LIBRARY 
 
 U 1 N 1 V 
 
 ERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Li 
 
 , .' 7 / 
 
 
 
ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 KNOWING AND BEING 
 
KNOWING AND BEING 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN VEITCH, LL.D. 
 l\ 
 
 PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND RHETORIC IN THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCLXXXIX 
 
 Att Rights reserved 
 
Upil 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 THE Essays in this volume were given as Lectures 
 to the advanced class, of Logic and Metaphysics 
 in the University of Glasgow, during the present 
 session, 1888-89. This class was instituted by 
 me in 1867. The attendance on it is wholly vol- 
 untary ; and, in the current session, its numbers, 
 though not large, show an increase, notwithstand- 
 ing the lack of appreciable encouragement to 
 prosecute the higher departments of Philosophy 
 in the University of Glasgow, or indeed in any 
 Scottish University. I hope to be able to 
 publish, in sequence, portions of the various 
 courses of lectures originally delivered to this 
 class, during the last twenty-two years. These 
 
VI PJREFACE. 
 
 will be to me a grateful memorial at least 
 of hours spent with an audience of youths, 
 fresh-hearted and full of hope, with the promise 
 and the charm of life still before them, who have 
 shown a real concern for the higher questions of 
 Speculative Philosophy. 
 
 J. V. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY, GLASGOW, 
 April 1889. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY, ..... 1 
 
 I. RECENT THEORIES, . . . .10 
 
 II. NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS,. . . 35 
 
 III. REALITY, ..... 84 
 
 IV. RELATION, . . . . .129 
 V. TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION AND NATURE, . 161 
 
 VI. EXTERNAL PERCEPTION, . . .178 
 
 VII. THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS, . . 232 
 
 VIII. THE INFINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS GENERAL 
 
 CONSIDERATIONS SUMMARY, . . 269 
 
 IX. PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, . . .301 
 
BEING, 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 THE problem of Philosophy may be said to be 
 twofold : on one side is the question, What do we 
 know ? on the other, What is ? Obviously the 
 first question has its main interest for us as leading 
 to the second. Our knowledge acquires interest 
 and importance from what it teaches us regard- 
 ing what is regarding our own Self, the World, 
 and God. Knowledge is a means, not an end. 
 We do not know merely that we may contemplate 
 or speculate. We know that we may believe. 
 As knowledge issues in belief, it further issues in 
 action, for we act as we believe. 
 
 I put the question as to Knowing first ; for it 
 seems to me irrational to put that of Being first, 
 or to attempt to settle any question about Being 
 A 
 
2 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 about what is first or apart from Knowing. 
 That is a vain method, as seems to me, though 
 it is professed, but always inconsistently acted 
 upon. 
 
 Further, I put the question as to knowing 
 not only first, but in this. form What do we 
 know ? In these times it will be found pretty 
 frequently put as, What can we know ? I 
 have no objection to this form of the ques- 
 tion. I think we must in the end come to 
 it. We must consider the question as to the 
 conditions, the reach, the limits of human know- 
 ledge. But I distinctly object to its being put 
 first. And I find very great disadvantages aris- 
 ing from its being so put. The risk of giv- 
 ing it the first place is, that we are apt to lay 
 down conditions regarding perhaps one part or 
 sphere of our knowledge only; and when we 
 have got those partial conditions or limitations, 
 we set them up as the laws of all knowledge, 
 and come thus to exclude from knowledge many 
 things that we do know. Hence I distinctly ob- 
 ject to what is called the Theory of Knowledge, if 
 this be not preceded by a thorough examination 
 and analysis of what we do as a matter of fact 
 know in and by consciousness in all its forms, 
 from Sense-Perception, through Memory, Imagin- 
 ation, Thinking including concepts, judgments, 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 3 
 
 reasonings up even to that side of our con- 
 sciousness which is conversant with what we call 
 the Infinite, the Absolute, the Unconditioned, the 
 Divine. If, for example, we start simply with the 
 knowledge we get in Sense-Perception, and draw 
 out its conditions and laws, and then carry them 
 all through our knowledge as its laws, we shall 
 make the blunder of limiting knowledge to a 
 single, and perhaps comparatively insignificant, 
 portion of its sphere. The laws of our knowing 
 the object in time and space are not necessarily 
 the laws of our knowing all objects. Yet this 
 has been actually done in philosophy ; and it has 
 been done through our setting up the question as 
 to what we can know, before that as to what we 
 do know. In a word, we must have Psychology 
 that is, a study of consciousness in its widest 
 sphere before we can have Metaphysics, or the 
 science of reality; and we must further have 
 psychology in all its fulness before we can have 
 what is called the Theory of Knowledge, for the 
 simple reason that you cannot give the theory of 
 a thing before you know what the thing is, and 
 is in all its completeness. The mistake in ancient 
 philosophy was to begin metaphysics before 
 psychology ; the mistake, common enough in mod- 
 ern philosophy, is to begin the theory of know- 
 ledge before psychology, and before we have any 
 
4 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 means of knowing what we know, or knowing 
 knowledge as a fact of experience. 
 
 In this connection there occurs to us the 
 contrast between ancient and modern method 
 practically between Aristotle and Descartes. In 
 ancient philosophy, especially the Aristotelic, 
 there is obviously the prominence of the object 
 in the method of investigation, being as being, 
 and the essential attributes of being as such ; then a 
 process downwards from this to its special forms : 
 and although being does not appear as the sum- 
 mum genus of the categories of Aristotle, still it 
 is there influentially. It is the objective forms, 
 the forms of reality, as embodied chiefly in lan- 
 guage, which determine the classification. 1 And 
 it is the modes of real judgment judgment about 
 things on which the logical forms in the Organon 
 are based. But clearly those objective forms or 
 facts cannot be considered apart. They are at 
 first for us, as they are in knowledge ; and know- 
 ing in every scheme of philosophy must come in 
 for its share of attention and scrutiny. Things 
 as they stand in relation to our acts of cognition 
 ultimately this is the point of view ; not, how- 
 ever, taking them merely as they now stand in 
 mature experience,but considering genesis, growth, 
 increase of knowledge as well. 
 
 1 Cf. Institutes of Logic, p. 51. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 5 
 
 The modern point of view, that of Descartes, 
 is generally spoken of as rather the analysis of 
 knowing than the analysis of being, and in a 
 good sense it is so. His cogito ergo sum has un- 
 questionably its starting-point in consciousness, 
 and he proceeds to being through consciousness. 
 
 Moreover, he inculcates the doctrine that the 
 
 
 
 mind is better known than the body or object ; 
 and he seeks to build up philosophy on the basis 
 of clear and distinct ideas, and mainly by deduc- 
 tion. But it would be a mistake to suppose that 
 in the method itself, or even as unfolded by 
 Descartes, there is any exclusion of a regard to 
 the object or varied objects of knowledge. Des- 
 cartes certainly never tried to evolve knowledge 
 out of the simple acts or operations of knowledge, 
 divorced from the variety of objects in experience ; 
 nor did he set up knowing, as the instrument of 
 philosophy, to the exclusion of known being. In 
 the first principle of his philosophy the imme- 
 diate implication of self-being in self-conscious- 
 ness, there is ample recognition of being as 
 known. The gulf supposed to exist between 
 knowing and being is here at once bridged, 
 for the being conscious in a given instance is 
 the being for the time, and knowing and being 
 are fused in one intellectual comprehension. 
 Here subject is not divorced from object, but 
 
6 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 subject and object become implicative. And 
 whatever may be thought of his tendency to ex- 
 aggeration in deduction from the clearness and dis- 
 tinctness of the idea, and its fatal consequences in 
 absorbing being in knowing, making belief simply 
 a harmony of concepts, carried to an extremity in 
 Spinoza, there is both in the Meditations and 
 the Principles a very ample recognition, in prac- 
 tice, of the need of studying mental operations in 
 the light of their objects. Thinkers may imagine 
 that they can study knowing to the exclusion of 
 the variety in the objects known; they delude 
 themselves. The acts of cognition not only cease 
 to be various, and thus adequate to reality ; they 
 actually cease to be. The study of being out of 
 knowing is vain ; not less empty is the study of 
 knowing apart from being. 
 
 It may be said that, on the whole, the view 
 which puts the investigation of knowing before 
 being has prevailed in modern philosophy, and 
 it is only lately that any unfaithfulness to the 
 method has been shown. It is even true that 
 Psychology, as a rule, has gone before the Theory 
 of Knowledge, though the psychological investiga- 
 tion has been hampered by hypotheses as to the 
 supposed ability or inability of the mind to know 
 in given spheres. It will be found that the various 
 doctrines and theories of Sense-Perception have 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 7 
 
 turned a good deal, for example, on the question 
 as to whether anything can be perceived which 
 is not a sensation or mode of the mind, or " idea " 
 in the mind. All this proceeds, as seems to me, 
 on a misapplication of the true method. We set 
 out to seek knowledge, and we hamper ourselves 
 by a system or hypothesis about knowledge, 
 already formed or traditionally got, and thus we 
 frustrate our own efforts. 
 
 It ought also to be kept in mind that " know- 
 ing" and "being" are abstractions. There is 
 no knowing in our experience without a knower ; 
 there is no being realisable by us apart from 
 something that actually is. Further, there is 
 no knowing which is not a definite act of 
 knowing either perceiving, or remembering, 
 or judging, or something else that is definite. 
 Hence we cannot set up knowing as a thing 
 to be inquired into in the first place. We can 
 deal only with this or that act of knowledge, 
 and deal with these in succession, until we have 
 exhausted as to nature the possible acts of our 
 knowledge. Thus, and thus only, can we set 
 down the conditions the essential conditions 
 of our knowing ; those apart from which there is 
 no object of knowledge ; those apart from which 
 there is not this or that act of knowing. Any- 
 thing else is a mere abstraction, and a worthless 
 
8 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 abstraction, and its conditions are not the con- 
 ditions of actual knowledge. In recent systems 
 of philosophy, the whole of the true relations 
 of these questions has been misconceived and 
 perverted. 
 
 The same is true of the terms "Pure Being," 
 " Consciousness," " Thought." Being, or pure 
 being, is simply quality less being being not 
 determined as this or that. There is nothing 
 corresponding to such a conception in reality. 
 Being must be related to some definite subject 
 ere it can mean anything real or actual, ere, 
 indeed, we can properly realise it as meaning 
 anything. Every object of thought, as thought, is 
 regarded as existing or real, in the sense of its 
 affirmation as an object of thought, whether it 
 be the percept of a time object or the concept of 
 that which may be at any time. Being is simply 
 the abstraction or universalised concept of this 
 fact. To be studied, being must be studied not 
 per se, but in its varied applications to real things. 
 But this application cannot come out of being 
 per se; it must be helped or furnished from 
 another source, a sphere beyond the limits of 
 the abstraction. Pure being is simply an empty 
 notion. 
 
 In the same way there is no reality correspond- 
 ing to the term "Consciousness," or even to 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 "a consciousness;" that is, there is nothing 
 in reality convertible with it. There are con- 
 scious acts, definite, individual, specific, suc- 
 cessive and coexisting in time. " Conscious- 
 ness " represents their common element, ab- 
 stracted by us, and raised into a concept. It is 
 the element, so to speak, of knowledge, recogni- 
 tion, or " awareness " on our part of certain acts 
 with definite contents. And we can put a mean- 
 ing into " consciousness " by thinking it as exem- 
 plified in an apprehensive conscious act (real), 
 or in a conceiving conscious act (ideal). But 
 thus only has it reality. Far less is it a person 
 or an actor. It ought not to be hypostatised, and 
 made to do what alone something more, that is, 
 a conscious subject, can do. 
 
 The same remarks apply to " Thought," which 
 is an abstraction of precisely the same character 
 and origin. It represents what is common to 
 individual or definite acts of thought in different 
 times ; yet it is set up to do and to be what only 
 that which grounds it a thinker can do or be. 
 
KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 L RECENT THEORIES. 
 
 THERE has grown up of late in our philosophical 
 literature a mode of dealing with its questions, 
 which has at least the merit of novelty to say 
 nothing of the mark of foreign importation. It 
 is not quite to be identified with the teachings 
 of the Critique of the Pure Ecason ; but it owes 
 its origin in great measure to that treatise. The 
 predominant doctrines of the Critique are repro- 
 duced in what may be called the new school, 
 somewhat modified or transformed, it may be, in 
 certain cases, but still essentially Kantian. The 
 influence of Hegel is also visible : Hegel, indeed, 
 has been read into Kant abroad, and also in 
 this country, so as to correct him, supply his de- 
 ficiencies, and carry him on to a higher stage of 
 development. What Kant regarded as merely a 
 
RECENT THEORIES. 11 
 
 form of knowing has been translated into a form 
 of being. The subjective necessity has been trans- 
 formed into the objective existence, and thought 
 and reality identified. For lack of a better word 
 it would not be improper to name the way of 
 looking at things which results from this fusion 
 of Kant and Hegel as Neo-Kantian. 
 
 We shall find, however, as we proceed, that this 
 new system is not wholly of foreign importation. 
 It borrows an essential principle from philosophy 
 nearer home. It first of all lays one hand on 
 that prime inspirer of modern thinking, alike 
 in its destructive and in its constructive sides, 
 David Hume ; and stretching out the other to 
 Kant, it seeks to fuse the two, to supplement 
 The Treatise of Human Nature, by the aid of the 
 Critique of the Pure Reason, and so reproduce 
 for us, or rather construct, the World, Man, and 
 God. The principle underlying the whole of 
 Hume's speculative reasoning, whether accepted 
 traditionally or put forward as true, is the lim- 
 itation of consciousness to perceptions, that is, 
 impressions and ideas, or states of consciousness. 
 Neither Kant himself nor the Neo-Kantians ever 
 rise beyond this limitation. They do not, whether 
 logically or not, regard Hume's impression per se, 
 or apart from objective relation, as an object of 
 knowledge; but they deny explicitly that any 
 
12 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 object, save a feeling or sensation, can be directly 
 apprehended by us, or can come as an element 
 into the complexus which constitutes an object 
 of perception or even of knowledge. The nihil- 
 ism of Hume, when his principles are fully 
 carried out, is abundantly acknowledged and pro- 
 claimed. But this is to be counteracted by the 
 new philosophy. It is for us to consider whether 
 the correction borrowed from Kant is of avail ; 
 whether the method of constructing objects is a 
 sound one, whether, in a word, the construction 
 is or is not based on truth of fact ; and whether, 
 looking to basis and construction alike, there is 
 truly and logically any advance to results beyond 
 those reached by Hume himself. Possibly it may 
 turn out that Neo-Kantianism is but Hume writ 
 large. 
 
 The essential feature of the method of Neo- 
 Kantianisin, as appears to me, is its analysis of 
 Knowing and its consequent determination of 
 what is meant by Being ; and, indeed, of Being 
 itself. It practically accepts Kant's question as 
 to how knowledge is possible; and it proceeds, 
 either following Kant literally or with certain 
 modifications, to lay down the essential conditions 
 of knowledge, those conditions apart from which 
 no object whatever is known perceived or con- 
 ceived. And it may, at least in certain promi- 
 
RECENT THEORIES. 13 
 
 nent cases, be held as adopting Kant's method of 
 determining those conditions viz., that known 
 as Transcendental Deduction, or the Transcen- 
 dental Deduction of the Categories. 
 
 The analysis of Knowing necessarily affects the 
 theory of Being. What are called the logical, pro- 
 perly metaphysical, conditions of knowledge, may 
 be held to limit our knowledge of reality simply, 
 with indefinite possibilities beyond ; or they may 
 be held as limiting Being or reality itself within 
 their own extension. So that Being as known 
 or knowable by us may be held to be the only 
 Being. It may even be held that the most 
 general, universal, or, properly, abstract condi- 
 tions of knowledge by us called categories 
 are, in an alleged concatenation, the universe of 
 Being ; so that from the analysis of what we call 
 knowledge we may come to regard the laws we 
 find as the true, inner, essential being of things 
 the world, man, and God. For once we set out 
 on the path of abstraction, and look only at the 
 conditions of the possibility of knowledge, the 
 ascent is easy to the view that the most abstract 
 formula which can represent those conditions is 
 the ultimate conception of the universe and ade- 
 quate to God Himself. If, for example, finite 
 knowledge and being be identified with the con- 
 ception of " relation," we have not far to go to 
 
14 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 make the highest in Knowing and Being a sum 
 simply or centre of relations a vast possibility 
 of development through finite consciousness and 
 call it an Eternal or Universal or Infinite Con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 The analysis of Knowing thus specially affects 
 the three acknowledged forms or kinds of Being 
 viz., Nature, Self or Man, and God and our 
 views as to what these mean and are. The prin- 
 cipal point here in reference, in the first place, 
 to nature, is the change in the recognised view 
 of it. When we say that we perceive or know 
 what we call nature, or an outward world, the 
 reality of a non-ego, we do not mean also that 
 in so doing we make or constitute nature, that 
 is, the facts and the order of those facts, which 
 form its known contents. We quite plainly dis- 
 tinguish knowing and being in this instance. 
 We hold as different the object perceived in the 
 moment of perception ; we distinguish it from 
 mere feeling; and we hold the permanence and 
 independence of existence, in some form or other, 
 through and amid our changing perceptions and 
 conceptions of what we call things. 
 
 But Neo-Kantianism changes all this for us. 
 To know nature or the outward world, that is, 
 to perceive and conceive it, is not merely to 
 recognise it, it is truly to make or constitute it. 
 
RECENT THEORIES. 15 
 
 "The understanding makes nature," in a sense, 
 no doubt, afterwards to be made more explicit; 
 but substantially it is held that nature is made 
 for us by what is called our " thought," or by 
 " thought," for ultimately we are to find that 
 " our thought " is not ours in the sense of exclu- 
 sive or even personal possession, but a form of 
 thought, or consciousness, designated Univer- 
 sal, Infinite, Eternal. Thought or consciousness, 
 and in the first instance as possessed by us, is not 
 only a perceiving or a conceiving of what has for 
 itself a reality, but it is the very constitution of 
 that reality. The dualism of nature and thought 
 or intelligence is abolished ; and we have in its 
 room a thought-created or constituted nature or 
 world of outward things. For the ordinary names 
 are in each case retained, even after they have been 
 eviscerated entirely of their recognised meaning. 
 
 When we come to the application of results to 
 Man, Self, or Person, we find also a considerable 
 change in the point of view, or meaning of the 
 terms. Instead of a conscious subject as the one 
 factor in knowledge, we usually hear of a " con- 
 sciousness," or "thought," as doing the work of 
 knowing and making. This is not a correct or 
 justifiable use of words ; it is a substitution of 
 the act for the actor, of the knowing for the 
 knower, even of the object of the knowledge for 
 
16 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 the knowing. But it indicates the bearing of the 
 theory on our personality or self -hood ; and this 
 is simply a minimising of it in the first instance, 
 for it is practically merging the self in its act ; and 
 from this the transition is easy to regard the act as 
 one not of our personality or self at all, but either 
 as complete in itself, or as that of a Single Supreme 
 Consciousness, regarded as working in all, and 
 called Infinite or Eternal. The use of terms in this 
 instance is characteristic, and points to what may 
 be called the dbstractionalism which dominates 
 the whole of Neo- Kantianism. When we call to 
 mind that this novel theory is introduced chiefly 
 for the purpose of founding a rational system of 
 Ethics, as opposed to a natural one, and find it 
 given as the only possible basis of a true moral 
 theory, the incongruity and inaptitude of the 
 lowering, even effacing, of personality stand out 
 in strong relief. The method, of which this is 
 but one example, will be fully illustrated in the 
 sequel. It will be found to be the treatment of 
 abstractions as if they were realities; and hold- 
 ing that to be true of reality which is true only 
 of an abstraction, and, e converse, holding that 
 to be false of reality which is not true of an 
 abstraction. 
 
 We find very little reference in Neo -Kant- 
 ianism to the knowledge of other selves in the 
 
RECENT THEORIES. 17 
 
 world of our experience. We are accustomed to 
 think that there are other people in the world 
 personalities like ourselves. The world of 
 nature is not, to our thinking, the only non-ego. 
 Each ego different from me is to me a non-ego, 
 in the strictest sense, a not-self to me. The very 
 meaning of self -hood or personality points to an 
 absolute mutual exclusion of the reality of each 
 self. All egos lie out of each other : on this 
 condition alone can they remain egos. How we 
 come to know these, and to have the conviction 
 that they are, is another question. It is a fact 
 that we have the conviction ; we certainly should 
 be surprised to learn, as the conclusion of a phil- 
 osophy, that " I " is in the world, but not " WE." 
 Yet I do not find any fair or face-to-face treat- 
 ment of this problem, or any definite conclusion 
 about it. If, however, we are to apply the prin- 
 ciple that conceiving an object also constitutes 
 that object, that conceiving the world of nature 
 makes it, how are we to escape extending the 
 principle to the world of Selves, which we be- 
 lieve to be ? Another self is not directly appre- 
 hended by us. We infer it only from certain 
 appearances. But these appearances are "feel- 
 ings," and they are created and constituted ob- 
 jects of knowledge by us. They have no tran- 
 scendent existence, in time at least, apart from 
 B 
 
18 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 our inind. How, then, can the supposed or in- 
 ferred self be an entity apart from our mind ? 
 The " feelings " through which it is known are in 
 my mind ; it itself, as an object of thought, can 
 thus only be in my mind. How, then, is it differ- 
 ent from me ? How can it be another self ? How 
 is it less a creation of mine than what I call the 
 world of outward nature ? In that case, what 
 precisely would be the kind of reality we should 
 have to attribute to another self, or one said to be 
 different from me the knower ? And on what 
 would its reality depend ? All I find is, that the 
 selves of the world are to be regarded as modes 
 or forms, or something of this sort, of the Supreme 
 Infinite Consciousness, of which I eventually dis- 
 cover myself to be a manifestation. Whatever 
 other conclusion follows from this, it is quite 
 clear that there cannot be any real difference, or 
 difference fitted to constitute a self at all in the 
 world, if every one is but the form or manifestation 
 of one hidden self, deploying itself through all. 
 
 With regard to the third great point the 
 nature and reality of God the highest question 
 of ontology or metaphysics the answer given 
 by Neo-Kantianism follows the line of thought 
 already indicated. It seeks gradually to work up, 
 through certain processes of analysis, to what is 
 called a Universal, or Infinite, or Eternal Self-con- 
 
KECENT THEORIES. 19 
 
 sciousness, regarded as the Divine Self or God. 
 This conception is a very marked instance of the 
 fusion of Kantianism and Hegelianism. Kant, as 
 is well known, finds what may be regarded as the 
 ultimate condition of knowledge, and of at least 
 phenomenal reality, in " the synthetic unity of 
 apperception or consciousness," or the transcen- 
 dental unity of self-consciousness. But while the 
 process or act of synthetic unifying is needed, 
 this does not, in Kant's view, imply a real self 
 or ego at the root of it. The self here is nothing 
 beyond a unifying process conceived as necessary 
 to the constitution of knowledge ; and the unified 
 product, the known world, is nothing unless as in 
 relation to the self or process. This is the pure 
 ego, but it is not realised in any actual self- 
 consciousness. It is, in fact, a mere abstrac- 
 tion of the form of consciousness, or the most 
 general statement of the condition of combina- 
 tion according to which we actually know or 
 possibly can know. Now that which with Kant 
 was a simple necessity of thought in construct- 
 ing experience, becomes with the later thinkers 
 a reality, and that which gives reality to the 
 world of nature and man being and knowledge. 
 While Kant shrank from regarding the transcen- 
 dental self as real, as more than a mere logical 
 abstraction, and especially from- identifying it 
 
20 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 with God, Neo-Kantians boldly make the ad- 
 vance, and hold the self to be real, and also to be 
 God. In this they follow the spirit, if not the 
 letter of Hegel, with whom reality or thought or 
 categorising are identical. What is rational 
 that is, what is thought under certain categories 
 is real, and what is real is rational. 1 The tran- 
 scendental self of Kant becomes the one side of a 
 conception, of which the manifold of things or 
 the world is the other. It is a principle of rela- 
 tion, or unifying, which cannot exist apart from 
 the relation or relations which it is supposed to 
 constitute. It is, in a word, the unity of the 
 manifold, this unity being necessary to the 
 manifold and the manifold to the unity. 
 
 Now, without meanwhile going fully into a 
 discussion of this view of the Divine reality and 
 of its grounds, it may at least be said that such 
 a conception of Deity does not in any way fulfil 
 what are usually regarded as the requirements 
 of the conception. It is clear, in the first place, 
 that the predicates of power or causality, of ac- 
 tivity and act, cannot apply to such a subject. 
 Indeed the conception of this self as the eternal 
 unity of the one and the many, expressly excludes 
 
 1 This point has been clearly and ably put by Professor 
 Seth in his recent treatise, ffcgelianism and Personality. See 
 especially pp. 423-435. 
 
RECENT THEORIES. 21 
 
 them. It never existed in a state of potency or 
 simple causality, and therefore never could mani- 
 fest activity in any sense we can attach to the 
 term. It is hence spoken of as an eternal act; 
 but neither is it an act, for this is essentially 
 a time conception, implying commencement and 
 completion. It is not an eternal act ; it is truly, 
 if it is anything, an eternal is. And this is sim- 
 ply to identify it with the sum of being in the 
 universe, and to say that this is two-sided, one 
 and many, or one in many, and eternally so. 
 Anything thus approaching even the idea of crea- 
 tion or creative power is utterly excluded, what- 
 ever sense we may attach to those words. To 
 speak of it as having "a constitutive activity 
 equivalent to creation " is a simple contradiction 
 in terms. The eternity of the act completely ex- 
 cludes this, for this is equivalent to the eternity 
 of the is. To raise this into an entity, and to 
 endow it even with the attributes of self and 
 consciousness, is simply to transfer to an abstrac- 
 tion, out' of time, conceptions not implied in it, 
 which it cannot yield or explain, and which, so 
 applied, become absolutely meaningless. This at 
 least is true, that the ideas of creation and crea- 
 tive energy are emptied of meaning, and for them 
 is substituted the conception or fiction of an 
 eternally related or double-sided world, not of 
 
22 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 what has been done, but of what always is. It 
 is another form of the see-saw philosophy. The 
 eternal self only is, if the eternal manifold is ; the 
 eternal manifold is, if the eternal self is. The 
 one in being the other is or makes itself the one ; 
 the other in being the one is or makes itself the 
 other. This may be called a unity ; it is rather, 
 if we might invent a term suited to the new and 
 marvellous conception, what may be designated 
 an unparalleled and unbegotten twinity. It will 
 be for us to consider the processes of thought 
 through which this conception is sought to be 
 established. Perhaps it may be found that they 
 are as little worthy of acceptance as the entity to 
 which they are supposed to lead up, while they 
 affect directly and injuriously true conceptions 
 of the sphere of experience and finite reality 
 generally. It will at least be a service to phil- 
 osophy, and the truthfulness of the speculative 
 habit, to require that terms no longer expressive 
 of received meanings, but of others even subver- 
 sive of the received, should not continue to be 
 used as if they retained their present connotation. 
 Neo-Kantiauisin, as represented alike by Mr 
 Green, M. Renouvier, M. Pillon, and others, is, as 
 I have said, simply an attempt to fuse the pheno- 
 menalism, or rather impressionalisra, of Hume, 
 with what may be called the apriorism of Kant. 
 
RECENT THEORIES. 23 
 
 It is held that Hume was right in so far as he 
 limited (presented) knowledge to impressions, or 
 states of consciousness ; he was wrong in so far 
 as he did not include relation, necessary relations 
 imposed on the impressions. Hume was right 
 in concluding from the limitation of sense know- 
 ledge to impressions, that no idea could be 
 formed of external objects distinct from the per- 
 ception, and continuing to be after the percep- 
 tion ceased. But he did not fully recognise the 
 place of relations or law in regulating those im- 
 pressions. And he did not recognise the validity 
 of the inference from me as a thinking subject, 
 or rather sum of representations, to other think- 
 ing subjects or centres of representations, analo- 
 gous to me. In these foreign centres of represen- 
 tations lies the true external world. 1 
 
 The belief of mankind is that there are ex- 
 ternal objects which are distinct from our per- 
 ceptions, and to which our perceptions are related 
 as to their causes. This is a universal illusion, 
 according to Hume, this belief in objects distinct 
 from our perceptions, and continuous even after 
 the perception. Imagination gives a representa- 
 tive character to impressions, which belongs only 
 to ideas. Imagination confounds likeness with 
 identity. Similar impressions occur, or are pro- 
 
 1 Cf. Pillon, Psychologic de Hume, Introduction, x., xi. 
 
24 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 duced, at different intervals ; we unite these im- 
 pressions in one and the same idea, suppressing 
 the intervals, and adding to likeness of nature 
 continuity of existence. The link of the similar 
 impressions is supposed to be an external object, 
 one and the same. The impressions thus become 
 representations and effects of this object. 1 
 
 " 'Tis universally allowed by philosophers, and 
 is besides pretty obvious of itself," says Hume, 
 "that nothing is ever really present with the 
 mind, but its perceptions or impressions and 
 ideas. . . . Now, since nothing is ever present 
 to the mind but perceptions, and since all ideas 
 are derived from something antecedently present 
 to the mind ; it follows that it is impossible for us 
 so much as to conceive or to form an idea of any- 
 thing specifically different from ideas and im- 
 pressions. Let us fix our attention out of our- 
 selves as much as possible : let us chase our 
 imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost 
 limits of the universe, we never really advance 
 a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any 
 kind of existence but those perceptions which 
 have appeared in that narrow compass." 2 Again : 
 " The only existences of which we are certain, 
 
 1 Cf. Pillon, Psychologic de Hume, Introduction, 9. 
 
 2 Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, B. I. p. ii., vi., p. 
 123 (ed. 1739). 
 
RECENT THEORIES. 25 
 
 are perceptions which, being immediately present 
 to us by consciousness, command our strongest 
 assent, and are the first foundation of all our 
 conclusions." 1 This is the one grand premiss, 
 as we shall see, of the whole of Neo-Kantianism. 
 It borrows, no doubt, category, especially relation, 
 from Kant, makes this its category of categories, 
 and seeks thereby to lick sensations into shape, 
 and so call them objects. But any other object, 
 so far as the external world is concerned, it never 
 gets than an aggregate of sensations, and it will 
 be found in the sequel that it thus logically cuts 
 itself off from all connection with, all knowledge 
 either of other individual selves in the world, or 
 of God, in any true sense of these terms. 
 
 Now, what precisely is the meaning of this 
 statement of Hume ? It may mean 
 
 (1.) That if we apprehend or know an object, 
 we consciously apprehend or know it, that con- 
 sciousness is implied in the perception of the 
 object. 
 
 This is a wholly indisputable statement, and in 
 no way touches the question as to whether the 
 object apprehended or known has or has not an 
 existence distinct from the conscious act of know- 
 ing. Some objects, even, we may recognise as 
 having their whole reality in and during the con- 
 1 Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, B. I. p. iv., ii., p. 370. 
 
26 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 scions act, as, for example, a state of pain which 
 passes away ; others we may not be able to re- 
 gard as so limited in their reality. They may be 
 so distinct from the conscious act, that we are not 
 able to say that they pass from reality when they 
 pass from our knowledge. And thus the whole 
 question as to the possibility and the nature of 
 their supersensible reality is opened up. Of this 
 character are the objects or qualities perceived, 
 known as extension or space-filling, in its various 
 forms, and what we regard as force in dynamics 
 and other sciences. 
 
 But the meaning may be (2.) That, in appre- 
 hending or knowing, that which is apprehended 
 or known is always and necessarily a state of 
 consciousness, or a form of the conscious subject 
 itself, that nothing can ever be present to the 
 mind but " a perception," that is, an " impres- 
 sion," or its copy " an idea," and consequently, 
 that our consciousness can never transcend, so 
 to speak, its own states, or know anything but 
 itself. We need not here refer to the conces- 
 sions made to Hume in this interpretation, as 
 yielding him a conscious subject, or more than 
 a conscious impression. I speak of a conscious 
 subject and its state to make the possible inter- 
 pretation really intelligible, though this is to 
 concede him too much. Supposing this to be 
 
RECENT THEORIES. 27 
 
 the meaning, and it seems to be so indisputably, 
 whence and what is the guarantee of the remark- 
 ably broad assumption here made ? It is not 
 enough to refer to previous philosophers who 
 may have held the view. That might suffice for 
 a hypothetical development of its consequences. 
 That would be taking up a tradition, and show- 
 ing what it leads to. But what we have to ask 
 is, What is the guarantee of this broad principle ? 
 Is it a generalisation from experience ? Is it an 
 a priori law of intelligence ? No attempt is made 
 by Hume even to answer this question. All we 
 get is that " philosophy " and " reflection " teach 
 us that so and so is the case. But I do not find 
 that philosophy or reflection really teaches me 
 anything of the sort. Besides, I must distinctly 
 object to dealing with a psychological matter in 
 this way. "We ought not to assume at the be- 
 ginning what forecloses the field of psychological 
 inquiry viz., as to what are the objects given or 
 apprehended in knowledge. No sound psychol- 
 ogy can start with an assumption as to the limi- 
 tation of consciousness in the sphere of its objects. 
 It must be open to true method to find what are 
 the objects known as a matter of fact. And if it 
 can be shown that there is more in consciousness, 
 or for consciousness, than sensations or impres- 
 sions more than facts, so to speak, of conscious- 
 
28 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 ness itself, we are bound to accept the conclusion. 
 Any system of philosophy which professes to re- 
 produce or reconstruct the world of knowledge 
 and being on such an assumption, and without 
 dealing, at the very first, with this question, is 
 doomed to aberration and error. 
 
 It is thus quite obvious why Mr Green, among 
 others of the school, speaks of all percepts as 
 " feelings." In pursuance of his view that 
 "thought" constitutes nature, it is necessary to 
 hold all the matter or material necessary to the 
 constitution to be within consciousness, and feel- 
 ing can never be taken as the synonym of the 
 quality of the material reality, of the qualities 
 of things in time and space, of the unconscious 
 and insentient. Once we have only "feelings" 
 to deal with, to constitute into objects, we are on 
 the high way to the making of nature by thought 
 or consciousness working in this form. We have 
 only to pile up the feelings, to synthesise them 
 into an aggregate, and the thing is made. But 
 the analysis which gives this result, if analysis 
 there ever were, is one utterly repudiated by 
 every sound psychology. We are back here to the 
 sensations of Condillac and the impressions of 
 Hume. Kant's matter, or " manifold of sense," in 
 its dubious character is abolished, and we have 
 the very definite subjective " feeling " installed in 
 
RECENT THEORIES. 29 
 
 its room. The Hegelian extreme of spinning the 
 particular out of thought or category is also thus 
 avoided. The categorising spider is dispensed 
 with, and the web of things, though somewhat 
 thin, is woven without it. 
 
 This one premiss of Hume runs all through Neo- 
 Kantianism. It is present in every one of the 
 school ; and it is fatal, unless vindicated, to the 
 conclusions of all. The proof of this will be offered 
 in the sequel. 
 
 So far as Kant is concerned, Neo-Kantians 
 generally reject the noumenon, or thing-in-itself, 
 standing by itself, and cut off from the sphere of 
 phenomenal knowledge. They borrow Kant's 
 relativity, but they reject his thing-in-itself. On 
 this they may be said to be unanimous. Substan- 
 tial reality of this sort is decried and denied. 
 But the question at once arises, How is egoistic 
 idealism in this case to be avoided ? The form- 
 less unrelated sensations do not yield a standard 
 of truth. They have even no reality, so con- 
 sidered. Yet it is admitted that reality does not 
 wholly depend on the individual ego, or all indi- 
 vidual egos put together. How am I to know 
 whether what I relate is really so related ? To 
 fill up this gap in the system, Mr Green has re- 
 course to an Eternal Self-consciousness, or self- 
 distinguishing consciousness, which, while time- 
 
30 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 less, contains all the relations of the universe 
 known and unknown to us. It is as we relate 
 according to the relations of the eternal con- 
 sciousness, that we reach the truth of things. 
 This is an infinite fount, or, better, reservoir 
 of timeless relations, which pours itself into 
 the human consciousness in time. It is the con- 
 dition not only of knowledge, but the creator 
 of reality, if such a concept could be applied to 
 an eternal act, and if any link between such an 
 act and succession in time could be conceived. 
 This hypothesis or metaphor we shall examine 
 in the sequel. 
 
 Others, like M. Eenouvier, while rejecting 
 Kant's noumenon, do not adopt this view. Ignor- 
 ing, as M. Eenouvier does, the conscious subject 
 in the interest of a centre of representations, and 
 thus holding all so-called egos or subjects in time 
 to be but centres of representations, he could not 
 consistently hold by an eternal self-distinguishing 
 consciousness. He boldly, therefore, substitutes 
 for Kant's noumenon, as the true conception of 
 being, the idea of phenomena as far as relation 
 in other words, the idea of relationship, or rela- 
 tionship in the most abstract form conceivable. 
 What we mean by being apart from this or that 
 relation, is simply the conception of relation in 
 general. Eelation is the category of categories, 
 
RECENT THEORIES. 31 
 
 and existence in its last and highest form is rela- 
 tion stretched to its utmost generality. Whether 
 such a conception can be identified with reality 
 at all, whether, in fact, it is higher than this or 
 that actual relation, whether it is more than a 
 pure abstraction, dependent on the individual 
 consciousness, whether it points to more than 
 the mere possibility of being, are questions 
 which we may readily put, but which the system 
 would probably find a difficulty in answering. 
 Being " for itself," that is, for relation, is very 
 nearly equivalent to the doctrine " being for 
 knowledge," urged as a modification of Mr Green's 
 view. The former expression has the advantage 
 of greater definiteness ; but all that can be urged 
 against it applies with equal force to the latter 
 phrase. 
 
 The main point of the controversy between 
 Neo-Kantianism and a true Eealism, is whether 
 the reality attributed to the particulars, indi- 
 viduals, in a word, the facts of experience, 
 can be adequately expressed in the reality attrib- 
 uted to general ideas, whether generalisations 
 or universal conceptions. Are the conditions 
 under which we think a particular object pre- 
 cisely equivalent, in the matter of reality, to the 
 conditions under which we perceive an object, 
 say of time and space, or even of our own con- 
 
32 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 scions life, realised under conditions of time ? 
 The whole tendency of Neo-Kantianism is to blur 
 the distinction under this head. It seeks to fuse, 
 in the first place, the knowledge, called generally 
 thought, or representation, with the object, what- 
 ever it be, thought or represented, to make, in 
 fact, the thought an absolute, not dependent on 
 any object separable from it, or having a proper 
 existence of its own. It would thus draw the 
 whole of what we understand by outward or 
 external reality within the sphere of " thought," 
 that is, truly consciousness or a subjective 
 existence. It seeks or tends, in the second place, 
 to absorb the conscious subject or self in this 
 same thought or general mode of conceiving 
 things; for the conscious subject is not allowed 
 to have any separate or independent reality apart 
 from the thought, which is the form of its life 
 and being, and which is a common or universal 
 intelligence, in which it participates. The con- 
 scious subject, if, indeed, the name ought to be 
 retained, when the thing has disappeared, is 
 merely the conscious condition of this thought 
 or intelligence, which is working all in all ; 
 it is the " vehicle " in which it is conveyed, or 
 the medium through which it is revealed to the 
 world of the finite. " The conscious subject " 
 floats in a certain dreamland of " thought." Its 
 
RECENT THEORIES. 33 
 
 reality lies in a mutual play of categories, where 
 experience is not. 
 
 Finally, to complete the evisceration of the 
 reality of the individual ego as even a true 
 time existence, it turns out that it is only a form, 
 or mode, of one Eternal Ego or self-distinguishing 
 consciousness, which appears in every individual, 
 that there is not " a double consciousness " in 
 man both an individual and an eternal ego 
 but simply this one self-distinguishing conscious- 
 ness pervading all individualities,- and making 
 all ; so that any finite reality which the Ego 
 might be supposed to have in its actual thinking 
 or representing is cleared away, and is replaced 
 by a timeless reality superior to it and to all 
 individual intelligences. And thus the circle is 
 completed. We start with " thought ; " we get 
 rid of the independent object in the interest of 
 thought. Thought is then promoted to the place 
 of the conscious subject, and is credited with 
 doing what only a thinker could do. Thought 
 then pierces through the finite subject, and leaves 
 him wholly behind in the interest of an eternal self- 
 distinguishing consciousness, which is thought in 
 its highest form. On this lofty abstraction hangs 
 not only all knowledge, but all that we call fact 
 in experience, the whole universe of being, all 
 morality and all religion in a word, " all the law 
 c 
 
34 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 and the prophets." The points at issue between 
 this form of Idealism and Eealism are mainly, (a) 
 Is the abstraction implied in such a method and 
 line of thinking, identical or convertible with the 
 reality of experience ? (b) Is it convertible with 
 the extent of the facts and order of experience ? 
 (c) Does it afford a conception or theory adequate 
 to the facts of our mental or conscious life ? (d) 
 Does it afford a conception or even hypothesis on 
 which science can consistently mark out the order 
 of the world, and find its laws ? (e) Does it afford 
 an adequate ground for a moral and religious 
 system which still conserves the facts of morality 
 and religion ? These are the questions that now 
 await an answer. 
 
35 
 
 II.NATUEE AND CONSCIOUSNESS, AS 
 IN ME GEEEN'S 'PEOLEGOMENA TO 
 ETHICS; 
 
 EVERY one with an adequate conception of the 
 relations between Psychology and Metaphysics 
 on the one hand, and Ethics proper on the other, 
 will accept the position that the ground and pos- 
 sibility of a theory of moral obligation and a 
 moral ideal for man are to be sought for in the 
 two first-mentioned sciences. The problem of 
 Ethics is not merely to generalise the modes of 
 human conduct, as in actual experience ; it is not 
 simply to afford certain kinds of prudential in- 
 junctions as to action in given circumstances. 
 The science of Ethics seeks to find the ground of 
 moral obligation the rationale of the " ought " 
 to exhibit the moral ideal or ideals of life, as 
 grounded on a view of the whole nature of man. 
 
 A psychology which reduces man to a mere 
 bodily organism, or to a series of reflex states 
 called sensations, resulting from stimuli on this 
 
36 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 organism, may give rise to an ethics of prudence 
 of caution and care for the pleasure and con- 
 tinuance of life ; it cannot ground moral obliga- 
 tion in any real sense of the term, and it fails as 
 completely in exhibiting any true moral ideal. 
 It is a worthy task, therefore, to seek in the 
 psychology of man a ground, if that can be found, 
 of moral obligation and moral law facts com- 
 patible with those conceptions, and fitted to yield 
 them a basis in reality. 
 
 But not less important than the bearing of 
 Psychology, or an analysis of knowledge on 
 Ethics, is its relation to the great ontological 
 question of the being and nature of God. This 
 question must be approached through an analy- 
 sis of knowledge, and can only be determined 
 through this analysis. Facts, data, scientific 
 generalisations and results, are no doubt in the 
 first place essential to the determination ; but it 
 is psychology alone, or, if the term be preferred, 
 philosophy, meaning always an analysis of 
 human knowledge, which can ultimately decide 
 the question as one of reason. It is not so 
 much facts as the interpretation of facts, through 
 conceptions or principles, which conducts us in 
 this sphere to the ultimate conclusion. A deci- 
 sion on this the highest problem of Ontology is 
 necessary alike to the completeness of philosophy 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 37 
 
 and to the satisfaction of our moral ideal. The 
 needs alike of speculation and of human life in 
 its practical aspect have habitually given pro- 
 minence to the question, and speculative philo- 
 sophy in this country and abroad has turned 
 emphatically of late upon the reality, the nature, 
 the conception of the supreme principle of the 
 world in a word, on the notion and existence 
 of Deity. 
 
 Obviously no philosophy can pretend to the 
 exhausting even of its own proper problems until 
 it has faced this question, and given a deliverance 
 on it, in one form or another. What is all reflec- 
 tion on experience, what all speculation, but an 
 imperfect and broken work, unless it lead to some 
 conception in regard to the origin and genesis of 
 the sum of phenomena, of the reality we know ? 
 Science may select and luxuriate in its special 
 domains ; but philosophy cannot so restrict itself, 
 if it is to be faithful to itself. Philosophy is a 
 view of the whole ; it aspires to confront all 
 being : and the ultimate question is not so much, 
 is there a Power at the root of things of all this 
 phenomenal world, all this real world as WHAT 
 is this Power ? In a word, WHAT is GOD ? How 
 are we to think of Him ? What is our worthiest 
 and our truest conception of that Power, which 
 our own limitation and dependence suggest to us 
 
38 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 as at least correlative with our reality, and the 
 reality of the world ? 
 
 Now I may say at once, with regard to this 
 point, that we must from the requirements of the 
 case have a Power, or conceive a Power, a Being, 
 simply, if you choose, somehow in relation to us 
 conscious beings, and to the world of nature. A 
 Deity utterly out of relation to us, not in any 
 way manifested to us or in us, and in the world 
 around us, is no Deity at all, at least, He is not 
 one for whom we can care, as He is not one whom 
 we can know. The true Deity must hold us in 
 the bonds of reality, of intimate relationship. 
 He cannot be held as standing wholly apart from 
 us, unrevealed to us, unknown and incognisable. 
 The main question about Deity comes to be, what 
 precisely is the relation in which he appears to 
 us, in which we stand to Him, in which we can 
 know Him, and through which we can approach 
 Him ? This again means for us What is our 
 worthiest conception of God ? 
 
 This relationship between what I would call 
 Psychology, involving the Theory of Knowledge, 
 and Ethics, Metaphysics, or Ontology, may be 
 regarded as admitted by schools of quite opposite 
 opinions and results. Nowhere is this allowed 
 more emphatically than in the works of the late 
 Mr T. H. Green of Oxford, with whose teaching 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 39 
 
 and writings a line of speculation, somewhat 
 novel in this country, is associated. I am quite 
 well aware that Mr Green has objected, and very 
 properly, to a certain kind of this analysis that, 
 namely, which, founding on the conceivable by us 
 and its necessary limits our inability to think so 
 and so would restrict objective reality by our 
 limitations. And he has laid down the principle 
 that we must look to "the determinations of being" 
 if we are to get any sound results. 1 There is a 
 sense in which this is an eminently legitimate 
 method. But I fear that in his own application 
 of the method, Mr Green has looked at " the 
 determinations of being " mainly as conceived by 
 us, or rather as he supposes them conceived, 
 and that his own practice coincides pretty nearly 
 with the vicious theory which he criticises. The 
 same principle of method the analysis of know- 
 ing had, indeed, been put forward and proceeded 
 on by Professor Terrier of St Andrews in his 
 Theory of Knowing and Being. There is a 
 marked similarity in this respect, and generally 
 in premisses, between the writings of these two 
 authors, though there may be perceived a cer- 
 tain difference in result. Mr Green, however, 
 shows a closer connection with certain positions 
 of Kant and the general drift of Hegel than 
 
 1 See Works, vol. iii. p. 143. 
 
40 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 Professor Terrier, at least, in the Theory of 
 Knowing and Being; and what is foreign in 
 Terrier appears in a more national dress than 
 in Green, as it certainly stands out in an incom- 
 parably clearer style. 
 
 Abroad there has been a tendency in the 
 same line of thinking. Without referring to all 
 who might be named, it is sufficient to point 
 to the writings of M. Eenouvier, under the 
 headings of Logic and Psychology. He is per- 
 haps the ablest and the most thoroughgoing 
 of all the authors who may be classed under the 
 title of Neo-Kantians. And it is but just to say 
 that, besides his remarkable ability, he is open 
 to recognition of. those broad facts of experience, 
 which are so severe a test of the real application 
 of the doctrines of the school. He certainly has 
 too large a share of the French logical habit and 
 its general soundness of reflection, to suppose that 
 facts, otherwise doomed to disappearance on the 
 principles of the system, could be saved by the 
 metaphor of an Eternal Consciousness. 
 
 Mr Green, in his Introduction to the Prolego- 
 mena to Ethics, accepts emphatically the position 
 of an analysis of knowledge as necessary to 
 Ethics. And the aim of his investigations may 
 be said to be to vindicate the grounds at once 
 of obligation and the moral ideal. And it can- 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 41 
 
 not be alleged that he does not dig deep enough, 
 for he goes back to questions as to the very 
 nature of man, consciousness, and reality ; he 
 offers a theory on those points, and he is of 
 opinion that this theory affords the ground of 
 freedom, moral obligation, moral law, and the 
 highest moral ideal. Whether his psychological 
 and metaphysical views actually afford such a 
 ground, whether even they are consistent with 
 the conceptions they are said to sustain, are 
 of course questions to be considered. The main 
 purpose, however, of these essays is not so much 
 the consideration of those questions, as a state- 
 ment and examination of the views themselves 
 regarded as to their own grounds or guar- 
 antee and their internal consistency. If they 
 are deficient in these respects, the question as to 
 their compatibility with the moral ideas will be 
 superseded. It may possibly be found that while 
 a purely sensational psychology is too low a 
 ground for personality or individuality, which 
 is at the root of all ethical conception, an abso- 
 lute idealism may on the other side be equally 
 inadequate, as ultimately sweeping away the per- 
 sonality which it professes to establish. It may 
 prove merely 
 
 " Vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself, 
 And falls on the other side." 
 
42 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 But my present purpose is not to pursue the 
 examination of the logical results of Mr Green's 
 theory of knowledge as bearing on Ethics. I pro- 
 pose merely to examine, in the first instance, his 
 theory or 'Metaphysics of Knowing,' and that 
 mainly as it is presented in the three intro- 
 ductory chapters of the Prolegomena to Ethics, 
 and the bearing of this theory on the highest 
 problem of ontology our conception of the 
 nature and reality of Deity. We have in these 
 chapters a definite theory of Knowing, and its 
 application to ontology in its highest department, 
 a theory which certainly has results of the 
 greatest concern and the widest reach. The 
 exposition is the most consecutive, and, I think, 
 the clearest, which Mr Green has left us of his 
 views on this subject. And it is desirable in the 
 interests of speculative truth to subject them to 
 examination and discussion. 
 
 There are three main points in Mr Green's 
 treatment of the ' Metaphysics of Knowing.' 
 There is, first of all, the question of the rela- 
 tion of Man to Nature, and what is implied in 
 a knowledge of nature. With this is connected 
 the analysis of knowledge in what we call 
 Perception. 
 
 There is, secondly, an analysis of the meaning 
 and application of Eeality as conceived by us. 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 43 
 
 There is, thirdly, his doctrine of knowledge as 
 Relational. 
 
 These points are not treated by him. quite 
 separately, but they are the lines along which 
 his speculation travels with a view to determine 
 the nature of the finite self-consciousness, and, 
 as a final conclusion, the nature of the eternal 
 or infinite self-consciousness with which he con- 
 nects the ultimate reality of man and things. 
 It will be my endeavour to state his views, 
 following, as far as possible, the order of their 
 development, and to examine their truth and 
 value. 
 
