Elements of Metaphysics

CHAPTER I. The Problem of the Metaphysician

THE PROBLEM OF THE METAPHYSICIAN

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#§1. The generality and simplicity of the metaphysical problem make it difficult to define the study. §2. Problem is suggested by the presence of contradictions in ordinary experience. §3.. By making a distinction between reality and appearance the sciences remove some of these contradictions, but themselves lead to further difficulties of the same sort; hence the need for systematic inquiry into the meaning of the distinction between the real and the apparent, and the general character of reality as such. §4.. Metaphysics, as an inquiry into the ultimate meaning of “reality,” is akin to poetry and religion, but differs from them in its scientific character, from the mathematical and experimental sciences in its method, from common scepticism in the critical nature of its methods as well as in its positive purpose. §5.. The study is difficult (a) because of the generality of its problems, (b) and because we cannot employ diagrams or physical experiments. §6.. The objection that Metaphysics is an impossibility may be shown in all its forms to rest upon self-contradictory assumptions of a metaphysical kind. §7.. The minor objections that, if possible, the science is superfluous, or at least stationary, may be met with equal ease. §8. Metaphysics is partly akin to the mystical tendency, but differs from mysticism in virtue of its positive interest in the world of appearances, as well as by its scientific method. §9.. It agrees with logic in the generality of its scope, but differs in being concerned with the real, whereas logic is primarily concerned with the inferrible. §10. The problems of the so-called Theory of Knowledge are really metaphysical. 1

CHAPTER II. The Metaphysical Criterion and the Metaphysical Method

THE METAPHYSICAL CRITERION AND THE METAPHYSICAL METHOD

§ 1. In the principle that “Reality is not self-contradictory” we have a universal and certain criterion of reality which is not merely negative, but implies the positive assertion that reality is a consistent system. § 2. The validity of this criterion is not affected by the suggestion that it may be merely a Logical Law; § 3. Nor by the raising of doubt whether all our knowledge is not merely “relative,” a doubt which is itself meaningless. § 4. As to the material of the system, it is experience or immediate psychical fact. § 5. It must be actual experience, not mere “possibilities” of experience; but actual experience must not be identified with “sensation.” § 6. Nor must we assume that experience consists of subjects and their states; nor again, that it is a mere succession of “states of consciousness.” § 7. The differentia of matter of experience is its immediacy, i.e. its combination in a single whole of the two aspects of existence and content. §8. This union of existence and content is broken up in reflective knowledge or thought, but may be restored at a higher level. § 9. Experience further always appears to be implicitly complex in respect of its content. § 10. An adequate apprehension of reality would only be possible in the form of a complete or “pure” experience, at once all-inclusive, systematic, and direct. The problem of Metaphysics is to ascertain what would be the general or formal character of such an experience, and how far the various provinces of our human experience and knowledge approximate to it. The knowledge Metaphysics can give us of the ultimate nature of reality as it would be present in a complete experience, though imperfect, is final as far as it goes. § 11. As to the method of Metaphysics, it must be analytical, critical, non-empirical, and non-inductive. It may also be called a priori if we carefully avoid confusing the a priori with the psychologically primitive. Why our method cannot be the Hegelian Dialectic 18

CHAPTER III. The Sub-Divisions of Metaphysics

THE SUB-DIVISIONS OF METAPHYSICS

§ 1. The traditional sub-division of Metaphysics into Ontology, Cosmology, Rational Psychology, common to all the great modern constructive systems. § 2. Precise sense in which we adopt these divisions for the purposes of our own treatment of the subject. § 3. Relation of Cosmology and Rational Psychology to the empirical sciences 42

