Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/370

VI. DR. WARD'S REFUTATION OF DUALISM. BY Miss E. E. C. JONES. IN the interests of an idealistic view of the world, for which in his Gifford Lectures l Dr. Ward so powerfully pleads, he endeavours first to disprove the Naturalism and Agnosticism to which, as it seems to him, a widespread rejection of idealism is due. He has in view here primarily those who " are dominated by naturalistic preconceptions," holding that with them at any rate Theism has no chance of acceptance until an idealistic view has been established, towards which consummation a disproof of Naturalism and Agnosticism must be the first step. But the real force of this disproof of actual mechanical theory is to be found in the fact that the careful examination to which it is subjected shows the mechanical member of the dualism into which experience has been split, to be (in the isolation which has been forced upon it) a poor travesty of reality, and quite incapable of standing alone as an explana- tion of any part of the concrete world. The argument of Parts i., ii. and iii. is indeed lucid and convincing, even without regard to what follows ; but its full weight and meaning do not appear until it is re-read in the light of Part iv., the argument of which not only elucidates and reinforces the conclusions previously reached, but shows that any merely mechanical scheme of the world must necessarily fail, since any such must be based upon a futile attempt to separate completely factors which in living experience (and therefore for philosophy) are inseparably connected. This is quite compatible with its being necessary to make the sepa- ration provisionally for purposes of scientific or practical convenience. I propose to follow in order, though not of course in detail, 1 Naturalism and Agnosticism, the Gifford Lectures delivered before the University of Aberdeen in the years 1896-1898 by Jaines Ward, Sc.D., Hon. LL.D. Edinburgh, Professor of Mental Philosophy and Logic in the University of Cambridge. 2 vols. London : Adam and Charles Black, 1899.