THE MISSING FACTOR IN CURRENT THEORIES. 27 



refused to bear any weight. What did men of science 

 do? They condemned the ladder and, balancing 

 themselves on the side that was secure, proclaimed 

 their Agnosticism to philosophy. And what did phi- 

 losophy do ? It stood on the other half of the ladder, 

 the half that teas not there, and rated them. That the 

 other half was not there was of little moment. It 

 was in themselves. It ought to be there ; therefore 

 it must be there. And it is quite true ; it is there. 

 Philosophy, like Poetry, is prophetic : " The sense of 

 the whole," it says, " comes first." 1 



But science could not accept the alternative. It 

 had looked, and it was not there ; from its stand- 

 point the only refuge was Agnosticism — there were no 

 facts. Till the facts arrived, therefore, philosophy 

 was powerless to relieve her ally. Science looked to 

 Nature to put in her own ends, and not to philosophy 

 to put them in for her. Philosophy might interpret 

 them after they were there, but it must have some- 

 thing to start from ; and all that science had supplied 

 her with meantime was the fact of the Struggle for 

 Life. Working from the stand-point of the larger 

 Nature, Human Nature itself, philosophy could put in 

 other ends ; but there appeared no solid backing for 

 these in facts, and science refused to be satisfied. 

 The position was a fair one. The danger of phi- 

 losophy putting in the ends is that she cannot con- 

 vince every one that they are the right ones. 



And what is the valid answer ? Of course, that 



Nature has put in her own ends if we would take the 



trouble to look for them. She does not require them 



to be secretly manufactured upstairs and credited to 



1 Prof. H. Jones, Browning, p. 28. 



