NATURE 



517 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1898. 



THE RETURN FROM IDEALISM. 

 The Metaphysic of Experience. By Shadworth H. 

 Hodgson. 4 vols. Pp. xix + 459 ; viii + 403 ; viii 

 + '446 ; viii + 503. (London : Longmans, Green, and 

 Co., 1898.) 



DR. SHADWORTH HODGSON'S first ejsay in 

 metaphysic was made a generation ago, and his 

 well-known " Philosophy of Reflection " dates from 

 twenty years back. In the interval his work has under- 

 gone review and development, revealed from time to time 

 in his presidential addresses in Albemarle Street ; but 

 it is in the present volumes only that the mature results 

 of his courage and patience appear in their due per- 

 spective. It is a matter for general congratulation that 

 so original a thinker should have been able to put forth 

 his system in such relative completeness. 



Neither empiricism which treats unanalysed concretes 

 as ultimate, nor materialism and idealism which lay the 

 stress on the facts of some one order only which we have 

 somehow and in some sense come to know, can offer us 

 an adequate explanation of the world as it exists for 

 common-sense. Materialism fails to explain conscious- 

 ness because matter is known for what it is only in 

 terms of consciousness. Idealism fails to solve the 

 problems of the material world as known to science 

 because it hypostatises thought, imputes real agency to 

 it. Nor is the compromise which makes the material 

 and the conscious simply diverse aspects of the same 

 reality less vicious in its use of unproven assumptions. 

 There is but one way left — experientialism or the in- 

 terrogation of consciousness by the analysis of its 

 process-contents. Such analysis is what Dr. Hodgson 

 calls metaphysic, and upon it may be built a con- 

 structive and complementary philosophy with unverifiable 

 results. The analysis and construction together constitute 

 philosophy as a whole. 



If it is possible to reach to what is in any sense of the 

 words beyond, and independent on, consciousness, it can 

 only be so by making distinctions in the analysis of the 

 contents of consciousness itself. Dr. Hodgson's first 

 book and volume then is devoted to this analysis. 

 What exactly do we find in consciousness 1 If we dismiss 

 the prejudices due to system and incident to language, 

 we have yet to face the fact that the analysis can only be 

 taken in hand when one has long built up his common- 

 sense world, and the conditions of past consciousness 

 cannot fail to affect present. Dr. Hodgson's device to 

 reach consciousness in its lowest terms is to introduce 

 new facts into consciousness, a note, say, and then 

 another struck on an unseen piano, and abstracting from 

 our knowledge of their names, significance, and associa- 

 tions, to inquire what is present in the empirical moment 

 of perception. He finds two distinguishable elements 

 involved, time and feeling. The first note is felt to have 

 receded, though retained in consciousness, as the second 

 is struck. Further consideration shows that time must 

 be taken as having duration and as continuous, and that 

 even the first note must begin to recede from the point 

 at which it begins to be felt. Thus all perception is 

 NO. 1509, VOL. 58] 



retrospective or reflective. This fact is important as 

 leading us at a later stage to contrast the reflective 

 functioning of consciousness as a knowing with its for- 

 ward movement as existent ; to apprehend, as we com- 

 pare retention with redintegration, the significance of 

 the phrase "below the threshold of consciousness" 

 familiar to the physiological psychologist ; to learn with- 

 out surprise that there is in antithesis to consciousness 

 an order of real conditioning, in which the neuro- 

 cerebral system is proximate condition of consciousness 

 as its conditionate and evidence. 



But for the present Dr. Hodgson riots in pure analysis 

 — how we become aware of time future, how we dis- 

 tinguish objective thoughts and objects thought of, 

 " what " and " that," nature and genesis, essence and 

 existence ; how and in what proportions tactual and 

 visual perceptions give us our knowledge of that pre- 

 eminently " common sensible," space ; how the external 

 world and the localisation of consciousness in our bodies 

 become known, and the like. Peculiarly significant is 

 the part played by desire and disappointed expectation 

 in leading us to distinguish the phantasmagoria of ob- 

 jective thoughts from the order of objects thought of as 

 really existing. 



In actual achievement as well as in fruitfulness of 

 suggestion this analysis is a veritable triumph. Its 

 central thought is that the agent and subject is the 

 organism, and not any immaterial Psyche or transcen- 

 dental ego implied in consciousness. The interruptions 

 of continuity in consciousness, and the part therefore 

 assignable to the brain and other nervous system in the 

 explanation of memory, lead us, if we can render matter, 

 in some sense indifferent to consciousness, intelligible as 

 a real existent, to a theory in which it is held that in and 

 from the cognitive order we can infer to an order of real 

 conditioning of which consciousness is the dependent 

 concomitant. The point on which the critic who is not 

 prepared to deny Dr. Hodgson's other main positions 

 would be most likely to take issue is the Lockean doc- 

 trine, that percept-matter and physical matter are so 

 related that matter is known as it actually is. Here, 

 perhaps, the antithesis of noumenon and phenomenon 

 might find rehabilitation. 



The order of real conditioning is the field of the posi- 

 tive sciences, except psychology. This deals with con- 

 sciousness as an existent in dependence on its proximate 

 conditions in the neuro-cerebral organisation. 



Book ii. deals with the positive sciences and contains 

 admirable analysis of some of their fundamental con- 

 ceptions. In this section Dr. Hodgson disclaims ex- 

 pertise, and supports himself on authorities ; but his 

 treatment of the ultimates of mathematics and physics 

 is wholly admirable. Corresponding to his treatment 

 of space in Book i., which was of quite palmary merit, 

 comes an adverse criticism of the claims of non-Euclidean 

 space-theories. His discussion of the Newtonian con- 

 ception of matter leaves nothing to be desired. In 

 chemistry he tends to follow "the new chemistry"; in 

 the biological sciences, though interesting, he is dis- 

 cursive and too little " positive " to be convincing. 



With Book iii. we pass to the science of practice and 

 practical science, to the analysis of conscious action 

 logical poetic or aesthetic, and ethical. And here the 



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