In its chase after idols this age has not wholly forgotten the gods,
and reason and faith in reason are not left without advocates. Some
years ago, at Trinity College, Cambridge, Mr. G.E. Moore began to
produce a very deep impression amongst the younger spirits by his
powerful and luminous dialectic. Like Socrates, he used all the sharp
arts of a disputant in the interests of common sense and of an almost
archaic dogmatism. Those who heard him felt how superior his position
was, both in rigour and in force, to the prevailing inversions and
idealisms. The abuse of psychology, rampant for two hundred years,
seemed at last to be detected and challenged; and the impressionistic
rhetoric that philosophy was saturated with began to be squeezed out
by clear questions, and by a disconcerting demand for literal
sincerity. German idealism, when we study it as a product of its own
age and country, is a most engaging phenomenon; it is full of
afflatus, sweep, and deep searchings of heart; but it is essentially
romantic and egotistical, and all in it that is not soliloquy is mere
system-making and sophistry. Therefore when it is taught by unromantic
people _ex cathedra,_ in stentorian tones, and represented as the
rational foundation of science and religion, with neither of which it
has any honest sympathy, it becomes positively odious--one of the
worst imposture and blights to which a youthful imagination could be
subjected. It is chiefly against the incubus of this celestial monster
that Mr. Moore dared to lift up his eyes; and many a less courageous
or less clear-sighted person was thankful to him for it. But a man
with such a mission requires a certain narrowness and concentration of
mind; he has to be intolerant and to pound a good deal on the same
notes. We need not wonder if Mr. Moore has written rather meagerly,
and with a certain vehemence and want of imagination.