METAPHYSICS & RATIONALISM

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2445, 26 April 1915, Page 2

METAPHYSICS & RATIONALISM

In the course of a paper, which he read at t'he room of the Order of the Star in the East (with Mr. Hardio Shaw presiding), entitled "From Metaphysics to .nationalism in Modern Thought," Professor Mackenzie touched upon the fact that modern thought and modern culture had been under a heavy handicap by reason of an all too slavish allegiance to the authority of antiquary times. "We frequently find even in our own times," he said, "this undue allegiance to authority asserting itself in the persistent disposition to pronounce final judgment by appeal to a_ text from the Scriptures or a quotation from an aucicnt writer. A controversialist often appears to entertain the conviction that he has completely disposed of an opponent in an argument if only he can recall a couplet from a more or less accredited poet, the older the more authoritative, having some real or fancied bearing on the question at issue: Often the text or quotation is, by being torn from .the qualifying context, made to mean something quite different from what it's author intended. Through the Dark and Middle' Ages men practically without exception looked to the past for help and guidance in the solution of such problems as presented themselves. Even in these wonderfully scientific and enlightened days of ours men and women are to be found fo; - whom the antiquary past is practically everything, and the present nothing in their philosophy of life. This is particularly so in their philosophy of religion." "This disposition to hark back to the past, and to attach supreme importance to its deliverance is due in the main to the fact that a wholly unscientific system of education (devised and directed almost invariably by ignorant and superstitious ecclesiastics) obtained until recently, practically all tho world over. What wa have to remember more particularly is that a slavish allegiance to antiquity and authority is calculated to prove irreparably and disastrously disconcerting for modern thought and progress. TrUth was after all in no way dependent on old dates or eminent names, but was reached in most connections by persistent thinking and patient -investigation. Disinterested search for truth—genuine researchwas practically unknown in Hebrew and Christian communities almost in our own day. Hence we have enormous accumulatians of what Carjyle would call motaphysical shot—rubbish claiming to be part and parcel of Divine revelations awaiting exacting critical examination at the hands of modernist oxegetes and experts in antiquarian research."