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by Schopenhauer. Of course the idealistic solution of External Perception-the reply to the question how and why is my senseconsciousness produced as I have it-involves inquiries into the ongoings of other monads, but of these ongoings our knowledge must be indirect.

Such, then, are some of the objections which bear, or seem to bear, severely on Hegelianism. All could without doubt be extensively elaborated, and more especially the pessimist indictment of panlogism could be drawn up with far greater effect. The force of this latter in the sphere of "Nature-philosophy" and in that of Hegel's "Objective Reason" in "Philosophy of Mind" is indeed overwhelming. The systems of Schopenhauer and von Hartmann, if too one-sided, are themselves witnesses to the incompetence of panlogism when it descends from the Olympus of Logic into the Hades of actual fact. Much embodied in these systems is unanswerable on current idealist lines and calls for the radical reconstitution of metaphysic. That reconstitution, I believe, and elsewhere I have endeavored to make good my assertion, can only be achieved by abjuring Reason as prius, and resorting to a superlogical, consciousless, but spiritual, spontaneity-to a monistic monadology. It seems probable that in this event many of the riddles of this world, pessimism, the ethical problem, the import of the individual, and so forth, might ultimately come to wear a far more encouraging aspect than they do now.

*

Having dealt with the Hegelian panlogism, I take this opportunity of passing some remarks on the "form of panlogism" espoused by the editor of this magazine, and expounded in its general outlines in his lucid and compact Primer of Philosophy. Space

1 Schopenhauer, despite his Inductive standpoint, tends to cling to a "Universal" better suited to abstractionists and notion-philosophers-tends to strip his WILL of all inner multiplicity. Yet he very strangely says, 'all proper and true existence obtains only in the individual . . . this immeasurable outer world has its existence only in the consciousness of knowing beings and is consequently bound up with the existence of individuals which are its bearers." Selected Essays, E. B Bax, p. 177. Why, then, ground these individuals in a mere unitary Will?

will compel me to consider only its broadest features, and also to ignore many of the points, touching which I am in hearty accord with its author.

Dr. Carus combines a bold empiricism with a quite Hegelian recognition of a World-Reason as the prius of mere human perceiving, feeling, and reasoning. Indeed, he strives after "a critical reconciliation of rival philosophies of the type of Kantian apriorism and John Stuart Mill's empiricism." All our knowledge flows from experience, but Reason-an "objective" or World-Reason, not "subjective" innate concepts or the like-is the source of this experience and the universality and necessity detected in the relational or formal aspects even of sensations are to be cited, he thinks, in proof of this view. Needless to say that Mill's associationism is a bar to the reconciliation favored by Dr. Carus; hence the latter's treatment of the question of "formal thought" is notably antagonistic to the standpoint of the famous British empiricist. But there is no reason whatever why a thoroughgoing Empiricism should not, with certain modifications, be made perfectly consonant with an Absolute Idealism or Rationalism. Aristotle, who, if not an Absolute Idealist, was well-nigh one,1 was at the same time an empiricist in so far as the problem of the origin of human knowledge in time was concerned.

But though Dr. Carus agrees with Hegel in the belief that Reason is sole prius, he is in no way inclined to favor the artificiality of that thinker and his repudiation of the Dialectical Method is obvious from the remark that "the inmost nature of reason is consistency, and thus the simplest statement of rational thought is the maxim of sameness formulated in logic in the sentence A = A” (p. 109). Rejecting the Dialectical Method, he rejects apparently with it all hope of articulating the rationality immanent in the world-order, the leading ambition, without question, of Hegel. Indeed, failing some such method, I do not see how the attempt would be feasible. Even if, as Dr. Carus urges, "human reason is

1" Well-nigh;" because his in or "matter" remains in the last analysis a surd, never wholly resolved into the IDEA or "form."

only the reflexion of the world-reason" (p. 117), we are still at a loss to understand how immanent necessity and connexion obtain between the moments of this World-Reason, and why it should actually unfold itself just as it does. We must take the unfolding, it appears, as an ultimate fact and abandon all attempts to pen a Logic which shall be one with Ontology.

But here I must advance a criticism which seems to me to possess much force. How does Dr. Carus, lacking a Dialectical Method, know that the World-Spirit which reflects itself in us is really rational at all? The Universality and necessity alleged to pervade experience may surely be witnesses not to the mere rationality of the world, but to the workings of a supra-rational, spiritual Power? Remember "reflexions" are often of a very faint and misleading character. And it will scarcely be urged that we men, who are not so very far removed from the animals, furnish a reflecting surface in any way adequate to the activities of an alleged WorldSpirit? May not the processes we term "reason" be merely a transient phase of our becoming-a wretchedly faint reflexion of spiritual activities such as altogether transcend reason? The moonlight reflected at midnight by a murky pool is no worthy representative of the splendor of the sun which is the original source of the light. And poor human reason, I take it, is no worthy representative of the splendor of that supra-rational spiritual sun which I have elsewhere termed the Metaconscious. Anyhow the supposition is worth considering.

