02.02 - Part 2, Chapter 2

CHAPTER II IDEALISM; AFTER SOME RECENT ENGLISH WRITINGS 1 THE difficulties in the way of an empirical philosophy of science, with which we dealt in the last

1 The reader who has no familiarity with philosophic literature is advised to omit this chapter. The philosophic reader will, I hope, regard it as provisional. Transcendental Idealism is, if I mistake not, at this moment in rather a singular position in this country. In the land of its birth (as I am informed) it is but little considered. In English-speaking countries it is, within the narrow circle of professed philosophers, perhaps the dominant mood of thought; while without that circle it is not so much objected to as totally ignored. This anomalous state of things is no doubt due in part to the inherent difficulty of the subject; but even more, I think, to the fact that the energy of English Idealists has been consumed rather in the production of commentaries on other people’s systems than in expositions of their own. The result of this is that we do not quite know where we are, that we are more or less in a condition of expectancy, and that both learners and critics are placed at a disadvantage. Pending the appearance of some original work which shall represent the constructive views of the younger school of thinkers, I have written the following chapter, with reference chiefly to the writings of the late Mr. T. H. Green, which at present contain the most important exposition, so far as I know, of this phase of English thought. Mr. Bradley’s noteworthy work, Appearance and Reality, published some time after this chapter was finished, is written with characteristic independence; but I know not whether it has yet commanded any large measure of assent from the few who are competent to pronounce a verdict upon its merits. chapter, largely arise from the conflict which exists between two parts of a system, the scientific half of which requires us to regard experience as an effect of an external and independent world, while the philosophic or epistemological half offers this same experience to us as the sole groundwork and logical foundation on which any knowledge whatever of an external and independent world may be rationally based. These difficulties and the arguments founded on them require to be urged, in the first instance, in opposition to those who explicitly hold what I have called the ’ naturalistic ’ creed; and then to that general body of educated opinion which, though reluctant to contract its beliefs within the narrow circuit of ’ naturalism,’ yet habitually assumes that there is presented to us in science a body of opinion, certified by reason, solid, certain, and impregnable, to which theology adds, as an edifying supplement, a certain number of dogmas, of which the well-disposed assimilate as many, but only as many, as their superior allegiance to ’ positive ’ knowledge will permit them to digest.

These two classes, however, by no means exhaust the kinds of opinion with which it is necessary to deal. And in particular there is a metaphysical school, few indeed in numbers, but none the less important in matters speculative, whose general position is wholly distinct and independent; who would, indeed, not perhaps very widely, dissent from the negative conclusions already reached, but who have their own positive solution of the problem of the universe. In their opinion, all the embarrassments which may be shown to attend on the empirical philosophy are due to the fact that empirical philosophers wholly misunderstand the essential nature of that experience on which they profess to found their beliefs. The theory of perception evolved out of Locke, by Berkeley and Hume, which may be traced without radical modification through their modern successors, is, according to the school of which I speak, at the root of all the mischief. Of this theory they make short work. They press to the utmost the sceptical consequences to which it inevitably leads. They show, or profess to show, that it renders not only scientific knowledge, but any knowledge whatever, impossible; and they offer as a substitute a theory of experience, very remote indeed from ordinary modes of expression, by which these consequences may, in their judgment, be entirely avoided. The dimensions and character of these Notes render it impossible, even were I adequately equipped for the task, to deal fully with so formidable a subject as TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM, either in its historical or in its metaphysical aspect. Remote though it be from ordinary modes of thought, some brief discussion of the theory with which, in some recent English works, it supplies us concerning Nature and God is, however, absolutely necessary; and I therefore here present the following observations to the philosophic reader with apologies for their brevity, and to the unphilosophic reader with apologies for their length. From what I have already said it is clear that the theory to which Transcendental Idealism may be, from our point of view, considered as a reply, is not the theory of experience which is taken for granted in ordinary scientific statement, but the closely allied ’ psychological theory of perception ’ evolved by thinkers usually classed rather as philosophers than as men of science. The difference is not wholly immaterial, as will appear in the sequel.

