ish metaphysics, the writings
of Bishop Berkeley, and considered his form of idealism, when it was
mentioned, to be a novel and startling paradox. It was, I fancy, a small
minority that had ever really looked into Kant; and Hegel was a name
standing for an unknown region wrapped in hopeless mist. This would be
enough to disenchant any young gentleman fresh from his compendiums of
philosophy. Persons, he would think, in so hopeless a state of ignorance
could no more discuss metaphysics to any purpose than men who had never
heard of the teaching of Newton or Darwin could discuss astronomy or
biology. It was, in fact, one result of the very varying stages of
education of these eminent gentlemen that the discussions became very
ambiguous. Some of the commonest of technical terms convey such
different meanings in different periods of philosophy that people who
use them at random are easily set at hopelessly cross-purposes....
'Object' and 'subject,' 'intuition,' 'experience,' and so forth, as used
by one set of thinkers, are to others like words in an unknown language
which they yet do not know to be unknown.

If metaphysics were really a separate and independent science upon which
experts alone had a right to speak, this remark would be a sufficient
criticism of the Society. It called itself metaphysical, and four out of
five of its members knew nothing of metaphysics. A defence, however,
might be fairly set up. Some of the questions discussed were independent
of purely metaphysical inquiries. And it may be denied, as I should
certainly deny, that experts in metaphysics have any superiority to
amateurs comparable to that which exists in the established sciences.
Recent philosophers have probably dispersed some fallacies and cleared
the general issues; but they are still virtually discussing the old
problems. To read Plato, for example, is to wonder almost equally at his
entanglement in puerile fallacies and at his marvellous perception of
the nature of the ultimate and still involved problems. If we could call
up Locke or Descartes from the dead in their old state of mind, we might
still be instructed by their conversation, though they had never heard
of the later developments of thought. And, for a similar reason, there
was a real interest in the discussion of great questions by political,
or legal, or literary luminaries, who had seen men and cities and mixed
in real affairs and studied life elsewhere than in books, even t