212 IDEALISM AND POLITICS 



How great this service of Idealism may prove to be is 

 best known to those who are best acquainted with the 

 troubled history of human enquiry, with its endless alter- 

 nation of the mutally refuting theories which, to use the 

 phrase of Plato, have ' ' tried to go on one leg." In meta- 

 physics at least if_we omit Plato and Arigtojle^theories, 

 oXwhich^Hegelianism is little more than a modern versjoji 

 men have been choosing Being and not Becoming, or 

 Becoming and not Being ; a One that excludes the Many, 

 or a Many that excludes the One ; particulars, but not 

 universals, or universals, but not particulars. They have 

 sought from one exclusive presupposition to proceed to 

 its opposite. If they have begun with a universal sub- 

 stance, they have tried to attain particular realities ; if they 

 have started from atoms, or real differences of any kind, 

 they have been in quest of, and they have sometimes fabri- 

 cated, relations between them. Their presuppositions, 

 their methods, and their ends are at war with themselves. 

 And they have all failed. The result has been first affirma- 

 tion, then counter-affirmation, then the sceptical despair of 

 reason, then indifference, then affirmation once more and 

 the repetition of the whole round. The history of logic 

 and epistemology tells the same tale. Knowledge, it has 

 been assumed, must be a priori and not a posteriori, or a 

 posteriori and not a priori ; mediate and not immediate, 

 or immediate and not mediate ; deductive and not induc- 

 tive, or inductive and not deductive ; proceeding from and 

 not to experience, or to and not from experience. But 

 knowledge has refused to come under either of these 

 exclusive alternatives, and reason will not go " on one leg." 

 And, surely, it is not a little thing if Idealism has succeeded 

 in casting doubt upon methods thus doomed to failure, 