What, then, is this ’ psychological theory of perception ’? Or, rather, where is the weak point in it at which it is open to attack by the transcendental idealists? It lies in the account given by that theory of the real. According to this account the 4 real ’ in external experience, that which, because it is not due to any mental manipulation by the percipient, such as abstraction or comparison, may be considered as the experienced fact, is, in ultimate analysis, either a sensation or a group of sensations. These sensations and groups of sensations are subjected in the mind to a process of analysis and comparison. Discrimination is made between those which are unlike. Those which have points of resemblance are called by a common name. The sequences and co -existences which obtain among them are noted; the laws by which they are bound together are discovered; and the order in which they may be expected to recur is foreseen and understood.

Now, say the idealists, if everything of which external reality can be predicated is thus either a sensation or a group of sensations, if these and these only are ’ given ’ in external appearance, everything else, in eluding relations, being mere fictions of the mind, we are reduced to the absurd position of holding that the real is not only unknown, but is also unknowable. For a brief examination of the nature of experience is sufficient to prove that an unrelated ’ thing ’ (be that ’ thing ’ a sensation or a group of sensations), which is not qualified by its resemblance to other things, its difference from other things, and its connection with other things, is really, so far as we are concerned, no ’ thing ’ at all. It is not an object of possible experience; its true character must be for ever hid from us; or, rather, as character consists simply in relations, it has no character, nor can it form part of that intelligible world with which alone we have to deal.

Ideas of relation are, therefore, required to convert the supposed ’ real ’ of external experience into something of which experience can take note. But such ideas themselves are unintelligible, except as the results of the intellectual activity of some ’ Self ’ or ’ I ’. They must be somebody’s thought, somebody’s ideas; if only for the purpose of mutual comparison, there must be some bond of union between them other than themselves. Here again, therefore, the psychological analysis of experience breaks down, and it becomes plain that just as the real in external experience is real only in virtue of an intellectual element, namely, ideas of relation (categories), through which it was apprehended, so in internal experience ideas and sensations presuppose the existence of an ’ I,’ or self-conscious unity, which is neither sensation nor idea, which ought not, therefore, on the psychological theory to be considered as having any claim to reality at all, but which, nevertheless, is presupposed in the very possibility of phenomena appearing as elements in a single experience.

We are thus apparently left by the idealist theory face to face with a mind (thinking subject) which is the source of relations (categories), and a world which is constituted by relations: with a mind which is conscious of itself, and a world of which that mind may without metaphor be described as the creator. We have, in short, reached the central position of transcendental idealism. But before we proceed to subject the system to any critical observations, let us ask what it is we are supposed to gain by endeavouring thus to rethink the universe from so unaccustomed a point of view. In the first place, then, it is claimed for this theory that it frees us from the scepticism which, in matters scientific as well as in matters theological, follows inevitably upon the psychological doctrine of perception as just explained: a scepticism which not only leaves no room for God and the soul, but destroys the very possibility of framing any general proposition about the ’ external ’ world, by destroying the possibility of there being any world, ’ external ’ or otherwise, in which permanent relation shall exist. In the second place, it makes Reason no mere accidental excrescence on a universe of material objects; an element to be added to, or subtracted from, the sum of ’ things ’ as the blind shock of unthinking causes may decide. Rather does it make Reason the very essence of all that is or can be: the (immanent) cause of the world - process; its origin and its goal. In the third place, it professes to establish on a firm foundation the moral freedom of self-conscious agents. That ’ Self ’ which is the prior condition of there being a natural world cannot be the creature of that world. It stands above and beyond the sphere of causes and effects; it is no mere object among other objects, driven along its predestined course by external forces in obedience to alien laws. On the contrary, it is a free, autonomous Spirit, not only bound, but able, to fulfil the moral commands which are but the expression of its own most essential being.

