think that further discussion would be needless. The speculative philosopher or metaphysician, so far as I know, assumes nothing, absolutely nothing, except that, in thinking, he has to satisfy his theoretical want. "But as to what will satisfy, I have of course no knowledge in advance. . . . The method clearly is experimental."[1] It is really an extraordinary thing that one should meet with such a statement as that which I cited from Introduction, p. 20, about the unchallengeable assertion. Is it not the well-worn and familiar doctrine of speculative philosophy, from Plato and Hegel downwards, that certainty comes at the end of thought or cognition and not at the beginning; as the result of science and metaphysic and not as their foundation? Is it perhaps contended that we must have it in the beginning if we are to have it in the end? If so, we are confronted with one of the worst of logical vices, which I will call "Foundationism," and I must admit that I have suspected our authors of harbouring it.[2] But consider for instance Mr. Bradley's Knowledge of the Absolute—I presume the only propositions which he would consider unchallengeable; the result of a laborious enquiry into first principles.[3] As regards what we early come to believe in on good grounds, being only our present experience—"his having an immediate experience"—Mr. Bradley's argument against Solipsism[4] seems to me to annihilate
- ↑ Bradley, "Mind," 1911, p. 306.
- ↑ "The New Realism," p. 93, and in many other passages. Cf. my "Logic," ed. 2, ii, 266 note and reff.
- ↑ My own "Logic," such as it is, is of course an attempt to embody this view in a detailed system.
- ↑ "Appearance and Reality," 254 ff.
