the immediacy of living experience, and by it many a difficulty which appals on paper would be shown to be shadowy in the field. And conversely, it would perhaps be possible for philosophy to grapple somewhat more effectively with the real difficulties of actual life.
Nor can I see why philosophers should fight shy of such a procedure. For surely the admission that philosophy is an interpretation of experience in terms of thought does not preclude us from the reinterpretation of our symbols by a reference to experience wherever that may seem expedient and profitable. Why should we commit ourselves to a task which must prove either illusory or impossible, that of the rational deduction of the self-evident? It is true that philosophic explanation came into being because experience is not wholly self-explaining. But to admit this is not to imply that everything requires explanation. For all explanation must set out from certain data, which may either be accepted as facts or considered self-evident, and in no wise necessitate or justify the attempt to explain everything, an attempt which must ultimately derive everything from nothing, by the power alone of an intentionally obscure vocabulary. What the data of such an ultimate explanation of the world should be, admits, of course, of further discussion; but I can see no reason in the nature of philosophy as such why the characteristic of Time should not be one of them. And if by a frank recognition of the reality of Time, Imperfection and Individuality we can reach a deeper, more complete and workable insight into the facts of experience, why should our philosophy be worse than one which is driven to reject them by ancient prejudices concerning the perfections which the world ought to possess?
The abstractions of metaphysics, then, exist as explanations of the concrete facts of life, and not the latter as illustrations of the former, and the Absolute Idea also is not exempt from this rule. Nor is it to a different conclusion concerning the subordination of abstract metaphysics that we are led by the consideration of the first argument adduced in their favour, the fact that all science shares their assumption.
That all science abstracts from the particularity and time-reference of phenomena, and states its laws in the shape of eternal and universal truths, is perfectly true. But this fact will not bear the inference it is sought to draw in favour of abstract metaphysics, and must not be allowed to prejudice the inquiry into the proper method of discovering an ultimate theory of the universe. For in the first place the treatment of its initial assumption by science differs widely from that of metaphysics. Science does not refuse to interpret the symbols with