Dr. Carus terms his standpoint a "monistic positivism," and very properly contrasts it with the mere agnostic positivism of Comte and Littré. He also justly assails the pernicious ignorabimus of modern agnostics in general. "The philosophy of these latter days is indeed like a ship run aground. Her helmsmen themselves have declared that further headway is impossible; that philosophical problems in their very nature are insoluble." For "philosophical" I should prefer to write "metaphysical" or "fundamental" problems. Philosophy is flourishing well enough in these latter days, but metaphysic until recently has certainly been at a disStill we have a stalwart, if small, crew of metaphysicians

count.

to man the ship even as things stand,—are not the followers of the Germans from Fichte down to Von Hartmann of some account? The Oriental metaphysicians, also, have their followers. But undoubtedly the agnostics and indifferentists poll by far the biggest vote, and I agree with Dr. Carus that the fact is in almost every way to be deplored.

The New Positivism represents the excellent principle "that all knowledge, scientific, philosophical, and religious, is a description of facts." "Laws" and concepts merely refer us to aspectsqualitative, quantitative, etc.—of the concrete real. "The natural processes themselves are reality." Exactly. Monism, it is urged, is the unitary conception of the world, explaining all facts as phases only of one principle, and opposed to the Henism which tries to explain facts by way of some one-sided agency, "matter," etc., borrowed from them. The true explanation must include all facts and not give undue preference to any abstractly viewed set of them. With this I am in hearty accord. But the question arises whether such a Monism is adequate to the situation. The world exhibits not only unity but diversity and we must surely not allow the diversity to be ignored when we discuss the Prius. Indeed, the all but universal struggle for existence suggests discreteness as well as unity as present in the all-evolving World-Spirit, and it is a monistic monadology that I would venture, accordingly, to proffer as the explanation most adequate to the situation. A mere unitary Principle is by implication without the germs whence sprout the Many. And let me add that the Experience on which Dr. Carus lays such stress invariably exhibits us to ourselves as impervious, self-contained centres of consciousness. However, I have dealt with this point previously.

Dr. Carus holds that the truth of a philosophy may be vindicated by its ethics; by the fact that people can live according to the maxims derived therefrom." Surely this view validates the most conflicting standpoints of Asiatic and European philosophy, all of which cannot be true since on the author's own showing, the "inmost nature" of reason is consistency! But waiving this point, pass on to the ethical ideal which Dr. Carus derives from "STS

I

tematised facts," to-wit Meliorism. Now Meliorism, of course, is not pessimism; nor again is it a modified optimism. In fact we are told, "That life has no value in itself; life is an opportunity for creating values. Life gains in value the more we fill it with worthy actions." Meliorism says that it is only prosecution of a moral end that makes life "worth living" (p. 6). This devotion to duty is exactly the ideal which inspired the ethics of Fichte, nay, which caused him to represent God as the "moral end" of the universe, as the Absolute Ego triumphant over the non-Ego of its own making. But let us consider this ideal in the present regard.

Turning to page 22 I read, "Errors are children of the mind. There is neither good nor bad, neither right nor wrong, neither truth nor falsehood except in mentality." For what then ought the Meliorist to sacrifice himself when he undertakes, let us say, to advocate some great reform which will advance the civilisation of the future, a lofty ideal if ever there was one? For his fellows? Certainly not. Dr. Carus assures us that "progress is accompanied with increased sensibility to pain, so that the average happiness is not increased even by the greatest advance of civilisation” (p. 6). For what then? For the "moral end" of the universe as Fichte would have said? Certainly not, for right and wrong, good and bad, only exist in our mentality. It appears, then, that the Meliorist is sacrificing himself merely to a figment of his own imagination, a barren thankless ideal of his own making. Self-sacrifice for the humanity of the future when that humanity cannot benefit by the act and there is no moral ideal beyond our own minds to take account of, is surely a huge mistake? Why labor to no purpose? For my part, were I a meliorist in theory, I am afraid that I should prove a very sorry décadent in practice!

Meliorism is said to found on "systematised facts," but where, I ask, are the facts? Is it true that life has no value in itself, are there no enjoyments which merit the name, no intellectual pursuits which are attractive enough to be ends-in-themselves? Again, life is said to be merely a chance for creating values? But values for whom? For ourselves and fellows? No: for meliorism does not find the value of life in reaping pleasures. Nevertheless, a "value"