Note 354 — Chapter VIII · PRAGMATISM AND ANGLO-HEGELIAN RATIONALISM

Having already given instances of this abstractionism in the case of such things as the “self” and the “universal” and “spirit,” it will suffice to point out here in addition (1) its tendency to talk of “experience” and “experiences” as if there could be such things apart from the prior real existence of the experients or the experiencing persons with whom we are acquainted in our daily life, and (2) its tendency to talk of getting at “the heart of actual life and love” in a “system” which leaves no place for the real existence of either gods or men who live and love. And then I trust that it may not be regarded as an impertinence to allege as another puzzling piece of abstractionism on the part of Dr. Bosanquet, that he has allowed himself to speak and think in his book as if his theory of the “concrete universal” were practically a new thing in the thought of our time—apart altogether, that is to say, from the important work in this same direction of other Neo-Hegelian writers, and apart, too, from the unique work of Hegel in the same connexion.