(9) The real strength of Dr. McTaggart's system must be measured by the validity of his objections to a Theism such as I have defended. I have attempted to reply to those objections in the course of these Lectures, and more at length in a review of his Some Dogmas of Religion in Mind (N.S.), vol. xv., 1906.
[1] Cf. Flint's Theism, Ed. v., p. 117 and App. xi.
[2] The most illuminating discussion of time and the most convincing argument for its 'objectivity' which I know, is to be found in Lotze's Metaphysic, Book II. chap. iii., but it cannot be recommended to the beginner in Metaphysic. A brilliant exposition of the view of the Universe which regards time and change as belonging to the very reality of the Universe, has recently appeared in M. Bergson's L'Évolution Créatrice, but he has hardly attempted to deal with the metaphysical difficulties indicated above. The book, however, seems to me the most important philosophical work that has appeared since Mr. Bradley's Appearance and Reality, and though the writer has hardly formulated his Natural Theology, it constitutes a very important contribution to the theistic argument. Being based upon a profound study of biological Evolution, it may be specially commended to scientific readers.
[3] Such a view is expounded in Dr. Schiller's early work The Riddles of the Sphinx and in Professor Howison's The Limits of Evolution. The very distinguished French thinker Charles Renouvier (La Nouvelle Monadologie, etc.), like Origen, believed that souls were pre-existent but created.
[4] I use the word 'causally connected' in the popular or scientific sense of the word, to indicate merely an actually observed psycho-physical law.
[5] In part, perhaps, also to a mistaken theory of predication, which assumes that, because every fact in the world can be represented as logically a predicate of Reality at large, therefore there is but one Substance or (metaphysically) Real Being in the world, of which all other existences are really mere 'attributes.' But this theory cannot be discussed here.
[6] In The New Theology.
[7] E.g. by Mr. Bradley in Appearance and Reality and still more uncompromisingly by Professor A. E. Taylor in The Problem of Conduct, but I rejoice to find that the latter very able writer has recently given up this theory of a 'super-moral' Absolute.
[8] I think it desirable to mention here that Professor Watson's account of my views in his Philosophical Basis of Religion completely misrepresents my real position. I have replied to his criticisms in Mind, N.S. No. 69 (Jan. 1909).
[9] This is sometimes denied by Philosophers, but I have never been able to understand on what grounds. If I know a priori the existence of other men, I ought to be able to say a priori how many they are and to say something about them. And this is more than any one claims.