 The first question with Mr Green in his 
 analysis of knowledge may be said to be the 
 relation of man to nature, and what is implied 
 in a knowledge of nature. In stating his opinion 
 on this and other points, I shall adhere as closely 
 as I can to his own language, ordinary terms 
 being frequently so used by him as to require 
 careful scrutiny of the meaning. There is not 
 unfrequently a double sense of a term which is 
 even self-inconsistent. 
 
 Mr Green starts with the question : " Can the 
 knowledge of nature be itself a part or pro- 
 duct of nature ? " (p. 13). From the terms of 
 this question it might seem that it is assumed 
 that " knowledge " and " nature " are two separate 
 
44 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 things, that there is a reference to the qualities 
 of what we call the world of the senses, that 
 the question is whether " nature " as a sense- 
 object is the source of our knowledge as a pro- 
 duct. But this is not quite what is meant. The 
 question is qualified by the phrase, " in that sense 
 of nature in which it is said to be an object of 
 knowledge" (p. 11). And we are told that if 
 the question be answered in the negative, then 
 "man in respect of the function called know- 
 ledge is not merely a child of nature" (p. 11). 
 And there is in him "a principle not natural, 
 and a specific function of this principle is 
 rendering knowledge possible" (p. 11). 
 
 It may be supposed that knowledge or con- 
 sciousness arises from what we call " matter and 
 motion," but we are here told that these have no 
 existence per se, these being objects of conscious- 
 ness. They do not exist "otherwise than as related 
 to a consciousness." And it seems to be main- 
 tained that "matter" means only "a statement 
 of relations between facts in the way of feeling, 
 or between objects that we present to ourselves 
 as sources of feeling" (p. 12). "Motion," too, 
 means "a synthesis of the different positions 
 successively held by one and the same body," 
 and " position " or " succession " of a body and 
 its "identity" mean "relations of what is con- 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 45 
 
 tained in experience, through which alone that 
 content possesses a definite character and be- 
 comes a connected whole " (p. 14). 
 
 Matter and motion, therefore, as known or in 
 a consciousness, are relations apparently of some- 
 thing called feeling or feelings. They do not 
 exist per se at least, they have no meaning for 
 us when we so speak of them. That which 
 exists for consciousness, that which we know, 
 is a relation or series of relations. But a rela- 
 tion needs " a principle of union." What, then, is 
 that principle which renders a relation possible ? 
 This cannot be a relation itself, for a relation 
 results from a principle of union. It must be 
 the source of a connected experience " which 
 renders both the nature that we know and our 
 knowledge of it possible." " In a man who can 
 know a nature there is a principle which is not 
 natural, and which cannot be explained as we 
 explain the facts of nature " (p. 14). 
 
 This definition of matter given by Mr Green 
 is as inadequate and assumptive a statement 
 as could well be made. It seems that matter 
 that is, perceived or known matter con- 
 sists in " relations between facts in the way 
 of feeling, or between objects that we present 
 to ourselves as sources of feeling" (p. 13). We 
 might very fairly here ask the question, What 
 
46 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 are the things called "facts" between which, 
 "the relations" subsist? They are apparently 
 " facts " " in the way of feeling." Surely any 
 tyro in psychology would know that this is not 
 an indisputable point that to identify "the 
 facts" of sense with the "feelings" of sense is 
 exactly what psychology has not been doing for 
 a hundred years at least, and that the main 
 burden of the question of perception lies in the 
 distinction contended for between things called 
 qualities or percepts of what is a not-self, and 
 the feelings and sensations of the conscious sub- 
 ject. All this is slurred over in a single phrase, 
 and matter is defined " as relations between facts 
 in the way of feeling." Surely it is worth con- 
 sidering that a point of limit between the sen- 
 tient and the insentient in sense - experience is 
 a main contention of Kealism. 
 
 But let us seek to realise for a moment what 
 is included under the term " feeling," as employed 
 by Mr Green. It obviously takes in all that we 
 find, apprehend, or know directly in Sense-Per- 
 ception, all, as we say, that is presented to us in 
 sense. It embraces tastes, odours, muscular feel- 
 ings, feeling of contact, sounds, colours, &c. 
 Along with these it indicates equally, extension, 
 solidity, figure, all the qualities we perceive and 
 conceive as essential to material reality. The 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 47 
 
 term, as thus applied, slurs over the most im- 
 portant distinctions in connection with the ob- 
 jects of Sense-Perception. One would imagine, 
 from Mr Green's use of it, that he was wholly 
 unaware of psychological discussion and inquiry 
 on this point from the time of Locke and Hume 
 to our own day. 
 
 Owing in great measure to certain assumptions, 
 really prejudicia, judgments formed beforehand 
 as to the immediate object of sense-perception, 
 we have had a series of philosophical theories 
 regarding this object, from Descartes downwards. 
 All proceed on an assumption, not proved, not 
 warranted by the facts of the case, viz., that what 
 we directly or immediately apprehend in sense is 
 always and only a state of the conscious percip- 
 ient, or, at the utmost, some ideal, or in modern 
 language, psychical phenomenon. Sense-know- 
 ledge has been held to be a relation between 
 similars. If we suppose the two factors, per- 
 ceiver and percept, to be of different natures, it 
 is held that there can be no perception or know- 
 ledge. This was an assumption unworthy alike 
 of science and philosophy of the principles of 
 every sound investigation into fact or truth. 
 Yet it has been most prevailing, and it subsists 
 now, exercising as baneful an influence as ever 
 it did. It is a case in which a so-called 
 
48 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 "theory of knowledge" is made to usurp the 
 prerogatives of actual psychological observation 
 and analysis ; it is to set up certain pretentious 
 " conditions " of knowledge as dominating know- 
 ledge itself. 
 
 With Descartes it issued in his doctrine of 
 mental "ideas" modes simply of the mind of 
 the percipient, which he was supposed to per- 
 ceive, in lieu of an actually existing extended 
 object. This "idea," however, represented it; 
 and God being veracious, the actual extended 
 world did, or at least, as he says, might, exist 
 as pictured in the idea. Besides the idea rep- 
 resentative of the primary qualities, there was 
 sensation ; this, too, being simply a state of the 
 consciousness. 
 
 Then we have precisely the same assumption 
 in Locke. We perceive things not immediately, 
 but only by the intervention of the ideas we have 
 of them. Ideas of the qualities of bodies, that 
 is, the primary qualities, are images, real re- 
 semblances of what are in bodies extension, 
 solidity, figure, mobility, &c. Sensations, as of 
 colour, sound, taste, smell, have no resemblance 
 to their outward causes certain powers of bodies. 
 They are simply states of consciousness. Ideas 
 and sensations are, however, equally ideal or psy- 
 chical facts. Locke's use of " idea " is no doubt 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 49 
 
 thoroughly ambiguous. It means any object of 
 thought whatever, including (1) the object in 
 perception ; (2) the object in imagination ; (3) 
 the abstraction we make from things, irrespective 
 altogether of their existence. But it is always 
 an ideal phenomenon. 
 
 Then, with Berkeley we have the keeping up 
 of Locke's ideas, but the denial of their represen- 
 tative character. There is, according to Berkeley, 
 no world or set of material things or qualities 
 beyond the ideas. Not only do ideas not corre- 
 spond to such an entity as a material world ; it 
 does not exist in addition to the idea. Minds, 
 and ideas in minds, are all that is. All the ob- 
 jects we perceive have their continued existence 
 or subsistence only in mind. The idea with 
 Berkeley is obviously a psychical fact or pheno- 
 menon, though he is generally regarded as hold- 
 ing it different from a state of consciousness. It 
 is in the mind, not of the mind. And he tells us 
 that " ideas " are " real things." " Ideas imprinted 
 on the senses by the Author of Nature are called 
 real things ; and those excited in the imagination, 
 being less regular, vivid, and constant, are more 
 properly termed ideas or images of things, which 
 they copy and represent. But then our sensa- 
 tions, be they never so vivid and distinct, are 
 nevertheless ideas ; that is, they exist in the 
 D 
 
50 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 mind, or are perceived by it, as truly as the 
 ideas of its own framing." 1 
 
 There is thus no difference in kind between 
 "ideas" of sense and those of imagination or 
 memory, none between ideas and sensations. All 
 are equally psychical or ideal facts, call them 
 what you will, differing only in degree or vivac- 
 ity. Of course, the inference from this, that the 
 percipi of an idea is its esse, is obvious, that it 
 cannot resemble anything but an idea, that it 
 exists only in a mind, and can subsist only in a 
 mind, supposing it to have a continuous existence 
 at all. No percept, be it extension, solidity, heat, 
 or cold, can be separated from perception in some 
 mind. They are, as psychical facts, on an equal 
 level. The substantial reality of the physical 
 world was thus gone, and not less, as seems to me, 
 its material phsenomehal reality. Second causes, 
 too, in perception had disappeared ; God was put 
 in the place of nature : to Him is directly attrib- 
 utable all our sense-impressions, sensations and 
 ideas, and creation with Berkeley came to mean, 
 as has been said, " that God decreed from that 
 time to produce ideas in the minds of finite spirits, 
 in that order and according to those rules which 
 we call the laws of Nature." 2 It should be 
 
 1 Principles of Human Knowledge, sec. 33. 
 
 2 Reid, Works, p. 287. 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 51 
 
 noticed here that Berkeley did not deny the non- 
 perceived reality of the idea, simply because it 
 was an object of perception, and, therefore, in- 
 volved a relation of knowledge, but because of 
 its nature as an ideal or psychical fact, capable 
 thus only of existing in a mind or consciousness. 
 Hume's impression came readily out of Berke- 
 leyanism. This is psychical, wholly psychical : 
 a conscious state only, however, not a state of 
 consciousness, for that would imply a continuous 
 consciousness, and thus a permanent conscious 
 subject. The substantial reality of the material 
 world had gone with Berkeley ; the substantial 
 reality of the other factor in knowledge mind 
 or finite mind was also now to go with Hume. 
 And existence is to be translated by an impres- 
 sion, at the best by a series of impressions or 
 consciousnesses, illegitimately bound together in 
 a series. This is the stage at which Mr Green 
 takes up the point ; and he proposes to restore 
 knowledge and reality by binding together in 
 relations, necessary relations, the "impressions," 
 the "feelings," to each other in an unalterable 
 objective sequence, and to a self -distinguishing 
 consciousness, as the subjective ground of the 
 objective relations. This, at least, in the first 
 place. But he has not one word of question 
 for the position that the immediate object of 
 
52 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 sense-perception is necessarily psychical, far less 
 for the assumption on which the whole modern 
 theories on this point have been grounded, and 
 unwarrantably grounded. And it may be confi- 
 dently added that Kant's " phenomena " are in 
 no better plight than Hume's "impressions" or 
 Green's " feelings." 
 
 Now all this has been questioned this as- 
 sumption, and its effect in the consequent limi- 
 tation of perception to psychical or ideal facts. 
 " I perceive the external object," says Eeid, " and 
 I perceive it to exist." There are " things in the 
 mind and things external to the mind. . . . Every- 
 thing is said to be in the mind of which the 
 mind is the subject. . . . Excepting the mind 
 itself, and things in the mind, all other things 
 are said to be external. . . . This distinction is 
 not meant to signify the place of the things we 
 speak of, but their subject." 1 In other words, I 
 apprehend or am conscious of that which is not 
 a state of my consciousness, which is not a 
 "feeling," of which I am the subject or which 
 inheres in me, but which is the quality of a 
 not-self or non-ego, now and here existing, in 
 contrast or antithesis to me, the percipient. 
 There is no medium or mediate object ; and 
 the object perceived is not a psychical phaeno- 
 1 Reid, Works, p. 221. 
 
 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 53 
 
 menon. So much even said Berkeley, but 
 he meant by object the idea, as actually exist- 
 ing, a psychical fact, a mental fact, how- 
 ever described. And Hamilton, in his later 
 view, makes an advance on Eeid. He, too, held 
 the immediate object in perception not to be 
 psychical ; but he did not hold it to be a quality 
 of a material world existing beyond the bodily 
 organism, unless in the case of a resisting force. 
 He regarded it as a quality of the organism 
 itself, endowed with sentiency, and existing as 
 extended. Yet the perceived object while con- 
 ditioned by the sentiency of the organism, is 
 not a " feeling," " impression," or psychical fact at 
 all not a state of consciousness, not an ideal 
 phenomenon revealed to mind, but a physical 
 quality of a physical object, the extension of the 
 environing bodily organism. And probably in 
 this will be found to a great extent the concili- 
 ation of the two opinions the view that what 
 we perceive is psychical alone, with the view that 
 what we perceive is truly physical or material, 
 the physical being thus brought, as it were, into 
 immediate relationship to that mind which cer- 
 tainly permeates the bodily organism with its 
 power of sentiency. The object perceived with 
 Hamilton is internal ; still it is not mental, but 
 physical or material. But all this development 
 
54 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 and progress of analytical psychology is wholly 
 ignored by Mr Green. He seems completely 
 ignorant of it, and speaks and writes as if psy- 
 chological history had been arrested at Hume's 
 impression, which he baptises "feeling." And 
 the same may be said of all of his school to the 
 present time. 
 
 What further, it may be asked, would a scien- 
 tific man in these times say to a writer who 
 thinks that the term feeling appropriately and 
 fully describes material forces and their effects, 
 mechanical, chemical, electrical, biological ? The 
 transmutations of energy, the evolutions of the 
 forces at work in the sensible world or sphere 
 of science, organism, and life, are to be regarded 
 as feelings, or, at the utmost, as feelings and their 
 relations. Would the scientific man not at once 
 say this is an inappropriate and utterly mislead- 
 ing piece of nomenclature ? 
 
 But there is much more than this to be said 
 from the scientific point of view. The one great 
 achievement of recent science has been the con- 
 necting of our sensations and perceptions, the 
 former as mental states and the objects of the 
 latter, with forms of matter which wholly tran- 
 scend both sensation and perception. Psychology 
 had long ago pointed out the dependence of sen- 
 sation, especially sound and colour, on things 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 55 
 
 unfelt and unperceived, on, in a word, the 
 supersensible in the act of vision and hearing. 
 The vibratory motion which precedes or accom- 
 panies sound, the undulatory motion which pre- 
 cedes or accompanies vision, and is totally un- 
 felt, unperceived, and unknown to the conscious 
 subject who experiences the vision or hearing, 
 all this was the commonplace of psychol- 
 ogy. And this alone was sufficient to show that 
 the insensible, the imperceptible, as a reality, 
 accompanied, was implied in sense-action that 
 it was, while wholly unknown to us. But modern 
 science has revealed to us the great space-filling 
 thing called ether, and beyond this the atomic 
 realities at the root of all material reality. It 
 has revealed, too, the transformation of force 
 in the form of motion into sense-objects as per- 
 ceived by us. All this it has done. It has, 
 in fact, discovered to us "those secret powers" 
 which may be attributed to the primary qualities 
 of body as causing sensation. All this action 
 is, however, wholly unfelt by us, unperceived 
 by us, beyond immediate knowledge; yet it is 
 during the immediate knowing. How, then, can 
 it be said that there are not objects of knowledge 
 which are not psychical, or simply states of con- 
 sciousness ? No finite consciousness whatever 
 ever perceives these. In no finite consciousness 
 
56 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 whatever are they states ; yet they have reality, 
 and the states of consciousness would not have 
 reality without them. They are the dominating 
 reality in our sensations and perceptions; they 
 are before our sensations ; they are at least their 
 partial causes. What, then, becomes of an at- 
 tempt to include the whole world of actual and 
 possible objects of sense, nay, of objects in 
 general, in " feelings," " psychical states," states 
 of consciousness ? And if we did not know more 
 than a mere state of consciousness in perception, 
 how should we ever be led to refer anything in 
 the end to ether, the space-filling, to what is en- 
 tirely out of ourselves ? Why, if we know noth- 
 ing but the mental, should we ever go beyond 
 the mental, ourselves, our mind, or conscious- 
 ness ? How could we suppose or infer from a 
 simple state of consciousness or sensation any- 
 thing not in the least felt or perceived, wholly 
 non-sensational, as ether in space, or molecules 
 far back in time ? How could we even, on such 
 a supposition, have the idea of the non-sensa- 
 tional at all ? 
 
 But the implied connotation of the term " feel- 
 ing" is as misleading as the ambiguity of its 
 application. Feeling certainly has a subjective 
 reference and suggestion. Sensations, emotions, 
 are especially the states or forms of a conscious- 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 57 
 
 ness, the experience of a sentient and conscious 
 subject. We do not regard these as the pro- 
 perties of a material reality. "We do not regard 
 the insentient and unconscious as capable of or 
 having feeling. But as the question really is as 
 to whether there is an ultimate distinction be- 
 tween sentient and insentient, conscious and un- 
 conscious, as matter of fact or reality, a writer 
 has no right to make use of a word which actu- 
 ally implies the identity of property in those 
 opposites. In doing so he is guilty simply of an 
 illogical assumption. 
 
 The bearing of this assumption on the argu- 
 ment is seen the moment we come to distinguish 
 time and space and their contents. Feeling may 
 probably be applied to what has reality and de- 
 gree in time, to simple succession apart from co- 
 existence ; but if we add coexistence and mutual 
 externality of points in space, feeling does not 
 properly apply. No doubt there may be coexist- 
 ing feelings, but it is not therefore to be assumed 
 that coexisting points in space are simply co- 
 existing feelings in consciousness, much less feel- 
 ings in succession. 
 
 If these fundamental points, as alleged by Mi- 
 Green, be self-evident, as they are assumed to be, 
 for practically no proof is given of them, the 
 marvel is why such a question as to whether 
 
58 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 knowledge is a part of nature, or even a product of 
 nature, can be put at all. If what we call nature 
 in all its forms be simply conscious relations, 
 while there is not even a recognition of the sep- 
 arate reality of the terms of the relations, what 
 is the meaning or relevancy of asking such a 
 question as whether knowledge is a product of 
 nature ? Such a question implies that nature is 
 something by itself, and can produce some other 
 thing called knowledge. But if nature be simply 
 relations, conscious relations, nature is already 
 knowledge, and probably as it is relations in con- 
 sciousness, apart from terms, a very irrational sort 
 of knowledge. If "matter and motion," the ul- 
 timate things in nature, be conscious relations, 
 relations existing only as known to consciousness, 
 what is the use of asking the question as to 
 whether knowledge or consciousness can be a pro- 
 duct of these ? They are already consciousness 
 and knowledge, and the question is absurd. It 
 means simply, Can consciousness be a part or pro- 
 duct of itself ? If motion be not a thing in itself, 
 actual reality existing as motion, if it be only 
 a sensation of sight and touch, dependent on our 
 or a consciousness, then, of course, there can be 
 no question whatever as to whether motion is the 
 cause of thought or consciousness. Thought or 
 consciousness is, ere or as motion is, for this is 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 59 
 
 merely a form of perception, having existence 
 only as perceived ; and to say that it is the cause 
 of perception or thought, is simply to say that 
 perception or thought is the cause of itself 
 Clearly, if motion is only a form of thought, 
 or mode of thought, it never can be the cause 
 of that which makes it. The burden of proof 
 is shifted to the point as to whether motion 
 can absolutely be described as a form of per- 
 ception, or wholly dependent for its reality on 
 perception. 
 
 It would be curious to know whence Mr Green 
 supposes we get this nature or series of changes 
 minus consciousness of which he speaks, and, at 
 least, supposes as an object of our thought. If a 
 series of changes minus consciousness has neither 
 meaning nor reality, how do we get the notion 
 of it ? We can quite understand what it means. 
 There is no use saying the words have no mean- 
 ing. It is certainly an object of conception at 
 least. And Mr Green, when he reasons about it, 
 must admit so much. But if it never was found 
 as separate from the understanding, and if the 
 understanding was never found as separate from 
 it, it is rather puzzling to discover whence we 
 reached the concept of it. And on the very same 
 principle, it is a puzzle to know how we got the 
 conception of an understanding which cannot be 
 
60 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 conceived or exist apart from this related nature, 
 and which yet makes it. 
 
 " Matter " means only " a statement of relations 
 between facts in the way of feeling, or between 
 objects that we present to ourselves as sources of 
 feeling." What, we may ask, is really meant 
 here ? Is it meant that we know facts, or, in Mr 
 Green's language, present feelings to ourselves as 
 facts, and then relate them to each other ? Are 
 the facts then terms, known terms of the rela- 
 tions ? Or are they only as they are in the rela- 
 tions ? Or are they themselves relations ? By- 
 and-by we may come to have some light on those 
 points. It may be found that relations are simply 
 postulated that facts or terms may be at all in 
 knowledge. We may find that the whole doctrine 
 of relationship is reversed, in order to make the 
 relation found the facts, and not the facts, as 
 terms, the relation. 
 
 But clearly, if we are to take the statement in 
 its obvious and natural meaning, we should have 
 more in the world, objectively regarded, than 
 relations ; we should have the facts or the feel- 
 ings as terms of the relations. And this admis- 
 sion or result would land us in a wholly different 
 kind of philosophical view from that towards 
 which Mr Green is laboriously working. To put 
 as an alternative the relation of objects to con- 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 61 
 
 sciousness, does not in the least help us here. 
 This is a wholly different point; and what we 
 are concerned to know is whether Mr Green 
 regards every object known in the external world 
 as a relation, or whether he admits there are facts 
 and relations. 
 
 One is certainly surprised that, on a point so 
 vital to his whole system as this doctrine of rela- 
 tion, he should have been at so small pains to 
 make his doctrine explicit, or to give reasons for 
 it. What he has not done has, however, been 
 attempted by another whose general cast of think- 
 ing is not unlike his own. It is said that " matter " 
 is relative, or cannot be analysed so as not to in- 
 volve a relation. " Every true datum," we are 
 told by M. Eenouvier, "is synthetic that is, 
 capable of analysis. But analysis separates ele- 
 ments of a composite comparatively, not simply 
 simple, because none of the elements can be ob- 
 jectified without condition and apart from every 
 other. So that in each part we can always find 
 a whole." l 
 
 Further, it is contended that all external objects 
 are composite, because they all participate of 
 space, time, and motion. Consciousness is not 
 simple, for it is its function to relate to a simple 
 
 1 Renouvier, Essai de Critique generate ; Traitt de Logique 
 generate. Second edition, p. 79. 
 
62 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 representation, in all moments, an indefinite num- 
 ber of other agglomerated representations of every 
 nature. Simple sensations are compound ; colour 
 is extended ; sound endures in time. We cannot 
 represent colour without surface. Analysis dis- 
 tinguishes, but does not make the synthesis less 
 inevitable. 1 
 
 This argument, applied to material reality, 
 amounts to saying that because sensations viz., 
 colour, odour, taste, muscular pressure, &c. 
 cannot be perceived or conceived by us out of 
 relation to space or time, each sensation is neces- 
 sarily composite as a relation. The answer is 
 obvious and simple. Each sensation is not neces- 
 sarily composite; it is not necessarily a whole 
 capable of further analysis. If we did analyse 
 it, it would cease to be a sensation, or the sensa- 
 tion it is. It is impossible for us to analyse the 
 sensation of colour into anything but itself, and 
 yet retain the conception of colour ; and so with 
 odour, taste, resistance, muscular pressure. These 
 are not wholes in any proper sense of the word. 
 They are the terms, the ultimate terms, of our 
 experience, on one of its sides, and so un- 
 analysable and irreducible. Even when science 
 comes to show us that sensation is partly de- 
 
 1 Renouvier, Estai de Critique gtotirale; TraiU de Logique 
 gtortrale. Secoud edition, p. 106. 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 63 
 
 pendent on antecedent movement, undulating, 
 vibrating, or other, it does not show us that 
 this is involved in the conception of sensation. 
 Sensation is not a composite in respect of this. 
 It is there as a wholly distinct conception which 
 we know and feel, whether we know antecedent 
 conditions or not; and out of these we should 
 never be able to evolve it, as back to them we 
 should never be able to reduce it. Even the test 
 of one conception being actually involved in 
 another is in no way fulfilled. 
 
 Further, it may be perfectly true that in our 
 actual perception, or even conception, we are not 
 able to separate colour from extension, or sound 
 from time. That does not prove that the con- 
 ception of colour is composite or reducible, or 
 that sound is in the same position. These two 
 concepts or percepts may stand to each other in 
 indissoluble relation ; that does not make each a 
 relation, it only makes them terms of a relation 
 a wholly different fact. They are still as con- 
 ceptions wholly simple " simply simple " de- 
 pendent, as such, on nothing anterior, and capable 
 of being explained by nothing anterior. The 
 synthesis may be inseparable, but it is a synthesis 
 of elements which cannot be identified with each 
 other, which are alongside each other but not 
 the same. In the synthesis you may by abstrac- 
 
64 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 tion separate the elements, but the elements you 
 cannot by any abstraction or analysis separate, 
 because they are no longer divisible wholes, but 
 indivisible units. Every simple sensation is such ; 
 and extension and time are, while composed, the 
 one of points out of points, the other of points in 
 succession, utterly meaningless beyond this ex- 
 pression of content. It would certainly be a very 
 pretty doctrine to maintain that because certain 
 things are not conceivable apart by us, the things 
 themselves are wholes. In other words, because 
 they make up wholes, they are themselves wholes. 
 As to colour and extension, for example, or sound 
 and time, not being conceivable apart by us, there 
 is an obvious confusion of the general and the 
 particular; there is the raising of the actual 
 relation to the rank of a general or universal 
 necessary relation, and so applying it to par- 
 ticular cases in which it does not at all hold. It 
 is quite conceivable that the same surface should 
 be in succession red, yellow, and green, though 
 we cannot conceive it apart from some clothing 
 of colour. There is no necessary relation between 
 this or that colour and this surface. There is a 
 necessary relation between some colour and this 
 surface. 1 But if each given colour and surface can 
 be conceived without the other, what becomes of 
 
 1 On this point see Ott, L'Idtalismc, I. c. 1, 3. 
 
NATUKE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 65 
 
 the argument that in perception, the actual colour 
 and the actual surface we perceive are necessar- 
 ily composite and related ? Is this not to carry 
 out to absurdity the mischievous doctrine of 
 the identity of function between perception and 
 conception ? 
 
 Of course, it may be said that although the 
 terms of the whole of relation, in the case of 
 colour and extension, are not themselves wholes, 
 they are yet parts of a whole viz., coloured-ex- 
 tension. But, in the first place, this is to give up 
 the position that the natural object is ultimately 
 a relation, and for relation to substitute term of 
 a relation viz., part of whole ; and in the second 
 place, if we regard the part as having its whole 
 reality in being the part, we unwarrantably iden- 
 tify a particular relationship in which it happens 
 to stand with the whole reality of the term re- 
 lated; and, in the third place, we commit the 
 fallacy of what may be called the see-saw 
 contradiction; we make the part real only as 
 or after we relate it, while we need the part 
 to be, and to be real, ere we can take a step 
 in relating it. 
 
 Mr Green apparently identifies the phrase " re- 
 lated to consciousness " with " knowledge of phse- 
 nonema," "correlation of object and subject"; and 
 from the assertion that " relation to a subject is 
 E 
 
66 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 necessary to make an object," infers "that an 
 object which no consciousness presented to itself 
 would not be an object at all." In other words, 
 he takes one side of the doctrine of phenomenal 
 knowledge, the side which declares the necessity 
 of an object in knowledge, and infers, in the 
 way of the ad dictum simpliciter fallacy, that un- 
 less an object be in a consciousness or for a con- 
 sciousness, unless it be a known object, it is 
 not an object at all, as no object unknown to a 
 consciousness exists. But there is a twofold fal- 
 lacy here. In the first place, the known object, 
 or object for the subject in the theory of phse- 
 nomenal knowledge, is not the presented object 
 merely, or the perceived object or quality, but all 
 that such a perceived object suggests, or can be 
 shown to imply in regard to reality beyond itself 
 objectively, on which it is or may be dependent 
 for its presentation to us. The whole object in 
 phenomenal knowledge is not, therefore, the 
 known object in the sense of the perceived or 
 apprehended object in a given time, but what to 
 thought surrounds and conditions it. And it 
 cannot be inferred from saying that the perceived 
 object is necessary to knowledge, that the ground 
 of the perception is " not an object at all." In 
 fact, this would not be a reasoning, but a simple 
 tautology. The perceived (or conscious) object 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 67 
 
 must be a perceived (or conscious) object ; hence 
 an object unperceived (or beyond consciousness) 
 is not an object at all. So far as my conscious- 
 ness is concerned, I thus know that the definitely 
 known object, or, if you choose, experienced ob- 
 ject, is not the whole object; in fact, suggests 
 an object, or portion of existence, unperceived, 
 but still existing. 
 
 In the second place, even if it were true that 
 I can put no meaning into " an object," unless as 
 it actually stands in relation to a consciousness, 
 unless as actually known, this would but imply 
 that I transfer, and must transfer, the meaning of 
 a term in my knowledge to all the knowledge I 
 can conceive. It does not imply that this mean- 
 ing belongs to all things which exist, as they 
 exist. It does not even imply that my know- 
 ledge is the measure of all knowledge, that my 
 form of knowledge is the form of the knowledge 
 of every intelligent being. There is here the 
 assumption of absolute knowledge on my part, 
 the identifying of me and my knowing with the 
 essence of all knowing. A philosophy which 
 starts with such an assumption has completed its 
 work ; but as it 1ms done it by an assumption, it 
 has done nothing. There is, in a word, in all 
 this an illegitimate passage from psychology to 
 ontology. 
 
68 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 In the third place, is it meant to be contended 
 that no object exists which is not in actual rela- 
 tion to a consciousness ? If so, objects spring 
 into being only with each successive conscious 
 act, and they not less drop out of being with each 
 successive conscious act. Consciousness, there- 
 fore, either creates objects as it goes along, to 
 drop each out of being for a successor ; or objects 
 somehow spring up just of themselves into con- 
 sciousness or being, through some curious pre- 
 established harmony between the march of events 
 and the steps of consciousness. The author's 
 theory or hypothesis, that there is "an eternal 
 consciousness," that is, a consciousness not in 
 time, for which all objects exist, and which are 
 thus held in being, need not be considered at 
 this point. It could easily be shown that such 
 a hypothesis, or personified abstraction, never can 
 by any possibility touch the conscious order or 
 succession of events in time; and it matters 
 nothing to the argument whether there be one or 
 many time-subjected consciousnesses in the world. 
 If actual existence of an object be only as it is in 
 relation to a consciousness, this existence is either 
 a creation of the consciousness, or a pre-estab- 
 lished harmony of an independent order of 
 things. 
 
 In the fourth place, is it allowed that there 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 69 
 
 may be knowable objects not yet in actual re- 
 lation to a consciousness ? Is that held to be an 
 object, which is capable merely of being related 
 to a consciousness, yet not at this moment known 
 to any consciousness ? What, then, becomes of 
 the position that there is no object at all which 
 is not related to a consciousness ? Or that actual 
 relation to a consciousness is convertible with 
 object ? 
 
 All possible objects are not, it is admitted, 
 actually in or for this or that individual con- 
 sciousness ; they are not in and for the conscious- 
 ness of all the individuals on this planet at this 
 moment. No single individual consciousness, 
 no totality of individual consciousnesses, contains 
 at this moment all the knowable, even in time. 
 New objects, new relations, are lying undoubt- 
 edly undiscovered; others discovered are un- 
 thought of or forgotten. Have these no reality ? 
 Are they not in existence ? At length they 
 come, for the first time, into the consciousness of 
 this or that individual. Do they now, for the 
 first time, come into being ? And when they are 
 recovered after oblivion, are they revealed ? The 
 admission that there are knowable objects, new 
 and undiscovered, the veriest knowable relation 
 of the meanest insect in the sunlight, destroys 
 the whole essence of a theory which makes exist- 
 
70 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 ence for a consciousness, that is, known existence, 
 convertible with all existence. To try to meet 
 this point, as has been done, by saying that all 
 objects, that is, relations, exist in one Eternal 
 Consciousness, above time, in which there is no 
 succession, is of no use. If this statement were 
 intelligible, which it is not, it would not affect 
 the reality of knowable objects in a conscious- 
 ness subject to succession, or enable us to under- 
 stand how an object can both be described as 
 existing only as a known object, and yet existing 
 as a merely knowable, that is, as yet unknown, 
 object. 
 
 But what really is the foundation of all this 
 talk ? On what ground is it alleged that there 
 is nothing " outside of consciousness " ; that there 
 are objects in consciousness outside of each other, 
 but none, no being, outside of consciousness it- 
 self ? The statement is generally advanced as a 
 principle, in fact, a mere assumption. But when 
 we analyse its ground, we find that it depends 
 wholly on a definition, and a limited definition, 
 of object. This is restricted to object of actual 
 knowledge, or known object. An object is re- 
 garded as the correlative of subject, and of con- 
 scious subject ; and so, given an object, there must 
 be a subject or knower. Of course, with this 
 as a definition, the conclusion is foreclosed, that 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 71 
 
 \ 
 
 an object is only for knowledge or consciousness ; 
 that it is not outside consciousness as known. 
 But this is either a simple begging of the real 
 point at issue, or a trifling with the whole matter. 
 It is true that a known object is in or for con- 
 sciousness or knowledge, though even here the 
 question is always open, What is the nature of 
 each object known, and what are the kinds of 
 objects? Are these modes of matter or mind, 
 or is there only one kind of object known to 
 consciousness ? But, admitting that a known 
 object is always an object for consciousness, it 
 does not follow that a known object is all that 
 exists, or that that which may become an object 
 of knowledge at a future time has absolutely no 
 reality. It has as yet no known reality ; but we 
 are not entitled on this ground to assert that 
 reality there is not, because reality known to us 
 is always necessarily an object for consciousness. 
 This would be to assume the very point at issue, 
 that there is no reality in nature or fact apart 
 from known reality. Nay, it is true that known 
 reality falls out of the known or knowing, as in 
 the case of memory. A past object that has been 
 known by us is, or may be, existent now, though 
 it has fallen out of our perception, even know- 
 ledge. We should be guilty of unwarrantable 
 dogmatism in saying either that the object does 
 
72 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 not now exist because it is no longer known to 
 us as an actual reality of space and time, or that; 
 if it exists at all, it must exist as known by some 
 subject, individual, finite or infinite. This is 
 wholly to go beyond any premiss we have laid 
 down, and simply to assume that a certain defini- 
 tion of object, or of object in a certain relation, 
 extends to all actual and possible objects of 
 knowledge. What is true of the past holds of 
 the future, and all the possibilities of knowing. 
 These never can be limited by the conditions of 
 actual knowledge, and reality, therefore, cannot 
 be circumscribed by a narrow and arbitrary 
 definition. 
 
 We know certain facts connected with our sense- 
 experience with perfect certainty. We know (1) 
 that there is a nerve-current preceding actual or 
 conscious sensation and perception by us, of which 
 at the moment we are wholly unconscious. We 
 come to infer it from scientific investigation, from 
 observation, and inductive inference. We know 
 (2), also, that beyond the organism or bodily 
 sphere there are agencies in space which precede, 
 condition, so far determine our actual sensation 
 or perception, of which, however, we have neither 
 sensation nor perception. There is the vibration 
 of the air in sound; there is the undulation of 
 ether in vision. These are objects neither of sen- 
 
NATUEE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 73 
 
 sation nor perception ; they are never apprehended 
 by us as such ; they are simply suggestions, infer- 
 ences, needed to account for the actual facts of 
 sense of which we are conscious. They accom- 
 pany the actual conscious state, but they lie 
 wholly beyond it; they transcend it: they are 
 not perceptible by us, and never will be per- 
 ceptible by us so long as our senses are limited 
 as they now are. What then ? What follows 
 directly from this ? 
 
 Surely it will not be maintained that categor- 
 ising this insensible object after it has actually 
 performed its function in sensation on our con- 
 sciousness, and may have quite ceased to be in 
 the form it was conceiving it now, when it is 
 inferred, as in time and space and as cause 
 made it an object of our consciousness at the 
 time of 'its occurrence or action, now past and 
 gone ? Does my thinking or conceiving this 
 insensible, imperceptible thing, called vibration 
 or undulation, make it to have been simply a 
 mode of or in my consciousness, when I know as 
 a matter of fact it was not and never could be any 
 such thing ? Clearly this thing can exist apart 
 from our consciousness, during the moment of 
 actual perception of its sensible effect : we come 
 to know this afterwards, that it did exist during 
 our perception or sensation, though we knew 
 
74 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 nothing of it at the time. If, therefore, its ex- 
 istence depends on its being intuited in time and 
 space, and categorised, this existence must be in- 
 tuited and categorised by another consciousness 
 than ours. This existence is now a past exist- 
 ence ; and if it needed intuition and category to 
 hold it in being, it was held in being by some 
 consciousness of mind not ours. On what pos- 
 sible ground can we assert that this was so ? Is 
 there any need that this insensible thing called 
 ether or undulatory motion, which, unconsciously 
 to us, acted on our organism, and so far produced 
 sensation, was, while it acted, the object of a con- 
 sciousness not ours ? Why should this conscious- 
 ness let it out of itself to act on ours ? Why did 
 it not keep it to itself ? This may be because, 
 when I afterwards come to infer its existence 
 from sensible data, I think it as having been in 
 time and space, and as cause. But have I any 
 ground whatever, from the fact that I am led to 
 infer insensible ether as the cause of sensation, 
 to suppose that it must have existed in a con- 
 sciousness at all ? I now know that it did exist 
 in space and time at the moment I experienced 
 the sensation, but I did not know this at the time. 
 What is there more to lead me to suppose that it 
 existed in a consciousness, and one necessarily 
 like my own, which perceived it in time and 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 75 
 
 space, and as cause of my sensation ? like mine, 
 no doubt, as to categorising, but endowed with a 
 power of perception indefinitely greater than mine, 
 capable of perceiving what utterly transcends my 
 power of perception ? What is this but a cum- 
 brous, useless, incompetent hypothesis ? Why 
 should I duplicate my consciousness ? And how, 
 if I do, should this numerically different con- 
 sciousness perceive it as the cause of my sensa- 
 tion ? The, to me, imperceptible undulation 
 might be an object of perception to it, but 
 what should it know of my perception? The 
 assertion that there is nothing outside of con- 
 sciousness is thus belied by the simplest sense- 
 experience. 
 
 Mr Green's conclusion is, that in order to know 
 an object that is, a relation, there is needed 
 the existence or action of something not in 
 nature, not in the order of relations, not itself 
 a relation, not an object in time. This, we may 
 say broadly, is consciousness, as it is in the indi- 
 vidual, and ultimately a supreme or one Eternal 
 Consciousness. This consciousness in man and 
 in the universe is the same, only working under 
 different conditions. But we have first to deal 
 with it as in man ; for it will surely be admitted, 
 even by Mr Green, that to know this one Eternal 
 Consciousness, we must know it first in its human 
 
76 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 aspect, or as subjected to the limitations of the 
 animal organism, with which, as we shall see, the 
 Eternal Consciousness has a fruitless and baffled 
 struggle. 
 
 With this is connected the further position 
 that consciousness, in knowing the object -rela- 
 tion, makes it. A self-distinguishing conscious- 
 ness knows something, an object, a relation, and 
 in so knowing makes it ; for it has existence 
 only as related to consciousness, or as conscious- 
 ness relates it. 
 
 " The consciousness through which alone nature 
 exists for us is neither natural nor a result of 
 nature." " What is the " nature " here spoken of, 
 whether simply assumed or allowed to be ? Evi- 
 dently it is given as opposed to consciousness, that 
 is, the consciousness of it by us. As yet we know 
 no other consciousness. This nature will mean, 
 then, a process simply of change, or a series of 
 events, minus consciousness. It is also used as 
 identical with " experience." If this nature be 
 known by us to be, the consciousness by which 
 we know the process of change cannot be one 
 stage or any event in the changing process ; 
 it must be that which remains all through 
 the change, conscious of each point, and con- 
 scious thus of the whole. In plain language, 
 change in time, to be known, requires a knower, 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 77 
 
 one and identical through the change. The 
 use of the abstract term " consciousness " for 
 this is, I must note in passing, an inappropriate 
 expression. This " consciousness," however, is 
 described as neither natural nor a result of na- 
 ture. It is not natural simply in the narrow 
 sense of nature, or the conception of nature, as 
 already defined. But it is, as thus used, a mis- 
 leading expression. The nature spoken of has, it 
 is maintained, no existence for us unless as in 
 this consciousness ; and yet it is contrasted with 
 consciousness as being natural, while conscious- 
 ness is at the same time spoken of as something 
 not natural, over and above nature. If nature 
 does not exist for us until we are conscious of it, 
 and only as we are conscious of it, conscious- 
 ness, the one side of the complexus, is just as 
 natural as nature, the other side, is, or nature 
 is just as non-natural as consciousness is. The 
 contrast between nature and consciousness as 
 two things, even conceptions, has ceased to have 
 a meaning. 
 
 The fatal flaw in all this reasoning is this: 
 The thing, the object, has no existence in itself ; 
 therefore it cannot generate the subject called 
 thought. But, on the other hand, the subject, 
 the thought, has no existence in itself ; therefore 
 it cannot generate the object_or thing, indeed 
 
78 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 generate anything. How, then, can aught be 
 known ? How can there be a relation of know- 
 ledge at all 1 If there be no object to begin with, 
 and no subject to begin with, who is to start the 
 business of knowing ? " The understanding creates 
 nature ; " but nature equally creates the under- 
 standing, for neither is until the other is. If 
 they come together so that there is knowledge, 
 which is creation, some one must surely help 
 them. Knowledge is a relation ; and as each 
 term is helpless to constitute it, and only really 
 exists as related, there is some higher cause or 
 power which brings them together, or rather which 
 evolves the relation in which they both exist, 
 and only exist. But the producer of a relation 
 which creates at once the relation and the terms, 
 primarily the first, secondarily the latter, is some- 
 thing of which we, as being merely in relation, 
 can form no conception. 
 
 But this " nature " created by the understanding 
 has in itself, as a nature, no distinct or continued 
 existence. It is dependent on the understanding, 
 in a word, on mind or self, at first the indi- 
 vidual self, working on certain material. But 
 I do not find that this understanding or indi- 
 vidual ego has any distinct or continuous being 
 apart from that nature which stands related to it, 
 or which it relates to itself, and so constitutes. 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 79 
 
 It is spoken of as the understanding, and also a 
 self -distinguishing consciousness ; but I do not 
 find any provision made for the beginning of 
 its distinguishing or constituting act. I do not 
 find any provision made for the self as simply a 
 potency, which comes into act. On the con- 
 trary, when it is first known, or is known as 
 existent, it is already linked to nature, insepar- 
 ately related to it. Apart from this relation, it 
 is a meaningless abstraction, or rather mean- 
 ingless term. How, then, am I to say that it 
 constitutes nature, or does anything whatever in 
 the way of cognitive activity ? If the object of 
 its act does not exist until it makes it, or rather, 
 until it and the object coexist, how am I 
 entitled to say that the self -distinguishing ego 
 is the superior of the two, or that it makes 
 nature ? Does not nature equally make it, if 
 there is any making in the case ? The whole 
 doctrine is a see - saw of mutually destructive 
 contradictories. If you give the complex under- 
 standing + nature a consciousness, it will be a 
 consciousness of a complex distinguished as to 
 its terms, so made, but made already, not to 
 make by a self - distinguishing consciousness. 
 We have now got into the high blaze of fusion, 
 the strong heat under which the factors of 
 the problem are dissolved. Understanding 
 
80 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 disappears in nature; nature in understanding. 
 There is a new compound, which is both or 
 neither, as you choose to take it. 
 
 But there are questions regarding the function 
 of " nature " in knowledge which it would have 
 been well had Mr Green, when he raised this 
 question, thought proper to discuss. It is true 
 that we find in knowledge subject and object, or 
 subject and nature. Is this properly described 
 as simply the relation of a self-distinguishing 
 consciousness, in which object is created by it ? 
 Has the " nature " element no power of stimula- 
 tion for the conscious side ? We are familiar 
 with the distinction of knowledge beginning in 
 experience, but not originated by it. What has a 
 writer like Mr Green to say on this point ? This 
 is quite a distinct alternative from any he puts. 
 " Nature " may not originate knowledge ; but it 
 may be the occasion or commencement of it in 
 such a sense that there would be no knowledge at 
 all, but for it as a stimulus. Is this to be got 
 over by the dictum that "understanding makes 
 nature " ? Would Mr Green have ventured to say 
 that perception arises without a stimulus in con- 
 sciousness from " nature " or the outward, what- 
 ever that be, whether an unconscious order, or a 
 mind holding nature? And how, then, can he 
 say that all nature, including this stimulus, is 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 81 
 
 made by the consciousness or knowledge which it 
 helps to make ? 
 
 But is such an inference as that " consciousness " 
 is not natural, or a result of nature, to be founded 
 merely on a knowledge, real or supposed, of a 
 process of change minus consciousness ? Let us 
 start from Hume's impressions, or series of im- 
 pressions, each of which is supposed to be a con- 
 sciousness. Here we have a process of change, 
 or series of events, a series of consciousnesses. 
 How is this series to be known by me ? The 
 consciousness attached to each impression will 
 not give me knowledge of the series. It is 
 restricted to each moment in the series. If the 
 series is to be known by me, it must be known 
 as one, with beginning, middle, and end, in time 
 by me, conscious of each impression all through 
 the process, and capable of combining these in 
 the unity of the series. Is the conscious act, 
 in and through which I know the series, to be 
 described as . non-natural, or as otherwise than 
 natural ? Are the impressions to be regarded as 
 "natural," while the conscious act of me the 
 knower, is to be regarded as something other and 
 higher than nature ? Obviously this is a futile 
 and misleading expression. It is perfectly true 
 that the consciousness of the series is not the 
 result of the series, is not the combined form of 
 
82 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 the separate consciousness, but a higher com- 
 prehension of the whole ; but for this reason, to 
 call it not natural is misleading. It is an essen- 
 tial part of the experience, and is as much 
 "natural," in the proper sense of the word, as 
 is the matter or impressions which it gathers 
 into a single whole. It is a fact in time, con- 
 tinuous in time, and is, in a word, experience 
 itself. It may very properly be called "a 
 spiritual principle " ; and this has a significance, 
 if it be contrasted with either a real or conceived 
 series of mere changes minus consciousness. 
 
 In fact, Hume himself, in the end, admitted 
 the force of this criticism. In order to explain 
 personal identity, he had recourse to memory, 
 which recalls and gathers together our past per- 
 ceptions, represents unceasingly their relations of 
 resemblance and causality, and thus permits the 
 imagination to pass easily from the one to the 
 other, according to those principles of association, 
 and to unite them all in an internal existence, 
 unique and continuous. Btft, as he himself sug- 
 gests, if " all our distinct perceptions are distinct 
 existences," and if " the mind never perceives any 
 real connection among distinct existences," how is 
 this unifying of them, as in one consciousness, 
 possible ? That is the difficulty which he frankly 
 acknowledges ; and he further acknowledges that 
 
NATURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 83 
 
 this difficulty is met by the supposition of our 
 perceptions being inherent in something at once 
 simple and individual. " Did our perceptions 
 either inhere in something simple and individual, 
 or did the mind perceive some real connection 
 among them, there would be no difficulty in 
 the case." * Hume, in fact, in this as on other 
 points, provided both the bane and the antidote. 
 If perceptions be so inherent, there is a possi- 
 bility, nay, a necessity, of unifying them as in 
 relation to one and the same individual con- 
 sciousness ; and this unity underlying all is suf- 
 ficient to afford a real link of connection between 
 perceptions that would be otherwise wholly dis- 
 tinct, as simply isolated impressions in isolated 
 consciousnesses. 
 
 * Treatise of Human Nature, App., p. 636 (Selby-Bigge's 
 edition). 
 
84 
 
 III. KEALITY. 
 
 IN order to reach those positions, we are offered 
 by Mr Green a certain analysis of the conceptions 
 " real " and " objective." It seems to amount to 
 this, that there is an " impression " or " feeling," 
 that we ask whether " an impression represents 
 anything real and objective ? " Of course, " some 
 feeling must be felt " in order even to ask such a 
 question. But the question means, " Whether a 
 given feeling is what it is taken to be ? or, in 
 other words, whether it is related as it seems to be 
 related ? " (p. 16.) Again, " Is a feeling, felt, really 
 related as some one thinking about it takes it to 
 be ?" Then we have the illustration of the engine- 
 driver, who " sees a signal wrong." It is not par- 
 ticularly illustrative ; but it may be taken to mean 
 that the engine-driver may think he sees a green 
 light when it is red, and so drives on. The re- 
 lations between the outward conditions of vision 
 and the visual impression are real, as in normal 
 
REALITY. 85 
 
 vision ; but the actual impression is green viz., 
 when it should have been red or, he thinks it 
 green, when it is actually red. The driver mistakes 
 the effect of one set of relations for that of another, 
 and hence his error in vision. He should have 
 seen red, but he actually saw, or thought he saw, 
 green. But there is a permanent, or established, 
 order here of relations that is, between the de- 
 termining or conditioning causes of vision and the 
 actual but varying impressions. "A conscious- 
 ness presents its experiences to itself as deter- 
 mined by relations, and, at the same time, con- 
 ceives a simple and unalterable order of relations 
 determining them, with which its temporary pre- 
 sentation . . . may be contrasted " (p. 17). The 
 terms "real" and "objective" have a meaning 
 only for such a consciousness. 
 
 But does this illustration not rather go against 
 Mr Green's position ? The signalman who, being 
 colour-blind we may suppose, sees green when, 
 according to the normal conditions of vision, he 
 would have seen red, sees exactly what is real in 
 the circumstances, and according to the conditions 
 of his vision : nay, more, if every one's vision had 
 been constituted as his, every one would have 
 seen the red to be green. What, then, becomes of 
 this illustration as proof that our sensations are 
 only real as unalterably related to a certain set 
 
86 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 of conditions ? It seems that in this case the 
 impression was not real, because it was not in ac- 
 cordance with what a normally constituted vision 
 would have seen or been impressed with. The 
 truth is, the impression according to the circum- 
 stances or conditions of the colour-blind vision 
 was, so far as this point goes, just as real as the 
 other impression would have been to an ordin- 
 arily constituted eye. The true sense of the 
 term real has already been lost. The reality 
 of a sensation, perception, or conception is, in 
 the first instance, just as it is to the mind; 
 what it signifies or may be interpreted to mean 
 in a sphere beyond itself is a wholly second- 
 ary point, and can only be a secondary form 
 of reality. 
 
