EX LIBRIS 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 FROM THE FUND 
 ESTABLISHED AT YALE 
 
 IN 1927 BY 
 WILLIAM H. CROCKER 
 
 OF THE CLASS OF 1882 
 
 SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL 
 
 YALE UNIVERSITY 
 
THE REIGN OF RELATIVITY 
 
BY VISCOUNT HALDANE 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HU- 
 MANISM AND OF OTHER SUBJECTS 
 
 THE PATHWAY TO REALITY 
 
 The Gifford Lectures delivered in the 
 University of St. Andrews. First Series, 
 1902-3. Second Series, 1903-4. 
 
 THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 
 
 AND OTHER ADDRESSES. 
 
 UNIVERSITIES AND 
 NATIONAL LIFE 
 
 Three Addresses to Students. 
 
 HIGHER NATIONALITY 
 
 A Study in Law and Ethics. An Address 
 delivered before the American Bar Asso- 
 ciation at Montreal on September i, 1913. 
 
 LONDON: JOHN MURRAY 
 
THE 
 
 REIGN OF RELATIVITY 
 
 BY 
 VISCOUNT HALDANE 
 
 NEW HAVEN 
 YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 MDCCCCXXII 
 
FIRST EDITION May 1921 
 
 SECOND EDITION (Issued only in England) June 1921 
 
 THIRD EDITION ..... August 1921 
 
 FOURTH EDITION . . . May 1922 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by 
 Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 
 
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION 
 
 IN this edition I have in the main made some textual 
 emendations, in themselves unimportant. But at one 
 place new matter of a more serious kind has been intro- 
 duced. Since the book was written Professor Einstein has 
 been in London, and it has been my good fortune to have 
 had opportunities for conversation with him. The philo- 
 sophical doctrine of the text of course lies outside the 
 domain to which he has confined himself. I have, how- 
 ever, under the stimulus of my talk with him, added, to 
 come in at p. 84, several fresh paragraphs which develop 
 more definitely than was done in the original edition the 
 interpretation which I have put on a basic principle in 
 modern mathematical physics on which, in agreement with 
 Minkowski, Einstein has, as it seems to me, rested his reason- 
 ing about relativity. This addition I have ventured to 
 make because the point with which it is concerned appears 
 to be one belonging quite as much to the theory of know- 
 ledge as to mathematics. The language used is my own 
 and not Professor Einstein's, and he is in no way re- 
 sponsible for my mode of statement. But I have intro- 
 duced nothing fresh in point of principle. I have simply 
 sought to clear up what for some readers has proved an 
 obscurity, in words which may assist in rendering in- 
 telligible the answer to a question they have been asking. 
 
 HALDANE. 
 
 LONDON, 
 July 1921. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE topics of this book are Knowledge itself and the 
 relativity of reality to the character of Knowledge. Some 
 of the questions considered in the book are more than two 
 thousand years old. That fact need not disturb us. 
 For there appears to have been steady progress in the 
 forms of the answers which have gradually been evolved. 
 If the substance of these turns out to be more akin to 
 doctrines originally produced by the Greeks than we had 
 expected to find, that again need not disturb us. It 
 would not trouble us in the case of literature or art, 
 and we have to learn to study philosophy, and even to 
 a considerable extent science, as we study these, with 
 the circumstances and language of the particular period 
 steadily kept in our view. To say this does not mean 
 that we are to treat lightly either truth itself or the im- 
 perative necessity for exactness in its statement. But it 
 does mean that we must have in mind that truth in its 
 full significance imports quality as much as it imports 
 quantity, and therefore variety in standard. We have 
 read the history of human endeavour in its many aspects 
 to little purpose if we have not learned this. 
 
 The subject discussed involves reference to metaphysical 
 inquiry. I regret that this has to be so, for meta- 
 physical discussions are not popular in the world as it is 
 at present. But that world is casting about in search of a 
 basis on which gradually to build up renewed faith. If it 
 continues in earnest in its searchings I believe that it will 
 find in the end that it is not possible to shirk encountering 
 philosophy in some shape. I can only say that I have 
 tried to assist the general reader to realise the single 
 principle on which the book is based and built up, by 
 putting that principle before him in the variety of its 
 applications. I have been fully aware that for those 
 
 ri 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 specially trained in the various branches of inquiry 
 touched on this has involved some repetition. But 
 the protean form in which the principle appears where 
 least expected afforded justification for my concern lest I 
 should have failed at any point to drag it out for con- 
 tinuous recognition. 
 
 Some sixteen years since, I published Gifford Lectures, 
 delivered at the University of St. Andrews. These ap- 
 peared in two volumes which bore the title of The Path- 
 way to Reality. Through the two volumes there ran a 
 thread which remains intact in the present book : the 
 principle of degrees in knowledge and reality alike. But 
 since the two volumes were written much new knowledge 
 has come into existence, and the treatment has been 
 consequently refashioned. The remarkable ideas developed 
 by Einstein, as the result of his investigation of the meaning 
 of physical measurement, have provided fresh material of 
 which philosophy has to take account. These, and yet 
 other ideas which are affecting the scientific outlook pro- 
 foundly, have appeared to me to call for a fresh route 
 of approach to a view of nature towards which philo- 
 sophical reflection was already being impelled. The 
 advantage which the methods of science possess is that 
 by them results can be reached and formulated with a 
 precision that is unrivalled, so far as they can go. A 
 price for this advantage has, however, to be paid, and 
 science is apt to find itself in strange regions if it does not 
 limit its scope with genuine self-denial. The inquiry 
 entered on by Einstein has, perhaps because of the 
 presence to his mind of something like this reason, stopped 
 short in his hands of the general problem of the Relativity 
 of all Knowledge. The question that remains is whether 
 the investigation of that problem can be carried further, 
 and if so, whether the philosophical method which appears 
 to be required is a reliable one. The answer I venture 
 to offer to the question is contained in the pages that 
 follow. 
 
 The subject is one that has occupied me for many 
 years ; over forty, I think. During much of that period 
 I have had other and pressing calls on my time, calls 
 both of an official and a non-official nature. But if on 
 occasions the general significance of knowledge has had 
 to be relegated to the background, it has throughout 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 been in my thoughts. On the day of my release from 
 office as Lord Chancellor in 1915, I projected this book 
 on Relativity, and it is now finished, for what it is worth. 
 I part from it as from a child whom I have watched 
 over and brought up, and who has occupied a foremost 
 place in my affections. The volume, such as it is, now 
 goes out into a world where it remains to be seen whether 
 it will be received well, or received at all. 
 
 HALDANE. 
 
 LONDON, 
 April 1921 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PART I THE PROBLEM OF RELATIVITY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 The changing attitude towards religion, politics, and literature. The 
 absence of settled conviction in the public mind is the result of reflec- 
 tion and can be made good only by reflection. There seems to be no 
 reason for misgiving. But it is not the less important to seek out foun- 
 dations on which faith can be rested. These foundations must in the 
 end be mainly spiritual in character, in the comprehensive sense of the 
 word " spiritual," and co-operation in the inquiry between the various 
 classes of spiritual reformers is therefore important. A great obstacle 
 to such co-operation is the sense that there is little harmony between 
 the various phases of knowledge. Can such harmony be established ? A 
 scrutiny of the history of reflective thought, if it makes more allowance 
 than is usual for relativity in the standpoints of the different orders of 
 thinkers, seems to suggest that the great systems are not really in such 
 conflict as is currently imagined. The history of philosophical thought 
 is no record of mere supersession of opinions. It is rather the exhibition 
 of advance hi ideas which have been antagonistic mainly in their one- 
 sided expression. If we apply the historical method over sufficient periods 
 of time, we discover continuity in progress little broken, provided that 
 we bear in mind the influence of relativity in the successive standpoints 
 which the narrative discloses. Relativity of this kind must always be 
 taken into account, for it bears on the real significance of truth. Truth 
 implies more than the mere agreement of an idea with something treated 
 as having an independent existence apart from it. The test may require 
 an adequacy more complete, and may have to take account of standpoint 
 and include value as well as measurement. . . pp. 3-15 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE DOMAIN OF SCIENCE 
 
 There is some analogy between the methods of science and those of 
 art, for both require the use of symbols, although their standpoints are 
 quite different. The disposition to-day in the domain of science is to 
 search for and detect unconsciously made assumptions. The Victorian 
 idea of reality as coming under two distinct phases, one objective and self- 
 subsistent, and the other only subjective and for science negligible, is an 
 illustration of this kind of assumption. The tendency of the new century 
 
 is 
 
x TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 is to relegate that idea to the lumber-room, and to regard the universe in 
 all its phases as an entirety. The Victorians really inherited their idea 
 from Locke, though Kant had partially superseded this idea, had they 
 but understood what he did. Modern science looks on meaning as in- 
 separable from experience. Kant's own shortcomings. He still sought 
 to get behind the final fact of knowledge, and this cannot be done. We 
 cannot resolve it into anything beyond^ itself ; we can only observe and 
 study it in its self -development. If we do so, we find that our perplexities 
 have arisen from taking it to be merely an attribute or instrument of a 
 thing called a self. This is an idea which is only relatively admissible, 
 and will land us in difficulties if employed without restraint. The actual 
 character of experience. The distinction between knower and known is 
 one that truly falls within knowledge. Each is as real as the other 
 within the entirety of knowledge, to which both belong. Knowledge 
 as a whole is itself the final fact behind which we cannot get. But it 
 has forms and stages within it characterised by their relativity. 
 
 pp. 16-32 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 RELATIVITY AND WHAT IT MEANS 
 
 The antiquity of the principle of relativity. Its acceptance by modern 
 science. The far-reaching importance of this acceptance, and the meeting 
 over it of science with philosophy. The various meanings of relativity. 
 The expression as used in this book. The real nature of knowledge. How 
 Kant approached the subject. The confusion latent in the question as 
 to the origin of knowledge. The way in which the principle of relativity 
 is now formulated by physicists. Entities and their relations. The 
 method of abstraction as employed in mathematics. Why our know- 
 ledge appears in experience as conditioned. Its early stages. Space 
 and time. Newton and Einstein. All that the physicist can actually 
 observe is variation and coincidence in the situations of things relatively 
 to each other. Of force physics can form no notion. The relative 
 character of space and time. Coincidences of events as studied in physical 
 science. Events imply interpretation as essential to their actual nature, 
 and in this sense and to this extent are of a mental character. The 
 relation of the general to the particular in knowledge. What is actual 
 contains both, and this is the key to the nature of knowledge and of its 
 object. The explanation applies in art and in estimates of value as much 
 as in science. The ultimate character of knowledge itself. pp. 33-50 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 The revolution in physical conceptions made by Einstein. Motion and 
 rest. Gravitation. The British Astronomical Expedition of 1919. The 
 basic controversy. Inertia and Energy. Diverging views about the 
 principle of relativity. Moritz Schlick. Whitehead. The latter' a 
 position as a logician. The conclusions to which he has brought himself. 
 Analysis of his theory. "Events" and their "passage." "Objects." 
 The method of " Extensive Abstraction." The larger issue raised by the 
 fresh view of relativity set forth in Professor Whitehead' a books. 
 
 pp. 51-81 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 EINSTEIN 
 
 The genesis of Einstein's discovery of the special and general principles 
 of relativity in physics. Measurement. The elimination of force as a 
 concept in physics. Action at a distance. The relation of phenomena as 
 observed to the space-time continuum. The " world-line," and the in- 
 separability in it of the spatial from the temporal. The significance of 
 Einstein's physical theories for philosophy. The metaphysics of Tensors. 
 Euclidean space. Professor Eddington's suggestions about the relation of 
 mind to nature. Comparison with the Hamiltonian theory of Representative 
 Perception. The ultimate physical basis. Riemann, Freundlich, and 
 Schlick on the ultimate ground of the continuum. Contrast with the views of 
 Professor Whitehead. The controversy is superseded if we cease to hypo- 
 statise nature into something of a different character from mind, and give 
 up insisting on disjoining particular from universal in our experience. Rela- 
 tion to mind is essential for the existence of nature, for apart from such 
 a relation congruence would be unintelligible. Professor Whitehead' a 
 logical methods seem to guide him towards this result. It constitutes a 
 difference between his view and the merely physical theory of Einstein, 
 and the question the former raises is inevitable. It really, however, 
 belongs to the domain of philosophy. Bergson on the spatialisation of 
 time and the fourth dimension. Gauss, Riemann, and Minkowski at 
 Gottingen. The doctrine of relativity in physical measurement leaves 
 several questions to be answered, including one as to the character of 
 the universe in which we have our place. It opens up possibilities of 
 knowledge of a new kind pp. 82-122 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 RELATIVITY IN EXPERIENCE GENERALLY 
 
 Einstein's principle of the relativity of measurement in space and time 
 cannot be taken as isolated. It has its counterpart in the other domains 
 of nature and of knowledge. For, however we may interpret it, there 
 remains before us the basic principle that knowledge everywhere enters 
 into reality with transforming power. Illustrations from biology. The 
 meaning of " cause " ; its relation to the concept of " end." The con- 
 trast between end and conscious purpose in the intelligent organism. 
 The doctrine of degrees or levels in reality and knowledge, and of their 
 relations to each other. All the sciences belong to one entirety, and all 
 their methods are required for the interpretation of experience. What 
 science owes to philosophy. It turns out that observer and observed 
 everywhere stand as inseparable in fact as well as in logic. Knowledge 
 is of differing kinds, and what determines these kinds is the standards 
 employed. They belong to different orders, as we find in the observation 
 of a mind or a living organism when contrasted with the observation of 
 a machine. The conception employed takes the place in the former of 
 the co-ordinates of reference used in the case of the latter. Mind, when 
 the abstractions we make are allowed for, includes the whole of these 
 within its entirety. The inherent tendency of knowledge towards self- 
 completion. Illustrations of this tendency. The full explanation has 
 always in the end to be from above downwards. The true character of 
 
xii TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 mind, and the way in which knowledge becomes relative. The finite self 
 and the object- world from which it is distinguished. The outlook is really 
 larger than that in which realism is differentiated from idealism. It is 
 in consequence of abstractions made to serve practical purposes that the 
 limited forms of knowledge arise. The meaning of truth. Knowledge 
 is something more than an instrument applied ab extra, and its various 
 forms require investigation in detail of appropriate kinds. pp. 123-146 
 
 PART II THE METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATION 
 OF RELATIVITY 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE SELF IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 My knowledge of myself as included in my object-world is a fact as 
 obvious as it is extraordinary. The difficulty in understanding it arises 
 from my having taken my mind to be a thing of which my knowledge is 
 a property. This cannot be true, for the distinction of my mind from 
 its object appears on scrutiny to be the result of reflection from a partial 
 standpoint. I turn out to be more than at first sight I took myself to 
 be. In my experience subject and object are never separated, but are 
 at every point mutually implied. They are not independent entities, but 
 the outcome of points of view which may be only relatively true. These 
 give me different kinds of objects, and of concepts through which they 
 are interpreted. When I say " I " the concept employed is, and must 
 be, of the character of a universal, and of general application. For other 
 men say " I " with identically the same meaning. Their bodies and 
 experiences and histories are different from mine, and in respect of these 
 we are independent beings. But we think correspondingly in a corre- 
 spondence that is based on identity in concepts. These are not occur- 
 rences in time, but are the very same thoughts despite their differences 
 in detail. Reality itself and the distinction between dreams and appre- 
 hension of what is actual depend on this. The relation of knowledge to 
 my organism. I know what other people feel only by knowing what they 
 think. Interpretation through concepts. The Leibnitzian monad. The 
 meaning of the identity of the world we all perceive. Mind and body 
 represent, not different entities, but different orders in experience. The 
 unreality of both universal and particular when taken in isolation. The 
 real is individual and never static. The relation of personality to organic 
 life. The finite centre. The range of reflection is unlimited, notwith- 
 standing that my mind is conditioned by having to express itself in my 
 organism. I am no mere object in an external nature. The character 
 of the self, and the interpretation of its finiteness. The tendency of 
 experience towards self-completion. Mind finds mind even in forms that 
 have aspects belonging to externality. . . . pp. 149-172 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MEANING AS ENTERING INTO REALITY 
 
 The " I," with my reference of my experience to it, is the foundation 
 of congruence in the various forms of that experience. The difficulty 
 felt in accepting this view arises from the tendency to separate the self 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS xiii 
 
 from the object- world in its knowledge. We have to do this for practical 
 purposes, but the interpretation so obtained is only relatively true. 
 The differentiations made within the entirety of knowledge. The mean- 
 ing of finiteness as characterising the self. Symbolism. Summary of 
 the position reached in the discussion. The terminology of metaphysics. 
 How meaning is essential for reality. The necessity of adequate concepts 
 for the apprehension of the real. The principle of degrees. How 
 knowledge itself must be studied. The view put forward is really 
 no new one, but as old as Greek philosophy. Truth and value. The 
 differences between individuals. To imagine that there can be 
 numerically different universes is to imagine what is meaningless. For 
 knowledge depends on identity of the concepts in which any universe 
 arises. Knowledge is no arbitrary procedure. It unfolds its own char- 
 acter. There is no properly statable problem of the genesis of know- 
 ledge, and reality is always conceptual, and of the character of a concrete 
 universal in which a relation of object to subject is implied. 
 
 pp. 173-192 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 It is only metaphorically that we can speak of nature as closed to 
 mind. Our intelligence is presented as finite and as confronted by nature, 
 but that intelligence turns out to be more than it takes itself to be, and 
 to this fact the principle of degrees is the key. The character of finite 
 knowledge. The implications of the conception of personality. Our 
 point of departure is the " this," in which we are here and now, but it 
 is only a point of departure for the activity of reflection, although the 
 world is there independently of our particular minds. The beginning 
 in time of knowledge. The treatment of thought in books on logic. 
 The full character of thought, and its tendency to search for the whole. 
 Criticism of the views of Mr. F. H. Bradley, Professor Bosanquet, and 
 Professor Pringle-Pattison. Cardinal Newman. The Hegelian " Phe- 
 nomenology." Summary of the chapter The meaning of divine 
 immanence. Relativity in this connection. . pp. 193-219 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 MANIFOLD ORDERS IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 In the same individual phenomenon there are present a variety of 
 degrees in knowledge. Our thinking takes place by imagery, in which 
 multitudinous concepts are implicit. The consideration of what we pass 
 by as merely inorganic nature illustrates this. Symbols. The use and 
 abuse of metaphor. The difficulty of its employment in philosophy, 
 although that employment is unavoidable. The example of our language 
 about death. The view of the self required for the doctrine of degrees. 
 Evolution. Darwin free from the characteristic failing of the Victorians. 
 Knowledge and instinct. The dialectical tendency in explanation. Goethe. 
 Mysticism. What we presuppose in our knowledge. The hypostatisa- 
 tion of conceptions into images supposed to be exhaustively descriptive. 
 The far-reaching influence of relativity. Illustration from the controversy 
 
xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 about free-will. The doctrine of degrees lays many spectral appear- 
 ances. All adequate explanation is from the concrete to the abstract, 
 and from above to below pp. 220-239 
 
 PART III OTHER VIEWS ABOUT THE NATURE 
 OF THE REAL 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 GREEK PHILOSOPHY 
 
 The temptation to read too much into Greek Philosophy. One of its 
 attractions is its freedom from modern obsessions. Its abiding character. 
 Its deliverance from the difficulty which has led in modern times to the 
 separation of knower from known, and to subjective idealism. Aristotle's 
 relation to Plato. Form and matter. The relation of the principle of 
 Becoming in Aristotle to the doctrine of degrees. The obscurities in his 
 presentation of his principle, and the consequent divergences between his 
 commentators. But Aristotle did insist that the relation between per- 
 cipient and perceived was the creation of knowledge itself. He was not 
 embarrassed by the modern tendency to reduce all conceptions to those 
 of externality and cause and substance. The principle of degrees is 
 implied in his system. The De Anima and the Metaphysics. His view 
 of mind. The price we have paid for getting beyond Aristotle, and 
 the defects of his view of the world. Knowledge as foundational in his 
 system. The conflict of views in it about Logic and Metaphysics. Com- 
 parison between the systems of Aristotle and Plotinus. The personality 
 of the latter. Neither ever got rid of a certain tendency to dualism. 
 The great value to us of Greek thought is its insistence that no view is 
 sufficient which excludes any important aspect in which reality and the 
 truth about it can be presented. The ethical shortcoming of Hellenism. 
 
 pp. 243-264 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 NEW REALISM 
 
 The effort of New Realism to confine itself to the methods of science. 
 The various schools of New Realists agree in attributing self -subsistence 
 apart from knowledge to a non-mental world. Differences in the views 
 of these schools. The domination in New Realism of the category of 
 substance. The inclusion of universals in the non-mental world. Its 
 view of consciousness. The barrier it puts in the path of subjective 
 idealism. Professor Alexander. Mr. Bertrand Russell on the relations 
 between logic and mathematics. Number. The possible relation of New 
 Realism to biology. Ought not the New Realists in consistency to claim 
 that morals, beauty, and religion also all of them belong to the non- mental 
 world ? Is not the distinction between this and the mental world a dis- 
 appearing one, and have they not proved too much ? What mind 
 really is pp. 265-291 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS xv 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM 
 
 The deflection of the view of New Realism about reality has its parallel 
 in that of Subjective Idealism, with consequent aspects due to relativity 
 in outlook. How Locke was led into a snare by a metaphor. His view 
 of mind as a thing and of knowledge as an instrument. Epistemology 
 and the " two substance " theory. Berkeley was launched in conse- 
 quence on a slippery slope, down which Hume conducted philosophy 
 to a precipice. They all three treated mind as " substance." Thomas 
 Reid's great service in rejecting the doctrine of " representative percep- 
 tion." " Common sense" as he conceived it. Kant carried the criticism 
 of the " substance " doctrine still further. His view of knowledge. It is 
 presupposed in all experience. His limited conception of the categories 
 and of space and time. The Critique of Judgment. The revolution in 
 thought which Kant effected. The defects in his system. The diverging 
 attitudes of the schools which succeeded him. The possibility of access 
 to the " thing-in-itself " through direct awareness. Schopenhauer. 
 The reasons why he founded no school. His personality. His system. 
 His relation to Bergson's principle. The real divergence of the latter 
 from Kant. The true nature of mobility. It is against the limitations 
 of Kant's mechanistic view of the categories that Bergson's great point 
 is really made. His originality in the statement of this. He actually 
 relies on intelligence and assumes it as presupposed in his view of reality. 
 An American critic of Bergson. "Creative finalism." Time. The 
 relation of Bergson to Bradley pp. 292-316 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 AN AMERICAN CRITICISM OF BERGSON 
 
 Notwithstanding the open-minded detachment of Bergson, he does 
 not free himself from the dominating influence of his peculiar view of the 
 character of reality. It is difficult in reading him to feel that the actual, 
 as he presents it, has meaning apart from knowledge. His view of time. 
 Professor Watts Cunningham on this. Hegel on time. For Professor 
 Cunningham teleology is no inadequate category, and it implies time as 
 a genuine form of reality, although there is a meaning in which time 
 is transcended in a fuller entirety. The "coherence" doctrine, and 
 Professor Bosanquet's exposition of it. His relation in this reference 
 to Mr. Bradley. The world of ends .... pp. 317-332 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE HEGELIAN PRINCIPLE 
 
 Schopenhauer and Bergson chose one branch of the path which diverged 
 from where Kant halted. They sought to reach the thing-in-itself through 
 direct awareness. Criticism has, however, tended to insist on this being 
 only a fresh form of knowledge. Hegel denied the reality of the thing- 
 
xvi TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 in-itself, and sought to get rid of the limited interpretation of the nature 
 of knowledge which had forced Kant to postulate that notion. In dis- 
 cussing Hegel's method it is necessary to begin by pointing out what it 
 was not, for most of the current ideas about it are misinterpretations, 
 arising partly from accepting second-hand information from would-be 
 interpreters. If we turn to Hegel himself the first thing we find is that 
 he did not treat things as created by our thinking about them. Nor 
 did he even set up the Prussian Constitution as an ideal, or as more than 
 a fact to be investigated. Other reasons which have led to the current 
 misinterpretation of Hegel are the circumstance that after his death 
 his school split itself into fragments, and also the unattractiveness of his 
 personality. His character. His terminology and his curious pedantry, 
 which is the outcome of his systematic effort after accuracy in expression. 
 The alternative path to that of Schopenhauer and others which he selected 
 was a resolute attempt to discover a wider meaning of knowledge than 
 Kant had attributed to it. He sought to explain the feature of its rela- 
 tivity by observing it in its self-development. Its dynamic activity he 
 called the Begriff, and its self-completing system he named the " Idea." 
 The individual was always concrete, and to be actual was for him to be 
 concrete and individual in form. No system of universals, taken per se, 
 could for him be real, any more than a merely objective world of par- 
 ticulars could exist dissociated from intelligence. Concrete experience 
 was the true form of the actual, and it was the work of mind in this that 
 had to be studied. The " Phenomenology of Mind " ; its scheme. The 
 antithesis of " Logic " and " Nature " as two counter-abstractions, each 
 of which involves the other and is real only in experience. Here the 
 principle of degrees is everywhere apparent. His historical method and 
 his vast learning. His attempt to exhibit the entire universe in syste- 
 matic form was too ambitious. It is the spirit rather than the letter 
 of Hegelianism that is still important. His influence in Great Britain 
 and America and India is to-day much more alive than it is in Germany. 
 Exposition of his point of view, Knowledge is our " That " ; we start 
 from it and never get beyond it. Thought and feeling. Identity in 
 difference. Thought is for Hegel more than merely relational. The 
 nature of the self. The ideal of knowledge. The resemblance of his 
 view of the object- world to that of Aristotle. Substance, cause and 
 effect. The categories are abstractions, and they form the subject of 
 his " Logic," which is really a Metaphysic. The various aspects pre- 
 sented by mind. God is immanent, and experience rightly interpreted 
 is for Hegel reality revealing itself. The finite aspects of mind it derives 
 through nature. His method is what is interesting to-day, and it must 
 still be studied pp. 333-348 
 
 PART IV THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS 
 ENVIRONMENT 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE RELATION OF MAN TO SOCIETY 
 
 Knowledge is not merely theory ; it is action in which we are likewise 
 free. We can select among values, which are not dependent on us indi- 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS xvii 
 
 vidually. These also belong to the foundational character of mind, and 
 exhibit degrees among themselves. The nature of the universal moment 
 which they disclose. The failure of Hedonism. The Good belongs to 
 the region of the free person. Conscience contrasted with law. Their 
 characters. The contrast of both with Sittlichkeit or " good form." This 
 last is the most prominent source of freedom within a civilised community. 
 It depends on general outlook and purpose. There may appear anti- 
 nomies between morality and law on the one hand, and " good form " 
 on the other. In the larger outlook these are resolved. This outlook 
 discloses man as no static entity but as a dynamic subject. Identity in 
 ends, as in knowledge generally. The choice between ends is influenced 
 by the distinction between values, which may prove to be final. Their 
 quality cannot be determined by reference to any subordinate standards. 
 The average levels of groups of individuals. The value of man as a 
 rational being turns on his capacity to rise above what is external or 
 biological, and to be a citizen in a realm of ends that are unquestionable. 
 The shadow of self. The lesson inculcated by Goethe in the second part 
 of Faust pp. 351-386 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 
 
 The real nature of the General Will. The difficulty in admitting its 
 existence arises from the assumption that the self is atomic. The basis 
 of its reality is correspondence arising from identity in conception and 
 purpose. The General Will is thus no entity independent of the private 
 will, but is the latter at a different level. It is no sum of private wills. 
 The standpoint in social purpose is what is important. The character 
 of sovereignty within the state. The controversy between Monists and 
 Pluralists. The mere question of legality is not decisive here. The 
 Church or the Trade Union may prove too strong to permit freedom 
 to the Government in the exercise of theoretical capacity. The true 
 source of sovereignty is the sanction of general opinion. The illusory 
 character of the decisions at the ballot-boxes. The difficulties experienced 
 in consequence by the Ministers who have to interpret their own man- 
 date. A real majority rule is different from mob rule. The position of 
 the Crown in the British Constitution. Bacon and Paley. The Judges 
 co-operate with Members of Parliament in securing that the exercise of 
 theoretical power is kept within the boundaries of the national mandate. 
 The influence of tradition and the utility of " red tape." The nature of 
 a nation and the true foundation of the sovereignty which lies behind 
 legality. In what sense the state itself is subject to obligations towards 
 other states. The idea of a League of Nations. There are levels in 
 human purpose higher than that at which the interests of the state 
 appear as final ends. The reality that is larger than that of the state. 
 
 pp. 367-381 
 
 2 
 
xviii TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PART VTHE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE RELATION OF MAN TO GOD 
 
 The lesson learned from the study of the relation of Man to the State. 
 The present problem is not different in character. The conception of 
 God as no entity separated from ourselves. He can be no far-away 
 Absolute whose nature is to be a totum simul ; no substance, nor yet 
 subject differentiated from its object. He must be the entirety, to which 
 the principle of relativity points ; mind as foundational and in its com- 
 pleteness. We are more than we take ourselves to be from our particular 
 standpoints. Can we work out such a conception adequately ? If we 
 regard God as immanent we can get some way at all events towards 
 doing so. Man's knowledge and God's knowledge. The use in this con- 
 nection of the principle of degrees. The true character of knowledge. 
 Why the Hegelian attempt at the exhibition of an exhaustive system was 
 too ambitious. Goethe's testimony to the power of Art in this connec- 
 tion. The language of Jesus. The use of religion. The light thrown 
 on the nature of the self. Time. Not a mind but mind. Analogues. 
 The necessity for knowledge in addition to emotion. " Man never knows 
 how anthropomorphic he is." Our metaphors. Thought is more than 
 merely relational. In the effort after truth we experience its real nature. 
 
 pp. 385-404 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 The significance of the ideal of self-completion implied in our know- 
 ledge of God as immanent in us. Even if not accomplished in our par- 
 ticular experience this ideal is a shaping end. It stands for the entirety 
 within which must fall every standpoint from which mind directs itself. 
 Analogies and illustrations. The relationships between human beings are 
 those of spirit to spirit. How this bears on the fact of death. What 
 is really desired in the form of life beyond the grave. Spiritualism falls 
 short of it. The deeper sense hi which death loses its reality. The 
 value of images and metaphors in this connection. Art and religion ; 
 their relation to philosophy. The application of the principle of rela- 
 tivity. The undertaker and the executor. The true significance of 
 the idea of life as beyond the all-severing wave of time, and of the symbols 
 in which this is expressed. ...... pp. 405-420 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS 
 
 Summing up of the result of the inquiry. The bearing of that result 
 on practical life. The necessity of educating the mind of a nation, and 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS xix 
 
 the variety essential in such education. The leadership required for the 
 guidance of the teachers and for the harmony of their work. Democracy. 
 The seriousness of purpose really apparent since the war. The advantages of 
 the reflective habit. Burke on human nature. The progress in national 
 standards. The mind of the State no more stands still than does the 
 mind of the individual. Its outlook is governed by relativity. The 
 principle of relativity teaches us that there are different orders in which 
 both our knowledge and the reality it seeks have differing forms, and that 
 we must be critical of ourselves when we attempt to bring categories to 
 bear. This is a lesson of high importance for practice. Its value in 
 enlarging our outlook on life. ..... pp. 421-431 
 
 INDEX pp. 432-434 
 
PART I 
 THE PROBLEM OF RELATIVITY 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 i 
 
 Preliminary. The practical problem. Its scope. The ambiguity in the 
 Meaning of Truth. 
 
 ONE of the results following on the Great War has been 
 an increased disposition to scrutinise opinion about 
 religion. What is sometimes called " authority " does 
 not count for what it did. Questions are being raised 
 with a freedom that is fresh about the formulas which 
 express the various kinds of faith. Men and women appear 
 to be looking to-day to the spirit more than to the letter. 
 Precision in theological statement is no longer held to be 
 of high importance, and abstract principles are not being 
 given a great place in the creeds. Even as to the prospect 
 of a life beyond the grave, the people do not concern 
 themselves in the old way. The pictorial representa- 
 tions of such a life are passing largely into the hands of 
 others than ministers of religion; for example, of the 
 spiritualists. The learned classes, including those among 
 the clergy themselves who are learned, are becoming 
 more absorbed in the idea of an eternal life that can be 
 lived here and now, and is beyond the reach of the all- 
 severing wave of time. If for them the grave continues 
 to have no victory, it is from a new standpoint that death 
 has lost its sting. What seems to move people is quality 
 rather than quantity. If the once famous question, 
 " Are we still Christians ? " put by David Strauss nearly 
 fifty years ago in The Old Faith and the New, were again 
 raised in these times, it seems unlikely that the question 
 would cause great commotion in the mind of the man in 
 the street. 
 
 In public affairs, too, marked changes in attitude are 
 in operation. Not only here but on the Continent various 
 forms of political idealism are exercising far-reaching 
 
 3 
 
4 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 influence. About such idealism there is much indefinite- 
 ness of thought. Many of those who range themselves 
 on its side do so, not from enthusiasm about a programme, 
 but from the desire of an inspiration which they have 
 ceased to find in the politics of the generation that is 
 passing away. What the basis of their new political faith 
 is to be they can tell but vaguely. This age is one indeed 
 of democracy, but not of democracy concentrated on any 
 plan of reform that is universally or even generally 
 accepted. 
 
 Nor is it only in the spheres of religion and of public 
 life that a growing change in public opinion is becoming 
 manifest. In literature and in art new tendencies are 
 obvious. The days in which stress was laid on a high 
 level in reflection appear for the time at least to be over. 
 The names of the great reflective poets are associated with 
 a period the work of which is ceasing to satisfy current 
 taste. Expression as an end in itself, rather than as 
 suggestive of insight, seems now to be what counts for 
 most. The average of quality in expression is high, but 
 the restriction of its significance has for a consequence 
 that peaks and pinnacles are no longer conspicuous. The 
 poets are not our leaders to-day in the fashion in which 
 they used to be. 
 
 These and other features of the period in which we 
 live are illustrative of changes in disposition that appear 
 to be coming over the men and women of our time. 
 Not only are settled convictions less apparent, but the 
 motive-power which generally attends such convictions 
 is no longer displayed in the old fashion. The loss is a 
 considerable one. But there is neither profit to be found 
 in lamentation nor is there a royal road to a remedy. 
 The gap in the foundations of the old beliefs has been 
 largely the result of reflection, and it is not by the stimu- 
 lation of emotion, but only in further reflection, that 
 there can be hope of filling it up. No intensity of merely 
 personal conviction can be put for this purpose in the 
 place of conclusions based on reasoned knowledge. For 
 subjective certainty will always in the future be what 
 it has been in the past, individual and only imperfectly 
 communicable. 
 
 Now it must not be hastily assumed that the attitude 
 of the day to such subjects as religion, politics, and 
 
THE NEW ATTITUDE 5 
 
 literature is one that, from the highest outlook, we ought 
 to regret. If that attitude has brought loss in some 
 things, it is bringing gain in others. Much wheat is being 
 separated from the chaff which our predecessors accepted 
 in vast quantities with their wheat. Great progress is 
 taking place in science. The average is high in literature. 
 If there is absence of conspicuously outstanding prophets, 
 the taught are not separated from their teachers by the 
 wide intervals of the days that once were. The best 
 students know so much that it is no longer possible that 
 any professor should impose on them by the mere authority 
 of his position. His authority they will recognise, but, 
 where they do so, on other grounds. The general stan- 
 dards of intelligence are rapidly rising. And if we look 
 in a different direction, towards the capacities of nations 
 as distinguished from individuals, no war was ever fought 
 with such concentration of national effort as the history 
 of the recent war records. The daring displayed and 
 the knowledge applied, not least in the ranks of the 
 people themselves, were probably much greater than at 
 any former time. The general level of intelligence 
 proved to be such that there was little ground for gloom 
 about it. Perhaps the most impressive feature was that 
 increased knowledge and civilisation appeared to have 
 brought in their train no such paralysing influences as 
 the critics used to forecast. It was the most highly 
 educated and civilised peoples that fought best. The 
 formidable terrors of increased science were compensated 
 for by increased courage, and most of all among those 
 who knew best what science could threaten. 
 
 Still, even when good quality in the average level has 
 been recognised, there remains in the onlooker a sense 
 of something wanting. Without a permeating faith of 
 some kind, a faith that can compel in ordinary times as 
 well as in those of emergency, a people can hardly remain 
 great. The faith may have to assume different forms in 
 different countries. It may take the form of a definite 
 religious conviction, and this has naturally been the case 
 in the past with nations that tended to believe fervently 
 in their mission to convert the world to truth. As time 
 goes on and dogmas die, this form of popular belief dis- 
 plays itself less frequently. A more common form, 
 especially in modern times, has been the faith of a nation 
 
6 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 in the overwhelming justice of its claim to individual 
 greatness. We saw such a faith emerge long ago in 
 ancient Rome. We have seen it later on in the France 
 of Louis XIV and Napoleon Bonaparte. We have wit- 
 nessed it still more recently in modern Germany. Some- 
 thing of the sort, perhaps a good deal more than is 
 desirable, we are aware of among ourselves. In the case 
 of each nation there has been a general outlook, varying in 
 form and mode of influence. For each people there has 
 been a national philosophy which has been tacitly em- 
 bodied in its tendencies. The view of life acted on in 
 each particular country is different from that of its 
 neighbours. The difference becomes apparent, not only 
 in the national literature, but in the utterances of states- 
 men. The tone has to accord with the mood of those 
 addressed. At times the mood and the tone become 
 modified. They may rapidly be changed by the results 
 of some great convulsion. A war of sufficient magnitude 
 will apparently transform both, and so may some far- 
 reaching political convulsion, such as in British history 
 was the expulsion of the Stuarts and the definite estab- 
 lishment of a new relation between sovereign and subject 
 under the Revolution Settlement. 
 
 But in the main the state of knowledge, using the word 
 to cover knowledge in the widest sense, seems to be in 
 the long run the governing factor. Practice always, in 
 some respect at least, reflects principle, and is influenced 
 by accepted objectives where they exist. For the develop- 
 ment of the soul of a people, it is therefore necessary 
 to go beyond the transient work which is all that the 
 mere man of affairs can accomplish. There must always 
 remain much that he cannot give, and for the deeper and 
 more abiding inspiration we have to look to others than 
 our rulers. The greatest reformers, those whose influ- 
 ence has been the most far-reaching and abiding, have 
 been the reformers of the soul rather than of the body. 
 That is why it is so important that our ministers of 
 religion, our men of letters, our scholars, our artists, our 
 men of science, and our thinkers generally, should re- 
 member that they are under a responsibility to society at 
 large. Where they have failed to realise this, the reason 
 for their failure seems to have been something that was 
 wrong with themselves. 
 
CO-OPERATION NECESSARY 7 
 
 To-day some of these spiritual reformers appear to be 
 succeeding in their task, and others to be failing in it. 
 One reason for this is the difficulty they experience in 
 mutual co-operation. This difficulty is at least partly 
 due to the current state of knowledge. Those who possess 
 special knowledge live in different camps. For instance, 
 to talk to-day of harmony between religion and science 
 is to use words that have little meaning. If the clergy 
 and the scientific laity are disposed to fight less than 
 they once did, it is because they think about each other 
 less than in the days when rigid orthodoxy was held in 
 higher esteem. 
 
 Now some progress in the work of co-operation for a 
 great common end would naturally result if it were 
 practicable to render the various forms of knowledge 
 capable of being brought into organic relation with each 
 other. The leaders in each branch would be in such an 
 event more effective in so far as they were clearer as 
 to what they could tell us about the boundaries and 
 understandings between themselves and those engaged 
 in other kinds of teaching. If progress is to be practicable 
 in the development of a unifying tendency throughout 
 knowledge as a whole, it must accordingly rest on the 
 survey of the general field of knowledge in the light of 
 principles that are fit to be accepted. Do such principles 
 exist ? This is the question which I shall venture to 
 consider in the course of the pages that follow. 
 
 I will offer no further apology for presuming to under- 
 take a difficult task. My reason for entering on it is not 
 any idea that I can do so better or even as well as others, 
 but the sense that the task is an essential one. There 
 is little chance of progress unless it is preceded by a 
 systematic attempt to extract from below accumulated 
 matter what there is reason to regard as valuable truth 
 lying buried there. What has to be brought to the 
 surface seems to deserve the name of truth. For scrutiny 
 appears to disclose that the evolution of thought, ancient 
 as well as modern, has really resulted in more harmony 
 of result than is popularly supposed. It is the relativity 
 of the different standpoints of the historians that has 
 been the main factor in obscuring this harmony. We may 
 come to think that the great systems which have been 
 borne down to us by the current of reflection, in our own 
 
8 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 and in past generations, have brought with them more 
 of an enduring basis on which to build up a general out- 
 look than we had imagined. When read in the light of 
 certain things which we have learned to-day, the great 
 systems of reflective thought suggest convergence on 
 principles reached in common, principles which harmonise 
 in their main results, however different in expression they 
 appear. No doubt there have been intense controversies, 
 controversies in which direct denial of the truth of previous 
 ideas has been placed in the forefront. But in the end 
 it has seemed as though, even in these cases, the negative 
 had in the main become incorporated with that against 
 which it was directed, and that a freshly stated and 
 more comprehensive result had been the outcome. 
 
 We are too prone to read the history of philosophical 
 knowledge as though it consisted of a record of mere 
 corrections of error and supersessions of defective opinion. 
 In reality it is the history of advance in ideas which have 
 been revolutionary mainly in their expression. Between 
 the teaching of the great schools of Grecian thinkers, those 
 schools which were led by such men as Plato, Aristotle, 
 and Plotinus, and the teaching of the great idealists of 
 the modern world, there is no insuperable gulf. If we 
 strip the forms of such teaching of the mere setting that 
 has been due to the times, the agreement is more marked 
 than is the difference. Applying to philosophy the his- 
 torical method, we can trace the divergences that are 
 distinctive of the modern outlook largely to the measur- 
 able influences of intervening factors. There is, for 
 example, the modern tendency of human intelligence to 
 concentrate itself on exact science, a concentration which 
 is far from showing signs of diminution. The progress 
 of mathematics and of physical and biological conceptions 
 has resulted in much influence on formal methods, in- 
 cluding even those of metaphysicians. Then there has 
 been the moulding power of Christianity and, hardly less, 
 of the Renaissance, and finally there has been the changing 
 but permeating literary atmosphere in which expression 
 has had to take place. 
 
 In reading the history of philosophy we have accord- 
 ingly to read it as we have learned to study the history of 
 religion, including the Bible itself, as Matthew Arnold 
 long ago told us to read it. The story cannot be taken 
 
HOW WE SHOULD READ PHILOSOPHY 9 
 
 apart from its context in the surroundings amid which 
 from time to time it has been written. But there is a 
 continuity in that story which reflection brings to light. 
 To grasp that continuity requires concentration and 
 patience. But it seems to disclose itself as unbroken 
 when these are brought to bear on the survey of the story 
 as a whole. Without any attempt to write a history of 
 philosophy, it is my object to do what I can to contribute 
 something to the disentangling process. For there is 
 much that has been from time to time overlooked, and a 
 good deal that seems as though it was being overlooked 
 even to-day. 
 
 The successive forms of intellectual and spiritual activity 
 in philosophical thought do not, when regarded from 
 this outlook, appear to have really brought about as 
 great a change in the substance remoulded in them as 
 people think. They have had much to do with the correc- 
 tion of the abstractness and also of the looseness of many 
 of the old modes of expressing truth. They have given 
 rise to new expressions about the character of both know- 
 ledge and reality, and have resulted in subordinate schools 
 as transitory as they have been subordinate. But, tran- 
 sient as these have been, they have often proved in their 
 own periods of great value. We owe, for instance, much 
 to what is called Mentalism or Subjective Idealism. It may 
 to-day be rejected as a superseded and inadequate theory 
 about reality. But it has served its purpose by dragging 
 to light a great deal that before its time had not been 
 adequately thought out. If of little value for construc- 
 tion, it has had much for criticism. It has shown itself 
 to be a valuable form of the negative, and, like other 
 forms of the negative, it has been incorporated and 
 absorbed, without having permanently arrested the 
 stream of tendency. There is no modern thinker who 
 does not owe something to such subjective idealists as 
 Berkeley and Hume. There are but few who remain of 
 their way of thinking. 
 
 Similarly, the attempt to throw philosophy into the 
 form that the science of the period called for has had 
 much influence in preparing for reflection on how to pene- 
 trate deeper than even modern science can. The doctrine 
 of evolution and the wider doctrine of development ; the 
 modern theory of the relativity of relations in space and 
 
10 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 time ; the introduction into biology of the notion of 
 end as preferable for guiding observation to that of cause ; 
 these, and countless other changes which have shown 
 themselves in new kinds of scientific conception, have 
 necessitated fresh fashions of approach and of statement 
 in philosophy itself. But, again, these new ideas may 
 well turn out to have in the end only the sort of value 
 which fashions which were fresh a hundred or two hundred 
 years ago possessed. They have been necessary for the 
 purpose of bringing to the light narrow views held about 
 the material with which we have been dealing, rather than 
 for that of contributing to any result conclusive in itself 
 as to the knowledge of that in which reality consists. 
 The more we study the history of thought, the more does 
 it become apparent that the advantage of modern thinkers 
 over inquirers such as Aristotle lies chiefly in the external 
 materials with which they have worked. The root 
 problem has been the same, and the advance towards the 
 later solutions has been greater in superficial aspect than 
 in substance. 
 
 Still, this does not really imply that there has been no 
 progress in the search after truth. Were it said without 
 careful qualification about the progress of discovery in 
 science it would indeed give cause for heart-searching. 
 That is because science recognises as required by its special 
 standards of truth the definite results obtained from the 
 balance and the measuring rod. Advance tested only by 
 these standards must be mainly advance in quantitative 
 result, rather than in interpretation in its fullest form. 
 When we apply another kind of test in the search after 
 truth, it does not alarm us if we are told that humanity 
 has not got to a higher level in literature and art than 
 it did in the days of ancient Greece. That is because we 
 are using a different standard, and recognise that here 
 we are concerned, not with measurement in time and 
 space, but with value in quality. Now in qualitative 
 value there is of course advance, but it is advance of a 
 kind different from what can be expressed in figures or in 
 quantitative or serial symbols. 
 
 Poetry has been described as being the most perfect 
 speech of man, that in which he comes nearest to being 
 able to utter truth. But this description depends for its 
 sufficiency upon its being clearly understood what is meant 
 
TRUTH AND VALUE 11 
 
 by perfection. To the mathematician there is an advance 
 towards perfection in speech when the current ideas about 
 infinitely small quantities, inherited from Newton and 
 Leibnitz, have been thrown overboard, and the limits of 
 functions have been expressed as depending simply on 
 order in series. It is for the mathematician a real step 
 forward when he gets rid of the notion of counting as an 
 adequate basis for number, and can explain it as the 
 designation of classes of similar collections, with which he 
 can operate in his science, although they may include, not 
 only what can be counted, but the transfinite numbers 
 which by their very nature cannot be counted in the way 
 that obtains in arithmetic. 
 
 All this may be truth of a very high nature, but it is 
 not the truth of poetry. Value for mathematics depends 
 on standards that are different from those applied in the 
 domain of art. Truth for the mathematician is concerned 
 with the structure of conceptions belonging to order in 
 externality in its widest sense, in which greater and less 
 mean something that, although not necessarily dependent 
 on arithmetical counting, still does depend on order in 
 quantity based on a not wholly dissimilar principle. But 
 truth in poetry depends on a value in quality belonging 
 to a different order in reflection. Now value, however 
 subjective it may seem to be to the mind that is not 
 sufficiently developed to judge it, is yet estimated by 
 standards which are final, in the sense that our minds 
 are compelled in the end to accept the standards, just as in 
 the case of those employed in our judgments of quantity. 
 That this is so, and that judgments of qualitative value 
 have the significance of fundamental truth, the history of 
 literature and art is the witness. It is without hesitation 
 that we have for all time placed Wordsworth higher than 
 Eliza Cook, and Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe 
 above the minor poets of our own and other countries. 
 So it is in pictorial art and in religion also. We know 
 broad differences in value there as certainly as we know 
 the differences between light and darkness. 
 
 The predominance of the value that is qualitative thus 
 distinguishes certain kinds of truth from what falls short 
 of being the full truth. The standards in the former are 
 really final and foundational, as much as in the instances 
 of truth of a scientific order, notwithstanding that the 
 
12 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 tests by which they are applied belong to a mode of 
 reflection different from that to which what are popularly 
 called scientific standards belong. The orders in both 
 cases include conceptions, but these are neither of the 
 same kind nor applied in the same way. We do not 
 arrange serially the objects to which the standards of 
 ethical or artistic excellence apply. We speak of both 
 Sophocles and Shakespeare as dramatic poets of the 
 highest genius. And, while we recognise the great differ- 
 ences which characterise their poetry, we do not try to 
 inquire arithmetically which poetry was the best. On 
 the contrary, we say that each belonged to the finest 
 level of its own kind, one which in its own fashion was the 
 highest imaginable by us, estimated by tests which we 
 cannot but accept and beyond which imagination does 
 not point. 
 
 It is thus that it becomes clear that truth has a meaning 
 which is in important respects relative to the subject- 
 matter. In the history of literature we are prepared, as 
 we are not in the history of science, to find truth attained 
 not less completely in periods that are gone than in the 
 period of to-day. The form, the mode of expression, may 
 in literature belong to what is past. But the substance, 
 the quality, belongs to what is independent of time and 
 space and change ; it is of an order that actually lies 
 outside time, for sequence in time and continuance do not 
 essentially concern it. It is not with order in quantity 
 that we are concerned here. 
 
 When we speak of what is true in literature and music 
 and art we mean something different from what we have 
 in our minds when we are discussing scientific theory. 
 Yet even in science what is recognised as true may imply 
 much that belongs to varieties in level that are not con- 
 cerned with mere quantity. In biology and in medicine 
 we observe what has aspects other than those of the 
 mechanical and belongs to a different order. The doctrines 
 of evolution, of heredity, and of growth appear to necessi- 
 tate the recognition of ends in operation, as distinguished 
 from external causes ; ends, the operation of which is 
 of such a character that difficulties about action at a 
 distance disappear, and that the ends themselves take 
 external shape in the phenomenon of a whole which has 
 no existence outside its members and the material in 
 
THE MEANING OF TRUTH 13 
 
 which it expresses and conserves itself, maintaining un- 
 broken the identity of the organism through its course 
 from its conception to its death, notwithstanding meta- 
 bolism and constant change in material. In medicine it 
 is far from clear that the nature of the stimulus imparted 
 by a drug to the performance of function by the organism 
 can be expressed in terms of physics or of chemistry. 
 The character of the stimulus belongs to the domain of 
 life, and distinctive differences in mode of operation are 
 obvious. Even in sciences that are concerned with 
 externality as such, like mathematics and physics them- 
 selves, adequacy implies more than mere correctness in 
 ordinary measurement. Of this the teaching of Einstein 
 is the demonstration. Still, in science generally measure- 
 ment is in itself of the highest importance. Even in 
 physiology the conceptions and methods of physics and 
 chemistry are not only capable of application to the 
 phenomena of the living being, to the measurement of 
 the taking in and giving out, for example, of its energy, 
 but are essential for exact knowledge about these 
 phenomena. Science is largely concerned with the 
 mechanical standpoint from which truth is the measur- 
 able agreement of the conception framed with its object 
 as something external to and independent of it. The 
 adjustment of the terms in which its conceptions are to 
 be expressed must accordingly depend largely on the 
 balance and the measuring rod. 
 
 It is in the light of experience such as I have referred 
 to, that we become aware that when we talk of truth we 
 sometimes have in our heads an agreement, depending on 
 comparison of relations in time and space of images with 
 their objects, or that we may mean, as in literature, 
 music, and art generally, what is of a different kind, 
 depending on adequacy of that which is expressed to an 
 ideal of value that imposes its authority, as it were, from 
 within the mind itself. The question that now arises is 
 what we mean by truth in philosophy. There is no doubt 
 that philosophy is dependent on science in a way that art, 
 for example, is not. For the excellence of a picture it is 
 wholly immaterial whether its object has ever been 
 there, or whether the details ever appeared in time and 
 space in the proportions in which the artist has made them 
 stand. The cottage and the girl who appears at its door 
 8 
 
14 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 may never have existed. Or if they did, and if what is 
 sought to be conveyed is artistic value, and not mere 
 reproduction of details, as in the case of a photograph, 
 exactitude is of little importance. What matters is the 
 quality of the idea that the picture awakens. That is 
 its value as true for art. But if philosophy, the problem 
 of which is always the final character of reality, is to give 
 an enlightening account of that reality, it must be under 
 no mistakes as to the scientific truth about the facts 
 which it has to interpret. Accuracy is here indispensable, 
 for otherwise the supposed facts will not in the end stand 
 for facts, and confidence will not be commanded. That 
 is why, despite the great contribution which the Greeks 
 made to the interpretation of the universe as they con- 
 ceived it, faith in that interpretation has been lessened 
 by the great growth in scientific knowledge which has 
 taken place since the days in which Bacon wrote. New 
 information about the facts has entailed modifications in 
 much of the interpretation that the Greeks put on what 
 had to be interpreted. 
 
 Nevertheless the Greeks did many things that have 
 advanced our understanding of the actual, a great deal 
 more than they usually get credit for. The general 
 character of reality received a treatment at their hands 
 which dispelled a good many partial notions. This is 
 true in particular, as we shall see later on, of what they 
 taught about the general relation of knowledge to the 
 actual. For them knowledge meant knowledge without 
 restriction of character, direct and indirect, aesthetic as 
 well as scientific. For they had realised that the com- 
 plete truth is the whole, and that the different kinds 
 of reflection fall, along with their objects, within an 
 entirety. 
 
 The outcome seems, then, to be that what we really 
 mean by truth may sometimes have to be construed as 
 extending to more than the mere agreement of our ideas 
 with what is conceived as existing apart from and as 
 external to them. The test of truth may have to be 
 adequacy in a fuller form, a form which is concerned, not 
 f only with the result of measurement with the balance or 
 the rule, but with value that cannot be so measured and 
 that depends on other orders in thinking. What is truth 
 from one standpoint may not of necessity stand for truth 
 
THE TEST OF TRUTH 15 
 
 from another. Relativity, depending on the standard 
 used, may intrude itself in varying forms. 
 
 To be true a conception must be adequate. Its adequacy 
 for the special purpose in view may consist in its agree- 
 ment with the results ascertained by measurement. Or it 
 may consist in its value as lifting us above what seems to 
 be of a low order, relatively to higher quality recognised 
 by criteria that are foundational. This is the truth 
 which we recognise in a work of art when it gives us the 
 sense that beyond what it expresses there is nothing 
 higher of which we can form any idea. It may be that 
 it is only in art in some form, awakening in us the 
 feeling that we are lifted above relativity and are in the 
 presence of what of its own kind is perfect and complete, that 
 we can have this sense without qualification. But some- 
 thing like it arises in our souls in religious consciousness 
 also, depending as it does on a feeling of finiteness accepted 
 and as accepted transcended. This is an example of 
 adequacy in value of another form. In neither case is 
 feeling wholly divorced from reflection. And if a level 
 were attainable at which the apparent separation between 
 thought and feeling were superseded, there would be no 
 sharp distinction between the various forms of adequacy, 
 scientific and aesthetic. It may therefore be stated 
 generally that an idea is true when it is adequate, and 
 only completely adequate when it is, from every point 
 of view, true. Each form of test that is applicable must 
 be satisfied in the conception of perfect adequacy ; for 
 otherwise we can have only truth that is relative to 
 particular standpoints. 
 
 It seemed desirable to get this almost but not quite 
 obvious proposition clear before proceeding to search for a 
 principle by the light of which certain important forms, in 
 which it is currently claimed that truth is correctly pre- 
 sented, may be called into the witness-box for examination. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE DOMAIN OF SCIENCE 
 
 IN the conclusion of the last chapter it was suggested that 
 the word " truth " is not free from ambiguities. It has, 
 latent in it, implications dependent on our standpoints. 
 The truthful description of nature given by the physicist 
 may be highly divergent from that given by the poet. 
 For they have approached nature from different points of 
 view, and have brought to bear conceptions of reality that 
 belong to different orders in thought. The poet has no 
 use for the differential equation of the physicist, the stan- 
 dards of which are not concerned with emotion. To the 
 physicist, on the other hand, the imagery in which the 
 poet idealises the sunset may well seem to be, from a 
 strictly scientific point of view, greatly misleading. 
 
 Yet for criticism that is to be adequate both stand- 
 points are required. For truth is relative. The two out- 
 looks have their justification in the different orders in 
 reflection to which they belong. Moreover, there is some 
 analogy between the method of science and that of the 
 poet and the artist. In mathematics, for example, science 
 constructs what are pictorial symbols. These may be 
 geometrical figures or they may be arithmetical numbers, 
 or they may be algebraical forms that symbolise general 
 conceptions applicable to classes of numbers, such as the 
 symbols that figure in an equation. But pictorial they 
 are. They are objects to be looked at, and to be experi- 
 mented with by moving them about on paper. When the 
 mathematician transforms the equation x y into 
 x y 0, he can interpret what he has done mediately, 
 by reflecting about it. But reflect extensively he need 
 not, for he can see at a glance that the result is correct. 
 He has been experimenting with objects the relative 
 position of which on the paper he has changed, and his 
 eyes tell him that the re -arrangement was justified. No 
 
 16 
 
THE VICTORIAN OUTLOOK 17 
 
 doubt concepts are implied, and the process can be 
 expressed for reflection in a logical form. But he has not 
 needed to reflect fully. What he has done, by a resort 
 to symbols apparently merely external, has been to effect 
 at the least a great economy in thinking, and he has come 
 to his new result apparently through immediate percep- 
 tion. In this fashion he cannot only get at truth by 
 short cuts, but he can make discoveries which might have 
 been very difficult, if not impracticable, for abstract 
 logic. It is in ways not very different that the poet and 
 the artist construct images which seem to require no 
 speech to explain them, and can be used in reflection as 
 we use counters or banknotes. They stand for meaning 
 which we do not need to express, although it is there 
 implicitly. 
 
 Let us pursue this line of reflection a little further, by 
 extending its application to the domain of physical 
 science. We will begin by asking what is the view of 
 nature which the physicist fashions for himself. 
 
 There are not many features of the intellectual life of 
 the twentieth century more interesting than a new 
 disposition that is becoming very prominent. It is the 
 disposition to search for and drag to light unconsciously 
 made assumptions. How much may not the individual 
 mind of the observer have deflected the real results which 
 his observation has yielded ? What are the facts as truly 
 apprehended in their integrity ? 
 
 The necessity of putting such questions is becoming 
 more and more evident. In the last century many 
 prominent Victorian men of science had a theory, which 
 Professor Whitehead, who has written two books to 
 which I shall refer a little later on, has called the " bifur- 
 cation " theory. For these Victorians the object-world 
 of what we call " nature " was distinguishable into two 
 separate phases. One was the genuine objective reality. 
 This consisted in a self-subsisting and uniform system 
 of space and time, with its points and instants independent 
 of the events that occurred at them. Within this frame- 
 work, and conforming to its structure, there was a 
 mechanistic assemblage of atoms and energy, consisting of 
 and operating within an all -pervading material substance 
 which they called the aether, and which disclosed the atoms 
 and the energy as varying attributes of matter. The other 
 
18 THE DOMAIN OF SCIENCE 
 
 phase of the world of nature was wholly diverse. It was 
 not real in the sense the first was real, as something 
 existing quite independently of any relation to the mind, 
 but subjective, in the sense that it arose only in perception 
 and by individual interpretation of the results of causes 
 belonging to the objective domain of the first phase, 
 causes which, as they maintained, could be resorted to 
 inferentially as the explanation of the mental results. 
 These latter were, in effect, secondary as distinguished 
 from primary qualities. Thus the colour violet was a 
 subjective phenomenon of a secondary kind, but it could 
 be connected, by the intelligence of a person sufficiently 
 educated, with primary phenomena in the form of causes 
 which could be observed in nature as motion in certain 
 wave-lengths in the aether. The explanation was not an 
 easy one to follow, for it could not show any identity 
 between cause and effect such as science searches for. 
 But it was generally accepted. 
 
 Not all of these Victorians were untroubled about this 
 bifurcation doctrine, for the philosophical critics of the 
 time, some of whom were well equipped by studies in the 
 controversies of past periods, accused them of having 
 lapsed into obsolete metaphysics without knowing it, and 
 certain of the physicists themselves were disposed to 
 think that no good answer to such criticism had been 
 given by science. But so long as the bifurcation doctrine 
 prevailed, and no common root for the two phases in 
 nature could be stated intelligibly, the tendency to divide 
 reality into two independent parts remained unchecked. 
 
 The view commonly assumed as true by the majority 
 of the Victorian men of science, even when they did not 
 state it explicitly, met with a good deal of remonstrance 
 from the laity. A story is recorded of an occupant of the 
 Woolsack, a man with a mind that was highly distin- 
 guished for its penetrating capacity in other fields of 
 knowledge, but was not versed in either philosophy or 
 science. He happened to be returning from a meeting of 
 a well-known society which then existed. The society 
 was one formed for the discussion of metaphysical subjects. 
 There had been a dinner of its members out of London, 
 and some of the party, including the Lord Chancellor and 
 several eminent men of science, were returning to London 
 by train. The talk in the railway carriage turned on the 
 
THE VICTORIAN LORD CHANCELLOR 19 
 
 distinction between wave-lengths in the aether as external 
 causes and colours as purely subjective effects, and on 
 the somewhat meagre, if still highly important, phases in 
 nature which were all that the science of the day would 
 recognise as real independently of the mind of the observer. 
 The Lord Chancellor is said to have listened attentively 
 for some time, and then to have put a searching question, 
 " But do you mean to tell me that the blue of that cushion 
 is only in my eye ? " 
 
 Whatever science may have thought forty years ago, 
 to-day the distinguished Judge, had he been alive, would 
 have found the scientific world largely on his side. For 
 the blue is beginning to be generally looked upon as no 
 more merely in a man's head than is the electron or the 
 point-event of the outside world. People do not now try 
 to bifurcate nature in the old fashion. The outside world, 
 as I look on it while writing at this window, lies before me 
 with riches of which every phase truly belongs to it as 
 genuinely as does any other. It exhibits mechanistic 
 features, but it also has biological aspects not less impor- 
 tant. It discloses the shaping influences of ends, and it 
 possesses colour and beauty and value. From different 
 standpoints all these come into and belong to the entirety 
 of the world as it is stretched out before me. Take 
 away any of them and that world will not only mean 
 but be something different. I who am observing it am 
 myself one among the numerous objects which I identify 
 as belonging to it. There is a single whole within which 
 fall matter and mind alike. We may explain it as we 
 please, we may describe in what it consists, but that it is 
 for us as it seems is a final fact. Such is at least the view 
 which is beginning to be insisted on in the twentieth 
 century, even in scientific circles. The Victorian school of 
 which I have been speaking thought of the mind as one 
 thing and of what it observed as another thing. They 
 applied the category of entity or substance to both with- 
 out pausing to take breath. That was in reality why the 
 Lord Chancellor grew suspicious of them. To-day the 
 method of the Victorian physicists and biologists is being 
 rapidly relegated to the lumber-room. It is science itself, 
 much more than philosophy, that is sending it there. 
 Modern men of science do not now think of the world as 
 consisting of an objective portion, including certain 
 
20 THE DOMAIN OF SCIENCE 
 
 separable and self-subsistent entities, or follow blindly the 
 principle which John Locke long ago made popular because 
 it seemed so simple. The battery of criticism brought to 
 bear on Victorian scientific speculation by mathematicians, 
 physicists, and biologists, not less than by men with names 
 well-known in philosophy, and by others, believers in the 
 reality of universals, some of whom were the spiritual 
 fathers of the New Realists of to-day, has done its work. 
 The " bifurcation " doctrine is in ruins. Science does 
 not now concern itself with distinction of entities nearly 
 so much as with distinction of standpoints, whether these 
 are the standpoints of observers in a space which is begin- 
 ning to be now looked on as only relatively independent 
 of the observer, or the standpoints to which observation 
 generally is found to be confined in its results by the 
 limited character of the conceptions applied. Separation 
 in standpoint, or in order and level in knowledge, is 
 thus tending to supersede the notion of separation in 
 existence. 
 
 The form which this change assumes is the importance 
 now attached to interpretation or meaning in the con- 
 stitution of experience. Nature lies before us with the 
 significance we ascribe to it indissolubly incorporated with 
 all the rest of its character. The tests and standards of 
 truth are as inexorably applied as ever, but they are 
 differently expressed. My individual mind does not 
 create nature. Rather does it belong to nature as a part 
 of it. But, as we shall see later, its significance as so 
 belonging requires careful definition. From one stand- 
 point, interpreted in the conceptions appropriate to that 
 standpoint, it may well appear to be just a thing or an 
 event within nature. But this, as we shall also see later 
 on, is no exhaustive or adequate description of the full 
 character of what we really imply when we speak of our 
 minds. It is not simply for my mind that nature is what 
 it is. Doubtless there is always a certain relativity to the 
 individual. To my dog, whose mental equipment is other 
 than mine, the world as it exists is a more limited one 
 than it is for me. Beauty, for example, apparently does 
 not belong to it for him. Now this is the case, if to a less 
 extent, even as between men. The artist and the man of 
 science are aware of what others are not aware of. Still, 
 they, like other men and the dog, seem to start from a 
 
LOCKE AND BERKELEY 21 
 
 that," the " what " of which is the varying 
 content that gives meaning, and reality not less, to their 
 experiences. But this content is inseparable from inter- 
 pretation. Even printed words are only insignificant 
 splashes of ink excepting so far as I can read them. The 
 old idea was that the meaning must be something quite 
 separate from that of which it was the meaning. But 
 closer study has raised questions about this. 
 
 Locke had treated meaning as being separable from 
 experience when he distinguished primary qualities, such 
 as those of extension in space, from secondary qualities, 
 such as colour, and had insisted on the former as belonging 
 to the thing perceived, and the latter as belonging only 
 to another thing, the mind that perceived it. Berkeley 
 carried this further when he refused to distinguish the 
 allocation of the two kinds of quality. For he declared 
 that all our experience told us was that our minds, as 
 spiritual substances of some sort, were aware of their 
 own sensations and ideas, and that these were to be 
 looked on as self-subsistent signs through which a deity 
 informed us of the nature of a world which arose in 
 virtue of his having so ordered these ideas. The actual 
 experience was thus isolated from its meaning. Because 
 the ideas thus regarded in themselves could tell us nothing 
 intelligible, either of the nature of the spiritual substances 
 named minds or of the deity who acted on them, the 
 Berkeleian theory was easily torn to pieces in the hands 
 of Hume. If sensations and ideas were self-contained 
 entities, and their relations were merely external and acci- 
 dental to their self-contained character, then the relations 
 could have no necessary validity, and the unity and 
 apparently compelling character of knowledge were illu- 
 sions, the results of habit and the association of ideas, and 
 were wholly unreliable. The precipice of scepticism thus 
 began to loom very close at hand, and the only question 
 of difficulty that remained was how, if our knowledge 
 could in reality amount to no more than this, such a 
 pretence at knowledge could ever have conducted us to 
 any consciousness of the reality of the precipice. 
 
 It was of the question so raised that Kant laid hold. 
 I refer to him, not for the purpose of discussing his system 
 at this point, but only to draw attention to what I believe 
 to be the case, that he is the father of what is new 
 
22 THE DOMAIN OF SCIENCE 
 
 beginning to be recognised by the scientific thought of our 
 time as the view implied by its methods. 
 
 Kant was unable to find a solution of the problem of 
 the real in the notion of experience as a collection in time 
 and space of isolated entities, existing independently of 
 their relations, and apart from a setting in some frame- 
 work of meaning which would make these relations essen- 
 tial to the existence of the entities. For him the work of 
 science lay in interpretation, and interpretation could 
 signify no more than the finding of the true meaning. In 
 what, then, did the meaning of our actual experience 
 consist? Although Kant's solution of this problem was 
 only a partial one, it is not the less highly instructive 
 to-day. He threw overboard the easy-going assumption 
 that it will do to look on the mind as a self-contained 
 thing confronted in experience by another self-contained 
 thing. Going behind such thinghood he sought for an 
 explanation of the relationship in the inclusion of both 
 under a totally different conception, indicative of a mode 
 of actuality that was quite different. When we perceive, 
 Kant held that we are more than we appear to ourselves 
 to be. What is really constructive of our object-world 
 is intelligence, and this is more than merely individual. 
 Intelligence which introduces significance into its object 
 is the very condition which is implied for the possibility 
 of experience, and it must therefore be the identical 
 knowledge of all individuals in so far as they have experi- 
 ence. In two pure forms of perception, or of what he called 
 intuition, time and space, its activity arranges in rela- 
 tions, or schematises, the raw material of sensation, which 
 comes to it from things in themselves, into an orderly 
 world, thus arising independently of our individual partici- 
 pation. Within experience so constituted the particular 
 mind so encounters an object that is independent of 
 itself as a merely particular personality. The object is 
 in this fashion independent of the mind, inasmuch as it 
 falls within a larger process than that of merely individual 
 knowledge. The individual mind itself arises as the 
 outcome of the process, while at the same time, although 
 itself an object in experience, it is more than this because 
 it expresses the process in which it appears to itself as a 
 result. 
 
 This was Kant's theory of nature. It showed a great 
 
KANT 23 
 
 advance in capacity for explaining the facts of objectivity 
 over that of Berkeley. For, in the first place, inasmuch 
 as all experience owed its structure to mind as its foun- 
 dation, the laws of that structure, as being put into it by 
 mind itself, must be universally and of necessity true. It 
 lay in this fashion in the very nature of experience that 
 two and two should make four ; that the square of the 
 hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle should be equal 
 to the squares of the other sides; and that every event 
 should have a cause. These things were deducible from 
 the underlying conditions of every possible experience, 
 and within such experience they were of necessity every- 
 where valid. On the other hand they were true, not of 
 what did not come into our experience and therefore was 
 not thus constructed, but only of experience and within 
 its limits. At the character of God, and of objects con- 
 ceived as lying beyond experience, we could not get by 
 perception. These remained ideals due to reflection, and 
 their reality was not to be apprehended in what we could 
 experience. This was true also of ends and artistic ideals. 
 For the forms in which, for Kant, the activity of mind 
 operated in the constitution of its objective world, were 
 of a mechanistic character, and did not include such non- 
 mechanistic forms of knowledge. 
 
 Kant's method laid new foundations for the principle 
 of objectivity in nature. For he had rescued this from 
 the particularism of Berkeley and the latter's divorce of 
 what alone the senses make us aware of from its far- 
 reaching significance as experienced. For Kant the mind 
 found as there in nature what was of its own character 
 and content, in objective form. In a measure, to be 
 intelligible was for Kant to be real, and to be real was to 
 be intelligible. For meaning was everywhere incorporated 
 in reality. But people presently began to ask why Kant 
 had limited his categories to those of a mechanical order, 
 and why time and space were put on a different footing 
 from the other factors involved in knowledge, by being 
 made mere forms of intuition instead of being given a 
 conceptual character, like number and causality. It was 
 presently declared that Kant had committed a cardinal 
 error in really trying to go behind the fact of knowledge 
 and to break it up. It was asked how it could be, if 
 knowledge was the only mode of approach to facts, and 
 
24 THE DOMAIN OF SCIENCE 
 
 was itself presupposed in all attempts at investigation 
 even of itself, that its validity could have been properly 
 called in question in this Critical Philosophy. To try to 
 question the instrument through which alone questions 
 can be realised and answered is to commit the fallacy of 
 the sceptics, who, if consistent, ought in limine to deny 
 the possibility of reliable scepticism. We cannot learn 
 to swim excepting by entering the water, and trusting 
 ourselves to it. We must trust ourselves to knowledge 
 simply because there is no way of doing anything else. 
 The only mode of studying knowledge is, therefore, the 
 observation of it in its own self -development. It cannot 
 be broken up into fragments, for there is nothing beyond 
 it of which such fragments can consist. Therefore Kant 
 was not justified in trying to lay it out on the dissecting 
 table for dismemberment. The distinctions between 
 thought, time and space, and sensation, cannot be funda- 
 mental. They must fall within one entirety, and it is as 
 belonging to that entirety as its phases, and not as entities 
 apart, that they must be studied. 
 
 Such a view of the real must take account of the knower 
 as well as the known, if it is to be a complete philosophy. 
 But when we distinguish, as we must do for the limited 
 purposes of daily life, nature as known, from the percipient 
 for which it is there, we form a conception of the world 
 confronting us as self-contained and as if " closed to 
 mind." Such a conception is legitimate only if we re- 
 member that it depends on a standpoint which will prove 
 not to be a final one. There may have to be a yet fuller 
 conception, belonging to a different standpoint in know- 
 ledge, a conception within which both mind and nature 
 can be shown to fall. But it is legitimate, if we bear in 
 mind that the actual standpoint is just that of an observer 
 face to face with a world which he provisionally accepts 
 as there independently of his observation, to confine 
 ourselves to what we take to be revealed in perception, 
 though relatively only, the presence of nature as an 
 apparently self-contained system. Now in science, strictly 
 so called, we observe and experiment with a view to 
 determining the general notions involved in the descrip- 
 tions of things so taken. 
 
 In nature thus conceived we make no distinction such 
 as that between secondary and primary qualities. We 
 
NATURE 25 
 
 take it to be an entirety as it stands. Every phase belongs 
 to the entirety and is a factor in it. Interpretation and 
 standpoint are accordingly inseparable from what is inter- 
 preted. This is easy to see when we turn to objects in 
 nature, such as a sunset, which owe their important 
 significance as facts to the artistic consciousness of the 
 observer. The sunset in its beauty is not the less real 
 because for the man of science, who from another stand- 
 point, puts a different interpretation on it, its reality 
 means something quite else. So with the picture that 
 hangs on the wall. From one point of view it is merely 
 a disorderly mixture of colours spread over a canvas. 
 From a different point of view it expresses meaning 
 which is not the less real because it requires, to give it 
 existence, mind of a certain order. The printed words 
 which we interpret as expressing a poetic idea are in the 
 same case. The words embody a poem, although to 
 another view they are merely so many smears of printer's 
 ink or even dirt. For a dog they are only something to 
 chew. The world before me would lose half its reality 
 did it not yield meaning for mind at the level that is 
 required to apprehend that meaning as among integral 
 phases of the existence of the world at that level. 
 
 When we turn from aspects, such as beauty and ends 
 expressed, to those of mere mechanism, the same truth 
 confronts us. Every man has some science in him 
 through which the world is present in the ordered mechani- 
 cal aspect it wears. Even the animal that discriminates 
 what is useful to it from what is noxious seems to bring 
 reflection and memory to bear. We human beings think 
 abstractly by the aid, for instance, of geometrical figures 
 or of arithmetical numbers, and, by bringing our so-called 
 immediate world under these conceptions, we extend its 
 significance and the range of our inferences over those of 
 the animal. It is further true that the mathematician, 
 the physicist, the chemist, the biologist, the artist, the 
 clergyman, the metaphysician, all abstract from, or, in 
 other words, ignore, the phases of the real that do not 
 concern their respective purposes, in order to get distinct 
 and extended knowledge about the aspects of things that 
 are important to them, and to find out what their reality 
 signifies. Within each order of approach to significance 
 in what is apprehended fresh truth emerges and reality 
 
26 THE DOMAIN OF SCIENCE 
 
 is invested with fresh meaning. The truth that emerges 
 is not in each case of the same order. Its standards, as 
 we have already seen, vary with the order and the stand- 
 point to which alone they are appropriate. Of these 
 standpoints there may be more than one employed 
 in the direction of the activity of knowledge. Within each 
 there will be the truth and error that belong to it, and 
 within each the criterion will prove, as the case may be, 
 to be of the strenuous order of science, or of the com- 
 pelling character of unquestionable value recognised, or 
 of some even different character. It is not independent 
 entities that we discriminate in these different phases of 
 the actual, but aspects arising from the points of view 
 we are at. There may in an actual and individual phase 
 of our experience be many aspects present, and there 
 may be required as many kinds of knowledge as are 
 appropriate to each aspect. In certain of these kinds of 
 knowledge the scientific methods of abstraction will 
 predominate. In others what matters will be the idea of 
 excellence in value. In the latter cases the idea may 
 seem to us to be indistinguishable even in reflection from 
 the object, and the judgment of excellence will be of a 
 character so immediate and simple that it will seem to 
 amount to no more than a feeling aesthetic, ethical, or 
 religious. But it is not really so, for no such feeling is 
 possible unless, by mental quality of a reflective kind such 
 as distinguishes the man from the animal, the mind is 
 rendered capable of the judgment of excellence. Thought 
 and feeling are never separable in what is actual. The 
 one may appear to be suggested more prominently than 
 the other, but both are invariably present. For the dis- 
 tinction between them is itself a creature of reflection. 
 This is shown by what has been said about man : that he 
 alone in the animal kingdom is capable of religion. 
 
 The principle is one that distinguishes broadly the 
 views of thinkers like Kant from those of the school of 
 Berkeley and Hume. Nothing is real for us apart from 
 meaning, and the meaning is not separable from the " It " 
 which we perceive. We may of course attribute wrong 
 meanings. The mind of man is free, free to err and free 
 to sin. But there are standards of truth of different 
 forms which develop with the development of knowledge. 
 By the aid of these we free our minds from interpreta- 
 
OUR KNOWLEDGE OF NATURE 27 
 
 tions which are aberrations from the normal, merely due 
 to the idiosyncrasies of the individual within each order 
 of truth. They enable us to distinguish what is true for 
 all men from what is the subjective belief of one or a few 
 only. They even enable us to pass beyond a traditional 
 opinion, and to recognise it as subjective and individual 
 in its origin, and as not conforming to the conditions 
 which alone make experience possible. Thus, while 
 knowledge never stands still and is always being developed, 
 it may take time and repeated testing to discriminate the 
 true character of what is believed to be knowledge. This 
 does not imply that truth varies with the individual ; it 
 varies, but in accordance with principles of universal 
 application. When we apprehend truly the nature of 
 the object of knowledge we apprehend something that 
 is independent of our private outlook. There is no diffi- 
 culty in coming to this conclusion ; the difficulty is as to 
 what it signifies. 
 
 It is, as we have seen, only on the basis of accepting 
 knowledge as an ultimate and final fact, in terms of which 
 all that is apparently subjective, error as well as truth, 
 must be rendered, and within which all that is or can be 
 must somewhere fall, that our object- world is intelligible, 
 Now it is just this consideration that delivers us from the 
 puzzle that arises when we hastily assume knowledge to 
 be merely our knowledge as particular beings. We are 
 at once forced to inquire whether knowledge is not more 
 than this. Kant, as we have noticed, denied that know- 
 ledge was a mere attribute of the empirical self that 
 belongs to its object-world. He asserted it to be that 
 which lies at the foundation of the self, and of the object 
 equally, as well as of the relation of the two. From some 
 view of knowledge such as this it seems impossible to 
 escape. For it is, on the one hand, the way of deliverance 
 from subjectivity, and, on the other, it accounts for our 
 consciousness of an objectivity that is independent of the 
 particular self that perceives. Kant's view thus gives us 
 the " It " of which we are in search. Reality lies in the 
 foundational character of knowledge, and in the dis- 
 tinctions between perceiver and perceived, knower and 
 known, as being distinctions falling inside the entirety of 
 that foundational character, inasmuch as they are made 
 by and within knowledge itself. 
 
28 THE DOMAIN OF SCIENCE 
 
 The point is one which will be developed later on. It 
 is a point of no easy character. But then the problem 
 of reality is a very difficult one, perhaps the most difficult 
 of all problems, and it is only when we are driven to face 
 it that we ever do so. Now here we are driven to face 
 the problem, because, unless we can find a solution for it, 
 we can hardly hope to get at a principle such that it can 
 free us from perplexity over a multitude of other problems 
 which press on us ominously. It is suggested that our 
 knowledge, when we perceive an object, is a relation which 
 is somehow established between it and us, just as if we 
 were only living things possessing a special and individual 
 attribute of being able to know. But if that suggestion 
 is based on an hypothesis assumed to be true but incapable 
 of being formulated intelligibly, we are driven to inquire 
 whether the hypothesis is tenable. It may be not only 
 an apparently plausible but a useful one, useful for 
 application when we do not need more than the aspect 
 of reality which it yields. But it may not the less be 
 profoundly false, if it claims to be a principle by which we 
 can explain, if we wish to go deeper into the nature of 
 existence. 
 
 I cannot at this early stage do more than state the 
 alternative principle. It is no novel one. It belongs to 
 the essence of the metaphysics both of the greatest of 
 the Grecian thinkers and of the most modern idealists. If 
 it is a true one it is only because of a profound misappre- 
 hension that we seek to resolve knowledge into a relation 
 between self-subsisting entities, or indeed into anything 
 other than itself in its many forms and aspects. For, 
 should it prove to be the case that behind the fact of 
 knowledge we cannot go, and that all criticism of its 
 truth or untruth falls within itself and must be wholly 
 its own act, then it is obviously absurd to treat it as an 
 activity of a particular being in space and time. It is 
 in a larger view the medium within which all experience 
 lies, and the self is its expression, but never its complete 
 expression. For the self is finite, although, just because 
 of its character as an organ in which knowledge expresses 
 itself, it is at all times more than it takes itself to be. 
 
 It is in the dubious fashion I have referred to that the 
 relation of the intelligent human being to the object 
 which he perceives is sometimes regarded as belonging to 
 
KNOWLEDGE A FINAL FACT 29 
 
 the order of thought concerned with externality. That is 
 because both his mind and his object are taken to be things 
 or substances, legitimately from many standpoints, but 
 legitimately only from these standpoints, and in the light 
 of such conceptions as properly belong to them. But if 
 we reconsider the assumption here tacitly made, that we, 
 as individual men with names and positions in space, ought 
 to be taken first in the proper order of reflection about 
 reality, and that the fact that we know may be taken 
 only in the second place, a different conclusion seems to 
 force itself on us. The subject as distinguished in know- 
 ledge from the object can hardly be regarded as a self- 
 subsisting substance, but is surely just itself a form that 
 arises within knowledge. The object appears to be simi- 
 larly just another form, the corresponding and correlative 
 result of the distinction. The activity of knowledge in 
 making the distinction is thus in truth prior to the results 
 distinguished. One of these results is that knowledge 
 assumes for itself the aspect of a subject or self, so dis- 
 tinguished and yet expressive of the activity of knowledge 
 itself. It is related within the final fact of knowledge to 
 an object which belongs to knowledge as much as the 
 self belongs to it, and is its correlative reality within the 
 entirety. Thus an object is not merely naturally but 
 essentially there for the subject, not only in space and 
 time, but in consciousness. Behind the fact of conscious- 
 ness one cannot go. It is our " that " of which we can 
 only inquire into the " what." The " what " is always 
 self -changing, for knowledge is dynamic and not static. 
 But still in some form it always occupies us. What the 
 form is, in the case of object and subject alike, is a question 
 that turns on standpoints and orders in conception result- 
 ing from them, and of these the character of knowledge 
 discloses in its self -development an unlimited variety. 
 The point is therefore that at the foundation of these 
 standpoints, implied in them and capable of expression 
 in all and each of the multiple presentations to which 
 they give rise, is the cardinal and irresoluble reality of 
 knowledge itself, the ultimate medium in terms of which 
 all else must be expressed, whilst it cannot itself be 
 expressed in any terms beyond its own. 
 
 It is this view of knowledge, different from that yielded 
 by the artificial and subordinate standpoint from which 
 4 
 
30 THE DOMAIN OF SCIENCE 
 
 the psychologist sometimes has to treat it, that renders 
 not only the relativity of its isolated phases but also the 
 merely relative truth of these phases intelligible. If it 
 is a correct view, then the question of what underlies know- 
 ledge and gives rise to it is one which is unintelligible and 
 absurd. Neither what we call minds nor what we call 
 things know. They are themselves objects within the 
 knowledge which has aspects that in order of reality 
 precede and go beyond them. Things are therefore out 
 there just as they appear to be, independently of me the 
 individual knower, although they have had attributed to 
 them aspects in reality of a relative order. Such aspects 
 are the inevitably incomplete expressions of the founda- 
 tional knowledge within which alone such aspects them- 
 selves arise. 
 
 If this be true we have accounted for the fact that there 
 is an " It," and are already a long way from Mentalism or 
 Subjective Idealism. The question of the genesis of 
 knowledge as related to any other reality turns out to be 
 irrational. But the " It " has its meaning or interpreta- 
 tion as part of its reality. So, in his way, Kant held, and 
 he would appear to have been right as against Berkeley 
 and Hume, who sought to obliterate what was essential 
 in that meaning. 
 
 Before concluding this chapter and approaching its 
 principles at a further stage, it is worth while to restate its 
 conclusion in another form. 
 
 The final and foundational fact appears to be the fact 
 that I know. For it is in terms of knowledge that all 
 existence is expressed. Excepting for knowledge nothing 
 has any meaning, and to have no meaning is to be non- 
 existent. 
 
 Obvious as this seems it is yet a conclusion which meets 
 at once with an objection. The plain person refuses to 
 accept it on the ground that it is not his thinking about 
 them that calls things into existence. He is clearly right 
 when he says this. But does his objection affect the con- 
 clusion against which it is directed ? On one construction it 
 does so. If the last word about knowledge is that its object 
 is to be looked at as a property of a particular mind 
 with a particular place in space and time, the objection 
 seems unanswerable. Dr. Johnson, however, answered this 
 construction long ago when, in comment on Bishop Berkeley, 
 
THE SELF 31 
 
 he thumped his stick upon the ground. The ground was of 
 course just as much an actual fact as was his individual 
 mind. 
 
 Nor does the difficulty Dr. Johnson felt seem to be 
 made less by Berkeley's suggestion that there is some 
 other sort of mind than that of the inquirer in the know- 
 ledge of which reality can be sought. For it is not easy 
 to see in what relation the inquirer's mind, that of a 
 person with a history and a position in nature, can stand 
 to such another mind if it be something outside his own. 
 
 The problem remains unsolved. It is only in terms of 
 knowledge that reality can be expressed, and knowledge 
 can be described in no terms that go beyond its own. 
 Even the distinction between reality and unreality is one 
 within thought itself. The only way out of the puzzle 
 seems therefore to retrace our steps, and to ask whether 
 at some point we have made an assumption that has 
 precipitated us into our difficulty. Now there was an 
 assumption that is obvious. On the older hypothesis we 
 took knowledge to be a property of the particular self 
 that is asking the question about it. No doubt from one 
 point of view, and one that is not only legitimate but 
 necessary, this is so. But is it the only possible point of 
 view ? Surely not. For the self is not less than any 
 thing else an object for knowledge. That is to say, it pre- 
 supposes the ultimate fact of knowledge if it is to have 
 any meaning at all, and in logic, at all events, knowledge 
 comes first. Is it, then, open to us to proceed on the 
 footing that the self is a notion that has arisen within 
 knowledge and is derivative from it ? If so, knowledge may 
 turn out to have been the ultimate fact and the foundation 
 of the universe for which we are in search. 
 
 There is one possible view which leaves such a con- 
 clusion open to us. It is that the common idea of a self 
 with which undoubtedly knowledge is somehow in inti- 
 mate association as its property, is a conception that is 
 only relatively an adequate one. Of conceptions that are 
 only relatively adequate there are many examples. One 
 of the most familiar is that of a living organism. We 
 can and do in our daily practice treat it as so many pounds 
 weight of carbon and other atoms and molecules, arranged 
 in accordance with the principles of physics and chemistry. 
 So far this is a true view. The law of the conservation of 
 
82 THE DOMAIN OF SCIENCE 
 
 energy applies to the living organism. But this concep- 
 tion of it is not the whole truth nor adequate truth. For 
 the organism is living, and its character can only be fully 
 expressed in terms of life. So expressed it consists in 
 growth, heredity, and generally in behaviour in the 
 unconscious fulfilment of an end, resembling the pursuit 
 of a purpose realised by the component parts. The sub- 
 stance is always changing, but the end persists until its 
 function in the interest of the species terminates with 
 death. The end is no physical or chemical cause, acting 
 ab extra. It is the quasi-purposive behaviour of the con- 
 stituent organs, such as the lungs and the kidneys, which 
 adapt their work in apparent concert for the preservation 
 of a whole that, in so far as it is so preserved, lives and 
 controls the action of its organs in accordance with its 
 requirements. 
 
 Thus the physical and chemical standpoint is only 
 relatively true, however useful and necessary for getting 
 clear and extended knowledge belonging to a certain 
 order in reflection. The standpoint of biology, with the 
 conceptions it employs, is no less necessary, and is certainly 
 not less obvious and natural in our daily attitude. The 
 two outlooks do not conflict, because they belong to 
 different orders in thought, employing ideas that are in 
 logic of diverse kinds. Reality presents itself at two 
 different levels. 
 
 Now it may be that we shall find that the self analo- 
 gously presents itself differently at different standpoints 
 belonging to different orders in reflection, and that it has 
 only been relatively that the self has appeared as sort of 
 substance of which knowledge was an instrument, by 
 means of which the mind so conceived got at things thus 
 looked on as existing outside and wholly independently of 
 its knowledge about them. We shall have in this book to 
 examine that question, along with others that arise out 
 of it. 
 
 I have now led the reader, as he may think precipitately, 
 into an early discussion of what must be the cardinal 
 question for philosophy. But I have done this in order 
 to make what follows intelligible, and to enable me to pass 
 to the general principle of the relativity of knowledge. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 RELATIVITY AND WHAT IT MEANS 
 
 THE principle of relativity, if its beginning is sought for, 
 will be found to date back to the days of ancient Greece. 
 Plato and Aristotle were aware of it and of its far-reaching 
 importance. Later on Plotinus was occupied with it. It 
 recurs in subsequent periods of the history of thought 
 about reality* What seems to be needed in our own day 
 is not merely its statement in a form adapted to our 
 times, but its rescue from obscurity, arising from uncon- 
 scious assumptions and distorting metaphors. Almost 
 every great philosopher of ancient and modern times has 
 had his attention directed to the principle in some form, 
 but it is to-day that there has come to it for the first time 
 a chance of obtaining from science itself full scope. For 
 it has at last penetrated definitely into the .domain of 
 science. Leibnitz and Kant came near to touching on its 
 application in this region, although in their times that 
 application would have been regarded, and not unnatur- 
 ally, as matter for philosophy by itself. But now science 
 has begun to scrutinise its own foundations, and to apply 
 its own methods in the investigation. It is in this 
 fashion that the researches of Einstein have given a fresh 
 importance to the principle of relativity. The precise 
 standards and the exact reasoning of the most modern 
 mathematicians and physicists are throwing a new light 
 on the significance of the principle. Apart from their 
 work it is impossible to-day to state it adequately or to 
 appreciate its range. Men of science are now advancing 
 with sure steps into a domain which for long they did not 
 think of entering. It is not a domain that can belong to 
 them alone. In this borderland they are bound to meet the 
 
 33 
 
84 RELATIVITY AND WHAT IT MEANS 
 
 metaphysician. It may turn out that they need him just 
 as he needs them. For the principle itself is one of 
 which they can have no monopoly. It does not apply 
 only in physical science, or only in philosophy in relation 
 to that kind of science. As we shall find, it is one that 
 is required in other departments, belonging not only to 
 science itself, but to art and religion and knowledge 
 generally. 
 
 It is therefore necessary, if the principle is to have its 
 scope fully interpreted, to follow out its application in a 
 good many regions. This I have sought to do so far as 
 I have felt able. It is unwillingly that I have even 
 touched on topics with which highly trained specialists 
 alone are competent to deal in detail. I know too well 
 from my own practical experience in hearing legal argu- 
 ments how quickly the deficiencies of the outsider become 
 obvious to a trained eye. But, then, the principle of the 
 relativity of knowledge does not itself belong to any single 
 domain. Einstein's teaching is only an illustration of its 
 application to a special subject. To interpret the principle 
 itself it is necessary to examine the character of knowledge 
 as a whole, and in doing this it is not practicable to avoid 
 looking at the various regions in which this great principle 
 in knowledge discloses itself. 
 
 I have thought it right thus to explain why I have 
 found myself compelled to touch topics which should be 
 dealt with as a rule only by those who are highly trained 
 specialists. I have avoided, as far as was possible, any 
 suggestion that encroaches on their work. Where I may 
 seem to have ventured to speak boldly it has been because 
 the point was one which impressed itself on me as outside 
 the peculiar sphere of any specialist and belonging to the 
 general theory of reality, merely illustrated in a special 
 fashion. 
 
 Relativity in its widest sense is an old and familiar 
 idea. It sometimes only means that our view of things 
 in the world varies with our personal circumstances. The 
 hills look as if on fire. But if I change my position I see 
 that what I took to be fire was really an appearance due 
 to my position and produced by the light of the sunset. 
 A book seems obscure and dull ; with fuller knowledge it 
 becomes both lucid and engrossing. A neighbour seems 
 objectionable. I have not appreciated his character. 
 
INDIVIDUAL RELATIVITY 35 
 
 When I come to do so I believe in him, and take an alto- 
 gether different view of his nature : 
 
 " Why, what but faith, do we abhor 
 And idolise each other for 
 Faith in our evil or our good, 
 Which is or is not understood 
 Aright by those we love or those 
 We hate, thence called our friends or foes ! " 
 
 There is another sense, quite different from this, in 
 which relativity imports that our direct knowledge is not 
 of things as they are in themselves, but only as they appear 
 in relation to our minds, and thus phenomenally. Kant 
 and Sir William Hamilton, and the believers in the 
 principle of Representative Perception, used the word in 
 this latter meaning. But relativity may have yet a third 
 meaning. It is alleged that, however much we exclude 
 speculation about the metaphysical character of reality, 
 and however earnestly we refuse to go behind actual 
 experience, that experience is dependent on conditions, 
 inasmuch as the observer employs, and is compelled by 
 the constitution of his mind to employ, standard concep- 
 tions which exclude from him all but certain aspects 
 of what appears. These conceptions may belong to the 
 domain of physical science, or of biology, or of morals, or 
 of religion. The task of the inquirer is in each case to 
 discover what they are, and to define their characters and 
 their relations to each other. For the conceptions mould 
 the experience in which they are applied, and they are 
 apt to give rise to the mistaken opinion that the phases 
 they hypostatise represent separately existing and inde- 
 pendent realities. Thus a living organism comes to be 
 regarded as an entity of a kind different from a mechanism, 
 and a mind as an entity or kind of thing subsisting in 
 isolation from both. The alternative view is that through 
 our conceptions we do isolate, but that we isolate only 
 special aspects of reality, and do not distinguish indepen- 
 dent realities as separately subsisting. If the object 
 world is of a character not dissimilar from that of the 
 mind, then, however much its existence be not dependent 
 on the individual mind of the onlooker, it may well be 
 that the process of distinction of aspects, which is one of 
 making abstraction from all aspects with which we are 
 not immediately concerned, is a process in which the mind 
 
86 RELATIVITY AND WHAT IT MEANS 
 
 finds in nature something analogous to its own character 
 in respect of its generality. Our experience may really 
 indicate degrees or levels that are only intelligible as dis- 
 tinguished in the mind, although the mind does not put 
 them there but finds them there. Existence and its 
 meaning will thus be inseparable, in the fashion of which 
 Kant thought in opposition to Berkeley. The world of 
 nature will be a world into which concepts enter, in the 
 sense that it is only mediately, by interpretation through 
 them, and not by mere passive sense-awareness, that we 
 reach what its reality signifies, and discover the laws which 
 obtain in it. The methods of science in this way bring 
 the observer into new regions, regions in which the notion 
 no longer holds that nature can be taken as closed against 
 mind in any but a provisional sense. For the object- 
 world turns out to be an entirety, in which the differ- 
 ences between primary and secondary qualities, between, 
 for example, molecular activity and the colour which results 
 from it, no longer appear as differences between actually 
 independent entities, or even as due to causes and effects 
 belonging to separate sections of the actual. They will 
 be differences which result from distinctions in the order 
 of both knowledge and existence, in phases to be looked 
 upon as belonging to a single entirety, and it will follow 
 that whether we reach these phases or do not depends on 
 the standpoints from which we find ourselves approaching 
 nature. Our knowledge is in this sense relative ; but not 
 only our knowledge. The experience to which it is 
 directed is itself relative, in that its reality involves the 
 variety in level which the totality of the experience pre- 
 sents. The distinction between appearance and reality 
 becomes one of degrees towards full comprehension. 
 
 What is before us is there, and is independent of the 
 particular onlookers who are present along with it. It is 
 discoverable for us only by means of observation and 
 experiment, and not by a priori reasoning. The principles 
 which have governed scientific method since Bacon laid 
 its foundations apply undisturbed. The thing which we 
 have to avoid is apart from these principles. It is the temp- 
 tation, arising from carelessness or from want of know- 
 ledge, to slip inconsiderately from the terms of one order 
 of thought which is appropriate to the facts which are 
 actual into the terms of a different order which is not so 
 
INTERPRETATION OF RELATIVITY 37 
 
 appropriate. We have to take heed, in the light which 
 the principle of relativity casts on the problem of scientific 
 inquiry, lest we employ our general conceptions un- 
 critically and at large, and so fall into the blunder 
 of confusing our categories. If we do so we shall in 
 the end inevitably prove to have been false to the only 
 facts before us, and to the application of the proper con- 
 ceptions which they called for, conceptions falling within 
 the order in knowledge that was alone appropriate. Should 
 we Tail to exercise the care over this that is needful we 
 shall only add more illustrations of distorted apprehension 
 and of failure to reach the real. 
 
 It is, as we shall see, with just this kind of significance 
 that reality is said to-day, in philosophy and science 
 alike, to depend on the principle of relativity. The source 
 of the relativity may sometimes depend, in this new 
 meaning, on conditions which affect observers whose 
 knowledge is governed by a set of common conditions, so 
 long as these conditions remain for them the same. Rela- 
 tivity may be due to such a set of conditions and even be 
 the outcome of the very nature of the mind itself, to 
 such an extent that the imagined line of demarcation 
 between the mental and the non-mental world turns out 
 to be only relatively a true one. It is relativity of this 
 wide nature, further- reaching in its scope than is usually 
 supposed, that I propose to consider in its various aspects 
 throughout what follows. It is a relativity that is not 
 subjective, in the sense that things are only to each of 
 us what they appear to be. Man individually is not, as 
 with Protagoras, the measure of all things. On the other 
 hand, reality appears to be unintelligible apart from its 
 relation to knowledge. But then individual knowledge 
 itself may well turn out to be unintelligible apart from a 
 structure which is foundational in the knowledge of every 
 individual knower. Kant has made this view widely 
 understood, whether or not he was right in his presenta- 
 tion of it. The schematism in the forms of space and 
 time of the activity of mind in connection with his cate- 
 gories which Kant expounds, is worth study if only as a 
 means of approach to modern physical problems. Kant 
 did not, as the physicists of to-day in effect do, distinguish 
 sharply between the intuitional and the conceptual aspects 
 of our experience in space and time. A purely intuitional or 
 
88 RELATIVITY AND WHAT IT MEANS 
 
 sensuous apprehension, the only one with which he imagined 
 that he had to concern himself, does not lend itself to 
 such a question as whether physical space is Euclidean 
 or not. The distinction, with its far-reaching conse- 
 quences, is one, as we shall see, that arises only in space 
 and time into which concepts due to reflection enter, and 
 the possibility of a derivative foundation for space and 
 time was not one which Kant had before his mind. 
 
 The wider meaning of relativity I have now indicated 
 in the general fashion which is all that is possible at this 
 early stage. It does not import either that object can be 
 reduced to subject or that subject depends on object. It 
 does in the end import that we have to ask whether these 
 are not themselves conceptions of a secondary nature, 
 arising within mind or knowledge with a character that 
 is foundational to both. If so, the principle of relativity 
 may turn out to be not only a natural but an essential 
 principle, if the universe is to be intelligible. The ques- 
 tion of how knowledge in general has come into existence 
 becomes a mistaken one. The real question ought to be 
 quite different, as to how knowledge is conditioned in the 
 individual who on the particular occasion knows, and as 
 to the circumstances and history which have brought the 
 conditioning about. For the first form of the question, 
 which seeks to ask for an explanation of how there is any 
 knowledge, in reality assumes the fact of knowledge as its 
 presupposition, the very fact behind which it sets itself 
 to go. The question in the second form, on the other 
 hand, leaves it possible to treat knowledge as the foun- 
 dational fact, and to confine the investigation to forms 
 in which it discloses itself. 
 
 The distinction between these two questions is a vital 
 one. It is a distinction that has been much neglected, 
 and the neglect to take account of it has given rise, not 
 only to much confusion of mind, but to various meta- 
 physical systems of a transitory character, founded on 
 more than dubious assumptions. The effect of these 
 assumptions has been that those who made them have 
 gone on to set up a gap between the mental and the non- 
 mental which it is difficult to recognise as final in experi- 
 ence, either ordinary or scientific. The obscurity which 
 surrounds the reality of this gap appears to be forced on 
 our attention even in science, as some of its most recent 
 
THE PRINCIPLE IN PHYSICS 39 
 
 developments show. The apparent difficulties appear to 
 be due, in part at least, to failure to take account of the 
 principle of relativity itself. I therefore turn to the con- 
 sideration of this principle. 
 
 I propose to refer in the first place to the fashion in 
 which the principle in its modern aspect has been recently 
 forced on our attention by the physicists. The most 
 remarkable illustration of this is the teaching of Einstein. 
 For, if he be right, he has been the initiator of ideas really 
 more revolutionary than those of Copernicus or of Newton. 
 Not only does he claim to have deprived space and time 
 of their supposed characters as self-subsistent and uniform 
 frameworks of existence, belonging to an altogether non- 
 mental world, but he and those who think with him have 
 given a new meaning to the most general of the laws of 
 nature. An English mathematician, Professor White- 
 head, has, as I will point out a little later, investigated the 
 question in a different way, the importance of which is, 
 I think, hardly yet understood. 
 
 Einstein's language is that of the mathematician, and 
 mathematics is his chief instrument. This has its great 
 advantages. Mathematical expressions possess an exact- 
 ness depending on abstraction carried within definite 
 limits to a high degree of perfection. They are the 
 outcome of a consistent purpose, which is to disregard and 
 eliminate all that is irrelevant to the end of presenting 
 relations of order in externality in the most precise and 
 general form practicable. Because they deal with what 
 can be visualised in space and can symbolise relations of 
 order of this kind to the exclusion of all else, they can be 
 kept more free from ambiguity and from metaphor than 
 the expressions of metaphysics can be. Mathematical 
 language may thus, like poetry, be described as perfect 
 speech, but it is perfect in quite a different sense. It 
 deliberately looks away from quality, especially from 
 that with which poetical imagery, for example, is con- 
 cerned. It ignores all aspects of the universe other than 
 those which can be brought under the special conceptions 
 with which it deals. Now in such conceptions we have to 
 do with entities conceived as indistinguishable from each 
 other save through measurable relations. Apart from 
 these relations they are not, in any pure form such as is 
 required, recognisable, but, on the other hand, the rela- 
 
40 RELATIVITY AND WHAT IT MEANS 
 
 tions require the entities as their basis. The entity and 
 its relations are thus inseparable. Taken by themselves 
 they are mere abstractions. But taken together we find 
 in them the characteristics of fundamental arrangements 
 in order which we recognise and express as the roots of the 
 most general of all physical laws. The entities and their 
 relations, whether we are thinking of them as point- 
 events with their intervals or in any other form, we cannot 
 immediately perceive. For perception starts from feeling 
 of contact with our organism and is in itself chaotic and 
 formless. It is only by interpretation that we recognise 
 its setting in an order of universals which are inseparable 
 from its reality for us, and this order, and the distinctions 
 in it which give rise to definiteness and precision, are 
 reached by interpretation made mediately through con- 
 ceptions. The aspect of reality with which the mathe- 
 matician has to deal, however final it may appear, and 
 however independent it may be of a particular observer, 
 is therefore conceptual, although it does not the less on 
 that account stand for what is actual. He is not con- 
 cerned with the question whether mind makes things or 
 things make mind. He is the less inclined to trouble 
 himself about this question because he has not before him 
 any distinction between them which is either clear or 
 relevant to his task. And his great advantage is that he 
 has a multitude of visual symbols which he can not only 
 operate but observe in their mutual relations. 
 
 It is easy for mathematics, in virtue of its methods of 
 interpretation, and by abstraction from what is irrelevant 
 to the purpose in hand, to bring what are thus general 
 forms of reality, which the individual mind recognises as 
 confronting it independently of its particular personality, 
 into distinctness. It develops their implications and so 
 reaches new knowledge. When the work is at the highest 
 degree of generality, a borderland discloses itself between 
 mathematics on the one hand and the territory of episte- 
 mology and logic on the other. To this borderland those 
 on both sides have access. There is no barbed wire fence 
 which prevents temporary crossings. Into the purely 
 mathematical aspects of such doctrine as that of Einstein, 
 few philosophers are rash enough to attempt to enter. 
 Mathematicians talk in an admirably lucid language which 
 is exclusively their own. But still it does not describe 
 
INTERPRETATION 41 
 
 all the ground to be covered, and it is only with further 
 territory within the borderland that philosophy is con- 
 cerned. From this territory it is possible to see something 
 of the features of the other ground around it in more 
 directions than one. 
 
 As I shall have to point out more fully later on, our 
 knowledge of the world that seems to confront us is pro- 
 foundly shaped by the conditions under which we know. 
 In human experience the mind expresses itself only under 
 certain organic conditions. Inasmuch as the organism is 
 what nature has made it, we know in the first instance 
 through our senses, among which the one that has the 
 widest range is sight. But if all we found in experience 
 was the sensations that come to the organism through 
 the sense of sight we should have no objective world. 
 It is, as we have seen, only in virtue of interpretation that 
 such a world becomes present to consciousness. Mere 
 isolated impressions could not give it to us. It is as 
 understood, and by the aid of memory in which are con- 
 nected the past and the present, that we become aware 
 of the orderly arrangement of the coexistences and suc- 
 cessions which underlie our actual world. Whether the 
 relations that are essential to this awareness exist outside 
 our minds, or only within our minds, or both, the result 
 seems the same. But what is the character of these rela- 
 tions ? They are not themselves sensations, they are the 
 intelligible setting in which the mind by interpretation 
 finds what comes to it through sensation, but lies beyond 
 mere sensation. When I look for the cause of some event 
 that has happened it is because I envisage it as implying 
 a relation to some event that I conceive as having pre- 
 ceded it. When I say that two and two make four I am 
 establishing, or at least recognising, a relation that is no 
 mere particular of feeling, but is of general application. 
 I am, in short, always seeking to discover what goes 
 beyond the sense of the moment, and is therefore not 
 immediately perceived, but known by the introduction of 
 reflection in some degree, however small. To this factual 
 region of reflection the general principles which enter into 
 my world belong, and, if they are found to be both reliable 
 guides in the progress of my knowledge and wide enough 
 in their application, I call them laws of nature. They are 
 really very general relations which disclose themselves to 
 
42 RELATIVITY AND WHAT IT MEANS 
 
 all men who inquire under the conditions that obtain in 
 common for them as in my own case. Extended observa- 
 tion through experiment and the detachment of attention 
 from what is irrelevant enable us to generalise induc- 
 tively, so as to reach principles which apply to varieties 
 in actual experience. Not only do these principles give 
 to that experience a fuller meaning than it possesses apart 
 from their underlying implication in its nature, but they 
 enable us to predict and to extend it. They are not the 
 less, because of their accordance with experience, creatures 
 of reflection. They have no significance apart from their 
 recognition, and they belong to the interpretation of 
 experience, arising only in mediate knowledge of a general 
 kind, different altogether from the isolated sense of 
 impressions made on the extremities of the nerves. 
 
