KEGELS '' METAPHYSIC. 159 



with a fall more dire than that of Icarus : stripped 

 of the false plumes in which he had counterfeited 

 the divine bird of Zeus, and pursued by the imprec- 

 ations of those who discovered too late the cheat 

 which had deceived him, and at length perceive that 

 a haughty scorn of the phenomenal does not satisfy 

 the demands of reality, and that empty abstractions 

 are not "the staff of life, he perishes miserably, and 

 leaves lasting discredit on a subject which seems 

 composed of a series of splendid failures. 



Of this type of metaphysics we may take as 

 examples Eleaticism in ancient, and Hegelianism in 

 modern times. The Eleatic philosophy seems to 

 have simply ignored the phenomenal, and to have 

 consisted in an emphatic assertion of the abstract 

 unity of the universe. Its ingenious polemic against 

 the possibility of Becoming has been preserved in 

 Zeno's famous fallacies about motion, and "Achilles 

 and the Tortoise " and " The Arrow " will ever 

 retain their charm — even though the world has long 

 ago replied to the system which they illustrated and 

 defended by a solvitur ambulando. 



The same praise of ingenuity may be bestowed 

 also upon the Hegelian system, which is doubtless 

 the most ingenious system of false pretences that 

 adorns the history of philosophy. For even its 

 metaphysical character is largely a pretence. It 

 pretends to give us metaphysics where it really has 

 no business to be more than epistemological. We 

 fancy it is speaking of metaphysical realities when 

 it is really dealing with logical categories. It pre- 

 tends to give us a thought- process incarnate in 

 reality, but the thought remains motionless, and its 

 transitions are really affected by the surreptitious 

 introduction of phenomenal Becoming. It pretends 



