F. F. KOGET^ ON EENEST NAVILLe's LIFE. 



207 



This is an unpretending manner of philosophising, a manner 

 fiee from subtlety, unrefined in the best sense of the word, 

 ringing forth the note of healthy intellectuality, betokening a 

 strong docile nature. The sight of such competent workman- 

 ship is beneficent to the onlooker and gives an extremely 

 favourable opinion of the workman. The earnestness, the 

 sincerity, the straightness of Naville, clothe him with the 

 authority of good sense, and show that common sense in a region 

 infested with sophisms may be one man's originality. This 

 wisdom of Naville's is no timidity, no disability, no ignoring of 

 the temptations, of the difficulties with which the exercise of 

 thought is beset. Naville knows his times and is a man of his 

 day. Any objections that may have been cast up by contem- 

 porary critique against time-honoured truths, he has tested and 

 probed. Any new ideas, dashing hypotheses, any entrancingly 

 bold strokes of " second sight " the contemporary scientific 

 movement may have attempted, he has witnessed with a quiet 

 mind and sympathetically regarded. He consorts with them 

 whom he fights. He does not admit that science may be right 

 within a domain allowed to be her own, and said to be wrong in 

 another sphere. He does not admit that truths of the moral 

 order, when challenged by science, should be considered to be 

 above accepting the challenge. He is a " gentleman " to whom 

 high-handed doings are repugnant. In philosophy, he holds 

 violence to be contrary to the fundamental instinct — the belief 

 of reason in peace and unity. He mistrusts dogma as producing 

 a division in the very place where a symbol of union should 

 appear. 



What Naville demands is that for the collective word science 

 should be substituted the plural sciences, and that two kinds of 

 sciences should be distinguished : on the one hand physical and 

 physiological sciences, on the otlier hand psychological and 

 moral sciences. Now on the threshold of both categories figure 

 facts, that is to say, a something against which and without 

 which our mind can avail nothing. " Facts," he says, " in any 

 seriously meant science, are the foundation and the criterion of 

 theories, and that is true anywhere and in everything. Thus, 

 without any diffidence, he writes that determinism is the postulate 

 in the study of matter, and why should one be disturbed 

 thereby ? If there are facts of another order which cannot be 

 brought down to determinism, these facts will prevail. Against 

 what will they prevail ? will it be against every kind of 

 determinism ? Not at all ; but against an unfair or excessive 

 application of determinism. From facts transcending deter- 



