Essays Speculative and Political
by the Rt. Hon. Arthur New York: George H. Doran Company. 1921. x+241 pp. $3.00.
THIS volume embraces two groups of extremely miscellaneous essays, entitled,respectively, ‘Speculative’ and ‘Political.’ This duality illustrates the well-known truth that, while English speculation has, as a rule, been political, its politics have not been speculative. English philosophers, from Bacon and Hobbes, through Locke and Hume, to John Stuart Mill and Mr. Balfour, have, as a rule, philosophized in the empirical manner and in the idiom of men of affairs; while English statesmen, on the other hand, have been notable for their lack both of metaphysical subtlety and of idealistic enthusiasm.
In the essay on ‘ Bergson’s Creative Evolution’ the author describes his original philosophical impulse, which found expression in 1879 in ‘A Defense of Philosophic Doubt,’ and in 1895 in the ‘ Foundations of Belief.’ He grew up in an atmosphere of aggressive ‘naturalism,’ when Mill and Spencer appeared to have silenced the guns of religious philosophy. Anticipating the tactics which pragmatism afterwards employed against idealism, he accused this ’reigning school’ of being as much governed by practical motives as were their opponents, the champions of religion. He argued that, if the same philosophic weight were conceded to ralues ’in departments of speculation which look beyond the material world,’ as naturalism unconsciously claims within that world, then religion would be as well entitled to credence as science. Mr. Balfour, in other words, did not propose to prove the doctrine of theism by irresistible reasoning or decisive evidence, but rather to justify the belief in theism by its indispensableness to the moral will. In the Gifford Lectures of 1914, on ‘Theism and Humanism,’ his philosophy took a somewhat more positive turn, and he sought to prove that the theistic principle of a rational purpose in things affords the only intelligible basis, both of science and of common sense.
But that which most forcibly impresses the reader of Mr. Balfour’s philosophical writings is the essentially skeptical quality of his genius. If idealism had been the reigning philosophy in his youth, he would undoubtedly have attacked that. The effect of his skepticism is not to leave him empty or embittered, because he has never committed his essential self to the uncertainties of the intellectual adventure. He does not philosophize for the salvation of his soul, but as a genteel pastime.
The philosophical essays in the present volume are the work of a gifted amateur, who as a public character, with a private interest in philosophy, is naturally called upon to do the appropriate and graceful thing upon ‘occasions.’ He delivers the ‘Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture at Newnham College in 1908, and selects the subject of ‘Decadence,’ not because he has either learning or convictions in this field, but because the subject interests him and lends itself to treatment in a public address. He speaks pleasantly of Francis Bacon at the unveiling of the Bacon Memorial in the gardens of Gray’s Inn, in 1912; and as President of the Society for Psychical Research, in 1894, he chats entertainingly of the fruitless efforts, and apparently insuperable difficulties, which mark the history of that gallant organization. The essays on Bergson and on Beauty find him at his best, because one is not expected to agree with the author whom one reviews, or to be conclusive in the field of æsthetics.
Two of the political essays are admirable: an article on ‘Anglo-American Relations,’ written for the German readers of Nard und Süd in 1912, and stating its English side of the case with an altogether English blend of manliness and courtesy; and a review of Treitschke’s View of German World-Policiy, full of brilliant refutation and derisive wit.
The present volume does not indicate that Mr. Balfour might have been a great philosopher; but it does indicate that, if he could have been allowed to detach himself from convictions, and indulge his ironical and skeptical view without official, class, or national inhibitions, he might have been a distinguished man of letters.
R. B. PERRY.