II

I am reluctant to suggest objections to any theory which promises results so admirable. Yet I cannot think that all the difficulties with which it is surrounded have been fairly faced, or, at any rate, fully explained, by those who accept its main principles. Consider, for example, the crucial question of the analysis which reduces all experience to an experience of relations, or, in more technical language, which constitutes the universe out of categories. We may grant without difficulty that the contrasted theory, which proposes to reduce the universe to an unrelated chaos of impressions or sensations, is quite untenable. But must we not also grant that in all experience there is a refractory element which, though it cannot be presented in isolation, nevertheless refuses wholly to merge its being in a network of relations, necessary as these may be to give it ’ significance for us as thinking beings ’? If so, whence does this irreducible element arise? The mind, we are told, is the source of relation. What is the source of that which is related? A ’ thing-in-itself ’ which, by impressing the percipient mind, shall furnish the ’ matter ’ for which categories provide the ’ form,’ is a way out of the difficulty (if difficulty there be) which raises more doubts than it solves. The followers of Kant themselves make haste to point out that this hypothetical cause of that which is ’ given ’ in experience cannot, since ex hypothesi it lies beyond experience, be known as a cause, or even as existing. Nay, it is not so much unknown and unknowable as indescribable and unintelligible; not so much a riddle whose meaning is obscure as mere absence and vacuity of any meaning whatever. Accordingly, from the speculations with which we are here concerned it has been dismissed with ignominy, and it need not, therefore, detain us further. But we do not get rid of the difficulty by getting rid of Kant’s solution of it. His dictum still seems to me to remain true, that ’ without matter categories are empty.’ And, indeed, it is hard to see how it is possible to conceive a universe in which relations shall be all in all, but in which nothing is to be permitted for the relations to subsist between. Relations surely imply a something which is related, and if that something is, in the absence of relations, ’ nothing for us as thinking beings,’ so relations in the absence of that something are mere symbols emptied of their signification; they are, in short, an ’ illegitimate abstraction.’

Those, moreover, who hold that these all-constituting relations are the ’ work of the mind ’ would seem bound also to hold that this concrete world of ours, down to its minutest detail, must evolve itself a priori out of the movement of ’ pure thought.’ There is no room in it for the ’ contingent ’; there is no room in it for the ’ given ’; experience itself would seem to be a superfluity. And we are at a loss, therefore, to understand why that dialectical process which moves, I will not say so convincingly, but at least so smoothly, through the abstract categories of ’ being,’ ’ not-being,’ ’ becoming,’ and so forth, should stumble and hesitate when it comes to deal with that world of Nature which is, after all, one of the principal subjects about which we desire information. No explanation which I remember to have seen makes it otherwise than strange that we should, as the idealists claim, be able so thoroughly to identify ourselves with those thoughts of God which are the necessary preliminary to creation, but should so little understand creation itself; that we should out of our unaided mental resources be competent to reproduce the whole ground-plan of the universe, and should yet lose ourselves so hopelessly in the humblest of its ante-rooms. This difficulty at once requires us to ask on what ground it is alleged that these constitutive relations are the ’ work of the mind.’ It is true, no doubt, that ordinary usage would describe as mental products the more abstract thoughts (categories), such, for example, as ’ being,’ ’ not-being,’ ’ causation,’ ’ reciprocity,’ &c. But it must be recollected, in the first place, that transcendental idealism does not, as a rule, derive its inspiration from ordinary usage; and in the second place, that even ordinary usage alters its procedure when it comes to such more concrete cases of relation as, for instance, ’ shape ’ and ’ position,’ which, rightly or wrongly, are always considered as belonging to the ’ external ’ world, and presented by the external world to thought, not created by thought for itself. Are the transcendental idealists, then, bound by their own most essential principles, in opposition both to their arguments against Kant’s ’ thing-in-itself ’ and to the ordinary beliefs of mankind, to invest the thinking ’ self ’ with this attribute of causal or quasicausal activity? It certainly appears to me that they are not. Starting, it will be recollected, from the analysis (criticism) of experience, they arrived at the conclusion that the world of objects exists and has a meaning only for the self-conscious ’ I ’ (subject), and that the self-conscious ’ I ’ only knows itself in contrast and in opposition to the world of objects. Each is necessary to the other; in the absence of the other neither has any significance. How, then, can we venture to say of one that the other is its product? and if we say it of either, must we not in consistency insist on saying it of both? Thus, though the presence of a self-conscious principle may be necessary to constitute the universe, it cannot be considered as the creator of that universe; or if it be, then must we acknowledge that precisely in the same way and precisely to the same extent is the universe the creator of the self-conscious principle.

