are always clear as to the sense in which they mean it to be taken.[1]
But, indeed, the time-honored title of Idealism itself covers a double entendre of a similar description, according as it is used metaphysically or epistemologically. Metaphysically, Idealism is opposed most ordinarily to Materialism; in the widest sense it is the opposite of what may be called the mechanical and atheistic view of the universe, whatever special form that may take. Is self-conscious thought with its ideal ends, — the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, — the self-realizing End that works in changes and makes it Evolution? or are these but the casual outcome of a mechanical system — a system in its ultimate essence indifferent to the results which in its gyrations it has unwittingly created and will as unwittingly destroy? Is thought or matter the prius? Is the ultimate essence and cause of all things only "dust that rises up, and is lightly laid again"; or is it the Eternal Love of Dante's Vision — "the love that moves the sun and the other stars"? That is the fundamental metaphysical antithesis. If we embrace the, one alternative, however we may clothe it in detail, we recognize the universe as our home, and we may have a religion; if we embrace the other, then the spirit of man is indeed homeless in an alien world. In the plain, impressive words of Marcus Aurelius — "the universe is either a confusion and a dispersion, or it is unity and order and providence. If it is the former, why do I care about anything else than how I shall at last become earth? But if the other supposition is true, I venerate, and I am firm and I trust in Him who governs." Marcus Aurelius expresses the difference from the religious or practical side; from the speculative side the difference is, as I have said, a metaphysical one, and all the theories which support the latter alternative may be embraced under the generic name of Idealism.
- ↑ A fuller analysis of the use of the term "phenomena" in Kantian and positivistic thought would bring some of these inconsistencies instructively to light. For the plausibility of the quasi-scientific agnosticism which is so widely spread in our periodicals and popular philosophy depends in great part on a systematic confusion between the two different senses of the word.