 All our knowledge of nature is of this sort, but a great 
 deal of it is concerned with relations of quantity, which 
 depend on things being experienced as apart from each 
 other in space or in time or in both. Indeed, space and 
 time appear to be themselves got at by generalisation from 
 the apartness of events. It is not through differences in 
 quality that they possess their main importance. This 
 they have in relation to differences in position or order, 
 without reference to the colour or other characteristic 
 and individual qualities of the things themselves. When 
 we compare these latter characteristics we may not 
 primarily be concerned with position or order at all. 
 
 This, stated briefly, seems to be how we come to the 
 notion of our world as displaying quantitative order, and 
 to space and time as the characteristic forms in which 
 that order is displayed. But these are merely general 
 relations. For to get at a clear conception of them we 
 have to leave out of account all considerations relating to 
 the individual peculiarities of the objects they contain. 
 We may even have to make abstraction of our attention 
 from the whole of the objects that fill them. Our know- 
 ledge about space and time simply as such is therefore 
 abstract knowledge, and in so far imperfect. We perceive 
 immediately and directly neither empty space nor empty 
 time, any more than we perceive objects otherwise than 
 within them. They are only conceived, not perceived, in 
 their abstract purity. They are relations which reflection 
 discovers and disentangles. But having disentangled 
 

 SPACE AND TIME 43 
 
 them, people have been in use to take them, not indeed 
 as forming a part of their world as particular objects 
 existing independently, but as a kind of actually sub- 
 sisting framework in which objects are set, and so as 
 belonging to the actual hi the same fashion for every kind 
 of individual observer, however he may observe and 
 without reference to any conditions. In this respect space 
 and time are usually spoken of as though absolutely real, 
 and as being there just as they seem to be. Newton took 
 this view. A generalisation such as this becomes invested 
 with a high reputation for certainty. The world often 
 generalises confidently with even less ground for convic- 
 tion. It took a very long time before extended and 
 accurate observations succeeded in getting rid of the 
 Ptolemaic view of the heavens and of the old-fashioned 
 corpuscular theory of light and heat. We must draw 
 inferences and so generalise to a cause or a law if we want 
 to get a rational explanation of the facts, and, if our earlier 
 rational explanation will not fit them, we then look for a 
 new generalisation. That is due to the finite and relative 
 character of our knowledge, and it is also the explanation 
 of why we are apt to stop prematurely in the task of 
 explanation, and to get ourselves entangled in what is only 
 conventionally true, instead of having reflected and inter- 
 preted on a basis so wide and so uniform that it is found 
 to explain all the facts, and to give what we can call 
 properly a law of nature. 
 
 Our current notions of space and time are illustrations 
 of results of generalisations which, if Einstein is right, are, 
 although wide in their basis, yet quite inadequate. So 
 far from being frameworks in which, as perceived by us, 
 things exist in the same way under all sets of conditions, 
 and which are always absolutely uniform, he says that it 
 is due to the position of the observer that they present 
 themselves with the shapes and measurements we attri- 
 bute to them as being of their essence. It is only rela- 
 tively that the current ideas of the relations in them of 
 objects are true, or that they themselves exist as they are. 
 For the space and time which we observe may derive 
 their forms from the conditions affecting the observers, 
 and so may turn out to be, not absolute, but only varying 
 systems. The outcome of Einstein's doctrine is a new 
 and more searching set of generalisations about space 
 
44 RELATIVITY AND WHAT IT MEANS 
 
 and time, and the objects in them. The necessity of a 
 change in point of view is asserted to be that the old 
 theory will not fit the facts, as fuller observation has 
 ascertained their nature. If he is well founded in what 
 he says, we have now to accept certain consequences of 
 the principle that we can only describe with accuracy the 
 positions of objects in nature if we bear in mind that 
 their relations in space and time are relative to the special 
 co-ordinates or systems of reference of the observer and 
 vary accordingly. Newton thought that space and time 
 presented frameworks of reference subsisting indepen- 
 dently of the observer, and that, if we had once fashioned 
 for ourselves adequately a set of co-ordinates for them 
 which were unvarying, this might be relied on as a stan- 
 dard for universal and not merely relative truth in measure- 
 ment. Now there may be a great number of observers 
 each relying practically on a similar frame of reference, 
 and, in so far as all of these refer to it, these observers 
 will to that extent have a general and not merely a sub- 
 jective or individual outlook. Still, their collective stan- 
 dard is merely relative, inasmuch as it depends on the 
 co-ordinates which the whole class of these observers 
 employ in common, co-ordinates which may, by their 
 nature, be only relative. The task of the mathematical 
 physicist is, therefore, to dig deeper down in searching for 
 universally true foundations for measurement and quanti- 
 tative knowledge generally. He has to clear his mind, 
 not only of prejudices in favour of the absolute character 
 of space and time, but of other prejudices on his way. 
 We talk of force as if we knew what we were speaking of. 
 If we were concerned, as are followers of Schopenhauer or 
 Bergson, with what for them is direct or intuitional appre- 
 hension of will power or of creative energy, we might 
 attach a definite meaning to the word force. But, in the 
 capacity of physicists, concerned only with the observa- 
 tion of quantitative change and of alteration in position, 
 we cannot do this. All we actually observe is variation 
 in the situations of things relatively to each other, and 
 even the phenomena of what we have been used to put 
 down to the account of some force acting at a distance can 
 as a rule equally well be stated exhaustively in terms of 
 mere variation of situations arising from the relative 
 positions of the observer. If a lady drops her parasol and 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 45 
 
 it seems to her to be attracted by gravitation to the 
 muddy pavement, it is not difficult, if we make an effort 
 to free ourselves from unconscious assumptions, to repre- 
 sent this adequately from another conceivable point of 
 view. For an observer with a sufficiently powerful tele- 
 scope, and himself at such a distance as to know nothing 
 of any gravitational attraction from the earth, it might 
 appear that the earth and the lady were moving upwards 
 with an accelerating or increasing velocity, and that when 
 the lady's parasol slipped out of her hand it at that 
 moment lost its accelerating push, and relapsed into a 
 rate of motion upwards that was uniform and without 
 acceleration. In consequence it would be obvious to the 
 distant observer that the accelerating pavement and the 
 mud had overtaken it, instead of the parasol having 
 descended to them. The approach in position would, 
 for such a distant observer, with co-ordinates of reference 
 other than those of the lady on the pavement, be one of 
 the earth relatively to the parasol, while for the lady 
 the change of position would be, according to her mundane 
 co-ordinates, one of the parasol relatively to the pave- 
 ment. In each case the phenomenon observed would be 
 observed as it actually happened, and appear as it did 
 simply because of the special position of the observer. 
 The relations described, whether spatial, as in direction 
 and distance, or temporal, as concerned with time in the 
 beginning and ending of the journey of the parasol, would 
 depend on the standards of the observer for their 
 reality, which would therefore be relative only. What 
 Einstein has sought to do is to clear out of the most 
 fundamental conceptions of physical science convention- 
 alities and prejudices which prevent us from arriving at 
 a view which will explain all the facts and not only certain 
 of them. It is because the old system could not account 
 for what was observed in connection with such facts of 
 observation as the movement of the perihelion of Mer- 
 cury, the ultimately ascertained deflection of the rays of 
 certain fixed stars when passing the sun, the principle which 
 actually governs the electro-dynamical activity of electrons, 
 and the apparently constant velocity of light, that the 
 school of Einstein found it essential to try to penetrate 
 more thoroughly, in order to discover reliable founda- 
 tions for the basis of our scientific knowledge of nature. 
 
46 RELATIVITY AND WHAT IT MEANS 
 
 One of the difficulties people feel when, as so many 
 now do, they read about relativity, is especially that over 
 time. It is hard to grasp that time not less than space 
 is, taken in isolation, a mere abstraction. It is difficult 
 to realise that time and space really imply and depend 
 on each other, in notion as well as in fact. The idea that 
 there is an absolute framework of time and a quite 
 independent absolute framework of space is not easy to 
 avoid. For we have been schooled to it, and the idea 
 works well for the purposes of everyday life on our globe. 
 But if both space and time are stripped of what is un- 
 essential, and presented in their bare nakedness, they 
 look different. If there were no succession in time, and 
 everything appeared as at one instant, a little reflection 
 shows that we could not apprehend the positions of points 
 in space. Their reality depends for us on their separa- 
 tion, which itself depends on transition, and this on suc- 
 cession in time. On the other hand, if, in the absence of 
 all separation in space, there were only one spatial point 
 in which existence centred for us as time elapsed, it is 
 equally clear that intervals of time would have no meaning. 
 Duration would be immeasurable, for it is by spatialising, 
 as on the dial of a watch, that we measure it. Space and 
 time are really abstractions from a reality which includes 
 both in mutual implication. 
 
 It seems, then, that the new system which we are con- 
 sidering is not that of any merely psychological or 
 intuitional space and time directly and completely given 
 in direct sensation, for this could not be resolved in the 
 way the facts require, but only one of interpreted space 
 and time in which our perceptions are correlated. The 
 psychological data are only the beginning. We construe 
 these into an objective space-time manifold, not merely 
 for the purposes of science, but as a necessity of our daily 
 life. Our space and time may well be real, but reality 
 has now a relative meaning. Apart from construction 
 there could be no world before us. Our visual and tactual 
 impressions we have invested with importance by inter- 
 preting them as in relations which are conceptual in 
 character, in the sense of implying reflection and not 
 mere feeling. It is not as frameworks subsisting as self- 
 contained phenomena independently of the objects in 
 them, such as are the independent space and time Newton 
 
THE WORK OF REFLECTION 47 
 
 thought of, but as what gets meaning only in our thought 
 about them, that we really discover space and time in our 
 actual experience. Physics does not deal with bare sen- 
 sations, but mainly with the coincidences of events, coinci- 
 dences which are not immediately presented in experience. 
 That it has so often to describe the nature of such coinci- 
 dences by means of differential equations, dealing with 
 notional aspects of reality, shows this to be so. Its 
 magnitudes and laws are more often than not altogether 
 non-sensory. This does not, however, signify that they are 
 not real. The conception of an electron may or may not 
 be a final one, but it indicates what is recognised as a real 
 connection or complex of actual objective .factors. The 
 picture of the world, as recent physicists present it, may 
 or may not be a final one, but, so far as it goes, it accounts 
 for the facts better than does that framed by an untrained 
 mind. It is abstract, of course, in the sense that there 
 is much in our rich and varied world which it leaves out of 
 account, but it gives us a system of symbols by means of 
 which we can interpret, predict, and indirectly extend 
 our experience. There is therefore no reason why we 
 should not treat the scientific objects, which the physicist 
 discovers by interpretation, as being at least as real as 
 the bare and unstable intuitional elements so called, from 
 which our experience is popularly believed to start. If a 
 system of judgments such as that of the physicist gives us 
 a theory which is the only one that covers and explains 
 the facts, and enables us to pass beyond what is immediate, 
 and to forecast the future accurately, we have evidence 
 that entitles us to treat it as presumably true of reality. 
 Before closing this chapter it may be convenient to refer 
 to the import of some words used which must be used 
 again. It has been pointed out that the actual facts 
 we know are always individual or singular, and yet imply 
 a general aspect as well as one of particularity. The cow 
 that I am looking at from the window where I am writing, 
 I know to be what it is in virtue of its general character 
 as belonging to a class of animal. I also know it as this 
 particular cow, here and now. But although I separate 
 them in reflection I have no knowledge of these aspects 
 as self-subsistent entities in my perception of the indi- 
 vidual animal. Jersey cow is a general description, 
 depending for its application on a definition. But I know 
 
48 RELATIVITY AND WHAT IT MEANS 
 
 nothing of a Jersey cow in the abstract. What I do know 
 is that I can recognise a particular animal as belonging 
 to that class. Nor have I any experience of a cow that 
 belongs to no class, for at the least I recognise the animal 
 as a cow. 
 
 Of what is general or universal per se I have therefore 
 no experience. Nor have I any the more experience of 
 what is purely particular. When I look at the cow or 
 point to it I say that it is this cow here and now before 
 me. But " this," " here," and " now " become " that," 
 " there," and " then " when I turn round. They, too, are 
 universals. The barest sensation has universals in it. 
 Had it not I could not distinguish and so be conscious of it. 
 
 Everything therefore turns on the aspect on which I 
 concentrate my attention. The general and the par- 
 ticular are ideals in my knowledge without self-subsistence 
 apart from my reflection, but one or the other may be what 
 is important to attend to. The particular factor is never 
 absent, but I may divert reflection from it if it is unim- 
 portant for my purpose. Take an algebraic symbol, say x. 
 It is a variable. It symbolises not any arithmetical 
 number as a singular, but all or any of such numbers in 
 so far as they belong to a class in virtue of certain pro- 
 perties. Still, I think of it as an a?, a mark made with 
 ink on a piece of paper. This helps me much. The 
 mark serves as the substitute for a great number of pro- 
 cesses of thought that are implicit but irrelevant to my 
 immediate purpose, which is to extend my knowledge 
 about the properties of the class to which x belongs. I 
 gain fresh knowledge by doing this. If x y, then 
 * y l = 0. That is a very simple illustration of how, in 
 mathematics, progress is made by distraction of attention, 
 resulting not only in economy of thought, but in its 
 extension to new properties of classes which are true 
 whatever the particular numbers that fall within the 
 classes. The symbol applies to all or any of the numbers 
 that belong to the class. It is in itself a singular, but 
 it is symbolic of a universal, and can be treated as taking 
 the place of that universal in a multitude of operations 
 visualised on paper or in imagination as there for sight. 
 What is dominant is the general aspect that is separated 
 out by abstraction as important for the purpose in hand. 
 
 The same thing is true when I am dealing with what 
 
t_ 1 .. 
 
 GENERAL AND PARTICULAR 49 
 
 belongs to ethical or artistic knowledge. If I say of 
 what I am looking at that it is good or beautiful, I am 
 recognising in it a value. Now, as we shall find, certain 
 values are foundational in knowledge in the same sense 
 that knowledge generally is foundational. They cannot 
 be resolved into particular sensations of pleasure. For 
 these sensations are only recognised as such when some- 
 how classified as giving pleasure or the reverse. In such 
 recognition value of some kind is attributed to them. 
 The value may be of a high order or of a low. But it is 
 a value, and as such it imports what is general, although 
 here, too, we never can get away in our experience from 
 a factor that points to what is particular and fleeting. 
 We can see this if we try to picture to ourselves what 
 " valuable " means. It is always something valuable, of 
 which we make an image when we reflect on it. Even 
 the goodness of God is of this nature. The language of 
 the Scripture and of poetry illustrates the fact. 
 
 All this is the outcome of the character of knowledge. 
 It is in its essence individual. The difference between 
 what we call general knowledge and knowledge in detail 
 is one of degree. The degree lies in the emphasis which 
 we lay on the aspect on which we are concentrating, and 
 this turns on the purpose in hand. It is the freedom that 
 is characteristic of thought which enables it to lay stress 
 now on one aspect and now on another. But thought 
 always starts from what is individual, and from this it 
 never gets away. 
 
 As it is with knowing, so it is with the known. They 
 are correlatives and have the same character. It is only 
 by abstraction that we distinguish in them the general 
 from the particular, and suggest to ourselves that these 
 have existence independently of each other. That was 
 what Aristotle meant when he said that there was nothing 
 in the intellect that had not been first in the senses. He 
 might equally well have put the principle the other way 
 round. But the power of distinguishing by making 
 abstraction may be very important. The method of the 
 mathematician shows this. The method of the artist 
 shows it not less. It is common to hear people say that 
 art is concerned with feeling. This is quite true. Colour 
 and shape are its material. But these are important only 
 in so far as they are made symbolic of value, and value, 
 
50 RELATIVITY AND WHAT IT MEANS 
 
 as we have just seen, is as much of the character of the 
 universal as are the abstract conceptions of the mathe- 
 matician. Values vary in quality, and it is the business 
 of the poet and the artist, and of the critic in literature 
 and art, to know this, and to be able to discriminate 
 between values and to place them in their order. Reflec- 
 tion is always present, explicitly or implicitly. It makes 
 us aware that truth and beauty and goodness have final 
 and foundational value, and that beyond them we cannot 
 pass, or express them in terms beyond their own. There 
 are other values, but for the most part they are derivative 
 and merely relative, and they are sometimes false in 
 contrast with the value that is final. It should be added 
 that values are expressed, not as a rule as abstract principles, 
 but as ends. They have not the less on that account the 
 moment of the universal as essential in them. That is 
 because they belong to knowledge in the widest sense of 
 the word. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 THE year 1919 witnessed a remarkable change in the 
 attitude of British physicists towards the old Victorian 
 ideas of space and time. Four years previously Einstein 
 had developed his principle of relativity, and had given 
 it in full form to the mathematical public. His view was 
 revolutionary. It will be necessary to refer to it later 
 on, and for the present it is enough to say that if true it 
 implies the upsetting of the conventional ideas about the 
 meaning of measurement. Till then space and time had 
 generally been accepted as what Newton believed them 
 to be. They were regarded as resembling independent 
 frameworks, everywhere uniform and unchangeable, in 
 which events took place. They were looked on as abso- 
 lutely objective, and as wholly independent of the con- 
 ditions under which objects in them were observed. Few 
 people had even suggested that the measurements made 
 in them could in any way be affected by these conditions. 
 But Einstein had insisted on the relativity of the units 
 measured to the position and standards of reference of 
 the observer, and, as a consequence, that the geometry 
 required to explain the universe would be found not to be 
 restricted to that of Euclid, but to extend to a variety of 
 alternative systems, varying with circumstances of which 
 full account must be taken. There was no such thing 
 for him as a position of absolute rest from which to calcu- 
 late ; for rest was in itself only a relative term. A man 
 in an express train might seem to another standing on 
 the embankment to be in rapid motion, but, so far as his 
 system of estimating form was concerned, there was no 
 real reason why the former should not just as much con- 
 sider himself to be at rest, while the railway line, on 
 which he looked down from the carriage window, flew from 
 
 51 
 
52 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 under the wheels and carried the other man along with 
 it. Such a suggestion offends what we call, with practical 
 justification, common sense, but the discrepancy arises 
 out of general habits of thought and expression, adopted 
 to render possible conformity with the requirements of 
 social intercourse, and these are not final for analysis. 
 The reason for questioning such thoughts and expressions 
 from a wider standpoint appears less startlingly extrava- 
 gant if a different illustration is taken. An observer of the 
 heavens standing on our earth treats himself as observing 
 the sun from a stationary position on the earth, and 
 as being therefore at rest. As a matter of fact we know 
 that the earth on which he stands is moving round the sun 
 with gigantic velocity, and must appear so to an observer 
 on the sun. The points of view of the two observers will 
 therefore be so different, and in such constant change, 
 that it is easily demonstrable they must be characterised 
 by great differences in the results of observation. 
 
 Applying the same principle to the interpretation of the 
 phenomena of gravitation and using a powerful calculus, 
 Einstein had succeeded in making a precise estimate of 
 what ought to appear to be the deflection of the 'rays 
 coming from certain distant fixed stars, influenced by the 
 gravitational attraction of the sun on the passing rays. 
 The idea of such a deflection was familiar and its lines 
 had been calculated by others on the footing that space 
 and the paths of light in it were under all conditions of the 
 same character. The actual deflection could only be 
 observed during an eclipse, and on the 29th of May 1919 
 such an eclipse was to take place. Einstein predicted 
 that, as the result of relativity, the actual deflection would, 
 if observed, prove to be by a definite amount greater than 
 it could be if the Newtonian theory of absolute space were 
 true. The English Astronomer Royal took up this 
 challenge in 1917, when, the war notwithstanding, the 
 details of Einstein's calculations had reached this country. 
 In 1919 two English expeditions were sent out to West 
 Africa and Brazil respectively. Successful observations 
 were made. In November the Astronomer Royal an- 
 nounced the results to the Royal Society. Einstein's 
 calculation had proved to be substantially the true one, 
 and something like a revolution in a great department of 
 scientific thought was the result. 
 
REVOLUTIONARY CONTROVERSIES 53 
 
 I shall refer later to some of the important consequences 
 of the new view for philosophy. For the moment I am 
 concerned with its bearing on the old Victorian idea of 
 nature which had been inherited, so far at least as space 
 and time were concerned, from Newton. As to that idea 
 there is preponderating agreement that it is now unten- 
 able, but its rejection is already giving rise to much 
 controversy as to what should take its place. One school 
 of mathematical physicists seems to tend towards men- 
 talism of some kind in its treatment of space and time. A 
 different school tends to regard what we call relativity as 
 an objective phenomenon, belonging to nature and capable 
 of being readily recognised as belonging to it if we will 
 only be in earnest in rejecting the bifurcation doctrine of 
 the older physicists. This rejection must of course carry 
 with it the denial of any framework of space, time, points, 
 instants, and other relations within that framework, if 
 taken to be existing as absolutely self-contained in un- 
 varying form and independently of secondary qualities. 
 
 It is safe to predict that there will be hereafter much 
 discussion of the question thus raised. Already the mathe- 
 maticians are over the border-line, and are at work in 
 what used to be considered the domain of the meta- 
 physician. Perhaps it will turn out that the title deed 
 of the latter is not wholly inoperative, but he seems, at 
 present at least, disposed to look on his brother the 
 mathematician, not as a trespasser, but rather as a long- 
 expected and welcome guest. 
 
 The problem over which the various schools of mathe- 
 matical physicists tend to dispute seems to emerge as 
 the result of certain assumptions. If our minds are self- 
 contained things, confronted by another self-contained 
 thing called nature, it is difficult to account, either for our 
 knowledge of relative space and time, or for any other 
 sort of knowledge. For in that view, knowledge will 
 consist only in our particular impressions or our general 
 conceptions, regarded as belonging to a thing we call the 
 mind, as properties or instruments. The question will 
 then arise, impressions or conceptions of what ? More- 
 over, if the reality we know consists in something different 
 from and independent of the way in which the mind 
 conceives it, the further question arises as to what this 
 something can be or can mean. New Realism, as will be 
 
54 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 seen later on, has appreciated the difficulty, and has 
 treated the non- mental world of nature as including, 
 not only particulars, but universals, which we seem to 
 find there and so become acquainted with. But another 
 school has pointed out difficulties in the way of this answer, 
 which arise from the assumption, if it is still maintained, 
 that the mind is a thing. The latter school has held to 
 it, in terms which have varied through two thousand years 
 but have embodied the same principle, that it is a fallacy 
 to treat mind as a thing. For what it is for us appears 
 rather to be a form falling within knowledge itself, and if 
 so it is within the ultimate fact of knowledge alone that 
 the nature and origin of what we call our minds, with the 
 particulars and universals alike that belong to their nature, 
 must be sought. In that case impressions and concep- 
 tions can be separated only by abstractions made within 
 knowledge. The individual forms which arise for it, alike 
 as expressed in the character of a world external to mind, 
 or of a mind as conditioned by its self-presentation as an 
 individual entity confronting that world, must them- 
 selves seek their explanation within knowledge so inter- 
 preted that behind it there is no sense in trying to get. 
 The relativity of the physicist becomes in this way only 
 a special case of relativity of a wider order. It ceases 
 to be a question which concerns the man of science specially 
 how mind is related to nature, and how the contributions 
 of each to the object in our knowledge are to be apportioned. 
 The physicist, indeed, cannot enter on the discussion of 
 this topic without becoming a metaphysician. What 
 he has to do is to search out and be conscious of tacit 
 metaphysical assumptions. 
 
 But it may well be that he can, without going a long 
 way into philosophy, and even if he abjures metaphysics 
 as highly dubious, come to a clear understanding with 
 himself as to the true character of his method and its 
 results. This is what the older physicists failed to do, 
 and the assumptions they unconsciously made in conse- 
 quence landed them in dogmatism. I shall presently 
 illustrate the thoroughness with which this dogmatism 
 has been brought to light by a distinguished British 
 physicist of to-day, who seems to me to have delivered 
 the question of physical relativity from a good many of 
 the difficulties with which it has been surrounded. But 
 
THE TEACHING OF EINSTEIN 55 
 
 to this illustration I shall not be in a position to proceed 
 until I have said something more about Einstein himself. 
 I ought to add here that I am fully conscious that the 
 present chapter may not be found by the general reader 
 to be an easy one. It comes in at this early stage because 
 the explanation of the general principle renders it almost 
 essential that it should do so. But the reader may find 
 the topic less forbidding if he turns first to the next 
 chapter, which seeks to explain, so far as is necessary for 
 philosophical purposes, the way in which the doctrine of 
 relativity in measurement has been developed by Einstein 
 and his school. At present I am concerned to show how 
 our knowledge of nature, taken as given by science itself 
 without twist or bias due to a priori assumptions, points 
 us in the direction of the broad principle of relativity. 
 The advantage of dealing first of all from a general point 
 of view with the principle as rendered by Einstein is that 
 it enables the student to see the limits within which his 
 work, great as it is, has been confined. The object of 
 what immediately follows is to get at the explanation, 
 not only of the shape given by him to the principle, but 
 of the mode of its introduction into the sciences of physical 
 nature. Before this can be done we must have in our 
 minds at least the general character of his doctrine. In 
 the first place let us see what for Einstein himself are its 
 broad features, reserving the details for a subsequent 
 stage. 
 
 Stated generally the teaching of Einstein is that absolute 
 rest and motion are meaningless for physical science, and 
 that motion can signify only the changing positions of bodies 
 relatively to each other. This is the sole sort of physical 
 change of which we have experience, and the idea of an 
 absolute motion is a metaphysical invention of the school 
 of classical mechanics which is associated with the great 
 name of Newton. The latter, as already observed, believed 
 in space and time as in themselves independent entities, 
 and as unaltering frameworks within which each pheno- 
 menon of nature had its special position. This is the view 
 which Einstein has attacked. The strength of his position 
 lies not only in the consistency of his reasoning, but in the 
 circumstance that he is able to do what the older school 
 could not, to give a clear account of the reasons for 
 certain things in nature which are apparently inexplicable 
 
56 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 otherwise. The basis of his explanation is that all measure- 
 ment of spatial distances is really performed, not by 
 reference to any absolute spatial standard, such as an 
 imagined aether might give, for none such can be shown 
 to exist, but by comparing the relative positions of bodies 
 as observed. It follows that, if the comparison is 
 intended to result in a reliable measurement, the phenomena 
 compared must be interpreted with reference to the 
 relative situation and other conditions affecting the 
 observer and the co-ordinates employed by him in 
 measuring. As space has no self- contained nature, it cannot 
 have attributed to it any necessary conformity with 
 Euclidean principles, or indeed with those of any other 
 particular geometry. Such principles cannot govern the 
 constitution of its varying appearances under differing con- 
 ditions of observation, for they may not apply to the facts. 
 
 Applying this principle Einstein was able to demonstrate 
 without difficulty why the velocity of light must always 
 appear to be the same, whether measured from a body 
 approaching its source with a great velocity or from one 
 at rest. In the case of two situations for observation, 
 one of which was in uniform rectilinear movement rela- 
 tively to the other, it was an established fact that the 
 velocity of light coming towards the observer was in 
 each case found constant, at 186,330 miles a second. 
 This well-known circumstance was shown by Einstein to 
 have an adequate explanation which did not require 
 any unlikely hypothesis, such as some conjectural pro- 
 perty of the aether in contracting the measuring standards 
 used by the person passing through it when moving 
 towards that source. It was completely intelligible as 
 soon as it was seen that when making his measurements 
 his standard of reference depended on his situation, and 
 that he was consequently interpreting units which pos- 
 sessed a meaning different from that of the units measured 
 by another observer relatively at rest to him. 
 
 The impressive conclusions of the Einstein doctrine do 
 not stop here. Classical mechanics regarded the inertial 
 mass of a body as an absolute and invariable character- 
 istic quantity. But according to the deductions from 
 his principle of the relativity of rest and motion inertia 
 of matter signifies no more than energy stored up or 
 held back in it. As the outcome of this everything 
 
INERTIA AND GRAVITATION 57 
 
 that we know of the inertia of energy holds without 
 exception for the inertia of matter. Now the general 
 principle of relativity of all motion had led Einstein 
 to yet another sweeping conclusion. It is well known 
 that bodies which move under the sole influence of 
 what we call gravitation so move without reference to 
 the nature of the body. For instance, a piece of lead 
 and a piece of cork fall (if in vacuo and so undisturbed by 
 currents of air) at the same rate. The acceleration is 
 independent of the difference in material. This led 
 Einstein to infer that gravitational mass is in reality in- 
 distinguishable from inertial mass. The same quality 
 will therefore manifest itself to the observer as weight 
 or as inertial energy, according to his circumstances in 
 observing. This leads to the definition of a new principle, 
 that any change which an observer perceives in the motion 
 of a body as due to gravitation would be perceived in 
 exactly the same way if there were no gravitation, pro- 
 vided the system from which the observation takes place 
 be moving with an acceleration suitable to the supposed 
 gravitation as it would appear from his point of observation. 
 Of force physicists know nothing. What they experi- 
 ence is only change in relative position. If, therefore, it 
 is once established that gravitational and inertial energy 
 are the same thing regarded from different standpoints ; 
 that the inertia of matter is only the inertia of latent 
 energy ; and that the unit of measurement for both space 
 and time varies, according to the conditions of the observer, 
 in the interpretation that must be given to it, many 
 consequences ensue. Some of these are slight. Newtonian 
 physics remains approximately true for the small calcu- 
 lations of distance which are all that we require for every- 
 day purposes on the earth. But when we turn to our 
 relations to the heavenly bodies, the case may be enor- 
 mously different. And even for us on the earth there may 
 be tremendous consequences. These may not develop 
 practically for a long time, but we cannot be sure whether 
 the new scientific outlook may not suddenly bring about 
 some unexpected and practical transformation. The 
 business world is just beginning to ask questions about 
 this. I translate the following passage from a recent 
 article by a shrewdly- minded Berlin engineer. The point 
 he raises is now a familiar one. There is nothing new 
 
58 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 in it, but it suggests questionings which may affect 
 practice. 
 
 " According to the new light which science is throwing 
 on the constitution of matter, we may be sure that the 
 gigantic store of energy revealed can be looked for only 
 in atomic structure. Even existing knowledge about its 
 dissolution in connection with radio-active substances has 
 indicated to us similarly startling monstrosities. A 
 gramme of radium, in its complete self- con version into 
 lead, exhibits the tenth part of the very amount of energy 
 which, according to the theory of relativity, must be 
 developed by its dissolution into nothing, and in the 
 course of such a conversion it appears to lose 10 per cent 
 of its mass. The phenomena of radio- activity thus yield 
 a strong confirmation of the result of the theory of rela- 
 tivity. While we are standing to-day powerless when 
 confronted with the atomic dissolution of the radio-active 
 substances, just as did primaeval man before a forest 
 conflagration, the theory of relativity tells us that it must 
 be possible to break up the atoms of any mass we encounter, 
 and to win from it the gigantic amounts of energy that are 
 there latent, In this fashion the theory, which has come 
 into the world in a form so entirely abstract and mathe- 
 matical, presses on us guidance for the practical technical 
 work of future centuries. It places the task of obtaining 
 new sources of energy so sharply before us, so clearly and 
 so precisely for calculation, that it will be surprising if in 
 practice we do not pretty quickly attain to the accom- 
 plishment of this task." 
 
 This writer estimates that there is as much heat energy 
 latent in a thimbleful of ordinary matter as there is to be 
 got by ordinary processes out of 3,000 tons of coal. For 
 the present we can, by very wasteful methods, convert a 
 mere percentage of the latent energy of the 3,000 tons of 
 coal into kinetic heat energy. How soon will the great 
 scientific discoverer appear who will show us how to get 
 the like amount from a thimbleful of ordinary earth ? It 
 may be a long time, but we do not know. Genius, when 
 it appears, has wings with which it mounts in a fashion 
 that astounds us. Newton and Einstein are examples 
 from which we do well to take heed. We shall be wise 
 
GERMAN INTERPRETATIONS 59 
 
 if, as a practical nation, we listen to the new warnings 
 which science is now giving us in however general a 
 language. We cannot foresee what new developments 
 knowledge may bring for industry. We have to watch 
 and study and experiment. Otherwise, we may find 
 ourselves in the position of those foolish virgins who were 
 surprised by the midnight call while their lamps were yet 
 untrimmed. 
 
 For the moment all I am endeavouring is to indicate in 
 bare outline the general character of Einstein's revolu- 
 tionary discovery. It is a triumph of mathematical 
 genius and of the power of scientific imagination in 
 adapting the ideas of his great predecessors, men like 
 Gauss and Riemann, to the solution of problems of which 
 they hardly dreamed. What I have suggested is that 
 the principle of relativity in physics, as Einstein has con- 
 ceived it, is one so far-reaching that it is of importance 
 for any theory of the ultimate character of reality. This 
 is a question on which Einstein himself, a mathematician 
 and physicist, has touched but little. There are, however, 
 disciples of his, both in Germany and in England, who 
 have given attention to it. The tendency has apparently 
 been to treat space and time as meaning different things, 
 according as they are regarded from the standpoint of 
 ultimate analysis by mathematicians and physicists, or 
 from that of the intuitional or psychological view of the 
 observer. The two kinds of space and time are, accord- 
 ing to such writers as Moritz Schlick of Rostock, who is 
 a professor of philosophy as well as a mathematician, 1 
 " essentially dissimilar and incapable of comparison with 
 one another ; but have, as our experiences teach us, a 
 perfectly definite and uniform functional relation to 
 one another." Space and time, as governed by the 
 principle of relativity, appear to be regarded by Professor 
 Schlick as not being the space and time directly perceived 
 in intuitional experience, but as being of a non-intuitional 
 or conceptual character which has its foundation in what 
 is a four-dimensional manifold, the existence of which is, 
 so far as we are concerned, arrived at only by inference. 
 But this suggests a splitting up of experience into sensa- 
 tions and conceptions which seems to have but little 
 warrant in the actual character of that experience. It 
 
 1 Space and Time in Contemporary Phytia, Eng. tr., p. 9. 
 
60 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 appears to be an attempt influenced by a superstition 
 inherited from Kant, who sought to treat space and time 
 as if they could be self-contained pure forms independent 
 of concepts. It is a view which arises naturally only 
 if the mind is taken to be a sort of thing with know- 
 ledge, including the forms of intuition, as its instrument, 
 and the object as in some measure self- subsis tent. But a 
 Kantian may still seek to hold it in a guarded form, and 
 so may others who go i'urther than Kant in the same 
 direction. What Kant said on the subject of space and 
 time as mere forms of intuition, and therefore of a self- 
 subsisting and independent character, was subsequently 
 examined by Hegel in a criticism that has not been much 
 studied either here or in Germany. 1 For the latter the pure 
 form of time was just an abstraction. Its real character 
 was that of Angesckaute Werden (Becoming as directly 
 apprehended), and of being as such inseparable from 
 space. Space, taken by itself, was for Hegel the most 
 abstract and general form of externality, consisting in 
 mutual exclusion without definite internal differentiation. 
 But time, on the other hand, was for him more than 
 merely the spatialised, and so distorted time with which 
 mathematics deals. " It is only in an arrested, paralysed 
 form, only in that of the quantitative unit," that it is dealt 
 with in mathematics, in order, for the purposes of mathe- 
 matics, to get an " indifferent, external, lifeless content." 
 Here Hegel and Bergson come near together. 8 
 
 Now this suggestion is a very different one, not only 
 from Kant's view, but from that of Professor Schlick. 
 The latter recognises a world existing in a second kind of 
 space and time, apparently harmonising with but not the 
 less independent of the two pure forms which figure in 
 the Critique of Pure Reason, the first conditioning all 
 externality, the second inner experience as well. Some 
 Kantians in Germany, looking on this as a heresy, have 
 accordingly not been grateful to Professor Schlick. Ewald 
 Sellien, for instance, has written an acute but compre- 
 hensive essay on the subject, Die Erkcnntnistheoretische 
 Bedeutung der Eelativitdtstheorie (Berlin, 1919). It is an 
 essay worth study, by mathematicians as well as by philo- 
 sophers, for in it the shortcomings of both are dragged 
 
 1 Werke, vii, paras. 254 and 258. 
 
 * Werke, ii, p. 35. (Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind.) 
 
SELLIEN AND MACK'S POSITIVISM 61 
 
 to light with some precision. He discusses the philo- 
 sophical foundation of the principle of physical relativity, 
 taking the positivism of Mach as his extreme case, and 
 contrasting this with what is for himself the real Kantian 
 view, which he defends. As to Schlick, who does not go 
 as far as the so-called " posit ivists," but thinks that a 
 relativist may still remain a good Kantian, Sellien con- 
 siders that, although this may well be true, Schlick has 
 misinterpreted Kant's teaching, by distinguishing space 
 and time into kinds, one of which is " physiologico- 
 psychological" and the other " physico-logical." But for 
 Sellien, Kant's pure forms of intuition are quite free from 
 any physiological or psychological element, and are forms 
 of a pure intuition which has nothing whatever to do with 
 the material that in truth presupposes these forms only for 
 certain aspects of its order and arrangement. When Kant 
 speaks of relations within such pure intuition he is at most 
 concerned only with rules for construction in it. We 
 cannot form an image of two equal straight lines, but we 
 can invoke a rule for their construction in space, and so 
 obtain a principle which makes it possible " to draw true 
 conclusions from bad figures." Euclidean geometry is 
 for Sellien the appropriate system for Kant's form of space. 
 But it is for Kant no necessity of thought, and other 
 geometries are intelligible which, while referring to what 
 is Euclidean as their presupposition, can be made to 
 represent conceivable " objective and perceptual space 
 systems of other kinds, with equal logical and mathe- 
 matical validity." That these are primarily conceptual 
 does not detract from their claim to be true of the ulti- 
 mately real. Thus, according to Sellien, the theory of 
 relativity can be accepted consistently with the philo- 
 sophy of Kant. For after all it is not with the merely 
 general and abstract character of space but with the 
 relations of objects in it that relativity is concerned. He 
 quotes with approval Max Planck as rejecting the " posi- 
 tivist " view, and declaring that although physical science 
 starts from sense-impressions its principle is to get from 
 these to what is independent of subjectivity (endowed with 
 at most mere forms), and possesses universal and objective 
 truth. This must lie in a reality independent of the 
 individual physicist. Planck, to whom a reference will 
 be made in the next chapter, appears to be, for reasons 
 6 
 
62 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 connected with what is known to physicists as the 
 " quanta " theory, a sceptic about the general or wider 
 principle of Einstein in reference to motion. 
 
 But Planck, and of course Sellien himself, will have none 
 of merely empirical " positivism." Its view of the objects 
 of physical science reduces them to the coincidence in 
 space-time of elements in passive awareness. Such 
 elements as immediately and indirectly experienced are 
 for positivists such as Mach the sole reality. When in 
 physics we speak as though coincidences of a less immediate 
 nature were actual, we are only using abbreviated modes 
 of speech. The conception, for example, of the physical 
 world as based on a four-dimensional reality, its space- 
 time continuum, is no more than an abridged statement 
 of the correspondence of subjective time-space experiences 
 through the various senses. 
 
 According to the writer I am quoting, Sellien, this 
 principle of " positivism " has influenced unduly not only 
 Einstein but his predecessors in his own field of work. 
 For them mathematics has been only a branch of physics. 
 He cites Gauss as having said : "I am coming more and 
 more to the conclusion that the necessary character of our 
 geometry cannot be proved. . . . Geometry must have the 
 same rank assigned to it as physics." Sellien declares 
 that Riemann and Helmholtz took the same view as Gauss, 
 and that Minkowski, Freundlich, and Einstein have followed 
 them in it. He is not sure that this is as true of Minkowski 
 as it is of the others, inasmuch as he, in the famous address 
 on Space in Time referred to in the next chapter of this 
 book, expressed the opinion that ordinary three-dimen- 
 sional geometry is only a chapter of four-dimensional 
 physics, and could be deduced from the latter if the time 
 co-ordinate was always treated as zero. For himself, 
 and those who like himself believe in Kantianism, Sellien 
 sums up his conclusions thus : " In the problem of space- 
 time what we are concerned with are questions of measure- 
 ment, and not questions relating to space and time as 
 forms of intuition." The doctrine of Kant is not, he thinks, 
 inconsistent with that of Einstein, but the doctrine of 
 Newton is inconsistent with it. The problem of Kant was 
 of a nature quite distinct from that of Einstein, but 
 wherever there is contact there is no real obstacle to 
 harmony. 
 

 PROFESSOR WHITEHEAD'S INTERPRETATION 63 
 
 I have thought it worth while to refer to the controversy 
 in Germany about the foundational principles on which 
 relativity rests in order to show that the " bifurcation " 
 tendency has had its analogue there, although in a different 
 form from that which obtains in Britain. I will only add 
 that even Kantianism itself cannot be said to be free from 
 the tendency to disjoin the various characters manifested 
 in experience. 
 
 Now this supposed disjunction or bifurcation is being 
 stoutly contested, at least in this country, from a scientific 
 point of view. It is interesting that an explanation has 
 been insisted on in England of the whole doctrine of rela- 
 tivity which not only denies the disjunction, but is more 
 thorough in the logical treatment of relativity than any- 
 thing that I have so far become acquainted with in the 
 works either of Einstein himself or of his disciples in 
 Germany. 
 
 The author of this explanation is Professor A. N. White- 
 head, who has set it forth in detail in two recent books, 
 The Principles of Natural Knowledge and The Concept oj 
 Nature, books which must be studied together if they are 
 to be fully understood. The writer is not only a mathe- 
 matician of eminence. He is equally distinguished in the 
 new department of mathematical logic, a department in 
 which he and Mr. Bertrand Russell, with a small but dis- 
 tinguished group of well-known writers on such subjects 
 as number, in France, Germany, Italy, and America, have 
 been pioneers. If the questions dealt with were purely 
 mathematical, I should not presume to comment on the 
 argument about them. In that case the task could fall 
 only to one adequately trained in the very highest mathe- 
 matics. But as a matter of fact the inquiry is not only 
 one that is logical as much as mathematical, but it conducts 
 the student into a region which is obviously a region of 
 metaphysics, a fact which is apt to become overlooked. 
 Not by Professor Whitehead, for he is not only aware of it 
 but is careful to disclaim any philosophical assumption. 
 Still, he pushes his method of logical analysis to a point 
 where it seems to me to have taken him over the border- 
 line, for reasons which I shall have to indicate later on. 
 Meantime what I am concerned with is to show, by refer- 
 ence to his teaching, on how different a footing he has 
 sought to place the doctrine of relativity from that on 
 
64 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 which it has been left by Einstein and his disciples. From 
 their practical results Professor Whitehead does not 
 dissent, and he fully accepts the greatness of Einstein's 
 discovery and of its consequences. What he does is to 
 exhibit it in a new meaning. I may add that in the 
 borderland where the mathematician and the logician and 
 metaphysician meet, the conceptions employed by the 
 first have the almost paradoxical character of presenting 
 less of strangeness to the latter than do their results to 
 many highly trained mathematicians. Just as a merchant 
 may not be able to add up his bank-book as correctly as 
 the bank officials can (and I have known even a senior 
 wrangler to be wanting here), but yet knows from a 
 standpoint different from that of the expert a peculiar 
 significance which the result has for himself, so Gaussian 
 co-ordinates and tensors present a significance for logic and 
 metaphysics which is something additional to that which 
 they have for one who is a mathematician alone. It is 
 this further significance, always giving rise to new problems 
 which lie beyond the domain of the pure mathematician, 
 which invests such conceptions with unusual obscurity for 
 him. The difficulty of following them presents of course 
 great trouble to the philosophers. But the significance 
 of the standpoint attained may seem less strange to the 
 philosophers on whose studies it bears closely, although 
 they find much difficulty in treading in the steps by which 
 the pure mathematician has been able to climb up to it. 
 Something analogous seems to me to be true of such special 
 sciences as biology and sociology. All such sciences tend 
 increasingly to illustrate the fact that knowledge is really 
 an entirety, the aspects of which can be separated only 
 provisionally. 
 
 As I have observed earlier, Professor Whitehead is reso- 
 lutely opposed to the old Victorian view of the division of 
 nature into what exist only subjectively, the secondary 
 qualities which appear only in sense-perception, such as 
 colour and the feeling of touch, and what is taken, on the 
 other hand, to exist in itself in absolute and independent 
 space and time, the supposed primary entities of geometry 
 and physics. He will have nothing of the assumption 
 on which such a division is based. His purpose is to take 
 nature as it seems, and to ascertain by adequate analysis 
 the kinds of entities and of relations between them which 
 

 HIS ANALYSIS OF NATURE 65 
 
 are disclosed in our perception of nature. He does not 
 seek to discover the whole of what nature discloses. Social, 
 ethical, and aesthetic phenomena, for instance, are outside 
 the physical science to which his method is confined, and 
 so, to a large extent, is life itself, although certain aspects 
 of biological character exhibit rhythmic relations on which 
 he touches. He confines himself in the main to the 
 phenomena of which physics must take account, and his 
 method of treatment is to take nature in this aspect as 
 " closed to mind," that is, as there independently of it. 
 For reasons which will appear later on I do not think he 
 succeeds in separating nature from mind. Indeed, he is 
 careful to say that he commits himself to no metaphysical 
 assumption on the point. His purpose is to proceed in the 
 only way he takes to be legitimate for a mathematical 
 physicist. But even in this he cannot wholly divest him- 
 self of a philosophical garment. For he has to declare that 
 experience is " significant." For Berkeley significance 
 meant that God was indicating to us a meaning, that of an 
 ordered world, through a series of self-contained signs which 
 our minds received and then interpreted. The signs, or 
 ideas, had their own existence detachable from the signific- 
 ance. That was why his doctrine fell a prey to the 
 scepticism of Hume. But Kant would have nothing to do 
 with Berkeley's view. He declared that significance and 
 experience were the same thing, and that they were 
 therefore incapable of being detached even in theory from 
 each other, as Hume had sought to do. 
 
 All this Professor Whitehead expounds with lucidity 
 and freshness at an early stage in his Principles. He 
 declares the nature of significance to be a fundamental 
 question for the philosophy of natural knowledge. " To 
 say that significance is experience is to affirm that per- 
 ceptual knowledge is nothing else than an apprehension of 
 the relatedness of things." We must not look round, he 
 says, for a knowledge of things and then seek their rela- 
 tions, which in that case we shall not find. " Natural 
 knowledge is a knowledge from within nature, a knowledge 
 1 here ' within nature and ' now ' within nature, and is an 
 awareness of the natural relations of one element in nature " 
 (the "percipient event," or a bodily awareness of simul- 
 taneous relations of all nature to this awareness) " to the 
 rest of nature." He seems here to accept the " internality '- 
 
66 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 of relations to their relata, in a way that is not consistent 
 with the doctrine of those New Realists who treat the 
 relata as entities separate from relations that are external 
 to them and self-subsistent. 
 
 The fundamental characteristic of nature is the 
 " passage " of its events. Nature is always moving, and 
 sense- awareness is always seizing on the passing events 
 as they extend over each other. For sense- awareness this 
 extension is a present fact, the unity expressed in which 
 we call simultaneity. It is what is discerned. Professor 
 Whitehead names it a " duration." But this does not 
 mean an abstract stretch of time. We have not yet got 
 to time. It is just a section of nature as for awareness, 
 limited by the apparent simultaneity of what it includes. 
 It is not, however, a perfect simultaneity, or a moment. 
 For, again, this would require the concept of time for its 
 definition, and we have not yet reached this concept. It 
 is what has been called the " specious present," which for 
 a more delicate awareness might have smaller durations 
 into which it was divided. Nature is thus a process to 
 which each duration belongs. In this view of the funda- 
 mental character of nature being passage the author comes 
 near to the view of Bergson, but he will not allow passage 
 to be identified with time, even as much as Bergson does. 
 Passage is rather the fundamental feature of nature from 
 which both time and space are constructed by our abstrac- 
 tions. It is easy to see how he approaches to the space- 
 time continuum on which Einstein, in agreement with 
 Minkowski, lays so much stress. For the physical basis 
 of this continuum is just the quality of passage in events. 
 These, while they occur in a duration, extend over each 
 other, so that we have a foundation on which we erect 
 the conceptions of both time and space, thus themselves 
 merely derivative in character. 
 
 But events merely as such could not be identified. They 
 pass, and cannot be recognised. For recognition is aware- 
 ness of sameness, and each event is by its nature essentially 
 and wholly distinct from every other. What we recognise 
 as continuing the same must therefore be something that 
 does not pass. This Professor Whitehead calls an 
 " object." It does not share in the passage of nature, and 
 it is the result of an act of comparison. He says, however, 
 that there can be a non-intellectual relation of sense- 
 
EVENTS AND OBJECTS 67 
 
 awareness which connects the mind with a factor of nature 
 without passage. Now there are clearly objects in nature 
 as it presents itself to us. Otherwise experience would 
 be devoid of significance, and there could be no knowledge 
 and no science. How can this be ? The answer he gives 
 is that events have characters in accordance with which 
 they shape themselves. The objects are ingredient in these 
 characters, and make them what they are. It is in virtue 
 of the ingression into events of objects that the events 
 body forth permanences in virtue of which they can be 
 compared. Nature as we find it is such that there can be 
 no events and no objects without the ingression of objects 
 into events. 
 
 Pausing at this sentence in Professor Whitehead's 
 analysis, the metaphysician will hold up his hands. The 
 portal of nature was to be bolted and barred against mind, 
 but mind has apparently gone round the corner, got in 
 by a back door, and taken possession of the building. 
 " Events," " recognition," " objects " ! Here we have 
 knowledge with all its implications, and knowledge in 
 which the " significance," which for Professor Whitehead 
 is the reality of our experience of nature, consists. I am 
 far from complaining. I am in agreement with the author. 
 But I feel I have been led by him into territory which 
 seems not new, but somewhat familiar to me. If we went 
 a little further we might expect, and not without reason, 
 to find that the boundary-line between mind and nature, 
 and the entire distinction between them, fell within know- 
 ledge as having been established only by reflection. 
 
 But this does not detract from the interest of the method 
 of treatment. It is searching as no other method of 
 scientific treatment of the problem has been searching. 
 The author is not afraid to say that objects in our know- 
 ledge of nature may be no more than logical abstractions. 
 They may indeed be posited by sense- awareness itself, 
 but even when they are not so posited they may belong 
 to nature. He lays stress on the way in which educated 
 language about space and time has been made to conform 
 to the orthodox Newtonian view of these as absolute frame- 
 works, with points as fixed entities in them. If there is no 
 absolute but only relative position a point cannot be such 
 an entity. " What is a point to one man in a balloon with 
 his eyes fixed on an instrument is a track of points to an 
 
 
68 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 observer on the earth who is watching the balloon through 
 a telescope, and is another track of points to an observer 
 in the sun who is watching the balloon through some 
 instrument suited to such a being." 1 "If you admit 
 the relativity of space, you also must admit that points 
 are complex entities, logical constructs involving other 
 entities and their relations." " When you once admit 
 that the points are radically different entities for differing 
 assumptions of rest, then the orthodox formulae lose all 
 their obviousness. They were only obvious because you 
 were really thinking of something else. When discussing 
 this topic you can only avoid paradox by taking refuge in 
 the comfortable ark of no meaning." Events, says this 
 mathematician, are named after the prominent objects 
 situated in them, and thus, both in language and in 
 thought, the event sinks behind the object, and becomes 
 the mere play of its relations. The theory of space is thus 
 converted into a theory of the relations of objects, instead 
 of being a theory of the relations of events. But objects 
 have not the passage of events. Accordingly space treated 
 as a relation between objects is divorced from its connec- 
 tion with time. It is space at an instant without any 
 determinate relations between the spaces at successive 
 instants. It cannot really be one time-less space, because 
 the relations between objects change. In other words, it 
 is a conception ot reflection gotten by an abstraction. 
 
 It will be convenient to see what result this acute critic 
 of orthodox physical science reaches as his conclusion, 
 before proceeding to his relation to the Einstein doctrine. 
 At p. 167 of the Concept of Nature he sums up the con- 
 trast between what ought to be said and what is commonly 
 said. I will give the passage in his own words : 
 
 " The concrete facts of nature are events exhibiting a 
 certain structure in their mutual relations and certain 
 characters of their own. The aim of science is to express 
 the relations between their characters in terms of the 
 mutual structural relations between the events thus 
 characterised. The mutual structural relations between 
 events are both spatial and temporal. If you think of 
 them as merely spatial you are omitting the temporal 
 element, and if you think of them as merely temporal you 
 Concept oj Nature, p. 135. 
 
HIS VIEW OF SPACE AND TIME 69 
 
 omitting the spatial element. Thus when you think 
 of space alone, or of time alone, you are dealing in abstrac- 
 tions, namely, you are leaving out an essential element in 
 the life of nature as known to you in the experience of your 
 senses. Furthermore, there are different ways of making 
 these abstractions which we think of as space and as time ; 
 and under some circumstances we adopt one way and 
 under other circumstances we adopt another way. Thus 
 there is no paradox in holding that what we mean by space 
 under one set of circumstances is not what we mean by 
 space under another set of circumstances. And equally 
 what we mean by time under one set of circumstances is 
 not what we mean by time under another set of circum- 
 stances. By saying that space and time are abstractions, 
 I do not mean that they do not express for us real facts 
 about nature. What I mean is that there are no spatial 
 facts or temporal facts apart from physical nature, namely 
 that space and time are merely ways of expressing certain 
 truths about the relations between events. Also that under 
 different circumstances there are different sets of truths 
 about the universe which are naturally presented to us 
 as statements about space. In such a case what a being 
 under the one set of circumstances means by space will be 
 different from that meant by a being under the other set of 
 circumstances. Accordingly, when we are comparing two 
 observations made under different circumstances we have 
 to ask, ' Do the two observers mean the same thing by 
 space and the same thing by time ? ' The modern theory 
 of relativity has arisen because certain perplexities as to 
 the concordance of certain delicate observations, such as 
 the motion of the earth through the ether, the perihelion 
 of Mercury, and the positions of the stars in the neighbour- 
 hood of the sun, have been solved by reference to this 
 purely relative significance of space and time." 
 
 The quotation I have just given indicates Professor 
 Whitehead's attitude towards the view of the school of 
 Einstein about space and time. With them relations in 
 space and time are constructions by the mind of the 
 observer, whose measurements are dependent on his system 
 of reference. They are, as I have already pointed out, 
 in a large measure merely subjective, and quite distinct 
 from the relations in the space-time continuum which is 
 the underlying fact in what we perceive. For Professor 
 
70 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 Whitehead, on the other hand, space and time are objects 
 which are no doubt constructed by what are in reality 
 abstract methods, but they are based on the events in the 
 passage of nature to which the continuum belongs. They 
 stand for what is actually present to us, although observed 
 indirectly and under differing circumstances, which may 
 produce variations in the character of what is so observed. 
 For him there is thus a single reality, while for the school 
 of Einstein there are apparently two, one intuitional, 
 or passively and directly apprehended, and the other 
 conceptual. Space and time do actually exist in nature 
 for the author of the Concept of Nature, but they have 
 many varieties. 
 
 Whether or not Professor Whitehead is justified in his 
 conclusions, he has at all events arrived at them by a 
 method of a strict order. As I have said, he is one of the 
 most prominent of the exponents of the modern school, 
 which seeks the foundations of mathematics in logic and 
 has produced new methods of investigation. One of these 
 has been invented by Professor Whitehead himself, and it 
 is by restricting himself, as far as possible, to what is 
 in harmony with this method that he arrives at the 
 results described in detail in his two books, results to the 
 general character of which I have now referred. The 
 method is that of " Extensive Abstraction." Its purpose 
 in this connection is to express in terms of physical objects 
 the various roles of events as active conditions in the 
 ingression of sense- objects into nature. It will be remem- 
 bered that although objects are products of recognition of 
 sameness, and so of abstract reflection in which they lose 
 the quality of passage that is inherent in events, still they 
 belong to nature as an essential part of its significance, and 
 therefore as not merely subjective but as actual. Now 
 this is not the less true, merely because they may be per- 
 ceived as varying with the situation of the observer. In 
 the progress of the investigation of nature there emerge 
 scientific objects, which embody those aspects of the 
 character of the situation of physical objects that are most 
 permanent, and that are capable of expression without 
 reference to a multiple relation including the percipient 
 event of our bodily awareness. The relations to each 
 other of scientific objects thus become characterised by a 
 certain simplicity and uniformity, so that the characters 
 
THE METHOD OF EXTENSIVE ABSTRACTION 71 
 
 of observed physical objects can be expressed in terms 
 of scientific objects. These are no mere formulas for calcu- 
 lation, because formulas must refer to things in nature, 
 and scientific objects, for instance electrons, are the things 
 in nature to which the formulas refer. 
 
 Take as an illustration time and space themselves. The 
 determination of the meaning of nature is largely concerned 
 with the characters of time and of space as objects. They 
 are abstracted from events, and when we pursue their 
 investigation we find that they are inseparable, and that 
 their measurements involve each other, as in the modern 
 theory of electro- magnetic relativity, brought to light by 
 the researches of Clerk Maxwell and others. Looking at 
 time as an object per se, it is the ordered succession of 
 durationless instants, which are known to us merely as 
 relata in the time series, the relation in which we know 
 merely as the one-dimensional order in which instants 
 follow each other. Thus the instant and the relation imply 
 each other. Taken as self-subsistent this would give us 
 time as an absolute system. But such bare time is to be 
 found nowhere in nature. What we call time, and make 
 our object in reflective perception, is derived from our 
 awareness of the passage of events. It is this concrete 
 and factual passage, and the cardinal fact that the events 
 that pass are not isolated entities, but in our awareness of 
 them extend over each other, that form the materials from 
 which we construct our notions of time and space. 
 
 The method of extensive abstraction is Professor White- 
 head's way of exhibiting this conclusion with the reasons 
 for it. It is a method which in its sphere achieves the 
 same object as does the differential calculus in the region 
 of numerical calculation, for it converts a process of 
 approximation into an instrument of exact thought. At 
 the same time he claims that it is merely the systematisa- 
 tion of the instinctive procedure of our habitual tendency 
 in practical life to seek simplicity in relations between 
 events by excluding all but what is small and simple 
 enough to be definitely formulated. The principle of 
 extensive abstraction gives rules by which this is to be 
 achieved, and its results can be indefinitely prolonged. 
 Thus we get at a precise " route of approximation," and 
 we arrive by it at results of reflection, such as " event- 
 particles," points in instantaneous space, and moments of 
 
72 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 time in each of which all nature is instantaneously there, 
 with the volume incident to such moments. Elements 
 such as these form the exactly determined concepts on 
 which the fabric of science rests. 
 
 An illustration which the author gives may be useful as 
 indicating the way in which the approach to simplicity is 
 made by convergence of the infinite series formed by an 
 abstractive set towards the limiting character of the natural 
 relation sought after. This last is what is called its 
 intrinsic character, while the properties belonging to the 
 relation of whole and part between its members are called 
 its extrinsic character. These properties guide us to the 
 intrinsic character, which emerges from the convergence 
 and is its limit. " We see a train approaching during a 
 minute. The event which is the life of nature during the 
 minute is of great complexity, and the expression of its 
 relations and of the ingredients of its character baffles us. 
 If we take one second of that minute, the more limited 
 event which is thus obtained is simpler in respect to its 
 ingredients, and shorter and shorter times such as a tenth 
 of that second, or a hundredth or a thousandth so long 
 as we have a definite rule giving a definite succession of 
 diminishing events give events whose ingredient charac- 
 ters converge to the ideal simplicity of the character of the 
 train at a definite instant. Furthermore, there are different 
 types of such convergence to simplicity. For example, we 
 can converge as above to the limiting character expressing 
 nature at an instant within the whole volume of the train 
 at that instant, or to nature at an instant within some 
 portion of that volume for example within the boiler of 
 the engine or to nature at an instant on some area of 
 surface, or to nature at an instant on some line within the 
 train, or to nature at an instant at some point of the train. 
 In the last case the simple limiting characters arrived at 
 will be expressed as densities, specific gravities, and types 
 of material. Furthermore, we need not necessarily con- 
 verge to an abstraction which involves nature at an instant. 
 We may converge to the physical ingredients of a certain 
 point-track throughout the whole minute. Accordingly 
 there are different types of extrinsic character of con- 
 vergence which lead to the approximation to different 
 types of intrinsic character as limits." l 
 i Concept of Nature, p. 82. 
 
THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM 73 
 
 What has been said may suffice to give some indication 
 of the method which Professor Whitehead applies in his 
 investigation. The application of it to his problems 
 requires for its explanation logical and mathematical 
 technicalities on which it would be out of place to enter 
 here, and for these I must accordingly refer the reader to 
 the two books. What I can do is to add to what has been 
 said about the instrument a little about the results its 
 author reaches with it. 
 
 The space- time continuum, which underlies our per- 
 ceptual experiences of space and time as popularly 
 conceived, is itself no doubt an object constructed by recog- 
 nition. However much, therefore, it is foundational it is 
 " conceptual." In saying so I am alleging nothing against 
 the factual character which has been given to it by both 
 Professor Whitehead and Einstein. For our experience 
 is always " significant," and this conception may well be 
 essential in that significance. 
 
 But if the space- time continuum is real, notwithstanding 
 its conceptual character, can the same be said for instants 
 or moments in time and bare points in space ? Professor 
 Whitehead would certainly reply in the affirmative. For 
 him these cannot be less than " scientific objects " required 
 for the interpretation of nature, and they therefore form 
 part of its significance and so of its reality. They give 
 us reality, but in forms fashioned by interpretation. They 
 are not " events," but they are objects which enter into the 
 character which events assume in our experience. Hence 
 they may be of the greatest importance for science, and 
 must be closely defined. This he seeks to do. Consider 
 position in space at an instant. All nature must be treated 
 as bounded by that instant. Under the method of abstrac- 
 tion its instantaneous space becomes the assemblage of 
 abstractive elements covered by the instant. How do 
 these get position? By the intersection, brought about 
 by reflection, of two moments, the locus of which inter- 
 section is the assemblage of abstractive elements covered 
 by both of them. Two moments which are successive and 
 so mutually exclusive cannot be thought of as intersecting, 
 and therefore the abstractive elements they cover are not 
 conceived as doing so. Corresponding lines in them con- 
 sequently neither do nor can intersect. Along this path we 
 get to parallelism. If the moments are not successive, but 
 
74 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 belongto different and independent temporal series, their con- 
 tents may intersect. That is to say, there may be a common 
 assemblage of abstractive elements, which we recognise as 
 of an overlapping character, although belonging to more 
 moments than one. The application of the method to the 
 railway train in the passage just quoted shows how this 
 may be so. Such an intersection of geometrical elements 
 in the space of one instant by geometrical elements of the 
 space of another instant gives rise to planes, lines, and 
 points. Speaking generally, position is the quality which 
 an abstractive element possesses in virtue of the inter- 
 secting moments in which it lies. When he is dealing with 
 these elements as strictly confined to instantaneous space, 
 Professor Whitehead reserves for them the expressions 
 44 levels," " rects," and " puncts." It was bad enough 
 for Einstein to have compelled the physicists to think of 
 the space- time continuum; and of the relations of its point- 
 events or event-particles, in " Tensors," the result of a 
 calculus so refined that it can express the intervals between 
 them in terms of functions of variables that are independent 
 of any particular form in space and time. When Einstein 
 did this he chastised the physicists with whips, but 
 Whitehead has chastised the mathematicians with scor- 
 pions. They have now, as the outcome of his logic, to 
 think of space relations as divested of all covering for 
 their nakedness from succession. " What," the plain man 
 will exclaim, " is an instant of time that stands in no rela- 
 tion to any succeeding instant, and what is an assemblage 
 of points so isolated that you are not allowed to compare 
 them by looking successively from one to the other ? " 
 He begins to think gently of those who once asked him 
 whether there was any difference between mere being in 
 general and mere not-being in general. He took them to 
 be preposterously asserting that to have half a crown was 
 as good as not to have it. But he comes to believe that 
 those to whom he attributed such an enormity may quite 
 unduly have been made scapegoats, when he looks on the 
 outrage against current ideas now indulged in by the new 
 logicians of modern mathematics and physics. 
 
 The truth, however, is that the plain man is wrong. If 
 he will abstain from easy-going speculation about articles 
 which pertain to the ultimate character of reality he will 
 be troubled by none of these apparitions, and will escape 
 
VARYING SPACE-TIME SYSTEMS 75 
 
 from his fear of intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy. 
 With the mathematicians and physicists it is otherwise. 
 Their sciences cannot stand still. Bold leaders, like Ein- 
 stein and Whitehead, are beckoning them forward, from 
 ground which is treacherous into territory which may or 
 may not prove secure. It is true that in the new region 
 they will find themselves fraternising, first with logicians 
 and then with metaphysicians. It cannot be helped. 
 Knowledge is a whole, and those who pursue it are not only 
 fellow-men but brothers in its pursuit. 
 
 These new ideas are not so remote from ordinary ex- 
 perience as they seem. The actual realities to which they 
 relate turn on the degrees to which reflection can be 
 carried. My dog reflects, but only up to a point beyond 
 which he fashions no concepts to carry him. He knows 
 nothing, so far as I can see, of parallelism or even of space 
 as differentiated definitely from time. But he is aware 
 of the continuity of events, and he even estimates its 
 flow by coincidences, the feeling in his stomach, for example, 
 of hunger which heralds his supper-time. Place of satis- 
 faction, too, he associates by an analogous coincidence in 
 his experiences with the kitchen door. He is thus aware of 
 something resembling in character what Minkowski called 
 the " world-line," a continuous flow in which events 
 become distinguished, even in the absence of measurement. 
 But geometrical relations exist, not for him, but only 
 for those who can reflect at the level they require. 
 
 So far Professor Whitehead has shown the way to a 
 plurality of space and time systems. These contain 
 objects based on events of which the observer is aware, 
 and which in full perception he discriminates into objects 
 and relations based on them. The objects are in this 
 sense things, and not mere thoughts. But with the 
 intrusion of the recognition that is required, the objects 
 are recognised as related to perception ; to what he 
 speaks of as the percipient event, and as coming within 
 the duration of its awareness. They are thus perceived 
 with variations depending on the circumstances in which 
 observation takes place. It is so that space and time 
 systems arise, and, as their genesis is from relations 
 between objects, the systems may vary and the space and 
 time be relative in form and in measurement. The " dis- 
 tances " between event-particles, what Einstein calls 
 
76 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 " point-events," may be the foundation, according to 
 differences in the positions of observers, of a space the 
 co-ordinates of which are curvilinear and not straight, 
 or of a time the units of which imply differing measure- 
 ments in alternative time systems. 
 
 But how are the time systems of different observers, 
 or of the same observer under different conditions, co- 
 ordinated ? Co-ordinated they undoubtedly must be to some 
 extent, for our common experience is of nature as an entirety. 
 This is one of the most interesting questions discussed 
 in the two books, and the solution is highly significant. 
 If the question were put to a metaphysician he might have 
 little difficulty in answering it. He might reply that 
 thought does not exist in separation from the series of 
 objects presented in space and time, save in so far as it 
 is described in a distorted form from standpoints, such as 
 those at times adopted by the psychologist, which give 
 only a relatively true account of it. He would go on to 
 say that in such cases the relativity arose from the assump- 
 tion of a view which could be justifiably adopted only for 
 a special and limited purpose. He would then point out, 
 what we shall have to discuss in detail at a later stage, 
 that the character of our thinking implies the recognition 
 of actual identity in difference. Observers might thus be 
 recognising a nature of which their conceptual knowledge 
 was identical in its respective differences, so that we all 
 of us behold the sun, moon, and stars as identically the same 
 objects, despite differences due to our positions. As the 
 distinction between the concept and its object falls 
 within knowledge, and has no meaning apart from or out- 
 side it, he would not be troubled by the problem of how 
 thoughts and things were to be brought into one in the 
 significance of experience. 
 
 But it would have been difficult for Professor Whitehead 
 to take such a line in his discussion. He does not 
 pronounce against this kind of objective idealism, which 
 is a development of that Kantian interpretation of signi- 
 ficance as implied in experience on which he looks with 
 some favour. But he has set to himself the task of en- 
 deavouring to explain nature on the provisional footing that 
 it is closed to mind. He is accordingly as consistent as he 
 can be, and he is a thinker with but few illusions as to the 
 difficulties he finds in being so. His standpoint indeed 
 
POSITION 77 
 
 implies that mind is in the main something that looks on 
 nature as outside it. Even his " percipient event " has 
 a biological appearance. It is a natural further step to look 
 on the concepts of thought as distinct from the reality 
 about which they are concepts. Thought itself may place 
 them in this relation quite justly for special purposes of 
 its own. It often does so. But when it does so it is in 
 virtue of distinctions that are its own creatures. From 
 another standpoint, at which no such distinction is treated 
 as final, the universals of thought are present in the 
 particular object, which gets its reality only through them, 
 and at the same time is what gives these universals reality. 
 This seems to be the real explanation of how significance 
 and experience can mean the same thing. The form is 
 of the character to which metaphysicians have given the 
 name of the " concrete universal," the individuality that 
 is as much general as it is particular, and in which these 
 two phases if distinguishable are so only in reflection, and 
 not as separate entities in the real about which we reflect. 
 Such concrete universals are intelligible only if mind and 
 its object belong to one entirety, and are in final analysis 
 inseverable. 
 
 Now the necessity of recognising some such principle 
 as this, characterising reality, comes to light in Professor 
 Whitehead's explanation of Congruence. If there are 
 alternative space and time systems, how do we compare 
 them ? Not merely by measurement, for this, as a matter 
 of fact, presupposes congruence. A yard measured in one 
 such system may have a different significance from a 
 yard measured in another. If we are to compare we 
 must be certain that the unit signified is identical in the 
 two systems. Einstein has made this very clear, as we 
 shall see later on, and so have the discrepancies from 
 Newtonian calculations which astronomy has revealed, 
 and the new ideas involved in the solution of the question 
 as to why the velocity of light always appears constant. 
 
 Now we have seen how Professor Whitehead has suc- 
 ceeded in clearing the ground to a certain extent. He has 
 found an explanation of how points and lines and planes 
 which are constructions of reflection that come to us, not 
 in bare sensation, but through recognition, arise out of the 
 inseparability of space from time, so that all space-time 
 systems in which these emerge present conceptual objects 
 
 7 
 
78 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 so far identical in structure. The possibility of measure- 
 ment remains still to be explained, although coincidence 
 in position has up to a certain point been accounted for 
 in terms that apply to all such systems equally. Motion 
 presupposes rest for its significance. Now rest depends 
 on position. It does not follow from acceptance of the 
 principle of relativity that there is no position which is 
 in any sense at all absolute. There is in the case of each 
 time system a meaning in which we can attribute some- 
 thing resembling an absolute position. The series of 
 instantaneous spaces in the moments of a temporal series, 
 which we reach by abstraction from events, and regard 
 as parallel because such moments are successive and so 
 independent as regards each other, may define positions 
 as being absolute within the systems which belong to that 
 time series. Such positions may be those of event- 
 particles in successive spaces, so correlated in their respec- 
 tive sets that each possesses the same position in a series 
 of spaces. " Such a set of event- particles will form a 
 point in the timeless space of that time system. Thus a 
 point is really an absolute position in the timeless space 
 of a given time system." Still, there are alternative time 
 systems, and each must therefore have its own definition 
 of absolute position. If we take one of these time systems 
 and consider it as possessing various instantaneous spaces, 
 we find that motion, which is an observed fact, is mean- 
 ingless if we think of it as confined to a single instan- 
 taneous space. It expresses the comparison between 
 position in one instantaneous space with positions in other 
 instantaneous spaces of the same time system. Rest, like 
 motion, is an observed fact. The percipient event is 
 " here " and its duration is " now." The relation of the 
 percipient event to its duration is what Professor White- 
 head names " cogredience." It gives the sense of rest 
 and helps the integration of the duration into a prolonged 
 present. The preservation of this peculiar relation to a 
 duration is a necessary condition for the function of that 
 duration as a present duration for sense-awareness. Co- 
 gredience is the preservation of an unbroken quality of 
 standpoint within the duration. It is the continuance 
 of identity of station within the whole of nature which 
 has its terminus in our sense-awareness. Thus perception 
 is always " here," and a duration can only be posited as 
 
CONGRUENCE 79 
 
 present for sense-awareness on condition that it affords 
 one unbroken meaning of " here " in its relation to the 
 percipient event. It is only in the past that you can have 
 been " there " with a standpoint distinct from your 
 present " here." The percipient event determines the 
 time system immediately present in nature. As the per- 
 cipient mind in its passage correlates itself with the 
 passage of the percipient event into another percipient 
 event, the time system correlated with the percipience of 
 that mind will change. 
 
 Professor Whitehead deduces from these principles the 
 meaning of perpendicularity in space. It arises from the 
 intersection of the moments of different time systems 
 possessing their respective instantaneous spaces. The 
 directions will be different, and the levels in the two 
 spaces will therefore intersect. The symmetry of per- 
 pendicularity is a particular case of the symmetry of the 
 mutual relations between the two time systems. It 
 stands for a unique and definite property in nature. But 
 still cogredience has not as yet brought us as far as con- 
 gruence, and an adequate explanation of congruence is 
 essential if comparison and measurement in space and 
 time are to be rendered intelligible. Cogredience explains 
 perpendicularity, and, when taken in conjunction with 
 the reciprocal symmetry between the relations of any two 
 time systems, congruence results from the conjunction. 
 The constructions of science are merely expositions of the 
 characters of things perceived. To understand the nature 
 of congruence we turn to what we have already found in 
 the fact of motion. Motion expresses a possible connec- 
 tion between spatial and temporal congruence. An event- 
 particle, to take an elemental case, has its position defined 
 by the aggregate of moments (no two of the same family) 
 in which it lies. It receives its position in the space of 
 one moment in virtue of intersections from the whole 
 aggregate of other moments in which it also lies. The 
 differentiation of the space of the first moment into a 
 geometry comparable with those of the other instantaneous 
 points occupied by the event-particle expresses the intersec- 
 tions with the spaces of the other time systems. In this way 
 planes and straight lines and points find their meaning, and 
 are capable of comparison through recognition. On the 
 other hand, parallelism and correspondence arise from the 
 
80 RELATIVITY IN AN ENGLISH FORM 
 
 parallelism of the non-intersecting successive moments of 
 the same time system with the abstractively reached 
 contents of the first moment. Similarly, the order of 
 parallel planes and of event-particles on straight lines 
 arises from the time-order of intersecting moments. These 
 are the sources from which geometry derives its physical 
 explanation. If Professor Whitehead is right, he has 
 given an answer to a question put by Riemann long ago 
 to which I shall refer in a later chapter. 
 
 The qualities which all space and time systems must 
 exhibit in common, however different may be the results, 
 due to the position of the observer, of measurements made 
 in them are thus the basis of congruence according to the 
 doctrine explained in the two volumes. It is this identity 
 in the principles of the fundamental structure of these 
 systems that enables the measurements made in them to 
 be compared, and that is the basis of their congruence. 
 Students of the mathematical theory of relativity in its 
 earlier or " special " form will be reminded of the way in 
 which Einstein applies the Lorentzian formula for trans- 
 formation. The spatial and temporal co-ordinates of a 
 system in motion in a straight line towards a source of 
 light are rendered by this formula comparable with the 
 co-ordinates of another system which is treated as at rest. 
 The illustration is a merely particular case falling under a 
 much wider principle, and it is an easy case to follow 
 because the equations compared have a common constant 
 of a very simple kind, that of the velocity of light. But 
 a broader principle is required on which measurement in 
 one space-time system can be translated into the terms of 
 measurement in another different from it, if we are to find 
 the foundation on which is built up the system applied in 
 a complicated fashion in the transformations used in the 
 general theory of relativity, and this principle appears to be 
 just that with which Professor Whitehead is here dealing. 
 
 I feel that in the brief references to his work now made, 
 I have not done more than offer an indication of Professor 
 Whitehead's elaborate and searching analysis of con- 
 gruence, and I must refer the reader who desires to explore 
 it further to his two books, with the hope that in what I 
 have written I have not done much injustice to the 
 character of his exposition. 
 
 What I am concerned, however, to add is that, gallant 
 
PROFESSOR WHITEHEAD'S WORK 81 
 
 as is his attempt, the author of the Concept of Nature can 
 hardly claim to have successfully excluded nature from 
 the imputation of the ingression of mind into its constitu- 
 tion. Congruence, for example, like much else in his 
 system, is the creature of the recognition of objects, and 
 such recognition appears to me to be meaningless excepting 
 as itself the pure creature of mind. In a later chapter I 
 shall have to come to grips with the New Realists over this 
 point. It is not necessary to go so far as a distinguished 
 writer on relativity, Professor Eddington, seems to do in 
 order to make good the point that mind and the object- 
 world, as interpreted by the doctrine of relativity, are 
 inseparable. The facts to which he draws attention in 
 this connection are remarkable, but they do not appear 
 to imply of necessity the principle of representative 
 perception which I think he imports into them. 
 
 Professor Whitehead, abjuring metaphysics, has sought 
 to keep on the other side of the line. I doubt whether he 
 has succeeded. But he has at least accomplished this, 
 lie has shown that philosophy cannot hope to make 
 progress without taking full account of such an analysis 
 of the object- world of reality as only scientific methods 
 like his can make possible. His logical investigation is 
 an entirely fresh one, and, whatever the light which it has 
 cast on the ultimate character of reality, it has at all events 
 opened up a new region with which the inquirers of the 
 future will have to make themselves familiar. Only one 
 equipped as is Professor Whitehead with both mathe- 
 matical and logical science of the highest order could have 
 explored hitherto unfamiliar ground with the originality 
 and the thoroughness which he has shown to us. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 EINSTEIN 
 
 I NOW turn to the doctrine of relativity in measurement 
 in the form given to it by the school of Einstein. My 
 endeavour will be to bring out the connection of the 
 doctrine in this shape with the wider meaning of the 
 principle which lies beyond mathematical and physical 
 science. In the first place it is necessary to enter on 
 some explanation of this doctrine as applied by Einstein 
 to the forms of space and time. 
 
 Long before 1905 it had been found by experiment that 
 the velocity of light appeared to be always 186,330 miles 
 per second, whether the passage of its rays was towards 
 us while we were at rest with regard to its source or 
 whether we were ourselves moving towards that source. 
 In the latter case the true velocity of approach between 
 the observer and the rays must, according to logic, have 
 been really greater than in the first case, for just the 
 same reason that the combined velocity of two trains 
 coming towards each other is greater than that of either 
 singly. But the combined velocities in the instance of 
 light appeared after most careful observation not to 
 conform to this calculation, and in consequence certain 
 physicists, assuming the aether to be an actual and inde- 
 pendently existing substance in which the waves of light 
 travelled, had resorted for an explanation to the idea 
 that all bodies which were in motion towards the source 
 of the waves in the aether underwent, from some action 
 on them of that aether, a contraction in length in the 
 direction of their motion. This would have accounted 
 for the apparent constancy in the velocity of light, for the 
 contraction would have extended not only to the other 
 elements in the moving system of the observer, but to the 
 rods and clocks by which space and time were measured from 
 this system. These would have measured in contracted 
 
 82 
 
THE SPECIAL THEORY 83 
 
 units. However, the supposition was unsatisfactory in 
 that there was no vestige of direct evidence to support 
 the hypothesis of such a contraction. 
 
 In 1905 Einstein introduced a wholly different explana- 
 tion of the fact that the velocity of light appeared to be 
 the same, whether the observer was at rest or was 
 moving with a velocity of his own towards the source 
 of the rays. His explanation was that the system of 
 measurement was demonstrably relative to the motion 
 or rest of the observer, and that this relativity had been 
 overlooked. He pointed out the assumption, tacitly made, 
 that the aether was an independent physical substance, the 
 standards of relations in which therefore never varied, and 
 declared that such an assumption was unwarranted. No 
 system of measurement and no employment of co-ordinates 
 as necessarily of an absolute and unvarying meaning 
 could legitimately be based on it. For when we observe 
 motion we observe in reality only the relations of things 
 as altering their positions in reference to each other that 
 of our own situation, for example, to a source of light. If, 
 he said, we bear this fact in mind the consequence is clear. 
 The basis of measurement and the appearance of reality 
 depending on it, and therefore the outcome, and the signifi- 
 cance of the units employed, must vary with any change in 
 situation of the observer. To look at a body moving on the 
 face of our earth is a simple matter. For ordinary practical 
 purposes our changes of position on the earth are not 
 of a velocity great enough appreciably to affect measure- 
 ment, and its basis does not materially vary in observa- 
 tion of objects on the earth. But suppose that, instead 
 of observing objects on the earth, we are observing a 
 distant star as a source of light. In this case the observer 
 may be moving with great velocity relatively to the star. 
 To understand Einstein's principle as it applies in such 
 a case, it is necessary to get out of our heads the per- 
 sistent assumption that when we look out on the universe 
 of space and time we are looking at something which 
 is self-subsistent. For him spatial and temporal relations 
 in that universe depend on the situations and conditions 
 of observers. The character of space and time is there- 
 fore purely relative, and so is their reality. 
 
 If one observer is approaching the object observed with 
 a great velocity, while in regard to that object the other 
 
84 EINSTEIN 
 
 observer is at rest, then, if Einstein be right, what is 
 experienced in his observation by the first observer will 
 be actually different from what is experienced in his 
 observation by the second. For, in order that the velocity 
 of light should have remained the same for both, the units 
 defining what is observed, as employed by them respec- 
 tively, must have been different. What gives rise to 
 the difference is that, as we saw in the preceding chapter, 
 space and time do not exist separately from each other, 
 excepting so far as we abstract and separate them notion- 
 ally in measuring change or movement. This we do by 
 employing for the purpose of such measurement co- 
 ordinates or axes of reference which must be applicable as 
 regards both space and time. Now our observers are in 
 motion relatively to each other. This logically involves 
 that, as each obtains the same result in his measurement 
 of the velocity of light, the co-ordinates with reference to 
 which they have resolved the union of space and time 
 have been different. The proportions between the co- 
 ordinates used by the observers in each case may be 
 expressed mathematically in sets of equations. In each 
 case the unit of the combination of space with time is 
 apparently the same, but not the less, on resolution into 
 derivative aspects, these aspects are found to exist in 
 different proportions. This explains why, notwithstanding 
 the relative rest and motion of two observers, the motion 
 of one of them having to be added on in estimating the 
 relative speed of the approaching rays, the velocity of 
 light remains the same for both. 
 
 At the risk of repetition it may be well to state more 
 fully why, according to what is called the special or re- 
 stricted principle of relativity as originally formulated by 
 Einstein, the velocity of light comes out as a constant, or is 
 the same for all persons observing its approach irrespective 
 of whether they are in motion or stationary, provided that 
 in the case of a moving observer his rate of motion does not 
 vary and his course is a straight one. 
 
 That this ought not to be so is suggested by the analogy 
 of two railway trains approaching each other. For the 
 velocity of each train must be added in if we are to find 
 the actual rate of approach. It seems accordingly that 
 the velocity of an observer moving towards a distant 
 source of light must similarly appear in the result of calcu- 
 
THE METHOD WHEN WE MEASURE 85 
 
 lation. But the analogy of the trains is in reality only of 
 limited application. In our every-day life on the earth 
 we may justifiably for practical purposes assume that we 
 are all relatively at rest when we observe, and that the con- 
 ditions under which we measure are therefore always the 
 same. This assumption is, however, wholly unjustifiable 
 when we are observing a star, for we may in fact be moving 
 either towards or from it with great rapidity, and we can- 
 not take the observer to be otherwise situated than in a 
 system which is changing its position relatively to the star 
 at a high speed. The conditions under which such an 
 observer measures are therefore quite different from those 
 assumed for practical purposes to obtain in the case of the 
 observer of the trains. His motion and continuous altera- 
 tion of relative situation make all the difference in the prin- 
 ciple which gives meaning to measurements that have to 
 adjust themselves to changing standards. 
 
 To see the logical consequences of this we must retrace 
 the steps which the analogy of the train made us take, and 
 ask ourselves whether it was safe in our astronomical 
 observation to assume that space and time, with units 
 calculated in them such as miles and seconds, can have a 
 reality which is not dependent on some fashioning in the 
 process of observation which may have caused their reality 
 to vary in its character. Are there in truth any relations 
 in space and time between objects which ought to be looked 
 on as furnishing the foundation of absolute measures and 
 shapes ? Are there any such measures and shapes which 
 can be taken to be under all conditions primary and funda- 
 mental, as Newton assumed ? Or are these all relative to 
 the situation and conditions of the observer ? 
 
 It may be that before we reach the forms and measure- 
 ments in which objects appear to us we have started from 
 some basic fact which is independent of them and on which 
 we have built them up by interpretation. It is possible 
 that relations in space and time are merely the outcome of 
 intellectual construction ; in other words are relations in 
 which the observer in his effort after discovery has to set 
 this basic fact in its reference to himself, so that both the 
 significance and the reality of the relations depend on such 
 reference to the observer, and have to vary according as 
 he observes from a system which is in motion of some kind 
 or from one which is at rest. He may have fashioned his 
 
86 EINSTEIN 
 
 measurements differently according to the co-ordinates 
 or standards of reference which he has had to employ in 
 making them. 
 
 Now it is far from clear that Newton was justified in 
 assuming an absolute character in motion as something 
 which we apprehend directly. If I step across a railway 
 compartment I may be moving relatively to the train at 
 only a very minute fraction of a mile in a minute. But 
 individually I may be moving for an observer on the plat- 
 form of the station the train is passing at sixty miles an 
 hour plus this small fraction. The relativity in standard 
 does not, moreover, end there. For the combined velocities 
 of the train and myself have to be added to the great 
 velocity (possibly over eighteen miles a second) with which 
 the earth and the train on it are passing relatively to positions 
 in the sun. Again, the solar system may itself be moving 
 in the firmament, and so on ad infinitum. The velocity 
 can never in short be expressed as an absolute one, or other- 
 wise than as relative to some system apart, which again is 
 presumably itself in movement relatively to some yet other 
 systems beyond. We are not justified in the assumption 
 that there is any self-contained or absolute velocity in 
 nature to measure. Why, then, should the units in which 
 we render for ourselves either the velocity of the trains or 
 that of light have been taken as meaning what they did 
 otherwise than merely relatively to the situation of the 
 observer and its rest or motion ? Nothing further appears 
 to have been really imported in the miles and seconds in 
 which the velocity is estimated under conditions which 
 differ or in the reality we attribute to them. My rate of 
 transit in crossing the railway carriage was expressed in 
 terms which were only final in the train, and the earth and 
 the sun in addition were assumed to be at rest. It is plain 
 that scientifically this assumption ought not to have been 
 treated as being absolutely true. The same thing occurs 
 when I approach the source of the ray of light coming 
 towards me. The significance of the directly apprehended 
 fact, which is the change in position relative to myself, and 
 is called velocity, has to be estimated, and this I do by finding 
 analytically how space and time, miles and seconds, are 
 related in it. That is how velocities are really measured 
 and compared. They are always calculated in terms of 
 the particular co-ordinates employed and are relative to 
 
UNIFORMITY IN RESULT THE OUTCOME 87 
 
 these. For observers who are all in the same state of rest 
 or motion the results will be uniform, for the co-ordinates 
 will have been the same. But if the position of the observer 
 is a changing one the velocity, which is measured only as 
 relative to his position, changes also as he measures it. 
 Our direct and primary experience is simply the bare fact 
 of the change in position itself, that of the ray with a move- 
 ment relatively to ourselves increased by our own velocity 
 if we are going towards the distant star. This bare fact of 
 observation does not by itself present miles and seconds as 
 units in which we express it. We have to estimate the 
 significance of the immediate presentation of the changing 
 position of the light waves as they advance towards us 
 and we towards them. This we do by estimating relatively 
 to the standards of reference we adopt as our co-ordinates, 
 representing hypothetically assumed lines we select as 
 appropriate, in terms of which we measure the results of 
 our observation. One of these co-ordinates is chosen so as 
 to yield us a measurement of length, another gives a spatial- 
 ised representation of the duration occupied. The propor- 
 tion in which the measurements which result from their 
 use appears, when we estimate velocity by relating space 
 to time, both thus represented, gives us our measure of the 
 velocity. Now if the different observers are themselves 
 changing position relatively to each other the results 
 obtained in this way must vary proportionately. These 
 results are analysed in terms of co-ordinates which them- 
 selves vary with changes in the situation of the observer 
 in reference to what he observes, importing it may be 
 more length traversed in the second, or the same length 
 in a second that really comes out shorter. What the 
 observers have taken their respective measuring-rods and 
 stop-watches to indicate, however these may resemble, 
 will thus be facts with different meanings. The units 
 of velocity will have been got at in the same way, but they 
 will in point of fact be different in their significance and 
 therefore in the character of their reality, for the space and 
 time relations thus reached by abstraction and inference 
 will have been constructed in the process of observation 
 and combined in varying proportions. As there is no 
 absolute space or time, but the relations which give 
 measurement and meaning to both are always relative 
 to changing standards, the apparent velocity will remain a 
 
88 EINSTEIN 
 
 constant, an unvarying fact apparently basic in our aware- 
 ness, but it will really have been differently estimated in 
 the measurements we make. It is therefore clear that to 
 get at the truth we ought to have taken first, not the idea 
 of measurement in space or time assumed to exist independ- 
 ently of us, for these consist in relations which are merely 
 derivative and dependent for their reality as well as our 
 observations of them on how the observer has resolved the 
 antecedent and original fact of the changing position of 
 the light ray relatively to himself, but the actually primary 
 fact of his awareness of the change in a mere manifold or 
 continuum before it was in any way measured. 
 
 It appears mathematically, when we write out the proper 
 equations, that the variation in the results of the measure- 
 ment thus obtained takes place automatically as the 
 outcome of the special principle of relativity. The result 
 in the familiar nominal units called miles and seconds is 
 always the same, but it has been necessarily made the same 
 by the application at the starting-point of standards or co- 
 ordinates of measurement which altered proportionately 
 as the relative situation and conditions of the observer 
 varied. Our measurement has therefore changed propor- 
 tionately not only the significance of these units but their 
 reality for us, and the constancy of the velocity of light is 
 disclosed not as an antecedent to the process but as a 
 consequence of the character of that process. 
 
 The mathematical equations which express the process 
 itself, together with the methods of adjustment so that the 
 meanings of the results may be reduced to a common 
 standard, are called the Lorentzian equations of transfor- 
 mation. The curious will find these equations stated and 
 explained in a way that may now be more readily intel- 
 ligible to anyone who will take a little trouble, in Section 
 XI and the First Appendix in the English translation of 
 Einstein's book on the Theory of Relativity. 
 
 The basis of our measurement is thus an ever-changing 
 one. And when we measure the distances relative to our 
 earth as moving, our clocks and measuring-rods, although 
 they may be so constructed as to appear to register in terms 
 outwardly the same, do not record in these terms the same 
 actual result. For space, and time also for that matter, are 
 not fixed entities, but signify only relations between objects. 
 There is no justification for the assumption of absolute 
 
RELATIVITY IN MEASUREMENTS 89 
 
 motion or absolute rest. Length and the correspondence 
 which we call simultaneity, meaning thereby that the times 
 recorded as those of the happening of two events at two 
 positions are recorded as identical, turn out to be relative 
 conceptions, depending on the real situations of our 
 standards of measurement. Two events which appear to be 
 of equal duration according to measurement within one 
 system may occupy different times when measured within 
 another system. Thus, space and time being really inter- 
 dependent, the hypothesis of a contraction in the measuring 
 rods and clocks is superseded as quite unnecessary. That 
 which appears is merely the result of the relativity of 
 our method of measuring lengths and times. Even 
 coincidence, in the form of simultaneity or correspondence 
 as ascertained in measurement of time by clocks, may 
 be only apparent. For its appearance in the end 
 depends on what may be measurements in different space- 
 time systems, that is on the spatial standards of reference 
 afforded by the dials of the particular clocks, and these 
 may imply what are really different units. Space systems 
 and time systems thus alike depend for the standards 
 that make them on the situation of the observer 
 relatively to what he observes, and on whether he is at 
 rest or moving. Two systems at a distance from each 
 other, moving in different directions and with different 
 velocities, may, for observers in them of a common object, 
 be productive of results signifying different truths, in the 
 form of shapes and measurements of space and time as 
 actually and correctly observed. Of course the observers 
 are assumed to be observing separately and in self-contained 
 systems, without any reference to each other. Even on 
 the earth we find illustrations of this kind of relativity. 
 From the railway line a train appears to be moving ; from 
 the train the line appears to be so. The presentation of 
 what happens from a system of reference moving with the 
 train is different from that yielded by a system of reference 
 on the line. What tells us that in this case the only reliable 
 observation must be observation from the line itself, is 
 that the picture framed from the train will not fit into the 
 context of either the general experience of our fellow-men 
 on the earth or our own usual experience. It is this 
 discrepancy from our conventional standards, and not 
 any absolute perception of space and time as subsisting 
 
90 EINSTEIN 
 
 by themselves, that shows us that our passing system of 
 reference is in such an instance unsuitable for getting at 
 the way in which things will present themselves under 
 conditions more in harmony with our lives than those 
 of an obviously transitory experience. But in other cases, 
 such as that of an observer on Mars, no such context 
 of general experience may exist, and in such cases the 
 estimate under one set of conditions of reference has to 
 be accepted as giving truth and reality not less actual than 
 what is yielded by observation from a different system. 
 
 To illustrate this more plainly I will take an instance 
 where there is no reason for preferring one set of co- 
 ordinates of reference to a rival system. I adapt the 
 substance of this illustration from Professor Eddington's 
 brilliant book on Space, Time and Gravitation. Big Ben 
 strikes one and, an hour later, two. For me, sitting hard 
 by in Queen Anne's Gate, the strokes appear to occur at 
 the same place, and to be separated by an hour. This 
 agrees, too, with what my own watch says. But an 
 observer situated on the sun would consider that the 
 strokes had occurred at different situations in space of 
 Big Ben, for he would have seen that the earth had moved 
 in the hour about 70,000 miles along its orbital track with 
 respect to the sun, from which he was observing. In 
 resolving the result of his observation into the space 
 component of the position, he thus resolves it with a 
 different result from mine, for whom, Big Ben being at 
 rest for me, the space change is nil. If he resolves the 
 space by a different standard of reference, he has also to 
 resolve the time component differently, for space and 
 time, as we have seen, involve each other. The watch of 
 the observer on the sun may be constructed on the same 
 principles as my own, but the measurement of time by 
 the units marked on the watch on the sun, though appar- 
 ently analogous, will have a different meaning. Its 
 apparent agreement with mine will not be real, for the 
 spaces on its dial, to which reference has to be made for 
 measurement in looking for the simultaneities belonging 
 to correspondence in time as indicated on the dial spaces, 
 will not be in reality corresponding spaces, the measure- 
 ment being made on a different basis of reference. There 
 will thus be two different local time systems, just as there 
 are two different local space systems, and the observer in 
 
SPATIALISED TIME 91 
 
 each will measure with reference only to the co-ordinates 
 of his own system. 
 
 That the time measurements of the observer on the sun 
 should vary with his space -system is not surprising. For 
 apart from the view of time and space as differently 
 fashioned abstractions from a time-space continuum in 
 which they have grown from a common root, and 
 also apart from other difficulties, mathematical and 
 physical, in the process of their dissociation, there is a more 
 general way of expressing the reason. Those who have 
 studied Bergson will remember his principle that the time 
 we observe is always spatialised time, and has a distinctive 
 character as such for the observer who seeks to make it 
 an object of scientific experience. It is this spatialisation 
 of time that gives to coincidence and correspondence in 
 time their measurements. We measure time by treating 
 it as in relation to space, and it is only in terms of space 
 that we can measure it. With pure duration measurement 
 has, in Bergson's exposition, nothing whatever to do. 
 The measurement of calculated time must therefore vary 
 with the character of each particular space system. 
 
 Thus the position of the observer and what he observes 
 turn out to imply each indissolubly, and the theory of 
 relativity, even in the limited form in which Einstein 
 introduced it in 1905, does away with the traditional con- 
 ception of unaltering relations in space and time which 
 was accepted by Newton, and banishes the notion of 
 the aether as a self-subsisting substance with a unique set 
 of co-ordinates to which all general laws are finally refer- 
 able. No such unique or final system, if its implications 
 are thought out, is either reconcilable with the apparently 
 constant character of the velocity of light, or is on Einstein's 
 principle possible. 
 
 On the principles laid down by Newton the co-ordinates 
 by reference to which observers with different situations 
 and movements estimate could not have been really 
 equivalent. That the velocity of light should appear to be 
 under all circumstances the same for all systems, whether 
 they moved or were at rest towards the source of its rays, 
 was the demonstration of this. That velocity could not 
 truly be the same if the velocity were absolute in an inde- 
 pendent space and time. But, if its estimation depended 
 on measurements made in space and time systems 
 
92 EINSTEIN 
 
 which varied in the significance of their units with the 
 position and movement of the observer, then the con- 
 stancy of the measured velocity of light would be the 
 outcome of the self-adjusting nature of the standards by 
 reference to which it was measured. On this footing light 
 signals could not any longer be regarded as depending for 
 their coincidences merely on the condition of an indepen- 
 dently existing substance in which they were propagated, 
 because such a substance would in that case be at rest 
 for all systems, and the facts would consequently be 
 inexplicable. In the same way the electro-magnetic field, 
 which extends indefinitely into space, could, as a conse- 
 quence of what research and experiment had disclosed, 
 be no independent " carrier." 
 
 Ten years later, in 1915, Einstein made known to the 
 world that more general theory of relativity which is now 
 associated with his name. His first view was not thrown 
 over, but had become a special case of a wider principle 
 which claimed to get rid of much that had perplexed 
 observers. The first theory had indeed obviated the 
 resort to the notion of a physical contraction in our 
 measuring instruments. The apparent contraction was no 
 longer taken to be a physical shortening of the instrument. 
 It had been shown to be the natural consequence of the 
 complete relativity of measurement, and to be the out- 
 come of changes in the position of the observer with his 
 co-ordinates or standards. But the scope of the doctrine 
 of 1905 had been restricted to what was found by com- 
 paring movements rectilinear in direction and constant 
 in proportional velocity. If the systems compared do not 
 move in this fashion account must be taken of further 
 phenomena. This is a consequence of the full principle 
 of relativity, as developing the original principle of 1905, 
 with the complete treatment of space and time as merely 
 varying relations generalised from the positions and move- 
 ments of objects. 
 
 These considerations led Einstein to insist in 1915 on 
 the broad principle that the motion of all bodies is nothing 
 more than their apparent change in situation relatively 
 to one another. The objects which constitute our universe 
 will present appearances which differ in every case accord- 
 ing to the situation and kind of motion of the observers 
 with their measuring systems. These appearances are the 
 
GRAVITATION AND INERTIA 93 
 
 actual reality. Absolute position, shape, and measurement 
 are all unmeaning. Space and time disappear as self- 
 subsistent, and in their place we get a plurality of relative 
 systems. 
 
 We now come to a fresh outlook made possible by the 
 general principle of relativity. We have seen how the 
 notion of force had lost meaning for modern physicists. 
 But there was one kind of motion which was apparently 
 explicable only as the manifestation of something in the 
 nature of actual pull. In gravitation we seem to observe 
 a case in which bodies genuinely attract each other. 
 What is called inertia, the fact that a body remains at rest 
 or else goes on in the path in which it is moving in continua- 
 tion of its actual motion, does not imply this sort of 
 explanation. But there is a feature, and a very important 
 one, which gravitational and inertial force exhibit in 
 common ; they vary with the mass of the body that moves. 
 The two so-called forces are so far analogous, and if the 
 general principle is applied that all that is observed in 
 motion is change of position, they seem as if they must be, 
 so far as measurement is concerned, indistinguishable. The 
 observed acceleration of any body left to itself may, in the 
 light of this, be regarded as due either to gravitation or to 
 inertia. It is a mere question of interpretation, under 
 which it is open to us either to think of the event as 
 taking place in a field where a genuine force called gravita- 
 tion is operating, or, if we cannot attach any definite 
 meaning to such a force, to think of the system of reference 
 from which we are observing as being in fact itself in an 
 accelerated motion equivalent to that of the body observed 
 and imagined to be moving under the influence of gravita- 
 tion. 1 On this footing there will be produced exactly the 
 same appearance for the observer. The phenomena will 
 seem to obey the same law in the same way, whichever 
 alternative we adopt. We really perceive no force, but only 
 relative change in position. This result is in effect what 
 Einstein has named the principle of equivalence. 
 
 The physicist observes relative changes in the positions 
 of objects and no more. These changes link for us the 
 objects changing so uniformly that we talk of them as 
 acting on each other. But whenever we talk so we come 
 upon a fresh difficulty. How is action at a distance to be 
 
 1 See p. 56, ante. 
 8 
 
94 EINSTEIN 
 
 made intelligible ? At a different standpoint, that from 
 which we observe the living organism, where what is mani- 
 fest is self-control and behaviour under the continuous 
 guidance by an end inherent in the object and no ex- 
 ternal cause of its activity, the perplexity does not arise. 
 An end is operative as just the self-conduct of the living 
 organism. But whenever we are in the region of the 
 externality of cause to effect the difficulty is unavoidable. 
 There the form of causation ab extra must be assumed, 
 and how can such a cause operate at a distance ! The 
 school of physicists of whom I am speaking claim to 
 satisfy all that is required of them by showing that the 
 so-called gravitational and inertial forces are the expres- 
 sions of a single fundamental principle, based wholly on 
 what is observed as change in position, in accordance with 
 the principles of relativity and equivalence. They do 
 not enter into any metempirical question as to whether 
 we can go behind the simple fact of the behaviour towards 
 each other of the bodies that conform to the laws of 
 relative motion. They claim that the problem of how 
 action at a distance under a gravitational pull is possible 
 does not arise so far as they are concerned, and is one that 
 is superseded for physics. The principle of explanation 
 is equally applicable, whether the bodies are planets at 
 enormous distances from each other in a solar system, or 
 are vanishing points separated from each other by distances 
 that are indefinitely diminishable. Here Einstein comes 
 face to face with a further problem. He is in search of 
 physical laws which will be true for every description of 
 space-time system. The terms in the fundamental equa- 
 tions in which such physical laws can be expressed, if space 
 and time may assume any form and may be non-Euclidean, 
 must prove capable of application, whatever substitutions 
 of variable co-ordinates are made in them. They ought, 
 therefore, so far as they refer to space and time, to provide 
 for their complete relativity, so as to exclude from them 
 " the last vestige of physical objectivity." He works out, 
 accordingly, a method of treating the world which appears 
 to observation, as if capable of analysis into motion ex- 
 pressed as that of a particle through ultimate point-events 
 or world-points, separated only by indefinitely vanishing 
 distances. These distances, which give him line elements 
 in what Hermann Minkowski called a "world-line," are 
 
THE GENERAL THEORY 95 
 
 not what we should call relations in space or time, for they 
 depend on a combination of the ultimate characters of 
 both spatial and temporal quantity. That is because the 
 world as we observe it is continuously changing, so that 
 the elements required for its explanation must be motional 
 with four dimensions, and may comprise the fundamental 
 characteristics of both time and space. The infinitesimal 
 distances or intervals between his point-events have thus 
 for Einstein this amount of physical significance. They 
 accord with the implications of all possible experiences of 
 externality. He applies to them a highly refined calculus 
 which, first of all, enables him to interpret his world-line 
 as indicating the motion of a material point rectilinearly 
 and uniformly, as in the earlier or special theory of 
 relativity. This is symbolised by a straight path in four 
 dimensions, the fourth dimension being the time-dimension 
 which is implied in movement and required for the ex- 
 planation of change. But by a further development, 
 which converts his calculus into one much further-reaching, 
 based on transformations in the differential equations 
 founded on the co-ordinates of the point-events, such 
 that these equations may be applicable in the case of 
 every sort of system moving even with accelerating velocity, 
 he gets for his result a principle which applies when the 
 domain is one where it is necessary to recognise the wider 
 aspect of relativity. The intervals between his point- 
 events may have characteristics which have to be 
 described in symbols analogous to those of curvature. 
 This will be so wherever account has to be taken of 
 the results of observing the varying and apparent deflec- 
 tions in relative position and velocity due to what 
 used to be called gravitation. The old law of Newton 
 was that a particle, when not interfered with by external 
 forces, moves uniformly and rectilinearly. The new funda- 
 mental law which for Einstein has superseded it is that 
 the world-line of an infinitesimal particle is a " geodesic " 
 path. What is meant by a geodesic path ? As I understand 
 Einstein it is the track appropriate to whatever is the 
 actual character of the space-time continuum. To such a 
 track the ordinary ideas of distance in space and interval in 
 time do not apply. For we have not yet got so far as these. 
 The mathematical interpretation of the law of gravita- 
 tion, as I interpret it, is that it defines explicitly the 
 
96 EINSTEIN 
 
 fulfilment by a particle of the principle of its geodesic 
 track. That track will be a unique and limiting one. 
 But its nature has so far not got any characteristics 
 resembling what depends on measurement in space or 
 time. If this formula seems a highly abstract guide to 
 the ascertainment of the behaviour of matter, we must 
 remember that the object is to get behind the merely 
 relative ideas according to which in daily life we measure 
 the relations between external bodies. It is these ideas 
 which Einstein finds to have broken down, and he is 
 searching for what is reliable. 
 
 At this point it may be useful to try to unravel what 
 is apt to prove perplexing to students of philosophy in 
 some of the statements of physical results. A real diffi- 
 culty in following the discussion in the mathematical 
 world of the epistemological foundation of space and time 
 forms arises from the language which is employed, almost 
 without restraint. Mathematicians are so used to tech- 
 nical expressions based on space and time as currently 
 accepted that when they pass to relations in the con- 
 tinuum they adopt these expressions as if they were quite 
 free to employ them. But in the conception of the con- 
 tinuum space and time have not yet been differentiated 
 from each other, nor does its character allow of a treatment 
 as if they contained quantities measurable as greater or 
 less than each other. The tendency to use language which 
 overlooks this is one which must cause difficulty to philo- 
 sophy quite as much as to mathematics. Some mathe- 
 maticians are well aware of it, and try hard to put on 
 the brake. But the use of expressions appropriate only 
 to conventional space and time is difficult to check. 
 When we are told, for example, by so careful a writer 
 as Professor Eddington in his book (at p. 70) that the 
 unique or actual track in the space-time continuum is 
 not the " shortest " but the " longest," the layman is 
 puzzled until he recalls that " longest " does not imply 
 what we usually mean by the word, as referring to measure- 
 ment of length in space. What Professor Eddington says is 
 quite intelligible if it is borne in mind that what he is really 
 referring to is the technical result of equations referred to 
 on his next page, and to the peculiar geometry which 
 the minus sign of time requires. But I cannot help 
 feeling that a good deal would be made clearer, not only to 
 
QUESTIONABLE TERMINOLOGY 97 
 
 the laity but to the mathematicians themselves, if the 
 necessity for distinction were everywhere kept in sight. 
 
