BOOK THE FIRST.

METAPHYSICS.

1.1. THE NECESSITY FOR METAPHYSICS.

As a preliminary to that experiment in mutual confession from which this
book arose, I found it necessary to consider and state certain truths
about the nature of knowledge, about the meaning of truth and the value
of words, that is to say I found I had to begin by being metaphysical.
In writing out these notes now I think it is well that I should state
just how important I think this metaphysical prelude is.

There is a popular prejudice against metaphysics as something at once
difficult and fruitless, as an idle system of enquiries remote from any
human interest. I suppose this odd misconception arose from the vulgar
pretensions of the learned, from their appeal to ancient names and their
quotations in unfamiliar tongues, and from the easy fall into
technicality of men struggling to be explicit where a high degree of
explicitness is impossible. But it needs erudition and accumulated and
alien literature to make metaphysics obscure, and some of the most
fruitful and able metaphysical discussion in the world was conducted by
a number of unhampered men in small Greek cities, who knew no language
but their own and had scarcely a technical term. The true metaphysician
is after all only a person who says, "Now let us take a thought for a
moment before we fall into a discussion of the broad questions of life,
lest we rush hastily into impossible and needless conflict. What is the
exact value of these thoughts we are thinking and these words we are
using?" He wants to take thought about thought. Those other ardent