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 Outline of the idealistic constructiipn 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 031 066 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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 the Cornell University Library. 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924029031066 
 
AN OUTLINE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 IDEALISTIC CONSTRUCTION 
 OF EXPERIENCE 
 
AN OUTLINE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 IDEALISTIC CONSTRUCTION 
 OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 BY 
 
 J. B. BAILLIE 
 
 M.A., D.PHIL, 
 
 REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN 
 
 AUTHOR OF "Kegel's logic" 
 
 fLonOon 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1906 
 
 ■+ 
 A II rights reserved 
 
PREFACE 
 
 An idealistic theory of experience generally pre- 
 sents a somewhat perplexing appearance. It 
 seems either to go too far, and to make ex- 
 perience intelligible by merely resolving it into 
 ideal elements ; or not far enough, and to leave 
 experience, of which it professes to give the 
 principle, outside the explanation altogether. The 
 "explanation" in the first case is little better than 
 a truism : it means that experience is intelligible if 
 it is resolved into ideal, i.e. into intelligible elements. 
 In the second case the "explanation" is a paradox, 
 since we are unable to read our experience by the 
 light of the "explanation." Both start from the 
 duality of subject and object, which is certainly 
 essential to experience. But the first destroys the 
 distinction in the process of showing the unity 
 between the two ; the second destroys the unity of 
 experience in the attempt to do justice to the 
 distinction on which it rests. The result is that 
 neither common sense nor the ordinary scientific 
 mind is convinced by idealism. The idealistic 
 argument may seem unassailable, and its ingenuity 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 may be beyond dispute, but it fails to give the 
 mental security which everyday thought seems to 
 possess. Idealism is left to take its own course; 
 and common reflection remains within its own 
 distinctions unaffected by the idealistic analysis. 
 The concession, granted by idealism, that the truths 
 of common sense or science are "valid so far as 
 they go, but are one-sided in character," is accepted 
 quite readily by both attitudes of mind, because 
 they only pay attention to the first half of the 
 statement and ignore the qualification implied in 
 the second. For a qualification which is not shown 
 to affect their procedure vitally is rightly considered 
 irrelevant. 
 
 This incongruity between the idealistic argument 
 and the course of experience is seen in the char- 
 acter of the argument itself as well as in its results. 
 The procedure is arbitrary in form and disconnected 
 in its content. Sometimes, as, for example, in Green's 
 theory, purely psychological distinctions determine 
 how the argument is to proceed and what it is to 
 deal with. No logically necessary unity connects 
 the analysis of " the spiritual principle in man as 
 intelligence" with that in "man as moral." Ele- 
 ments are somehow "given" to man as spirit, which 
 he manipulates for one purpose " intellectually," for 
 another "morally." Where they come from, or 
 what value each has for the totality of man's 
 spiritual life, is not explained, nor even considered. 
 Somehow the elements are simply there to begin 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Vll 
 
 with ; and it is supposed to be sufficient if we can 
 show that man qud spirit is different from man as 
 animal. But it seems evident that all distinctions, 
 even that between man's lower nature and man's 
 "spiritual principle," must fall within and \)^ phases 
 of man's total experience ; and all phases must be 
 shown to have a necessary place in the activity of 
 his life. It is not enough to draw the distinction 
 between man and natural existence; still less is it 
 justifiable to regard an explanation of the distinction 
 between the two aspects as equivalent to a synthesis 
 of his entire experience. 
 
 In order to avoid such difficulties in the idealistic 
 position we ought to show how experience is from 
 one end to the other a realisation of a spiritual 
 principle. We must at once do justice to the 
 very form and content of experience on the one 
 hand, and the nature of spirit on the other. We 
 should be able to feel that, in the result, we 
 are in touch with actual experience, and also that 
 we are dealing with a single principle controlling 
 all its movements. We cannot dismiss any phase 
 of experience either as illusory or as merely " one- 
 sided " ; we have to give each a necessary place in 
 the whole in order to show wherein that "one- 
 sidedness " lies. We cannot resolve one " aspect " 
 into another, for that still leaves us without any 
 explanation of what its distinctive nature involves. 
 It may be quite true, e.g., that Perception involves 
 a "universal " principle. But we want to know how 
 
VUl 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 that principle works in concrete experience so as to 
 give us what normally we call Perception. In actual 
 experience Perception is just Perception, neither 
 more nor less ; if we " resolve it " into something 
 "higher" we still must state what it is in itself. 
 To do anything else is not to explain it, but to 
 explain it away. To describe it as "undeveloped 
 reflection " does not show what kind of experience 
 it gives us as it stands, but what it is from the point 
 of view of reflection, i.e. another kind of experience. 
 The same holds good when we consider Science or 
 Morality, or any other form of experience. " One- 
 sided " each may be. But that is only from the 
 point of view of the -whole. Yet experience is not 
 simply the -whole ; it is a whole through its mutually 
 independent parts. Experience lives and moves 
 through different forms each with a distinctive 
 nature of its own. The essential factors are the 
 same all through : a subject in relation to, and 
 united with, an object. The distinction between 
 these factors creates the movement of experience, 
 the life of which consists in the gradual assimilation 
 of these fundamental elements to one another. 
 
 The relation is not sustained everywhere in 
 the same way ; the end of experience as a living 
 process is not realised to the same extent in 
 each special form of experience. A complete 
 idealistic explanation of experience ought there- 
 fore to show (i) that each phase of experience 
 embodies in a specific way the one spiritual prin- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 IX 
 
 ciple animating all ; (2) that each is distinct from 
 every other simply by the way it embodies that 
 principle ; (3) that each is connected with the 
 others and so with the whole in virtue of its realis- 
 ing that principle with a certain degree of com- 
 pleteness ; (4) that the whole of experience is a 
 necessary evolution of the one principle of experi- 
 ence through various forms, logically connected as a 
 series of stages manifesting a single principle from 
 beginning to end. Such an explanation must have 
 the character of developmental construction. 
 
 The attempt is made in the following chapters to 
 expound the idealistic argument from this point of 
 view. It has long seemed to the author to be much 
 the most fruitful line that argument can take ; and 
 no other seems so completely to avoid the difficul- 
 ties and ambiguities of the views above referred 
 to. It is hoped that this attempt at a constructive 
 exposition of the idealistic principle will, in spite of 
 the many imperfections of which the author is 
 very well aware, prove of some value to students 
 of philosophy, and of some assistance to those who 
 have felt with Green that the work of the great 
 idealists must " all be done over again." 
 
 The author does not profess to put forward a 
 view that is altogether new. For the form of this 
 outline of idealism, more particularly in the case of 
 the earlier stages in the argument, he is indebted 
 to the great masterpiece of idealistic reflection 
 in modern philosophy, Hegel's Phenomenology of 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 Mind. More might perhaps have been made of 
 the analysis of "Sense-experience," "Perception," 
 and " Understanding." The point of view from 
 which they are here treated is capable of throwing 
 much valuable light on the difficult and intensely 
 interesting questions suggested by these forms of 
 experience. The limits of an " outline," however, 
 could hardly have justified discussion in greater 
 detail. 
 
 The author has sought to bring out the force of 
 the position here taken up by connecting and con- 
 trasting it with that of Kant, with which in many 
 ways it has considerable historical affinities. He 
 has found this method throughout both useful and 
 instructive, and believes it may prove so to the 
 student. 
 
 He has also tried as far as possible to bring the 
 argument to bear on the solution of problems which 
 are of pressing importance for philosophy at the 
 present time ; and is not without hope that some 
 help has been given towards clearing up some of 
 the dark places of experience. 
 
 The importance of the point of view here 
 adopted has been frequently recognised in recent 
 reflection. The author would refer in particular to 
 the work of such different thinkers as Adamson, in 
 his lectures on "Theory of Knowledge" (in vol. i. 
 part V. of his Lectures) ; Professor Ward, in his 
 Naturalism and Agnosticism ; and Professor Laurie, 
 in the original and illuminating argument developed 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 in his Synthetica. In each of these we find the 
 same position insisted upon which is here traced in 
 outline — that subject and object constitute the life 
 of experience and develop pari passu from the 
 very first, and in developing give rise to all the 
 wealth of human experience in its various forms. 
 
 It should be mentioned that Chapters 1 1. -VI. 
 contain the substance of the Shaw Fellowship 
 Lectures delivered at Edinburgh University during 
 the winter session 1904-5. 
 
 J. B. BAILLIE. 
 
 King's College, Aberdeen, 
 August 1906. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Recent idealism starts from Kant — The different interpretations of his position 
 — ^Twofold character of Kant's idealism — The emphasis on universal ex- 
 perience — Its result — The emphasis on the individual subject — Its result 
 — ^Necessity for further reconciliation — " Validity " and " fact " — Lotze — 
 The dualism within individual experience — The problem thence arising — 
 The solution found in Purposiveness in general — Statement of this solution 
 — Pragmatism or Humanism — Its idealistic elements — Its defects — (l) 
 It confines the unity of experience to the historical or psychological 
 individual — The unity of experience is wider than any and all individual 
 history — or than any collection of individuals — and is not a series — (2) It 
 makes the unity arbitrary — It is necessary and objective in its control — and 
 the objectivity is not simply that of society — The unity is that of an 
 absolute Single experience — Philosophy and Religion, being at the point of 
 view of this Whole as such, stand for objectivity of all other experience — 
 We must start, in interpreting objectivity and necessity of knowledge, 
 from this Absolute Individuality as found and expressed in Philosophy and 
 Religion — All restricted forms of experience inadequate, and cannot serve 
 as a basis for constructing experience — The value of this position — 
 Experience both universal and individual — Reflective Knowledge a form 
 of individuation — The genetic construction of experience — Matter and 
 form in experience — Method of Philosophy self-explaining — The position 
 of Idealism ...... Pages 1-43 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 DUALISM AND THE NEW PROBLEM 
 
 The formulation of the problem of Knowledge— The factors in knowing (l) 
 active relation of subject and object, (2) with truth as end— The problem 
 of Knowledge has to consider the relation between these two, between 
 actual and ideal. 
 
 xiii 
 
xiv CONTENTS 
 
 Kant's view of the problem— His dualistic assumption— Limit to Knowledge 
 determined by the subject— Faith— Its function— Its object— Problems of 
 intellect become postulates of Faith— The limit to Knowledge without 
 significance — The conception of it is determined by Kant's Dualism — 
 Significance of " spontaneity " of subject— Teleological Judgment— Kant^s 
 argument really refutes Dualism — Dualism in Locke — Its effect on his 
 " analysis " of the content of the subject's knowledge in Book II. of the 
 Essay — and on the interpretation of existence in Book IV. — The issue in 
 both essentially the same— Locke and Kant— Berkeley and Hegel. 
 
 We must give up Dualism — This involves change in conception of Truth — and 
 of the relation of "reality" to " thought "—and of " limitation of know- 
 ledge " — Common ways of conceiving the problem of Knowledge — Logic 
 as abstract and as concrete — The new problem : it deals with all forms of 
 Knowledge — Knowledge is consciousness of object ; and is therefore 
 coextensive vrith Experience — The psychological distinction of knowing 
 and willing not an objection to this — The problem is to explain the 
 relation of the ideal in all Knowledge to each and every form of Knowledge 
 — The ideal is the source of necessity in Knowledge . . Pages 44-79 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE 
 
 The ideal of Knowledge — Subject and object a complete unity through 
 diversity — The ideal is subject completely conscious of self — This is 
 implicit in all forms of experience, as explicit it is the ideal for every 
 form — It contains simply and at once all the substance of experience in its 
 different forms of expression — In it mind answers to complete mind — The 
 ideal is the source and end of all experience — Experience is rooted in the 
 distinction of subject and object — Its end is to reinstate the complete unity 
 out of which it arose and which conditions its "course" in finite 
 consciousness. 
 
 Contrast of this with Kant's view — For Kant Knowledge is essentially a 
 series of relations of individual mind to isolated objects — But the mind is 
 always a continuous whole, and the objective world a continuity — His 
 view of necessity is purely formal, and is determined by the formal 
 character of the pure ego on the one hand and the equally formal notion of 
 a " possible experience " on the other — and is the same in every case in 
 which it is found — Necessity really due to a relation between the ideal 
 immanent in all Knowledge and actual Knowledge — Necessity in experience 
 does not mean always the same thing : it varies vidth the form of 
 experience, and admits of degrees — Illustration from perceptual fact and 
 conceptual principle — Truth is held by Kant to be an agreement between 
 thought and its object — It is limited to thinking experience or "science" 
 — But this overlooks the fact that in all forms of experience there is a 
 relation of subject and object and therefore truth — The relation is distinct 
 in each case, and the object and the subject are different in each case — 
 
CONTENTS XV 
 
 The " agreement " conception of truth is not wide enough to embrace 
 all kinds of truth — There is truth, e.g., of Moral Experience — Each 
 form has its own truth — and the complete truth is the whole — The ques- 
 tion as to the " possibihty of truth " has strictly no meaning, for it can only 
 be answered by an appeal to another form of truth — This seen in the 
 case of Kant's attempt to answer the question — Experience is always 
 concrete — Kant's use of the term "possible experience" — It is the 
 correlation of the formal ego — But experience, being concrete, can never 
 as a whole be "possible" — Kant's inconsistency in using the term. 
 'Selected" experience — Experience must be taken as a whole — This can be 
 done by taking as the centre of all experience a typical individual mind — 
 Appeal to experience ; its meaning — Characteristics of experience — Sub- 
 ject and object — Their distinction and nature — Knowledge and experience 
 — Summary — The nature of the interpretation . Pages 80-113 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 PLAN AND STAGES OF THE ARGUMENT 
 
 Experience as " self- explaining " ; truth and error of this — Necessity in 
 experience: what — Systematic connexion by a central principle — The 
 method of procedure — Its two aspects, universal experience and individual 
 finite centre of experience — Continuity of all experience — It is the logical 
 connexion of historically discrete experiences of an individual mind — The 
 problem is the same at each stage — We begin vrith the assumption of an 
 ideal — Presuppositions in philosophy — Other ways of explaining experience 
 
 " Proof" of a philosophical interpretation — The end of all experience is 
 
 the ideal — The ideal is complete experience — This is concrete, and a form 
 of experience — Misunderstandings — All forms at once positive and 
 negative— The three chief aspects or levels of experience . 114-135 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE INTERPRETATION OF SENSE-EXPERIENCE : 
 AND OF PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE 
 
 Sense is simplest form of relation of subject and object— Object here is not- 
 self in general— This is source of "externality" of objects— Ways in 
 which this appears at the higher levels of experience— " Externality of 
 object "in philosophical discussion— Problem of " External Perception" 
 starts from this— Cannot be the only problem of Philosophy ; it igriores 
 other phases of experience— Forms of opposition of subject and object : 
 (I) Sensation; (2) Perception; {3) the distinction of a world of appear- 
 ance from a worid of supersensible reality— These express opposition 
 
xvi CONTENTS 
 
 with varying degrees of fixity and absoluteness ; but are ways of gradually 
 transcending it altogether. ^^ 
 
 Sense-experience breaks up into discrete "this," "that," "now," "then — 
 But all such terms imply universality— The universal is the continuum of 
 the process of change making up sense-life. 
 
 Perceptual experience deals expressly with universals of sense — " Seeing" and 
 "perceiving"— The universal is on one side the "thing" (percept) with its 
 qualities, on the other the act of percipience with its constituent sense- 
 functions : seeing, touching, etc.— Sometimes one side is exclusively 
 emphasised, sometimes another— Perception does not deal with particulars 
 —and does not imply dualism— The object in Perception is a " thing"— 
 For Perception a thing is an " association " of qualities— Its unity excludes 
 and includes— AVhen we keep to the sphere of Perception proper there is 
 no thing-in-itself— Perception admits nothing but sense-qualities — The 
 subject in Perception is realised in the process of the discrete functions of 
 sense (seeing, hearing, etc.) which are "associated" within its life— This 
 process is at once a process of the subject and the object — It is the life of 
 the experience as a unity of the different factors subject and object — 
 Hence percept and percipient necessarily proceed together and vary in 
 degree and nature the one with the other — The opposition of subject and 
 object in Perception is relative, and is due to the content of sense being 
 simply not-self ..... Pages 136-175 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 UNDERSTANDING AND THE WORLD OF NOUMENA 
 AND PHENOMENA 
 
 The need of an advance on Perception — The content of Perception contains 
 elements in unresolved opposition, both as regards the diverse qualities 
 and the unity of things — It is also arbitrary in its distinction of essential 
 from accidental aspects of things — The step required is that of Under- 
 standing — To take this step means that Knowledge is not to be defeated- — 
 The position of Dualism — It creates an impassi for Knowledge — Its result 
 — The position of Common-sense Realism likewise unsatisfactory — Under- 
 standing is on its subjective side a process of resolving diversity of things 
 as such into a unity of which they are parts or expressions — The objective 
 side of this is Force, which is a unity in and through its manifestations — 
 These are sides of the same experience — The content of Perception falls 
 within Understanding — Kant's view — The heterogeneity of Perception and 
 Understanding — These are in reality continuous, and differ in the degree 
 of realising the same end — Process of Understanding — (i) Laws — Objec- 
 tive and Subjective — Laws neither independent of subject nor dependent 
 on subject — This is a level of experience — Manipulation of Laws the be- 
 ginning of "Freedom of subject" — Understanding the "truth" of Per- 
 ception — (2) Phenomena and Noumena — The distinction created by the 
 
CONTENTS xvii 
 
 elements in Understanding— But it is a distinction within experience, and 
 does not imply a "beyond" to experience— Perception "taken up" into 
 Understanding— (3) Elucidating or Explaining— 'VYas, is a relation of the 
 differences to the unity : it makes the one continuous with the other, the 
 differences being resolved into the unity of Law and vice versa — Ex- 
 planation not a "function" of Understanding, but the life of Under- 
 standing—The unity it establishes is a self-determined universal — A 
 self-determined universal is a thought or conception — This is therefore the 
 beginning of subject conscious of self in its object— Self-consciousness 
 thus the goal of knowledge of " external objects," and the ground of all 
 such Knowledge . . . . Pages 176-208 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 In Understanding self is implicit in the process of Explanation — Self not yet a 
 conscious object — This made possible by the activity of unifying involved 
 in the process of Understanding — To be conscious of the same unity gives 
 rise to consciousness of subject as the same, as one self— Understanding 
 by overcoming all estrangement of object and subject lays the founda- 
 tion for this new form of experience, the consciousness of self as such — 
 This passes through various stages towards complete reahsation — (i) 
 Desire — This is level of consciousness of self in objects implicitly one with 
 self, but as such selfless — Desire falls solely within self-experience — Desire 
 for " things " : its meaning — Desire different from Understanding — Desire 
 as such is a determinate mode of experience — Its process: Need: 
 Impulse : Satisfaction — Desire implies no " beyond " in experience of 
 self — Desire is only consciousness of self in selfless objects — (2) Recog- 
 nition — Here self as such is object for subject — This the only way of 
 knowing self — Self not found by Understanding or Perception — It is 
 reflected consciousness of self in another self — Its process — Forms of 
 Recognition — (a) When mere self recognises mere self — Ego = Ego — Self- 
 identity — Its significance — Abstract fireedom — (b) When self as particular, 
 "natural," recognises self as particular — Ego distinct from Ego — 
 Mere difference — Its significance — Contingency of self— (c) When self as 
 mere self recognises itself in self as natural or particular — Inequality of 
 self-recognition — Master and Serf — Significance in the development of 
 consciousness of self — (3) Final form of consciousness of self — Conscious- 
 ness of self as universal — This facilitated by the process of (2, c) — Self as 
 universal gives absolute or universal freedom of self — Abstract forms of 
 this type of self- consciousness — Stoicism : abstraction of self from 
 " nature " — Scepticism -. abstraction of self firom other selves — Self- 
 alienation : abstraction of self from self — The further evolution of self- 
 consciousness— Self must be concrete, not abstract . . 209-244 
 
xviii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE SPHERE OF REASON SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE 
 
 The unity of experience now established is explicit conscious identity of subject 
 and object — This is henceforward the moving principle of all experience — 
 It is concrete in character — Difference from Kant — His principle of self- 
 consciousness is formal — This due to his dualism of Ego and " Things " 
 — It is incapable of further development — Hence the discontinuity between 
 his critical philosophy as a form of knowledge and the knowledge he 
 criticises — Effect of this on his own theory — That theory restricted 'to 
 mere form, and is external to concrete experience — The connection — 
 Philosophical Knowledge must fall within experience itself — It is a concrete 
 expression of self-consciousness, and is shown to be so by the further 
 development of self - consciousness — Self- consciousness contains the 
 principle of various phases of experience, e.g. Reason, Morality, Religion 
 — First stage of this development is Reason — Reason -Knowledge — 
 Reason contains diverse movements because concrete — It has a content 
 of its own — " Conceptions," etc. — Reason is a level of knowledge, an 
 experience — This agrees with common thought — In Reason object and 
 subject are distinctions within their conscious identity — Content is the 
 same on both sides — Identity of Reason : what — Moments of the life of 
 Reason — (i) Observation — This not subjective even to the ordinary 
 scientific mind — Differences of content in process of Observation due to its 
 development in experience — Its content consists of Conceptions — How 
 different conceptions come of consciousness — Illustration from mechanism 
 and teleology — " Reconciliation " of such Conceptions : what — Categories 
 as universal pure unities of Reason — Categories are Reason in detailed 
 expression — (2) Conceptions develop into Laws of Reason — Thus Obser- 
 vation passes into Judging and Demonstrative Connexion — Difference 
 of content in Laws — Consummation of development of Reason is attain- 
 ment of Ideal of Science — Systematic coherence of life of Reason — This 
 agrees with procedure of Science — and with "Logic of Science" — Limita- 
 tions of " Logic of Science " — Difference between " Logic of Science " 
 and Theory of Experience — Relation between Reason and preceding 
 process of Sensation, Perception, and Understanding Pages 245-274 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE SPHERE OF FINITE SPIRIT MORAL EXPERIENCE 
 
 Result of Reason — It establishes a self-determined universal experience — It 
 
 makes possible self-conscious individuality— Reason does not isolate 
 
 It implies a. universal self-consciousness— " My reason": what — Indi- 
 viduality conscious of itself as universal and existing for itself is Spirit 
 
CONTENTS xix 
 
 — Its realisation is the Moral Order of Society — Illustration from general 
 conception of "Freedom" — "Man alone is capable of Morality": its 
 meaning — Truth of the view that " man is moral because rational " — 
 Spirit not Reason as such— Spirit is mediate conscious identity of subject 
 and object, the identity for itself — Reason is that identity in itself, 
 relation between self and others being implicit — Hence process of Reason 
 not mediated through others, but through its own content — That Moral 
 Life is the outcome of Reason agrees with Kant's position, but is 
 different from Kant's statements — Reason not formal, but concrete — 
 Morality not a formal expression of self - consciousness in general, but a 
 concrete realisation of Spirit — Hence Morality not an individual reality, as 
 Kant held, but a reality through individuals, and is logically prior to the 
 individual realisation of it — Hence Society not based on a "contract," 
 for a " contract " as an ethical fact presupposes a Society — Two aspects 
 of the Moral Order : {a) Universal self-consciousness, (b) specific individual 
 embodiment of it — These imply one another, and while distinct are 
 inseparable — (a) Universal self-consciousness appears as Social Law and 
 Custom — It is the same for all alike — It is realised in different forms of 
 Social Unity : Family, Civic Community, and State — It is the source of 
 Rights, Institutions, Virtues — {b) Individual realisation appears as 
 Responsibility, Duty, Law, Conscience — These two aspects of the experi- 
 ence are treated and described differently in common life — Conscience is 
 the final achievement of Moral Life, completest freedom of individuality 
 in and through Social Whole — "Private" conscience — Each aspect 
 carried out through "natural" conditions, for "nature" is here an 
 element in individuality— In (a) the " natural," " physical" conditions. 
 Land, Climate, etc., are the material for the civilisation of a People — 
 Substance of "nature" provides content of rights — and stability for 
 Society — In (b) the physical and psychical contents of individuality provide 
 the substance of duty — and the content of "moral responsibility" — The 
 assimilation of these two aspects is a process of conflict and reconciliation. 
 The attainment of the end establishes absolute self-consciousness, and leads the 
 way to Religion ..... Pages 275-308 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE SPHERE OF ABSOLUTE SPIRIT RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 CONTEMPLATION 
 
 The result of the Moral Life establishes Spirit as supreme reality compre- 
 hending all the preceding content of experience as its moments— But there 
 Spirit is realised by a process of spiritual individualities, a process due to 
 the distinction between individual and universal self-consciousness— Spirit 
 must, however, be fully actual to itself as a whole, and as a unity contain- 
 ing all distinctions at once— To be conscious of it in this way is to take 
 up the point of view of Absolute Spirit— This is the principle of Religion— 
 
XX CONTENTS 
 
 It is thus different from Morality — It is sui generis, and is both necessary 
 to the evolution of experience and universal — It is a final form of 
 man's experience and a supreme expression of his rationality — It is an 
 experience, but not specially anthropomorphic — Religion deanthropo- 
 morphises man — All experience anthropomorphic — Religion does not 
 involve a process as does morality — Its life complete always and at once — 
 Forms of Religion are the result of phases of Absolute Spirit — In each 
 Spirit is experienced in a different vifay, has a different mode of self- 
 manifestation — (i) Absolute Spirit immediately manifested and imme- 
 diately experienced — Nature gives the content of religious experience — 
 The Religion of Nature — Its method of expression — Its cult — (2) Absolute 
 Spirit contrasted with the immediate content of nature and withdrawn 
 into self — -Here self-conscious purpose is the primary content of Religion 
 — Religion of the Moral Order of experience — Its' manner of expressing 
 itself is governed throughout by the idea of purpose — This illustrated by 
 certain prominent features — Its cult and ceremony— -(3) Absolute Spirit 
 actually present as such to spirit — This implies no contrast and no 
 abstraction — Spirit is wholly manifest to Spirit — "Revealed" Religion, 
 or Religion of the Spirit — Some characteristic elements of this form of 
 religious experience — Faith, Hope, Love, Sacrifice — These three phases 
 of Religion not absolutely separate — Contemplation as a way of expressing 
 the relation of Spirit to Absolute Spirit . Pages 309-344 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that the Idealistic Inter- Modern 
 pretation of Experience in recent philosophy has "^^j^'JJJ^ 
 been determined and guided by the results of 
 Kant's analysis of knowledge. The criticism or 
 further development of Kant's position has, however, 
 by no means led to agreement amongst the expon- 
 ents of Idealism, either as regards their premises 
 or conclusions. We cannot but feel that this is not 
 merely due to the many-sided character of Kant's 
 theory, many-sided to the extent of inconsistency, 
 but also to the inheritance or reappearance of the 
 assumptions of Dualism from which he started. So 
 far has this disagreement gone that it seems almost 
 necessary for idealism to try to understand itself, to 
 see what it wants or aims at before it attempts to 
 carry out its principle. The difficulty of idealism in 
 any form has no doubt been increased by the growth 
 of a more intimate and a wider acquaintance with 
 reality than existed at Kant's time, more particularly 
 in regard to facts of history and biology. These 
 have tended to give still greater emphasis to just 
 the element that Kant tried to surmount — the 
 empirical or temporal character of all human 
 
2 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 experience. The increased weight given to the 
 methods and results arrived at in these departments 
 of experience has gradually shifted the focus of 
 idealism altogether, until in more recent times it 
 has assumed a form not very far removed from 
 what used to be called Subjective Idealism. 
 Kant's The positive outcome of Kant's analysis may be 
 
 result. said to have been the justification of the actuality 
 of a Universal Experience, and the Anthropocentric 
 Conception of Knowledge. Now it is the opposition 
 and the connexion between these two that have 
 determined the direction of idealistic reflection. 
 Both are essential to his view ; both must be taken 
 account of by any interpretation that derives its 
 principle from him. The one lays stress on the 
 fact of necessity and universality in experience, the 
 other on the fact that experience is only for a human 
 subject. 
 Develop- In the course of further reflection one or other 
 the 6rst in of these two has tended to become primarily em- 
 two forms, phasised, the other being derived from it. Thus 
 at the outset stress was laid on the former — 
 the reality of universal experience. This first 
 took the form of elaborate systematic construc- 
 tion of the entire content of such experience — 
 universal experience as Metaphysical Knowledge. 
 Another but less elaborate development of the 
 same position lay in the tendency to emphasise the 
 purely scientific attitude in knowledge, with its 
 methods of hypothesis and verification, — universal 
 experience as Scientific Knowledge. In the former 
 the human subject with its processes and apparent 
 limitations seemed to disappear in the process 
 of a Whole which contained it, and controlled or 
 
between 
 them. 
 
 I UNIVERSAL EXPERIENCE 3 
 
 corrected its limitations ; the anthropocentric element 
 in Kant's result, along with its complementary con- 
 ception of a thing-in-itself, was thereby dropped. In 
 the latter, the anthropocentric element was brought 
 in merely to justify the restriction of the range of 
 universal experience to the scientific mood, and so 
 to round off the limitation of its content to neces- 
 sary truth, on which it insisted, by an appeal to an 
 Unknown or Unknowable beyond human ken. 
 
 The two quite distinct developments of the idea Conflict 
 of universal experience could not long exist side by 
 side without some conflict arising and some recon- 
 ciliation being called for. And the demand was 
 on the whole forced primarily from the side of the 
 second form. For, while universal experience in the 
 form of science necessarily tends to the elimination 
 of the individual, because it claims to present truth 
 for all independent of any one (and in this respect 
 the relation of scientific truth to the individual mind 
 resembles what we find in universal experience taken 
 as metaphysical knowledge), there is no limit to 
 the kind of object-matter of actual experience which 
 it may take up. Science can discuss any object 
 that falls inside experience, and never doubts that 
 it can do so with full assurance of achieving universal 
 results. Its attention therefore, while to begin with 
 directed primarily to " natural phenomena," was soon 
 directed to the individual conscious subject itself 
 and its processes, which are likewise "phenomena." 
 It may have been driven to consider the subject for 
 some special reason, but the direction of attention 
 upon it was in the long run inevitable, both because, 
 in one aspect, the individual is a part of organic 
 "nature," and, in another aspect, its processes are 
 
4 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 part of the historical sequence in time. The analysis 
 
 of the development and processes of the conscious 
 
 subject as such (Empirical Psychology in all its 
 
 forms) leads us to look on everything in experience, 
 
 of whatever kind, as having its source and place in 
 
 the life-history of the individual. But this primary 
 
 emphasis on the individual tended to throw the 
 
 whole responsibility for knowledge, in whatsoever 
 
 form, on to the subject of knowledge, and thus to 
 
 lead to a reinterpretation of the reality of universal 
 
 (scientific) experience from that point of view. The 
 
 other element in the Kantian result (the anthro- 
 
 pocentric conception of knowledge) now came to 
 
 be taken as primary and ultimate, and universal 
 
 experience as derivative — the reverse of what 
 
 we found when emphasis was laid primarily on 
 
 universal experience. From this point of view 
 
 conceptions, which were the universals, and the 
 
 principles of necessity, in experience, are themselves 
 
 seen to have their origin and place in the history 
 
 of individual experience, and the insistence by 
 
 science on the " relativity of knowledge," which was 
 
 maintained before, is now made with stronger 
 
 emphasis than ever. It does justice, and more 
 
 than justice, to the anthropocentric element in 
 
 Kant's result. 
 
 The result But no sooner is this line of development pursued 
 
 emphasis to its logical issue than a startling result is seen, 
 
 on the xhe outcome of such a movement is plain. Exclusive 
 
 process emphasis on the subject and its processes leads us 
 
 ledT^ to look upon all experience as subjective only ; 
 
 knowledge has its source and conditions determined 
 
 by the life-history of the individual mind in time. 
 
 The result is that universal experience in the 
 
// 
 
 I INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 5 
 
 Kantian sense disappears, or is dissipated, into a 
 series of processes in time with no "objective" 
 necessity, and no determinate universality in it. 
 But if this is so, where then are we to get for 
 science the universality and necessity on which Kant 
 insisted, and which are essential if science is to claim 
 to present "truth"? It is no answer to say that 
 this analysis merely affects the value of the scientific 
 interpretation of "nature" and the conceptions 
 there used. It affects equally the scientific value or 
 pretensions of the psychological analysis itself. 
 This, too, can have no value as science (which 
 it claims to be), if science in general with its 
 conceptions and universals is dissipated into the 
 stream of events of mental history. In other words, 
 just as primary emphasis on universal experience 
 tended to eliminate the individual centre of know- 
 ledge (the individual subject), primary emphasis on 
 the processes and history of the individual subject 
 tends to do away with the very idea of universal 
 experience. Whereas when emphasis was laid 
 primarily on universal experience we seemed to be 
 placed in the position of having universal experience 
 indifferent to or even without the individual subject's 
 life, here we seem to have the individual subject 
 without any universal experience at all. 
 
 To preserve equally both elements on which The next 
 Kant laid stress now becomes the problem for^^^^Pj^^,, 
 idealism. It must at all costs save the reality of and 
 universal experience, and it must accept the scientific 
 facts of the life -history of the individual and its 
 changing and varying processes, since the statement 
 of such a history is itself the product of universal 
 experience (science). To do so, a distinction, hard 
 
6 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 and fast, but, so far as it goes, satisfactory, is drawn 
 between the logical or cognitive "worth" and "value " 
 of a conception, and its " existence " as a " fact," with 
 historical connexions before and after its immediate 
 appearance. To the former is assigned all universal 
 experience ; to the latter all the life-history of the 
 individual subject. They belong to two distinct 
 spheres of experience. They run parallel and 
 "correspond," but have not even a asymptotic 
 relation to each other. 
 Lotze. It is at this stage that Lotze^ has his place in the 
 
 history of idealism. He mediates the opposition 
 between the claims of science to be universal 
 experience in Kant's sense, with the claims of the 
 individual subject to be the source and origin of 
 all experience whatsoever, and does so by drawing 
 the distinction between " validity " and " origin " 
 just mentioned. For him, since universal experi- 
 ence has its rights per se as the sphere of thoughts 
 and conceptual activity, there is no limit to the 
 extent of its activity, and hence it is not restricted 
 to scientific activity but embraces and legitimises 
 even metaphysical knowledge as well. And there 
 is no danger of pursuing the analysis of the 
 individual too far ; for all such analysis contains is 
 "facts" of mental history, which in themselves are 
 something apart from the world of " values." 
 The But the distinction, while it allays conflict, is rather 
 
 of aIs ^^ of the nature of an eirenikon than a synthesis. For 
 the standing opposition between them is never re- 
 conciled, and leaves a cleft running through his 
 interpretation from beginning to end. On the one 
 hand, the "facts" that "exist" set a boundary to 
 
 ^ And after him, Bradley. 
 
 distinc- 
 tion. 
 
I LOTZE 7 
 
 the sphere of conceptual or universal experience : 
 "reality is richer than thought," and the achieve- 
 ment of a complete synthesis is a mere " ideal " for 
 thought. On the other, while the basis of fact 
 starts thought, "suggests" it, "stimulates" it, yet, 
 in the long run, we never get beyond the range of 
 ideal activity, never reach the reality even of the 
 " external " world. "This varied world of ideas 
 within us {started by the external world) forms the 
 sole material directly given to us for reflection." 
 In this position, therefore, we find, superadded to the 
 Kantian dualism between mind and things without, 
 a dualism between "validity" and "origin," concep- 
 tion and existence, falling inside the individual 
 subject itself. 
 
 It was impossible that this result should stand as it requires 
 a final idealistic expression of experience.^ Hence \^^y_ ^^ 
 the further development of idealism consists in an 
 attempt to unite, in some form or other, and not 
 merely to distinguish, these two aspects to which 
 Lotze seeks to do justice. Here again emphasis is 
 still laid on the individual subject and the processes 
 of his history. It is inside his experience that the 
 distinction insisted on by Lotze falls. The universal 
 experience is universal within his experience as a 
 whole, and the events of his history take place there 
 also. There is no need and no possibility of going 
 beyond him. But the distinction mentioned cannot 
 possibly be an absolute separation or cleft in his 
 experience. That is inconsistent with the unity of 
 individual experience, and with the process which 
 actually takes place in gaining universal experience. 
 
 1 I need here only refer to the masterly criticism of Lotze by Prof. Dewey 
 in his Logical Studies, without working out in detail the main points of 
 criticism he there emphasises. 
 
8 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 It is inconsistent with the former, because a unity 
 which spells dualism or parallelism between "validity" 
 and " history " is no unity even in name ; and 
 it is inconsistent with the latter, because universal 
 experience takes its start from actual events in the 
 life-history of the subject, varies with the life of the 
 subject, and is realised in and through such events 
 only. Events are not the less events because they 
 have conscious "validity"; and "validity" is not 
 the less so because it "happens " to be in conscious 
 experience. Universal experience is not something 
 per se apart from the process of history : it is in 
 that process, or rather that process is the way in 
 which it appears. Even, therefore, if we could and 
 do speak of universal experience, it is only universal 
 in the sense of common to individual minds sharing 
 the same historical conditions of growth. So, too, 
 when we find it by itself (as we may), this "common" 
 consciousness within which universal experience 
 falls, contains precisely the same antithesis within 
 itself which we find in the individual consciousness 
 as such. The same antithesis and the same problem 
 of reuniting the antithesis are presented whether we 
 take the individual conscious subject, or theconscious- 
 ness of a group, however large, of individual minds. 
 The new We havc thus to show how these two distinct 
 problem, p^aggs of "truth" and "fact," "what" and "that," 
 "content" and "existence," "thought" and "reality" 
 can be elements in the life of the individual's 
 conscious experience. To do so necessarily in- 
 volves the abandonment of a universal experience 
 per se. Its reality "per se" is not to be found, and, 
 if found, would be needless, since all it contains can 
 be shown to fall within individual experience as 
 
I PURPOSIVENESS 9 
 
 such, where it alone exists in any case and on any 
 view of what it means. We need not therefore regret 
 the disappearance of a universal experience /g;' se, 
 for we do not require such an entity for actual experi- 
 ence at all. With this admission, therefore, we part 
 not merely with metaphysical knowledge per se, 
 which threatened the reality of the individual 
 subject, but with scientific knowledge per se, which 
 treated the processes of the individual subject as 
 irrelevant to, or at least as quite immaterial to, its 
 fixed and final " necessary truths " independent 
 of .any individual mind whatsoever. There is 
 neither the one nor the other, if the very reality 
 of universal experience (the concepts, judgments, 
 etc., which make up its characteristic features) 
 falls within a process making up the life -history of 
 the individual's experience. 
 
 How then is the union and the distinction of the The unity 
 two elements to be made ? By observing that the [^g^^^^^f 
 characteristic feature of self-conscious individual Purpose : 
 experience is the same in principle as that of all matism. 
 living individual experience, and is merely a 
 particular form of it suited to and expressing the 
 special nature of human experience. That general 
 feature is Purposiveness. In man, purposiveness is 
 more developed than in other forms of conscious 
 animal experience, and more complicated. It con- 
 sists in activity directed by conscious pursuit of ends, 
 which are contrasted with what does not contain 
 them, and can therefore be determined by them. 
 Man, like other living individuals, has a variety of 
 ends to realise in order to maintain his plane 
 of self-preservation. One, but only one of these, 
 is to order the course and contents of his varied 
 
lo INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 presentational or ideal life, put it into coherent 
 
 shape. This is only one form of the manifestation 
 
 of his purposiveness. There are others concerning 
 
 his emotional life, concerning his life amongst other 
 
 individuals of the same species, as a part of 
 
 "nature," and so on. In every case the result is 
 
 the same, — the establishing, as a conscious fact, of 
 
 the sense of "unity in his individual experience." 
 
 What, in particular, subserves this, has achieved 
 
 its meaning for the individual subject, and has 
 
 significance accordingly, i.e. " significance " with 
 
 reference to the one supreme fact — the unity spoken 
 
 of Its value lies in that and that only. Moreover, 
 
 that is just what "value," "validity," "significance" 
 
 means. 
 
 It But again, as it is primarily the individual 
 
 inTfedlr ^ubjcct's experience that is here concerned, or 
 
 of satisfac- thought of, the guarantee or indication of the 
 
 attainment of that result must lie primarily with 
 
 the subject, be a conscious fact, which cannot of 
 
 itself be communicated but only shared by a 
 
 number in common, if it be shared at all. It 
 
 must be a "feeling," a "sense," a "sentiment" — 
 
 the feeling of "satisfaction," the "sentiment" of 
 
 rationality. 
 
 The result Heucc the doublc character of the completed 
 
 obj'ett^'e I'ssult. On the one side, the reinstatement of the 
 
 and unity of experience as a conscious fact, attained 
 
 subjective. 1111 ..... 
 
 by and through a process takmg place m time, 
 implies that the process to that end has been 
 achieved, that the specific adjustment in question 
 has been " successful," has " worked " out. The test 
 of "value" lies just in "success" or "efficiency." 
 That test, and so the "value," or "validity" is objective. 
 
I PRAGMATISM n 
 
 in the sense that the unity re-established is secured. 
 That unity is what is always aimed at ; it there- 
 fore endures permanently throughout all the ex- 
 perience of the individual, and merely changes its 
 form according to circumstances in the life-history 
 of the individual's experience. Because that unity is 
 thus permanent and sought after by every individual, 
 this objective character of every special adjustment 
 is capable of being communicated to others. From 
 such communication and inter-relation of individuals 
 is built up a fabric of mutually recognised and ac- 
 knowledged forms of adjustment which we call the 
 general order of experience wherever it is found, in 
 common Morality, in common Knowledge, etc. On 
 the other side there is the "sense" peculiar to the 
 individual consciousness as such, the " feeling of 
 satisfaction " which is altogether his own, cannot be 
 communicated, is both underivable and underived. 
 That is his special test, and is subjective only. The 
 latter is ultimate not merely in time but in sufficiency 
 for the individual. Whether other people feel it or 
 not is a secondary result brought about by the 
 "significance" which his successful adjustment 
 possesses. But the " sentiment " and the " success- 
 ful adjustment" both fall inside the individual's 
 experience solely. Hence for him there is both 
 a subjective and an objective side to the result 
 achieved. That the objective may be communicated 
 does not make it successful for him : its success 
 makes it possible for him to communicate it. The 
 objectivity of the result is not derived from com- 
 munication to others ; at best it is merely confirmed 
 by so doing. Its being communicated is derived 
 from its being objective for him. 
 
12 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 The case All this applies generally to all the processes of 
 °edge!"^" individual experience, and in particular to knowledge 
 as one process of that experience. In this special 
 case adjustments, as it happens, take the peculiar 
 form of connecting and relating and gathering to- 
 gether the diversity of presentational life. That is 
 endlessly manifold and varied in character ; per se 
 indeed a " chaos," ^ a puzzling multiplicity. What we 
 have to do here is to secure and keep the unity of 
 experience at all costs in the midst of this endless 
 change and variety. The kind of unity required 
 depends on the " situation " ^ raising the need for it. 
 That situation is always specific, and the unity 
 demanded is thus always definite in character. Now 
 "conceptions," "judgments," etc., are just ways in 
 which this result is achieved in the case of know- 
 ledge. They gather together a whole range of 
 variety into a single form of unity. They sum it 
 up into a formula which enables us to maintain unity 
 in multiplicity ; they give a compact or condensed 
 expression for a number of detailed elements. They 
 are merely a "conceptual shorthand"^ "devices for 
 saving time." Or, to put it otherwise, we seek to 
 control, in the interests of the unity of our experience, 
 the variety and opposition of presentational elements 
 in a given conscious situation ; and conceptions, 
 judgments, etc., are ways in which we bring about 
 this result. They are modes or functions adopted 
 to meet the requirements of the given situation, and 
 are dictated partly by it as regards the matter, 
 partly by the unity of experience as regards the 
 form. Successfully to realise that purpose is to 
 
 ■' See James, " Humanism and Truth" in Mind, vols. xiii. and xiv. 
 '^ Dewey's expression. ^ v. Karl Pearson, Grammar of Science. 
 
I IDEALISM AND HUMANISM 13 
 
 do all that knowledge in the given situation 
 requires— z>. is to attain ''truth" as regards that 
 situation. Conceptions, judgments, etc., are con- 
 scious "instruments" designedly selected and em- 
 ployed to work out the unity required in a given 
 case. They are " truth " if they accomplish this end, 
 if they " work " successfully. Knowledge is a con- 
 scious operation whose "validity" lies in its efficiency 
 to do its work, to control the presentational variety 
 of conscious experience ; its end lies merely in its 
 operation being successful, and that end is truth. 
 Or, finally, since it is one of the many processes for 
 achieving the essentially purposive character of man's 
 experience, and is determined, therefore, solely by 
 his specific purposes and interests, knowledge is a 
 human means or device for realising a human end. 
 
 The above way ^ of bringing together the different "Human- 
 elements in the Kantian result is what has been made " prag-' 
 familiar to us recently under the names of " Prag- ">atism." 
 matism " and " Humanism." 
 
 There are certain aspects of this view which any idealistic 
 thorough idealistic interpretation must regard as i^^^pj^^'.^ 
 satisfactory. We may agree (i) that any kind of™^''='"- 
 experience must somehow be individual ; (2) that 
 universal experience does and must in some way fall 
 within the life-history of the conscious subject ; (3) 
 that the principle of unity in such a life must be ex- 
 pressed by a term wider than, and including as one of 
 its phases, reflective knowledge ; (4) that nothing can 
 lie " beyond " reflective knowledge so far as its special 
 activity is concerned ; (5) that there is no possible 
 separation in experience between truth and fact, at 
 
 ^ In the above statement of the Pragmatist position I have in mind the 
 argument of Professor Dewey in his Logical Studies, which seems to me much 
 the ablest and most forcible exposition of this view. 
 
14 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 most there is only a distinction between them ; (6) 
 that reflective knowledge as such must always be 
 concrete, and is never merely formal within the 
 sphere to which, in experience, it belongs : for it 
 always works within and with reference to a deter- 
 minate " situation " : hence the distinction of form 
 and matter falls within the knowledge-situation and 
 is created by it : there is no thought per se and no 
 matter /^r se over against thought ; (7) that reflective 
 knowledge is a self-contained sphere of experience, 
 with ends of its own which have to be realised and 
 satisfied, and which do not conflict with other parts 
 of experience. 
 
 The sole question is whether such a view does or 
 can do justice to the elements it thus seeks to bring 
 together — the objective universality in conscious ex- 
 perience and the reality of individual experience. 
 Can it satisfy what these two require ? 
 Objections. There are many points of difficulty in the way of 
 accepting this view as final. Let us confine atten- 
 tion to a few — those by reference to which it will 
 be possible to throw light on the argument of the 
 succeeding pages. We may pass by certain technical 
 difficulties, such as those suggested by the use of the 
 term "works," as the characteristic qualification of 
 the idea of "validity"; the "relativity" of "satis- 
 factions " ; the want of clearness in the use of the 
 term "satisfaction" as a standard of truth, since it 
 seems that the kind of satisfaction that is " truth " 
 is just " true " satisfaction ! These difficulties, how- 
 ever, are formal in character. 
 
 Restricting t i i • -ii i r 
 
 the concep- In the ioug run it will be found that all the defects 
 unUy°of*^ °^ '■^^ position arise from restricting the conception 
 experience, of the "unity of experience," to the life of the 
 
I UNITY OF EXPERIENCE 15 
 
 historical or, as it is sometimes termed, the " psycho- 
 logical " individual. That conception is essential to 
 the theory, as it is to every form of idealism. It is 
 from the unity of experience that the various " pur- 
 poses" or "ends" are derived which determine the 
 processes of reflection, for the attainment of which 
 thinking is "instrumental." Without that we should 
 never know where or why a thought "worked," we 
 should never know why it should stop "working" 
 at one point rather than at another, or whether it 
 should stop at all. The "working" of thought 
 would not merely be interminable but futile. The 
 fact that the result, however varied, is uniformly 
 registered "satisfying," "successful," implies the 
 perpetual presence within all the processes of a 
 single principle which is being realised. And it is 
 "satisfied " because it ultimately dictates the purpose 
 for a specific situation, and does so in order to meet 
 its demand — the demand for unity. 
 
 But such a unity cannot in the nature of the case The unity 
 be restricted to the " mere " individual. For how- "ndi^duai 
 ever large the "span" of the individual's experience 
 from stage to stage, from moment to moment in its 
 experience, that unity is always wider than such a 
 span. For it determines how in each moment and at 
 each stage the purpose is to be realised, how the 
 specific unity or the specific " satisfaction " is to be 
 attained. It does not just arise with the satisfaction 
 of the moment : if so, it certainly might be regarded 
 as limited to his experience as this exists from time 
 to time. It only appears in a series of realisations. 
 But these, each and all, are attempts to satisfy and 
 secure one and the same ultimate unity. This unity 
 is not completely realised in any of its expressions 
 
i6 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 at all : otherwise why does it ever need to be 
 " satisfied " again ? Why is the problem of getting 
 " satisfaction " endlessly set to the individual ? 
 Moreover, that it is not attained by any number of 
 such expressions is not merely proved by the fact 
 that it has to be reinstituted, re-established as a 
 conscious result. It is admitted that it is this unity 
 which in a given case sets the question in a partic- 
 ular situation. There could be no sense of "dis- 
 comfort," of "antagonism of elements "in a given 
 conscious state, unless on the basis of an implied 
 unity of these elements. It is because of this, that 
 it is worth while trying to unite the opposition, 
 reconcile it, and establish the unity. We could 
 never feel the opposition unless the unity were 
 there. That is the only reason why certain kinds 
 of distinction of elements do demand and lead 
 us to expect a "solution" of a given problem, 
 while others do not. Quite different elements may 
 coexist in conscious life without there being any 
 sense of the " tension " which we try to remove by 
 thinking until a successful issue is attained. We 
 can, e.g., be conscious of a " fourth dimension" and 
 the " yellow peril " at one and the same moment : 
 but this never leads us to any attempt to reconcile 
 or unite them. There is no sense of " tension " 
 between them as a crying problem. Why ? Because 
 there is no implied unity in them, no identity of 
 content between them of such a kind that the 
 immediate unity of experience is staked on the 
 explicit fusion of the two in a continuous conscious 
 result. The unity we demand is always relative to 
 the situation presented, because it is implied within 
 that situation, and historically creates it, gives rise 
 
I UNITY OF EXPERIENCE 17 
 
 to it. Those incessant attempts to meet situa- 
 tions are not due merely, or at least so much, to 
 accretion of " experience " from without, as to growth 
 from within, an ever - increasing assertion of the 
 presence of the unity in experience " over against" 
 different elements consciously presented together. 
 The unity is itself gradually being made determinate 
 as experience advances, "laws" are formed, etc., and 
 this sets up ever new efforts for a fresh reconstitu- 
 tion of unity in experience. But for the implicit 
 unity there would then be no problem. The 
 problem, as a felt question, is the hint that the unity 
 is there implicitly. The problem would be equally 
 impossible if we had mere difference of content, as it 
 would be if we had clear conscious unity of experi- 
 ence. It is because the diversity is a clear conscious 
 fact which the unity is not, and both coexist as 
 factors in the total experience, that a " problem " can 
 possibly be felt to arise. Because, then, the unity 
 awakens the problem of the moment, and because the 
 unity is ever creating the problems of experience 
 and cannot be completed or exhausted in any one 
 realisation of it, the unity of experience must be 
 something wider than the span of any individual 
 experience. 
 
 If it be said that it is simply the total unity ofit^n^stin 
 
 some S611S6 
 
 the individual's total experience that is meant, then be wider. 
 this is wider than any historically individual experi- 
 ence. It then becomes an ideal beyond the. moment 
 of the individual's life—" beyond " in the sense that 
 in some real way it actually is, and is yet wider 
 than the momentary stages in the individual experi- 
 ence. But such an unity is universal, if universal is 
 to have any meaning ; and is not individual in any 
 
i8 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 sense in which the historical individual can be, and is 
 taken to be so. It then becomes the ultimate unity of 
 all his experience implicitly present at each moment, 
 and expressing its existence in his conscious life by 
 its ceaselessly setting the problem of consciously 
 attaining and reinstating it. If we do not take 
 this view, then the ideal becomes a "mere ideal," 
 " constructed" and looked on as outside the present. 
 But if so, it is quite futile because it does not assist 
 the actual problem of a given situation. It does not 
 create its specific character ; and hence we cannot 
 account for the perpetual recurrence of the necessity 
 for reinstating the unity. Unless that ideal is in 
 some real sense bound up with the existence of the 
 demand for unity at each moment, it is ineffective and 
 useless. But if it is so bound up, then it is not a 
 "mere " ideal : it is a constitutive element in individual 
 experience all through its process. The unity is 
 then not confined to the individual experience from 
 moment to moment ; it is both prior to it and ahead 
 of it — it is universal. It is that from which the 
 demand for unity in a given case starts, that in which 
 its satisfaction terminates. And once it is admitted 
 to be beyond the unity of the individual's temporal 
 experience, as this incessantly appears, the degree 
 of universality, the amount and extent of it, is 
 merely a further question which does not affect the 
 principle. The fact that the unity is universal is all 
 we need here insist on. But since it does and must 
 govern all the individual's experience, it is plain, 
 at any rate, that it cannot be short of the totality 
 of all his experience actual and possible. 
 The unity Another alternative is to resolve the individual's 
 
 not merely . ... 
 
 a series, cxpcrieuce Simply mto a series of reinstatements or 
 
I PHENOMENALISM 19 
 
 re-establishings of the unity required by specific 
 problems. We then have a series of unities without 
 any permanent centre to which to refer the successive 
 "satisfactions," without any centre from which and 
 in which the series happens to be an experience at 
 all, and without which it seems obvious that the 
 successive demands for unity would not arise. If 
 this is what the issue comes to, then it seems clear 
 that, instead of having a subject without universal 
 experience, or universal experience without a subject, 
 we have here neither a subject nor universal experi- 
 ence. It is a reappearance of Hume's position under 
 the guise of satisfying the claims of science which 
 Hume rejected. The final criticism of this view, 
 however, has surely been once for all gained for 
 philosophy, and need not be repeated here. 
 
 It is only by the confusion of the unity satisfied The con- 
 
 , , '11 •. r 1*1 fusion of 
 
 at each given moment with the unity from which pheno- 
 individual experience starts a// its problems and in menaiism. 
 which a/l are satisfied, that such a position could be 
 maintained. 
 
 It would be merely extending the above argu- Specific 
 ment into detail to point out that the actuality of a thirunt 
 universal unity in the individual experience is even versai 
 historically evident in a concrete way trom the 
 facts of Inheritance, Language, Society, etc., from 
 the basis of which the individual life starts. These 
 are themselves merely phases of the comprehensive 
 universality which that unity, fully interpretated, pos- 
 sesses. For they, too, are expressions of it which 
 have grown up historically and been incorporated 
 in the constitution making up an individual life. 
 
 That this unity is not really an individual unity 
 at all is acknowledged by Humanism in the constant 
 
20 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 CH. 
 
 The signi- 
 ficance of 
 the social 
 factor in 
 Human- 
 
 It implies 
 universal- 
 ity. 
 
 Human- 
 ism tends 
 to regard 
 the social 
 unity as 
 derivative. 
 
 appeal to "social" consciousness which it makes. 
 That is the only form in which it admits a uni- 
 versal unity to appear ; so much so that at times 
 the " truth " of knowledge is something confined 
 simply to the needs of communication required by 
 and making possible a society. " Rationality " 
 is held to be just common agreement between 
 intelligent individuals. Knowledge expresses that, 
 starts from it, and its special processes and ends 
 are determined by the general purposes of social 
 unity and social order. Science is a " social 
 phenomenon." The general conscious unity of 
 society necessitates and conditions the formulation 
 of the "laws," the "conceptions," the "unities," the 
 " truths " of knowledge. A language is the medium 
 of such communication, and thought is dependent 
 on and limited by the character of this medium. 
 
 Now if all this is admitted, and if it is granted 
 that this social unity precedes and conditions the 
 kind of unity realised in any individual experience, 
 then obviously we have given up a purely individual 
 point of view. We now take the unity " aimed at " 
 and "satisfied" to be strictly universal, and one 
 which determines the unity in the individual life. 
 If we confine it to such a restricted universal as 
 " social mind," we shall indeed not do justice to the 
 unity which a Whole of experience implies. But 
 that is a further question. At any rate such a social 
 unity is wider than and does contain and determine 
 the individual unity. 
 
 In point of fact, however, the tendency of this 
 view is rather to regard the unity of a social con- 
 sciousness as itself derived from the unity of the 
 individual life, and to be neither constitutive nor, in 
 
I UNITY OBJECTIVE 21 
 
 the long run, as such, regulative of that life, but a 
 mere product of the activity of individual minds. 
 In such a case, the "common agreement" as to the 
 unity established is merely a peculiar characteristic 
 of what is essentially confined to individual minds. 
 It is due to a further " use " of the individual unity. 
 Clearly a unity of different minds obtained by an 
 agreement which happens to be effected after unity 
 is secured by the individual, cannot itself be wider 
 than the individual with whom it starts. For the 
 " agreement " is an attribute of the individual 
 unity, and does not extend its meaning, does not 
 carry the individual beyond himself, is not universal. 
 And to this view what is said above will strictly 
 apply.^ 
 
 But, further, the unity of experience, which The unity 
 determines the purposes of all the process of "„ "mult 
 " thinking," for which thinking is " instrumental," ^^ extra- 
 cannot possibly be confined to the individual if it is Ind" "^ 
 to operate effectually at all. Every train of thinking °i'Je=''ve. 
 has an end, which is admittedly not arbitrarily fixed. 
 Selection there no doubt may be, but it is always 
 selection within a certain range, and the selected 
 purpose when adopted cannot be tampered with at 
 will. It carries compulsion along with it, a com- 
 pulsion which defies all our efforts to put it aside. 
 The "success," the "satisfaction," carries with it 
 convincingness, as well as quiescence, of mental 
 state. However we may express this characteristic 
 
 ^ The inconsistency of appealing to a social consciousness to confirm the 
 judgments of the individual mind seems, curiously enough, to have escaped the 
 notice of Humanists. But it is surely transparent that if Society is created or 
 derived as a significant fact from intercommunication between individual units, 
 it cannot be appealed to in order to determine the worth of what individuals 
 say or do. If the value of social life is derivative, it cannot in any sense be a 
 standard of value for that from which it derives its own value. 
 
22 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 of a successfully established unity, whether as the 
 incapacity to tolerate a contradiction or otherwise, 
 it is there. And only if it is there can we rest in 
 the unity when found. Now this means that the 
 specific unity we realise in a given situation, the 
 thought which is "true," is not dependent on the 
 mere processes in the life-history of the individual. 
 These, being events, merely happen and may be 
 directed at will. It is because they can be that 
 certain of these directions are not true, and others may 
 be. The process which is " true," therefore, is deter- 
 mined by conditions in some way independent of the 
 mere presentations of the moment. Moreover, the 
 very solution is itself a process inside the individual 
 life, and as such, therefore, can be purely arbitrary. 
 The characteristic of the unity, however, is that it 
 is not arbitrarily realised ; it exerts control on all 
 that takes place. Such control, therefore, cannot 
 itself be determined solely inside the processes 
 which are themselves regulated by its action. The 
 control is brought about by an agency in some sense 
 independent of all such processes which make up 
 mere life-history. Such processes from the point of 
 view of the controlling agency vary with the life- 
 history of the individual, and fall solely within its 
 scope. They make up its constitution at a given 
 moment. They are " subjective." As distinguished 
 from them, the controlling agency is " objective " ; 
 it abides through and distinct from the changing 
 content of the individual, and remains after any 
 change has run its course. And it does so because 
 it in some way preceded the change, as the condition 
 determining one direction and not another. The 
 agency has "reality," " vaHdity," " objectivity." 
 
