Yet without seeking to solve the only real problem, namely, how nature
is actually constituted, this introduction of metaphysical powers
raises all the others, artificially and without occasion. This side
of M. Bergson's philosophy illustrates the worst and most familiar
vices of metaphysics. It marvels at some appearance, not to
investigate it, but to give it an unctuous name. Then it turns this
name into a power, that by its operation creates the appearance. This
is simply verbal mythology or the hypostasis of words, and there would
be some excuse for a rude person who should call it rubbish.
The metaphysical abuse of psychology is as extraordinary in modern
Europe as that of fancy ever was in India or of rhetoric in Greece. We
find, for instance, Mr. Bradley murmuring, as a matter almost too
obvious to mention, that the existence of anything not sentience is
unmeaning to him; or, if I may put this evident principle in other
words, that nothing is able to exist unless something else is able to
discover it. Yet even if discovered the poor candidate for existence
would be foiled, for it would turn out to be nothing but a
modification of the mind falsely said to discover it. Existence and
discovery are conceptions which the malicious criticism of knowledge
(which is the psychology of knowledge abused) pretends to have
discarded and outgrown altogether; the conception of immediacy has
taken their place.
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