Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/468

 454 W. CALDWELL : V. It is to be sincerely hoped that the coming generation of metaphysical philosophers will have lost altogether that feel- ing of resentment which many thinkers of to-day still cherish against what they believe to be the dishonesty or the thoroughly unphilosophical character of any attempt to judge of theories by their consequences or by their influence over the " will ". A moment's reflexion will perhaps convince us that David Hume (confessedly one of the purest and freest intelligences not only of the Enlightenment Period but of all time) never doubted that action, human action, was, after all, the thing, the entity of which all metaphysic might be regarded as attempt- ing an explanation. It was because knowledge and theory could not justify action that he professed a sceptical theory of knowledge. And there are signs in many other modern metaphysicians that they too simply cannot keep purely theoretical inquiries about the nature of things apart from questions of practical necessity. All the world knows that Kant (whose mind is almost an ultimate fact for the philo- sopher) could not and did not,- however the fact is ridiculed (as by Heine and Schopenhauer and others) or explained away or justified (by Edward Caird, e.g., and Prof. Adamson). As for Hegel, Prof. Ritchie (like many other expositors) has recently z been very anxious to prove that he [Hegelj ap- proached logic through the study of history. If we turn to Mr. F. H. Bradley whom many of us delight to honour as our modern Parmenides, we find him (partly like Hume) openly confessing that his only reason for treating of such things or topics as " God and Religion " is his practical inability to refrain from doing so. "If 2 I have touched on them here it was because I could not help it." Why does not Mr. Bradley demand of himself a philosophy of this very fact. Surely there is no fact, no tendency, beneath the level of meta- physical inquiry. Why is it that neither he nor Hume can avoid treating of such perilous matters, or that they both concede that to treat of them at all is defensible only as the expression of an instinct ? Evolution teaches us that there would be no such instinct were not " morality and religion" matters of " practical consequences," matter of real as opposed to imaginary relations between our actions and the behaviour (?) of the universe as a whole. " That a man should treat," says Mr. Bradley, " of God and religion in order merely to understand them and apart from the influence of some other consideration and inducement is to many of us [i.e., we 1 See MIND, Jan. and Oct., 1899. 2 Appearance, anil Reality (1st ed.) p. 451.