I OBJECTIVITY 23 
 
 To accept this result does not at all settle where " Objec- 
 the "objectivity" lies; least of all does it imply that *annC fail 
 it is outside all experience. The latter is the position ^"'^>p *e 
 of " Realism " or " Natural Dualism " ; but it by no'" 
 means follows from the general character of objec- 
 tivity. The nature of objectivity depends entirely 
 on how experience as a whole is conceived. But 
 objectivity, as the control exerted by the unity, does 
 imply that as such it cannot fall solely and simply 
 within the life-history of the mere individual. In 
 some way it must lie beyond its processes, no matter 
 what their span, or how long they continue. To 
 let it fall within their processes is necessarily 
 to make the direction decided on one of the pro- 
 cesses themselves ; and this prevents us arriving 
 at any finality in the result. To put it outside 
 all the processes, but somehow still inside the indi- 
 vidual life-history, would split up the continuity of 
 individual life. We should have to put on one side 
 the processes, on the other the unity that controls 
 them ; they would then remain for ever apart. 
 But this would reinstate the dualism of truth 
 and fact, objectivity and subjectivity, in a form 
 similar in kind to that found in " realism," which this 
 view under consideration seeks to overcome. In 
 a word, either the direction falls absolutely within 
 the process of the individual life, in which case 
 there is no selection ; the whole process is neces- 
 sitated from first to last, and the very peculiar 
 character of thinking, the realisation of a con- 
 scious and consciously selected end, is lost: or 
 else the controlling unity is in some way distinct 
 from the process, independent of it, in which case 
 it falls outside the limits of individual life and 
 
24 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 history, and can be exerted upon it just for that 
 reason. 
 The objec- If, however, we grant that this controlling unity 
 merely °' ^^ objective, the range and extent of the objectivity 
 that of a are such that at least it cannot be bounded by any 
 whole. form or appearance of finite conscious life. It is, 
 therefore, impossible to limit it to a "social unity" 
 inside which the individual life-history is spent. 
 For social life has itself a history, itself has a process, 
 determined likewise by ends and for ends. The 
 latter may be final for the individuals within it, so 
 far as concerns their relation to it ; but its own pro- 
 cesses must be determined by reference to a wider 
 controlling unity still, if " objectivity " is to be given 
 to the results of social activity. Moreover, we can- 
 not draw a sharp line between the control exerted 
 by the social unity and that exerted on the individual 
 life as such ; and in some cases they are not separate 
 at all. We seem bound, therefore, to admit that, in 
 the long run, the only objectivity which is final is 
 that in which the unity determining finite processes 
 within experience is simply the unity of all experi- 
 ence as such. That is behind all forms in which 
 objectivity appears, whether in the life-history of the 
 individual or in that of social process. Its unity 
 merely gets specified to meet the demands created 
 by the particular situations arising within the various 
 spheres of finite conscious process. It remains one 
 and the same through all. In interpreting the 
 nature of "truth," of "objectivity," in any form, 
 therefore, we not merely can but must start from 
 the unity of experience as a whole. 
 
 Now if the unity at work in all finite individual 
 experiences of whatever kind is a comprehensive 
 
I ABSOLUTE EXPERIENCE 25 
 
 universal unity, and if the unity of all experience is The Unity 
 the ground of all forms of " objectivity " in finite Zfo?an 
 experience, then, to explain the nature of universality Absolute 
 in Knowledge or in Morality or anywhere, and tOen'S!" 
 explain the ground of the objectivity which all forms 
 of finite experience claim to possess, we must start 
 from the idea of an Absolute Single Experience. It 
 must be absolute, for nothing less will meet the case 
 completely ; it must be single, for the experience is a 
 unity. Being experience it must be the experience 
 of a conscious life, and being a unity, consciously 
 referred to as such, it must be the experience of a 
 single subject, an Absolute Individuality. Universal 
 experience is not something apart and per se ; it is 
 universal experience to and in some single life. For 
 a completely universal experience, therefore, there 
 must be an individually complete subject. The 
 "objectivity" of Knowledge, Morality, etc., does 
 not mean that truth is apart from all minds, or any 
 minds ; it exists as the truth for a mind — an Absolute 
 Mind. But since experience is wider than reflective 
 Knowledge as such, or wider than Morality as such, 
 we must interpret such an experience by a term 
 which will embrace all forms of experience within 
 its sweep, and yet refer them to itself as its own, as 
 belonging to its unity. The term best expressing 
 such an individuality is Spirit, and the forms of 
 experience where we most clearly perceive the 
 possible workings of such a Spirit are Religion and 
 Philosophy. Hence the real starting-point for the 
 complete understanding of objectivity in knowledge, 
 whether in Perception or Morality, or any other 
 forms, which are modes of finite experience, is in the 
 self-conscious activity implied in the processes of 
 
26 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 Religion and Philosophy, where we are at the point 
 of view of the whole as such, and think in terms of it. 
 Only the We cannot begin short of this, say, with the 
 «°ewo°/ validity and objectivity of Perception or Science, 
 Absolute and thence endeavour to establish or overthrow the 
 eiTceT claims to objectivity which Philosophy or Religion 
 adequate. j^^„ p^j forward. Either attempt is futile : for we 
 
 We cannot ^ ^ i i • • ■ r i 
 
 take a Cannot establish or destroy the objectivity oi what 
 oTIxpIri™ we hold to be a restricted type of knowledge by 
 ence as our taking as our basis that found in another form. The 
 
 base line. . . , . ^ , » (. 
 
 process is quite arbitrary ; lor the form we nx on as 
 the basis of objectivity is selected because of our 
 special interest in it, its power to appeal to us, its 
 prominence in our experience, or what not. Every- 
 thing in such a case depends on our specific point 
 of view. If we happen to regard Perception as 
 primary and ultimate, then everything else is tested 
 by an appeal to that, and derives its objectivity ac- 
 cordingly ; a position we find assumed in the scien- 
 tific appeal to perceived "fact" as a test of "truth," 
 the appeal to " observation " and " experiment," etc. 
 If, again, we take Moral Knowledge as the primary 
 reality of experience, the reason and the result are 
 similar. And so on. The reality of experience 
 becomes focussed in such a form ; everything else is 
 referred to it, and all objectivity is derived from 
 its peculiar conditions. Not merely is the process 
 arbitrary, but it cannot attain its end, for it assumes 
 what has itself to be determined, — the ground for 
 the objectivity of that particular form we choose to 
 regard as ultimate. The only ground we can adopt, 
 if we do not submit it to examination, is that of 
 feeling, our "satisfaction" in it, the "compulsion" it 
 has over us, the "sense" of immediate constraint 
 
I BASIS OF CONSTRUCTION 27 
 
 it has over us. This is just what we might have 
 expected. For the special appeal such a particular 
 form of experience made to us, was due to our indi- 
 vidual interest in it, our individual selection of it, 
 and hence the ground of its value can only be a 
 subjective one, the " feeling" of necessity it gives to 
 us. But this is not a "reason"; for it lacks the essen- 
 tial character of reason — universality — and defies 
 communication. Each individual, therefore, is left 
 to himself ; and one type of knowledge being as good 
 as another to select as ultimate, human experience is 
 dissolved into a variety of individual attitudes. The 
 very principle a// professes to accept, the umiy of 
 their experience, is given up straight away, and the 
 objectivity claimed by one can be at once denied 
 by another, and no experience is left with any 
 objectivity at all. In other words, if we start from 
 a restricted form of experience, and regard that as 
 supplying the test of objectivity for all others, we 
 are unable to supply ground for the objectivity 
 of that one we select, and therefore unable to 
 guarantee the objectivity of any experience what- 
 ever. We are not merely able to deny the claim 
 to objectivity, say, of the philosophical form of ex- 
 perience, if we take, e.g.. Sense-experience or Science 
 as our base line. That we can do legitimately enough 
 from such a position. But we are unable to assert 
 the objectivity of the special form of experience 
 we take as ultimate. While if we try to prove 
 the objectivity of all others by reducing them to 
 terms of this one we adopt, our attempt must fail 
 from the start, since we are assuming what itself 
 requires proof— that the one we have selected does 
 supply all the objectivity knowledge claims. Such 
 
28 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 a claim the others are prima facie entitled to dis- 
 pute ; and the development of reflection as well as 
 the process of experience are perpetually putting it 
 aside in favour of some other form. We can only 
 demonstrate and establish the objectivity of any 
 form of knowledge if we are prepared to demon- 
 strate the objectivity of all forms of knowledge. 
 We can only show that the unity of experience, 
 in one particular form of experience, e.g. scientific 
 thinking, supplies validity, objectivity, to that form of 
 knowledge, if we are prepared to accept the unity of 
 experience as a whole as the ground of all objectivity 
 whatsoever. It is because the unity of experience 
 as a whole is the source of all objectivity that any 
 particular kind of objectivity can arise in any par- 
 ticular form of experience ; for that particular " com- 
 pulsion," "constraint," which any particular form 
 possesses, is due to the fact that the unity at work in 
 its concrete life is a form of the unity at work in 
 the whole of experience. 
 Phiio- Now it is in Philosophy and Religion that we 
 
 RdigioT take up the point of view of the unity of the whole 
 ^oi'nt^of °^ experience. They assert and embody in self- 
 view of conscious experience the unity of the Whole, and 
 Exp°eri-' °^ ^^'^ indivi^iual minds with the Whole. They 
 ence. therefore, as modes of experience, stand for the 
 absolute objectivity of all knowledge whatsoever. 
 To derive their complete unity from any other 
 form of experience, e.g. Perception or Science, 
 is necessarily a varepov irporepov, even if it have 
 the semblance of success. It may have a semblance 
 of success, e.g., where Philosophy is set merely 
 to "criticise" the conditions or conceptions of 
 Science, as if Philosophy were a kind of additional 
 
I PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 29 
 
 Science. To confine Philosophy to this is futile ; 
 for all other problems raised by experience itself, 
 e.g. the place of Morality in experience or the 
 Aesthetic ideal in experience, become then merely 
 borderland questions. Indeed, to take as final a 
 lower form of experience, such as Perception, 
 leads in general to pure scepticism regarding the 
 nature and value of all Philosophy. That is in- 
 evitably so ; for if the limited sphere of interest is 
 final, the point of view of the Whole is either 
 impossible or worthless. Scepticism in Philosophy, 
 however, can never coexist with belief in Science. 
 In the long run, the distrust of the former passes 
 into the sphere of interest of the latter, and the 
 stability and objectivity of any and all knowledge are 
 imperilled. Even a confessed and acknowledged 
 ignorance about the unity of experience as a whole, 
 soon leads to doubt of our knowledge in any form 
 whatever; and doubt is a preparatory stage for 
 silent or open distrust. 
 
 We can see this in the present attitude in regard niustra- 
 to science assumed by many of its exponents, ^'^e' of ' ^ 
 " Reality " as a whole, they say, they know nothing science, of 
 about, and cannot even name. What then is the of taking 
 view taken of science.? It consists of mere^^PJ^J^ 
 "descriptive formulae," a "conceptual shorthand," view, 
 which we contrive and use to get along in dealing 
 with this reality. But it seems evident that a 
 description of what is admitted to be incognis- 
 able, or at least unknown, is absolutely cut off from 
 having any import except for the mind describing. 
 If the reality exercises a check on the character 
 of the description, it seems illogical to say it is 
 not known, for the coherence of knowledge just 
 
30 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 consists in being so controlled ; and that control 
 must come from the object described, because the 
 object is so constituted and not otherwise. If it 
 does not come from the reality, one description is as 
 good as another, and the very progress of know- 
 ledge becomes purposeless. When this objection 
 is put aside by pointing to the fact that we can 
 prophesy and anticipate by means of our descriptions 
 what reality will do, the extremity of the dualism 
 seems given up altogether. For to speak of 
 calculating an unknown is to use terms without a 
 meaning. A " shorthand " is surely indecipherable 
 if we are not in touch with the meaning of the 
 language we have taken down in symbol. If it be 
 said that the descriptions are truer, because for us 
 they are simply " better " descriptions, better fulfil 
 our needs, then this leaves altogether unanswered, 
 positively or negatively, the question whether these 
 needs may not just be a fuller appreciation of reality. 
 In short, this restriction imposed on science is due 
 to a prior restriction placed upon knowledge as a 
 whole, a sceptical attitude regarding philosophical 
 knowledge. It is typical of every such attempt. 
 It either compels us to accept two heterogeneous 
 kinds of knowledge, a descriptive and a non- 
 descriptive, which have no continuity of purpose 
 with each other, and yet profess to deal with the 
 same reality ; or else to make knowledge purely of 
 presentational " phenomena " hold, and to leave 
 " reality " out of account altogether. 
 absolute If, then, we consciously take up the point of 
 
 vi°ew ° view of the unity of the whole of experience — as we 
 avoids do in Philosophy and Religion — we avoid the in- 
 difficuities. coherencies into which we must fall if we take 
 
 An 
 
1 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 31 
 
 anything less as our -n-ov <ttS). For Religion and 
 Philosophy, in one aspect, simply stand for absolute 
 objectivity in knowledge. In them the " ideal " at 
 which finite forms of knowledge "aim," the "unity" 
 these finite forms seek to establish point by point 
 and moment by moment, as each stage of experience 
 calls for it, is established and completely attained, 
 not as an ideal but as an actuality. All Philosophy 
 and Religion do is to give it detailed expression and 
 detailed coherence. They exist solely and simply 
 within its realisation : in them all other experience 
 is "completed," "culminates," as we say, because in 
 them we consciously assert and consciously live 
 within the complete unity of all experience. They 
 are the attitudes of which this unity constitutes 
 the substance. Nowhere else in experience do we 
 consciously take up such an attitude to this complete 
 unity. Without them we should never be conscious 
 of the unity of all experience ; to be conscious of 
 it is to take up the religious or philosophical attitude. 
 They therefore embody all that the other modes of 
 experience aim at. Hence from them, in a real 
 sense, all the objectivity other forms of experience 
 possess is derived, because the objectivity of these 
 other forms is justified in the long run by the absolute 
 unity realised in Philosophy and Religion. Certainly 
 but for this absolute unity being realised, we should 
 not, as we have seen, be able to assert objectivity 
 anywhere in finite experience. 
 
 We do not take up this position of the absolute it is not 
 unity of experience by choice. Apart from the^^^pj^j/ 
 historical fact that it has always been adopted by 
 the human spirit, and that in Religion and Philosophy 
 the human spirit invariably does obtain the sense 
 
32 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 of absolute completeness and unity, we must adopt 
 the unity of all experience as the absolute ground of 
 all forms of knowledge, for it is the ground of any 
 kind of "absoluteness" knowledge may and does 
 claim to possess. For only if any given act or form of 
 knowledge has an acknowledged place in the whole 
 can it be said to be "absolutely valid." And we 
 cannot, by mere choice, put aside all " absoluteness " 
 from experience, because to do so is to exercise just 
 an absolute claim. Since we must take some kind 
 of knowledge as final, even though that knowledge 
 may be merely the knowledge that no finite form 
 is final, we thereby create that knowledge into 
 "absolute" knowledge. We cannot dismiss abso- 
 luteness from experience by an act of will. If we 
 do not find absoluteness in one way we are certain 
 to set it up in another.^ 
 Quaiifica- But this position must not be misunderstood. It 
 is not meant to imply that, when we take up the 
 point of view of the absolute unity of experience in 
 Religion and Philosophy, everything that Religion 
 and Philosophy as a matter of fact do express, 
 reveals everywhere and always all that this unity 
 contains. The history of Religion and Philosophy 
 contains the answer to that claim. In the nature of 
 the case this cannot be so, because the point of view 
 of the Whole is conditioned by the detailed character 
 and contents of the Whole as these appear from time 
 to time historically. These affect the particular 
 expression which they will obtain from Philosophy 
 and Religion. Hence arise the various forms of 
 
 ' There is a lack of humour in the antipathy to absoluteness in experience 
 expressed by Mr. Schiller. It amounts to saying, almost in so many words, 
 that the term "absolute" must be absolutely eliminated from philosophical 
 discussion ! 
 
 tions. 
 
I UNIVERSAL AND INDIVIDUAL 33 
 
 Religion and Philosophy which the human spirit, 
 whose complete unity they express, has adopted. All 
 it means is that this point of view is not simply one 
 which is aimed at, but is one which can be adopted 
 and actually developed into detailed coherence. 
 
 Now when we admit in this way that, on the one The value 
 hand, the unity of all experience is self-conscious "g^'ljl^j^ 
 Spirit, and that, on the other, we can take up in 
 Religion and Philosophy the point of view of this 
 unity and express what it contains, and thus embody 
 in a distinct mode of experience the final and objective 
 ground of all knowledge, we can do justice to the 
 difficulties Humanism tries to meet, without falling 
 into the relativistic position it adopts. We can also 
 find a starting-point from which to explain and justify 
 the "objectivity" attaching to the various forms of 
 experience. It is quite true to maintain, as Human- 
 ism does, that there is no universal experience by 
 itself which either works in vacuo apart from 
 individual mind, or creates individual minds in its 
 process. It is quite true to maintain that if this 
 were so we could never see how it got into the 
 concrete life-history of the individual, and made his 
 knowledge valid. To explain knowledge would be 
 indeed hopeless if we put on one side an abstract 
 universal experience, and on the other the historical 
 conscious individual, and then tried to show how 
 these two came together in the acts and processes of 
 knowledge. There is no universal experience which Universal 
 is not individualised. At the same time it must be musTbT^ 
 acknowledged that the historical individual, as such, ^"J^^"*^"- 
 is also a mere ens raiionis, the creation of abstract 
 thinking, and a creation of exactly the same kind as 
 that of a universal experience per se. For it is just 
 
 D 
 
34 INTRODUCTION en. 
 
 the thought of a mere universal experience which 
 makes it possible for us to think its exact antithesis 
 — a mere individual experience ; and the one is as 
 false as the other, if taken by itself as a starting- 
 point from which to look at knowledge. Hence, 
 just as we may very reasonably object to the sugges- 
 tion that universal experience gives rise, in the 
 course of its own movement, to the truths which 
 individual experience contains, creates them so to 
 say out of itself; so we may very well object to the 
 attempt to create, justify, or explain, universal 
 experience from the process of an individual's life- 
 history. The former tends to treat the individual as 
 a mere casual embodiment of its processes ; the latter 
 to treat universal experience as a contingent result 
 of individual activity. We thereby overlook the 
 other half of the truth already stated, but left un- 
 stated by Humanism. As there is no universal 
 experience which is not individualised, so there is no 
 individual experience which does not point beyond 
 itself to universal experience. The truth is we 
 cannot have individuality at all unless it is consti- 
 tuted of both universal and specific elements, whether 
 the individuality be a pebble or a person. The union 
 of these two elements in individuality gives rise to 
 all the process of change and variety of which it is 
 capable, and the way in which they are united 
 determines the kind and place of the individuality 
 in question. Experience is individual all through, 
 and from first to last, no matter where we take it ; 
 and that means not an abstract isolated individual, 
 but concretely individual, a unity of universal and 
 specific factors. All types and forms of experience 
 contain in them these two elements, and a kind of 
 
r REFLECTIVE KNOWLEDGE 35 
 
 experience is just a form of individuation. The 
 history of experience is the history of self-conscious 
 individuality — Spirit. 
 
 Thus the explanation of the nature and validity Reflective 
 of reflective knowledge or Science is a special case ^ fom^or 
 of the general problem of showing how experience indWidu- 
 becomes individuated, maintains the stability, the 
 unity amid variety, which characterises individuality. 
 It does not consist, therefore, in relating an abstract 
 universal experience to an abstract individual ex- 
 perience, either by way of showing how the former 
 gives rise to the latter or the latter to the former. 
 It consists in showing how the individuality of 
 the experience we call " knowing " is established, 
 built up, and maintained. The explanation there- 
 fore assumes a standard, or, as we call it, an 
 "ideal" of individuality, and this in the long 
 run, as we have seen, is the complete and single 
 unity of all experience — Absolute Individuality. It 
 consists, therefore, to put it otherwise, in showing 
 how the Absolute Individuality which is Absolute 
 Experience becomes specified and realised in that 
 special case of individuation, the conscious relation 
 of particular to universal (conceptual activity), which 
 constitutes the process of reflective knowledge. The 
 interpretation of reflective knowledge ("Logic" in 
 the narrower sense of " Theory of Knowing ") is part 
 of the larger question of the interpretation of experi- 
 ence as a whole— of the " Logic of Experience." ' 
 There is no break or gap between the special inter- 
 pretation of reflective thought and that of other 
 forms of individual experience, just as there is, in 
 concrete experience as a whole, no gap between, e.g., 
 
 ' Prof. Dewey's term and also Hegel's. 
 
36 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 CH. 
 
 The inter- 
 pretation 
 of 
 
 Absolute 
 Experi- 
 ence. 
 
 reflective thought and "perceiving" or "common 
 sense." There is continuity from first to last. 
 The interpretation of the one form of individu- 
 ality, therefore, must be one which embraces in its 
 sweep that of every other. Reflective experience 
 does not arise all of a sudden and constitute an 
 absolutely new departure in experience. It is 
 implicit in experience from the start, not in the 
 sense that that which does precede it in time 
 contained its results there already,^ but in the 
 sense that the Ideal of Individuality at which all 
 finite forms of experience aim and partly express, 
 necessitates that it should appear ; and this Ideal is 
 implied in every mode of experience, because each 
 mode focusses the Whole at a specific point and in a 
 specific way. 
 
 What, then, does the interpretation consist in ? 
 It is clear that we cannot get " behind " Experience 
 to explain it. That is as futile as it is impossible. 
 The interpretation itself must fall within the scope 
 of Experience. It is equally impossible to reduce 
 Experience to terms of any one form, for that cannot 
 but fail to do justice to the others, since they become 
 thereby secondary if it is primary ; and yet every 
 form all the while stands by itself and has a life of 
 its own with terms and activity sui generis. But if 
 all forms of experience are pro tanto valid, have 
 individual significance each by itself, the only inter- 
 pretation that will do justice to this uniqueness of 
 
 ' If that were so, then certainly Prof. Dewey's objection (Logical Studies, 
 p. 46) to the view here advocated would hold. For the moment, however, in 
 his eagerness to emphasise the significance of the position he is himself defend- 
 ing — that reflective thinking is one type of experience by itself — ^he has over- 
 looked the fact that it must be continuous with the rest of experience. This, 
 of course, does not at all assume that " Thought " was "there " before it " arose." 
 
I MODE OF INTERPRETATION 37 
 
 value each possesses, and yet be an interpretation 
 of them all, is one which shows their connexion one 
 with the other. To connect, however, implies a 
 unity of significance in all. That unity is found in 
 the Ideal of a completely Individual Experience, 
 which contains them, and of which they are " realisa- 
 tions " or expressions. The connexion of one form 
 with another is the same therefore as connecting 
 them with this Absolute Individual Experience. 
 To connect them with this, which they all imply, is 
 to unite them to each other. But this Individual 
 Experience is, from the point of view of each and all, 
 an Ideal. Hence the connexion consists in tracing 
 how they successively and separately embody, 
 realise, or approximate to this Ideal. From it they 
 may be separately distinguished, while still being 
 moments in its own Reality. It remains as the one 
 complete Individuality ; they focus it in different 
 ways, — ways unique when looked at inter se, but 
 united in virtue of the common Ideal they all 
 embody and aim at. This Individuality has, how- 
 ever, no existence apart from them ; it exists in and 
 through them. They together make up its own 
 substance, a substance whose content is expressed 
 in them. \\., per se, so far as we can speak of \tper 
 se, is the centralising unity of all, and therefore not 
 a mere collection of them as parts. The parts are 
 separate for themselves inter se ; they are together 
 for it and in it. That is possible just because it is 
 Experience by an Individuality — a Subject and not 
 a mere substance. The connexion of them is thus 
 from the point of view of the absolutely Individual 
 Experience, a mere exposition of what it contains, 
 of what makes up its life. From the point of view 
 
38 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 of the parts, therefore, the connexion consists in 
 showing how they successively approximate to ^ the 
 attainment of Complete Individuality, their Ideal. 
 Being successive on the one hand, and showing 
 the various degrees of approximation on the other, 
 it is a gradual realisation or " development " of what 
 Complete Individuality is and consists in. From 
 the point of view of the Whole Unity itself, it is 
 merely an exposition of what itself contains. 
 Putting these two aspects together, the interpreta- 
 tion consists in a genetic exposition of the forms in 
 which Absolute Individuality appears and is realised. 
 The forms appear and appear as historically distinct. 
 As such they are merely scattered and separate, 
 appear heterogeneously, and as the focus of experi- 
 ence changes. They have as historical appearances 
 no connexion but that of mere events. But if we 
 look on them as realising, even in their merely 
 successive appearance, the supreme Individuality, 
 they have not all the same value, nor does the his- 
 torical individual himself look on them as all attaining 
 what he aims at — Complete Individuality — to the 
 same degree. If he were, therefore, to go through 
 them successively according to their value for him, 
 it would still be the history of his experience, for he 
 would take up each in succession in time, but it 
 would not be of the zigzag and haphazard character 
 which his experience, dictated by the needs of 
 moment, alone adopts. It would be an orderly 
 realisation of the ideal of Individuality, at which he 
 all along strives: it would be a "genetic history" 
 
 ^ It is too apt to be forgotten in looking at experience "genetically" that 
 we cannot even trace genesis, show development unless we Icnow the end to 
 which the process tends, as well as the antecedents from which it began. 
 
I INTERPRETATION OF EXPERIENCE 39 
 
 of Experience, This is another expression for what 
 the interpretation consists in. 
 
 Every point, therefore, where experience comes a 
 to a halt, so to say, where the unity of experience is hif4"^'!fof 
 attained, where the individual experiencing " rests " complete 
 and is " satisfied," is the attainment of a specific ailty^' " 
 individuation, a union of elements in a whole, of^""^'^"^^^ 
 
 1 • 11 1 -1 T-i • 1 ^'' forms 
 
 universal m and through particular. The universal ofindividu- 
 varies with and in the particular ; and the individu- ^''°''" 
 ation, the stability which that union secures, differs 
 accordingly. Each is experienced, is individuality, 
 but in a different way. The individuality attained 
 in Perceptual Life is one thing, that in Reflective 
 Activity another, in Morality another, and so on ; 
 and the processes of securing individuality in the 
 several cases differ accordingly. In Perception it 
 consists in bringing "sense qualities" to a focus 
 which is called a " thing " ; in the case of Reflection 
 it consists in bringing "ideas" to a focus called 
 "judgment" in its simplest form, and "inference" 
 in its highest. In Morality the individuality attained 
 is different again, and takes different methods to 
 become established. It is not, therefore, merely in 
 reflective thinking that we come to "rest," are 
 "satisfied," but wherever the unity of experience is 
 realised, wherever individuality is attained. We are 
 "satisfied" merely in different ways. But because we 
 are satisfied in each in a specifically different way, 
 each is specifically distinct from the other; each 
 works within a certain range of activity all its own. 
 
 There is no clashing therefore, and no "opposition" 
 between, e.g.. Perception and Reflective Thinking. 
 "Perceptual facts" are not "opposed" to "Reflec- 
 tion" as something "external " : the world of facts as 
 
and 
 'form 
 
 ence. 
 
 40 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 Noopposi- "perceived " cannot therefore stand on one side and 
 mo'de°s of i" Opposition to Reflection on the other. Experience 
 experi- jg individuated in each in a different way, and each 
 matter" attains its own purpose, the purpose which locates 
 it in the totality of Experience and fixes it there. 
 in experi- Nor does One supply "matter" to the other, as if 
 the matter were externally "given." Matter and 
 form in all cases fall inside the individuality of the 
 experience, whether it be Reflection, or Perception, 
 or any other. The matter of one, therefore, cannot 
 be the matter of another, nor the form of one the 
 form of another. Each has its own matter and 
 form. The matter of Reflection is " ideas " ; the 
 form is the construction we impose on them in the 
 interests of that type of individuation we call re- 
 flective experience. No doubt the content of Per- 
 ception may provide the stuff for thought to work 
 with. But it does not work with it as perceptual fact, 
 but as thought fact. When we analyse Reflection 
 into its elements, no doubt we can separate the 
 matter from the form and speak of the latter as 
 "given," and, as "given," we may assign it to the 
 realm of Perception. But to assign it is the act of 
 thought itself, not the work of Perception, which has 
 a life and being of its own, just as thought has. In 
 Perception, similarly, we may analyse it into its 
 elements and assign the qualities to Sensation, and 
 keep the form of unity, which Perception gives them 
 in the "thing," to perceiving itself as such. But 
 here again the assigning is the work of Perception. 
 The qualities are not given by Sensation to Percep- 
 tion, for Sensation has also a life of its own. And 
 so on through all the forms of individuality experience 
 assumes. 
 
I PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 41 
 
 Thus it is that the exposition of the Whole, the Philosophy 
 interpretation of Experience as a whole, belongs to Re^ ;„„ 
 that type of experience where Absolute Individual- 
 ity is known as such. We saw that in Religion and 
 Philosophy the point of view of the Whole is taken 
 up and becomes an experience for the individual. 
 Here self-conscious Spirit, as such, is present to 
 self-conscious Spirit qua, finite individuality. Here 
 the finite individual is consciously one with the 
 Whole as such. It does so in different ways in 
 Philosophy and in Religion. The way of detailed 
 connectedness of the parts in the Whole, and as 
 they are for the whole, is the special attitude of 
 Philosophy. The genetic exposition we have Phiio- 
 spoken of, therefore, is the way in which Philosophy '°p^^- 
 brings the forms of individuality together. It is 
 the method or process by which Philosophy works 
 out its special individuation : it is the " philo- 
 sophical method " of realising individuality. Since 
 Philosophy is at the point of view of the Whole 
 as such, it is a matter of indifference whether we 
 say that Absolute Individuality works itself out in 
 this way, expounds its own life, or that Philosophy 
 adopts this way of revealing the connectedness of 
 the parts in the one Whole. The method is an 
 " absolute " method, or is the method of Absolute 
 Individuality. Here the content and form are one, 
 as in other forms of individuation. We do not make 
 a separation in the individuality of experience be- 
 tween what is "perceived" and the "perceiving" of 
 it, between "thinking" and the "content" of thinking, 
 between form and matter in " sense " or in any other 
 type of individuality. We can draw a distinction 
 inside each, as we do and must ; but we do not 
 
42 INTRODUCTION ch. 
 
 separate and put one on one side and the other 
 on another. This holds similarly of Philosophy. 
 Matter The matter of Philosophy is Experience as a whole ; 
 in phiio- its form the way Experience as a whole is held 
 sophy. together. And those two are inseparable in the 
 type of individuation we call the philosophical attitude 
 in experience. Philosophy, therefore, does not clash 
 with other forms of Experience : it is a mode by itself. 
 It does not dissolve other forms into itself: nor does 
 it determine what they are. It merely, in pursuit 
 of attaining its specific end, connects these together. 
 It does not create nor destroy each ; it "explains" 
 all by connecting all. And to connect all is to show 
 the place each occupies in the Whole, and so to 
 interpret each in relation to the other. Further, 
 in the course of doing so, it at once connects the 
 several phases of experience and shows itself to 
 Its method have a place in the plan of Experience. It explains 
 pUinhig ^ others and so explains itself: it is "self-explain- 
 ing." This "justifies" itself; and it does so by its 
 success in achieving its purpose. It thus avoids 
 the objection that Philosophy requires to get 
 "behind" experience to "explain" it, by proving 
 that itself belongs to and holds good of that 
 Whole it explains. And in doing so, it is not 
 acting differently from what takes place in other 
 forms. For every form does this. For example, 
 Reflective thinking, when operating, " justifies " 
 to itself the special individuality it (Reflection) 
 possesses as against Perception or Sensation ; 
 for it maintains that what it develops, " its conclu- 
 sions " ''hold good" of the world of Perception and 
 Sense ; or, to put it in another way, Reflection is the 
 "outcome" of "perceptual" life and the life of "sense." 
 
I ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 43 
 
 But is there only one philosophy and one 
 method ? For an idealism which takes Absolute Absolute 
 Spirit to be the Unity of Experience, and which "^^'''™' 
 takes finite self-conscious Spirit to be at the point 
 of view of the Whole, there can be only one 
 philosophy and one method of interpretation. The 
 statement of the contrary lies with its opponents, 
 just as the defence of it lies with those who uphold 
 it. And either can only satisfy the other by show- 
 ing that every other point of view is really included 
 within the one adopted. Idealism does profess 
 that this is the case. 
 
 How the process of interpretation is carried 
 out, what is its starting-point and how it achieves 
 its end, I have tried to state in the following 
 chapters, in a form doubtless more summary than 
 the magnitude of the subject really justifies. But 
 the types of individuation, or forms of unity of 
 subject and object, as they are called, which are 
 here discussed, are sufficiently representative to 
 enable us to see in outline the character of the 
 Idealistic Construction of Experience. They are 
 modes of individual experience with which we are 
 everywhere familiar, and they represent individu- 
 ality at different levels of its realisation. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 DUALISM AND THE NEW PROBLEM 
 
 It will be convenient to lead up to the statement 
 of the idealistic view of Knowledge, if at the start 
 we formulate the ultimate question at issue in any 
 interpretation of Knowledge, and show, by reference 
 to certain historical theories preceding Hegel, how 
 their defects arise out of the assumptions which 
 governed their view of the problem to be solved, 
 and how again these defects point the way to such 
 a conception as idealism seeks to establish. 
 The initial Here we are met by the difficulty involved in 
 offomui- ''"yi'^g ^o draw an ultimate distinction within experi- 
 ating the encc and to keep to it throughout succeeding dis- 
 cussion, a difficulty only lessened but not removed 
 by the knowledge of successive failures to overcome 
 it. Perhaps in no part of philosophy is this greater 
 than in the formulation of the question as to the 
 nature of knowledge. The result is seen in the 
 diversity of treatment of the subject which we find 
 in the history of reflection. No doubt it might be 
 argued that there is not so much diversity in the 
 general conclusions arrived at, and, if these are the 
 same, the consistency of method, it might be said, is 
 a question of ways and means, and need not greatly 
 concern us. Each mind, we might hold, must find 
 
 44 
 
cH.n FACTORS IN KNOWLEDGE 45 
 
 its own way to truth by the avenue that seems 
 clearest, and the main thing is that the various 
 avenues should converge towards the same spot. 
 But while the general rationality of experience may 
 prevent the human mind being put to confusion 
 in the final issue, it is still legitimate to maintain 
 that some ways of reaching the end are safer and 
 more direct than others. That is the justifica- 
 tion for attempting at the outset to formulate the 
 problem we seek to solve. 
 
 Knowledge^ does not merely, as Kant indicated. The factors 
 start from experience ; it is a kind of experience, in iedg^°^ 
 any sense of that term. It will be admitted, too, 
 that its significance lies in its being an activity with 
 a certain end in view, the end we call the attain- 
 ment of truth. These are two distinct phases of 
 its nature, as is obvious when we observe that the 
 end may not be always attained, or that knowledge 
 may go wrong and, as we say, be " false," while yet 
 truth remains its necessary goal. Were the distinc- 
 tion between a right and a wrong way of getting to 
 the end meaningless, knowledge might be looked 
 on as simply a mechanical process with conscious 
 events for its content. Now, if the relation be- 
 tween these two aspects is such that knowledge 
 is most really knowledge when it attains its end, 
 it seems clear that what above all things the 
 interpretation of knowledge has to consider is the 
 ideal of knowledge. Not that we can separate 
 actual knowledge from its ideal ; they can only be 
 distinguished. But any attempt to confine the 
 
 1 "Knowledge" is here used primarily in the narrower sense of, e.g., re- 
 flective knowledge. As the argument proceeds we shall find reason to extend 
 its significance to include, e.g.. Morality. Vide pp. 72-73. 
 
46 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 question to the consideration of actual knowledge 
 Awithout conscious reference to the ideal of knowledge 
 seems bound to lead to error somewhere. On the 
 other hand, merely to consider the character of the 
 ideal of knowledge as such, without reference to actual 
 knowledge, will equally be one-sided in its result. 
 The question of knowledge, in short, is one which 
 must take account of both aspects of this form of 
 experience. Indeed, unless both are admitted and 
 acknowledged to stand in this intimate relation to 
 each other, it is difficult to see how the problem as 
 to the nature of knowledge could arise. Know- 
 ledge in finite experience is rooted in the distinction 
 between the activity of endeavour and the reality 
 of attainment ; and beyond this, knowledge, as a 
 form of experience, does not go. Within that, 
 it is an experience sui generis and complete. That 
 is the only antithesis which is essential to its vitality ; 
 and the existence of it is the sole condition of its 
 continuance as a finite process. 
 The Now if that is its simple elementary constitution as 
 
 stated "^ presented in experience, what is the ultimate problem 
 that we must raise regarding it, the problem which 
 the theory or interpretation of knowledge seeks to 
 solve ? If we are not to prejudge the answer by 
 preliminary assumptions, the problem seems capable 
 of being stated in only one form. We have to show 
 the way by which knowledge, in the pursuit of its own 
 end, achieves that ideal it seeks ; or, otherwise, we 
 have to show how the ideal of knowledge determines 
 the actual realisation of knowledge in experience. 
 These ways of expressing the problem are in prin- 
 ciple the same, for the ideal and the actual are both 
 implied in knowledge. We have not in this inquiry 
 
II THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 47 
 
 to state the content of ideal knowledge, i.e. of know- 
 ledge in its ideal form : this would give us the round 
 of speculative science, an Encyclopaedia of philo- 
 sophical knowledge. Still less are we to state the 
 content of ordinary knowledge in the different spheres 
 in which this is exercised, for this would mean 
 stating all the varied content of Perception, Science, 
 etc., in each of which we have knowledge of a kind. 
 What we have to consider is the relation between 
 knowledge as actual and knowledge as ideal, the 
 relation, namely, of how, in the life of knowledge, the 
 one is determined by and in the other. That seems 
 the simplest way to formulate the question as to the 
 nature of knowledge. No assumptions beyond the 
 fact of actual knowledge and the ideal of knowledge 
 are thereby made to start with. We do not by 
 anticipation hint at either the limits or the range of 
 possible knowledge, or even the conditions of know- 
 ledge, for these in a way prejudice the answer. The 
 question so formulated is, so to say, raised by 
 knowledge itself. It is the knowing experience 
 become self-conscious. This way of looking at the 
 question, while it is to some extent familiar in recent 
 logical discussion, is essentially the point of view 
 adopted by Absolute Idealism. 
 
 Let us try to bring out the significance of this 
 conception by considering for a moment the problem 
 of knowledge as taken up and discussed by Kant. 
 In what we have to say we shall attempt to show 
 how the adoption by him of other assumptions led 
 to errors, the existence and nature of which in- 
 directly indicate the need for starting from such a 
 principle as that above stated. 
 
 A fundamental assumption from which Kant's 
 
48 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 Kant's view Started and which pervades his argument all 
 fs"ump^ along is the cleavage between the subject " know- 
 tion. ing, " or, as he puts it sometimes, ' ' having experience, " 
 and the being of things. This was no doubt his 
 heritage from the Cartesian metaphysic. But it 
 found support in his early scientific training and in 
 his keen appreciation of the finite and tentative 
 character of human knowledge, which contrasted 
 sharply with the boundless world of independent 
 fact standing over against it, and setting a limit to 
 its activity. 
 Subjective For Kant, however, the reality of things per se 
 don^The' which mark the bounds for Knowing, is so in- 
 limits of effectual to influence the course of knowledge 
 ledge. that the very function of determining the positive 
 character of the limit itself is undertaken by the 
 subject. The limit is a boundary set to the activity 
 of understanding by the equally subjective activity 
 of reason. Merely to speak of things imposing a 
 limit was not enough : if taken thus, the limit would 
 be merely characterless and obviously inoperative 
 in itself A positive significance in relation to 
 knowledge had to be given to it ; and this from the 
 very nature of the case could only come from the 
 subject. Thus the limit, so far as it could be an 
 effectual limit to knowledge, was imposed and estab- 
 lished by that same subject which was held to be 
 bounded in its activity by things per se. This 
 exhausted its significance as far as concerned 
 knowledge, whose activity was thus entirely self- 
 determined, even in its very limitations. 
 The But Kant had still in some way to give a sub- 
 
 Faith.°" ° stantial and independent nature to the being of 
 things, if not by knowledge, then apart from it : other- 
 
11 DUALISM AND KANT 49 
 
 wise they were not merely unknown, but as good as 
 unreal. Their reality could not be considered in 
 terms of knowledge without a patent self-contra- 
 diction. Yet their reality must be for a conscious- 
 ness in some way. Hence we require to appeal to 
 a special function of the mind for that purpose. 
 This function is what Kant calls Faith, which is not 
 knowledge nor strictly reason, but still has its source 
 in consciousness, i.e. in the subject. Such a function 
 once more illustrates Kant's difficulty in finding how 
 a conscious subject can, from the side of the subject, 
 in any way deal with what to begin with is held to 
 be beyond it altogether. 
 
 Merely, however, to assert the existence of the The object 
 being of things by an unknowing act of Faith, does ° 
 not carry us far in determining the actual nature 
 they possess. Faith had to do what knowledge 
 failed to do — to deal in a positive way with the 
 realm of things per se, of which knowledge could 
 merely state that they were beyond its province. 
 It had to give local habitation and a name to what 
 for reason was little better than an airy nothing. 
 But to give assurances of any kind by Faith alone, 
 with no reference to knowledge, can only be admitted 
 either as an endeavour to speak intelligibly in two 
 mutually untranslatable languages, or as an attempt 
 to carry on the business of intelligence on a system 
 of bare credit. And what do we find .? The world 
 of Faith gets its concrete filling from the activity of 
 moral will. This at first seems a great deal, even 
 though it takes no account of, and certainly does not 
 seem to refer to, that realm of the being of things 
 which specifically concerned knowledge of nature, and 
 which, in the Critique of Pure Reason, stood over 
 
 E 
 
50 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 against it as an ultimate limit to understanding. But 
 even this filling is of less significance than it seems, 
 for we are assured of nothing but the. form, i.e. the 
 bare activity of will. And, moreover, even the reality 
 of this is merely a matter of Faith.^ It is not 
 intellectually impossible, but it is actual solely 
 for Faith. And why this meagre result .'' Simply 
 because Faith is outside knowledge ; it gives no 
 determinate content or significant assertion on the 
 one hand, and is incapable of giving more than a bare 
 assurance on the other. Faith is itself characterless, 
 a mere ungrounded act, and what it supplies must 
 in consistency have the same indeterminate value. 
 The mere fact that will is assigned to the sphere of 
 reason settles once for all that its significance is 
 intellectually for ever a mere problem ; for reason is 
 the sphere of the problems of the intellect, or, what 
 is the same thing, the bounds of understanding. To 
 gain any information about it is therefore logically 
 impossible. Kant's Faith is merely a compromise 
 between the sceptical tendency lurking in the concep- 
 tion of the " bounds of reason," and the necessity of 
 doing some justice to the initial assumption regarding 
 the reality of the being of things. This compromise 
 could, in the nature of the case, only take the form 
 of a mere possibility ; and thus Faith gives a bare 
 assurance. That is all it is able to accomplish for us in 
 regard to the being of things. Hence the admitted 
 insecurity of the argument dealing with the so-called 
 " practical reason," an insecurity which is only saved 
 from disaster by a thinly-drawn qualification, the 
 problematical phrase — " as if " : " man is free when 
 he acts as if he were so." 
 
 ' As Kant says, we have no guarantee that "pure duty" is ever "realised." 
 
II PROBLEMS AND POSTULATES 51 
 
 In fact this Faith tells as little about the being Faith 
 of things as knowledge, which is just nothing in "^^^^ 
 Kant's view. The thing per se in the form of will pf 
 has no more to do with actual concrete morality p"obiemr' 
 than the thing per se had to do with the actual 
 process of knowledge. In both cases it is quite 
 ineffectual, is outside "experience." The one lies 
 away beyond knowledge and is consigned to the 
 " ideas of reason " ; the other lies away behind actual 
 morality and is assigned to a peculiar act of Faith. 
 The one is described as a "problem," the other 
 is described as a "postulate." The difference 
 is merely due to the point of view from which 
 the same thing is looked at. In the former case 
 we have in mind the terminus ad quern of an 
 experience, in the other the terminus a quo ; and 
 both are identical, because all we can say of each 
 is, on the one hand, that it is unknown, and on the 
 other, that it is the "unconditioned condition" or 
 "limit" of experience. The same character, which 
 we find in the case of Freedom, is possessed by the 
 other entities which inhabit this realm of things 
 per se, and which Kant speaks of as God and 
 Immortality. Their character is the same, and 
 their value the same for exactly the same reasons 
 as those just mentioned in the case of a " free " will. 
 They belong to the sphere of Faith, which merely 
 can assert that they are ; they, too, are and remain 
 for the sphere of Faith postulates, as they were 
 problems for the sphere of intellect. 
 
 Thus, then, try as Kant will he never succeeds in 
 carrying the ramparts of " things per se." They for 
 ever defy assault. The attempt to do so in the 
 discussion of the Practical Reason merely reveals the 
 
52 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 futility of the task ; for the argument in the Critique 
 of Practical Reason does not take us a step further 
 than the result arrived at in the Critique of Pure 
 Reason. It merely changes the designation of the 
 The signi- thing we havc been considering. The limit is there 
 fhe"?mif t° begin with, and the limit remains ; and little 
 to Know- difference seems to be made to actual intelligible 
 ^ ^^' experience whether it is or what it is. For the whole 
 wealth of the world's significance, what Kant calls 
 " experience," is still in the possession of the subject 
 in spite of it. The limit merely asserts itself — that 
 is all. If we start with such an assumption as 
 Kant (and indeed naive Realism also) adopts, we 
 are compelled to raise the problem of knowledge in 
 only one form. We must ask, in some way or other, 
 "how is knowledge possible"?; within what limits 
 does it work ? ; what is its relation to that over against 
 which it stands for ever opposed? No other kind 
 of problem regarding the ultimate nature of know- 
 ledge is possible ; and that form of the problem is 
 predetermined simply by the initial assumption re- 
 ferred to. A boundary is set up at the start to the 
 very activity of knowledge, and the real question to 
 be considered is simply what is the limit, and what 
 are the conditions which determine that limit, make 
 it both possible and necessary. The question is 
 certainly a legitimate one in such circumstances, and 
 seems indeed at first sight an easy question. At any 
 rate it seems by no means so ambitious as the 
 attempt to give a systematic construction of the 
 whole of Being. For we are simply directing upon 
 the fact of knowledge in general a scientific analysis, 
 in the same way as we do towards any other fact, 
 e.g. space. Knowledge is here a perfectly circum- 
 
II KANT'S PROBLEM 53 
 
 scribed and definable process : it is a process found 
 in a thinking subject, and bounded on this view from 
 first to last by a reality beyond and independent of 
 that subject. Hence its very limited character at 
 once attracts attention and raises scientific curiosity 
 regarding it. There are no preliminary metaphysical 
 difficulties to be faced and overcome. For the 
 question does not seem to occur to Kant, as it did 
 to Berkeley, what that " independence," that " being 
 beyond" really means. The very statement of 
 his question indicates complete assurance of the 
 substantial worth of his assumption. " How are 
 synthetic judgments a priori possible," implies that 
 in his inquiry he is at once compelled to admit the 
 separation between knowledge and reality, and yet 
 to explain somehow in what way the perpetual 
 reference to it from the side of ideas is legitimate. 
 The term " possible " refers to something actual and 
 assumed to begin with ; for possibility can only be 
 decided or considered on a basis of actuality. The 
 question therefore refers to what is possible in the 
 circumstances. The term "a priori" merely ac- 
 centuates the same contrast, brings out still more 
 clearly the pointed antithesis from which he starts. 
 While " synthetic " bears on the face of it the marks 
 of the opposition he is trying at once to accept 
 and justify. Kant never seeks deliberately to over- 
 come that initial opposition. His sole question is to 
 explain, within the limits necessarily imposed on 
 knowledge, the reference of ideas beyond the im- 
 mediate consciousness of the knowing subject, — 
 an act of reference peculiar to all ideas which 
 make up the content of knowledge, and one which 
 falls solely within the subject knowing. 
 
54 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 "Spon- Hence we see the importance laid by Kant on 
 
 Ihesubjec? the fact of Subjective spontaneity, or freedom. The 
 reference is not forced on the mind ab extra (as 
 Locke seemed to imply) ; for this would mean that 
 reality invaded the subject bodily, which is just as 
 illegitimate as to assert that the subject covers by 
 the act of knowledge the gulf separating it from the 
 being of things, and which would in any case break 
 down the opposition assumed at the start. The act 
 of reference must come from the free, spontaneous 
 The work activity of the subject. Hence it is, again, that the 
 ing^sT whole apparatus of knowledge described by Kant 
 subjective, belongs from beginning to end to the subject only. 
 Reality has nothing to do with it. That remains 
 for ever a "beyond." Whether it is taken to be a 
 " real " " beyond," as in the Aesthetic, or an ideal limit 
 or " regulative idea," as at the close of the Analytic, 
 the result is exactly the same. Thus, the being of 
 things appears at the end of Kant's inquiry still 
 outside knowledge as it was at the beginning, not so 
 much because his inquiry has led him to that result, 
 but because he has all along worked under the assump- 
 tion of its being outside ; not because the analysis 
 has put it outside, but because its being outside has 
 determined the analysis. Thus for all theoretical or 
 cognitive purposes, the being which is beyond know- 
 ledge might, as far as the apparatus of knowledge is 
 concerned, be quite as well non-existent. It does 
 not determine that apparatus, it does not affect the 
 process of knowledge. It does simply one thing 
 and one thing only, it decides that a limit shall be 
 set to knowledge ; but it does not decide what that 
 limit is, or where it is, nor how it affects knowledge. 
 From this comes the peculiar result of the Kantian 
 
II TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT 55 
 
 analysis. The being of things remains indifferent 
 and characterless outside the subject, while all that 
 gives worth and significance to the life of the subject 
 is assigned to the subject in virtue of the apparatus of 
 knowledge, which makes its "experience," That is, 
 the subject surrenders any claim to possess the being 
 of things by knowledge, and rewards its self-sacrifice 
 by enriching its life with everything of significance 
 that can be made into experience. It gives up 
 any right to knowing things per se, but thereby 
 merely gives up what it has no interest at all in 
 wishing to grasp. 
 
 Kant, therefore, goes to the very verge of the The 
 apotheosis of knowledge, but recoils from this byj^^'^^"', 
 reminding himself that there must be a, limit. This Judgment. 
 is seen likewise in the Critique of Judgment, where 
 Kant (so we may put it) considers another aspect 
 of the realm of the being of things which falls 
 outside the sphere of the Critique of Practical 
 Reason, an aspect which also concerns that limit 
 set to knowledge referred to in the Critique of 
 Pure Reason. Everything of value is, in the 
 Critique of Judgment, allowed to hold good so far 
 as experience goes. But in the last resort, i.e. so far 
 as the being of things is concerned, we must again 
 qualify our judgments by the otherwise ineffectual 
 phrase "as if"— -"nature " must be considered "as 
 if" acting "purposively." This merely expresses 
 in the milder form of a measure of precaution 
 precisely what has been present throughout all 
 Kant's interpretation of knowledge, viz., the reality 
 of a limit to the subject's activity. 
 
 It seems strange that Kant should have laid such 
 extraordinary stress on the reality of the being of 
 
dualism 
 ineffective. 
 
 56 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 things as a limit to knowledge, and yet that this 
 very reality should have had little or no meaning of its 
 The own. If the limit it imposes on knowledge had been 
 assumed to come from knowledge itself, its want of 
 content might have been inevitable ; for it would 
 then have been just that beyond which there was no 
 knowledge and on this side of which all the content 
 of knowledge lay. But Kant began by assuming that 
 the being of things, reality with its now substantial 
 wealth, stands on one side and over against it the 
 subject's activity in knowledge. We are entitled, 
 therefore, to expect that the one side would at least 
 have been as concrete as the other, that in short the 
 dualism would have been permanent and effective, 
 and not evanescent and ineffective. So slight a 
 hold does the substance of things have on know- 
 ledge in the final form of Kant's view, that it comes 
 to be little more than a reminder that human know- 
 ledge is at best finite. The "limit" is a tax which 
 has to be paid for the privilege of understanding, 
 and which being quite undetermined in character 
 can therefore be reduced to the absolute minimum. 
 Kant gradually reduces the substance of the reality 
 of things till finally it becomes a mere ghostly 
 shadow of its earlier self, a ghost which neverthe- 
 less haunts his theory with all the persistence of 
 an ineradicable superstition, and with which at all 
 costs he must somehow make his peace lest it 
 imperil the security of knowledge. But the very 
 slightest means are required to lay a disembodied 
 ghost, for the being alone to be considered is the 
 subject who fears it. Hence it is enough to call it a 
 "problem," a "postulate," the "unconditioned con- 
 dition " or what not, all of them apparently differing, 
 
n KANT'S DUALISM 
 
 57 
 
 but with the same identical content, namely, none at 
 all, — their vagueness corresponding completely to 
 the indefiniteness of what is referred to, and the 
 expressions themselves being all used merely to win 
 the favour of the inhabitants of the shadow world 
 beyond the confines of experience. 
 
 It is clear that in all this Kant is doing no more inconsist- 
 than adhering to the conditions of an assumption ™'=y °^ 
 
 r i-ii- 11 t • • r 1 dualism 
 
 from which his problem started, in spite of the with 
 necessary results to which the actual course and^^^^^^j 
 method of the inquiry itself inevitably ought to lead 
 him. The inquiry is prosecuted by one principle ; 
 the assumption remains external to it. Hence it 
 merely exerts an incessant check on the natural 
 trend of his own argument. The assumption was 
 external from the start ; for it had nothing to do 
 with determining the specific course of the analysis. 
 It is "regulative," not "constitutive," i.e. external, not 
 immanent : and regulative and external it remains. 
 Hence the unsatisfactoriness of the relation between 
 the two at the end of the theory. The view of actual 
 knowledge, which he develops, has changed the whole 
 situation : it is inconsistent with the sharp dualism 
 from which Kant started. But, since the theory 
 must hold at all costs, and the assumption has also 
 to be maintained in some form or other, the only 
 solution is to make the antithesis as slight as possible. 
 This is done by placing, with a kind of ironical con- 
 sistency, the opposite poles of the antithesis outside 
 of experience altogether ! 
 
 Now it seems evident that since all Kant's diffi- Kant's 
 culty has arisen through starting from the original ^'^n"^" 
 assumption, the difficulty would vanish, and his^nsatk- 
 essential theory remain, if the assumption with which 
 
58 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 we are to begin were either dropped altogether or 
 fundamentally changed. And there is every reason 
 for doing so, since the assumption is itself unessential, 
 is merely accepted as apparently self-evident, and 
 is not established, by his theory itself, in the form from 
 which Kant began. In philosophy, to start from a 
 mere presupposition is to raise a standing objection 
 against the validity of the result ; but to leave that 
 presupposition unexplained or refuted, is in a sense 
 the argumentum ad absurdum of the presupposition. 
 Now the step taken by the immediate successors of 
 Kant, and more especially by Hegel, was essentially 
 this. They refused to admit Kant's assumption, 
 and if, as with Hegel, a logical starting-point was 
 accepted, that starting-point was one which found 
 its explanation in the theory itself 
 Other It is important to notice that it matters little 
 
 duaTsm: what form the initial dualism assumes, the same 
 Locke. effect is seen in the resulting theory of knowledge 
 which we have found in Kant's case. Locke, to 
 refer to him in this connexion, likewise starts his 
 epistemology from a dualistic presupposition. His 
 analysis is more "empirical" than Kant's, his view 
 The of knowledge more mechanical. Knowledge is the 
 Know°^ result of the interplay of things with the mind 
 ledge. or spiritual substance. The two substances act and 
 react on each other. In that sense reality exerts a 
 more controlling influence on the course of know- 
 ledge in Locke's argument. But the ultimate issue 
 is again in all essential respects the same as in 
 the case of Kant. Locke ^ is sure of the content of 
 experience so far as consciousness is concerned, and 
 hands over to the subject-substance as much of the 
 
 1 In Book II. of the Essay. 
 
II LOCKE ON KNOWLEDGE 59 
 
 thing -substance as he possibly can. But being 
 restrained in so doing by the latter, he divides the 
 content of experience between the two. And he Secondary 
 does this in quite an arbitrary way. One part he^"*^ 
 assigns to the subject, and calls this " the secondary qualities. 
 qualities " ; the other part he assigns to the thing, 
 and names this " primary qualities." Yet they are 
 both cognisable, i.e. they both fall within the sweep 
 of the ideal life of the subject. To make the original 
 opposition still significant he must, therefore, assign 
 something to the thing-substance which can find no 
 part or lot in the life of the subject. But, since he 
 has already taken up so much content, indeed all the 
 content he can think of, there is nothing intelligible 
 at all left remaining for the thing-substance. This 
 he naively acknowledges ; for, he says, the thing is 
 by itself merely the " something, we know not what" 
 underlying these primary qualities, an unknown 
 entity, which does not in point of fact really enter 
 into experience at all. In other words, the thing- 
 substance, at the opposite pole of the antithesis from 
 the subject -substance, is for Locke a mere caput 
 mortuum. So far as actual experience goes, it is 
 quite ineffective, a beyond with which experience 
 has in itself no concern. Its only character is that 
 it does not enter into the ideal world of knowledge. 
 This is the result arrived at, and we may say 
 the only result possible, in Locke's analysis of know- 
 ledge in Book II. of the Essay. When he does The 
 face the exact nature of existence in Book IV. existence. 
 (since somehow he must give an account of the 
 actual relation of knowledge to that which by 
 assumption is opposed to knowledge), the result 
 merely brings out the difficulty of making the relation 
 
6o DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 between knowledge and existence at once con- 
 sistent with the meaning he gives to knowledge, 
 and with the need of preserving that existence by 
 which knowledge is bounded from the start. There, 
 in Book IV., we find that existence is always an 
 external existence, and our cognitive relation to it 
 is at some point necessarily contingent, i.e. external. 
 Existence is in three kinds, that of the Self, God, and 
 Things, corresponding, we note in passing, pretty 
 closely to the content of Kant's ideas of reason.^ 
 Each appeals to and appears in knowledge in a 
 different way. The one. Self, is immediately certain 
 only ; it is as such outside knowledge, but is directly 
 present to it at a certain point. In other words, it 
 is an immediate but inexplicable and unexplained 
 fact, not built into the structure of thinking, but 
 simply there, and so is a limit to denial. What it is, 
 cannot be shown, how it is, still less so. It adds 
 nothing to its content ; it is simply a naked fact, 
 known by a bare act of certitude. God, again, is an 
 existence demonstrable by successive acts, each of 
 which is self-evident, the starting-point being the 
 immediately certain existence of the subject. The 
 content of God's nature is gathered from common 
 thought and handed over to the fact of his existence 
 gratuitously. Because God's existence is an indi- 
 vidual fact external to the individual mind and 
 yet demonstrable, the demonstration of God's 
 existence is peculiar in kind and distinct from any 
 other demonstration. For all other demonstration 
 deals with universal truth, which in Locke's view is 
 abstract and therefore not real, because the real is 
 
 ' That Locke should have divided the reality opposed to knowledge thus 
 is in itself remarkable. 
 
II LOCKE'S RESULT 6i 
 
 essentially individual. So that we have to accept 
 the external existence of Supreme Reality after a 
 unique process of mind has brought it to our know- 
 ledge. If this is not done the existence remains 
 ever beyond knowledge. But when it is done we 
 have to allow that a process of demonstration 
 which holds of universal experience can yet give 
 a conclusion which is essentially individual. The 
 externality of the result arrived at is thus made 
 evident by the very contingency of the method 
 of achieving it. While as to the last form of 
 existence (Things) they are only found in the 
 special acts of sense activity, and at the points 
 of time to which these acts refer and are opera- 
 tive. Outside these acts the existence of things 
 has no significance; at most it is a "probability." 
 In other words, the existence of things is essentially 
 external to the knowing subject, for the knowledge 
 of it is contingently dependent on the operation, 
 and, moreover, the successful operation, of sense 
 activity, which varies from point to point, from 
 time to time, and from mind to mind. 
 
