ABSTRACT FIRST PRINCIPLES ALL BAD. l6l 



of all things is false. It is no matter what we call 

 it, whether it is dubbed the Absolute, or the Un- 

 knowable, or the Idea, or the Will, or the Uncon- 

 scious, or Matter, or Reason, the Good or the In- 

 finite. Nor is it a relevant difference whether the 

 fundamental principle be picked up out of the sphere 

 of material or of immaterial things, and whether we 

 pronounce that the All is the One, or Number, or 

 a material *' element," like Fire, Water, or Air. For 

 all these first principles are abstractions ; they will 

 give partial interpretations of aspects of things, 

 more or less successful according to the importance 

 of the element denoted by the abstraction, and ac- 

 cording to the care with which it has been selected. 

 But not one of them can ever be wholly successful, 

 for each of them is a part which cannot include the 

 whole. The efforts, therefore, of such theories may 

 present to the astounded spectator the most surpris- 

 ing feats of mental acrobatism, but they must be as 

 fruitless as a man's attempt to put himself into his 

 own pocket. 



§ 8. In addition to the evils of the ywpi^ixoq involved 

 in the abstractions of mere metaphysics, further 

 difficulties arise out of the random and haphazard 

 way in which they arrive at their first principles. 

 Philosophies are, for the most part, generated by 

 reflection upon the difficulties of the theories of the 

 past, and so work on from age to age in the same 

 old narrow and vicious groove. Hence the history 

 of philosophy presents a series of unprofitable con- 

 troversies, like that as to the nature of universals, 

 as to the origin of knowledge, as to the existence of 

 an *' external " world, etc., which would either never 

 have been raised or rapidly adjusted if philosophy 

 had kept in closer contact with the real problems of 



R. of S. M 



