Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/68

56 SHADWORTH H. HODGSON. hath. That is the proper temper of true love, and that is the temper in which we must approach philosophy. We must make no bargain with truth. It is said and most truly said, that we ought to be per- fectly indifferent, perfectly receptive, with regard to experi- ence, to bring with us no bias of our own. But what I want to point out is, that to maintain this indifference, recep- tivity, and freedom from bias, is itself a decided attitude and temper of mind, which it costs a determined effort to main- tain. It is a positive temper of mind which we may call either faith or love of truth for its own sake, the very oppo- site of a foregone conclusion. Though positive, it furnishes no premiss, initiates no line of argument, favours no par- ticular result. What it initiates is method, a method of getting experience pure. In order to give up those insinu- ating imaginations which constitute a bias, we must first find them out. It is an instance of being biased by such imaginations, when we attempt a construction of the uni- verse, either in avowed separation from analysis, or in undistinguished union with it, analysis meaning analysis of the universe as known, or as in knowledge, that is, experi- ence in the widest sense of the term. To construct the universe from first principles can be nothing but a bad imitation of science, working with unverifiable instead of verifiable hypotheses. If the foregoing diagnosis of the philosophical position and problem is correct, philosophy will fall into two main parts or branches, analytic and constructive, of which the analytic must be treated first, before the other is attempted, or even held to be possible, so entirely will it depend on the results of the analytic part. But this division of philosophy into two parts, analytic and constructive, the former being the condition of the latter, is, you will observe, a division of method, resulting from the precept of subordinating every- thing to analysis. It is a theorem relating, not to the object-matter of philosophy, but to our treatment of it. The same object-matter may be treated under both heads, or twice-over. There is a separation of two branches of philosophy because there is a distinction of its two methods, analysis and construction. Method is the practical part of speculative philosophy as a pursuit philosophia agens that part of which we contribute to the resulting discoveries of truth. And it is a dictate of plain good sense, that so soon as we are aware of the inti- mate and subtil nature of the disturbance which our familiar conceptions and involuntary assumptions cause in the phe-