LIBRARY or Tin: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Received.... -"JVQK.S^fcg -,---, 18 Accessions No. ^-fj/d Shelf No. L I METAPHYSICA NOVA ET VETUSTA METAPHYSICA NOVA ET VETUSTA A RETURN TO DUALISM BY SCOTUS XOVANTICUS So r* ,j -^s. o/uA/t> SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND EXTENDED WILLIAMS AND NOKGATE 14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON AND 20 SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH 1889 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. IN the first edition I dealt in a brief, if not perfunctory, way, with the mental experiences which precede the emergence of Reason, being- anxious to hasten to my main argument. In this second edition I speak more fully of the phenomena of Feeling, and I have been led, in this connection, to modify my view as to the source of the consciousness of Being. This affects the language in several chapters, and has made necessary a revised statement of the categories. The improvements and additions made I need not specify here, as they will speak for themselves. The argument of the book remains what it was, but the statement is fuller and largely recast. As to the argument itself, I would only add, in the words of Professor Seth, 1 "All that can be 1 From Kant to Hegel, p. 66. vi Preface to Second Edition. asked of philosophy is, by the help of the most complete analysis to present a reasonable syn- thesis of the world as we find it." In his admirable Study of Religion Dr. Mar- tineau criticises some of my positions. I have not formally replied to him ; but, taking the advice of Professor Flint in Mind, I have, in view of Dr. Martineau's objections, written a little less concisely than in the first edition. S. S. LAURIE. UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, April 1889. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. " EACH individual must go through a process of reflection for himself in order to realize [the definite principles at the root of knowledge] ; but in so doing he rises above his mere in- dividual experience and puts himself in the sphere of universal knowledge for Man. He unites himself with Mind in Humanity. There is no mere individualism in such a system : there is rather the lifting up of the individual from his narrow sphere to the realm of the universal and the eternal/' This quotation might almost serve by itself as a preface to the following Excursus, but I will add a few words : The synthesis required for the perception of objects was the aim of Kant's Analytic, and he 1 Professor Veitch's Hamilton. viii Prejace to First Edition. certainly was right in maintaining that such synthesis was impossible to mere Sensibility. It seems to me, however, that he was wrong in concluding that there was no possible real con- tent of knowledge save in and through Sensibility (d priori and d posteriori). Not only do we know the functions of Eeason as such, but (as I shall attempt to show) these functions throw into Consciousness pure percepts which are them- selves rea] and true content of knowledge ; and which, further, are not merely regulative, but constitutive, of the external. I do not pretend to find, or to shoot from a pistol, any fundamental idea of Eeason out of which all diversity is derivable by inner deter- mination. This would be Speculation. My standpoint is psychological, and my metaphysic is psychological or phenomeriological metaphysic. I know of no way of ascertaining truth regarding Mind save by looking steadily and long at Mind and recording what I see. The reduction of all truth of nature and spirit alike to a unity is perhaps a logical possibility ; but, before it can be even attempted, we must first humbly seek Preface to First Edition. ix and loyally accept from nature and spirit the facts of nature and spirit. On the other hand, let me say, that, while I would designate the following investigation phenomenological or psychological metaphysic, I am not to be understood as holding that either scientific Psychology or Ethics is possible save as grounded in Metaphysic ; or rather, I might say, a true metaphysic (not "in the air") is at bottom psychology, and a true psychology is fundamentally metaphysic. May 1884. CONTENTS. FIRST PART. PAOK CHAP. I. EVOLUTION OF MIND 1 CHAP. II. GENERAL STATEMENT AS TO THE RISE OF REASON IN THE CONSCIOUS SUBJECT . . . . . .28 CHAP. III. THE ACT OF PERCIPIENCE 33 CHAP. IV. THE FORM OF PERCIPIENCE . . . .40 CHAP. V. THE PRIMARY LAWS OF REASON IN RELATION TO THE FORM OF PERCIPIENCE 49 CHAP. VI. SEPARATING AND NAMING 52 CHAP. VII. SENSATION AND PERCEPTION . . . .57 CHAP. VIII. UNITY IN THE PERCEPTION OF THE MANIFOLD. THE SENSE-SYNTHESIS OR CONCEPT 60 SECOND PART. DUALISM. i. Extension and Externality, n. Knowledge of the External Object. Relativity, in. The Phenomenal is ipso facto Relative Not -so. iv. Recapitulation . . .70 THIRD PART. CHAP. I. THE COMMON OR GENERAL THE PROCESS GENERALLY 92 CHAP. II. THE NATURE OF THE ACT OF PERCEIVING THE COMMON OR GENERAL MORE FULLY CONSIDERED . . 97 xii Contents. PAGE CHAP. III. THE ABSTRACT-PERCEPT, AND THE ABSTRACT- CONCEPT 102 ("HAP. IV. FORM OF MEDIATION AS THE FORM OF PERCEPTION, COMPARISON, ABSTRACTION, GENERALIZATION, REASONING, AND CAUSAL INDUCTION 115 CHAP. V. MEDIATION AS GENERAL FORM OF PERCIPIENCE OR KNOWING (Repetition) 122 FOUKTH PART. THE MATTER AND SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE. 1. Phenomena of Inner and Outer Sense. 2. Natural History of the Consciousness of Space. 3. On the Locus of a priori Percepts 127 FIFTH PAKT. DIALECTIC PERCEPTS OR SYNTHETIC PREDICATIONS A PRIORI (Intellectual Intuitions). Preliminary .... 141 CHAP. I. BEING OR SUBSTANCE IN FEELING AND IN THE DIALECTIC OF PERCIPIENCE 145 CHAP. II. BEING, UNIVERSAL AND NECESSARY . . .154 CHAP. III. BEING : POTENTIALITY : THE ABSOLUTO-INFINITE 156 CHAP. IV. THE SENSUOUS INFINITE SPACE . . . .165 CHAP. V. DURATION AND TIME : NECESSARINESS AND INFINITENESS OF THESE 168 Further Remarks on the Sensuous Infinite . . .176 CHAP. VI. CAUSE AS A DIALECTIC PERCEPT OR SYNTHETIC A PRIORI PREDICATE. 1. The Causal Predicate. 2. The Causal Nexus. 3. The Law of Uniformity in Nature 180 CHAP. VII. END .199 Contents. xiii SIXTH PART. PAGE ON THE CATEGORIES : CHAP. I. GENERAL STATEMENT AS TO THE CATEGORIES . 203 CHAP. II. PARALLELISM OF SENSE AND REASON . . 209 CHAP. III. THE CATEGORIES: A. Categories of Recipience ...... 216 B. Categories of Percipience Dialectic Percepts or Synthetic a priori Categories ....... 220 Categories of Percipience or a priori Synthetic Predicates 225 CHAP. IV. REDUCTION TO UNITY 229 SEVENTH PART. CHAP. I. THING ESSENCE IDEA DEFINITION : 1. Thing. 2. Essence. 3. Idea (a) In reference to Abstract- Percept ; (b) In reference to Abstract-Concept. 4. Essence (continued). 5. Definition .... 237 CHAP. II. RETROSPECT 257 CHAP. III. NATURE . . . .- . . .260 EIGHTH PART. CHAP. I. TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS (so CALLED) AND SOLUTION OF THE INSOLUBLE 266 1. Conditions of Perceiving (a) Synthesis in Quantity; (b) Synthesis in Time ; (c) The Atom ; (d) Identity. 2. Sensualizing the Dialectic (a) The Causal Predicate : (b) Being ; (c) Ens realissimum ; (d) Kant's psycho- logical Paralogism. CHAP. II. THE TRANSCENDENT AND THE IDEAL . . . 288 FIRST PART. CHAP. I. EVOLUTION OF MIND. 1. To define Consciousness, save negatively or, if positively, otherwise than by equivalent terms, is impossible. An organism which is " aware of " other things than itself is conscious. But if we would simplify still further the description by expressing it more fundamentally, we should have to give it a wider sweep and say that every organism that feels is conscious. Feeling is a comprehensive term. Again, we might say, negatively, that consciousness, in the wide sense, is that state of an organic being which cannot be explained as purely mechanical or dynamical. Positively, again, we may say that consciousness, in the more restricted sense, is a feeling in an organism of something as being not that which feels although this " other " may be within the organism. For present purposes it is enough to say that Con- sciousness in its most general sense is Feeling, and that outside this feeling a man cannot go in his endeavour to explain himself and the series or system of which he is a part. I may also add, consensu omnium, that where there is consciousness there is Mind as distinguished from Matter (whatever matter may be). A 2 Evohition of Mind. E.g. we are conscious of hunger and thirst, and fatigue and vigour, of pain and pleasure, of hope, of despair, of anger and fear, of motives, of resistance, of the varied external world, etc. etc. 2. There are successive grades or stages of conscious- ness from the lowest animal form of it to Man. These stages are infinitely graduated. We shall content our- selves with differentiating the important movements as these present themselves to the observer the critical points in the progress of Consciousness, the mind-crises in the infinitely graduated evolution. 3. Both in the mechanical and organic world there is action and reaction there is the impression of one thing on another, and resistance to that impression. In the organic world we see this impression and reaction against impression in a highly complex form ; e.g. the sensitive plant, physiological processes in plants and animals, etc. Plants and animals receive impressions and react upon them without Feeling that is to say, mechanically or dynamically. This response to an outer or inner stimulus (stimulus arising within the organism) is called reflex or automatic action. It may be regarded as a kind of anticipation of Consciousness. 4. Inasmuch as in a conscious organism the impres- sion necessarily precedes the feeling in time, we may now describe Consciousness in its rudimentary stage as Evolution of Mind. 3 reflex-action in and through Feeling. The impression * made on the organic subject is no longer merely dynami- cal ; it is felt ; that is to say, it passes into the recipient basis of Feeling, and is thrown out from it as a felt there an object. Note. This feeling is dim, obscure, and groping in its initial forms, as we may see by watching animals during the first hours and days of their existence. 5. The stages of consciousness are accompanied by stages of nerve-development. And it is only in animals whose nerve-system has a centre, i.e. cephalous animals, that we can be said to find the rudiments of positive feeling or consciousness, e.g. the snail and whelk. The transition from purely dynamical reflex action to this rudimentary consciousness we can only note : we can- not explain it. 6. The first or rudimentary stage of feeling, as con- sciousness, seems to be a feeling of a unit of sensation only, as when a snail puts forth its horns and becomes aware of an object in its path. This stage of Feeling the feeling of a unit only I may call (for want of a better word) SENSIBILITY. This is Sensation in its simplest form. The feeling is within the organism of the snail, but it reflects that feeling into the external. 1 It is impossible to avoid using the word "impression"; but all I mean to convey by it is that a non- subject becomes for the subject. 4 Evolution of Mind. But the external stimulus cannot yet strictly be called an " object " to the snail a " subject." A step has been taken towards this, and that is all. Note. Some day, when the psychology of animals has been thoroughly investigated in correlation with their nerve-structure, it may be possible to trace the gradual ascent from this elementary sensation to that much higher stage of which the next paragraph treats. 7. At the same stage as that at which animals become provided with developed avenues for different kinds of external impressions, especially with eyes (e.g. dogs and horses), a vast number of units of impression pass into their brains and are felt, i.e. find their terminus in the conscious being the central unity of the organism. 8. At the stage of elementary sensation (or con- sciousness as sensibility) a unit of impression finds its terminus in a unitary basis of receptivity or feeling. At the advanced stage of which I am now speaking, numer- ous, or rather innumerable, units of impression proceed- ing from external objects find their terminus in a beent 1 basis of feeling which, itself a unity, receives the com- plex many as a single. The multitude of units are aggregated into a one object outside, and they are received, as so aggregated in a single, within the basis of receptivity. 9. This basis and capacity of receptivity in general 1 I have to apologise for this awkwardly constructed word first used by Dr. Hutchison Stirling ; " essent " might be misleading. Evolution of Mind. 5 exists before it acts, as does also the basis of conscious- ness as sensibility. As existing prior to emergence into activity in response to a stimulus, it is to be called Consciousness, or Mind, potential. 10. Consciousness at the advanced stage (7), in which it receives and reflects a complex of units as a single, is to be likened to a mirror. It is a reacting or reflecting mirror in this sense, however, that it has not only in itself a feeling of an impression, a " somewhat not itself," but further reacts so as to place that impression outside itself as an " object " in the place from which it came. The cohering units of sensation, which constitute the impression a, are felt more or less vaguely in the recep- tive consciousness, and then flung out into space. This a is localised at its point of origination, e.g. a stone a stone there precisely as it is felt. Consciousness-proper now operates ; it is a feeling of an impression as a " somewhat there," an object. The stone there exists as I feel it within here, but it may be said to have been raised in the scale of being by be- coming an object not simply in relation to other material objects in space, but an object in, to, and for, a consciousness or mind. Consciousness-proper, then, may be said to be the capacity of an organism to feel what is not itself as not itself, and implies a duality, viz., the recipient one basis of feeling and a thing felt as not that basis of feeling, but something else and other than it. By what process a potential feeling - basis is so 6 Evolution of Mind. affected by a force from without as to be transformed into the actual feeling of an external object unlike itself, is unintelligible. We have to speak of the process in metaphorical language. 11. Observe now what has happened: the cohering units of sensation there are co-ordinated as a " single in many " in my recipient consciousness received as synchronous and co-ordinated, as a " many in a single," in consciousness as in a mirror. The result on the side of consciousness may be called a synopsis. For this act the consciousness of the complex object as an object-there, I reserve the name of Sense-attuition the completed form of sensation. [The feeling of a many-in-a-single got by merely looking at it naively.] Consciousness in this its attuitional stage is conscious- ness-proper, as I have said. The term Attuition, in fact, covers the whole sphere of Mind prior to the appearance of Eeason. 12. To say that I am now conscious of an object is an imperfect record: I feel the object as being, the being of the object. Sense-attuition, or simply " attuition," is a feeling of the Being of an object which, by reflection or reaction, is placed outside me at its point of origination. This feeling of the leing of the object may be called the consciousness of immediateness of being so and there. 13. But the feeling of the immediateness of the being of the object outside is not 'knowledge of that Evolution of Mind. 7 object : it is simply vague, indefinite, obscure feeling ; and that is all. If we take the object in all its com- plexity, but as a single synopsis, it may be said to be thrown on the sensorium as a figure is thrown from a magic-lantern on a sheet. It is the mirror-like receiving and reflection of a complex object as "being which I wish to denote by the term attuition. 14. The resultant of attuitional consciousness, e.g. a stone or a stick, a man or a moon a many in a single, I have called a synopsis of the object : it may be also called an attuit, since it is the achieved outcome of consciousness as attuitional or attuent. 1 5. This attuition is the form of all subsequent know- ledge of the real that is to say, of all that Becipience can yield to mind, prior to knowing or reason. 16. The feeling of Being is not simply an inner feel- ing of Being, but of Being reflected into the outer, into that which is not my feeling. This at the mere attui- tional stage of Mind. [The activity of Eeason has yet to emerge, to yield us the positive affirmation of the " being- there."] I am not concerned then about what becomes of particular Being when I turn my back on it and look in another direction. It is first felt there as an external substantive, and then subsequently (when reason emerges) affirmed there. I should be much surprised to learn that there was a possibility of its 8 Evolution of Mind. not being there always independently of me. Doubt- less, I am convinced that if I am absent others will see it; but this is not the ground of my conviction and certainty of its independent thereness, but a consequence of it. But here I anticipate somewhat. 1 17. Through feeling, in the form of attuition, we get the Real, i.e. Phenomenon generally. 18. The whole range of pure receptivity is merely this sense-attuition ; and man, if he were to be summed up as a consciousness at this stage of the evolution of mind in nature, would be merely an animal an attuent living organism, like a Dog. But, Man KNOWS. 19. Not only to the highest form of sensation, viz., attuition, does what I say apply, but also in a rudi- mentary way even to its initial form as sensibility (8). I have said that bare reflex action in response to 1 That the reality of Being (as distinguished from Nothing) lies in a ''presupposition of relations" is, I understand, the argument of Lotze (p. 33). If a babe opens his eyes for the first time on an object, he sees certainly what, as a matter of fact, lie subsequently knows in a vague way to exist as a system of relations ; but he feels the being of that confused object quite irrespective of these relations, or rather through them, or any unit in them. Lotze seems here to affirm as a fundamental category of perception, and, consequently, of all knowledge, that there is an a priori Form of Relation ; in other words, of parts, and an organised totality of parts. How else, indeed, could there be presupposition ? According to Lotze, there could be no feeling of the being of a unit : consequently, no legiti- mate affirmation of the being of a unit. From which it surely follows that, as there cannot be being of a unit, there can also be no being of relations ; for relations arise only as a system of units. Evolution of Mind. 9 stimulus may be regarded as a kind of anticipation or prediction of consciousness. We see in sensibility the lirst emergence of mind in nature ; and its modus is that of reflex action. A basis of recipient feeling is stimulated by impact or impression outside itself, and reacts ; but now reacts in and through the feeling of that impression as not itself as there. This "basis" feels the " being-so-and-there " in its immediateness. How am I to regard this receptive basis? If the reader grant me the fact of Being-universal, I then must regard it as simply Being which, advancing beyond the fetters of the merely mechanical determination in the inorganic and the vegetable organic, is now individuated (nucleated) in and through a material organism, in such a way as to feel the being of things consequently to react only after and through the feeling. In short, we have Being-individuated which feels "being so and there" (i.e. the various sense-impressions), in its immediateness. 20. All our attuits are within us. Of course; how else could we feel except by feeling ? But by and in the very same process by and in which we feel the being of the attuits we reflexly place them outside us in space as beings, or characters or qualities of a being, inde- pendent of us, the recipients in brief (as has been already said) as objects. 21. The primary function, then, of the feeling-basis at the stage of consciousness- proper is not a simple io Evolution of Mind. matter. There is first Being individuated (this, of course, as a subsequent discovery), lying in the slumber of potentiality as recipient unitary basis : there is then an impression or impact which stirs the recipient basis from without, and thereupon the potential passes into the actual in this form, viz., reflex action throws out the impression into space as a not-here but a there, and so constitutes it Object, and in the same movement feels it as " being-so " (determined in one way and not in another a somewhat). We know nothing of what goes on until the emergence of this complex result, viz., the feeling of being " so and there." These three elements " being," " so," and " there " are all contained in the first entry of consciousness-proper on the theatre of existence. The impression becomes an " object " in the very act, moment, and crisis of re-flection and the co-relative "subject" is at once therein and there- through made possible 22. This reflex action of the recipient unitary basis is not pure activity an activity originating in that which acts but a mere response to stimulus in and through feeling: therefore passive-active activity. 23. Inner feeling also, embracing all the passions and affections, no less than feelings of outer things, arise in us on presentation of a stimulus some shape or move- ment or condition. They reach the consciousness or feeling-basis as impressions. So with the involuntary images or representations of what has once been pre- sented to consciousness or feeling. But we do not Evolution of Mind. 1 1 confound such subject-objects with real objects except in abnormal conditions of the organism. 24. The pure activities of consciousness also (of which we shall soon speak) become part of our experience as felt by us and as being. The whole realm of experience is in truth a record of Feeling primarily a presentation to, or datum in feeling or consciousness ; and, second- arily, representation and imagination. 25. The basis of Eeceptivity or Feeling is always essentially passivo-active in its form or mode. This basis receptive passivo-active attuent basis we may now distinguish once for all by the name " Conscious Subject " the term " Subject " now emerging because there is an " Object." As correlatives the one is neces- sarily nil without the other. But it is the greatest of metaphysical fallacies to conclude that the individual Subject is constituted by the Object, or, vice versa, the Object by the Subject. 26. Man, as a merely conscious subject, is an animal; the highest animal, because his capacities for feeling are more potent, more subtle, delicate, sensitive, and various than are those of other animals. But it is only in degree that he differs, thus far, from a horse or a dog. The infant man is in the purely animal or attuent passivo- active state, though in him there is the sum of all nature and the potentiality of reason. 27. Man, then, in so far as he is merely a conscious 12 Evolution of Mind. subject, is nothing more than a receptive and reacting basis of impressions : and as such an entity a thing that is reflecting things that are : a unit of being, Being individuated reflecting the real or phenomenal shapes that be. A stone is alone in its desolate isolation the conscious subject holds communication with all created things. 28. True, it may be said that the sensibility (or capacity for feeling) contains the form of all sensibles. For sensibles can be sensed only to the extent to which the finite subject can sense, and in the way in which it senses. Of course, God Himself can be only as He is. But it is a wholly illegitimate conclusion that sense is not a true reflection of that which is sensed, but rather to be regarded as a constituting of the object by sense at the solicitation of some prick or pricks of stimulation. That feeling as a sense-capacity makes the object possible for feeling (an identical proposition) does not carry with it the conclusion that the said object is constituted ly feeling out of x, y, z. The object is constituted for the subject in and through feeling : that is all. So under- stood, the subject as sense is the form of all sensibles (Aristotle), just as (we shall in the sequel see) the Subject as activity is the pure (transcendental) form of all activities. When I make self an object to self, and so am con- scious of self, I am conscious of the object as the sub- ject and the subject as the object. Very different, nay, quite other, is the record of mere sense. Evolution of Mind. 1 3 29. As conscious subject man is not yet rational. The characteristic note of the experience of the mere subject is immediateness. To say that at this stage man and the higher animals are wholly destitute of " Keason," is, however, to draw too hard and fast a line between the non-rational and the rational. There is in nature an "infinite" gradation (I here use the word "infinite" in the sense that the gradation is such as to be non-determinable by finite reason) ; and there is also in the sphere of consciousness, which is the sphere of mind as distinguished from matter, a similar infinite- ness of gradation. The prominent and essential note of Keason, when it emerges clearly, is that it attains its end (as we shall see) mediately. 30. There is, as all may see, in the merely conscious pre-rational subject an adaptation of itself and its needs to its environment, which is an anticipation of Eeason, just as reflex nerve-action in the plant or acephalous mollusc is an anticipation of rudimentary consciousness. In many acts of animals we find an inference, in others we find a medium used for the attainment of an end, as when a parrot takes a stick to scratch the back of his head where his claw cannot reach, or an elephant throws leaves on his back to protect it from the heat of the sun, and so forth. But all this is (like the experience of the conscious subject generally) immediate. The inference is an immediate inference from the particular to the particular. There is here, however, the germ or anticipation of Eeason. 14 Evo iiit ion of Mind. 31. The non-rational conscious subject, if restricted to its own proper sphere, may even attain to a keener sensibility, and consequently a more ready adaptation of itself to its own experiences and environment, than the rational subject. The explanation of this is that the introduction of what we call " Eeason " inevitably leads to the exercise of mind on the experiences of the subject: it thus supersedes the full natural activity of feeling-adaptations. Eeason intercepts the teachings of nature, so to speak, and suspends the full intensity of the capacities and aptitudes of the subject as a merely conscious entity fighting its way in a crowd. By observ- ation of the higher animals we are able to see how great a command of his experiences man, if he were non- rational, might attain to. If they can accomplish so much, and through heredity hand down an aptitude once attained (it matters not whether this tradition be in the molecules of the embryo, or acquired by imita- tion, and so transmitted to the embryo), how much more than they might not Man, as the most delicately organ- ised of all animals, attain to, if he had not reason ! 32. These are questions of the highest importance, viz., What, hoiv much, and how, the immediate experi- ence of the conscious subject is, prior to the emergence of Keason? To find answers to these questions is the task of the psychologist, and it is only in the process of time that, by the investigations of successive inquirers, the answers can be fully given. But we may venture to summarise in general terms a certain answer Evolution of Mind. 15 to these questions quite sufficient for the purposes of Metaphysic. 33. I say that the answers to the above questions the general answer, not the details, either psychological or physiological are of the highest importance; and this because, until we have clear conceptions regarding the functions of the conscious subject, simply as such, in providing us with the materials the real of our experience through Feeling, as a merely recipient re- acting or reflex subject, we shall not be in a position to avoid attributing to Keason what Eeason does not truly contribute. This defect in prior analysis leads, and must inevitably lead, to endless confusion as to the specific functions of Eeason in man, and a misreading of its revelations to him as interpreter of his experience and guide of his life. Nor can it be doubted that the painful and harassing confusion of psychological writers is largely due to the ignoring of the respective spheres of the non-rational and the rational in mind-products. 34. The conscious subject, simply as such, is recipient, and recipient and re-flective only. Any activity which it displays is (as I have said) passive activity. It reflects what impresses it in the form and shape in which it is impressed (i.e. it is only by some subsequent discovery that I can possibly doubt this). The stone outside me impresses me as a coherent aggregate of units of sensa- tion or impression which the subject throws back into the space out of which it has emerged in the form in 1 6 Evolution of Mind. which it has impressed it, that is to say as a single in many a totality a synopsis. (Not yet as a " one " or unity.) 35. Everything that reaches my consciousness from the outer reaches it as spaced or extended. Individual objects are spaced and they are in a surrounding space. But this surrounding space is not space in any sense other than the space of the particular object, e.g. the stone. It is as much a "thing" as the space in, or of, the stone is a thing. By this I do not mean that space is a thing, but merely that space, in whatever form it reaches my consciousness, reaches it as a spaced or extended " somewhat," or a " somewhat " extended, though there be yet in it no differentiation. In short, space is, like all the impressions made on consciousness from without, a Predicate. There is no such "thing" as abstract space in rerum natura ; abstract space as con- ceived when Eeason comes on the field is, like any other abstract, an outcome of a process of abstraction from reality, not itself reality. 36. I am conscious, in fact, merely of a mass of pre- dicates variously presented to me in innumerable objects. I feel a manifold of impressions ; but I do more : for it has been pointed out that in the very act of so feeling I place them outside me by the reflex action to which I have already more than once adverted. The feeling of an impression is thus a feeling of the impression as a being and object or phenomenal shape outside there. Evolution of Mind. 1 7 The attuit is a thing of consciousness, but it is also an external object, and an object precisely as it is an attuit, unless I can, when Eeason emerges, show that it is other- wise than as I primarily feel it and naively reflect it. 37. The primary experience has, as I have said, a look of simplicity, but it is not simple. It is a feeling in my subject but also a synchronous reflection ; it is this feeling which, in the act or crisis of reflection, becomes an object. 38. But this is not all. If it were, the conscious subject would be only the surface on which played an endless phantasmagoria. As a matter of fact (as has already been said), there is in every feeling of an object a feeling of the BEING of the object. So there is a feeling of the being of the subject, but not as yet raised out of the vagueness (little more than potenti- ality) of a basis or ground (because it is not yet an " object "). 39. It is this feeling of the being of an object which is the feeling or consciousness of its actuality, as dis- tinguished from its phenomenality (reality). It is as being that it is a res or thing, and not phantasmagoria. Whatever may be the difficulties which Eeason after- wards may raise, and having (often perversely) raised, attempt to solve, the primary experience contains the feeling of an object as bee'nt or actual. The object is ; through its isness it is an actual. B 1 8 Evolution of Mind. 40. The primary experience, then, of the conscious subject is, as I have already pointed out, threefold the feeling of an impression ; the feeling of that im- pression as not itself, but separate from itself, outside there, i.e. as object ; and the feeling of that object as being or actual. The feeling of Being is universal, and it is immediate; by which last term I mean that it belongs to the merely conscious or attuitional subject as such, and is not mediated by any act of Reason ; but is wholly prior to the emergence of Eeason. 41. If we desire to gather together the various com- munications made to consciousness through feeling, and as merely a Recipient, we cannot, probably, do better than take the classification of all such data given by Aristotle in his Predicaments; better, perhaps, as modified in the sequel. 42. I have been speaking as yet almost wholly of outer sense or feeling of those impressions which we receive through our external senses, including the impressions of our own bodies as extended things, not ourselves. But besides outer sense we have materials presented to our consciousness by inner sense. Here we encounter in a very pronounced form the question of conscious entity or mind and material or physical entity, which is not in itself mind but merely extension or motion. The one is not the other, and yet they are so mutually involved (as being the phenomenon consti- tuting one actuality) that we cannot say that any act Evolution of Mind. 19 even of pure reason (when it finally emerges) does not implicate what is called (the real of sense) "matter"; while again there are certain movements of matter of the cerebral nerve tissue which originate, through memory and association, the activity of Eeason, just as an actual presentation does. But even prior to the emergence of Reason we can say that wherever con- sciousness is, however it may be stimulated into life, there is mind. For the demonstration that mind is the prius of matter, we are dependent on other considera- tions than those afforded to us by the merely aesthetic consciousness. Were it not for the subsequent emer- gence of Eeason, which is interpreter and guide, we should not be in a position even to start the question .as to the duality of mind and body spirit and matter. 43. But our chief concern at present is to ascertain what contributions inner sense or feeling makes to the matter in consciousness. When we contemplate these we find them to be difficult of enumeration in detail. But generally we may say : There are first the feelings which our bodies as organisms by their external affec- tions or inner motions originate : these may be called organo-genetic, and admit of being generalised as Bodily Complacency or Displacency. Among such feelings are the pains and pleasures of our bodies, caused by external relations, such as cold, warmth, and injuries and benefits generally, also hunger and thirst, and the pain and pleasure of their dissatisfaction or satisfaction. These organic feelings we place outside ourselves in our 2O Evolution of Mind. bodies as not ourselves at least, when we attain to self-consciousness in reason ; but they differ from other affections and impressions of the external in this, that we cannot escape them. They proceed from the matter which is bound up with us as part of our composite nature. As minds we say that they are presented to us just as outer nature is : they assail us : they are in us but not of us. They are of the nature of stimuli which call forth reflex action. As subjects of these objects (both in the primary and secondary sense of the term subject) we are part of the scheme of the natural life- mechanism of the world. 44. Then there are other feelings which, though arising in our consciousness without our intervention,, and simply on the presentation of certain objects things or acts are yet regarded as of the constitution of the conscious mind, and not merely presented to it and so- affecting it. Such are those feelings which are generally spoken of as affections, passions, and emotions. 45. Now, if we keep strictly within the aesthetic or attuent consciousness the mind common to us with animals we shall perhaps be able to ascertain the simple and rudimentary form of those feelings prior U> any interposition of Eeason in us. Indeed it is only by the help of comparative psychology, it seems to me, that we can be quite sure of discriminating these various feelings in their elementary simplicity. Proceeding on these lines we may hope to discriminate the primary Evolution of Mind. 2 1 feelings, but this, like other inductive investigations, can find its conclusion only after much attentive in- quiry. I do not, at all, pretend to be able to furnish a complete list of them. 46. But enough is ascertainable even now for meta- physical purposes. There are, for example, the primary feelings of Fear, Eesistance, Sympathy, Love of others, Love of the love of others, Hate, Expectation, Effort, Joy in expectation or fulfilment, and Grief in expecta- tion or failure, the pleasing feeling of Calm in equili- brium and the painful feeling of Disturbance when the equilibrium is shaken, the feeling of submission and dependence in the presence of manifest Power, which seems to me to be not wholly and alone Fear. All these affective feelings are exhibited by animals (in some form or other) as well as by man. Just as, how- ever, man's power (prior to the appearance of Keason) of receiving and re-acting on external impressions, and so relating himself to the external, is, by virtue of his higher organism, much greater and more subtle quantitatively and qualitatively greater than that of animals ; so, in the field of inner affections, he is quan- titatively and qualitatively the superior of other animals. In this, as in all his feelings, capacities and aptitudes he is the paragon of " animals." x 47. When Reason emerges (if 1 may here for a 1 To classify feelings under the categories Pleasure and Pain is an empty generalisation. It is content we want. We might as well classify them under Affirmation and Negation Yes and No. 22 Evolution of Mind. moment anticipate), these inner affections, being pene- trated by it, assume under it higher forms than the rudimentary manifestation of them in animals or babes. Expectation for example becomes Hope, Eesistance becomes Courage, Submission to superior power becomes Awe and Eeverence ; Sympathy, Love, and Love of the Love of others extend their bounds, and modify their character ; and other transformations are effected by the intrusion of Eeason and Purpose, while by our infinitely various relations to objects the most complex states arise. Practical ethics is the regulation and direction of the chaos of inner feeling as motive-forces of action under universals prescribed by Eeason ; just as Know- ledge is the regulation and direction of the whole sphere of inner and outer feelings with a view to possession under universals or categories prescribed by the same Eeason. Were we only sesthetic entities we should move, or rather be moved, from feeling to feeling simply as particulars, just as we should in relation to external presentations pass from particulars to particu- lars. Experience would no doubt teach us lessons and increase our aptitudes for satisfactory correlation of ourselves with the chaos of forces which drive us hither and thither ; but that is all. 48. It is evident that Knowledge must precede action if it is to be the action of a Eeason-endowecl organism; just as feeling or stimulus must precede action in a non-rational organism. And I may so far Evolution of Mind. 23 again anticipate as to say that if there be such a faculty as Eeason differentiating the man from the animal, it will introduce fresh facts and feelings into consciousness which must have a dominant place in determining conduct inasmuch as it proceeds from a supreme source. 49. Impressions of inner and outer sense once truly made are retained. This retention of impressions is called memory. It would appear that just as impres- sions are made through the channel of the nerve-system, so they are retained for reproduction in the nerve- system. Impressions seem to effect certain molecular changes on the cerebral tissue which, though displaced by others, yet are held in reserve by the brain for future use. (In the present state of physical science our language must be here very general.) It would appear that if the motions in the brain whereby impres- sion a was conveyed repeat themselves in the ordinary conscious life of the organism when the object is absent, a again makes its appearance in consciousness as an image of a reality now no longer present. Without this memory there could be no mental progress. Memory is mother of the Muses. The permanent retention of an impression depends (speaking still exclusively of the aesthetic consciousness) on its quantity and quality, that is to say, on the frequency of the repetition and the intensity or vividness of the impression. 50. This storehouse of impressions, out of which are presented continually to consciousness images of past 24 Evolution of Mind. realities without the intervention of any extraneous agency, is subject to certain laws or rules of appearance. That is to say, there is a tendency for certain impres- sions when they recur to suggest through some com- munity of cerebral action other impressions previously concurrent with them. Thus the continual movement of images of the past over the mirror of consciousness is not arbitrary, but like other processes of nature subject to certain rules. These we call the laws of suggestion, or association of ideas (images, represen- tations). 51. The record of merely attuent consciousness is not in the preceding paragraphs exhausted. Nothing is as yet brought to light in the empirical record of the outer, so far as we have gone, save Quantity, Quality, and Motion. There is also, however, Time and Kela- tion. But it is difficult to deal with these aspects of the recipient consciousness without reference to the action of Eeason. They will gradually come more clearly into view as we go on with the registration of the facts of Mind in its larger meaning. 52. The record of the sesthetic recipient or attuent Consciousness has yielded these results as mere matter of fact : Feeling-ground or Conscious Entity ; the Feeling of an impression ; the feeling of that impres- sion as Being ; the feeling of that beent impression as not the feeling-ground but as separate from it, negation Evolution of Mind. 25 of it, and as there ; in short as Object to a Subject. The various feelings, impressions, states of receptivity (real, phenomenal) may be generalized, I have said, under the Aristotelian predicaments under a modified statement of these. These predicaments are not known, for knowledge is not yet ; but our power of knowing has enabled us (here and now) thus to segregate these facts of feeling or receptivity. The memory of recepts and the association of these belong to the aesthetic or attuent consciousness, and may be seen operative in animals. All activity in the attuent stage is as yet of the nature of re-action : it is reflex action plus consciousness, that is to say, through and in Feel- ing. Accordingly, it follows that the ground of Feeling, the conscious entity which we call subject, is subject not merely in the sense of the here-ground of the there- object, but also subject to the object in the ordinary sense of the term. It is determined by it. It is under the object as a slave is under his master, it is in the hands of the object, it is moved hither and thither by the object with only enough reflex activity to adapt itself fairly well to its environment and so live. 53. Hence the impressions of outer and inner sense, though felt in their difference, are not set apart from one another and marked off or distinguished; they are not compared, they cannot be arranged under classes ; generals are impossible ; causal connexion save as mere succession of impressions cannot arise ; reasonings or mediate judgments are beyond its capacity. The world 26 Evolution of Mind. inner and outer is to this merely feeling or conscious entity incoherent individua. 