Page:Appearance and Reality (1916).djvu/581

 may be brought to nought by something—we do not know what. And I submit that the difference between such doctrines and those of this work is really considerable.

And if I am told that generally the doctrines of this book fail to satisfy our nature’s demands, I would request first a plain answer to a question which, I think, is plain. Am I to understand that somehow we are to have all that we want and have it just as we want it? For myself I should reply that such a satisfaction seems to me impossible. But I do not feel called on to criticise this demand, until I see it stated explicitly; and at present I merely press for a plain answer to my question.

And if the real question is not this, and if it concerns only the satisfaction somehow of our nature’s main claims, I do not see that, as compared with other views about the world, the view of this work is inferior. I am supposing it to be compared of course only with views that aim at theoretical consistency, and not with mere practical beliefs. Practical beliefs, we know, are regulated by working efficiency. They emphasize one point here, and they suppress another point there, without much care to avoid a theoretical self-contradiction. And working beliefs of any kind, I imagine, can more or less exist under and together with any kind of theoretical doctrine. The comparison I have in view here is of another order, and would be made between doctrines each of which claimed to be a true and consistent account of the whole of things. Such a comparison I do not propose to make, since it would require much space, and, while perhaps serving little purpose otherwise, could not fail to give great offence. But there are two conditions of any fair comparison on which I would insist. In a question about the satisfaction of our nature all the aspects of that nature must first be set forth, and not a one-sided distortion of these or an arbitrary selection from them. And in the second place every side of the doctrines compared must be stated without suppression of any features that may be found inconvenient. For every view of the world, we must all agree, has its own special difficulties. Where, for instance, from a theistic or a Christian point of view a writer condemns, say, a “naturalistic” account of good and evil—would that writer, if he had a desire for fairness and truth, fail to recall the fact that his own view also has been morally condemned? Would he forget that the relation of an omniscient moral Creator to the things of his hand has given trouble intellectually, and is morally perhaps not from all sides “comfortable?” His attitude, I judge, would be otherwise, and this judgment, I submit, is that of every fair-minded man, whatever doctrines otherwise he may hold. Nothing is easier than to make a general attack on any doctrine while the alternative is ignored, and few things, I would add, are, at least in philosophy, less profitable. With this I will pass to a special treatment of some difficult problems.