It is a pleasure to all of us to hold forth upon subjects about which we know very little. It is particularly a temptation to university professors to get away from the subjects of their own chairs and lecture as dogmatically as their nature demands on subjects of other people's chairs. That is why I am speaking to-night about Psychology. As to Vice, the case is a little different. Even if my own experience is regrettably limited, I have for some years studied the Chairman, and I bring my observations before a society full of persons whose range and profundity of knowledge will be sufficient to correct any hasty generalizations on my part.

The student of Spinoza is faced by a peculiar difficulty. On opening the Ethics—Spinoza's chief work, completed for publication shortly before his death in 1674—he finds a system of metaphysics set forth in geometrical form, starting from definitions, axioms, and postulates, and advancing synthetically from first principles to a detailed interpretation of the universe. The difficulty lies not in the language— Spinoza's Latin is easy to construe, and there are translations—nor in the lack of literary graces; his style indeed is singularly impressive in its austere dignity. It lies rather in this, that the method of exposition conveys a misleading suggestion of dogmatism and finality, and conceals almost all traces of the patient inquiries that issued in the finished structure. If once the principles of the system are admitted, the rest appears to follow by logical necessity. But by what processes of thought was Spinoza led to those principles? This is the problem that besets the reader: in order to understand the Ethics, he must penetrate behind the text of the propositions to their significance as answers to the questions that were stirring in Spinoza's mind.

One of the strangest of the many strange habits of philosophers, which mark them out as the Ishmaels of the scientific world, is their refusal to agree as to the precise meaning of the words they use. No philosopher, it seems, is bound by the definitions given by predecessors or contemporaries of even the most central terms: each has to define his terms for himself. The resulting situation certainly lends itself to ridicule and caricature, as in the legend of the theological disputants who arrived after long argument at the conclusion that when the one said ‘God’ he meant what the other meant when he said ‘Devil.’ Still it is probable that this idiosyncrasy of philosophers has some real ground in the special nature of the task on which they are engaged, and is not a mere exhibition of aimless malice or sheer incompetence. Whether that is so or not, one of the consequences of this situation is that the titles of philosophic discourses are apt to be singularly unilluminating: as an indication of the problem to be raised they are, to say the least, highly ambiguous. How the reader may understand the title of this paper I do not know; but the question which I had in mind in choosing it was this.

In Book VII, p. 520, Socrates describes the arguments by which the philosophers must be induced to “return to the cave,” that is to say, to resume the practical business of politics from which they have escaped into the better life of contemplation. They must be shown that this sacrifice is a debt which they owe to the city in return for the opportunity which it has afforded them of becoming philosophers. “Will our pupils,"1 he continues, “when they hear this, refuse to share in turn the toils of state, when they are allowed to spend the greater part of their time with one another in the heaven of ideas?” “Impossible,” Glaucon replies; “for they are just men, and the commands which we impose on them are just; there can be no doubt that every one of them will take office as a stern necessity, and not like our present ministers of state’.

He upon whom has descended the “amor intellectualis Dei” must make up his mind to walk much alone. In the world of “intellectuals” he is at present “out of the swim,” and his work must be done against the prevailing current. And among the generality of religious people, he is regarded as rather a disturbing presence in matters of faith, apt to fall short, apparently, of their own standards in the service of God. “The love of the mind for God” has little popular esteem in English-speaking Christianity. The nineteenth century valued feeling as the chief element in religion, and the emphasis of to-day is on the practical service of the will. But in our tradition, from Colet and the Cambridge Platonists to Westcott and von Hiigel, the “amor intellectualis Dei” has produced a line of great men of God, and surely will never be without its witnesses. Their message is a two-fold one. First that every experience of life can be “produced” into an experience of God by an effort of personality in which creative thought and constructive imagination has its part, second that this “love of the mind” is natural in some degree to all men, and an end in itself, giving to each lover an original vision. “It is Origen,” writes Dean Inge, “who in words thrilling alike by their humility and confidence, proclaims that ‘as the eye seeks the light, as our body craves for food, so our mind is impressed with the natural desire of knowing the truth of God and the causes of what we observe.’”

In his Introduction to McTaggart's Philosophical Studies, Dr. S. V. Keeling complains that in the interests of a prejudice in favour of science and scientific methods, Russell and his followers have denied the possibility of solving metaphysical problems without giving any philosophical reason for this proscription. And by “metaphysical problems,” Dr. Keeling seems to mean (as against Russell and in agreement with McTaggart) ethical problems about the amount of good and evil in the world, the nature of human beings and their destiny, the hopes of men about immortality, and hence the “ultimate analysis of Time,” etc. Science is not concerned with such problems, and moreover it is the business of philosophy to “justify” induction and cannot itself employ a scientific method. Dr. Keeling therefore urges a return to the rationalism of McTaggart and the attempt to solve such problems by the deductive method. I want to say why this seems to me impossible and why such problems are insoluble unless they can be interpreted empirically and left to the investigation of the special sciences. I shall refer first to the most important feature of present empirical philosophy, then discuss metaphysical and other deductive systems, and finally dispute McTaggart's claim that the Self must be known by acquaintance and not by description, which Dr. Keeling regards, mistakenly, as it seems to me, the final refutation of this part of “positivistic phenomenalism.“ By this procedure I do not intend to justify or defend analytic philosophy but merely to re-compare its method with that of McTaggart.