, which may be described indifferently as an 
 eternal intelligence realised in the related facts of 
 the world, or as a system of related facts rendered 
 possible by such an intelligence " ( 36), he, rather
 
 248 GREEN ON OBJECTIVE REALITY CH. 
 
 unhistorically, attributes the Weltanschauung thus 
 implied, not to Hegel but to Kant. 
 
 27. But leaving this historical question aside, 
 let us consider how far Green's doctrine of the 
 Spiritual Principle in Nature is adequate for his 
 purposes. Its want of definition makes criticism 
 itself somewhat halting and uncertain ; but I believe 
 that Green intended by means of the doctrine to 
 establish the following points : that there exists a 
 " world of abiding realities " which does not consist 
 of ' things -in-themselves ' either in the Kantian or 
 in the materialistic sense ; that this objectively real 
 world has a spirituality which is parallel to the 
 spirituality of man ; and that, above all, it is in 
 virtue of this parallelism that we can regard the 
 spiritual principle in man as a reproduction of the 
 Spiritual Principle in Nature. Let us take these 
 points in order. 
 
 Green's discussion of perception which aims at 
 disproving the existence of ' things-in-themselves ' 
 points, as we have seen, towards solipsism and the 
 abolishing of objective reality altogether. It is the 
 aim of the doctrine of the Spiritual Principle in 
 Nature to re-establish the belief in objective reality 
 upon a surer foundation. But can it be re-estab- 
 lished thus ? Green's argument is that the exist- 
 ence of a " world of abiding realities " is guaranteed 
 by its presence to the mind of God. But a moment's 
 thought suffices to show that it is not presence to 
 the mind of God that makes the world abidingly 
 real for man. When Green speaks of nature, or
 
 viii HOW IS REALITY CONSTITUTED? 249 
 
 the relational element in nature, as constituted by 
 the Spiritual Principle, he must, I take it, be speak- 
 ing of nature as it is known to man ; he cannot 
 mean nature-in-itself, if there be such a thing. Now 
 nature-as-known-to-man is real for each individual 
 man mainly by reason of its presence to his personal 
 consciousness ; for each man the objective reality 
 thus personally verified forms the nucleus of the 
 objective world. Beyond this nucleus there is a 
 vast peripheral tract of reality not thus verified ; 
 and the question is how this peripheral tract is for 
 each man constituted as real. The answer, surely, 
 is by presence to the consciousnesses of other 
 members of his society. A relation may exist 
 between an electric wire and a chemical solution 
 which is beyond the observation of a non-scientific 
 person ; but he may treat it as real by reason of its 
 presence to the consciousness of a man of science. 
 But, in order that what is real for another's con- 
 sciousness may be real for one's own, it is necessary 
 that the other consciousness should be within what 
 may be called one's universe of conversation. 
 Relations which may be present to the conscious- 
 ness of a dweller in the planet Mars have not, by 
 virtue of that presence, any reality for dwellers on 
 the Earth. And the same limitation applies in some 
 measure to consciousnesses which stand at very 
 different levels, as of those of a scientist and a 
 savage : they stand too far apart to co-operate to the 
 full in constituting reality. These considerations 
 are applicable to the divine consciousness in its
 
 250 THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE REAL CH. 
 
 relation to man. If Green had wished to maintain 
 that relations are, by reason of their presence to 
 God's mind, real for men, he should have proved 
 that God can enter the human 'universe of con- 
 versation ' : God must talk to and act upon men 
 after the manner of the Old Testament. Now this, 
 of course, Green never dreamt of maintaining ; 
 but nothing less could suffice for the re-establish- 
 ment of his "world of abiding realities " from the 
 standpoint which he assumes. And, even if 
 Green had adopted this extreme position, a further 
 difficulty would have had to be met : it would have 
 been necessary to explain why, if the divine con- 
 sciousness constitutes reality for men, men share so 
 scantily in the wealth of the divine experience. 
 
 28. Let us pass now to the second point, and 
 inquire in what sense reality would be spiritual even 
 if it were constituted for us by the divine conscious- 
 ness. Consider any ordinary relation constituted 
 by human consciousness, say that between one's 
 pen and one's inkstand. Such a relation may in 
 a certain sense be called spiritual because a spirit 
 constitutes it ; but it is not spiritual as the subjective 
 spirit is spiritual. There is an impassable difference 
 between subjective spirituality and what may be 
 called objective spirituality, just as there is between 
 the subjective intelligence of an inventor and the 
 intelligence which is objectively embodied in his 
 machine. Spirituality in the latter sense is like the 
 spirituality which is proved by the ordinary ' argu- 
 ment from design.' Both Green's argument and
 
 vni SPIRITUAL PARALLELISM 251 
 
 the design-argument, if successful, prove that there 
 is spirituality in nature, but they do not prove that 
 nature is spirit. This illustrates once more Green's 
 divergence from Hegel. The reader will under- 
 stand that I take this divergence as illustration of 
 Green's philosophic sanity : it really is absurd to 
 say that one's pen is part of the mind of God. But 
 we must remember that, if this really was Green's 
 position, he cannot be allowed the advantage of the 
 Hegelian impersonal subjectivism in his doctrine of 
 the Sonship of Man. 
 
 Green's doctrine of the Sonship of Man has been 
 touched upon already (supra 1 7, 20), and certain 
 grave difficulties attending it have been indicated : 
 we cannot understand how or why the Eternal 
 Consciousness reproduces itself, or what element of 
 human nature it is that is reproduced. But what 
 really lends plausibility to the doctrine of repro- 
 duction is the alleged parallelism of the Spiritual 
 Principle in nature with the Spiritual Principle in 
 man. It is plain that Green was trying to 
 secure the advantages without the disadvantages 
 of Hegelianism. The Hegelian who regards the 
 universe as homogeneously spiritual throughout has 
 no difficulty in treating human spirits as reproduc- 
 tions of the Absolute : the difficulty is to see how 
 there can be room for finite spirits. Green, viewing 
 the universe not as subject but as constituted by a 
 Subject, makes room for finite spirits : but therewith 
 the parallelism ceases, and the plausibility of repro- 
 duction is impaired. An old-fashioned philosopher
 
 252 SPIRITUAL REPRODUCTION CH. 
 
 who by means of the ' argument from design ' has 
 established the existence of an intelligent Author of 
 nature, might argue that this intelligence is repro- 
 duced in man ; and to an argument of this kind 
 Green is entitled, but he is not entitled to more. 
 
 Thus it cannot be said that Green has turned the 
 tables upon naturalism. If he had been justified 
 in maintaining that there is the closest parallelism 
 between nature unified and constituted by the 
 Eternal Consciousness and man unified and con- 
 stituted by human consciousness, he could have 
 assented with equanimity to the naturalistic doctrine 
 that man is a product of nature ; or rather, he could 
 have substituted for that doctrine his own formula 
 which lays it down that 
 
 " the concrete whole, which may be described indifferently 
 as an eternal intelligence realised in the related facts of 
 the world or as a system of related facts rendered possible 
 by such an intelligence, partially and gradually reproduces 
 itself in us, communicating piecemeal, but in inseparable 
 correlation, understanding and the facts understood, 
 experience and the experienced world " ( 36). 
 
 But, as no such parallelism can be established, the 
 advantage, such as it may be, of this counter-stroke 
 upon naturalism must be foregone. 
 
 And, indeed, the loss is perhaps not so serious 
 after all. Attractive in some ways as Green's 
 doctrine of Reproduction may be, I doubt if it 
 satisfies the religious consciousness so well as the 
 teaching of ordinary theism. The ordinary theist 
 would argue, not unreasonably, that to speak 
 of parallelism detracts from the incomprehensible
 
 vni GREEN'S ETHICAL PSYCHOLOGY 253 
 
 superiority of the world-consciousness ; his would 
 maintain that, if we can speak at all of the divine 
 consciousness as reproduced in the human, the re- 
 production is infinitesimal in degree. 
 
 29. We turn now to Green's theory of moral 
 action, where also the bias of subjectivism is trace- 
 able. The theory may be summarised as follows : 
 The general form of moral action is that it is an 
 effort to satisfy desire, which is always for some 
 personal good, that is, for some conscious state of 
 the agent that is anticipated as satisfying ( 86, 9 1 ). 
 By virtue of his self-consciousness the human agent 
 has the unique capacity of forming to himself the 
 conception of a good-upon-the-whole, i.e., of an all- 
 inclusive summum bonum of which any particular 
 good is but the partial and temporary expression 
 ( 85, 90, 128, 354). In every human motive this 
 conception of a summum bonum makes itself felt. 
 When Esau sold his birthright for pottage his 
 motive, strictly expressed, was not hunger but a 
 " conception of himself as finding for the time his 
 greatest good in the satisfaction of hunger " ( 96). 
 The good man is one who has a true conception of 
 the summum bonum ; whereas the bad man has a 
 false conception. But virtuous and vicious men 
 alike must, as human agents, form some conception 
 of the summum bonum and act with reference to it 
 ( 99> II 5)- The vicious man differs from the 
 virtuous precisely in supposing that his good lies in 
 such conduct as from man's nature cannot possibly 
 lead to the good ( 178).
 
 254 INTEREST IN SELF TRANSFORMED CH. 
 
 In the chapter on subjectivism I attempted to 
 show how the denial of objective reality tends to 
 throw the moralist on some form of self-seeking for 
 the explanation of morality. So, at least, it is with 
 Green. His 'self-realisation' is really of kindred 
 nature to the egoistic hedonism which he attacks so 
 vigorously ; they are both species of self-regarding 
 ethics. It seems as if Green had accepted from 
 Aristotle the view that morality is concerned with 
 desire, which is always for a good ; and as if he had, 
 like Kant, accepted the reasoning of the naturalists 
 that every good must be some state of the agent's 
 consciousness anticipated as satisfying. He only 
 differs from them in asserting that the anticipated 
 satisfaction is not pleasure. 
 
 30. The self-regarding interpretation of mor- 
 ality, and in particular that form of it expressed by 
 the phrase self-realisation, has so great a body of 
 support that it would be impolitic to attempt a 
 cursory criticism. I can only assert my conviction 
 that a truer interpretation would be one keeping more 
 closely to the disinterested-benevolence doctrine of 
 Hume and the 'moral sense' of Hutcheson. Such 
 an interpretation would recognise that, for morality, 
 the interest which the subject feels in objects is 
 more important than the interest which he feels in 
 himself. Although the latter half of the Prolegomena 
 shows a welcome inclination towards this line of 
 thought, in the former half Green's explanation of 
 the functions of the ego is very reflexive. He 
 speaks of it as " self-seeking and self-realising "
 
 vm INTO INTEREST IN OBJECTS 255 
 
 ( 100), "self-presenting" ( 101), "conscious ot 
 itself as its own object and thus self-determined " 
 ( 102, cf. 112), "self-distinguishing" ( 112), and 
 "self-objectifying" ( 175). However, the further 
 he proceeds with the book the more he extricates 
 himself from the subjectivist circle. He does this 
 by adopting tacitly a sort of doctrine of ' heterogony 
 of ends ' resembling the ' law of transference ' of the 
 association moralists. In one section the "quest of 
 self-satisfaction" ( 160) is still paramount and 
 objective interests are ancillary : " ordinary motives" 
 are " interests in the attainment of objects without 
 which it seems to the man in his actual state that he 
 cannot satisfy himself" ( 160). But in the next 
 section objects have attached the main interest to 
 themselves, and self-satisfaction has dropped into 
 the background. " Benevolent desires terminate 
 upon their objects, upon the benefits done to others " 
 ( 161). Henceforward we hear continually of 
 objective interest in ever widening forms, " interests 
 as of a person in persons" ( 201), "interests 
 ranging from provision for family to the improve- 
 ment of the public health or to the production of a 
 system of philosophy" ( 234), "interest in moral 
 qualities as such " ( 243), " interest of which the 
 object is a common good " ( 283). It is this latter 
 line of ethical interpretation, I believe, which has 
 brought the third book of the Prolegomena so much 
 into favour ; but Green never shows how it is to be 
 reconciled with the subjectivist doctrine to which he 
 adheres in form all through.
 
 256 THE DIVINE MORALITY CH. 
 
 31. But the main proof that Green's insight 
 was superior to his system is to be drawn from 
 what he says of the moral nature of God. He 
 argues that the moral relation of man to God is 
 exactly parallel to the intellectual relation ; in both 
 the knowledge and the morality of mankind the 
 eternal self-conscious Subject is reproducing itself 
 under human limitations ( 99, 174). In God 
 human potentialities are perfected ; he realises the 
 ideal of holiness ( 173, 187, 192, 302), he is there- 
 fore the consummation of virtue, the source of virtuous 
 effort, and the ideal of virtuous aspiration ( 302). 
 
 The nobility of these conceptions must not blind 
 us to their inconsistency with Green's main ethical 
 theory. We must remember that, when the form 
 of all moral activity is regarded as the quest of self- 
 satisfaction, the element of love or charity can 
 exist there only by accident. To the self-satis- 
 faction moralist it is logically an accident that man 
 is social and can only satisfy himself by taking 
 interest in society and its members (cf. 199, 370, 
 375) : were it possible for man isolated to get self- 
 satisfaction, there would be no need for the social 
 element at all. Assuming that spiders have a 
 higher intelligence than we believe them to possess, 
 we should, on Green's subjectivist view, be forced 
 to admit that the most unsociable of spiders may be 
 perfectly virtuous because perfectly self-satisfied. 
 
 Now evidently we have no reason to think that 
 the causes which necessitate a social element in 
 human self-satisfaction operate upon God : it is
 
 vni REPRODUCED IN MAN 257 
 
 presumptuous to assert that God cannot obtain self- 
 satisfaction without taking man into partnership 
 with him. Aristotle, who put the highest virtue 
 in a form of self-satisfaction, was much more 
 logical in separating God from altruistic interests 
 altogether. And if the divine virtue consists in 
 perfect self-satisfaction it cannot act as a stimulant 
 to moral aspiration in man. When another man 
 has attained a satisfaction which we are seeking, he 
 becomes an object of emulation to us, and we may 
 be comforted by the practical assurance of the 
 attainability of the satisfaction ; but this only holds 
 good as between man and man, and not as between 
 man and God. Nor indeed is Green ever thinking 
 of a stimulus of this kind : he is thinking of the 
 stimulus of disinterested admiration for the highest 
 type of character. But for another being's self- 
 satisfaction we never profess admiration except 
 ironically : we may envy him for having attained 
 the summum bonum ; but we hardly venerate him. 
 
 32. Nor is there the slightest propriety in 
 speaking of the satisfaction of one being as repro- 
 ducing itself in another. The only sense at all in 
 which this is possible is by sympathy, according to 
 the explanation of Adam Smith ; but this is not in 
 question here. As regards its direct experience 
 enjoyment is the most incommunicable thing in the 
 world. Nor is it easy to suggest any reason why 
 an enjoyment of the summum bonum experienced 
 by God should be reproduced in man. 
 
 This brief indication of the absurdity of these
 
 258 WOULD GREEN HAVE REVISED CH. 
 
 ethical positions when interpreted strictly is sufficient, 
 for it is plain that Green never meant to interpret 
 them strictly. He never carries through his thesis 
 that the form of all morality is the quest of self- 
 satisfaction. The altruistic sentiments which should 
 logically be ancillary to self-satisfaction soon become 
 for him the foremost part of moral experience. He 
 thinks of virtue, not as self-satisfaction, but as a 
 settled habit of active benevolence. It is the divine 
 charity which, as in ordinary Christian theism, 
 becomes the object of man's veneration ; and it is 
 charity, not self-satisfaction, which is reproduced in 
 man from God. 
 
 33. In the foregoing pages of criticism I have 
 tried to point out, not only the weakness in Green, 
 but also the sources of his strength. And, in judg- 
 ing the weak parts, we must not forget that the 
 Prolegomena, in which all Green's system is con- 
 tained, was a posthumous and, indeed, an unfinished 
 work. Apart from certain fundamentals Green was 
 a hesitating, irresolute, one might almost say a 
 timorous, thinker, the sort of mind that is easily 
 nonplussed by objections from a critical pupil. 1 
 The views which he urged against the philosophy 
 of the lower categories he held unshakably, because 
 convinced of their truth by long and painful con- 
 sideration and reconsideration. But there is nothing 
 to show that he would have held with equal tenacity 
 to the constructive metaphysic of the Prolegomena. 
 
 1 I owe this to an anecdote from the President of Corpus.
 
 HIS METAPHYSIC? 
 
 In any case it is certain that in the later chapters of 
 the Prolegomena we find less and less of the idols 
 that have done him so much disservice. What he 
 has to say of the personal character of the moral 
 ideal, of the extension of the area of common good, 
 of the place of objective interest in a good life (see 
 esp. 228), of the development from the Greek to 
 the modern conception of virtue, of the practical 
 value of the moral ideal and of the practical value 
 of a theory of the moral ideal, is all admirable. 
 The metaphysical system of the earlier part of the 
 Prolegomena is ambitious and stimulating ; but the 
 ethical doctrines of the later part are truer, and give 
 their author a claim to stand in the historic succes- 
 sion of British philosophy.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 MR. F. H. BRADLEY 
 
 i. THERE can be no doubt that Mr. Bradley, 
 if he chose, could write a most interesting philo- 
 sophical autobiography : the position he occupies at 
 present is a remarkable one, and he has made no 
 small journey in reaching it. His first book, Ethical 
 Studies (1876), shows him taking up Hegelianism 
 by reaction against the lower-categories philosophy 
 then generally prevalent in English thought : in 
 his last he has come to something not unlike 
 Spinozism ; though his interest in the Absolute is 
 very different from the scientific, self-contained, anti- 
 sensuous mysticism of Spinoza. 
 
 It follows from these relationships that Mr. 
 Bradley 's work is both intellectualist and absolutist. 
 It is his advocacy of the Absolute that is the better 
 known ; but his intellectualism is the more im- 
 portant for all the positive features of his doctrine. 
 Absolutism, as we know, does not go far as a 
 principle of explanation ; it is rather a principle that 
 suppresses explanation : but the intellectualism with 
 which Mr. Bradley began his career has left abundant 
 
 traces on his more constructive work all through. 
 
 260
 
 CH. ix HEGELIAN PROPAGANDA 261 
 
 2. His Ethical Studies has the brilliancy and 
 something of the immaturity of youth. Its preface 
 shows clearly enough the object which the author 
 had set before him : being profoundly dissatisfied 
 with what he calls the one-sidedness and dogmatism 
 of English moral philosophy, he desired to introduce 
 a "fresh element" into "the chaos of our philo- 
 sophical literature" {E.S. p. 6). By the "fresh 
 element " Mr. Bradley means, as the closing words 
 of his preface show, the principles of Hegel, then 
 rather more than half a century old, but up to that 
 time not duly taken account of by English thinkers. 
 To Hegelianism Mr. Bradley refers not obscurely 
 at the end of his first ' Study,' where he bids us 
 remember that 
 
 " we live in an island, and that our national mind, if we 
 do not enlarge it, may also grow insular ; that not far 
 from us there lies (they say so) a world of thought, which, 
 with all its variety, is neither one nor the other of our two 
 philosophies, but whose battle is the battle of philosophy 
 itself against two undying and opposite one-sidednesses ; 
 a philosophy which thinks what the vulgar believe ; a 
 philosophy, lastly, which we all have refuted, and, having 
 so cleared our consciences, which some of us at least might 
 take steps to understand." 
 
 Very significant is the tone, even more than the 
 content, of the foregoing extract as showing the 
 attitude of many forward-looking minds at that time. 
 Thirty years ago Hegel was read but little over 
 here, and understood still less : no one could be 
 sure what a better understanding of him might not 
 do for British philosophy. Such a passage could 
 not be written now when most people understand
 
 262 ALLEGIANCE WITH RESERVATIONS CH. 
 
 pretty well how much, or how little, we have to 
 hope from Hegel. 
 
 3. The main interest of Ethical Studies, apart 
 from its witty polemic against the traditional English 
 philosophy, is that it forms a good example of the 
 position taken by Anglo-Hegelians to their master. 
 Mr. Bradley never adopts the two essential doctrines 
 of Hegel, the Thought-Absolute and the Dialectic. 
 At a later date we find him writing of Hegel, 
 " I cannot say that I have mastered his system " 
 (P.L. p. vi.) ; and it is quite possible that, all along, 
 difficulties of interpretation may have prevented 
 him from defining his position with regard to that 
 master. But a careful perusal of Ethical Studies 
 shows that Mr. Bradley, from the first, must have 
 felt that Hegelianism would not 'do,' and must have 
 shared the common feeling among Anglo- Hegelians 
 that there were insuperable objections to its system- 
 atic acceptance. Nevertheless, he adopts much of 
 the results and general tendency of Hegel. Mr. 
 Bradley's 'soft' determinism, his magnification of 
 society and belittlement of the individual, his sneers 
 at conscience and reverence for the social 'ethos,' 
 his invective against the ' false ' infinite, and, in 
 particular, his doctrines of the real or concrete 
 universal and of the social will have all an un- 
 mistakable provenance. 
 