All, therefore, that the transcendental argument requires or even allows us to accept, is a ’ manifold ’ of relations on the one side, and a bare self-conscious principle of unity on the other, by which that manifold becomes inter-connected in the ’ field of a single experience.’ We are not permitted, except by a process of abstraction which is purely temporary and provisional, to consider the ’ manifold ’ apart from the ’ unity,’ nor the ’ unity ’ apart from the ’ manifold.’ The thoughts do not make the thinker, nor the thinker the thoughts; but together they constitute that Whole or Absolute whose elements, as they are mere no -sense apart from one another, cannot in strictness be even said to contribute separately towards the total result.

Now let us consider what bearing this conclusion has upon (i) Theology, (2) Ethics, and (3) Science. i. As regards Theology, it might be supposed that at least idealism provided us with a universe which, if not created or controlled by Reason (creation and control implying causal action), may yet properly be said to be throughout infused by Reason and to be in necessary harmony with it. But on a closer examination difficulties arise which somewhat mar this satisfactory conclusion. In the first place, if theology is to provide us with a groundwork for religion, the God of whom it speaks must be something more than the bare ’ principle of unity ’ required to give coherence to the multiplicity of Nature. Apart from Nature He is, on the theory we are considering, a mere metaphysical abstraction, the geometrical point through which pass all the threads which make up the web of possible experience: no fitting object, surely, of either love, reverence, or devotion. In combination with Nature He is no doubt ’ the principle of unity,’ and all the fulness of concrete reality besides; but every quality with which He is thus associated belongs to that portion of the Absolute Whole from which, by hypothesis, He distinguishes Himself; and, were it otherwise, we cannot find in these qualities, compacted, as they are, of good and bad, of noble and base, the Perfect Goodness without which religious feelings can never find an adequate object. Thus, neither the combining principle alone, nor the combining principle considered in its union with the multiplicity which it combines, can satisfy the requirements of an effectual theology. Not the first, because it is a barren abstraction; not the second, because in its all-inclusive universality it holds in suspension, without preference and without repulsion, every element alike of the knowable world. Of these none, whatever be its nature, be it good or bad, base or noble, can be considered as alien to the Absolute: all are necessary, and all are characteristic. Of these two alternatives, I understand that it is the first which is usually adopted by the school of thought with which we are at present concerned. It may therefore be desirable to reiterate that a ’ unifying principle ’ can, as such, have no qualities, moral or otherwise. Lovingkindness, for example, and Equity are attributes which, like all attributes, belong not to the unifying principle, but to the world of objects which it constitutes. They are conceptions which belong to the realm of empirical psychology. Nor can I see any method by which they are to be hitched on to the ’ pure spiritual subject,’ as elements making up its essential character.

