UC-NRLF I.I HRARV OK THK University of California. RECEIVED BY EXCHANGE Class 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 OF THE UNIVERSITY or THE REVIEW PUBLISHING CO. BALTIMORE 1908 r PRESS or WIIXI&MS * W11.KIN9 COMPANY BALnUORE ar *■ 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 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. 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\' 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 . 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. 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 trecomes 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{ '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. " THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH SCerdue. ^° " °° °'' ^"^ ^^^^^^" ^^^ J^-t^ ! '<^(. 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