54. And yet mind has in the higher animals made considerable progress. In its earliest stage it is merely re-action against a singular a unit of impression, but concurrently with the growth of the central nerve-system there has arisen an ever-extending capacity for im- pressions and the consequent re-actions. A snail and a dog exhibit conditions of receptivity and re-action far removed from each other. Just as an untrained man at whom a dozen balls are thrown catches only one, while the juggler catches all twelve, so an ever-increasing capacity for the synchronous reception (and reflection as objects) of impressions is manifest as we ascend in the scale of conscious life. The numerous units of impres- sion which together reach the consciousness of a dog from an object, e.g. a cart, are received together and reflected as they are received as a synopsis, so that an aggregate of such units becomes to the dog the object just as it exists in the world external to it in so far as it sees and feels it. A dog does not confound a man, a cow, a fellow-dog and a stone. So with infant-man. There is thus in the subject of a dog a passive-active co-ordination of the units that come to it synchronously which makes it conscious of a totality external to it. A synoptic totality or aggregate : and as such, a "single " made up of confused particulars but not yet a One or Unity. All this takes place in the sphere of mere feel- ing which I have distinguished when it reaches this Evolution of Mind. 27 advanced stage as attuition. A dog or a horse is a conscious attuent organism. Questions as to the " thing in itself " arise only as the result of the subsequent reflection of mind on its own experiences. They arise because of our impatience of the presentation of mere predicates (called " phenomena," a name which unhappily contains in it a fallacy). This impatience is quite justifiable. "We shall, however, see in the end that there is no " thing in itself " outside Being and thought-universal as determined by means of sensible predicates. This anticipatory observation applies in like manner to "substance" and, for that matter, to subject also. 28 General Statement as to the Rise of CHAP. II. GENERAL STATEMENT AS TO THE RISE OF REASON IN THE CONSCIOUS SUBJECT. 1. Is man more than an attuent organism ? If so, what ? And what is the significance of the " more " for him as an individual planted in the centre of the universal system of things ? What we call Reason has not yet appeared in con- sciousness. The life of an intelligent animal is wholly attuent and non-rational ; and indeed, even after Reason appears on the scene, the life of a man is largely attuent and non-rational, if he does not slam the door of Feeling in the face of universal and various being and transform himself into a mummy with the bare form of reason working like clockwork inside him. He is occupied in sleeping and caring for his body, and simply living in an automatic fashion without any conscious exercise of Reason. He is played upon by inner and outer sense, is part of the vast scheme of Nature, with infinite points of contact and com- munity with the universal. Nor is this to be regretted : for it is in this way that man maintains his connec- tion with the actual with nature through feeling. The pure activity of Reason if too pronounced excludes a man from the genial companionship of universal and infinitely various being. He is apt in such circum- Reason in the Conscious Subject, 29 stances to become starved ; and the soil of mind in its large sense becomes sterile for want of feeding. 2. We seek now the " essence " of the human mind ; and by this we mean its specific differentiation from consciousness, or mind in general. That essence is thinking: that is to say, it is (in its elementary form) an innate endeavour after clear and adequate percepts of things. Now this innate endeavour is certainly a process. Accordingly, we have as charac- teristics of thinking that it is an endeavour and a process. Let us look at this more closely. 3. At the point at which the attuent consciousness completes itself, we become aware of a new phenomenon in the sphere of mind. The conscious subject (or sub- ject-consciousness) exhibits a new function, a fresh power which, without altering its relation to the realm of the Eeal, gives a new character to that relation and a new meaning to the Eeal. This new function or power we call EEASON the human mind. 4. The psychological (and as will be seen the meta- physical) interest now is to ascertain what precisely this new phenomenon is what is its essential and differentiated character. If we can watch it in its genesis we shall learn more about its essence than by describing its modes of operation when it is already mixed with the real and has become difficult of extri- 30 General Statement as to the Rise of cation. A criticism of knowledge will yield us little as compared with a criticism of knowing. 5. Xow the essential character of the new exhibition of mind which we call Eeason is, that it is a movement in and from within the conscious subject, the final cause of which movement is the arrestment of the fluent matter or real in the attuent subject for the purpose of converting that material, from being a mere presentation of an object to the subject and domi- nating it, unto an object possessed ~by the subject and dominated % ^- This spontaneous movement or endeavour in and by and from within the subject is to be designated Will. Will, then, is the essential character of what we call Eeason ; Will is the root of Reason, and the total of Reason is simply Will, and the process whereby it fulfils itself, realizes, that is to say, its own final cause. The beginning of philosophy, Fichte says, is an act of Freedom : and I merely add that freedom is the beginning of philosophy because it is the beginning of all possible knowing. 6. In the individual organism, man, there are move- ments from within outwards, to be classified as Desires and Emotions ; but they are simply reflex re-action on the presentation of a stimulus, a stimulus not necessarily external to the body, but external to, and (in a sense) alien to, the organic centre which re-acts. This we have seen to be true of the non-rational intelligence Reason in the Conscious Subject. 31 in becoming aware of that which is not subject of object as such. A fortiori is it true of that specific kind of universal Feeling with which pleasure and pain are bound up. The exhausting of the record of Feeling and Ee-action is the exhausting of the record of the conscious subject simply. But now this conscious subject itself initiates. Eeflex-action is content with the attuit and this is sufficient for all the purposes of the "intelligent " animal, nor is there any reason in the nature of things why mind in nature should not stop here. But it does not stop. The conscious subject itself initiates from within purely a movement, in other words it functions Will. 7. If we would ascertain the true nature of this new phenomenon, we must watch the movement in its rudi- mentary form the rudimentary form of Keason, viz. : Percipience ; and if we do so we shall find in this act, the whole of a priori Dialectic a Dialectic, moreover, which is not simply the formal activity of the subject for the reduction of its real content to Knowledge, but also the Dialectic of and in the objective and universal Real itself. Knowing is simply the subsumption of the Real or object to conscious subject through the dia- lectic of the subject itself. 8. The most remarkable outcome of this new Will- movement is the raising thereby of the conscious subject to self-conscious subject the transformation of the individual into an Ego a Personality. 32 Rise of Reason. 9. The conscious subject as now informed with the self-sprung initiating Will arrests the flux of felt pheno- mena. These are already by reflex activity placed outside the feeling subject as objects and as objects-being. The Will-reason does not constitute these objects, or realities, or actualities : it finds them so, and it simply proceeds to constitute them for itself as known objects into knowledge. The being, the reality, the actuality are there prior to the activity of Eeason, and are in no- way dependent on it. 10. The secret and subtle process whereby the con- scious subject becomes a self-conscious personality will engage our attention in the sequel. Meanwhile it suffices to say that conscious subject perceives itself as well as other things, Being becomes conscious of its own Being, and the mere " Is " becomes " I am." Logically speaking, this self-consciousness is the prius of Percipi- ence ; but chronologically it is not. The Act of Percipience. 33 CHAP. III. THE ACT OF PERCIPIENCE. 1. IN the most advanced stage of sensation which I name " attuition " (the characteristic of the higher forms of the brute-creation) not only has consciousness of the external as a whole, emerged from the condition of confusion in which the stage of sensation between sensibility and attuition (which I have not thought it necessary to speak of) may be supposed to leave it, but total objects, e.g., tree, stone, etc., are received as separate one from the other. A tree-stump, a boy, and a wheelbarrow are all separate and diverse objects to a dog, and further observation will quickly satisfy us that the impressions which are re- ceived from these objects by the dog, are probably as numerous as those received by the infant. The aggregate of sensations which constitutes the object a for the dog, is clearly demarked on his sensorium and consciousness from the aggregate which constitutes b. So with the infant. Now this is a most important advance of mind. For it means in so far as we can venture to interpret it, that attuition (the mental condi- tion of the higher animals) is the instinctive and reflex co-ordination of particular sensations, yielding thereby a consciousness of the collective totality of various sensible qualities constituting the object which is, c 34 The Act of Percipience. for the time being, present. It is not yet the con- sciousness of those various qualities, separately one from another, which in their co-ordinated co-existence constitute the object in sense. The total objects are separated for Eecipience one from the other as totals, but the various qualities of each object are not so separated. These various sensible properties or qualities, however, in so far as they are sensible, may be, and frequently are, in succession, attuited one after the other, as characteristic of one total object of attuition, and, as belonging to one and the same object, and not to another. This, however, is wholly dependent in the case of both animals and infants on the salience of the said qualities the prominence of the qualities to the eye or other sense, the obtrusive- ness or the force with which they imprint themselves on the Receptivity. But the various properties of the external totality are not seen to be co-existent yet sepa- rate elements in making up the phenomenal object which for the time is the whole or aggregate in attui- tion. Attentive observation of the mental condition of dogs and infants bears out this conclusion; while apart from such observation, it is manifest that the consciousness of certain properties as co-existent in any object of attuition, and yet separate one from the other, implies (as we shall shortly see) higher mental forces. 2. In attuition then the objective sense-totalities are separated one from the other, but the co-existent The Act of Percipience. 35 properties resident in each separate totality (though these may be objects of attrition one after the other or in succession, and thus, by means of association, be dimly connected with the totality) are not attuited as together and yet separate. The attuition of an object is in brief a clear, but not a distinct, consciousness. Individual objects are not mixed in confusion; the outline or delineation of each "whole" is clear, or approximately so ; the elements which constitute each, however, are yet, in their mutual relations, confused and blurred; and yet a passive-active co-ordination is busy and successful. 3. Note that even in this comparatively advanced region of attuition, the intelligence, or conscious subject, has not yet delivered itself from the dominion of objects, although it is aware of the separation of one object from another. All that it senses, and all that it attuites, occupy the receptive individuality to the suppression of individuality itself. They conceal and overpower, without extinguishing, it. Totalities of attuition separate and define themselves on the subject and for it; they are not separated or defined from each other by the subject, save in the restricted sense of the reflex action of the sensorium or basis of feeling. Individuality, indeed, is as yet crushed by the weight of the external object, so to speak : the animal is little more than a machine set in motion by the outer or inner sense a more or less clear mirror, it is true, of phenomenal nature, yet itself also a part, though a 36 The Act of Percipience. conscious part, of the mechanism of nature. Will or Freewill are, at this stage, notions wholly inapplicable. Note. The manifestations of consciousness would seem to grow with the growing physical basis of life and consciousness, and to degenerate and die with it. This physical basis, be it nerve or something of which nerve itself is merely the body or vehicle, would appear to be the condition of the existence of consciousness and limits its quantity and quality. The case of ants and other insects, however, seems to show that the range and character of attuitional intelligence does not depend on the quantity, but on the quality, complexity, and adaptation of this physical basis. 4. I may now (even at the risk of repetition) define Attuition to be the reflex co-ordination of elements or units of sensation as an image or synopsis of a total : it is a synthesis in and for the conscious subject. 5. When we next in our survey of life take note of consciousness in its onward and upward progress, we find that a fresh movement has carried the recipient subject into the midst of what is, in truth, a very re- markable series of phenomena. The subject-individual has passed out of and beyond itself ; it has passed be- yond the mere reflex co-ordination of data; it has overleapt the stage of passive-active receptivity; it has disencumbered itself of the load of that which is not itself; it has become freely active. The pheno- mena, quiescent (quantity, form, colour, solidity, etc.), or movent and sequent, which characterise the out- The Act of Percipience. 37 ward, are now not merely attuitionally received and reflexly co-ordinated, but by a spontaneous inner movement of the conscious subject, they are arrested in their irregular and devious courses, and actively distinguished and co-ordinated. A Force advances out of what has been hitherto mere receptive attuitional individuality, and prehends or seizes the presentation, holding it close to itself and contemplating it. This force is WILL. Mind proclaims itself Eeason. 6. No new being, no new individuality, has been here created. The subject-individuality exists in the dog as in the man : but in the latter a rebellious move- ment has taken place against the outer which has ended in victory. No new "substance," let me repeat, now comes within our ken, as is too commonly assumed; an assumption which vitiates metaphysics-proper, as well as psychology and ethics. However ]ong we hold in contemplation this new fact in the progressive life of Mind, it presents itself to us, at last as at first, as a movement initiated in, and effected by, the subject itself. Less than this it is not ; more than this it is not. In other words, while the receptivity of attuition is rightly denominated passive activity, impressions being co-ordinated by mere reflex action, we have now to deal with active activity. Nay more, it is pure activity. For observe, it has in its primordial move- ment no content. It is, in other words, Will : or, if we choose to indulge in tautology, Free Will. We thus at once see that the essence or essential 38 The Act of Per dpi ence. differentiation of Eeason from animal consciousness is Spontaneity, Freedom, independence of all else. 7. Further, in so far as this Will has any stimulus, that stimulus is to be found wholly in itself, in the Form of End which lies concealed in the fact of move- ment. As kinetic movement it contains and projects end as its terminus and proceeds towards it in a specific way. 8. What then is the " end " (the final cause) of this primary and rudimentary kinetic movement ? It is a Percept. And what I desire to emphasize is, that the particular end is not, and cannot be, in the movement as such in its initiation; otherwise it would begin where it ended, which, besides being contrary to pheno- menological fact, is absurd. On this primary fact then, of pure intelligence, not of moral or pathological motive, I rest Will as free and autonomous. 9. There is thus contained in the primary fact of Will, (1) Kinetic energy, and (2) the pure or empty Form of End. The behaviour of this formal Will, when it deals with materials, will shortly appear. 10. In consequence of this sudden advance of the subject from within outward, the phenomenal is then and there sub-ordinated to the subject. The individual intelligence is no longer under the dominion of objects, living only in them, and swayed hither and thither by them. It seizes them one by one at pleasure, and The Act of Percipience. 39 under the stimulus of its own inborn formal power affirms the existence of each. That is to say, the con- scious subject not only attuites one object as differing from another, but also as opposed to itself (the subject), as negating itself, and thereupon subsumes it under itself relates it to the unity of its own conscious self in the act of affirmation. Hitherto the subject has be- held objects, sensing their outness ; now it beholds them qua objective, as not-self, and proceeds to take possession of them. It sees them in the antithesis of subject and object; and is thus empowered, not merely to affirm (what has as yet been only felt) that they are not-self or " object," but also to affirm what has already been only vaguely attuited, viz. : that they are themselves, and not other things. This isolation of the object and the reduction of it to the subject is, speaking generally, Percipience or Perception a pure act. 4O Form of Percipience. CHAP. IV. FORM OF PERCIPIENCE. 1. ATTUITION is, observe, already conscious of an " other " or not-self as object, although it cannot possibly affirm it. It is conscious of an outside a, be it space generally (a totuni objectivum) or some particular figured object of attuition such as a tree or stone. Percipience has this datum of attuition to deal with ready to hand, and its Form of procedure is this : (1) Kinetic movement of Will against a presentate (already in attuition as not the subject, i.e. as an object). (2) This presentate is either A, B, C, or D, etc. (3) It is not B, C, or D. (4) Therefore. (5) A is A. This conclusion as to the being and identity of A is the satisfaction of the pure empty Form of End, which is in the bosom of the conscious-subject when it evolves or functions Will ; and that end is, as we see, a Per- cept. The object is already in antagonism with the subject, and now in accordance with the above process it is at once prehended and subsumed under it, that is, it is known or perceived ; and instantaneously there- after, and we may say therein, affirmed. 2. Thus, in entering this new sphere of conscious mind, which new sphere is here identified with Percep- tion, I find that I enter it enveloped in the forms of (1) End; (2) Excluded Middle; (3) Contradiction ; (4) Form of Percipiente. 41 Sufficient Keason; (5) Being or Identity (with its consequent affirmation in the form of a proposition). These Forms (or Laws of Movement) are simply the explicit expression of what is implicit in this new advance of consciousness, this wholly inexplicable spontaneity, this actus purus, this Will which lies at the root of the whole, and makes Eeason possible. 3. Let it be carefully noted, however, that prior to the subject-evolved act of perceiving there existed a sub-self-conscious, i.e. a conscious attuitional state in which the object A wrote itself on my receptivity, affirmed itself t as it were, on me the subject. Its shape, its being, its thereness, the subject felt ; but that was all. 4. Simply to catch or prehend the object would not yield perception of it. Having arrested and isolated the individual, a chasm would still exist between the object and knowledge of it, were it not for the final movement of Will, which places the prehended object in the unity of consciousness. In attuition, the object falls on the unity of consciousness, and is there, by a co-ordinating reflex action, dealt with and projected outside; in percipience, the Will, prehends the object as there out- side, and, bringing it back, relates it to the unity of consciousness, and by this subsumption into itself takes possession, perceives, knows. 5. Thus, beginning with attuition which merely receives the impression of the external with more or 42 Form of Percipience. less of reflex co-ordination, the Will moves, after a certain manner, to a completion of that simplest act of intelligence which is Percipience : a vital and all- important act, however; for to perceive is to know. We are by Percipience launched into the sphere of Eeason. 6. Nor is this yet all : for, as we have seen, there at once arises in the moment of prehension or completed percipience, the inevitable impulse to externalize the fact of percipience by a vocal or other sign. We are compelled to affirm A (the percept)=:A, or A is A. This is vocal affirmation, the sign and seal of the completed perception, the proposition of the prior judg- ment. The vocal or other sign of affirmation carries with it (as itself an externalization of the inner of conscious- ness) riot merely the affirmation of the being of A, and of A as equal to itself, but further the being of A as external to me : A is there, as opposed to me who am here. The original consciousness of a " somewhat " opposed to, or set over against, my consciousness at the stage of attuition, forced into relief my own separate hereness as a feeling ; and now finally, in the last moment of percipience subsumption into the unity of consciousness self affirms (what, however, has been already sensed in attuition) the externality and inde- pendence of the percept : for the thought-affirmation is not merely "A is A," but, "A is A" there, not here (which " here " is me). Form of Percipience. 43 7. Thus, as the object before the birth of Will stimulates the potential basis of Feeling into Subject, or single homogeneous feeling entity, so now the per- ception arid affirmation of the object, as " itself there," involves the perception and affirmation of the subject here, and as equal to itself : self-identity. I understand Hume to say that there is, in impressions, nothing but impressions sole and single and no consciousness of being apart from these. But the record of aesthetic consciousness is not so simple : as I have shown it contains the feeling of being and (reflexly) thereness. And this feeling the dialectic process ends by affirming. The process of dialectic which so ends contains the following moments : 8. Initiation of Reason. 1. The Kinetic initiating movement which we call pure Will. (a) Formal (empty) End lying implicit in this initiation of movement. Modus of the Reason movement : Mediation. 2. The moment or form of the Excluded Middle. 3. The moment or form of Negation or Contradiction. 4. The moment or form of Sufficient Reason. (a) Implicit in this mediating process is (real) End. The mediating process is m its totality teleological. Transition. 5. Prehending and relating the content of the issue of the preceding moments to the unity of consciousness : subsumption. The Issue. 6. The affirmation of the Being of the object as a determined somewhat : " a determined so and not otherwise." (a) The Law of Identity is in this act yielded. 7. The affirmation of the externality and independence of the object as not only " that," but also " there." 44 Form of Percipience. These moments constitute the fabric of Eeason : they are all implicit in the prime arid primal activity of mind which we call Percipience; impressions are impotent to yield them. 9. Percipience again " Tree = Tree," Tree is Tree, is judgment: to be distinguished, however, from Judg- ments commonly so called, such as " the tree is green," as being an identical and so far forth an analytic, in opposition to a synthetic or ampliative, judgment. All judgments are in the moment of Negation or of Identity. 10. When we say that this free act of intelligence is Perception or Knowledge, we merely employ different words to denote the same thing. For, Perception and Knowledge, when rightly understood, are in their essential nature identical terms. 11. Affirmation is again (as has been already said) merely the last term of the moments of percipience when they take the concrete form of a verbal pro- position as externalized thought; and this we call Utterance, or Speech. Speech is a prolongation of the free potency of will-perception into externalization. It thus may be regarded as an impulse (quite outside the possibility of explanation) to re-create sensuously, in articulate sounds, the world of sensations after they have passed through, or been reduced to, the- unity of consciousness as percepts. The result is really vox et praeterea nihil a sound of which the significance Form of Percipience. 45 lies in the prior percept. Speech or the instinct of physical articulation follows in the wake of thought : and we feel that nothing is safe till the perception, conception, and so forth, is externalized in definite and appropriated sounds. 12. It is this act of Will which transforms the animal attuitional intelligence into human percipient intelligence, which proclaims that the boundary of the non-rational has been overstepped, and that the subject has become, once for all, rational. Will is thus seen to be, in its initiation, the root, and in its form, the essence, of Keason; and Willing in its primal act is ground and possibility of Knowing. Will, I say, in its formal movement is Reason, and in its real end is the realization for itself of the idea, as we shall hereafter see. 13. Percipience is of the simple and singular; but, as we have seen it is not itself simple ; it is a dialectic process containing various moments. Its issue also contains implicit in it the affirmation of the being and thereness of the percept. The " now " is also implicit, as will appear hereafter. The affirmations are, however, affirmations of data of feeling or recipience. 14. The attuitional (or animal) subject functioning pure Will and so seizing itself as well as other things is the Subject becoming aware of the Subject. Thus, Self-consciousness, Ego, Self or Personality is constituted. What the Subject is, and again what the Self is, no man 46 Form of Percipience. can explain, any more than he can carry his head in his mouth. All that can be done is to watch the latter in the throes of birth and name what we see. 15. Self, at whose heart lies Will as condition of its possibility, now directs itself with endless activity, upon the infinite field of sensation and attuition presented to it, and through affirmation transforms attuits into percepts, attuitional consciousness into knowledge or cognition. The activity is endless, because it is pure activity. 16. Further, the emergence of this new potency, Will, gives me possession of a new recept a recept of a pure activity and of all the forms of that activity. I become conscious of an initiating force and its processes. Note. Let me say here that I am not speaking of the breadth of units in attuition which constitute the matter of a simple percept, but with the result and percept itself a colour or total figure, etc. Of the units I as yet know nothing : in so far as it is possible to know anything, it can only be by means of a subse- quent and purposed analysis. 17. Such is the primary synthesis of object with subject. But Eeason is not content with this primary synthesis. It resumes its attack on the perceived presentation again and again. 1 8. This new power the power of imposing self on and subsuming into self the presentations of sensation Form of Percipience. 47 and attuition (inner and outer), enables a^man to affirm of each presentation in succession that it is itself, and not merely not another, but also not the others, which others it has eliminated. The distinctness with which these several properties are discerned depends on the intensiveness with which the special force, which is root of Reason, is applied. From the first that force is a free, spontaneous movement, but the intensity and energy of its application vary in accordance with physical and sensuous obstructions and with the gradual subsequent growth of motives to know. Most men take, all their lives, such a semi-passive survey of the properties of successive objects as amounts to little more than attuition. The objective phenomena which to the eye of sense constitute the " thing," have doubtless in the course of this passive experience made their impression on the conscious subject, but they are not known ; that is, the conscious subject as willing has not subsumed them, and they fade from the memory. Nay, so tran- scendent is the power of Will over Nature, that not merely is the prehension or seizing of the external phenomenon dependent on its activity, but by fixing itself on one or two phenomena it can, for the time, annihilate the consciousness of all else. Self is otherwise engaged, and the whole realm of nature strives in vain for a hearing. Self has chosen to shut it out, and to reduce its whole capacity for impression to a unit. 19. Such are the nature and potency of this won- derful central force, which some regard as a passive sen- 48 Form of Percipience. sorinm, a reed moved by every wind that blows, a sheet of white paper, one phenomenon in an infinite series of invariable or (it may be) determining sequents ! 20. When the subject making itself its object con- stitutes Ego it manifests its freedom. Its limitation is then itself alone and within itself. But its freedom has already been vindicated. It is only as a, feeling subject that it is the slave of the other, of that which is not it. Note. If I sometimes speak of Will as Keason it will be understood that I use the initiatory moment of the whole for the whole. Reason is Will-potency plus the form of its process. The issue of the process rela- tively to the individual subject is Ego. There is no such thing as an abstract entity called Will. The Primary Laws of Reason. 49 CHAP. V. THE PRIMARY LAWS OF REASON IN RELATION TO THE PERCIPIENT ACT. IN close connection with the preceding chapter I may here, without unduly interfering with the argument of this book, introduce a few remarks on the primary or fundamental laws as treated by logicians generally, which I have presented to the reader as moments in the one act or movement of Perception. The law of Identity A=A may be deduced from the law of Contradiction, i.e. it is implicit in it. If A is not " non-A," it is A. Again the law of Contradiction may be deduced from the Law of Identity, for that A is not " non-A" is implicit in A= A. It is quite clear, however, that neither the one law nor the other is a possible con- ception except as the issue of an antecedent law, viz. " A is either A or non-A " law of Excluded Middle. By following the vital process of thinking as I have tried to do above we see clearly ; and, by " thinking," I mean here the rudimentary act of Percipience in which, if anywhere, the differentiation of Eeason from sensible- attuition is to be detected. The Law of Alternatives or of Excluded Middle being the logical prius of the other four, it is at once evident that the Law of Negation or non-contradiction emerges as prius of the Law of Identity. 50 The Primary Laws of Reason For greater clearness it is better to call " non-A " by the symbol B. Then, Law of Identity, A is A. Law of Contradiction, A is not B (non-A). A is A 'because it is not anything else ; it is not anything else or B because it is A. Why so ? Because again A cannot be at once A and B (non-A), and it must be one or the other. That is to say A (anything whatsoever) must be itself or something else. Why must anything whatsoever, A, be itself or something else, B1 To demonstrate this would be manifestly to reason in a circle. It seems to me that we simplify things very much by declining to speak of these facts of mind as Principles or Laws of all reasoning, thereby suggesting that they are generalisations and giving them a dogmatic air. This I consider is the result of looking at logical and psychological questions from the anatomical or morpho- logical point of view. Let us regard them rather from the physiological standpoint, that is to say, watch thinking (here Percipience) in the organic or vital process of effecting itself, as truly being and breathing. These "laws" are then revealed to us as implicit in the organic process and in their true logical order as moments or pulses of one act each moment implicit in the other. The conscious subject functioning as Will moves itself for the purpose of separating or determining one (or more) of the mixed multitude of attuits by which it is oppressed ; and moves in a certain way or by a in Relation to the Percipient Act. 51 certain process which is a logical succession of moments, not one of which is intelligible without the other. A (Anything whatsoever) is either itself (A) or B (non-A) something else [Exc. Middle]. A is not B (non-A) [Contrad.] A is A. (Id.) I must now ask again why is A=A, and the answer is because it is not (non-A) B and it must be either A or B (non-A). The cause or reason then of "A is A " is to be found in the prius of Negation and demands this amended form of concluding statement, viz. THEREFORE "A is A " ; and this is what is called the " principle " of Sufficient Eeason. To which we have further to add that the conscious- subject, thus functioning as Will, seeks an end of its initiated motion that end being implicit (as a formal moment) in the initiation of motion. This end it formally seeks by the above way or process of move- ment, mediating the positive issue through Negation as ground. The sum then of the primal percipience-act is as I have explained it above. Eeason then is a living unity of movement. The empirical ego, one might say, is the conscious subject ; the transcendental is pure Ego or personality or self constituted by the functioning of the conscious subject directed on itself. There are not two minds or reasons. 5 2 Separating and Naming. CHAP. VI. SEPARATING AND NAMING. 1. ADVANCING now with this new weapon, Keason, to the synthesis and conquest of the manifold in sense, the now self-conscious subject quickly finds that the secret of its power consists in the primary act of separating, of determining through negating, as we have exhibited the process above. By separating the phenomena, the totalities in attuition which consti- tute to the eye of sense this or that thing, it carries on the work of separation for Knowledge, which separa- tion has been already visibly completed outside in the constituting of a manifold of things instead of one large all-filling thing. The differentiation of a tree from a stone, and a stone from an animal, has been already effected for the eye of passive attuition (as in the case of animals). When the power of actively differentiating nature and of discovering its less prominent differentia- tions comes on the field, the subject begins a restless, untiring, all-devouring career. It separates and seizes the totalities of mere attuition in a synopsis and so perceives them each whole as one; it separates and seizes the elements which enter into these totalities, each element as one ; it seizes the resultant knowledge as such, and thus, having once succeeded, becomes inflamed with the desire to know ; it seizes the process Separating and Naming. 53 whereby it seizes; it seizes itself; it seizes the seizing of itself, and falls back foiled only at the gates of the absolute and undifferentiable. 2. This Will-reason is the power of holding in pre- sence of consciousness, and subsuming under conscious- ness, that which is not-self. It holds the separate before it as affirmed, " known." It so holds the pre- sentate as separated ; it so holds the presentate, after it has disappeared from vision, as the representate. This knowing, this affirming also confirms the impres- sion made on the non-rational attuitional consciousness, at the same time that it purifies that impression by exalting it to Perception. 3. The separation of the individual presentate always maintains a negative relation to the other presentates from which it is separated ; but these other presentates have the sub-self-conscious character of attuits : e.g. I separate and perceive the solidity of a horse's hoof, but while I fix myself on this characteristic, the rest of the animal is present to me ; but only as an attuit. 4. To complete its act of affirmation, the Will finds itself compelled, as has been already explained, to externalize its act and to seek for a sensible or material- ized shape, words. Unclothed with shapes, be they words or signs, prehensions are scarcely worthy of the name of percepts, having never fairly emerged out of the 54 Separating and Naming. non-rational plane of attuition. Until we name, we are, to use a phrase of Montaigne's, " merely licking the formless embryo of our thoughts." As the being of a thing is completed only in its material externalization, so the perception or thought of a thing is completed only in its sensuous externalization or fixation in audible sounds. The force of the Will in knowing does not rest satisfied with the mere act of knowing, but goes on till it contents itself, and completes itself, by projecting its achieved perception into the sphere of sense. 5. Memory. All that we wrest from experience is embodied in language. The man of genius is he who can present us with some new conquest. The percept thus becomes sensualized as an articulate sound, and, as such, returns to consciousness as a recept, and in this way a basis of attuitional reminiscence (as dis- tinct from recollection) is formed for percepts as such, no less than for sensations and attuits. 6. The fact of Will is also the explanation of Kecol- lection as distinct from mere Keminiscence, which latter is determined wholly by natural association. The Will confirms, by affirming, the object in consciousness ; and when need arises, it moves itself and goes in search of past consciousnesses. Eecollection is animal remini- scence plus Will. In so far as it is Will, it is a pure act ; Keminiscence belongs to the receptive and attuitional consciousness of man. In so far as the memory of a Separating and Naming. 5 5 dog differs from that of a man, it does so merely because of the absence of Will. 7 The Will, the conscious subject as willing, has not only the power to recall past percepts, and to give, through its involvement in the physical basis of life, sensible shape in language to its own act, but in its free movement it can even suspend its own activity, and turn back the subject to a state of attu- ition. Such is day-dreaming and reverie. There is an involuntary production of this state under those physical conditions which we know as sleep. In such day-dreaming, reverie, or sleep, non-self-conscious movements go on with more or less intensity according to the degree of vitality (whatever that may mean) of the subject. The non-rational or animal subject is always in this sub-self-conscious condition into which man only occasionally enters ; and the difference be- tween the day-dreaming of a man and the conscious- ness of a dog would seem to be this, that in the former there is a background of existent, though almost wholly suspended, Will, and that in him the condition of attuition necessarily embraces past percepts as well as recepts and attuits. This unregulated play of the non-self-conscious subject may be called a play of repre- sentation or imagination in the primary sense of this last word. Hidden affinities among representates may frequently now work themselves out, and large sugges- tions and broader views of life and of the possibilities of consciousness may sometimes be the fruit of this 56 Separating and Naming. suspension of Eeason. Its possible abuses are manifest, but its benefits as an enricher of the soil of mind are unquestionable. In this latent action of Reason, we may be even said to share more fully the universal intelligence, and losing that which is individual, we become part of the Whole. The door of the temple of mysticism lies in this direction. Sensation and Perception. 5 7 CHAP. VJI. SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. ATTUITION as mere receptivity more or less reflexly co-ordinated is Sensation in the usual philosophical acceptation of that term ; but sensation in its highest form. The current doctrine regarding the origin and process of knowledge, and the primary and secondary kinds of knowledge of the sensible, compels an attempt to distinguish between Perception-proper and Sensation- proper, and to show where the one ends and the other begins. According to prevalent theories of knowledge there is no real distinction possible between these two, if the upholders of these theories are consistent with themselves. At most, sensation ends where the process ends, by which the receptive subject is reached by the object ; and at this very point precisely, perception begins. But this is merely a convenient way of talking, whereby a, felt difference of some sort or other is indi- cated without being explained or vindicated. Even to maintain that perception and sensation are in an in- verse ratio to each other, is only to enunciate still more emphatically that there is some felt difference, and to point to characteristics of the psychological phenomena which are valuable in themselves as observed facts (if true), and may possibly help to reveal the ground of 58 Sensation and Perception. their relation to each other. Is this so-called " law " of inverseness after all tenable on the ordinary theories of knowledge ? If perception be merely a resultant of sensation (that state in which sensation becomes a distinct object to consciousness), it would seem rather to follow that the more intense the degree of sensation the more intense must be the perception ; that is to say, if there be perception at all. The true phenomenological relation of sensation and perception, and the distinction between them which that phenomenological relation brings into light, have been- already set forth. Sensation-proper differs from Percipience in this, that in the former the Object seizes the Subject (so to speak), stimulates it into a reflex action, which process is the process of the feeling of object and, therethrough, of subject. The subject is, so to speak, in the hands of the object. In the latter, the subject as Will, in other words Ego, itself goes out and seizes the sensed object, subsumes it into itself or relates it to itself, and effects "knowledge as affirmation. The union of the object (already there in the prior process of sensation) with the subject by the subject is the act of percipience or rudimentary knowing. Also, just as, in the former case, subject comes within the sphere of feeling-experience in the feeling of object ; so in the latter, the affirmation of subject by itself emerges in and through the affirmation (perceiving, knowing) of object. An impression on the senses may be so vivid and intense that the Will can re-act against it only with Sensation and Perception. 59 difficulty, in which case the act of perceiving or know- ing is obstructed. Hence it is that, as Kant says, the most favourable condition for knowing is where the sensation is moderate. This is a common experience ; but if, nevertheless, we choose, to perceive when the impression is intense, then the keener the sensation the more vivid and true will be the perception. It is true, however, that the act of Will in percipience may be overpowered by the mass and intensity of a sensation. The explanation of the psychological fact lies in this, that perceiving is a subject-evolved free act of Will, proceeding after a certain manner towards the prehension and subsumption of the already sensed object into the unity of consciousness; and without such an explanation, the relation between sensation and perception, although it may be so far correctly described, cannot be disclosed. 