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The Aesthetic Experience: Its Nature 
 and Function in Epistemology 
 
 By 
 
 WILLIAM DAVIS FURRY 
 
 A Dissertation Submitted to the Board of 
 
 University Studies of the Johns Hopkins 
 
 University in Conformity with the 
 
 Requirements for the Degree 
 
 of Doctor of Philosophy 
 
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 THE REVIEW PUBLISHING CO. 
 BALTIMORE 
 1908 
 
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 CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction v-xv 
 
 PART I. 
 
 Chapter I. The First Immediacy 1-27 
 
 I. Description of Original Experience I 
 
 II. Simplicity of Only Relative 4 
 
 III. Its Value in Present Discussion 8 
 
 IV. Characteristic Products of g 
 
 V. Riseof Dualistic Experience 10 
 
 Chapter II. The Second Immediacy or Semblant Consciousness ll~23 
 
 I. The Inner-Outer Dualism 11 
 
 II. Memory vs. Fancy 12 
 
 III. Characteristics of the Semblant Object 13 
 
 IV. Place of the Semblant in the Development of Thought 21 
 
 Chapter III. Dualistic Character of Reflective Experience 24-37 
 
 I. Content of Thought Dualistic 27 
 
 II. Control of Thought Dualistic 28 
 
 III. Types of Meaning not Rendered in Reflection 31 
 
 IV. Mystical Outcome of Modern Attempts to Transcend the 
 
 Dualism of Thought ^^ 
 
 Chapter IV. The Aesthetic as a Hyper-Logical Experience 38-64 
 
 I. Nature of Current Epistemological Problem 38 
 
 II. The Nature and Outcome of the Intellectualistic ami the 
 
 Voluntaristic Programme 40 
 
 III. Characteristics of the Higher Semblant or Aesthetic Experi- 
 ence Found to be Those Demanded by the Epistemological 
 
 Problem of Reflective Thought 47 
 
 IV. Conclusion 61 
 
 part II. 
 
 Chapter \'. Greek Thought to Thalcs as Illustrative of the First imme- 
 diacy 65-73 
 
 I. Characteristics of Primitive Thought 66 
 
 II. The Unreflective Myths 68 
 
 III. I he Riseof Duahsuc Experience "Jo 
 
 ,90 
 
iv COXTENTS. 
 
 Chapter VI. Greek Thouj^ht from Tlialtsto Neo-Platonism 74~90 
 
 I. Riscof Inntr-Outcr Dualism 74 
 
 II. Democritus 76 
 
 III. Socrates and the Sophists 77 
 
 IV. Plato, Poet rather than Scientist 78 
 
 \'. Aristotle and his Treatment of Art 80 
 
 VI. Mystical Character of Post -Aristotelian Thought 84 
 
 \II. Neo-Platonism 88 
 
 Chapter VII. Plotinus to Cierman Mystics of Sixteenth Century 91-105 
 
 I. GroNNth of Scholasticism and Mysticism 93 
 
 II. Augustine and his P^mphasis upon the Will 96 
 
 III. Individual Thrown Back upon Himself 98 
 
 1\'. The Renascence 100 
 
 \ . 1 he Reformation 101 
 
 VI. The Mystics, Bohme and Others 104 
 
 Chapter VIII. Descartes to Kant and German Mystics 106-129 
 
 I. Dualism of Descartes and the Occasionalists 106 
 
 II. Spinoza and Pantheism no 
 
 III. English Empiricism 112 
 
 IV. Leibniz 115 
 
 V. The Eaith Philosophers, Lessing, Jacobi and Herder 117 
 
 VI. Kant and the Third Critique 1 19 
 
 VII. The Mystics, Maimon, Reinhold, Schiller, etc 124 
 
 Chapter IX. From Kant to the Present '30~i55 
 
 I. Post-Kantian Idealism 130 
 
 II. Kichte 131 
 
 III. Schelling 133 
 
 IV. Hegel and his Use of Art 136 
 
 V. Schopenhauer and Art 144 
 
 \'l. Modern Attempts to Solve the Epistemological Problem 
 
 Presented by Reflective Experience 1 47 
 
 VII. The Present Status of the Epistemological Problem and 
 
 the Use of the Aesthetic Experience as a Solution 149 
 
INTRODUCTION' 
 
 That the epistemological problem is the most urgent in cur- 
 rent philosophical discussion is to be inferred from the intro- 
 duction into the more complete works of Logic and Metaphysics 
 of topics that directly pertain to neither. The preliminary 
 discussions found in such works as Bradley's, Bosanquet's, and 
 Sigwart's Logic are not however psychological precisely, neither 
 are they to be regarded as an indication that Psychology is be- 
 coming sufficiently ample in its programme to include what pre- 
 viously was regarded as subject-matter of more or less independ- 
 ent philosophical disciplines. The introductory chapters in 
 the works thus named are rather epistemological than psycho- 
 logical. Paulsen is historically justified in holding that Kpistem- 
 ology arises always as a critical reflection on Metaphysics with 
 which it is, at the first, identified. From Kant and Locke until 
 now the conviction has been growing that knowing precedes 
 being, so that the priority which Metaphysics so long held 
 should be given to Epistemology. The limitations as well as 
 the possibilities of human knowledge are to be sought within the 
 knowing process rather than in some already determined 
 objective existence. 
 
 Since the time of Locke and Kant, epistemological inquiry 
 has been increasingly to the fore. There was 'constant whetting 
 of the knife' until the time of Lotze, who felt that the whetting 
 process should end and an actual theory of the object of knowl- 
 edge established. But despite the constant whetting of the 
 knife the conviction will not down rhar the whetting has not 
 yet been sufficiently done. 
 
 Both Kant and Locke were embarrassed by metaphysical 
 presuppositions in assuming an existence falling beyond the 
 
 ' This Introduction, while intended to define the epistemological problem, 
 serves also in a measure as a summar)' of the writer's position. I he de- 
 tailed references to the authorities mentioned will be found in the later more 
 extended passages of the essay. 
 
 V 
 
vi THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 limits of thought. The objective, as determined apart from 
 the knowing process, held the determining role in thought, and 
 continued so to do until the idealistic reaction of the Post- 
 Kantians. The attempt was then made to establish the 
 object of knowledge wholly in terms of the subject. Self-con- 
 sciousness was held to be the sole condition of knowledge. 
 Experience was regarded as the realization of a single, spiritual 
 principle, while the successive modes in the development of 
 knowledge were regarded as the specific ways in which this 
 one principle embodies itself. The unity of experience, which 
 had hitherto been sought bevond experience, was disclosed in 
 the evolution of the self. Tiie object of knowledge becomes 
 thus intimately related to the subject that has it as object. 
 
 With Hegel the self came to be identified with reflective 
 thought. Reality came also to be identified with thought, 
 since being which should fall bevond the process of thought 
 would be the same as the non-existent. The distinction of 
 subject and object as the necessary condition of knowledge 
 at any stage of the development of thought, is a distinction 
 of mmd from itself and finds its completion when mind 
 becomes conscious that the distinction is of its own mak- 
 ing. Nevertheless, the object of knowledge to be vital and 
 fruitful, must be more than is already given in thought. The 
 self is not furthered by merely revolving its own perfections. 
 If the object is not more than the subject, thought as judg- 
 ment, becomes both meaningless and useless. This position 
 is also expressed in the view of Lotze that 'reality is richer than 
 thought', and in the statement of Bradley that 'knowledge is 
 unequal to reality.' All these expressions are based upon the 
 conviction that thought must somehow refer to a real beyond 
 itself. Thought, therefore, remains dualistic despite the at- 
 tempted ultntification of its two aspects in terms ot rational 
 thought. 
 
 Kant also fountl that thought as such is dualistic and so 
 concluded that "beyond the bounds of knowledge there is a 
 sphere of faith." But what thought could not do, Kant thought 
 the moral consciousness able to accomplish. The \ oluntarists, 
 including the Bragmatists of the present time, seek in turn to 
 
INTRODUCTION. vii 
 
 make the will the exphiininc; principle of the mind and the sole 
 organ of reality. But Kant found that the moralistic position 
 is also dualistic since the will cannot reduce the subject-matter 
 of thought. Every genuine act of will involves a struggle upon 
 the part of the subject toward its object, which is not, as yet, 
 an actual possession. The object of the will, as also the object 
 of thought, must represent an 'other' as a larger and more com- 
 plete experience, in which the dualistic character of will is to be 
 transcended by being absorbed in a more complete experience. 
 
 The dualisms of both the theoretical and the practical, be- 
 queathed to modern philosophy by Kant, constitute under one 
 form of statement or another, the epistemological problem 
 of current discussion. Defined as the dualism of mind and 
 body, it is sufficient to indicate that it cannot be solved by re- 
 ducine either term of the dualism to the other. This means 
 necessarily the loss of the meaning attaching to the one, without 
 a corresponding increase of meaning attaching to the other. 
 Both terms of the dualism have come to represent definite 
 types of meaning and any attempt at a solution of the problem 
 thus set by ignoring either type of meaning is already doomed. 
 The inability of any one of the more modern attempts to solve 
 the epistemological problem is to be found in the fact that 
 these several attempts have either minimized or wholly ignored 
 one or the other of these types of meaning. That mind cannot 
 be reduced to body is evidenced by the fact that Materialism 
 represents a passing philosophy. The rapid spread of idealistic 
 philosophy in our day shows also how easily the metaphysical 
 doctrine of the unreality of things visible and tangible can be 
 popularized. Paulsen is abundantly justified in his character- 
 ization of modern philosophy as tending toward idealism. 
 The inability, however, of either of these two general types of 
 philosophy to satisfy the mind indicates that the solution of 
 the epistemological problem has not only not been adecjuately 
 achieved, but that such solution can be attained only by 
 reaching a farther meaning in which both types of meaning 
 are merged in a single unitary mode of experience. 
 
 The dualistic character of the epistemological conscious- 
 ness is generally recognized in current discussion. The dual- 
 
viii THE AESTHETIC EXPER!E\CE. 
 
 ism is, however, no longer regarded as a datum of immediate 
 experience, but rather an experience into which consciousness 
 develops. The epistemological consciousness [must therefore 
 be treated genetically and while affirming the position of St. 
 George Mivart that "Kpistcmology is a product of mental ma- 
 turity both racial and individual," likewise the position of Or- 
 mond that "the distinction of subject and object is fundamental 
 to Kpistemology" and still further the position of Professor 
 Baldwin that, "it is only when the mode of reflection has been 
 reached, in which the subject takes the objective point of view, 
 that the knower becomes an Epistemologist," we shall main- 
 tain in the present discussion that the epistemological con- 
 sciousness of reflection, with its characteristic problem of uni- 
 fication and completion, has been reached only when conscious- 
 ness has passed through a series of earlier dualistic experi- 
 ences, in each of which the epistemological problem presented 
 itself. No one mode of the development of thought is to be 
 taken exclusively as containing the explanation of the whole, 
 but all forms of knowledge are to be considered. Taking this 
 point of view, it at once occurs to us that it is necessary to widen 
 the generally accepted notion of the nature of the epistemolog- 
 ical consciousness and the problem which it presents. 
 
 Upon analysis, thought is found to involve always the pres- 
 ence and operation of two moments, which in reflective thought 
 are recognized as 'content' and 'control.' The programme of 
 a Genetic l^pistemology would be the tracing of the develop- 
 ment of thoutrht both in the individual and in the race with 
 respect to the increasing determinateness of these two aspects. 
 Hegel's Phnuomologic des G^/i-/rj-, represents an attempt in this 
 direction but lacks the psychological point of view requisite to 
 the genetic method. Baldwin's Thought and Things is the 
 most complete and satisfactory attempt yet made to treat 
 knowledge genetically. 
 
 In the light of such a mctiioii of treatment ot the develop- 
 ment of thought it is seen that thouglu has reached the dualism 
 of reflective experience onl\ by passing througli a series of 
 earlier dualistic experiences, at each of which a higher mode of 
 conscious determination was made possible by the establish- 
 
IXTRODUCTIO.X. ix 
 
 ing of a more comprehensive and complete experience. Each 
 successive mode of mental determination is made possible and 
 necessary by the presence in consciousness of partial and frag- 
 mentary meanings. Thought, as Bradley discerns, is always 
 incomplete and must, for the sake of its own completion, be 
 absorbed in a fuller experience. The Voluntarists also find 
 the ideas, as internal meaning, finite and fragmentary, and 
 this necessitates an external meaning as an *other' and more 
 complete and all-inclusive experience. Both the Intellectual- 
 ists and the Voluntarists agree that thought and will seek an 
 object in which both alike are to be completed. But such 
 completion is necessarily a further experience. To attempt to 
 solve the epistemological problem presented at any stage of its 
 genetic development by a return to genetically earlier experience 
 means a mutilation of the system of meanings already acquired, 
 while the resulting constructions become more or less empty 
 postulates. 
 
 Despite the increased discussion of the epistemological 
 problem in modern philosophical inquiry, one seeks in vain 
 for a definite statement of the problem itself. According to 
 Bradley it is the problem of "forming the general idea of an 
 absolute experience in which all phenomenal distinctions are 
 merged — a unity which transcends and yet contains every 
 manifold appearance in an immediate, self-dependent and all- 
 inclusive individual." For Bosanquet, it is the "work of 
 intellectually constituting a totality which we call the real 
 world." With Royce, who proceeds from the more active 
 aspect of consciousness, and makes will rather than thought 
 the explaining principle of the mind and the organ of reality, 
 the epistemological problem presented by the subject-object 
 dualism of reflective experience is the "transcending of the 
 subjective by the process of completely embodying, in indi- 
 vidual form and in final fulfilnKiii.the internal meaningof finite 
 ideas." The Pragmatists finall\-, b\- subordinating the theo- 
 retical to the practical, thus identifying the true and the good, 
 attempt to solve the problem by reinstating a form of experi- 
 ence in which stimulus and response, as the two aspects of 
 the life of action, regain their old-time immediacy. Group- 
 
THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 ing rhe Pragmatists wirh rlu- X'olunrarists, it is to be said that 
 the\", together with rht- Inrellectuahsts, represent the two cur- 
 rent t^■pes of epistenioiogical theory, while both alike reach the 
 conclusion that the epistenioiogical problem is the setting up of 
 a larger and more complete experience in which the limitations 
 alike of thought and will are overcome. 
 
 Defining the progress of cognition again as an increasing 
 determinateness of the two aspects, content and control, the 
 limitation of each of the two preceding tvpes of epistenioiogical 
 theory becomes evident. Each proceeds by attempting t(» 
 make the one or the other of the two aspects of thought an 
 iiupcrium m impcrio^ and both reach the common conclusion 
 that either of these two aspects cannot interpret the whole of 
 experience. Assuming that reflective thought involves the 
 subject-object dualism, the Intellectualists attempt to reconcile 
 the dualism thus presented by an exclusive emphasis upon the 
 side of the object as a related content. The control aspect, 
 according to Bradley is "something necessary, but still per 
 accidcns. And as thought can not make phenomena, it con- 
 tents itself without them and is therefore symbolic and not 
 existential." Whatever form and structure the content, of 
 knowledge may come to show are dependent upon the laws of 
 thought. The control aspect, however, retains its primitive 
 value and validity, while the presented contents, as the result of 
 a process of increasing contextuation, become but sublimated 
 symbols of the reality which thev once constituted. The dual- 
 ism of the intellectualists represents the presence and conflict of 
 two sorts of experience, one immediate, characterized by lack 
 of reference beyond mere psychic existence, and the other medi- 
 ate, characterized by the relational and discursive character of 
 thought. The epistenioiogical problem is occasioned b\' the 
 conflict of these two types of experience, a conflict arising onlv 
 when reflection is reached, and finds its solution, for the time 
 being, b\' a process of making thought tncrelv ps}cliic, thus 
 identif\ing the mediate with the primitive immediacy, l^radley 
 is at pains to indicate, however, that the conflict between 
 these two types of experience is due to the presence of reflective 
 thought, rather than the reverse, as the Voluntarists and Prag- 
 matists are today insisting. 
 
INTRODUCTIOX. xi 
 
 The latter, as representing a second type of epistenioiogical 
 theory, seek to overcome the duahstic character of reflective 
 experience by phicing ahiiost exclusive emphasis upon the 
 control aspect of thought, inwardly or subjectively interpreted. 
 The object of thought, they hold, must represent the expression 
 and embodiment of the subject as the inner organizing, deter- 
 mining principle ot knowledge. The object of knowledge is 
 what it is only because the subject means it as its own (jbject. 
 Ideas as content of thought are acts of will as well as acts of 
 cognition, and the object of thought is but the embodiment and 
 fuihlment of an exclusive act of will or purpose. The subject 
 of knowledge can acknowledge no object other than those of 
 its own determination. What therefore the content of thought 
 is, as well as the relational character which characterizes it, 
 is determined solely in terms of the zcill as the controlling 
 and organizing moment of experience. 
 
 But it is found that both types of epistenioiogical theory are 
 inadequate, in that each finds meanings which it is not able to 
 reduce in terms of its explaining principle. The Intellectual- 
 ists find with Bradley that thought can never harmonize its own 
 content, meaning that thought as such can never transcend the 
 dualism of the 'that' and the 'what' as the two aspects of 
 thouglit. The more complete thought becomes as a relational 
 system the deeper and broader becomes the dualism. To 
 attain reality as the object of thought, meaning an experience in 
 which these two aspects of thought are reconciled, means neces- 
 sarily breaking with thought, so that the conclusion is reached 
 in the present discussion that reality, as a unified experience, 
 becomes for the Intellectualists an a-logical and m\stical postu- 
 late. 
 
 The Voluntarists likewise find that will, as the controlling 
 and organizing aspect of thought, is also dualistic, since it is 
 unable to reduce the subject-matter of reflective thought. To 
 reduce the true to the good, as for instance Professor James 
 does in his recent lectures on Pragmatism, only shifts the em- 
 phasis of the dualism. The dualism remains as one of end or 
 good and fact, together with the epistenioiogical problem of its 
 reconciliation. Will can not harmonize its content with the 
 
xii THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCC. 
 
 data of thought, and the attempt to solve the cpistemological 
 problem thus presented by making the will all-sufficient by 
 reaching a 'volitional immediacy' in which the ivtll wills only 
 Its own will, is to set up an :i-\()liri()n:il postulate wliich is also 
 mystical. 
 
 The Hnal outcome of these two t}'pes of epistemological 
 theory is closelv identical, in that both alike reach an absolute 
 experience which, as the completion alike of the finite and frag- 
 mentary character of thought and will, 'is not anything but 
 sentient experience.' Such is the necessary outcome of anv 
 epistemological theory which proceeds by ignoring either of 
 the two aspects of thought. The strength of each type of 
 theory however represents the weakness of the other. The 
 farther the \'oluntarist pushes his programme, the more he 
 reveals the need ot thought as lending value and meaning to 
 the life of will. Whatever meaning is found attaching to the 
 practical life is borrowed from reflective and rational experi- 
 ence. The fact is that, if the will were able to will itself, to 
 operate as it were in a void, occasion for an acr oi' will would 
 never arise. Professor Royce is quite right in holding that the 
 active life is motived by the finite and fragmentary character of 
 finite ideas. But a farther experience, in which present expe- 
 rience as limited and mcomplete is made more complete, can 
 not be reached by reverting to an earlier more immediate mode; 
 the absolute experience must represent fulfilment, not destruc- 
 tion. And likewise, the farther the Intellectualist extends his 
 programme, the more is felt the need of bringing thought into 
 more fruitful relations with the more active and selective 
 aspects of experience. Thought as such is pale and as it were 
 removed from the concrete character of life as actually lived. 
 It only "formulates and duplicates, divides and recombines 
 that fullness of reality which is had directly and at first hand 
 in sense experience." Hradley recognizes the static character 
 of reflective thoutrht, init is unable to avoid this outcome. The 
 \'()luntarists, with Professor Royce, also appreciate that the 
 dualistic character ot reflective experience can be transcended 
 only in a tulkr and richer embodiment of whatever meanings 
 consciousness already has. Neither type of theory can limit 
 
INTRODUCTION. xiii 
 
 itself to its own programme because each proceeds by abstract- 
 ing one of the two essential aspects of knowledge. 
 
 These criticisms suggest that, if knowledge is to escape from 
 the cul-de-sac in which reflective experience involves it, it can 
 do so onlv in some mode of experience in which the two aspects 
 of thought, content and control, with whatever meanings attach 
 to them, are brought together in some larger whole. The 
 determination of such a mode of experience represents the epis- 
 temological problem par excellence. Such experience will be in 
 type neither purely rational and static nor wholly volitional and 
 dynamic; it must be a mode in which, as Professor Baldwin 
 says, "experience can find its dynamics intelligible and can act 
 upon its static meanings as immediate and dynamic satisfac- 
 tions." 
 
 The burden of the present discussion is that the aesthetic 
 experience represents a mode of conscious determination in 
 which the two aspects of thought are recognized and reconciled 
 by the rise of a new mode of immediate experience. 
 
 The essential character of this type of experience is the *sem- 
 blant' treatment of meanings already present for the sake of 
 further meaning as fulfilling personal purposes. By this method 
 of treating meanings already present as having a further mean- 
 ing, using present meanings as schemata for more complete 
 meanings, consciousness completes the othenvise incomplete 
 and fragmentary character of its present store. The epis- 
 temological problem of the Intellectualists is precisely the 
 problem of setting up of an 'other' as a richer experience in 
 which thought as incomplete might complete itselt. On the 
 other hand the epistemological problem of the V'oluntarists is 
 that of discounting a future experience which, as external mean- 
 ing, completely embodies the othersvise finite and fragmentary 
 character of finite ideas. Both alike hold that the experience in 
 which thought and will are completed is a state of immediacy in 
 which both theoretical and practical interests are wholly satis- 
 fied. But each type of theory, failing to recognize the mediatory 
 role of the semblant treatment of an already guaranteed content, 
 has to fall back on a mode of reality beyond its own monistic 
 postulate, thus hugging to itself a mass of ill-gotten gain. 
 
xiv THE AESTHETIC E.\PERIE\CE. 
 
 In tlu- present discussion it is shown that the .xsthetic arises 
 with the episteniological alike in the race and in the individual; 
 that the .esthetic experience has passed through a series of stages 
 of development at each of which it reflects the epistemological 
 problem then present and crying for solution. Upon analysis, 
 the aesthetic experience at each of these several stages is found to 
 possess precisely those characteristics which enable it to reduce 
 the several meanings which neither thought nor will can of itself 
 reduce. As Kant long ago perceived, neither the theoretical nor 
 the practical reason can heal the wound that reflection makes. 
 The need is for a type of interest siii generis; and this is what we 
 find the xsthetic interest to be. It represents a treatment of 
 meanings already acquired for the sake of the further meaning 
 that inspires them, the process of reaching a completer experience 
 — an ideal whole — through the schematic treatment of earlier 
 partial experiences of thought and will. The object thus con- 
 structed is held up and treated as being what it is not and as be- 
 ing everything save precisely what in its concrete isolation it is. 
 It sets up the 'other' of thought as a further meaning which wjiile 
 not realized, can nevertheless be treated 'as it it were.' 1 he 
 object of thought thus constructed does not break with experi- 
 ence, since it represents a more complete experience. I here is 
 a focusing of the two aspects of thought by a process of detach- 
 ment from the original spheres in which they hold as mediate 
 experiences, by the setting up of a larger whole of experi- 
 ence in which both aspects become moments in what is imme- 
 diate. 
 
 The aesthetic experience thus represents the expression of an 
 interest which is neither theoretical nor practical. Because of 
 this, it is fitted to reconcile and unify these two types of interest. 
 It is true, as Professor Tufts contends, that the a-sthetic did not 
 arise to satisfy an already existing sense of the beautiful; but to 
 identify it with either of the two recognized types of interest 
 means to reduce the .tstluric to the limitations from which it 
 seeks to disengage them. The point to be insisted upon in the 
 present discussion is the fact that the a-sthetic can not be reduced 
 to any form of mediate experience, without at once bringing 
 about its own destruction; this (jualihes it as a mode of experi- 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 ence in whicii these several mediate types arc reconciled and 
 the entire psychic function furthered. 
 
 Defining genetic episteniology as the tracing out ot the de- 
 velopment of thought with reference to the increasing deter- 
 minateness of its two aspects of content and control, and dcHn- 
 ing the epistcmological problem as that of tlie furthering of these 
 two aspects without the sacrifice of either, by the establishing 
 of a more complete experience m a new and higiier immediacy 
 which in turn becomes the platform for still higher reaches of 
 thought; and further defining the X'sthetic experience as a mode 
 of conscious determination in which the guaranteed meanings of 
 consciousness are mediated with reference to a further and 
 ideal experience — an experience whose value lies, as Professor 
 Baldwin says "in discounting in advance any new demands for 
 mediation which new dualism may make," the epistemological 
 function of the aesthetic at once becomes evident. 1 he 'abso- 
 lute' experience is thus reached. It is not a formal and static 
 experience, such as the Intellectualists reach, nor is it a blind and 
 meaningless dynamic as the Voluntarists teach; but it is rather 
 an experience which is richer and completer than either thought 
 or will or both together, since it represents an experience in 
 which the 'genetic dynamogenies as well as the static dualisms 
 are mediated.' 
 
 ' Baldwin, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. IV' , No. 4, April, 1907; see also Thought 
 and Things, Vol. II, Appendix, II. My indebtness to Professor Baldwin, both 
 with respect to general ideas and to details, will be evident to the reader. I 
 w ish especially to acknowledge the use of material from his unpublished lectures 
 on the nature and role of the xsthetic. 
 
1> 
 
 OP THE 
 
 ^NIVERSiXY 
 
 THE AESTHETIC EXPERn:NCE: ITS NATURE AND 
 
 FUNCTION IN EPISTEMOLOGV. 
 
 PART I. EXPOSITORY. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 The First Immediacy as Illustrating an A-dualistic Conscious- 
 ness and as being Pre-epistemological and Pre-aesthetic. 
 
 Mr. A. E. Taylor has pointed out that the character of 
 experience for the metaphysician is its immediacy, meaning 
 thai character of experience in which existence and content 
 considered as the two aspects of reflective thought are not sepa- 
 rated in consciousness. Such immediacy, he proceeds to say, 
 may be due to the absence of reflective analysis of the given con- 
 tent into its constituent aspects, or it may be due to fusion, at a 
 higher level, into a single directly apprehended whole, of the 
 results won by the processes of abstraction and analysis. There 
 is, he concludes, an immediacy which is below reflective thought, 
 as well as an immediacy which is above it. It is with what Mr. 
 Taylor calls the immediacy below reflection that we have to do 
 in the present chapter.* 
 
 That consciousness, alike in the individual and the race, is, 
 in its first appearance, immediate in the sense of being a-dual- 
 istic, is a conclusion by no means peculiar to Mr. I a)l<)r. 
 Psychologists and anthropologists alike hold, fii;it conscious- 
 ness, in its first appearance, is undifferentiated and protoplasmic, 
 the 'big, booming confusion' of James, the 'unditterentiatcd 
 continuum' of Ward, and the 'relatively pure ojijectivity' of 
 Baldwin. These several writers agree in holding that primitive 
 consciousness is a-dualistic in the sense, that there is present in 
 consciousness no distinction between given data and the result- 
 ing constructed meanings. "The child" as James says, "docs 
 not see light, but is light." lo open the eyes is precisely 
 seeing. There is no reference of presentations to the external 
 
 ' A. E. Taylor, Melaphysics, p. 32. 
 
 I 
 
2 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 world Since at rhis stage of conscious development there is no 
 distinction made between content and other things. " 1 here 
 was a time" sa)s Bradley, "when the separation of the outer 
 world as a thing apart from our feelings had not even begun."' 
 And again he says, "in the beginning there is nothing be\ond 
 what is presented ; what is, is felt, or is rather felt simplv. Ihere 
 is no memory or imagination or fear or thought or will and no 
 perception of likeness or difference. There are in short no 
 relations and no feelings but only feeling. In all one blue with 
 differences which work and are felt, but are not discriminated."^ 
 A more recent description of this first immediacy is given by 
 Professor James under the caption 'Pure Experience.' "Pure 
 experience" he says, "is the name wiiich I give to the original 
 flux of life before reflection has categorized it. Only new- 
 born babes and persons in semicoma from sleep, drugs, ill- 
 nesses or blows can have an experience pure in the literal 
 sense of a that which is not yet an\' definite what, though 
 ready to be all sorts of whats. . . Pure experience in 
 
 this state is but another name for feeling or sensation. Put the 
 flux of it no sooner comes than it tends to fill itself with emphases 
 and these to become identified and fixed and abstracted; so that 
 experience now flows as if shot through with adjectives and 
 nouns and prepositions and conjunctions. Its purity is only a 
 relative term meaning the proportional amount of sensation 
 which it still embodies. ... In all this the continuities 
 and discontinuities are absoluteh' coordinate matters of immedi- 
 ate feeling."-' 
 
 It is assumed, therefore, that within this hrst immediac\' the 
 distinctions characteristic of reflective thought are not present. 
 To be in consciousness and to be apjirehended are identical and 
 It is a matter of no difference whetiur we speak of this ftwling 
 or feeling this. The Hrst immediacy represents a totalit}- or 
 continuum holding wholh' within its own grasp. Whatever 
 the object ma)' come to be, it does so through the process in 
 
 ' Bratilcy, A ppramnrf an J Krnlitv, p. 261. 
 
 * MinJ, O. S. Vol. \II, p. 343. Cf. also HraJItv, Prinriplfs of Logic, p. 457. 
 
 * Quoted by Prof. Baldwin, Thought and Things, Vol. I, p. 25. 
 
THE FIRST IMMF.DlACr. 3 
 
 which it arises. There is no distinction, within this early con- 
 sciousness, between an object and our perceiving it, and the 
 resulting construction represents the unity of the object in per- 
 ception. The knower and his world stand upon the same basis 
 of reality in undisturbed feeling. Any particular form of sense- 
 experience is but a modification of the undifferentiated sensory 
 continuum. As yet there are no distinct forms for the different 
 senses and whatever of discreteness or discontinuity or variety 
 may be found within this early experience must be sought for 
 on the side of the sensory content. This content both stimulates 
 the active processes of the individual and serves as a center 
 around which these processes gather. Things and not isolated 
 sensations thus come to be the first results reached by conscious- 
 ness and while in this first experience there is no distinction to 
 be drawn between things and thought, things are nevertheless 
 to be regardedashavingtheunityof objects in perception. What- 
 ever the presented object comes to be it represents thus an 
 immediate unity of consciousness. 
 
 Emphasis is laid upon this first immediacy of consciousness 
 in the present discussion since, by almost universal agreement, 
 it is regarded as the type of consciousness in which we are 
 brought into closest contact with what later becomes the coeffi- 
 cient of reality. Present-day metaphysicians are almost unani- 
 mous in maintaining that reality as an absolute experience is 
 realized onl\' is some form of immediacy of consciousness. 
 Bradley explicitly holds that reality is a matter of immediate 
 experience and his further characterization of such immediacv 
 as a state of 'sheer sentience,' as a state of undifiercnriated feeling, 
 identifies his absolute experience with this first immediacy of 
 consciousness. 'The will-to-believe' of Professor James and 
 the 'volitional immediacy' ot I'rofessor Royce must be inter- 
 preted in a similar waw 
 
 \\ hether this first immediac\' of consciousness be identified 
 with reality as an absolute experience and all else made phe- 
 nomenal, or used onlv as a type of experience in which reality 
 is actually given, the fact remains that the analysis of this 
 a-dualistic consciousness has been motived by certain meta- 
 physical presuppositions. Assuming that reality can be given 
 
4 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 onlv in an immediacy of consciousness and assuming still further 
 that this immediacy is due to the absolute simplicity of the 
 primitive consciousness, metaphysicians at once proceed to 
 analyze this first immediacy. As a result three types of epistem- 
 ological theory have been brought forward in modern dis- 
 cussion, viz., the Inrellectualistic, the AfFectivistic and the 
 Voluntaristic, each attempting to make some one aspect of 
 developed consciousness the explaining principle of conscious 
 development as well as the sole organ of reality. 
 
 Each of these three types of epistemological theory proceeds 
 upon the assumption that consciousness is, in its primitive stage, 
 wholly simple, in the sense that only one of the later aspects is 
 present. Experience thus comes to be regarded as the realiza- 
 tion of some one principle, that is, in other words, each stage of 
 conscious experience is but the embodiment in a specific mode 
 of this one principle and these successive modes in the actualiza- 
 tion of this one principle differ only in the way in which it is 
 embodied. Mental development thus becomes the necessary 
 evolution, through various modes, of a single principle. Hegel's 
 Ph'anomenologie des Geistes represents an attempt in this direc- 
 tion in assuming rationality as the explaining principle of the 
 mind, while Herbert Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy represents 
 a similar attempt, although in a wholly antipodal way. The 
 more modern movement in philosophy generally known as 
 'Pragmatism,' with its characteristic interpretation of experi- 
 ence solely in terms of the practical and the identifying of the 
 true and the beautiful with the good, is to be regarded not only 
 as a revolt from Hegel and Green but also as an attempt to make 
 u/// the explaining principle of mental development and the 
 organ of reality.' 
 
 From an analytical point of view, however, the simplicity of 
 the first immediacy of consciousness is relative only. Every 
 presentation is also a determination. From the begmnmg con- 
 sciousness is active and constructive. "The so-called imme- 
 diate intuition," says Green, "has content only m so far as it 
 
 I 
 
 ence 
 
 See Jamts. Priicm.jtism. p. -6, and also Miss Adams, The .lestbettc Expert- 
 
THE FIRST IMMEDIACY. 
 
 is not merely presentative."' Consciousness is never purely 
 a-noetic. Every 'that' is also a 'what.' What the presented 
 content is determined to be depends upon the active, disposi- 
 tional tendencies of the individual. To make these tendencies 
 absorb the whole of the presented content would make impossi- 
 ble the later dualisms of thought, while to make the presented 
 object the determining factor, as the empirical school in general 
 did, would create an absolute impasse in knowledge. Both 
 factors are present and operative and the significance of the first 
 immediacy is that it represents a stage of experience in wliich 
 these two aspects of all thought are held together. It is a 
 psychological truism to-day that nothing can be in conscious- 
 ness except what consciousness puts in. The unity, however, 
 of this early consciousness is not a unity won from a disturbed 
 situation, but the unity of a consciousness that has not lost its 
 original wholeness. The experience is one in which there are 
 no spheres of reference and control, since the later distinctions 
 of self and not-self, and inner and outer, are not present.- 
 
 From such interpretation of the rise of consciousness there 
 can arise no absolute impasse in knowledge. While as yet 
 there is no distinction of means and end, of interest and datum, 
 it is nevertheless true that the afFective-conative dispositions 
 seize and determine the presented content in congruitv with 
 themselves. Whatever conflicts may arise between these two 
 factors in this primitive experience they can be said to be 
 resolved by the processes creating them. It is precisely here 
 that we are to seek for the rise of the aesthetic experience, whose 
 function in the development of thought is the burden of the 
 present inquiry. The unity of the first immediacy of consci- 
 ousness represents the merging of the two aspects of thought 
 which are not as yet distinguished within consciousness. There 
 is no justification for regarding the first immediacy of con- 
 sciousness as absolutely simple in character, nor for identifying 
 it with either of the aspects of reflective thought. What we are 
 to assume at the outset, is not the duality of subject and object, 
 
 ' Prolegorrie-no to Ethics, p. 48 (2d ed.). 
 
 ' R. Adamson, The Development oj Modern Philosophy, \o\. II, p. 198. 
 
6 THE AESTHETIC F.XPERIES'CE. 
 
 but rnthcr their unity. The real problem here, is not as to the 
 character of the dualism of the pcrceiver and the perceived, but 
 rather, as to the kind of unitv that precedes them. 1 his 
 unity, from the present point o{' view, is to be ref;;arded as the 
 outcome of the activity of the perceivmg subject and not the 
 unity given it from without, which is the error of the dualistic 
 theory of knowledge, nor wholly made bv itself, which represents 
 the error of subjective idealism. Confessing our own guilt of 
 the 'psychologist's fallacy' but which fallacy, after all, becomes 
 the only guide of the metaphysician (Ormond), it is to be con- 
 cluded, that the unity of the first immediacy represents a unitv 
 of the active, constructive processes of the individual.' The 
 thing perceived is the content of the act of perceiving, while the 
 processes of perceiving are realized in the thing perceived. 1 he 
 relation between the two factors is not that between static 
 entities, each fixed and complete, but a relation of 'togetherness' 
 which, from a higher analytical point of view, represents a sort 
 of universalization of an otherwise heterogeneous and meaning- 
 less content. The content of the object of perception thus 
 becomes a related content, bur in this early stage of conscious 
 development, neither the object nor the relationships establish- 
 ing it, arc distinguished. The content of perception, when 
 viewed from without, consists essentially of separable and dis- 
 tinguishable units; but consciousness in irs first immediacy gets 
 no such separable and distinguishable units, but things, 'pro- 
 jects,' which embody the unity of the primitive consciousness. 
 Of this early consciousness, before distinctions arise between 
 content and control, it is to be said that, it acts in its entirety 
 upon whatever content may be presented. I lure is as yet no 
 manipulation of means with reference to a particular end, since 
 these two aspects of thought are nor held apart, but we have 
 rather what Professor Ormond calls 'spontaneity of will- 
 efFort' which is selective and constructive without prior interest 
 and purpose. Borrowing Professor Baldwins formula of atten- 
 tion, Attenrion = y^, ci, a, (in which .7 srands \\n the gross 
 general activities of the attentive process, a the special class of 
 
 ' Baldwin, Mental Developttunt, p. 286 (lA td."). 
 
THE FIRST IMMEDIACY. 7 
 
 motor reactions attacliiiii; to classes of experiences and <t tlie 
 finer adjustments within nV it is at once to be seen that the 
 attentive processes of the first imiiiediacv are confined lo the ele- 
 ment A . The control of the object is thus direct and immediate, 
 because consciousness being a-duahstic, the process of deter- 
 mination and construction of the object is a self-contained proc- 
 ess. The resulting construction thus holds true of the whole 
 ot experience and represents, therefore, a quasi-generah/a- 
 tion. This, I take it, is precisely what Professor Baldwin has 
 in view m speaking of these projective constructions as 'con- 
 cepts of the first degree'- and Royce as 'vague universals.' All 
 things are in this sense universal in this first immediacy, since not 
 only is there no distinction between content and control, but 
 even the content functions only as a whole. The unity of 
 consciousness within this early stage may be said to be due to 
 the fact that the afFective-conative tendencies as the control 
 factor seize, envelope and determine the situation as a whole. 
 The resulting construction represents a 'projectification' of con- 
 sciousness in all that it can apprehend. Ihe whole of whatever 
 meaning is possible to consciousness as yet a-dualistic is given 
 adequate rendering. From the psychic point of view we are 
 to regard the control of this earh' experience as being 'auto- 
 nomic' in character. The unity thus preserved between these 
 two factors of primitive thought is rather functional in char- 
 acter, in the sense that the self is not distinguished from the 
 inner dispositional processes, thus illustrating the general con- 
 clusion of modern psychology, that within primitive experience, 
 motor adjustment is the measure and test of mental unity. 
 
 It is also to be pointed out that, within this first immediacy 
 of consciousness, the distinction of individual and social does 
 notarise. The life of the individual is largely one of group main- 
 tenance, and custom, fixed and specific, determines conduct. 
 Education in primitive societies is largely a matter of handing 
 
 ' Mental Development, pp. i^i ^. 
 
 'See Baldwin, Thought and Things, \'o\. I., whose terminology is followed 
 in the present discussion. In tlie last eilition of Menial Drvelopment (1906), 
 Professor Baldwin applies the term 'Schematic Generals' to these first projeaive 
 constructions. 
 
8 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 down traditions. The exclusiveness of primitive society and 
 the more or less constancy of the environment supphcd both a 
 common content and common control, while both were held in 
 an undisturbed unity. Ihc resulting constructions are thus 
 common in character, but since the aspect of commonness 
 is not psychic to the individual, it is rather to be regarded as 
 'aggregate.' No personality as such attaches to the con- 
 structions of this early experience and they are, therefore, to be 
 regarded as anonymous as well as autonomous and collective in 
 character. Thus the successful construction of a presented con- 
 tent makes possible communication with others and not vice 
 versa as the Pragmatists contend. Moreover, the objectivity 
 which attaches to the projects of the first immediacy, is not the 
 result of their being communicable to others, but rather, they 
 are common possessions precisely because of their being objec- 
 tive. 
 
 In conclusion it is to be said that the significance of this first 
 immediacy of consciousness is, that it represents a stage of 
 mental development, in which the several aspects of thought, 
 while present and operative, are not distinguished, while the 
 projects, as the resulting constructions, represent attempts at 
 the maintammg of the equdibrmm of stmiulus and response, 
 control and content, by reducing all presented content to terms 
 of the inner dispositional tendencies. If, therefore, we define 
 experience to mean the essential unity of subject and object, 
 and further define such unity as the ideal toward which experi- 
 ence moves, it becomes evident that, in this first immediacy, 
 we have to do with the first of the stages in this development. 
 
 W'ithm the first immediacy, however, are found the materials 
 and motives of its own polarization. Characteristic responses 
 fail to bring the accustomed satisfaction and situations are con- 
 stantly arising which put to confusion all earlier motor accom- 
 modations. Varied experiences witli objects already familiar 
 break down the equilibrium of stimulus and response. Thus 
 while the object remains one, responses to it tend to multiply. 
 The child's world as one of chance and change, creates at once 
 the necessity and opportunity of rhougiit. New presentations 
 gain upon the indiMdual's store of motor adjustments. Means 
 
Tilt: FIRST IMMEDIACr 
 
 and end thus tall apart in consciousness and the need arises of 
 a method wherebA' they may be brought together. Interest, 
 which at the first is embodied in the affective-conative dispo- 
 sitions ot the individual, which are not held apart in con- 
 sciousness from the presented content, may make either <jf these 
 two aspects of thought its objective, so that we have what Pro- 
 fessor Baldwin has named the interest of habit and the interest 
 of accommodation.' Kach represents a form of control and the 
 operation of the two forms of control in the presence of a com- 
 mon content, constitutes the dualism, whose reconciliation 
 becomes the problem always of a dualistic experience. I he 
 epistemological problem arises only with the dualizing of con- 
 sciousness, and its solution waits upon the setting up of a com- 
 plete experience, which, at once explains and completes an 
 experience 'otherwise fragmentary — the setting up of a whole 
 which is not conditioned and controlled by its relations to other 
 things, but is determined and complete within itself. 
 
