Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, 'Ichthyology' to 'Independence' / Volume 14, Slice 3 - Various

Now it is just to these implications in the idea of spirit that some of the prominent recent expositions of Idealism seem to have failed to do justice. They have failed particularly when they have left the idea of “determination” unpurged of the suggestion of time succession. The very word lends itself to this mistake. Idealists have gone beyond others in asserting that the subject in the sense of a being which merely repeats what has gone before is timeless. This involves that its activity cannot be truly conceived of as included in an antecedent, as an effect in a cause or one term of an equation in the other. As the activity of a subject or spirit it is essentially a new birth. It is this failure that has led to the present revolt against a “block universe.” But the difficulty is not to be met by running to the, opposite extreme in the assertion of a loose and ramshackle one. This is merely another way of perpetuating the mistake of allowing the notion of determination by an other or a preceding to continue to dominate us in a region where we have in reality passed from it to the notion of determination by self or by self-acknowledged ideals. As the correction from the one side consists in a more whole-hearted acceptance of the conception of determination by an ideal as the essence of mind, so from the other side it must consist in the recognition of the valuelessness of a freedom which does not mean submission to a self-chosen, though not self-created, law.

The solution here suggested is probably more likely to meet with opposition from the side of Idealism than of Pragmatism. It involves, it will be said, the reality of time, the dependence of the Infinite in the finite, and therewith a departure from the whole line of Hegelian thought. (1) It does surely involve the reality of time in the sense that it involves the reality of existence, which it is agreed is process. Without process the eternal is not complete or, if eternity means completeness, is not truly eternal. Our mistake lies in abstraction of the one from the other, which, as always, ends in confusion of the one with the other. Truth lies in giving each its place. Not only does eternity assert the conception of the hour but the hour asserts the conception of eternity—with what adequacy is another question. (2) The second of the above objections takes its point from the contradiction to religious consciousness which seems to be involved. This is certainly a mistake. Religious consciousness asserts, no doubt, that God is necessary to the soul: from Him as its inspiration, to Him as its ideal are all things. But it asserts with equal emphasis that the soul is necessary to God. To declare itself an unnecessary creation is surely on the part of the individual soul the height of impiety. God lives in the soul as it in Him. He also might say, from it as His offspring, to it as the object of His outgoing love are all things. (3) It is a mistake to attribute to Hegel the doctrine that time is an illusion. If in a well-known passage (Logic § 212) he seems to countenance the Spinoxistic view he immediately corrects it by assigning an “actualizing force” to this illusion and making it a “necessary dynamic element of truth.” Consistently with this we have the conclusion stated in the succeeding section on the Will. “Good, the final end of the world, has being only while it constantly produces itself. And the world of the spirit and the world of nature continue to have this distinction, that the latter moves only in a recurring cycle while the former certainly also makes progress.” The mistake is not Hegel’s but ours. It is to be remedied not by giving up the idea of the Infinite but by ceasing to think of the Infinite as of a being endowed with a static perfection which the finite will merely reproduces, and definitely recognizing the forward effort of the finite as an essential element in Its self-expression. If there be any truth in this suggestion it seems likely that the last word of idealism, like the first, will prove to be that the type of the highest reality is to be sought for not in any fixed Parmenidean circle of achieved being but in an ideal of good which while never fully expressed under the form of time can never become actual and so fulfil itself under any other.

Bibliography.—(A) General works besides those of the writers mentioned above: W. Wallace, Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel (1894), and Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind (1894); A. Seth and R. B. Haldane, Essays in Phil. Criticism (1883); John Watson, Kant and his English Critics (1881); J. B. Baillie, Idealistic Construction of Experience (1906); J. S. Mackenzie, Outlines of Metaphysics (1902); A. E. Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics (1903); R. L. Nettleship, Lectures and Remains (1897); D. G. Ritchie, Philosophical Studies (1905).

(B) Works on particular branches of philosophy: (a) Logic—F. H. Bradley, Principles of Logic (1883); B. Bosanquet, Logic (1888) and Essentials of Logic (1895). (b) Psychology—J. Dewey, Psychology (1886); G. F. Stout, Analytic Psychology (1896); B. Bosanquet, Psychology of the Moral Self (1897). (c) Ethics—F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies (1876); J. Dewey, Ethics (1891); W. R. Sorley, Ethics of Naturalism (2nd ed., 1904); J. S. Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics (4th ed., 1900); J. H. Muirhead, Elements of Ethics (3rd ed., 1910). (d) Politics and Economics—B. Bosanquet, Philosophical Theory of the State (1899), and Aspects of the Social Problem (1895); B. Bonar, Philosophy and Political Economy in their historical Relations (1873); D. G. Ritchie, Natural Rights (1895); J. S. Mackenzie, An Introd. to Social Phil. (1890); J. MacCunn, Six Radical Thinkers (1907). (e) Aesthetic—B. Bosanquet, History of Aesthetic (1892), and Introd. to Hegel’s Phil. of the Fine Arts (1886); W. Hastie, Phil. of Art by Hegel and Michelet (1886). (f) Religion—J. Royce, Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885), and The Conception of God (1897); R. B. Haldane, The Pathway to Reality (1903); E. Caird, Evolution of Religion (1893); J. Caird, Introd. to the Phil. of Religion (1880); H. Jones, Idealism as a Practical Creed (1909).

(C) Recent Criticism. Besides works mentioned in the text: W. James, Pragmatism (1907), A Pluralistic Universe (1909), The Meaning of Truth (1909); H. Sturt, Personal Idealism (1902); F. C. S. Schiller, Humanism (1903); G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica; H. Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil (1907).