60 Unity in Perception of the Manifold. CHAP. VIII. UNITY IN THE PERCEPTION OF THE MANI- FOLD. THE SENSE-SYNTHESIS OR CONCEPT. 1. THUS far we have described in general the action of elementary intelligence as it advances to knowledge. Perception we have found to be, in accordance with the old dictum, separation or determination through negation, and the reduction of the separate to the unity of self-consciousness. It, moreover, involves a process which I need not here repeat. Let us now go back to the first dawning of percipience on the world of attui- tion, and follow still further its formal history in the work of separating, and in the other work which it has to do. 2. The totality of this, that, or the other attuit is received into consciousness as a synopsis. It is an unresolved complex in sense : it is a single totality in percipience. The term " unity " is to be reserved for a rational act, not for an attuitional state. The first per- ception then is the perception of the attuited synopsis. A vague, general, and unresolved aggregate of units of sensation which have made a certain impression is marked off by the action and affirmation of Will from other aggregates which make a different impression. It may happen, and constantly does happen, that a prominent quality in the object receives, because of its Unity in Perception of the Manifold. 61 salience, special attention, and in this case all the other units of impression are sub-self-consciously felt as associated with that prominent differentia, but they are not separately perceived. The subject of the affirma- tion which follows perception is to begin with little more than x with an indefinite number of possible predicates: if a specific quality has been noted it is then a with an indefinite number of possible predicates. 3. The perception of the synoptic totality is at the same time the starting-point of unwitting, rion-self- conscious, crude, and spurious generalization of many individuals under a common name. A plurality of objects passes before consciousness : all these at this stage of intelligence simply as synopsis. Sense-com- plex a makes an impression as a total, and sense- complex b makes a different impression as a total. It is the complex total I perceive and separate from other totals. Having perceived the attuit or synopsis a I name it " Cow " : I name the differing b " Tree." A bull, a horse, an ass present themselves and I call them all by the name " Cow," because the impressions they respectively make as complex totals are similar. So different kinds of trees and shrubs come before me, and I name each and all Trees for the same reason. If after the first experiences of perceiving a, b and c I were asked to describe them, I could not do so : I could justify my naming all a's " cows " only by saying that the general impression each in succession made on me was similar to the first impression. A very slight ad- 62 Unity in Perception of the Manifold. vance in my experience of objects would force on me the most prominent mark of the objects called a, say, " four-legged." If asked why I called these objects " Cows," the answer would be, " because they are four- legged " ; but in so saying I should proclaim that I per- ceived a as a totality and further as a four-legged totality. The other elements in the four-legged tota- lity would lie in the sub-self-conscious repository of attuition unresolved. The first step towards the unity of a sense-concept as distinguished from the mere totality in perception would thus be made. The elementary perception " Cow " is accordingly a " General " based on similarities, and is so used freely by the nascent intelligence. This crude generalization is superficial and untrue because, as we shall see, it is the work of the external impressing itself on the merely attuent consciousness, and the presentate is as yet unattacked by the Will beyond the mere perception of the totality as an indefinite somewhat different from other objects. To call it a generalization at all in any strict sense is incorrect. But it is important to observe that mind (generally) begins with the universal in this crude form, and then pushes on to the particular, again to reach the universal, but now a rational universal as opposed to sense-universal. 4. Will, even in its earliest movements, has made con- siderable progress, for it has now affirmed the attuited Unity in Perception of the Manifold. 63 totality in perception as a one totality ; in other words, it knows what has hitherto been only an attuited totality. A in attuition has, through the process of Percipience, become not-B nor any other thing, arid is then affirmed or known as A. The formula has been already given in the moments of the act of pure Will, which constitute together the texture of reason as distinguished from mere animal attuitional consciousness. It is manifest, however, that I could not proceed to deal with A at all with a view to its final affirmation in percipience, unless I first had A present to consciousness, and I cannot have it there except as equal to itself quasi self-identical. The judgment of the conclusion, " A is A," therefore, seems to be anticipated in mere attuent feeling, inasmuch as this fact is the point of departure for "A is not B " : and yet again the affirmation " A is A" is impossible, save as the sequel of " A is not B." I explain this admitted difficulty (as I explain spurious generalization above) by the introduction into meta- physical psychology of the attuitional consciousness as chronologically prior to the perceptive and having a domain of its own. " A " (some presentate or other) is first received into attuition from without and projected as object : the second movement which alone is Percep- tion, and therefore Eeason, is the affirmation that this object "A is not B, nor C, nor D "; and so I reach the third that " A is A." True identity is to be found in the judgment of Keason alone. 5. When an object becomes the subject of predicative 64 Unity in Perception of the Manifold. propositions it is an empty sound and is equivalent to little more than the universal "That thing there." Whatever predicates the word may hold concealed, it is no more the " thing " than all the other predicates yet to be discovered. 6. The Will or Self, after exercise of spontaneous energy, feels its own power, and, under the irre- sistible impulse to separate (for the very nature of Will is restless movement), begins to seize the various qualities or units which enter into the individual totalities; and the knowledge "cow" or "tree" (applied indifferently by a kind of spurious generalization to many animal and vegetable organisms respectively) becomes split up into many differing animals or trees respectively which, while possessed of common charac- teristics as animals and plants, are now by the force of Will, further differentiated one from the other. 7. This act of Ego or Will we may call, if we choose, Attention ; but it is better to reserve that term for the act when sustained for a time. When considered in relation to a unit held in consciousness as opposed to all other objects, the act of Will is called , abstraction ; and when considered in relation to the totality which is being broken up by the all-shattering force of Will, it is analysis : that is to say, as applied to things. At a later stage, when the consciousness has become over- laid and surcharged with traditionary differentiations fixed in vocables, the Will finds its chief task to be Unity in Perception of the Manifold. 65 the dissolving of the various elements which have in the course of history entered into notions, and so led or misled mankind. So important and so great the task that for generations it would sometimes appear that the work of the Philosopher is one solely of definition and division. Nay, if our notions of things contained only true and also exhaustive elements, the Definition of the Notion would also be the Definition of the Thing. 8. This work of Analysis, separation with reference to the totality in Perception, advances with quick steps when the fact of the resultant viz., knowledge, is recognized. Pleasure here enters not at all into the primary act but into the result. That there are differences is felt in attuition ; and the discovery of difference, when once it has made a beginning, then becomes an end in itself to Keason. The more energetic intelligences take the lead in prosecuting the task for the less vigorous, with a view to the satisfaction of the restless avidity of the Ego, which desires to see clearly and distinctly that which really is presented to it, and so to make it its own by subsuming it into self. 9. This partial and provisional knowledge yields to us a distinct consciousness so far as it goes ; that is to say, such of the qualities, properties, or component elements as are known, are known in their separation one from the other at the same time that they are known as parts of a totality in perception, the remaining parts being sub-consciously felt. This totality in perception E 66 Unity in Perception of the Manifold. becomes gradually more and more broken up by the perception or knowing of its constituent elements or qualities, and is gradually transformed into a unity of qualities perceived, a Unity of perception. This re- quires further illustration, for it is a great stride and involves much. Let us follow at the risk of repetition the intelligence-process by which the unity is reached. 10. The process, after all, does not in fact, indeed can not, differ from that whereby the external totalities, as such, were formerly affirmed, and it is expressed by the formula " A is not B, nor anything else " ; therefore, " A is A " (both these being of course preceded by the sub-self-conscious, i.e. merely conscious, attuition of A). The sub-self-conscious attuition of A is a quasi-affirma- tion (or declaration) of itself "by the external object on, to, and for, the subject. The next step is, as we have just said, " A (the attuited totality) is not B, nor C, -nor D, nor anything else ;" therefore, " A is A," an affirmation by and for the subject. The third step in the history of Percipience is, C (a quality in A) is not D (nor X Y Z) : G is C : C is in A. And so on with all other qualities which are discerned or are discernible : by such a move- ment it is that we know, and this is continually repeated. 11. Every step in differencing which we thus make encroaches on the vague totality in perception. This total percept * continues to be affirmed as a totality, but it gradually yields to the ever-growing discrimination of 1 I am quite well aware that in calling the totality in presenta- tion a percept, I expose myself to criticism. But note that a dog has Unity in Perception of the Manifold. 67 the qualities in it. Every fresh percept breaks up still further the totality of the percept, until the latter is supplanted altogether by a colligation of qualifying and quantifying percepts. The thing the mere totality in perception (vague and unsatisfying) now becomes the Unity in perception or knowledge. The Thing at this stage, and thus far, is to empirical consciousness, what its perceived qualities are in their unity, as all return- ing into themselves, plus the affirmation that it is. This isness will be afterwards shewn (as has been already indicated in the Table of the Form of Perci- pience) to be the affirmation of the Identity of the thing with itself, which identity has been in the attuent stage a vague feeling of sameness. 12. The end of all this energizing of the Ego is Perception and therefore the single and simple. By analysis Will seeks to break up the totality in attui- tion, and to find the true qualities of a thing and the last differentiation or "essence" (so called), so that round this ultimate differentiate it may synthetically reconstruct the totality in the unity of knowledge. For the end of the analysis of the primary synthesis, i.e. the synopsis, is again synthesis. 13. This unity in perception, achieved by the spon- the totality in presentation. Reason distinguishes totality from other totalities simply as a totality (to begin with) and affirms it as such. Why, it may be asked, do I occupy my reader with what is little more than elementary Logic ? Because I have a thesis to establish viz., that the whole fabric of Reason is concealed in Percipience. 68 Unity in Perception of the Manifold. taneous movement of Will directed against attuits, and gradually won from the totality or aggregate in attui- tion, is to be called a Sense-Concept (or sense-synthesis as opposed to a sense-synopsis). The movement whereby the matter of the concept is gathered or subsumed into a unity lies in the spontaneity of Eeason, which is the conscious subject freely functioning Will after a process* 14. It is only after Will comes on the field that we can be said to perceive or know ; but the object present to sense, prior to the exertion of the spontaneity which is the root of the act of percipience, is not a vague, undefined and chaotic series of feelings, or of sense- stimulations, but already an aggregate of sense affections which have been printed on consciousness together as an external and independent " somewhat," and consti- tute a totality in sense i.e. an attuit. Unity is not yet there, but aggregated synoptic totality of this, that, or the other sense-object is unquestionably there. 15. The distinction between the totality in attuition which, when perceived, is at best merely an attuit (or synopsis) perceived, and the unity in perception or true synthesis which constitutes a sense-concept, is obvious enough. This concept is further to be dis- tinguished from the Concept which is the fruit of subsequent generalization, and which presents itself to our consideration in the next movement of Intelli- gence in its attempt to arrange and understand the manifold outer. The distinction which is here laid down between sense-concept, which is an individual Unity in Perception of the Manifold. 69 thing, and generalized concept, which contains things under it, is frequently forgotten. 16. The sense-concept is attained by a succession of perceptions, which perceptions are judgments. It is a synthesis of analytic judgments. That the primary perception of the total complex is judgment will be denied by some, but this because of their inadequate understanding of the act of perception. In the primary judgment of percipience the subject of the proposition is the demonstrative pronoun " That " (a mere abstract and universal) which is applied to the vague totality in attuition, and the predicate is the name we give to the confused congeries of qualities in attuition, e.g. " That (there) is tree." All we try to express is the difference of this total from other totals. 17. Let us note here that, so far as we have yet gone in the evolution of Intelligence, we have reached the sense-concept and have as yet met with nothing save Percipience : for Concipience is merely the binding together of a series of percepts or perceived predicates as constituting the total object before us ; and this by the sheer force of Will. As yet the " thing " is only the empirical thing and is on its way to its true birth in Eeason ; and it is not to be hastily concluded from the fact that the concipient act seems to be (in so far as it is to be distinguished from the percipient) mechanical in its nature, that the " thing " is simply " being " with a bundle of predicates cohering in an external and mechanical fashion. SECOND PART. DUALISM. 1 I. Extension and Externality. 1. THERE are here two questions that of Extern- ality and that of Extension or Space. 2. Hume's fundamental position may be thus briefly stated : Every idea that is to say, every experience, thought and conviction of the human mind arises primarily from some impression conveyed to the mind through inner or outer sense ; in other words, arises from Sensation. Sensation means felt impression. Further, every impression is found, when closely looked at, to be simple and single, and proclaims itself to consciousness as nothing else than itself. Ultimately then our knowledge that which we call reality and truth is nothing save our outer and inner sensations and their sense relations. 3. Hume does not deny that we have convictions of the externality of other men in the world, and of every object in it, also of substantiality, being, 1 The following argument is from a pre-Fichtian standpoint. Dualism. 7 1 necessary cause, and so forth ; nor does he deny that such convictions are to be assumed as true in the ordinary work of life. His object is to show in what circumstances and by what process these practical beliefs are evolved out of the aforesaid impressions and ideas, and to demonstrate that they are all to be explained as (fundamentally) impressions cohering ; that thus they ever remain within the sphere of individual mind, and beyond this have no validity. 4. Externality. All is within me. Of course, where else could it be, if I am to be conscious of it and know it ? Hence it is that I may doubt the externality of what I feel and know. 5. If an object nature, or let us say that part of nature which I call my body be truly external to consciousness, we do not need to demonstrate its non-dependence on human intelligence, and its separate continuity as a more or less explainable aggregate of mutually interpenetrating qualities and relations. [Quality corresponds in the object to impression or sensa- tion in the mind.] Such externality would give us that duality of mind (or consciousness) and nature which is the assumption of common sense, and, could it be demonstrated, would critically vindicate the crude belief of the vulgar. And, after all, every philosophy must ultimately sist itself at the bar of 'common sense ' in the ordinary meaning of this expression. 6. Hume points out that we are not directly con- 72 Dualism. scious of the externality of Space or Extension, but merely of extension as an impression, and as a quality of objects. To the argument that extension is pre- sented to our consciousness along with other qualities of objects as being outside us or external, Hume would reply that this is to make an impression, which is by its nature single, double, because the impression would then convey to our minds Space plus Externality. 7. Hamilton in formulating the fundamental position of the Scottish School, says that the external and the internal exist as opposites by the very same evidence, and in the same act. So far he gives a critical basis to " Common Sense." But, it might be objected to him, where do you find this outerness and innerness as independent primary facts of consciousness ? In the most rudimentary acts of sensation and perception you see only space or extension, and you choose to add on the further fact of outerness to that extension, when all the while you are conscious only of extension, and hasten illegitimately to the inference of outerness or externality: objectivity is one thing, externality another. If it be not an inference, then, you are bound to show that the sensation of externality is given plus the sensation of a spaced object in the same act ; in short, you have to maintain, what Hume denies, that impressions are, or may be, in their ultimate analysis, double. If the double impression which thus gives rise (in Hume's language) to two ideas, is contrary to fact, then the inference has to be justified. To Dualism. 73 say that it is a "necessary and universal" inference, is merely to re-affirm the old Scottish position in its crude uncritical form. And, even if we grant his argument, Hamilton's primary duality only gives us, at best, a non-ego of some kind or other. 8. If, however, we were to identify Extension with Externality, we should have so far an answer to Hume. Where is the "impression," Hume would say, which yields to you the " idea " of externality ? Answer, the impression of extension (which you yourself admit), for this is externality. This would give us a true duality; for externality, as Hume himself admits, involves independence. But, as in this case externality itself would be still a subjective impression, fresh difficulties would arise. 9. Before Eeason appears on the scene at all, and while we are yet regarding mind as limited to purely aesthetic or sense-relations (Attuition), the state of the case seems to be this : Extension as a totum objectivum, and extended and figured things are received by the subject-sense as impressions. These impres- sions act as a stimulus or irritant to the sensational or attuitional subject and so give rise to a reflex action of consciousness whereby the impressions, viz., exten- sion generally and all impressed objects, are placed outside the subject, and in that act constituted an external object. Extension is thus a datum to con- sciousness ; the externality of extension is given reflexly 74 Dualism. ly consciousness. By a reflex action of consciousness things are constituted objects and external. This movement, moreover, lies in the very heart of con- sciousness ; and through it alone is consciousness possible. Externality is thus an universal and neces- sary in all sense-impressions and is, in this acceptation, an & priori offspring of the aesthetic consciousness merely. Dualism of subject and object is thus consti- tuted within the sense or attuitional sphere (the sphere of Feeling) before Eeason in the elementary form of Percipience appears on the field. When it does appear, it at once posits or affirms the issue of that necessary reflex movement of sense which constitutes the exter- nality of an object ; and it does so in the form " A, i.e. That (there) tree, is." Thus the externality of the " thing " is in no way dependent on Eeason. 10. We must hold with. Hume, I think, that the independence of things is constituted by and in their externality. Extension or Space accordingly, as now shown to be external to the subject, is independent of the subject. 11. It does not, however, seem to follow from the universality of Space as given in universal impression, nor from the externality of Space as given through the above necessary reflex movement, that Space is a necessary, i.e. an inevitable condition of all possible thought of the external. In other words, that extension is the universal modus existendi of the sensible non-ego, which non-ego is external, does not explain the neces- Dualism. 75 sariness of extension. This presents a difficulty; but may it not be met thus ? In what sense is space neces- sary ? In this, that I cannot think the external other- wise than as extended. But this is simply to say that, as wherever I receive the external I receive it as ex- tended, so whenever I image the external I must image it as extended. All that is presented to sense is extended, and therefore all that is or can be represented is also extended. Sense is sense, and not anything else, and all possible imagination (i.e. re-productive or productive imaging) of the external operates in the field of sensa It seems to me, accordingly, that we may say : Necessity for Extension, i.e. Extension as necessary predicate of all possible externality, is simply an Analytic Necessary. In fact all sesthetic universals are analytic necessaries. 1 II. Knowledge of the external object : Relativity. 1. To sum up Consciousness whether in the stage of rudimentary sensation or in that more advanced stage of co-ordinated sensations which is called attuition, has a prius in the object, that is to say, it is by a move- ment outside itself and independent of itself that the potentiality of consciousness becomes actual. This irritation is, from the side of the subject, called Eeceptivity. The feeling of the externality of the source of that irritation is simply a result of a reflex 1 The question of the infiniteness of Extension will be after- wards considered. 76 Dualism. action in consciousness; and what is external to the subject is independent of the subject. Thereafter, when the strata of mere Keceptivity have been burst through, as it were, by the volcanic action of the newly- evolved energy which arises in and springs out of the subject (which dynamic energy we call Will), the externality of the impression (extension) is therein and thereby affirmed. Thus the fact and predication of externality are implicit in the constitution of the aesthetic, attuitional and non-rational consciousness, and thereafter explicit and affirmed in rational conscious- ness. And here, but exclusively within the sphere of percipience or affirmation, externality rests on the same basis as the fact of internality. The affirma- tion of internality, as a sole, is an impossibility to Eeason. 2. The whole question of externality becomes a question at all only when men begin to analyse the nature of knowledge and the sources of knowledge. Hence it is that in connexion with this question the further but cognate question occurs, " Given an object truly external to the subject, can the subject truly know it, precisely as it there is ? " 3. Certainly, if I do not know the external object as it is, but simply use it as a fulcrum x for my own attuent and rational activities, it becomes a mere determinable of my Keason in respect not merely of its formal grounds (which aspect of the question may be for the Dualism. 77 present set aside) but also as regards what we call its sensible qualities its phenomena, its matter. This is the question of the Relativity of Knowledge. If we do not know the object an sicJi, then it is either for con- sciousness or consciousness is for it. No other kind of relativity is possible. 4. If the object be not external, cadit qiiaestio, because if it is not external it must be internal ; in other words, it must be the creation of consciousness in some way or other, and what is created by conscious- ness must be true, as it is, for consciousness. 5. So far, however, we may regard ourselves as having gone: There is an object impressed on me which is external to me, viz., extension ; but that which I see and name " extension " may only after all be an external "somewhat" which sets up by a law of nature the image and scheme of extension in me. The truly external x may be transformed into y as it enters my subject-consciousness. I am dependent for all I call knowledge of the sensible on an infinite number of transcendental #es which I convert into ys. These transcendental #es are merely a series of dynamical shoves. If relativity of knowledge does not mean this, it has no meaning. It matters not in the least whether relativity takes the shape of a physiological, psychological, or ontological relativity. They are all the same at bottom as regards the verity and validity of my knowledge of phenomena. Those who think 78 Dualism. they get rid of difficulties about Matter by transforming all the sensible into forms of Motion, merely substitute one kind of external cosmos (or chaos) for another: the philosophical question is not even touched thereby. Fallacy in Terms. 6. The terms most commonly used in the discussion are Eelative, Sensation, Idea, Form, Substance, Phe- nomenon. These words are too often used in such a way as to beg a theory or veil a fallacy. If, however, we can expose the fallacies in the use of the terms Eelativity and Phenomenon, it will suffice. 7. " Relative " is used sometimes in the sense of the locally or personally relative, as when an object, whose constitution meanwhile remains unaltered, is bitter to one and sweet to another, or it may be to the same person in altered circumstances. There is the relative among things, as when we say that things are large or small, as measured by some common standard. And further, there is the relative involved in all knowledge, inas- much as any one thing can be known only in relation of community or opposition to other things, or both. In none of these senses can the term be admitted into the discussion of the Eelativity of Human Knowledge. 8. But even in philosophical discussion there is a sense in which " relative " is used, which is beside the question, and that is the sense of the limited or re- Diialism. 79 stricted. 1 Knowledge is of course limited and restricted. This does not affect the philosophical question as to the validity the truth of what we do know. 9. The question, in fact, lies wholly between re- lativity proper and relativity in the sense of adaptation or transformation of the unknown x, in accordance with certain conditionings of the percipient subject. These two distinct uses of the term are, I hold, constantly confounded. 10. Nobody, I suppose, denies that knowledge is a relation, nor again that a knowledge of an object is a knowledge of a system of relations. Wherever there is Subject and Object, there is of necessity a relation, and the object, too, is itself a system of relations of 2 quantity, quality, etc. This strict and accurate use of the term is to be called Relatedness. Everybody re- cognizes Relatedness, and so it conies to be assumed that relatedness involves relativity ; whereas, into the word " relativity " a new thought has been insinuated. Relativity, as that term is commonly used, is in truth relatedness plus adaptation of one of the terms of the relation to the other. And in this lies the fallacy. 11. A man may quite rationally maintain that there is an actually and independently existing scheme of 1 Hamilton's " authorities " almost all refer to this sense of Relative." 2 0/not in ; otherwise there would be nothing to relate. 8o Dualism. things, but that his knowledge of that scheme of things is merely a bringing of a certain object, nature, un- known as it exists, within the range of a certain kind of intelligence called human: which intelligence sees the object according to its own kind, and so constitutes it. In other words, we may hold that the subject creates for itself a coherent world, relatively valid for the purposes of the individual's existence, out of a world, really subsisting, it is true, but in its independent reality different (it may be) from the world of human intelligence, and for ever unknowable by it. This is substantially the doctrine of hypothetical realism : and, it is at once apparent that those who imagine that they save the external truth of percepts by affirming the non-mediateness of sensible perceptions, are in error and delude themselves, so long as they also maintain the relativity of human knowledge. This requires only to be stated, to be at once apparent. Eelativity in their mouths must mean, if it means anything, the modifica- tion of an unknown external object, which is employed merely as a fulcrum, in or by the percipient subject : and, that being so, it throws no light on the validity of knowledge, to say that my sensible perceptions are the fruit of a direct or immediate communication between me and the external world. Indeed, the position is unintelligible. I cannot concern myself about the directness or indirectness of a knowledge which, after all, is not absolutely true and valid. 12. Neither a sensible nor an attuitional subject, nor Dualism. 8 1 an intelligent rational subject is possible, except as one of two factors. Neither sensation nor perception (to put it otherwise) is possible, except as a member of a duality the one member being the Subject, the other member being the non-Subject or object. In other words, subject and object, in the sense of inner and outer, are necessarily terms of a relation : the one term involves the other. Now, if we look at this fact from the point of view of an assumed objective Creative Power an absolute ens realissimum, of which all intelligences are mere passing forms, it is primd facie absurd to suppose that the scheme of creation involves at the very summit of its energising, which is the finite Eeason, a suicidal act: that it creates in its highest effort an intelligent subject, while overturning in the very act of creation the raison d'etre of that act, viz. percipience, or knowing. This consideration, while leading us to expect efficacy and validity in perception, disposes of the objections founded on the supposition of the total change which would be wrought on the object of perception by a modification of our senses. We are entitled to start with the assumption of a harmony between the conscious and the non-conscious, perfect equivalence between the idea and the ideatum. In sensation and percipience there is, as in everything else, a process of "Becoming." Given an external object, that object becomes to my consciousness. Why should this process vitiate itself ? The onus prolandi lies on him who supposes it does. Whatever may be the range of a subject's sensation or perception, the F 82 Dualism. sensible presentates as such, and so far as they go, are truly given to the subject. That is to say, it is possible for the subject, if it be a normal organism of its kind, to sense and perceive the sensible and perceptible as they exist, within its proper range of action. 13. .Further, Relativity, in the sense of relatedness of subject to object, cannot involve invalidity. For if relatedness involves invalidity, and if relatedness is present, as it must be, wherever subject and object are present, knowledge is for ever impossible to all intelli- gences whatsoever. Nay, it becomes doubtful if even the Creator could know the objects of His own creation, after they have been placed out of Himself. 14. Again, the act whereby self thinks self would be subverted, inasmuch as self is here related to self through the act of diremption. The doctrine of re- lativity is, moreover, like scepticism, self-destructive, for the knowledge that knowledge is relative is itself a relative knowledge. 15. Eelativity of knowledge, in the strict signification of the term relativity i.e. relatedness, merely means, that in all knowledge there is a subject and object, and therefore necessarily a relation between them. If such relativity introduces an element of uncertainty, know- ledge is for ever impossible (I repeat) for all intelligences whatsoever, whether in the body or out of the body. Herein lies the fundamental fallacy: because subject Diialism. 83 and object the condition of all possible knowing by intelligences, divine or human are limbs of a relation, that is to say, because they involve each the other, therefore the relation in which the former necessarily stands to the latter is a " relative " relation, the term being now used surreptitiously in the secondary sense of modified or adapted. In other words, the very con- dition of all possible knowing is itself a destruction of the validity of the act of knowing, nay of the possibility of knowing, and converts knowledge itself into an illusion. The absurdity of this position is evident. The result of the doctrine is simply this, It is impos- sible to know, and this ~by the very nature of the act of knowing. 16. There is not only the relatedness between the subject conscious and the object in consciousness : there is the universal relatedness of things, the inter-recipro- city and community of all the parts of the whole. Such an experience in sense as a Thing per se is not given to us or (probably) to any possible mind. Indeed it never can be per se except in so far as it is per aliud and in olio : but the " how " of the " per se " per alia and in aliis seems to me outside the possibility of ex- planation. Yet the thing " for us " is the thing in itself (an sich) : in other words, the thing we know as being so-determined is the thing as it is in its actuality. Why should it not be ? 17. Our mere attuitional consciousness, I conclude, is a true mirror of the external as it there exists. It is 84 Dualism. not to be supposed that Nature, in the slow process of evolution, finally breaks down at the critical point of reflecting itself. Naif natural realism holds its ground. in. " The Phenomenal is ipso facto Relative" Not so. 18. As regards the word "phenomenon" there exists a fallacy as great as that which we find in relativity. Those who make play with this word, regard (if con- sistent) all data of sense as forms constituted by the subject, while they posit, as underlying these, " being " of some sort or another as the sole reality. This sole reality may be a merely limitative noumenal x. I admit that there seems to be a contradiction in terms in speaking of the reality of phenomenon, but is this not due to our first wilfully importing into the word phenomenon the notion of semblance in opposition to true being? We have no right to do this. The ex- ternal presentate is the phenomenon, that is to say, it is the modus existendi of Being Being thus or thus. But Being is not one "thing," and phenomenon another. The thing before us is Being plus its modus existendi, i.e. phenomenon. These are two sides of one and the same actuality. This will appear more clearly when we consider further the consciousness of "Being." All abstraction of one side of the actual fact from the other is merely logical a necessary process in the search for truth. Each moment in the actuality bears home to us a truth. Phenomenon, or Dualism. 85 the "sensible," is not, however, to be interpreted as crass matter. Here, too, we have to ascertain what it is we are really conscious of as external, and leave it there. It is certainly not crass matter that we are conscious of. 1 9. As to the speculative ontological difficulty which leads us to affirm only one possible Substance, the question should be put thus : Not, are sensible things as externalities possible, but are individual finite Egos possible ? For from a strictly logical ontological posi- tion, it is quite as legitimate to understand the subsist- ence of a stone as the subsistence of a finite Ego. Are we to accept such finite individualities (even if their subsistence presents insoluble difficulties), or rest in the inevitable alternative that we ourselves are phantom shadows of shadows with an illusory freedom involving an inexplicable (and ridiculous) sense of moral respon- sibility ? Phantom shadows truly, but with this further peculiarity, that we can detect the mockery of which we are the victims, and so, as it were, defeat the Creator on His own ground ? The vast one, Fate, which over- whelms us, yet finds us defiant and supreme ! 20. No one denies the fundamental unity of subject and object, inner and outer ; to do so would be to set up two Gods. As a matter of fact, however, the move- ment of creation exists in a diremption, and our business is done when we have exhausted our analysis of experi- ence. Better to leave irreconcilables standing than 86 Dualism. involve ourselves in absurdities. Phenomenological metaphysic has simply to look and to record. Let us beware of confounding the constituting of a " thing " for conscious knowledge with constituting a "thing" for itself. iv. Recapitulation. 1. The attuent consciousness receives external things, as already co-ordinated, in their co-ordination ; and the capacity of the conscious Subject at this stage of mind- development is the capacity to receive as a whole (out there) parts in relation in other words co-ordinated qualities in a whole or synopsis of Sense. The datum is not atomic or relationless, but an aggregate of rela- tions mirrored and reflected as an aggregate, and undis- criminated as to its parts. 2. The attuent consciousness at the moment of receiving the "impression" of Extension (and all sense-impressions), locates them as outside itself, and as external, independent of itself, by a reflex action which is of the essence of consciousness. The idea "here" (to use Locke's expression) is also the thing " there." The conscious Subject is herein negated by the " other." 3. The Feeling of Being which we have with the phenomenon is placed outside in and with the pheno- menal Object. ( Vid. Chap, i.) Dualism. 87 4. When further, Consciousness rises into Keason through the emergence in itself of Will, its primal pre- dication is the aforesaid externality and independence of extension and all objects of sense ; the formula being " That (there) is A, B, or C," etc. Externality is thus given as primary fact of attuition, and primary act of reason. 5. The negation of the conscious subject by the "other" is cancelled or negated by the act of sub- sumption which brings the other or "object" into a relation of unity with the subject. But immediately thereupon this negation of the first negation is again negated by the affirmation that the " thing " is there. 6. There is, therefore, a veritable dualism of finite subject and finite object. 7. Extension, being a universal of things, is conse- quently a universal of impression ; but Extension as a necessary is not thus accounted for. ( Vid. 9.) 8. Potential consciousness being stimulated by some- thing not itself, externalizes that something as "object" by the necessity of its own nature (which I call reflex action) and thereby and therein becomes actual con- sciousness. 9. Further, the universal in recipience is also the 88 Dualism. necessary in all thought involving outer sense. For all imagination of the sensible or the possible-sensible is itself in and through sense. How else can it be ? The necessariness of Space is, therefore, an analytic necessary. If outerness is as Space, how can I image or think the outer save as Space, in other words how can I image or think Space save as Space ? This illus- trates what I mean by saying that Space is an analytic necessary. 10. When I am conscious of external Space, I am conscious of an indefinite entity or thing extended, or rather, a thing indefinitely extended in a series of mutually exclusive points not of an empty space in which extended bodies are placed. I am also conscious of separate bodies extended, of figure, colour, and so forth; and this long before the new activity called Keason appears on the field to perceive what has been receptively sensed. The side-by-sideness and mutual externality of bodies does not presuppose a prior Space in which they are located here and there. 1 These bodies are themselves parts of all-pervading space determina- tions of the universal externality of which they are a 1 It is difficult to see how, on the assumption of the Kantian d priori Space-form, we can get localization, a here, and b there, etc. It is easy to see how by means of a Space-form we (and we includes dogs and horses) invest the suggestions of sense with Extension as the condition of their being perceived. But how do we dispose these things ? The same difficulty appears as regards sequences in Time. Dualism. 89 part. 1 By which I do not mean that Space is a thing, but that I am conscious only of Spaced things, not of Space-abstract ; i.e. Space is a predicate. 11. The a here of recipient consciousness is precisely similar to the a there of externality. The harmony of the Cosmos is to be assumed to hold here as it does elsewhere, unless potent reasons can be alleged for doubting it. It is only necessary to redargue objections in order to make the primary assumption safe. These objections (I have endeavoured to show) all turn on a fallacious use of the terms Kelativity and Phenomenon. The condition of consciousness, which is relatedness, cannot ipso facto invalidate consciousness. The final movement of the cosmic evolution of Being, which movement is knowing, cannot be suicidal. 12. To the objection that certain (so-called secondary) qualities of the external, e.g. colour, sound, heat, etc., are wholly subjective, the answer is that qualities are, qud subjective, mere Schein or illusion, not Erscheinung or true phenomenon. Certain impressions involve the sensory in pleasure and pain more than others, and thus it is that they are conceived and named in terms of the feeling, not in terms of the object. No competent observer will receive a first impression as the truth of the external. The external phenomenon is seen, as 1 This primary consciousness of Space implies doubtless units of sensation, but it is only when these units have reached a certain quantity that I become aware of any impression whatsoever. 