Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/259

 258 CRITICAL NOTICES : ousness, if any, would consist, are apparently matters rather of application in detail than of theoretical principle. Taking, then, the philosophy as so presented, ve shall find it fall naturally, as every philosophy should, into the two main branches of specula- tive and practical. Hinton avoids the error, too prevalent with Englishmen, of seeking to rush the questions of Ethic, without previously settling their foundations in the general analysis of experiential knowledge. Nothing can appear more futile to an unprejudiced observer than to treat either Ethic, Logic, or Psychology, or attempt an independent theory of any of them, without previous settlement of the basis they are to stand on in general subjective analysis. It is like beginning to build a house with one of the top storeys, leaving the foundations and the ground floor to be inserted afterwards. The house would be all in the air, and so is the theory. All true philosophy must take the opposite course, a course well described in a saying about Plato, quoted by Coleridge in The Friend (vol. iii., p. 126, ed. 1837) : "Plato's philosophising, if any man's, was genuine and thorough ; and his principle was, that it was impossible for us to see the truth in matters of ordi- nary experience (ia ai'OitiL"irivti), without first obtaining an insight into their metaphysical basis (in dcia) ". (Coleridge is not respon- sible for the translation.) Yet the press may be almost said to teem with works on Ethic, Logic, and Psychology, which show little or no perception that a basis in the general analysis of con- scious experience is necessary to their stability, necessary to the ascertainment of the place they hold in the total fabric of human knowledge and conduct. Hinton's Ethics come first for treatment in the present volume, in the two papers entitled "Philosophy and Ethics," and " Utili- tarianism and Altruism". The last paper, "A few Notes on Hinton's Theology," contains his speculative basis. Between these come the two papers of Hinton's already mentioned,, and two papers by the author, "The Lawbreaker," and "A Law of Development," the latter being the longest in the book, which exhibit the connexion and analogy between the prac- tical and the speculative, and a theory of the general mode in which errors both practical and speculative, both of conduct and of knowledge, are corrected as man's history advances. The chief point about the law of development is its containing what in Hegelese might be called Aufl>'-iixr!it : the new truth, or the new custom, at once destroys <nnl fulfils what it destroys; a point the earliest expression of which is met with, at least so far as I am aware, in the Gospels, This is very well put by the author, and this paper, as well as "The Lawbreaker," will well reward perusal. These two papers are followed by a sketch of a more personal character, "Hinton the Seer". He is here contrasted as Seer,, that is as representing the function of serin y as opposed to