 Apart from the question of actual consistency Result 
 between these results and those arrived at in the "^^^^j^ j^^ 
 analysis of Book II., we can see that in effect Books ii. 
 the ultimate issue is much the same in the two^° 
 books. The difference which at first sight appears 
 to exist is due to the way in which the discussion is 
 carried on. In Book II. Locke is dealing primarily 
 with knowledge and its content; in Book IV. 
 primarily with existence and its relation to knowledge. 
 The assumption in both cases is the same, viz. the 
 dualism of knowing-substance and thing-substance. 
 In the former discussion, therefore, when he is 
 
62 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 dealing with knowledge, emphasis is laid on the 
 kinds of ideas, on the content of knowledge, and by 
 the analysis of them the thing-substance is dissolved 
 as far as he can into ideas. The remainder is 
 necessarily a mere "we know not what," and this 
 is handed over to the thing -substance! In the 
 latter discussion (Book IV.) the weight of his 
 argument rests on the thing - substance (Reality, 
 Existence). As much stress as possible is laid 
 on it, and knowledge is brought as closely into 
 touch with it as it can come. That is the point of 
 the emphasis on "immediacy" in Book IV., there 
 being a special virtue for Locke in " immediate " 
 " certainties," because by them we touch consciously 
 an external existence. Where knowledge fails, 
 existence still remains, and hence knowledge in its 
 turn now becomes contingent : its pronouncements 
 regarding existence are no more than ''probable." 
 Probability, of course, implies some ground or resting- 
 place, and that is found, in Book IV., on the other 
 side of the antithesis, viz. in existence. In the former 
 analysis in Book II., therefore, the thing-substance 
 as such becomes so far emptied of meaning as to 
 be unknown ; in the other (Book IV.) the thinking- 
 substance as such becomes so far valueless that its 
 functions are mere probabilities. In the one, the 
 thing becomes uncertain from the point of view of 
 knowledge ; in the other, knowledge becomes uncer- 
 tain from the point of view of existence. Thus the 
 issue in both cases is for all ultimate purposes the 
 same. And the issue in both cases is inevitable, 
 for the dualism is there to start with, and must be 
 maintained. We can arrive at it or deal with it 
 either by starting from the one side or the other. 
 
II LOCKE AND BERKELEY 63 
 
 If we start from one side and take it as primary, 
 it necessarily follows that the other is secondary, 
 just because it is external to start with. And its 
 externality is just expressed in the result that the 
 other can never be completely identified with it. The 
 result is most clearly seen precisely when we consider 
 the bounds of the antithesis, i.e. when we ask what 
 there is beyond knowledge on the one side, and what 
 of knowledge is left beyond existence on the other. 
 The one gives us a thing emptied of content, the 
 other a knowledge emptied of value. 
 
 It is very significant thus to note how closely the Locke and 
 result of Locke's analysis resembles that of Kant. ^^°*" 
 Apart from subtleties of method and penetration of 
 inquiry, the issue in both cases is in all essential 
 respects the same, and for the same reason. Both 
 start from the same assumption which lies outside 
 the process of their analysis, and yet has to be in 
 some sense admitted into its result, because it directs 
 the argument as an underlying presupposition. It 
 was therefore with some good reason that Hegel 
 described Kant's theory as another expression of 
 Lockeanism. 
 
 It is singularly interesting to observe how the Berkeley. 
 correction of Locke's argument took almost an 
 exactly similar line to that adopted by Kant's suc- 
 cessors. Berkeley's view of knowledge consists just 
 in denying the necessity for the unknown substratum 
 of the thing-substance, and in seeking to show how 
 it was possible to make cognitive experience intel- 
 ligible without it. That is, just as Kant's critical 
 successors dropped the thing per se, so Berkeley 
 dropped the absolutely unqualified, unknown, thing- 
 substance. Each accepted the preceding analysis 
 
64 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 of knowledge ; both refused to accept the dualism 
 within which it worked ; it was an inadmissible and 
 unnecessary assumption. In both cases, therefore, 
 the development was in an idealistic direction. 
 The difference between the ultimate result of the 
 development in the two cases was due to the kind of 
 idealism which was made possible by the implicitly 
 individualistic or psychological view of knowledge 
 given by Locke on the one side, and the implicitly 
 universalistic view of knowledge established by Kant 
 on the other. Locke's theory held of individual 
 experience primarily, and Berkeley's idealism was 
 in consequence Subjective Idealism ; Kant's theory 
 emphasised universal experience primarily, and 
 Hegel's idealism was in consequence Objective or 
 Absolute Idealism, 
 
 Result. Now if we seem compelled, in view of the 
 
 results to which any naive dualism of the kind just 
 considered inevitably leads, to give up such an 
 assumption as the starting-point of an interpretation 
 of the nature and possibilities of knowledge, a number 
 of important conclusions follow at once. These we 
 may state by way of introducing the real nature of 
 the problem to be discussed. To begin with, it will 
 be necessary to admit a change in the conception of 
 truth altogether. On any dualistic presupposition 
 
 I. Truth, truth must mean some kind of "agreement" between 
 the opposed factors, which though opposed come into 
 some relation. This relation is generally spoken of 
 as a reference of ideas to a reality beyond ideas, the 
 reference being an act on the side of the knowing 
 subject. Such a reference carries with it necessarily 
 the conception of a real, external in some sense, 
 and remaining external always. Since knowledge 
 
II THE CHANGED QUESTION 65 
 
 consists in such a reference, it is implied that on the 
 other side reality sustains the act of reference, i.e. 
 accepts what is referred as warranted by its own 
 nature and constitution. That is, reality refers back 
 to knowledge. Knowledge thus being a double- 
 sided reference, truth is simply an accurate reference 
 on the one side and an accepted reference on the 
 other. But this means that the two references 
 concur; or, as it is said, truth is an "agree- 
 ment" between knowledge (thinking) and reality. 
 "Agreement" implies a bargain by two parties, 
 and is ratified necessarily on both sides. But if, as 
 we have seen in the case of Kant, the " agreement " 
 in the long run falls inside the subject-activity alone, 
 and is found only there as a conscious fact, the other 
 side being essentially beyond, falling outside, then the 
 very idea of an " agreement " must be given up ; for 
 an agreement has no meaning where only one side 
 can act, where the other side is merely independent 
 and remains so. Some other conception of truth, 
 then, must be found and accepted at the very start.^ 
 Again, for similar reasons, " reality " in the dualistic Reality. 
 sense cannot be spoken of as furnishing the standard 
 of accuracy for knowledge. Reality is held to 
 supply a check which can be put upon the pro- 
 cess of thinking ; it is what holds knowledge 
 within certain bounds. It constrains the order 
 of ideas in knowing. It is that to which thought 
 " appeals " for the verification of connexions amongst 
 ideas. It alone can secure or warrant the necessity 
 which must characterise determinate thought-con- 
 structions. All such phrases imply the same 
 
 ' For a very concise and convincing argument against the "agreement" 
 conception of truth, cp. Joachim, On the Nature of Truth, c. I. 
 
 F 
 
66 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 dualism referred to and the same view of truth. 
 But if the necessity is determined by the thinking 
 subject, as Kant shows, if its significance is found 
 in relation to a possible experience, i.e. an ideal 
 system of connected conscious elements, then the 
 appeal to any standard beyond knowledge is mean- 
 ingless ; for this is both inoperative and inherently 
 useless. Besides this, the supposition that what is 
 for ever beyond knowledge can itself control the 
 order of ideas in a sphere {i.e. the subject's-experience) 
 outside itself, a sphere which is self- complete by 
 hypothesis — such a supposition is in itself unintel- 
 ligible,. This is made still more evident when the 
 term "reality" is found to have no one definite 
 meaning, but to vary with the attitude of the subject 
 thinking — to be one thing in Perception, another in 
 Understanding, etc. The one " reality " which is to 
 form the standard, and which is not any of these 
 specific types of reality, is inevitably, as in the 
 hands of Kant and Locke it became, a mere 
 residuum ; and that surely cannot control the course 
 of the ideas of any subject. 
 
 Connected with this view of truth is another prin- 
 ciple which must likewise be surrendered or modified. 
 II. Reality It Hcs in the nature of an agreement between thought 
 Thought. ^""^ reality, that reality, while it can make an agree- 
 ment, yet has a nature of its own outside this agree- 
 ment. This must always be the case so long as 
 agreements are made, and since truth is all that 
 knowledge achieves and aims at, and since truth con- 
 sists in such agreements, endless in form and number, 
 there must always remain a nature peculiar to reality 
 in order to make such agreements possible. This 
 nature, therefore, can by no process of knowledge 
 
11 REALITY AND THOUGHT 67 
 
 whatsoever be exhausted, otherwise knowledge 
 itself would cease to exist, for then there would be 
 nothing to make the agreements which it strives to 
 attain. This position finds expression in the view 
 that "reality is richer than thought," to take Lotze's 
 statement of it ; or that knowledge is unequal to 
 reality, to use Bradley's conception of the same 
 position ; or that beyond the bounds of knowledge 
 there is a sphere of " faith," to take Kant's interpre- 
 tation of the same situation. All these expressions 
 are based, in the long run, on the same principle of 
 thoughts referring to a real somehow beyond them- 
 selves. But if reality is in any sense beyond 
 knowledge it is of no importance where, in the 
 history of knowledge, the separation is made. To 
 make knowledge bear an essentially asymptotic 
 relation to reality is in principle precisely the same 
 as to separate knowledge and reality absolutely from 
 the start. The only difference is that the former puts 
 the separation far away at infinity, — "reality cannot 
 be exhausted by thought " ; the latter plants it down 
 at our feet, — " reality is outside knowledge." But this 
 is a difference which is unimportant and meaning- 
 less : unimportant, since in both cases reality is be- 
 yond us, and the question of " when " it comes to 
 be so does not concern knowledge : meaningless, 
 since in both cases we can never say when knowledge 
 actually has failed ; the beyond is always a beyond in 
 either case. The position just referred to is therefore 
 rooted in dualism, in spite of the apparent conces- 
 sion of the worth of knowledge up to a certain point. 
 For it must accept the alternative ; either knowledge 
 does give the nature of reality, in which case the 
 question of amount and the time it takes to exhaust 
 
Limits. 
 
 68 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 it is of no significance, since the nature of reality is 
 explicitly known and implicitly cognisable ; or there 
 is at the outset a fundamental cleavage between the 
 two, in which case at no point does knowledge give 
 reality. This view, then, must likewise be rnodified 
 or given up. 
 
 If once more reality is not in any sense essentially 
 III. beyond knowledge, if dualism is abandoned, the 
 
 inquiry into the nature of knowledge cannot take the 
 form of asking "what are the limits of knowledge," 
 "under what conditions does it work," "what is the 
 relation between thought and reality." For know- 
 ledge must in some way determine its own conditions, 
 i.e. must be a self-contained experience. The limits 
 of knowledge must mean — not what lies beyond the 
 reach of knowledge, what lies outside knowledge when 
 it has exhausted its utmost resources, but — within 
 what range does a specific form of knowledge hold 
 good ? ; how do the modes of knowledge limit one 
 another? ; for knowledge can be limited by nothing 
 but knowledge. The relation of thought to reality 
 cannot any longer mean, when does thinking stop and 
 reality begin? ; how is the sphere of thought adjusted 
 to a reality outside itself ? The very form of such a 
 question is due to a kind of comparison between think- 
 ing on the one side and a real on the other. But such 
 a comparison is itself impossible without thinking, 
 and without an identity containing the factors com- 
 pared. The question, so far as it has a meaning, 
 is really due to comparing one sphere of thinking 
 experience with an object belonging to another. 
 In point of fact, it is mainly due to comparing con- 
 ceptual thought with the object-world of perceptual 
 knowledge. Clearly these are separate ; but they 
 
II THE NEW PROBLEM 69 
 
 are only separate inside knowing-experience itself, 
 as modes of conscious activity. The comparison, 
 therefore, is a relation of one form of knowing- 
 experience to another. Hence if the comparison 
 implies that conceptual activity, as such, is cut off 
 from all the real, and related to it in some strange 
 way externally, then it falls into error. Conceptual 
 thinking has an object world of its own, a real of its 
 own — the world of conceptions ; just as perception 
 has an object of its own — the world of "things." 
 At no point is thinking divorced from its object, 
 and hence to speak of an external relation between 
 thought and reality either has no valid meaning 
 at all, or else it means the relation of one mode of 
 conscious experience to another. 
 
 Where, then, shall we start the problem of the The new 
 interpretation of knowledge .'' If we drop all pre- '° ™' 
 suppositions which would condition the nature of 
 knowledge externally, and, at the same time, if we are 
 not to inquire into one particular kind of knowledge 
 {e.g. Perception), nor into a particular sort of relation 
 amongst forms of knowledge {e.g. between Percep- 
 tion and Conception), then we can only start from 
 the fact of the activity of knowledge in general on 
 the one side, and of a purpose or end arrived at by 
 knowledge on the other. These are the simplest ele- 
 ments or factors in the problem as to what knowledge 
 is and how it proceeds. Without these there would 
 not be the experience we call knowledge at all. For 
 knowledge does aim at something, has some purpose, 
 because it is a human activity ; and that knowledge, 
 as a conscious experience, exists, not even the most 
 daring scepticism can deny. But granting this 
 and this only, then the problem of understanding 
 
•JO DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 knowledge consists in finding out simply how these 
 two factors are related. What precisely is it that 
 knowledge actually aims at ? where does it reach 
 its goal ? and how does it get to that end ? ^ 
 
 Observe the generality of the problem. Know- 
 ledge is found in many forms, but all are forms of 
 the same attitude, and hence must, in a general 
 inquiry into knowledge, get consideration. Too 
 often a different view has been taken of the 
 Other question regarding the nature of knowledge. Some- 
 Itltemenfs times the inquiry is limited simply to the discuS- 
 ofthe sion of the so-called "perception of the external 
 world." This is in the main what Berkeley, Locke, 
 and Hume were thinking of when they raised the 
 problem of knowledge, and we can see how their 
 form of the question affected Kant. In a way this 
 seems always to have been thought to be in a 
 peculiar sense epistemology proper. At other times, 
 again, the discussion has gathered round the analysis 
 of the elements and relations of conceptual know- 
 ledge. Here it has been supposed that we are in 
 a region away from Perception altogether ; that 
 we have a world by itself following its own laws 
 and modes of procedure, — so much so that in its 
 extreme form it is said we hardly need think of 
 any world of perceptual reality at all. Know- 
 ledge so treated has been the subject-matter of 
 the Logicians. Logic had to deal with this sphere 
 primarily, because here primarily we get "reasoning."^ 
 This discussion, no doubt, was not always spoken 
 of as epistemology, because concepts were taken 
 
 ^ To answer that question is in part the purpose of Hegel's Phenomenology 
 of Mind. 
 
 ^ Reasoning, the highest expression of conceptual knowledge, has been in 
 such a case taken for the whole of it. 
 
II LOGIC 71 
 
 without any necessary filling from Perception, or 
 from any other form of knowing experience, and 
 the question of their worth as conveying truth 
 regarding experience could not therefore readily 
 arise. The more "empty" they were the better 
 for the discussion of them ; and hence the form of 
 such a discussion gradually drifts into the purely 
 abstract and symbolical treatment of thought which 
 we find current in so-called Formal or Symbolic 
 Logic. Reality comes in, if at all, by applying the 
 results of " reasoning " to any special " universe of 
 discourse."* When some reference to "truth" and 
 "experience " is introduced by way of reaction from 
 this highly abstract and very one-sided view of 
 thought, the discussions of Logic start from the 
 nature of Judgment, whose meaning it is the busi- 
 ness of Logic to develop. In judgment, it is held, 
 reality is always implied, and hence stress is laid on 
 the act of so-called "reference to the real " immanent 
 in judgment. The point of agreement between this 
 view of Logic and the other is the divorce both 
 make between " ideas " and " reality." The point 
 of divergence lies in the insistence, in the second 
 case, on the worth of ideas as conveying the actual 
 meaning of the real. But the real, for this second 
 type of Logic, is nevertheless what lies beyond 
 ideas so conceived. Hence we get the ambiguous 
 position that, on the one hand, ideas refer to the 
 real as an " immediate," the immediate of perceptual 
 experience; and, on the other, that reality as such 
 is, not immediacy, but the "ultimate subject" of 
 
 1 It seems fair to say that this treatment of thought by "formal logic" is 
 historically to a large extent responsible for the problem of the "relation 
 of thought to reality." 
 
72 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 all experience, what is beyond the immediate, an 
 indefinite and indeterminate extension of it. In 
 other words, we are immediately in touch with 
 reality, and yet reality is mediately " constructed " by 
 us. This view of Logic is current in the more recent 
 developments of Logic. ^ It is clear how closely it is 
 allied to epistemology, for it deals with the nature 
 of concrete knowledge, knowledge, namely, as this 
 appears in judgment. But the limits of its con- 
 ception of knowledge necessarily make it rather an 
 interpretation of science and scientific procedure 
 than of knowledge in general.^ Hence it is that the 
 only kind of immediate referred to by ideas is the 
 immediate of external perception, perception of 
 things as parts of " nature," — a limitation of the 
 range of immediacy which is quite misleading if left 
 unexpressed. 
 
 If, therefore, we are not to discuss simply one mode 
 
 of knowledge, and if we refuse to take any one form 
 
 as exclusively knowledge, it is manifest that we must 
 
 widen our conception of the nature of epistemology 
 
 and alter our problem. Not one, but all forms of 
 
 The new knowledge will be considered. Wherever we can be 
 
 its°cha" '' ^^'d t° know, be the object what it may, that will fall 
 
 acter. under the scope of the inquiry. But this means that 
 
 the problem embraces every way of being conscious of 
 
 an object. For at the very least it will be admitted 
 
 that in all conscious human experience there is a 
 
 somewhat present to consciousness to make that 
 
 ' It is the view found in Lotze and Bradley, and to a less extent in 
 Bosanquet. 
 
 ' It is interesting to notice that the discussion of other forms of knowledge, 
 e.g-. Sensation, or again Morality, is handed over to different kinds of analysis. 
 For that reason this view of Logic is not really epistemology proper. It is less 
 so than even Mill's Logic, which does discuss the " Logic of the Moral Sciences." 
 
n KNOWLEDGE IS EXPERIENCE 73 
 
 experience possible, whether the somewhat be a 
 spot of colour, a planet, a human soul, or the 
 universe. But the presence of somewhat to con- 
 sciousness is exactly what knowledge in its widest 
 and most complete sense really means. It is not 
 necessary that the two should be clearly and con- 
 sciously distinguished by a given individual ; this 
 is irrelevant. If it were necessary, then much of 
 what passes for knowledge, even in popular speech, 
 would have to be rejected. These, then, are the lowest 
 terms in which all knowledge can be described, 
 and when so described knowledge and conscious 
 experience are, strictly speaking, co-extensive. It is 
 impossible to draw hard and fast lines across experi- 
 ence and arbitrarily say, here is " knowledge," there 
 is "perception," that is " morality," this in "instinct," 
 the other is " intuition," and so on. For in all these 
 cases one and the same fact is found, a somewhat of 
 which mind is conscious ; and literally that is all there 
 is to find in each case. But to be conscious of some- 
 what is surely knowledge. The precise relation, 
 which merely determines the special kind of know- 
 ledge, does not alter the fundamental fact of its 
 being knowledge. To isolate one form of such 
 relation and speak of it as exclusively "knowledge" 
 is unwarranted, if that which makes " knowledge " a 
 form of experience is exactly the same as we find in 
 other forms of experience. Thus to say that " know- 
 ledge " is exclusively confined to statements, tq what 
 can be expressed in words, is not even in agreement 
 with current acceptations of the term, where we 
 regard much knowledge as being immediate, and 
 both incapable of being spoken, and unnecessary to 
 be expressed. So when it is held that knowledge 
 
74 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 implies a distinction of ideas from things, we are 
 confronted with the fact that in sense -experience 
 there is no such distinction ; and yet we are " dis- 
 tinctly aware," i.e. we know, through Sense. 
 An objec- It may be said that such a view would confound 
 *'°°- knowledge and conation. In "will," as seen in 
 Morality, it may be held, we have surely something 
 different from knowledge, although in "will" also there 
 is a somewhat for consciousness. In fact, the relation 
 of something to consciousness, we might say, tells us 
 nothing of the kind of relation, whether it be one of 
 action or observation, and cannot be named know- 
 ledge, which, it might be held, is only one form of 
 that relation. But to that the reply seems sufficient, 
 (i) that conation in the sense of activity is certainly 
 present in "knowing" itself, whatever meaning we 
 give the term ; yet this does not alter our view that 
 it is knowledge: and (2) in conation {e.g. in the 
 case of Morality) there is surely knowledge even 
 in the narrowest sense ; for we are conscious of 
 objects. 
 
 The truth is that in two ways such an objection to 
 the idealistic interpretation is mistaken. The objec- 
 tion is raised from the side of psychology only, where 
 we have in view simply the processes of individual 
 (:) The mind taken subjectively, and deal with the elements 
 fogrcai o"" factors which compose the immediate experiences 
 analysis of a subject, and the distinctive attitudes it can take 
 "expiana-up in its Varied experience. From this point of 
 tion." view certainly knowledge and conation must be 
 distinguished. They are generically different phases 
 of conscious life. But the psychological point of 
 view is confessedly limited in various ways, in this 
 way amongst others that it deals solely with the 
 
II PSYCHOLOGICAL OBJECTION 75 
 
 conscious individual life, as a finite unit, and does 
 not transcend the immediate conditions of that life. 
 Now even the individual in his actual experience 
 is not to be fully understood merely from his subjec- 
 tive side. We cannot by resolving his individual 
 experience into its ultimate elements and conditions 
 thereby state the full meaning and content of that 
 life itself. By resolving a tree into its chemical and 
 physical constituents and conditions we could not 
 describe the configuration, the actions, and reactions 
 which make up its concrete life -history, make up 
 the full meaning of the tree as it is in itself, and in 
 relation to others. Hence, for this reason alone, an 
 objection to a more full and concrete interpretation 
 of the individual's experience cannot be legitimate if 
 based on an expressly one-sided and abstract position. 
 The real individual who lives and moves through- 
 out his experience has not simply a subjective side 
 but an objective as well, and at the same time. 
 But if this be so, then it is not simply one of the 
 elements of conscious life which is operative now 
 at one stage of that experience, and another at 
 another. The self as a unit operates with all its 
 "ultimate elements" at once, and must do so just 
 because they are its ultimate elements. Thus in 
 concrete life we find that actual knowing implies 
 conation in the psychological sense, actual conation 
 implies knowing in the psychological sense. Since 
 these are in concrete experience indissoluble, 
 it is irrelevant to speak of an interpretation of 
 concrete experience identifying the two. They 
 are themselves identified and must be so treated. 
 Hence we may psychologically look at, e.g., Percep- 
 tion, either as a manifestation of the conative activity 
 
76 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 of a subject or as presentation ; but in concrete 
 experience it is both at once. And the only general 
 expression for that experience is to say that there is 
 in Perception a somewhat for a consciousness, or 
 there is consciousness of something. This general 
 form of awareness characterises all possible modes 
 of the life-history of the concrete individual, from 
 the Perception of a tree to the realisation of a Moral 
 Order, or the Life of Religion. Now to be aware of 
 anything is, in the widest as well as in the narrowest 
 sense, to know. Hence the experience of the in- 
 dividual, which just consists in all the forms of being 
 aware of something, is to be regarded as consisting 
 in modes of knowing. The object or the somewhat 
 may vary according to the plane of experience ; but 
 there must always be an object and a subject to 
 make it an object, and for which the object is. 
 Whether we use the term " experience " or the 
 term "know" is thus indifferent. 
 
 What makes the term " know " seem insufficient is 
 Reason the fact that in knowing we have in general the object 
 objection, primarily in view, and not the subject who knows. 
 The scientist, e.g., does not think about himself at 
 all in knowing ; he is absorbed in his object, and 
 tries indeed, as he says, to eliminate the subjective 
 factor altogether. He, qua scientist, occupies a 
 trans-subjective or "impersonal" attitude, what has 
 been called the point of view of " universal 
 experience." In other forms of activity, however, 
 this attitude is not deliberately taken up ; the 
 subjective factor consciously remains a determining 
 element in the experience. This is seen, e.g., in 
 Perceiving, or again in Morality and Religion. 
 Hence the reluctance to admit that a term which is 
 
n QUESTION TO BE ANSWERED ']^ 
 
 generally appropriated for a mode where the subject 
 is consciously suppressed, should be applied also to 
 cases where it is consciously emphasised. But it 
 is our whole contention — a legitimate contention 
 — that in Science, no less than in every mode of 
 experience, the subject is operative and cannot be 
 eliminated,^ and that what we have in Science is 
 merely one special form of the experience of mind. 
 And thus the " scientific mood " stands, qua ex- 
 perience, on the same footing as all other modes. 
 
 The other reason in defence of this more (2) Psy- 
 general use of the term knowledge, is that con-^^owSr^ 
 scious awareness is wider than both knowledge and and willing 
 
 1 1 1 • 1 T • imply a 
 
 conation m the narrow psychological sense, it is wider 
 wider because it contains both as moments or factors. <=°°='=.'°"= 
 
 principle. 
 
 It is conscious awareness of content so conceived 
 that we are dealing with, because this is the con- 
 sciousness operating throughout experience. Hence 
 it is inaccurate to assert that we are ignoring one 
 of those factors by using an expression which 
 necessarily must contain them both. 
 
 We have to take, then, all the forms of awareness. Meaning 
 of consciousness of something, which make up what problem "^ 
 we call our experience. No one is taken to the 
 exclusion of the other ; all modes of experience 
 must find a place in it. The question is. What 
 does the interpretation of knowledge so considered 
 mean ? how is the significance of knowledge so 
 understood to be arrived at.-* If we ask this ques- 
 tion about any one mode, the answer is to be found 
 in the actual procedure of the form of knowledge 
 
 ^ This, indeed, is very evident even to the scientist himself. The existence 
 of the " personal equation " in Science, the possibility of error in observation 
 and calculation and assumption, the doubt or, again, the satisfaction and con- 
 fidence in the final result— all testify unmistakably to the subjective factor. 
 
78 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM ch. 
 
 itself. Thus, in the case of "perceiving," when 
 we seek to find out the nature or meaning of Per- 
 ception, we seek to state the " truth " about percep- 
 tual experience. This means that when Perception 
 attains its highest expression, its essential end, we 
 have its real nature. Its truth does not lie outside 
 it, nor in its constituent conditions (psychological, 
 physiological, etc.). It is a mode of knowledge, 
 and its truth is the end which constrains or 
 controls the process of perceiving. It is this end 
 which imparts to Perception the necessity which 
 characterises it as a mode of knowing, for it is to 
 this it must proceed in order to be Perception. Its 
 truth in that sense lies within its very process and 
 determines it. So of any other mode of knowledge. 
 And this is the way by which we are to find out the 
 real meaning of all the modes in which knowledge 
 appears, and which make up the mind's experience. 
 Instead of taking one mode, we are here to take 
 all the modes together. These are simply diverse 
 forms in which that fundamental relation of aware- 
 ness of a somewhat, which constitutes having ex- 
 perience, appears. The mind, we may put it, in 
 experience, when looked at as a whole, is aware of 
 a somewhat in general, a continuum of objectivity, 
 which gets differentiated into specific objects, or 
 "somewhats," according to the kind or plane of 
 experience, Perception, Science, Morality, etc.^ To 
 interpret this general relation as such is exactly 
 the same problem in principle as to interpret the 
 meaning of any specific mode of knowing. And just 
 
 ' Or, again, we may state the same position by saying that to the one con- 
 tinuum of objectivity the one continuum of mind gets differentiated into a 
 variety of specifically distinct conscious attitudes. 
 
n NECESSITY IN KNOWLEDGE 79 
 
 as in the latter case we find the solution in determin- 
 ing the ideal or end aimed at, which controls the 
 relation between mind and its particular object, so 
 we find the interpretation of the whole process by 
 showing what is the ideal aimed at and implied in 
 all the forms of knowledge, and how and where 
 that ideal is realised. There is only one such ideal, 
 for it is the consciousness of one and the same 
 individual in which there is experience. And it 
 must be operative throughout all the forms of its 
 experience. The question as to how is precisely 
 the question as to the method of carrying out this 
 interpretation. 
 
 Here, then, is the significance of the new inter- Necessity 
 pretation of knowledge. What gives necessity ^o'^^L^^^ 
 knowledge is not, as dualism holds, some external End. 
 constraining force exerted by a so-called world 
 beyond the mind, a world of things, which controls 
 the order of our subjective ideas. The necessity is 
 to be found only in what is inherent in the very 
 essence of knowledge itself. But that is just the 
 end or ideal at which knowledge aims, and which it 
 expresses by its process. The meaning, in other 
 words, is to be looked for in what is immanent in 
 knowledge, not what is transcendent. Necessity 
 there must be, and necessity is a controlling force. 
 It implies a contrast between what is and what 
 must be, between a fact and a law, a part and a 
 whole, a datum and an ideal. That is all it means 
 in the last resort. The controlling force in con- 
 sciousness can only be a conscious Ideal. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE 
 
 The Ideal: The wholc strcss of the interpretation here rests on 
 !!,l,nin„ the character of this Ideal. An ideal is, in any 
 sense, within the limits to which it applies, the 
 completest unity in the greatest diversity. Thus 
 an " ideal " of scientific interpretation in the case, 
 say, of any mechanical system, is one in which we 
 have a principle regulating or controlling all the 
 elements, and combinations of these, which make 
 up the constituent parts of that system. So of 
 a moral or artistic "ideal" in given relevant cases. 
 In regard to consciousness of objects, the ideal 
 will also be that in which we have the deepest 
 unity with the richest diversity. The diversity 
 here lies in the two elements distinguished, viz. 
 consciousness and a somewhat or objects. The 
 unity is just the presence of the one in and to the 
 other. The object is not external, nor is it internal ; 
 for these terms imply a connotation quite alien to 
 the character of knowledge, and are in fact the 
 creation of experience itself. Nor is the unity one 
 of interaction, for here again we have a mechanical, 
 and to that extent an external relationship. The 
 unity is one in which consciousness only exists in 
 and through the object, and the object only in and 
 
 80 
 
Ill UNITY OF SUBJECT AND OBJECT 8i 
 
 for consciousness. So much is this the case that 
 we can, and do in actual life, consider one side 
 as if it were the whole unity. This is what we 
 find, on the one hand, e.g., in scientific inquiry, in 
 generalisation, or even classification, when it is 
 said " we must eliminate the subject altogether, the 
 object alone is what we have to keep in mind." 
 On the other hand, when, e.g., in mathematical 
 analysis, we are said to carry on the process merely 
 " in our minds " and then " apply " the result to so- 
 called objective facts, such as motion, here again 
 one side stands for the whole experience. The 
 reason for such apparently contrary views is just 
 the completeness of the identity of subject and 
 object in knowledge. The distinction of subject 
 and object is experience broken up into its diver- 
 sity ; the active relation of the two, however it 
 appears, is experience in its unity, withdrawn to its 
 identity. But neither the diversity nor the unity 
 has any significance without the other. 
 
 The ideal, then, for this consciousness aware of Form of 
 an object is to be found at that level or mode of ^ 
 experience where mind as subject has its self as 
 a whole consciously before it, not implied, but 
 actually expressed. Or, put otherwise, it is the 
 form where the object is the mind itself; it is that 
 identity which does not merely make its diversity 
 ''possible^' but is its expressed content. And 
 this is the ideal, because this has been implied 
 all along. It is not an absolutely new mode of 
 experience. It is the mode which appears when 
 that is attained explicitly which was always present 
 implicitly ; for, as we saw just now, subject only 
 is in its object. It finds itself there ; while the 
 
of the 
 Ideal. 
 
 82 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 object is only through a subject. We have, there- 
 fore, merely to get those two sides absolutely 
 transparent to each other, completely fused as a 
 conscious fact, and we have the ideal for all forms 
 of conscious experience. 
 Content Now it is clear that such an ideal will be unable 
 
 to stop short of a complete mind and a complete 
 object. It will not be found in the consciousness of 
 a special object, a particular object, such as we have 
 in the consciousness, say, of a " thing " or the world of 
 " society." These are partial ; there always remains 
 something outside any one of them ; for they always 
 remain outside, i.e. different from, one another. 
 They are, looked at in one way, merely modifica- 
 tions or specific modes of the one complete objective 
 continuum which faces consciousness as a whole.^ 
 Mind in its unity as a whole is aware of objec- 
 tivity as a whole; "things," "events," "persons," 
 etc., are just elements in this continuum, to each of 
 which mind takes up a specifically different atti- 
 tude. Thus the mind's unity as such is not, in the 
 long run, satisfied by anything short of the whole, 
 the reason being that only then is its unity com- 
 pletely found or expressed. But if its unity is com- 
 pletely found in the whole, there is no distinction 
 between itself and the whole. The whole is its 
 unity ; its self is there in its fulness. If the self 
 only finds itself in its object, it finds its completes! 
 self, its full unity, in the completest object. Or, the 
 ideal is found when the self is consciously the 
 objective totality, of which the specific objects of 
 detailed experience are but parts or elements. In 
 
 * Looked at in another way they are specific attitudes of the one continuous 
 unity of the subject of all experience. 
 
Ill THE IDEAL IMPLICIT AT FIRST 83 
 
 this ideal mind answers to mind consciously and 
 completely. This means, to use the familiar phrase, 
 that mind is satisfied when its object is the Absolute, 
 and that Absolute is mind. The ideal of experience 
 is the complete and conscious unity of the subject 
 with a conscious Absolute. 
 
 The importance of such an ideal lies not so much its sig- 
 in its being a definite mode of experience. It is " '^^°'^^' 
 that. But it is the condition which makes real any 
 mode of knowledge whatsoever. It is the logical 
 ground of the awareness of anything, even of the 
 lowest form of awareness. Experience in all its 
 forms starts with the distinction of consciousness 
 from objectivity. That distinction is from the first 
 implicitly a distinction of m.ind from, itself, and 
 therefore finds its completion in becoming conscious 
 that it is so. But explicitly it appears to begin with 
 as a contrast between mind and objects in general. 
 How that contrast comes about is a question for that 
 study which deals with the growth and evolution of 
 the life of mind.^ There it is shown that mind 
 begins in somatic and soul life with its various 
 qualities. We then have merely a relation of soul 
 to environment, the soul being one item in the 
 complex whole of " nature." Only with the dawn of 
 consciousness does mind begin to be actualised, for 
 only then does it become aware of its distinction 
 from the whole. Only at this stage can it have 
 " experience," can there be " experience " at all. 
 
 Experience proper, therefore, begins at that Experi- 
 level of the mind's life where consciousness starts, ^"''^" 
 for experience means conscious relation to some- 
 thing ; and with the rise of consciousness comes an 
 
 1 This is in part the business of Psychology, whether rational or empirical. 
 
84 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 object of which mind is conscious, that from which 
 mind is distinguished. Ultimately, of course, what 
 consciousness is aware of is the whole of objec- 
 tivity, which stretches from the immediate present 
 or focus of consciousness without break to the 
 totality of objective content. In a sense this whole 
 is there to start with, for soul becomes mind by 
 distinction from the whole with which it was 
 formerly (in soul life) fused. But the whole is at 
 first explicitly just an immediate whole, that whole 
 nearest to soul life — the life of sense. Hence, as 
 we shall see, the first stage of experience is sense- 
 experience} But the whole is for the most part 
 iinplicit in the first stage of experience. Being 
 implicit it forces experience to develop ; and that 
 creates the "course" of experience. The first form of 
 an object being "external," inadequate, shot through 
 with diversity, a development of experience is 
 demanded to get that unity it really wants, and which 
 was there from the start of consciousness. Experi- 
 ence, it may be said, is the great venture of the Spirit 
 to try to accomplish by its own history, and at its own 
 level, what is done for soul by the "course of nature." 
 It is the Spirit's voyage of discovery to find its own 
 meaning ; the falling of the world in sunder to be 
 fused by the white heat of thought and spiritual 
 toil for freedom. Freedom is the goal of the life- 
 history of experience ; it is there we have at the 
 higher level of the sphere of Spirit what we had 
 at the level of soul life. For the distinction re- 
 ferred to has arisen within finite mind ; and its 
 having arisen is just the proof of its finitude. To 
 establish finite consciousness and create such a 
 
 ' Cp. Adamson, Lectures, vol. i. p. 290 fF. 
 
Ill IDEAL OF EXPERIENCE 85 
 
 distinction mean the same thing. But that by which 
 it arose is that in which it finds its completion and 
 satisfaction ; for it is the unity out of which came 
 the diverse elements, conscious subject and an object. 
 Hence the ideal is not merely the goal towards 
 which the modes of knowledge point, but the 
 very principle which makes them what they are for 
 finite consciousness. It is that which makes them 
 essential modes, and which makes them modes at 
 all, i.e. forms of experience, of a unity of the diverse 
 elements, subject and object. Thus to show that 
 the modes of knowledge have their complete realis- 
 ation in this ideal is both to prove that Absolute 
 Mind is that in which the nature of knowledge is 
 satisfied, and also that which makes all modes of 
 knowledge at once possible and valid. It is the 
 ground as well as the goal of all truth whatsoever. 
 
 We see at once in all this the character of the 
 change which has come over Kant's problem. 
 
 To begin with Kant considered knowledge to be Kant's 
 an affair between an individual mind and an in- p"^'''""- 
 dividual object. Now this, of course, is in a sense 
 true, but only in a very limited sense. The mind is 
 consciously aware for the most part of one object in 
 every act of knowledge, and hence the conceptions 
 etc., which it employs, appear, so to say, one at a time, 
 and as occasion demands. But to regard this as the 
 whole truth is to confound the psychological process of 
 knowing, with the content of truth with which know- 
 ledge is concerned. For it confuses the act of atten- 
 tion, or the series of such acts, by which, certainly, 
 knowledge is carried on, with the content on which 
 mind is engaged. These acts are no doubt discrete, 
 but the consciousness of objects is continuous and 
 
86 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 unbroken. The object engaging our mind at a 
 particular time is isolated, for selection involves 
 isolation, and attention implies selection. But just 
 because a content is selected, all the other content 
 of objectivity is implied, to some extent even con- 
 sciously, in every act of knowledge. Take, for 
 example, the knowledge of the sounds filling an 
 auditorium. We are thinking of, knowing, the 
 words which comprise these sounds, but we are also 
 aware of the size, colours, etc., of the room, and our 
 place in it and so on. The mind, in fact, is never 
 literally aware merely of what is at the focus of 
 attention, nor does knowledge consist simply in 
 such discrete separate acts. The mind is a centre 
 of varied relations to a whole of objectivity, for this 
 alone completes its purpose, and only in this as a 
 whole can it rest satisfied. Hence what we have 
 to consider in knowledge is not a single relation 
 of a mind to a single object, but of mind in its 
 unity to the total objectivity in which alone are 
 its purpose and nature completed. When this is 
 taken account of, we shall not take truth to be 
 realised in specifically different acts each complete 
 in itself; nor shall we divorce the finite mind from 
 the complete whole in which it finds satisfac- 
 tion. For only in and through the whole is it truly 
 itself. From the point of view of the complete 
 interpretation of mind's knowledge, therefore, the 
 nature of the whole is logically prior to that of the 
 part, because it makes each phase of knowledge a 
 moment of the complete truth at which knowledge 
 in all its various forms aims. It is not, of course, 
 necessary that we should begin the interpretation 
 by stating in its entirety what this ideal contains. 
 
s 
 view. 
 
 in KANT'S VIEW OF NECESSITY 87 
 
 For a reason we shall see presently that is not 
 essential. Nor is it possible to do so ; it would 
 mean beginning the interpretation by giving it in 
 its entirety at the start. But we can and must 
 proceed in the light of that ideal. 
 
 From this again it will be seen what meaning " Neces 
 must be attached to the idea of necessity in know- Kant'" 
 ledge, an idea which played such a large part in 
 determining Kant's theory. For Kant necessity, if 
 it was to be found at all, had to be essentially a 
 priori, because the material of the objective world 
 was somehow beyond coherent knowledge, and for 
 that reason was contingent as regards it. Thus the 
 conceptions of " necessary knowledge " and " possible 
 experience '' were in Kant's theory strictly comple- 
 mentary conceptions. Necessity could only exist in 
 what was logically prior to experience ; and because 
 experience was logically posterior, it was, from the 
 point of view of self-consciousness, dependent, and 
 per se therefore contingent. This position is merely 
 another illustration of the dualism with which Kant 
 worked. Had " empirical contingency " referred to 
 the validity of a generalisation, e.g. in science, no 
 doubt the necessity would have been concrete ; it 
 would have been embedded in experience, even 
 though the necessity would then have been merely 
 relative. But Kant's necessity has no part nor lot 
 in experience at all : it is unconditioned necessity he 
 refers to. This, however, can only hold good of the 
 pure conditions of experience. It is not concrete in 
 any sense ; it is purely abstract and formal. The 
 necessity holds only of the sphere determined by the 
 a priori grounds of experience. But what does 
 necessity in this case mean ? Necessity in its very 
 
88 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 principle implies a relation between parts in a 
 whole. Nothing in particular can be necessary in 
 itself. Necessity holds between one thing and 
 something else. The relation may be expressed 
 hypothetically or otherwise, but a relation it must 
 be. Now for Kant the relation here in question is 
 one between the unity of the self and the idea of a 
 possible experience. Conceptions constitutive of 
 experience are the functions by which the manifold 
 is built into this unity. Their necessity lies in 
 their being the only way of securing the single 
 unity of the self when dealing with the varied 
 detail of sense. A " category " is that by which the 
 manifold can be part of the experience of a single 
 self. Hence since this is done by specifically 
 different functions (according to the kind of object), 
 each is necessary in exactly the same sense. And 
 each is necessary as it stands ; for on Kant's 
 view, as we saw, objects are known by separate 
 acts. Observe what that necessity amounts to. 
 It is strictly relative to a possibility, viz. a possible 
 experience. That possibility is purely abstract, 
 as abstract as the pure self for which it is a 
 possibility. It does not of itself constitute the 
 specific character of the conceptions or universals 
 which give necessity, any more than the pure ego. 
 Their special nature has therefore to be deter- 
 mined in other ways. In point of fact it is 
 determined quite fortuitously, either by the sugges- 
 tion of sense-facts, which give the hint, so to say, 
 what conception, i.e. what specific necessity, is 
 required in a given case; or the conception is 
 obtained by a gratuitous appeal to the structure 
 of traditional thought or logical doctrine which, as 
 
m NECESSITY IN EXPERIENCE 89 
 
 Kant himself confessed, he drew upon when arrang- 
 ing the Hst of his categories. The necessity, in 
 short, so far as of significance for the interpretation 
 of the nature of knowledge, is purely and simply of 
 a formal character, which tells nothing whatsoever 
 as to the concrete necessity which is alone of value 
 in actual knowledge. When it becomes definite we 
 have to get its nature elsewhere. This is the inevit- 
 able result of Kant's dualistic assumption, where 
 at the very best necessity must be of a point by point 
 character, each special case of necessity being deter- 
 mined without conscious reference to the single 
 unity constituting the principle of necessity in every 
 case.^ 
 
 Now on the above view the necessity in know- Necessity 
 ledge lies also in a relation ; it is a relation between andTisef 
 the ideal aimed by all knowledge, and a given mode fro™ *e 
 of knowledge. It is the constraining influence of the 
 ideal which compels acceptance of the validity of a 
 given act or form of knowledge. It is not a com- 
 pelling force exerted externally on the course of the 
 mind's thoughts by a reality beyond knowledge ; 
 nor again a controlling abstraction like that of 
 the unity of a possible experience. The necessity 
 must lie in the heart of knowledge itself; and 
 knowledge can only be controlled by an inward 
 principle when that principle is implicit in the 
 very nature of knowledge. The necessity deter- 
 mining knowledge must then be immanent, not 
 
 ' Similarly in Kant's view of morality. Every duty is absolutely necessary, 
 and necessary to the same degree, because the necessity lies in formal agree- 
 ment with law in general. But when duties become concrete, their matter 
 comes from experience, which relatively to the law is contingent. The 
 necessity of each law therefore stands by itself : there is no determination of 
 laws from a central unity. 
 
90 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 transcendent in any sense ; and that is found in 
 the contrast between what is potential and what 
 is actual, between what is a whole and what is 
 a part. Thus, e.g. in Perception, what compels 
 us to admit validity in an act of perceptual know- 
 ledge, such as "there is a tree," is the implicit 
 presence in that act of the essential unity of 
 mind and its object. The degree to which that 
 is realised varies in Perception, — a fact seen, on 
 the one hand, in the vagaries and illusions of 
 Perception, and, on the other, in the incapacity of 
 perceptual knowledge, as a whole, to tell the com- 
 plete truth. But such necessity as it does have comes 
 from the one principle just stated. And the same is 
 true of the necessity inherent in scientific knowledge, 
 or again in a moral judgment. Every form has 
 necessity, in short, for the reason that in each the 
 ultimate unity of mind with its objective world is 
 both asserted and implied. 
 
 This, again, indicates that necessity does not 
 Necessity require to mean exactly the same thing in all forms 
 form.^ '" of knowledge, as Kant seemed to imply. We shall 
 find this more particularly when we consider the 
 method. Meantime, it is sufficient to observe here 
 that variation in the form of necessity lies in the 
 nature of the case. For if the principle at the root 
 of necessity is the unity of the whole self with the 
 object of which the self is aware, the very diversity 
 of the forms in which the life of the self appears 
 just means that there are different degrees in which 
 that unity is explicitly secured, or that it is implicit 
 to a greater extent in certain forms than in 
 others. That must be so, because they could not 
 be different forms on any other condition. Their 
 
m DEGREES OF NECESSITY 91 
 
 having necessity at all lies in their nature as modes 
 of knowledge, and their being different implies a 
 difference in their necessity. This can be confirmed 
 by an appeal to everyday experience, though of 
 course such an appeal is not final for a systematic 
 interpretation of experience. Thus, for example, we 
 are familiar with the appeal men make from " prin- 
 ciples " or "conceptions of thought" to "actual 
 facts " belonging to Perception, an appeal which is 
 made in different ways according to the interest at 
 stake. At one time men will say, "let us give up 
 ideas and theories, and let us see what the facts 
 say " : meaning thereby that conceptual knowledge, 
 generalisation, etc., is looked at as either confusing 
 or contradictory, while the "facts" are steady and 
 manifest to the normal operation of Perception. 
 This appeal is made in spite of the transparent and 
 admitted truth that Perception is, of all mental pro- 
 cesses, perpetually open to error and liable to illusion 
 — as is indirectly indicated in the precautions taken 
 for eliminating sources of error in observation. At 
 another time we find that just as readily men will, 
 in other circumstances of mental life, appeal from 
 "facts" to "conceptions," in those cases especially 
 where particular facts seem to make against a long- 
 accepted principle, or even a largely verified hypo- 
 thesis. Here, it is held, the facts will later on be 
 shown to fall under the principle, although they seem 
 at present not intelligible by it. Such an appeal may 
 be stated in the strongest form ; " if your facts do 
 not agree with the conception, so much the worse 
 for your facts." In this case a different and a lower 
 certainty, or cognitive necessity, is attached to per- 
 ceptual fact than to conceptual principle, and that in 
 
92 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 spite of the accepted truth that conceptions easily- 
 lead us astray because of their mere universality.^ 
 In this opposition, then, between perceptual fact and 
 conceptual principle, however that opposition be 
 expressed, we have an illustration of a difference 
 admitted in ordinary life beween one kind of cogni- 
 tive necessity and another. And this difference is 
 not merely one in kind but in worth for our experi- 
 ence. Some forms of experience are said to be 
 more necessary to us than others, e.g. moral, or, it 
 may be, religious experience. By this we mean, not 
 so much that we can less easily exist without them, 
 that their absence would impoverish life, but that 
 they realise more fully the nature of our experience ; 
 or, to use our terms, they have a deeper unity of 
 the diverse elements, subject and object. 
 
 It is impossible, therefore, to discuss the question 
 of the necessity of judgments, as if necessity means 
 the same thing throughout the whole range of 
 experience. Yet this seems certainly to have been 
 assumed, e.g., by Kant and Hume in their inter- 
 pretation of knowledge. 
 Nature of Once again we see that the new conception of the 
 thh view, problem of knowledge involves our giving a definite 
 meaning to what the very idea of knowledge implies — 
 Truth. Ordinarily understood, truth, as Kant puts 
 it, means the agreement between thought and its 
 Kant's object, held by dualism to be separate. Kant's own 
 theory gave a curious turn to that conception. If 
 the object is the unity of the matter of experience 
 with the conception of understanding, the latter con- 
 taining the function and rule of synthesis which the 
 
 ' This second relation between facts and conceptions is not limited to 
 "scientific " experience. It is the peculiar note of morality and religion. 
 
 view. 
 
Ill ALL EXPERIENCE HAS TRUTH 93 
 
 unity of the object implies, it is clear that the object 
 is not more exclusively matter than form or con- 
 ception. But if thought in any sense "makes the 
 object," "legislates for nature," what comes of the 
 meaning of truth as just defined ? Thought cannot 
 " agree " with its object, if thought is itself a deter- 
 mining condition of the nature of the object, for 
 the very word "agree" implies that the object is 
 something with an independence of its own.^ 
 
 The meaning Kant attaches to truth will hold 
 only when we deal conceptually with what we may 
 call perceptual knowledge, — i.e. where, as in the case 
 of science in the narrowest sense of the term, 
 a sharp distinction is implied between sense per- its narrow 
 ception on the one hand, and judgment and infer- appffca- 
 ence on the other. It concerns relations amongst ''°°- 
 ideas, not "matters of fact," and deals with the 
 connexion between these two factors in the con- 
 stitution of an intelligible experience. It does not 
 refer to any other relation between mind and its 
 object than that in which the object is looked upon 
 as something "given" from without, and the mind is 
 regarded as dealing with it by certain generalising 
 processes peculiar to itself, — as we say "thinking 
 about" the object. It excludes, therefore, from the 
 range of truth the sphere, e.g., of Moral Experience, 
 or again that of Art, and applies essentially to the 
 harmonious relation between mind and its object 
 in the sphere of "science." In these other spheres 
 specifically different expressions are used. Thus, 
 on this view, it would probably be held that in the 
 relation in Art, harmony of feeling was satisfied, in 
 Morality harmony of will. To speak of forms of 
 
 1 The object, of course, is not, in Kant's sense, the " matter " of experience. 
 
94 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 the moral life as more or less "true," would, on 
 Kant's view, be probably considered a misapplication 
 of terms. 
 Truth is The fundamental principle at work in this con- 
 
 m^?^-%s ception of truth is no doubt the unity of mind and 
 mistake, its object. Where this is complete we are said 
 to have, in intellectual experience, "truth." But a 
 moment's reflection shows that this narrower mean- 
 ing is at once inaccurate in its application of that 
 principle, and too restricted in its range. For it takes 
 truth to be in reality a relation between iwo different 
 forms in which the subject and its object are con- 
 nected. The subject belongs to one form of 
 experience, the object to another. It holds truth 
 to be a relation between, say, the perceived object, 
 and reflection about that object. But it is trans- 
 parent that in Perception itself we have a specific 
 relation between subject and object, for Perception 
 is a mode of experience : and in reflection likewise 
 Relativity we have another specific relation between subject 
 andobject. ^'^^ object for the same reason. And the object 
 is no more the same in each case than the attitude 
 of the subject is the same. Both object and subject 
 are different in the two cases. Object and subject 
 are correlative to each other, and an alteration in 
 the one ipso facto means a change in the other. 
 Thus the object of Perception is not the same as the 
 object for Reflection ; and it is no more possible to 
 perceive an object and then think about that same 
 object as it is in Perception, than it is to see a law 
 of nature by opening our eyes. "The laws of the 
 planets," as an astronomer once remarked, "are not 
 written on the sky." 
 
 Hence, the view which supposes that our reflec- 
 
Ill MIND AND ITS CONTENT 95 
 
 tion is "true," because its result "agrees with" 
 sense-fact, makes a twofold mistake. In the first The error 
 place, it seeks to identify the object of Reflec- '"'°f°'^- 
 tion with that of Perception, and thus implicitly 
 neglects to note that each has a distinct object of its 
 own. In the second place, it separates the process of 
 reflection from its own object, takes that process to 
 be something by itself, and looks upon it as dealing 
 with an object which is external to itself, whereas this 
 object really belongs to another sphere of experience 
 altogether. It is true that Reflection and Perception 
 are distinct in our experience : hence the attempt to 
 unify them, which gives rise to the view of truth we 
 are criticising. But it is not true that the elements 
 or factors into which each can be resolved can be so 
 cut loose and separated as to replace one another 
 indifferently, or be transposed from one sphere to 
 another. 
 
 On the other hand the view of truth we are This view 
 opposing is too limited in its range, even if it could °oo "* 
 be accepted as it stands. If the harmonious relation limited. 
 of mind and its object is the fundamental principle 
 in that conception of truth, then why should not the 
 conception apply wherever we have such a relation .'' 
 We can see at once that we must so apply it. 
 For not merely is it not possible, except arbitrarily, 
 to limit it to one form of that relation, but the 
 complete harmony or agreement (as we choose to 
 call it) cannot be attained at all unless when mind is 
 taken in its completeness and related to the object 
 world in its entirety. For what is meant by 
 " mind " in such a statement ? If a particular form 
 of mind {e.g: in Perception or Morality), then clearly 
 mind will never be fully satisfied, fully harmonised 
 
96 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 merely by one such phase of its activity, simply 
 because no particular form can exhaustively realise 
 its nature, satisfy its supreme end. Truth would 
 therefore be unattainable at all if that were meant. 
 But if we mean, as we must, mind in its entirety, 
 mind in its complete unity, then it is impossible to 
 stop short of applying the conception to each and 
 every way in which mind is related to its object. 
 The mind is one, and only attains complete con- 
 sciousness of unity in its relation to the whole of its 
 content, and every relation in which it stands to 
 an object, every part of its experience is merely a 
 partial expression of its completed realisation, a 
 partial form of its "truth." This is saying no more 
 than that truth must be the whole, and cannot be 
 confined to any special form or phase of experi- 
 ence — as the narrow view of truth above given 
 proposes to do. 
 The Now this change in the conception of truth is an 
 
 idealistic essential characteristic of the above view of ex- 
 perience, and follows directly from the nature of its 
 principle. We are no longer to take one form of experi- 
 ence as furnishing truth, and determine the truth of 
 others by means of it. Each has a truth of its own ; all 
 are " truths " for mind as a whole. The Moral Life, 
 or, again. Religion has its own truth, which differs 
 from every other, but has a value all its own which 
 cannot be affected by another phase of experience. 
 Their claim to be true just lies in their claim to be 
 at all. And they claim to exist, simply because mind 
 seeks in each a phase of its complete realisation. 
 Science is not the only means of presenting truth ; 
 it only presents a special form of truth. It is not 
 the only form of knowledge, in the widest sense. 
 
 view. 
 
in "POSSIBILITY OF TRUTH" 97 
 
 for Morality is also a form of conscious relation of 
 subject and object. 
 
 Such a question, again, as the "possibility of"Possi- 
 attaining truth," which is sometimes raised, ceases j'J^'j'^,?^ 
 to have importance from its very indefinite- 
 ness. If it implies a doubt regarding all truth, 
 it is at once meaningless and self- contradictory. 
 It is meaningless to raise a sceptical question 
 regarding the possibility of truth in general, for 
 that question being intelligent implies at least the 
 possibility of a true answer. Again, the very idea of 
 " possibility " implies a standard by which to test 
 something assumed for the moment to be proble- 
 matical. In that sense the question is self-contra- 
 dictory. If, however, it means a particular form of 
 truth may not be possible, we have to ask, in order 
 to make the question definite, which form is referred 
 to by the question. The form of the question seems 
 to imply that there is a single standard for all truth. 
 But such a standard must either be purely formal, or, 
 if it has content, must be a special form of truth 
 taken as the standard for all other forms. A purely 
 formal standard is valueless, for truth is essentially 
 concrete, being the innermost nature of the life of 
 mind. We cannot separate form from content, unity 
 between mind and object, which is the general form, 
 from the actual phase of mind and the actual object 
 between which the unity holds. While if we take 
 one particular form of truth as a standard, this will 
 certainly be arbitrary unless it be the whole. 
 
 It is just such a limitation of the meaning of truth Kant on 
 which gives rise, e.g., to Kant's conception of the oft'ruth?" 
 range of valid knowledge, or again to the position 
 taken up by Descartes at the very outset of his 
 
 H 
 
98 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 philosophical inquiry. If, as Kant held, truth is only- 
 possible when we have sense -experience, then we 
 have restricted the content of truth to begin with, 
 and the whole argument to establish the limits of 
 knowledge and the impossibility of knowing things 
 in themselves apart from sense, is devised to sustain, 
 and is merely a consistent development of, the 
 initial limitation of the range of truth. Alter the 
 conception, and the whole construction of Kant's 
 Critique of Pure Reason has to be revised. The 
 very problem of " the conditions of the possibility of 
 true knowledge " is seen at once to be futile, because 
 it sets up one form of truth as final and yet seeks 
 to examine the conditions of its truth by another 
 form of knowledge, viz. a scientific or philosophical 
 criticism. It is inherently impossible to understand 
 or examine any knowledge except by knowledge 
 itself. Such a problem makes a pretence of restrict- 
 ing truth to one sphere, but is all the while, by its 
 very examination of that sphere, asserting the equal 
 validity of another kind of knowledge, viz. criticism 
 of knowledge. This gives an air of artificiality 
 to the whole argument. At the very best it is no 
 more than an analysis of the conditions of our know- 
 ledge of the external world, of truth regarding the 
 world of Perception, not an analysis of knowledge 
 as a whole. The Critique is, like Locke's Essay or 
 Berkeley's Principles, a chapter on the philosophy 
 of perceptual experience. Beyond this the results 
 are fruitless. It is transparent, for example, that, 
 if we restrict knowledge to perceptual experience, 
 we are bound to fall into inconsistency if we try to 
 go beyond it ; for to try to go beyond it, and yet not 
 be able to go beyond it, is precisely the whole of 
 
in KINDS OF TRUTH 
 
 99 
 
 the inconsistency in question. The ingenuities of 
 the Dialectic in the Critique of Pure Reason are 
 merely illustrations on certain fundamental points of 
 this single inconsistency. So, again, no one in his 
 senses ever supposed that by Perception we could 
 know the truth about what, by its very nature, is 
 assumed to be outside the range of Perception, viz. 
 a thing in itself. As perceived, it is necessarily a 
 thing for us, and what it is outside that condition, 
 i.e. for itself or ''in itself" is obviously beyond the 
 power of Perception to say. 
 
 But for Kant's prejudice in favour of one form of 
 truth, he would have been led to try to justify the 
 very attempt to gain, by other forms of knowledge, 
 certainty regarding what lay beyond perceptions. 
 And this would have involved a change not merely 
 in his view of truth, but in his very conception of a 
 criticism of knowledge. 
 
 Now if truth cannot be taken in any one-sided Kinds and 
 way, we are bound to reject all attempts to limit itsf.^^^^j^y °^ 
 range to one form, or to judge its worth by making and 
 one special kind absolute. And when we do so, there 
 is nothing left but to accept every form of relation 
 between mind and its object as giving, pro tanto, a 
 certain mode of truth. Any realisation of the life 
 of mind is at once experience and truth ; it contains 
 subject and object, and is a form in which the unity 
 of mind with its object is revealed. Such a unity is 
 what we mean by truth. This view means that the 
 worth of no phase of experience shall be sacrificed to 
 the claims of another, and that each will be acknow- 
 ledged as contributing its own amount to the sum- 
 total of truth. Hence, e.g., from this point of view. 
 Religion, or Science, or Morality cannot and need 
 
loo TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 not surrender their truth in the interest of one 
 another ; for each simply presents a different truth 
 for mind, and enriches its life thereby. To set up 
 Science to judge Religion is just as futile as to examine 
 the moral life with our five senses. The mind attains 
 a different satisfaction through each and all of its 
 forms, and, as forms of experience, they cannot dis- 
 agree, because the kind of realisation in each case is 
 different. To take one either as standard for all the 
 others, or as the only valid form, is deliberately to 
 impoverish the meaning of the mind's life — a result 
 which the biographies of specialists in all departments 
 of activity. Art, Science, or Religion, amply testify 
 in a painfully concrete manner. 
 