90 Dualism. soon as I get rid of local excitement, to be a motion of some sort, and this phenomenon actually and externally subsists and exists as the physicist (not the ploughman) knows it. 13. The true sense-presentate in consciousness then is there outside me so as it is here inside me. 14. Yet all is phenomenon, i.e. the appearing side of existence, from which the being side cannot be dissoci- ated without involving us in self-created gratuitous and wilful contradictions. The phenomenon is, the pheno- mena are. Nor do these phenomena present themselves to consciousness (save perhaps the vulgar consciousness) as substantive crass matter. We feel and we perceive only qualities qualities quiescent and movent, statical and dynamical all as in relation. The " thing " is, in brief, a system of predicates and relations plus Being (and dialectic as this will be more fully exhibited in the sequel). As to the inscrutable noumenon, it is simply thought there and thought here in me. Such seems to be the actual fact yielded by a critical psychology, and it has to be accepted and made the best of. For all I know, there may be a material entity in the vulgar sense, but I can neither see it nor imagine it, nor in any way think it. The philosopher, like the physical investigator, must honestly accept and report what he actually finds. Even if his doing so should involve thought in insoluble contradictions, that is not his fault. I am well aware that by the Dualism. 9 1 naive acceptance of the " other " of Feeling inner and outer, I evade some difficulties rather than solve them, and I plunge into others. But I submit that while the datum may be described and defined in its ultimate terms and relations, it is impossible to get beyond the simple acceptance of it; and as to contradictions, it must suffice if we can show that they must arise in a finite intelligence simply because it is finite. Note. Egoistic idealism, in the mere affirmation of Ego as sole reality, eo ipso posits the other as Fichte said and Hegel confirmed. The Hegelian thought is directed to the reduction of this " other " to a moment in the uni- versal dialectic a result which to philosophic faith is an irresistible conclusion, but which it is impossible scientifically to demonstrate. THIRD PART. CHAP. I. THE COMMON OR GENERAL. The Process Generally. LET us now resume our tracking of the march of in- telligence or Will-Beason. Were all objects isolated from one another and wholly different, were not all things parts of one system, were there not a universal community or commercium, our knowledge would consist simply of an arithmetical enumeration of unconnected facts unmeaning atoms. There could be no mediation, no abstraction, no generalization, no reduction to cause, no sj^stematic view of nature, at all possible. This community is not merely a community of Being, one, simple and univer- sal in all and each, but a community of predication. Through the like in the different, and the different in the like, it is that our knowledge of the particular in feeling passes into the universal and is capable of rationalization. This community and reciprocity is a fact of external nature : we approach, and finding it there, endeavour to interpret it by the organon Eeason. The Common or General. 93 1. The prehensive movement of Will (as we have seen) seizes the totality of attuition, and, by prehending it and subsuming it into the unity of conscious- ness, raises the attuit to a percept. But while the totalities or aggregates as such are perceived, the ground of the difference of each from the other is as yet, though existing and / et c-, until the ana- lytico-synthetic movement is presumed to be complete. These successive predications may be positive or negative. The negative again may be positive, though in the form of negation, as when I say " man is not mortal," wherein I affirm positive continuance of life : or they may be only preliminary steps in negation whereby I assist the process of positive determination by excluding this, that, and the other from the notion of Being: Potentiality. 157 the object before me ; preliminary steps always taken, but not always explicitly enunciated. We are speaking of the concrete. But when we have present to us the abstract non- sensible percept Being, we are not entitled to affix to it ampliative predications, for this would be to determine it, and, so far, to destroy it as " being." Of being we can know nothing save in and through its finite deter- mination in the world. We can predicate nothing of it save itself, Being = Being. And yet everything that is given to consciousness is given as itself and not anything else : and as itself and not anything else "being" has its notion. If it has not, how can it differ from anything else ? We are entitled then, at least, to a series of negative predi- cations, in order to preserve the purity of the notion of " being " as given. These negative predications are not ampliative; they simply protect the primary experience, and have only the external form of predi- cative propositions. But further, although we can predicate nothing of "being" relatively to itself, we can predicate not only its negative characters in relation to other facts, but also its positive relations to other facts as we find these given. Thus, we have already said Being is the "sole universal " as a matter of fact. It " is " in all that " is " and can " be " in the actual and the possible. Then, negatively, in relation to the " many " we say it is one : in relation to the complex, it is simple ; in relation to the innumerable diverse experiences in 158 Being: Potentiality. our feeling-consciousness, it is always the same and unique. Again negatively, that is to say as opposed to the finite, Being is non-finite or infinite. Being, as such, is the absolute-infinite. In truth, to speak of Being as absolute-infinite is a tautology. This non-finite prlus of all determination is the true Infinite. It is only because the finite first arrests us and occupies con- sciousness that the term " infinite " assumes a negative form %07&-finite. It is the positive of which the finite is the negation, the universal thesis of which finite phenomena are the antithesis. We are quite within our legitimate intellectual rights in speaking of Being as abstracted from the concrete in which we always find it. For (as I have said) it is only by separation, abstraction, analytico-synthetically that we do or can know any complex whatsoever. At the same time we must take facts as we find them, and we find Being and affirm Being only as one moment in the concrete. We may deal with it as an abstract, but only on condition that we do not illegitimately divorce it from the concrete. What has been said of Being above, as sole-universal, as one, as simple, as absolute-infinite, is said of it as a moment in the determined or finite concrete. And, still restricting ourselves to this, we further say Being is the implicit of the explicit manifold, because One is prius of the many, the Absolute-infinite prius of the finite, Being prius of its phenomenon. Being, still regarding it as a moment in the concrete, is therefore the Potential Being: Potentiality. 159 of the actual ground and source of the determination which with it constitutes the actual. Being-universal is the potentiality of existence-universal. I am quite aware that I raise in these statements the whole question of philosophical method. I am not, however, speaking of Being as a "thing" out- side and apart from phenomenon, determination, and finitude, but only as a moment in the total con- crete. As suck I am as much entitled to define Being (in the etymological, not logical, sense of definition) as I am entitled to define the finite and phenomenal presentate of sense by resolving the sense- synthesis into its predicates. With this difference, however, that in dealing with the simple and one, I can so define or demark it only by reference to that which is not it. Hence I would say, these seeming predicates of Being are strictly speaking to be called implicates of the notion of Being. They are no more predicates of Being than it is a predicate of Being to say that it is a universal datum in feeling, and a universal and necessary datum in the inner determination of the dialectic process. The true predicates of Being are there in sense the totality of the universe. Being is at once noun and verb of a universe of finite pre- dications. There is, of course, a further question Can we separate Being from its finite determinations its pre- dicates in externality, and so withdraw it from the world, of which it is the implicit potential ? I pass this question. ' I am here engaged with Analytic only. 160 Being: Potentiality. Infinite Being, not an infinite Being, is as yet all I have found. But this Being, as it has been put in these pages, is none the less because of this unsolved difficulty, ens realissimum, ens entium, ens originarium first and fundamental factor in the complex notion, God, always with us here, there, and everywhere. The fact of Being is not a product of the Dialectic only : it is given a posteriori, and is borne into me, myself a beent subject, bringing with it. the ground of all things, the possibility of all actuality. The result, to my thinking, is that Being is as a possession of my consciousness a posteriori, and also in apriori dialectic. I both feel and know absolute-infinite universal-Being, prius, ground, and potentiality of all that exists, more closely and intimately than I know that leaf outside there. The "thing in itself" is nothing save this very Being determined-so through the dialectic of Being in its movement of finite deter- mination. Being and the Infinite. On this question I may be allowed a few more words even at the risk of repetition. " Being," as a dweller in man's consciousness, is, both in feeling and a posteriori, and in the dialectic and a priori. The finite is there outside me in numberless shapes ; but the finite, the determined, the determinate is also in every moment of the a priori dialectic as an inner self-determining process. Being: Potentiality. 161 It thus lies in the very heart of the Percipience movement that in one and the same act it should affirm Being and Finitude as the issue of its movement, viz. "A is" To determine, and to affirm the Being of the determined, is its primary function. Finitude, accordingly, in so far as it is a " necessary," is a dia- lectic necessity and a dialectic percept as well as Being. But neither the one nor the other owes its existence in consciousness as a universal to the dialectic move- ment : they were there in the conscious subject prior to the emergence of the dialectic percipient activity. Being is not only in and of the affirmed determinate, but is the ground and possibility of the affirming. In the sphere of attuition, being and the determined are both felt, but they are not distinguished. The moment of their distinction is the moment of the dialectic affirmation, "A is." And the mere looking at this act shows us that the affirmation lies in the is, and that without the " is" as logical prius and ground, there could be no determinate. Being then is the ground of the Determinate. I take up the determinate into consciousness as grounded in Being. Taking now this universal and necessary percept Being, I have found that as such and by itself it is qualityless ; that it is in all actual or possible affirma- tions the same and one. Again, I find that it is non- finite, non-determined. Were it not so it would be "A" not "is": it would be itself a determined somewhat with nothing to affirm it or sustain it as L 1 62 Being: Potentiality. a determined. Consequently, it is non-finite ; and as being in itself and by itself it is absolute -non- finite. This experience of Feeling and percept of the dia- lectic process then, viz., Being, we have found to be one, universal, necessary, homogeneous, absoluto-infinite. These characteristics may be called predicates, but not correctly so called, for they are not synthetic attribu- tions, but implicit in the fact and thought or " notion " of Being itself, and they all arise out of the negation of the finite one as opposed to the manifold non- finite as opposed to the finite same as opposed to the different. There is no absoluto-infinite save Being. The definition of the true Infinite then is simply that it is Being as non-finite ground of the finite the not- as-yet-finitized, the determining not-determined, the conditioning not-conditioned the potential not-yet. The sensuous infinite, again, is the non-limitability of that which is prehended as finite, determined, con- ditioned. The true infinite is the prius of the universal finite ; the sensuous infinite, on the contrary, arises in thought only when the finite and determined is already there ; and arises, moreover, only as a characteristic of my thinking of the finite, and may or may not have objective truth. It is not itself any moment of the dialectic, but only the inevitable result of the dialectic intromitting with Space and Time. Being absoluto-infinite, however, is a very different matter. It is the very ground and possibility of de- Being: Potentiality. V; 163 , terminates; and I cannot by possibility take up any determined or the totality of the determined, save as grounded in absoluto-infinite being. It is not a con- sequential result of the dialectic, but permeates the very activity itself. Having first felt determination and being as a dual complex in rebus, I next, as a percipient activity, affirm Being in rebus, take up res so and not otherwise, and affirm it moreover as infinite, undeter- mined prius, and ground of the finite and determined. The above I hold to be the true analysis of the primary percept " A is " in its universal characters. We know nothing of the "Absolute," and we are here in the region of phrase and vagary (it is said). True, we can know nothing of the Absolute (i.e., absoluto- infinite), but we can and certainly do know the Absoluto-infinite. Even the Hamiltonian will admit that the term Absoluto-infinite represents some thing or other ; else how do we get the word, and why does he talk about it ? Manifestly there is a mental phe^ nomenon to be explained. Of knowledge and what knowing is, it is unnecessary to do more than to repeat that to know is to prehend and hold present to con- sciousness by an act of Will (to subsume into the unity of the conscious subject) ; in other words to per- ceive. There is a phenomenological fact in my conscious- ness so subsumed, for which I find the name Absoluto- infinite. Inasmuch as I hold that fact present to my consciousness I know it. Being is the Infinite. Within the sphere of this Absoluto-infinite, as such, 164 Being : Potentiality. however, my finite thinking cannot move save in the form of finite thinking, and it is therefore shut out from that sphere. The mere fact of Absoluto-infinite- Being, however, is as certain as the fact of finite phenomenal existence. Neither the one nor the other can be thought separately, though the latter seems to be so thought. If it be not so, then dogmatic atheism is the only rational outcome of philosophy instead of being (as it is) the most non-rational of all possible results. It is a proclamation of our sensuous enslavement to proclaim the nothingness of Being. It is precisely because Being is nothing determinate and explicit that it is everything, including that which is not yet disclosed. Thought is deeper than words ; but, deeper far than any thought that gives shape and distinctness to the daily aims of finite reason, is feeling the feeling of Being, the greatest gift of God to man. In and through this we find the Infinite, and repose from the clashing claims of intellectual contra- dictions. Poet and sage alike find here a refuge from strife. The Sensuous- Infinite. 165 CHAP. IV. THE SENSUOUS-INFINITE SPACE. LET us consider now the sensuous-infinite as opposed to the true infinite the non-finite. Were Infiniteness in respect of Space to be explained by the fact that Space itself is an CJL priori of the aesthetic consciousness, animals would then have a sense of infiniteness, whereas in the natural history of the consciousness of space it has been shown that, on the attuitional or aesthetic plane of mind, a sense of indefiniteness is alone possible. Infiniteness, as a percept, is Keason-born and its genesis may be thus unfolded : Animal intelligence, in the attuition of a determined totality in space, determined for it, not ly it, must have a feeling of indefiniteness of space outside the given totality. Eeason, will-born, comes on the field and there is then possible the perception of this totality, which gives rise, by antithesis, to a clear consciousness of indefiniteness of space. When this consciousness is itself prehended, it is transformed into a perception of indefiniteness. This perception of indefiniteness in respect of space is not a perception of infiniteness, though it is generally so regarded. The act of determination (which is quantification) of a spatial totality in perception or 1 66 The Sensuous- Infinite. of a portion of space, yields necessarily, I have said, by antithesis, the consciousness of indefiniteness or the indeterminate, and this, again, may become a percept. The perception of infiniteness on the other hand, is the perception of illimitability the not-to-be-determined; and this as the necessary antithesis of limitability. We see this the moment we see that perception is possible only in so far as it is determination, or quantifica- tion, or negation. In the necessary act and fact of limit or finitude, the illimitable or sense-infinitude is affirmed. The questions of the minimum divisibile and the maximum extensibile are, it seems to me, futile ques- tions. We may affirm a minimum divisibile be it atom or (real) point but to image a minimum of exten- sion which cannot be still further divided would be to imagine an extension that is not extended. However reduced, the presumed minimum is still extension, and it is of the very nature of extension to be divisible : this is extension. We shall be able to conceive and prove a minimum of extension when A ceases to be equal to A. So with the maximum the possible circumscription of space. By the very conditions of the act of perception, which is determination or quan- tification, space must be always outside any possible image or determined portion of space whether as a maximum or a minimum. The sense-infinite is in fact contained in the act of percipience as a determining act. A man cannot jump out of his- own skin. The Sensuous-Infinite. 167 Consider it for a moment and you will see that the perception of anything spaced is limitation, and in- volves in its very nature non-limit. Accordingly, the moment I think limit as such, I must think the illimitable ; or, rather, the act of thinking limit is thinking illimitability. But not illimitability of Space, but an illimitable or infinite series of Spaces. 1 68 Duration and Time. CHAP. V. DURATION AND TIME NECESSARINESS AND INFINITENESS OF THESE. AT the stage of attuition, the conscious subject is re- cipient of external impressions and by reflex activity co-ordinates these, and so attains to synopsis. It is aware, further, of a succession of objects, a, b, c, d, etc., and the intervals between these are filled by & feeling of the con- tinuity of the recipient subject. The interruption of the continuity of the subject by a, b, c, d, etc., marks off that continuity of being into parts or periods. These periods or lapses of duration constitute what is strictly to be called Time. There is in this animal and pre-rational condition a vague consciousness of "before-and-afterness," but only in so far as association links, or may link, a to &, etc., and so forth. Animals accordingly have a sense of Time; vague, it is true, because it rises out of merely attuitional states, but sufficient to attract our notice, especially in those animals that have a vivid temperament. The above, we presume, would be a fair, if brief, account of Time as an experiential fact from the Lockian point of view, modified and adapted to the terminology and point of view of this treatise. Men have all that animals have; but they have more. The difference is not one merely of intensity or Duration and Time. 169 vividness of feeling, but is one of kind. This specific difference is due to the characteristic attribute of the human animal, viz., Will, which is the basis and kinetic ground of percipience. What the animal attuites of successive changes or of interrupted continuity of dur- ation the man prehends, fixes, and subsumes into the unity of consciousness, in brief, perceives. Time, as periods (or spaces) of continuity or duration, is thus sharply defined ; and with this sharpness of definition the power of taking note of lapses, and of measuring Time, arises. The vague feeling of a before-and-after also is thereby raised into a clear perception of a before-and-after. Let us consider this question more closely : From one point of finite determination to the next there is a lapse. The finite is not merely a series of co-existent atomic points of Space, but it is a series of atomic " nows." " Time " is not visible as space is. I cannot get it through sense. All I can get through sense is mo- tions of parts of space in space. Atomic spaces are intelligible as parts of one Space. I cannot see Time: I cannot feel Time. I am entirely in the hands of successive motions as presented to my consciousness. Now no number of a succession of motions of or in space could yield the conscious- ness Time. Nay, if I will think purely and simply what actually occurs in sense alone, I shall find no succession. Motions I should be aware of these I 170 Duration and Time. should receive : but they would be anarchic. Not to speak of order, there could not be even succession ; and consequently there could be no series. It is essential to denude ourselves of associations, and of the contribu- tion of reason to sensation in order to see this clearly. a b c, as mere phenomena, I say, will not give even succession or series. To get this I must have a b c. To say by way of explanation that a is given now and b then is a patent assumption of a series in Time ; and this is the very question at issue. There must be a continuity between a b c if I am to be aware of them as a series. There is no sensible continuity between phenomena as such ; this is certain. In short, a b c are, and can be, a succession, a series, at all, only in so far as they are in or of a Con- tinuum : a continuum which is in itself unbroken : it is a b c which break it. Where is this Continuum ? As regards the sentient individual we say there is the unbroken continuity of the beent subject or recipient basis. This continuum is not made up of a series of as and bs and cs an in- finite number of finite experiences. It is these very experiences, in so far as they are a series or succession, that we have to explain. But if the continuum is not an infinite number of finites, it has no determinations. What then is it ? It is simply Being the one sole continuum and bond of atomic motions [as, perhaps, of atomic spaces]. The " one-after-the-otherness " then of sense-experi- Duration and Time. 1 7 1 ences is made possible by the fact of a permanent con- tinuum in which they as objective arise (Being), or, for which they as subjective experience become (the beent consciousness). But here we have introduced a new word the word " permanent " compelled to do so by the play of finite determinates on my consciousness, which play has revealed through antithesis the one and " permanent " continuum as necessary ground of the series. "Per- manent " is that which persistently remains during all changes ; in other words, it is in its relation to changes and the question of Time, During. During and Duration are to be used as opposed to finite changes and determinations. What is it that " dures " ? Being and Being alone the sole connective of universal existence. Subjective Time. It is evident, then, that if there were no sense of continuity filling up the space between the successive presentations a and &, there manifestly could be no consciousness of Time. There would be nothing of which Time, i.e. lapses of duration, could be a portion. There would be the successive percepts a and I, but as the interval would be a blank, nothing could come of this experience save the said isolated percepts a and I. It is the succession of a b c, moving, so to speak, over the surface of, or in, the permanent being-subject, which brings into consciousness two phenomenological facts, viz. (a) Continuity of being, or Duration; (b) Successive spaces or parts of continuous being, or Time. 172 Duration and Time. Time, then, as a subjective experience, has its roots in a twofold consciousness the consciousness of the continuity of the being of the subject (i.e. duration), and motion or change. Thus far, Time is as yet seen to be merely a succession of portions or spaces of Duration; i.e. determinations in the form of succes- sion. Objective Time. If there be a veritable externality (which there is), then the observed succession of por- tions or periods of duration is a real external succession of motions. There is a before-and-after external to the subject. Objective Time is, or might be described as, pulses of infinite duration. In other words, universal Being externalizes itself as motion in a protensive series of determinations, as well as in Extension. Time, then, is an actually sub- sisting series of determinations following one upon another outside there, and independently of a finite percipient, just as space is a co-existent outside-one- another series. Duration or during is simply (as now appears) con- tinued-Being and we now here encounter another implicate of Being, an implicate yielded by its relation to change or a series. Were there no change or series, the notion "continued" could not arise, and During would be simply a synonym for Being ; but because of the fact of change there is yielded a fresh contribution to the notion of Being. During is a stream on which there is no ripple, an eternal now. Time is in sense ; and Duration, the thesis of Time, D^l,rat^on and Time. 1 73 is also in sense or feeling, just as Being is ; for it is We cannot go on to speak of During and Time in their own language any more than we can think them in their own true lineaments. During assumes the spatial form of a protensive quantity a line ; and Time assumes the form of finite parts of that line. What follows, therefore, is in the language of Space, and so far, therefore, metaphorical. Necessariness of Time in Sense. Duration is a uni- versal and necessary condition of Feeling. Is Time, i.e. portions of Duration, a necessary within the sphere of the aesthetic, or sense, consciousness ? Even if there were no space, there would yet be a consciousness of inner changes of a succession of determinations in the beent continuum. Time is thus not only a universal, but a universal condition, of consciousness, and, as such, a " necessary," just as space is. But, further, it is a necessary of sense in so far as it is involved in Space. I cannot feel Space, and I cannot image Space, save as a series of parts. The infinite parts of extensive quantity involve protensive quantities or times. Infiniteness of Time in Sense. Time is not infinite in Sense because it is itself a finite-determination. DURATION AND TlME UNDER CONDITIONS OF EEASON. Eeason in its elementary form of Percipience now enters to deal with the above data. 1 74 Duration and Time. It vivifies attuitional experience. But not only so. Necessariness and Infiniteness of Duration. Duration, since it is Being, is a posteriori as well as a priori. Duration is accordingly a necessary and infinite the prime and ultimate necessary of both subject and object. All that Keason effects is that the perception of Being- universal as During is brought into relief through the perception of a determinate series. But the con- sciousness of the necessity and infiniteness is not due to Keason : it is, prior to the emergence of reason, felt ; and now, it is perceived and affirmed. Necessariness of Time. The feeling of Time as lapses of duration as determinations of during-Being, e.g. a b and & c, is now, through the activity of perci- pience, vivified, discriminated, subsumed and affirmed. Percipience is not only a determination of quantity a quantifying as regards space-universal, but in the same act it is an arrestment of flux of duration, a (the object) is now. But this timing now is the issue of a dialectic move- ment. The necessariness of Time, or Timing, is thus contained in the Dialectic. So we found the necessity of a determination of a finite or quantified object in space was a necessary issue of the Dialectic. Infiniteness of Time. "We are now dealing with finites, and the sense-infinite in respect of Time emerges. The arrestment of the determinate is the arrestment of the determinate as " now!' That is to say, the limitation of duration to a "now" Given the line or flux of dura- tion, it is manifestly impossible to limit it to the point Duration and Time. 175 of "now" without affirming therein a "before" and " after." This, viz., non-limitation, or rather, not-yet- limited, or indefiniteness, is contained in the fad of limitation. But at whatever point I put my " now," I also posit a before and after : and there is thus forced on me (just as in the case of Space) that the illimitable is contained in the ad of limiting by the very nature of that act : the infinite in respect of Time arises out of the finitizing act. Limit posits with itself, as condition of the pos- sibility of positing, the illimitable. But not the illim- itable of Time, for Time is everywhere a determined or finite ; but an illimitable series of Times. This is the Sense-Infinite in respect of Time. The true Infinite is given in Duration as Being-During. Questions accordingly as to the minimum and the maximum are unavoidable, but the discussion of them is vain. Whether there be an atomic punctum of Time or not, we are compelled to speak of Time in terms of space, and it is as impossible to conceive an atom of time as it is to conceive an atom of space. Also, a maximum of the series of Times, past or future, is an impossibility. There is an infinite series. The very conditions of knowing necessitate the infiniteness, i.e. the illimitability of the series : the infiniteness is in the finite act ; and as the fact is so, it must simply be accepted. To beat our heads against such questions is a waste of energy. 1 When we have found a fact and 1 The question, " Had the world a beginning in Time ? " seems in the light of the above wrongly put. It should be, " Had Time a beginning? " i.e. Had the Finite a beginning ? 176 Duration and Time. the genesis of that fact, our work is at an end. Like the Buddhist priest, we must just spread our carpet and sit down before the ultimate. Further Remarks on the Sensuous Infinite (Space and Time). In addition to the true infinite the absoluto-infinite as that has been explained, there is, as we have seen, an experience of reason which yields to consciousness the infiniteness of Space and Time the two aesthetic universals as a series of Spaces and Times. The finitization of Absolute-Infinite Being, however, its determination into the finite and phenomenal, has taken place before the infiniteness of these universals of sense becomes an object of perception at all. There is a per- ception of indefiniteness of Space and Time in the very first act of percipience. This is inevitable, for how can I affirm a circumscribed portion of Space and Time without positing at the same moment the indefinite and uncircumscribed, the not-yet circumscribed, as out- side and beyond the circumscribed ? This is a percep- tion of Indefiniteness of the universals Space and Dura- tion ; and beyond this nothing. This, manifestly, is not infiniteness. The restless activity of Will in its desire to compass the whole of things the synthesis of all experience finds as a matter of fact, that it cannot do it. Why ? Because percipience is itself an act of deter- mination of Space and of arrestment or determination Duration and Time. 177 of Duration. Thus it may go on determining these universals for ever, and yet precisely because the act is an act of determination, a continuous and endless series of determinations, the act of percipience is finally exactly where it was after its primary determination. The result is that the determination of the total of Space and Time is by the very nature of reason as per- cipience for ever impossible. That is to say Space and Time already given as universals are found to be neces- sarily illimitable by human reason because of the nature of that reason. Were it otherwise, percipience would not be determination ; percipience as act would vanish and there could be no percipience. But reason is not on this account justified in saying that Space and Time are infinite factually on the side of either the maxi- mum or the minimum ; but only this, that the finitiz- ing of these aesthetic universals is impossible to human reason as reason, and this because of the very nature of finite reason. The perception of the Sensuous Infinite is the perception of illim it ability as necessarily con- tained in the consciousness of limit. To call even this non-limitability of sense-universals " the Infinite " is misleading. The true Infinite is the absolute or non-finite as already explained. The absolute-infinite is as such out of relation and prior to relation ; the infinite of Space and Time, on the contrary, arises out of the finite and is possible only through the finite. This sense-infinite which is through the finite, this finite which involves the infinite, is, as we shall afterwards see, of ethical importance ; M 178 Duration and Time. and also of intellectual importance, for it stimulates the activity of reason in the direction of atomic dia- thesis (search for essence) on the one side, and to a completion of the synthesis of all experience on the other. The true Infinite, I repeat, is the non-finite : the sensuous infinite (of which I have been speaking) arises out of the impossibility inherent in human reason (by its very essential nature) to finitize the finite into which the true Infinite has already passed as the manifestation of its Being its modus existendi. The play of finite and infinite into and out of each other, in the matter of Space and Time, early forces on the mind of man the consciousness that the finitizing of the totality Space and Time are impossible to him. He then says Space is infinite, Time is infinite ; but all he is entitled to do is to inquire how it is that an object which is itself a finite determination of the true Infinite should not be finitizable by his reason. When he can detect the explanation of this as lying concealed in the very nature of reason-percipi- ence itself, he then finds that he is not entitled to make any dogmatic assertion at all about the factual infiniteness of objective Space and Time, but only that he cannot finitize their series nay, could not do so without a suicide of such reason as he has. The true Infinite, on the other hand, he both feels and perceives as an implicate of Being : it is objective both in the sense of being non-ego and in the sense of being both ego and non-ego the sole universal and necessary Duration and Time. 1 79 in all actual or possible existence. As such it is ground and, as ground, constitutive of the Finite. It is this question of the infinite in the finite of a sense-series that complicates all questions of the iden- tity of a concrete thing. All is in flux and there is no point at which a thing can be said to be purely itself as a mathematical point is. In Space and Time all change of state is infinitely divisible. There is no leap across a chasm however minimized it may be. There is infinite graduation and gradation. A thing is now what it was not then, but even in its " now " it is already in its future as in its past. The old sophistical and sceptical difficulties arising out of this have never been solved and never will be. The supposed answers have been either tu quoques or delusive. The task of philosophy is not solely to explain, but quite as much to place its finger on the unexplainable, show how it must be unexplainable, and there leave it. 1 80 Cause as a Dialectic Percept. CHAP. VI. CAUSE AS A DIALECTIC PERCEPT OR SYNTHETIC a priori PREDICATE. IN addition to Being or Substance is there any other necessary Universal the offspring of the subject-self which we affirm of the phenomenal as constitutive of it ? If there be, we cannot find it in the attuent conscious- ness, for we have exhausted its record : we must look for it in the form of Percipience, for there we find Eeason in its elements. That we universally and necessarily affirm Cause is admitted. Metaphysical debate, like most ethical de- bates, is a debate not as to matters of fact, but as to origins. The genesis, and consequently the nature of the Causal notion is variously explained, and the notion itself is often explained away. But no spasm of logical effort will ever satisfy men that the synthesis of Cause and Effect is resolvable into invariable succession, com- bined with a habit of expectation of the recurrence of what has often before occurred. There is a residuum of necessity which is by such an explanation left un- accounted for. 1. The Causal Predicate. Two questions, viz., the necessity of the Causal Predi- cate as a Universal, and the necessity of the Causal The Causal Predicate. 1 8 1 nexus, are (I think) frequently mixed. Hume certainly distinguished, though he almost immediately proceeded to confound, them. Attuent consciousness is aware of external pheno- mena as statical and dynamical and as related to each other as units of a series. There is nothing in the attuition of motion to suggest anything save the fact it- self of motion. This fact is accepted just as statical and quiescent phenomena are accepted ; and it is in attuit- ing these simply as phenomenal facts that the function of mere attuitional consciousness exhausts itself. In the attuition of a dynamic series, however, there lies the expectation of recurrence. If a series has once occurred in sense, why should it not always recur? This is true of dogs as well as of men ; and Hume's conclusion on the whole subject must be accepted as beyond question if we confine ourselves within the attuitional pre-rational sphere of the conscious subject. Again, suppose the necessariness of the Causal Nexus the " productive power " of the antecedent in a time-sequence of two or more could be established, it would not follow from this that the Causal Predicate is a necessary of human intelligence. If this were all, we could, it seems to me, conceive a given quantity of matter and energy to be the eternal status quo, and the sphere of things to be maintained by a complex and "unceasing causal reciprocity of an efficient as well as universal character, without therefore concluding that the primary status quo is itself an effect of a prior cause. We cannot, however, as a matter of fact, so conceive 1 8 2 Cause as a Dialectic Percept. the primary status quo ; and the question is, how does the universal and necessary predicate of Cause arise ? Given the perception of necessary sequences within the range of the existent and phenomenal, we should, it is true, be driven by the impulse of mind to continue the operation of sequent and antecedent regressively ad infinitum. But this inevitable impulse of mind could not establish the necessity of Cause as a universal predicate. It might be regarded indeed simply as a cacoethes cogitandi. Our business is then first to ascer- tain whether the causal predicate, as a universal and necessary, be a fact of intelligence. And this question cannot be settled on the " common sense " ground that we have an inevitable necessity imposed on us to affirm Cause, but only by the critical exhibition of the nature and genesis of the necessity, if that be possible. In the simple, initial, and rudimentary act of intelli- gence which is 'called Percipience, we have found the process whereby we reach a percept. That process is (stated generally) the Form of Mediation which, when broken up, yields us the laws of Reason-movement, viz., Excluded Middle, Negation, Sufficient Reason, and Identity. This identity is the conclusion of the process and is the form of the subsumption of the object by my will into the unity of consciousness, and its consequent affirmation as determined being equal to itself. But this determined being has been manifestly mediated : the thing is, because it is not any other thing. It is mediated, in brief, through negation as ground. The Causal Predicate. 183 So it is with every determination and discrimination ; and we thus have a mediating or causal process as prius of the issue in percipience the determined somewhat or percept. Here, then, is Cause, as " Sufficient reason," woven into the very form of the primal process of Eeason, accompanying it in every act, and making its acts possible. Sufficient Reason is the summing up of two ante- cedent movements, viz. : A is either A or B or some- thing else (excluded middle) : it is not B or anything else (contradiction or negation) ; Therefore ; it is A (identity). The cause, the formal cause or ground of the existent external, is contained in the therefore of Sufficient Reason which lies in the bosom of the mediating process of all possible Percipience. The universality and necessity of the Causal predicate as synthesis of the external and interpreter of the matter of sensation, is thus exhibited as implicit in the act of Percipience, and so Reason-born. As in the case of " Being," the Causal Predicate is necessarily affirmed of the totality and unity of things, as of each individual thing. It is not a " general " nor an "abstract," but a percept a dialectic percept a synthetic a priori predicate, and involved in the very nature of Reason. The importance of the distinction I here make be- tween the Causal Predicate and the causal nexus is great. If it be not recognised, then the Causal notion is applicable to nothing save empirical changes of state going on within the sphere of finite phenomena. 1 84 Cause as a Dialectic Percept. We find ourselves under the necessity, it is said, of carrying the Causal predicate regressively back ad infinitum. But this is an illusion : Cause, kinetic and formal, is the real ground which Eeason posits as in things, and it is the prius of things qua phenomena. It is the condition of the possibility of our thinking things. When I imagine myself under the necessity of affirming a cause of this ground-cause and so on, I have created my own difficulty by first sensualizing the dialectic percept, Cause (as we said also in the case of Being). I have either transformed Cause into an ens of imagination, or into an ens of abstraction both of which proceedings are equally illegitimate. Given that I so think Cause, it follows, of course, that I must think the said cause as again caused, and so forth. But if I hold Cause before me as dialectic of Eeason beyond which I cannot by the very nature of the case go (at least along the ordinary beaten path of thinking), any predication of a cause of the cause is a contradiction and an absurdity. This intellectual perception of the act and fact of pure reason is characteristic of our cognition of all the Dialectic percepts. I have said Cause is predicated as necessary ground of things qua phenomena. After what has been said elsewhere I need scarcely protect myself against being supposed to use the word " phenomena " in the Kantian sense. Phenomena are not shows of things constituted by the mind, but the system of predicates existing there for the mind : and beyond these and their Being and Reason-ground or ratio there is nothing. The Causal Predicate. 185 Further, we would point out that discussion about the infinite regression of causes is futile ; because if the Form of our percipience of all thought, be causal, how is it possible to imagine the uncaused in things ? We should first have to unship reason. Thought can- not get behind the primary arid necessary conditions of thought. An interesting question arises as to the relation of cause and effect to Time. Cause is always necessarily conceived as the time-prius of the effect. Why so ? Because all thinking is in Time, and the fundamental form of Keason yields the mediating moments as priora of, as the prius, the completion of the dialectic act the percept. In fine, the Causal predicate is outside the series of phenomena as phenomena, and is constitutive of them as ground. We may now pass from the Causal Predicate to the Causal Nexus. 