 The employment of images to meet the demands of situa- 
 tions other than those in which they were originally given, tends 
 to separate the images from the process in which they are con- 
 tained. The memory image, as one bearing the coefficients of 
 successful conversion back into the original experience, becomes 
 distinguished from the images of fancy, which no longer possess 
 conversion value. In a measure it is to be said, that fancy 
 represents the freedom of memory run riot; it is, indeed, what 
 Amiel has called it, 'La dimanche de la pensee.' But yet it 
 seeks to be a-dualistic since while memory objects have no exis- 
 tence apart from immediate consciousness but find their sphere 
 of reference beyond themselves, the images of fancy represent, 
 by a complete removal of all external control, a return to 
 an immediacy of consciousness. No distinction is made in 
 fancy between the images wholly fugitive and fleeting, that is, 
 wholly detached from their suggested termini or end-states, and 
 the treatment given them in consciousness. .As contrasted with 
 the memory images, however, the dualism of inner and outer 
 reference maintains itself. 
 
 ' Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, Feeling and ff'ill, ch. vii. 
 
10 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 The significance ot the fancy consciousness in the present 
 connection is, that it represents the setting up of a world in 
 which consciousness can move freelv, freed from the hard facts 
 of the \\()rhl of sense-experience and the hmitations of memory. 
 Judged m the hght of memory, the fancy constructions are 
 worthless, but thev nevertheless possess positive value in sunder- 
 ing the two aspects of thought as well as supplving tractable 
 material upon which consciousness can exercise its dawning 
 sense of agency and control. 
 
 Hut fancy is not creative. We are to distinguish between 
 the reproductive imagination and the imagination proper. 
 Ribot fails to make this distinction in his otherwise valuable 
 work entitled, Essay on the Creative Imagination. In a general 
 way it is to be said, that fancy represents the objectification of 
 consciousness with complete spontaneity. The fancies of the 
 individual, like the unreflective myths of his primitive ancestors, 
 are embodiments of an a-dualistic consciousness, thus compre- 
 hensive and for the time sufficient for all things. "This," as 
 SulK' sa\'s, "is the happ\' age of childhood when a new and 
 wondrous world created by a lively phantasy (fancy) rivals in 
 brightness, in distinctness of detail, aye in brightness too, the 
 nearest spaces of the world on which the bodily eye looks out 
 before reflection has begun to draw a hard dividing line between 
 the domain of historical truth and fiction."' 
 
 Thus the first immediacy, despite its apparent all-sufficiency, 
 carries with it its own instability. The complete swing from 
 memory to fancy makes necessary a return movement. Fancy 
 errs by its own defect and possesses contrast value only. The 
 complete detachment of fancy, however, constitutes it a world 
 apart. As peculiarly inner, it comes to have a persistence and 
 value peculiar to itself. Consciousness is now beset b)' rival 
 claims and the evident need is a completed experience which 
 finds its control wholh' wirliin itself. It is preciseh' here that 
 the epistemological problem arises for tiie first time, which 
 finds its solution in the 'semblant' consciousness, to the study of 
 which the next chapter is given. 
 
 ' Sully, StuJifs ni Cl'iti/hnnJ, p. S2. 
 
CnAl'TI-R 11. 
 
 The St-cond I irimcdtacy or 'Senihlant' Consciousness, as the 
 Merging of Dualistic or MeJinie Controls. 
 
 From the standpoint ot reflective thouglu, the development 
 of cognition is to be defined as an increasing determinnteness 
 of its two factors, content and control.' The first immediacy 
 was treated in the preceding chapter, as illustrating a mode in 
 the development of cognition in which the two aspects of thought, 
 while present and operative, were not held apart in conscious- 
 ness. \\ ithin such mode of consciousness, undetermined pres- 
 ence was given all objects. Presentation and determination, 
 content and control, interest and datum, were held in the most 
 perfect equilibrium. Reality was a matter of pure feeling, 
 whde the attitude of consciousness toward the object constructed 
 was one of 'presumption. '- 
 
 Bur, \\ ithin the first immediacy were found the motives and 
 the materials of its own polarization. Making the stimulus, 
 rather than the response, the determining factor in the con- 
 struction of sense objects, it is to be said further, that the break- 
 ing down of the original immediacy was due to the presence of 
 changing stimulations. Memory objects are valuable onlv in 
 so far as they bring sense confirmation and dispositional tenden- 
 cies are recognized apart from their accustomed responses, only 
 when they fail to reach their accustomed end-state. I he pres- 
 ence of objects which resist immediate treatment, as well as the 
 irregular behavior of persons, contribute also to the isolation 
 of the inner as a world in itself. In general it may be said that 
 the presence of the new and the failure of the old, contribute to 
 the sundering of the two aspects of knowledge, which until now, 
 were held in an equilibrium more or less stable. Moreover, the 
 
 'Baldwin, Thought mi J Things, Vol. II, hitr.; iiprimcci in Psychological 
 Revinc, Vol. XIII, No. 6, 1906. 
 ' Baldwin (unpublished lectures). 
 
 II 
 
12 Tin: AESTHETIC EXPERIES'CE. 
 
 individiiars own bodv has long been the seat of certain definite 
 experiences of 'storm and stress,' which, as being bevond his 
 immediate control, come also to be regarded as ambiguous. 
 Thus far it is to be said that the inner is such, as Professor Bald- 
 win has pointed out, simplv because it is not outer.' I he out- 
 come of the several movements already indicated, is the gradual 
 formation of a sphere of images possessing a certain stability 
 and character of its own. Unlike memory, however, the inner, as 
 such, lacks all reference beyond itself and does not lead to any- 
 thing beyond the process in wliicli it is contained.^ As thus 
 separated from the outer as held in the net of memory the inner 
 possesses as yet only the characteristics attaching to the images 
 lying outside the established forms of control. 
 
 As the result of the element of detachment attaching to the 
 memory object, both memory images and fancies come to be 
 regarded as inner, in the sense of falling within the body of the 
 individual. But the body is the starting place of the child's 
 life of exploration and discovery. He has already learned that, 
 by manipulating his members certain satisfactions are to be 
 had. The child early imitates and strangely enough, as Pro- 
 fessor Baldwin has shown, he begins by imitating persons. By 
 this means, what was at first projective to him in the conduct of 
 persons, comes to be associated with his own inner life. Imita- 
 tion thus becomes the method of treatment whereby content 
 hitherto untrnctable and capricious is carried over into the 
 life of the individual. As the result of the absorption of what 
 was at the first outer by the process of imitation, the inner is 
 no longer regarded as made up alone of images that have lost 
 all positive value, but is now recognized as being w hatever lends 
 itself to imitative treatment. Imitation, which is at first organic 
 in character, comes to be applied to the whole inner content as 
 detached from the external, and comes to be treated with reference 
 to the fulfillment of inner purpose. It is evident, that with this 
 separation of the images as content available tor inner treat- 
 ment, apart from its actual control in the outer, and with the 
 
 ' Thought and Thtns;s, \'o\. I, pp. 90 sq. 
 'Ibid. 
 
THE SECOND IMMEDIACY. 1 3 
 
 adoption ot imitation as the method of selection and reduction, 
 knowledge has entered upon a higher mode of determination. 
 Following the usage of Professor Baldwin we shall speak of 
 this mode as the 'lower semhlant' in which, bv the merging of 
 two sorts of control, consciousness regains a new and higher 
 immediacy. 
 
 The Characteristics of the Semhlant Consciousness. 
 
 The works of Groos,* Lloyd Morgan- and Professor Bald- 
 win' in connecting the aesthetic with the play consciousness, have 
 opened a new epoch in the study of aesthetics, while the epist- 
 emological value assigned the aesthetic consciousness in Pro- 
 fessor Baldwin's Thought and Things, supplies an adequate 
 motive of aesthetic construction. The conviction is general 
 that the aesthetic consciousness has not arisen to satisfy an 
 already existing sense of the beautiful.* This leaves open the 
 question of the motive of the rise of the aesthetic, which in the 
 present essay, is found within the general problem of knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 It is quite evident, however, that the role assigned the 
 aesthetic consciousness in the development of knowledge, depends 
 wholly upon the characteristics found attaching to it. I he 
 conviction has long held that play is in some way a natural 
 phenomenon of the mental life of the individual, while the close- 
 ness of its connection with art has been explicitly recognized 
 since Schiller. We are not concerned with its biological and 
 psychological value in the present discussion but rather with its 
 epistemological value as coming in between the image and the 
 reflective modes of consciousness, and thus standing mid-way 
 between the first immediacy which is below reflection and the 
 higher which extends above it. 
 
 According to Herr Groos the several theories of play may be 
 
 ' The Play of Animals and The Play 0} Man (P-ng. trans.). 
 ' Animal Behaviour. 
 
 ' Soiial and Fjhutd Intfrprftattons, p. I4S, ff., etc. 
 
 * See Tufts, 'I he (lenesis of thr Aesthetic Categories, 'Decennial Publications 
 of the University of Chicago, Vol. III. 
 
14 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 reduced ro two: the first, datinfi; back to Schiller and brought 
 forward in more recent times hv Herbert Spencer, has been 
 most ade(|uatelv defined by Wallaschek. " The surplus vigor in 
 more highlv developed organisms, exceeding what is required 
 for immediate need, in which play of all kinds takes its rise, 
 manifesting itself bv wav of imitation or repetition of all efforts 
 and exertions essential to the support of the organism."* Play 
 thus arises only when an excess store of energy has accrued to 
 the organism and so has onlv a negative value to the organism, 
 while art, as associated with play, comes to be regarded as a 
 useless luxury — a sort of by-product — possessing no direct 
 utility whatever for the life of mind or body. Professors 
 Groos and Baldwin have pointed out certain facts that tell con- 
 clusively against the 'surplus-energy' theory, and the theory 
 proposed in its stead corrects the limitations of the former theory 
 and exhibits the real value of play. Limiting ourselves in the 
 present connection to the epistemological value ot play, it is 
 said, subject to further elucidation, that the individual must be 
 playful to be anything more. The several writers on the sub- 
 ject of play already referred to, have laid stress upon play as a 
 sort of practice of what the organism already has tor the sake of 
 its retention and advancement. Professor Baldwin has shown 
 that the method may be used for the advancement of the mental 
 life as well as the physical and social. Ihe several characteris- 
 tics of the semblant or play consciousness treated in the present 
 connection are selected with reference to the emergence of the 
 epistemological consciousness and to the use made of the 
 aesthetic, or semblant consciousness, as the organ of imme- 
 diacy through a merging of two sorts of control. 
 
 (/) The Content of the Lower Semblant or Play Consciousness. 
 
 The inner-outer dualism, whose reconciliation becomes the 
 epistemological problem of the semblant consciousness, is found to 
 be a dualism falling within the field of images. Both the images 
 of fancy and the images f)f memory are now inner, in the sense 
 that they are alike materials for imitative treatment. To this 
 
 ' The Origin of Music. Quoted by Lloyd .Morgan in .hiimal Behaviour. 
 
THE SECOXD IMMEDIACY. I 5 
 
 entire psychic fielcl the inutan\c method is apphttl, \Mth the 
 result that the two types of images are redistrihuted and the 
 images of fancy, kicking the coefficients of memory which justify 
 their reference to a determined sphere, retreat again into the 
 germinating sphere of the suhject to which all else isobject. The 
 dualism is thus between two classes of objects, onlv one of which 
 finds a determined sphere of reference and the epistemological 
 problem is the erecting of a sphere of reference in which the two 
 types of images are unified. Images, as Professor Baldwin 
 has shown, are inner only because they are not outer. Lacking 
 the coefficients of memory which justify and guarantee whatever 
 use is made of them, the images of fancy are not available for 
 imitative treatment. They lack the persistence and represent- 
 ing character attaching to the memory images and consequently 
 have no reference apart from the process in which they occur. 
 Having thus no field of reference, the images ot tancy, might, 
 like the stream, go on forever, but their flow would be aimless 
 and meaningless. To have meaning and validity there must be 
 some reference to a sphere of determined existence in which 
 they hold true. 
 
 But only that which already possesses some determination 
 as holding within a definite sphere of existence can be 'sembled.' 
 That which lacks determination altogether is not imitable. 1 he 
 defect of the fancies was their elusiveness. They err by defect.* 
 But the images of memory are also found to be insufficient in 
 the light of the demands of an increasing experience. From 
 an analytical point of view it is to be seen, that we are in the 
 presence of a real dualism and one which can not be transcended 
 by ignoring either of its two poles. It is precisely here that we 
 are to find the value and function of the semblant consciousness 
 as the organ of reconciliation and unity. Since memory as the 
 sole sphere of reference and control has proven itself limited, in 
 the sense that it can not meet the demands of changed and chang- 
 ing experiences, and since the images of fancy functioning as a 
 demand for unity and congruity have no field of reference what- 
 ever, a fieldof reference must be established in which the demands 
 
 ' Baldwin, Thought and Things, Vol. I, p. 90. 
 
i6 nn: AtiyrHETic f.xperiesce. 
 
 alike of each are met and reconciled. But such sphere can be 
 erected onlvas a projection from a sphere of reference and control 
 already established, hence only the images of memory as held 
 under definite coefficients of control are available for semblant 
 construction. A further meaning is to he reached onK" In' a 
 reading forward of the present meaning, which is at once the 
 function and value of the 'sembling' process. The absolute 
 experience, at any mode of its genetic development, is but a pro- 
 jection of whatever meanings consciousness has at the time in 
 question. To extend experience is not to break with experience, 
 and if reality is to be immediate, it must needs be an immediacy 
 which completes and merges all present meanmgs and interests. 
 To limit the semblant construction to the images of fancy 
 would at once rob it of all variety and meaning and reduce it to 
 a sort of empty immediacy, of which illustrations are not lacking 
 in the history of epistemological theory. On the other hand, 
 to limit the semblant to the memory images alone, would yield 
 only a world of discrete and quantitative determination. But 
 by an inner imitation of meanings already guaranteed, both 
 aspects of the dualistic experience are at once recognized and 
 reconciled. The semblant consciousness thus stands as a pro- 
 test against any one-sided procedure and meets the several 
 demands of increasing thought, by treating meanings already 
 established as 'schemata' for the sake of further meaning, which 
 while not as vet possessed, is nevertheless treated and accepted 
 as already established. The reality-feeling, characteristic of 
 the first immediacy, due to the immediate unity of the two 
 aspects of the constructive process and which was lost in the 
 mediate control of memory, is again possessed in the 'make- 
 believe' character of the semblant. 
 
 (2) The Control in the 'Semblant' Consciousness. 
 
 Defining x\u- development of knowledge as the increasing 
 determinateness of its two aspects, content and control, the sem- 
 blant consciousness, as a process of inner imitation, under the 
 urgency of purpose selective of contents already established, is 
 to be regarded as the first appearance of a relatively free sub- 
 
THE SECOND IMMEDIJCr. I 7 
 
 jective control. Within the Hrst iininediacv no distinction was 
 made between these two aspects of thought and the unity is to 
 be regarded as a 'projection' embodying the affective-disposi- 
 tional tendencies. Presentations were determined wholh in 
 terms of what consciousness then possessed. From the vantage 
 ground of reflection it is to be said, that consciousness, during 
 its first immediacy, defined its world in terms of undifferentiated 
 feeling.' It is further to be said, that within such consciousness, 
 the emphasis is to be given rather to the subjective aspect. 
 From the standpoint of the individual the process is 'autonomic,' 
 since both aspects of thought are as yet involved in a jis\'chic 
 whole, whde from the objective point of view the process is 
 'foreign,' in the sense that the presented object is the determining 
 factor of the process. These two factors were detached in 
 memory, but the mediate character of the control of memory 
 shows that consciousness is yet a-dualistic. Fancy represented 
 the detachment of memory become complete, in that a complete 
 break was made with the outer as the sense-datum. In the 
 semblant consciousness there is a return to the outer, as held in 
 memory, but the return is not complete. The content is ac- 
 cepted as guaranteed by the coefficients of memory, while the 
 control aspect is to be seen in the fact, that the images an^ not 
 used for the sake of regaining the original sense-control. The con- 
 tent, thus guaranteed, is used for the sake of fulfillinginner pur- 
 poses and thus given a determination which it does not have, 
 but which its control coefficients justify. Consciousness, for 
 the first time stands apart from its content and treats it with 
 reference to its own purposes and demands. The semblant 
 object thus represents an inner construction for inner purposes, 
 but out of materials determined in earlier modes. It is neither 
 a fancy object, nor a transcript of the outer as held in memory, 
 but rather a 'prescript' for the reconciliation and unification of 
 the claims alike of the two aspects of thought now present and 
 operative. \n fancy, the control aspect attaching to memory 
 is wholly ignored and while recognized in the semblant is never- 
 
 ' Professor Baldwin's 'Reality-feeling.' Sec Handbook of Psychology: Senses 
 and Intellect, ch. vii. 
 
1 8 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIES'CE. 
 
 thclcss lifted from its regular sphere aiul carried into another. 
 The content accepted as a 'presumption' in the first immediacy 
 is now carried temporarilv to another sphere for the sake of 
 further determination and made an 'assumption,' but an 
 assumption justified by the already present 'presumption.'' As 
 in the first immediacy the determination given presented con- 
 tent was regarded as an attempt upon the part of the inner dis- 
 positional processes to reduce the presented content into unity 
 with themselves, so the semblant object is to be looked upon as 
 an inner control of content wirli reference to its own embodi- 
 ment. In the presence of the conflicting claims and demands 
 of sense and memory, the semblant object, as an inner deter- 
 mination of presented content, restores unity and hence imme- 
 diacy of consciousness, by merging these several demands into a 
 whole that at once transcends and completes both without 
 ignoring either. 
 
 (j) The Immediacy of the Semblant Consciousness. 
 
 A third aspect of the semblant consciousness is to be inferred 
 from the attitude of consciousness toward the object thus con- 
 structed. IVimitive consciousness was held to be onlv relatively 
 simple, and its immediacy represented an equdibrium of the as- 
 pects of knowledge later to be distinguished. Ihe determination 
 given was found to be the issue of the affective-volitional tendencies 
 and represented an attempt at a definition of the world in terms 
 of feeling.- In the semblant consciousness the several aspects 
 of thought have fallen asunder and each is present as a sort of 
 demand peculiar to itself. Kach of the two characteristics of 
 the semblant already indicated has to do with one of the aspects 
 respectively of the inner-outer dualism of the semblant con- 
 sciousness. So long as consciousness remains a-dualistic the 
 world of presented content is taken at its face value and 'things 
 are what they seem.' Reality is solely a matter of feeling 
 
 ' ILiKlwiii, Thought and Things, Vol. II, ili.ip. i, §4. See Henrand Russell, 
 Meiiiong's ' 1 heory of Compie.xes and Assumptions,' MtnJ, 1904. 
 
 ' Cf., Reality-feeling: UMwin, Handbook of Psychology; Frcling an J ff^iH, 
 ch. vii. 
 
THE SECOXD IMMEDIACY. I9 
 
 or 'presumption,'' Both the content and the control aspects 
 were placed upon the same basis of reahty. Despite the detach- 
 ment of the images of memor}' and their use as possessing con- 
 version value into real facts of the outer world, the aspect of 
 control is mediate, in the sense that it is vested in a content King 
 outside the control process. Fancies came and went, formed 
 and dissolved, without prior interest or determination upon the 
 part of consciousness. As a result no distinction was made 
 within the field of fancies. But with the isolation of the inner 
 as material available for imitative treatment, differences at once 
 arise within the sphere of images between those that have outer 
 reference and those that do not. The latter, as a sphere of 
 reference, has as yet only negative value, being made up of 
 images that can not be imitativelv treated. Every image is 
 determined as belonging to either one of these two spheres, but 
 can not hold in both. In either case, the disposition of the 
 images is through a mediational content, which means that the 
 old-time immediacy is broken down. The obvious need is a 
 sphere of reference in which the common content is treated with 
 reference to the demand of the inner. The significance of the 
 semblant is, that by merging these two aspects of control, it 
 becomes the organ of a new and higher immediacv. 
 
 The semblant consciousness has objectivity as the first imme- 
 diacv also had, but an objectivity secured by taking over into 
 the inner the outer pole of the inner-outer dualism. It is in the 
 the semblant, therefore, that we are to find the first instance of a 
 real transcendence upon the part of consciousness, bv the erec- 
 tion of a schematic object in which, for the tmic, its several 
 aspects of control are completely harmonized. 1 hus conscious- 
 ness transcends its dualistic experience bv erecting an object in 
 which the demand of the inner for unity and of the outer for 
 consistencv and meaning are merged in a new mode of control, 
 which in turn becomes the organ of immediacy of the two 
 aspects of knowledge. I he semblant consciousness is imme- 
 diate in character, an experience in which existence and content, 
 interest and datum are merged into a common unity of reference 
 
 'Ibid. 
 
20 THE AF.STJIF.TIC. F.XPFRIF.SCE. 
 
 and control. In the case of the first ininiediacy, such unity was 
 secured and licld in the absence of reflective analysis of the given 
 into its characteristic aspects. In other terms, the first immedi- 
 acy represents a rendering of the whole of consciousness, in its 
 as yet unbroken unitv, while of the semblant consciousness, it 
 may be said that, it represents an experience in which the 
 several aspects of thought are again merged in a complete and 
 self-sustained whole. 
 
 {4) 'Syndoxic' Character of Semblant Constructions. 
 
 The three aspects of the semblant consciousness thus far 
 considered will later be found to be precisely the three criteria 
 demanded by the several attempts at a solution of the epistemolog- 
 ical problem of reflective thought, as well as the three aspects of 
 the aesthetic experience par excelletice. But there is another 
 aspect of the semblant consciousness, viz., its 'commonness,* 
 which is also a characteristic of both the reflective and the 
 aesthetic experience. Ir has already been pointed out, that 
 the 'projective' constructions of the first immediacy were 'aggre- 
 gate,' that is, common to the group but not recognized as such 
 by the individual. The anonymous character of the unreflective 
 myth has often been noted but not as yet explained. No inquiry 
 is raised as to the author of mvths and fancies, still their value 
 is not lessened in finding them both anonymous and collective. 
 
 Professor Baldwin has shown, that memory shows a form of 
 *secondary' conversion which is essentially social in character.* 
 He has also pointed out how the individual in play comes to 
 submit his creations to others for confirmation. The material 
 thus entering into the semblant constructions is already under 
 social guarantees and is selected because of its common charac- 
 ter, while the images of fancy, as being purely private- rein 
 innerlich — are at one relegated to the limbo of the illusory and 
 meaningless. The semblant construction thus becomes an 
 object for general acceptance. It carries with it a demand for 
 general recognition. It is precisely here that we are to seek for 
 the aspect of "shareableness' and 'universality' which attaches 
 
 ' Baldwin, Thought and Things, Vol. I. p. i^+fF. 
 
THE SECOND IMMEDIACY. 21 
 
 to play and art alike. \\ liile the play object may be recognized 
 by a few onh', ir nevertheless carries with it that common aspect 
 which makes it hold tor all competent observers. The objective 
 character of the semhlant object, like the projective character 
 of the myths and fancies of the first immediacy, involves 
 the aspect of commonness. It is precisely here that we are to 
 seek for the normative and universal character of the semblant 
 object. 
 
 It is very generally recognized in present-day aesthetic dis- 
 cussion, that the aesthetic consciousness has arisen from motives 
 other than a pre-existing love of beauty. The determination of 
 the motives from whence it has arisen remains as yet an open 
 problem. Professor Tufts, of the University of Chicago, holds 
 that we are to seek for the motives of the aesthetic in the held 
 of social psychology. But Professor Tufts leaves open a still 
 larger problem as to what makes social progress and intercourse 
 possible. In the present discussion, following the conclusions 
 of Professor Baldwin, thought is the matter of the social process 
 and all thought is necessarily common. Accepting this con- 
 clusion, we are led to the result, that the motives of the aesthetic 
 consciousness are to be sought in epistemology rather than soci- 
 ology. At the several stages of the development ot the epistem- 
 ological consciousness the demand arises for an object which 
 is not private, but which appeals to all members of the commu- 
 nity. Thus we found that the fancies and myths of the first 
 immediacy were 'aggregate' and non-individual. With the rise 
 of the inner-outer dualism, the need is for an object which at 
 once meets the demands of the individual and at the same time 
 demands general recognition. At each successive mode of 
 determination of thought, the purely private is eliminated and 
 only materials under the test of secondary conversion, that is, 
 tested by means of others, become available for imitative treat- 
 ment. The problem of knowledge thus becomes not 'Mow can 
 we think things together,'' but rather how can we manipulate 
 an already common content for the effective embodiment of 
 individual meanings and purposes. 
 
 ' James, 'ffow can wel hink Ihings Together ?' /'jv^/'o/o^/Va/ ^^•viru;,\'ol. II, 
 pp. lOjfF. 
 
22 THE J ESTHETIC EXPKRIES'CE. 
 
 It is thus seen tliar tlu- characteristics of the lower semblant 
 consciousness are precisely those denianded by the cpisteniolog- 
 ical problem of the inner-outer dualism, whence the conclusion, 
 that tile two have arisen together, and that the motives and 
 function of the aesthetic are to be found within the epistemo- 
 logical. By merging the two aspects of control issuing respec- 
 tively from the inner and the outer, the aesthetic becomes the 
 organ of world-unity and world-interpretation. The projects 
 of the first immediacy were found to be 'synergetic' while the 
 semblant objects are to be defined as 'syntelic' or 'contemplative.'' 
 They are ideal, in the sense that they are neither pure fancies 
 and thus private and subjective, nor mere transcripts of mem- 
 ory, which is mediate as to its control, but rather as Professor 
 Ormond says a 'prescript' of a world in which the selective and 
 the recognitive are reconciled. - 
 
 The semblant object therefore reconciles the inner-outer 
 dualism bv merging the two sorts of control issuing respectively 
 from the poles of the dualism. It is neither inner nor outer, 
 but it reconciles and satisfies alike the demands of eacli. 1 he 
 remote control of memory is, for the time, released. 1 he con- 
 trol of the semblant construction is unique, in the sense, that the 
 material entering into it is lifted, as it were, from its original 
 control and used for personal purposes. The object thus con- 
 structed might be real but it is not, though treated 'as if it were.' 
 The 'autotelic' character of the control of the constructions of 
 the first immediacy was found in the fact that these construc- 
 tions represented an attempt to fashion the presented world in 
 congruous terms but without conscious separation of the factors 
 involved. Interest then meant the whole of the aftective-con- 
 ative dispositions. But with the bifurcation of consciousness, 
 interest may be directed either toward the content as held in 
 memory, or to the control which is not yet able to function in its 
 own name. But the very fact of the rise of the semblant object 
 is indicative of a form of interest which does not terminate 
 with the already guaranteed content of memory. It is precisely 
 
 ' Baldwin, riipiil>lishctl Lectures. 
 ' FounJiitioris of K tiouliJ(;i\ ch. ix. 
 
THE SECOND IMMEDIACr. 23 
 
 here that we are to seek tlic rise ot tlic scniblant as an attempt 
 upon the part of consciousness to give expression and embodi- 
 ment to the interest which gives it birth. The history of aes- 
 thetics would be simply the history of the rise and development 
 of this sill generis type of interest. The several historically 
 recognized art-periods of the world reflect the successive stages 
 of the embodiment of the selt. W ithin the Hrst immediacy 
 there is to be found whatVignoli has called "the objectification 
 of the self in all the phenomena it can perceive."' Bur in the 
 second immediacy, realized in the semblant consciousness, there 
 is the fusion of two possible controls. Consciousness is now 
 possessed of spheres of reference, only one of which, memory, 
 is under its own characteristic coefficients of control. From 
 this sphere the material of the semblant construction is drawn 
 since it always gets its materials from the already established. 
 But this material, as already established, is used in the semblant 
 consciousness for the sake of a more complete embodiment ot 
 the self, which is accomplished by the self giving it a meaning of 
 its own and not one guaranteed through something else. The 
 'reality-feeling' of the first immediacy which is lost in the mediate 
 character of memory, is again reached in the 'make-believe' 
 construction of the semblant construction. The self becomes 
 one with its object in a new and higher immediacy. By a pro- 
 cess of 'Einfuhling,' a reading of itself into the object, it com- 
 pletes itself, by setting up an experience in which all motives 
 and controls are merged. The external world as held in memory 
 is held up and treated schematically for the sake of further 
 meaning. The aesthetic experience, at whatever stage of its 
 development, is therefore an ideal experience in the sense that 
 it does not mediate the original control. Its meaning is an 
 imported meaning and comes directly rather than through some- 
 thing else. 1 he control of the construction is not completely 
 born of the self since the inner is yet lacking in determination. 
 The semblant consciousness is, therefore, to be regarded as 
 quasi-epistemological and the semblant construction in which 
 new and higher immediacy is reached as quasi-aesthetic. 
 
 ' Vignoli, Science and Myth. 
 
CHAPTKR III. 
 
 The Mediate and Dtialistic Character of Reflective Thought as 
 
 the Outcome of the Lower Setnblant and the Prelude to 
 
 the Higher Sernblant or Aesthetic Consciousness. 
 
 The episteniological consciousness is dualistic.^ To know 
 implies and involves a knower as well as something known. 
 Current epistemological discussion recognizes the subject- 
 object dualism as the fundamental characteristic of thought. 
 Intjuiry as to the origin, nature and validity of knowledge arise 
 only with the distinction of these two factors involved in every 
 conscious construction. Paulsen is justified in the conclusion 
 that since epistemological discussion arose as critical inquiry 
 upon metaphysics, it arose late in the history of thought.- But 
 it would not be true to say that epistemological inquiry was not 
 present at a much earlier date than Locke's Essay and Kant's 
 Critique of Pure Reason. It is neither a matter of chance, 
 nor arbitrary procedure, that modern philosophical discussion 
 has gathered about epistemological, rather than metaphysical 
 inquiries. Theory of knowing rather than theory of being is 
 now to the fore. If epistemological inquiry did not arise as 
 an independent discipline until the latter half of the eighteenth 
 centui} , It was not due to an absence of the necessary motives 
 and materials at an earlier period. The fact rather is, that 
 epistemological inquiries were present long before the name, 
 and the more exact statement of the problem of knowledge in 
 modern times, represents the focusing of a long series of con- 
 verging motives and materials of an epistemological character. 
 Ihe epistemological consciousness must be treated genet- 
 icallv rather than transversely.^ It arises with the breaking 
 
 ' Baldwin, Thought and Things, Yo\. I, p. 266, ami \(il. 1 1, chaps, xiii-xv; 
 Hradltv, A ppeoronce ond Realitx, pp. 170, 1 75. 
 ' i'aulscn, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 3jg. 
 • Baldwin, Thought and Things, Vol. 1, p. 12. 
 
 24 
 
THE DUALISTIC CHARACTER OF REFLECT I0\. 25 
 
 down of the first immediacy of consciousness and its problem 
 becomes the erection of an experience in which the (kial charac- 
 ter of rliought is merged and a higher immediacy estahhshed. 
 In the preceding chapter it was shown, that the sembhuit or 
 play consciousness represented the reconcihation and merging 
 of two sorts of control.* With the breaking up of the first imme- 
 diacy, in which content and control were held in a relativelv stable 
 equilibrium, memory and fancy stood for two possible wavs of 
 treating presented content. Interest, at first identical with the 
 affective-conative dispositions, and unitary, has also been polar- 
 ized, so it is possible to speak of an interest of a selective as well 
 as interest of a recognitive character. These two types of 
 interest represent two possible attitudes of consciousness toward 
 its own content. The significance of the semblant conscious- 
 ness was seen in the fact, that it represented the reconciliation 
 of these two forms of interest by setting up of a detached and self- 
 controlled construction. 
 
 Before the rise of the semblant, as an inner determination, 
 the inner possessed value only in contrast with the outer. But 
 the semblant, as merging both memory and fancy, is neither 
 a memory object, nor a pure fancy, but in a sense both. 1 he 
 rise and progressive determination of the semblant supply the 
 materials and motives of the substantive dualism of reflection. 
 The sense of agency and control found present in the semblant 
 becomes completely generalized for all content and functions 
 as the presupposition of control. The quasi-logical character 
 of the control of the lower semblant consciousness was found in 
 the fact that the constructive self was still identifieil witli a 
 portion of its content. The epistcmological consciousness is 
 reached only when the self as subject is set over against its entire 
 content. 
 
 No adequate solution of the epistcmological problem is 
 possible so long as the subject is identified with some one ot 
 its aspects. With the rise of the mode of reflection, in which 
 the self is set over ajrainst the whole of its content, a content 
 inclusive of mind and body, each under its own form of control, 
 
 * Ibid., p. 119. 
 
26 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 the epistemological problem becomes the reconcihng of a dual- 
 ism both terms of which are equally under subjective control. 
 There is no ground whatever for makmg either mmd or body 
 prior in the solution of the problem, since both have arisen 
 together. Either apart from the other represents an abstraction 
 and reality must be inclusive of both. Any form of interaction- 
 ism makes the problem of knowledge insoluble, while a paral- 
 lelism of the type that forbids all reconciliation, reduces the 
 epistemologist to the same extremity. 
 
 In the preceding chapters the attempt was made to show, 
 that the earlier dualistic experiences were transcended in an 
 imitative treatment by consciousness of the meanings already 
 acquired. The limitation in eacli mstance was found in the 
 fact that the constructive self was identified with one term of the 
 dualism. The semblant consciousness was found to be 'pragma- 
 tclic' in the character of its control, because the materials of its 
 construction were borrowed from memory. The outer world, 
 as held in the grasp of memory, was as yet the sole sphere of 
 reference and control. But witli the rise of the subject-object 
 dualism of reflection, both mind and body are equally objects 
 of thouiiht and available for imitative treatment. From the 
 genetic point of view, therefore, the epistemological problem of 
 reflection can be solved only by a re-statement of the subject-object 
 dualism for common reflection, which will make possible the trans- 
 cending and merging of the subject-object dualism. This requires 
 the same process as that by which the earlier dualisms were also 
 transcended and merged. 
 
 Reflective thought is thus dualistic, since the dualism of sub- 
 stances has been redistributed, but has not disappeared. 
 Thought has still to do with two opposed spheres with character- 
 istic forms of control, the one constituting the content and the 
 other the judging self. The conflict here is a dualism of control, 
 both forms of w hich however, are mediated through a common 
 content, and the solution of the jMdblem waits upon the erection 
 of a field of reference and control in wliicli reality is given 
 immediately, rather than through a mediating content, the 
 erection of an 'absolute experience in whicii phenomenal dis- 
 
THE DUALISTIC CHARACTER OF REFLECTION. 27 
 
 tinctions are merged, a whole become immediate at a higher 
 stage without losing any richness.'' 
 
 (/) Dualisttc Character of the Content of Reflection. 
 
 Defining judgment as the acceptance or rejection of mate- 
 rials determined in earlier modes of cognition, the content 
 of the logical mode may be said to be whatever the mind may 
 think about. The whole content of e.xperience, sense objects, 
 memory objects, semblant objects, and even fancy objects are 
 alike objects of thought to the subject which is now set (ner 
 against all content as the controlling, directing and organ- 
 izing factor of experience. Self in this sense may think about 
 everything and anything.- But the content of thought is 
 mediate in character, since judgment, as the redistribution of 
 earlier meanings, must of necessity accept its content as held under 
 certain presuppositions of control. Whatever the objects of 
 thought and whatever use may be made of them, the control of 
 the sphere from which they are drawn still holds. Judgment 
 may be selective but is selective of facts only, so that the control 
 of the judgmental process is beyond the judging self. In the 
 Kantian sense, judgment is, therefore, regulative rather than 
 constitutive of experience. It is precisely here, I think, that we 
 are to seek for the limitation generally recognized as attaching 
 to thought. Thought, as Bradley says, is always desiring 
 another than itself, because its content is always in an incom- 
 plete form,' and it seeks to possess in its object that whole 
 character of which it already owns the separate features. But 
 since such a complete object lies beyond thought, it must 
 remain forever an Other.* 
 
 (2) The Dualistic Control of Thought. 
 
 The content of the logical mode thus carries with it certain 
 determinations due to its having a certain 'make-up.' The 
 
 ' Bradley, .-I ppearance and Reality^ p. 160. 
 ' Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory, pp. I and 2. 
 ' Hradlcv, .1 ppearance and Reality, p. 1 80. 
 Mbid.. p. 181. 
 
28 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 character of such determination reflects the stage of develop- 
 ment which the constructive consciousness has reached. The 
 aspect of control, as the second factor of conscious construction, 
 is to be sought for in the process by which presented content is 
 referred to its appropriate sphere of existence and control. The 
 aspect of control, therefore, is, in the logical mode, mediate in 
 the sense that the content is used as holding within a certain 
 sphere of reference. 1 rutii as the outcome of the logical proc- 
 ess means preciselv reference to a sphere, and thus involves 
 something to which it is true as well as some one to whom it is 
 true.' But in judgment these two are never the same, for if 
 they were, judgment would be wholly meaningless. There is, 
 therefore, a real dualism present in judgment, which thought 
 can not of itself transcend. Mr. Bradley is quite right in sav- 
 ing that thought can not, in its actual processes and results, 
 transcend the dualism of the 'that' and the 'what.'- Thoujiht 
 is relational and discursive, meaning that its control falls outside 
 the subject, so that B^adle^■, and the Intellectualists in general, 
 conclude that the real subject of judgment is reality, that is, a 
 fuller experience in which thought is absorbed, the predication 
 of a content consistent with and in entire agreement with the 
 self. The control aspect of thought, like the content aspect, 
 thus points for^vard to a more complete experience, in which 
 the two aspects are merged and completed. But this represents 
 the epistemological problem of reflective experience. 
 
 (5) The Subject of Thought. 
 
 Withm the logical mode arises the distinction between the 
 T and the 'me,' the thinker and the things thought. In our 
 treatment of the two aspects of thought known as content and 
 control, we found that both alike pointed forward to an aspect 
 of the process of thought that was not fullv rendered in either 
 of its two factors. It was found that thought as such was unable 
 to get its materials into a harmonious system or to establish a 
 control in which the subject, as the existence factor, and the 
 
 '.Sec Baldwin, Thought and Things, Vol. 11, chap. xiii. 
 ' Hradky, A ppearance and Reality, ch. xv. 
 
THE DUALISTIC CHARACTER OF RFFLECTIOX. 29 
 
 predicate, as the content f:ictt)r, were iMoui^lu togi-tlHr witliin 
 some immediate experience. Asa result of this embarrassment 
 between subject and object, the Intellcctuahsts identify the sub- 
 ject of judgment with reahty as such. Mr. Bradlev has shown 
 that the thinking self can not be identified with any particular 
 content. Thought thus seems always to he unahle to render 
 its own subject. Mr. Bradley appreciates this fact and goes 
 over to what may be called an 'a-logical' experience, meaning 
 an experience in which subject and object are contained in an 
 immediacy of feeling.' What Mr. Bradley among the Intellec- 
 tualists and Professor Royce among the Voluntarists are search- 
 ing after, is a form of experience in which rhe self is able to 
 completely embody itself. The problem becomes the further 
 reading of present meanings, for the sake of fiirtlicr meanings. 
 The function of thought is the employment of already estab- 
 lished forms of control for the sake of increase of knowledge; 
 bur rhe problem now becomes the employment of already guar- 
 anteed meanings for the sake of control of future experience.^ 
 
 The epistemological problem thus becomes the problem of 
 erecting an experience in which all partial and fragmentary 
 meanings are made complete and in which the subject finds 
 itself completely reflected. The first immediacy was main- 
 tained by the self objectifying itself in all the phenomena it could 
 perceive. Without the distinction of subject and object, con- 
 sciousness nevertheless maintained its primitive unity and purity 
 by reducing the object to the unity of pure feeling. In the 
 'make-believe' character of the semblant consciousness we 
 found the merging of two forms of control, by the erection of an 
 object in which the self identified itself with its object. It is 
 therefore to this same mode of conscious construction that we 
 are to turn for a solution of the dualistic experience of reflective 
 thought. 
 
 Summing up the discussion thus far made, it is found that 
 within the movements of the logical mode we have found two 
 
 ' WtvuWc)', A pptfirance and Rcalit\,^. 1 72. 
 
 'See Baldwin, ■r/.'ott^/'^ and Things, Vol. II, ch.ip. xiv, who distinguishes 
 these two movements as 'knowledge through control' and 'control through 
 knowledge' respectively. 
 
3° 
 
 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 types of meanin<2; which were not onlv not rendered, hut for the 
 rendering of which consciousness within the logical mode was 
 wholly inadequate. In the first place it was found that the 
 thinking self could not be rendered in terms of logical thought 
 and thus remains over as an rlcment of 'intent.' Logical pro- 
 cedure can take place onl\' witlun a related content. 1 he 
 thinker thus finds himself limited to .ind conditioned by ihe 
 material with which he works. His point of view must be 
 retrospective and his judgments must be of the factual type only. 
 The personality of the thinker must be as completely lost as is 
 possible. Formal logic bv the use of a series of wholly neutral 
 symbols represents an attempt to eliminate the personal element 
 of thought. In the second place we have found that withm the 
 logical mode the control aspect of all thinking remains also 
 unrendered. But we have also found that it was precisely by 
 this means that thought was able to reconcile conflicting con- 
 trols in earlier experiences and thus reach a platform for higher 
 mental determinations and constructions. 1 he projective con- 
 structions of the first immediacy were regarded, from the point 
 of view of the consciousness that had them, as 'presumptions,' 
 while the constructions of the semblant or play consciousness 
 were regarded as 'assumptions.' The attitude of consciousness 
 toward the first type of constructions has been characterized as 
 'primitive credulity' In Bain and 'reality-feeling' by Baldwin, 
 meaning a sort of naive acceptance of the object. In the case 
 of play objects, in which the self stands apart from its objective 
 constructions, there is a sort of identification of the self \\ itli 
 the object, an acceptance of the object as constructed wholly 
 for inner, personal purposes. Logic is not a matter of variable 
 belief and every precaution is taken to rule out this aspect of 
 thought. But thus far we have seen that consciousness has been 
 able to unify itself and thus reach a platform for higher mental 
 determination only by a reading forwartl ft irs present store of 
 meanings and arraching to them nuaiiings which they are not 
 known to possess bur accepting tiiem ami treating them as if they 
 already possessed the meanings thus attached to them. Belief 
 thus passes into 'faith,' the substance of things held as pos- 
 sible, the acceptance of something as if its realit\' were already 
 realized. 
 