 The only difficulty, then, which faces this inter- 
 pretation of what truth means, is, how is truth to be 
 distinguished from error or illusion in such a view ? 
 Or, to put it more formally, by what process shall we 
 criticise and connect these various truths so as to 
 show an inherent necessity running through them all ? 
 This raises the question of the method of explaining 
 knowledge. With this we shall deal presently.^ 
 Experi- It is evident, after the foregoing, that we shall 
 also have to reconstrue the ordinary use of the term 
 theory. "experience" in philosophy, if the new problem is 
 to be understood properly, and its position justified. 
 To Kant the problem of knowledge was the analysis 
 of the conditions of what he called a " possible experi- 
 ence." In whatever way the term be understood, it 
 implies quite a distinctive conception of the relation 
 of mind to its experience. The self or ego is looked 
 upon as a self- complete and self- closed abstract 
 entity, over against, and in that sense external to, 
 
 1 Vide Chap. IV. 
 
 ence 
 Kant^ 
 
m SELF IS CONCRETE loi 
 
 which, experience is placed, and with which somehow 
 it gets connected. We may say that it is the aim of 
 Kant's theory to give the conditions of such con- 
 nexion. Experience in this way is confessedly 
 something contingent, so far as the self (or the self 
 functioning through understanding) is concerned. 
 And this Kant states in so many words. It is im- 
 possible, indeed, to give any meaning to such a 
 term unless by taking something to be actual. 
 For a " possible " has only significance by relation 
 to something definitely secured and fixed. But 
 such a conception must in that case be essentially 
 abstract and empty for two reasons. We cannot, in 
 the first place, divorce the concrete self from its 
 actual experience ; yet to give meaning to that con- 
 ception we must do so, for a "possible" experience 
 implies a self without experience, i.e. a purely inde- 
 terminate abstract ego, an ego that is not yet realised, 
 an ego implicitly. Possible experience, when applied 
 not to a particular content but to the whole, is cor- 
 relative to and distinguished from an abstract self, 
 a self that is to be. On the other hand, an 
 experience which is only possible is itself indeter- 
 minate, and in that sense empty of content. Such a 
 conception cannot in itself be effective in determin- 
 ing actual knowledge as distinct from problematical 
 assertion. Yet it is only in reference to such a con- 
 ception that "a priority," which has its source in the 
 mind apart from such experience, gets its value and 
 significance for experience. It is easy to see from 
 this how the a priori conceptions of which Kant 
 speaks come to be "empty" in themselves. Their 
 emptiness is simply due to their being functions of 
 an empty self, an abstract ego, that ego which is 
 
ence is 
 concrete. 
 
 I02 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 assumed to be per se divorced from experience, and 
 is a bare potentiality. They are merely different 
 phases of that indeterminate functioning entity.^ 
 Experi- Now it seems obvious that the only experience 
 
 we have to deal with is actual concrete experience, 
 and that this is not the experience of an abstract ego, 
 but of a living ego in a perpetual state of activity, 
 an ego ceaselessly realising itself. If we take the 
 standpoint of actual life we shall refuse to make 
 any separation between an ego and its realisation, 
 between a mind and its "environment" of experi- 
 ence. For the self is never the mere possibility of 
 having experience as a whole ; it always is a definite 
 form or mode of experience. And it is no more 
 possible to separate experience and self than the 
 members from the organism : the members are the 
 organism in its diversity, the organism is its members 
 in their unity. The term "possible" only has a 
 meaning on the basis of actual experience. We can, 
 therefore, never get to the point of view from which 
 all experience is a mere possibility, not because this 
 is beyond our capacity, but because it is self-contra- 
 dictory. The term " possible experience " cannot be 
 used as a regulative condition by reference to which 
 certain abstract functions in our minds are to get a 
 value. The functions (or notions as Kant calls them) 
 are not there in any sense until there is experience ; 
 they are only in experience. It is just as true 
 that experience makes them possible as that they 
 make experience possible. Rather, there is no mere 
 possibility in either case : experience is actual in 
 them, they are actual in experience. " Possible 
 
 ' One would have supposed that at least the diversity of their functions 
 would imply a certain amount of content in the ego to constitute their difference. 
 
m KANT'S USE OF EXPERIENCE 103 
 
 experience " thus can only mean what may fall inside 
 the range of the life of mind as it is actually con- 
 stituted, something that may come about on the 
 tasis of the actual. It can only apply to an implicit 
 but not yet explicit stage of experience, and can 
 never apply to experience as a whole. Experience 
 as a whole cannot be contingent, since within ex- 
 perience both contingency and necessity fall, and 
 experience itself provides the ground of distinction 
 between the two. Experience is through and through 
 actual, and actual by its bare existence. All the 
 distinctions drawn within experience are the result of 
 analysing its content and are merely elements of its 
 nature. For that reason there is no going beyond 
 experience, and no standard or point of reference 
 external to it, to serve as a ground for determining it. 
 This would be self-evident but for the ambiguity 
 of the term itself. It is this ambiguity which created 
 Kant's position. For him that was primarily an judgment 
 objective judgment of experience, in which we have "^cT^^" 
 necessary unity of the elements of the sensible or 
 perceptual world. It is not always easy to say 
 whether it was the unity or the perceptual content 
 which was most emphasised in the term experience ; 
 in any case both were essential to his conception of 
 the term. But this compelled him to adopt the 
 paradox that there were large tracts of conscious 
 life which yet fell outside experience. These were, 
 e.g., on the one side, what he called judgments of 
 perception, and on the other, the whole field of 
 absolute or pure morality. There could be no 
 reason for excluding these from the scope of the 
 term except one, viz. that a particular and limited 
 meaning had been attached to experience. In 
 
experi- 
 
 104 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 different systems of philosophy, and in common life 
 also, one form of experience is often taken as the 
 Selected standard and type of all experience whatsoever. It 
 is of no importance which form we take so far as the 
 ultimate issue is concerned. For in every case we 
 shall find that much of conscious activity and 
 conscious life is held to fall outside experience, 
 simply because it does not fall inside the limited 
 interpretation we have put on experience at the 
 start. The mode of experience fixed upon is not 
 always the same. Sometimes, e.g., in crude em- 
 piricism, sensuous experience, pure and simple, is 
 looked upon as experience in the strict sense, and 
 whatever cannot be expressed in terms of sense is 
 rejected as either probable or illusion. At another 
 time scientific law or mechanical order is the type, 
 and everything else valued accordingly. Or, again, 
 the moral order or the religious life may be taken 
 as the primary reality, and the rest of experience 
 becomes a show or mere appearance, even in 
 certain cases an illusion. Any of the chief types 
 of experience may be taken as fundamental and 
 alone real, from mere sensuousness up to mere 
 religiousness. Which type is adopted depends on 
 the kind of mind or spiritual individuality, and 
 varies not merely from individual to individual but 
 from race to race. All agree simply in their 
 rejection of every other mode of experience in 
 preference to the one regarded as primary. Such 
 a procedure, what we may call the human selec- 
 tion of the real in experience, is thus not con- 
 fined to philosophical systems, but characterises the 
 whole history of the life of humanity. It may be 
 looked on as the outgrowth of the universal fact. 
 
Ill EXPERIENCE AS A WHOLE 105 
 
 which is at the same time the universal necessity, 
 of that selective interest which governs all finite 
 individual experience. But whereas this is merely 
 a difference of emphasis in ordinary life, it becomes 
 a metaphysical principle when the phase selected 
 is exaggerated into the norm for reality as a 
 whole. 
 
 There seems only one way of escape from the Universal 
 inconsistency which must arise when one phase of gj^^"'" 
 experience is adopted as ultimate. We must take 
 experience in its most comprehensive meaning as 
 the starting-point from which to proceed in our 
 constructive analysis of what it contains. We must 
 start, in other words, from the whole of experience as 
 such. This is the only principle from which to pro- 
 ceed to work. It is necessary to do so if the part is 
 to be properly interpreted, for any phase can only 
 be regarded as a specific phase by looking at it 
 apart from a whole ; the particular form is the 
 result of analysis of the whole, however that analysis 
 may be brought about. And it is possible to do so, 
 if we have a sufficiently comprehensive conception 
 of what the unity of experience is ; for a whole is a 
 unity. Every experience is actual and concrete, and The whole 
 the whole is the absolutely concrete. The unity, ence f"' 
 therefore, cannot be an abstract unity, it must what. 
 contain that diversity which gives concreteness 
 and individuality. The principle of unity can thus 
 be neither an abstract ideal end, nor an abstract 
 indeterminate basis, but an active ground of differ- 
 entiation. Now we take experience as a whole 
 when we look upon the subject-mind, in which alone 
 experience exists, as the centre to which all forms 
 of experience refer and round which they gather. 
 
io6 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 The wholeness of experience is just the completed 
 expression for the unity of the subject-mind which 
 pervades it and owns it. The ground of unity is 
 thus what we call mind or self-conscious Spirit. 
 Experience in its concreteness is a manifestation in 
 time and space; it is embodied, and covers the 
 whole life of conscious activity wheresoever found. 
 But this is precisely human history. The experi- 
 ence of mind is the appearance of mind in time, 
 is its history, its realised existence. The actual 
 mind at work in experience is individual mind. 
 Hence on the one side to analyse and systematise 
 experience as a whole means to interpret and con- 
 nect the historical manifestations of human in- 
 dividuality. On the other side, it is to disclose the 
 nature of an individual mind taken as the type of all 
 forms in which individuality may appear in human 
 history, it is to trace the ways in which a generalised 
 or typical individual mind would show its activity. 
 It must be general, because all human experience is 
 what we are considering ; and it must be individual, 
 because experience is only concrete in individual 
 minds. In a sense, of course, all human experience 
 is every one's experience : but it is equally clear that 
 all experience is not explicitly so. Much remains 
 implicit even for the richest mind, though all is in 
 principle possible for the poorest. Human experience 
 is the expression of one self-consciousness, but its full 
 expression requires the entire activity of combined 
 human effort and struggle. Humanity is in that 
 sense a unity, and the individual whom we consider 
 in dealing with experience as a whole must there- 
 fore be a representative, typical, or generalised in- 
 dividual mind. Now it is just this comprehensive 
 
m APPEAL TO EXPERIENCE 107 
 
 scope which is here given to the meaning of the 
 term experience; and the actual starting-point for 
 discussion is the concrete experience of a typical 
 individual mind as it historically exists in the life of 
 humanity. 
 
 It is clear from this that the "appeal to "Appeal 
 experience," which every philosophy professes to ence^""^"' 
 make, and which all knowledge professes to claim, 
 whether for verification of conclusions or correction 
 of the process of reflection upon its meaning, has 
 quite a different significance on this view from, 
 e.g., that of Kant. The experience appealed to in 
 Kant's case must necessarily have a perceptual char- 
 acter and content. This determines the range of 
 possibility. This can only be appealed to by what 
 is accepted as in some way apart from it, outside it. 
 Conceptions as such are examples of such entities 
 outside Perception. Yet these have a nature of their 
 own, a nature not found in perceptual experience alone. 
 This Kant himself acknowledges explicitly when deal- 
 ing with Morality, where he states a specific condition 
 which can give these conceptions a value, viz. self- 
 consistency. This gives thought as such a necessity 
 distinct from the necessity which concerns perceptual 
 experience. This twofold test of worth which Kant 
 employs, and is forced to adopt, illustrates the im- 
 possibility of taking one phase of the content of mind 
 as alone valid, and indicates the limited character of 
 experience in Kant's view. The very meaning of an 
 "appeal" to experience implies the existence of some- 
 thing apart from it, but yet in some way connected 
 with it. In short, the appeal must be made from one 
 part to another part, or from one part to the whole as 
 such. The former is impossible if one part is taken 
 
io8 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 to be peculiarly experience ; the latter is impossible 
 if the part is treated as external to the whole. The 
 only meaning that can be attached to the phrase 
 "appeal to experience" is that one element finds 
 somehow a place in the ordered connectedness of the 
 whole. What that place is depends on the nature 
 of the element. The appeal is different in each case, 
 for one form of experience differs from another. 
 Thus what would be a test of experience in the case 
 of Morality would not be adequate in the case of 
 Sense-life or in the case of Scientific Knowledge. 
 The whole question, therefore, turns on the essential 
 nature of experience, and of the way in which its 
 parts are to be connected. 
 Experi- Experience always implies a relation between 
 
 what. two distinct elements : the one is that for which 
 something is, and the other the something which 
 is presented. These are the so-called subject and 
 object. Sometimes the term experience, in ordinary 
 use, designates this relation along with its factors, 
 as when we say "such an event was an experience" : 
 sometimes it means the relation per se, as when we 
 speak of ourselves "having an experience", or "ex- 
 periencing something " : sometimes again the objec- 
 tive aspect is emphasised, sometimes the subjective. 
 But in every case there is implied or expressed 
 a duality of elements within the continuity of their 
 relation. ■' 
 
 This will be found to hold when the term is applied 
 derivatively to inanimate things or, again, to living 
 beings in general. Primarily the term refers to 
 conscious life where there is a conscious distinction 
 
 ^ Cp. " The proper unit of our experience from first to last is the total con- 
 tent of any moment of consciousness." — Adamson, Lectures, vol. i. p. 292. 
 
Ill NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 109 
 
 of the object factor from the subject factor. Here 
 experience is the interrelation of a subject with 
 what is consciously present to it — its object. Object 
 implies a subject just as subject implies object. 
 The relation between the two, again, is not external, 
 as if the one could be without the other. The 
 being of the one simply implies, because it refers to, 
 the other; subject exists through relation to object 
 and vice versa. 
 
 What the nature of the relation between the 
 two is, cannot be answered apart from experience. 
 For this implies that we must find a more ultimate The 
 term than experience to furnish the answer. If this r^g^'dUng 
 cannot be given without a contradiction in terms, experi- 
 then the answer to the question must be furnished by 
 experience itself. It can only be given when experi- 
 ence as a whole is developed. What the relation 
 is, means either of two things : ( i ) how did it arise, 
 (2) how is it determined, or what does it aim at? 
 These are the only ultimate questions about experi- 
 ence. One is answered by genetic psychology ; ^ the 
 other is found by tracing the forms through which 
 experience passes. The nature of the relation will 
 differ with the sphere of experience we are con- 
 sidering. In some cases it seems a kind of inter- 
 action, e.g. in the life of Sense : in other cases the 
 emphasis seems to rest with the subject, e.g. in the 
 Moral Life : in others again with the object, as in 
 the case of scientific knowledge, when, as we say, 
 the nature of the object ' determines the current of 
 our ideas.' 
 
 The only question we can properly ask regarding Subject 
 these ultimate factors in experience is what specifically object. 
 
 ' On the genesis of the distinction, cp. Adamson, Lectures, vol. i. part v. c. I . 
 
no TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE ch- 
 
 distinguishes subject from object. The answer to 
 that can be best found if we take a typical and 
 characteristic form in which the terms subject and 
 object are found. This is found when mind is con- 
 trasted with nature. Nature is that which is over 
 against, presented to, mind. Mind is "subject," 
 nature is " object." This is the point of view taken 
 up by all science and ordinary life. The distinguish- 
 ing feature of subject is here self- determination, 
 self-sufficiency, or generally reference to self as one 
 and single. That is subject which can be conscious 
 of self as such, which can consciously refer to self. 
 Object here is that which is referred to self, that 
 whose completeness lies in something beyond the 
 sphere of its own reality. It is that which in 
 consciousness is for something else. A subject is 
 that which in consciousness is for itself. In other 
 words, in conscious experience a subject is inherently 
 self-referrent and self-dependent, an object as such 
 essentially points to and is dependent on something 
 else.^ And wherever we have subject and object 
 constituting experience these will be found to be 
 their essential characteristics. 
 
 Subject and object being the elements in the 
 unity of experience, subject is that which is for 
 itself through the object ; in being conscious of the 
 object it is conscious of self by referring that object 
 to itself. The object is that which is for the subject 
 in virtue of the activity of the subject ; it has no 
 being except for a subject. This is the conception 
 
 ^ Hence the general character of " objectivity " in experience is "outness," 
 " extendedness," i.e. reference of content to what is external to its immediate 
 existence. This seems a consequence of the above distinction, not the 
 source of it. Cp. Adamson, loc. cit. ; also Fichte, Bestimmung des Menschen, 
 Book II. 
 
Ill KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE iii 
 
 of the factors of experience with which we start 
 and with which we work. Here we are concerned 
 merely to interpret what this implies. 
 
 We can see that this conception of experience Know- 
 must identify experience and knowledge, in the g^'^jCTi!"'^ 
 general sense of awareness of objects. It is clear «"=«• 
 from what has been said that there is no restriction 
 whatsoever in the content of experience ; wherever 
 we have a conscious subject aware of an object, 
 there we have experience. Everything that can be 
 an object enters an experience. And it is equally 
 clear that the range of the objective world is limited 
 only by the self- reference of the subject. What- 
 ever it can refer to itself is ipso facto an object. 
 But if mere self-reference is all that is required to 
 constitute subjectivity, it can distinguish itself from 
 everything and anything, even from itself. Hence 
 every element and aspect of experience can be made 
 an object for a consciousness, even what we may call 
 experience as a whole. This last, in fact, is actually 
 the case when the mind raises the philosophical 
 question as to the meaning of experience as such ; 
 it thereby makes the whole as such its object. 
 Now in all these possible attitudes in which subject 
 is related to object, their fundamental characteristic 
 seems certainly cognitive. There seems no reason 
 why consciousness of objects should not be de- 
 scribed as knowledge ; or that all possible modes of 
 such consciousness should not be called experience. 
 But it must be noted that here knowledge means 
 neither more nor less than consciousness of some- 
 thing, whatever that something be. We are well 
 aware of the difference between reflective, observa- 
 tional, or perceptual knowledge when we use the 
 
112 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 term knowledge as equivalent to experience in 
 general. Scientific knowledge, for example, is 
 merely a specific way in which consciousness can 
 be aware of an object ; but this does not restrict 
 knowledge specially to Science. It does not involve 
 a confusion between psychologically distinct pro- 
 cesses, e.g. those of cognition and willing. These 
 processes are in any case only abstractly separable ; 
 the mind always acts as a unity in all.^ The 
 essential point is that wherever we have experience, 
 consciousness must be aware of something. The 
 way in which it is aware of course differs, and this 
 makes the difference in the experience. But there 
 must be awareness of something ; and to be con- 
 scious of something is, in its universal acceptation, 
 knowing something. All this, in point of fact, 
 follows from the difference already noted between 
 the above view of experience and Kant's. 
 Summary. Such, then, is how we are to determine the 
 significance of the various stages of experience in 
 the light of and by the aid of self-consciousness 
 as the fundamental principle. The various forms 
 have all a worth, and each contains a truth. None 
 is able to exhaust the full meaning of self-conscious- 
 ness. Hence the only alternative is to regard them 
 all as necessary modes of its life; and the only 
 method of arrangement is that of an order according 
 to degree of realisation of the one principle in all. 
 In this way we can justify the rejection of all one- 
 sidedness in experience ; and meet the difficulty, 
 in the way of any monistic view of knowledge, as 
 to how truth and falsehood are to be interpreted. 
 This difficulty is overcome in the case of dualism 
 
 ' Vide p. 1 08, note. 
 
Ill NATURE OF INTERPRETATION 113 
 
 by setting up one form of truth as final, e.g. that 
 of perceptual experience, or of conceptual connexion, 
 and then determining every other expression of 
 knowledge by reference to this as a test. The 
 denial of dualism, and this interpretation of ex- 
 perience are thus closely related. 
 
 It is to be noted, in conclusion, that we are not The leai 
 concerned here with any such analysis of the 'i"^^'^'°°- 
 machinery of knowledge as is given by Kant or 
 Locke. There is one and the same question asked 
 at each stage : how does a given form of knowledge 
 hold together and relate the ultimate factors deter- 
 mining and constituting all knowledge, all experi- 
 ence ? ; how is unity amid the diversity of subject and 
 object sustained ? We have, e.g., in dealing with 
 Perception or Morality to bring out the " truth " of 
 Perception, the "truth" of Moral Experience. We 
 reduce the various forms of experience to their uni- 
 versal constituents, and determine how each realises 
 its unity in them. When this is done, we have all 
 the knowledge of the nature of a given mode of 
 knowledge which a theory of experience can 
 demand. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 PLAN AND STAGES OF THE ARGUMENT 
 
 The mode How then is experience so conceived to be inter- 
 pretation, preted? We cannot ask, as we have said, what 
 are the conditions of the possibility of experience. 
 There can, in the long run, be no way of finding 
 how experience is possible except by entering the 
 field of experience itself. The experience which 
 is to be is continuous with that which is. What 
 we must do, then, is to take experience as it is in its 
 totality, and to find controlling it such a necessity 
 as an absolute explanation requires. We must try 
 to bring into connected inner coherence the variety 
 of experience given as historically discrete. We 
 can neither rise above experience nor go below it, 
 if we would explain it as a whole. We must, there- 
 fore, find the connexion within experience itself. 
 Experi- This does not mean that ordinary experience is 
 
 ""sdf-ex- self-explaining, in the sense that we need not think 
 plaining." about it at all. Ordinary experience is precisely 
 without "explanation" at all. Its rationality is not 
 self-evident; it merely is. It can be rational 
 as well as a conscious fact only if this be made 
 manifest by the long way of reflective compre- 
 hension. When it is commonly said "experience 
 explains itself," what is meant is that experience is 
 
 114 
 
IV EXPERIENCE SELF-EXPLAINING 115 
 
 the direct and immediate content of a conscious life, 
 and beyond this we cannot and need not go. That 
 is of course true ; but it is not an explanation. It 
 is merely an assertion that we never go beyond 
 experience, which is to say no more than that 
 experience is experience. An explanation requires 
 a special effort to fulfil a special end, an end lying 
 beyond the range of desire and outside the interest 
 of many conscious lives. The statement, however, 
 may be said to be true in the sense that experience 
 contains within its scope, and will furnish, the ex- 
 planation which has to be given. The explanation 
 merely brings out the necessity inherent within 
 experience, throughout all its phases. Therein, 
 too, lies the truth of the statement that "experi- 
 ence must verify explanation," that "philosophy 
 must start from and in its result agree with 
 experience." Such a statement is self-evident if 
 the explanation given by philosophy is one which 
 shows how experience connects its various phases 
 by a law at work in the very nature of experience ; 
 if, in other words, the explanation has to show that 
 the necessity of reason, which philosophy seeks, is 
 the reason of the necessity which experience itself 
 implicitly contains. 
 
 That, then, is the only kind of attitude we can 
 take up to experience if we would explain it com- 
 pletely. To answer the question thus will solve the 
 very problem which Kant and Locke raised about 
 the nature of knowledge as restricted to the narrow 
 range of Perception or Science. For the warrant Necessity 
 for the certainty and necessity in such knowledge j"j''°°"" 
 is given if we show how scientific and perceptual 
 activity are necessary forms of the experience of con- 
 
ii6 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT ch. 
 
 scious mind. The question regarding their necessary 
 validity arises simply because they are different 
 functions of mind, which can be distinguished, 
 and which act separately. Their very isolation 
 creates the problem of their value for experience : 
 what do they contribute to the whole if they are a 
 part? what is their necessity if they are separate 
 and to that extent externally related ? Now ultim- 
 ate necessity lies with the whole. Experience in its 
 entirety is in the long run the only principle of 
 necessity; "necessity of thought" is in the long 
 run identical with "necessity of fact." Hence to 
 fit each function into its place in experience is to 
 give it the necessity belonging to it. And that is 
 precisely the way we have to answer the problems 
 of Hume and Kant. There can be no problem 
 as to how we are to satisfy thought regarding 
 necessity in Science, or in perceptual experience, 
 because thought so taken is itself knowledge, and 
 knowledge is not something on one side and the 
 criticism of it something on the other. Both are 
 knowledge, and criticism of knowledge is essentially 
 self-criticism. Nor again is "knowledge" on one 
 side and "mere perception" on the other. Both 
 are knowledge, and both in any case are experience. 
 Criticism of the necessity in perceptual experience 
 is therefore again self-criticism of experience. 
 To Hence the statement of the connectedness of 
 
 to°expkia. experience is at once the satisfaction of rationality 
 and the expression of necessity in the content of 
 experience. We cannot get outside it. Our inter- 
 pretation is itself a phase of our experience, which 
 experience itself must connect with other phases or 
 forms. Experience must contain our explanation of 
 
IV EXPLANATION IS CONNECTION ii; 
 
 it just as much as our explanation construes experi- 
 ence. That is the only way our explanation can be 
 true ; and such an explanation must in the nature of 
 the case be true because it shows our explanation to 
 be a necessary moment of experience itself. This 
 means, in a word, that experience is self-explaining if 
 we can find a way of connecting its diverse moments 
 which will fit every aspect of it into its place in 
 the whole. Such a method of explanation must 
 lie in experience itself, be inherent in the very 
 life of it. It will not be simply objective, though 
 it will be so in the sense that the content of experi- 
 ence is controlled by the method independent of 
 merely individual selection and subjective caprice. 
 That is, it will be objective in the sense of com- 
 pletely universal, holding of each phase and at 
 each stage, comprehending the whole in its sweep. 
 It will, again, not be merely subjective, though it 
 will be subjective in the sense that the subject 
 mind is involved all along and must find that the 
 connexion established completely satisfies its con- 
 sciousness of unity. But that will free the connexion 
 from the contingency of individual caprice, mere 
 private interest and demand. In other words, it will 
 be subjective and universal at the same time, which 
 means it will be universal mind or mind as universal 
 whose unity will be expressed. The connexion has 
 to be both objective and subjective. It will be an 
 " absolute " connexion. The method of explanation 
 will have to be an " absolute " method. This is 
 essential, since experience itself is both subjective 
 and objective at once, and since beyond experience 
 there is nothing. Experience is relative to nothing 
 outside itself, and since it is the absolutely real, the 
 
ii8 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT ch. 
 
 method of explanation must be absolutely final ; the 
 connexion is to lie in the very nature of experience. 
 This is all that is meant by a method being 
 "absolute." It does not mean that the thinker 
 himself has given the final truth, but merely that 
 there is no other way by which complete explanation 
 can be attained, however successfully or unsuccess- 
 fully any individual thinker works with it. And 
 indeed this claim is justifiable and its truth self- 
 evident. For clearly a method of explanation, 
 which is not bound up with the contingency of 
 individual caprice or the contingency of external 
 objective fact, must be the ne plus ultra of explana- 
 tion. It is experience "explaining" itself; and that 
 surely is absolute explanation. The only doubt 
 which remains is the doubt about any given attempt 
 to express it, whether it has been in any system, 
 or can be in general, successfully carried out. 
 How it Now the way by which we may proceed 
 
 proceeds ^^ gi^^ such an explanation is shortly this. Ex- 
 to work, perience is, we saw, realised at once in individual 
 minds and yet in no given individual mind 
 completely. It takes all the diversity of finite 
 mind to experience all that can fall within man's 
 experience. With man's experience as a whole 
 we are alone concerned, for this is the only experi- 
 ence historically realised. The Divine Mind is 
 a conscious experience for man, and hence the 
 discussion of it falls within man's province. We 
 could not think of it unless it fell inside our 
 experience in some way. The religious aspect of 
 experience is where most obviously and generally 
 finite experience specifically and deliberately realises 
 the life of Absolute Spirit ; and hence the Divine 
 
IV EXPERIENCE IS INDIVIDUAL 119 
 
 Mind as such comes up for definite consideration 
 when the religious experience of finite mind is 
 discussed. Whatever the real nature of such 
 experience, it is none the less finite experience 
 with which we are dealing. The same is true of 
 the experience called Philosophy. It may tell us 
 all we really know of Absolute Spirit, but it falls 
 inside individual experience like everything else, 
 and must be considered as a phase of it. Even, 
 therefore, though it should turn out that in certain 
 moods in experience we consciously seek to over- 
 come finitude as such, they are still moods of finite 
 experience in the first instance, and take their place 
 amongst others.^ To find, then, all that the experi- 
 ence of finite mind contains we must deal at once 
 with individuals, and with the whole of man's ex- 
 perience as historically revealed. We may look on 
 human experience as the experience of a compre- 
 hensive individual, an individual who can or may 
 live through all finite experience. If we take as 
 the subject mind of finite experience what we have 
 called a typical individual mind, we will do justice 
 at once to the totality of human experience in all 
 its diversity, and the individual form in which all 
 finite experience is realised. 
 
 Taking then such an individual as the centre ns two 
 of experience, we can look on the explanation of^P^*^''" 
 experience in two distinct ways. We may try to 
 show how the one individual mind assumes the 
 various forms in which experience appears. We may 
 explain experience as a series of forms which the 
 
 1 The distinction of finite mind from finite mind is no doubt a fixed, and 
 that between finite and absolute mind a vanishing distinction, but in both cases 
 finiteness has a positive significance. 
 
I20 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT ch. 
 
 individual mind adopts in the process of realising 
 itself in experience : or we may regard experience 
 as the content which fills or can fill the life of the 
 individual mind. In the one case we look upon 
 experience from the point of view of concrete 
 individual mind : in the other from the point of 
 view of a universal mind. In the former experience 
 is the expression or manifestation of the essence of 
 individual mind, and is realised by its self-conscious 
 activity ; in the other experience is the content so 
 expressed, the completed result. These two ways 
 are possible because experience has a subjective 
 and an objective aspect, it is at once subjective and 
 objective. And since they are inseparable, the two 
 ways of dealing with experience are merely aspects 
 of the same process. 
 Unity of We must not think of subject and object as two 
 and*"^' things separate and external from one another. 
 object This gfives us dualism pure and simple. They are 
 different aspects of a single identity. The object 
 world is experience all in its diversity, the subject 
 world is experience focussed in its unity. The real 
 distinction, therefore, is not between two things 
 subject and object, but between experience in its 
 diversity, and experience in its unity. The former 
 is objectivity pure and simple, the latter is 
 subjectivity pure and simple. Because of the 
 distinction between finite individuality and universal 
 experience, the distinction between experience as 
 objective and individual mind may assume the form 
 of a contrast between a particular self, over against 
 which stands the totality of experience ; and the 
 one seems outside the other, external to it. But 
 the whole life of an individual mind is the perpetual 
 
IV COMPLETE EXPERIENCE 121 
 
 refutation of this opposition ; it is an incessant 
 assertion of the identity between a finite individuality 
 and complete experience. The finite individual 
 mind has a relation to the content of human experi- 
 ence as a whole — the content of universal mind — 
 exactly similar to that between the momentary 
 focus of a given individual's attention and the whole 
 range of his presentational content. As the latter 
 are continuous and inseparable so are the former. 
 
 Because of the contrast between an individual The 
 mind and its completely explicit experience, the Sivoives 
 relation between the two is necessarily one that is history. 
 realised historically. The individual mind is not 
 all at once the whole of experience as found in 
 the life of humanity. It expresses experience in 
 consciously distinct forms or stages, which are 
 modes of its own complete life. Experience is 
 realised in moments which are consciously successive 
 to one another. From the point of view of the 
 individual mind experience is a variety of historical 
 appearances, it is a series of phenomena in the 
 process of an individual life. To trace these stages 
 and connect these appearances by constant reference 
 to the ideal form which, as we said, they all imply, 
 is to give a connected account of the phenomena 
 of the life of individual- mind. It is what we may 
 call a Phenomenology of Mind. 
 
 The question to be answered is, how in the in- The 
 dividual's life is a given special subject-object relation brsoived.° 
 constituted so as to make a specific experience ? On 
 the one hand, how does the subject-mind specifically 
 function in reference to a specific object-content of its 
 experience ? On the other, how does a determinate 
 object-content constitute part of the life-history of 
 
122 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT ch. 
 
 an individual mind. The inquiry is carried out by 
 means of a constant implicit and explicit reference 
 to the ideal of experience. Hence to answer this 
 question is at once to state the truth a given 
 experience contains or aims at, and to determine 
 the plane or level of experience it occupies. It is 
 precisely the same question that is put from one 
 end of experience to another, and precisely the 
 same method of answering the question must 
 be adopted. The fact that it is of the same mind 
 that each question is asked ensures that the way of 
 answering it will merely vary with what the 
 experience is, and establishes a continuous con- 
 nexion between all the forms in which the mind 
 appears. 
 
 We have to take account of both subject and 
 object at once, for the one changes with the other. 
 The one is relative to the other, because both con- 
 stitute what we mean by the individual's experience. 
 And because we are dealing with the individual 
 mind, the specific experience will imply a specific 
 attitude of the mind in that experience. Subject 
 activity and conscious content involve each other. 
 Thus we can read the meaning of experience in the 
 life-history of a typical or generalised individual 
 soul. Completely carried out, then, we have here 
 the answer to the question as to the nature of 
 experience.^ 
 
 ' When we drop the reference to the individual's experience and cease to 
 regard the content of experience as phases of the life-history of the individual 
 mind, experience falls into its component constituents, each separate and self- 
 contained. What are stages from the point of view of an individual's experi- 
 ence are distinct areas of reality when taken by themselves. What are 
 fragments of a single experience are wholes when we eliminate, or treat as a 
 kind of constant and invariable co-efficient, the individual whose experience 
 they together constitute. They can therefore be dealt with by themselves as 
 
IV THE STARTING-POINT 123 
 
 When we take knowledge or experience, as we How to 
 shall call it, in the sense adopted by Hegel, it is at ^^^ 
 first sight difficult to see where and how to begin 
 the interpretation of it. All ordinary methods of 
 procedure fail us ; because these in general start by 
 assuming one phase of experience as ultimate or 
 primary. To explain experience in such cases con- 
 sists in finding how other aspects of conscious life 
 are related to the one we fix upon, whether by way of 
 derivation from it or reference to it as the source of 
 validity. In our case no such assumptions are 
 made, and the task of interpretation is correspond- 
 ingly greater. When we look at conscious experi- 
 ence historically, or phenomenologically, and seek 
 to show its inner coherence, we might in a sense 
 begin anywhere, with any of the forms in which 
 experience appears. Since, as we have seen, the 
 same kind of question is asked at all parts of 
 experience, the analysis could be carried out from 
 any point. But clearly this would not tend to 
 produce the coherent connexion amongst all parts 
 which is required. For this purpose we must know 
 both how to proceed and where to begin. Now 
 while an absolute beginning cannot in the nature of 
 
 separate areas of reality, each with diverse content of its own, which can 
 be rationally connected. Since individual mind must necessarily appear 
 historically, this way of interpreting experience must differ from that of a 
 Phenomenology, but only to the extent of making no reference to the modes 
 of the life of individual mind. Now experience has a varied content : religious 
 life, art, morality, what we call nature, organic and inorganic, science with 
 all its various conceptions, etc. All these, then, can be handled from this 
 point of view. All may be shown to be rationally constituted, resolvable into 
 terms of reason. The various scientific constructions of these different parts 
 of experience make up the entire range of the world of universal reason ; and 
 these appear as Philosophy of Law, Religion, Art, Logic, etc. The method 
 of procedure will be here determined by the nature of reason itself, a nature 
 which is of the essence of the self-consciousness. 
 
124 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT ch. 
 
 the case be merely assumed, we must assume that 
 which makes any beginning possible, viz. the end 
 which is to be attained. This determines not 
 merely that there is a beginning but -what the 
 beginning must be. To that extent our inter- 
 pretation of experience rests on an assumption. 
 But this is inevitable. For we have to establish a 
 certain result, namely, a connected experience, and 
 we cannot put this down, so to say, all at once. It 
 has to be realised by a process, and that process 
 must have a beginning and a conscious determin- 
 ing purpose from first to last. Our assumption is 
 no more than such a determining purpose. From 
 this the beginning is derived, and by this the con- 
 nexion is established. It is not as such given by 
 experience ; for this falls into discrete moments or 
 modes. The absence of connexion is precisely 
 what calls for a philosophy of experience. 
 Assump- No doubt what we may call the "mood" of 
 
 phiio- philosophy is given in experience ; it is a phase of 
 sophy. jj.g ijfg_ gy^- tijg ^ay phUosophy is to accomplish 
 
 its task is not given ; it has to be found and brought 
 to light. Since it is not there to begin with, it must 
 be assumed till it is established. And therein lies 
 the peculiarity of the above assumption. It does 
 not remain an assumption ; the working out of the 
 connexion aimed at by philosophy removes from 
 the assumption the characteristic of contingency and 
 arbitrariness which would cast an initial doubt on its 
 validity, and thus gives what was assumed the attri- 
 bute of necessity. To establish an assumption is to 
 destroy its nature as an assumption ; it is to " prove " 
 it. In other words, the assumption is only such at 
 the outset of the argument, not at the end. The 
 
IV PRESUPPOSITIONS 125 
 
 argument itself makes the assumption a truth, or 
 " proves " it. This is what is meant when it is 
 said philosophy must do without any presuppositions, 
 if it is to be accepted. Not that we cannot use 
 assumptions in any sense ; but all assumptions must 
 be established by philosophy itself, and so cease to 
 be simply assumptions. They are merely required 
 by the conditions of philosophical procedure. Their 
 content finds its own place in the same system which 
 they determine. When the system is completed, 
 therefore, it contains no presuppositions. 
 
 In this way we can get over an initial difficulty other 
 which seems to be avoided, but in reality is not ^^n°[„g. 
 avoided, by those who take as ultimate a certain 
 mode of experience, e.g. Sense-experience, and then 
 proceed to explain all other phases of experience 
 by reducing or referring them to that one form. 
 Their procedure is ostensibly simple, and they can 
 begin with that type of reality which they regard as 
 ultimate. This is the plan adopted by Sensation- 
 alism, or by Empiricism generally. Its success 
 is merely apparent, however, because it fails in 
 the nature of the case to prove that this type of 
 experience is itself ultimately valid ; or, again, it 
 fails to show how other modes of experience derive 
 all their content from this one type without already 
 in some way implying their content in that type. 
 This objection has been repeatedly pointed out in 
 the history of philosophy, and is the substance of 
 the objections made against Empiricism by an 
 idealistic critic like Green. 
 
 The plan proposed, while thus apparently more 
 difficult than that of other methods of interpretation, 
 really accomplishes, provided it can be carried out, all 
 
126 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT cii. 
 
 that is required by complete philosophical theory, a 
 theory which establishes its own necessity and pre- 
 supposes nothing. But it is clear that it rests on a 
 Phiio- peculiar view of the nature of "proof." Proof, in 
 proof!"^' general, usually assumes at some stage in its process 
 a provisional character whether it be in its premises, 
 or in its results, or in its conditions. And, indeed, 
 proof without conditions seems a contradiction in 
 terms, since it is a means of relating incompletely 
 intelligible parts of a whole to one another. On the 
 above view, proof, to be complete or absolute, must 
 be without conditions or qualifications ; for there is 
 nothing to condition its worth or absoluteness ; it 
 deals with the whole as a whole. The actual 
 "proof" that the method is true consists in showing 
 that its assumption appears as the final outcome of 
 the experience which is to be connected : that is, 
 the truth of the method of proof just lies in success- 
 fully explaining experience by it. The success is 
 seen not simply in the step -by -step connexion, 
 but in showing that all experience leads finally 
 to this end. It is a form of the "transcendental 
 proof" used by Kant, but without his reserva- 
 tions, and without the acceptance of the idea of 
 a "possible" or contingent experience. It is the 
 transcendental proof not as a regulative method for 
 establishing necessity, but as a concrete organising 
 principle. 
 The end is We ask then what is the end which determines 
 Ideal, jj^g beginning and the manner of interpretation ? 
 We saw that the meaning of experience lay in the 
 essential unity of subject and object, its component 
 and mutually related elements. And we saw that 
 the ideal of such experience lay in the consciously 
 
IV THE IDEAL OF EXPERIENCE 127 
 
 complete identity of the two elements. This ideal 
 is, then, the end at which it aims and from which 
 the interpretation must start. 
 
 Experience will be best realised, if there are what the 
 to be different forms of its expression, when '"'^^^ '^' 
 that unity is most explicit, when the subject and 
 object are explicitly aspects of the same conscious 
 unity. For then the subject will consciously be 
 identical with its object, its object will be its very 
 self. In this case, the object is self and aware of 
 the subject, subject is self and aware of object ; or 
 subject and object are each self-conscious. But this 
 is only possible when the object is the self of the 
 subject which has experience, and where this self- 
 consciousness is absolutely all inclusive. It will be 
 found in absolute self-consciousness, in that form 
 of experience which we call the life of Absolute 
 Mind. 
 
 It is clear that this is the final reach of the activity 
 of experience : it is the ideal of a completed experi- 
 ence. For there is no opposition here which is not 
 overcome ; there is no relation between subject and 
 object (which is the essence of all opposition in ex- 
 perience) which is not at the same time a conscious 
 or explicit identity between them. Identity, to be 
 complete, must be identity of content and not 
 abstract or formal identity. Hence the consciously 
 complete identity of subject and object must be 
 found when the subject has for object its entire 
 self, or when we have absolute consciousness of 
 self. But this means no more than, and no less 
 than, that this form of experience is spiritual life 
 pure and simple. It is the life of Spirit as such, 
 complete and self-contained. Conscious spiritual 
 
128 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT ch. 
 
 experience is therefore the ideal of all finite experi- 
 ence. 
 The Now we must note that this is not merely 
 
 an^experi- an end to which experience points, but one which 
 ence. jg \,o\}s\ itself real, and underlies the life of experi- 
 ence at all its stages. Thus the absolute con- 
 scious unity of subject and object is implicit in the 
 lowest form of, say, Sense-experience, and is explicit 
 as a specific form of experience in, e.g., Religon. 
 The unity is in most cases of experience only 
 implicit : but what is implicit is this completely 
 conscious identity. The unity of subject and object 
 must be there, otherwise there is no experience : 
 subject and object would then fall apart and be 
 sundered by the whole diameter of being. But the 
 unity itself as a conscious unity only comes fully 
 to light in certain forms of experience (viz. Re- 
 ligion and Philosophy). This completely expressed 
 identity, then, is the controlling or constitutive unity 
 throughout all experience. 
 It is not The only alternative to admitting this is to 
 
 regard the final goal of experience as a "mere 
 ideal " at which the individual life aims, but never 
 reaches, i.e. it remains always a mere "point of 
 view." This puts it outside the range of actual life ; 
 it never is a reality, but a possibility, not a fact but 
 a problem, not a certainty but a "postulate." As 
 such it can have no constitutive or determining force 
 on our actual experience. Experience would then 
 have to be interpreted by a principle which never 
 transcends the immediate opposition of subject and 
 object, never reaches the inner nature of that unity 
 in which they subsist. This unity would in that 
 case either be simply acknowledged, and called a 
 
 a formal 
 ideal. 
 
IV THE IDEAL IS CONCRETE 129 
 
 " mystery " ; ^ or else it would be denied altogether ; ^ 
 — and then we have thorough-going dualism, which 
 means in the long run scepticism regarding ultimate 
 things. 
 
 The conception of the reality of that unity as The 
 an actual form of experience, and of its function in conwete. 
 determining all forms of experience, is thus pre- 
 cisely the extreme antithesis of both mysticism 
 and scepticism. It is the deliberate adoption of 
 the idea of a complete experience as the principle 
 for illuminating all other forms of experience. It 
 starts from the actuality of a complete self-conscious 
 unity, and from that seeks to determine how every 
 other form of conscious unity is constituted, and 
 how all are connected through their common im- 
 plication of this highest form. For these two 
 steps are connected together. To show how every 
 form of experience is constituted by this idea of 
 a completely conscious unity, is also to show 
 how they are related to each other, because they 
 are all forms of experience, and therefore different 
 realisations of the one complete unity dominating all 
 experience. 
 
 Now this is not a startling principle to adopt, import 
 It really means no more than that we are in °^}^^f , 
 
 . . , . . pnnciple. 
 
 earnest with the principle that self-consciousness is 
 the key to the meaning of experience, a principle 
 laid down by Kant, and indeed found in different 
 ways, as Hegel tried to show, throughout the history 
 of philosophy. Consciousness of self is a relation 
 
 ^ The position of " Deism." 
 
 ^ The position of " Agnosticism." It is curious to find dualism at the basis 
 of these abstract and opposite positions. They are indeed closely allied in 
 other ways. It is easy to pass from the abstract assertion that the Unity is, to 
 the equally abstract assertion that we do not know what it is. 
 
 IC 
 
130 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT ch. 
 
 of an object to a subject. It is therefore an 
 experience. And because the unity of its two sides 
 is made exphcit by their content being the same, 
 we have there the very idea of all experience fully 
 and consciously expressed, viz. the unity of subject 
 and object. To adopt it as a ground of explanation 
 does not involve, therefore, as is done in so many other 
 cases, taking an external arbitrary principle of some 
 kind, fitting experience into it, and then, in virtue of 
 the coherence or symmetry thereby secured, calling 
 it " intelligible." The point is that experience in 
 any and all its forms implies this principle. Hence 
 to interpret experience by the idea of consciousness 
 of self is to interpret experience by itself, by what 
 experience really is when fully expressed. 
 
 It does not matter whether this complete 
 experience is spoken of as the ideal experience of 
 "finite" mind or as "absolute" mind. It is finite 
 experience absolutised, finite experience completed. 
 Whatever more this may mean, and does mean, 
 that is enough to begin with as an end from 
 which and by which to look at all finite modes 
 of experience. We have, in short, simply to deal 
 with completed self- consciousness as such, as an 
 explicit identity of subject and object. In what 
 form of experience the attainment of this is found, 
 and what that form contains — this is itself part of 
 the inquiry. 
 Misunder- Again, it must not be supposed because the 
 ideal of experience is actually realised in the 
 religious life or in philosophical consciousness, that, 
 relatively to this, other forms are to be so interpreted 
 and understood as if they were incomplete expres- 
 sions of the philosophical or religious experience. 
 
 standings. 
 
IV ALL EXPERIENCE NECESSARY 131 
 
 That would commit the error against which the 
 idealistic interpretation is a protest, the error, namely, 
 of regarding one type of experience as essentially 
 real and the other's " appearances " of it — as if one 
 form were in strictness the only form, the others 
 being unsuccessful attempts to express it, and, 
 because unsuccessful, erroneous, and therefore to be 
 merely superseded altogether. This is the mistake 
 made by those who lay exclusive emphasis on 
 Religion or on Philosophy. It is the fallacy of 
 enthusiasm, fanaticism, and over -concentration of 
 any kind. It is as false as the attempt made by 
 Empiricism and Sensationalism to reduce all ex- 
 perience whatsoever to mere manipulation of the 
 elements of sense-experience ; and is false for the 
 same general reason. If we take Religion to be the 
 only real experience, because fully satisfying the 
 notion of experience, then we proceed to divide 
 experience into "reality "and "mere appearance"; 
 and thereby fall back on a distinction which brings 
 in again precisely the dualism we want to get over, 
 and do get successfully over in the religious life. 
 Such a division of experience makes the religious 
 unity itself rtt.&r Ay abstract, a bare unity; and this may 
 very easily suggest to a mind absorbed in other modes 
 of experience, e.g. the scientific, that very possibly 
 this bare unity may itself be " appearance " or even 
 illusion — a development very often found in reac- 
 tions from mysticism.^ If, again. Philosophy is taken 
 as the only valid experience in the same one-sided 
 way, we may come to look on Science, Perception, 
 
 ' Mr. Bradley's conception of Reality and Appearance arises out of such 
 an over-emphasis as that described, and is in part open to the objection 
 indicated. 
 
132 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT ch. 
 
 Morality, etc., as merely incomplete revelations of a 
 meaning completely realised in Philosophy. We tend 
 to look on them as imperfect attempts to express 
 the real nature of experience as a whole, or different 
 "points of view," as it is sometimes put, from which 
 we look at "reality." This is more often done in 
 the case of Religion, which is at times spoken of 
 as merely figurative or symbolic philosophy. But it 
 is sometimes carried to other forms of experience 
 as well.^ 
 Every Such fcsults are only possible through laying ex- 
 
 Ixperknce clusive emphasis on the negative significance of the 
 is positive relation of complete experience to the other forms. 
 fnits™^ It overlooks the fact that all forms of experience 
 degree, ^j-g ^g^j ^jj^j actual just because they are experience, 
 because expressing a relation between subject and 
 object, no matter what the relation be. Each there- 
 fore is essentially and fundamentally positive in 
 character. This indeed is recognised by ordinary 
 thought, or " common sense," where, while one 
 form of experience may be allowed to check or 
 limit another, yet all are given their place. The 
 question of the worth of any particular form of 
 experience itself assumes its positive reality, and only 
 arises because of that positive or " real " nature. 
 Moreover, the question, as to the valtie of a given 
 form, only arises in certain cases and for certain 
 purposes, which for the most part are of a practical 
 kind. In practical life the question as to the worth 
 of all and every form of experience in its entirety, 
 really never arises. It is only when we make the 
 
 • This is seen, e.g. , in Mr. Mackenzie's view of the forms of experience as so 
 many different " constructions " of experience, perceptual, moral, aesthetic, etc. 
 See Outlines of Metaphysics. 
 
IV FORMS POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE 133 
 
 connexion amongst all parts of experience our 
 special problem, viz. in Philosophy, that we attempt 
 to show in a thorough-going manner the relation 
 between its various forms. And it is then only that 
 the danger occurs of pressing too far the negative 
 effect of comparing higher and lower forms.^ It 
 is then, in short, that we are apt to desert the 
 positive ground on which all experience really 
 rests, and from which the philosophical problem 
 itself arises. 
 
 All forms, then, are at once positive and negative. Every 
 and must be so regarded. All are necessary, because ^v^and^' 
 subject and object must take up all forms of relation negative. 
 to each other in order to exhaust the possibilities of 
 experience. In working with the conception of 
 complete experience we can see more clearly the 
 sort of question we have to ask and answer regard- 
 ing each form. That is all it does for us. We 
 cannot deduce the various forms from it, because 
 Philosophy is reconstruction not creation. Rather 
 we deduce it from them by a long process. And 
 the question it asks is : — What in the light of com- 
 plete self-consciousness does the unity of subject 
 and object in a given form amount to } how is the 
 identity they imply expressed and constituted in The 
 each case? By asking this of every form wei"^^''°"' 
 shall ultimately show how all finite experience is 
 determined. 
 
 We use, then, the idea of complete experience to 
 show in what, in the given forms of experience, the The 
 relation of subject to object consists. By showing ^"^s"™'"'- 
 this in the case of all forms we shall at once explain 
 the meaning of every experience, the meaning of all 
 
 ' This danger is seen in Mr. Bradley's analysis. 
 
134 STAGES OF THE ARGUMENT ch. 
 
 relations of subject to object, and we shall thereby 
 establish the principle from which we set out, that 
 complete self- consciousness is the ideal of all ex- 
 perience. This will show that experience, because 
 essentially self-conscious, is self- explaining, for the 
 principle in use all through is itself revealed by ex- 
 perience. The form of experience in which this ideal 
 of experience is found is what we call Philosophy 
 or completed knowledge. Hence the whole argu- 
 ment is merely a persistent and consistent application 
 of the essential principle of Philosophy, viz. complete 
 experience, to explain all experience philosophically. 
 This may seem a circle or a transparent common- 
 place, whichever way we please to look at it. It is 
 enough to remark that it is at least a legitimate 
 position to take up, and in a sense is so obvious as 
 to need no comment at all. It is saying no more 
 than that for philosophy to do its own business it 
 must justify itself to itself completely, it must be 
 self-determining from first to last. 
 
 This, then, being the end and principle from 
 which and by which to work, the first step is to find 
 out where to begin, and what are the main stages 
 The through which the argument must pass. This is 
 
 easily stated. We have, as we have said, subject 
 and object as the antithetic elements in the concrete 
 reality of conscious experience, and the key to its 
 entire meaning lies in the complete explicit unity 
 of the two, the subject conscious of itself in its object. 
 Now the individual subject may be aware of an 
 object as purely and simply other than, opposed to, 
 itself, have not even a feeling of implicit unity with 
 it. It may, again, be aware of self as other than 
 but implicitly one with the subject-mind conscious 
 
 stages, 
 
IV CHIEF MOMENTS OF EXPERIENCE 135 
 
 of it. And, finally, it may have overcome all sense 
 of otherness in its object, and be fully and explicitly 
 aware of itself in the object of which it is conscious. 
 More simply, perhaps, we may say that in the first 
 stage the individual is conscious of objects which 
 are prima facie quite alien to and outside the 
 subject ; in the second, of the self, but as something 
 which is ostensibly different from, and over against 
 the subject conscious of it ; in the third, of the self 
 as transparently identical with the subject. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE INTERPRETATION OF SENSE-EXPERIENCE : 
 AND OF PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE 
 
 Nature The first Stage is found in the simplest and, for con- 
 Tng o?^^" sciousness, the most primitive form of experience — 
 sense-ex- coHsciousness of objects of the world of Sense. It 
 is here, as has been recently argued,^ that the con- 
 scious relation of self and not-self first dawns. That 
 is the fundamental or simplest form of experience, 
 the simplest form of objectivity on the one hand 
 and of subjectivity on the other. It is here that 
 objectivity is what is named "external."^ The 
 object at this stage is simply the not-self in general, 
 and the form of experience in which we find it 
 specifically is what we call Sense-experience, con- 
 sciousness of objects of Sense. The analysis of 
 Sense-experience will bear this out. 
 iiiustra- Indirectly this epistemological conception is con- 
 
 sense as firmed by the familiar everyday fact of the strange- 
 not-seif. ness, the unpredictability, the elusiveness of the 
 world of sense, which in different ways affect the 
 attitudes of individuals towards it. Thus to the 
 religious mind it may give rise to the feeling of the 
 
 ^ By Adamson, Lectures, vol. i. part v. c. i. 
 
 ^ Objectivity as "external" is just the space-character of this content of 
 experience. 
 
 136 
 
CH. V THE WORLD OF SENSE 137 
 
 nothingness of the sense-world, its very variety 
 being an indication of its inadequacy to reveal the 
 ultimate One to which that type of mind clings. 
 Or it may seem the veil of an inner reality, i.e. 
 its mystery and strangeness are transferred to a 
 permanent reality which merely shines through the 
 infinite detail of its pattern, and, because it is a 
 mere veil, it sinks to the level of a means which 
 loses its own terrors as such, and may be ultimately 
 destroyed, burnt up, or, as it is put, " rolled 
 together like a scroll." Its elusiveness, again, 
 is for the ordinary mind the source of all the 
 suggestiveness of sense, of its symbolical character, 
 of those "obstinate questionings of sense and out- 
 ward things," of "blank misgivings of a creature 
 moving about in worlds not realised." So, too, its 
 unpredictability is the source, e.g., of the perpetual 
 reserve which guards all our judgments concerning 
 sense-experience other than what we have lived 
 through, and even concerning that also — a reserve 
 which pursues empirical knowledge to its utmost 
 limit of accuracy. It is the source, further, at once 
 of the contingency found by science, and of its 
 incessant and necessarily endless attempt to remove 
 it. All these together make the self-conscious in- 
 dividual feel himself so detached from the world of 
 sense as to be able to withdraw from it altogether 
 into his own inner life, and even to doubt its very 
 existence.^ 
 
 This act of withdrawal has appeared at different foph°Jai 
 times throughout the history of philosophy, more forms 
 particularly, however, in modern philosophy, from attitude 
 
 towards 
 ^ As is done by the higher " mysticism '' — an abstract but supreme form of the world 
 self-consciousness. °f sense. 
 
138 SENSE-EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 the time of Descartes' doubt regarding the world 
 of sense - objects. It is seen in the perpetually 
 recurring problem as to the " existence," or at least 
 as to the nature of the existence, of the so-called 
 " external world " — the problem sometimes described 
 as the nature of " external perception." To the 
 ordinary concrete mind, and to the scientific con- 
 sciousness, as well as to absolute idealism, this may 
 indeed appear a very singular problem to raise. 
 And when it is looked at as the only problem of 
 philosophy (as it is, e.g., by Berkeley), it may well be 
 considered inherently inadequate as an expression 
 of the whole problem of philosophy, and essentially 
 incapable of solution under the conditions in which 
 it is raised. This is partly proved by the result of 
 Berkeley's own analysis. But it is just as evident 
 when we look at the amount of experience which it 
 leaves out of account, and which cannot be ignored 
 by philosophy. Thus the nature of Moral Experi- 
 ence, or the Moral World, does not fall inside such 
 a problem ; and yet it has to be introduced even 
 in the solution which is offered. We see this in 
 Descartes' appeal to the moral goodness of God as 
 a guarantee for the belief in the existence of external 
 things, and in the way moral ideas are used by 
 Berkeley throughout his argument. This, again, 
 comes out in a striking manner in Hume, who was, 
 for historical reasons, concerned primarily with this 
 narrow conception of the problem of philosophy. 
 For him, there seems no doubt at all about the 
 reality of moral distinctions and the moral life in 
 general ; for him, any one who treats them sceptically 
 is looked upon as insincere froni the start. This 
 merely proves indirectly that the external world is 
 
V SENSE-EXPERIENCE NOT ALL 139 
 
 not the only object of experience, and cannot 
 therefore, as his sceptical analysis of perception 
 seemed to suggest, exhaust the whole problem of 
 philosophy. For surely the moral life is a reality 
 just as much as so-called external things. The 
 same remark holds good in regard to scientific 
 realities, realities of the scientific consciousness, say, 
 in the case of mathematics, or, again, as regards the 
 reality of the religious consciousness. These can- 
 not be affected by the analysis of the meaning of 
 the "external world." The application of the same 
 methods of analysis to these kinds of reality as to the 
 problem of the external world, reveals, by the very 
 inadequacy of the result attained, the futility of 
 confining the question to this one problem. For 
 the relation of the object to the subject is different 
 in these cases, and does not appeal to us in the 
 same way. Thus it never seems to occur to any 
 mind, still less to the ordinary or the scientific mind, 
 to doubt the existence of the Moral Order, or Social 
 Life. No one, for instance, doubts the existence of 
 his friend, or his family ; at least if doubts occur, he 
 finds it better to keep his doubts to himself! The 
 reason is that these simply do not belong to the 
 world of sense alone, or to the world of perception, 
 and hence they cannot and do not take up the same 
 relation of externality or " otherness " to his self, as 
 is possible in the case of the world of the things 
 of "sense." They are a different kind of object, 
 and while they may and do appear in sensuous 
 form, Sense, as we are well aware, does not exhaust 
 their meaning and reality. So much so that even 
 death, or the negation of their sense reality, is taken 
 to be no absolute or necessary barrier to their 
 
I40 SENSE-EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 continued reality. Hence it is that the appeal to, 
 or consciousness of, deeper realities, i.e. realities 
 entering more into the inmost life of the subject, 
 than we find to be the case with external things, 
 often provides the arresting point to thoroughgoing 
 mental uncertainty regarding reality in general, not 
 merely in the ordinary life-history of individual 
 minds, but in actual philosophical systems — as we 
 find, e.g., in Hume, or again, in a different way, in 
 Kant. Such higher or "inward" realities are deliber- 
 ately or unconsciously used to turn the flank of a 
 sceptical attack on knowledge even in regard to the 
 external world. 
 The signi- But that the doubt can arise at all regarding the 
 phii"o" °'^ external world of things of sense, shows conclusively 
 
 sophicai how thorougfh and complete the opposition can be 
 doubt , . , ^ . , , , . , . , 
 
 regarding and IS between mmd and objects at the simplest or 
 
 lowest level of experience. The extremeness of the 
 
 opposition is there always, and merely comes to 
 
 light in an extravagant or excessive form when 
 
 men doubt either philosophically or otherwise the 
 
 existence of external things altogether. Strictly 
 
 carried out, such a doubt is bound to lead either 
 
 negatively to pure Scepticism, or positively to pure 
 
 Solipsism, which, inside the limits within which 
 
 it keeps, cannot really be answered, — a characteristic 
 
 which led Voltaire to remark that Solipsism was 
 
 madness, but beyond the reach of argument or 
 
 refutation. 
 
 We start, then, with this opposition of subject and 
 
 object in its unqualified and extreme form, and we 
 
 ask how is experience in such a case constituted. 
 
 What is the nature of that essential unity which so 
 
 relates these opposite elements as to form a concrete 
 
 sense-ex- 
 perience. 
 
V FORMS OF THIS EXPERIENCE 141 
 
 experience ? We put this same question when we 
 ask what is the "truth" of this experience, truth 
 here meaning the nature of the specific identity which 
 unites subject and object. 
 
 The opposition here considered appears in differ- Forms of 
 ent ways. Mere Sense -experience is its simplest ^^^ ^^^^' 
 and most obvious form. But we find the same kind (i) Sensa- 
 of opposition in other phases of experience. When *'°"' 
 we speak of "perceiving" an object, we draw a firm 
 line between our perceiving and the object perceived. 
 We say, e.g:, the object is oui there, whether we per- 
 ceive it or not, or even whether anybody perceives 
 it or not. The object-world as perceived is sharply (2) Per- 
 separated from the subject-mind experiencing it in '^^p"""- 
 and through Perception. This is the position of 
 common sense, and to some extent of the scientific 
 mind ; so much so that the sphere of independent 
 " fact " for science and common sense lies generally 
 in the objects of Perception. "Facts" are taken 
 to be precisely what instruct and mould the mind, 
 and so are independent of, "external to," the sub- 
 ject, whose business it is merely to accept what 
 he " finds," or " what his senses teach him." So 
 separate are the objects, that our mind is held 
 to refer to them by a process of its own which 
 may err ; but, it is held, the " facts " never can. 
 Hence, since we can refer truly or falsely to this 
 world, our experience of it takes the form of specific 
 kinds of judgments. Judgments of Perception. All 
 our perceptual knowledge takes this form. Our 
 ideas here "refer to" this object-world which we 
 perceive, but which is " apart from " our minds. Yet 
 in spite of this independence, it is also maintained 
 that the world we perceive seems to depend on, or. 
 