2. The Causal Nexus. Let us look at this question historically and geneti- cally. It is really a question of empirical causation de- manding an explanation which the empirical by itself cannot yield. The attuent consciousness, which precedes the emer- gence of the rational in and through Will, we can imagine as being, in its first experiences, aware only of the quiescent qualities of the external. It then suddenly receives the impression of motion, e.g. the i86 Cause as a Dialectic Percept. motion of a leaf up to that moment attuited as stable. This experience suggests nothing save the isolated new phenomenon motion or change of state. The fact of change, however, is thereby introduced into attuitional consciousness and so added to receptive experience. If the rational consciousness becomes aware for the first time of this new phenomenon of motion, there is, of course, a place here, as everywhere, for the universal Causal Predicate; but there is as yet no place for the Causal Nexus. Matter is not yet furnished for this. The attuent intelligence is, as yet, aware of nothing save the fact of motion and change. If, however, the alighting of a crow on the branch had preceded the motion, these two motions would then be attuited through association as before and after a b. Nay, even the attuent consciousness might after a certain frequency of impression associate two or three ante- cedents with a sequent. The association in memory of an antecedent and sequent a I leads to the expectation of b when a is again attuited, as when a dog expects the descent of a whip on seeing the raised arm : nay, the memorial association may suggest a when b is seen. In short, the order or series of attuits in time leads an attuent intelligence (as endowed with memory) to expect a repetition of the same order when any unit of the series re-appears. This habit is engendered on phenomenal experience. The primary fact given to us, and which we receive and have to explain, is the sequence a b. The Causal Nexus. 187 The non-rational attuition of sequents is undoubtedly, at best, an association as passive and receptive in its character as is the attuition of a single and simple phenomenal shape. But this does not prevent the education of experience or custom taking effect in non-rational intelligences. But the series of sequent movements which in a dog ends with the sensation of pain may some day change its character. The up- lifted arm, which, up to a certain date in his experience, has been an antecedent of the descending whip, is found also to be sometimes followed by a friendly pat. The second limb of the associated series of movements is thus destroyed and another limb takes its place ; and this new sequence, if repeated more frequently than the first sequence which was bound together in attuition, will ere long supersede it. Inasmuch as a dog cannot, because of his want of Will-potency, fix attuits in consciousness and discriminate their true characters, he cannot compare, though he can feel likenesses and differences : thus the more frequent becomes to it the invariable, and there are fixed, in his associative memory, certain sequences as always occurring. Further, the dog not only, through mere association, attuites invariableness of succession as characteristic of a series of phenomena, but it has a further capacity : for, if any pleasure or pain affecting its own organism is one term of the invariable series, its movements show that it expects one term of the series to be followed by another. It expects 1} when it is attuent of a. The certainty of expectation is not, of course, a knowledge 1 88 Cause as a Dialectic Percept. in any proper signification of the word, because the Keason-movement whereby we perceive or know is not yet there ; but it is fore-felt. Accordingly, a dog (if we might venture to interpret its intelligence) is, by means of associative memory, attuent of a series of movements consisting of two or more terms ; further, of the fact that the one invariably follows the other in the order of time : and not only so; for the attuition of the invariableness of the occurrence of the terms of the series becomes in the canine con- sciousness the feeling of expectation that a specific sequent will follow a specific antecedent. It would almost seem, then, that the animal con- sciousness may claim to possess, in common with that of man, an experience of the causal relation. And such is the fact in every essential respect, if the perception of cause and effect as existing outside, and consequently the notion of the causal nexus, built on the foundation of that perception, be only a perception of an invariable and certain (that is, " always to be expected ") series of phenomena. I say there would be no essential differ- ence ; the sole difference would lie in the greater vividness and intensity of the attuitions of the higher organism (man). The causal nexus as analysed by Hume is. in point of fact, the causal nexus of the dog as it has just been exhibited. It is, to use a Kantian phrase, the synthesis of imagination in the sensibility only. The term attuition, it is scarcely necessary to repeat, has been used to denote that state of consciousness The Catisal Nexus. 189 which is neither perception on the one hand, nor mere elementary sensation on the other : as it rises above the latter in its reflex power of co-ordinating many synchron- ous impressions as a single totality, so it falls below the former as a specifically lower grade of intelligence. In attuition, the subject is conscious of the object: the object occupies and fills the subject without regard to the spontaneity or movement of the latter, which is in a condition of receptivity, or, at best, of passive or reflex activity. The subject is the slave of the objective phenomenon. In perception or knowing, on the other hand, the subject, as Will, applies itself to the object, arrests the flux of phenomena, fixes some one pheno- menal object, and, by subsumption into the unity of con- sciousness, makes it more or less permanent as an object of consciousness. Now the delivery of the rational man from the tyranny of the object enables him, in the first place, to contemplate steadily the mere synthesis in the sensibility given by impressions, and to discriminate, in a sequent series, those terms which are the true ante- cedents of a perceived consequent from those which either do, or may, vary. Forcible impact, and not the raising of the arm, he discriminates as the true, invari- able, and certain antecedent of the dog's pain when he is beaten : the human agent, the uplifted arm, the whip, are all detected to be variables and therefore not true causal antecedents. The attuition of the dog is, no less than the perception of the man (it is true), a conscious- ness of sequences: but the perception of a man (by virtue of the sustaining Will) is a consciousness which 190 Cause as a Dialectic Percept. can disentangle and discriminate those veritable terms of the series which alone must issue in the consequent. Thus we rise to the conditioning invariable antecedent, and have taken a step in advance of Hume, and are alongside of Mill. Perception thus discriminates, from among its phe- nomenal experiences, that which is truly the invariable and certain antecedent of a given consequent. Thus far it simply reads correctly, from the book of experience, that which has happened, does happen, and certainly will happen. The merely attuitional brute reads from the same book incorrectly and confusedly, because it cannot bring Will to bear on the phenomena. Sequence is not consequence. Let us now take another step forward. The expecta- tion of the future recurrence of the same sequence in the same order reached by the perception of the man is simply a projection of the in variableness of the past into the future ; it resolves itself into a confident and reasonable anticipation ; and the (so-called) certainty of the recurrence of b after a can never be more than this confident anticipation, unless we silently and surrepti- tiously import more into it from some other source than the mere experience of sequence as such. In Hume it is and can be nothing else than the reasonable anticipa- tion based on custom or habit, and so it must be with all Sensationalists. At this stage of phenomenal ex- perience it is usual to stop ; and, if we here stop, the (so-called) causal is truly resolvable, it seems to me, into merely uniform conditioning sequence : and the The Causal Nexus. 1 9 i outcome of this is, "b will always follow a"-, iiot"& must always follow a" What is the true force here of the word " conditioning " ? Merely this, that the true antecedent has been discriminated and not the appar- ent merely. This uniform and apparently inevitable sequence is really all that we yet find. The uni- formity of nature is, thus far, not necessary, but merely "to be expected." For the necessity of the sequence is not at all yet explained : it is rather cast out from consciousness as an illusion, and interpreted as a mere cacoethes intelligendi. Now without this something more, it will hardly be maintained that the above explication of the relation of antecedents and sequents is an exhaustive record of the causal synthesis which we call the nexus of cause and effect. Forcible impact on a sentient body is not only invariably followed by pain in such a body, a sequent always to be expected; but over and above this, it cannot but be followed by pain. There is a must in the case. Forcible impact on flesh and nerve and the consequent pain, are related, not only as certain and invariable terms of a series, but as necessary terms of a series. Given the one, the other must follow. This is what rational intelligence really means by Cause and Effect by the causal nexus, or necessary relation, of the sequent series a b. Again, if a given antecedent invariably and neces- sarily involves a certain sequent, and if that specific sequent cannot take place without the prior occur- rence of that specific antecedent, what is this but to* 192 Cause as a Dialectic Percept. say that the antecedent causes the sequent or effects it ? Cause then means in the rational consciousness Efficient cause. There is no cause which is not efficient ; any non-efficient antecedent in a series is ipso facto mis- named cause, and must be forthwith eliminated. Nay more, the efficient cause is also formal cause, because a is the ground of the qualitative difference that takes place, and which we call b. Cause then, it appears, is efficient and formal, 1 cause and effect are related by a must, by a necessary nexus nor merely by invariableness of sequence. All that has yet been said is a mere matter of phenomenological fact in the history of intelligence, which we may try to explain, but which finally declines to be explained away. Can it truly be explained or justified ? Must we content ourselves merely with loud assertion of the existence and reality of the necessary nexus, or must we accept it as after all an illusory habit of mind ? Consider : Is this necessity given in the experience of sequent phenomena, or is it imported into conscious- ness from some other source as a concomitant of the relations of sequence ? The answer is, that while all the phenomenal materials are given in experience the must is a subject-evolved product the form in which the particular time-sequence is taken up by Keason. No assertion that this is so, however, no empha- sizing of mere assertion can establish its truth. We must show how it is a Eeason-necessity. If we do not 1 In the Aristotelian use of the term. The Causal Nexus. 193 do this, we stop short at the critical point of the whole analysis, and our loud affirmation is mere vulgar opinion dressed up in the borrowed clothes of philo- sophical terminology. The case stands thus in accordance with the pre- ceding investigation. The universal CL priori synthetic predicate Cause, implicit in the Form of Percipience, takes up all pre- sentates as caused statical as well as dynamical pre- sentates. The presentate before me, e.g. a bird, is perceived and affirmed as a caused determinate some- what which is the issue of a causal process : when the said bird flies, the new phenomenon, motion, is per- ceived and affirmed as also caused ; and that is all. But if I see that two motions follow each other, e.g. the approach of a cat, a, and the flight of the bird, b, I have a case of time-sequence. The ct, priori universal predicate thereupon operates thus : b was caused : what was the cause ? Answer, a the time-antecedent. Thus I synthesize ab as causally, that is necessarily, con- nected, and I thus establish the causal nexus in this particular case. Among all the possible time-priora of b, a alone seems to account for b as productive or effectuating cause. The necessity is thus engendered on this particular time-sequence by means of the a priori causal synthetic predicate which compels us to think things as caused somehow. But the causal nexus is within the series of the phenomenally con- ditioned. N 1 94 Cause as a Dialectic Percept. But all this, it may be admitted, gives us the fact of Cause, the necessity of Cause as ground of b, and the affirmation of a as being that ground in the particular case ; but we have not yet so bridged over the relation of a to b as to yield a nexus which is, as a matter of experiential fact, necessary as between those two par- ticular phenomena. True ; but the explanation of that necessary nexus in the particular case is to be found in a simple operation of intelligence. For, our concept of a (the cat) is by the new experience extended so as to comprehend the quality of " bird-alarming," and our concept of b (bird) is extended so as to comprehend the quality of " cat-fearing " ; and so long as these concepts respectively contain these elements a must be followed by b. Two concepts are so related in thought as to cross each other and are thus so tied together that to think and affirm the one is to think and affirm the other. In brief, the law of Identity comes on the scene in the completed cognition of a particular sequence-relation and the necessary nexus in thought is thereby consti- tuted. It is a case of identity. So, e.g. " Fire burns wood/' i.e. Fire is comburent, Wood is combustible : the two concepts cross and are mutually involved. We say the necessary connection in thought. For my constitution of the nexus in the particular case before me may be no nexus at all in rerum natura. And yet for a thousand years men may so have re- garded it. It is a question of observation : b may not have been caused by a but by x, or y, or z. This, 1 say, is a question of accuracy in the observation of the The Causal Nexus. 195 phenomenal sequential series. But having, however erroneously, constituted the two concepts, a, b, as I have constituted them, they must remain in a neces- sary nexus, till I have, in the further progress of knowledge, taken them to pieces and reconstructed them. The vera causa the true synthesis of db we reach, as we reach other knowledge, only by passing beyond crude percipience and concipience, and, through analytico-synthetic processes, finding the actual fact. This is Science. The nexus in rerum natura is seen only when we finally see that it is a case of transmutation of Energy a case of physical identity. To say, however, that an effect is simply the sum of its conditions is one of the many attempts to solve difficult questions by easy phrases. The pave- ment is dry, and it rains : result a " wet pavement." The coincidence of two sets of conditions produces a tertiv/ni quid something that did not before exist. The perception of the fact of physical identity is said to explain the causal nexus. But it cannot do so, for the nexus is a thing of thought. For ages before the identity was seen which revealed that b as effect of a was simply 6 a , the nexus of ab was to thought a necessary and efficient nexus. It does not matter whether the causal synthesis was wrong or right. Opinion is always on its way to science ; but at every step of the way it is subjectively assured of its causal affirmations, and the synthesis is disconnected finally only by showing that the concepts in the synthesis are not what we thought they were. The nexus is thus 196 Cause as a Dialectic Percept. broken. The causal nexus rests on identity, but it is an identity in thought. Let it be noted in this connection that the so-called induction of Cause of which Logicians treat, if it is to be called induction at all, is induction of a peculiar and analytic character. I have / an effect ; and preced- ing it and somehow effectuating it, there are the possi- bilities a, b, c, d, e, mixed up. My search for cause is an analysis of this complex series in order to isolate the true , specific causal element in the series, that results in the specific effect, /, and which I find to be e. We thus have the causal synthesis e-f. We are aided, doubtless, in searching for this by the so- called methods laid down by Logicians. But these do not constitute methods at all : they are simply the experimentalist's expedients and are subsidiary to true Method. The Method is analytico-synthetic. In conclusion, let me make two remarks. Causality does not determine the time-sequence of db. Causality merely finds itself involved in the universal time- sequence. The Form of Percipience necessitates the causal moment as prius of the effect the percept ; and the attempt to construe a logical prius in thought is to place it as an antecedent in Time. The dialectic of finite reason is in Time. The Sensationalist, departing from his only logical and tenable doctrine invariability of sequence - in time engendering a quasi-necessity now calls the cause a conditioning invariable antecedent. If by this he means merely to signalize the true antecedent as The Causal N exits. 197 opposed to many possible antecedents or the crude antecedents of the vulgar, he manifestly gains nothing as regards the question of causality. If, on the other hand, he means by the word " conditioning " that there is something more than true time-sequence, he is endeavouring illegitimately to foist in causality in the sense of effectuating power and necessary effect ; and thus, he either gives up the sensationalist position altogether, or confesses his failure to explain causality. 3. Tlie Law of Uniformity in Nature. This does not mean that what has happened once will happen again. Nothing more than the possibility of its happening again is established by its happening once. If any sequence, al), happens frequently, the proba- bility of its happening again is then established, and a consequent expectation arises in the mind of the observer; and the more frequently it happens, the greater is the felt probability of its recurrence. When, next, the sequence, ab, has been invariable in all the instances yet observed, as in the case of day following night, the probability rises to a firm belief that 1) will always follow a. But this, at most, is only conviction (subjective). When, further, a is affirmed as the invariable (so- called) " conditioning " antecedent of &, we have a con- viction of the continued recurrence so strong as to amount almost to certainty ; and this is sufficient for all practical purposes. 198 Caiise as a Dialectic Percept. But there is, as yet, no necessity in the uniformity of sequence. To-morrow's sun might rise a charred mass. Until we recognise the necessity of the syn- thesis ab, there is no objective law of uniformity in nature. This necessity rests, as I have shown, on the Law of Identity. If & did not follow a, 1} would not be b nor would a be a. All uniformity of sequence in phenomena, accord- ingly, is only possible and, in varying degrees, probable until we have definitely discriminated and affirmed a true causal sequence. And the uniformity of nature is merely the uniformity of the causal relation ; the necessity is the necessity of the causal nexus, which is analytic. Eeciprocity is not a separate category but merely the causal intercommunity of parts whereby a complex unity is constituted the unity of a thing or of a Science of things. 1 The question of the causal nexus, it now appears, lies entirely within the finite phenomenal series. The Causal Predicate again, which is the a priori ground of our searching for cause at all, is the ground of the possibility of any finite phenomenal series whatsoever, and as ground and efficient, constitutive of the world. 1 It is scarcely necessary to point out that in a doctrine of natural realism, the perception of the co-existence of phenomena is in no way dependent on the notion of Reciprocity as a form of the Causal notion. End. 199 CHAP. VII. END. WILL under the stimulus of formal (empty) end seeks a " real " filling. This it finds in the perceived presen- tate. Having achieved this, it then continues its ac- tivity under two stimuli the inner formal stimulus and the stimulus of pleasure in Knowing. It moves always towards the completion of the analytico-synthetic pro- cess which, as an absolute synthesis of the conditioned and unconditioned, is for ever impossible. It is Things which Will takes up in the processes of its dialectic movement. It mediates its own percepts but only by taking up things as mediated as causally constituted thus and not otherwise. This mediating or causal movement in things is, as being a movement, necessarily involved in a terminus of movement an End. The end of the movement in each case is simply the thing itself as determined-so. What is true of the individuum is true of the total concrete. This total this universe is, in so far as representable in imagination, affirmed as the sum and completion of a mediating or causal movement. The moments of the dialectic are the elements of a unity which are necessarily conceived (as all else) in a time series, but which are seen to involve each the other. The End is in each step of the process and in the initiation of it. 2OO End. The question of " purposed " end involves the question of Being and its Dialectic as subject as itself universal Consciousness. I shall not complicate my argument by entering on this question here. It suffices to say that if the universe is not a purposed end, it is at least a fact. It is, moreover, a fact resting in the universal of Being, and mediated or caused. A fact caused is a result, an outcome of the causal movement and implicit in it ; and, as such, an end. The causal movement contains in its very heart an issue, and that issue is " end " the achievement of an initiated move- ment. This achieved end is the universe of things as datum of Eecipience. But so far as the inner determination of the Dialectic goes, it advances no further than the " determined-so and not otherwise." In that final mo- ment it is, as dialectic, not yet the finite phenomenon. It is the specific ground of the specific phenomenon whether that be an individuum or the universe. This specific ground is the " essence " of the individuum. 1 The end of the dialectic movement is achieved in a deter- mined-so, which is the essence of the concrete thing, just as a thought is prius of its word. The word is, in the case we are considering, represented by the finite ex- pression or manifestation in quantity of the "deter- mined-so " of the Dialectic. Just as my thought or your thought, when it has reached clearness, finds the necessity of vocal utterance, so does the universal dialectic find a necessity for its 1 Vid. " Essence " below. End. 201 utterance in the universe of Space and Time, that it may complete itself as Being and Thinking realize itself by becoming Existence and Thought. It is this expression of Being and Thinking as the system of things which reaches us parts of that system and within it in sense recipience. The ascertainment of what the total truly is, as a concrete of Mind and manifestation, is the function of our finite thinking. Sense alone can give us the outer phenomenal : thinking alone can penetrate to the inner thinking. We thus have given to us in the formal process of finite reason the mind-reality of the universe, though not without debt to feeling as regards the universal ground, Being. "Being" we have found to be the sole universal, simple, one, absolute -infinite, infinitely-during, the potential, ground and thesis of all that exists the universal bearer of finite matter and finite mind. This Being, as universal ground, moves towards difference and determination in a dialectic process which is Eeason or thinking. Beent Eeason is the inner truth of the whole system of coherent differences. For shortness, then, we may name this Being and its process, Absolute-Causal-Being. It is not within the chain of phenomenal experience and so itself con- ditioned. In feeling, it is true, it is given as Being. But it is given also in dialectic given in and through the first synthetic act of reason, which is percipience, and it is thus & priori. It is conditioning. 2O2 End. Absolute-Causal-Being is always immanent in its world ; and there we first and last find it. But it is not to be conceived either as identical with the world or as limited by the finite totality of things, as if the finite were an alien limitation : its limitations are always within itself. We do not impose the Dialectic on the phenomenal ; it is seen and affirmed in and through the phenomenal of which it is the mind- verity. We grasp the pheno- menal just so. The finite dialectic is not merely formal nor yet regulative ; it is first and last opera- tive as constitutive of the phenomenal. Consequently whatever is felt or thought is felt and thought, whether we are explicitly conscious of it or not, sub specie aeterni- tatis. Each and every simple perception in truth implicitly affirms God as Being and Eeason. The " thing in itself," finally, is the essence of the concrete thing, and essence is simply " Being deter- mined-so." It is only in the finite expression of the determinate that the question of identity becomes a giiaestio at all. We saw that it is the Causal Predicate in the Dialectic which demands a cause within the time-series of pheno- mena : that the nexus within phenomena as a necessary nexus is the necessity of a partial identity of concepts. We now see that End is in each thing for itself alone, and in the total for itself; and that this end is the " deterrnined-so " of the dialectic. End is Essence, as we shall subsequently see. SIXTH PART. ON THE CATEGORIES. CHAP. I. GENERAL STATEMENT AS TO THE CATEGORIES. " THERE are only two cases possible in which syn- thetic representation and its object can correspond, can relate themselves to one another necessarily, and, so to speak, meet one another : Either the object makes the representation (perception in consciousness) alone pos- sible, or the representation (the perception) makes the object alone possible." This Kant says, by way of intro- duction to the Deduction of the Categories. In con- sistency with Dualism, we must hold that the mental experience is, within the whole sphere of Recipience, determined by the object presented to us ; and that, consequently, the true a priori contribution to the object is restricted to that which sense-presentation cannot possibly give. These h priori contributions come to the help of mere sensibility in order to con- stitute the complete notion of the object for conscious- ness as that object actually there exists. I know a quantum and I know Quantity, but my thought of quantity is not quantity. And this remark applies to all that is primarily given in feeling all 203 204 General Statement which gi veils are not products of the finite subject in any sense whatsoever. What I have now to say on the Categories is sub- stantially only the formulation of the argument and conclusions of preceding chapters. If by Categories be meant generalizations of the different kinds or classes of predicables, we shall, it is manifest, have to look for them both in the a posteriori elements of Eeceptivity and in the a priori Dialectic moments of Percipience which are together constitutive of the object as known. The Intelligible or the Koumenon we know as fact and reason-form : but nothing more can we know of this without characterization; and all characterization is, as such, to human intelligence phenomenal. The noumenal which is simply another name for the synthetic a priori categories whereby we take up the phenomenal, is given to us as in things, but not ~by things. These categories are wholly unrealizable by thought even as empty abstracts until we have first found them in the synthesis of experience. They are the engine whereby intelligence intellects what is actually there indepen- dently of it and already determined for it. This dialectic machinery exists for the purpose of arranging the pheno- mena of presentation and making knowledge (but not existence) possible ; and this machinery is further in the world, and not merely formal. The a priori Categories are not, however, to be re- garded as shapes or moulds that subsist like indepen- as to the Categories. 205 dent faculties in the activity of consciousness, and into which the fluent sensible is rim. Their genesis and modus operandi have been already exhibited. Nor can they be applied to themselves. As the primary moments and forms of Eeason, their true function is discharged in dealing with the matter of knowledge and finding themselves there. Keason cannot legitimately turn back on itself and apply the & priori forms to the forms themselves. This would compel us to speak of the possibility of possibility, the being of being, the cause of cause, or the cause of being, and so forth. Such application of the a priori categories can have no validity. We cannot carry our heads in our mouths. The almost irresistible impulse to make the application ought, however, to be recognised as a phenomenon of consciousness, and explained. The a posteriori Categories also are the product of Reason, but only in so far as they are predications ; e.g. a quantum is a datum of sense, but the pre- dication of a quantum, which we may call a quan- tificate, is the fruit of Eeason inasmuch as it is the result of the action of Eeason mediately determining or affirming a quantum. Quantity-universal is a datum of sense of the attuitional state of consciousness ; it is an attuitional fact which reaches me before Will with its dialectic appears on the scene at all. For the affirmation of Quantity, Eeason is of course necessary ; but Quantity exists both in fact and in my conscious- ness prior to the emergence of human reason. So with quanta : they are out there to begin with, and 206 General Statement are attuited by the conscious-subject before they are affirmed. Quality again is the determination by the Will in percipience of actual and externally-subsisting modes of existence. Degree is simply the more or less in attuitioii discriminated and affirmed. So with all relations ; they are in the things. What we call physical laws are merely processes within things, generalized. Time, again, is vaguely sensed and attuited by animals, and is through the active prehension and arrestment of During as " now," merely determined and predicated. It has to be noted accordingly that the a posteriori Categories are given by the outer, and that it is only in so far as they are raised to predications that they owe anything to Will-reason at all. To ascertain these categories, accordingly, we have to think ourselves back into the animal state of attui- tion, before the Will-potency has emerged to give birth to Eeason; for the a posteriori categories are simply the classification of actual and possible predi- cations of the already existing data of Sense. The impressions on the attuent subject are affirmed, and all possible affirmations are then generalized. These possible predications of the data of sense are the pre- dicaments ; and I doubt if we can improve much on the generalizations of Aristotle, after we have thrown out those which are not truly a posteriori in their nature, if there be any such. I doubt if there are any, unless we first read into Aristotle what does not appear on the surface. Relation in Time might be held to as to the Categories. 207 include the causal nexus, but as a posteriori it is to be regarded as denoting only the sense relations of antecedent and sequent in Time, and nothing more. 1 To illustrate the a posteriority of Categories let me repeat that quantity is a datum of sense, and that quanta also are data. The act of affirmation converts the quantum, already present to the attuent intelli- gence, into a quantificate. The quantum, as is the case with all impressions, is simply the object in sensibility awaiting the action of Eeason on it. An animal is attuitively conscious of the a posteriori categories in their particularity, but it cannot categorize, because it cannot affirm. They are present to it as sense-attuits ; the emergence of Keason in man makes it possible for him to predicate, and so to raise these mere attuits to knowledge. Accordingly the a posteriori Categories are, strictly speaking, the classification of received attuits, which Will on its emergence subsumes and affirms, thereby raising them into predicates and predicables. This being so, we have, in strict regard to a con- sistent Dualism, to exhibit the classification of attuits, whereon the Will acts in order to constitute them predicaments. To call them Categories (which means predications) prior to this action of Eeason is inac- curate. They might, however, be called pre-categories. 1 Attempts to generalize still further the Aristotelian predica- ments seem frequently to be based on a misapprehension, and are either illusory or introduce a priori notions. Descartes and Wolff do not distinguish between Categories of Sense and Categories of Reason. 2o8 General Statement as to the Categories. But Will in percipence accomplishes much more than this mere predication of the phenomenon. Nature interpreted by the above h 'posteriori Categories would still be anarchic at best, a colligation of facts. In the Form of Percipience there are brought into play the Categories of pure Beason the universal and necessary synthetic predicates. These convert confusion into order, and order, again, into system and organic unity. The dialectic process in Percipience consists of the kinetic movement of Will containing in itself the empty form of end and effecting that end the sub- sumption of an object into the unity of consciousness mediately, through the moments of excluded middle, negation, and sufficient reason. This subsumption into the unity of consciousness is the affirmation of a deter- mined somewhat. Now if we look at this primal process, we shall see that all true h priori Categories grow out of it. We thus find unity and a genetic construction for these categories. For example, the category of possibility is simply the moment of excluded middle. The moment of being or is-ness yields identity (A = A) ; and as this is-ness is given as a determined somewhat which is, we have the category of Essence which is simply Being and its dialectic in its final moment ; it is the " thing in itself." The a priori categories must have a unity of genesis whether we are able correctly to enumerate them or not; for the Form of Percipience is the Form of Keason whereby it grips and marshals the sensible. It is the network of reason and of the universe, thereby constituted for us a cosmos. Parallelism of Sense and Reason. 209 CHAP. II. PARALLELISM OF SENSE AND KEASON. have in permanent union the feeling of being and the feeling of phenomenal shapes, the former as ground of the latter a system of differences cohering in " Being." (Part I.) In the reflex action which externalizes these feel- ings as objects, the mere subject has exhausted all its function. This conscious subject now moves in order to deal with these objects. This kinetic energizing which emerges out of the conscious subject has always been regarded, under whatever name reason, intelligence, understanding as an activity. What I have desired to demonstrate is that its activity is pure activity, and that the essence of reason or intelligence is the pure activity of a subject consciousness ; further, that this pure movement has, by the very fact that it is a move- ment, an end ; a formal end, for as yet there is no con- tent: and, further, that it moves towards its end (which end is a percept) by a certain way or process which is not at all determined by the facts of feeling, but by itself and through its own necessary nature. This pro- cess is the Dialectic of Eeason, and it terminates in a judgment of the identity of the phenomenal or synoptic A of Sense. This judgment is by no means a simple affair, but, o 2 io Parallelism of Sense and Reason. on the contrary, highly complex. The identity of the thing with itself is affirmed, A = A: the being of A is affirmed, A is A : the finitude of A is affirmed for the final dialectic moment is determination, and the whole process has determination in view: the objec- tivity (but not necessarily externality) of A. is affirmed, viz. A is there (not me the subject) as object : still again, the oneness of A is affirmed, A is one as opposed to the multitudinous expression of the rest of the alphabet of sense : finally, the " nowness " of A is affirmed. By the use of italics the complex contained in the resultant unity of the percept may be exhibited to the eye: a is a (finitude, determinate). a is a (being of a). a is a-there (object). a is now (time or punctum durationis). a is one (unity). a a (identity). Now, all these issues of the dialectic are already factually there in feeling. The dialectic in seeking for content merely re-discovers them, so to speak, and transmutes them out of the sensible into the rational. Thus reason will be seen to proceed on parallel lines with nature (the totality of feeling). For example : The feeling of the being of A is a fact. The dialectic again carries the fact of being and the judgment of being implicit in it from its very initiation of move- ment : its first emergence out of the confusion of Parallelism of Sense and Reason. 2 1 1 passive feeling is in this form, " A is either A or B," A is not B : A is A. The feeling of the sameness of A with A is a fact, i.e. the sameness of the first and subsequent impressions which A makes in sense, and which enables a dog to recognise its master; the Dialectic judgment carries this mere sameness of A in Feeling into the Identity of A after a process, raising it out of feeling into a truth of judgment a necessary of Eeason. The feeling of the finitude of various impressions, each excluding the other, and each as object excluding consciousness as subject, is already a fact : the dialectic raises this into a judgment, and affirms determination or finitude of this or that, A or B. There is in mere sense & feeling of "nowness" which the Dialectic raises into a judgment. The feeling of singleness and its co-relative multi- plicity is already a fact of consciousness : the dialectic affirms as an act of judgment the one, and, through one, the many. So far as the Dialectic is concerned, there is no judg- ment of externality, but of objectivity only ; the affirma- tion of externality being an a posteriori predicament. The Dialectic thus comes to the support of Feeling, and runs on parallel lines with the phenomena of feeling. But it is not yielded by the phenomena of feeling. It is a subject-sprung free movement seeking for content. If the thinker will cancel the dialectic in himself, he will find that the matter of the dialectic was already experienced in feeling after a fashion. He will 2 1 2 Parallelism of Sense and Reason. find, in short, that he has simply interpreted that experience, and by a free act converted it into know- ledge for himself, and, therethrough, found the reason in it. I may now illustrate this position further by taking the moments which are the prior a of the issue. The first moment in the dialectic as a process, as distinct from the mere kinetic Will-initiation, is the Law of Excluded Middle ; A the attuit before me as object either is A or B (B being here equivalent to all other possible things, i.e. to not- A). Now, the feeling, pre-rational, consciousness of an animal presents to it an endless variety of diverse finite objects. It stands before them in confusion and is led by some inner impulse or natural affinity, or what comes to the same thing, by the salience even we may say prosilience of A to go to that, and then by some other object (B) is led to B and so forth ; and it cannot help itself. There is no Law of Ex- cluded Middle working in the animal consciousness here, and none in man as a merely cesthetic being ; but there is unquestionably an impression of many objects and a feeling (however vague) of possible alternatives. Nature itself here may be said to operate in terms of the Excluded Middle by the presentation of alter- native objects, and attracting to A and not to B through its power of impressing the particular feeling- organism before it more forcibly thus than otherwise. Accordingly, the formal movement of Eeason, when it emerges, operates on what is already there in the rudi- Parallelism of Sense and Reason. 213 mentary form of feeling, and as possibility of alterna- tives. In this sense, then, dialectic may be said to add no fresh matter to consciousness, but only to raise impressions that are loose and non-significant into the necessity of Reason by affirmation. Nature in feeling suggests alternatives, and, so far, Sense runs on parallel lines with the Dialectic ; but the dialectic is a free movement to meet a nature which is clamant for interpretation. Were only a unitary atom pre- sent to consciousness and, beside this, nothing the dialectic would still move as it does. It would say " that " is either A or nothing ; it is not nothing, and so forth. Negation, again, in the dialectic process already exists in the feeling of the mutual exclusion of diverse objects of sense ; but there is no judgment of negation and there- fore no necessity of negation until the dialectic acts. There is nothing in Sense corresponding to Cause as a universal predicate. It is only in the relations among phenomena that the universal predicate has its sense- parallel, and that in the form of a time-sequence. Speaking generally, a system of dualism must hold that there is a real logic of things which the formal logic of mind recognizes, and, in recognizing, interprets. It would be a strange thing indeed if the energy of Reason seizing the external found that the one did not answer the other that the datum of sense defeated the process of dialectic, that the plastic power of Reason encountered material which it failed to mould. It 214 Parallelism of Sense and Reason. would be equally strange if the datum of sense failed to find its knower and interpreter, if it for ever remained what it appears to a dog or a horse. The datum truly is as Eeason cognizes it Eeason cognizes it as it truly is. The consciousness of an animal does not err so far as it goes, but it is inadequate to the task of cognition, of thought. A criticism of knowledge is thus a criticism of things. It may seem then, for a moment, that the formal Dialectic adds nothing to the matter of feeling. But, in truth, the Dialectic adds everything by the mere act of transforming feeling into knowledge. Will-reason advances imperiously on the manifold in sensation, and affirms that the object before it in feeling is, and must be, either A or not- A. It lifts the object out of feeling, and a second time presents it and relates it to consciousness as affirmed, as known ; and secondly, this affirmation in all its implicit moments is an affirmation of necessity. It is so, and it must be so. Finite mind cannot act save so. Thus it is that the Dialectic contains not only the whole interpretation of Nature (Feeling), but the necessary character of Nature as such. It is res, phenomena, feeling, nature that the Dialectic takes up not as itself being that nature, but as being the meaning of that nature, the reason or thought-side of the phenomenon, whereby the pheno- menon is an actual. How could I know Keason in things (supposing it there) except in and through a reason-act in myself ] To the attuitional consciousness Parallelism of Sense and Reason. 