46 SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY 



mysticism and of most metaphysics. When the emo- 

 tional intensity of such a mood subsides, a man who is 

 in the habit of reasoning will search for logical reasons 

 in favour of the belief which he finds in himself. But 

 since the belief already exists, he will be very hospitable 

 to any reason that suggests itself. The paradoxes ap- 

 parently proved by his logic are really the paradoxes of 

 mysticism, and are the goal which he feels his logic must 

 reach if it is to be in accordance with insight. It is in 

 this way that logic has been pursued by those of the 

 great philosophers who were mystics notably Plato, 

 Spinoza, and Hegel. But since they usually took for 

 granted the supposed insight of the mystic emotion, their 

 logical doctrines were presented with a certain dryness, 

 and were believed by their disciples to be quite inde- 

 pendent of the sudden illumination from which they 

 sprang. Nevertheless their origin clung to them, and they 

 remained to borrow a useful word from Mr Santayana 

 " malicious ' in regard to the world of science and 

 common sense. It is only so that we can account for 

 the complacency with which philosophers have accepted 

 the inconsistency of their doctrines with all the common 

 and scientific facts which seem best established and most 

 worthy of belief. 



The logic of mysticism shows, as is natural, the defects 

 which are inherent in anything malicious. While the 

 mystic mood is dominant, the need of logic is not felt ; 

 as the mood fades, the impulse to logic reasserts itself, 

 but with a desire to retain the vanishing insight, or at 

 least to prove that it was insight, and that what seems to 

 contradict it is illusion. The logic which thus arises is 

 not quite disinterested or candid, and is inspired by a 

 certain hatred of the daily world to which it is to be 

 applied. Such an attitude naturally does not tend to 



