Metaphysics, to pass current in England, has now to be
baptized and become part of the authoritative religious instruction,
else it is foreign and barbarous to the English matter-of-fact ways
of thinking. Mill's "System of Logic" was not intended as a system
of _philosophy_ in the German, French, or even Scotch sense of the
term. It is not through the _a priori_ establishment or refutation
of highest principles that experiential, inductive, fact-proven
principles of science are regarded or tested by the unmetaphysical
English mind. Metaphysical doctrines prevail, it is true, in
England, to the extent, probably, that Mr. Mill estimates--twenty to
one of its thinkers holding to some such views. Yet it would be a
misconception to suppose these to be products of modern English
_thought_. They are rather preserves, tabooed, interdicted to
discussion, not the representatives of its living thought.
Mr. Mill estimated the worth of contemporary thinkers in accordance
with this almost instinctive distrust of rational "illumination;"
setting Archbishop Whately, for example, as a thinker, above Sir W.
Pages:
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99