 4. It is worth while to pause a moment over 
 Mr. Bradley's references to the ' universal,' because 
 they illustrate, I think, a peculiar weakness of 
 the Anglo- Hegelian position. The references are
 
 THE CONCRETE UNIVERSAL 
 
 scattered all through Ethical Studies : Mr. Bradley 
 explains the " most widely spread amongst all men's 
 rooted beliefs " about human action by the doctrine 
 " that an universal is real, and that that universal 
 is conscious of itself" (p. 31) ; he suggests that we 
 may regard the " unity of the two factors " in voli- 
 tion as " the individual whole, or again the concrete 
 universal " (p. 66) ; the " concrete and real universal 
 makes the morality, which does exist, possible in 
 theory as well as real in fact" (p. 105); he re- 
 pudiates asceticism as " the tyranny of the (abstract) 
 universal" (p. 125); the fault of the doctrine of 
 1 duty for duty's sake ' is that " for mere particular 
 it substitutes mere universal " (p. 128) ; true morality 
 is "something like a universal," whereas "happi- 
 ness, as the effort to construct that universal by the 
 addition of particulars, gave us a futile and bastard 
 product, which carried its self-destruction within it, 
 in the continual assertion of its own universality, 
 together with its unceasing actual particularity and 
 finitude" (p. 145); the goodwill "is a concrete 
 universal, because it not only is above but is 
 within and throughout its details" (p. 147); he 
 recommends " my station and its duties " by the 
 argument that " in that the universal is concrete " 
 (p. 159); and asserts that "the right and duty of 
 gaining self-realisation through the real universal is 
 still as certain as is the impossibility of gaining it 
 otherwise" (p. 173). 
 
 Now I would argue that a philosopher should 
 not play fast and loose with such a doctrine as the
 
 264 'MY STATION AND ITS DUTIES' CH. 
 
 Concrete Universal. In Hegel it has a definite 
 sense and is an integral part of his system ; Dr. 
 Stirling even calls it, rather mistakenly I should 
 say, the secret of Hegel. A writer who uses it 
 should either define it for himself, or else be under- 
 stood to accept the full Hegelian position. Mr. 
 Bradley certainly gives no definition, and does not 
 even hint at one ; while the rest of his book with 
 its large indebtedness to Aristotle and common- 
 sense, not to mention the religious mysticism at 
 its close, is quite incompatible with systematic 
 Hegelianism. Now this is quite characteristic of 
 Anglo- Hegelian writers : all through we find them, 
 while declining the Hegelian system, offering in 
 philosophical explanation terms and doctrines which 
 are meaningless outside the Hegelian system. 
 
 5. The main ethical doctrine of Ethical Studies, 
 " my station and its duties " is another illustration of 
 this illegitimate borrowing. It is said by its author 
 to depend on the principle that " when we will 
 morally, the will of the objective world wills itself 
 in us, and carries both us and itself out into the 
 world of the moral will, which is its own realm " 
 (p. 162). Now this objective will, elsewhere termed 
 "objective mind" (p. 167), is a Hegelism which 
 means a whole system if it means anything. 
 
 However, this question of origin may be passed 
 by ; a more profitable matter of discussion is the 
 claim of the station-and-duties doctrine to be an 
 adequate interpretation of moral experience. To 
 my mind its fatal defect consists in overlooking the
 
 ix IGNORES CHOICE OF CAREER 265 
 
 individual's part of choosing his station and of 
 interpreting its duties in his own way. To take 
 station-and-duties as the supreme moral category 
 implies, firstly, that each man has what Mr. Bradley 
 calls an "appointed function" (p. 164). Now this 
 phrase is misleading : our higher functions are not 
 appointed, but self-appointed. And this ought to 
 be particularly obvious in a university, where the 
 choice of careers goes on daily before our eyes and 
 could, surely, be illustrated most copiously from 
 Mr. Bradley 's personal observation. Moreover the 
 doctrine implies that a man's station sets forth to 
 him his duties in adequate prescription ; whereas it 
 is notorious that the duties are prescribed only in 
 the most general terms, so that a man's function is 
 pretty well what he chooses to make it. To say 
 that the objective mind " speaks the word of com- 
 mand and gives the field of accomplishment, and 
 in the activity of obedience it has and bestows 
 individual life and satisfaction and happiness " (p. 
 167), is to over-estimate considerably the moral 
 direction which the individual gets from society. 
 We need not press against Mr. Bradley his phrase 
 of ' the will of the objective world willing itself in 
 us : ' for, if we did, it would mean the merging of 
 personal volition altogether. We may take it as an 
 extreme and incautious expression of Mr. Bradley's 
 reaction against the equally extreme individualism 
 of our traditional moral and political philosophy. 
 
 6. Very interesting in view of later develop- 
 ments is the religious mysticism of the "Concluding
 
 266 RELIGIOUS MYSTICISM CH. 
 
 Remarks" of the book. The end of Mr. Bradley's 
 " Studies " brings him into distant view of a state 
 " where morality is removed and survives in its 
 fulfilment." 
 
 " The hunt after pleasure in any shape has proved itself 
 a delusion, and the form of duty a snare, and the finite 
 realisation of ' my station ' was truth indeed, and a happi- 
 ness that called to us to stay, but was too narrow to 
 satisfy wholly the spirit's hunger ; and ideal morality 
 brought the sickening sense of inevitable failure. Here 
 where we are landed at last, the process is at an end, 
 though the best activity here first begins. Here our 
 morality is consummated in oneness with God, and every- 
 where we find that ' immortal Love,' which builds itself 
 for ever on contradiction, but in which the contradiction 
 is eternally resolved" (p. 305). 
 
 All this points forward to Appearance and Reality. 
 
 7. Mr. Bradley's second book, The Principles 
 of Logic (1883), contains the main bulk of his con- 
 structive work ; though, as dealing with a technical 
 subject, it has attracted far less notice than Appear- 
 ance and Reality. Its independent and elaborate 
 treatment of logical questions, and its great influence 
 upon study in this university, call for a somewhat 
 detailed criticism : at the risk of taxing my readers' 
 patience I will try to show the how and why of Mr. 
 Bradley's shortcomings on the main questions of logic. 
 Not that I mean seriously to offer apology for entering 
 so far into detail : considering that logic is the staple 
 of philosophical teaching in Oxford, we must confess 
 to doing too little rather than too much in the detailed 
 investigation of disputed logical problems.
 
 ix LOGIC SPOILT BY PASSIVISM 267 
 
 The preface tells us that the work " makes no 
 claim to supply any systematic treatment" (p. v.) : 
 it has, indeed, more the air of a voyage of discovery 
 than of a statement of ' Principles.' This does not 
 make for lucidity; but the main difficulty lies in 
 the intricate cross-currents that pervade the work. 
 There are people who hold that, in spite of the 
 vigour and lucidity of its style, it is the most difficult 
 English philosophical treatise that is worth the 
 trouble of reading. After repeated perusal, how- 
 ever, it seems possible to discern the principles 
 that account for its general form and for its re- 
 markable failure to come to any definite conclusion. 
 Quite in Mr. Bradley 's regular manner, a sheaf ot 
 ultimate doubts and dilemmas closes the whole 
 inquiry. 
 
 What any one can see is the shadow of the 
 Passive Fallacy hanging over Mr. Bradley's whole 
 conception of the function of thought and of its 
 relation to reality. Mr. Bradley always speaks of 
 reality as unalterably given, something that exer- 
 cises compulsion upon thought, something to which 
 thought is bound to conform (p. 40) : he never 
 recognises the function of thought in making and 
 transforming reality. 1 It is possible I may be met 
 here with the objection that the creative function 
 of thought is psychological, and that its properly 
 logical function is the recognition of existent reality 
 which is forced upon its notice. To this I should 
 
 1 Cf. especially his remarkable simile of the human mind to an intelligence 
 hung passively over a river covered with drifting objects (p. 54).
 
 268 INCOMPATIBILITIES OF THOUGHT CH. 
 
 answer that I deny the validity of the distinction 
 between the logical and the psychological as thus 
 laid down. The distinction is constantly made (e.g. 
 in P.L. p. 21), but nowhere have I seen any clear 
 justification of it. At any rate I do not believe it 
 can be maintained in the present case. If logic 
 is the theory of thought, and if, as I believe, the 
 creative function of thought is important beyond 
 every other, then that function cannot be extruded 
 outside of logic. 
 
 Where Mr. Bradley 's logical treatment seems to 
 get at cross-purposes with itself is in his combina- 
 tion of intellectualism with an absolutism of the 
 ' feeling ' type. His adoption of the former is easily 
 understood : in this book, as in Ethical Studies, Mr. 
 Bradley is waging war against the lower-categories 
 philosophy, and borrows from Germany weapons 
 to fight the logic which would view the operations 
 of thought as a kind of chemistry, or as mechanical 
 association and resurrection of sensuous elements, 
 or as the working of a specially complicated logical 
 machine. His feeling-absolutism is no less intelli- 
 gible as a reaction against the Hegelian panlogism. 
 The difficulty comes when Mr. Bradley tries to 
 work the two together : in almost every chapter 
 these two incompatible strands of thought are inter- 
 woven with an intricacy to drive the most patient 
 commentator near despair. 
 
 8. The intellectualist bias which consists in 
 ignoring the sensational element of knowledge 
 appears most strikingly in his second chapter on
 
 ix 'ALL JUDGMENT IS ABSTRACT' 269 
 
 "The Categorical and Hypothetical Forms of 
 Judgment." The long and formidable discussion 
 thus entitled is designed apparently (I speak without 
 much confidence) to cut the ground from under the 
 sensationist logicians : while they hold that the 
 whole matter of thought is sensational, Mr. 
 Bradley contends that none of it is sensational 
 and that all judgment is abstract. The sensationist 
 interprets ' All men are mortal ' as a categorical 
 statement about material facts which may be 
 sensuously verified : Mr. Bradley holds that such 
 a judgment is not categorical, is not about material 
 facts, and cannot be sensuously verified. He 
 insists that the strictly correct formulation of ' All 
 men are mortal' is 4 If man then mortal.' "The 
 universal judgment is thus always hypothetical. It 
 says, ' Given one thing you will then have another/ 
 and it says no more. No truth can state fact " 
 
 (P- 47). 
 
 9. The great difficulty in the way of carrying 
 
 out this doctrine thoroughly is, of course, what 
 Mr. Bradley calls the singular judgment of sense, 
 such as ' Here is a wolf ; and he admits that at a 
 certain level of thought " the judgments that analyse 
 what is given in perception will all be categorical " 
 (p. 107). But in the second part of his second 
 chapter he undertakes to show that on a stricter 
 scrutiny such judgments are no less abstract and 
 hypothetical than 'All men are mortal,' and differ 
 only for the worse in expressing a lower degree of 
 truth.
 
 270 THE JUDGMENT OF SENSE CH. 
 
 " The only hope for the singular judgment lies in 
 complete renunciation. It must admit that the abstract, 
 although hypothetical, is more true than itself is. It 
 must ask for a place in the same class of judgment, and 
 be content to take the lowest room there. It must cease 
 to predicate its elements of the real, and must confine 
 itself to asserting their connection as adjectives generally, 
 and apart from particular existence. Instead of meaning 
 by ' Here is a wolf or ' This tree is green/ that ' wolf and 
 ' green tree ' are real facts, it must affirm the general con- 
 nection of wolf with elements of the environment, and of 
 ' green ' with ' tree.' And it must do this in an abstract 
 sense, without any reference to the particular fact. In a 
 low and rudimentary form it thus tends to become a 
 scientific law, and, entirely giving up its original claims, 
 it now sets its foot on the ladder of truth " (pp. 104 sq). 
 
 . 10. In this attack upon the judgment of sense 
 Mr. Bradley is thinking, I presume, specially of 
 J. S. Mill. Mill, in explaining his doctrine of the 
 import of propositions (System of Logic, bk. i. chap. v. 
 4), gives as the simplest example, " The summit 
 of Chimborazo is white." 
 
 " The word white," he says, " connotes an attribute 
 which is possessed by the individual object designated by 
 the words ' summit of Chimborazo ' ; which attribute 
 consists in the physical fact of its exciting in human 
 beings the sensation which we call a sensation of white. 
 It will be admitted," he adds, " that by asserting the pro- 
 position we wish to communicate information of that 
 physical fact." 
 
 But this is just what Mr. Bradley refuses to admit ; 
 he denies the fundamental principle from which the 
 sensationist logic takes its start. 
 
 In his proof that the judgment of sense is 
 universal from the outset Mr. Bradley has obviously
 
 CANNOT IDEAS REACH REALITY? 271 
 
 borrowed from Hegel. In the Phdnomeno logic des 
 Geistes (pp. 71-82) Hegel undertakes to prove that 
 immediate sense-experience (sinnliche Gewissheit] 
 gives us nothing but pure Being (reines Seyn). It 
 is essential to his panlogist position that he should 
 interpret sense-experience in this way : his whole 
 philosophy collapses unless he can disprove the 
 common opinion that sense-experience supplies us 
 with concrete data, or with anything more than 
 the emptiest and most abstract of universals. Mr. 
 Bradley has not to face the same imperious necessity, 
 and it is a blot upon his book that, to support his 
 own position, which here is essentially different from 
 Hegel's, he has adapted some of the flimsiest 
 arguments of the Phenomenology. 
 
 n. To examine these arguments in detail 
 would be a long digression : I can only comment 
 upon two points in Mr. Bradley's doctrine. The 
 first is that in saying that " the real is inaccessible 
 by way of ideas " (p. 63), or, in saying that ideas, 
 being abstract, cannot indicate or be made 
 applicable to concrete particulars, he is inflicting a 
 monstrous disability upon thought. No specifica- 
 tion of time or place, he argues, is sufficient to 
 express the particular. "When we say 'It rained 
 last Tuesday,' we mean this last Tuesday, and 
 not any other ; but, if we keep to ideas, we do 
 not utter our meaning " (p. 62 ; cf. Phan. d. Geistes, 
 p. 74). But, surely, in writing these words Mr. 
 Bradley could hardly have realised their import. 
 If we cannot utter our meaning how is it that we
 
 272 'NEARER REALITY, FARTHER FROM SCIENCE' CH. 
 
 still manage to do it ? I give the order ' Light 
 your candle,' and lo ! in spite of the alleged univer- 
 sality of the enunciation, one particular candle is lit. 
 The truth is, I suppose, that the separate elements 
 of a sentence may be universal taken separately, 
 and yet, in combination, may indicate a unique indi- 
 vidual. ' Light,' ' your,' and 'candle' are severally 
 terms which represent ideas, but put together, and 
 taken in combination with attendant conditions that 
 are part of the understood content of the command, 
 they suffice to indicate a particular thing. 
 
 12. The other comment I have to make refers 
 to the difficulty of reconciling Mr. Bradley 's doctrine 
 of the abstractness and falsity of the perceptive 
 judgment with what he says in the self-same chapter 
 of sense-experience as our unique mode of contact 
 with reality. This last is not an obiter dictum of 
 Mr. Bradley's : it recurs all through the Princples 
 of Logic, and is, as we shall see later, fundamentally 
 connected with his feeling-absolutism. Present 
 perception, he says, is the base from which our 
 ideas of past and future are projected (p. 62) ; it is, 
 so to speak, the one loophole through which we 
 touch reality (p. 70). And yet we are told that this 
 unique contact gives us nothing but the very poorest 
 and falsest kind of universal : not till we get away 
 from it to those hypothetical which embody laws 
 do we get into the world of science (p. 92). From 
 these expressions of Mr. Bradley's we can only 
 conclude that the nearer we are to reality the 
 further we are from science. It is on the relation
 
 ix IS NOT JUDGMENT DYNAMIC? 273 
 
 of sense-experience to knowledge that the intricacy 
 of thought in the Principles of Logic reaches for me 
 its culminating point : the foregoing is but one of 
 many difficulties that might be raised on this head 
 were it profitable to do so. 1 
 
 13. In all he says about judgment Mr. Bradley 
 ignores its active and creative side. This may be 
 illustrated by his general definition: "Judgment 
 proper is the act which refers an ideal content 
 (recognised as such) to a reality beyond the act" 
 (p. 10), and also by his doctrine that judgment is 
 not true unless it is forced upon our minds by 
 reality (p. 40). In other words Mr. Bradley's view 
 of judgment is this : The judger has in his mind an 
 ideal content ; in judgment he asserts that reality pos- 
 sesses that content ; and judges rightly or wrongly 
 according as reality accepts or rejects the content. 
 This account, it is obvious, holds good only of that 
 knowledge in which we trace passively the features 
 of reality ; it is quite inapplicable to cases where we 
 act upon reality. The simplest action, mending a 
 quill-pen, for example, involves judgments in which 
 we do not offer ideas to reality to accept or reject, 
 but in which we impose ideas upon reality. Mr. 
 Bradley gives no account of such judgments ; this 
 will be illustrated further when I come to speak of 
 his doctrine of inference. 
 
 14. This side of Mr. Bradley's intellectualism, 
 his neglect of activity, purpose, and creation, receives 
 
 1 The reader who wishes to go further into these very puzzling questions 
 should consult Prof. Bosanquet's study of Mr. Bradley's views in Knowledge 
 and Reality, especially chap. i. and the "Conclusion." 
 
 T
 
 274 THE DISJUNCTIVE JUDGMENT CH. 
 
 minor illustrations from his views of the Disjunctive 
 Judgment (bk. i. chap, iv.), of the Quantity of Judg- 
 ments, and of the Modality of Judgments (bk. i. 
 chaps, vi., vii.). 
 
 In his treatment of disjunction, Mr. Bradley is 
 quite right in refusing to make it a " mere appen- 
 dage" or "simple application of the hypothetical" 
 (p. 121), and in insisting that it is always partly 
 categorical : where he goes wrong is in treating it 
 entirely as a judgment of partial ignorance: 'Jones 
 is in England or America' is Mr. Bradley's type 
 of the disjunctive judgment (cf. p. 123). The 
 disjunctive judgment, says Mr. Bradley, 
 
 " first takes a predicate known within limits, and 
 defined by exclusion, and then further defines it by hypo- 
 thetical exclusion. It rests on the assumption that we 
 have the whole field, and by removing parts can deter- 
 mine the residue" (p. 130). 
 
 All this is true as far as it goes ; but by stopping 
 at this point Mr. Bradley has left out the most 
 characteristic and valuable function of the disjunc- 
 tive judgment, which is to define within limits a 
 purpose or expected event. ' We are going to 
 London next week or the week after' ; ' He must 
 either submit or resign,' are judgments to which 
 Mr. Bradley's just-quoted formula is inadequate. 
 Disjunctions of this kind indicate from an indefinite 
 number of possible events two or more as likely to 
 happen. In regard to the future it is absurd to say 
 that " we have the whole field, and by removing 
 parts can determine the residue ' ; for the " field " 
 has not yet come into existence.
 
 ix THE QUANTITY OF JUDGMENTS 275 
 
 15. In his chapter on the Quantity of Judg- 
 ments, Mr. Bradley makes a useful attack on various 
 superstitions of sensationist logic ; but in the most 
 important part of the chapter, that in which he treats 
 of Intension and Extension, he is under the influ- 
 ence of Hegelian views which seem to me more than 
 usually inept in this connection. 
 
 On the common-sense view, which I am disposed 
 to hold till good reason is shown for giving it up, 
 an extensional or denotative judgment is one that 
 tells us something about some person, thing, or con- 
 crete feature of the world in which we are interested. 
 Mr. Bradley 's own example, ' Caesar is sick,' is a 
 plain and straightforward denotative judgment. On 
 the other hand, a judgment which is meant to be 
 taken in intension or connotation (both bad terms) 
 tells us something about the qualities, aspects, laws, 
 or relations of concrete persons and things. The 
 Hegelian is of course excluded from this common- 
 sense view. He must treat every proposition as a 
 universal. " Every judgment," says Mr. Bradley 
 speaking at the higher metaphysical level, " is uni- 
 versal, and in the end they may all be said to be 
 universal absolutely" (p. 179). This, however, is 
 an ideal of metaphysics, and, for " logical purposes," 
 Mr. Bradley admits that "it is better to ignore it " ; 
 in logic " the extension cannot be reduced to inten- 
 sion " (p. 155): though he seems disposed, contrary 
 to what I should hold to be right, to treat intension 
 as prior to and more important than extension. 
 