2 1 5 this vast and complex phenomenon in space and time is an actual through the Being in it as felt ; this is all that mind at this stage can attain to. To the rational consciousness this phenomenon in space and time is an actual through the Being in it as known ; and not only now through the Being in it as known, but through the whole dialectic in it as known in it and through it the ground and actuality of it. Thus the formal of Eeason may seem to repeat the record of experience, and do nothing more for us, and we may be refused the right to call it CL priori at all. But, as a matter of fact, all movement of reason as such is pure and formal, and all is h priori ; and I am bound to follow and record its moments of inner determina- tion as clear additions to the matter of consciousness effected in me independently of my activity. The dialectic then is a synthetic a priori series of affir- mations ; and yet the position is this : The Dialectic, apart from the datum of sense, is like a cheque on a banker duly signed, but which meets with the response " no effects " ; the datum of sense without the dialectic is a cheque on a bank where there are " effects," but it wants the signature. 2i6 The Categories. CHAP. III. THE CATEGORIES. A. Categories of Recipience. WHAT then constitute the dialectic percepts, the & priori synthetic categories, the necessary moments of .Reason, the necessary ground of the actual, in them- selves necessary simply because they constitute the modus ratio nis ? It will be seen, from the preceding chapter, that before entering on this question we have to consider the categories of Sense or Eeceptivity. In this connection we have the traditional Aristotelian predicaments. The discussion as to the precise signi- ficance and the historical genuineness of these, and as to the final acceptance of all of them by Aristotle himself, will not occupy us here. It seems to me that this discussion is just as interesting as any other ques- tion of philosophical antiquities and not more so, and it is desirable rather to use what we have, so far as it will go, as an aid to the settlement of the predicaments themselves. The essential thing to note, it seems to me, is that these categories are a posteriori, and based on the issue or final moment of the activity of percipience as exer- cised on the pure datum of sense. The point of view Categories of Recipience. 2 1 7 from which I regard Mind suggests this interpretation of the Aristotelian categories. In any case it compels me, as recognizing a veritable datum outside acting on me a conscious-subject, to generalize the modus of the presentation of the external to consciousness. The categories of activity are implicit in the Dialectic and ci priori, proceeding by an inner determination ; the categories of -impression or presentation, on the- other hand, are strictly to be called Universals in Sense. It would be vain to pretend that the subject is not a difficult one, and that it is an easy matter to keep one category so clear of another that there is no intercrossing. It certainly will occur to a thinker that just as the a priori categories are moments in a unity of process, so a posteriori universals, as the uni- versals of externalized thought, are also moments in the unity of the process of universal Mind ; and in a synthetic cosmic construction, an attempt might be made so to present them. Meanwhile, however, our business is to see what the datum in experience actually conveys into me and to generalize its forms. We must beware of outstripping experience at the bidding of the constructive and speculative impulse. Now, just as the a priori categories will be found to be based on our analysis of Percipience, so the a posteriori categories are based on the analysis of Feeling or Eecipience as that appears in Part I. All that has to be said in this Treatise constitutes at least a logical unity, and rests on a very simple basis. 218 The Categories. We receive as Universals and affirm : I. Being. II. Quantity in general, i.e. Space, Extension. III. Quality, i.e. Quantity qualified into single individua by figure, colour, and so forth. Diverse individua or " ones." IV. Eest and Motion of individua ; i.e. of the above qualified quanta. V. Eelation of the individua : (a) In respect of quantity or space, the greater and less ; and the locality Where. (V) In respect of quality or the How Degree. (c) In respect of coexistence and successions of motion. This latter involves Time- Sequence and the When. 1 These data of sense are in sense and reflected by the conscious-subject into externality : they are then generalized and affirmed by reason and become pre- dicaments of the real. Nature interpreted by these a posteriori categories would still be anarchic a mere colligation and placing of facts at best. It is in the Form of Percipience, whose issue is the affirming judgment of the identity of A, that we find implicit the categories of pure Eeason the necessary a priori synthetic predicates. These convert confusion into order, and order again 1 (a) (b) (c) are the basis of the perception of likeness or un- likeness among individua. Categories of Recipience. 2 1 9 into system and organic unity, and so interpret the world and constitute knowledge. The & posteriori categories may be called the summa genera of recipience the generalization of what is given in Sense. As a matter of historical fact no one object in sense does of itself yield all the categories, but, properly treated (put through its paces so to speak), any one object can yield them. Inasmuch as the summa genera are the generalizations of the experience of this, that, and the other in Sense, the exhaustion of them in their application to any one object would be the completion of all that can be said of that object as a datum or to put it otherwise, all its determinations as an externalized " somewhat." Accordingly, it is not incorrect to speak of the categories as the summa genera of possible predication so long as they are restricted to the record of sense. The genetic deduction of these categories from a principle of unity seems to me impossible from the point of view of Dualism. They can, to the finite subject, be merely generalizations of the data of sense, simply because they are given to the subject and not in and ly reason. Such an attempt at genetic deduc- tion would, consequently, while quite possible, be merely an exercise of the constructive and speculative imagination ; and, therefore, not science. The arrange- ment of them under some more general conception, such as Substance and Accidents, is merely logical and external. 22O The Categories. B. Categories of Percipience Dialectic Percepts or Synthetic a priori Categories. The question now recurs, How did the conscious attuent subject proceed in order to take possession of ct, posteriori recepts and convert them into percepts, thus raising them from the plane of feeling to the plane of Keason ? Just as in the case of the Categories of Kecipience or Feeling I had to refer the reader back to Part I., which deals with the facts of reflex passivity ; so now, in the case of the Categories of Percipience, I have to refer the reader back to the chapter which deals with the elementary facts of pure activity. I have to watch the Subject as it functions Will, and discriminate the successive moments of the one movement whereby it affirms. The & priori categories thus ascertained do not stand in the human mind side by side, but are themselves the process of mind as reason they con- stitute reason. They are a unity of living movement. The first moment in the Dialectic, viz., Will, is not in rebus. We can place it in nature only by placing it there and giving no reason (a common enough specu- lative feat), or by showing that it is implicit in Cause as a movement. It cannot be said that we take up things as willed. The will-movement constitutes them for us, it is true ; but it is, as such, pure movement and has not yet at this initial stage come into contact with matter at all, or content of any kind. At this point the con- Categories of Percipience. 2 2 1 scions-subject is as yet only on the way to the pre- hension and comprehension of things the resuming of the data already in feeling and the subsuming of the same into the subject for knowledge. The a priori categories are to be found in the process of this Will-movement, not in the movement as initiation of the process. On this subject I would say that when I throw myself on the diverse and manifold of matter in feeling, I force my way among the anarchic elements of sense in order to reach an end in them and for myself. The movement is carried on by me in and among them. Kinetic or initiating move- ments in me provide the analogy of a primal moment in the constituting of Nature ; but as a matter of fact I do not take up Nature as " willed," but rather I will to take up nature. The arbitrary placing of Will, as mere kinetic or dynamic, in Nature, would be to imitate the false method of certain systems, and to shoot a wonder-working principle out of a pistol. And, when we have got Will there, it is not distinguishable from a mere primum mobile. We must guard .against specu- lative temptations. We know the dynamic moment that exists in nature only as implicit in the causal or mediating process generally. We must not confound the a posteriori category Motion (obvious enough) with the a priori nisus or energizing in Mind or in Being. This moment of kinetic initiation this nisus in the ob- jective universal is not ascertained as in any way necessarily given through the conatus or nisus in the 222 The Categories. conscious-subject (Will). This, rather, is itself an instance of the universal fact. The functioned Will, or rather the subject function- ing Will, issues in determination : this is the resultant, the issue, the completion of the dialectic in percipi- ence as determined from within itself, and in no way determined by the things with which it deals. But further The functioned and functioning Will has attained its result after an "either-or," and the form is the Law of Excluded middle the Category of Possi- bility. The next moment in the process is a is not 5, (not-a) the Category of Negation. The next moment is " Therefore " ; that is to say in and through the two antecedent moments as pre- misses, a is a. This is the Category of Sufficient Eeason : Determining-so. The conclusion is as above explained, and contains the Category of Identity, the Category of Being, the Category of the Quantum (determination or finitude in thought), and the Category of Quale (determined-so in thought). Through the whole of this process runs the Category of Being. It is either a or 5 ; it is not &, therefore, it is a. Being is the sole universal. The explicit statement of the process accordingly ought to be put thus, Being is either as a or &, Being is not-as-&, therefore Being is as a. Universal Being in short is thus quantified and qualified. Steeped as man is in Categories of Percipience. 223 universal Being, he cannot shake it off either in the sphere of Feeling or of Keason. Let us note, again, how the thing is taken up by and in the dialectic movement. It (the determinate) is taken up as a possible somewhat and as a caused somewhat. The whole process from first to last is a mediating or Causal Process. From the point of view of an actual consciousness (or generally of mind), Cause formal or qualitative, and final Cause or End, and Cause efficient (meaning by this here initiatory movement or nisus) are all moments in a unity both of act and thought. So patent is this that even when we deal with a sense organism, e.g. a plant, no one can separate, except in time-sequence, the fruit from the potentiality of that fruit in the seed. The end is already in the beginning, and the beginning is in the end, and the initial movement of effectuation is in the final result as effectuated. So in the a priori categories, if I have Cause and End as moments, I have implicit in these a beginning an initiating nisus. Thus, in taking up Nature as Caused, and as having End, the initiatory nisus is posited ; and what we, finite minds, really do is to grasp or grip the universal whole as teleologically constituted. The constitutive & priori categories compel us to hold all in thought as a teleo- logically grounded whole. I think that if we keep strictly to the a priori record, the above brief statement exhausts it. That record does not give us organism or organization. 224 The Categories. For this, the contribution of the a posteriori of sense is necessary. It is complexes which are presented to my sense, and the condition of my knowing them is a diathesis of the complex into the parts and a synthesis of these parts back into the complex before me: and this, so far, is knowledge. But this very process itself proceeds on the presumption that they combine into a whole which is a unity the resultant "thing" before me. Here now enters the necessity of reason, which a priori demands a constituted whole as end of a movement simply, and nothing more. The phenomenal fact of parts aggregating into a whole which is a unity is thus necessarily conceived as a unity whose parts are governed by the whole, and which are in a reciprocity (causal relation) that determines the whole as a one; and thus we get our concept of organism or organization. Accordingly, the notion of organization arises in the coalescing of the a posteriori fact and the & priori teleological category. Thus, we take up and interpret experience as a caused and purposed system resting on the ground- universal of Being, of which Being-universal all things are, through the Dialectic of Keason, the determinates. These categories not only arise as in rebus, but we cannot by any effort of mind construe them to our own self -consciousness as an object of knowledge save as in rebus. We are now in a position to enumerate these h priori synthetic predicates. Categories of Percipience. 225 Categories of Percipience or a priori Synthetic Predicates. I. Being-universal (absolute-infinite, and ground of all possible determination). II. Possibility the Excluded Middle. III. Negation. IV. Sufficient Eeason (Determining-so). V. Determined-so-ness of Being 1 (Essence and Finitude). VI. Identity. VII. End or Purpose (Final Cause). Implicit in these : VIII. Kinetic nisus. Derivative Categories. (a) The Causal Nexus ; (6) The Notion of Organization. The Causal Nexus of db is a derivative category : it rests on the Causal Category as operating within a phenomenal series and demanding that ~b be caused, and on the Category of identity which determines the particular synthesis ab (see chapter on Cause). Again, what is merely the teleological moment as re- gards the " singular," becomes the notion of Organization the moment I have a phenomenal complex before me. There are certain terms which have the air of cate- gories, but which are not so. 1 In concrete quantum and quale. P 226 The Categories. For example, " substance " is simply the Being of a thing as opposed to the finite phenomenal determina- tion in quantity and quality. "Subject" arises only as co-relative of Object : in itself, it is, in the universal sphere of mind, from its lowest to its highest forms, merely what Substance is in the sphere of the sensible. The general result is that there is given to the sub- ject an external world, the forms of which datum are generalized in the & posteriori Categories of Kecipi- ence. Thereupon, the said Subject by a free movement takes up the whole & posteriori matter with a view to the knowing of it in a certain way, which is a necessary way. The way in which it takes it up constitutes a series of moments that yield the a priori categories. And the further result of this is, that the total of a posteriori matter is necessarily conceived as " Being proceeding to the determination of itself causally and teleologically." The individual thing is so subsumed by me, and consequently the totality as a system is so subsumed. Any attempt to reduce the empirical laws of nature to a unity is thus justified. These categories interpret and systematize Nature. For it is under the inevitable and self -determining movement of the a priori cate- gories that we approach the & posteriori categories of recipience, and, taking up the matter of Feeling, grasp the world as an organism in the final unity of Thought. We thus find the conception of nature as an ordered system and organic unity implicit in the simple act of Percipience the first and rudimentary act of Keason Categories of Percipience. in which act all the & priori categories are wrapped up. In other words, the network of all that is, or can be, object of knowledge is the form of Percipience, which is both reason and reasoning ; for syllogizing, inductive and deductive, mediates through positive generals, just as Percipience mediates through negation. First and last, we become aware of this formal element only in the act of prehending nature, i.e. in concrete. So it arises and not otherwise. Thus it is that this form of thought is not only the net of reason, but also the net of nature itself constitutive of nature. The Categories not only interpret nature for me ; they interpret nature for itself. The great Datum over against me, given in and through feeling, is simply, as such, a mysterious fact in extension, motion, and relation, which, as a fact, overpowers me spiritually, just as it finally overpowers my natural frame, by dissolving it into its elements. Nature is the vesture in which the Absolute- Causal-Being presents Himself to sense, and in and through which He lives and works. Thus far we may see ; but the whole realm of feeling seems to defy reduction to any lower terms than extension, motion, and relation. It is something, however (is it not enough ?), to be assured that the outer is not merely an x negating my self-consciousness, but that, on the contrary, it is Eeason externalized ; and that, as universal reason, it is one with the moments of my finite reason. My finite reason goes out to find itself in nature, and finding it there, also finds God, as Being and Eeason. 228 The Categories. When under the free Eeason-nisus, we finally reach physical truth the statical and dynamical laws of things (i.e. relations and correlations) in and through which Eeason-universal expresses itself and lives we shall, even then, possess only the ground-plan of the world as extension, motion, and relation; but we shall be no nearer God than we are now, if we will only open our eyes. Philosophy watches the physico- scientific movement with an interest which the mere physicist cannot comprehend. It desires to see a construction of the ultimate physical categories. The concentration of the gaze of the physico-scientific mind on physical conditions unhappily blinds it to philo- sophy ; but only for a time. Antagonism is ridiculous. But the metaphysician must remember that the pheno- menal can be explained only by the phenomenal : meta- physics cannot do it. Metaphysics is summed up in the exposition of the forms of free Keason, whereby it grips the whole, and in exhibiting this as also the form of existence, i.e. as Eeason-universal. It thus reveals the universal principle which underlies and constitutes the whole. The relation subsisting between this Eeason-universal and the phenomenal, between the Infinite and the Finite, we vainly endeavour to penetrate. We make guesses, and inevitably involve ourselves in contradictions. Reduction to Unity. 229 CHAP. IV. REDUCTION TO UNITY. THERE is, I repeat, an identity between the Cosmic Eeason and the Eeason of man. We ascertain the moments of reason in rebus. The Form of Eeason is immanent in nature, and it is immanent there before I know it to be so, or find it in myself. Man, alone of all creatures, is conscious of the immanence in himself as constituting his reason, and he uses it as an instru- ment for the interpretation of the universe. Thus, and so explained, Ratio essendi is Ratio intelligendi, and vice versa. The Universal Mind -process is first known through the dialectic of the personal mind. But when we lift ourselves out of a personal to a uni- versal standpoint, we see that the universal Eeason- movement functioning in and for the conscious-subject (as in all else) is re-functioned by that conscious-sub- ject in its free will-movement for the purpose of taking hold of nature as a reasoned whole. Taking hold of itself too, it rises into a self-conscious personality. Human reason is the universal reason conscious of itself under finite limitations. The moment that the will-movement initiates itself in a particular sentient organism and raises it to a free lordship, that organism is thereby reflected on itself, and must become a person and a reason. The same Mind, accordingly, is in 230 Reduction to Unity. nature and man alike. Man is, in his atttierit recep- tivity, a perfect mirror of the natural, and in his reason-activity a counterpart of the rational. My thinking-power is thought-universal reflected into me as a finite consciousness and become me. When once I see this, all things are reconciled. Being and Eeason, or, we may say, Bee'nt Eeason, constitutes the sole noumenon in endless differentiation. This, I am well aware, it is easy to say ; but my aim has been to demon- strate it. For I have shown hoiu it is that, to use a Schellingian phrase, " Nature is visible Intelligence and Intelligence invisible Nature." There is a true Unity. Accordingly, man's knowledge of the Universal Eeason in nature is Divine knowledge knowledge of God, who is nearer to us than the " things that are made." The reason of man is one pulse of the Uni- versal Eeason, in which we verily live and move and have our being. I am not speaking the language of religious emotion, but of sober fact. Our function as knoiving-lDeings is to interpret nature to itself through reason ; our function as " doing " beings is to reconcile, in and through the universal, our particular reason with nature and other finite spirits, as a given total of facts and conditions. While saying thus much, I shall not allow myself to be betrayed into vague expressions of a high-sounding generality, and identify, with a view to a spurious unity of conception, either the subject with the object or the object with the subject. This is either to abolish the individual ego or to abolish nature. Knowing is Reduction to Unity . 231 never final : it is a gradual evolution of mind in the human race and therefore an evolution of self -conscious- ness. But knowing is not something in the air which is neither you nor me, nor any other entity. To all eternity it presumes a knowing subject and a known object, and it is not for me or any man to reduce these to a unity which is not merely, at best, a parallelism. Enough if we can see that the necessary modus operandi of finite Keason is the modus operandi of the Thing the not-rne. But that Thing is not constituted by me in itself, but given to me and constituted by me for me, i.e. for knowledge, as the thing actually there is and exists. And this is Dualism. On the other hand there is a sense in which the Subject is the Object. For the object-universal to my recipient consciousness is nature, of which my body is a part, and with which, consequently, my body has in- finitely various relations in a never-ceasing reciprocity. There is no breach of continuity between the organism of nature and my organism. Further, this nature as determined in me is determined as a consciousness which, liberated from the prison of nature, thinks nature, and, so thinking, finds that very thinking in nature. For, finite mind in constituting nature for itself, reveals its thinking self as, at the same time, in nature. Thus, as part of nature, man's body is in continuity with the Object and is not an isolated unit the Object is the Subject: again, as self-conscious ego liberated from the necessity of nature, he liberates nature, and the Subject is the Object as Beent Eeason, 232 Reduction to Unity. and is in continuity with it. From this point of view alone lies the possibility of an absolute synthesis ; but there can be no synthesis where there are not differences to synthesize. Dualism, in fact, means fmitude and individuality. Any and every attempt to reduce the "other" to the one always silently carries that "other" with it. It will not be cancelled. To cancel it is to cancel creation inter alia to cancel me and you. There is no formula which can help us, no formula which can save the truth of exist- ence while at the same time losing it in, what is after all an illusory, One of Being. Dualism is for God as well as for Man, with this difference, that the spirit of man itself, and all nature, are embraced in the universal Subject, and that all is within the Divine movement. And yet the shapes and motions which are summed in the a posteriori categories are "phenomenon," and as such the " not " of Being. Its " notness," however, is possible only as a positive " somewhat " other than that which it negates. And again, this positive " somewhat " is positive only in so far as it contains the Being which it negates. That seems to me to be the record. All I know is that I have, before me, Being in or as pheno- menon, expression, externalization, the other, the nega- tive : equally, I have before me the same phenomenon, etc., being. The phenomenon is, isness is as pheno- menon (space, motion, etc.) : the One is as difference and as individua. It is the conflict and union of Being and not-being that gives me the actual. This is the Reduction to Unity. 233 Datum with which I have to deal. So long as a man holds that the phenomenon, the individuum, is, he is a dualist : so long as he holds that isness is qua pheno- menon or individua, i.e. through its own negation, he is an idealist. There is no inconsistency in holding both. There is and can be nothing save mind and its external- ization. To cancel the one factor or the other is impos- sible without first cancelling all feeling, and consequently all thought. I keep by the old-fashioned term " Dualist " as good enough, and because I doubt if a better can be found. Ego is the apex of Negation ; and yet, is it not ? has it not a for-itself-existence which is so far from being a mere shadow of the universal mere schein that it is the centre from which I take the measure of the universe and myself, and to which I return, after many excursions, to find therein the truth of God ? It will, however, be already apparent to the reader who has followed the argument, that the phenomenon, while it is wholly independent of each individual subject, is not in itself independent, has no in-itself- subsistence, but only a "for-itself-existence." Of the Ego itself this is true. The One is always in the many, the affirmation in the Negation. To explain everything is impossible; but I shall endeavour to show more fully, though it involves repetition, in what sense we may say that the subject is the object. The " Subject is the Object " might as well be put the " Object is the Subject," were it not for the possible mis- 234 Reduction to Unity. apprehension that the Object constituted the Subject. Such phrases are vague and require to be carefully defined and closely looked into. The finite subject as feeling, we may say with Aristotle, is itself the " form of all sensibles." It is the mind-side of them. But it is only as feeling that Mind can become aware of Quantity, etc. ; not as lieason. There is, again, a sense in which the Subject is the Object, i.e. in which the Object may be said to be the activity of the subject. Nature, as well as the mind of man and of all other beings, is the external of the universal subject the determination or finitizing of the universal subject, its modus existendi. The esse and the cogitare are always immanent in the phenomenal existere. Such seems to be the true and simple record of experience. Observe now that my finite subject is this universal subject finitized involved that is to say in the series of Space, Time, etc. ; and when my Subject energizes to grasp the universal Object it does so in one certain way, which way is not only its own dialectic, but in rebus the dialectic of that which is grasped immanent reason of the universe. The object then as a Reason-object, and not simply as an external of Quantity, Motion, etc., is found to be my subject as a reason. The result then of my thinking act is to find myself in the. object. To find myself, I repeat, not to constitute the fact of the immanent Eeason in its own objectivity. That im- manent Eeason is the prius of the finite subject, and Reduction to Unity. 235 the finite subject interprets it through its functional (not personal) identity with the universal immanent Reason. How, indeed, could ratio mundi be seen except by ratio ? The Universal Subject, in constituting the universal object in space and time as the " other " of itself, has not let this object escape from itself, and let it go as an external and independent " somewhat." It is mind- universal which thus externalizes itself; and universal Being, as we have found, is in all, through all, sustainer of all. The all in Quantity, etc., is simply universal mind so living. Mind-universal first appears as mind-individual mind separating itself from nature though always in it, in it but not of it, in the form of feeling or con- sciousness. This is Being-universal as an individuum that feels, receives, and reflects the Object-Nature, which, in so far as it is mere phenomenon, is dead. Dead, that is to say, to all save the infinite creative Subject, until finite, individuated mind emerges to tell it what it truly is as the outer of Bee'nt Eeason immanent. From this point forth, God is both felt and known the universal by the particular, the infinite by the finite, the Creator by the creature. Is the doctrine of God immanent in nature and man Pantheistic ? So it would appear to be, as imma- nence has hitherto been understood. The question will not be discussed here ; but I may point out that God immanent as Being and Thinking is, however put, implicit Pantheism. But what shall we say of God 236 Reduction to Unity. as immanent Thought ? Nature and man are not simply the eternal Subject in a constant process of determining, but the eternal Subject determined. Eternal thinking is necessary ground of all; but in the world and man this thinking has determined itself into individua, and is now Thought. This is to say, that the Absoluto-infinite has had to reckon with the finite the negation of itself and has become the finite as determined into this or that. Thinking-eternal is continuous, never-failing ground of all, but the resultant Thought has claims of its own. Such immanence is not Pantheism. It may so appear to minds which cannot conceive separation of Being-thinking from its fulfilled thought, save as a spatial separation. Such minds are slaves of. Sense. I am content, meanwhile, if the reader will simply accept Absoluto-infinite- Causal-Being as ground of all that exists the universal mind-thesis. If he will dwell on this, he will quickly find himself contemplating an Absoluto-infinite-Causal Being. SEVENTH PART. CHAP. I. THING ESSENCE IDEA DEFINITION. 1. A Thing. AN aggregate of units of sensation impressed on the attuent consciousness is a " thing " in sense. But this thing, as we have frequently said, is to be called a totality only; and from the point of view of the subject impressed, a synopsis in sensibility. Even when the totality is first perceived as a one object negating other objects, the parts of it are as yet in a vague and attuent synopsis in the consciousness of the (now) rational percipient. The differentiation of parts, to which Will is next by inner necessity im- pelled, transforms the aggregate of qualities or synopsis into a synthesis, which is no longer a mere totality, but a unity in percipience, an individual sense-con- cept. Even when we have exhausted the & posteriori Categories on the object, we still have only a synthesis in sense a sense concept. We have made considerable progress, doubtless, in a knowledge of the thing pre- sented to us, but we do not yet know it. The colli- gated sum of its sense qualities is not the true " thing." 237 238 Thing. The & priori Categories have now to come on the scene. They have been, it is true, implicit in percipi- ence and concipience, but they have not, as yet, been in self-conscious operation. These now tell us that the object is, that it exists as an end in and for itself, and that it reaches this end as caused. That is to say, that the parts are inter-dependent ; that there is a fusion or (more correctly) a correlation of parts determined so as to effect the thing. This inner reciprocity of parts is inevitably thought under the pressure of the dialectic a priori forms. The unity is now no longer a mere synopsis, no longer a mere synthesis of qualities a mere composite ; but a complex of inter-related, inter-dependent, reci- procal parts effected under the pressure of the a priori Categories. The " thing," as soon as the a posteriori and a priori Categories have both received their full content in and through it, is known, and, accordingly (in etymo- logical consistency), we may say that the concept has now become the notion. The notion is truly the "thing" (the thing being, of course, all the while there subsisting outside me). The notion is the reasoned unity of the synthesis. All the moments of the dialectic are shut up within the object or thing. Our knowledge has thus various stages, and must always be provisional, though continually gaining in richness, till we have finally filled both the a priori and a posteriori Categories. Meanwhile, one man's know-- ledge is another man's ignorance ; and this, till physical science has completed itself. Thing. 239 The inter-relation and reciprocity of parts necessary to the constitution of a " thing " reveal to us that the fusion which we call the " whole " is known only through the parts, and the parts equally through the whole. This is to say, that the " thing " is an organism. Even the dynamical and chemical conditions which constitute a stone are, from a philosophical point of view, organic. The " thing," then, as datum is, so to speak, the pro- duct of the & posteriori Categories ; as known, as the notion, it is the product of the a priori Categories. But I should like to repeat, usque ad nauseam legentis, that the a priori Categories are first known, and only known as in the thing, as veritable content of, or within, the " thing." They are formal, it is true, but this only means that they are, and are possible to us, through the pure movement of Eeason. They are the thought that, first passing into us, then emanates from us, not to be imposed on, but to be found in, the phenomenal, which phenomenal taken along with that thought or thinking is the actual. Again, the thing may be said to be a system of or- ganized predicates and as such an independent entity (an sich) : and yet it is not independent (in the strict sense), inasmuch as it is in and through the universal dialectic, and, moreover, in universal reciprocity with all else. 2. Essence of the Thing. 1 By a process of continuous analysing and synthe- 1 In dealing with this subject I must assume that the reader keeps in view the chapters on " Generalization," etc. 240 Essence of the Thing. sizing we may suppose ourselves to have reached the Notion. But the restless will is not yet content ; it ever seeks difference. The thing is there, and its notion is here ; but the thing, as notion, subsists as itself part of the totality of nature. There are, in the ultimate truth of a thing, not merely its parts and the inter-re- ciprocity of these whereby it constitutes itself, but there are also its infinite relations to the larger whole of actual (or, for that matter, of possible) existence. And at this point, it seems to me, enters the vexed question of Essence. Of the a priori categories, " Essence " is one. Thus it emerges : The dialectic movement of Percipience terminates in the prehension and subsumption of the " being determined-so-and-not-otherwise " of an object. This is the essence of an object. But the "determined- so-and-not-otherwise " is the Notion of that object its completed record. Consequently the essence of an object is the Notion its determined-so-ness in its totality. In the category of Essence two moments are involved the is or positive, and the is-not or negative. The moment of negation in the Dialectic necessitates the negative relation ; the " determined-so " of the issue contains the positive character of the thing relatively to itself. All-important is negation if my sum of know- ledge is to go on growing through differencing. In the light of the Category, then, metaphysically and really, the Essence is identical with the Notion. But the determined-so of Being expresses itself as a Essence of the Thing. 241 mcrete complex, and the question as to the essence )f the visible phenomenon is forced upon us, as dis- LnguishecU from certain variable qualities which are of small, or no, account. What is that whereby the thing before me is what it is its quantum and guale ? The total concrete before me is mind and matter (pheno- menon) : as mind, the essence of the said concrete is exhausted in the determined-so ; but in the finite exhibition of this determinate, I have facts in space and motion, a complex ; and experience compels ine to re- cognize a possibility of variation which does not affect the " thing " : The question of essence in this relation again arises. (1) Here we first encounter the popular use of the word which is also the logical. All things are in a more or less of community of properties, and we seek in each thing (under the differentiating impulse in percipience) to detach that property which, though only one element in the notion or real essence (from a cosmic point of view) of the thing, yet negatives all other things, and this we call its essential property or essence. The negative element in the notion "Man," for example, whereby he is differenced from all other animals, is rationality. But rationality does not ex- haust the infinite series of determinations which con- stitute man as a real, and as known, and as a " deter- mined-so." Eationality is the essence of man, truly ; but I merely mean by this that the qualitative element in man, which negates all else outside man, is " ration- Q 242 Essence of the Thing. ality." Essence is here logical. Thus far, then, when I say that the essence or essential quality of man is rationality, I merely isolate and emphasize that positive element in the notion which negates all other things. There may, however, be more than one characteristic which negates all else. In that case the synthesis in thought of the sum of the differences negative relations to all else would constitute the essence of the Notion. Essence, popularly and logically, accordingly, is not that " without which A would not be A," for this is the Notion, the real essence, but " that whereby A being A, is not B or C," etc. And this result will be recog- nised as a well-worn definition of essence. A " thing " is " being or determined-so, and not otherwise " ; and we may say that, when we speak of the logical essence, we are merely emphasizing the " not otherwise," because therein lies the negative relation to all else. And this explanation of what we mean by the essence of a thing is supported by the vulgar use of essence as simply difference, when we speak of things of the same class, e.g. the " essence " of a " black " pansy is its " essential " difference from other pansies, viz., its blackness. The essence, in other words, is its negative relation to other pansies ; but it is only as being first a positive that it can be a negative. (2) Essence of an Abstract-Concept. Take that ens rationis a generalized or abstract-concept, e.g. " Man " or "Horse." The synthesis of qualities common to individuals of a Class, can (according to the above explanation) manifestly have no " essence " in the Essence of the Thing. 243 popular or logical sense : the term is inapplicable. For the common or general is itself the synthesis of the essential characters of a series of individuals. It itself posits and exhausts the negative relation of difference, and is, in relation to the series of individuals, the Essence. (3) Essence of an Abstract-Percept. The essence of an abstract singular again, e.g. a percept, "redness," is the percept itself in its nakedness. (4) Essence of an Individuum. Now in the above uses of the term "essence" there lies concealed the sugges- tion of the truth as regards the essence of the concrete individuum. For in this use of the word, as applied to a complex object, we virtually say that there is a synthesis of properties in A, and, as long as it exists as this synthesis, it remains A ; that is to say, it may indulge in certain changes and yet remain "essentially" what it is and was. This is the conclusion of mere common sense, and it is a just and valid conclusion. But how is it to be explained in face of the fact that the "essence" has been identified above with the "notion" in its totality? The answer is to be found in the form of the Dialectic, which compels us to take up a " thing" as a " caused, synthesized, organised unity of parts." Each individuum, as the result of a deter- mining or differentiating causal movement, is itself so Long as that causal synthesis holds, whatever changes may take place in it which are indifferent as regards :his causal synthesis of parts. In brief, it is the causal process or functioning within the thing which is neces- sarily (under the pressure of the dialectic) conceived by 244 Idea. us as the true " thing" all else being indifferent and variable. The goal of all thinking as regards the in- dividuum is precisely this " essence," This " essence" is the true ultimate ground ; it is that whereby the thing not only is itself but whereby it negates all else. It is that differentiation of functioning in the finite of time and space which is the primal mani- festation of the determining-so of the Dialectic of Being, Thus, " essence " which, relatively to the universal of Being, and within it, is final cause, relatively to the complex object in sense is ground-cause. It is manifest that we can never attain to the final and true notion of a concrete thing until we have the " essence" of it. 3. Idea. " Idea " is simply " Essence " hypostasized, and this in all the uses of the latter word, except that which we identify with " Notion." We say that we have the idea of a thing when we extract and emphasize the so-ness of a thing in its negative relations that whereby A is A as opposed to all else. The notion of this or that man is the totality which constitutes him as a positive and negative : the idea of this or that man, as man, is rationality that whereby he is negatively related to all else. Idea then is " essence," only we are now holding the essence apart in thought as a " somewhat." (a) Idea in reference to the Abstract-Percept. The Form of percipience is a ceaseless striving to get at the Idea. 245 is-ness of a percept as " determined-so and not other- wise " to see that whereby it is what it is as not other things : in other words it is a search for the essence. In the region of mere percepts, essence, notion, and idea are necessarily synonymous, for percepts are de singulis. What difference there is lies in this, that the idea is the essence hypostasized as an ens rationis the idea (as we say) of a line or a point, for example. A mathematical line is length without breadth. It is of course impossible for the human mind by any amount of minimizing to imagine to itself a line which has no breadth, or a point which has no magnitude. This is the question of infinite divisibility. But it is not impossible to think a line which is only length. As in the case of abstract concepts and abstract per- cepts, the Will here liberates a certain quality (or qualities) inherent in a sense-object, and affirms it or them to the exclusion of all others ; it is only a case of .abstraction. Again, no minimum msibile (or imagindbile) is without magnitude : but I can abstract, and affirm, mere position as point of departure without magnitude. Geometry even in its simplest percepts is a science of Eeason an ideal science, i.e. a science of idea. When I project its abstractions into space and construct them, the figures I draw are only approximately correct ; and, while reasoning by help of them, I think away all sense-element at the very moment that I use it, or seem to use it. The Will, under the stimulus of the form of end which prompts to continuous diathesis, having once 246 Idea. got within range of any object, be it concrete or abstract, restlessly pursues it and hunts it down until it has isolated it and grasped it in itself as it truly is. It is thus enabled to affirm that whereby the object is what it is its essence as a positive and negative (the notion), and only then reposes. The empty form of end has received its content. In the case of a singular or per- cept essence and idea are, manifestly, one and the same. 1 When we explicate in words our thought of the (essence or) idea of a line we call it a definition. Having once got this, we can proceed by necessary demonstration under the laws of Identity and Con- tradiction. Our demonstrations are then necessary, that is to say, analytically necessary. So with axioms of equality, etc., which are simply concrete perceptions raised to the idea by the force of Eeason. 