 The true conception of the real, according to 
 this view, is to be sought for in a certain kind of 
 relation between feelings, or between objects that 
 we present to ourselves as sources of feeling. 
 When we take the feelings rightly, or the rela- 
 tions rightly between those antecedents or con- 
 comitants, we have the real the objective. 
 This Tightness is to be tested by the harmony 
 between our " taking " the relation, or what some 
 one thinking about it takes it to be, and " a single 
 and unalterable order of relations determining 
 the relations " in our consciousness. 
 
REALITY. 87 
 
 (1.) The conception of the real or objective is 
 presupposed in the very terms of such a state- 
 ment. There can be no possible or actual agree- 
 ment between a given relation or supposed rela- 
 tion of two feelings or facts in consciousness, with- 
 out the presupposition that each feeling or fact is 
 known to the conscious self as now, or as now 
 and here nay, is known as of a definite quality. 
 A feeling is only as it is in time and conscious- 
 ness. We have no conception of any feeling or 
 impression which does not involve affirmation of 
 its reality as now, or as now and here. And con- 
 sequently, if reality consist in known relation, this 
 relation cannot be merely of one feeling or fact 
 to another, but of a feeling or fact to the con- 
 scious-subject ; as little can it consist in the re- 
 lation " between objects that we present to our- 
 selves as sources of feeling." 
 
 But there is a confusion here all through be- 
 tween the interpretation of feelings or sensations 
 and the reality of the sensations themselves. 
 This latter is primary ; the other is secondary, and 
 to be inquired into through analogy and induction. 
 Take the case of the relation between feeling and 
 an object that is present as a source of feeling 
 that is, between feeling and feeling, for every 
 object is ultimately a feeling conceived as related. 
 I have before me the rose which I see, and I 
 
88 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 have in me, so to speak, the odour which I feel. 
 The seeing the rose, or the impressions I have 
 which make up the rose and the odour, are both 
 present, and I relate the odour to the rose as its 
 source the feeling to the feeling. Now, and 
 now only, have I any conception of reality or 
 objectivity. If I misinterpret the feeling, and 
 refer it to the rock on which grows the rose, 
 then I have made a mistake as to the reality or 
 true objectivity ; but it is only in relation to this 
 general conception of an objective unalterable 
 order of relations between the feelings, that 
 reality has a meaning for me. I have no other 
 idea of reality than of correspondence between 
 what seems to be related, and what is actually, 
 absolutely, or unalterably related in an order of 
 feelings. I say, in reply to this, that the odour I 
 feel in presence of the rose is already real to me, 
 whether I connect it with the rose or not as its 
 source, whether I connect it with any feeling 
 that went before it in consciousness; that it is 
 not this kind of relation which, carried out, con- 
 stitutes reality; that reality does not depend 
 merely, or in the first instance, on my finding the 
 true cause, much less relating the feeling to its 
 place in an unalterable order, but on the simple 
 presence of the feeling in my consciousness as 
 felt, and occupying its place in time, and as doing 
 
REALITY. 89 
 
 so not necessarily in relation to any other feeling, 
 but as a positive thing or quality known by me, 
 and contrasted, it may be, with the absence of all 
 other quality. 
 
 Further, the real or objective cannot consist 
 simply in the relation or connection between one 
 feeling and another, or a feeling and its source, 
 however correctly known, for the reason that the 
 feeling or fact is necessarily known as of this or 
 that quality in the first instance, ere we can say 
 anything about its relation to another feeling on 
 the thread of consciousness, or of its relation to 
 its source or cause. Quality grounds relation of 
 kind. And though relation to time is indifferent 
 to quality, the thing in time always has the mark 
 of the this now, or now and here. 
 
 Nothing can be more absurd than the con- 
 sequence of this doctrine, that we only reach 
 the real the truly real when we do not blun- 
 der in the attempt to interpret the contents of 
 our consciousness. If anything could make such 
 a doctrine more ludicrous, it is the admission 
 that in the process of mistake or failure, in 
 the misinterpretation of the feeling, there is as 
 much reality as in the successful relation of it 
 to its source (p. 17). If there be as much 
 reality here, how can the conception of the real 
 be the harmony between related feelings and this 
 
90 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 objective determining order ? How can reality 
 mean a mistaken, unrealised relation, and a true 
 correspondence with the unalterable order ? 
 
 Mr Green proceeds to give us an account of 
 the nature of the necessity of a conception, as 
 distinct from the logical necessity of a conclu- 
 sion contained in premisses conceded. This 
 means that the conception is " necessary to 
 the experience, without which there would not 
 for us be a world at all, and there can be 
 neither proof nor disproof of such necessity as 
 is claimed for any conception, but through 
 analysis of the conditions which render this 
 experience possible" (p. 18). 
 
 This is the usual Kantian transcendental de- 
 duction, as now commonly interpreted. Given 
 such or such an experience, consciousness, or 
 knowledge of a world, this or that conception 
 is necessary to the knowledge. Analyse such a 
 knowledge, and you will find that the concep- 
 tion in question is implied in it. The (given 
 or supposed) knowledge or experience is not 
 possible without it. In this case, the distinc- 
 tion between facts and fancies implies " a con- 
 ception of the world as a single system of re- 
 lations." Idea of matter of fact, analysed, 
 " means an idea of a relation which is always 
 the same between the same objects." Again, " our 
 
REALITY. 91 
 
 idea of an object means that which is always the 
 same in the same relations." " Each impression 
 implies the idea of a world as a single and 
 eternal system of related elements, which may 
 be related with endless diversity, but must be 
 related still." (P. 19.) 
 
 Now, in the first place, the necessity of the 
 conception here spoken of is a purely hypotheti- 
 cal necessity. If experience be so and so, a 
 certain conception is necessary to its so being. 
 Or as experience is identified with knowledge or 
 a consciousness of objects, if this consciousness be 
 as described, then this conception is necessary. 
 But this experience, so described, must be shown 
 or found to be as a matter of fact. It must be 
 my actual experience as tested by psychological 
 analysis. And the question is thus carried back 
 to an earlier stage than that of the transcendental 
 analysis or deduction. And this comes to be 
 what precisely is the experience of which we are 
 speaking. But let this be so ; after all, a concep- 
 tion necessarily involved in it, so that it would 
 not be the given experience or our experience, 
 would be but an element of the possibility of this 
 experience as conceived by us. It would not, in 
 a word, be our experience, or experience for us, if 
 we were to leave out one of its necessary ele- 
 ments. And what is this but a simple analysis 
 
92 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 of experience as we find it, tested by reflective 
 analysis ? 
 
 But, further, if the conception be thus involved, 
 is it not involved in some other conception, which 
 is part of the total experience or consciousness ? 
 It is not logically involved, we are told, as a con- 
 clusion in the premisses. These can be taken, 
 comprehended, separately, and thereafter the 
 conclusion may be or must be evolved. But if 
 not in this way, in what way is the conception 
 spoken of necessary ? Is it necessary to the 
 whole or complete act of experience ? How 
 shown what is the process of " proof " ? Ob- 
 viously there is nothing in the shape of proof 
 whatever under such conditions. If it be neces- 
 sary to the total act of experience, if this be not 
 possible, that is, conceivable without it, neither is 
 the remanent part conceivable without this con- 
 ception. We never, therefore, can start from the 
 one to prove the other, or draw the other, for 
 the two or more elements are given us necessarily 
 together in the complex act. If, for example, a 
 self-distinguishing consciousness be necessary to 
 a conscious relation, we never can conceive the 
 one apart from the other, and so evolve the other 
 out of it, for the simple reason, that neither is 
 conceivable apart. All that we can say is, that 
 we find this in experience. It is further to be 
 
REALITY. 93 
 
 noted that this analysis amounts to no more 
 than an analysis of knowledge, or experience 
 as known, as consciousness. It does not touch 
 in any way the question how this experience, 
 as a matter of fact, has actually arisen. Yet 
 these two points of view are confounded all 
 through the discussion ; for we hear quietly, as 
 if it were quite the same thing, " of the necessary 
 character of the ideas which it [the analysis] ex- 
 hibits as operative in the formation of experi- 
 ence " (p. 18) ; whereas it is but the analysis of 
 the ideas which already make up this very ex- 
 perience which is possible in the case, and which, 
 when we try to think them apart, we cannot suc- 
 ceed. In other words, we fall back on a neces- 
 sity test simply by reflective analysis. 
 
 As to this argument from " the transcendental 
 proof," so much vaunted, and so variously stated, 
 little need be said at this point. Even if it were 
 valid, it does not bear on the implication of a uni- 
 versal self in the individual self of time. This 
 is asserted to be a necessary inference, because 
 the denial of it would involve all our experience 
 in contradiction (p. 258). I have never seen 
 anything of the slightest force in the way of 
 supplying a link between premiss and conclusion 
 here. It seems to me even, on the other hand, 
 that the assertion of such an entity involves the 
 
94 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 whole of our experience in contradiction. It is 
 an express contradiction to assert an individual 
 ego in time, much more a plurality of such 
 egos, along with one universal ego which must 
 necessarily absorb all be all and every one. 
 And it is to introduce into human knowledge 
 an element of fundamental uncertainty, when 
 we are represented as first accepting the indi- 
 vidual ego for the individual which it alleges 
 itself to be in time and consciousness, and then 
 finding out in the end that it is no such thing, 
 but the universal ego struggling with the hostile 
 conditions of the animal organism. 
 
 The analysis of " the idea of a matter of fact " 
 as "an idea of a relation which is always the 
 same between the same objects " and of " the idea 
 of an object as that which is always the same 
 in the same relations," is about as remarkable an 
 example of tautological verbalism as could well be 
 found. How could a relation be different "be- 
 tween the same objects," or how could an object 
 be otherwise than "the same in the same rela- 
 tions " ? Is not, further, relation here secondary 
 dependent on the same objects ? And how do 
 we know that two objects in different times are 
 the same ? Would this not be a knowledge prior 
 to the relation ? And how could two objects 
 be the same object? How could they be any- 
 
REALITY. 95 
 
 thing but similar ? The relation would thus be 
 founded on something prior to it that is, quality 
 and even likeness in quality. 
 
 But the point to be kept in view, towards which 
 all these statements are meant to tend, is, that 
 our experience or consciousness of objects cannot 
 arise out of a series of objects of which there 
 is no consciousness, either ours or some other. 
 " A consciousness of events as a related series 
 experience in the most elementary form in which 
 it can be the beginning of knowledge has not 
 any element of identity with, and therefore can- 
 not properly be said ' to be developed out of a mere 
 series of related events/ of successive modifications 
 of body or soul, such as is experience in the for- 
 mer of the senses spoken of. No one, and no 
 number of a series of related events, can be the 
 consciousness of the series as related. Nor can 
 any product of the series be either. ... A con- 
 sciousness of certain events cannot be anything 
 that thus succeeds them. It must be equally 
 present to all the events of which it is the con- 
 sciousness. For this reason an intelligent experi- 
 ence, or experience as the source of knowledge, can 
 neither be constituted by events of which it is the 
 experience, nor be a product of them." (P. 21.) 
 
 " Experience has two meanings simply change, 
 and the consciousness of change. There is a 
 
96 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 series of changes chemical or atmospheric in 
 the growth of the plant. There is the definite 
 physical experience of changes in sleep. But 
 this is different from the experience which is a 
 knowledge of nature or the consciousness of 
 change." (P. 20.) 
 
 Now the main position here is eminently 
 sound that is, that a consciousness of a series 
 of events is not possible as a part of the mere series 
 of events, or as the product of it. The conscious- 
 ness, or, much better, the permanent conscious 
 subject, must be present to each of the events 
 in the series, otherwise the series cannot be 
 known as a series, or in fact at all. But there is, 
 as usual, a change of terms in the conclusion 
 drawn from this. The writer no longer there 
 speaks of the conscious experience merely as the 
 intelligent experience of the series, but experience 
 " as the source of knowledge " ; and thus doubles, 
 so to speak, the expression, with a view to show 
 that conscious experience is not only to be dis- 
 tinguished from a mere series of related events, 
 but is that from which knowledge itself that 
 is, the conscious experience springs. And this 
 fallacious mode of statement is emphasised by 
 distinguishing further the events of which it is 
 the experience, and so doubly, even trebly, con- 
 founding the meaning of words. If experience 
 
REALITY. 97 
 
 that is, conscious experience be not a mere un- 
 conscious series of events, neither can it be said 
 to have an intelligent experience as a source of 
 knowledge that is, a source of itself, or know- 
 ledge as a source of knowledge. 
 
 But there is another point here. It may be 
 true that a consciousness of related events cannot 
 spring from a mere series of related events ; it 
 does not follow that the knowledge or conscious- 
 ness of the series is constituted simply by "a 
 consciousness which is equally present to all the 
 events of which it is the consciousness " (p. 21). 
 A consciousness thus present in succession to 
 each event can only be an act of consciousness 
 an intuition of each event in succession, and 
 therefore, in each a different intuition in time, 
 varying numerically with the event. Such "a 
 consciousness" is utterly inadequate to give us 
 " a consciousness of the series." We do not thus 
 advance one whit beyond Hume's doctrine of 
 conscious impressions. What is needed for the 
 consciousness of a series is not simply a conscious- 
 ness present to each, but a permanent conscious 
 or knowing subject putting forth a conscious act 
 in the successive times, and, in virtue of its own 
 identity, gathering up the acts in one common 
 conception as those of a series. Thus is the 
 knowledge or experience by us of the series con- 
 G 
 
98 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 stituted, but it does not follow that the series is 
 constituted by the permanent identical conscious 
 subject. There must be in the series, as ground- 
 ing the knowledge of it, a feature or condition in- 
 dependent, in the first place, of the knowing act, 
 which enables the subject to differentiate it from 
 what is not a series, but, say, a coexistence of 
 events or the relation of causality. These are 
 as truly relations as that of succession, though 
 of quite a different character. 
 
 But are we left to the alternatives, as is here 
 assumed, of consciousness arising from a series 
 of unconscious events, and that of consciousness 
 arising from a prior or primary consciousness of 
 events ? The impossibility of the former may be 
 established. Are we necessarily driven to the 
 alternative of derivation of our consciousness 
 from a prior or primary consciousness of a series 
 of events ? By no means. May not our con- 
 sciousness be as a power to be developed into act 
 or reality, in and along with the concurring series 
 of events ? Is there anything impossible or im- 
 probable even in there being, as contemporaneous 
 entities, time-conscious acts and time-succeeding 
 things? Is the existence of a subject in time 
 capable of rising to consciousness under certain 
 conditions, and thus a real entity in time, less 
 reasonable as a conception than " a consciousness 
 
REALITY. 99 
 
 equally present to all the events of which it is 
 the consciousness " ? Nay, does not the latter 
 supposition involve the conception first of a cap- 
 able conscious subject enduring in time ? Does 
 the conception of a primary consciousness of 
 events, above time apparently, from which our 
 time-consciousness is supposed to arise, help us 
 to connect with its cause that is, explain the 
 rise of our time-consciousness any more than the 
 mere series of related events ? 
 
 But we are further told that " any conscious- 
 ness of change, since the whole of it must be 
 present at once, cannot be itself a process of 
 change. There may be a change into a state of 
 consciousness of change, and a change out of it, 
 on the part of this man or that ; but within the 
 consciousness itself there can be no change, be- 
 cause no relation. of before and after, of here and 
 there, between its constituent members between 
 the presentation, for instance, of point A and that 
 of point B in the process which forms the object 
 of consciousness." (P. 22.) 
 
 We have here a process of change the presen- 
 tation of point A, then of point B, necessarily in 
 succession. This process in succession is the 
 object of consciousness; one consciousness must 
 be present to each point, in order to be conscious 
 of the change ; but there can be no change in the 
 
100 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 consciousness itself which knows the change, 
 no relation of before and after, of here and 
 there, between its constituent members, "since 
 the whole of it must be present at once." There 
 is here a contradiction, a simple absurdity. In or 
 through one single immovable consciousness there 
 pass conscious points A and B that is, conscious 
 acts directed in succession to objects yet there 
 is no change in the consciousness. The conscious- 
 ness knows the process of change, but it itself 
 suffers no change admits of no change or modi- 
 fication whatever "since the whole of it must 
 be present at once." If there be a consciousness 
 or knowledge of a definite change in things of a 
 succession of objects in a definite time there 
 must be a corresponding change in the series of 
 cognitive or conscious acts, otherwise the con- 
 ception of the process would be impossible. 
 This conception of the completed process as one 
 of change is, no doubt, one and indivisible ; but 
 it is a conception all the same which is possible 
 only through the grouping in one of changes con- 
 sciously known in the series. The unity and iden- 
 tity here is not of the consciousness itself, but of 
 the conscious subject, existing through the series, 
 and putting forth definite conscious acts in suc- 
 cession, and in the end setting forth its conception 
 of the process as one of change. There is here 
 
REALITY. 101 
 
 the usual confusion between consciousness and 
 the conscious subject, the confusion between 
 consciousness as a mere abstraction or term and 
 the definite acts of consciousness which make 
 it up. 
 
 The understanding, accordingly, enables us to 
 conceive that there is such a thing as the order of 
 nature that is, "certain relations regarded as 
 forming a single system ;" and further, the under- 
 standing " which presents an order of nature to 
 us, is in principle one with an understanding 
 which constitutes that order itself " (p. 23). The 
 conception opposed to this is that of an order of 
 nature on the one side and the conception of an 
 order of nature on the other, and between them 
 " some unaccountable pre-established harmony." 
 
 Here Locke is taken as the representative of 
 "the traditional philosophy of common sense." 
 There can hardly be clearer evidence of the lack 
 of knowledge in the history of modern philosophy 
 than such a statement. " The philosophy of com- 
 mon sense," as represented by Keid and Hamilton, 
 is a wholly different thing in conception from any 
 view of Locke, especially any view of his regard- 
 ing sensation and perception. Locke expressly 
 held that there is no direct or immediate appre- 
 hension of an external world the world of 
 things. There is, in his view, (1) sensation 
 
102 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 as of sound, colour, taste, smell, &c. But sensa- 
 tion is not a quality of things ; it is simply a state 
 of the mind, caused by things to which it has no 
 resemblance, and whose nature, therefore, it does 
 not convey to us. There is, (2) "the idea," or 
 ideas, in perception. These are real resemblances 
 of certain qualities inseparable from matter, as 
 extension, solidity, figure, mobility. 
 
 Hamilton, on the other hand, expressly, and 
 Reid in all probability, held an intuitive or 
 immediate apprehension of the quality of the 
 material world as present to, and existing for, 
 consciousness ; and they maintain that this view 
 is in accordance with universal belief, while that 
 of Locke is distinctly opposed to it. As to the 
 ground of the first principles of knowledge the 
 philosophy of common sense proper they do not 
 differ less from Locke, though here what is 
 called " intellectualism " in Locke is to be con- 
 sidered. If there is one point more than another 
 which Reid contests, and contests successfully, in 
 his Second and Sixth Essays, it is the funda- 
 mental position of Locke's philosophy, that know- 
 ledge consists in " the perception of the connection 
 and agreement, or disagreement and repugnance, 
 of any of our ideas ; " and not less strenuously 
 does he contend that the hypothesis of " ideas " 
 in perception cannot give the slightest knowledge 
 
REALITY. 103 
 
 of the real world. This constant persistent mis- 
 representation of what they are pleased to term 
 " common sense " is a characteristic of Neo- 
 Kantian writers down to the present moment. 
 
 But Locke, it appears, holds sensation to be real 
 because we cannot make it, and relations not to 
 be real because we make them because they are 
 the work of the mind. What is said in reply to 
 this is certainly remarkable in itself and its broad 
 assumptiveness. " Without relation," we are told, 
 " any simple idea would be undistinguished from 
 other simple ideas, undetermined by its surround- 
 ings in the cosmos of experience. It would thus 
 be unqualified." (P. 23.) In other words, no sen- 
 sation or quality of matter can be to us an object 
 of consciousness, unless as some other simple 
 sensation or idea known to us determines it, 
 qualifies it, as of this or that sort. No single 
 colour can be known unless we know another 
 colour, or it may be a taste, an odour, or a sound. 
 But is there not the same difficulty in regard to 
 knowing the other simple sensation or quality 
 which there is in regard to the first, as yet un- 
 distinguished and undetermined ? How are we to 
 know the other or surrounding simple sensation 
 or quality, if we do not already know that which 
 it surrounds ? How can we speak of another 
 quality at all in such a connection, when as yet 
 
104 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 there is not one to begin with, it waiting all the 
 while on its surroundings to be determined to be, 
 while this is equally waiting on its neighbour? 
 What does this, in fact, logically carried out, imply, 
 but that we cannot know anything because we 
 cannot know everything? 
 
 The mistake here, and it is a vital one, run- 
 ning through the whole reasoning of those chap- 
 ters, is the making that primary viz., relation, 
 which is only secondary; substituting for the 
 quality, even the reality, of a thing, that which 
 can only be founded on it. Besides, there is a 
 confusion of two quite different kinds of rela- 
 tion the relations of objects to each other, meta- 
 physical and physical, and the relation of the 
 known object to the knowing subject, a confu- 
 sion, in fact, between the relations among existing 
 things and the relations of the knower to the 
 known existing world. 
 
 In ordinary thinking, it is said, we oppose the 
 work of the mind to the real, not as the work of 
 the mind, as such, but the work of the mind as 
 assumed to be arbitrary and irregularly change- 
 able (p. 25). But it seems that the question 
 What is the real ? which we seek to answer by 
 means of this opposition is "a misleading one, 
 so far as it implies the self-contradictory suppo- 
 sition of there really being something other than 
 
REALITY. 105 
 
 the real from which it could be distinguished" 
 (p. 29). But apparently we may ask and decide 
 the question, "Whether any particular event or 
 object is really what it seems to be, or whether 
 our belief about it is true ? " And the test of this 
 is, " the unalterableness of the qualities which we 
 ascribe to it, or which form its apparent nature " 
 (p. 27). " Whatever anything is really, it is un- 
 alterably." " A sensation is the unalterable effect 
 of its conditions, whatever those conditions may 
 be." " The unalterableness of the fact that a cer- 
 tain feeling is felt under certain conditions, is as- 
 cribed to the simple feeling." (Pp. 27, 28.) 
 
 "The inquiry into the real is as to an un- 
 changing relation between the appearance and 
 its conditions, or an unchanging relation between 
 these and certain other conditions." (P. 29.) 
 "That there is an unalterable order of rela- 
 tions, if we could only find it out, is the presup- 
 position of all our inquiry into the real nature of 
 appearances; and such unalterableness implies 
 their inclusion in one system which leaves 
 nothing outside itself." (P. 30.) 
 
 We cannot answer the question, What is the 
 real? because the real is everything. There is 
 nothing that is unreal. There is not reality and 
 non-reality. We may make a judgment about 
 the real which is false. We may form an errone- 
 
106 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 ous opinion. " The relations by which, in a false 
 belief as to a matter of fact, we suppose the 
 event to be determined, are not non-existent. 
 They are really objects of a conceiving conscious- 
 ness. As arising out of the action of such a con- 
 sciousness, as constituents of a world which it 
 presents to itself, they are no less real than are the 
 actual conditions of the event which is thought to 
 be, but is not really determined by them." (P. 26.) 
 It is hardly necessary, as seems to me, to go 
 further than this for the reductio ad dbsurdum of 
 the philosophical system of which it is the teach- 
 ing. Subjective illusion, error, false judgment 
 about facts and the order of things, are real, 
 equally real, with the knowledge of objective 
 truth with true judgment about facts and the 
 order of facts because both are equally relations 
 in the mind or consciousness, and perhaps the 
 work of the mind. These relations are not 
 non-existent, therefore they are real, equally real, 
 with the true relations also determined by the 
 mind. Whatever the mind determines, whether 
 it represents correctly an object and its condi- 
 tions or not, is equally real. We cannot, there- 
 fore, say a fact falsely alleged viz., the death of 
 a person is unreal; for although it is a false 
 judgment, it is still a judgment, and therefore 
 not unreal. Was there ever such a confusion in 
 
REALITY. 107 
 
 the application of the word real ? Cannot we get 
 a test of the real in its application, say, to matter 
 of fact in general, so as thus to distinguish 
 what is, as a matter of fact, from what we may 
 think to be, but which never was, nor will be ? 
 Is it the same kind of reality of which we are 
 speaking when we say this event did not happen, 
 and I erroneously judge that this event did 
 happen ? The whole plausibility of this reason- 
 ing, if it deserves the name, is the confusion 
 between the subjective individual judgment or 
 thought about reality, and the objective reality of 
 the fact itself of existence itself. These are not 
 both equally real ; they are not real in the same 
 sense. There is not an opposition between the 
 happening of the fact and my erroneous judg- 
 ment about it, but between the happening and 
 the non-happening of the fact. What is the real 
 in matter of fact is a perfectly competent question, 
 and we can answer this question so as to say this 
 is real, that is unreal. We are dealing in the 
 first instance, in both cases, with our conceptions 
 or thoughts about the real ; but the real does not 
 lie in the mere representation of the fact, but in 
 the fact itself as standing to us in a correct repre- 
 sentation. " The real is everything," is about as 
 weak and unanalysed a statement as could well 
 be made. The real is thus what is and what 
 
108 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 is not what occurred and what did not occur 
 what we perceive and what we imagine 
 what we see and what we dream what is true 
 and what is false; and it is all this equally, 
 simply forsooth because these are things or rela- 
 tions in consciousness ! All the blunderings of 
 individuals during the past striving to represent 
 the course of things in science, have been equally 
 real with the true representation, and on the same 
 level as the real order of nature itself. 
 
 But these strivings and blunderings in the indi- 
 vidual mind to get at the true relations of things 
 what are they ? Are they the workings of an 
 individual subject or consciousness, different from 
 the absolute or eternal consciousness, which holds 
 everything in being? Then he too this indi- 
 vidual subject must be real as the eternal con- 
 sciousness is real, for he too is is, in fact, our 
 consciousness. Then there will be two realities, 
 coequal, not one simply, as we are told, with a 
 double aspect. Are these blunderings the blun- 
 derings of the Eternal Consciousness, omniscient 
 and omnipotent the all-creator, the all-sustainer ? 
 But how can this power blunder, or be anything 
 but what he is absolute and eternal truth ? 
 The admission points to the central weakness of 
 the system. "The eternal consciousness" is a 
 name simply for what we know and realise of 
 
REALITY. 109 
 
 consciousness that is, our own ; sufficiently 
 blundering and progressive, but confessedly never 
 complete. 
 
 Suppose we substitute " the true " for " the real," 
 are we to dismiss this question as to what is 
 the true, because this supposes that there is some- 
 thing untrue ? But if not, why not ? Why dis- 
 miss the question of the real on this ground, and 
 not that of the true ? Does not asking the ques- 
 tion, what is the true, suppose or imply that there 
 may be something which is untrue ? But can 
 there be anything untrue to my consciousness, if 
 my consciousness always presents to me relations 
 of things when it presents the true, and relations 
 of things when it presents the untrue ? Not cer- 
 tainly unless there be a test of true and of untrue 
 relations. But if reality consist in relation, how 
 can there be both true and untrue relations in my 
 consciousness? My relation is for the moment 
 just what it is, and nothing more. Am I then 
 to seek another relation which will correct this 
 present relation ? But this other relation is only 
 itself a relation in my consciousness ; and if I 
 have nothing but relation as a test of relation, 
 why should I reasonably prefer the one to the 
 other, or say the one relation is true and the 
 other not ? I am just as much precluded, on the 
 grounds set forth, from asking the question, What 
 
110 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 is the true ? as from asking the question, What is 
 the real ? 
 
 But we are now confronted after all this with a 
 singular admission. Though we cannot ask the 
 question, What is the real ? we can ask the ques- 
 tion, What is the real in particular events ? 
 whether any particular event is really what it 
 seems to be ? whether our belief about it is real ? 
 And we can settle this question. We can get a 
 test of it the test, namely, of unalterableness be- 
 tween sensation and its conditions, and between 
 these conditious and other conditions. But surely 
 if we can determine the real in particular events, 
 as, say, an unchanging relation between the ap- 
 pearance and its conditions, how can it be said 
 that the question, What is the real, is meaningless ? 
 Is this not saying that the real means, or is an 
 unchanging relation between, two terms ? We are 
 told even that this is "the essence of reality." 
 How, then, is it impossible for us even to put the 
 question ? Does the writer actually suppose that 
 in asking what is the real, we are not dealing with 
 it in particular cases, and in its various applica- 
 tions ? or that our answer would be anything but 
 a generalised test in the different classes of cases, 
 or if possible a universal test for all individual 
 instances ? But what of the consistency with his 
 own position ? If the real in a particular case be 
 
REALITY. Ill 
 
 the unalterableness of a given sensation and its 
 conditions, will not the unreal be the mistaken 
 judgment we make about this sensation and its 
 conditions ? Will it not be that we have judged 
 that the thing seems to be so and so, while it is 
 not ? But what becomes of the statement made 
 a little ago, that anything into which relation for 
 consciousness enters is real nay, equally real, 
 that there is no unreal at all ? 
 
 Truth, in Mr Green's view, consists in a feeling 
 being related by us as it is actually related in the 
 order of the world that is, in the Eternal Consci- 
 ousness. He admits that we may and do blunder 
 about the true relations. Even this should be a 
 puzzle for his system, since it is the Eternal Con- 
 sciousness which is manifesting itself in relations 
 through us, and yet there is a possibility nay, 
 an actuality of mistake as to the true import of 
 our knowledge, and the real place of feelings in the 
 one unalterable related order. But the fatal flaw 
 in the Eternal Consciousness as a standard of ob- 
 jectivity, with which we have to compare our con- 
 ceptions of order and connection, is that we do not 
 know it as an independent standard at all. It is 
 only partially revealed in us, as far as our ani- 
 mal organism will permit. Though in us, we are 
 not it, and therefore cannot know it as it is. It is 
 God alone, as Mr Green tells. us, who can know 
 
112 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 God, and therefore know the world. The partial 
 revelation is all we know. All is but a manifes- 
 tation in us of an otherwise hidden Eternal Spirit 
 or order of relations. We know but in part ; we 
 know what is vouchsafed to us ; but we are not 
 in a position to compare our conceptions of the re- 
 lations with the relations as in reality as in the 
 Eternal Consciousness. We are thus left in utter 
 uncertainty as to whether our thoughts do corre- 
 spond with the thought-relations that make up the 
 universe. Truth thus ceases to be capable of be- 
 ing conceived as a harmony between thought and 
 things. We have not, as on the ordinary view, 
 presentations of sense on the one hand and re- 
 presentations or thoughts of these on the other. 
 We have simply a series of thoughts or thought- 
 relations succeeding each other one coming, then 
 passing, and being replaced by another. Past, 
 present, and future would be simply a stream of 
 thoughts. Could we on such a scheme preserve 
 even self-consistency or non-contradictoriness in 
 our thoughts ? There is nothing in the mere 
 sequence of thoughts to keep them consistent with 
 each other. There is no reason why negation 
 should not directly follow affirmation, and the 
 thought which affirmed should be succeeded by 
 the thought which denied the same thing. But as 
 thought-relation of the moment, incapable of being 
 
REALITY. 113 
 
 related to any objective standard, there is not the 
 slightest test of the truth of our thoughts, or 
 power of deciding between the affirmation and 
 the negation of the subject to which they relate. 
 Here we come back pretty well, notwithstanding 
 the absolutist pretensions, to the Homo mensura 
 of Protagoras, and the mere flow of subjective 
 impressions. Truth and certainty have no longer 
 any real meaning in knowledge. 
 
 It is clear, I think, that Mr Green has not 
 analysed the connotation of the real, nor has he 
 properly considered its various applications. To 
 restrict the real to " an unchanging relation be- 
 tween the appearance and its conditions, or an 
 unchanging relation between these and certain 
 other conditions," is simply to put a part for the 
 whole, and to leave out meanings of the real 
 without which such a relation could not even 
 be conceived. In its primary application the 
 reed means something apprehended as existing, in 
 opposition to that which is not so apprehended, 
 or in opposition to the absence of any appearance 
 whatever. In the earliest conceivable form of 
 Perception there is something apprehended not 
 nothing; and we mean by the real at first the 
 appearance, percept, impression, whatever we 
 come to call it, which is known to consciousness, 
 as opposed to the blank or negation of it. Im- 
 H 
 
114 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 pression and no impression, at a given time, 
 cannot be identified. We call the impression 
 real; we speak of the absence of impression as 
 the unreal. We cannot identify these, unless on 
 pain of the total subversion of knowledge and 
 rationality. The impression or percept may be 
 perceived, and its absence may be thought by 
 us, but this does not identify them, or make 
 them both real in any true or equal sense of the 
 term. This is the real for us existence known 
 or apprehended by us, as opposed to what is con- 
 ceived, it may be, but ideal only ; the negation or 
 opposite, but properly unreal. Unless this form 
 of reality is given or apprehended by us, we are 
 powerless to think even of its relations to any- 
 thing whatever, before or after it. So far as 
 this form of reality is conceived, there can hardly 
 be any mistake about it. It exists for conscious- 
 ness it exists while I am conscious of it; and 
 accordingly it is exactly what I am conscious it 
 is what I feel to be, or what I know to be. 
 The sensation I experience can only be the sensa- 
 tion of the moment ; the percept I have can only 
 be the percept of the moment. I affirm it to be, 
 implicitly or explicitly, and it can only be as I 
 affirm it. It exists as in consciousness. I may, 
 no doubt, proceed further, and affirm that it is 
 related to something that went before it, that 
 
REALITY. 115 
 
 it will be related to something that comes after 
 it, that it is related to something which accom- 
 panies ; but here I enter on a new sphere alto- 
 gether. I go beyond my actual consciousness, 
 and judge apart how it stands either to other 
 actual states of consciousness, or to possible 
 states of consciousness, or to conditions of states 
 of consciousness. And here I may very readily 
 go wrong judge wrongly as to its real relations ; 
 but the reality of the sensation, percept, or con- 
 cept, as for me a conscious object, stands un- 
 touched. And I commit a very grave blunder 
 if I confound the truth of the relation which I 
 make or affirm with the reality of the object 
 in my consciousness, or the untruth of the re- 
 lation which I affirm, with the unreality which 
 would be identical with the absence of the object, 
 sensation, or percept from my consciousness. 
 
 There are, besides, other meanings of the term 
 real. It not only means what is, as for conscious- 
 ness now, or now and here ; it means also what 
 is supposed to be, whether it is an actual object 
 of consciousness or not. Unless we suppose 
 what we call the outward world to be simply 
 a series of revelations to the individual or in- 
 dividuals of the race, successively inspired in 
 them in fact, created in each succeeding moment 
 of perception we must suppose some continuity 
 
116 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 in that world and in its related parts. There 
 are not only actual percepts, there are possible 
 percepts for each individual nay, for the whole 
 individuals of mankind, for science is not yet 
 exhausted. And we may, and do, apply the term 
 reality to the possible new knowledge which is 
 thus open to us, or rather to that supposed 
 continuous source of this knowledge. And it 
 matters nothing at present whether we regard 
 this outward world as a material force or as an 
 abiding mind. This we hold to be real, as the 
 continuous source to us of sensations and per- 
 ceptions which we do not create. This is, properly 
 speaking, objective reality objective reality in the 
 proper and characteristic sense of the term. It 
 is reality outside of our consciousness, not for 
 us an actual object of consciousness. And no 
 one has a right to discuss reality, as simply 
 meaning relation or relations among even 
 known objects, without expressly considering it 
 in this its objective, it may be supersensible, 
 aspect. 
 
 There is the distinction actually accepted in 
 philosophy, actually proceeded upon in all our 
 thinking, of the real as existing for our conscious- 
 ness and as we are conscious of it, and the real 
 as having an existence in its own nature some- 
 how for itself. In the widest sense of the term, 
 
REALITY. 117 
 
 real embraces both forms of existence, though the 
 latter, as not actually apprehended in conscious- 
 ness, but only conceived by us, may fairly be 
 regarded from our point of view as ideal. 
 
 Further, there is still a third application of the 
 term real. It applies not only to what is to 
 what is actually realised, but it is used for what 
 may and ought to be. In some departments of 
 knowledge we are able to sketch beforehand to 
 outline what we call the true reality, as opposed 
 to the imperfect or unrealised. We are even able 
 in some cases to say this ought to be, when it 
 is not. It is so in all ethical precepts, and in 
 all laws relating to imaginative construction. 
 We can depict the ideal of moral character, 
 though it does not exist ; and the perfect form in 
 imagination, though we do not find it in fact. 
 This we say is the real, not the imperfect, de- 
 velopment. This is properly the reality of the 
 type ; and here, as the type is not as yet realised, 
 the real coincides with the ideal. 
 
 Eecently certain writers, who may fairly enough 
 be classed as Neo-Kantian, have essayed to meet 
 objections to certain of the points now indicated, 
 while modifying often materially the common 
 positions of Hegel and Green. The two main 
 points referred to are (1) that reality is only 
 
118 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 u for knowledge " ; and (2) the doctrine that the 
 individual is alone real. 
 
 (1.) The former point touches the essence of the 
 whole controversy. What is, is for knowledge 
 is the thesis. But it does not seem to me to be 
 cleared in the discussion, or made more certain. 
 
 When I am told that there is "no outside 
 of consciousness which has really any meaning," 
 and when I am told at the same time that the 
 individual self or consciousness of space and time 
 is not that consciousness which makes experience 
 possible, I confess I am puzzled to know what 
 answer is meant to be given to the question as to 
 the extension of the term reality as to what is 
 meant to be called real and, much more, as to 
 the permanency of the real and its ground. 
 Eeality is obviously held to be more than my 
 experience or that of any individual whatever. 
 It is not allowed to be an element foreign to 
 thought or consciousness on which it may work. 
 It is not properly something existing, in space 
 and time, apart from me, the conscious subject, 
 for this would be to put it "outside of con- 
 sciousness," and outside of consciousness has no 
 meaning. I am not even allowed to postulate an 
 absolute thought or consciousness, in which this 
 reality is to abide. It is neither outside of my 
 consciousness, nor is it inside another conscious- 
 
REALITY. 119 
 
 ness at least, an absolute or supreme conscious- 
 ness. Then what is the explanation of its being 
 more than my conscious impression, as Hume 
 puts it, or the conscious impression of some in- 
 dividual who would necessarily be " outside my 
 consciousness," and therefore meaningless, quite 
 as much as any " foreign element " ? For nothing 
 can be more foreign to me than an other self. 
 This implies absolute exclusion, exclusion in 
 space, time, and conception, in reality and in 
 thought. 
 
 But the refuge seems to be that all reality 
 is " for knowledge " : what is the meaning of this 
 phrase? Is "knowledge" here used as an ab- 
 straction as a simple term or conception ? How 
 can all reality be said to be for this ? The con- 
 ception of knowledge and the fact of knowing 
 are utterly different things. The "knowledge" 
 spoken of must be the act of some subject or per- 
 son. But it is not the act of me, the individual 
 of time and space, for reality is much wider 
 than any knowledge of mine ; and it is as little 
 completed in all the individuals of the race. 
 Then there is on this view of the doctrine no 
 absolute ego or intelligence for whose knowledge 
 anything is. In what sense, then, can complete 
 reality be " for knowledge " ? The answer seems 
 to be given in the statement, " that thought does 
 
120 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 not, as we find it in our experience, exhaust the 
 predicates of the subject or its judgments, or 
 present those contents, in the form of individual 
 existence here and now." l In other words, our 
 thought is capable of indefinite progression, 
 though it never can rise above a relational 
 knowledge, never can actually complete know- 
 ledge. How this should constitute the difference 
 between thought and fact, it is hard to see. Be- 
 cause thought never can complete the knowledge 
 of fact, thought is different from fact. I should 
 have imagined that if thought knows fact, and 
 yet cannot complete its knowledge of it, that 
 thought and fact were already different in the 
 first act of knowledge ; and if so, that the differ- 
 ence cannot depend quite on the circumstance of 
 the inadequacy of thought bound to relations to 
 complete knowledge, and so transcend itself. 
 
 This is advanced to meet the question as to 
 " the nature of the reality which there is in the 
 object of knowledge, over and above ordinary 
 knowledge itself." 2 It seems a somewhat odd 
 solution of the problem. It may amount simply 
 to saying that relational knowledge is capable 
 of endless progress, but how this throws light 
 on " the nature of reality over and above ordi- 
 nary knowledge," is not clear. Nor is there the 
 1 Mind, No. LI I., p. 588. 3 Ibid., p. 587. 
 
REALITY. 121 
 
 slightest connection between the two statements. 
 Or it may be taken as implying that there is 
 reality beyond ordinary knowledge which we, 
 bound as we are in relations, cannot definitely 
 grasp. This seems to be the meaning of sen- 
 tences such as these : " It is this completion 
 of thought beyond thought which remains for 
 ever an Other. Thought can form the idea of 
 an apprehension, something like feeling in its 
 directness, which contains all the features desired 
 by its relational efforts. It can understand that, 
 in order to attain to this goal, it must get beyond 
 relations. Yet it can find in its nature no other 
 way of progress. ... It perceives that this 
 essential side of its nature must somehow be 
 merged, so as to take in the other side. But 
 such a fusion would force it to transcend its 
 present self how in vague generality it does 
 apprehend, but how in detail it cannot under- 
 stand, and it can see the reason why it cannot. 
 This self-transcendence is an Other, but to assert 
 it is not a self-contradiction." x 
 
 This impossibility, then, of definite knowledge 
 on our part this impossibility of actual self- 
 transcendence constitutes "the nature of the 
 reality which there is in the object of knowledge 
 over and above ordinary knowledge itself." It 
 
 1 Mind, No. LIL, p. 583. 
 
122 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 seems to me to amount to little more than saying 
 that if we seek to transcend our ordinary or re- 
 lational knowledge, we shall fail to reach any 
 definite conception, though we have a convic- 
 tion that there is something called an Other, 
 which we do not and never can grasp. How this 
 incapacity on our part throws any light on the 
 nature of reality beyond ordinary knowledge, or 
 anywhere else, is to me an absolute puzzle. I 
 should venture even to think that if we knew a 
 thing only as we do not know it, we should not 
 know it at all. Yet this is cited as the essence 
 of Neo-Kantianism as it now is, and the great and 
 precious legacy which it has received from Hegel- 
 ianism otherwise not of much value. 
 
 But the admission here, that reality must al- 
 ways come to us in relation and relational know- 
 ledge, is an important one. This transcendent 
 Other is known to be that is all. It is for our 
 knowledge. It is an Other to that knowledge. It 
 is the dark shadow of our actual knowledge, which, 
 like the moon with its bright and dark side, is 
 utterly non-infusible. But is this the correct in- 
 ference from the fact of the relativity of know- 
 ledge ? Reality in its widest extent is confessedly 
 beyond us, wider than we ; it is ever appearing 
 in knowledge, but never there completed. Does 
 this not imply that reality, as it appears for our 
 
REALITY. 123 
 
 knowledge, is but a part of what actually is 
 symbol or manifestation it may be; that along 
 with our definite relational knowledge of fact we 
 have a conception of reality, indefinite it may be, 
 but still a conception of existence as transcend- 
 ing our knowledge of details or characters ; and 
 although we may always have to shape our def- 
 inite knowledge in relations to refer it to time, 
 space, and category these are inadequate to the 
 full sphere of being as it actually is at the 
 moment of our knowledge ? Let us admit that 
 reality must always come to us in relation, or as 
 known be " for knowledge," this does not prove 
 that reality only is as it is in relation or "for 
 knowledge." It may be wrong, it is true, that 
 the very being "for knowledge" implies the 
 being not "for knowledge," if by "knowledge" 
 we mean our definite relational knowledge. For 
 this being for knowledge needs a ground ; and if 
 there be no ground outside of our definite acts of 
 knowledge, then these successive acts are simply 
 the spontaneous creations of facts themselves in 
 a word, of the universe and thus we land in 
 simple Egoism. 
 
 (2.) If we run back the reality of the physical 
 world to its furthest point, on what may be called 
 its material as opposed to its formal side, we 
 shall reach the atom. This may be taken as the 
 
124 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 individually real, and the ground of aggregate 
 individual reality in the time and space we know. 
 To this it has been said, by way of criticism, that 
 an atom is " a category " by which we make the 
 world intelligible to ourselves, and that "if the 
 reality of things consists in their being composed 
 of atoms, then it follows that their reality consists 
 in their being thought." 1 
 
 This of course implies the wide proposition, 
 that whatever we think as the constituent of the 
 universe, be it atom, monad, or force of any 
 sort, is real only because we think it, or at least 
 because it is thought by some one ; because, in a 
 word, it is necessarily an object of thought. Thus 
 the thinking a thing or object makes its reality. 
 When we understand how a thing is done, the 
 understanding is the mode of the doing of the 
 thing, and there is no reality in the mode of 
 doing, but only in our thinking the mode of 
 doing. From this it follows, first, that as our 
 thinking the mode is a process now, and there 
 is no reality but in the thinking of the process, 
 the world, in this case, is constituted for the first 
 time along with the thinking, in the thinking, 
 and consequently the constitution of the reality 
 of the universe was not a thing of the past, but 
 of the present nay, is the thought of the thinker 
 
 1 Mind, No. L., April 1888, p. 256 et seq. 
 
REALITY. 125 
 
 who understands it. If this thought be the act 
 of the individual thinker of time and space, then 
 the reality of the constitution of the universe, and 
 with it that of the universe itself, comes and goes 
 with the thought of the individual consciousness. 
 If the " thought " spoken of be an abstraction 
 from the individual altogether, it has either no 
 meaning, or it is the thought of something called 
 an eternal or absolute consciousness, which can- 
 not be shown to have the slightest connection 
 with the world of time and space. Such a theory, 
 therefore, affords no explanation whatever of the 
 past genesis of the universe, or of the permanent 
 continuance of that universe. But the truth is, 
 that the statement of the identity of reality and 
 thought, or known reality, is simply an assump- 
 tion of the whole point at issue, and an illustra- 
 tion of the pervading fallacy of Hegelian method. 
 To the statement that the individual alone is 
 real, it has been objected that we cannot know 
 any individual except in its universal aspect 
 that " the individual is unknown just in so far as 
 we cannot universalise it." The "universal" is 
 not merely a sum of individuals. The individual 
 apart from the universal is as much an abstrac- 
 tion as the universal apart from the individual. 
 The individual is consequently not more real 
 than the universal. 
 
126 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 It is perfectly true that for us there is no con- 
 ception of an individual per se. This we may 
 allow to be an abstraction in fact, worse, it is an 
 impossibility in our thinking. The furthest back 
 we can go in thinking the individual, we have 
 yet to think it in being, as one, as in time, as this 
 not that. Difference and relation necessarily 
 enter into every conception of the ultimate in 
 individuality. This is so. But does it follow 
 from this that the universal feature in the in- 
 dividual in the this or that of experience is 
 equally real with the this or that which we actu- 
 ally perceive or apprehend ? If we conceive an 
 individual simply say, an equilateral triangle 
 the individual image which we frame may fairly 
 enough be regarded as on the same level of re- 
 ality with the universals embodied in it, with 
 three-sidedness and equilateralness ; but is the 
 triangular object which I apprehend as here and 
 now before me in space and time, to be treated 
 exactly as my concept of the ideal triangle is? 
 It is perfectly clear, as seems to me, that to any 
 one not blinded by baseless philosophical assump- 
 tions, there is a whole world of difference in the 
 two cases. It may quite well be that we cannot 
 state specifically the elements of difference, at 
 least fully ; but that a difference there is, and 
 that in this difference lies precisely the nature 
 
REALITY. 127 
 
 of reality, there can, I think, be no question for 
 any one who is faithful to the teaching of 
 experience. The universal which I recognise 
 in the individual is not that which constitutes 
 the individual, for the simple reason that it 
 equally constitutes any other individual of the 
 type, and by this conflicts with the very notion 
 of individuality. So far from its being true that 
 we cannot know the individual except in its 
 universal aspect, it is true that the individual so 
 known or so regarded is no longer individual is 
 simply merged in the generic type. 
 
 This inseparable correlation of the individual 
 and the universal is used in the so-called proof 
 or establishment of the universal self. This is 
 maintained to be, and to be the real in fact, ul- 
 timately the only real self against the view that 
 the individual self of time is the true real, and the 
 universal self a mere abstraction. But if the 
 principle fails in a lower sphere, it fails here 
 above all. The fact of the individuality of the 
 self of time and consciousness in no way implies 
 the reality of a self above time and consciousness, 
 which is supposed to be the " condition " of both. 
 There is in the first place a confusion here be- 
 tween a self a real existing self and self-hood. 
 The individual self of time certainly implies the 
 conception call it a universal of self-hood ; and 
 
128 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 this may be shared in by other individuals in 
 time, real or possible. But this mere self-hood 
 is not a self in the sense of the individual of time 
 and consciousness. And it is most illegitimately 
 set up as a real self, called Eternal or Universal, 
 in correlation with the self of time. There is no 
 such correlate or implicate in the conception of 
 the self of time. There is the element the pos- 
 sibly universal element of self-hood or selfness ; 
 but this has no title to be regarded as a self above 
 time, or as anything but what it is a simple 
 abstraction. 
 
129 
 
 IV. RELATION. 
 
 WE come now to the question of the nature of 
 Kelation. On this mainly depends the answer to 
 the question: Whether the all-inclusive prin- 
 ciple of an Eternal Self-consciousness is needed 
 to constitute the system of things or relations ? 
 
