Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/228

214 austerity, and mathematical economy in the way of beliefs, no one can call Renouvier dry. Sentimental he certainly is not, but few writers show a wider sympathy with mankind's graver needs. Thus the relations of better and worse are amongst those which, finding them between phenomena, he keeps. This, he says, is a really moral world, and a world in which, as it offers itself, something is really wrong. Following then Kant's postulate that what ought not to be need not have been, he denies universal determination, and amongst the various unexplained beginnings, which as ultimate categories have at any rate to be admitted amongst the data of philosophy, he finds a place for the predestinate acts of individual beings. Free-will, so called, thus takes its place within the system; and nothing can be finer than the manner in which Renouvier thereupon shows, in an admirably true account of the natural history of belief, that, if free-will be admitted at all into the Universe, it must be left as a legitimate 'methodological' factor in the construction of philosophy. For philosophies are acts. Whether men admit or deny the fact, passion always plays some part in making them reject or hold to systems, and volition, whether predestinate or unpredestinate, always will play a part in deciding when to encourage and when to suppress one's doubts. Renouvier's refusal to blind himself in this matter is a refreshing breath of manliness in the midst of the self-deception and pretence so usual amongst philosophers. Instead, however, of simply deploring this inevitable complicity of our active nature in our theoretic life, he discusses soberly its bearings, and shows that in dealing with a certain class of doubts, insoluble by pure theory, there is inward propriety in letting volition have its say. The question of universal predestination, for example, is theoretically insoluble. But if our wills be ever free from antecedent determination, what is more fit than that they should have a voice in acknowledging that truth, which by acting they create? We may, then, without shame freely postulate our freedom, and we may freely postulate many other things that go with it in harmonious connexion. Renouvier thus decides for the existence of beings outside of the individual thinker, and for moral relations with them, and postulates immortality and a moral providence or God. In much of this he of course but follows Kant's footsteps. It must be said that the tone of his theism is more ratiocinative than devout, and that much of his impressiveness, when he defends objects of traditional veneration, comes from the fact that his personal affections seems so little engaged.