Page:The Distinction between Mind and Its Objects.djvu/64

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58
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN

mology."[1] Wallace (l. c.) adopts precisely the same attitude.[2]

Green intended, beyond any reasonable doubt, a rehabilitation of Logic and Metaphysics as against Psychology and Theory of Knowledge considered as independent sciences. He proceeds, as we all do, not by prior assumptions of premisses for demonstration—a method, I should contend, impossible for a sound logician, and Green was an exceedingly sound one—but by trying to construct a conception which would most completely harmonise with the facts[3] and so afford the completest theoretical satisfaction. Of course, he did not deny the existence of externality, not even of unconscious externality.[4] He held, however the conviction, in which I agree with him, that you could not have a world without consciousness as its centre. Here, I am glad to understand, the new realist primarily differs because he supposes any view like Green's to be an unwarranted assumption ab initio. He

  1. e.g., "Mind," 1900, p. 39 note. I think he uniformly insists that there can be no theory of knowledge except as part of and in connection with a complete theory of Reality, cf. e.g., "Mind," 1911, p. 337.
  2. l.c. supra. Dr. McTaggart, I ought to admit, refers with interest to Epistemology; but his Idealism is certainly far from Subjectivism. See "Studies in Hegelian Dialectic," 120.
  3. "Prolegomena to Ethics," sect. 82, 174.
  4. "Works," i, 380; ii, 16. On the existence of Nature beyond finite perception, see Bradley, "Appearance," 273 ff.