206 IDEALISM AND POLITICS 



There is no simplest fact, and no most rudimentary judg- 

 ment which is not for it a " system." 



As is its metaphysical starting point, so is its method. 

 Its Logic is neither deductive nor inducdye. It proceeds 

 neither_from thejknown Jo the unknown which, by the 

 bye, is^ibsjird-- nor from^thejanknown to the known, which 

 isjmpossibie. It does not start from principles in the hope 

 of deducing facts, nor from facts in the hope of discovering 

 principles. On the contrary, all thought, the most elemen- 

 tary and the most advanced, is for Idealism at once 

 deductive and inductive, analytic and synthetic, occupied 

 with facts and principles : it is even both negative and 

 positive. Knowledge evolves, it says, and evolution, in 

 its hands, appears as a very nest of contraries. Evolution, 

 it maintains, implies sameness and change, identity 

 throughout the whole and the constant transmutation of 

 every part and element within the whole. It even makes 

 the identity express itself in the differences, and it deepens 

 both the identity and differences as it proceeds. It both 

 denies and asserts that the beginning and the end of the 

 process are the same ; it makes the last the first, and the end 

 throughout the process both real and not real. 



The features of the idealistic categories of valuation 

 have the same baffling character. Idealism is at once_an 

 optirmsin and a^ej>simism. Reality, for it, is evil in every 

 part and perfect as a whole, sane throughout and ' ' intoxi- 

 cated in every limb." God is immanent in the universe, 

 the very substance and truth of all finite being ; and yet 

 finite being is all the more real and independent on that 

 account. Idealism would maintain both religion and 

 morality in all their rights. It trusts both the goodness 

 and the power of God to the full, and will have nothing 