BOOK II. Ontology—the General Structure of Reality

ONTOLOGY—THE GENERAL STRUCTURE OF REALITY

CHAPTER I

REALITY AND EXPERIENCE

§ 1. In a sense “reality” for each of us means that of which he must take account if his special purposes are to find fulfilment. § 2. But ultimately the world must possess a structure of which all purposes, each in its own way, must take account. This is the “Ultimate Reality” or “Absolute” of Metaphysics. In Metaphysics we regard it from the special standpoint of the scientific intellect. There are other legitimate attitudes towards it, e.g., that of practical religion. § 3. The inseparability of reality from immediate experience involves the recognition of it as teleological and as uniquely individual. § 4. The experience within which all reality falls cannot be my own, nor yet the “collective” experience of the aggregate of conscious beings. It must be an individual experience which apprehends the totality of existence as the harmonious embodiment of a single “purpose.” The nearest analogue our own life presents to such a type of experience is to be found in the satisfied insight of personal love. § 5. The experience of such an “Absolute” must not be thought of as a mere reduplication of our own, or of the scientific hypotheses by which we co-ordinate facts for the purposes of inference. § 6. Our conception is closely connected with that of Berkeley, from which it differs by the stress it lays on the purposive and selective aspect of experience. § 7. Realism, both of the Agnostic and of the Dogmatic type, is incompatible with the meaning we have been led to attach to “reality.” But Agnosticism is justified in insisting on the limitations of our knowledge of Reality, and Dogmatic Realism in rejecting the identification of Reality with experience as a merely cognitive function of finite percipients. § 8. Subjectivism, according to which all that I know is states of my own “consciousness,” is irreconcilable with the admitted facts of life, and arises from the psychological fallacy of “introjection” 50

CHAPTER II. The Systematic Unity of Reality

THE SYSTEMATIC UNITY OF REALITY

§ 1. The problem whether Reality is ultimately One or Many is inevitably suggested to us by the diverse aspects of our own direct experience of the world. The different theories may be classed, according to their solution of this problem, as Monistic, Pluralistic, and Monadistic. §2. Pluralism starts from the presumed fact of the mutual independence of human selves, and teaches that this independence of each other belongs to all real beings. But (a) the independence with which experience presents us is never complete, nor the unity of the “selves” perfect. (b) The theory is inconsistent with the systematic character of all reality as presupposed in both knowledge and action. § 3. Monadism again makes the systematic unity of the real either an illusion or an inexplicable accident. § 4. Reality, because systematic, must be the expression of a single principle in and through a multiplicity. The unity and multiplicity must both be real, and each must necessarily involve the other. § 5. If both are to be equally real, the whole system must be a single experience, and its constituents must also be experiences. A perfect systematic whole can be neither an aggregate, nor a mechanical whole of parts, nor an organism. The whole must exist for the parts, and they for it. § 6. This may also be expressed by saying that Reality is a subject which is the unity of subordinate subjects, or an individual of which the constituents are lesser individuals. § 7. The nearest familiar analogue to such a systematic whole would be the relation between our whole “self” and the partial mental systems or lesser “selves.” § 8. The nearest historic parallel to this view is to be found in Spinoza’s theory of the relation of the human mind to the “infinite intellect of God” 84

CHAPTER III. Reality and Its Appearances—the Degrees of Reality

REALITY AND ITS APPEARANCES—THE DEGREES OF REALITY

§ 1. Reality being a single systematic whole, the nature of its constituent elements is only finally intelligible in the light of the whole system. Hence each of its “appearances,” if considered as a whole in itself, must be more or less contradictory. § 2. But some “appearances” exhibit the structure of the whole more adequately than others, and have therefore a higher degree of reality. § 3. This conception of degree of reality may be illustrated by comparison with the successive orders of infinites and infinitesimals in Mathematics. It would be the task of a complete Philosophy to assign the contents of the world to their proper place in the series of “orders” of reality. § 4. In general any subordinate whole is real in proportion as it is a self-contained whole. And it is a self-contained whole in proportion as it is (a) comprehensive, (b) systematic; that is, a thing is real just so far as it is truly individual. § 5. The two criteria of individuality, though ultimately coincident, tend in particular cases to fall apart for our insight, owing to the limitation of human knowledge. § 6. Ultimately only the whole system of experience is completely individual, all other individuality is approximate. § 7. In other words, the whole system of experience is an infinite individual, all subordinate individuality is finite. Comparison of t“his position with the doctrines of Leibnitz. § 8. Recapitulatory statement of the relation of Reality to its Appearances 104

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