THE ACCUSATION 195 



The votaries of Idealism have been slow to accept the 

 challenge made by our author and seconded by Mr. Morley. 

 Still, I cannot condemn their silence ; for it ought to be 

 obvious that a philosophical theory has this in common 

 with a mathematical, physical or any other theory that it 

 cannot be either refuted or justified except at the expense of 

 the trouble of comprehending it. In the case of Idealism, 

 almost beyond any other, that task has not proved easy 

 even to those who have seriously taken it in hand. Hence, 

 in its case, almost beyond any other, recourse has been had 

 to coarse methods of refutation, which Idealists are justified 

 in ignoring " joukin' and letting the jaw gae by." But, 

 partly from loyalty to great teachers whose influence has 

 long seemed to me as pure as their lives, and partly from 

 the feeling that Mr. Hobhouse has gravely wronged a great 

 cause, deepening prejudice where prejudice was all too 

 prevalent, I am tempted to examine his statements with 

 some care. 



I begin, as before, by referring briefly to the matters in 

 which I agree with Mr. Hobhouse. The first of these 

 concerns the range of the influence of this theory upon 

 the social and political life of the present time. Idealism, he 

 truly says, is the most popular philosophy of the time. For 

 many years adherents of this way of thought have deeply 

 interested the British public by their writings. Almost 

 more important than their writings is the fact that they have 

 occupied philosophical chairs in almost every university in 

 the Kingdom. Even the professional critics of Idealism 

 are for the most part, like Mr. Hobhouse, themselves 

 Idealists after a fashion. And, when they are not, they 

 are, as a rule, more occupied with the refutation of Idealism 

 than with the construction of a better theory. It follows 