 On the subject of relation generally, I do not 
 find in Mr Green's statement anything like an 
 adequate discrimination between what may be 
 regarded as the two fundamental forms of rela- 
 tion viz., (1) the relation between the knower, 
 consciousness or conscious subject, and the object 
 known; and (2) the relation between or among 
 objects known that is, in respect of each other. 
 The former may be called subjective relativity ; 
 the latter objective. I do not find this essential 
 distinction recognised explicitly by Mr Green, 
 and I find very constantly in his reasoning a 
 confusion of these, the two forms of relation. 
 Indeed he seems to use the phrase " related to 
 i 
 
130 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 consciousness " as synonymous with " knowledge 
 of phenomena," and also with "the correlation 
 of subject and object." But the relations be- 
 tween phenomena considered as matter of know- 
 ledge, and the relation, constant and permanent, 
 between the conscious subject and the object, 
 are not to be lightly assumed as of the same 
 character ; nor are they so in point of fact. 
 Even supposing it were shown that knowledge 
 of a phenomenon necessarily implies the know- 
 ledge of its relation to another phenomenon, 
 that it is given, or found only in, some such 
 relationship, this would not prove that the kind 
 of relationship thus found is of the same nature 
 as the relationship between the conscious knower 
 and the related thing known. The latter re- 
 lationship, while universal, necessary, may be 
 wholly unique in kind. Knowledge, as a general 
 fact, arises when conscious subject and object are 
 together or correlated in time ; but it will not be 
 pretended that the one term the conscious sub- 
 ject is always or necessarily of the same nature 
 as the object with which it is in correlation. It 
 will not be pretended surely that the space-object 
 which we know call it relation or anything you 
 choose is of the same nature as the conscious 
 subject or consciousness which knows it. It will 
 surely not be pretended even that the coloured 
 
RELATION. 131 
 
 surface is of the same nature as the perceiving 
 subject of consciousness. The knower or per- 
 ceiver is certainly different in character from 
 extension, solidity, incompressibility in bodies, 
 from mechanical, chemical, and other forces, 
 which yet it apprehends or knows. If this be so, 
 the relationship of knowledge which arises from 
 the correlation of the subject and object is of 
 quite a different kind from the relationship sub- 
 sisting among those objects themselves as space- 
 objects. It will not be pretended that they are 
 in respect of each other of an essentially different 
 nature. They are distinctly homogeneous ; and 
 accordingly a relation between them as homo- 
 geneous things is a wholly different kind of 
 relation from that of knowledge between the 
 subject knowing and the object known. There 
 does not appear to be any apprehension of 
 this distinction throughout Mr Green's discus- 
 sion ; and the result is, that a conclusion thus 
 depending on the wholly ambiguous premiss of 
 " related to consciousness " is of very little value. 
 If we look only to the sphere of objective re- 
 lationship, we may find things so actually in- 
 terlaced in their details that they cannot be 
 apprehended or known by us out of mutual 
 connection. If we look to the sphere of the 
 subject and object, in its essential relationship, 
 
132 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 we may find no such fixed or necessary connec- 
 tion as that the particulars or particular objects 
 known are unalterably related to it, or even 
 unalterably related to it in any given case. The 
 subject may be wholly free to deal with object 
 or objects, though it is always connected with 
 some object. It may quite well have a place or 
 standing of its own amid all objects, and yet be 
 necessarily related to none ; while in the object- 
 ive sphere the homogeneous phenomena appear 
 to us actually inseparable. So far as the con- 
 scious subject is concerned, these may appear to 
 be inseparable, unalterable at least by it. And 
 yet it the subject itself may remain indepen- 
 dent amid the flow and variety of the details, 
 whose relationship to each other is wholly unlike 
 its own relationship to any. 
 
 By this confusion we illegitimately anticipate 
 conclusions on the vital questions of philosophy. 
 Let us suppose that the objective phenomena are 
 related through the law of physical causality, 
 through the law of the transformation and trans- 
 mutation of energy. This may be considered 
 apart from the question of the necessity or un- 
 alterableness of the relation. Are we at once to 
 assume that the relation of subject and object is 
 so regulated ? that object is simply the energy 
 of the subject transformed into an opposite to 
 
RELATION. 133 
 
 itself ? But if we identify the objective, and, so 
 to speak, subjective relationships, how are we to 
 escape this conclusion ? 
 
 We need hardly pursue this matter into its de- 
 tails. But surely it will be admitted that phaeno- 
 mena in space which, for the most part, demand 
 juxtaposition in order to their being (causally) 
 related, are not to be confounded with even the 
 facts of consciousness, such as volition and its 
 effect. Surely this is a relation of a wholly 
 different nature, either from bodies in space 
 actually placed side by side, and even from 
 bodies which, as in the relation of gravity, act 
 at a distance in space. If the space relation be 
 different even from the volitional relationship, 
 how much more must it differ from the relation 
 of a conscious subject to all the varieties of its 
 known objects ? Yet there does not seem to be in 
 the whole of Mr Green's discussion on this point 
 the slightest acknowledgment of the difference 
 the essential difference in kind between those 
 relationships. " Eelation " is all we hear of it, 
 and it matters not to what it is applied what 
 it denotes ; it is the idea always of relation, and 
 unalterable relation. 
 
 But let us see what precisely is Mr Green's 
 doctrine on the subject of relation. Here we 
 must rely on quotations of the author's exact 
 
134 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 words/ for these are not, as a rule, translatable 
 into ordinary language without transparent con- 
 tradiction. The following are the chief points : 
 
 (1.) The main point in relation is " the unity of 
 the manifold." "Abstract the many relations 
 from the one thing, and there is nothing. They, 
 being many, determine or constitute its definite 
 unity. It is not the case that it first exists in its 
 unity, and then is brought into various relations. 
 Without the relations it would not exist at all." 
 -(P. 31.) 
 
 (2.) " The one relation is a unity of the many 
 things. They in their manifold being make the 
 one relation. If these relations really exist, there 
 is a real unity of the manifold, a real multi- 
 plicity of that which is one. 
 
 (3.) " But a plurality of things cannot of them- 
 selves unite in one relation, nor can a single 
 thing of itself bring itself into a multitude of 
 relations." 
 
 (4.) " The single things are nothing except as 
 determined by relations which are the negation of 
 their singleness, but they do not therefore cease 
 to be single things. Their common being is not 
 something into which their several existences 
 disappeared." 
 
 (5.) " If they did not survive in their singleness, 
 there could be no relation between them, noth- 
 
RELATION. 135 
 
 ing but a blank featureless identity. There must 
 then be something other than the manifold things 
 themselves, which combines them without effacing 
 their severalty." (P. 31.) 
 
 Now, here are two points : 
 
 (1.) The several relations of a thing constitute 
 the unity of the thing even its existence : with- 
 out the relations the thing is nothing would not 
 exist at all. 
 
 (2.) But the several relations negate the single- 
 ness of the thing, and yet the single thing does 
 not cease to be single. The thing still remains 
 single, otherwise there could be no relations. 
 
 These statements are absolutely contradictory, 
 and cannot be held together. If relations consti- 
 tute the existence of a thing if, in a word, the 
 being of the thing and the relations of the thing 
 are convertible, and especially if these relations 
 are several there is an absolute contradiction in 
 holding at the same time as true that the thing is 
 single, or one. Further, we are speaking now 
 only of abstractions called relations, which are 
 impossible alike in thought and fact, apart from 
 a single thing in relation to something else, or 
 single things in a time relation to themselves. 
 
 There is a further contradiction in holding that 
 the relations of a thing constitute its unity. The 
 relations of a thing may reveal its unity ; they do 
 
136 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 not make it to be one. A thing could not have 
 several relations that is, properties unless it 
 be already one, or be supposed to be one, at the 
 moment of showing the various relations. The self 
 or ego is known to be one in time, because at vari- 
 ous successive moments of time it reveals different 
 acts that is, shows its relations to or in those 
 acts ; but our knowing these acts, and the fact of 
 a one self through them, does not make the self 
 one. This only shows us that the self must be 
 supposed to be one, otherwise we could not know 
 it as related successively to different acts. All 
 through there is confusion or assumptive identi- 
 fication of knowing and being. It is the case that 
 we must suppose that the self first exists in its 
 unity, but it is not the case that we know the self 
 as first existing in its unity. We know that this 
 must be, because we know certain definite relations 
 which it manifests in successive times, and we 
 know that it survives each successive change of 
 state or relation. 
 
 The third position is : "A plurality of things 
 cannot of themselves unite in one relation, nor 
 can a single thing of itself bring itself into a 
 multitude of relations." 
 
 " A plurality of things " means, I suppose, two 
 things at least. These cannot of themselves unite 
 in one relation. This, I suppose, is because they 
 
RELATION. 137 
 
 are a plurality are, say, two. Two bodies in a 
 given space cannot gravitate towards each other of 
 themselves. They do gravitate towards each other ; 
 how do I know it is not of themselves ? What put 
 gravity into them, I may not know. But is it not 
 there ? And do not the bodies gravitate of them- 
 selves, so far as I observe, or can know mean- 
 while ? 
 
 The whole is a mere argument from abstractions. 
 " Plurality " must, as a concept, always remain 
 plurality, and "singleness" must always remain 
 " singleness," or unity. But possibly the very 
 things we know are known as related to begin 
 with, and we do not need to abstract either their 
 plurality or their singleness, and contemplate 
 these apart, and then ask ourselves whether the 
 " plurality " or " singleness " can do this or that. 
 Possibly things in relation are what we know, and 
 possibly this knowledge depends on their being 
 already constituted, and what they are. 
 
 Further, relation does not necessarily imply 
 " unity " at all. There is relation where there is 
 difference, as in saying a rock is not organised, 
 two is not four, &c. The unity here is secondary ; 
 it may be the unity of the person judging, or his 
 relation to the object of thought, but the relation 
 of difference in the matter judged is equally real. 
 
 Eelation does not imply " the unity of the 
 
138 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 manifold." It does not imply that the many is 
 one, but simply that there is one amid or in 
 many. It is one thing to say all things like in 
 successive times are one in respect of the point 
 of likeness, and another to say that the like things 
 are one. The like things are not necessarily one 
 because they are like. If they are like only in 
 one particular, they are not one. If they are like 
 in every particular, they are not one absolutely, 
 because they were experienced or perceived in 
 successive times ; and each time constitutes indi- 
 vidual difference. 
 
 And if the relation be of the one or self to the 
 many of its successive states, there is not any 
 more a " unity of the manifold." The self is one 
 and indivisible amid the states : the sum of the 
 states or of the self in each time in the states 
 the states + the self do not make the many 
 states one ; they are diverse, individually differ- 
 ent, as in different times, nay, it may be of 
 wholly different characters, as feeling, desire, 
 volition. 
 
 In the next paragraph, arguing for the need of 
 intelligence to combine the manifold things with- 
 out effacing their severalty, he holds that it is 
 essential that " one [sensation] should not be 
 fused with the other, that the distinct being of 
 each should be maintained." He adds, " On the 
 
RELATION. 139 
 
 other hand, in the relation to which their dis- 
 tinctness is thus necessary, they are at the same 
 time united" (p. 32). This, he thinks, can be 
 done only by " the action of something which is 
 not either of them or both together." This is 
 " the relating act of an intelligence which does 
 not blend with either " (p. 32). 
 
 The distinct being of each is necessary thus to 
 the relation, and yet we have been told that the 
 relation makes, and is, the unity the being of 
 everything. Is not " the distinct being of each," 
 so far as the relation of likeness or difference 
 between the sensations is concerned, thus sup- 
 posed as the ground of the relation ? How can 
 this be both ground of relation and relation 
 itself ? 
 
 But further, how can " a relating act of intelli- 
 gence," which blends with neither, compare and 
 relate distinct things sensations or anything else 
 unless it apprehends the things as distinct to 
 begin with, and then finds the point or points of 
 similarity ? But if it does this, it must know the 
 things as its own objects ; and if objects of know- 
 ledge or intelligence thus to begin with, how 
 can it be, as we are told immediately thereafter, 
 " that sensations, as brought into relation by in- 
 telligence [i.e., relation to each other], become 
 sensible objects or events " ? If sensations are 
 
140 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 already apprehended as objects to the intelligence, 
 how have they to wait for relations between them 
 to make them intelligible ? 
 
 But there is a deeper point. Intelligence, it 
 appears, brings these things into relation sensa- 
 tions, atoms, &c. everything in the (material) uni- 
 verse, at least. " Eelation is the product of our 
 combining intelligence." " Our intelligence is a 
 factor in the real of experience." Is it so ? Is 
 it the intelligence which in our world or cosmos 
 constitutes the real for us ? the real order ? the 
 relations of things ? It brings " things into rela- 
 tion," so makes them to be what they are makes 
 them real for us, in a word. Then have things 
 no relations as given or presented to us, as 
 actually occurring in the course of time, as 
 actually coexisting in space ? Are the time 
 relations, the space relations, simply creations 
 of our intelligence ? What warrant has this 
 intelligence for its action its bringing together, 
 combining, relating ? Does it do its work blindly 
 without apprehended ground in the things, or 
 does it see relations in things, or what corre- 
 sponds to relations, and so constitutes our (known) 
 cosmos ? There is no answer to this question 
 no glimpse of it. It will not do to say there is no 
 order which is not an experienced order, and 
 therefore a conscious order. I should admit no 
 
RELATION. 141 
 
 such assumption. But even if this were so, I 
 wish to know how intelligence can constitute 
 relations between sensations relations of various 
 sorts out of its own spontaneity ? 
 
 Intelligence is a conscious process, it is sup- 
 posed to know what it is doing. When we judge 
 that heat is not cold, or black is not white, or 
 round is not square, why do we make the differ- 
 ence ? When we judge that sensations are suc- 
 cessive in time, that others are simultaneous, 
 that some are coexistent in space, how does in- 
 telligence make the difference ? What is its 
 ground or warrant for procedure in each case ? 
 Why does it make different relations ? On no 
 reasonable ground but on that of a known order, 
 which it does not create, but which informs and 
 illumines it. 
 
 We may fairly ask what relations, and how 
 many in any given case, are needed to make the 
 object of experience real? We have before us, 
 for example, the " feeling " we call water. Water 
 has no doubt various relations to other " feelings." 
 As we realise these, water is real. But whicli of 
 them, and how many ? Are they to be what may 
 be called the essential relations or what ? Is the 
 " feeling " water not real until it is related to its 
 elements, the " feelings " oxygen and hydrogen ? Or 
 is it real when I relate it to its property, the feel- 
 
142 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 ing of washing or cleansing ? or to its property, 
 the feeling of flowing or fluidity ? Or is it real 
 as I think of it as existent, as now and here, 
 as in quantity, quality, degree, and so on ? If 
 the former be the meaning, and water is not real 
 until I relate it or as I relate it to something else 
 beyond it, beyond the momentary perception, 
 then though the present perception gives me an 
 object (of vision), it is not yet real, and I relate 
 what has as yet no reality to something else, and 
 so make it real. I am afraid that if I have no 
 reality in the momentary perception to begin 
 with, I shall never by any process of so relating 
 clothe it in reality at all. And further, if I have 
 to wait for all the actual and possible relations 
 of the percept ere I can clothe it in its full 
 reality, I shall have to wait a long while. 
 
 If by relating the immediate or momentary 
 percept be meant referring it to category, exist- 
 ence, quality, degree, &c., or to time and space, 
 I have simply to say that this relation the par- 
 ticularising of the category depends on the char- 
 acter of the percept, and is only possible in as 
 far as there is a ground of relation in the object 
 itself, constituted for my apprehension. But if 
 there be this ground, the object is already real, 
 has its quality, degree, &c., as the condition of 
 my relating it. Its reality does thus not lie in 
 
RELATION. 143 
 
 the relation or relating, but in the ground of the 
 relation. 
 
 Here is a specimen of reasoning : " Of two 
 objects which form the terms of a relation, one 
 cannot exist as so related without the other, and 
 therefore cannot exist before or after the other. 
 For this reason the objects between which a 
 relation subsists, even a relation of succession, 
 are, just so far as related, not successive " (p. 
 34). In other words, two objects which are suc- 
 cessive are, so far as related to each other, not 
 successive ! But let us hear the explanation : 
 
 " In other words," we are told, " a succession 
 always implies something else than the terms of 
 the succession, and that ' a something else ' which 
 can simultaneously present to itself objects as 
 existing not simultaneously but one before the 
 other." What although the succession does im- 
 ply " something else " than the terms of the suc- 
 cession ? How does this make the terms of the 
 succession not successive not before or after ? 
 Nay, there is even a deeper plunge, for the 
 " something else " is actually brought in to pre- 
 sent the objects to itself as before and after! 
 
 We are not concerned to dispute the position 
 which is so constantly and elaborately asseverated 
 and maintained in this Introduction, that there is 
 a reality in what is the work of the mind, that 
 
144 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 all the work of the mind, or what is attributed to 
 mind, is not mere illusion ; nor even the position 
 that mind or intelligence is a factor in experi- 
 ence. But it is going much further than this 
 to hold, and to hold as the one necessary alter- 
 native, that relation constitutes reality, that rela- 
 tion is necessarily the act of intelligence, our or 
 other, and thus by inference exists only as it is 
 understood, or in an intelligence. 
 
 Yet this seems to be the assumption of the 
 whole matter. " Intelligence, or something analo- 
 gous to it," we are told, is necessary " to account 
 for a relation between material atoms as much 
 as any other" (p. 32). It is hardly necessary 
 to point out that " to account " for a relation may 
 require an act of intelligence; but that it does 
 not follow that the relation, or rather the ground 
 of the relation, can subsist only in an intelli- 
 gence. Yet this is what is implied ; for we are 
 told that "if relations are to be supposed real, 
 otherwise than merely as for us otherwise than 
 in the cosmos of our experience we must recog- 
 nise, as the condition of this reality, the action 
 of some unifying principle analogous to that of 
 our intelligence" (p. 32). Does it follow from 
 this that there can be no relation which is not 
 actually known in or by some intelligence ? Or 
 is this identical with saying that " the derivation 
 
RELATION. 145 
 
 of knowledge from an experience of unalterably 
 related phenomena is its derivation from objects 
 unalterably related in consciousness " ? (p. 34). 
 
 Here the question arises Are there any un- 
 alterably related phenomena in outward or 
 physical experience? Are we entitled to say 
 of the laws of nature, that they represent the 
 relations of unalterably related phenomena ? 
 We know uniformity between sequences. Are 
 we entitled on any ground whatever to speak 
 of them as unalterably related ? Is this not to 
 go beyond actual experience, and to do so with- 
 out even presenting the semblance of a reason ? 
 What is unalterable relation but necessary rela- 
 tion ? "I demur," says Jevons, " to the assump- 
 tion that there is any necessary truth even in 
 such fundamental laws of nature as the inde- 
 structibility of matter, the conservation of energy, 
 or the laws of motion." 
 
 And what of the phenomena of consciousness ? 
 Are these all to be assumed as unalterably related ? 
 Is every volition I form unalterably related to 
 me, the wilier ? Is the word " unalterably " to be 
 applied equally to all physical and to all moral 
 facts ? If so, and if all even in the human con- 
 sciousness be merely " a reproduction of the Eter- 
 nal Spirit or consciousness," what becomes of moral 
 freedom in any conceivable sense ? How can 
 K 
 
146 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 there be freedom, if it is a mere reproduction of 
 processes passing in an Eternal Consciousness 
 which flows partially through me ? What is this 
 but veiling in terms of the Eternal Consciousness 
 a universal fatalism, in which each individual 
 partially participates ? Call the eternal evolution 
 conscious, what does that matter to the neces- 
 sity of it? 
 
 Mr Green's position may truly be summed up 
 in one expression " all is relation ; relation alone 
 is." Kelation is the real for our intelligence ; it 
 is the real for the Divine Intelligence. The 
 terms of relation are not; they have no proper 
 existence for themselves. To this are tacked on 
 various statements to the effect of the distinctness 
 of terms in the relation, and of a relator, human 
 or divine, in the relation; but these have no 
 proper existence for themselves ; their being in 
 the relation is their only being. The subject, 
 human or divine, is spoken of as the relator, but 
 his work is always finished for him ere he is, and 
 he is only in the completed work. Kelator he is 
 not ; related is all that can be claimed for him. 
 Mr Green ignores entirely the ordinary view of 
 relation, rather subverts it, and still tries to keep 
 up distinctions which are only possible on the 
 frank recognition of reality and distinction in the 
 terms of the relationship ; and of independence 
 
RELATION. 147 
 
 in the relator or conscious subject, human or 
 divine. He ought in consistency to give up the 
 advantages of the ordinary doctrine after discard- 
 ing its conditions, and let existence flow on as a 
 mere stream of relations, in which human and 
 Divine reality are alike lost, which has its source, 
 if it ever had one, no man knows where, and 
 which goes no man knows whither. Tlavra pel. 
 
 The contrast between Mr Green's doctrine and 
 the ordinary doctrine is obvious, but he has not 
 vindicated his own position. As has been well said, 
 " All relations supposes two terms which are not 
 the relation itself ; this depends on the former, 
 but the former are independent of it." This is 
 wholly opposed to our author's doctrine. But if 
 he does not admit this, what is the logical result ? 
 Why this that the terms themselves are rela- 
 tions. But if this be so, there is no first or fixed 
 for knowledge, no beginning of knowledge. If 
 every term for us is already a relation, then this 
 relation is already dependent on a prior relation, 
 of which it is impossible for us to have any know- 
 ledge. At every point where we attempt to com- 
 mence in knowledge, the effort is conditioned by 
 an unknown relation, and we may spend our time 
 in the fruitless backward movement of an infinite 
 regress, which, after all our efforts, eludes us as 
 when we began. The truth on this point is : 
 
148 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 There is a relation of knowledge between sub- 
 ject and object, but I do not know how it is, 
 or how it has arisen. It is the first thing for 
 me, and in order to know at all, I find myself 
 in it or supposing it. 
 
 On the other hand, a relation between two 
 things in time, or in time and space, is a relation 
 which I, the knowing subject, apprehend, be it 
 similarity or difference, cause and effect. Two 
 things are in my knowledge, and I apprehend 
 them as related. The things might quite well 
 vary, and so the relation would vary. The re- 
 lation is thus dependent on the accident of the 
 things being at a 'given time and place. The re- 
 lation is thus conditional hypothetical. But 
 the relation between me knowing and an object 
 known, the relation of knowledge itself, is 
 primary, as being the condition under which I 
 know the objective terms and their relation ; and 
 though the object in this relation may change, 
 the other term the subject does not, but re- 
 mains permanent, whereas in any objective re- 
 lation of things each term is variable. The 
 identification of reality and relation is thus be- 
 lied by the fundamental fact of the relation of 
 the subject to object in all our knowledge. The 
 subject is the one and permanent, amid all objects 
 and all its relations to objects ; and in this unity 
 
RELATION. 149 
 
 and permanency there is more than any existing 
 relation or the sum of all relations taken together. 
 What may be called the method, rather the 
 trick I do not say designed in all this kind of 
 reasoning, is to take a term or concept already 
 existing, and to analyse it, to show what is im- 
 plied or supposed to be implied in it; to show 
 that it is related or correlated, and in doing so to 
 treat the term and the different terms which are 
 involved as if they were active, or constituting 
 elements in the general concept. The whole of 
 Mr Green's treatment of relation is an exemplifi- 
 cation of this method. There is no consideration 
 whatever as to how the abstract concept or term 
 came to be at all, or to be within our conscious- 
 ness. It is regarded as a sort of personage, which, 
 when questioned as to its nature and genesis, is 
 seen to deploy into various constituents and rela- 
 tions; and the mere fact of there being such is 
 taken as sufficient to account for its reality as 
 a fact of our consciousness. " Kelation," for ex- 
 ample, is set or taken up, and then we hear of 
 " unity," and " plurality," and the " manifold," 
 what they can do and what they cannot do and 
 how they are to be got together, by something 
 called " a relator," who is to be " above nature " 
 and " out of time." Is not the first question, Has 
 " relation " a concrete exemplification in our con- 
 
150 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 sciousness ? On what fact or facts does this ab- 
 stract term or conception depend ? How have 
 we come to have it or to form it ? Is it verifiable 
 in experience ? In a sound sense, Hume's demand 
 to produce the " impression " to which the " idea " 
 corresponds is applicable in all such cases, to save 
 us either from mere verbalism, or from the as- 
 sumption that in analysing our abstraction we are 
 dealing with the sphere of reality. 
 
 The truth of the matter is, that the concept of 
 Being is wider than the concept of Eelation, and is 
 not exhausted by it. It is not exhausted even by 
 the postulate of an eternal sum of relations called 
 a self-distinguishing consciousness. It is wider 
 even than such a conception ; the being or ground 
 of those relations to be possibly or partially re- 
 vealed to man, is itself more than the sum of the 
 relations. And in this we have already tran- 
 scended the concept of relation. To name the 
 sum of possible relations in the universe, some 
 known and others wholly unknown to us, an 
 eternal self - distinguishing consciousness, is to 
 introduce more than relation into the universe, 
 while relation is declared to be all that is known 
 and all that exists. 
 
 It is admitted even by writers like M. Kenouvier 
 that leiny expresses something more than this or 
 that relation, " that it is applied absolutely to all 
 
RELATION. 151 
 
 relations and to all terms, to all the phenomena 
 which analysis can distinguish, in so far as they 
 appear, exist, posit themselves, come in any man- 
 ner into representation." But what seems to be 
 implied in this concession as to the transcendence 
 of being over knowledge at any given stage, is at 
 once cancelled by the statement that " being has 
 an absolute as well as a relative sense, but the 
 first apart from the second is certainly vain, hence 
 all is relative." l 
 
 The point indicated here is the correlation in 
 our knowledge of such concepts as Kelative and 
 Absolute, Finite and Infinite, Perfect and Imper- 
 fect, Limited and Unlimited, Time and Eternity, 
 Space and Immensity. It seems to be urged that 
 in each case, the second or correlative concept is 
 vain or empty, seeing that it cannot be con- 
 ceived or realised in knowledge apart from the 
 first. It is argued that, as dependent on the first 
 in knowledge, it is nothing in existence, or it is 
 identical with the first. All this mode of reason- 
 ing seems to me to be a mere quibble, a mere play 
 upon words. It might just as fairly be argued 
 that the first term the relative, for example is 
 not the relative but the absolute, and that all is 
 absolute. When I know that there is this or that, 
 I have definite knowledge. This is the relative. 
 
 1 Cf. Ott, L'ldtalisme, p. 105. 
 
152 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 The absolute, or what is not yet known as this or 
 that, is the something over and above this actual 
 knowledge, which as yet I do not definitely know. 
 This absolute may be simply what is as yet inde- 
 terminate or indefinite to me, something in itself 
 quite determinate, but as yet not known by me as 
 such, though it may come to be so known. Can 
 it be said at this stage of my knowledge that the 
 absolute so conceived is nothing, that all is rela- 
 tive in my knowledge, that this unknown is not 
 as truly, if not as much, an object of my know- 
 ledge as the this or the that which I happen actu- 
 ally to know ? Can it be said that being thus 
 absolutely taken, taken out of actual known re- 
 lation, is vain ? Why, then, in this case, we 
 should never know that anything is until we 
 know what it is. But such an absurdity in the 
 face of experimental science ! in the face even of 
 the ordinary principle of causality, which is con- 
 stantly pointing to the indeterminate as the un- 
 known cause, and acting through this by special 
 ignorance as the spur to all scientific research. 
 
 This holds when we take the word absolute for 
 what is out of relation the point at present in 
 question. But if we pursue the matter further, 
 we may come to see that this is but a starting- 
 point for all the higher questions of philosophy, 
 instead of being, as is implied, their foreclosure. 
 
RELATION. 153 
 
 We are face to face with the indeterminate or 
 absolute at every the most advanced stage of 
 knowledge. There is still always the something 
 beyond the actual relation. Is this to be held for 
 ever as a relation, a new relation of the same 
 kind we know, only to be added to actual know- 
 ledge ? Here, then, you get into the all-engulf- 
 ing bog of the infinite regress of relations : rela- 
 tion in relation never-ending relation all is 
 relation. Might we not thus properly say at 
 once, that all but the small speck of science that 
 has somehow emerged is for us chaos ? chaos 
 in respect of origin, cloud in respect of destiny ? 
 There are the ever-grinding wheels of relations, 
 relations that are related to nothing in the past 
 but relations, to nothing in the future but re- 
 lations. This is the universe the world, man, 
 and God. It never had a beginning in an ab- 
 solute being in a constitution of relations 
 seeing there is no absolute; and it will never 
 be gathered up in the absolute, for the same 
 reason. An eternal whirl in the past, an eternal 
 whirl for the future. This is the Universe of 
 Being for us, and absolutely. 
 
 Obviously a relation in knowledge necessarily 
 supposes a plurality of terms, and, what is more, 
 it supposes the terms actually related. A term 
 relative to another term that is, to its correlative 
 
154 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 is not a relative at all, if it be not thought as 
 related to the other or correlative term. A hus- 
 band is not a husband, he may be a man, unless 
 he is thought as related to the correlative wife. 
 Known relation, therefore, is always dependent 
 on an act of thought or conceiving, and relatives 
 do not exist for us unless as actually related and 
 correlated in thought. What, then, is a relation 
 out of thought ? What is "before and after, here 
 and there, when there is no one to think them to- 
 gether? Does not the relation the contrast 
 subsist whether we are there to think it or not, 
 or any other finite ego ? The relation we know 
 at a given time cannot subsist out of our thought ; 
 and similarly of any other individual conscious- 
 ness. But the terms of the relation, as out of the 
 given relation, may subsist, whether we relate 
 them or not whether we constitute them into 
 relatives or not. And I, or indeed every finite 
 ego, may be ignorant of an infinity of possible re- 
 lations or relatives, some of which, however, we 
 may come to know in the course of experience 
 and science, may even be ignorant of many of 
 the other relations of the two terms, whose one 
 special relation I happen to know. For the terms 
 are not relatives until I conceive them to be such ; 
 they are terms, by me as yet unrelated to other 
 terms. The increase of knowledge means an in- 
 
RELATION. 155 
 
 crease of the knowledge of relations. But the 
 ground-possibility of this lies in the terms them- 
 selves, in their properties, in the sphere of defi- 
 nite ordered existence in the cosmos, which I 
 do not constitute, which I only partially and 
 with difficulty grasp. Clearly, reasoning from 
 analogy, it may be said that the cosmos, or 
 order of things, is itself a series of related terms, 
 whether I know them or not. Eelations known 
 by me, or by any finite ego, are not all rela- 
 tions, are not the first of all relations. And 
 further, if we are to think of the cosmos as re- 
 lated with parts, properties, powers mutually 
 connected we ought to think of it as grounded 
 in thought, as ordered by thought, as sustained 
 by thought, with which ours even is in analogy. 
 But beyond this, definite conception fails us, and 
 the substitution of a sum of relations, or universe 
 of relations, for the actual order and ordering of 
 the world, is to darken, not illumine, our thinking 
 on the subject. It is logically to eviscerate the 
 order of the world, or its meaning as an independ- 
 ent constituted system, to evaporate every finite 
 ego in the ungrounded abstraction called relation; 
 and it is, finally, to resolve God Himself into a 
 sum of relations more nebulous even than the 
 star-dust out of which, some think, the planetary 
 system arose. 
 
156 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 A relation, as has been said, is a synthesis ; but 
 it is also an antithesis. Even when the relatives 
 really coincide, they are always mentally con- 
 trasted. This arises from the fact that relation 
 necessarily implies a plurality of terms. The 
 one the non-plural, the not-relative, the absolute 
 is diametrically opposed to the relative. It 
 follows from this that relatives can never be 
 thought as one, or in the unity of a single notion. 1 
 Discrimination, contrast, is the very life-blood of 
 relativity. Hence, just because things are rela- 
 tive, they differ, are not one, are not conceivable 
 as one. It matters not whether the relation be 
 one of resemblance or of difference, one of suc- 
 cession or coexistence one of cause and effect, or 
 of means and end, there is always a plurality of 
 terms conceived as mentally distinct. And hence 
 no argument can be founded on relation or its 
 so-called unity which would imply an identifica- 
 tion of the terms. The just inference is wholly 
 the other way ; and simply because we conceive 
 relation at all, we conceive things in relation as 
 different. This is the very esse of relation. 
 
 This has a very special bearing on the highest 
 relation known to us viz., that of subject and 
 object, or knower and known. Here, whether the 
 
 1 Hamilton's Metaphysics, App., vol. ii. p. 536. 
 
RELATION. 157 
 
 known be regarded as a simple state of the con- 
 scious subject, as the quality of a non-ego in time 
 and space, as another self in time, whether the 
 known be perceived or conceived, there is always 
 a contrast a contrast in the very relating. This, 
 in its ultimate form, is the difference of knowing 
 and being known. It is one thing to know ; it is 
 another to be known. The two are inseparable in 
 thought ; they are relative and correlative. Think 
 the one, we must think the other ; but think the 
 one as the other we cannot. The moment this 
 should take place, the relation itself would disap- 
 pear. There is no relation in absolute identity, 
 no relation certainly of knowledge. The relation 
 of knowledge, accordingly, of subject and object, 
 affords no ground whatever for the conclusion 
 that the terms of the relation are identical iden- 
 tical either in thought or in fact. They are to- 
 gether, and they are contrasted that is the whole 
 matter. 
 
 Finally, in Mr Green's theory the supposition 
 of the eternal self-distinguishing consciousness 
 with its totality of relations, both actual and 
 possible, is evidently intended to afford an ex- 
 planation at once of the distinctness of the world 
 from man, and of its continued existence, apart 
 from finite consciousness. Now, as it seems to 
 
158 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 me, this is to go wholly beyond the sphere of 
 relation, to mistake the whole conception of 
 relation, and its place in knowledge and being. 
 The world of induction and science is revealed 
 to us a world in which there is uniformity of 
 sequence or recurrence between facts or terms. 
 We have a law when we can speak of A being 
 uniformly followed by B, or when we can go 
 further and say A is the cause of B, and wher- 
 ever A occurs it will bring us B. But it ought 
 to be observed that induction is here limited to the 
 relation to the knowledge of it as necessary in 
 sequence, or the knowledge of it as constant con- 
 junction in coexistence. Induction does not say 
 that the antecedent we have met with in the 
 past will be found in the future. We have had 
 experience of the action of the magnet in the 
 past, but we do not by induction infer that there 
 will be always magnets in the world. All that 
 induction entitles us to infer is, that if we find a 
 magnet again, after our experience of the past, it 
 will show attraction for iron. In other words, 
 what we generalise in induction is a relation, a 
 certain uniform, in a sense necessary relation, 
 between antecedent and consequent, in this case 
 the magnet and iron. Induction thus, properly 
 speaking, tells us of the subsistence of uniform 
 relations between things, but it does not guar- 
 
RELATION. 1 59 
 
 antee to us the permanency of the things them- 
 selves, that is, the causes actually existing in 
 the world. In a word, so far as induction goes, 
 the existence, and even the constitution, of things 
 is purely hypothetical. Given the present facts, 
 given the repetition of the present antecedents, 
 and we may be assured of, may firmly believe in, 
 the present or experienced order among them, 
 their orderly recurrence, the permanency of 
 their relations. But this in no wise guarantees 
 to us the continued existence of the things them- 
 selves between which this order or definite re- 
 lationship exists. Eelation thus the whole 
 totality of relations known to science, or even 
 knowable by science does not explain the per- 
 manent or continued existence of a single fact 
 in time or space, of a single cause or term of 
 knowledge. There is no guarantee of anything 
 except the hypothetical uniformity of sequence, 
 or the constant conjunction of coexistence. And 
 what it is impossible for any one conception 
 of relation to do, is equally impossible for the 
 sum of relations to accomplish. Hypostatise the 
 totality of relations in the world, actual and 
 possible, attribute these to a self-consciousness, 
 called eternal or infinite, or anything you choose, 
 you have still only a sum of relations which, 
 from their nature, are purely hypothetical, sup- 
 
160 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 pose terms, do not guarantee the reality of the 
 terms or their continued existence ; and thus you 
 have no ground whatever for supposing or infer- 
 ring the continued existence of the world, whose 
 order, if it exists, is all that is given you in 
 relation. If, therefore, this hypothesis of an 
 eternity of relations existing in a self -distinguish- 
 ing consciousness be all on which to ground the 
 permanency of the world, and help us to rise 
 above individual egoism or psychological ideal- 
 ism, we have no valid ground whatever for such 
 a position. 
 
161 
 
 V. TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION 
 AND NATURE. 
 
 THE whole of this discussion by Mr Green con- 
 nects itself very closely with what is known as 
 the transcendental deduction of Kant, and his 
 view that " understanding makes nature." It is 
 not necessary at present to enter into a thorough 
 analysis of the transcendental deduction, what 
 it postulates as a basis, what it supposes as a 
 method, and other points connected with it. 
 There is, however, one essential point which in 
 the present connection demands notice. It has 
 been objected to the transcendental deduction 
 that it may show all that is in the existence of 
 nature, as we ordinarily understand nature, and 
 of the sciences of nature as we are taught to 
 accept them ; but it cannot show either that 
 such a nature exists, or that our accounts of 
 it are accurate. 1 
 
 1 A. J. Balfour, Philosophic Doubt, pp. 90, 91. 
 L 
 
162 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 The answer made by Professor Watson and 
 others is, " That, as Kant holds ' understanding 
 to make nature ' (in the sense of a single object- 
 ive order of phenomena), to ascertain the forms 
 under which alone an order of nature can be 
 understood is to ascertain laws of nature itself. 
 The question whether such a nature exists be- 
 comes unmeaning (such a nature as the only one 
 that can be an object of knowledge or under- 
 standing must be). If Kant has answered the 
 question, How is knowledge possible ? there can 
 from his point of view be no further question 
 whether such a nature exists as that which is 
 thus known. The functions of understanding 
 through which nature is known are the functions 
 through which, as a nature, it exists." l The dual- 
 ism of nature and intelligence has disappeared. 
 
 The transcendental deduction thus professes 
 to be an analysis of the conditions under which 
 it is possible for us to conceive what is called 
 nature. But the nature here referred to turns 
 out to be not what we ordinarily suppose nature 
 to be something in opposition to intelligence, the 
 one member of a dualism in which intelligence 
 is the other member for "the understanding 
 makes nature." Now this point must be cleared 
 up. Are we to start with the assumption, con- 
 
 1 Cf. Green, Works, vol. iii. p. 151. 
 
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION AND NATUKE. 163 
 
 trary to ordinary belief, that the conceiving 
 nature is nature, or makes nature ? Or that 
 the intelligising nature is nature ? If the under- 
 standing makes nature, nature is simply a process 
 and product of the understanding. It has, can 
 have, no separate or independent reality. There 
 are not two things understanding and nature 
 but one, viz., understanding and its product, 
 nature. Is this an assumption made as to the 
 meaning of nature to begin with ? Or is it the 
 thesis to be proved in the end ? If the former, 
 the whole transcendental deduction of the laws 
 or conditions under which it can be conceived 
 or known has nothing whatever to do with the 
 question regarding the possibility of the know- 
 ledge of nature in the ordinary sense of the term. 
 And we may throw the whole deduction aside as 
 utterly irrelevant. Here you profess, first of all, 
 to show how, and how alone, I can know nature. 
 This is not what you actually do, or carry out. 
 You, under cover of doing this, show, or seek to 
 show, how something called understanding makes 
 nature does not merely know it, but actually 
 creates it. This may be true or false in itself, 
 but it implies a shifting of the real issue a shift- 
 ing from a process of knowing to a process of 
 making or calling into being. The question 
 which the transcendentalist has here to answer 
 
164 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 in the first place is, Is this sense of the term 
 nature to be taken and put in the place of the 
 ordinary dualistic sense ? What right have you, 
 the transcendentalist, to assume the negation of 
 dualism ? Do you not require a philosophy to 
 prove this ? and is this not the proposition which 
 you have got to establish in the end, not to as- 
 sume at the outset ? 
 
 This is no answer at all, therefore, to the objec- 
 tion made that an analysis of the conditions 
 under which we can alone know nature does not 
 imply that nature exists. Let the necessary con- 
 ditions on which what we call understanding 
 makes nature, or conceives nature, be duly set 
 forth. There is no ground here for saying that 
 there is a nature at all, in the dualistic sense of 
 the term ; and all that is really established, sup- 
 posing the analysis successful, is the conditions 
 under which we are obliged to think how under- 
 standing makes or produces something called 
 nature, which is not nature in any real sense of 
 the word. Nay, the setting forth the necessary 
 conditions of a conceivable object called nature 
 is not in any sense the same as setting forth the 
 reality of even that nature, if this be supposed 
 more than simply an object conceived. The con- 
 ditions of a conceived, understood, or intelligible 
 object are simply the conditions of that object as 
 
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION AND NATURE. 165 
 
 conceived or intelligible. And if the object has 
 more or other than a conceptual existence, then 
 these conditions will be realised in it, otherwise 
 it would not be the object spoken of. But this 
 is a purely hypothetical statement. It does not 
 carry us forward to the actual reality of the ob- 
 ject, or allow us to descend one degree from the 
 lofty region of a priori possibility. There is here 
 an ambiguity in the term nature the confusion 
 of the conceptual reality of an object with its 
 actual or present reality, and an assumption of 
 the identity of the laws of knowing with the laws 
 of being. But the truth is, that no philosophy 
 worthy of the name could pursue such a method 
 as this. It is only a shift to which its advocates 
 are driven to meet objections. The transcen- 
 dental method, if it is to do anything at all, must 
 start from what is recognised as reality from 
 an acceptance of ordinary experience, or of 
 some portion of it. It may proceed to say and 
 to show that whatever fact, concept, or principle 
 can be shown to be necessarily implied in that 
 experience or portion of experience selected, must 
 be accepted by those who agree as to the reality 
 of the starting-ground. But this implies a cer- 
 tain common consent to begin with. The tran- 
 scendentalist and I must agree about the reality 
 of the bit of experience selected. There must, 
 
166 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 further, be analysis and definition of the experi- 
 ence through ordinary psychological method ; and 
 if this is to take in all that is given in experience, 
 or supposed to be given, there must be at least 
 a tolerably complete system of psychology laid 
 down in the first place, and agreed upon ; other- 
 wise the basis would be simply in "common-sense" 
 that dreadful bugbear to the lofty deductiou- 
 ist. And, further, there must be the acceptance 
 of certain logical canons, or principles of reason- 
 ing, else we could not tell what is necessarily im- 
 plied, or only contingently associated in our de- 
 duction. Then the transcendental method might 
 be of some use in laying bare the connections and 
 implicates of knowledge ; but this practically sup- 
 poses a prior philosophy, and instead of being, as 
 it is represented, the method of the ground and 
 possibility of all knowledge, it is only an applica- 
 tion of principles to facts already ascertained. 
 
 The question of the relation of Understanding 
 to Sense, in the perceiving or making of the world 
 of nature, is a vital one for Kant and Kantianism. 
 Does it mean, as Dr Hutcheson Stirling supposes, 
 that there is perception first, and categorising or 
 understanding afterwards ? Is there special cog- 
 nition, and then is it that the understanding 
 through its categories makes the special percep- 
 tion or sense - apprehension necessary and uni- 
 
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION AND NATURE. 167 
 
 versal ? Do we find knowledge in individual in- 
 stances, and through reflection find that these are 
 embodied in the instances, concepts, and prin- 
 ciples which we must think and which all must 
 think ? 
 
 This view of Kant's doctrine is not admitted 
 by the Neo-Kantians ; and we find what is alleged 
 to be the correct account of the doctrine sum- 
 marily stated by Professor Watson in the follow- 
 ing words : 
 
 " When Kant is leading up to his own theory, 
 and simply stating the facts he has to explain, or 
 when he is criticising the dogmatic theory of his 
 predecessors, he naturally speaks as if sense im- 
 mediately reveals to us special objects or events. 
 From the philosophical point of view, however, 
 sense he conceives of as the faculty which sup- 
 plies the isolated differences which thought puts 
 together and unites into individual objects or con- 
 nections of objects. The ' manifold of sense ' is, 
 therefore, simply that element in knowledge which 
 supplies the particular differences of known ob- 
 jects ; and these differences, of course, vary with 
 the special aspect of the known world, which at 
 the time is sought to be explained." 
 
 (1.) " Sense supplies the isolated differences 
 which thought puts together and unites into 
 individual objects or connections of objects/' 
 
168 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 Nothing in the form of an object is thus 
 presented to thought, or perceived. " Isolated 
 differences " are " supplied " to thought, and 
 thought puts them together, makes an object 
 or objects of them. 
 
 (2.) " The ' manifold of sense ' is, therefore, 
 simply that element in knowledge which sup- 
 plies the particular differences of known objects, 
 and these differences of course vary with the spe- 
 cial aspect of the known world which at the time 
 is sought to be explained." 
 
 (3.) When, for example, Kant is seeking to 
 show that individuals in space and time are 
 necessarily extensive quanta, the special fact of 
 knowledge to be explained is the apprehension 
 of objects as made up of parts forming individual 
 aggregates. These parts Kant regards as directly 
 perceived or contemplated. The " manifold " may 
 be the parts of a line, the parts of any geometrical 
 figure, or even particular figures, regarded as con- 
 stituents of more complex perceptions ; or, again, 
 it may be the parts of individual objects in space. 
 
 So far, here, the meaning is perfectly clear, and 
 we have at least an intelligible account of what 
 thought has to work upon in constructing objects 
 of space and time. Perception or sense hands 
 over to it parts isolated parts or points, say in a 
 line, as not yet, however, made up into a line. 
 
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION AND NATURE. 169 
 
 These are perceived as " isolated differences," 
 as " a manifold." They are, however, in con- 
 sciousness sense-consciousness ; and what is 
 called thought gathers them together, makes 
 one object of them, in this case, a straight 
 line ; and thus individual objects are consti- 
 tuted. Any realistic philosophy may quite well 
 accept this statement. It is an analysis, quite 
 a possible one, of the mode in which space objects 
 at least are conceived by us. Exception, of course, 
 might and would be taken to the assumption 
 apparently made, that when we have accounted 
 for the conceivability of the object, for the ob- 
 ject as in combined apprehension and conception, 
 we have at the same time explained the genesis 
 of the object as an actual fact or reality. We 
 have explained, in a way, or laid down the uni- 
 versal conditions of its reality as a conceived 
 and conceivable object by us ; but prior ques- 
 tions might certainly be raised as to how the 
 perception of each particular point is itself pos- 
 sible. For if we start from this as necessary to 
 the action of the thought which is to constitute 
 the object, we have not explained our know- 
 ledge of the object from the beginning ; we have 
 but laid down certain conditions under which 
 what is perceived is constituted into what is 
 conceived by us. And there is a further point 
 
170 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 here: if the particular parts or points the 
 "manifold," coextensive or successive be mat- 
 ter of perception, it cannot be true that an 
 object is constituted for the first time by the 
 action of thought which only works upon the 
 perceived data. We cannot deny the name of 
 object to a percept in consciousness: a single 
 percept a point or part facing the conscious 
 subject, is as much an object as the more com- 
 plex object, say line or figure, which is con- 
 structed by thought. 
 
 But we are immediately told that, though all 
 this be so, " the particulars, as due to sense, are, 
 when taken by themselves, mere abstractions ; 
 they are, in fact, not even known as particulars 
 apart from the synthetic activity of imagination 
 as guided by the category of quantity. To have 
 a knowledge of the parts of a line, or the parts 
 of a house, as parts, is to know at the same 
 time the combination of those parts. But the 
 combination of those parts takes place for us 
 only through the act by which we successively 
 determine space to particular parts, and in that 
 determination combine them." 
 
 Now it seems to me that in this we have the 
 confusion of two wholly distinct propositions, 
 and that from this confusion springs the aber- 
 ration manifest in the whole of this mode of 
 
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION AND NATURE. 171 
 
 reasoning. It may be perfectly correct to say 
 that we cannot know the points or particulars 
 of a line, the parts of a house, of a tree, or 
 object in space, as the parts of such line, 
 house, tree, without at the same time knowing 
 the whole of which they are the parts. If we say 
 these are the points or particulars which make 
 up this line or that house, we must know at 
 the same time the combination of which we 
 speak as this line, house, or tree. But this pro- 
 position is not relevant to infer that we did not 
 know those points or particulars in isolation 
 simply as points or particulars. We may not 
 know these at first as parts of a whole cannot 
 so know them, indeed, until we combine them; 
 but we may know each as a point or part or 
 particular percept, each as a present impres- 
 sion in time as opposed to no impression; each 
 as a particular point in space, as opposed to a 
 vague or blank space ; and, consequently, we do 
 know them as particulars quite definitely and 
 intelligently. And hence it is a mistake to 
 suppose that there is any negation of the doc- 
 trine that particulars are apprehended or known 
 as particulars, in the proposition that to know 
 particulars as the particulars of a definitely 
 combined whole, say line or tree, we must first, 
 or at the same time, at least, have combined 
 
172 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 the whole. And yet on this confusion of totally 
 different propositions the whole of this argument 
 is based. It is nothing better than a piece of in- 
 tellectual jugglery unconsciously done. 
 
 But there is more than this to be said, and it 
 is relevant to the following inference : " Thus, in 
 the knowledge of the line, there are implied both 
 the particular element of sense and the universal 
 element of thought. We do not first perceive the 
 line and then apply the category, but in perceiving 
 the line we apply the category. And as in all 
 recognition of objects in space we necessarily 
 determine the particulars of sense through the 
 schema, as silently guided by the category, we 
 may express this condition of our knowledge 
 in the proposition, 'All percepts are extensive 
 quanta! " l Here the confusion I have spoken 
 of reaches its climax and application. Of course 
 we do not first perceive the line and then apply 
 the category of quantity, and in perceiving the 
 line we apply the category. But this refers 
 to the secondary process, or the result of the 
 combination of particulars already given and 
 known. The moment we get the length of com- 
 bination, we get the length of quantity and in 
 perceiving what we have combined, we may be 
 said " to apply " the category, in a word, to re- 
 
 1 Green, Works, vol. iii. p. 156. 
 
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION AND NATURE. 173 
 
 cognise quantity, even necessarily. It may even 
 be said that in combining the particulars in con- 
 structing the line we are doing it under the 
 guidance of the category. But this does not im- 
 ply that there are no known particulars until, or 
 only as, the combination is effected. It only im- 
 plies that there are no particulars of that special 
 combination or synthesis. 
 
 Nay, more, it would be absolutely impossible 
 for thought, or anything worthy of the name of 
 thought, to act to construct anything if it were 
 true that, in the case of a specific combination, 
 there is no percept in consciousness no particular 
 of sense known ere the thought has worked and 
 combined, or as the thought is working and com- 
 bining. There could be no conscious combination 
 of that which as yet did not exist in perception or 
 consciousness, there could be no reasonable com- 
 bination. Thought could not take cognisance of 
 the differences in things, could not know what 
 category to apply in any given case, unless the 
 perception furnished the difference to it. The 
 " manifold of sense " is said to supply differences 
 isolated differences. If these are not by them- 
 selves, as opposed to the new character which they 
 assume as parts of the combined whole, known 
 to consciousness known to thought itself 
 thought is paralysed, and never could determine 
 
174 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 the slightest difference in things. It may be it 
 is necessary that in knowing objects sense and 
 thought the particular and the universal should 
 be combined ; but they are not, and could not be 
 combined, hi the way spoken of. This supposed 
 mode of constituting objects results either in the 
 impossibility of knowledge or in unreason. 
 
 But it may be said that in recognising known 
 particulars prior to particulars in a specific or 
 individual combination, and particulars thus as 
 relative to that combination, you do not escape 
 the application of category to knowledge and the 
 constitution of knowledge through category. The 
 particular impression of a given time, or time and 
 space, implies difference and distinction by the 
 percipient, implies even the percipient himself, 
 and relation to himself relation to other im- 
 pressions in time and space, and so on. All this 
 is true, and essentially true. But in admitting 
 this, nay, inculcating it, there is no divorce im- 
 plied between perception and thought, as in the 
 interpretation of the Kantian view with which we 
 have been dealing. At the very minimum of 
 perception there is category inexplicit category, 
 it may be universal concepts and laws of know- 
 ledge waiting to be evolved in the clear light of 
 reflection. But perception has its place as much 
 as thought. It has to guide thought, as much as 
 
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION AND NATURE. 175 
 
 thought has to regulate perception. To say that 
 thought "constitutes" the object, or that "un- 
 derstanding makes nature," is unwarrantable, or 
 it is a confusion of reality as perceived with 
 reality as conceived. There can be no more 
 violent or worse abstraction than that which 
 severs the thought of the understood from the 
 perceived, and even arrogates to the former the 
 power of constituting the latter. 
 