142 SENSE-EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 at least, be qualified by, the nature of the subject 
 perceiving. For the variety of our avenues of 
 Perception suggests the possibility of others in 
 differently constituted perceiving subjects ; while the 
 variation of the actual content of the perceivable 
 world according to the position in time or space, 
 the condition of the organism, etc., of the perceiving 
 subject, leads to the recognition of a certain amount 
 of dependence of the content of objects perceived 
 upon the subject. 
 Conse- This Contrast between the apparently self-evident 
 
 quences opposition or separation of subject and object in 
 contrast Perception on the one hand, and their undeniable 
 I," pg^j.."^^^ reciprocal dependence on the other, leads the re- 
 ception, flective philosophical mind, in the long run, to raise 
 the question (above mentioned) regarding the mean- 
 ing of an independent world of Perception. It leads 
 also to the historic distinction between "primary 
 sense - qualities " and "secondary sense - qualities," 
 the ground of distinction being the accidental or 
 the necessary character of the relation of subject to 
 object in the case of any given quality, according as 
 the quality is primary or secondary. If it is accidental, 
 the quality perceived is primary, the subject "makes 
 no difference " to the object ; if it is necessary, the 
 quality is derivative or secondary, the subject is 
 essential to determine the quality. It leads again 
 to the distinction between the "that" and the 
 "what" in judgments of Perception, the "what" 
 referring to the content of the judgment, the " that " 
 to the existence of the object to which " ideas," 
 the media of judgment, are taken to " refer." Here 
 the separation is limited to the " thatness " of the 
 perceived object, the "whatness" can belong, or 
 
V SENSUOUS AND SUPER-SENSIBLE 143 
 
 does belong, to the sphere of ideas. The " that " 
 is always immediate, the "what" mediate; and since 
 the " that " is beyond ideas, it is beyond judgment 
 and so beyond knowledge.^ From this again arises 
 what is called the separation of "reality" and 
 " thought," a separation implying a dualistic view of 
 knowledge. 
 
 But yet another form of sharp separation between (3) Ap- 
 subject and object is to be found, one which, to ^nd'^thr 
 some extent, has still to do with the world as Super- 
 experienced in sensation, and as perceived. Both woru.^ 
 common sense and in part the scientific mind are 
 accustomed to speak of the world we know as one of 
 " appearance " ; and what appears in it and through 
 it is some active force or power at work behind the 
 screen or veil revealed to Sense and Perception. 
 This " world of appearance " may be ordered by 
 "laws." These laws are not found in Perception. 
 They are construed apart from it ; ^ but, because 
 unseen, they are referred to an " invisible " " non- 
 sensuous " world. They are ways in which the 
 non-sensuous world produces order in the sensuous 
 world. Similarly, we may refer the varied motions or 
 processes of the sensuous world to hidden "forces" 
 of which these motions are the expression. The 
 "expression" is before consciousness when perceiv- 
 ing ; it appears : the " force " is beyond what appears. 
 
 These distinctions are found in. the attitude 
 of science, and are certainly seen at work in 
 common thovight. Here an abrupt opposition is 
 
 ' Hence the "representative" theory of "external perception," where 
 ideas "intervene" between the subject and the "that" (the existence) of the 
 object. 
 
 ^ i.e. They are determined in the first instance negatively as regards Per- 
 ception : they are " not seen," intangible, etc. 
 
144 SENSE-EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 established between the subject-mind on the one 
 hand, and a non-sensuous object-world on the other. 
 The sensible manifestations, as such, of this world 
 create no opposition for the subject to overcome.^ 
 The opposition is maintained between object and 
 subject by means of Xhtxa.. Since it does not fall in- 
 side sensible experience, it is now set up between a 
 non-sensuous object in a super-sensible world and 
 the subject. When this is done the opposed factors 
 (subject and object) are now seemingly further 
 apart than ever ; ^ for we have all the wealth of 
 sensible experience between them, separating them 
 from each other and from ultimate union. All 
 sensible experience may be said even to be de- 
 pendent on the subject and its activity ; and if so, it 
 is then held to be " phenomenal " of a world beyond 
 the range of Sensation and Perception proper. 
 The sensible world is epiphenomenal, as regards, 
 and in contrast with, a noumenal non-sensuous 
 reality, into w^hich the subject "cannot penetrate." 
 This may be expressed in the form which Goethe 
 puts into the mouth of the physicist, "No creature's 
 mind can pierce within dark nature's inner secret." 
 Here it is held we only know what " appears," never 
 what " ultimately exists " ; that remains in permanent 
 opposition and externality to the subject. Or it 
 may find a philosophical expression, as, e.g., in the 
 case of Kant, where the actual life of experience 
 consists in objects being determined and unified by 
 functions of the subject on the one side working upon 
 the matter of sense on the other, the whole lying 
 
 * They are held to be directly present to it, whether as its own ideas or 
 otherwise. 
 
 ' i.e. further apart than they were at the level of, e.g.. Perception. 
 
V PHENOMENA AND NOUMENA 145 
 
 between two non-experienced, i.e. non-perceivable 
 noumenal realities, the pure ego-subject and the 
 mere thing per se. These last are sundered by the 
 whole diameter of being, and neither known nor 
 united at any point. They are simply opposed, so 
 much so that even to say anything regarding them 
 is to endanger the sacred silence which guards their 
 being from the invasion of knowledge. 
 
 This separation of subject and object by means This is the 
 of a distinction between phenomena and noumena, ofexteraai 
 sensible and super-sensible, is an acknowledgment opposi- 
 at once of their necessary connexion in actual 
 experience, and yet of their being still opposed 
 and external to each other. It pushes the factors 
 in opposition (subject and object) beyond the 
 bounds of all sensible experience, as if at all costs 
 it would refuse to surrender the assertion of their 
 separation. The distinction, which first of all holds 
 of and constitutes sensible experience, becomes now 
 a distinction between a sensible and a super-s,Qxys^^ 
 world. If this opposition is not to be absolutely 
 maintained in the case of Perception, as above 
 described, then it must at any rate hold good of 
 what is beyond perceptual experience. Yet, since 
 the two worlds (sensible and super-sensible) must 
 still somehow be thought of as continuous, experi- 
 ence being a unity, the difficulty which arises from 
 setting up something beyond sensible experience, 
 opposed to the subject of experience, has to be 
 got over. This is done in some cases by saying 
 that sensible experience is phenomenal of a nou- 
 menal world, that objects perceived are "appear- 
 ances " of an unknown reality, ^ 
 
 1 All this is clearly the result of an attempt to justify at a higher level of 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 SENSE-EXPERIENCE 
 
 CH. 
 
 These 
 three are 
 funda- 
 mentally 
 the same 
 type of 
 opposi- 
 tion. 
 
 These three ways of taking the relation between 
 subject and object must be considered together.^ 
 
 experience, through a process of reflection, the same kind of separation of 
 subject and object which we find in the case of sense-experience and percep- 
 tion. We would see that it is so if we considered how they are specifically 
 constituted. We should then also discover how ultimately the separation 
 has to be and is overcome altogether. Science, we find, for example, some- 
 times falls back on some monistic principle, or, again, on a quasi-religious 
 intuition into the ultimate nature of things, i.e. into what lies " beyond " in 
 the super-sensible. Other forms of experience, again, assert, and work in 
 ordinary life by the assumption of, an essential identity between the two 
 elements, an identity which may find expression in the so-called rationality of 
 the world as a whole whose nature the subject shows. In short, actual 
 experience and reflection upon experience, in the long run, are forced to abandon 
 the attempt to keep the two factors of experience absolutely apart and 
 external ; and to put their separation in a super-sensible world is seen to be, 
 what it is in reality, a mere refuge in the unknown for maintaining the 
 necessity of an inherently false position. 
 
 If they are really separate, why these elaborate devices to establish what, 
 to begin with, should be obvious : if they are not separate, our aim should 
 rather be to show that they are distinctions inside a unity. The distinction 
 between real and phenomenal, sensible and super-sensible, are merely made to 
 keep the two as far apart as possible. The very failure to make the result 
 coherent, as in the case of Kant, is evidently an indication that the business 
 of reflection is also to bring them together and show their place in a single 
 identity — a result which, in fact, is accomplished by carrying experience to a 
 higher level. This will appear in the sequel. 
 
 '^ They may, indeed, in a sense be looked at as three different ways of 
 trying to secure the same result — to maintain the conscious distinction between 
 subject and object as a separation of opposite elements in spite of their unity, a 
 unity which must and does assert itself somehow in experience in each case, and 
 which analysis of that experience shows to be there all the while. First, there 
 is the sensation and the sense-quality, the sense-response on one side and the 
 sense-stimulus on the other. But the reciprocal variation of the two and the 
 essential continuity between them breaks down their independence and asserts 
 their unity as a conscious fact. The opposition failing there, it next takes the 
 form of a separation of the unity of sense-qualities and the function of uniting 
 them, of thing and perceiving, percept and perception. But here, again, the 
 mutual interdependence of the two sides, the dependence of the character and 
 existence of the " thing " on the selective reaction of the acts of percipience, 
 and of the function of perceiving on the permanence of the percept, fuses the 
 separated elements into the continuity of a single unified experience. The 
 opposition now seems to have failed utterly : sense-experience and perceptual 
 experience do not exist by opposition of subject and object so much as by their 
 indissoluble unity. Yet the opposition dies hard, and will not be given up. To 
 make a last stand it is taken out of mere sense-experience altogether," and is set 
 up as an opposition between what is sense and what is not sensuous — between a 
 ' ' sensible " and ' ' super-sensible " world. Here the separation, the ' ' externality " 
 
V SENSE-EXPERIENCE 147 
 
 Their fundamental characteristic is, that in them 
 subject and object are held separate from each other. 
 The special feature in each case is what we may- 
 call the relation to "sensibility" in some form or 
 other. It lies in Sense-experience proper, it is 
 present in Perception, it is essential to the distinc- 
 tion between a Phenomenal and Super-sensible world. 
 There is a direct connexion between the external 
 relation of subject and object on the one hand and 
 this implication of the element of sense. For 
 sensibility consists essentially in the external rela- 
 tion of parts to each other indefinitely. The parts 
 in sense-experience are outside each other : " this " 
 is "here," "that" is "there"; the "now" is a unit 
 marked off from a " then." Sensibility is not some- 
 thing which makes these distinctions and relations 
 possible ; it just is this relating of parts externally 
 to each other. Hence to look upon experience as 
 at all sensuous, bound up with sense, means simply 
 that we look on subject and object (the final factors 
 » 
 
 of subject and object, becomes almost a kind of unconscious irony of experience 
 itself. For what it sets up as utterly opposed and " external" to another as a 
 fact of experience, — an opposition defying the unity of them in experience, — has 
 been itself oxeaXeA by that very unity itself and in its own interests. And this 
 comes out when we see that the sensible world, which is the typical form of 
 external opposition, of one thing being "outside" another, is itself put as u 
 whole outside what is not sensible, what is super-SEOsAAs. This at once stultifies 
 the very meaning of external opposition, external separation. For what is 
 " super-sensible " cannot be " external " to what is "sensible,"' M sense alone 
 contains " externality" ; and sense as a whole cannot be " external" to what 
 is not-sensible, for the same reason. Either, therefore, the super-sensible falls 
 within what is sensible, or else the relation between them is not that of 
 " externality." The first is impossible, and naturally enough, therefore, we 
 find that the relation of " externality" is transmuted altogether, and becomes 
 one between what "appears" and what "abides," between "phenomenal" 
 and "nonmenal," and the world of sense becomes an expression of (not 
 external to) the super-sensible. And thus the original professed separation 
 fails utterly and disappears altogether into the unity of a single self-conscious 
 experience. The following argument brings this out. 
 
proper. 
 
 148 SENSE-EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 in experience) as outside each other ; and conversely, 
 when subject and object are opposed externally 
 experience is necessarily sensuous. Experience 
 qua sensible is the specific and concrete way in 
 which external opposition is felt and spoken of in 
 ordinary life. 
 
 Sense-ex- What we have to do is to show how they are 
 perience jjgj^ tocfether in an individual mind so as to form 
 
 oroDer. o ^ 
 
 a concrete single experience. This means showing 
 the unity which relates them, the identity which 
 holds them within itself as differences. In the case 
 of mere Sensation or mere Sense-experience this is 
 comparatively easy. The general quality of all 
 sense-experience is the simple immediate existence 
 of a conscious content. It is not a " reference " of 
 our ideas to sense ; for there is at this level of 
 mind-life no distinction between ideas and other 
 " things." Conscious content simply is. Take as 
 example the sense of colour qu& sense, and elimin- 
 ate all reference to distinct ideas of intensities in 
 colour, names of colours, etc., all of which imply 
 comparison and developed thought. The colour 
 simply fills our sense of sight: it is just the general 
 sense of sight modified in a specific way at a 
 specific point. No man is conscious, in sense- 
 experience, of a distinction between the mere filling 
 of his eyes with light, and some idea of light in his 
 mind which is referred to a luminous area, any more 
 than he is conscious of a distinction at all between 
 his open eye and light. To open his eye means 
 exactly seeing. A colour is for sense-experience no 
 more than a modification of this general luminous 
 area. So of any other form of mere sense-experience. 
 This quality of merely being, without further dis- 
 
V "THIS" IS UNIVERSAL 149 
 
 tinctions, we express by such terms as " here," 
 " now," " then," " there," " this," " that," etc. These 
 terms are primarily used to convey to ourselves and 
 others precisely this immediate presence of a sense 
 content, the mere consciousness of a sense quality. 
 
 They do not all have the same specific connota- 
 tion. "This" is not the same as "here," and 
 " now " is different from both. But these are merely 
 variations of the same kind of conscious life.^ 
 
 Now whether expressed or unexpressed these sense- 
 are the only ways in which mere Sense-experience fg^'g^^™'^^ 
 appears. Take from an object of nature, e.g. a tree, sideness. 
 all the complex notions which make up its full 
 meaning for science and developed knowledge, sub- 
 stance, activity, life, laws, etc., and what we have left 
 ultimately is merely a sense-experience of a this-here- 
 and-now. The "this" is, say, green here and now.^ 
 And, again, because any given " this " is opposed to 
 another "that," which too may come to be looked on 
 as a "this," Sense-experience as a whole breaks up 
 into a multitude of parts all outside of, and side-by- 
 side with, each other. All can be equally named in 
 exactly the same way, as "this," "that," "here," 
 etc. The parts of Sense-experience simply fall 
 outside each other, have no inner coherence, and 
 imply no active construction. Hence it is that in 
 such experience subject and object are looked on 
 by developed self-conscious life as furthest apart. 
 How then does a "this" experience, an experience 
 
 ' i.e. parts of the same objective continuum of sense — the parts being side- 
 by-side, external. " This," " that," etc., express externality in different ways 
 and degrees. 
 
 ''■ It is because sense-experience seems thus " found," not made, " picked up," 
 not constructed by developed intelligence, that to higher thought it appears so 
 "external," that the object we are conscious of, the this, seems "outside" us. 
 
I50 SENSE-EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 consisting of "thises," "heres," "nows," etc., have a 
 unity at all, a concrete identity of diverse elements ? 
 The In the first place, let us observe that the term 
 
 m'verl'ai' " ^his," "that," etc, can apply to an indefinite 
 number of parts of Sense-experience. Sense seems 
 at first to be merely particular, a "this" seems com- 
 plete in its isolation, and falls outside the subject, 
 which is merely another particular alongside it, "this" 
 ego, " this " subject. But just because each is looked 
 at as a "this," a particular "this" cannot be a mere 
 term for particularity. It applies to all cases of 
 Sense-experience, and hence is universal. That is 
 inevitable, because merely to isolate particulars is to 
 give all the same character, namely, isolation, and 
 hence the character of isolatedness is itself universal, 
 embracing all cases of itself For that reason " this " 
 does not express and cannot express merely parti- 
 cularity at all, it is in some way universal. Particular 
 " thises " are thus not absolutely external to each 
 other, they are manifestations of and in a universal, 
 and so imply each other. A " this " contains in 
 itself implicitly a "not this," and both fall inside the 
 universal of thisness in general. 
 The But that may seem merely an argument based on 
 
 is'an^ the use of words, on the fact that " this," like every 
 immediate word, has always at least a potentially universal 
 tkiuum. application. It implies, however, a deeper truth. 
 The immediate of sense-consciousness is a totality, 
 a continuum, compassing in its sweep all the parts 
 into which it may become differentiated by interest 
 or attention or otherwise. The total immediate is 
 alone the "this-now," and the various "thises "or 
 " nows " are merely selected out of it. They each 
 mean the totality, because otherwise they would 
 
V SENSE UNITES DIFFERENCES 151 
 
 not themselves be, since it alone is the immediate. 
 Thus if "now" does not mean the total "now," it 
 makes the rest of the "now," and hence relatively 
 itself, a "then." Hence a "this," while seemingly 
 a discrete particular, is really an attempt to con- 
 centrate into a single point, into a " this-here," the 
 totality of the immediate which alone is "this-here." 
 The attempt is no doubt justified, because every 
 part of the immediate of sense is alike qud immediate, 
 and hence the same term will apply to any part of 
 it. This is practically all that is required for the 
 direct purposes of the ordinary life of every day, 
 where these terms are perpetually recurring. The 
 context of fact, and the common understanding of 
 men, save them from the confusion which analysis 
 can detect. But none the less the attempt is un- 
 successful and the position untenable. No particular 
 " this " can express fully the total immediate, and it 
 alone is what is present to consciousness. The latter 
 is always present, but the former is inadequate to it. 
 We may try to avoid this conclusion by saying we 
 mean "a this": analysis shows at once that this is 
 mere redundancy. From this failure arises the 
 view often put forward that language cannot express 
 the mere particular "this" at all. That, however, 
 is not due to the inadequacy of language to deal 
 with actual experience, but because of the absence 
 of any experience to which language in such a 
 case could really refer. " This/' for Sense, always 
 means what is universal, namely, the total immediate 
 of sense -experience ; and hence language, which 
 must be universal, is quite equal to what " this " 
 means, but must necessarily be unequal to what 
 " this " may pretend to express but can never mean. 
 
152 SENSE-EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 We never mean this isolated, discrete, dissociated 
 particular of Sense, because that is inherently with- 
 out significance of any kind to any mind. "This," 
 "now," etc., thus stands for what is universal. 
 This is There is a further reason, too. Any "this" includes 
 
 generic. ^^ jj.ggjf ^ multiplicity of "thises"; "now" contains a 
 plurality of "nows." This is seen in familiar ways. 
 We say "now it is day"; but this "now" includes 
 hours, which again are " nows." " Here is a table." 
 "Here" includes spaces, points, etc., which again 
 are "heres," and so on. But a "now" which con- 
 tains plurality within itself as its own is a universal. 
 Similarly of " this " and the other terms. 
 Sense is a We See, then, that the real nature of sense- 
 unity of consciousness lies in a universal which contains the 
 parts of sense-life as differences. That universal is 
 just the continuity of the process which makes up the 
 life-history of immediate sense-experience. This may, 
 by selective interest or otherwise, appear in distinct 
 phases or parts. But each as readily becomes its 
 opposite, and this fluent interchangeableness con- 
 stitutes the identity between them. The incessant 
 change of sense-life is due to its being a mere varia- 
 tion of the same simple form of existence, is due 
 in fact to the interchangeableness of its content ; a 
 " this " can equally well become a " that," a " now " a 
 " then," and so on. This incessant change of similar 
 elements is all that sense-life consists in. Hence 
 its variability, its endlessly fleeting character, its 
 instability, its inadequacy to satisfy the desire for 
 a stable ideal, or constant organising universal. 
 Hence, so far from being the ultimate touchstone 
 of reality, as some have held, it is just what is 
 perpetually slipping from our grasp. Its being is 
 
V SENSE HAS UNIVERSALITY 153 
 
 change, its life the death of its moments. As for 
 constituting a support, which some have tried to 
 make it, against sceptical attack, it is bound to 
 prove the best weapon scepticism can use. The 
 incessant change, which constitutes its life as a 
 universal, makes it impossible for a "this" or 
 "that" to maintain a substantial permanent reality 
 external to the subject. A " this " or " that " has no 
 reality of its own at all ; its nature falls into the 
 universal process of change. 
 
 On the subjective side, again. Sense-experience Subjective 
 is likewise dissolved into the series of units of feel- of^gense. 
 ing, Sensations, which make up the discrete parts of 
 the one changing continuum of Sense - life. The 
 " this " is the objective side, the " feeling " the sub- 
 jective side of the one experience. Being immediate 
 the one to the other, it is only by reflection that 
 the distinction is drawn between a subjective and an 
 objective side. In the experience itself it is in- 
 different whether we say " this-feeling " or " feeling- 
 this." We see in this way why it is impossible 
 to state whether "sensations" are "objective" or 
 " subjective." What we have in Sense-experience 
 is simply a universal process consisting in the mere 
 awareness of an immediate content, continuous as 
 change, discrete as moments of it.^ This makes up the 
 whole relation, at this stage of experience, between 
 subject and object. They themselves exist by find- 
 ing their being simply in this process. Universality 
 as a continuum of changing elements is thus the 
 condition of the possibility of Sense-experience. 
 
 ' Hence, as a consequence, we see that the individuality or, again, the 
 uniqueness of a subject-ego can never be established (as some have main- 
 tained) by appealing to mere Sense-experience, for this shows uniqueness to 
 have no place in sense-life at all. 
 
154 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 Univer- But, it must be noted, the universality here is 
 
 here'' how ^'^^ ^ distinct entity for sense-consciousness. It is 
 found. a continuum of change. Hence the universality is 
 never ascribed, in Sense-experience zise//, to the ego 
 whose nature is just to be universal. Universality 
 as such is only presented at a level above sense, and 
 is known primarily by thinking about Sense. Sense 
 is merely awareness of "this." The way univer- 
 sality does appear in Sense is in that feeling of 
 certainty which accompanies each "this" of Sense- 
 experience as it comes and as it appears, a feeling 
 which characterises all Sense-experience in exactly 
 the same way. When consciousness does become 
 explicitly aware of the universal, the way is opened 
 to a further and more developed form of this stage 
 of conscious life — Perception. 
 Percep- The examination of Perception reveals in the 
 
 same way that the object perceived has not as such 
 absolute independence, that its very nature is to 
 '^ dissolve into a unity containing it and the subject to 
 which it stands related. In Perception subject 
 and object seem to stand opposed. But such an 
 external relation as appears there cannot be sustained 
 if the object itself can be shown to dissolve into a 
 more comprehensive totality, or universal, within 
 which also the subject-life falls. This is what 
 analysis of the object and of the process of Per- 
 ception brings out. The main points in the analysis 
 can be shortly stated. 
 Perception In pure Sense-experience the essential reality 
 the Uni- ^as the universal ; what was directly conscious at a 
 versai of given moment was a certain " this." The universal 
 as suck is the real centre of interest in Perception. 
 Hence the meaning of the term; it is "seeing 
 
 tion, 
 
V THE UNIVERSAL IN PERCEPTION 155 
 
 through "or " thoroughly " into the heart of sense- 
 content, getting hold of its stable unity and universal 
 nature in spite of the appearing diversity and the 
 incessantly changing features of Sense. Thus we 
 distinguish in common life between "seeing" and 
 "perceiving." Both are knowing in the widest sense, 
 both are experience in any sense. The difference is 
 in the way the universal operates. The conscious 
 presence of a universal in Perception is, again, the 
 ground of the common view that perceived facts, or 
 facts of Perception, are the basis of Science, and so 
 the basis of inference (which is a process of know- 
 ledge dealing solely with universal relations). It 
 is for the same reason that much of Perception 
 can in time be inferred or guessed at, without going 
 through the actual process of Perception, as, e.g., in the 
 observation of a series of objects. To this, indeed, 
 perhaps may also be traced the doubtful doctrine that 
 Perception is a kind of " unconscious inference." 
 
 The universal of Sense, then, is the primary factor The 
 in Perception. It is double-sided, subjective and *^°^°J,^^^ 
 objective at once. That lies in the very nature of of the 
 the case ; Perception is an experience. But it is 
 exactly the same universal in both cases, the 
 universal constituting the experience, giving it unity. 
 The subjective side, perceiving, is simply the process 
 of the universal, the universal as actively operating. 
 The objective side, the percept, is the same universal 
 taken simply as a totality, static and fixed in 
 conscious experience. At first no doubt the latter 
 seems the more fundamental in perceptual ex- 
 perience. As it is said, we cannot alter " facts " 
 perceived by the way we perceive them ; the 
 process of Perception, that is to say, neither produces 
 
156 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 nor alters the object perceived. On this view the 
 object is taken to be the essential reality ; it is, 
 "whether perceived or not." But that is really due to 
 the greater prominence in the experience of Percep- 
 tion of the permanent controlling unity, not to any 
 ultimate difference in the content of Perception 
 between the objective and the subjective side. On 
 the contrary, the fact that the process does not alter 
 the object is just due to the presence of the same 
 universal in both. Indeed we acknowledge, even 
 in common speech, that perceiving and perceived 
 qualities are, in certain cases at least, mutually 
 dependent, such cases being, e.g., the so-called 
 " secondary qualities." But the important point is 
 that while we may assert the object to be funda- 
 mental and the process of perceiving to be dependent 
 on it, yet examination will show that the process of 
 perceiving an object just consists in taking the 
 aspects of the object separately and relating them 
 so as to form the unity of the object. The object 
 does not exist outside the process, waiting, so to say, 
 till the process is correctly done, whereupon it will 
 become known as the single object for Perception. 
 The object itself y«j^ comes to be in and through the 
 process which takes place in perceiving. In other 
 words, x}s\t. process oi Perception (the subjective side) 
 is itself the object in course of fitting its component 
 elements together. The object as such is the pro- 
 cess completed, the elements united. There is no 
 separation between the being of the object and the 
 perceiving of it — a position which Berkeley sought 
 to establish by another route. For idealism this 
 is literal truth, and the exposition of this identity, 
 first in the case of the universal we call the object 
 
V DUALISM AND PERCEPTION 157 
 
 perceived, then in the case of the universal we call 
 the process of perceiving, is all that constitutes the 
 analysis of the nature of perceptual experience. 
 
 The peculiarity of perceptual experience therefore Perception 
 lies not in its dealing with "particulars," while other j°^j ^°j'^ 
 forms of knowledge, e.g. science, deal obviously with particu- 
 conceptions or universals. That is a common view, 
 which analysis indirectly refutes. The peculiarity 
 lies just in the kind of universal which operates 
 in Perception, in the way in which the universal 
 connects the special elements composing it. The 
 mere opposition of subject to object in Perception is 
 not the antecedent condition of perceptual experi- 
 ence, which must be presupposed before Perception 
 can arise.^ This would make Perception the result of 
 bringing together two alien and mutually excluding 
 substances. Dualism on this view would be the 
 necessary basis on which this type of experience 
 would rest ; and the relation between them, which 
 constitutes Perception, might well be thought of as 
 purely mechanical and causal. 
 
 The latter is no doubt a common interpretation 
 of it. Its classical expression is found in Locke, and 
 it is characteristic of the so-called empirical school Perception 
 generally. Perception on this view arises through Dualism. 
 the subject being " impressed " or acted upon by the 
 object, the subject merely working up these " impres- 
 sions " or " sensations," as they are sometimes called, 
 by certain " laws " peculiar to itself. The singular 
 result of this position is, that the dualism assumed 
 as the ground of Perception is held to pervade all 
 
 ' The opposition is due to the way in which the universal we are here 
 dealing with appears. It is a sense-universal, and Sense-experience is side- 
 by-sideness of parts in the whole continuum. 
 
158 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 knowledge, even the highest, because "all know- 
 ledge starts from Perception." Conceptual Science 
 is explained as due to "abstracting" or "generalis- 
 ing " from perceived fact, i.e. by eliminating certain 
 aspects or elements found in Perception. Perception 
 is held to be the most direct form of contact 
 between subject and object, the most concrete way of 
 relating these "substances." Hence the further we 
 go from it, the more we must drop in our progress, 
 the more we must eliminate, and therefore the less 
 accurately do we present the facts arising from 
 Perception. Hence it is inevitable that conceptual 
 knowledge should be looked on as less valuable, less 
 true, should be taken as merely " abstract," a mere 
 "construction," or whatever other terms are used to 
 convey the idea that to be further from Perception 
 is to be less near the "real." Conceptions as such 
 become " copies," or after-results, due to " mental " 
 activity ; or at best they merely " correspond " to 
 the " reality " revealed in Perception. They form 
 when arranged a world by themselves, parallel with, 
 and in a way " reproducing," but never realising 
 the actual course of things found by Perception. 
 " Reality " then becomes " richer than thought " ; 
 the " truth " is found in the life of perceptual 
 experience. When this distrust of the value of 
 conception asserts itself strongly, we have a recoil 
 towards empiricism in the crudest of forms. This 
 result is seen in the history of post- idealistic 
 philosophy since Kant, where the explanation of 
 knowledge has been sought simply in a clearer 
 analysis of the nature and conditions of perceptual 
 life. When carried to its logical issue, this tendency 
 means either the frank abandonment of the 
 
V PERCEPTION AND EXTERNALITY 159 
 
 philosophical point of view and ideal altogether, 
 or the strange attempt to find the meaning of 
 things through experimental psycho-physics and 
 physiology. 
 
 But subject and object must not and need not be Perception 
 at all thought of in this way to explain Perception. fmpiy°°' 
 It would be truer to say xh^X perceptual experience by Dualism. 
 its very nature puts the object ''external to" the <^ 
 subject, rather than that the externality of subject to 
 object gives rise to Perception. At any rate, perceptual 
 experience and the externality of subject to object 
 are simply different expressions for the same thing. 
 For subject and object to be opposed as unities 
 just means that they appear in the form of Per- 
 ception. The contrast between subject and object 
 in Perception is simply a particular case of the 
 relation between the two, a relation which is present 
 in experience in general. Hence we must proceed 
 to explain Perception from precisely the opposite 
 point of view from that of dualism. It is not 
 this externality of subject to object which is to be 
 assumed at the start, but the unity of subject and 
 object. The prima facie externality has itself to 
 be explained as a distinction inside an identity, a 
 distinction drawn, in the long run, by the self- 
 conscious activity at the basis of all experience. 
 At the level of Perception as such (i.e. as distinct 
 from reflective interpretation of it by philosophy), 
 the identity between the two sides is not expressly 
 known.^ Because their unity is not explicit, the 
 elements remain in it, and are accepted, as merely 
 opposed and mutually exclusive. Hence the 
 
 1 At the most, as, e.g., Kant confesses at the end of his analysis of percep- 
 tion, the identity is merely believed in. 
 
i6o PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 Import- 
 ance of 
 this view 
 of Percep- 
 tion. 
 
 Know- 
 ledge 
 breaks 
 down all 
 opposi- 
 tions. 
 
 characteristic of perceptual experience. Analysis, 
 therefore, has to bring out this identity by showing 
 that the different elements imply it. To do this is 
 to explain Perception.^ 
 
 Now since it is in the sphere of Perception that 
 we come across the so-called "external world," that 
 we meet the opposition usually set up between 
 "mind" and "nature" in its crudest form (in the 
 form, that is to say, of one substance external to and 
 acting upon another substance), this analysis of 
 Perception is of crucial importance for the whole 
 view of experience. If it is correct, it is difficult to 
 reject the interpretation to be given of the nature 
 of Scientific activity, of the life of Morality and 
 Religion, of the unity of Spirit and Nature, the 
 refutation of Kant's dualism, and of his concep- 
 tion of the finiteness and the contradictions into 
 which human reason necessarily falls. For these 
 are all developments of the same position, and 
 follow, one may say, almost inevitably on the 
 admission of this view of Perception. 
 
 It follows also from the same interpretation that 
 there can be no absolute impasse in the way of know- 
 ledge. For if, where the contrast between subject 
 and object seems greatest, viz. Perception, the object 
 is still constituted by the same universals controlling 
 
 ^ Thus the view, here stated, simply takes in a concrete form Kant's principle 
 of self-consciousness as its starting-point, and shows Perception to be one way 
 in which it operates in experience. In this sense it is nearer the truth of that 
 principle than the position of Fichte, who did not show that the distinction of 
 subject and object in Perception is immanently involved in the idea of self- 
 consciousness, but endeavoured to show how the one produced the other and 
 put it externally beyond itself by an initial act of spontaneity. So conceived 
 the externality for ever remains, and is a perpetual "other" to self-consciousness, 
 never completely reconciled ; or if reconciled, the externalising process becomes 
 a mere fiction from which the ego never escapes, but which is illusory none 
 the less. 
 
V THE OBJECT OF PERCEPTION i6i 
 
 the subject, then knowledge can never be brought 
 face to face with any kind of thing-in-itself beyond 
 its power to grasp. The contradictions of experi- 
 ence will always be resolvable by the power which 
 created them, and will not be attributed either to 
 the pretentiousness of finite mind (as Kant held), 
 or to the fallibility of human reason, but will be 
 accepted as part of the nature of experience. The 
 systematic justification of this view is the sum and 
 substance of Hegel's interpretation of experience. 
 
 In dealing with Perception, then, we first analyse object of 
 the object into its constituent characteristics. It ^q^^^' 
 is the universal of sensibility, the sense-universal. 
 What, as mere Sense-experience, was taken to be 
 a series of discrete " thises," must now be viewed as 
 elements in the universal. They are ways in which 
 it appears, and hence are themselves a plurality of 
 sense elements. These are what we call " qualities " 
 of Sense.^ They are together in the universal which 
 is the focus of perceptual experience. This focal 
 unity is what we call a " thing." A " thing " is just 
 the unity of the object in Perception. The " thing " 
 is the universal of Perception when that universal 
 is viewed as a complete whole. The " qualities " are 
 the phases or aspects of this universal. They are 
 as such universal, universals of sense ; and, being 
 so, they, like all sensuous experience, fall apart 
 from each other and from the central unity. 
 Taking the plurality of qualities which together 
 make up the variety of the object perceived, they 
 are, because at once together and falling apart 
 
 ' Thus what in Sense-experience is a " this-feeling," a mere variation of 
 the continuum of immediate experience, becomes in, Perception a fixed quality 
 (on the object-side) and a determinate qualification (on the subject-side). 
 
 M 
 
i62 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 from each other, held to be merely associated in 
 an object. Thus colour, sound, and taste may 
 all be qualities of the same perceived object, but 
 there is no inherent connexion of a quality " white " 
 with a quality "sweet" and a quality of "crisp- 
 hardness," e.g., in the case of sugar. The one 
 quality is not to be attributed to the other : they 
 are merely there together at the same time and yet 
 apart as qualities. Taking the qualities as a whole, 
 there is nothing more in the object than these 
 qualities, except the fact of their being associ- 
 ated together. This indeed was Berkeley's un- 
 answerable criticism of Locke. Looking, again, at 
 the unity of the object in its distinction from 
 the plurality of the qualities, the same apartness 
 characterises the relation of the qualities to the 
 unity. They are said merely to " belong to " or 
 be " properties " of the object. " Belonging to " 
 and "being properties of" essentially imply that in 
 some way the qualities have an external relation to 
 the object. They are " attached to it," or, again, are 
 said to "inhere "in it, both of which terms indicate 
 that the " it " is something or other apart from them. 
 This is seen in a concrete way in ordinary experience, 
 where it is admitted that a quality may pass away 
 altogether, or give place to another quality similar 
 or different in nature, and yet the unity of the object 
 still remain. 
 The unity The objcct in Perception, then, is a universal, a 
 as wdfL "thing" which breaks up into a plurality of universals, 
 includes, sense-qualities, existing side by side. These qualities 
 are the positive content of the object. If they were 
 absolutely indifferent to each other, existing merely 
 side by side, it would be difficult to give any meaning 
 
V THINGS 163 
 
 to the unity of the object at all. A " thing " would 
 simply be yellow, and also sweet, and also round ; 
 nothing more. It would be not a unity but a 
 conglomerate. But this alone cannot constitute 
 a "thing." To be a unity it must exclude as well 
 as inclttde. And what a "thing" excludes is other 
 "things." To do so is to be "one thing," a con- 
 crete unity and not a plurality of elements side by 
 side. This exclusion gives it stability and prevents 
 it being a mere flux as in pure Sense-experience. 
 The permanence in the midst of, and in spite of, 
 the flux of sense is the peculiar mark of a " thing " 
 as such, as distinct from a quality ; it constitutes 
 the thinghood of the "thing." But it is a stability 
 in the sphere of Sense ; its content is Sense. 
 Hence to be " one thing " means being external to 
 another ; each is a unit and shuts out or excludes 
 another from itself. There is no thought here of 
 a law or force controlling the unity and making it 
 permanent. Such ideas come later. For Perception 
 the unity is simply a focus of qualities excluding 
 other foci of other qualities. Hence their unity, their 
 stability, is a "here," a "now," a " lAts," or ''that," 
 " thing," etc. But since its unity consists simply of 
 sense-qualities, it falls in its entirety as well as in its 
 qualities into the current of change. Hence the 
 "disappearance" of "things" lies in their very 
 nature as "things," and their varying degree of 
 stability depends on the kind of qualities possessed. 
 Thus the unity of a "thing" is not something 
 independent of the qualities, nor something outside 
 Perception. For Perception, the unity just lies 
 in the universal, the "thing," excluding other 
 "things," and being one amongst others; the way 
 
i64 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 it specifically does so is simply by those special 
 qualities it is said to "possess." In perceptual 
 experience, therefore, the universal, which is the 
 centre of this experience, breaks up into a variety 
 of sensuous universals (qualities) which lie apart 
 from each other and mark off that universal itself, 
 which is the "thing," from other "things." To 
 include qualities is thus to exclude other "things"; 
 and to do both at once is to be this or that " thing," 
 is to be a single or one "thing." 
 
 Thus the nature of a perceived "thing" from 
 first to last is resolvable into elementary universals 
 The limits belonging to the sphere of sensibility. There 
 ofPercep- jg j^q more, so far as Perception goes, than 
 just this specification of a universal of Sense into 
 sensuous universals. If we ask for more, or if we 
 are led to go further, it must be because we are 
 going beyond Perception proper. At the level of 
 Perception there is nothing more to be given or 
 required. That we must go further will be seen 
 presently. But the point to notice is that Perception 
 as such does not and cannot contain more than 
 what has been stated. If mind cannot be satisfied 
 with that, we thereby confess simply that our mind 
 cannot be exhausted by perceptual experience, not 
 that Perception as such contains more than Per- 
 ception supplies in the above analysis. Perception 
 as such creates no difficulties it cannot solve ; it is 
 a higher phase of the life of mind that forces 
 perceptual experience into contradictions which it 
 (Perception) cannot overcome. This higher phase 
 of mind must do so just because it is higher. And 
 as the difficulties are raised by this higher sphere, 
 they must be solved by this higher sphere, and not 
 
V KANT ON PERCEPTION 165 
 
 by Perception. They can be solved by mind, 
 because mind has raised them ; and hence mind is 
 never defeated in pursuing its own purpose of 
 realising a complete unity. No doubt this higher 
 sphere beyond Perception seems to be demanded by 
 Perception. We show (as we shall see presently) 
 that the very nature of a "thing" is to be at 
 once a self-contained unity and also a dependent 
 unity. And when we do this, Perception seems to 
 call for a further effort of mind to get over the 
 difficulties inherent in its own nature. But, in point 
 of fact, what has brought Perception to this pass is 
 another level of mind which is immediately above 
 Perception ; and hence the solution of those 
 difficulties is to be found at that higher level also. 
 
 Stated in this way the position is sharply Kant's 
 distinguished from that of Kant or again of Locke p^^^°[ 
 and Berkeley. Kant, taking a dualistic view of the tion. 
 conditions of Perception, held the view that "behind" 
 the thing perceived there was implied for Perception 
 a thing ^^r se not perceived, a hidden core or focus 
 of reality not resolvable into sense qualities which 
 we can know. He did not, like Locke, speak of this 
 unity as a law of the thing, and thereby bring it 
 within the range of knowledge. It was simply a 
 " beyond," something "outside" knowledge, which 
 no power of mind can get at. Clearly, if Percep- 
 tion and Understanding are heterogeneous forms of 
 mind, anything which remains always unrevealed by 
 Perception, and which yet is not supposed to have 
 been placed in Perception by Understanding, must 
 for ever be an unintelligible surd for human 
 knowledge. Such a surd is the thing apart from 
 its qualities. On the above view, however, such an 
 
i66 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 idea is the creation of Understanding, the higher 
 power of mind above Perception. For Perception 
 there cannot possibly be a thing per se, because 
 Perception reveals solely universals of sense, and 
 there is nothing more to be found in perceptual 
 experience. The " thing- in -itself " is due to the 
 determination of perceptual experience by a higher 
 level of the mind's experience, the level, as we shall 
 see, of Understanding. Hence the thing-in-itself 
 cannot be an ultimate surd for knowledge, since it 
 is to start with merely the result of the mind taking 
 up a point of view in regard to Perception which is 
 beyond the reach of Perception itself. Certainly 
 Perception cannot perceive a "thing-in-itself," in 
 the sense of Kant. But, then, it does not exist for 
 Perception at all. Hence if it is beyond Perception, 
 it is not necessarily beyond knowledge at another level. 
 The mistake of Kant consisted in condemning 
 human knowledge for not being able to grasp at 
 one level of experience (Perception) a content 
 whose very existence is only found at a higher 
 (Thought). And this in the long run was due to 
 his making Perception and Understanding hetero- 
 geneous, which again was the result of his dualism. 
 Berkeley. Berkeley, again, truer to the nature of Perception, 
 finds nothing but sense-universals, or "ideas of 
 sense," as he calls them, in the world of things, 
 and denies the existence of any unknown somewhat 
 so far as concerns Perception. True also to the 
 externality characteristic of sense qualities and 
 perceived universals (or things), he seeks to establish 
 a purely contingent or " occasional " relation between 
 them. They become in his hands "signs" of the 
 presence of one another, the anticipation of one 
 
V ITS SUBJECTIVE SIDE 167 
 
 after the other being the creation of the experience 
 of perceptual life itself. But while intending to 
 limit all knowledge in the first instance to per- 
 ceptual experience, he unconsciously goes beyond 
 this by introducing the conception of an orderliness 
 into experience, which he does not really derive from 
 Perception as such, but from the further nature of 
 mind. In other words, order is introduced by the 
 deeper nature of mind, i.e. by self-conscious reason, 
 into the flow of sense-life. This order has its 
 source ultimately, or a priori, in the divine-mind, 
 and derivatively, or a posteriori, in man's individual 
 mind. But it is, for Berkeley, an order of a sensuous 
 material ; and hence for him is again of a contingent 
 kind. Thus causation, e.g., becomes the external 
 relation of a sign to a thing signified. Hence, 
 while both regard Knowledge as essentially per- 
 ceptual in character, Berkeley falls into an opposite 
 error from Kant. Kant set a limit to knowledge 
 because Perception implied an element not given 
 or found by Perception itself. Berkeley set a limit 
 to knowledge although it did not imply any unper- 
 ceived element. The limit in Kant's case is really 
 due to the nature and conditions of Understanding, 
 which is the source of necessity in experience and 
 yet is apart from Perception. The limit in Berkeley's 
 case is determined by the fact that because perceptual 
 experience does not carry us beyond what is per- 
 ceived, the connexions of experience must at best 
 be contingent. Hence in Kant's case the limit is 
 characterised by a term belonging to the region of 
 Perception, it is a " thing-in-itself " ; in Berkeley's 
 case it lies outside Perception, and is called a 
 " notion." 
 
i68 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 Hegel's The above interpretation avoids both these posi- 
 
 correction. ^^q^^^ flj-gt ^y looking upon Perception and Under- 
 standing as 6oik forms of experience at different 
 levels but continuous with each other ; and, secondly, 
 by regarding the limitations, difficulties, and con- 
 tradictions of the one sphere as due to, and hence 
 to be solved by, mind at a higher sphere of conscious 
 activity. 
 The The resolution of the elements of the object of 
 
 Pct!:"''" perception into separate conscious parts, and the 
 tion. conscious relation of these to each other, constitutes 
 just what we mean by "perceiving." Perceiving is 
 Perceiv- the subjective side of the same universal which con- 
 '"s- stitutes the object in perceptual experience. The 
 
 process of perceiving does not consist in an inner 
 activity which goes on of itself, and when completed 
 all at once refers to an object which throughout that 
 activity was external to it. The process of perceiving 
 contains the object all along. The development, or 
 activity, of the process is just the object coming to 
 consciousness, entering experience. The completion 
 of the process is simply the realisation of what 
 Perception means. There is no "act of reference" to 
 the object which takes place all of a sudden : it is 
 there from, first to last in the process of coming to 
 know the object in Perception. No doubt there is 
 a finality about the completed relation of subject to 
 the object, i.e. about that stage in the process where 
 we have all the certainty Perception can give ; and 
 no doubt that feeling of finality is not found in the 
 earlier stages. But that is in the nature of the case. 
 As a process with a definite goal (viz. the attain- 
 ment of that kind of unity of subject and object 
 which Perception achieves) it must be less secure 
 
V SENSE-FUNCTIONS 169 
 
 and definite in the stages preceding the end. But 
 this does not mean that the course of our ideas in the 
 earlier stages is generically different from the final 
 result. It does not mean that before we have that 
 final certainty, which Perception gives, the process 
 is " psychical " or psychological, and that when we 
 have it, the process suddenly becomes " cognitive " or 
 logical. It is both subjective and objective all along ; 
 for it is experience from first to last. The subjective 
 aspect of Perception just lies in the process of being 
 conscious of the elements comprising the unity of 
 the object, i.e. of becoming gradually aware of the 
 diversity implied or contained in the universal 
 belonging to Perception. This involves at once 
 analysis and synthesis, and in this perceiving 
 essentially consists. 
 
 To trace, then, the process of perceiving is merely 
 to repeat the moments contained in the object of 
 Perception, and to express the nature and result of 
 Perception from the point of view of the subjective 
 side of the experience. 
 
 We can see these characteristics of the process The pro- 
 of Perception exemplified more especially when ^gpj°Jjj^*''' 
 we are perceiving new objects, or when dis- 
 tinguishing a sensuous area into perceptual units, 
 or, again, when identifying an obscurely presented 
 whole, say the objects in a misty landscape. Here 
 we can be distinctly aware of separating and 
 combining elements, selecting, rejecting, unifying, 
 and breaking up until a point is reached when, as we 
 say, we are certain of " perceiving " such and such 
 an object, after which the process ceases. In 
 such cases we are all the while inside the subject- 
 object relation. The difference between the process 
 
ments. 
 
 170 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 and the conclusion is one between a complete and 
 an incomplete realisation of the nature of the rela- 
 tion. The former is described as the subjective 
 side specifically, the latter is the objective side, but 
 the difference is not a separation. The objective 
 aspect is involved all along in the subjective process, 
 and conversely. When we separate them sharply, 
 as we can do for practical purposes, and as is done 
 absolutely by a dualistic view of perceptual know- 
 ledge, we can put perceiving on one side and the 
 thing with its qualities on the other. But each 
 really involves the other, each is merely a phase of 
 the same unity, the experience we call Perception. 
 Its eie- Hence, then, to trace the steps in the process of 
 
 perceiving is merely to relate from another point of 
 view the factors involved in the nature of the object, 
 the " thing " perceived. In both cases we have a 
 plurality of elements at once apart and indifferent to 
 each other, and yet forming a unity. The elements 
 on the subjective side are the various ways of appre- 
 hending by the different sense functions, "hearing," 
 " seeing," etc., which are distinct and yet fall within 
 the one activity of the subject. Thus seeing, 
 hearing, and touching may be all elements in the 
 experience of perceiving a given " thing." They are 
 specifically different, and yet side by side in the life 
 of the subject, and in that sense are a unity. Their 
 togetherness just makes up the unity of the act of 
 perceiving. Each again is subdivided into equal 
 diverse elements or forms; seeing "black" being 
 different from seeing "white," and so on. In all 
 respects, therefore, we have the same kind of 
 diversity in unity in the process of perceiving (the 
 act of Perception) and the product perceived, the 
 
V PROCESS OF PERCEPTION 171 
 
 "thing." In analysing the epistemological meaning 
 of " things," and in stating the nature of perceiv- 
 ing, we are reaching the same experience merely 
 from different points of view. Or, to put it more 
 emphatically, the "thing" just is the content of 
 the act of perceiving ; the process of perceiving 
 realises itself in the consciousness of a "thing." 
 In a "thing" the universal consists in a unity of 
 various qualities lying side by side : they simply 
 are together. But this " being together" is also and 
 in the same sense a form of the activity of perceiv- 
 ing, "Togetherness" appears within the subject 
 in the form of specifically discrete functions of 
 sense-apprehension, seeing, hearing, tasting, etc., 
 each qualitatively apart and unique in its operation, 
 and merely existing together as the activity of the 
 one subject. The unity of the " thing" perceived is 
 thus as truly a specific expression of the activity of 
 perceiving as a determinate character of the objec- 
 tive world. For the kind of unity is the same on 
 both sides. Its being a unity is not given to the 
 self That is the error of the dualistic view of 
 Perception. Nor is it simply and solely made by 
 the self; that is the error of Subjective Idealism. 
 The unity is the subject itself realised in a specific 
 form ; when realised we have the objective unity of 
 the " thing " in experience. What is fundamental is 
 the subject-object relation constituting the experi- 
 ence. The unity of that experience on the side of 
 the subject appears as the perceiving of a " thing " : 
 the unity of the experience in another aspect is the 
 percept, or "thing." Thus the relation between 
 subject and object in Perception is not a bringing 
 together of static entities each fixed and complete. 
 
culties. 
 
 172 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 The experience is a continuous process containing 
 different moments or factors ; it is a unity in and 
 through difference. When completed the differ- 
 ences stand apart as distinct phases of the one unity, 
 because, on the one hand, the process is a process 
 of Sense-experience, i.e. side-by-sideness, and, on 
 the other, the differences are here universal, and 
 therefore maintain a fixity impossible at the level 
 of Sense as such. Thus the stability of the 
 opposition of subject and object in Perception is 
 the product of this single process, not the ground 
 of it. 
 Diffi- If, then, the two sides are thus to be identified, 
 
 how are we to account for the apparent separation, 
 at least practically formed and ordinarily accepted, 
 between perceiving and the thing perceived. The 
 stones or trees, it may be said, are transparently 
 separated from the mind of the individual percipient. 
 They are there, it is held, whether any one perceives 
 them or not ; they are independent, if anything can 
 be. Is this independence illusory ? How is it to 
 be explained ? In reply to this it has to be pointed 
 out ( I ) that if we accept sense-life as a continuum, 
 then clearly differentiation, relation, unification, etc., 
 must operate before we can get even specific objects 
 like trees or stones. These must be separated out 
 of the generic whole of the "this-here-now" of Sense 
 before they get the individuation of " things." Such 
 separation surely goes to constitute them what they 
 are, and such separation is the result of experience, 
 the experience, namely, we call Perception. (2) If 
 the above analysis of sense-experience is correct, we 
 cannot regard sense-life as having any independence 
 of the subject. A sense-experience which implies 
 
V DISTINCTION OF FACTORS 173 
 
 no subject of such experience seems meaningless. 
 But if this be true, and if Perception is a further 
 development of the very nature, and not simply on 
 the basis of, sense-life, the essential unity of subject 
 and object in the experience must be carried forward 
 and found in Perception as well. To deny this is to 
 deny the meaning of the development of the one 
 out of the other. (3) The real question is not as 
 to the abstract unity of subject and object, but as 
 to the kind of unity holding between them at the 
 different stages. No doubt the unity of percipient 
 and " thing " is not the same as that holding between 
 feeling and a mere Sense element. The relation is 
 different because the experience is different. That 
 lies in the very nature of the case. Development 
 there would otherwise be none. But difference in 
 the expression of the unity is something very far 
 removed from the absence of any unity at all, which 
 separation of subject from " thing " implies. (4) We 
 must distinguish sharply between the object in Per- 
 ception, between the unity of percipient and " thing " 
 in an individual's concrete perceptual experience, 
 and what holds good for consciousness in general. 
 The trees and stones in Mecca are certainly not bound 
 up with the perceptual life of a specific individual 
 in Scotland in the way they are connected with an 
 individual in Arabia. They are matter of inference 
 to the former, and of direct Perception to the latter. 
 That is, they belong to a non-perceptual experience 
 in the case of the former, and to Perception only in 
 the case of the latter. In the former the object 
 belongs to what we may call general or conceptual 
 experience, the experience of a conceiving s,vkii]^cx. : in 
 the latter the object exists for 2. perceiving s^jky^&cl, a 
 
174 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 subject qu& perceiving. Hence it is mere confusion 
 to speak of the object for general experience and 
 the subject in perceptual experience in the same 
 breath, as if subjects and objects could be cut loose 
 and transposed as we please. Subject and object 
 are always relative to one another and to the 
 experience which they constitute. It is out of this 
 confusion that the idea of a separation between things 
 and the subject arises. We are using object in one 
 reference and subject in another. (5) It is also to 
 be pointed out that it is the thing-character of the 
 object world we are considering, i.e. the content of 
 Perception only. Thus, for example, a tree or even 
 a stone is not simply a " thing," any more than a 
 human being is a mere "thing." They have the 
 thing-character in so far as they appear in that form 
 of experience we call Perception. But we cannot 
 exhaust a tree by perceptual experience, still less a 
 human being. A tree, e.g., has " life," as we say, it is 
 governed by "laws." Neither of these categories 
 belong to Perception ; we cannot perceive " life " or 
 " law." These imply a further development of mind 
 and experience ; they imply what, as we shall see, we 
 call Understanding and Reason. Hence it is utterly 
 misleading and erroneous to assert a separation 
 between perceiving and its object, when the grounds 
 of that separation imply elements of which in the very 
 nature of the case Perception can take no cognisance. 
 We must keep within the universe of discourse of 
 Perception itself, and then ask whether the nature of 
 perceptual -experience is such that there is or can 
 be a separation between its object and its subject. 
 When we do so we shall find, as indicated above, 
 that the fixity of the opposition of subject and 
 
V IMPORTANCE OF PERCEPTION 175 
 
 object in Perception is the result of universalising 
 moments of the continuous process of sense-elements. 
 The sense -content, as we saw before, consists 
 essentially of units side by side ; when universal, 
 that content gets permanence of character, and this 
 fixes the side-by-sideness into a stable opposition of 
 content. Therein lies the difference between Sensa- 
 tion as such and Perception as such. The oppo- 
 site elements, however, are none the less moments 
 of the one continuous process in which the life of 
 this experience consists ; and they arise out of that 
 process. That is the only kind of opposition which 
 exists at the level of Perception as such.^ 
 
 The justification for this somewhat lengthy 
 analysis of Perception is that Perception presents a 
 crucial problem for any interpretation of experience 
 such as is here given. It is by appeal to perceptual 
 experience that dualism for the most part finds 
 justification ; while Perception seems at first to be a 
 serious obstacle in the way of any thorough-going 
 idealism. 
 
 ' The kind and degree of opposition varies with the content of the 
 perceptual experience. Hence the distinction between primary and secondary 
 qualities on the one hand, and the varying degree of "thinghood" in 
 perceived objects on the other. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 UNDERSTANDING AND THE WORLD OF NOUMENA 
 AND PHENOMENA 
 
 The need The next question is, how is the content of experience 
 stage^ofex- involved in the Perception of things to be brought 
 perience. into a Unity which will completely satisfy conscious- 
 ness ? It is plain that at the level of Perception 
 this satisfaction is not attained. In point of fact 
 nothing is so common as the confession of defeat in 
 attempting to penetrate completely the life of things. 
 This refers to the experience we have through 
 Perception. The limited range of Perception, the 
 transitoriness of qualities, the alteration of their 
 arrangement, the disappearance of things themselves 
 — all these in everyday life prevent permanent 
 satisfaction with this level of experience. 
 A thing But the very principle of perceptual experience 
 
 external' "^akes this inevitable. For it lies in the nature of 
 relation, qualities and things that they have their peculiar 
 character through external relation. A "thing" only 
 is by reference to other "things." Its unity is for 
 Perception a unity by exclusion. It is, as we may put 
 it, obtained by selecting a certain area of sense fact, 
 leaving the rest aside, and looking on the part selected 
 as a fixed and determinate object. Its determinate 
 unity just lies in its shutting out the remainder of 
 
 176 
 
CH. VI THINGS ARE ISOLATED 177 
 
 sense with which all the while it is continuous. 
 This character also affects the internal unity of the 
 " thing." For that, as we saw, lies in the qualities 
 excluding one another and in being simply together, 
 side by side. That whose nature lies in exclusion 
 is eV5^^ excluded. But complete reciprocal exclusion 
 means dissolution. Hence the passing away of 
 "things." So, again, of the qualities. They are 
 universals, no doubt, but universals of Sense. But 
 what is of Sense carries its opposite in its very 
 nature : a " this " is not for ever a " this." It is 
 no sooner "this" than it becomes a "that." A 
 universal of Sense, therefore, in spite of its fixity, 
 carries within it the instability of its own origin. 
 One quality passes and gives way to another literally 
 and completely. The colour of a " thing " gives place 
 to another colour without any internal unity between 
 them : they simply are there. And, finally, the result 
 is the same if we take a "thing" with its qualities. 
 Here we have an object which contains opposite 
 elements simply existing together within it, but 
 not coherently connected. They are and remain 
 apart from each other. The object is looked at as 
 this object in virtue of a certain quality, its "pro- 
 perty " ; the distinctiveness of it as one object lies in 
 that property. The object is a universal because of 
 its plurality of properties existing side by side ; it is 
 " this " and also " that," and " this " in spite of " that." 
 
 Now all this implies that the nature of a " thing " And is 
 is not self-contained. Its nature carries with it 3*^*^^^°^^ 
 perpetual reference to what is outside it, other than complete. 
 it. It could not have this quality unless by contrast 
 with other "thises," other qualities. It could not 
 be the meeting-place of qualities unless by reference 
 
 N 
 
178 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING ch. 
 
 to other spheres from which itself is distinguished. 
 Externality, in short, is of the essence of a thing, 
 and that means that it is not self-contained. 
 Arbitrari- No doubt thcse two aspccts mentioned seem to 
 Perce°^- iTiake a "thing "a substantial reality with an inde- 
 tion. pendent being of its own. But the very fact that in 
 Perception itself either side indifferently is regarded 
 as its reality shows the inherent instability of a 
 "thing." We find that sometimes Perception takes 
 one quality or more to be the essential being of the 
 "thing," as when primary qualities are taken to be 
 more fundamental than secondary; while sometimes 
 its real being is placed in the combination of certain 
 qualities, the others being indifferent, as when a 
 drop of water is regarded as a "thing," even it 
 may be the same "thing," whether it be coloured 
 or clear, rounded or flattened, etc. This ambiguity 
 the perceptual consciousness may try to overcome 
 by drawing a distinction between "essential" and 
 "accidental" characteristics of "things"; or, again, by 
 saying that the "thing" is "independent" in certain 
 respects, though relative to others in other respects. 
 But these are easily seen to be subterfuges. For 
 a distinction between essential and non-essential 
 characteristics in the case of what owns qualities 
 in a merely external way, the qualities being for 
 Perception merely side by side, is clearly quite arbi- 
 trary. While, again, to assert the independence or 
 inherent self-identity of things, and yet qualify it by 
 adding "so far as it is this or that," is obviously an 
 assertion and a denial in the same breath. 
 
 The level of Perception therefore cannot satisfy 
 the mind's desire for completely coherent unity. 
 The constituent factors in the " thing," its unity and 
 
VI PERCEPTION INCOMPLETE 179 
 
 its diverse elements, are and remain antagonistic to 
 each other in the very being of " things. " They 
 are " associated," but disparate : they include by 
 excluding, they are one merely by being many. 
 They both fall inside the " thing " ; but for Percep- 
 tion they stand opposed and unreconciled. Hence to 
 meet the demand which the mind makes on its 
 experience, a further stage of experience must be 
 introduced. This step is made possible because a further 
 both opposed factors fall within the totality of the nelelsary. 
 " thing's " nature. In this way they are seen to 
 be parts of a whole. The step is made necessary, 
 because the experience of mind cannot be exhausted 
 so long as the sense of opposition remains within 
 it ; that opposition must be removed. What we 
 want is a whole which will not be fettered or con- 
 ditioned in this purely external way characteristic 
 of the "thing." In other words, the universal 
 we want must not be one which is maintained 
 simply through relation to others ; it must be self- 
 determined, coherent within itself To obtain this 
 in experience, since it cannot be had from Per- 
 ception, we pass to another attitude of mind. That 
 attitude is what we call Understanding. Under- 
 standing is thus the next level of experience required 
 to realise what is left unsatisfied by Perception. 
 
