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THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE.

OF

THE UNIVERSE.

BEING AN

ATTEMPT TO DETERMINE THE FIRST PRINCIPLES
OF METAPHYSIC, CONSIDERED AS AN INQUIRY
INTO THE CONDITIONS AND IMPORT

OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

BY

EDWARD DOUGLAS FAWCETT.

LONDON:

EDWARD ARNOLD,

37, BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C.

Publisher to the Endia Office.

1893.

(All rights reserved.)

LONDON:

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,

STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

TIBBVBA

SOMUL GROWAR DABI YTRAVIMU

PREFACE.

THE object of this work is a Metaphysic which, stalking naked, but not ashamed, among current iconoclasms, shall proffer a definite, though necessarily tentative, SOLUTION OF THE WORLD-RIDDLE. Circumstances favouring, it is proposed to expand this solution in the course of a series of works.

The procedure adopted in this Prelude has two main aspects. In Part I. is presented a critical survey of the great landmarks in the History of Modern Philosophy, with a primary reference to their bearing on metaphysical (as opposed to merely psychological and other) inquiries. We cannot cope adequately with modern problems unless at least this portion of the intellectual past is with us. In the golden words of Hegel, "the history of philosophy in its true meaning deals not with the past, but with the eternal and veritable present; and in its results resembles, not a museum of aberrations of the human intellect, but a pantheon of god-like figures representing various stages of the immanent logic of all human thought."" Whatever our view of the standing of "logic" may be, it is essential to allow for this organic unity of past and present thinking so ably enounced by Hegel. Philosophy, if not the history of philosophy, is inseparably allied with it. Wishing, however, to present a picturesque account of the advance, I have purposely dwelt mainly on the • Logic, p. 137 (Wallace's trans.).

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