ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the idealism in constant conflict with the agnostic thought which makes of God a residual or marginal existence and constantly striving to realize God in the fullness of reality. The preoccupation with theological studies—always lively in a religious race like the English, and stimulated to the point of exasperation by the agnosticism-supplied another motive towards the development of the new idealism. The critical acuteness and at the same time the analytical bent of English idealism are seen very clearly when it con-fronts the facts of which empiricism is so confident, and shows how they resolve themselves into relations. The fundamental error of empiricism and naturalism consists in isolating from the beginning nature and thought, while neither thought nor the so-called external world are self-subsistent existences. Empiricism offers as the complement of its metaphysic a moral philosophy which reflects both its vulgarity and its congenital feebleness.
