244 HUMANISM 



XIII 



But for this very reason too much importance should not 

 be attached to it. It follows indeed that it is a sad waste 

 of energy for psychologists and epistemologists, who have 

 in principle assented to Hume s assumptions, subsequently 

 to contend for the recognition of mental activity in any 

 shape or form. For even though mental activity were (as 

 I believe it to be) the most real and essential and all- 

 pervasive and ineradicable fact in our nature, and implicit 

 even in the very theories which seek to set it aside, it 

 would yet be vain to try to extort a recognition of 

 its existence from the Humian assumptions, or to 

 describe it in naturalistic terms. How can any one, e.g. 

 confute a polemic which begs the point at issue with the 

 superb audacity of Hume s argument in the Appendix to 

 the Treatise ? l First he professes a desire to find a 

 perception on which the causal connexion could be 

 based; then he assumes (i) that &quot;if perceptions are 

 distinct existences, they form a whole only by being 

 connected together &quot; ; (2) that &quot; no connexions among 

 distinct existences are ever discoverable by human under 

 standing.&quot; Whence it would clearly follow that, even if 

 we had a perception of causal connexion, it could not, 

 ex hypothesi^ serve as a principle of connexion, by the very 

 fact of its being a perception, and so doomed to remain 

 a distinct and disconnected existence ! 2 



Thus the very attempt to prove the existence of 

 activity to those who insist on taking up a point of view 

 from which it cannot be seen, is a mistake. The true 

 retort to their attitude is to show that it is arbitrary, and 

 does not go deep enough, and that better alternatives 

 exist. Mr. Bradley, however, is quite right from his own 

 point of view, as an intellectualist, as a logician, and as a 

 pupil of Hume, to wage war upon the concept of Activity : 

 he is wrong only in imagining that a conception which 

 has been expunged from psychology and expelled from 



1 P. 635, ed. Selby-Bigge. 



2 It is not so clear why &quot; the connexion or determination of the thought to pass 

 from one object to another&quot; which &quot;we only feel&quot; should not yield the 

 internal impression &quot; required ; but Hume s large and loose way of equating 

 impression, sensation, and perception, greatly helps him in ruling out this 

 possibility. 