 Here there seems to be a vast amount of work awaiting 
 the mathematical-logicians, which they have only just 
 begun to enter on. 
 
 Einstein himself uses language in which he appears to 
 treat the continuum as though it could be described in 
 terms, not indeed of Euclidean space and time relations, 
 but of relations of some sort in space and time ; Gaussian 
 co-ordinates, for example. " The following statement 
 corresponds to the fundamental idea of the general 
 principle of relativity : ' All Gaussian co-ordinate systems 
 are essentially equivalent for the formulation of the general 
 laws of nature'" (The Theory of Relativity, English 
 translation, chap, xxviii). But in the days of Gauss 
 the continuum had not been conceived as Minkowski con- 
 ceived it later on, and it was hardly realised that the 
 question of the character of its co-ordinates was not one 
 of direct perception. It is far from clear, therefore, that 
 it is legitimate to express the relations within the con- 
 tinuum in such terms, excepting as a useful mathematical 
 device which can throw no light on the ultimate character 
 of its subject-matter. Such devices are often very 
 valuable. The task of the physicist is, for example, 
 greatly simplified by the step of multiplying the time 
 co-ordinate in his equations by the square root of minus 
 one. But this is his own expedient for getting his 
 equations into a workable form. No doubt the space 
 and time elements, so far as they have an analogue in the 
 continuum, must be described as related with what are 
 opposite signs. But, even taking the most large-minded 
 view of the mathematical processes which the equations 
 exhibit, the suggestion is inevitable that when mathe- 
 maticians use in their absolute equations the symbols of 
 arithmetic what we are dealing with is measurable in a 
 fashion in which by its very character it is not. 
 
 I know it will be said that these are questions which 
 can be dealt with only by highly trained mathematicians, 
 and not by mere students of philosophy. That is in 
 a sense true. But the student of philosophy has at 
 moments to jog the elbow of the mathematician, and 
 to remind him of things of which he must take account 
 when he is seeking to explain in what the real consists. 
 
98 EINSTEIN 
 
 We have seen already how different from the loose 
 ideas ordinarily associated with everyday experience 
 are the precise meanings to be attached to timeless 
 space and spaceless time. Neither can stand for more 
 than an abstraction of reflection, and yet both con- 
 cepts are required in order to account for the harmony 
 of experience. We have to keep their significance in view 
 from a wholly different standpoint in our analysis of the 
 relation in the world-line. To the character of this rela- 
 tion these abstract conceptions are the very antithesis. 
 We are in search of a law of nature which concerns what 
 is fundamental to experience, and not merely of variable 
 creatures of everyday reflection, such as are ordinary 
 space and time. What must be the character of such a 
 law, and how can it be sought for in a way that is 
 logically admissible ? That is what we want the mathe- 
 maticians to make clear to us. 
 
 As I understand what they have said so far, it is this. 
 They start off with the simple case of point-events in 
 the continuum, assumed to be separated only by indefinitely 
 attenuated intervals. Such intervals we may call, if we 
 carefully guard ourselves from pictures of self-subsistent 
 space and time, the shortest paths. We require co- 
 ordinates for their definition which will not suggest any- 
 thing involving some particular shape or measurement. 
 They must be applicable in general terms to the basis of 
 every possible space-time system. 
 
 For the description of such an interval it is necessary 
 to employ a differential equation, as being the only effec- 
 tive means of eliminating what is irrelevant, and of at 
 the same time attaining to precision. The path of a 
 particle in the interval must, if the conditions of its 
 limiting character are to be complied with, be geodesically 
 the most direct of all natural paths, in the only meaning 
 which can be attached to what combines spatial with 
 temporal analogues, their inverse proportions notwith- 
 standing. By " natural " I mean what is appropriate 
 to the kind of reality to which the track belongs. 
 In formulating this interval the equation describing 
 it of course must not be confined to variables de- 
 pending on any particular system of measurement. 
 The equations and the co-ordinates employed in them 
 must therefore be made, if possible, co-variant in such a 
 
COINCIDENCE AND INTERVALS 99 
 
 way that they may apply in the case of every possible 
 space-time system. On this footing we may start by 
 taking our ordinary perceptions and dissecting out their 
 contents by abstraction. We have, of course, to be sure 
 that the perceptions from which we start all belong to a 
 single space-time system. The reason is plain. We 
 depend throughout on being able to ascertain coinci- 
 dences. Observation, in order to be of any value, de- 
 pends in the main on our being able to ascertain that 
 two points on which we have fixed attention stand in some 
 relation of coincidence at the same moment in the same 
 time-system. 
 
 But here there arises a further point. Coincidence of 
 this kind does not require measurement. If the intervals 
 are not of Euclidean straightness, but are of some sort of 
 curvilinear character, there may still be coincidence, just 
 as much as if the interval were a straight line. The co- 
 ordinates which refer to magnitude may therefore express 
 any form of magnitude, provided they define the coinci- 
 dences in terms which express them, apart from any par- 
 ticular form in measurement. If a formula describing the 
 interval mathematically can be found which will be true 
 whatever the nature of the further co-ordinates introduced, 
 provided they fall within the description of being functions 
 of the original co-ordinates, there will have been discovered 
 a mode of ascertaining the nature of the interval in the 
 continuum with exactness, which will remain applicable if 
 at a later stage there are introduced further values based 
 on particular observations of the ordinary kind. When, 
 by thus introducing particular results of observation, say 
 of the heavenly bodies, we give to the new co-ordinates 
 special numerical meanings, we shall still have preserved 
 the general relation, and can make it the foundation of a 
 law of motion that is at once of the utmost generality in 
 application and independent of all particular systems 
 of observation. 
 
 Mathematical investigation of a high order has led to 
 the discovery of equations which express this basis. The 
 " interval " can now be defined in terms which admit of 
 indefinite variation in detail, while preserving the relation- 
 ships which are necessary for its determination. The 
 equations are " co-variant " for any substitutions of co- 
 ordinate values. There is thus obtained an accurate 
 
100 EINSTEIN 
 
 description for the continuum and for the activity in which 
 it consists. Space and time as physical entities per se are 
 banished from the ultimate foundations of physics. 
 
 The theory of how to find mathematical expressions of 
 a character so general that they can be used in the equa- 
 tions descriptive of intervals in such a fashion that the 
 equations remain true, however the co-ordinates to which 
 they relate vary in detail, is called the theory of " Tensors." 
 Tensors are expressions which seem to include intrinsic 
 qualities of the continuum, and may be applied in the 
 form of groups ascertained in reference to it. They stand 
 for what are qualities more than for definite quantities, 
 and they not the less admit of application to the results of 
 observations made in empirical space and time of any 
 kind, such as are the gravitational potentials. They are 
 so applied by introducing the results of actual spatio- 
 temporal measurements, and yet they are such that values 
 of the same character for the ultimate relations in the 
 continuum are obtained, whatever system of space and 
 time measurement may be adopted. About Tensors, Pro- 
 fessor Whitehead makes the grim observation that " the 
 announcement that physicists would have in future to 
 study the theory of Tensors created a veritable panic 
 among them when the verification of Einstein's prediction 
 was first announced." l 
 
 It is not easy to describe in ordinary language what 
 can be characterised with freedom by mathematical 
 methods alone. Still, there is room for an effort to do so, 
 inasmuch as such an effort is required for the philosophical 
 interpretation of the true nature of the continuum that 
 lies at the foundation of our world in space and time. 
 
 If we fix our minds on the conception of an indefinitely 
 vanishing phase in our experience of that world, and by 
 abstraction extrude the notions of measurement and 
 shape which arise in reflection, we find ourselves con- 
 fronted with bare awareness of change. It is change in 
 which space and time have not yet been discriminated, but 
 
 1 The reader who wishes to try to explore the elements of the mathe- 
 matics involved may find helpful a book by Professor Moritz Schlick, 
 Space and Time in Contemporary Physics (English translation by Brose, 
 Clarendon Press). Along with this he may read profitably Professor 
 Eddington's book, Space, Time and Gravitation, at pp. 89 and 189. If he 
 desires to pursue the subject into mathematical details he may turn to 
 the Report on the Relativity Theory of Gravitation published by the latter 
 (Fleetway Press, 1920). 
 
TENSORS 101 
 
 is just the activity out of which we build up our concep- 
 tions of them. This activity gives us paths of the never 
 static point-events towards which -our actual experience 
 tends as its limits. We approximate thus to these paths 
 as what Minkowski called the " world-lines " of the -point- 
 events, and to " intervals " between them. Such intervals 
 are neither spatial nor temporal, but they express what 
 lies at the very foundation on which we build up our 
 ideas of space and time as relations. Still, they can be 
 described, for we are aware, even in this abstract region, 
 of coincidences. The intervals intersect and are related 
 to each other by what we recognise as positions in the 
 activities that are antecedent to definite spaces and times. 
 We can thus describe our world-lines with their intervals. 
 This mathematicians do by defining co-ordinates of 
 position for the coincidences observed, bare co-ordinates 
 to which the ideas of shape and measurement have no 
 application, but which are yet sufficiently describable to 
 admit of their character being sufficiently ascertained in 
 general terms. By the employment of differential equa- 
 tions, so as to obtain purely limiting notions, what is 
 irrelevant is eliminated, and the dominating conception be- 
 comes that of points approximating with infinite closeness. 
 The equations which thus describe the relations of 
 what is indefinitely vanishing in our actual experience 
 have thus on their right-hand sides co-ordinates referring 
 to infinitesimals of observation, but these co-ordinates 
 express mere functions of position depending on bare 
 coincidence in the result, and have at this stage nothing 
 to do with either shape or measurement. Still, the 
 equations define definite relations, relations which will 
 continue to obtain whatever may be the shape and 
 measurement subsequently superinduced as the result 
 of observation and experiment. The equations, which 
 are triumphs of mathematical genius, and are of a char- 
 acter so refined as to be very complicated, contain on 
 the right-hand side the symbols of a set of functions of 
 what may be termed, if we carefully qualify the ordinary 
 suggestions of words, the foundations of the space -time 
 continuum, extending to features out of which both 
 space and time may arise. Shape and duration are 
 excluded along with measurement. The expressions used 
 are so formulated as to be applicable whether the co- 
 
102 EINSTEIN 
 
 ordinates are subsequently developed into what are 
 appropriate to space and time as Newton conceived them, 
 and aie so made, rectangular, or are polar or oblique or of 
 a different or curved nature. Whatever the character of 
 wjbat is later on observed is determined to be, the linear 
 relation in the equations of the expressions defining the 
 intervals will hold good. The name given by mathema- 
 ticians to expressions of this kind is that of tensors. The 
 tensor principle can be extended when our experience is such 
 that account must be taken of matter as present in the con- 
 tinuum, and it then yields equations of a still more intricate 
 character, based on certain very general characteristics of 
 such matter, but still independent of space and time. 
 
 Our knowledge is rendered at a later stage particular, 
 by observation and experiment ; and this involves the 
 application, not only of measurement to space and time, 
 but of some particular geometry. According to Einstein's 
 general theory of relativity there is no one geometry of the 
 universe. The characters of the relations which we call 
 space and time arise from the varying movements of 
 bodies changing their situations relatively to each other 
 and to the observer. The new method gives a law of such 
 change which is independent of such relativity. We 
 have seen how gravitation can be expressed merely as an 
 illustration of movement, and how Newton's law of 
 gravitation assumed a particular hypothesis as to space 
 and time. Einstein therefore substitutes a more funda- 
 mental law, concerned primarily with relations in the 
 continuum purely as such, and with the changing relations 
 of objects independently of any particular space-time 
 system. It is necessarily formulated as a law of activity 
 in the continuum itself, presupposed before we can attain to 
 shape and measurement. The path described is inde- 
 pendent of particular forms. It depends on the character 
 of the underlying continuum itself and is called a geodesic 
 line. Newton's law of motion was to the effect that a 
 point if undisturbed by any extraneous force moved 
 uniformly and rectilinearly. Einstein's law, which extends 
 to both inertial and gravitational effects, because of his 
 principle of their equivalence, asserts that a point in 
 motion in a gravitational field has as its world-line the 
 shortest path in the continuum. Shortest only means 
 most direct, having regard to the character in point of 
 
THE METHOD 103 
 
 anything analogous in the continuum to what we have 
 in our heads when we talk of curvature. In a different 
 sense the path may prove mathematically describable as 
 the longest, or as a maximum. The fundamentally inverse 
 relationship of the spatial and temporal characters may 
 necessitate such a description as the outcome of the only 
 appropriate form of the equations employed. 
 
 When physicists have to apply the method of Einstein, 
 if they are to deal with the concrete facts observed, they 
 measure in the usual way, and then bring the quantities 
 so obtained within the scope of the tensor equations. In 
 this fashion the basic laws expressed in the latter enable 
 events in the space and time systems encountered to be 
 correctly represented in their true characters. The 
 specification required is made by ascertaining measured 
 values for example, the measurements of the distribution 
 and motion of gravitating bodies. The functions expressed 
 in the tensors thus get a particular application, but the 
 fundamental relations and the laws which result from 
 them remain. Misleading inferences based on what 
 appears as it does merely from the situation of the par- 
 ticular observer are thus corrected. It was by so dividing 
 the investigation into the two stages which the doctrine 
 of physical relativity requires that Einstein was able to 
 correct calculations, based on Newtonian assumptions, 
 as to the objective and uniform character of relations in 
 space and time, and to predict that the deflection of the 
 rays from fixed stars observed on the occasion of the 
 eclipse in May 1919 would be found to be what observa- 
 tion established, more nearly 1"*74 than 0"'87. His 
 explanation of the supposed movement of the perihelion 
 of Mercury was arrived at by the same method. 
 
 Lest this account of the method should seem lacking 
 in technical clearness I will venture, though not without 
 hesitation, to try to express it in other words more familiar 
 to those concerned with the special subject immediately 
 under discussion in this chapter. The general character 
 of the continuum may, I gather, be described as follows. 
 The intervals from any point-event P to the assemblage 
 of neighbouring point-events have certain characters. 
 These characters can all be expressed in terms of a 
 set of functions of co-ordinates of P, so that if Q 
 be a neighbouring point-event the relation of Q to P 
 
104 EINSTEIN 
 
 depends (1) on the small differences of the corresponding 
 co-ordinates of Q and P, and (2) on the above-mentioned 
 set of functions. If these functions are regarded as the 
 characteristic functions at P, then the relation of P to Q 
 is defined by the differences of the co-ordinates and by 
 the characteristic functions. 
 
 Now alternative systems of co-ordinates for the con- 
 tinuum can be adopted. Each alternative system of 
 co-ordinates necessitates an alternative system of char- 
 acteristic functions. But the relation is such that the 
 characteristic functions at any point P of one system of 
 co-ordinates can be expressed linearly in terms of the 
 characteristic functions of the other set of co-ordinates. 
 This property is called the tensor property of the sets of 
 characteristic functions. 
 
 What I have ventured to say must be taken as pre- 
 tending to record no more than it does, the impressions of 
 a non-mathematician about what the mathematicians are 
 saying to each other when they enter the borderland of 
 philosophy and speak about it among themselves. The 
 impression is that of a stranger in whose presence they 
 talk, but who, although keenly interested in learning from 
 them, is but imperfectly acquainted with a language which 
 to them is one of second nature. They may, therefore, be 
 gentle with him if his accent seems strange and his capacity 
 to do justice to their words appears inadequate. His 
 reason for listening and in his turn making comments 
 does not appear to be an irrelevant one. They are in a 
 territory that is occupied in common, and forbearance on 
 both sides is therefore necessary. I do not believe that 
 the fundamental conceptions are as obscure as some of the 
 mathematicians take them to be. The reason they seem 
 so is that they are concerned with matters which involve 
 consideration of a more than merely mathematical char- 
 acter. For the rest I am not lacking in admiration for 
 the splendid power of the instruments the mathematicians 
 possess, and the wonderful results they have achieved 
 with them ; instruments which impress me not the less 
 because it is beyond my powers to wield them. 
 
 It may have been observed how far-reaching are the 
 consequences of the new interpretation of what lies at the 
 foundations of our perception of motion. We are brought 
 face to face with the necessity of giving it a meaning very 
 
THE LAW OF MOTION 105 
 
 different from that which it had for Newton. Let us 
 glance at the contrast between these meanings. For 
 Newton it is, for example, a proposition of universal 
 application that two material bodies attract each other 
 with a force proportional to the product of their masses 
 and inversely proportional to the square of their distance. 
 But if the general theory of relativity be true this is a 
 statement of fact which, if it professes to be exact, is quite 
 inadequate. It assumes, to begin with, a single definite 
 space and a single definite time, in which the two bodies 
 are taken to be in simultaneous positions. But, as 
 Einstein and Professor Eddington, as well as Professor 
 Whitehead from another point of view, have said, what is 
 simultaneous in one time -system may not be simultaneous 
 in another, and the distance between two bodies, as well as 
 apparent coincidences, may also have a different significance 
 in different space-systems. The law is therefore incomplete. 
 It is only by going deeper down that we can hope to find 
 a fundamental and universally true law of motion. 
 
 Inertial and gravitational mass, for the general theory 
 of relativity, are indistinguishable in character. They have 
 no absolute significance. Mass finds its meaning in the 
 presence and relative positions of bodies. Mechanics now 
 seems to become a general theory of relative motion, so far 
 as direct observation is concerned. Any fundamental law 
 of mechanics must, if difficulties over the conception of 
 action at a distance are to be eliminated, be a differential 
 law, containing only the description of an interval with no 
 finite distance between the point- events it separates. In 
 the special theory of relativity the velocity of light was 
 treated as an absolute constant, and had to be so. It 
 appears questionable whether in the light cast by the 
 general theory it ought to be thus treated. 
 
 There is no unvarying geometry of distance or measure- 
 ment. Just because in the general theory of relativity the 
 ultimate relation in the continuum which underlies all par- 
 ticular observations preserves its form irrespectively of 
 how the variables that form the co-ordinates in its equa- 
 tions are estimated in shape and quantity, so the relation 
 has no self-contained and direct application in our current 
 interpretations of observations of nature, and does not, 
 taken by itself, express the time and space of our individual 
 experience. But the relation is basic for all forms and 
 
106 EINSTEIN 
 
 variations of such experience. The fundamental law of 
 motion must therefore be of a character quite different 
 from that of gravitation as stated by Newton. It is, as 
 Professor Eddington has pointed out, not so much a law 
 as a definition, expressing the way in which point-events 
 in the continuum are related. It supersedes, not only 
 Newton's law of gravitation, but his principle of inertia, 
 in so far as that implies that a particle when undeflected by 
 extraneous forces moves uniformly and rectilinearly. The 
 new law is a mathematical expression which describes the 
 character of the activity in the "world-line" of the con- 
 tinuum of a particle as being a geodesic line in that 
 continuum. 
 
 Into the differential equations in which the fundamental 
 relation is expressed there are introduced the " tensors," 
 which admit of relations to the intrinsic qualities of the 
 continuum of further and varying elements to be derived 
 from particular observation. The tensors seem, as I have re- 
 marked, to represent qualitative characteristics rather than 
 ordinary quantities, and to express the relations of the point- 
 event in the field to which they belong in the continuum. 
 These factors appear in the equations in their further forms 
 in groups, but the older mathematicians, who anticipated 
 their shape, hardly thought of these fundamental elements 
 excepting as having the nature of geometrical quantities, 
 by which the metrical properties of space were to be 
 ascertained. Such tensors not only allow of a physical 
 interpretation under Einstein's doctrine, but such an inter- 
 pretation is called for in order to provide an adequate 
 expression for motion in the indefinitely varying forms of 
 the gravitational field. The development of the original 
 formulas is required to define the way in which they apply 
 for the purposes of physical description. The original 
 formulas themselves are essential if our knowledge is to 
 be more than merely relative to our position as observers. 
 For, to quote Einstein's own words in the chapter on the 
 space-time continuum in his book on the Theory of Rela- 
 tivity, " Every physical description resolves itself into a 
 number of statements, each of which refers to the space- 
 time coincidence of two events A and B." 
 
 By applying his development of the calculus in this wider 
 form Einstein is able to determine the exact nature of the 
 distribution and motion of every sort of gravitating body. 
 
EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRY 107 
 
 It is a triumph for mathematical methods. But it is not 
 only what we call matter that is subject to gravitational 
 deflection. From the standpoint of relativity energy, 
 integrated by operation in time into enduring action, must 
 obviously appear, whenever that operation can be observed, 
 as subject equally with what is called matter to apparent 
 gravitational deflection. Such energy, moreover, becomes 
 indistinguishable in character from inertial mass. This 
 results from the fundamental principle underlying the 
 general theory of relativity. 
 
 The fruits of that theory and of such laws as I have 
 above referred to do not cease here. They have been 
 developed by their author into mathematical consequences, 
 which have given explanations of what was inexplicable on 
 Newtonian principles taking no account of relativity. 
 Whatever criticism may have in store for his doctrine, it 
 has at least accomplished several great advances. It has 
 made the physical picture which the universe presents 
 more intelligible to science ; it has banished out of physics 
 the necessity of attributing an objective character to 
 gravitation, the force which has always been under sus- 
 picion in so far as it seemed to necessitate the hypothesis 
 of action at a distance; and, finally, it has enabled all 
 the laws that underlie physical events to be reduced to 
 differential equations, an advantage not the less real 
 because only a mathematician can be happy with it. 
 
 One word more about space. It is often said that 
 Einstein has sought to abolish Euclidean space and Eucli- 
 dean geometry with it. This is not accurate. His method 
 is one of complete relativity, so far as direct experience 
 goes. It therefore applies to every kind of space, and 
 admits of Euclidean as well as of non-Euclidean geometry, 
 whenever applicable. That is because space and its shape 
 and measurement are on his theory what they seem to be 
 only by reason of the position of the observer and the 
 system under which he observes. Accelerating velocities 
 and deviations from rectilinear movement in relation to 
 each other of systems of observation may give the space 
 that appears any form. It can have no standard or 
 absolute shape, independent of the system conformed to in 
 observation, consistently with the principle of relativity. 
 Consequently the spatial universe may as well prove to be 
 non-Euclidean as to be Euclidean, and its lines and its 
 
108 EINSTEIN 
 
 planes may as readily possess curvature as straightness. 
 It follows that we may require a number of alternative 
 geometries. That this should be so is natural as well as 
 necessary, and the calculus of Einstein is so fashioned as 
 to provide for it. But Euclidean space obviously remains 
 as one of the infinity of variations of which his method 
 can take account. It is an aspect of nature which, so far 
 as logic is concerned, need not have presented itself, 
 though in practice we treat it as having done so, and find 
 that the assumption is sufficiently true for most purposes. 
 Even Einstein's variations of that assumption are not very 
 great for everyday practical purposes. But, from the 
 standpoints of science and philosophy alike, we have to 
 distinguish the kind of reality that pertains to special and 
 particular aspects of space and time from the permanent 
 character which belongs to those ultimate underlying 
 relations, ascertained only analytically, but not the less 
 as belonging to reality, that are the foundation of the 
 mathematico- physical laws relating to the disposition of 
 point-events, and so to what is believed by Einstein to be 
 omnipresent in nature. 
 
 In a remarkable article in Mind, written in the April 
 number for 1920, the substance of which on this point is 
 repeated, but perhaps with less emphasis on its philosophical 
 suggestions, in the book he has recently published under 
 the title Space, Time and Gravitation, Professor Eddington 
 has pointed out that Einstein's equation, in which he 
 expresses the fundamental principle of what used to be 
 called gravitation, is not in the ordinary sense a law of 
 nature, but really a highly pregnant definition of such 
 mere alteration of position as might be attributable in a 
 vacuum. The equations concerned deal primarily only 
 with the abstract entities we call point- events. The theory 
 of relativity tells us that in the primary definition we are 
 not yet concerned with matter, but only with motion 
 treated so generally that we have eliminated the elusive 
 idea of particular particles of matter remaining permanently 
 identical, and also all particular measurements of space 
 and time. We are not yet occupied with what our direct 
 perception will disclose about the details of the external 
 world. We are occupied only with the basic conceptions 
 apart from which that world would not have any ordered 
 meaning for us. It is only after we have applied these 
 
PROFESSOR EDDINGTON 109 
 
 conceptions that we learn what the density and state of 
 motion of matter truly signify for the man of science. We 
 have then to deal with what are further elements, belonging 
 in a less degree to the foundations of experience, but con- 
 forming to the principles which lie at these ultimate founda- 
 tions, because otherwise such elements could not present 
 themselves in experience at all. To those who know 
 Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, something of an analogy 
 suggests itself here. Professor Eddington goes on to say 
 that in reality matter does not cause unevenness in the 
 gravitational field, inasmuch as the unevenness of the field 
 is just what we really mean by matter. He suggests that 
 " the intervention of mind in the laws of nature is more 
 far-reaching than is usually supposed by physicists." He 
 is even " almost inclined to attribute the whole responsi- 
 bility for the laws of mechanics and gravitation to the 
 mind, and deny the external world any share in them." 
 " The physical theories," he says in concluding his article, 
 " which form the bases of this argument are still on trial, 
 and I am far from asserting that this philosophy of matter 
 is a necessary consequence of discoveries in physics. It 
 is sufficient that we have found one mode of thought tending 
 towards the view that matter is a property of the world 
 singled out by mind on account of its permanence, as the 
 eye ranging over the ocean singles out the wave form for 
 its permanence among the moving waters ; that the so- 
 called laws of nature which have been definitely formulated 
 by physicists are implicitly contained in this identification, 
 and are therefore indirectly imposed by the mind ; whereas 
 the laws which we have hitherto been unable to fit into a 
 rational scheme are the true natural laws inherent in the 
 external world, and mind has had no chance of moulding 
 them in accordance with its own outlook." 
 
 In using such language Professor Eddington is in the 
 metaphysical borderland of mathematics. The mind, 
 whose moulding influence he suggests, does not present 
 itself to him as mind in the foundational interpretation 
 which Aristotle, for example, gave to it. It seems to 
 mean rather a particular human mind, or at least a mind 
 distinguished as a self, in some sense separated from an 
 independent system of nature that confronts it, while 
 moulding the appearance of that system to the form which 
 it imposes. If so, what is important is rather the form 
 
 9 
 
110 EINSTEIN 
 
 thus imposed db extra than the merely residuary objective 
 existence. That existence may account for certain natural 
 elements which the mind cannot mould in accordance 
 with its own outlook. It may even furnish, as Professor 
 Eddington suggests in his article in Mind, the four-dimen- 
 sional aggregate of point-events. But the laws of gravita- 
 tion and of mechanics generally he doubts whether it can 
 account for. If he is justified in this doubt, his position 
 seems to be even more akin to that of believers in the 
 principle of " Representative Perception," like those of the 
 school to which Sir William Hamilton belonged, than it is to 
 that of Kant, although it is nearer to that of Kant than to 
 the doctrine of Aristotle to which I have already referred. 
 Einstein himself does not seem to have pronounced in 
 favour of any particular philosophical views, although 
 apparently, like his Cambridge commentator, at moments 
 he leans towards subjectivity in his interpretation of our 
 experience of relativity. But not altogether. For his 
 German disciples, Freundlich and Schlick, in their books 
 on his doctrine, have both drawn attention to its connec- 
 tion with an observation made by Riemann which bears on 
 the necessity of finding for the measurements of time and 
 space, in whatever general form they may be expressed, 
 some ultimate physical basis. The last-named mathe- 
 matician used these words : " The question of the validity 
 of the hypotheses of geometry in the infinitely small is 
 bound up with the question of the ground of the metric 
 relations of space. In this question, which we may still 
 regard as belonging to the doctrine of space, is found the 
 application of the remark made above ; that in a discrete 
 manifold the principle or character of its metric relations 
 is already given in the notion of the manifold " (because 
 we can measure it by mere counting, there being no con- 
 tinuous transition from one single element to another, and 
 each being a single entity in an arithmetical aggregate), 
 " whereas in a continuous manifold this ground has to be 
 found elsewhere, i.e. has to come from outside. Either, 
 therefore, the reality which underlies space must form a 
 discrete manifold, or we must seek the ground of its metric 
 relations (measure-conditions) outside it, in binding forces 
 which act on it." Such " binding forces " both Freundlich 
 and Schlick appear to find in relations between the intervals 
 of points in motion and the influence of a gravitational 
 
RIEMANN 111 
 
 field. The absolute equations, which Einstein has adopted 
 from Riemann, give a world-line in which a point moves, as 
 described in terms of the new co-ordinates in the equations, 
 under gravitational influence, that is in time and space of 
 any form. The factors which stand for gravitational forces 
 therefore represent the inner or objective ground of the 
 measure relations of the space-time manifold. Freundlich, 
 however, in Note 6 to his book on the foundations of 
 Einstein's Theory of Gravitation, suggests a doubt. He 
 says that until recently the energy which a body emanates 
 by radiation was regarded as a quantity which varied con- 
 tinuously. But he remarks that the researches of Max 
 Planck have led to the view that this energy is emitted in 
 " quanta," and that therefore the measuring of its amount 
 is to be performed by counting these " quanta." The 
 reality underlying radiant energy is in that case a discrete 
 and not a continuous manifold. " If," he observes, " we 
 now suppose that the view were gradually to take root 
 that, on the one hand, all measurements in space only have 
 to do with distances between aether-atoms ; and that, on 
 the other hand, the distances of single aether-atoms from 
 one another can only assume certain definite values, all 
 distances in space would be obtained by " counting " these 
 values, and we should have to regard space as a discrete 
 manifold." 
 
 Into the physical questions thus raised in connection 
 with the " quanta " theory, I do not feel myself competent 
 to enter, and I will not presume to do more than refer to 
 their existence, and only mention them because they seem 
 to me to point to considerations which go beyond mathe- 
 matics and physics and belong in part at least to the 
 domain of philosophy. To these I have referred in the 
 preceding chapter. It does not seem clear that, if 
 Riemann's " binding forces " are necessary, they have a 
 sufficient explanation in the suggestion of gravitational 
 equivalence, or even that the necessity of a continuous 
 manifold as their independent physical foundation is 
 sufficient, on the only principles with which Einstein con- 
 cerns himself. For space and time and their measurement 
 belong exclusively to a later stage, a stage which had not 
 yet been differentiated in Riemann's day, and to which 
 stage the " quanta " theory, concerned as it is with 
 physical energy, may turn out to belong. 
 
112 EINSTEIN 
 
 But even so, in his apparent unconsciousness of how little 
 of an epistemological nature he assumes, Einstein is in 
 conflict with views expressed by Professor Whitehead. 
 In his Concept of Nature, the latter adheres firmly to the 
 hypothesis that nature can be investigated as self-contained 
 apart from and independently of the mental operations 
 of the observer. The meanings which are of its essence 
 represent our renderings of an actual and objectively real 
 character in what we apprehend in these meanings. He 
 disclaims any intention in saying so to trench on farther- 
 reaching questions relating to any system which may 
 explain mind and its objects in their relationship. Mathe- 
 matics and physics are for him concerned only with an 
 object-world of nature conceived as self-subsistent. So 
 far he does not differ in fundamentals from what Kant 
 might have said. He simply does not enter on it. 
 
 But not the less Professor Whitehead declares emphatic- 
 ally that the theory of relativity, with the general results 
 of which he is in agreement, is in reality wholly consistent 
 with this view, and has nothing to do with any merely 
 subjective interpretation. If the relations between event- 
 particles are looked on as mere formulas in which we 
 express the characters of the space and time our minds have 
 adopted, they are of a subjective character. For him it 
 is therefore impossible to attach any clear conception to the 
 Einstein explanation of space and time, although he is in 
 the main in agreement with its results. According to his 
 own view there is an indefinite number of actual dis- 
 cordant time-series and an indefinite number of distinct 
 spaces, and any correlated pair of these is sufficient for the 
 filling in of our descriptions of the physical universe. We 
 employ naturally one single time-series when we measure, 
 but we have to remember that the " creative advance " 
 of nature imports as actual a variety of such series. The 
 whole bundle of these has to be taken into account, with 
 the variation in co-ordinates, if we are to measure this 
 factual advance of nature. The differences, when we 
 neglect the necessary distinctions, are usually very small, 
 and we do not notice them, but the neglect of them has 
 led in the end to the break-down of the Newtonian method. 
 In that method, for example, the law expressed for gravita- 
 tion assumes only a single definite time and a single definite 
 space, and the masses attracting each other are assumed 
 
DIVERGENCES FROM EINSTEIN 113 
 
 to be in positions which are really simultaneous, whereas 
 simultaneity may mean what differs for observers with 
 different time-systems. " The apparent paradoxes of 
 relativity arise from neglecting the fact that different 
 assumptions as to rest involve the expression of the facts 
 of physical science in terms of radically different spaces 
 and times, in which points and moments have different 
 meanings." l " The observed motion of an extended 
 object is the relation of its various situations to the strati- 
 fication of nature expressed by the time-system fundamental 
 to the observation. This motion expresses a real relation 
 of the object to the rest of nature. The quantitative 
 expression of this relation will vary according to the 
 time-system selected for its expression." a Accordingly, 
 although time and space are abstractions they signify real 
 facts of nature, notwithstanding that what one observer 
 means by them is different from what another observer, 
 situated in another position, will mean. Our measure- 
 ments when expressed in terms of an ideal accuracy are 
 measurements which express properties of the space-time 
 manifold, in which space and time have their foundations 
 in the inseparable dimensions that characterise its passage, 
 and are represented by the general co-ordinates of which 
 the absolute equations express the functions. Thus space 
 and time refer back for their origin to the twofold character 
 of the continuum as an actual fact of existence independent 
 of us, and are not of the subjective character which, 
 according to Professor Whitehead, is assigned to them by 
 the school of Einstein. 
 
 The radical difference may, I think, be expressed thus. 
 Professor Whitehead holds that what we perceive are events 
 in their passage, as defined by the character of a continuum 
 or manifold in which space and time have not yet been differ- 
 entiated. These events we present to ourselves reflectively, 
 yet, as part of their reality, as objects, and by a further pro- 
 cess of abstraction we come to relations between these 
 objects, which we determine as relations inspace and in time. 
 But the basic fact in our perception is the continuum, upon 
 which our ideas of objects and of space and time alike are 
 erected by us. It is to the real character of the continuum 
 that science must therefore refer back in the search for 
 
 1 Concept of Nature, p. 192. 
 * Ibid., p. 195. 
 
114 EINSTEIN 
 
 final truth. Our space and time systems are the varying 
 outcome of interpretation of the contents of durations 
 in our perceptions, and we employ varying standards of 
 references in these interpretations, dependent on our situa- 
 tions. In this last point I read Professor Whitehead as 
 not differing from Einstein materially. The conflict of 
 view arises over what it is that we interpret. For Einstein 
 this appears to be a world of objects already there in space 
 and time, but in space and time rendered in different forms 
 and measurements depending on the situation of the 
 observer. Einstein seems to think that what we perceive 
 are objects and not events, and relations in space and 
 time of which only the shapes and measurements vary. 
 The continuum for him seems to be got at indirectly by 
 inference, and not to be the actual basis of nature as directly 
 known. Despite what Einstein says, I think that White- 
 head is nearer to the position formulated by Minkowski 
 himself than Einstein is. The question is one of great 
 importance for the theory of knowledge, and uncertainty 
 about it has already led to ambiguity in the language of 
 some physicists of eminence, who speak of the continuum 
 as though the relations within it could be described in 
 terms appropriate only to measurement, such as " longest " 
 and " shortest." No doubt the application of tensors 
 has enabled these to avoid practical difficulties, but the 
 obscurity in point of principle seems to remain. 
 
 From the merely philosophical standpoint of the present 
 book, it seems as if that Professor Whitehead is on firm 
 ground, in so far as he does not assume the exclusive truth 
 of any particular philosophical theory. The great diffi- 
 culty, however, always is how to keep clear of metaphysics, 
 and I am not sure that he altogether does this. 
 
 It is all very well, when something, say ds, has been 
 described as " conceptual," to ask, as he does, conceptual 
 of what ? Mathematicians experiment comfortably with 
 ds, and describe it in equations as though they were 
 describing a " thing." But the " thing " has to be treated 
 as what is called infinitesimal, and the laity have been 
 taught that infinitesimals are now banished out of mathe- 
 matics, excepting as symbols for limiting relations of order 
 in quantity. But if what is so symbolised is only a relation 
 it is surely notional or a general conception or interpreta- 
 tion. What is being described is what is of a universal 
 
UNDUE ABSTRACTIONS 115 
 
 character in other words, a concept. This does not entail 
 either that universals are to be taken as floating about in 
 nature disembodied from particulars, or, as the only 
 alternative, that they are unreal. They may have exist- 
 ence in union with particularity, a phase from which they 
 are detachable only by abstraction. It may be quite 
 right to talk of an infinitesimal, if we remember that it is 
 only by abstraction that we can do so, and that every 
 phase of existence for sense as such is excluded from the 
 description. If reality has for its form concrete uni- 
 versality, in which the object of knowledge can present 
 itself as particular for sense (either actually or as 
 imaged) as well as in generality for thought, and is in 
 neither case severable from the subject in knowledge, the 
 puzzle disappears. It is in this form that we appear to 
 feel and know. There is no feeling apart from some 
 factor in it of reflection, and no reflection excepting in 
 images with a pictorial factor. Why do we hesitate to 
 accept this, which is conveyed to us by our own experience 
 as a cardinal fact of reality ? 
 
 The answer is that it is because we have hypostatised 
 the method, so valuable for physics, of treating nature as 
 self-contained, and so closed to mind, into a principle of 
 absolute and not merely relative application. If what 
 mind finds in nature when it experiences it is what is of the 
 same character as itself, there is no reason for rejecting the 
 method, merely because it is one which depends solely on 
 a standpoint that is chosen for convenience, and is adequate 
 only relatively to the purpose for which it has been adopted. 
 The difficulty has been raised by the assumption that we 
 can go behind the fact that we know, and account for 
 knowledge itself, instead of confining our study to the 
 forms it assumes. One of these forms is human knowledge, 
 or experience, and this is obviously no final form. Much 
 light is to be got on the reasons why it is what it seems to 
 be by the study of nature by itself and of the fashions in 
 which intelligent beings appear in course of that nature. 
 But such a study assumes knowledge as the condition of 
 its possibility, and even of its very meaning. On what 
 knowledge is, as distinguished from the genesis of the 
 particular forms in which it displays itself, no light is cast 
 or can be cast. To attempt such an inquiry is to deceive 
 oneself, as do the sceptics. The character of thought is. 
 
116 EINSTEIN 
 
 always to extend beyond itself. That is because of what 
 has been called, from ancient times onwards, its dialectical 
 quality. It is never static. It is always reaching beyond 
 its own distinctions. That is where I think that the New 
 Realists have done less than justice to the facts. 
 
 If we approach the question from another side, we get 
 the same result. As Professor Whitehead points out, the 
 notion of uniform space and time is only got by abstraction 
 from objects, as distinguished from events in nature. It is 
 an intellectual construction that does not correspond to 
 the facts. For space and time systems are relative, and 
 in their character independent of and different from each 
 other. Still, they must hi some way be congruent, for 
 otherwise we could not compare them, and so have the 
 knowledge we possess of the world of nature as an entirety. 
 This, he says, is possible because there is one fundamental 
 factor which is everywhere and always constant, the rela- 
 tion which every event and every relation between events 
 bears and must bear to our direct awareness of it. In 
 other words, relation to mind is essential to nature, which 
 would not be nature apart from this relation. Nature is 
 thus only relatively and not finally closed to mind, and is 
 far from being independent of it, although for our limited 
 practical purposes it is useful, with a view to concentra- 
 tion on a standpoint, to ignore the dependence. This we 
 seem to cease to do, however, when, as we must, we treat 
 nature as congruent. We can only make it congruent, 
 if I interpret Professor Whitehead aright, by bringing in 
 what is mental ; call it " sense-awareness " or the fact of 
 knowledge as you please. We are thus again brought 
 back to the view of knowledge which is fundamental to 
 the argument of this book. The distinction of the mental 
 from the non-mental world ceases to be final, even for 
 physics. 
 
 At p. 32 of his Concept of Nature, Professor Whitehead 
 says : 
 
 " In considering knowledge we should wipe out all these 
 spatial metaphors, such as ' within the mind ' and ' without 
 the mind.' Knowledge is ultimate. There can be no 
 explanation of the c why ' of knowledge ; we can only 
 describe the c what ' of knowledge. Namely, we can analyse 
 the content and its internal relations, but we cannot 
 
THE WIDER SIGNIFICANCE OF RELATIVITY 117 
 
 explain why there is knowledge. Thus causal nature is 
 a metaphysical chimera ; although there is need of a 
 metaphysics whose scope transcends the limitation to 
 nature. The object of such a metaphysical science is not 
 to explain knowledge, but exhibit in its utmost com- 
 pleteness our concept of reality." 
 
 I agree, and I think that Professor Whitehead has 
 shown, more than any other writer on mathematical 
 physics that I know, the extent to which the relativity 
 principle conducts us, whether we will or not, into regions 
 more extensive than those that are assigned to the kind of 
 science to which general opinion has so far taken it to be 
 confined. Does the question at issue turn on considerations 
 that genuinely belong to the domain of physical science ? 
 I doubt it. An assumption appears to be inherent as its 
 basis. That assumption is that mind is a thing, standing 
 in an external relation to another thing, called nature, 
 which produces on it a causal result called knowledge. 
 The theory underlying the assumption is that we can get 
 behind knowledge and explain it. But suppose for a 
 moment that we cannot make this assumption in an 
 intelligible form. That we do make it in daily life is no 
 doubt quite true. So it was quite true that the New- 
 tonian physicists successfully assumed that for the pur- 
 poses of daily life time and space were self-subsistent and 
 uniform entities. But the sanction of success in practical 
 life, though enough for many purposes, has not proved to 
 be in the end enough for science. Is that sanction enough 
 to justify for men of science the tacit assumption of the 
 general hypothesis about the nature of knowledge ? For 
 they not only seem to get into an impasse, but they get 
 there by neglecting warnings which have come to them, 
 as I have already indicated, from various schools of 
 thinkers since the days of ancient Greece. It is not 
 enough for men of science to say that they do not wish to 
 concern themselves with metaphysics, unless they can 
 show that they have kept out of metaphysics altogether, 
 and have not tacitly assumed a metaphysical principle 
 which may turn out to be wholly unsound. 
 
 But I will not pause further to dwell at this stage on the 
 significance of such an outlook. For that significance is 
 the underlying principle of the present book, its " single 
 
118 EINSTEIN 
 
 thought," and in the subsequent chapters the principle 
 will be developed. 
 
 Some of the pronouncements on which the various 
 schools of contemporary physicists agree bring us very 
 near to that borderland in which science and philosophy 
 approach each other, and they fit in with a good deal that 
 seems to be light which the doctrine of relativity, in the 
 wider form which philosophy gives to it, throws on the 
 problem of the nature of knowledge. How the teaching 
 of the philosopher and the physicist may converge in this 
 direction is illustrated by Bergson. His students may 
 remember that, as I have already reminded my readers, 
 he insists on mathematical time and his own " duration " 
 being quite different. He points out that in reflection we 
 always spatialise time into discrete intervals which are 
 constructed in spatial form. We thus seem to enable 
 ourselves to count equal intervals of time, and also coinci- 
 dences in it which we call simultaneities. The time-space 
 relation so created in our minds becomes thus a fourth 
 dimension, which, because it is essential, we tacitly intro- 
 duce and add to the three ordinary dimensional relations 
 of space. It is in this way that duration is for Bergson 
 made to assume the form, in reality illusory, of a homo- 
 geneous medium, and that the feature connecting space 
 with time, which we call simultaneity, is introduced as if 
 it were an actual fact directly observed. A space-time 
 manifold is so constructed by the mind. Questions are 
 thus raised concerning relativity to the observer, arising 
 from the artificial character of apparent simultaneity. 
 
 But the name of Bergson is not the only name which 
 comes to one's memory in reading Einstein. 
 
 If you walk along the promenade on the venerable 
 fortification or mound which surrounds the old university 
 town of Gottingen, you come upon a curious statue of two 
 men. One is a physicist kneeling by a model repre- 
 senting wave motion along lines, the form of which he is 
 apparently trying to explain to himself and to interpret 
 as exemplifying some general law. But he seems puzzled, 
 and he looks upward to another figure bending over him, 
 and apparently suggesting a solution for his difficulty. 
 The second figure is that of a man of very striking appear- 
 ance. The face is a highly intellectual one, and the expres- 
 sion, though grim, suggests immense power of mind. It is 
 
GOTTINGEN AND GAUSS 119 
 
 that of Gauss standing over his colleague Weber, to whom 
 he looks as though he were suggesting the solution of some 
 mathematical difficulty which is perplexing the latter. It 
 is impressive for those who believe, not only in the 
 boundlessness of the range of abstract science, but in the 
 continuous development of great principles when once 
 established, to observe that methods devised by the insight 
 of Gauss, seventy years ago, should still serve men like 
 Einstein to-day in a fresh domain. For Gauss discovered 
 a mathematical scheme which remains still appropriate 
 for expressing to-day in the generality, unrivalled in its 
 kind, of mathematical language, the relation to each other 
 of the points in any sort of space that has to be defined 
 and measured. As many co-ordinates, which may be 
 either straight or curved as is required, are assigned to 
 each point as the continuum has dimensions. The method 
 of Gauss was so devised as to be capable of application in 
 what is called non-Euclidean geometry as well as in 
 Euclidean, and it could be so adapted as to include among 
 its co-ordinates one to represent time. The general laws 
 of the new version of physics, as Einstein has proposed it, 
 thus finds a convenient mode of expression in the method 
 proposed by Gauss for dealing with space in its most 
 general features and possibilities many years before 
 Einstein's version was dreamed of. 
 
 It is interesting to remember how the way was thus, 
 nearly three-quarters of a century since, prepared for 
 thinkers like Einstein and the interpreters of the doctrine 
 of quantitative relativity. Gauss must have possessed 
 one of the most extraordinary mathematical intellects 
 that has appeared since Newton died. His genius enabled 
 him to anticipate ideas which were to mature only long 
 after his time. He had the gift of overcoming mathe- 
 matical difficulties which seemed insuperable to others of 
 his own period. He was a man, too, of resolute character 
 in carrying out his ideas. It is recorded of him that when 
 he wished to bring to the test his doubts as to whether 
 geometry had more than an empirical character, he 
 insisted on measuring with theodolites the angles which 
 three rays of light, emitted from three high points in 
 Germany, the Brocken, the Hoher Hagen, and the Insel- 
 berg, made with each other. The purpose was to deter- 
 mine experimentally whether the angles of a very large 
 
120 EINSTEIN 
 
 triangle actually amounted to two right angles. In the 
 Chair of Mathematics which he held at Gottingen, a 
 university distinguished, like Cambridge in our own 
 country, as the home of a series of great mathematicians, 
 Gauss was succeeded after a brief interval by Riemann. 
 The latter died young, but his was a genius second 
 only, if indeed second, to that of Gauss. Between them 
 they evolved much of the foundation of the difficult 
 mathematical methods which Einstein was to develop 
 still more fully later on, methods which are not the 
 less difficult because they conduct those who apply 
 them into that border country of which I have already 
 spoken. 
 
 But Gauss and Riemann were not the only teachers at 
 Gottingen who were pioneers in laying the mathematical 
 foundations of the principle of relativity. Hermann 
 Minkowski was professor there from 1902 to 1909. He it 
 was who saw more clearly than any before his day that 
 space and time were inseparable, and, taken by them- 
 selves, could be regarded as mere abstractions from a 
 continuum which possessed the fundamental character 
 of both in indissoluble union. The form of activity in 
 this continuum he named the " world-line." 
 
 Like Riemann, Minkowski was a man of genius who died 
 young. He was born in 1864. Very early his published 
 papers attracted attention, and a Chair was founded for 
 him at Gottingen. He died in 1909, having left a reputa- 
 tion behind him nearly comparable to that left by 
 Riemann. His most famous contribution to the literature 
 o relativity was the address he delivered, under the title 
 Raum und Zeit, at Cologne on the 21st of September 1908, 
 before a scientific congress. In this address he announced 
 his conviction that at the basis of experience lay, not 
 space, but an infinite variety of space -systems, and that 
 the foundational reality for physics was a " world-line," 
 in which the truth of the phenomenal world must be looked 
 for as a four -dimensional world from which space and time 
 must be taken as arbitrary and derivative constructions. 
 Everything turns on what we mean by rest, and this 
 depends on how we determine arbitrarily our space and 
 time in observation. Three-dimensional geometry becomes 
 a mere chapter in the book of four -dimensional physics. 
 Space and time, as Newton conceived them, sink down to 
 
CONCLUSION OF THIS CHAPTER 121 
 
 a new and lower status as mere shadows of the one four- 
 dimensional world. 
 
 It is this purely derivative character of the space and 
 time of current physics, and the consequent impropriety 
 of applying language descriptive of them to the ultimate 
 manifold, that Professor Whitehead seems to me to have 
 brought out in his treatment of relativity, more thoroughly 
 than Einstein or even Minkowski himself has done. 
 
 I have now endeavoured to convey some idea of what 
 relativity in measurement appears to import for philo- 
 sophy. The sketch I have made is one only of outline, 
 but it will serve as an introduction to applications of the 
 principle, in more general forms than those that are 
 mathematical or physical, in the discussion which follows. 
 
 Physical relativity must not be looked on to-day as 
 more than the beginning of a new outlook for mathema- 
 ticians and physicists. The doctrine has much in its 
 appearance to commend it. But it is apparently as yet 
 only in a stage that is incomplete. Not only are funda- 
 mental principles unsettled, but special problems remain 
 to be solved. For instance, what light does the new 
 doctrine throw upon rotation ? A rotating body bulges 
 under what we call the action of centrifugal force which 
 gravitational attraction does not adequately restrain and 
 so compensate for. Newton naturally held rotation to be 
 an absolute fact. It does not depend on relative position 
 in the same way as motion of translation does, and such 
 facts of observation as those yielded by Foucault's pen- 
 dulum and the gyroscope bear out the view of its inde- 
 pendence of anything beyond itself. What, then, is the 
 significance of the apparent centrifugal force to which the 
 bulging of a rotating body is due ? Does the principle of 
 relativity in measurement of position and of motion in 
 translation still leave open the possibility of some world- 
 wide inertial frame existing independently of relative space 
 and time systems ? Some mathematicians suggest this. 
 Others, like Professor Whitehead, point out that Newton's 
 laws of motion are only true if the axes to which they 
 refer belong to a body which is not rotating, and is not 
 of accelerating velocity. If this is forgotten, instances 
 will appear in which action and reaction will not be equal 
 and opposite, and uncompensated forces will show them- 
 selves as in rotating bodies. Is this explanation one 
 
122 EINSTEIN 
 
 which in itself is sufficient ? These and analogous points 
 remain for the mathematicians to agree on and explain 
 to us laymen. 
 
 Again, what is the character of the universe ? Is it 
 that of a universe which is finite and yet unbounded ? 
 Einstein himself suggests this, and gives reasons for 
 thinking that it may be cylindrical. If, for simplicity, 
 we start off by thinking of ourselves as existing in space 
 of only two dimensions instead of three, that is to say as 
 in " Flatland," then so long as these dimensions are plane 
 certain perplexities do not arise. But suppose that the 
 two-dimensional surface is not plane, and that we live on a 
 curved surface ! We shall not know it, because we have no 
 experience of a different kind to guide us. We shall then 
 find what we took to be our straight lines of measurement 
 returning on their origins in circular or other curves. 
 The curved world will thus be finite, although there is no 
 limit to it to be experienced. Now a world with three 
 dimensions that are curved instead of straight can be 
 devised just as well as one of only two. Riemann, Helm- 
 holtz, and Poincare have long ago made such an idea 
 intelligible in popular form. Such a curvilinear space 
 must of course not be thought of as something carved out 
 of a larger space of the ordinarily imagined character. It 
 is to be taken to be all that space can mean as well as can 
 be. And if space itself be thus of a really curved nature, 
 then we live in a universe which, if unbounded, is not the 
 less finite. 
 
 What the form of the order of things in that universe 
 is we do not yet know. Einstein and his disciples have 
 only entered on inquiry as to the answers science can give 
 to the questions raised. So far they are able to do little 
 more than reveal to us unlimited possibilities of truth 
 attainable by reflection. But at least they have helped 
 to emancipate our minds from the deadening effect of 
 conventional ideas. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 RELATIVITY IN EXPERIENCE GENERALLY 
 
 EINSTEIN'S principle of the relativity of our measurements 
 in space and time cannot be taken in isolation. When 
 its import is considered it may well be found to have its 
 counterpart in other domains of nature and of knowledge 
 generally. Before we enter on this question let us be clear 
 as to what the relativity principle in physics has brought 
 us. We may define it as Einstein himself has done, or 
 with the greater freedom exhibited in Professor Eddington's 
 book, and also in German expositions such as that of 
 Schlick. Or we may give to the principle the more objec- 
 tive interpretation reached by Professor Whitehead, who 
 is very definite in rejecting anything like a tendency to 
 split externality into two phases, one that of the space-time 
 continuum and the other that of space and time systems 
 as they actually occur in an independent experience. 
 There is a broad feature which all the different views exhibit 
 in common. Into the results apparently yielded by direct 
 sense-awareness concepts have not only entered, but have 
 entered with transforming power. 
 
 Our biological notion of our organisms as percipient 
 make this in practice difficult to visualise. We think of 
 our sensations as originating in the contact of the afferent 
 extremities of our nerves with something in the environ- 
 ment independent of the organism. It is thus that our 
 knowledge of the external world seems to have reality and 
 independence. It is therefore, on this hypothesis, some- 
 what unintelligible to suppose that concepts can enter 
 into that reality and independence. For concepts look as 
 though they were essentially creatures of mere reflection, 
 always general and applicable to an infinity of singulars 
 indifferently. They are not happenings in time and 
 space but identities in mode of apprehension. If the 
 
 123 
 
124 RELATIVITY IN EXPERIENCE GENERALLY 
 
 biological view of knowledge be the final one they cannot 
 really enter into the particularism of reality in sense- 
 perception. 
 
 But the biological view of the organism as a thing 
 receiving impressions from its environment in truth pre- 
 supposes the vision of an entire world within which the 
 receiver, the receiving, and the received have already the 
 places presupposed by the necessities of the process. A 
 biological epistemology can therefore only possess relative 
 truth. It can no more account for our knowledge of that 
 world, which it has already in its explanation assumed 
 to be there, than can the classical notion of space and time 
 as absolute account for facts of observation which modern 
 physics has placed beyond doubt and which yet appear to be 
 irreconcilable with that notion. Its case is indeed a much 
 worse one, for it cannot account even for itself. We are 
 thus driven back to the revision of our popular idea of the 
 relation of the biological thing to its environment as an 
 explanation of knowledge. As we shall find in more detail 
 later on, knowledge cannot be thus explained. It is itself 
 presupposed, even when we distinguish a particular sensa- 
 tion from a concept. The distinction between the two falls 
 within knowledge itself and presupposes it. Only for 
 the sake of convenience do we refer to sensations apart 
 from concepts or concepts apart from sensations. When 
 we do this it is for a reason analogous to that for which the 
 mathematician permits himself to talk of infinitesimals, 
 and to calculate with them as though they expressed more 
 than mere relations. 
 
 It is therefore not surprising that the theory of rela- 
 tivity should be considered to have shown that the reality 
 of a world of space and time can only be stated in terms of 
 concepts. For what we call nature turns out to have been 
 permeated by the activity of reflection. It is interesting to 
 notice how this conclusion presents itself to the minds of 
 men of science themselves. Professor Eddington, who is 
 both an acute and a courageous thinker, uses these remark- 
 able words at p. 197 of his book, towards its conclusion : 
 
 " Our whole theory has really been a discussion of the 
 most general way in which permanent substance can be 
 built up out of relations ; and it is the mind which, by 
 insisting on regarding only the things that are permanent, 
 
CAUSES CONTRASTED WITH ENDS 125 
 
 has actually imposed these laws on an indifferent world. 
 Nature has had very little to do with the matter ; she had 
 to provide a basis point-events ; but practically any- 
 thing would do for that purpose if the relations were of a 
 reasonable degree of complexity. The relativity theory 
 of physics reduces everything to relations ; that is to say, 
 it is structure, not material, which counts. The structure 
 cannot be built up without material ; but the nature of 
 the material is of no importance." 
 
 Professor Whitehead would hardly accept this inter- 
 pretation of the relativity doctrine, but we have seen that 
 there is reason to regard him as proceeding in the same 
 direction by another path. However, therefore, we look 
 at it, the theory of relativity in physical measurement 
 means this, that our measurements are what they are 
 because of the concepts through which knowledge effects 
 them. Whether these concepts assume the form of co- 
 ordinates, such as those which are harmonised by the 
 Lorentz equations for transformation used for the earlier 
 or special principle of relativity, or whether they are the 
 " Tensors," which have been adapted by Einstein for 
 the measurement of the continuum in its relation to forms 
 of every order in the actual space and time of our experi- 
 ence, we come to the same result. It is through general 
 principles, and not by immediate awareness in its sim- 
 plicity, that we get our knowledge of physical nature, and 
 the reality we discover is of an order in character the same 
 as that of our knowledge about it. 
 
 It is of special importance that this should have come out 
 so clearly in physics, the science which is concerned with 
 nature in the aspect in which are presented externalities 
 absolutely excluding each other. It is not less important 
 that in other domains of science a similar conclusion should 
 prove inevitable. 
 
 In biology, the idea with which we are primarily con- 
 cerned is, not that of cause, as in physics, but that of end. 
 It is essential for progress in accurate interpretation to dis- 
 tinguish these two clearly. They belong to different orders 
 in thought, and much confusion has resulted from failure 
 to distinguish their respective characters. 
 
 Cause is a very indefinite expression. Externality to 
 the effect is of its essence, but its meaning is relative in all 
 10 
 
126 RELATIVITY IN EXPERIENCE GENERALLY 
 
 cases to the subject-matter. For the housemaid the cause 
 of the fire is the match she lights and applies. For the 
 physicist the cause of the fire is the conversion of potential 
 into kinetic energy, through the combination of carbon 
 atoms with those of oxygen and the formation of oxides 
 in the shape of gases which become progressively oxidised. 
 For the judge who is trying a case of arson it is the wicked 
 action of the prisoner in the dock. In each case there is a 
 different field of inquiry, determined from a different stand- 
 point. But no such field is even approximately exhaustive. 
 The complete cause, if it could be found, would extend to 
 the entire ground of the phenomenon that had to be 
 explained, and this ground would reach, not only to the 
 whole of the world, but to the entirety of the universe. 
 More than this ; if the ground could be completely stated 
 it would be indistinguishable from the effect itself, including, 
 as it would do, the whole of the conditions of existence. 
 Thus we see that when we speak of the cause of an event 
 we are only picking out what is relevant to the standpoint 
 of a special inquiry, and is determined in its scope by the 
 particular concept which our purpose makes us have in 
 view. The physicist who investigates the abstraction 
 called physical nature excludes from his attention many 
 forms of activity which others observe and which belong 
 to a different domain. 
 
 The end that for the biologist determines the activity 
 of the living organism is a phenomenon of an order of which 
 the special methods of the physicist can take no account. 
 This kind of phenomenon also can only be reached through 
 adequate concepts, but the concepts belong to a different 
 order of thought. In observing ends as guiding the 
 behaviour of the merely living organism, we have not as 
 yet to do with conscious purpose, itself belonging to quite 
 a different order, that which is mental and not merely 
 biological. The end is not the less quite different from 
 a cause. Every event which we pick out and name as a 
 cause we pick out and name as one conceived to be external 
 to the effect which follows on it. If we did not do so we 
 should be unable to draw any distinction at all as physicists. 
 We are dealing with what is akin to the externality to each 
 other of the symbols with which the reflection of the mathe- 
 matician concerns itself. But in the case of ends this is 
 otherwise. The end is immediately present. It operates 
 
CHARACTER OF ENDS 127 
 
 ab intra rather than ab extra. In this respect it is more 
 akin to consciously purposive than to causal action. The 
 parts of the living whole behave more like the citizens of 
 a state than like the molecules of a substance. The 
 organism lives by continuing to realise an end even through 
 progressive and complete alteration in constantly changing 
 material. It takes in from its environment, and gives 
 out to it in a fashion in which continuity is unbroken, and 
 in which its form is modified by the fulfilment, not of some 
 external law, but of a law which it appears to impose on 
 itself. Its change of form takes place in accordance with 
 characteristics which it inherits, and which cannot be 
 adequately expressed in mathematical or physical terms, 
 and its whole life is one which is self-determined in a develop- 
 ment or behaviour taking place in the interests of the 
 species to which it belongs, and to subserve the ends for 
 which it comes into existence and, after it has run its 
 course, dies. It is only in terms of life itself that life can 
 be expressed, and these terms lie outside the words which 
 the physicist has to employ. Of course physical and 
 chemical conceptions have great value in the observation 
 of the organism. They are needed in order to interpret 
 certain aspects of the taking in and giving out of its energy, 
 aspects which it presents in common with the other objects 
 of external nature. But such aspects are never adequate 
 to the full reality. They are not more than abstractions, 
 under which that reality can be properly regarded only 
 if it is remembered that in them no complete or even 
 sufficient account of life is ever given. An end operates 
 quite differently from a cause. Its activity is a present 
 activity, behaviour and not causation. Our knowledge 
 about it is determined by an entirely different set of 
 conceptions. 
 
 But just as relativity is the characteristic of the concep- 
 tions of the physicist, so is relativity characteristic of those 
 of the biologist. When we pass to the order of phenomena 
 that are mental, such as those of the animal that consciously 
 reflects and carries out a defined purpose, we have something 
 before us that is of an order in thought different both in 
 logic and in fact. In the organism the end is never realised 
 perfectly. The contingency that is so prominent a feature 
 of nature seems to contend with it. Even in the living 
 human being disease and physical feebleness interfere 
 
128 RELATIVITY IN EXPERIENCE GENERALLY 
 
 with his life. They impede the lowly and the great 
 alike : 
 
 " What hand and brain went ever paired, 
 What heart at once conceived and dared." 
 
 But not the less the distinctive quality of mind is to be free 
 and self- determining. To this subject we shall have to 
 return later on, when we consider how mind expresses itself 
 in external form. For the moment it is enough to say that 
 thought as such is not only incapable of restraint save by 
 itself, but is untrammelled by the physical limits which 
 confine the organism in sensation. It is of the nature of 
 mind that the entirety should be implicitly present in 
 every detail of its activity. The whole is in the part and 
 the part in the whole, in a fashion which has nothing quite 
 resembling it in the phenomena that belong to the domain 
 of biology. Every thought, however trivial, really implies 
 the whole of our mental content. 
 
 In what sense mind is to be treated as relative in know- 
 ledge we shall see in time. For the present I will only say 
 that knowledge discloses itself as of degrees and at levels 
 which are determined by the character of the concepts it 
 employs. But these degrees and levels imply each other. 
 They are not distinct entities apart. They are all of them 
 required for the interpretation of the full character of reality. 
 To them one may apply an observation which Professor 
 Eddington makes at p. 82 of his book about nature : 
 
 " We have neither the vocabulary nor the imagination 
 for a description of absolute properties as such. All 
 physical knowledge is relative to space and time partitions ; 
 and to gain an understanding of the absolute it is neces- 
 sary to approach it through the relative. The absolute 
 may be defined as a relative which is always the same, no 
 matter what it is relative to. Although we think of 
 it as self- existing, we cannot give it a place in our know- 
 ledge without setting up some dummy to relate it to." 
 
 In the same fashion, if we wish to get at the ultimate 
 character of the knowledge that is foundational of reality, 
 we must take account of all the degrees and levels at which 
 it appears and interpret them according to their places in 
 the entirety. 
 
RELATIVITY IN CONCEPTION 129 
 
 We may now turn to the general field of knowledge in 
 order to see whether it accords with the principle of 
 relativity to which an extended meaning is thus given. 
 In later chapters we shall have to approach the subject 
 in more detail. For the present it will be enough if we 
 find that the characteristics of our experience are such as 
 to require investigation from the point of view just 
 indicated in outline. 
 
 It is to be regretted that the title " theory of relativity " 
 was ever appropriated to the extent it has been for Ein- 
 stein's doctrine, just as if it belonged to that doctrine in 
 a special way. What he is concerned with is relativity 
 in measurement in space and time only, and relativity 
 extends to other forms of knowledge as much as to that 
 merely concerned with quantitative order. The different 
 orders in experience appear to imply, as determining 
 their meanings, conceptions of characters logically diverse, 
 like those of mechanism, of life, of instinct, and of con- 
 scious intelligence. The principle of relativity applies to 
 all standpoints determined by conceptions appropriate 
 indeed to particular orders of knowledge, but thereby of a 
 limiting character. It seems therefore accurate to regard 
 quantitative relativity as only a special illustration of a 
 wider principle. 
 
 I thought it well to begin with the Einstein theory in 
 its general features, because that theory reminds us admir- 
 ably of the profound extent to which we may all of us be 
 shown to have submitted unconsciously to the rule of 
 what is only relatively true. It may well be likely, even 
 if Einstein is right, that we shall continue for a long time 
 to talk about weight and gravitation influenced by old 
 conventionalities. It may happen that the man in the 
 street will hardly cease to resent the notion that when his 
 umbrella falls from his hand into the mud, what has in 
 truth happened is such that he and the pavement may 
 be treated as moving with accelerating energy in an 
 upward direction, while the umbrella, having no acceler- 
 ating push communicated to it, remains unaccelerated 
 until the moving pavement hits it. He may stick firmly 
 to his familiar co-ordinates and system of reference. But 
 science cannot stand still to listen to his remonstrances, 
 and for physics it is possible that a time may arrive when 
 even the good old name gravitation will not be discover- 
 
130 RELATIVITY IN EXPERIENCE GENERALLY 
 
 able in any respectable textbook. Science has been able 
 to place to its credit in the past revolutionary victories 
 not less confusing. After all Galileo and Einstein have 
 been the authors of commotions nearly equally impres- 
 sive, and now every child at school thinks easily in 
 Galilean co-ordinates in a fashion which would have 
 confounded even the learned of an earlier and Ptolemaic 
 outlook. 
 
 All this illustrates once more how closely mathematics, 
 physical science, and the inquiry into the ultimate char- 
 acter of reality which is called metaphysics, are related 
 to each other. Much of recent progress in knowledge has 
 consisted in the bringing to light and elimination of un- 
 conscious assumptions, and this progress in determining 
 the true character of reality has required, as indispensable 
 to it, the ascertainment of the limits of the various forms 
 of that knowledge which is ultimately one and indivisible. 
 Capacity for imaginative range counts for much ; and to 
 art and to poetry science owes a great deal for their stimu- 
 lative effect on this capacity. It is under a debt of grati- 
 tude to the Renaissance, and without such visualising 
 minds as that of a Leonardo da Vinci it might not have 
 stood to-day where it does. But if science owes something 
 to art, it owes not less to the investigations of great meta- 
 physicians like Leibnitz, Berkeley, and Kant. 1 For it is 
 men such as these who have done most to initiate the 
 process of bringing to light the unconscious assumptions 
 which have deflected even careful observation. Thus 
 to-day it is largely due to the influence of idealism in 
 metaphysics that biologists are breaking away from the 
 dogmas of an exclusively mechanical standpoint, and are 
 boldly claiming to interpret and express life in terms of 
 conceptions that belong to the order of life alone. We 
 have analogies to this process in art and in religion. The 
 truth of their ideas depends for the mind that is concerned 
 with them on what belongs to orders or levels in reflection 
 different from those which dominate in science. Faith 
 may well be the substance of things which science cannot 
 see, if its implicit categories are categories really belonging 
 
 1 On the work of exploring the history of the contributions of philosophy 
 to the foundations of science as affected by relativity, it would be super- 
 fluous for me to enter. For this work has been excellently accomplished 
 by Professor Wildon Carr in the acute essay on " The Philosophical Principle 
 of Relativity," recently published by him. 
 
DIFFERENT ORDERS IN KNOWLEDGE 131 
 
 to other orders in knowledge and reality. The principle 
 of relativity applies here also, but even more sweepingly. 
 The demonstration of the importance of the principle 
 which the mathematicians and physicists of to-day are 
 offering is helpful, but it covers only a fragment of the 
 ground. Fully operative, the principle teaches us that 
 observer and observed always and everywhere stand in 
 relations which are inseparable in logic as they are in 
 fact. The conception and the conceived are alike embraced 
 within a greater and foundational actuality. Behind 
 knowledge we cannot penetrate in our search for reality. 
 But knowledge is not always of the same kind. There 
 are everywhere in it what are analogous to the differing 
 frames of reference of the physicist. The degrees or 
 stages in knowledge generally, as distinguished from that 
 of measurement, are even less reducible to each other's 
 terms than these " frames," for every form of the latter 
 can be expressed in the terms of a calculus. But life 
 cannot, as we shall see, be expressed in terms of mechanism, 
 or intelligence in terms of life. The orders in thought are 
 of logically different kinds, and they have no relation 
 analogous to equivalence in quantitative order. 
 
 The importance of beginning the consideration of the 
 whole subject with the principle of the relativity of 
 measurement lay in this, that in mathematical physics 
 we have a demonstration that is convincing by its justifi- 
 cation from the use of external standards. There we are 
 dealing with what we can see or touch, to the extent that 
 we start in every case from results given by the clock or 
 the balance and the measuring rod, and in the end return 
 to them as our tests. The co-ordinates of our systems of 
 reference depend on what presents itself as direct experi- 
 ence of relaions in space and time. 
 
 But in the case of knowledge in other forms the primary 
 reference is to standards of a wholly different order. The 
 reference in our experience of the living organism is to a 
 whole that has no existence outside of or apart from the 
 members in which it realises itself, and in so realising 
 itself controls them. They have no existence as living 
 members excepting in and through it. Means and end do 
 not fall asunder ; there is no feature resembling action at 
 a distance, nor is that whole in the conservation of which 
 life consists any cause distinguishable as an event apart 
 
132 RELATIVITY IN EXPERIENCE GENERALLY 
 
 in space or time from the results of its self-conservation 
 in its organs. To be organic imports the fulfilment of an 
 end. That end is in mere life no conscious purpose. It is 
 a final and self-contained form of reality. But it is that 
 in the light of which the living organism is recognised as 
 being such, and is interpreted. In this significance it 
 belongs to reality, and without it such reality would not 
 be. Mind finds meaning for itself in it in a form and at 
 a level which is just thus describable and only so describ- 
 able. For it is a form which is ultimate. It belongs to 
 the actual and is not resoluble into the conceptions which 
 lie at the foundation of less concrete forms of our experi- 
 ence. Like the co-ordinates of the physicist it is a con- 
 ception of reflection, and a conception that is foundational, 
 but only to what is known through it and as disclosing it 
 in actual existence. 
 
 In this respect there is a real analogy between the system 
 of reference of the physicist and that of the biologist. But 
 the reference of the latter is not to an external standard, 
 as in the case of the former, although the reference is in 
 both cases conceptual. The difference is that the con- 
 ceptions belong to different stages in the forms in which 
 mind recognises its own character in its object. 
 
 Mind, in the fullest meaning, the meaning in which it 
 is foundational to reality, thus discloses irself at a variety 
 of levels which we shall have to consider as we proceed. 
 It certainly imports more than can be expressed in the 
 terms of any set of conceptions appropriate to only one 
 of these levels. It is that in terms of which all forms of 
 reality can be expressed, but which itself can be expressed 
 in no terms beyond itself. Within its entirety there are 
 various conceptual forms, which show themselves as 
 forms of general application. As such they are disclosed, 
 like the space and time systems of Einstein, as belonging 
 to the facts of reality and of knowledge alike. They repre- 
 sent levels or degrees in knowledge which have relations 
 to each other, but they are not reducible to each other. 
 For they are ultimate, alike in conception and as expressed 
 in concrete and actual facts that are not facts apart from 
 them. 
 
 Let us for a moment again approach the question of 
 what is meant by truth. It is plain that it may involve 
 more than any merely fragmentary view of the actual. 
 
TRUTH IN BIOLOGY 133 
 
 In all its forms knowledge is ever seeking to complete 
 itself, and it refuses to submit to stop short of the ideal 
 which its nature imposes on it in each of these forms alike. 
 Truth must imply the whole and nothing short of the whole, 
 whether the whole be actually and fully attainable by the 
 human mind or not. 
 
 This, as we saw, has proved to be the case in physical 
 science. The doctrine of relativity made the ideal apparent 
 in a fashion in which it was not before apparent. We are 
 now conscious that the co-ordinates by which we usually 
 measure are always relative and never absolute. The 
 calculations of the astronomer have to take account of 
 more factors than used to be dreamed of. So it is in 
 pure mathematics with number, which is now found to 
 mean more than merely what can be counted. So with 
 series, which depends to-day, not on definite quantity, 
 but on logical order in externality. The old concepts 
 current in science are everywhere turning out to fall 
 short in the interpretation of the actual, and we begin to 
 recognise that what we have been treating as actually 
 ascertained facts were only our working hypotheses, 
 fashioned sufficiently for the immediate purpose, but 
 wholly inadequate to the full presentation of complete 
 truth. Every particular form of knowledge is relative, 
 and is destined in the end to recognise the boundaries of 
 its own apparent order, and to demand that we should pass 
 over to conceptions of a new character. 
 
 What is impressive, even in the cases of mathematics 
 and the physical sciences, both of which are concerned with 
 externality and quantity, is still more strikingly illustrated 
 when we turn to the sciences of life, such as animal 
 physiology, botany, and biology generally. Here the 
 methods of exact measurement, brought forward for 
 application from the regions of physics and chemistry, 
 are no doubt of a utility which is indispensable. For we 
 are still dealing with phenomena that belong to an external 
 world, in the sense that they possess relations which 
 require such methods for their investigation. But these 
 methods are not the only methods we require in this 
 region of phenomena, nor are they by themselves adequate. 
 The facts with which we are concerned appear to belong 
 to an order different in kind from that of the conceptions 
 of physics and of chemistry, alike as regards our knowledge 
 
134 RELATIVITY IN EXPERIENCE GENERALLY 
 
 and as regards reality. It is only by abstraction, by 
 shutting out from attention certain aspects of what we 
 observe, that we can employ these conceptions. Their 
 employment is necessary, but it does not give us more 
 than relative and partial truth. 
 
 Thus we find that if we are to describe intelligibly the 
 facts of heredity, of the transmission of modes of behaviour, 
 and of the development and growth through a definite 
 course of life of an organism, from the union of a sper- 
 matozoon with an ovum in order to form a new and pro- 
 gressively independent organism, we must employ other 
 terms than those expressive of causes acting ab extra on 
 materials external to them. We pass naturally, if we 
 observe without distorted attention, to the notion of life 
 as the self-realisation of what we may call an end as dis- 
 tinguished from an external cause, an end which is a mould- 
 ing influence immediately present and not acting at a 
 distance ; an end which conserves itself and remains 
 continuous and identical notwithstanding its constant 
 change of the material in which it expresses itself. The 
 human organism is always parting with its carbon, its 
 oxygen, and its other chemical constituents. It is con- 
 tinuously taking in fresh substance from which to derive 
 supplies of energy, and then setting itself to eliminate 
 the waste products when their function has been fulfilled. 
 But it behaves as a living whole, self-conserving throughout 
 metabolism and change of material, and it pursues a 
 definite course, first of growth and then of decay, from 
 its conception, through its birth, to its maturity and final 
 death. The individual inherits and maintains the dis- 
 tinctive characteristics of the species, and when it has 
 fulfilled the function of bringing into life through birth 
 descendants to whom it transmits its own capacities and 
 qualities, it passes away in the interests of a larger whole, 
 that species whose own ends and whose own continuance 
 it subserves. During life it conducts itself, not like a 
 machine, but with vastly greater delicacy. The work 
 done by the blood corpuscles in taking up just the neces- 
 sary oxygen and no more ; by the kidney in selecting out 
 and secreting injurious substances which it gets rid of in 
 the urine ; by the tissues in the metabolism by which 
 carbohydrates are converted into glycogen ; these and 
 countless other phases in the activities of the living 
 
LIFE 135 
 
 organisms are no mere illustrations of mechanical or 
 external causation. They are more nearly analogous to 
 what arises from the actuating spirit of a battalion which 
 has been highly trained, where the men combine almost 
 instinctively in carrying out the common purpose, ordered 
 by a word of command and responded to as only a collec- 
 tion can respond which is no mere collection of individuals, 
 inasmuch as it forms a practised and cohesive social unit. 
 
 Yet the organism that is merely living does not really 
 act, as the battalion does, purposively or even instinctively. 
 It acts only quasi-purposively. What controls it is not 
 conscious purpose, reflectively selected, but what belongs 
 to an order that is more than mechanical but is short of 
 being intellectual. When we contemplate the living 
 world we are contemplating it at the level of end as dis- 
 tinguished from causes on the one hand and from conscious 
 purposes on the other, and our conceptions are those of a 
 definite and special order. 
 
 There are, of course, many features by which end is 
 distinguished from purpose properly so called. The mere 
 end is not the less actual because it is operative wholly 
 apart from consciousness. It selects, but its selective 
 activity is not free for it, and does not depend on 
 knowledge. It acts as though it discriminated, but its 
 discrimination is merely analogous and no more than 
 analogous to choice. The kidneys keep constant the purity 
 of the blood from noxious substances with the utmost 
 exactness in adaptation to circumstances, and with a 
 precision and delicacy that suggest self-directing intelli- 
 gence in selection, more than they suggest merely chemical 
 processes ; but they really effect this regulation because, 
 although they do not carry out any conscious purpose, 
 they are living members of an organism whose end and 
 whose existence in the conservation of that end the kidneys 
 live in continuously subserving. For apart from their 
 place in this whole they do not continue to live. They 
 have a special and definite place to fill in a community 
 of organs, and excepting as filling this place they are not 
 kidneys. It is in the particular end which they fulfil that 
 their life and identity consist, and this end it is that 
 requires constant change in their substance. 
 
 Now the conception of end, as we see it embodied in life, 
 is, as I have observed, sui generis. Reduce it to mechan- 
 
186 RELATIVITY IN EXPERIENCE GENERALLY 
 
 ism, or exhibit it as intelligent choice, we cannot. Life 
 belongs to an order of phenomena which can be observed, 
 interpreted, and expressed only in terms of the conceptions 
 of their own order, that of life. This is where the principle 
 of relativity comes in. The actual, where we find it alive, 
 belongs to a level just as truly real as that of the machine. 
 The living organism owes what it is, not to the control of 
 mechanical causes operating and moulding it from without, 
 but to the quasi-purposes of which it is the embodiment, 
 and which are everywhere and at all times present in its 
 life. Action at a distance in such circumstances presents 
 no problem, for the control is inherent and has its place 
 as belonging to the present character of existence. The 
 organism seems as though its members were fulfilling an 
 immediate end, which is not the less now actual and 
 immediate in influence merely because its fulfilment may 
 require a course of time in which to accomplish its full 
 development. 
 
 When we turn to the higher kinds of organism which 
 embody more than life, inasmuch as they exhibit con- 
 sciously intelligent selection and freedom of choice, we are 
 face to face in our object- world with a yet more concrete 
 order of reality, that which belongs to mind as it confronts 
 our own minds in the world before us. The intelligent 
 animal, the horse, the dog, the human being, are all, at 
 their own stages, the manifestation of mind expressed and 
 consciously directing itself in the action of an organism 
 which is thus more than a merely living organism. We 
 have passed beyond the stage of mere ends in process of 
 accomplishment to one in which differences in level of a 
 new order become apparent. The order is again, in logic 
 and in quality, a new and distinct one. The intelligent 
 organism may in certain aspects be treated as a machine, 
 but it has other aspects certainly not less actual in which 
 it is more than a mere machine. Even when we describe 
 it as alive, we have to describe it as much more than 
 alive. For as actual it embodies mind, and it therefore 
 not only controls but selects in accordance with purposes 
 exhibiting values of varying character, with qualities that 
 belong to self-conscious intelligence alone. 
 
 A new and large problem about the nature of reality 
 thus confronts us. How are we to explain the fact that 
 the actual exhibits itself in orders which are irreducible 
 
PURPOSE AND INTELLIGENCE 137 
 
 to each other ? This fact seems to be staring us in the 
 face, and recent progress in scientific research appears to 
 be intensifying its definiteness and importance. The old 
 idea that somehow science was likely to end by exhibiting 
 all difference as merely quantitative difference is growing 
 remote. The principle of relativity in the orders of exist- 
 ence is fast acquiring a new and largely extended signifi- 
 cance, going beyond what relates merely to order in 
 quantity and the concepts of that order. 
 
 It seems hopeless to try to build up the explanation 
 from below. Morality cannot be reduced to mathematics, 
 and no more can life be resolved into mechanism, or reason 
 into mere instinct. It is safer to accept what appears to 
 be unmistakable fact of observation, and, if light is to be 
 cast upon it, to seek that light from what is nearer to 
 actuality, as being more complete in the way it lends 
 itself to explanation, rather than from what obtrudes its 
 fragmentary character. 
 
 But how is this to be justified ? Some of the New 
 Realists, well aware of the difficulties, have suggested an 
 answer to the question. What distinguishes their position 
 from that of the older forms of realism is that they project 
 universals into the non-mental world. Later on it will be 
 necessary to consider how they do this. At present it is 
 enough to refer to the fact that they do so. They treat 
 the non-mental world which for them confronts the mind 
 as something from which the latter is receptive, and 
 receptive, not merely of what is in the nature of the 
 particular, but also of universals and relations that find 
 their meaning through our reflections, but are not the 
 less treated by them as truly there. These are regarded 
 as independent and non-mental objects, and yet as of a 
 general character in relation to applicability. But if this 
 be so, what remains of the mind that perceives ? It 
 becomes like a substance on which impressions are causally 
 effected by other substances outside it in time and space. 
 Only among the causes which thus produce consciousness 
 and perception seem to be the very universals we have 
 hitherto taken to have significance possible only as 
 belonging to the nature of mind itself, and not of exter- 
 nality. Physical causes are so extended as to include 
 entities akin to Ideas as Plato conceived them. 
 
 But why should we treat the phenomena of mind as 
 
138 RELATIVITY IN EXPERIENCE GENERALLY 
 
 the effects of a cause ? If it be claimed that we come to 
 such a conclusion inasmuch as it is the only one adapted 
 to scientific methods of treatment, the answer is that this 
 is due to an assumption which has long been complained 
 of, and which modern scientific methods do not entail. 
 The principle, even merely physical, of relativity appears, 
 indeed, to impel us towards a different view. There is 
 for it no bifurcation, and no fixed or rigid framework, such 
 as the Newtonians dreamed of. There is rather a universe 
 which is what it is for us only in virtue of variety in inter- 
 pretation. Its reality and its meaning are not separable. 
 General conceptions in observation come in everywhere. 
 It is mind and the significances which it finds that make 
 that universe what we take it to be, and the relations of 
 the objects within it are not fixed or independent of these 
 objects, but are the results of our interpretations. The 
 doctrine of relations independent of and external to what 
 they relate seems thus to fall into difficulties. 
 
 At this point I wish to guard against misapprehension. 
 The equations to which I have earlier referred, and the 
 relativity which arises from them, are not for the new 
 school of physicists merely individual equations. They 
 are inherent in all experience, and are conditions that 
 lie at its foundation. I can best remind the reader of 
 this by referring him to Kant's teaching in his Critique of 
 Pure Reason, although what he there said may prove only 
 a step towards an adequate explanation of the true rela- 
 tion of knowledge to the universe. 
 
 What Kant did was to insist that experience was not 
 reality apart from its signification. He distinguished 
 between the particular self, the self that appears only as 
 a particular object in experience in time, and the foun- 
 dational activity in knowledge which made even this 
 experience possible. Scrutinising such experience he said 
 that it was intelligible only on the footing of taking 
 knowledge as being more than merely individual, or as an 
 instrument used by the individual. The object- world 
 within which the individual himself emerged was intelli- 
 gible in its reality only if the individual knew through the 
 expression in him of what Kant called the " synthetic 
 unity of apperception," operating in various modes of 
 activity called categories, and schematising its activity in 
 forms of space and time which were imposed on the 
 
KANT'S TEACHING 139 
 
 object- world as the conditions through which alone it 
 could arise. In this sense they were transcendental to 
 experience, in so far as they stood for limiting conditions, 
 but not transcendent in the sense of enabling us to get 
 beyond it. The activity of mind was thus no activity 
 which could be regarded as an instrument wielded by 
 the individual whom we know only empirically as an 
 object in knowledge. For it was only through such 
 activity that even he was there as object. 
 
 So with the new school of physicists relativity belongs 
 to the very nature of the object in knowledge, and does 
 not lie in any mere employment of knowledge by a par- 
 ticular individual. No doubt all knowledge is in a sense 
 relative. As individuals we are deflected everywhere by 
 what distinguishes us as individuals. Our personal habits 
 of mind and even of body, our social purposes, the limita- 
 tions of our individual faculties of sense-perception, our 
 want of mental training, these and other idiosyncrasies 
 all hamper us in analogous ways, and deflect us from 
 attention to aspects of what is real, but does not serve 
 our immediate purposes. We may, however, suffer in 
 common from such defects without their belonging to the 
 conditions of knowledge itself. Theory and practice, 
 reflection and volition, are closely related in the fashioning 
 of individual experience. But these personal aspects of 
 relativity are not what either Einstein or Kant has had 
 in view. What they have been concerned with are the 
 conditions of experience in general, and not merely per- 
 sonal conventionalities. If Einstein's foundational con- 
 ceptions of end-points and their relations, and Kant's 
 description of the transcendental character of knowledge 
 in general, are open to the comment that even to these 
 the principle of relativity extends, it is in a deeper sense 
 than that in which we pronounce the outlook of the indi- 
 vidual to be relative to his individual peculiarities. 
 
 How the great and fundamental fact of knowledge is to 
 be accounted for is a question that is constantly being 
 raised. But it is inherently an irrational question, for 
 the fact of knowledge is presupposed as ultimate in what- 
 ever shape the question is put. When we raise points 
 about how knowledge is put together we are raising points 
 about a foundation which our own very questions presup- 
 pose for their possibility. We are of course entitled to 
 
140 RELATIVITY IN EXPERIENCE GENERALLY 
 
 inquire into the growth of the faculties in the individual, 
 and the genesis of its psychological forms. This is part 
 of our study of nature as taken in abstraction. But 
 psychological knowledge is always relative. It is the 
 outcome of the employment of a particular standpoint, 
 and of a set of conceptions which can present what is 
 observed only as it appears as it exists from that stand- 
 point. 
 
 This is true of our knowledge of the particular self that 
 knows, looked on at arm's length, as an object in the 
 world of experience and with a history there. But it is 
 equally true of our knowledge generally. Even the point- 
 events of Einstein, with their intervals, and the appar- 
 ently absolute equations, depending on co-variance for 
 co-ordinates of every curvature, do not present them- 
 selves as necessarily final. And going more widely afield 
 than Einstein has done with his investigation of the 
 conceptions under which we measure, we come to the 
 partial nature of those other conceptions through which 
 we determine the orders of reality at levels of a wholly 
 different kind. There too the truth we reach is not the 
 whole, for beyond it lies an entirety of knowledge in 
 which each order with its own forms has its place, but 
 no more than its place. To this topic we shall have to 
 revert later on. Meantime it is enough to remark that 
 relativity seems to prevail everywhere. That is because 
 we are human and finite, and cannot visualise the entirety, 
 or even take it in abstractly excepting by making abstract 
 distinctions in our reflection. But that entirety remains 
 as the ideal standard for our thought. How art and 
 religion bring us apparently face to face with it we shall 
 see. But for thought with its might, not less wonderful 
 because we think only in general conceptions, the ideal 
 completion is not the less present notwithstanding that it 
 seems to be always beyond. We gain and keep our 
 freedom and our science in the constant struggle to be 
 true to the principle which it imposes on us, finite as we are. 
 
 It is hardly surprising that there should be a point of 
 approach which leaves the objective universe to be regarded 
 as what exists independently of the particular perceiving 
 individual, and yet admits of the application of the 
 principle of relativity in its widest form. It has been 
 customary to look on knowledge as an instrument which 
 
KNOWLEDGE 141 
 
 the mind makes use of in apprehension. But is there not 
 a wider view of knowledge, in which it is foundational of 
 both apprehension and what is apprehended ? From such 
 a standpoint the ultimate signification of reality would be 
 inclusion of its " concrete universals " within a whole 
 outside of which there lay no meaning for the word exist- 
 ence. The distinction made between subject and object 
 would import, not a relation between two independent 
 entities, but a distinction made by knowledge itself within 
 its own field. Knowledge signifies, when so regarded, 
 not a special form of individual activity, the subject of a 
 particular science of epistemology, but the ultimate and 
 final fact within which fall object and subject alike. 
 Mentalism fails because it hypostatises one aspect within 
 the entirety of this fact ; realism, because it exalts into an 
 independent existence another aspect. Neither has any 
 intelligible significance apart from the other. They are 
 correlatives, the necessary outcome of the essential char- 
 acter of mind, always active and never inert substance. 
 Substance, indeed, can itself be no more than a particular 
 category which intelligence employs in bestowing on part 
 of the field of its objects a meaning that is of the essence 
 of their reality. The difference between idealism and 
 realism thus disappears in the larger outlook that embraces 
 the difference itself. 
 
 The point will of course be made that knowledge is always 
 for us the knowledge of a finite individual. No doubt it 
 is, but it is equally true that it is at the same time always 
 more than this. By its very nature such knowledge tends 
 to bring itself at every turn within a larger entirety, and 
 it is only in so far as it does so that his knowledge is possible 
 for the finite individual. If its range appears narrow, it 
 is not because knowledge is narrow in its nature, but because 
 of the hindrances due to the organic form in which 
 human experience finds expression. The knowledge of 
 such a human being conditioned by his organic conditions 
 we call his experience, and it is plain that what is thus 
 described, however much it may point beyond itself, is a 
 finite form of knowledge. What is obvious is that there is 
 nothing in any particular experience, and equally nothing 
 conceived as lying beyond it, that has a meaning excepting 
 in terms of knowledge. And if existence be only one of 
 these meanings, then to be known in some form is the only 
 11 
 
142 RELATIVITY IN EXPERIENCE GENERALLY 
 
 way of being real. To be known, I repeat, not as if through 
 a window, by a mind that is merely organically conditioned, 
 but as by mind that signifies the system to which the finite 
 intelligence and its object- world alike belong. 
 
 Now the connection of this view of knowledge and reality 
 with the doctrine of orders or degrees on which I have 
 already touched is obvious. It is only a world embodying 
 the principle of relativity, in the form which the doctrine 
 entails, that can be said to exhibit the character of mind, 
 with its exclusion of disconnected fragments and relations. 
 The doctrine of degrees negatives the attribution of this 
 fragmentary nature to the universe, and exhibits it as 
 embodying in a self-completing entirety a plurality of 
 orders in existence as well as in knowledge of that existence. 
 All that is actual discloses a variety of aspects. The living 
 organism exists, in ways in which it may legitimately be 
 so regarded, as a system of matter and energy conforming 
 to physical and chemical conditions. It exists so if abstrac- 
 tion from its other and dominant phases is made under 
 the guidance of conceptions of a mechanistic order. Exces- 
 sive concentration of attention in applying such concep- 
 tions gives rise to the abstract view called materialism. 
 But materialism furnishes no account of the facts of life 
 or of consciousness. These belong to other orders, which 
 what lives and knows presents both in reality and for 
 adequate knowledge. It is only in terms of conceptions 
 belonging to these other orders that what is living and 
 conscious can even be described. 
 
 Still, it is true that for the advancement of knowledge 
 of other kinds about the living organism the abstractions 
 of physics and chemistry are of high and indispensable 
 value. They serve the biologist as mathematics serves 
 the physicist. The more abstract the conception, the more 
 completely are eliminated those details that are for the 
 purpose of the moment irrelevant. It is by this kind of 
 concentration, with its consequential exclusions of other 
 aspects, that exactness in reasoning and measurement is 
 made possible for us who cannot do everything all at once. 
 And so far as the process extends it is legitimate, because 
 the actual always presents more than one aspect. But 
 the whole truth, or even adequate truth, it never gives. 
 The principle of relativity, in a wider meaning than that 
 which is usually attached to it, applies throughout experi- 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF DEGREES 143 
 
 ence. Not that every object presents for what we call 
 direct apprehension every possible aspect. A piece of 
 iron does not live. It has an actuality that appears to be 
 purely physical and wholly independent of our knowledge 
 about it. And yet this is only a rough working view, 
 which suffices indeed for practice, but not for science. 
 The ultimate atoms of iron of which it is composed we 
 cannot reach, nor, if we could, would they have for science 
 anything approaching to finality. The question would 
 then arise how they were related to what appears to lie 
 beyond in the structure of reality, to the ideal electrons 
 through the energy of which in the magnetic field we 
 approach to the constitution of matter. Thus our piece 
 of iron turns out to be, as it presents itself in what we call 
 the actual world, a phenomenon belonging to knowledge 
 indeed, but to knowledge only at a stage in the complete 
 self-relation of its phases. 
 
 Taken from yet another point of view the relativity of 
 our experience of the iron becomes no less apparent. Its 
 colour, its weight, its taste, its size, its general appearance 
 might present themselves quite differently to beings of 
 another kind, with senses other than ours, or in a different 
 world where the limits of visibility in space and time were 
 different. Relativity comes in here also. Knowledge is 
 indeed taken to be of the actual, but then the actual turns 
 out to be profoundly dependent on the character of know- 
 ledge itself. Pragmatism, the doctrine that the view is 
 true which works, inasmuch as it harmonises with the con- 
 text of experience, is often put forward in extreme and 
 exaggerated forms. Yet it has some justification. For it 
 is only when we take as our final standard an ideal that 
 is in itself never completely attainable by us, the ideal of 
 knowledge in its entirety, that we have as against pragma- 
 tism a tenable conception of a final standard of truth. 
 
 Thus knowledge and reality again prove to be distinguish- 
 able only by abstraction made for practical purposes. 
 They are not separable, in the fashion that is commonly 
 imagined, for scientific knowledge in its fulness, and the 
 case of the nature of iron is just an illustration of a wider 
 form of that principle of relativity of which the doctrine 
 which Einstein has made famous is an illustration of 
 another and different kind. 
 
 If this be so the question which again arises is in what 
 
144 RELATIVITY IN EXPERIENCE GENERALLY 
 
 truth consists. As has been already pointed out, the 
 agreement of an idea with something external and inde- 
 pendent of it is too limited as a standard to cover all the 
 facts. The essence of truth seems to lie rather in the 
 adequacy to its object of the idea in range of quality as 
 much as of quantity. Since everything that is appears to 
 stand in relation to all else that is, a perfect idea would have 
 to comprehend the entire universe. Now no such idea is 
 possible for the human mind, the mind that is conditioned 
 in that it has to work through senses and a brain. Our 
 standard of truth as human beings must therefore fall short 
 of this ideal, and be just a working instrument with the 
 aid of which we seek to travel towards the interpretation 
 that is complete. But the old notion of apprehension and 
 its object alike as of static character has vanished under 
 scrutiny. Knowledge is dynamic. It is an effort to 
 transcend the apparently given. It is always pointing 
 beyond itself. And with the continuous advance towards 
 fuller comprehension the object itself loses its apparently 
 given character. It, too, is dynamic in its nature. That 
 is the underlying principle of relativity in its wider form. 
 Within their own orders in knowledge and reality, and 
 subject to our recognising that it is only with truth belong- 
 ing to these orders that we are dealing, there are methods 
 that are essential appropriate respectively to each form of 
 science. Relations of quantity require the clock, the 
 measuring rod, and the balance for their precise ascertain- 
 ment. Without these instruments science could not 
 progress. But, as we now learn, it is only what in the end 
 turns out to be relative truth that they can give us. When 
 we deal with problems the solution of which transcends 
 everyday experience, such as those of the constancy of the 
 velocity of light, or the relation throughout the universe 
 of gravitation to inertia, we come up against the demon- 
 strated relativity of everyday standards of measurement 
 in even their apparently most exact forms. Mathematics, 
 which can speak in a language more comprehensive than 
 that in which the mere observer describes what he sees, 
 enables us to express the limitations which the subjectivity 
 of the latter forces upon him. But not the less the physi- 
 cist must use the clock, the measuring rod, and the balance, 
 and cannot get on without them. For his purpose is to 
 acquire ideas that fit in with the context of experience, 
 
APPREHENSION AND ITS OBJECT 145 
 
 not only his own but that of other men, and this his 
 measurements enable him to do, because, although the 
 results are limited by the general conditions of observation, 
 these conditions apply to the others around him who have 
 experience analogous to his own. What he has to be 
 careful about is to remember that his and their experience 
 as an entirety contains aspects belonging to differing orders 
 and conceptions, and that what applies to its reality under 
 one head does not apply to its reality under another. The 
 chemist and the poet may be helpful to each other, but very 
 often they may be the reverse of helpful. 
 
 Now this is intelligible if apprehension and its object are 
 regarded, not as independent entities, but as phases separ- 
 able only within the domain of mind and as distinctions 
 made by it within its entirety, an entirety which contains 
 as belonging to itself object not less than subject. This 
 is what is meant by speaking of mind or of knowledge as 
 foundational. Knowledge is in none of its aspects, the 
 most discursive reflection or the barest awareness, a causal 
 process taking place between two independent entities. 
 The object and the subject that knows fall alike within a 
 single system and have reality only in its terms. Outside 
 and apart from it they have no meaning. Facts are not 
 isolated and independent fragments. Whether we look 
 at the scientific phases of the principles of relativity, or at 
 the wider application to the content of experience of the 
 principle as the historian or the moralist applies it, this is 
 apparent. Much of the confusion of thought which has 
 beset philosophical investigation has arisen from the 
 assumption that knowledge is an independently existing 
 instrument to be wielded and applied ab extra. It is 
 not so, even for the physicist. Much less is it so for the 
 historian who, in order to reproduce a past that lives in 
 the present, has always to re-interpret it, and to abstain 
 from trying merely to photograph imagined fragmentary 
 occurrences which are not in their truth fragmentary or 
 self-contained, but are intelligible and actual only in the 
 context and significance which are brought out by the work 
 of intelligence. The truth, here as elsewhere, is always 
 more than it seems at first sight to be. This does not mean 
 that there is not a most vital and genuine distinction 
 between truth and error and between fact and fiction. 
 But it does mean that only by abstraction do we fix our 
 
146 RELATIVITY IN EXPERIENCE GENERALLY 
 
 conceptions of things in forms that do not permit them to 
 pass, in virtue of the dynamic character of that which 
 renders these things what they are, beyond the ideas 
 of the actual that work in practice only because they are 
 adequate at the level which is all that immediate practice 
 requires. The whole truth lies beyond these working 
 conceptions, but only in the light of standards and orders 
 that belong to the higher levels in knowledge to which it 
 points us is it necessary that our working conceptions 
 should be qualified and their relativity insisted on. 
 
 We have here reached a point at which we must no longer 
 dwell on general principles, but have to pursue the investiga- 
 tion in detail. It will be convenient to begin with a scrutiny 
 of what we find in the individual self, and to endeavour to 
 determine the relation of the self to what it perceives. 
 
PART II 
 
 THE METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATION OF 
 RELATIVITY 
 
 147 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE SELF IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 THAT I am aware of a world surrounding me, a world more- 
 over that includes within it myself who am aware of it, 
 is a fact that is obvious and yet extraordinary. So obvious 
 is it that rarely does the significance of this fact cross the 
 threshold of consciousness sufficiently to have attention 
 directed to it. Seldom does the circumstance that I know 
 awaken any question as to what that implies. But none 
 the less, if I do reflect on it, the fact is a strange one. For 
 when I think of myself as looking at the world around 
 me I become aware of myself as a physical organism, a 
 kind of thing that occupies a seat on a chair, but a thing 
 that seems also to have an extraordinary property, that 
 of exercising an activity called knowing. This activity 
 appears, moreover, to have breaks in it. When I shut my 
 eyes I cease to see, and this confirms for me the off-hand 
 impression I form of knowledge as a process taking place 
 within the world. And yet the world has no meaning, 
 except for knowledge itself, and in the terms of that 
 knowledge. 
 
 But at this point difficulties surge up. For when I 
 think of what sits on the chair and opens and shuts its 
 eyes, I observe that it is a living organism with nerves and 
 a brain. And it seems that it is the stimulation of these 
 nerves by influences coming to them from outside, through 
 the eyes and other organs of sense, which causes the sensa- 
 tions that arise in the form of responses made by the brain. 
 It must therefore be out of these responses that I really 
 put together my knowledge of the world outside me, not 
 less than that of the body itself upon which that know- 
 ledge depends. 
 
 However, this explanation only lands me in fresh per- 
 plexities. For my experience assures me that the world 
 
 149 
 
150 THE SELF IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 outside and my body also are there, whether I perceive 
 them or not. I am dependent on that world for my very 
 existence, and I am dependent, at the same time, on my 
 nerves and my brain for the significance of the world on 
 which I am thus dependent. What I perceive must have 
 existence apart from my activity in perceiving, especially 
 if this last be only the responsive activity of the living 
 being that is aware of it. The activity and its object 
 cannot be the same. But, on the other hand, I find myself 
 no nearer an explanation if I take the full plunge, by saying 
 to myself that my response to stimulation when I perceive 
 is only the effect in a causal process in which the environ- 
 ment acts on my nervous system and indirectly on my 
 cerebral hemispheres. For it is just in terms and within 
 the medium of knowledge itself that such causes have even 
 the slightest meaning for me. Now if they had no meaning 
 at all for me that would be as much as to say that they 
 were nothing and were not. I must therefore go back on 
 the steps in my hasty reasoning, and try to find out at what 
 point my difficulties have commenced. 
 
 These difficulties seem to have arisen as soon as I fixed 
 on the notion that my mind was a kind of thing, and that 
 knowledge was a property of this thing. It seemed 
 plausible to think of looking out as it were through a 
 window. But was I right in framing such a notion ? Is 
 my mind really a thing at all ? Is not its nature more akin 
 to a system of continuous interpretation, within which all 
 that is, was, and can be falls, and is not knowledge just 
 such a system, and as such the final fact ? If so, knowledge 
 is quite different from any property of a thing. It is rather 
 in the nature of a medium to which every form of existence 
 must be referred. In particular it does not seem clear 
 that reality can be divorced from meaning. Knowledge 
 appears as if it were no static thing, but actual only as a 
 dynamic process, differing altogether in character from 
 any between outside objects. For it creates its own dis- 
 tinctions within itself, and excepting through it and in 
 its terms there is no intelligible significance to be found 
 for either the self that knows or for the objects to 
 which it is related. Knowledge may thus turn out to be 
 the prius of reality, and, like the Elan of Bergson or the 
 " Will " of Schopenhauer, itself the ultimate reality, cap- 
 able of expression in no terms beyond its own, inasmuch 
 
KNOWLEDGE A FOUNDATIONAL FACT 151 
 
 as creation is meaningless outside its scope. Things and 
 our reflections on them must alike belong to it. If, indeed, 
 the lan or the " Will " is intelligible it can, in this 
 view, be so only as the result of distinctions made within 
 knowledge of some sort, and it must fall within it as its 
 own mere form and not as reality independent of it. It 
 may then appear in the end that it is only by what is called 
 abstraction, by a separation made in reflection for limited 
 ends and standpoints and of a secondary and provisional 
 nature, that knowledge has ever come to seem to be any- 
 thing else than a foundational fact, the ultimately real 
 that can be rendered only in its own terms. If this is to 
 be so we shall have to interpret knowledge in no narrow 
 sense. It will have to extend not only to notions but 
 to feelings, so far as these are really distinguishable forms 
 within it. Knowledge is not an object that is for me, any 
 more than I am merely an object that is for knowledge. 
 No doubt I can look into what I call my mind and represent 
 it as something held out for scrutiny. But in so doing the 
 distinction I have made seems to have distorted it, by 
 leaving out of notice the fundamental fact that its own 
 activity is itself the preliminary condition to this process. 
 A living being that knows seems to belong to an order quite 
 different in kind from that of one that merely lives without 
 knowing. For the first, even though restricted by physical 
 conditions, gives meaning to and has present to it the world 
 within which the second has only a place. 
 
 Perhaps I may be able to make what is thus being forced 
 on me plainer to myself if I try to analyse what is really 
 going on with me at this moment. I am sitting at a table 
 near a window which looks out on a park in London. Before 
 me is a multitude of objects quite different in character. 
 There are the iron railings of the park. In front of them 
 is a roadway, laid out mechanically, but so as to give effect, 
 just as do the railings, to human purposes. The designs 
 have been imposed externally by craftsmen. Along the 
 road there move motors, again fashioned by artificers to 
 embody designs. Then there are horses, which are living, 
 and therefore very different from the motors, although 
 they also draw loads, to which work they have been 
 trained in the service of man. Within the railings there 
 are trees and plants, which are living organisms of one 
 nature, and also birds and dogs, which are living organisms 
 
152 THE SELF IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 of a different nature. The birds as they seek for food, and 
 the dogs as they watch and follow their owners, show 
 something which the vegetable organisms do not show, 
 something that resembles the intelligence of which I am 
 aware in myself. Turning my reflection on to that self, 
 it seems to present many aspects and degrees. My hands 
 and feet, my habits of life, my clothes even, belong to my 
 personality, and seem to be in some sense part of me. And 
 yet I am obviously more than they make up by any process 
 of addition. For I think of myself as " I," and that it is 
 " I " to whom they belong, and what I indicate when I 
 say so is obviously not a thing or even an event. For 
 the appearances of myself, on which I am reflecting as 
 facts, all fall within an experience which is single and 
 indivisible, save through distinctions arising within my 
 own reflection. It has thus the character of an entirety. 
 But it is an entirety conditioned and limited by a specially 
 important fact, that I am the centre in which this experi- 
 ence has its focus, and from which it also, as it were, 
 radiates. And I notice at once that the range and activity 
 of my mind in this experience radiate far beyond what is 
 in contact with me or even close to my living body. My 
 experience is always in course of letting itself be enlarged 
 by the thinking activity of the self. I throw that experi- 
 ence into the form of a definite system, and I rationalise it 
 through thoughts which are not like passing emotions, but 
 are of general and lasting application. I recognise what 
 is so interpreted, a chair for example, as harmonising with 
 my thoughts and as embodying the principles they give 
 me. I rely on the rational character of what I think of 
 as real by passing boldly in reflection to judgments about 
 what belongs to the future and to the past, and to beliefs 
 that concern a world that cannot at the moment be seen 
 or felt or heard. Just now it is noon, and an hour ago the 
 hands of the great clock, which at this moment stand at 
 12, indicated 11 o'clock. That this was so I am certain, 
 for I assume, what I have always found to be true, that 
 nature pursues a continuous and definite course from the 
 past through the present towards the future. The 
 momentary appearance of the clock I therefore interpret 
 with reference to a past of which I have made an image 
 in my mind based on this conception. It has taught me 
 that the events which I call causes give rise to definite 
 
THE CHARACTER OF MY EXPERIENCE 153 
 
 effects. If the movement of the motor-cars which are 
 passing is to be explained, it is explained, consistently with 
 the context of experience past as well as present, by the 
 presence of petrol which is being consumed in order to 
 convert its potential energy into the kinetic energy of 
 motion. So also I infer that the horses must have been 
 fed this morning, because otherwise I know, from what I 
 have learned on other occasions, that they would be too 
 feeble to draw the waggons. There are houses beyond 
 the park and smoke rising from chimneys, and I judge 
 that there must be social and industrial life where they are, 
 although I cannot see or hear or feel it. For I always 
 interpret my actual perceptions as revealing to me only 
 a fragment of a larger whole which I construct for myself 
 in reflection through ideas of general application, and 
 knowledge about this larger whole can, with a greater or 
 less degree of certainty, be extended beyond it limitlessly 
 into regions still larger and more remote. 
 