 Before indicating what this form of mind con- 
 tains, and how experience at this stage works, let us 
 notice in passing the peculiar significance of this step. Meaning 
 Stated shortly, it implies neither more nor less than° ^^^^" 
 that the mind of man is on the one hand not to be 
 defeated in its demand for a completely coherent 
 experience, or, what is the same thing, complete 
 consciousness of self in experience, and on the other 
 
i8o SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING ch. 
 
 hand is not to be put off by subterfuges or partial 
 reconciliations, no matter how ingenious. Be the 
 object and the subject as far removed to all appear- 
 ance as they may, be the antithesis between the 
 factors in any mode of experience as great as 
 possible, this view of knowledge maintains as a 
 working assumption, which the course of the in- 
 terpretation of knowledge is to justify to be correct, 
 that a satisfying unity can and must be attained 
 by the mind operative in experience. Hence, on 
 this view, the transparently incomplete sense of 
 unity arrived at by Perception is not the occasion 
 for confessing the bankruptcy of knowledge in 
 Two regard to the so-called external world ; nor is 
 ^^^^' it sufficient merely to supplement and guard its 
 limited form of truth by qualifying expressions or 
 patch -work apologies. The former is the attitude 
 often assumed by a thorough -going Dualism, the 
 latter is adopted by so-called common-sense Realism. 
 Thus, those who regard Perception as the sole avenue 
 to knowledge of a world, from which to begin with 
 the mind is separated by the whole diameter of being, 
 The and which gets into contact with mind through the 
 DuaiSm° agency of our "external senses," find that the opposi- 
 tion between the two poles assumed at the start 
 remains at the end of the process of Perception. The 
 world remains external, and Perception fails to convey 
 to the mind its " real " nature. The admission of this 
 takes the form of drawing a distinction between 
 what the world may be "in itself," what things are 
 " in themselves," and what they are " for " perceiving 
 minds. Regarding the former we are said to know 
 nothing ; regarding the latter we are held to have 
 a working certainty, a certainty, however, always 
 
VI DUALISM AND PERCEPTION i8i 
 
 threatened and liable to be overthrown by the un- 
 known reality behind the veil of sense-experience. 
 Knowledge beyond perceptual experience is im- 
 possible, however much we may desire or demand 
 it. In spite of, perhaps because of, this confession, 
 the question cannot but be perpetually raised: — 
 what, then, are the things when not perceived ? 
 what qualities have they ? do they have even 
 qualities at all when the percipient is removed 
 temporarily or permanently? And the question 
 remains as persistently without an answer. This 
 qualified agnosticism very easily passes into absolute 
 agnosticism or even pure scepticism. For the 
 transition from the question, "what are the things 
 apart from the qualities I perceive " ? to the question, 
 "are the qualities I perceive really properties of things 
 at all " ? is too simple to be neglected by the awakened 
 reflection of the critic of knowledge. When this step 
 is taken, we can stop at nothing short of the paralysis 
 of all knowledge of the external world, and total 
 scepticism is the result. Such, indeed, is the point of 
 view deliberately adopted by a mind which is frankly 
 prepared to accept despair rather than cherish 
 delusion.^ The way out of these difficulties consists 
 in accepting the inherent incompleteness of the pro- 
 cess of perceptual experience as a form of knowledge ; 
 in asserting, further, that the consciousness of that 
 incompleteness implies the presence in experience of 
 another form of knowledge which can extend and 
 complete our knowledge of the world of "things" ; 
 and as a consequence in denying the dualism assumed 
 by the view just stated. 
 
 ^ I have in mind here the epistemological position of a critic like Huxley on 
 the famous controversy regarding protoplasm. 
 
i82 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING ch. 
 
 And of On the other hand, the mere ingenuity, or ingenu- 
 
 slnse"""""" ousness, of the " good sense " of " ordinary under- 
 Reaiism. standing," which professes "to take things as they 
 are " and not to go further, is not sufficient to secure 
 the end we seek to attain. For this, while admitting 
 the insufficiency of Perception, yet at the same time 
 seeks to make the result seem completely satis- 
 factory by merely distinguishing between what is 
 an "essential" aspect of a "thing" and what is 
 "unessential"; i.e. it merely qualifies one of its con- 
 tradictory elements by reference to another. In this 
 way it never feels the need of transcending the know- 
 ledge of "things" given in Perception, and never seeks 
 to bring the contradictory elements into coherent con- 
 nexion. It considers any attempt to do so as an 
 endeavour to transcend what it calls "experience," 
 meaning by this perceptual experience ; and sees in 
 the attempt merely the sophistical manipulation of 
 abstractions. Such procedure, indeed, it may even 
 identify with philosophy itself, which is said to deal 
 merely with "bare" thoughts, "pure abstractions." 
 This is to a large extent the view of "common sense," 
 and of much reflection on the nature of " science." 
 
 But this is evidently a confession of want of 
 
 thoroughness in the application of the idea of 
 
 These knowledge. It implies that such terms as essential 
 
 unsatis- ^^'^ unessential, universal and particular, are not to 
 
 factory, be taken too seriously, and do not raise any problems 
 
 that require a further solution. It means that the 
 
 belief in the coherence of knowledge need not be 
 
 applied to conceptions, but must be restricted to 
 
 what can be attained by Perception, no matter 
 
 what that involves. And it is clearly inconsistent. 
 
 For such ideas as essential and unessential are 
 
VI UNSATISFACTORY VIEWS 183 
 
 considered necessary to Perception, and yet they do 
 not themselves belong at all to the level of perceptual 
 knowledge as such. Perception does not perceive 
 essentials and non-essentials : it perceives a "thing" 
 and its qualities. Such ideas are thus treated as 
 external to perceptual experience and yet as 
 necessary. But if they are necessary they surely 
 demand further systematic interpretation ; while if 
 they are external they may be considered irrelevant 
 for Perception as such. Then, again, the sheer 
 sophistry of proceeding in this way is manifest when 
 we note that in point of fact it is quite indifferent 
 and arbitrary which aspect is held to be essential 
 and which not. Everything depends on how in a 
 special case things are regarded. This must be so. 
 For the terms essential and unessential, so far as 
 concerns the content of Perception, are held to be 
 interchangeable. All the same, what is unessential 
 is still looked at as necessary. But to hold anything 
 to be unessential and yet necessary is inherently 
 contradictory. 
 
 There is only one course left if we are to apply 
 the idea of knowledge, of coherent unity, systematic- 
 ally. These factors necessarily operative in Per- 
 ception must be made consistent with the unity xhe way 
 they imply. This is the more necessary since the °"'- 
 very elements are themselves the life of Perception. 
 They make Perception as such what it is : the flux 
 of " things " has its ground just in the fact that what 
 is essential may be in another aspect the reverse, 
 what is universal may become particular. Their 
 significance in this respect is ignored altogether by 
 Dualism and Realism : and hence they are treated 
 as being more or less external to "things," and 
 
i84 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING ch. 
 
 calling for no further treatment on their own 
 account. To secure such treatment the point of 
 view of mere Perception must be left behind, and 
 a higher aspect of experience appealed to. This 
 implies that Perception is not self-complete, as it 
 is assumed to be, and it implies that the sphere to 
 which Perception points has a nature and content 
 of its own demanding separate consideration and 
 development. This is precisely what is done in 
 passing to Understanding as that mode of experience 
 to which we are carried in order to reconcile the 
 opposite elements of Perception, 
 Under- What kind of experience this is, and how it 
 
 irTits™^ ' proceeds, are determined first by the elements which 
 subjective Perception leaves unreconciled ; and second by the 
 demand for coherent unity on the part of self- 
 consciousness, a demand which controls the whole 
 course of experience. The first, we might say, 
 prescribes the content, the second prescribes the 
 form, of this next stage of experience. We may 
 put the result here attained in the following way. 
 We saw that the unity present in Perception 
 was universal, because within it all the discrete 
 elements in the perceptual world lay together. The 
 question now is simply how does this universal hold 
 these different elements together, or in what way 
 does it show itself a concrete universal ? It is not 
 something external to the factors present in the 
 nature of " things " : this would merely restate the 
 contradiction we are seeking to remove. Nor is it 
 merely an abstract designation for what is common 
 to them. It is identified with them, the medium in 
 which their relation takes effect. They are related to 
 each other ; " things" and "qualities" mutually imply 
 
VI UNDERSTANDING 185 
 
 and refer to each other, in virtue of some identity. 
 Their differences are the ways in which it appears ; 
 its unity is the ground of their interrelatedness. 
 They get their stability from it. It is resolved into 
 them. They are dissolved into it. The independ- 
 ence of " things " with their " qualities," which makes 
 them indifferent to each other, collapses into the 
 unity of the medium in which they subsist and by 
 which they affect each other. The unfolding of 
 this identity is just the realisation of independent 
 "things" and "qualities." Now, says Hegel, the 
 process hereby involved is what we call active 
 "Force" (Kraft). In Force we have an identity On its 
 containing all that appears as its "expression," and°^g^**'* 
 a diversity of elements different from and inde- Force, 
 pendent of each other and yet manifestations of the 
 one fundamental identity. It is just such an idea, 
 therefore, which can unite in itself the two aspects 
 which characterise " things " — mutual independence 
 of elements, and a unity which insists on being the 
 sphere of such independence. For Force, by its 
 very nature, must express itself without reserve. 
 Force resolves itself into diverse elements, what 
 we call its "manifestations," which differ in time, 
 place, and relation. The unity of Force in that 
 sense lies in its holding the plurality of manifesta- 
 tions into which it is resolved : the diversity is that 
 unity made explicit, " expressed." This, then, is 
 how the world of things appears at the level of 
 experience immediately above Perception, and which 
 is demanded by the incoherence of Perception : for 
 a world of " things " and " qualities " we have sub- 
 stituted a world of "forces" and their "expression." 
 Let us not misunderstand the result. This 
 
i86 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING ch. 
 
 Meaning does not mean that the individual human mind in 
 °osition dealing with perceptual reality makes use of, or 
 manufactures the notion of Force in order to reduce 
 to unity the different factors, which Perception 
 leaves side by side and without connexion. Such 
 a view is ruled out from the start ; for it rests on a 
 dualistic basis, altogether alien, as we have seen, to 
 the idealistic conception of knowledge. The mind 
 does not first of all find itself in difficulties with 
 regard to the qualities inherent in "things," — e.g. 
 the colours, sounds, etc., belonging to a perceived 
 object — and then, because unable by Perception to 
 reduce all this diversity to unity, proceed to "create" 
 out of the resources of its own consciousness the 
 idea of Force, and employ it to reduce discord to 
 harmony. This is meaningless, unless to begin with 
 we assume that mind is confronted with an objective 
 world altogether alien to itself, and with which it 
 endeavours to reconcile itself as well as possible. 
 Such a view of the process is that taken by Em- 
 piricism, or again by Pragmatism. The idea of Force 
 certainly appears later in experience than the content 
 of Perception, and certainly brings that content into 
 some deeper unity than Perception can supply. 
 But this aspect of the case concerns the history and 
 psychical process of the individual, and does not affect 
 the place and worth of such an idea in experience. 
 For the view here adopted, Force is not an idea 
 "employed" by, and so external to, conscious mind, 
 any more than "thing" or "colour" can be looked 
 at in this way. Force indicates a certain level of 
 experience to which the mind has come in dealing 
 with its content. The idea is revealed in man's 
 experience, it may be with all degrees of clearness 
 
VI CONSCIOUSNESS OF FORCE 187 
 
 and precision. As a way in which mind operates, it 
 appears in the half-conscious or unconscious attitude 
 of the untutored mind which believes in and sees a 
 hidden source of power and activity behind the 
 changing life of sensuous things, as well as in the 
 definite reflection on the forms of things which we 
 find in the cultivated intellect. The lowest level 
 in which it appears is no doubt the source of what 
 we call crude anthropomorphism and animism, 
 while the highest may appear as the beginnings of 
 scientific reflection in the history of man.^ But 
 the same attitude is operative throughout. The 
 difference between highest and lowest lies simply 
 in the elimination of contingent and chance detail, 
 and in obtaining the abiding unity.^ 
 
 The world as " perceived " gives place, then, to Subjective 
 a world "understood"; a world of " qualities " andl^^J^l'"- 
 " things" becomes a world of "forces" and their plied in 
 "manifestations." Force simply stands for the experience 
 objective aspect, wliile Understandincf is the subjective '^'^^^^ " 
 
 / . . unique. 
 
 side of experience at the level above Perception ; 
 just as in the latter perceiving was the subjective 
 side and " things " the objective. To " understand " 
 is only possible in experience if and where the 
 objective world is looked on as the expression of 
 Force. The consciousness of Force is literally 
 the content of experience within that stage. The 
 sphere of Perception and " things " is not outside and 
 opposed to the sphere of Understanding and Force. 
 The sphere of Perception as such has itself given 
 
 ' Cp. Ward's view of cause, force, etc., as anthropomorphic. Naturalism 
 and Agnosticism, ii. p. 237 ff. 
 
 2 Thus in pure science, such a unity is virithout " human '' qualities of any 
 kind : it has merely quantitative characteristics. Hence the contrast between 
 the idea of scientific energy and that of primitive animism. 
 
i88 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING ch. 
 
 place to that of Understanding, has passed away into 
 
 it, and hence cannot be opposed to it. When we 
 
 are understanding we are no longer perceiving at all : 
 
 we have left perceiving behind and are at a higher 
 
 level of experience. Hence there is no sense, on 
 
 such a view, in asserting that in Understanding we 
 
 "apply" the idea of Force to perceptual "facts." 
 
 The idea of Force already implies the content of 
 
 Perception, and what we do in Understanding is 
 
 to develop what that idea itself contains, carry it, 
 
 so to say, its whole length, exhaust its value for 
 
 experience. And by doing so we come to find in 
 
 turn its limitations, and hence pass to a higher stage 
 
 of unity still. But we do not take Perception, so to 
 
 say, in one hand, and Understanding in another, 
 
 and try to reduce the difficulties of the one to the 
 
 shape prescribed by the other. The process is a 
 
 development, where each stage contains already the 
 
 preceding, and is not to be fitted into or connected 
 
 with it mechanically. 
 
 Kant. And herein, again, lies the difference between this 
 
 view and Kant's. For Kant, and indeed many others. 
 
 Perception and U nderstanding are generically different 
 
 agents of a mind which, as a detached and complete 
 
 entity by itself, uses its machinery now in one way and 
 
 now another. But since it is all the while one mind, 
 
 the two must somehow be brought together ; ^ and if, 
 
 after that, there is still some gap, or again some 
 
 residuum, discoverable, another attempt must be made 
 
 to get a completer unity, — which is the so-called unity 
 
 of "reason." Why the mind can or should act in these 
 
 different ways, and how a mechanical unity of any 
 
 kind can satisfy self-consciousness, is not clear. But, 
 
 ' Hence the machinery of " schematism " and " categories." 
 
VI NATURE OF UNDERSTANDING 189 
 
 for Kant, it is enough that both Perception and 
 Understanding seem to deal with the same objective 
 world, the world of "nature" "outside" the mind. 
 The one gives so much of the content of that worldf; 
 the other does something quite different to bring its 
 content within the range of experience. Perception, 
 so to say, picks it up in fragments and brings those 
 fragments to be connected by Understanding. The 
 latter takes them up without alteration and puts them 
 together by relations all its own, and alien to 
 Perception. 
 
 Hegel's correction is twofold in character. He Hegel's 
 first rejects the departmental conception of the''^^' 
 organisation of conscious life, which implies that 
 all departments co - exist and co - operate in the 
 mind ; and for this conception he substitutes that 
 of the mind having different levels of experience in 
 each of which it is realised, and in each of which it is 
 in a certain degree complete because it is experience. 
 What has to be expressed and exhausted is, 
 not the object -world as a res completa, but ex- 
 perience as a unity of subject and object. In the 
 second place, he gives up the view that experience at 
 any stage is composed of mere particulars requiring 
 a special organ or function to deal with and collect 
 them together before coherence can begin. Instead 
 of this he maintains that there is universality at every 
 stage : that there is never matter without form, 
 difference without identity. Hence there is no need 
 for one type of experience to "provide matter" for 
 another : each has its own form and matter peculiar 
 to it, its own universals and content. From these 
 two positions it follows that Perception and Under- 
 standing are not to be brought together because they 
 
this view. 
 
 190 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING ch. 
 
 are external to one another. They are different 
 attempts on the part of conscious experience to attain 
 the same purpose, namely, to satisfy the one supreme 
 end of self-consciousness. The one does not supply 
 what the other lacks. The one simply does more com- 
 pletely what both accomplish in different degrees. 
 Truth of Now reflection will let us see that there is profound 
 truth in this interpretation of the nature of Under- 
 standing. For to "understand" an object assumes 
 that the mind does not merely see directly the uni- 
 versal (as in the case of Z'gr-ception) but penetrates 
 to its inner meaning, and reveals the inner principle 
 connecting its elements.^ It implies that the object 
 is known as falling in its entirety inside a single 
 conscious unity, which when resolved into its different 
 constituents just is the full content of the object. 
 We cannot profess to understand unless both these 
 aspects of the situation are consciously present to us. 
 To seek to understand means either to grasp the 
 unity holding together the differences of which we 
 are aware, or it means showing how this unity breaks 
 up and expresses itself in these various differences. 
 Any case of scientific or popular "understanding" 
 of an object will illustrate this. The very effort and 
 claim to "understand," therefore, implies the presence 
 of this principle ; or, to put it otherwise, the existence 
 of such a principle in experience takes the form of 
 " understanding." Now Force is just the objective 
 way this effort appears when Understanding works : 
 it is the principle on which it proceeds. How it 
 shows itself in detail we shall indicate presently. 
 Such a conception taken as it stands no doubt is 
 
 1 The etymology of our word brings this out : as it does also in German. 
 Cp. also the Greek Sidvoia. 
 
VI LAWS 191 
 
 abstract. That is in the nature of the case, because 
 here we are dealing with Understanding in general, 
 simply as a mode of experience. But the whole course 
 of Understanding as it "deals with" the various 
 elements or spheres of objectivity, e.g. trees, rocks, and 
 clouds, is the detailed application of one and the same 
 attitude which proceeds by one and the same principle. 
 
 How then does this form of experience. Under- under- 
 standing, develop, how does it reveal its activity ^^'^""^'"s 
 more concretely ? It takes first the form of what process : 
 we call Laws connecting the diversity of the 
 object, and leads to the gradual distinction of a 
 sphere of Phenomena or Appearance from a sphere 
 of Noumena or Supersensible reality. Force is 
 merely the general form of unity of the objective 
 world as presented to Understanding. When this 
 takes definite and detailed shape, i.e. when its 
 meaning develops, as by the process of experience it 
 must, it becomes more specifically a law-determined 
 and law-constituted world.^ At first sight this seems 
 an unfamiliar way of stating the nature of Under- 
 standing. But let us clear away misinterpretations. 
 Ordinarily speaking, Laws are spoken of as being 
 " made" by Understanding, and at the same time we 
 look upon these Laws as being not ours but " deter- 
 mining the object." Now what is meant by Under- 
 standing, "making laws" of objects, and objects 
 being "determined" by them? It is clear that the 
 Laws are held to be in one and the same sense for 
 Understanding and in objects. The attitude of 
 reflection and common sense bears this out. But 
 this surely means that there is a fundamental identity 
 
 ^ That is, Force and its "expression" when developed take the form of 
 laws "constituting" the objective world and controlling their detailed content. 
 
192 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING ch. 
 
 between these two aspects of the experience of 
 Law? Understanding cannot be cut off from the 
 object if the Law is the same on both sides. We 
 do not, of course, raise the question how complete 
 or true a Law may be, or what are the conditions of 
 obtaining a true Law, nor again how are Laws applied 
 and verified — all that is the business of psychology, 
 or, again, of the analysis of the method of reflection 
 in special cases, to determine. We are dealing with 
 the ultimate question : — what is the very ground on 
 which the fact of Law rests, and from which it 
 arises as an experience? It is not given. It is not 
 created. It must therefore be rooted in the very 
 nature of experience. It first arises at the level of 
 Understanding. Hence the view often expressed 
 that Laws are " formed by " and are the expression of 
 " intellect." But this can only be half a truth. For 
 Understanding must have an object, and Laws could 
 not even appear without the object. There must be, 
 therefore, an objective side to this activity of Under- 
 standing. That objective side is a unity revealing 
 itself in diversity, an identity which is one in its 
 difference and revealed wholly in difference : and 
 this corresponds to Force. Hence the view also 
 held that Laws are the nature of the object. 
 Corrobora- Now reflective activity itself, not to speak of primi- 
 *^°^°^ *'^ tive anthropomorphism from which science comes, 
 Subjective indirectly corroborates this. For Laws are there 
 looked on as endowed with a certain " power " which 
 "manifests" itself in and through them. They are 
 not static but dynamic. Consciousness of " power " 
 has been said more than once to give rise to the very 
 idea of the dynamic relation of " cause and effect." ^ 
 
 ' See e.g. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii. p. 237 ff. 
 
VI CONSCIOUSNESS OF LAWS 193 
 
 And this same consciousness of Force is found to 
 be the beginning in human experience of the demand 
 for inner coherence amidst change. These facts in- 
 directly throw light on the above view : but of course 
 do no more. That explanation goes much further 
 than empirical considerations can reach. It concerns 
 the very being of Law in human experience. To 
 say that Laws have their " source " in human 
 Understanding requires us also to say that they 
 are the form which the experience of Understand- 
 ing takes when its unity specifically determines its 
 different manifestations. To employ a metaphor, 
 Understanding can be looked on as a primordial 
 cell which differentiates itself into distinct units 
 homogeneous with itself. These units we call Laws : 
 they are simply ways of Understanding, expressions 
 of its single activity. Understanding and the Laws 
 by which it works are related as potential to actual, 
 function to execution. Laws of arranging the 
 diversity of things are not artifices contrived by our 
 mind : they are the mind in one of its phases, its 
 phase of Understanding. And whether in specific 
 cases they are correct or not, has nothing to do with 
 their ultimate significance and nature. 
 
 Such Laws, again, are looked on as having an Objective 
 objective existence. The objective side is similarly ^"^^" 
 constituted. Force is here the primordial cell corre- 
 sponding to Understanding on the subjective side. 
 The breaking up of the unitary activity of Force 
 into specifically different units means the realisation 
 of unity in diverse expressions or manifestations of 
 Force, These various unities pervading diversity 
 are the Laws which are " at work," as we say, in the 
 objective world. Hence it is that the Laws of 
 
 o 
 
views. 
 
 194 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING ch. 
 
 things are looked upon by reflection in ordinary 
 experience as at once ways of "understanding" 
 things, and ways in which things "work." These 
 are just the subjective and objective aspects of the 
 same concrete experience. 
 One-sided No doubt we speak of the Laws as being " out- 
 side our minds " or understandings, and may even go 
 so far as to say these Laws are merely found by us 
 and are independent of us.^ On the other hand, 
 again, we often speak of the Laws of things as 
 simply our own devising and having no counterpart 
 in the actual being of things themselves.^ The very 
 fact that such contradictory positions have been held 
 suggests that each is emphasising some abstraction 
 and ignoring the concrete experience. And the 
 history of philosophical criticism has brought out 
 their one-sidedness repeatedly. Both views imply a 
 Dualism between subject and object, which, as we 
 have seen, leads knowledge into an impasse. The 
 fact that one emphasises the objective nature of 
 Law, and the other the subjective, does not make 
 the one view better than the other. It is merely a 
 difference of stress on the side of the Dualism which 
 comes into prominence when, on the one hand, we 
 think of the universal bindingness of Law, or, on 
 the other, of the process by which we come to be 
 aware of it, a process which itself necessarily implies 
 the changeableness of any particular Law. When 
 we think of the former. Dualism leads us to say 
 Laws are "external " and " independent " of us : when 
 we think of the latter. Dualism leads us to say they 
 
 ' In this case we are thinking of the objective universal unity of Law as 
 distinct from its realisation in any particular subject's experience. 
 
 ' In this case we think of the process in the individual's mind of coming to 
 the experience of what Law involves. 
 
VI EXPERIENCE OF LAW 195 
 
 are " our own " and dependent on us. But analysis 
 compels us to admit that the Laws are at once sub- 
 jective and objective, because experience is both at 
 once. And this does not leave the necessity or 
 contingency of Laws unexplained. For (i) when 
 this refers to particular laws, the question can only be 
 decided by the course of experience, and to decide it 
 either one way or another does not affect the ultimate 
 nature of Law as a principle determining experience : 
 and (2) the necessity of the element of Law lies 
 ultimately in the fact that it is one way in which the 
 ideal of a unified self-consciousness determines that 
 unity to appear in the course of its experience, a 
 unity with a subjective and objective side at once. 
 
 (i) Now this view has great significance in Results. 
 other ways. Three points may be here noted. 
 In the first place, it lets us see that by advancing 
 to the stage of Law the mind is not leaving the 
 nature of things behind and setting up a Dualism, 
 but carrying things, the deeper meaning of things, 
 with it. And just as objects " perceived " did not 
 fall outside perceiving experience as such, the same 
 is true of objects as " understood." Experience 
 at this stage, as at others, has its own peculiar 
 content, and, as it stands, is not opposed to 
 some "beyond," some unknown, and unexperienced 
 "real" which might for ever cast doubt on the 
 value of its process. There is no such gulf; and 
 hence no such doubt can arise. All that is of 
 significance at the level of Understanding actually 
 falls inside that experience ; and the mind at that 
 stage is completely at home with itself and its 
 object. The Laws are literally Laws of objects. 
 They have not one significance to Understanding 
 
196 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING ch. 
 
 and something else to the object known. Ex- 
 perience does not keep its account of truth by 
 double entry, does not require the services of some 
 unseen interpreter to translate the course of things 
 into the language of Understanding, or vice versa. 
 The Laws which Understanding states are part and 
 parcel of the whole experience in which they appear. 
 In point of fact, if we examine common life we shall 
 find that in spite of, indeed because of, the alteration 
 or even abandonment of particular Laws of things, 
 the ordinary mind does insist that the Laws by 
 which at any time it understands things are actually 
 constitutive of those objects, and as such it ten- 
 aciously holds to them while it can. To under- 
 stand, in short, so far from setting up an opposition 
 of any kind between mind and objects just means 
 that these two aspects of experience have come 
 into a deeper conscious unity than was possible at 
 the level of Perception. 
 
 (2) Again, this activity of Understanding is seen 
 at once to be the first indication on the part of mind 
 of that power of manipulation which is one of the 
 characteristics of freedom. Mind is here at a higher 
 level than Perception, simply because there is a 
 clearer contrast and relation between the unity and its 
 diverse contents. This gives greater possibility of 
 self-direction, selection, less control by the immediate 
 content of the moment than we find in the life of 
 perceptual experience. Hence we find in the sphere 
 of Understanding the beginning, or at least the pos- 
 sibility, of what we call "suggestion," "hypothesis," 
 "negation," " affirmation," distinction between "real" 
 and " unreal," and so on— all of which, on the one 
 hand, have a reference to a wider content than the 
 
VI SPONTANEITY 197 
 
 immediately present, and, on the other, imply, at 
 least dimly, a consciousness of the central all- 
 controlling unity of the self in experience. These 
 are aspects of the life of freedom. We see this in 
 everyday experience. A man feels more at home in 
 the life of Understanding than in the sphere of 
 Perception. In the latter he feels, so to say, tossed 
 hither and thither as sense facts dictate ; in the 
 former he has a control over the course of conscious 
 events, a power of resistance and adaptation which 
 make for coherence and definiteness of mental life. 
 Similarly, again, in common experience "men of 
 understanding " are looked upon as just those who 
 manifest and possess, within certain practical limits, 
 a consciousness of order and law pervading the 
 things which make up their immediate environ- 
 ment. And it is just this aspect of Understanding 
 which, as we shall see, points the way to a still 
 higher step in the development of self-conscious 
 experience. 
 
 (3) But, in the third place, we see here how this 
 view of Understanding has at once modified and 
 gathered together the whole teaching of Kant 
 regarding the relation of Understanding to the Kant. 
 objects of Perception. For Kant, Understanding, 
 in dealing with the content of the perceptual 
 world, is the parent of the law and order that 
 pervades it. On the above view, the idea of law is 
 likewise a principle of Understanding ; but Under- 
 standing has lost entirely the subjective character 
 which it has in Kant and which is the direct con- 
 sequence of the dualistic assumption underlying 
 his view of knowledge. Understanding, again, 
 is here, as in Kant, the sphere of necessity and 
 
198 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING ch. 
 
 objectivity in dealing with the content of Perception ; 
 for in Understanding we find the immanent 
 universal which is the ground of stable objectivity, 
 and that essential relation of differences to identity 
 in Law, which gives necessity to the content of 
 things. But whereas for Kant this objectivity is 
 looked on as something derived from and imposed 
 by Understanding, on the above view the objectivity 
 is not derived from, but the complementary aspect of, 
 Understanding. Since subject and object only exist 
 in the unity of experience, the one is not determined 
 by the other but with the other. And that, in 
 substance, we may take to mark at once Hegel's 
 difference from Kant, and his conception of the 
 relation between Understanding and Perception — 
 the question which occupies Kant's Analytic in 
 the Critique of Pure Reason. Understanding is 
 simply a higher development of the relation between 
 subject and object than we have in Perception. 
 In it we have a truer unity of subject and object 
 than perceiving supplies ; and in that sense this 
 stage of experience gives both a deeper ex- 
 pression of the nature of the subject and of the 
 nature of objectivity than we find in perceptual 
 experience. This higher truth is higher, not by 
 lying outside but by containing in itself all that 
 Perception aimed at. Again, Understanding is not 
 simply found side by side with Perception in human 
 experience, and when picked up and contrasted with 
 Perception found to give a higher unity to 
 experience. It arises as a necessity, on the one 
 hand, from an implicit consciousness of a deeper 
 unity than we find in Perception and, on the other, 
 from our explicit consciousness of the inherent 
 
VI UNDERSTANDINGS: PERCEPTION 199 
 
 incompleteness of Perception. It is directly related 
 only to Perception, because it is the immediate 
 outcome of Perception, is the next level to which 
 experience rises to try to attain that complete 
 unity not found at the level of Perception. In 
 that way the stage of Understanding is " deduced " 
 from the complete unity of self-consciousness, just 
 as Kant (though in a different sense) asserted ; and 
 it is demanded by Perception (which Kant also 
 asserted). 
 
 The further important element which arises in the 
 course of developing the meaning of this stage of 
 experience is the distinction between "phenomenal" 11. 
 and " supersensible " reality. This arises simply ^enai and 
 from the contrast which comes to be made between noumenai 
 the world of Law and the diversity of content in 
 and through which Law is "manifested." We 
 still have with us the continuous change of content 
 which we found characteristic of Perception. This 
 appears now as the ceaseless activity of Forces 
 in process of manifestation. Objects come and 
 go, the qualities appearing pass away into one 
 another ; nothing in the world of things remains 
 stable. But the world of Law has fixity and 
 endures. The unity remains and is not destroyed 
 by the differences into which it is resolved ; rather 
 it remains by means of and through the changes in 
 which it is manifested. It would not otherwise be 
 a unity expressing itself in and through difference. 
 Hence the antithesis. On the one hand, we have 
 constancy amid change, which is of the essence 
 of Law as a principle of unity. On the other, 
 changing elements which for ever reconstitute but 
 never destroy the permanence of that unity. Thus, 
 
200 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING ch. 
 
 e.g. the Law of Gravitation is held as a principle of 
 unity, though the things and the qualities of things 
 in which it is revealed to us pass out of our sight 
 and disappear altogether. We hold by the unity, 
 which is the essence of the Law, and not by its 
 sphere of manifestation. The fact that other 
 qualities and things take the place of those that are 
 gone does not prevent us from holding by the unity 
 as such ; it confirms us in doing so. It proves 
 that the unity is concrete, and the special differences 
 do not affect our insistence on it as the vital reality 
 of things. It is in this way that Understanding 
 in ordinary life actually does keep its stability 
 and security amidst the changing manifestations 
 of a law-constituted world. The consciousness of 
 unity is of greater significance than that of the vary- 
 ing elements, and its greater value for experience 
 leads us to hold to it, be the change as great as it 
 may. A man's Understanding and the Laws which 
 constitute it, are thus, in the everyday world of 
 human experience, the stronghold for the safety, for 
 the coherence of his conscious life, even when the 
 shifting array of temporal events, on which he has 
 come for practical purposes to rely, is scattered in 
 catastrophe. A being limited to Sense or Percep- 
 tion does not have that security, not because it 
 can do without it, or fails to appreciate it (if that 
 were so, then Understanding would be a question- 
 able boon to the higher type of mind), but rather 
 because it is completely under the sway of its infinite 
 variety. 
 Nature of Here we see precisely the ground of the distinc- 
 tinctfon. '^°" which comes to be made. Understanding, 
 because it can lay stress on the unity of Law as con- 
 
VI PHENOMENA AND NOUMENA 201 
 
 trasted with the diversity of its manifestation, can hold 
 these two aspects apart as fixed distinctions inside its 
 experience. It comes to look on the one as a sphere 
 per se distinguishable, and in that sense separable, 
 from the other. The manifestations stand on one 
 side, the system of unities or Laws on the other. 
 The one is looked on as the outer expression, the 
 transient realisation, or, if we choose, the "unfolding" 
 of the nature of the other. The other is looked on 
 as the inner vital principle, the underlying substance, 
 the active source of the detail of the world of things. 
 Hence there are drawn, in the course of experience 
 at the stage of Understanding, the distinctions with 
 which we are in everyday life familiar — between 
 " inner " and " outer," the " passing phenomena " and 
 the " permanent noumena," the " immediate present " 
 and the "remote beyond." These distinctions we 
 find in everyday life, as well as in the reflective 
 procedure of scientific thought which arises from it. 
 
 Now this lets us see once more what is meant by Under- 
 Understanding being the deeper truth of perceptual a^j p"f. 
 experience. It might at first be supposed that we ception. 
 were here simply reintroducing Perception with its 
 change and flux of qualities and things, and calling it 
 "appearance," while professing all the while to have 
 passed beyond it. It might be supposed that this 
 distinction between inner and outer, phenomena and 
 noumena is^ no more than a way of putting Under- 
 standing alongside Perception, and allocating one 
 aspect of things to one function and another aspect 
 to the other, leaving the two all the while not recon- 
 ciled. But the truth is that this distinction is only 
 drawn inside the life of Understanding and cannot 
 
 1 Like Dualism. 
 
202 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING ch. 
 
 appear at the level of Perception. He is not reviving 
 Perception, but building Perception into the structure 
 of Understanding. What is solely present in 
 Perception, the variety of sensible qualities and 
 the flux of things, is here merely a moment or 
 aspect of Understanding, viz. its aspect of diversity, 
 appearance, phenomena. For Perception there are 
 no phenomena at all : for they are wholly and only 
 as they are in Perception. There is no beyond, 
 no noumena in perceptual experience ; their esse is 
 their percipi. For Understanding there are pheno- 
 mena, because there is a deeper unity. They are 
 phenomena with reference to their inner principles 
 of unity or Laws. Hence, to use Hegel's expres- 
 sion, that variety which makes the entire content 
 of Perception is " taken up " by Understanding 
 and appears as a moment in its concrete life. It 
 can be so " taken up " because Understanding, in 
 virtue of this unity of Law, goes beyond Perception. 
 And it goes beyond it, because that unity is not 
 exhausted (as is the content of Perception) in the 
 momentary present, or the immediately "given." 
 
 The supreme importance of this distinction, again, 
 lies in the fact that thereby it is shown that the 
 Pheno- distinction between phenomena and noumena is not 
 Noumena ^ difference (as Kant asserted) between what is part 
 both fall of experience and what cannot be so. There is no 
 beyond to experience at all. The distinction is one 
 which falls inside experience itself, and is constituted 
 by the nature of Understanding as a stage of ex- 
 perience. Here, again, therefore we surmount the 
 difficulty which was raised by Kant's Dualism. The 
 Dualism made it logically necessary that there 
 should be an unknowable sphere beyond experience ; 
 
 penence. 
 
VI EXPERIENCE CONTAINS ALL 203 
 
 hence Kant's noumenal world is a "limit" to experi- 
 ence. But in truth, the noumenal world arises only 
 in contrast to phenomena. It is necessary, but only 
 necessary as a constittient element in experience, not 
 as a boundary to it. The "beyond," the "inner," is 
 relative to the "immediate," and the "outer"; just as, 
 and because, Force is relative to its "manifestation." 
 As the immediate phenomenon is in experience, so 
 is the remote noumenon. All experience cannot be 
 immediate ; there cannot be an absolute whole 
 immediately manifested, without a contradiction in 
 terms. Similarly, an absolute " beyond " to all ex- 
 perience, a noumenal world outside experience as a 
 whole, is a contradiction in terms. It is thus, then, 
 that we can do justice to Kant's distinction and 
 yet dispense with the thing-in-itself. 
 
 The final development of the meaning of Under- m. 
 standing carries us to a further stage in the evolution ation.^'^" 
 of experience. In the process of Understanding, 
 while we are dealing with universals, yet the unities 
 or Laws expressly reveal the "inner" life of "things" : 
 the relation of subject to object has still a certain 
 relative externality. As we saw, the Laws of things 
 are looked on by the ordinary mind as having 
 a being of their own "beyond" the conscious 
 life of the subject, as "real" whether they enter 
 it or not ; and these universals may even be 
 looked on as peculiarly "subjective." It is this 
 conscious contrast which creates or suggests that 
 opposition between Understanding and the Laws of 
 things which was referred to before. The relation, 
 however, of Law to its manifestation, when fully 
 realised, carries us beyond this conscious opposition 
 altogether. The relation of a Law to the phenomena 
 
204 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING ch. 
 
 it controls is, when developed, such that the differ- 
 ence between them loses all its apparent fixity. The 
 Law is not simply " in " the manifestations or ' ' through " 
 them ; it is the diversity which makes up its content. 
 The relation between them is that of continuity ; it 
 is not external or fortuitous. This immanent con- 
 tinuity between these elements (the unity of the Law, 
 and the plurality of the content of what is united) 
 on its objective side appears as an incessant change 
 or exchange between the two. The one slips into 
 the other ; the two are moments of a single process.^ 
 On its subjective side this continuity has also a 
 peculiar character and significance — it is what in the 
 sphere of Understanding is called "elucidating the 
 nature of" the object. For "elucidating" or "ex- 
 plaining " is literally reducing or resolving the 
 variety of the object into the unity of its Law, in 
 such a way that the manifestation of that unity will 
 mean the appearance of the variety of the object.^ 
 " Explanation " is that stage in the development of 
 the nature of Understanding where the opposite 
 elements which it distinguishes are through and 
 through consciously identified, and where therefore 
 the objective and the subjective side of this experi- 
 ence are explicitly made a continuous single unity. 
 Explanation is not strictly a function of Under- 
 standing ; it is Understanding at its highest stage. 
 
 ' As it is put, there is no law without particulars, and no law except in 
 particulars. 
 
 ^ From this comes the isolated nature of each " explanation.'' Each holds 
 good by itself as it stands, even though we are aware of its limitations. We 
 keep within the range of the object from which we start, and get at its Law. 
 Elucidating seeks to go no further. Hence the fixity and apparent "finality " 
 of the result in spite of its finiteness. This " finality " of what is " limited " is 
 characteristic of the whole procedure of Understanding. Hence its difference 
 from Reason. 
 
VI EXPLANATION IS OBJECTIVE 205 
 
 Now, in Understanding, we sometimes say that 
 the necessity in the connexion established by 
 "explanation" is not the" thing itself" which is 
 explained. But such a distinction is no sooner 
 made than it has to be given up. For if this 
 distinction can be drawn, the " explanation " is not 
 completely established, while if the explanation is 
 complete there is nothing left over from which it 
 can be distinguished. The difference between 
 "explanation" and the Law, whose meaning is 
 expressed and realised in the "explanation," is for 
 knowledge, for experience, merely verbal. To say " we 
 have the explanation," and to say, "we have con- 
 sciously elucidated the nature of the object," are one 
 and the same. " To explain the Laws of a thing " is 
 a redundancy of speech. The Laws as unities of a 
 phenomenal world, and the Laws as forms of "explan- 
 ation " are indistinguishable. But if that be so, then 
 in the conscious experience which we have at this 
 highest expression of Understanding, the subject is 
 not aware of some object over against and contrasted 
 with it. The subject is conscious, when connecting 
 the content of phenomena by the Law manifesting 
 itself phenomenally, of referring the diverse content 
 to a principle at one with the self of the subject. 
 The conception of Law may be at first abstract 
 and separable from the phenomena, fixed in a world 
 of its own, a " supersensible " world, and on that 
 account can be, as we saw, consciously contrasted with 
 and distinct from the subject. That is the im- 
 portant point. Law is only "outside" the subject 
 when it is taken as an entity /^r se. But then it is 
 inadequate to its own meaning ; and hence may indeed 
 be thought of as beyond the subject which is concrete. 
 
2o6 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING ch. 
 
 When Law is concrete, i.e. is the controlling unity 
 of its diversity, we cannot look on the law as outside 
 the subject. Explanation and Law fall together as 
 functions of a single experience. That is, when the 
 experience is fully realised it is consciously a single 
 unity of which subject and object are sides. The 
 opposition of the object is now overcome just because 
 the distinction between the Law and its manifestation 
 is a transient and vanishing distinction. The con- 
 ception, with which Understanding works, is therefore 
 not something of which it is conscious, but in and 
 through which it is conscious. In "explanation" all 
 sense of otherness has been removed, and in the object, 
 subject is conscious of its own unity. Consciousness 
 of an object has thus passed into Self-consciousness. 
 To put it otherwise, the unity at work in the experi- 
 ence of Understanding is a unity which both manifests 
 itself phenomenally and refers phenomena to itself, a 
 universal which dissolves into difference and again 
 resolves that difference into itself. This means it is 
 a self-referring, self-determined universal, i.e. a self- 
 complete, self-limited, or infinite universal. That, 
 however, is a self-conscious universal, for only what 
 is conscious of self can return upon self with its 
 diversity. Thus then, according to this view, the 
 process of Understanding fully realised and expressed 
 becomes self-conscious experience, and with this we 
 have arrived at the truest relation of subject to 
 object. All other possible forms of experiences are 
 developed from this one general relation. 
 Results. The significance of such a result is not far 
 
 to seek. If the full meaning of Sense-experience 
 was found in Perception, and the truth or goal of 
 the relation of subject to object in Perception lay 
 
VI SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS VIEW 207 
 
 in Understanding, and if the final issue of this is 
 Self-conscious experience, then Self-consciousness is 
 thereby shown to be the very ground of the conscious- 
 ness of things, the very principle in virtue of which 
 the consciousness of things becomes an experience. 
 "Consciousness of an other, of an object other than 
 subject, is itself," says Hegel, "necessarily self- 
 consciousness ; it necessarily means being reflected 
 into a self, consciousness of a self in what is other or 
 objective." Or we may put it thus. Self-consciousness 
 is the highest expression for consciousness of objects : 
 for such a consciousness at once expresses the fact of 
 diversity between subject and object, and also that of 
 unity between them. But these two elements or 
 factors are really implied in all forms of consciousness 
 of objects. The difference between Self-conscious- 
 ness and other forms of relating subject and object, 
 is that the former makes fully explicit both aspects, 
 the unity and the difference, whereas other forms 
 express the difference (consciousness of something) 
 but only bring out the unity imperfectly and in 
 different degrees. But if Self- consciousness is 
 the highest expression, it is that at which they all 
 aim, it is their reXo?, and hence it is the ground of 
 their being what they are. In Kant's expression 
 Self-consciousness is " the condition of the possibility 
 of all consciousness of objects whatsoever." Mind 
 can be conscious of objects because and when it is 
 conscious of a Self. And consciousness of self 
 is logically prior ; it is the ground for our being or 
 becoming conscious of things. This means that 
 the consciousness of objects, in those cases where 
 these factors are distinctly opposed, is an imperfect 
 realisation (though a necessary one) of the principle 
 
2o8 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING ch. vi 
 
 of' Self- consciousness. The former arises out of 
 the consciousness of self—x}a3.\. is its possibility and 
 justification : it can remain fixed in the distinction 
 and the contrast found there — if it does so it falls 
 into error, the error which, e.g., creates Dualism in 
 all its forms : it may rise into complete conscious- 
 ness of self as its process develops — and that is its 
 "truth." 
 
 This, then, in brief is the view of the knowledge 
 of things of the "external" world on the basis of 
 absolute idealism. It is a continuous refutation of 
 Dualism, and is the transformation and re-expression 
 of a principle which is essentially Kantian from 
 beginning to end.^ 
 
 ^ It is worth noting that the position of Dualism is invariably based on and 
 confined to the lower levels of experience, Sense-experience and Perception 
 particularly. No one ever seems to think of treating Moral Experience, which 
 belongs to the level of Self-consciousness, from the dualistic point of view, or 
 of basing the dualistic position upon Moral Experience. Yet in the latter we 
 have subject distinct from object as truly as in Perception. But there the two 
 are so obviously "intimate" and "inward" to each other that it is absolutely 
 impossible to dissociate them and set up a gulf between them. The 
 question ought surely to suggest itself why, if this is so here, should there be 
 really such a gulf anywhere in experience ? Why suppose that experience can 
 even be, if there is such a gulf anywhere ? If the unity between the two is so 
 obvious in Morality, may it not exist everywhere else in experience in the same 
 way ? If we regard Moral Experience as being of higher value than, say. Per- 
 ception, as we do, the question might suggest itself, may this not be just 
 because there we have a higher realisation of what experience as such is ? and 
 if so, should we not start from that point in our interpretation of experience as 
 a whole ? In point of fact, it is just such an experience as Morality which 
 enables us to turn the flank of the dualistic position. If Moral Experience is 
 not dualistically constituted, dualism as a general theory must be given up : 
 and if Moral Experience is higher than Perception, no matter how much 
 Perception justifies dualism, experience as a whole must be interpreted from 
 the higher point of view. This is the essence of the idealistic method of 
 attack on dualism and "Naturalistic" Realism. It would also be equally 
 possible to turn the dualistic position by an appeal to such a form of Know- 
 ledge as that given in Memory, where clearly we have an object, but an object 
 in no sense ' ' outside the mind." Memory is a highly complex form of 
 consciousness of self, and cannot be explained at all on the dualistic assump- 
 tion. The same is true of other forms of Self-consciousness. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE 
 
 While the process of " explaining," realised by Under- 
 Understanding, implies the consciousness of self in pj^e"^"! 
 its process, it is not carried out by any direct refer- the way 
 ence to the self as such. At best it only establishes the sciousness 
 possibility of making self an object of which we may °^ ^^'^• 
 be aware directly and explicitly. It is, however, the 
 only level of experience hitherto considered that 
 could do as much. For here alone do we have as 
 object of consciousness a single permanent conscious 
 unity containing the variety of "things" as its very 
 expression. We saw how the fact of diversity, so 
 characteristic of Sense, and the form of all exter- 
 nality, reasserted itself in spite of the activity of 
 Perception, through which unity was, at least 
 partially, introduced into experience by the foci of 
 Perception called "things." Here in Understand- 
 ing a unity is at last secured which resists dispersion 
 into diversity, and maintains itself through all dif- 
 ference in the world of "things." In virtue of 
 Understanding experience is always held consciously 
 together amidst all change of sensible phenomena. 
 No matter how wide the range of phenomena, the 
 
 209 P 
 
2IO CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 unity is realised and is maintained in precisely the 
 same way. The diversity is consigned to pheno- 
 mena, the unity to what is beyond all phenomena. 
 The same process of Understanding takes place in 
 all cases, the same unity is secured (the unity to 
 satisfy Understanding) wherever the process is 
 realised. Being thus all-comprehending the subject 
 finds itself at home throughout its objective world 
 in the same way. 
 The result Now the Completeness and the sameness of the 
 standing'is unity, realised as a conscious result produced by its 
 to give the own activity, react, so to say, on the subject exer- 
 
 subject the . . , . . , . , . . , 
 
 sense of its cismg the activity, and create within it the con- 
 own unity, sciousness of the unity of its own action. This 
 consciousness of the unity of its own action is the 
 germ of the consciousness of a self. When the 
 unity is explicitly accepted as its own it becomes 
 ipso facto self-conscious. So far as Understanding 
 goes, this step is merely implicit. Understanding 
 is a mode of the subject's experience, and the 
 unity arrived at is only implicitly a self-unity. 
 When that unity is accepted as its own, Under- 
 standing passes into self-consciousness. The con- 
 sciousness of the unity of the activity becomes a 
 consciousness of the unity of the subject exerting 
 the activity. 
 Under- xhe possibility of this has been brought about 
 
 by its pro- by the character of the process of Understanding 
 thfse™^^ which involves manipulation of detailed phenomena, 
 unity into selection, refusal, affirmation, and negation as its 
 conditions. All this tends undoubtedly to throw 
 into relief the consciousness of sameness in the 
 activity of the process, to bring out, therefore, the 
 oneness of the subject as a conscious fact, and 
 
VII UNDERSTANDING IMPLIES SELF 211 
 
 thereby to set up self as per se an object in experi- 
 ence.^ 
 
 The unconditioned or self-conditioned universal The unity 
 which is the object of Understanding, — i.e. the uni- standing'^ 
 versal whose nature is not determined, as in the case of i^npii^itiy 
 Perception, by an external other, but itself determines opposition 
 all otherness, all phenomena — can only be so because °f ^u^ect 
 
 , ,^ . . ' and object. 
 
 the subject in it is conscious of itself, because the sub- 
 ject feels no otherness confronting and opposing itself. 
 The content of its experience is a thought-content, and 
 a thought-content is essentially a self-content. But 
 
 1 It is significant that this result should be arrived at by way of the con- 
 sciousness, through Understanding, of Law in experience. It lets us see why 
 a self has no meaning unless as a conscious principle of order. The self 
 involves the very idea of order or unity, because it arises in experience out of 
 a consciousness of Law amidst phenomena. A " man of understanding" is at 
 once one who " knows his way about " amidst the phenomena of his world, 
 and also sustains the sense of selfhood, never loses his own sense of unity, in 
 dealing with its ceaseless variety ; for to do the one is ipso facto to do the other. 
 On the other hand, we can see from this how " mental confusion" involves at 
 once loss of the sense of unity in experience and dissipation of selfhood in the 
 diversity of phenomena ; and this confusion can pass through all degrees from 
 temporary perplexity, where the unity is struggling to assert itself against the 
 appearances, to permanent derangement, where the unity is altogether lost 
 amidst them, and the subject falls back to the level of mere Perception. It is, 
 again, by way of Understanding, that man rises to the levels above brute 
 consciousness (Reason and Morality) and yet maintains contact with it by imply- 
 ing those processes of experience, — Perception and Sensation, — to which brute 
 consciousness is confined. While, finally, the result throws light on the distinc- 
 tion between man's understanding and brute " intelligence. " Understanding 
 as such is short of self-consciousness while containing the germ of it. It 
 may very well be that brutes can rise as high as to understand. Because 
 they exhibit many of the forms of human Understanding, they are often 
 thought to have the consciousness of self, while in point of fact they have no 
 such consciousness at all. For consciousness of self involves Understanding, 
 but the latter is not per se the former. The fact that the observer of brute 
 intellect merely "infers" that it has the consciousness of self, looks upon this 
 as something which may be for the brute intellect but is not a reality for him, 
 is itself a proof that the consciousness of self is really not there at all. For 
 the consciousness of self, if it is an experience, is bound to be expressed in 
 specific ways, e.g. as recognising his own self, as Science, or as Religion ; for 
 these simply are experience based on consciousness of self. The fact that 
 these do not appear in brute life means that the consciousness of self is not an 
 experience for it. 
 
212 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 while in such a universal, absolute difference of sub- 
 ject and object disappears from experience, in the 
 first instance this thought-content carries with it the 
 fixity characterising what is opposed to the subject. 
 The thought of Understanding claims finality on 
 its own account, and just as it appears.^ Hence 
 arises the need to overcome this independent 
 stability confronting the subject. The process of 
 doing so, however, is merely a relation of the sub- 
 ject to its own content, to its self. It consists in 
 breaking down that resistance its own content offers 
 to complete identification with the subject, and estab- 
 lishing self-consciousness on both sides — subject 
 aware of self in object, object accepting and recog- 
 nising subject as its self. The whole process takes 
 place as a movement from implicit to explicit con- 
 sciousness of self, and is necessitated because the 
 conscious unity of the two sides (subject and object) 
 of the experience is at once asserted and yet not 
 realised completely. That the further development 
 is to take place is an indication that, while Under- 
 standing has broken down the rigidity of the oppo- 
 sition between subject and object characteristic of 
 the attitude of mere consciousness as such, which 
 took the forms of Sensation, Perception, and Under- 
 standing, it does not of itself satisfy the unity which 
 the disappearance of that opposition implies. In 
 other words. Understanding is an incomplete ex- 
 pression for the unity of experience, and at most 
 prepares the way for a fuller expression of it — an 
 expression which, in the first instance, takes the 
 form of the subject being aware of self as its object, 
 instead of " sense-quality " or " thing." 
 
 1 Vide note, p. 204. 
 
VII PHASES OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 213 
 
 This consciousness of self, even in its simplest Consdous- 
 and earliest form in experience, assumes different |Jfg^^g°g(f 
 phases, which indicate the stages through which it hfs 
 passes to complete realisation of the principle it phases and 
 contains. At the outset, however, it has to be^™^^^'=^= 
 noted, as the result of what has been said about previous 
 Understanding, that this self, of which consciousness expire °^ 
 is aware, is here not one object amongst other ence. 
 objects of experience, but the one and only object 
 for the subject. The self is its world, its whole 
 objective content. It embraces within it all the 
 content so far considered, all that made up the 
 experience of Sense and Perception. These are 
 now elements in the content of self only, and are 
 to be treated as such. There is here no world 
 of "things" and "qualities" in contrast to a sub- 
 ject ; what was the world of " things," in th.& former 
 stages of experience, has passed, by means of Under- 
 standing, into a content of experience whose char- 
 acter is self and self only. This level of experience 
 is, therefore, so far as it goes, complete as it stands, 
 and all that preceded is now to be re-moulded or 
 re-interpreted from the point of view of consciousness 
 of self. We live and move here solely within the 
 range of consciousness of self. That is our world. 
 
 To begin with, then, the content of this world. The object 
 because merely implicitly self, seeks to retain a ^^3" ' ^ 
 certain being of its own which is at once felt asjns'a°ce 
 distinct, and yet as in truth "belonging to" thesub-sSF" ^ 
 ject. The world of objects presented is mine, but 
 yet keeps apart from me. It is implicitly mine, but 
 can only become so by my act. Being implicitly 
 mine it appeals to me to claim it as such ; because 
 it is implicitly mine I respond to that appeal. It 
 
214 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 seeks to be "me," just as I assert that it is so. I 
 can take it and find myself in it ; it surrenders its 
 content to me. To use a psychological distinction, 
 it is unconsciously myself and tends to enter con- 
 sciousness as mine ; I accept or assert this truth 
 on my side, and lift its unconscious nature into a 
 conscious result. The only meaning of the object 
 lies in thus handing its whole being over to the 
 subject as its own. The very life of the subject 
 lies in determining that content as its self. The 
 realisation of this demand and claim means securing 
 the identity of the two by completely overcoming 
 the distinction between them and establishing them 
 as a unity. Now this recriprocal tendency of the 
 one to the other for the fulfilment of the nature of 
 both is the phase of experience we call Desire. 
 Desire. In Desire there is a distinction of the factors 
 
 subject and object with a felt identity between them 
 and required by both sides. The tendency, combined 
 with the sense of distinction, gives precisely that felt 
 tension which characterises Desire. The tension 
 implies at once that this distinction is a conscious 
 fact, and that the identity of the factors forces itself 
 through the distinction in order to get their deeper 
 unity realised. The movement of the process in 
 this experience is carried through just by gradually 
 bringing out this identity as a conscious result, and 
 establishing it as the primary fact in the situation. 
 If that is not achieved the experience continues as a 
 felt strain till it is either accomplished, or the Desire 
 abandoned : the Desire remains unfulfilled, " unsatis- 
 fied." When it is achieved the tension, and with 
 it the distinction, disappears : the Desire is fulfilled, 
 and Satisfaction takes its place as an experience. 
 
vn DESIRE 215 
 
 The whole process is thus double -sided from Desire is 
 
 double- 
 sided. 
 
 beginning to end : it is only possible within the 
 sphere of consciousness of self. The distinction 
 from which it starts is implicitly felt as a vanishing 
 distinction, and can only be so felt because it is set 
 up within, and, indeed, by the type of consciousness 
 by which it is resolved. The object in Desire is 
 not really something "external" to the subject. 
 Its being consists in giving up its distinction from 
 the subject altogether ; and this it could not do if it 
 were substantially alien to the subject. The subject 
 in Desire does not really take the object to be 
 foreign to its life. On the contrary, the subject seeks 
 to annul any distinction the object seems to have, 
 and to make the object's content its own, to break 
 down the distinction separating it from the self, and 
 build its content into the very substance of the self. 
 There is no Desire at all where the object is looked 
 at as remaining apart from the subject. 
 
 At the level of Perception this is possible. For The 
 in Perception self does not seek to be the object nor founTin°" 
 the object to be our self : there we seek to realise a Perception 
 unity vioSch preserves distinction as a conscious fact.^ exist in 
 Hence in Desire we do not really desire " things " ^^^'"^^• 
 qud " things," for that would leave them still apart 
 at the end of the process. The Desire would never 
 be satisfied ; it would never be Desire. We desire 
 what has a self - significance. When we say we 
 desire "things," we really mean that we desire 
 what, while at first distinct from us, is, in the result, 
 to become consciously part of our own content. 
 
 * Strictly speaking, as we saw, Subject does not even exist for Perception 
 in the form of Self as such. Hence Perception is not an avenue to Know- 
 ledge of Self. Fide note, p. 225. 
 
2i6 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 Or to put it somewhat paradoxically, we "desire 
 things " in the sense that we desire the disappear- 
 ance of their "thing" character, and the trans- 
 formation of them into the substance of the self. 
 The supposition that we can desire "independent 
 things " is due to a confusion between the object as 
 it is for Perception before Desire arises, and the 
 object as it is after Desire takes place. Perception 
 may certainly precede Desire. But we do not 
 desire because we perceive ; and we do not desire 
 what we perceive. We desire in fact — the object 
 in the experience of Desire, not the object in the 
 experience of Perception ; and the object for Desire 
 is just that which loses the " externality " of a 
 " thing " and fills up the life of the subject, A 
 "thing" must become content of self before it 
 enters the sphere of Desire. 
 Under- Hcuce it is Only so far as the self embraces in 
 
 and"^'"^ its sweep the content of the world before it, regards 
 Desire, that Content as implicitly Its own, as what can 
 realise its own life as such, that the attitude of 
 Desire can be assumed. That this content is im- 
 plicitly its own was, as we saw, established as a 
 fact by the process of Understanding. Now Desire 
 just brings out the significance of what Understand- 
 ing has guaranteed. Understanding establishes 
 that the world of object finds its meaning in the 
 unity of the self ; Desire carries out further, by the 
 active life of the subject, the significance of this 
 result. By Understanding, the subject finds the 
 world its own : Desire makes it so by actively 
 identifying all content with its self. Understanding 
 establishes self as the ground of experience ; Desire 
 implies in its process the active presence of the self 
 
VII DESIRE 217 
 
 as the principle of its mode of experience. With- 
 out the consciousness of self, there is no Desire. 
 Desire is its first and simplest realisation as a 
 distinctive factor in experience. 
 
