of the kind, since we can define the particular series in question, and provide by formula for all of its terms. And if it be objected that Achilles, at least, in traversing the intervening space, must successively pass through all of its least units, we may reply that he has a like infinitely divisible time in which to do it.

This very meagre treatment of the matter will serve, I trust, to suggest the method by which the seeming paradoxes of space and time may be dispelled. Such a method serves not only to throw light on the nature of space and time, and so to save the already over-burdened 'absolute' from the necessity of assuming entire responsibility for them; but it also justifies space and time, and establishes their reality in their own terms. In short, if science be defective or limited, it is not because space and time, its fundamental concepts, are unreal.

§ 11. The most important critique of science is yet to be considered: that critique, namely, which rests on the assertion of the priority of consciousness. Since The Priority of this assertion constitutes the central thesis of idealism, and, as such, will occupy us during the next three chapters, a brief mention of it must suffice here.

Consciousness

In his book on Hume, Huxley writes as follows: "If the materialist affirms that the universe and all its phenomena are resolvable into matter and motion, Berkeley replies, True; but what you call matter and motion are known to us only as forms of consciousness; their being is to be conceived or known; and the existence of a state of consciousness, apart from a thinking mind, is a contradiction in terms. I conceive that this reasoning is irrefragable. And therefore, if I were obliged to choose between absolute materialism and absolute idealism, I should feel compelled to accept the latter alternative." Huxley's acceptance of this argument is very significant. For in the great controversies of the last century, he has been one of the most 1T. H. Huxley: Hume, p. 279.

distinguished protagonists of science. Despite his scientific affiliations and habits of mind, he was prevented from being an idealist only because he was an agnostic. The "reasoning" which constitutes the chief support of idealism he regarded as "irrefragable"-in common with the majority of the philosophers of his own and the present generation.

Science, it is argued, abstracts things from their relation to knowledge. Concretely, everything is 'object' for a subject; something perceived, thought, or willed. This is supposed to become apparent at the moment when one becomes reflective or self-conscious-at the moment when one recognizes the central place of that 'I' which is naïvely overlooked, or, in the case of science, deliberately omitted. The real nature of things is grasped only when things are taken in this context. Viewed in this light, the world of science loses its self-sufficiency. It is, to be sure, internally systematic and consistent. But we are now to recognize that it is literally the world of science; formed to suit the purpose of scientific thought, and expressing, in the last analysis, the capacities and motives of knowledge. So it is to knowledge itself-to sense, thought, or purpose, that one must look for the root and stem of reality.

The critical examination of idealism must be reserved until we shall have become more fully acquainted with its grounds. But it is important to point out the essential agreement between idealism and the motive or standpoint of religion. We have already seen that while science, on the one hand, seeks to eliminate the personal equation, and to banish from mind the hopes and fears that are at stake, religion, on the other hand, makes the application and draws the moral. Religion, in other words, is essentially a judgment of the bearing of reality on life. Now idealism asserts that reality is grounded in life, and ultimately controlled in its interests. Idealism not only construes things

1 See above, pp. 28-29.

in their bearing on life, as religion does; but affirms that such a construction of things affords the only true insight into their nature. It not only adopts the method of religion, but affirms the priority of that method over the method of detachment and self-elimination adopted by science. Thus idealism comes to be identified with the institution of religion; and to be recognized as its champion against naturalism.

But this alignment of intellectual forces is confusing and misleading. In the first place, idealism, as a special theory, acquires unmerited prestige through its alliance with religion-which is a universal human interest. The validity which attaches to the interest and the institution in which it finds expression, is transferred to the theory. For the religious method has its incontrovertible rights. Reality does have a bearing on life, and it is necessary that reality should be so construed. But it does not follow that such a construction should, as the idealist would have us believe, take precedence of all other constructions. It may be that while reality affects life, it does so only accidentally; for philosophy to overlook this possibility, by employing the religious method exclusively, would be sheer bias. To this bias idealism is peculiarly liable.

In the second place, the association of idealism with the religious motive tends, as we have seen, to encourage the belief that philosophy is the same as religion. Idealism has not hesitated to identify the standpoint of philosophy in general with its own special bio-centric doctrine. But this is to exclude ab initio a philosophy which shall survey the totality of things dispassionately. It is to beg the question of the place of life in reality at large, and thus commit philosophy with reference to a question which it should treat in a spirit of free and critical inquiry.

The central thesis of idealism, to the effect that consciousness, especially in the form of cognition, is the creative and sustaining principle in things, thus obtains a certain

1 See above, pp. 29-30, 40-41.

adventitious support from prevailing ideas concerning the relations of science, religion, and philosophy. It has also the support of certain dialectical arguments, which we shall presently examine. The outcome of that examination cannot fairly be anticipated here. But we shall find, I believe, that the arguments for idealism fail; and if so, the critique of science on the ground of the priority of consciousness is invalid.

Science as a Limited Body of Truth

§12. Are we then to conclude that science has no bounds, and that the claims of an optimistic religion must therefore be abandoned? There remains a very simple alternative. Without prejudice to the truth of science or to the validity of its methods, without disparagement of the reality of physical nature, or the reduction of it to dependence on consciousness, it is still open to us to conclude that science is not all of truth, nor physical nature all of being. That which distinguishes such a critique of science is its recognition of science and nature, as they stand. They are not partially true or real; they are simply parts of truth and reality. And the other parts, while they do not undo or transmute the fact, may nevertheless put a wholly new face on the total situation. They disprove every claim to the exclusive truth of science; and provide a balance that may justify religion.

The ground on which such a critique of science stands has already been stated.1 Analysis shows that physical science presupposes logic and mathematics; or, that physical reality is complex, and decomposable into more simple terms and relations. Physical science has to do, furthermore, with certain features of physical reality. It describes the quantitative constancies exhibited by physical change. And there are other features exhibited even by bodies; such, for example, as their control, in the case of living bodies, by desire and will. Thus, being is neither physical in substance nor is it exclusively mechanical in behavior.

1 See above, pp. 82-84. I shall resume this argument, and amplify its religious applications, in the final chapter.

Logic is prior to physics, in the sense that it has to do with more elementary forms of being; and ethics is at least correlative with physics, since what it describes is as truly found in the world as that which physics describes. And logic and ethics, taken together with other equally unimpeachable branches of philosophy, not only disprove the generalizations of naturalism, but afford a basis for religious belief.

It cannot, I think, be denied that naturalism has gained rather than lost by the usual tactics of its adversaries. It has been put in the position of being the more desirable alternative. As between naturalism and the traditional supernaturalism, no one would now hesitate to choose. And the polemic of idealism and pragmatism has similarly enhanced the credit of the very object of their attack. The charge of failure, the attempt to make capital out of the fallibility of science, has reacted upon its authors. The attacks upon the method of science have tended to create the supposition that the only alternative to naturalism is inexactness or unreason. The assertion of the unreality of space and time has not only failed to carry conviction, but has given rise to the more effective counter-charge of agnosticism and mysticism. And the attempt to disprove naturalism by claiming the universal priority of consciousness, has driven into the camp of naturalism many who shrink from the paradoxes of subjectivism. As the only alternative to supernaturalism, obscurantism, irrationalism, agnosticism, mysticism, and subjectivism, - naturalism has acquired a place of intellectual distinction which it does not in fact merit. The greater the opportunity, then, for a critique of science that shall do it strict justice; a critique that shall neither, on the one hand, concede the extravagant claims which naturalism makes in its behalf, nor, on the other hand, through the extravagance of its counter-claims, produce a reaction in its favor.