 When I again bring my reflection to bear on my own 
 self I find something analogous. For my experience of 
 myself contains much more than any mere particular feeling 
 of self. Memory, for instance, enters into it copiously. 
 I am what I was. The future presses on me not less than 
 the past. I shall be what I am, and the purposes to which 
 my will is directed are even now moulding and changing 
 what I am at the moment. What I am now is not abiding. 
 Yet in the changing experience of myself I remain identical. 
 If I am in time, time seems not less to be what it is just 
 for me. Apart from the experience in time, in which I 
 appear as object to myself and conscious of that self as 
 in time, I am not. Yet it is only when referred to its 
 focus in myself that the succession in time-experience 
 is brought together as a single and continuous succession. 
 Apart from the self as the subject in which it is held 
 together it seems to have neither meaning nor existence. 
 Time, therefore, does not appear to be a last word about 
 reality. It belongs, not indeed to me as a mere particular 
 self or subject, but to an object- world that is there for me. 
 
 It is thus plain that by myself I really mean more than 
 my clothes, or my appearance, or my habits, or the par- 
 ticular contents that are stored in my mind, or their dura- 
 tion. It is rather in my thinking and in the interpretations 
 I make that the key to my distinctive nature seems to lie. 
 
154 THE SELF IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Moreover, the interpretation and the interpreted, though 
 distinguished, are not distinguished save as in common 
 belonging to that nature. What I thus conclude about 
 myself I find that I must conclude about my neighbours 
 not less. For when I turn to ask myself what it is that 
 makes my fellow-men that which they are to me, it appears 
 to be really the relation of their minds to mine. 
 
 I see from the window an acquaintance coming down 
 the street. I have to go down to the door and meet him in 
 a couple of minutes, and the sight of him awakens a train 
 of expectations and purposes of the coming interview. 
 What I felt a moment ago before I saw him is what I was 
 then, and my present feeling is continuous with it, but in 
 course of being changed by the notion of the coming 
 meeting. It is plain that my experience of myself is 
 nothing rigidly fixed or remaining the same. It is not 
 static, but self-transforming. What holds the thread of 
 continuity unbroken for me is that I am constantly 
 bringing my experience under general notions, notions that 
 give it more than mere feeling or particular meaning for 
 me, and that I am so reorganising and readjusting it. Just 
 as the inner feelings that fill my consciousness are always 
 unbroken, even when changing, so are my perceptions of 
 what goes on beyond my house. The birds move, and yet 
 I recognise them as the same birds, notwithstanding that 
 they look different. I know that there is a sequence in 
 what I see which takes place in accordance with principles 
 that endure, though what they govern is activity that is 
 always altering its form. Everything around me is in 
 constant course of change, in some cases slowly, like the 
 burning coal in the grate close by me, in other cases swiftly, 
 like the positions of the motor-cabs that pass. What holds 
 my experience to identity in such changes is their principle, 
 resulting in laws which I recognise as operating unbrokenly. 
 I believe in such laws instinctively. I do not doubt that 
 they will continue to hold good. Nor do even the birds or 
 the dogs, which appear to govern their behaviour by the 
 same assumption. Their action is doubtless mostly un- 
 conscious, but they act just as though they were following 
 out purposes based on an explicit assumption that as 
 things have been so they will be. 
 
 Now however it may be with the birds and the dogs, 
 this is for myself, as an intelligent and reflecting being, 
 
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND CONTINUITY 155 
 
 a principle which I can bring clearly into consciousness. 
 It is what gives their significance, theoretical and practical, 
 to my feelings. The feelings themselves would be nothing 
 apart from their setting in reflection. And this setting 
 enables me to pass beyond every apparent particular 
 character they have, and to group them and connect the 
 past and the present in an entirety, thus anticipating 
 the future. I hold myself before myself, and with it the 
 world in which I live and which I look on as surrounding 
 me and including myelf in it, in thoughts which do not 
 pass with time in the way my feelings and sensations do. 
 The most obvious of these thoughts is always that it is I 
 who see, I who hear, I who feel, I who know. The I that 
 does all this is no transient feeling or passing phase of 
 consciousness. It emerges in reflection as obviously more 
 than of a particular and passing character. For I can, 
 if I go near them, hear the other men who pass by also 
 saying " I " just as I do, and they are, as in my own case, 
 obviously centres for worlds of experience of their own. 
 They, too, hold themselves up before the mirror of self- 
 consciousness, and in that mirror see themselves as having 
 the same thoughts as are mine ; I and you, you and me. 
 We are different, not in the principle or character for 
 reflection of the varying worlds of our experience, but in 
 the details. For each one of us to know his world as his 
 own is what we do in common, in our own ways. We 
 cultivate our private gardens, though we cultivate them 
 on principles that resemble. The self that knows is dis- 
 tinguished from other selves by the details of its experi- 
 ence, by its own peculiar surroundings, by its history, by 
 contents stored in memory, of which it is aware if they 
 are reflected on and so made an object for its thinking. 
 But at the foundation of knowledge in all of us is the fact 
 that this is the knowledge of the person that says "I," 
 and that in saying so the person is affirming that, what- 
 ever else the world is, it is a world of which he is in some 
 sense the centre and the foundation. It is for thought 
 alone that this is so, for no feeling can be held up to con- 
 sciousness, excepting by thinking of it as the feeling of a 
 mind for which it is presented. 
 
 What the facts appear to disclose is thus that what I 
 apprehend has two constituent factors, its being felt and 
 its being subjected to thought. But these factors are not 
 
156 THE SELF IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 distinct processes in space or in time. They belong to 
 different points of view which are concurrent. There is 
 no feeling that does not require for its reality some sort of 
 setting in thought. There is no thought that does not 
 go back to some image depending on feeling for its matter. 
 Thought and feeling, when we distinguish them, stand for 
 us as the abstract and the concrete, the universal and 
 the particular. But although so distinguishable they 
 are not independent existences. My capacity for knowing 
 and still more my capacity for extending my knowledge 
 seem plainly to depend on my so distinguishing. But it 
 is a distinction which does not relate to independent facts. 
 It is the creature of reflection. Yet arbitrary thought 
 does not make things. A dream is in one sense as much 
 a reality as anything else, in the sense that through my 
 imagination it seems for the time to present before me an 
 actual concrete world in which I see and hear. In so far 
 the dream is of the actual. But it is reality only in a 
 qualified sense, for when I awake and resume the possession 
 of my faculties I find that what I imagined to be actual 
 in my dream and felt to be such was not so, but a mere 
 construction by the mind. It turns out, when I try to fit 
 the dreamed of world into my general surroundings, those 
 that include my awakened mind and my body also as 
 apprehended by that mind, that it will not fit in. My 
 organism is a fact in the entirety of my experience, and 
 when I follow out, as I must, that experience as an en- 
 tirety, I find that my dreamed of position in space and 
 time does not harmonise with what I now think, and what 
 other people are thinking. For I know my world to be 
 real largely because I find that it is presented to me when 
 I fully apprehend it in a way in which I learn that it is 
 presenting itself to other people also. 
 
 How do I know what these other people experience ? 
 By knowing what they think, by distinguishing particulars 
 for reflection from what is general in it. Their sensations 
 I cannot directly experience. These enter only into the 
 private worlds of which they are finite centres, as I am of 
 mine the worlds in experiencing which they say "I," 
 as in my own case. I only conclude what these feelings 
 must be like through inference based on the analogy of 
 my own feelings, that is to say, by means of conceptions. 
 But thought is on mere succession of private sensations 
 
IDENTITY IN REFLECTION 157 
 
 and feelings. It works with ideas of general application. 
 These are, in so far as they possess the character of uni- 
 versals, in all minds literally the same. Such universals 
 of reflection are not events. They do not, like facts of 
 sensation regarded merely as events, only resemble each 
 other in different minds. They are conceptions by the 
 "I," and are not occurrences in space or time, but 
 thoughts which disclose literal identity in logical signifi- 
 cance. Reflection, by the abstractions it makes from 
 what treated as an object is fleeting, seems to us to give 
 the very identical thoughts, so far as they correspond, 
 which the poet expressed in verses composed two thousand 
 years before us. The ink and the words printed with it 
 on paper from which we read present more than a mere 
 aggregation of marks made by a machine carrying out 
 the plan of the printer. What is before us is a set of 
 symbols, the meaning of which we apprehend, and take 
 as indicating ideas that, though those of another person, 
 yet stimulate us into reproducing in our own creative 
 imagination just what the poet imagined. And this is 
 only possible because the words symbolise identities 
 which must therefore be those, not of feeling, but of con- 
 ception. It is only for an educated mind, exercising 
 reflection which is adequate, that they can do this. For 
 the man who cannot read or does not care about them 
 the words printed symbolise little more than a mechanical 
 row of marks. For the dog who chews the paper they do 
 not symbolise so much. But thought, which can fly 
 beyond the immediate and which reveals identity in its 
 reflective activity, brings before us the self of the poet, 
 and a train of ideas so fashioned by him long ago that 
 they can set our own creative imagination working, and 
 lift it to high levels like his own. 
 
 What is true of the poem is true of all the life I look 
 out on from my window. I am constantly interpreting 
 through concepts. It is thus that I get the belief that 
 the people before me see the same sky and the same 
 sun and trees as I do. Into their sensations I cannot 
 enter. But their words and their general behaviour are 
 symbols through which I know that reality is conceived 
 by them just as it is by me. 
 
 A great metaphysician, Leibnitz, long ago laid down 
 that because we are shut into our own private worlds, and 
 
 12 
 
158 THE SELF IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 cannot feel what others feel, we are monads each with a 
 world of his own, from which the rest are completely shut 
 out. The agreement of these worlds and the harmony of 
 our actions he thought he could only explain by assuming 
 the existence of a pre-established harmony brought about 
 ab extra by a Creator. But he overlooked that quality 
 of thought which distinguishes it from feeling. Feeling 
 may be regarded through the power of thought to make 
 abstractions, and to hold out its objects as though they 
 could be private and particular, as having a definite place 
 in time and space, and as such exclusive. When we 
 imagine it as a property of an organism this is easy. But 
 the abstractions of reflection, when they are of the order 
 of universals and harmonise, are so far literally identical. 
 The thoughts they embody are not in any true sense events 
 in time or space. The psychologist may indeed treat 
 them as such for limited purposes. But when he does he 
 transforms their original and actual character. Literal 
 identity in difference is the real characteristic of all 
 general conceptions, gotten though they may be by 
 derivation from what is individual or singular and so far 
 particular. When I follow a proposition of Euclid I think 
 just the thoughts that he thought. The fact that he lived 
 a long time ago, and that the lines which he had on his 
 papyrus are not the identical lines that I see on my copy 
 of his propositions, makes no difference. For I can dis- 
 regard as irrelevant and abstract my mind from all 
 differences of this kind in accomplishing my purpose, 
 which is to reflect, just as he reflected, in general concep- 
 tions. No lines can be drawn on any papyrus or paper 
 that are accurately parallel, but lines can be drawn which 
 will so sufficiently represent lines truly parallel as to serve 
 for symbols of the conception they embody. It is the 
 conception that alone matters for the mathematician. 
 He really deals always with what is general, and never 
 with what is singular, save in so far as it is capable of 
 symbolising what is general, and forming a basis for 
 inference of a general character. 
 
 The same thing is true of my intercourse with other 
 human beings. I now meet my friend at my front door. 
 His private and particular feelings I cannot reach. He 
 has an organism of his own, and a world and a history, 
 with an accumulation of knowledge, which are different 
 
IDENTITY IN INDIVIDUAL SELVES 159 
 
 from mine. But his behaviour to me and his words are 
 symbols, which, by expressing meanings created in his 
 mind, enable me to judge that his experience has a corre- 
 spondence with mine that is based on identity in con- 
 ception and mode of thought. I cannot get beyond my 
 own senses in immediate apprehension. If I did not 
 possess the proper organs of sense I could neither see nor 
 hear nor feel nor smell nor touch. But possessing these, 
 if I were confined to them I should be a monad shut up 
 in a world of its own. It is thought that lifts me out of 
 exclusiveness and that takes me into worlds unknown to 
 merely immediate apprehension because they cannot be 
 so known. And as with me so with my friend. He, too, 
 is a person, an " I " in whom is foeussed a world which 
 he reaches beyond and extends only in thought, but in 
 thoughts that in the correspondence of their system with 
 my own are for the general purposes of knowledge 
 and creative imagination identical with them. He 
 who says " I " utters a word symbolic of a meaning 
 which for this purpose is just the same for all of us. It 
 is to particulars that we must look for the differences 
 between persons, particulars which matter from the 
 standpoint of thought less and less the more general the 
 mode of thinking is. It is the same world that is before 
 you and me, and that is because it embodies sameness in 
 our conceptions of it, conceptions which can be extended 
 into detail without assignable limit, but are still con- 
 ceptions. 
 
 Yet, as has already appeared clear, there is no thought 
 apart from its basis in feeling, any more than there is 
 any feeling which is not in some degree set in thought. 
 The world of experience is a world characterised by its 
 implications, implications through which are unified the 
 phases of the dynamic activity of mind in which experience 
 consists. That experience corresponds in all rational 
 beings, however it may differ in regard to their history 
 and their individual peculiarities. It is a whole con- 
 taining within itself the I who know and the entire field 
 of knowledge, with the conceptual and sentient aspects 
 distinguished within it through its own abstractions. The 
 world that confronts me is as actual as is the subject that 
 apprehends in it its object. It is only the confusion of 
 thought with a property of substance that has given rise 
 
160 THE SELF IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 to what has been called the ego-centric predicament of 
 the subjective idealist. 
 
 But my friend is a different person from me, and the 
 animals are also living beings, as real so far as they live 
 as I am. What is it that makes me and my friend persons, 
 and the animals separate individuals ? It is our own 
 separate organisms and their histories and individual ex- 
 periences. These differ among themselves. The organism 
 of the man is of a higher character than that of 
 the brute. That of man does not merely live. It sym- 
 bolises a higher order, that of full intelligence. This is 
 what the human form implies. It is symbolic to us of 
 the possibility of thinking, of remembering, of recalled 
 history, of family and other social relations, apart from 
 which the man whose organism it is would not be the 
 person he is, either for himself or for us. His body 
 is much more than merely living. It means all these 
 aspects and many besides. It is for reflection that this 
 appears, and in reflection, the subject's own as well as 
 that of others, mind finds itself actual in facts that are 
 only from one point of view external. The human body 
 is mind in external form, mind in the meaning symbolised 
 in it. When it dies it ceases to present this aspect or to 
 be mind. It is in virtue of his having a brain that con- 
 ceives and directs and remembers, so that the past and 
 the present and the future are brought within a single 
 whole, that man appears as an individual, a person in a 
 world of persons. Mind and body are not separate exis- 
 tences in space. The body, taken at the higher degrees 
 of its reality, seems to be mind and to know itself as such. 
 Between my organism and its environment there is no 
 sharp line drawn. There is a constant interchange of 
 material. Life is just the self-conservation of the organism 
 in fulfilment of an end preserved unbroken amid material 
 which is constantly changing. The intelligent life of a 
 person is something yet higher. It deliberately makes use 
 of and controls the environment and moulds it to its 
 purposes through knowledge. It exercises freedom in 
 choice. It is so that we have our station in society, and 
 the world generally, and the rights and duties belonging 
 to that station. The human body is thus much more 
 than mere life. It represents mind and expresses it. It 
 stands for " I," a universal, and in so far we get identity 
 
THE ORGANISM AS EXPRESSING DIFFERENCE 161 
 
 between one man and another. But the mind so expressed 
 is one that is conditioned by the body. For although it 
 is the body in a higher aspect than that of life, still what 
 we are confronted with is a body that can starve and 
 die, and that has a definite place in space and time, and 
 an experience which is profoundly dependent on its own 
 nature. It is only in so far as it thinks that the body 
 gets above and beyond the natural limits of its physical 
 self, and though in thinking its activity is of a nature 
 wholly different from that of energy radiating from 
 matter, still there is dependence on the body as the organ 
 of its expression. For there is no thought apart from 
 feeling, although there is also, as we have seen, no feeling 
 apart from thought. Now feeling implies a body that 
 can feel, and so does our thinking. 
 
 What is the nature of experience ? It is self-expanding. 
 It is always changing. The " This " is ever passing into 
 the "That"; the "Here" into the "There"; the 
 " Now " into the " Then." It is through memory and 
 through concepts, such as that of substance, that we give 
 a setting to the object- world as presenting permanent 
 aspects. The nature of knowledge is to fix and give mean- 
 ing to particulars by universals in which they are set 
 and become realities. It is well to have a term which can 
 be used to describe the two factors which enter into the 
 constitution of experience. The word " factor " is not a 
 happy one, for it suggests action in space and time, and 
 these belong to and fall within experience rather than are 
 foundational to it. If we use the more technical word 
 " moment," as indicating a phase separable in logic by 
 abstraction but not in reality, we may say that in the 
 actual, and in our knowledge of it as it is, there are two 
 moments, the universal and the particular. The actual 
 is the individual or singular, which exhibits both of these 
 as phases united in the dynamic process in which it has 
 reality. Thus the real is always individual, and is never 
 static, and it is a concrete universal which implies mind 
 for its very reality. Nor is there any thinking that is 
 purely abstract or any feeling that is not qualified by 
 thinking. The moments of thought and feeling when we 
 experience are inseparable, save in the logical analysis 
 which we are ever unconsciously making in daily life. 
 
 Esse may be said to be " per dpi " or " intelligi," if we 
 
162 THE SELF IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 remember that experience is not a property of a particular 
 self but the foundation underlying all that is, implying 
 a self that experiences. Object and subject are not 
 separable. They are rather phases, distinguished by 
 the activity of reflection, within a mental process that 
 is single and indivisible. 
 
 In such light as these reflections bring to me, I now 
 turn back to consider my experience when I recognise 
 my friend who came down the road to my house. He was 
 for me at first only a moving object, which I did not dis- 
 tinguish from other moving objects I interpreted as 
 human. As he comes near, however, I now distinguish 
 him from other men, for I recognise in him one whom I 
 know, not merely as a member of the human species, but 
 as the father of a particular family with which I am inti- 
 mate. As he comes still nearer I catch an expression on 
 his face which shows that he, in his turn, recognises me. 
 I think of him as one with whom I have had many talks 
 and many dealings. His history as I know it, and my 
 history as he knows it, are what enable us to interpret and 
 develop the existence of each for the other. We are two 
 things, no doubt ; made up of so many pounds of carbon 
 and other chemical substances. But that is only one 
 aspect, and is not the important aspect for either of us. We 
 are equally clearly two living organisms which imply for 
 their reality self-control and self-development, in accord- 
 ance with inherent biological ends which go beyond the 
 level of the mechanical and chemical relations that are 
 the characteristics of the mere thing. But still, if we 
 were merely living organisms, we should have no con- 
 sciousness, no knowledge, no feeling. We should not 
 each be "I," or for each other what we are. We should 
 not be selves or personalities. Now it is just in so far as 
 we are selves or personalities, with what this implies in 
 the way of recollection, of experience, and of recognition 
 of the self as grouped with other selves in society, that we 
 as friends have meaning for each other. Apart from know- 
 ledge of this kind we should not exist for each other as 
 we are. The essence of our mutual existence is the 
 meaning we have for each other. That meaning is con- 
 stitutive of such existence. Of other men I say that they 
 might conceivably have had such special relations to me, 
 but they have not, and by so much I do not know them. 
 
MY FRIEND AND I 163 
 
 Their individual personalities may have special signifi- 
 cation for others, but for me they have no special significa- 
 tion. They are only members of the species man, a great 
 fact carrying in its train great social implications. In 
 possessing this meaning for me they do exist as men. But 
 for me they do not exist as my friends, for they have no 
 relation to me of this kind, and the friendship has there- 
 fore no place in my own particular world of fact. The 
 condition of friendship is the recognition it implies. 
 
 When, therefore, I recognise my friend, I have passed 
 far beyond the limits of mere sensation, of mere sight, or 
 of mere touch, considered as nothing more. These stand 
 for necessary moments in direct knowledge. But what I 
 get from them are the indications which I interpret and 
 on which I build my conceptions, conceptions which are 
 inseparable from the reality of my world, but which are 
 yet largely drawn from my own self-knowledge. For it 
 is only by interpreting my friend in the light of the 
 content of my own consciousness, with its recollections and 
 other material stored up in it, as acquired in the past and 
 preserved in my memory, that I find the reality of the 
 orders with which I am concerned in my knowledge of 
 him. He is what he is, in the first place, because he is a 
 body with a particular appearance and history. That 
 enables him to be segregated and identified as the living 
 body of John Smith. But although this is a phase and a 
 necessary one in his existence as a particular man, and as 
 different from myself, it is not all or nearly all. It is the 
 characteristics that appear to pertain to John Smith at 
 a higher order of knowledge than this one, that have made 
 it possible that he and I should have the significance for 
 each other in which we have become friends. 
 
 What is the foundation of such significance ? Plainly 
 this, that we feel and think and remember alike. Alike, 
 but not in exactly the same way. He has his point of 
 view, and I my own. But although differences come in, 
 these points of view do not conflict. For there is corre- 
 spondence between them. In that there is difference they 
 are not identical. If they were, there would not be two 
 distinct minds, each conscious of the other as its object. 
 For all consciousness of objects implies consciousness of 
 difference. But in consciousness there may be correspon- 
 dence, that is, the recognition of identity in difference. 
 
164 THE SELF IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Now it' is only when the level of thought is reached that 
 we can have identity in difference. Thoughts can be 
 identical because they are in the nature, not of events, 
 but of what is of the universal in character. But mere 
 feelings and other events, if indeed there be such, must 
 have the particular as characteristic of their nature, and 
 are, just on that account, never identical. If we would get 
 precise information about them, we must use methods such 
 as Professor Whitehead's method of Extensive Abstraction. 
 We may so reduce them to their limiting conceptions. As 
 such they will become instants and points in time and 
 space ; that is, they will become abstractions of reflection. 
 When Leibnitz spoke of the identity of indiscernibles, he 
 used a rather doubtful expression. No doubt conceptions 
 of thought, if they are held out at arm's length and 
 distorted into mere occurrences in time and space by 
 the artificial procedure of psychology, may in a sense be 
 spoken of as indiscernible, provided they are not sought 
 to be distinguished merely as successive events. But even 
 that is not quite true, because they remain, like instants 
 and points, discerned as separate in space-time. In so 
 far they belong to thought and are not truly held out 
 without reference to self as mere occurrences, but are in 
 truth thoughts reached by reasoning about experience. 
 We cannot form any pictorial ideas that are true of instants 
 or points. We always present them as concrete indi- 
 viduals in imagination. When, on the other hand, we 
 say that their meaning is the same, what we actually intend 
 to convey is, that the thinking imported is identical in 
 character, and not that there is external resemblance 
 between two mental pictures, as in the fashion in which 
 one fact external to another in time and space may 
 resemble it. But even in the latter case corresponding 
 reflection is ultimately at the root of reality. 
 
 When John Smith and I meet at my door and shake 
 hands, and begin to talk of what interests us in the 
 progress of the harvest or of the Church Missionary 
 Society, it is the correspondence in our thinking that 
 matters. It is actual identity in conception that underlies 
 that correspondence in our reflections. Differences, of 
 course, there are, but not such as to preclude correspon- 
 dence in our ways of looking at things based on sameness 
 of conception. For thought as such is no activity in space 
 
THE NATURE OF RECOGNITION 165 
 
 or time. It is that in which such activity and all else is 
 presented. 
 
 What is the relationship that is essential when two 
 friends meet ? The respective individualities do not lie 
 in the filling of different parts of space with substances, or 
 even in the fulfilment of similar ends by the living 
 organisms, but in a wide range of meaning and its inter- 
 pretation common to the two minds. Each is mind for 
 the other, and is a particular mind with a characteristic 
 embodiment, inasmuch as in each mind expresses itself 
 in the form of a living organism that knows as well as 
 lives, a form that is indeed inadequate to the full reality, 
 but yet so far is symbolical of intelligence. 
 
 As we shall see later on when we come to consider 
 the principle of degrees or orders in knowledge and reality, 
 mechanism and life belong to different orders, neither of 
 which is explicable or can even be expressed in the terms 
 that belong to the other. A machine is a structure in 
 which the parts, be they regarded merely as aggregates of 
 molecules or be they looked on as larger masses of matter, 
 are held together and aggregated ab extra through a system 
 of causation in which the cause lies outside the effect. In 
 a living organism, on the other hand, the meaning and the 
 possibility of existence lie, not in any outside cause, but 
 in an end which is everywhere and at all moments recog- 
 nised as being actively present, and as in its domination 
 constantly preserving itself amid metabolism of material. 
 The whole is in each part, and the parts do not exist 
 except in behaving as realising the whole. The 
 organism reproduces itself, and the new life inherits, in a 
 fashion that is inexplicable mechanically, modes of be- 
 haviour in which it resembles countless other individuals 
 of the same species. It is thus that, self-fashioned, it 
 pursues a definite course from birth to death. This is 
 so throughout nature, and to try to explain it mechanically, 
 as the fortuitous result of external causes, comes to seem, 
 as the range of observation is progressively extending, 
 more and more of an absurdity. Life can only be stated 
 in terms of life. The repugnance to so stating its nature 
 has arisen from the narrow notion that to do so is to 
 express the quasi-purposive character of an end as being 
 something supernatural, in the sense of lying outside the 
 laws of nature. But this anxiety is exaggerated. It 
 
166 THE SELF IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 arises from the assumption that the world of nature can 
 be stated in terms of matter and motion. The defects of 
 this view we considered earlier. It is not harder to believe 
 that life is more than mechanism than it is to believe that 
 knowledge is more than life. It is true that knowledge, 
 referred to the course of nature taken as a " closed system," 
 is found in the individual human being as conditioned by 
 his organism, just as his life is found to be dependent on 
 mechanical conditions. To accept this fact is one thing. 
 It is quite a different thing to identify the two, or to try 
 to reduce the higher to the lower, or to express it in terms 
 of the lower. They are not separate entities in time and 
 space, but belong to different orders of experience, ex- 
 hibiting that relativity which belongs to all our knowledge, 
 and are subject to the laws of their own order and not 
 of other orders which have no meaning for them. Nature 
 treated as a " closed system " is not fully interpreted. 
 Unless this is realised difficulties of explanation become 
 insuperable. The principles of the conservation and 
 degradation of energy belong to the mechanical aspect 
 or order of principle, and, as applying to that aspect, we 
 have no reason to question their unbroken sway. When 
 we come to the other order, in reality and in our know- 
 ledge of it, within which life falls, the notion of what we 
 call in this connection an end as the controlling influence 
 is just as natural. There is never anything that is super- 
 natural in the sense of violating the conditions obtaining 
 throughout its own order. But there are many different 
 orders, and it is the confusion of their points of view and 
 appropriate conceptions with those of other orders that 
 gives rise to the false idea of the supernatural. 
 
 When I and my friend recognise each other and begin 
 to talk, it is to a still higher order in the varying aspects of 
 reality than the order of mere life that the relationship of 
 correspondence in our minds belongs. This is now the 
 dominant order, and is other than that in which causation, 
 or even the fulfilment by the living organism of the ends 
 which fashion its course of life, prevail. It is in terms of 
 this order that we say that the most important relationship 
 of human beings to each other is one which turns on true 
 identity of thought. Human individuality implies many 
 aspects, mental, organic and inorganic. The body ex- 
 presses personality, and is symbolical of personality as 
 
PERSONALITY 167 
 
 its interpretation, but it is, in aspects which are inseparable 
 from its reality, not the less a physical body. These are 
 the aspects in which individuals are external to one another. 
 When we reach the level in reality which belongs to the 
 higher order called mind, there is difference here also 
 between individualities, yet it is difference which does not 
 have its root in externality, but in that divergence which 
 is embraced in all correspondence, and yet ultimately im- 
 plies the identity in difference between modes of thinking 
 that lies at the foundation of correspondence in mental 
 activity. It is an identity the import of which extends 
 to memory, to imagination, and to feeling, as well as to 
 reflective activity. 
 
 How the world we experience seems to us, and what it 
 really is for us, thus depends in the event on interpretation, 
 and the meaning which is the result of that interpretation. 
 Knowledge is a process, an activity. It is what we have 
 called dynamic and never static, in the nature of subject 
 rather than substance. What it yields it yields in a form 
 that is always in large measure of a general character. 
 The merely particular has no meaning for us excepting as 
 set in the universal. In saying this I am not referring to 
 mere psychological analysis, which is often bound to be 
 artificial, nor am I thinking of knowledge as an instrument. 
 To have regarded it as such seems to me to have been one 
 of the most grievous errors in the past, and to be a common 
 one even to-day. The error is due to the idea that know- 
 ledge can be treated as just a means by the use of which 
 we gain access to its object, and it has suggested the false 
 idea that there is an insuperable gulf which must separate 
 what is called mind from matter, and make us choose 
 between idealism and realism. 
 
 The simplest way of approaching the problem of what 
 reality amounts to is to start with experience as real, and 
 to watch its implications and changes. As I sit in my 
 chair I have a definite experience, varying constantly in 
 its scope, of what surrounds me in the room where I am, 
 and of what I see out of the window. Other and different 
 experiences are open to me if I choose to move about, and 
 so alter the conditions, or to make extensive use of such 
 further senses as that of touch. But each form in my 
 experience seems to consist with every other, and to fit 
 into a system or entirety which can be accounted for as real 
 
168 THE SELF IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 only if the explanation be sought for, not from lower up 
 towards higher, but from the self downwards. What I 
 see is different from what I feel, but there is correspondence 
 between them, and they appear to belong to a single system. 
 Now this system as a whole has certainly one condition. It 
 is and must be no less than the entirety of the experience 
 of the self that in one of its aspects at all events is sitting 
 in the chair. That self is limited by the external organism, 
 with its various modes and channels of sensation, in which 
 it finds expression in the nature which is its object- world. 
 Indeed, there appears to be no self independent of the 
 organism. But, then, what is this organism ? It is more 
 than merely living. It has eyes, and thus it sees ; it has 
 ears, and thus it hears ; it has hands, and thus it touches. 
 It has, too, a brain, and it thus apprehends and under- 
 stands. At first glance these qualities look like the 
 properties of a thing. But is this anything approaching 
 to a sufficient account of them, even when regarded as 
 qualities of what sits in the chair ? Let us see. 
 
 When I, sitting here, put to myself the question of what 
 I am, there is one answer which, so far as it carries me, 
 is obviously true. I am subject in knowledge as plainly 
 as I am object. That is just to say that I know. I am 
 the centre, finite, it is true, but still the centre, in which 
 my experience holds together and to which it is referred 
 back. I individually have direct experience through my 
 senses of very little of the universe. Beyond Carlton 
 House Terrace, the mansions of which I can see from where 
 I sit, there lies a great city. I infer this from data with 
 which my sense organs furnish me, though I do not have 
 direct sense-experience of the London that lies beyond the 
 horizon of vision. I think of my actual experience as 
 forming part of an intelligible system, the parts and rela- 
 tions of which that are not directly experienced can be 
 known indirectly from what is immediately known. The 
 full system is constructed in my experience through con- 
 cepts applied, and it is in the light of the conceptual whole 
 that I attach meaning to the part in front of me. This 
 whole exists for me who am stationed here and now. It 
 may have an existence and meaning beyond this fact, but 
 it has at least this form of existence and meaning. 
 
 When I turn reflection in upon the " me " for whom 
 these things are, the first thing that strikes me is that it is 
 
THE SELF AS EXPERIENCED 169 
 
 obvious why I apprehend directly only a fragment of the 
 Universe. The " I " who apprehends it can indeed think 
 unrestrained by physical limits, and can pass in thought 
 by inference and reasoning beyond the margin of what it 
 can perceive. For mind, if it may be spoken of as an 
 instrument, has no boundary to its scope. It can have 
 none, for its problems are in truth its own creatures. If 
 the self fails in wielding reason it is not because of any 
 defect in its instrument, but because of its inability to wield 
 it. For the self is in its aspect as object for itself physically 
 limited. I am not my clothes, nor are the surroundings 
 which belong to my bodily life part of my nature as subject 
 in knowledge. And yet they condition its grasp and power 
 of presentation. They set bounds to my bodily activity, 
 and the bondage of the body affects the power of the mind. 
 When overcome by fatigue or drowsiness I cannot think 
 properly. The existence of my soul is so far at least 
 dependent on conditions of time and space and the material 
 that fills them. 
 
 On the other hand, it is for me sitting here that the 
 panorama of life presents itself. It may be that a meaning 
 can be ascribed to its possible existence independently of 
 me, but excepting as known as it is for me, actually or 
 possibly, it does not come before me, and cannot come to 
 utterance. In that sense at least its existence centres in 
 me. What were a world apart from relations such as 
 externality, and cause, and end, and beauty, and goodness ? 
 And what do these signify apart from their interpretation 
 by the mind that apprehends them ? To project them all 
 into a so-called " non-mental " world is just to project 
 mind with them into that world, and thus, not to eliminate 
 a subjective side in knowledge, but to demonstrate afresh 
 its inseparability as an integral moment in the entirety. 
 Subjective idealism and objective realism seem to be 
 little else than different names for the same inadequate 
 attempt. 
 
 When, then, I ask what the " I " is, it is not surprising 
 that it is difficult of description excepting as an essential 
 moment in the " not-me." By withdrawing my attention 
 from the latter I become more and more clearly aware of 
 the presence at every turn in my experience of conceptual 
 thought, the thought which directs itself to concentration, 
 not simply on particulars of sense, but on their relations 
 
170 THE SELF IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 and the meanings which these relations embody. The 
 " I " is the centre of thought to which these are all referred. 
 It is to " me " that the whole of experience is brought back. 
 When it is brought back in the form of reflection, rather 
 than of sensuous apprehension, it is brought to a focus in 
 thinking, to mind itself as sought to be disentangled from 
 what is for mind. It is only by abstraction that the dis- 
 tinction is affected, but the abstraction is one which lays 
 stress on the mental side as not less actual than what is 
 taken to be the physical side. "I," approached thus, am 
 of the nature of the universal. Except as it is for me the 
 world is incapable of interpretation. Object and subject 
 therefore cannot be looked on as two things existing inde- 
 pendently or as separate entities of any kind. They are 
 rather different aspects in an integral process or spiritual 
 activity, a whole within which both fall as aspects. That 
 whole is experience, an experience that is dynamic and not 
 static, and is in its real nature subject yet more distinctly 
 than substance. 
 
 But the aspects of this experience do not themselves 
 appear as having significance independently of each other. 
 It is true that I, who sit in this chair and look out of the 
 window, am from one point of view just activity in reflec- 
 tion, the centre to which the activities of thought and 
 volition and freedom are referred. But although this 
 centre I am finite. And the finiteness appears on scrutiny 
 to consist in the fact that the self is expressed in an organism 
 which it invests with intelligence and with the distinctive 
 characteristics of mind. The self is related to its organism, 
 not as a thing apart, but rather as an end which it embodies. 
 It is thus that the organism, taken at a higher degree in 
 its reality, is a rational being, and possesses initiative and 
 freedom in this initiative. We mean to convey so much 
 when we say that the organism is a personality. It is 
 more than mere life, it is still more than a mere machine. 
 And yet it presents the aspects which are distinctive of each 
 of these orders of existence, though it presents them only 
 in a relationship to the higher orders just referred to. They 
 are essential, for apart from them the nature of the self 
 would consist merely in the universals of reflection, and 
 there would be no world of nature. Differences between 
 personalities would not exist. It is through the organic 
 and the inorganic conditions under which it is known as 
 
CONCLUSIONS OF THE CHAPTER 171 
 
 its own object that the self is a finite centre and a distinct 
 individual. 
 
 We may put the conclusions of this chapter in another 
 way in which the transition towards completion by experi- 
 ence is apparent. As we find it experience implies a self 
 whose experience it is. But, even if we make abstraction 
 in reflection from the self, and regard the object- world of 
 nature as though it could be closed to mind, we see in that 
 object- world the suggestion of the relation between per- 
 cipient and perceived which thrusts itself more and 
 more clearly on our attention as we progress. Even the 
 merest living organism appears to be continuously distin- 
 guishing itself from its environment in a fashion that has 
 no analogue in the machine. The oyster closes its shell 
 when a foreign substance is sought to be introduced. It 
 gives out and takes in what the end that controls its 
 processes of life requires. It may have no consciousness, 
 no feeling, but its life presents this characteristic. As we 
 go higher there is a closer approximation to the reality of 
 a self. The dog may not say "I," but he has a sense of 
 property. He resents the intrusion into his house of 
 another dog, which he will yet tolerate outside it ; he barks 
 at a stranger who approaches the door ; he has a sense of 
 propriety which makes him ashamed when he has mis- 
 behaved. All this shows that he has formed in his intelli- 
 gence the germ of a consciousness of self. The w orld is not 
 significant for him as it is for us. He is lacking in concepts. 
 For him the full world does not exist, but some world does 
 from which he distinguishes himself as if from a not-self. 
 
 When we reach the contemplation of man in experience 
 a still higher level has been attained. The significances 
 of both the not-self and the self are fuller. As organisms 
 we are in the world. But we are more than of it, because 
 that world is included along with ourselves in an entirety 
 of reflection. To that entirety we belong as mind, not hi 
 the way in which a thing with a number is found among 
 other things with different numbers, but as forms of mind 
 at a stage in knowledge at which the whole is realised as 
 single and indivisible, save in so far as at this stage know- 
 ledge expresses itself as conditioned by external require- 
 ments for its self-expression. These conditions belong to 
 the that from which we start and cannot go behind. But 
 the brain and the personality, external as they are in one 
 
172 THE SELF IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 aspect, are not the less expressive of mind and recognised 
 as signifying the presence of mind. That the objective 
 world should be reached at all, through the nerves and the 
 cerebral centres, is evidence of what the organism signifies 
 for a more adequate interpretation. 
 
 Mind thus finds mind in external form. But the exter- 
 nality when construed receives meaning only through 
 distinctions which fall within knowledge. As, therefore, 
 we proceed to a still more adequate view of knowledge, 
 more adequate because now wide enough to account for the 
 hard facts, we find that the general distinction between 
 object and subject which seems so fundamental when 
 superficially looked at, is itself one which has a subordinate 
 place when regarded from the only standpoints that are 
 adequate, those of knowledge as an entirety. 
 
 We saw how this view pressed itself on us even in 
 physical science. For, as Chapter IV made apparent, even 
 the resolute attempt to treat nature as closed to mind made 
 by Professor Whitehead only demonstrated afresh the 
 derivation of the reality of its object from the mind that the 
 object appears to confront as independent of it. This is 
 the lesson taught alike by science in all its forms and by 
 philosophy. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MEANING AS ENTERING INTO REALITY 
 
 IF the path pursued is leading in a right direction, we have 
 got some distance towards a source of light by which we 
 may read the self. My experience has its focus in an 
 "I," which is the essential condition of all experience. 
 As we saw in an early chapter, presence to mind has been 
 made, by at least one eminent mathematician under the 
 form of sense- awareness, the foundation of the con- 
 gruence of the various space-time systems of nature, 
 objective but varying, according to the principle of physical 
 relativity. Nature thus in truth does not shut out mind. 
 The relation of mind to nature is a foundational one, and 
 it lies in this, that there can be no meaning in any object- 
 world that is not object- world for a knower. If there can 
 be no meaning for the object there can be accordingly no 
 existence for it. For existence involves meaning, and is 
 not a fact unless it is significant. 
 
 The difficulty which people feel in accepting such a view 
 as this arises, as we saw, from their identification of the 
 self that knows with the self as merely known. The latter 
 is taken to be merely a particular object in space and time, 
 especially in so far as it has the form of a living organism. 
 To this extent it is obviously dependent on nature, and 
 nature does not depend on it. 
 
 Of course this is so far truth. But it is not the full 
 truth. For the fact that nature is not exclusive of the 
 work of mind in constituting it is shown, even in our mere 
 sense-awareness, to be a necessary condition of the possi- 
 bility of congruence. This seems to imply that the object- 
 world has as its correlative the subject for which it is the 
 field of knowledge that is present to that subject, and in 
 which it distinguishes even itself as made object from 
 itself. The relation is an impossible one to visualise, simply 
 
 13 173 
 
174 MEANING AS ENTERING INTO REALITY 
 
 because visualisation can only be of what are possible 
 objects in the field of perception. Now knowledge merely 
 as such is no object external to the mind that knows. Its 
 nature is to be just itself, subject and not substance, 
 definable in no terms beyond its own. Its character must 
 therefore partake of that of the universal. When I say 
 that I know I do not grasp at any particular. I refer to 
 thought, general in its character and application. To get at 
 what is particular I must include my object- world, and in- 
 clude it as an aspect in my individuality. Thus knowledge 
 is, taken in isolation, an abstraction and as such unreal. 
 It is one moment only in the real. Subject and object 
 are, in short, undivorceable. For they are aspects mutually 
 implied in the only kind of reality that is in character 
 ultimate, inasmuch as there can be no meaning in any- 
 thing outside it. This is individual, and of the nature of 
 the concrete universal which involves presence to a subject, 
 but includes an object aspect just as much as that of being 
 subject. 
 
 If all this be true, then when we find mind as an object 
 in nature, which we do when the object is an intelligent 
 living being, mind is recognising itself, and is confronted 
 in its object, not with any separate entity, but with itself, 
 with what signifies intelligence and that identity which 
 is distinctive of the universals of thought alone, the 
 identity in difference in which I found my relation to my 
 friend, John Smith, to lie. My organism as expressive 
 of knowledge is essentially here and now. His, as similarly 
 expressive, is there and then. And in my organism I am 
 aware of myself as a centre, finite in virtue of my corporeal 
 conditions, but still a centre, of experience as it is for me. 
 In virtue of the fact that in my fellow-man I am finding 
 a self that corresponds to my own, I recognise that John 
 Smith is mind, and that, in knowing him as object for my 
 knowledge, mind is finding mind. It is the universals 
 of thought that make our relations correspond. They 
 exhibit identity amid difference, depending for its form 
 on standpoint. If he is there and then for me, when I am 
 here and now, I am then and there reciprocally for him as 
 here and now. Literal identity in conception can alone 
 make this intelligible. 
 
 It is thus the intrinsic relation of the two, not as separate 
 entities, but as aspects differentiated within the entirety 
 
FINITE MIND 175 
 
 of knowledge by itself, to which we must look if we are 
 to get a better understanding of the relation of subject 
 to object and of our minds to those of others and to nature. 
 Metaphor is specially unhelpful in the solution of the 
 problem. We cannot succeed if we start off with an 
 image such as that of two things confronting each other. 
 For just the same reason, what is higher will prove inex- 
 plicable if the platform chosen for departure is one which 
 belongs to a lower order in reflection. Mind cannot be 
 reached from matter. Nor can their relations be under- 
 stood if mind is visualised, as Locke and Berkeley and 
 Hume tried to visualise it. Knowledge must be allowed 
 to explain itself. That is why its embodiment in meaning 
 becomes of crucial importance, and why reality in the 
 end turns out to be a form of meaning. To try to witness 
 the genesis of mind in time is thus, so far as concerns the 
 ultimate nature and significance of mind, to try to put 
 the cart before the horse. Such a procedure may be useful 
 for the psychologist as an artifice, but it can throw no light 
 on the final character of the real. It is common ground 
 that the physical form of man presents different aspects. 
 Its inherent character varies as the standpoint from which 
 it is regarded in reflection varies. At one level in experi- 
 ence it is reality as physical. At another it is recognised 
 as the expression of an "I," which is not the less an " I " 
 because it is known, in a form arising within the field of 
 its own reflection, as sitting in a chair. As we withdraw 
 from the chair we approach progressively towards the 
 " I " that is plainly much more than a thing, and we find 
 that the progress is towards its identification with the 
 cardinal fact that we know. 
 
 It may be useful to pursue this line further, and to ask 
 what is implied when we speak of mind with a form that 
 is finite. 
 
 I walk along the street in a world of persons and things. 
 I am one of these, but I am also a particular mind which 
 is in a sense their centre and which recognises them as 
 there. What does this mean ? To take an analogy 
 from mathematical physics, I am at rest and in relation 
 to me the world is changing. But this is only relatively 
 true, for I am in my turn a changing object for others, 
 who, like myself, take themselves to be finite centres at 
 rest with existence changing while there for them. To 
 
176 MEANING AS ENTERING INTO REALITY 
 
 be at rest in this sense is therefore for general interpreta- 
 tion as much a relative conception as it is in physics. The 
 difference is that whereas in physics the position depends 
 on the system of co-ordinates chosen, here it depends on 
 the system of concepts employed, those of mind and of 
 its self-disclosure as object. Such relativity is possible 
 in both cases only because our knowledge is through 
 universals. Because it is mind that expresses itself and 
 characterises us, John Smith and I are what we are to 
 each other through the identity of our thought about 
 things. We are finite centres which present such 
 identity amid differences. That is why we find ourselves 
 in the same world and see the same people and the same 
 streets. 
 
 To understand this we have to avoid forgetting, what 
 has already been said, that to have meaning is of the 
 essence of being actual. Our interpretation of our own 
 experience may be right or it may be wrong, but in 
 the absence of some interpretation experience is neither 
 real nor experience at all. It is impossible to interpret 
 existence otherwise than as a form of meaning. That is 
 what Kant taught us a long time ago, and Kant was not 
 the first to point it out. The object thus stands in an 
 integral relation with knowledge, and has its origin in 
 distinctions made within it. Such knowledge may be 
 of varying degrees and kinds, the outcome of the self- 
 directing freedom of mind that pursues it. With these 
 variations there will alter the characters apprehended in 
 the object. This is no fleeting or independent set of 
 sense-particulars. For it is only by employing general 
 conceptions that we can even speak about it. That this 
 is so is obvious. A square is no affair of passive awareness. 
 It is a symbol of what is interpreted as of a significance 
 that is general. Nor is a living organism a revelation 
 through bare sensation. Its distinctive character is that 
 we recognise in it self-conservation, an end conceived 
 as dominant and remaining so through change in par- 
 ticulars and continuous metabolism of material. Here, 
 again, we are confronted with what is in character universal. 
 
 I will endeavour to bring together the results so far 
 reached. They embody what is suggested as the basis 
 for completion of the necessary view of nature. 
 
 1. The only method of attaining to such a view that 
 
SUMMARY 177 
 
 affords any chance of avoiding unconscious assumptions 
 is the method of trying to take the simple fact of experi- 
 ence and to observe it in the self-explanation which the 
 activity of thought offers. We thus go away, as far as 
 we can, from hypostatising our knowledge into the image 
 of an instrument applied from without, and observe its 
 own activity. 
 
 2. In our experience, in its fullest aspect as a form of 
 knowledge, we find that to know means to be neither 
 only subject nor only object, but that these are the 
 moments in a larger entirety, which is the actual fact of 
 knowledge within which they are distinguished. This 
 is the fundamental characteristic of reality in its ultimate 
 character. 
 
 3. " /," sought to be taken per se and out of my con- 
 trast to my object- world, is an empty universal, unreal 
 excepting as a moment in the more comprehensive entirety. 
 
 4. What is " not-me," when we seek to exclude " me " 
 as the other moment, is an equally unreal abstraction. 
 
 5. But the abstract " not-me " is not confined in 
 experience to externality, such as that of nature taken to 
 be in absolute externality in space and time. For in 
 experience it confronts " me " in differing orders. Within 
 each of these we have a principle reigning, and this 
 principle is never transcended in its own order of reflection. 
 Thus externality gives birth only to externality, and not 
 to life which implies an end that is quite other than 
 external, or to mind as indicative of the order to which 
 it belongs as a fact of existence. There is never anything 
 that is truly supernatural, but there may be experience 
 belonging to a different order from that which at the 
 moment confronts us. 
 
 6. The orders among objects progress from externality, 
 as in the extreme forms of mutually exclusive points in 
 space and mutually exclusive successive instants in the 
 time series, to the finite centre of knowledge, in which 
 mind has its object as mind. Here we have experience 
 of what we call the soul. 
 
 7. Each individual object may include, as does what 
 we name the living organism, the characters of a plurality 
 of orders. 
 
 8. Self and not-self are wrongly conceived if visualised 
 as mutually exclusive externalities. They are reciprocally 
 
178 MEANING AS ENTERING INTO REALITY 
 
 implied factors in self-distinction by mind within its 
 complete entirety. The object may have spatial and 
 temporal relations as indicative of certain orders of reality 
 expressed in it. But it may, through the presence of 
 higher orders, be also recognised as a self that knows, 
 finite because object and as such conditioned in space and 
 time. It implies, in that it knows, the moment of the 
 subject in knowledge. It knows, but yet knows as here 
 and now. Our sense-awareness illustrates this, and is a 
 feature in which the externality to each other of various 
 systems is transcended and their congruence is rendered 
 intelligible. Thus we get the "finite centre." 
 
 9. Man's place in nature is determined, so far as his 
 aspect is natural, by nature. Science generally and 
 evolution under the guiding influence of ends explain it. 
 But as soon as we have to take into account the higher 
 aspect in which man finds himself as personality, and says 
 "I," the knowledge that is confined to nature as relatively 
 closed to mind is insufficient for the explanation of man's 
 position in the cosmos and its signification. Nature 
 taken as closed to mind cannot display to us orders depend- 
 ing on categories in which we pass beyond an object 
 aspect. The ends that are realised in us point to such 
 categories, and our experience of the soul and the state 
 points to them very definitely. Such experience cannot 
 be explained as evolution based only on succession and 
 causation. Ends and conscious purposes are apparent in 
 its phenomena. 
 
 I may be reproached for the terms I have employed. 
 It will be said that they are metaphysical and obscure. It 
 is quite true that they are metaphysical, and they are 
 certainly not familiar. But it is the very difficulty of 
 all metaphysics that it can never be made intelligible 
 by the use of popular words. Such words import pictures 
 of occurrences. They always convey metaphors, and con- 
 sequently they are always misleading. Metaphysics, 
 more than any other branch of inquiry, needs a terminology 
 of its own, chosen because of its freedom from suggestion. 
 What we have to eliminate, if we would get at the nature 
 of reality, is unconscious and illegitimate assumptions. 
 These prevail everywhere in the popular discussions of the 
 subject. The effort to avoid them requires no defence, 
 although it may land us in the use of words not less uncouth 
 
METAPHYSICAL TERMS 179 
 
 than those the mathematician uses. Metaphysics is a 
 subject in its character just as difficult as is mathematics, 
 and perhaps more so. For it is more elusive and it requires 
 preliminary study not less thorough. But while the 
 necessity for these things is conceded in the case of mathe- 
 matics, in that of metaphysics it is not conceded. As has 
 been observed, a cobbler is supposed to need a special 
 education, but a philosopher is not. To interpret and 
 arrange your categories is more difficult than to make a pair 
 of shoes. I am not sure that it may not be in the end 
 more difficult than to interpret and handle " tensors " and 
 the intricate equations in which they appear. But little 
 account is taken of this circumstance. The mathema- 
 ticians are kicking the metaphysicians up the mountain. 
 Rightly, because the mountain has to be ascended. But 
 the metaphysicians at least know where the precipices and 
 crevasses lie. The mathematicians are ascending along 
 with their brethren into a metaphysical region, and it is 
 not for them to reproach the latter if they claim to use 
 guidebooks with a terminology less misleading than is 
 the ordinary language of social intercourse. The mathe- 
 maticians themselves have been very particular on this 
 point. They have what is, relatively speaking, a highly 
 exact terminology, referring to symbols with which they 
 experiment as though these were counters. The meta- 
 physicians neither are nor can be so well off. Their rela- 
 tives must not reproach them if they use words which, if 
 they do not easily convey exactly what is meant, at least 
 exclude what is not meant. No doubt the atmosphere is 
 a rarefied one. If you are bidden to ascend the Himalayas 
 and report on the view, you anticipate a deficient atmo- 
 sphere and provide yourself with oxygen apparatus, as 
 cumbersome as it is indispensable. No one ought to 
 reproach you for so doing, or take exception to the use of 
 artificial means without being himself accustomed to the 
 exceptional conditions. For this is the only effective 
 method of reaching the level at which there becomes 
 possible a survey from these heights. It would have been 
 well for human knowledge if philosophers had not been 
 as timid as they have often proved, and had been able to 
 insist, as their spiritual relatives have done, on having a 
 definite terminology of their own. 
 
 We may now return to the question of how meaning 
 
180 MEANING AS ENTERING INTO REALITY 
 
 enters into reality, and exhibits order in degrees. We 
 know the self that perceives as being an object, sitting in 
 a chair it may be, but in any case falling within the natural 
 world of objects. We have seen what is meant by the 
 statement that it is possible to be at once percipient and 
 perceived. How can the subject that knows be also the 
 object that is known ? For we cannot split up reality. 
 Is it open to us to look upon what we perceive to be a bio- 
 logical organism as being also the mind that perceives it ? 
 A way out of the difficulty appears possible if existence 
 actually presents itself at stages or degrees which are 
 different in kind, and if the one system of reality can there- 
 fore appear in differing aspects which vary according to 
 the order of thought within which reality is interpreted, 
 as even in Einstein's physical doctrine. If, for example, 
 we excluded all conceptions excepting those of a nature 
 purely mechanistic, an organism would present the relation- 
 ships of the parts of a machine and these only. The 
 physicist and the chemist work with such conceptions, and 
 for them the organism is simply matter and energy, exhibit- 
 ing the causal principles of physics and chemistry and con- 
 forming to their laws. Approached in this aspect and 
 order in reality there is no reason to doubt that the laws of 
 the conservation and degradation of energy will be found to 
 be reigning unbroken, or that the uniformities of molecular 
 structure will obtain here as elsewhere in the experience 
 of the chemist. But although we accept this interpre- 
 tation so far as it goes, it does not enable us to interpret 
 fully or even to observe or describe a living organism. The 
 characteristics of such an organism do not lie merely in its 
 molecular structure, and still less in any aspect of its 
 activities in which these are related as causes external to 
 their effects. Its composition is ever changing. It is 
 always parting with its substance and taking in fresh sub- 
 stance, while preserving its form and life. Between itself 
 and the environment there is no sharp or exact line of 
 demarcation. Passage into a different stage in develop- 
 ment is everywhere apparent. No particle remains per- 
 manently. The characteristics of the living creature have 
 come to it by inheritance, and cannot be described in 
 mechanistic terms. To claim that they can be so de- 
 scribed, excepting under violent abstractions that deprive 
 the language used of any approach to adequacy, is to ignore 
 
DEGREES IN WHAT IS REAL 181 
 
 the teaching both of biology and of common sense. The 
 essence of the nature of a living organism lies in its control, 
 not by external causes, but by an end which conserves its 
 existence through a definite course, commencing before 
 birth and terminating only in death. It is the end that 
 fulfils itself, progressively and yet in a definite fashion, 
 that signifies in the organism in which it expresses itself 
 identity in the life of that organism. The organism main- 
 tains that identity despite metabolism and the continuous 
 process of change in material. It is the end which is the 
 characteristic feature of life, and which constitutes the 
 living being a whole that gives their meaning to parts each 
 of which performs a function in that whole, and each of 
 which has itself no life excepting as a living member of the 
 whole for which it functions. The notion of cause is 
 wholly inapplicable. The end is nothing more than a 
 determining and common behaviour, which has no reality 
 apart from the members which live and are nourished and 
 sustained only in maintaining it. Yet it influences their 
 conduct, and keeps it constant. That is why the organism 
 preserves its life, and does not necessarily stop, as a machine 
 might, because of merely momentary disturbance from 
 without. 
 
 To attempt to render such phenomena of everyday 
 experience into mechanistic terminology is, as I have 
 already said, to attempt what is impossible. It is only 
 in terms of life that life can be expressed. The end the 
 persistence and self-direction of which constitute its essence 
 does not belong to the order of externality. It is true that 
 from a different standpoint the living organism can be 
 treated as if its relationships were merely those of time 
 and space, and as if it were subject to their conditions in 
 the aspects which it so presents. This is the method by 
 which the physicist and the chemist investigate the 
 phenomena of life, and it is fruitful and necessary. But 
 it is inadequate to the actual. For the living organism 
 has the other aspects in which it comes under different 
 orders in knowledge and reality alike. So far as concerns 
 the end, controlling the behaviour of what occupies both 
 space and time, the difficulty which we encounter elsewhere 
 in trying to conceive causal action at a distance has no 
 application. For the end is ideal. It is, as I have already 
 said, more analogous to the disciplined common purpose 
 
182 MEANING AS ENTERING INTO REALITY 
 
 of an army than to an external cause. It is everywhere 
 present, and it is also present in every instant of growth 
 and in every point of development, bringing the future to 
 actuality in the circumstances of the present. It is no 
 influence operating ab extra that we are here dealing with, 
 any more than on the other hand it is the consciously 
 selected purpose of a being that exercises intelligent self- 
 control. We are concerned with a concept that belongs 
 only to biological science, and not to physics, on the one 
 hand, nor to the region of mind, on the other. This con- 
 clusion seems at least in harmony with our actual observa- 
 tion and experience. What its theoretical possibility 
 implies we shall consider presently. The point at this 
 stage is that even as a mere biological fact the individual 
 who sits in the chair is unintelligible if the only concepts 
 available for his interpretation are those of mechanism. 
 Indeed, we may go further. If we concede, for the sake of 
 argument, the validity of the dubious distinction between 
 a character that is non-mental and one that is analogous 
 to that of mind, then the individual human organism 
 may well, in respect of its character, be assigned to the 
 mental world. It is less difficult to conceive it as having 
 a variety of aspects if each of these can possess only 
 relative reality. 
 
 When we turn from the phenomena of mere life to those 
 of mind, we are faced by what is analogous. In the pre- 
 ceding chapter it was pointed out that the personality of 
 the individual John Smith rested in the correspondence, 
 the identity despite difference, between his thinking and 
 that of his neighbours. John Smith is an animal, but it 
 is not as an animal that he is my friend. It is as a man ; 
 that is, as a freely and intelligently selecting mind. 
 Neither his physical nor his biological aspect or qualities 
 avail to make him this ; but only those that belong to the 
 orders in knowledge that are implied in the experience I have 
 in him of what is intellectual, moral, and spiritual. We 
 saw that it is not through mere sense-particulars that these 
 are apprehended. It is only by interpretation that can 
 yield meaning, and that depends on actual identity in the 
 conceptions of thought. The signs interpreted have to be 
 significant of such conceptions as being identically present 
 in the mind of my friend as well as in my own mind, and 
 the access is by way of reflection and memory. 
 
HOW MIND BECOMES AWARE OF MIND 183 
 
 It is thus that mind becomes aware of mind. Each 
 mind has an aspect in which it is object for the other, an 
 object interpreted, however, to signify another subject in 
 knowledge, the " I " particularised in form. The self is 
 expressed in a physical organism whose behaviour we 
 construe as meaning what our own personality means for 
 us. It is thus that we attach significance to its signs, and 
 render its language. But, in so far as these embody 
 meaning, it is only for developed intelligence that they 
 embody it. They are phenomena of what, in aspects per- 
 taining to a different order, belongs to the merely external. 
 All aspects must be co-present for reflection that is fully 
 comprehensive. The apprehension of the actual in its 
 integrity requires them all. But they do not, when taken 
 in isolation, constitute fragments of the actual, existing 
 externally to and independently of each other. The actual 
 object the aspects of which are thus collectively presented 
 is no arithmetical collection of these aspects. It is an 
 entirety interpreted from points of view which differ in 
 their logical character, and belong to different orders in 
 knowledge, no one of which is reducible to the other, how- 
 ever much it may require its presence. Here again we 
 seem to encounter, not the result of any metaphysical 
 theory, but a fact which everyday experience forces on us. 
 It would seem as though we could only hope to get at the 
 entirety of the actual by leaving knowledge to exhibit its 
 own implications, and to develop itself free from constraint 
 of standpoint and of consequent relativity in conception. 
 But knowledge, though in its final nature both free and 
 creative, yet at our actual level in its own hierarchy reveals 
 itself for us only as subjected to the organic conditions which 
 belong to its finiteness as human knowledge, and it is 
 accordingly only by hypothesis and experiment, and by 
 reasoning that is in the first instance relational and dis- 
 cursive, that as human beings we can do our work. 
 
 If the complaint is made that I have not defined more 
 fully the nature of knowledge as thus alleged to be founda- 
 tional, and I am asked to describe it in familiar terms, 
 my answer is that the request so made is misplaced. For 
 knowledge as that foundational fact cannot be described 
 in terms of anything beyond itself. Its conception is an 
 ultimate one, within which both subject and object fall. 
 We are all of us prone to lapse into the psychological attitude 
 
184 MEANING AS ENTERING INTO REALITY 
 
 and to try to hold out for examination mind as though it 
 could be looked on as a thing. But when we do this we fall 
 into the clutches of relativity, and it is just about what 
 can only be relative truth that I am endeavouring to offer a 
 warning. Attempts have been made to exhibit in syste- 
 matic and complete form the entirety of knowledge in 
 final fulness, by observing its self -development without 
 introducing the confining and distorting standpoint of any 
 special science. Whether these attempts have succeeded 
 is doubtful. To this question we shall return later. Mean- 
 time it may be admitted freely that "knowledge " is a word 
 that is apt to mislead. But it is probably the best term 
 available, and it is doubtful whether vov? or Wissenschaft 
 is more free from reproach. All three words may be so 
 used as to suggest not unnaturally relative and not 
 ultimate reality. 
 
 In every phase knowledge depends on interpretation. 
 Its concern is meaning. The meanings belong to different 
 orders of thought. Do they also belong to different orders 
 in reality ? Surely it is impossible to doubt this, if meaning 
 is really involved in the actuality of experience. John 
 Smith is certainly real. So is the living organism. So are 
 the relations apart from which events would be non- 
 existent. So is beauty and so is sin. No theory of sub- 
 jective idealism can, as we have already seen, separate 
 meaning from experience without lapsing into an im- 
 practicable scepticism. Nor is it in the least apparent how 
 to relegate all these aspects of reality to a non-mental 
 world, distinguished as existing in separation from any 
 percipient object and acted on by it in a mere relation of 
 external causation. 
 
 What ordinary common sense believes seems to be 
 what it is also most natural to believe. The universe 
 appears to us, unlike some of our Victorian predecessors, 
 as but one entirety. I apprehend it and myself within 
 it. But this I do through reflection, by mediate know- 
 ledge, for although I apprehend to a certain extent 
 directly through my senses, I do so only in so far as I 
 interpret what my senses tell me. The direct data with 
 which these can furnish me are limited by the conditions 
 of my organism. These data have reality for me through 
 feeling indeed, but through feeling interpreted. By fuller 
 reflection, reflection which proceeds in an ever-increasing 
 
KNOWLEDGE IN ITS FULNESS 185 
 
 degree inferentially and through general ideas, I can pro- 
 ceed beyond apparent immediacy, and extend the inter- 
 pretation and the meanings which come to me through it. 
 It is thus that I conceive the full universe. In the first 
 stage the conceptions and categories which I employ, 
 when I try to apprehend systematically, are few and simple. 
 But as interpretation proceeds I require more of them, 
 including many that belong to different orders in thought. 
 We do not always find the various orders follow on each 
 other in time according to their logical sequence. The 
 child may think of its mother as some sort of personality 
 before it thinks of her as the efficient cause of its sur- 
 roundings. But reality is not thereby divorced from 
 knowledge of reality. The percipient is an object in his 
 universe, but it is still the universe including himself that 
 is there for him, and for its meaning it implies the presence 
 of mind. 
 
 We have now been brought face to face with the full 
 problem of knowledge. The solution suggested is one 
 which has the merit of being in substance an old one that 
 has satisfied, not only some of the most acute of modern 
 thinkers, but the metaphysicians of ancient Greece in 
 their greatest periods. For these, too, entertained views 
 in which knowing and the known are not regarded as 
 separate or separable entities, or knowledge as a mere 
 instrument that is taken up or laid down at pleasure, and 
 applied ab extra to get at reality of a character independent 
 of it. With the thinkers to whom I refer knowledge in 
 its fulness did not exclude any phase of varying forms 
 of intelligence. To feel and to will and to think were 
 not activities belonging to separate faculties. The 
 theoretical and the practical were not divorced in intelli- 
 gence ; for they appeared to these thinkers simply as 
 different fashions in which it realised its ends, fashions 
 which we distinguish only in our imagery. Such imagery 
 is the natural procedure of mind as expressing itself 
 through the senses and by the organism, a form in which 
 its nature appears in degrees of reality which are not the 
 highest. But, in the result, outside the activity of mind 
 in knowledge there exists nothing in any intelligible sense, 
 and all differences in kind of truth are the outcome of this 
 activity. For to truth belong, as we saw, more standards 
 than one. If the standard is one of value we accept its 
 
186 MEANING AS ENTERING INTO REALITY 
 
 results because we cannot do otherwise. The conscious- 
 ness of difference in values seems to belong to mind at a 
 level where it is more than it appears to be merely in our 
 conditioned selves, and in which it imposes on us truth 
 and system just because such truth and system are the 
 foundations on which is built up our individual knowledge, 
 with its freedom to err as readily as to go aright. It is 
 thus from above, from levels that are qualitatively higher 
 than our conditioned selves, and are not dependent on 
 our individual vagaries, that we draw the guidance required 
 for even daily life, and realise that the idea that is to prove 
 true must be one that when tested proves adequate in all 
 respects, theoretical and practical alike. 
 
 The essence of even finite mind, that is of mind in the 
 form of an organism, is that such a mind is free. It is 
 because such freedom is inherent in the very nature of 
 mind at every level that we can choose error or truth, sin 
 or righteousness. 
 
 We have, I hope, now got some light for the solution of 
 the problem which pressed itself on us, the problem of 
 how the subject that knows can be at the same time an 
 object known. It turns out in the end to be a question 
 of the categories employed, resulting from standpoints 
 that are not mutually exclusive. Here, as in other 
 respects, we are always more than we take ourselves to be. 
 
 As I sit in my chair I am not merely an "I," a subject, 
 but I am one among many objects in nature. The mental 
 character which as such an object I, who am also subject, 
 possess in common with my neighbours, makes me judge 
 the world in harmony with them. That world lies before 
 me, and it is by my private judgment in the main accepted 
 as what it is by that of my neighbours. Because I and 
 they are minds thinking identical or corresponding 
 thoughts, there is the same world for all of us. Only to 
 a madman does what appears unquestionable to us seem 
 otherwise, and he is mad under the distortion it may be 
 of physical causes. Of course even healthy individuals 
 vary. The limits within which we recognise the activity 
 of mind as sane are very wide. Insight to an extent which 
 agreeing with yet predominates over ordinary insight may 
 indeed be possessed only at a price. A man of genius may 
 be predominantly sane in what he tells us, for his grasp of 
 what we recognise as of the highest of values may be greater 
 
GENIUS 187 
 
 than ours. But the price he has paid for his self-concen- 
 tration may have been such as to render him eccentric. 
 Napoleon and Attila did not judge or act as do other 
 men, nor did John the Baptist or St. Francis of Assisi, 
 or Browning's " Grammarian." And yet in their own 
 ways all these were supersane, though only in the orders 
 of reflection in which they excelled. As ordinary human 
 beings, as husbands and fathers, they would possibly have 
 turned out deficient. But each of them had power of a 
 kind that enabled him to move easily in a certain region 
 in which smaller men would have striven vainly to move. 
 They were genuinely specialists. Napoleon would have 
 been but a poor evangelist, and John the Baptist would 
 probably have proved to be a dubious leader at Austerlitz. 
 Their specialism consisted in their power of exercising 
 mastery, each in his own region, over certain concepts 
 and images. They were supermen in the sense that hi 
 one direction or the other a greater power of mind in them 
 marked them off from those around them. Yet the con- 
 cepts and images of the greatest men of genius are only such 
 as man's position in nature permits, and their own resem- 
 blance to the rest of humanity far exceeds their divergence 
 from it. The concepts and images of such men are 
 theoretically within the range of the most ordinary indi- 
 vidual. That they can be understood and are held in 
 esteem by ordinary men establishes this. Again, the 
 normal limits of human individuality are partly physical. 
 A headache or a toothache may hamper our capacity to 
 think. In sleep consciousness does not cease, but my 
 awareness of my bodily position and the operation of my 
 senses in keeping me in communion with my surroundings 
 are interrupted. We alter in intellectual capacity from 
 time to time during the twenty-four hours in response to 
 external conditions. Even the absence of sunshine may 
 make the difference that Goethe declared that it made to 
 his power of composition. Thus it is not merely want of 
 concepts and images, or of access to these of higher orders, 
 that hems us in. It is the physical aspect of the self, an 
 aspect on which we, in that we belong to the object-world 
 of nature, are dependent for the expression of that self. 
 And this is true not the less although in a different aspect, 
 belonging to a different level, we are free mind. 
 
 The animal that runs by my side has intelligence, and 
 
188 MEANING AS ENTERING INTO REALITY 
 
 he is in contact with his environment through his sense 
 of smell to an extent which I am not and cannot be. In 
 so far his world includes more than mine does. But in 
 his case there is a limitation of mental individuality pro- 
 portionate to his lack of concepts and of images. The 
 larger orders of reflection do not exist for him. His 
 universe is a restricted universe. He knows nothing, for 
 instance, of wars or strikes. What he does not experience, 
 because he cannot construct it in thought, is thus for him 
 non-existent. He is confined to what is relatively immediate 
 awareness through sensation in a fashion which I am not. 
 For in my case there is a capacity, which he does not 
 share, for reflection that is mediate, and that is operative 
 through concepts and images of an order he cannot 
 command. 
 
 The system of my experience and of the knowledge in 
 which it is sustained is, on the other hand, restricted in my 
 own case by the special features of my organism. I can 
 conceive of beings intelligent as I am, but with senses of 
 a different nature. Such beings may perceive in a 
 fashion which I cannot even imagine. Moreover, they may 
 be endowed with a brain-power capable of rendering 
 itself more effectively than mine the organ of sustained 
 thought. Both in immediate and in mediate comprehension 
 such beings, if they exist, will be my superiors. 
 
 But if such beings do exist it appears clear that they 
 are included in one and the same universe with myself. 
 For it is only through reflection that their possible existence 
 has any meaning for me, or mine for them. In this 
 respect they resemble John Smith. I conceive of them as 
 setting in thoughts that correspond to my own and are 
 in so far identical with them, an experience the general 
 structure of which, for intelligence, is just that of my 
 own mind, and which differs from my experience only in 
 its details. Such experiences are thus based on identity, 
 the identity that characterises mind throughout and 
 relates it to itself in its objects. To speak of numerically 
 different universes is thus to use language that has no 
 meaning. 
 
 As I sit in my chair and envisage myself as an object 
 that is a mind in my world, I am therefore actually mind 
 conscious of mind, although I am contemplating it under 
 the limiting influence of relativity. I am indeed in truth 
 
MIND AS OBJECT 189 
 
 and in fact more than I take myself in so doing to be. I 
 refer my knowledge back to an " I." In so far I am no 
 longer chained to the view that all that comes into reflec- 
 tion is of object character. I have distinguished my 
 object-world from the mind that contemplates it. But 
 I have done so only to reintroduce that mind, the subject 
 for which my world is its object, as in another aspect 
 itself object. To regard this view as final is impossible, 
 for I can discover no expression in which to define know- 
 ledge as being a causal operation in the space and time in 
 which the object- world presents itself to me. It is in 
 that I know that I exist. The relation of knowledge is 
 presupposed in every attempt to present it in causal form. 
 It is the foundation on which reality and unreality alike, 
 truth and error, beauty and ugliness, righteousness and 
 sin, all rest. Each of these presupposes knowledge as 
 the medium in which they are and have meaning. That 
 is what is intended when it is called " foundational." It 
 is the entirety within which they appear as its aspects, 
 at stages in relativity that make them all stand for degrees 
 of unreality. The truth is the whole and these are but 
 partial truths. I know as I find myself situated. My 
 own knowledge is the " that " from which I have to make 
 my start. Get behind it I cannot. My daily task is to 
 explain what it is, and the consequent signification of the 
 fact of my being the finite centre that I am. 
 
 This is the position in experience and in the system that 
 contains experience as an aspect falling within it, the 
 aspect of the self that as experienced contemplates from 
 a chair. Because it is a self that contemplates from a 
 chair, the St. James's Park and Carlton Terrace limit its 
 horizon. Because it signifies a self that is more than 
 merely such as sits in a chair, there are the unseen part 
 of the Metropolis, the world, and the universe beyond. 
 These exist for it inasmuch as the character of mind, even 
 in finite form, is to have freedom from its limitations, 
 not in immediate apprehension, but in mediate reflection. 
 The unstinted range and might of thought enable it to 
 transcend the limits which the senses and the situation 
 impose. But even in reflection on the world of the most 
 abstract character, the mind is looking for the revelation 
 of its own character in its object. The freedom of our 
 minds is no freedom in vain imagining. In our efforts 
 
 14 
 
190 MEANING AS ENTERING INTO REALITY 
 
 after knowledge we are compelled to look for system in 
 what is before us, system which is no creature of our 
 private reflections. Our unfreedom is of the sort which 
 all who are truly free impose on themselves. They en- 
 deavour to think systematically and in harmony with 
 principles which mind itself produces and imposes on 
 itself. It is so that the harmony which is required by 
 truth is found. A purely arbitrary procedure in know- 
 ledge is the procedure of error, and, because mind abhors 
 error, it renounces the arbitrary, and seeks for the order- 
 liness in thought that is inherently characteristic of its 
 nature. 
 
 Because the object-world is in this fashion included 
 in the entirety, and knowledge, so far from being a process 
 of intervention between that world and the self, in truth 
 overlaps both, there is no gap between the character of the 
 object and that of the mind for which it is there. It is 
 only in virtue of distinctions created within what is a 
 whole that these characters are marked off from each other. 
 They are different in so far as the standpoints from which 
 they are apprehended are standpoints which imply con- 
 ceptions of different orders. But the distinctions are not 
 between independent entities, but between independent 
 aspects in the presentations, at their respective stand- 
 points within the entirety. It follows that there is no real 
 problem raised as to the possibility or the genesis of know- 
 ledge, and that the question as to how knowledge is to be 
 explained as the outcome of facts antecedent to it in 
 logic and in time and space is one which is wholly irrational. 
 The world of nature is there, just as it seems, and the self 
 in the chair is there just as it seems. The only legitimate 
 questions are those raised as to the fashion in which they 
 present the aspects which they do. 
 
 If the character and the quality of the object- world be 
 such as has now been suggested, a good many difficulties 
 disappear. What we know is neither only the particular 
 of immediate awareness through sense, nor the universal 
 formulated and hypos tat ised in reflection. It is that 
 which partakes by its nature of both characters, the 
 individual or singular object which is there not more for 
 thought than it is for sense, or for sense than it is for 
 thought. In that object particular and universal do not 
 exist in isolation. They have no meaning and cannot be 
 
SENSATION AND REFLECTION INSEPARABLE 191 
 
 even expressed in such isolation. When we think, even as 
 we believe, wholly abstractly, imagination has really come 
 to our aid, and we are thinking in images, images fashioned 
 freely, like the symbols of the mathematician, to accord 
 with principles of general application that are implicit. 
 The object of knowledge has just for this very reason been 
 denned in philosophy as the concrete universal, as in other 
 words implying mind, and this it is under all conditions. 
 It follows that sense and reflection are inseparable for 
 us. It is no objection to the recognition of what is held to 
 be real that it is only through reflection, aiding itself by 
 moulding images to its purposes, that we can recognise 
 that reality. This conclusion tends to supersede many 
 controversies, including those that we encountered in the 
 case of the space-time continuum. The difficulty there 
 arose from the protagonists having treated as being one 
 only for the methods of mathematics a question that was 
 really for the methods of metaphysics. If the assump- 
 tion, implied if not expressly made, that the mind is a sort 
 of thing which is looking at another sort of thing called 
 nature, be in ultimate analysis superfluous and really un- 
 meaning, then it does not matter whether it is by direct 
 perception or only by inference that we find the space- 
 time continuum as something actually present in nature. 
 It is a conception which is required in order to elicit the 
 harmony of experience. To quote Einstein's own descrip- 
 tion of the treatment of the subject by Minkowski : " From 
 a * happening ' in three-dimensional space, physics becomes, 
 as it were, an ' existence ' in the four-dimensional world." 
 Such existence has of course to be ascertained by observa- 
 tion and experiment. No other method is worth much or 
 can be relied on. But what we thus discover and observe 
 is no mere particular of sense. It is the finding of itself 
 in its object by mind. The test of truth is its adequacy 
 for the explanation of experience, and for the description 
 of what has a unique character in that experience. It is 
 in terms of conceptual knowledge alone that we can 
 describe what we cannot recognise by sight or touch as an 
 object per se. But the description is not less one of an 
 "It," of something actual, which we diagnose as the 
 explanation of phenomena, as we do in the cases of atoms 
 and electrons. It is real in just the same fashion as they 
 are. For its recognition is a necessity of knowledge as it 
 
192 MEANING AS ENTERING INTO REALITY 
 
 stands to-day and is our guide in our belief in what is real. 
 A working hypothesis the space-time activity no doubt is. 
 But it is the hypothesis which the principles of mathe- 
 matical physics as they now stand appear to compel us to 
 regard as an hypothesis which not only works in practice 
 but is true of reality. 
 
 If we rid our minds of the idea that in nature reality is 
 confined to isolated entities which we somehow ought to be 
 able to get at in direct perception, and which stand in 
 merely independently conceived or external relations to 
 each other, it is not difficult to accept the space-time con- 
 tinuum as being the basis of physical nature, provided, 
 that is, we have reached a standpoint in our investigations 
 from which physical reality cannot receive a full or con- 
 sistent meaning without the hypothesis. This is because 
 the character of reality is that of the concrete universal, 
 for the recognition of which reflection is required as much 
 as is sense. Nature is there. From a definite standpoint 
 which has its place among the varying exhibitions of the 
 relativity of knowledge it is independent of and appears 
 closed to the observer. But not the less its texture is 
 bound to be as much for him conceptual as it is sensuous. 
 For both of these aspects have their places within the 
 entirety of knowledge. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 WE have now before us reasons for thinking that nature 
 can be no self-contained entity apart from mind. It is in 
 and through mind that it attains reality. The orders of 
 nature are consequently not limited to those of externality. 
 The full universe, of colour, of sound, of beauty, is not 
 presented exclusively or adequately in any such forms. 
 Other qualities clamour at our doors, and solely in virtue 
 of our abstractions do we shut them out. It is only in a 
 shower of metaphors that we suggest as explanatory of 
 what is actual the ideas of the world of the pure physicist. 
 Such a world is no real world. 
 
 If our knowledge could be perfected we should have 
 before us as completed in their entire system the orders 
 that contribute to what confronts us. Only by a divorce 
 that except for strictly limited purposes is unjustifiable can 
 we divide the mind that is at home in each and all of these 
 orders from its object. As that object more and more 
 suggests to us degrees of a progressively less abstract 
 character, it approximates the more closely to the nature 
 of mind itself, and the division between the two fades. In 
 human personality mind finds itself for us more fully than 
 in any outside thing. What it finds here is indeed of its 
 own inmost nature. Man exists, in being and knowing 
 alike, at degrees in reality which belong to the domain of 
 mind, and are not merely such as characterise physical 
 nature. It is accordingly only by a procedure resembling 
 that of the Victorian bifurcationists that we can separate 
 nature sharply off from intelligence. It is similarly that 
 we divide the self from its human form. In truth these 
 are not separate entities. They are appearances in different 
 orders of knowledge. At its higher level in reflection the 
 human organism appears as the self, and it is only at other 
 
 193 
 
194 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 levels in our reflections, at which also we apprehend it, 
 that it presents the appearance of a particular self instead 
 of self simply. The identity in thought that characterises 
 myself and my friend renders intelligible how a plurality 
 of selves is possible. It is a plurality with physical aspects 
 the source of which is man's place in nature. The identity, 
 on the other hand, that underlies such a plurality of actual 
 selves and explains it has for its origin the relation of 
 nature to mind as its completion. 
 
 I am a particular person with a name, and a past and a 
 kinship to others, as well as a situation in which I am here 
 and now. So far I might be described almost as a mere 
 organism might be. But I cannot be adequately so 
 described, for none of these facts about me are separable 
 from the other fact that they belong to me as a human 
 personality, a self, a mind. As such I have the sense that 
 I am more than even this, and that there is implied a yet 
 higher degree than that of my appearance as a separate 
 self in the experience of myself and others. I find pressed 
 on me, in art, in religion, in thinking, the ideal of person- 
 ality and of mind as at a different level on which my world 
 is not divided from myself as at first sight it seems to be. 
 Potentially at least I can comprehend this ideal, not " as 
 through a glass, darkly," but in reflection, which if abstract 
 is capable of realising the limits by which human know- 
 ledge is marked off from knowledge as conceivable. Within 
 an individuality in which all the degrees in reality and their 
 resulting relations were harmonised, subject and object 
 would ideally come together, and the distinction between 
 them would disclose itself as one wholly within the self. 
 This is a conception which reflection itself suggests to us 
 with increasing importunity. 
 
 For the animals below me such questions do not arise. 
 Reality is for them confined to orders that do not admit 
 of them, for they do not reach to the level in knowledge 
 that is man's. In the case of beings, if such there be, of a 
 higher order the difficulties in recognising the object as in 
 complete harmony with mind may be less. But as mind 
 is ever differentiating itself for us mortals in the processes 
 that arise in its self-distinctions, the complete solution of 
 all differences can belong fully to mind only at the highest 
 level reason can compass, a level where thinking and 
 creation must be contemplated as indistinguishable. Such 
 
THE FINITE CENTRE AGAIN 195 
 
 a level we do not attain in the place in experience that 
 is ours. That place is one here and now, and affords the 
 only foothold that is actual in our daily experience as men. 
 It is but reflectively, by thought which can spread its wings 
 and fly beyond the limits of what appears immediately, 
 that we can explore the self in a fuller significance. In 
 each case the significance and the reality are the same. 
 That is the outcome of the doctrine of relativity and its 
 completion. 
 
 Such a view is what is indicated if we refuse to treat 
 nature as finally self-contained, or, more generally, if we 
 decline to regard object as really divorceable from subject. 
 
 In the preceding chapters I have sought to throw some 
 light upon what is meant by speaking of the fact of know- 
 ledge as an ultimate and foundational fact. Behind the 
 fact that we know we cannot get ; cogito, sum, not cogito, 
 ergo sum. To ask what is the explanation of the fact that 
 I know is therefore an irrational question. Of course it is 
 true that we can trace in the external forms of nature the 
 growth of the intelligent organism and of its activity in 
 becoming conscious. For in so far as this growth takes 
 place it is akin to that of the nervous system and the senses, 
 and these belong to nature. In recognising this the view 
 of the " Behaviourists " is as legitimate as it is essential. 
 But it is a view only of the growth of mind as it discovers 
 itself in nature ; and nature presupposes the experience 
 apart from which it is meaningless and within which it 
 falls, as coming to us as much by interpretation through 
 concepts as through the senses. The experience of myself 
 as a centre takes a definite expression in the kind of 
 organism in which knowledge expresses itself. It is by 
 so much finite, and is itself an experience that varies and 
 grows. For it is clear that the experience of myself as a 
 finite centre is never either complete or final. What is of 
 universal truth in the character and texture of such a 
 limited experience depends, as I have pointed out, on 
 thoughts which are identical in your thinking and in mine. 
 But we have also sensations and feelings, and these, if they 
 could be taken merely as such, would be ours individually 
 and exclusively, for they come into consciousness only 
 through our organisms. What is accessible to others is 
 only that setting in reflection of particulars which is in- 
 separable from the reality of these sensations and feelings 
 
196 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 as facts. In other words, it is just in virtue of the universals 
 of knowledge which go to their constitution that the 
 experiences of different persons are identical, and that 
 these persons can be even said to have the same sensations 
 and feelings. The sensations and feelings are theirs 
 exclusively and individually. But it is in virtue of these 
 universals, identical in mind in every form, being inherent 
 in particulars which are in what is actual inseparable from 
 them excepting in so far as in reflection abstractions are 
 made, that we see the same sun, moon, and stars before us. 
 Pure knowledge through concepts and mere feelings are 
 neither of them separate entities. The notions of them as 
 self-subsisting are no more than asymptotic limits towards 
 which the activity in which mind consists can direct itself 
 indefinitely in abstractive analysis. But that activity can 
 never finally fix them as entities, for, like the infinitesimal 
 of the mathematician, they have no independent actuality. 
 Experience is an entirety within which they are distinguished 
 only when it is turned in on itself and is analysed by 
 reflection within its own field. 
 
 Now the reasons why we speak of our sensations and 
 feelings as though we could visualise them as self-sub- 
 sistent, or seize on and hold them up as existences by 
 themselves and with a character all their own, is that we 
 concentrate in our practice on images of our own existence 
 as being that of a physical organism. This is, however, a 
 concentration which results in truth that is only partial. 
 We always refer to an " I " in our experience, and therefore 
 to a subject not less than to an object, and subject and 
 object are neither properly separable nor mutually exclu- 
 sive facts. The subject is the expression of experience 
 in its quality of being foundational, as it is in the judgments 
 we make and refer back to the self which judges. Our 
 experience regarded on its subject side, as the experience 
 of self, is approached through the instrumentality of 
 conceptions which are appropriate only to a stage in reflec- 
 tion different from that at which the object- world is 
 treated as self-subsisting. We can, and in daily life for 
 many purposes do, think of the self as a thing, a body 
 clothed with an infinity of properties and relationships, in 
 fine as if it were a substance in space and time resembling 
 other substances. But it is not the less, when we follow 
 out more fully what its nature implies, subject as much 
 
FINITE PERSONALITY 197 
 
 as it is object, and the more we abstract from the charac- 
 teristics with which its objective form invests it, the more 
 nearly does it present itself for reflection as a centre, not 
 itself situated somewhere in space and time, but to which 
 space and time are referred ; as the " here " and " now " 
 in distinction from the " there " and " then." But these 
 expressions stand, not for points in an absolute framework 
 of space and time, but for universals with the identity of 
 conception that characterises universals whoever may 
 express them. The characteristic of the centre is therefore 
 a reference back to thought, and this takes us straight to 
 the focal point in knowledge, that activity of the self about 
 which we have already spoken. What is the inference ? 
 It is surely that the finiteness of the centre of personality 
 belongs to the stage in its reality which it presents when 
 apprehended in a less notional form, the apprehension 
 which tends to lay its stress on sensation and feeling as if 
 these were the dominant and only true moments in the real, 
 and less on self -searching processes of thought of a more 
 general kind. Sensation and feeling are represented as 
 energies of the organism in the orders of knowledge to 
 which they belong, and it is only in so far as the organism 
 is envisaged as in an object-world that they have any place 
 of their own in its system. Now it is true that even at the 
 level of personality we still have before our minds the 
 organism. Personality is the organism at a higher level 
 in conception, just as what lives is matter and energy 
 transformed and exhibited at a higher stage of reality as 
 actually experienced, in which it expresses the end as the 
 final cause of life. The principle of degrees in reality as 
 well as in knowledge is the explanation of how this is 
 possible, and the facts appear to bear out the explanation. 
 But the organism, even when disentangled from the 
 abstract character with which it is invested, and when in 
 reflection raised to a higher nature, is still, as the level of 
 personality is reached, at no abiding stage in reflection. 
 For an ideal presses its claim upon our thinking with a 
 power that is irresistible. The conception of subject, 
 if followed out, becomes more than a mere point or focus 
 of reference for activities or events in space and time. 
 Space and time are for it ; they require the implication of a 
 subject reflecting for which they are conceived as its own 
 facts before we can attach meaning to the words. Even the 
 
198 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 physical doctrine of Einstein suggests this. Their charac- 
 ters are relative to the subject, and the subject as 
 such is not, when adequately interpreted, in them. It is 
 only when reflection has by an imperfect abstraction lowered 
 its level, and has treated the subject-self as having a par- 
 ticular location in space and time in which it is permanently 
 at rest in them, that they claim independence. Indeed, 
 it is only in so far as reflection remains at the standpoint 
 at which it treats the subject as an object which can be, 
 as it were, held out and scrutinised, that the separation 
 between the two is hypos tatised. If our intelligence were 
 so powerful that it could follow as far as the implications 
 lead, it could do more than reach this final conclusion as 
 an ideal of reflection, attained only by letting the activity 
 of thought disentangle itself from embodiment in sensation 
 and feeling, and in the symbols that are descriptive of them, 
 which is our everyday plane in human experience. Instead 
 of having to make abstractions and look towards an ideal 
 merely grasped in its general terms, with a yearning for 
 closer knowledge more akin to that of everyday practice, 
 the mind would realise the impulse to seek to behold God, 
 as it is wont, in accordance with the physical conditions of 
 knowledge, to seek to behold man. But for us, at the level 
 to which our organic conditions confine us, this cannot be, 
 save through the abstract might of thought. If we would 
 see God we must be capable of ceasing to be as merely men. 
 There is for reflection a barrier fixed between the ideal and 
 its attainment at the stage in the whole to which we are 
 compelled by the finite purposes that in fact chain us to 
 our station, and determine for us a " This " from which 
 we cannot as mortal shake ourselves free, or do more than 
 work out in thought the implication of its " What." Yet 
 in images created by faith we do pass over this barrier, for 
 what mind has itself posited mind is conscious that it has 
 in a sense transcended. Nor is this faith a mere blind 
 striving. It is rather the thinking which, abstract though 
 it seems even for metaphysics, yet dominates and trans- 
 forms emotion by making it the symbol of thought and the 
 vehicle of ideals that are concrete and of compelling power, 
 as in art and in religion. Such faith is indeed the sub- 
 stance of thing unseen. 
 
 But if this be the true nature of experience it must be 
 interpreted with a new significance. It must be thought of 
 
DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY 199 
 
 as being something both wider and deeper than it appears 
 at the level to which our organic structure as living beings 
 tends to hold us. Because I individually am dependent 
 on a brain and senses I cannot in direct apprehension get 
 beyond the degree of reality which is for me a fact of exist- 
 ence, the " That " of which, though partaker of the true 
 character of mind, I can do no more than explicate the 
 " What." It is this that is meant when it is conceded that 
 finite mind arises through nature and implies its presence, 
 arises and implies it as reality at a higher degree arises 
 through and implies degrees that, while lower and super- 
 seded, are still actual and present. It is no question of 
 causation in time of the higher by the lower. It is rather 
 a question of " Becoming " in the sense in which Aristotle 
 understood it, the becoming that is the activity of self- 
 developing mind, completing itself through a succession of 
 stages. In these, time, though a relation to the actual in 
 these stages, is included by mind within the whole which 
 its activity presents to itself at various degrees, instead 
 of itself enveloping the mind that in relation to it is rather 
 the subject for which time is. If this be true, universal 
 and particular, thought and feeling, mind as distinguished 
 from nature, are phases in a whole which in its self-com- 
 pletion is beyond the order of time, and is spiritual in its 
 inmost character. Experience does not present itself 
 consistently to us as such a whole because, although mind, 
 we are mind which is yet conditioned in its activity by 
 nature, and by the bodily organism which is part of nature. 
 It is again a question throughout of degree in knowledge 
 and reality. I am human because I habitually follow 
 human purposes, as must be the case for one subject to 
 physical conditions. It is just so that I exist at my stage 
 in the hierarchy of existence. These purposes are mine 
 inasmuch as without them I could not be what I individually 
 am, and they hold me to dependence on sensation and 
 feeling. But even as human I am mind that has attained 
 to much more in the process of its self-explication. For 
 mind, in whatever form it appears, has for its very essence 
 and characteristic this, that it is free and capable of 
 abstracting itself from every particular detail in its object- 
 world, even from its own pain and its own death, and can 
 grasp its own character as having standpoints from which 
 it delivers itself from these. 
 
200 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 I have now tried to indicate what is meant by speaking 
 of experience as foundational. It is the whole outside of 
 which I do not get and cannot get. For, raised in reflec- 
 tion to its highest form, all that is has significance only as 
 falling within it. As of such a form we can present to our- 
 selves no pictorial image of it, and yet our reflection, which 
 is activity within experience itself, compels us beyond our 
 present images of its contents. The completed entirety 
 within which falls all that is and was and will be, not less 
 than the mind for which it is there, is the whole for thought 
 short of which thinking cannot arrest its conception. 
 Experience though conditioned is knowledge. We must 
 therefore abstain from trying to treat what lies at the 
 very root of the meaning of existence as though it were 
 itself an incident of existence. Knowledge is no property 
 of a substance ; it cannot be called a property even of the 
 subject. It is the subject itself in its essential aspect. 
 In fine it is foundational, the foundation on which the 
 finite centre rests. It is ever building up, through its own 
 self-distinctions, the whole in which feeling and the 
 reflection of finite mind are separated, but by a process of 
 abstraction which is justified only by the end that it has 
 to subserve, and that has called it into being. 
 
 It follows from these conclusions that the world is there 
 independently of thought which is recognised as merely 
 my thought, thought as discussed in the ordinary text- 
 books of logic. What I feel and see and hear and smell and 
 taste is actual independently of the relation to it of myself 
 appearing as a thing in the world confronting it. This 
 is realism of a kind, but it is a realism which finds the 
 universals of thought as themselves present in the con- 
 stitution of that world. For it imports a whole which is 
 presented as embracing common qualities, and common 
 qualities, as Aristotle reminded us long ago, cannot come 
 to us through the particular senses of individuals. They 
 are universals ; not entities apart, such as Scholasticism 
 disputed over as being either real or else only nominal. 
 They are universals that are inherently present in the 
 constitution of what is singular, in virtue of its having both 
 general and particular factors or moments. 
 
 It will be convenient to contrast this view of the Universe 
 with others that are current. And that I may do this I 
 must, even at the risk of repetition in different language of 
 
LOGIC IN DIFFERENT FORMS 201 
 
 some things that have already been said, look again over 
 certain parts of the ground from a different point of view. 
 I have just referred to the treatment of thought in the 
 ordinary books on Logic. But these books are written 
 from highly varying outlooks on the subject. There 
 are the old-fashioned manuals of formal logic, founded 
 largely on that phase of Aristotle's teaching which is 
 recorded in his Analytics, as distinguished from very 
 different phases that appear in his metaphysic and in his 
 treatise on the mind. In his teaching of logic he seems 
 to look on thinking merely as an instrument in our hands. 
 Then there are expositions, such as those of Mr. Bradley 
 and Professor Bosanquet, in which thought is looked on as 
 belonging to a higher order, but is still investigated in its 
 appearance as the thinking of a finite human being, con- 
 ditioned by his position in nature. Finally, and different 
 from both of these modes of treatment, is that of logic as 
 belonging to the metaphysic of ultimate reality, a treat- 
 ment in which thought is approached as being a system of 
 abstractions, but abstractions not only from what is finite, 
 but also from the entirety of reality, an entirety which 
 implies a corresponding system of counter-abstractions 
 of a wholly different character. This is the method of 
 Hegel, to the nature of which we shall have to look at 
 a later stage. Each mode of approach is required and is 
 legitimate if its purpose is borne in mind. The varying 
 modes of approach are each of them necessary, but they 
 belong to different stages in reflection. 
 
 We start in our development as human beings from the 
 simplest phases of our finite life. Our world begins in 
 sentience. We first of all distinguish our sensations. These 
 present themselves as we distinguish them, in relations of 
 time and space. It is only by abstraction from the con- 
 tents which they qualify that we come to isolate these 
 relations and regard them as self-subsisting frameworks. 
 They are as they come to appear only for reflection which 
 has advanced a certain way in pursuance of an object. 
 Within them we first conceive the feelings we have as to 
 some extent exclusive of each other. We then begin to 
 realise that they affect each other in fashions which we 
 conceive, in terms of time and space relations, as those of 
 causes or coexistences. We assume that the laws we find 
 to be followed will hold true as our experience progresses, 
 
202 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 and the assumption is verified as we proceed from sentience 
 to sentience. We assume this because the basis of reality 
 for us is progressively disclosed as inseparable from know- 
 ledge and its rationality. It is there independently of our 
 knowledge as finite centres. We then, by reflection based 
 on the hypothesis that these rational laws will continue to 
 hold good, begin to predict what we shall find as we pro- 
 ceed to fresh experiences. We thus enlarge the meaning 
 of the world that we are progressively finding before us. 
 We unconsciously assume that what we first of all have 
 before our minds, the reign of the mechanical forms of law 
 in nature, is the important thing to look for. The view of 
 the world which we thus get is in the first instance that of 
 things excluding and determining each other in their 
 externality. But it is only the activity of reflection that 
 has taken us beyond our immediate sensations, and such 
 reflection has at first been directed under mechanical con- 
 ceptions in order to subserve practical purposes. As we go 
 further we employ other ideas, such as those of ends, which 
 guide us to other facts and relations when we proceed to 
 reflection and prediction. We thus come to find the world 
 as presenting aspects different from those that are merely 
 mechanical. But we habitually return to our earliest 
 tendency, for it is the one under which we first became 
 accustomed to clarity in distinguishing. Still, even this 
 took place only through the instrumentality of something 
 more than mere sensation. It was the work of thought, 
 thought that found its justification as it proceeded. We 
 therefore go forward in the effort to range the contents of 
 our experience under the conceptions to which we were 
 first accustomed, returning to categories which we found 
 to be true of the order of things, as well as reliable for 
 predicting the forms they were assuming. It was indeed 
 the tendency of thought, setting before itself in the first 
 instances only limited purposes, to eliminate other con- 
 ceptions of ends and higher causes as these intruded them- 
 selves. Memory, recognition, comparison of ideas, were 
 all operative, but operative under this tendency so to 
 represent the world as mechanistic and exclude these higher 
 aspects. They were higher by the very fact that in the 
 relation of the end to the means, which nature displayed 
 as freely as it did that of mechanism, and in the relation of 
 the whole to the parts as exhibited in what we recognise 
 
THE GROWTH OF OUR KNOWLEDGE 203 
 
 as living, the mind was discovering as before it something 
 more akin to its own nature than this mere externality 
 and mutual exclusion of the constituent elements on which 
 in the first stage we laid stress. This is the outcome of the 
 operation of the final end that is implicit in knowledge. 
 It was useful to treat the world as mechanical and self- 
 subsistent. But it soon began to be doubtful whether 
 even in practice we could treat the mind as one thing and 
 its object as another external to it. For mind, as it more 
 and more succeeded in reaching over its world and making 
 it fully intelligible, was more and more finding itself ; and 
 the beautiful, the good, and the true came to be looked on 
 as inseparable from the intelligence for which they were 
 present. It was in this way that experience seemed to 
 develop its fulness. Starting from mere sentience it became 
 progressively the experience of a world containing various 
 degrees in conception and various stages in reality. The 
 higher the level reached by reflection the higher and fuller 
 is this experience, and the more it becomes plain that it is 
 only by our abstraction that we have drawn a line between 
 experience and experiencing. The earliest form which 
 the process of growth in knowledge assumes is that of 
 separation in space and time, but by the embodiment of 
 the activity of the mind in the general conceptions which 
 it forms for itself the mind is able to get beyond what is 
 immediate, and mediately, by reflection, to grasp the past 
 and the future as implied by the real not less than is the 
 present. But as sentience is of what is present it is only 
 through the concepts of reflection that the mind can accom- 
 plish this work. Still, its activity through these concepts 
 has no limit. They belong to the mind and they create 
 the problems which they resolve. Their justification is 
 that they seem, as Aristotle held, to be inseparable from 
 the particulars of sense. For these particulars have no 
 meaning apart from their setting in general conceptions. 
 What is experienced is always in form individual or singular, 
 and such that in it the universal element, that which 
 thought grasps, is inseparable from the merely particular, 
 in integrity with which it has reality. Experience is there- 
 fore more than immediacy, and it is only real in so far as 
 the activity of mind finds itself disclosed in it. It is not 
 static. It is an activity, a constant progress. It is 
 dynamic and it seems to progress, in an effort under the 
 
204 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 impulse of larger ends to be attained, towards the realisa- 
 tion of that completeness which mind would have if its 
 world were not estranged from it by the distinctions it has 
 itself created. 
 
 We find ourselves as actual at a certain stage in the 
 process, a stage which is our " That," our point of depar- 
 ture. Mind and body are not two distinct things. Our 
 bodies express our minds as their own " entelechies." But 
 they express mind as subject to the physical limitations of 
 the organism, which is physical not less than it is alive 
 and sentient and intelligent. Our position in the Universe 
 is therefore subordinate and restricted. It is because we 
 are subject as well as substance, because we bring the 
 Universe into the focus of the self, and because there is 
 no gulf between the self and that Universe, that we can 
 transcend the boundaries of the space and time that hem 
 in our immediate perception. But it is only through con- 
 ception, through indirect processes of thought, which can 
 make abstractions and so bring to consciousness that which 
 in reality is of the character of the universal, that we get 
 beyond ourselves and take in the Universe in its entirety. 
 Even the power of thinking is conditioned by the strength 
 and health of the organism through which it functions. 
 The state of the nervous system may make all the difference 
 to the appearance to us of the world, and to our power of 
 interpreting it. A paralytic stroke may destroy our 
 capacity as men, and reduce us as living beings to the 
 mental level of the unintelligent brute ; to partial death. 
 Beings of a different organisation and with different senses 
 from ours might have a wholly different experience. Yet 
 in the main the higher and most perfect characteristics of 
 thinking would have to be for them what they are for us. 
 Otherwise the existence of such minds could have no 
 meaning for us, or of ours for them. We cannot even 
 speak of them as possible, unless there is taken to be in 
 them that which we recognise as identical with certain 
 aspects of our own existence and the degrees of reality 
 which belong to these aspects. It is therefore obvious 
 that, in contemplating the possibility of any phase of 
 experience, we think of a common basis on which all 
 possible experience must rest, a common medium, if a 
 dubious metaphor be permissible, within which all reality, 
 the merely conceivable as well as the actual, must fall. 
 
MIND AS SUCH '205 
 
 To say this is to speak of what is true of mind alone. For 
 mind alone has quality such that its entire Universe has 
 meaning only as falling within itself and so constituting 
 with it an ideal and a completed whole, an end which 
 demands full realisation, a perfection of existence with no 
 region beyond itself even for thought. Mind so conceived 
 by reflection can never be a pictorial object of perception. 
 So to represent it would be to limit and transform its 
 nature. Nor can mind at such a stage in self-realisation 
 be merely a centre of feeling. For feeling, apart from 
 its setting in knowledge about it, is an abstraction, and 
 the nature of what is final cannot be of such a character. 
 It cannot any the more be in the nature of mere thought 
 as marked off from or contrasted with feeling. Its nature 
 must imply the mediation which characterises the highest 
 process of intelligence. For all its processes must be 
 referable to the self-contained entirety that is attributed 
 to this, the highest and final degree of reality. Eye cannot 
 see or ear hear such, and were it not for that infinity of 
 range which is characteristic of the thinking even of finite 
 human beings, we could not present to our minds the 
 abstract concept in reflection of the subject as know- 
 ledge, whose field and content are no existence foreign 
 to its self. 
 
 Reality at such a degree, although a self-contained 
 system, realises itself at its levels progressively, if what 
 is no better than a metaphor may for a moment be 
 used. And, assuming the view of reality which this book 
 seeks to express to be right, it is obvious that reality does 
 so, crystallising, as it were, its conceptual self-evolution 
 at stages which are those of finite mind. Experience 
 always has implications beyond those we attend to in 
 everyday practice. We know only in so far as we are more 
 than we take ourselves to be. In art and religion, as well 
 as in philosophy itself, we become aware of this. How can 
 the causal standpoint of physical science enable us to 
 estimate the quality of a sonata ? The higher emotions 
 of mankind, undivorceable as they are from reflection, and 
 inseparable, their apparent immediacy notwithstanding, 
 from the thinking that knows no limit to its range, at 
 moments disclose what lifts them above the ordinary level 
 of emotion. Religion, poetry, music, and pictorial art 
 bring feeling to a level as high as any that reason can 
 15 
 
206 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 reach, and by reason's light set emotion for us in forms 
 that endure. 
 
 We seek for wholes of various orders in the forms both 
 of objects of what we call direct experience and of general 
 knowledge, not less than in the mind that apprehends them. 
 These wholes are, as I have said, individual, in nature as 
 well as in thought, and they are wholes into which enter 
 principles of general application, even in cases where the 
 object has not the form of mind but belongs to a different 
 stage in the hierarchy of reality. Such objects point 
 beyond themselves towards an ideal. That is what 
 Tennyson means when he says : 
 
 " Flower in the crannied wall, 
 I pluck you out of the crannies, 
 I hold you there, root and all, in my hand, 
 Little flower but if I could understand 
 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
 I should know what God and man is." 
 
 Goethe expresses himself similarly about our everyday 
 life. It is in his poem " Vermachtniss " : 
 
 " Vernunft sei uberall zugegen, 
 Wo Leben sich des Lebens freut, 
 Darin ist Vergangenheit bestandig, 
 Das Kiinftige voraus lebendig, 
 Der Augenblick ist Ewigkeit." 
 
 Things present different aspects of reality according to the 
 varying degrees they embody. In our experience of them 
 we have not departed from actual fact merely because 
 there come occasions when they appear to us, as Browning 
 says : 
 
 " Changed not in kind but in degree. 
 The instant made eternity." 
 
 It may assist in the discussion of an elusive topic which 
 I have sought, at the risk of considerable repetition in 
 different words, to elucidate, if I now try to contrast the 
 conclusion so far reached with the views of writers such as 
 Mr. F. H. Bradley, Professor Bosanquet, and Professor 
 Pringle-Pattison. For although these three thinkers have 
 discussed the nature of the finite self and have arrived at 
 opinions from some of which I do not feel myself very far 
 removed, there are yet points of difference, not only 
 
MR. F. H. BRADLEY 207 
 
 between themselves but between them and myself, which 
 seem to me to require consideration. 
 