 " We successively determine space to particular 
 parts." " We " cannot do anything of the sort, 
 meaning by that the personified abstraction called 
 " thought." " The determination of space to par- 
 ticular parts " is not possible by us, unless as the 
 particular parts are already related to space, and 
 apprehended by us as so related. Every indi- 
 vidual thinker might determine as he chose, if 
 there were not a fixed objective to which his 
 perception and thought are subject. And this 
 opens up the whole question as to the ultimate 
 ground of our knowledge, as well as of the ulti- 
 mate nature of being. 
 
 Therefore, nothing exists out of this relation 
 in other words, there is no absolute existence, 
 there is even no existence unless a conscious ex- 
 istence. The whole ground alleged on which the 
 conclusion is based is the inability of the indi- 
 vidual self to conceive an object that is, reality 
 
176 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 in any but such a relation. But am I thus 
 entitled, on the ground of simple inconceivability 
 on my part, to say that related, phenomenal, or 
 known reality is all that is ? In the former case, 
 the power or conceivability of the individual was 
 made the ground of the constitution of existence ; 
 in the latter case, the limit of conceivability is 
 made the ground of the restriction of being to the 
 sphere of the phenomenal. The known, or know- 
 able under relation, is identified with the whole 
 sphere of reality. In both cases the link of proof 
 is wanting, and the inference equally unwarrant- 
 able. Nay, it might be shown that, but for a 
 background of the phenomenal, which is definitely 
 imperceptible, but yet is thinkable and necessarily 
 thought, the phenomenal itself is contradictory 
 not reality at all. And though this position is 
 laid down as leading to the necessity of a uni- 
 versal self or intelligence which transcends the 
 individual, time, and finite reality, and yet makes 
 them to be, it can be shown to be utterly sub- 
 versive in the conclusion. If relational or related 
 reality be all reality, a self which is everything 
 which is absolutely universal in being is utterly 
 inconsistent with any such conception of the real. 
 It must not be assumed, as is done, that " the thing 
 in itself " is necessarily divorced from the phen- 
 omenal an absolute entity, incapable of receiving 
 
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION AND NATURE. 177 
 
 a predicate ; but as ground of the phenomenal, or 
 known, it does not properly come under the des- 
 ignation of being related to a subject, much less 
 the individual conscious subject, as the phaenom- 
 enal itself is. It may have to be " conceived " in 
 quite a different way from the time or presented 
 object, and may have a reality not in any way 
 dependent on me or my modes of conceiving, or 
 those of any finite subject whatever. 
 
 M 
 
178 
 
 VI. EXTEENAL PERCEPTION. 
 
 MR GREEN has hitherto worked up to his ultimate 
 conclusion through the two lines of an analysis 
 of Reality and Relation. He now, in the second 
 chapter of the Prolegomena, seeks to reach the 
 same conclusion through an analysis of what we 
 know as External Perception. Reality and rela- 
 tion may be regarded somewhat as abstractions ; 
 but an analysis of Perception certainly refers to 
 something definite, and we may suppose that if 
 the reality of the Eternal Consciousness can be 
 connected with this, it must have some claim to 
 our belief in the concrete. Let us see. 
 
 It seems, according to Mr Green, that popularly, 
 and even philosophically, there exists a confusion 
 " between the perceived object and the exciting 
 cause of sensation " (p. 63). He accordingly pro- 
 ceeds to clear up this point as a fundamental 
 one; for the mistake leads to "an extension of 
 the perceived object from the consciousness in 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 179 
 
 which perception consists, and to the view of it 
 as an external something to which perception is 
 related as an occurrence to its cause " (p. 64). 
 "The stimulant of the sensation involved in a 
 perception is never the object perceived in a 
 perception." In a perception of colour, for 
 example, the vibration of ether which stimulates 
 the optic nerve is not the object perceived. 
 This may not even be known to exist; it may 
 be only the scientific man who includes this in 
 the knowledge of the perception. But whether 
 known or not to exist, the vibration of ether, 
 as the exciting cause of the sensation of colour, 
 does not enter into the object perceived into the 
 content of the perception in the same sense in 
 which it acts as the exciting cause of the sensa- 
 tion. So far, this is perfectly true, and is the 
 commonplace of the psychology of vision. It 
 would have been, however, more accurately ex- 
 pressed if it had been said that the object of 
 perception, in this case the colour, is an object 
 known in quite a different way from that process 
 by which we know infer the vibration of ether ; 
 that the one is an intuition, and the other an in- 
 ference of induction ; and further, that to mix two 
 such different forms of knowledge in one complex 
 act called perception, is to lead simply to con- 
 fusion and ambiguity, and to retard the progress 
 
180 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 of sound analysis. Instead of saying that this 
 inferential knowledge does not enter into the 
 content of the perception, " in the same sense in 
 which it acts as the exciting cause of the sensa- 
 tion," it would have been more correct to say 
 that it in no way enters into the content of the 
 perception, though it may accompany the intui- 
 tive act as a gathered knowledge. Hence there 
 cannot be anything but censure for a statement 
 like this : " Strictly speaking, it is not a vibratory 
 ether, but the fact consisting in the relation be- 
 tween this and the optic nerve this fact as 
 existing for consciousness that enters into or 
 determines the perceived object, as the scientific 
 man perceives it " (p. 65). In no case whatever, 
 of the scientific man or other, does this " relation " 
 " enter into the perceived object "; it is not known 
 to consciousness in the act of perception ; the 
 sensation of colour is complete without it ; it is 
 not an object of perception, or part of it; it is 
 a subsequent knowledge acquired by scientific 
 method. All this comes of a loose use of words, 
 based on imperfect psychological analysis. But 
 there is more than this. It is wrong, according 
 to Mr Green, " to suppose that this object or con- 
 tent is external to the percipient consciousness, 
 as the stimulant matter is to the sentient organ- 
 ism " (p. 64). " The sentient organism to which 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 181 
 
 the vibratory ether may be considered external 
 is not consciousness, either as exercised in per- 
 ception or in any other way " (ibid.) The per- 
 ceived object, however described, is wholly within 
 consciousness ; or rather, " the opposition of with- 
 out and within has no sort of application to it. 
 A within implies a without, and we are not en- 
 titled to say that anything is without or outside 
 consciousness ; for externality, being a relation 
 which, like any other relation, exists only in the 
 medium of consciousness, only between certain 
 objects as they are for consciousness, cannot be a 
 relation between consciousness and anything else. 
 An affection of the sentient organism by matter 
 external to it is the condition of our experiencing 
 the sort of consciousness called perception ; a re- 
 lation of externality between objects is often part 
 of that which is perceived ; but in no case is there 
 such a relation, any more than a relation of before 
 and after, between the object perceived and the 
 consciousness of it, or between constituents of 
 that consciousness." (P. 65.) 
 
 Now what does this really mean ? Is it co- 
 herent ? Why, is it not rather absolutely con- 
 tradictory ? 
 
 Let us take the total object of perception as 
 the scientific man perceives it, without disput- 
 ing meanwhile about the mixing up of intuition 
 
182 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 and inference. There is (1) the sensation of 
 colour ; (2) the affection of the optic nerve ; (3) 
 the cause of this in the undulatory ether; (4) 
 the known relation of this to sensation as effect. 
 The undulatory ether is external to the optic nerve 
 as part of the sentient organism. The ether is 
 not consciousness ; the sentient organ is not con- 
 sciousness ; these are external, therefore, to con- 
 sciousness : yet the moment they become related 
 as external to each other in consciousness as 
 known to be what they are they are no longer 
 external to consciousness, for they are thus 
 related as external, and all relation is in con- 
 sciousness ! In other words, things that are ex- 
 ternal to consciousness, that exist and act, and 
 yet are not a part of consciousness, the moment 
 they are known to be external, cease to be 
 external ! How can we consistently speak of 
 undulatory ether " external to the sentient organ- 
 ism," of " an affection of the sentient organism 
 by matter external to it as the condition of 
 experiencing the sort of consciousness called 
 perception/' if our whole knowledge in percep- 
 tion be that " of the relation between this 
 [undulation] and the optic nerve," if this be 
 wholly within consciousness, and at the same 
 time nothing " which is known or related can be 
 outside consciousness " ? Ether, undulation, sen- 
 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 183 
 
 tient organism, cannot be intelligibly regarded by 
 us as not consciousness, yet existing and acting, 
 and at the same time as, the moment they are 
 known or related in knowledge, becoming parts 
 of consciousness or within consciousness, and 
 then only existing for us. The two statements 
 are absolutely contradictory ; and further, as con- 
 ditions of perception, they are external to con- 
 sciousness, but as they are not known in this 
 externality, but only as "within consciousness," 
 the conditions of perception are never known as 
 they are, but only as something else constituents 
 of consciousness. The conditions of the con- 
 scious perception precede all before the percep- 
 tion : these are external ; but as known, they are 
 parts constituents of the conscious perception ; 
 these are internal ; they are thus both preceding 
 conditions and constituent parts. If there be no 
 within and without in our consciousness of things 
 as they are, there is neither within nor without at 
 all the distinction must transcend knowledge. 
 And to talk of things being within consciousness 
 when they cannot be distinguished from those 
 without, is a simple break with intelligibility. If 
 "the external stimulant" of sensation, which is 
 the occasion of perception, be known, it must be 
 known in an act of knowledge which transcends 
 consciousness itself, for there is no without and 
 
184 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 within in consciousness. Nothing is external to 
 it ; and perception is in consciousness is a sort 
 of consciousness. Knowledge, therefore, is wider 
 than consciousness, or we may know and not be 
 conscious of our knowing. This is simply an 
 attempt to ride on the opposite theories of Keal- 
 ism and Idealism at the same time. 
 
 It is at this point in Mr Green's theory of Per- 
 ception that the lack of grasp of the facts as they 
 actually are, and of their bearing on his doctrine, 
 becomes conspicuously apparent. The simple 
 analysis of the process in perception, including 
 especially the organic, is sufficient to expose the 
 whole of the fallacy of the so-called oneness of 
 being with consciousness, or of there being nothing 
 " outside of consciousness." To maintain the 
 oneness or unity of being with consciousness, 
 as it is phrased, in face of even the simple 
 facts of sensation and perception, seems extra- 
 ordinary. The relation of the ordinary physical 
 or organic conditions to sensation and percep- 
 tion seems never to have been grasped by a cer- 
 tain class of writers. There are certain organic 
 movements which precede or accompany ordinary 
 sensation and perception. These are well known 
 in vision, in hearing, in touch. The extra-organic 
 or purely outward movement in space, undulatory 
 and vibratory, takes place ; the terminal organ 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 185 
 
 viz., the retinal expanse is thereupon affected; 
 then the nerve or nerves which communicate with 
 the brain ; then the brain centre. We have there- 
 upon the sensation viz., light or colour. But all 
 those changes of movements, from undulation in 
 space to brain centre, are, as such, wholly unknown 
 to us at the moment of sensation. Of them we 
 really know nothing ; they lie wholly beyond the 
 consciousness of the moment. Scientific observa- 
 tion and induction on our part come subsequently, 
 acting probably on organisms not our own, to 
 note and generalise them. It cannot be main- 
 tained that these are not outside the consciousness 
 of the sensation nay, outside the consciousness 
 in succession of every sensation. Will it be main- 
 tained that they have no reality, no true exist- 
 ence, because they are outside consciousness 
 that of myself, that of any individual percipient ? 
 Why, they are as real as the sensation itself, 
 though they are not within the consciousness at 
 the moment. They have a definite individual 
 momentary existence, and then pass away never 
 in their proper individual existence to be recalled. 
 They are a part at the same time of the real 
 world, of that world of experience which I only 
 partially grasp in my consciousness, but which is 
 all the same whether I grasp it or not. I come 
 afterwards to know them, to think of them, to 
 
186 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 infer them. But will it be maintained that now 
 only at this later stage they come into being, 
 because I conceive them or think them through 
 my consciousness ? This supposition is simply 
 ludicrous in itself. Besides, how can I identify 
 the past being of those movements a being gone 
 never to be again with my ideal conception of 
 their being long after this first actual being has 
 disappeared ? This argument might be extended 
 with reference to all being all individual being 
 in space and time which depends for its concep- 
 tual realisation either on the image of memory 
 that is, referring to the past, or on the image of 
 imagination, referring to the future and possible. 
 Oneness with consciousness the unity of con- 
 sciousness in this sense no more exhausts or is 
 convertible with reality than the being of the one 
 moment can be rendered adequate to the being of 
 every moment. 1 
 
 Mr Green then proceeds to develop his theory 
 of Perception. According to him, the constituents 
 of any perceived object " can exist only for con- 
 sciousness, and the consciousness for which they 
 thus exist cannot be merely a series of phenomena 
 or a succession of states " (p. 65). He adopts, in 
 a way, the account of perception as a synthesis, 
 
 1 On this latter point see Mr Shand in Mind, April 1888, 
 p. 231. 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 187 
 
 and this synthesis is, in his view, one of feelings, 
 but not " of feelings as caused by the action of 
 external irritants on the nervous system, but of 
 known and remembered facts that such feelings 
 have occurred under certain conditions and rela- 
 tions " (p. 66). The former synthesis may be pre- 
 supposed in perception, but it is the latter which 
 constitutes it. He continues: "No feeling as 
 such, or as merely felt, enters into the perceived 
 object, not even the present sensation, which is 
 admitted to be a necessary condition of percep- 
 tion. It is not the sensation, but the fact pre- 
 sented by the self -distinguishing subject to itself, 
 that such a sensation is here and now occurring, 
 occurring under certain relations to other expe- 
 rience, it is this that is the nucleus on which the 
 recalled experience gathers, suggesting other pos- 
 sibilities of sensation." (P. 67.) 
 
 Let us see how this analysis applies to the 
 facts in any given case. I have a consciousness of 
 colour as spread out before me in space, and at a 
 given moment or in a series of moments. This 
 consciousness I may call sensation or perception. 
 The colour, as seen by me, is the sensation. It is 
 felt ; but " as merely felt," it does not enter into 
 the perceived object that is, in plain language, 
 as I suppose, it is felt but it is not perceived. 
 Perception does not arise until I, the self-distin- 
 
188 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 guishing subject, " have presented to myself the 
 fact that such a sensation is here and now occur- 
 ring, occurring under certain relations to other 
 experience." If ever there was an impossible 
 distinction attempted, this is one. What is im- 
 plied in the sensation being felt? What is im- 
 plied in there being a sensation at all ? Why, 
 surely a consciousness of it. Can we name any- 
 thing a sensation which is not a conscious sensa- 
 tion or conscious state ? The affirmative here 
 seems to me not only not to be possible, but to 
 contradict the very meaning of the term sensation, 
 as appropriately used in the history of philosophy. 
 But if a sensation as felt is an object of conscious- 
 ness or in consciousness, what becomes of this 
 so-called distinction between sensation and per- 
 ception ? What becomes of such a theory of 
 perception at all ? If the sensation, in order 
 to be at all, must be in consciousness, then 
 there is a consciousness or apprehension, explicit 
 or implicit, of the sensation as now, or as now and 
 here. The now and here imply certainly distinc- 
 tion and relation. They imply the specified pres- 
 ence of the sensation in the continuous movement 
 of our experience, its distinction from, and rela- 
 tion to, other portions of that experience. There 
 is further involved the presence of a self-distin- 
 guishing conscious subject, as that through which 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 189 
 
 this sensation and all our other experience is pos- 
 sible. All this the self -distinguishing subject 
 comes fully to know and realise, through certain 
 processes of reflection. It is not by any means 
 a happy form of expression to say that the self- 
 distinguishing consciousness "presents" these 
 facts to itself. It comes to a knowledge of them 
 as facts, no doubt ; but if there be any presentation 
 in the matter, there is as much receptivity on the 
 part of the self-distinguishing consciousness as 
 presentation by it to itself. But if all this know- 
 ledge be involved in the simple consciousness of 
 the sensation in the sensation as felt what 
 does the perception add to it ? Perception in 
 this case would merely be a term, and a singularly 
 inappropriate one, for the gradual evolution by 
 reflection of what is involved in the simple act of 
 sensation say, the sensation of colour or sound. 
 According to the point of view and character of 
 the individual self - distinguishing consciousness, 
 there would be more or fewer of those distinctions 
 and relations apprehended, the fact of the sen- 
 sation being or being felt would be the rudimen- 
 tary one in an objective point of view ; its rela- 
 tion to what went before it or to what came after 
 it would be further readily noted'; and in a 
 highly reflective person, the self - distinguishing 
 subject would probably stand outjft rjoliof^^But 
 
190 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 to call this concentrating and gradually evolving 
 reflection perception is about as bad an applica- 
 tion of a word as can well be conceived. 
 
 But let us take the other alternative. Let us 
 suppose that the sensation as felt is not in con- 
 sciousness, and that we have thus to wait until 
 the self-distinguishing consciousness, or subject, 
 presents the fact of the sensation to itself. Now 
 it may be conceded that there are sensations so 
 slight in our ordinary everyday experience that 
 we hardly, if at all, notice them. They come and 
 go, especially in the case of mental absorption, 
 when the mind is otherwise occupied, say, in 
 study or thought, without special regard, and 
 there is little or no memory of them. But these 
 may be thrown out of account, as never amount- 
 ing to real knowledge the normal degree of 
 knowledge which constitutes recognition. At- 
 tention specially arrested and concentrated on 
 one of those sensations would doubtless render it 
 known and emphatic. Such cases do not come 
 within the scope of the present theory. The sen- 
 sation in question is supposed to be felt merely ; 
 but apparently it is not as yet in consciousness, 
 or we do not consciously distinguish it as an 
 actual fact in our experience, we do not present 
 it to ourselves as such. But if it be not in con- 
 sciousness at all, how comes the self-distinguishing 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 191 
 
 subject to deal with it, to think of it, to regard 
 it as occurring now and here ? How can the self 
 think of it as anything whatever, not to say as 
 this and not that ? The self-distinguishing con- 
 sciousness must be supposed to be a reasonable 
 being; and such a being certainly would not 
 present to itself as a fact the present occurrence 
 of a sensation which is not in consciousness at all ; 
 nor would such a being say that there is knowledge 
 or perception of this sensation as opposed to that 
 of red, say, as opposed to yellow, or of an odour 
 as opposed to a sound unless there were in the 
 actual fact of consciousness a known ground of 
 difference. Contradiction, essential contradic- 
 tion, runs through the whole of this analysis. 
 
 I am said to present to myself the sensation, 
 say, of pain or pleasure as a fact, and upon this 
 presentation it only then becomes a fact in 
 other words, I recognise it as a painful or pleas- 
 urable sensation. Is this presentation or recog- 
 nition of the pain or pleasure as a fact in my 
 experience really the pain or pleasure which I 
 feel ? It seems to me to be nothing of the sort, 
 but a wholly secondary or reflex act, dealing with 
 what is already felt, with what is already actually 
 matter of consciousness or experience. That this 
 presentation or recognition is different from the 
 pain or pleasure of the moment is shown by this, 
 
192 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 that although the pain or pleasure has passed, I can 
 still present it to myself in idea as a pain or pleas- 
 ure experienced. And, consequently, there is on 
 such a theory no difference whatever between the 
 actual consciousness of the pain or pleasure and 
 the recognition of it even subsequently as a fact 
 of pain or pleasure in my experience. In truth, 
 Hume's idea, or copy of the original pain or pleas- 
 ure, may be regarded as much a thing of the 
 same kind as the original sensation, if this theory 
 of presentation be held valid. 
 
 There seems to be a very serious gap in this 
 doctrine of External Perception, as stated by Mr 
 Green. To put it in intelligible language, we 
 may be said to begin in perception with present- 
 ing to ourselves, that is, recognising, being aware 
 of a fact in the way of " feeling," or a feeling as 
 a fact. But this " feeling " seems to be connected 
 by Green with certain organic conditions at first 
 beyond consciousness. In the natural history of 
 the " feeling," the unconscious organic impression 
 is first. But apparently this organic impression, 
 and the feeling following it, of which we take 
 cognisance, or become conscious as occurring in 
 time, or in time and space depend ultimately, 
 in some way or other, on an Eternal Self-dis- 
 tinguishing consciousness, which is the one side 
 of the multiplicity of relations or things in the 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 193 
 
 world. Clearly, then, the " feeling " is passively 
 determined in us; the "feeling" is the product 
 or result of the action of the Eternal Conscious- 
 ness. This looks very like Berkeleyanism. As 
 with Berkeley, the percept is ideal, in the sense 
 of being a psychological or psychical fact. We do 
 not find from Mr Green whether he regards " feel- 
 ing" as a state of the finite consciousness, or as in it, 
 passing through it. The latter is more consonant 
 with the general drift of his doctrine, and if this 
 be his view, it is simply that of Berkeley's 
 " idea." Then we have also the other point that 
 the " feeling " or " idea " or psychical fact is de- 
 termined in us and for us by the Eternal Con- 
 sciousness. This may fairly be taken as analo- 
 gous to the Divine Mind or Spirit of Berkeley. 
 Now if this be so, we are entitled to ask, is this 
 " feeling " or " idea " which our mind is deter- 
 mined to present to itself, the result of the imme- 
 diate action or inspiration of the supreme self- 
 consciousness working directly on our finite con- 
 sciousness ? Or is it an " idea " or " feeling " 
 which exists in this Divine Mind alone, and 
 which we are permitted to contemplate ? If the 
 former, how can it be held that there is " no 
 double consciousness " in the universe ; that in- 
 finite and finite consciousness are one ? If the 
 latter, how can it be said that the finite conscious 
 
 N 
 
194 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 
 subject ever had an " idea " or " eeling " deter- 
 mined in it at all ? And how can it, being thus 
 virtually one with the Divine, ever be imperfect, 
 or short of the divine knowledge ? Then, fur- 
 ther, we are left entirely in the dark as to whether 
 these " feelings " are inspired in every successive 
 moment of our consciousness, whether the pro- 
 ducing power acts fitfully or constantly, whether 
 the action on every organism is precisely the 
 same; for although we are told of the unalter- 
 ableness of the eternal consciousness, we, being 
 but imperfectly filled by it, do not know this or 
 anything of it except in so far as it acts upon us. 
 We are just about as far from a solution of the 
 problems of the world at the close as at the out- 
 set of such a theory. 
 
 There is even the origination of a fresh diffi- 
 culty. To place the percipient face to face with 
 the action of the divine or eternal; to place it 
 under the immediate causal action of the divine 
 or supreme the real one cause of all is to 
 sweep away the whole sphere of secondary or 
 intermediate causes, to make perception and 
 percept, that is, phenomenon in the outward or 
 real world, the series of psychical phenomena we 
 name such, in all its course and extent, the im- 
 mediate, even necessary, result of divine power. 
 Whatever sensible anomaly or contradiction, 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 195 
 
 whatever sensible experience of pleasure or pain, 
 whatever sequence of physical evil or suffering 
 all this comes directly from the divine is the 
 divine hand at work, if we may speak of the 
 eternal consciousness as an agency at all, and so 
 put into it a predicate which renders it even 
 possible to deal with the course of experience 
 passing on in time. The hypothesis of the 
 eternal consciousness, as held by Mr Green, 
 explains nothing, but adds to the difficulties 
 of the situation. 
 
 In fact, it is impossible to classify a scheme of 
 this sort, which says yes or no to precisely the 
 same proposition, which is permeated by contra- 
 dictions, and remains only as a thin glimmering 
 mist, in which neither the world, man, nor God is 
 recognisable. 
 
 Yet the purport of the whole is plain. It is 
 an attempt to minimise in fact, annihilate the 
 objective or presented side of Perception to the 
 illegitimate aggrandisement of the subjective side. 
 We are expected, on such a basis as this, to infer 
 that the subject alone, or self -distinguishing con- 
 sciousness, presents us with the external world 
 out of itself ; weaves it, in fact, as a web out of its 
 own consciousness. Psychologically, such a doc- 
 trine may only be false, and thus comparatively 
 innocuous ; but, ethically and theologically, it 
 
196 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 has, as we shall see, somewhat serious and vital 
 consequences. 
 
 This purpose, indeed, is very soon expressly 
 avowed. We have already been told " that the 
 constituents of a perceived object exist only for 
 consciousness " (p. 65). Now we are taught that 
 " the particular things we perceive this flower, 
 this apple, this dog in the only sense in which 
 they are objects to us, or are perceived at all, 
 have their being only for, and result from, the 
 action of a self - distinguishing consciousness " 
 (p. 68). 
 
 This is explicit enough. Things " have their 
 being only for," and " result from the action of a 
 self-distinguishing consciousness." We need not 
 at present consider that the self-distinguishing 
 consciousness turns out to be one common to all 
 individuals of the race, and not merely the con- 
 sciousness of this or that supposably varying 
 individual. It is still a " consciousness " from 
 whose action all particular things in the world re- 
 sult, and they exist only for it. So far as we have 
 hitherto gone, the alleged proof of this conclu- 
 sion seems rather to point to the impossibility 
 the negation, in fact of sense-knowledge or per- 
 ception at all ; a process of knowing which is 
 essentially self -contradictory is of no value as 
 proof of any conclusion. And if what has been 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 197 
 
 said on this point in the criticism already made 
 be correct, there is little need for going further 
 in examination of a conclusion so based. But let 
 us look at it a little specially; and first, of the 
 terms in which it is couched. 
 
 (1.) Particular things "in the only sense in 
 which they are objects to us, or are perceived at 
 all, have their being only for a self-distinguishing 
 consciousness." How alone can we assert such a 
 proposition as this ? How are we entitled to say 
 that the object in perception, in each and all 
 of the senses, not only taste, smell, sound, and 
 colour, but extension, with all its implicates, and 
 resisting force, exist only as they are the (known) 
 objects of "a self -distinguishing consciousness" 
 or conscious subject; that which distinguishes 
 what it apprehends or knows from itself, and so 
 recognises it ? How do we come to think of " a " 
 self -distinguishing subject or consciousness at all ? 
 Only through the consciousness each man has of 
 himself as a self -distinguishing subject of know- 
 ledge. Until or unless we have this, we cannot 
 speak with meaning of a self-distinguishing sub- 
 ject. This is a thing wholly in the air, an utterly 
 unwarranted abstraction, nay, nothing for any 
 one whatever, until or unless as he realises him- 
 self as a self-distinguishing power. But what is 
 the result of this ? Why, this ; that we are start- 
 
198 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 ing from the individual of consciousness ; we have 
 analysed what he does, we may suppose, in the 
 act of sensible apprehension, in his relation to 
 the quality merely of a not-self. By what step, I 
 ask, does any one proceed from this individual 
 analysis to the universal assertion here made 
 about " a" self -distinguishing consciousness, or self- 
 conscious subject ? Is the analysis of what takes 
 place in my consciousness necessarily identical 
 with what takes place in all consciousness what- 
 ever ? Is my consciousness and its mode to be 
 set up straightway without further proof as the 
 essential -type of all consciousness whatever ? 
 Are we to have a self-distinguishing conscious- 
 ness set up as the universal measure of being, 
 as the type even of all knowledge, merely be- 
 cause I, a self-consciousness, happen to know 
 under certain definable limits ? This may be a 
 right or a wrong conclusion ; it is one, however, 
 which Mr Green, and others who follow him, have 
 not attempted to prove have, in fact, illegiti- 
 mately identified with a simple supposed analysis 
 of the individual self -consciousness. 
 
 The vicious method of philosophising repre- 
 sented by Mr Green and his followers cannot be 
 more emphasised than just at this point. The 
 analysis, or supposed analysis, of what takes 
 place in my individual consciousness is forth- 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 199 
 
 with, and without the slightest attempt at ad- 
 ducing a reason, attributed to a distinguishing 
 self-consciousness that is, to all or every self- 
 consciousness ; and further, this abstraction so il- 
 legitimately clothed is set up as the type of all 
 self -consciousness, and the condition, even the 
 measure, of all existence. The whole question 
 is precisely the value and import of individual 
 experience or consciousness, and the man who 
 ignores this misses the primary question of 
 philosophy. 
 
 It comes, then, to this, that at the least we can- 
 not attribute to -the action of a self-distinguish- 
 ing consciousness more than fairly follows from 
 the action of that self-distinguishing conscious- 
 ness which we know, and which, in the first 
 instance, at least, we call ourselves or self. Now 
 the question arises: Are we entitled, on the 
 ground of the action of our self-distinguishing 
 consciousness, to say that perceived objects have 
 their being only for, and result from, the action of 
 a self-distinguishing consciousness ? 
 
 I am conscious of a resisting force, which I 
 distinguish quite from myself, in the sphere of 
 space in which I make an effort to move. This 
 force is opposed to me in every way, to my 
 will, to my muscular effort, to all my power. 
 It is beyond me in space, in opposition to my 
 
200 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 personality. It is as distinctly something not 
 belonging to me as anything that can be con- 
 ceived. I experience its resistance, its existence, 
 at a particular time and place. Does this force 
 exist only for my consciousness, and is it the result 
 of my self-distinguishing consciousness ? Sup- 
 pose my fruitless effort withdrawn, does the 
 force which opposed me cease to be ? Does it 
 cease to be again capable of opposing me the 
 moment I renew my effort ? If not, how can it 
 be said to exist only for my consciousness, or to 
 be the result of my self-distinguishing conscious- 
 ness ? Is there not here a gross and palpable 
 confusion of perceiving and being, that is, of 
 knowing and being, while not a word of proof of 
 the identity of these is adduced ? 
 
 Supposing, in a word, that we do perceive an 
 object only as we are a self -distinguishing con- 
 sciousness, does it follow necessarily that the 
 object has no possible existence apart from its 
 existence as perceived by us ? We distinguish our- 
 selves from the object or percept. Does this at 
 all imply anything about the reality of the object 
 beyond this, that in the act of knowledge the 
 thing is distinct from ourselves ? is a not-self ? 
 Are we entitled on this ground to say that its 
 whole reality is identical with its perceived 
 reality ? That it may not subsist apart from the 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 201 
 
 time of our perception, either as it is or in some 
 form capable again of appearing to us as an 
 object, even an object similar to what we now 
 perceive ? Nay, is not rather the self-distin- 
 guishing a suggestion of the possibilities of exist- 
 ence out of the moment of actual perception? 
 And if we are not entitled absolutely to identify 
 perceiving and "being in the case of our own self- 
 distinguishing consciousness, how are we war- 
 ranted in doing it in the case of a or any or every 
 self-distinguishing consciousness ? Here the in- 
 ference, and it is a crucial point, wholly breaks 
 down. 
 
 The position taken up by another distinguished 
 writer l on this point seems to me to be substan- 
 tially the same as that of Mr Green, though the 
 latter does not admit the identity. He even 
 criticises it as a subjective method, or an appeal 
 to " thought as a subjective process," and holds 
 that " an unwarrantable inference is drawn from 
 the power of conceiving to the reality of that 
 which is conceived." 2 He seeks to correct or 
 supplement it by the statement of what may be 
 taken as his own method in these words : " To 
 assume, because all reality requires thought to 
 conceive it, that therefore thought is the condi- 
 
 1 Principal Caird, in Introduction to Philosophy of Religion. 
 
 2 Works, vol. iii. pp. 143, 144. 
 
202 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 tion of its existence, is unwarrantable. But it is 
 another matter if, when we come to examine the 
 constituents of that which we account real the 
 determinations of things we find that they all 
 imply some synthetic action which we only know 
 as exercised by our own spirit." l And this is, 
 that all things have their being in relations. I 
 think Mr Green's objections to the " subjective 
 process " thoroughly sound ; but I fail to see 
 that they do not in substance apply to his own 
 method, which professes to look at the deter- 
 minations of things, and to infer "a thinking 
 consciousness " to account for the union of the 
 relations, because " we know no other medium." 
 What is this but to found on the power of con- 
 ceiving ? As the method to which Mr Green 
 refers is, as seems to me, unsound, and the source 
 of erroneous inference, it comes in here for rele- 
 vant notice. The passage quoted for comment by 
 Mr Green is certainly a typical one, embodying 
 as it does the main argument of the book. Part 
 of it is as follows : 
 
 "To constitute the existence of the outward 
 world, or of the lowest term of reality we ascribe 
 to it say in ' atoms/ or ' molecules,' or ' centres 
 of force ' you must think them or conceive them 
 as existing for thought ; you must needs presup- 
 1 Works, vol. iii. p. 145. 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 203 
 
 pose a consciousness for which, and in which, all 
 objective existence is. To go beyond or attempt 
 to conceive of an existence which is prior to or 
 outside of thought, ' a thing in itself,' of which 
 thought is only the mirror, is self-contradictory, 
 inasmuch as that thing in itself is only conceiv- 
 able by, and exists only for, thought. We must 
 think it before we can ascribe to it even an exist- 
 ence outside of thought." l 
 
 We have here the statement that we cannot 
 conceive an object say, atom without suppos- 
 ing a consciousness or conscious subject for whose 
 thought or for whom it exists. This is ap- 
 parently identified with the statement that the 
 object atom or element does not or cannot exist 
 before or outside of a consciousness or conscious 
 subject ; that it can only exist for thought, or if 
 conceived. To this it may be said, it is true 
 that I or we cannot conceive an object without 
 implying that I conceive the object, and without 
 implying that the object exists as an object of 
 conception. An object, if conceived, is an object 
 of conception, or for thought. But is this the 
 same as saying that if an object say atom be not 
 conceived, it can have no existence whatever ? or 
 does the latter proposition follow from the former ? 
 Is this first statement the same as saying that 
 
 1 Philosophy of Religion, p. 156. See also p. 236. 
 
204 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 the object conceived has no other kind of exist- 
 ence, never had any other kind of existence, than 
 that it now has viz., a thought or conceived 
 existence ? Does it necessarily rise into being 
 with my knowledge of it ? and if not, what warrant 
 have I for saying that it cannot be unless as in 
 some consciousness ? The existence here spoken 
 of is the existence of the object as conceived. It 
 is a wholly subjective reality, and obviously I 
 cannot have a thought or conception of an object 
 which does not exist in my thought or concep- 
 tion. This is true of me and of every thinker. 
 But is this the same as saying, or does it in any 
 way follow from this, that the object of my con- 
 ception only so exists, or has no other existence 
 than in this subjective relation to me or some 
 thinker ? Because the object conceived or 
 thought necessarily exists as an object conceived 
 or thought, am I entitled to say that " there is no 
 existence which is prior to or outside of thought" ? 
 When we think or conceive on object say atom 
 or molecule we no doubt in a sense may be said 
 " to constitute the existence of the object," but 
 we do not necessarily constitute " the only exist- 
 ence " of the object. To state the latter proposition 
 on the ground of the former is simply a piece of 
 as yet unwarrantable dogmatism. Even in ex- 
 ternal perception, where we have apprehension 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 205 
 
 and conception of an object say force in resist- 
 ance to our locomotive effort the object is " con- 
 stituted " for us as an object of knowledge by our 
 apprehension of it ; but are we entitled straight- 
 way to say that the whole or sole reality of the 
 object lies in its being apprehended by us, or 
 in its conceived and certainly passing reality ? 
 When we say an object " is only conceivable by 
 thought," is this the same as saying an object 
 " exists only for thought " ? To me it seems there 
 is an obvious confusion of two distinct proposi- 
 tions; and if the latter is supposed to be an 
 inference from the former, it is an illegitimate 
 inference. 
 
 But, further, the argument is self -contradic- 
 tory. An atom or molecule cannot exist before 
 thought, that is, before a self-conscious subject 
 which conceives it, or apart from such a subject, 
 because it is only conceivable by thought. At 
 the same time, we are told that the reality of the 
 world does not depend on our conceiving it ; this 
 reality subsists whether we perceive it or not, 
 existed before we were born, and % will exist when 
 we are no more. It follows, therefore, that the 
 reality we perceive or conceive, as the world, has 
 an existence outside of our thought or conscious- 
 ness. Its existence, at least, does not consist in 
 its being related to us. And we are told we can 
 
206 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 conceive this. " The world, and all that is therein, 
 we can conceive to be as real, though we, and 
 myriads such as we, no longer existed to perceive 
 and know it." l How, in the face of this, can it 
 be maintained that we cannot conceive being or 
 reality outside of consciousness? We can con- 
 ceive being or reality at least outside of our con- 
 sciousness nay, of every individual conscious- 
 ness like ourselves. "Where, then, is the guarantee 
 of the alleged inability on our part to conceive 
 reality outside of consciousness in general? If 
 we can so conceive it in our own individual con- 
 sciousness, what becomes of the ground of proof 
 that a consciousness is necessary to its existence 
 in the universe ? The whole ground of this pro- 
 position is abandoned, our inability to conceive 
 in a particular way given up, and the general or 
 universal assertion of the need for a conceiving 
 consciousness to constitute reality remains only 
 gratuitously made. 
 
 The way, accordingly, in which the supposed 
 contradiction is here reached, is by setting as 
 contradictories two propositions, the one of which 
 is not the negative of the other. The one pro- 
 position is, No object is conceivable unless by a 
 conceiver or thinker; the other is, No thing 
 exists unless as the object of conception by a 
 
 1 Philosophy of Religion, p. 157. 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 207 
 
 couceiver or thinker. But the former proposition 
 does not imply the latter, either immediately or 
 mediately, and the latter proposition does not 
 negate the former, and therefore cannot be set 
 up as its contradictory. I say, not immediately, 
 for the terms are not identical, and they require 
 to be proved to be so. Not mediately, or by 
 proof, for the ground of proof would be that no 
 object, unless as conceived by some thinker or a 
 consciousness, exists. But that is the very pro- 
 position in dispute, and the whole reasoning is a 
 mere petitio principii. 
 
 I may notice here in passing what, without dis- 
 respect, may be called the " stick argument," first 
 introduced, if I mistake not, by Professor Terrier. 
 It is one of the two main fallacies which vitiate 
 his Metaphysics of Knowing and Being. It has 
 been frequently repeated, as obviously triumphant. 
 It amounts to this : You cannot conceive one 
 end of a stick without conceiving the other, 
 you cannot conceive the circumference of a circle 
 without conceiving the centre, you cannot con- 
 ceive an object without a subject. You can dis- 
 tinguish these from each other, but you cannot 
 actually isolate them. Therefore, you cannot 
 conceive the one end, the circumference, the 
 object as existing without the other end, the 
 centre, the subject. Therefore, further, the latter 
 
208 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 end, circumference, object does not exist 
 without the former. It is curious to find that 
 any one who reflects upon or analyses terms 
 should find any cogency of proof in such an argu- 
 ment as this. All of these are in truth simply 
 identical or tautological propositions mere hy- 
 potheses of definition or abstraction; and the 
 drawing out of what is implied in the subject of 
 each in the form of an explicit predicate adds 
 nothing whatever to our knowledge, far less 
 guarantees any real connection in existence. We 
 simply do not contradict ourselves, or say any- 
 thing inconsistent with the subject of the pro- 
 position, say only what is implied in what we 
 lay down or conceive. 
 
 The so-called argument is really this: Every 
 object implies a subject, because it would not be 
 an object as defined and abstracted by us without 
 a subject ; as every effect implies a cause, because 
 it would not be an effect as defined and abstracted 
 by us without a cause. Every end of a stick im- 
 plies another end, because it would not be that 
 which we call a stick without two ends. This is 
 simply a piece of weak tautological verbalism. 
 The true question in reference to object lies back 
 in the concrete, and is as to whether every 
 thing known to us has but a known reality or 
 a reality during the moment of cognition. The 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 209 
 
 negative of this question is confessedly assumed 
 as the conclusion of the piece of tautological ver- 
 balism. What would Hume have said to the 
 argument, that because every effect implies a 
 cause, every change implies a cause ? 
 
 The truth is, that the formula "subject and 
 object " is an abstraction ; it represents what is 
 common to all acts of knowing to perception, 
 memory, imagination, conception alike, but it 
 tells me nothing of the question as to the distinct- 
 ness or continuity of the thing known, in the 
 moment of cognition, and after it has passed. It 
 says nothing of the nature of the object ; whether 
 the thing known by me is distinct from me 
 as a reality, whether this may be object to 
 another knower, whether it may subsist and be 
 again to me the object I knew before. The 
 abstract formula object implies subject says 
 nothing of the nature of the thing I call object, 
 nothing of the variety of the objects of know- 
 ledge. It may be percept that is, quality of a 
 non-ego, image as in memory, concept as in 
 thought, state of consciousness as in feeling, 
 all this is left out, slurred over, in the abstract 
 formula, subject and object, and falls to be 
 decided on the grounds of the concrete fact, not 
 on that of the arbitrarily abstracted formula, of 
 what may be common, while no account is taken 
 
 
210 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 of difference. In fact, it amounts practically to 
 this I cannot know without knowing something. 
 What that something is, whether it is distinct 
 from me, whether it is continuous in being with 
 the moment of knowing, what are its relations 
 to existence, even to other minds, this formula 
 that if there be (known) object there must be a 
 (knowing) subject leaves wholly out of account. 
 Further, it may be noted that to talk of 
 " thought " as the prim of things, because in 
 order to know a thing we need to think it, is 
 really a most inaccurate form of speech. No 
 thought can be said to be prior to its object 
 these are contemporaneous. Even if taken as an 
 abstraction, they are still in one and the same 
 indivisible act at once. And the thought has no 
 more right to be taken as prior than the object 
 of it. The act of thinking the thought and its 
 object are together, be it in time or in thought. 
 And because an object conceived supposes a 
 thought or act of thought, this implies no more 
 the priority of the thought than the priority of 
 the object, without which the thought cannot be. 
 If we are to talk of priority at all in this case, 
 it should not be of the thought which is an act, 
 and never existent without an object, but of the 
 thinker and his power, which admits of stimu- 
 lation by the object, of that which passes into 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 211 
 
 the definite form of the object. This view about 
 thought being the prius of things is evidently 
 supposed to be Hegelian. It is really not so. 
 Hegel would not properly look upon thought as 
 the prius of things ; he regarded thought in this 
 case, category as the thing, and the evolution of 
 categories as the evolution of the universe. 
 
 We are told that there cannot be an object 
 outside of consciousness, because we must think 
 it before we can ascribe to it an existence outside 
 of consciousness. Why, this statement is belied 
 in every step taken by science, almost in every 
 step taken by ordinary inquiry. Every cause 
 we do not know of a given effect, every substance 
 in which a phenomenon may inhere, is as yet an 
 existence outside of consciousness. A cause we 
 suppose; the particular cause we do not know. 
 How, then, is the existence of the special cause 
 negated by our ignorance of it, or dependent on 
 our knowledge of it ? Will it be maintained that 
 there is nothing more or other in the particular 
 cause than there is in the category of causality, 
 and that the knowledge of the latter is identical 
 with the knowledge of the features of each in- 
 dividual cause ? This would only be another 
 proof of the absolute divorce of the Hegelian con- 
 ception of things from fact and experience, and the 
 utter uselessness of it in the real course of life. 
 
212 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 But is our conception, with its limits, to be 
 taken as the test absolutely of all reality and 
 all possibility of the real? May what is 
 actually conceived, what is definite, not be 
 transcended at any given time ? "We can try to 
 conceive cause upon cause, all back through 
 time : we know what this means, but we know 
 that we can never accomplish an actual concep- 
 tion of cause upon cause in endless regress. The 
 conception is impossible in thought so long as 
 we are subject to time conditions. But simply 
 because we have no actual or realised concep- 
 tion of an infinite regress, is this necessarily 
 an impossibility ? It is so in point of fact, if we 
 are to set up the actually conceived or conceiv- 
 able as the standard of reality. 
 
 Then we have another allegation of a similar 
 character, as the basis of the philosophy incul- 
 cated. It is given in these words, "All that 
 I think, all objective existence, is relative to 
 thought in this sense, that no object can be con- 
 ceived as existing except in relation to a think- 
 ing subject." l What of this, we may ask ? On 
 whose thought is this conceivability laid ? What 
 is " in relation to a thinking subject " ? Would 
 such a premiss in any case warrant the inference 
 that nothing exists unless in relation to a think- 
 
 1 Philosophy of Religion, p. 157. 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 213 
 
 ing subject ? This is apparently the conclusion. 
 I or we cannot conceive an object unless as so 
 related to myself, or to some other conscious sub- 
 ject. The same proof of the same conclusion has 
 been attempted in other words. In fact, it is the 
 stock-in-trade argument of all modern idealists, 
 whether of -the individualistic or absolute type. 
 Thus it is said by another writer of a dif- 
 ferent school: "We affirm that there is an ex- 
 istence out of consciousness which we can only 
 know in so far as it is in consciousness. In other 
 words, we affirm an independent existence, whilst 
 by this affirmation we give it the lie." This 
 amounts to the assumption that if we know, 
 what we know only exists in or as a part of 
 the conscious act of knowing, or it becomes 
 consciousness. An existence cannot be separate 
 from knowing, if it be once known. There 
 is nothing in experience nothing in any law 
 of intelligence to justify this assumption. An 
 existence may be " in the consciousness," in the 
 sense of being known by us, and yet have 
 a proper independent existence apart from our 
 knowing. It does not necessarily become a part 
 of our consciousness, or our consciousness in 
 any form. It does not necessarily sink to the 
 level of the passing existence of the conscious act 
 all experience belies this. It is while we know 
 
214 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 it and as we know it ; it may be while we do not 
 know it, either exactly as we know it, or in a 
 potential form capable of again appearing in 
 knowledge. To say that a thing " is in conscious- 
 ness " is merely to say that we know it ; and to 
 dogmatise as to its non-existence when we do not 
 know it, is to put a meaning amounting to a peti- 
 tio principii into the phrase "in consciousness." 
 In fact, the statement, instead of proving a contra- 
 diction, is the very suicide of knowledge itself. 
 
 But it may be said, as it is otherwise put, that 
 the expression, an unrelated object, is meaningless 
 for us, and cannot, therefore, be or exist; that 
 into which we cannot put meaning cannot be. 
 If we take this proposition in its universality, it 
 would simply consign to the limbo of the non- 
 existent everything not yet discovered by science, 
 and into which as yet we cannot put a meaning. 
 If we take it in a restricted form as to the essen- 
 tial condition of the constitution of any object of 
 knowledge whatever by us, it will imply (1) that 
 the unrelated has no meaning, while the related 
 has an assumption which is obviously untrue. 
 We know the meaning of the unrelated, as well 
 as we know that of the related. Or it will imply 
 (2) that above the relation or relating of objects 
 nothing has a meaning, which is also untrue, 
 seeing that the relator has a meaning, and that 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 215 
 
 even in certain absolute systems the relator is far 
 from being known in his totality. Or it will 
 imply (3) that because, as we can conceive an 
 object only as in relation to us, relation by some 
 intelligent is necessary to the existence of any 
 object, which has been shown to be groundless. 
 Or it will imply (4) that that which has abso- 
 lutely no meaning for us can be spoken of as 
 non-existent; whereas such a (so-called) subject 
 of thought admits of no predicate whatever, 
 whether existence or non-existence, beyond being 
 that which is not expressible in a term or syn- 
 thesis of terms. And this is at the root of the 
 whole bad reasoning. We do not and cannot put 
 a definite meaning into things until they become 
 objects to our consciousness, and until they exist 
 as objects of conscious thought. Up to that point 
 we may deal with terms, but not objects or sub- 
 jects of predication. But we are not entitled on 
 this ground the negative condition of our know- 
 ledge to say anything about the existence or 
 non-existence of things, of the actuality or possi- 
 bility of the world, to transform the condition of 
 our knowledge into the condition not only of all 
 knowledge, but of all being. 
 
 But there is even a more serious flaw in all 
 this mode of reasoning. There is the confusion 
 of two wholly different sides of knowledge under 
 
216 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 the vague term thought. There is thought in con- 
 ception ; there is thought in perception or intui- 
 tion. Thought as conception of an object, of 
 which alone in this connection we hear, is ideal 
 or notional. The existence of the object con- 
 ceived is for this form of thought wholly no- 
 tional; it is a mode of reality wholly different 
 from that which appears in thought regulating 
 perception. We may quite well admit that the 
 ideal reality of the object of the concept is con- 
 stituted by the conscious subject working under 
 certain conditions. This applies to category, and 
 to generalisations from experience. But the 
 reality of the percept, even as regulated by 
 thought and its laws, is a very different thing, 
 and cannot, in any intelligent view of the matter, 
 be said to be constituted by thought or by the 
 thinking subject, in the same sense in which the 
 object of a concept, be it generalised or universal, 
 is constituted. What a writer has to do is not to 
 assume the identity of those two kinds of know- 
 ledge, and to reason on this assumption. He 
 has got to analyse them, and to show that they 
 agree, so far at least as his purpose is concerned. 
 And that has not been done. The ambiguity of 
 the word " thought," its constant unanalysed 
 employment in recent philosophy, has become 
 a positive weariness and copious fount of evil. 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 217 
 
 "Thought" properly means the abstract con- 
 cept, as opposed to " thing," or it may be to 
 " feeling," " desire," " will." This abstraction has 
 no meaning unless as a concept realised by some 
 thinking subject either I or thou or some in- 
 telligence of analogous constitution. Yet it is 
 constantly used as if it were a person the con- 
 scious subject himself and usually credited 
 with what is called synthetic power. Nay, it 
 is used even assumptively, as if it were the 
 only reality, or all reality. As a concrete ex- 
 pression, " thought " may mean either the think- 
 ing subject, or the act of that subject in any 
 given case, or the product of the act realised 
 in the consciousness of the subject. It is 
 used for conception, or the grasp of the general 
 or universal in knowledge. It is used even for 
 perception or intuition, which is limited to def- 
 inite conditions of time and space. These are 
 opposite, some of them conflicting, senses ; yet in 
 a certain style of philosophical writing the term 
 is employed as if it had but one, and that a strictly 
 definite, meaning. Advantage is taken of this 
 vague connotation, unconsciously probably, as 
 the meaning may suit the case in hand, and so 
 disastrously for the interests of accurate discus- 
 sion and progress in speculation. 
 
 But let us note in passing how, on this form of 
 
218 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 the absolutist theory, we get to the universal self, 
 and what this getting means. 
 