 What then does Mr. Bradley, with his modified
 
 276 EXTENSION AND INTENSION CH. 
 
 Hegelianism, regard as the difference between in- 
 tensional and extensional judgments ? The first, he 
 says, " asserts a connection of different attributes, 
 with an indirect reference to an identical subject " 
 (this may pass unchallenged, though " identical " is 
 rather superfluous) ; the second " directly asserts the 
 identity of the subject, with an implication of the 
 difference of its attributes" (p. 161). In fact, we 
 have here yet another application of the great 
 Hegelian formula of ' identity in difference ' to which 
 such far-reaching and almost mysterious import is 
 attributed. But, as applied to explain extensional 
 or denotative judgments, this formula seems to 
 render them quite meaningless. Mr. Bradley says 
 that " in ' Caesar is sick,' the same person is said to 
 be sick as well as Caesar" (p. 168) ; that is, we are 
 asserting the identity of one man who has these two 
 attributes of being sick and of being called Caesar 
 (see p. 161 quoted just above). Now, really, is this 
 the meaning of ' Caesar is sick ' ? Think of some 
 exactly parallel statement, ' Dinner is ready.' We 
 have all heard this hundreds of times : have we 
 ever once understood it to mean an assertion of 
 identity with an implication of different attributes, 
 an assertion that the thing which is dinner is iden- 
 tical with the thing which is ready. There must be 
 identity ; but is the butler who makes the announce- 
 ment meaning to assert identity. The ' plain man ' 
 would say that the butler knows we are expecting 
 dinner and lets us know when it is ready to be 
 eaten : in technical terms the butler adds to an
 
 MODALITY 277 
 
 object, partially defined in our minds, a further defi- 
 nition appropriate to our known purpose of satisfying 
 hunger. Would Mr. Bradley maintain that the plain 
 man is wrong, or would he still maintain that the 
 straightforward meaning of ' Dinner is ready ' is 
 adequately embodied in his formula of identity in 
 difference ? 
 
 1 6. In Mr. Bradley's chapter on the Modality 
 of Judgments there is much indeed to comment on. 
 A good deal might be said, for instance, on the 
 doctrine (p. 183) that the necessary is "nothing but 
 a phase of the hypothetical." (A toothache is neces- 
 sary very often. Is it a kind of hypothesis ?) But 
 this is off our immediate line of inquiry. What I 
 wish to call attention to is Mr. Bradley's reduction 
 of all forms of modal assertion to one, which he calls 
 the assertorical. In opposition to the common doc- 
 trine which regards categorical assertions as formally 
 different from the possible and the necessary, Mr. 
 Bradley states his own position as follows : 
 
 " There are no degrees of truth and falsehood. If S P 
 is fact, it cannot be more than fact : if it is less than fact, 
 it is nothing at all. The dilemma is simple. S P is 
 affirmed or it is not affirmed. If it is not affirmed, it is 
 not judged true at all. If it is affirmed, it is declared to 
 be fact, and it cannot be more or less of a fact. There 
 clearly can be but one kind of judgment, the assertorical. 
 Modality affects not the affirmation, but what is affirmed. 
 It is not mere S P that is asserted modally : it is another 
 content, a modified S P" (p. 181). 
 
 In other words, the common opinion says that 
 the three statements ' S is P,' ' S may be P,' ' S must 
 be P,' are alike in content but differ in form, one
 
 278 CAN POSSIBLE AND NECESSARY CH. 
 
 content, S P, being asserted in three modes, the 
 categorical, the possible, and the necessary : Mr. 
 Bradley, on the other hand, says that the three state- 
 ments are alike in form but differ in content, and 
 that in strictness they should be expressed as ' S is 
 P,' 'S is possible-P,' 'S is necessary-P.' 
 
 Now at a casual glance it may seem that no point 
 of importance is involved in this divergence of 
 opinion : but on consideration we shall see that Mr. 
 Bradley's view is suitable only to a static world, and 
 that the common view does more justice to the 
 kinetic and dynamic factor. If there were no such 
 thing as futurity, if the whole of existence existed 
 complete as I speak, then Mr. Bradley would be 
 right in holding that " there are no degrees of truth 
 and falsehood," and that " if S P is fact, it cannot 
 be more than fact ; if it is less than fact, it is nothing 
 at all " : clearly there could be only " one kind of 
 judgment, the assertorical." But let us consider a 
 simple, everyday modal assertion, ' I may go down 
 to-morrow.' Here S P is not a fact, and yet, surely, 
 it is not "nothing at all." Applied to futurity Mr. 
 Bradley's " simple dilemma " fails. Again, how does 
 such a case suit Mr. Bradley's contention that in 
 modal assertions we assert not S P modally, but 
 modified S P ? In the categorical judgment ' I 
 am going down,' an intelligible unmodified con- 
 tent is predicated of the subject ; whether, like the 
 ordinary grammarian, we take ' I ' to be the subject, 
 or, like Mr. Bradley, we take ' all reality ' as subject. 
 But in ' I may go down to-morrow ' what is the
 
 ix BE REDUCED TO ASSERTORICAL? 279 
 
 modified content that we assert of all reality ? Is 
 it ' myself possibly going down to-morrow ' ? And 
 is the simple -seeming statement ' I may go down 
 to - morrow ' really equivalent to the alarmingly 
 mysterious ' I assert myself-possibly-going-down-to- 
 morrow of all reality ' ? So far as the last form of 
 words is intelligible at all, its meaning seems irre- 
 concilable with that of its alleged equivalent. In 
 short, Mr. Bradley's static intellectualism has once 
 more led him to a false attack on common sense. 
 
 The only possibility of evading this conclusion 
 is to make the old distinction between the logical 
 and the psychological, and to dismiss modal state- 
 ments like that just instanced as being " concerned 
 with nothing but my mental attitude," and as having 
 "a psychological not a logical bearing" (p. 182). I 
 have already denied the validity of this distinction, 
 which Mr. Bradley nowhere establishes by argument; 
 and in the present connection it would reduce logic 
 to a childish game. It implies that in logic you 
 pretend that the Universe is a Totum Simul and 
 that thought has nothing to do but to define it. 
 As soon as we recognise change and energy, in 
 other words, as soon as we get into real life, we are, 
 it seems, out of logic and into psychology. 
 
 1 7. The two latter books of the Principles of 
 Logic, which deal with inference, are, to some minds 
 at least, more valuable than the first. The early 
 chapters of the first book contain much startling 
 doctrine, and are highly stimulating from their vigour 
 and novelty ; but the theory of inference yields more
 
 280 MR. BRADLEY ON INFERENCE CH. 
 
 solid instruction. It is not at all systematic or com- 
 plete ; induction, particularly, is treated in very 
 cavalier fashion. Much of it is devoted to strong 
 polemic, the Doctrine of the Association of Ideas 
 and the Inductive Canons of J. S. Mill bearing the 
 brunt of attack. Whether what Mr. Bradley attacks 
 is in all cases what his opponents really held has 
 been doubted by many of his readers. But at any 
 rate the general drift of Mr. Bradley's argument 
 as making for a spiritual interpretation of reasoning 
 is in harmony with the best tendencies of contem- 
 porary logic. He does great service too by his on- 
 slaught on those antiquated formalisms which deluded 
 men into the hope of getting substantial results by 
 the mere manipulation of logical symbols. The 
 syllogism may or may not deserve all the abuse that 
 Mr. Bradley heaps upon it ; but he has successfully 
 dissipated its prestige, and has left it to stand on its 
 own merits, such as they are. 
 
 1 8. So far so good : but Mr. Bradley has been 
 stronger in polemic than in construction. The 
 chapters in which he sets forth his own theory of 
 inference are saturated with intellectualism and the 
 passive fallacy in general. In the total result his 
 doctrine is less satisfactory than Prof. Bosanquet's, 
 who, though an intellectualist, seems always just on 
 the point of breaking away from his unfortunate 
 traditions and of recognising the dominant position 
 of purpose and plan in reasoning. Before I start 
 criticising Mr. Bradley's views on inference, it will 
 make for clearness if I summarise in advance the
 
 ix 'INDIVIDUALITY OF SYNTHESIS' 281 
 
 purport of what I have to say. I believe that in- 
 ference depends upon plan, in other words, that 
 from data A B we are able to infer C in so far as 
 the plan or purpose of A B requires C for its com- 
 pletion. Towards this view Mr. Bradley seems to 
 tend in many of his expressions ; but, when he 
 comes to explain these expressions systematically, 
 he slips back to a position not much in advance of 
 the formal logicians against whom he fulminates. 
 Now for the criticism in detail. 
 
 19. In his chapter entitled "Principles of 
 Reasoning," Mr. Bradley inquires into the operative 
 principle of inference, or what it is that justifies us 
 in advancing from data A B to a further content C 
 which is not before us, and states it as " individuality 
 of synthesis" (p. 241). This would be an excellent 
 phrase if we could be sure that Mr. Bradley under- 
 stood it in the right sense. In the ordinary use of 
 ' individuality ' it means something like unity of plan, 
 and in this meaning it is undoubtedly a principle, 
 perhaps the principle, of inference. We can see this 
 in a characteristic example. Let the data of the 
 inference be a mutilated fragment of an ancient 
 statue, and let the inference be its restoration by the 
 expert antiquary. If asked why he supposed that 
 the figure represented, say, a man quoit-throwing, 
 the antiquary would doubtless point to indications 
 in the figure showing that such was the artist's 
 design. " Individuality of synthesis " would not be 
 a bad phrase to express the principle of such an 
 inference. But does Mr. Bradley understand his
 
 282 WHERE IS THE INDIVIDUAL? CH. 
 
 principle in this way ? He expresses it in formal 
 terms thus : 
 
 "Where elements A and C are related homogeneously 
 to a common B, A and C are related within the same 
 genus. Or where one relation only (either A B or 
 B C) is within the category of subject and attribute, 
 there is a valid conclusion within the category of either 
 A B or B C" (p. 241). 
 
 Such is the ambiguity of skeleton judgments that 
 I cannot feel quite positive in denying that my ex- 
 ample of the statue can be covered by Mr. Bradley 's 
 principle as thus explained : I feel almost sure that 
 it cannot. Nor, so far as I can see, will the prin- 
 ciple apply better to any case of individuality that I 
 can think of. 
 
 However, further on in the chapter he specifies 
 as principles of inferential synthesis "the principles 
 (i.) of the synthesis of subject and attribute, (ii.) of 
 identity, (iii.) of degree, (iv.) of space, and (v.) of 
 time" (p. 243). None of these, again, seems to 
 cover the statue-example. The synthesis of identity, 
 which promises best, is explained by Mr. Bradley in 
 a very formal way; "Coin A has the same inscrip- 
 tion as coin B, and coin B as coin C, therefore A 
 as C " (p. 244). It is true that he gives us to under- 
 stand that yet other forms of synthesis are possible 
 (p. 242), but he gives no examples of them. In all 
 his definite explanations of the principle of "in- 
 dividuality of synthesis " he makes the mistake of 
 just omitting the individual. 
 
 20. In a chapter shortly following, entitled 
 "Two Conditions of Inference," Mr. Bradley lays
 
 ix ONE PREMISS UNIVERSAL 283 
 
 down principles that must be regarded as supplement- 
 ing or superseding the principle of individuality of 
 synthesis. They are "(i.) it is impossible to reason 
 except on the basis of identity ; (ii.) it is impossible 
 to reason unless at least one premiss is universal " 
 (p. 260). Leaving the first principle for further con- 
 sideration, as being the more important, let us con- 
 sider universality. I quite agree with Mr. Bradley 
 that inference is possible only on the condition that 
 the premises contain an element of universality ; but 
 I complain that he interprets universality in such a 
 way as to deprive the condition of all its significance. 
 Universality is a term which constantly recurs in 
 contemporary philosophy, but we seldom get an 
 explanation of it. The true line of explanation is, 
 I think, to regard a proposition as universal so far 
 as it embodies a rule. Thus we can connect 
 ' universality ' with ' individuality of synthesis ' in the 
 sense that both are terms expressing plan or system. 
 It then becomes plain why we can have no inference 
 without universality in the premises. Unless we 
 can discern a rule, or plan, or system in the premises 
 or data, we cannot proceed from them to some con- 
 tent which is not before us. 
 
 This interpretation of universality is, however, 
 foreign to Mr. Bradley. "An universal judgment," 
 he says, "is one that holds of any subject which is 
 a synthesis of differences " (p. 2 70). But what special 
 virtue for inference is there in synthesis of differ- 
 ences as such ? A handful of sand is a synthesis of 
 differences. And the further Mr. Bradley goes in
 
 284 BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS UNIVERSAL? CH. 
 
 explaining universality the less of definite meaning 
 he leaves it. The most singular of singular judg- 
 ments, such as " B is to the right of C, is," he tells 
 us, " an universal judgment, because B is an identity 
 which has the differences of its spatial relations to 
 A and C" (p. 271). We have only to remember 
 Mr. Bradley 's dictum that " in the end no judgment 
 is really particular, they are all universal " ( p. 270), 
 to see that his condition of universality in the pre- 
 mises of an inference is a merely tautologous con- 
 dition which cannot help being fulfilled in every case. 
 21. Let us now turn back to Mr. Bradley 's 
 other condition of inference, that it is impossible to 
 reason except on the basis of identity. The primary 
 importance of identity in the constitution of infer- 
 ence is enforced by Mr. Bradley here and elsewhere 
 in metaphorical expressions which vary from time to 
 time. He speaks of the identical middle term as a 
 " bridge " which carries you across the logical chasm: 
 failing such an identity "the back of your inference 
 now is broken, and the extremities no longer belong 
 to any individual principle " (p. 261). In another 
 passage he holds that "wherever we join one 
 premise with another we must do so by means of 
 an identical point" (p. 268). Later on he speaks 
 of inference as " a construction round an identical 
 centre" (p. 419); which suggests something like a 
 wheel with an identical content as the hub and the 
 inferential spokes constructed round it. Elsewhere 
 he says : 
 " Inference is the getting a new result from a certain
 
 ix INFERENCE BASED ON IDENTITY 285 
 
 datum. The result is procured by an ideal operation 
 upon this datum, and when procured becomes its predi- 
 cate. Reasoning thus depends on the identity of a 
 content inside a mental experiment with that content 
 outside. And so we find once again in the total process 
 that need of individuation, which we before discerned in 
 the middle construction. Just as that construction was 
 insufficient to give us a new relation of the extremes 
 unless it joined them in an individual whole so here the 
 full process would not get to a conclusion unless it pos- 
 sessed an individuality. And it is made individual by 
 the identity of that content which runs right through it, 
 and which joins the final result to the initial starting- 
 point " (p. 40 1 sq.). 
 
 This last passage, if it stood alone, and if we 
 could take the terms ' individuation ' and ' individual 
 whole' in their natural meaning, would represent 
 well enough the standpoint from which I myself am 
 criticising Mr. Bradley. In that case identity would 
 mean identity of plan, such an identity as unites the 
 fragment of the statue which we possess with its 
 completion which we infer. But this interpretation 
 seems forbidden by the material or quasi-material 
 tone in which he constantly speaks of identity, a 
 tone which reminds us so strongly of the formal 
 logicians. It is as though premises and conclusion 
 were held together by actually visible and tangible 
 clamps, or pegs, or plugs of identical content. 
 
 22. This point comes out in Mr. Bradley 's 
 views on likeness and analogy. He holds that, in 
 strictness, there is no such thing as likeness at all. 
 When we say that two things are like we really 
 mean that they are partially identical ; we only use
 
 2 86 LIKENESS AND ANALOGY CH. 
 
 the term ' like ' because we do not know exactly in 
 what point the identity consists. Likeness "refers 
 properly to a general impression" (p. 261): it is a 
 term to cover partial ignorance, in the same way as 
 'chance.' The significance of this appears when 
 Mr. Bradley says that 
 
 " you cannot argue on the strength of mere likeness. 
 Whatever else may be right this at all events must be 
 wrong. ' A is similar to B, and B to C, and therefore A is 
 like C,' is a vicious inference, one that need not always be 
 mistaken in fact, but that always must be a logical error. 
 In practice I think we should all admit this" (p. 261). 
 
 I for one, however, should not admit it for a 
 moment either in practice or in theory. 
 
 For it is obvious that Mr. Bradley's doctrine of 
 likeness abolishes analogical reasoning as such, a 
 sacrifice which, in my opinion, logic can ill afford. 
 Take such a case as that, instanced by J. S. Mill, of 
 the village matron who administers a certain drug 
 to her Lucy because last week it cured a neighbour's 
 child suffering in a similar way. The plain man 
 says that the two cases are like each other : Mr. 
 Bradley must hold that they are really in part 
 identical. Buried somewhere in each case, he must 
 argue, there is an absolutely identical piece of con- 
 tent : this it is that justifies more or less an inference 
 from one case to another. But all this, to my mind, 
 is pure mythology. What is the identical clamp, 
 peg, or plug of content " running right through " 
 these two cases ? How in any such sense can an 
 event in the present be "joined" to an event which 
 is past and gone ?
 
 ix THE 'FINAL ESSENCE OF REASONING' 287 
 
 A thorough application of Mr. Bradley's doctrine 
 of identity and likeness would revive some of the 
 most barren and soulless pedantries of mechanical 
 logic. A perfect inference would be one in which 
 there was total identity of content between data and 
 conclusion. Let totality be symbolised by T. Then 
 in the strongest inference short of perfect there will 
 be T i points of identity ; in the next below T 2 
 points, and so downwards : the weakest possible 
 inference will have one point of identity, the next 
 above two points, and so upwards. Can anything 
 be further from a truly philosophical view of infer- 
 ence ? All this, and much more, comes from 
 ignoring the personal, active, and purposive character 
 of intellectual experience. 
 
 23. Static intellectualism is very plainly shown 
 in Mr. Bradley's reduction of all reasoning processes 
 to one fundamental type which he describes in his 
 chapter on the " Final Essence of Reasoning." 
 This does away with the common distinction of 
 induction from deduction, which is, I should argue, 
 a perfectly sound one. Not that I believe in an 
 absolute distinction between the two ; absolute dis- 
 tinctions are to be made very sparingly in logic, if 
 at all. But the plain fact is that our mental pro- 
 cedures are quite different in induction and deduc- 
 tion respectively. The difference may be illustrated 
 best from the more active mental operations : in 
 framing a plan to carry out a purpose in a given 
 situation we are proceeding inductively ; in carrying 
 out a plan previously formed we are proceeding
 
 288 ' INDUCTION, DEDUCTION, ME ME CHOSE' CH. 
 
 deductively. The two sorts of procedure require 
 different gifts of mind and different attitudes to 
 reality. 
 
 Such facts are necessarily ignored by the Hegelian 
 panlogism : for Hegel there can be but one type of 
 mental process, the movement from the more abstract 
 to the less abstract categories of the Encyclopedia. 
 Mr. Bradley's acceptance of sensation as an 
 element of knowledge precludes him from the full 
 Hegelian position ; but he is, nevertheless, strongly 
 inclined towards it. He holds that a true analysis 
 of mental operations should " prevent our staggering 
 at the truth of a weighty paradox ; ' Knowledge 
 advances from the abstract to the concrete ' ' 
 (p. 434). The " paradox " is, of course, a corner- 
 stone of Hegelianism ; and the paragraph which 
 follows will show how Mr. Bradley has re-shaped 
 it for his own system. 
 
 The single mental process to which Mr. Bradley 
 reduces what are commonly called induction and 
 deduction is termed by him analysis and synthesis. 
 These two terms, he goes on to say, are really 
 names of one process. " Analysis and synthesis 
 have so much in common that they are actually 
 identical . . . though different they are the same" 
 (p. 430). Such difference, therefore, as does exist 
 between them seems to be in our point of view. 
 "In analysis the given becomes the continuity of 
 fresh discretes, while in synthesis it becomes one 
 single discrete in a fresh seen continuity " ; " in 
 analysis we employ a function of plurality in unity,
 
 ix THE VALIDITY OF INFERENCE 289 
 
 in synthesis we use a function of unity in plurality " ; 
 in one we have " difference with identity " ; in the 
 other "identity with difference" (pp. 432 sq.}. The 
 truth at the bottom of this I take to be that induc- 
 tion and deduction alike involve an analytic-synthetic 
 activity of thought, that is, in both we break up the 
 given world into elements and recombine them for 
 our own purposes. But that is quite a different 
 thing from saying that induction and deduction are 
 nothing but analysis-cum-synthesis. 
 
