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into the not uncommon error which identifies muddy water 
with deep water, and the other equally hasty generalization 
which asserts that whatever is clear must he shallow. 
To form an adequate conception of the rottenness of the 
foundation on which this so-called philosophy rests, it is 
necessary to have made it a considerable subject of study. 
My limits will only allow me to illustrate it by one or two 
brief quotations. I quote from Lewes's History of Philosophy. 
“ The blind and unconscious products of nature are nothing 
but unsuccessful attempts of nature to make itself an object ; 
the so-called dead nature is but an unripe intelligence. The 
acme of its efforts, i.e., for nature completely to objectize itself, 
is attained through the highest and ultimate degree of reflec- 
tion in man, — or what we call reason. Here nature returns 
into itself, and reveals its identity with that which in us is 
known as the object and the subject." 
“ This function of reason is elsewhere more distinctly described 
as the total-indifference point of the subjective and objective. 
The absolute he represents by the symbols of the magnet. 
Thus as it is the same principle which divides itself in the 
magnet into the north and south poles, the centre of which is 
the indifference point; so in like manner does the absolute 
divide itself into the real and ideal, and holds itself in this 
separation as absolute indifference. And as in the magnet 
every point is itself a magnet, having a north pole and a 
south pole, and a point of indifference, so also in the universe 
the individual varieties are but varieties of the eternal 
one. Man is a microcosm. Reason is the indifference point. 
Whoso rises to it, rises to the reality of things, which reality 
is precisely in the indifference of object and subject. The 
basis of philosophy is therefore the basis of reason ; its know- 
ledge is the knowledge of things as they are, i. e. as they are 
in reason." 
Of many of the terms of this quotation, I am not 
ashamed to confess that I am unable to form any distinct 
conception. They consist of a mass of indefiniteness, of 
which, as far as I can see, reason is incapable of predicating 
anything affirmatively or negatively. The sooner they are 
excluded both from theology and philosophy, the better. It 
is surprising that large numbers of men ever could have been 
deluded into the idea that such muddy waters must be pro- 
found depths. 
A similar dealing with transcendental conceptions — I dare not 
call 'it reasoning — induced Hegel to assert the actual existence 
of non-existence ; that Being and non-Being are the same ; 
that contradictions are identical; that subject was object, and 