 " In thinking myself, my own individual con- 
 sciousness and an outward world of objects, I, 
 at the same time, tacitly think or presuppose 
 a higher, wider, more comprehensive thought or 
 consciousness, which embraces and is the unity of 
 both. The real presupposition of all knowledge, 
 or the thought which is the prius of all things, 
 is not the individual's consciousness of himself 
 as individual, but a thought or self-consciousness 
 which is beyond all individual selves, which is the 
 unity of all individual selves and their objects, 
 of all thinkers and all objects of thought." l 
 
 Now let us suppose that I, the individual thinker, 
 am conceiving or apprehending something not- 
 ine in my experience ; that I am confronted, as I 
 truly am, with a non-ego, or quality not in the 
 least mine or belonging to me what is the link 
 of proof in the further proposition that I at the 
 same time know a self -consciousness which is 
 beyond my individual self and all individual 
 selves, which is even the unity of all individual 
 selves and their objects of all thinkers and all 
 objects of thought of me and not-me ? I con- 
 fess the link is to me wholly a blank. I do not 
 find a single item of proof of such a new proposi- 
 
 1 Philosophy of Religion, p. 158. 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 219 
 
 tion. I can make my individual self, like other 
 things, an object of my thought. True, but in 
 so doing, am I not still simply my individual self 
 of the present time dealing with my individual 
 self, either as past or present ? What is really 
 the ground for saying that I, the individual self 
 of this moment, standing confronted with some- 
 thing not - me, do in that knowledge know a 
 universal self in which I and the not - me are 
 fused in one ? If this be so, if in this sense I 
 transcend myself, what becomes of me and my 
 knowledge ? Can I any longer be said to know 
 when the difference between me, the self, and 
 the not-self is abolished, and the two are fused 
 in one ? Nay, how can I be said to distinguish 
 the two sides, or know anything of the two sides 
 at all, if every time I know, or think I know, I 
 necessarily recognise that I and the object not-me 
 are really one, and I am fused in a universal in- 
 telligence or self which is both ? Can I keep my 
 individuality and laws of knowledge under differ- 
 ence and plurality while I am merged in one uni- 
 versal self which is both me and what I know ? 
 Nay, can the words knowledge, truth, fact, reality, 
 on this supposition, have the slightest meaning ? 
 
 When I know or apprehend myself and some- 
 thing not myself in the same indivisible act of 
 cognition, I am said to transcend myself, and 
 
220 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 necessarily to know or apprehend a universal 
 self - consciousness or intelligence, in which I 
 and what I know or apprehend are one. Even 
 if I am obliged to transcend myself and the not- 
 me as a condition of my knowing, am I obliged 
 straightway to think a universal self, and to 
 regard it as a real self in the sense in which I 
 know myself to be real ? This is the crucial 
 point of the whole theory as thus put, but a more 
 complete saltus in concludendo could not be given. 
 If I grasp myself and a not-self in one and the 
 same act of cognition, I no doubt have a two- 
 sided conception. But how has my individuality, 
 therefore, disappeared in a universal self, which is 
 both me and the not-self ? The one statement, 
 instead of being implicative of the other, is directly 
 contradictory of it. To try to save the opposition 
 by saying that you can distinguish, while you 
 cannot divide or separate as independent, the one 
 from the other, is merely to cloak the absurdity in 
 a form of verbalism. You cannot distinguish the 
 one from the other. You cannot have an indi- 
 vidual self, much less a series of individual selves, 
 and at the same time one universal self; you 
 cannot have at the same time subject and object, 
 or self and not-self, in any sense, and one univer- 
 sal self which unites all selves, and both subject 
 and object. 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 221 
 
 It may be said it seems to be assumed that 
 the existence of a distinguishing self-conscious- 
 ness is needed for the subsistence of the object 
 perceived for example, force in space. Now 
 I do not say that the mode of the- subsistence of 
 force that passes out of my perception is easily 
 explicable, or explicable at all. Here, possibly, 
 we may be face to face with the mystery the 
 insoluble mystery of being. But I may have 
 evidence from experience inferential proof that 
 the force or object does exist in some way or 
 other, in a sphere transcending my perception. 
 This, in fact, is the lesson of science in its simplest 
 form. It teaches the reality of the insensible 
 constituents of the world in the form of atom, 
 ether, corpuscle, along with and involved in the 
 sensible. These are not and never can become 
 objects of perception, that is, phenomena in 
 the proper sense of the term. But the point 
 at present is, Does the supposition of the 
 reality and subsistence of a self - distinguish- 
 ing consciousness not necessarily me to whom 
 this force continues to be a perceived object, 
 serve in any way to render the subsistence 
 of the force out of and above my individual 
 perception explicable or reasonable ? On this 
 hypothesis, the object perceived the force is 
 handed over, as it were, to a self-distinguishing 
 
222 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 consciousness, who takes care of it until I need it 
 again for my perception. One would like to know 
 the ground or grounds, in the first place, for the 
 assertion of such an ego ; one would like to know 
 further whether this other ego is a counterpart 
 of my ego or self-distinguishing consciousness 
 an older or a younger brother. If he is, I fear 
 he will have the same difficulty as I have in 
 keeping a continuous hold of the perceived ob- 
 ject, and therefore in his turn will need to hand 
 it over to a third ego of similar constitution and 
 capacity, whose powers will be similarly tested, 
 strained, and baffled, so that, in order to keep up 
 the subsisting being of the object, it will be neces- 
 sary to go on, ad infinitum, conjuring up egos or 
 distinguishing self - consciousnesses, and so the 
 chance of the recovery of the object thus handed 
 about will be infinitesimally small. And certainly 
 the force, after passing through all those mystic 
 forms of air, would have but little prospect of 
 being again recognised by me. 
 
 Or if we put this supposition in the form of one 
 universal self -distinguishing consciousness, or 
 ego, framed in our conception after the model of 
 our own individual ego, but stripped of certain 
 limitations, indeed all limitations, set above time, 
 and yet capable of keeping in its perception or 
 consciousness the time-objects of perception, and 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 223 
 
 so holding them in continuous being we shall 
 get probably the theory after which the writer is 
 toiling. This hypothesis will be examined in the 
 sequel on its own merits. At present all that 
 need be said is that, even if it were admitted, it 
 can afford no reasonable or conceivable ground of 
 explanation of the subsistence of that which I 
 perceive in time and space, seeing that this ego, 
 so-called, has not the slightest relation to either. 
 
 But let us look at perception on its objective 
 side. We have constant talk here of the object, 
 the object perceived, the real nature of the object, 
 and so on. We have to ask, (1) Can we, on this 
 theory, have an object in perception at all ? (2) 
 What is the real nature of the object as perceived, 
 according to this doctrine ? Let us take Mr 
 Green's own words : 
 
 " The real nature [of a flower] consists in re- 
 lations of which consciousness is the medium or 
 sustainer. It is not, however, with the real 
 nature of the flower, but with its nature as per- 
 ceived a fragment of the real nature that we 
 are here concerned ; and it is relations of which 
 the percipient consciousness is the sustainer, 
 which exist only through its action, that make 
 the object, as in each case the percipient perceives 
 it, what it is to him." (P. 68.) 
 
 We have here as constituents of the real nature 
 
224 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 of a sensible object (1) conscious relations, or 
 relations of which consciousness is the medium or 
 sustain er ; (2) which exist only through its action ; 
 (3) which make the object what it is to the per- 
 cipient. Where is there any objective residuum 
 or ground whatever ? Where is there anything 
 but conscious relations or relations in conscious- 
 ness ? What is the so-called object perceived 
 but the perceiving itself no longer apprehensive 
 of aught out of itself, but a simple process of re- 
 lating, in a word, a perceiving without a percept 
 a relating without terms to be related ? This 
 impossible action, of consciousness is called the 
 object perceived the real nature of the thing, as 
 perceived. The truth is, there is no longer any 
 object ; there is simply perception without a per- 
 cept, and relation without a ground. Pure ab- 
 stractions in fact, mere words are treated as 
 realities, and the whole real world of experience 
 vanishes under the process. This is the arbitrary, 
 unverified and unverifiable process of the whole 
 of this order of philosophising. It violates every 
 rule of good sense and of accurate philosophical 
 method. 
 
 But a point for the theory here emerges, which 
 receives very scanty consideration. It is some- 
 what lightly stated in the following words : 
 
 " Facts related to those of which the percipient 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 225 
 
 is aware in the object, but not yet known to him, 
 can only be held to belong to the perceived object 
 potentially, or in some anticipatory sense, in so 
 far as upon a certain development of intelligence, 
 in a direction which it does not rest with the will 
 of the individual to follow or no, they will become 
 incorporated with it. But they become so incor- 
 porated with it only through the same continued 
 action of a combining self - consciousness upon 
 data of sensation through which this object, as 
 the percipient already perceives it, has come to 
 be there for him." (Pp. 68, 69.) 
 
 This introduces us to the question of the future 
 of perception or knowledge of its growth and 
 development in experience under conditions of 
 time. Clearly the relations, or, in other words, 
 the properties of any given object of perception 
 which future research may develop, are numerous, 
 indefinite, we may say illimitable. This is espe- 
 cially true if we take the object not only in itself as 
 a percept, but in its possible combinations with 
 other objects. Properties, relations of the per- 
 ceived object, will emerge of which we did not 
 dream at first, and these will become incorpor- 
 ated with our conception of the object. 
 
 And, what is more, our knowledge will not only 
 develop in respect of the possible attributes of the 
 objects in relation to new objects with which it 
 p 
 
226 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 may be in the future connected, but in respect 
 of the actual constitution of the perceived object 
 itself or what, therefore, has taken place in the 
 past, ere the object became a percept for us. Thus 
 the percept water will appear to us in the simplest 
 perception as possessing certain properties or re- 
 lations such as surface, clearness, fluidity ; but 
 we may come also to know, and so to incorporate 
 with our conception of it, its constituents, oxygen 
 and hydrogen, of which the mere perception gave 
 us no idea. 
 
 Now on the theory before us we are told that 
 such facts all the facts not known to the per- 
 cipient at a given time are to be held as belong- 
 ing to the perceived object " only potentially or 
 in some anticipatory sense." And by-and-by a 
 or the self-distinguishing consciousness at work 
 will in its usual fashion incorporate them with 
 the actually perceived object. Now, no doubt, 
 what a thing can do, but has not yet done, may 
 in a good sense be said to belong to it "poten- 
 tially." It is a power of action or development 
 existing in it, as motion is in the pent - up 
 water as the stem and leaf are in the seed 
 as the fruit is in the blossom. But looking even 
 to this, the future development of the percept, 
 is it satisfactory to say that the action or pro- 
 perty as undeveloped belongs to the actual per- 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 227 
 
 cept or object perceived only potentially or in 
 an anticipatory sense, so that growing knowledge 
 or increasing consciousness adds it to the object ? 
 Is not the property, the power, there now in the 
 percept, whether I, the self-distinguishing con- 
 sciousness, as yet know it or not ? Is it correct, 
 is it even rational, to maintain that the new pro- 
 perty as it conies into my knowledge also comes 
 into being? Yet what other interpretation can 
 be put on the statement that these new proper- 
 ties or relations " become incorporated with the 
 object only through the same continued action 
 of a combining self-consciousness upon data of 
 sensation, as at first made the object said to be 
 perceived " ? What is this but to say that grow- 
 ing knowledge is increasing creation ? What is 
 " a combining self-consciousness " here but the 
 self-consciousness of the individual or of each 
 individual, working in time ? for everything is 
 necessarily known from the beginning to the 
 universal self-consciousness, whatever that may 
 mean. This cannot be supposed ignorant of 
 future properties or relations. The self -con- 
 sciousness which adds to or incorporates with 
 the object new properties is a time-consciousness 
 struggling with ignorance, and yet, as it is 
 growing in knowledge, means things growing 
 in being. 
 
228 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 But what of the other properties or relations 
 of the object perceived, of which we are ignorant 
 during our perception, and which yet make up 
 the object itself ? What of the undiscovered ele- 
 ments viz., oxygen and hydrogen which make 
 up water ? What of the whole field of chemical 
 analysis which reveals the constituent elements 
 of leaf and stem? These become incorporated 
 with the object perceived, as in a future time we 
 come to know them. But, unfortunately for the 
 theory, these were in the object perceived from 
 the first, and made it, unknown to us ; and but 
 for these, it would not have been even the limited 
 perceived object it appeared to us. And yet it 
 is a or the self-distinguishing consciousness work- 
 ing in time, and through ignorance, which is 
 making them and adding them to the object 
 incorporating them with it ! This is an emphatic 
 instance of the conclusions which result, and 
 must result, from the unwarranted confusion of 
 knowing and being in metaphysics. 
 
 In fact, if we were to take this part of the 
 theory by itself, we should at once land not only 
 in creation by the self-distinguishing conscious- 
 ness working in time, and so gradually casting 
 off its ignorance, but we should have a purely 
 arbitrary or fictional creation, each individual 
 ego working precisely as it pleases. Clearly, if 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 229 
 
 it be the self-distinguishing consciousness which 
 makes the perceived, if there be nothing thus 
 which, lying out of its range in a fixed manner, 
 determines the relations which it perceives or 
 constitutes its action may be, for aught we know, 
 wholly arbitrary. There is neither standard nor 
 check for its action. We might have as many 
 worlds as there are individual egos to make them. 
 But Mr Green will not have this ; and it is thus 
 necessary for him to find some fixed objective 
 standard or power of control higher than the 
 individual ego, who is ignorant to begin with, 
 and yet creative as he goes on, but who is kept 
 in order by, shall we say, a higher self-distin- 
 guishing consciousness than himself, or one 
 with which somehow, in the end, he comes to be 
 identified. Here is the first indication of the 
 superintending and controlling power: "Objects 
 do not cease to be ' objective ' facts do not cease 
 to be unalterable because we find that a con- 
 sciousness which we cannot alter or escape from, 
 beyond which we cannot place ourselves, for 
 which many things indeed are external to each 
 other, but to which nothing can be external, is 
 the medium through which they exist for us " 
 (p. 69). 
 
 This passage contains what we may call rather 
 a subtle conveyance into the discussion of a new 
 
230 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 point. It is not argued that the arbitrary nature 
 of the action of the individual ego would not 
 follow from the conditions of its action just laid 
 down, but we, the individual egos, are at once 
 confronted with " a consciousness which we can- 
 not alter or escape from, beyond which we cannot 
 place ourselves," " as the medium through which 
 things exist for us." Hence, therefore, our action 
 cannot be arbitrary ; we are bound hand and foot 
 to this " a consciousness " and out of it we 
 cannot for a moment get. We had heard re- 
 peatedly before of " a " self-distinguishing con- 
 sciousness working on the data of sensation, and 
 making this into fact or object perceived, and 
 quite superior to mere succession in time, and 
 we were not warned that this meant anything 
 but each individual ego endowed, it may be, with 
 a common function, and coming somehow in dif- 
 ferent places and times to tolerably similar results. 
 But now " we," while still appearing or not extin- 
 guished, are confronted at once with "a con- 
 sciousness " which holds us as tight as if we 
 were the prisoners of fate, and will not allow 
 us the least latitude of fiction in the making of 
 the world. This easy offhand introduction of 
 " a consciousness," to which we are somehow 
 related, is the vital point in the theory, in as far 
 as it moves towards its conclusion. And a great 
 
EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. 231 
 
 many questions of the utmost importance at once 
 confront us. We may ask Is there this con- 
 sciousness? On what grounds is it alleged to 
 be ? What precisely is it ? How is it revealed 
 to us, or to the " we " for whom it is the unalter- 
 able medium of knowledge and being ? 
 
232 
 
 VII. THE ETEKNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 THE main ground of proof of the Eternal Self- 
 distinguishing Consciousness, is founded on the 
 analysis of Sense-perception already given. Per- 
 ception, it is alleged, as established, requires, in 
 order to the presentation of the simplest com- 
 ponent of the whole perceived, " the action of a 
 principle of consciousness, not itself subject to 
 conditions of time, upon successive appearances, 
 such action as may hold the appearances 
 together without fusion in an apprehended 
 fact " (p. 70). Again " The ordinary perception 
 of sensible things or matters of fact involves 
 the determination of a sensible process, which 
 is in time, by an agency that is not in time" 
 (p. 71). 
 
 It seems to me, on the other hand, that such a 
 principle has not been shown to be necessary to 
 ordinary perception, or to any perception. What 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 233 
 
 may be taken to have been proved is quite a 
 different proposition. It is that in the apprehen- 
 sion of an object in relation to another object 
 before it, or to other objects of which it is one 
 in a series, there is needed, over and above the 
 objects or terms of the succession, a continuous 
 subsisting principle or subject conscious of each 
 momentary object, and capable of holding all of 
 them before it in one conception as the parts of 
 one series in time. It is true that this conscious 
 subject is not in the series, in the sense of being 
 one of the terms succeeding ; it transcends in a 
 sense each of the terms, it transcends even the 
 series ; but " above time " or " not in time," or 
 " not itself subject to conditions of time," it is 
 not. It is a one principle or knowing subject 
 which subsists through the moving terms of the 
 series ; which by a conscious act knows each term 
 as it succeeds and passes, in the time of the term ; 
 which is, therefore, essentially and necessarily in 
 time at each point in the succession ; which is 
 further necessarily in time, when the given or 
 definite succession terminates, and when it repre- 
 sents to itself the various successive presenta- 
 tions that make up the whole which it now knows 
 and did not know "before. The fallacy here lies in 
 confounding the conscious representation at the 
 close of the series which is in itself one and 
 
234 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 indivisible the concept of one definite succession, 
 with the knowledge which progresses to the com- 
 pleted synthesis; and because this in itself is 
 not a succession of terms, holding that the subject 
 conscious of it or which makes it is " not in time." 
 It further lies in identifying the superiority or 
 transcendence of the subject to the terms or 
 times of the known succession, with its superi- 
 ority to or aloofness from "the conditions of 
 time." So far from a subject of this nature being 
 necessary to perception, perception would be im- 
 possible if the percipient were subjected to any 
 such conditions. Yet it is mainly on such a 
 ground as this that we are asked to take the step, 
 or rather make the leap, to the existence in 
 the universe, and as the ground of the whole 
 facts or relations of being, of an Eternal Self- 
 consciousness, variously described, and, as we 
 shall see, dubiously and confusedly related to 
 that of the individual- ego. 
 
 We ought also to note at this point the ex- 
 ceedingly inaccurate statement of the accepted 
 realistic view on this matter. It seems that, 
 according to this doctrine, no synthesis of sensa- 
 tions into objects is required to be performed by 
 the conscious subject : " objects are supposed to be 
 there independently of any action of our minds ; 
 we have but passively to let their appearances 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 235 
 
 follow each other over the mental mirror. The 
 succession of such appearances, and of the mental 
 reactions upon them reactions gradually modi- 
 fied through accumulated effects of the appear- 
 ances may fairly be taken to constitute our 
 spiritual being " (p. 69). This is simply a rough 
 statement of a sensational view of consciousness, 
 which every sound realist repudiates. This is not, 
 as is assumed, the only alternative to Mr Green's 
 view ; and it is a specimen of the intellectual 
 unfairness which characterises him, and most of 
 his followers and writers in the same line. They 
 are constantly presenting an extreme alternative 
 of this sort as the only one. It is not so in this 
 case, as any one ordinarily familiar with the rep- 
 resentative writers on the realistic side knows. 
 The alternative to a conscious subject above time, 
 yet doing work in time, is not a merely successive 
 consciousness, or rather set of conscious impres- 
 sions, got from an independent order of external 
 phenomena; but the very different and not 
 irrational conception of a conscious or spiritual 
 subject, continuous in time, exercising a synthesis 
 on an order of facts, for purposes of knowledge, 
 yet rendering the conception of succession pos- 
 sible. And this doctrine does not confuse the 
 conception of the singular indivisible unity of 
 the subject, one in the midst of the passing 
 
236 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 terms, with its superiority to the conditions of 
 time. 
 
 But the process of proving from the self-con- 
 sciousness in perception, which is above time, 
 goes on. It might be that this was a theory of 
 sense-perception and no more. But it is to have 
 a much wider extension than this. It is to be 
 applied not only to the perception of fact, but to 
 the facts themselves. Facts, or relations of objects 
 in our consciousness, do not come into being when 
 a man attains knowledge of them, or cease to be 
 when his knowledge ceases or he forgets. There 
 is a universe of facts, or of relations, quite inde- 
 pendent, it would appear, of the individual con- 
 sciousnesses of the world, which have a time- 
 history. The perceiving consciousness " seems to 
 vary from moment to moment; it apprehends 
 processes of becoming in a manner which implies 
 that past stages of the becoming are present to it 
 as known facts ; yet is it not itself coming to be 
 what it has not been ? " (p. 72.) Have we not, 
 then, here got to an antithesis ? And is it that 
 the relations which the perceiving consciousness 
 constitutes are not the real relations of the uni- 
 verse after all? Or are the universe -relations 
 identical with those made by the perceiving ego 
 working on sensation, acknowledged to be in 
 time, and event in time ? We shall see. 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 237 
 
 The universe-fact, if we may so speak the 
 objective, unalterable fact, implies, nay is, a 
 relation. "Fact always implies relation deter- 
 mined by other relations in a universe of facts ; 
 and such relations, though they be relations of 
 facts to each other in time, imply something out 
 of time, for which all the terms of the relations 
 are equally present, as the principle of the syn- 
 thesis which unites them in a single universe" 
 (p. 71). Facts being relations, necessarily exist 
 only for a consciousness or in a consciousness. 
 The analogy of the perceiving consciousness is 
 transferred to the universe, or universe-conscious- 
 ness ; and as perceived reality is simply relation 
 in time by a subject out of time, so is all the 
 reality of the universe, or rather the true and only 
 reality of things. Fact reality then, means 
 ultimately relations of events to each other in 
 time, subsisting in a consciousness or principle 
 out of time, which unites them in a single uni- 
 verse. There is a (or one) consciousness, or self- 
 distinguishing subject, for which the relations 
 or facts that form the object of our gradually 
 attained knowledge already and eternally exist; 
 and the growing knowledge of the individual is a 
 progress towards this consciousness (p. 75). This 
 is " the eternally complete consciousness " (p. 72). 
 
 Here, then, we have the further question as to 
 
238 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 the precise relation of this eternally complete con- 
 sciousness to " our consciousness " the conscious- 
 ness of me as an individual, and of every indi- 
 vidual in the world. The answer is thus given : 
 
 " ' Our consciousness ' may mean either a func- 
 tion of the animal organism which is being made 
 gradually a vehicle of the Eternal Consciousness, 
 or that Eternal Consciousness itself, as making 
 the animal organism its vehicle, and subject to 
 certain limitations in so doing, but retaining its 
 essential characteristic as independent of time, as 
 the determinant of becoming, which has not and 
 does not itself become. The consciousness which 
 varies from moment to moment, which is in suc- 
 cession, and of which each successive state depends 
 on a series of ' external and internal ' events, is 
 consciousness in the former sense. It consists in 
 what may properly be called phenomena ; in suc- 
 cessive modifications of the animal organism, 
 which would not, it is true, be what they are if 
 they were not media for the realisation of an 
 Eternal Consciousness, but which are not this 
 consciousness." (Pp. 72, 73.) 
 
 This is a somewhat remarkable statement as 
 coming from an idealist, and shows, what the 
 whole course of absolute idealism discloses, that 
 it is identical ultimately with absolute materi- 
 alism. We might have naturally and logically 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 239 
 
 expected that the Eternal Consciousness, hold- 
 ing the relations which alone are real, would 
 have directly communicated with that self-con- 
 sciousness which we know and are. In our 
 self - consciousness even in its lowest form of 
 our perceiving consciousness we yet are not 
 conscious of dependence on a bodily organism. 
 If there be an eternal self - distinguishing con- 
 sciousness far above time and space we might 
 have expected the spiritual to communicate with 
 us directly, on our spiritual side the universal 
 soul touching directly the time-soul, spiritual, 
 too, in its essence and power. But no; this is 
 not the new and advanced conception. " Our 
 consciousness" that part of the eternally complete 
 consciousness in which we are permitted to parti- 
 cipateis " a function of the animal organism " ! 
 Do we but communicate with the Eternal Spirit 
 through the animal organism ? But let us for the 
 moment take it so. " A function of the animal 
 organism " yet is there nothing external to con- 
 sciousness ? to the Eternal Consciousness ? The 
 Eternal Consciousness is struggling, striving, even 
 baffled with " the animal organism " called man ! 
 trying to interpenetrate it. Yet all is in the 
 Eternal Consciousness. A relation, therefore, 
 this animal organism in the Eternal Conscious- 
 ness, a relation which it makes which is 
 
240 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 only as it is in it, yet which baffles its de- 
 velopment! A more illegitimate dualism never 
 was called to the needs of absolute ideal- 
 ism. A consciousness " varying from moment to 
 moment," "consisting in phenomena," "in suc- 
 cessive modifications of the animal organism," 
 this is the human consciousness, or our conscious- 
 ness. It is not consciousness at all, in any proper 
 sense of the term, but the identification of con- 
 sciousness with a material non-ego, illegitimately 
 and contradictorily borrowed by the idealist, with 
 a view to depreciate the true consciousness which 
 psychology reveals. This too is done in the in- 
 terest of an abstraction called the Eternal Con- 
 sciousness, which, by its timelessness alone, is 
 absolutely divorced from the whole world of 
 experience. 
 
 But we are immediately assured that there is, 
 after all, " not a double consciousness in man ; " 
 only " the one indivisible reality of our conscious- 
 ness cannot be comprehended in a single con- 
 ception" (p. 73). I should think it could not, 
 on this system at least. It would be exceedingly 
 hard to fuse in one conception a consciousness 
 described as a series of varying, successive phae- 
 nomena, modifications of the animal organism, 
 with a one consciousness described as eternal 
 that is, at once for ever what it is, not subject to 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 241 
 
 conditions of time, and yet really the same with 
 the successive consciousness, the function of 
 the animal organism. There can be no such con- 
 ciliation, no such fusion. There can be no indi- 
 visibility of reality in such a conception, for the 
 simple reason that there cannot be framed by the 
 mind an object corresponding to such conditions. 
 The human consciousness we know has disap- 
 peared, and in its room we have an abstraction, 
 not only unverified and unverifiable, but null 
 through hopeless contradiction. 
 
 But we have admissions as to " processes organic 
 to our consciousness," " events affecting the animal 
 system organic to consciousness " (pp. 79, 82, and 
 elsewhere). These, it seems, are " determined by 
 the mind to which all things are relative " that 
 is, the Eternal Consciousness ; and then this con- 
 sciousness reproduces itself in our knowledge or 
 consciousness, "in respect at least of its attri- 
 butes of self - origination and unification of the 
 manifold" (p. 82). The whole bodily organism, 
 accordingly, in as far as it ministers to knowledge 
 in sense or perception, is the thought or thought- 
 relation of the Eternal Mind or consciousness. 
 It is not the sign of the thought of this mind 
 something different from that which it expresses ; 
 but it is actually the thought or thought-relation 
 of this Infinite Consciousness. Brain, sensuous 
 Q 
 
242 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 organ, nerves afferent and efferent spinal chord, 
 &c., are all simply thought -relations in the Su- 
 preme Mind, or at least the one mind of the uni- 
 verse. But in perception we do not perceive or 
 know these. They are the conditions of our sense- 
 knowledge ; but we can have, actually have, 
 ample sense-knowledge, without being conscious 
 of them or knowing anything about them. At the 
 same time, this sense-knowledge is, after all, the 
 act the thought-relation of the one conscious- 
 ness which awakes in us to sense-knowledge. 
 As in us, therefore, this consciousness may be, 
 nay, is, actually ignorant at a given moment of 
 perception of thought-relations which exist only 
 in itself. And if these relations exist at that 
 moment, they must be in the thought of this 
 consciousness, which is at one and the same time 
 ignorant of them and conscious of them. That is 
 the pass to which we come. The one conscious- 
 ness of the world is like the moon, to this extent, 
 that it has a dark side and a light side. Only as 
 the light (or conscious) side by hypothesis alone 
 exists, the dark (or unconscious) side, while neces- 
 sary to the light side, has, as dark, no existence. 
 Or if the thought - relations summed up in the 
 organism are known to the Eternal Conscious- 
 ness per se, though not known to it in man, or as 
 connected with this organism, it must know in 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 243 
 
 one of its functions or sides that of which it is 
 ignorant in the other. It is a compound of know- 
 ledge and ignorance regarding the same thing. 
 What now becomes of the " one consciousness " 
 of which we hear so frequently ? If a house so 
 divided against itself can stand, most contrari- 
 eties will. 
 
 I am in no way concerned to dispute the posi- 
 tion taken up by Mr Green, to the effect that man, 
 as a consciousness or better conscious being, is not 
 a part of nature, in so far as nature means organ- 
 ism, organic function, and so on in plain words, 
 a body and nerve system. It may even be ad- 
 mitted that this system is " organic to conscious- 
 ness " or knowledge in man though, I think, in 
 speaking thus the writer is undesignedly playing 
 into the hands of the materialist. The latter 
 would make short work of Mr Green's eternal 
 mind or consciousness working on the organic 
 part supposed to condition our consciousness. 
 
 Even supposing these objections did not hold, 
 the description of the relation between the eter- 
 nal consciousness and the time consciousness is 
 enough to condemn the theory. In the animal 
 organism called man, the Eternal Consciousness 
 (or universe consciousness) is constantly making 
 relations, related facts that is, reality. It is 
 making them in time, and it is " reproducing it- 
 
244 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 self " in these time relations. It is in itself com- 
 plete; the universe is complete in it, "in its 
 timeless unity of knowledge." There is no suc- 
 cession in the Eternal Consciousness, but one 
 omnipresent now. In what sense can this timeless 
 spirit be said to reproduce itself under conditions 
 of time and succession, or facts related in time ? 
 How does the timeless one become the timed 
 manifold ? Is it enough to say that the universe, 
 regarded as independent of the individual con- 
 sciousness, is a series of relations for a conscious- 
 ness ? That all independent relations are neces- 
 sarily conscious relations ? Be it so : how does 
 this enable us to see or to say that one supreme 
 consciousness, not in time, for which these rela- 
 tions exist, does or can reproduce itself that is, 
 its conscious relations in those of an individual 
 consciousness, admittedly developed successively 
 or in time ? The fact and its relations are in our 
 knowledge determined as now, in relation to past, 
 present, and future. How is this a reproduction 
 of the timeless ? And what guarantee have we 
 that our time determinations are identical with 
 the timeless determinations of the Eternal Con- 
 sciousness ? How do we know that the former 
 even correspond to the latter ? What guarantee, 
 then, have we of the truth of our determinations ? 
 Either the timeless and the time consciousness 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 245 
 
 are different, and then we have no warrant for 
 asserting the relations which each knows to be 
 the same ; or the time consciousness is the same 
 consciousness as the eternal, only with a different 
 name or in a different aspect : then, in that case, 
 it is distinctly improper to say it reproduces it- 
 self in man. It is the Eternal Consciousness 
 alone, and there is no reproduction in the mat- 
 ter. After all, there is not thus an eternal and an 
 individual consciousness, but one consciousness 
 flowing through all consciousnesses, having, how- 
 ever, lost its timeless character, and being iden- 
 tified with the sum of finite consciousnesses. We 
 get substantially the same result from the con- 
 sideration of the Eternal Consciousness and the 
 relations of which it is the subject. It is the 
 unity of the manifold ; and " the determining and 
 determined," we are told, " cannot be really sep- 
 arated." The one is necessary to the many ; the 
 many to the one. The Eternal Consciousness is 
 not without its relations; and the relations are 
 not without the Eternal Consciousness. They are 
 relative and correlative. There never was a time 
 when the Eternal Consciousness determined those 
 relations, for then it would have existed without 
 them ; there never was a time when the relations 
 existed to be taken up into the Eternal Conscious- 
 ness, for then there would have been a universe 
 
246 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 as yet unrelated to consciousness. Neither was 
 first both sides are equal in this respect. Each 
 is necessary to the other ; the Eternal Conscious- 
 ness depends for its meaning that is, its being 
 on the relations ; the relations, for their meaning 
 or being, on the Eternal Consciousness. But the 
 relations are, after all, what we call objects and 
 the laws of objects, which we come gradually to 
 know. The relations are the universe the ob- 
 jective universe of the senses and of science. 
 Until these relations are thus displayed and 
 realised, they are wrapt up in the timeless in- 
 scrutable unity of the Eternal Consciousness. 
 This consciousness then, after all, is dependent 
 for its meaning that is, its being on the 
 world of time and space ; nay, it is this world 
 of objects and relations, unwarrantably named 
 an eternal consciousness. As the consciousness 
 of man expands, so, and only so, does the Eternal 
 Consciousness : nay more, it not only grows in 
 width of knowledge, but it thus grows in being, 
 truly realises itself, grows out of its timeless 
 severed unity in increasing human knowledge of 
 relations. And thus, instead of saying that the 
 human consciousness is dependent on the eternal, 
 and that it is merely a reproduction of the latter, 
 it would be more correct to say that the eternal 
 consciousness depends for its reality on the 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 247 
 
 human, and is a simple reproduction in the form 
 of a hypostatised abstraction of the human con- 
 sciousness itself. 
 
 As to the extremely critical point of the rela- 
 tion of the universal self to the individuals of 
 time, we are told by one who may be regarded 
 as a follower of Mr Green that we must have 
 recourse to "hypothesis." 1 Yet this is a philo- 
 sophy which scorns humbler systems, and pro- 
 fesses to lay bare the universe ! It is actually 
 reduced to " hypothesis " at the point where the 
 origin of the highest reality known to us in 
 experience our own conscious selves comes to 
 be considered. There is here a complete gap in 
 knowledge : the gulf yawns between the two sides 
 unbridged, and yet this occurs in a system of 
 absolute unity in knowledge and being ! 
 
 We are told on the point of the relation of 
 nature and mind, that, "as a process in time, 
 nature precedes mind, and mind is the outcome 
 of nature, yet nature only exists as an intelligible 
 system for mind." 2 This is utterly irreconcilable 
 with other parts of the theory. Nature, apart 
 from us, exists only in the Eternal Consciousness 
 above time. In this there can be no before or 
 after ; nature is as essential to mind in the eternal 
 self as the latter is to it. There never was pre- 
 
 1 Mind, No. L. p. 258. Ibid, p. 259. 
 
248 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 cedence, and to talk of mind as the outcome of 
 nature is to contradict the vital point of the 
 whole theory. 
 
 That thought -relations make the world are 
 in fact the world this is the essential point 
 of the theory, and consequently if we had "a 
 complete knowledge of everything in the whole 
 infinity of its relations, this would mean the 
 making of the thing. ... If I knew another in- 
 dividual person through and through, I should 
 be that person. Just because we do not fully 
 know our own selves, we never fully are our 
 own selves." l This is actually advanced as 
 a serious metaphysical argument. We are ob- 
 viously in imminent danger of losing our in- 
 dividuality, owing to too great intimacy with 
 our neighbour! But what, it may be asked, 
 becomes of the unknowing neighbour in such 
 a case ? Does he, too, lose his individuality, 
 and become me ? And what is the compound 
 which results from this complete fusion ? This 
 loss of the self in another self through knowledge 
 which necessarily constitutes that self, may be 
 a perfectly logical deduction from the system : if 
 so, it is a simple reductio ad absurdum. 
 
 But, after all, the Eternal Consciousness turns 
 out to be somewhat of a failure in regard to 
 
 1 Mind, No. L., p. 261. 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 249 
 
 knowledge, or rather realising its own knowledge 
 and being. It is terribly hampered by limitations, 
 owing to its vehicle the human organism, and to 
 its having to make progress in time. Apparently, 
 if it had been content to stay "in its timeless 
 unity," it would have been complete; but, for 
 some unexplained reason, it has to go out of this 
 into time, whether voluntarily or compulsorily is 
 not clear, and there it practically breaks down. 
 " The reproduction," we are told, " has a process 
 in time for its organ ; therefore it is at once pro- 
 gressive and incapable of completion." The Eter- 
 nal Consciousness can thus never realise itself in 
 man, " because of the constant succession of phae- 
 nomena in the sentient life, which the Eternal 
 Consciousness, acting on that life, has perpetually 
 to gather anew into the timeless unity of know- 
 ledge " (p. 77). There is a conception that there 
 is a whole order of things, but we can never fully 
 know it, or the Eternal Consciousness cannot know 
 it in us (p. 77). In other words, if the Eternal 
 Consciousness keeps its hand closed in the time- 
 less unity of the manifold, it is perfect, complete ; 
 if it opens its hand and so expands to the mani- 
 fold, it is at once baffled and imperfect. Time and 
 the facts of time are too much for it. It fails to 
 grasp them completely. " The constant succession 
 of phenomena in the sentient life" apparently 
 
250 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 baffles the Eternal Consciousness, and frustrates 
 its complete development in man. But we have 
 been repeatedly told that the Eternal Conscious- 
 ness makes all phenomena and their successions. 
 There is no order of phenomena in the universe 
 independent of the relations which subsist in the 
 Eternal Consciousness. Otherwise there would be 
 an order of things external to the Eternal Con- 
 sciousness a supposition, above all, not for a 
 moment to be tolerated. The Eternal Conscious- 
 ness, accordingly, in the only form we know it 
 or can share in it, is baffled by its own phae- 
 nomena its own relations ; creates what it cannot 
 master, spins ropes which entangle it, or is con- 
 stantly employed in weaving a web which it 
 never completes. It is perpetually working up 
 material " into the timeless unity of knowledge," 
 whence it is supposed to have emerged; but it 
 can never overtake the whole contents of time. 
 Time is long, but art is short. The eternal 
 power of knowing and being thus remains in the 
 end baffled and discredited. The Keason com- 
 prehending itself is a phrase for Hegel's system ; 
 the Keason baffled in comprehending itself would 
 apply to Green's Eternal Consciousness. It is 
 never able to complete for itself the knowledge of 
 the world as a whole in man. It gives him, how- 
 ever, the general conception that there is a whole 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 251 
 
 to be known ; and so far as the Eternal Conscious- 
 ness can go, man has the satisfaction of knowing 
 this, and the conviction that this consciousness in 
 him is impotent to achieve the ideal which it sets 
 before him. For the pitcher he brings to the 
 eternal fountain is either too small, or it has no 
 bottom. "We thus come back very much to the 
 teachings of a less pretentious philosophy, accord- 
 ing to which 
 
 "All experience is an arch where through 
 Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades, 
 For ever and for ever when I move." 
 
 But in this philosophy we have not lost hold of 
 the facts of life, nor sacrificed the reality we 
 know for shadows and hurtful abstractions. 
 
 We have seen that consciousness conscious- 
 ness in general, especially the Eternal Consci- 
 ousness suffers nothing to be external to it. 
 This, of course, would be arrant dualism. Con- 
 sciousness is " that for which many things are 
 external, but to which nothing can be external " 
 (p. 69). Things feelings in (our) consciousness 
 may be related as successive. There is thus a 
 time externality a before and after. But in 
 the Eternal Consciousness, while there is rela- 
 tion there is no succession. It is a timeless 
 whole, comprehending all actual and possible 
 relations. Our consciousness is admittedly short 
 
252 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 of the whole. It fails to realise the fulness of 
 the Eternal Consciousness, or rather, this con- 
 sciousness fails to realise its own fulness in us. 
 It is therefore not in our knowledge ; it is not a 
 relation determined or determinable by us. In 
 its own being it escapes, transcends us. Is 
 there no externality here, different from the 
 mere externality of successive states or feelings, 
 of successive relations? To say nothing of the 
 absurdity of supposing the timeless unity di- 
 vided, part in our knowledge and part not, 
 is there not an essential externality between the 
 timeless unity and our limited and time con- 
 sciousness ? What stronger externality does any 
 dualism demand than that I, a consciousness in 
 time, should be hopelessly and for ever severed 
 from the Eternal Consciousness in its complete- 
 ness above time ? And yet this system is put 
 forward as absolute idealism, and the solution 
 through unity of the order of the world. 
 
 Further, as to the development of the Eternal 
 Ego, there is a serious difficulty. Looking to the 
 fact of the degrees of knowledge, education, cul- 
 ture in individuals, these must be admitted to 
 be of the most various and unequal sorts. There 
 is the state of the savage, the child, the man of 
 ordinary knowledge, the man of science, the poet, 
 the philosopher. History and actual experience 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 253 
 
 show the greatest possible diversity in attain- 
 ments, in degrees of development. Yet all in 
 each is the manifestation of the Eternal Ego. 
 What, then, determines the variety and limitations 
 which we know to exist ? Is the impediment to 
 an equal development in all due to anything in 
 the Eternal Ego itself, or is it due to outside 
 influences and obstacles, say, difference in the 
 animal organism, and in outward circumstances 
 generally ? If the impediment lie in the Ego 
 itself, what are we to think of its absoluteness, 
 completeness, and omnipotence ? Is it not thus 
 as eternal and infinite, holding within itself a 
 baffling element, a simple contradiction ? If the 
 obstacle lie in the organism or in outward cir- 
 cumstance, what becomes of its unity, of the 
 monistic theory implied in it ? Have we not 
 thus a dualism, and a confronting, thwarting, 
 irreconcilable Non-Ego ? a Non-Ego in the shape 
 of the lowest form of materialism, merely 
 animal organism. An Infinite Ego which devel- 
 ops in all, but is never perfectly developed in any, 
 from causes which it cannot control, falls simply 
 into disintegration among the animal organisms 
 of time. 
 
 Why thus set up such a hypostasis as an 
 Eternal Consciousness, which, complete in itself, 
 utterly fails when it touches practical life? 
 
254 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 which cannot then, though omnipotent, and 
 really all that is, give effect to itself. Why 
 set up a hypothesis which, on touch with the 
 facts of life, is an absolute failure ? Why not 
 leave us rather to the working out of the lessons 
 of life through the openings of experience, as 
 these come for us in the course of time, and in 
 the development of intelligence, apart from an 
 Eternal Consciousness which necessarily swallows 
 up all our personality, and leaves us but the 
 " vehicles " of fate, touched with consciousness ? 
 And with his self-distinguishing consciousness, 
 be it eternal or in time, can the philosopher draw 
 from it one single fact one single relation that 
 matter of which it is so full, and through which it 
 subsists ? Not one. He cannot from his point of 
 view give you the most elementary fact or law 
 in God's universe. He has got to wait for them 
 through the method of observation, and then, 
 forsooth, in a lofty and lordly manner, to deter- 
 mine each to make it. But what provision is 
 there for the making of these in simply a self- 
 distinguishing consciousness, call it Eternal 
 or in time ? If there be but a self-distinguishing 
 in consciousness, how can this do anything but 
 distinguish from itself ? And how can this sim- 
 ple self -distinguishing give anything but a simple 
 non-ego ? How can it give the variety in things, 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 255 
 
 in objects and laws, which we know is to be found 
 in this universe of ours ? It is, of course, utterly 
 helpless. If even one thing differs from another 
 in our experience, idealism is discredited fails 
 utterly. It knows nothing, can know nothing, of 
 an outward which it has not created. How can 
 it reasonably discriminate in this outward, with 
 nothing but its self-distinguishing function ? with 
 nothing fixed or determined in the outward ? 
 with nothing presented to it ? On the scheme 
 of absolute idealism, variety in the objects of 
 knowledge is impossible. And with the failure 
 alone to account for this, idealism perishes. 
 
 But it may be asked, What precisely is the 
 ground of inference which is supposed to connect 
 our experience with this Eternal Self-conscious- 
 ness? Supposing it admitted that our self-dis- 
 tinguishing consciousness does unite the manifold 
 of our experience into objects of knowledge that 
 it has the unifying power or function spoken of 
 does it follow at once that the uniting power at 
 work in constituting the reality of nature is neces- 
 sarily a self-distinguishing consciousness exactly 
 of the same character as our own ? and, secondly, 
 is such a power sufficient by itself to explain the 
 objectivity? How are we entitled to say that 
 the unifying power in nature is a conscious power, 
 because we, a unifying power in knowledge, are a 
 
256 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 conscious power ? The power at work in nature 
 may be above nature non-natural not one of 
 the phenomena unified. But does it follow that 
 this power must be a self-distinguishing conscious 
 subject, because I, a self -distinguishing conscious 
 subject, unify phenomena in my knowledge or 
 experience? Supposing there is independently 
 of me a uniform objective order which I call 
 nature, and this, it should be observed, is not 
 proved even to exist on Mr Green's system, am 
 I shut up to attribute this uniformity directly to 
 a self-distinguishing consciousness like my own ? 
 Is it not conceivable that the power immediately 
 at work in this system is a force not conscious of 
 itself, or of its work, or of its ends ? This may 
 not be the whole or the ultimate power in things. 
 This power may even be a controlled and regu- 
 lated power, but if it is even a possibility, this 
 is sufficient to disprove the necessity of a self- 
 distinguishing consciousness like mine as the sole 
 ground of a uniform system of nature. It is 
 quite possible that the unifying power which I 
 know as myself in my experience is but one of 
 the unifying powers at work in the universe. 
 Analogy of function does not imply identity of 
 agent ; similarity in effect does not imply identity 
 in cause. Is there really anything more incon- 
 ceivable in this intermediate force being at the 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 257 
 
 command of an Eternal Spirit, than there is in 
 supposing that the bodily organism is " the 
 vehicle " of the Eternal Consciousness ? If this 
 be possible, or conceivable even, far less asserted 
 as true, how can it be said that a force in the 
 universe, subject to the action and control of the 
 Eternal Spirit, is inconceivable, inadmissible, far 
 less unreal ? Is not this supposition of an organ- 
 ism, through which the Eternal Consciousness 
 seeks to move, and which it seeks to animate, 
 simply on a par with a force objective to itself, 
 which it constitutes and controls? 
 
 Then, further, is such a self-distinguishing con- 
 sciousness sufficient to create and to sustain the 
 order of nature ? Is there really, after all, an 
 identity even in function ? I, a self -consciousness, 
 combine and co-ordinate for the purpose of know- 
 ing. Is this conscious combination sufficient for 
 the purpose of being, which is independent of at 
 least my knowledge ? Is the ongoing of nature 
 precisely similar to the ongoing of my conscious- 
 ness ? Is the objective reality here supposed 
 precisely identical with the succession of feelings, 
 percepts, &c., in my consciousness ? Is the mere 
 sustaining of these in and by a self-distinguish- 
 ing consciousness, called eternal, an adequate 
 ground for their actual reality, permanency, and 
 uniformity ? No attempt is made to show that 
 R 
 
258 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 this is so. In a word, it is simply assumed that 
 objective independent uniformity in reality is 
 necessarily the same with the process essential to 
 my knowledge of sensations and percepts these 
 being nothing more to me than forms of succes- 
 sion in my consciousness. As we know, so the 
 world is ; as the object known depends for its 
 being known on a self-distinguishing conscious- 
 ness, so the world, as existing, depends for its 
 reality and permanency on a self-distinguishing 
 consciousness. A more complete hiatus in reason- 
 ing could not be adduced. 
 
 But the theory leads further than this. We 
 must suppose, if it be true, that the uniformity of 
 nature the actual existing relations among things 
 never had a beginning, are eternal, unchange- 
 able, unalterable as the eternal timeless conscious- 
 ness on which they depend, and which constitutes 
 them. In other words, the relations of the order 
 of nature which come partially into our know- 
 ledge, which are discovered by science, and 
 which are realised in our experience, in this 
 planet of ours, and what we know of other 
 things adjoining in space, are the only possi- 
 ble relations, laws, truths of nature, in the uni- 
 verse of being. Are we, on any ground of fact 
 or reason, entitled to say this order never had a 
 beginning in time, that it is the only order of 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 259 
 
 things, fixed, unalterable, and consequently that 
 it can never have an end? What is this but 
 rash assumption and unwarranted dogmatism ? 
 What is it but to confound two wholly different 
 orders of truths the contingent generalisations of 
 experience, and the unchanging laws which lie at 
 the root of our intelligence? It does not even 
 provide for the distinction between laws of fact 
 or phenomena, and the whole sphere of historical 
 truths on the one hand, and the necessary con- 
 secutions of mathematics on the other. The 
 necessary unchanging formulae which the astron- 
 omer applies to phenomena are not distinguished 
 as to the character of unalterableness from the 
 shifting phenomena themselves. The star which 
 may be extinguished to-morrow is as unalterable 
 a fact as the geometrical law which expresses its 
 relations to the rest of the system. 
 
 A curious light is cast on the theory when the 
 author proceeds to connect it with our actual 
 experience, and especially with what he is pleased 
 to call freedom, or man as a free intelligence. 
 Here he has at once to face the notion and the 
 fact of causality. He is clear enough as to the 
 nature of what we call cause or causality. It is 
 " the relation of a given event, either to another 
 event invariably antecedent to it, and upon which 
 it is invariably sequent, or to an assemblage of 
 
260 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 conditions which together constitute the event, 
 into which it may be analysed" (p. 80). Such 
 a cause, he adds, is not a " free " cause. Those 
 antecedents are in their turn invariably deter- 
 mined by other antecedents, and the sum of con- 
 ditions depends on a larger complex (p. 80). 
 
 The term cause, therefore, as thus commonly 
 understood, and as realised in our experience, is 
 not applicable to the Eternal Consciousness, or one 
 mind which unifies the universe, and makes even 
 the relation of causality itself possible and know- 
 able. The antecedent is in the first place different 
 from the consequent the sum of conditions from 
 the effect. But the one Eternal Consciousness is 
 not different from its manifold of thought- rela- 
 tions. It distinguishes itself from the manifold 
 it unifies it " but it must not be supposed that 
 the manifold has a nature of its own apart from 
 the unifying principle, or this principle another 
 nature of its own apart from what it does in 
 relation to the manifold world. Apart from the 
 unifying principle, the manifold world would be 
 nothing at all, and in its self-distinction from that 
 world the unifying principle takes its character 
 from it ; or, rather, it is in distinguishing itself 
 from the world that it gives itself its character, 
 which therefore, but for the world, it would not 
 have " (p. 80). This is the conception, if it can 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 2G1 
 
 be called, of the relation of the Eternal Conscious- 
 ness and the world of being. " The agent must 
 act absolutely from itself in the action through 
 which that world is, not, as does everything 
 within the world, under determination by some- 
 thing else. The world has no character but that 
 given it by this action ; the agent has no character 
 but that which it gives itself in this action " 
 (p. 81). It is added, " This is what we mean by 
 calling the agent a ' free cause ' " (ibid.) 
 
 Clearly, the notion or category of cause can 
 have no application to this agent or principle of 
 unifying, which has no nature or reality apart 
 from the unifying, and is only the unifying. 
 There is no plurality of terms here, as in the 
 causal relation no antecedent and consequent. 
 This so-called agent is not, unless as unifying or 
 relating a manifold ; and the manifold is not, un- 
 less as being unified or related by the agent. But 
 why in this case retain the terms agent or prin- 
 ciple at all ? What right have we to apply 
 words which imply a nature in the agent, a 
 plurality in the relation, and an efficiency in 
 action when not one of these things is admitted 
 to exist? Why also speak of mutual action in 
 such a case, where there is not even one agent ? 
 Obviously the relation of causality is wholly 
 transcended in such a case; and an author has 
 
262 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 no right to retain the advantage of the suggestion 
 of words which in such an application are utterly 
 eviscerated of their proper meaning. 
 