 There is no implication here of a purpose which Desire in 
 governs Desire, or of an end at which it aims, form'""^'^ 
 That comes later. Here we are dealing with 
 Desire simpliciter as a general mode of experience. 
 Desire per se is a conscious actualisation of self, 
 whatever be the value of the self otherwise. This 
 ultimate nature of Desire is the basis on which all 
 other more specific forms of Desire rest, and has 
 therefore nothing to do with the consideration 
 whether a desire is "good" or "bad." "Good- 
 ness " and " badness " imply other forms of experi- 
 ence which are different from and higher than mere 
 Desire, and determine the character or worth of 
 desires.^ Desire is here merely the way conscious- 
 ness of self is first consciously realised ; and this 
 must exist as a form of experience, before a desire 
 can be called "good" or "bad," for it is the ground 
 of anything being pursued as "good" or "bad." 
 From this point of view the statement of Spinoza is 
 true, that a "thing" is not desired because it is 
 "good," but "good" because we desire it; i.e. 
 Desire in general must take place first as a form 
 of experience : goodness, as a special quality of the 
 object desired, comes later. To begin with, all the 
 implicit content of the self is, or can be, desired, 
 just because the self, which Desire expresses, is, at 
 this stage, one with all its object world. We can, 
 as we say, desire "anything."^ This is so because, 
 from the point of view where the self is one with all 
 
 1 Namely, Society, Moral Order. ^ As it is said, " Desires are in6nite." 
 
2i8 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 the content of its experience, everything can be 
 explicitly identified with it. At a higher level of 
 self-experience, say Morality, certain elements of 
 the content of self come to be qualified in one way, 
 others in another, and may come to be selected and 
 desired for their specific quality (as, e.g., "good" or 
 "bad"). But to begin with, the distinctive qualifi- 
 cations which arise from further experience do not 
 exist. Objects are merely desired because they 
 implicitly fall within self- consciousness, and are 
 asserted in Desire to do so. The self is here quite 
 indeterminate in value and meaning : it is mere self, 
 mere unity of the subject as such. Hence, on the 
 one side, the very indeterminateness of the self 
 makes it possible for it to dominate any or all the 
 content which is presented, everything that fills 
 experience, i.e. "we can desire anything" : and, on 
 the other, that all content should be implicitly one 
 with such a self is precisely what makes the content 
 appeal to the self, makes it first " desirable " and 
 then "desired," i.e. "everything is a possible object 
 of Desire." If it were absolutely alien to the self 
 the attraction would not arise : if it were absolutely 
 one with the self there would be no point in its claim- 
 ing to be so. The union of attraction and repulsion, 
 which constitute the tension of Desire, arises simply 
 from the contrast between an unfilled indeterminate 
 self and the content with which it is implicitly at 
 one — a contrast, therefore, which falls within the 
 consciousness of self 
 The pro- The process involved in Desire is already in- 
 Desire. dicated in what has been stated. When the con- 
 trast between a content which implicitly is, but ex- 
 plicitly is not, one with the self, becomes a conscious 
 
VII PROCESS OF DESIRE 219 
 
 fact, there arises the feeling of a unity unrealised 
 because of some element opposing its realisation. 
 This feeling is what we call a Need. Consciousness 
 of a Need is only possible because of the felt unity 
 of oneness with self. The felt unity, co- existing 
 along with the conscious opposition, produces a 
 movement to do away with the contradiction be- 
 tween the opposite factors. The conscious neces- 
 sity compelling the removal of this contradiction 
 takes the form of an assertion of the unity of the 
 self, in spite of and through the opposition. Such 
 a conscious assertion is the active Impulse, which is 
 an essential element in the process of Desire. This 
 activity is negative in character by its very nature ; 
 it .arises because of, and in order to remove, an 
 opposing content. It consists simply in destroying 
 the characteristic separateness in the content. Since, 
 however, that content is implicitly one with the self, 
 such a process of negation can only issue in the 
 assimilation of the content to the self. With that 
 assimilation the opposition is at once removed and 
 the feeling of self- unity established. This feeling 
 of self-unity is what we call Satisfaction, and is that 
 in which Desire terminates. Hence in actual ex- 
 perience we find that Desire can only work by 
 destruction of content. 
 
 It is this active assertion of self in the process of The result 
 Desire that makes Desire of such significance in the ° ^^"^' 
 development of consciousness of self For with the 
 explicit assertion of this oneness between self and 
 the content before it, with the domination of that 
 content by the self and^or the self, the self comes out 
 at the end of the process of Desire more truly than 
 ever the essential principle of experience. Here we 
 
220 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 have no longer a world of Understanding, with its 
 distinction of elements into phenomena and noumena 
 — a distinction created to sustain, as it were at all 
 costs, the opposition of subject and object which 
 mere consciousness adopts. Such a distinction must 
 disappear in Desire, for the very principle that the 
 unconditional universal Law or thought is the inner 
 reality of which phenomena are the outer expression, 
 has ceased to be merely " inner," and has itself be- 
 come " outer." There is no longer any contrast 
 between "inner" and "outer" when the self is all 
 in all to itself, is consciously the beginning and 
 the end of its experience. The self, which is essen- 
 tially thought, has left the inner hidden realm of 
 noumena " beyond " phenomena, and has become 
 manifest as at once the inner life of the process of 
 Desire and the outer embodied result of that process ; 
 for Desire, as we saw, falls wholly within the sphere 
 of self-experience. It has ceased to be merely that 
 at which we arrive as the result of Understanding, 
 it is that from which in Desire we start. The 
 world of objects making the content of experience 
 is not merely found to be in union with the subject 
 by Understanding ; it is now determined consciously 
 to be so by the subject. The subject no longer, on 
 the one hand, makes an apparently alien world of 
 objects harmonious with itself by forcing its way 
 into the inmost recesses of that world, plays the 
 r61e of noumenon in the form of thought, and so 
 becomes at home with itself in the variety of the 
 object — "understands" it: while yet, on the other 
 hand, it keeps up the distinction of the object world 
 from itself by drawing a line between inner truth 
 and a sphere of appearance. The subject in the 
 
vn DESIRE 221 
 
 case of Desire constitutes the very being of the 
 object both in form and content. The objects are 
 not simply y»;' the subject ; they are implicitly in the 
 subject, and claim explicit oneness with it. The 
 self does not find them " without " and make them 
 fall " within " itself. They are from the first im- 
 plicitly within it. Desire can bring this to clear 
 consciousness, and does so by finding, as the result 
 of its process, that they fill up its life, "fulfil" or 
 "satisfy" it. Just as in the case of Perception the 
 esse of " things " lay in their percipi, so in the case 
 of Desire the being of objects lies in their being 
 desired, in their satisfying a self 
 
 In Desire, then, self is the beginning and the end Desire not 
 of the process ; consciousness of objects is self-con- '=°™p!^'^^ 
 
 ^ ' .' conscious- 
 
 sciousness ; the subjective and the objective side of nessofseif. 
 experience are consciously one. But Desire perse 
 does not exhaust the full significance of this ex- 
 perience. It represents rather the simplest form in 
 which it appears, where objects get their meaning 
 from the self which claims them as its own, and are 
 therefore subordinate to its active identification of 
 them with itself Such a world of objects is im- 
 plicitly one with a self, but is not per se a self on its 
 own account. It has its being only for a self, but 
 does not claim to be per se a self The object, in 
 short, is per se selfless, though claiming oneness 
 with the self Moreover, the self, which is here 
 realised as a conscious result, is, just because of 
 that character of its object-content, necessarily a 
 particular self. For we have here in Desire a self 
 with its indeterminate world of objects referring to 
 it as their unifying principle ; and what is attained 
 through Desire is the feeling of this self being 
 
222 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 satisfied by the object. It is the one subject ; all else 
 is adjectival for this subject. Hence it is that, on 
 the one hand, Desire is, as we say, always in- 
 dividual, and the satisfaction of self varies indefi- 
 nitely, that " the desires of selves differ " ; and, on 
 the other, that Desire has to do only with objects 
 which can be subordinate to, assimilated by, a self, 
 and is not a relation between selves as such. One 
 self does not desire another self; nor desire along 
 with another; but always and only for itself 
 Desire, in short, is a relation between a self and 
 a selfless object. 
 The higher But the process of Desire makes possible a higher 
 con'^dius- ^"^"^ completer form of consciousness of self. By 
 ness of Desire the self is carried out and established 
 objectively. The self is now not simply the implicit 
 unity of experience. The subject is conscious of 
 its self as an objective result. Its self is novi for 
 its self in and through objects. Through Desire 
 self is therefore on both sides (subjective and objec- 
 tive) of experience. The way is thus prepared for 
 an object to be a self on its own account, and still 
 be for a self. One self may stand over against 
 another self, be for it, and yet be a self. The 
 experience of self-consciousness, in other words, 
 can be sustained and realised by a relation of one 
 self to another. This is made possible by the result 
 of Desire. It is, however, an actual experience at 
 a level above Desire and different from it. It is a 
 level where a subject is conscious in its object, not 
 of something without meaning until it becomes its 
 own, but a self having a being for itself on its own 
 account : not, however, a self other than the subject, 
 but in union with its self, its own other. It is the 
 
VII RECOGNITION 223 
 
 level where one self ' ' recognises ' ' and ' ' acknowledges ' ' 
 its identity in another self — the level of Recognition. 
 
 The process of Recognition is simply the form of Recogni- 
 experience in which consciousness of self takes place (3i°°inct 
 when subiect and object each claim to be self. Desire (fo"? 
 implies, as we saw, that only one side is self, the under- 
 other is selfless, and hence is subordinated to self s*^"'^™^- 
 The fundamental relation between two self-conscious- 
 nesses can only consist in each being self for itself 
 and also for the other. But that means that each is 
 "accepted" by the other in the same sense, since 
 each just is what the other is — self. It can only do 
 so because it is self. And it must do so, because it 
 is thus merely asserting self in another form. Hence 
 it is that we do not desire the self of another. We 
 necessarily put it from us, for to be one self is just 
 not to be another. So far as we are conscious of 
 another self, we, in the first instance, simply allow 
 it to be there before us. It cannot be ours without 
 destroying our self. We cannot negate it, we can 
 therefore only affirm it. Nor, strictly, can we "under- 
 stand"^ it, still less "perceive"^ it. There is no 
 "understanding" a self, not because it defies "under- 
 standing" and is therefore "inexplicable," but because 
 " understanding " is simply not the way to become 
 conscious of it even in the most elementary form of 
 its existence, as "mere" self. If we try to "under- 
 stand " it, we necessarily draw distinctions within 
 it ; we have to distinguish how it expresses itself 
 and what it is in itself apart from its expression. 
 But this cannot give what we want — namely, the 
 
 ^ Kant also insisted on this. 
 
 2 Berkeley held that knowledge of selves is obtained by inference based on 
 " perception. " 
 
224 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 self as such with and in its expression, the self as 
 a unity beneath all distinction/ Understanding 
 must proceed by such a distinction and cannot rise 
 above it. Understanding, therefore, is bound to fail 
 when we seek to become conscious precisely of what 
 implies the absence of such a distinction. Under- 
 standing fails to give us the self, because the 
 unity arrived at by Understanding is lower than 
 the unity of self-consciousness.^ The failure does 
 not prove the self non-existent or unintelligible. 
 The attempt to accomplish such a task is itself 
 meaningless. We do not want to " understand " a 
 self at all : we merely recognise or acknowledge it. 
 It would be useless, therefore, if in such a case we 
 could "understand," for the result would not convey 
 to us what a self is. We can only " understand " 
 what has no self, what is over against us as an alien 
 object. We can see the truth of this if we try for a 
 moment to give a meaning to the expression, "we 
 can understand what our own self is." It at once 
 suggests an infinite regress as the only way of 
 interpreting what is inherently a self-contradictory 
 statement. If the application of Understanding 
 to our self fails by its very nature, it fails for 
 precisely the same reason when we have to deal 
 with other selves. It is in general only in regard 
 to the latter that we do make the attempt ; for there 
 a self is something more than self proper or mere 
 self It is an object which in one aspect, its sensible 
 
 ' It is only a self if all its content is self, i.e. there can be in its case no 
 distinction of what it is "in itself" and how it "appears." 
 
 ^ Hence the failure of analysis, e.g. in Psychology, to discover a self is 
 inevitable. All analysis is a form of "understanding," and proceeds by 
 distinctions. But this does not prove, as Hume and his successors 
 held, that there is no self, and no unity. Such a contention is radically a 
 fetitio principii. 
 
VII RECOGNITION 225 
 
 aspect, belongs to the sphere of Perception, and 
 hence presents the same general character out of 
 which Understanding arises. But it is meaningless 
 to try to go beyond that aspect. Hence the illusory 
 nature of the attempt to carry the process of " under- 
 standing" the subject higher than the sphere to 
 which Understanding is strictly applicable as a 
 form of experience.^ 
 
 The experience of being conscious of self in Recogni- 
 another self, therefore, is inherently different from "°"' "'*'^'' 
 both Understanding and Desire. It is not merely 
 " knowledge " in the sense of mere consciousness of 
 objects, knowledge as found in Perception and 
 Understanding. It is a consciousness of another 
 self reflected back upon the subject and becoming 
 a consciousness of its own self in that other. It is 
 re-knowledge — re-cognition. And this is made pos- 
 sible because self, as we have seen, is on both sides 
 of the experience, is subjective and objective. We 
 are not dealing at this stage with the more developed 
 forms of self-consciousness, as these appear at higher 
 levels of experience still, in, e.g., Morality and the 
 Social Order. Here we are dealing with the bare 
 consciousness of self, consciousness of mere self. 
 And at this level consciousness of self in and through 
 another self consists in the subject simply accepting 
 that other self as revealing its self to itself. 
 
 It is implied in this process that the relation is The pro- 
 mutual. What holds for one side holds for the^^^^^j 
 other ; what is accepted by one is admitted by the tion. its 
 
 three 
 I It is equally futile to suppose that we can "perceive" other selves ; or aspects, 
 that we gain a " knowledge of other selves " through " perception." The self 
 is admitted not to be a "thing," and is never asserted to be in any sense 
 " external." But if so, Perception, which has for its content " external things," 
 is, ipso facto, not the mode in which consciousness of a self can appear. 
 
 Q 
 
226 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 other. "Acknowledgment"^ means re-affirming 
 from one side what is asserted by the other ; "re- 
 cognition"^ implies the re-appearance in the one 
 consciousness of the self-content which falls within 
 another. All this lies in the very principle of a 
 reciprocal relation between selves. It may be 
 realised with different degrees of completeness, but 
 every form of it involves one or other of the 
 elements implied in the principle. To begin with, 
 the self on both sides is a particular self, and the re- 
 cognition is of one self by another single self. Being 
 self, it is in one of its aspects mere or bare self; it 
 contains implicitly, but is capable of abstracting itself 
 from, all its own objective content, the content which 
 it secures through the process of Desire. Again, 
 being a particular self objectively present to another 
 self, it has all the characteristics of a particular 
 object : it is a " this self," with a " sensible " or 
 "natural" existence of its own, in virtue of which 
 it appears to another self as "this particular self" 
 And, finally, being a self/^r itself, it is not simply a 
 self apart from its content, and not simply a parti- 
 cular self through and in its particular content (as 
 "object" for a particular self), but a self containing 
 all its particularity as its own, a ^^ifor itself because, 
 and in the same sense as, it is for another. All these 
 elements have to be accepted and "acknowledged" 
 before full Recognition of a self by a self is obtained. 
 Only in the last is the self completely realised ; for 
 there it ceases to be merely an object for another, 
 and to that extent dependent on another, for its 
 
 ' The more complex forms of "recognition" and "acknowledgment" 
 which take place in the Social Order are, in the long run, based on, and are 
 developments of, this more ultimate form of consciousness of self. 
 
VII SELF-IDENTITY 227 
 
 meaning, and becomes independent, self-dependent, 
 really " free." In this last stage it thus knows itself 
 to be free and gets that freedom of self " recognised," 
 Until and unless this is accepted on both sides con- 
 sciousness of self in another self is not completely 
 established. 
 
 The aspect of self as detached from all sensible Ego as 
 existence is essential to consciousness of self. For ^fj^ ego. 
 it means the identity of self with self; and this is 
 the bare but essential form of self-consciousness, 
 "ego is ego." It is only obtained by the self 
 abstracting itself from the contingency of sense. 
 This self must be " recognised." But when bare 
 self " recognises " mere self in another, the Recog- 
 nition is as empty as the selves which constitute 
 the relation. It consists in merely asserting and 
 accepting selfhood. The one finds no difference 
 between itself and the other. The only ground of 
 distinction is the reciprocal act of Recognition itself. 
 But for this, our self would be the self of another ; 
 the ego recognising a self would be aware merely 
 of its own self. This form of Recognition has a 
 supreme value, however. It is the formal aspect 
 of freedom. It is, again, the insistence on the 
 identity, even though abstract, of all selfhood ; and 
 this means the implicit universality of all selves. 
 It implies, too, the essential equality of all selves, 
 an equality exactly the same as the equality of a 
 self with itself. And this is the ultimate basis of the 
 equality of selves in the Moral Order of experience. 
 Still, on this level of Recognition, no concrete re- 
 lationship can be established and taken up between 
 the selves ; for bare identity of self makes all 
 inter-relation impossible because needless. It is 
 
diiferent 
 from ego, 
 
 228 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 the simplest and least complete form of Recognition 
 on that account. 
 Ego as The aspect of self, again, as embedded in or 
 
 confined to its sensible existence, is likewise essential 
 if the self is to be accepted as this particular self, an 
 object for another self ; and must be so recognised. 
 Each self may "recognise" the other as "this 
 particular self." In such a case, what we have is 
 the bare difference of one self from the other. 
 Each " recognises " itself as different in accepting 
 the self of the other, and vice versa. The Recog- 
 nition is not the asserting of abstract identity, but 
 abstract exclusion. Each accepts the other, but 
 as a natural existence, much in the same way as it 
 accepts the existence of natural beings other than 
 selves. They establish consciously the existence of 
 each other as diverse, and in that sense opposed. 
 They may exist side by side, but that is the only 
 positive condition of their relation. If they come 
 into active relationship, at once the difference asserts 
 itself, and the result is struggle and conflict — negation 
 of self. It is consciousness of self in a "state of 
 nature," each opposed to each and all. They are 
 equally selves only by asserting their difference from 
 one another. This state is only different from the 
 play of natural forces in being consciously exerted 
 and consciously directed by self-conscious beings. 
 This form of Recognition has, however, its value in 
 emphasising the fact of distinction between selves 
 in spite o/all identity, and the fact of "contingency " 
 of particular selves. 
 between ^ These two aspects are distinct ; and, moreover, 
 selves in they have not the same value as moments of the 
 
 Recogni- , ' 
 
 tion. self, even though they are both essential to it. For 
 
vn INEQUALITY OF SELVES 229 
 
 the former emphasises the fundamental element in 
 self-consciousness, self-identity, abiding unity, free- 
 dom, self-containedness ; the latter inevitably estab- 
 lishes the element of variety, diversity, all that is 
 characteristic, in fact, of " sensible objects." Since 
 they are thus distinct and of unequal value, and 
 yet both selves, there can be a Recognition of 
 the one as such by the other as such. This will 
 introduce a consciousness of inequality between 
 the two sides in the experience we are considering. 
 It may very well happen in the course of the de- 
 velopment of complete consciousness of self in 
 another self, complete Recognition, that one self 
 may emphasise one of those aspects, while the other 
 emphasises the other aspect. One self may insist 
 on the abstract self- reference apart from sensible 
 existence, the other may claim to be, and be content 
 to remain, bound up with the sensible embodiment 
 of self. One may assert itself to be, and be "acknow- 
 ledged" to be, detached from all "natural" existence, 
 the other may claim to be and be recognised to be, 
 inseparable from it. One may assert its abstract 
 " freedom," the other its abstract " contingency." 
 When this is the case, and a relationship of Re- 
 cognition is taken up between two such selves, it 
 takes, by its very nature, the form, not of an equality 
 of one self before the other, but of inequality. The 
 one is the higher and superior in value, the other is 
 lower and inferior in value. The one sees the other 
 merely as his particular objective self, as his sub- 
 ordinate self, as his sensible existence ; the other 
 sees the first as his own true, free self, whose 
 sensible reality he expresses, but which he himself 
 is not and does not claim to be. When this 
 
230 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 relationship is set up and constituted as a concrete 
 experience, we have what appears in the charac- 
 teristically human relation of Master and Serf} 
 Masterand This relationship is not here considered in its 
 ^^^- ethical aspect. That introduces other considera- 
 tions altogether different from what is relevant here. 
 Its significance in the present connexion lies simply 
 in its being a specific stage in the realisation of the 
 consciousness of self, that stage in which there is a 
 conscious inequality of value between one side (the 
 subject) and the other (the object), and where that 
 very inequality becomes a condition of experiencing 
 selfhood, of "recognising" self. The above argu- 
 ment does not, therefore, justify the relation of 
 Master and Serf morally; it "justifies" it epistemo- 
 logically, by showing that it has a necessary place 
 in the development of consciousness of self, that it 
 is a form in which this experience must appear if the 
 one side is identified with an aspect of self different 
 from the other. That it can and must appear is 
 a proof of its necessary value : that it arises out of 
 an incomplete realisation on both sides of the life of 
 the self, is a proof that it may be and is trans- 
 cended at a higher level of consciousness of self. 
 Be it noted, however, that the relationship does 
 Serf not a not mean, as is so often supposed, that the Master, 
 "thing." Qj. consciously free self, is aware of the Serf, or 
 "natural" self, as a "thing." That is both im- 
 possible and meaningless. For the Serf constitutes 
 the Master a free and true self, just as much as the 
 Master constitutes the Serf an unfree self: for 
 
 ' It is one of the earliest forms in which the life of concrete self-conscious- 
 ness appears, and one of the most enduring and subtle forms in which it is 
 always maintained, as we can see if we reflect for a moment on the enormous 
 part it plays in the life of every Society. 
 
VII SERFDOM 231 
 
 each recognises and accepts the self of the other. 
 Moreover, each recognises the other as his own 
 self, the one his self in the form of natural exist- 
 ence, the other in the form of free self. The Serf 
 is to himself iv&&, though only in and by his Master : 
 the Master has to himself a. natural existence, though 
 only in his Serf. A "thing" never has such a re- 
 lationship to a subject, because a " thing," in point 
 of fact, only has a meaning at the level of Per- 
 ception, where self- consciousness does not, strictly 
 speaking, explicitly exist. The only possible at- 
 titude we can take up to a " thing " is to perceive it : 
 that is the content of perceiving experience. We 
 may, if we like, look on the Serf as the "thinghood 
 of self," in the sense that here the Master treats the 
 self as an object bound up with the sphere of sensible 
 or natural, " external," existence. But it is not sensible 
 existence as such that he deals with, but the self 
 qua natural existence. And this constitutes all the 
 difference between a " thing " as such and a Serf as 
 such. All this difference comes out, indeed, in the 
 process of maintaining this relationship. For the 
 Master to commit to the Serf the performances of 
 his (the Master's) purposes ; to punish him for 
 failure to execute them ; to allow the Serf even to 
 " buy his own freedom " by labour or otherwise ; to 
 set the Serf free — these and other conditions of the 
 relationship indicate the contrast between "things" 
 and " Serfs." But in fact to identify the two is to 
 trifle with the nature of the principle involved in 
 two cases. The one is a relation between conscious 
 subject and "unconscious" or selfless existence: 
 the other essentially a relation between two self- 
 conscious beings, a relation which in principle 
 
232 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 might very well either change sides in the course 
 of experience, or disappear altogether, when the full 
 realisation of self-consciousness is established. 
 The The maintenance of this relationship in all its 
 
 toweTn details — ruling on the side of the Master, service on 
 Masterand the side of the Serf, command and demand on the 
 one side, and obedience on the other, — follows 
 logically from the fundamental character of this 
 form of Recognition. Both are selves ; and seek 
 to maintain themselves as such. The one, the 
 Serf, in his abstract consciousness of self, gives 
 up freedom of self as such for the sake of the 
 bare existence, the natural life of the self, which 
 is in principle a subordinate moment of self-conscious- 
 ness. The Serf thereby confesses he is incapable 
 of asserting his own free self-identity as such. He 
 must therefore subordinate the self he prefers to 
 another self, since his own self -consciousness implicitly 
 demands this for its complete realisation} He can- 
 not be this free self of himself, yet must, because he 
 is self-conscious, realise it somehow ; hence he does 
 in through another self In this way he does get 
 his full consciousness of self, but does so only at 
 the expense of a phase of his own real self-con- 
 sciousness. Since he gives up free selfhood, he 
 is ipso facto conscious of complete self only in sub- 
 ordination to that which is free. He can only be fully 
 self by giving expression to that dependence. This 
 he does by "obedience" and "service." By doing 
 so he gets his true self, for only if he does so can he 
 get what he lacks and must have ; since his complete 
 self is implicitly and truly also a free self. Hence 
 
 ' These two aspects being together the ultimate moments of complete 
 selfhood. 
 
vii SELF AS UNIVERSAL 233 
 
 the Serf's relation to his Master is not arbitrary 
 but a necessity for the Serf himself The same 
 holds good, with the necessary changes, regarding 
 the position of the Master in this experience of 
 self- consciousness. The Master can exert his 
 " authority " over the Serf, because he surrenders 
 his natural existence and stands for mere freedom of 
 self, albeit abstract freedom (a freedom which, 
 because abstract, is, to begin with, contingent upon 
 greater " force of will," " energy of self," or any ex- 
 aggeration of a difference which makes abstraction 
 easy). In exerting it he is performing for the Serf 
 what the Serf as self-conscious requires and im- 
 plicitly demands — the function of free self: and 
 he is doing for himself what he also requires — the 
 maintenance of his abstraction from the " natural " 
 self which is implicitly his own, but is subordinate 
 to him. 
 
 But while such a mode of obtaining conscious- Complete 
 ness of self can indeed play an important r61e ness"f "eif 
 in the evolution of this experience, and must '^ °^i 
 
 . . . possible 
 
 appear to some extent wherever the experience where self 
 is found, it is inherently inadequate to its fulp^^""'"- 
 expression. It rests on an abstraction on the part 
 of each side of the experience ; and, if sustained, 
 must perpetuate a fundamental contradiction.^ It 
 seeks to maintain an essential inequality of the 
 self with itself; and this implies that the self is 
 not really a unity, that its aspects cannot be ex- 
 plicitly what they are implicitly — a position which 
 the very relationship above considered denies. 
 
 ^ A contradiction, however, on which a very large part of the life of a 
 Society rests, and which is largely the very moving principle of its ceaseless 
 activity. The " Labour problem," which concerns Society so deeply, is an 
 instance in point. 
 
234 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 Since on each side in the above experience, one 
 aspect of the self is impHcit and the other explicit, 
 the complete realisation of consciousness of self is 
 found where on each side the self, of which each 
 is conscious, is explicity both aspects at once, and 
 each sees in the other, not a phase of its self, but 
 its entire self, where each is for the other what 
 it is for itself, and is in the other what it is in 
 itself. This means, however, that each is conscious 
 of itself, not simply as distinct from but as com- 
 pletely one with another, conscious of being self in 
 the same sense as the other. It is then conscious 
 no longer of simply " my self" and "this self" at all. 
 In the form of " my " or " this " self it was particular. 
 Hence in this completer consciousness of self it 
 becomes conscious of universality of self or of self 
 as universal. 
 Universal- This is brought about directly as the result of 
 made^^'^ the Very relationship of incomplete self-conscious- 
 possibie by ncss above stated. For the Serf, realising its 
 ofTnequaU natural self for the self of his Master, does so by 
 ity of carrying out the purposes of the Master (his free 
 self) through and in his own natural life. This 
 process is what is called his Toil or Work. In 
 his "Labour" he moulds and determines natural 
 existence by conscious purposes, which are in the 
 first instance his Master's, but are secondarily his 
 In the own. The Serf makes those purposes his own in 
 Serf. "obeying" his Master. But since these purposes 
 are at the same time the purposes of his own 
 true or free self (his Master), in carrying them out 
 he is really carrying out his own true self. That 
 true self therefore becomes his own self through 
 the purposes he adopts in virtue of his " obedience." 
 
vii UNIVERSALITY OF SELF 235 
 
 They are directly realised by his will as such, not 
 by that of his Master. They are, to begin with, 
 abstractly his, since his true self is abstractly apart 
 from him, as his Master. But these purposes, 
 while they remain abstract for the Master (since 
 he does not carry them out), become concrete forms 
 of action for the Serf. By carrying them out he 
 thus becomes concretely possessed of his true self, 
 no longer as something external but as his own 
 energy of will. He thus acquires, through " obedi- 
 ence " to his Master, the self which he had first 
 of all put from him, or abrogated in favour of 
 another self. By Labour, therefore, the inequality, 
 originally set up within his consciousness of self, 
 is removed altogether, and his complete self is 
 restored to him as a unity and as his own. When 
 this is brought about, and comes home to the Serf 
 as a conscious fact, he is in a position to assert 
 his freedom, and so claim an equality of self-con- 
 sciousness with his former Master, claim, that is to 
 say, to be for the other self (his Master) what he 
 is thus, as the result of his l^sboux, for himself It 
 is merely a question of time and circumstance when 
 and how this shall be insisted on and fully realised ; 
 whether it comes from the side of the Master, 
 who "lets him go free"; or comes from himself by 
 " acquiring " it through some means or other ; or is 
 brought about, it may be, through external agencies 
 of history compelling its full expression. 
 
 Similarly, from the side of the Master the same in the 
 result has to be brought about. He is abstractly ^^'^'^' 
 free ; his concrete freedom is only realised by the 
 purposes, embodying his freedom, being carried out. 
 But since they are carried out by another self (the 
 
236 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 Serf), he will remain only abstractly free unless they 
 
 are concretely his own as well. If he remain only 
 
 abstractly free, while the Serf, by the process above 
 
 stated, becomes concretely so, he will be inferior to 
 
 the Serf He is bound, therefore, in the interests 
 
 of his own free self to secure, by some means or 
 
 other, that his self shall be concretely free. This he 
 
 does by embodying his purposes in natural objects 
 
 as such, and, on the one hand, subordinating these 
 
 to himself, while, on the other, "using" them as a 
 
 means of establishing his freedom in the eyes of the 
 
 other. This implies, e.g., "hiring" the Labour of 
 
 the other, and acknowledging in this the freedom of 
 
 the other to give or withhold his Labour. It implies, 
 
 in short, the surrender of the relationship of inequality 
 
 between his self and that of the Serf, and thus brings 
 
 about the transition to a state of equal and complete 
 
 consciousness of self between the two sides. 
 
 Universal When this is a fully conscious experience, both 
 
 scious°ne'ss ^ides recognise each his self in the other as it \sfor 
 
 the basis the Self of each. Each acknowledges his self to be 
 
 highest in "o peculiar or particular self, but to be a self with 
 
 human ex- universality of nature. Each sees in the other the 
 
 perience. _ , 
 
 reflex of his true self, of what he \sfor himself; sees 
 himself, therefore, no longer as particular and isolated, 
 but as universal. From the relation of selves as 
 universal, springs all that is highest in human expe- 
 rience — the certainty man has of secure "rationality," 
 out of which comes Science ; the Moral Order of the 
 world ; his sense of being absolutely at home in the 
 universe wherever the individual self-consciousness 
 exists within it ; his Religions, where he claims to 
 live the life of an eternal self-consciousness. All 
 these are but further developments of the funda- 
 
VII FREE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 237 
 
 mental principle of a consciousness of a universal self, 
 which, again, means a consciousness of being through- 
 out all its content absolutely at home with itself, of 
 being entirely for itself, or completely free. Con- 
 sciousness of complete freedom and consciousness of 
 being a self which is universal, are therefore one 
 and the same experience. All manifestations of 
 universal self-consciousness are thus phases of free- 
 dom. Free self-consciousness is, then, the ground 
 and end of all experience. 
 
 At first this complete consciousness of freedom tws 
 takes an abstract form, as we find in the history both conscious- 
 of the individual mind and the human race. To be "^== °^ 
 
 f. 1 r 1 • 1 - ■ 1 1 freedom 
 
 conscious 01 a sell which is universal — to be con- at first 
 scious that, in being for himself, the individual is for ^•^^tract. 
 all selves, that he represents selfhood in general — 
 can very well be asserted in highly abstract ways. 
 It can become the source of boundless self-assurance 
 and superb self-exaltation on the one hand, or pro- 
 found self-abnegation on the other ; and between 
 theses two extremes lie all the various forms of 
 exaggerated and self-confident isolation of the self 
 from the richness of its concrete experience. Taken 
 in an abstract form, indeed, no mode of experience 
 is so capable of endless distortion, so fraught with 
 peril and danger, so liable to pass the bounds set by 
 the orderly necessity of a rational coherence. For 
 the very consciousness of a self, which, in abstrac- 
 tion from all the details of existence of whatsoever 
 kind, yet carries its universality within it, can dare 
 to transcend all finite existence, and still find itself 
 at home with itself, still find its objectivity within 
 itself. It may so transcend all finite existence that 
 reflection is unable to distinguish its claim to be 
 
238 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 universal from boundless egoism. It can so think 
 away all else except itself, that it can claim to be all 
 that is. It can mistake the mere claim to be all 
 existence for the claim to be at one with universal 
 self-consciousness, just as it can mistake the claim 
 to be free from all existence for the consciousness 
 of a universal self. The very universality of the 
 self, in short, is the danger of this experience ; for 
 that universality has all the indefiniteness of an 
 abstraction, and all the plenitude of reality. It 
 may be made so indefinite as to be indistinguishable 
 from nonentity ; it may be made so definite as to be 
 indistinguishable from the very opposite of universal 
 self-consciousness and become an attitude of mere 
 caprice. 
 Three In the main the abstract expression of this form 
 
 atBTrac°/ °^ experience may appear in three distinct ways, 
 universal The Commonest and perhaps healthiest shape it 
 sciousness: takes is that of lifting the self away from all depend- 
 stoicism. eucc upon, and attachment to, natural existence of 
 every kind, and of finding, on the positive side, its 
 life and being in the consciousness of bare universal 
 self as self. This is the mood of elevation above 
 all " nature " and natural conditions, of communion 
 with self in its bare formal universality, with pure 
 " thought," and of relation to the concrete realities of 
 existence merely by way of exclusion and denial. 
 This type is the attitude adopted by the Stoical self- 
 consciousness in whatever form it appears, whether 
 in the form historically called by that name or in 
 the form of Asceticism which is logically allied to it. 
 There is nothing of worth here but what comes from, 
 and has the aspect of, the pure self. Only the self 
 as universal is the truth ; only the thought of the 
 
vii STOICISM 239 
 
 self, the pure thought, has any abiding place in 
 experience. " Things " and " objects " presented 
 are obstacles in the way of the consciousness of 
 thought for its own sake ; or, at best, centres and 
 occasions of reaction and recoil into the region of 
 thought. They have only significance by being 
 excluded from self-consciousness, and have no place 
 in it. Life in connexion with them can only be 
 endured on sufferance. To give up all connexion 
 with them is not only no loss, it is positive gain ; 
 and, in consequence, the world of such things can 
 be completely and even deliberately abandoned by 
 the process of justifiable suicide. The positive life 
 of the self is found in the life of thought, and with 
 that type of self wherever it is found. Those who 
 live this life together, in spite of contact with natural 
 existence, make life in time and space tolerable for one 
 another, and form a social whole by themselves — a 
 brotherhood of immortals. But such a communion 
 of pure self-consciousness is only imperfectly realised 
 here and now, since " here and now " militate against 
 its consummation. It is independent of every " here 
 and now " ; it is a whole, whose unity lies not in this 
 life but only in the life apart from all natural con- 
 ditions — a city of God. 
 
 It is easy to see that, since every self-conscious Scepti- 
 life is actually found only under natural conditions, "'™' 
 only one step requires to be taken to carry the 
 abstraction of self-consciousness still further. The 
 self may abstract not only from all natural existence, 
 but from all specific forms of existing self-conscious- 
 ness except its own. Here, again, we have con- 
 sciousness of self as universal ; but the universality 
 is strictly and deliberately asserted to lie only 
 
240 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 within the limit of the individual self-consciousness 
 as such. The whole weight and burden of univer- 
 sality is lightly assumed by the individual self, 
 simply in virtue of his being conscious of self. He 
 can abstract himself from all else, and that very 
 fact is just the expression of his universality, is just 
 the manifestation of it. All security and universality 
 begin and end with his self as this individual self. 
 But since every self not merely can, but, on this 
 view, must, take up exactly the same attitude, there 
 remains no point of identity or common ground 
 at all for any one self-consciousness to share with 
 another. And this is deliberately and consciously 
 asserted to be the case, and is accepted as the true 
 expression of a consciousness of universal self. 
 When this position is taken up we have the 
 attitude of thorough-going Scepticism, of Scepticism, 
 not as a method, but as a mode of experience. 
 Here universal self- consciousness is disintegrated 
 and dissipated into the endless multiplicity of which 
 it is capable, just because that is, in a certain sense, 
 universal self- consciousness ; and this endless 
 diversity is as such identified with the universal 
 self. In other words, each takes his own individual 
 self as such to be the one universal self, and ipso 
 facto takes it to exclude all others. For each, 
 the truth is his own, is for himself only; therein 
 lies the positive side of this attitude. For in Scepti- 
 cism the self must always take at least its own 
 attitude to be true for itself. But it acknowledges 
 just as much that the same position can be main- 
 tained by others equally for themselves. But this 
 acknowledgment eo ipso so qualifies its own truth, 
 its own attitude, as to destroy all its positive value 
 
VII SCEPTICISM 241 
 
 for that self. The attitude thus carries its own nega- 
 tion within it, as an integral and essential moment 
 of it. It is therefore, since it claims of itself to 
 be true experience, self-destructive. And Scepticism 
 only achieves its highest consummation as an ex- 
 pression of abstract free self-consciousness, when it 
 is not only aware that this is its outcome, but asserts 
 it to be the only possible form of experience ; when 
 it not only admits but demands this result. For 
 this denial of all value in its own position is itself 
 the supreme achievement of its type of freedom, — 
 the freedom which consists in mere detachment for 
 its own sake, in detachment not only from natural 
 existence but from other selves. While Stoicism is 
 the withdrawal of self from all particularity of 
 content in order to find its sense of security, its 
 sense of free universality, in the region of the pure 
 self, of thought, wherever this may be obtained ; 
 Scepticism is the withdrawal from even this univer- 
 sal of thought, and hence has nothing left in which 
 to find its sense of absolute freedom, except this 
 very power and act of withdrawal itself. 
 
 It thus prepares the way for the final and unique seif- 
 abstraction into which free universal self-conscious- *i>«"^t'°"- 
 ness may pass. It may not merely abstract itself 
 from all else other than itself, but in virtue of its 
 freedom, it may put its very self outside itself, and 
 attempt to maintain an attitude of detachment from 
 its own self-consciousness. Nothing could exceed 
 this degree of abstraction ; and here all the peril, 
 to which this form of experience is liable, takes 
 a positive shape. In the previous cases there 
 was always some region of self in which the self 
 could feel its security, its sense of being at one with 
 
 R 
 
242 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. 
 
 self absolutely ; for in these cases it did not give up 
 everything. In the first, it did not surrender the 
 universality of pure self, and had the joy of com- 
 munion with other selves who shared in pure 
 thought; in the second, it did not surrender the 
 satisfaction of exercising for itself the privilege of 
 abstract freedom, and that very satisfaction with 
 itself in doing so kept it at one with itself. But 
 here it has given up by its very freedom even that 
 security of self, the security of having a self to 
 assert for the sake of assertion. The result is, it is 
 here consciously cut off" from all security whatsoever. 
 It is divided now not against something apart from 
 itself, but against itself; and is conscious within 
 itself of its own alienation from itself, with no stable 
 resting-place either within or without the range of 
 its self- consciousness. Such an attitude is one 
 of inherent self-contradiction, a contradiction not 
 brought about by contrast to what is other 
 than itself, but by its own self. It is therefore 
 incapable of being removed by any process of 
 self- conscious activity at all. It is pure self- 
 negation, seeking at the same time to maintain 
 itself as self-negation. The universality here appears 
 not as something positive, but as the persistence in 
 the same self of an essentially negative attitude. 
 For this Self-alienation is itself regarded as necessary, 
 as the very expression of free self- consciousness. 
 It cannot therefore be got rid of, but remains as 
 a permanent state of conscious self-diremption and 
 self-dissolution. When Stoicism turned in fear or 
 contempt from natural existence, it had a city of 
 refuge to which it could flee and be at peace ; when 
 Scepticism turned in distrust from all that it 
 
VII SELF-ALIENATION 243 
 
 regarded as alien to itself, It could still trust in 
 itself as such. But here there is no place of 
 refuge, no foothold for trust to rest upon. Hence 
 there is nothing left but to accept as the 
 only attitude, a consciousness of self- despair, 
 self-distrust, self-pity, self-contempt, — a sphere of 
 experience where the very power of freedom has 
 become a source of terror in having the privilege 
 and the necessity of exercising it. This sphere of 
 self-created and self-constituted unrest may take 
 different forms.^ It may appear as passive quiescent 
 self-despair ; or the self may seek to protect its life 
 from the ruin which lies within it, by the very 
 struggle to restore the unity of its experience at all 
 costs, whether through active contact with natural 
 existence or active communion with other selves ; 
 or, again, the self may live a life of "gnawing self- 
 consciousness," only saved from disaster by seeking 
 some consistency through endless self-analysis.^ If, 
 however, the state of self-disruption ceases to be 
 felt as a conscious whole, and referred to the self as 
 its own, the self may become divided absolutely into 
 separate areas altogether, and one partial self set 
 itself up against another partial self, and each claim 
 to be the whole. When this, the extreme form of 
 this self-consciousness comes about as a permanent 
 condition, the self has lost even an implicit sense of 
 unity. The universality of the self is reinstated 
 as a " diseased " state of self-consciousness. 
 
 All these abstract forms of consciousness of 
 universal self, by their very abstractness and the 
 
 ' Cp. Sartor Resarius, "The Everlasting No," and "The Centre of In- 
 ■difference." 
 
 ^ Cp. AraieVs Journal. 
 
244 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF ch. vii 
 
 The uni- rcsults to which they lead, indicate that the self here 
 must'be'^ must take its freedom not abstractly but concretely. 
 concrete, fhe self as Universal must be a concrete universal, 
 must find itself as a whole in its other as a whole. 
 When this is done, it will not merely insist on the 
 bare certainty of being universal, a certainty which 
 is essentially one-sided, but will find its universality 
 in the concrete content of its life. Its self-con- 
 sciousness will not be simply asserted subjectively 
 but objectively as well. It will find its complete 
 self in its object, and will not seek to assert itself 
 by withdrawing from objectivity. It will be com- 
 pletely at home on both sides of experience at once 
 and in the same sense. This, indeed, it finds when 
 it develops fully what that principle of universal self- 
 consciousness really contains. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE SPHERE OF REASON SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE 
 
 When experience has become explicitly a conscious- The unity 
 ness of self, when it has been shown that this very achfeved. 
 principle of self- consciousness has been all along 
 involved in its process, even at the lowest stages 
 at which the mind is conscious of objects at all, it 
 might be said that our purpose has been achieved. 
 For thereby it has been proved that the duality in 
 which knowledge emerges does not destroy, but 
 involves the unity of the elements in all knowledge, 
 subject and object ; and hence knowledge is real 
 and is of reality all along. The whole difficulty 
 regarding knowledge is just that it seeks to convey 
 the unity of mind and objects, and yet, at least to 
 begin with, exists through an opposition between 
 them. The activity of knowledge would be mean- 
 ingless, unless it were undertaken to bring out the 
 unity between those factors constituting it. As we 
 often say, knowledge must be " true," i.e. the mind's 
 process must " agree with " the " nature " of the 
 "object"; or, again, knowledge must, to be know- 
 ledge, and not mere temporal sequence of events in 
 conscious life, have "validity," i.e. what is arrived 
 at must be guaranteed or accepted by the character 
 imposed on its process by the world to which its 
 
 245 
 
246 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 activity refers. Whatever we may think of such 
 expressions, they do at least emphasise this funda- 
 mental aim of knowledge — the attainment of a unity 
 between iactors prima facte contrasted and opposed. 
 Now it has been established so far that the duality 
 in knowledge, even in its most extreme form, does 
 involve this inherent unity ; that this unity is what 
 each stage aims at expressing ; that it is the deter- 
 mining condition of its activity at any one stage, and 
 of its process from a lower to a higher stage ; and, 
 finally, that this unity is proved to be involved by 
 the fact it is evolved as an explicit result of the 
 process of knowledge towards its goal. In the 
 consciousness of self this unity is no longer implicit 
 but expressed. With the attainment of this result, 
 therefore, all preceding forms of experience find 
 their validity ratified, and itself takes its place as 
 their highest truth and supreme end. 
 The Why, then, do we not stop there in this inter- 
 
 notfomai: pfetation of knowledge ? This was undoubtedly 
 Kant. all that Kant aimed at establishing, and, so far, suc- 
 cessfully established. For he showed that unless 
 this was involved there could be no unity in know- 
 ledge at all ; or, stated otherwise, that the possibility 
 of unity in knowledge rested on the reference to 
 the self in every act of knowledge. But unity in 
 knowledge is just truth in experience ; and hence 
 the attainment of truth at all depended on the 
 implication in our knowledge of this reference to, 
 this consciousness of, self. Kant was content to 
 prove that this must be so, if there is to be a 
 "possible experience" at all; and being interested 
 solely in showing that experience was possible, he 
 was satisfied with the bare fact that this reference 
 
viii FORMAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 247 
 
 does or must take place. For him, therefore, this 
 reference is essentially and necessarily /orma/ in char- 
 acter. This is valuable so far as it goes ; but, after 
 all, it is merely the beginning of an explanation, not 
 the working of it out — its principle, and not its full 
 expression. Moreover, that formality, characterising 
 Kant's principle, limits, or is limited by, his range of 
 interest in the problem. For Kant the only question 
 about knowledge arises out of the duality of the 
 factors involved (subject and object), as this appears 
 in its extreme and most obvious forms. His problem 
 is to explain how there can be necessary unity in our 
 knowledge as we find it at the levels of Perception 
 and of the Understanding of "things," where quite 
 clearly the mind seems to stand on one side and 
 objects over against it on the other. And, no doubt, 
 that problem is as obvious as the opposition between 
 the factors which suggests it ; while, again, it is the 
 form in which common sense and natural science 
 find it most urgent. If, therefore, he could explain 
 how unity was possible there, he would satisfy a 
 serious demand, A formal solution, then, was 
 sufficient to show how it was possible, and with the 
 demonstration that those extreme opposites had a 
 ground of unity, nothing more seemed required. 
 The knowledge involving such opposition could be. 
 allowed to proceed on its own course with the 
 validity of its process guaranteed. The mere 
 justification of its validity could not of itself add 
 to the amount of that knowledge, nor could any 
 knowledge resting on that dualism be increased by 
 deduction from a principle merely establishing its 
 validity. In short, the demonstration of the worth 
 of ordinary knowledge could afford to be and remain 
 
248 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 purely formal, since it lay altogether apart from the 
 process of that knowledge itself, and was not con- 
 tinuous with that process. The demonstration 
 belonged to a different attitude of experience alto- 
 gether : it was a philosophical theory of knowledge, 
 and therefore, while it was a kind of knowledge 
 itself, it was not the same in kind as was the 
 knowledge dealt with by that theory. 
 Kant's Hence for Kant there is a sharp distinction 
 
 ^rincfpie between philosophical knowledge and the know- 
 invoivesa ledge of Ordinary understanding and science. 
 
 discon- 
 
 tinuity There is no continuity between them whatever ; 
 between jjjgy g^j.g giniply different processes. The fact that 
 
 philosophy •' 7.,., .... . . , , 
 
 and the result of philosophical inquiry is thus purely 
 
 exp™rie1ce formal is in harmony with his whole attitude towards 
 speculative knowledge. For him ordinary know- 
 ledge and science could extend our consciousness 
 of the meaning and content of the world ; philo- 
 sophical thinking could not. Thus all the extension 
 of our knowledge of the world was regarded by him 
 as the object of the former, and was their sole 
 . prerogative. With that philosophy had nothing 
 to do. But if all knowledge of objects comes from 
 them alone, what can be left for philosophy to do ? 
 Clearly nothing but to deal with purely formal 
 questions regarding knowledge itself Kant has 
 in some way to acknowledge the claims of philosophy 
 to be a necessary attitude of the human spirit, and 
 must therefore give it some fact to deal with. But 
 he will not allow that it extends knowledge of objects, 
 therefore its subject-matter must be knowledge as 
 such. And since it is excluded from knowing the 
 content of experience, there is absolutely nothing 
 left but the pure form of knowledge to discuss. 
 
VIII KANT'S FORMAL PRINCIPLE 249 
 
 Any kind of content lies beyond its province to 
 consider. But the pure form of knowledge is 
 simply the principle involved in all knowledge. 
 Hence, to show what this is and how it works is all 
 that a theory of knowledge can give. Here we see 
 once more the reason for the purely formal character 
 of his principle of self-consciousness. His problem 
 was formal by its very character, and his solution is 
 formal as a result ; even though, so far as it goes, it 
 is satisfactory. It is thus that he makes the com- 
 promise between the distrust of speculation which 
 had arisen in him so strongly after his acquaintance 
 with the barren metaphysic of preceding philosophy, 
 and the necessity after all to satisfy the speculative 
 impulse in man in some way or other. But he 
 creates, by so doing, an impassable gulf between the 
 knowledge analysed by philosophy and philosophical 
 knowledge itself. 
 
 The effect on his theory is twofold : all continuity its effect 
 of principle between ordinary knowledge and °heory" ^ 
 science on the one hand and philosophy on the 
 other is ignored or rendered Impossible, and that 
 principle above ordinary knowledge, which enables 
 him to criticise and justify its validity, remains 
 undeveloped. It cannot be developed by Kant, 
 for it has no content : it is purely formal. If it 
 tries to develop itself into knowledge, it merely 
 shows its ineptitude, Kant holds, by falling into 
 "antinomy," Yet in some way it is a reality. 
 Hence Kant hands over its positive reality to 
 another plane of experience altogether — the practical 
 moral will — and leaves the negative results, which 
 are all it can intellectually attain to, within the 
 theoretical attitude of experience. 
 
250 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 Paradox of It IS evident at a glance that Kant's result 
 i^Won. is paradoxical. In the interests of what for Kant 
 were the highest phases of experience — those of 
 Duty and Religion — he places Morality in a region 
 beyond the reach of knowledge ; as if human know- 
 ledge were something to be either afraid of, on 
 account of its critical concern for truth, or ashamed 
 of, because of its incompetence to reveal it completely. 
 On the other hand, in the interests of knowledge 
 Kant has been at considerable pains to demonstrate 
 the inherent necessity and universal validity of 
 Science. Surely it is evident that if knowledge is 
 inherently justifiable as a mode of experience, it 
 cannot be denied the right to extend its activity as 
 far as it pleases ; and if Morality is similarly a real 
 aspect of experience, it has nothing to fear from 
 Science, and nothing is gained by protecting it from 
 knowledge. It seems a singular defence of the 
 validity of Morality to relegate it to a sphere which 
 is unknowable, while the only way of defending it 
 must be by some form of knowledge itself. In point 
 of fact, knowledge takes its revenge, as it always 
 must in such a case, by depriving the result of any 
 concrete value. 
 The All this is altered by taking a single step. The 
 
 corTecdon: principle Securing the unity of knowledge and in- 
 conscious- volved in it all through, does not externally join 
 
 nessofself , . i i • • • n /- i t i 
 
 concrete subject and object ; it mternally fuses them. It does 
 not formal, j^qj jij^j^ them ; they are phases of it as a living 
 unity. They are not parts which are fitted into each 
 other ; but rather parts of a single cell. They are, 
 in fact, elements derived from its complete reality by 
 a process of analysis either implicit (in the develop- 
 ment of experience itself) or explicit (by conscious 
 
vm SELF IS CONCRETE 251 
 
 reflection). This interpretation of the principle is 
 involved in its having been shown to be that truth, 
 the attainment of which has been the aim of all know- 
 ledge from the start. Hence, when this first arises 
 as a conscious form of experience, the outcome of 
 the preceding stages of experience, where subject 
 and object were in obvious contrast, the principle is 
 not a formal unity at all, but a concrete mode of 
 experience, which, while it contains what preceded 
 in the sense that it is their truth, has a life and being 
 of its own whose content has yet to be revealed and 
 expressed. We cannot, therefore, stop with the 
 explicit attainment of the mere consciousness of self 
 involved in all the knowledge that has gone before, 
 — unless that self-consciousness is, as it there stands, 
 the exhaustive expression of all that self-conscious- 
 ness means, and experience cannot be further 
 developed. That this is not so is evident, first, from 
 the fact that the self is here the most concrete of 
 all realities ; in the second place, because there is 
 still a vast amount of experience left untouched by 
 the preceding phases of experience (Perception, etc.), 
 and needing, therefore, interpretation by self-con- 
 sciousness ; and, thirdly, because — the conscious- 
 ness of self being a mode of experience — it has 
 expressly to build all that the preceding phases of 
 experience (Perception, etc.) contained into the 
 structure of its life and make them consciously its 
 own. It has, in fact, to recast experience as hitherto 
 known into explicit consciousness of self, just as, e.g., 
 Understanding took up the content of Perception 
 and moulded that after its own form, Develop- 
 
 Hence, then, the attainment of self-consciousness ™^"'°^ 
 
 1. . 1 r . . , , . . conscious- 
 
 as an explicit mode of experience is the beginning nessofseif. 
 
contains. 
 
 252 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 of a further advance in the interpretation of experi- 
 ence and in the deeper consciousness of what the 
 self contains.^ But from this point onwards we are 
 always within the sphere of an explicit consciousness 
 of self. The self is aware of itself in all its contents 
 and movements, and of nothing else. The object 
 world is consciously one with the subject world, and 
 the course of development consists just in making 
 this conscious unity more and more complete, more 
 and more concrete, more and more adequate to all 
 its content. 
 What it Now, just as Kant placed Morality and Religion 
 
 in the sphere of pure consciousness of self, so here 
 part of the life of self-consciousness proper is realised 
 in these forms of experience. And just as Kant 
 relegated Morality and Religion to the world of 
 Reason only, so our argument will show them to 
 arise out of the life of Reason. But these of them- 
 selves do not exhaust all that self- consciousness 
 contains, as Kant seemed to hold. There are other 
 movements as well ; and a complete interpretation 
 of the principle will show what these are. One 
 marked divergence from Kant appears in the fact 
 that a place can be found at one of its stages for the 
 philosophical attitude, the activity of Speculation. 
 This in itself may be said to be an obvious 
 result to secure ; yet Kant's view of knowledge 
 leaves it unexplained. The question is bound to 
 arise in Kant's theory, What kind of knowledge 
 is it in which Kant's own philosophy consists ? 
 quis custodit custodes ? For Kant, however, as we 
 have said, there is a gulf fixed between science and 
 
 ^ This is the way in which actual experience reveals the reality of the higher 
 forms of self-consciousness. 
 
VIII REASON 253 
 
 speculation. But by developing the principle which 
 Kant left purely formal, the principle of explicit 
 Self- consciousness, we can establish a continuity 
 between the two, and thereby close the circuit of 
 human knowledge as the expression, i.e. the ex- 
 perience, of self-consciousness. 
 
 All the forms of explicit consciousness of self 
 contain and express the conscious union of self with 
 its object and conversely. Wherever we have a 
 conscious explicit identity between self and its 
 object, there we have self-consciousness. The chief 
 forms of this unity we have still to state. We must 
 always bear in mind that self-consciousness is not 
 bare identity of self and its object, and that self- 
 consciousness takes specifically distinct forms just 
 because it reveals its reality in different degrees of 
 completeness. 
 
 To begin with, we have the simple certainty on First form 
 the part of the self that the content known is not sc^uinTss 
 merely not alien to itself, but is essentially one with of self in 
 it. The self, as we say, is at home with itself in its of Reason. 
 world, in its experience. It is adequate completely 
 to reveal the object before it; "finds itself" in its 
 object, and finds the object to be in absolute agree- 
 ment with its own nature. There is no " beyond " 
 in the nature of the object which is hidden from the 
 eye of the self, and hence no distinction between an 
 " appearance " of the object and the " inner meaning'' 
 of the object, between what the object is for us 
 and what it is " in itself" This distinction was 
 formed at the level of Understanding, and created, 
 as we saw, by the character of Understanding, and 
 its way of going to work as a form of knowledge. 
 Here that contrast has disappeared, and the object is 
 
254 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 through and through transparent to the self as a self, 
 to the self as a universal and as a unity. But this is 
 just what we mean by a " rational " experience, by 
 knowing " rationally," by knowledge in and through 
 Reason. The first and simplest form, therefore, in 
 which self-consciousness is adequately expressed is 
 in the life of Reason as such, in Reason-knowledge. 
 This Let us explain. We must observe, in the first 
 
 prindpie place, that this is just what Kant's own view logically 
 with Kant, implies. For him, too. Reason is higher than Under- 
 standing, and hence to it is assigned Morality, to the 
 criticism and knowledge of which Understanding, 
 which is confined to knowledge in the sense of natural 
 science, cannot attain. And Reason belongs to the 
 region of pure consciousness of self proper ; it is, in fact, 
 that self-consciousness as a purely formal function in 
 experience. For self-consciousness, on Kant's view, 
 is just the principle of unity in experience, i.e. the 
 principle in virtue of which subject and object are 
 absolutely harmonised. This means that in self- 
 consciousness subject is one with object, and must 
 obviously be so, because it is conscious of nothing 
 but self. But this is as much as to say that in it 
 mind as a unity is one with its content as unified. 
 And this is precisely what is found in the life of 
 Reason as such. Hence it is that absolute unity in 
 experience is relegated by Kant, in the various forms 
 in which that unity is demanded (Self, World, and 
 God), to the sphere of Reason. 
 The All that is equally true here, with a difference, 
 
 fif Re^on "^^^ forms of uttity in which Reason appears are 
 involves not restricted to those few mentioned by Kant. 
 consent!'" These are only particular expressions of the one 
 fundamental fact that in the life of Reason subject 
 
VIII REASON CONCRETE 255 
 
 and object are consciously one. Reason is a special 
 form of experience, and wherever it works at all, 
 there we have the same sense of unity, the sense 
 of being at home with our object. It deals, e.g., 
 with the "world," the world of "nature" in the sense 
 in which science and common knowledge speak of 
 " nature " ; and there it does insist on the unity of 
 the world (to use Kant's expression), i.e. the inter- 
 relatedness of all the parts in the whole, and to 
 make a whole. But to do so is just to insist that the 
 self is at one with the world, for it is the unity of 
 that self which is simply expressed objectively in 
 the "unity" of the "world." Hence the world is 
 one because we are conscious of the self in the 
 world ; or, conversely, we are conscious of the world 
 as one, because we are conscious of the one self in 
 it. The self at home with the world, or the world 
 at one with the self, both mean that the world is a 
 unity as the self is a unity. But whereas Kant 
 took that unity in a purely formal sense, we 
 ought to see that unity concretely and all along the 
 line in dealing with the world. If to be at one with 
 the world is to find that same unity everywhere in 
 it, the unity of the self with the world is necessarily 
 differentiated into as many " forms of unity " or 
 "conceptions" as are required to exhaust that 
 sense of unity we have in dealing with it. Or 
 in other words, the life of Reason does not consist 
 in simply asserting the bare unity of the world and 
 the bare unity of the self with it, but in manifesting 
 that unity in detail. Thus it is that the work of 
 Reason must be manifested in various forms : as 
 many forms as are required fully to exhaust the 
 nature of Reason in dealing with the world before it. 
 
256 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 (2) Reason This leads to a second point. Kant had restricted 
 of kno™ knowledge to Understanding, and hence for him 
 ledge not jt was a problem what to do with the unity of 
 a imi o j^g^gQj^ when he could only deal with it by way 
 of Understanding. The error here lay in restricting 
 the idea of knowledge to the process.of Understand- 
 ing. Dismiss that, and his problem is at once 
 changed and his solution disappears. We then 
 see that Reason is not some function beyond know- 
 ledge, working somehow in vacuo, yet working 
 because it must, since it is an activity of the human 
 spirit. Reason ts literally knowledge, a kind of know- 
 ledge, still distinct from that of Understanding (and 
 therein lies the agreement with Kant), but not sub- 
 ordinate to it, a form of knowledge sui generis and 
 working on a plane of its own. This follows from 
 our having taken self-consciousness concretely and 
 not formally ; but it is evident that at once it 
 effects a change in the conception of knowledge. 
 For on this view Reason expresses truths of its own, 
 works in ways of its own, and works towards its own 
 ends independent of check or direction from any 
 other authority whatsoever. No doubt, what it 
 reveals is final for it alone, not for any other level 
 of experience : but that is true of any phase of 
 knowledge. It is true, e.g., of Perception. But 
 its being a phase of knowledge, while it reserves 
 its validity to its own special process, does not 
 surely put it on a level with any other form of 
 knowledge. It is a higher form than any that have 
 hitherto appeared, just because it is first of all the 
 culmination of the movement of knowledge as it has 
 hitherto proceeded, and, secondly, because it deals 
 more adequately with experience {i.e. is in greater 
 
viii REASON AND EXPERIENCE 257 
 
 harmony with the nature of self-consciousness which 
 all experience implies) than any other of the preced- 
 ing forms of knowledge. Thus Understanding does 
 not criticise it ; it rather (as Kant himself held) 
 corrects Understanding. 
 
