i DEGRADATION OF PHILOSOPHY 45 



least substantially representative of the 

 truth. 



But the new veto on anthropocentric 

 thought, although helpless to expel it, is 

 quite competent to cripple and degrade 

 it. It cannot exclude our own faculties, 

 but it may select and favour the lowest, 

 the humblest, the most elementary, the 

 most blunt, the least perceptive. It 

 may silence the highest, the acutest, the 

 most penetrating, the most intuitive, 

 those most in harmony with the highest 

 energies in the world around us. All 

 this the new doctrine may do, and does. 



Accordingly the very first instance 

 given to us of the new philosophy is a 

 striking illustration of its effects. It 

 fixes the attention on mere outward and 

 external things. It seeks for the first 

 and best explanation of organic beings 

 in the mere mechanical effects of their 

 surroundings. The physical forces 



