We cannot interpret this adage broadly and take it literally, for then we should have to admit that men’s judgments as to the beautiful cannot constitute the material of a science at all, and that there can be no such thing as progress in the fine arts.  The notion of progress implies a standard, and an approximation to an ideal.  Few would dare to deny that there has been progress in such arts as painting and music; and when one has admitted so much as this, one has virtually admitted that a science of aesthetics is, at least, possible.

The science studies the facts of the aesthetic life as ethics studies the facts of the moral life.  It can take no man’s taste as furnishing a standard:  it must take every man’s taste as a fact of significance.  It is driven to reflective analysis—­to such questions as, what is beauty? and what is meant by aesthetic progress?  It deals with elusive psychological facts the significance of which is not easily grasped.  It is a philosophical science, and is by no means in a position to follow a beaten path, dispensing with a reflective analysis of its materials.

[1] Preface.

[2] section 269.

[3] section 376.

[4] “Essay concerning Human Understanding,” Book I, Chapter III.

CHAPTER XIX

METAPHYSICS

74.  WHAT IS METAPHYSICS?—­The reader has probably already remarked that in some of the preceding chapters the adjectives “metaphysical” and “philosophical” have been used as if they were interchangeable, in certain connections, at least.  This is justified by common usage; and in the present chapter I shall be expected by no one, I think, to prove that metaphysics is a philosophical discipline.  My task will rather be to show how far the words “metaphysics” and “philosophy” have a different meaning.

In Chapters III to XI, I have given a general view of the problems which present themselves to reflective thought, and I have indicated that they are not problems which can conveniently be distributed among the several special sciences.  Is there an external world?  What is it?  What are space and time?  What is the mind?  How are mind and body related?  How do we know that there are other minds than ours? etc.  These have been presented as philosophical problems; and when we turn back to the history of speculative thought we find that they are just the problems with which the men whom we agree to call philosophers have chiefly occupied themselves.

But when we turn to our treatises on metaphysics, we also find that these are the problems there discussed.  Such treatises differ much among themselves, and the problems are not presented in the same form or in the same order; but one who can look beneath the surface will find that the authors are busied with much the same thing—­with some or all of the problems above mentioned.