2. But if this be so, what is the ethical value of that freedom which is attributed by the idealistic theory to the self-conscious ’ I ’? It is true that this ’ I ’ as conceived by idealism is above all the ’ categories,’ including, of course, the category of causation. It is not in space nor in time. It is subject neither to mutation nor decay. The stress of material forces touches it not, nor is it in any servitude to chance or circumstance, to inherited tendencies or acquired habits. But all these immunities and privileges it possesses in virtue of its being, not an agent in a world of concrete fact, but a thinking ’ subject,’ for whom alone, as it is alleged, such a world exists. Its freedom is metaphysical, not moral; for moral freedom can only have a meaning at all in reference to a being who acts and who wills, and is only of real importance for us in relation to a being who not only acts, but is acted on, who not only wills, but who wills against the opposing influences of temptation. Such freedom cannot, it is plain, be predicated of a mere ’ subject,’ nor is the freedom proper to a ’ subject ’ of any worth to man as ’ object,’ to man as known in experience, to man fighting his way with varying fortunes against the stream of adverse circumstances, in a world made up of causes and effects. 1

1 This proposition would, probably, not be widely dissented from by some of the ethical writers of the idealist school. The freedom

These observations bring into sufficiently clear relief the difficulty which exists, on the idealistic theory, in bringing together into any sort of intelligible association the ’ I ’ as supreme principle of unity, and the ’ I ’ of empirical psychology, which which they postulate is not the freedom merely of the pure self-conscious subject. On the contrary, it is the individual, with all his qualities, passions, and emotions, who in their view possesses free will. But the ethical value of the freedom thus attributed to selfconscious agents seems on further examination to disappear. Mankind, it seems, are on this theory free, but their freedom does not exclude determinism, but only that form of determinism which consists in external constraint. Their actions are upon this view strictly prescribed by their antecedents, but these antecedents are nothing other than the characters of the agents themselves.

Now it may seem at first sight plausible to describe that man as free whose behaviour is due to ’ himself ’ alone. But without quarrelling over words, it is, I think, plain that, whether it be proper to call him free or not, he at least lacks freedom in the sense in which freedom is necessary in order to constitute responsibility. It is impossible to say of him that he ’ ought,’ and therefore he ’ can’. For at any given moment of his life his next action is by hypothesis strictly determined. This is also true of every previous moment, until we get back to that point in his life’s history at which he cannot, in any intelligible sense of the term, be said to have a character at all. Antecedently to this, the causes which have produced him are in no special sense connected with his individuality, but form part of the general complex of phenomena which make up the world. It is evident, therefore, that every act which he performs may be traced to pre-natal, and possibly to purely material, antecedents, and that, even if it be true that what he does is the outcome of his character, his character itself is the outcome of causes over which he has not, and cannot by any possibility have, the smallest control. Such a theory destroys responsibility, and leaves our actions the inevitable outcome of external conditions not less completely than any doctrine of controlling fate, whether materialistic or theological. has desires and fears, pleasures and pains, faculties and sensibilities; which was not a little time since, and which a little time hence will be no more. The ’ I ’ as principle of unity is outside time; it can have, therefore, no history. The ’ I ’ of experience, which learns and forgets, which suffers and which enjoys, unquestionably has a history. What is the relation between the two? We seem equally precluded from saying that they are the same, and from saying that they are different. We cannot say that they are the same, because they are, after all, divided by the whole chasm which distinguishes ’ subject ’ from ’ object.’ We cannot say they are different, because our feelings and our desires seem a not less interesting and important part of ourselves than a mere unifying principle whose functions, after all, are of a purely metaphysical character. We cannot say they are ’ two aspects of the same thing,’ because there is no virtue in this useful phrase which shall empower it on the one hand to ear-mark a fragment of the world of objects, and say of it, ’ this is I,’ or, on the other, to take the ’ pure subject ’ by which the world of objects is constituted, and say of it that it shall be itself an object in that world from which its essential nature requires it to be self-distinguished. But as it thus seems difficult or impossible intelligibly to unite into a personal whole the ’ pure ’ and the ’empirical’ Self, so it is difficult or impossible to conceive the relations between the pure, though limited, self-consciousness which is ’ I ’ and the universal and eternal Self-consciousness which is God. The first has been described as a ’ mode ’ or ’ manifestation ’ of the second. But are we not, in using such language, falling into the kind of error against which, in other connections, the idealists are most careful to warn us? Are we not importing a category which has its meaning and its use in the world of objects into a transcendental region where it really has neither meaning nor use at all? Grant, however, for the sake of argument, that it has a meaning; grant that we may legitimately describe one ’ pure subject ’ as a ’ mode ’ or ’ manifestation ’ of another how is this partial identity to be established? How can we, who start from the basis of our own limited self-consciousness, rise to the knowledge of that completed and divine self-consciousness of which, according to the theory, we share the essential nature? The difficulty is evaded but not solved in those statements of the idealist theory which always speak of Thought without specifying whose Thought. It seems to be thus assumed that the thought is God’s, and that in rethinking it we share His being. But no such assumption would seem to be justifiable. For the basis, we know, of the whole theory is a ’ criticism ’ or analysis of the essential elements of experience. But the criticism must, for each of us, be necessarily of his own experience, for of no other experience can he know anything, except indirectly and by way of inference from his own. What, then is this criticism supposed to establish (say) for me? Is it that experience depends upon the unification by a self-conscious ’ I ’ of a world constituted by relations? In strictness, No. It can only establish that my experience depends upon a unification by my self-conscious ’ I ’ of a world of relations present to me, and to me alone. To this ’ I,’ to this particular ’ self-conscious subject,’ all other ’ I’s,’ including God, must be objects, constituted like all objects by relations, rendered possible or significant only by their unification in the ’ content of a single experience ’ namely, my own. In other words, that which (if it exists at all) is essentially ’ subject ’ can only be known, or thought of, or spoken about, as ’ object.’ Surely a very paradoxical conclusion.

