Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/462

 448 W. CALDWELL : of things. Before we can be sure about the consequences to our experience of certain theories or of the truth of certain theories it is absolutely necessary to have in our minds a uniformly working conception of what our experience is. At one place he emphasises the fact that the experience by which we test theories and propositions must be particular, 1 and at another he seems to assign no limit to the experience that may be ours if we but have the conviction of the reality in the world of certain ideal things. " The notion of God, on the other hand, however inferior it may be in clearness to those mathematical notions so current in mechanical philosophy, - has at least this practical superiority over them, that it guarantees an ideal order [how much better this is than definite And particular consequences !] that shall be permanently preserved." ,(7) These very words inferior in clearness and withal practical superiority are only too suggestive of the difficulties that arise in the minds of metaphysicians in consequence of Prof. James's comparative neglect to give a uniform state- ment or theory of the real nature of experience and of his neglect to offer us a valid reason for sacrificing theoretical inferiority to practical superiority. The real question is not, as he puts it : " And how, experience being what it is once for all [i.e., godless and ' brutish ' and ' short ' how fatal !], would God's presence in it make it any more ' living,' any ' richer ' in our sight ? " but : " Is there anything Divine about experience as it now is '? " for surely if the world is fixed and determined as it is without God, it is supremely idle to bring in anybody or anything to make it different. To do so would also be illogical, 3 for as logicians know men never invent absolutely groundless hypotheses. We must have at least some ground in experience for believing in a divinity that " shapes our ends " ere we can logically talk of the theistic philosophy as what Prof. James calls a " vital hypothesis ". It would be perfectly in order for Prof. James to attempt by some philosophy or other to show that the Good Life and Goodness may be demonstrated to be the supreme 1 Cf. supra, sec. i. One of the worst phases of the Materialism of to- day is its impossible faith in the actuality of certain isolated particular things. The more resolutely we search for the indubitably particular and the merely individual, the more surely do we find that nothing exists unto or for itself. As Mr. Bradley said lon<^ ago (Logic, p. 63) : " // is an illu- sion to suppose, that by speaking of ' events ' we get down to real and solid particulars, and leave the region of universal adjectives ". 2 Italics mine. 3 As Mr. Bosanquet puts it (Logic, i., 287), " Every hypothetical judg- ment is affirmed only within an actual system ".