 To begin with, for Mr. Bradley and (though of this I 
 am not quite so sure) for Professor Bosanquet also, the 
 nature of thought is to be relational, by which they mean 
 that the subject in judgment is always beyond the content 
 predicated of it, and is never exhaustible by predicates 
 which cannot contain the whole of its nature. Thus no 
 fact of sensible experience and no feeling can be adequately 
 exhibited in a system of thought-content. Thought estab- 
 lishes relations and is discursive, and if it ceases to be this 
 it ceases to be itself, and yet if it remains this it cannot 
 present what is immediate. On the reality and immediacy 
 of sentience they lay great stress. And so they hold that 
 to enable thought to attain to complete presentation it 
 must cease to predicate, it must get beyond mere relations, 
 it must reach something other than what we usually mean 
 when in everyday practice we use the word truth. It 
 desires to reach a whole which can contain every aspect 
 within it, but, if it is to do so, all that distinguishes it from 
 feeling and will must be absorbed, and thought must there- 
 fore have changed its nature. In a mode of apprehension 
 which is to be identical with reality, predicate and subject 
 in judgment and not less than the whole relational form, 
 must be merged. I think that these sentences, so far as 
 few words can suffice, summarise the position on the 
 question stated in Mr. Bradley's Appearance and 
 Reality. 
 
 Now the first thing that strikes me about the argument 
 is that all the thinking of which we have any experience 
 by its very character implies mediation and a process of 
 establishing relations. If we are debarred from relying 
 on the predication which is the inseparable form of judg- 
 ment as it is for us we therefore cannot think in any 
 adequate fashion, and consequently we cannot investigate 
 the nature of the real at all. It is true that the form our 
 thinking assumes is dominated by varying ends. At times 
 and very frequently our purpose is simply to distinguish 
 the predicate from the subject and make definite thereby 
 what has been added to knowledge. We isolate the thing 
 of which we speak, so that it may be shown as inde- 
 pendent in its essential nature from what we say about 
 it. " The sun has set." The sun is the subject in this 
 
208 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 judgment. Its setting is a separable phase which is 
 predicated with the implication that it represents only a 
 transitory state of the sun's appearance. A mere feeling 
 of sunset would give us no knowledge. We want definite 
 knowledge. Consequently thought assumes the form of 
 what is sometimes called judgment of the understanding, 
 in which the subject and the predicate are held asunder. 
 But reflection always discloses that such judgments are 
 only valuable for limited use. The fuller truth lies in the 
 more extensive reflection which shows the sunset to be 
 merely an incomplete phase in a physical system, a large 
 whole in which it gets a new significance. To regard a 
 judgment as a self-contained and final movement of mind 
 is to hypostatise an abstraction. For judgment appears to 
 be rather the exhibition in thought of the enrichment of the 
 subject by its being brought continuously into relation 
 with a larger whole, in which subject and predicate are 
 aspects in one entirety which is their further truth. With 
 this provisional whole reflection does not stop. It goes 
 on to predicate of the so enriched subject yet more, and 
 extends the significance of the original whole. That is 
 inherent as what is called the dialectical quality of know- 
 ledge. The sunset turns out to be due to the rotation of 
 the earth, which will for many hours obscure the sun from 
 the place where I am. It is only for the sake of distinct- 
 ness of conception that we pause over the fragmentary and 
 crystallised judgments of understanding. Under these we 
 abstract and hypostatise, as we do, for instance, when we 
 regard things arithmetically with reference only to their 
 numbers and not their qualities. 
 
 Mr. Bradley, of course, is well aware of this tendency of 
 thought, which he regards as an inherent defectiveness. 
 But he is not content to put it down to the influence of 
 contracted purposes, an influence which thought might 
 shake off by altering these purposes. He holds that for the 
 apprehension of true reality, as distinguished from appear- 
 ance, a form of apprehension is required other than the 
 thinking which is for him in every phase inherently con- 
 ditioned by a relational character. The form required 
 must be one in which apprehension is immediate, and is not 
 mediated by reflection. Subject and predicate, sentience 
 and thought, must not be separated in it. Nothing short 
 of the avoidance of this will enable the mind to attain its 
 
CARDINAL NEWMAN 209 
 
 ideal grasp of ultimate reality in its fulness. Such a per- 
 fection of knowledge is for Mr. Bradley not incapable of 
 being conceived. It is, indeed, suggested by knowledge as 
 we find it, for in that knowledge we have experience of 
 ourselves as impelled to seek to overcome defects, and to 
 reach a result in which knowledge can rest just because in 
 it absolute reality is felt as much as thought. Such know- 
 ledge is an Other for which human knowledge searches, 
 yet it would be, if attained, akin to our human knowledge, 
 though differing from it in having transcended the 
 unending relational form. We should in that case have 
 an experience which, it is true, we cannot have under 
 existing conditions. We cannot, starting from ourselves 
 as finite centres, represent a perfect experience in an 
 image, or even construe it reflectively in its detail. But we 
 infer that if we could attain to such a stage we should have 
 reached knowledge of a kind which must be more than 
 feeling, just as it must be more than relational thought, 
 a knowledge in which idea and reality would come together 
 in an identity " not too poor but too rich for division of its 
 contents." 
 
 What troubles me in this is a difficulty in following how 
 the author of Appearance and Reality can legitimately get 
 as far as he does, or indeed escape the precipice of a com- 
 plete scepticism. Another feature in Mr. Bradley 's system 
 is that in which he lays emphasis on a principle of degrees 
 with which I am in whole-hearted agreement. But I find 
 difficulty in reconciling it with what I have just referred 
 to. The problem of philosophy is there, in his view 
 apparently, not the explanation of genetic evolution in 
 time, but the explanation of degrees of completeness in 
 thought and its objects. Now it is only by the instru- 
 mentality of thought itself, as we know and rely on it in 
 daily life, that we can even attempt to realise this principle. 
 On thought we are absolutely dependent. It is only in 
 terms of thought that any kind of reality can have meaning, 
 or that any significance can be attached to its existence. 
 Experience itself is penetrated through and through with 
 such thought. Behind it we cannot get. There is a 
 passage in Cardinal Newman's Grammar of Assent l in which 
 that acute critic puts very simply the root difficulty 
 
 1 Fourth dition, p. 61. 
 
210 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 which confronts those who would cast doubt on our ex- 
 perience : 
 
 " We are what we are, and we use, not trust, our faculties. 
 To debate about trusting them in a case like this is parallel 
 to the confusion implied in wishing I had a choice whether 
 I would be created or no, or speculating what I should be 
 like if I were born of other parents. ' Proximus sum 
 egomet mihi.' Our consciousness of self is prior to all 
 questions of trust or assent. We act according to our 
 nature by means of ourselves, when we remember or reason. 
 We are as little able to accept or reject our mental constitu- 
 tion as our being." 
 
 My experience, even conditioned as it is by my position 
 as a living and intelligent being in a world in space and 
 time, and by the physical limitations of brain and sense 
 with which I was born, is thus my foundation. I can, it 
 is true, get beyond my limits through thought, which takes 
 the form of conception, and fashions universals which carry 
 me far beyond immediacy. But in the actual exercise of 
 my activity in thinking, as distinguished from its quality 
 and range, I am subject to physical restrictions which 
 nature imposes. Thought is trammelled, yet not more 
 than trammelled, by the demands of time and space. For 
 it is no sequence of events in these ; it is for thought that 
 even they are there and possess meaning. In the natural 
 execution of our limited purposes thought, therefore, 
 assumes a relational form, but this is a form which does 
 not exhaust its nature. 
 
 It was a conviction similar to that of Cardinal Newman 
 which led Hegel, when he wrote The Phenomenology of 
 Mind, to protest against the idea of treating knowledge 
 as something by itself, or as a mere instrument which the 
 mind could hold out for independent examination in a 
 stereotyped aspect, and criticise ab extra. Kant had tried 
 to do this, and in the Phenomenology Hegel denounces 
 the attempt. For the latter the only thing that could 
 exhibit the real nature of thought was itself. Its criticism 
 must therefore be the self-criticism to which it subjects 
 itself in observing the correction of its own abstractions 
 which experience discloses when we let it tell its own story, 
 by unfolding to us in our observation forms or stages 
 
PROFESSOR BOSANQUET 211 
 
 ranging from substance to subject. For him thought 
 assumed the relational aspect which the judgment of the 
 understanding aims at, but only as an aspect transitional 
 to the stage at which it comes to comprehend itself as 
 embracing all relations within it as its own creation. Know- 
 ledge was therefore, for Hegel as for Aristotle, foundational 
 to reality itself, and not a particular fact embraced within it. 
 For if it is taken to be such a fact, and as such may exhibit 
 a relational character which precludes it from even 
 abstractly reaching what is final, it follows, as Mr. Bradley 
 holds, that the ultimate reality, the Absolute, must be 
 another kind of experience, qualitatively and possibly even 
 numerically differing from our own, and standing to it in a 
 relation which excludes any approach or participation that 
 can be made intelligible. The self we experience and know 
 is for such a doctrine mere appearance, a construction of 
 reflection chained to the finiteness of the centre to which 
 it belongs. Reality is Another, and is unattainable by the 
 very knowledge that professes to deduce its existence. 
 It is difficult to see how such an entity apart can have even 
 the significance which Mr. Bradley and Professor Bosan- 
 quet assign to it, or any real meaning as an intelligible 
 foundation for the Universe. Such a view is far removed 
 from that which finds in actual experience degrees towards 
 a fuller and completed knowledge of the same nature, and 
 which looks on the ideal for which it seeks as immanent in, 
 and not as apart from, the experience of which in thought 
 it is the completion. 
 
 In the second series of his admirable Gifford Lectures 
 Professor Bosanquet seems to me to come near to this 
 latter view, and my only difficulty about what he writes 
 is to read it as consistent with his interpretation of thought 
 as inherently defective. The finite individual, he declares, 
 is more than merely finite, and has a capacity in thinking 
 which goes beyond what is finite. " It is freely admitted," 
 he says in the second lecture, " that in cognition the self is 
 universal. It goes out into a world which is beyond its 
 own given being, and what it meets there it holds in 
 common with other selves, and in holding it ceases to be a 
 self-contained and repellent unit." He does not find the 
 distinctness of finite centres a difficulty. For " the pure 
 privacy and incommunicability of feeling as such is super- 
 seded in all possible degrees by the self -transcendence and 
 
212 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 universality of the contents with which it is unified." These 
 contents are " organs of self-transcendence." " Feeling," 
 in order to be capable of utterance in determinate form, 
 " must take an objective character. It must cease to be 
 a blank intensity, it must gather substance from ideas." 
 And in so doing it " must change its reference to self, or 
 modify the self to which it refers. Different persons are 
 organisations of content which a difference of quality, 
 generally, though not strictly, dependent on belonging to 
 different bodies, prevents from being wholly blended." 
 " We do not experience ourselves as we really are." 
 
 Professor Pringle-Pattison has given a full exposition 
 of his conclusions about God and the finite self in the 
 Gifford Lectures to which he has given the title of The Idea 
 of God. It is a book the acute insight of which is matched 
 by an admirable literary form. For him finite personality 
 is not what it is for Mr. Bradley and Mr. Bosanquet, a mere 
 construction of thought based on sentience in a finite centre, 
 but a self-sufficing entity. The problem of how such an 
 entity is related to the Absolute is for Professor Pringle- 
 Pattison inscrutable by human thought. It cannot be that 
 of substance to substance, for in the first place he is critical 
 of the application of the conception of substance in this 
 connection, and in the second place God is not for him to 
 be regarded as in any sense whatever finite. Yet he holds 
 that it is of the essence of the self to be exclusive of other 
 selves, and, although he admits that this cannot be so in 
 the relation of man to God in the same fashion as in the 
 relation of man to man, yet how it can be different in the 
 case of God is one of the things which he declares cannot be 
 explained and must remain a mystery. For he finds each 
 finite self to be unique, an " apex of the principle of indi- 
 viduation by which the world exists," a " separate and 
 exclusive focalisation " of the Common Universe. The 
 self or subject " is not to be conceived as an entity, over 
 and above the content, or as a point of existence to which 
 the content is, as it were, attached, or even as an eye placed 
 in position over and against its objects, to pass them in 
 review. The unity of the subject, we may agree, simply 
 expresses this peculiar organisation or systematisation of 
 the content. But it is not simply the unity which a 
 systematic whole of content might possess as an object, 
 or for the spectator. Its content, in Professor Bosanquet's 
 
PROFESSOR PRINGLE-PATTISON 213 
 
 phrase, has come alive ; it has become a unity for itself, 
 a subject. This is, in very general terms, what we mean 
 by a finite centre, a soul, or, in its highest form, a self." 
 
 Professor Bosanquet, in passages other than those I have 
 quoted earlier, lays stress on the characteristics of the 
 subject as such in the self, but these characteristics are for 
 him not final. Experience has a larger meaning in which 
 they are transformed, and in some sort exist transformed 
 in the Absolute. The first form, therefore, does not repre- 
 sent the full or the actual reality. It appears as it does 
 because of the operation of a thinking which consists in 
 for ever establishing relations that are themselves not finally 
 real, and the self is a construction through such relations, 
 and as such is adjectival. 
 
 For Professor Pringle-Pattison the self is impervious, not, 
 it may be, to all the influences of the Universe, but to other 
 selves, " impervious in a fashion of which the impene- 
 trability of matter is a faint analogue. In other words, to 
 suppose a coincidence or literal identification of several 
 selves, as the doctrine of the universal self demands, is 
 even more transparently contradictory than that two 
 bodies should occupy the same space." 
 
 For myself I cannot think that either of these views 
 is satisfactory. They have this in common, that they 
 both question the competence of thought to solve the 
 problem of the nature of the finite self and of its relation 
 to the Absolute. For in one view the finite individual 
 is a construction of relational thought, which by reason 
 of its inherent incapacity cannot attain to the path by 
 which alone reality can be reached. In the other view 
 the metaphors used seem to me merely to disguise the 
 suggestion that selves are in truth mutually exclusive 
 units the relations of which can be truly assigned to 
 positions occupied in time and space. They are thus 
 in effect brought under the category, not of subject, but 
 of substance, however different be the name which is 
 given to it. The self so regarded is of a nature differing 
 toto ccclo from the self regarded as one among many but 
 explained to be so regarded only provisionally, and 
 because reality is taken at a certain stage or degree which 
 is short of that which belongs to it when more fully 
 comprehended. Now the doctrine of degrees seems not 
 only to get rid of the difficulties arising from apparent 
 
214 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 exclusiveness which impress Professor Pringle-Pattison, 
 but to restore thought to the position of respectability 
 from which Mr. Bradley and Professor Bosanquet depose 
 it. Intelligence is not the less intelligence because there 
 are aspects under which it presents itself to itself as par- 
 ticipating in the character of an object in space and time, 
 or as conditioned in the way we find it described as being 
 in the logic-books. For the individual man, notwith- 
 standing that he is also the subject in knowledge, cannot 
 escape from the fact that the knowledge is his knowledge, 
 the mental activity of a particular individual, whom the 
 psychologist, by applying his abstract methods, may 
 regard as possessing that knowledge as a property or 
 quality, and whom, if we abstract from what is indeed of 
 the essence of his personality, we must look on as an 
 organism or even as a thing with attributes. It is so 
 that the category of substance inevitably introduces itself. 
 In finite knowledge, that is to say, knowledge the activity 
 of which is conditioned as it is with us, this will always 
 be the case. For our basis is to start in time from what 
 we directly feel, from what our organism brings to con- 
 sciousness, and the process of our knowledge is one which 
 develops the implications of what thus seems to come to 
 us from without through the channels of our senses. But 
 in developing these implications we are not extracting 
 externalities out of externalities. We are rather bringing 
 to light principles which are implicit as foundational to 
 even the simplest aspect of experience. Among these 
 principles is the presence at every stage of the subject 
 moment in experience. As we reach the higher stages the 
 far-reaching character of this moment and its unity with 
 its object become more and more apparent. Experience 
 is a single and self-contained entirety, although it has thus 
 many aspects and degrees towards perfection. And it 
 seems to me to have in no phase any meaning except as 
 mediated by thought and interpreted by the only form of 
 thought I know, the thought which is progressive and can 
 set before it nothing short of the completed whole that is 
 the ideal towards which it aspires. That whole can surely 
 be neither unmediated feeling nor, at the other extreme, 
 an intellectual totum simul, unchanging and inert. It 
 must rather be, in a completed if ideal form, just the 
 activity that expresses and develops itself in us, in 
 
SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS 215 
 
 varying degrees towards perfection in the experience in 
 which we who are its members and creatures participate. 
 It is the system of that activity which is the interpreta- 
 tion and foundation of the Universe, that in which being 
 and knowing are not exclusive or apart. Philosophy, 
 Religion, and Art alike appear to guide us towards this 
 result. 
 
 I will now sum up its conclusion before bringing this 
 chapter to its end. The world that confronts me is 
 actual, and is independent of me, its observer. But that 
 is not the last word about either that world or myself. 
 Both belong to a greater entirety. It is only in so far as 
 they fall within the field of knowledge that they have 
 any meaning or are. The difficulty which realism has had 
 in admitting this has arisen from its assumption that 
 knowledge is the property and instrument of a finite self, 
 the means by which an independent knower lays hold of 
 what is actual apart from himself. But this assumption 
 not only makes the knower different from his knowledge, 
 but implicitly treats the knower as a substance of which 
 knowledge is an activity or property. The knower is 
 thus regarded as finite. In a sense this is true, as we 
 have already seen, but only when we are concerned with 
 aspects that are far from representing the whole truth. 
 Knowledge cannot really be an instrument wielded ab extra, 
 because it is that within which all reality, whatever be 
 its nature, falls. Moreover, knowledge cannot itself be 
 expressed in terms that go beyond itself. It is the 
 foundation of all reality, of the percipient mind, whether 
 nascent or fully developed, as much as of that which is 
 perceived. Because, at the stage at which we exist as 
 individual human beings, it expresses itself in the form of 
 an organism, the conscious self makes itself actual in 
 finite form, the form of the intelligent self with a physical 
 aspect. This fact is its " That," from which we start 
 and must start, and our task does not go beyond the 
 explanation of what it signifies. One thing which such 
 explanation brings to consciousness is that knowledge 
 has different orders, and is always relative to the order 
 in conception and the standards with which it is con- 
 cerned. The limitations imposed on the activity of our 
 minds by the organic conditions under which they think 
 prevent us from being at all times and under all circum- 
 
210 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 stances aware that this is so, or that in the form of our 
 knowledge as so conditioned, which we call oiir experience, 
 there are always implicit not only the conceptions of a 
 single order but those of many orders. It is by making 
 use of a single kind of conception, and assuming it to be 
 exhaustive, that we come to think of the mind as one 
 thing and its object as another thing, with knowledge as 
 a property by which the first can reach the second. But 
 closer attention shows that mind is much more than an 
 individual thing and, taken apart from the abstract fashion 
 in which we are apt to regard it, is not different in nature 
 from knowledge itself. Our experience is thus potentially 
 and implicitly complete knowledge. It is our human 
 conditions that prevent it from becoming this explicitly. 
 Yet, inasmuch as we are inherently more than we take 
 ourselves to be, no ideal short of perfection in knowledge 
 can ever satisfy us. 
 
 Just as difference of order in thought appears in the 
 experience of the finite individual, so it appears as differ- 
 ence of order in mode of existence and meaning of the 
 object that confronts him in space and time. For that 
 object too falls within knowledge, and is characterised by 
 the various levels which knowledge reaches in it. 
 Mechanism and life and intelligence as appearing in the 
 object- world are all equally entitled to be called real. It 
 is only by abstraction from the fulness of our experience 
 that we set them up in our descriptions as independent 
 and self-subsistent entities. For, like thought itself, 
 experience is always dynamic and never static. The 
 dialectic of its activity is everywhere apparent. 
 
 That we should be aware of an external world is there- 
 fore, contrary to what is commonly supposed, no fact 
 that can be resolved into something antecedent to itself 
 in logic or even in time. The actual problem is to bring 
 out the implications of this awareness and its significance. 
 Neither Plato nor Aristotle nor Plotinus was troubled 
 by any such problem as subjective idealism raises, any 
 more than have been those writers of modern times who 
 have denied that knowledge is a mere instrument. They 
 would all of them have equally refused to join in the 
 attempts of Berkeley and Hume, or in the attempts of 
 the New Realists of to-day, to bring awareness under 
 mechanistic conceptions. The way that is better than 
 
THE WORLD AS IT SEEMS 217 
 
 any of such attempts is surely to refuse to depart from 
 belief in the reality of the world as it seems to us, or to 
 allow ourselves to be debauched by undue indulgence in 
 the metaphors that give plausibility to such attempts. 
 The world is there as it seems, and it presents itself to us 
 in orders of knowledge and reality all of which are in 
 their own places valid and actual. That is why it is 
 essential that we should understand and hold firmly to 
 the great principle of relativity. For it is only by doing 
 so resolutely that we can hope to shake off the effects of 
 the metaphors in which distorted views have been sug- 
 gested to us. 
 
 The further problem that remains if we have succeeded 
 in this is to make clear to ourselves what the foundational 
 fact of knowledge really imports. If we throw aside the 
 physiological and psychological metaphors with which 
 it is commonly sought to invest that fact, it remains appar- 
 ently plain that we still have to look for its nature in our 
 own experience changed rather in degree than in kind. 
 But then degree means everything when we are concerned 
 with the immanence of meaning which we discover. We 
 are not indeed driven like Plotinus to reject, as an obstacle 
 to the grasp of mind in its highest conceivable form, any 
 possible relation to an object. For if that relation falls 
 completely within mind, as one established by itself, it 
 is no more than a distinction which in being established 
 is transcended. We may be content with Aristotle to 
 regard mind itself as activity, as in all its forms essen- 
 tially Becoming, and its ultimate character as being 
 that of thought which thinks itself and finds itself in its 
 object. The conception of mind at such a level seems 
 to be forced on us when we turn reflection in upon itself. 
 The significance of what is sometimes called divine 
 immanence is the recognition that the orders in the 
 knowledge of the finite self are explicable only as partial 
 expressions of higher orders which reveal themselves to 
 reflection, and in which the distinction between thinking 
 and what is thought is in the end and ideally superseded. 
 It is only through such a conception that the foundation 
 of the Universe appears to become intelligible. 
 
 In the final result the character of what we perceive 
 may be put thus. We find before us existents which seem 
 independent of the apprehension of the observer, but 
 
218 APPEARANCE AND REALITY 
 
 which resemble in character the thoughts of which he is 
 aware in his own mind. These they resemble particularly 
 in that they are always breaking out into relations, and 
 in that the relations which they so disclose are, like those 
 of the thoughts about them, intrinsic to these entities, 
 and not existences independent of them. If I say that 
 my notion of something is that it is this particular definite 
 thing, that implies that it is distinguished from some 
 other thing different from it. Neither thought has its 
 meaning or its reality independently of the other thought. 
 So it is with its object in nature also. A black thing is 
 only what it is when contrasted with white things. A 
 change is only a change relatively to what does not change. 
 A single thing is what it is only when contrasted with a 
 plurality of things. The more we consider what we 
 apprehend as being objects in any experience of nature, 
 the more we see that they are what they appear to be 
 just in distinction from objects that appear differently. 
 Relativity is everywhere obvious. It is inherent in the 
 order of nature just as much as it is inherent in the order 
 of knowledge. It is only through judgments of contrast 
 that the distinctions between things which exist in nature 
 have any significance for us. The " root " from which 
 nature springs and the " stuff " out of which it arises are 
 thus analogous to the " root " or " stuff " from which 
 our thoughts arise. Both possess the characteristics that 
 are distinctive of mind. If there be no problem that can 
 be rationally raised as to why we know, what we are left 
 with is thus nature that is inherently of the character of 
 mind. Of course my thoughts do not make the things 
 I individually see, but, on the other hand, the character 
 of the things I see, when I apprehend its full significance 
 and implications, is not a different one from that of my 
 thoughts. It is only under my abstractions that the two 
 seem foreign to each other, abstractions which are made 
 for various purposes in the progress of an effort towards 
 a more exact understanding of reality, and which, in the 
 course of this effort, come to stand for degrees of unreality. 
 The doctrine of physical relativity is just a special case 
 of the general principle. If we approach nature by what 
 aim at being strictly objective methods of approach, 
 such as that of Professor Whitehead, we seem to come to 
 just the same thing in the end. There is a root which 
 
PHYSICAL RELATIVITY 219 
 
 branches into reality of two descriptions, and these are of 
 characters that are not different, and in which mental and 
 non-mental are not distinctive terms. That is why, for 
 instance, space and time are found to imply each other, 
 and why in the general investigation of nature what we 
 seek to arrive at is always meaning. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 MANIFOLD ORDERS IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 IT is now time again to approach the principle of orders 
 in thought. The first observation I wish to make is one 
 by way of reminder that conceptions or categories of 
 different orders may operate at the same time in our 
 experience. A man may be thought of from many stand- 
 points, the selection of which depends on the aspect of 
 his personality our purpose is concerned with. It is only 
 when we take our conceptions in abstraction from the 
 individual form in which alone they attain reality, a form 
 that implies particularity not less than the universals in 
 which it is set, that we get these conceptions as apparently 
 exclusive. Their logical character is that of being definite 
 and general, and they are so far exclusive. But we 
 cannot present to ourselves these pure abstractions, or 
 even think about them in isolation. For all our thinking 
 implies imagery, an image that coming under a concept 
 gives actuality for us to that concept, but does not lose its 
 character as an image. When I speak of a circle I imagine 
 a circle-like appearance. There is no such thing in experi- 
 ence as a perfect circle, nor can I construct a mental 
 picture of one. But I can fashion in my mind or on paper 
 an effigy the importance of which for me in the connection 
 in which I interpret it is only that it is a sufficient symbol 
 of a conceptual meaning in my reflection. 
 
 I am free to direct my attention as I choose. If my 
 purpose is logical or mathematical reasoning I select the 
 point of view that is proper to my purpose, and apply 
 the general conceptions that are relevant and are of the 
 order that is appropriate. That is how I come to identity 
 and correspondence. What determines the relevancy and 
 appropriateness of these conceptions is of course not 
 arbitrary on my part. I am actual only so far as I am, 
 not merely subject in reflection, but just as much an 
 
 220 
 
MY EXPERIENCE 221 
 
 object in a field of experience within which it is conditioned 
 by its surroundings. Even for my mind its individual 
 freedom is limited by conditions. They extend, not 
 merely to what is spatial and temporal, but to the entire 
 content of the experience within which I reflect. The 
 further I get from presenting myself to myself under the 
 aspect of mere substance, and the nearer I come to the 
 full realisation of my nature as subject in my know- 
 ledge, the more there sinks out of sight the view of myself 
 as an individual whose thought and activity belong to the 
 contingency of events and whose spontaneity is controlled 
 from without. If I could present in reflection only the 
 view of myself as subject it seems as though there would 
 be no significance in the notion of a plurality of minds, 
 and so none for arbitrariness in thought or volition. 
 These imply my existence within a world of objects. But 
 I cannot present to my mind such a view, even though 
 the ideal to which it points me may be true and the possi- 
 bility in abstract reflection at least of such a standpoint 
 is necessitated as that from which alone a thoroughgoing 
 explanation from above is possible. For I am, when all 
 has been said, still an individual sitting in a chair, and 
 what I can do is no more than to think of myself as 
 requiring for interpretation of my full significance orders 
 of thought which include the lower ones distinctive of 
 such physical things as myself and my chair. All actual 
 experience is not only in its details concrete, but 
 implies a multitude of conceptions which pertain to the 
 different levels from which it can be approached. The 
 individual thing before my eyes has many aspects. 
 
 When, sitting here, I look out of the window I see how 
 true this is. The earth in the park is hastily taken to be 
 inorganic. But a fuller and more searching experience 
 tells me that this is an altogether inadequate account of 
 it. For the earth, in the first place, contains a multitude 
 of micro-organisms, and there is also no part of it which 
 does not owe its form to the intervention of living beings, 
 whether these be worms or gardeners. Again, even the 
 inorganic has, as part of its existence for me, colour and 
 weight and shape, and these are appearances which vary 
 with the particular relation to the percipient. Every 
 phase of apparently inert matter is relative even for the 
 individual onlooker. 
 16 
 
222 MANIFOLD ORDERS IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 When I follow this out it becomes fairly plain that my 
 hasty view of what I call inorganic matter was an abstract 
 one, and quite inadequate to the riches of what I perceive. 
 The modern electrical theory of the constitution of matter 
 resolves apparently ultimate particles or molecules, and 
 reduces them to central corps of positive electricity sur- 
 rounded by clusters of electrons, composed of negative 
 electricity and rotating round the corps. But who has 
 ever seen or felt an electron in isolation ? Matter of any 
 particular kind is really in the nature rather of an event 
 which requires time for functioning, and does not in its 
 scientific description present us with the last word. It is 
 by inference, as the result it may be of " a welter of 
 differential equations," that we get at the notion of what 
 is to-day talked of as its final meaning in terms of a mag- 
 netic field. We certainly do not experience this directly, 
 although we read about it in books. Its scientific char- 
 acter is an inference of a highly abstract though very 
 valuable kind. Physics is conducting those who pursue 
 it further and further into the notional regions of mathe- 
 matics. Even the new branch of learning known as 
 " Physical Chemistry " is of this sort. No set of images 
 is any longer insisted on as adequate to molecular struc- 
 ture in chemistry or to its laws. The images employed 
 are more and more treated as merely symbolic of more 
 general and therefore more abstract concepts. It is 
 certainly not in terms of such remote notions that the 
 plain man interprets what he fancies he sees in the flower- 
 beds, and has taken to be inert components heaped 
 together mechanically. In nature the inorganic is an idea, 
 like that of bare space, got by abstraction from a greater 
 fulness of reality, and is a useful working hypothesis for 
 limited purposes, but not adequately or accurately repre- 
 sentative of all the phenomena that belong to the actual. 
 Its real significance is in final analysis negative ; it is that 
 of an environment which we hastily assume to be outside 
 and independent of the scope of the activity of life. 
 
 We present to ourselves pictorially our meanings and 
 the interpretations which we form in our minds about 
 what we see or hear or feel or imagine. What we think 
 may have been a result reached only indirectly by reflec- 
 tion. It may be, for example, the reference of the 
 phenomena of the material world to electrons which can 
 
PICTORIAL THINKING 223 
 
 be described only in highly general language. But even 
 of such electrons we persist in forming some kind of image, 
 unconsciously but assuredly. Now such images are of 
 course misleading, unless it is always borne in mind that 
 they are but symbolical of what is general in concrete 
 universals. For the actual, even when it is a mere mental 
 picture, always has in its nature the moment of the par- 
 ticular. Even if I say of anything just that it is here or 
 now I say what is untrue, for by the time I have spoken 
 the words it has become there and then. The descrip- 
 tions are in terms that are of necessity general, and they 
 do not exclusively govern the particulars. They are 
 forms in apprehension which belong to reflection. 
 
 Yet they are essential to the actual. It is intelligible 
 only as possessing such forms. We may call them rela- 
 tions. They are, however, relations which enter into the 
 events we observe and apart from which these events 
 could not be apprehended. That is what is meant by 
 calling them intrinsic or internal. But no event can be 
 so apprehended except as in a duration, a merely specious 
 present, which imports change. When we try to fix this 
 in an image in order to preserve its permanent or universal 
 aspect, we transform it. It is thus that images which are 
 used to symbolise the universals of reflection, or the rela- 
 tions that remain identical through changes in what is 
 related, are apt to mislead. They do not adequately repre- 
 sent the actual in our experience. Some external symbols 
 are indeed so ordered that they do not profess to do more 
 than symbolise. The name " square " does not mislead 
 when it calls up the image of a square. We know that 
 what is important is only to be found in the definition 
 which the name connotes, and that this definition is of 
 general and not of particular application. In the case of 
 a number also we are not misled, unless it be by looking 
 on it as the indication of a stage in the counting of par- 
 ticulars, whereas modern mathematics has extended the 
 connotation to the description of the relations to each 
 other of classes or collections. But with most names it 
 is otherwise. They call up an image, and the image is 
 not a distinct guide to the reality. 
 
 Thus it comes about that the process of naming calls 
 up more than universals, and that as we use words in our 
 trains of reasoning we think pictorially. But as such 
 
224 MANIFOLD ORDERS IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 pictures, which naturally stand for actual and individual 
 objects of experience, contain in their constitution orders 
 of thought of more than one kind, our images are mis- 
 leading in a more subtle fashion than that just alluded to. 
 For they suggest as applicable orders of thought other 
 than those appropriate. 
 
 It is tempting to express oneself in images, for they 
 lend a vividness which is a great adjunct to style. More- 
 over, they are suggestive of feelings which cannot be 
 described abstractly. In art they are therefore essential. 
 For in art the mind expresses itself chiefly in apparently 
 direct feeling, and although its quality carries us beyond 
 the particular it is not in the form of abstract concepts 
 that it does so, but in the form of values which are foun- 
 dational to artistic quality. 
 
 However, in scientific description values of this kind 
 are not what we are seeking for, and the power of imagina- 
 tion has to be kept in restraint. The metaphors that arise 
 out of the images we call up, even in the strictest thought, 
 are a special source of danger in scientific and philosophic 
 investigation. Because they are metaphors, and there- 
 fore representations of what embodies the standpoints of 
 many orders of thought, they are slippery as symbols for 
 the standpoint of any one particular order. When we 
 say of God that He is a Spirit we glide easily into regarding 
 Him as a " magnified and non-natural man," instead of as 
 the ideal completion of immanent mind. If we talk of 
 a " finite centre " as a form of consciousness we are trying 
 to describe, we slip into words which lead us to the treat- 
 ment of feeling as though it could be a mere object, self- 
 subsistent apart from any subjective moment. And yet 
 we know nothing of the jellyfish that seems to possess 
 this, nothing of whether it has consciousness that though 
 restricted in scope is yet consciousness, or of whether the 
 jellyfish has any feeling at all. The expression " finite 
 centre " is a metaphor which suggests an object in space, 
 and unless closely watched the name conducts us towards 
 what are mere metaphysical superstitions. The same 
 thing is true of such metaphorical words as " instant," 
 " point," " cause," and " soul." They are useful if we 
 bear steadily in mind that they really indicate conceptions 
 that belong to certain orders in reflection only, and not 
 separate elements in any individual fact. 
 
THE DANGER OF METAPHORS 225 
 
 Without such metaphors we cannot get on. They are 
 even more required in the interpretation symbolically of 
 our thoughts to others than for our own thinking. For 
 the latter purpose, however, they remain essential. In the 
 exact sciences the endeavour is made with some measure 
 of success to get over the danger of misleading sugges- 
 tion, by the adoption of special and technical termin- 
 ology. This is no doubt of great use, but it is never wholly 
 successful. The terminology of chemistry, for example, 
 calls up at every turn mental pictures of atoms and mole- 
 cules and structures of which we have and can have no 
 direct experience. That such ideas should be true in fact 
 is a valuable working hypothesis. It suggests a set of 
 general conceptions through which the chemist can har- 
 monise and extend his knowledge. But if he claim more 
 than this kind of merely relative validity for his theory 
 he comes into sharp conflict with his next-door neighbour 
 the physicist, who will have none of his idea that the 
 chemical atom can stand for more than a mere step towards 
 a deeper conception of matter. And the physicist in his 
 turn is pulled up by the mathematician and the meta- 
 physician, and held tight until he admits that he, too, has 
 been dealing only with provisional abstractions from 
 concrete actuality, and that all he has reached is a further 
 set of general notions of merely provisional application 
 about certain relations which experience implies. 
 
 Probably no branch of the human endeavour after 
 knowledge has suffered so much from the dominance of 
 metaphor as has philosophy. In this region images do 
 not merely mislead. They render interpretation immensely 
 difficult. Beauty of literary style in philosophical writing 
 is not uncommon, and such writing often exhibits a latent 
 poetical gift that is highly attractive. From the Berke- 
 leian imagery of feelings and ideas as the signs through 
 which God is manifesting Himself to us, to Hegel's famous 
 description of the consummation of the absolute end as 
 consisting in the removal of the illusion that makes it 
 seem yet unaccomplished, the history of philosophy con- 
 tains a long record of splendid metaphors. But the first 
 of these examples, if accepted in its literal implication, 
 leads us straight to scepticism, and the second to the 
 notion of the ultimately real as a totum simul. Neither 
 consequence was intended by the writer of the words from 
 
226 MANIFOLD ORDERS IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 which they follow, nor will such a consequence follow if 
 the image is stripped of its misleading colour, and inter- 
 preted as only symbolic of what cannot be painted in 
 words as a picture of any actual experience. The reason- 
 ing would not seem so convincing if the colour were 
 stripped away. But this circumstance does not detract 
 from the real truth, which is that the metaphors in 
 question produce their powerful influence on us simply 
 because they stimulate our imaginative faculty, and so 
 appear to deliver us from the necessity of bearing, without 
 an aid that is as artificial as it is trying, the hard but 
 necessary burden of holding as tight as we can to exact 
 and therefore abstract conceptions. 
 
 I am far from wishing to suggest that any branch of 
 description, or even of human thought, can get on without 
 a copious employment of metaphor. That is because the 
 actual is always concrete. But the fact remains that 
 the actual does imply in its meanings and in itself 
 relations which are the embodiment of what reaches over 
 the particularity to which reality owes an integral 
 aspect, but only an aspect, of the form in which mind 
 construes it. 
 
 This conclusion brings us back to the source of all our 
 difficulties, the apparent finiteness of the mind which 
 must express itself through a brain that not merely lives 
 but knows. That brain, like the human organism itself 
 as the entirety within which the brain has its function as 
 a member, is no external instrument which mind wields. 
 While it lives and works its significance for us lies in the 
 intelligence which it in itself expresses. This significance 
 is inseparable from it as a fact in experience. But the 
 brain is mind only in an aspect of its existence, which is 
 but one among many aspects. The organism that sits 
 in a chair may be regarded from other standpoints, from 
 which it is, for example, a thing that will one day become 
 merely such, and be carried away in a coffin. The char- 
 acter of being a living organism, and a fortiori that of 
 being experienced as an intelligent one, terminates with 
 the change in nature called death. The skeleton which 
 till then was a member of the living organism drops on 
 that event into the different character of being a mere 
 mechanism, an imperfect one too, for the end is no longer 
 operative which fashioned its development, and to serve 
 
PERSONALITY AND SUPER-PERSONALITY 227 
 
 which the living self-arranging activity existed. So it 
 will be with me some day, and I shall become for others 
 an object belonging to a different order in experience from 
 that to which I belong to-day for myself as well as for 
 those others. Moreover, alike as I am now or as I shall 
 appear when dead, I shall have ceased to be as I appear 
 now, an object for myself. 
 
 Such ceasing to be will have its consequences in the 
 changed experiences of other finite personalities. My 
 death I can myself, however, contemplate from a different 
 point of view. The event when it comes will occur for 
 me as within my object- world. But I am more than that 
 object-world. I have aspects which belong to an order 
 of thought higher than that through which I interpret 
 myself as the individual sitting in this chair. My per- 
 sonality implies concepts which are of a quality different 
 from those of the here and the now* I interpret what 
 I am from above downwards. My personality is not 
 intelligible when regarded as merely built up from below 
 out of fragments that belong to externality. It is in my 
 mind, in so far as that mind is more than a mere object 
 and is not less the subject-self in which experience centres, 
 that this experience has its genuine situation. Subject 
 and object are only intelligible as phases falling within a 
 higher entirety. That entirety is no thing. It is nothing 
 out of relation to mind ; it is of the character of subject ; 
 it is the expression of the activity of thought. Within 
 the field over which it reaches are reality and unreality, 
 time and space, truth and error, righteousness and sin, 
 beauty and ugliness. These and all other distinctions fall 
 within and not without its field. Such personality is more 
 than individual ; it is rather super-personal. Higher aspects 
 of reality than those of the daily life of a living and 
 intelligent organism are immanent in the self-knowledge 
 which expresses itself in me. That knowledge extends in 
 principle to the entire universe, for that universe has no 
 significance except in terms of its concepts. 
 
 Apart from this view of the self and the content that 
 is immanent in it, the doctrine of orders or degrees in 
 knowledge and reality alike appears to be unintelligible. 
 But, once accepted, that doctrine and the consequential 
 character of all experience which it carries with it seem 
 to become not only intelligible but inevitable. The view 
 
228 MANIFOLD ORDERS IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 of the self to which I refer throws a new light on the 
 meaning of what we call evolution. 
 
 Like the phenomena of the rest of experience those of 
 evolution disclose relations belonging to varying orders 
 of reality. There is the mere externality to each other of 
 the periods in succession. There is the development due 
 to the control by a quasi-purposive yet unintelligent end. 
 This may be operative from the very beginning, and may 
 still require for its accomplishment a tract of time. It 
 may act long before it is fully accomplished, as it does in 
 the embryo which, though undeveloped, is yet in posse 
 the complete human being, or even in the picture or the 
 poem in which the idea which requires the complete 
 work of art for its full embodiment yet may disclose 
 itself as a semi-conscious inspiration by that idea in 
 early and imperfect stages. The end as final cause thus 
 seems to act although distant in time and in space also 
 from the culmination of its operation, and to differ in this 
 respect from the efficient cause of physical nature. The 
 developments which its operation brings about are thus 
 akin, in the conceptions required to render it intelligible, 
 to the conceptions which belong to the life and the sphere 
 of the organic. 
 
 It is important to keep such distinctions as these suffi- 
 ciently closely before our eyes, if we are to estimate aright 
 the appeals made to us by those Victorian men of science 
 who asked us to interpret life, not through the concep- 
 tions which its obvious facts force on us, but exclusively 
 through those of physics and chemistry. I am not refer- 
 ring, in saying this, to the author of The Origin of Species. 
 Charles Darwin laid the foundations of much that is 
 characteristic in the doctrine of biological evolution as it 
 is coming to be formulated to-day, formulated as com- 
 prising in its reference ends as well as outside forces. That 
 was because he studiously confined himself as closely as 
 he could to actual circumstances which his genius had 
 enabled him to detect where others had omitted to 
 observe them. Towards the end of the book Darwin 
 tells us that all he has sought to do is to show that species 
 have been modified, during a very long course of descent, 
 by the preservation through natural selection of many 
 successive slight favourable variations, and that the 
 theory of descent with modifications embraces all the 
 
DARWIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 229 
 
 members of the same class. He believed that animals 
 have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, 
 and plants from an equal or lesser number. But no- 
 where did this close observer say that he had found life 
 originating from anything but life, or interpretable as mere 
 mechanism. His doctrine does not carry him beyond the 
 facts of life, or suggest any conceptions lower than those 
 which belong to life itself. 
 
 I am thinking, when I refer to biologists of the Vic- 
 torian period, of others than Darwin, men of high science, 
 but with a passion for the principle that progress in time 
 is continuous in only some single and isolated order of 
 knowledge, and does not take place by breaks ; a passion 
 which gave rise to the superimposed conviction that all 
 progress can be represented as a putting together of an 
 aggregate, higher simply in that it is more complex, out of 
 elements which in an earlier period existed as separate 
 mechanical units in a framework of external relations. 
 But these elements are in truth inseparable save in reflec- 
 tion from a larger standpoint with which they are always 
 actually associated. Knowledge may increase in its quality 
 and in its range, and, in so far as it does, may exhibit 
 conformity to a principle of continuity. But this con- 
 tinuity arises out of what is of its own nature, and can be 
 rendered only in terms of itself. Of course there is 
 always much in knowledge that is implied but not yet 
 fully developed, and this may be latent so far as con- 
 sciousness is concerned. But even so it is still of the 
 nature of knowledge, although the aspect may appear to 
 be throughout mechanistic. In so far it resembles life, 
 which also can be expressed only in terms of the concep- 
 tions of life, and never in terms of what is merely mechani- 
 cal. How low down in the scale of quality we find what is 
 actually knowledge and marks off conscious purpose from 
 both mechanism and life, it is not easy to be sure. Does 
 the bee act with knowledge when it leaves its hive, and 
 goes to the heather, miles distant, afterwards to return 
 laden and unerringly find its home ? Is it under the 
 guidance of consciousness that it constructs the comb 
 with an exactness which rivals that of the most highly 
 trained artificer ? Probably not ! The quasi-purposive 
 selection is here, as far as we can judge, unconscious. 
 Ends are operative, but ends of a nature differing in 
 
230 MANIFOLD ORDERS IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 characteristics from those which form the ideal for intelli- 
 gence, as well as from the even lower ends which realise 
 themselves merely in the conservation of itself by the 
 whole in bare life. Instinct and knowledge, however 
 difficult to distinguish their results may at certain points 
 be, seem to represent separate stages in the influence of 
 ends in the actual world, degrees in the actuality of final 
 causes which differ in character and in kind, and the 
 higher of which are irreducible to any results of the lower. 
 In time life never grows out of mechanism ; in time 
 knowledge is never an effect of the action that is merely 
 living, or even merely instinctive. Nature exists con- 
 tinuously in time. She does not proceed per saltum. But 
 her continuity of growth is a continuity within definite 
 orders, each of which has its own significance and not that 
 of another order. 
 
 In evolution there always appear to be relationships 
 that are more than those of one order. Our experience 
 displays a development which belongs not merely to time, 
 but to mind also, for which time is. The higher stands 
 to the lower at once as that in comparison with which the 
 lower is less perfect because more abstract, and also as 
 the more concrete individuality within the limits and 
 range of which the lower falls. Thus, as we have seen, 
 the bare event is only an abstraction from the reality of 
 that event in its relations, and experience as Berkeley 
 imaged it was only an abstraction from the significant 
 experience in which its meaning was as much its very self 
 as was the factor of immediate feeling. Mere static being 
 is the outcome, as abstract as it is unreal, of the attempt 
 of the mind to break up the flowing character of actual 
 experience into isolated instants and points. Experience 
 itself finds its logical and factual completion in the mind 
 for which it is experience. And mind itself has its truth in 
 that higher aspect of its meaning in which the object and 
 subject worlds arise only by distinction made within itself 
 in the course of the activity which is of the essence of 
 reflection. 
 
 It is thus that in analysis the different orders in know- 
 ledge and reality alike appear to manifest themselves, and 
 it is thus that knowledge and reality turn out to fall 
 within a single entirety. The relationship, as has been 
 already observed, is not one of time. The sequences may 
 
THE DIALECTICAL CHARACTER 281 
 
 even apparently invert those of the time-order. They do 
 not really do so. For it is through these very sequences 
 in reflection that the time -order becomes intelligible and 
 actual. The ultimate relationship is one of conception, 
 of the distinction of abstractions, and of their integration 
 in interpretation from being only abstractions from what 
 is more concrete and therefore more true to the character 
 of all reality. Such a relationship in thought was called 
 by the Greeks dialectical. The explanation of its essence 
 lies in its insistence that all explanation is one of self- 
 developing activity, and must be derived, if it is to be 
 adequate, from what is higher, as the key to what is only 
 a fragment of its riches. " The fashion of this world," 
 said Goethe, " passes away, and I would fain concern 
 myself only with that which is abiding." And in another 
 passage the same great critic of human experience reminds 
 us, in his Spruche in Prosa, of that which illustrates the 
 underlying principle of what is characteristic in his teach- 
 ing : " What appear to be intelligible causes lying close to 
 hand we can grasp, and they are therefore readily inter- 
 preted by us as being such ; for which reason we gladly 
 take that to be mechanical which is in truth of a higher 
 order." 
 
 The higher in order is also the more concrete. It is 
 the more individual ; not only individual as being a thing 
 marked off from other things, but individual in the sense 
 of its reality embodying more perfectly the union of par- 
 ticular with universal in what transcends them both, 
 reconciling their apparent antithesis, and disclosing its 
 own activity as the true source of the distinction between 
 them. We cannot see or hear the real at these its higher 
 levels, but however high the level it is capable of grasp 
 by thought, for it is only in so far as its orders belong to 
 thought that it is intelligible, and has what we mean by 
 reality. The scepticism which denies this capacity of 
 thought denies its own power of explanation and contra- 
 dicts itself. The method of mysticism is hardly less one 
 of negation, and it is thereby that mysticism plunges 
 itself into inconsistency. Not feeling but reflection alone 
 can indicate the difficult and steep path which must be 
 ascended if the ultimate character of reality is to be 
 reached. For reflection has created all the problems, and 
 their solutions must be fashioned by itself. 
 
232 MANIFOLD ORDERS IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Our experience is a stage, but a stage only, along the 
 path towards what reflection can accept as full compre- 
 hension. For in an experience in which everything is in 
 relation, and feeling is marked off from thought by refer- 
 ence to organic conditions, the ends which control us as 
 particular existences compel us to treat the self to which 
 the experience is referred as itself object within its own 
 experience. That there should be degrees and distinct 
 orders in our experience thus becomes inevitable. We are 
 finite and conditioned by the character of the organisms 
 in which we express ourselves in our aspects as phenomena 
 of nature and so in s^ace and time. In order to get clear 
 knowledge we finite beings have to limit our endeavours 
 and our purposes. We start from where we find our- 
 selves. The starting-point is the " That " of experience. 
 We are what we are, and we cannot take in at any one 
 moment all the forms of what it is abstractly possible 
 for us to perceive. But not the less the power of reflec- 
 tion in conceptual form is so free from hindrance that it 
 can pass beyond the limits which our contact with nature 
 through the limits of our senses imposes on direct percep- 
 tion, and that it can interpret, indirectly and by reasoning, 
 the universe, as not made up of the fragments we see and 
 feel and hear, but as the larger ideal whole towards the 
 realisation of which reflection ever presses in its efforts 
 to attain to complete experience. Such a whole know- 
 ledge seems to presuppose as the foundation of the 
 orderliness of existence and of the uniformity of nature. 
 It breaks it up no doubt by abstractions, made for the 
 accomplishment of purposes which if essential are tem- 
 porary, into aspects which it isolates from each other, and 
 which individual freedom varies. This it does in order 
 to make practicable distinctness, not only in pictorial 
 representation, but in the reflection which is, after all, that 
 of a mind subject to bodily limitations of its power. The 
 partial aspects so presented owe much of their frag- 
 mentary character and mutual exclusiveness to the imagery 
 that goes with sense-perception, but in the end they really 
 owe their quality to the particular conceptions or cate- 
 gories to which reflection has temporarily abandoned itself, 
 in order to divert its result from much else that is possible, 
 but is irrelevant to the purposes of the particular effort at 
 interpretation that is being made. Each aspect may thus 
 
KINDS OF KNOWLEDGE 233 
 
 be seen to stand for a stage in reflection and to belong to a 
 degree or order in experience. Its general character is 
 what it derives from the category or conception by which 
 it is confined and distinguished, and the working image 
 is formed accordingly. 
 
 Our presentations owe their separateness and apparent 
 conflict to the fact that they are distinctive of their own 
 orders or levels in reflection and in the experience which 
 is fashioned by reflection. They are brought under the 
 general conceptions with which reflection operates when 
 it confines itself to a particular order of thought. When 
 we reflect we abstract, that is we exclude from our atten- 
 tion all that does not concern our present purpose, and 
 we generalise and construct in reflection only under the 
 logical conceptions that are appropriate to our standpoint. 
 Thus when we study a human being we may for one set 
 of purposes treat him as a system of matter and energy, 
 for another set as living, and for a third as a self-conscious 
 and free personality. If the principle I have just been 
 stating be true it is a sheer fallacy to assume that because 
 one of these views of him is, taken by itself, justifiable, the 
 others are therefore false. Each may be adequate in the 
 order in experience with which for the time being we 
 are concerned, and for each view what appears for the 
 moment to constitute truth and reality may be accurately 
 described in terms of the conceptions appropriate to the 
 standpoint which we are occupying. But this, of course, 
 can only be so if we have remembered that truth and 
 reality imply still more than what in virtue of our abstrac- 
 tions they are being taken to amount to, and that there- 
 fore no single order of conceptions can be adequate to 
 complete study. The abstract views obtained by the 
 application of categories or particular orders must, in 
 other words, be taken as representing, not separate 
 entities, but separate kinds of knowledge about reality. 
 This is what is implied when we accept the general principle 
 of the relativity of knowledge. 
 
 The importance of the doctrine of degrees in knowledge, 
 truth, and reality is that it insists on the conclusions of our 
 various inquiries into what appears directly to confront 
 us as being in fact the outcome of a series of experiments 
 and processes of observation and reflection by which we 
 have stripped the actual, and presented it through our 
 
234 MANIFOLD ORDERS IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 various sciences in exclusive aspects due to the confining 
 effect of abstraction. We do not take in all the phases of 
 our object- world at one and the same time, nor can any 
 single phase be for us exhaustive of the facts as they are 
 for knowledge of other orders. Even within a particular 
 order this may be so. The revolutionary changes which 
 Einstein has introduced into the mathematical theory of 
 the forms and measurements of space and time, were 
 introduced by showing that conceptions belonging to 
 customary mathematical physics had been applied in 
 a fashion that had rendered them too narrow for possible 
 aspects cognisable within their own order. The general 
 fallacy into which we are apt to fall is that of hypostatising 
 conceptions which special sciences have framed for their 
 own purposes in interpretation into images supposed to 
 be exhaustive of final reality ; whereas in truth such 
 conceptions are only the means by which we concentrate 
 attention, and by an interpretation, the apparent clear- 
 ness of which is due to the ease in application that results 
 from its narrow demands, enable ourselves to frame 
 images and make predictions. The images so framed are 
 the main source of our difficult ies. We must always be 
 on our guard when we detect ourselves indulging in the 
 temptation to stereotype a general principle into an 
 imagined picture of reality. 
 
 No doubt it is difficult to resist the tendency to express 
 general truths in metaphorical form. We start in our 
 experience from the recognition of things as separate from 
 each other in space and time, and we tend to come back 
 to this, our original and natural form of experience. But 
 if we construct spatial and temporal images of qualities 
 and relations that are for logic only universals, we are, 
 however inevitably, robbing them of that in their nature 
 which constitutes them universals. They become when 
 visualised mutually exclusive and repellent entities. Now 
 it is just this character which is foreign to the nature of 
 thought, in which the universal has its real home. Our 
 daily experience as men and women teaches us that in our 
 thinking even our most precise and definite concentration 
 is never of an exclusive character. Our thinking is always 
 carrying us beyond our frame of mind at the moment. It 
 seems to reach beyond every phase which it isolates in 
 general conceptions, so long as they remain general in their 
 
THOUGHT ALWAYS UNFOLDING ITSELF 235 
 
 character, and are not stereotyped into images separated 
 in imagined space and time. Even in the latter case they 
 carry us beyond themselves, for they are symbolic of more 
 than they can express. Our thinking becomes distorted 
 and inadequate if we fail to realise that it is only by the 
 recognition of larger wholes than those with which for 
 the moment we are concerned that truth is to be reached. 
 That is why we distinguish men and women into narrow- 
 minded and large-minded, and approve what we call a 
 " synoptic " view when we hear of it. In so doing we 
 recognise the dialectical character of knowledge as essen- 
 tial in it. 
 
 The conclusion of the whole matter thus seems to be 
 that thought, the nature of which is to be dynamic and 
 not static, and to tend in all cases to pass beyond the 
 result which it has attained, is in constant process of 
 unfolding further conceptions than those on which it 
 concentrates. These further conceptions may belong to 
 the same order in knowledge or to other orders. In the 
 actual object of experience the orders are concurrent, 
 even if only implicitly so. In one or other of them we 
 abstract from the context and form images which are 
 exclusive in the sense that they are determined by the 
 particular conception that has guided us in framing them. 
 They are therefore inadequate to the full truth, the ideal 
 of which is always a larger and fuller whole. What is 
 abstract and so inadequate is thus the outcome of the 
 process of judgment at its narrower stages, and the 
 inadequacy and abstractness diminish as our judgments 
 complete themselves. That is why we are always more 
 than we seem to ourselves to be. It is of the essence of 
 mind that this should be so. 
 
 As we exist under conditions arising from the particu- 
 larity of the organisms in which minds are expressed 
 and have plurality as objects in nature, we are hampered 
 in our freedom of thinking by what is not separable 
 from the character of mind treated as a finite centre. 
 But we are none the less more than finite centres and 
 than mere monads to which, in effect, the category of 
 substance has been applied in defining them. For thought 
 does not consist in any simple series of events in time. It 
 is that the correspondence of which discloses true identity 
 as the foundation of difference. In so far as we think and 
 
236 MANIFOLD ORDERS IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 know we are more than finite individuals. Identity of 
 thought brings each of us within a single universe, the 
 foundation of which is that conceptually it is the same 
 for all of us, and that outside it we cannot travel even in 
 reflection. Its recognition as concerned with the entirety 
 is indeed the foundational basis of reflection. 
 
 How is this universe to be conceived ? Only by an 
 abstraction that is inadequate can we regard it merely as 
 a possible object confronting intelligence. For within its 
 scope falls intelligence itself, subject not less than object. 
 And it is in the aspect of subject that it has its character- 
 istic as the entirety within which every distinction falls. 
 
 From this point of view the theory of the relativity of 
 knowledge derives a meaning wider than that which the 
 physicists give to it. It delivers us, in this extension of 
 its meaning, from difficulties even greater than those 
 which trouble the physicists themselves. For it shows us 
 that the material and the spiritual are not separate and 
 self-subsisting facts, but are illustrations of different 
 fashions in which reality presents itself when regarded 
 from standpoints divergent in the logical character of 
 their methods. There is no more striking illustration of 
 the difficulties that arise when this wider significance of 
 relativity as the principle is not realised, than the particular 
 problems connected with human personality. 
 
 Among the useful illustrations of the confusion of 
 thought that arises when the aspects of such personality 
 which belong to one order of thought are assumed to be 
 cognisable in terms of conceptions belonging to another 
 order, is the controversy as to determinism. Are our acts 
 of will brought about by antecedent conditions, or are 
 they spontaneous in the sense that they are uncaused ? 
 The true answer seems to be that the question is irrational, 
 inasmuch as no problem of cause and effect can arise. 
 Volition is inherently the activity of reason. In the exercise 
 of reason we may err, just as we may sin. But the exercise 
 is that of the creative activity of mind itself, an activity 
 that is not an event apart from the mind that exercises it. 
 We are rational in so far as we express reasoned judg- 
 ments. They may be right or they may be wrong. But 
 they are not the effects of causes external to them. It 
 is the analogy of space and time relations which has misled 
 here. Mind exists in its judgments, not apart from them. 
 
UNREAL DIFFICULTIES 237 
 
 There is no difficulty in accepting this fact if we do not 
 drag in physical analogies, and represent to ourselves 
 mental processes as aspects of reality at the level where 
 causation is fundamental. / think, / judge, / will. We 
 are here concerned with no phenomenon of nature as 
 stretched out in a series of objects independent of each 
 other, but with subject as such, an aspect cognisable 
 only in terms of conceptions which are appropriate to 
 itself alone. The principle of degrees guides us in this 
 instance as elsewhere. Thought is neither determined 
 ab extra nor is an uncaused phenomenon of nature. For 
 its character is that of subject, and the minds of other 
 men must be interpreted in the same terms as my own, 
 terms which recognise that I find the mind which is 
 myself in other minds, expressed no doubt in organisms 
 external to mine so far as they are merely physical, but 
 more than merely physical in so far as they express thoughts 
 and a freedom of self-determination corresponding to and 
 by so much identical with those of which I am conscious 
 in my own self. 
 
 The principle of degrees thus lays unreal spectral 
 appearances which are only alarming because they are 
 bogies which we have ourselves conjured up. It teaches 
 us that the whole of the mind is present implicitly in every 
 particular activity of the mind. It bids us look away 
 from the analogy of mere sequences of events in time 
 as inadequate to what we are observing. No doubt 
 psychology does often treat what it calls the phenomena 
 of mental action as if they could properly be so named. 
 But valuable as is its method, in the same fashion as is 
 the method of the chemist who investigates the chemistry 
 of the living organism of high value, the method cannot be 
 applied except by making violent abstractions, useful 
 from the points of view of other sciences, but inadequate 
 for that from which we seek to observe the ultimate char- 
 acter of reality. It is not by treating mind as an external 
 instrument, but by watching the self-explanatory develop- 
 ment within as well as apart from self-conscious activity, 
 that we get at its characteristic nature. 
 
 The history of speculative thought is the narrative of 
 a series of efforts to replace the inadequate method of 
 explanation from below by the exhibition of the lower 
 orders in thought and their contents as abstractions from 
 
 17 
 
238 MANIFOLD ORDERS IN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 what is higher and in reality more concrete. The actual 
 is in this view under all conditions what must in the end 
 be stated in terms that are those of the domain of mind. 
 The effort to do this has always shown itself to be attended 
 with a certain danger. We are prone when we make it to 
 try to exhibit the source of our experience as something 
 different from what knowledge reveals, an absolute, it 
 may be, which our individual knowledge either cannot 
 wholly compass or which, if attainable, is only to be 
 attained by some method differing for us wholly in char- 
 acter from any with which experience has made us familiar. 
 Metaphysicians, by tacitly introducing the notion of the 
 source of human experience as something of a different 
 nature from itself, have carried the idea of the difference 
 so far as to suggest a separation which is nothing if not 
 numerical, and which suggests the introduction of the 
 category of substance by the metaphors employed. But it 
 is not such a category as substance that can be adequate in 
 this connection. What we have to do is simply to observe 
 the various orders in reflection as they are exemplified in 
 what we know, and to distinguish them, not as separate 
 existences, but as disclosed simultaneously in the actual. 
 They are not only appearances. They are all essential 
 inasmuch as mind has to recognise them all as present in 
 the constitution of experience. To anything beyond that 
 experience and separable from it they do not carry us. 
 They only exhibit it with new meanings. The higher 
 the order necessitated for reflection the nearer we come 
 to the recognition of that ideal adequacy and complete- 
 ness which forms the ultimate standard of truth. 
 
 If knowledge were some sort of instrument distinct in 
 existence from its object, this view would give rise to 
 difficulties. The question would arise whether there was 
 not some kind of reality existing independently of the 
 subject in knowledge. But if the distinction between the 
 subject and what appears to confront it is a distinction 
 which is due to reflection itself this question does not 
 emerge. For knowledge, taken in the wide meaning in 
 which it includes the various forms of subjective activity, 
 appears to be foundational, or in other words presupposed as 
 the very commencement and condition of experience. The 
 object- world is of the same character as the self for which 
 it is there, and both of them fall within an entirety. To 
 
REALISM MAY CONVERGE TO IDEALISM 239 
 
 ask how it is that we have any knowledge at all is to put 
 a mistaken question. The relevant question is how know- 
 ledge is confined by the organism in which it expresses itself. 
 Knowledge is itself a final fact. Knower and known fall 
 within it. That I see or feel or hear the world, or that I 
 transform it conceptually, is an ultimate truth which 
 cannot be explained as the result of anything beyond 
 itself. The object- world is actual apart from the percipient 
 and reflective organism. So far this is realism. But it 
 must always be added that it is only at a certain stage in 
 reflection and by the employment of certain concepts that 
 the distinction between knower and known arises. It is 
 a distinction which is characterised by relativity. The 
 more we reflect and the more complete the grasp of know- 
 ledge the less the differentiation seems justifiable or of 
 importance. The further we proceed the more does mind 
 find mind in what confronts it. If we take self-conscious- 
 ness and eliminate, as far as our habitual modes of framing 
 working hypotheses permit us to do so, the idea of a 
 thing in space confronted by another thing, we must 
 find ourselves concerned with thought and no longer with 
 externality. Even the physical doctrine of relativity 
 forces this on our attention, and leads us towards the view 
 that the question between idealism and realism is an idle 
 one. The actual is meaningless except in terms of know- 
 ledge, and that knowledge can only describe itself if the 
 full variety of its orders is recognised as essentially implied 
 in it. 
 
PART III 
 
 OTHER VIEWS ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE 
 
 REAL 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 GREEK PHILOSOPHY 
 
 IN the preceding chapters I have examined from a modern 
 point of view the principle of degrees in reality, and the 
 question of the relation of mind to the object- world which 
 the doctrine appears to necessitate. In the present chapter 
 I wish to illustrate what I have said by pointing out that 
 the conclusion reached is not peculiar to modern tendencies 
 in philosophy, but is to be found in unmistakable sub- 
 stance in the ideas of antiquity. I propose to take as my 
 main illustrations the teaching of Aristotle and of Plotinus 
 respectively. 
 
 One has always to be careful" not to read into the 
 language used by the Greeks more than is really there. 
 But it is at least clear that they were more free than we 
 are from certain hindrances, amounting almost to obses- 
 sions, which impede modern thought. Their philosophy 
 is, if on this account alone, particularly instructive when 
 we have to try to realise the true character of the relation 
 of the mind to what it knows. For the methods of physical 
 science had not progressed with them so powerfully as to 
 make it hard to break through what has grown into a 
 habit, and to look on thought and what it apprehends 
 as in a relation quite different from that of causal activity 
 between things of foreign natures. In common with the 
 New Realists of to-day the Greeks did not hesitate to 
 find universals in the object- world, as real as any par- 
 ticulars of sense. Relations were for them actually 
 present, just as they are said to be by those New Realists 
 who have thrown aside the prejudices of the crude and 
 empirical realism of recent times and have declined any 
 longer to try to separate the non-mental from the mental 
 world by assigning to the latter exclusively universals, 
 and attributing to the former a particularist nature 
 accessible only through sensation. 
 
 243 
 
244 GREEK PHILOSOPHY 
 
 It is, as I have already insisted, only a superficial pre- 
 judice that leads people, in reading the history of philo- 
 sophy, to seek for the mere supersession of system by 
 system. In science, which is to a great extent dependent 
 on exact observation and measurement, a subsequent 
 result, founded on more precise experiment, may wholly 
 displace an earlier view. In the history of art, which docs 
 not depend on the recording of quantitative facts, I 
 pointed out that the standard of truth about value is 
 a different one. And I added that in philosophy, which 
 looks for larger wholes, and for orders in arrangement 
 beyond those inquired after by physical and natural 
 science, the student who seeks for the most adequate 
 light on the nature of reality is no more safe in dis- 
 regarding the past than is the student of the history of 
 literature. The story of the growth of philosophy must be 
 read in the entirety of that story, and it may be found 
 that far back even the greatest conceptions have been 
 attained. For philosophical insight of a high order is 
 not like what results from a successful experiment in the 
 laboratory. Its principle is of a nature more akin to the 
 insight of a great literary critic, an insight which remains 
 of high value for all time. The world will continue to 
 read Plato and Aristotle and Plotinus, just as it will 
 continue to read Homer and Shakespeare and Goethe. 
 The fashion of the period may have wholly passed away, 
 but there remains an underlying substance of a quality 
 that is abiding. 
 
 It is characteristic of the most mature forms of Grecian 
 thought to decline to look for the final reality of the 
 universe in an experience built up by the aggregation and 
 succession of simple and self-subsisting units external to 
 each other. A real so constituted would for them have 
 been a uniform structure of a single nature. It would 
 have had no transition in it, no dynamic character of 
 becoming instead of merely being. It would have existed 
 as possessing in all its aspects a nature wholly alien to 
 that of the mind which observed it. Accordingly the 
 difficulties that have driven us moderns towards subjective 
 idealism as a possible way of escape from captivity to space 
 and time did not trouble the Greek philosophers nearly 
 to the same extent that they have troubled us. For 
 Greek thinkers, those like Plato and Aristotle at all 
 
THE PLATONIC IDEAS 245 
 
 events, found no such apparently final line of demarcation 
 between the object- world and the mind that knew it as 
 should make them desire to resolve either into the other. 
 They did not consider themselves called on to attribute 
 much of the world of nature to the subjective activity of 
 intelligence. They thought it natural that such a world 
 should disclose features differing wholly in kind and 
 quality, irreducible to each other and including phases 
 of an order as high as that of the Platonic Ideas. For 
 them attempts to apportion reality and to share it 
 between a mental and a non-mental world were without 
 importance. One reason was their freedom from the 
 obsession that mind must be a sort of substance operated 
 on ab extra. For Aristotle, to quote him as the example, 
 when we know we take in what confronts us. But for 
 him, as for Plato before him, what confronts us is no 
 mere aggregate of atomic particulars. It is a real which 
 is of a character akin to that of mind itself. 
 
 Aristotle refused to countenance the treatment by his 
 great predecessor of the Platonic Ideas as if they could 
 be immobile existences apart. He did not wholly reject 
 the Platonic doctrine, but he regarded experience as not dis- 
 closing the gulf between the Ideas and the extended world 
 which that doctrine seemed to him to imply. For him 
 form was not separable from its matter. The latter was 
 the merely possible, which was just a stage in a continuous 
 translation towards actuality, characteristic of a process 
 of Becoming which had the realisation of form as its deter- 
 mining end. It was a logical evolution in which there was 
 no hiatus. Even matter itself was not a sheer negation 
 of the actual ; it was a stage on the road in thought 
 towards the actual. In the language of modern idealism 
 matter and form were logical moments in the process of 
 the actual rather than separate elements in its constitu- 
 tion. Thus the educated man was one with whom it had 
 throughout been possible, because of an inherent capacity, 
 which was other than the limited potentiality of the brute, 
 that he should become educated. He stood as form to a 
 possibility which was implied by the fact of his having 
 become educated. While Aristotle would not, like Plato, 
 regard the Idea as a universal subsisting by itself outside 
 sense-experience, and while he regarded our knowledge 
 as beginning in time with experience through the senses, he 
 
246 GREEK PHILOSOPHY 
 
 yet agreed with Plato in thinking that the non-sensible 
 form was present in the object and in all knowledge of 
 it and remained unaffected through changing experience. 
 The Universe could thus be looked on by him as con- 
 taining within itself successive phases in the transition 
 to more perfect form. But these phases were no results 
 of causation in space or even of mere passage in time. 
 They were capable of definition only as levels at which 
 thought was progressively real in things and things in 
 thought. 
 
 Although in studying Aristotle one finds the substance 
 of this doctrine, and is impressed with his desire to insist 
 on it, yet his reader has to recognise that he was not 
 always successful in making it a matter of what appears 
 like consistent presentation. It is only necessary to 
 examine the writings of the various commentators on his 
 system in order to see that, in expression at least, he was 
 often ambiguous. Zeller, for instance, in the exposition 
 of Aristotle's principle of the Primum Mobile in chapter vii 
 of the volume on Aristotle in his Philosophy of the Greeks, 
 says that he confines the function of " the Divine Reason 
 to a monotonous self-contemplation, not quickened into 
 life by any change or development," and so " merges the 
 notion of personality in a mere abstraction." Quoting 
 Aristotle's own expressions he points out that the latter 
 declares that " God moves the world in this way ; the 
 object of desire and the object of thought cause motion 
 without moving themselves." " The final cause operates 
 like a loved object, and that which is moved by it com- 
 municates motion to the rest." This, says Zeller, is so 
 obscure as to be almost unintelligible to us. Commenting 
 on the opinion so expressed Dr. Edward Caird, in his 
 searching examination of Aristotle's doctrine in vol. ii 
 of The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers 
 (Lectures XIV and XV), points out that such a new kind 
 of action, a self-determination which is above movement 
 or change, can only be one which is purely ideal or spiritual, 
 such as that by which we set before us an end, and make 
 it the object of endeavour. This, he observes, is im- 
 possible to take as adequately representative of the 
 activity of a perfect being, for there can be no external 
 end or independent final cause of activity for such a being. 
 Aristotle felt himself forced to represent it as one which 
 
ZELLER AND CAIRD 247 
 
 was in the world and not in God. And he therefore failed 
 to show either how the spiritual being can be conceived as 
 originating such movement or change in a finite world, 
 or how he is himself related to it in any way. 
 
 Still, writes Dr. Caird, it is evident that Aristotle does 
 conceive God in a higher way. He likens the Universe to 
 an army, the excellence of which lies in its order, but is 
 separately embodied in the General through whom the 
 order comes into it. He takes Aristotle really to mean 
 that although God cannot think anything lower than 
 Himself, such as is the finite world in space and time and 
 contingency, He can still think of it in its order, in the 
 types that are realised in it. The Divine intelligence must 
 therefore have been really conceived by Aristotle, not as 
 an abstract self -consciousness, but " as gathering all the 
 ideal forms that are realised in the world into the unity 
 of one thought." And in support of this view he quotes 
 passages from the Metaphysics. The difficulty, he goes 
 on to add, arises for two reasons. The first is the ten- 
 dency of Aristotle to the dualism between a pure intelli- 
 gence which is eternally one with itself, and transcends 
 the distinction between subject and object, and the other 
 is the conception, not consistently eliminated, of a world 
 of change, made up of parts external to each other, and 
 failing to attain unity. The ideal form is looked on as 
 complete in itself and not as realising itself in matter. 
 Form and matter are never brought completely together. 
 The second reason to which Dr. Caird draws attention 
 is due to the tendency of Aristotle to set up an abstract 
 opposition of the theoretical to the practical, of contem- 
 plation to action. The result is the division of God from 
 His world, and of reason from volition. Nevertheless 
 Dr. Caird thinks that Aristotle had in his system the sense 
 of a more thoroughgoing solution. Idealism, he says, 
 " will not fear to admit the reality of that which is other 
 than mind, and even in a sense diametrically opposed to 
 it ; for it rests on a perception that these are yet neces- 
 sarily related, and that both are different and correlated 
 aspects of one whole." It is true, he thinks, that Aristotle 
 maintains the existence of a material and therefore un- 
 intelligible element in the Universe, corresponding to our 
 sense-perception of the particular. But fuller insight, he 
 considers, was not far from him, " for it is not difficult to 
 
248 GREEK PHILOSOPHY 
 
 see that his conception of the finite world makes it the 
 necessary correlate of his conception of pure self -conscious- 
 ness, and therefore not really independent of it or separable 
 from it." Like Spinoza he holds that " he who loves God 
 cannot desire that God should love him in return." Thus 
 he tends towards something like dualism. But there are 
 passages, he says, in Aristotle which point to a fuller 
 meaning. In ithe concluding sentences of his 14th 
 Lecture, Dr. Caird makes this observation : " Indeed, if 
 we were allowed to take such glimpses of truth as if they 
 were equivalent to a clear vision of all that is involved in 
 them, it would be difficult to prove that there has been 
 any progress in philosophy, or even in human thought ; 
 or that the latest philosopher has gone beyond the thoughts 
 which presented themselves to the first men who reflected 
 upon their own nature, and upon the nature of the Uni- 
 verse." Here Dr. Caird takes a view which goes beyond 
 that of Zeller and some other commentators of great 
 authority. But his book is so admirable that I have 
 cited it, for it offers an interpretation which, while caution 
 is enjoined, teaches us to read Aristotle free from the 
 tendency to think that, because the Greeks had not the 
 orderly view of experience which the progress of subse- 
 quent science has made possible for us moderns, we are 
 therefore to read them as though the great problems of 
 reality were not realised by them. 
 
 With this word of reserve it may be said, I think, truly 
 that a great lesson which Greek philosophy insisted on 
 remains but little assimilated. It is that the distinction 
 between percipient and perceived, established as it is in 
 knowledge, is the work of knowledge itself, and cannot be 
 examined without a preliminary inquiry as to the nature 
 and relation to the entire Universe of that knowledge. 
 Not only for Aristotle, but for the great schools of those 
 under the influence of Greek thought who came after him at 
 an interval of four centuries, Plotinus and later on Proclus, 
 it seemed impossible to assign to mind any position except 
 that of the prius of things. Whether with Aristotle we 
 call this prius the Active Reason or with Plotinus the 
 One, the point remains the same. Esse is Intelligi only if 
 Intelligi be taken to mean what is fundamental in experi- 
 ence after the abstractions arising from a biological idea 
 of the self have been eliminated as mere derivatives of 
 
THE SPIRIT OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY 249 
 
 reflection. It is because of the rigour of this elimination 
 that Greek thought seems obscure and like mysticism. 
 And yet the metaphysicians of Athens and of the later 
 Neo-Platonic schools were only expressing what their 
 close reasoning had forced on them, when they proclaimed 
 the apparently first to be truly the last, and reason finally 
 developed to be the foundation of the apparently causal 
 process in the scrutiny of which reflection had dragged the 
 work of reason to light. For them the most significant 
 moment in the real was the universal, brought to light in 
 abstract form by the activity of thought, thought which 
 was as much of the essence of the object as it was of the 
 perceiving mind. The modern scientific tendency to reduce 
 all conceptions to those of externality and cause and 
 substance was not a tendency which embarrassed the 
 Greek spirit in the way in which it embarrassed the 
 reflections of those who were to follow up its working. 
 The distinction between subject and object was one which 
 for thinkers like Aristotle and Plotinus was present to 
 their minds. But it was a distinction falling within 
 knowledge, and the reason why it was forced on knowledge 
 they found in their respective interpretations of the 
 mind of man as conditioned by the realisation of itself in 
 the organism, and of the soul as the entelechy of just that 
 organism. If we may call them idealists at all and 
 ordinary realists they certainly were not their idealism 
 was of a distinctly objective type. They were no episte- 
 mologists who sought to treat perception as an instru- 
 ment through which an independent reality was reached. 
 Perception was for them a feature of an entirety within 
 which percipient and perceived alike fell, and in which the 
 constitution of both, with the apparent antithesis between 
 them, was to be sought. In perception the mind found 
 what was of its own character, and the conditions by 
 which it was limited were of its own impesing. 
 
 It is when Aristotle is so understood that we cease to 
 be surprised at finding in him, as something naturally 
 arising, an early form of the doctrine of degrees in know- 
 ledge and reality. He is well worth study in this con- 
 nection to-day. He was free from the difficulties which 
 attend modern idealism of the subjective type in giving 
 what we feel to be its due to the actual world. But that 
 was because he held facts to have their foundation not 
 
250 GREEK PHILOSOPHY 
 
 in matter but in form. Experience was for him a process 
 of progressive interpretation in the Becoming, which was of 
 its essential character. He had inherited from Heraclitus 
 the belief that nothing stands still, and he had added 
 that all that is exhibits stages in development from 
 capacity for form to form completed. With Goethe in 
 " Eins und Alles," he could have said : 
 
 " Nur scheinbar steht's Momenta still, 
 Das Ew'ge regt sich fort in Allen, 
 Denn alles muss in Nichts zerfallen, 
 Wenn es im Sein beharren will." 
 
 The highest possible form was for Aristotle the First 
 Mover, the activity which experience reveals. Its nature 
 was to be that which alone was complete, in the sense of 
 being a perfect whole, 1/01)9. Development towards the 
 fulfilment of ends was the process of existence, a process 
 which naturally disclosed stages. All other sources of 
 activity, the causes that are efficient but material, he 
 treats as falling short of complete reality, and subordinates 
 to final causes. Action at a distance presented no diffi- 
 culty, because the Universe was for him ideal throughout 
 its existence, and fashioned and operated on by ends 
 that were inherent in it. What he speaks of as the 
 Active Reason, the highest and final form of creative 
 activity which Reason assumes in both knowing and 
 being, is for him the foundation not only of the object- 
 world, but of the Passive Reason that appears at the 
 stage in which mind is confronted by objects of which it 
 is percipient ; and for Aristotle experience is not intelli- 
 gible on any other footing. Even if we look at the 
 bare facts as they appear to the psychologist it is neces- 
 sary, as he points out, to pass beyond explanation based 
 on the separate senses alone. It is not enough, he says, 
 in the case of sight, the sense for colour, or smell, that 
 for odour, to take account merely of individual qualities 
 which can be perceived exclusively by the senses appro- 
 priate to them. For perception is more than a matter 
 of the outward organ. It is in the action of the mind 
 that the unification of the results is to be sought as in a 
 common faculty. The necessity for assuming such a 
 faculty is for Aristotle obvious. We have two eyes and 
 two ears and yet see and hear the objects of these senses 
 
THE COMMON SENSIBLES 251 
 
 as single existences. There must therefore be a central 
 instrument of sense, in distinction from the special organs, 
 to bring together the separate communications and to 
 unite them in the individual consciousness in perception. 
 There are " common sensibles, movement, rest, number, 
 figure, magnitude ; such properties being peculiar to no 
 one single sense, but shared in common by all of them. 
 Movement, for instance, is perceived at once by touch 
 and by sight " (De Anima, II, vi, 3). Again : " When 
 we reach the common sensibles we find we have a common 
 perception of them which enters into all the senses, not a 
 perception connected with some single sense " (ibid. Ill, 
 i, 7). " The object of sense is in fact, at the moment 
 when it is perceived, identical with the actual exercise of 
 sense perception, although it is true the aspect which the 
 former presents to us is different from that of the latter " 
 (ibid. Ill, ii, 4). 
 
 Aristotle seems here to approach the standpoint, not 
 of ordinary realism or of subjective idealism, but of an 
 idealism of an objective character in which the mental 
 and the non-mental are not divorced, and subject is not 
 treated as independent of object. The universal is not, 
 as with Plato, an entity apart from the particular, but is 
 present as inseparable from it in the singular. The real 
 is individual, and the mind encounters what is of its own 
 nature existing in the object of perception. He does not 
 stop at this point. He has so far brought knowledge and 
 its object into a common medium, for all knowledge is 
 concerned with the universals which the constitution of 
 experience implies, and he explains how this is possible. 
 For him mind and its object, as I have already observed, 
 are not two things apart in space or time, with the 
 relation between them regarded as causal. He rejects 
 in effect the. category of substance in this connection. 
 Knowledge and its object are, as the words I have quoted 
 indicate, identical in their difference. The explanation 
 he places in the foundation which he attributes to all 
 reality. The highest principle, that which underlies 
 Becoming, and realises itself in the mind that knows, is 
 always and exclusively vovs, the activity of thought that 
 thinks itself and is the primum mobile, the origin of all 
 form as well as itself the perfection of form. Matter is 
 thus an abstraction made by and within mind, and is 
 
252 GREEK PHILOSOPHY 
 
 what is to be regarded as the starting-point in an intel- 
 lectual process which extends from that which is merely 
 possible to the completion which the possible presupposes 
 as the foundation of its very meaning. When the highest 
 stage is reached form and matter, and mind and its 
 object, are at one. The attainment proceeds by degrees 
 or stages which cannot be represented as related through 
 a mere transition in time. In his Metaphysics (e.g. Book ix, 
 chapter 8) he seems to indicate that he holds such expres- 
 sions as " cause " and " priority " to be ambiguous, and 
 that actuality is to be looked on as in truth prior to potency. 
 He explains (Book xii, chapter 7) that " thought 
 thinks itself because it shares the nature of the object of 
 thought ; for it becomes an object of thought in coming 
 into contact with and thinking its objects, so that thought 
 and the object of thought are the same." What makes 
 them seem to us different is, he explains in the concluding 
 words of chapter 9, that the stage in which matter is 
 wholly transcended is never reached in human life, and 
 that objects therefore present an appearance of com- 
 positeness which is foreign to the divine thought that is 
 foundational. 
 
 I have referred to Aristotle particularly because, 
 although he was a systematic observer of nature, the 
 interpretation he offers of the character of the world 
 within and without our finite minds was but little embar- 
 rassed by difficulties which press on modern men of 
 science. Our absorption in the methods of physical 
 science has led to great advances in knowledge. Experi- 
 ment and exact observation have transformed certain of 
 our conceptions of truth and have given us further stand- 
 points of great value. But we have paid a price for this. 
 The category of substance has become unduly dominant 
 with us. It has created a tendency to regard everything 
 from a single set of viewpoints, and to reflect as though 
 there were only one kind or level in thinking. Aristotle 
 suffered from the want of our exact knowledge in his 
 speculations about nature. But he enjoyed a compen- 
 sation. It was easier for him to realise that there were 
 more aspects involved in being actual than only one, 
 and to accept the principle that knowledge and reality 
 alike exhibit stages, distinct in kind, which must be 
 estimated by applying different conceptions and different 
 
DIFFERENCES IN LEVELS OF KNOWLEDGE 253 
 
 standards. His doctrine of final causes freed him from 
 difficulty in accepting what was in the nature of action 
 at a distance. The form of final cause which he called 
 " entelechy " was conceived by him as of a character 
 wholly different from that of the mechanical relations to 
 which the followers of Bacon were later on to confine 
 themselves almost instinctively. 
 
 But despite these advantages he was weighed down with 
 difficulties from which the progress of observation and 
 experiment has freed us. To-day the world is assumed to 
 be throughout an orderly world. The more searching 
 our investigations the more thoroughly have they elimin- 
 ated apparent gaps in the sequences of mechanical and 
 biological phenomena alike. The sequences may be of 
 different natures and may exhibit different principles, 
 according as they are sequences in mechanism or in life, 
 but they are of their kind, so far as experience carries 
 us, unbroken. Uniformity within the several orders of 
 existence seems to us to reign in nature undisturbed within 
 each order. For the Greeks this was not clearly so. The 
 range of their special sciences, from mathematics through 
 physics to biology, was very limited. There were gaps 
 everywhere, and the different aspects of reality were not 
 clearly distinguished or ranged under the conceptions 
 appropriate to them. The consequences were what we 
 should reckon disorder everywhere in the procedure of 
 their scientific thought. The various fields of observation 
 overlap. Metaphor is indulged in without consciousness 
 that it is simply metaphor. The philosophy of the 
 Greeks is in this respect difficult to interpret, and it is 
 still more difficult to be sure that we are not reading into 
 it more than is there. But, taking Aristotle's system as 
 a whole, there are certain features in regard to which there 
 is little room for mistake. For him it is clear that reality 
 discloses a variety of stages, rising in thought from the 
 deficiency of form which he called matter towards the 
 self-completing form which is the ground and the inspira- 
 tion of the activity of the whole in its self-realisation. 
 Becoming is for him of a meaning deeper and further- 
 reaching than any of evolution in time. It stands for the 
 intelligible process by which thought, transcending while 
 embracing aspects capable of presentation in time, and 
 progressively grasping itself as form including and super- 
 18 
 
254 GREEK PHILOSOPHY 
 
 seding the negative relation to matter, is disclosed to 
 analysis as the foundation of every meaning in the 
 universe, and of all that is actual within and without. 
 The student need not worry himself over the mythological 
 images which Aristotle is fond of introducing in this con- 
 nection. It was the fashion of his age to resort to myths 
 and to speak in what were in these days the popular 
 modes of expression. The history of philosophy must be 
 read, like that of literature, with reference to the usages 
 of the time in which it was written. Underlying his 
 language in all its forms there is in Aristotle always insis- 
 tence on that ultimate identity of thought with its object, 
 and that refusal to separate them in kind, which are what 
 is distinctive in his standpoint. It is the human limita- 
 tions which are embodied in our organism, the instrument 
 which the reason in us has to work with, and which is 
 inseparable from self-consciousness of experience, that 
 prevent us from holding to these firmly throughout. And 
 Aristotle knows this and tells us how and why it is so. The 
 soul is indeed the entelechy of the body, and therefore 
 from the body it is not separable in fact. It is the reality 
 of that body, but its reality at a different and more 
 adequate viewpoint in the hierarchy of reason than that 
 at which things appear only as operating on each other 
 in space. For Aristotle it is absurd to speak of the soul 
 as moving the body after the fashion of a thing acting on 
 another thing. 
 
 " This view," he says, " is held by Democritus, whose 
 words rather recall the saying of Philippus the comedian, 
 that Daedalus made his wooden Aphrodite capable of move- 
 ment by pouring quicksilver into her. Democritus' 
 explanation is in truth not much superior to this. He 
 tells us that the atomic globules contract and move the 
 whole body in virtue of the law imposed on them to 
 remain at rest. But, we should ask, are these same 
 elements to produce rest also ? How they will produce 
 this result it is difficult or in fact impossible to say. And 
 indeed generally, apart from any special form of doctrine, 
 the soul, so far as we can see, moves the body not in this 
 manner, but through the agency of purpose or thought." 
 (De Anima, I, iii, 9.) 
 
 Aristotle too comes well in sight of, what he indicates 
 
PRINCIPLE OF DEGREES IN ARISTOTLE 255 
 
 with less precision but still without much ambiguity, a 
 level at which reason does not distinguish itself from 
 matter by giving form to it, and at which it does not 
 find itself conditioned by any instrument which it has to 
 use. He indicates a yet higher degree in the order of the 
 aspects which reality implies, an intelligible completion 
 in which knowledge is the same as actuality, and form 
 and matter are entirely at one. This is the degree at the 
 level of which knowledge and its object are no longer in 
 antithesis, the stage at which thought is creative in that 
 it actually thinks itself, and encounters nothing but itself 
 in its object. Human knowledge, conditioned as its organ 
 is by nature, cannot reach this degree in reality, but such 
 thought must be assumed to be actual, for it is the foun- 
 dation in terms of which alone the actual can in ultimate 
 analysis be expressed. 
 
 This is the doctrine of Aristotle as I read him. It must 
 be taken subject to the reservations of Zeller and the 
 words of caution used by Caird. But the interpretation is 
 substantially that put on it by several other commentators. 
 Of these I know no paraphrase of the Aristotelian position 
 in metaphysics and psychology which impresses me more 
 than that which occurs in the little volume of a hundred 
 and fifty pages, written as long ago as 1837, with the 
 title Leib und Seele, by Professor J. E. Erdmann of Halle, 
 and republished in 1902 by Professor Bolland of Leyden. 
 This book brings out the principle which has always to 
 be borne in mind by the reader of Greek philosophy, 
 that it is not by looking at experience as consisting in a 
 series of appearances which succeed each other in time, 
 and are mainly quantitatively distinguished, that the 
 facts can be accounted for, but only by recognising ex- 
 perience as exhibiting stages in the quality of its reality, 
 stages which are related to each other, not causally, but 
 in reflection. 
 
 There is another reservation which has to be recorded 
 at this point. In his writings on logic, as commonly so 
 called, Aristotle says a good many things that are difficult 
 to reconcile with the main current of his metaphysics. 
 The discrepancies can hardly be explained as merely due 
 to the imperfect form in which the text has come down to 
 us. In his theory of the syllogism he speaks as though the 
 universals with which thought had to do were classes simply 
 
256 GREEK PHILOSOPHY 
 
 as wholes of extension. This idea was fastened on by 
 the Schoolmen, and it culminated in the doctrine of the 
 quantification of the predicate. Small wonder that the 
 major premise, and the syllogistic form, or what is called 
 " linear inference " by modern logicians, have fallen into 
 some disrepute. We need not be surprised that a genera- 
 tion subsequent to Aristotle should have declared loudly 
 that ancient philosophy was just a search for universals 
 of this kind, while modern science was a search for causes. 
 Still, read as a whole, in Aristotle's teaching it is quite a 
 different principle that is most prominent, the principle, 
 namely, that the concern of knowledge is primarily and 
 inherently, not with numerical classes, but with relations. 
 
 As I have already observed, Aristotle has no monopoly 
 of a principle which in substance he was the first really 
 to suggest. Plotinus, as we shall see, later on enounced 
 it quite as definitely, and in modern times Hegel worked 
 it out elaborately. In our own days Mr. F. H. Bradley 
 and Professor Bosanquet have made the doctrine a 
 familiar one, and Professor Pringle-Pattison has dwelt on 
 it in his Gifford Lectures. I will quote from Mr. Bradley 
 a single passage, and with the quotation I will close 
 these references to Aristotle, making only this brief 
 comment. One has to be careful not to read the statement 
 of Mr. Bradley which follows as to the principle in its 
 modern form as if one could find it as clearly in the state- 
 ments of a philosopher who wrote more than two thousand 
 years before. But Mr. Bradley had himself, as he has 
 told us, inherited his doctrine of logical stages from the 
 idealism which culminated in Hegel early in the last 
 century, and that idealism treated its own doctrine as 
 derived largely from Aristotle. It is therefore not without 
 authority to support me that I seek to connect the stand- 
 point of to-day with that of a great thinker of antiquity. 
 Now the standpoint of to-day is expressed in Appearance 
 and Reality (pp. 497, 498) in words which seem to me 
 admirable. 
 
 After saying that for metaphysics all appearances have 
 certain degrees of reality, and that metaphysics can assign 
 a meaning to perfection and progress, Mr. Bradley adds : 
 
 " If it were to accept from the sciences the various 
 kinds of natural phenomena, if it were to set out these 
 
MR. BRADLEY'S STATEMENT 257 
 
 kinds in an order of merit and rank, if it could point out 
 how within each higher grade the principle of the lower 
 grade is carried out in the higher, metaphysics surely 
 would have contributed to the interpretation of nature." 
 
 And a little later : 
 
 " In a complete philosophy the whole world of appear- 
 ance would be set out as progress. It would show a 
 development of principle, though not a succession in time. 
 Every sphere of experience would be measured by the 
 absolute standard, and would be given a rank answering 
 to its own relative merits and defects. On this scale pure 
 Spirit would mark the extreme most removed from lifeless 
 nature. And at each rising degree of this scale we should 
 find more of the first character with less of the second. 
 The ideal of spirit, one may say, is directly opposed to 
 mechanism. Spirit is a unity of the manifold in which 
 the externality of the manifold has utterly ceased. The 
 universal here is immanent in the parts, and its system 
 does not lie somewhere outside and in the relations between 
 them. It is above the relational form, and has realised 
 it in a higher unity, a whole in which there is no division 
 between elements and laws. The sphere of dead 
 mechanism is set apart by an act of abstraction, and in 
 that abstraction alone it essentially exists. And, on the 
 other hand, pure spirit is not realised except in the 
 Absolute." 
 
 Five centuries after Aristotle, Neo-Platonism became 
 the philosophy of the Graeco-Roman world. Its greatest 
 figure in this period is that of Plotinus, who was born in 
 Egypt but finally settled in Rome and taught there. He 
 died in A.D. 270, leaving behind him the materials of the 
 fifty-four books of his Enneads, which Porphyry edited. 
 
 Apart from the accounts of his system given by Zeller 
 and Caird, we possess a thoroughly sympathetic exposition 
 of his teaching in two admirable volumes published by 
 Dr. Inge. These volumes contain the fruits of much 
 research, and they supplement the excellent work done 
 by Mr. Thomas Whittaker, from a somewhat different 
 standpoint, in his book on the Neo-Platonists. Mr. Stephen 
 Mackenna has also rendered into attractive English the 
 
258 GREEK PHILOSOPHY 
 
 nine books of the first set of the Enneads and the Life 
 of Plotinus written by Porphyry. These versions of 
 Plotinus are of special value to persons like myself, because 
 the original text is so difficult as to be readily accessible 
 in its meaning only to finished scholars. 
 
 I will first of all indicate very briefly the doctrine of 
 Plotinus in outline. He was deeply influenced by Aristotle, 
 whose doctrine of the relation of matter to form his own 
 view resembled. Where he differed most from him was 
 in refusing to find in thought conceived as thinking itself 
 an adequate expression of the ultimate foundation of 
 reality. For he insisted that even if knowledge is con- 
 ceived as at a level where it is creative of its object, it 
 yet exhibits as implicit a distinction from the object, 
 which imports a limit not the less actual because know- 
 ledge itself has produced it. The ultimate foundation 
 must therefore be regarded as beyond the form of thought 
 as well as that of being, and as an unity which is com- 
 pletely self-contained and remains within itself. It is the 
 Absolute One and the Absolute Good, according to the 
 point of view from which it is approached in reflection. 
 
 But the Absolute so conceived is not to be described 
 by predicates, even to the extent of saying that it is 
 unity or that it is good. It is what must be assumed as 
 foundational, but is in no sense substance. It has no 
 locality. As that which all things imply and on which 
 they therefore depend, it may be said to be everywhere. 
 But as it is itself no " thing," it can have no spatial relation 
 to anything else, and is therefore nowhere. It is not a 
 cause, for to call it so would be to imply a time relation. 
 For Plotinus, as for Aristotle, the true order is logical and 
 is not sequence in time. The higher is the explanation of 
 the lower, and not the lower of the higher. In the case 
 of the human body there is separation of parts, although 
 there is unification in what has reached even this stage 
 only. The higher form of this unification is the soul. 
 But souls, although they have much in common, have yet 
 differences which mark them off as particular souls. There 
 must therefore be a higher stage, that of the general soul. 
 Still, although the general soul, conceived as such, is the 
 principle of life and motion in the world, that world is 
 other than itself. Matter thus limits form here. A higher 
 aspect is therefore that of mind thinking itself, and not 
 
PLOTINUS 259 
 
 any world separate from it, and containing all forms that 
 are actual in time and space. But even at this point 
 thought distinguishes itself from itself, and therefore for 
 Plotinus it has not attained its highest possibility. This 
 is the absolute unity, the One. But the One is not sub- 
 stance and it is not static. It realises itself in mind and, 
 through mind, in the objects which are one with it. Yet 
 even in the identity with its object in which mind finds 
 itself, there is a duality between thinking and being 
 thought which is indicative of a degree in reality lower 
 than that of the One. Mind comprehends all that is in 
 the world. It is in mind that matter becomes actual. 
 In particular all ideas belong to it, whether they are con- 
 ceived in separation, as Plato conceived them, or treated 
 as inherent universals after the fashion of Aristotle. The 
 relation of its Ideas to mind as an entirety resembles, 
 not that of the parts of a spatial whole, but rather that of 
 the principles of a science to the sum of knowledge within 
 which they are embraced. Because the world of space 
 and matter stands only as what is possible, contrasted 
 with a completion which is actual, it is in the supra- 
 mundane intellect that it attains reality. That intellect 
 is essentially active and therefore productive, and is the 
 source of the appearance of differences. The One is many, 
 not by local situation, but in virtue of the intrinsic differ- 
 ences arising from the intellectual activity which belongs 
 to its nature, activity which operates, as Aristotle had 
 taught, on matter which is the indestructible subject of 
 form. 
 
 In Plotinus there is prominent a mystical element. The 
 One does not think, for it is completely self-possessed, 
 and therefore above thought. What apprehends it must 
 therefore be, not thought, which proceeds by distinguish- 
 ing, but an identification of itself with it by the individual 
 mind. There are moments in the history of the individual 
 self when the vision of the One dawns on it. In these 
 moments it seems to be passively receptive. It appre- 
 hends in an attitude which is different from that of know- 
 ledge. Such apprehension is not really a vision, for the 
 seer is not distinguished from the seen, but has identified 
 himself with it. In the account of Plotinus in the second 
 edition of Mr. Thomas Whittaker's Neo-Platonists the 
 author sums up at p. 103 the practical outcome of the 
 
260 GREEK PHILOSOPHY 
 
 doctrine. " While here, the soul cannot retain the vision ; 
 but it can retreat to it in alternation with the life of know- 
 ledge and virtue which is the preparation for it." " And 
 this " (in the words which conclude the Enneads in Por- 
 phyry's redaction) " is the life of gods and of godlike and 
 blessed men, a deliverance from the other things here, a 
 life untroubled by the pleasures here, a flight of the alone 
 to the alone." 
 
 Of the personality of Plotinus, to which it is of interest 
 to refer as influenced by the atmosphere in which he taught, 
 we have a record in the life of him written by Porphyry. 
 The latter says " that he seemed ashamed of being in the 
 body, and that this feeling was so deeply rooted that he 
 never could be induced to tell of his ancestry, his parentage, 
 or his birthplace." He would not allow his portrait to 
 be painted, asking : " Is it not enough to carry about 
 this image in which nature has enclosed us ? Do you 
 really think I must also consent to leave, as a desirable 
 spectacle to posterity, an image of the image ? " " He 
 abstained from the use of the bath, contenting himself 
 with a daily rubbing down at home." Porphyry mentions 
 that Eustochius had given him an account of the death 
 of Plotinus. He came to him from Puteoli and arrived 
 just in time. When he did so Plotinus said, " I have 
 been a long time waiting for you ; I am striving to give 
 back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All." As 
 he spoke a snake crept under the bed in which he lay, 
 and slipped into a hole ; at the same moment Plotinus 
 died. 
 
 It was to Porphyry that Plotinus entrusted the task of 
 revising his writings. " Such revision was necessary," 
 Porphyry tells us ; " Plotinus could not bear to go back 
 on his work even for one re-reading ; and indeed the 
 condition of his sight would scarcely allow it ; his hand- 
 writing was slovenly ; he mis joined his words ; he cared 
 nothing about spelling ; his one concern was for the idea." 
 Apparently he inspired such confidence in his wisdom 
 and integrity that a good many people left their children 
 with their property under his guardianship, and his house 
 was filled with these boys and girls. " He always found 
 time for those that came to submit returns of the children's 
 property, and he looked closely to the accuracy of the 
 accounts : " Until the young people take to philosophy," 
 
THE ENNEADS 261 
 
 he used to say, " their fortunes and revenues must be 
 kept intact for them." 
 
 Of the Enneads there were six, each containing nine books. 
 They suggest throughout the small esteem in which the 
 author held the phenomena of space and time. Porphyry 
 tells us that one Amelius, being scrupulous in observing 
 the day of the new moon and other holy days, once asked 
 Plotinus to join in their celebration. Plotinus replied : 
 "It is for those beings to come to me, not for me to go 
 to them," an observation which recalls what Heine declares 
 he overheard Hegel say when vexed by hearing the vast- 
 ness of the firmament extolled : " The stars, the stars ! 
 what are they but a brilliant irruption in the sky ? " 
 
 It was the opinion of Plotinus that " we rise to real 
 being as that from which we originally sprang. We think 
 intelligible objects " (he says in the Enneads, vi, 5, 7), " and 
 not merely their images or impressions, and, in thinking 
 them, we are identified with them. Thus we participate 
 in true knowledge, being made one with its objects, not 
 receiving them unto ourselves, but rather being taken up 
 into them. And the same is the case with other souls 
 as with our own. Hence, if we are in unity with the 
 intelligence, we are in unity with each other, and so we 
 are all one." Here Plotinus suggests the doctrine of 
 identity in the thought of separate persons which has 
 already been discussed. Such individuals are for him 
 imperfect manifestations of intelligence, rendered imperfect 
 by the conditions of nature and of finite existence. But 
 thoughts are not properly events in space and time. It 
 is only for special purposes, and by abstractions such as 
 those of the psychologist, that we treat them as such. I 
 need not refer further for the explanation of this than to 
 what I have already said in earlier chapters. Like Aristotle, 
 Plotinus looks on discursive thought, which takes things 
 in their separation and connects them externally to each 
 other, as a limited and therefore imperfect manifestation 
 of mind under finite conditions. Such thought is not, 
 however, a property of the organism regarded as a thing. 
 It characterises the higher level of personality. At a 
 still higher level in mind the barriers that divide us from 
 objects and from other persons would vanish, and intelli- 
 gence would know itself in its object, not discursively but 
 directly. We should thus reach self-consciousness that 
 
262 GREEK PHILOSOPHY 
 
 knew itself and recognised itself alone. And beyond this, 
 according to Plotinus, there is a yet higher level or degree 
 at which, as I have already mentioned, for him the dis- 
 tinction that even a perfect self-consciousness makes 
 within itself must disappear and the One be attained. 
 But to reach that unity we must transcend self-conscious- 
 ness and become as nothing in order to find all in God. 
 Here Plotinus becomes a mystic. He cannot express in 
 any but negative propositions what he strives to convey. 
 " When the soul becomes intelligence it possesses and 
 thinks the intelligible, but when it has intuition of God it 
 abandons everything else," although " we truly come to 
 ourselves only as we lose ourselves in Him." This is for 
 Plotinus not so much a development of something new 
 as a recovery of what is lost. For his method is to explain 
 from above downwards, and not to build up from below. 
 It is this form that the doctrine of degrees in reality assumes 
 with him. 
 
 One feels that in such utterances the method of Plotinus, 
 like that of Aristotle, was hampered by the traces of a 
 tendency towards dualism which Aristotle never completely 
 got rid of, and which Plotinus only avoids by taking 
 refuge per saltum in mysticism. There is no thorough- 
 going attempt to relate to each other the stages in know- 
 ledge and reality. Although mind is regarded as foun- 
 dational the higher levels of thinking are not brought into 
 systematic relation with those below them, so as to exhibit 
 mind in nature and nature in mind, and their apparent 
 divergences as the outcome of reflection under organic 
 conditions. Moreover, the artificial form of the Aristotelian 
 logic made the task of doing so more difficult than it might 
 otherwise have been. For that logic treats thought as 
 discursive and as operating formally through inherent 
 separations which belong essentially to judgments of the 
 understanding. As a consequence, while the doctrine of 
 degrees was a vital one in their systems, we do not find 
 it consistently and fully developed in the writings Aristotle 
 and Plotinus have bequeathed to us. 
 
 Aristotle and Plotinus spoke in the philosophical dialect 
 of their times. It is not our dialect. The words they 
 used often suggest ideas about matters of fact which have 
 long since disappeared under the scrutiny of exact observa- 
 tion. But just as it matters little to the student of 
 
SCIENCE AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY 263 
 
 literature whether the story of Hamlet is true, so the 
 question whether Hellenist philosophers were well furnished 
 with accurate scientific knowledge is not the main question. 
 Philosophy has always to turn to science for material. 
 It cannot interpret with full usefulness unless it is in 
 possession of the real and exact facts to be interpreted. 
 But then every branch of the sciences has its own principles 
 and its own outlook. The task of philosophy is to ascer- 
 tain how far each science embodies standpoints adequate 
 to the whole truth, and not merely to abstract and partial 
 aspects. What is the kind of knowledge that the physicist 
 can offer ? His details may be never so right, and yet he 
 may have escaped from a merely partial statement of truth 
 not so much as has his metaphysical predecessor with 
 details throughout erroneous. It is the character of the 
 principles applied and the stage in knowledge reached 
 that matter here. A Tyndall may well have got to no 
 higher a stage in this connection than a Lucretius. The 
 range of his conceptions may have been no wider and of 
 no higher an order. The penetrative power of thought, 
 itself of developing capacity, may be unlimited, if fully 
 wielded. But the hindrances of finite nature, the con- 
 fining character of the brain and the organism, may have 
 prevented him who tries to wield that power from develop- 
 ing it fully, and with it the range of the conceptions of 
 which reflection is capable. It needs a larger survey 
 than one only from a single point of view to embrace the 
 whole truth. For that truth makes itself manifest in 
 many and varying degrees of reality. It is neither this 
 nor that. It reaches over their distinction and character. 
 We have, if we would be sure that we are not confined by 
 trammels, to compare standpoint with standpoint, to 
 study, as a whole and in their relations, the various phases 
 through which the history of thought has passed, and to 
 read the great writers in the spirit in which we approach 
 literature, the spirit of search for high quality in conception. 
 What, indeed, we have to look for is the standard of this 
 quality. The metaphors may be those of a past age, the 
 science may be so obsolete as to be unworthy of the name. 
 And yet, in the insight into the real nature of the problem 
 of reality, and in the comprehensiveness of the answer 
 offered, we may have a solution which penetrates more 
 deeply into the true constitution of the Universe than the 
 
264 GREEK PHILOSOPHY 
 
 partial aspect of that constitution presented in the work, 
 more accurate in observed detail, of a later date, not- 
 withstanding that it has been done with far more command 
 of exact facts. 
 
 The value to us moderns of Greek thought is that the 
 Greek thinkers recognised that no view was sufficient which 
 excluded any important degree in which reality and the 
 truth about it could be presented. Goethe says some- 
 where that the test of poetry is size. We may to-day say 
 the same thing about philosophy. 
 
 Where Hellenistic reflection remained least complete was 
 not in any matter of detail or upon its theoretical side. It 
 failed to hold control of the human mind because it was 
 ethically inadequate in the scope of its outlook. It did 
 not take sufficient account of the infinite value belonging 
 to human personality, humble as well as great. That 
 was where it laid itself open to the criticism of Chris- 
 tianity, a criticism which subsequent reflection by degrees 
 assimilated and found justified. It was not that Hellenism 
 had wholly failed to be conscious of its own defects. 
 Socrates and Plato were aware of what had to be added 
 for its completion. But neither they nor those who followed 
 them were in deep enough earnest over the fundamental 
 problem of ethics. They wavered over it, and they gave 
 place to those who did not waver. 
 