THE DIAUSTIC CHARACTER OF REFLECT 10 S\ 31 
 
 In addition to these two types of nieaninf^ which the logical 
 mode fails to render, Professor Baldwin has pointed out that it 
 fails also to render certain 'singular' meanings. He points 
 out, what is a matter of general recognition, that the singular 
 judgment has been a sort of 'thorn in the Hesh' to the logician 
 and the philosopher alike. Traditional logic finds itself wholly 
 unable to exhaust this type ot meaning and as a result it is 
 identified in some way with the univt-rsal. 
 
 The fact appears to be that there are two types of singularity, 
 which Professor Baldwin has named 'essential' and 'imjK)rted' 
 singularity, only the latter of which is of concern in rhe present 
 connection. The first type is 'rendered only in community,'' 
 whereas the second gives a judgment not of truth but of descrip- 
 tive assertion. Its singularity is a matter of selection and appre- 
 ciation, and thus can not be rendered in logical terms. - 
 
 There are therefore three types of meaning not rendered by 
 the developments within the logical mode. Consciousness is 
 again in the presence of a dualistic experience and the epistem- 
 ological problem of reflection becomes the problem of erecting 
 a whole of experience in which these several meanings are 
 rendered. 
 
 The character and place of the ontological problem deter- 
 mine the character and function of the epistemological and 
 the several historic types of reality reflect as well the several 
 types of epistemological theory. Professor Baldwin' has ar- 
 ranged those several types of theories of knowledge under two 
 general types and his classification is here followed. Both t\pes 
 of theory which he knows respectively as the 'Identity' and the 
 'Representative' are found to proceed from ontological necessity 
 rather than psychological analysis. Kach alike assumes the 
 subject-object dualism as the necessary presupposition of reflec- 
 tive thought and each also attempts to transcend the dualism 
 
 ' Baldwin, Thought and Things, Vol. II. chap, xiv, §8; and in the article 
 'Logical Communitv and the Diffircncc of Discirniblcs,' P/vc/'o/ojf/.a/ Rn'inu, 
 Nov., 1907, I'rof. Baldwin shows that it is only by generalizing its successive 
 appearances that a singular object can be made matter of judgment. 
 
 ' Baldwin, loc. cit.,Vol. II, chap, xiv, §4. 
 
 ' Unpublished Lectures. 
 
32 THE AESTHETIC F.XPERIESCE. 
 
 thus established h\ estahhshing some sort of correspondence 
 between thoiio;ht and reality. 
 
 The Identity theories proceed upon the assumption that 
 thought and its object can not be foreign to each other. I he 
 object of thought must necessarily be the product of thought. 
 The dualism must therefore fall within the process which is 
 responsible for its appearance. Hut since consciousness is 
 recognized as three-sided, we are to expect that each of the 
 aspects of consciousness will be made in turn the organ of 
 knowledge and reality. Accordingly we haye with us Intel- 
 lectualists, Voluntarists, and Mystics or 'AfFectiyists.' By neg- 
 lecting the e.xistence aspect of thought, the representatives of 
 an identity theory of knowledge reduce thought and reality to 
 a system of 'implications.' That each is unable to carry itself 
 through, is to be inferred from the fact to be discussed in the 
 following chapter, that each, in the end, arrives at a conception 
 of reality in terms of immediate and undifferentiated feeling. 
 
 The value of the identity theory resides in the fact that it 
 represents an attempt to preserve and restore the aesthetic 
 and religious ideas threatened by the attempts of the empiricists 
 and finally destroyed by the materialists. But because the 
 identity theory refuses to accept any object as an item of knowl- 
 edge which can not be e.xplained by analysis of the subject, 
 it becomes fixed and static and in the end a purely formal 
 discipline. 
 
 The representative theory of knowledge arises through a 
 failure of the former type of theories to deal adequately with 
 the more urgent and vital matter of life and experience. The 
 rapid development of empiricism is to be found in its kee|Ting 
 close to experience. The object of thought must be other than 
 thought, in which 'other' thought must find both its motives 
 and sanctions. But in either type of theory reality is given 
 as a fixed system in which, according to the Rationalists, thought 
 must find its law and goal, while according to the Empiricists, 
 thought is true only in so far as it adequately represents a world 
 already organized apart from the knowing mind 
 
 But as in the time of Kant, so also to-day, the conviction is 
 felt that these two types of theory have- run themselves out. 
 
THE DUALISTIC CHARACTER OF REFLECTIOX. 33 
 
 1 lit- tdct thar the cliaiiipioMs ot ;in iLltiuity theory ot knowledge 
 find theinstlvcs in the presence of ;in itn passe which can be 
 bridged only by a denial of the validit\ of the process by which 
 it is established, reveals both the limitations and the defects of the 
 theory. These writers proceed upon the assumption that reality 
 must be one and immediate, but since thought is mediate in char- 
 acter, reality must, in the end, be gotten in terms of pure feeling. 
 The \V)luntarists also recognize the dualistic character of the 
 practical lite, bur a dualism which conduct, as such, can not 
 transcend, so that the 'other' in terms of which the self completes 
 itselt, must be gotten in an immediacy of the will. Thus in an 
 indirect way the outcome of the rationalistic movement has 
 been to arouse and ground the conviction that realitv is larger 
 than thought, and that the final interpretation and unification 
 of experience will proceed the rather from the affective-volitional 
 aspect of consciousness. 
 
 The outcome of the several attempts to establish a represen- 
 tative theor\' of knowledire has been strikingly similar to that of 
 the former type of theory. Proceeding from an inadecjuate 
 notion of experience, the Pragmatists, as the avowed empiricists 
 of the present time, find the highest type of thought and reality 
 in undifferentiated and unrel^cctive feeling. The plain man of 
 the street who does not think but knows, represents the ideal 
 type of thought. Thought arises only with the collapse of habit 
 as an equilibrium of stimulus and response, and reality means 
 simply its successful re-establishment. The upholder of the 
 Identity theory of knowledge found that reality, as the ultimate 
 subject of thought, fell outside the process of thought. The 
 Kmpiricists, on the contrary, in seeking to emphasize the control 
 aspect of thought, erred in making the empirical occasion the 
 sole cause of thouiiht. Ihe lesson to be derived from the failure 
 of each of these two types of epistemological theory is, that 
 thought can nf)t bring unity and completeness into its content 
 without transcending itselt. The epistemological problem thus 
 becomes the problem of transcending the subjective. Hut the 
 failure alike of each of the two attempts at a solution of the 
 epistemological problem already referred to forbids any further 
 attempt at effecting a solution at the expense of the one or the 
 other of the two aspects of thought. 
 
34 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 In tilt present discussion the term experience is used as 
 applying only to consciousness after the subject-object dualism 
 has been reached. The Rationalists are quite right in holding 
 that experience proper connotes conscious relation to something, 
 that is, the distinction of object, of which the individual is con- 
 scious, from the mind which is conscious. Such experience is, 
 however, only of gradual attainment. To identify experience 
 with the first immediacy, in which thought functions as a self- 
 contained whole, and make such experience the type of the 
 ultimate experience, means to reduce the highest conceivable 
 experience to undifferentiated and unrelated feeling. The 
 Pragmatists are also right in the contention that thought is a 
 function within experience, if reflective thought is meant. To 
 identify reality with an immediacy of consciousness can mean 
 only that reahty is the highest and most complete type of experi- 
 ence, 'an immediate, self-dependent, all-inclusive individual.'' 
 Bradley identifies reality with the Absolute as that which is at 
 once without distinctions and relations. Still later he identifies 
 reality with 'sheer sentience' — a sort of Nirvana in which all the 
 attainments of thought disappear in a life-less immediacy. But 
 to reach such immediacy, the relational side of thought must be 
 merged, since reality can be had only by getting a 'whole which 
 is not anything but sentient experience.'^ It is precisely here 
 that Bradle}' differs from Green, for while the latter would make 
 reality a matter of relations, Bradley would make relations a 
 sort of screen, which thought throws over reality. In the latter 
 case the attaining of reality means the undoing; of thought. 
 Thus the 'sheer sentience' of Bradley in which the dualistic 
 character of thought is overcome is an a-logical or mystical 
 experience — a 'consummation of thought in which thought is 
 lost.' 
 
 Professor Royce in Tlw JForld and the Individual, xt:ichGS a 
 quite similar conclusion while proceeding from the more active 
 aspect of consciousness. According to Professor Royce, reality 
 is that in which the ideas find their complete embodiment and 
 
 ' Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 1 79. 
 ' Ibid., p. 173. 
 
THE DUALISTIC CHARACTER OF REFLECTIOX. 35 
 
 meaning. Every idea, he continues, is as well an act of volition 
 as of cognition, and possesses thus two meanings, an internal 
 and an external, the latter being a sort of projection or a reading 
 forward of the former, a discounting of future experience. The 
 external meaning as the 'other' is that which the internal mean- 
 ing seeks for its own realization. \\ hat is, or what is real, is 
 the complete embodiment in individual form and in Hnal tulhl- 
 ment of the internal meaning of finite ideas.' Truth is no 
 longer a matter of identity of subject and object, nor a more or 
 less adequate representation of an external order of things 
 existing either in the mind of God (Plato) or in the external 
 world (Hobbes), but the conformity of an idea as an internal 
 meaning with its own determined external meaning. "No 
 finite idea can have or conform to any object save what its own 
 meaning determines, or seek any meaning or truth but its own 
 meaning and truth."- "This final embodiment is the ultimate 
 object, and the only genuine object, that any present idea seeks 
 as its Other," In a word, reality thus becomes the fulfilment 
 of purpose. 
 
 " By thus distinguishing sharply between the conscious inter- 
 nal meaning of an idea and its apparently external meaning, 
 we get before us" says Professor Royce, **an important way of 
 stating the problem of knowledge or, in other words, the prob- 
 lem of the whole relation between Idea and Being. "^ 
 
 But how can the idea as a cognitive state, possessing only 
 internal meaning, possess itself of an 'other' as an external 
 meaning, as that which is essential to its own completion .' 
 Bradley, it will be recalled, was confronted with the same prob- 
 lem and finding that thought as thought is not able to grasp 
 reality sought deliverance in an ;i-logical state of 'sheer sen- 
 tience.' Professor Royce, on riie other hand, finding that 
 thought can not of itself create ideals, since it has to do with the 
 categories of the true and the false, and holding that reality must 
 necessarily be ideal in the sense of n more complete experience 
 
 ' Rovce, Thf ff'orlJ and the Individual, p. 3 ^9. 
 Mbi'd., p. 340. 
 * Ibid., p. 27. 
 
36 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 not as vet realized, fincls in rhe inor::! consciousness the postulate 
 of realitv. 
 
 But will represents also a ir.cdiatc forni of experience. 
 The object of nioral conduct is under foreign control, in the 
 sense that its value is not in itself, Inir in the end not as yet 
 attained. Will, therefore, like thought, presupposes a reality 
 which transcends it, a reality which it is forever pursuing but 
 is never able to grasp. Professor Royce seeks to avoid the 
 imfyasse into which the Inrellectualistic position led him at an 
 earlier period of his philosophic thought, by making reality an 
 act of will, rather than an act of thought. "To be real," he 
 says, "means to express in a final and determinate form the whole 
 meaning and purpose of a system of ideas"* — "A totum sirtiul, 
 — a single, endlessly wealthy experience."^ 
 
 But Professor Royce nowhere points out the method by 
 which the ideas as internal meanings are able to project a farther 
 experience in which they find their final embodiment. 1 he 
 'other,' as the object of the life of purpose, can not, in any sense, 
 be foreign to the self. Bur the fact remains that every genuine 
 act of will is actuated In' an unrealized idea, hence the conclusion 
 would seem to follow. rh:ir volition as such, can find no place in 
 experience in which the aspects of existence and ideality, of 
 the self that is willing and the object willed, are once for all 
 finally united. Professor Royce appreciates the dualistic char- 
 acter of will, as well as the unitary character of reality, and in the 
 end posits an immediacy of will in which the self identifies itself 
 with the object necessary to its completion. 
 
 For both the Intellectualists and the \'oluntarists the epistem- 
 ological problem is the same, the problem of reaching a higher 
 type of meaning in which the body of present partial and frag- 
 mentary meanings are explained and completed. Lach alike 
 arrives at the conclusion that realir\' must always contain a 
 further aspect which is neither thought nor wdl anil cm not be 
 apprehended luukr the form of eitlur. Realir\- therefore can 
 never he precisely what it is for thought or wdl. Neither proc- 
 
 ' Royce, Thf ff'orld and the Individual, \ ol. 1. p. 545. 
 ' Ibid., p. 546. 
 
THE DlALlSriC CHARACTER OF REFLECTION. 37 
 
 ess is complete in itself, whereas realitv must he an individual, 
 all-inclusive whole. Lackinii; a method wherchy consciousness 
 can reach further meaning upon the hasis of meanings already 
 acquired, both Bradley and Royce find refuge in an immediacy 
 of feeling. But to reach such a conclusion, each breaks with the 
 principle which was made at the outset the explaining principle 
 of the mind and the organ of realitv. 
 
 In the preceding chapters it has been shown that conscious- 
 ness is possessed of a method of treatment of its present store of 
 meanings whereby it mav be treated with reference to a more 
 complete meaning. Fhe dualism of reflection has been preceded 
 by earlier dualistic experiences in each of which the aesthetic 
 arose as a means of rendering content as a complete whole. 
 In the discussion of the logical mode we have found three types 
 of meaning left over after thought had exhausted itself, hence a 
 dualism remains upon our hands. Bradley is quite right in 
 holding that thought can not get its content into a harmonious 
 system. > Volition necessarily carries with it the same limitation. 
 Truth and good alike are under mediate control and are general, 
 whereas reality is immediate and individual. But these are 
 precisely the characteristics we found attaching to the semblant 
 consciousness in its earlier modes and to it we are to return 
 again as the aesthetic experience par excellence; and we shall 
 find, upon analysis, that it arises with the epistemological con- 
 sciousness as the necessar\- organ of rendering the meanings 
 that have not been rendered in the logical mode. 
 
 * Appearance and Reality, p. 179. 
 
Chapter IV. 
 
 The /^esthetic Experience as a H \per-loglcal Mode of Con- 
 sciousness in which the Dualism of the Logical 
 Mode IS Overcome. 
 
 in the preceding chapter it was pointed out, that neither 
 thought nor will is able to exhaust experience. In both types 
 of conscious experience there is found to be something more 
 than cither thou2;ht or will. In cithcrinstance reality becomes 
 that which satisfies both I'thought and will and both the 
 Intellectualists and the Voluntarists reached the common con- 
 clusion that reality is an immediate, self-dependent and all- 
 inclusive individual. But since such type of experience can not 
 be reached either in terms of thought, or of conduct, but is, never- 
 theless, the final realization of both, it is to be sought for in an 
 immediacy which is the rather feeling in character. Mr. Brad- 
 ley has also shown, that reality can not be regarded as a mere 
 identity of thouirht and will, but rather the goal toward which 
 both are striving — an experience in which both thought and will 
 alike are present not, however, formaliter but eminentur.^ 
 
 Thus it is to be concluded from the outcome of the intel- 
 lectualistic and voluntaristic discussions, that reality must 
 always contain a further aspect which is neither thought nor 
 will and which can not be fully given in either. Both types 
 of epistemological theory reach the conclusion that thought and 
 will are general and mediate, while reality is individual and 
 immediate. But since neither thought nor will can establish an 
 experience of such type, both must yield to an immediacy of 
 feelinc;, which as beine; rather a-loc;ic;il, in the instance of the 
 Intellectualists and a-volitional, in the instance of the V^olun- 
 tarists, is to be regarded as a mystical outcome. 
 
 Current epistemological discussion centers about the prob- 
 lem presented by the dualism of mind and body as representing 
 
 ' Sec Bradley, Appearance and Reality, pp. 469-485. 
 
 38 
 
THE AESTHETIC AS HTPER-LOGICAL. 39 
 
 two antithetical substances. Accepting this duahsni as a datum 
 of logical experience, the attempt is made to bring the two 
 together, either bv reducing the one to the otiier, orby Hndingsome 
 third entity which issues in the two aspects of mind and body, 
 respectively. To accept the dualism as a datum of logical 
 experience and then attempt to reach a solution in' reducing 
 either one to the other leaves the problem unsolved, while the 
 setting up of some tertmm quid solves the problem by a sort of 
 'back-door' method. One grows tired reading that mind is a 
 form of matter, or that matter is an aspect of mind, or still 
 further that the universe is made up of 'mind-stuff." lo 
 materialize the spiritual, or spiritualize the material rather 
 pushes the problem farther back than reaches a solution. The 
 individual is neither a thinking machine wholly impersonal in 
 character, nor the creature of unreflective instinct, but has 
 become conscious of himself as a thinking and acting personal- 
 ity and refuses to accept any solution of the problem of knowl- 
 edge in which these two aspects of his nature are so etherealized 
 or materialized as to lose whatever of vitality and value they 
 have gained in the development of thought. The individual 
 having become conscious of himself refuses to believe either in 
 mutual exclusion, or ultimate antithesis of the two terms of the 
 dualism. Thought has reached increased determination, not by 
 the suppression or the elimination of either of its two aspects, 
 but rather bv merging both in a higher sphere of mental deter- 
 mination. 
 
 In the first two chapters above the attempt was made to 
 show that thought reaches a higher plane of construction 
 through an imitative treatment of its present store of meanings. 
 The aspect of unity, what Bradley and Royce call individuality, 
 is to be sought for on the side of the controlling self rather than 
 of the controlled content. The more or less mystical outcome of 
 the epistemological theories of Hradley and Royce (mystical in 
 the sense of affectivistic) is the necessary outcome of any 
 attempt to solve the epistemological problem by identifying the 
 self, as the control moment of thought, with any one of its sev- 
 eral aspects. Historically speaking, it is to be said that epistemo- 
 logical discussion has completely boxed the compass in that each 
 
40 Till- .lEsriitync experie.\ce. 
 
 (jf the several aspects of developed consciousness h;is, in turn, 
 been made the explaining principle ot the mind and the organ of 
 reality. 
 
 Each of the three types of epistemological theory referred to 
 in rile preceding paragraph is found to emphasize some one 
 aspect of what later will he found to be the final interpretation of 
 reality. The element of value in each particular theory repre- 
 sents also the limitations of the remaining types of theory. A 
 more satisfactory theory of reality is to be reached, not by mak- 
 ing a sort of composite picture of the three types of theory, but 
 rather by the disco\ery of a mode of conscious determination 
 in which the several claims of these otherwise partial and frag- 
 mentary theories are met and merged. 
 
 The Intellectualists maintained and snii maintain, that the 
 subject and object must be identical. "If" says Bosanquet, 
 "the object-matter of reality lay genuinely outside the system 
 of thought, not our analysis onlw bur rhoucjht itself, would be 
 unable to lay hold of reality."^ All knowledge is a product of 
 thought in that it represents an immanent evolution from certain 
 a priori principles which are neither derived from nor verified 
 by experience. Experience is from one end to the other a 
 realization of a spiritual principle. Ihoughr can not exist 
 apart from its object, nor can the object of thought exist apart 
 from thought for which it is object. On any dualistic theory of 
 knowledge, truth must mean some kind of agreement between 
 opposed factors, which while opposed come into some sort of 
 relation. This relation is generally spoken of as the reference of 
 ideas to a reality beyond ideas. ^ 1 he reference, however, is on 
 the side of the knowing subject, while it also carries with it the 
 conception ot a real which always remains in some sense, 
 external. Bur, the Intellectualists insist, while knowledge refers 
 to reality, reality also refers to knowledge, that is. truth is a 
 matter of accepted reference on the one side and an accurate 
 reference on the other.'' The two references thus always concur, 
 
 ' Bosanquet, Logic, Vol. I, p. 2. 
 
 ' Cf. liradlcy's di-tinition of judgment, Principles of Logic, ch. i. 
 
 * Sec IJaillie, Idealistic Construction of Experience, pp. 64. 
 
THE AESTHETIC AS HrPER-LOCICAL. 4 1 
 
 since the dualism of siihjccr and external object falls within the 
 knowinp; process as mode of conscious acti\it\'. The distinc- 
 tion of subject and object is experience broken up into its diver- 
 sity 1 he object as such is neither external nor internal for 
 either term would make the problem of knowledge insoluble. 
 The dualism, in fact, is the creation of experience itself. Such 
 dualistic experience is, however, a wound, but a wound of con- 
 sciousness' own making and truth represents the attempt upon 
 the part of consciousness to heal the wound homcEopathicalh.' 
 The ideal experience represents that mode of conscious deter- 
 mination in whicii tlie mmd as the subject has itself as a whole 
 consciously before it. 1 he problem of knowledge thus becomes 
 the setting up of the ideal experience at the successive stages in 
 the development of thouglit -a problem which Ilegel, the 
 'Father of the School,' solved in terms of the aesthetic, while his 
 later followers find the solution in an immediac\' in wJiich the 
 two aspects of thouglit are brought into unitv. The point of 
 special emphasis in the present connection is, that the Intellect- 
 ualists sought to harmonize the entire content of thought bv 
 identifying the two aspects of conscious determination. The 
 object of knowledge must, therefore, be of the subject's own 
 construction, in which the subject finds itself fulh' realized. 
 
 The outcome of the Intcllectualistic movement was the 
 setting in of what FlofFding calls 'the logical ice-age,' and from 
 which \ oluntarism represents a reaction. It at once occurs 
 that a thorough-going Intellectualism rates all purpose and value 
 low. Following the Second Critique of Kant, the \()luntarists 
 make the will the primary and constitutive function of con- 
 sciousness and reality a matter of will-acts ( I hathandlungen) 
 rather than ideas. thought to be vital and valuable must, they 
 hold, be selective and purposive, and both these aspects of con- 
 scious experience are ignoretl m a rationalistic theory of knowl- 
 edge. The object of knowledge to be real, must be something 
 more than an object already identified with the sidiject in cog- 
 nition. The object of knowledge must be m a real sense an 
 'Other.' To say that the object must become content of the 
 
 ' Bradley, Appearance and Reality^ p. i66. 
 
42 
 
 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 self before it can become the object of thought makes an act of 
 will an emptv procedure. But reality is larger than thought, 
 and back of thought lies a deeper part of the self. The cate- 
 gories of the will are more potent than the categories of thought. 
 Reality is not something already given in a related content which 
 onlv awaits further analysis, but something which we are striving 
 to bring into being. Furthermore, reality is always ideal, in 
 the sense that it represents that after which consciousness is 
 aspiring in order to clothe itself with unity and completeness. 
 
 The real significance of the \'oluntaristic movement is the 
 emphasis placed upon the concrete and ethical character of 
 thought. I3y their insistence upon the relational and discur- 
 sive character of reflective thought to the complete exclusion of 
 the existential import, the Intellectualists reduced thought to a 
 wholly formal procedure and made the object the conclusion of 
 a syllogistic process. But, as has been pointed out already, 
 thouo^ht is never able to render harmoniously its own content. 
 The meaning which connects the several phases of thought and 
 adds unity to the process as a whole is found in the- ideal of a 
 completely individual experience, of which the several phases ot 
 thought are expressions. There can, therefore, be no real prog- 
 ress in thought, and truth and fact are identical, since thought 
 is a self-contained process. That, however, which unifies thought 
 in the sense of organizing and holding it together suggests alike 
 the inadequacy of the Intellectualists and the starting point 
 of the Voluntarists. 
 
 The Voluntaristic movement represents an attempt to render 
 the 'intent' aspect of thought. The object of knowledge as that 
 which will complete an otherwise inharmonious and incomplete 
 experience, must be something more than an already contained 
 experience, but rather that which calls forth efl^ort for its posses- 
 sion, and in the possession of wliich consciousness experiences 
 a positive widening of iis active-emotional life. The 'other' 
 of thought, as Professor Royce has pointed out, is precisely that 
 which thought must needs have for its own complete realization. 
 The object of thought must necessarily be beyond thought's 
 present attainment or it becomes valueless either as object of 
 thoucht or of moral endeavor. 
 
THE AESTHETIC AS HrPER-LOGICAL. 
 
 4i 
 
 But the practical life, like the theoretical, is also under a 
 mediate form of control and the moral consciousness can no more 
 realize its inner, organizing, controlling principle than can the 
 theoretical consciousness. Kach alike necessitates an ahsolute 
 experience which is neither thought nor conduct, hut an experi- 
 ence of an individual whole in which horh thought and voli- 
 tion are lost in a higher immediacy. For the Intellectualists 
 each phase of thought is significant and finds its interpretation 
 only in so far as it represents a reflection of a higher expe- 
 rience. The ideal experience would he that in which the sub- 
 ject has itself as a whole consciously before it, or as Baillie has 
 expressed it, "it would be the form of knowledge in which the I 
 object is the mind itself. Bur sucii experience is the condition \ 
 which makes knowledge possible at any stage whatsoever, and 
 is not merely the goal toward which the several modes of knowl- 
 edge point, but the very principle which makes them what thev 
 are for finite consciousness."' Bur the problem at once arises, 
 the epistemological problem par excellence for the Intellectual- 
 ists, as to how^ any particular stage of experience as finite and 
 fragmentary, can reflect a more complete experience. It will 
 be recalled that Hegel made use of the art-consciousness as a 
 sort of mirror in which rhc ideal experience was reflected, while 
 Bradley and Bosanquet respectively fall back upon 'sentient 
 experience' and a 'pure act of faith.' The \'oluntarists are con- 
 fronted by the same problem as to how present finite acts of will 
 can reflect an experience in which the life of will is fullv realized — 
 an experience of 'purposneness without purpose.'* In a later 
 chapter it is shown how the earlier Voluntarists like Fichte and 
 Schopenhauer made use of the aesthetic consciousness as setting 
 up an experience in which the active life finds an object in which 
 all its aspirations and appreciations are fullv reflected, while in 
 our day Professor Royce, as an avowed \ Oluntarist, finds the 
 absolute experience in a 'volitional immediacy.' Thus it is 
 seen that while the epistemological jMoblem was the same for 
 these two types of epistemological theory, they also arrived at 
 
 ' Baillif, IJc-alisttt- Construction oj Esfxncme, p. 85. 
 ' Kant, Krit. d. Urieilskraji, p. 87. 
 
44 
 
 Tin. .il-.sTHF.TIC FXPFRIEXCF. 
 
 siiiiihir solutions. The immediate experience embodied in an 
 individual form represents an attempt to unity and thus com- 
 plete an otherwise mediate and incomplete experience by setting 
 up an experience in which subject and object are completely 
 merged in an all-embracing unity. Thus, the true and the good 
 are transcended and completed in a whole of undifferentiated 
 and unrelated feeling. 
 
 The character of the absolute experience thus reached proves, 
 however, to be more or less meaningless and empty, since it 
 has completely broken with the earlier partial meanings. The 
 subject alike in thought and conduct is more than either. Both 
 demand an 'other,' and such 'other' constitutes reality only in so 
 far as it contains what at once puts an end to all thinking and 
 willinii;. But in attaining this 'other' both thought and volition 
 lose their essential character. Bradley seeks a way out of the 
 difficulty thus presented by saying that the 'other' which thought 
 is always seeking but which remains forever beyond thought is 
 its own completion. "Thought," he says "can form the idea 
 of an apprehension, something like feeling in directness, which 
 contains all the character sought by its relational efforts. 
 Thought can understand that, to reach its goal, it must get 
 beyond relations, ^'et in its nature it can find no working 
 means of progress. Hence it perceives that somehow this rela- 
 tional side of its nature must be merged and must include some- 
 how the other side. Such a fusion would compel thought to lose 
 and to transcend its proper self.^ And the nature of this fusion 
 thought can apprehend in vague generality, but not in detail; 
 and it can see the reason why a detailed apprehension is impos- 
 sible. Such anticipated self-transcendence is an 'other;' but 
 to assert that 'other' is not a self-contradiction."-' Bur lacking 
 a method of treating thought with reference to its own advance- 
 ment, Mr. Bradley in the end sets u]i a conception of reality 
 which is a-logical in character. I he 'will-to-believe' of Pro- 
 fessor James, 'the pure act of taith' ot Bosanquet and the 
 'volitional immediacy' <^f Royce, are to be regarded also as 
 
 • \\TdiA\Q\, A ppearance and Reality, pp. l8l, iSi. 
 MbiJ.. p. 1S2. 
 
THE AESTHETIC AS HIPER-LOGICAL. 45 
 
 postulates ot reality oi an a-l()ii;ieal or aft'ectivistic character. 
 With both types of theory the problem becomes the construction 
 of a single whole of experience under some mode of conscious 
 construction in which present Hnite meanings find themselves 
 completeh' unified and realized. 
 
 In the preceding chapters the attempt has been made to 
 show that consciousness is possessed of such a method whereby 
 present guaranteed meanings may be treated with reference to 
 further meaning. The first immediacy was found to represent 
 a single whole of experience due to the fact that the affective- 
 conative dispositions seized and determined the whole of the 
 presented content. The resulting unity of this early experience, 
 embodied m the 'schematic general,' under a form of naive 
 acceptance as an act of 'presumption,' represents in germ 
 the two aspects of all thought, which, while already present and 
 operative, have not been distinguished. Reality, in this earlv ^ 
 undifferentiated experience, is the 'projective construction' 
 which represents the unity of the object in perception. The 
 unity of the thing perceived represents the unity of the act of 
 perceiving, or, in still other words, the unity of the thing per- 
 ceived represents a specific activity of the perceiving subject. 
 The unity ot the projective consciousness is not given in the 
 presented content, nor, on the other hand is it wholly made by 
 the consciousness that has it, but the unitary character of the 
 first immediacy, represents the realization, in a definite form, 
 ot the active-dispositional tendencies as a sort of embryonic 
 self. 
 
 The significance ot the 'lower semblant' or play conscious- 
 ness was tound in the tact that it is conscious of the merging of the 
 two aspects of thought which were not held apart within the 
 first immediacy. Imitation, as a method of manipulating a 
 guaranteed content with reference to the tulfilnunt and embodi- 
 ment of inner purpose, is now consciously applied to whatever 
 content consciousness has. We found that 'semblant' control 
 was not direct and mediate as m memory, but the content 
 guaranteed in memor\' is lifted from its original moorings and 
 used with reference to the fulfilment of dispositional tendencies. 
 Play thus becomes a sort of self-contained process in the sense 
 
46 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 that it finds its end in the process itself. It is indulged for its 
 own sake and hence lacks all conscious utilitarian or experi- 
 mental value. rhcre is complete identification of the player 
 with the object thus constructed — a reading-in, as it were, 
 of the person of the player into the object thus constructed. As 
 the 'projective' construction arises in an undifferentiated ex- 
 perience, so the semblant object represents an object, which 
 wiiile not true to any established form of control, is nevertheless 
 accepted and treated 'as if it were' real. It is evident that we 
 are in the presence of an wholly new form of control — a control 
 of an already guaranteed content in the form of a completed 
 whole of content. There is a detachment of the self from the 
 stern realities of real life whose limitations are transcended by 
 the erecting of an experience, not as yet realized, but which can 
 nevertheless be treated as if it were already realized. The sem- 
 blant construction thus becomes a personal, all-inclusive, self- 
 contained construction, in which the self as the controlling and 
 organizing principle of thought reaches, by a process of merg- 
 ing and unif^■ing the several aspects of thought, a new and 
 higher plane of mental determination. 
 
 Having shown that, in the earlier modes of consciousness 
 the aesthetic and the epistcmological arose together, and that 
 the former was found in each instance to possess those charac- 
 teristics demanded by the latter — whence the conclusion that the 
 aesthetic experience functions as an epistemological postulate — 
 it now remains to show that the aesthetic experience, when once 
 reflective thought is reached, still possesses the characteristics 
 which make possible a solution of the epistemological problem 
 of reflective thought. Making use of the generally recognized 
 characteristics of the aesthetic experience we will now show that 
 the aesthetic experience possesses precisely those characteristics 
 which (jualify it to render the three types of meaning which the 
 logical mode as sucii is unable to render.' 
 
 ' In this procedure, and in the results, the writer is foUowinp IVofessor 
 HaUlwin's uii|>uhlisheil lectures in which he has presented S(Miie of the material 
 of the third volume of his work Thought and Things. 
 
THE AESTHETIC AS HTPER-LOGICAL. 47 
 
 (/) The Objectivity of the Aestlietic Experience. 
 
 The failure alike of the Rationahsts aiul rhc Kinpiricists to 
 arrive at a satisfactory theory of knowledge is to be found in the 
 fact that each starts with an assumption which lies outside the 
 accepted analysis of knowledge, but which has nevertheless to 
 be admitted nito the result as the underlying presupposition. 
 Hegel was wholly justified in describing Kant's theory of knowl- 
 edge as but another expression of Lockeanism. Both assume 
 a dualism of subject and object which must somehow be main- 
 tained. It is of interest to note in passing, that the correction of 
 each took an idealistic direction; for as Berkleianism represents 
 an attempt to remove the unknown substratum of the thing sub- 
 stance and to show that cognitive experience can get on without 
 it, so the critical successors of Kant attempt to drop the 'Ding- 
 an-sich.' For both Locke and Kant, knowledge must find its 
 standard beyond itself in the sense that reality is necessarily 
 larger than thought. This same position is reflected in the 
 statement of Lotze that 'reality is richer than thought' and in 
 that of Bradley that 'knowledge is unequal to reality,' or still 
 again in the statement of Kant that 'beyond the bounds of 
 knowledge there is a sphere of faith.' All these expressions are 
 based upon the same presupposition, that thought implicates 
 always a reality beyond itself. Bur it at once appears that reality 
 beyond thought is not only unknowable but valueless; for 
 either knowledge determines reality, in which case the nature 
 of reality falls within riu- limits of thought, or tlurf is, from the 
 outset, a fundamental cleavage between knowledge and reality 
 which can never be healed by either. The significance ot the 
 Intellectual movement is to be sought in the fundamental pre- 
 supposition that knowledge must, in some way, determine its 
 own conditions, that is, it must be a self-contained experience. 
 
 The object of knowledge can be neither external nor inter- 
 nal; it is not the product of interaction between subject and 
 object, but rather a unity reflected in the object as constructed 
 within consciousness. The 'projects' of the first immediacy 
 represented a unitary experience secured and held in terms of 
 'motor synergy.' While within this early consciousness pro- 
 
48 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 ess and product were not distinguished, the point of insistence 
 was, that within this first experience we found the condition 
 wliich was to make real and possible all modes of knowledge 
 whatsoever. The 'projective' experiences of this early con- 
 sciousness were neither transcripts of the outer order of things 
 nor complete determinations of presented content in terms ot the 
 affective-conative tendencies, Inir represented the unity of the 
 two processes functioning as yet in :iii undisturbed immediacy. 
 
 In the 'semblant' consciousness, the resulting object in which 
 the dualism of inner and outer was merged was shown to be 
 clearly a matter of inner determination. The value of the 
 object thus constructed was found to consist, not in its reference 
 to the object as such, but to the subject that determines the 
 object. Ihe object is one in which the subject finds himself 
 reflected and enlarged. If we were to define the ideal experience 
 as that in which the subject found itself fullv reflected and 
 embodied, it is evident that in the lower semblant construction 
 we have at least a type and an illustration of such experience. 
 Taking its material at the place at which it finds it, the sei-.-iblant 
 consciousness erects this material for the sake ot completmg 
 itself in a further experience. While therefore the semblant 
 object is not an object held in memory, neither is it a break with 
 memory but it is the memory object lifted from its guaranteed 
 forms of control and used for the sake of further meaning. 
 Thus it is seen that both in the early immediacy, in which there 
 was no separation of the two factors of thought, as well as in the 
 second immediacy, in which the two factors of thought were dis- 
 tinguished, consciousness is possessed of a method of treating its 
 content for the sake of advancing its own meanings. 1 he 
 resulting object in each mode of consciousness represents a 
 merging of the two aspects of thought in a construction which 
 becomes a platform for still higher conscious determination. 
 
 Bur objectivity is a universally recognized characteristic ot 
 the aesthetic experience. Santayana defines beauty as pleasure 
 objectified.' Kaiu uses the terms 'universality' and 'necessity. '^ 
 
 ' Santayana, Thf Setisf of Beauty, pp. 44-49. 
 ' K.int, Kritic der Urteilskraft, sec. 6. 
 
THE AESTHETIC AS UrPER-LOGICAL. 49 
 
 Cohn in his Allgftuetne Aesthetiky uses the term 'F'orderun^is- 
 character,' while Volkelt has deHiied tlie objectivity of heauty 
 as due to the 'fusion of feehng and conteinphition.' What is 
 meant in the several attempts at a definition of aesthetic ob- 
 jectivity is, that the aesthetic object and the consciousness in 
 which it arises are no longer held apart. The self becomes 
 identified with the object as peculiarly its own. Thus it is to 
 be said that the self that could not be rendered in terms of logical 
 meaning finds in the aesthetic experience its complete rendering 
 at the stage of development thus far reached. It becomes true, 
 as Professor Baldwin has pointed out, that the aesthetic reflects 
 the stages in the development of the self. The aesthetic ob- 
 ject is therefore not an external object as the Intellectualists 
 well saw, but only a farther experience. 1 he object which 
 they attempt to set up represents always a more complete 
 experience in which the self as the thinker would complete itself. 
 But lacking a method whereby consciousness could extend its 
 present store of meanings in an object in which thought finds 
 its limitations transcended, the 'ideas of the reason' of Kant, 
 the 'pure act of faith' of Bosanquet and the 'sheer sentience' of 
 Bradley, become empty categories in the sense that they tell us 
 nothing whatever about the reality beyond thought. To say 
 with Kant that the object of knowledge represents a 'possible 
 experience' is meaningless unless there is some point of contact 
 with the actual, for possibility can only be determined upon a 
 basis of what is already real. To treat a thing 'as if it were' is 
 possible only when the thing as a further experience finds ground- 
 ing in present experience. To ask 'How are synthetic judg- 
 ments a priori possible,' means for a genetic psychology, 'How 
 can thought legitimately refer to a reality beyond itself.'' But 
 it will occur at once that no such transcendent object can be 
 reached by a process of analysis of thought-content. It is pre- 
 cisely here that we are to seek for rhe inadecjuacy and failure of 
 the intellectualistic programme. " 1 he Absolute does not 
 want," says Bradley, "to make eyes at itself in a mirror, or, 
 like a squirrel in a cage, to revolve the circle ot its own perfec- 
 tions. Such processes must Ik dissolved in something not 
 
50 THE Al-STIIETIC EM'ERIESCE. 
 
 poorer bur richer than themselves."' Hur liow can thought do 
 so ? Bradle)' himself has said, that if 'thought becomes other 
 than relational and discursive — that is, mediate in control, — 
 it brings about its own destruction;'- while it has been shown in 
 the preceding chapter that there are meanings present in reflec- 
 tive thought which reflection cannot of itself render .' But why 
 limit thought to the movements within the logical mode .' May 
 it not again he true, as Hegel pointed out, that the wound 
 occasioned by the presence of a dualistic experience has been 
 made by consciousness which is also able to heal it ? And did 
 not Hegel show remarkable insight in holding that the nature of 
 objectivity depends wholly upon the way in which experience as 
 a whole is conceived ? Both the attempts and the limitations of 
 the Intellectualists to establish the objectivity of thought as a 
 perfect whole of experience, lend confirmation to the assumption 
 of the present investigation, that the aesthetic experience is pre- 
 cisely the organ of this sort of objectivity. The self, as the 
 one meaning which the Intellectualists admit can not be ex- 
 pressed in terms of thought, once again, as in earlier experiences, 
 embodies itself, as the presupposition of control, in a whole of 
 experience. Objectivity thus becomes the unity of control issu- 
 ing from the individual himself upon a content already set up. 
 In a word, objectivity means only the unity of all experience as 
 such and such unity is secured in termsof the aestheticexpenence. 
 The aesthetic indeed as an experience in which the sub- 
 ject completely embodies itself in an object erected under its 
 own presuppositions of control, an experience in which the sub- 
 ject identifies itself with its object, indicates not the completion 
 of the process of thought but rather makes ready and possible a 
 new and higher mode of mental determination. It is, ilicre- 
 fore, o sign that thought can proceed., rather than a sign that the 
 work of thought is ended. Ihe latter view of the aesthetic 
 experience, which is admiral^K' worked out b^• Miss Adams,"* 
 would reduce the aesthetic experience to a sort of epi-phenome- 
 noii of smooth-working thought. It, at the least, reduces the 
 
 ' and ' Uradky, .'1 ppiarance anJ Reality, cli. xv. 
 
 ^ }^\\ss t\i\7ixns,Thr Aesthetic Experience: its Meaning in a Functional Psy- 
 chology, 1907. 
 
THE AESTHETIC .IS HIPER-LOGICAL. 5 1 
 
 beautiful like the true and the good to the practical, and Miss 
 Adams wouKl doubtless sav with IVofessor jauies that the 
 beautiful must also be considered as a good. 1 lie outcome of 
 the present investigation, however, leads to the conclusion that, 
 the beautitul has a value and tunction of its own in experience 
 and that instead of being given a place and \alue subordinate 
 to either the true or the good, it is rather to be said that the true 
 and the good are such onlv because they are also moments in 
 the larger whole of the beautiful.' 
 
 According to Kant the object of knowledge must be both 
 universal and necessarv. It is ot historical interest to observe 
 that he found these two characteristics attaching to the beauti- 
 tul. Bain also notes the fact that the beautiful is shareable. 
 But still the question remains as ro wlutlur ob)ectivitv lends 
 universalit\' and necessity or whether universalit\' aiul necessity 
 lend objectivity. Professor lufts, in his article entitled 'On 
 the Genesis of the Aesthetic Categories,' attempts to show that 
 the objectivity attaching to the beautiful is due to the elimination 
 of the subjective and private and the setting up of a social 
 standard of value, so that his solution of the above question as 
 to the priority of the objective or the universal is that the 'uni- 
 versalizing or socializing' of the standard is the ground, rather 
 than the consequent, of the objectifying. Beauty thus becomes 
 a social phenomenon and its several categories are to be sought 
 for in social situations and social demands; while art, instead of 
 being the embodiment of an interest sm gcncriSy has arisen to 
 satisfy other motives largely of a social character. In the 
 present discussion, however, reasons have been found for regard- 
 ing the aesthetic experience as a sut generis experience, whose 
 function is to be sought for in epistemology. I he objectifying 
 of consciousness has been found to be a matter of unifying of 
 consciousness and the aesthetic has been found to have arisen 
 as the organ of such unification. Within the first immediacy, 
 'motor synergy' was found to be tin measure and test of mental 
 unirv. i he 'projective constructions,' as the embodiments of 
 the first immediacy, were found to be 'objcctifications of con- 
 
 ' Cf. Baldwin, Ftagmtnts in Philos. and Scitnct, Introduction. 
 