 The same line of remark would apply to the 
 use of the term subject, or conscious subject, or 
 even consciousness. A conscious subject or self 
 identified with a unifying process without a nature 
 to begin with, or for that part to end with, is a re- 
 markable conception. The process of unifying 
 consciously unifying is an act of a conscious 
 subject, in as far as it means anything at all. 
 There is the nature of the subject, the act of the 
 subject, nay, there is even the matter or object 
 dealt with. And when these things are denied 
 to exist, the words implying them are used in- 
 appropriately and unjustly, and with the effect of 
 securing an advantage in the discussion which is 
 wholly illegitimate. 
 
 But it seems that this unifying process, which 
 to some would hardly appear to be an abstraction, 
 but a simple piece of empty verbalism, gets a 
 meaning for us from the fact that in our action in 
 knowledge there is an instance of the exercise of 
 such causality. Our consciousness, as we are 
 frequently told, is " a reproduction " of that mind 
 or process of unifying, " in respect at least of its 
 attributes of self-origination and unification of the 
 manifold" (p. 82). It has already been shown 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 263 
 
 how absolutely the ground fails here, that, in 
 fact, there is no such process in our consciousness 
 that it is merely transferring the so-called con- 
 ception of this timeless unifying to our experience, 
 without attempting in the least to vindicate the 
 conception from its inherent impossibility. The 
 only reason here adduced for it, as applied to our 
 experience, is stated in these words : 
 
 " A form of consciousness which conceives time 
 cannot, for that reason alone, be in time " (p. 82). 
 Why so ? A self conscious of or conceiving time 
 apprehending succession in time cannot there- 
 fore be in time. Why not ? What cogency is 
 there here ? Why in that case should it be 
 possible that a form of consciousness which con- 
 ceives the supposed Eternal Consciousness, yet be, 
 as is alleged, in that Eternal Consciousness ? or, 
 much more, be that Eternal Consciousness which it 
 conceives ? If it had been said that a conscious- 
 ness, or conscious subject which conceives time, 
 cannot be time merely, there would have been 
 some sense in the statement. As it stands, it is 
 without proof, and even irrational. If a subject 
 conceives time, his act at least must be in it to 
 the extent that it is the act of the moment in 
 which he conceives it. 
 
 The new phrase, " self -origination of the mani- 
 fold," is quite an addition to the usual " unifica- 
 
264 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 tion." It is another instance of the attempt to 
 unite the conception of a nature and power in the 
 consciousness ours or the other with the ab- 
 sence of these things. And it further adds the 
 conception of pure arbitrariness in the self- 
 origination, seeing there is nothing whatever in 
 the way of order to work upon, as there is 
 nothing whatever in the shape of a worker. 
 
 In proceeding to his theory of free intelligence, 
 Mr Green makes certain statements or admis- 
 sions which he thinks necessary steps, but which 
 are hardly consistent with his general doctrine. 
 It seems that "an organism or living body is 
 something in itself other than what its relations 
 make it that, while it is related to other things 
 according to mechanical and chemical laws, it has 
 itself a nature which is not mechanical or chem- 
 ical " (p. 85). " But the living body does not, as 
 such, present its nature to itself in consciousness. 
 It does not consciously distinguish itself from its 
 relations. Man, on the other hand, does so distin- 
 guish himself. . . . He consciously distinguishes 
 himself from all that happens to him" (p. 85). 
 Man, on this view, is released from the thraldom 
 of organic processes, to be handed over as the sub- 
 ject or vehicle of the reproduction of an Eternal 
 Consciousness that is, the necessary inexplicable 
 mutual relation of the one and the many, eter- 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 265 
 
 nally constituted, absolute and unchangeable. 
 Many people would think the one necessity very 
 much on the level of the other. Yet this is 
 human freedom the ground of obligation and 
 moral ideal. 
 
 " In respect of principle, though man is a self, 
 and distinguishes himself as such, he exerts a 
 free activity an activity which is not in time, 
 not a link in the chain of natural becoming; 
 which has no antecedents other than itself, but 
 is self-originated " (p. 86). The organic processes 
 have a strictly natural history ; but there is in 
 man "the action of an Eternal Consciousness, 
 which uses them as its organs, and reproduces 
 itself through them" (p. 86). The organism 
 as in man may be the result of evolution from 
 lower forms of organism, in which the Eternal 
 Consciousness did not reveal or reproduce itself. 
 But this does not affect the doctrine that an eter- 
 nal consciousness is now implied in human know- 
 ledge. There is " an absolute difference between 
 change and the intelligent consciousness or know- 
 ledge of change, which precludes us from tracing 
 any development of the one into the other, if 
 development implies any identity of principle 
 between the germ and the developed outcome " 
 (p. 88). But the organism of man in which there 
 is now the eternal intelligence might possibly be 
 
266 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 developed through stages of growth and modifi- 
 cation in animals, until in man it became the 
 fit vehicle of this intelligence (p. 89). As to the 
 ethical bearing of this metaphysical theory, I do 
 not at present propose to discuss it fully. But I 
 may say that it seems to me that, as the Eternal 
 Consciousness is described by Mr Green, it has not 
 actually or necessarily any moral quality what- 
 ever; and accordingly, that its reproduction in 
 man, however far this may proceed or be desired 
 by the individual, can yield no moral ideal 
 whatever. It is simply a self - distinguishing 
 consciousness, in any and every conceived or con- 
 ceivable object : it is, in fact, the relation or dis- 
 tinction between subject and object. To it every 
 object is indifferent, or indifferently an object, 
 provided only it be an object. It has neither 
 emotion, desire, nor will. It is at the utmost 
 a pure or mere intelligence ; and its reproduction 
 in man could at the best lead only to development 
 in knowledge, which is not in the least coexten- 
 sive, or even identical, with the moral ideal of 
 humanity. In fact, it seems to me that mere 
 self-distinguishing does not imply any end at all 
 any conception of successive improvement, or of 
 growth towards that perfection which the moral 
 consciousness requires and yearns after. 
 
 Motive is, we are told, always an idea of per- 
 
THE ETERNAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 267 
 
 sonal good, and the question of moral freedom is 
 the question as to the origin of motives. The 
 self or self-consciousness identifies itself with some 
 desire ; this identification is the motive, and the 
 resulting act is therefore free. The motive is not 
 a mere desire, and there is no unmotived desire 
 between motives, neither is the act necessarily de- 
 termined by the strongest motive. The act does 
 necessarily proceed from the motive; but the 
 motive is not one of the desires which solicit a 
 man, but one of these as identified by the man with 
 himself. That the motive is the outcome of cir- 
 cumstances and character is compatible with the 
 idea of freedom, if it be understood that both cir- 
 cumstances and character, though conditioned, are 
 conditioned only through a self -distinguishing 
 and self-seeking consciousness. But the char- 
 acter of a man is not something other than 
 himself, which co-operates with an equally in- 
 dependent force of circumstances to determine his 
 action. For the character is the man who is thus 
 not determined except as he determines himself. 
 And though the act is a necessary result, the 
 agent is not a necessary because not a natural 
 agent. Remorse and self-reformation are thus 
 intelligible, because action proceeds from self- 
 consciousness, and not from an unmotived power 
 of choice. But if my present depends on my 
 
268 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 past, and my future on my present, why should 
 I try to become better ? This arises from con- 
 fusedly supposing that if the act is a necessary 
 result of the agent, the agent must be necessary 
 that is, an instrument of natural forces. But the 
 question implies that the agent is not this, but a 
 self-distinguishing and self-seeking consciousness ; 
 that his future depends upon this consciousness, 
 and that it would be absurd to try to become, 
 unless it so depended. (P. 100 et seq.) 
 
 The identification of self by itself with a desire 
 this is moral freedom. Why or how the identi- 
 fication ? Not, as the indeterminist supposes, the 
 will making an unmotived choice, but the self 
 determining itself, or freely identifying itself with 
 the desire. This is simply to throw the diffi- 
 culty as to free choice a step backwards. Why 
 the self should determine itself or identify itself 
 with this desire rather than that, is no more thus 
 explained than on the theory of indeterminism 
 and motiveless choice. And when we know that 
 this self which seeks and determines itself in this 
 particular mode is really the Eternal Self or con- 
 sciousness, the whole ground of individuality and 
 possible moral action for man is swept away. 
 
269 
 
 VIIL THE INFINITE SELF - CONSCIOUS- 
 NESS GENEKAL CONSIDEEATIONS 
 SUMMAEY. 
 
 INSTEAD of the term "Eternal" we find some- 
 times used that of " Infinite " ; and we have 
 ready talk about an or the " Infinite Self-con- 
 sciousness." The change in the phrase seems to 
 me to be of little moment. It suggests, however, 
 a line of criticism somewhat different from the 
 foregoing. 
 
 If this "Infinite Self-consciousness" be more 
 than a mere abstraction that is, an ideal not 
 restricted to this or that time, or the mere rela- 
 tive in a correlation, if it be, as is alleged, a 
 reality, how is it known as such to us ? This 
 is the question as to proof. 
 
 (1.) Is it known by Intuition immediately, 
 directly, as we know our modes of mind our- 
 selves? Do we know in any one intuition a 
 one consciousness which reproduces itself in 
 
270 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 every finite consciousness in the world? If 
 known as a one universal consciousness, it must 
 be known in one intuition. It cannot be known 
 in parts or succession, and yet known as one. 
 If known in one intuition, it is known as in 
 one moment of time that is, an infinite self- 
 consciousness is known as existing in a single 
 instant of time, and is known as infinite, and 
 yet under the restriction of a definite instant of 
 time. By intuition, subject to limit, it cannot be 
 known, as infinite, or as the one infinite. Further, 
 as is obvious from the terms, no intuition of the 
 Infinite or Absolute, taken as Absolute unity, 
 is possible in human consciousness, unless on 
 the necessary implicate of the identification of 
 the Ego or consciousness with this absolutely 
 one being this all-comprehending unity. 
 
 (2.) Is it known mediately through the data of 
 our experience ? by some kind of inference from 
 these data ? or sum of data ? Is it that we run 
 back the facts, the laws, the matter and the form 
 of our experience, to one infinite self-conscious 
 reality, and that we must do so? these data 
 being the parts or effects or modes of its constant 
 ever-present activity, manifestations of its being 
 and self-hood. The question here is not regard- 
 ing a power, analogous to ourselves, behind all, 
 even in all, the root and ground of all, but 
 
THE INFINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 271 
 
 of a power as an infinite self-consciousness, mani- 
 festing itself in all, as finite self -hood manifests 
 itself in the phenomena of mind or consciousness. 
 It is a self -consciousness, but an infinite one. 
 We must claim that people be kept to the mean- 
 ing of their words. On what ground, then, is it 
 that I infer the fact of an infinite self-conscious- 
 ness from my experience as knowing and being ? 
 I am not aware that any attempt of the least 
 moment has been made to answer this question, 
 or to face the question in any direct way. 
 
 To say, as is done, " that thought of any kind, 
 positive or negative, doubting or asserting, postu- 
 lates itself, postulates, that is, not the thought 
 of the individual thinker, but a thought of self- 
 consciousness that is prior to all individual think- 
 ing, and is the absolute element or atmosphere in 
 which it lives and breathes," is the purest begging 
 of the question at issue. It means simply that 
 there is a possibility of abstraction, of looking 
 at consciousness in general, and considering the 
 individual consciousness as an instance of it. But 
 to regard this as a pi*ius of the individual is simply 
 to hypostatise an abstraction, and make that first 
 which is really last. When the necessary link 
 comes to be established, it is not to be done by 
 " postulating." 
 
 Why should I regard myself, the matter I 
 
272 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 know, the forms of my knowing the logical 
 and metaphysical laws of knowledge, the gener- 
 alised laws of science, as the modes or mani- 
 festations of a self-conscious being transcending 
 me and my experience, and conscious in me and 
 my experience? Why should I further regard 
 this being as conscious of itself, not only in me, 
 but in every human being or finite ego nay, in 
 all the realm of being and science ? What is 
 there in my conscious experience to lead me to 
 this conclusion ? I confess I find nothing adduced 
 of the least relevancy. There is a talk of the need 
 of an infinite self -consciousness as the ground of 
 the relations among objects in the world of know- 
 ledge and being. Objects are known in relation 
 under forms of category and in relation to a 
 conscious subject. But I do not see how this in 
 any way proves that these relations known to me, 
 or even merely existing relations, if there be such, 
 are the thoughts of an infinite self -conscious- 
 ness, that I and all my experience are simply 
 the working, activity, or reproduction of an ego, 
 common to me and to every finite intelligence. 
 Nay, as I find that the relations in question are 
 regarded as essential to the reality of this infinite 
 self -consciousness, that these are reciprocally 
 necessary, I do not see why the relations among 
 things should not be regarded as constituting 
 
THE INFINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 273 
 
 this infinite self-consciousness, as much, at least, 
 as this self-consciousness can constitute them. 
 The infinite ego is only as it is in relations : 
 the relations are only as in the infinite ego. 
 Then which is which? or what is the differ- 
 ence between them ? The one fundamental re- 
 lation I know is that of subject and object in 
 consciousness. The infinite ego is in this, and 
 this is in the infinite ego. But how, then, am I 
 to distinguish them, and say the ego is first or 
 constitutive ? Why may not I equally say, the 
 relation of subject and object is first, and con- 
 stitutive of the ego ? Wherein does such a doc- 
 trine differ from the impression the conscious 
 impression, or series of impressions of Hume, 
 in which subject and object, form and matter, 
 activity and object, are simply fused indiscrim- 
 inately in one expression ? 
 
 But it seems to me that this infinite ego is not 
 only not warranted by our consciousness expe- 
 rience. - It actually contradicts it. I do not, as 
 a matter of fact, find that all objects are a part 
 of me, or mode of me or my consciousness. I 
 find a limit, a very marked limit, between me, 
 the conscious and sentient subject, and objects in 
 correlation with me. I find a limit to the sphere 
 of my conscious and sentient being, and I do 
 not find that I can fuse these, or identify them. 
 
274 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 I cannot say that all objects I know are per- 
 meated by my consciousness or sentiency. I 
 know they are not, or at least I have no reason 
 to say they are. How, then, am I entitled, on the 
 ground of experience, limited and contrasted as 
 it thus is, to say that these two sides of being, 
 though in synthesis, are really only the mani- 
 festations of one infinite ego, self-conscious in 
 each ? I have nothing in my experience corre- 
 sponding to this. How, then, on the ground of 
 my experience, can I make such an affirmation ? 
 
 But further, I cannot reconcile such a concep- 
 tion, if it may be called so, of an infinite ego 
 one, single, universal with the reality of me as 
 an ego at all. The essential requirement of my 
 reality as one, single, definite personality, is that 
 of limit, discrimination, contrast, definite distinc- 
 tion, from every other ego. If an ego is, then 
 there are other egos, either real or ideal. But the 
 moment I lose distinctivity, I cease to be an ego, 
 and am merged either in what is a non-ego or in 
 some other ego. But how can I retain limit, dis- 
 tinctivity, if there be but one infinite ego, and 
 I be merely its reproduction, or a manifestation 
 of it? 
 
 I say this is inconceivable, impossible ; and 
 accordingly you have but two results. Either 
 the infinite ego is, and it is all, every ego, and I 
 
THE INFINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 275 
 
 am not ; or I am this definite ego or personality, 
 and what I call an infinite ego subsists only in 
 me or as I am conscious. There is thus the 
 choice simply of a pantheistic idealism, which 
 is contradicted by the experience on which it 
 founds, or the infinite ego is a name simply 
 for the human or finite ego. If this latter be 
 real, God is man ; if it be taken generically, as 
 the concept or abstraction of the finite ego, God 
 is that abstraction. And this the identification 
 really or ideally of the infinite with the finite 
 ego is the alternative chosen by the Hegelian 
 left the two Bauers, Feuerbach, and Max Stirner. 
 
 On this all-important point of the relation of 
 the infinite ego to the finite ego of consciousness, 
 we have no light from Neo-Kantianism. But we 
 ought to get definite answers to these questions : 
 
 (1.) Does the infinite ego or self-consciousness 
 reveal itself to me the finite ego in each syn- 
 thesis of knowledge or consciousness ? 
 
 If the answer be in the affirmative, then the 
 infinite ego the universal self reveals itself to 
 me, the finite self, in a given moment of time, and 
 as existing in a given moment of time. But such 
 a self has and can have no time limitation ; and 
 the moment it is subjected to such, it ceases to 
 be the universal, or infinite self or ego. 
 
276 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 (2.) Or does the infinite self -consciousness re- 
 produce itself in me the finite consciousness 
 each time I know a succession, or know at all ? 
 What, then, am I the finite ego ? A reproduc- 
 tion a ceaseless reproduction of the infinite self- 
 consciousness. And so is every finite human ego. 
 The reproductions will be as numerous as the egos 
 of the universe. Every human organism holds, 
 so to speak, this reproduction. But how can the 
 one infinite ego or self-consciousness reproduce 
 itself in the finite ego, and much more in every 
 finite ego ? What becomes of its infinity in the 
 first instance, and what becomes of its unity in 
 the second ? Such a theory issues only in its 
 own self-annihilation. The only conceivable 
 being of any finite ego on such a hypothesis is 
 an illusory one. It cannot be an ego truly; it 
 can be only the shadow and the seeming of the 
 one universal self, which gleams for a moment in 
 our organism, and then passes on. We may con- 
 serve the organism in such a case; we do not 
 conserve the ego either self-hood or personality. 
 
 Further, is the reproduction of the infinite self- 
 consciousness, as a power or reality in the finite, 
 compatible with any contingency of fact to be 
 met with in experience ? It is regarded as a 
 creative, or at least constitutive, power, working 
 out the world of experience ; it has reality only 
 
THE INFINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 277 
 
 as it does this, and as it is in the world of 
 experience. Could this world, then, have been 
 anything else than it is as an existence or matter 
 of fact, on such a supposition ? If the order of 
 experience known to us be only, as it is, the 
 manifestation of an infinite self -consciousness, 
 and this self-consciousness be only as it is re- 
 vealed in or creates the known world of existence, 
 how is the contingency of such a world even con- 
 ceivable ? To attribute contingency to it, or the 
 possibility of being other than it is, is to con- 
 tradict the very supposition from which we start. 
 But if this be so, what are the logical results ? 
 The present or known order of things, and 
 things as we know them on this planet, and as 
 far as we can know them elsewhere, or the infinite 
 self -consciousness can know them through us, 
 which is quite the same thing, is the only pos- 
 sible, and it. is necessary. Everything is exactly 
 as it may be, and as it must be. But there are 
 opposites, even contradictions, in this experience 
 of ours this manifested, created, necessary ex- 
 perience of the infinite self-consciousness. There 
 is, for example, the known contrast of finite 
 subject and object in knowledge and reality; 
 there is the contrast of the evil motive and 
 deed with the virtuous motive and deed ; there 
 is the contrast of this individual and that indi- 
 
278 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 vidual : but all this is equally the manifestation 
 or creation of the one infinite self-consciousness ; 
 in this even, and only in this, it is. It is mani- 
 fest in all, and it is one ; it is universal, it is 
 infinite. What, then, becomes of the very idea 
 of opposition or contradiction in experience ; of 
 the opposition of subject and object in the one 
 individual ; of the opposition of good and evil in 
 experience ; of pleasure and pain ; of the opposi- 
 tion of the multiplicity of individual egos ; of the 
 plurality of the race of mankind ? The very idea 
 of opposition is sapped. The thing is an illusion; 
 all is only the manifestation, the creation, of 
 the one infinite universal self - consciousness, 
 which is at the root of things and is in things ; 
 and all opposition is a simple illusion to be dis- 
 pelled by this higher reason, this new light on 
 the universe of God. If we hold by the suppo- 
 sition of the self-manifesting, infinite, universal 
 self-consciousness, then all in the world all the 
 manifested or existent, however different to us 
 or in appearance is really the same in essence, 
 in ultimate reality or fact; or if we hold by 
 the difference the oppositions of experience 
 there is no ultimate one self - consciousness, or 
 being with a unity of nature so related to this 
 world of ours. 
 
 If by one infinite self -consciousness at the root 
 
THE INFINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 279 
 
 of things is meant an energy or act of power, 
 reason and will, whose beginning we cannot know 
 or fix, which even lies at the root of the two 
 possibilities of finite being time and space 
 is now, and shall for ever be, working in and 
 through things, in all the development of the 
 world and man in its being and upholding, 
 then I should say this seems to me a necessity 
 of the case. But I should think this exceedingly 
 ill, indeed misleadingly, described as one infinite 
 self -consciousness, because this would actually 
 contradict certain of its own known results. It 
 would further be exceedingly unworthily de- 
 scribed as an eternal energy in the sense of 
 being a single determinate necessary outgoing of 
 a power, grounding the energy. This would be 
 unworthy also of certain of its results, and could 
 give us no free power or ethic worthy of the 
 name. A spiritual free power at the root of 
 things, in things now, conditioning all the 
 background of all that I can take as a concep- 
 tion grounded on the highest analogy of my 
 own experience, but only as a result grounded 
 on psychological and ethical facts, and on science 
 or the reigning order of the outward world. 
 How perfectly to construe it to my mind, how to 
 relate it precisely to the finite world, that I do 
 not profess to know. 
 
280 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 But it may very fairly be argued that the con- 
 tradictions involved in the terms used are such 
 as to destroy the whole theory. In other words, 
 the theory is not only not proved, it cannot be 
 stated consistently in terms. 
 
 Is the notion of self a conscious self 
 compatible with " infinite," in any sense of the 
 word? 
 
 Self is a definite individual conscious reality. 
 Only as such, and thus distinguished from other 
 selves, material and spiritual, is it a reality at 
 all. An infinite self may mean a self not 
 limited or limitless, as an infinite space or an 
 infinite time. Is this limitlessness compatible 
 with the notion of self at all ? If self have 
 no limit, how is it self ? Is that which is 
 absolutely without bounds anything but a form 
 of indefinite possibility ? It may mean a self 
 capable of infinite development, in time and in 
 space a development without limit on any side 
 or form. This development would be a manifesta- 
 tion, and there would thus be constant or ever- 
 lasting ongoing or process of manifestation. But 
 if this development stopped, it would not be de- 
 scribable as an infinite but a finite self. It 
 would never, therefore, be at any time an infinite 
 self, but only a self on its way to the infinite. 
 As a self capable of infinite development, it 
 
THE INFINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 281 
 
 would be capable of development not only 
 through all time and space, but through every- 
 thing in time and space, would indeed de- 
 velop the things in time and space, both their 
 matter and their form ; for anything, either 
 matter or form, out of the development, would 
 limit it. And this infinite self, being conscious 
 or self-conscious, would be conscious of itself as 
 in its development. It would thus be conscious 
 of all that is matter and form as itself, or at 
 least a mode of itself, contained in its being. 
 This would be the gradual realisation of the 
 all-creating, all-embracing soul of the universe. 
 The ultimate goal of such an infinite would be 
 the permeating of the world as an organism, in 
 which this self rose to infinite self-consciousness. 
 As in our own bodily organism, we are conscious 
 and sentient all through ; so this self would finally 
 realise itself in the full permeation, so to speak, 
 of all the contents of space and time. But such 
 a self-consciousness is a growth, and ought not 
 to be spoken of in the beginning as an infinite 
 self-consciousness, but as something on the way 
 to this stage. 
 
 Further, this infinite self-consciousness is re- 
 produced in me and in all other individual self- 
 consciousnesses. We are part of its creation and 
 development. Is it a complete reproduction of 
 
282 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 itself ? Then in this case there will be as many 
 infinite self-consciousnesses as there are finite 
 egos in the universe, and the unity of self- 
 consciousness is a dream. Is it only a partial 
 reproduction, thus finite or limited in each and 
 by each ? Then what becomes of its unity thus 
 broken up and disintegrated ? And how am I to 
 know in this case that there is one infinite self- 
 consciousness ? 
 
 Further, does my consciousness of myself in 
 experience necessitate a reference, either of corre- 
 lation or of implication, to an infinite self-con- 
 sciousness, as a reality on which I depend, and 
 which is necessary to my being conscious of 
 myself? My consciousness of myself implies, 
 as correlative, something distinguished from me, 
 either a passing mode of consciousness, or a per- 
 ceived quality of the outer world. As actual, my 
 self-consciousness implies the reality of the mode 
 or quality perceived ; as conceptional, the concep- 
 tion of the mode or quality perceived. But it in 
 no way necessitates me to think one infinite self- 
 consciousness, or a self-consciousness extending 
 through all time and space and things. On the 
 contrary, it excludes this ; and in affirming itself 
 as a self, one, indivisible, denies any one infinite 
 self -consciousness known to me, both the mind 
 and the world. 
 
THE INFINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 283 
 
 I may think of a self-consciousness as embody- 
 ing the conception and form of my own self -con- 
 sciousness. This would be a simple abstraction 
 from my experience of myself as myself. But it 
 would not necessarily have any reality ; it would 
 be simply the individual (logical) which I form 
 in order to embody or realise the notion of self- 
 consciousness. If I made this more than a logi- 
 cal individual a real, numerical individual I 
 should personify or hypostatise the object of an 
 abstraction. And if I added to it the epithet 
 " infinite," because it is realisable in every actual 
 and conceivable self-consciousness, I should mis- 
 take the logical universality of the concept for 
 an individual of real existence. If by " infinite " 
 I meant "limitless," or capable of indefinite 
 development, I should fall into the contradic- 
 tions and absurdities already indicated. And this 
 apotheosis of an abstraction is really what is 
 implied in the theory. The universal is purely 
 logical ; it is the common element in knowledge, 
 generalised, universalised. This is truly what is 
 meant by " a pure ego " ; but such a conception 
 is utterly unthinkable per se, just as any other 
 concept is : it has existence neither in thought 
 nor in reality ; and the realising of it, or the indi- 
 vidualising of it, is simply the act of a finite self- 
 consciousness, which thinks or imagines itself 
 
284 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 knowing. But this abstract in no way consti- 
 tutes the finite ego ; the finite ego constitutes it. 
 
 Further, an infinite self-consciousness may be 
 a misnomer for an eternal self-consciousness, 
 meaning an act out of and above time or succes- 
 sion altogether. How this has got any connec- 
 tion with development and relations, relations 
 making up the world the world of time and 
 space, it is hard to see. An eternal act, or an 
 eternal anything that never comes into time at 
 all, or comes in altogether, in one indivisible 
 moment, thus flashing out all relations, all reality, 
 at once, is a conception, if it can be called such, 
 which has no bearing whatever on our experience, 
 or any experience conceivable by us, which is 
 necessarily a time-experience a continuous de- 
 velopment. As a theory not only transcendental 
 but absolutely transcendent of thought, fact, 
 time, it may be left to the mid-air position of 
 Mahomet's coffin never getting to heaven, and 
 never touching earth. 
 
 The theory of which I have been speaking 
 seems to me to be founded 
 
 (1.) On the idea of a real self or ego, which it 
 gets in experience or empirical consciousness. 
 
 (2.) It regards this self as a universal, or uni- 
 versal individual, still retaining the idea of its 
 reality. 
 
THE INFINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 285 
 
 (3.) It regards the universal or infinite self 
 as the power which manifests all that is, subject 
 and object mind and the world. 
 
 (4.) At the same time, it denies the universal 
 self anything but an actual reality, as in its 
 manifestations of subject and object mind and 
 the world. It thus falls back into the view 
 of the inseparable synthesis of the one and the 
 many, as constituting the only reality. It 
 ceases, therefore, to explain the synthesis as the 
 result of a real self, or potency, at the cost of 
 things, and is content to say the synthesis is 
 all that is. 
 
 (5.) It thus saps the very conception of con- 
 stituting relationship ; for as the terms are really 
 inseparable, only exist as related, there could 
 never have been a point at which, or from which, 
 the relationship was constituted. 
 
 (6.) We can form no conception of any rela- 
 tion unless between a plurality of terms : in par- 
 ticular, there can be no unifying by us, or in our 
 conception, unless as we are conscious of the 
 different, or manifold, to be unified. But no 
 provision is made for a plurality of terms, this 
 plurality is even denied : in particular, there is 
 no possibility of a consciousness of the mani- 
 fold unless as already related to the one ; and 
 hence there can be no unifying, no synthesis, 
 
286 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 no putting together, in any natural sense of the 
 terms. 
 
 It thus seems to me that in those positions 
 there is a hopeless contradiction. This arises 
 ultimately from the attempt to grasp the totality 
 of the world in a single conception ; whereas the 
 facts alike of man and nature are incompatible 
 with any such conception. The two incompatible 
 ideas in the theory of a universal self are those 
 of constitution by the self implying reality per 
 se and potential existence in fact, freedom ; and 
 the conception of the reality of the self as in, and 
 only in, the manifestation. These two conceptions 
 we cannot reconcile. We must give up constitu- 
 tion with the surrender of reality per se. All that 
 is left to us after that is process ongoing, un- 
 accountable process or, rather, the law and 
 mode of development, at least, of ongoing; not 
 even the one passing into the many, but the 
 simple interlacing of one and many the iron 
 band that subsists amid the passing materials. 
 This, so far from corresponding to the idea of 
 God, does not imply spirituality at all not even 
 intelligence, far less freedom. All that it amounts 
 to is that there is an order in things, but an 
 order observed by the things themselves. And 
 we can say no more about it. Causality, potency, 
 creative power, are utterly given up. To say that 
 
THE INFINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 287 
 
 the world must be many and one, is to tell me 
 nothing about the origin or genesis of the world, 
 or even about the actual contents of the world 
 which are thus uniform and manifold ; and it is 
 to tell me nothing about the cause or causality, 
 either before the world or in the world. This 
 abandonment of causality and the elevation of 
 mode or law to its place, called relation, is the 
 annihilation of even the possibility of the ques- 
 tion "What is the Supreme Power at work in 
 the world ? Pantheistic Idealism, in its most 
 recent form, and Comtism, as equally excluding 
 cause from things, and substituting law or se- 
 quence, seem to me thus to be, as far as theistic 
 result is concerned, undistinguishable. 
 
 What are the objections, it may be asked, to 
 the scheme of a Deity or Supreme Power, above 
 nature and finite Mind, distinct from these really 
 and numerically, yet related to them as cause, as 
 free cause or power that is, a God conceived 
 as conscious Will and Intelligence, after the 
 highest form of causality we know ? 
 
 These are (a) that such a relation between 
 God and the world involves a "dualism," and 
 " philosophy " seeks necessarily a unity, a mon- 
 ism, as the explanation of things ; (b) that such a 
 relation is " accidental," " external," " arbitrary," 
 thus contingent. We must, in a word, have a 
 
288 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 cause which, from its nature, must pass into the 
 world, and show its nature in the world, or 
 through the nature of the world. 
 
 Now as to the phrase about " dualism," I set 
 not the slightest store by it. There may be 
 dualism in the universe, or there may not. 
 But to assume that there must be monism, and 
 that ultimately philosophy must find the one, 
 otherwise it is not "philosophy," is simply to 
 make a wholly gratuitous assumption, and to 
 peril the existence of philosophy on a condition 
 that may never be realised. What philosophy 
 seeks, and ought to seek, is something higher even 
 than monism, and that is the truth, the ultimate 
 truth of things. Whether this be monism, spirit- 
 ual or material, for the latter would equally well 
 satisfy the requirement of unity, or whether it 
 be dualism, or that which we can only name 
 as such, is a matter to be settled by philosophy ; 
 but the settlement one way or another, whether 
 monistic or dualistic, would not be suicide for 
 philosophy itself. 
 
 As to the phrases "external," "accidental," 
 "arbitrary," they really are without force or 
 relevancy. Supposing the world to be an act of 
 the Divine, the result of a free act not necessi- 
 tated, this would be no more " arbitrary," " acci- 
 dental," " external " to His Being, than an act of 
 
THE INFINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 289 
 
 free- will is to ours. As I have said elsewhere, 
 "so far from a creation which depends on an 
 act of free-will, regulated by thought analogous 
 to our experience, evidencing only an external 
 or accidental relationship, it is in fact the sym- 
 bol of the very closest, most intimate, of all 
 the relationships of our consciousness. For the 
 closest tie which we know in our inward ex- 
 perience is just that which subsists between 
 the willing and the resolution which I form. I 
 relate resolution to myself in a way in which I 
 relate no other mode of consciousness, either 
 feeling, desire, or thought itself. It is mine 
 in the sense of being truly my own creation ; 
 and it is to me the most fitting of all analogies 
 for the mysterious fact of Divine origination 
 itself. The finite, as thus related to the infinite, 
 is truly the passage of the Divine Power into 
 actuality or realisation. It is only a purely 
 verbal logic, founding on verbal assumptions, 
 which can regard it as ' external ' or ' accidental.' 
 . . . Will, the expression of personality, both as 
 originating resolutions and moulding existing 
 material into form, is the nearest approach in 
 thought which we can make to Divine Crea- 
 tion." 1 
 
 But, further, what is the alternative given to 
 
 1 Descartes, Introduction, pp. clxv, clxvi. 
 T 
 
290 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 us here ? The cause must be such, that from its 
 nature it must pass into act, and so manifest its 
 nature. 
 
 In the first place, the cause, call it infinite 
 or absolute, is under a necessity of manifes- 
 tation. Well, then, the development will be in 
 one definite form, and no other. Necessity 
 knows no variation. The development is in 
 time; let us take it as the development we 
 know, or as has happened, though that we 
 never could predict. But let us take it so. 
 Then our world is the one possible, because it 
 is the one necessary. Are we prepared to take 
 this consequence ? Do the -facts of experience 
 warrant it? Does the physical or moral quality 
 of the world warrant it? Can we ascribe to 
 the finite material world which we find in our 
 experience more than a purely hypothetical 
 necessity ? No one, I think, will venture ra- 
 tionally to do more than this. Mechanical and 
 chemical laws depend ultimately on atomic ex- 
 istence, proportion, combination, collocation. Or- 
 ganisation and life are also somehow connected 
 with those circumstances. But is it not con- 
 ceivable that those ultimate constituents of the 
 universe might have been different in various 
 points of constitution and adjustment ? Will it 
 be maintained that the actual order which we 
 
THE INFINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 291 
 
 know has arisen is the only possible order the 
 single necessary and essential development at 
 the root of things ? Is there not presumption 
 of the worst and rashest sort in saying that the 
 contents and the laws of this planet of ours, and 
 of such other parts of the universe as we happen 
 to know, is the only possible the necessary 
 development of the one Infinite Power at the 
 root of Being ? Did the necessary development 
 of this power only begin when this planet was 
 cast off from the sun, and commenced existence 
 as a seething mass of matter? And is such 
 necessary development limited to this temporary, 
 passing, isolated world of ours ? Further, does 
 not the element of evil in the world imply a 
 contingency which is entirely incompatible with 
 the supposition of a single possible best evolution 
 from an absolutely perfect infinite ? l 
 
 But is the finite being or development not 
 variable in content at the will the reasonable 
 or righteous will, it may be of the Infinite One ? 
 Then what becomes of his infinity? Can we 
 conceive a Being as infinite who is restricted to 
 a single development of finite being ? But if he is 
 not so restricted, but may evolve several forms of 
 finitude, how can it be said that any finite as a 
 given form is necessary to him, or results neces- 
 
 1 Descartes, Introductim, p. clxvii. 
 
292 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 sarily from his nature ? Or, in other words, that he 
 stands in necessary relation to any given develop- 
 ment ? or to any development which he may not 
 vary that is, to any development at all ? Is not a 
 Power a personality which can vary can con- 
 trol its own development higher than a Power 
 which is under necessitation in a definite mode ? 
 In the whole, or nearly the whole, of those 
 absolute or transcendental starting-points there 
 is an assumption which is unwarrantable, and 
 really vitiates the whole of the deduction, whether 
 of knowledge or being, in each case. I should 
 express this assumption by saying that there 
 is an abstraction an undue abstraction of 
 the actual or real or material side of knowing 
 from the possible, indefinite, or formal side. To 
 understand this we may start, in the first place, 
 from what every one acknowledges "I think," 
 "I am conscious," "I know." In so express- 
 ing ourselves we use two terms that which 
 thinks, that which is conscious, or, if you choose, 
 that which comes to think, that which comes to 
 consciousness. Now, which is the ultimate here 
 if ultimate there be, or be sought ? Is it that 
 which thinks, or is it the thinking ? Our phil- 
 osophy will be determined almost wholly by the 
 answer which we give to this question by the 
 alternative which we select 
 
THE INFINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 293 
 
 What is Kant's alternative? Apparently the 
 thinking, the consciousness, but the pure or 
 mere consciousness that is, the consciousness 
 viewed abstractly from that which is conscious. 
 It is in his language the synthetic unity of 
 apperception or consciousness. This is an act 
 or process, if it have any meaning at all. It is 
 the consciousness, not that which is conscious 
 or comes to consciousness. It is the thinking, 
 not the "I." And out of this pure or mere con- 
 sciousness, if so much can be credited to it, the 
 " I " of consciousness comes. In fact, the order, 
 the logical order, is reversed. It is not I who 
 think or am conscious who generates or is the 
 source of consciousness, but it is the conscious- 
 ness, the pure, mere abstract consciousness, which 
 so to speak, generates the " I " or " me." This, 
 it seems to me, is the fruitful source of the 
 aberrations in method of subsequent German 
 transcendentalism of the systems of Fichte, 
 Schelling, and Hegel. With Fichte for Kant's 
 phrase is substituted the "pure ego," but this 
 is no more that which thinks than it is with Kant. 
 It means with Fichte, and can only mean on a 
 system which states a basis above experience, 
 " pure thought " or " pure consciousness " divorced 
 from an actual ego, but issuing in it afterwards, 
 as it issues in nature. With Schelling, also, 
 
294 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 the indifference or identity of subject and ob- 
 ject is not that which thinks the identity, but 
 the consciousness, real or supposed, of the 
 identity itself. And with Hegel we have the 
 most obvious acknowledgment of the separation 
 of the pure consciousness or being from that 
 which is conscious ; in the Idea, as equivalent to 
 the Eeal, in pure thought pure being; as the 
 principle of all, as in and constituting all, devel- 
 oping through all, through finite mind or Ego, 
 Nature, up to Absolute Idea. 
 
 Now I say this is a wholly illegitimate and 
 illogical abstraction. If you are to seek an 
 ultimate being beyond the me thinking or con- 
 sciousness, it is not the consciousness or think- 
 ing on which you ought to fix, but on that 
 which every conceivable act of consciousness or 
 concept even of consciousness presupposes viz., 
 that which is conscious, and which knows itself 
 to be conscious. Pure or mere consciousness is 
 not the first thing, relatively, but the " I " or 
 thinker. Pure or mere thinking has no meaning, 
 or conceivability even, apart from that which 
 underlies it. Nay, such a concept has no power 
 of movement, or of doing anything whatever. It 
 has no dynamic in itself, and it is only as that 
 which thinks, moves, acts, that it can move or 
 act, or come into any form of conceivable reality 
 
THE INFINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 295 
 
 or fact. It will be found that the alternative 
 which holds to both the ego and the conscious- 
 ness as the primordial fact in knowledge at least, 
 is the true one, whether we regard the ego 
 as constitutive of knowledge or merely the ob- 
 server of the great spectacle of things. 
 
 It might easily be shown that the same form 
 of fallacious basis runs through the system as 
 in Plato, which would make idea the first and 
 formative that is, idea per se. "We can form no 
 conception of such a process, apart from that 
 which ideates, so to speak, and realises the idea. 
 Call your forms idea, apperception, category, con- 
 cept, pure consciousness, pure thought, call it 
 what you will, this is, after all, an abstraction, 
 and an illegitimate abstraction, which puts the 
 second first, and which is utterly powerless to 
 take a single step into the sphere of being. 1 
 
 On the grounds which I have stated, and others 
 which might be adduced, I think the theory of 
 a literal one infinite self -consciousness which I 
 have now noticed quite untenable, and fitted to 
 throw no light on the problem of the world, 
 either as to origin, character, or destiny, or on 
 the same points touching man. Such a theory, 
 moreover, proceeds on a false or unsound philo- 
 
 1 Cf. Descartes, Introduction, chapters iii., iv., xi., xii. ; and 
 later, Bax, History of Philosophy, p. 345. 
 
296 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 sophical method. It begins at the wrong end; 
 and though it professes to keep in view always 
 experience, or its possibility, it wholly loses sight 
 of the relevant facts. 
 
 The true method, as seems to me, is 
 
 (1.) To accept and start from our own finite 
 self -consciousness, our own definite reality as 
 personality, as self -hood, guaranteed to us in 
 experience and the necessity of thought. 
 
 (2.) To show that all knowledge whatever, and 
 therefore every object of knowledge, is in relation 
 to this the real, definite, conscious subject ; and 
 this would include the knowledge even, the alleged 
 knowledge, of an infinite self -consciousness. 
 
 (3.) That to subvert the finite self-consciousness 
 is to subvert all knowledge. Unless this be in- 
 dubitable, nothing else is certain. To make it 
 illusory is to make all knowledge illusory to 
 sap, in a word, the foundations of realism, ideal- 
 ism, infinite egoism itself. 
 
 (4.) To show that, with the finite ego of con- 
 sciousness as a basis, we may, nay, perhaps must, 
 rise above it, to an ego in the world spiritual, 
 like our ego knowing ; free, like our ego willing ; 
 creative, like our ego doing, known thus not 
 anthropomorphically, but by analogy, with what 
 is highest in our conscious experience. And this 
 higher ego can, I think, be best reached through 
 
THE INFINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 297 
 
 the argument of dependence, or the broken, in- 
 complete, imperfect character of our experience, 
 as in man and the world. This would be to 
 ground on a fact, not to hypostatise an ab- 
 straction. 
 
 The main fallacy which runs all through the 
 reasoning of the school to which I have re- 
 ferred, is supposing that in what is called the 
 transcendental proof or deduction of the ele- 
 ments of knowledge, we can deal with any 
 knowledge other than the human, with know- 
 ledge in general, or that we can have any higher 
 guarantee for any assertion whatever than the 
 necessity which lies in the thought of each in- 
 dividual, testing it for himself. No man can do 
 more than analyse his own conscious knowledge, 
 which exists as a fact, into its elements ; and he 
 can have no other or higher guarantee for the 
 nexiis or connection of those elements than the 
 necessity he feels of thinking it, either directly, or 
 indirectly, through the necessity of foregoing prin- 
 ciples. Even if I come to allege the necessity of 
 the one infinite self-consciousness as at the root 
 of all, this after all is but a conviction in me, the 
 individual thinker, which I hold and believe to 
 be necessary. After all, the one infinite self- 
 consciousness hangs on my thinking, and it is 
 the merest delusion to suppose that because I 
 
298 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 call it by this high-sounding name, it can pos- 
 sibly have any guarantee beyond the ordinary 
 psychological analysis and reflection ; and this, 
 when rightly interpreted, only exposes its incon- 
 sistency and its emptiness. 
 
 The other fallacy in the method seems to me 
 to consist in making the universal ego necessary 
 to knowledge, a reality or power capable of mani- 
 festing itself, even creating things, while it is a 
 simple abstraction from the fact that in all our 
 knowledge there is an ego. This is wholly to mis- 
 take the nature of an abstraction or abstract idea. 
 The universal ego as an idea has no power or 
 reality in time whatever no activity. It is on 
 the same level as any concept, which we hold 
 and can realise, by thinking it as exemplified in 
 an instance in this case, this or that ego. So far 
 from such an ego being a power of creating us, 
 we are the power which creates it first by ab- 
 straction, and then by imagination realising the 
 abstraction. A more complete case of what we 
 call vcrrepov Trporepov cannot be conceived. In 
 this sense, no doubt, a universal ego is intelligi- 
 ble; but it is wholly powerless, wholly useless 
 as a ground of reality. 
 
 Further, I may add that I do not see how 
 even the term God or Deity can be retained on 
 such a theory. When we speak of God, of man, 
 
THE INFINITE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 299 
 
 of the world, we mean a contrast a certain op- 
 position. 1 The two latter may be fused, as it 
 were; they may be regarded as one a form of 
 finite reality. Still this reality is regarded as 
 different from, even in opposition to, the reality 
 we name God. The term God marks for us the 
 highest reach of opposition in infinite and finite, 
 absolute and relative, unconditioned and condi- 
 tioned, and other expressions. But, according to 
 the theory, this opposition no longer truly exists in 
 any form, either in knowledge or in reality. The 
 knowledge of the one term, the infinite, is not pos- 
 sible without the knowledge of the other ; the real- 
 ity of the one term is not possible apart from the 
 reality of the other : the one only is as the other 
 is ; the other is only as the one is. The terms 
 infinite and finite no longer mark a contrast, but 
 a unity a unity of knowledge and being. How, 
 then, can the term GOD be any longer applied to 
 that in which He is not distinguished from His 
 opposite, but really fused with it made depend- 
 ent on it for His reality ? That which is only, as 
 it is one and many, cannot certainly be regarded 
 as the one in the relation. He cannot even be 
 regarded as that which relates the many to the 
 one; He is simply a form of abstract relation- 
 
 1 See Descartes, Introduction, p. clxxi et seq. Cf. Bax, 
 History of Philosophy, p. 393. 
 
300 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 ship in which opposition is unknown a void and 
 empty conception indifferent to content capable 
 of being spoken of neither as one nor many, 
 neither as reality nor person ; above predication, 
 because above attributes, either of power, intelli- 
 gence, or goodness. God is now neither substance, 
 cause, nor being ; He is not the ultimate or the 
 first. What we call God on such a system is as 
 much subject to the iron fate of the relationship, 
 as the minutest particle of being or the meanest 
 of His creatures. The eternal, ever-manifesting 
 relationship of the one and the many is THE 
 SUPREME, and to it the actual one is as indifferent 
 as the many, the many as the one. 
 
301 
 
 IX. PHILOSOPHY OF EELIGION. 
 
 WE have treatises professing to deal with the 
 " Philosophy of Keligion." The title is an aspir- 
 ing one. Under the heading " Philosophy of Ke- 
 ligion " should be found, in the first place, a broad- 
 minded effort to grasp the religious facts in their 
 integrity and totality, as the religious conscious- 
 ness and its history present them. Instead of this 
 we have usually placed in the fore-front of the 
 investigation, or to be found running through the 
 discussion, a certain philosophical theory, which 
 is used as the standard by which to try the facts ; 
 and simply because these facts do not suit the 
 theory that is, it may be, because the theory is 
 too narrow for the facts these are either rejected, 
 or so eviscerated of meaning as to cease to be 
 what they were formerly regarded. And it may 
 possibly be found that the pretensions of the 
 theory put forward are such as cannot be ad- 
 mitted in any science or system of knowledge 
 that deals with the facts of experience. It may 
 
302 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 be found that these pretensions are applicable only 
 to the line of mathematical reasoning, that they 
 are such as must fail in regard to matter of fact 
 real, moral, or spiritual, that even if they could 
 be applied to the abstract categories of thought, 
 they would still leave out all actual reality of 
 time and space and experience in general. 
 
 We are told that true knowledge, rational 
 knowledge that is, philosophical knowledge is 
 a cognition of necessary truths, and this in the 
 sense of finding necessary links in all parts of 
 knowledge from beginning to end, so that one is 
 involved in and flows out of the other in an 
 ordered and perfectly necessary systematic con- 
 nection. We do not find merely that things are, 
 but we discover that they must be, I presume, as 
 they are. The one being given, the others follow, 
 and the whole body of knowledge constitutes one 
 organic system. This is the language of the 
 commentators and followers of Hegel from Vera 
 onwards to recent productions in the same line. 
 We are always to get " systematic," " organised," 
 "rational" knowledge. This is a very fine and 
 high-sounding formula; and we have had pre- 
 tensions before to mathematical demonstration in 
 philosophical knowledge. In the past, these pro- 
 fessions have come to very little ; they are not 
 more profitable now. If, instead of standing on 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 303 
 
 this high a priori platform for it is nothing else 
 the professors would come to experience, to 
 science with the whole body of its generalisa- 
 tions, to the elements of matter in the form of 
 atoms, and show how these are actually neces- 
 sarily connected, they would do some relevant and 
 crucial work. If they would further show the 
 necessary transition from atomism, or any stage 
 they may name, to organism and life, and from 
 life to soul and man, and from man to God, they 
 would do something to the purpose and in the 
 way of proving their sounding thesis. But until 
 this is done with some reasonableness and cogency, 
 we may fairly disregard the pretension. Mean- 
 while, what may be said about the pretension is, 
 that there is no proof or even possibility of show- 
 ing necessary connections between the truths of 
 science from the beginning to the end, even the 
 widest generalisations of science, that such a 
 series of necessary links could apply to the ab- 
 stract categories of thought alone, that these 
 links have not been supplied in regard even to 
 them, and that if they were supplied, the system 
 would still leave out of sight the whole world of 
 individual realities, all that is of highest concern 
 to us, all that is most worthy of attention in any 
 system of philosophy deserving the name. 
 
