Professor Alexander—for he is to be our guide—does not know about metaphysics, logic, and psychology is, I take it, not worth knowing.[1] One may modestly differ from such a man; but to treat his views as due to philosophical inexperience, is simply not to be done. And then secondly, about the doctrines themselves. Although a realism, and even a physical realism, they contrast sharply with what is meant by Materialism. If they are meant to be called materialist, which I do not know that they are, it is the conception of matter that has widened, and not the nature of reality that has been cut down to fit an abstract matter. The theory aims at totality, at a fair and complete recognition of the world as we know and love it. It does justice to the sensations of sense, and to the secondary qualities. And at least the doctrine which I am to discuss to-night has no faith in a prerogative reality of spatial properties.
- ↑ Since writing this passage, I have seen "The New Realism" of the six authors. I could not altogether, from the point of view of my own studies, apply this judgment to them. They strike me as better informed outside philosophy than in it.
