idea of self-consciousness. In other words the intelligence when it once
begins to define an object for itself, finds itself launched on a
movement of self-asserting synthesis in which it cannot stop until it
had recognized that the unity of the object with itself involves its
unity with all other objects and with the mind that knows it. Hence,
whatever we begin by saying, we must ultimately say 'mind'" (Caird,
_Kant_, i. 443).
While the form in which these doctrines were stated proved fatal to
them in the country of their birth, they took deep root in the next
generation in English philosophy. Here the stone that the builders
rejected was made the head of the corner. The influences which led to
this result were manifold. From the side of literature the way was
prepared for it by the genius of Coleridge, Wordsworth and Carlyle;
from the side of morals and politics by the profound discontent of the
constructive spirit of the century with the disintegrating conceptions
inherited from utilitarianism. In taking root in England idealism had
to contend against the traditional empiricism represented by Mill on
the one hand and the pseudo-Kantianism which was rendered current by
Mansel and Hamilton on the other. As contrasted with the first it
stood for the necessity of recognizing a universal or ideal element as
a constitutive factor in all experience whether cognitive or
volitional; as contrasted with the latter for the ultimate unity of
subject and object, knowledge and reality, and therefore for the
denial of the existence of any thing-in-itself for ever outside the
range of experience. Its polemic against the philosophy of experience
has exposed it to general misunderstanding, as though it claimed some
a priori path to truth. In reality it stands for a more thoroughgoing
and consistent application of the test of experience. The defect of
English empiricism from the outset had been the uncritical acceptance
of the metaphysical dogma of a pure unadulterated sense-experience as
the criterion of truth. This assumption idealism examines and rejects
in the name of experience itself. Similarly it only carried the
doctrine of relativity to its logical conclusion in denying that there
could be any absolute relativity. Object stands in essential relation
to subject, subject to object. This being so, it is wholly illogical
to seek for any test of the truth and reality of either except in the
form which that relation itself takes. In its subsequent development
idealism in England has passed through several clearly marked stages
which may be distinguished as (a) that of exploration and tentative
exposition in the writings of J. F. Ferrier,[2] J. Hutchison
Stirling,[3] Benjamin Jowett,[4] W. T. Harris;[5] (b) of confident
application to the central problems of logic, ethics and politics,
fine art and religion, and as a principle of constructive criticism
and interpretation chiefly in T.
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