Elements of General Philosophy BY GEORGE GROOM ROBERTSON LATE GROTE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON EDITED FROM NOTES OF LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE COLLEGE, 1870-189 BY C. A. FOLEY RHYS DAVIDS, M. A. LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1005 INTRODUCTORY NOTE THAT I have been able to compile a second volume of lectures delivered by the late George Groom Robertson is again due, in the first place, to the kindness of Mr. Charles Robertson in placing at my disposal the MS. notes left by the professor, and, in the second place, to the ready help afforded me, through the loan of their note-books, by those students to whom I acknowledged my debt of gratitude in the Elements of Psychology, and to whom I here once more express my grateful obligation . Once more, too, I wish to record my sense of the benefit derived from the corrections and suggestions made by Mr. Charles Robertson and 1 I append the names of those who contributed materials that I was able to use for this manual George A. Aitken, Esq. Rev. Martin Anstey, M. A. Mrs. Archer Hind Miss Laura Pocock Mrs. Sophie Bryant, D. Sc. Herman J. Cohen, Esq. Professor W. Hall Griffin, B. A. Rev. Isidore Harris, M. A. H. Frank Heath, Esq., B. A, Ph. D. Rev. Alfred Hills, B. A. Principal J. Viriamu Jones, M. A., F. R. S. University College S. Wales and Monmouthshire J. Neville Keynes, Esq., M. A., LL. D. Benjamin Leverson, Esq., B. A. Rev. S. Levy, B. A. J. W. Manning, Esq., M. A. Miss Dorothy Marshall, B. Sc. Andrew Ogilvie, Esq., B. A. Miss Mary Robertson, M. A. Ernest C. Robinson, Esq., M. A. G. Armitage Smith, Esq., M. A. President J. G. Schurman, M. A., D. Sc. Cornell University Rev. E. H. Titchmftreh, M. A. H. J. Tozer, Esq., M. A. x Introductory Note. it imperative that I should select, and the choice was determined less by the nature of my materials than by what seems to me to have been a salient standpoint in my masters critical philosophy. Holding by an enlightened Experien tialism, he was repelled by the Individualism prevailing in experiential doctrine from Locke till the present century. Advance in biology has rendered in philosophy, as he says, for ever impossible the older Experientialist position, that knowledge, with its objectivity, its universality, its necessity, can be acquired by every individual for himself, in the course of his own experience, from the beginning. Close and sympathetic study of the great Rationalist thinkers, from Plato to Kant, enabled him to discern what they, burdened by faulty method and the then scanty store of the fruits of scientific research, were groping after in their insistence on the innate furniture of the mind, namely, the predetermination, the collective endowment of the individual by the race, as to whatever his own experience can teach him. Adjusting his own philosophy, on the one hand, to take account of every advance in scientific theory, he was careful, on the other, to bring out the continuous evolution of philosophic thought, history of human error though it might be 8 . And he held that the Experientialism even of to-day needed to be widened and deepened, not only by frankly adopting the evolutionary standpoint, but also by being brought face to face at all points with the best teaching of Rationalist thought, including especially the critical stand points of Kant. Hence it is that I have selected the 1 See below, p. 152. See below, p. 19. Introductory Note. xi Cartesian school and the Kritik rather than lectures on Bacon, Locke, Hume, and others. I need not here repeat what is written in the Elements of Psychology by way of apology to the memory of the dead philosopher for undertaking a task so heavily fraught with responsibility as the editing of these lectures. That responsibility is but slightly alleviated in the present volume by my having had access, in the lectures where it is indicated, to more complete MSS. by the authors own hand...