 In his novel The Death of the Gods, Meres jowski tells 
 the story of the Emperor Julian. He loved Hellenism in 
 all its forms. But the efforts of Julian could not bring 
 back the gods of Greece to life. " You are sick," cried 
 to him Arsinoe in the story, " you are all too weak for 
 your wisdom. That is your penalty, Hellenists of too 
 late a day. You have strength neither for good nor for 
 evil. You are neither day nor night, nor life nor death. 
 Your heart wavers, here and there. You have left one 
 bank, and cannot reach the other. You believe, and you 
 do not believe. You betray yourselves, you hesitate ; 
 you will and you do not will, because you do not know on 
 what to set your will. They alone are strong who, seeing 
 one truth, are blind to all other. They will conquer us 
 us who are wise and weak." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 NEW REALISM 
 
 ONE of the most interesting departures in speculation 
 during recent years, a departure in its own way as striking 
 by its influence as that of M. Bergson, has been the move- 
 ment initiated by the various schools of New Realists. 
 Since the commencement of the twentieth century the 
 disciples of these schools have been engaged, both here 
 and in the United States, hi inquiries of a far-reaching 
 nature. Turning away from the methods of their pre- 
 decessors, and particularly from those of the idealists, 
 they have sought to bring philosophy into close relation 
 with science, by endeavouring to adopt the modes of 
 investigation which have been evolved by the latter. 
 They claim to have thus placed philosophical inquiry on 
 a sound basis. 
 
 Of these New Realists there are, as I have indicated, 
 several schools, diverging from each other rather in results 
 than in methods or tendencies. For all of them have 
 this in common, that they give to the non-mental world 
 the status of being self-subsistent and completely inde- 
 pendent of the mind of the observer. Actual objects do 
 not for them exist in the mind, but in a medium that is 
 independent of mind. Its characteristic feature is appar- 
 ently taken to be that of self-subsistent space and time, 
 or of their union in a foundational space-time continuum. 
 For space and time may prove in the end to be only two 
 inseparable forms of a general and self-subsisting externality. 
 Some New Realists go so far as to call space-time the 
 final substance of the phenomena of experience. But the 
 important point on which all the New Realists appear to 
 be at one is in holding that things exist as they seem, 
 and that to interpret them as not existing apart from our 
 consciousness of them is absurd. Even mere appearances, 
 
 265 
 
266 NEW REALISM 
 
 if it be legitimate to use the word, are non-mental. As 
 for minds, according to one school of New Realism, if 
 they disappeared from the universe there would have 
 disappeared only passive awareness, or possibly a system 
 of " conations," independent of which our sensations 
 themselves subsist as objects in a non-mental surrounding. 
 According to another school, that of certain prominent 
 American metaphysicians, the physiological organism is 
 the only reliable fact, and even the relation of awareness 
 or conation is nothing with a character apart from that 
 of its objects, but appears in consciousness only as 
 distinguished or grouped in a special fashion by the 
 nervous system, in contrast with other objects. For 
 this school and for those Behaviourists who are associated 
 with it, the grouping, but only the grouping, either 
 depends on the nervous system, or else is simply to be 
 accepted as a fact included in the universe like any other 
 fact. The supposed evidence of introspection in support 
 of a peculiar mental activity is denied altogether. Seeing 
 means simply colours occurring; hearing means sounds 
 occurring ; thinking means thoughts occurring. Mind 
 is just a casual selection out of the objects included in the 
 field of consciousness, and has no characteristic that dis- 
 tinguishes its nature from that of the other object sin the field. 
 The word consciousness is a merely demonstrative appella- 
 tion. For the former school there is thus an approach 
 to dualism, between what may be called in a carefully 
 limited sense subject-objects and mere objects. For the 
 latter school mind is nothing distinguishable from any of 
 its objects ; it is simply a set of objects of a special class. 
 Even when we are in error there is an object, and there 
 is no justification for regarding the erroneously conceived 
 appearance as the creation of a mind more than in the 
 case of any other object. 
 
 Thus objects alone really exist, and what we call con- 
 sciousness is, at the most, a name for certain segments 
 or groups of these objects. Knowledge is indeed often 
 dependent on contiguity and succession. Such relations 
 may be characteristic of the groups in which they consist. 
 But to say this is to say something not free from ambiguity. 
 It does not really imply that such mental relations enter 
 into the nature of the object. What is real may be non- 
 material, inasmuch as it may stand in non-material rela- 
 
RELATIONS AS EXTERNAL 267 
 
 tions, but this does not import that it is therefore mental. 
 The object is always different from its apprehension. We 
 may classify it as material or non-material, as fact or as 
 fiction, as concrete or as abstract, as true appearance or 
 as untrue. All of these relationships as such may be 
 objects, and in so far as they are they exist independently 
 of our apprehension of them. Thus universals and rela- 
 tions which we can only describe in terms of universals are 
 part of the non-mental reality. 
 
 This doctrine is of course remote from that of ordinary 
 materialism. It does not deny the reality of the relations 
 or universals to which our knowledge guides us, and which 
 have been hitherto assigned to its domain for the explana- 
 tion of their genesis. It gives these relations and uni- 
 versals, on the contrary, a high place in actuality. For it 
 declares that they belong to the substance of the non- 
 mental world and are independent facts in it. 
 
 As is to be expected from the method adopted, what 
 is in truth the conception of substance is really implied 
 as the everywhere dominant category in such teaching. 
 It is disguised under the general name of entity, when it 
 is applied to what is of a more than merely sensational 
 nature, such as are the relations in which sensations are 
 ordered and connected. But even these relations are 
 looked on as self-subsisting, as static and self-contained 
 realities, and to them the conception of substance, which 
 is applied to other aspects of the phenomena of experience, 
 is virtually extended likewise. 
 
 I shall refer in the pages which follow to what seems 
 to me to be the real significance of the recent movement 
 in philosophy of which I am writing. The outcome of the 
 new doctrine appears to be that, contrary to what the 
 idealists teach, the world of our experience owes to mind 
 little or even nothing of its constitution. The novelty in 
 point of form of this latest departure in philosophy lies 
 in its inclusion of relations of the type of universals, which 
 were before considered to be products of thought, in an 
 object -world which is pronounced to be strictly non-mental. 
 In so including universals the new movement brings us 
 back to what bears some analogy to the doctrine which 
 Plato taught more than two thousand years ago. But 
 New Realism makes its point much more definitely than 
 Platonism did. It claims to have laid its finger on a 
 
268 NEW REALISM 
 
 cardinal fallacy in epistemology, the doctrine according 
 to which knowledge is the property of a mind, and yet 
 actually creative. It asserts strenuously that the mental 
 act of perceiving contributes nothing to the actual exis- 
 tence of the object perceived. What we feel or even know 
 is, for the new school, not only real and independent, but 
 complete in itself apart from the work of the mind in 
 apprehending it. The object of thought, according to 
 the most thoroughgoing exponents of this realism, is in 
 its nature independent of any act of thinking, just as 
 much as what is felt is independent of feeling. The justi- 
 fication of this is put forward in the shape of a systematic 
 reconsideration of the character of experience. Such a 
 reconsideration shows, it is claimed by some prominent 
 New Realists, that there is between the act of perception 
 and the reality that is perceived nothing intermediate or 
 purely mental, nor anything that is legitimately to be 
 regarded as an idea or presentation. It was through a 
 mistake under this head, a confusion of the act of percep- 
 tion with the idea perceived, that Berkeley thought he 
 had arrived at subjective idealism, and that Hume 
 developed Berkeley's result into scepticism. It was the 
 merit of Reid, though he did not know how to push his 
 discovery, to have found out where these two went astray. 
 By the New Realists generally the pretensions set up 
 for knowledge by the idealists are reduced to very modest 
 dimensions. Consciousness itself is held by none of them 
 to amount to more than an activity or conation of a special 
 kind, capable of nothing beyond passive reception, and 
 itself developed by the nervous centres of the brain. Such 
 activity does not add to the reality which confronts it, a 
 reality which it presupposes and with which it is corn- 
 present in space and time. Indeed, the fundamental 
 relations in the universe are really relations of compresence 
 in space and time, relations which belong to the conscious 
 and the unconscious alike. The mind which contemplates 
 the fire is compresent with it in these foundational modes 
 of reality in exactly the same fashion as is the armchair 
 in which the organism is sitting. The nature of the mind 
 which perceives both the fire and the chair is that of 
 awareness, an activity, as is subsequently discovered, of 
 a brain, but an activity that is not constructive but 
 only receptive. It is a process, operating as a factor 
 
COMPRESENCE 269 
 
 in a self-subsisting world of space and time, of apprehending 
 by way of sense or by way of thought. It is a process 
 that is moreover aware of or, as is said by Professor 
 Alexander and his followers, " enjoys " itself. Into the 
 constitution of the existence of what it apprehends it does 
 not enter at all. It is simply receptive of its object, and 
 coexists with it in the experienced world, the relationships 
 of which are thus more fundamental than are those of 
 knowledge. Indeed, knowledge is something merely 
 superinduced on the compresence of the brain with the 
 fire. That compresence is foundational, and belongs to 
 the chair in the same way as to my brain, although in the 
 case of the chair awareness, in which consciousness 
 consists, has not been superinduced. 
 
 All of the New Realists might not choose these expres- 
 sions. But some have used them, and I think that they 
 fairly describe what lies at the foundation of the general 
 doctrine. Later on I shall touch on other aspects of this 
 realism of the twentieth century. But even a bare 
 outline of its fundamental doctrine shows its main point 
 of application. Idealism had ousted the old materialistic 
 realism, and, by analysing the existence of the object- 
 world into perception or thought, had reduced matter to 
 mind. Modern Realism rejects the analysis and the 
 monistic view of reality which it entails, and affirms that 
 reality is through and through extra-mental, and, as 
 extra-mental, fragmentary or at least pluralistic. Even 
 percepts and the objects of thought, which have been in 
 the past permitted to pass muster as belonging to the 
 territory of the mental, are now affirmed to lie outside it, 
 and to exist independently of each other and of the activity 
 of the intelligence that apprehends them. A formidable 
 barrier is thus erected across what Berkeley and Hume 
 took to be an open highway to subjective idealism. 
 
 This is an impressive position, but its far-reaching 
 character is not its only notable feature. It is supported, 
 as no philosophical system has before been supported, 
 with a claim to evidences drawn from mathematics and 
 physical science. A large body of investigators, here and 
 in the United States, are busily engaged in devising new 
 applications of its principle and method, applications 
 which are based on mathematical and scientific attain- 
 ments in some cases of a very high order. The philo- 
 
 19 
 
270 NEW REALISM 
 
 sophical magazines, as well as the philosophical books 
 which pour out of the Press, testify to the volume and 
 vitality of the work that is being built up in support of 
 the new doctrine. Its students are already in occupation 
 of an extensive field in current philosophy, and they are 
 pursuing their subject in the regions of exact and detailed 
 knowledge with an energy that has had but few parallels 
 in the history of thought. 
 
 The appeal made is a good illustration of the method by 
 which genuine progress takes place in the pursuit of 
 metaphysical truth. First great schools, such as those 
 of the Platonists and Aristotelians, monopolise the atten- 
 tion of the world and seem to have established a claim 
 to finality of principle. But by degrees there rises up a 
 reaction against them, such as that of the days of Francis 
 Bacon, and they appear to have been permanently 
 deserted. This, however, proves in the end not to have 
 happ'ened. For new forms of idealism, founded largely 
 on the results originally accomplished by Greek thought, 
 but having absorbed the apparently negative contribution 
 to such knowledge of modern science, presently occupy 
 the field. They claim men's attention afresh, and for a 
 time seem to have displaced all else in the estimation of 
 those who know. But when the generation of master 
 minds who have been adapting afresh what is old in the 
 new forms begins to pass away, these forms in their turn 
 begin to seem abstract in method and stale in outcome. 
 There then sets in a process of transformation, apparently 
 radical, from a new outlook, based mainly on the posses- 
 sion of fresh and more exact knowledge about the consti- 
 tution of reality in its various forms, an outlook which in 
 its turn seems always destined to be altered from a stand- 
 point apparently fundamentally different. 
 
 But the differences are never, so far as the history of 
 thought in the past is a guide, so fundamental as they 
 appear to the generation in which they first emerge. Pro- 
 gress takes place by oscillation succeeding oscillation and 
 reaction following on reaction. Every great controversy 
 seems as if predestined to end in a larger and more complete 
 outlook, in which the best that has gone before is taken 
 up and preserved, and there is no reason to think that 
 the new and great controversy which modern realism has 
 raised will not work out analogously. Nothing but good, 
 
PROGRESS IN PHILOSOPHY 271 
 
 in the form of an enlarged view of some of the character- 
 istics of reality, is likely to emerge as its result. 
 
 For every new system of thought that is worth anything 
 brings with it fresh and deepened conceptions under which 
 to interpret the universe. Plato and Aristotle accom- 
 plished results of this sort. The modern idealists did the 
 same thing in a fresh fashion, and the New Realists are 
 apparently working with a similar purpose to-day, when 
 they interpret the objective world as containing universals, 
 thought about, no doubt, but nevertheless as real as the 
 particular experience given to knowledge by acquaintance 
 through sense. The reconceived universals may or may 
 not have for sense a separate existence apart from the 
 particulars which they hold in their framework. They 
 may prove to have the character of either external or of 
 internal relations. But they reveal themselves in our 
 experience of these particulars as there present and 
 confronting us, and not merely as added by reflection 
 ab extra. It is for these relations and the laws to be 
 deduced from them that science searches, and they guide 
 and mould all the searchings of science. In this way in 
 a new philosophy conceptions selected from the non- 
 mental environment will determine the subject-matter 
 for reflection, which always finds features only of the 
 character for which it has adapted itself to seek. We see 
 this in the case of the new school, which conceives the 
 object of consciousness as a real world confronted by 
 another thing which stands passively receptive towards 
 it. We see the same influence in the instance of 
 Bergson, when he finds himself guided by observation to 
 the existence of an ultimate and creative activity of life 
 as directly disclosed by our consciousness. We see a 
 similar moulding influence exhibiting itself in varying forms 
 in the systems of the subjective idealists, such as Berkeley 
 and Hume, and in the later and different systems of the 
 German idealists and their followers. But we are apt to 
 place the oppositions between the conceptions of the 
 various schools too high, to regard them as though they 
 were absolute instead of merely relative, and to fail to 
 see how each turns out to be just in the end a correction 
 of what has gone before by the incorporation of a negative, 
 a correction which is itself destined to be similarly qualified 
 and supplemented later on. The more fundamental and 
 
272 NEW REALISM 
 
 far-reaching of the conceptions which dominate tendencies 
 in this fashion we call, in technical language, categories, 
 and we come, if we read the history of philosophy aright, 
 to regard it as a history of the criticism of categories. 
 
 Now the moulding power of categories does, as we have 
 seen, no doubt alter for us in a remarkable manner our 
 view of the character of truth and reality. It even appears, 
 since we never can be certain of finality in the forms of 
 our categories, to snatch from us all hope of finality in 
 our attitude towards the Universe. Ought this to dis- 
 courage us ? The recognition of it does not discourage 
 us when we meet it elsewhere. In literature, in art, and 
 in music, where the representation, however much drawn 
 from nature, is valuable only in so far as it is born again 
 of the mind of him who creates it, there is no such finality. 
 Truth and reality are there considered to lie in what is 
 finest and highest in the quality which a generation has 
 produced. The truth never stands still. It is always 
 changing its form as our categories change. Relativity 
 thus acquires a new meaning for us. 
 
 What is fundamental and essential is the development 
 of fresh results of utility in application. For the sake of 
 this progress must always be taking place in the correction 
 and evolution of our conceptions. To the searching 
 criticism of these conceptions, whether in theoretical or 
 in practical life, there is no finality. It seems that, as 
 was in the end discovered by Faust : 
 
 " He alone gains and keeps his life and freedom 
 Who daily has to conquer them anew." 
 
 Now this will not discourage us if we have the insight to 
 perceive that supposed finality must be actual falsehood, 
 whether we are dealing with daily affairs, or with literature 
 and art, or with philosophy or with science. It is not 
 faith in final truth so called, because for us human beings 
 there is no such thing as absolute and final truth, but 
 the quality of strenuousness and progress in the search 
 after it that alone can give us a sense of finality attained 
 in which we can rest. 
 
 The influence on all our knowledge of categories as 
 conceived in our period is accordingly a factor of the last 
 importance, and it is to categories and their criticism that 
 we must see closely if we would be certain of the only kind 
 of progress towards what is real that it is worth trying to 
 
PROFESSOR ALEXANDER 273 
 
 make. But our categories do not merely limit our 
 outlook. Affirmatively they impart to it new definite- 
 ness and penetration. By means of them we concentrate 
 and direct mental effort. They guide us in the reflective 
 search for truth, and, as far as their light can reach, show 
 us new paths along which to pursue it. The New Realism, 
 to take it as an illustration, is stimulating the study of 
 logic and mathematics. Whether the work done may 
 hereafter be found to have been partial and unduly abstract 
 is not the question. The point is the advance towards 
 methods by which problems hitherto insoluble seem to 
 become capable of solution. 
 
 In his recent Giff ord Lectures, so far as they are concerned 
 with space and time and with the bearing on their inter- 
 pretation of the principles of New Realism, Professor 
 Alexander, in two closely reasoned volumes, has shown 
 how philosophy may seek to establish organic relations 
 with mathematical and physical science. The Lectures 
 contain a notable attempt to accomplish this, and are 
 characterised both by fairness towards those who differ 
 from him and by great general knowledge. He discusses 
 in particular the mutual implications of what we separate 
 in reflection as space from time, and he tracks back 
 the common root of their apparent features to the space- 
 time continuum of the school of Einstein. Into the 
 details of his reasoning I have not room to enter. But 
 I may observe that he regards the continuum as analogous 
 in its character to that of motion, and sees in it a 
 foundation for the reality, not only of space and time 
 and the relations in them, but even of those categories 
 which others, like Kant, have treated as forms of 
 mind itself. Whether, therefore, the continuum comes 
 first for science, or knowledge itself must come first, it is 
 necessary to ask at the outset. For it seems to me that 
 the argument of Professor Alexander, by reason of his 
 loyalty to his own principle, has been somewhat deflected 
 from the results which are all that the new mathematico- 
 physicists have really produced. 
 
 He shows that space, taken in abstraction from time, 
 could have no distinction of parts, while time, taken in 
 abstraction from space, would yield a mere " now." Apart 
 from space there would be no connection in time, mathe- 
 matically considered. A real continuum therefore implies 
 
274 NEW REALISM 
 
 both factors, for without a temporal element there 
 would be no separate points to connect. There is no 
 instant of time apart from a position in space, and no 
 point of space except in an instant of time. The point 
 occurs at an instant, and the instant occupies a point. 
 This is not very different from the Bergsonian analysis of 
 mathematical time. The ultimate stuff of the Universe 
 for Professor Alexander must therefore, accepting as he 
 does the principle of relativity in observation, be of the 
 character of point-instants, and it is so that we get at 
 the continuum. The correspondence which characterises 
 it is, not a one-to-one, but a many-to-one, correspondence. 
 For one point may occur at more than one instant, and 
 one instant may, analogously, occupy several points. He 
 thinks that in this conclusion he is in full accord with 
 Minkowski's conception of an absolute world of four 
 dimensions, of which ordinary geometry omits the fourth, 
 the temporal element. According to the general principle 
 of relativity, as Einstein has since expressed it, we here 
 reach a geodesic line to which is relative any possible 
 form of motion and acceleration in a gravitational field. 
 The form of the differential equation describing its track 
 must therefore be such as to be applicable whatever 
 may turn out to be the character of the co-ordinates 
 of reference of the observer of motion in any conceivable 
 gravitational field. But surely this result imports nothing 
 short of relativity, not of what is of a non-mental character, 
 but of what is so for intelligence. Let us try to see 
 whether this can be otherwise. 
 
 I begin by observing that there seems to be no reason 
 to differ from those who insist on the reality of the con- 
 tinuum. The question is what this reality means. The 
 continuum may be taken to be actually there, just in the 
 same sense as are electrons. We cannot directly perceive 
 either one or the other. Conceivably a being with more 
 highly developed organs of sense might. But we cannot, 
 and yet we say that we know the continuum and the 
 electrons to be existent. What do we mean by this ? 
 Surely that we interpret the phenomena of ordinary 
 space and time as importing reality only relatively, that 
 is as construed from a standpoint which might be quite 
 different, to an extent that is unlimited, from what it is. 
 The construction from that standpoint is relative to the 
 
MENTAL CHARACTER AND RELATIVITY 275 
 
 particular standpoint. So far as it is applied to what we 
 are here concerned with, forms in extension and their 
 measurement, it is a purely relative one. It depends on 
 the concepts which fashion the belief that gives rise to 
 the standpoint, the belief, for example, that I, the observer, 
 have axes of reference of a particular kind, and am at 
 rest or in motion as the case may be. Under the influence 
 of this belief I, the observer, relying on co-ordinates of 
 reference which may vary infinitely, not only interpret 
 but experience accordingly lines, measured by reference to 
 my conditions, as straight or curved, distances as greater 
 or smaller, and time as correspondingly measured. I 
 grasp that all this has come to me from interpretation of 
 the actual, and not through direct and immediate know- 
 ledge of it. I go on to ask, still by searching, not for per- 
 ceptions, but for systematically drawn inferences, to what 
 I am to ascribe meaning as belonging to the actual, in 
 the sense of not being either appearance or notion relative 
 only to some particular standpoint. I am searching for 
 what I can legitimately conceive as true, not from one 
 standpoint only, but from any standpoint, an existence 
 that can in consequence have its meaning only through 
 universals. In the case of the continuum the universals 
 prove to be, not static entities of a non-mental aspect, 
 but variables, true universals of mind which are never 
 inert and are always in process in virtue of their inherent 
 nature of developing new relations. That seems to be 
 the necessary result of being in earnest with Einstein's 
 principle of the equivalence of inertial and gravitational 
 relations. 
 
 In order to see that this is so, one has only to turn to 
 Einstein's own homely illustrations. I will take one of these, 
 only slightly adapting its descriptions to British habits 
 of expression. A man is travelling in a train going fifty 
 miles an hour. Having finished the contents of a bottle 
 of smooth exterior, such as the wind cannot catch, say a 
 ginger-beer bottle, he opens the window, and, to satisfy 
 his curiosity, drops it on to the line. He observes, when 
 he stretches out his head, that the bottle falls in what 
 for him is a straight line perpendicular to the ground, 
 under the influence of gravitation. As the other inter- 
 fering force, inertial motion, is common to the bottle and to 
 himself in the train, he has not to take account of it. The 
 
276 NEW REALISM 
 
 permanent way seems to be running from under the train 
 in the other direction, and the bottle seems to fall out in 
 a nearly perfectly straight line. 
 
 But to an indignant plate-layer, who has just escaped 
 its impact, and who happened to be standing at the side 
 of the permanent way, the bottle appears not to have 
 dropped in a straight line at all, but to have flown by 
 him in a parabolic curve. The reason of the difference 
 is that the plate-layer applied different co-ordinates of 
 reference, interpreting himself as at rest on the embank- 
 ment, while, according to the system of reference of the 
 passenger in the train, he and the train looked at rest and 
 the embankment in motion. On the earth, by which both 
 systems were contained, there were therefore two systems, 
 one relatively at rest and the other relatively to it in 
 rectilinear motion, which could be rendered into each other's 
 terms by applying the formula devised for the Lorenz- 
 Fitzgerald contraction hypothesis. What the formula 
 does, unlike the old Newtonian formula for adjustment 
 on the footing that the permanent way and the plate- 
 layer were at rest in an absolute space and time, is to 
 provide for the variation and consequent relativity of 
 the co-ordinates used in each case for expressing the space 
 and time factors in the equations, and for rendering them, 
 while of different mathematical values, equivalent for 
 purposes of mathematical calculation. 1 
 
 But an infinity of such variations in these factors is 
 possible, if we take into account other conceivable stand- 
 points of observers. To a man in the sun there would 
 be one, to a man in Saturn another, to a man in a very 
 distant fixed star a third, and so on, ad inftnilum. What 
 Einstein has done, by applying the general principle of 
 equivalence, is to get rid of the idea of space and time 
 as independent of the observer, and to provide a method 
 which will apply to all or any of the forms and measure- 
 ments which for him depend on these standpoints. He 
 treats the relations in the continuum alone as determining 
 an absolute system of reference. 
 
 1 It makes no difference to the truth of the principle that its applica- 
 tion has to be limited by those exigencies of society, which compel us on 
 the earth to regulate our practice by conventional co-ordinates. A police 
 magistrate would therefore deal summarily with a defence by the 
 passenger based on Einstein's general doctrine. The context of social 
 experiences requires its exclusion from everyday affairs. 
 
RELATIVITY AND NEW REALISM 277 
 
 Now it is only conceptually and by reference to the 
 observer that he can do this. It is only mediately and 
 by inference, for there is no direct awareness of any such 
 continuum or of such relations of measurement. They are 
 only meanings which Einstein discovers in nature by his 
 mathematical methods, and they are surely analogous to 
 what is mental in character, and to nothing which passive 
 awareness can furnish. Their very intrinsic variability 
 shows this. They presuppose knowledge for their reality, 
 and it is not knowledge that presupposes them. It is 
 only the forced hypothesis that knowledge is a causal 
 relation between two independently existing things that 
 gives any plausibility to a different idea. Such an idea 
 cannot even be put into language unless such a causal 
 hypostatisation is first made. Is, then, the foundational 
 fact that we know in truth of a conceptual character ? 
 We have already given reasons for answering that question 
 in the affirmative. 
 
 As has already repeatedly been said, the affirmation 
 does not mean that thought creates things. To 
 conclude that it means anything of the sort is again to 
 assume tacitly that mind is a thing that acts causally 
 and the world a different thing of a non-mental nature. 
 Now Einstein's doctrine is an illustration of the falsity 
 of the assumption. What he is concerned with is a series 
 of meanings which possess reality and veracity only 
 relatively to knowledge. If the principle of relativity 
 is well-founded the very basis of New Realism seems 
 to disappear into vapour. None the less the strictest 
 mathematical -physical methods remain wholly justifiable 
 for anyone who carefully guards himself against implica- 
 tions that take him beyond the limits of physical 
 science ; as Professor Whitehead, for example, guards 
 himself. For all he looks for is the meaning of reality 
 from the point of view of science as strictly confined to its 
 own domain. To the window theory of the mind he is 
 not tied. For him the actual is not put into the dilemma 
 of either coming in or going out through windows. 
 
 I cannot therefore but feel that Professor Alexander, 
 despite his admirable maxim of * thorough,' makes too great 
 a demand on our credulity. 
 
 Another brilliant exponent of the doctrine of the New 
 Realist school in philosophy is Mr. Bertrand Russell, whose 
 
278 NEW REALISM 
 
 reputation as a thinker, and particularly as a mathema- 
 tician, is more than European. He claims that on the 
 basis of its ability to treat the self-contained character 
 of the world as non-mental and as including universals, 
 he is able to put the connection of logic with mathematics 
 on a new footing. If relations are not merely the products 
 of thought, but confront us in the world of experience as 
 existent there not less truly and independently of our- 
 selves than the particulars of sense, then the work of logic 
 must be to investigate these relations. Because they are 
 extra-mental entities, notwithstanding their quality of 
 being universals, we can rely on their validity when, by 
 thought and experiment directed by thought, we have 
 discovered them, and they may therefore legitimately 
 guide us in forecasting the behaviour of the particulars 
 of the experience in which they are embodied. Thus the 
 problem of how deductive reasoning can give us more in 
 its conclusions than was contained in its premises appears 
 in a new light. It was a problem which was insoluble 
 only if we assumed that general principles could amount 
 to no more than inductions by enumeration from the whole 
 of the particulars. The question of course arises whether 
 the result reached by Mr. Russell is a monopoly of New 
 Realism, and whether it has not been already attained 
 from a different point of view. But what is interesting 
 is that the outlook of Mr. Russell and of others who share 
 his metaphysical views has directed them to this solution. 
 In the hands of a master of mathematical method like 
 Mr. Russell himself it has proved very fruitful. For it has 
 enabled him to treat mathematics as a branch of his new 
 theory of logic. In this way he extends its range in a 
 fashion in which it was difficult to extend that range 
 while mathematics was confined for its subject-matter to 
 forms in space and time, even when got by construction, 
 and had no proper access to concepts. For if there is a 
 body of relations in the world of objectivity in space and 
 time which, although universals, are entities existing as 
 independently of our reflection as do the relations in 
 space and time which we find in the world as perceived by 
 the senses, there is no inherent reason why we should 
 exclude the former from the subject-matter of mathematical 
 method. Indeed, by including them in this subject-matter 
 it is claimed that much advance can be made. 
 
MR. BERTRAND RUSSELL 279 
 
 Logical forms, according to the view to which I am 
 referring, and indeed according to other views, comprise 
 more than is contained in the mere two-term relations of 
 subject and predicate in the judgment of formal logic. 
 They are the foundation of general truths and also deter- 
 mine the structure of the general propositions which 
 express these truths. They are even more significant for 
 the modern synoptic logic, which dismisses the ordinary 
 major premise as a useless figment, than they are for the 
 older syllogistic logic. The business of mathematics is 
 with certain classes of such general truths, and its object 
 is, like the object of every kind of science, to rationalise 
 the confused and indistinct perceptions of experience by 
 discovering and disentangling the implications they contain 
 and the relations which govern them, implications and 
 relations which, though universals, may be actual entities 
 just as truly as the percepts themselves. The science of 
 mathematics is the branch of logical science which deals 
 not only with certain of the relations which are character- 
 istic of space and time but with the concepts under which 
 they fall, and which guides us in, among other things, 
 making ideal constructions in space and time symbolical 
 of these concepts. The method of mathematics is largely 
 deductive, for, when a concept of universal application, 
 being a real entity in Plato's sense, has been discovered, 
 we can frame propositions based on it which are true of 
 all the particulars which experience teaches us that it 
 governs, in so far as they are seen to illustrate, and so 
 belong to the class ascertained by the concept. Thus 
 these propositions may be held genuinely to extend know- 
 ledge when we apply them. 
 
 It is worth while even for a layman to pause at this 
 point, and to try to appreciate an illustration afforded 
 by the treatment of mathematical truth from the stand- 
 point of the New Realism. 
 
 The definition of number has for long been a puzzle to 
 mathematicians. To limit the application of number to 
 what can be counted is to exclude all that cannot be 
 counted, such as are transfinite numbers. It might 
 therefore seem natural that New Realists should have 
 sought to treat the word number as descriptive of an 
 actual but non-sensible entity. Mr. Russell, however, 
 does not take this course. He thinks that while number 
 
280 NEW REALISM 
 
 is properly predicable, not of physical things, but of classes 
 to which they belong, it does not directly represent an 
 actual entity. What it signifies is a class, but a class of 
 which the meaning is the possession by its members of a 
 defining property in virtue of which they belong to it. 
 Number is not, for Mr. Russell, the outcome of the con- 
 sciousness of repetition in our activity in counting. It is 
 on the contrary a title by which we describe the class to 
 which collections of things belong in common when their 
 members stand in such a relation that each member in one 
 collection has, corresponding to it, a member in another 
 collection. It is the possession of this property that 
 makes the two collections similar in class and capable of 
 description as the same in number. Number thus refers, 
 not to objects, but to the possession by a collection of a 
 property which relates it to other collections in such a way 
 that they may be regarded as belonging to a common 
 class, the class which the number, which may or may not 
 be capable of being ascertained by enumeration, describes. 
 In this sense a unity is asserted. When we say of an 
 infantry battalion that the number of its rifles is one 
 thousand, and is the same as the number of the privates 
 who serve in it, we mean that for each man in one collection 
 there exists a rifle in the other collection, and that the two 
 collections, which are similar by this one-to-one corre- 
 spondence of their members, belong to the class which has 
 the title of one thousand. It is the relation of the collec- 
 tions and their one-to-one correspondence which the 
 number indicates. Even if we cannot ascertain an 
 arithmetical number of the members it contains, the class 
 may be defined algebraically as #, and we can reason 
 about x as the indication of a class to which all collections 
 or classes that are similar to it belong. The number 2, on 
 the other hand, to take an ordinary arithmetical example, 
 is the class of all couples, and 3 is the class of all triads. 
 It may be hastily exclaimed that this, while true, is 
 artificial and abstract, and is no sufficient reason for 
 rejecting the usual way of regarding numbers as properties 
 of things as distinguished from classes and from general 
 descriptions or characteristics which bring the subjects 
 possessing them into membership of classes. But the 
 answer given is that it is the very abstraction which the 
 method makes that enables it to disengage the conception 
 
NUMBER 281 
 
 of number from the limitations within which its applica- 
 tion is confined when that application is made dependent 
 on the presence of specific objects which can be counted 
 in virtue of being before us. In what are called infinite 
 collections the members of the class are not all before us, 
 and never can be. Yet, although a series is unending, we 
 may know that every member in it has a corresponding 
 member in another infinite series, and vice versa. In 
 such a case we can find an algebraic description, applicable 
 not only to " each," but to " any," which will define the 
 entirety of the series. The new definition can in point of 
 fact be applied to infinite numbers and collections as 
 easily as to those that are finite. For this method it is 
 also claimed that it delivers us from apparent antinomies 
 which are inevitable with ordinary procedure. The old 
 method to which arithmetic is limited because of its 
 definitions lands it in insoluble problems and also at 
 times in contradictions. It cannot deal with transfinite 
 numbers. It has, again, no use for such a conception as 
 <V/2, and still less for that of \/ 2. And yet in other 
 branches of mathematical science these are of great value. 
 It has been deflected by the limitations of its concepts, 
 and if the reasoning of the most modern mathematicians 
 has accomplished nothing else it has at least subjected 
 these concepts to a salutary criticism. 
 
 It has been said that if a mathematician of the days 
 of ancient Greece were to come to life again to-day, he 
 would be astonished at what would seem to him a miracle, 
 the fact that even the children in the modern world do 
 sums with easy facility in multiplication and division, 
 which would have been beyond the arithmetical faculty 
 of the greatest mathematician of antiquity. The explana- 
 tion is of course the possession of the Arabic notation and 
 of the number 0, possessions which have enormously en- 
 larged our arithmetical capacity. Now it may well be 
 that, just as this advance in ideas expanded our mathe- 
 matical scope in a large class of operations, so the new 
 notions which have been introduced by logical methods, 
 based on the assumption of the reality of intelligible rela- 
 tions, may greatly extend the possibilities of mathematical 
 operations. People were held back in the first case by 
 the paucity and narrowness of current conceptions, and 
 it may be that the world will prove to have been similarly 
 
282 NEW REALISM 
 
 held back in our own time. Mr. Russell says that he 
 required the metaphysics of the New Realism for his 
 emancipation. Whether this particular metaphysic was 
 really essential for his mathematical developments may be 
 open to question. But the doctrine is at least highly 
 suggestive, and it is a result as valuable as it is rare when 
 a man of science has sought to present his system as a 
 connected whole of thought. 
 
 Having made this reference to Mr. Russell's mathe- 
 matical logic, and to its value in his hands, I must none 
 the less say something more. In one of his latest books, 
 his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, published in 
 1919, he explains his view of the broad principles that 
 underlie an earlier and much more detailed treatise, the 
 Principia Mathematica. In the subsequent book he 
 extends his basic principle freely to every sort of process 
 of thought. Among the most important of the chapters 
 in the new volume are the fourteenth, which deals with 
 Incompatibility and the Theory of Deduction, and the 
 fifteenth, which is devoted to what he calls Prepositional 
 Functions. These last are expressions containing one or 
 more undetermined constituents, such that, when definite 
 values are assigned to them, they become propositions. 
 Such a function is therefore itself one whose values are 
 themselves propositions. The assertion in its case is not 
 that the principle invoked applies to a particular instance, 
 but that it is true in all or any of such instances if it can 
 be asserted of them significantly. A common property is 
 the subject of a prepositional function, which means 
 what becomes a true proposition only when some one of 
 its objects is taken as the value of the variable. " If A is 
 human, A is mortal " may be valid as a statement, whether 
 A is human or not, but it is a statement of a functional and 
 not a prepositional nature. 
 
 With the aid of this method Mr. Russell proceeds to 
 lay bare certain fallacies, largely, but by no means all, 
 mathematical. He attributes these to neglect of the 
 above distinction. The method is doubtless a really 
 useful one for certain purposes, useful in the same way as 
 is that of the psychologist in disentangling, for definite 
 if limited purposes, and arranging in a scheme of practical 
 value, the phenomena of consciousness, or rather certain of 
 their aspects. But I think that, just as in the case of the 
 
HOW WE REASON 283 
 
 psychologist there are always latent certain distortions, so 
 in Mr. Russell's thesis there is implied a claim to insist 
 that thought must assume a form which may well be one 
 of its forms, but is not less clearly only one out of an infinite 
 variety. Reflection may be forced into such a form in 
 order to bring it to the test. But it is thereby mangled. 
 
 Mr. Russell says that he means by a proposition primarily 
 a form of words which expresses what is true or false. 
 " I say ' primarily,' because I do not wish to exclude 
 other than verbal symbols, or even mere thoughts if they 
 have a symbolic character. But I think the word ' pro- 
 position ' should be limited to what may, in some sense, 
 be called ' symbols,' and further to such symbols as give 
 expression to truth and falsehood." l 
 
 Here we seem to find the root of the matter. In mathe- 
 matical reasoning there is, because of the character of the 
 symbols with which its processes are concerned, obvious 
 justification for Mr. Russell's demand, and it is applicable, 
 if in a form less stringent, from certain other standpoints. 
 Mr. Russell refers us to the Principia Maihematica for a 
 list of his formal principles in deduction. These are such 
 as are illustrated in processes of mathematical reasoning. 
 But when, as he apparently does, he goes on in the recent 
 book to suggest that the account given is adequate for 
 inference of every type, questions at once arise. In 
 literature, in art, in religion, do we reason in ways like this ? 
 Is the description of the processes of thought given in the 
 chapters referred to one that can apply to thought in all 
 its forms ? Can what is dynamically f oundational to every 
 possible form be thus put into a strait-waistcoat and 
 rendered static ? The claim seems from my outlook to 
 be much too narrowly conceived. I am well aware that 
 the conclusions embodied in these pages are such that I 
 cannot have the hope of securing the concurrence in 
 them of Mr. Russell. But as a plain person, who takes 
 thought just as he seems to himself to find it, and prefers 
 to let it pursue what seems to be its natural life, rather 
 than to kill and dissect it, I must here part company even 
 with one for whose originality and acuteness I have so 
 deep a respect as I entertain in the case of Mr. Russell. 8 
 
 1 Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, p. 154. 
 
 8 As an illustration of a sort of human reflection in the pursuit of truth, 
 at the other extreme from the sort which Mr. Russell seems to suggest 
 
284 NEW REALISM 
 
 If the suggestions of the New Realism have taken root 
 in the soil of pure mathematics, there is another depart- 
 ment of science where they ought to be at least as fertile. 
 The science of biology appears to have suffered more than 
 any other from limitation in categories. The majority 
 of those who follow it still think that all the apparent 
 relations belonging to organic life, beyond such as can 
 be expressed in terms belonging to physics and chemistry, 
 exist only in the mind of the observer and have no 
 real counterpart in the objective world. When driven 
 to concede that the growth of a cell cannot be regarded 
 by the observer as analogous to that even of a crystal, 
 some of them have betaken themselves to the idea of a 
 special sort of energy of which the causal action explains 
 the phenomena under observation. Sometimes they call 
 what they thus invoke vital force, and sometimes, not 
 very accurately, an entelechy, still intending by the latter 
 term to describe what in reality exists outside the material 
 in which it realises itself, and is thus a form of causal 
 action. More often, however, biologists have simply 
 ignored the crucial question of what conceptions they 
 ought to use, and have contented themselves by affirming 
 
 as the true type for our thinking, I transcribe the passage which follows 
 from a recent book by a great American critic in other regions, Mr. Justice 
 Wendell Holmes's Collected Legal Papers (at p. 180, where he is dealing 
 with the " Path of the Law "). The author is writing about the method 
 of reasoning requisite when the aim is to attain to truth in the adminis- 
 tration of justice. " I once heard a very eminent judge say that he 
 never let a decision go until he was absolutely sure that it was right. 
 So judicial dissent often is blamed, as if it meant simply that one side or 
 the other were not doing their sums right, and that, if they would take 
 more trouble, agreement inevitably would come. This mode of thinking 
 is entirely natural. The training of lawyers is a training in logic. The 
 processes of analogy, discrimination, and deduction are those in which 
 they are most at home. The language of judicial decision is mainly the 
 language of logic. And the logical method and form flatter that longing 
 for certainty and for repose which is in every human mind. But certainty 
 generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man. Behind the 
 logical form lies a judgment as to the relative worth and importance of 
 competing legislative grounds, often an inarticulate and unconscious 
 judgment, it is true, and yet the very root and nerve of the whole pro- 
 ceeding. You can give any conclusion a logical form. You always can 
 imply a condition in a contract. But why do you imply it ? It is because 
 of some belief as to the practice of the community or a class, or because 
 of some opinion as to policy, or, in short, because of some attitude of 
 yours upon a matter not capable of exact quantitative measurement, and 
 therefore not capable of founding exact logical conclusions. Such matters 
 really are battle-grounds where the means do not exist for determinations 
 that shall be good for all time, and where the decision can do no more 
 than embody the preference of a given body in a given time and place." 
 
BIOLOGICAL CATEGORIES 285 
 
 that the methods of physics and chemistry are the only 
 methods which are permissible in exact science. The 
 consequence of such attitudes in biological research is 
 that its directions are profoundly influenced. There are, 
 of course, mechanical and chemical processes which have 
 to be studied in the action of the blood corpuscles or 
 the kidneys. But these ought not to be assumed to be the 
 only phenomena which concern the biologist, or even the 
 most important of such phenomena. If we were studying 
 the structure and activity of an army or a state, or if we 
 were applying ourselves to the formulation of the ethical 
 or juridical principles which govern the action of a com- 
 munity, we should study the facts which experience 
 presents with the aid, not of the balance or the measuring 
 rod or the clock, but of standards and methods and con- 
 ceptions of quite a different order from those of physical 
 science. We should recognise that the phenomena under 
 investigation required ideas analogous to those we derive 
 from the experience of self-consciousness and of intelligent 
 purpose, for their comprehension. Now why is this 
 readily admitted to be so in the study of human society 
 while it is denied in the study of the human body ? The 
 answer is not far to seek. The conventions of many 
 biologists do not allow them to use, except provisionally, 
 such a conception as that of end, or of action which is 
 quasi-purposive in that it consists in the realisation of an 
 end. Use them provisionally they must, for facts which 
 embody these conceptions stare them in the face. The 
 course of life in the organism which conserves and main- 
 tains itself throughout the metabolism to which its 
 material is subjected along the curve of the career from 
 birth to the death that is necessary in the interest of the 
 species ; the organic development which results from the 
 union of spermatozoa and ova, and the phenomena of 
 heredity which this development exhibits ; these things 
 and the like require categories higher than those of 
 mechanism to render them capable even of expression. 
 Yet the older-fashioned biologists, while they are forced 
 to use these categories, are equally forced by their meta- 
 physical assumptions to deny them, except as only pro- 
 visionally used and as in ultimate analysis untrue. For 
 their philosophy implies that no relations in their object- 
 world beyond those of physics and chemistry are real. 
 20 
 
286 NEW REALISM 
 
 Their ambition has been to be delivered from metaphysics, 
 and to remain with feet firmly planted on the rock of fact. 
 But this rock becomes insecure for them because of an 
 assumption which for all they know may be metaphysical, 
 the assumption that the relation of end in activity, or of 
 a whole existing only in the parts which belong to it and 
 yet dominating their behaviour, cannot be a fact of 
 extra-mental existence. Reality is by such would-be 
 observers strictly confined to something very like the old 
 supposed primary qualities, and they forget to open their 
 day's work by a prayer to be delivered from the perils of 
 a metaphysic as unconscious as it is out of date. 
 
 Now the New Realism is full of edification for this 
 conventional school of biologists. Just as other universals 
 are for it entities belonging to physical reality, so surely 
 must be ends and the relation of an organic whole to its 
 parts. The New Realists may well inform the physiologist 
 that when he studies the exquisitely delicate and quasi- 
 purposive operations by which the kidney keeps the blood 
 in a normal condition, or by which the blood corpuscle 
 itself regulates the amount of oxygen which it takes up 
 in the lungs and of the carbonic acid which it gives off, 
 or by which the living organism generally devotes its 
 activity to the maintenance of normal conditions, his duty 
 is to take reality as he finds it, and not to deflect and 
 distort his observation of it by excluding the only concep- 
 tions of his facts that are warranted by what he observes. 
 We are all of us confined in our study of the Universe by 
 the limitations which the narrowness of our ideas imposes 
 on our observation. Were I better equipped in this 
 respect I should understand the world more fully when I 
 walk abroad in it, an observation the application of which 
 I do not restrict to my talk of scientific concepts. Yet I 
 take comfort by observing that, notwithstanding a certain 
 superiority in realisation of things around which the dog 
 who accompanies me possesses in virtue of his sense of 
 smell, an aeroplane and even a steam-engine mean nothing 
 to him. Everything is relative here as elsewhere. 
 
 The New Realism, therefore, may accomplish much by 
 delivering the modern physiologist from the terror of 
 unknown metaphysics, and from the interference with 
 his freedom to observe which the tendency to abjure all 
 but certain aspects of reality has brought on him. 
 
THE DEFECT OF NEW REALISM 287 
 
 But here a doubt arises. If the New Realists can do 
 so much, why do they not go further and do more ? They 
 seem at times to lack the courage of their convictions. If 
 the categories of life are as much part of a non-mental 
 world as are those of mechanism, why are not the categories 
 of morals and beauty and religion also part of it ? The 
 hesitation which is sometimes shown in giving the answer 
 to this question seerns to arise from the circumstance that 
 if it is so, then there is nothing left in the mental world at 
 all, hardly even the activity which is conscious of enjoying 
 itself. If the object- world is to swallow down the entire 
 subject- world, then there is no longer any need for dis- 
 tinguishing between non-mental and mental, or between 
 matter and mind. If the latter is absorbed into the 
 former, then the former can have no separate existence. 
 And it looks as though it were only by an abstraction that 
 they have been separated in thought and distinguished, 
 Separate entities they can hardly really be. If this be 
 so, there is not only no need for New Realism but there 
 is no room for it. If consistent with itself and resolute 
 in pushing its reasoning to the inevitable conclusion, it 
 may chance that it will rind that it has decreed its own 
 abolition. This is a point which must be noticed. A 
 serious flaw in the armour of a system is found if it turns 
 out that it proves too much. The question which arises 
 is therefore how it has come about that the New Realists 
 have professed to draw a boundary- line by which the 
 region of the non-mental can be sharply divided from that 
 of the mental. What comes again to memory here is 
 that, as has already been pointed out, existence in space 
 and time is for them foundationai in the case of all that 
 is real, be it matter or be it mind. For if consciousness is 
 an activity at all it is a property of a thing, the nervous 
 system, and is confronted in relations of extension and 
 succession by another thing, the non-mental world, with 
 its entities and existences, its universals and particulars. 
 The dominating conception which has been applied to the 
 mind is that of the thing and its properties, or, in other 
 language, the category of substance. But is this category 
 adequate ? If it turns out to be inadequate quite other 
 relations than those of extension and succession may have 
 to be brought under consideration, if the facts are to be 
 capable of being grasped. For it may turn out that, in 
 
288 NEW REALISM 
 
 the relation from which we never get away in our experi- 
 ence, the object is not a thing confronting another thing, 
 but arises solely by distinction made within knowledge 
 which is really indivisible, and which appears as broken 
 up only in virtue of acts of abstraction made by and 
 within itself. If so, not only distinctions made in terms 
 of space and time, but distinctions made between the 
 non-mental and mental worlds, may prove to have been 
 incorrectly interpreted, and they may disclose themselves 
 as conceptions of abstraction made within and not 
 without mind itself. In that case mind and not exter- 
 nality will be foundational for the Universe. 
 
 In order to ascertain more definitely the significance 
 of the question thus raised it is essential to recall the 
 philosophical ideas against which the New Realism was 
 raised up in protest. For it seems as though the conflict 
 were in reality one of counter-abstraction against abstrac- 
 tion, and that the attacking critics have taken a windmill 
 to be a giant. What do we really mean by mind ? If, 
 when we use the word, we are thinking of a thing, or 
 of a property of a thing, then the criticisms of the New 
 Realists are difficult to answer. If we mean what is 
 only a centre, finite in time and space, or a self that 
 belongs to no order in reality higher than that of the 
 organism in which it expresses itself, the New Realists have 
 again much to say. The mind can on such a footing be 
 no more than a succession of states of the consciousness of 
 something observed, either by itself or from outside. The 
 ego-centric predicament arises at once, the predicament 
 in which the new school have sought to place subjective 
 idealism. But if mind falls also within orders in reality 
 of a higher character, and its foundation as finite has to 
 be sought in a self-completing entirety such as was dis- 
 cussed earlier, then its nature cannot be exhaustively 
 described in terms of the conceptions which the New 
 Realists bring to bear on it. Mind can on that footing 
 only assume for itself a finite aspect in so far as it is more 
 than finite. The distinction between itself and the world 
 that confronts it is one that thought itself has made. 
 There is, as New Realism itself asserts, no gulf between 
 the mental and the non-mental. They are phases in a 
 whole within which they both fall, phases which are frag- 
 ments only because of the standpoint of the observer. 
 
THE NON-MENTAL WORLD 289 
 
 What is the character of that whole ? It seems to be 
 such that within its terms and within itself all that in any 
 way exists must fall. It is activity, but not the activity 
 of anything apart from itself, or one which operates within 
 forms of externality that have meaning only in its terms. 
 To describe knowledge otherwise is surely to misconceive 
 what is essential in its nature. 
 
 What, then, is the nature of mind ? If New Realism is 
 right, it is either a group of things or an attribute or 
 property of things. Let us bring this theory to the test 
 by looking at the nature of the non-mental world that is 
 supposed to exclude mind and subsist apart from it. Its 
 phenomena are not static but dynamic, and they are 
 characterised throughout by their relativity. If we accept 
 this far-reaching principle ex animo, do we realise how 
 profound a difference it must, if it be a true one, make 
 in the real character of the universe we observe around 
 us ? How are we to conceive the changes in that universe ? 
 They have to be recognised as varying with the mind of 
 the observer. Reality itself can thus, at times at least, 
 be accurately describable only in terms of differential 
 equations, recording relative rates of change for the 
 observer and in the reality observed. If that reality 
 belongs to the mental, to thought as distinguished from 
 non-mental entities, this occasions no difficulty. For the 
 characteristic of thought is always to be continuously 
 self-transforming. That is its dialectic, its negation of 
 the relatively static character of what is taken to be 
 external to it. And this means that what is apparently 
 external to it never is really so. My interpretation of my 
 world, and the meanings I attribute to it, are integral 
 parts of that world as it seems and is for me. This is not 
 wholly strange. If I were to enter Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, in company with my dog I should know for 
 certain that it was real for him in a very different fashion 
 from its reality for me. For him it would be mainly a 
 place of pleasing odours and of sensations which attracted 
 him much. For me it has attractions quite other, with 
 which many associations and a memorable past invest it 
 as the home of the higher mathematics. For my dog, who 
 can know nothing of these things, this aspect of what is for 
 me more characteristic of its reality than the stone walls 
 does not exist. And so for a disciple of Ptolemy, or even of 
 
290 NEW REALISM 
 
 Newton, the starry heavens measured and placed in the only 
 fashion which Einstein will allow us to recognise in them, 
 as existing in modes relative to our observation, would 
 be there hardly more than the real Trinity College, as 
 it exists for man in its full significance, is for the dog. 
 My thought as the individual who is writing this does 
 not make things, but that is very different from saying 
 that thought is alien to the constitution of the universe 
 and does not, in the multitudinous phases in which we 
 feel and know, enter into the very essence of the real 
 universe. 
 
 Mind is no isolated thing ; it is no attribute or property 
 of a thing. It is the self-creating, self-contained, and 
 self -comprehending activity within which falls and renders 
 itself all that was, is, and will be. It is the self-developing 
 interpretation and expansion of the meanings which are 
 its own creatures, the meanings which make reality what 
 it is, whether for limited purposes we distinguish it as 
 what we call non-mental or not. It is never concerned 
 only with a fragment, or confined to any singulars that are 
 exclusive. That is because it is always in one aspect 
 subject which takes in and goes beyond its object. Its 
 range covers always the entirety of the universe, an 
 entirety which, potentially or actually, in reflection if not 
 in direct experience, is within that range. It is subject 
 rather than substance, for substance is one only among 
 the categories under which thought creates differences, 
 while to call it subject is to point to what is distinctive 
 in its characteristics. Even as conditioned by its mode 
 of self-expression in the intelligent organism which marks 
 off the finite self, that self is yet mind with this inherent 
 character, and has as its essence the power to transcend 
 limitations which have meaning and therefore reality for 
 thought alone. The mind starts from the barest sense of 
 the contact of the organism with another substance. It 
 expands its sensations into a whole ordered by reflection 
 in simple relations of externality. This whole it recognises 
 as one which by its very nature cannot be confined within 
 itself. Fresh feelings and fresh relations are thus recog- 
 nised and established, relations, it may be, belonging to 
 a higher order in reflection. Mind thus expands its world, 
 and in expanding it knows that its action is not arbitrary, 
 inasmuch as it is discovering its own nature and finding 
 
CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER 291 
 
 itself in what appeared external to and independent of it, 
 but really fell within an entirety which was no other 
 than mind itself, which is thus meeting with its own 
 activity and work in a system within which it has, to 
 begin with, become aware of itself as an object belonging 
 to the entirety thus revealed under finite conditions. That 
 is how, as I conceive it, the individual in his aspect of 
 finiteness is related to the self which at a higher degree 
 of reality and knowledge is nothing short of mind in its 
 full and infinite character ; changed, again to use Brown- 
 ing's words : 
 
 "Not in kind, but in degree." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 REALISM AND IDEALISM 
 
 IN the last chapter I drew attention to the extent to 
 which New Realism has allowed its views to be deflected 
 by the notion of the thing and its property. This notion 
 appeared as a narrow one, but of a potency which has 
 given rise to a form of relativity, an antithesis to that of 
 subjective idealism but based on the same idea of finality 
 in order of knowledge. Into the story of the genesis of 
 subjective idealism itself it is not necessary to go here in 
 much detail. For it has been told often and excellently, 
 and people are familiar with the unconscious assumptions 
 made by John Locke, when he adopted the method of 
 " looking into his own understanding and seeing how it 
 wrought." The method is just one more illustration of 
 how a metaphor may prove a real snare for a meta- 
 physician. Locke sought to trace the genesis of intelli- 
 gence, on the footing that he could safely represent it to 
 himself as a property of a thinking thing. He went on to 
 explain the beginnings of that intelligence in a way that 
 assumed it to be already present in its completeness ; an 
 instrument that was really from the start taken to be at 
 the disposition of the mind as already furnished with 
 it. His very image of that mind, as fully equipped but 
 enclosed in a human body and confronted by something 
 wholly foreign of which it was to gain experience, in truth 
 begged the question as to the genesis of experience that 
 he set himself to solve. For it is only in terms of fully 
 developed knowledge that his imagery has any meaning. 
 Locke was one of the first to try to treat knowledge 
 systematically as though it could be regarded as an 
 instrument, separable from knower and known alike, and 
 capable of being laid on a table and pulled to pieces. He 
 was, in other words, a pioneer in what is called in our 
 
 292 
 
LOCKE AND BERKELEY 293 
 
 time epistemology. In him we find the " two-substance " 
 theory in all its nakedness, with knowledge regarded 
 apart and as a process taking place between the substances. 
 How it can be possible to go behind knowledge, while 
 taking it with us as the means by which we are to get 
 behind it, is a question that does not occur to him. And 
 yet the metaphysician who forgets it falls into sin against 
 the light at the very outset of his pilgrimage. It is lawful 
 to ignore this question only for the special purpose of 
 being able to concentrate on a view of knowledge that is 
 never meant to be more than relative. The mathematician 
 and the physicist are typical users of the method of 
 externalisation. But their object is not to get at the 
 ultimate meaning of reality. It is an object of a much 
 more limited kind, appropriate only to an outlook that 
 is deliberately restricted. The view so attained can yield 
 only results that are never more than relatively complete, 
 and it depends on restricted conceptions adopted in order 
 to obtain precision in only a special kind of inquiry. 
 
 If Berkeley destroyed certain of the superstitions of 
 Locke when he discovered that it was wrong to speak of 
 ideas as resembling non-ideal objects, his doctrine was 
 none the less itself shortly afterwards forced by Hume 
 down a slippery slope on which it was impossible to stop. 
 Dissociating himself from his predecessor's view about 
 ideas, Berkeley had still, in effect, applied the notion of 
 substance to the mind and to God, both being required 
 under this aspect for the application of his own principles. 
 He treated experience as what could be broken into bits, 
 existing apart from the significance which their mutual 
 relations gave them, instead of as a whole which must be 
 left in its integrity. Hume had in consequence an easy 
 victory over him. There was no foothold on this slope. 
 Spiritual substances and causation disappeared alike 
 under the application of the analysis which Berkeley had 
 himself applied to material substances. There was nothing 
 left which could justify us, on this footing, in assuming 
 that we could find more present than merely particular 
 experiences or impressions along with expectations, scienti- 
 fically unjustifiable, of their repetition, expectations which 
 habit, derived from what we had chanced to find in the 
 past, excited in us. What answer could be given to the 
 question which must be put about every idea we had, 
 
294 REALISM AND IDEALISM 
 
 whether of substance or of cause or of expectation, 
 " From what impression is the supposed idea derived ? It 
 is only an additional force and vivacity that distinguishes 
 the ideas of the judgment from the fictions of the imagina- 
 tion." Belief is from this point of view a matter of 
 purely subjective feeling, and not of rational insight, as 
 Berkeley thought. " 'Tis not solely in poetry and music," 
 said Hume, " we must follow our taste and sentiments, 
 but likewise in philosophy." When I am convinced of 
 my principle, " 'tis only an idea which strikes more 
 strongly upon me. When I give the preference to one 
 set of arguments above another I do nothing but decide 
 from my feeling concerning the superiority of their 
 influence. Objects have no discoverable connexion 
 together ; nor is it from any other principle than custom 
 operating on the imagination that we can draw any 
 inference from the appearance of one to the existence of 
 the other." So with our " opinion of the continued 
 existence of body," or our thinking that what appears as 
 constantly repeated is the same as numerical identity, 
 for we " disguise, as much as possible, the interruption, 
 or rather remove it entirely, by supposing that these 
 interrupted perceptions are connected by a real existence 
 of which we are insensible." " It is thus, too, that we 
 come to the hypothesis of the double existence of percep- 
 tion and objects ; which pleases our reason, in allowing 
 that our dependent perceptions are interrupted and 
 different ; and at the same time is agreeable to the imagina- 
 tion, in attributing a continued existence to something 
 else, which we call objects. This is, however, but ' a new 
 fiction ' ; only a palliative remedy which contains all the 
 difficulties of the vulgar system, with some others that 
 are peculiar to itself." 
 
 The story thus told in its bare outline shows how the 
 notion of mind as a " thing " impelled Locke down a path 
 on which he could not stop, and down which Berkeley was 
 impelled by it still further. It was reserved for Hume 
 to conduct philosophy yet nearer to the termination of 
 this path in a precipice. The path selected by these three 
 thinkers was that indicated by the signpost which pre- 
 scribed the way as being to treat mind as substance, and 
 Hume finally penetrated along this way until he came to 
 a point where substance and mind with it disappeared 
 
THOMAS REID 295 
 
 into the void. Then came on the scene Reid and Kant, 
 the respective founders of two schools of philosophy in 
 both of which it was insisted that the steps taken must 
 be retraced and a return made at any rate some way 
 back towards the starting-point. The first of these schools 
 was that founded by Thomas Reid. He was a man well 
 worthy of admiration, though he has been much forgotten. 
 In certain points he anticipated what was to come more 
 than a century later from the New Realists. Like them he 
 entered at the beginning on the pathway which Locke 
 had chosen, in the belief that it would lead, not to a 
 precipice, but to reality. He, too, contemplated knowledge 
 as an attribute or relation belonging to something which 
 he called the mind. But he refused to go further, and to 
 follow Locke in taking the immediate objects of the mind 
 to be mere ideas. He saw that to do so could only lead 
 to the disaster with which Hume had threatened 
 philosophy. He, therefore, like the New Realists, rejected 
 the doctrine which was to become that of representative 
 perception. He thought that what was really perceived 
 was, not an idea, but a fact, outside of and external to 
 the mind that perceived it. He refused to concede to 
 Locke and Berkeley the reality of either an intermediate 
 or even a purely mental idea or presentation. Existence 
 outside the mind was known directly, and such existence 
 went on, whether or not there were windows in the mind 
 through which we became aware of it. 
 
 Speaking of Hume, for whose insight he had a profound 
 respect, he says this : 
 
 " For my own satisfaction I entered into a serious 
 examination of the principles upon which this sceptical 
 system is built ; and was not a little surprised to find that 
 it leans with its whole weight upon an hypothesis which 
 is ancient indeed, and hath been very generally received 
 by philosophers, but of which I can find no solid proof. 
 The hypothesis I mean is that nothing is perceived but 
 what is in the mind that perceives it that we do not 
 really perceive things that are external, but only certain 
 images and pictures of them imprinted upon the mind, 
 which are called ' impressions ' and ' ideas,' ... I thought 
 it unreasonable, upon the authority of philosophers, to 
 admit an hypothesis which, in my opinion, overturns all 
 
296 REALISM AND IDEALISM 
 
 philosophy, all religion and virtue, and all common sense, 
 . . . and I resolved to enquire into this subject anew with- 
 out regard to any hypothesis." l 
 
 When Reid speaks, as he goes on to do, of " common 
 sense " as guiding him, he means, not the vague view of 
 the man in the street, but what he calls " the first degree 
 of reason," having for its object to judge of things self- 
 evident. This he contrasts with " reasoning," or " the 
 second degree of reason," which draws conclusions that 
 are not self-evident judgments of this " common sense." 
 It was under the guidance of such a principle that he sought 
 to restore the reality of the object-world, and to rescue 
 it from the pillage and plunder which it had suffered under 
 the pens of the subjective idealists. In some very material 
 respects he was a true pioneer of the New Realists. 
 
 Such was the distinctive tenet of the founder of the 
 Scottish philosophy, a philosophy which was destined to 
 go to pieces under the influence of Scottish professors who 
 had learned something, but not enough, from Kant. To 
 Kant himself it is now time again to refer, for he was the 
 other thinker who, like Reid, so far as the result went, 
 but in a fashion wholly different, controverted the con- 
 clusions drawn by Hume from the premises furnished by 
 Locke and by Berkeley. 
 
 Kant, unlike Reid, found no satisfaction in Natural 
 Realism. He insisted that this doctrine could be placed 
 on no secure foundation in the absence of a critical examina- 
 tion, as its preliminary, of the nature of knowledge itself. 
 Such an examination he regarded as a method by employ- 
 ing which we might reach what underlay the act of 
 knowing, and with this in view he set himself to analyse 
 and resolve into constituent factors knowledge itself. He 
 was the early exponent of that sort of " epistemology " 
 which the New Realists hold in contempt, but which they 
 really reject less thoroughly than did idealists later than 
 Kant, in so far as they show hesitation in allocating to 
 objectivity features that are apparently of a mental 
 nature. 
 
 The Konigsberg professor saw clearly what Berkeley 
 and Hume had done. They had reduced experience to 
 
 > Reid's Works, ed. Hamilton, p. 96, 
 
KANT 297 
 
 an aggregate of self -subs istent entities, denying to them 
 relations to each other that could be intrinsic and essential, 
 or such as would in the main be of the character described 
 in the technical jargon of to-day as internal and not 
 external. Berkeley and after him Hume had thus 
 violently deprived experience of those meanings which 
 it possesses for knowledge of all kinds, and had so isolated 
 these meanings as to render them an easy prey for the 
 sceptics. Kant determined to bring the wandering mean- 
 ings back within a fold where they would be as secure as 
 experience itself. He set himself to prove that experience 
 could not exist at all in the absence of at least certain of 
 them. This he found to be especially the case with such 
 relations of things as give them their quantitative aspects, 
 and also their positions as depending, actually or possibly, 
 on each other. In our judgments we determine things as 
 being in such relations, and, therefore, if we wish to 
 discover what the primitive characters of the relations 
 are, we had better turn to the forms of judgment in ordinary 
 logic and see what we find there. By doing this Kant 
 found a dozen such forms or categories which have to be 
 applied in order to constitute the experience of the actual 
 world which we find when we look within ourselves or 
 when we perceive what is external in nature. Apart 
 from the significance or meaning which has made that 
 world a real one for us it would not exist at all. He 
 therefore pronounced his categories to be the very con- 
 ditions through which experience was rendered possible. 
 They are contributions which mind makes to its con- 
 stitution. As such he calls them transcendental, indicating 
 by this name that they are conditions of experience as it 
 is for us, inasmuch as without them our experience could 
 not be ; and he distinguishes the knowledge of experience 
 got through them from knowledge that it aims at being 
 transcendent, in the sense that it seeks to reach what lies 
 outside actual experience, and cannot be attained in it at all. 
 Thought was thus presupposed by experience, and to 
 thought it owed those characteristics, such as the certainty 
 that two and two will always make four, and that every 
 change must have a cause, which are made inherent in it as 
 it is assumed in our daily life to be. It is thus that, for 
 Kant, mind could not be resolved, as Hume had sought to 
 resolve it, into a discrete series of mere independent impres- 
 
298 REALISM AND IDEALISM 
 
 sions, which, even for the latter, had the inexplicable quality 
 of being aware of itself as a continuous unity. Mind, 
 therefore, in so far as it performed its constitutive function, 
 could not itself be an object in the experience to which 
 it was itself giving rise. For in so performing its function 
 Kant held that it gave their essential features to all 
 objects which could arise for it. This it did by the very 
 character of its operation. That operation took place by 
 the imposition of two mental forms, in themselves empty, 
 called time and space. In these mind arranged a raw 
 material of orderless sensation which was there indepen- 
 dently of it, and might be taken, for all Kant knew to the 
 contrary, to proceed from some unknown and unknowable 
 thing-in-itself. The empty forms just referred to were 
 by the activity of mind schematised into replicas of the 
 twelve categories, and in this way it had the means to 
 hand of fashioning the raw material of sensation into 
 intelligible forms, which included those, not only of nature, 
 but of our individual selves as objects so constructed. 
 As I have said, there were for Kant twelve modes or 
 categories of thought in which this unifying activity 
 operated. To enable these to do their work there were 
 the two subjective forms in which the construction took 
 place, space and time, and finally there was postulated 
 the raw material of sensation and feeling which was 
 arranged or schematised within the two forms by the 
 activity of thought operating on the principles expressed 
 in the categories. These last, which, as already observed, 
 he limited to twelve in number, w r ere derived from the 
 study of the operations of thought in judgment as 
 described by the formal logic of the day, in its material 
 features an inheritance from Aristotle, and they included 
 such relations as substantiality, causality, and reciprocity. 
 In point of fact all these categories are primarily those 
 concerned with mechanical arrangement, for beyond 
 mechanical arrangement Kant's conception of experience 
 as actual did not really take him. It was just this limita- 
 tion of experience to the externality of mechanism which 
 later on was to lead philosophers like Bergson to break 
 away from Kant's epistemology, and to say that the real 
 was something quite different from and of a higher order 
 than anything that an intellect so limited could apprehend 
 in experience. For the intellect, throughout the course 
 
HIS MECHANISTIC TENDENCY 299 
 
 of experience as Kant conceived it, was confined, by the 
 limits within which alone it could operate, to the appre- 
 hension of phenomena external to and exclusive of each 
 other in space or time or both. 
 
 Kant's method was thus by a scrutiny of experience to 
 determine the conditions which must be inferred as neces- 
 sary to explain its production. These were the conditions 
 which, as I have already mentioned, he called transcen- 
 dental, and which he distinguished from inferences, 
 however much suggested to us in our reflection, of what 
 was transcendent, that is incapable of being in any way 
 brought within experience. 
 
 The process was of course not one in time and equally 
 not in space. It was foundational to reality in both, 
 and so was metempirical. For Kant time was a form 
 under which was brought all experience, inward and out- 
 ward alike. Space, on the other hand, was the form or 
 framework in which appeared what we call external 
 experience. Because time and space were forms imposed 
 by the mind, without which there could be no experience 
 at all, they were a priori and the constructions made in 
 them were of universal validity. Thus mathematical 
 principles, the outcome of construction in these forms 
 applied to an object- world which could only come into 
 existence through them, were not only of universal validity, 
 but, because their principles recorded the results of 
 a priori construction by the understanding in pure time 
 and space, they added to knowledge. Hume had appar- 
 ently destroyed the claim to universal validity of all 
 supposed mathematical truths of a synthetic kind. But 
 Kant, by referring to the conditions which rendered 
 mathematical experience possible, had restored them to 
 their kingdom. He was able similarly to assert against 
 Hume that the relations of substance and accident and 
 cause and effect, which the latter had attacked, were 
 essential relations in the construction of experience by the 
 understanding, and therefore capable of establishment 
 as universally valid a priori for objects of experience. But 
 the understanding, just because it was confined to such 
 experience as it could construct through its limited table 
 of categories, could establish no reality other than a 
 merely mechanistic one, for the restricted nature of the 
 twelve categories through which understanding operated 
 
800 REALISM AND IDEALISM 
 
 in the construction of experience confined the field of 
 reality to what that nature admitted of. 
 
 The world, however, although it might be said not to 
 be more than such a finite experience, certainly meant more 
 for us. This further and deeper meaning Kant found in 
 the work of Practical Reason, which postulates, as morally 
 essential, ideals that go beyond the empirical world due to 
 judgments of Understanding, ideals of Reason, such as 
 those of God, Freedom, and Immortality. These seemed 
 to be required by the conditions of moral life, and although 
 they could not be realised in experience, they were not on 
 that account to be dismissed as unreal in a different sense. 
 But Kant did not stop here. In his third Critique, that 
 of Judgment, he showed the necessity, if certain most 
 important aspects of the world as it seems were to be 
 explained, of introducing, between the simple apprehension, 
 on the one hand, by which we come to our actual yet 
 limited experience, and the practical reason by which, 
 on the other hand, we recognise moral ideals, yet another 
 series of governing ideals which determine the judgment 
 when it pronounces of things that they embody ends, 
 or are so fashioned as to be beautiful. Teleology and 
 mechanism belong to different orders of knowledge, and 
 it was the task of the Critique of Judgment to reconcile 
 them. This it did by pronouncing final causes to be 
 merely regulative principles, necessarily regulative of 
 the activity of the mind in surveying nature, but not 
 actually included in the reality of objective nature itself. 
 It was conceivable that another kind of understanding, 
 not discursive like our own, which in its relation to 
 the actual always proceeds from parts to other parts 
 and to their mechanical aggregates, might grasp its ex- 
 perience differently, and find teleological universals, such 
 as ends and beauty, actual in it. Such an understanding, 
 if it existed, would be an intuitive understanding which 
 would comprehend in direct perception all the phases 
 that came before the mind, as the outcome of a single 
 principle. 
 
 It was this notion of an intuitive understanding, taken 
 up by Kant only to be laid aside, which proved fruitful 
 in the hands of his successors, and ultimately gave 
 birth to modern idealism. What Kant had accom- 
 plished was to turn metaphysical inquiry into a new 
 
THE REVOLUTION EFFECTED 301 
 
 channel ; it was for those who came after him to develop 
 its course. 
 
 But if we glance back at Hume we see clearly the 
 revolution which even Kant had accomplished. He had 
 set criticism to work on the notion of mind as a thing, 
 and had pointed out the insufficiency for it of such a 
 conception. For him the essential nature of the mind 
 lay in its foundational activity as intelligence, and not in 
 its being, from the merely relatively justifiable standpoint 
 of psychology, a thing or a property of a thing. I am 
 speaking here of the transcendental synthesis or ego, which 
 he inferred as the indispensable condition of there being 
 any experience at all. Introspective experience would of 
 course display a finite self of a different kind, a train of 
 perceptions and feelings, constructed, like other experience, 
 under the time form, and fashioned into an object in the 
 world of perceptive experience. The pure subject, on the 
 other hand, to which the unity of all thought must be 
 referred, we could know directly only to the extent of 
 being conscious that it existed. The form of self-know- 
 ledge, as perceptive of self as an object, tells us also of 
 a " What" but then this is for Kant only knowledge of a 
 phenomenal self as it appears under construction in time, 
 a succession of states subjected to the form of inner 
 sense in which we apprehend it. 
 
 It is the distinction between these meanings of the self 
 that differentiates Kant from his predecessors, and enables 
 him to refuse the path which led to Hume's precipice. 
 The self was analysed by Hume into a succession of 
 impressions and ideas as regards which it could be no 
 more than passively recipient, if it could be even so much. 
 If he did not call it a substance, with Berkeley, it was 
 because he would not allow the title of the self to be 
 even this. Such substantiality was not disclosed by his 
 method, and for that method had no significance. But 
 to the question how a mere succession of impressions and 
 ideas could be aware of itself as such he had no answer. 
 Here was a fact of experience which required something 
 like the transcendental method of the critical philosophy 
 to throw light on it, a method which should begin by 
 asking the question how the experience with which Hume 
 had sought to start was possible at all. 
 
 Hume had reduced reality to a succession of ideas of 
 21 
 
302 REALISM AND IDEALISM 
 
 the self, connected only by their association in the mind, 
 and the self he had endeavoured to resolve into this 
 succession and nothing beyond. Kant had shown that 
 in order to account for the fact of our actual knowledge of 
 even such a succession much more than a series of isolated 
 ideas was required. He did not, like the New Realists, 
 say that the relations which held these ideas together 
 and united them into the whole which experience dis- 
 played, were themselves, though universals and not 
 particulars of feeling or sensation, part of a non-mental 
 world. So far as the raw material on which the mind 
 operated in construction was concerned, he held that it 
 was formless and came from an unknowable source, a 
 thing-in-itself. Experience, in other words existence 
 itself, was for Kant thus an appearance that was not 
 ultimate, but one which was built up by a self which was 
 not a thing but a transcendental activity of a mental 
 character, setting up and filling in a framework of a 
 limited character. In other language, instead of taking 
 the world as a " That " from which he had to start, and 
 behind which he could not get, he had explained it as 
 the result of a process of construction out of epistemo- 
 logically obtained elements. He might, if he had acted 
 on the suggestions in his Critique of Judgment, have 
 enlarged his conception of the self so as to make it not 
 separate from or poorer than the world in which it found 
 itself. Indeed, at one time he had hinted that the self, 
 which was one root of experience, and the thing-in-itself, 
 which was the other root, might have a common origin 
 and a common nature. But as to this he was careful to 
 make no definite pronouncement. His system, therefore, 
 in the result proved on scrutiny to be defective. What 
 was the self apart from its experience ? What meaning 
 could be attached to the antithetic thing-in-itself ? What 
 was the meaning of the antithesis ? Why should the 
 categories of the Understanding be limited to twelve, or 
 at all, and the ideals of the Reason and the Judgment, as 
 distinguished from the Understanding with its mechanistic 
 categories, be excluded from any share in the constitu- 
 tion of experience as reality. All these questions and 
 others were asked and presently answered in a sense 
 different from what was admissible from Kant's standpoint. 
 It was denied that knowledge could be laid, as he had 
 
THE DISSECTION OF KNOWLEDGE 303 
 
 laid it, on the dissecting table and resolved into bits. Was 
 it not only within experience that such a process could be 
 essayed, and was not knowledge presupposed in its 
 integrity as the foundation of the very endeavour ? 
 
 It is no part of my purpose to write the history of 
 philosophy, nor to show the stages through which the 
 answers to the searching questions just mentioned pro- 
 ceeded after Kant's time. All that is necessary for the 
 object of these pages is to bring out how the outstanding 
 conceptions of reality arrived at after criticism of Kant 
 bear on the principle of the relativity of knowledge. 
 
 As Kant had split up experience into two component 
 elements, one of which was due to the mind as a factor 
 and the other to the thing-in-itself, it was natural that 
 divergence of tendency should know itself. Some philo- 
 sophers there were who laid stress on the latter factor, 
 the thing-in-itself, which provided the element of sensation 
 or feeling. Others there were who took an opposite course 
 and asked whether the operation of mind in constituting 
 experience ought not to have its scope regarded more 
 widely than Kant had done, and be treated as extending 
 to matter as well as form. 
 
 I will touch first on the tendency of those who adopted 
 the former course, and sought to approach reality from 
 the side of its matter, but yet with the aid of the Kantian 
 view of experience as requiring the intelligence without 
 which it could not have the significance we find in it. This 
 school turned its attention to the supposed thing-in-itself, 
 and declared that its nature was not inaccessible to the 
 human mind, as Kant had thought. The mode of access, 
 however, they agreed with him in thinking could not be 
 knowledge. But there seemed to exist a direct awareness 
 which might be named intuition, and through this we 
 should be able to ascertain enough to guide us to the 
 character of the ultimate reality. 
 
 Of this new school a highly important pioneer was 
 Arthur Schopenhauer. His work has been superseded by 
 that of Bergson in an analogous direction. For that of 
 Bergson is more thorough, and he has made use of copious 
 material which science has provided since Schopenhauer 
 passed away. Still Schopenhauer stands out as a great 
 figure in the history of modern speculative thought. He 
 did what William James did later on, in America, he 
 
804 REALISM AND IDEALISM 
 
 sowed the soil with seminal ideas. Of these the chief one 
 was that while knowledge must, as Kant had shown, be 
 impossible to conceive as a property of a thing, still 
 reflection could get behind itself, and resolve even know- 
 ledge into a form of the activity of will. 
 
 Before looking at what this imports from the point of 
 view of relativity, it is worth noting that the very character 
 of the principle made it an unfortunate one for the 
 founding of a school. Mathematicians can easily found 
 schools of continuous thought, because their concern is 
 a body of propositions about order in externality based 
 on direct deliverances through sense. There are, therefore, 
 more or less indisputable facts relating to space and time, 
 on which agreement can rest, and which form an accepted 
 test of initial truth. In logic and even in metaphysics, 
 while this is not so to nearly the same extent, there may 
 still be available general criteria as tests for our reasoning. 
 They are less of an objective nature than those of science, 
 but still, provided we are dealing with abstract reasoning 
 such as a judge has to deal with in deciding on the validity 
 of an argument on a point of law, a generally approved 
 conclusion, conformable to these criteria, is at least 
 intelligible. But when we come to the domain of what 
 is supposed to be immediate awareness, to feeling for 
 which it is a condition that the stabilising influence of 
 reflection should have been extruded, the case is other- 
 wise. Whether the form assumed by the doctrine is that 
 of intuition as a basis of science, or of intuition as a basis 
 of mysticism, the result is not materially different. For 
 the basis reached depends on mere individual awareness 
 to an extent that renders it in the main subjective and 
 incommunicable. The particular has been separated from 
 the universality or identity which belongs to reflection, 
 and not to sense as such, and is the foundation on which 
 the possibility of adequate communication rests. Systems, 
 therefore, such as that of Schopenhauer, as a rule are 
 accepted by no large school and are not permanent. Their 
 value is as instruments for criticism ; they raise a negative 
 which can be usefully incorporated as a qualification of 
 what it is directed against. 1 
 
 1 Although Schopenhauer founded no school, he has left individual 
 disciples who follow him with devotion, and some, at least, of these 
 would deny what I have just said. One of his adherents of to-day, 
 
SCHOPENHAUER 805 
 
 This kind of isolation quite naturally fell to Schopen- 
 hauer, but it was intensified in his case by his difficult 
 personality. He was impatient of the apparent neglect 
 of his gospel by the professors and the universities, and he 
 did not conceal what he thought of them. Why he never 
 got a chair is not wonderful. Here are a few winged 
 words (typical of many other sayings of his) which appear 
 in the preface, written in 1844, to the second edition of 
 his greatest book, The World as Will and Idea. Referring 
 to the idealism still current in these days in the German 
 universities, he remarks : 
 
 " This is a doctrine which it is only necessary to impose 
 upon the reader at starting, in order to pass in the most 
 comfortable manner in the world, as it were in a chariot 
 and four, into that region beyond the possibility of all 
 experience which Kant has wholly and for ever shut out 
 from our knowledge, and in which are found immediately 
 revealed and most beautifully arranged the fundamental 
 dogmas of modern Judaising, optimistic, Christianity. 
 Now what in the world has my subtle philosophy, deficient 
 as it is in these essential requisites, with no intentional 
 aim, and unable to afford a means of subsistence, whose 
 pole-star is truth alone, the naked, unrewarded, un- 
 befriended, often persecuted truth, and which steers 
 straight for it, without looking to the right hand or the 
 left, what, I say, has this to do with that alma mater, 
 the good, well-to-do university philosophy which, burdened 
 with a hundred aims and a thousand motives, comes on 
 
 R. H. Franc6, has just published a rather notable essay on Relativity, 
 with the title Zoesis (Munich, 1920). As the name indicates, the basis is 
 Schopenhauer's principle that we are directly aware of Will, the final 
 reality, in our bodily life, by the analogy of which we interpret the 
 rest of the universe. It is out of the impulse of the will to realise 
 itself that knowledge and through it its phenomenal objects arise. Our 
 experience and our science have in consequence a biological character 
 to which they always come back, and so have the final standards of 
 reference by which knowledge and reality are determined. France seeks 
 to show that all phenomena are, for science as much as for everyday 
 experience, moulded by biological characters. He makes an attempt, 
 as earnest as it is ingenious, to exhibit Einstein's principle and also the 
 " Quanta " theory of Max Planck as the outcome of a system of refer- 
 ence thus determined. He carries his investigation into the region of 
 chemistry also, and he exhibits command of scientific detail in each case. 
 But for him the Einstein principle of relativity is of course only a par- 
 ticular application of a wider principle, which requires philosophy such aa 
 that of Schopenhauer for its interpretation. It is interesting to observe 
 how views of this kind are now being put forward with much vigour in 
 Germany. 
 
306 REALISM AND IDEALISM 
 
 its course cautiously tacking, while it keeps before its eyes 
 at all times the fear of the Lord, the will of the Ministry, 
 the laws of the Established Church, the wishes of the 
 publisher, the attendance of the students, the goodwill 
 of colleagues, the course of current politics, the momentary 
 tendency of the public, and Heaven knows what besides ? " 
 
 The old cynic was left to live in solitude at Frankfort- 
 on-the-Main, where, without wife or child, and accompanied 
 only by " Young Schopenhauer," his dog, he used to take 
 a daily walk across the river bridge. But his general 
 knowledge, perhaps in consequence, became enormous. 
 He levied a contribution on every form of learning. He 
 was a master of the history of literature, as well as of art 
 and music, and the evidences of what these meant for 
 him are everywhere apparent in the books he published. 
 His, too, was a really fine literary style. In short, if ever 
 a man was equipped to be the philosopher of intuition it 
 was Schopenhauer, whose appreciation of what can only 
 be felt was not less than his intellectual grasp. 
 
 Among the few thinkers for whom he had any reverence 
 Kant stands out prominent. He demands an acquaintance 
 on the part of his readers 
 
 " with the most important phenomenon that has appeared 
 in philosophy for two thousand years ; I mean the 
 principal writings of Kant. It seems to me, in fact, as 
 indeed has already been said by others, that the effect 
 these writings produce in the mind to which they truly 
 speak is very like that of an operation for cataract on a 
 blind man." " For Kant's teaching produces in the mind 
 of everyone who has comprehended it a fundamental 
 change which is so great that it may be regarded as an 
 intellectual new birth." " On the other hand, he who has 
 not mastered the Kantian philosophy, whatever else he 
 may have studied, is, as it were, in a state of innocence ; 
 that is to say, he remains in the grasp of that natural and 
 childish realism in which we are all born, and which fits 
 us for everything possible, with the single exception of 
 philosophy." 
 
 Schopenhauer none the less, as I have said, sought to 
 go behind Kant's insistence on the foundational character 
 
HIS DIVERGENCE FROM KANT 807 
 
 of knowledge, and this he was able to do, without glaring 
 inconsistency with the principles of his master, just because 
 the latter had confined this foundational character to 
 what was sufficient to account for only a limited form of 
 experience. Had Kant .been in bitter earnest with the 
 doctrine that knowledge was a final fact and all-compre- 
 hensive, his disciple could not have got where he did 
 without openly breaking with the doctrine. But Kant 
 had left as open questions the natures of the raw material 
 of feeling and of the thing-in-itself. Schopenhauer, there- 
 fore, as Bergson has done since his time, proceeded to look 
 further afield. He arrived at the conclusion that, however 
 much in the rest of our external experience we are confined 
 to what is phenomenal and arises from the operation of 
 the understanding as constructive, in our direct awareness 
 of our bodily life we have disclosed to us, in an intuition 
 which is not mediated by thought, something of a wholly 
 divergent nature, the will as the ultimate fact in reality. 
 By analogy we extend this disclosure to things other than 
 our bodies. Will becomes the " key to the nature of 
 every phenomenon in nature." Besides will and ideas of 
 perception nothing is known to us of any reality, or is 
 even thinkable. That the self-disclosure of will gives 
 rise to knowledge and to motives which arise only through 
 knowledge, does for him not affect the point. For these 
 do not belong to the nature of the will, which has nothing 
 to do with consciousness, but to its manifestation in 
 phenomenal form in a human being or an animal. What 
 we are aware of as our 
 
 " voluntary movements are nothing else than the visible 
 aspects of the individual acts of will, with which they are 
 directly coincident and identical, and only distinguished 
 through the form of knowledge into which they have 
 passed, and in which alone they can be known, the form 
 of idea." 
 
 That is why he gave his book the title of The World as 
 Will and Idea. 
 
 So far as the idea, that is perceptive knowledge, is 
 concerned, he agrees with Kant in treating space and time 
 as forms in which intelligence constructs phenomena. 
 But as regards the activity, attributed by Kant to mind 
 
308 REALISM AND IDEALISM 
 
 in the shape of the twelve fundamental modes of opera- 
 tion which were for the latter the categories, he differs. 
 The activity of mind assumed for Schopenhauer, not these 
 twelve forms, but that of a simpler " Principle of Sufficient 
 Reason " according to which it operated in various modes. 
 At the foundation, however, of the activity of mind and 
 of its phenomenal activity generally, lay will, just as 
 analogously Bergson was, later on, to find the foundation 
 in a different form of creative activity with the character 
 of unspatialised duration. Schopenhauer holds that he 
 has adequately expressed the character of our conception 
 of the relation of the will to the phenomenal world by 
 explaining it to be, not the relation of an abstract 
 
 " idea to another idea, or to the necessary form of per- 
 ceptive or of abstract ideation, but the relation of a 
 judgment to the connection which an idea of perception, 
 the body, has to that which is not an idea at all, but 
 something toto genere different, will." 
 
 He thus distinguishes this principle from all other truth. 
 We infer, from the analogy of our own bodily con- 
 sciousness, not only that will objectifies itself throughout 
 nature, but that it does so in ever ascending grades, as in 
 the vegetable and animal kingdoms. At the higher 
 grades we reach a point where the individual can no 
 longer get food for its assimilation only by movement 
 following on mere stimuli. Movement has to be directed 
 by motives, and so consciousness becomes a necessary 
 further grade in the objectification of will. A developed 
 brain appears, and knowledge, along with the world as 
 idea, comes into existence. 
 
 " Thus knowledge generally, rational as well as merely 
 sensuous, proceeds originally from the will itself." 
 " Originally destined for the service of the will, in the 
 accomplishment of its aims, it remains almost throughout 
 entirely subjected to its service ; it is so in all brutes and 
 almost in all men. Yet we shall see in the Third Book 
 how, in certain individual men, knowledge can deliver 
 itself from this bondage, throw off its yoke, and, free from 
 all the aims of will, exist purely for itself, simply as a 
 clear mirror of the world, which is the source of art. 
 
PRINCIPLE OF DEGREES WITH SCHOPENHAUER 809 
 
 Finally, in the Fourth Book, we shall see how, if this kind 
 of knowledge reacts on the will, it can bring about self- 
 surrender, i.e. resignation, which is the final goal, and 
 indeed the inmost nature of all virtue and holiness, and 
 its deliverance from the world." 
 
 Besides the grades of objectification which the experi- 
 ence of nature exhibits, there are, for Schopenhauer, still 
 more fundamental gradations of the forms in which will 
 objectifies itself that are manifested in innumerable 
 individuals, and exist as their unattained types or as 
 eternal forms of things, not themselves entering into 
 space and time, which are the medium of individual 
 things, but remaining fixed, subject to no change, always 
 being, never becoming, while the particular things arise 
 and pass away, always become and never are. These 
 latter grades of the objectification of will are analogous to 
 the Platonic Ideas, which are necessarily object, something 
 known, and in that respect different from the thing-in- 
 itself, but in that respect alone. The subordinate forms 
 of the phenomenon, which arise out of the principle of 
 sufficient reason that corresponds to the transforming 
 activity of the perceiving mind through its categories, are 
 not yet assumed here, but there is present the first and 
 most universal form, that of idea in general, the form of 
 being object for a subject. In this way the doctrine of 
 degrees in knowledge and reality appears in the philosophy 
 of Schopenhauer in a special fashion. 
 
 I have now done enough to admit of some glimpse into 
 the manner in which he really breaks from Kant, whom he 
 somewhat hypocritically extols as his spiritual father. 
 He has seen that the way of Kant ended at a point where 
 the path divided into two alternative and diverging 
 further paths. The one led in the direction of divesting 
 knowledge of every trace of having a merely instrumental 
 character, and freeing it from the appearance of subjec- 
 tivity ; the other led to the retention of this character, 
 and to the degradation of knowledge from the considerable 
 position assigned to it in Kant's explanation of the real, 
 by making it the mere servile instrument of his thing-in- 
 itself endowed with a positive character. This Schopen- 
 hauer sought to accomplish by identifying will with what 
 was for his master the caput mortuum of the thing-in-itself. 
 
810 REALISM AND IDEALISM 
 
 Bergson has sought to do something analogous in his 
 theory of creative evolution. But, although he too has 
 been a student of Kant, Bergson has broken away from 
 him more completely. His philosophy is now so well 
 known in these Islands that it is not necessary to do more 
 than to point out the cardinal feature in its bearing on 
 that principle of the relativity of knowledge which is the 
 underlying conception of this volume. 
 
 The work of Bergson is not less important for its criticism 
 of Kantianism than it is for its own constructive side. He 
 directs his attack largely against the mechanistic char- 
 acter within which Kant sought to restrict experience. If 
 there be only conceptions of this order which science must 
 recognise as those to which reality is limited, then he does 
 not dissent from the conclusion of Kant that the inferences 
 which the latter felt bound to draw were unavoidable. 
 But was the method of Kant one which was true to the 
 facts as we have them in our direct experience ? Bergson 
 thinks not. He insists that knowledge, as Kant conceived 
 its nature, transforms the real instead of disclosing its 
 veritable character. Let us look first at what Bergson 
 says about time and space. He puts them on different 
 footings, attributing to time, when taken in its integrity, 
 a much more intimate relation to reality than that of space. 
 Looking closely at time we find that when intelligence 
 tries to form an idea of the movement of objects it does 
 so by constructing movement out of mobilities put together. 
 Even in the case of a simple movement, such as raising 
 the arm, what is really going on cannot be pictured in 
 conceptual imagination. For the actual mobility cannot 
 be pictured at all. Intelligence cuts its continuity into 
 static stages after the fashion of the cinematograph. We 
 are always spatialising time in this way. It was this that 
 gave rise to the apparent insolubility of the puzzles pro- 
 pounded by Zeno. When we try to think of time we 
 represent it to ourselves under the form of a line made 
 up of parts external to one another. The temporal series 
 is conceived as made up of odd moments analogous to 
 points in space. 
 
 At this point in Bergson's reasoning the question 
 suggests itself whether we dare assume that thought only 
 visualises its objects in this spatial fashion. Surely the 
 use it makes of the images it shapes is not to regard them 
 
BERGSON 811 
 
 as affording the ultima ratio of reality, but to treat them as 
 fraught with meaning, as the expression of concepts which 
 are more than their symbols taken as self-contained could 
 express. How otherwise do we have the conception of a 
 living organic whole as giving significance to its members 
 by being present in them ? This is no image of a spatial 
 distribution. Bergson's own principle is that the real is 
 duration, but not mere succession of events in time, treated 
 as though separate in space. It is an important principle, 
 but it requires to be made intelligible, and that is possible 
 only through an intelligible conception, which goes beyond 
 any image. When he tells us that we must give up the 
 method of construction which Kant employed, and look for 
 experience freed under one aspect from the moulds into 
 which knowledge casts it, he makes a point which is good 
 against Kant, but seems good only because of the limita- 
 tions which Kant's doctrine of the mechanistic character 
 of his categories imposed upon him. Bergson holds that 
 knowledge cannot give us access to what underlies 
 spatialised time, in which part succeeds part. He therefore 
 refers us to direct intuition, as disclosing the truly real 
 as distinguished from what we make it appear to us, a con- 
 crete duration, or creative evolution, in which the recasting 
 of the whole is always going on. Something like this 
 Schopenhauer had said before him when he suggested 
 that we have immediate experience of the will in nature. 
 But Schopenhauer followed Kant in affirming the sub- 
 jectivity of time as well as of space, and Bergson's form of 
 the doctrine is therefore quite fresh. His fundamental 
 principle is that intuition enables us to escape from 
 spatial and mechanical views, and takes us straight to 
 reality, the nature of which is to be duration that has 
 action as its inmost character, and in which the activity 
 is creative, a continuous elaboration of what is abso- 
 lutely new. 
 
 For Bergson it is only in such an intuition that ultimate 
 reality, or what properly might be called that which is 
 of an absolute character, can be given. Everything else 
 falls within the province of analysis, the operation on its 
 subject-matter of intellect directed ab extra. By intuition, 
 he tells us in the Introduction to Metaphysics, which he 
 has written with a lucidity of diction with but few instances 
 to rival it in the whole history of philosophy, that he 
 
312 REALISM AND IDEALISM 
 
 means the kind of intellectual sympathy by which one 
 places oneself within an object in order to coincide with 
 what is unique in it and consequently inexpressible. 
 " Analysis is a translation, a development into symbols, 
 a representation taken from successive points of view 
 from which we note as many resemblances as possible 
 between the new object which we are studying, and 
 others which we believe we know already." Such a repre- 
 sentation can never be complete. Yet it is necessarily the 
 method of positive science, which always works with 
 symbols. But metaphysics has as its object to dispense 
 with these misleading symbols. It is so that we get at 
 the meaning of our own personality. There are no two 
 identical moments in the life of the same conscious being. 
 Take the simplest sensation, suppose it constant, absorb 
 in it the entire personality. The consciousness which will 
 accompany this sensation cannot remain identical with 
 itself for two consecutive moments. For the second 
 moment always contains, over and above the first, the 
 memory that the first has transmitted to it. A conscious- 
 ness that could experience two identical moments would 
 be a consciousness without memory. It would die and 
 be born again continually. It would be unconsciousness. 
 The unrolling of the duration of the inner life which we 
 reach only in intuition resembles, indeed, in some of its 
 aspects the unity of an advancing movement, and in others 
 the multiplicity of expanding states. But no metaphor 
 can express one of these two aspects without sacrificing 
 the other. The inner life is all these things at once, 
 variety of qualities, continuity of progress, and unity of 
 direction. It cannot be represented in images, any more 
 than in abstract concepts. 
 
 But after all it is only by appealing to intelligence that 
 Bergson has been able to get so far, and to avoid a sceptical 
 denial of the possibility of knowledge. For his intuition 
 is in truth akin in its nature to what he contrasts it with. 
 But for intelligence his intuition would surely have been 
 mere unconsciously directed instinct and have remained 
 so. It is intelligence that has enabled him to transcend 
 the point of view of intelligence itself as he conceives it. 
 Intuition, in the significance it possesses for him, resembles 
 knowledge more than it is different from it. It is upon 
 knowledge that he falls back when he has to tell us what 
 
THE CRITICS OF BERGSON 813 
 
 intuition reveals, even though it be merely to explain the 
 difference between the two. 
 
 I am therefore unable to differ from the conclusions of 
 an American critic of Bergson's system, Professor Watts 
 Cunningham, who has worked out a set of doubts on this 
 point similar to my own in a brilliant essay on the 
 Philosophy of Bergson. 1 We read over here a certain 
 amount of the philosophical literature which is being 
 poured out in the New World, but not as much as is 
 desirable. For America has been bringing freshness of 
 mind to bear on metaphysical problems ever since the 
 days of James and Royce, and this freshness is as apparent 
 in the treatment of idealism by her thinkers as it is in 
 the fashioning of that new realism which has had its 
 home at Harvard and elsewhere in the United States, at 
 least as much as it has had a home over here. 
 
 Therefore I do not apologise for quoting Professor Cun- 
 ningham when he is expressing in his own vigorous way a 
 conclusion not different from that to which I have myself 
 come in the question at issue. His books are as yet less 
 known on this side of the Atlantic than they might well 
 be. But he is still a young man, and more is likely to 
 be heard of him later on. 
 
 * 4 Thought," he says, " is a process of interpretation 
 whereby experience is unified and organised. It is the 
 life of the mind which finds expression in conscious experi- 
 ence as a totality. It is evident in common sense and 
 science, in superstition and philosophy. It gives us the 
 physical sciences, but it does not stop there. It is respon- 
 sible for the biological and the mental sciences, but it does 
 not stop even there. From it come our art, our religion, 
 and our philosophy. It breathes through all the ramifi- 
 cations of our experience, and gives whatever insights we 
 have which are worth preserving. The true, the good, 
 and the beautiful are expressions of it ; for it is our very 
 self -consciousness." 
 
 If Professor Cunningham is right we do not remain in 
 any " strait- jacket of static and spatial moulds." For to 
 think the world means simply to interpret it in just such 
 
 1 Longmaas. 1916, p. 91. 
 
814 REALISM AND IDEALISM 
 
 an infinite variety and elasticity in combinations by intelli- 
 gence as it demands, whether their characters be those of 
 mechanism or of teleological ends operating as final causes. 
 It must be that knowledge transcends the categories of 
 mechanism and is something more than an abstract under- 
 standing of the kind within which the Critique of Pure Reason 
 would restrict it. And when we are asked to infer from 
 this restriction that we have to take refuge in an intuition 
 which is supposed to be wholly diverse in its character 
 from any possible knowledge, we naturally ask whether 
 he who makes the demand has not made it only because 
 he has unduly narrowed the meaning and range of the 
 knowledge which gives significance and system to our 
 experience. There is a formidable point made in what 
 Professor Cunningham says in a later passage of his book. 1 
 Discussing Bergson's view that there is no real teleology 
 in the world process as intelligence represents it, inasmuch 
 as the process of accomplishing an end must consist 
 solely in the reproduction of a fixed and static plan, the 
 American critic declares this view to rest on the unjustifi- 
 able assumption that will and intelligence are mutually 
 exclusive. 
 
 " The absurdities of the conception of creative evolution, 
 which in the last analysis must be defined as merely an 
 infinite progression without a goal, may all be traced to 
 this fatal abstraction. When we remove this deficiency 
 from our analysis of conscious experience and clearly 
 recognise that intelligence is dynamic, that, in other words, 
 intelligence and will are only two terms which we use to 
 refer to two sides of the same reality, we at once see that 
 the abstract sort of teleology which Bergson so effectively 
 criticises, and for which he substitutes his conception of 
 creative evolution, is replaced by a more concrete teleology, 
 creative finalism, in which the controlling ends themselves 
 exist and grow precisely in their own creation. This 
 view provides for the reality of the temporal series in such 
 a way that the question ' How is time real ? ' is not an 
 insoluble mystery. For it defines the evolution of reality 
 in just those categories which conscious experience 
 exemplifies and makes determinate a claim which cannot 
 successfully be made for the theory of creative evolution." 
 
 * p. 179. 
 
PROFESSOR WATTS CUNNINGHAM 315 
 
 The very experience of enduring through time in an appre- 
 hended succession of continuous and connected particular 
 experiences seems impossible unless a future is implied 
 at every stage in that experience taken as a whole. Our 
 aims and purposes enter into our present content and 
 mould it. The actuality of the future is implied as a 
 moving influence. In other words, ends are at every 
 point, in .one form or another, determining factors, and 
 we bring in again the teleology which Bergson would 
 exclude, but in a form in which it is freed from the 
 spatiaiising tendency to which he objects. 
 
 As to what time really means, other questions arise, of 
 a character different from those which we discussed in 
 connection with physical relativity in measurement. 
 Finite experience seems to be inseparable from a temporal 
 element of some sort. And yet if time be final, even to 
 the extent in which a temporal element characterises the 
 space-time continuum, then unless that continuum itself 
 is no more than a conception appropriate only to a stage 
 in reality, there can be no completed whole, such as is the 
 ideal towards which we aspire in our experience and our 
 abstract knowledge alike. Time is real for the finite 
 individual who as an object in experience is in it. But 
 he appears to be the expression, even in this his finiteness, 
 of an entirety more perfect ; within which he and time 
 alike fall, and in which time itself is completed and 
 absorbed. It belongs to our " That." Away from it we 
 cannot get. Yet conceptual thought points to it as being 
 rather a moment in a whole within which it falls, than 
 what can be expressed in terms of itself alone. Otherwise 
 knowledge and experience would seem to be unintelligible, 
 relating as they do past, present, and future, in a fashion 
 such that each mutually implies the other. Here again 
 the principle of standpoints comes in. 
 
 Bergson's duration represented as final reality, and 
 Mr. Bradley's Absolute, in which thought is to coincide 
 with feeling in what is different from both, thus seem to 
 present obscurities that are analogous. The difficulty 
 that each conception raises is the inevitable question how 
 it has been reached. In both cases, the conception must 
 be attained through knowledge. How, then, can it in its 
 nature transcend knowledge ? Is it not more natural to 
 say that the forms in which we know are limitless, and 
 
316 REALISM AND IDEALISM 
 
 that knowledge can by their aid transcend, not merely 
 mechanism, but the reflection that is relational in so far 
 as it throws its objects into the separation that is distinctive 
 of judgments of the understanding ? It may even be that 
 something tacitly resembling the intellectualism of a larger 
 order, which became the instrument of idealism after the 
 time of Kant, has really been reintroduced by Bergson 
 and Bradley alike, though in different forms, both 
 directed to the overthrow of the doctrine which Kant 
 bequeathed. 
 
 I will now turn to some points in Bergson's doctrine 
 which have been the subject of keen criticism. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 AN AMERICAN CRITICISM OF BERGSON 
 
 M. BERGSON has done a great deal towards bringing out 
 what is inherent in the character of experience. But if 
 the history of philosophy in the nineteenth century has 
 established anything it has shown that he has hardly done 
 enough. He might himself prove to be very ready to 
 admit this. He does not claim to have given to the 
 world any complete or exhaustive system of philosophy. 
 His utterances are characterised not only by grace of 
 expression, but by a modesty which is distinctive of the 
 man and of his standpoint. In this respect he is wholly 
 unlike Schopenhauer. 
 
 In a recent book, L'Energie Spirituelle, which Professor 
 Wildon Carr has translated, under the title Mind-Energy, 
 in a style which is as distinguished for excellence as it is 
 characterised by affectionate reverence for the author 
 and his great qualities, Bergson makes clear his standpoint. 
 He holds that there is no principle from which the solution 
 of the great problems can be exhaustively deduced. Yet 
 the actual facts are indicative of converging directions. 
 What the lines of facts converge towards is the conclusion 
 that philosophy can no longer be the work of any single 
 thinker. It must increasingly call for corrections and 
 retouches ; for progress, like positive science, and, like 
 that, for work of collaboration. 
 
 But M. Bergson does not, so at least it seems to me, 
 free himself from the dominating influence of a single 
 principle. He is held by a view of the character of reality 
 which will not let him escape from it, admirable as is his 
 open-mindedness. It appears to confine him closely. 
 Let us see where it appears to make him fall short in his 
 treatment of reality. 
 
 If thought includes the whole activity of mind, practical 
 22 317 
 
318 AN AMERICAN CRITICISM OF BERGSON 
 
 as well as theoretical, there does not appear to be any 
 sharp line of demarcation to be drawn between thought 
 and other moments that disclose themselves in the con- 
 stitution of experience. It is present in all phases of that 
 experience, and, on the other hand, apart from and outside 
 them it cannot work nor even possess meaning. When 
 we think abstractly it is in images and metaphors. What 
 is out there before me has significance and is for me 
 real only in so far as I interpret it. But even when I 
 try to think most abstractly I never get away from the 
 actual or, from what for this purpose is the same thing, 
 images of the actual. Meaning is everything, but then 
 there must always be that which expresses the meaning. 
 We separate the meaning from its embodiment just 
 because of our tendency to conceive mind as a subject 
 apart confronted by an object that exists independently 
 of it. Finding that this is so, we tend to come to what 
 critics of Green have pronounced to have been with him 
 a timeless self, or an absolute as a totum simul, or an 
 object which has its reality only in its relations. But, 
 then, what if there be no aloofness between percipient 
 and perceived ? The simple way of looking at things, the 
 way of the ordinary man, does not suggest much aloofness. 
 He thinks of himself as an individual person, a mind, 
 existing in a definite part of space and time, and confronted 
 and surrounded by an environment which controls him, 
 and which consists largely of other minds and their work. 
 From his sense of his position in society and the common- 
 wealth, down to his relation to his wife and children, he 
 feels that he exists in and through this environment, and 
 that it is not foreign to him. It is only by reflection, that 
 is to say by abstraction, that he detaches himself from it 
 even in thought. Solidarity with his intimate surround- 
 ings is of the nature of his very life. It is only within 
 this solidarity and as based on it that he draws the line, 
 which is always provisional and for a purpose, between 
 himself and what is not himself. The foundation for him 
 of all reality is just his experience, in the wide sense in 
 which it includes his whole mental content, interpreted in 
 the various meanings by the light of which he reads it, 
 and which impart to it a significance which is more 
 than individual. But this experience includes time and 
 space. It is true, as Bergson has pointed out with great 
 
THE FUNCTION OF KNOWLEDGE 319 
 
 force, that these terms are ambiguous. We spatialise 
 our images of time unduly. The elemental-time experi- 
 ence, apart from the distorting influence of reflection 
 about it, is rather of the character of unbroken continuity 
 or flow, analogous to the world-line already discussed, 
 than of a succession of independent items in a series. But 
 the moment we begin to reflect we begin to separate 
 present from past and future, and to erect what we speak 
 of as present into something which is present existence 
 and is fixed as such by reflection ; as contained in a 
 duration, no doubt, and not within a mathematical moment. 
 Now without reflection there cannot be that human 
 experience which is the only experience we have, and the 
 result is that time begins at once to possess a significance 
 which, if secondary, is highly developed. Past and 
 future are held together with the present, and we have 
 to recognise that as a condition of our experience it must 
 in some sense be more than what is immersed in the 
 current of spatialised time. In no other way can we 
 make intelligible the experience of the past in relation to 
 the present. But this does not of necessity imply that 
 the basis of personality is a timeless self. When I look 
 back and recall what I did and felt thirty years ago I am 
 holding together and comparing past with present. But 
 it is my past experience, emotional as well as cognitive, 
 that I am comparing with what I have now. The 
 experiencer has changed continuously and in detail, as 
 well as the experienced. Although from one point of view 
 it is the same self that has felt and known throughout, 
 there has been, from another standpoint, a time process 
 for the self as well as for the not-self. But this time 
 process has been a time process none the less for a self 
 that in an essential fashion appears to have overreached 
 time as a factor or moment in its totality, but only as a 
 factor or moment. The actual self is, in an aspect which 
 is a necessity in its constitution, at once present, past, and 
 even future. None the less time is neither external to it 
 nor its creature. The foundational basis of knowledge 
 and experience is an experience which presents itself as 
 at once in time and out of it. That is why experience 
 cannot be conceived as a thing or even as an event. 
 But why should we seek to conceive what is foundational 
 by the analogy of anything but itself? Its only appro- 
 
320 AN AMERICAN CRITICISM OF BERGSON 
 
 priate terms are its own terms. We must not think of 
 consciousness as a property, the consciousness of a person. 
 The person is consciousness. He is essentially activity 
 and process, but it is activity and process aware of them- 
 selves and existing only in this awareness, an awareness 
 within which all distinctions, including that between real 
 and unreal, arise. In other words consciousness is im- 
 plicitly self -consciousness, and is fragmentary and incom- 
 plete when conceived otherwise. 
 
