ABSTRACT
I have been asked to prefix to my contribution to this volume some account of the manner in which the theories set out below formed themselves in my mind. As an undergraduate at Oxford (1883–87) I was greatly interested in questions of social reform, but in probing them I came upon real or apparent difficulties, sociological and philosophical. I rather innocently took Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary theories as the last word of science, and though attracted by T. H. Green’s social and ethical outlook I could not see in his metaphysics a valid philosophical solution. Nor did his theory of society satisfy all the requirements of liberty as set out by Mill. It occurred to me, however, that Green’s “Spiritual Principle” might represent an “empirical” rather than a “metaphysical” truth, that it might be identified with the Comtist conception of Humanity (especially as interpreted by Bridges), and that the development of this principle might represent the true line of evolution. This hypothesis raised in the first place metaphysical questions which occupied me for some years, during which I arrived at a Realistic view of the field of knowledge (which separated me from the Comtists) and at a conception of the Rational which brought me back into unexpected contact with Idealism. This “organic” view of rationality, which (as will appear below) has come to be for me the basis of knowledge, ethics, and even in a sense of Reality, is due mainly, I believe, to Dr. Bosanquet, though it would not be fair to father my interpretations of it upon him. For a long time I kept it in the background, working at mental, moral and social development on a rigidly “positive” method, but as years went on the remarkable changes that took place in the world of science, the break up of materialism and the opening of wider possibilities, seemed to justify a greater freedom in synthesis.
