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there ^ s a iimm* Hegelianism 8, tnt^t iu /'ally remiaoie, so long as it is <;ontent to admit that as yeu it knows nothing at all an admission which it is apt to make in its last chapters, but which never prevents absolutely certain knowledge that its adversaries are mistaken. So far as Mr. Joachim's book goes, it would appear that the views advocated by Mr. Moore and myself are also not internally refutable : at least, this book does not attempt such a refutation. This state of things, it must be admitted, is very unsatisfactory, and seems to render the progress of philosophy almost hopeless. And at the best, even when the reductio ad absurdum can be successfully effected, its result is purely negative : it merely disproves some opinion, without thereby showing that some other opinion is right. It seems to me that the only hope lies in a more careful scrutiny of the premisses that are apt to be employed unconsciously, and a more prolonged attention to, fundamentals, in the hope that gradu- ally the area of agreement may be enlarged. Hitherto it has been the fashion to extol construction at the expense of criticism and analysis, and until very recently most philosophers have considered it an essential part of their business to provide something that could be called a proof of the existence of God. Hence premisses have been accepted at haphazard, almost without reflection ; and atten- tion has been almost wholly concentrated on results. This habit is especially fostered, it seems to me, by the Hegelian philosophy, which denies that it has any premisses, and therefore leaves to its opponents the task of discovering what its premisses are. In a work on "the nature of truth," one might have hoped to find some defence of the premisses ; but at any rate it is a rare merit in Mr. Joachim's book that it makes some of the premisses explicit, which is perhaps as much as a philosophical work can be expected to do. B. EUSSELL.