 Now if this be true the difficulty in regard to time has 
 arisen because time has been inadequately conceived. 
 The view of time as a succession of discrete units, as 
 what Bergson has called mathematical time, is no more 
 adequate to its nature than is the view of it as a mere 
 empty or blind continuum, flowing on unbroken and 
 uninfluenced by ends or purposes. But if time is only one 
 factor, although one logically essential, in that under- 
 lying activity of the self apart from which the universe 
 has no meaning for us, then its relation to ends to be 
 realised and to organisation in the interest of these ends 
 becomes intelligible. If time falls within mind and does 
 not lie outside it, it may be properly regarded as a principle 
 through which the self organises its content, and not as a 
 mere succession of disconnected events external to each 
 other. 
 
 I find myself in agreement on this point with some 
 things written by the American thinker whom I have 
 already quoted, Professor Watts Cunningham, both in 
 his Philosophy of Bergson and in an essay on " Coherence 
 as Organisation," published in a recent volume of Philo- 
 sophical Essays by American Writers. 1 After criticising 
 the contracted view of intellectualism which, influenced 
 by Kant's restriction of the table of categories, character- 
 ises Bergson's writing, Professor Cunningham points out 
 the value of the enlarged conception of temporalism which 
 Bergson has introduced. Time is, he holds, fundamental 
 in reality. 
 
 " For my part," he says, in concluding his book on 
 Bergson, " I must confess myself unable to see how it 
 can legitimately be denied that intellectualism logically 
 
 1 Philosophical Essays in honour of James Edward Creighton, New 
 York, The Macmillan Company, 1917. 
 
PROFESSOR CUNNINGHAM AGAIN 821 
 
 involves some form of temporalism, and by temporalism 
 I mean the doctrine that time is genuinely predicable of 
 reality. For it certainly is not easy to understand how 
 it would be possible for the universe to meet the demands 
 of intelligence if the universe were in its essence static 
 and pulseless and rigid. If intelligence demands anything 
 of the universe at all, it would seem to demand that 
 there be room enough there for its teleological categories 
 to bud and grow. Surely there is no necessary inconsis- 
 tency between an intelligible universe and a temporal 
 universe ; in so far as Bergson and the anti-intellectualist 
 propagandists generally assume the contrary they really 
 assume the main point at issue. Nor, on the other hand, 
 are we driven to the conclusion that a reality of which 
 time is predicable is ipso facto subject to blind and irre- 
 sponsible chance. A growing and changing reality, not- 
 withstanding the fact that it is dynamic, may nevertheless 
 be systematic ; in so far as intellectualists tend to deny 
 that such is conceivable they apparently base their 
 contention upon the assumptions of that type of intel- 
 lectualism which they themselves not only admit, but 
 insist, is outgrown. The principles of true intellectualism 
 seem to me to be no more consistent with a sterile abso- 
 lutism than they are with an erratic creative evolution ; 
 they rather demand of the real that it be a process a 
 process in which ends are potent, and in which these 
 ends are themselves dynamic and evolving." 
 
 In the essay to which I have referred Professor Cun- 
 ningham carries his criticism into the camp of such 
 idealists as hold mere logical consistency to be an adequate 
 conception of truth. He quotes with approval Professor 
 Sabine's question whether : 
 
 " If truth is the whole and if totality is the ultimate 
 principle of individuality and value, and if thought is 
 just the nisus of experience towards its completeness, 
 what is this more perfect experience to which judgment 
 is not the key ? Is it altogether perverse to suspect that 
 the defect is not in the relational form of judgment, but 
 in the coherence theory of truth ? Is it not really 
 probable that the concrete universal is an inadequate 
 logical principle ? " 
 
822 AN AMERICAN CRITICISM OF BERGSON 
 
 To the question so put Professor Cunningham offers an 
 answer : 
 
 " If the coherence theory is to be saved, the transcen- 
 dental principle of unity within experience upon which 
 it insists, and which it calls ' thought ' or ' reason,' must 
 be brought definitely into touch with the concrete situa- 
 tions in which it is supposed to function, and must be 
 so defined as to imply an intelligible view of the temporal 
 order ; in short, that coherence must be so construed as 
 to place the emphasis on organisation of ends rather 
 than mere abstract logical consistency." 
 
 He thinks that the coherence theory was in its origin 
 a reaction against Hume's atomism, and that Kant's 
 counter-theory of the transcendental unity of apperception, 
 with its emphasis on system as the criterion of meaning, 
 was the origin of the coherence doctrine. The attack on 
 the doctrine by the pragmatists is directed, not so much 
 against the general insistence on system and unity within 
 experience, as against the sort of unity postulated. For 
 if the unifying principle is to be taken as an immanently 
 constitutional and organisational reason, which holds 
 over from one moment of experience to the next, and is 
 in this way transcendental in the Kantian sense, the 
 conception lays itself open to two objections. First of all 
 the unity so posited is too far removed from, and too 
 externally related to, the concrete instances in which it 
 is supposed to operate, and is no more than a form or 
 mode of some supra-empirical ego. The true doctrine, 
 say the critics to whom Professor Cunningham is referring, 
 is that only the relevant can be true, and that the relevant 
 must always be relevant to a purpose. Then again, the 
 principle of unity assumed by the coherence theory fails 
 to do justice to the sort of unity which is actually found 
 within concrete experience. As a matter, these critics 
 say, of indisputable fact, experience grows in time, and as 
 a result involves a considerable degree of discontinuity 
 and hesitancy ; but the unity posited by the coherence 
 theory is timeless, and therefore the theory fails to discover 
 any ultimate significance in the temporal order. Temporal 
 discreteness seems on the face of it to have little to do 
 with abstract consistency. In short the coherence theory 
 
THE COHERENCE THEORY 323 
 
 is incompetent to account for the reality of the time 
 order, and implies that ultimately the temporal must be 
 transcended as belonging to an inherently imperfect type of 
 experience which cannot be regarded as of ultimate worth. 
 
 As against Kant, Professor Cunningham agrees with 
 this criticism. Kant only substitutes another abstraction 
 for that of Hume, an abstraction which is in reality wholly 
 separated from time. But following out his own inter- 
 pretation of Hegel in another book which he has written 
 on Thought and Reality in TLegeVs System, Professor 
 Cunningham presses the point that Hegel and the Neo- 
 Hegelians have sought to define thought in terms more 
 concrete than those of Kant, and to bring the transcen- 
 dental element within experience into more direct and 
 vital contact with the concrete empirical situations in 
 which it is meant to function. 
 
 In saying this Professor Cunningham seems to be well 
 founded. There is a remarkable passage in Hegel's 
 Phenomenology ', to which he does not refer, but which 
 forms part of a criticism of those who underrate the 
 significance of time, a criticism which confirms Professor 
 Cunningham's view. This passage has already been 
 quoted at p. 60. Hegel, as is at last beginning to be 
 understood, did not aim at deducing objective reality 
 from thought, the That from the What. The distinction 
 between these fell for him within experience, not outside 
 it. Pure feeling and pure thought were alike abstractions 
 arising within the living content of ever-active self- 
 consciousness, and owed their existence to that activity. 
 The content of consciousness, or experience, was, on the 
 one hand, no mere succession of isolated and mutually 
 exclusive units. On the other hand, it was not the con- 
 struction of thinking alone. Nature and Logic were 
 abstract aspects for reflection of the actuality to be looked 
 for in mind taken in the widest sense. Mathematical 
 methods are accordingly for Hegel never wholly adequate 
 to the real. Time is the general counter-aspect in nature 
 which corresponds to the activity of thought itself regarded 
 in abstraction, and the essence of time is continuous change. 
 The temporal order has thus a significance to which the 
 abstract form of the coherence theory does scant justice. 
 Professor Cunningham points this out. He declares that 
 the temporal aspect of experience is fundamental and is 
 
324 AN AMERICAN CRITICISM OF BERGSON 
 
 basic. The form of the systematic unity of human 
 experience must accordingly be restated, and he suggests, 
 as against Bergson and the adherents of the purely 
 logical principle of the coherence doctrine alike, that the 
 latter must be, not abandoned, but restated as one of 
 organisation of ends. But such an organisation of ends 
 can only be stated as a system. This brings us back to 
 the value of ends with their standards, and in that form to 
 rationality. For truth is the expression of system. 
 Can the doctrine that the truth is the whole, and the test 
 of coherence to which it leads, be accepted ? Professor 
 Cunningham thinks that this question may properly be 
 answered in the affirmative, provided that thought is 
 recognised as possessing certain fundamental character- 
 istics. In the first place it must be interpreted as that 
 in experience which includes the various so-called states 
 of consciousness, both cognitive and emotional. Thought 
 is no event over against any form of experience, practical 
 or theoretical, but the very principle of organisation 
 through which the forms of experience are a unitary 
 whole and belong to a single experience. In the second 
 place it is characteristic of thought to hold over from one 
 moment of experience to another. For it is a principle 
 and not an event, and its essence is to be past, present, 
 and future at once. Although the time order is a funda- 
 mental feature of experience, yet thought overreaches 
 throughout it, and by doing so renders possible the con- 
 tinuity of past, present, and future. Thus even the ends 
 which govern the action of the individual may originate 
 in his past history. In the third place, inasmuch as 
 thought includes successive moments, it cannot itself be 
 said to belong to any one moment. It cannot be static, 
 but is always self-evolving, and is a principle which takes 
 the form of a temporal process of experimentation, trial, 
 and error. In so far as the current coherence theory 
 tends to destroy the significance of time Professor Cun- 
 ningham cannot agree with it. For truth, as it has 
 meaning for us, is concerned with a present concrete 
 experience, which is both discontinuous and continuous, 
 and is therefore temporal. The criterion of truth as 
 logical consistency is for him in reality a progressive 
 co-ordination of ends, so that the criterion is not really 
 separable from reference to a temporal stream. Finally, 
 
THE CHARACTER OF EXPERIENCE 325 
 
 thought cannot be regarded as " a mere conscious state 
 existent within some particular psychological history." 
 It is rather to be found " chiefly in the physical and social 
 orders, in the world-process itself." Of course thought 
 
 " exists in psychological experience, but then we must 
 regard it as something gradually to be attained, as an 
 acquisition and not as an endowment, a progressive 
 process of creative effort which matures only through 
 contact with the objective order, and which becomes 
 aware of its own fundamental nature through its unfolding. 
 In short thought must be said to have its habitat primarily 
 in the objective order and only secondarily in the indi- 
 vidual." 
 
 Such a view, says Professor Cunningham, will of course 
 be attacked as bringing back the trans-experiential 
 elements of the old coherence theory. But he replies 
 that if there be one lesson which the history of philosophical 
 inquiry from the time of the Sophists down to the present 
 has taught us with unmistakable certainty, that lesson 
 is that a theory of truth which seeks its criterion in 
 merely subjective experience ends at last in giving us 
 no criterion at all. The failure to recognise this has been 
 fatal to pragmatism. It is true that so far as the various 
 " states " of consciousness are concerned they exist 
 nowhere outside of a psychological experience. This is 
 the case with feeling in its various forms. But is it true 
 in the same sense of rationality ? My reason exists in 
 my own individual mind, but it is not less true that it 
 transcends my experiential limitations. " In order to 
 identify ourselves with objective rationality there is no 
 obligation imposed on us to lift ourselves by our own 
 bootstraps." To be rational is just to be identified with 
 the objective order of the universe. " Surely science 
 exists in no man's mind, but surely, also, every lowest son 
 of Adam is in some sense capable of science." Otherwise, 
 and if reason were not supra-psychological, the whole 
 history of scientific achievement were utterly inscrutable, 
 and, for that matter, the whole history of society and even 
 of the individual himself. 
 
 " Thought, upon which the coherence theory lays so 
 
826 AN AMERICAN CRITICISM OF BERGSON 
 
 much emphasis, must not be supposed to be an abstract 
 principle, standing over against the various states of 
 consciousness, which it somehow mechanically and mys- 
 teriously binds together. Rather must it be conceived 
 as the principle of organisation through which these 
 states exist, as they do exist, and which, because it is a 
 principle, is more than these states taken either dis- 
 tributively or collectively. Once again, because it is a 
 principle of organisation within experience, it must hold 
 over from one moment to another ; on the other hand, it 
 is not non-temporal and cannot be so conceived, since 
 organisation ipso facto involves time. To speak of a 
 timeless act of thought, as Green does, is a contradiction 
 in terms, if thought is taken in the sense here insisted on. 
 Finally, thought is not a process which is confined wholly 
 to an individual biography, as is a feeling of pleasure or 
 a particular desire ; thought is rather the principle of 
 objectivity which spans the gulf between the individual 
 and the world." 
 
 Such a view of the real application of the coherence 
 theory meets, for Professor Cunningham, the difficulty of 
 the supposed abstractness of the theory. For rational 
 organisation of this kind belongs to concrete experience. 
 It is the determination of value within a given set of 
 circumstances. " The truth is the whole " just means 
 that, under the conditions as they are discovered to be, 
 the true is that which complies with the demand of experi- 
 ence for rational unity. The pragmatist who says that 
 only the relevant is true, and that relevant means relative 
 to a purpose, is right enough so far as he goes. But 
 idealism does not stop where he stops. It goes further 
 and offers a standard by which the varying degrees of 
 relevancy may be judged. Mere isolated desires and 
 interests are logically valueless ; what is essential is the 
 standard of an organised whole in which these desires and 
 interests have their places. The problem which arises is 
 more than one of mere logical coherency. Reason cannot 
 be defined in isolation from concrete experience. To 
 quote Professor Bosanquet, 
 
 " For thought which has become expert in this world, 
 such media as sound, colour, form, rhythm, the sound 
 
TIME 827 
 
 that with other sounds satisfies the educated ear, the 
 colour that is demanded by a colour scheme, are, I take 
 it, as necessary and rational as the conclusion of a 
 syllogism." 
 
 It is a mistake, according to Professor Cunningham, 
 arising from the abstract form in which the coherence 
 doctrine has been put forward, to say that teleology is 
 an inadequate category, and that what is novel is in last 
 analysis unintelligible ; in other words, that the real is 
 timeless, and the temporal order mere appearance. If 
 experience could be conceived as that in which disruption 
 and selection could not occur, organisation, which is 
 based on selection, could not be predicated of it. Such 
 an experience would be merely static. A timeless Absolute 
 is thus excluded. The temporal alone is intelligible. 
 
 I have quoted Professor Cunningham's bold pronounce- 
 ment at some length, because I think it is one which 
 raises important matters for consideration. In the first 
 place it embodies the tendencies of a new school of idealism 
 which is growing up in the United States, and which con- 
 tains a number of thinkers distinguished alike by freshness 
 of outlook and by comparative youth. In the second 
 place this interpretation of idealism is based on a careful 
 study of Hegel as well as of Bergson. The claim to have 
 brought near to each other the conclusions of those two 
 thinkers is an impressive one. Has it been successfully 
 asserted ? 
 
 In a considerable measure I think that it has. Judged 
 by a very important test, that of conformity to experienced 
 fact, what is suggested seems to bring us nearer to the 
 actual in life than does the doctrine which reduces mathe- 
 matical time to appearance. Of course the acceptance of 
 time as a genuine form of reality is attended with diffi- 
 culties. But these appear to arise from misconception. 
 If time be regarded in the light in which Hegel himself 
 regards it in the passage quoted earlier from his Pheno- 
 menology, the difficulties are less. For time, as he there 
 describes its essence, is no more mere mathematical time 
 than is the duration of Bergson. It is not exclusively 
 discrete any more than it is exclusively continuous. 
 Because it is the counter-abstraction to the movement of 
 thought of which the characteristic is the combination 
 
828 AN AMERICAN CRITICISM OF BERGSON 
 
 of identity with difference, it is both continuous and 
 discrete. Now in time conceived mathematically the 
 stress is mainly laid on the second of these aspects, and 
 it is not pointed out that each is itself an abstraction 
 which necessitates the other, just as difference necessitates 
 identity. 
 
 Then between time taken abstractly and the thinking 
 of which it is the counter-abstraction a gulf is fixed, 
 illegitimately, if Hegel is right. Things cannot for him 
 be divorced from thoughts, or thoughts from things. In 
 mind, which is in its nature always concrete experience, 
 the two appear as moments which have reality there alone. 
 They are not things apart. They are simply diverse 
 aspects of the real, and as abstractions they pass over 
 into each other, excepting in so far as the reflective 
 activity of mind can hold them apart. 
 
 Now this view ought not to be a startling one. We 
 have already seen its truth exemplified in the case of 
 biology. There the relations of mechanism are superseded 
 by those of development in fulfilment of an end. Not 
 only is the externality of the parts into which space is 
 resoluble overcome, but the succession of events in time 
 is likewise overreached by ends which do not appear as 
 separate events in time, and which yet control and mould 
 the significance of such events. In the organism the whole 
 exists in the members and is everywhere present in them, 
 overcoming their externality to each other in space as 
 well as in time, and endowing them with life and meaning. 
 In the organism there is manifest a development from 
 birth to death, a development, too, controlled in the 
 interests of the species to which the individual belongs. 
 The end governs in these respects also, just as it supersedes 
 the relationship of externality. Here the end is no 
 external force or event. It is simply the fundamental 
 character of the phenomenon, a character which endures 
 through succession and change and is present throughout 
 their course, moulding the development to its own purpose. 
 There is apparent discontinuity at moments, there is 
 accident, there is the contingency inseparable from 
 externality. But the tendency remains unfaltering. 
 There is no whole as perfect in its entirety as is the activity 
 of mind, which is explicitly or implicitly present in every 
 one of the manifestations to which it gives reality and 
 
TIME AND OUR EXPERIENCE 329 
 
 meaning. But the analogy of living is much more nearly 
 that of thinking than it is that of mechanism, with its 
 disjunction of external parts aggregated ab extra. Both 
 in life and in thought space and time are transcended, in 
 the sense that, though there, they are there as moments 
 only in a greater entirety, which, inasmuch as it over- 
 reaches, transcends them. We live as individual per- 
 sonalities amid and by means of foreign material which 
 we cannot wholly control. Contingency is everywhere 
 raising its head. We think in images to which we cannot 
 wholly assign their limits of validity in our logic. Our 
 life and our thought and the mechanical appearance 
 which confront us are aspects of a reality which include 
 them all in its phases, the concrete experience which is 
 the only reality that has meaning for us, and in terms 
 of which we must somehow interpret even what we try to 
 conceive as lying beyond it. 
 
 Such an experience manifests itself by its very nature 
 at stages which differ in their approach to completeness, 
 stages which I have spoken of as degrees in truth and 
 reality. Now these stages do not, as I have already 
 pointed out, necessarily exist apart in space or succeed 
 each other in time. Knowledge sometimes begins with 
 the higher degree of completeness and goes back to what 
 is more abstract and so less perfect. When we rationalise 
 experience by reducing it to terms of mathematical formulae 
 we rob it of most of its riches. But on the other hand 
 we transcend the limits of immediacy in this fashion and 
 advance knowledge. Moreover, the procedure is in harmony, 
 so far as it goes, with the facts. The properties of straight 
 lines and perfect circles hold even of what are the least 
 perfect exemplifications of these constructions, that is to 
 say, wherever the exemplifications can be treated as 
 illustrating them they conform to the properties. So, 
 too, in the case of an organism its action conforms to 
 mechanical and chemical laws. There is no reason to 
 doubt that the laws, for example, of the conservation and 
 degradation of energy apply to the instance of an organism 
 just as much as in that of a machine. But although this 
 phase is a true one it has been, like that of the perfect 
 circle, isolated by abstraction, and it does not represent 
 the whole truth. The conception which the phase 
 exemplifies is not a complete conception or at the highest 
 
330 AN AMERICAN CRITICISM OF BERGSON 
 
 possible degree of truth and reality. It is the most con- 
 crete that is the most real, and one wonders whether 
 certain general concepts among which we seem to move 
 very easily, such as those of mass, atoms, molecules, and 
 energy, will not also turn out to have been mere abstrac- 
 tions inadequate to the reality of which they purport to 
 be descriptive. Instead of trying to build up reality out 
 of such supposed simple existences, it may be that we 
 shall come to regard them as aspects, for reflection only, 
 of phenomena of a richer order, from which they have 
 derived their meaning by a process of analysis in its 
 nature artificial. When at an earlier stage we were con- 
 sidering the relation of the environment to the organism, 
 we observed the play of this sort of abstraction, and the 
 artificial view of reality to which it gave rise. It may 
 be that the play of abstraction obtains right through that 
 realm of nature, and has led us into making distinctions 
 that are not in truth of the hard and fast character we 
 suppose. 
 
 But this does not of necessity imply that such abstrac- 
 tion is error. It is rather a necessity inherent in the 
 character of human knowledge, the inevitable procedure 
 of a mind whose organ consists in a human brain and 
 body. It is the method which characterises knowledge. 
 In the chapter in the second volume of his Logic, in which 
 Mr. Bosanquet discusses the coherence doctrine, he speaks 
 of it as a standard applicable to discursive thought, but 
 a standard of truth which itself does not pretend to be 
 the perfect or all-inclusive experience. He rejects, as I 
 think rightly, the notion that truth consists in the corre- 
 spondence of an idea with something external to and 
 independent of it. That, as we have seen earlier, is truth 
 only in a limited and primitive aspect. He places truth 
 as consisting rather in the systematic coherence of judg- 
 ments which enter into the very nature of reality. These 
 judgments profess to express the nature of the real so far 
 as it can be uttered in a system of predicates and relations. 
 Yet, for Mr. Bosanquet, the nature of the highest con- 
 ceivable experience cannot be such a system of predicates 
 and relations. Thought, he holds with Mr. Bradley, 
 dissociates and so destroys any experience which could 
 claim to be perfect. That is because he takes thought to 
 be inherently relational and to give us no more than 
 
PROFESSOR BOSANQUET 831 
 
 what is merely appearance as distinguished from reality. 
 Yet reality is operative, for Mr. Bosanquet, in truth, and 
 in this limited sense correspondence results. The explana- 
 tion is that judgment, which gives the appearance of 
 reality, but only in the relational form, does its best to 
 reach true individuality. It can never do so because 
 individuality lies beyond that form. Perfect coherence is 
 thus impossible, for the perfection of truth lies in a reality 
 different in kind. Truth is no more than a fulfilment under 
 its own conditions of the nature of reality. If it be said 
 that therefore truth cannot be quite true, the answer for 
 Mr. Bosanquet is that no experience short of perfect 
 reality is ever quite itself. Its fullest completeness lies 
 in a more perfect form of experience which is beyond 
 itself. 
 
 But Mr. Bosanquet makes a reservation which appears 
 to me to mark a departure from the tendency of 
 Mr. Bradley's doctrine, and to bring him nearer to the 
 doctrine of degrees. For he goes on to say that the worlds 
 of our experience have been fundamentally transformed and 
 reconstructed by thought, working in and on perception 
 and general experience. These worlds have their existence 
 and quality in one. " Our worlds are all different, and 
 yet all apparently solid, and clothed in inseparable contents, 
 which nevertheless are of our own discrimination and 
 attribution." These are not, as a rule, taken as predicates. 
 They are regarded rather as belongings of reality, although 
 we can separate them and take them as predicates. The 
 interesting point about the supposed individual subjects 
 in the judgments of such experience is their relativity. 
 Thought has made them, and can unmake them, and 
 indeed is always remaking them. Thus a quasi-real 
 world is, for Mr. Bosanquet, continuously being deposited 
 as part of the work of thought, and thought is therefore 
 in itself not so far removed from the nature of a perfect 
 experience as the exclusively relational view would lead 
 us to think. But this quasi-real world is of a plastic 
 nature. Its aspects never remain fixed or static, nor 
 wholly cut off from a fuller character of reality. 
 
 Is not this conclusion one that comes near to that which 
 treats reality itself, as well as our knowledge, as disclosing 
 itself at a variety of levels which form intelligible stages 
 in the logical progress of its self-development ? And may 
 
332 AN AMERICAN CRITICISM OF BERGSON 
 
 not truth lie rather in consistency in this development of 
 the continuity of the logical progress from each level to 
 the larger level beyond it, than in the attainment of a 
 goal which thought itself cannot define and which must 
 remain for ever an ideal that cannot be realised ? If so, 
 it is the striving that contains the truth, the truth of 
 quality. And the ultimate reality is just what is expressed 
 in the reality of this striving. It is in the world of ends 
 that we must seek our standards. Was Hegel, then, far 
 wrong when he declared that within the range of our 
 finiteness we could never see or experience that the end 
 had been really secured, but that the consummation of the 
 infinite end lay in the removal of the illusion which made 
 it seem unaccomplished, an illusion which our finiteness 
 has created ? If this be the case, then, that there should 
 be progressive supersession of error is essential to what 
 is no static attitude, but a dynamic process. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE HEGELIAN PRINCIPLE 
 
 WE have seen how the caution of Kant led him to stop 
 before electing which of two further paths he would 
 follow. But his system could not remain as incomplete 
 as he left it. Schopenhauer and Bergson chose a path 
 which led far from where Kant finally stood. For they 
 both entered on the pursuit of what seemed to be 
 analogous to that thing-in-itself the nature of which Kant 
 had declared to be impenetrable for knowledge. But it 
 was not on knowledge that either of them professed to 
 rely as the instrument for penetrating to things-in-them- 
 selves. It was on direct awareness. Schopenhauer found 
 this in the immediate sense we have in our own bodies 
 of the reality of will. Bergson found it in a not dissimilar 
 direct awareness of a foundational activity which he calls 
 durSe or 6lan, or creative activity, but he did not lay 
 the emphasis that the former did on bodily sense of direct 
 intuition. 
 
 Over both forms of this post-Kantian development the 
 critics have been active. By whatever name we call 
 direct awareness, or however we describe it, it is insisted 
 that what it yields in the hands of Schopenhauer and 
 Bergson alike is what is obviously in truth knowledge, 
 and much more than any mere passive awareness. From 
 the former we hear a great deal about the inherent char- 
 acter of will, and also about its modes and grades of self- 
 manifestation. By the latter we are told much of 
 scientific detail about the creative activity and how it 
 operates. Of time we learn not merely that it is, but a 
 good deal about what it is. 
 
 The result is that, not only the American criticism to 
 which I have referred, but also criticism in the Old World, 
 23 333 
 
334 THE HEGELIAN PRINCIPLE 
 
 has pressed the view that the attempt to supply the 
 role of knowledge by direct awareness has been no more 
 of a success than it has been in the parallel instance 
 of New Realism. Unless we are able to treat know- 
 ledge as a mere causal and accidental external relation 
 between entities wholly independent of it, it is difficult 
 to regard it as having been shown in any of these versions 
 to be capable of resolution into something anterior to itself. 
 
 Even in the years with which the nineteenth century 
 opened this attempt had been made by others, like 
 Schelling, and had apparently failed. It resulted in the 
 end only in what Hegel grimly characterised as a " night 
 in which all cows look black." There was therefore a 
 desire to probe afresh the ground examined by Kant, and 
 to see whether it was really necessary to attribute to 
 knowledge the limited scope and significance which was 
 all that Kant would permit to it. This desire culminated 
 in the Hegelian system, and about this system it is 
 accordingly desirable to say something here, in the hope 
 that it may prove less misleading than some other state- 
 ments about its principles. 
 
 It is odd that one should have to begin to speak of 
 a philosophy by telling what it was not, instead of at 
 once stating what it was. But this appears unavoidable 
 in the case of Hegel. For the habit of not taking the 
 trouble necessary, in this instance a good deal of trouble, 
 to proceed to the source and to master his own version, 
 instead of trying to get knowledge of it at second-hand 
 or from isolated citations, has led to extraordinary con- 
 fusion of ideas. I will begin by stating once for all that 
 Hegel did not suggest that things were created or con- 
 structed by our private thoughts about them. 
 
 Anyone who wants to verify this statement has only to 
 turn to the criticism of Kant in the account given by 
 Hegel of the " Second Altitude of Thought towards the 
 Objective World," in the early part of the volume on 
 Logic, in his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. 
 His very purpose, a purpose pursued undeviatingly, was 
 to eliminate the element of subjectivity with which idealism 
 had been invested by Kant. Nor did Hegel believe, on the 
 other hand, in any absolute, outside and apart from human 
 knowledge. He did not even, to pass to a very different 
 illustration, set up the Prussian constitution as a final 
 
MISREADINGS OF HEGEL 335 
 
 deliverance of truth. It was merely one among a number 
 of other phenomena which had to be investigated as among 
 existing facts, in their relation to human individuality. 
 About this he says, in the preface to his Rechtsphilosophie, 
 that the book is no more than an attempt to conceive 
 of and present the state in the form it has actually 
 assumed as the embodiment of rational knowledge. 
 
 " Philosophy has to be on its guard against constructing 
 a state as it ought to be. Philosophy cannot teach the 
 state what it should be, but only how the ethical universe 
 is to be known." 
 
 And again, in the Zusatz to paragraph 273 : 
 
 " The principle of the modern world as a whole is 
 freedom of subjectivity, the principle that essential aspects 
 of the spiritual whole should attain their right by self- 
 development. From this standpoint one can hardly 
 raise the idle question as to which form is the better, 
 monarchy or democracy." 
 
 Why, then, has he been so much misinterpreted ? One 
 reason is that in the hands of lesser men the instrument 
 which he wielded easily was too ponderous for them. 
 After his death his school split up into subordinate groups, 
 which by degrees perished from sheer feebleness. There 
 was an orthodox group of the right, which found a mission 
 in the defence of orthodoxy in religion and politics. With 
 these topics Hegel had professed carefully to refrain from 
 concerning himself, on the ground that they lay outside 
 the limits of his philosophy. There was also a more 
 vigorous school of the left, containing leaders like Strauss, 
 Karl Marx, and Lassalle, which again went far beyond the 
 teaching of its founder. There was in addition a variety 
 of smaller groups of disciples, rivulets in which the main 
 current was frittered away, to disappear in sandy soil. 
 
 Another reason was the personality of Hegel himself. 
 He commanded admiration because of his intellectual 
 power, but the love of the general public he never com- 
 manded, as Kant did, or as Schiller and even Goethe did 
 in literature. His was a grim figure, and by no means 
 altogether inspiring. Goethe, who had in some ways a 
 
336 THE HEGELIAN PRINCIPLE 
 
 high respect for him, and in whose study at Weimar a 
 bust of Hegel still stood in the days when I last visited it, 
 had a very definite sense of certain defects in Hegel's 
 character. 1 The curious will find these touched on in the 
 published correspondence between Goethe and Zelter 
 which took place at the time of Hegel's death. 
 
 Still, detached as in many respects Hegel was about 
 public matters, there is no doubt that while he was a 
 Professor at Berlin he made himself at times more useful 
 than was becoming to the Prussian Government of the 
 day. His attitude was not always admirable. Indeed, 
 his personality does not appear to have been in all respects 
 an attractive one. His strength lay in his tremendous 
 intellectual power, although in his letters there are many 
 indications of a gentler side. He was no recluse. He 
 went into the literary society of Berlin freely. Whether 
 in all respects he possessed " the social gift," or was 
 wholly a success there, is not clear. At least he appears 
 to have liked to meet his fellow human beings. He is 
 said to have played whist, and to have found in it the 
 relaxation which the great Moltke was to find in it later 
 on. He was a good husband and father. He is reported 
 to have himself kept his household accounts, and that 
 rigorously. In these respects he differed from those 
 eminent philosophers who have found metaphysics to 
 consist best with a solitary life unblessed by wife and family. 
 Spinoza, for example, and also Kant sternly preferred the 
 companionship of their own thoughts. 
 
 One cannot call his a figure that appeals to the imagina- 
 tion. His power of influencing men lay in a wholly 
 different direction. Perhaps his lack of personal popu- 
 larity has had something to do with the distorted image 
 of his system that the man in the street seems to have 
 constructed and to have passed on to the present genera- 
 tion. But in any event the last description that would 
 suggest itself to anyone who has really busied himself in 
 trying to get an accurate impression of this extraordinarily 
 powerful figure in the Walhalla of thought is that he was 
 either a mystic or obscure in his apprehension. His 
 knowledge was enormous, both of the literature and of 
 the science available in his time, and he had full command 
 
 1 Goethe disliked the political atmosphere of Berlin. To Hegel it waa 
 by no means uncongenial. 
 
HIS PERSONALITY 337 
 
 of it. For the rest, he appears as a rather hard man, 
 always master of himself, and never expressing emotion 
 unless of deliberate purpose. Few great thinkers have 
 steeled themselves more against deflection by side interests. 
 With Hegel the system is the outcome of an unswerving 
 industry in accumulating material and of adhesion to a 
 single line of thought. 
 
 It is a hundred years since he wrote his most important 
 books, and they were written in a phraseology which is 
 ill-suited to the present day. No doubt philosophy has 
 suffered much from looseness in expression and from the 
 introduction of metaphor into its language. But Hegel 
 went further than was required towards the opposite 
 extreme. He devised a terminology which is his own, 
 but, although exact, is of a barbarous kind. He is 
 systematic as only a German can be systematic. At 
 times this feature approaches to pedantry. But if the 
 language is repellent it is careful and replete with meaning. 
 In what he says there is always an approach to scientific 
 precision. Once master his principle and his method 
 of expressing it, and he is never difficult to follow. But 
 then the preliminary discipline to which the reader has to 
 subject himself is severe. For the writing is for the most 
 part as abstract in form as a German can make it, and to 
 say that is to say a good deal. 
 
 However, what really makes Hegel so difficult is some- 
 thing not his fault. It is the inherent difficulty of the 
 problem, a problem that is probably in itself more baffling 
 than any other we know of. After all, Plato and Aristotle 
 and Plotinus, who had the same problem to deal with, 
 are really more difficult to follow. Their terminology, if 
 less abstract, is looser and more obscure, and had they 
 written in German their methods of exposition would 
 probably to-day have been reprobated even more than is 
 that of Hegel. " 
 
 I have already indicated how Kant stopped at a point 
 where the way beyond divided itself, and how Schopenhauer 
 and Bergson have followed one branch of the divided path. 
 Hegel pursued the other. For him Kant's " thing-in- 
 itself " was, as with them, an illusion, but the way 
 towards ultimate reality lay, not in direct awareness or 
 intuition of anything in itself, but in a resolute attempt 
 to discover the character of knowledge freed from the 
 
388 THE HEGELIAN PRINCIPLE 
 
 special relativity with which Kant had invested it. This 
 was the source of Kant's belief in something inaccessible 
 to experience, but which might yet be the basis both of 
 our thought and of the things which it was about. 
 Hegel's alternative plan was to observe knowledge pas- 
 sively in its self-development through its multitudinous 
 forms. Its intrinsic nature was for him to be active 
 or dynamic. The fashion in which he found this dynamic 
 activity displaying itself in the movement of thought he 
 named the Begriff. The dialectical quality of concep- 
 tions, by which each implied the other and took its 
 place within an intellectual entirety, yielded, as the 
 result of observation of thought and things alike, a self- 
 completing system, called the " Idea." The individual, 
 or universal in concrete form, was the actual, and the 
 actual was always individual. No merely abstract 
 thoughts, no system of universals, taken per se could be 
 actual. Nor, on the other hand, could a merely objective 
 world exist dissociated from intelligence, as if self- 
 subsistent independently of it. Such a world would be 
 no more than a mere counter-abstraction, with no factual 
 reality. The true reality was to be found in the concrete 
 experience disclosed in our minds, the factual reality of 
 which could not be questioned. For in mind the universal 
 and the particular, the abstraction and the counter- 
 abstraction, were actual as united in what was individual, 
 and, as these two factors or moments, were constitutive of 
 what was concrete and as such actual. To determine the 
 character of ultimate reality the only way was therefore 
 to observe the disclosure made by the mind of its own 
 nature and its own dialectic. If we did this faithfully 
 we should be able to see in what its human and finite 
 quality consisted, and in what respects the human mind, 
 as appearing in nature and in self-consciousness, imported 
 what was more than finite as its foundation. This problem 
 he worked out in his first great book, The Phenomenology 
 of Mind. The result was for him, as in the main for 
 Aristotle, that knowledge was disclosed as being foun- 
 dational of reality. The next step was, by logical analysis, 
 to distinguish within knowledge its moments, a task which 
 could only be accomplished reflectively and by abstraction 
 from the concrete reality. He set himself to make the 
 requisite analysis in his Logic, the first part of his Encyclo- 
 
HIS METHOD 330 
 
 pcedia. There he sought to work out the various forms 
 of abstract conception which actual knowledge implies 
 and makes explicit. He also exhibited what he took to 
 be the dialectical or dynamic activity by which each form 
 of conception involves and passes into a negative counter- 
 part, a further abstraction by the incorporation of which 
 it is enriched, with the result that a third conception is 
 always precipitated, in its turn to develop its own nature 
 similarly in virtue of this active character of reflection. 
 The entirety is a system of abstract thought, as naturally 
 inherent in and characteristic of the objects of mind as 
 it is of knowledge regarded from a subjective standpoint. 
 The completed entirety, being no more than a system 
 of universals yielded by abstraction, naturally requires a 
 counter-system with the character of particularity, in 
 order to the attainment of real existence in actual know- 
 ledge as we find it in experience. This it has in the 
 counter-abstraction which we call nature, which is just 
 as necessary and foundational as is abstract thought. 
 Neither creates the other, and both are real only in their 
 union in experience and in mind, which carries us beyond 
 what is usually meant by experience. For it is experience 
 that constitutes the basic reality from which the start is 
 made, and which all reflection presupposes. Thought does 
 not make things any more than things make thought. 
 Idealism and realism, as hard and fast principles, are alike 
 beside the point. 
 
 Hegel goes on, after displaying Logic, Nature, and Mind 
 Actual, in the three volumes of his Encyclopedia, to apply 
 his doctrine. It imports, as implied by its character, a 
 system of scale of degrees, both in knowledge and in 
 objective existence, corresponding to the standpoints to 
 which the self-evolving character of reflection gives rise. 
 The application by him of this principle takes the form of 
 a treatment in detail, in accordance with his ground 
 conception of reality, of various branches of human know- 
 ledge, as we find them, for example, in Ethics and the 
 theory of the State, in ^Esthetics, in Religion, and in 
 History. As regards the last, we owe to him, probably 
 more than to any other, the modern historical method. 
 His task he accomplishes in a series of volumes with an 
 impressive command of material. He was a tremendous 
 student, equipped by long years of patient research in 
 
840 THE HEGELIAN PRINCIPLE 
 
 almost every department, and thorough in his work to 
 the last degree. It is his critical outlook in these regions, 
 based on a coherent principle, that has been the source 
 of much of his influence in philosophy, and that has 
 continued to exercise a great influence even in our own 
 times. For there are few, if any, out-and-out Hegelians 
 left. The attempt he made to exhibit the entire universe 
 in systematic form has been adjudged too ambitious. 
 Even in recent British philosophy, such as that of Green, 
 Bradley, and Bosanquet, it is the spirit and not the letter 
 of Hegelianism that is apparent. But his influence, 
 indirect as well as direct, has been enormous, and it is in 
 both this country and America, and now also in India, 
 apparent to-day as much more alive than it has been in 
 Germany for fifty years past. 
 
 The Germans are fond of saying that they have made 
 more out of Shakespeare than we in Britain have. This 
 saying may or may not have some colour of truth. But 
 it is probably still more true that we have made more 
 out of Hegel than they have. 
 
 I shall not try to describe even briefly what Hegel 
 taught the world in Hegel's language. What I wish 
 to do is to inquire what is the point of view in which his 
 teaching has culminated. To this I proceed. For not 
 only is he still well worth study even to-day, but those 
 who have not studied him hard and wrestled with his 
 text are scarcely fully equipped for the investigation 
 which a modern philosophical critic has to undertake. I 
 often observe in otherwise able writers easy conclusions 
 about him, based on materials supplied by middlemen. 
 Yet no such source of supply will do. The fountain-head 
 must be sought. Modern Germany has in the main forgotten 
 him, and into modern Britain and America and India his real 
 lesson, like the lesson taught by Aristotle whom he brought 
 back to life for us, has only of late years penetrated. Even 
 to-day some of his most interesting criticisms, such as those 
 in the Zusdtze of the Philosophy of Mind, which were omitted 
 by the late Professor Wallace in his admirable translation 
 of the book, are accessible only in the original text. 
 
 As I interpret him, he broke definitely and finally with 
 Kant's attempt to treat knowledge as an instrument 
 which we can hold out and look at as something capable 
 of being critically dissected ab extra into constituent parts. 
 
HEGEL'S VIEW OF KNOWLEDGE 341 
 
 For Hegel knowledge in its comprehensive meaning was 
 the foundation and source of all that was, is, and can 
 be, the medium of all possible existence, culminating at 
 its highest degree in the exhibition of the distinction 
 between the self and its object as superseded. It is for 
 him within and through knowledge that this and every 
 other distinction is made, whether between real and 
 unreal, or fact and fancy, or being and knowing. For 
 him the Absolute was knowledge taken in the wide sense 
 in which it presents the aspects both of experience and of 
 what is experienced, according as we approach it in 
 reflection. Reality is an experience that embraces what 
 is felt and willed not less than what is thought. Know- 
 ledge is our fundamental fact, the " That " from which 
 we start and outside which we cannot get. Mere feeling 
 and mere thought are only asymptotic limits which we 
 set before ourselves in our attempts to unravel our experi- 
 ence. If we marshal its riches adequately it will unravel 
 itself before us. For its form is to be not only individual 
 but dynamic. Universal and particular unite in the 
 individual reality as its moments. This is so because the 
 form contains thought as much as feeling, and is con- 
 tinuously self-developing and not static, the activity of 
 subject and not of substance. The individual is always 
 breaking out beyond itself into the infinity of its relations. 
 There are thoughts and therefore universals which we 
 fix for the moment in judgments of understanding. We 
 believe that we can put them into nutshells, and we try. 
 But, in language which the late Lord Macnaghten used 
 about the " Rule in Shelley's Case," it is one thing to 
 put these ideas into a nutshell and quite another to 
 keep them there. The ideal of truth is the whole, and 
 knowledge is always reaching beyond itself after a larger 
 entirety which abstract thinking is constantly forced to 
 seek as qualifying the apparently static " That." For from 
 the " That " the " What " is never severable, nor does it 
 itself ever stand still. In the phases of experience of which 
 Hegel speaks the universal is nothing apart from the 
 particular, and the particular as such, taken by itself, is 
 equally unreal. Both, as I have said earlier, are abstrac- 
 tions. The only actual is the individual fact from which 
 they are abstractions non-existent in independence. The 
 essence of such an actual is that identity in difference which 
 
342 THE HEGELIAN PRINCIPLE 
 
 is intelligible only when mind has an object in which its 
 own character is expressed. So alone can the whole be 
 latent in its completeness in every detail. Because its 
 essence is to embody such a whole the individual is always 
 breaking out, in the intellectual setting outside which it 
 has no significance whatever, in the activity from which 
 it is inseparable, into relations, into predicates, into 
 universals, which have yet no substance apart from the 
 facts they qualify, facts which appear as particular only 
 for the abstraction through which our apprehension strips 
 and isolates its work. Thought is relational, but for 
 Hegel it is more than relational. It is always transcending 
 this phase by seeking for further wholes in which the re- 
 lations it establishes are included and superseded. Such is 
 the movement of experience. It is our experience, yet we, 
 found in it as finite, are only so found by distinctions which 
 thought makes within the field of its own reality. As in 
 its activity the moment of the subject comes into 
 prominence, we are carried by reflection beyond the idea 
 of self as only a sentient and intelligent organism existing 
 within a world which controls as well as confronts it. 
 It is so that we have experience at its degrees in the 
 order of reality, and it is only through reflection that we 
 become aware that such experience points beyond itself 
 to the conception of an entirety in which subject and the 
 object in knowledge cease to appear divergent, a self- 
 contained system outside which there is nothing, inasmuch 
 as there is and can be no meaning to be attached to 
 existence outside or beyond it. Such an idea we who exist 
 in point of fact as finite centres, conditioned by our station 
 in the world, cannot visualise. It cannot be yielded by 
 the particulars of sensation. It is intelligible only 
 mediately and for reflection, not by direct apprehension. 
 Nevertheless it is the truth about the object- world, and 
 is that in reference to which such a world alone has a 
 meaning. This is the Hegelian Begriff or " Notion," and 
 its completion, when its full implication in the entire 
 system of its activity is before us, is the Hegelian system. 
 
 Now, how does Hegel get at this result ? What is his 
 method ? To understand this we have again to turn to 
 his first great work, the account of his " voyage of dis- 
 covery," published in 1807, under the title of the 
 Phenomenology of Mind. The book was finished, in the 
 
HIS PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND 343 
 
 autumn of 1806, amid the rattling of sabres. Napoleon 
 entered the little university town of Jena while Hegel 
 was putting his last touches to his work. " I have seen 
 the World Spirit," writes Hegel characteristically to a 
 friend : "it was on horseback." 
 
 It is the world spirit, in a wider meaning than the 
 domination of Europe by any one man, that Hegel set 
 himself to consider in his Phenomenology ; it is the pene- 
 tration of experience by thought. He starts from what 
 seems simplest and least mediated by reflection, and 
 assumes the role of a passive observer who watches the 
 work of reflection, playing not only on what is externally 
 apprehended, but on what is of its own nature. I notice 
 that it is now noon, and I write it down. But no sooner 
 have I done so than this immediate truth has ceased to be 
 immediate. It belongs to the past. It was then noon. 
 Now it is a quarter past noon. " Now," which appeared to 
 be given to me as an inert and particular character in per- 
 ception, turns out, as soon as I try to fix it, to have been 
 fashioned through an active if abstract universal, real 
 only in a succession of singular or individual occurrences. 
 It is the same throughout with the " Here " and the 
 " Now " ; the " This " and the " That " ; the " I " and 
 the " You." It is as universals that they have meaning 
 and remain enduring in a succession of singulars, the 
 nature of which is always to be developing new relations 
 for itself. This is why scientific truth is always abstract. 
 The self-developing character of the immediately real 
 never stands still, for what is immediate derives its 
 stability and permanent significance from the thought in 
 which it sets itself. Goethe knew this when he wrote 
 the lines in which, in the Prologue to Faust, he makes it 
 a command from God to man to strive to hold fast the 
 best in life by setting it in thought that endures. 
 
 The penetration of mind into reality is everywhere 
 apparent. Mind is not a thing merely confronted by 
 another thing, its environment. It is an activity, a power 
 that at every point makes that environment what it is for 
 us and what it is in itself. It contains within itself the 
 environment, as well as the centre for the reflection in 
 which its objects are focussed ; finds itself as what makes 
 these objects real ; and establishes the distinction between 
 itself and them. As I look out on the country that lies 
 
344 THE HEGELIAN PRINCIPLE 
 
 in front of the window at which I am at this particular 
 moment writing, I see that great truth everywhere 
 exemplified. Relativity is the order of the day. If 
 there is matter which seems inert it is only because for 
 practical purposes I regard it as such. The corn grows 
 up as if purposively realising an end, by transforming the 
 soil and moisture about it and making them parts of a 
 living vegetation. Life is everywhere, and the more I 
 look closely at what seems to be its environment, the 
 more I find that environment to have its meaning only 
 in relation to life. If I regard it otherwise, as the mathe- 
 matician, the physicist, and the chemist must do, it is 
 in order to isolate and fix aspects gotten by abstractions 
 which do not exhaust its reality ; in other words, to get 
 knowledge belonging to different orders in reflection, and 
 affording degrees in that reality. The stages in the 
 panorama which unrolls itself in front of me, the self- 
 presentation of the hills, of the river, of the trees, and 
 of the men and women who are working in the fields, none 
 of these disclose a single or exclusive degree of reality. 
 All are present as aspects that are not separate existences, 
 but are the outcome of different standpoints that imply 
 each other in the entirety which underlies my experience 
 of each taken as singular. The rocks are worn down by 
 the water, and are required to furnish the material which 
 life incorporates and exhibits at a new stage for reflection. 
 The basic slag, which is the refuse from the ironworks, 
 serves the life that incorporates it into organic existence 
 as a valuable manure. The farmer and the farm servants 
 respect each other as personalities, brought into unison 
 in their labours by the common purposes of the conscious 
 intelligence which assigns to them their places in a 
 kingdom of ends. Everywhere nature shows aspects 
 which are degrees in relationship only in a known that 
 has no significance separable from its being known. As 
 Aristotle long ago pointed out, the antithesis between 
 matter and form is a fluent one. What is in one reference 
 matter is in another reference form. Wood, he told us, in 
 relation to the finished house is matter ; in relation to the 
 growing tree in which it is alive, it is form. So the soul 
 in relation to the body is form, in relation to reason it is 
 matter. The Aristotelian conception was that the 
 totality of existence constituted a graduated scale, of 
 
ARISTOTLE AND HEGEL 
 
 which the lowest degree was a " first matter " entirely 
 without form, and the highest a " last form " entirely 
 without matter. What finds itself between these limits 
 is in one aspect matter, in another form, and each 
 is constantly translating itself into the other in a 
 process of what for the great thinker was a process 
 of becoming, through higher and ideal formations in 
 reflection. 
 
 The Hegelian conception of experience in the Phenomeno- 
 logy is not different in principle. For Hegel, too, relations 
 which are only intelligible as being akin to those of thought 
 are constantly breaking through the abstractness of a 
 supposed mutual externality, and disclose the real as a 
 series of stages in quality. The series does not appear 
 as one of mere succession in time, for time from the 
 psychological point of view is itself but a form of abstract 
 externality. Still, apart from series in some shape, and 
 from notions which it implies, the riches of the world as 
 it appears are inexplicable and unmeaning. Substance 
 and cause are notions that pass over into each other in 
 reflection. The effect is in one view identical with the 
 sum of the conditions that constitute its ground. In 
 another view the distinction between the cause and what 
 follows on it is vital and cannot be ignored, inasmuch as 
 adequacy of thought requires it. Thought, conceived as 
 giving rise in its activity to the standpoints from which it 
 treats reality in the experience that is its object, is for 
 Hegel the ground fact of the Universe, and it is the play 
 of thought in its self-development that is the spectacle 
 he seeks to unfold in the Phenomenology, alike in the 
 world and in the self. 
 
 The ground forms of such foundational thinking, taken 
 in their relation to each other as a self-completing series 
 of abstract categories which culminate in an entirety, is, 
 as I have observed earlier, the subject of Hegel's Logic. 
 It is thus a metaphysic which deals only with conceptions 
 got by abstraction from the actual. The advantage of so 
 treating them is that their significance can be ascertained, 
 and a dialectical movement of thought can be exhibited 
 in which the relational form, into which the sharp dis- 
 tinctions made by understanding throw our judgments, 
 is superseded by being made subservient to the end that 
 takes shape in the entirety of the process. This entirety 
 
346 THE HEGELIAN PRINCIPLE 
 
 is the " Idea," and his Logic exhibits it in a form in which 
 it and its contents are not more than mere abstractions. 
 The counter-abstraction to its character as a kingdom of 
 universals is described in his Philosophy of Nature, where 
 externality in space and time, the primary characteristic 
 of particularity, appears as reality under another aspect, 
 which cannot stand by itself, or even be stated in the 
 form of mere particulars. The abstractions of the Logic 
 and the counter-abstractions of the Philosophy of Nature, 
 have meaning and reality only as the universal and 
 particular moments which are implied in our experience 
 and in the individual form which distinguishes it. Neither 
 set is created by or can be deduced from the other. Such 
 abstractions have existence merely from a metaphysical 
 outlook, and attain to factual reality only in the mind 
 in which they combine. But because it implies, not 
 merely pure thought, but the natural aspect also, mind, 
 which is thus inseparable from the particular, from one 
 point of view arises through nature. It is, therefore, at 
 its lower degrees of actuality, finite. But it is also pre- 
 supposed by nature which attains reality only in it. Mind 
 can thus exhibit an ascending order of degrees, and accord- 
 ingly it presents aspects, depending on these in their order 
 and character, as belonging to self-consciousness, not 
 only in the individual, but in the family, the state, and the 
 embodiments of intelligence in ethical and juridical systems. 
 The Prussian constitution, as I have said, was, for Hegel, a 
 fact of experience to be investigated in its place just like any 
 other. Its position in the panorama of the world's history 
 and the logical significance of its structure had to be ex- 
 amined. But beyond this Prussian state and beyond every 
 other were the ideals and degrees in reality realised in 
 spiritual life, in Art, in Religion, and in the knowledge that 
 has so emancipated itself from limited ends and consequent 
 undue abstractions that it can take account of the object- 
 world as in ultimate analysis that in which mind finds 
 itself and nothing outside or beyond itself. 
 
 It is just mind, taken at the highest stage it reaches 
 through Art, through Religion, through Philosophy, that 
 finds God as immanent in it, and experience rightly 
 interpreted to be the real revealing itself. A direct and 
 immediate apprehension of the full truth is not possible 
 for an intelligence that is throughout hampered by the 
 
THE CONTINGENT 347 
 
 moment of the particular, and is bound up with bodily 
 organs and with nature itself. We are in the world though 
 not of it, and we cannot escape from the external and 
 the contingent. The particularity of the very self opens 
 the door for error and for sin. For, as we have seen, if 
 nature has its foundation in mind, mind has its finite 
 aspects through nature. That is how the irrational and 
 contingent arises and confuses mankind, and that is why 
 the reflective consciousness has a long path to travel 
 towards its emancipation from the deadening mass of what 
 confronts it. But as we comprehend we transcend, and 
 thought, even when conditioned by an inseparable sense 
 of finiteness, is in its nature infinite. By the use of 
 concepts which, though always abstract may be not the 
 less true, by the power of reason, it can thus reach 
 conclusions about God as well as about man. For the 
 difficulties and the mysteries have their fountain and 
 origin in a limitation which it is aware of and, just for 
 that reason, is ever passing beyond. 
 
 Such, as I understand it, is the underlying principle of 
 the Hegelian view of the relation of the cosmos to the 
 completed entirety of knowledge, the Idea realising itself 
 in mind with the combination of general and particular 
 moments in its activity. The factors in that activity are 
 the abstractions of universal and particular. The actual 
 is always concrete and is self -developing experience. It 
 is a view not far divergent from that of Aristotle, whose 
 teaching had influenced it profoundly. It may be too 
 ambitious. It may be impossible for thought, con- 
 ditioned by nature as it is, to penetrate as far as Hegel 
 attempted to penetrate in his system. But at least the 
 attempt stands out like that of the great Greek, whom 
 Dante calls " the Master of those who know," as belonging 
 to the highest level in the history of human effort in 
 knowledge. We may hesitate before accepting the 
 Hegelian conclusions, as we hesitate to-day to accept what 
 was told us by Aristotle. But in each case the method 
 employed is of a great order, and it is the method that is 
 of most importance. The reader lays down both exposi- 
 tions stimulated in his faith in the value of a sustained 
 effort to see things steadily and to see them whole from 
 an outlook that admits no limitation to the " wonderful 
 might of thought." If thought can penetrate at all into 
 
318 THE HEGELIAN PRINCIPLE 
 
 the millstone that is inevitably there for finite minds 
 that are organically conditioned, Aristotle and Hegel 
 have got some way in enabling us at least to see into the 
 general nature of the millstone. 
 
 I have now tried to say what can be said about the 
 Hegelian principle in the compass of a few pages. I have 
 confined myself purposely to its bearing on the doctrine 
 of relativity in knowledge, a bearing which appears very 
 close. I conclude this chapter by repeating that no 
 philosophical doctrine has been more misrepresented or 
 given to the world in a more distorted form than has been 
 Hegelianism in current literature. It is only now that 
 we are beginning to understand what Hegel really meant 
 to do. This has been partly due to the abstract and 
 almost pedantic way in which he has expounded his own 
 thoughts. But the thoughts are all set out in his writings. 
 It is his apparently too ambitious manner of exposition, 
 and also the rubbish with which many of his disciples 
 and commentators proceeded to overlay his system, which 
 have disguised from us his real meaning. But the lesson 
 he taught has already been assimilated by many. It 
 took over two thousand years for us moderns to think 
 ourselves back into the real significance of the teaching 
 of Plato and Aristotle. It seems, however, as if less time 
 would be really required to penetrate through the crust 
 with which the Hegelian principle has got overlaid. 
 
PART IV 
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS ENVIRONMENT 
 
 24 349 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE RELATION OF MAN TO SOCIETY 
 
 UP to this stage what we have been concerned with has 
 been primarily the theoretical aspect of knowledge. But 
 knowledge is more than merely theoretical. It not only 
 issues in action, but it is action. It does not leave its 
 world as it finds it. As the principle of relativity shows, 
 it shapes appearance and reality alike in nature. It is 
 the fact that both of these stand to it in a relationship 
 which j is in a measure dependent even on the organic life in 
 which knowledge expresses itself. Colours, for example, 
 may vary in the perceptions of different individuals. 
 Knowledge is, however, not the less spontaneous and 
 self-determining, and so are the external forms which it 
 assumes in natural and social life. 
 
 Just as we are free in what we call theoretical knowledge, 
 so are we free in the kind of knowledge which assumes 
 the form of choice. We can select on our own initiative. 
 And just as what we know theoretically is independent of 
 the individual subject, in so far as both arise within 
 knowledge and have it, in its foundational character, as 
 their common basis, so it is with value and the choice 
 of value. Values are in their essence independent of the 
 individual subject who selects them, inasmuch as if they 
 did not owe their significance and reality to something 
 else than his arbitrary selection there would be no objec- 
 tive world of the good and the beautiful, any more than 
 there would be of the true. When we know what we know 
 is an actual and real world that is independent of our 
 subjectivity, in so far as that subjectivity is but a 
 derivative result, the distinction between which and its 
 object-world is a distinction which falls within the foun- 
 dational character of mind itself, as resulting from it. 
 If we approve of some end or of some possible action as 
 
 301 
 
352 THE RELATION OF MAN TO SOCIETY 
 
 right or as beautiful, we recognise it as not dependent for 
 being so on an arbitrary choice. It is so and cannot, 
 the conditions remaining unchanged, be otherwise. 
 Here, as in the other cases, we find degrees and differences 
 of level in knowledge and reality. 
 
 The fact is only another illustration of the principle 
 that the individual is always more than at first sight he 
 seems to be. Whether it is the individual as the active 
 subject in knowledge, or the individual object of that 
 knowledge, what becomes apparent is that we are dealing 
 with neither a fleeting particular nor a merely static 
 universal. It is the universal that is active in individual 
 form, and is therefore always dynamic as pointing beyond 
 itself. The universal moment gives the identity which 
 is not the less identity that is real only in difference and 
 constant change. The static aspect of the actual is due 
 to the abstraction which hypostatises the universal moment 
 into what is unreal, save for the legitimate purpose for 
 which abstraction is applied in clarifying and communi- 
 cating knowledge. 
 
 Value in its ethical and aesthetic sense is thus the 
 outcome of the root principle of degrees. We cannot 
 challenge the ultimate standards of such value or express 
 them in terms of what is lower. Just as the organism is 
 no mere aggregate of isolated particles, so the good and 
 the beautiful are no mere preponderances of atomic 
 pleasures. Hedonism has always failed as an adequate 
 expression of the facts. It is only in the terms that are 
 peculiar to themselves that we can even speak properly 
 of the good and the beautiful. They are what they are 
 because they stand for independent stages in mind. If 
 the phenomenal world in which they are illustrated and 
 expressed is but transitory, they themselves, as principles, 
 on which even its changing aspects depend for their 
 reality in time, are not transitory. For they are the 
 conditions apart from which what appears in time cannot 
 so appear. 
 
 We have seen how mechanism, life, and personality 
 present themselves as belonging to different levels in the 
 real world, levels of which the explanation cannot be 
 found by trying to construct what is higher out of what 
 is lower, but must be looked for rather in abstractions 
 made from above downwards from a yet fuller reality. 
 
VALUES 353 
 
 To the region of personality belong the phenomena of 
 the degrees of goodness and beauty. It is the will that 
 is good. It is for the mind, and for the mind only, 
 that beauty is born and is there. Goodness and beauty 
 are what have been called tertiary qualities, but they are 
 as much aspects of actual fact as mechanism or life. The 
 emphasis is here on what is personal, the relation of the 
 free subject to the object- world of which in certain aspects 
 it forms part. But neither that world nor the mind 
 which it confronts is capable of being adequately 
 described apart from the recognition of these aspects as 
 integral to the entirety. 
 
 If we begin with the good, the first thing that strikes 
 us is that the region in which we have to seek it is that 
 of the free person. He can choose, and in certain phases 
 of his choice it is an individual and inward standard 
 which appeals to him, a standard set up by his con- 
 science. He knows the difference between right and 
 wrong, and his inmost self bids him choose what is right. 
 He stands before a tribunal, and the tribunal is his own 
 self, his self at a higher level than that at which it pursues 
 the merely pleasant. Just as in man knowledge is the 
 medium within which the individual self develops and 
 expresses itself, so it is with the individual will. The 
 form here is that of choice, active preference, a process, 
 not a mere isolated event in time. And the reality of 
 this activity cannot be understood apart from a higher 
 degree in that reality than the isolated and fragmentary 
 volition of the individual, looked at in his aspect of one 
 organism among a numerical multitude. In all of these, 
 just as there is identity in their thinking, so there is 
 identity in their ends in volition. 
 
 In the next chapter we shall have to examine the possi- 
 bility of what is called a general will, and to see what 
 are the limits of the conception and what it actually 
 means. At present it is sufficient to suggest that it may 
 prove to be the individual mind in its larger significance, 
 as dominated by ends that in other individuals are identical 
 with its own. This may afford explanation, not only of 
 morality strictly so called, but of much besides to which 
 we shall come presently. 
 
 What we call conscience is this sense of ends of higher 
 value and obligation than any that are concerned with 
 
854 THE RELATION OF MAN TO SOCIETY 
 
 merely personal interests. Conscience is what, when his 
 sense of it is fully awakened, man recognises as his private 
 tribunal, his own court for decision between values. But 
 it is private only in so far as its scope is the life of the 
 particular man, not the less that he is more than a mere 
 isolated individual. The sanction is subjective, and it is 
 binding on himself as an individual subject. He has in 
 this region no right to force his decision as regards himself 
 in the same fashion on his neighbours, however certain 
 he may feel about that decision in his own case. The very 
 loftiness of the motive which makes a man think more of 
 the interests of his neighbour than of himself, or that bids 
 him sell his goods and give the price to the poor in 
 obedience to an inward call, renders that motive in the 
 highest cases incapable of being made a rule of universal 
 application in any positive form. To make it so would 
 be to trench on the freedom of other persons to seek and 
 follow the dictates of their own consciences. That was 
 why Kant's attempt failed, the attempt to lay down as the 
 canon for all conduct that it should conform to an obliga- 
 tion to act at all times from maxims fit to be universal rules. 
 When this was worked out in relation to human society it 
 appeared that such maxims could be no more than merely 
 negative, and must prove inadequate as guides to daily life. 
 Morality, properly so called, is not enough for citizen- 
 ship. Society requires binding rules of a positive char- 
 acter, and institutions by means of which these can be 
 made effective. Such rules must restrain effectively 
 arbitrariness in individual conduct, in the interests of the 
 community. Without them others could not have freedom 
 to live their lives. But such rules are, as we shall see 
 later on, simply the embodiment or expression in objective 
 form of the common purposes of mankind living in the 
 groups in which it is distributed. Law, properly so called, 
 whether civil or criminal, consists of certain regulations 
 for conduct which have been laid down publicly, either 
 directly or in virtue of delegated authority, by the sovereign 
 power of the state. There has been such a delegation even 
 when a railway company, acting with statutory authority 
 conferred on it, makes bye-laws, for these derive their 
 binding character in reality from the government of the 
 state, and while unrevoked are laws as binding as Acts 
 of Parliament. 
 
LAW 355 
 
 But law is more than a mere command. It is this 
 indeed, but it has a significance which cannot be under- 
 stood apart from the history and spirit of the nation 
 whose law it is. Larger conceptions than those of the 
 mere lawyer are required for the appreciation of that 
 significance, conceptions which belong to the past, and 
 which fall within the province of the moralist and the 
 sociologist. Without these we are sometimes unable to 
 determine what is and what is not part of the law. 
 Anyone familiar with the proceedings of law courts knows 
 how often the historical method has to be applied, in ascer- 
 taining, for example, the principles which decide the 
 invalidity of contracts as offending against public policy. 
 In England considerations may have to be taken into 
 account differing from those which would obtain in a like 
 case on the Continent. The laws contain general rules of 
 conduct, expressed in objective form, and enforced by 
 sanctions applied by the state. But they are not always 
 to be found expressed in definite and unchanging form, 
 and the tribunal which enforces them often has to consider 
 a context of a far-reaching character, a context which may 
 have varied from generation to generation, and which 
 may render even a written rule obsolete, or make it 
 necessary to apply one that is unwritten and about which 
 ethical judgments are at variance. There is also a large 
 class of cases which come within the law, but which the 
 judges feel themselves unable to decide. When the 
 question is whether a van has been driven negligently, or 
 whether a contract for carriage has been made with suffi- 
 ciently clear notice given that the contractor has only 
 undertaken to convey on certain terms, the terms, for 
 instance, that he is to be exempt from the liability that 
 would be implied had be been silent, the question whether 
 in such cases the course that has actually been followed 
 was proper and sufficient may turn on no general principle 
 of law strictly so called. It may depend, not on abstract 
 rules which cannot take account of all the particular 
 considerations that ought to be weighed, but on what 
 reasonable men of the world would say that their fellow- 
 man ought in the individual situation to have done. In 
 other words, the judges confine themselves to defining the 
 question and to saying what is admissible as evidence on 
 its merits, and leave the decision of what is to be regarded 
 
356 THE RELATION OF MAN TO SOCIETY 
 
 as legally right or wrong in the particular case to a jury, 
 or, it may even be, to themselves as mere judges of fact. 
 For what has to be determined here is just how a reason- 
 able person, acting as other reasonable men would do, 
 ought to have conducted himself. 
 
 In these, as in other instances, the province of law 
 overlaps part of the province of a different kind of obliga- 
 tion which usually has no legal sanction at all, and may 
 also fall far short of the obligations of conscience. In 
 this latter province, a far more extensive one, we find a 
 system, coloured by community tradition, in which also 
 individual conduct is regulated and controlled. But such 
 control has in most cases no legal sanction attaching to 
 it, notwithstanding that it applies, just as law ought to 
 do, to all the members of society alike without distinction 
 of person. We have never had in the English language 
 a distinctive name for it, and this has been unfortunate 
 because of confusion both in thought and expression 
 which has arisen from defective terminology. In German 
 the system to which I am referring has been marked off 
 as that of Sittlichkeit. This is the system of habitual 
 or customary conduct, which may overlap the field of 
 much of what is covered by morality, as well as of much 
 of what falls within law, and which embraces all these 
 rules for conduct on the part of members of a community 
 which general opinion asserts that it is " bad form " or 
 " not the thing " to disregard. The general sense attaches 
 to these rules a sanction to this extent, that the man who 
 disregards them is in peril of being " cut," or at least of 
 being looked on askance. The system is so generally 
 accepted and enforced by opinion that no one can venture 
 to ignore it without in some way suffering at the hands 
 of his neighbours. If a man maltreats his wife and 
 children, or habitually inconveniences his fellow-citizens 
 in the public streets, he is pretty sure to find himself the 
 worse off in the end, even if he has not broken any law. 
 It not only does not pay in the end to do such things, but 
 the decent man does not wish to do them. What he looks 
 to is the standard of the community of which he is a 
 member. He has everywhere around him an object- 
 lesson in the conduct of respectable people in the com- 
 munity to which he and they belong. Without habitual 
 self-restraint on the part of the natural man, that is the 
 
GOOD FORM 357 
 
 man as tending to yield to animal impulses, there could be 
 no tolerable social life, and real freedom for human society 
 could not be enjoyed. 
 
 It is this sense of obligation towards others, not merely 
 subjective, like that of conscience, and not external, like 
 that of law, that is the chief foundation of freedom 
 within a civilised community, and also of the institutional 
 forms of such a community. The reality of the system 
 takes shape in family life and in other social institutions. 
 It is not limited to particular forms, and it is capable of 
 manifesting itself in fresh aspects and of developing and 
 changing old ones. The civil community is more than 
 a mere political fabric. It includes all the social institu- 
 tions in and by which individual life and development 
 are influenced, such as are the family, the school, the 
 church, the local assembly. It extends its moulding 
 influence to the legislature and to the executive. None of 
 these can subsist adequately in isolation from the others. 
 They embody different kinds of general purpose, and are 
 expressions in varying forms of that purpose in such a 
 fashion that society appears as an organic whole which 
 includes the nation and may extend beyond it. 
 
 But if these purposes are to be effectively expressed 
 they must themselves be living and effective in their moving 
 power. For if they become feeble the institutions of which 
 they are the foundation will also become feeble and 
 begin to lose cohesion. Different nations excel in their 
 Sittlichkeit in different fashions. The spirit of a great 
 community and its ideals may vary from those of other 
 communities. Moreover, nations sometimes present the 
 spectacle of having degenerated in this respect. The 
 world is always changing, and the nations within it change 
 their levels, and not invariably for the better. 
 
 That the system of what is " good form " or " the thing 
 to do " is not coincident with the systems of morality and 
 law, is on occasions quite apparent. The duel has been 
 generally condemned in this country both by morality 
 and by law. Yet to shrink from it used not very long 
 since to be what social opinion could not tolerate. That 
 has changed. But more recently, while the war spirit 
 was at its height, we had opportunities of observing 
 the same phenomenon of antinomies arising between 
 conscientious conviction and social opinion. Some- 
 
358 THE RELATION OF MAN TO SOCIETY 
 
 thing of the same kind is true of gambling and gambling 
 debts. 
 
 What is essential for the strength of such a system of 
 social opinion is that it should have become a matter of 
 habit and of second nature. The well-behaved person 
 does not ordinarily have to reflect on how he ought to 
 behave himself. Good form, in the street or in the 
 parlour, is with him almost instinctive, and he is the 
 more appreciated the more this is characteristic of 
 him. For his action is neither due to the reflective but 
 unconstrained dictates of his conscience on the one 
 hand, nor to his knowledge of the statute book, with the 
 penalties it prescribes, on the other. The explanation 
 of his fitness to be a member of society is that he is no 
 isolated particle, but a person living in relation to his 
 fellow human beings, and permeated by ends held in 
 common with them, by which, however little consciously, 
 his conduct is influenced at every turn. It is by the 
 fulness of the life of the whole as shown in his activity 
 that he is judged, and his individuality becomes larger 
 and not smaller by his acceptance of the duties he owes 
 to those around him. 
 
 The self is thus no static substance, but is dynamic 
 subject. The activity of such a subject has a diversity of 
 forms. It is reflective, in the face of the world which con- 
 fronts it and in which it exists. But it is also a moulding 
 force with power over its surroundings. This power it 
 exercises when it wills and acts in furtherance of its choice 
 in so willing. The power may be great or may be small. 
 But it is a power which is to a very great extent exercised 
 for ends and through means to these ends which are 
 identical for all the individual subjects who constitute 
 the group or the community. For the self, as we have 
 seen, is what it is in the region and at a level of knowledge 
 which is identical throughout its differences in diverse 
 individuals. The ends are therefore in like manner, not 
 mere events existing in externality and only resembling 
 each other, but the same for mind in its multitudinous 
 forms of self-expression. Organisms exist separately in 
 space and time. But these, even though unconscious, 
 are self-directed in the fulfilment of ends that are not 
 external, and much more clearly is this the case with 
 what we distinguish as separate intelligences in the 
 
THE HUMAN SOUL 359 
 
 organisms through which they are expressed. The soul 
 that has reached the level of being a self is self-determining. 
 Its energy is of a nature to which the principle of con- 
 servation that rules in the mechanical world has no appli- 
 cation. Mind as we observe it in the self initiates, and in 
 initiating creates, as Bergson and others have impressed 
 on us. The self is not only capable of free choice, but, 
 because it is rational, it chooses some ends in preference 
 to others. It chooses these because it has latent in it 
 higher standpoints of its own existence, at which these 
 ends represent for it good as distinguished from evil, and 
 beauty as distinguished from ugliness. The differences 
 in such levels are apparent, and, while we are free to 
 choose, we feel ourselves morally and aesthetically impelled 
 to choose what is better. Difference expresses itself in 
 the form of distinction between values, and these values 
 are for us radical facts. When perceived we cannot 
 ignore them without standing self-condemned, condemned 
 that is to say by our higher nature, a nature which we 
 feel an obligation to awaken and to keep awake. It is 
 in this sense that these values are foundational, just as 
 truth is foundational in theoretical reflection. Behind 
 them we do not go. We may misconceive and distort 
 them, just as we may fall into error in reasoning. It is 
 of our nature so to do, for we are free agents and uncon- 
 strained. But back to them we come, just as we always 
 in the end seek for deliverance from error and for the 
 attainment of truth. We have a sense of moral and 
 aesthetic responsibility, just as we have the sense of 
 intellectual responsibility. The two are cognate, and 
 their origin is the fact that even in daily life the self has 
 a higher level than that of simple particularism. 
 
 Just as we find the nature of truth to lie in systematic 
 as distinguished from merely fragmentary apprehension, 
 so we find value to be more than particular in its character. 
 The individual shapes that it presents have as their dis- 
 tinguishing quality identity in their differences. Value 
 implies choice, and choice in fulfilment of a consciously 
 adopted purpose. It therefore implies personality, and 
 is no attribute that can belong to things taken in abstrac- 
 tion from the subject to which they are present. Value 
 falls within the domain of mind as such. But within 
 this domain there is an infinite variety in the nature of 
 
360 THE RELATION OF MAN TO SOCIETY 
 
 value. For instance, it may lie in the quality of a 
 pleasure, or it may consist in the accepted and satisfying 
 excellence of a moral action. But in neither case is the 
 value recognised referred for its standard to anything 
 below itself. The failure of hedonism as an account of the 
 facts is traceable to its insistence on reference to a lower 
 standard, quantity of satisfaction as the explanation of 
 level. Now level, or the degree which a special experience 
 expresses, is not something external to degrees that are 
 either lower or higher, so as to be capable of explanation 
 by genesis ab extra. It is a foundational fact, the relation 
 to which of the mind that is fully developed is recognised 
 by that mind. A dog does not make this recognition in 
 adequate form because his mind is not adequate to human 
 experience. A depraved person may not make it, for his 
 organic character may have debarred his soul from full 
 development. But a normal human being recognises 
 value just as he recognises truth or any other form of 
 reality. He may err, for he is free. He may not have 
 it in him to appreciate the highest forms. That is because 
 he is always to some extent conditioned by nature and 
 made unequal in the possession of her gifts to his more 
 fortunate fellow-men. But to a large extent he is capable 
 of truth here as elsewhere, and if he were not he would 
 not be a normal human being. 
 
 Just because of the difference between the capacities of 
 individuals there is always an average level which their 
 groups exhibit. It is this average level that results in the 
 standards of daily life. It determines what we look for 
 in quality of conscience, in the state of the law, and in the 
 habitual behaviour which does not fall below good form 
 in the group. The principles or rules which express the 
 average and minimum level at which the citizen is expected 
 to comport himself do not possess in themselves fixed 
 values. They may vary as the groups of individuals vary. 
 But they are the expressions in general or objective form 
 of what the relevant values mean within the group. They 
 may import something resembling ethical obligation or 
 aesthetic standard. In any case they stand for what we 
 think ought to move the will of the individuals who belong 
 to the group, be it a nation or be it less. They import, 
 too, a relation to the existence of the value in objective 
 form. Not, it may well be, as anything external, even in 
 
SOCIAL VALUES 861 
 
 the way in which law may be said to be external, but as 
 something actual in a high aspect of individual life, an 
 aspect in which the free choice of the individual will be 
 what is characterised by value. The activity of mind is 
 here no mere recognition of logical or of external sequence ; 
 it is a judgment about reality made for practical purposes, 
 and with reference to what exists. It is not concerned 
 with what belongs merely to the particularism of the 
 physical organism in which mind expresses itself in this 
 man or that. It is with what is of a general nature and 
 with identities in human purpose that this kind of mental 
 activity is concerned. It is choice in accordance with a 
 system, and such a system, in its varying forms, is the 
 standard by which we condemn or approve our choice in 
 particular instances. The value of man as a rational 
 being thus turns, not on external causation, not on his 
 impulses as a living organism, but on his capacity to rise 
 above these impulses in controlling himself, and to become 
 a citizen in a realm of higher ends. His will is that for 
 the exercise of which he is deeply responsible, not only as 
 regards others, but to himself as always more than he 
 seems at the moment to be. The world of his experience is 
 not static ; he and his surroundings may both be changing ; 
 what exists is ever in process of becoming superseded. 
 And yet there is continuity in the great principles on 
 which depends the value of human ends, alike in merely 
 theoretical knowledge and in that practical form of know- 
 ledge which is called choice. The two kinds of knowledge 
 not being really different the truth for both is of the 
 same character, and is what for us finite beings at all 
 events is never perfect. All we can be sure of is that there 
 are certain aspects which it presents that are foundational 
 to progress and ought therefore never to be ignored. It is 
 thus that values are for us not only objective, but in certain 
 phases unquestionable. What ought to be and what is 
 tend to come together. 
 
 The perplexity that is common about the reality of 
 values arises from the old notion that the mind is a kind 
 of thing that is confronted by some external authority 
 in its choice of standards. But if the mind has its definitive 
 nature as subject rather than substance, and in its self- 
 creating activity exists with different levels of outlook, 
 the control in the selection of its objects and in its 
 
362 THE RELATION OF MAN TO SOCIETY 
 
 recognition of their quality is one that belongs to itself and 
 falls within its own nature. Whatever the character of 
 our experience, whether it be theoretical or ethical or 
 aesthetic, it seems everywhere to disclose as actual varying 
 degrees in that character and in our kinds of knowledge. 
 According to the level which predominates we classify 
 the people with whom we come into contact. They do 
 not exist in any one form alone, and the worst of them is 
 potentially better than he seems to be. They exhibit 
 many incongruities in both mind and character. But we 
 classify them according to what seems to predominate, 
 often wrongly, from want of variety and scope in our own 
 outlook, but still with definite standards before our minds. 
 One set of persons in the main pursues pleasure of a lower 
 order ; another that of a higher nature. There are those 
 who are the creatures of their surroundings ; there are 
 others who live lives that are dedicated to high callings. 
 Some are for the most part content to remain under the 
 shadow of self ; there are others whose very existence is 
 an apparently unbroken record of decisions that have no 
 reference to their private interests. And so it is also 
 with relative capacity for the appreciation of the beautiful 
 and the true. In the main we classify through the kind 
 of conception that seems to dominate the end pursued, 
 just as we classify the kinds of knowledge by the concep- 
 tions under which it proceeds in the investigation of reality. 
 The ends which obtain in choice and the abstractions neces- 
 sarily made in reflection are alike those of a plurality of 
 orders which can neither be reduced to orders below them 
 nor be treated as indistinguishable without confusion being 
 the result. The difference between Portia and Sir John 
 Falstaff is one not of quantity but of quality, and it is a 
 difference that rests on principles that are foundational to 
 ethical judgment. 
 
 It is difficult to make this kind of abstract statement 
 about such difference in point of principles seem alive 
 when it is expressed in merely theoretical terms. It may 
 therefore be worth while to turn to an example of its em- 
 bodiment in that " most perfect form of speech," poetry. 
 Of such examples there are many, but one of the best is 
 that afforded by the second part of Faust. 
 
 Goethe disliked philosophy eo nomine. Yet that great 
 critic of life and knowledge had a penetrating insight into 
 
GOETHE'S FAUST 363 
 
 the substance of metaphysics. He had not only studied 
 Spinoza and, to some extent, Kant, but he was intimate 
 with Schiller, whose interest in these things was keen, 
 and, as readers of his correspondence with Zelter know, 
 he had seen much of Hegel. 
 
 As I have already pointed out by reference to the 
 passage quoted at p. 227 from the Spruche in Prosa, 
 Goethe had grasped the difference which separates the 
 categories of mechanism from the higher categories, and 
 distorts, when we do not keep this difference in kind 
 before the mind, our observation of facts. And he also 
 understood the soul that is conscious of high potentialities 
 in range and destiny, the soul of man at his best, and that 
 nothing enduring or satisfying can be hoped for from 
 merely piling up quantities of pleasure. That is why the 
 Deity, in the " Prologue in Heaven " at the beginning of 
 the first part of the poem, tells Mephistopheles, in the first 
 place, that He, the Lord, attaches a certain value to the 
 ceaseless activity of the devil, in so far as it keeps man, 
 always prone to err, from relapsing into slumber. But 
 He then goes on, after warning the devil that he is too 
 ignorant of higher things to succeed in the end, to address 
 to humanity, the true child of God, the injunction that in 
 enjoying the riches of life it must never cease in the 
 endeavour to hold these riches in bonds of love, and to 
 set the transient nature of what is passing in thoughts 
 that belong to the eternal. 
 
 The first part of the story of Faust is, as we might 
 expect from this, the record of a complete failure on the 
 part of Mephistopheles. To the high-trained scholar, 
 restored to his youth, but still a developed soul, he offers 
 pleasure piled upon pleasure, culminating in the seduction 
 of the innocent Gretchen. It is all in vain. There is no 
 point at which Faust can be brought to say to the 
 moment, " Stay, thou art fair." Sensual enjoyment 
 cannot prove for such a soul an enduring good. Faust 
 is disgusted with it. 
 
 The second part of the poem opens with the temptation 
 spread in more subtle forms. Faust, who is found sleeping 
 in the surroundings of beautiful nature, where he has been 
 sprinkled by the spirits with the waters of forgetfulness, is 
 awakened to new adventures. He enters into the life of 
 Courts, and becomes powerful and wealthy. His intelli- 
 
364 THE RELATION OF MAN TO SOCIETY 
 
 gence demands something more perfect than the forms of 
 art in his own period. He is transported to the surround- 
 ings of Ancient Greece, and is united to Helen of Troy. 
 Greek beauty is made to come to life again for him. But 
 this has been accomplished only for his own individual 
 development, and for that alone he has sought it. Such 
 concentration on self cannot satisfy. There are higher 
 standards. He is rich and powerful, if now old. He can 
 command what he pleases. The devil suggests to him 
 that he should build a castle and live there, surrounded 
 with every source of enjoyment, looked up to by all men, 
 and made famous by the poets. But the suggestion fails. 
 Faust replies : 
 
 " Die That 1st allea, 
 Nichts der Ruhm, 
 
 Von Allem 1st dir Nichta gewahrt 
 Was weisst du, was der Mensch begehrt, 
 Dein widrig Wesen, bitter, scharf, 
 Was weiss es, was der Mensch bedarf." 
 
 Finally Faust comes to a decision. He has formed a 
 plan of shutting out the sea from land of his which it is 
 overflowing, and so of increasing the extent of ground that 
 can be cultivated. But in getting this done, through no 
 evil intention of his own he turns out to have inflicted 
 cruel suffering on innocent people. He is now old. Care 
 breathes on him and blinds him, and he realises that in 
 this blindness he is submitting to what is some equivalent 
 for the pain he has caused. He feels that it is now for 
 others that he must use his power and riches, and no longer 
 for himself, and relief comes to his soul : 
 
 " Die Nacht scheint tiefer tief hereinzudringen 
 
 Allem im Innern leuchtet helles Licht ; 
 Was ich gedacht, ich eil' es zu vollbringen ; 
 Des Herren Wort, es gibt allein Gewicht." 
 
 He orders the work of reclamation to be pressed on. 
 He cannot now see its progress, but reports are brought 
 to him. The land is being won from the ocean, and it will 
 become fertile and remain so if those for whom he has 
 won it by using his power and wealth will daily work to 
 keep the dams he has made in repair, so that the tide 
 may be held back. This gives him a new view of human 
 
FAUST 365 
 
 happiness, the sense of well-being that is to be gained, 
 not by the attainment of some permanent and final result 
 that will remain so apart from daily effort, but of one that 
 is to be preserved intact only by work regularly done. It 
 is by giving them surroundings in which they may reap 
 the fruits of sustained and unbroken effort and of the 
 quality in it, that he feels he has at last discovered the 
 true fountain of happiness for them and himself alike. He 
 breaks out into what is to be the final exclamation of his 
 old age : 
 
 " Ja ! diesem Sinne bin ich ganz ergeben, 
 Das ist der Weisheit letzter Schluss, 
 Nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie das Leben, 
 Der taglich sie erobern muss. 
 Und so verbringt, umrungen von Gefahr, 
 Hier Kindheit, Mann und Greiss sein tucntig Jahr. 
 Solch ein Gewimmel mocht' ich sehn, 
 Auf freiem Grund mit freiem Volke stehn. 
 Zum Augenblicke durft' ich sagen : 
 Verweile doch, du bist so schon ! " 
 
 He falls back dead. Satan thinks the condition of the 
 original bond has been satisfied. But he is wrong. It 
 was not in any sense that he has comprehended that 
 Faust has said to the moment, " Stay, thou art fair." It 
 was because he has risen at last to a higher level of 
 spiritual existence, a level at which when attained his 
 redemption has been worked out. Quantity is superseded. 
 A new order has been reached, an order that belongs not 
 to time but to eternity : 
 
 " Alles Vergangliche 
 Ist nur ein Gleichniss ; 
 Das Unzulangliche 
 Hier wird's Ereigniss ; 
 Das Unbeschreibliche 
 Hier ist es gethan." 
 
 I have quoted the second part of Faust because it 
 illustrates in pictorial form what I have meant in speaking 
 of different kinds of experience, and by the underlying 
 conceptions which these kinds embody as distinctive of 
 them. Thought and conduct alike disclose themselves as 
 expressive of a variety of standpoints fundamentally 
 differing. No one realised this more keenly than Goethe, 
 and what we find in him we find also in Wordsworth, in 
 Browning, and in many of the reflective poets of the Vic- 
 25 
 
366 THE RELATION OF MAN TO SOCIETY 
 
 torian era. Goethe expressed the doctrine more definitely 
 than others, because his mind was pre-eminently of a 
 reflective character. In Faust he works out his doctrine 
 of Redemption, as self-emancipation from lower to higher, 
 progressively attained. For Faust the new heart and the 
 right spirit that were what was needful for salvation came 
 by slow degrees and only after a long and sustained effort. 
 But they came at last because, and only because, the 
 approach to the divine in man made them possible, by 
 virtue of controlling ends which he dwells on agaiR and 
 again, not only in Faust, but in his lyrical verses. There 
 is little attempt made by Goethe to throw the lessons he 
 taught into systematic or even consistent form. But his 
 success shows how, in the hands of a great artist who 
 is also a great thinker, metaphor and symbol may be 
 made potent as influences for awakening in the mind a 
 sense of the highest of which it is capable. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 
 
 Is there a General Will ? This is a question which has 
 given rise to much controversy, and to a discussion which 
 shows no sign of abatement. But much of the dispute 
 has apparently arisen from some of the parties in battle 
 array insisting on attributing to others views which they 
 do not hold. If it is assumed that the mind is a self- 
 contained and exclusive particular thing, that subsists 
 with no relations to other selves excepting those that 
 belong to externality, then it is obvious that there is no 
 entity apart which can properly be called a general will. 
 At most there can be resemblance of purpose-like activities 
 which, if they can be called common activities, can be so 
 called only in the sense that they resemble, in the way 
 in which outside things resemble each other. What we 
 have on this footing is analogy only. The question of a 
 general will in any other sense cannot properly arise 
 because its exclusion has been begged at the outset. 
 
 But suppose that this exclusion cannot be conceded ! 
 Suppose that the true nature of the self is that discussed 
 earlier ! Suppose that the everyday distinction between 
 selves takes its rise primarily in difference of organism ! 
 What then ? It has already been pointed out that such 
 a view does not necessarily imply that the self is something 
 merely superinduced on the organism. The latter may 
 present itself at degrees of various kinds in its reality, 
 and so may present itself as mind. If mind can recognise 
 mind as included in its object-world, that is easily intelli- 
 gible. I may find identity in thought between John 
 Smith and myself, identity so tempered by difference as 
 to give rise to a correspondence based on genuine sameness 
 pro tanto. If the principle of degrees be one which 
 characterises the entire universe, including knowledge 
 and its object alike, that is a natural inference. It 
 
 367 
 
868 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 
 
 results from the character of mind, which is that not of a 
 thing but of an intellectual activity which reaches over 
 the whole of the universe of discourse to which it gives 
 meaning, and creates for itself the distinction between the 
 self that knows and the reality of what it knows. To 
 this universe of discourse reflection sets no limit. The 
 self may be known as well as know, and the distinction 
 is its own work. It is only when the self is taken to be 
 no more than a static thing with position in space and 
 time, and when knowledge is assumed to be a property of 
 such a thing, that we fall into trouble. 
 
 If this be so the problem of community in will between 
 John Smith and myself presents a further aspect. In the 
 same sense as we think identically we will identically. For 
 mind apprehending and mind expressing itself in choice 
 are not separate entities. Thoughts and choices are not 
 events in an external world. Their consequences may be 
 different, but with these consequences they must not 
 themselves be confused. 
 
 If minds are no longer thought of as exclusive things, 
 with separate spatial and temporal positions, the doctrine 
 of a general will becomes less difficult. It can be no 
 outside compelling power, but must be just the corre- 
 spondence between volitions. Alike such volitions stand 
 for activity in thought, however much the consequences 
 due to such activity are distinguishable. John Smith 
 and I and our fellow-citizens co-operate in virtue of 
 identity in intelligence. It is a question not of things 
 but of thoughts. The result of our co-operation in the 
 activities which follow on our conclusions is our joint 
 contribution to the organisation of society and of the 
 state and the institutions that are social and political. 
 These institutions are thus the embodiments of really 
 common purpose. They are fully intelligible only at the 
 degrees in knowledge and reality which are those of the 
 mind they express. In them mind thus finds itself, as 
 Aristotle said long ago. In them I and you are spiritually 
 coincident, and it is spiritual and not physical coincidence 
 with which we are here concerned. At the level of reality 
 at which we stand when we recognise society and the 
 state, we recognise just ourselves and others as fellow- 
 citizens who think the same thoughts and make the same 
 decisions. 
 
THE GENERAL WILL 369 
 
 It is thus that we get to the common will. It is nothing 
 apart from our own wills. It is just our own wills at their 
 social level. Of course the purposes are largely concerned 
 with what lies beyond our individual control, just as merely 
 theoretical knowledge is concerned with a field that 
 stretches far beyond the actual capacity of the individual. 
 Various degrees of reality may be disclosed by the objects 
 of the common will. Our reflection and volition both 
 imply plurality in level. It is not in every aspect of our 
 world that the identity is obvious that is characteristic of 
 mind, or for that matter even of its correspondences. For 
 we are separate organisms, notwithstanding that these 
 organisms express intelligence and behave as doing so. 
 It is only when we confine ourselves to the category of 
 substance, and so are held to the level of w T hich that 
 category is determinant, that the principle on which the 
 reality of a common will rests is difficult to understand. 
 As interpreted by reference to the doctrine of degrees it 
 is a natural consequence of that doctrine. 
 
 It follows not less plainly that the general will is some- 
 thing quite other than the sum of the wills of all. That 
 is because we are not here in the region of arithmetic. 
 The general will is no aggregate, for it is not numerically 
 different from the individual wills in which it expresses 
 itself. It is, as we have seen, just these wills interpreted 
 in their correspondence. Many attacks in detail on the 
 principle would have been found to be beside the point 
 if this had been more widely seen to be a possible 
 explanation. For the real attack must then have been 
 transferred to the issue that arises earlier, that as to the 
 actual nature of mind and of the distinctions between its 
 objects. If these distinctions are merely numerical, and 
 are between occurrences in space and time, then one set 
 of consequences ensues. If the distinctions belong, on 
 the other hand, to reflection and fall within it, in forms 
 appropriate to the different categories, then quite another 
 kind of inference forces itself on us. 
 
 I propose, therefore, in the rest of what I have to say 
 in this chapter, to proceed on the footing that I need not 
 restate the reasons which have led me to accept the latter 
 alternative. I shall treat mind as what can be described 
 only in language that is appropriate to mind and to no 
 mere thing, just as I spoke of life as capable of description 
 
370 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 
 
 only in the language of life. And I shall speak of reflec- 
 tion and volition, not as events in a non-mental world, but 
 as activities that fall within mind as such. 
 
 The first question to which I wish to turn is one as to 
 the character of sovereignty within the state. Here we 
 find ourselves in a whirlpool of controversy. The school 
 of monists insists that the state is one and that its 
 sovereignty is one and indivisible. They affirm that 
 sovereignty may be delegated, but that its source is a 
 single source, the power of the state as the final form of 
 social unity. Those who call themselves pluralists, on the 
 other hand, declare that the state, so far as it is a totality, 
 manifests itself in a plurality of forms, corporate, quasi- 
 corporate, and otherwise, and that sovereignty is broken 
 up and distributed among these. That there is one form 
 which is nominally supreme from the point of view of 
 legality is not decisive. For the theoretical legal power 
 which is exercised by a constitutionally supreme body 
 representing the state, such as, for example, the British 
 Parliament, consisting of King, Lords and Commons, 
 cannot really be exercised so as to dominate the power of 
 other organisations of which the constitution is forced to 
 take account. In days that at all events once were, the 
 Parliament had to stand in awe of the Church. It could 
 not secure obedience to its decrees from the people unless 
 the people were satisfied that the command of Parliament 
 was not in conflict with the command of God, given through 
 the Church. And to-day the pluralists point to the power 
 of such bodies as the Trade Unions, and to the fact that, 
 with the developed prominence of industrial influence, 
 Parliament can only control these effectively within narrow 
 limits. 
 
 Whichever of these two views is right, I think that 
 neither, at all events in its extreme form, is wide enough 
 to fit the facts. If the source of the power of the state 
 and of the reality of the state is the embodiment of common 
 purposes entertained by the people who constitute it, that 
 source can only be a general will, such as has been referred 
 to above, and the true source of sovereignty must be simply 
 public or general opinion. Now general opinion is not 
 always easy to diagnose and ascertain. It has a history, 
 and it often fluctuates rapidly. It may have entrusted a 
 particular body of men with the duty of carrying its 
 
SOVEREIGNTY 371 
 
 decisions into effect, and it may appear, say in the pro- 
 gramme nominally endorsed at a general election, to 
 have expressed itself and to have given authority for 
 the execution of its decrees. But none the less it may 
 not really have done so. One of the most delicate and 
 difficult tasks confided to a newly-elected Ministry is to 
 determine what mandate has really been given. Not 
 only may that mandate be really different from what 
 it appeared to be from the language at the time em- 
 ployed by those who gave it, but it may be undergoing 
 rapid and yet silent modification. This implies that it is 
 the general opinion of the nation at the time when action 
 has to be taken that is the ultimate source of authority, 
 and that under a constitution like our own such opinion 
 has to be interpreted, not as crystallised, but by continuous 
 exegesis directed to ascertaining what it has become. 
 Those who originally expressed opinions, perhaps even 
 violently, may not really have intended to give a final 
 decision or one that was meant to endure. They may 
 have felt the points at issue to be too obscure, and have 
 meant that the Ministers in effect chosen should decide 
 for them what modifications of existing decisions and what 
 further and fresh decisions might be required. And if the 
 Ministers fail to perform this function for those who 
 intended them to do so, they may be held deeply responsible 
 for the failure, and may not be allowed to excuse them- 
 selves by pointing to spoken or written words as having 
 been approved at the time of a general election. 
 
 It is not enough to say that in the ballot boxes a 
 numerical majority of votes for a particular plan was 
 found. For it may have become obvious that these votes 
 did not represent a clear or enduring state of mind. The 
 history of the questions at such an election and the changes 
 in their context have therefore to be taken into account. 
 A real majority rule is never a mere mob rule. The 
 people is not a simple aggregate of momentary voices but 
 is a whole, and it is this character that governs its mani- 
 festations of opinion. Representative and responsible 
 government is thus a complicated and difficult matter, and, 
 if it is to be adequately carried out, requires great tact 
 and insight, as well as great courage ; qualities which the 
 people of a country like our own have become trained to 
 understand and to appreciate. No abstract rules for 
 
372 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 
 
 interpretation can take the place of these essential qualities 
 of character in the statesman. 
 
 The reason of the discrepancy is just the manifold 
 nature of the mind of the individual voter and its self- 
 developing and self-changing mode of evolution. It is 
 this that the statesman has to study if he would get at 
 the real general will of the people. That will may even 
 be to devolve to him the duty of taking the initiative and 
 of acting for his clients freely, as a man of courage and 
 high intelligence should act, and he may have been chosen 
 more on the ground of faith in his possession of these 
 qualities than in order that he might take some specific 
 action which the nation feels that it has not adequately 
 thought out. Democracy, even in its most complete and 
 thoroughgoing form, may imply all this. 
 
 Now if this is true there may be a great difference 
 between the theoretical and the actual power of legis- 
 lation, and the same may be the case with the executive 
 government. Under a system of administration like our 
 own there are well-known constitutional limitations on 
 legal power. Theoretically the King may do many things, 
 individual acts apparently of his own initiative, to which, 
 if it could be proved legally that he had done them, the 
 Judges in the Courts would have to give effect. But if 
 the King were to purport to enact a law at Buckingham 
 Palace merely by himself, the Judges might well say that 
 they were forbidden by the law of evidence as it stands 
 in our own time from even looking at a law effected in 
 such a form, inasmuch as there was before them no legal 
 proof that the King had made a law. In the days that 
 followed the Norman Conquest the rule might have been 
 otherwise, and James the First at least held views which 
 were essentially at variance with it. In his time the 
 doctrine of the prerogative was advanced to such a point 
 that it was, for certain purposes at all events, unquestion- 
 able in the law courts. Bacon himself suggested that the 
 Judges, though they be " lions," yet should be " lions 
 under the throne, being circumspect that they do not 
 check or oppose any points of sovereignty." But it was 
 not long before the general sense of the British Community, 
 as interpreted by the Judges generally, led the latter to 
 refuse to recognise any legislative action by the Crown, 
 unless clothed in a form provided by Parliament, or 
 
THE CONSTITUTION 373 
 
 expressed in some fashion established by Parliamentary 
 sanction, as capable of being proved before them. It 
 became necessary that every such measure should appear 
 as brought forward on the face of it in the shape of legis- 
 lation by the King, by and with the advice and consent 
 of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament itself. 
 The King could still in theory legislate, but the only 
 possible proof of his having done so was the production of a 
 constitutional form that had the aspect of a Parliamentary 
 Act. If it could have been proved otherwise that he 
 had enacted something, it does not appear theoretically 
 that the Judges could have refused to give effect to it. 
 But a gradually evolved rule of constitutional evidence 
 became by degrees equivalent to a principle which had 
 all the force of a rule of substantive law. 
 
 In the same way the King might conceivably of his own 
 initiative make a treaty, but the Judges would require 
 proof of this by the production of a document sealed with his 
 Great Seal, which is, though not constitutionally under his 
 personal control, the only admissible legal evidence of the 
 King having so acted. In other cases the counter-signature 
 of a Secretary of State becomes requisite for proof of 
 an exercise of royal authority under the sign manual. 
 
 It is in these ways that in a country with an unwritten 
 constitution like ours the law and the constitution, 
 which are often at variance in their language, are brought 
 into harmony. It was Paley who wrote, even in his 
 Moral Philosophy published in 1785, these words : 
 
 " In the British, and possibly in all other constitutions, 
 there exists a wide difference between the actual state of 
 the Government and the theory. The one results from 
 the other ; but still they are different. When we contem- 
 plate the Theory of the British Government, we see the 
 King invested with the most absolute personal impunity ; 
 with a power of rejecting laws, which have been resolved 
 on by both Houses of Parliament ; of conferring by his 
 charter, upon any set or succession of men he pleases, 
 the privilege of sending representatives into one House 
 of Parliament, as by his immediate appointment he can 
 place whom he will in the other. What is this, a foreigner 
 might ask, but a mere circuitous despotism ? Yet, when 
 we turn our attention from the legal existence to the 
 
874 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 
 
 actual exercise of royal authority in England, we see these 
 formidable prerogatives dwindled into mere ceremonies ; 
 and, in their stead, a sure and commanding influence, of 
 which the constitution, it seems, is totally ignorant, 
 growing out of that enormous patronage, which the 
 increased extent and opulence of the Empire has placed 
 in the disposal of the executive magistrate." 
 
 The representatives of the nation assembled in Parlia- 
 ment can thus, by indirect as well as direct methods, make 
 what is theoretical power keep within the boundaries of 
 what is desired by the nation, and the Judges, by applying 
 law, much of which is in truth judge-made, co-operate in 
 giving effect to the process. But the Parliament itself, 
 and even the administration which has its full confidence, 
 are themselves also subject to limitations on their powers 
 of a kind that are not what is technically called constitu- 
 tional, but are yet of a highly potent character. I have 
 referred to the influence in the past of the Church, and of 
 the Trade Unions in our own time. But there are other 
 forms in which opinion takes shape that have to be 
 reckoned with. Tradition still bulks for a great deal. 
 There are financial usages from which Cabinets are chary 
 of departing, for fear of public prejudice, even though 
 such departure may be the only way of securing both 
 economy and efficiency. This is one of the sources of 
 what is called " red tape." It has been so done in the 
 past, therefore it must be so done to-day. Again, there 
 is a good deal of attention paid to past practice, and also 
 to sentiment, even when it is the sentiment of people who 
 have not much power. That is characteristic of the 
 British nation generally, and not merely of the rulers it 
 chooses. But its Parliament has often displayed this 
 tendency on a large scale. Walpole and his Whig col- 
 leagues were devoid of bigotry. Yet Walpole would not 
 consent to relieve the Dissenters from the Test Act, 
 although they were his warm supporters and asked for 
 such relief. Most sensible people have all along wanted 
 the Jews to be freed from political disabilities ; yet it 
 could not be done for a very long time. Catholic emanci- 
 pation was altogether unreasonably delayed. The story 
 of Roman ecclesiastical titles in this country is a familiar 
 one. The Act prohibiting these was likely to prove a 
 
PUBLIC OPINION 375 
 
 dead letter from the beginning, and yet it was passed, on 
 sentimental grounds. To-day much of our legislation 
 about aliens is probably altogether in excess of public 
 opinion, but it is the tradition of the days in which that 
 legislation was brought forward that it should be insisted 
 on. The explanation of these things, and of other political 
 phenomena of the kind, is not brutal selfishness, or in- 
 difference. It is, as Hume pointed out long ago in his 
 Essays, that " though men be much governed by interest, 
 yet even interest itself, and all human affairs, are entirely 
 governed by opinion" Opinion has moulded the action 
 of Parliament and also the common law which the Judges 
 administer. It has influenced administration at every 
 turn. The more it is observed in the results of its opera- 
 tion, the more apparent does it become that opinion is 
 the fountain from which flows power and in which the 
 true source of sovereignty is to be sought. Opinion may 
 create capacity or it may restrict it or distribute it. All 
 these things it does continuously. It is the perception 
 of dependence on opinion that restrains Cabinets and 
 Parliaments from coming into conflict with what, from 
 the point of view of merely theoretical capacity, are 
 subordinate institutions within the State. Public opinion 
 may be backing up the action of those representing even 
 institutions which concern the general interest but little, 
 to such an extent that if Ministers or Parliament were to 
 try to meddle with these the requisite moral authority 
 would be found wanting. 
 
 What constitutes a nation has been described by Renan 
 in these words. " Man," he says, " is enslaved, neither 
 by his race, nor by his religion, nor by the course of rivers, 
 nor by the direction of mountain ranges. A great aggre- 
 gation of men, sane of mind and warm of heart, creates 
 a moral consciousness which is called a nation." Such a 
 moral conseiousness expresses the unity of the citizens in 
 institutions which make up the state, as do the members 
 of an organism make it up. The chief of these institutions, 
 that which stands for the singleness of the state to people 
 outside it, is the Government. This may assume the 
 most differing forms. It is Hegel who observes (Rechts- 
 philosophie, paragraphs 273 and 274) that every nation has 
 the constitution which suits it and belongs to it. The 
 state, he says, is the nation's spirit and depends on the 
 
876 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 
 
 character of its consciousness of itself. It is therefore 
 idle to think of giving to a people a constitution a priori. 
 The principle of the modern world as a whole is freedom 
 of mind, and it is by self-development that those aspects 
 come about which the whole presents. From this stand- 
 point it was that he declared that philosophy refuses to 
 concern itself with " the idle question as to which form is 
 the better, monarchy or democracy." Aristotle had given 
 in his Politics an answer of a not very different kind to 
 such a question. But, whatever the constitution, we 
 come back in the end to its foundation. This must be 
 the consent of the governed. Even when there is an 
 absolute monarchy this is so. The King may claim to 
 rule as of divine right, but unless the people as a whole 
 recognise this right he cannot exercise it. It is their 
 assent to his title to be there, merely tacit and the outcome 
 of tradition though that assent may be, that is the ultimate 
 foundation of his title. There is of course infinite room 
 for discussion as to why such assent should be given. It 
 may be said, as was claimed by great French writers of 
 the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to be given 
 because it is the command of God, expressed through His 
 Church on earth, that it should be given. But even so, 
 the acceptance of this command depends on the faith of 
 men in the divinity of its origin. Such a faith is only a 
 form of general opinion, however important it may be, 
 and so back to its foundation on general opinion the basis 
 of sovereignty is always brought. 
 
