p. F. EOGET, ON ERNEST NAVILLE's LIFE. 



205 



and wrong. 12. Idealism cancels the ordinary distinction 

 between truth and error. 13. Idealism may lead to positivism, 

 a philpsophising negative of philosophy. 14. Idealism in thought 

 may lead to nihilism in effect. 15. Idealism narrowed down to 

 a philosophy of evolution might supply an intelligible doctrine 

 in biology. 



IV. Determinism. 



1. Absolute determinism is a common effect from materialism 

 and idealism. 2. The concatenation of facts is the realisation 

 of a conditional determinism. 3. One may admit a general 

 determinism which does not exclude contingencies. 4. Deter- 

 minism is a legitimate postulate with the sciences whose subjects 

 obey the law of inertia. 5. The extension of determinism to 

 facts of all and any order is the consequence of an extremist's 

 conception of science. 6. Determinism has no place for the 

 heart. 7. Determinism has no place for conscience. 8. Deter- 

 minism may degrade reason. 9. Determinism leads to 

 passivity. 



The perusal of the foregoing tables or summary brings out 

 very plainly that, for Naville, philosophy is cumulative, a 

 synthesis of moral, intellectual and religious predicates. He 

 finds that spiritualism brings with itself the means of taking 

 into account every honest desideratum of the heart, of con- 

 science and of reason, reconciling the mind of man to the 

 knowledge which it can obtain about the making of the world. 

 According to him, in every and any other philosophy that may 

 be attempted or adopted, there is a lacuna, an absentia. In such 

 philosophies obvious deficiencies in the physical, intellectual or 

 moral departments of doctrine point to one addendum as indis- 

 pensable to bring the sum right ; a creative Spirit, or in the 

 other, but equivalent poetic form — God. Our best knowledge 

 of God is the Christian. So the adding together of our religion, 

 of our philosophy and of our science must bring out the correct 

 total. Until this happens, some figures, as it were, must have 

 been wrongly put down by us, for we write under dictation, and 

 must listen hard, till we hear right. 



That those figures are a harmony rather than a sum, 

 must follow, a harmony in which several instruments are 

 attuned to each other. The leaving out of any one of them 

 would mean an impeifect concert. An imperfect tuning of any 

 one would mar its contribution to the whole. So Naville singles 

 out in each instrument its discordant notes and tunes them out 



