Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/46

 III. MOEAL OBLIGATION. By WILLIAM MITCHELL. THE reason why, while Science makes a straight course, Philosophy makes a zigzag and doubling advance is that the one is aware from the first of the precise facts with which it has to deal, while the other labours under the disadvantage of having itself to determine what they are. Philosophy must somehow state its own problem, and it cannot do this without somehow first answering it. Could philosophy state with sufficient definiteness what it has to explain, its pro- blem would be, if not solved, at least on the certain road to solution. It has to give the rationale of experience. But then, what is experience ? It certainly includes much illusion, and neither thought nor experience is at once adequate to expel it. Not our thought, which of itself is a criterion not of truth but of consistency. Not experience, for it embraces the illusions. If you merely pick and choose facts that will harmonise, you may give a certain rationale of these ; but it is neither the philosophy of experience, nor, if derogatory to other facts, is it more a philosophy at all than an arbitrary generalisation. That is why philosophy is so difficult to make and so easy to criticise. Theories are made which explain certain facts and the rest are fairly or foully thrust in along with them, while those that are too obstinate are treated as sour grapes and handed over to credulity. This is especially the case in respect of Ethics, the science of the practice of man as man, and still more in the case of Moral Obligation by which as man he isolates himself from the other animals and would unite himself with God. Even for the purpose of mere criticism we must be sure that the facts we flourish are genuine realities and not illu- sions. But since we cannot adopt all the facts of experience, seeing many are illusory, we are in this dilemma. On the one hand we cannot pick and choose among the facts without adopting a theory to guide us ; and on the other hand, we cannot find a theory except we begin from the facts. It is evident that no one part of our fact-experience can be con- demned on the mere strength of another part. We can eliminate the contradictions of our thought by reference to the pure facts of experience. But how eliminate the contra- dictions among these facts themselves? We have to purify