52 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 sciousness in nil rlu- phenomena perceived.' Vhw were also 
 found to he 'aggregate' in character, that is, common although 
 not so to the constructing consciousness. Hut the point in- 
 sisted upon in the present connection is, that they were aggre- 
 gate in reference hecause thev were 'projective' and not 'pro- 
 jective' because thev were 'aggregate.' Likewise plav was 
 found to be 'svndoxic' and not private in character. Flav always 
 involves and demands an audience. The material that becomes 
 available tor pla\' is found to be under social control. Moreover, 
 it has been pointed out, that plav is essentiallv a re-construction 
 of a social mdieu. But as Professor Baldwin has pointed out, 
 play is not real, in the sense of setting up an actual situation. 
 Memory is present as a sphere of reference and control, but the 
 play object as the merging of two sorts of control represents a 
 detachment from an\' exclusive claim that either form of control 
 may make. The interest in preserving a social situation is pre- 
 cisely the interest which is lacking. The fact is that plav never 
 goes over to real life and is not indulged in for the sake of medi- 
 ating real life. And so also of art. To make art social means 
 to place upon the aesthetic experience the very limitations from 
 which it is seeking to free itself. Likewise to sav that art must 
 be true, in the sense of mediating truth, means to involve art in 
 the limitations from which thouirht is seekins;, through the art- 
 consciousness, to free itself.' Ir is nor true, therefore, as Pro- 
 fessor Tufts holds, that objectivity, as characteristic of art, 
 is due to the universality of the experience, but rather that the 
 universality is due to the objectivitv of the aesthetic experience. 
 'Common' thought alone makes socialization possible and 
 objectification gives the ground and possibility of universality. 
 The universality and the necessity which the Intellectualists 
 sought for and which were found in an experience in which thought 
 with irs diialistic limitations and implications was transcended, 
 are touml among the generalh' recogni/ed characteristics of 
 
 • Baldwin, Unpublished Lectures. Professor l^aldwin holds that the uni- 
 versality of art conies from its use of materials already, in some degree, uni- 
 versalized in thouijlit, and reflects the degree of commonness or 'social' 
 meaning of the material; but that the aesthetic experience as such is not social 
 in the sense that it lacks anything of full and immediate personal appreciation. 
 
THE AESTHETIC AS HVPER-LOGICAL. 53 
 
 the aesthetic experience, so that ir can he coiickidcd that tlie 
 demand of the epistemological problem for objectivity is suppHed 
 in the aesthetic experience, 
 
 (2) The Aesthetic Experience as a Furthering of the Self. 
 
 It has already been pointed out, tliat tlie several stages m the 
 development of the aesthetic experience, represent and reflect 
 stages in the development ot the self, as the contrcjl factor of all 
 mental determination. 1 he child and the race alike project 
 into things, including persons, the experiences passed through 
 in connection with things. Primitive thought is animistic. 
 Play was shown to be the setting up of a situation in which the 
 feeling of self was involved. The significance of pla\, in the 
 development of the individual, was seen in the fact, that it indi- 
 cates the isolation of the two aspects of thought which were 
 held tojiether in the earlier modes. Professor Baldwin and 
 others have characterized this aspect of play as 'the sense of 
 agency.' The point of interest is, that the play object is one set 
 up for the satisfaction of inner, personal purposes and indulged 
 as such. As a semblant object, it is neither memory nor fancy 
 but stands as an object in whicli both are merged and com- 
 pleted. As a type of interest it finds its end-state in neither 
 memory nor fancy but in itself as a detached and self-controlled 
 meaning. It thus represents a furthering of the self, as the pre- 
 supposition of control, so that the value of the construction 
 attaches to the subject rather than to the object constructed. 
 
 In the higher aesthetic experience this same characteristic 
 has been noted and described by\'olkelt as the "widening of our 
 life of feeling toward the typical, the comjirehensive and the 
 universal." This characteristic is to be found in all stages of the 
 aesthetic experience as attaching t(^ the subjective aspect of the 
 process. It is treated here, not only because it is a generally 
 recognized characteristic of the aesthetic experience, but rather 
 because it satisfies the demand made by the \ oluntaristic type 
 of epistemological theory that the object of thought shall in 
 some way represent that in which the subject finds itself enlarged 
 and realized. Ihe meaning of experience is not to be found in 
 the essential identity of subject and object but in an 'other' in 
 
54 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 which the subject finds itself furrhercd and completed. The 
 'other' thus becomes a deliverance of the practical rather than 
 the theoretical consciousness, and the moral consciousness is 
 made the postulate of an all-comprehensive and individual 
 experience. Thought not being able to encompass the object 
 in which it Hnds itself fully reflected and its limitations overcome, 
 seeks deliverance in the will. Growth, development, implies 
 struggle and struggle implies something to be overcome, so that 
 the object of knowledge is posited for the sake of moral struggle 
 and perfection. To be vital and fruitful the object of knowledge 
 must he beyond the subject, whose attainment of the object 
 brings the e.xperience of an enlarged and increased self. The 
 Voluntarists from Fichte to Royce emphasize thus the control 
 aspect of thought rather than the relational aspect. 
 
 But will is also found to be dualistic and can, no more than 
 thought, come to final fulfilment. Moral struggle always involves 
 a struggle between existence as it is and what our active nature is 
 seeking to make it. It is precisely this dualism that Professor 
 Royce seeks to explain in terms of the two-fold meaning of ideas, 
 the internal and the external. The epistemological problem 
 from this point of view becomes the erection of an object as a 
 not-self or an external meaning in which the self finds itself 
 revealed and realized. The earlier rationalistic position of 
 Professor Royce is still present despite the more voluntaristic 
 statement of the problem of knowledge. The external meaning 
 of the idea is a necessity inherent in the nature of the idea 
 as a cognitive state. Experience is purposive and reality can 
 be only the embodiment of a single, all-inclusive purpose. 
 Thought is barren and judgment dead unless both are concerned 
 with the more concrete matter of actual experience. ICvery 
 idea is as much an act of will as an act of cognition and reality 
 is an experience m which purpose, as a singular meaning, is 
 embodied. Will, therefore, like thought, presupposes a reality 
 beyond itself, in which it finds its partial and nucliate meanings 
 completed in the all-embracing immediacy of a single purpose. 
 
 Bur tin \ Oluntarists, like the Pragmatists of the present, by 
 ignoring the relational aspect of thought, reduce the acts of will 
 in which the 'other' is erected to a sort of leap in the dark. \\ ill 
 
THE AESTHETIC AS HTPER-LOGICAL. 55 
 
 as function, nuist liave sonicthnig to work with .iv.d upon, and 
 by ignoring the content aspect of thought, the control aspect 
 becomes more or less capricious and arbitrary. Admitting that 
 thought imphes a situation in which the two aspects of knowl- 
 edge have fallen apart, the question remains as to what sets up 
 the situation that makes thought possible and necessary. The 
 'other' of thought, as Royce well sees, must not be a complete 
 break with consciousness,/*/^/ must be a meaning for the con- 
 sciousness ivhich sets it up as an 'other.^ It is precisely here that 
 the position of Royce is the more fruitful and which will not 
 permit his being grouped with the Pragmatists. The epistem- 
 oiogical problem for Royce thus becomes the setting up, by 
 the ideas as internal meanings, of an external meaning as a single, 
 all-inclusive whole of experience, in which consciousness is 
 furthered and completed. But one seeks in vain for even an 
 attempted solution of the problem as thus stated. The Volun- 
 tarist and the Pragmatist thus find the limitations which they 
 found in the Intellectualistic position lying at their own door. 
 Will, like thought, can complete itself only by becoming what is 
 not will. Reality, as an absolute experience, can onlv be an 
 experience in which the subject is one with its object, a sort of 
 immediate apprehension in which the dualistic character alike 
 of thought and will is merged in a single, harmonious experience. 
 Professor Royce reaches therefore the conception of a 'volitional 
 immediacy,' which being an essentially a-volitional experience 
 must be regarded along with the 'will-to-believe' of James as 
 a sort of mystical postulate. 
 
 Professor Royce's position represents an advance over the 
 earlier intellectualistic position, in that the object of knoxuledge 
 IS necessarily a meaning for the consciousness that has it. The 
 dualism thus falls within experience and represents a dualism 
 of consciousness toward its guaranteed content, rather than a 
 datum of immediate experience. Hut still the question remains 
 as to how consciousness can erect a meaning as an 'other' in 
 which it finds itself furthered without breaking with its store of 
 present meanings .' Or as I^rofessor Royce himself puts the 
 question 'How can the subjective transcend itself.'' The 'other' 
 of thought to be valuable, must be neither identical with the 
 
56 THE .1 ESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 sub jeer, nor a coDiplcic brciik with experience, but a meaning 
 external only in the sense that it represents a further but never- 
 theless possible experience. The outcome of the voluntaristic 
 programme is identical with that of the Intellectualistic and each 
 alike seeks a solution in an immediate experience, which must 
 issue from the experience which is seeking its own completion. 
 In the case of the Intellectualists, it was shown that conscious- 
 ness is possessed of a method of extending its present guaranteed 
 content for the sake of embodying the interest of an inner and 
 personal sort without breaking with the meanings already 
 acquired by thought; so it now remains to indicate that con- 
 sciousness is also possessed of a method of postulating further 
 meanings, in w hich the present limited and fragmentary mean- 
 ings are merged and completed, without breaking with the 
 values already acquired in consciousness. 
 
 Professor Baldwin and others have found the 'self-exhibiting' 
 activities of the individual to be involved in tlie rise of the aes- 
 thetic experience. I he burden of the present discussion has 
 been that the aesthetic in the several stages of its development 
 reflects the development of the self. Plav was shown to be 
 always the setting up of a situation of a personal sort. The 
 limitations of the play mode are to be found in the material held 
 in consciousness under its own coefficients of control; this 
 determines and limits the possible construction which conscious- 
 ness can make of it. As between memory under the most rigid 
 control as representing an external order of things and fancy as 
 wholly detached content, play as an essentially inner construc- 
 tion was neither and yet satisfied the demands of both. The 
 motive of the play-construction is a motive sui generis and to 
 reduce play to work would mean to destroy the essential charac- 
 ter of play. The object thus constructed, while not real if 
 tested only by memory, is nevertheless accepted as if it were real. 
 1 he 'reality-feeling' of the projective consciousness, reflecting 
 the unity of subject and object as the two factors of all mental 
 construction — whichunity was broken down by the mediate char- 
 acter of the control of memory — is once more secured In the 
 playful setting up of a 'make-believe' object as the 'assumption' of 
 still farther meaning. The hmitationof the lower semblanr con- 
 
57 
 
 struction is to be sought in the material avaihihle for such treat- 
 ment. Onlv when the logical mode is reached do tlic two types 
 of meaning, with one or the other of which the self as control 
 factor has been identified, become the content of the self as the 
 presupposition of control. The failure of the Intellectualists to 
 deal adequateh' with the epistemological problem is to be found 
 in the assumed identity of the self and its related content. The 
 Voluntarists on the other hand identify the self with the practical 
 will. But both thought and will were found to be dualistic in 
 character, so that the self could never embody itself fully and 
 immediately in either. Both alike reached the conclusion that 
 reality must be some form of immediacy of consciousness, as a 
 sort of hyper-e.xperience in which both thought and will are 
 realized in an object which is neither e.\clusivel\'. But tiie 
 aesthetic experience as a h\'per-logical mode of conscious de- 
 termination is found to be possessed ot a method ot manipu- 
 lating both types of meaning with reference to their being 
 brought together under the presupposition ot a control issuing 
 from within. The object thus constructed under the presuppo- 
 sition of inner control, is accepted as meeting the demands alike 
 of rlu- life of thought and will, without being held under the 
 mediate form of control of either, but at the same time standing 
 for a type of mental determination in which both are advanced 
 without breaking w irji the meanings already acquired. 
 
 Defining the developmentof cognition as a seriesof determina- 
 tions of the two aspects of thought, the attempt has been made 
 to show that consciousness has from the outset advanced trom 
 one mode of determination to another only by a process of advan- 
 cing the meanings already acquired under definite forms of con- 
 trol. The object which made thought possible and fruitful at 
 each of the successive modes of mental determination now falls 
 wholly within experience without at the same time being a mere 
 duplicate of an already acquired meaning. 1 he unity of sub- 
 ject and object implied in all knowledge is the unity of the self 
 acquired through an imitative treatment of its present supply 
 of meanings. The resulting identity thus becomes a matter of 
 acceptance, of belief, rather than an analysis of present content. 
 The object is a semblant construction erected for inner, personal 
 
58 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 purposes and whollv under inner determination. The identity 
 of subject and object, which the Intellectuahsts were in search 
 of is to be soufjht in aesthetic experience which permeates 
 consciousness as a whole rather than in some Absolute, which 
 lies, as it were, be\ond the process of mental determination and 
 operates upon it from without. But because the object is thus 
 erected as havinc; further meaning and thus serving to unify 
 and complete all partial controls and meanings, it is also an 
 object not as yet possessed; and hence it functions as an 'other* 
 thus meeting the demands of the Voluntarists. Thus the self> 
 which the Intellectuahsts identified with related content and the 
 Voluntarists with the practical reason, but which as a meaning 
 could not be rendered in terms of either, becoming detached from 
 both types of meant tig, restates both for common reflection, and 
 transcends the dualistic experience due to the presence and func- 
 tioning of the two antipodal methods of control of content, by the 
 same method by which the earlier dualisms tvere transcended. 
 
 Thusit is to be concluded that the aestheticexperience as being 
 an experience of unity of subject and object, as the two aspects 
 of thought and will, as well as being also a furthering of the self 
 toward what Professor Tufts has called the 'broadlv significant' 
 fullv meets the demands of the epistemological postulate in 
 these two respects. 
 
 (j) The Aesthetic Experience as Meaning the Singular and 
 Immediate. 
 
 But while the Intellectuahsts and the Voluntarists differ as 
 to what constitutes an object of knowledge, the former emphasiz- 
 ing the subjective aspect, the latter the objective, both agree 
 that the object of knowledge as that in which the subject finds 
 itself fullv reflected must necessarily be one of single, immediate 
 experience. The absolute, according to Bradley, must hold all 
 content in an individual experience where no contradiction can 
 exist — a unity which transcends and vet contains a manifold 
 appearance.'' Me also describes such an immediacy of thought 
 and existence as being nothing but 'sentient experience.'* Pro- 
 
 ' and ' Hrailliv, A ppcarancf on J Rf nitty, ch. xv. 
 
THE AESTHETIC JS UIPER-LOGICAL. 59 
 
 fessor Royce makes objectivity a matter of purpose. Ideas are 
 selective. Thev seek their own. They attend onlv to what 
 thev themselvts have chosen. Moreover they desire in their 
 own way. The object thus comes to be preciseh' what it is 
 because the ideas as internal meanings mean it to be rlu- object 
 of the ideas themselves. Ideas are also to be judiieil in the 
 light of what thev intend and the world of the ideas is simply 
 will itself determinately embodied. The only possible object 
 that an idea can ever take note of is precisely the complete con- 
 tent of its own conscious purpose, and the limit of the process 
 would be an individual (singular) judgment wherein the will 
 expressed its own final determination. "What is real," he 
 says, "is, as such, the complete embodiment, in individual form 
 and in final fulfilment, of the internal meaning of finite ideas." 
 This common demand upon the part of the Intellectualists 
 and the \'oluntarists alike, that the object of knowledge must 
 needs be individual and immediate — while representing the 
 'other' of knowledge as that which while not yet real is to be 
 treated as if it were, what Bosanquet calls 'an act of pure faith' — 
 is to be regarded as an attempt to express two types of meaning 
 which we found were not embodied in the logical character of 
 thought, namelv, the attitude of belief and the 'singular' tvpe 
 of judgment. But once more we find that these two types of 
 meaning are rendered in rhe aesthetic consciousness. 1 he 
 immediacy of the aesthetic experience has been long recognized. 
 Plato speaks of it as 'pure pleasure free from desire. ' Schopen- 
 hauer calls it a 'stilling of the w ill,' w hile Kant refers to the same 
 experience under the aspect of 'disinterestedness or contem- 
 plation.' In more recent literature it is known as 'conscious 
 self-illusion,' imitation and 'make-believe.' Cohn, in his Allgf- 
 meitie Aesthetiky assigns to the semblant constructit)n an inten- 
 sive or immanental value as opposed to the consecutive or trans- 
 gredicnt value of the true and good as pointing always beyond 
 themselves. Psychically play is wholly non-utilitarian in value. 
 The child does not play for the sake of some further end. 
 The plav-object while recognized as not real is nevertheless 
 indulged in as if it were real and is so for the time being. 
 It is unreal onlv with reference to the interest which erected it. 
 
6o THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 As Professor Baldwin has expressed ir in his as yet unpubHshed 
 lectures, the senihlant object is a construction that claims one 
 control and has any form of control except the one claimed. 
 But only because of this is it fitri-d to supersede and transcend 
 the control of any particular kind. The disinterestedness is 
 due to the union of motives which point toward and terminate 
 in some form of indirect or mediate control. In fact, it is to be 
 said, that the resulting immediacy is due to the absence, through 
 suspension for the time being, of the motives that would make 
 the situation a real one. It is accepted and treated as being 
 what it is not. It might be true or good or real but immediately 
 rather than through some external form of control. The situa- 
 tion is one wholly determined from within as satisfying the inner 
 demand for unity. The content thus treated is detached from 
 its original moorings and erected into a world apart. But this 
 world is a closed world. Consciousness and its object are one and 
 immediate, in the sense that the self finds itselt fully absorbed in 
 the object of its contemplation. The aesthetic experience thus 
 represents a furthering of experience by widening the process of 
 comprehension and at the same time reveals and enlarges the 
 self that has been hidden, as it were, behind the mediate and 
 discursive operations of thought. The process of world-con- 
 struction and world-interpretation is essentially a process of 
 embodying the self in what hitherto seemed wholly foreign to 
 us. 
 
 Hence it is that all art is animistic and religion anthropo- 
 morphic, thought and conduct can be generalized and the 
 true and the good become so in their own right onlv in so far as 
 the individual can identify himself with his world. But since 
 such identity can be attained neither in th(Hight nor will, as is 
 to be inferred from the fact that both the Intellectualists and the 
 Voluntarists seek such identity of the self and its object in an 
 immediacy of experience which is neither thought nor will, 
 it must be sought in some ideal construction. There is, there- 
 fore, a further agreement among writers upon epistemological 
 theory that the transcendent notion which serves to unify the 
 dualistic character of thought and will bears the impress of art 
 rather tiian of science. Ihe type-phenomenon which appears as 
 
THE AESTHETIC AS HYPER-LOGICAL. 6 1 
 
 the solution of the cpistemologicnl prohlcm at the several stages 
 of its development are characterized always by an appreciative 
 or selective element. Kverv philosopliical system appears as a 
 work of art. Lange has called philosophical construction an 
 art because of the idealizing tendency exhibited in it, tlu- tend- 
 ency to look for the highest expression of the real in the ideal. 
 But knowledge has been found to be essentialK' an idealizins: 
 process. The various stages of this process are reflected in the 
 several stages of the development of the aesthetic experience. 
 Hegel shows remarkable insight in insisting that knowledge as a 
 process reflects the coming to full consciousness of the self. But 
 the self also passes through a series of stages in the course of its 
 development, so that each object determined by the self is also 
 a further determination of the self. The aesthetic experience 
 represents always a construction of the self out of its own mate- 
 rials for the sake of its own embodiment, a construction in winch 
 consciousness has to do onlv with its own. Ihe semblant object 
 thus becomes an object for sensuous apprehension and con- 
 sciousness accepts it, not because of its truth or goodness but 
 rather because it finds itself expressed in it in individual 
 form. 
 
 Such an experience meets the demands alike ot the Inrd- 
 lectualist and the Voiuntarist. In it the three types of mean- 
 ings left unexpressed by thought are given complete embodi- 
 ment. In the object thus erected the mind rests satisfied as with 
 something complete, self-sustaining and unique and which 
 leaves no purpose unfulfilled, no estrangement ot self and not 
 self unreconciled. In the work of art the form and matter, the 
 content and the control are inseparable. As an ideal, it is not 
 to be contrasted with the real world wiiich stands hard-and- 
 fast, but is the embodiment of an exclusive interest. The ideal 
 does not necessitate a break with the real, but is only the real 
 raised to a higher plane. Ihe 'other' of Bradley and the 
 'external meaning' of Rovce, reach after ideal constructions in 
 which the self realizes itself. The individuality which each 
 attaches to the object as the other of thought and volition is an 
 'intent' meaning and is what it is only because the self sets it up 
 and accepts it for what it reads into it. It is an 'other' only 
 
62 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 because it is ideal and ir is ideal onK' hctause the self erects it 
 under its own presupposition ot control. It is immediate and 
 singular because the self finds itself fuUv reflected in the object 
 thus constructed. As freed from all sorts of foreign and mediate 
 control, such as characterize thought and volition, the self can 
 now move about m a world under its own form of control. The 
 embarrassment and limitations of the dualistic character of 
 thought and will are removed by the setting up of a new and 
 higher immediacy, so that the work of thought can proceed to 
 new and higher determinations. The aesthetic experience, it 
 is thus concluded, functions as the epistemological postulate of 
 world unification and world interpretation. 
 
 Miss Adams is quite right in seeking to place the aesthetic 
 e.xperience within the general process of thinking, meaning by 
 thinking the attempt upon the part of thought to escape from a 
 dualistic experience. But in placing the aesthetic experience 
 at the close of the thought-process, as a sign that thought as 
 unimpeded action may go on, she appears to reduce the aesthetic 
 experience to a mere accompaniment of thought, rather than as 
 serving some function within the thought-process. Thought, 
 for Miss Adams, and the Pragmatists generally, means the 
 breaking down of an immediacy of stimulus and response, and 
 finds its function in restoring the immediacy thus lost. From 
 immediacy to immediacy thus represents the whole of thought. 
 Upon the analysis of the aesthetic experience, she finds that it 
 exhibits precisely those characteristics attaching to an immediate 
 experience, whence the conclusion that the aesthetic rises at the 
 end of and indicates the success of the thouglu-])rocess. 1 he 
 aesthetic experience thus becomes a sort of by-product — a feel- 
 ing accompanying a smooth working experience. 
 
 In the present discussion it has been shown that the aesthetic 
 experience arises with the epistemological consciousness. Ihe 
 latter is a dualistic experience occasioned In tin presence in 
 consciousness of contrasted meanings. The reconciliation and 
 completing of these contrasted meanings becomes the epistem- 
 ological problem at the several stages of mental iltvelopment. 
 The devflopmenr of thought has |")roccded oiil\ In .in increasing 
 determinateness of its two aspects. Unless the content of 
 
THE AESTHETIC AS HYPER-LOGICAL. 63 
 
 thought at anv stage of its developinent can be treated with 
 reference to a further meaning, the content becomes at once 
 fixed and static. On the other liand, unless the control aspect 
 is informed and hinited in its operations it becomes, as in the 
 case of fancy, a meanmgless and valueless dynamic. 1 he 
 epistemological problem thus becomes always the search after 
 a mode of conscious determination in which these contrasted 
 meanings are brought into a whole of meaning without the loss 
 of either. As Professor Baldwin has put it,' "a discrete unin- 
 tellifrible dynamic is no better than a contentless formal static." 
 
 It has also been our purpose to show that thought is reduced 
 to the postulate of an empty and mystical experience when a 
 solution of the problem presented by the presence in conscious- 
 ness of contrasted meanings has been attempted by exclusively 
 emphasizing the one of these two aspects of thought to the com- 
 plete exclusion of the other. From our present point of view 
 the epistemological problem becomes the setting up of a mode 
 of experience in which to use the same author's words, thought 
 has a way of finding its dynamics intelligible as a truthful and 
 so far static meaning, and also of acting upon its established 
 truths as immediate and so far dynamic satisfactions. 
 
 The point of view contended for in the present investigation 
 is that the aesthetic experience represents a mode of mental 
 determination in which these two types of meaning are recon- 
 ciled and thus unified and completed. In tracing out the 
 several stages of the development of the aesthetic it is shown 
 that each such stage reflects the character of the epistemological 
 problem at the corresponding stage of its development. When 
 the reflective mode of consciousness has been reached, with the 
 presence of meanings which thought as mediate and discursive 
 is unable to reduce, it is shown that the aesthetic experience, as 
 a hyper-logical mode of consciousness, has those characteristics 
 which enable it to set uji an experience in which the dualistic 
 character of thoutrht is transcended. Our conclusion then is 
 that the aesthetic experience has arisen with the epistemological, 
 
 ' PsvcholoRti-al Bullettri, .April 15, 1907, p. 124; see also Thought and Things, 
 Vol. II, Appendix, II. 
 
64 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 has passed thn)u<ih a corresponding series ot stages of develop- 
 ment, and lias throughout functioned as theepistemological postu- 
 hite of unification and completion. It is not therefore to be 
 placed at the completion of thought but must rather be regarded 
 as marking the pausing place in reflective thought brought about 
 bv a process of mediating and thus reconciling the otherwise 
 dualistic character of experience. 
 
 Reaching thus the conclusion that the aesthetic has arisen 
 with the epistemological and, as representing the expression of a 
 type of interest sui generis, functions as the epistemological 
 postulate of the unification and completion of experience, it is 
 to be shown in the following chapters, that in the development 
 of thought in the race, the two types of experience have arisen 
 and developed pari passu, and that here also the aesthetic has 
 functioned as the postulate of a unified and completed thought. 
 
I'AR'l II. HISTORICAL. 
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 Greek 'Thought from the Earliest Beginnings to Thnles: A-Junl- 
 istic in Character, hence Pre-Eptstemological and Pre-A es- 
 thetic, and Illustrative of the First Immediacy. 
 
 In the following chapters an attempt is made to trace the 
 development of thought with reference to the rise and develop- 
 ment alike of the Kpistemologicnl and the Aesthetic, together 
 with the use made of the aesthetic Consciousness as the.organ 
 of world unification and interpretation. It will he shown that 
 the aesthetic and the epistemological have arisen together, 
 and that each, in the course of its development, has passed 
 through a series of well-defined modes, all of which may he 
 reconstructed with a tolerahle degree of completeness. It will 
 also be shown that the several modes of development of the 
 one are in essential agreement with the corresponding modes in 
 the development of the other.' In other words, each mode of 
 thought will be found to have had its corresponding mode of 
 aesthetic expression.- It will also appear that the conflicts and 
 embarrassment of the epistemological became the occasion and 
 opportunity of the aesthetic. The character of the aesthetic at 
 the several stages of its development will he found to have been 
 determined bv rlu- character of rlu- epistemological problem 
 demanding solution. Ihe motive of the aesthetic is, therefore, 
 to be sought in the epistemological. Professor I utrs has 
 insisted that the motives are to be souiiht within the domain of 
 social psychology. Ihis conclusion is reached onlv In making 
 the social prior to thought, whereas in the present connection, 
 thought as common, is made the material of the social process. 
 The conclusion upon which the jircscnt attempt is based, is 
 
 ' F. Hegel, Phil, of Fine Art, trs. by Hosanquct, p. lOI. 
 ' Cf. Hirn, The Origins of Art, p. 2. 
 
 65 
 
66 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 that the motives of the aesthetic consciousness arc to be sought 
 in eptstcmology ratlier than sociology. 
 
 It has already been pointed out that the epistemological con- 
 sciousness must be treated genetically and that the several 
 dualisms, through which thought passes in the course of its 
 development, are to be regarded as the successive modes of its 
 development. At each of these dualistic experiences the epis- 
 temological problem arises anew. These successive dualisms are, 
 furthermore, to be regarded as situations into which conscious- 
 ness grows, rather than states imposed ab-extra.' If we are to 
 regard the several dualistic experiences into which consciousness 
 develops as 'wounds,' they must be regarded as wounds of 
 consciousness' own making, the leaves for whose healing are 
 found arising with the wounds, since as Hegel says "the hand 
 which inflicts the wound is the hand that must heal it." 
 
 The subject-object dualism of reflective thought within 
 which the epistemological problem par excellence arises, is not, 
 therefore, a datum of immediate experience, but represents that 
 mode of conscious determination and control of experience made 
 possible and intelligible by a series of earlier dualistic experiences. 
 Within each of these earlier stages an epistemological problem 
 arose whose solution made possible the next higher mode of 
 determination and control of presented content. But in each 
 instance, the problem became the problem of the unification of 
 experience. From the analytic point of view the epistemolog- 
 ical consciousness is dualistic, the unitv ot which can onlv be 
 secured by the healing of the breach. Hut since the dualism is of 
 consciousness' own making, there is the presumption that it 
 will also bring about its own healing. In the present attempt, 
 the purpose is to show that the aesthetic consciousness arises 
 with the epistemological and jiresents always an ideal unity in 
 which the unity and completion of experience are obtained. 
 
 Maintaining the dualistic character of the epistemological 
 consciousness there is no need of carrying our investigations 
 beyond the thought of the Greek world.- "The birth-day of 
 
 ' Ct. W.iici, N (ititraltsm and A gnosticism, \o\. II. 
 
 ' Windclbaml, H istory of Philosophy, p. 23; V.rdmau, History of Philos- 
 ophy, p. 13; Gompcrz, Thf Greek Thinkers, Introduction. 
 
GREEK THOUGHT TO THALES. 67 
 
 our modern world" says Hegel, "is the moment when the Greek 
 sages began to construe the tacts of the universe. Before their 
 time the world lav as it were in a dream-life. Unconsciously in 
 the womb of time the spirit of the world was growing -the 
 faculties forminc in secrecv and silence — unrd the dav of birth 
 when the preparations were completed and the young spirit 
 drew its hrst breath in the air ot thought. Among the Greeks 
 the Reason Hrst became conscious, since they were the first to 
 make the distinction between sense and thought."' 
 
 But the distinction thus referred to was only gradually 
 reached. The earliest conceptions of the Greeks are found to 
 be those possible at a period when consciousness is relatively 
 a-dualistic. Ihe earliest Greeks possessed no clear distinction 
 between mind and matter, the material and the spiritual.' One 
 must, therefore, be naive, as Professor Dewey says, in dealing 
 with Greek philosophy and not introduced distinctions which 
 only arose later. Throughout the period indicated at the head 
 of the present chapter Greek consciousness was the rather vague 
 and undifferentiated. Here as in the Orient custom forbade 
 any separation of fact and meaning. The 'fatal boon ot knowl- 
 edge' had not yet been born and the immediate unity ot con- 
 sciousness was as yet undisturbed. Sensuous presence was the 
 only reality and the world was one of pure appearance. 
 
 As the world on the banks, 
 
 So is the mind of man. 
 ******* 
 
 Only the tract where he sails 
 
 III' wots of; only the thoughts 
 
 Raised by the objects he passes are his.' 
 
 The researches of the archaeologist and thi comparative 
 anthropologist have succeeded in pushing farther back the 
 boundary line of the historic past, and the period of (jteek 
 philosophy before Thales has been reconstructed with great 
 fulness and accuracy. Regarding consciousness as active and 
 
 ' Wallace, The Lope oj Iligel, p. 261. 
 ' Janet and Scaillcs, ProbUtns of Philosophy, p. 214. 
 ' Matthew Arnold, The Future. 
 
68 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 reconstructive, rather tlian passive and receptive, its active and 
 reconstructive processes are here seen in their entire spontaneity. 
 I'ritnitive man uneniharrassed by a duahstic experience and 
 wliollv freed from the compeUing character of external control 
 and the demands of rational conceptions gave the freest embodi- 
 ment to his active, dispositional tendencies. This stage in the 
 development of the thought of the race, not unlike the corre- 
 sponding period in the development of the individual, is char- 
 acterized by the creation of myths. As the product of an 
 a-dualistic consciousness the myth is to be defined with Vignoli as 
 "The psychological objectification of man in all the phenomena 
 he can perceive."* From the analvtical point of view it may be 
 said that the world presented is determined largely in terins of 
 the affective-volitional disposition without any distinction what- 
 ever appearing to consciousness between the two factors thus 
 involved. - 
 
 This first stage of thought must, therefore, be regarded as 
 one of relative immediacy — a stage in which thought is free 
 from internal complexity and in which stimulations call forth 
 immediate responses. The unreflective myth, as the character- 
 istic product of this first immediacy, is to be regarded, neither as 
 a thing of pure presentation, nor of existential judgment, but 
 rather one of pure 'presumption.'^ 1 he deliverances of this 
 a-dualistic consciousness are accepted as real, since no disturb- 
 ing experiences have as yet arisen within the sphere of reality- 
 feeling.^ These unreflective myths have been regarded, and 
 rightly, as the first attempt at a metaphysics of nature. In tact, 
 from the beginning until now, whenever pure reason has been 
 found inadequate, thought has sought refuge in some form of 
 mythological construction. Whatever theory ot the universe 
 primitive man possessed, is to be souglu in the myth. It at 
 once includes both science and religion and regulates both 
 social and private life.^ 
 
 ' Quotiii liv Kibot, The Crtuitive Imagmalton, p. 121. 
 
 'Cf. Wuncit. Outlines of Philosophy, trs. by judd, p. 303 ff.; and Terr)', 
 The Approach to Philosophy, p. 225. 
 
 'Urban. Psxrhotogical Rcvinv. Two Aniclcs, Vol. XIV, Nos. I .iml 2. 
 * Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, Feeling and ff ill, pp. 148 ff. 
 ' Cf. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Arts, p. 375. 
 
UNIv 
 
 J 
 
 GREEK THOUGHT TO T HALES. 69 
 
 A. Lang and others have shown that the social life of the 
 Greeks before the dawn of reflective thoLin;ht, was a matter of 
 group maintenance, controlled by specific and traditional cus- 
 toms. The individual was in unconscious unit\' with the com- 
 munity of which he chanced to be a member, and both regulated 
 and justified his life through reference to the ideals incarnate in 
 the habits and customs of the community.' Then it was true 
 that the individual did not think but knew, since there was 
 neither occasion nor opportunity of thought. The individual 
 was one with the situation in which he lived. In tact, he carried 
 the entire situation within himself. Primitive man was thus 
 social from the outset and there is no justification for the later 
 contention that the individual when first found stood alone and 
 had in some way to be made social. The materials and motives 
 of whatever determinations of presented content the individual 
 might make were common to the group, but since they were not 
 psychically common, they are rather to be regarded as 'aggre- 
 gate' in character.- We should expect to find, what in fact we 
 do actually find, tiiat the unreHective myths are wholly anony- 
 mous as to their origin and collective as to their reference. It is 
 not without significance that no names are found attaching to 
 the myths. There was, as yet, no distinction between the pro- 
 ducers' and the spectators' point of view and the myth became 
 the sole means of e.xpression of the social and mental life, and 
 like the fancies of the individual, at the corresponding period, 
 became the sole reality of primitive man. 
 
 Regarding the unreflective myth as the product of a primitive 
 and uncritical consciousness and characterizing primitive 
 thought as the representation of concrete objects in terms of 
 the subject himself, without the distinction between subject and 
 object coming into consciousness, the materials and motives of the 
 polarization of the a-dualistic consciousness are already present. 
 There follows close upon this early period of spontaneous myth 
 creation a period of transformation and decline. Accepting 
 the classification of the mvths proposed by Ribot into explica- 
 
 ' Cf. A. Lang, \fyth. Ritual and Religion, Vol. I, ch. 9, Vol. II, ch. 17. 
 ' Vide Baldwin, Thought and Things, Yo]. I. p. I4S ff; cf. A. Lang, Cuj/om and 
 Myth, p. 5; Paulsen, Introd. to Philos., p. 6. 
 
7° 
 
 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 tive and non-explicative/ it becomes extremely easy to indi- 
 cate the influences that tended to make a reconstruction of the 
 former necessary. Primitive thoue:ht, as anthropologists and 
 ethnologists have shown, is anthropomorphic in character. 
 The earliest conceptions of the world were purely mythical, 
 because none other were possible. The myth thus becomes 
 the response to a series of needs both theoretical and practical, 
 but which have not as yet become distinct from each other. 
 The resulting interpretation is not however subjective, as Ribot 
 insists, but rather 'projective' thus corresponding to what 
 Urban has called pure 'presumption. '- 
 
 The subsequent stages in the development of thought repre- 
 sent stages within this first immediacy, so that using the term 
 objective in a somewhat loose sense, it can be said, that the 
 development of thought is not from the subjective to the objec- 
 tive but a development within the objective.' The embarrass- 
 ments that supply the materials and motives of a new determina- 
 tion of thought, are to be sought in rhe increase of inner possi- 
 bilities and differences of attitude toward presented content, 
 rather than in the compelling character of the outer. The sev- 
 eral movements both in the land of Greece and the outlying col- 
 onies referred to in the present connection are selected for the 
 purpose of showing how they contributed to the isolation and 
 deepening of the inner, in contrast with the outer, thus making 
 a reconstruction of experience both possible and necessary. 
 
 Then as now, 'tempora et res mutantur,' and the fact of 
 change, as Windelband says, became the stimulus to reflection; 
 and the rise of reflection means that the old-time equilibrium of 
 stimulus and response, motive and sanction, is breaking down. 
 It is precisely within these changed and changing conditions 
 that we are to seek the rise of the inner-outer dualism. Sense- 
 perception and memory alike arc questioned in a world whose 
 scenes are constantly shifting. Vhe unreflective myth-making 
 consciousness loses its position and supremacy as the organ of 
 world interpretation and unification. The multiplicity of myths 
 
 ' Ribot, Essay on the Creativr Imagination, p. 131. 
 
 ' Cf. Urban in Psychological Rrvinv, Vol. XIV, 1907, Nos. I and 2. 
 
 ' Cf. Bosanquct, Essentials of Logic, p. 22. 
 
GREEK THOUGHT TO T HALES. 7 1 
 
 and the host of deities become a stumbling block to some and 
 foolishness to others, while the legends clustered like 'weeds in 
 the pathless and primeval forest.' The thinning ax was every- 
 where in demand and as well the hand that could wield it with 
 cunning. Ihe familiar attitudes no longer bring the old-time 
 satisfactions, and new experiences are constantly arising tiiat 
 throw the individual into confusion. Custom forbade tlie 
 separation of fact and meaning, but the familiar supports are 
 failing precisely when and where most needed. The world long 
 held together is fast falling asunder. 1 hings are no longer what 
 they seem, and fact and meaning are no longer identical. 
 
 As has been indicated the unreflective myth served to satisfy 
 both theoretical and practical needs which are n(^t as yet dis- 
 tinguished from one another. The explicative and the non- 
 explicative myths are significant as indicating the presence and 
 operation of the materials and motives of the differentiation of 
 the primitive constructions within the first immediacy. What 
 is especially significant is, that when the demand for a trans- 
 formation of the myths came, it was with reference to the former 
 rather than the latter. It is important also to observe, that 
 within the sphere of the explicative myths, the process of trans- 
 formation did not issue in philosophic speculation wholly free 
 from mythical elements. Hence from the beginning until now, 
 despite the increasing skill and strength of science as the rival 
 of the imagination, the latter has not lost its position as an inter- 
 pretative and reconstructive principle of thought.'' 
 
 The increasing failure of the explicative myths in the 
 presence of increased knowledge, tended to throw the non- 
 explicative in greater relief and thus sharpen the contrast 
 between the inner and the outer. In the race, as also in the 
 individual, the embarrassment occasioned by the failure of the 
 'representing' and 'conversion' value of images^ became the 
 need and opportunity of fancy, which by a relatively spontaneous 
 flow of images detached from the process in wliich they occur, 
 seeks to regain the original immediacy and thus end tiie con- 
 
 ' Cf. Urban, 'Appreciation and Description and the Psychology' of Values,' 
 
 Philosophical Revirw, Nov., 1905. 
 
 ' Baldwin, Thought an J Things, \'ol. I, ch. v. 
 
71 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 flict arising between expectation and icalitv. "Nothing" says 
 Sullv, "seems more to characterize the childhood of the race 
 than the myth-making impulse which by an overflow of fancies 
 seeks to hide the meagerness of knowledge." 1 bus the world 
 of fancy, nor unlike the primitive myth-world, becomes a 'pro- 
 jective' world in which thought can once more wander with 
 absolute spontaneity. The naive consciousness accepts it with- 
 out question and, while neither science nor history, serves for 
 both in the primitive mind. Both the myths and fancies of the 
 unreflective consciousness are frankly naive, claiming neither 
 meaning nor moral, but loved for their own sake, as children 
 delight in Fairy Tales and as even the wise of the 'grown-ups, 
 have not outgrown genuine delight in pure romance. 
 
 The value of the myth is to be sought in the process rather 
 than the product. The failure to estimate the myth from this 
 point of view has led both anthropologists and ethnologists to 
 attribute to it only a negative value in the development of thought. 
 Max Miillcr thus defines the myth as a 'disease of language,' 
 while Herbert Spencer finds its origin in the worship of the dead. 
 In the present attempt, the myth-making consciousness, while 
 looked upon as pre-aesthetic, is nevertheless regarded as the rise of 
 a process of world objectification and unification continuous with 
 the mental life. Thought is at the first 'projective,' in the sense 
 that it reduces the presented world into terms of what it itself 
 has, and fancy is to be regarded as the beginning of the process 
 of unification of experience which will be shown to develop 
 along with the increasing demands and possibilities of thought. 
 
