IDEALISM AND POLITICS 

 VIII 



THE DEFENCE 



A SUMMARY of the objections urged against Idealism. The 

 objections are valid, provided vital considerations are omitted. 

 But the omission perverts the theory. Why Idealism is 

 peculiarly liable to perversion : it is compacted together of 

 elements ordinarily assumed to be irreconcilable, and has the 

 unity of differences as its starting-point. Its logic is neither 

 Inductive nor Deductive, but both : it maintains the truth of 

 both Morality and Religion, and in that respect is both a 

 Pessimism which condemns and a Pessimism which approves 

 facts. It is neither Socialism nor Individualism, but both ; 

 and is never satisfied with the abstract "Yes" or "No" 

 of ordinary thought. 



But its rejection of pure opposites and merely exclusive 

 categories may accord with facts. The world itself may be 

 neither a "One" nor a "Many," but a " Many in One." 

 The actual moral and religious life, which it seeks to explain, 

 presents the same apparent incompatibilities. So does the 

 social and political life. Hence, at the worst, Idealism is 

 valuable in that it brings us back to the complexities of 

 reality ; and in that it exposes the fallacies of abstract systems. 

 How Idealism discredits the logic of exclusion in the province 

 of politics. Why it can please neither the destructive 

 reformer nor the mere Conservative. How it would maintain 

 present institutions as against the former, and yet, as against 



