Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/402

390 H. HAVELOCK ELLIS : legitimate satisfaction of the soul's aspirations in the facts of the world, in science, in law, in place of (to use Hinton's words) the " partial and precarious satisfaction they still endeavour to find in claiming a sphere of exceptions to the law, or a Will beyond it ". Hinton has frequently re-affirmed this position as to the relation of the emotions to the intellect, sometimes rather obscurely, and it has occasionally been misunderstood. It has sometimes appeared as if he held the emotions to be a source of knowledge of the same kind as the intellect gives, as, in fact, a kind of arbitrary intellect. Mr. Sully, for instance, has unhesitatingly attributed this view to Hinton, and points out that, while sense and intellect are homo- geneous, the whole process from the one to the other being continuous, when we turn to the emotions we enter a totally new and unconnected region. We are compelled, therefore, to hesitate before giving our adhesion to the supremacy of the emotions viewed thus. But, if Hinton ever held it, cer- tainly he has nowhere explicitly stated so strange a view of the function of emotion. Whether intellect and emotion are homogeneous may admit of question, but it can scarcely be said that Hinton ever made any assumptions in the matter. His error lay, rather, in endeavouring to give stability to an already valid psychological process by converting it into a metaphysical entity. It is one thing to say that there can be no true picture of the world without the aid that imagi- nation gives ; without conceiving it, for instance, as the phenomenon of an existence which is love or rightness. It is quite another thing to say that the world actually is, apart from the conception of the percipient, the phenomenon of any such existence. It may be doubted whether Hinton, like many thinkers of strong metaphysical tendency, ever adequately realised the vast distinction between these two propositions. The function of emotion, of imagination, how- ever, as a great factor in the right seeing of the world, without which sense and intellect give but an incomplete vision, involves nothing of the homogeneity of intellect and emotion. And it is as an attempt more or less clearly apprehended to vindicate the legitimate function of imagination as the interpreter of scientific truth that Hinton's philosophy is of chief significance. This significance, however, has clear limits. If the quality by which his work in philosophy is chiefly marked could be indicated by a single word it might be said that Hinton was, above all, a stimulating thinker. It is of little consequence whether you agree with him or not ; his insights, his audaci-