xi ON PRESERVING APPEARANCES 197 



unless we can conceive how the higher or spiritual 

 world can transcend and absorb, without negating, the 

 lower or material world, the postulates of the religious 

 consciousness must continue to seem idle fairy tales to 

 the austere reason of the systematic thinker. 



Moreover this dependence of derivative realities on 

 primary experience has a most important bearing on the 

 philosophic status of Idealism. At present Idealism 

 remains in the position of an unprofitable paradox, 

 because none of those who have professed a theoretic 

 belief in it have cared or dared to act upon their theory. 

 And so the argument for it is among those which, in 

 Hume s phrase, admit of no answer and carry no con 

 viction ; and yet, strangely enough, idealist philosophers, 

 so far from being disconcerted by it, seem to be rather 

 proud of this fact. Why else should they perpetually 

 be apologising for what they conceive to be the paradox 

 of their doctrine, and explaining that it really leaves the 

 empirical reality of things entirely untouched ? Idealism, 

 they say, opens no royal roads to higher realms : it 

 makes no practical difference to the reality of anything, 

 save, perhaps, that it enables the philosopher to recoil 

 at will upon a point of view not understanded of the 

 vulgar. 



To all of which, as humanists, we must reply, that this 

 defence but aggravates the charge. It proves Idealism to 

 be either worthless or pernicious : the latter, if its sole 

 function is to gratify a philosophic pride ; the former, if 

 it really makes no difference. And while a temporary 

 air of paradox is not unbecoming to the youth of a novel 

 view, it is the plain duty of every doctrine that seriously 

 pretends to maintain itself as truth before the public to 

 turn itself into an accepted truism as quickly as it can. 

 If therefore Idealism really means anything, it must enable 

 the idealist to regard reality differently from the realist, 

 and to act differently in virtue of his truer insight. To 

 say that Idealism makes no difference is thus to pronounce 

 its utter condemnation. It is to admit that it is the same 

 thing as Realism, variously named, i.e. to render it a 