 If this be so it is obvious that even within the state the 
 controlling opinion may operate in different fashions and 
 forms. Supreme legal capacity may be given to Parliament, 
 and yet Parliament may be restrained from exercising the 
 legal capacity so given, excepting in accordance with certain 
 standards. Parliament might, for example, so far as its 
 legal power is concerned, pass a law continuing its existence 
 far beyond the period at which a general election ought 
 to take place. It might theoretically deprive the electors 
 of their power to vote at elections, and so to review its 
 conduct of public affairs. But if it did it would speedily 
 be called to account, somehow. Civilisation has a good 
 many resources even short of that of " Pride's Purge." 
 A statute of the kind I am speaking of would be within 
 the theoretically sovereign power of Parliament. It might 
 
THE STATE AND SOVEREIGNTY NOT IDENTICAL 377 
 
 be passed so as to satisfy what are called, in the stricter 
 sense of the term, the conventions of the constitution. 
 But constitutional in a larger meaning of the term it 
 would not be. Parliament would find itself confronted 
 with a torrent from the source of all sovereignty that 
 would overwhelm it. So, too, were Parliament to pass 
 some Industrial Act inflicting injustice on the working 
 classes, it might find itself face to face with the united 
 action of the Trade Unions, and be reduced to impotence 
 by a general strike of a magnitude greater in scale than 
 any so far known. 
 
 Thus there has always to take place a careful balancing 
 of considerations, in order to determine the extent of the 
 mandate that has been entrusted to the legislature. For 
 that legislature does not really represent sovereign power. 
 Sovereignty has its definite source, and even the highest 
 institutions in the state may not be able to claim it. It is 
 the assumption that the state and sovereignty are single 
 and indivisible that has been the source of confusion, and 
 has given rise to much of the controversy between monists 
 and pluralists. For some purposes the state is always 
 single and sovereignty not broken up. Even where there 
 is a federal constitution, and the executive is by the con- 
 stitution independent of the legislature, the state is still 
 one and indivisible so far as other nations are concerned. 
 It is the state that stands for what is one and indivisible 
 when we have relations from outside with the people of 
 the United States of America. Yet within that state 
 sovereignty is divided and can be exercised unitedly only 
 if there is concurrence of purpose on the part of the 
 separate institutions which compose it. The Dominion 
 of Canada and the Commonwealth of Australia illustrate 
 the same principle in other forms. 
 
 With ourselves in Great Britain the situation is theo- 
 retically different. But it is equally true that the Parlia- 
 ment is powerless against opinion. Even if its members 
 had ceased to exercise a restraining influence upon the 
 government it would always be because the constituents 
 to whose wishes they have to be responsive were not 
 sufficiently in earnest to insist on action by their repre- 
 sentatives. 
 
 We can thus see how sovereignty means something that 
 lies behind legal forms and institutions, and how it is 
 
378 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 
 
 referred to a general will of the character defined for its 
 real meaning. That general will may stand for a choice 
 influenced from many sides. Religion, industrial require- 
 ment, tradition, and other springs of impulse of different 
 natures, may all enter into the ground of the decision of 
 the people at large. The statesman's task under con- 
 stitutional or indeed any other form of government is 
 never an easy one. He who acts in such a position from 
 one maxim only is a pedant who spoils things for himself 
 as well as for others. 
 
 It is because of this complexity in the considerations 
 on which the general will of the people is based that the 
 existence of the state is never the last word in controversy. 
 Much complaint has been made against the doctrine that 
 the state is itself subject to no law. As a proposition of 
 technical jurisprudence this doctrine seems incontrovertible. 
 For law as interpreted by the lawyer means a rule that 
 the state lays down for its own people and enforces. Such 
 a rule cannot be laid down in the same fashion for the 
 people of other states, because the state that enacts it is 
 unable to supply the same sort of sanction as exists at 
 home. Its laws embody the purposes of its own people, 
 not those of others whom it does not represent and who 
 have given it no authority to apply coercion among them. 
 
 If, however, we pass beyond the region of jurisprudence 
 there are other principles of which we have to take 
 account. Within a state and apart from all legal sanction 
 there exist, as we have seen, systems of morality and of 
 the habitual good behaviour which the Germans call 
 Sittlichkeit. These systems vary with the standards of 
 different nations, but their essential features are common. 
 All good people, of whatever nationality, recognise 
 analogous obligations of truth and justice, and in the 
 main they resemble in their sense of what is and what is 
 not good form in social life. In the various great capitals 
 society presents only minor differences. Men and women 
 in all of these cities resemble in general purpose and in 
 habit more than they differ. As in private life so it is 
 in affairs of state. It is always possible, given mutual 
 sympathy and forbearance, to develop a tendency to look 
 to an ideal which may present itself as common to different 
 nations. The desire for a League of Nations is the most 
 recent illustration of how this may be attempted in 
 
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 379 
 
 practice. The nascent League of to-day has followed 
 on a period of exhaustion from fighting. But it is already 
 beyond much doubt that it can be made to grow into 
 strength if only there be general goodwill towards it. In 
 the days before the war there had been ententes and 
 concerts between great Powers founded on the same 
 sort of ideal. But the tendencies of the times had allowed 
 men's minds to become too much diverted towards other 
 and purely national objects to allow the nascent purpose 
 to be attained. That to some extent at least the purpose 
 was a practicable one was shown by the successes that 
 had attended the founding of certain limited ententes 
 and alliances. The elimination of differences arising out 
 of territorial and commercial ambitions had led to real 
 friendships, with the disappearance of old rivalries. 
 Nations had begun to see that they had duties towards 
 each of the others in the same group, as well as rights. A 
 new kind of international Sittlichkeit, based on more than 
 the letter of any agreement, was developing itself. 
 
 But the effort to make all the great nations, and not 
 merely those in the respective groups, accept this attitude 
 ex animo, failed. There was not enough of sustaining 
 faith behind the movement. The desire for a League of 
 Nations which may supersede the old grouping, with its 
 attendant dangers in encouraging attempts to balance 
 power, is probably more real to-day than it has been at 
 any previous period in the history of the world. It is 
 not yet strong or pervasive enough to produce the sense 
 of certainty as to its prospects. Still, the desire is there, 
 and bears witness to its real foundation. 
 
 The state is no final form for the embodiment of the 
 purposes of a people. The world is becoming more and 
 more international. States are not isolated units. They 
 continue to subsist only through relations with other 
 states, relations which tend to multiply in volume as 
 well as intensity, and which show no prospect of being 
 superseded. As this is so it is natural that the purposes 
 of the people of each nation should broaden progressively. 
 There may be quarrels and wars in the future. Luxury, 
 ignorance, and indifference always promote misinterpre- 
 tations, and these are not easy to prevent from arising. 
 But just as the mind of man extends to ends beyond his 
 own private concerns, and beyond those of his family, or 
 
880 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE STATE 
 
 of his city, so he has latent in his consciousness ends which 
 carry him beyond the state to which he belongs. For 
 the vital interests of that state he may be ready to fight 
 and die, and nevertheless he may not be of those who 
 pronounce on the side of their country whether in the 
 right or in the wrong. The sense of what is seemly, and 
 beyond this, conscience, with its insistence on the obliga- 
 tion to speak the truth and to be just, may bring the 
 purposes of the citizen in his public life into sharp conflict 
 with those of the man who looks only to the expediency 
 that is of momentary importance and duration. 
 
 In short, there are levels in human purposes in which 
 they rise above the state as a final form of end. Beauty 
 and goodness and truth concern men neither merely as 
 individuals nor as citizens. There is an outlook that is 
 cosmopolitan because no other end than that of humanity 
 simply as such can satisfy it. When our concerns are 
 those of mankind in this higher sense we are still at a 
 level which is that of the finite, but we recognise that our 
 finiteness is pointing beyond itself, and that within unduly 
 limited forms of self-expression mind is not to be confined. 
 
 The outlook at this level and the higher ends that 
 direct it have, like those of lower degrees, embodiments 
 which constitute their objective world. These embodi- 
 ments have nothing approaching the definiteness which 
 those within a state display. But they appear and have 
 their witnesses in treaties, in diplomatic usages, in con- 
 ventions about rules of international law, and in the 
 movements for putting the mutual guarantees of inter- 
 national peace on a secure footing, and the agreements 
 in which these are expressed. The stability of these 
 objective embodiments of international purpose may not 
 so far have been great. We may be still a long way 
 off from such a basis of enduring Sittlichkeit among 
 nations as will afford stability for the rules of what is 
 called international law. The disregard of these rules 
 through the great war illustrates this. But at least there 
 are already some indications that higher than merely 
 national purposes are moving mankind, and that it is 
 struggling to express them in institutions that may in 
 the end prove to have dominating influence. 
 
 There is thus, as indeed there always has been, reality 
 of a nature outside and beyond that of the state. How- 
 
WHAT IS HIGHER THAN THE STATE 381 
 
 ever shadowy it is there, and it shows itself to be at least 
 capable of development into stable forms. This is only 
 what was to be expected. For the source of this reality 
 is the same as the source of that of the state itself. Both 
 are due to the character of mind, which works and creates 
 general opinion at levels that transcend the ends, not only 
 of the particular self, but of the mere citizen of any par- 
 ticular nation. In ethics, in the recognition of each 
 other of whatever race as human and as therefore 
 entitled to respect as persons, in religion, in art, and in 
 knowledge, local particularity counts for little. It is 
 superseded at the higher degrees in experience at which 
 the mind is discovering itself in the greatest aspects of its 
 nature and activity. For the mind is, as has been pre- 
 viously insisted on, inadequately described as a thing 
 among things. It is what can be adequately spoken of 
 only in terms that belong to its own character. It is that 
 within which all that is particular as well as all that is 
 universal fall, and is that which by its overreaching intel- 
 lectual activity establishes distinctions between true 
 and false and real and unreal, that have meaning and 
 validity only for itself. It is what exists at no single 
 degree or level either in actuality or in knowledge. It is 
 the dynamic principle to which is referred back all that 
 falls within experience, and not only all that falls within 
 it but all that gives it significance. 
 
 26 
 
PART V 
 THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE 
 
 383 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE RELATION OF MAN TO GOD 
 
 To the question of how the individual is related to the 
 state, we have now found the answer to be that the state 
 embodies in external form certain common purposes of 
 the individual citizens who compose it. It is the various 
 characters which common social ends assume, and the 
 general standpoints of the citizens whose ends they are, 
 that determine the nature and distribution of the various 
 public institutions within the state and their relations to 
 it, as well as the character, extent, and distribution of the 
 authority of the state itself. We discussed the meaning 
 of what is called the general will and found it to lie in a 
 correspondence based on identities in the minds of indi- 
 viduals with common social ends. If it were once clearly 
 recognised that minds were not entities wholly exclusive 
 of each other, it seemed that there was little difficulty in 
 the acceptance of the conclusion that sovereignty could 
 be referred to community of purpose in the citizens who 
 compose the Commonwealth. 
 
 We have now to pass to a more obscure question, that 
 of the relation of man to God. It is well to begin by 
 endeavouring to clear the ground of familiar preliminary 
 difficulties, and this appears to be possible only if a resolute 
 application is made of the principle of degrees. So far 
 we have seen a good many perplexities disappear as the 
 realisation of the relativity of knowledge became plain. 
 That is how the physicists have got over the trouble 
 of the apparently inconsistent results of measurement in 
 time and space ; the biologists over the obtrusion 
 of mechanistic obsessions ; the psychologists over the 
 demands for recognition of a physiological basis for 
 mind ; and the poets over the stern call to realities by 
 science. In each case the demand made has been answered 
 by its being shown that the conceptions on which those 
 who made these demands based them were conceptions 
 
 385 
 
386 THE RELATION OF MAN TO GOD 
 
 of only limited application, an application conditioned by 
 the level in thought and the interpretation of experience 
 by which the character of the demand was determined. 
 The meaning of reality proved to be by no means always 
 of the same kind. For it varied with differences between 
 orders which were distinct for reflection when carried far 
 enough, and which resulted in forms of truth that can 
 be expressed in no terms beyond those that are appropriate 
 to their special order. 
 
 What, then, is the nature of the conception which we 
 seek to frame in our minds when we speak of God ? 
 Obviously one belonging to a very comprehensive order, 
 for it is in the light of no limited standpoint that we 
 can set ourselves to explain downwards, looking for 
 nothing above or beyond. We cannot mean by God a 
 thing or a substance. For this would give us only what 
 was an object to the mind and possibly external to it, 
 as the old Deists held. Now Deism never succeeded in 
 giving us any notion of God other than that of a finite 
 person acting ab extra. It seems plain that God must 
 be other than this. He can hardly, however, to go to the 
 opposite extreme, be wholly transcendent, that is to say 
 unreachable in knowledge. For that would be to leave 
 Him as really confronting the subject, if not as an abstract 
 notion yet as a mere inference, or alternatively as 
 a bare awareness in feeling, as mysticism will have it. 
 He would none the less in both cases be finite as being 
 in truth outside of mind, in that He was thus tran- 
 scendent. To call Him the Absolute appears to be not 
 less objectionable, though on yet other grounds. To 
 begin with, we do not know how this word is to be 
 interpreted. We have no phase in experience that corre- 
 sponds to it. Even in the highest efforts of poetry speech 
 about it seems only to be possible when it takes refuge 
 in spatial and temporal metaphor. Poetry may through 
 such metaphor suggest truth, but adequate truth it cannot 
 utter. It leaves us confronted with a result beyond, 
 which we cannot express in words. For the emotion 
 awakened is scientifically valuable only by its implications 
 for reflection, and the implications cannot be rendered 
 definite. They point vaguely towards a God who is a 
 timeless totum simul, a conception for which the only 
 kind of knowledge we possess and that has any meaning 
 
GOD NO EMPTY ABSOLUTE 387 
 
 for us has no use. For the concepts of all our knowledge 
 have reference to an actual that is not static but dynamic 
 and present in us, and so in some relation to time. To 
 speak of God as the Absolute is, however, of value as 
 indicating negatively what He cannot be, if not as telling 
 what He is. It implies truly that His existence belongs 
 to no partial or single level in reality. Substance He 
 therefore is not, nor yet subject as differentiated from 
 its object. He must not stand for less than the entirety, 
 and such an entirety must be that within which all dis- 
 tinctions and resulting relations can fall. It cannot be 
 adequately expressed as a mind, for this suggests that it 
 may stand excluded from entities other than itself. 
 
 By this negative procedure we are driven back to look 
 for our idea of God as to be sought in the nature of know- 
 ledge as it has already presented itself. We saw that the 
 principle of degrees implies the view that knowledge is 
 foundational in the sense of being all-comprehending, 
 the first as well as the last within mind itself. It must 
 therefore be that in which exists self -developed the entire 
 hierarchy of degrees, within mind and within the reality 
 which has no existence apart from it. We also saw that 
 not only has the universe no meaning apart from such 
 foundational mind, but that even the distinction between 
 subject and object is mind's own creation and falls within 
 it. Such a reduction of objectivity to creation through 
 concepts and their resulting mental standpoints did not 
 surprise us. For the principle of quantitative relativity, 
 as shown to be creative of shape and measurement, by 
 the physicists of our own day, had prepared us for the 
 extension of that principle to qualitative differences arising 
 from variation in dominant conception, and for so finding 
 the work of mind to be present in every phase of reality. 
 
 We may thus speak of such foundational knowledge as 
 the absolute of which we are in search, if we do not leave 
 out of memory that what we are so speaking of is no 
 absolute that is existent apart from mind as it is disclosed 
 in ourselves. We are assisted, if we so speak, by what 
 has already been pointed out, that the plurality of minds 
 is a plurality that has meaning only at certain levels in 
 reflection that are subordinate in that they import organic 
 conditions, such that mind expresses itself in the forms 
 of living beings with physical aspects. When we got 
 
888 THE RELATION OF MAN TO GOD 
 
 to the stage in knowledge at which such apparently 
 mutually exclusive beings come into the relations that 
 their intercourse with one another requires, we saw how 
 this was only possible by reason of a correspondence based 
 on genuine identity of thought, an identity which belonged 
 to a level different from that of the externality to each 
 other of events. We are therefore directed in our inquiry 
 towards mind, not as activity in space and time, but as 
 that for and through which spatial and temporal relation- 
 ships arise. It is no totum simul existing independently 
 of these relations. It gives them place within its entirety 
 along with other aspects of reality. Thus it is only as 
 presupposing mind that these aspects can themselves be 
 explicable. That is an implication of the principle of 
 relativity in its comprehensive form. Of course we start 
 from our finite human knowledge, conditioned as it is by 
 nature. For the physicist, for the chemist, for the 
 physiologist, for the psychologist, the " That " and the 
 " It " imply just man as they find him in nature. But 
 not only do these standpoints yield results that differ 
 fundamentally in logical conception, but they give rise to 
 aspects which consist, and yet are all, in their own ways, 
 equally true. Human personality and the human mind 
 are thus complex in the orders of thought they import. 
 More points of view than one are required if man is to be 
 understood. The respective conceptions of the sciences 
 just referred to are not only merely relatively true. They 
 are a long way from being the only conceptions required 
 for our interpretation. We are more than they make us 
 out to be. Not only in art and in religion, but in philo- 
 sophy also this becomes fairly plain in the light which is 
 cast on the character of reality by the study of the all- 
 embracing scope of mind. 
 
 Can we hope to work out the conception of the ultimate 
 character of knowledge adequately ? The question needs 
 consideration. On the one hand, we are finite human 
 beings, finite in this, that our thinking is conditioned by 
 the organisation of the brain, a brain through which mind 
 as it is in us expresses itself. On the other hand, this brain 
 is not only physically active but lives and also thinks. 
 It belongs, in the higher degree of reality which it presents, 
 to the level of personality. So far as it belongs to this 
 level its activity is that of a self, which is more than at 
 
GOD AS IMMANENT 389 
 
 first sight it appears, for it turns out that thought even 
 when thus conditioned is not the less the knowledge which 
 has given rise to its own problems, and is limited in their 
 solution only by physical difficulty in the wielding of 
 what is potentially a limitless power over a limitless range. 
 Of course that capacity is hampered by these physical 
 conditions, but they are conditions which, if they confine 
 reflection to feebleness in its procedure, do not affect its 
 intrinsic character. None the less there are efforts which 
 the human mind is as unable to make successfully as it is 
 to visualise the contents of a tensor equation. 
 
 For all these reasons it appears to be as immanent 
 that we must seek God. The physicists are to-day search- 
 ing for the foundations of the phenomenal world of space 
 and time in the work of reflection. As Professor Eddington 
 observes, in the article which I have already quoted, the 
 intervention of mind in the laws of nature is more far- 
 reaching than is usually supposed. That is a saying 
 which requires interpretation, but in it there is profound 
 truth. In the same sense not less far-reaching is the 
 intervention of mind in the laws which apply to the other 
 phases of the universe. And this is so because at every 
 turn the operation of the principle of relativity is as 
 transforming in its application as it is where it guides us 
 in our thinking about space. God can hardly be less than 
 the process of mind in an ideal integrity, the process in 
 which mind as all-comprehending is ever realising itself 
 at a series of degrees which are divergent logically in so 
 far as they are different in the dominating conceptions 
 which lie at their respective foundations. To conceive 
 God otherwise would be to conceive Him as really a finite 
 God. Because the differences referred to are in level of 
 knowledge, including self-knowledge, it does not follow 
 that man's knowledge is indistinguishable from God's 
 knowledge. They are not two separate entities, nor need 
 they be so for the differentiation of finiteness from infinity. 
 Even in the mind that is finite there may be degrees that 
 take us beyond what is finite, intelligible to abstract 
 thought indeed, but incapable of becoming present in 
 direct sense experience. For that experience is the 
 experience of a mind of physically limited capacity, and 
 is therefore, so far as the senses are concerned, limited 
 in range. In mind that is not thus trammelled by the 
 
390 THE RELATION OF MAN TO GOD 
 
 restrictions of a particular organ, but can present itself to 
 itself in its completeness, with all the distinctions and 
 degrees that it establishes as belonging to the entirety, 
 present and yet with their separateness superseded, there can 
 be no such limitations as characterise human experience. 
 Time and space will not disappear, for their forms result 
 from its own operation. But at a higher degree in reality 
 they cannot present themselves as limiting conditions, for 
 their source in mind itself cannot be obscure to a perfect 
 comprehension. There is no phase that mind, as it must 
 be interpreted in its perfection, does not overreach and 
 hold within itself. 
 
 It is therefore to within our human experience, inter- 
 preted as implying higher degrees, that we must look for 
 the eternal self that is all-embracing. We are not to seek 
 an Absolute Being apart that cannot be reached by know- 
 ledge such as ours. We are to look on our minds as our 
 means of access and, by studying the character of the 
 levels to which reflection points us, to observe what direc- 
 tion they indicate to our reflection. It is to the self as 
 we have experience of it in human life that we have to 
 turn for our starting-point, and to nothing that has not 
 an analogue in the characteristics of that self. We have 
 to remember that our very experience teaches that the 
 only explanation which satisfies in the end is explanation 
 from above downwards, finding in the conceptions that 
 belong to lower levels distinguishing characteristics that 
 disclose themselves as the outcome of what is higher and 
 more perfect in knowledge. What is perfect is most 
 concrete and also most actual, for it is only by abstractions 
 made within it that what is lower in the scale of thought 
 emerges. It is no question of genesis in time. The 
 genesis is due to thought, to the activity of mind. To 
 say merely that things are, is to tell very little about 
 them. For just as much from another point of view they 
 are not, and it is only when the affirmative is bound up 
 with the negative, as in change, that we approach what 
 is actual. But even with this we cannot stand still, for 
 reflection, which is always passing beyond its objects, 
 crystallises the process, momentarily at all events, in what 
 is grasped as fixed by its limitation through something 
 different from itself and in that sense external to it. So 
 we generalise to the conception of a quantity of such 
 
DIFFICULTIES OF THE HEGELIAN ATTEMPT 391 
 
 things, and in distinguishing them from each other we 
 are driven to think of them as having individual qualities 
 of their own. We are driven so in our reflection to their 
 measure, to their grounds in existence, to their contrast 
 with the observing mind, and to limitless other relations 
 which enter into their nature, relations which are not 
 arithmetically finite in number because mind is unlimited 
 in its activity. Such relations disclose themselves as 
 entering into the very foundation and meaning of our 
 diverse experiences. They appear together in aspects of 
 their presentation. Because they are forms of an infinite 
 and omnipresent activity, the whole of which is there in 
 every phase, it is only in the abstractions made by reflection 
 that we isolate them with the consequences to which they 
 give rise. Whether a catalogue can be made of these 
 categories, or whether they can be presented as a complete 
 system, may well be doubtful. For mind is protean in 
 the forms of its activity, which know no boundaries in 
 range or number. The most guarded attempt to make 
 such a catalogue or presentation is apt to suggest that 
 there is some sort of absolute system capable of being 
 taken in detachment, a view that becomes full of difficulty 
 on scrutiny. It is the sense of such difficulty that has 
 led to the disposition to reject the Hegelian system, on 
 the part even of some who have attached high importance 
 to Hegel's method of approaching the problem of reality. 
 For practical purposes it does not appear necessary to 
 make such an attempt to set up an absolute system as he 
 thought he could make. It is sufficient if we have a firm 
 grasp of that higher character of the self which directs 
 us beyond our own finite forms, and which is indicated 
 not merely in metaphysics, but in art and in religion. For 
 these last, although, as I have already said, they cannot 
 give us actual knowledge as the foundation of faith in 
 aspects unseen, yet testify to their presence as ideally 
 implied in a universe that we know to be at least far more 
 than merely mechanistic. 
 
 It is important to have the significance of this testimony 
 before our minds. The principle applies, not only to 
 works of art in the ordinary sense, but to the highest 
 forms of reflective poetry, as well as to the language of, 
 for example, the Bible. Goethe, whose insight into the 
 necessity of recognising underlying foundations was pene- 
 
392 THE RELATION OF MAN TO GOD 
 
 trating, has illustrated his own point of view in a great 
 deal of his poetry. One sample I will quote presently. It 
 is a poem on the nature of God, and is among the firmest 
 of his utterances on this subject. 
 
 Art produces for us a different world from that of actual 
 nature, a world with a reality of a different kind. This 
 reality may be, perhaps it always is, " born again of the 
 spirit." As Goethe says : " Die hochste Wirkung des 
 Geistes ist den Geist hervorzurufen." And elsewhere, 1 
 " Nature organises a living, an indifferent being, the artist 
 something dead, but full of significance ; nature something 
 real, the artist something apparent. Into the works of 
 nature the spectator must import significance, thought, 
 effect, reality ; in a work of art he will and must find 
 this already there. A perfect imitation of nature is in no 
 sense possible ; the artist is only called to the represen- 
 tation of the surface of an appearance. The outside of 
 the vessel, the living whole that speaks to all our faculties 
 of mind and sense, that stirs our desire, elevates our 
 intelligence that whose possession makes us happy, the 
 vivid, potent, finished Beautiful, for all this is the artist 
 appointed." 
 
 Goethe, in this last passage, is distinguishing the relative 
 reality of nature, as confronting us " indifferent " to mind, 
 with the work of art as being at another level in the 
 hierarchy of reality, a level at which the mind of the artist 
 is actually embodied in his work. Goethe was not what is 
 ordinarily understood by a metaphysician, but he possessed 
 great philosophical insight. 
 
 In the Proosmion to his Gott und Welt he expresses himself 
 thus : 
 
 " Im Namen dessen der Sich selbst erschuf ! 
 Von Ewigkeit in schaffendem Beruf ; 
 In Seinem Namen der den Glauben schafft, 
 Vertrauen, Liebe, Thatigkeit und Kraft ; 
 In Jenes Namen, der, so oft genannt, 
 Dem Wesen nach blieb immer unbekannt : 
 
 Was war' ein Gott, der nur von aussen stiesse, 
 Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse ! 
 Ihm ziemts, die Welt im Innern zu bewegen, 
 Natur in Sich, Sich in Natur zu hegen, 
 So dass, was in Ihm lebt und webt und ist, 
 Nie Seine Kraft, nie Seinen Geist vermisst. 
 
 1 In his commentary in Diderot's Versuch uber die Malerei. 
 
RELIGION 393 
 
 ** Im Innern 1st ein Universum auch : 
 Daher der Volker loblicher Gebrauch 
 Das jeglicher das Beste was er kennt, 
 Er Gott, ja seinen Gott benennt, 
 Ihm Himmel und Erden iibergiebt, 
 Ihn fiirchtet, und wo moglich liebt." 
 
 In the Gospel of John we find what is in reality the 
 same thought. At Jacob's well Jesus taught the higher 
 truth to the woman of Samaria. Guessing that He was a 
 Jew, she assumed that He would say that Jerusalem, and 
 not the mountain of Samaria, was the place where people 
 ought to worship. But Jesus told her that she worshipped 
 she knew not what, but that the hour would come when 
 true worshippers would worship the Father in Spirit and 
 in Truth. " God is a Spirit," He said to her, " and they 
 who worship him must worship him in spirit and in 
 truth." 
 
 In religion, expressed in language such as this, we have 
 a certain completion suggested for our human experience 
 without which it would be one-sided and essentially 
 defective. Reality is brought before us in a further aspect, 
 an aspect which is offered to us as possible through the 
 acceptance of a higher standpoint, to be attained, it may be, 
 not reflectively, but by a voluntary submission of the will. 
 To this we feel ourselves moved emotionally, rather than 
 as the result of any process of logical reasoning. It is by 
 what may be called constant practice in some form of the 
 presence of what is highest in purpose and in level, that 
 we seem best able to keep this emotion alive, and our 
 experience of life appears to require such practice in some 
 form if it is to obtain for itself the fullest fruition. 
 
 The self is personal. But it is more in its implication 
 than merely finite. It is misleading, therefore, to frame 
 images of the self in its highest conceivable and most 
 comprehensive character as what we call a person. 
 Finiteness and even thinghood are at once suggested by 
 the implications of the human order to which personality 
 as we are familiar with it belongs, and in what is neces- 
 sarily a rarefied atmosphere we cannot genuinely advance 
 if propped only by metaphors that are unsustaining and 
 may fail us at any turn. The self nevertheless exists in all 
 its possible forms at a degree that implies personality. The 
 Highest Selfhood, the selfhood which is the foundation not 
 only of the individual subject but of the entirety of the 
 
894 THE RELATION OF MAN TO GOD 
 
 universe, must therefore be at least personal. But as it 
 must be taken to include as falling within its own activity 
 the distinction of self from not-self that is characteristic of 
 human finitude, and to preserve this distinction yet only as 
 its own act and determination, so it must, if an imperfect 
 expression may be used, be, not merely personal, but 
 super-personal, in virtue of its reality as extending beyond 
 the limitations of the finite. For all such limitations fall 
 within itself and at the most are there only for it as its 
 own production. Personality, as we have seen, implies 
 finitude, if there is to be differentiation between persons. 
 But even our human experience of our relations to others, 
 and the very social surroundings which the mind requires 
 for its development, carry us beyond such mere finitude to 
 a standpoint in which correspondence in thought importing 
 identity is presupposed in the recognition of ourselves in 
 association with our neighbours. At this standpoint 
 personality lifts us to a level in reflective self-consciousness 
 higher than that of a selfhood that is exclusive. Not 
 merely I and you, but neither merely you nor me, form 
 the ground of social intercourse and of citizenship. In 
 art, in religion, and in knowledge itself, this more than 
 personal standpoint emerges yet more distinctly, and we 
 are reminded that all atomic views of human existence fall 
 short of finality. 
 
 There is thus a natural impulse in experience which 
 directs the mind to a fuller view of itself than as a merely 
 living and intelligent organism occupying a definite and 
 particular station in the world of space and time. The 
 larger outlook is that in which the consciousness of our own 
 relativity, as well as the relativity of our knowledge, becomes 
 the dominant one. Just as space and time are found to be 
 dependent for their reality on outlook, so do other aspects 
 of the real turn out to be equally dependent. We visualise 
 only from standpoints which emerge on scrutiny as being 
 neither final nor even adequate to the possibilities that 
 confront us. The conceptions which are appropriate 
 solely to isolated standpoints dominate not only our 
 thinking but our volition. But we learn progressively that 
 it is not in exclusive forms of contemplation and action 
 that we can attain to that of which we are in search. As 
 higher standpoints are reached our vision becomes wider, 
 and the object-world, the relativity of which begins to be 
 
THOUGHT AS CREATIVE 895 
 
 realised, becomes less foreign. Reflection and action come 
 to seem less and less separated. As the object- world 
 ceases to seem external and strange to the subject, con- 
 ception and execution appear as in their ultimate forms 
 inseparable. For mind that knows the distinction between 
 its object and itself as one due only to finitude in know- 
 ledge, to conceive and to create are no longer mutually 
 exclusive ideas. 
 
 One of the hindrances in preventing such an idea from 
 appearing adequate to the facts is our notion of time as 
 independent and self-subsisting. Purpose and the action 
 it directs seem to us to be necessarily separate in it. For 
 mind which is limited through its activity having to 
 express itself under physical conditions this may well for 
 some purposes be so. But, as the physicists themselves 
 have taught us, time is not what Newton took it to be, 
 something existing absolutely and independent of mind. 
 The doctrine of relativity has shown us that time, at least 
 as we experience it, may be in its forms merely appearance, 
 not in the sense that there is a real time relatively to which 
 it is only appearance, but in the quite different sense that 
 its relativity is of the essence of its reality, and that it 
 owes that reality, notwithstanding the absolute form 
 which we erroneously attribute to it, to the constructive 
 interpretation of intelligence. The character of the time 
 relation varies, even for physical science, with the stand- 
 point of the observer. Its apparent fixity is the creation 
 of abstraction. At certain standpoints we accept it as 
 fixed and final in its appearances. At other standpoints 
 we do not. Therefore for mind, when aware of itself in 
 its completeness and of the relativity to itself of the entire 
 universe that falls within it, succession in time is indeed 
 a form of which it takes account, but takes account only 
 as determined by standpoints that are not final. It is not 
 either by adding its various outlooks together or by blotting 
 them out that knowledge becomes complete. It is by 
 rising to a level above them in comprehension, and so 
 superseding while preserving and not destroying, that even 
 in daily life knowledge develops itself. Who has not 
 noted the effect of fuller study in enabling him to grasp 
 details as a system ? Whether it be in the reading of a 
 book, or in the painting of a picture, or in the appreciation 
 of a poem, what we find we need is to become so familiar 
 
396 THE RELATION OF MAN TO GOD 
 
 with the details that we can combine them in a whole and 
 interpret them in a system. It is not by what logicians 
 call " linear " inference that knowledge is in the main 
 extended. It is by ascertaining the reciprocal implica- 
 tions of an assemblage of details, and learning in this 
 fashion its entirety as the system in which these details 
 have their meaning. The work a judge has to do when 
 he hears and tries a case in Court is not simply to draw 
 an inference as to whether a certain state of facts fall 
 under an abstract principle of law. His main task is to 
 ascertain the true relations involved in what is proved in 
 evidence, to weld the facts interpreted in these relations 
 into a whole in his mind, and to consider the juridical 
 significance of the whole when so conceived and not 
 before it seems to him to have become adequately so 
 conceived. In this way a juridical and authoritative 
 decision, a new fact in the object-world of society, is 
 brought into being by mind. The analogue of such pro- 
 cesses of finite mind guides us in framing an idea of what 
 must be the character of mind that is not finite in other 
 words, that has all levels within itself as a realised 
 entirety. In the first place what we have to think of is 
 not a mind, but mind. Our own relations to our fellow- 
 men in our conversations with them, relations which 
 depend on the recognition of identity in thought, indicate 
 this direction. In the second place we must not think 
 of its object as foreign to such mind, or as known except 
 as what falls within it. Here the extended and most 
 general form of the principle of relativity furnishes us 
 with the clue. In the third place we must not represent 
 to ourselves end and means as falling apart. Time if 
 transcended is not abolished. It is no question of a totum 
 simul that is before us. But time is, on the other hand, no 
 longer invested with the notion of absolute self-subsistence, 
 or with that of more than form dependent on standpoint. 
 It seems to follow that for mind, conceived as the indica- 
 tions thus direct us to conceive it when in final and perfect 
 completion, thought and creation cannot be otherwise than 
 ultimately inseverable in conception. For the process of 
 knowledge is no longer one conditioned by time. Rather 
 does it itself condition time. All possible standpoints are 
 embraced, embraced not as separate units, but as aspects 
 within one entirety, aspects each of which has its sub- 
 
THINKING AND FEELING 397 
 
 ordinate place in the hierarchy of a comprehension that 
 is ideally all-embracing and perfect. 
 
 Of such comprehension we find, as I have said, analogues 
 within our own minds, although analogues which can but 
 give direction to the thought and feeling that inspire each 
 other and lift us beyond ourselves. To perfect compre- 
 hension, in which feeling and reflection cannot be separate 
 or exclusive, they do not lift us. They may fill us with 
 emotional contentment by the indications they suggest 
 of our close relationship to the infinite. Feeling as it is 
 awakened in us by art and by religion can so lift us, when 
 it is of the quality that suggests analogy between the 
 human and the divine. It is the emotions of this type 
 that: 
 
 " Be they what they may, 
 Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 
 Are yet a master light of all our seeing ; 
 Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
 Our noisy years seem moments hi the being 
 Of the eternal silence ; truths that wake, 
 To perish never 1 " 
 
 But while art and religion and natural goodness of dis- 
 position may produce this sense of peace, there is that 
 which they cannot accomplish. When reason has made 
 wounds, then only reason can adequately heal them. That 
 is why for the complete approach to God the great thinkers 
 of the past have insisted on the necessity of adding to art 
 and to religion knowledge. For only on knowledge as the 
 foundation can we raise an edifice which is not in peril of 
 being shaken by the convulsions to which all that is based 
 on subjectivity is liable. Even knowledge itself, however 
 penetrating and profound, and however great the sense 
 of command it may give, shares to some degree with the 
 heart " the vassalage that binds her to the earth." For 
 as Wordsworth again says : 
 
 " Distempered nerves 
 
 Infect the thoughts ; the languor of the frame 
 Depresses the soul's vigour." 
 
 That is because mind in us shapes itself in human form, 
 with the resulting feebleness that ever attends our human 
 personality. 
 Still, when all has been said that can be said about the 
 
 27 
 
398 THE RELATION OF MAN TO GOD 
 
 dependence in mankind of mind on matter, the fact 
 remains that the effort which man can make when he 
 reflects is limitless in its scope. It is true that his capacity 
 to wield his instrument may be affected in the ways that 
 Wordsworth speaks of, and that : 
 
 " Reason, best reason, is to imperfect man 
 An effort only, and a noble aim ; 
 A crown, an attribute of sovereign power, 
 Still to be courted, never to be won." 
 
 Yet " the wonderful might of thought," as it was called 
 by Hegel, remains unrestricted ; unrestricted because 
 there are no problems excepting those that it has itself 
 created. 
 
 " Irks care the crop-full bird ? Frets doubt the maw- 
 crammed beast ? " It is man only that is so troubled, and 
 that because he is allied to God. In man the infinite is 
 inherent and of his essence. That is why he is not satisfied 
 unless, either through feeling or through thought, it has 
 come to him that he is more than he has taken himself to be. 
 
 We return to the principle which has been throughout 
 these pages the basis of the analysis. Mind is foundational 
 to reality in all its forms. Not a mind, for to speak of 
 a mind is to treat knowledge as a mere instrument, as 
 a particular thing, as something which might properly be 
 interpreted through the conception of substance. But 
 that conception and every other form of the actual 
 and the ideal, alike fall within knowledge. Its dis- 
 tinctions are those that itself it makes. Subject and 
 object, conception and feeling, thinking and willing, 
 these all arise as of separate characters only in virtue of 
 differences which the activity that is of the essence of 
 reflection establishes. Outside knowledge, interpreted in 
 this larger significance, we cannot get. And if we desire 
 to find from the analogy of our own knowledge its nature 
 as passing beyond the limited experience that is ours, 
 we must at no point forget that knowledge is in its fullest 
 aspect foundational, and we must seek its character in 
 the study of its works bearing this in mind. 
 
 The distinctions which we make between the mediate 
 and the immediate contents of our consciousness, the 
 fashion in which by abstraction we define and separate 
 out our standpoints and the conceptions that belong to 
 
HUMAN KNOWLEDGE 899 
 
 them, the contrasts we establish between the relative and 
 what we take to be absolute, are all of them the outcome of 
 the purposes we pursue in arranging our results in forms 
 which by reason of our finitude we seek in order to give 
 them distinctness. Abstraction as the outcome of con- 
 centration on particular ends is everywhere present. Now 
 it is just this kind of distinction and division that must 
 be regarded as no longer final in knowledge as foundational 
 to reality. That such distinctions and divisions must be 
 assumed as in a degree preserved in even knowledge at 
 this level, the knowledge which is both last and first, and 
 has all its purposes as part of and within its own nature, 
 seems clear. For they are the creations and outcome of 
 that knowledge, although their emphasis is due to the 
 finite forms it gives itself. I cannot agree, as I have 
 already said, in thinking that knowledge of this kind can 
 be different in character from human knowledge, or that 
 the discursive and relational character of our reflection 
 prevents us from at least interpreting that character. For 
 it is, after all, only by reflection that we are led to conceive 
 it as an ideal after which we are to seek. Its character 
 must surely be that of thought which, as Aristotle and 
 Plotinus declared long ago, knows itself in its object and 
 its object in itself. End and means, mediacy and im- 
 mediacy, are separated in it by no abstractions that remain. 
 For the dialectical activity that is of the essence of thought 
 in the only form in which we can attach meaning to it 
 supersedes such abstractions as soon as made. 
 
 Goethe's saying that " man never knows how anthropo- 
 morphic he is " has a wide application. For man is ever 
 prone to fashion God in his own likeness, as a being with 
 attributes that resemble his own and are really human. 
 Theologians and even philosophers are apt to let the 
 purposes of the moment control them, and to apply 
 limited categories which are appropriate only for lower 
 standpoints to what has meaning only from the highest 
 and most comprehensive standpoint of all. The infinite 
 foundation of all thinking as well as of all being cannot 
 be substance but must be subject whose object is nothing 
 that is outside itself. It is in this sense that God is 
 immanent. It is the great principle of the relativity of 
 all man's knowledge that compels him to look for the 
 form in which that relativity reconciles itself with final 
 
400 THE RELATION OF MAN TO GOD 
 
 truth by simply observing how knowledge develops itself 
 within his own mind. He must not allow his human 
 purposes, for instance his desire to present to himself the 
 Almighty in pictorial and vivid form, to deflect him in 
 the use of his method. If he yields to what is a powerful 
 temptation he becomes anthropomorphic at once. The 
 strength of art and of religion lies in their power of 
 inspiring emotion of a high quality, high because its 
 interpretation in thought, which cannot easily express 
 what it strives after except in the symbolism of feeling, 
 is itself of a high order. In doing this they resort 
 inevitably to the use of metaphor, and in using it they 
 become pictorial and make the God they are seeking to 
 realise for us appear as He is not. Such metaphors are yet 
 of high value for the quality of the immediate consciousness 
 of which they are expressions. Of this nothing else can 
 indeed take the place. When the quality is great enough 
 these metaphors can at least suggest a standpoint which 
 they cannot express. But they must always, if they are 
 not to land us in controversy and confusion, be care- 
 fully guarded by reflection, and recognised as being, 
 however valuable for our human sustenance in spiritual 
 life, no more than they really are, that is to say, inadequate 
 expressions of ultimate truth. For the mind that could 
 take in at once all standpoints in relativity and combine 
 them in a single entirety in which each should have its 
 place and no more than its place, resort to metaphor 
 would be wholly superseded. It is the apparent divorce 
 of sense and thought which the finitude of mind and its 
 relativity in apprehension brings about that gives the 
 occasion for the necessity of this symbolism. 
 
 If thought as it shapes itself in the mind of man is 
 abstract, it is yet powerful in virtue of that abstractness. 
 For the abstract character is the outcome of limitation in 
 purpose, a limitation of purpose that is essential for finite 
 capacity. He who would accomplish anything has to limit 
 himself. The necessary abstraction has its compensation 
 in the range which it confers on intelligence. Mathematics 
 affords an illustration of this. Its symbolism enables 
 quantitative order to be expressed with such refinement 
 that, as in Einstein's fundamental equations, even the 
 space and time of experience can be dealt with concep- 
 tually and yet in symbols that retain their visualised 
 
THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY 401 
 
 precision. The so-called intervals between his point- 
 events are measured by no co-ordinates that we ex- 
 perience. They are in this respect analogous to those 
 categories which Kant conceived as being real in that they 
 made schematisation in space and time possible, but could 
 not themselves be represented in any such scheme. They 
 are, in other words, concepts which so far from being 
 derived from experience are that through which alone 
 experience can become significant and so real. Meta- 
 physics, like mathematics, can advance only by putting 
 everything that is irrelevant to its end out of sight. That 
 end is to determine the ultimate nature of reality. This 
 must for the metaphysician be accomplished by the use 
 of the most comprehensive categories. He cannot remain, 
 like his colleague, confined in his studies to those of order 
 in externality. Nor is he concerned, like the experimental 
 physicist or the chemist, simply with causes, or like the 
 biologist with ends and the conceptions that have for 
 their language that of life. He cannot be satisfied, as the 
 psychologist must be, by holding out in objective fashion, 
 yet only by abstraction, thinking and feeling as if they 
 were processes that could be adequately studied as 
 occurrences in space and time. All these methods have 
 their great uses, but the uses are for purposes which are 
 limited and relative in character, and must be restrained 
 in their ambit. 
 
 Now the ultimate character of reality cannot be studied 
 under such limitations, any more than it can be investigated 
 by what is really an analogous method of abstraction, the 
 use of metaphors drawn from the surface of experience. 
 We are dealing with conceptions, but with conceptions 
 that have to extend to much more than can even the 
 point-events and world-lines of the physicists. We have 
 to frame conceptions of nothing short of mind, the highest 
 and also the richest of what it is possible for reflection to 
 grasp, because it is that to which all else must in ultimate 
 analysis be referred. In this sense mind, because it is 
 what is perfect and real without qualification, is that which 
 is the hardest for the language of finitude to define. 
 Within it all abstractions fall, for out of the activity of 
 mind they all proceed. It is therefore the most concrete in 
 the hierarchy, for nothing even appears to fall outside it, 
 except in virtue of some distortion. It is no instrument 
 
402 THE RELATION OF MAN TO GOD 
 
 that can be taken up or laid down, or subjected to outside 
 scrutiny. For the taking up and the laying down, and 
 the very scrutiny and the testing of the truth thereby, 
 are its own act and assume its validity. It must therefore 
 study itself, not from without but from within, in its 
 awareness of its own working, in its consciousness of 
 itself. Even so the task is hard for the mind that sets 
 itself to explore a field that for it has no limit. It is only 
 in general conceptions by means of which reflection passes 
 beyond immediacy in feeling, that mind can for us express 
 its own self -consciousness and describe its own nature. 
 
 It is thus to self-consciousness disclosing its character 
 as it does in man that we come back as the source of 
 our knowledge of God. The wonderful might and range 
 of thought exhibit themselves here as without limit, even 
 when in the form which Mr. Bradley has called relational 
 and discursive. For that it is a relational and discursive 
 form does not in itself render our task impossible. There 
 is no barrier which prevents us from interpreting what is 
 implied by the higher degree of reality which must dis- 
 tinguish mind as it is in God from what it is in man. Eye 
 cannot see and ear cannot hear it, for its nature does not 
 admit of its being seen or heard, excepting so far as it 
 may be represented in forms belonging to the lower 
 degrees within its nature to which the senses of mind with 
 organic form belong. But thought, even when as it 
 always is for us relational and discursive, is no static event 
 in externality or in time. Its nature is to be conceptual, 
 and as conceptual to be identical in all its differences. 
 The consciousness of man is not a different thing from 
 the consciousness of God. Man and God are not numeri- 
 cally distinct subjects in knowledge. They are the one 
 foundational mind, disclosing itself in different degrees 
 or logical stages in the progress of reality, but as identical 
 throughout divergences in form. It is the identity that 
 underlies the correspondence of our thoughts and renders 
 them what they are that relates man to his fellow-man. 
 It is the same identity in difference that relates him to God. 
 
 If this be so it is apparent that to regard the finite and 
 the infinite mind as different entities is only to court 
 disaster in our reasoning about them. Difference there 
 is, but it is in degree in reality, and it is a difference which 
 is intelligible to logic. The human mind, conditioned 
 
THE NATURE OF GOD 403 
 
 as it is by organic hindrances in its power of wielding its 
 instrument, may be inadequate to a complete and syste- 
 matic presentation even in abstract concepts of what 
 is present in itself. But the instrument within its grasp 
 is not inadequate, for that instrument is just mind as 
 such. Our approaches to the ideal may be asymptotic. 
 But it is a false image that makes that ideal seem to be 
 truly something far away and unreachable. God is 
 present in us, and it is in God that our fully developed 
 reality must centre. 
 
 We cannot rise above our own level in existence. But 
 that need not discourage us. It is in the present realisa- 
 tion of the ideal, in the struggle to attain to it, and not in 
 the actual attainment of what our position in the hierarchy 
 of reality excludes from being capable of final and closed 
 fruition by us, that the truth for us lies. Our knowledge 
 is relative, and relative it must remain. But if we know 
 that it is relative, and what its meaning is, and the place 
 of that meaning in the full entirety to which it belongs, 
 we have gained what we require. We have a standpoint 
 from which we can rise above that which is really below 
 us, and we have equally a standpoint at which we can 
 contemplate our significance in the light that comes from 
 above. From above, but from no source that is separate 
 in space or time from our own personality. For the source 
 is one that lies within us and gives to self the significance 
 which it possesses. And so it is that as the fashion of 
 this world passes we feel moved more and more to set 
 our feet on the rock that is abiding. 
 
 It is the conception of these things as truth that under- 
 lies what is greatest in reflective poetry and in religion 
 itself. These teach us that in our finiteness there is 
 nothing to make us despair, if we will only keep before 
 our minds that our ideal is one that is present with us, 
 and not afar in some absolute region apart which we know 
 not. It is in the quality of our striving, infinite as an 
 ideal, and not in the goal which if attained would end 
 the striving, that truth lies. 
 
 " Man, therefore, thus conditioned must expect, 
 He could not, what he knows now, know at first ; 
 What he considers that he knows to-day, 
 Come but to-morrow, he will find misknown ; 
 Getting increase of knowledge, since he learna 
 Because he lives, which is to be a man, 
 
404 THE RELATION OF MAN TO GOD 
 
 Set to instruct himself by his past self ; 
 
 First, like the brute obliged by facts to learn, 
 
 Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind, 
 
 Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law, 
 
 God's gift was that man should conceive of truth 
 
 And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake, 
 
 As midway help till he reach fact indeed, 
 
 The statuary ere he mould a shape 
 
 Boasts a like gift, the shape's idea, and next 
 
 The aspiration to produce the same ; 
 
 So, taking clay, he calls his shape thereout, 
 
 Cries ever, * Now I have the thing I see ' ; 
 
 Yet all the while goes changing what was wrought, 
 
 From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself." 1 
 
 1 Robert Browning, " A Death in the Desert." 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 ETEENAL LIFE 
 
 THE time has come to enter upon a further question. 
 What significance are we to attach for the purposes of 
 the accidents and limits of ordinary life to the ideal of 
 self-completion implied in our knowledge of God as 
 immanent in us ? Is it a significance that in an intelligible 
 fashion discloses that ideal as any sort of fact actually 
 attained and present ? 
 
 There are obviously many points of view from which 
 ideal self-completion is not accomplished in particular 
 experience. Still, it may be a present and shaping end. It 
 may mould our experience in a fashion such as that in 
 which in organic life the impulse to fulfil an end preserves 
 continuous form amid change of materials, or in a fashion 
 such as that in which the universal gives meaning to the 
 particular in what is actual only in their union. There 
 we find reality attained in individual shape ; in an activity 
 that, because of the moment in it of what is general, is 
 ever stretching beyond what it has set up as its own 
 limits. Our experience, in our consciousness of self in 
 its relation to the world, is always revealing to us the 
 ideal as at all events an immediately present and impelling 
 power. At a degree even higher than that exhibited 
 in organic life it is there, and always as dynamic and 
 continuous in its process of self-accomplishment. In 
 knowledge the ideal has a yet higher place than in mere 
 life. For it appears as an entirety within which falls, 
 distinguishable as if self-subsistent only for abstract 
 reflection, every standpoint from which mind directs 
 itself. Relativity arises from the differentiations so made, 
 and it is the ultimate character of mind to establish within 
 its all-embracing ambit these differentiations and the 
 reasons for them, as its degrees or as levels attained in its 
 own progress towards self -completion in a perfect entirety 
 
 405 
 
406 ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 It is so that the principle of relativity in knowledge seems 
 in ultimate analysis to find its justification with the solution 
 of many problems in consequence. If the ideal is never 
 present as a self-contained and finally accomplished fact, 
 it is not the less the foundation and meaning of finite 
 activity. Just on that account truth and freedom from 
 limitation by what is lower are attained in the very 
 quality of a sustained effort towards that ideal. 
 
 We do more than we are aware of when we thus conceive 
 and dare. We do not stretch out our hands in vain, 
 moved merely by love of the shore from which we are 
 divided. We are conscious, dimly, it may be, but suffi- 
 ciently, in feelings and metaphors that spontaneously 
 fashion themselves, of a transcendence of our own selves. 
 The real is within and not apart from us. 
 
 *' With wide-embracing love, 
 Thy spirit animates eternal years, 
 Pervades and broods above, 
 Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears. 
 
 " Though earth and man were gone, 
 And suns and universes ceased to be, 
 And Thou wert left alone, 
 Every existence would exist in Thee. 
 
 " There is not room for Death, 
 Nor atom that his might could render void, 
 Thou, Thou art Being and Breath, 
 And what Thou art may never be destroyed." 
 
 Our words, when we utter as Emily Bronte thus spoke, 
 express what we really mean by God. 
 
 Even in the form that relativity assumes in connection 
 with our measurements of space and time we learned 
 something that is of use in this further stage of our 
 inquiry. There is not one system of space and time 
 in contrast with which the others are subjective perver- 
 sions. Every separate system is relatively as real as 
 every other. So when we pass to the worlds of biology 
 and psychology where, not systems in which the observer 
 measures, but conceptions which he employs determine 
 the characteristic reality of the object observed, the same 
 lesson becomes apparent. Change in standpoint gives no 
 change in the actual. In each such case we get reality 
 only of a special degree or kind, but it is not the less on 
 that account reality. 
 
THE HUMAN PROBLEM 407 
 
 Now this must be so equally with the change in stand- 
 point of which we have been speaking in connection with 
 the conception of immanence- Here is yet another aspect 
 in which mind gives birth to what is actual. 
 
 Let us follow this out in its reference to human life. A 
 mother loses her son. She is broken down with a sorrow 
 that is passionate. Time does not abate that sorrow. 
 No consolation makes it seem less. For, say what it is 
 possible to say, still the hard fact remains. The touch 
 of a vanished hand is no more, and the tender grace of a 
 day that is gone never returns. Time passes, but the soul 
 that remembers is faithful. She does not think out in 
 detail what she longs for. She herself may have grown 
 old, and her son, had he still lived, would also have changed. 
 But none the less she longs to be by him again. It is not 
 that she visualises a meeting with him changed, it may 
 be, by the lapse of a long period, changed in circumstances, 
 in age, in character. Nor does she think definitely how 
 it would seem to him if, stereotyped as at the moment of 
 his death in mind and body, he, a youth, were to come 
 to find his mother altered and grown old. What above 
 all she desires is that if they meet again it shall be, not 
 as strangers, but as mother and son. For the relationship 
 is one, not of living beings in their mere externality to 
 each other, but of spirit to spirit. It is a relationship, 
 not of merely separate lives, but of mind to mind, 
 a relationship which, as we saw in an early chapter, 
 depends on correspondence, on identity amid difference, 
 on feeling that is more than mere particular feeling. It 
 was this that the physical organism of the son expressed 
 for his mother as symbolic of his personality. The inter- 
 pretation was and remains a spiritual one. 
 
 Now this interpretation would not remain if the symbol 
 were altered in character, and, as a consequence, the 
 mother does not really desire to have restored in another 
 life, unchanged and undeveloped, a being for whose very 
 existence growth and development were essential. The 
 relationship requires continuous self- alteration for its 
 reality, and such continuity it can only have if its nature 
 is more adequately conceived. It is therefore not sufficient 
 that a life beyond the grave should be a mere repetition 
 under altered and divergent circumstances of the old 
 life here. That is what spiritualism seems to overlook, 
 
408 ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 for a mere repetition must prove unsatisfying, and cannot 
 be sufficient from the higher point of view. The life of 
 which it tells us, as of something brought back to us just 
 as it has always been, lacks the spiritual advance that is 
 needful. What makes the suggestion additionally un- 
 attractive is that the interpretation may have been filtered 
 through some medium of no high quality. As Mrs. 
 Bosanquet has expressed it, in her poem " Non tali 
 Auxilio" : l 
 
 " Were there indeed no barrier that could save 
 Their spirits from the importunity 
 Which looks to necromancy for a proof 
 The dead will talk with us, nor hold aloof, 
 Far better were the silence of the grave 
 Than life entangled in futility." 
 
 From one outlook the son that death took became an 
 inert physical object that was carried away in a coffin. 
 But is there no other aspect of his death ? For the son, 
 that he should die is that an event happens within his 
 object- world, bringing about the termination of his 
 relation to it as a bodily self for which it is present. He 
 does not look on that event only as does a mind apart. 
 All of what happens falls wholly within his world, an object- 
 world that is no external thing independent of another 
 thing called his mind. For both belonged to the entirety 
 in knowledge which he as himself mind has throughout 
 expressed. His death is therefore an event happening to 
 himself as his own object within that object-world. In 
 its fullest aspect it was an event for his mind and relatively 
 to it. Apart from its relation in its place in nature to 
 that through which alone nature is possible, it has no 
 meaning at this standpoint and no reality. 
 
 Just as Newtonian space proves to have merely 
 relative reality when the character of space is more fully 
 comprehended ; just as independent nature is seen to be 
 unreal if separated from the interpretations which it 
 receives in and for knowledge ; so death becomes unreal 
 for the mind which it affects solely as a physical event 
 in its world. It is an actual event, but actual only in so 
 far as knowledge, confined to a definite but not final level, 
 has invested it with a reality that is relative. For mind 
 
 1 In the little volume entitled Zoar, written by her husband and herself. 
 
DEATH 409 
 
 reaching over it as over a particular happening within its 
 own experience it possesses a different aspect. 
 
 Nor has this been so only for the dying man. It is so 
 also for her who has been the spectator of his passing 
 from her. For the mother, if her outlook is of a character 
 wide enough, feels it, even though she cannot express her 
 feeling in words. She knows, dimly it may be, but as she 
 holds certainly, that all was not sufficiently recorded 
 when what was the son she loved was carried away from 
 her to be laid in the earth. By faith, the sense of things 
 unseen, because demanding vision of a higher order in 
 knowledge, she is aware that it is not so. And inspired 
 by her sense of higher truth she may exclaim, " O death, 
 where is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy victory ? " 
 
 Do not let us misinterpret the scene. At its own 
 level in the orders of knowledge and reality, death is 
 an event as actual as it is sorrowful. But at a stand- 
 point belonging to a different order it has another 
 meaning altogether, a meaning in which death does not 
 touch the subject-self. This self is no transitory physical 
 object intelligible merely as such. To interpret death 
 adequately a highly important standpoint has to be taken 
 into account from which the self is recognised as what 
 is not simply a physical organism. Even at that for 
 which death is an event belonging to nature there is a 
 meaning that is more than individual. As the life of the 
 human organism had a beginning, so it must have a ter- 
 mination. The living being exists, not as a bare par- 
 ticular, but as a member of his kind, as an individual who 
 must pass away, so far as he is one among other individuals 
 in a natural world, in the interests of the species to which 
 he belongs. He has other ends, too, which he has to fulfil 
 in general interests analogous. He belongs to his country, 
 and it may be that he can only fulfil his duty by dying 
 for it. He may be called on to wear his life out for the 
 sake of those who depend on him or for the sake of his 
 neighbours. He lives in and through an environment 
 that entails duties towards society and not merely towards 
 himself. That he should, after his life has run its course, 
 pass away in the form in which he has lived, is accordingly 
 as natural as that he should have come into being. If 
 that course is interrupted by premature death, such 
 interruption is due to the contingency belonging to all 
 
410 ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 that is external. But in truth it is quality and not 
 quantity that is important. 
 
 It seems, therefore, that it is the self regarded as subject, 
 at a degree in reality of a character which belongs to 
 what is higher than the mere time series, that the mother 
 must think of for comfort in her bereavement. It seems, 
 too, that it is in this aspect that she does just in fact 
 look at the self the external symbol of which is no longer 
 present. Reappearance on earth as a phenomenal 
 body there, attended as it would be with ever-occurring 
 changes and breaches in the continuity of a personality 
 that implies life in nature, could never give her back the old 
 tie unbroken in its highest possible form. It is for this 
 reason that spiritualism seems to me to miss the true 
 point. I will not discuss the results of observation of 
 which its votaries are convinced, for I do not know with 
 the accuracy that is essential what they are or what they 
 mean. Experience in Courts of law has taught me how 
 misleading and how fragmentary such records are apt 
 to prove. People offer not merely the facts, but their 
 own inferences inextricably mixed up with them, even 
 when acting with passionate desire for truth. I have 
 learned from observation the necessity of calling in 
 question closely all testimony that is not only faithfully 
 and deliberately offered under sanctions that enjoin 
 the nearest practicable approach to accuracy in detail, 
 but that is not also sifted by skilled cross-examination 
 scientifically directed. Nearly everything that I read, 
 even of what is written down by the best kind of 
 spiritualists, is open to criticism of this kind. The 
 application of a sifting procedure such as that of a 
 Court of Justice appears to be highly desirable before 
 such testimony, even from the most honourably inten- 
 tioned witnesses, is accepted as a basis for inference. 
 Moreover, so far we know but little of the phenomena of 
 what is called telepathy, a quality of mind which may 
 still reveal much that is new in a yet strictly natural order. 
 Nor have we yet studied exhaustively the content that 
 lies below what is directly present to consciousness, and 
 is hidden in the apparently inexhaustible pit of the ego ! 
 
 But the other interpretation of immortality stands on 
 a different footing. The soul has here a different meaning. 
 It culminates in personality with an aspect other than 
 
IMMORTALITY 411 
 
 that of mere nature with its time system. To the time 
 series the mind of course stands in an essential relation. 
 Of this relation we found early an illustration in Professor 
 Whitehead's analysis of the function of sense- awareness 
 in making a congruent world possible. It is in the self 
 that the universe centres, and it is in the self in another 
 aspect, of a kind isolated by the abstractions we have to 
 make in reflection, that we find an object among a 
 multitude resembling itself in nature. It is in our indi- 
 vidual experience that these two standpoints are brought 
 together in a reality which the two views taken in separa- 
 tion present only partially. There is nothing in point of 
 principle more baffling in such an idea than there is else- 
 where in that of the relative reality of the different degrees 
 in knowledge. In the experience of the concrete individual 
 we find the distinction drawn, and we find it drawn in 
 emotion as well as in reflection. That is because the 
 individual is throughout concrete, and his mental activity 
 lies as much in feeling as it does in reflection. The two 
 are inseparable in the actual life of mind, and are unreal 
 in any attempted separation. Thus we always present 
 our ideas in images, but in images that are significant 
 and fraught with meaning. 
 
 When, then, we interpret immortality in the larger 
 sense as life that is eternal as being more than appears 
 in the time series, we fashion images which import this. 
 These images may have spatial and temporal forms. 
 They are generally only metaphorical, but they are symbolic 
 of what itself is of no character that is either spatial or 
 temporal. This is the entirety to which we have so often 
 referred, that whose aspects are distinguished in the 
 different forms of knowledge, forms whose standpoints all 
 fall within the whole to which they belong as modes of 
 its partial expression. In art we have the entirety revealed 
 in representations which, when they come to us, born of 
 the mind of a great genius, we may feel to be adequate, 
 inasmuch as we have no higher standard of the same 
 order by which to get beyond them. In art the particular 
 and the universal, the symbol and what it signifies, may 
 be fused in a perfection of form that is inseparable from 
 the matter to which the form is given. The work of art 
 is in this way apparently immediate. It has been born, 
 not of nature, but of mind, and yet in that birth from mind 
 
412 ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 so directly and fully endowed that in it there is little 
 work left for reflection to do in bringing what is particular 
 into harmony with what is general. The perfect individual 
 symbol speaks and interprets to us for itself. 
 
 In religion there is something analogous. Its char- 
 acteristic is that the relation of the self to the entirety in 
 which its reality lies is the relation of man to God. Here, 
 again, it is not in general conceptions that the relationship 
 is currently rendered. It is in images and symbols fraught 
 with inherent meaning, just as in a great picture. Only 
 the feeling is feeling that is yet more absorbing than that 
 of the artist. For it is the feeling of life beyond time 
 gained in the submission and surrender of the life that 
 belongs to time, and by the whole-hearted acceptance of the 
 fact of finiteness. We have to be in another world while 
 yet in this one. We are what we seem to be, and yet as 
 we seem to be we know we are not real. We feel that we 
 must rise above our natural selves. 
 
 " God harden me against myself, 
 This coward with pathetic voice 
 Who craves for ease, and rest, and joys ; 
 
 " Myself, archtraitor to myself ; 
 My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe, 
 My clog whatever road I go. 
 
 " Yet One there is can curb myself, 
 Can roll the strangling load from me, 
 Break off the yoke and set me free." 1 
 
 It is the whole-souled acceptance of the new outlook 
 on existence, the determination to deny the mere will to 
 live, and to seek the whole in indifference to self-interest, 
 that matters in religion. It is not victory, in the form 
 of an outward good to be gained for the soul, that counts ; 
 it is in the effort itself and in its quality that deliverance 
 is attained. The old outlook is superseded and a new one 
 adopted. To some men this new outlook comes in the 
 shape of the emotion that is intuitively known to be 
 religious because of the meaning with which it is fraught, 
 a meaning that emerges in the sense of its inherent value 
 in comparison with all besides. To other men the new 
 outlook arrives as the result of prolonged reflection or of 
 intellectual insight. Yet others have something of both 
 kinds. It is an error to suppose that a religious attitude 
 1 Christina Rossetti, " Who shall deliver me ? " 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGION 413 
 
 cannot have its origin in the conviction that comes of 
 logic. Spinoza was above all a thinker, and his thinking 
 brought him to conclusions sufficiently clear to enable 
 God to be revealed under them. That the form was 
 abstract in character was for a mind such as his no draw- 
 back. 
 
 But for most men and women religion, although, 
 different from both, will always resemble philosophy less 
 than it does art. For it depends for the majority on 
 quality in creative imagery, and is, moreover, of a practical 
 rather than of a theoretical nature. That is why people 
 gain strength by worship in common in a visible church, 
 consecrated to the God whose presence to them they there 
 hope to realise through the stimulation of actual practice. 
 
 Taken in its largest meaning philosophy excludes no 
 standpoint that belongs either to art or to religion. But 
 its path is too steep and too hard to be available for the 
 great majority. If its conclusions are to be made of 
 general application this must be done through leaders of 
 the people, in religion, in art, in knowledge generally, 
 who are willing to teach and apply its lessons. I think 
 that the greatest lesson that it can yield to-day is that 
 the relativity of knowledge has among its consequences 
 this, that all forms of knowledge are reconcilable if con- 
 strued as aspects within one entirety. This is a lesson 
 which we saw exemplified in physical science. We saw 
 it also illustrated in biological science by the fitting in, 
 when properly understood, of the methods of physics and 
 chemistry with the recognition of the essence of organic 
 life as to be sought in a controlling end. We traced the 
 same principle, that of distinguishing realities into aspects 
 as distinguished from entities, in psychology and the 
 science of the state. It would be easy to follow out the 
 lesson in the treatment of other subjects, such as economics. 
 The statistician obtains his results by surveying the 
 evidence of certain common purposes in great assemblages 
 of human beings and abstracting attention from idiosyn- 
 crasies which do not affect the result yielded quantitatively 
 by his method. He gets, for example, little information 
 about moral qualities, but for such information he is not 
 searching ; it is irrelevant to a limited purpose. 
 
 But relativity is also, though not in a scientific form, 
 characteristic of the standpoint of mankind, not only in 
 28 
 
414 ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 daily judging individuals but in judging other nations 
 than their own. Of this we see daily constant and curious 
 illustrations. From a book on English Public Finance, 
 recently published by the New York Bankers' Trust 
 Company, I take these sentences, from p. 15 : 
 
 " Englishmen and their newspaper editors delight in 
 heckling and finding fault with the Administration as we 
 would say ; the Government as they would say. But to 
 the observer 3,000 miles away, quietly studying the figures 
 without any other object than to get at the facts, the 
 results obtained seem little short of marvellous. They 
 could only be obtained in a country where patriotism runs 
 so high that the people demand to be taxed and taxed 
 heavily, as we are assured was the case in England during 
 the course of the war." 
 
 Here is national relativity indeed. The writer has fixed 
 his attention on the circumstances that the total expendi- 
 ture of Great Britain in the six years of the war exceeded 
 the aggregate expenditure of the preceding two and a 
 quarter centuries, and that over 36 per cent of the total 
 expenditure during the war was met out of revenue. His 
 co-ordinates of reference differ from those of the average 
 British critic at home. 
 
 It is, however, in the deeper meaning of the principle 
 of relativity, that depending for its application on funda- 
 mental categories or conceptions transformative of reality, 
 that we have been inquiring into its application to the 
 problem of eternal life. In the scientific light which the 
 principle so applied casts, we have seen how the problem 
 arises of a life, not continued within time, but in its full 
 nature independent of the time series. We drag down, 
 even for the practical purposes of those immediately con* 
 cerned, the quality of the conception and its power of trans- 
 forming reality by raising it to another order, if we degrade 
 it into unthinking identification with that of a resurrected 
 or independent body continuing the old life as on earth. 
 It is not too much to say that such a picture does not 
 help religion but hinders it. So far as it is meant to 
 symbolise death as the gateway to another life, it does 
 so by metaphors which are as misleading as they are 
 inadequate. For we saw in the earlier chapters that the 
 
THE UNDERTAKER AND THE EXECUTOR 415 
 
 soul and the body are riot distinct entities, but that the 
 former is just the organism as it appears at a higher 
 level in knowledge. Not the less on that account is the 
 level one from which we get fuller reality, as full as that 
 which the biologist finds in life. The undertaker and the 
 executor have their proper and necessary functions, but 
 in a lower order of the actual. The lesson of relativity 
 warns us against the narrow view which takes the reality 
 of different orders as meaning different entities competing 
 with each other for the title to be accepted as actual. It 
 is as separate aspects, finding their relation to each other 
 within the whole that is visible only to a perfected know- 
 ledge, that their true significance is revealed. Of such a 
 perfected whole we, who are more than we take ourselves 
 to be, have glimpses in art, in religion, and in philosophy, 
 in each case in a different way. 
 
 For us, whose world is in everyday life envisaged under 
 the finite forms due to our conditioned faculties, a direct 
 and pictorial presentation of the ultimate unreality of 
 death is never completely accomplished. The veil of 
 Maya, which imperfect understanding is ever weaving 
 for us, by its abstractions leads us from the full truth. 
 Yet, as symbols of more than they can express for such 
 partial insight, the pictorial representations that are 
 common have their use. They have a significance that 
 carries us beyond them. They point us to reality at a 
 higher level. On the plane of our lives as human beings 
 in the world of nature, physical and social, we belong to 
 the stream of the events which we experience. These 
 events pass away, they pass inasmuch as the order to 
 which they belong is one of succession. Return as events 
 in this succession they cannot. For their essence consists 
 in this, that they should lie in a time series. Now we 
 have only to look at the fuller character, taken by itself, 
 of such a series to see what the relation of events in it 
 must ultimately prove to be. Segregated as it is in time, 
 each instant succeeds the preceding one in its order. The 
 earlier moment has gone finally when the second one 
 follows it. It is only in a spatial relationship that they 
 are recalled or are distinguishable. It is in the space 
 system that it involves that each time series becomes 
 actual for us otherwise than as a mere abstraction of 
 reflection. The moments are not identical, but apart 
 
416 ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 from space they are indiscernible, and require to be sus- 
 tained in memory and through distinctions which only 
 spatial relations make possible. Leibnitz was not justified 
 in speaking of the identity of indiscernibles. There may 
 be indiscernibles without identity. What he says is only 
 true of actual and individual objects, not of bare events 
 which have received no setting or construction from reflec- 
 tion. When we die, therefore, in so far as we are mere 
 objects in the world of nature, we have passed as the 
 moment in the time series passes, excepting inasmuch as 
 the picture constructed in reflection remains as a possession 
 of the observer. 
 
 But this is only half of the truth. For the succession 
 in the time series would be impossible excepting as held 
 together and unified in the knowledge for which it is. 
 That knowledge cannot itself be an object or event in the 
 series, for it is only through it that the series has a possible 
 existence. There are thus two factors implied in our 
 experience of events in time, the known and the knower, 
 and the latter, in so far as it is subject in this experience, 
 is above the plane of the time series, just as it is, for the 
 same reasons, not less above that of relationship in space. 
 The factors are not separable as events in experience. 
 But it is the distinction between them which explains the 
 meaning of our recognition of the triumph of the spirit 
 over the grave, and its significance for knowledge. We 
 are once more face to face with the consequences of the 
 principle of relativity. 
 
 Now if we apply this lesson, the first thing that strikes 
 us is that we find in it a justification for what many 
 of those whom we name the best believe in with their 
 whole souls, the significance of a higher life that is beyond 
 the reach of the all- severing wave of time. The pictorial 
 language in which this idea is expressed is the language 
 of finite knowledge. It is therefore inadequate, for its 
 material belongs to the domain of an order in knowledge 
 that is not the highest. But, by the faith which is the 
 sense of an order yet higher, or in a mysticism which may 
 be just that faith under another name, the pictures framed 
 are invested with a meaning which gives them a title to 
 recognition as symbolic. Just as the printer's ink is the 
 symbol of the poet's inspiration, and has generally interest 
 for us as if real in no other sense, so the imperfect effort 
 
THE PLAIN MAN 417 
 
 to express what cannot be adequately expressed may 
 conduct us to a reality beyond its outward form. In order 
 to make intelligible how this can be so, the principle of the 
 relativity of knowledge has to be invoked. But the plain 
 man does not need to understand. He is satisfied with 
 what the direct presentation presses on him, a picture 
 that gives him the sense of peace and contentment and 
 that satisfies his highest longing. 
 
 In an often-quoted sentence in the preface to his Appear- 
 ance and Reality, Mr. Bradley throws out a suggestion. 
 " Metaphysics," he says, " is the finding of bad reasons 
 for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these 
 reasons is no less an instinct." In these words he guards 
 himself against a possible accusation of taking his subject 
 too seriously. So long as metaphysics is separated from 
 the rest of the body of scientific knowledge the meta- 
 physician is apt to lay himself open to this suspicion. 
 But if philosophy be nothing segregated from the remainder 
 of the whole system of knowledge, but applies a principle 
 which it holds in common with every branch of that 
 system, then it hardly requires defence more than other 
 modes of the application of knowledge do. It is true that 
 its standard is not that of measurement, but in this it 
 does not stand alone, and it has at least all the justification 
 for its conclusions that criticism has in literature. But 
 Mr. Bradley, in what he says, is really warning us against 
 pedantry, the undue exaltation of the abstract mind. His 
 warning is one which those who are disposed to regard 
 lightly the faith of simple minds would do well to bear 
 in remembrance. For that faith is in itself a correction 
 of abstractions. It is the sense of the fuller significance 
 of experience. 
 
 The dying man may have before him no picture that is 
 clear excepting one of himself as passing away from a 
 world which he and others imagine as continuing after 
 him. It does not disturb him that this should be so. 
 For he has the sense that more is signified. This sense 
 may come to him in forms that vary. The firm conclu- 
 sions of a life spent in thought may bring it. Or it may be 
 gained in the consciousness that death has been accepted 
 because it was a duty to encounter it. Or, again, it may 
 come, as it so often comes, to the simple mind which 
 religious feeling has permeated. If the dying man is of 
 
418 ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 this latter sort he may be filled with a faith that assures 
 him that his " Redeemer liveth." If it be so he is 
 strong and victorious not less than is he who holds as 
 his final thought that it is within his own mind that the 
 world and himself as in it are passing, and that in his 
 'grasp of this fact he is above it and is at one with the 
 eternal. So it is that when his simple creed, pictorial 
 it may be, but symbolical of fuller reality and deeper 
 significance, bids the humblest soul in his greatest and 
 last extremity be assured that he is in the presence of 
 God, it may be that his is an insight differing in form only 
 from that of the profoundest thinker. 
 
 Such seems to be the value of what Wordsworth has 
 called our " Intimations of Immortality." Let there be 
 no self-deception as to what they mean, and no taking of 
 them to indicate some interruption of a kind that is 
 miraculous of the order of experience in space and time. 
 The miraculous is what violates the principles of the order 
 to which it belongs. What I am speaking of imports no 
 such violation. Things remain, in the orders in which 
 they are recognised as existing, just what they seem to be. 
 But their significance as existing is changed with change 
 in standpoint, and their reality in consequence not only 
 has an altered meaning, but is an altered reality, trans- 
 formed in the new order to which it now belongs. This 
 conclusion should occasion us in point of principle no 
 more misgiving than the conclusion that there are different 
 systems of space and time, according with differences in 
 systems of reference. 
 
 The case of the self in its aspect of externality is diver- 
 gent from these last referred to, but in circumstances only. 
 In such illustrations as those physical instances we can by 
 reflection render our measurements congruent for know- 
 ledge if we realise that they appear as they do because of 
 the standpoint adopted. We have, for example, assumed 
 ourselves to be at rest and to be at liberty to employ a 
 certain set of co-ordinates of reference with which we are 
 familiarly associated. But these turn out to have been 
 co-ordinates forming only one out of other possible sets. 
 In the same way, although we can use mechanistic con- 
 ceptions to interpret the living organism physically and 
 chemically as being an assemblage of molecules, isolated 
 and merely external to one another, we have made the 
 
STANDPOINT THE KEY TO REALITY 419 
 
 organism have this character by our employment of these 
 conceptions, and we may have to give this standpoint up, 
 as being neither exhaustive nor adequate, if we are to get 
 at the character of the true facts of life. In this case the 
 change of standpoint is a change in the categories or 
 conceptions under which we direct attention. 
 
 It is this latter kind of readjustment, not of the standard 
 of reference in measurement of externality, but of the 
 category employed, that we have to make if we would 
 get at reality in what we name as eternal life or as God. 
 But in all cases the principle is the same. For it is that 
 the standpoint requires critical examination before we 
 conclude that it is adequate for the order of existence in 
 which we are searching for the real. We may discover 
 that we have got from it only what relatively signifies 
 reality, and that for the interpretation of the individual 
 in the perfection of his existence an outlook and a set of 
 conceptions more completely comprehensive is necessary. 
 
 The capacity of man to interpret is unlimited in its 
 range, because the range of mind as such even in human 
 form is unlimited in its power of framing general con- 
 ceptions. In art and religion mind may be brought, 
 apparently directly and not only mediately, into the 
 pictorial consciousness of what is highest in its own nature. 
 That is because feeling and thinking are not really separate 
 faculties. Were we untrammelled by the physical organs 
 through which mind is actual in us we should not find it so 
 hard to realise a relation which demands expression even 
 in abstract thinking through images which thought has 
 to use. So far, again, as feeling is concerned it is fraught 
 with the values implied and recognised in it. It is because 
 of this defectiveness of form, inherent in all interpretation 
 and the outcome of our finite natures, that things are 
 taken to be no more than they seem for the limited purposes 
 which direct our attention in everyday matters. But we 
 are capable of more and we recognise more as being actual. 
 If death cannot appear from the outlook of everyday life 
 to be other than what judged from that outlook it in truth 
 is, a calamity which may entail for those left behind 
 suffering as well as grief, at least it has the very different 
 aspect of which I have now spoken. 
 
 Often, too, we become aware that their deaths have 
 been essential for giving full effect to the life-work of the 
 
420 ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 greatest among us. It was so with Jesus, with Caesar, 
 with Nelson, with countless others who have yielded up 
 their lives as individual men in order to make those of 
 others better. The personalities of these great ones survive 
 in the results of their work, and their deaths have been 
 required to produce the lasting results of that work. 
 Surely it is as wrong to think of them as the mere victims 
 of regrettable forces of blind nature as it would be to 
 desire that they should have lived on, to the detriment, 
 it might have been, of the causes to which they had 
 consecrated their earthly existence. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 CONCLUDING BEFLECTIONS 
 
 THE endeavour to accomplish the purpose described in 
 the first chapter has now been made. It has not been 
 merely in its direct bearing on particular forms of know- 
 ledge that the doctrine of degrees has seemed to afford 
 new light. It teaches a yet more general lesson. It 
 furnishes a fresh outlook on the apparent conflicts disclosed 
 throughout the story of reflective thought. It enlarges 
 our conception of truth. We follow the development of 
 human knowledge with a deeper insight into its real process. 
 For we see in its result one which has been accomplishing 
 itself continuously, and which is founded on a principle. 
 The principle is one which teaches us to read the history of 
 philosophy as evolving progressively a lasting view of the 
 foundation of reality, a view remaining substantially con- 
 stant in varying forms, despite temporary changes due to 
 alteration in modes of approach attributable to periods 
 and circumstances. Variations there have been, without 
 doubt, and deflections from time to time. But these are 
 inseparable from the freedom of human personality to 
 concentrate for its own purposes on what accords with its 
 bent at the moment. The larger view has often been 
 temporarily displaced, but always to return clad anew, 
 to reassert its power over the human mind. In the 
 main an obvious thread has remained unbroken, and is 
 seen to have done so if the progress is surveyed from 
 beginning to end and as a whole. Science and religion 
 appear, in the course of this progress, not as reconciled, but 
 as in no antagonism, inasmuch as they are concerned with 
 different standpoints. Their results, therefore, are dis- 
 covered not to conflict with each other, if studied, as they 
 should be studied, in the light cast by relativity. 
 
 The field of knowledge has been surveyed and its general 
 character has been examined. The system of knowledge as 
 
 421 
 
422 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS 
 
 an entirety has seemed in the end to disclose itself as being 
 an ultimate fact, within which fall both the self and the 
 world of nature by which in our daily outlook the self is 
 confronted. Analysis reveals both of these as simply forms 
 in which knowledge is self-presented, and in which it is 
 before itself. To know means more than to look out 
 through a window at some reality of a different character. 
 For to be independent and actual has no significance 
 outside the form in which things appear as we apprehend 
 them in even the knowledge that is finite. 
 
 On the other hand, our minds are just as little centres 
 of activity creative of objects apart from them in time and 
 space. The mind and its objects are both actual, and as 
 they appear for us they are correlative and co-ordinate. 
 But they not the less fall within the entirety, in which they 
 have their ultimate foundation. Within this whole they 
 are distinguished, and the distinction is itself a creature 
 of reflection. For it seems to have no meaning that is 
 intelligible on any other footing. Cogito, sum. In knowing 
 we are, and the objects distinguished from us and from 
 each other also are. In each case the meaning and the 
 reality are inseparable and have the same character. 
 
 Within the entirety nothing has significance excepting 
 what the activity of thought gives to it. To have no 
 meaning and not to exist appear to be the same thing. 
 The activity of thought is thus the source of what we call 
 reality. It establishes what are conventionally termed 
 entities, but are really the outcome of standpoints. 
 Modern science, as we have seen, indicates this conclusion 
 as definitely as does metaphysics. It is our systems of 
 reference and the categories we employ in directing and 
 concentrating attention that give birth for us to the 
 varying forms which truth and reality assume. Such 
 truth and reality have their foundation in these forms. 
 But they are not subjective creations. They stand for 
 just what we mean when we speak among ourselves of the 
 actual. They characterise things themselves and not 
 only our thoughts about them, and events are real in and 
 through them. But truth and reality are relative, 
 inasmuch as they are thus the outcome of cardinal stand- 
 points in knowledge. Along with each of such par- 
 ticular standpoints there are always others that have 
 title deeds of equal validity. It is only relatively that 
 
THEORY AND PRACTICE 423 
 
 for any one standpoint a title can be asserted for its result 
 in a form that is exclusive. The final and complete truth 
 cannot be less than a systematic whole of knowledge 
 within which all particular and partial outlooks have their 
 places as levels or degrees in knowledge. It is therefore 
 from above and not from underneath, from what is concrete 
 and individual, and not from abstractions only derivative 
 from it, that we must seek to inquire, if we would strive 
 to realise the ideal of bringing the whole under a final 
 and adequate conception, and of so attaining to full truth. 
 
 All this presses itself on us as the outcome of the 
 principle discussed in these pages, a principle brought to 
 the light at times more and at times less perfectly in both 
 ancient and modern thought. Its prominence to-day is 
 perhaps greatest in the domain of science. On science it 
 is conferring a new and extended significance, by the 
 introduction of the conception of relativity into scientific 
 method. 
 
 For practice the general result, if it be true, must have 
 a bearing resembling what it possesses for theory. Society 
 consists of an assemblage of individuals whose purposes 
 show the correspondence considered in the chapter on 
 the state. But these individuals differ from each other 
 in the details of both purpose and outlook. The differences 
 are as essential for the life of society as is the identity on 
 which correspondence is based. It is well that this 
 should be so. Were it otherwise, that life would be at a 
 dead level and progress would not exist. Among animals 
 the individuals of the species resemble each other the 
 more the lower we go. Between the individual bees 
 belonging to a hive it is difficult to detect any divergence 
 in conduct, and in a less degree this is true of horses and 
 dogs. But in mankind, with whom the power of free 
 reflection is the distinguishing characteristic, a variety 
 corresponding to the presence of individual freedom of 
 mind is obvious. The more civilised is man the greater 
 is the divergence between individual characters. We see 
 this best if we compare the activity of a highly intellectual 
 nation with that of a savage people. In their works we 
 know them as they are. 
 
 Purpose is determined by conception, and conception is 
 therefore of commanding importance. Its formation needs 
 stimulation and guidance, and it is the function of the 
 
424 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS 
 
 teacher to provide this. The national system of education 
 is thus neither an accident nor a luxury. It is a necessity, 
 and it is increasingly recognised to be such as a nation 
 grows in stature. 
 
 But such education is not only of one type, nor does it 
 proceed from any single source. Its genesis is the desire 
 of freedom in thought and action, freedom in which man 
 is indeed hampered by the physical structure that is the 
 organ in which mind expresses itself, but is in respect of 
 his brain power far less restricted than are the lower 
 animals. These we can train only in a comparatively 
 small degree, but man we can educate without any definite 
 limit because of the range of his reflective capacity. To 
 the might of thought no secret of the universe is wholly 
 impenetrable, man's station in nature and the restricted 
 range of his organs notwithstanding. For thought is akin 
 in character to the objects it thinks, and, as the result 
 of the correspondence of reality with knowledge, mind 
 recognises no barrier as absolute. 
 
 We learn, therefore, in ways the variety of which is as 
 great as the variety of our souls, and we draw the life- 
 giving water of knowledge from an infinity of wells. For 
 one it comes in the shape of increasing aptitude for action 
 and success in dominating his environment. To another 
 it comes in power gained by solitary reflection. To a 
 different type of mind it arrives as success in 'social rela- 
 tions. But whether it be in the field, or in the study, or 
 in the meeting-place, what is attained in the end comes 
 through some sort of knowledge. This may have the 
 shape of fresh ideas of a general type, selected and arranged 
 for application, or it may take the shape of that semi- 
 instinctive aptitude for which the name experience is 
 sometimes appropriated, a kind of experience which is the 
 outcome of the correction of error by trial, and is largely 
 a result of developed disposition, inborn or acquired. 
 
 Though men and women are endowed by nature un- 
 equally, and always depend to some extent for the chances 
 of their minds as much as of their bodies on the accident 
 of circumstances, in the individual cases of the majority 
 there is always much service that can be rendered by 
 others. The mind is self -developing, but its power of self- 
 development comes to it through its objects and ideas. 
 In its freedom to select these it needs guidance, intellectual, 
 
DEMOCRACY AND THE HIGHER LEADERSHIP 425 
 
 social, and spiritual. To give such guidance is the work 
 of the leader who can teach. 
 
 But the blind cannot lead the blind aright, and the 
 teachers must have their eyes open and see as much as is 
 practicable of the paths along which they are to lead. 
 There is required, accordingly, for the guidance of the 
 teachers themselves, higher leadership of the kind which 
 can stimulate towards reliable ideals in science, in art, in 
 religion, and in philosophy. For the relativity of their 
 outlooks has to be realised by all engaged in branches of 
 knowledge with which other branches may have to be 
 brought into relation. It is here that the principle of 
 relativity has its greatest application. It shows that 
 truth is of different varieties in the different orders of 
 knowledge. It insists, as the consequence, that toleration 
 is not only expedient but necessary. It is not by restrain- 
 ing freedom of thought, or even freedom of action, further 
 than restraint on freedom of action is required in the 
 interest of the just liberties of others, that the highest 
 level of well-being is to be reached. It is by that enlarge- 
 ment of the individual spirit and its outlook which lets 
 us see how much we must know before we can be sure 
 that we know at all. 
 
 Democracy, that is to say, the rule of those who have 
 been selected to be directly responsible to the citizens as 
 a whole and to conform to the general will of the nation, 
 in the sense in which that will was interpreted in the 
 chapter on the state, is at present tending to become a 
 fact all the world over. We have, therefore, to consider 
 more than ever before how to implant in the mind of the 
 people the inclination to call for the development of 
 intelligent interest and of the individuality that is of its 
 essence. I need hardly say again that mind I take to 
 include not less what is spiritual than what is interpreted 
 through reflective capacity only. We have to teach our 
 people, if we would maintain the great station of our 
 own country among the other nations of the earth, that 
 they must see things steadily and see them whole. If we 
 are to do this we must make sure that our statesmen, our 
 local leaders, our teachers and our preachers, have them- 
 selves something of the mind that is really synoptic, 
 and are in some degree fitted to speak of eternity as well 
 as of time. 
 
426 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS 
 
 In certain respects the attainment of such a result cannot 
 but depend on a general outlook which must in the end 
 rest on what our best thinkers can provide for us. If the 
 principle of relativity in its broadest sense be a true one 
 it is capable of furnishing a lesson for general practice 
 which may help to guide our thinkers in their work, work 
 which must be shaped by objectives of high quality, 
 which they can in common set before themselves. In the 
 past we have been distracted, probably unnecessarily, by 
 differences and controversies on questions of minor 
 importance. To-day the state of the world after a great 
 war suggests at least the possibility of a better state of 
 things, in which men and women may, throughout their 
 inevitable differences, be in agreement about some things 
 that are in common needful. For their insistent ques- 
 tionings show them to have been stirred at last by a great 
 convulsion of soul, and to be serious as they were not 
 before war broke upon them. 
 
 It is this seriousness of mind that those who are 
 well-to-do have to encourage by their example. I need 
 hardly say that I do not mean that there is no room for 
 lightness of touch. But I think that we are deficient 
 in attention to concentration of high purpose. It is true 
 that temperament varies in localities, and gives rise to 
 provincial variations that are largely the results of 
 tradition, and sometimes to dispositions that have grown 
 under the soporific influence of surroundings. These are 
 everywhere apparent. Yet such is the variety of the 
 possible ways in which human beings can excel that 
 there is room in our society for every sort of activity. 
 " Die Zeit," as Goethe used to say, " 1st unendlich lang ! " 
 We are most of us capable of almost unlimited application 
 if we choose to make use of our particular opportunities. 
 But, then, art also is long, and life after all has an end. 
 What we have to dread is, not so much contrast between 
 the forms of possible activity, as inertness. Self-directed 
 activity is essential to success in every shape, and energy 
 can only be properly applied if it is inspired by sustained 
 purpose. 
 
 The reflective habit is thus highly desirable in the 
 interests of our democracy. How much misery, through 
 strikes and lock-outs and unrest, would not have been 
 averted had there been enough of reflection ! The 
 
BURKE ON MANKIND 427 
 
 necessity for reflection is not only on one side. If the work- 
 man does not always reflect neither does the employer. 
 The want of a broad outlook on the relations of labour to 
 capital has produced and is producing intensification of 
 an undesirable sense of difference in advantages. To the 
 narrowness of the existing outlook as it appears to the 
 working classes we are only beginning to become alive, 
 and we still dwell on the evils of class conflicts as though 
 the responsibility for them were mainly on one side. 
 
 It is true that, as Burke said long ago, " the nature of 
 man is intricate ; the objects of society are of the greatest 
 possible complexity ; and therefore no simple disposition 
 or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature 
 or to the quality of his affairs." He said this, with his 
 genius for conveying a general principle pictorially, with 
 reference to the affairs of his own period. But his words 
 are not the less profoundly applicable to the labour 
 question as it is with us to-day. It is no easy problem to 
 devise in this connection a means by which ends, the 
 accomplishment of all of which is essential in the interest 
 of the nation, can be rapidly attained. No principle 
 abstractly applied will solve the difficulties that press on 
 us. As Burke says elsewhere, " no rational man ever did 
 govern himself by abstractions and universals." Again, 
 in another connection, he has a pregnant utterance, equally 
 of a general application. " The question with me is not 
 whether you have a right to render your people miserable, 
 but whether it is not your interest to make them happy. 
 The manners and principles of those who lead, not of those 
 who are governed . . . will ever determine the strength or 
 weakness and therefore the continuance or dissolution of 
 a state." Reminders such as these ought never to be out 
 of memory in our attempts at dealing with the social 
 problem that promises to press itself most on us in the 
 near future, that of the industrial life of this nation. It 
 will be our own responsibility if the appearance of things 
 becomes yet more menacing. For our democracy is not 
 naturally revolutionary. It is in truth miscellaneous in its 
 composition and conservative in its tone. There need 
 be no fear if we are careful in time, and do not by our 
 neglect allow sparks to kindle into flames. What we all 
 require, in every class of society, is the wider outlook from 
 which is visible the danger, together with what is necessary 
 
428 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS 
 
 to avert it. We have to educate those who by their 
 numbers are our masters when the ballot takes place, and 
 we have also to educate ourselves. Not wholly without 
 reason are the working classes bidding their would-be 
 physicians to heal themselves. It is not good for any of 
 us that there should exist the gaps in mental life that 
 exist to-day. Out of these gaps arise discontent and unrest. 
 The world is a better world than it once was. Slavery 
 is gone, and Christianity has established the infinite worth 
 of the individual and the value for eternity of the humblest 
 soul. There has been progress in many directions. It is 
 progress that is so far not accepted as being sufficient. 
 That is hardly in itself a cause for anxiety. It is of the 
 nature of mind never to be quiescent, and in its dialectic 
 it is ever passing from one outlook to another that is 
 different. The mind of a people is in this respect like the 
 mind of the individual man. No political faith can 
 remain static and live. The life of such faith lies in its 
 development. It is a mistake to look back to a period that 
 has passed and to point to the tone and temper of its 
 leaders as having been mistaken, merely because we 
 observe some apparent narrowness. The tone and temper 
 may not have been narrow as estimated by reference to 
 the purposes required by the period. We needed the free 
 trade movement in this country at the time when it came. 
 Most of us do not in the least desire to go back on what 
 that movement accomplished, or to question the great and 
 new service it rendered in its period. But we say that here 
 too relativity comes in, and that what was then indeed 
 wisdom was yet only its beginning and not its end. To-day 
 the problem of the production and distribution of the 
 fruits of industry assumes a new and different form. That 
 does not show that the great principle of a past generation 
 was in that generation wrong or that it is wrong now. It 
 only proves that its truth, while truth according to the 
 standards of the time, and perhaps still truth for our time 
 also, is not enough to cover the field of the outlook in the 
 days in which we live. There is a new demand in our 
 period for interference with individual liberty in the 
 interests of society as a whole. It may or may not be 
 justified. But in any case the question is one that must 
 be answered from a further system of reference, and to 
 which the answer may prove an answer which we are 
 
THE GENERAL LESSON 429 
 
 bound to accept as admissible where our forefathers would 
 have rejected it. The mind of the state never stands 
 still, any more than does the mind of the individual. 
 We have therefore not only to watch but to think, and to 
 take heed lest our social organism gets encrusted with the 
 products of an environment that is no longer suited to it. 
 
 I have made this reference to the public life of nations 
 because it is germane to the principal subject under dis- 
 cussion. The opinions, collective as well as individual, of 
 mankind are profoundly dependent on relativity in outlook. 
 Such relativity is a secondary consequence of the deeper- 
 lying relativity of knowledge in its general character, and 
 in practical life is not dissimilar in the fashion of its 
 working out. But an element of subjectivity, an influence 
 due to individual personality, always enters into what we 
 call opinion to distinguish it from full knowledge. The 
 two are related by the fact that in each reference to some 
 standard is the condition of truth. But in the case of 
 the knowledge that is the medium within which alone 
 experience of any kind can really emerge, the principle 
 applies in a fashion that goes to the very roots of reality. 
 It is the same current, but when we turn to relativity in 
 the details of human intercourse we find that the current 
 has overflowed its banks and become spread out so much 
 that its channels are no longer clearly marked. It has lost 
 its definite appearance as the main stream. 
 
 The survey endeavoured in this volume now approaches 
 its conclusion. There is a final question which the reader 
 may ask, since the end is in sight. Assuming the principle 
 of relativity to mean all that has been said, what guidance 
 does it offer for the conduct of our individual lives ? I 
 do not think that the question is a difficult one to answer. 
 The real lesson which the principle of the relativity of 
 knowledge teaches us is always to remember that there 
 are different orders in which both our knowledge and the 
 reality it seeks have differing forms. These orders we 
 must be careful to distinguish and not to confuse. We 
 must keep ourselves aware that truth in terms of one 
 order may not necessarily be a sufficient guide in the 
 search for truth in another one. We have, in other words, 
 to be critical of our categories. As an aid to our practice, 
 the principle points us in a direction where we may possess 
 our souls with tranquillity and courage. We stand 
 29 
 
430 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS 
 
 warned against " other- worldliness " in a multitude of con- 
 cealed forms. We are protected, too, if the doctrine be 
 well-founded, against certain spectres which obtrude them- 
 selves in the pilgrim's path. Materialism, scepticism, and 
 obscurantism alike vanish. The real is there, but it is 
 akin in its nature to our own minds, and it is not terrifying. 
 Death loses much of its sting and the grave of its victory. 
 For we have not only the freedom that is of the essence 
 of mind, but we are encouraged to abstract and withdraw 
 ourselves from the apparent overwhelmingness of pain and 
 even of death itself. Such things cease to be of the old 
 importance when they lose the appearance of final reality. 
 There may come to us, too, contentment of spirit, and 
 a peace which passes our everyday understanding. We 
 grow in tolerance, for we see that it is in expression rather 
 than in intention that our fellow-men are narrow. We 
 realise that we are all of us more, even in moments of deep 
 depression, than we appear to ourselves to be, and that 
 humanity extends beyond the limits that are assigned 
 even by itself to itself. Our disposition to be gentle 
 to those who may seem to misinterpret us because 
 of dissent from our outlook on life grows with the 
 recognition that, as Spinoza wrote two hundred and fifty 
 years ago, in his answer to the letter offering him refuge 
 in a chair at Heidelberg from his theological persecutors, 
 " religious dissensions arise not so much from the ardour 
 of men's zeal for religion itself, as from their various dis- 
 positions and love of contradiction, which leads them into 
 a habit of decrying and condemning everything, however 
 justly it be said." Of Spinoza himself Renan has without 
 exaggeration spoken as " 1'homme qui eut a son heure la 
 plus haute conscience du divin." His life and his attitude 
 of soul remain a lesson of high value for those who seek 
 to believe as he did, Est Deus in nobis. Words like these 
 do not call for the recognition of what is supernatural. 
 They relate to what is in final truth natural, and all they 
 claim at our hands is the recognition that what is natural 
 falls within differing orders of reflection, all of which are 
 found to be in ultimate harmony. It is this that seems 
 to have been in substance the creed, varying in expression 
 but ever indicative of a common faith, proclaimed by 
 some of the greatest guides of mankind in ancient and 
 in modern times. It is a creed that if it be true helps 
 
THE END 481 
 
 those who can make it their own to dispel obscurities, 
 and to lighten for themselves and for others the burden 
 and the apparent mystery of human life. It is a creed 
 that stimulates the practice of unselfishness in social and 
 religious life, interpreted as fully harmonising with the 
 dictates of philosophical thought. " If any man shall do 
 His will, he shall know of the doctrine." 
 
INDEX 
 
 Absolute, an, 387, 390 
 
 Action at a distance, 93, 134 
 
 Active reason, 250 
 
 Alexander, Professor, 273 et seq. 
 
 American bankers, 414 
 
 American philosophy, 313 
 
 Aristotle, 8, 243 et seq., 262, 345, 
 
 347, 348 
 Arithmetic, 281 
 Arnold, Matthew, 8 
 Art, 4, 11, 12, 13, 244, 411 
 Assumptions, unconscious, 17 
 Astronomer Royal, the, 52 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 14, 36, 253, 372 
 Bergson, 66, 91, 118, 265, 271, 
 
 ZlQetseq., 317, 333, 337, 359 
 Berkeley, Bishop, 9, 21, 30, 130, 268, 
 
 293 
 Berlin engineer, an, on Energy 
 
 and Relativity, 57, 58 
 Bifurcation of Nature, theory of, 17 
 Biology, 10, 12, 124, 125, 126, 130, 
 
 133, 284 
 
 Bolland, Professor, 255 
 Bosanquet, Professor, 201, 206, 
 
 207, 211, 212, 214, 326, 331, 340 
 Bosanquet, Mrs., 408 
 Bradley, F. H., 201, 206, 207 etseq., 
 
 214, 256, 315, 340, 417 
 British Astronomical Expedition 
 
 of 1919, 52 
 Bronte, Emily, 406 
 Browning, Robert, 404 
 Burke, Edmund, 427 
 
 Caesar, 420 
 
 Caird, Edward, 246, 255 
 
 Carr, Professor Wildon, 130, 317 
 
 Categories, 272 
 
 Cause, 125, 135 
 
 Centrifugal force, 121 
 
 Chemistry, 142 
 
 Christianity, 3, 8, 428 
 
 Cogredience, 78 
 
 Coincidence, 99, 101 
 Common Sensibles, the, 251 
 Compresence, 269 
 Congruence, 77, 79, 80 
 Cook, Eliza, 11 
 
 Cunningham, Professor Watts, 313 
 et seq., 320, 323 
 
 Dante, 11, 347 
 
 Darwin, Charles, 228 
 
 Death, 226, 409 
 
 Degrees in knowledge and reality, 
 
 180, 199 
 Deism, 386 
 Democracy, 4, 425 
 Dialectic, 235 
 
 Eclipse of 1919, the, 52 
 Eddington, Professor, 81, 96, 100, 
 
 105, 109, 123, 124, 128 
 Einstein, 33, 34, 39, 43, 45, 51, 52, 
 
 55, 56, 58, 82 et seq., 95, 96, 103, 
 
 106, 107, 114, 121, 123, 129, 
 132, 139, 140, 191, 275, 276 
 
 End, 135 
 
 Erdmann, Professor J. E., 255 
 Euclidean space, 107 
 Extensive abstraction, method of 
 71 
 
 Faith, 5 
 
 Faust, 362 et seq. 
 
 Finite centres of knowledge, 141, 
 
 156, 178, 195 
 France, R. N., 305 
 Freundlich, 62, 110 
 
 Galileo, 130 
 
 Gauss, 59, 97, 118 
 
 Generality, 49 
 
 Geodesic line, 95 
 
 Goethe, 11, 187, 231, 335, 343, 365, 
 
 391, 399, 426 
 Good form, 356 
 Gottingen, 118 
 
 432 
 
INDEX 
 
 433 
 
 Gravitation, 93 
 Greeks, the, 14 
 Green, T. H., 318, 340 
 
 Hamilton, Sir William, 35, 110 
 Hegel, 60, 225, 261, 327, 332, 334 
 
 et seq., 375, 391 
 Heredity, 134 
 Holmes, Mr. Justice, 284 
 Homer, 11 
 Hume, David, 9, 21, 268, 293, 301 
 
 Idealism, subjective, 9 
 
 Identity, personal, 155, 159, 160, 
 
 163 
 
 Inertia, 93 
 Inge, Dr., 257 
 " It," the, 27, 30 
 
 Jena, 343 
 
 Jesus, 393, 420 
 
 John the Baptist, 187 
 
 Johnson, Dr., 30 
 
 Julian, the Emperor, 264 
 
 Kant, 21, 22, 23. 26 ; 27, 33, 38, 60, 
 65, 109, 130, 138, 139, 296 et 
 seq., 303, 311,333, 337 
 
 Knowledge, 6, 29, 141, 144, 150, 
 167 
 
 Law, 355 
 
 Leadership, the Higher, 425 
 League of Nations, 378 
 Leibnitz, 11, 33, 130, 157, 416 
 Life, nature of, 93, 127, 134, 160, 
 
 165 
 
 Light, velocity of, 45, 82, 83, 91 
 Literature, 4 
 
 Locke, John, 20, 21, 292 et seq. 
 Lord Chancellor, a Victorian, 18 
 Lucretius, 263 
 
 Mackenna, Stephen, 257 
 
 Mathematics, 16, 39, 40, 48, 53, 179 
 
 Matter, 222 
 
 Maxwell, Clerk, 71 
 
 Meaning, 21, 168, 179 
 
 Measurement, 14 
 
 Meres jowski, 264 
 
 Metaphors, 225 
 
 Mind, 127, 132, 136, 160, 172, 175, 
 
 290 
 
 Minkowski, 94, 101, 120, 191 
 Moltke, 336 
 
 Monads, 158 
 Morality, 354 
 Mysticism, 231 
 
 Napoleon, 187, 343 
 
 Nation, nature of a, 375 
 
 Nature, 17, 20 
 
 Nelson, 420 
 
 New Realism, 66,137,243, 265 etaeq. 
 
 Number, 279 
 
 Orders in reflection, 32 
 Organism, the living, 31 
 
 Paley, 373 
 Parallelism, 73 
 Parliament, 370 
 Particular, 47, 48 
 Pathway to Reality, preface 
 Perception, representative, 35, 110 
 Perpendicularity, 79 
 Personality, 227 
 Philosophy, history of, 8, 9 
 Physicists, what they really observe, 
 
 47, 93 
 
 Planck, Max, 61, 111, 305 
 Plato, 8, 137, 244, 245, 348 
 Plotinus, 8, 243, 257 et seq., 262 
 Poetry, 10 
 Political opinion, 4 
 Politics, 3 
 Porphyry, 260 
 Pragmatism, 143 
 Pringle-Pattison, Professor, 206, 
 
 212,213, 214 
 
 Progress, 10 ; in philosophy, 271 
 Protagoras, 37 
 Prussian Constitution, 334, 346 
 
 Quanta theory, 111 
 
 Realism and Idealism, their con- 
 vergence, 239 
 Reformer, task of the, 6 
 Reid, Thomas, 268, 295 
 Relativity, various meanings of, 34 
 Religion, 3, 393, 412, 413 
 Renaissance, 8 
 Renan, 375, 430 
 Riemann, 59, 80, 110, 120 
 Rossetti, Christina, 412 
 Rotation, 121 
 Russell, Bertrand, 63, 277 et seq. 
 
 Sabine, Professor, 321 
 Scepticism, 21 
 
 Schlick, Professor, 59, 100, 110 
 Schopenhauer, 303 et seq., 333, 337 
 
434 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Science, 16 et seq. 
 
 Self, 29, 149 et seq., 152, 169, 171 
 
 Sellien, Ewald, 60, 62 
 
 Shakespeare, 11 
 
 Shortest path, 98 
 
 Simultaneity, 105 
 
 Sittlichkeit, 378 
 
 Sovereignty, 370, 377, 385 
 
 Space, 94 
 
 Space and Time, relativity of their 
 
 reality, 83 
 
 Space-time continuum, 73 
 Spinoza, 430 
 
 Spiritualism, 3, 407, 410 
 State, the, 377, 379, 381 
 Strauss, David, 3 
 Symbols, 16, 17 
 
 Teleology, 327 
 Tensors, 100 et seq. 
 Terminology, metaphysical, 179 
 
 Time, 94, 153, 230, 327, 329 
 Truth, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 132 
 Tyndall, 263 
 
 Universe, whether finite, 122 
 
 Value, 10, 15, 351, 353, 361 
 Victorians, the, 17, 18, 19, 64 
 
 Wallace, Professor, 340 
 War, the Great, 3, 5 
 Whitehead, Professor, 17, 39, 63 
 et seq., 105, 112 etseq., 123, 125 
 Whittaker, Thomas, 257, 259 
 Will, the, 307, 353 
 Will, the general, 353, 367 
 Wordsworth, 11, 397, 398 
 World-line, 94, 101 
 
 Zeller, 246, 248, 265 
 Zelter, 336, 363 
 
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