Page:Studies of a Biographer 2.djvu/149

 is not free. To some philosophers, I am aware, this has a meaning; but to common sense it presents itself simply as a very convenient plan for taking both sides of any important question. In later years, indeed, Jowett, while still having a certain leaning towards Hegel, became suspicious of metaphysics generally. Some knowledge of metaphysics, he says, 'is necessary to enable the mind to get rid of them.' Metaphysics ought, as he was always saying, to be subordinate to 'common sense,' whereas Coleridge had said that 'common sense should be based on metaphysics.'

The effect was that he decided to treat all problems in what he calls (in reference to free-will) the 'only rational way,' that is, 'historically.' You are, that means, to accept beliefs as facts without troubling about their reasons. The result of this method is curiously given in some notes of 1886, which, as Dr. Abbott tells us, were his 'last reflections.' This, says Jowett, is the age of facts which are 'too strong for ideas,' and of criticism which is 'too strong for dogma.' The Christian religion may change till miracles become absurd; the 'hope of immortality' mean 'only the present consciousness of goodness and of God'; the 'personality of God, like the immortality of man,