 24. Mr. Bradley 's final chapters on the Validity 
 of Inference present as clear an example as any one 
 could wish of the passive fallacy tinged with intel- 
 lectualism. For reasoning processes to claim validity 
 Mr. Bradley requires of them at least two things, 
 first, that they should have developed of themselves 
 without our personal interference; secondly, that 
 they should copy reality. Both requirements seem 
 to me utterly unjustifiable and impossible. 
 
 " We must begin," he says, " with a frank and ready 
 admission. If we really did make of our own free will 
 the conclusion which we come to, if the result did not 
 ' follow ' of itself from the datum, but were pushed and 
 thrust on by our arbitrary force . . . then assuredly the 
 process is invalid and vicious" (p. 500). 
 
 Mr. Bradley then proceeds to examine various 
 forms of reasoning in order to find one " where the 
 conclusion really comes from the unhelped premises " 
 (ibid.\ and argues that there are certain forms of 
 reasoning in which this does take place. It is 
 needless to discuss his distinction between self- 
 developing and non-self-developing forms of reason- 
 
 u
 
 290 THE FALLACY THAT INFERENCE CH. 
 
 ing, because, in my opinion, the distinction and all 
 that it implies is chimerical. Never does the con- 
 clusion come unhelped from the premises ; no 
 "premises change before our eyes into the con- 
 sequence" (p. 501); the "content concluded" is 
 never "wholly unhelped, untouched and self- 
 developed" (p. 502) ; no "premises themselves pass 
 into the result " (p. 504). With all the language of 
 self-impelled, self-developing inferences we are in 
 a land of mythology, the Hegelian mythology of 
 thoughts that have hands and feet and go about of 
 themselves. As soon as we wipe mythology from 
 our eyes we see that premises might lie side by 
 side to all eternity, and yet no conclusion result ; or 
 rather, to speak in strict language, that premises are 
 not premises at all till some person premises them, 
 that is, takes them in order to work a conclusion 
 out of them. The whole inferential construction 
 premises and conclusion is nothing but a con- 
 trivance to further human purposes. 
 
 And if all logical process, all inference, is thus 
 purposive, then it must be selective and exhibit 
 volition. To Mr. Bradley the volitional element in 
 inference is a ground for distrusting it : he says, for 
 example, that 
 
 " wherever the mind makes an arbitrary choice, wherever 
 it seems to operate at will (as in distinction, comparison, 
 and again in abstraction), that capricious alteration can 
 hardly represent the course of events. And a dire 
 suspicion was then whispered within us. If in inference 
 the conclusion is made what it is by an arbitrary act, how 
 can any such process be true of reality " ? (p. 497.)
 
 ix IS SELF-DEVELOPING, NON-SELECTIVE 291 
 
 To speak of the volition displayed in distinction 
 and the rest as " arbitrary " and " capricious " is, of 
 course, to beg the question. We distinguish, 
 compare, and abstract in order to gain some end : 
 if the end is reasonable, then a judicious operation 
 to gain it should not be stigmatised as arbitrary and 
 capricious, though it certainly is an act of choice 
 and will. We take what we want and leave the 
 rest. It is no ground of complaint against inference 
 that it does not take everything. 
 
 25. And if the process of reasoning be selective 
 it cannot " represent the course of events." Why 
 ever should it? Why should the "process of our 
 reasoning " be an " ideal counterpart of fact " ? (p. 
 521). Why should our mental operations be "the 
 same with any actual process in things"? (ibid.} 
 Why should any " intellectual experiment " be " the 
 parallel of a movement in the real universe " or 
 " the literal expression of ... facts" or "the 
 double of an outward change that shows feature for 
 feature in an answering element " (ibid.}. It is a well- 
 known thing about idiots that their mental operations 
 " represent the course of events " much more literally 
 than those of sane men, and altogether bear some- 
 thing of that looking-glass relation to existence 
 which the foregoing extracts seem to desiderate. 
 Surely, the higher our intellect rises, the further it 
 gets from slavish reproduction. The intellectual 
 man desires to learn the formulae of humanity and 
 nature, the generalisations which will enable him to 
 understand and control important tracts of reality.
 
 292 THE FALLACY THAT REASONING CH. 
 
 In the mental operations by which he reaches the 
 formulae I cannot discern any parallelism to facts at 
 all : the formulae themselves follow reality only 
 in the sense of embodying its plan. Nor is Mr. 
 Bradley in a better position if the reality be under- 
 stood, not as the string of sensuous appearances, 
 but as the One Absolute Reality. Indeed there 
 are additional objections quite special to this latter 
 interpretation. If we asked inference to conform to 
 phenomena we should know at least what it was 
 that inference had to conform to ; in the other 
 alternative we should be asking it to conform to the 
 unknown. 
 
 My position, then, is that, not only is it impossible 
 for reasoning to be in any sense a "strict counter- 
 part of the nature of things " (p. 498), but that it 
 would be no better for reasoning if it could be. In 
 one sense the world does demand that reasoning 
 should conform to fact, but such conformity is not 
 what Mr. Bradley means. He is thinking of a 
 point-to-point conformity. 
 
 " How," he cries, " can we submit to the belief that my 
 reasoning must represent reality ? How can we suppose 
 that each trivial argument, every wretched illustration 
 that we may have used in these discussions, provided only 
 it be free from flaw, must have its direct counterpart in 
 the nature of things ?" (p. 524). 
 
 But all this is wide of the mark : the conformity 
 which the world demands is primarily a conformity 
 of results, using ' results ' in the widest sense. The 
 astronomer predicts the eclipse and, if the eclipse 
 appears at the stated time, that conformity satisfies
 
 MUST COUNTERFEIT REALITY 293 
 
 common sense. The computations which were 
 necessary to the prediction must conform to reality 
 only so far as is needed to secure the success of the 
 operation. In other words, what men require of 
 reasoning is that it shall submit to verification, such 
 verification as the subject allows, the best of all 
 being accurate prediction. Mr. Bradley never 
 mentions verification, though I believe that on 
 sound principles it must be regarded as one of the 
 most important heads of logic. Its place in his 
 work is taken in some measure by these discussions 
 on the counterfeit presentment of the real, discussions 
 which, I believe, never touch on the validity of any 
 mental operation at all. 
 
 26. So far, for the sake of clearing the issues, I 
 have spoken as though inference were concerned 
 with investigating a reality unalterable by our will 
 as though we were normally engaged in investiga- 
 tions such as those of the geologist and astronomer. 
 Even on this supposition Mr. Bradley's remarks on 
 validity fall wide of the facts. Still less truth have 
 they if we dispense with this highly artificial 
 supposition, and recognise that the main function of 
 inference is to help us to act upon reality. The 
 soldier reasons out a plan of attack, infers that he 
 will capture the fortification, orders the assault, and 
 verifies his reasoning by success. Plans, or active 
 inferences, are the commonest, the most important, 
 and the most typical examples of reasoning ; and 
 they flatly contradict all Mr. Bradley's criteria of 
 validity. They never develop themselves, they
 
 294 GOOSE-STEP LOGIC. MR. BRADLEY'S 
 
 always involve the selective interference of the mind 
 that makes them, and, so far from copying reality, 
 they make reality copy them. Intellectualism is 
 debarred from giving any account of active infer- 
 ences : their origin, their material, their method of 
 operation, and their validity are all beyond the ken 
 of the dominant logic. They are either ignored, or 
 relegated to some outer limbo of psychology. 
 
 The true friends of logical science must always 
 deplore its neglect of the active side of life as fatal 
 to its interest and vitality. Logic is a study that a 
 man of the world is half ashamed of ; its traditions 
 and associations are pedantic, unreal, absurdly out 
 of relation to facts. Though admittedly valuable 
 as mental gymnastic it has always bordered on the 
 ridiculous, like the goose-step of the German army. 
 We shall never get logic out of the goose-step 
 condition till we have made it more adequate to 
 life. 
 
 27. The element of Absolutism is less patent 
 upon the surface of Mr. Bradley's book, but per- 
 vades it with a subtle influence the limits of which 
 are extremely hard to define. Not the least formid- 
 able among the critic's difficulties are due to the fact 
 that Mr. Bradley, when he wrote the Principles of 
 Logic, had hardly elaborated his metaphysic to the 
 form in which it appears in Appearance and Reality. 
 "On all [metaphysical] questions," he says in his 
 preface, " if you push me far enough, at present I 
 end in doubts and perplexities." Doubts and per- 
 plexities, accordingly, are what beset his critic at the
 
 ix HEGELIAN ABSOLUTISM 295 
 
 end of the most patient investigation. The result 
 which appears to emerge is that Mr. Bradley has 
 borrowed the conception of the Absolute from 
 Hegel ; has used it for certain logical purposes with- 
 out considering how far it harmonises with certain 
 fundamental portions of his logic ; has indicated that 
 he desiderates a radical change in the Hegelian 
 conception of the Absolute ; and has correlated the 
 conception of the Absolute thus revised with certain 
 other logical doctrines, once more without reference 
 to the consistency of his whole logical scheme. 
 
 The Hegelian conception of the Absolute appears 
 unmistakably in a passage in which Mr. Bradley in- 
 dicates the completed ideal of reason as contrasted 
 with the one-sided processes which the human mind 
 actually follows. 
 
 " If we realised our ideal," he says, " what then should 
 we get ? We should get a way of thinking in which the 
 whole of reality was a system of its differences immanent 
 in each difference. In this whole the analysis of any one 
 element would, by nothing but the self-development of 
 that element, produce the totality. The internal unfold- 
 ing of any one portion would be the blossoming of that 
 other side of its being, without which itself is not con- 
 summate. The inward growth of the member would be 
 its natural synthesis with the complement of its essence. 
 And synthesis again would be the movement of the whole 
 within its own body. It would not force its parts into 
 violent conjunctions, but, itself in each, by the loss of 
 self -constraint would embrace its own fulfilment. And 
 the fresh product so gained would renew this process, 
 where self-fission turns to coition with an opposite and 
 the merging of both in a higher organism. Nor would 
 the process cease till, the whole being embraced, it had
 
 296 RECOGNITION OF THE INDIVIDUAL CH. 
 
 nought left against it but its conscious system. Then, the 
 elements knowing themselves in the whole and so self- 
 conscious in one another, and the whole so finding in its 
 recognised self-development the unmixed enjoyment of 
 its completed nature, nothing alien or foreign would 
 trouble the harmony. It would all have vanished in that 
 perfected activity which is the rest of the absolute " (pp. 
 449 *?) 
 
 This passage is nothing but a poetic statement 
 of the principle of the Hegelian dialectic. 
 
 That the ideal of reason is a self- developing 
 Absolute Thought is consistent enough with that 
 part of Mr. Bradley's famous second chapter in 
 which all ordinary judgments are reduced to com- 
 binations of abstract ideas, and with the general 
 intellectualist tendency to ignore volition or to reduce 
 it to a form of thinking. What Mr. Bradley does 
 not attempt to justify is his combination of Hegelian 
 absolutism with a considerable recognition of the 
 finite individual. We have seen how Hegel's system 
 requires him practically to ignore the finite indivi- 
 dual. This Mr. Bradley never attempts for a 
 moment. He assumes all along that the knowledge 
 of which logic is the theory is knowledge existing 
 primarily in finite individual minds. Here, then, is 
 a fatal want of consistency. I do not mean to say 
 that some sort of Absolute is not compatible with 
 recognition of the individual : but what Mr. Bradley 
 does is to adopt a form of absolutism which excludes 
 the individual, and use it for purposes of logical 
 explanation, while at the same time according in 
 other respects full recognition to the individual.
 
 ix THE NISUS OF THOUGHT 297 
 
 28. The most important, though not the most 
 prominent, of Mr. Bradley's applications of absolu- 
 tism is to explain the nisus of thought, in other 
 words, the motive force which impels us to judge, 
 affirm, and generally to embark upon the business 
 of thinking. Were the question put before the plain 
 man he would doubtless say that we think because 
 we have got to live : but Mr. Bradley must seek his 
 nisus elsewhere, and he finds it in a principle of 
 self-development which operates in the individual 
 similarly to that principle of cosmic development 
 shadowed forth in the recent quotation. 
 
 This principle is introduced by Mr. Bradley 
 rather gradually. We get a first glimpse of it in 
 his second chapter, where he says that 
 
 " in common life we all experience the tendency to 
 pass from one single case to some other instance. We 
 take what is true at one time and place to be always true 
 at all times and places. We generalise from a single 
 example. We may deplore this tendency as an ineradi- 
 cable vice of the unphilosophic mind, or we may recognise 
 it as the inevitable condition of all experience, and the 
 sine qua non of every possible inference" (p. 92). 
 
 The most distinctive and impressive statement of 
 the principle is the following : 
 
 " It is a law that, when we have a subject A, and with 
 this a possible predicate b, and when . . . this predi- 
 cate b is left alone that then the subject appropriates 
 this predicate, and openly attributes it to itself as a posses- 
 sion. We may not recognise this law, we might even like 
 to repudiate its claim, but we cannot help obeying it. 
 Where a suggestion has been made, if that suggestion is 
 not rejected by the fact which we start with, or again by 
 some other suggested quality ; if, in short, we are left,
 
 298 'A SOLE POSSIBILITY IS FACT' en. 
 
 not with disparate possibles, but with one uncombated 
 may-be that suggestion must always be taken as fact. 
 This is a process of thought, and it does not seem to fall 
 under any previous process, but on the contrary to lie at 
 the root of all our reasoning. . . . The striving for per- 
 fection, the desire of the mind for an infinite totality, is 
 indeed the impulse which moves our intellect to appro- 
 priate everything from which it is not forced off" (p. 45 i). 
 
 The same principle under the name of the "con- 
 clusion from impotence " forms, according to Mr. 
 Bradley, the ultimate justification of disjunctive 
 reasoning (p. 129), and he also connects it with that 
 formula of self-realisation which represents the out- 
 come of Ethical Studies. 
 
 " This double effort of the mind," he says, " to enlarge by 
 all means its domain, to widen in every way both the 
 world of knowledge and the realm of practice, shows us 
 merely two sides of that single impulse to self-realisation, 
 which most of us are agreed to find so mystical " (p. 452). 
 
 Those who do not follow Mr. Bradley in his 
 acceptance of the Absolute find it hard to adopt his 
 "conclusion from impotence." Thus Prof. Bosanquet 
 remarks in discussing Mr. Bradley's treatment of 
 the disjunctive judgment, " I confess that I cannot 
 see my way to the principle that a sole possibility is 
 fact," and adds with an air of perplexity, " I am 
 almost driven to suppose that I have failed to under- 
 stand the nature of this principle. I do not seem to 
 myself to be aware of its operation " {Knowledge and 
 Reality, p. 260). There are a good many people 
 who would have to make a similar confession. 
 
 29. The most conspicuous use which Mr. 
 Bradley makes of absolutism is to confute the sensa-
 
 ix 'PARTIAL; THEREFORE FALSE' 299 
 
 tionist logicians. Their mainstay, as we know, is 
 sense-perception. One line of Mr. Bradley's attack 
 upon the perceptive judgment is, as we have already 
 seen, the reduction of it to the lowest form of 
 abstract or hypothetical judgment. The other line 
 is to assert that it is false because partial. A subor- 
 dinate form of this attack is the argument that the 
 content of the perceptive judgment has no definite 
 boundaries. 
 
 " Seeking there [i.e. in the given] for the simple," says 
 Mr. Bradley, " at the end of our search we still are con- 
 fronted by the composite and relative. And the outer 
 edges themselves are fluent. They pass for ever in time 
 and space into that which is outside them " (p. 98). 
 
 Another subordinate form of attack is that any 
 perceptive judgment such as ' P exists ' is only true if 
 all its conditions are contained within the judgment : 
 
 " and here the conditions are the whole extent of spaces 
 and times which are required to make the given 
 complete. . . . And this cannot be. It is not merely in- 
 conceivable psychologically ; it is metaphysically impos- 
 sible" (pp. 99, 104). 
 
 Both these subordinate objections are after all 
 merged in the grand objection that the perceptive 
 judgment is partial. "You must take up the given 
 as it really appears without omission, unaltered, and 
 unmutilated. And this is impossible " (p. 98). Pre- 
 sumably, the only perceptive judgment which Mr. 
 Bradley would admit to be true would be the im- 
 possible one which predicates of reality all the per- 
 ceptive content which exists, has existed, or will 
 exist. Such a judgment I suppose would deserve
 
 300 WHAT JUDGMENTS ARE CATEGORICAL? CH. 
 
 the title of categorical, because it would predicate 
 of the Total Reality one entire aspect of it. 
 
 30. When Mr. Bradley comes to face the final 
 question, Where is the categorical or perfectly true 
 judgment to be found ? we observe that he turns to 
 " a class of judgment which makes an assertion 
 about an individual which is not a phenomenon in 
 space or time" (p. 107). Among such judgments 
 are " The self is real " and " Phenomena are nothing 
 beyond the appearance of soul to soul " (ibid.]. The 
 difficulty about accepting such judgments as cate- 
 gorical is that, to an absolutism which goes beyond 
 even Mr. Bradley, they also exhibit a certain kind 
 of selection and partialness. The " falseness of the 
 analytic [i.e. the simple perceptive] judgment" he 
 ascribes partly to its " stating a part as if it were the 
 whole," and partly to the fact that in it " we have 
 separated, divided, abridged, dissected, we have 
 mutilated the given; and we have done this arbitrarily, 
 we have selected what we chose " (p. 94). Well, but 
 all this with a slight change of phrase might be 
 said of Mr. Bradley 's own example ' The self is real.' 
 And it might be said, too, of every judgment except 
 that one unexceptionable case where the Absolute 
 predicates its whole perceptive content of itself. 
 
 This may serve as a reductio adabsurdum answer 
 to Mr. Bradley's absolutist line of attack upon the 
 perceptive judgment. Partialness and selection are 
 features of every act of thought; so far are they 
 from convicting a judgment of falsity that they are 
 essential conditions of truth.
 
 ix ANTI-HEGELIAN ABSOLUTISM 30 r 
 
 31. So far the absolutism that we have traced 
 in the Principles of Logic is, or might be, a thought- 
 absolutism of the Hegelian type. It is certain, 
 however, that we can discern already in this work 
 that reaction against the Thought-Absolute which is 
 carried to such lengths in Appearance and Reality. 
 The passage in which Mr. Bradley makes his claim 
 for the inclusion of feeling in reality has become 
 almost classical : 
 
 " Unless thought stands for something that falls beyond 
 mere intelligence, if 'thinking' is not used with some 
 strange implication that never was part of the meaning of 
 the word, a lingering scruple still forbids us to believe 
 that reality can ever be purely rational. It may come 
 from a failure in my metaphysics ; or from a weakness of 
 the flesh which continues to blind me, but the notion that 
 existence could be the same as understanding strikes as 
 cold and ghostlike as the dreariest materialism. That 
 the glory of this world in the end is appearance leaves 
 the world more glorious, if we feel it is a show of some 
 fuller splendour ; but the sensuous curtain is a deception 
 and a cheat, if it hides some colourless movement of 
 atoms, some spectral woof of impalpable abstractions, or 
 unearthly ballet of bloodless categories. Though dragged 
 to such conclusions, we cannot embrace them. Our 
 principles may be true, but they are not reality. They 
 no more make that whole which commands our devotion, 
 than some shredded dissection of human tatters is that 
 warm and breathing beauty of flesh which our hearts 
 found delightful" (p. 533). 
 
 With this valuation of feeling we cannot fail to 
 connect Mr. Bradley's doctrine that it is in 
 " sensible presentation " that we make " direct 
 encounter with the real world " (p. 64). This 
 doctrine he expresses in a variety of phrases, as
 
 302 THE SENSE-ELEMENT IN KNOWLEDGE CH. 
 
 that it is only by means of this "one unique point 
 of contact with reality " that our experience " can 
 be stamped with the mark of fact " (p. 69), or that 
 " it is impossible, perhaps, to get directly at reality, 
 except in the content of one presentation : we may 
 never see it, so to speak, but through a hole " 
 
 (P- 70). 
 
 32. The foes of the fantastic in philosophy 
 will welcome as a mark of grace Mr. Bradley's 
 recognition of the place of sense-perception in 
 knowledge, and few will complain of his desire to 
 see feeling included in absolute reality so long as it 
 is kept within bounds. Even Prof. Bosanquet 
 remarks 
 
 " it was well done, in my judgment, to invest Perception 
 with the pre-eminent importance of being the one point 
 in which we have direct contact with reality, and to give 
 this contact with reality the decisive position in the 
 activity of judgment" (Knowledge and Reality \ p. 17); 
 
 though he finds fault with the " bloodless ballet " 
 passage as laying its author open to " suspicions of 
 a crude dualistic realism" (ibid. p. 18). But it is 
 impossible to ignore the serious difficulties which 
 this recognition of feeling causes for the internal 
 consistency of Mr. Bradley's work. 
 