It may perhaps be said by way of reply, that in talking of particular ’ I’s ’ and particular experiences we are using language properly applicable only to the ’self ’ dealt with by the empirical psychologist, the ’ self ’ which is not the ’ subject,’ but the ’ object,’ of experience. I will not dispute about terms; and the relations which exist between the ’ pure ego ’ and the ’empirical ego* are, as I have already said, so obscure that it is not always easy to employ a perfectly accurate terminology in endeavouring to deal with them. Yet this much would seem to be certain. If the words ’ self,’ ’ ego,’ ’ I,’ are to be used intelligibly at all, they must mean, whatever else they do or do not mean, a ’ somewhat ’ which is selfdistinguished, not only from every other knowable object, but also from every other possible ’self.’ What we are ’ in ourselves,’ apart from the flux of thoughts and feelings which move in never-ending pageant through the chambers of consciousness, metaphysicians have, indeed, found it hard to say. Some of them have said we are nothing. But if this conclusion be, as I think it is, conformable neither to our instinctive beliefs nor to a sound psychology; if we are, as I believe, more than a mere series of occurrences, yet it seems equally certain that the very notion of Personality excludes the idea of any one person being a ’ mode ’ of any other, and forces us to reject from philosophy a supposition which, if it be tolerable at all, can find a place only in mysticism. But the idealistic theory pressed to its furthest conclusions requires of us to reject, as it appears to me, even more than this. We are not only precluded by it from identifying ourselves, even partially, with the Eternal Consciousness: we are also precluded from supposing that either the Eternal Consciousness or any other consciousness exists, save only our own. For, as I have already said, the Eternal Consciousness, if it is to be known, can only be known on the same conditions as any other object of knowledge. It must be constituted by relations; it must form part of the ’ content of experience ’ of the knower; it must exist as part of the ’multiplicity’ reduced to ’ unity ’ by his self-consciousness. But to say that it can only be known on these terms, is to say that it cannot be known as it exists; for if it exists at all, it exists by hypothesis as Eternal Subject, and as such it clearly is not constituted by relations, nor is it either a ’ possible object of experience,’ or ’ anything for us as thinking beings.’ No consciousness, then, is a possible object of knowledge for any other consciousness: a statement which, on the idealistic theory of knowledge, is equivalent to saying that for any one consciousness all other consciousnesses are less than non-existent For as that which is ’ critically ’ shown to be an inevitable element in experience has thereby conferred on it the highest possible degree of reality, so that which cannot on any terms become an element in experience falls in the scale of reality far below mere not-being, and is reduced, as we have seen, to mere meaningless no-sense. By this kind of reasoning the idealists themselves demonstrate the ’ I ’ to be necessary; the unrelated object and the thing-in-itself to be impossible. Not less, by this kind of reasoning, must each one of us severally be driven to the conclusion that in the infinite variety of the universe there is room for but one knowing subject, and that this subject is ’ himself.’ 1

