Those who accept Leslie Stephen’s philosophy suppose that for this young man, as for all others, a way of escape may be found by appealing to experience. But surely none are so sanguine as to suppose that, by appealing to experience, they are going to avoid what Mr. Stephen describes as “endless and hopeless controversies.” Alas, this is not so! The field of experience is no well-defined and protected region under whose clear skies useful knowledge flourishes unchallenged, while the mist-enshrouded territories of its metaphysical neighbours are devastated by unending disputations. On the contrary, it is the very battlefield of philosophy, the cockpit of metaphysics, strewn with abandoned arguments, where every strategic position has been taken and retaken, to which every school lays formal claim, which every contending system pretends to hold in effective occupation. Indeed, by a singular irony, the thinkers who, at this particular moment, talk most about experience are those metaphysicians of the Absolute in whose speculations Mr. Stephen saw no beginning of interest, except that of being (as he supposed) at once the refuge and the ruin of traditional religion. But these philosophers have no monopoly. All men nowadays speak well of experience. They begin to differ only when they attempt to say what experience is, to define its character, explain its credentials, and expound its message. But, unhappily, when this stage is reached their differences are endless. IV I am, of course, not concerned with Mr. Stephen except as a brilliant representative of a mode of thought to which I most vehemently object. I do not object to it merely because it is in my judgment insufficient and erroneous, still less because I dislike its conclusion. I object to it because it talks loudly of experience, yet never faces facts; and boasts its rationality, yet rarely reasons home. These are far graver crimes against the spirit of truth than any condemned in Locke’s pretentious aphorism, and they lead to far more serious consequences. If you ask me what I have in mind when I say that agnostic empiricism never faces facts, I reply that it never really takes account of that natural history of knowledge, of that complex of causes, rational and non-rational, which have brought our accepted stock of beliefs into being. And if you ask me what I have in mind when I say that though it reasons, it rarely reasons home, I reply that, when it is resolved not to part with a conclusion, anything will serve it for an argument; only when it is incredulous does it know how to be critical.