 Certain of these difficulties have been alluded to 
 already (supra 12). If sense-perception is our 
 point of contact with the real, then it ought to be 
 the basis or material of knowledge : from sense- 
 perception we ought to start, and to sense-percep- 
 tion we ought to recur for verification. But all this
 
 ix CAN KNOWLEDGE HANG IN VACANCY? 303 
 
 is quite inconsistent with Mr. Bradley's treatment 
 of knowledge from the intellectualist point of view. 
 We do not come to the " world of science," he says 
 (p. 92), till we have got " away from the facts [i.e. 
 sensuous experiences] " " towards shadows [i.e. 
 abstractions] ". 
 
 We may draw this series of criticisms to a head 
 by pointing out that, on Mr. Bradley's view, 
 knowledge has no point of attachment to Reality 
 anywhere. This difficulty does not occur in Hegel, 
 since, Reality being entirely thought, knowledge at 
 any stage is simply identical with the corresponding 
 stage of Reality. It is Mr. Bradley's admission of 
 a sensuous element into Reality, combined with his 
 intellectualism, that makes it impossible for him to 
 bring knowledge and reality together. As we 
 have seen in previous criticisms, he would have 
 us believe that, in its lowest sense-perceptive stage, 
 knowledge only touches Reality as a starting-point 
 which it leaves at once. Consider now the further 
 stages : How by the progress of knowledge do we 
 define reality ? what qualities do we attribute to 
 it by the judgments we make ? It is Mr. Bradley's 
 position that all propositions of the form ' A is B ' 
 are reducible to the form ' If A then B,' and that, 
 therefore, neither A nor B is asserted of reality. 
 What we really do assert of Reality, according to 
 Mr. Bradley, is an " occult or latent " quality x, 
 which guarantees the sequence ' If A, then B ' 
 (pp. 85 sqq.). But this practically gives up the 
 defining of Reality altogether : one makes no pro-
 
 304 CHEAP AND EASY MONISM CH. 
 
 gress towards defining an object by attributing occult 
 ^r's to it. Finally, Mr. Bradley shows no connection 
 of completed knowledge with Reality. It is funda- 
 mental with him that human knowledge, however 
 complete, is essentially incapable of grasping Reality. 
 Knowledge therefore, it would seem, is neither 
 based on sensation nor ends in the Absolute, but 
 hangs miraculously in vacancy : it rests on nothing, 
 reaches nothing, and refers to nothing all along. 
 
 One feels doubtful whether to explain the incon- 
 clusiveness of the Principles of Logic by its author's 
 admission of an unintelligible element into the Real, 
 or by his failure to unify the conflicting elements of 
 his logical theory ; probably both causes contribute. 
 Whatever be our explanation, the scepticism, one 
 might almost say the hopelessness, of the work is 
 remarkable. One certainty alone, emphatic though 
 negative, closes the long - drawn oscillation and 
 disputation of his last chapter : " no cheap and easy 
 monism can stand before an enquiry into logic " 
 (p. 533). Very true, no doubt ; the only question 
 is which monism may claim to be the cheapest and 
 easiest. Mr. Bradley apparently has the materialists 
 and sensationists in view ; but there are some who 
 think that in such a competition Hegel is not much 
 behind Haeckel and Herbert Spencer : and, unless 
 my valuation is quite at fault, a sceptical monism is 
 cheaper and easier than anything. 
 
 33. Mr. Bradley 's third and last book, Appear- 
 ance and Reality (1893), i s > m spite of some show
 
 ix HAS THE ABSOLUTE BEEN PROVED ? 305 
 
 of complexity, much simpler than either of its pre- 
 decessors, being devoted entirely to advocating what 
 I have called Feeling-Absolutism as the most satis- 
 factory theory of the universe. It falls logically 
 into two parts, which in the actual arrangement are 
 rather shuffled together, one on the imperfection of 
 the world of human experience, the other on the 
 perfection of the Absolute. So it should ever be 
 with mystical or quasi-mystical works -De contempht 
 mundi, leading up to De perfectione universi. 
 
 From one point of view the book has been 
 criticised in previous chapters. In Chapter III. I 
 attempted a general definition of Absolutism ; in 
 Chapter V. I distinguished Feeling-Absolutism from 
 Thought-Absolutism, and thereafter drew out what 
 I regarded as its logical consequences, illustrating 
 from Appearance and Reality my argument that 
 feeling-absolutism involves scepticism and is im- 
 potent for explanation in every branch of philosophy. 
 Now I propose to comment on Mr. Bradley's meta- 
 physic, more in and for itself than as exemplifying 
 the mischievous working of an idolon. 
 
 The first point to be noted is that Mr. Bradley 
 never proves his Absolute, the two arguments in 
 this direction which can be collected from his book 
 plainly falling short of proof as soon as they are 
 briefly stated. The first of them is that we must 
 postulate a perfect Absolute because all finite exist- 
 ence is imperfect. Mr. Bradley does not, I believe, 
 put the matter into this short form, but we must 
 
 understand this to be the upshot of his Book I., 
 
 x
 
 306 DOES A CRITERION PROVE ITS OBJECT? CH. 
 
 entitled " Appearance " : there can be no other 
 reason for subjecting every kind of finite existence 
 to destructive criticism. But it needs no elaborate 
 argument to show that, having proved every finite 
 thing imperfect, one is no nearer to a perfect 
 Absolute : the condemnation of the parts is not the 
 justification of the whole. Mr. Bradley 's other 
 argument is more explicit. He says that in 
 testing every finite object by a criterion which 
 denies inconsistency we imply that we possess an 
 absolute criterion, i.e., self-consistency ; and that 
 this guarantees the existence of an Object satisfying 
 it. " Our standard denies inconsistency, and there- 
 fore asserts consistency. If we can be sure that 
 the inconsistent is unreal, we must, logically, 1 be 
 just as sure that the reality is consistent" (p. 139). 
 But, I answer, granted the validity of Mr. Bradley's 
 absolute criterion (which I shall presently discuss, 
 36), it does not follow that there exists an Object 
 which will satisfy it. If Reality exists, says Mr. 
 Bradley, it must be self-consistent. Very well, I 
 reply; but does Reality exist in the sense that Mr. 
 Bradley uses ' Reality ' ? If Reality or the Absolute 
 cannot be proved to exist by independent argu- 
 ments, it will not be conjured into existence by the 
 criterion. 
 
 34. Mr. Bradley's assumption of the Absolute 
 is covered to some extent by his use of the question- 
 begging terms 'appearance' and 'reality,' which 
 
 1 "Logically" seems hardly a suitable term in this case: Mr. Bradley's 
 argument has the form 'If not- A is not-B, then B is A.' For remarks on 
 the alleged priority of the ' standard ' to ' reality,' see infra 36.
 
 MR. BRADLEY'S MYSTICISM 307 
 
 he treats as correlatives, so that to call anything 
 ' appearance ' implies a ' reality ' behind it which 
 appears in the appearance. The result of his 
 sceptical first book is that all phenomena are 
 ' appearances ' : having thus proved the existence 
 of appearances he has proved, if we accept his 
 terms, the existence of the correlative ' reality.' 
 This argument, however, is upset merely by deny- 
 ing Mr. Bradley's right to use ' appearance ' and 
 'reality' as correlatives. 
 
 But in his assumption of the Absolute Mr 
 Bradley is, of course, not the victim of verbal 
 ambiguity ; he is rather yielding to the impulse of 
 that mystical temperament which makes itself seen 
 in his introduction. To Mr. Bradley's mind philo- 
 sophy in general and metaphysic in particular is 
 related to the "sense of mystery and enchantment," 
 to aimless wandering, to love for an object we know 
 not what, to the charm of twilight, to experiences 
 which bring us into " communion with what is beyond 
 the visible world," and with " something higher, which 
 both supports and humbles, both chastens and 
 transports us" (pp. 3 sqq.\ In "certain persons, 
 the intellectual effort to understand the universe is 
 a principal way of ... experiencing the Deity " 
 (p. 5). For scientific reasons, doubtless, mysticism 
 is kept in the background through the body of his 
 work ; but the course of his argument is unintelligible 
 unless we recognise its latent influence. 
 
 35. In Chapter V. I spoke of Mr. Bradley's 
 Absolute as conceived under the form of feeling,
 
 308 THE BRADLEIAN ABSOLUTE IS 
 
 and framed my criticism accordingly ; but, as a fact, 
 this is not an adequate phrase to express the pre- 
 dominant position of the feeling-element in the 
 Bradleian Absolute. The Absolute, Mr. Bradley 
 says many times, is an experience, and this experi- 
 ence must include, not thought merely, as the 
 Hegelians have it, but feeling and will (cf. A.R. 
 2nd ed. p. 554). Thus there should be at least 
 three elements in the Absolute. On a closer 
 scrutiny, however, the three resolve themselves into 
 two ; for Mr. Bradley still holds " will always to be 
 the self-realisation of an idea" (ibid. p. 619), and an 
 idea is presumably always a form of thought. We 
 are left then with feeling and thought only in the 
 Absolute. But a further consideration shows that 
 there is no sort of equality between these two ele- 
 ments. The feeling which belongs to the Absolute 
 is, so far as we are given to understand, not 
 essentially dissimilar from human feeling. The 
 thought of the Absolute, on the other hand, must 
 be essentially dissimilar. It is a fundamental asser- 
 tion of Mr. Bradley's that the relational form, by 
 which human thought works, is self-contradictory 
 and unreal : the thought of the Absolute must 
 therefore be non-relational. But of such non-rela- 
 tional thought we cannot form the most distant 
 conception, nor does Mr. Bradley throughout his 
 book attempt in any way to help us to conceive it. 
 It follows, then, that the element of the Absolute of 
 which we have no conception and which is the 
 victim of an incurable self-contradiction, is entirely
 
 ix BLANK FEELING : CONTRAST HEGEL 309 
 
 swallowed and absorbed by the element which we 
 can conceive, and of which no self-contradiction 
 is alleged. For us the Absolute must be pure 
 indistinguishable feeling. I know that Mr. Bradley 
 would protest passionately against this. " The 
 Absolute," he cries, "stands above, and not below, 
 its internal distinctions ... it includes them as 
 elements in its fulness ... it is not the indifference 
 but the concrete identity of all extremes " (p. 533). 
 But we must distinguish between what Mr. Bradley 
 wants, and what he has succeeded in establishing. 
 I know that he hates the thought of an Absolute 
 which is a featureless blank. I contend, however, 
 that on the conditions which he lays doivn we can 
 conceive of the Absolute in no way but as a feature- 
 less blank. 
 
 All this must be kept in mind by those who are 
 
 inclined to credit the Bradleian Absolute with the 
 
 t 
 
 advantages, such as they are, of the Hegelian. 
 The Hegelian Absolute is but a poor substitute for 
 human personality, and yet its imagined mode of 
 existence approximates in some measure to that of 
 the human person : since it is conceived under the 
 form of intelligence, the opposites which it combines 
 and reconciles may be regarded as intelligent human 
 qualities. The nearest approach in actuality to the 
 Hegelian concrete identity of opposites is found in 
 human characters which exhibit strangely diverse 
 qualities, as when a man is honest about money but 
 dishonest in love, or clever in finance but stupid 
 over cards. Such cases make the Hegelian Absolute
 
 310 THE FEELING ABSOLUTE CH. 
 
 distantly conceivable. On the other hand, nothing 
 makes the omni-solvency of the Bradleian Abso- 
 lute conceivable, except those experiences of stupor 
 which are not so much human as infra-human. 
 
 36. Bearing these criticisms in mind, let us 
 ask what relation the Feeling-Absolute bears to 
 that Principle of Self-Contradiction which makes so 
 great a figure in Appearance and Reality, and is 
 stated otherwise as the criterion of self-consistency 
 and internal harmony. The Principle itself may 
 easily be misunderstood. From a section in the 
 Principles of Logic (pp. 135 sgq.}, combined with 
 an appendix in Appearance and Reality (2nd ed. 
 pp. 562 sqq.\ we gather what it is not : it is not the 
 merely formal Law of Contradiction, ' A is not 
 not- A.' Of this formal law Mr. Bradley speaks 
 with much contempt, as an "absurdly feeble," 
 "weak and perfectly inoffensive" affair (P.L. 
 p. 141): it does not dominate facts; its whole con- 
 tent is derived from them. To understand what 
 the Principle of Self-Contradiction does mean we 
 must go to those passages in which Mr. Bradley is 
 dealing with the matter directly and is speaking 
 with precision. These occur in his chapter on the 
 " General Nature of Reality," which must be read 
 in connection with the sceptical and destructive 
 chapters on "Appearance," more particularly that 
 entitled " Relation and Quality," which contains the 
 gist of them all. " The result of our First Book," 
 he says, "has been mainly negative. We have 
 taken up a number of ways of regarding reality,
 
 AND SELF-CONTRADICTION 311 
 
 and we have found that they all are vitiated by self- 
 discrepancy " (p. 135). What this self-discrepancy 
 means we have seen already ; it is due to the 
 essential viciousness of the relational form. Now 
 the same principle that condemns appearance justifies 
 Reality. Throughout the First Book, says Mr. 
 Bradley, " we were judging phenomena and were 
 condemning them, and throughout we proceeded as 
 if the self-contradictory could not be real. But 
 this was surely to have and to apply an absolute 
 criterion" (p. 136). It is because it satisfies the 
 absolute criterion that Reality is real. It is real, in 
 fact, because it transcends that relational form which 
 is the essential vice of appearance. 
 
 From all this it is plain that Mr. Bradley's 
 Criterion and his Absolute are one thing under two 
 names : the Criterion is merely a formulation of the 
 Absolute. Ostensibly, as we have seen (supra 33), 
 the Criterion comes first, and the Absolute or Reality 
 is established thereby. But we cannot doubt that 
 really the Absolute is prior : if Mr. Bradley's mind 
 had not been preoccupied with the Absolute, the 
 Criterion would never have occurred to him. 
 
 It is important to observe that Mr. Bradley can 
 claim non-contradiction for the Absolute only in this 
 sense of non-relationality. He is not entitled, for 
 example, to say that the Absolute is self-consistent 
 in the ordinary sense. As we have just seen, mere 
 formal-logical consistency may be left out of account, 
 and in any case it is not applicable to the Absolute 
 which both is and is not any predicate that one can
 
 312 THE ABSOLUTE IS SELF-CONSISTENT CH. 
 
 mention. In the commonest, most sensible, and 
 most literal use of self-consistency there is always 
 reference to plan or purpose, such as a 'self might 
 pursue. Such self-consistency, once more, is alien 
 to the Feeling- Absolute. The very term 'self- 
 consistency' is one which Mr. Bradley cannot 
 rightly claim to use. He has proved of the self 
 that in what ever way it is taken " it will prove 
 to be appearance ; " that it cannot " maintain itself 
 against external relations which " enter its essence " 
 and "ruin its independency," that it is "in any case 
 unintelligible " ; that " it does not give us the facts 
 as they are in reality, and, as it gives them, they are 
 appearance, appearance and error"; that it carries 
 us away into a maze of relations, relations that 
 lead to illusory terms, and terms disappearing into 
 endless relations ; and, finally, that " it seems, where 
 not hiding itself in obscurity, a mere bundle of dis- 
 crepancies " (pp. 119 sq.}. Obviously any term 
 compounded with ' self must be unsuitable for 
 defining the Absolute. 
 
 Still less is Mr. Bradley entitled to assume that 
 the Absolute is non-contradictory, or self-con- 
 sistent, or harmonious, or perfect in any hedonistic 
 or eudaemonistic sense. This assumption he does 
 make, and in more than one passage justifies it by 
 an argument which has a strange ring of The Will 
 to Believe : " if the main tendencies of our nature do 
 not reach consummation in the Absolute," he says, 
 for example, " we cannot believe that we have 
 attained to perfection and truth" (p. 148). Else-
 
 ix ONLY AS NON-RELATIONAL 313 
 
 where he justifies his assumption that the Absolute 
 is happy by its alleged harmoniousness. "If the 
 Absolute is to be theoretically harmonious its 
 elements must not collide. Idea must not disagree 
 with sensation, nor must sensations clash" (p. 155). 
 All this may be very true ; but Mr. Bradley has 
 not proved it, except by taking advantage of the 
 ambiguity of the term 'harmonious.' From the 
 harmoniousness of the super-relational there is no 
 logical passage to the harmoniousness of happiness. 
 That the conception of an unhappy Absolute offers 
 no intrinsic impossibility we know from the ' Un- 
 conscious ' of von Hartmann. 
 
 37. And we must beware of supposing that the 
 Principle of Self-Contradiction guarantees the per- 
 fection of Mr. Bradley's Absolute in the way that it 
 guarantees the perfection of Hegel's. For Hegel 
 all things are thoughts, and every finite thought is 
 always tending by its inherent dialectic to pass over 
 to its own contradictory with which it synthesises 
 itself, only to suffer a new diremption. Self- 
 contradiction or self-opposition is the omnipresent 
 moving principle which makes the finite grow by a 
 homogeneous process into the infinite : the Hegelian 
 Absolute is perfect just because self-contradiction 
 has done its utmost work within the finite. Quite 
 otherwise is it with a 'pantectic' absolutism like 
 Mr. Bradley's. There can be no homogeneous 
 process from finite to infinite ; for the relational is 
 utterly disparate from the super-relational. Nor is 
 the Principle of Self-Contradiction a principle of
 
 3H NO PLACE FOR 'DEGREES' CH. 
 
 movement in finite things ; it is a simple test by 
 which they are condemned (p. 136). It cannot 
 guarantee the all-round, comprehensive perfection 
 of the Absolute which satisfies it : because the 
 Absolute satisfies the test we cannot be assured 
 that it includes the valuable elements of the finite 
 things which have not satisfied it. 
 
 38. This leads us to consider Mr. Bradley 's 
 doctrine of Degrees of Truth and Reality. Some 
 people, who regard Mr. Bradley too much as 
 Hegel's disciple, have called this the centre of 
 Appearance and Reality * : to me it seems to be 
 more or less out of place there. In Hegel it has 
 perfect appropriateness ; for he regards the True 
 and Real as entirely rational, and is therefore able 
 to attribute truth and reality to finite existences in 
 proportion to their rationality. In Mr. Bradley, on 
 the other hand, the doctrine has the air of having 
 been borrowed from Hegel merely to conciliate 
 common sense and to mitigate the paradox that 
 the Absolute, in a sense, is evil, false, and ugly 
 (p. 488). 
 
 I have in a former passage (Chapter V. 6) 
 noticed that Mr. Bradley cannot make any applica- 
 tion of this doctrine. Rejecting human criteria he 
 must use the Absolute as his criterion, a purpose for 
 which it is unsuitable in whatever way we under- 
 stand it. If, on the one hand, we understand it 
 as a sensuous neutrum, it follows that finite ex- 
 
 1 Its main thesis is rather that reality is more than thought, i.e. thought + 
 feeling (A.R. 2nd ed. p. 555).
 
 ix IN FEELING-ABSOLUTISM 315 
 
 periences will be higher in degree in proportion as 
 the feeling - element in them swallows up every 
 other ; which would be monstrous. If, on the 
 other hand, we take the Absolute, in the sense that 
 Mr. Bradley wishes us to take it, as an experience 
 which includes but transcends feeling, it still gives 
 us no practical criterion for estimating degrees. 
 Mr. Bradley can tell us nothing of the Absolute but 
 that it is all-inclusive and perfectly harmonious. 
 The former quality, that of bigness or extensiveness 
 (cf. A.R. p. 370), gives nothing but the roughest 
 criterion, which in many cases is quite inapplicable : 
 better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. 
 The quality of harmony has still less criterion value : 
 the life of Europe is probably not more harmonious 
 than that of Greenland or China. In any case no 
 one ever dreams of using a criterion so ill-defined 
 and inaccessible as the Absolute ; we always rely on 
 criteria merely human. 
 
 39. In first approaching mysticism (Chapter III.) 
 I ventured upon a distinction between its optimistic 
 and pessimistic forms. The first, which sees the 
 divine perfection shining through every form of 
 finite existence, has its most familiar representatives 
 in the tender pantheistic nature-worship of Words- 
 worth, and in the confident new - world trans- 
 cendentalism of Emerson. For illustrations of the 
 opposite tendency we have Schopenhauer and von 
 Hartmann, who are influenced by repulsion from 
 the actual world rather than by attraction towards 
 ideal Perfection. Mr. Bradley is not to be classified
 
 316 CAN AN IMPASSIVE ABSOLUTE CH. 
 
 offhand as belonging to one or the other ; but he 
 certainly has a pessimistic tinge which prevents him 
 from making, so to speak, the best of his Absolute. 
 A mystic who wants to make us love the universe 
 must have something of the Wordsworthian or 
 Emersonian enthusiasm : it is quite right that 
 Mr. Bradley, like other mystics, should have his 
 homily De contemptu mundi; but the question is 
 whether he has not overdone it. The Absolute 
 that is established by negative, sceptical, and 
 destructive arguments will never be an amiable one : 
 in Mr. Bradley's own phrase, "though dragged to 
 such conclusions, we cannot embrace them." On 
 one point certainly Mr. Bradley's Absolute does 
 bring us full conviction, it has all the fulness of 
 sensuous life : this is something to be thankful for ; 
 but we should like to feel equally convinced of its 
 richness of intellectual interest, moral virtue, and 
 beauty. 
 