 Hut the spontaneity of fancy does not sweep away the per- 
 sisting character of the outer as held wirhm the net of memorv. 
 Both the demand of the inner as embodied in fancy and the 
 control of memory are now present and operative in conscious- 
 ness and the first real sundering of consciousness is upon us. 
 Bur the dualism is not complete, in rhar rhe inner as yet pos- 
 sesses only a contrast value. The jiresence of alternative 
 responses and the compelling character of the new objects of 
 presentation contribute to the separation of fact and meaning, 
 datum and dispositional tendencies, stimulus .iiul response. 
 Neither m}thological cosmology nor aphoristic ethics is ade- 
 
GREEK THOUGHT TO THJLES. 73 
 
 quate to the demands which the individual now makes of them. 
 As Professor Caird says: "The dehcate moon-ht web of poetic 
 fiction which the Greek inKii;ination (fancv) had woven around 
 the crude naturahsm of pre-historic rehgion, insensibly coloring 
 and ideali/ing it, could not maintain itself in the light of a critical 
 age."' Ihe nuths of the earlv cosmogonists and theogonists 
 yield to a poetrv in which a subjective element appears. The 
 naive culture of Mycenae so beautifully pictured in the Homeric 
 poems began to yield to individual thought and treatment. 1 he 
 primitive myths were recast by the masters of choral song and 
 "The neutral tints of the back-ground were ever more and more 
 relieved by strong self-conscious figures standing out from the 
 uniform mass."- 
 
 Until now no question is asked touching the meaning and 
 origin of things and the emancipation of thought from habit and 
 custom means that the power of grasping the meaning of things 
 apart from rhcir actual existence has really come. "The 
 Greeks" says Zeller, "were the first who gained sufficient free- 
 dom of thought to seek for the truth respecting the nature of 
 things, not in religious tradition but in the things themselves; 
 among them a strictly scientific method first appears, a knowledge 
 that follows no laws except its own, became possible.^ Reality is 
 no longer a matter of undisturbed feeling, and presence and mean- 
 ing are no longer identical. The images detached from their 
 original sense moorings and used as ideas, meanings, the prob- 
 lem at once arises of adapting these meanings to new situations 
 and the satisfaction of varied interests. The problem of the 
 inner and the outer has come, whose reconciliation became 
 the burden of thought and the epistemological problem of all 
 Greek thought. The rise of a dualized experience is significant 
 as indicating that the epistemological consciousness with its 
 characteristic problem of unification has come and it remains to 
 show in the next chapter that the aesthetic consciousness has 
 also arisen and, as 'semblant' consciousness, becomes the 
 appropriate organ of the interpretation and unification of the 
 inner-outer dualism. 
 
 ' Caird, Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, Vol. II, p. 41. 
 ' Gompcrz, The Greek Thinkers, Vol. I, p. II. 
 'Zeller, Pre-Socratic Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 133. 
 
Chapti:r Y\. 
 
 Greek Thought froju T hales to Nco-Platonism as Illustrating 
 the Epistemological Use of the Aesthetic Consciousness as 
 the Organ of fVorU Unification and Interpretation. 
 
 That outward circumstances and thought act and re-act on 
 each other is a truth that has passed into a truism in our day, 
 but in Greece it was a fact preeminently true and important. 
 From Thales to the death of Aristotle must be regarded as the 
 great epoch of Greek speculation within which is comprised all 
 that is most perfect and brilliant in ancient philosophy. When 
 the period began, Greek thought was just beginning to emanci- 
 pate itself from the mythological cosmogonies and theogonies,^ 
 while at the close of the period, thought had mapped out, and to 
 some extent formed, the paths along which subsequent thought 
 has been forced to travel. But, as Gomperz remarks, before 
 reflection could flourish, a considerable mass of detailed knowl- 
 edge had to be accumulated. Both geographical and tempera- 
 mental conditions were highly favorable in Greece for such 
 enlargement of knowledge during the period from Thales to 
 Plotinus. The growing power of reflection and acquaintance 
 with the knowledge of the P2ast awakened the notion of stability 
 and law, which brought the problem of matter into the fore- 
 ground of human thought. 
 
 Other tendencies were at work which tended to throw the 
 individual back upon himself and thus sharpen and deepen the 
 inner life. The development of industry and commerce, of 
 war and politics, brought the individual face to face with other 
 occupations and aims. Frequent changes in the polity of the 
 state led men to regard it as a creation more or less human. The 
 presence of cases, which could not be dralt with by any law 
 already in existence, necessitated a modiHcation of tin- ideas 
 themselves. The friction of circumstances tends always to 
 
 ' Ferrier, Institutes of Metaphysics, p. 165, ct seq. 
 
 74 
 
GREEK THOUGHT AFTER THALES. 75 
 
 dissolve the rigidirv of custom nntl tliscussion is horn, whiili, as 
 Professor Devvev savs, led anionu; the Greeks to the generation 
 of logical theory.' As the result of these repeated failures of the 
 moral law, morals, like politics, was regarded as the product of 
 individual creation and hence as personal. 
 
 The beginnings of Greek thought are to be sought in the 
 colonies rather than the mainland, which as Gomper/savs 'be- 
 came the play-ground of the Greek intellect.' Reflection takes 
 its rise in the presence of change, and science working outward 
 and backward, has, from the time of Thales, until now, been 
 seeking the «,"/'*, the 'what' as the fundamental stuff out of 
 which all things have come, and in which their explanation 
 is to be sought.- Beneath all change there must be that which 
 does not change and which gives unity to the othenvise chaotic 
 manifold. The so-called 'Physiologers' from Thales to Democ- 
 ritus were seeking a postulate which would make all change 
 intelligible. By one fell stroke Democritus reduced all phe- 
 nomena to the mechanics of atoms. The things perceived by 
 the several senses are to be regarded as a sort of mazy dance of 
 physical points, since the atom was characterized by an abstract 
 corporeality. The atoms are as manifold, and are assigned what- 
 ever attributes, the problem of knowledge may demand. They 
 were mechanically and mathematically arranged and deter- 
 mined. The outer world is no longer to be looked upon as a 
 "play-ground of innumerable capricious and counteracting mani- 
 festations of Will,"' the expression of unknown and unseen 
 powers shifting the scenes from behind, but rather as com- 
 posed of an infinite number of atoms determined in all their 
 movements and combinations by unchangeable law. 1 bus, 
 as Professor Baldwin says, "The outer was stripped of those 
 relative and ambiguous predicates which embarrassed earlier 
 speculation."* 
 
 ' 'Stages in the Development of Logical Theor)',' Philosophical Revtev,', Vol. IX, 
 No. V. 
 
 ' Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, I, 3, 983. b6. 
 
 ' Gomperz, The Greek Thinkers, Vol. I. 
 
 * Proc. St. Louis Congress Arts and Science; reprinted in Psychological Review, 
 Vol. XII, 1905. 
 
76 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIES'CE. 
 
 But the treatment of the inner did not keep pace with the 
 treatment of the outer. ByDeinocritusandthcAtomiststhemind 
 was looked upon as a series of ima<:;es produced by the move- 
 ments of the atoms constituting the outer. The images were 
 reduced copies of external objects. The contrast between 
 sense-perception and thought, which was raised by Socrates 
 was explained bv the Atomists b\' establishing a quan- 
 titative relation between them.' Ihe psychology of Democ- 
 ritus, established upon a materialistic basis, recognized no 
 independent mechanism of ideas as conscious states.^ The 
 Atomists emphasized the physical side of the dualism of inner 
 and outer and while the objective, as the external, was carried 
 very far toward our more modern conclusions, the subjective, 
 as the inner, was given only negative consideration and treat- 
 ment.' The general recognition of the relativity of the data of 
 sense-perception bv Democritus and others, contributed, how- 
 ever in an indirect way to the isolation and deepening of the 
 inner. Democritus was convinced that knowledge was not pos- 
 sible upon a basis of relativity. Atomism represents a search 
 after an epistemological principle in terms of which the world 
 of experience can be explained and unified. The atoms of 
 Democritus serve as 'schemata' the twofold purpose of scientific 
 description, namely, communication and control of experience. 
 They are however 'symbols' not 'concepts, and thus illustrate the 
 fact that all description involves an appreciative or selective 
 element. The character and extent of the appreciative element 
 thus employed depend upon the purpose in view. While there- 
 fore, the primitive explanations of the world have yielded to a 
 more scientific, the selective element has not wholly disappeared, 
 and whatever unity and stability were found in the world of 
 Democritus and his contemporaries must be sought for in the 
 aesthetic consciousness, as a mode of mental determination of 
 presented content. 
 
 With the change of the seat of philosophy from the outlving 
 colonies to the home-land, there took place also a characteristic 
 
 ' Aristotli-, De Anima, I, 2, 4^06 b 30 (W-ilLnct). 
 
 ' Vide riuophr.istus, Ph\s. Opin., 3 (l)itlil). 
 
 ' Vide Ferritr, Institutes of Metaphysus, pp. 161, ct. ff. 
 
GREEK THOUGHT AFTER THALES. -J-J 
 
 change in the character of phil()S()ph\' itself. Hitherto philoso- 
 phv was concerned primarily with the physical universe. But 
 with the Sophists, the practical aspect came forward. The 
 Protagorean 'homo mensura omnium' is significant as the first 
 explicit recognition of the inner as a center of organization and 
 control. The Sophists, as pure subjectivists, retluced knowl- 
 edge to mere opinion.^ But making the individual the measure 
 of all things, thev were unable to justify knowledge as a com- 
 mon possession and in the end gave up its pursuit. The urgent 
 problem of the age, how to secure knowledge which would 
 preserve the social and moral life of the nation in the presence of 
 the continued failure of the old-time supports, while formulated, 
 was not solved by the Sophists. To the solution of this problem 
 a greater Sophist gave both his thought and life, whose ^ryihOi 
 aeauTKv' is significant as indicating the change of emphasis in 
 philosophic thought. 
 
 Socrates raised the question and called upon every individual 
 to raise it for himself; but of its solution, he confesses himself 
 as ignorant as any other individual. The outcome of the 
 Sophistic movement was the discrediting of all thought — "the 
 futile attempt to spin truth out of one's own inner conscious- 
 ness."- The epistemological problem was the finding ot the 
 common element of all thought — a problem which Socrates set 
 himself to solve. To know, is in order to do, so that with 
 Socrates the moral consciousness functions for the first time as 
 an epistemological postulate. 
 
 To think, according to Socrates, necessitates common prem- 
 ises, as well as a common end. That the outer is the deter- 
 mining pole in the inner-outer dualism of the age, is to be inferred 
 from the fact, tiiat the general conceptions which Socrates estab- 
 lished bv means of his characteristic method, represent the 
 things of abiding worth in the existing social situation. Mean- 
 ing is no longer identical with sense-perception, but is rather 
 what one intends. Social life demands community of conduct 
 and therefore common meanings, but since consciousness is still 
 
 ' Dcwev, 'Stapes of Lopical Thcorv.' Philos. Rn.iifu-, Vol. I.\, 1 905. 
 ' On the Sophists, see Aristotle, .\fft. III., 2, 1004; Plato, Protogoras, Jowct's 
 Trs., beginning at p. 310 A; TheaetetuSy Ibid., p. I5lh. 
 
78 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 regarded as passive and receptive the aspect of coniinonncss 
 must be sought witliout.' 
 
 The latter part ot the hfe of Socrates covered the period of 
 tile loss of Athenian prestige and supremacy, and his philosophy 
 has been defined as an attempt to hold up consistently the better 
 ideals of Athenian life.- With Plato, Athens having yielded to 
 Macedonian rule, jihilosophv came to be an attempt to recon- 
 struct the original Greek City-State. His philosoplu', like that 
 of his master, is primarily ethical, hut the complete failure of 
 the outer makes reconstruction possible only to the philosopher. 
 Once more the epistemological problem becomes the obtaining 
 of knowledge which will justify and guarantee conduct m the 
 midst of constant change. Plato also recognized that neither 
 thought nor conduct is possible upon a relativistic basis. The 
 senses are deceptive and perception can yield opinion only. 
 Only the ideas are real. Sense experiences become real only in 
 so far as the^' participate in the ideas or imitate them. 1 he 
 ideas, however, are 'schemata,' and while they can not be verified 
 in terms of sense-experience they are the necessary presup- 
 positions of thought. They are also practical as were the notions 
 of Socrates, as representing the things of most value in the social 
 situation. 
 
 But Plato was poet as well as philosopher, seer as well as 
 scientist, and his solution of the epistemological problem is poet- 
 ical rather than logical.^ The nnths which bulk so largely in the 
 Dialogues are not to be regarded as instances of defeat or grace- 
 ful embellishments merely, but rather as Westcott says "\'en- 
 turous essays after truth— embodiments of definite instincts — 
 material representations of speculative doctrines which while 
 affirmed by instinct can not be verified by scientific process." 
 As the unreflective myth represented an attempt to hold together 
 the two worlds of sense-presentation ami dispositional tendencies 
 so in the hands of Plato, the nnth, now Income conscious, 
 bursts in upon the Dialogue with the revelation of a world trans- 
 
 ' Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory, p 1 33. 
 
 'Dewey, Lectures on Greek I'liilosophv in Johns Hopkins I'niversity, 1906- 
 1907 (not puhlisheil). 
 ' Cf. Phatdeus, Jowctt's translation, p. 265 D; Symposium, Ibid., p. 201 D. 
 
GREEK THOUGHT AFTER THALES. yg 
 
 cending the world of sense-experience by wliich the latter is 
 transfused and reduced to unity. 1 he myths of Plato are, 
 therefore, vital and integral parts of the Dialogues and repre- 
 sent deliverenccs of that larger aspect of consciousness which as 
 Stewart says "Is not articulate and logical but which feels and 
 acts and wills — to that major part of our nature which while not 
 able to explain what a thing is or how it appears but feels that it 
 is good or bad and thus expresses itself in judgments of worth or 
 value rather than in existential judgments of fact.' 
 
 Whatever unity therefore, the Dialogues of Plato contain, is 
 to be sought in his artistic rather than in his logical treatment. 
 Still Plato is unable to distinguish between the True and the 
 Good; and this limitation is significant as reflecting both the 
 character of the epistemological problem and the nature of the 
 aesthetic consciousness which is used as the appropriate means 
 of reconciling the inner-outer dualism. The two spheres of 
 reference into which consciousness is now polarized are the 
 world of sensible phenomena and the world of ideas. lo rhe 
 former Plato ascribes no specific value whatever. The world of 
 ideas is the only true and essential world. Fhe plienomena ot 
 sense may lead us to the realm of the eternal ideas, but to enter 
 the latter, we must break with the former. The original beauty 
 is both bodiless and colorless and bears no likeness whatso- 
 ever to the things of sense-perception. Like philosophy, the 
 organ of artistic creation is a sort of higher inspiration. The 
 artist is no longer guided by scientific methods but by a 'sort of 
 uncertain and tentative empiricism.' Art products are there- 
 fore for Plato, a species of phantasy and while he nowhere 
 defines precisely what the term phantasy means as used by him, 
 it nevertheless appears to be a creation lying mid-way between 
 the phenomena of sense-perception and the immutable ideas, 
 corresponding to what in the case of the development of thought 
 in the individual we found to be a process of 'sembling' as the 
 form bv which contents of thought are advanced and accepted as 
 'assumption' as compared with 'pure presumption' of the first 
 immediacy. In one connection Plato hints that there might be 
 
 » Stewart, The Myths of Plato, p. 21. 
 
8o THE AESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 a more pt-rfect art because of a complete knowledge, but then 
 art and philosophy would become identical. If we define the 
 epistemological problem as it presented itself to Plato, as the 
 unification of experience now sundered by the inner-outer 
 dualism and known as the problem of the one and the manv, we 
 are justified in concluding that bv the use of the aesthetic con- 
 sciousness Plato sought to solve the problem thus presented by 
 reducing his world to an artistic whole. Thus the expression of 
 the 'one in the many,' of 'unity in variety' which represents the 
 truly aesthetic principle of Greek thought touching the beauti- 
 ful, represents also the urgent problem of Greek speculation 
 and its characteristic solution. Plato clearlv recognized the 
 epistemological problem set by his two-fold world of ideas and 
 sense-phenomena, and sought its solution in terms of beauty, 
 which placed between the two worlds became the abiding sign 
 and evidence of the presence of the Absolute and the stimulus 
 to the development of higher possibilities. 
 
 The continuity of Greek thought must be sought in Aris- 
 totle, rather than in the several Platonic Schools that arose after 
 the death of the Master. Both Plato and Aristotle agree in 
 defining philosophy as the science of the concept, as the uni- 
 versal element of thought and conduct. But while Plato makes 
 the universal the starting point of his philosophy and attempts 
 to deduce the particular from it, Aristotle begins with the par- 
 ticular datum of experience and seeks to ascend to the universal. 
 For Aristotle experience is the true cause of knowledge rather 
 than, a mere occasion, as Plato taught. The former universal- 
 ized the concept by placing it in a world apart and above the 
 particular, while the latter makes the universal an attrduite of 
 the mind itself.' Form and matter, the universal and the par- 
 ticular, actuality and potentiality, are related, and the determin- 
 ation of the relations exiscinc between them becomes tiie ciiief 
 task of the philosopher. 
 
 I he jihilosopiu' before Aristotle represented a series of 
 attempts to regulate and reorganize the social situation fast 
 disintegrating, hence its practical character. B\- the time of 
 
 ' Mel., Ill, 4. 999; De .lltiui, II, 5, 417. 
 
GREEK THOUGHT AFTER THALES. 8l 
 
 Aristotle, social lite has disintegrated beyond all hope ot success- 
 ful reorganization, so that thinkuig can be followed because of 
 its own interest. Since the State, as the sphere of abiding truth 
 and values, has wholly failed, such sphere can be sought only in 
 and through thought. In fact, as Professor Dewey has shown, 
 two short generations sufficed to effect a complete divorce 
 between philosophy and lite, and the isolation ot rcHective 
 thought from practical conduct.' IMiilosopiu' now became an 
 organ of vision, an instrument of interpretation, rather than a 
 series of attempts to reclaim and reorganize a social situation 
 that had wholly failed. 
 
 The limitation of the Aristotelian procedure is to be seen in 
 the fact, that Aristotle w-as obliged to assume, as self-evident, 
 certain fundamental truths which were neither established nor 
 modified by thought, but which stood in their own right. - 
 Apart from such truths the mind is still in the grasp of fancy and 
 opinion.^ It became necessary to assume these fundamental 
 truths as posts to which to fasten, organize and control the 
 otherwise particular and contingent experiences. No question 
 was asked, at the first, touching the universality and credibility 
 of the truths thus assumed. Later however the problem of the 
 *quod semper, ubique, ab omnibus,' became one of special impor- 
 tance. But with Aristotle "commonness" was assumed and as 
 in the case of Plato it may be concluded that the material thus 
 assumed by the philosopher was of a 'syndoxic' character. The 
 sphere of presuppositions was therefore 'common-as-common, 
 so that the use of it was more like to obtain general approval 
 and acceptance. 
 
 Aristotle's philosophy represents an attempt to solve the 
 dualism inherent in the Platonic conception ot lileas. But 
 while he diil not solve the problem presented In the dualistic 
 consciousness, he cleared the wa\ tor a solution not hitherto 
 possible. For Plato the world, as objective, is just the uni- 
 versal of thought, which in his abstract fashion, he separates 
 
 ' Johns Hopkins University Lectures on (jreek Pliilosophv (not puMislied). 
 
 ' Aristotle, Ana. Post, II, IQ, 99A, 20. 
 
 ' Aristotle, Metaphysics, XII, 9, 1086, b 8. 
 
82 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 coniplerelv from the particulars of sense bv setting them apart 
 as self-subsisting realities. 
 
 To bring these two worlds together represented the epis- 
 temological problem which Plato bequeathed to his successors- 
 The positive contribution of Aristotle is his contention that the 
 universal and the particular do not dwell apart in complete 
 isolation, but that the universal existed only in and through the 
 particular, while the latter existed onlv in and for the former.' 
 Reality, therefore, must be found in the indissoluble union of 
 these two aspects of thought. Thought and sense can not be 
 taken apart from each other, except by a process of abstraction. 
 The individual is not, therefore, the given of sense, as Plato 
 held, but the joint product of sense and the universals of 
 thought, of matter and form. In fine, the aspects of the prob- 
 lem presented bv the epistemological consciousness are rather 
 two aspects within the same process. Matter as the unformed 
 tends toward form with something akin to desire, so that matter 
 is not negation as Plato would say but privation. Form on the 
 contrary as the final and efficient cause is the source of specific 
 determination, actuality and perfection, while matter remains 
 nevertheless a real principle of being. 
 
 The process of world-construction was considered by Aris- 
 totle after the analogy of the plastic arts in which the materials 
 employed serve not only as a limit to the realization of formative 
 thought, but as the means of the revelation of thought itself. 
 The artist is not confined to a slavish imitation of things as they 
 are but it is possible for him to reproduce things as they might 
 be. Art is no longer the imitative reproduction of nature, 
 which is itself a copy only, as Plato taught, but an act of creation 
 in the form of an image in which the incomplete purpose of 
 nature and her defects are corrected. - 
 
 Aristotle thus saw in arr, as Butcher says, a rational faculty 
 which divines nature's unfulfilled intentions and reveals her ideal 
 to sense. ^ The illusions which it empU)ys are of consciousness' 
 own making and acceptance ami instead of cheating the mind 
 
 ' Arisfotlc. .fn.i. Post, I, II, 77 a 5; Mtt. \I, ifi, IO40, IU7. 
 
 ' Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and the Fine Arts, pp. 1 10, 14.4. I 50. 
 
 ' Ibid. 
 
GREEK THOUGHT AFTER THALES. 83 
 
 as Plato thought, image forth the immanent idea which can not 
 find expression under the forms of material existence. Poetry 
 is, therefore, more philosophical tiian history according to 
 Aristotle,' and when we recall the long and bitter feud between 
 poetry and philosophy the conclusion becomes extremely signifi- 
 cant. Between poetry and history, however, there was no such 
 feud and in primitive times the two are identical. Poetry, 
 according to Plato, is only fiction and all fiction is necessarily 
 immoral, hence poets must be denied citizenship in the ideal 
 republic. In the Poetics of Aristotle there is a manifest attempt 
 to heal this strife and Aristotle finds in art the meeting point of 
 the universal and the particular, of form and matter.- Poetry is 
 thus related to philosophy in that it seeks also to express the 
 universal as pure form. It finds its differentia from philosophy 
 in the fact that while their content is identical, the method ot 
 expressing the content is wholly different. Given reality is 
 still the sphere of reference and control, but to Aristotle it must 
 be ideal. 
 
 But if realitv is thus preserved, in what direction does 
 the process of idealization proceed and what is the standard by 
 which such procedure is to be judged .'' Thus far, we have 
 seen, that moralistic considerations embarrassed aesthetic specu- 
 lation and artistic creation. This was due to the fact that the 
 theoretical and the practical activities of consciousness were not 
 clearly differentiated. With Aristotle the two forms of activity 
 are clearly recognized as distinct and the attempt is actually 
 made to give each independent treatment. With Aristotle the 
 practical is made subordinate to the theoretical. Art, however, 
 is for Aristotle a practical science, since distinction between the 
 fine and useful arts was not reached by the Greeks at all.' 
 Nevertheless the recognition of the beautiful as subordinate to 
 the practical is significant as indicating the rise of the sense of 
 value and the interpretation of the world from the standpoint of 
 meaning. Bur these meanings, values, ideals, can not be 
 
 ' Ibid., p. 153 ff. 
 ' Butcher, op. cit. p. 360 ff. 
 
 * Bosanquet, Histrtry of Aesthetics, p. 22; cf. also. Butcher o/>. fi/., 144, and 
 ch. iv. 
 
84 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 expressed in terms of the theoretical reason which must take 
 things as they are. In the instance ahke of the theoretical and 
 the practical rlu- control is mediate in character which indicates 
 that consciousness has lost its old-time immediacy. Theoret- 
 ical philosophy sought some unifying principle hut could only 
 arrive at the conception of unity in terms of content and control 
 outside the process of determination and construction. Art, 
 on the contrary, as the expression of unity in direct and sensuous 
 form, supplied the postulate demanded alike by the theoretical 
 and the practical reason. Thus both Plato's 'reminiscence,' 
 and Aristotle's 'blessed contemplation,' represent aesthetic 
 attempts as a solution of the epistemological problem of the age. 
 
 In the presence of the dualism of inner and outer, form and 
 matter, the actual and the ideal, consciousness at once bounds 
 beyond 'flamantia moenia' and finds refuge and victory by 
 identifying itself with the object of aspiration and contempla- 
 tion, in a state of immediacy — a state in which reminiscences 
 passes into intuition, faith into sight and in whicii the individual 
 enters into the contemplative blessedness of the Deity in a life 
 of Svishless absorption.' 
 
 The significance of the several schools of thought that arose 
 after Aristotle, is to be found in the several attempts to find the 
 criterion of rhouiihr and conduct within the individual. The 
 thought of the whole period is ethical, but of a negative charac- 
 ter. Both the Stoics and the Epicureans were materialists in 
 their conception of nature and sensuous in their theory of knowl- 
 edge. The former were fatalists and taking life more seriously, 
 their philosophy became the more popular. Nature was their 
 great word as a whole in which every thing is necessitated and 
 purposive. The world of nature, as comprehending the things 
 of supreme worth, is given the place of respect and authority 
 formerly enjoyed by the outer social order. The fatalistic 
 character of the Stoics shows both the strensrth and limitation of 
 the will. Thought being unable as yet to create a world for the 
 will, the latter, by the aid of the imagination, from which it is 
 never separated, attempts to carry itself through. The Stoics 
 at once turned Pantheists, which means always an identifica- 
 tion of the actual and the ideal, *of what is and what ought-to- 
 
GREEK THOUGHT AFTER THALES. 85 
 
 bc.'^ For the Stoics, there was no margin between the actual 
 and the ideal, hence the static character of the system. The 
 eschatological element, wjiich bidks so large in the literature of 
 the Stoics as well as m other literature of the time, represents an 
 imaginative embodiment of human belief touchin<i the Hnal 
 outcome of things and \n the case of the Stoics represents the 
 carr}ing of aesthetic insight to a cosmic conclusion. The dual- 
 ism which runs through Stoicism is a dualism within matter, 
 the terms of which differ onl}' (juantitatively (a sort of material- 
 ized idealism), hence the control is as yet in the outer. Thus 
 as Bosanquet indicates, ''The mechanical view of the imagina- 
 tion, the negative or intellectualist view of the emotions, the 
 complete subordination of the theoretical to the practical, all 
 these influences hindered the Stoic from completing his con- 
 ception of man's place in nature by an adequate theory of 
 aesthetic expression."- By universalizing the individual they 
 found neither need nor opportunity of individual activity and 
 construction and the doctrine of imperturbability or complete 
 freedom from the outer represents an attempt to merge, in a 
 mystical consciousness, the social and individual aspirations in 
 a far away dream of a common fellowship of wise men.' 
 
 The Epicureans made the 'reasonableness of feeling' the 
 criterion of conduct and made the world the work ot chance. 
 In matters of cosmology they revived the atomic theory of 
 Dcmocritus, while they drew their ethics and theory of knowl- 
 edge from Aristippus. Being casualists x\\q\ refused to 
 acknowledge the objective value of art as expressing a definite 
 content and even went so far as to reduce all imitative art to 
 the level of cookery. Nevertheless, the Epicureans, with their 
 characteristic emphasis on feeling, contributed in an indirect 
 way to the isolation and deepening of the inner. Their general 
 likeness to the Stoics is to be inferred from the fact that with 
 both the highest ideal conceived was negative, both abhorred 
 the conditions in which they were placed, and agreed in seeking 
 happiness by freeing the individual from all disturbing elements. 
 
 ' Martineau, The Study of Religion, Vol. II. 
 
 ' Bosanquet, History of Aesthctus, p. 1 00. 
 
 ' Cf. The Republic of Plato, for an Ideal State for Philosophers only. 
 
86 Tilt: .{ESTHETIC FXPFRIEXCE. 
 
 Both the cosniopolitaiiisni oi the Stoics and tlie individualism 
 of the ICpicureans contributed to the loosening of the ties that 
 bound the inner to the outer and the search of both after a 
 criterion of truth is significant as indicating that the standard 
 of truth and conduct is regarded as a matter ot inner deter- 
 mination. 
 
 Kuno Fischer suggests that the pliilosophic problem after 
 Aristotle was the problem of freedom, that is, the freeing of man 
 from the world whose dissolution became daily more evident. 
 The Stoics would have men attain freedom by becoming dead 
 to the world about them, while the Epicureans would have men 
 enjoy as much as possible and suffer as little. The Skeptics 
 went still farther and sought to convince men that the problems 
 pressing for solution were after all insolubK . Ihcse three 
 movements, while differing in details, nevertheless spring from 
 one motive and aim at one end, namely, the freeing of the 
 individual from the world and the attaining of a self-conscious- 
 ness contained within itself with entire self-sufficiency. 
 
 To ground the individual thus freed from the outer world, 
 and to create for him a world in which he can 'live and move 
 and have his being,' becomes the urgent problem of the age. 
 While freed from the outer, the individual has come to perceive 
 that the inner is also a part of the outer.' Whether the inner 
 be made pure will as with the Stoics, or feeling as with the 
 Epicureans, or thought as with the Skeptics, it comes to be 
 regarded as outer also, so that the outer now claims to be both 
 inner and outer. 
 
 In chapter 11 it was shown that the individual is brought 
 face to face with a similar experience, owing to what Professor 
 Baldwin has called the 'anomalous position of the body;' the 
 resolution of this double claim of the body issues in the sub- 
 stantive dualism of niiiul and body.' 
 
 But while widening to the utmost the chasm between the 
 inner and the outer, the individual also seeks their union. The 
 epistemological problem as to the reconciliation of the corporeal 
 and the incorporeal, the jihvsical ami the spiritual, the temporal 
 
 ' Plotinus, EnneaJs, 1\'., 7, sec. 2 (Criutzcr text). 
 
 ' Thought and Things, Vol. I, p. 95ff.; cf. cli.iptcr ii of this p.iper. 
 
GREEK THOUGHT AFTER THALES. 87 
 
 and the eternal, represents the philosopliical problem of the last 
 years of anticjuitv. The historians of the period agree in hold- 
 ing that the thought of the period is characterized bv a search 
 after aid in all possible sources, but more especially in the 
 Orient. The motive for such procedure is close at hand. 
 Since the outer has failed, only two possible modes of reconcil- 
 ing the dualistic experience are open: either b\' supernatural 
 revelation on the part of God or supernatural illumination on 
 the part of the individual. Accordingly aid was sought in two 
 principal sources. In the first place deliverance was sought in 
 the Jewish Scriptures, which had been made known to the 
 Greek world through the Septuagint translation. It is to be 
 noted also that the external fortune of the Jews at this time made 
 them kin to the individuals of the Graeco-Roman world, while 
 the ardent hope of future restoration, the spiritualized concep- 
 tion of God and the conception of angels as mediating between 
 God and man, made the Jewish Scriptures extremely attractive 
 to the individuals of the Graeco-Roman world. But while 
 Greek thought was purely intellectual and thus made thought 
 and reality identical, Jewish thought conceived ot Ciod as the 
 highest reality in terms of will. The world is regarded as the 
 expression and embodiment of the will of God and is therefore 
 purposive, rather than mechanical, while the Messianic Hope, 
 which unifies the Jewish Scriptures, reaches its climax in the 
 Incarnation, which has been called the 'Poetry of Conscience.' 
 The reconciliation of the two worlds is thus secured by 
 means of the working will, whicii has now become conscious of 
 itself as apart from the materials with which it operates.' The 
 resulting construction is neither a transcript of the outer, nor a 
 creation of pure fancy, but a world which while not existent is 
 nevertheless accepted and treated as if it were in actual exist- 
 ence. The world thus erected in which the several demands 
 of consciousness are recognized and reconciled is no longer a 
 'presumption' such as characterized the first immediacy, but 
 rather an 'assumption.' In the construction ot this world 
 materials are borrowed from any source whatsoever. The 
 
 ' Plotinus, op. cit., IV. 7, sec. 7; \', 11, 12S, i, 3 et seq.; IV, 7, sec. 8. 
 
88 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 period therefore is comparable to the corresponding period in 
 the development of thought in the individual, which we know 
 as tile 'semblant' or play consciousness. The result is that we 
 are now presented with an aesthetic of the will, and beauty comes 
 to be regarded as coordinate with morality rather than stthordi- 
 vate to it as in the earlier aesthetic theory. 
 
 The selective aspect of the thought of the period is to be seen 
 also in the tendency to go back, to the older conception and the 
 selection made is extremely significant as showing the epis- 
 temological value ot the earlier mythical constructions. 1 he 
 individual, in turning to the past finds two movements of thought 
 which answer his need, namely, the teachings of Pythagoras and 
 Plato, and both are at once surrounded with a halo of divine 
 authority. But since the Pythagorean numbers must be taken 
 conceptualh' only, the Neo-Platonic philosophy becomes the 
 more valuable. 
 
 Plato's doctrine of the Ideas, as descending step b\' step 
 from the highest unity to the lowest limit, where form enters 
 into matter, is at once seized upon as supplying the reality of 
 the two poles of the dualism, as well as supphing the series of 
 intermediate beings which as rungs in the ladder become the 
 means of communication and thus of reconciliation of the two 
 worlds, otherwise completely irreconcilable.^ The primordial 
 Being, as the Idea of the Good, is placed beyond the world 
 of men and things.- The intermediate beings are not the result 
 of the creative act ot God, but rather emanations of his fullness.' 
 The significant aspect of these emanations is that, as emanations 
 rather than determinations of either thought or will, they become 
 the plastic material of aesthetic or semblant treatment. It is 
 precisely here that we are to seek for the general advance in 
 aesthetic theory and construction in Plotinus. 
 
 According to Plotinus and also Dio Chrysostom and Philo- 
 stratus, art is not a more or less exact imitation of an outer copy- 
 world, wliich IS itself only a copy, but the expression of a selective 
 will in sensuous form. But since Plotinus was an emanationist, 
 
 ' riotimis, op. ctt.^ V, sec. I; II, i68. 
 
 ' riotimis, op. rit., VI, 9, sec. 6. 
 
 ' Cf. The I'Icroma doctrine of the New Testament. 
 
GRKEK THOUGHT .1FTF.R THALES. 89 
 
 rather than an evolutionist,' tliat w liich is realized in the forni of 
 art is necessarily less than the idea — the created less than the 
 creator — but he nevertheless insists tliat " If any one condemns 
 the arts because they create by way of imitation of nature, first 
 we must observe that natural things themselves are an imitation 
 of something further and next we must bear in mind that the 
 arts do not simph- imitate the visible but go back to the reason 
 (Logous — Ideas) from which nature comes and that they create 
 much out of themselves and add to that which is defective as 
 being themselves in possession of beauty." Art, therefore, is 
 no longer slavishh' imitative, but rather symbolic. 
 
 Nevertheless by making matter wholly antipodal to mind, a 
 complete reconciliation of the dualism is impossible. To solve 
 the epistemological problem thus presented the individual must 
 rise above the material and temporal world- and grasp the 
 eternal idea from which all things proceed and which therefore 
 gives meaning and value to all things. 
 
 The moralistic considerations which embarrassed the aes- 
 thetic theory alike of Plato and Aristotle are removed by Ploti- 
 nus and beauty comes to be regarded as the direct expression of 
 reason by means of aesthetic semblance. Still, the Absolute 
 Reason, while within the universe as the outer, is not contained 
 by it, hence it can not be given in terms of external nature. Thus 
 one must go beyond the process in which the dualism originated 
 for its solution. Lcstasy rather than reason becomes the organ 
 of the apprehension of beauty. Above the intellectual intuition 
 is the ecstatic intuition of the One in which the duality of the 
 human and the divine, the corporeal and the spiritual, the tem- 
 poral and the eternal, ot thought and being is reconciled through 
 an immediacy of contact with the Primordial Being. Ecstasy, 
 therefore, as a symbolic experience, becomes the means of tran- 
 scending self-consciousness by erecting an object which tran- 
 scends ail particular determinations. The beautiful is more 
 than a matter of unit\' in variety; it is the whole in which the 
 parts are lost to view and which bodies forth in symbolic fashion 
 
 * Plotinus, loc. cit., V, sec. 2. 
 ' Ibid., VI, 9, 10. 
 
90 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 the eternal beauty and significance of the universe.* Insisting 
 upon the epistemological problem as the unification of experi- 
 ence, it is to be concluded that in transcending the inner-outer 
 dualism the Neo-Platonists made use of the aesthetic conscious- 
 ness as the organ of world unification and interpretation. 
 
 ' Vide, Enneads, IV, I, a passage in which Plotinus bids us mount by means 
 of the beauty of the external world, to the contemplation of the 'ideal form,' 
 the 'universal world.' 
 
Chapter VII. 
 
 The Development of Thought from Neo-Platonism to the German 
 Mystics of the Sixteenth Century, as Illustrating the Pro- 
 gression from the Inner-Outer Dualism to that of 
 Mind-Body, in %uhich the Mind Term of the 
 Dualism IS Distinguished from the Body 
 Term only for Theoretical and Theo- 
 logical Purposes. 
 
 The mystical reconciliation of the inner-outer diKilisni by 
 the Neo-Platonists represented the merging of a two-fold con- 
 trol. There was, in the first place, an actual turning to the past 
 for materials already under definite and guaranteed coefficients 
 of control. The imperturbable self-certainty of the post-Aris- 
 totelian philosophy had been so completely shaken with the 
 continued failure of the outer order, that man everywhere as 
 in need of help and no longer finding his own insight sufficient 
 turned to the 'records of the past.' These writings of the 
 earlier periods were regarded as the means of a higher revelation. 
 As Windelband has pointed out, the striking characteristic of 
 the period after Aristotle is the search after authority, and 
 not capable of being spun out of one's own inner imagination 
 and thus gotten immediately, was sought in historically accredited 
 revelations. Divine revelation thus became the highest source 
 of all knowledge.^ But the selection and manipulation of these 
 materials were matters of individual illunnnation :iiui thus 
 immediate in character. The Neo-Platonic Mysticism repre- 
 sents a theory of knowledge, which as Windleband says, con- 
 tains a heightened value of the individual as evinced in fcelinj! 
 and as the attempt at a fulfilment of the longing of the age that 
 truth might be arrived at by experience as an inner communion 
 of the individual with the Supreme Being. But since the dual- 
 ism was not complcrt', tlie inner possessing 'contrast value' 
 
 ' Windelband, History of Phil., cli. vii, p. I02. 
 
 91 
 
92 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 only, the symbolic constructions of the Neo-Platonists, as the 
 seniblant or imitative treatment of the material borrowed from 
 the past under the urgency of practical need, must be refjarded 
 as the rather quasi-aesthetic; while the epistemological con- 
 sciousness with its characteristic problem of unification of 
 experience must be regarded as quasi-epistemological. It is to 
 be inferred, therefore, that the aesthetic arose with the epis- 
 temological as the appropriate organ of world reconciliation and 
 interpretation and that the character of the aesthetic con- 
 struction reflects more or less faithfully the character and 
 demands of tlie epistemological. 
 
 In the case of the development of the thought of the race, as 
 also in the case of the growth of thought in the individual, the 
 erection of a semblant object under inner control and assigned 
 meaning which ir does not as yet possess brings forward the 
 problem of a further determination of the inner. Until the rise 
 of the semblant, the body was recognized as the abode of both 
 the outer and the inner, while the latter was wholly lacking in 
 positive determination. As the result of the imitative treatment 
 of the body it is at once assigned to the outer as a sphere of 
 material available for inner treatment and tlu- tulhlment of 
 inner purposes. But with the rise of the semblant, the same 
 method of manipulation is applied to contents once inner, so 
 that what was once inner, is now made outer, while the inner, 
 as such migrates still farther within. It is precisely here that 
 we are to seek, for the materials and motives of the dualism of 
 the material and the spiritual, the corporeal and the incorporeal, 
 that ran throughout the philosophy of the Middle .Ages and 
 which finally issued in the mind-body dualism ot Descartes. 
 
 The development of the epistemological consciousness is 
 thus seen to be the separation and increasing determinateness 
 of the two factors that enter into its objective constructions as 
 embodiments of meaninsi. Ihese two factors are the content 
 and the control. The characteristic of consciousness in its 
 first immediacy was that it involved no separation of these two 
 factors. Ill classic (jreek, thought was largely 'projective' 
 and phdosoplu' represented a series of attempts to secure tran- 
 (juillity in the midst of certain failure. Both the epistemological 
 
NEO-PLATONISM AND EARLT MYSTICISM. 93 
 
 problem and its aesthetic solution were rather objective — in the 
 sense however of 'projective' that does not imply the correspond- 
 ing subjective. The continued failure of the outer as held in 
 memory and the rapid enrichment of experience in the Htrh 
 and fourth centuries made necessary and possible the dis- 
 tinction of theoretical and practical interest. With Plotinus, 
 however, we hnd the first instance of the determination of 
 an object as possessing a meanmg and existence determmed 
 by the mind itself. But it remains to be pointed out, that 
 in the end, the thought of the Neo-Platonists terminates, on 
 the objective or content side, in a sphere which lies beyond 
 existence and, on the subjective side, in a mystical illumination, 
 which is after all the negation of thought.* 
 
 But the erection of a semblant object as representing the coal- 
 escence of two controls raises the problems connected with the 
 terms meaning, existence, reality, together v. ith the larger prob- 
 lem of individuation, which has so far been raised only. As has 
 been indicated, the semblant constructions of the Neo-Platonists 
 represented an imitative treatment of materials borrowed from 
 other sources and accepted as being under a definite form of 
 control but which was lifted from its original moorings and 
 made the object of inner manipulation and thus assigned to a 
 sphere which is neither outer nor inner, but in which the 
 demands of both are recognized and realized. The resulting 
 construction was due very largely to religious interests and in 
 the disposition of the object thus erected the two attitudes 
 merged in its construction at once issue and set the problem 
 which made necessary a similar construction toward the close 
 of the period under discussion. The theory of Inspiration or 
 Illumination, which as the merging of two controls and thus 
 the symbolic means of an immediate unity ot the individual 
 with the Supreme Being at once diverged into two wholly 
 different forms. In the case of the Church, borrowing the 
 material and model of its organization from the Graeco-Roman 
 world, revelation as Windclband says, became fixed as histor- 
 
 ' \"i(jf, Enru-tiJsy VI, 7, ^4, wluTf Plotimis s.ivs that 'he who would rise above 
 reason, falls outside it.' Cf. also Bigg, Xco-Platonism, p. 199. Cf. also Sie- 
 beck, Religions phil. StuJign, I19. 
 
94 
 
 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 ical authority and thus became the source of the Scholasticism 
 of the Middle Ages; while the continuation of the inner control 
 factor of the Neo-lMatonic symbolism became the source of the 
 Mysticism of the same period. 1 he tracing out of the develop- 
 ment of these two streams of thought with the emphasis how- 
 ever upon the former is the matter of present concern. 
 
