Philosophy and Specific Problems [pp. 208-232]

PHILOSOPHY AVD ITS SPECIFIC PROBLEMS.
truths may have led them often to adopt a phraseology which,
at first sight, would seem to imply abstraction from experimental fact, rather than to be the direct expression of such
fact. And to a mental eye clouded with sensuous prejudices
and not trained-or perhaps too indolent or preoccupied-to
follow the path of experimental demonstation which they pursued, even their most successful statements may seem as meaningless as the sounds of civilized speech to barbaric ears. Nor
is it indeed to be maintained that the science which they and
others of like mind proclaimed and still proclaim was, or is,
perfect, complete, and free from relative error; but of what
science can the contrary be said? But what is strenuously to
be insisted on, as simple matter of historic fact, is that their
whole labor was nothing but an attempt to comprehend man's
whole, actual experience. It was in no sense an attempt-per se
absu.rd and nonsensical-to determine, by the pursuit of a "highpriori road," truths out of all possible relation to experience.
The nearest approach in form to such an attempt is found, not
in the history of philosophy proper, but of what most people
nowadays understand by "metaphysics." It is signally illustrated in the history of British "philosophy," whether " empirical" or "intuitional." The "empirical philosopher" first determines that all our knowledge or experience is strictly of a sensible nature. This means, being interpreted, that all that I know
is rigorously confined to the consciousness of my own individual mental states or "feelings." The immediate inference then
is that I have no knowledge, properly speaking, of the "external world" which my consciousness is popularly supposed
to represent, nor of myself as a knowing agent, or recipient,
capable either of creating or of receiving, or "having," the consciousness in question. I and the external world are, if we
really exist at all, "tmeta-physical" entities. We are independent of and lie behind, or beyond, that which is assumed to be
the only object and instrument of knowledge, viz. empiricosensible consciousness. The "belief" in our existence is indeed
inexpugnable, but it is wholly unaccountable, mysterious, "conjured up by nature." And yet, as the "empirical philosopher"
would not entertain any belief, even on compulsion, in a wholly
irrational manner, moral necessity is laid upon him to seek to
2I3
I