 40. All this, that makes the Absolute less 
 interesting, makes us less disposed to believe in it 
 as real. Nor, to speak plainly, does Mr. Bradley 
 encourage our faith as much as he might. In one 
 passage he says "In the Absolute there is probably 
 no pleasure [and, presumably, no pain] outside of 
 finite souls " (p. 200). Now, who can care for an 
 Absolute that is not even pleased or pained? In 
 a later passage he goes yet further : " it is better, on 
 the whole, to conclude that no element of Reality 
 falls outside the experience of finite centres " (p. 528). 
 Taken by itself this seems to make the Absolute
 
 ix BE INTERESTING AND CONVINCING? 317 
 
 but a fifth wheel to the coach, and to leave every- 
 thing to human and infra-human spirits. There are 
 some who have thought that scepticism is the last 
 word of Mr. Bradley's book, and that a more 
 appropriate title for it would be the Disappearance 
 of Reality : others have suspected that the only 
 function of the Absolute is to give Mr. Bradley 
 opening for a long series of bitter and destructive 
 comments on things that common humanity holds 
 dear. Such critics lay stress on the difficulty of 
 taking seriously a totally impassive Absolute that 
 can do nothing for man, and maintains a more than 
 Epicurean indifference to human weal and woe. 
 For my own part, however, I think that such a line 
 of criticism fails to do justice to the subtleties of the 
 mystic temperament : I am convinced of the depth 
 and strength of Mr. Bradley's belief, hard as it 
 may be for us to formulate that belief in coldly 
 logical terms. Somehow or other the Absolute, as 
 Mr. Bradley states it, does give a satisfaction to 
 certain minds ; if nothing more, it gratifies a mood 
 of cosmic emotion, perhaps even offers consolation 
 for the shortcomings of mundane existence. 
 
 41. Some very abstruse questions are suggested 
 by the element of Subjectivism in Appearance and 
 Reality, which might perhaps be pursued with 
 advantage had Mr. Bradley himself gone more fully 
 into the matter, and discussed the difficulties con- 
 nected with his position. He starts from the 
 generally admitted position of idealism, "Anything, 
 in no sense felt or perceived " is " quite unmeaning " ;:
 
 3i8 DIFFICULTIES IN MR. BRADLEY'S 
 
 and passes thence to the much more disputable 
 subjectivist position, " Experience is the same as 
 reality" (p. 145), or, conversely, " Reality is sentient 
 experience" (p. 146). Of this transition he speaks 
 with absolute confidence, " so far we may be said to 
 know absolutely and unconditionally " (A.R. p. 536) : 
 contrary opinions he stigmatises as vicious abstrac- 
 tions and "meaningless nonsense" (p. 145). Now, 
 when it is stated by a thinker of Mr. Bradley's 
 type that reality = experience, the statement seems 
 capable only of three interpretations. The ex- 
 perience referred to must be either that (i) of finite 
 individuals alone, or (2) of the Absolute alone, or 
 (3) of the Absolute as somehow including the ex- 
 perience of finite individuals. The first and second 
 interpretations being obviously ruled out, we are left 
 with the third. And the difficulties which arise, 
 apart from those incident to subjectivism generally, 
 belong on the one hand to the whole conception of 
 an Including Consciousness, and on the other hand 
 to the reconcilement of this conception with various 
 expressions of Mr. Bradley's. 
 
 It scarcely seems profitable to pursue these 
 difficulties at length. I suppose that Mr. Bradley 
 adopted this impersonal subjectivism, perhaps on 
 the suggestion of Hegel, in order to melt down 
 more easily every element of existence into the 
 Absolute : if my pen is nothing but a piece of 
 sentience, it goes into the Absolute with less 
 resistance than if I attributed to it independent 
 objectivity. Now it would be easy to show how
 
 ix IMPERSONAL SUBJECTIVISM 319 
 
 difficult a view this is to work out consistently ; but 
 I doubt in general the fairness of forcing back upon 
 a writer difficulties which are merely incidental to 
 his scheme and do not seem to have had his direct 
 consideration. I would only point out that the 
 conception of an Including Consciousness has no 
 warrant from the facts of experience, except possibly 
 from hypnotism and spiritualism. And these can 
 hardly have been in Mr. Bradley's mind ; for he is 
 wont to speak of the phenomena usually called 
 4 psychic ' with considerable disdain (cf. A.R. p. 343). 
 Another difficulty is that the Absolute stands above 
 the distinction of subject from object, and indeed 
 above all distinctions. Thus the acceptance of the 
 Including Consciousness would involve the theory of 
 a distinctionless consciousness distinguishing itself 
 into finite consciousnesses and realising itself indis- 
 tinguishably through their distinctions. Till Mr. 
 Bradley has found occasion to elucidate these 
 matters, further critical subtlety seems wasted on 
 them. Sufficient scope for ingenuity exists indeed 
 in harmonising what Mr. Bradley has actually 
 written. How, for example, are we to bring 
 together the dictum " Reality is sentient experience " 
 with the dictum that " no element of Reality falls 
 outside the experience of finite centres." What 
 about the further side of the moon, and the earth 
 before life appeared upon it? For such cases Mr. 
 Bradley really seems to need the hypothesis of 
 angels or demons. 
 
 42. And now I retire for good and all from the
 
 320 LITERARY AFFINITIES CH. 
 
 most interesting and stimulating task of criticising 
 Mr. Bradley's philosophy. There are three points 
 of view from which his work may be considered ; 
 as developing Hegelian principles, as an original 
 contribution to philosophy, and as literature. It 
 will be gathered from the preceding pages that in 
 the two former aspects I think he is rather at cross- 
 purposes with himself. Nature, I believe, meant 
 Mr. Bradley for an original mystic, one who would 
 have brought within our ken a trans-phenomenal 
 reality different from Spinoza's, or Schilling's, or 
 Hegel's, or von Hartmann's, and different toto ccelo 
 from that of Christian devotion. His training and 
 historical position in the development of English 
 thought, on the other hand, have pressed him into 
 the service of developing and popularising the ideas 
 of German panlogism. 
 
 The literary affinities of Mr. Bradley's work 
 would well repay study, if such were my province. 
 From this point of view what is pre-eminently 
 remarkable in Appearance and Reality is its apprecia- 
 tion of feeling generally, and its insistence on the 
 value of strong emotional and sensational experience. 
 In this he claims the sympathy of those who think 
 that in the past feeling has not been treated fairly. 
 All the philosophers from Plato to T. H. Green 
 have antithesised flesh to spirit ; and all down the 
 ages the literary men have been content to admit 
 that the higher life is essentially spiritual. In our 
 time, however, the flesh seems to have come by its 
 own and something more. I am not, of course,
 
 ix A PROPHET OF THE FLESH 321 
 
 referring to any mere recrudescence of carnalism, 
 which is too common and simple a phenomenon to 
 deserve specially philosophic attention. I am 
 thinking rather of a view of the flesh which puts it 
 on a par with spirit, or, shall we say, a view which 
 holds that the spiritual is reached most nearly 
 through intensification of the sensuous. I cannot 
 define more accurately a Weltanschauung which I 
 cannot claim fully to understand ; but something like 
 this is said to underlie the poetry of Rossetti, Walt 
 Whitman, and Mr. Swinburne, and has been traced 
 in the work of Browning, Walter Pater, J. A. 
 Symonds, and Mr. George Meredith, 1 not to mention 
 continental writers. Unless I have taken Mr. Bradley 
 quite amiss he is of kin with them ; he also is a 
 prophet of the flesh. He must be interpreted 
 with relation to a movement which has given us 
 much of what is finest in passion and feeblest in 
 reasoning in the literature of the later nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 1 See J. Spens, "The Ethical Significance of Rossetti's Poetry," in Int. 
 Journ. of Ethics, vol. xii. No. 2 (Jan. 1902).
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PROFESSOR BOSANQUET 
 
 i. PROFESSOR BERNARD BOSANQUET is a typical 
 example of the Anglo- Hegelian of the present time, 
 and all the more repays criticism because in his 
 case construction bears an unusually large ratio to 
 commentary and historical exposition. He takes up 
 with modifications the phraseology and some of the 
 leading principles of Hegelianism, and altogether 
 has made it his aim to adapt that philosophy to con- 
 temporary tastes and needs. And yet, like most 
 of the thinkers of his school, he is not a Hegelian 
 in the strict sense, in so much as he does not 
 commit himself to the fundamental dogmas of the 
 Dialectic and the pantheistic Absolute. 
 
 Why these two dogmas have been dropped by 
 Prof. Bosanquet we can conjecture from internal 
 evidence only. The dialectic indeed is quite alien 
 to modern ideas and finds a friend in Dr. McTaggart 
 alone. Prof. Bosanquet's shyness of the pan- 
 theistic Absolute seems to be a more personal affair. 
 It is certainly not connected with any leaning 
 towards theism, but rather seems to be the reluct- 
 ance of a cautious and anti-mystical intellect to 
 
 322
 
 PROF. BOSANQUET AND HEGEL 
 
 take a huge metaphysical assumption without 
 grounds more solid than Hegel has to propose. A 
 noticeable thing is that Prof. Bosanquet does not 
 replace either the dialectic or the Absolute with 
 anything of his own, and so leaves a hiatus which 
 his readers have often considerable difficulty in 
 filling up. 1 
 
 2. With this serious divergence the question 
 arises why Prof. Bosanquet should have been 
 attracted to Hegelianism. Apart from the reasons 
 to be mentioned presently, there is the obvious and 
 perfectly sufficient one that twenty years ago was 
 the appropriate conjuncture for the diffusion of 
 German ideas into our too insular thinking : any 
 one earnest for philosophic progress had only to 
 ally himself with the most notable tendency of the 
 period. But we must certainly also consider that 
 the philosophic position of this country bore some 
 analogy to that of Germany in Hegel's time. There 
 was in England the same pressure of the lower 
 categories, and the same need to vindicate the 
 independence and dignity of the spiritual life ; the 
 same need to repel encroachments of orthodoxy 
 upon liberty of thought ; the same need for a wise 
 conservatism in moral and political life. The first 
 motive may be taken for granted throughout ; while 
 the operation of the two latter is certainly not incon- 
 siderable. In his Logic Prof. Bosanquet is careful 
 to point out that "ecclesiastical interest" tends to 
 
 1 This is particularly noticeable in regard to his views of Development and 
 of Truth, infra 5, 10.
 
 324 PROF. BOSANQUET'S CH. 
 
 exert itself in favour of theories that " represent 
 judgment as an arbitrary and irrational activity " 
 (i. p. 378) ; while the upshot of his Philosophical 
 Theory of the State is that the state is a moral 
 institution parallel to those organised habits of the 
 individual which enable him to withstand the tem- 
 porary and accidental solicitations of passion. 
 
 3. Of Prof. Bosanquet's three main works, 
 Logic, History of Aesthetic, and Philosophical Theory 
 of the State, the first calls most for critical notice : 
 the second is constructive only in a very subordinate 
 degree ; while the third in its later chapters, where 
 the definite theory comes, follows Hegel very 
 closely. The Logic is a very favourable specimen 
 of Anglo- Hegelian work. Though owing much to 
 Hegel in its general scheme, it is a tolerably free 
 criticism, not only of knowledge, but of life. On 
 an immense number of points, particularly in its 
 treatment of inference, it is in advance of anything 
 in our language. It would, I believe, have achieved 
 more decisive success but for its passivist tendency 
 and its inclination to intellectualism and subjectivism. 
 Of absolutism, as we have seen already, Prof. 
 Bosanquet keeps clear. 
 
 The Passive Fallacy which penetrates Prof. 
 Bosanquet's whole view of things may be exemplified 
 in its most general aspect by his view of Reality 
 and the relation of knowledge to Reality. His 
 inquiries do not call upon him to deal directly with 
 ultimate metaphysical problems, but what he says 
 and what he fails to say are enough to show that he
 
 x PASSIVIST VIEW OF REALITY 325 
 
 quite ignores the kinetic and dynamic character 
 both of reality and of the human mind. 
 
 Prof. Bosanquet never has occasion to tell us 
 explicitly what Reality is and what it is not ; but, 
 on his view, it is apparently non-material and 
 certainly quite static. This is plain from what he 
 says about time and change. He admits that every 
 one in a certain sense and from a view-point short 
 of ultimate must admit the reality of time. But he 
 minimises that admission by treating time and time- 
 determinations as more or less illusory, and as 
 owing their importance mainly to personal defect of 
 knowledge. 
 
 " The conception of cause," he says, " as an event in 
 time anterior to effect gives way on analysis, and forces 
 us back to the conception of the complete Ground ; and 
 the conception of incomplete Ground (causa cognoscendi) 
 as distinct from Cause, expands into the same unity, 
 which, as we saw, is at once the complete Cause and the 
 real Ground, i.e. the relation of part to part within an 
 actual and systematic totality" (i. 278). 
 
 History, therefore, he continues, has for its ideal " to 
 disappear into systems of hypothetical judgment, in 
 which complete ground should do duty for cause 
 and effect, and the relation of time should disappear " 
 (i. 276). So far as the time-relation will not dis- 
 appear, Prof. Bosanquet would regard it as having 
 only negative significance. " The order of succes- 
 sion, which has a largely negative aspect, disappears 
 in the significance of a positive systematic con- 
 nection " (i. 273); "for logical purposes change 
 is only a case of difference or negation" (i. 140) :
 
 326 'LOGIC AND METAPHYSIC ARE ONE' CH. 
 
 " change and motion have their logical value simply 
 as embodiments of difference " (i. 143): "the Judg- 
 ment tends to overcome change, and to view 
 phenomena sub specie aeternitatis, and is in this 
 respect at one with the Platonic 'forms' " (i. 41). 
 
 Upon the metaphysic of Knowledge Prof. 
 Bosanquet is hardly more definite than upon Reality ; 
 but he quite dissociates it from any dynamic action 
 of the world on the human spirit, or of the human 
 spirit on the world. The systematic totality of the 
 Real is somehow constructed and sustained by 
 knowledge in general, and somehow reconstructed 
 by knowledge in finite individual minds. 
 
 " The world, as known to each of us" says Prof. Bosanquet, 
 " is constructed and sustained by his individual conscious- 
 ness ; and . . . every individual also frames for himself, 
 and sustains by the action of his intelligence, the world 
 in which he in particular lives and moves. Of course 
 such a construction is to be taken as a re-construction, a 
 construction by way of knowledge only" (i. 45). 
 
 Hence for Prof. Bosanquet, no less than for 
 Hegel, logic and metaphysic are identical. 
 
 " I entertain no doubt," he says, " that in content logic is 
 one with metaphysics, and differs, if at all, simply in mode 
 of treatment in tracing the evolution of knowledge in 
 the light of its value and import, instead of attempting to 
 summarise its value and import apart from the details of 
 its evolution " (i. p. 247). 
 
 4. This anti-dynamic Intellectualism, which 
 prevents Prof. Bosanquet from appreciating the 
 true character and function of thought is not really 
 in harmony with his deepest conception of the task 
 of the logician. It is evident from the opening
 
 x THOUGHT AS LIVING FUNCTION 327 
 
 pages of the Logic that he wishes to treat his subject 
 with something of that modern scientific spirit which 
 insists on the organic co-ordination and evolution 
 of human nature. His purpose, he says, is "the 
 unprejudiced study of judgment and inference 
 throughout the varied forms in which their evolution 
 may be traced " ; he regards the form of thought 
 as " a living function " ; he proposes to undertake 
 " the genetic analysis of a systematic development" 
 (i. p. i sq.}. These are admirable phrases ; better 
 could not be found to stand in the forefront of 
 a logical treatise : my complaint is that Prof. 
 Bosanquet has a static prejudice which prevents 
 him from acting up to them. Take first the descrip- 
 tion of thought as a " living function." What is a 
 living function ? Surely it can be nothing else than 
 the function fulfilled by one element of our nature 
 as a factor in that system of functions which con- 
 stitutes our life. If the phrase be taken in its full 
 significance it puts thought into its right place at 
 once : it means that thought is implicated with the 
 other elements of human nature and is influenced 
 throughout by that implication. But there is no 
 effective recognition of this in Prof. Bosanquet's 
 work : he says nothing of the connection of thought 
 with volition or with sensation. He appears to 
 proceed on the panlogist assumption that thought 
 is the whole man, or at any rate all of him that 
 counts for logic. 
 
 5. Again, consider those other phrases of 
 Prof. Bosanquet's, "evolution," "genetic analysis,"
 
 328 SYSTEMATIC DEVELOPMENT CH. 
 
 " systematic development " : here again we have 
 suggested a standpoint thoroughly in accordance 
 with modern scientific ideas a standpoint which 
 would treat the various forms of logical thinking as 
 progressively successful attempts to understand the 
 world. But this is not the standpoint which Prof. 
 Bosanquet adopts in his actual treatment. It is true 
 he begins with the simplest thought-forms and pro- 
 ceeds upwards to the more complex and adequate : 
 but he does not proceed genetically. He does not 
 show us one form growing out of the one before it 
 as the fruit of the subject's progressively successful 
 striving. He limits himself to classification, and 
 ranges his judgment-forms side by side like dried 
 specimens in a pre-Darwinian herbarium. 
 
 The scheme of Prof. Bosanquet's classification 
 is borrowed from Hegel, a fact which makes his 
 neglect of the genetic character of thought even 
 more remarkable. For Hegel's logic is genetic after 
 a fashion, and his classification is based upon the 
 treatment of thought-forms as categories of reality, 
 the poorer and more abstract of which develop into 
 the richer by the immanent principle of dialectic 
 movement. Prof. Bosanquet, very properly, will 
 have nothing to say to dialectic development. But 
 this makes it all the more imperative that he should 
 recognise development in some better and truer 
 sense. 
 
 6. This leads us on to a truly fatal flaw in Prof. 
 Bosanquet's Logic, his omission of purpose. I be- 
 lieve that a sound theory of knowledge would be
 
 x WHY IS PURPOSE LEFT OUT? 329 
 
 based on the principle that thought, as implicated 
 with action, is purposive through and through. 
 Here again it appears that Prof. Bosanquet's deepest 
 convictions would have led him in the right direc- 
 tion : so, at least, one gathers from his repeated 
 insistence on individuality. " Truth," he remarks, 
 "is individual, and no general principle, no abstract 
 reflection, can be adequate to the content of what 
 is individual " (i. 3). And, again, he says, " The 
 main function of judgment would then be identified 
 with the exhibition of individual totalities at once 
 in their absoluteness and in their relativity" (i. 152). 
 And he goes beyond even the personal idealist when 
 he affirms that "the individuality of the content 
 dictates its own time, place, and measure of exist- 
 ence " (i. 241). All this about individuality is in 
 the right direction, at any rate ; but how does Prof. 
 Bosanquet reconcile it with his neglect of purpose ? 
 Surely it is purpose alone that confers individuality 
 upon logical content. Take, for example, this very 
 sentence that I have just written. Assume, for the 
 sake of argument, that it is perfectly apt in further- 
 ing the purpose I have in view, i.e. the establishment 
 of a certain view of the relation of purpose and 
 logical individuality : in that case it is perfectly in- 
 dividual ; as read in this context it could not be 
 mistaken for any other sentence that ever was 
 written. But if, on the other hand, it is quite irrele- 
 vant to the context, its individuality sinks to a 
 minimum. 
 
 The same matter may be illustrated from another
 
 330 WHAT PLACE HAS PERCEPTION CH. 
 
 side by considering the kindred subject of cogency. 
 I do not remember that Prof. Bosanquet treats 
 explicitly of cogency, either to explain in what it 
 consists, or to distinguish one degree of cogency 
 from another : but the whole tone of his work is 
 opposed to the notion that cogency is derived 
 primarily either from logical form (as the old- 
 fashioned logicians thought), or from abstract rela- 
 tions of measurement and number (as the mechanical 
 logicians). Whence then does it come ? Prof. 
 Bosanquet seems to be always near, but never quite 
 on to, the truth that individuality and cogency are 
 to be found primarily in the system of human purpose 
 and life. 
 
