ABSTRACT
The identification of the business of metaphysics with the production of metaphysical principles is one that is made in W. H. Walsh's classic book on metaphysics, Metaphysics. It is important, for the proper understanding of this work, to distinguish between metaphysical principles and metaphysical insight. Walsh appears to be saying that metaphysical statements are a priori, and therefore are not empirical generalizations from experience. While his description might be true of the practise of some metaphysicians, it does not characterize the type of metaphysics practiced here, nor does it characterize the type of metaphysics practiced by such classical figures as Plato, Spinoza or Hegel. Perhaps there are metaphysicians who are guilty of what Walsh describes as reading their principles into experience, but such a practise is simply bad metaphysics. After one has garnered some metaphysical insight, one may use it to guide one's practise, but this is legitimate only after one has discovered it.
