102 HUMANISM vi 



Nor can I see why philosophers should fight shy of 

 such a procedure. For surely the admission that philosophy 

 is an interpretation of experience in terms of thought 

 does not preclude us from the reinterpretation of our 

 symbols by a reference to experience wherever that may 

 seem expedient and profitable. Why should we commit 

 ourselves to a task which must prove either illusory or 

 impossible, that of the rational deduction of the self- 

 evident ? It is true that philosophic explanation came 

 into being because experience is not wholly self-explaining. 

 But to admit this is not to imply that everything requires 

 explanation. For all explanation must set out from 

 certain data, which may either be accepted as facts or 

 considered self-evident, and in no wise necessitate or justify 

 the attempt to explain everything, an attempt which must 

 ultimately derive everything from nothing, by the power 

 alone of an intentionally obscure vocabulary. What the 

 data of such an ultimate explanation of the world should 

 be, admits, of course, of further discussion ; but I can see 

 no reason in the nature of philosophy as such why the 

 characteristic of Time should not be one of them. And 

 if by a frank recognition of the reality of Time, Im 

 perfection and Individuality we can reach a deeper, more 

 complete and workable insight into the facts of experience, 

 why should our philosophy be worse than one which is 

 driven to reject them by ancient prejudices concerning 

 the perfections which the world ought to possess ? 



The abstractions of metaphysics, then, exist as ex 

 planations of the concrete facts of life, and not the latter 

 as illustrations of the former ; and the Absolute Idea also 

 is not exempt from this rule. Nor is it to a different 

 conclusion concerning the subordination of abstract meta 

 physics that we are led by the consideration of the first 

 argument adduced in their favour, the fact that all science 

 shares their assumption. 



That all science abstracts from the particularity and 

 time-reference of phenomena, and states its laws in the 

 shape of eternal and universal truths, is perfectly true. 

 But this fact will not bear the inference it is sought to 



