Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/364



obvious reasons, the foregoing discussion has been planned with constant reference to the criticisms of Professor Howison, contained in his contribution to the original discussion before the Philosophical Union. My difference with Professor Howison appears the most fundamental amongst those developed during that discussion; and yet, despite the plainness of speech in some of the foregoing incidental replies, I have everywhere borne in mind the hope of reconciliation expressed at the outset of this supplementary paper. Nor have I desired to make my criticisms merely destructive. Professor Howison appears, at the outset of his argument, as one who deliberately adopts idealistic principles. If, as I have said, his actual doctrine takes rather the form of an Ethical Realism, that is because, to his mind, the ethical relationships amongst individuals, while existing solely for the sake of the individual minds themselves, appear to him, as he expresses himself, to be irreducible to the contents in any one mind, or to any other element definable in terms of any single unity of consciousness. In consequence,