1 Hume tells us that if extension is infinitely divisible (which it certainly is to consciousness), we could not conceive a point or line that is to say, in realizing to our imagination a point as the termination of a line, the said point would break itself up into parts at once, and go on doing so ad irifinitum, and thus the termination of a line would be inconceivable. This was a neces- sary outcome of Hume's philosophical position. The answer seems to be sufficient that in mathematical points, lines, and surfaces, we are not dealing with extension as a concrete fact at all, that imagination is entirely excluded from the field that what we are engaged with is a thing of thought which we (by pursuing, as above explained, a concrete abstract percept to its end) hava ourselves created out of the concrete. " A point is position without magnitude," this is a reason-product ; the sensible or the imaging of the sensible is quite out of place. So with all the fundamental ideas of Geometry. Idea. 247 (b) Idea in reference to the Abstract- Concept. The percepts which, first given in concreto, enter into an abstract or general-concept (e.g. "man," "horse"), are not, when taken together as an ens rationis, the essence of any possible individual. They are not that whereby an individual is what it is, but only that whereby a certain class or kind of individuals are synthesized in the unity of thought. In other words, these colligated percepts are the essence of the kind or class, which is constituted by them, and essence and notion are here identical. The " idea " or essence of a particular tree is not really before us when we tnink the abstract-concept " Tree," but only the idea or essence of the class which we ourselves have analytically and synthetically con- stituted. The idea, then, is here merely the hypostasis of the generalized kind or class, and is co-extensive with it. Idea in brief, in reference to the generalized concept, is eZSo? hypostasized ; and Plato himself cannot help passing and repassing from the one term to the other. (c) Idea in reference to the Individuum. The idea of a particular concrete thing is simply the essence of that thing (see above) hypostasized. These intercrossing questions General Concept, Kind, Essence, Idea have exercised the minds of metaphysicians for more than two thousand years, and not without good reason. If we accept the conclusions above given, the only question that would now invite to discussion would be the precise bearing of the 248 Essence. Abstract general or eZSo? on the Essence or Idea of an individuum, in order that we might see how it came to play so large a part in philosophical debate ; and on this I shall say a few words. 4. Essence (continued.) Relation of the General to the Essence of an Indi- viduum. The essence of a general-concept is the total synthesis itself; and of a singular or percept (whether particular or general), the essence is the percept itself. As regards the individual concept, again a thing, we find that there is no difference between the Notion and the Essence, from a cosmic point of view. " Essence," used as synonymous with " idea " and logically, denotes the isolation and emphasizing (for logical or popular purposes) of the negative elements of the thing in rela- tion. As regards the individuum, essence and idea mean the said differentiating negation (itself of course a positive), conceived not as a quality or predicate, but as causal functioning in the thing. I have said that essence and idea, as synonymous words, merely emphasize that part of the notion of a thing which signalizes its negative relations to other things. And this I think may help us to extract from the complexity of thinking the relation of a general- concept to the essence of the particular things compre- hended under that Concept a question both of the old and the modern world. EZSo? is idea or essence of what t Each of the multitude of cows, for example, that have existed or do exist, is said to differ " essentially " Essence. 249 from every other. The " essential " difference of the particular and individual sense-concept cow a from b is in the length of its hair or the colour of its hair (it may be) or anything else you please. They " essentially " differ ; but they are also said to be " essentially " alike in so far as each shares in a certain synthesis of char- acters which I have detected, and hold together by the mere dynamic force of Will, and call a general concept. Thus the cows are at the same time essentially different and essentially alike. In saying they are essentially different I sub-affirm their essential likeness, and in saying they are essentially alike I sub-affirm their essential difference. Let us consider now this general concept or eZSo? in relation to the individuals themselves of a group or class, in order that we may detect the reason for using the general-concept as, in some special sense, the essence of each. I am a second Adam in a second Eden naming the beasts, and I have already got hold of the concept <( animal " by my experience of fishes, reptiles, and birds. To-day there pass before me in columns sheep, goats, and cows, and give me a multitude of new sensa- tions. I see that they are animals, but unlike those of yesterday, and I name the crowd by their most salient common quality "four-footed." Suppose I remained satisfied with this : I have then a percept which is a general-percept because it has a plural reference to a multitude of individuals. I am now justified in saying 250 Essence. that the essential characteristic of the animals of to-day as compared with the animals of yesterday is " f our-footedness ; " but this quality is no more of the " essence " of sheep and goats and cows than any other quality possessed by these animals. Further observa- tion justifies me in saying that they are also mammalia and graminivorous. My general-percept has now become a general-concept a synthesis of qualities or percepts which as a synthesis has a plural reference. Each animal has now this synthesis of characteristics, what- ever other qualities it may or may not have. But even this synthesis has no more to do with the " essence " of each animal than the general single percept " four- footed" had. It is merely a statement in sum of certain qualities which each possesses alongside a multitude of others not mentioned. And yet I rightly say that this synthesis of qualities distinguishes the various multitude before me from other animals hitherto seen and named, and so is their essential synthesis (or synthesis essential to them) as a group. Just then as in the case of individual objects the essence of a black pansy is the single percept blackness, and of a red billiard ball redness, as opposed to other pansies and other billiard balls; just as, further, the " essence " of a multitude of objects is the single per- cept " four-footedness," under which common likeness they are grouped or classed as that whereby they are opposed to, or differenced from, all other animals (hitherto observed). So now, the synthesis of percepts, Essence. 251 i.e. the general-concept, under which combination of likenesses they are now grouped, is called the essence of the group or class because it sums the differences of each of that class as opposed to all other objects. I, in fact, use the terms " essence " and "essential," now as formerly, to signalize or emphasize the negation of other objects by the group of objects before me a negation which they exhibit in common. But the sum of qualities or percepts which constitute the synthesis has no more to do with the " essence " of each indi- viduum in the class relatively to itself than the other qualities which I have already described, or may hereafter detect, in each of them. When I say the essence of the general-concept " Cow " is a, b, c, etc., I say what I mean, viz., that a, b, c, etc., constitute the essence of the general-concept its notion ; and, as its notion its totality. But a fallacy at once enters when I go on to say the " essence " of a particular cow is a, I, c, etc. The qualities a, I, c, etc., are "essential" only to the constitution of any parti- cular object seeking admission to the already consti- tuted "class." Kelatively to the general-concept the term " essence " is wrongly used, for a, b, c } etc., is the totality of the Concept or Notion, and there is nothing in a totality to emphasize. Kelatively, again, to each individual under the general-concept, the said concept gives no more information regarding the essence of said individual than the as yet uncounted other qualities possessed by it, so far as I am yet supposed to know. The essence of a cow merely means the possession by 252 Essence. an individual animal of a synthesis of certain qualities (whatever else it may possess) which entitle it to be called a Cow. In fact thus far we are manifestly in a purely logical as distinguished from a metaphysical sphere. The process of generalization is an almost mechanical device under the synthesizing impulse of reason for shorten- ing and easing the process of thinking : it is the erec- tion of temporary reserve magazines and signal-posts as we march into the enemy's country. And yet, there must surely be something more to be said in justification of the history of the world- shaking battles round the standard of etSo?, etc. The explanation lies, it seems to me, in the importance of the intellectual device of generals. The synthesis of percepts is a synthesis of likenesses in a group of in- dividuals, which likenesses in their combination con- stitute the " difference " of the said group from other things. In short (as I have frequently said above), Essence, in its historical usage, is distinguished from the totality of the Notion of an individual only in so far as it conspicuously signalizes or emphasizes the negative relations of the individual (or class of indi- viduals) to all else; the ultimate negative relations being its specific causal functioning. Accordingly, the significance of the general or etSo? lies in this that it is always a step on the way to the negative relations of an individual, the sum of which negative relations constitutes its differentiation. The synthesis of likenesses contained in the general-concept Definition. 253 is, as a synthesis, a valid explanation of each of a class of individuals, and, as such, may be used as their pro- visional essence. It thus helps us on the way to the final diathesis of the individuum. 5. Definition. The word Definition is used in two senses. In one sense it is equivalent to limitation or deter- mination, which is merely the formal process of knowing. Having accomplished this process, how- ever partially, and fixed the issue of it by a sign or symbol be that symbol, e.g. rhinoceros, state, 01 piety, we may then have to define these terms to one who, not having accompanied us in the process of deter- mining, has an inadequate and confused conception of what the terms contain by way of denotation and con- notation. To define, in this the second and ordinary sense, is simply to explicate the implicit to take out and expose to view the determinations which primarily constituted our knowledge. It is manifest that here we do not determine, but merely recite the- determinations already made. We thus seem to be defining a term, which is a dead, unmeaning sound or sign: we are in truth defining the thing signified by the term. No definition of a term as such is possible. The term itself is a dead label. We merely recall what the term symbolizes. The natural history of naming, however, is not ade- quately described above. Having more or less clearly perceived one or two prominent characteristics, we 254 Definition. hasten, and hasten prematurely under the pressure of the impulse of articulation, to fix the objective reality by a word. Our knowledge may be thus far little but illusion : it is certainly inadequate. Thus we use names which we have prematurely coined, and we pass them as intellectual and moral currency, while all the time they are base metal. Hence all sorts of intellectual evils. Hence, too, the constant and legitimate demand we make on ourselves and others to define terms. Hence also the fact that definition, which is, strictly speaking, mere explication, is used as equivalent to exact knowing determination db initio. As almost all our intellectual inheritance is in the crystallized form of words, the exact definition, as denoted and connoted by them, is the essential condition of our entering into the possession of our estate. Until we have done this, we are like men who have received their title-deeds, but have not yet seen or enjoyed their property. Thus we again see how the fallacious opinion arises that definition is of terms ; as a matter of fact it is not so. Logicians tell us that Definition is by genus (genus proximum) and differentia (nota specified), and the two together constitute the essence. Certainly definition to this extent sufficiently indicates, in most cases, the intellectual whereabouts of the thing indicated by the term, and is sufficient for all ordinary purposes. But in such definition there is a subaudition of a whole world of determinations and relations which are merely indicated by the generic and differentiating terms. Definition. 255 Accordingly it is to be concluded, .as I have already stated, that real, as distinguished from logical or grammatical, Definition is simply explicit recitation in words of what we have ascertained regarding a thing. The definition will be as complete as our prior know- ledge. If our attained knowledge of a thing is scien- tifically complete, our explication in words may also be complete. But the definition of a concrete thing can never be other than provisional ; though always extend- ing, just as our knowledge is. What we define then is not the word, but the thing which the word symbolizes. We attach words to things to mark them off from other things, although we know next to nothing about them; but even in such rudimentary cases, we define, if called upon for a definition, not the term, but the thing denoted, in so far as it is known. So in defining a thing of imagination which has no actual existence, we yet define the thing of imagination as a thing of imagination. Definition is, in brief, a re-knowing in explicit terms of what we already tacitly know. To be complete it must be the evolution of all that is in the notion of the thing. All our knowing is a search for the true Notion, and all our definition is merely a re-knowing of that which has already (probably prematurely) consolidated itself in terms. Our definition consequently will partake of the obscurity or clearness, the confusion or distinctness, the adequacy or inadequacy of our knowing of the reality which is symbolized by the term. 256 Definition. Definition then (if we do not confound the primary and secondary uses of the word) is explication, and, as explication, it consists of analytic propositions. When the thing to be defined is a singular or percept, the proposition which purports to define it is inevitably an identical one e.g. "a straight line is the shortest between two points " : the predicate merely repeats the subject in other words. If we would escape confusions and falsities in reasonings, we have, for our guidance, from time to time to re-know words and that which they denote and connote. The education of youth consists largely in introducing them to true definitions, for words are the vehicles of previous thought. And precisely to the extent to which we give many words ready-made with a view to define some other word, instead of leading the learner through the processes of observation and reasoning which terminated in the invention of the word as their symbol, to that extent do we give signs for things, the dead for the living, a phantasm for a reality, and choke the channels of nascent thought. Leibnitz pointed out that we constantly reason with words as mere symbols, without having in our con- sciousness the realities they connote and denote. In such cases the realities at one time known, i.e. distinctly present in consciousness, have been allowed to fall back out of knowledge into the degraded form of at- tuition, in which they lie, and where they are generally available when we want to recall them. Retrospect. 2 57 CHAP. II. RETROSPECT. IN past chapters I have avoided, as far as possible, all collateral subjects of inquiry, however seductive, in order to concentrate attention on my main line of argument. The thesis which I have ventured to ex- pound may be thus briefly summed up. Kinetic Will-movement as functioning of the con- scious-subject is the root of Eeason ; and, as it is in its rudimentary activity contentless, it is Free. Its movement as such is not in and through another, but in and through itself ; it goes out in its essential free- dom to find the " other." Pure formal end is implicit in this fact of Will. The Will-movement in effecting itself (which effectuation is, in the first instance, a simple percept), contains implicitly in its own bosom certain moments which, as so contained, are pure CL priori. These Moments of the Will-movement in Percipience yield all the a priori Categories, and thus furnish the formal scheme of nature. These Categories thus genetically exhibited, are, in truth, the Laws of Nature awaiting phenomenal filling from the physicist. This process of knowing is a dialectic unity ; each moment being present in the others. So also in Nature. All Eeason-activity is simply the repetition under different conditions of the primary act of simple Percipi- 258 Retrospect. ence. The conclusion of the Syllogism, for example, is only a judgment mediated through a positive " general." The formal scheme of nature revealed in this primary activity of finite reason is revealed from the first as the universal immanent Eeason : it is in rebus only that we first and always find and affirm it; and apart from which no affirmation is possible. The formal dialectic is the real of finite reason, and the real in the universe. Transferring ourselves to a cosmic stand-point, we then say that the Universal Mind in nature, by be- coming conscious under finite conditions, constitutes Human Keason; and that, accordingly, Eeason in nature and Eeason in man are identical. Man, in seeking to know nature, is in truth seeking there the reflection of his own reason. Having found this, he at once sees that his individual reason is again itself but a reflection of universal reason. This universal Mind in Nature, thus discovered, is God that is to say, God as Being and Eeason, or Beent Eeason (Absolute- Causal Being). Apart from this, there are physico-theological and ethico-theological considerations (not here to be dis- cussed) which have their due place in our final notion of God. All this I put forth not as speculation, but as phenomenological fact. As to Dualism: Absolute-Causal-Being or Mind- Universal can only exist (or only exists) by self-deter- mination, which is self-conditioning. Retrospect. 259 This conditioning is a process actually going on outside each finite individuality, but embracing each and all. It accomplishes this realization in Time through the numberless shapes and individua which we generalize as quantity, quality, and relation, and these, truly mirror themselves in our (attuent) consciousness. This effectuated and conditioned side of Mind is spread out there before me and exists, as I see it, if I see it truly, and independently of me. There is a veritable Dualism. But this phenomenon (or matter), while apart from me, is not given as self-subsistent ; but merely as one side of immanent Mind. These two are necessary to actuality, just as an Apollo impressed on wax is the artistic image of Apollo, only by virtue of the impression as product of the artist's mind and the wax taken together. A consistent Kantianism ought to be prepared to create the whole existent world out of a chaotic series of stimuli, arising, no one knows whence or how, in the aesthetic consciousness. According to the view here given, Form finds itself already there in matter : Being infinite, universal is " given " there as determining itself in the infinitely finite of Extension and Motion with their relations ; and here as determined into a self- referent one that feels and reflects the whole, and re- thinks the thought in the existent for its own growth and enrichment, interpreting, not constituting, the ob- ject; capable of receiving the phenomenal nature through Feeling, capable of interpreting the Eeason in nature through its own rational movement. 260 Nature. CHAP. III. NATURE. IF the preceding analysis be a true analysis, it is impossible to hold that the sensible object has self- subsistence in any sense in which this term can be used. It exists only in, and by, and for mind that is to say, not my mind but Mind-universal. That, I conceive, has been shown to be a simple record of fact. But though not self-subsistent, it subsists for it- self, that is to say, it has a for-itself subsistence ; and, as a total and as infinite particulars, it is separate from the universal movement which we call mind and yet in it, receiving its whole reality and signifi- cance from it. So, my body is not me. As long as there are personalities, there can be no difficulty about the possibility of myriads of individua. The individuality of a stone is the same question as the individuality of a self-conscious Ego. Yet these myriads and the total of sense-possibility are also, as a matter of fact, given to me as in, by, and for, Mind-universal. It is given to man alone to recognise the immanent unity in difference of the one Being and Life and, in the very act of recognition, he abolishes himself by ful- filling himself in God. Abolishes himself in the sense Natitre. 261 of sublating his personality into the universal, but not cancelling that personality: on the contrary, filling it. Thus finite mind contemplates infinite mind ; though finite, it is conscious of the Infinite and of its own infinite relations. The contemplation of nature as here presented is the contemplation of each and all as necessarily in God, in other words, siib specie aeternitatis. I do not see why certain thinkers should trouble themselves about the relation of a finite subject to a finite external world. Nor do I catch what they mean by a mechanical process being necessary to connect the two. Where is the mechanical process ? The becoming of experience in a consciousness that is all. Mind-uni- versal becomes finite mind in my self-consciousness : nature, as such, reaches its ultimate expression in my body (the manifestation in Space and Time of my self- conscious Ego). Nature is conveyed into rne through this my body itself a part of the same nature-organism. There is no breach of continuity here. How these nature-shapes are transmuted into Feeling, the basis of mind, we cannot say ; nor does it in truth much matter, except to the philosophy which affects to explain everything. Coming from universal mind they are re- converted in me into mind ; and the result is my feeling them. Again, the "Being" there finds "Being" here, and requires no transmutation. The here of the subject and the there of the object are in perfect community 262 Nature. as Being, It has been said, above, that the self-conscious subject goes forth to find itself as reason in Nature ; it is equally true that Nature enters the finite subject to find itself in it. And yet it seems impossible to con- strue Space, Motion, and Time in terms of Thought- categories. There must in any such system of cate- gories, however plausible, or however strictly they may seem to be constructed by a genetic necessity, always be an externalization which is not itself thought-cate- gories ; and we cannot dispose of it by merely labelling it the outer of an inner, still less by libelling it as nothing more than a metaphor. The supreme function of philosophy is to search for God, and to vindicate the fact and implicates of human Personality ; and I would venture to say that it is demonstrable, that if there be not Dualism, there is no God possible for man, or no man possible for God. God becomes simply a name for a system of Nature, and is not the God we seek, and man is not so much as a puff of smoke. And yet we can say with Hegel, the Absolute is Subject, and the Subject is Begriff, i.e. eternal activity of Eeason a unity constituting itself in and through dialectic moments. But this Eeason-activity not only is, but lives. Spread out before me is its life the Eeal : here within me is the reflection in feeling of that life, and also its truth as actuality, for the dialectic in me is that very universal dialectic which, as constituting my reason, is knowing. The universal Begriff is also my Begriff. My reason truly lives only in the universal Natitre. 263 Eeason. All my life of reason is the becoming of the universal in me. I am sufficiently well aware of the contradictions to which dualism gives rise, but any other doctrine fails, still more than dualism, to explain facts. Subjective idealism, whether in the Berkeleian or Kantian form, seems to me (perhaps through some intellectual im- potence) the reductio ad dbsurdum of speculation. 1 The contradictions which arise under a dualistic conception have to be faced, and pronounced insoluble ; but philo- sophy, I admit, has not accomplished its task until it can show how these contradictions are and must ~be, insoluble, and perchance find in their insolubility a significance both for the intellectual and the ethical life of man. The construction of "Matter," on which some have wasted their powers, is, from the philosophic point of view, a futile occupation. For it is evident that there can be no "construction" of matter which does not assume matter, that is, Space, Motion, Time: it is a circular process. I defy any man to construct Space without the help of Space. I defy any man to con- struct Motion or Time, or the Finite, without surrepti- tiously making use of Motion and Time, and the Finite. All physical science is wholly within the finite sphere, the phenomenal series, and can find, at best, finite causes for finite effects. 1 And after all, the Kantian cannot get rid of the contribution of the senses as data. 264 Nature. We are quite entitled, and indeed bound, to reduce a posteriori categories to their fundamental and final expression, if we can. But when all is done, the philosophical question will remain precisely what it is now. Nor are the physiological conditions of feeling and thought at all in place in the great questions of philo- sophy. How and by what process can certain vibra- tions, atmospheric or etheric, plant space and motion in a conscious mind, is a question the answer to which will always be arrested precisely at the critical point. Mind has become Nature : it is just as easy for Nature again to become mind through the nature-organism (body) of a mind. -Nature is mind-universal become; an individual mind, as feeling nature and knowing nature, is nature passing back into mind or conscious- ness under finite conditions. Assume a Keason-movenient within nature ; this can be known only by a Eeason nay, more, by a Reason which is itself that Eeason-movement, not an alien reason-movement. So, given a subject which receives impressions from a without, it cannot receive them, since it is itself part of the system, save precisely as they exist, without dislocating the whole and reducing it to absurdity and chaos. The process whereby external nature maintains its continuity with nature as my body is, doubtless, a legitimate object of scientific inquiry. This is the physiology of the senses and the brain. But the transmutation out of nature-conditions into mind- Natztre. 265 experience, is as impossible of solution as the prior transmutation of Mind-universal into Nature-universal, of the Infinite into the Finite, Being into Existence, eternal During into the finitude of Time. They are given as a Concrete. I, however, as Mind and Body, contain within myself (as an Actual) both Subject-mind and Object-nature a complex of both. But no analysis of either one or the other can ever cancel either, any more than it can cancel both. EIGHTH PART. CHAP. I. TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS (SO CALLED) AND THE SOLUTION OF THE INSOLUBLE. THE Will that kinetic movement which lies at the root of human reason and makes it possible is in its essence activity. In its ceaseless effort to reduce all things to the unity of apperception that it may perceive or know them, it recognizes no limit save exhaustion of the physical organ. It even passes beyond the bounds of possible knowledge and plays with fictions, in a vain attempt to categorize the dialectic ground itself of possible knowledge to condition that which conditions ! The primary perception of an external object is, as we have seen, the first crude attempt to bring some sort of order out of mere attuitional presentation ; but, even in that first affirmation of a crude synopsis, there is implicit a certain blind analysis, for it cannot take place till one totality in presentation is separated from another and subsumed into the unity of appercep- tion. Even this rudimentary act of reason, accordingly, is both analytic and synthetic. Will-reason, in so ener- gizing, involves itself in two tendencies of movement ; Transcendental Ideas. 267 on the one side, the differencing or diathesis of the individual percepts in a complex, and, on the other, the synthesizing of the concept, which, in so far as it has been preceded by an analysis of the complex in presen- tation, is now no longer a mere totality but a unity. Thus it is that the two tendencies of Will-reason are determining and ever determining till it reaches the absolutely simple percept ; and synthesizing and ever synthesizing, until it reaches the absolute unity of the cosmic whole. The diathesis of the single and the synthesis of the whole (and the former as the sole ground of the possibility of the latter) constitute the termini of Eeason-activity towards which it is ever striving and, too often, prematurely hastening. What we can alone by these processes legitimately strive for is the diathesis and synthesis of the con- ditioned, that is to say, of phenomenal presentations ; and even this can never be an absolute synthesis. But a locomotive, which may have reached its destined terminus with its full steam on, still presses forward, though the next advance may plunge it into the inane. So with the Eeason-activity ; on the side both of diathesis and synthesis, not content with the dialectic percepts as ground, possibility, and truth of the phenomenal, it seeks to press, with the same weapons, into this region of the Absoluto-infinite and unconditioned ; an illegitimate procedure yielding in- valid results. Let us consider these aspects of Keason briefly, in the light of the preceding analytical exploration. 268 Transcendental Ideas. The first crude synthesis, we found in our earlier chapters, is the synthesis of the attuited aggregate or totality. After analysis of the constituent elements of this aggregate, we reach the synthesis of the sense-con- cept. After the completed analysis, under the impulse of the ct, priori categories, of the dynamical and causal inter- relation of elements, and the relation of the object to other presentates, we have the synthesis of the " notion " in which the moments of the Form of Percipience the dialectic percepts are themselves constituent elements. But we are not yet satisfied that we know : under the continued impulse of the diathesis of Eeason we seek to isolate the essence or idea of the notion that, namely, whereby it is what it is, as negating all else ; in other words, the notion in its relations of difference to all else. With this, if it could attain to it, Eeason would rest content in the sphere of the synthesis of the conditions of the " Thing." Now, as a matter of course, the protension of Eeason in dealing with the whole of nature follows the steps which Eeason has taken, in dealing with the particulars of nature. It endeavours through imagination to form a synthesis of the attuitional aggregate the totality of the sensible. This is entirely in the Category of Quantity. Again, it endeavours to reach a completed synthesis of the unity of the "notion" a Unity of Quantity, Quality and Eelation, and these as permeated and organised by the formal or dialectic elements. Though Transcendental Ideas. 269 we may never be able to reach either the completed totality or the rational unity, none the less must we, at the bidding of Will, under the stimulus of the bare form of end within it and the impulse of the perception of the Infinite, seek for a completed cosmical synthesis. It may be said that, since the matter or content of pure activity is everything that is, or can be, a presen- tate to consciousness, the aim of ultimate diathesis and synthesis cannot be restricted to the sphere of the presentates of outer sense, because the dialectic percepts Absoluto-infinite, Cause, and Being are, through self- activity, themselves also presentates to consciousness. The answer is, that when we reach the absolutely simple percept we cannot carry the analytico-synthetic process into it, and that these dialectic knowledges are not concepts but percepts, simple, absolute, infinite; they defy synthesis, for there are no elements in them to synthesize. They are products of pure activity; they are the never absent ground and constituent elements in the synthesis of the phenomenal: as immanent in the phenomenal, they are, and are known. There is nothing deeper by which to interpret them. Nor do they consist of parts : as mind-reality they pass into each other and are one, because they are moments of the one living dialectic of Eeason. It is as a unity they are given, and it is only logically that we can separate the moments. Thus it is that the synthesis of Eeason the synthetic CL priori is possible to knowledge only as that synthesis is given, that is to say, in its bare simplicity ; but further, nothing is given. Mark, 2 jo Transcendental Ideas. however, that this unconditioned and conditioning is precisely that which we, thus far, do know. It is the essence and reality of our Eeason. It is itself the synthesizer of the universe : it is God. There is no contradiction here. The conditioned it is which gives rise to contradic- tions ; and these arise from the attempt to carry the conditioned into the unconditioned, or vice versd, and to translate 'the one into terms of the other. On the whole question I would venture to say, in accordance with what I have before said, that while our difficulties must ever remain, and have, simply as such, an important, nay vital, relation to the spiritual life of too self-centred man, they are in one sense capable of solution. They do not admit of an answer in them- selves, but we can ascertain how it is that we get in- volved in them ; and a metaphysic out of which the solution does not arise is futile. I say out of which the solution does not arise. It will be found that our difficulties are caused either by our losing sight of the very conditions of perceiving and thinking the matter of sense ; or by our inevitable tendency to sensualize, or phenomenalize, the pure product of Dialectic. Let us take these in order. 1. Conditions of Perceiving. (a) There can be no complete synthesis of the condi- tioned, because any such must be a complete synthesis of Quantity or Extension. And why is this impossible ? Because, as we have again and again seen, the very act Transcendental Ideas. 271 of perceiving extension, or any part of it, is determining or limiting. If perceiving is limiting, how is it possible to perceive and not limit ? And if we limit, there must by the very nature and necessity of the case be a not-limited and a not-limitable outside any possible percipient act. It is not, surely, necessary to say more by way of solution simple though the solution be. (b) Passing from Space to the synthesis of a regres- sive series Time. We found the Time-affirmation to be an arrestment by an act of Will of the continuity, or pretension, of Being as During. The act of deter- mining any presentate of consciousness is a determining it as now. To the fact of duration we call " Halt." If the act of determining of perceiving and thinking be this, how is it possible to hold in thought a com- pleted synthesis of a regressive series ? This is to sub- vert the very possibility of thinking a suicide of reason. There can be no conceivable beginning in Time by the very nature of the case, any more than there can be a limitation of Space. The Hamiltonian will tell us that of two contradictory inconceivables, one must be true. This is an unphilosophical conclusion. In the region of the inconceivable, what right have we to predicate anything ? (c) The procurrence and pretension of Eeason presses, on the other side of the percipient-movement, to what I have called the final diathesis of the determined, and is here met by a difficulty as insuperable as the syn- thesis of determinations. In the region of the pheno- menal (sensible) it seeks for the absolutely simple the 272 Transcendental Ideas. atom ; and in its search is met by the problem of infinite divisibility. Now there seems to be nothing in the nature of the act of determining or thinking to make it impossible to reach the final diathesis, and to envisage the simple atom. But we are here met by the condi- tion of all external sensibility Space. We have no knowledge of Space or Extension as an abstract, but only of a thing spaced or extended. But whether we have or not, the fact still remains that a point is a mere rational entity, and exists nowhere save to the eye of Keason. A simple point of space is an impos- sibility to all conception of the external, simply because the very nature and definition of Space its modus existendi is " extension "; and this, let me remark, whether we regard space as given to sensibility or pro- jected ly sensibility. Accordingly, when we imagine we have isolated the atom, we find that it must, after all, itself consist of co-existent coterminous points, and is therefore divisible ; as atom, consequently, it eludes us. To endeavour to outflank the difficulty by calling the atom a dynamic centre of energy will not suffice ; because dynamic energy without extension is not thinkable : we really affirm dynamic energy in, or of, or through, extension or matter. Vortex rings won't save us, for these presume a dynamic centre working after a certain fashion in ether, which is matter. Doubtless there is a dynamic centre which is now- phenomenal, for Absolute-Causal-Being works so ; and the very term " work " shows us, that to say it works- dynamically is a tautology. Transcendental Ideas. 273 Nay, even the intelligent atom the monad does not give us the atom we are in search of, because, if it be a thing extended, the old difficulties recur ; and if it be a noumenal intelligence it has (as Kant says) repre- sentations, which would thus constitute its parts. An atom, by its notion, must be such that any attempt to divide it, even in thought, would cause it to vanish into the non-phenomenal or non-existent. The solution then, of the difficulties raised by the inevitable impulse after a final diathesis of the simple, is to be found in the very nature of Extension itself, and there is no use in battling with the difficulty when we see it to be insoluble. None the less is the idea of the ultimately simple, as such, a reality, and physical science must proceed on the assumption of the atom, if it is ever to construct even an approximate synthesis of the conditioned. It will be seen that the explanation of infinite extension differs from the explanation of infinite divisibility thus : The former is explained by the very nature of the ad of knowing merely as such ; the latter by the nature of given Quantity, which contains in its fact, whether as presented or imagined, continuity and therefore discretion. The question of the infinite divisibility of Time is explained in the same way, for we can construe Motion and Time to ourselves only in terms of space. It does not follow from the rational necessity of infinite divisibility that any quantity consists really and objectively of an infinite number of parts, but only s 274 Transcendental Ideas. that quantity must always, from its nature, be con- ceived by finite reason as made up of parts. Hence we may fairly surmise that the atom, as a simple, though it can never be seen or imagined, may yet exist ; and Physics may proceed on this hypothesis. (d) Identity. The identity of an individuum is in the " essence " of the individuum, as that has been explained in a past chapter. And yet it may be objected, this causal organizing functioning which controls and de- termines the parts to a unity of end and constitutes the " thing," is in Time and Space, and thus can effect itself only under the conditions of Time and Space. Thus Identity encounters the old difficulty the infinite divisibility of Space, Motion, Time. May we not get over the difficulty thus ? The motion b } into which, in the ceaseless flux, a is always passing, may be merely a repetition of motion a ; c may repeat b, and so on, as long as there remains a unity of organic function. Identity, like Essence, is an d priori thought- determination ; but the moment thinking passes into finite forms it becomes involved in those contradictions of the finite that arise out of the very nature either of the percipient act or of its object. In fact, strictly speaking it is never 1 2 o'clock ; but inasmuch as there was a time antecedent to 12 and now a time subse- quent, we may reasonably conclude that there was a point at which it was 12. Everything concrete and phenomenal is at any one point something else ; and yet " either-or " holds, and a is a and not b. Such is the potency of the & priori category ; but it seems to Transcendental Ideas. 275 me impossible to explain identity in the phenomenal, save in some such way as that indicated above, and which amounts to this : May not the identity of a concrete individuum be maintained for a certain period in Time by the continual repetition of the same motions of the same atoms by means of which its functioning unity effects itself ? 2. Sensualizing the Dialectic. The second class of insolubles arise out of the pure a priori dialectic precepts, and have nothing to do with the phenomenal or a posteriori. Having once grasped the percept of the Ahsoluto- infinite, it seems to me that no sane man could proceed to think the ground of this ultimate ground without being amused with the fallacies and fictions of his own imagination. But it is equally, though not so palpably, absurd to speak of the Causality of Cause or the Being of Being. The dialectic movement of Eeason yields Cause and End, just as it yields the Absoluto-infinite and Being, as immanent ground of all that exists, and formal possibility of our synthesis of the conditioned. The Eeason in the universe, thus and not otherwise, passes into us as children of nature ; and, as it is the form of the Universal Eeason, so it becomes the formal move- ment of that Eeason as finite, in its attempt to take nature to itself. Eeason can be seen only by the eye of Eeason. And yet we would in our perverse ness reduce Eeason itself to a sensible and phenomenal ! 