[372] This is seen in his admission (on p. 351) that the “bad will” no
less than the “good will” is a logical necessity, when taken along with
his doctrine about mind and body, his doctrine of the “dependence” (p.
318) of the finite individual upon the external mechanical world. Dr.
Bosanquet, of course, thinks that even in this apparent Determinism
he is justifiably supplementing the ordinary ideas about the “self”
as “creative” and “originative” (p. 354), by the wider recognition
that I am more or less completely doing the work of the “universe”
as a “member” in a “greater self.” And he adds in the same sentence
the words that “_I am in a large measure continuous with the greater_
(p. 355) _self_,” and “_dyed with its colours_”--a further step in
Determinism, as it were, and a step which, with the preceding one to
which we have just referred, no critic can fail to connect with the
Determinism that we have already found to be implicated in his doctrine
of the “self,” and in his general doctrine that the “external” must be
frankly accepted as a factor in the universe.
[373] By the “spectator” fallacy we mean his tendency to talk and think
of the self as it is for a spectator or student, looking at matters
from the outside, and not as the self is for the man himself.
[374] Wollaston is the English ethical philosopher who, according to
Leslie Stephen’s account, thought, after thirty years of meditation,
that the only reason he had for not breaking his wife’s head with a
stick was, that this would be tantamount to a denial that his wife was
his wife.
[375] See _Idola Theatri_ by Henry Sturt (the editor of the well-known
“Personal Idealism” volume) of Oxford--a book that enumerates and
examines many of the fallacies of the Neo-Hegelian school. Mr. Sturt’s
first chapter is entitled the “Passive Fallacy,” which he calls, with
some degree of justice, the prime mistake of the idealistic philosophy,
meaning by this the “ignoring” of the “kinetic” and the “dynamic”
character of our experience.
[376] It is Natural Theology that is the subject proper of the _Gifford
Lectures_.
[377] See p. 149 of Chapter VI.
[378] With, we might almost say, the pragmatists and the humanists.
[379] This is really their main distinguishing characteristic and merit.
[380] See p. 162.
[381] “Indeed, I do not conceal my belief that in the main the work has
been done.”--_Preface._
[382] I think that the confession is a praiseworthy one in view of the
fact of the prejudice of Rationalism, that philosophy has nothing to do
with convictions but only with knowledge.
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