 7. The anti-sensational side of Prof. Bosanquet's 
 intellectualism is seen in his treatment of perception. 
 In this matter, as in others, I seem to observe a 
 worse and a better tendency in him, the former due 
 to Hegel, the latter to sympathy with modern science. 
 Unluckily, it is the former that gets its way. 
 
 In his systematic account of the perceptive judg- 
 ment he holds that in its simplest form it presents 
 us with a "qualitative content" which "is very 
 nearly simple." This reminds us of Hegel's doctrine 
 that "sensuous certainty" gives nothing more than 
 bare " Seyn," the utterly abstract category which 
 makes the beginning of thought's development. 
 The forms that succeed, according to Prof. Bosan- 
 quet, get further and further away from the simplest 
 initial form till they culminate in the true generic 
 judgment. Now the defect of this account is that
 
 IN KNOWLEDGE? 331 
 
 it treats sensuous experience merely as a starting- 
 point to be left behind. There is no recognition of 
 its function as an element in constituting the more 
 advanced and generalised forms of judgment. Hence 
 the difficulty which Mr. Hobhouse expresses as 
 follows : 
 
 " I am quite at one with Mr. Bosanquet in thinking that 
 the work of thought is to form the real world into a 
 connected system. But I suggest that if we are to have 
 a fabric we must have the thread to weave, and the tools 
 to weave with. On my view, the thread is the world of 
 sense, and the tools the activity of thought ; but what Mr. 
 Bosanquet's thread is I cannot make out " ( Theory of 
 Knowledge, p. 413). 
 
 Without committing myself entirely to Mr. Hob- 
 house's metaphor of thread and tools, I must 
 say I feel a similar inability to understand Prof. 
 Bosanquet's position. I understand Hegel's posi- 
 tion : he ignores the sensuous element in knowledge 
 altogether, except so far as he refers to it as a sort 
 of thinking. But Prof. Bosanquet declares the 
 sensuous element to have capital importance, and 
 yet finds for it no effective place in his exposition of 
 the higher forms of judgment. 
 
 The better tendency of which I spoke consists 
 in taking just this view of sense-perception as the 
 data or material of knowledge. This tendency in 
 Prof. Bosanquet I gather from his repeated asser- 
 tion that in perception we touch reality. 
 " It was well done," he says criticising Mr. Bradley, " to 
 invest perception with the pre-eminent importance of 
 being the one point in which we have direct contact with 
 reality, and to give this contact with reality the decisive
 
 332 PROF. BOSANQUET'S SUBJECTIVISM CH. 
 
 position in the activity of judgment " (Knowledge and 
 Reality, p. 17 ; cf. Logic, i. pp. 3, 77). 
 
 I know that he also rebukes Mr. Bradley for making 
 too much of sensuous experience ; but this almost 
 looks like an attempt to run with the hare and hunt 
 with the hounds. So much, at least, is plain, that 
 Prof. Bosanquet wishes to give sensuous experience 
 a position in logic very different from that which 
 Hegel gave it. But, if he had carried out his wish, 
 if he had really given it " the decisive position in 
 the activity of judgment," his logical doctrine would 
 have been different from what it actually is, and 
 would not have exposed itself to such strictures as 
 that quoted from Mr. Hobhouse. 
 
 8. There is a very strong tinge of Subjectivism 
 in Prof. Bosanquet's work which he hardly seems to 
 realise to the full, but which, just for that reason, 
 gives rise to manifold difficulties and obscurities. 
 The difficulties seem to me incapable of systematic 
 reconciliation : but I think we can understand them 
 on the view that Prof. Bosanquet started from the 
 Hegelian impersonal subjectivism, found it impos- 
 sible to maintain in its entirety, and came round 
 into something like the individual subjectivism of 
 traditional English thought. 
 
 The tone of the Logic is strongly subjectivist 
 in the Hegelian sense ; and yet, as I have 
 already remarked, it never commits itself to the 
 Absolute. In the introduction to the Logic Prof. 
 Bosanquet raises the question what thought it is
 
 x WHAT THOUGHT DOES LOGIC STUDY? 333 
 
 that he is studying, but holds himself entitled to 
 put it by. 
 
 " The process," he says, " which logic investigates is the 
 single process and individual self-determination of the 
 whole which is the truth or reality. It is natural to ask 
 ' Where and what is this self-determination ? where does 
 it begin ? where does it end ? Is it in the individual 
 mind or in the history of the race, or in an arbitrary 
 combination of the two ? ' I cannot attach much impor- 
 tance to this question, which might be asked with equal 
 justice, as it appears to me, of every science. A science 
 deals with its object-matter wherever it finds it. The 
 self-determination of the knowing intelligence as the real 
 world takes place wherever there is knowledge and in so 
 far as there is knowledge " (i. pp. 6, sq.'}. 
 
 In a later passage he remarks that, though to 
 assume that reality is " simply relative to the 
 individual mind " would be ridiculous, yet the 
 caution which a modern writer must exercise is such 
 that "he hardly dares to allude to Mind as such or 
 in itself." Hence, " as a working conception in 
 Logic we are forced to adopt some such idea as that 
 of a normal intelligence operative in all human minds, 
 but subject to the accidental limitations of each " 
 (i. pp. 247 sq.}. This is obviously a compromise, 
 and has the usual weakness of compromises in 
 philosophy. Either the "normal intelligence" is 
 only a class-conception, and then the assumption of 
 " individual self-determination " implies the stand- 
 point of individual subjectivism ; or else it has a 
 real existence apart from human individuals, and 
 then we are committed to something like the 
 Hegelian Absolute.
 
 334 A 'MAGICAL PANORAMA' CH. 
 
 9. More solipsistic in tone is another passage of 
 his Logic (i. 45). The doctrine there propounded is 
 set out with much force in a later work {Essentials 
 of Logic, p. 14). 
 
 " For the purposes of Logic," he there says, " we must 
 turn our usual ideas upside down. We must try to 
 imagine something of this kind. We have all seen a 
 circular panorama. Each one of us, we must think, is 
 shut up alone inside such a panorama, which is movable 
 and flexible, and follows him wherever he goes. The 
 things and persons depicted in it move and act upon one 
 another ; but all this is in the panorama, and not beyond 
 it. The individual cannot get outside this encircling 
 scenery, and no one else can get inside it. Apart from 
 it, prior to it, we have no self; it is indeed the stuff of 
 which oneself is made. Is every one's panorama exactly 
 the same? No, they are not exactly the same. They 
 are formed round different centres, each person differing 
 from all the others by individual qualities, and by his 
 position towards the points and processes which deter- 
 mine his picture. For and here is the remarkable 
 point every one of us has painted by himself the 
 picture within which he is shut up, and he is perpetually 
 painting and re-painting it, not by copying from some 
 original, but by arranging and completing confused 
 images and tints that are always appearing magically on 
 his canvas. Now this magical panorama, from which the 
 individual cannot escape, and the laws of which are the 
 laws of his experience, is simply his own mind regarded 
 as a content or a world. His own body and mind, 
 regarded as things, are within the panorama, just as other 
 people's bodies and minds are." 
 
 Shortly afterwards Prof. Bosanquet raises the 
 question how it happens "that our separate worlds, 
 the panoramas which we construct, do not contra- 
 dict each other," and says "the answer is, that
 
 x A DIFFICULT DEFINITION OF TRUTH 335 
 
 they correspond" (p. 17). But he does not tell us 
 about any enveloping system which makes them 
 correspond, and therefore does nothing to qualify the 
 solipsism of his panorama metaphor with its magical 
 succession of changes. 
 
 10. But notwithstanding this very striking 
 utterance, Prof. Bosanquet's subjectivism rather in- 
 clines to the Hegelian type so far as its consequences 
 go. These may be shown by considering, for in- 
 stance, his view of Truth. In the common -sense 
 view, truth is regarded as correspondence between 
 individual thought and objective reality. But Hegel's 
 impersonal subjectivism precludes recognition of in- 
 dividual thought : he therefore applies the term truth 
 to express the relation of a higher category to a 
 lower ; the higher category is the ' truth ' of one 
 below, because it includes and explains it. Absolute 
 truth can be predicated of the universe alone as 
 Absolute Spirit, which is the perfect realisation 
 of all the other categories. Prof. Bosanquet's 
 view of truth is something like this, but far less 
 definite. He raises the question how logic explains 
 " that relation in which truth appears to consist, 
 between the human intelligence on the one hand 
 and fact or reality on the other," and says : 
 
 " If the object-matter of reality lay genuinely outside the 
 system of thought, not only our analysis, but thought 
 itself, would be unable to lay hold of reality. For Logic, 
 at all events, it is a postulate that ' the truth is the whole.' 
 The forms of thought have the relation which is their 
 truth in their power to constitute a totality ; which power, 
 as referred to the individual mind, is its power to under-
 
 336 SELF-DETERMINATION OF THOUGHT CH. 
 
 stand a totality. The work of intellectually constituting 
 that totality which we call the real world is the work of 
 knowledge. . . . The truth, the fact, the reality, may be 
 considered, in relation to the human intelligence, as the 
 content of a single persistent and all-embracing judgment, 
 by which every individual intelligence affirms the ideas 
 that form its knowledge to be true of the world which is 
 brought home to it as real by sense-perception " (i. pp. 2 sg.~). 
 
 Of this very difficult definition we can at least say 
 positively that it is irreconcilable with what the 
 plain man means by truth : it appears to be the 
 Hegelian view modified to some extent in the direc- 
 tion of individualism. To reach it Prof. Bosanquet 
 seems to have started from the idealist position 
 that if thought were separate from its object it 
 could never lay hold upon it ; to have accepted the 
 Hegelian position that the truth, the whole truth, 
 and the only truth is the thought- totality of the 
 Absolute ; to have shrunk subsequently from assert- 
 ing the existence of a super-human Thought, and 
 finally to have tried to reconcile the Hegelian posi- 
 tion that "the truth is the whole" with his own 
 individualistic and anti- mystical disbelief in any 
 spirits but those of men. 
 
 ii. The other point in which Prof. Bosanquet's 
 subjectivism is most apparent is the doctrine of 
 the self-determination of thought. Though Prof. 
 Bosanquet never gives a set exposition of this as 
 he does of truth, it figures early in his work (i. 6) 
 and is fundamentally implied in his whole treat- 
 ment. The slightest consideration will show how 
 incompatible it is with adequate recognition of the
 
 x NO MODERNISING HEGEL 337 
 
 individual. No one who takes any account of facts 
 would hold that the thought of any individual is a 
 self-determined or self-developing affair. Nor is the 
 argument much different if we understand ' thought ' 
 as the thought of the race, so long as we pay the 
 least regard to the actual history of civilisation. In 
 fact such a doctrine is compatible with nothing but 
 the Hegelian position which treats the facts of 
 personal history as accidental and illusory, except so 
 far as they can be regarded as exemplifying the 
 process of the Absolute Subject. Here, more than 
 anywhere else, Prof. Bosanquet reveals the true 
 filiation of his logical theory. 
 
 12. Prof. Bosanquet's Logic forms, I believe, 
 the high-water mark of Anglo- Hegelianism, which 
 in its later developments has turned more and more 
 to commentary and criticism. It is not probable 
 that so much acuteness and cultured experience will 
 be devoted again to a constructive formulation of 
 these principles. The higher, however, our opinion 
 of Prof. Bosanquet's capacity, the less hopeful we 
 shall feel of the possibility of adapting Hegel to 
 modern requirements : intellectualism, absolutism, 
 subjectivism, and the passive fallacy in general are 
 fundamental to the structure of Hegelianism. 
 
 There are two ways of modernising Hegel, of 
 which Prof. Bosanquet has chosen the more difficult 
 and more aspiring. One is to keep as much of the 
 essentials of Hegel as possible, and to attempt a 
 constructive reinterpretation of mental and moral 
 
 science in accordance therewith. This is what we 
 
 z
 
 338 PAN-RECONCILIATION CH. x 
 
 find in Prof. Bosanquet's works. The other way is 
 to sublimate Hegelianism into a doctrine of edifica- 
 tion ; to draw from it such lessons as that all 
 antitheses are reconcilable, that the good, the true, 
 and the beautiful are one, that sermons can be found 
 in logic and good in everything, and that Hegel is 
 the truth of all his predecessors. Such philosophising 
 has a considerable value for culture, inasmuch as it 
 gives breadth and serenity to one's outlook upon 
 thought and life. But what is valuable in education 
 may be useless in science. The complaint of the 
 friends of progress against the all-reconciling form of 
 Anglo- Hegelianism is that they find it a hindrance 
 to positive philosophical construction.
 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Where a heading of this index has formed the title of a chapter a general 
 reference only is made to the chapter 
 
 Absolutism, ch. v. ; an idolon, 15 ; 
 definition and illustrations of, 18-24; 
 in relation to impersonal subjecti- 
 vism, 143-9 ! reinforced in Britain 
 by German influence, 152-3 ; Schel- 
 ling's, 175-7 ; Hegel a panlogistic 
 absolutist, 180-1 ; in the Encyclo- 
 pedia, 184-6, 191-4, 197 ; Hegel 
 combines intellectualism and sub- 
 jectivism with, 199 ; causes Hegel to 
 ignore individuals, 201 ; vitiates 
 Hegel's philosophical method, 203 ; 
 and makes him ignore volition, 204 ; 
 in Bradley, 260 ; in his Principles of 
 Logic, 294-304 ; in his Appearance 
 and Reality, 305-17; Bosanquet's 
 attitude towards, 322, 333, 337 ; 
 fundamental in Hegel, 337 
 
 Academicism, as encouraging the pas- 
 sive fallacy, 11-12 
 
 Activity, v. Volition 
 
 Adamson, J?., on the Kantian method, 
 154 ; on Fichte's inauguration, 164- 
 165 ; on Fichte's oppositing, 167 ; 
 on activity in Fichte, 168 
 
 Amiel, a religious mystic, 20 ; pan- 
 tectic absolutism in relation to, 22 
 
 Analogy, Bradley would abolish reason- 
 ing by, 285-6 
 
 Anglo-Hegelianism, hostility to prag- 
 matism, 6 ; on personal immortality, 
 37 ; emphasises social loyalty, 58 ; 
 exaltation of the state, 66 ; ignores 
 political reform, 68 ; self-determina- 
 tion of thought in, 141 ; impersonal 
 subjectivism in, 144 ; growth of, 
 since Green's death, 179 ; adopts 
 the Hegelian idola, 199 ; causes of 
 growth of, 207-8 ; relation to syste- 
 matic Hegelianism, 208-10 ; weakness 
 of, illustrated from Ethical Studies, 
 262-4 ; typified in Bosanquet, 322-4 ; 
 
 Bosanquet's Logic high-water mark 
 f> 337 I all-reconciling form of, 338 
 
 Antinomianism, 128-9 
 
 Appearances, Doctrine of, a concession 
 to finite existence, 23 ; Bradley's, 
 306-7 
 
 Aristotle, conception of God in relation 
 to polytheism, 13 ; conception of 
 God as indifferent to utility, 43 ; 
 denial of evolution, 48 ; influence on 
 Green, 215-16 
 
 Art, intellectualist view of, 69-75 ' 
 Bradley on, 133 ; subjectivist view of, 
 140-1 ; as Hegelian category, 199 ; 
 treated by Hegel apart from artists, 
 202 ; omission of volition vitiates 
 Hegelian philosophy of, 204 
 
 Averroes, pantheism, 80 
 
 Balfour, A. J., on Green's Eternal 
 
 Consciousness, 235 
 Ball, S., on Bosanquet's Philosophical 
 
 Theory of the State, 67 
 Barralt, A., Physical Ethics, 215 
 Behmen, J., pantheism, 80 ; Urgrund, 
 
 99 
 
 Berkeley, G., explanation of subjecti- 
 vism of, 27 
 
 Bosanquet, B., ch. x. ; a Hegelian of i 
 the left, 3 ; qualified denial of reality 
 of time, 34 ; would absorb history in 
 science, 35-7 ; static treatment ot 
 the forms of knowledge, 48-9 ; intel- 
 lectualist view of truth, 51 ; regards 
 the passive form of judgment as 
 typical, 54 ; extrudes supposal from 
 knowledge, 54-5 ; misinterpretation 
 of conscience in Psychology of the 
 Moral Self, 63-4 ; denies free-will, 
 65 ; ignores individual's function in 
 his Philosophical Theory of the State, 
 66-9 ; art-philosophy, 70-4 ; logical 
 
 339
 
 340 
 
 BRADLE Y 
 
 use of conception of individuality, 
 96 ; resolves personality into its 
 environment, 97 - 8 ; subjectivism, 
 148 ; a diffuser of German idealism, 
 152 ; philosophy of, an adaptation 
 of Hegelianism, 179 ; on the human 
 nature in German idealism, 180 ; 
 regards perceptive judgment as root 
 of modern philosophy, 203 ; un- 
 critical borrowing of Hegelian ideas, 
 209-10 ; on Bradley's view of relation 
 of sensation to knowledge, 273, 302, 
 331-2 ; almost breaks away from 
 intellectualism, 280 ; criticises Brad- 
 ley's "conclusion from impotence," 
 298 
 
 Bradley, F. //. , ch. ix. , ch. v. passim; 
 represents a quasi-mystical Hegel- 
 ianism, 3 ; hostility to pragmatism, 
 6 ; doctrine of disparateness of the 
 absolute from the human intelligence, 
 18-19 I u 565 ordinary reasoning to 
 establish the Absolute, 19 ; a non- 
 religious mystic, 20 ; summarises 
 Hegelianism, 30; on volition, 40-1, 
 63 ; intellectualism in Ethical 
 Studies, 58 ; depreciation of con- 
 science, 60 ; eulogy of social loyalty, 
 6 1 ; on the morals of the non-theo- 
 retical person, 62 ; denies free-will, 
 65 ; Hegelian exaltation of the social 
 organism, 66 ; subjectivist account 
 of will, 148 ; diffusing German ideas, 
 152 ; partly adapts, partly reacts 
 against Hegel, 180 ; uncritical bor- 
 rowing of Hegelian ideas, 209-10 ; 
 treatment of perception criticised by 
 Bosanquet, 331-2 
 
 Bright, /. , as Green's ideal statesman, 
 
 212 
 
 Bruno, G., pantheism, 80 
 
 Caird, ., Evolution of Religion, 77- 
 79 ; diffusing German ideas, 152 ; on 
 the eighteenth century, 153 ; on Kant 
 and the Enlightenment, 154 ; on 
 Hegel's treatment of history, 199 
 
 Caird, J., Philosophy of Religion, 76 
 
 Conscientiousness, Hegelian misinter- 
 pretation of, 59-60, 62 
 
 Criterion, absolutist-utilitarian criterion 
 of truth, 112-13 ; Bradley on con- 
 sistency as, 306 ; relation of Brad- 
 ley's Absolute to his, 310-11 ; true 
 interpretation of Bradley's, 311-15 
 
 Curiosity, as motive to knowledge, 47 
 
 Darwin, and Hegel, 5, 68, 203 ; in- 
 fluence at Oxford, 213 
 Deduction, Bradley on, 287-9 
 
 Degrees of Reality, panlogist paradox 
 of, 31-2 ; applied to religion by 
 Bradley, 126 ; Hegelian doctrine of, 
 borrowed by Bradley, 314-15 
 
 Descartes, explanation of subjectivism 
 of, 26-7 
 
 Disjunction, Bradley on, 274 
 
 Doctrine of Appearances, v. Appear- 
 ances 
 
 Dualism, unsatisfactoriness of, 149 
 
 Eckhart, pantheism, 80 
 
 Education, the passive fallacy a disease 
 -of, 9-12 
 
 Emerson, R. W., an optimistic mystic, 
 3iS-i6 
 
 Error, indistinguishable from truth on 
 Bradley's view, 110-12 
 
 Essence, Bradley on, 100-1 ; definition 
 of, 101 
 
 Ethics, intellectualist doctrine of, 57-65 ; 
 feeling-absolutist doctrine of, 113- 
 123 ; passivity of Hegelian, 201 ; 
 omission of volition vitiates Hege- 
 lian, 204 ; statement and criticism 
 of Green's, 222-44 subjectivism in 
 Green's, 253-8 ; Bradley's, in Ethical 
 Studies, 261-6 
 
 Evolution, attitude of Oxford idealism 
 to, 3; concurs with voluntarism, 5; 
 Bosanquet's neglect of, 327-8 
 