1 Prof. Caird, in his most interesting and suggestive lecture on the Evolution of Religion, puts forward a theory essentially different from the one I have just been dealing with. In his view, a multiplicity of objects apprehended by a single self-conscious subject does not suffice to constitute an intelligible universe. The world of objects and the perceiving mind are themselves opposites which require a higher unity to hold them together. This higher unity is

IV

3. That the transcendental ’ solipsism ’ which is the natural outcome of such speculations is not less inconsistent with science, morality, and commonsense than the psychological, or Berkeleian 1 form of the same creed, is obvious. But without attempting further to press idealism to results which, whether legitimate or not, all idealists would agree in

God; so that by the simplest of metaphysical demonstrations Prof. Caird lays deep the foundations of his theology, and proves not only that God exists, but that His Being is philosophically involved in the very simplest of our experiences.

I confess, with regret, that this reasoning appears to me inconclusive. Surely we must think of God as, on the transcendental theory, we think of ourselves; that is, as a Subject distinguishing itself from, but giving unity to, a world of phenomena. But if such a Subject and such a world cannot be conceived without also postulating some higher unity in which their differences shall vanish and be dissolved, then God Himself would require some yet higher deity to explain His existence. If, in short, a multiplicity of phenomena presented to and apprehended by a conscious ’ I ’ form together an intelligible and self-sufficient whole, then it is hard to see by what logic we are to get beyond the solipsism which, as I have urged in the text, seems to be the necessary outcome of one form, at least, of the transcendental argument. If, on the other hand, subject and object cannot form such an intelligible and self-sufficient whole, then it seems impossible to imagine what is the nature of that Infinite One in which the multiplicity of things and persons find their ultimate unity. Of such a God we can have no knowledge, nor can we say that we are formed in His image, or share His essence.

1 Of course I do not mean to suggest that Berkeley was a ’ solipsist.’ On the scientific bearing of psychological idealism, see Philosophic Doubt, chap. ix. repudiating, let me, in conclusion, point out how little assistance this theory is able under any circumstances to afford us in solving important problems connected with the Philosophy of Science. The psychology of Hume, as we have seen, threw doubt upon the very possibility of legitimately framing general propositions about the world of objects. The observation of isolated and unrelated impressions of sense, which is in effect what experience became reduced to under his process of analysis, may generate habits of expectation, but never can justify rational beliefs. The law of universal causation, for example, can never be proved by a mere repetition, however prolonged, of similar sequences, though the repetition may, through the association of ideas, gradually compel us to expect the second term of the sequence whenever the first term comes within the field of our observation. So far Hume as interpreted by the transcendental idealists.

Now, how is this difficulty met on the idealistic theory? Somewhat in this way. These categories or general principles of relation have not, say the idealists, to be collected (so to speak) from individual and separate experiences (as the empirical philosophers believe, but as Hume, the chief among empiricists, showed to be impossible); neither are they, as the a priori philosophers supposed, part of the original furniture of the observing mind, intended by Providence to be applied as occasion arises to the world of experience with which by a beneficent, if unexplained, adaptation they find themselves in a pre-established harmony. On the contrary, they are the ’necessary prius,’ the antecedent condition, of there being any experience at all; so that the difficulty of subsequently extracting them from experience does not arise. The world of phenomena is in truth their creation; so that the conformity between the two need not be any subject of surprise. Thus, at one and the same time does idealism vindicate experience and set the scepticism of the empiricist at rest.

