A Critical History of Greek Philosophy

way—such ideas are utterly empty and hollow. Of these
truths, indeed,

we see a notable example in what the writer just quoted
styles his

“metaphysic.” This so-called metaphysic is wholly based
upon the

assumption that knowledge and its object exist, each on its
own

account, external to one another, the one here, the other
there over

against it, and that knowledge is an “instrument” which in
this

external manner takes hold of its object and makes it its
own. The

very moment the word “instrument” is used here, all the
rest,

including the invalidity of knowledge, follows as a matter
of course.

Such assumption then—that knowledge is an
“instrument”—our writer

makes, wholly uncritically, and without a shadow of right.
He gives no

sign that it has ever even occurred to him that this is an
assumption,

that it needs any enquiry, or that it is possible for anyone

to think

otherwise. Yet anyone who will take the trouble, not merely

superficially to dip into the history of philosophy, but thor-

oughly to

submit himself to its discipline, will at least learn that this

is an

assumption, a very doubtful assumption, too, which no one

now has the

right to foist upon the public without discussion as if it

were an

axiomatic truth. He might even learn that it is a false

assumption.

And he will note, as an ominous sign, that the subjectivism

which

permeates and directs the whole course of Mr. Wells’s

thinking is

identical in character with that {x} subjectivism which was

the

essential feature of the decay anddownfall of the Greek

philosophic

spirit, and was the cause of its finalruinanddissolution.

I would counsel the young, therefore, to pay no attention

to plausible