Mind Association

Death of Dr. McTaggartSource: Mind, New Series, Vol. 34, No. 134 (Apr., 1925), pp. 269-271Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2249454 .

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X.-NOTES.

TO THE EDITOR OF " MIND ".

SIR, I have been distressed, and a-little surprised, by the complaints

made against me in Prof. Case's article, T'he Development of Aristotle (MIND, N.S., 133). May I be allowed to assure your readers, as I have already assured Prof. Case, that I have no feeling towards his work on Aristotle but that of profound respect, and that I am exceedingly sorry that he or any man should suppose me to imply anything else. In justice to myself I must add that the grounds given for the complaint seem to me inadequate.

I confess to having used the language quoted from my review of Prof. Jaeger's Aristoteles (MIND, N.S., 130) and from the " pamphlet " (actually a lecture), published by Messrs. Blackwell. I submit, however, that in view of the scope and detail of Jaeger's treatment of his subject, my words cannot be taken, as they were certainly not meant, to imply that no work, or none of any value, had been done on the development of the Aristotelian philosophy before Jaeger. In their context they mean simply that Jaeger's is the tirst large volume devoted exclusively to the one problem of the growth of Aristotle's personality. His book is being contrabted not with the work of other Aristotelian scholars but with the number of large books which have been given to a similar treatment of Plato.

Prof. Case's arbicle on Aristotle in the Encyclopcedia Britannica was indeed namied in the other, sentence of which he complains (MIND, N.S., 131), but\not with any intention of depreciation. My object was, in fact, to call attention to it as proof that Germany had been anticipated by an English scholar and an Oxonian, and I "insinuated " nothing at all. When I said (not " insinuated ") that the article was restricted in its scope I meant exactly what the author himself means by saying that it was " coupressed into the space available ". I have at least learned from Aristotle not to confuse distinct " categories," and should therefore never use a remark about quantity as a cover for " insinuatioins " about quality. I am so conscious of innocence in the matter that, had Prof. Case com- plained of the other two sentences alone, I should at once have referred him to the third as proof that I meant him no injustice.

A. E. TAYLOR. EDINBURGH, January, 1925.

DEATH OF DR. McTAGGART.

IT is with profound regret that we have to record the death of John Ellis MoTaggart, Litt.D., Hon. LL.D., F.B.A., who died on January 18th, after a very short and sudden illness, at the early age of 58.

Born iu 1866, McTaggart was educated at Clifton and at Trinity

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270 NOTES.

College, Cambridge, where in 1891 he obtained a Fellowship by a dis- sertation on Hegel's Dialectic. In 1897, when James Ward was elected to the Professorship of Mental Philosophy and Logic, McTaggart was chosen to succeed him as College Lecturer at Trinity in the Moral Sciences; and he held this office till 1923 when, having served for the statutory period of twenty-five years, he retired.

Before he obtained his Fellowship, MeTaggart had already become convinced, by his study of Hogel, that the abstract conclusion with regard to the nature of the Universe, which he supposed Hegel to have intended to denmonstrate in his Logic, was in fact true; and also that this aostract conclusion rendered probable, if not certain, a number of further conclusions, both positive and negative, of which perhaps the most im- portant are these: (1) That the Universe is "a differentiated unity," in which the differentiations are individual spirits, bound together in such a way that the unity is not "subordinated to" the individuals nor the individuals to the unity; (2) That consequently the Universe is -not itself an individual spirit; (3) That the bond which unites the various in- dividuals is love; and (4) That consequently the Universe is in reality very different indeed from what it seems, and that, in particular, Time, Change, Space, and Matter are all unreal. And he also held (though this, he would have insisted, is a conclusion which cannot be rendered probable by the conclusion of the Logic alone) that each of us is one of the fundamental differentiations of the Universe, and that consequently each of us is immortal-though not, of course, in a sense which involves the reality of Time. Of the truth of all these conclusions (which I hope I have not misrepresented in any way) McTagggart remained profoundly convinced throuighout his life. But his views as to how they can be proved or rendered probable underwent some changes. As regards the most fundamental one-the abstract conclusion which he supposed to be the conclusion of Hegel's Logic-he believed, I think, at the time when he wrote his first two books, Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic (1896), and Studies in the Hegelian Cosmology (1901), that a valid proof of it was to be found in Heegel; but by the timle that he wrote his third and final book on Hegel, A Commentary on Hegel's Logic (1910), he had become convinced, as he there points out, that some of the steps in Hegel's argument were definitely fallacious. "I should wish," he says in the final paragraph of this book, "in concluding the exposition of Hegel's philosophy which has been the chief object of my life for twenty-one years, to express my conviction that Hegel has penetrated further into the true nature of reality than any philosopher before or after him ". But he adds: " It seems to me that the next task of philosophy should be to make a fresh investigation of that nature by a dialectic method substantially, though not entirely, the same as Hegel's ". It was to this task that he then devoted himself, and his results are embodied in Vol. I. of The Nature of Existence (published in 1921, and reviewed at length by Dr. Broad in MIND, Vol. XXX.)-a book in which, as the result of a very long and difficult argument, very different indeed from Hegel's, he thinks he has demonstrated a conclusion carrying us a long way towards, but not, I gather, quite as far as, the conclusion of Hegel's Logic. At the time of his death he was engaged upon Vol. II., which (to quote his own words) was to consider " what consequences of theoretical and practical interest with regard to various parts of the existent which are empirically known to us " can be drawn from the conclusions of Vol. I. And I am glad to say that a draft of this volume had already been completed by him, though it had not received his final revision, and will, I understand, be published shortly.

