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But they connected these views so closely with their views in metaphysics and theology, that the association with Burke was effectually disguised.
My father felt respect for his character, but was bored by his metaphysics a form of intellectual athletics which he had exhausted while still a young man. James's sister Harriet was also of the company.
What they have made of it does not concern us here, since the result has certainly not been a science; indeed they have obscured the very notion that there should be a science of all existence and that metaphysics, if it is more than a name for ultimate physics, can be nothing but dialectic, which does not look toward existence at all.
It is not easy to believe, that they were given to learn words without meaning; terms of art, not understood by the pupil; the systems of theologians, and the jargon of metaphysics. But then neither were they given without a capacity of being turned to advantage.
I remember the saying of a wise man at Rome: "Beware of the man of one book." I wonder whether the Russians are more profound now; but that is a question I cannot answer. At Dresden I knew Prince Biloselski, who was on his way back to Russia after having been ambassador at Turin. He was the author of an admirable world on metaphysics, and the analysis of the soul and reason.
His splendid prolixity, which was fitter for an assembly of philosophers than an English Parliament, sometimes wearied mere men of business, as much as his fine metaphysics sometimes perplexed them; and the man who might have sat between Plato and Aristotle, and been listened to with congenial delight by both, was often left without an audience.
Long before she had arrived at the conclusion that ethical and theological truth must be firmly established on psychological foundations, hence she plunged into metaphysics, studying treatise after treatise and system after system. To her grievous disappointment, however, the psychology of each seemed different, nay opposed.
All names of places London, England, Europe, the Earth, the Solar System similarly involve, when used, descriptions which start from some one or more particulars with which we are acquainted. I suspect that even the Universe, as considered by metaphysics, involves such a connexion with particulars.
The province of Metaphysics should be to us as to this wise workman his field; not a place to dream our days away in, but for occasional resort; in which we may forget the infinitesimal in healing visions of broad space and colour. I counsel every lonely man to satisfy what has been described as the common metaphysical instinct, and according to his powers to become a metaphysician.
At the age of seventeen, the metaphysics of the soul are shadowy, and it is a dreadful thing to be forced to define the exact outline of what is so undulating and so shapeless. To my Father there seemed no reason why I should hesitate to give answers of full metallic ring to his hard and oft-repeated questions; but to me this correspondence was torture.
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