276 Transcendental Ideas. (a) Cause universal, simple, infinite the process of the dialectic, a thought not a thing is given as a mo- ment in the immanent dialectic of nature. Inasmuch as Cause is in the necessary form of the reason-movement, I am compelled to think every presentate of conscious- ness so. Thus I may also, unfortunately, be led to think Cause-universal itself so, oblivious of its true character. I thus hypostasize Cause, constitute it a " real " of some sort as the very ground of the possibility of thinking it as caused. In brief, I destroy it by phenomenalizing it. The Causal as necessary ground of the phenomenal I find. How can I even speak of what is called the infinite regression of Causes ? To do this I must begin by transmuting the dialectic percept Cause into an empirical " somewhat." The regression of Causes, again, within the series of the conditioned, is simply a disguised attempt to limit Time, although I already know that an infinite series of past times is necessary to the act of perceiving a " now." (&) So with Being. Being is there and here, im- manent. As fact, there it is : the simple, the One r the unconditioned universal, the first and the last, the potential, the same, the during, eternal now. I may doubtless abstract Being, as I may abstract Space, or anything else ; but if in doing so I commit the banality of contemplating it as "thing," the product must, according to the necessary form of thought, be again affirmed as Being ; thus I get Being of Being : nor, of course, can I stop here, but I must go on ad infinitum. Transcendent** I Ideas. 277 Being, it will be said, is thinkable only as the antithesis of not-Being. Be it so. But here, again, I have made " being " a thing per se, a fiction ; and I may accordingly go on to say that not-Being as a positive can be thought only through not-not-Being, and so on for ever. And this because of the negative moment in all determination. But to pursue this line of fallacious and illusory thinking would be, it humbly seems to me, the deliration of speculation. Being is the ultimate the thesis the reality the diffused potentiality : and there it must rest. (c) Ens realissimum. Kant tells us that we transfer, analogically, the concepts of Substance and Causality to the Supreme First Intelligence when we hypostasize that transcendental idea. The answer is that the so-called concepts are, in truth, percepts ; and further, that they are given in a necessary unity as the ground of the sensible and as immanent in it. The " Supreme Intelligence" is not a hypostasized idea; it is itself Cause and Being ; cause, within the limits of the empirical, being merely transmutation of an already existing energy in a conditioned and necessary series, while particular " being," again, is merely the specific determination of Being. All this is given in the primal act of reason, viz., percipience. In brief, the very governing ideas which Kant says cannot be applied outside the empirical sphere, and which, as only regu- lative, have for their sole legitimate purpose the syste- matic unity of knowledge, are the sole fundamental categories and themselves constitutive of the whole 278 Transcendental Ideas. sphere of sense. As such they are themselves God the moving, all-embracing, conditioning Mind, which conditions and determines itself as a universe. True, we cannot apply the ideas of Absolute, Cause, and Being to the further explanation of themselves any more than we can rationally put forward A as an explanation of A. But this is very far from being Kant's ground of objec- tion to the categorizing of transcendental ideas. The idea of an "absolutely necessary Being," says Kant, is a mere concept of pure Eeason an idea having no objective reality. But what underlies this position of Kant? Nothing save his definition of " reality " in the Analytic. " Keality " is, according to the Analytic, given in and through sensation, and there are no elements of " reality " in the idea of an absolutely necessary being. Certainly not in the Kantian sense of the term : if it were so, how could it be " being," how could it be " absolute," how could it be " necessary" ? But surely had Kant not burdened him- self with a restricted definition of reality, he might have accorded to the necessary idea of the " absolutely necessary being " a reality for thought, for Eeason : nay, he would have seen it to be the sole veritable reality. It would not have followed from this that we were bound to. provide predicates for this "Being "as if it were a Thing. To do this would be to destroy the idea by bringing it within the sphere of Kant's reality. As against the Cartesian and Leibnitzian " idea " we may admit the force of Kant's argument; but it is Transcendental Ideas. 279 wholly invalid if the " idea " can be critically shown to be at once a datum of feeling, and the pure and necessary product of Eeason. Is there no reality in the ground of all possible determination, no reality in pure thought, as thought ? Does Keason exist for the mere purpose of co-ordinating the phenomena of sense and of enabling us to adapt ourselves to that co-ordination ? Kant considers that the idea of a Supreme Being for which there is no object is the hypostasizing of an idea. What is hypostasizing? It is predicating being, and consequently reality, of any concept. But in the ultimate concept (or rather percept) we do not pre- dicate being : that which is given to us is Being ; and, as such, it is through its own inner dialectic not merely regulative, but constitutive, of the cosmos. The more recent argument for God, which resolves itself into the necessity of a self-distinguishing one basis to which nature as a mere system of relations must be referred, is simply the old argument of the necessity for a First Cause dressed up in new clothes. Not by any means an argument to be despised, but stopping short of the truth through an inadequate analytic of knowledge. Of this Absolute-Causal-Being, with Will and End im- plicit in its notion, we can know nothing save that it is. Cause and End are one, and they are one with Being and the Absoluto-infinite. And this is given to us with a certainty greater than the assurance of an external world, because it is intimate 2 8o Transcendental Ideas. and close ; not merely in us, but, in truth, ourselves as beent reasons. The finite Ego the ultimate antithesis of the absolute universal, contains in its very rudi- mentary act of mere percipience, the ground and beginning of reconciliation to the universal, for in all perception I affirm God. To give ultimate explana- tions is not always the business of Philosophy, whose duty is discharged when it exhibits what is, and defines its own limits. But of this we may be assured, that the God which Being and Dialectic give us is no specu- lative thesis of a mystic imagination. Nature, as mere phenomenon, we see to be the mere quantitative and qualitative expression of the life of immanent God. The connection between the latter and the former the concave and convex of the same circle we shall never penetrate, although we may render a plausible and probable account of it. To us finite reasons, this duality which in truth from a universal standpoint is only a quasi-duality is a true duality. It is external to us and independent of us. Man is himself one of the finite objects in the pheno- menal world of Nature placed outside other objects, except in so far as there emerges in him the eternal Eeason, which continues its own modus essendi in him, and thereby constitutes his reason, so that thereby the finite may know Him and interpret His universe, and be a sharer for ever in the eternal life in which it already, even now, may participate. All further knowledge of God outside the pure dia- lectic is accessible to us only inferentially, either by Transcendental Ideas. 281 analogy or through the "things that are made." Nature and finite mind are the only predicates of the universal Being ; and to these we must look for further instruction. Even Kant admits that, given the fact of an ens realissimum ontologically, we are then entitled to learn what we can regarding its nature, physico- theologically ; and, if so, then, CL fortiori, ethico-theolo- gically, for man also with his ideas and ideals is the work of God. Still, knowledge, though adequate for the ends of life, must still ever be partial ; in Shakespeare's words, " It is not so with Him that all things knows As 'tis with us that square our guess by shows." The knowledge we have is at once negative and positive : It is negative in that, while God is in the pheno- menal and contingent, He is not of it. For what is matter ? Not (as we have seen) a crass reality which defeats the eternal mind, but merely the manner in which that mind effectuates its life as an infinite series of finite individua. So effectuates these, it has to be admitted, as to confer on the manner of its doing so, i.e. on matter, a restrictive power so restrictive, indeed, as to be ultimately dominant as regards each individual thing ; for each finally disappears in a dis- solution " All that lives must die, Passing through Nature to Eternity." But the limitations and the conditions of the pherio- 282 Transcendental Ideas. menal are not applicable to this eternal Mind. Change and pain, decay and death, are not affirmable of that which is the ground of the phenomenal and makes it possible. Again, on the positive side : the laws of nature and of the soul of man, as they are discovered, reveal truly the way of God's working Absolute Eeason .unfold- ing itself, Being implicit becoming explicit in the con- sciousness of man ; and to this revelation the physicist, the metaphysicist, and the poet alike contribute. To know is part of the allegiance we owe to the universal reason of which we are the finite reflection. As finite Eeason explores the territory of the unknown, light is from time to time vouchsafed. But it is not given to us in this mortal state "to know even as we are known " ; and there will always be room for the faith, that " all things work together for good to them that love God." As to pain, death, evil these are inexplicable. Every fresh attempt at an explanation only resolves itself, on examination, into a new way of stating the fact. We may easily state the fact in terms which seem to explain it, the more abstract the better of course if we desire to impose on ourselves. It is inevitable that we should try to reconcile the stern fatalities of existence with the idea of God and the Good, by sublating them into some universal law of the divine working ; and so presenting to the eye, of Faith at least, if not of reason, a possible harmony. But reduce the question to what Transcendental Ideas. terms we may, there still remains the fact; seems to be engaged in a struggle in which man are involved, and which it is man's dut^;16^Lv- to undertake, sacrificing himself on the altar of the Eternal. This for his personal guidance he may know, if he will, viz., that the truth of each thing, and of the whole, lies in its idea. In the realized idea of each and all lies the perfection of each and all the Good. Towards this, all is laboriously moving, and in this Good we believe, save in transient periods of unmanly doubt or despair. Discords, however, are certainly there, unresolved : the music of the spheres is not yet audible. The ideals of religion and art proclaim the truth of things and sustain the sinking spirit of man ; for they are prophetic of what ought to be arid a guar- antee of what truly is to the open eye. In each man's struggle God is with him if he chooses, working in him to will and to do and to suffer. The Zeus of Prometheus has been dethroned, and the father of spirits now governs the world. Questions can be put which cannot be answered by Metaphysic : for true metaphysic is a science, and can- not content itself with mere hazards and guesses. It is for Speculation as distinct from Metaphysic to take up these questions ; and to find, if not an answer, yet such a point of view as shall 'indicate a probable answer. And these answers may be so clearly in harmony with the general scheme of things as to yield a " subjective conviction " of their truth. A subjective conviction may be rich in motives, ideals, and ethical inspiration. 284 Transcendental Ideas. Such a subjective conviction is the basis of rational Faith the evidence of things not seen. To exaggerate the insolubility of the riddle of life, and to retire from the contest into the arms of languid resignation there to indulge the cheap luxury of scep- ticism and assume the cynical, but affectedly tolerant, superiority of one who knows too much to dare to be happy is the resource of unmanly minds. Kesignation is, at best, an understrapping virtue. It is the duty of a man to accept his conditions like a man, and, in a virile spirit and in the name of God, to mould the fatalities of his existence to ethical purposes : and, withal, to be of good cheer. If this philosophical investigation be but another illustration of the old saying " Omnia exeunt in mys- terium" may we not say that a philosophy which left no region of mystery into which Faith and Hope might stretch out their arms, must be a false reading of human Reason and of the conditions of the highest life of the human soul ? A philosophy which does not con- tain within it the infinite and inexplicable is simply a form of Positivism, by whatever name it may call itself. 1 1 At the same time, I would not be understood as denying that a synthetic cosmic construction is impossible on the basis of the preceding Analytic. There are certain ascertained objective truths from which a beginning might be made viz., God as the Being aod Dialectic of finite determination, and the teleological idea in that determination. Beyond these facts, however, we cannot (for want both of materials and machinery) take a step save on the basis of Analogy, which to some minds may give the conviction of certitude, to others only the assurance of faith. Transcendental Ideas. 285 (d) As to Kant's psychological paralogism it falls to be said, from the point of view of this analytical ex- ploration, that the function of determining and of all thinking is itself a unity that it is one, self-identical, and not the " other " (or object) all which Kant him- self admits. What then do we want ? We do not care in these days to enter into discussions as to the simplicity of the substance of the thinking self. We are con- tent to recognize its being and its functioning unity. We do not now discuss the immateriality of the soul, because we do not accept the concepts of matter which were dominant in the past ; nor do we consequently affect in these days to base any argument for immor- tality on the simplicity of the soul-substance, for we know nothing of matter save as that which is given as quantity and quality in sense. We are content to say of this functioning unity which we call Subject and Self that it is. The affirmation of Being, which we make of the phenomenal, is ct fortiori true of the self- identical thought-function itself, which brings the phenomenal into order and coherence and is the transcendental condition of the possibility of all know- ledge. Kant redargues the proposition that the soul is a simple " substance," but this does not touch the position that it is a functioning, spiritual, self-identical being, and as such a unity. Nay, further, though we cannot affirm the categories of the categories themselves, we can affirm them of the thinking unity when we make it itself an object of thought. And when we so apply 286 Transcendental Ideas. them, we find that Absolute-Causal-Being exists in this Ego-determination primarily for the purpose of thinking and affirming itself as immanent in the universal sphere of actual and possible existence. This Ego-determina- tion is, in short (as I have already frequently pointed out), the universal Eeason-movement of the cosmic whole reflected into itself in the organism called man,, which organism at the same time holds relations of antagonism to the universal, and is therein and there- through finite and conditioned. And this is what is meant by saying that man is created in the image of God. The finite reason is, however, not subject to any alien content of reason. Hegel says (Encyc. 382) that finite reason is not free in its immediateness, but only in its actuality. If I rightly comprehend Hegel, I would say that, on the contrary, finite reason is con- stituted by the pure will-movement, and therefore in and by freedom. Let us note further that it is the unity of conscious- ness which alone constitutes, and renders possible, the functioning of unity in all knowledge ; and that the fact of that unity of the subject-self is not constituted by the percipient act, but merely brought into relief in consciousness by the act of Will which prehends it, as it prehends all else. It first throws itself as object out of itself, again to reduce that object to the unity of apperception which, all the while, it itself is. Mind or reason is thus seen to be not at all simple, but, rather, a complex one of inner determination. In conclusion, the spontaneous kinetic movement Transcendental Ideas. 287 Will, emerging out of what has been till then mere attuent and animal consciousness, and, by means of a dialectic process, mediating and subsuming the matter of knowledge, and in that process giving birth to the & priori categories, is manifestly free in its relation to the whole sphere of the phenomenal, including the patho- logical conditions of the individual consciousness. We see, moreover, this reason of man to be a true mani- festation of the Universal Eeason. As free, the Will, in its finite relations, is responsible to Law of Conduct in, so far as it knows Law. Its primary function and end is knowledge, but its supreme end is conduct, that is to say, knowledge with a view to life in feeling and law in conduct. Just as the final aim of mere knowledge is the true i.e. the divine ideas in things, so the final aim of conduct is life in those ideas ; for through these alone can there be perfect conciliation of the particular with the universal, and life in God be effected. Thus it is that reason alone is ground and possibility of the true life of man, both in knowing and doing, and that the light of reason is the only light of life " the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." 288 The Infinite. CHAP. II. THE TRANSCENDENT AND THE IDEAL. THE Absolute-infinite is ground and prius of the determined and determinable ; the sensuous infinite is a characteristic of the already determined, and is neces- sitated by the nature of the percipient, or reason, act. Finite reason is never satisfied. It seeks continually for the completeness of the idea, in the particular and in the universal whole. The achievement of to-day is the beginning of to-morrow, the goal of one generation of men is the starting-point for the next. Hence the transcending impulse which would carry finite reason beyond the finite, in its search for a final and absolute synthesis which must for ever escape it. How is this to be explained ? The preceding chapters furnish the explanation, and that a simple one. To begin with, Eeason is the pure activity of the conscious-subject, and pure activity must by the necessity of the case be always active. Add to this the fact that this formal activity or Will, which is root of reason, has implicit in it the form of End as unceasing stimulus of Will, and we might then hold that the restless discontent of reason is sufficiently explained. And certainly, the analysis of the nature of Eeason as pure activity containing End partially The Ideal. 289 explains the phenomenon ; but not wholly. The never- ending nisus forward and upward in art, in science, and in the moral life is left out. Further, if pure activity with formal end implicit were the whole explanation, why should we not be content with the attainment of a succession of percepts as end of the will-movement ? This, it may be replied, we cannot be, because the dialectic of the reason-move- ment, as mediating or causal, compels us to relate and co- relate the said percepts with a view to an organic view of the total of sense, in which the percept, as a singular, will have its due place, but no more, in a complex unity. If we further say then that Keason must, by its very nature, always seek organic completeness as End, have we finally explained the ideal and transcendent nisus ? We have not. For, if this were the final explanation, a very rough and superficial correlation of experiences sufficient for the practical needs of life would content a man, and he would rest in his first thoughts of things as organisms. He does not do so : one rung in the ladder is here also, as in more rudimentary acts, only standing- room for the next. It is clear that the notion of the Infinite somewhere enters : And, accordingly, the further explanation is that the infinite transcendency of movement which character- izes reason, is an act of limitation an explanation which, at the first blush, looks paradoxical. Eeason as a limitating act, in and by that act (as we have seen) perceives and affirms the not-yet limited, and T 290 The Ideal. further, the illimitable in a series infiniteness. That is to say, it perceives that its knowledge not only is, but must be, always partial, and it is thus, through the perception of infiniteness, compelled to fresh en- deavour after a somewhat not yet attained. It is the infinite then as necessary element in the very fact of finitude, and in the act of finitizing, which necessitates discontent and stimulates to ever-renewed striving. But we have not yet done with the problem ; for this striving, ever renewing itself, pursues completeness or the ideal. The ideal simply means the perfection of a thing after its kind. But, since my knowing always necessarily contains in it the suggestion and fact of the illimitable and the beyond, how and whence do I get the notion of ideal perfection ? The consciousness of the more and the better is easily explained, for we have it in sense-experience ; but what of this completed perfection ? A most important and significant concep- tion this, because, stimulated by it, all Art, whether it be the industrial arts or the fine arts, exists, and through it alone is Art, as distinguished from mere imitation and adaptation to use, possible. Nay more, stimulated by this conception, the soul of man seeks the perfection of the ideal life. Now I do not think there is any explanation of this possible save what is to be found in the preceding remarks. Keason as I have shown is a dialectic of Will and it contains in it the form of End : that is to say, the dialectic is teleological. To say. that Eeason The Ideal. 291 is in its ct priori form teleological is to say that it pre- figures a completed end, organic or other, in each and every thing and complex of things. It may be said that the more or less of degree in things actually seen, suffices for an explanation of the ideal (idea in concrete*). I see many birch trees varying in degree, and one I have seen which is better than all the others, inasmuch as it impresses me more pleasingly. Among a series of birch trees this last I pronounce the best nay, the perfect birch-tree, and it is the standard by which in future I measure the place of all others on the scale : But it is precisely in this very experience-process that the formal prefiguring of Eeason is seen at work. A dog or cow has seen all these birch-trees as often as you have, and though both the one and the other seems to be in closer intimacy with nature than you, neither has any feeling on the subject of the less or more of perfection. And this because they are not rational. It is as a Keason that you take up all the material of sense as having, each thing after its kind, a beginning, middle and end -that end being the completion of itself the purpose of perfection. And this purpose of perfection in things is a necessary outgrowth of the formal dialectic which we call Eeason. As formal it is a prefiguration (which is yet without figure) seeking for its filling in the world of sense. The pursuit of the ideal, in brief, is determined by a principle, which principle is in the formal of Eeason ; and also (let me add) in the form, or the thinking, in Nature. 292 7^ke Ideal. Formal end implicit in the Dialectic is a prefigure- ment of possible repose, to be sought for and found in the achievement of itself. So far the Ideal in thought is explained. But not yet wholly: for, just at this point, we must fall back on the infiniteness of the reason-movement and recall the fact that the mind never rests in an achieved end, but ceaselessly pushes forward under an impulse of transcendency. This is due to the nature of the Eeason-act, which, in affirming an end attained, exhibits itself as a determining or limitating act, however complete that end may seem, and therefore is, at the same moment, under the neces- sity of affirming that which is beyond any assignable limit. For the finite Ego there is possible (to borrow a phrase from Professor Seth) only the " infinite progress of approximation." To sum up and repeat. The "ideal" or (generally the) transcendent is a fact of Eeason : it is not a mere accident or accessory of Eeason, but the necessary issue of the form of Eeason itself. It is not to be explained by the fact that Eeason is pure activity which as such can never rest, because this would not necessitate the distinctively forward transcendent movement of mind. It is to be explained by the nature of essential Eeason or Dialectic itself : (a) As taking up all matter of consciousness teleologically which compels it to formally propose to itself End. This essential character of the dialectic process, however, would content itself with affirmed ends as these might be first apprehended The Ideal. 293 were it not for, secondly, (&) The essential character of Reason (not now as dialectic process simply, but) in the issue of its movement as determination or limitation. Limitation carries with it the illimitable or the infinite in the finite. There is thus a stimulus in the heart of Eeason which, as formal end, compels the search for real end ; and the ficrther stimulus of the perception of the infinite in the finite, which urges to infinite endeavour, illimitable progression. Thus the Ideal in this, that, or the other is, as a Real iii experience, impossible ; because, however it may be constituted, there enters into it the affirmation of the Infinite. It is a prefigurement, as I have said, of pure Reason. This term, however, is to be accepted as a metaphorical expression of a reason-fact. The ex- planation of the necessariness of an infinite series in the sphere of the conditioned (as has been frequently shown) is explained by the nature of percipience as an act in its final moment : the Idea, in the Kantian sense, and the Ideal have their explanation in the said necessary infinite finitude. These explanations are so simple and emerge so obviously out of the analysis of reason in its primal act of percipience, that they may possibly be less acceptable to some minds than involved propositions which leave thought undefined, and give to mere mental confusion the air of mystical profundity. I do not here work out the ever-present action of the Dialectic always the same dialectic in the differing 294 The Ideal. spheres of experience Knowledge, the Beautiful (the Ideal of the Eeal), and the Good (the Ethical). These spheres are not isolated one from the other. They do not each demand separate explanation. They are fundamentally one. And let me add (merely dog- matically here), true reality or, in brief, Truth lies in the Idea and the Ideal. It is not necessary to invent a separate faculty of mind to explain the " ideas which Eeason employs in seeking to complete experience" (Kant's Transc.-AnaL, conclusion of B. I.), any more than it is necessary to distinguish between under- standing and reason, as if the latter were a specific faculty a mind placed on the top of a mind. Eeason is a one living movement, and contains in its move- ment the explanation of all that is explainable. Let me add that the completion of the totality of con- ditions which would yield the Ideal (the idea in concrete) would have two results : first, it would convert the ideal into the real of experience, and abolish the ideal ; and secondly, what I call the protension of Eeason, which is infinite, would stultify itself, for it would terminate in a completed conditioning of actual and possible matter of thought, and so pass into finitude. This protension of Eeason accordingly is, as regards the conditioned or finite, merely regulative, but yet of vital significance in science, art, and ethics. It is scarcely necessary to add (after all that has been said in past chapters), that we are not here speak- ing of the true Infinite, but only of the Infinite in the finite, that is to say, the Infinite implicit in the act of The Ideal. 295 conditioning all matter of thought the sensuous infinite. The true Infinite, the Absoluto-infinite, is to be found in feeling first, and thereafter in the Keason or Per- cipience process, in the feeling of Being universal and unique as yet undetermined and unconditioned, itself the conditioning ground of things and, thereafter, in the affirmation of the same Being in and through the Dialectic. If we do not see this, we are compelled to go on for ever in the search for God ; and to go on in vain, because we find ourselves involved in the banal process of positing being of a being and cause of a cause, and so on ad infinitum. The true Infinite, the Eternal One God Himself is all the while lying close to our hand in both feeling and reason, and, even in denying Him, we unwittingly affirm Him. THE END. Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty, at the Edinburgh University Press. NOTICES OF FIRST EDITION. METAPHYSICA NOVA ET VETUSTA: A Return to Dualism. By SCOTUS NOVANTICUS. (Pro- fessor S. S. LAURIE, LL.D.) 200 pp., 8vo, Cloth, 6s. "I congratulate you very sincerely 011 the production of this remarkable little book. Its results are among the best in philo- sophy ; at the same time that your deduction of them from the simple act of percipience is at once original and happy." From Dr. Hutchison Stirling. "The book is an analysis of Perception independently under- taken, but with full knowledge of, and reference to, the Kantian investigation. . . . The whole is worked out with much sureness of touch and with real philosophical insight. The author's know- ledge and use of German thought is flavoured by a certain sturdy Scotch independence as well as by an infusion of Scotch caution. . . . The book makes the impression of having been written by one who has held himself at some distance from the philosophical schools, and who has embodied in his work the results of his mature thought. . . . Relativity (with the author) is something quite different from Relatedness. . . . What is said by the author is said with admirable clearness." From "Mind," October, 1884. " . . . As a connected reasoned body of doctrines, the explan- ation offered by 'Scotus Novanticus' constitutes a new philosophical theory. ... By the help of this versatile will-force, the writer endeavours to solve the great problems of philosophy. ... If the reasonings and conclusions are not always satisfactory, the book will still be interesting to the readers of philosophy on account of the light it throws on several important points of speculative inquiry, and also for the thoroughness with which the doctrines are developed and carried out." From " The Scotsman." "The anonymous work 'Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta,' by ' Scotus Novanticus,' well deserves the careful attention of all who can appreciate a sustained piece of reasoning. . . . The book ii Notices of the Press. displays much maturity of thought throughout, and the author, whoever he is, possesses a complete grasp of philosophical distinc- tions. . . . Though he works out his theory forcibly in his own way, he has evidently been largely influenced by Kant, and the post- Kantian Idealists, particularly perhaps by Fichte. ... It may be described as a succinct but comprehensive sketch of a metaphysical psychology." From " The Contemporary Review." "... In the instance before us, while the subject handled is a large one, the treatment it receives (notwithstanding the brevity of the book) is wonderfully full. ' Scotus Novanticus ' wastes none of his space in rhetorical verbiage nor in wordy excursions into the picturesque fields adjoining his subject proper, but confines himself strictly to the province within which it lies. His style is terse yet lucid, and his book, though hard reading, as it is almost bound to be from its nature as from its succinctness, never fails to be inter- esting. ... In this little work the anonymous author attempts nothing less than to trace the genesis and history of our knowledge our knowledge of the outer world as well as of the workings of mind itself. ... It would be impossible for us here to give any- thing like a full and explicit account of the contribution which is here offered. ' Scotus Novanticus ' wastes no words, and his treatise reads like a mathematical demonstration. . . . The work will well repay a careful study, and is a valuable contribution to the subject with which it deals. We heartily commend it to students of Philosophy whether they be materialists or not."- Froni " The Scottish (Quarterly) Review." ' ' While, as we shall afterwards point out, we consider this work a failure as an argument for Dualism, we cannot help congratulating the author on the production of a w~ork so distinguished by subtle analysis and philosophic power. . . . We say his Dualism is illogical, because in no work have we seen the activities of the mind more clearly exhibited or their necessity for the constitution of knowledge more convincingly argued. More than this, he has freed himself from the paralogisms which strangled Kant when dealing with such notions as Being, Causality, and the Absolute. . . . It only remains to add that the style is clear, terse and vigorous."- From " The Glasgow Herald." "This is the work of a powerful and original thinker." From " The Modern Review" October, 1884. . . . ."Professor Laurie's ingenious and original little book. . . . Comprehensive treatise ... it abounds in admirable expositions Notices of the Press. iii and acute criticisms : and especially indicates a clear insight founded upon accurate knowledge into the insufficiency of the empirical psychology as a base of metaphysical philosophy." From "A Study of Religion" by Dr. James Martineau, 1888. ETHICA, OR THE ETHICS OF REASON. By SCOTUS NOVANTICUS, Author of " Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta." ' ' About twelve months ago the author of this volume published a work entitled ' Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta : a return to Dualism,' in which he advanced a notable theory regarding the origin and nature of human knowledge. . . . "In the 'Ethics of Reason' the direct influence of Kant and Hegel is especially evident ; still these old elements of doctrine, as well as the terminology, are here used in an independent way by a writer who elaborates a theory marked by distinctive features. . . . "To understand fully the doctrines thus propounded by 'Scotus Novanticus,' his reasonings must be studied in his own expositions, and as he has reasoned them out and connected the different parts into a system. All that we can say is that the various branches of the subject are unfolded with ability and ample knowledge of existing moral theories. . . . "The work is the production of an original and profound thinker who is well aware of the difficulties of his thesis. The argument is managed with skill and dialectic power. The treatise is well entitled to the attention of students of Philosophy." From " The Scotsman." "The 'Ethica' repeats the characteristics of the 'Metaphysica,' and is an equally noteworthy contribution to the determination of ultimate philosophical positions. The book is not controversial in character, and is as sparing as its predecessor in the specific allusions to other writers ; but we are able to feel that the absten- tion is advised, and that the author's theory has been elaborated in full view of modern discussions. As he proceeds on his way, doctrines receive their correction, amplification, or quietus, though their authors are not referred to. ... "Enough has perhaps been said to prove that the argument deserves to be studied by all who aim at clear thinking on ethical questions." From "Mind," October, 1885. " As we expected, the acute and logical author of ' Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta ' has followed up that work with another, in which iv Notices of the Press. his leading principles are applied in the field of ethics. Here, as in his former work, he is very close and cogent, scorning to allow himself any of the easy and rhetorical illustrations with which some writers in philosophy are prone to make up their chapters. What- ever may be said of his ideas, his style, it will be admitted, is one that is to be commended alike for its directness, simplicity, and serviceableness. We have read the book with an increasing con- viction of the author's originality and power, and of the benefit that his books may confer, even in this regard, on philosophical students. So carefully is his main argument drawn out that we cannot find space to outline it here, but must content ourselves with indicating one or two of his salient positions. . . . " The author's application of his principles to the development of the Altruistic Emotions, to Law, and Justice is admirably con- sistent and suggestive ; though, of course, in the process he has to deal somewhat severely with the definitions of the moral sense, the moral faculty, and conscience, which have been given by not a few writers on philosophy, ethics, and theology. Many of Kant's positions are incisively criticised, and lacuna?, as the author conceives, supplied. As a criticism of ethical systems, no less than as a piece of dialectic, and a positive contribution to ethical science, it is suggestive and thorough. We can cordially commend the book. It will raise questions no doubt, and answers will be forthcoming on various points ; but the questioners would do well to take a hint from the author in the style of answering them." From " The British Quarterly JReview" "Instead of the psychological method of inquiry formerly so- much in fashion in the treatment of ethics, we have here a method which is transcendental in character. . . . "Here, as indeed throughout the volume, 'Scotus Novanticus ' shows how ably he can conduct a process of reasoning throughout its various stages, avoiding every temptation to depart from the . definite line of argument which he has marked out for himself. . . . "This is an exceedingly able work. It contains much forcible writing, and shows the author to possess a singular power of sustained thought. We admire the way in which he keeps himself free from entanglement in view of side issues, and at the same time is able to indicate their bearings on the main theme. For the expression of abstract thinking the style could hardly be better. It is direct, and hence forcible, and, though using the language of philosophy, is free from unnecessary technicalities." From " The Glasgow Herald," April 10, 1885. Notices of the Press. v " The author's mode of working out his thought may seem to symbolize his ethical theory itself. The sense of effort that is a part of all moral action ends, as he shows, in a sense of harmony. Now 'Scotus Novanticus ' requires -from his readers a distinct intellectual effort in order to grasp his thought ; but if they are willing to make this effort, they are really rewarded by having in their minds an idea of a coherent system which has many features of originality, and which, regarded as a whole, produces (whether we agree with it or not) that sense of power to contemplate the world and action from a general point of view which is characteristic of the philosophic attitude as distinguished from the attitude of science and common sense." From " The Westminster Review." "This volume is characterized, we need hardly say, by all the excellent qualities that distinguished our author's previous work. . . ' Scotus Novanticus ' is a skilful and patient analyst of the pheno- mena of mind, and writes in a style that conveys very clearly what he wishes to express. It is a case of clear thought mirroring itself in clear language. . . . We remarked in regard to his l Meta- physica ' that it read like a mathematical demonstration : we have the same to say of this. 'Scotus Novanticus' has evidently a wholesome horror of 'padding.' His argument is about as con- densed as it could well be. Then he is so careful in the use of his terms that we run a risk of misleading our readers by employing them without also giving his precise definitions of them. We refer our readers, therefore, to the work itself. It will amply repay careful study, and only by careful study can the argument be fully appreciated. . . . 'Ethica' is a careful study, and a valuable contribution to ethical science." From The "Scottish (Quarterly) Review." " The present treatise contains a very close discussion of the chief points in debate between the different schools of moralists ; and the author seems, in my judgment, to be remarkably successful in harmonizing the elements of truth in each. ... It is not possible here to do more than single out a few points from a book which rewards a careful study." From " The Contemporary Review." ON THE "METAPHYSICA" AND "ETHICA" TOGETHER. " There is nothing absolutely new in [Dr. Martineau's] doctrine [as to necessity of conflict, etc.]. ... It has been admirably ex- vi Notices of the Press. pounded in a recent volume of great force of thought and scientific precision of analysis, under the title of ' Ethica, or the Ethics of Reason.' This volume bears to be by 'Scotus Novanticus,' author of a preceding volume entitled 'Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta.' Both volumes are marked by much vigour and lucidity, grasp of philosophic distinctions, and capacity of following and combining threads of thought to their end. . . . We have pleasure in recom- mending them to the attention of all students of Philosophy." From " The Edinburgh Review." "Das erste dieser beiden eng zusammengehorigen Biicher desselben ungenannten Verf. [des Prof. S. S. Laurie] lasst sich als eine Pheno- menologie des Geistes behufs der Constituirung einer erkenntniss- theoretischen Metaphysik bezeichnen, die von Kantischen, streng rationalistischen Gesichtspunkten ausgehend, sich von da mit Hiilfe weiterer an Fichte und Hegel erinnernden Elemente zu einer voll- standigen, eigenthiimlichen Ansicht der Sache erhebt." " In der Behauptung der Idee der Personlichkeit steht der Verf. durchaus auf Kantischem Boden ; sein Streben ist aber die theo- retische und praktische Seite der Vernunft einander moglichst zu nahern, um eben aus ihr als einem einheitlichen Princip eine vollst'andige systematische Erkenntnisseinheit zu deduciren wobei er sich dem absoluten Idealismus nachkantischer deutschen Philo- sophic annahert. Das Unternehmen des ' Scotus Novanticus ' kanii als einer der achtbarsten Versuche unserer Zeit, in Ankniipfung an die durch Kant begonnene philosophische Bewegung zu einer, mehr als bisher geschehen ist, abschliessenden Form eines speculativen Systems zu gelangen, betrachtet werden." C. S. (PROFESSOR SCHAARSCHMIDT). From "Die philosophische Monatshefte," xxii. 6,7. " . . . . deux ecrits recents fort remarquables signes du pseudo- nyme de ' Scotus Novanticus.' Ce sont des essais fort ingenieux de conciliation entre les me'thodes objective et subjective appliquees S, la recherche des origines de la connaissance et de la loi morale. >r M. G. ROLIN-JACQUEMYNS. From " La Revue de Droit inter- national." WILLIAMS AND NORGATE : LONDON AND EDINBURGH. B Y THE SAME A UTHOR. NOTES ON BRITISH THEORIES OF MORALS. DAVID DOUGLAS, Edinburgh. PRIMARY INSTRUCTION IN RELATION TO EDUCATION. Third Edition. J. THIN, Edinburgh. HANDBOOK TO LECTURES ON EDUCATION. Third Edition. J. THIN, Edinburgh. THE TRAINING OF THE TEACHER AND OTHER EDUCATIONAL PAPERS. KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH AND Co., London. THE EDUCATIONAL LIFE AND WRIT- INGS OF JOHN AMOS COMENIUS. Third Edition. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS. THE RISE AND EARLY CONSTITUTION OF UNIVERSITIES. KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH AND Co. ; APPLETON, New York. OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES ON EDUCA- TIONAL SUBJECTS. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS. il I ' UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY . . I : r:;>.;"