286 F. H. BRADLEY : may be as prophetic and anticipatory of truth as anything else we have, and some of them more so than others, cannot pos- sibly be denied. But what hope is there of squaring and settling opinions unless Absolutism will hold parley on this common ground ; and will admit that all philosophies are hypotheses, to which all our faculties, emotional as well as logical, help us, and the truest of which will at the final integration of things be found in possession of the men whose faculties on the whole had the best divining power ? CAN A MAN SIN AGAINST KNOWLEDGE 1 By F. H. BRADLEY. There is an old paradox which at some time we must all have encountered. That no one sins willingly, and that vice is igno- rance, must at some time have been offered to us all as gospel. And most of us, I presume, have long ago concluded that a truth has here been pressed into a falsehood. We naturally reflect that, as for the artist beauty rules the universe and is the dominant reality, so for the reasoning philosopher reason is the king and master both of the world and of the soul. And we have per- suaded ourselves that such prepossessions lead to conflict with fact. For not only may the ruler at times be absent, but even if he is present, yet appetite defies him, and, with no cloak of igno- rance, sins wilfully and knowingly in the master's sight. I cannot think that our persuasion is false. For me, too, the old gospel has joined the museum of one-sided growths, and, with " the practical reason," has been placed on the shelf of interesting illusions. I would not seek to revive them ; but, on the contrary, my object is to remove a hindrance to their well- earned repose. There is a psychological doubt which remains unsatisfied, and serves as the foundation for a serious mistake. Our experiences seem discrepant. For myself, and in my own mind, I am able to verify the presence of wrong-doing in the face of and despite the voice of conscience. I feel sure of this fact, but others are not certain, while others again within their experience are certain of the opposite. They assure me that never until con- science has slumbered, never until for the moment they have for- gotten the quality of their act, are they able to give way to an immoral impulse. It is not likely that any of us are quite mistaken about the fact. When an observer tells us that with him bad action never co-exists with present knowledge, that an actual consciousness of its immorality is incompatible with the victory of any desire, we may be sure that he is not wholly in error. He has observed a fact, but observed it wrongly ; and our task is to show that his
