philosophy. He had no profession and filled no public office, but
spent his time in systematic reflection and writing; and his long life
gave him the opportunity of reviewing, confirming, and improving upon
his first thoughts. There were two periods in his activity. In the
former of these he published three books: Time and Space in 1865, The
Theory of Practice in 1870, and The Philosophy of Reflection in 1878.
Shortly thereafter he was instrumental in founding 'the Aristotelian
Society for the systematic study of philosophy,' and he remained its
president for fourteen years. This led to contact with other minds who
looked at the same subjects from different points of view. He read
many papers to the society, which were published in pamphlet form and
in its Proceedings, and he built up his own system afresh in the light
of familiar criticism. It took final form in The Metaphysic of
Experience, a work of four volumes published in 1898.
As an analysis of experience, Hodgson's philosophy falls into line
with a characteristic English tradition. It agrees with this tradition
also in taking the simple feeling as the ultimate datum of experience.
But, even here, and wherever there is experience, there is a
distinction to be drawn–not the traditional distinction between
subject and object, but that between consciousness and its object.
There are always two aspects in any bit of experience–that of the
object itself or the objective aspect, and that of the awareness of it
or the subjective aspect; and these two are connected by the relation
of knowledge. The sciences are concerned with the objective aspect
only; philosophy has to deal with the subjective aspect, or the
conscious process which is fundamental and common to all the various
objects. Beyond this conscious reference there is nothing. The mirage
of absolute existence, wholly apart from knowledge, is a common-sense
prejudice. Consciousness is commensurate with being; all existence has
a subjective aspect. But this doctrine, he holds, is misinterpreted
when mind and body are supposed to interact or when mental and bodily
facts are regarded as parallel aspects of the same substance. In
psychology Hodgson may be called a materialist, unfit as that name
would be to describe his final philosophical attitude. Ideas do not
determine one another, nor does desire cause volition; the only real
condition known to us is matter. And yet matter itself is a composite
existence; it can be analyzed into empirical precepts; and therefore
it is itself conditioned by something which is not material: the very
term existence implies relativity to some sort of consciousness or
other. This is the conclusion of the general analysis of experience.
Of the unseen world which lies beyond the material part of the world
we cannot, he contends, have any speculative knowledge. But the
ethical judgment and our own moral nature bring us into practical
relation with that unseen world and thus permit a positive, although
not a speculative, knowledge of it. In this way, in the final issue of
his philosophy as well as in its fundamental positions, Hodgson
regards himself as correcting and completing the work of Kant.
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