 In its organization the church made free use of material 
 which represented the generalization of a past experience, so 
 that from the standpoint of the content of its organization the 
 church represented a mixture of Greek and Jewish elements. 
 The idea of God was made transcendent and the doctrine of 
 divine election is only the carrying over of the old Greek ideas 
 of aristocracy into the realm of the spiritual.' Ihis transcen- 
 dent view^ of things contributed to the separation and sharpen- 
 ing of the spiritual from the sensuous. But as thus organized 
 out of materials that represented the generalization of a past 
 experience, the kingdom is still interpreted outwardly, so that 
 both the thought and the conduct of the Middle Ages terminate 
 on an existence which lies beyond both.- The real treasures of 
 earth still lie beyond it, and the kingdom rliat is to be, already is, 
 and at a later day shall descend as the New Jerusalem from the 
 clouds. The Church of the West was thus organized upon a 
 thoroughly transcendental basis. 
 
 But having taken under her charge the highest interests of 
 the individual, the Church at once proceeds to take control of 
 the State. The separation of Church and State referred to as 
 representing the ethical climax of antiquity is to be undone by 
 bringing the two realms under a common organization with 
 Rome as its center and the bishop of Rome as its common head. 
 
 Nevertheless, the attempted union of Church and State con- 
 tributed to the farther isolation and deepening of the inner as 
 the second aspect of the Neo-IMatonic symbolism. The individ- 
 ual sought the Church because the State as the existing outer 
 failed him when most needed. The ideas an^und which the 
 doctrines of the Church gathered represented a generalization of 
 
 ' Cf. Nash, Genfsis of the Soi lul Cnnsitnuf, ch. ii. 
 
 ' Cf. Baldwin, 'Sketch of the History of I'sychology,' Psychological Review, 
 Vol. XII, 1905. 
 
NEO-PLATONISM JXD EARLY MrSTICISM. 95 
 
 a stage of knowledge alreatlv outgrown, hence the struggle 
 between the Nominalists and the Realists. In fact, both as 
 regards external organization and inner content, the Church 
 stood above the individual, with the result that the individual 
 is once more thrown back upon himself and compelled to go 
 beyond the Church for the expression and realization of his 
 ideas and aspirations. The age was characterized by the 
 increasing presence and number of Saints, Knight-errants and 
 Magicians. The growth of Monasticism, as a Church within the 
 Church, kept pace with the increasing secularization of the 
 Church Universal, and within monastic walls, were in process 
 of forming the ideas and ideals which at a later period burst 
 forth and became the formative principles of modern culture 
 and religion. 
 
 At this time were produced the great epics of the German 
 people — "Creations alive with all the stir and strife of the time, 
 retaining an afterslow^ of the oldest mythical traditions but 
 strangely tinged with the recent historical experiences, repre- 
 senting the old Germanic ideas of uprightness, devotion and 
 Hdelitv, but also the loosening of all social bonds and the rule 
 of vile passions brought about by this age of revolt."^ 
 
 By the ninth century the work of subjugation and conquest 
 was completed. 'The greedy, untrained individual of the North 
 had drunk the wine and eaten the food of the Graeco-Roman 
 civilization.'- The authoritative truth contained in the mediae- 
 val Church and State had accomplished its work of disciplining 
 the untrained masses. What was at first purely outer has now 
 become inner in the sense that the individual has made it his 
 own. By a process of imitative absorption, the rude conqueror 
 of the Roman world, has in turn, been captured by it, and a 
 new civilization arises. But in the process of absorption, the 
 appetites and impulses of the individual of the North, wiide 
 controlled are not destroyed bur (juickened, so that he at once 
 comes to make increased demands of materials which have been 
 so fully and faithfully doled out to him. The immediacy of 
 
 ' Francke, loc. cit., p. 16. 
 
 ' Dewey, 'Significance of the Problem of Knowledge,' University of Chicago 
 Contributions to Philosophy, No. Ill (1897). 
 
96 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 snnuilus :incl response, ot iiionvc aiul guarantee of thought and 
 conduct, is again broken down, and the individual of (lermanic 
 origin, no less than the Graeco-Ronian individual, must seek 
 these bevond the Church-State community of which he is now 
 a member. 
 
 That the burden of metaphysical discussion has shifted 
 from the ontological to the epistemological — from the outer to 
 the inner — is to be inferred from the character of the philosophy 
 of Saint Augustine. The Confessions is significant as indicat- 
 ing the rise and potency of the principle of individuality. The 
 placing of psychology in the very fore-front of his philost)ph\' 
 and his making will the chief factor of conscious life, are fur- 
 ther illustrations of the change of attitude toward the inner. It 
 will be recalled that with Socrates, thought ami will were com- 
 pletely identified. To know is to do; and sin is a matter of 
 ignorance. Aristotle made the will more central, but in the 
 end his conception of the will is made to conform to his con- 
 ception of the Deity. The emanational and dualistic con- 
 ceptions of antiquity are the necessary conclusions of a static 
 view of things. "Pagan antiquity" Baur says, "never got 
 beyond the antithesis of matter and spirit and could not con- 
 ceive a world produced b;- the free creative activity of a purely 
 personal will."' With both Plato and Aristotle and the Post- 
 Aristotelians, including the Theologians of the Church, the out- 
 ward movement of thought into a reality already determined, 
 rather than the treatment of the inner receives the emphasis. 
 The large place assigned the will by the learned Bishop of Hippo 
 illustrates the passage of thought from a static to a more dynamic 
 conception. Phe relations obtaining between God and the 
 w'orld come to be regarded from the ethical point of view. 
 "The peculiarity of Christian philosophy" sa\s Windclband, 
 "consisted essentially in this, that in its apprehension of the 
 relations between God and the World it sought to employ 
 throughout the ethical point of view of a free creative action." 
 1 he Greek conception of an uncreated matter is Ipart of a dual- 
 ism which may be refined but never reconciled with tlu- other 
 
 ' I'aur, Church History, Vol. I, p. 193. 
 
NEO-PLATONISM AXD EARLY MISTICISM. 97 
 
 term of the dualism, while the presence of an unreconciled 
 dualism, means the presence of some element in the universe 
 that successfully withstands the intellectual and ethical process.* 
 But the conception of the freedom of God and the creation of the 
 world as the outcome of a purposive act of a holy will, places at 
 once the dualism of form and matter, of ideal and actual, in 
 such relations to each other, that their reconciliation becomes 
 the burden of philosophic discussion. 
 
 It is interesting to observe that the development of the sub- 
 jective and the dynamic view of the world arise and develop 
 together. The conception of the freedom of God, as embodied 
 and illustrated in the creation and maintenanceof the world, drew 
 after it the conception of the freedom of the individual. Still, 
 human freedom was regarded as a divine gift, rather than a 
 natural attribute. The soul is not a gift but a task, while free- 
 dom no longer implies the identification of the real and the 
 ideal but the opportunity for the most perfect realization of the 
 individual. Hitherto the summum bonum represented the 
 unchanging nature of things and virtue was only a capacity for 
 its contemplation. But the highest good is now an nifimte 
 force rather than a fixed quantity. The realm of thought and 
 conduct is not a completed and static universe in which means 
 and end are identical, but a historic process in which the two 
 aspects are correlative and determining factors. The old-time 
 dualism of form and matter, the actual and the potential, still 
 remains but finds now a new basis within the individual. 
 
 The limitation of the thought of Saint Augustine is to be 
 seen in the fact that he holds the Church before iiim always as 
 the ultimate criterion, while at the same time, he gathers all his 
 ideas about the absolute and immediate certainty of conscious- 
 ness. Althoucht a virtuoso in self-observation and self-analy- 
 sis, his separation of the soul from the body, the individual from 
 the universal, was motived by theological and practical 
 purposes. The individual as erected by Augustine was wholly 
 
 The identifying of the Absolute experience with unformed matter, thus mak- 
 ing the Absolute matter without form, was the outcome of Neo-Platonism. 
 Cf. also the Absolute of Herbert Spencer. 
 
98 THE AESTHETIC EXI'EKIEXCE. 
 
 religious in character. The idea of God is immediately involved 
 in whatever certainty the mdividual consciousness has of itself. 
 Hut he also insists that the essence of truth is its existence, 
 and smce truth is absolutelv incorporeal, it can only be thought 
 as the ideas of God after a Neo-Platonic fashion. All rational 
 knowledge is thus knowledge of God. The relation of the 
 individual to truth is therefore passive and receptive; hence it 
 can be reached only throui^h a process of illumination or reve- 
 lat 
 
 ion 
 
 1 
 
 Ii is thus seen that the issue of the two types of thought in 
 Augustine, the metaphysical and the theological, is the dualism 
 of the individual and the universal whose reconciliation extends 
 far into the Middle Ages. Saint Augustine however found the 
 secret of the unification of experience, not in the restless activity 
 of the will with IMotinus, but in the rest of contemplation, an 
 experience into which the individual after the struggles and 
 exertions of the present life are over may enter and by becoming 
 absorbed in the divine truth mav once more enioy the perfect 
 identity of the divine and the human, the individual and the 
 universal. - 
 
 By the middle of the tenth century is seen fur the first time 
 in tile history of the Western world a distinctly German State, 
 which is not only able to maintain its own identity, but has 
 already entered upon that struggle against the Church, out of 
 which the modern individual is to emerge. Within this long 
 drawn-out struggle is produced a literature which is significant 
 as indicating the effective working of the two contrasting tend- 
 encies, nor onh' in literature, but in life as a whole. 1>\' the 
 end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth, 
 mediaeval society was at its height. Ihe long struggle between 
 the Church and the Kmpire assumed its largest proportions and 
 out of it there issued the most signal expressions of a collective 
 consciousness. liu- whole national existence had JH-en (juick- 
 cned and deepened by the Crusades and attempts are everywiure 
 made to give expression to the fulness of human nature. Chiv- 
 
 ' God is above all that may he said of Him; He is he.st known hy nescience, 
 best described by negatives. De. Trin, VH, 7; De Civ. Dei, IX, 16. 
 
 '£/>., 120, 20; De OrJ., H, 16, 42, 59; Cow/., \'!ll, 10 (Bigg's translation). 
 
NE0-PL.1T0.XISM .1\D EARLV MrSTICISM. 99 
 
 alrv has become rlic recognized foundation of public life. "In 
 the Minnesong; in the re)uvenated and transformed Cierman 
 Epic of the Migration period; in the adaptation, through the 
 medium of the French, of the Celtic and Graeco-Roman tradi- 
 tions, the chivalric ideal receives its poetical expression."' 
 
 Throughout the entire period, from the ninth to the thir- 
 teenth centurv, the most striking characteristic is the attempt 
 upon the part of the individual to reach beyond the limits of the 
 culture of the age as contained in the Church and State — a sort 
 of divHK- anticipation of a new social order. Once more as in 
 the days of Socrates, the individual can no longer hnd the 
 motives and sanctions of conduct within the community of 
 which he is a member. Whde corporate life is still the chief 
 concern of the individual there is everywhere to be seen the 
 development of the spirit of self-assertiveness which will later 
 bring about the dissolution of the present regime. "In the 
 directness of the \'olklied and its subjectivity; in the sturdy 
 realism of the religious drama; in the glorification of the inner 
 union between God and the soul by the Mystics; in the procla- 
 mation bv the Humanists of the sovereignty of the individual 
 intellect we see the different phases of that revolt against medi- 
 aeval society which culminated in the religious Reformation. "- 
 
 With the twofold movement called on its religious side the 
 Reformation and on its secular the Renascence, the individual, 
 freed himself from the immediate past. "The sum of the 
 whole matter is" says Nash, " that the individual fashioned by 
 the combined influences of the Graeco-Roman I'mpire and the 
 Bible, drilled in the monastery, called forth from the monastery 
 by the revival of culture and religion on the one hand and by 
 the growing power of the State on the other, stood free in the 
 open held of history."^ Having thus risen above the ideas that 
 had been handed down to him from the past, by regarding them 
 as material available for personal treatment, the probkni of 
 the reconciliation of a dualistic consciousness is once again the 
 urgent problem of speculation. 1 lie fact that consciousness 
 
 ' Francke, Social Forces of German Literature, p. 45. 
 
 ' Frnncke, op. cit., p. 52. 
 
 ^ Nash, Genesis of the Social Conscience, p. 259. 
 
100 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIES'CE. 
 
 now distinguishes itself from the materials of its manipulation, 
 presents a problem not hitherto found. The atmosphere 
 became one of invention — the search after control over natural 
 forces. The Renascence placed at the command of the individ- 
 ual the resources of the ancient world which by contributing to 
 the deepening of his intellectual powers, also enabled him to 
 free himself. The Reformation contributed to the quickening 
 of his conscience so that with quickened will and intellect the 
 individual goes forth to create his own world. 
 
 The individual thus become self-confident and self-assertive 
 reduces authority to a matter of individual opinion. The exter- 
 nal world thus freed from the element of caprice and animation 
 is gradually reduced to an order in which law reigns with 
 mechanical exactness and rigidity. The earlv Italian philoso- 
 phers of nature re-stated the pressing and vital problem of meta- 
 physics in terms of nature rather than God — from the stand- 
 point of philosophy rather than religion. Many of them were 
 persecuted by the Church but their influence is to be traced 
 throughout the whole of modern thought. 
 
 Along with the pantheistic conception of the physical world 
 there go also the secularization of religion and the deification of 
 the State. The spirit of the Renascence was concerned with the 
 present order of things and led to deification of both State and 
 Nature. The inner, as the creative self, seeks to embody itself 
 in a new principle of world interpretation and world recon- 
 struction, and as opposed to the religious-philosophical view of 
 the Middle Ages, which is every\vhere in process of dissolution, 
 seeks to establish what has been named a natural-philosophical 
 view of the world. "The spirit of the Western people," says 
 Windelband, "has now taken up into itself the entire material 
 wliich the past offers for its culture, and in feverish excitement 
 into which it is finally put by direct contact with the highest 
 achievements of ancient science it struggles upward toward the 
 attainment of complete independence." One feels the impulsive 
 blood of youth pulsate in its literature as though something 
 unheard of, something which had never before been must now 
 come into being. The men of the Renascence announce to us 
 nothing less than the approach of a total renovation of science 
 
NEO-PLJTONISM AND EARLY MYSTICISM. lOI 
 
 and ot the state of liunianitv. The warfare between the trans- 
 mitted doctrines leads to a surfeit of the past; learned research 
 into the old wisdom ends with throwing aside all book-rubbish, 
 and full of the youthful joy of dawning life the mind goes forth 
 into the cosmic life of nature ever }oung.' 
 
 The outcome of the entire movement of the thought of the 
 Middle Ages was the absorption in the inner world of the life of 
 the soul.- Within the Graeco-Roman world, interest in the 
 inner was determined by its relations to the outer. Through- 
 out the Middle Ages, on the contrary, the fate of the individual 
 vv^as determined by the development of the inner life. The 
 spiritual world came to be regarded as the abode of the individ- 
 ual and to which was ascribed as much reality as to the world 
 of matter. The grand outcome of the whole movement of 
 thought during the Middle Ages, is the bringing forward of the 
 materials and motives of the mind-bodv dualism, whose recon- 
 ciliation was at once undertaken, but which was hindered by the 
 lack of a free and comprehensive treatment of the world of 
 Nature. 
 
 The religious Reformation of the sixteenth century is to be 
 regarded as the expression of individuality in matters religious. 
 The Church was no longer able to mediate between the individ- 
 ual and the sources of all spiritual values. He now asserted the 
 right to touch the eternal without the mediation of another. 
 Thus as Nash says, "The idea of God came forth in unveiled 
 majesty to wed itself to the idea of the individual."' This 
 means that the individual is now rated high and has the hic:hest 
 good opened to him. But the Church makes a final attempt 
 to withstand the new thoughts and ideals by fortifying its own 
 traditions and at the Council of Trent made the philosophy of 
 St. Thomas eternally valid and binding. Luther, on the con- 
 trary, attempted to re-establish primitive Christianity as against 
 Catholicism and went back to St. Augustine for guidance and 
 authority. Thus by these two tendencies and systems of 
 thought, the metaphysics of the Middle Ages was split in 
 
 ' Francke, op. cit., p. 60. 
 
 ' HofFding, History of Modern Philosophy, \'ol. I, Imr. 
 
 ' Nash, op. cit., ch. viii. 
 
102 THE .1 ESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 twain. 10 clo^nia is nssic;ncd the wliole realm of the super- 
 sensuous while thf world of experience is reserved for philosophy. 
 But hefore thought liad time to come to itself and to appreciate 
 the problem hefore it, and the necessary method of solution, 
 the whole Platonic fVtltnnschauung came in and philosophy at 
 once turned from theology to natural science. The epistem- 
 ological problem which thus presented itself for solution, the 
 problem of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, was solved in 
 the light of the imaginative conception of the divine unity ot the 
 Living All. 
 
 In many respects the epistemological problem of the two 
 Platonic periods shows marks of similarity. I hen as now the 
 characteristic problem was the merging of two contrasted forms 
 of control in some form of immediacy of consciousness. 1 he 
 symbolism of Plotinus was seen to be an imitative or experi- 
 mental treatment of materials under definite guarantees of deter- 
 mination with reference to the fulfilment of inner purpose. Rur 
 after Plotinus, the element of Mysticism was ignored and the 
 ideas of the Graeco-Roman world became the motive and sanc- 
 tion of conduct and thought. But the clement of immediacy, 
 as seen in the Neo-Platonic Mysticism, continues its develop- 
 ment and is especially seen in the increasing appreciation of 
 external nature which sometmies approaches the modern. 
 Referring to this aspect of appreciation, Bosanquet says, that it 
 " Emphasizes unmistakably a new attitude of aesthetic perception 
 to external nature the like of which we have not found in any 
 Hellenic or Graeco-Roman writer."' 
 
 Defining the epistemological problem ot the age as the uni- 
 fication of experience by the reconciliation ot the subjective and 
 the external it is at once seen that Mysticism became the organ 
 of world unitication and interpretation. In the work of Bruno 
 is to be found the most characteristic products of the period of 
 the Renascence. In him the enthusiasm tor natural beauty 
 which had long been held in abe\ aiue became an all-absorbing 
 passion. The investigations of Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, 
 Galilei and Kepler produced a profound impression upon the 
 
 ' Hist, of Aesthetics, p. 129. 
 
NEO-PLJTONISM .1X1) EARLV MYSTICISM. I03 
 
 human mind and made impossible the holding any longer of 
 the narrow and earrh-ccntered theological views of the universe. 
 The earth is round and moves and God can no longer be con- 
 ceived as having His local dwelling in the heavens. A wholly 
 new way of looking at the world has now come into the human 
 mind, and along with the conception of a new and vaster uni- 
 verse comes also the conviction that it can be grasped as a whole. 
 The absolute unity of all knowledge and being is, however, 
 inaccessible to human reason and must therefore, become an 
 object of faith. The problem of thought thus becomes the 
 elevating of itself from the confused and chaotic manifold of 
 sense-experience to the unity present in all things. The aes- 
 thetic character of the attempted solution of the problem thus 
 presented is to be seen in the Hylozoistic character of the philoso- 
 phy of Bruno. All nature becomes alive. A world-soul per- 
 vades everything. Looking out upon the world, man every- 
 where beholds the embodiment and working of a powTr like 
 to himself, 'nearer than breathing and closer than hands and 
 ^tti,' yet present in the remotest star-spaces and informing all 
 things. The distinction between the human and the divine is no 
 longer tenable. Reality is an eternal spirit, one and indivisible, 
 from which all things flow and of which all thin2:s are only 
 images. Within rhis whole all differences disappear. As 
 opposed to the abstract unity of Spinoza, Bruno insists that God 
 is the whole, present in every individual thing and present as a 
 whole. Man, as an individual, is a mirror within a mirror, 
 whose perception of things is only a reflection of narurr which 
 in turn is a reflection of the thought of God. 
 
 The problem of knowledge becomes with Bruno the prob- 
 lem of the identification of the microcosm and the macrocosm. 
 How is it possible for any particular aspect of the whole to reflect 
 the whole of which it is an aspect .'' It is sufficient to indicate 
 that the problem as thus stated was solved by making a sort of 
 subjective leap beyond the actual limits of knowledge. As in 
 the earlier periods, so once more, the individual explains his 
 world by projecting himself into all the phenomena perceived. 
 Reason failing. Mysticism as an immediacy of feeling becomes 
 the sole resource. "The world-joy of the aesthetic Renas- 
 
104 ^^^ AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 cence," says Wincklband, "sinp;s philosophical dithvrambs in 
 the writings of Bruno and a universalistic optimism that carries 
 everything before it prevails in his thought."' 
 
 In the philosophic thought of Jacob Bohme, as Windelband 
 points out, Neo-Platonic Mvsticism is given complete religious 
 coloring. As against the hvlozoistic unity of Bruno, Bohme 
 posits a duality from the beginning. Strife is the mother of all 
 things. Things notfallingunderone oranotherof these terms are 
 dead. The world becomes thus the conflict between two oppos- 
 ing forces, a conflict ending only at death. Antithesis is the law 
 of being, and in 'ves' and *no' all things consist. Activity con- 
 notes a dualism, but every dualism is harmonized in the divine 
 nature. This struggle is also present within the experience of 
 every individual. Salvation means escape from this struggle 
 which can be secured only by a desire within the soul for God. 
 It is at this point that Bohme makes use of the doctrine of the 
 'Divine Spark,' a doctrine that at once suggests the Platonic 
 doctrine of 'rha/ryrjat^* only put in Christian language. The 
 moral struggle that characterizes human experience is due to a 
 power within, for 'what could begin to deny self, if there were 
 not something in man different from self.'"- Still the self is lost, 
 as it were, in the supernaturallv determined order of things. 
 For its freedom from a self-perceived bondage the soul must 
 wait for the time, 'the time of the lilies' as Bohme calls it, when 
 all nature will be delivered. Thus it is to be said with Inge that 
 the "dim sympathy of the human spirit with the life of nature 
 which Plotinus felt but which mediaevalism had almost 
 quenched, has now become an intense and happy consciousness 
 of community with all living things as subjects of one all- 
 embracing and unchanging law, the law of perfect love;"' and 
 with Hoffdinsi that Bohme's thoujihts have traveled far from 
 those of a distinctly religious man, so that it is no small wonder 
 that his mythologic fancy completely overpowered his thought 
 at this point.'* Despite the far-reaching assumptions found in 
 
 ' Windilband, Hist, of Philosophy, p. 368. 
 
 ' Overton, Life of ff'illiam Lou.'. 
 
 ' Inpc, Christian M \sticisiri, p. 285. 
 
 * HollJing, Hist, of Mod. Phil., Vol. I, p. 80. 
 
NEO-PLATOXISM JXD EARLY MYSTICISM. I05 
 
 the begilnning of his speculations, he was unable to carry them 
 through and in common with the thinkers of his age finds refuge 
 from the limitations of thought in an immediacy of conscious- 
 ness in which by a process of divine illumination the world of 
 opposites as distinguished by thought is united and the individ- 
 ual moves about in a world of his own determination. 
 
 The epistemological problem of the age under discussion 
 was the erection of a world in which thought and conduct could 
 find sanction and support in the midst of a world fast slipping 
 from beneath the individual's feet. The self as the inner, 
 organizing principle has risen above the established order of 
 things, because of its increasing failure, and seeks in terms of 
 feeling to erect one more permanent and satisfying. The pan- 
 theism of Bruno is wholly hylozoistic, the attempt to unify and 
 explain the world in terms of the self, but a hylozoism character- 
 ized bv the presence of reflective aspects whollv lacking in the 
 earlier attempts in the same direction. The Mystics assert the 
 immanence of God without qualification. In both attempts 
 there is a complete identification of the two worlds now fallen 
 apart in consciousness. Both attempts are to be regarded as 
 attempted embodiments of the self gradually freeing itself from 
 some aspect of its content. Thus the period of philosophic 
 thought under discussion proceeded from the immediacy secured 
 in Neo-Flatonic Mvsticism, through the dualism of a Microcosm, 
 with its ideal struggling for realization, and a Macrocosm in which 
 that ideal is conceived as completely realized of the Renascence, 
 and reached another immediacy through the merging, of a 
 dualistic experience in terms of an aesthetic construction. 
 
Chapter \'1II. 
 
 Modcrti Philosophy from Descartes to Kant and the German 
 
 Mystics, as Illustrating the Rise and Development 
 
 of the Subject-Object Dualism, together with 
 
 the Use of the Aesthetic Consciousness as 
 
 an Epistemological 'Postulate.' 
 
 Descartes and the Cartesians. 
 
 The primary assumpiion of Descartes, that of the duahsm of 
 mind and body, is but the expression of what had already been 
 worked out in the consciousness of the individual. In Greek 
 thought the individual and the universal were wholly identified 
 because of the a-dualistic character of consciousness. Throuiih- 
 out the Middle Ages the attempt was made to retain this old- 
 time immediacy by making the individual wholly dependent 
 upon the universal as organized in the Church. But the 
 attempt to unify the individual with the universal by making 
 the latter transcendent only contributed to the isolation and 
 deepening of the individual. In the attempt to make the 
 general notions of Aristotle sufficient and valid for all eternity, 
 the Church prepared the instruments of its own overthrow. 
 Authority failed finally to compensate the meagerness ot ideas. 
 The manipulation of these general notions had reached per- 
 fection and it was useless to go over the field again. Thought 
 must therefore find new fields of operation and as Professor 
 Dewey says, Galiki and Copernicus were as truly travelers as 
 Marco Polo and Christopher Colombo. "Inventio rather than 
 judicium, discovery rather than proof, became the burden of the 
 age." The outcome of this search after a method of manipula- 
 tion was the separation of the individual and the universal, so 
 that by carrying over to the realm of the outer what was once 
 inner and the making of it material for imitative treatment, the 
 inner now possessed of a persistency of its own is also to be 
 
 1 06 
 
MODERN PHILOSOPHT FROM DESCARTES TO KANT. 107 
 
 reckoned with as outer, but clirtLiinii; in its content and control 
 from the orii^inal outer. 
 
 But whde Descartes nia\ be said to haNe iienerah/ed the 
 motives of his ao;e he failed to treat the mind term of the dualism 
 as under continuous and ordered change.' lie did not establish 
 his psychology upon the facts ot experience. The poles of the 
 dualism are not distinctions tailing within consciousness but are 
 two whollv opposed and disparate spheres of existence. The 
 assumption of mind and bodv is both realistic aiul dogmatic. 
 As an individual Descartes is unable to break with the Church 
 and accepts its dogma as it came floating down to him. While 
 he made it the fundamental rule of his life to look within for 
 the criterion of thought and conduct and even boasted of beinc 
 self-educated, the objective world still finds its guarantee in 
 the veracity of God. 
 
 The more positive and naturalistic treatment of the outer 
 world made possible by the advance of the physical and 
 mathematical sciences, with which Descartes shows himself to 
 have been familiar, did not serve, however, to detach the inner 
 from the outer and bring it under like treatment. The advance 
 made by Descartes in the solution of the epistemological prob- 
 lem is to be sought in his assumption of the subjective as the 
 starting point of all scientific in(]uir\'. Immediate conscious- 
 ness thus becomes the criterion of reality. But his statement 
 must be taken as representing an immediately given datum 
 rather than the validity of judgment. Reflection, as issuing in 
 judgment, must be brought within the judgment process as 
 involving the mutual reference of subject and object. The 
 limitation of Descartes is to be inferred from his surreptiti- 
 ously introducing the object into the subject, rather than detach- 
 ing the subject. Thus, despite his efforts to the contrary, the 
 philosophy of Descartes begins and ends with a dualistic con- 
 sciousness as a datum of immediate experience. 
 
 Modern philosoph\', dating from Descartes, opens with a 
 subjective note. The individual emptied of all content and 
 given a self-centered and self-dependent isolation can find no 
 
 ' Cf. Baldwin, St. Louis Aiiilrcss, 'Sketch of the History of Psychology,' 
 Psychological Rnicic, Vol. XII. 
 
Io8 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 way of relating itself to the necessary object of thought. Accord- 
 ins to Descartes, to exist is identical with to think. But to 
 think is to think something. A thinking being can become con- 
 scious of its own existence and identity as subject, only by 
 knowledge of objects. Thinking involves and implies the rela- 
 tion of subject and object and to assign cither an independent 
 existence is to make the problem of knowledge unsolvable. 
 The famous dictum of Descartes, from which modern philosophy 
 is dated, is in reality, false, since it represents a premature 
 plunge into ontology before the way was prepared by an ade- 
 quate theory of knowledge.' Regarding the perceptions and 
 ideas as purely inner, that is, having no reference beyond the 
 mind having them, Descartes prepared the way for a subjective 
 idealism. Nevertheless the ideas are representative of things 
 outside the mind, that is, are symbolic of something beyond 
 themselves, which aspect alone makes them ideas and deter- 
 mines them as either true or false. 
 
 It is precisely here that we are to seek for the epistemological 
 problem of Descartes. The problem at once arose as to the 
 reference of ideas to objects or defining the problem in our own 
 terms, 'how can the ideas as unrelated mental facts transcend 
 themselves .'' It will become evident later, that if we start with 
 a self-contained subject we shall find no justification whatever 
 for the objective reference which knowledge implies and involves. 
 It is evident that Descartes appreciated the problematical char- 
 acter of his attempted solution; but he nevertheless defends the 
 truth of his position by reference to the veracity of God. The 
 abstraction of the thinking substance finds its counterpart in the 
 abstraction of the extended substance. The original whole of 
 consciousness is broken up into two inert entities. 1 he knowl- 
 edge of either is the result of a sort of mechanical interaction 
 between the two substances at a single point in the brain. 
 
 The limitations of the contentions of Descartes are best seen 
 in tlie attempted solution of Descartes' dualism by the later 
 Cartesians. Occasionalism, which is only Cartesianism carried 
 to its logical conclusion, denied the possibility of any interaction 
 
 • Seth, The Scottish Philosophy, p. 12. 
 
MODERX PHILOSOPHY FROM DESCARTES TO K.iXT. 109 
 
 between the two substances. Between nnnd and matter, the 
 extended and the unextended, there is an impassable gulf which 
 the Deity alone can bridge. Malebranche goes farther and 
 holds that the sole object of knowledge of the material world is 
 the idea of extension which we know only by virtue of our union 
 with God who illumines our minds. The external world is not 
 known to exist but believed to exist on grounds of supernatural 
 revelation. God thus becomes the true cause of our ideas apart 
 from whom we can neither perceive nor will. We see things 
 truly only as w^e see them in Him. The outcome of the philoso- 
 phy of Malebranche was the simplication of the Cartesian prob- 
 lem b\' making matter non-existent, so that our belief in the 
 reality of the objective order is rather an article of faith.' 
 
 It is important to observe in passing that Malebranche dis- 
 tinguishes between sensation, which is of the nature of feeling, 
 and understanding. The former is a subjective process only 
 while the latter is constituted of the clear and distinct ideas 
 which arise on the presentation of sense objects. These ideas 
 are, however, transcendent so far as the individual is concerned 
 and are thus both universal and objective. Still further the 
 ideas have to do only with the essence of things, while the sensa- 
 tions are concerned with the particular existences. For Male- 
 branche the epistemological problem arises in connection with 
 the relation between the ideas and the particular sensations. 
 The question which at once presents itself, is as to the passage 
 from the particulars of sense to the universality and objectivity 
 of ideas. But Malebranche in common with the age looked 
 upon the mind as passive rather than constructive, so that there 
 being no ascent from the subjectivity of the sensations to the 
 objectivity of the ideas such objectivity must be given the mind 
 from without. Here Malebranche, like Pascal and Geulincx, 
 only brings out the latent mysticism of Descartes in insisting 
 that causal efficacy is the prerogative of the Deity only. Hence 
 God is the true cause of all our ideas and in Him all things are 
 to be seen. God therefore is in immediate relations with every 
 thinking soul. Ihc mysticism of Malebranche thus becomes 
 
 ' R. .Adamson, Develop, of Mod. Phil., Vol. I, p. 52. 
 
no THE AESTHKTIC. EXPF.P.JES'CE. 
 
 an iniiiicdiacy ot consciousness ui Nvhuh rlie tlualisni of sense 
 and idea is transcended by the vision in wliich all things are 
 seen in God. 
 
 Spin 
 
 oza. 
 
 Iloflding makes Spinoza the central thinker of the seven- 
 teenth century, since his philosopln represents an attempt to 
 reconcile and unifv the several tendencies of the thought of the 
 age. His pantheism represents a brilliant attempt to merge 
 the mystical and the mechanical, the scientific and the teleo- 
 logical attitudes of thought which had been developing together 
 during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If the mysti- 
 cism of (leulincx and Malebranche represent attempts to solve 
 the epistemological problem set by the dualism of Descartes by 
 merging the two antipodal worlds in an immediacy of conscious- 
 ness, the pantheism of Spinoza represents a similar attempt bv 
 making the content of the two worlds identical. Mind and l^oth' 
 are aspects of one and the same reality. The Cartesian pre- 
 supposition that all things exist only in Ciod becomes the chief 
 corner stone of the dcx^rrme of Spinoza. Extension and 
 thought, mind and body, are not two substances, but ultimate 
 attributes of one substance. Ihese two attributes of thouirht 
 and extension are regarded as antithetical ways of looking at 
 the one substance rather than antithetical substances. 
 
 Descartes held that while the interaction of mind and body 
 was not evident it was nevertheless actual. For Cieulincx and 
 Malebranche the interaction was occasional rather than immedi- 
 ate and mediated b\ the will of the Deity. In either instance it 
 leaves the matter ot relation of mind and body wholl\- inexplic- 
 able. Spinoza at once denies the possibility of any interaction 
 whatsoever between mind and bodw To admit an interaction 
 destroys both the duality and the substantialit\- of each. There 
 is only one process of Incoming and the material and the spirit- 
 ual are but two aspects of the one necessar\' process. Particular 
 things, whether thinking or extended, are but modes of the one 
 eternal, unitary woiKl-ground. Thus, as Falkenberir has 
 pointed out. necessity in Incoining, n\\\\\ in being, mechanism 
 
MODERX PHlLOSUl'Ur FROM DEi;CARTi:S TU KAST. Ill 
 
 and pantheism, represent the controUing conceptions in the 
 Spinozistic scheme. 
 
 Spinoza's theory of knowledge is comparable to that of 
 Plotinus. Tlie mind's first knowledge is individual and frag- 
 mentary To acquire more perfect and adequate knowledge 
 the mind must pass beyond the individual and particular 
 point of view. To reach the more perfect knowledge Spinoza 
 recognizes two stages: first, that of reason (ratio) b\' the 
 employment^of which we come to know the essence of things. 
 This sort of knowledge is obtained by the process of deduction 
 and is therefore mediate in character. Rational knowledge is, 
 however, necessarily incomplete, as Spinoza holds, because it 
 enables us to arrive only at a partial view of things and can not 
 lift us to that plane of knowledge at which we behold all things 
 perfectly unified, sub specie aeternatis. To reach the point at 
 which all things are completely unified Spinoza introduces his 
 second stage of knowledge which he calls the intuitive, by 
 which we proceed not inferentially from one particular to 
 another but by taking a comprehensive view of all reality see 
 things in the light of the principle from which they proceed. 
 He who has reached this point of view says Spinoza, "evolves 
 all his ideas from that which represents the origin and source 
 of all nature, so that the idea appears to be the source of all 
 others." 
 
 He considers intuitive knowledire the highest, not because it 
 yielded a greater speculative insight into the nature ol things, 
 but because it frees the soul b\- transcending the limitations and 
 imperfections of sense experiences. "He aimed," says Hotf- 
 ding," at the highest knowledge, that is, the most intimate union 
 of the individual and tiie universal, of the particular \\ irh the 
 sum total of constant relations, and succeeds only by postulating 
 an intuition which reminds us now of the artist's conception, 
 now of the mystic's vision according as the stress is placed upon 
 the individual or the universal moment."' 
 
 ' History of Mod. Phil., Vol. I, p. 307. Cf. E. Caird, Evolution of Religion, 
 Vol. I, pp. 104, 105; ami Ethics (Klwes trs.). Pr. \'. 41 and Scholium. 
 
112 THE AESTHETIC EXFERIESCE. 
 
 The British Development. 
 
 The empirical movement, which found its hirgest and freest 
 expression in llngland, represents a series of attempts to recon- 
 cile the same dualism by reducing mind to matter. As opposed 
 to the mystical and theoretical character of Continental philoso- 
 phy, Hrirish philosophy Nvas the rather positive and practical. 
 The thinkers on the Continent were interested rather in the 
 form of thought, while the English thinkers from Locke on 
 were interested in the content oi thought. Modern epistem- 
 ological inquiry is usually dated from Locke and it is quite 
 true that the Essay gave birth and currency to the terms and 
 distinctions of modern philosophy. The Essay is also signifi- 
 cant as indicating the fact, that the ideas are, for the first time, 
 detached from the presuppositions of belief, and given inde- 
 pendent treatment. In Locke we have the first approach to a 
 more subjective treatment of the mind as constituted of a series 
 of ideas. \u the fourth book of the Essay, Locke attempts a 
 theory of knowledge. His definition of knowledge as the "per- 
 ception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas," leads at 
 once to a subjective idealism. But Locke attempts to save 
 himself by insisting that some of our ideas are 'representative,' 
 m the sense, that they "exactly resemble the modification of 
 matter in the bodies that cause such perceptions in us." These 
 are the so-called primary qualities, wliich Locke proceeds to 
 enumerate as solidity, extension, figure etc. The patterns of 
 these Locke would say really exist in the bodies themselves. 
 But in the case of sounds, tastes, etc., only an uninstructed mind 
 can suppose that there is anything like our ideas existing in 
 the bodies themselves. These are the so-called secondary quali- 
 ties which according to Locke are "nothing in the objects them- 
 selves but powers to produce various sensations in us by certain 
 modifications of their primary qualities." 
 
 His real contribution to the philosopliic thought ot the time 
 is to be seen in his endeavor to apph' the critical method of 
 Bacon to the study of the mind. He thus succeeded in reducing 
 the mind to a series of unrelated atoms of sense experiences 
 which neither aflord nor justify a reference beyond themselves. 
 
MODERX PHlLOSOPIir FROM DF.SC.IRTKS TO K.I XT. II3 
 
 "All general knowledge," Locke repeatedly s:;^'s, "lies only in 
 our thoughts and consists barel}' in the contemplation of our 
 own abstract ideas. "^ Still Locke appreciated the fact that 
 knowledge being thus limited Wf want something else.- This 
 'something else' he attempts to obtain by the employment of 
 the judgment which he defines as "the presuming things to be 
 so without perceiving it." Locke as an epistemologist at once 
 goes beyond the conclusion of his psychology, and it is to be 
 said that Locke really stopped where the problem of knowledge 
 properly begins; and despite the evident psychological character 
 of his work he inconsistently maintained the spirituality of the 
 soul and the existence of purely spiritual substances. 
 
 The general advance made by Berkeley over Locke is to be 
 inferred from his attempt to prove that not the secondary quanti- 
 ties onh-, hur the primary ones as well, are the products of the 
 human mind. The w-orld about us is much more dependent 
 upon the mind than we have hitherto thought. Matter is a 
 mere abstraction, one of those words which serve only to throw 
 a 'veil and mist' between the mind and truth. There is no 
 material substratum of things and to be is to be perceived. But 
 as Reid says, "The pillars by which the existence of a material 
 world was supported were so feeble that it did not require the 
 force of a Samson to bring them down." For Berkeley matter 
 is reduced to simple ideas with the notion of some cause.' 
 Thus at one fell blow Berkeley identifies the objects of knowl- 
 edge with the ideas of the mind. "The very existence of ideas 
 constitute the soul. Mind is a congeries of perceptions. Take 
 away perception and you take away the mind. Put the per- 
 ceptions and \()u put the mind."' 
 
 Here, apparently, a complete break is made with the external 
 world and the mind's ability to construct its own world vindi- 
 cated. But Berkeley did not make good his contention. His 
 denial of the existence of matter was made primarily for the 
 sake of refutins: atheism ami materialism. Bur with the denial 
 
 ' Essay, 15k. I and IV', ch. iii, 14. 
 
 ' Ibid.', Hk. IV, cli. iv, 3. 
 
 ' Treatise, sections I, 2, 3, 4, 6. 
 
 * Life and Letters, p. 438; also, Treatise, sections 68, 75, 80, 19, 20. 
 
1 1 4 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 of the material world, the (juestion at once arose as to the onijin 
 of our ideas, to solve which Berkeley substituted the laws of the 
 Internal Spirit for the laws of nature.' Like Plato, with whom 
 he was familiar, Berkeley came to estimate low the knowledge 
 derived throuuh the senses and in the Sins concerns himself 
 with the problem of showing how we may arrive at a higher 
 knowledge of the Eternal Spriti than that afforded by the 
 phenomena of sense.* It is true, he insists, that God speaks in 
 nature to us, but it is only through rational faith in causality, 
 that we come to discern the chain running throughout the whole 
 system of things and only by a process of ascending from the 
 lower to the higher can we reach a knowledge of the Highest 
 Being. ^ 
 
 The consequences of the metaphysics of Berkeley are pointed 
 out by Hume who is the legitimate outcome of British Empiri- 
 cism from Bacon and Hobbes to Berkeley. With Hume, on 
 the contrary, the mind's break with matter is made complete. 
 His attempt to solve the Cartesian problem is in reality the 
 denial of the problem, by denying substantial existence to both 
 mind and matter. According to Hume, the mind is its contents. 
 These contents are of two sorts, impressions and ideas which 
 are only fainter impressions. These alone constitute the 
 objects of thought. The substantiality of the self is a delusion 
 and what we call the mind is but a heap of perceptions united 
 by certain relations. Causality itself is only the succession of 
 phenomena — relation between our ideas — v.nd arises onh' from 
 experience. 
 
 The outcome of the philosophy ot Hume was the reducing 
 of mind as well as matter to mere phenomena and the denial of 
 any causal nexus between cause and effect. There is tlierefore 
 no permanent element in the world of experience and no valid 
 element whereby thought may justify the objective validity of 
 knowledge. Hume holds, that to form the idea of an object 
 and to form an idea simply, are one and the same thing, the 
 reference of an idea to an object being an extraneous denomina- 
 
 * Op. cil., Stctions 26, 65, 31, 32. 
 
 ' Op. cit., 90, 91. 
 
 *0p. cit., 148; Akiphron, Dialogue I\'. 
 
MODERN PHlLOSOPHr FROM DESCARTES TO KANT. I15 
 
 tion o[ winch the idea itself bears no mark or character.' It 
 was this complete subversion of the necessary and universal 
 character of knowledge which awakened Kant from his dog- 
 matic slumber and gave birth to the common-sense philosophy 
 of the Scottish School. 
 
 Leibn 
 
 iz. 
 
