408 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



One might have supposed that all this was settled before- 

 hand, from the time of Locke. But in spite of its title, we 

 find in the Oxford volume experientialism running at large 

 and everywhere; we find, in fact, (i) empiristic epistemol- 

 ogy, (2) an organised new assault upon a priori cognitions, 

 (3) a voluntarism of the most pronounced order, (4) an 

 ethical mysticism combating the mysticism of the intellect, 

 and finally (5) a ^/^-a^i-personalism resting upon the wholly 

 experiential and purely temporal existence of conscious 

 " individuals " added as a society to his own eternal being 

 by the creative fiat of God. In short, not a single trait of 

 systematic ideahsm is present ; the heart of real individuality, 

 of real personality, is not reached — nay, even the serious 

 attempt to reach it is foregone ; yet the whole is brought 

 under the name of Personal Idealism. The force of mis- 

 nomer could hardly farther go. 



One good, however, we shall in all probability reap out 

 of the issuance from Oxford of a cooperative book with this 

 title and with the contents embraced : the attention of all 

 the thoughtful in the English-speaking world, and even far 

 beyond it, will now surely be drawn to the vital questions 

 involved. Thence it may be hoped that the genuinely ideal- 

 istic implications of freedom, of evolutional limits, of valid 

 moral valuation, and of justified enthusiasm for the ideal, 

 will more and more clearly come into view. Not until this 

 occurs, certainly, shall we get finally rid of those plausible 

 makeshifts in the way of philosophy that leave our chief 

 ideal interests still at risk, and so only serve to prolong the 

 weary procession of philosophic disputes. 



