vi METAPHYSICS OF TIME-PROCESS 105 



to resolve itself into the question whether we can live 

 by it. 



In any case, then, it appears that scientific knowledge 

 is not an ultimate and unanalysable term in the explana 

 tion of things : Science subordinates itself to the needs 

 and ends of life alike whether we regard its origin 

 practical necessity, or its criterion practical utility. But 

 if so, the procedure of Science can no longer be quoted in 

 support of the attempt to found our ultimate philosophy 

 upon abstract and eternal universals. If the abstraction 

 from time, place, and individuality is conditioned by 

 practical aims, the next inquiry must evidently concern 

 the nature of these practical aims, to which all theoretic 

 knowledge is ultimately subsidiary. And if these aims 

 can be formed into a connected and coherent system, it 

 will be to the discipline which achieves this that we shall 

 iook for an ultimate account of the world. Is there then 

 a science which gives an orderly account of the ends of 

 life that are or should be aimed at ? Surely Ethics is as 

 much of a science as abstract metaphysics, and if it be 

 the science of ultimate ends, it seems to follow that our 

 ultimate metapJiysic must be ethical} 



Let us consider next what the attitude of such an 

 ethical metaphysic would be to the metaphysical preten 

 sions of abstract universals and of the Time -process 

 respectively. It seems clear, in the first place, that prac 

 tical aims, or a system thereof, do not easily lend themselves 

 to statement in terms of abstract universals. For an end 

 or purpose seems to be intrinsically the affair of a finite 

 individual in space and time, and the attempt to regard 

 the timeless, immutable and universal as possessed of ends 

 seems to meet with insuperable difficulties. If, therefore, 

 the ultimate explanation of the world is to be in terms of 

 ends, it would seem as though it must be in terms of 

 individual ends, realized in and through the Time-process. 

 Nor is there anything repugnant to reason in the con 

 ception of an end realized in a time-process that would 

 render it difficult for a teleological explanation to admit 



1 All this seems a very fairly definite anticipation of modern pragmatism (1903). 



