Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/104

92 A. J. BALFOUE ON GEEEN'S METAPHYSICS OF KNOWLEDGE. while he was an intellectual idealist ; and this single differ- ence obscures his perception of, or at least destroyed his interest in, their many points of likeness. Moreover he never quite forgave Berkeley for philosophising (as he said) with a theological object ; not perhaps sufficiently consider- that he might himself be accused, with not less justice, of philosophising with an ethical object. Both accusations are true, and neither is discreditable. Speculation, dealing as it must with subjects so vast and yet so near to us as religion, science and morality, can rarely be pursued by per- fectly colourless intellects ; and could not in all probability be pursued by them with any exceptional success. We are human beings and not investigating machines. But though this be so, or rather because this is so, we are specially bound to examine with anxious and impartial care every system with whose conclusions we are in general sympathy ; and if the reader has been tempted to think that in the pre- ceding pages I have not sufficiently dwelt on the broader aspects of the Prolegomena, that I have seemed too little aware of the subtlety and suggestiveness of its meta- physics, or of the moral fervour which in so strange and attractive a manner pervades even the most scholastic reasoning of its ethics, I ask him to believe that this arises from no lack of appreciation on my part. I go further and say that, though I demur to their being re- garded as portions of a reasoned philosophic system, I do not refuse to accept in their most general sense, and with some qualifications, the conclusions on which Green insists. It is not therefore with the desire of shaking these that I have been occupied with a technical discussion of the technical arguments by which they are sustained : it is rather in the belief that the sole hope of our being able in the first place to discover a reasoned theory of the universe, and in the second place to agree about it when it is dis- covered, lies in the mutual criticism of all who are anxious for the progress of speculation. So wide are the differences which separate opposing schools that much of such criticism must necessarily be irrelevant through want of mutual com- prehension ; but even when it is irrelevant it is not neces- sarily useless. "We may not unreasonably suppose that where there is much misapprehension there may be some obscurity, and that when the precise character of this obscurity is thus made known by its consequences, it may in part, at least, be found capable of removal.