I doubt, however, whether this solution of the problem will really stand the test of examination. Assuming for the sake of argument that the world is constituted by ’ categories/ the old difficulty arises in a new shape when we ask on what principle those categories are in any given case to be applied. For they are admittedly not of universal application; and, as the idealists themselves are careful to remind us, there is no more fertile source of error than the importation of them into a sphere wherein they have no legitimate business. Take, for example, the category of causation, from a scientific point of view the most important of all. By what right does the existence of this ’ principle of relation ’ enable us to assert that throughout the whole world every event must have a cause, and every cause must be invariably succeeded by the same event? Because we can apply the category, are we, therefore, bound to apply it? Does any absurdity or contradiction ensue from our supposing that the order of Nature is arbitrary and casual, and that, repeat the antecedent with what accuracy we may, there is no security that the accustomed consequent will follow? I must confess that I can perceive none. Of course, we should thus be deprived of one of our most useful ’ principles of unification ’; but this would by no means result in the universe resolving itself into that unthinkable chaos of unrelated atoms which is the idealist bugbear. There are plenty of categories left; and if the final aim of philosophy be, indeed, to find the Many in One and the One in Many, this end would be as completely, if not as satisfactorily, accomplished by conceiving the world to be presented to the thinking ’ subject ’ in the haphazard multiplicity of unordered succession, as by any more elaborate method. Its various elements lying side by side in one Space and one Time would still be related together in the content of a single experience; they would still form an intelligible whole; their unification would thus be effectually accomplished without the aid of the higher categories. But it is evident that a universe so constituted, though it might not be inconsistent with Philosophy, could never be interpreted by Science. As we saw in the earlier portion of this chapter, it is not very easy to understand why, if the universe be constituted by relations, and relations are the work of the mind, the mind should be dependent on experience for finding out anything about the universe. But granting the necessity of experience, it seems as hard to make that experience answer our questions on the idealist as on the empirical hypothesis. Neither on the one theory nor on the other does any method exist for extracting general truths out of particular observations, unless some general truths are first assumed. On the empirical hypothesis there are no such general truths. Pure empiricism has, therefore, no claim to be a philosophy. On the idealist hypothesis there appears to be only one general truth applicable to the whole intelligible world a world which, be it recollected, includes everything in respect to which language can be significantly used; a world which, therefore, includes the negative as well as the positive, the false as well as the true, the imaginary as well as the real, the impossible as well as the possible. This single all-embracing truth is that the multiplicity of phenomena, whatever be its nature, must always be united, and only exists in virtue of being united, in the experience of a single self-conscious Subject. But this general proposition, whatever be its value, cannot, I conceive, effectually guide us in the application of subordinate categories. It supplies us with no method for applying one principle rather than another within the field of experience. It cannot give us information as to what portion of that field, if any, is subject to the law of causation, nor tell us which of our perceptions, if any, may be taken as evidence of the existence of a permanent world of objects such as is implied in all scientific doctrine. Though, therefore, the old questions come upon us in a new form, clothed, I will not say shrouded, in a new terminology, they come upon us with all the old insistence. They are restated, but they are not solved; and I am unable, therefore, to find in idealism any escape from the difficulties which, in the region of theology, ethics, and science, empiricism leaves upon our hands. 1

1 1 have made in this chapter no reference to the idealistic theory of aesthetics. Holding the views I have indicated upon the general import of idealism, such a course seemed unnecessary. But I cannot help thinking that even those who find in that theory a more satisfactory basis for their convictions than I am able to do, must feel that there is something rather forced and arbitrary in the attempts that have been made to exhibit the artistic fancies of an insignificant fraction of the human race during a very brief period of its history as essential and important elements in the development and manifestation of the world-producing ’ Idea.’