 Before proceeding to the philosophy of Kant, it is necessary 
 to take note of the attempt of Leibniz to remove the antithesis 
 between mind and matter, without surrendering the aesthetic and 
 religious conceptions which were dangerously threatened bv the 
 Empiricists. Leibniz, like Spinoza, appreciates the unphilo- 
 sophic character of the Dcus ex machina of Descartes, but like- 
 wise appreciates that the Dens sive natiira of Spinoza solves the 
 problem by a sort of back-door method. 
 
 The epistemology of Leibniz is to be regarded as a via 
 media between two extremes, of Empiricism which reduced 
 knowledge to a series of sensations externally produced and 
 thus lacking both universality and necessity, and of Rationalism 
 that made knowledge consist only of clear and distinct ideas. 
 Like Spinoza he considers that the notion of substance is the 
 necessary starting-point of metaphysical inquiry, but while the 
 former defined substance in terms of independent existence, the 
 latter defines it in terms of process. "La substance ne saurait 
 etre sans action." Thus while Spinoza attempted to reconcile 
 the dualism of mind and matter in terms of identity of content, 
 Leibniz made a similar attempt in terms oi process? According 
 to Leibniz perception and apperception, sense-perception and 
 thought can not be completely sundered. They differ not in 
 kind but in their degree of development, so that body is to be 
 defined as confused soul while soul is body become clear and 
 distinct. Either mind or body represents a meaningless abstrac- 
 tion apart from the other and neither exists apart from the 
 other. Reality is therefore partly material and partly immate- 
 rial, rhe law of continuity demands that the soul always thinks 
 
 ' Treatise-, I, I't. Ill, 8, 14. 
 ' Leibniz, Monad. ^ 66, 67, 6q. 
 
Il6 THE .{ESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 and that while sense knowledge precedes rational knowledge 
 thev difttr in degree only. \\ hence then the origin of our ideas ? 
 In the Not4veaux Essais, Leihni/. insists, as against Locke, 
 that all our ideas are innate but uiiplicitl\ rather than ixpltcitly 
 so.' The soul is windowless facing the eternal world so that 
 all our knowledge is developed from the possibilities of thought 
 within itself. Ideas as little as anything else are given to the 
 mind from without.- The Monads are simple, indivisible and 
 indestructible units and differ from each other only in the degree 
 of the clearness with which thev represent other monads. Each 
 monad however is a little world in itself, a mirror of the whole 
 of reality. Each one has also a dual nature, that is, it is partly 
 active and partly passive, the passive element corresponding to 
 the Aristotelian matter, the active aspect to the /orm or entelechv 
 of the monad. 
 
 Leibniz saves himself from a subjective idealism bv his postu- 
 late of Pre-established Harmony, according to which the ideas 
 come to possess objective value since the development of the 
 psychic monad is paralleled by the development of the cosmic 
 monad. ^ The idea of God, as pure actuality, plays a determin- 
 ing part in the Leibnizian scheme; but he guards against the 
 mechanical necessity of Spinoza, by insisting that of all possible 
 worlds, God chose the best, and even apart from divine choice 
 the best would in the end prevail over all others and become 
 actual. The lex mclioris by which Leibniz sought to give 
 meaning and beauty to the world-order, is established upon 
 the law of sufficient reason which is both a law of thought and a 
 law of being. 
 
 Both in spirit and method the philosophy of Leibniz is strik- 
 ingly comparable to the Platonic and his attempt at a reconcilia- 
 tion of opposing systems of thought is poetic rather than scien- 
 tific. According to the programme laid out by the philosopher 
 the dualism must necessarily fall within consciousness and in his 
 definmg the epistemological problem as the passage from tlic 
 realm of unconscious ideas to the realm <if the clear and distinct 
 
 ' Cf. Petitcs Pfrcfptions, Nnv Essays (Latta"s trs.). 
 ' Monad, 78. 
 Mbid., 83, 86. 
 
MODERX PHILOSOPHY FROM DESCAR.'ES TO KJXT. II7 
 
 ideas. It is interestino; to note, that in so far as he dealt at all with 
 the problem and place of the beautiful, Leibniz places it on the 
 border-land of the conscious and rhc unconscious, the active 
 and the passive, aspect ot ideas, as partaking of the nature of 
 both and serving as the common ground of both.' 
 
 Tlir Faith Philosophers. 
 
 With the recognition of the limitations of reason, there is also 
 to be seen an attempt to vindicate the rights of feeling. Hoth 
 Rationalism and ICmpiricism, as final interpretations of human 
 experience having failed, the search of the age is for some 'trans- 
 cendent notion'- which shall reconcile the unending conflict 
 between the mechanical and the teleological, the material and 
 the immaterial, betw^een the naive and rhc ideal concepts of 
 causality. We have indicated the rise ot the same problem 
 under different conditions and at different times and have 
 attempted to show that the final interpretation reached in each 
 instance was aesthetic rather than scientific and discursive. At 
 such periods, as Lessing has pointed out, thought must proceed 
 gymnastically rather than dogmatically. The recognition be- 
 came a contagion by the middle of the eighteenth century, that 
 the art, science and literature of the past arc but idealized 
 expressions of the inner life of feeling and will. Winckelmann 
 (1755) in his Gedanketi iiber die Nachahiniing der griechischen 
 Ktinsiu-erke, showed that Greek life was the source and the 
 prototype of Greek art and literature. Lessing in the Laokoon 
 (1766) attempted to point out not only the 'that' but the 'hoiv of 
 Greek art, and contributed to the casting aside of the false inter- 
 pretations and arbitrary rules in which a pseudo-classicism had 
 wholh' submerjied the works of the classic artists and authors. 
 For Lessing, Greek art is essentially the expression and embodi- 
 ment of the inner vision, and instead of its being a slavish imita- 
 tion of nature according to certain prescribed rules, it is a free 
 creation, in which the individual lifts himself above nature. 
 The forms of the Greek artists were not born of external con- 
 
 ' Lotze. Gt-Sihtihtf J. Aesthclik, p. 275. 
 
 ' Hotfding, Problems of Philosophy, p. 100. 
 
1 1 S THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 straiiir, hut were rather conceived in the sjDhere ot pure beauty 
 which thus awakening no desire, at once transported the mind 
 into a dream of undisturbed immediacy. Therefore Winckel- 
 mann concludes, that if we would pn)duce works of art like the 
 (jreeks, we must learn to feel and live as the Greeks lived and 
 felt, that is, we must be as true, as noble, as free in our nature 
 as they were. 
 
 According to the Faith Philosophers, who carried forward 
 the attempted vindication of feeling, the source of truth is to be 
 sought in intuition rather than in discursive thought.' The 
 highest truths are to be felt not demonstrated. The most detailed 
 statement of the Faith philosoph\^ is to be fountl in jacobi and 
 we limit ourselves to a resume of his thought. He held that 
 the understanding alone can not guarantee reality, and in har- 
 mony with the conclusions of Lessing and Winckelmann, 
 insists that reality can only be presumed and felt.- Pure reason, 
 as the doctrine of concepts, can lead only to atheism and fatal- 
 ism. The conditioned can be made intellifiible only by means 
 of the unconditioned wliich lies beyond the reach of reason. It 
 is only by the intuitive knowledge of feeling that we are able to 
 transcend our finite and limited selves, and reach in beauty that 
 perfect union of the parts of being in virtue of which it becomes 
 a symbol of the inner life. 
 
 It is also to be noted that with Herder the individualism of 
 the Illumination yields to the conception of humanity as one great 
 individual which has passed through a series of stages in its 
 development, strikingly similar to the stages ir. the development 
 of the individual himself from infancy to old age. These con- 
 ceptions of the faith philosophy were carried out in the mystical 
 extravagances of the Romanticists after Kant, so that we turn 
 now to a study of the philosophy of the Sage of Konigsberg in 
 whom the several streams of pre-Kantian thought met and from 
 whom issued the characteristic tendencies of the philosopiu' ot 
 the modern period. 
 
 ' Vide, KalckcnbcTg, Htst. of Mod. Phil., pp. 310; .Also Hoft'tling, Hist, of 
 Mod. Phil., p. 3-18. 
 
 ' Falckenbcrg, op. nt., p. J13. 
 
MODERN PHlLOSOPHr FROM DESCARTES TO KANT. 119 
 
 Katit. 
 
 The epistemological problem set by the antithesis of mind 
 and matter, sense and reason, which had been the burden of 
 discussion from Descartes to Wolff and from Bacon and Hobbes 
 to Berkeley and Hume remained vet unsolved when Kant came 
 into the field. The two-fold problem as to the origin of our ideas 
 and the validity of their objective reference, which the Empiri- 
 cists attempted to solve by holding that all our ideas arc the result 
 of pure experience, and the Rationalists by making the ideas an 
 original possession of the mind, was clearly appreciated by Kant 
 who at once set himself to its solution. He appears to have 
 fully appreciated the fact, that both parties in the discussion 
 were partly right and partly wrong, since each was concerned 
 with an mdispensable factor of all thought; but each was wrong 
 in that thought to be vital and fruitful must be equally concerned 
 with both factors. Perceptions without conceptions, he insists 
 are meaningless, while conceptions without perceptions are 
 fruitless. The Rationalists pursued a wholly analytical proced- 
 ure and sought to explain all things by subsuming them as 
 predicates under definitely given subjects. But Kant's acquaint- 
 ance with the results in the field of science revealed the fallacy 
 of evolving a system of reality from a number of given defini- 
 tions. Still farther the discoveries of Galilei, Newton, Huygens 
 and others were presenting a series of predicates which could 
 not be explained by an analysis of any given subject. 
 
 According to Kant, the object of knowledge, is neither mak- 
 ing explicit what was already implicit in the mind, nor the 
 chance coming together of impressions from the external world, 
 but the construction of an object within consciousness. The 
 objects of thought can be none other than the product of thought. 
 As to its content the object of knowledge is particular and con- 
 tingent, while the form, which is of the mind's own contributing 
 lends universality and necessity. The antithesis in knowledge 
 is not between subject and object, as independent substances, 
 but an antithesis between the activity of the understanding and 
 sensuous perception. Thinking, according to Kant is the cate- 
 gorizing of sense data and the categories are the relations estab- 
 
120 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 lished by the iniiul among phcnonuiia. Ilicse categories are, 
 however onlv regulative, and add nothing to experience. Thev 
 are neither subjective dispositions, nor completelv developed 
 ideas, bur 'forms' which the mind fmpl()\s in making articu- 
 late an otherwise chaotic manifold of sense-experiences. Their 
 value according to Kant is the making of synthetic judgments a 
 priori possible, thus establishing, in oj^position to Hume, the 
 objective validity of knowledge. 
 
 The criticism has been made of the Kantian conception of 
 the categories, that thev were independent of the intuitions of 
 sense, and remained so, as far as the work of Kant goes. Bur 
 Kant appreciated the nature of the distinction and his doctrine 
 of the 'Schema' represents an attempt upon the part of the 
 synthetic imagination to mediate between the a priori forms and 
 the manifold of sense — "an art" as Kant says "hidden in the 
 depth of the human soul, the true sense of which we shall hardly 
 ever be able to understand."' 
 
 But while the categories are a prion, that is, independent of 
 the manifold intuitions of sense, they do not extend our knowl- 
 edge beyond the phenomenal world and can not, therefore, lead 
 to a knowledge of the noumenal world given in sensation. "The 
 understanding n priori can never do more than anticipate the 
 form of a possible experience, and as nothing can be an object 
 of experience except the phenomenon, it follows that the under- 
 standing can never go bevond the limits of sensibility. As 
 phenomena are nothing but representations, the understanding 
 refers them to a something as the object of our sensuous intui- 
 tion. Ihis means a something equal to x, of which we do not, 
 nay, with the present constitution of our understanding can not, 
 know anything."- The outcome of the First Critique is that 
 there is no transcendent knowledge, that is, no possible knowl- 
 edge beyond the limits of experience. Reason proposes ques- 
 tions which it is wliolK' un.d^Ie ro answxr. 
 
 Bur rhe limit of that whicli can be experienced is not neces- 
 sarily the limit of rliar which is or of thar wjiich ought to be, or 
 
 * Critique of Pure Reason , ]i. I 1 6. 
 ' Critique of Pure Experience, Intr. 
 
MODERN PHlLOSOPHr FROM DESC.1RTES TO K.1XT. 121 
 
 in other terms, the practical reason is not necessarih' hinitecl 
 because we have found that the theoretical reason is thus liniircd. 
 We are active and volitional creatures and while we find our- 
 selves unable to know things-m-thcmselves, we can neverthe- 
 less postulate them. The unconditioned, therefore, which makes 
 the conditioned significant and intelligible, must be sought in 
 the Practical Reason. Between things as thcv are known to us 
 and as they are in themselves, there is, for Kant, an abyss which 
 the understanding can not cross. Thought, therefore, as Caird 
 says, may like a physician, cure the ills of others but can not 
 meet the challenge to heal its own. 
 
 But if the Critique of the Pure Reason was sceptical toward 
 the ideas which made reason possible, the Critique of the Practi- 
 cal Reason sought at once to establish the validity of these ideas 
 from the standpoint of the moral life. Thus once again, though 
 with a material and a technique wholly impossible at an earlier 
 period, the moral consciousness functions as an epistemological 
 postulate. According to Kant the moral consciousness alone 
 can carry thought beyond the phenomenal to the universally 
 valid ground on which all higher truth rests. The active, 
 volitional life outruns the theoretical, and Kant, with a long line 
 of idealists, finds a solution of the epistemological problem in 
 terms of the working will. Upon an analysis of the moral con- 
 sciousness, he finds that its characteristics are precisely those 
 demanded by his analysis of the epistemological consciousness. 
 
 Mediating between the pure reason, which is the faculty of 
 the a priori forms of knowledge, and the practical reason, as the 
 faculty of the a prion principles of conduct, is the judgment, 
 which is the faculty of the a priori forms and principles of the 
 aesthetic feeling. For Kant, therefore, the beautiful, which is 
 the object of the judgment, mediates between the true and the 
 good which are the objects of the theoretical ami the practical 
 reason respectively.' The judgment as the faculty by which 
 the manifoKl of sense is unified, and the phenomenal world 
 brought under the principle of design, thus awakening in con- 
 sciousness the sentiment of the beautiful, becomes the principle 
 
 ' Cf. Bosanquet, Hist, of Aesthetics, p. 256. 
 
122 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 of world inrerpretation and unihcation.' But the judgments 
 are two-fold in character: First, the teleological judgment 
 that has to do with the problem of adaptation and arises only 
 when the mechanical explanation fails. The teleological con- 
 cept is, however, onlv regulative of experience, as appears trom 
 the antinomy which Kant treats in the dialectic of the teleologi- 
 cal judgment. Thus it is to be inferred that Kant appreciated 
 the limitation of the mechanical view of the organic world which 
 prevailed during the seventeenth and the opening years of the 
 eighteenth centuries. Mechanism and teleology are, as doc- 
 trines, irreconcilable and impossible, but as points of view, 
 attitudes toward a presented content, they are both necessary 
 and compatible. Thus Kant appears to have felt, what is more 
 strongly feir in our day, that description and appreciation can 
 not develop independently of each other, and that the theoretical 
 and normative sciences are not developed in entire isolation. 
 
 In pointing out the several movements of thought before 
 Kant, the Faith Philosophers were cited as bringing forward 
 and emphasizing the feeling aspect of consciousness which had 
 hitherto been completely ignored, or at least, made subordinate 
 to the other aspects of consciousness. The Empiricists had 
 insisted, however, that it is onlv in feeling that genuine contact 
 with reality is had and a personal guarantee of truth secured. 
 The attempt was made, therefore, to reduce all things, includ- 
 ing beauty, to mere feeling. The Rationalists, on the contrary, 
 characteristically insisted that personality, individuality, truth 
 and reality are meaningless when reduced to brute feeling; and all 
 things were then reduced to thought, and beauty was freed from 
 the element of feeling. Kant's doctrine of the aesthetic judg- 
 ment, as mediating between these antithetical views of the 
 beautiful at once suggested itself as the necessary and appro- 
 priate mediating principle between these two opposed types of 
 theory. 
 
 It is interesting to note in the present connection, that in his 
 analysis of the aesthetic consciousness, Kant finds precisely 
 
 ' Kritik d. Urthcilskraft, Jf'crkf 4, 14; Falckcnbcrg, op. cit., p. 40, ff; Hciffding, 
 of>. ctt., p. 104, ft'.; Hcgcl, History of Philosophy, 111, p. 543. 
 
MODERX PHILOSOPHT FROM DESCARTES TO KANT. 123 
 
 those characteristics which the epistenioloj^ical consciousness 
 demands for the sokuiun of its own characteristic problem. He 
 appears to have appreciated tliat his discussion in the second 
 Critique only pushed the problem farther back and that the 
 problem can be solved only in terms of feeling, which mediates 
 between reason and desire. Neither thought nor conduct can 
 give us a complete object, since each refers beyond itself. Feel- 
 ing, on the other hand, presupposes a complete idea of the 
 object. The problem to which Kant gives himself after con- 
 cluding that the feelings possess an epistemological significance, 
 is the determintaion of the a priori forms of feeling without 
 which the\' would possess neither universal nor necessary valid- 
 ity. Are there aesthetic judgments and what are their dL-fferen- 
 tia .'' The object alike of thought and desire is necessarily sub- 
 ordinated to some end. The new problem to which Kant now 
 sets himself is the determination of those feelings which are 
 motived by no conscious purpose. Such feelings, Kant finds, 
 make up the content of the beautiful and the sublime. The 
 beautiful is thus distinguished from both the true and the good 
 in that it is the object of a completely disinterested satisfaction.' 
 It differs from the merely agreeable in that it is the object of 
 universal satisfaction. It differs further from the good in that 
 it pleases without a concept. The pleasure of the perfect is con- 
 ceptual, of the good is purposeful, while the pleasure of the 
 beautiful is emotional and hence immediate. The secret of 
 aesthetic construction is, that in it, the mind constructs its 
 own objects without purpose and under its own immediate 
 control. 
 
 The object therefore that shall at once reconcile the sensuous 
 and the formal, the mechanical and the teleological, is one that 
 recognizes the legitimacy and the place of the several demands of 
 consciousness and in the construction of which both sense-percep- 
 tion and reason cooperate. As to the objectivity of the object 
 presented by the aesthetic consciousness, Kant was somewhat 
 in doubt, and in the end asserted the existence of a principle of 
 beauty and purpose and goodness hidden in nature which reason 
 
 ' Purposive without the idea of an eiui,' Krittk J. Urfetlskraft,p.Sj, note. 
 
i:.4 THE AESTHETIC EXPERJEXCE. 
 
 can not formulare. Nevertheless Kant recognized the epistem- 
 ological vakie of the aestlietic consciousness and his analysis of 
 the latter is a faitiiful reflection of the epistemological problem 
 of the iinivcrsrili/.ation and ohjcctification of experience. 
 
 Tlir German M vstics. 
 
 The outcome of the Kantian discussions is that the object of 
 thouirht is thoujzht's own construction. The world that each of 
 us knows is made by him rather than for him, through the activ- 
 ity of consciousness itself. The problem is no longer as to how 
 the world as already organized is carried over into the mind as 
 Locke thought, but rather how we can construct our own world. 
 The object of thought is neither an immediate datum of sense, 
 a brute shock as the Empiricists held, nor a mere predicate 
 analyzed out of an already given subject, but essentially a free 
 construction upon the part of consciousness. In this way Kant 
 thought to be able to strike a balance between the empirical and 
 speculative tendencies of his age. His philosophy must be 
 regarded as an idealism whose peculiarity is to be sought in its 
 attempt to mediate between and reconcile the apparently irre- 
 concilable antagonisms of the philosophy and science of the 
 preceding age. The three Critiques^ however, lack a principle 
 of unity which shall at once bind them together and thus reduce 
 the entire discussion to unity. The general advance made by 
 Kant is to be seen in the fact, that both the theoretical and the 
 practical reason are given independent treatment, with neither 
 of which is it possible to identify the self as the 'transcendental 
 unity of apperception.' Until Kant, no hesitancy was experi- 
 enced in identifying the self with the one or the other of its two 
 possible aspects. From Socrates on, repeated attempts have 
 been made to identify the self with the moral consciousness and 
 will has been repeatedly made the postulate of thought and 
 reality. Bur in each such instance, as has been indicated, the 
 practical reason was resorted to only because the theoretical 
 consciousness could not rtiukr the whole content of experience. 
 In the philosopin of K;iiu, the will ma\ he said to liave come 
 to its majority aiul was brought under the control of the 
 
AtODERX PHILOSOPHl' FROM DESCARTES TO K.i.\T. 125 
 
 individual liimself. But Kant at once appreciated that after 
 reason and will had worked themselves through, there was 
 still a meaning left over, which he at once identified with the 
 rjoiimenal,asthin aspect of being lying beyond all thought, hut 
 which nevertheless made thought possible. Thus again, as 
 in earlier periods, the problem ot the remainder became the 
 problem of succeeding thought. 
 
 Kant himself found the principle of world unification and 
 interpretation in the feelings as the judgment of the beautiful 
 and his immediate disciples followed in the wake of the master 
 in their farther search after unity. Their immediate problem 
 was the resolution of the thing-in-itself; without it one could 
 not enter the Kantian philosophy, nor with it remain in. 
 Kant himself seems to have appreciated the inconsistency of the 
 noumenal conception, and suggestions arc found, in which he 
 identifies the 'thing-in-itself with the Pure Kgo as the inner 
 orgamzmg and constructive principle of the mind. Reinhold 
 raises the point at the outset, as to the failure of the Kantian 
 philosophy owing to the absence of some one presupposition 
 without which philosophy can never be a true science. Philoso- 
 phy is not possible until the philosopher determines upon some 
 one principle upon which the whole rests and which adds mean- 
 ing and beauty to the whole. But it is here, as Reinhold 
 remarks, that Kant fails, and at once attempts to surmount the 
 failure by setting up, what he calls, the 'principle of couscious- 
 ness.' Consciousness thus becomes the primary fact which 
 makes all thought and conduct possible. Knowledge is made 
 up of ideas which are related both to the subject and the object, 
 so that they must be distinguished from consciousness as well 
 as related to it. In fact, consciousness is only the relating of 
 the ideas to the subject and object, hence it is to be said of Rein- 
 hold that he placed greater emphasis than Kant upon the 
 activity and unity of consciousness. The unity of conscious- 
 ness can not therefore be identified either with subject or object. 
 The various form, of knowledge are only the ways in which this 
 relating process proceeds. 
 
 It is thus seen, as Hoffding has pointed out, that the Kant- 
 ian conception of a 'thing-in-itself has become restricted to a 
 
126 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 much narrower sphere than with Kant, from which it follows 
 that neither the ohject nor the suhject can he known in itself, 
 but only the world of consciousness which hovers between 
 the two. The presentation is distinp;uished in consciousness 
 both from the presented object and the presenting subject, 
 while related to both. The outer and inner conditions of reality, 
 Reinhold insists, must not be confounded. Xoumena are 
 neither conceived objects nor rhings-in-themselves, but the laws 
 which control our dealing with the objects of experience. Fail- 
 ing however to completely isolate the subject as the control 
 factor of thought from the object, while insisting upon the 
 necessity of the unity and activity of consciousness, Reinhold 
 sought to transcend the dualism implicit in all his work by set- 
 ting up an immediacy of consciousness in which both aspects 
 are merged in an ultimate unity. 
 
 Maimon also holds with Reinhold that the two aspects of all 
 knowledge as held by Kant must be given up and that knowl- 
 edge must be deduced from one common principle. The dis- 
 tinction between matter and form can be relative only. He 
 departs from Reinhold, however, in maintaining that ir is 
 impossible to establish a single highest principle. 1 he principle 
 of consciousness as held by Reinhold expresses what is common 
 to all principles, while the special principles are not deducible 
 from it. Assuming the dualistic character of all knowledge, 
 Maimon holds, that running throughout all knowledge, there 
 is an endeavor to reduce the dualism to unity. In fact it is pre- 
 cisely this demand for continuity that makes knowledge possible. 
 Experience is not, therefore, a necessary relation, but the actual 
 continuity of the perceived phenomena. 1 hings, objects exist 
 only in and for consciousness. We understand only what we 
 ourselves construct. The thing-in-itself, whether the subject 
 within or the object without, represents a limiting notion only, 
 which can in no way become an object of knowledge. The 
 problem of knowledge is the apprehension of phenomena 
 through their reciprocal relations.' Fhe instinctive desire of all 
 thought is the desire for unity, totality, which Hnds its locus and 
 
 ' Jacob! and Fichtc, 1799. 
 
MODERX PHILOSOPHY FROM DESCARTES TO KANT. 127 
 
 explanation ni tlie instinctive desire for perfection. Hut the 
 idea of totality and unitv can not be had as an object of thought, 
 while the striving for unity has only ethical value. How then 
 is unity of apprehension to be realized .'' How can the individ- 
 ual reach beyond the limitations of his present experience and 
 comprehend the chaotic manifold in a single, self-contained 
 experience.'' Such unity can not be had in terms of thought, 
 jNlaimon continues, since thought always points beyond itself. 
 In his further criticism of Kant, Maimon suggested a theory of 
 knowledge which would have led beyond the limitations of 
 Kant, but he became involved in the romantic cravings of the 
 age, and in search after unit\' in terms of imagination as a 
 sort ot immediate deliverance of pure feeling. So it can be 
 concluded with Hoffding that "The romantic craving for 
 unity, the longing to revel in the absolute, to unite thought 
 with artistic conceptions, was too strong to permit of Maimon's 
 critical and skeptical considerations exciting any permanent 
 interest." 
 
 Throughout his whole life Schiller manifested a genuine 
 delight in philosophical matters, a fact which justifies the bring- 
 ing forward of his name in the present connection. He was 
 an artist, rather than a philosopher, but took to philosophy, as 
 he himself said, in order to prove that the artist alone is the true 
 man and that art as such is the peculiar characteristic of man: 
 
 "Die Kunst, O Menscii, hast du allein." 
 
 Influenced at first by the ideal of freedom according to nature, 
 an ideal borrowed from Rousseau and the English l.mpiricists, 
 he finally arrived at the conception of the perfection of the indi- 
 vidual through the harmonious development of his own powers, 
 a development however proceeding from wuhm. In the light 
 of such ideal, no power of the individual is to be regarded as 
 unfit and unclean. Nature hath joined the sensuous and the 
 rational and let no man 'put them asunder.'' His problem was 
 thus the problem of the age as to how the sensuous and the rational 
 
 ' Vide, y ersuch iibcr den Zusammenhang der tienschcn N atur des Mcn- 
 schen mit seiner geisttgen. 
 
128 THE AESTHETIC LXi'ERIES'CE. 
 
 ct)ulcl be bicnifzht toiicther in some harmonious \va\'. 1 he ideal 
 life can not be reached bv leaving the sensuous behind, nor can 
 the highest development of the one be secured by the supression 
 of the other. 1 hr old-time uniiv between mind and nature, 
 the one and the many, has been lost as a result of advancing 
 culture. i he bringing together of these two aspects of human 
 experience represents the problem of the age as Schiller saw ir 
 and he sought solution in the aesthetic experience. To plav is 
 human and plav is the beginning of art. Onlv as the indivitlual 
 plays is he reallv human in the sense of reaching a free determina- 
 tion of himself. All other activities of the individual arise from 
 some particular attitude and thus set a limit upon the mind, 
 whereas the aesthetic experience is self-contained and leads to 
 the unlimited. The aesthetic experience is a whole in itself and 
 completes in itself all other experiences, so that in it, the individ- 
 ual feels as if he were snatched out of time, be>ond the 'flainma- 
 tia moenia' of the world, to an experience in which all his powers 
 function harmoniously without being moved or conditioned by 
 external powers or needs. Only by a free play of the indi\ id- 
 ual's own powers can he express himself as a totality, that 
 'schone seele' in which the conflict between the sensuous and the 
 super-sensuous is transcended.' Artistic activity thus mediates 
 between the lower sensuous impulses and the higher, rational 
 form-impulses and unites the two sides of human nature into 
 a harmonious whole. "In all the years;" he says, "art has been 
 the one mirror which held up to men a picture of their real self. 
 To it we must again return if we would find deliverance from 
 the limitations into which thought and conduct alike involve us. 
 Science, jihilosopin', political and business activities appeal to 
 individual aspects of human nature only. It is art alone that 
 demands the whole man and which can thus restore the inner 
 harmony of primitive nature. Man is onlv fullv man m per- 
 ceiving and creating the beautiful, which can arise only from tlie 
 most complete and harmonious blinding of the iial ami riie 
 ideal, of matter aiul form, of necessity and freedom." 
 
 The search after unitv and totality of experience became a 
 
 ' Briejen tiher die astbetische Erxiehung, and Anmut u. ffiirde. 
 
MODKRX THOVailT. I29 
 
 passion with the men of the closino; years of the eighteenth and 
 the opening years of the nineteenth century. Both in pohtical 
 matters and in thought the unity of the spirit was everywhere 
 seeking a more complete embodiment. As in the past, so again, 
 men looked both to religion ami to art as the means of a more 
 adequate expression of the increased richness of liti. The 
 Critical Philosopln' had left too far apart the several aspects of 
 thought, and their unification in a higher experience became 
 the problem of the age. The period was one of general upheaval. 
 The past was felt to be altogether inadequate and attempts were 
 made everywhere to construct life and thought upon a new basis. 
 The poetry of Goethe and Schiller represent attempts to embody 
 the profound aspirations of the times. The unity and totality 
 which thought found itself unable to attain unto were thus 
 attained in art, and as a consequence there was a general turning 
 to art as a resource from the limitations and embarrassments in 
 which thought found itself. Novalis in an unfinished work 
 entitled Heiurich von Oftcrdingeuy held poetry to be the inner- 
 most essence of things which is, as such, a peculiar movement of 
 the human spirit. Philosophy is, after all, only the theory of 
 poetry and in poetry alone is the mystic word which completes 
 and unifies our otherwise dualistic and discordant experience. 
 But poetry was the expression of feeling rather than the embodi- 
 ment ot thought, so that feeling was everywhere regarded as the 
 constructive principle of thought and life.' The mind of the 
 poet is free to mould and construct sensuous images as it pleases. 
 The distinction in thought between the sensuous and the super- 
 sensuous is a distinction which the mind itself makes and in turn 
 finds in art the or<zan of its reconciliation and transcendence. 
 As the outcome of the attempt to throw the entire content of the 
 intellectual life into a connected whole in terms of feeling, light 
 was shed upon many problems and utterance given to ideas 
 which outlived the several attempts themselves. These several 
 movements are the subject of more extended notice in ihr next 
 chapter. 
 
 ' Cf. Erdman, op. cit.. Vol. II, sections, 314, 315; and R. Naym, Die Roman- 
 tische Schule. 
 
Chaptfr IX. 
 
 The Development of Modern Thous^ht from the Post-Katttian 
 Idealists to the Present ^ with Reference to the Rise of 
 the Subject-Object Dualism and its Trans- 
 cendence by Postulating some Form of 
 Immediacy of Consciousness. 
 
 The suggestion of Kant that the thing-in-itself might be 
 identical withnthe pure ego, supphed a lead, not only for the 
 freeing of thought from the conception itself, but for the deter- 
 mination of the Ego as the subject of all experience. It will be 
 recalled that Kant left a hard and fast line of cleavage between 
 the pure ego and the form and materials of knowledge. The 
 ego, as the 'thing-in-itself,' represents a remainder as yet 
 unaccounted tor, and always the problem of the remainder 
 becomes the problem of advancmg thougin. For Kant the ego 
 was onlp a negative and hmitmg conception, but one made nec- 
 essary by the demand for conscious unity. Because of this 
 limitation, a necessary one, however, the three Critiques of Kant 
 remained more or less independent of each other, and whether 
 we agree with McCosh or not, that "Kantwas distinguished more 
 as a logical thinker and systematizer than a careful observer of 
 what actually takes place in the mind,"' the fact is that he intro- 
 duced a new point of view for the study of the phenomena of 
 consciousness. 
 
 Fichte. 
 
 Kant found after the completion of the first Critique that his 
 theory of knowledge was incomplete, since it could not of itself 
 supjil}' the transcendent element without which knowledge is 
 impossible. The unconditioned, which lends meaning and 
 relation to the conditioned, can not Ik reached in terms of pure 
 thought. The forms are valid only in the sphere of the under- 
 
 ' McCosh, Realistic Philosophy, \'o\. 11, p. 197. 
 
 KP 
 
MODERX THOUGHT. I3I 
 
 Standing. The three ideas, which are regulative of experience, 
 can not be arrived at in terms of thought. Hut according to 
 Kant, what the reason can not accompHsh tlic moral life can. 
 The moral consciousness alone can carry thought beyond the 
 phenomenal to that which is objectively valid and universally 
 necessary. The organization of experience must therefore be 
 sought for on the active side of consciousness. Later, Kant 
 found a conflict between these two disciplines and sought their 
 reconciliation in the aesthetic judgment as issuing from the feel- 
 ing aspect of consciousness. Fichte, however, whose chief con- 
 cern lay in the sphere of the practical, assumed that out of this 
 conflict and contradiction, this dualism of self and not-self, the 
 principle of knowledge issued. His assumption is that in the 
 moral conflict is to be found an explanation and the source of 
 theoretical knowledcre. Kant had already insisted that the 
 object of knowledge is the outcome of our own self-activity. 
 The transcendental ego is the law-giver of the universe. But 
 in either instance, the self as the pure ego was wholly lacking 
 in content. It was mere form and its unity was predetermined. 
 Fichte, on the other hand, whose problem was to bring to clearer 
 consciousness the nature of this free activity of the self in knowl- 
 edge and conduct, holds that the ego is both form and content. 
 It is precisely in this notion of the self as fundamentally active 
 that Fichte thought to find the unifying principle of philosophy. 
 Accordingly, he insists, in opposition to Kant, that the self is 
 not that which thinks and acts, but is itself the activity. It is, 
 he further insists, an activity which both goes (uit of itself and 
 returns upon itself. Only in activity can the self be known and 
 only thus can it realize itself. Kant's " thing-in-itselt" thus 
 becomes the activity of the self for Fichte, so that by giving it 
 a more positive place in pliilosophy its farther determination 
 became possible. 
 
 For Fichte, the object of knowledge is determined, not 
 beyond consciousness, but within consciousness as that which is 
 necessary to supplement the abstract reality of the ego. The 
 primary assumption of knowledge is not the 'I think' ot Des- 
 cartes, or the transcendental ego of Kant which lies behind the 
 life of thought and conduct, nor the unity of the subjective and 
 
132 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIEXCE. 
 
 objective of Reinliolcl, Inir rarlur the 'I act,' in which the 
 identitv of the subject and objc-ct is expressed. Ikir rht- noii- 
 ego, as that whicli is necessary to complete the ego, is derived 
 from the ego itself, as that which is asserted or demanded by 
 the ego in order that it mav have an object against which to 
 assert its own consciousness. We come therefore to beheve 
 in an objective world because we have previously willed to do so. 
 For Fichte as also for Schopenhauer and more lately Professor 
 Royce the non-ego, as the object of knowledge, is that which 
 the ego or subject posits that it ma\' become completel)' con- 
 scious of itself. The self and the not-self, the subject and the 
 object, are therefore correlative, since neither exists apart from 
 the other. The ego however must assert its own reality before 
 it can assert the reality of the sense-world. The funda- 
 mental principle of all science he says is expressed in the propo- 
 sition, "Das Ich setzt ursprunglich schlechthin sein eigenes 
 Seyn."' Prior to all assertions, the ego must be asserted 
 through itself.- The material of knowledge, to account for 
 which Kant was obliged to posit a 'thing-in-irself,' is thus 
 found m the activity of the self-existent ego. The 'thing-in- 
 itseir is absorbed in the subject, so that instead of the ultimate 
 dualism that obtained from Descartes, we have an idealistic 
 monism^ and the laws of thought are also the laws of being. 
 
 The ego, however, which in its pure conscious activit\' is 
 ground both of the empirical ego and the non-ego, remains 
 for Fichte the mere unlimited. Ir is onh' through the ego that 
 the non-ego is posited and the ego denied. Ihtrefore, the 
 ego both posits and denies itself. Both the ego and the non- 
 ego are to be regarded as objects of an ego, which as yet, lacks 
 determination in the Fichtcan theory of knowledge. Pichte's 
 appreciation of this, led to his third principle as an attempted 
 synthesis of the former two. Fhe ego, he says, asserts a dis- 
 tinguishable ego over against a distinguishable non-ego. Ich 
 setze nil sicli dcm t/ici/hnrcn Ich cm ihcilhorcs Nicht-Ich 
 entgcgen? 
 
 ' ff issrnschaftslchrf, \'ol. I, p. 10. 
 
 M bid., Vol. I, p. 5. 
 
 ^Complete (forks , Vol. I, pp. .S^ff. 
 
MODERX TIIOVGHT. 1 33 
 
 Fichte recognizes three approaches to the Absolute. The 
 first has already been referred to in the third principle of the 
 'Science of Kn(nvledge' which rt(|uired an ego over and above 
 the mutual limitations of the divisible ego and non-ego. Since, 
 he argues, the individual self is constantly asserting the not-self, 
 and the not-selt, in consequence, is required to take successively 
 higher points of view, there must of necessity be a 'universal 
 principle' which shall at once include all these activities. But 
 he also concludes that this all-embracing principle must be of 
 the general nature of the ego as the form of self-activity to which 
 everything in the universe is referred. Fichte also reaches, in 
 the same way, the conception of an Absolute thought in which 
 all finite processes of thought are made complete. Still further, 
 he conceives of the Absolute as the harmony of freedom and 
 law, in wiiich sense God only is Absolute and therefore the one 
 Reality. The ego is thus identified with God from whom, in 
 a somewhat Neo-Platonic fashion, all reality is derived. In 
 God, therefore, as the Absolute Ego, there is something more 
 than self-consciousness, and only in religion, as the life of blessed- 
 ness and love, can the individual ego become one with the 
 Absolute Ego. 
 
 Sc hell I rig. 
 
 \\ hat Schelling attempted to do represented the next step in 
 the Post-Kantian Philosophy. The conflict which Kant rele- 
 gated to the world of 'things-in-themselves' is carried over by 
 Fichte into the consciousness of the individual. For Kant, the 
 conflict was both unavoidable and insoluble, aiul came to an 
 end only in the Infinite. Fichte on the other hand, assumes 
 that out of these conflicts and contradictions the principle of 
 thought and conduct is born. The 'thing-in-itself,' of Kant, 
 becomes the activity of the self fi)r Fichte. The object of knowl- 
 edge as the non-ego is not as Kant assumed, a substance lying 
 outside of consciousness whose qualities the ego becomes aware 
 of, but the assertion of the ego of that which is necessary fiir 
 its own realization. 1 he world thus becomes the product of 
 our own consciousness, and the contradiction is to be looked 
 upon, not as a paralogism, but as the postulate of moral con- 
 
134 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 duct. Nature is the material of dutv, and without hmit there 
 would be no moral life.' Lvery presentation involves a con- 
 flict, but this conflict is not to be interpreted as coming from an 
 existence determined whollv apart from consciousness, but 
 rather a conflict falling within consciousness, and is in itself the 
 very making of thought and moral conduct. The ego is thus 
 both form and content, and the processes of the world of nature 
 become its own history. 
 
 But in addition to the conflict between reason and desire, 
 the self and the not-self, which Fichte brought together in an 
 immediacy of consciousness,- there is also the conflict between 
 the individual and the physical world. Ihe philosoph\" of 
 Schelling represents an attempt to deal with this problem. F'or 
 Fichte the not-self is a projection of the self, so that his philoso- 
 phy represents an attempt to identify the two terms of the dual- 
 ism by assuming an identity of process. The not-self thus 
 becomes a negative concept very comparable to the 'Ding-an- 
 sich' of Kant. One can not avoid asking, as Professor Royce 
 has asked, why the ego interrupts its unbroken activity in order 
 to posit the non-ego .'' Why posit the non-ego at all and why 
 posit one that necessitates a struggle upon the part of the ego :^ 
 Finally it must be said that for Fichte, Nature as the non-ego 
 was merely a limitation of the ego and at the most only a means 
 of the exercise of the individual's moral activities. The self 
 is not therefore self-controlling and the not-self of Fichte as 
 that in which the self seeks sanction and support for its con- 
 structions remains, like the play object ot the child, 'prag- 
 matelic' in character.^ 
 
 Schelling, on the contrary, holds that the not-self is given in 
 nature. The self and the not-self are therefore to be identified, 
 not by the assumption of the identity of process but of an identity 
 of presented content. All nature is dual.^ Both in nature and 
 
 ' Hoffdinp, o/>. fit. Vol. 11, p. 157. 
 
 'Vide tspcci.Tlly his lectures, Ubcr das ff'rsfn Jcs Ctlfhitcn. 
 'On the psychology- of the 'Dualism of Inner Struggle,' see Baldwin, 
 Thought an J Things, Vol. 1, p. 24."/ f. 
 
 * Haldwin, Thought and Things, \'ol. 1, p. IIQ. 
 
 * Cf. System dt-s tr<inS( rndrritidrn Idrtihsfnus, p. I90. 
 
MODER.\ THOUGHT. I35 
 
 spirit the essential principle ot ilLVclopinent is thought; but 
 while in Nature thought is seen struggling toward and finally 
 reaching consciousness, in Spirit there is the progress from con- 
 sciousness to the highest reaches of self-conscious thought. 
 Nature, for Schelling, is 'slumbering thought' and exhibits the 
 three great modifications, Mechanism, Light and Organic Life, 
 in each of which is present the fundamental antithesis required 
 for all activity.' The Spirit likewise, has passed through a 
 series of similar stages from theoretical thought, through practi- 
 cal, to aesthetic or art-consciousness. In each of these three 
 stages a characteristic antithesis appears, which disappears only 
 with the appearance of a more comprehensive mode of con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 The conflict in the thought of Schelling is one that issues 
 from a single principle which successively appears as nature and 
 spirit. In the second period of his activity he was led to the 
 position that this common principle, while somehow distinct 
 from both nature and spirit, is, nevertheless, the ground of both. 
 The conclusion reached is that there is one principle which mani- 
 fests itself in the two terms of the dualistic experience. But 
 Schelling was unable to carry out this conclusion, so that the one 
 principle, the substratum of subject and object, which he desig- 
 nates as the 'Identical Basis of all Differences,' is as much lack- 
 ing in positive content and determination as the 'Absolute Self 
 of Fichte and the 'Ding-an-sich' of Kant.- 
 
 The epistemological problem presented itself to Kant as a 
 conflict between the form and content of knowledge, which was 
 overcome in the aesthetic judgment. With Fichte the conflict 
 was between the concrete individual of the Ego and the Absolute, 
 which was also transcended in the immediacy of the religious 
 consciousness. It is important to note that in both instances 
 the principle of transcendence issued from the afl^ective-volitional 
 aspect of consciousness. It was a resort to the Gnniitli. The 
 active aspect of consciousness was always running in advance 
 of thoujiht; desire refusinjr to be held within rlu limitations of 
 
 * Uber Jen ivahren Bet^riff der Naturphilosophie^ Collected Works, \'ol. I, 
 ' Cf. Schelling, Phtlosophte Jer Mythologte. 
 
