The arts are like truant children who think
their life will be glorious if they only run away and play for ever;
no need is felt of a dominant ideal passion and theme, nor of any
moral interest in the interpretation of nature. Artists have no less
talent than ever; their taste, their vision, their sentiment are often
interesting; they are mighty in their independence and feeble only in
their works.
In philosophy there are always the professors, as in art there are
always the portrait painters and the makers of official sculpture; and
both sorts of academicians are often very expert and well-educated.
Yet in philosophy, besides the survival of all the official and
endowed systems, there has been of late a very interesting fresh
movement, largely among the professors themselves, which in its
various hues may be called irrationalism, vitalism, pragmatism, or
pure empiricism. But this movement, far from being a reawakening of
any organising instinct, is simply an extreme expression of romantic
anarchy. It is in essence but a franker confession of the principle
upon which modern philosophy has been building--or unbuilding--for
these three hundred years, I mean the principle of subjectivity.
Berkeley and Hume, the first prophets of the school, taught that
experience is not a partial discovery of other things but is itself
the only possible object of experience.
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