Whatever may bio thought of these and other conclusions of McTaggart's,

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NOTES. 271

and of the validity of his arguments for them, there can, I think, be no question that in respect of ingenuity and subtlety, and above all, perhaps, in respect of the clearness of his thought, he was a philosopher of the very first rank. In his works on Hegel he continually succeeds in sub- stituting clear, or comparatively clear, propositions for what, in Hegel, is to the last degree obscure and confused. Whether indeed Hegel really meant what McTaggart supposes him to have meant, there often seems reason to doubt; but at least McTaggart succeeds in giving a comparatively clear accoulat of what he supposes him to have meant. Nor was it only that McTaggart was naturally clear-headed in a very unusual degree: he spared no pains in trying to get clearer and clearer about all matters which seemed to him fundamental. Perhaps the most valuable lesson which his pupils learnt from him was the importance and the difficulty of trying to get quite clear as to what you hold, and of distinguishing between good and bad reasons for holding it.

Besides the four works mentioned above, the only other book which McTaggart pulblished was Some Dogmas of Religion (1906), a part of which was later reprinted under the title Human Immortality and Pre- existence. And this is a book which every one who has not read it, may be safely recommended to read. It deals with subjects in which every one is interested, and (at least for the most part) in a manner which every one can understand. Moreover it exhibits more uniformly, I think, than do his more technical books, one characteristic which ought not to be passed over in speaking of McTaggart-namely, his great distinction as a writer of English. His style is very peculiar: it is always very simple and direct; and one thing which cannot fail to attract attention is the degree to which he uses long successions of extremely short sentences. Nothing could be more unlike the common run of philosophical writing; and often the effects which he produces are extremely felicitous. Perhaps, too, this book enables the reader to see, in a greater degree than the others, something of the quality of the wit and humour and of the very strange and fascinating personality, which McTaggart displayed in con- versation, and of which it is very difficult to convey any idea to those who did not know him.

During the whole period of his tenure of his lectureship at Trinity, McTaggart took a very large part in the teaching of philosophy at Cambridge. The teaching of the history of modern philosophy was almost entirely in his hands: he not only gave each year, the general lectures on this subject for Part II. of the Moral Sciences Tripos, but always also the lectures on the special period, which is assigned for more detailed study, and which is generally changed every two years. In addi- tion to, this, from the time when, chiefly owing to his initiative, a paper on the Elements of Philosophy was introduced into Part I of the Tripos, he did all the lecturing on this subject too; and he also for many years held informal classes on the Problems of Philosophy for Part II. Finally he instituted in 1902, and continued till his death, a course of free lectures entitled an " Introduction to Philosophy," intended for students working for other Triposes-lectures, which were very successful and attracted large audiences.

TnEm EDITOR.

DEATH OF PROF. JAME$ WARD.

LEsS than two months after the death of McTaggart, Cambridge and English philosophy have sustained another great loss by the death of James Ward, Professor of Mental Philosophy and Logic, who died on

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