 But, further, there must be straightforward in- 
 
304 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 tellectual dealing with this " thought," " organic 
 reason," or whatever it may be called, in which 
 Man, Nature, God are both moments, which is the 
 unity of all, and which I am said to get as a pre- 
 supposition of my self-consciousness, conscious- 
 ness of subject and object in experience. We 
 ought to be frankly told whether it is simply an 
 "other" of me and my self -consciousness, a higher, 
 larger self, the " thought " I know and am a 
 reduplication, in a word, of my self-consciousness. 
 But this apparently is not so, for thus we should 
 not escape the much-decried theory of anthropo- 
 morphism, and we should retain the laws and 
 limitations which are essential to finite thought 
 and constitute it. What, then, we have to ask, is 
 " the thought " or " reason " which is the neces- 
 sary postulate of our thought or reason ? What 
 is that " thought " in which we are, and nature is, 
 and which is also God? It is clearly not our 
 thought, nor anything in the least like our 
 thought ; for our thought, as is admitted in 
 phrases calling it "the logical understanding," 
 " the finite consciousness," and so on, is subject 
 to the laws which regulate definite knowledge 
 intuition and conception, the laws of Identity 
 and Non-Contradiction, without which a definite 
 object is neither conceivable nor intelligible, 
 without which the definite intuition of an object 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 305 
 
 in time or in time and space, suffers complete 
 dissolution, without which, in a word, the ab- 
 surd is all-pervading, and knowledge chaos. This 
 is the limitation, the essential constitution of our 
 thought, its very nerve and sinew. The identity 
 of an intuition with itself, the self identity of the 
 point of time or space in which the perception 
 occurs, the distinction of the before and the after 
 in all intuitional knowledge, the identity of a 
 definite concept with itself, the absolute exclusion 
 of intuition and concept from its contradictory 
 sphere, the opposition of the fixed concept, scien- 
 tific or moral, to its contradictory negative, rail 
 this is guaranteed to us by the laws of Identity and 
 Non-Contradiction ; and if these are abolished or 
 suspended, our knowledge, our thought, is abol- 
 ished, and we have in its place pure meaningless- 
 ness, the deceptive shadow of knowledge in the 
 formulas of empty words. But " the thought " 
 which, wonderfully enough, " our thought " postu- 
 lates as its necessary presupposition, is the very 
 reverse of all this. This other thought or reason, 
 it seems, seeks unity complete unity ; and unity 
 is not to be got by mere affirmation that a thing is 
 what it is, as if, by the way, any one ever said 
 that affirmation under logical law did more than 
 declare and preserve unity. This higher or other 
 thought is a thought or conception, if we may 
 u 
 
306 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 still retain the words in their new and unusual 
 application, which runs what a thing is into 
 what it is not, affirmation into negation, exist- 
 ence by itself into existence other than itself, into 
 a denial which gives up any separate self -identical 
 being or life. And it does all this in order to 
 reach unity true unity the being of the thing 
 as it is, as at once what is and is not. This is 
 the presupposition of our limited and conditioned 
 thought, and it works in the spheres of Nature, 
 Man, and God, fuses them, takes them up into 
 itself, and so constitutes the universe of Being in 
 its totality and its oneness. Thus Man, Nature, 
 and God are in the end reconciled, and the ex- 
 pression " I am that I am " becomes " I am that I 
 am not." Various difficulties suggest themselves 
 here, but for the present purpose it is not neces- 
 sary to ask more than this Can this " thought," 
 this "reason," be called thought or reason as 
 known to us, or in our consciousness ? Are we 
 not now using the word in a wholly new con- 
 notation ? And have we a right to use it ? I say 
 we have not. If thought is to be stripped of its 
 acknowledged law and limitation that which is 
 its recognised essence let us coin another word 
 for the supposed entity so designated. We ought 
 to give up the name when we have abandoned 
 the thing. 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 307 
 
 This "absolute thought" or "reason" is not 
 thought or reason in any sense of the terms. It 
 is not a postulate or presupposition of our con- 
 ciousness in any form it is the contradiction of 
 our thought. It does not truly contain relations, 
 for it has nothing to relate; it provides for no 
 ground of relation in any self-existing unity, 
 either time or thought-identity. It has no real 
 unity ; it is only as it is in varied relations, and 
 these are only as in it; it is a pure abstraction 
 which has no counterpart in any concrete ; it is 
 kept afloat only by unanalysed metaphors and 
 bad analogies. 
 
 A complete or reasoned-out system of this 
 world Man, Nature, and God is an impossi- 
 bility on the conditions of our thought, much 
 more on their subversion. " Keason," Hegel tells 
 us, " is Substance as well as Infinite Power. Its 
 own infinite material underlies all the natural 
 and spiritual life which it originates, as also the 
 infinite form, that which sets this material in 
 motion. On the one hand, Keason is the sub- 
 stance of the universe, that by which and in 
 which all reality has its being and substance. On 
 the other hand, it is the infinite energy of the 
 universe ; since Keason is not so powerless as to 
 be incapable of producing anything but a mere 
 ideal, a mere intention having its place outside 
 
308 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 reality, nobody knows where, something separate 
 and abstract in the heads of certain human beings. 
 It is the infinite complex of things, their entire 
 essence and truth. It is its own material which it 
 commits to its own active energy to work up. . . . 
 It supplies its own nourishment, and is the object 
 of its own operations. While it is exclusively its 
 own basis of existence, and absolute final aim, it 
 is also the energising power realising this aim, 
 developing it not only in the phenomena of the 
 natural, but also of the spiritual universe the 
 History of the World. This ' Idea ' or ' Keason ' 
 is the true, the eternal, the absolutely powerful 
 essence ; it reveals itself in the world." l 
 
 Now I shall take this passage as summary and 
 typical, and I would ask, in the face of it, for an 
 explicit answer to the question as to what finite 
 " reality " in any form can mean, consistently 
 with its averments ? In what sense distinctive- 
 ness, independence, and difference can be ascribed 
 to the finite self-consciousness, to the Individual 
 Being of time, or of time and space ? I would 
 ask further, what possibly can be meant on such 
 a statement by the words Finite Power and Free- 
 dom, by Obligation, Responsibility, the distinc- 
 tions of Right and Wrong, the law of Duty ? I 
 would ask further, even, what is meant by the 
 1 Hegel, History of Philosophy, pp. 9, 10 (Eng. ed.) 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 309 
 
 World of Nature, by the natural and the super- 
 natural, by the material and the spiritual, the 
 human and the divine? These distinctions are 
 said to be preserved " within the Eeason." I ask 
 how they are or can be so preserved ? I ask also 
 how the development of that which is at once 
 Substance and Power is compatible with the merit 
 and demerit of the actors in history, as all his- 
 tory is simply its manifestation ? I ask, in a 
 word, how on such a doctrine anything which is 
 can be anything except that which must be ? 
 And if so, how that is compatible with any con- 
 viction which we possess regarding the possibility 
 of freedom in the realisation by us of moral ends, 
 or the spontaneous homage of worship to a God ? 
 These are questions on which I should humbly 
 desire to find some light thrown by those who 
 professedly accept the theory, and yet, as I assume, 
 hold by the realities and possibilities which I 
 challenge as incompatible. 
 
 "Moments within the Eeason" this is the 
 expression for the reality of Man, Nature, all 
 the individualities of the universe, nay, all the 
 generalities -of being. As nothing is fixed on the 
 scheme, and all is flowing, a " moment " even is 
 something. But I fear that a " moment " in the 
 course of the out-going of " the Absolute Eeason " 
 whatever that may be is not much to help us. 
 
310 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 It may appear to have a character of its own for 
 the time, but then this simply comes to become 
 to pass away into its opposite. Alas for the 
 individual, on the low level of time, who accepts 
 and believes in it! This moment is no more 
 different from the Absolute Substance or Keason 
 than is the drop of water from the stream. It 
 is but one of one and many. And however the 
 sparkle of the moment may make it seem to 
 differ, it is really the same, only a phase of the 
 passing substantial absolute, which is the law 
 of the identity of all things, the synthesis of 
 all contradictions. The natural outcome of the 
 Hegelian conception on what may be called its 
 abstract side is simply that the individual is a 
 "reflection," the passing reflection of the all- 
 comprehending substance. This side has been 
 actually developed and is represented by Strauss. 
 The absolute is the flow of the individuals of time 
 and space, thought is the thought of conscious in- 
 dividuals, the sum of natural law is the divine. 
 On -the other hand, as the individual contains the 
 abstract universality, and gives it meaning and 
 being, the supreme principle or ground of all is 
 simply a projection of the likeness of the individ- 
 ual himself on the mirror of his own consciousness. 
 This we have in Feuerbach. 1 
 
 1 Cf. Descartes, 'Introduction, xii., and Bax, History of 
 Philosophy, p. 341. 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF KELIGION. 311 
 
 Can there be any result of this speculative 
 system but absolute individualism, if anything 
 real be preserved from it at all? What are 
 "the moments" of the absolute Eeason on such 
 a view but simply the abstractions which I, 
 the individual, make ? . How can they have 
 even meaning unless for me or some individual 
 in time ? And each moment, what I call 
 man, subjective and objective mind, nature, 
 mechanical, chemical, organic, these are all but 
 points of view of mine, these are abstractions 
 dependent on my individual thought, ay, and 
 the Eeason itself, the absolute, the God who is 
 the synthesis of all contradictions, He too is my 
 creation. How then could this grand Monism 
 come to anything but the most isolated Monad- 
 ism ? Certainly nothing else. I have projected 
 from myself certain abstractions, with these I 
 have overshadowed myself, and perhaps I cower 
 under them as objects hypostatised superior to 
 myself. But after all, they are but my own cre- 
 ations. I soon come to find that this is so, and 
 when I give them up as realities I get rid of a 
 domineering and desolating Pantheism. But I 
 Jiave no other refuge except the other alternative 
 of the theory that of absolute individualism as 
 the basis and ground of all the abstractions which 
 I have been told was the sphere of reality, but 
 which I find is only the realm of shades. 
 
312 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 " The surrender of individual ethics " is the 
 last result of Hegelianism, and in its place we 
 are to have social ethics, that of the family, the 
 city, and the state. The surrender is not only of 
 all individual ethics, but of every ethical concep- 
 tion whatever. And we are no longer to worship 
 an anthropomorphic Deity. No ; we are only to 
 worship the absolute, which is the self-conscious 
 synthesis of all contradictions. For my part, 
 though not restricted to that, I prefer the an- 
 thropomorphic Deity. If he is not divine, he 
 is at least human. 
 
 Perhaps it may be found that the theorising of 
 religion is not quite within the purely speculative 
 or cognitive point of view, and that a philosophy 
 which starts simply from what is called " Reason," 
 or " pure knowledge," or " pure thought," has set 
 out on a wrong track, and not recognising the 
 full or normal nature of man in relation to the 
 universe or whole of experience with what it 
 implies, can but work out the microcosm, the 
 little world of individual conception, as opposed 
 to the great world, the macrocosm of God. 
 
 The misconceptions about the laws of Identity 
 and Non- Contradiction being applicable in one 
 sphere and transcended in another, which form 
 the groundwork of most recent Neo-Kantian trea- 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 313 
 
 tises on religion, are really marvellous to any one 
 ordinarily familiar with what these laws mean. 
 These laws are simply applicable to definite per- 
 cepts or concepts ; they cannot be applied to 
 the indefinite or indeterminate from their very 
 nature, and they are purely hypothetical. Given 
 a percept or concept of that which I definitely 
 know, this is to be regarded as what it is, and not 
 to be identified or confounded with its opposite. 
 The yellow I see is not red or blue, the organised I 
 conceive is not the unorganised or inorganic, the 
 round is not the square and so on. We can 
 make no assertion, lay down no premiss, take no 
 step in reasoning, without the assumption here 
 involved. Even when professing to assail the 
 assumption itself, we must make this very as- 
 sumption: Given A, whatever definite thing it 
 may be, it is not not-A. Such a statement can 
 never be contradicted in a so-called other or 
 higher sphere of knowledge that is, in the in- 
 definite or indeterminate ; for as there is no longer 
 a definite datum to begin with, the law which 
 conserves the identity of the datum with itself 
 has no possibility of application. It cannot con- 
 serve what is not as yet definite, for there is 
 nothing to conserve. If the thought be definite 
 to which the law is applied, it is absolute, insu- 
 perable, for it is wholly relative to the difference 
 
314 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 between the thought and its opposite : if the so- 
 called thought be indefinite, the law has no appli- 
 cation except such as is possible terminally. 
 There is, therefore, no possibility of such a law 
 being valid in one sphere and not in another. 
 
 Then, further, such a law applies even to the 
 definite only hypothetically. The datum is to 
 be somehow got or given something is ere the 
 law can come into application at all. Then we 
 can predicate of it self -identity. The relationship 
 is therefore hypothetical ; and, as such, is incap- 
 able of categorical denial. This makes it always 
 absolute or insuperable. Except in the sphere of 
 the given datum, the relation cannot hold, and 
 cannot be either true or false. It cannot, there- 
 fore, be subverted in any sphere of intelligibility 
 whatever called reason or anything else and 
 much less can such a principle be made a means 
 of method or immanent dialectic in developing 
 the indeterminate through its negation to definite 
 content. 
 
 Another fruitful source of confusion in this 
 subject is the lack of a clear and precise concep- 
 tion of what " externality " means, as applied to 
 the space-world, to other selves, and to Deity 
 Himself. This involves the whole question of 
 independent existence. As to the world in space, 
 externality is used and spoken of by some writers 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 315 
 
 as if the relation involved were a purely space- 
 relation that is, of points out of points the 
 relation exemplified in space itself. Conscious- 
 ness or the self-conscious is, as it were, set up 
 here in this point of space, and externality is 
 assumed to mean other things there in space. 
 There is talk of the outside of consciousness, as if 
 consciousness were regarded as a sort of pitcher 
 with a proper locality in space, and some things 
 might be inside it and other things outside it. 
 This is pretty much the Neo-Kantian representa- 
 tion of the realistic view of consciousness. And 
 we are told that there is no "outside" of con- 
 sciousness all is inside ; all is inside, or rather 
 if there be an outside, there is no outside to con- 
 sciousness ; it is always an outside in conscious- 
 ness. The inside of consciousness contains insides 
 and outsides, but it has no outside to itself. The 
 principle of the "stick argument" seems to be 
 here for the moment forgotten that an inside 
 implies an outside, just as the one end of the stick 
 implies the other. 
 
 The true conception of internality and exter- 
 nality has nothing to do with trifling verbalism 
 of this sort. That is said to be internal, or within 
 the mind, which is a property or quality of the 
 mind or ego, as feeling, perceiving, remember- 
 ing, reasoning, willing. These are in the mind 
 
316 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 as the subject of inherence, as its special con- 
 stitutive properties. They with the ego are in- 
 ternal, whatever be the relation of the ego to 
 time or space. They constitute the manifested 
 internal reality of mind, as opposed to qualities 
 which do not belong to mind. That, again, is 
 said to be external or without the mind which is 
 a property or quality not inhering in the mind 
 as subject, and actually or possibly inhering in 
 that which is a not-self or non-ego. The sub- 
 jective entity in old phraseology, as of Occam 
 and the Schoolmen, who could think precisely at 
 least, is the real in existence, that which has 
 qualities special to itself, of which it is the 
 subject, subject of inherence. There may be 
 what we call material quality, extension, figure, 
 divisibility, spatial quality, inhering in a non- 
 ego which we name material, or at least do not 
 regard as our mind, or mind at all. Or there 
 may be mental qualities which do not inhere in 
 me, the individual ego, but in another indi- 
 vidual ego, like me, existing in time, qualities 
 similar to mine but numerically different. Or 
 there may be a quality which I ascribe to the 
 Supreme Ego that is, a non-ego to me, as 
 omnipotence, omniscience, which I do not pos- 
 sess, which does not inhere in me, but which, 
 as inhering in the Supreme Ego, is external to 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 317 
 
 me. This is the true concept of internality and 
 externality the concept, to wit, of that which 
 inheres in one subject to the exclusion of that 
 which inheres in another, whether that be re- 
 garded as the subject of material or spiritual 
 inherence. In this sense, externality to my con- 
 sciousness is an absolute necessity, if I am to 
 allow anything except a purely subjective or 
 idealistic egoism. The insentient and extended 
 are in this sense external to me. The whole 
 space - world is so. Other selves are external ; 
 Deity is external; and to this externality it 
 matters nothing whether, as conceived by me, 
 those objects are always consciously conceived; 
 they are still conceived as externalities in 
 the sphere of being to the internality which 
 makes up my sphere of being. I stand in 
 contrast to the material non-ego, as possessing 
 specific qualities which it does not possess. I 
 stand in contrast to other egos as possessing 
 qualities, it may be, like theirs, yet numerically 
 and really distinct. I stand in contrast to God, 
 the Supreme Ego, as not possessing the quali- 
 ties which He possesses, or which I attribute to 
 Him. It is the merest self-deceptive verbalism 
 to say that simply because I know those facts, 
 all these things become parts of me, or depend 
 for their reality on my knowledge, or, which comes 
 
318 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 to the same thing, on some principle unproved 
 and hypothetical called Eternal or Infinite, 
 knowing in me. This, in fact, is really to beg 
 externality in order to destroy externality, all 
 the true reality of the world of being revealed in 
 my knowledge. 
 
 Further, and this point is essential, there is no 
 real analysis in Neo- Kantian authors of the 
 terms which they employ. They do not use 
 words in a definite sense in a sense which is 
 worthy of philosophical method. The phrases, 
 for example, of " eternal consciousness," " in- 
 finite consciousness," are put forward abso- 
 lutely without analysis, or without attempting 
 to show what is the meaning, if any, which can 
 by us be put into them. We have no defini- 
 tion, or even effort to set in definite words the 
 meaning of those terms. Definition may be 
 impossible and out of place, but this ought to 
 be said, and said explicitly. People have no 
 right to go on using words as if these had a 
 definite sense, when they may not have this at 
 all, and especially when the sense is not pointed 
 out and specified. 
 
 The word "eternal" has no true application 
 to the first principle of things until we know 
 what that first principle is. This might be atom, 
 or space, or time, so far as we know or can deter- 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 319 
 
 mine. " Eternal " really tells us nothing until 
 we know what the eternal is. In Green's use 
 there is no propriety in the word: it does not 
 mean something enduring always ; it means 
 that which is not in time at all. This cannot 
 possibly even be related to succession in time. 
 Green's use of " eternal " suggests an abstraction 
 which does not depend on this or that time, but 
 which may be true at any time or at no time, 
 being a mere essence thought by us something 
 one and indivisible as any abstract concept is. 
 
 Then as to the term " infinite," we have the 
 most various and conflicting applications. Usual- 
 ly it means simply the indefinite that to which 
 we can add without stop or limit, not knowing 
 whether there is stop or limit in the thing. In 
 numbers we can go on adding indefinitely ; there 
 is no definite number to which we cannot add, 
 just as there is no space or time known to us 
 which we cannot transcend. Yet this alone 
 this possibility of constant transcendence tells 
 us nothing as to the nature of the thing whether 
 it is completely without limits in its own being 
 or not. Possibly this may help us to the latter 
 conception; but the indefinite the indefinitely 
 increasable never can be identified with the 
 infinite. And the term " infinite," as that wholly 
 without bounds, can never be applied without 
 
320 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 contradiction to an ego a conscious ego of 
 which we can form any conception whatever. 
 
 The true conception of God is thus not to be 
 found in the terms " infinite " or " eternal," or both 
 combined. We may have these applied quite well 
 to that which is not God, or worthy of the name. 
 Atom may be eternal, space may be infinite ; but 
 neither would be God for us, or both combined. 
 There might be even an eternity of duration 
 through a whole mechanical past. We should 
 not worship that as God. 
 
 The only approach to an adequate conception 
 of God the only conception which provides 
 even for the possibility of the reality God is 
 that of absolute or complete independence of 
 Causality so far as His own being is concerned 
 while His action relatively to others is free. 
 This is the conception, in a way, of our own volition. 
 God, if at all, must rise above the line of finite 
 regress ; He cannot be a cause in that ; He cannot 
 be a cause dependent on another cause ; He must 
 be somewhere or at some point in the line of an 
 otherwise endless scientific regress, there above 
 it, yet related to it, and in it, otherwise He is 
 nothing for us. He need not cease, being an 
 absolute, independent cause, free and related to 
 things, from living and constant action in all this 
 great, varied, and wonderful world. He doubt- 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 321 
 
 less is the power in all, through all the power 
 in whom we live, and move, and have our being. 
 And He probably is nearer to us than those im- 
 mersed in the senses and the world ever suspect, 
 all through their happy and prosperous life; for the 
 senses, unillumined by pure imaginative insight, 
 or by reason, blind us to God. But whether we 
 can fill up the concept of Him or not whether 
 we can point to the being who is God, or whether 
 we must wait and follow with faltering steps His 
 partial, ever-growing, ever-living revelation, yet 
 we can and do know that He is and must be 
 seeing we know what we are, and how insuffi- 
 cient, dependent, and contingent is all in this 
 experience of ours. 
 
 But do not let us suppose that we have ex- 
 hausted the idea of God by " eternal," even " an 
 eternal self -distinguishing consciousness," or by 
 an " infinite self-consciousness," or any vague un- 
 analysed metaphorical phrases of this sort. God 
 is the perfect Being, the ens realissimum, the 
 Being who unites in Himself the attributes of 
 eternity and infinity, and absolute or complete 
 perfection. God is all that man is at his highest, 
 all that we can conceive of him at the best, 
 sublimed it may be raised a long way above 
 anthropomorphism, yet not merged in the im- 
 personality of pantheism. This conception may 
 x 
 
322 KNOWING AND BEING. 
 
 be added to in our growing knowledge and love, 
 but can never be contradicted. 
 
 We ourselves, in the sphere of relations in 
 the related world can speak of God's mani- 
 festations only in broken, diverse, incomplete 
 phrases. Far beyond us God is, yet He is near 
 to us in all that is in our own selfhood, in 
 power, in cause, in truth, goodness, and beauty 
 in all high ends which we can seek ; He is at our 
 door, even dimly in our hearts. But this Being 
 can never be grasped in one conception, or 
 treated as if He were the term or beginning of 
 a mathematical demonstration. He is, no doubt, 
 one and supreme. But He has endless relations, 
 endless, just because He is God. He is the 
 ground of all in all, through all, yet some- 
 how, not there, not in His supreme essence, not 
 in His selfhood, not as God. But in looking up 
 to Him as the ground of all relations, we can- 
 not formulate God in one conception in one 
 idea of the so-called reason. The only philoso- 
 phy and the only religion worthy of the name 
 is that which looks beyond pure formulae of the 
 mere intelligence or thought, and finds God in the 
 breadth of experience, history, human life, yet, in 
 Himself, utterly transcendent of all that in these 
 we can know, feel, or name. Not the definitely 
 Known God, not the Unknown God is our last 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 323 
 
 word, far less the Unknowable God, but the ever- 
 to-be-known God. We are not God, and when we 
 form, or attempt to form, an idea of Him, we do 
 not create Him. As Bossuet well said: "Si 
 rhomme avait pu ouvertement se declarer Dieu, 
 son orgueil se serait emporte* jusqu'a cet exces ; 
 mais se dire Dieu et se sentir mortel, 1'arrogance 
 la plus aveugle en aurait honte." 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS. 
 
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 XII. 
 
 SPINOZA. 
 BY THE VERY REV. PRINCIPAL CAIRD, Glasgow. 
 
 "A masterly piece of exposition, and, as such, will be welcomed 
 by all students of philosophy A metaphysical disquisition, ex- 
 tremely able and very valuable." Globe. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 BACON. PART L LIFE. 
 
 BY PROFESSOR NICHOL, Glasgow. 
 
 " His estimate of both the man and the times is well informed and 
 impartial, and his treatment of the memorable episode of the fall of 
 Essex commends itself to the reader as pre-eminently thoughtful and 
 fair." Glasgow Herald. 
 
 " The story of Bacon's fall is told in a narrative which is a model 
 of clearness and fairness." Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 "Professor Nichol's monograph is a well - arranged and well- 
 executed performance. " Manchester Examiner. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 BACON. PART II. PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 BY PROFESSOR NICHOL, Glasgow. 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON. 
 
LIST OF 
 
 Educational Works 
 
 Published by 
 
 William Blackwood & Sons 
 
 45 GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH 
 
 AND 
 
 37 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
2 TOllfam JBlacfcwooD anD Sons' 
 
 English Composition. 
 
 A Manual of English Prose Literature, Biograph- 
 ical and Critical : designed mainly to show characteristics of style. 
 By WILLIAM MINTO, M.A., Prof, of Logic and English Literature 
 in the University of Aberdeen. Third Edition. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. 
 
 " A masterly manual of English prose literature." Standard. 
 
 " Will be welcomed by those who are capable of appreciating excellent work- 
 manship. It is not rash to say that this work is the first scientific treatment 
 of the subject by an English writer. . . . About the ability as well as the 
 originality of the work there cannot be two opinions. The views pronounced 
 are expressed in terse, weighty, incisive dicta sentences to be carried away as 
 a geologist carries away a sample. . . . It is the best English book on the 
 subject." Observer. 
 
 " Mr Minto's is no common book, but a very careful and well-considered 
 survey of the wide field he traverses a survey undertaken not without con- 
 siderable critical competency and large equipment of knowledge." Scotsman. 
 
 Characteristics of English Poets, from Chaucer 
 
 TO SHIRLEY. By the SAME. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. 
 
 "As an introduction to the literature of the time of which it treats, this 
 volume is unique." Scotsman. 
 
 " It is seldom that we meet with a volume of poetical criticism so thought- 
 ful and suggestive Enough has been said to call the reader's attention to 
 
 a book which is alike remarkable for freshness of thought and accuracy of 
 expression." Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 English Prose Composition; a Practical Manual 
 
 FOR USE IN SCHOOLS. By JAMES CURRIE, LL.D. Forty-Seventh 
 Thousand. Is. 6d. 
 
 The English Language : its Grammar, History, 
 
 and Literature, with Chapters on Composition, Versification, Para- 
 phrasing, and Punctuation. By J. M. D. MEIKLEJOHN, M.A., 
 Professor of the Theory, History, and Practice of Education in 
 St Andrews University. Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 4s. 6d. 
 
 Also to be had separately : 
 GRAMMAR, with Exercises, 2s. 6d. HISTORY OP ENGLISH LAN- 
 
 OOAOE, Is. HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, Is. 6d. 
 EXERCISES AND EXAMINATION PAPERS, 6d. 
 
 Mathematics. 
 Primer of Geometry. An Easy Introduction to 
 
 the Propositions of Euclid. By FRANCIS CUTHBERTSON, M.A., 
 LL.D., late Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge ; Mathe- 
 matical Master of the City of London School. 5th Edition. Is. 6d. 
 
 The Theory of Arithmetic. By DAVID MUNN, 
 
 F.R.S.E., Mathematical Master, Royal High School of Edinburgh. 
 Crown 8vo, pp. 294. 5s. 
 
 Treatise on Arithmetic, with numerous Exercises 
 
 for Teaching in Classes. By JAMES WATSON, one of the Masters 
 of Heriot's Hospital. A New Edition. Fcap. Is. 
 
 Algebra for Beginners. By C. SMITH. Parts I., 
 
 II., and III. Fcap. 6d. each. Answers to ditto. 2d. each. 
 
Bfcucatfonal 
 
 Latin and Greek. 
 Aditus Faeiliores: an Easy Latin Construing 
 
 Book, with Complete Vocabulary. By A. W. POTTS, M.A., 
 LL.D., Head-Master of the Fettes College, Edinburgh ; and the 
 Rev. C. DARNELL, M.A., Head-Master of Cargilfield Preparatory 
 School, Edinburgh. Ninth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Aditus Faeiliores Graeci : an Easy Greek Con- 
 struing Book, with Complete Vocabulary. By the SAME AOTHORS. 
 Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 
 
 A Parallel Syntax. Greek and Latin for Beginners, 
 
 with Exercises and a Greek Vocabulary. By the Rev. HERBERT 
 W. SNEYD-KYNNERSLEY, LL.M., Trin. Coll., Cambridge; Head- 
 Master of Sunninghill House, Ascot ; Author of ' Greek Verbs for 
 Beginners,' &c. Crown 8vo. 3s. 
 
 Practical Rudiments of the Latin Language; 
 
 or, LATIN FORMS AND ENGLISH ROOTS. By JOHN Ross, M. A., 
 LL.D., Rector of the High School of Arbroath. Third Edition. 
 Crown 8vo, pp. 164. Is. 6d. 
 
 Stonyhurst Latin Grammar. By Eev. JOHN 
 
 GERARD. Fcap. 8vo, pp. 199. 3s. 
 
 Introduction to the Writing of Greek. For the 
 
 Use of Junior Classes. By Sir D. K. SANDFORD, A.M., D.C.L. 
 New Edition. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 Rules and Exercises in Homeric and Attic Greek, 
 
 to which is added a short System of Greek Prosody. By the 
 SAME. New Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 Greek Extracts, with Notes and Lexicon. For 
 
 the use of Junior Classes. By the SAME. New Edition. Crown 
 Svo. 6s. 
 
 Greek Testament Lessons for Colleges, Schools, 
 
 AND PRIVATE STUDENTS. Consisting chiefly of the Sermon on 
 the Mount, and Parables of our Lord. With Notes and Essays, 
 By the Rev. J. HUNTER SMITH, M.A., King Edward's School, 
 Birmingham. Crown Svo, with Maps. 6s. 
 
 The Art of Singing. With Vocal Exercises for 
 
 Young People. By ALBERT B, BACH. Crown 8vo. 3s. 
 
'GQflltam JBlacfewoofc an& Sons' 
 
 Mr Stormonth's 
 
 English Dictionaries. 
 
 AN ETYMOLOGICAL AND PRONOUNCING 
 
 Dictionary of the English Language. Including 
 
 a very Copious Selection of Scientific, Technical, and other Terms 
 and Phrases. Designed for Use in Schools and Colleges, and as 
 a Handy Book for General Reference. By the Rev. JAMES 
 STORMONTH. The Pronunciation carefully revised by the Rev. 
 P. H. PHELP, M.A. Ninth Edition, revised, with a new and 
 enlarged Supplement. Crown 8vo, pp. 795, 7s. 6d. 
 
 " This Dictionary is admirable. The etymological part especially is good and 
 sound. . . . The work deserves a place in every English school, whether 
 boys' or girls'." Westminster Review. 
 
 "A. good Dictionary to people who do much writing is like a life-belt to 
 people who make ocean voyages : it may, perhaps, never be needed, but it is 
 always safest to have one at hand. This use of a dictionary, though one of the 
 humblest, is one of the most general. For ordinary purposes a very ordinary 
 dictionary will serve ; but when one has a dictionary, it is as well to have a 
 good one. . . . Special care seems to have been bestowed on the pronun- 
 ciation and etymological derivation, and the 'root- words' which are given 
 are most valuable in helping to a knowledge of primary significations. All 
 through the book are evidences of elaborate and conscientious work, and any 
 one who masters the varied contents of this dictionary will not be far off the 
 attainment of the complete art of 'writing the English language with pro- 
 priety,' in the matter of orthography at any rate." Belfast Northern Whig. 
 
 " A full and complete etymological and explanatory dictionary of the English 
 language. ... We have not space to describe all its excellences, or to point 
 out in detail how it differs from other lexicons ; but we cannot with justice 
 omit mentioning some of its more striking peculiarities. In the first place, it 
 is comprehensive, including not only all the words recognised by the best 
 authorities as sterling old English, but all the new coinages which have passed 
 into general circulation, with a great many scientific terms, and those which 
 come under the designation of slang. . . . The pronunciation is carefully and 
 clearly marked in accordance with the most approved modern usage, and in 
 this respect the Dictionary is most valuable and thoroughly reliable. As to the 
 etymology of words, it is exhibited in a form that fixes itself upon the memory, 
 the root-words showing the probable origin of the English words, their primary 
 meaning, and their equivalents in other languages. Much useful information 
 and instruction relative to prefixes, postfixes, abbreviations, and phrases from 
 the Latin, French, and other languages, <bc., appropriately follow the Diction- 
 ary, which is throughout beautifully and most correctly printed." Civil Service 
 Gazette. 
 
 " A really good and valuable dictionary." Journal of Education. 
 
 " I am happy to be able to express and that in the strongest terms of com- 
 mendation my opinion of the merits of this Dictionary. Considering the ex- 
 tensive field which it covers, it seems to me a marvel of painstaking labour and 
 general accuracy. With regard to the scientific and technical words so exten- 
 sively introduced into it, I must say, that in this respect I know no Dictionary 
 that so satisfactorily meets a real and widely felt want in our literature of 
 reference. I have compared it with the large and costly works of Latham, 
 Wedgwood, and others, and find that in the fulness of its details, and the 
 clearness of its definitions, it holds its own even against them. The etymology 
 has been treated throughout with much intelligence, the most distinguished 
 authorities, and the most recent discoveries in philological science, having been 
 laid under careful contribution." Richard D. Graham, Esq., English Master, 
 College for Daughters of Ministers of the Church of Scotland and of Professors in 
 the Scottish Universities. 
 
JSfcucatlonal TKHorfcs, 
 
 ii. 
 The School Etymological Dictionary and Word- 
 
 BOOK. Combining the advantages of an ordinary Pronouncing 
 School Dictionary and an Etymological Spelling-Book. Contain- 
 ing : The Dictionary List of Prefixes List of Postfixes Vocab- 
 ulary of Root-words, followed by English Derivations. By the 
 SAME. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo, pp. 260. 2s. 
 
 "This Dictionary, which contains every word in ordinary use, is followed up 
 by a carefully prepared list of prefixes and postfixes, with illustrative examples, 
 and a vocabulary of Latin, Greek, and other root-words, followed by derived 
 English words. It will be obvious to every experienced teacher that these lists 
 may be made available in many ways for imparting a sound knowledge of the 
 English language, and for helping unfortunate pupils over the terrible difficulties 
 of our unsystematic and stubborn orthography. We think this volume will be 
 a valuable addition to the pupil's store of books, and, if rightly used, will prove 
 a safe and suggestive guide to a sound and thorough knowledge of his native 
 tongue." The Schoolmaster. 
 
 "Mr Stormonth, in this admirable word-book, has provided the means of 
 carrying out our principle in the higher classes, and of correcting all the in- 
 exactness and want of completeness to which the English student of English is 
 liable. His book is an etymological dictionary curtailed and condensed. . . . 
 The pronunciation is indicated by a neat system of symbols, easily mastered 
 at the outset, and indeed pretty nearly speaking for themselves." School Board 
 Chronicle. 
 
 III. 
 
 The Handy School Dictionary. For Use in Ele- 
 mentary Schools, and as a Pocket Reference Dictionary. By the 
 SAME. Pp.268. 9d. 
 
 History. 
 Epitome of Alison's History of Europe, for the 
 
 USE OF SCHOOLS. 29th Thousand. Post 8vo, pp. 604. 7s. 6d. , 
 bound in leather. 
 
 The Eighteen Christian Centuries. By the Rev. 
 
 JAMES WHITE, Author of 'The History of France.' Seventh 
 
 Edition, post 8vo, with index. 6s. 
 
 " He goes to work upon the only true principle, and produces a picture that 
 at once satisfies truth, arrests the memory, and fills the imagination. It will 
 be difficult to lay hands on any book of the kind more useful and more enter- 
 taining." Times. 
 
 History of France, from the Earliest Times. By 
 
 the SAME. 6th Thousand, post Svo, with Index. 6s. 
 
 History of India : from the Earliest Period to the 
 
 CLOSE OP THE INDIA COMPANY'S GOVERNMENT, WITH AN EPI- 
 TOME OF SUBSEQUENT EVENTS. Abridged from the Author's 
 larger Work. By JOHN CLARK MARSHMAN, C.S.I. Second Edi- 
 tion, with Map. Crown Svo, pp. 568. 6s. 6d. 
 
 " ' There is only one History of India, and that is Marshman's,' exclaimed a 
 critic when the original three-volume edition of this book appeared some years 
 ago. He had read them all, and a whole library of books referring to periods 
 of the history, and this was his conclusion. It is a wise and a just verdict." 
 Daily Review. 
 
Ulilltam ;J6lacfcYvoo& anfc Sons' 
 
 Geography. 
 
 Eleventh Thousand. 
 
 Manual of Modern Geography : Mathematical, 
 
 PHYSICAL, AND POLITICAL ; on a new plan, embracing a complete 
 development of the River Systems of the Globe. By the Rev. 
 ALEXANDER MACKAY, LL.D., F.R.G.S. Revised to date of pub- 
 lication. Crown 8vo, pp. 688. 7s. 6d. 
 
 This volume the result of many years' unremitting application is specially 
 adapted for the use of Teachers, Advanced Classes, Candidates for the Civil 
 Service, and proficients in geography generally. 
 
 Fifty -Third Thousand. 
 
 Elements of Modern Geography. By the SAME. 
 
 Revised to the present time. Crown 8vo, pp. 300. 3s. 
 
 The 'Elements' form a careful condensation of the 'Manual,' the order of 
 arrangement being the same, the river-systems of the globe playing the same 
 conspicuous part, the pronunciation being given, and the results of the latest 
 census being uniformly exhibited. This volume is now extensively introduced 
 into many of the best schools in the kingdom. 
 
 One Hundred and Seventy-Sixth Thousand. 
 
 Outlines of Modern Geography. By the SAME. 
 
 Revised to the present time. 18mo, pp. 112. Is. 
 
 These ' Outlines' in many respects an epitome of the ' Elements 'are care- 
 fully prepared to meet the wants of beginners. The arrangement is the same 
 as in the Author's larger works. Minute details are avoided, the broad outlines 
 are graphically presented, the accentuation marked, and the most recent 
 changes in political geography exhibited. 
 
 Thirteenth Edition, Revised. 
 
 The Intermediate Geography. Intended as an 
 
 Intermediate Book between the Author's ' Outlines of Geography ' 
 and 'Elements of Geography.' By the SAME. Revised to the 
 present time. Crown 8vo, pp. 238. 2s. 
 
 One Hundred and Fifth Thousand. 
 
 First Steps in Geography. By the SAME. Ee- 
 
 vised to the present time. 18mo, pp. 56. Sewed, 4d. In cloth, 6d. 
 
 Geography of the British Empire. By the SAME. 
 
 3d. 
 
 Elements of Physiography. By the SAME. 30th 
 
 Thousand. Seepage 8. 
 
Educational TJdorfcs. 
 
 OPINIONS OF DR MACKAY'S GEOGRAPHICAL SERIES. 
 
 Annual Address of the President of the Royal Geographical Society. 
 We must admire the ability and perseA r ering research with which he has suc- 
 ceeded in imparting to his ' Manual ' so much freshness and originality. In no 
 respect is this character more apparent than in the plan of arrangement, by 
 which the author commences his description of the physical geography of each 
 tract by a sketch of its true basis or geological structure. It is, indeed, a most 
 useful school-book in opening out geographical knowledge. 
 
 Saturday Review. It contains a prodigious array of geographical facts, and 
 will be found useful for reference. 
 
 English Journal of Education. Of all the Manuals on Geography that have 
 come under our notice, we place the one whose title is given above in the first 
 rank. For fulness of information, for knowledge of method in arrangement, 
 for the manner in which the details are handled, We know of no work that can, 
 in these respects, compete with Mr Mackay's Manual. 
 
 A. KEITH JOHNSTON, LL.D., F.R.S.E., F.R.G.S., H.M. Geographer 
 for Scotland, Author of the 'Royal Atlas,' &c., &c. There is no work of 
 the kind in this or any other language, known to me, which comes so near my 
 ideal of perfection in a school-book, on the important subject of which it treats. 
 In arrangement, style, selection of matter, clearness, and thorough accuracy of 
 statement, it is without a rival; and knowing, as 1 do, the vast amount of 
 labour and research you bestowed on its production, I trust it will be so appre- 
 ciated as to insure, by an extensive sale, a well-merited reward. 
 
 G. BICKERTON. Esq., Edinburgh Institution. I have been led to form a 
 very high opinion of Mackay's ' Manual of Geography ' and ' Elements of Geo- 
 graphy,' partly from a careful examination of them, and partly from my expe- 
 rience of the latter as a text-book in the EDINBURGH INSTITUTION. One of 
 their most valuable features is the elaborate Table of River-Basins and Towns 
 which is given in addition to the ordinary Province or County List, so that a 
 good idea may be obtained by the pupil of the natural as well as the political 
 relationship of the towns in each country. On all matters connected with 
 Physical Geography, Ethnography, Government, &c., the information is full, 
 accurate, and well digested. They are books that can be strongly recommended 
 to the student of geography. 
 
 RICHARD D. GRAHAM, English Master, College for Daughters of 
 Ministers of the Church of Scotland and of Professors in the Scottish 
 Universities. No work with which I am acquainted so amply fulfils the con- 
 ditions of a perfect text-book on the important subject of which it treats, as 
 Dr Mackay's 'Elements of Modern Geography.' In fulness and accuracy of 
 details, in the scientific grouping of facts, combined with clearness and sim- 
 plicity of statement, it stands alone, and leaves almost nothing to be desired 
 in the way of improvement. Eminently fitted, by reason of this exceptional 
 variety and thoroughness, to meet all the requirements of higher education, it 
 is never without a living interest, which adapts it to the intelligence of ordinary 
 pupils. It is not the least of its merits that its information is abreast of all 
 the latest developments in geographical science,- accurately exhibiting both the 
 recent political and territorial changes in Europe, and the many important 
 results of modern travel and research. 
 
 Spectator. The best Geography we have ever met with. 
 
:JBlacfcwoofc an& Sons' 
 
 Physical Geography. 
 Introductory Text-Book of Physical Geography. 
 
 With Sketch-Maps and Illustrations. By DAVID PAGE, LL.D., 
 &c. , Author of Text - Books of Geology ; and Professor CHARLES 
 LAPWORTH. Twelfth Edition. 2s. 6d. 
 
 "The divisions of the subject are so clearly defined, the explanations are so 
 lucid, the relations of one portion of the subject to another are so satisfactorily 
 shown, and, above all, the bearings of the allied sciences to Physical Geography 
 are brought out with so much precision, that every reader will feel that diffi- 
 culties have been removed, and the path of study smoothed before him." 
 Athenaeum. 
 
 "Whether as a school-book or a manual for the private student, this work 
 has no equal in our Educational literature." Iron. 
 
 Advanced Text -Book of Physical Geography. 
 
 With Engravings. By the SAME. Third Edition. 5s. 
 "A thoroughly good Text-Book of Physical Geography." Saturday Review. 
 
 Examinations on Physical Geography. A Pro- 
 gressive Series of Questions, adapted to the Introductory and 
 Advanced Text -Books of Physical Geography. By the SAME. 
 Sixth Edition. 9d. 
 
 Elements of Physiography and Physical Geo- 
 
 GRAPHY. With express reference to the Instructions recently 
 issued by the Science and Art Department. By the Rev. ALEX. 
 MACKAT, LL.D., F.R.G.S., Author of 'A Manual of Modern Geo- 
 graphy, Mathematical, Physical, and Political,' &c. With numer- 
 ous Illustrations. 30th Thousand, pp. 164. Is. 6d. 
 
 Comparative Geography. By Carl Hitter. Trans- 
 lated by W. L. GAOK. Fcap. 3s. 6d. 
 
 A First Book on Physical Geography. For 
 
 Use in Schools. 64 pp. 4d. 
 
 Botany. 
 
 A Manual of Botany, Anatomical and Physio- 
 logical. For the Use of Students. By ROBERT BROWN, M.A., 
 PH.D., F.R.G.S. Crown 8vo, with numerous Illustrations. 
 12s. 6d. 
 
 "We have no hesitation in recommending this volume to our readers as he- 
 ing the best and moat reliable of the many works on Botany yet issued. . . . 
 His manual will, if we mistake not, be eagerly consulted and attentively 
 studied by all those who take an interest in the science of botany." Civil 
 Service Gazette. 
 
BCmcatfonal 
 
 Geology. 
 
 Twelfth Edition, Revised and Enlarged. 
 
 Introductory Text-Book of Geology. By DAVID 
 
 PAGE, LL.D., &c., Professor of Geology in the Durham Univer- 
 sity College of Physical Science, Newcastle ; and Professor Charles 
 Lapworth, LL.D., Mason Science College, Birmingham. With 
 Engravings on Wood, and Glossarial Index, 3s. 6d. 
 " It has not been our good fortune to examine a text-book on science of which 
 
 we could express an opinion so entirely favourable as we are enabled to do of 
 
 Mr Page's little work." Athenaeum. 
 
 Sixth Edition. 
 
 Advanced Text-Book of Geology, Descriptive and 
 
 INDUSTRIAL. With Engravings, and Glossary of Scientific Terms. 
 By the SAME. Revised and enlarged. 7s. 6d. 
 
 "We have carefully read this truly satisfactory book, and do not hesitate to 
 say that it is an excellent compendium of the great facts of Geology, and writ- 
 ten in a truthful and philosophic spirit." Edinburgh Philosophical Journal. 
 
 "As a school-book nothing can match the Advanced Text-Book of Geology 
 by Professor Page of Newcastle." Mechanics' Magazine. 
 
 "We know of no introduction containing a larger amount of information in 
 the same space, and which, we could more cordially recommend to the geolog- 
 ical student." Athenaeum. 
 
 Tenth Edition. 
 
 The Geological Examinator. A Progressive Series 
 
 of Questions, adapted to the Introductory and Advanced Text- 
 Books of Geology. Prepared to assist Teachers in framing their 
 Examinations, and Students in testing their own Progress and 
 Proficiency. By the SAME. 9d. 
 
 "Few of our handbooks of popular science can be said to have greater or 
 more decisive merit than those of Mr Page on Geology and Palaeontology. 
 They are clear and vigorous in style, they never oppress the reader with a 
 pedantic display of learning, nor overwhelm him with a pompous and super- 
 fluous terminology ; and they have the happy art of taking him straightway to 
 the face of nature herself, instead of leading him by the tortuous and bewilder- 
 ing paths of technical system and artificial classification." Saturday Review. 
 
 German. 
 A Handy Manual of German Literature. For 
 
 Schools, Civil Service Competitions, and University Local Exam- 
 inations. By M. F. REID. Fcap. cloth. 3s. 
 
 A Treasury of the English and German Lan- 
 
 GUAGES. Compiled from the best Authors and Lexicographers 
 in both Languages. Adapted to the Use of Schools, Students, 
 Travellers, and Men of Business ; and forming a Companion to all 
 German - English Dictionaries. By JOSEPH CAUVIN, LL.D. & 
 PH.D., of the University of Gottingen, &c. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d., 
 bound in cloth. 
 
10 IQiUfam J8lacftwoo& an& Sons' 
 
 Zoology. 
 
 A Manual of Zoology, for the Use of Students. 
 
 With a General Introduction on the Principles of Zoology. By 
 HENRY ALLEYNE NICHOLSON, M.D., D.Sc., F.L.S., F.G.S., 
 Regius Professor of Natural History in the University of Aber- 
 deen. Seventh Edition, rewritten and greatly enlarged. Post 8vo, 
 with 555 Engravings on Wood. Pp. 956. 18s. 
 
 " It is the best manual of zoology yet published, not merely in England, but 
 in Europe." Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 "The best treatise on zoology in moderate compass that we possess." 
 Lancet. 
 
 Text -Book of Zoology, for the Use of Schools. 
 
 By the SAME. Fourth Edition, enlarged. Crown 8vo, with 264 
 Engravings on Wood. 7s. 6d. 
 
 " This capital introduction to natural history is illustrated and well got up in 
 every way. We should be glad to see it generally used in schools." Medical 
 Press and Circular. 
 
 Introductory Text-Book of Zoology, for the Use 
 
 OP JUNIOR CLASSES. By the SAME. Sixth Edition, revised and 
 enlarged, with 180 Engravings. 3s. 
 
 " Very suitable for junior classes in schools. There is no reason why any one 
 should not become acquainted with the principles of the science, and the facts 
 on which they are based, as set forth in this volume." I^ancet. 
 
 " Nothing can be better adapted to its object than this cheap and well- 
 written Introduction." London Quarterly Review. 
 
 Outlines of Natural History, for Beginners ; being 
 
 Descriptions of a Progressive Series of Zoological Types. By the 
 SAME. Third Edition. With 52 Engravings. Is. 6d. 
 
 " There has been no book since Patterson's well known ' Zoology for Schools ' 
 that has so completely provided for the class to which it is addressed as the 
 capital little volume by Dr Nicholson." Popular Science Review. 
 
 Introduction to the Study of Biology. By the 
 
 SAME. Crown 8vo, with numerous Engravings. 5s. 
 
Educational TKflorfcs. 11 
 
 Palaeontology. 
 A Manual of Palaeontology, for the Use of Students. 
 
 With a General Introduction on the Principles of Palaeontology. 
 By Professor H. ALLEYNE NICHOLSON, Aberdeen. Second Edi- 
 tion. 2 vols. 8vo, with 722 Engravings. 42s. 
 
 "The most complete and systematic treatise on the subject in the English 
 language. It has not only been thoroughly revised and to a great extent re- 
 written, but so much enlarged by the addition of new matter, that it may claim 
 to be considered to all intents and purposes a new book." Saturday Review. 
 
 The Ancient Life -History of the Earth. An 
 
 Outline of the Principles and Leading Facts of Palseontological 
 Science. By the SAME. With a Glossary and Index. In crown 
 8vo, with 270 Engravings. 10s. 6d. 
 
 Agriculture. 
 Catechism of Practical Agriculture. By HENRY 
 
 STEPHENS, F.R.S.E., Author of the 'Book of the Farm.' 19th 
 
 Thousand. With Engravings. Is. 
 
 11 Teachers will find in this little volume an admirable course of instruction 
 in practical agriculture that is, the outlines which they may easily fill up ; 
 and by following the hints given in Mr Stephens' preface, the course would 
 scarcely fail to be quite interesting, as well as of great practical benefit. 
 Landed proprietors and farmers might with propriety encourage the introduc- 
 tion of this work into schools." Aberdeen Journal. 
 
 Professor Johnston's Catechism of Agricultural 
 
 CHEMISTRY. A New Edition, being the 86th Thousand, revised 
 and extended by Sir CHARLES A. CAMERON, M.D., F.R.G.S.I., 
 &c. With Engravings. Is. 
 
 Professor Johnston's Elements of Agricultural 
 
 CHEMISTRY AND GEOLOGY. Fourteenth Edition, revised and 
 brought down to the present time, by Sir CHARLES A. CAMERON, 
 M.D., F.R. G.S.I., &c. Foolscap. 6s. 6d. 
 
 Popular Chemistry. 
 Professor Johnston's Chemistry of Common Life. 
 
 New Edition, revised and brought down to the present time. 
 By ARTHUR HERBERT CHURCH, M.A. Oxon., Author of 'Food, 
 its Sources, Constituents, and Uses ; ' ' The Laboratory Guide for 
 Agricultural Students,' &c. Illustrated with Maps and 102 En- 
 gravings on Wood. Crown 8vo, pp. 618. 7s. 6d. 
 "No popular scientific work that has ever been published has been more 
 generally and deservedly appreciated than the late Professor Johnston's 
 ' Chemistry of Common Life.' ... It remains unrivalled as a clear, inter- 
 esting, comprehensive, and exact treatise upon the important subjects with 
 which it deals. . . . The book is one which not only every student but 
 every educated person who lives should read, and keep to refer to." Mark 
 Lane Express. 
 
 "The established reputation of this volume is not merely maintained, but 
 its value is considerably increased by the care with which every subject has 
 been posted up to the date of publication." Athenceum. 
 
12 OTllfam JBlacfcwoofc and Sons' 
 
 Mental Philosophy. 
 
 Seventh Edition. 
 
 Lectures on Metaphysics. By Sir WILLIAM 
 
 HAMILTON, Bart., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the 
 University of Edinburgh. Edited by the Very Rev. H. L. MAN- 
 SELL, LL. D. , Dean of St Paul's, and JOHN VEITCH, LL.D., Professor 
 of Logic and Rhetoric, Glasgow. 2 vols. 8vo. 24s. 
 Third Edition. 
 
 Lectures on Logic. By Sir WILLIAM HAMILTON, 
 
 Bart. Edited by the Same. 2 vols. 8vo. 24s. 
 Third Edition. 
 
 Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, 
 
 EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITY REFORM. By Sir WIL- 
 LIAM HAMILTON, Bart. 8vo. 21s. 
 
 New Edition. 
 
 Philosophical Works of the late James 
 
 FREDERICK FERRIER, B.A. Oxon., LL.D., Professor of Moral 
 
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