ioo HUMANISM vi 



cannot give us the whole truth, can it give us any truth ? 

 Is not the alternative to the rejection of the full claims 

 of Hegelism (and kindred systems) a sceptical despair of 

 the power of the reason to find a clue out of the labyrinth 

 of experience ? 



Such a plea would not be devoid of a certain plausi 

 bility. Stress might be laid on the fact that the funda 

 mental assumption of all abstract metaphysics is the 

 fundamental assumption also of all science, that the whole 

 imposing structure of the laws of nature is formulated 

 without reference to the temporal and spatial environment 

 and the individual peculiarities of the things which obey 

 these laws, and so likewise lays claim to an eternal 

 validity. How then can Metaphysic dare to reject an 

 assumption which supports the whole of Science ? Again, 

 it may be urged that from its very nature philosophy is 

 an interpretation of experience in terms of thought, and 

 must necessarily exhibit the intrinsic peculiarities of human 

 thought. If abstraction, therefore, is characteristic of all 

 our thinking, if all truth is abstract, it would seem that 

 all philosophy must stand or fall with the abstract formulas 

 in which alone our thought can take cognisance of reality, 

 and may not dream of casting off the shackles, or denying 

 the sufficiency, of the systems of abstract truth which the 

 ingenuity of the past has propounded. 



Nevertheless I incline to think that it is possible to 

 steer the human reason safely through between the Scylla 

 of Scepticism and the Charybdis of an Idea absolutely 

 irreconcilable with experience. But to do so it is im 

 perative to define exactly the part played by abstraction 

 in a philosophic account of the world. 



Evidently, in the first place, it does not follow that 

 because all truth in the narrower sense (v. note, p. 98) is 

 abstract, i.e. because all philosophy must be couched in 

 abstract terms, therefore the whole truth about the universe 

 in the wider sense, i.e. the ultimate account that can be 

 given of it, can be compressed into a single abstract 

 formula, and that the scheme of things is nothing more 

 than, e.g., the self-development of the Absolute Idea. To 



