Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/549

 .Bother ci^aruci^. ^ ^g**- mind, very unfashion- able at the present moLL.~.^u among Philosophers, is a firm and uncompromising belief in Morality. He holds that we have as little right to deny the objective validity of our moral as of any other class- of our judgments, and remains unconvinced by the dialectic of Mr. Bradley and Prof. Taylor as to the alleged inconsistencies and irreconcilable contradictions in our moral ideas. Personally I am strongly disposed to believe that ideas which cannot be expressed clearly are not worth expressing at all. It is precisely Dr. McTaggart's combination of lucidity with metaphysical acuteness and thorough- ness that seems to me to put him in the front rank of contem- porary Philosophers. His lucidity is never made into an excuse for shirking difficult problems. It may be, indeed, that he does sometimes forget some of the limitations of human thought, and assumes too readily that there is no alternative between giving a completely adequate, coherent, and intelligible account of the nature of God, or the Absolute, and acquiescing in complete Agnosticism. But this is a fault on the right side. I regard the present work as the most formidable challenge that has for a long time been pre- sented to the theistic Philosopher all the more formidable because it is so largely based on the very premisses which most philosophi- cal Theists accept, and because the controversy is carried on with much the same weapons as those which they are themselves in the habit of employing. Every one who is at all acquainted with Dr. McTaggart's previous writings will know that the creed which he proposes as a substitute for Theism is the belief in a personal Immortality without a personal God. The Absolute is a society of Spirits, who form a Unity but a Unity which exists only in its differentiations. It is clear that this position involves a repudiation of most of the commonplace anti-theistic arguments. Dr. McTag- gart is as far removed from Materialism, Agnosticism, or any form however disguised and attenuated of Naturalism as the most dogmatic of Theologians, and far more so in reality than some Philosophers who use language about the Absolute which sounds not merely theistic but highly orthodox. All the more important is it that Dr. McTaggart's challenge should be taken up, especially by those who believe that truth is more likely to emerge from error than from obscurity. I need hardly say that in the present review I can do no more than indicate the main heads of Dr. McTaggart's argument, and in still fainter outline the sort of reply which, as it seems to me, might be made to them. The first chapter is devoted "to the importance of Dogma". All the flimsy evasions by which people have persuaded themselves that jt is possible to have Eeligion without Dogma are here sub- jected to a remorseless dissection. Religion is defined as "an emotion resting on a conviction of a harmony between ourselves and the universe at large," dogmas as "propositions which have any metaphysical. significance" and religious dogmas as "proposi- tions whose acceptance or rejection by any person would alter hi&