ples adopted throughout the exposition as would enable the reader to follow it untroubled by metaphysical difficulties. That introductory chapter has grown insensibly into a substantive work; and the two volumes of which it consists are but a portion of what has been written. Not only has the chapter grown into a work, the work itself has grown into a systematic introduction to the philosophy of Science; and what was intended merely as a preparation for a Psychology discloses itself as the Foundations of a Creed. This brief sketch of its history may not only explain and partly justify the somewhat ambitious pretensions of this work, it will also explain and partly justify certain defects in its composition. Having grown up heterogeneously, its structure is heterogeneous. Sections now brought together have been wrought out at the distance of years, and without reference to each other; while during repeated revisions and remodifications many repetitions and cross-references have been inserted, and sentences bearing the obvious trace of 1872 or 1873 appear in pages originally written perhaps eight or ten years previously. The reader is also sometimes called upon to accept results for which the evidence can only be produced in subsequent chapters or volumes. I have so far guarded against this evil that in such cases I have only asked for provisional assent. The Foundations of a Creed ought to have sufficient standing-room for antagonistic schools. The general consideration that every philosophical opinion must have some truth sustaining it, is here adopted; and therefore due weight is attempted to be assigned to adverse arguments, for example, those which affirm and those which deny the possibility of Metaphysics, or the existence of Innate Ideas; the facts which favor, and the facts which exclude, the spiritualist hypothesis and the materialist hypothesis. While cordially agreeing with those philosophers who reject both Spiritualism and Materialism, I do not agree with them in their conclusion that we know nothing whatever of Mind or Matter. I hold with their antagonists that we know a great deal of both. I cannot agree that Philosophy gains any refuge from difficulties by invoking the Unknowable; though it may admit the existence of the Unknowable, this admission is transcendental, and leaves all the purposes of Philosophy unaffected. Deeply as we may feel the mystery of this universe and the limitations of our faculties, the Foundations of a Creed can only rest upon the Known and Knowable. The second volume, completing this First Series, is now under final revision. THE PRIORY, September, 1873. |