Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 60:240 (Oct 1903)
Article: The Metaphysical Needs Of Our Time
Author: James Lindsay

BSac 60:240 (Oct 1903) p. 633

The Metaphysical Needs Of Our Time

Rev. James Lindsay

Of no one thing does the thought of our time stand more in need than of a revived interest in Metaphysics. A scared Ritschlianism has fled before metaphysics: the almost universal attitude of the scientist towards metaphysics is that of the scorner: much even of the ethical philosophy of the time is grown squeamish before metaphysic. However, signs of quickened interest in metaphysics have not been wanting. In the recent speculative thought of Germany, metaphysical boldness has not been wanting, as witness the works of Eucken, Busse, Külpe, Thiele, Wundt, Paulsen, Rolfes, and others that might be named. In England, we have had the great metaphysical works of Drs. Shadworth Hodgson, Bradley, and Ward, while America has rendered important service through Professors Bowne, Ladd, Howison, Royce, and others. To all which must be added labors like those of Renouvier, Fouillée, Pillon, Dauriac, in France, and the work of De Sarlo and others in Italy. Subjective and individual moments will inevitably enter into the treatment of metaphysics, and the need presses that metaphysics go out in search of objective materials.

The real unity of the universe, its goal and its ground, and the nature of man’s soul,—these are all themes into which our individual hopes, fears, and desires are prone to enter, and in respect of which we must give the more earnest heed to what is objective. I mean, we cannot keep too close to palpitating Reality. For Metaphysics is just the

BSac 60:240 (Oct 1903) p. 634

philosophy of the Real. The mind’s healthy instinct for reality must be maintained in our quest for the highest categories. The adequate hypothesis—the all-comprehending concept—will thus be no vain abstraction. Shunning the atmosphere of illusion, metaphysics must take primary account—in a way not always done—of Evolution as principle of becoming, and must show the end which Evolution subserves in compelling thought to recognize the necessity of teleology or the fact of purpose in nature. The need of our time is to maintain the primary position of Metaphysics, whereby, as presupposition of the special problems of Ethics, Psychology, and Logic, it must take precedence of them, and profoundly affect their direction and treatment, even while Metaphysics may receive, from their detailed outworking, fullness of form and content.

Never, I believe, was the need for a true metaphysic more deeply felt, Ritschl, Comte, and Littré notwithstanding. The metaphysic we so crave will ground its laws, not in any molecular movements of things physical, nor even in any mere volitions of the Will Divine, but in the Divine Nature or Essence. An ethical metaphysic it must be, with the metaphysic...