 Extension, v. Quantity of Judgments 
 
 Faculty - psychology, and the passive 
 fallacy, 14 
 
 Faith, Bradley's view of, 128-9 
 
 Feeling, v. Sensation 
 
 Fichte, explanation of subjectivism of, 
 27 ; ignores objective reference of 
 morality, 143 ; lapses from strict sub- 
 jectivism, 147 ; position in German 
 idealism and sketch of doctrine, 
 156-71 ; Schelling's relations to, 
 172-3 ; recognises volition, 204 
 
 Free-will, and the absorption of history 
 in science, 36-7 ; intellectualism 
 denies, 64-5 ; a chimera according 
 to Bradley, 114; Kant's noumenal, 
 156 ; based by Green on analysis 
 of knowledge, 232 ; Green's doctrine 
 of, 242-4 ; determinism of Ethical 
 Studies derived from Hegel, 262 
 
 Geometry, regarded by intellectualists as 
 type of science, 43 
 
 German Idealism, ch. vii. ; its relation to 
 contemporary thought, 7 ; accounts 
 for Green's intellectualism and sub- 
 jectivism, 211-2; diffusion at Oxford, 
 219-20 ; Green's attitude to, 221
 
 INTELLECTUALISM 
 
 God, v. Religion 
 Goethe, admiration of Fichte, 165 
 -Green, T. H., ch. viii. ; negative atti- 
 tude to modern scientific ideas, 2 ; 
 Oxford philosophy declines after his 
 death, 3 ; suggested voluntarist syn- 
 thesis in relation to author's dis- 
 satisfaction with, 5 ; ignores power 
 in things, 33 ; intellectualism in 
 ethics, 57-8 ; adopts a merely nou- 
 menal view of freedom, 65 ; philo- 
 sophy of religion, 76-9 ; subjectivism 
 in ethics of, 147-8; diffusing German 
 ideas in Oxford, 151-2 ; indebtedness 
 to Hegel and Kant, 179 
 
 Haeckel, monism, 98, 304 
 
 Hamilton, Sir W. , as starting German 
 influence on Oxford, 151; agnosticism , 
 218 
 
 Hampden, R. D., Course of Lectures 
 introductory to the Study o f Moral 
 Philosophy, 220 
 
 Plartmann, E. v., pantheism, 80 
 pantheism excludes theism, 130 
 metaphysical basis of ethics, 134 
 the Unconscious, 150 ; as pessimistic 
 mystic, 315 
 
 Hedonism, connected with absolutism, 
 112-13120; Bradley on, 123; sub- 
 jectivism concurs with, 139 
 
 Hegel, Hegelianism in Bradley, Bo- 
 sanquet, and Wallace, 3 ; no sub- 
 stitute for Darwin, 5 ; his panlogism 
 s monistic, 17 ; how he can maintain 
 panlogism, 27 ; doctrine of identity 
 of philosopher's reason with world- 
 reason, 1 8 ; ignores power in things, 
 33-4 ; relation of time to dialectic, 
 34 ; Hegelianism and immortality, 
 37-8 ; deduces sensation, 38-9 ; on 
 volition, 40-1 ; Hegelianism empha- 
 sises moral institutions, 58 ; Hege- 
 lianism emphasises social loyalty, 
 59 ; political philosophy, 65-9 ; art- 
 philosophy, 69-70 ; pantheism, 80 ; 
 thought-absolute, 81 ; Bradley's re- 
 action against, 81-2; self-enjoying 
 absolute criticised by Bradley, 84 ; 
 Hegelian compared with Bradleian 
 absolute, 86-8, 309-10, 313-14; 
 Philosophy of Religion, 88 ; Hegelian 
 subjectivism, 138, 144-7; radicalism, 
 160 ; conditions for understanding, 
 1 66 ; difference from Schelling on 
 the organ of philosophical know- 
 ledge, 177-8 ; position in German 
 idealism and sketch of doctrine, 
 179-210 ; relation to Green, 220 ; 
 Hegelian subjectivism in Green's 
 
 philosophy of religion, 246-8; 
 Hegelianism in Ethical Studies, 261- 
 264; view of sense- perception adopted 
 by Bradley, 271 ; thought goes from 
 abstract to concrete, 288 ; absolutism 
 adopted by Bradley in Principles of 
 Logic, 295-300 ; contrast of Hegelian 
 with Bradleian Absolute, 309-10 ; 
 Hegelian doctrine of Degrees of 
 Truth and Reality borrowed by 
 Bradley, 3141-5 ; impersonal sub- 
 jectivism borrowed by Bradley, 318 ; 
 Bradley as developing the principles 
 of, 320 ; Bosanquet's relation to, 
 322-4 ; Bosanquet's logical classifica- 
 tion borrowed from, 328 ; Hegelian 
 subjectivism in Bosanquet, 332-7; 
 doctrine of truth partially adopted 
 by Bosanquet, 335-6 ; doctrine of 
 self-determination of thought adopted 
 by Bosanquet, 336-7 ; difficulty of 
 modernising, 337 ; Hegelianism as a 
 doctrine of edification, 338 
 
 Hegelianism, v. Hegel 
 
 History, absorbed in science by Bo- 
 sanquet, 35-7 
 
 Hob/iouse, L. T., on Appearance ana 
 Reality, 89 ; on Bosanquet's treat- 
 ment of perception, 331-2 
 
 Hume, I)., Kant's advance on, 154- S 1 
 sensationalism, as opposed to Green, 
 213 ; Inquiry concerning the Prin- 
 ciples of Alorals, the best specimen 
 of eighteenth - century moral philo- 
 sophy, 217 ; reduction of facts to 
 feelings opposed by Green, 245 
 
 Identity, Bradley on, as basis of 
 inference, 283-7 
 
 Individuality, Bradley and Bosanquet 
 on, 96.; Bradley's view that self- 
 realisation is attainment of, 122 ; 
 Bradley on individuality of synthesis, 
 281-3, 285 ; purpose in relation to, 
 
 3 2 9 
 
 Induction, Bradley on, 287-9 
 Inference, common account of inference 
 is too passivist, 54 ; Bradley on, 279- 
 294 
 
 Intellectual ism, ch. iv. ; definition and ' 
 illustrations of, 15-18 ; reinforced in 
 Britain by German influence, 152-3 ; 
 Hegel apanlogistic absolutist, 180-1 ; 
 Hegel combines absolutism and sub- 
 jectivism with, 199; inGreen, 211-12; 
 in Bradley, 260 ; in his Principles of 
 Logic, 268-94 Bradley's absolutism 
 inconsistent with his, 302-3 ; in Bo- 
 sanquet, 324-32; fundamental in 
 Hegel, 337
 
 342 
 
 INTELLIGIBILITY 
 
 Intelligibility, panlogist account of, 49- 
 
 50 
 
 Intension, v. Quantity of Judgments 
 Interest, panlogist account of the 
 
 interest of knowledge, 44-8 ; truth 
 
 is subordinate to, 52 
 
 James, W., pragmatism in, 4 ; on 
 terms and relations, 92 ; on the 
 passion of theory, 189 ; suggestions 
 of The Will to Believe in Bradley, 
 312 
 
 Jowett, B., influence on Green, 219 
 Judgment, intellectualist view of, 53-5 ; 
 Bradley's view of abstractness of, 
 269 ; Bradley ignores active side of, 
 273 
 
 Kant, makes some recognition of sen- 
 sation and volition, 29 ; answer to 
 antinomies of, 95 ; position in Ger- 
 man idealism, 153-9 principle of 
 self-consciousness adopted by Fichte, 
 157 ; radicalism, 159 ; relations to 
 Fichte, 164-5 I er >d f his philoso- 
 phising, ethical and religious, 188 ; 
 destroyed current metaphysics ac- 
 cording to Hegel, 192 ; followed by 
 Green in basing morals on analysis 
 of knowledge, 225 ; surrender to the 
 sceptics, 226 ; as suggesting Green's 
 Timeless Self, 240 ; influence on 
 Green's view of freedom, 242-3 
 
 Knowledge, v. Logic 
 
 Locke, J. , wax- tablet theory, as opposed 
 to Green, 213 
 
 Logic, panlogist view of, 42 - 57 
 feeling-absolutist view of, 106-13 
 Hegel's conception of, 184, 190-7 
 passivism of Hegel's conception of, 
 200 ; Green's analysis of knowledge, 
 227-32 ; logical difficulties in Green's 
 conception of the timelessness of the 
 self, 241 ; Bradley's views on, 266- 
 304 ; Bosanquet's views on, 324-37 
 
 M'Gilvary, E. B., on the purpose of 
 the Encyclopedia, 185 
 
 McTaggart, /. E. , on time, 34-5; 
 hedonism, 113 ; proves inapplica- 
 bility of Hegelianism to contemporary 
 controversies, 187 ; revision of the 
 transitions of the dialectic, 190 ; on 
 the meaning of 'subjective' in Hegel, 
 202 ; on the application of Hegelian- 
 ism to religious controversy, 207-8 ; 
 alone in adopting Hegel's dialectic, 
 322 
 
 Mansel, H. L., agnosticism, 149; 
 
 diffusing German ideas in Oxford, 
 151; agnosticism and academic con- 
 servatism, 214 ; relation to Green, 
 217-18 ; relation to German idealism, 
 219 ; Prolegomena Logica as suggest- 
 ing title of Prolegomena to Ethics, 
 223 
 
 Martineau, J., dualism, 149 
 
 Mill, J. S. , explanation of subjectivism 
 of, 27 ; ignores power in things, 33 ; 
 influence at Oxford, 213-14 ; view of 
 the mind as a series of feelings 
 opposed to Green, 221 ; doctrine of 
 import of propositions attacked by 
 Bradley, 270 ; Bradley on Inductive 
 Canons of, 280 ; view of analogy 
 opposed to Bradley, 286 
 
 Modality, Bradley on, 277-9 
 
 Moral Philosophy, v. Ethics 
 
 Muirhead, J. H. , on the goal of know- 
 ledge, 42-4, 55-7 
 
 Mysticism, its relation to absolutism, 
 19-24 ; in Ethical Studies, 265-6 ; 
 in Appearance and Reality, 305 
 
 Naturphilosopkie, Schelling's, 172-6 ; 
 
 Hegel's, 191, 197-8 
 Nettleship, /?. L. , indeterminateness in 
 
 teaching, i, 2 ; memoir of Green, 
 
 2I S 
 
 Nicholas, of Cusa, pantheism, 80 
 Nicolai, hostility to Fichte, 165 
 Nisus, of morality and knowledge 
 according to Bradley, 119-121 ; of 
 thought according to Bradley, 297-8 
 
 Oken, L. , Lehrbuch der Naturphilo- 
 sophie, 198 
 
 Paky, W. , Moral and Political Philo- 
 sophy shows moral philosophy at its 
 lowest, 217 
 
 Panlogism, v. Intellectualism 
 
 Pantheism, mysticism and absolutism 
 how related to, 24 ; Bradley's com- 
 promise of theism with, 129-32 ; in 
 Hegel, 1 88 
 
 Passive Fallacy, ch. ii. ; the three idola 
 concur with, 15 ; in Hegel, 200-1 ; 
 in Bradley's logic, 267, 289-94 I m 
 Bosanquet, 324 ; fundamental in 
 Hegel. 337 
 
 Pater, W., subjectivist view of art, 
 140-1 
 
 Paulsen, F., on Kant and the En- 
 lightenment, 154 
 
 Perception, v. Sensation 
 
 Personal Idealism, 3 
 
 Personality, panlogism cannot start 
 from, 29 ; denied by absolutism,
 
 SEW ELL 
 
 18-19 I trie three idola to be criticised 
 mainly as ignoring, 28 ; panlogistview 
 of, 37 ; intellectualist logic ignores 
 connection of knowledge with, 43-4 ; 
 Bradley's criticism of, 95-104 ; Brad- 
 ley on the self, 105-6 ; Hegel's anti- 
 personalism, 201-2 
 
 Pessimism, pessimistic mysticism, 21-2 ; 
 Bradley's tinge of, 315-16 
 
 Phenomenalism, Bradley's, 39, 105-6 ; 
 Kant's, 156 
 
 Philosophy of Nature, v. Naturphilo- 
 sophie 
 
 Plato, the preacher's fallacy in, 10 ; 
 faculty-psychology in, 14 ; ' virtue is 
 knowledge ' and theory of ideas as 
 illustrations of intellectualism, 16 ; 
 half- recognition of sensation in, 29 ; 
 philosophy of religion, 75-6 ; protest 
 against errors of popular religion, 
 124 ; spectator of all time, 152 ; 
 influence on Green, 215 
 
 Plotinvs, an optimistic mystic, 21 
 
 Political Philosophy, intellectualist, 65- 
 69 ; Hegel's, 206-7 ; Green's, 222 ; 
 Bradley's, in Ethical Studies derived 
 from Hegel, 262, 263-5 
 
 Preacher's Fallacy, 10 
 
 Psychology, panlogist view of, 38-41 ; 
 feeling - absolutist view of, 105-6 ; 
 mythology in Bradley's, no; the 
 Kantian method as opposed to the 
 psychological, 154-5 ; psychological 
 difficulties of Green's view of the 
 timelessness of the self, 239-40, 242 ; 
 Bradley's distinction between logic 
 and, 268, 279 
 
 Quantity of Judgments, Bradley on, 
 
 275-7 
 Quietism, 128-9 
 
 Reinhold, K. L. , supplanted by Fichte, 
 
 164-5 
 
 "Relation, Bradley's attack on, 90-3, 
 101-13, 108 ; Bradley's view that 
 knowledge is false because relational, 
 108-10, and that morality is false 
 because relational, 116; Green's 
 proof from knowledge of a relating 
 consciousness in man and nature, 
 228-31; relation far excellence is 
 ideological, 233-5 ; that Bradley's 
 Absolute is non - contradictory only 
 means absence of, 311-13 
 Religion, God must be conceived dyna- 
 mically, 8 ; reaction from poly- 
 theism as encouraging the passive 
 fallacy, 13 ; mystical form of, 19-21 ; 
 intellectualist philosophy of. 75 - 9 ; 
 
 God absorbed in Absolute, according 
 to Bradley, 115; feeling - absolutist 
 philosophy of, 123-33; Fichte's 
 views on, 168-71 ; Hegel's Logic 
 represents God in his eternal essence, 
 191 ; the philosopher is the mouth- 
 piece of Deity, according to Hegel, 
 201 ; omission of volition vitiates 
 Hegelian philosophy of, 204 ; based 
 by Green on analysis of knowledge, 
 229-32 ; weakness of Green's con- 
 ception of God, 233-5 I difficulties 
 of Green's conception of Sonship of 
 Man, 237-9 ; Hegelian subjectivism 
 in Green's doctrine of the Spiritual 
 Principle, 246-53 ; Green on moral 
 nature of God, 256-8 
 
 Ritchie, D. G., regards Hegel as 
 ' truth ' of Darwin, 5 ; approve-. 
 Muirhead's view of goal of know- 
 ledge, 56 
 
 Robinson, A., on the forms of know- 
 ledge, 48 
 
 Rossetti, D. G. , literary affinities to 
 Bradley, 321 
 
 Schelling, pantheism, 80 ; impersonal 
 subjectivism, 144; position in German 
 idealism and sketch of doctrine, 
 171-9 ; identity -philosophy system- 
 atised by Hegel, 180 ; relations to 
 Hegel at Jena, 181 ; set the fashion 
 of Naturphilosophie, 198; recognises 
 volition, 204 ; on philosophic truth 
 as intuitive, 205 
 
 Schiller, F. C. S., " Axioms as Postu- 
 lates," 4 ; Fichtean line of thought 
 in, 142-3 
 
 Schopenhauer, cosmic striving, 4 ; pan- 
 theism, 80; will-absolute, 81 ; ex- 
 tinction by Hegel, 162 ; a pessimistic 
 mystic, 315 
 
 Scripture, E, W. , New Psychology, 100 
 
 Self, v. Personality 
 
 Self-assertion, as motive to knowledge, 
 
 45- 6 
 
 Self-realisation, Bradley's formula of, 
 121-3 ; Green's, 254 
 
 Sensation, panlogistic view of, 38-9 ; 
 feeling included by Bradley in the 
 Absolute, 82-4; Hegel's treatment 
 of, 203 ; Green's analysis of percep- 
 tion, 226-7 I subjectivism in Green's 
 treatment of perception, 245 - 7 ; 
 Bradley's treatment of perception, 
 269-73, 2 99-33 I Bosanquet's treat- 
 ment of, 330-32 
 
 Sentiment, as motive to knowledge, 
 46-7 
 
 Sewell, H . , Christian Morals, aao
 
 344 
 
 SMITH 
 
 Smith, Goldwin, strictures on Mansel, 
 
 218 
 
 -Social Loyalty, Hegelian view of, 59 ; 
 Bradley on, 61-2 ; the best side of 
 Hegel's conservatism, 206-7 
 Solipsism, v. Subjectivism 
 Space, Bradley on, 93-4 ' 
 
 Spencer, H., Green's attitude to, 2 ; 
 represents English individualism, 69 ; 
 gratuitous agnosticism, 149 ; in- 
 fluence on British thought, 151 
 Spinoza, Spinozism in Bradley, 3 ; an 
 optimistic mystic, 21 ; pantheism, 
 80 ; pantheism excludes theism, 130 ; 
 cosmic emotion in Ethics, 132-3; 
 form of the Ethics adopted by 
 Schelling, 176 ; Bradley's approach 
 to, 260 
 
 State, v. Political Philosophy 
 Stevenson, R. L. , Attwater's religion in 
 
 The Ebb Tide, 133 
 
 Stirling, J. H., on the concrete uni- 
 versal, 33, 264 ; on the hardness of 
 Hegel, 1 80 
 
 Stirner, Max, Der Einziger und sein 
 Eigenthum, 139 ; subjectivist ethics, 
 
 143 
 
 Stoicism, Hegel's view of, 182 
 Stout, G. P., on Bradley's doctrine of 
 
 relation, 91 
 
 -Subjectivism, ch. vi. ; an idolon, 15 ; 
 definition and illustrations of, 25-7 ; 
 reinforced in Britain by German 
 influence, 152-3; Hegel combines 
 intellectualism and absolutism with, 
 199 ; Hegel's avoidance of solipsism, 
 205-6; in Green, 211-12, 244-58; 
 in Bradley's Appearance and Reality, 
 317-19; in Bosanquet, 332-17; funda- 
 mental in Hegel, 337 
 Supposal, Bosanquet's extrusion of 
 supposal from knowledge, 54-5 
 
 Taylor, A. E., hedonism, 112, 120; 
 
 ethical difficulties suggested by, 117 ; 
 
 subjectivist view of art, 140 
 Things, panlogist account of, 30-34 
 Time, panlogist denial of, 34 ; Bradley's 
 
 attack on, 94-5 ; Green's view of the 
 
 Eternal and the human conscious- 
 nesses as timeless, 231, 237-40; 
 Bosanquet argues for merely negative 
 significance of, 325-6 
 Truth, panlogist account of, 50-3 ; 
 Bradley's doctrine of conditionality 
 of, 107-8 ; Bradley's doctrine of the 
 falsity of, 110-12 ; Bosanquet's view 
 of, 335-6 
 
 Ueberweg, on Hegel, 30, 180 
 Universality, Bradley on, 283-4 
 Utility, as motive to knowledge, 44-5 ; 
 
 tends to be used by absolutists as 
 
 criterion of truth, 112-3 
 
 Vischer, F. T., art-philosophy, 70-1 
 Volition, the central point of the philo- 
 sophy of the future, 4-5 ; the passive 
 fallacy ignores, 8 ; the three idola 
 ignore, 15, 28 ; ignored by intel- 
 lectualism, 16-17, 35-7 I an d by sub- 
 jectivism, 27 ; difficulties of intel- 
 lectualist psychology of, 39 - 42 ; 
 nominally included by Bradley in 
 Absolute, 82-3 ; admitted by Bradley 
 to give an intense feeling of reality, 
 1 02 ; an extreme form of volun- 
 tarism, 142-3 ; Fichte's recognition 
 of, 168, 204 ; Hegel's neglect of, 
 204 ; Green's failure to find sys- 
 tematic room for, 236 ; Bradley's 
 ' station-and-duties ' ethic ignores, 
 264-5 ; ignored by Bradley in judg- 
 ment, 273 ; and in inference, 293 ; 
 practically excluded by Bradley from 
 Absolute, 308 ; ignored in Bosan- 
 quet's logic, 328-9 
 Voluntarism, v. Volition 
 
 Wallace, W. , a Hegelian of the right ; 
 constructive weakness of, 3 ; on 
 Hegel's Encyclopedia, 183-4 
 
 Watson, J., on Schelling's transcen- 
 dental idealism, 175-8 
 
 Will, v. Volition 
 
 Wordsworth, W. , as optimistic mystic 
 3I5- 6 
 
 THE END 
 
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