136 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 reason. In tin- insrancc- of tlu- l^omantlclsts, and even of 
 Fichte, the tinotional aspect of consciousness seized and deter- 
 mined the entire Held of experience. But every emotional 
 experience tends toward an aesthetic moment, which becomes, 
 for the time, our final interpretation of the universe and our 
 means of evaluatif)n. But smce the aesthetic object is not 
 merely the object of thought, its full content musi be sought 
 elsewhere than in reason. In the present instance, as in the 
 previous ones, because of lack of content for the construction of 
 the aesthetic object, consciousness turns to the past and uses 
 materials similarly used in earlier periods. Schelling therefore 
 in his search for a more positive filling of his concept of Identity 
 turned to the Ideas of Plato, the Pantheism ot Bruno, and the 
 Mysticism of Bohme. To his philosophy of nature and the 
 transcendental philosophy of spirit, Schelling now adds a philos- 
 ophy of identity in which all things are seen under the Spino/is- 
 tic 'sub specie aeternatis' and is thus lead back to the Absolute 
 Identity in which all plurality is transcended. In the aesthetic 
 consciousness, he concludes, we are at once both finite and 
 infinite, and our final interpretation of the world is artistic 
 rather than scientific; the beautiful is the perfect realization ot 
 the union of the subjective and objective — an identity toward 
 which thought is moving but which art alone can accomplish. 
 In art, therefore, the antithesis between the real and the ideal, 
 between reason and desire, between thought and conduct, dis- 
 appears, so that art becomes the solution ot all the problems of 
 reflection.^ 
 
 Hcgcl. 
 
 With Hegel the cpistcmological jnoblem is opened anew and 
 instead of the postulate of the Absolute Indifference of Schell- 
 ing, in jiroposes the Absolute of immanent activity. The 
 Absolute is not substance bui self-conscious Spirit, and the unity 
 of consciousness is the principle troin which all things issue and 
 to whicli they are to iu' referred tor their final explanation. 
 From I he Cartesian opposition of mind and matter, neither 
 Kant, nor Schelling, nor Fichfe, was al^lt to tr»-e himself. In 
 
 ' lalckcubcrg. History of Mod. Phil., p. 456. 
 
MODER.W THOUGHT. I37 
 
 each instance the epistemological problem was occasioned by 
 the presence of an extraneous principle, so that the solution of 
 the problem thus presented could be found only in ji;oin«i; beyond 
 consciousness. But for Hegel, the conscious spirit is the real 
 presupposition and the ideal end of all things. According to 
 Schelling, subject and object proceed from the Absolute, which 
 is, in succession, nature and spirit, whereas with Hegel, the 
 Absolute becomes successiveh' subject and object, nature and 
 spirit, or in the words of Turner, Hegel's Absolute is a "process 
 rather than a source, an infinite of activit\' rather than one of 
 static immensity and undifferentiated plentitude, a maelstrom 
 rather than a sea ot unruffled rest."' 
 
 Fichte attempted to solve the epistemological problem set by 
 Kant by reducing the 'thing-in-itselt' to one of its aspects, 
 while Schelling made the 'thing-in-itselt' an Absolute identity. 
 The motive in each instance was to Hnd a common principle 
 from which the dualism of subject and object issued. The 
 limitation of each attempt is to be found in the necessity of seek- 
 ing the support and sanction of thought and conduct bexond 
 consciousness which could be realized onh' in terms of some 
 mystical or ecstatic immediacx'. The advance in Ilegel is to 
 be seen in the ma kino; of the Absolute the common source of the 
 ego and the non-ego. In fact Hegel makes the process itself 
 the Absolute. 
 
 This movement, however, has its own law and goal. 1 hese 
 are not due to the action of some external agency but are 
 immanent in the process. Reason is the law and self-conscious 
 reason is the goal of the process. Reason, therefore, and the 
 Absolute are identical and thought is the source and sum of all 
 reality. Beinjr is only thoutiht realized ami becoming is only 
 the development of thought. Philosophy can not transcend 
 rational experience since onlv the rational is real and philosophy 
 must be in harmony with actuality and experience.' 
 
 According to Hegel philosophy starts with the 'idea,' as the 
 system of reason and the sum of reality. I his all-comprehen- 
 
 ' Turner, Hist, of Philosophy, p. 562. 
 ' Wallace, The Logic of Hcgcl, p. 10. 
 
138 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 sive idea follows a law of development whose end is determined 
 withm the process and in the course of its development passes 
 through three definite stages whicii constitute the three divisions 
 of philosophy. In each of these three divisions, there is a 
 further triatlic division, so that each constitutes, as it were, a 
 microcosm, whde the three make up an all-inclusive macrocosm. 
 It necessarily follows that the first, as dealing with the idea as 
 the whole of realir\ , will be of the greatest importance in the 
 Hegelian system. Logic, therefore, as the science of things held 
 in thought, and thus identical with metaphysics, has to do with 
 the several stages through which the idea passes, from the 
 earliest stage of immediacy, in which there is no distinction 
 between being and non-being, to the stage in which the idea 
 from the stage of reflection passes back into itself again in 
 another and higher immediacy. 
 
 The 'notion,' according to Hegel, is being returned to its own 
 immediacy or, as he himself puts it, the notion is the principle 
 of freedom, the power of substance self-realized. As contain- 
 ing all the earlier categories, the notion is the truth of being — the 
 realization of totality and must be regarded as semblant since 
 the 'other' ot the notion is not really another. The contradic- 
 tion thus involved between the notion as idea, and thai which is 
 not notion, except in a semblant way, disappears in the idea as 
 the absolute notion, which Hegel defines as the union of the 
 notion and its objectivity, of the real and the ideal, of soul and 
 body. I ruth is the absolute notion become its own object in 
 the theoretical sphere. The Good is the absolute notion become 
 its own object in the practical realm. But when the notion 
 returns to itself from the limitations of the true and the good, 
 the finiteness of cognition and volition, it becomes the absolute 
 idea. This represents the goal of the logical processes. 
 
 In its next stage, the Idea passes into otherness and becomes 
 nature, which Hegel defines as 'the Idea in state of otherness,' 
 a state midway between ihr immediac\' of reason as notion, and 
 thi' redintegrated immediacy of reason as fulh' realized in the 
 spirit. In nature the Idea has been particularized and external- 
 ized and natural science is justified in regarding phenomena as 
 isolated realities and in dealing with the universe in piecemeal 
 
yfODERX THOUGHT. I 39 
 
 fashion rather than as a whole. But pliilosopli}- takes a higher 
 point of view, and represents the Idea as attaining again its 
 unity and identity in man, who is the goal of nature's processes. 
 In the individual, as in nature, the Idea passes through a three- 
 fold stage of development as subjective, objective and absolute 
 Spirit. 
 
 By the subjective mind, Hegel refers to the soul, conscious- 
 ness, and the several psychical processes. The highest realiza- 
 tion of this phase of mind is to be found in the "free will as 
 intelligence."' But this freedom is acquired only as the mind 
 comes to complete self-consciousness. At the first mind was 
 
 A 
 
 whollv immersed in nature. When it came to the recognition 
 of itself as the Ego, it divested itself of nature and as theoretical 
 mind made itself the determiner of its own intuitions and 
 thoughts. Then, by means of the impulses, desires and inclina- 
 tions, it proceeded to determine its own contents thus arriving 
 at a complete self-determination, which is freedom. The entire 
 procedure is, however, purely theoretical, as contrasted with the 
 purely practical character of the manifestations of the objective 
 mind. In both instances, the mind is in a state of otherness, 
 as Hegel would say, meaning doubtless that whatever control 
 the mind exercises in either the theoretical or the practical 
 sphere, is mediate in character. 
 
 But the Idea passes into a state of otherness, only that it may 
 return enriched and deepened into itself again. The absolute 
 mind, in which the antithesis between the theoretical and the 
 practical, the true and the good, is transcended, represents the 
 complete realization of the world-process. It is for Hegel, a 
 conception ot the ideal in which the soul becomes completelv 
 unified with all its finite manifestations in a richer and deeper 
 mind. In brief the Absolute mind is the mind with all its mean- 
 ing realized. 
 
 But that in which the mind finds itself tullv realized reveals 
 itself as an Ideal under three forms — as the beauty of Art, as 
 Divine Perfection in God, and finally as the Absolute of Philoso- 
 phw The Ideal thus becomes the sphere in which the subject 
 
 ^Encyclopedia, sec. 48 1. 
 
140 THE AESTHETIC EXI'ERIESCE. 
 
 knows itself as reconciled both with the world of nature and the 
 world of spirit. Such an absolute experience, Hegel like Schell- 
 ing finds in the aesthetic consciousness and defines a work of 
 art as the representation of the Idea in sensuous existence, which 
 satisfies alike the deniantls of theoretical and practical knowl- 
 edge and elevates the mind above all forms of finitude to the 
 highest enjoyment.' But all realitv is development and the 
 principle of the true philosophy is neither the abstract under- 
 standing, which finds itself limited to the phenomenal world, 
 nor a mystical intuition which attempts to reach the highest 
 knowledge by an easy and quick leap, but reason itself as the 
 faculty of concrete concepts. 1 he reconciliation of the several 
 antitheses of thought, is therefore, neither impossible nor immed- 
 iate from the outset of thought, but is the result of develop- 
 ment. Reason neither sets the opposition nor denies it but 
 proceeds to reconcile the antithesis, which is the necessity of all 
 development. The object ot plnlosophv is the absolute as the 
 living subject which posits distinctions and returns from them 
 to a higher synthesis. Each such synthesis becomes, in rum. 
 the pedestal for a still higlier synthesis, a platform upon w hich 
 higher modes of reality may arise. - 
 
 Reality is replete with contradictions, but is nevertheless 
 rational. The contradictions in which thought involves itself 
 are not due to an a-logical mo/r/^;// which falls beyond the thought 
 process, but show rather the incentive and possibility of all 
 thought. 1 hese contradictions are not to be annulled by a 
 return to a more primtive consciousness,^ but rather to be con- 
 served by thinking the contradictory concepts together in a 
 higher synthesis. For I legcl, the absolute thought, as the merg- 
 ing of the subjective and the objective, passes also through a 
 three-told stage of development, and art, which is the absolute 
 in sensuous form, the infinite in the finite, must yield to religion 
 in which the sensuous element of tiie tt)rmer passes into a higlier 
 state of consciousness and l>ecomes the in wart! life of the 
 
 ' Hcgcl, Philosophy of Fine Art (Bosanquet's trs.), p. \ ^. 
 
 ' Cf. Baldwin's ' llu-ory of Genetic Modes' in Development and Evolution, 
 ch. xvii and .\ix. 
 
 ' ]■ alckinherg, op, ctt., p. 492. 
 
MODERN THOUGHT. I4I 
 
 emotional nature. As art was the reconciliation ot the sensuous 
 and the Ideal, a reconciliation in which the sensuous prevailed, 
 so religion is the reconciliation of feeling and thought in which 
 the emotional nature holds the chief place. 
 
 But in religion, the contradiction is between thought and the 
 emotional nature, which phdosophv alone is able to resolve. 
 Philosophv thus becomes the highest form under which the 
 Absolute manifests itself. There is here a complete return to 
 thought, the circle is made complete, and tin- jirocess may 
 repeat itself but can not reach a higher stage. The contradic- 
 tion in the religious consciousness provokes free speculative 
 thought with which logic or the science of thought as it is in 
 and for itself, has to do. Having thus returned to itself, there 
 can be no further development and the process can onl\' repeat 
 itself. The Idea, as the Absolute, is the process of develop- 
 ment actualized, and philosophy, as the science of the actualiza- 
 tion of the Absolute Idea is, "The highest, freest and wisest 
 phase of the union of the subjective and the objective mind and 
 the ultimate goal of all development." 
 
 The absolute Idea as the synthesis of the objective and the 
 subjective notion becomes the platform for a further determina- 
 tion upon the part of the Idea itself. The syntheses thus far 
 effected are to be explained as imaginative constructions from 
 the images and ideas derived from the data of intuition. Ihev 
 are still, as Hegel calls them, more or less concrete, individual- 
 ized creations. But with the rise of the absolute Idea, thought 
 has been so far perfected as to no longer need help for its intui- 
 tions. As reason, its first movement was the appropriation of the 
 immediate datum which makes it universal; but with the attain- 
 ment of the absolute Idea, it proceeds to give the character of an 
 existent to the materials thus far perfected In the process of 
 'Auto-intuition.' A construction of such character can arise onlv 
 when thought has reached that stage of its unfoldment at which 
 its ideas are accepted as its own and whicli, under its own 
 positive coefficients of control, can be used tor the sake of the 
 embodiment of further meaniniis. 
 
 The absolute Idea appears successively as Nature and Mind, 
 thus furnishing the subject-matter of two independent disc:- 
 
142 THE AESTHETIC EXPCRIE\CE. 
 
 plines. Nature is the Idea (reason') in the state of otherness — a 
 state mid-way between the immediacy of the notion and the 
 immediacy of reason as fully realized. In nature, the Idea has 
 once more lost its unity, and appears as a series of independent 
 particulars. It passes through a series of stages and at last 
 comes to self-consciousness in the individual. Here once more 
 it passes through the three-fold stages of development. Dchn- 
 ing the formal essence of the mind as freedom, Hegel holds that 
 it is only as the mind arrives at complete self-consciousness, 
 that the mind attains perfect freedom. Only by successive acts 
 ot knowledge does the mind emancipate itself from foreign 
 control. The recognition of the ego means the attainment of 
 inner freedom of determination. Having assumed the deter- 
 mination of its own ideas, intuitions and thoughts, the mind 
 proceeds by means of the impulses and desires to fashion this 
 content for the sake of the satisfaction of theoretical and practi- 
 cal interests. But freedom thus attained must be realized, per- 
 fected, and this can be accomplished only through necessity, 
 as its opposite. For this reason alone, the mind objectifies 
 itself in law, the family and the state. But in the most perfect 
 objectification the mind is limited. The subjective mind can 
 not always find itself perfectly expressed in the objective. The 
 former is always running in advance of the latter and making 
 demands which the latter can not satisfy. 
 
 But since the antithesis is of the mind's own making, it can 
 also be synthesized by the mind, so that the mind, having 
 objectified itself, completes the circle of development by return- 
 ing to itself again, thus becoming identical with itself and as 
 being subject to itself alone, becomes the Absolute Mind, as 
 embodied in art, religion and philosophy. The theory of art 
 has already been dealt with, and it needs only to be added in 
 the present connection, that it again becomes the organ of 
 immediacy and supplies a synthesis of nature and mind, which 
 at once becomes the platform of a higher construction as 
 embodied in religion and philosophy.' 1 lie latter, however, 
 becomes for Hegel the reconciliation of art in which the sen- 
 
 ' Hegel, Introduction to Philosophy of Fine Art (Bosanquet's trs.), p. 13. 
 
MODKRX TllorCHT. I43 
 
 suous prevailed and religion in which rhe emotions prevailed. 
 In both art and rehgion the truth is revealed symbolically, 
 whereas in phik)S()phv, it is revealed as reason, and is therefore 
 superior to both art and religion. 
 
 It has been shown, 1 think, that the aesthetic consciousness 
 in the treatment of Hegel developed with the epistemological 
 and that it became in every instance the organ of a higher syn- 
 thesis. In the instance of the epistemological problem of the 
 reflective consciousness, as Hegel regards reflection, the aes- 
 thetic consciousness again becomes that phase of experience in 
 which higher aspect of reality is immediately disclosed. Art 
 is thus the Absolute Mind disclosed, not as something behind 
 the sensuous form, but in the sensuous form, giving it its form 
 and meaning. Art, therefore, is not a matter of inference, but 
 something to which to come immediateh'.' In religion also 
 reality is manifested in an immediacy of consciousness. In 
 ethics the mind is always confronted with the knowledge that 
 beyond the present act, lies another, which has to be accom- 
 plished. Duty always connotes and involves another, thus 
 illustrating the relationship of the one and the many. The 
 moral consciousness is capable of endless progress and the selt 
 could never reach its goal through it. But in religion, which is 
 the surrender of the will of the individual, and the acceptance 
 of the will of God, the self finds its true life, thus ending the 
 moral struggle by the attainment of the end of the moral lite in 
 an immediacy of consciousness. But Hegel, whose tempera- 
 ment was wholly idealistic, sees here a contradiction, which can 
 be overcome only in terms of pure thought. Nevertheless one 
 can not read the Philosophy of Fine Art without retaining the 
 conviction, that the aesthetic consciousness, as the organ of 
 transcendence, does after all aftord the only ultimate view of 
 reality. We do not get rid of our finiteness in our j^hilosojihi/- 
 ing, bur in art and religion, according to Hegel, we come into 
 immediate knowledge of those deeper aspects of reality which 
 are in their nature ultimate and thus form the very basis of our 
 finite existence. 
 
 Ibii 
 
144 ^^'J^ AESTHETIC EXPFRIEXCE. 
 
 Thar the rational alone is real, implies that reason has no 
 limitations, l-.vervthing real is iiltimatelv analvzable into terms 
 of rational thoii<ihr. How inacle(]iiare this conception of reality 
 is, is to be inferred from the reactions that at once arose against 
 it with their characteristic insistence upon the importance of the 
 non-rational. The attempt to bring the whole of realitv under 
 a single principle certamK represents the goal of philosophic 
 endeavor, hut such principle can not be reached bv neglecting 
 or ignoring either of the several aspects and demands of the 
 conscious life. 
 
 It can not be denied that the attempt of Hegel to completely 
 unify the element of the Kantian jihilos()ph\' represents the most 
 comprehensive view of the problems of philosophy hitherto 
 found. No department of human knowledge was untouched by 
 it and there was none that did not feel its influence. B\ making 
 thought 'common' rather than purely individual, as it had 
 hitherto been, and by making so large use of the notion «>{ 
 'development,' his philosophy was made to represent the embodi- 
 ments of rhf highest aspirations of the last century. 
 
 But his attempt to bring the whole of reality under one prin- 
 ciple of the mind brought about its immediate failure. Immedi- 
 ately after his death there arose a certain mystical and pessi- 
 mistic reaction against his system. The vast and rapid accu- 
 mulation of scientific knowledge, the increased daring of the 
 human mind and the larger control over the external world dur- 
 ing the past century, tended to the weakening of the rationalistic 
 explanation of the universe. Predicates were daih' arising that 
 could not be analyzed out of the subject and reality was coming 
 to be felt as larger than thought. Subject and object could no 
 longer be kept upon the same basis of realit\- in iniie thought 
 and the subject at once sought to erect its own object; and since 
 thousht has failed resource again is souiilit in the aflfective- 
 volitional aspect of consciousness. With Schopenhauer, the 
 \\ ill-activity of the mind, is brought into prominence, as the 
 creator of the world. 
 
 According to Schopenhauer, the world is not a mere appear- 
 ance, as Kant thought, but rather a worKl whose reality is to be 
 sought in ;i Mind force struggling for self-conscious assertion. 
 
MODER.W THOUGHT. I45 
 
 The \\ ill thus becomes the 'thing-in-itself.' Will, not thought, 
 is the ultimate principle of the mind and thought is but the 
 reflection ot will.' The affective-conative tendencies, as the 
 struggle of inner forces for objective expression, is to be made 
 the true basis of philosophy and the only approach to the 
 Absolute. 
 
 Schopenhauer's epistemologv is summed up in the expres- 
 sion 'Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung.' The ideas are not to be 
 thought of as given archetypes of an external reality, but pre- 
 sentations created bv the subject from the principle of 'suffi- 
 cient reason' {zuretcheuden Grutide). The innermost reality 
 of the world is to be sought in subjective struggle, as an uncon- 
 scious force behind the world of appearance. But by insisting 
 that the innermost reality of the Absolute as Will can never be 
 known to consciousness, Schopenhauer, at once reduces his 
 system to a mystic pantheism. - 
 
 But having defined the Absolute Schopenhauer attempts a 
 definition of the world of presented fact. This he finds to be 
 only successive modifications of the will. Each successive objec- 
 tification of the will represents an embodiment of the 'will-to- 
 be.' The world of presentations thus comes to be a reflection 
 of the will and, therefore, dependent upon the subject which 
 perceives it. The subject can not get beyond itself. The 
 object of knowledge is a wholly relative thing, created by the 
 subject under the a prion laws of thought.^ 
 
 But while the world of presentation is wholh' determined 
 by the subject as the knower, consciousness nevertheless points 
 to a higher world which does not depend upon the subject. 
 This world, which to Kant remained wholly beyond the limits 
 of experience, is, according to Schopenhauer fiirced upon us in 
 an act of belief. To know one's own self necessitates the 
 knowledge of things beyond one's self. Neither subject nor 
 object can stand alone. Kither would be mcanmgless apart 
 from the other. The self is, thercfi)re, both the subject and 
 object of thought. "I know myself," he continues, *'as the object 
 
 • Die ff'elt ah tfiUe unJ forsullung, iJk. I\'. 
 
 ' Pern', Approach to Philosophy, p. 2QO; HofFding, o/>, f«/., Vol. II, pp. 235 ff. 
 
 ^ Die ff'elt (lis ff'ille u. f'orstellung. Vol. I, pp. 3 ff. 
 
146 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 of thought of Others and thus an object of thought along with 
 other objects." The chasm between thinking subject and 
 objects of thought is thus partially transcended,' 
 
 In making the subject and object of knowledge alike the 
 products ot will, Schopenhauer followed in the path marked out 
 by Fichte. He makes will the essence of the world and also the 
 nature of man, so that the world can be known only through 
 man. 1 he common essence of each is however grounded, not 
 m appearance, but in the 'thing-in-itself.' Will thus becomes 
 both the phenomenal and the noumenal. It is precisely here 
 that the epistemologicalproblemof Schopenhauer really appears. 
 How can will, which is known by means of ideas, be identical 
 with the will as the 'thing-in-itself.'' He appears to have appre- 
 ciated, what had not hitherto been appreciated, that the phe- 
 nomenal and the noumenal can not be separated in any absolute 
 way. But despite the fact that his conception of the will is 
 elementary and his general psychology romantic rather than 
 scientific, Schopenhauer himself realized that the will is 
 dualistic and hence a problem within itself, which the will can 
 not of itself solve. Knowledge is brought into being as the 
 servant of the will but can not in any possible manner influence 
 the will. Moreover the will remains identical throughout all 
 stages of the development of knowledge. Only therefore in a 
 higher type of knowledge can will escape from its characteristic 
 bondage, the Urplianomcuy in which the will as it is in itself is 
 presented. But since the Urphanomen can not be reached in 
 terms of ideas, Schopenhauer turns to the aesthetic experience 
 and finds that it is only in art as the goal of human striving that 
 all pain and suffering cease. Knowledge is always proceeding 
 from one ground to another and will is ever striving anxiously 
 forward after that which it is not, but in artistic contemplation, 
 in \\hich all things are seen sub specie acternatis, the terrible 
 struggle for existence is ended. Defining tiie cpistemological 
 problem of Schopenhauer as the unification and realization of 
 the will as a dualistic experience, the solution reached was in 
 terms of the aesthetic experience, as an experience of an immed- 
 iacy of will. 
 
 ' Il>iil.. \'ol. II, pp. 7j6ir. 
 
MODERl^ THOUGHT. 1 47 
 
 It is unnecessary to pursue this historical investigation 
 further, since the characteristic episteinological theories ot" more 
 recent times are the suhject of critical investigation in an earhcr 
 chapter.' Until the idealistic reaction a half century ago psy- 
 chology was rather epistemology, and the subject of experience 
 was interpreted in terms of content established apart from the 
 mind perceiving it. That psychology has so long been in the 
 'gall of metaph}sics and the bonds of ontology' is due to the 
 failure to apply to the material with which it has to do the same 
 methods — and in the same spirit — which have for a long time been 
 applied to the treatment of external phenomena. The failure 
 of the current epistemological theories is to be found in the fact 
 that the mind, as the subject term of the currently recognized 
 dualism, is not treated as being under definite and continuous 
 laws of development. As in the earlier periods already dis- 
 cussed, the mind as the inner aspect of the dualism of current 
 discussion remains the 'undigested' element in the theory of 
 knowledge. But our point has been to show that in the earlier 
 dualistic experiences solution was found by carrying over into the 
 inner the coefficients under which the outer was held and guaran- 
 teed and thus made material for the embodiment of inner purposes. 
 The failure to follow out such precedent in the treatment of the 
 epistemological problem presented by the subject-object dualism, 
 has motived the setting up of a number of defective and limited 
 theories of knowledge. Within a dualistic experience it is 
 possible always for consciousness to proceed in either of two 
 directions, so that we are to expect materialistic and mechanical 
 theories on the one hand and idealistic and humanistic theories 
 on the other. But the several theories which proceed by 
 emphasizing the one term of the dualistic experience to the 
 exclusion of the other have been weighed in the balance and 
 found wanting, and as after similar attempts at a solution of 
 earlier dualisms, so now, there is a general movement toward 
 a more idealistic solution.- Repeated attempts have been made 
 to identify the self with some content, either intellectual or 
 volitional, and in either instance, it has been found that neither 
 
 ' Chapter iv. 
 
 ' C(. Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy, p. xiv. 
 
148 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIES'CE. 
 
 thought nor vohtion is ahle to completely harmonize its own 
 content. The conclusion has thus been reached, that reality 
 as an absolute experience, can be neither thought nor will, but 
 some form of immediacy of experience, in which both alike are 
 completed. So long as thought remains thought it is neces- 
 sarily less than the whole of reality which it seeks to know, so 
 that reality must always contain an aspect which can not be 
 apprehended in thought. Moreover thought is always general, 
 while reality must necessarily be also singular and immediate. 
 But while thought is always seeking to comprehend the singular, 
 it is found that the singular can not as such become the actual 
 content of thought and so remains as an 'intent' meaning in 
 consciousness.' 
 
 And likewise of the will. For as has been indicated, the 
 will implies the possession of and the motivation by the contrast 
 between existence as it at present is and as it should be for the 
 actualization and realization of ends in experience. It also, 
 like thought, implies a separation of content and its references,^ 
 while reality can only be found in :in experience in whicli these 
 two aspects are finally united in :in immediacy ot will, nn 
 experience in which, as Professor Royce says, 'the will wills its 
 own will,' or better, an experience in which the will by willing 
 fulfills its own will. But an object in wliich the will finds itself 
 fully reflected is necessarily an ideal object and therefore a form 
 of 'intent' rather than content. Hence in the case of the Intel- 
 lectualists and the Voluntarists alike, reality, as an absolute 
 experience in which thought loses its generality and mediacy 
 and will its privacy and intent of struggle, is not reached. I'or 
 the one, reality remains a-logical, for the other a-volitional. In 
 short each fails to reduce the term of the dualism embraced by 
 the other. 
 
 Both types of epistemological theory agree that reality, as 
 the object of knowledge, must issue from the subject, while the 
 mystical resort in the case of each appears in the attempt to set 
 up an ideal object as an intent meaning, which somehow falls 
 beyond the process to which it makes its exclusive appeal. 
 
 ' See li.ildwin, Thought and Things, \'o\. II, di.ips. xiv, xv. 
 
 ' Prof. Haldwin's dualism of 'fact and end.' Ibid., \'oI. 11, chaps, xiii and .\iv. 
 
MODERX THOUGHT. 1 49 
 
 Such experience may be found in undifferentiated and unrelated 
 feeling, as an experience in which the several aspects of th()u<;ht 
 and volition are merged in an unbroken immediacy; hence both 
 alike tend to set up some such experience as the type of reality 
 in an absolute experience 
 
 Closer analysis reveals the fact that these two types of epistem- 
 ological theory represent severally aspects of human experi- 
 ence, either of which is meaningless and valueless apart from 
 the other. The apparently empty and meaningless outcome 
 of these several attempts point the way, at least, in which the 
 future solution of the epistemological problem of leHection lies. 
 Both thought and conduct are implicated in anv fruitful and 
 significant theory of reality. Some way out must be found 
 whereby consciousness ma^' regain its immediacy, without 
 breaking with its entire life of achievement, and thus falling 
 short of the full meanino; of thought and volition. The mystical 
 (in the sense of affectivistic), outcome of the Intellectualistic 
 and the Voluntaristic theories of knowledge and reality, is to be 
 inferred from the fact that neither can reach an absolute experi- 
 ence without breaking with the meanings already acquired in 
 consciousness. But why stop the constructive process at this 
 point .'' Since the dualism falls wholly within consciousness, 
 is in fact of consciousness' own making, why not look also 
 within consciousness for a hisrher mode of construction in which 
 the fragmentary and limited meanings are transcended .' More- 
 over it has been the burden of the present attempt to indicate 
 the fact that consciousness has reached the dualism of subject 
 and object only by transcending a series of earlier dualistic expe- 
 riences. Each such experience found its completion by a process 
 of reading forward of the meanings then present in conscious- 
 ness. The transcending of the earlier dualistic experiences was 
 not reached by ignoring the meanings then present, so that the 
 resulting construction, represented m each instance, not an 
 empty, but the fullest and richest possible experience. It 
 Mysticism means a theory of knowledge and reality reached 
 and realized only in unanalv/ed and undifferentiated feeling, 
 our outcome is not mystical; for the aesthetic experience 
 in the several stages of its development brings unity and 
 
150 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 completion to an otherwise incomplete and clualistic experi- 
 ence by setting up, in a schematic way, a farther and richer 
 meaning. In terms of the semblant consciousness a wav has 
 been found whereby consciousness may transcend itself without 
 ignoring or breaking with its already acquired meanings. Lack- 
 ing such method of treatment of meanings already present in 
 consciousness, both Bradley and Royce are driven in the ^nd 
 to set up a form of 'sheer sentience' and 'volitional immediacy' 
 in which the essential character and meaning alike of the Intel- 
 lect and Will are wanting. The conclusion of the present 
 attempt is, that in the aesthetic experience we have a mode of 
 conscious construction in which the dualistic character of 
 thought and will are transcended without sacrificing the essential 
 meanings of either.' 
 
 Such a solution of the epistemological problem presented by 
 the dualistic character of reflective experience, can be reached 
 only when both types of experience, isolated by the Intellectual- 
 ists and the Voluntarists respectively for methodological pur- 
 poses, become the subject-matter of a new and higher mode of 
 conscious construction. Knch successive determination of 
 thought has been reached only by an increasinjr determinateness 
 of its fwo-fold aspect, content and control. At each higher 
 mode of conscious determination both the content and the 
 control are deepened and furthered, the former by the taking 
 over into the objective, as a sphere of guaranteed content, what 
 had before been inner as the undetermined, the latter by a proc- 
 ess of retreating into a further 'inner' whose kernel is the sense 
 of agency and control. The significance of reflection is that it 
 marks that stage in the development of consciousness at which 
 the self, as the presupposition of control, is finally set over 
 against the whole of its content as made up respectively of mind 
 and body. To reduce matter to mind or mind to matter or 
 both to some mystical principle, leaves the epistemological prob- 
 lem unsolved, since the dualism of subject and object remains 
 unmediated. 
 
 ' Vide, Tavlor, Elements of Metaphystcs, p. 413; Bradley, A ppenrance and 
 Reality, p. 172; Ro)xe, The If or I J and the Itidividu(d, \'ol. I, p. 42; and Baldwin, 
 Thought and Things (\'o\. I, I'nfacc, and Vol. II, Appendix, II). 
 
MODERX THOLGHT. 151 
 
 It has been the purpose of this historical invcstitjatii)n to 
 show that thought, ahke in the individual and the race, has 
 reached the mode of reflection with its characteristic dualism 
 of subject and object, onlv by passing through a series of earlier 
 dualistic experiences in each of which the epistemological prob- 
 lem arose anew, while the solution of such experience was 
 sought bv a resort to the aesthetic experience. 1 he epistcm- 
 ological consciousness is alwa\'s dualistic, while the demand 
 of consciousness is for a self-centered and self-controlled world. 
 The unification and objectihcation of the world, in terms of the 
 inner control factor, became the epistemological problem within 
 each of the earlier dualistic experiences, and remains so when 
 reflection is reached. But, regarding a dualistic experience as 
 an incomplete experience, a conclusion reached both bv the 
 Intellectualists and the Voluntarists, it has already been shown 
 that such experience can complete itself only by the establish- 
 ment of a farther experience, which, while not as yet realized, 
 can nevertheless be accepted and treated as '// it were already 
 realized.' The object of knowledge in terms of which our finite 
 and fragmentary experience is completed and interpreted is, 
 as Kant already pointed out, the object of a possible experience, 
 mogliche Erfahruug. Knowledge is, therefore, a process of 
 idealization. Thought as mediate and relational, and therefore 
 finite, is always seeking an Other as its own completion. Hut 
 unless the "Absolute is content with making eyes at itself in a 
 mirror, or like a squirrel in a cage satisfied in revolving in a 
 circle of its own perfections,"' the Other must fall beyond the 
 process of thought. Thought and fact are not identical, and 
 for thought to make them so means the destruction of thought 
 itself. Here then is the dilemma of the Intt llcctualists: How 
 can thought posit an Other, which, while falling beyond prestnt 
 experience, is not independent of all experience .' BradUv 
 realizes the precise character of the problem set by a thorough- 
 going Intellectualism and reaches the conclusion that "thought 
 to get beyond its relational character and thus reach something 
 more than truth must be absorbed into a fuller experience." 
 
 Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 1 72. 
 
152 
 
 THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. 
 
 Tliouglit can, therefore, desire a consuinniation in wliicli ir is 
 lost, a whole of experience in which all the elements of finite 
 experience would be contained in an immediacy which is noth- 
 injj else than 'sentient experience.'' 
 
 The Voluntaristic theory of knowledge as most adequately 
 worked our hv Ro\cc is brought face to face with the same 
 dilemma, viz: How can tlic idea as an internal meaning set u]^ 
 an Other as an external meaning in w hich the internal meaningis 
 determinately embodied ' "In seeking its object," savs Professor 
 Rovce, "anv idea whatever seeks absolutely nothing but its own 
 explicit, and, in the end, complete determination as this conscious 
 purpose embodied in this one way. The complete content of the 
 idea's own purpose is the only object of which rlie idea can ever 
 take note. This alone is the Other that is sought." "What is, 
 or what is real, is as such the complete embodiment, in individual 
 form and in final fulfilment, of the internal meaning of finite 
 ideas." The Other of thought thus becomes a further meaning 
 in which all partial and fragmentary meanings are completely 
 embodied, but the fact remains that Professor Royce has nowhere 
 shown how it is possible for the ideas as finite meanings to set up 
 a completed experience and to treat it 'as if it were completely 
 present."'- Thus despite the difference of the premises from 
 which they start, both the Intellectualists and the Voluntarists 
 arrive at the same conclusion, viz., that experience whether of 
 the intellectual or volitional type can complete itself only in a 
 further experience; but lacking a method whereby present mean- 
 ings may be treated for the sake of further meaning both arrive 
 at a more or less empty and meaningless type of reality as an 
 absolute experience. 
 
 But the extremity of the intellectual and the voluntaristic 
 becomes the opportunity of the aesthetic, which appears with 
 the epistemological, and functions always as the organ ot worKI- 
 transcendencc and world-completion. In the instance of the 
 earlier dualistic experiences, reconciliation and completion were 
 secured, not in terms of meanings already acquired, but always 
 
 ' Ibid, cli. XV. 
 
 ' Royce, The World and the Individual, Lecture VII, on 'Tht Internal and 
 External Meaning of Ideas.' 
 
MODERX THOUGHT. I 53 
 
 by a schematic treatment of meanings already present for the 
 sake of further meaning. Each such reconcihation and unifi- 
 cation represents an increasing determinateness of the two 
 aspects of thought already distinguislied as content and control, 
 and the resulting immediacy of experience is due to the ereccion 
 of a 'semblant' object under the presupposition of 'inner' con- 
 trol with which the 'inner' as the subject of experience identifies 
 itself by a process variously named but coming into general 
 recognition of 'Einfiihling'' (Lipps), 'absorption'- (Mitchell), 
 and 'sympathetic or semblant projection'^ (Baldwin). 
 
 With the rise of reflection, and the subject-object dualism, 
 the subject term functioning in each instance as presupposition 
 of a control, there is a re-distribution of contents for the sake of 
 common reflection. Two types of meaning are present and 
 issue respectively in two types of judgment as the embodiments 
 of the theoretical and the practical interest respectively. But 
 it has been pointed out that in both thinking and acting the 
 subject is more than either thought or conduct. Neither type 
 of experience is able to render the whole of its own peculiar 
 meaning, while at the same time it tends to minimize the mean- 
 ing peculiar to the other. The essential point in the present 
 connection is that both types of experience are dualistic and 
 remain so, so that to destroy this dualistic character means to 
 deprive both of whatever meaning they have acquired. Any 
 postulate of reality as an absolute experience reached by such 
 procedure will necessarily be a-dualistic, whether exprcssctl m 
 terms of logical identity or mystical contemplation. 
 
 But our contention has been, and here the matter must end, 
 that consciousness has developed from its first immediacy, as 
 an a-dualistic experience, to the full-fledged dualism of subject 
 and object, only by a process of semblant construction, in which 
 the two aspects of thought are merged in a new and higher 
 immediacy. The 'that' and the 'what,' the existential reference 
 and the related content, have arisen and developed together. 
 The resulting epistemological probKiii becomes the reconcili.i- 
 
 ' Lipps, Raumaeslhettc u. geometrtscb-optiscbe Tauschiingen. 
 ' Mitchell, Growth and Structure of the MinJ, Lcct. viii. 
 ' Baldwin, Unpublished Lectures on Aesthetics. 
 
1^4 ^^£ AESTHETIC EXPERIESCE. 
 
 tion of these two factors of thought; hut it can not he reached 
 bv assigning the primacy to either. It is precisely in such 
 procedure that we are to seek for the rise of the partial and 
 inadequate epistemological theories of the present time. The 
 conviction is thus forced upon us that the epistemological prob- 
 lem can be solved only by the setting up of a mode of conscious 
 construcion in which the two aspects of thought are reconciled 
 and thus unified. Such mode of conscious determination is 
 found in the aesthetic experience, hence the conclusion is reached 
 that the epistemological and the aesthetic have arisen together 
 and that the latter has functioned always as the organ of world 
 unification and completion, thus satisfying the demands of the 
 two-fold aspect of all thought. 
 
 From this point of view, the aesthetic experience becomes 
 an absolute experience, but not in the sense that it is a 
 static and meaningless experience. Here I think is found the 
 fruitfulness of the present point of view in contrast with the 
 Intellectualistic or Voluntaristic or pure Affectivistic. New dual- 
 isms will continue to rise but as Professor Baldwin has shown, 
 such dualisms will be those of fact and not of meaning.' Hoth 
 types of meaning are now objective to the self as the presup- 
 position of control, so that we can conclude with the statement 
 of Professor Baldwin that with the rise of the aesthetic experience 
 consciousness has a way of finding its dynamics intelligible as a 
 truthful and so far a static meaning, and also of acting upon its 
 established truths as immediate and so far dynamic satisfactions; 
 thus reaching the only tenable absolute as an experience in 
 which all contrasted meanings as relative and instrumental are 
 removed. If we define the epistemological problem as the 
 problem of* transcending the subject,' of 'constituting the totality 
 which we call the real world,' of "forming the idea of an absolute 
 experience in which phenomenal distinctions are nurgetl, a 
 whole become immediate ar a higher stage without losing any 
 richness," or finally "the complete embodiment, in individual 
 form and in final fulfilment, of the internal meaning of finite 
 ideas," and further define the aesthetic experience as a mode of 
 
 • Baldwin, Thought anJ Things, Vol. II. Appendix, II. 
 
MODERX THOVGHT. 1 55 
 
 conscious determination in which a higher mode of immediacy 
 is reached by the merging of the duahsms and relativisms of 
 thought, hght is at once thrown upon the resort to the aesthetic 
 experience in the history of the development of the thought of 
 the race; and the thesis here presented, that tiie aesthetic has 
 arisen with the epistemological and functions as the epistem- 
 ological principle of world-completion and interpretation is 
 confirmed. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
 
 William Davis Furry was born June 21, 187^, at PVostburg, 
 Maryland. Prepared for college in the Public Schools of Wash- 
 ington County, Maryland, and under the private instruction 
 of Professor Auiiustus Schaeffer in Latin and Mathematics and 
 Professor Charles Veneziani in Greek and French. He grad- 
 uated from the University of Notre Dame (Indiana), \sirh the 
 degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1900, receiving honorable men- 
 tion in Greek, Political Science and Philosophy. Was I*rofes- 
 sor of advanced Latin and Greek in Ashland College, Ashland, 
 Ohio, i900-'o2, and Professor of Philosophy and Psychology 
 l902-'04. Was a graduate student in Philosophy in the Uni- 
 versity of Chicago at times from i90i-'o4. Received the Mas- 
 ter of Arts degree from the University of Notre Dame, 1904. 
 Entered the Johns Hopkins University in October, 1904, as a 
 graduate student in Philosophy, including Psychology, Experi- 
 mental Psychology and Biology. He held the Fellowship in 
 Philosophy and Psychology, i9o6-'o7, and received the degree 
 of Doctor of Philosophy, 1907. After receiving his doctor's 
 degree he was awarded the Henrv E. 'Johnston, Jr., Research 
 Scholarship. 
 
 It is a most pleasant duty for the writer to acknt)wkdge his 
 indebtedness to the Professors in the Department of Philoso- 
 phy and Psychology in the Johns Hopkins University: to Pro- 
 fessor Griffin under whom he has done work in Modern Phil- 
 osophy; to Professor Stratton for the interest which he has 
 shown in this piece of work throughout its preparation; and to 
 Professor Baldwin, not only for the helpfulness of his criticism 
 and suggestions in preparing this work for the press, but more 
 especially for the untiring and sympathetic care with which he 
 has directed the writer's philosophical studies during his resi- 
 dence in the Johns Hopkins University. 
 
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