98 HUMANISM vi 



to the modus operandi of all systems of abstract 

 metaphysics. 



They cannot account for the time-factor in Reality, 

 because they have ab initio incapacitated themselves from 

 accounting for Time as for change, imperfection and 

 particularity for all indeed that differentiates the realities 

 of our experience from the ideals of our thought. And 

 their whole method of procedure rendered this result 

 inevitable. They were systems of abstract truth, and 

 based on the assumption on which the truth of abstraction 

 rests. 1 They aimed at emancipating philosophy from 

 the flux to which all human experience is subject, at 

 interpreting the world in terms of conceptions, which 

 should be true not here and now, but eternally and 

 independently of Time and Change. Such conceptions, 

 naturally, could not be based upon probable inferences 

 from the actual condition of the world at, or during, any 

 time, but had to be derived from logical necessities 

 arising out of the eternal nature of the human mind as 

 such. Hence those conceptions were necessarily abstract, 

 and among the things they abstracted from was the time- 

 aspect of Reality. 



Once abstracted from, the reference to Time could 

 not, of course, be recovered, any more than the indi 

 viduality of Reality can be deduced, when once ignored. 

 The assumption is made that, in order to express the 

 4 truth about Reality, its thisness, individuality, change 

 and its immersion in a certain temporal and spatial 

 environment may be neglected, and the timeless validity 

 of a conception is thus substituted for the living, changing 

 and perishing existence we contemplate. Now it is not 

 my purpose here to dispute, or even to examine, the 

 correctness of that assumption itself. What I wish here 

 to point out is merely that it is unreasonable to expect 

 from such premisses to arrive at a deductive justification 



1 I have in this sentence purposely used truth in two senses, in order to 

 emphasise a distinction, which is too often overlooked, between the conceptual 

 interpretation of reality, which is truth in the narrower sense, and the validity 

 or practical working of those conceptual symbols, which constitutes their truth in 

 a wider sense. In the former sense truth is merely a claim which may, or 

 may not, be ratified by experience (see below, p. 100, and above, p. 57). 