 This view of Reason as itself a kind of knowledge This 
 is nothing novel. It is actually accepted by every- ^gi^^ssw'* 
 
 o J r ] 1 common 
 
 day experience of a non-philosophical kind. We do thought. 
 hold that in the life of Reason man is "at home with 
 the world," in a way he is not, e.g., at the level of 
 Perception. We consider " a reasonable soul " 
 the highest expression of human life. We do 
 maintain that "nothing can resist the might of 
 reason," that in the long run everything must give 
 up its meaning to the spirit of reason engaged 
 seriously in finding out that meaning. This is the 
 postulate of scientific procedure. It is what we mean 
 by speaking of the world as " intelligible," as a 
 " rational " world, which can be " made one with 
 our own reason," and must give up all claims to be 
 independent of it. It is the moving principle behind 
 all scientific effort, urging it on in spite of, indeed 
 through, all its mistakes in grasping the meaning of 
 things. We generally hold there is nothing hidden in 
 the natural world that shall not be made known some 
 time or other to the eye of inquiry. And we con- 
 sider that man to be highest as a man who achieves 
 this end most completely. In all these and other ways 
 we find in everyday life that the sphere of Reason is 
 not merely held to be the highest expression of the 
 knowing consciousness, but that it is itself a form of 
 knowledge. It is the region of conceptual coherence 
 and demonstration. It is the principle of deanthro- 
 pomorphisation, that principle by which we transcend 
 
258 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 metaphor drawn from Sense {i.e. our senses) and 
 Perception, and rise to Conceptions. These are not 
 limited to or by Sense, and so are not restricted by 
 the specific individuality of the knowing conscious- 
 ness ; they are universal and not (as all metaphor 
 is) individual. 
 The pro- We are thus merely doing justice to the claim 
 Reasol— which every one makes for the life of Reason. 
 Kn°w- How, then, does Reason as a process of knowledge 
 ^ ^^' work ? Let it be remembered first that while 
 Reason is thus knowledge, it is not simply a "func- 
 tion" (7/ the self; it is the self in a specific mode of 
 experience. It can only be said to be a "function" 
 of it in the sense in which any aspect of experience 
 is one moment of its life amongst others ; not in the 
 sense that the self "uses" Reason as the "instru- 
 ment" by which to "know" "things," or is a kind 
 of activity exercised by the self, " possessing " such 
 a capacity. Reason is the self-conscious life of mind 
 in one of its realisations of itself. Reason-knowledge 
 is self-conscious experience. Hence, in evolving the 
 process and content of such knowledge, we are all 
 the while expressing the very nature of self-conscious 
 life as that appears here. Reason-knowledge is, in 
 short, just the self qua knowing a content as itself 
 The object Again, wc must not in this knowledge separate 
 and subject j.j^g Rcason which knows from the object which is 
 separate, known, as if Reason were on one side and the 
 object on the other, and each separated from the 
 other by a gulf which the "process" of knowing 
 tries to span. The antithesis here implied has been 
 altogether left behind. It is found at the level of 
 mere Consciousness certainly, as we have seen ; 
 knowing does there seem a way of joining subject 
 
vm SUBJECT & OBJECT IN REASON 259 
 
 and object. It is just because the antithesis is there 
 so abrupt, and knowing does seem to come between 
 them, that we found the distinction arising between 
 a world of noumena and the sphere of pheno- 
 mena, already stated in dealing with Understand- 
 ing. For that distinction is just the reappear- 
 ance in the result of what was there from the 
 first as a condition of getting any result at all. 
 But at the level of Reason that antithesis, as we 
 have seen, has disappeared as an opposition of 
 elements. It is merely now a distinction of content 
 within a conscious unity, not an opposition of elements 
 demanding a unity. A distinction certainly there is 
 and must be, otherwise there would be no knowledge ; 
 for knowledge without diversity has no existence. 
 We have subject and object here in Reason, as else- 
 where : Reason is a plane of experience which has 
 these for its constituents. But in Reason subject 
 and object consciously fall inside the unity they 
 imply as moments of the single act of self -conscious- 
 ness; or, stated otherwise, the single activity of being 
 conscious of self contains as its ultimate constituents 
 subject and object, and therefore these are by and in 
 that unity explicitly identified. But, it may be asked, 
 in what sense identified ? In the sense that the object 
 is the meaning of the whole in one form, the subject 
 its meaning in another. The subject is the unity to 
 the self, the object the unity ^or the self: the com- 
 plete act of Reason is just one in which that is to 
 itself what it is for itself. Only so is it at once a whole 
 and a self-contained whole ; anything else would be 
 partial and incomplete. We can see this at once in 
 any ideal statement, eg. "two and two are four," 
 "the perpetual motion is untrue of physical energy." 
 
26o SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 Here we are not saying something true for us. It 
 is, as we say, " the very nature of thought," is " the 
 very meaning of the thing," "anything else is impos- 
 sible," i.e. the content of the subject is nothing in 
 this connexion but what the object reveals. The 
 object reveals just what the subject reveals; or, 
 again, the unity of experience is explicitly realised 
 in these statements. There is no opposition, no con- 
 scious distinction between what / think and what the 
 object is — there is absolute identity of both sides. 
 Subject Hence it is characteristic of Reason that, in dealing 
 
 S'aspicts' with its life and activity, we do not start from the 
 ofthe same subject and find what it says "about" the object, 
 and then compare what it says with the "nature" of 
 the object to see if it is "true," if they "agree." 
 Nor, on the other hand, do we start from the object 
 simply and find out what it contains, and then submit 
 this for " acceptance " by the subject. There is no 
 place for comparison when both are explicitly identi- 
 cal in content and process to begin with ; and there is 
 no meaning in "acceptance" when the subject is 
 consciously there in the very being and nature of the 
 object all along. Wherever this is the case we have 
 the life of Reason, and conversely. The being of the 
 object is the content of the subject, the process of the 
 subject is the life of the object. To use a familiar 
 but somewhat misleading expression, " thought " 
 and "being" are in Reason consciously one through 
 and through, in form, process, and content. It is 
 therefore immaterial whether we speak of the 
 content of Reason as the nature of the subject or 
 the reality of the object. 
 
 At the same time, it must be noted that while 
 all the phases in the development of explicit self- 
 
vm PROCESS OF REASON 261 
 
 consciousness have this characteristic of Reason, all 
 are rational, they are not all mere Reason. Thus Reason 
 one such development of self-consciousness is what ph^e°of 
 we call Spirit and spiritual life — phases which appear conscious- 
 as Morality and Religion. These are rational, but "eTf! ° 
 they are not Reason as such : they are developments 
 from Reason, but with a characteristic distinction of 
 their own, the nature of which will appear presently. 
 
 What, then, are the forms in which the life of 
 Reason, as such, appears ? It is the simplest expres- 
 sion, as already said, of the explicit conscious unity 
 of subject and object. Experience operates in this 
 way, it is a form in which experience is realised, 
 a " language," so to say, in which experience may 
 be expressed. This was true of the level of Per- 
 ception — there was a perceptual world, a world 
 of Perception ; so, again, of " Understanding." 
 And it is because all these " worlds " are phases 
 of self-conscious life (which is always a whole, a 
 unity) that this is possible, that each is different, 
 and all are necessary. The life of Reason is one 
 such distinctive expression of experience. 
 
 Now the way the life of Reason appears is first Forms of 
 of all the activity of what we call Observation^^'"^^^ 
 in its various forms, — Observation of " nature," observa- 
 of "physical" objects, and of "organic" life. Ob- 
 servation of the self-conscious individual as such 
 (in Psychology), Observation of the self-conscious 
 life in relation to its organic embodiments (Psycho- 
 physiology). In all these cases we have no sense 
 of an antithesis, an opposition between the " observ- 
 ing mind " and the " observed obj'ect " ; we are in 
 immediate touch with the object, the object is the 
 content of the subject's life. We "describe" what 
 
262 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 the object is, not "in terms of" our individual 
 life, but as it is in itself. There is no distinction 
 between what it is in itself and what it is for us. 
 In Reason what we say is what the object means ; 
 what the object is, is the meaning expressed in 
 the process of " describing" it and stating the " con- 
 ception " it "embodies." It is only when there 
 appears to be opposition between subject and object 
 (as e.g. in Perception) that we can in ordinary life 
 even speak of the object having a being of its own 
 with which what we say "agrees." For then the 
 object is said to be something "in itself" as the 
 subject is something in itself, and this " agreement " 
 between the two indicates and preserves that extern- 
 ality implied in the opposition. But when that oppo- 
 sition is consciously given up, the object has no " in 
 itself" which is not to us, which does not "appear," 
 and no appearance which is not its very nature and 
 meaning. This is just what we fnd, assume, and 
 express in "observing" an object, and in stating its 
 content. The scientist does not ask, when "observ- 
 ing," whether his way of proceeding is justifiable, 
 whether his attitude is a "true" one, whether it 
 "gives" the object, and so on. To do so would 
 stultify and render impossible his whole procedure. 
 He may and does ask whether his "observation" is 
 "true," i.e. whether, when observing, he is eliminat- 
 ing what might render the results invalid, or not a 
 complete expression of the object. But to ask such 
 a question assumes that in Observation itself he is 
 at one with the object observed. A "correct "or 
 " incorrect " Observation is only possible, even as a 
 distinction, if Observation as such is a specific mode 
 of having experience. For " correctness " implies 
 
VIII DIFFERENCE IN CONTENT 263 
 
 a standard imposed on Observation, and therefore 
 assumes the nature of the observing process as a 
 process of self-conscious life, but does not determine 
 what that nature is. Now all science rests on that 
 assumption and is the outcome of that attitude. 
 
 Moreover, it is because of this fusion of subject Differ- 
 and object in the process of Observation that he content of 
 can and does distinguish different objects, that he has Reason the 
 different "principles" and different " conceptions " observa- 
 to state the nature of the " object- world." How''°°- 
 is it that we do not confound, e.g., inorganic and 
 organic, organic and self-conscious individuality ? 
 It is not simply because we have a variety of different 
 "objects" and require different "ideas" to express 
 them. It is not because, in point of fact, we do 
 " find " them different, and the mind has to bring out 
 of its inner consciousness different "thoughts" to 
 express their difference. Where is the necessity 
 for and the satisfaction in the different " thoughts " ? 
 It is because, all along the line in the activity of 
 Reason, subject and object are so fused that certain 
 " notions " are alone adequate to express the unity of 
 Reason in one case, and other " notions " in another. 
 And it is because this unity is realised at different 
 levels of coherence that, e.g., " mechanism " ade- 
 quately expresses one form of that unity, and 
 " teleology," or the idea of end, another. It is not 
 that the object " suggests " (as Kant seemed to imply) 
 the notion which the mind is to " employ " ; but 
 that the life of Reason contains the different notions 
 as modes of the unity of subject and object. The 
 essential point is that the absolute unity of Reason 
 can arise neither from one side only nor from the 
 other side. It is not the subject which " imposes " 
 
264 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 its content of the object, nor the object which " pre- 
 scribes " or furnishes its nature to the subject. It is 
 the one activity of Reason which reaHses its unity 
 in the different notions. But why different? why 
 not always the same conception expressing the unity 
 of Reason ? Because Reason is concrete self-con- 
 sciousness ; and just as the activity of self-conscious- 
 ness expresses its life through the variety of modes 
 of experience as a whole, so in each particular mode 
 that activity can only be exhausted by appearing in 
 different shapes and forms peculiar to, and revealing 
 in each case, the characteristic nature of that special 
 mode. Self-consciousness as Reason, therefore, 
 reveals the process of its activity precisely in the 
 fact that the unity appears in diverse forms, in this 
 case diverse Conceptions. Or, again, all these are 
 required to exhaust the full meaning of that unity, 
 simply because experience is being read or "ex- 
 pressed " in terms of the unity of Reason ; and 
 experience has variety because self-consciousness 
 must appear in many ways to reveal its full life. 
 ^^g "But why a particular one at one time and 
 
 specific another at another ? " Again we answer because 
 between there are various forms of the unity (Conceptions) ; 
 concep- 2,xiA which is to be expressed depends on the level of 
 
 tions . ^ ^ _ ^ ^ 
 
 necessi- Unity to be realised. What m particular the form of 
 rISoh^ that unity shall be at a given time is a matter for the 
 history of the individual observer, and does not affect 
 the epistemological question regarding the necessity 
 inherent in the general process involved throughout. 
 Reason, for example, takes Teleology as the special 
 conception in dealing with organism,^ instead of, say, 
 
 ^ i.e. Teleology is the subject-side. Organism the object-side of the experi- 
 ence of Reason in one of its forms. 
 
vm MOMENTS OF REASON 265 
 
 Mechanism, because the unity of Reason requires 
 both in order fully to reveal its activity, and certain 
 aspects of the content of Reason are exhausted by 
 one notion, others require another. Or, to put it 
 otherwise. Reason in working out its full significance, 
 realising all it contains, passes from one form of unity 
 to another. One of these is mechanism, another tele- 
 ology. They are not so much imperfect attempts to 
 express the complete unity of Reason as definite and 
 necessary moments in which that unity must appear in 
 order to express its complete nature.^ Mechanical 
 law is not an imperfect teleological principle ; it is 
 one form of the unity of Reason, but less complete 
 than teleology. Both are derived from the same 
 source, and both are required to exhaust the life of 
 the process. We cannot interpret the same thing 
 teleologically and mechanically. That would be a 
 superfluity, an absurdity, if both were complete in- 
 terpretations. What we do in using them is to 
 reveal the unity of Reason in these different ways, 
 because only so do we exhaust the activity of Reason. 
 Hence it is needless to propose (as is so often at- 
 tempted) to " reconcile " mechanism and teleology, 
 as if, to begin with, they "conflicted." They are 
 different to begin with, and in order to reconcile them 
 we would either require a higher notion, or we must 
 sink their differences altogether. But a higher notion 
 is still another notion of Reason, and hence the same 
 difficulty would arise again, viz. what to do with the 
 differences we are "reconciling"; while if we sink 
 
 ' We have merely to ask ourselves why, on the one hand, we are not con- 
 tent to use only one conception in rational experience, and why, on the other, 
 we feel compelled to go further than a given conception carries us, to see that 
 this must be so. We cannot appreciate the above view unless we see that 
 it seeks to answer this question. 
 
266 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 their differences we are ignoring their value as 
 moments of Reason, and making the problem of 
 "reconciliation" meaningless. They are "recon- 
 ciled," in the only way necessary, by the very fact 
 that they are essential moments of the life of the 
 one Reason. The coherence and unity of the life of 
 Reason is itself the guarantee that the conceptions 
 do not really conflict. And this coherence is mani- 
 fested just because it does not "apply" these concep- 
 tions to precisely the same identical content. Hence 
 it cannot conflict with itself. It is realising its unity 
 in a different way in each content, and therefore 
 they are diverse. Its unity is expressed in each of 
 them, hence they do not need to be reconciled. We 
 do not look at the same thing with each conception 
 as it occurs : that would be confusion. A difference 
 of Conception is (for Reason) a difference of content, 
 and a variety of content is variety in the life of 
 Reason. The only " reconciliation " the Conceptions 
 need is obtained by connecting them all as phases 
 in the realisation of the life of Reason, which is the 
 underlying principle determining each as it stands, 
 and the variety of form they severally possess. 
 The But we have already anticipated the development 
 
 develop- °^ ^^^ activity of Reason as a specific attitude of 
 ment of the experience. It starts as we saw with Observa- 
 Reason : tion. But that is the form the activity assumes. 
 Categories. What is its Content ? This is easily determined. 
 We have here consciousness of self, the expression 
 of a unity through and in differences (subject 
 — object). But the self is by its very nature a 
 universal, the universal in experience. The different 
 specific ways in which that self, when it is explicit, 
 appears, must therefore be through universals. To 
 
ym CATEGORIES 267 
 
 be conscious of self is thus to be conscious of uni- 
 versals, and to be conscious of universals is to 
 be conscious of self in one or other of its specific 
 manifestations, i.e. its detailed content. But again, 
 at this stage we have explicit unity of self and 
 object in its simplest form, in its ultimate irreducible 
 elements. All of them are expressions of that 
 unity, but as mere unity ; all of them are universal, 
 but pure universals as such. There must be a 
 plurality, because the self is a "realised" unity, not 
 a formal unity. As a formal unity there is, as Kant 
 said, but one universal, viz. the pure unity of self- 
 consciousness. But as a " realised " " concrete " 
 unity it must be manifold, break up or evolve into 
 diverse functions of uniting activity. But a universal 
 which is a pure universal, a unity that is a tnere unity 
 is a Conception, a Category. Hence the content of 
 Reason, the substance of Observation, consists of 
 Categories. With these Reason "works"; in these 
 it expresses its active function as the unity of 
 subject and object in its simplest form. 
 
 Here, again, this view is at one with Kant, but Categories 
 instead of taking the Categories to be connected ^^^ ^^^^ 
 with the formal unity of self by the quasi-external act specific. 
 of judgment, " I think," the Categories are the / 
 thinking — functioning as the explicit unity of subject 
 and object. Instead of the unity of the self making 
 an experience "possible" through the "application" of 
 the Categories, the Categories make the unity of the 
 self actual in experience. Instead of the Categories 
 requiring to be picked up externally and contingently 
 by reference to the history of thought and logical 
 doctrine, the Categories are simply the necessary 
 elements into which the unity of the experience is 
 
268 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 resolved. The Categories are not limited to a certain 
 formal and arbitrary number ; the Categories are in- 
 definite in number, are, if we choose, endless in number, 
 for Reason is not to be exhausted in any detail of 
 experience. The Categories, again, are not to be 
 deduced by showing that experience is impossible 
 without their use and application ; they are deHved 
 from the unity of Reason, evolved from it in and 
 through its activity in experience. Instead of the 
 Categories being necessary because they are all con- 
 nected in the same sense with the unity of self, and 
 have the same degree of significance and validity 
 accordingly, they are necessary because the unity of 
 Reason must in exercising its activity express itself 
 in each, and they have a different significance and 
 value according to the degree in which they realise 
 this type of unity of subject and object. Finally, 
 the self is not, as Kant held, a principle above the 
 Categories simply, it is the principle in them ; it is 
 the Category of all the Categories, the Conception of 
 all Conceptions. 
 Concep- With Conceptions, then, the determinate activity 
 
 develop of Reason begins. They vary in character according 
 into Laws, ^q j]^g unity expressed, and vary because the unity is 
 concrete, as already stated. They become what in 
 Observation are called the "marks" or "aspects" 
 of an object, and correspond on the plane of Reason 
 to the " qualities " spoken of in the case of Perception, 
 or the " appearances " which we have in the case of 
 Understanding. By these "marks " or attributes we 
 "describe" the object and differentiate one object, 
 e.g. in physical nature, from another. But this is 
 merely the beginning of the evolution of the content. 
 The Conceptions employed are isolated, separate. 
 
VIII JUDGMENT AND SYSTEM 269 
 
 The complete unity on the other hand must be all- 
 pervading, must control the diverse elements, show 
 the inner Principle connecting the various Concep- 
 tions (attributes), and show these elements to be 
 merely differences inside a further unity, a deeper 
 unity of Reason. This deeper unity will contain them 
 as moments, control their relation to each other, their 
 place in the whole, order their situation and mode of 
 appearing, and so give them the special significance 
 they have as "marks," "aspects" of the object. 
 They will get their special meaning and value from 
 it. Relatively to them it will be more fundamental, 
 because determining what they are and how they 
 are. But this is precisely what we mean by a 
 governing Principle or Law in the sphere of 
 Reason. With the formulation of Laws, Observa- 
 tion (Conception) passes into Judging and De- 
 monstrative or Systematic Connexion. These Laws 
 are Laws of Reason, just as the Conceptions which, 
 because of their variety, demand them, are Con- 
 ceptions of Reason. And these Laws are in principle 
 the complete expression of what Reason realises in 
 its activity as a unifying principle. They are not 
 static unities, but dynamic agencies, ways in which 
 the life of Reason functions. They are " operations " 
 of the active unity of Reason. They do not regulate 
 objects ; they constitute objects ; for they are phases 
 of the world of Reason inside the unity of which, as 
 we saw, its objects fall. They are not the. forms of 
 Reason but its substance ; and so are not the " forms 
 of the object," but the reality of the object. They are 
 not imposed by the subject ; they are the very content 
 of Reason, which is at once subjective and objective 
 in the same sense. They are not "discovered" 
 
270 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 by Reason; they are expressions, evolutions of 
 the content of Reason. They are the culminating 
 point of its movement as Reason, because in them 
 we have the full expression of Reason as unity in 
 diversity, the principle uniting the various Concep- 
 tions, the unity of the unities (concepts) characterising 
 the world of Reason. Further than that Reason 
 qtid Reason, mere unity of subject and object, does 
 not go. When a further stage is taken, Self-con- 
 sciousness passes beyond the stage of mere Reason 
 to another mode of self-conscious life. 
 Differ- The various Laws differ as the Conceptions 
 
 concret'^ differ, and the Laws of the inorganic world differ 
 ness of from those of the organic, as these again differ from 
 those of conscious life. But the Laws are in all 
 cases necessary developments of the very nature of 
 Conceptions, of Categories. They derive the uni- 
 versality they possess from the same function of 
 Reason. But they are at once a more comprehensive 
 and a more concrete universality ; they have a 
 greater degree of individuality, with a greater degree 
 of specification. They are a deeper unity because 
 they are connexions of Conceptions. They make 
 Conceptions coherent which appear to begin with as 
 separate. What we said of the "reality" of Con- 
 ceptions holds with a similar and a greater force of 
 Laws, which develop out of the function of unity 
 implied in Conceptions. The Laws are not obtained 
 by piecing Conceptions together externally, but by 
 deepening the unity of Reason which Conceptions 
 themselves express. In that sense these Laws are 
 literally the evolved expression of the Conceptions 
 which we found to be the simplest content of 
 Reason. Just as a given Law of an object is higher 
 
VIII SCIENTIFIC PROCEDURE 271 
 
 than a given Conception determining an object, so 
 there may be and are wider and wider Laws, embrac- 
 ing in them Laws less wide in extent. What these 
 are it is the business of rational scientific procedure 
 in given cases to determine. That the attainment of 
 them is possible, is both guaranteed and necessitated 
 by the one function of Reason operating all through. 
 The achievement of the end of Reason is the estab- 
 lishment of a completely articulate intelligible world 
 of Reason — the Ideal of Science.^ 
 
 It will be seen from all this how closely this view This view 
 is in touch both with the process of Science in the ^I'^'by^ 
 strict sense of the term, and with the ordinary treat- ^<='"^i 
 
 ^ . .^ , . . . .,. Scientific 
 
 ment of scientific procedure in treatises on scientific procedure 
 method. Science begins by "observing" the^"'^.*^^. 
 "facts," determines their "characteristics," connects Science. 
 their constituent elements together, and finds the 
 "laws" or "principles'' "governing" their connexions. 
 All along it is working with universals, its primary 
 elements are conceptions. It is said no doubt to 
 start ixoTsx particulars; and this is true. But it is 
 particulars as "instances" of a type, of a "class," of a 
 general conception, not bare particulars (which indeed 
 are strictly non-existent for Science). The whole 
 process of Science just consists in developing the 
 nature and inner unity at work in these elementary 
 conceptions.^ Its "judgments," " inferences," its 
 
 ^ Hence the difference between the consummation of Understanding (Ex- 
 planation) and that of Reason (Systematic Connexion). Whereas in the former 
 each " explanation " was complete by itself and had a finality all its own ; in 
 the latter nothing short of complete system can have finality. Anything less 
 is consciously a fragment of a whole vidth only a "partial validity" on that 
 account. This is because the unity of Reason works all through in the light 
 of its absolute unity. 
 
 ^ Hence the view, which has been so fully worked out by, t.g. , Lotze and 
 Bosanquet, that Conception is simply implicit Judgment, Judgment is implicit 
 Inference, Inference is implicit Systematic or absolute Connexion. 
 
272 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 "theories," its "laws" are simply the evolution of 
 the conceptual substance in and with which it works, 
 and are universal from beginning to end. They 
 are universal because all are phases of the life of 
 Reason, and they form a continuous process gradu- 
 ally evolving a deeper, more comprehensive univer- 
 sal, — a unity with greater complexity in it, and 
 greater control over its elements, — simply because 
 it is the one movement of Reason operating all 
 through, and this aims at a single result — complete 
 self-expression. 
 
 The ordinary discussions of scientific method 
 (Logic in the narrow historical sense) are, again, 
 merely statements of what this process consists in, 
 how it takes place and achieves its result, the 
 kind of certainty obtained in different forms of the 
 process, the different ways of expressing unity 
 (different judgments and inferences), etc. The 
 The Logic difference between such a treatment of scientific 
 and Ae"^^ method, and the present statement of the nature of 
 theory of the Scientific mood of experience, is that the former 
 enS!"^ takes for granted the general character and validity 
 of scientific process as an empirically recognised fact ; 
 while the latter raises and answers the very question 
 as to what place Science and scientific activity have 
 in the life of self-conscious experience as a whole, 
 where it appears, and what it essentially is, i.e. what 
 it is as a mode of the one ultimate principle at 
 work in all experience. The former, no doubt, 
 by starting, as it does, with an assumption, cannot 
 escape this other problem, and really introduces into 
 its interpretation some implicit or explicit conception 
 of the general aim, worth, character, and significance 
 of scientific process. So important, so fundamental 
 
viii LOGIC OF SCIENCE 273 
 
 indeed, is this underlying theory of the purport 
 of Science as the phase of experience, that it is 
 found impossible to discuss scientific procedure 
 apart from it. The discussion, in its limits and 
 in its form, is shaped by that conception as to 
 what place Science occupies in experience. Hence 
 the totally diverse treatments of the character and 
 process of Science which we find in different text- 
 books of what is commonly called Logic. It has 
 therefore to be acknowledged, and is in point of fact 
 admitted, that the kind of treatment of the Logic of 
 scientific knowledge given in ordinary treatises on 
 Logic, depends in the long run on some underlying 
 but unexpressed " theory of knowledge," and has 
 only an approximate value till that theory is made 
 evident. In Hegel's System the treatment of Logic 
 is literally nothing more than the connected exposi- 
 tion of the content of pure Reason. Thus he does 
 justice to the ordinary view of Logic, and yet 
 mends its defects by stating what place Reason 
 has in experience as a whole. 
 
 Finally, it will be seen that the development Reason 
 of the activity of Reason works up in its own special previous 
 medium the stages we formerly found in the sphere functions 
 
 ,/j.. rir °f<=on- 
 
 01 consciousness as such (as distmct trom sell- sdousness. 
 consciousness). These moments were Sensation, 
 Perception, Understanding. To these on the level 
 of Reason correspond the forms of Conception 
 "^xo^^r. Judgment (the relation of conceptions, or the 
 distinction of conceptions inside a unity holding both 
 — these expressions mean the same so far as we 
 are concerned), and the interconnexion of different 
 conceptions through the Law or Principle deter- 
 mining all as its elements, the phase of inferential 
 
274 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE ch. vm 
 
 Demonstration. Reason thus completely exhausts 
 through processes of its own activity the substance 
 of knowledge formerly assigned to uniquely distinct 
 attitudes of experience (Perception, etc.). For 
 all these phases spoken of (Conception, etc.) are 
 merely stages in the development of Reason alone. 
 Hence the ease of transition from one to the other; 
 and hence the certainty of the work of Reason at 
 every stage. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE SPHERE OF FINITE SPIRIT MORAL EXPERIENCE 
 
 The complete realisation of the life of Reason has Twofold 
 a twofold result. Let us bear in mind again that Jhe"na°ure 
 Reason is not an abstract adjective of human ex- °f Reason: 
 perience, but a concrete mode of its life. Further, its seif-deter- 
 life is individual from beginning to end, just because ""°^*^- 
 experience is one, a whole, concrete. To become 
 conscious, then, of self in and through the object is 
 not merely to have the form of unity, but to have the 
 content and substance of that unity, to have a world 
 which is not merely consciously moulded by, but 
 consists in, the self. There alone does it realise an in- 
 dividuality which is absolutely self-contained in each 
 individual, where Reason is actively and consciously 
 the moving principle. Its world is not so much its 
 own : it is that ; for it is " at home " in that world. 
 But it is its very self. What it is conscious of and 
 what is consciously at work is self. Nowhere can it 
 find anything but the self-same substance of its own 
 life. There is nothing "beyond" it to oppose ic ; 
 everything falls within it, is identified with it, made 
 part and parcel of it. What it touches recalls its own 
 nature, responds to its own impulse ; what it does is 
 the revelation solely of that nature. To use of the 
 ■world of Reason a phrase employed by Hume after 
 
 275 
 
276 MORAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 Berkeley, there is nothing to be met with in heaven 
 or earth but the mind's own ideas. This is the in- 
 evitable result of the life of Reason within which 
 subject and object are consciously identified. All 
 this means is that individual experience is here 
 self-completed, self-determined, self- constituted, not 
 implicitly but explicitly. It is " independent " 
 because there is nothing beyond it to limit its 
 activity : it is " self-dependent " because its move- 
 ment is self-initiated and self-constituted. It begins 
 from and ends in its self That is one result. 
 The self is The Other result is that, because the content is 
 uaiversai. goigjy ggjf^ a.nd the self (for the reason before indi- 
 cated) is essentially universal, the attainment of self- 
 contained individuality is ipso facto the explicit 
 realisation of what is consciously not mine in par- 
 ticular but is universal. But to realise this level of 
 self-consciousness is to attain to and establish as a 
 factor of experience Universal Self-conscious in- 
 dividuality. If the world it realises is its own, and 
 yet, from one end to the other, self, this must be so. 
 The substance of this world is a single universal 
 self-consciousness. It is not simply a number of 
 discrete selves, all of them conscious ; it is one 
 universal self- consciousness. If universality were 
 merely numerical plurality, its world would not be 
 a unity, and could not fall within a single experi- 
 ence at all. It is a collective, a comprehensive 
 unity, not a numerical aggregate of units. 
 
 The individuality attained in the life of Reason 
 is not, therefore, a particular isolated existence. 
 Isolated existence is transcended by the fact that the 
 substance of its life is universal. The expression,, 
 "my own" self- consciousness, "my" Reason, is,. 
 
sciousness. 
 
 IX RATIONAL INDIVIDUALITY 277 
 
 properly understood, a contradictio in adjecto. I am Distinc- 
 only truly self-conscious by implying a consciousness [nXidLi 
 of a self beyond my existence. The distinction selves fail 
 between a "me" and a "thee" falls inside this world of un^^jf'' 
 completed self-consciousness, and is generated by it. ^elf-con- 
 I am conscious of self by reference to a self- world, a 
 world realised and constituted by self. My self-con- 
 sciousness is mine by relation to a self beyond me in 
 particular, by contrast with a wider self-consciousness. 
 I "possess" it, because what I possess has a reality 
 containing me in particular, and on which I can lay 
 hold, and in living in and by which / am absolutely 
 self- contained and complete, as Reason requires. 
 Even in the case of some particular " property " 
 which /possess, I cannot call this "mine" unless there 
 is a wider whole of property in which I am merely 
 sharing, and on which I in particular lay hold. I may 
 distinguish "my" property from "yours," but I do not 
 separate, cut off my property from yours. For if each 
 did this there would be no "property"; there would 
 be merely an external relation of one exclusive entity 
 to another. But to say my property, is to make 
 something literally a part of me, a quality of me, a 
 " proprium" a determination (internal), and not an 
 "accidens" (external) to me. Similarly, but in 
 an infinitely deeper sense when I speak of " my " 
 self-consciousness. I am / (universal) through a 
 universal self which I am conscious of as one with me, 
 but which is wider than "me," and by being in which 
 I live in a self-complete and self-contained world — 
 the world of explicit concrete self-consciousness. 
 
 The sphere, where we begin and end with self- 
 conscious individuality and with that only, is the 
 world of Spiritual life, which exists in the definite 
 
278 MORAL EXPERIENCE cii. 
 
 The sphere historical form of the Moral Life and the order of 
 of this self- Society. The attainment of rational individuality, of 
 
 conscious- J , , - 
 
 ness is the individuality constituted by the activity of concrete 
 Life.* self-consciousness, is the foundation of Morality. 
 
 If we take any of the general characteristics 
 ordinarily regarded as belonging to Morality, we 
 ThisiUus- shall see this at once. The moral life is said 
 "Free- to imply "Freedom." To be free is to be "at 
 dom." home with ourselves along with others," to realise 
 ends which are ends of our own choosing, and 
 in which, when realised, we shall both find our- 
 selves and have our self acknowledged by others. 
 But that result does not merely imply Society 
 as if our moral life were our own individual 
 affair, and Society were there simply to confirm 
 us in our purpose. It is literally the activity 
 of a social, of a universal self - consciousness, at 
 every point. The end is " ours," we " choose " it : 
 i.e. it is the expression of our self, of the self we 
 are conscious of. But this means that it is ours as 
 distinct from the end of some other self, whose exist- 
 ence and reality are therefore essential to make it 
 possible for us to call it "ours" in particular. We 
 find ourselves in the end itself as well as in the 
 choosing of it. But the end achieved is a self 
 attained, just as the process of achieving it is self- 
 expression. The end achieved, again, is, because 
 achieved, no longer merely particular but a self 
 ''objectified," universalised, with a significance not 
 merely for me, but for all who know it. We demand 
 that the end shall be acknowledged as " ours." 
 This means that the end is "accepted" by others 
 (or " rejected " as the case may be), i.e. the end is 
 not merely "my" end, but the end for a universal 
 
IX SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 279 
 
 self-consciousness. "My" self therefore is not 
 merely mine at all, but one with that universal. 
 A negative confirmation of the same principle is 
 seen when we pursue an end outside a social 
 whole, and without the slightest reference to it. 
 The end is said to be mere isolated "impulse," 
 and the life directed by impulse is on the plane of 
 merely organic activity, or is " the life of an animal," 
 whose activity is without any significance beyond 
 the moment of realisation, because not implying a 
 self which endures consciously beyond the moment. 
 
 If we examine any other characteristic aspect So of other 
 of Morality, e.g. "responsibility," "duty," "virtue," Morality." 
 etc., precisely the same result will be brought to 
 light. The very terms connote universal self- 
 consciousness ; so completely does man, by his 
 thoughts and procedure in the moral life, recognise 
 that Morality is without significance apart from this 
 implication of universal self-consciousness. Morality 
 is in fact its detailed explicit actualisation. 
 
 Hence the view so often put forward on other "Man 
 grounds that man alone is capable of Morality, cipabieof 
 This is a distorted way of stating the case, because Morality." 
 it seems to imply that Morality is a thing per se up 
 to which certain creatures may "rise," and by chance, 
 as it were, this creature, or one of these creatures, 
 happens to be man. The truth rather is that 
 Morality has no existence at all anywhere except 
 as the realisation in detail of universal self-conscious- 
 ness. This universal self-consciousness is a mode 
 of human experience, and Morality emerges with it, 
 is its result. 
 
 It is said, again, that man is a moral being 
 because he is essentially a rational being: that 
 
28o MORAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 " Morality is, the principle of the moral life is to be found in 
 implies jj^g nature of Reason. With this view the course 
 
 ration- 
 ality." of the above argument agrees : for Reason is the 
 
 basis of self-complete individuality, and such in- 
 dividuality has all the functions and characteristics 
 of Reason from the beginning to the end of its 
 activity. But self-conscious individuiality is some- 
 thing more than mere Reason ; it emerges after the 
 completion of the life of Reason. Morality is not 
 Reason pure and simple (as pure Science can be 
 said to be) ; nor is the moral life explained merely 
 by referring it to Reason. It is rather the self- 
 differentiation of a universal self-consciousness into 
 specific individualities, each having substantial ex- 
 istence for itself. It is not an adjective of individual 
 life, but the substance of individual life. In short, 
 it does not consist in Reason as bare Reason, but in 
 Spirit, of which Reason provides the basis, but 
 is not the exhaustive expression. Morality is the 
 expression of spiritual activity, and Spirit is just self- 
 conscious individuality, which only is a self in and 
 through universal self. If we draw the distinction 
 between Reason and Spirit formally, it would be 
 that Reason is the consciousness of the immediate 
 identity of subject and object, the consciousness of 
 that identity as it is in itself, whereas Spirit is the 
 consciousness of that unity as it is for itself^ It is 
 
 ■■ The distinction between the two is parallel to that between " Under- 
 standing" and "Desire." In the former, as we saw, the consciousness of 
 self was implicit, in the latter the explicit principle of the process : in the 
 former the- self was "found" ; in the latter "carried out" : in the former we 
 had the "intellectual" attitude, in the latter the "practical." So here in 
 Reason "other selves" are implicit: hence the possibility of speaking of "my" 
 Reason : in Spirit they are explicit and their unity therefore established by a 
 process of mediation. Hence arises the "practical" activity of realising the 
 unity of Spirit through selves, each universal and for itself: and this is the 
 Moral Life. 
 
IX KANT'S POSITION 281 
 
 therefore at a higher level of experience than Reason. 
 The identity of self with its object, which constitutes 
 the life of Reason as such, is implied in the life of 
 Spirit, for its world is also self-determined. But 
 Spirit rests on the consciousness not so much that I 
 am in myself all in all, am one with my immediate 
 content, the world of " nature " — certainly a great 
 achievement ; but that I am one with, i.e. am for 
 myself, universal self- consciousness — which is a 
 supreme triumph of experience. Out of that sense 
 of unity, surely one of the most marvellous and pro- 
 foundly significant of all the attitudes of experience. 
 Morality arises, and appears as a historical experi- 
 ence in time. 
 
 It will be seen how this conception of the place Similarity 
 of the moral life in experience both agrees wnh posidon.^ 
 and is different from that of Kant. For Kant moral 
 experience was realised on a higher level of con- 
 scious life than Science, and belonged to the sphere 
 of Reason. Moreover, Morality was only truly 
 Morality in the form of " pure will," " pure practical 
 reason " ; i.e. it had its source in and expressed the 
 essentially universal principle of experience. Again, 
 the realisation of the moral life consisted in carrying 
 out an end whose very meaning was universal, a 
 "maxim" or "law" of "duty." Such a universal 
 carried the individual beyond his particular existence, 
 and only had a moral significance if it did so. But 
 it did not merely carry him beyond, it built him into 
 a rational whole of reason in which others shared. 
 It was by reference to this whole that his action 
 was to be determined, and that his action became 
 really moral. This whole was a whole of rational 
 beings qu& rational. He was to act as a typical 
 
282 MORAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 rational being, i.e. in a way other rational beings 
 would act. Only so, obviously, could there be a 
 whole of rational beings, and by doing so ipso facto 
 there was established a whole of such beings. His 
 action therefore presupposed, implied, and bound 
 him up with other rational beings. His moral action 
 was action in and for a universal reason. This Kant 
 expressed consistently enough by saying that a 
 moral action was one which was done in and for a 
 " kingdom of ends," a kingdom of rationals, a social 
 whole, in short, of rational beings. 
 ThedifiFer- All this is Contained in the above argument, 
 ^ce^from g^^ ^j^^^.^ j^ ^ difference. For Kant this world of 
 Kant's reason was, like its source in pure self-conscious- 
 formarand Hess, formal Only. Hence his social whole had 
 external. ^ unity, but a formal unity. The universality 
 was an adjective of the individual action, a char- 
 acteristic of his will -act, not the substance of his 
 concrete practical life. This was true of all the 
 individuals who acted morally. They remained 
 individuals separate, unique, isolated qua individuals. 
 Their connexion was through their common obedience 
 to what was universal : they all aimed at universality, 
 and in this universality therefore they all shared. It 
 regulated them and bound them together as in- 
 dividuals ; but it, as such, did not constitute their 
 very substance. Their moral reality was not deter- 
 mined by the unity of the universal ; the unity was 
 derived horn them and their common action in follow- 
 ing it. It was thus external to them. They remained 
 unique, impenetrable units of moral activity through, 
 and, in a sense, in spite of, their following the same 
 moral law. Hence in analysing Society in the Meta- 
 physic of Morals, Kant takes the view that Society 
 
IX KANT'S VIEW OF SOCIETY 283 
 
 is the result of a " contract " — a logical result of his 
 conception of the place of universality in the moral 
 life. For " contract " is an external relation between 
 individual wills agreeing to certain common con- 
 ditions. Thus, like the universality of his law of 
 duty, Kant's social whole, his whole of rational wills, 
 is a purely formal unity. The formality of the social 
 whole is, indeed, another expression of the formality 
 of the principle of the law of moral action. They 
 can be only connected externally if the universal is 
 an adjective or attribute of each individual's will-act. 
 The order, the unity of society, is above the concrete 
 wills, in a " supersensible world " : actually in experi- 
 ence, they are unique, sensibly separate units. Their 
 unity is due to each uniquely, and per se aiming at 
 universality in action. The fact that they all do so 
 is the only identity holding them together. And 
 such a unity is not merely formal, it is as good as 
 contingent. For if universality is an attribute of 
 the individual's will-act, an attribute which, because 
 it ought to be, either may or may not, as a matter 
 of fact, exist, the universality is separable, not 
 essential. It may or may not be possessed, and the 
 connexion with others, which depends solely on that 
 kind of universality, becomes a mere accident of 
 individual endeavour. Indeed, just as, on Kant's 
 admission, an act of pure duty can never be found 
 really in experience at all, so the contingency of the 
 existence of a real society of personal wills is a 
 logical issue from the contingency of the realisation 
 of all true duty. 
 
 The position of absolute idealism is sharply con- The 
 trasted with all this. The universality of moral ""^'^g'^ 
 action is not an attribute of it, but its very essence. 
 
284 MORAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 because Morality does not have any being at all 
 until the self has achieved conscious universality 
 and actively lives in and for it. The universality 
 is not made by the act being moral. The uni- 
 versality is there, and thence comes the possibility 
 of Morality. The universality is not a quality 
 which may or may not be ; for the self which is 
 realised in the moral life is inherently universal to 
 start with, and is logically prior to the realisation of 
 that life. Morality comes from the existence of 
 self- conscious individuality, expresses the content 
 and movement of a universal self- consciousness. 
 And the universal self- consciousness, while it does 
 not exist apart from self-conscious individuality, is 
 per se as real, as actual to start with, and all along, as 
 the latter. There is logically no separation possible 
 between the two. A distinction there is, as we shall 
 see, but that is not separation. Hence Society 
 is not derived from individual activity as directed 
 by universal ends. It is merely maintained by that 
 process, and is as much a " fact " as the individual's 
 activity. Individuals as distinct entities are in 
 Morality differentiations of the universal self-con- 
 sciousness which they all imply, and which they live 
 by maintaining. Hence Society is not contingent on 
 individual action. It is essential to the real concrete 
 existence of its individuals ; it draws out their true 
 nature. The universal, the Social Unity, is, like 
 the self, not regulative but constitutive. Society is 
 therefore not the result of a "contract" between 
 separate wills; this universal self-consciousness just is 
 a Society, a whole of wills. Moreover, it is logically 
 impossible for it to be the outcome of a contract. 
 For any contract, to have the ethical significance 
 
IX SOCIETY NOT A CONTRACT 285 
 
 of a contract at all (something which is binding on 
 wills), can only arise if Society exists, or if it is 
 assumed to exist in order to determine the place 
 of the ethical fact of contract in the moral life of 
 individuals. To explain Society by the notion of a 
 " contract " is therefore a va-repov irporepov. Again, 
 the content of the moral life, properly understood, is 
 not, and cannot be, limited simply to the individual 
 realisation of the idea of duty. If it were, then the 
 moral life would be, as Kant admits, a perpetual 
 failure, and Society could never really exist at all. 
 But Society, a universal self-consciousness, does 
 exist, as an order of self-conscious individual wills. 
 Hence its substance must comprehend a wider range 
 of content, and a more concrete system of detailed 
 acts of will, than can be gathered under the notion 
 of duty. It must, as we shall see, comprehend, e.g., 
 rights and institutions, a//, in fact, that is concerned 
 with the concrete relation of self-conscious will to 
 self-conscious will ; while this again, in itself, implies 
 man's relation to and connexion with nature and 
 natural conditions of existence. In short, whereas 
 Kant starts from uniquely separate individuals, and 
 regards these individuals as setting up a moral 
 order by coming into relation to each other, it is 
 really the attainment in experience of universal self- 
 consciousness that makes possible the co-existence 
 and co-operation of self-contained individuals for the 
 maintenance of a single social whole. They can only 
 have this completeness found in morality because 
 of their consciousness of deing- universal selves. 
 The detailed development of all that this individu- 
 ality contains, a development carried out in the light 
 of, by constant reference to, and by implication of, 
 
286 MORAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 that universal self-consciousness, is itself the attain- 
 ment of what the moral life means} 
 The The road of development of this plane of experi- 
 
 mJntTf ^"<^^ ^^ already indicated by what has been said, 
 this form Self-consciousness appears as self-sufficient in and 
 enc^^^" through individuality, and does so in virtue of the 
 fact that universality here is not an attribute of 
 separate centres of self-conscious life, but a sub- 
 stantial universal self, constituting the very basis 
 for the completeness and sufficiency any particular 
 individual feels. There are thus two opposed or con- 
 trasted factors involved in this mode of experience. 
 These are the life of the universal self-consciousness, 
 — substantial and actual universality ; and the life of 
 each moment of it, — the distinct individual centres 
 sharing in and living by that universality. We can- 
 not cut these two asunder. The difference between 
 them is rather one of emphasis on an element of 
 what is precisely the same concrete reality in both 
 cases. The specific individuality has a twofold char- 
 acter by its being consciousness of self by self; one 
 self is what we have called the substantial universal, 
 the other is the determinate limited individuality 
 each possesses, and which makes each distinct from 
 another. The first is the sameyi?r all and in all ; the 
 second is restricted to a certain area or sphere of that 
 totality. Similarly, the universal substance "dupli- 
 cates " its self in virtue of its being a self-conscious 
 whole, a whole in and through consciousness of 
 
 ^ This conception of the essentially social character of self-conscious in- 
 dividuality is also maintained by Fichte, whose development of Kant's principle 
 preceded Hegel's. Fichte, however, by separating the sphere of rights from 
 that of duty, and by assigning to duty an "infinite " or endless task, fails to 
 work out the essentially concrete nature of the conception, and seems, in fact, 
 to reinstate isolated individuality at another and a higher plane of existence. 
 
IX CUSTOM AND CONVENTION 287 
 
 self; the one self being the universal self as such, 
 which is the same for and in all, and the other the 
 specifically distinct forms in which its concrete life 
 appears — the determinate individualities. This 
 mutual implication of each side in the other is what 
 is meant in the general statement, "there is no 
 society apart from the individuals," a statement 
 which has to be supplemented by another, " there 
 are no real individuals apart from society." But 
 though the distinction is thus one of emphasis, it is 
 not merely a logical but a living distinction,^ because 
 self-consciousness is an active unity, yb^ which each 
 element is an essential moment. 
 
 Now the process involved in the complete realisa- Two 
 tion of the unity of these two phases is just the J^e^Morai 
 whole activity of what we call Moral Life. On thei'''^.= (') 
 
 . , , , r 1 • 1 1 Social Law 
 
 one side we have the process 01 the universal sub- and 
 stance moulding and determining the inter-relations Custom. 
 of its parts by uniform conditions of regular order. 
 It must act thus, and can only act thus, because its 
 substance is purely universal. The result of its 
 activity must, therefore, appear simply as "uni- 
 formity," " order," " law." It appears in the 
 form of what we call Social Law and Custom, the 
 Ethos of a People. With this the individual in 
 a People is at home ; in this he participates. A 
 People is a self-conscious unity maintaining its equi- 
 librium by certain uniform or habitual ways of acting. 
 The totality of these constitute an "ethical," i-e. 
 "habitual," "order" all its own. In virtue of being 
 in accord with it the individual finds guaranteed the 
 
 ' Out of the distinction in fact arises the process in which Social Life con- 
 sists ; for the process consists simply in adjusting the two factors so as to form 
 a stable and permanent whole. 
 
288 MORAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 security, permanence, and uniformity of purpose in 
 his own individual existence, and with these, there- 
 fore, the happiness and peace that come from efficient 
 and successful realisation of those universal purposes 
 which make it possible for him to possess the self- 
 sufficient individuality above spoken of. It is not 
 something attached externally to or aimed at by a 
 People, as if it were outside the life of a People. 
 It is the methodical working out of the life and 
 destiny of a People as a self-conscious substantial 
 reality of history. It is not "made" by individuals 
 as their " effect." Once established at all, it is prior 
 in time to each individual within its life. But it is 
 logically prior in any case to his individuality ; for 
 it is the ground of his being what he is, the goal 
 or end at which he aims. Without aiming at 
 that universal end he would not be a self-conscious 
 individual. For the very essence of the individual 
 lies in identifying himself with that universal, 
 which is a substantial concrete self, not something 
 away beyond him, but actual and living, and 
 therefore exerting its power and claims directly 
 upon him. It makes him real, makes him an 
 individuality complete in it and self-contained by 
 it. This active, universal, spiritual substance carries 
 on its own ends through individuals as its moments. 
 They are its "speech," its "expression," as, for 
 example, to take a prominent case, when it speaks 
 its purpose through a judge or a monarch. It is the 
 operative principle determining the position of indi- 
 viduals in the whole, the relation of their several 
 positions to one another, the bounds set to each, and 
 the claims exerted by one on another, — i.e. it is the 
 source of Rights in every concrete form. It breaks 
 
IX FORMS OF SOCIAL UNITY 289 
 
 up its supreme concrete unity into specifically distinct 
 spheres of universal activity, forms of universal 
 self-consciousness. While remaining the all -per- 
 vading unity throughout, connecting the one with 
 the other, in each of these forms it lives in a 
 different way, realises a distinct mode of universal 
 self-consciousness. The spheres which are usually 
 distinguished in this whole are the life of the 
 Family, Civic Life, and the life of the State. These 
 are, in the actual realisation of the whole, confined 
 within certain limits.' Each implies the others in 
 a fully realised universal spiritual existence, and 
 implies the others through the one substance within 
 which they all fall. They have different degrees 
 of universality ; the self in each is more or less 
 universal. Thus the Family is less wide than, and 
 can in that sense be said to fall within, the Civic 
 Life. The Civic Life stands in a similar relation 
 with regard to the State. But this is not to be under- 
 stood as if the Family were a part of the Civic Life 
 simply : it is a part of the one Whole containing all. 
 The Civic Life is not simply a unity of Families : it 
 is a unity through Families. Similarly of the State. 
 It does not strictly contain the others ; for itself is 
 contained in that complete unity of self-conscious 
 life which comprehends all. But it has specific 
 functions with reference to the others, which these 
 others /^r se could not exercise, and which constitute 
 
 ' It is important to observe that the State is an aspect or form of this self- 
 conscious whole. We are apt to confound the "State" with a "Society." 
 But Society, Social Unity, is the genus of which "state," "family," and 
 " communal life " are merely species. The " State " is an ethical function of 
 a social whole, with a definite activity or " will " of its own, having limitations 
 as regards other "wills" in the social whole. Hence, e.g., the question of the 
 "limits" of "state interference." But all "wills" fall inside the social 
 unity and are exerted in the interests of that social whole. 
 
 U 
 
290 MORAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 it a special mode in which the self-conscious Whole 
 appears. 
 
 This universal, self-conscious life is the source of 
 Law, or realised Order, and fully expresses and 
 contains all the ends which are implied in the 
 realisation of self-conscious individuality in human 
 history, the ends of self-conscious life in relation 
 to self-conscious life, the relations of Persons to 
 Persons. Its purpose in experience is actually to 
 reveal and maintain all these ends, and so to make 
 possible self-complete individuality. 
 (2) The On the other hand, again, there is the process 
 
 of's'edfic' '^y which the activity of every specific focus of self- 
 individu- consciousncss draws into his own life the universal 
 *'^' life of the Whole just spoken of He focuses 
 the Whole because he is self-conscious, and his 
 self is essentially and implicitly universal, i.e. aims 
 at being a whole. From this point of view, all 
 that the Whole actually contains is potentially in 
 each. Each does not merely reflect the Whole. It 
 consciously aims at being the Whole, getting all its 
 universal content within its own active individual 
 life, making the substance of the general mind and 
 will its own mind and will. To make all its own 
 purposes universal as that is universal, and to feel 
 its self in its individual existence not merely one 
 with the Whole, but a whole all by itself — that con- 
 stitutes for it a world of self- consciousness all its 
 own achievement. It is, in a way, to make itself 
 independent of the Whole, by taking into itself 
 all that makes the Whole self-complete. It is a 
 process of destroying distinction by becoming self- 
 sufficient, and, on becoming self-sufficient, to be, 
 in a sense, independent of the tutelage, care, and 
 
IX CONSCIENCE 
 
 291 
 
 guidance of the Whole. To do so is to set up an 
 authority, a guide, or controlling agency -within its 
 own individual life, and make itself complete as it 
 stands, to judge for itself, act for itself, and find its 
 actions ratified and approved by the " sanction " 
 within its own bosom. In doing so, it may come 
 even to regard the Whole as external to itself. It 
 can do so, because it is self-conscious, and can 
 withdraw into the recesses of its own individuality 
 and put everything else "outside" it. If it makes 
 this distinction an opposition, conflict or struggle 
 may arise between the separate focus of active 
 self - consciousness and the concrete totality of 
 spiritual self-consciousness above spoken of. Such 
 conflict is an imperfect and necessarily inadequate 
 form to which its process may lead it, and often 
 does historically lead it. Its true aim and com- 
 plete realisation, however, are found where its own 
 universal content is absolutely in harmony with 
 that Whole, and yet is entirely explicit to itself, con- 
 stituting a self-contained world. With the attain- 
 ment of this as a conscious attitude it has ipso 
 facto exhausted {to itself as a conscious fact), the 
 substance of this universal life, and has lost its 
 individual self in the Whole. It has risen to 
 absolute Self-consciousness. And through this it 
 passes beyond the sphere of the Moral Order 
 as such and enters another mode of self-conscious 
 experience — the mode, as we shall see, called 
 Religion. 
 
 The process, by which each aims at attaining Morality 
 this separate world of self-guiding, self-controlling ^™p" ' 
 universality, constitutes quite a distinct plane of the science. 
 moral order from that spoken of as Custom and 
 
292 MORAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 Law or the Ethos of a People. It is the world of 
 individual self-legislation, the world of Conscience, 
 the sphere of " Individual Morality." As the former 
 is the ethical sphere of universal Custom, Right, 
 Virtue, this is the sphere of Individual Principle, 
 Sentiment, Duty. The former is the operation of 
 general order in and through all — explicit Law 
 and Convention ; the latter that of specific Choice 
 and Responsibility. In both cases it is a universal, 
 self-conscious life : in the one case realised by all, 
 for all, and through all in the same sense ; in the 
 other realised by each for each and through each 
 in the specific way characteristic of the different 
 self-conscious individualities into which the Whole 
 falls. We are merely reading the same type of 
 experience (unity of self-conscious individuality) in 
 opposite ways, the one from the point of view of 
 the Whole as such, the other from the point of 
 view of the specific focus as such. To use Plato's 
 metaphor, it is like writing the same truth in larger 
 and smaller letters. The Whole concentrates the 
 life of every one into moments of its own activity \ 
 the specific focus concentrates the life of the Whole 
 into processes and moments of its own special 
 self- conscious individuality. Hence, e.g., as we 
 have Law in the former case, so we have it in the 
 latter ; and in both cases Law expresses a relation of 
 self-conscious life to self-conscious life. In the former 
 it is expressed openly, written down, and carried out 
 publicly (after the manner of a universal self-con- 
 sciousness per se) ; in the latter it is not expressed 
 in words, it is known by the individual "immedi- 
 ately," it controls the impulses, etc., of the individual 
 will, and is not recognised by any one but himself. 
 
IX SIGNIFICANCE OF CONSCIENCE 293 
 
 Just as, further, In public or social Law, the 
 authority and compulsion of the unity of the Whole 
 are exerted on each through force, physical it may 
 be, or in the quasi-automatic routine of "conven- 
 tional understanding" ; so in the individual soul we 
 find authority exerted on the course of the individual 
 will through the power of Conscience — the universal 
 which shapes the unity in the individual life. 
 
 Different terms have been employed to express Different 
 these distinct phases of the realisation of self-con- s^ns"or 
 scious individuality ; but they are merely distinctions ^ese 
 of aspect of what is fundamentally one type of experi- objective 
 ence. We may call the first objective self-conscious ^^^. . 
 
 1 J . . .^ . subjective. 
 
 unity, the latter subjective self-conscious unity. 
 But it must be understood that these are not 
 separate but only distinct aspects of what is all 
 the while one and the same. It is right to call 
 the former objective, if we mean that objective is 
 one and the same for all in the same sense, much 
 as, e.g., when we call 2-1-2=4 ^" "objective truth." 
 It is not true if we mean that there is no objective 
 element in the latter : for without such an objective 
 aspect there would be no experience there at all. 
 Similarly with the necessary changes regarding the 
 term " subjective." 
 
 We may speak, again, of the first as the sphere "Free- 
 oi universal " freedom," " free Society," the latter as ''°™' ' 
 the sphere of individual "freedom." But the very 
 idea of freedom implies that it is both universal and 
 individual. A freedom which is not the freedom of, 
 and in individuals is a form of, bare necessity.'' Hence 
 the fallacy of "state socialism " in the interests of the 
 moral life. And a freedom which is not freedom 
 in and through universality, i.e. through a whole of 
 
294 MORAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 other self-consciousnesses, is not freedom but caprice, 
 and cannot produce order. ^ 
 The final When each individual self-consciousness absorbs 
 menrof the life of universal self-consciousness, and makes its 
 Moral Ex- universal content the very substance of its own life. 
 Freedom we have the final stage in the development of this level 
 Con"^^ of experience. Spirit is only spirit in individualised 
 science, form, for the aim of spirit is a unity conscious of its 
 unity in all the differences that enter its life and 
 determining such differences by its self as a unity^ 
 Hence the very idea of complete self-consciousness, 
 which dawns after the development of Reason, 
 only becomes realised when every individual form 
 in which it appears manifests its whole meaning and 
 purpose, is constituted by universality as its very self, 
 and is a self-determined whole. Spirit is the sphere 
 of Freedom, because in it we have conscious deter- 
 mination of a self by an order, a universality, which 
 is its own nature. Spirit is not free by means of 
 individuals, but in and through individuals. Hence 
 the complete achievement of spiritual existence is 
 found when Freedom is expressed fully in every 
 self-conscious life, in every spiritual individuality. 
 Thus the goal of self-conscious individuality is 
 found where specific individuality is at once specific, 
 and contains within it the universal life of self- 
 consciousness. It cannot be free and complete 
 if it contains less, for only in complete univer- 
 sality of self- consciousness lies freedom and self- 
 sufficiency, and only in that universality is its true 
 significance found. On the other hand, it is in 
 
 ' We find the distinction between these aspects also expressed in the con- 
 trast between the "general will" and the "individual will," or, in plural 
 form, "the will of all." 
 
science. 
 
 IX CONSCIENCE IS SOCIAL 295 
 
 specific individualities that the whole is actualised. 
 Only, therefore, when each absorbs the meaning of 
 the whole, is the whole truly itself and truly 
 expressed, is it free self- consciousness completely 
 developed. Hence it is only in the stage at which 
 individuality appears in the form of Conscience 
 working through duties, etc., that self-conscious 
 individuality gets its full realisation. 
 
 But this must not be misunderstood. It is not Quaiifica- 
 meant that the goal of self-consciousness lies in the ■<°private" 
 maintenance of the "rights," the "position," ofCon- 
 "private conscience." The very term "private 
 conscience" is an unconscious irony. Conscience 
 has no significance, no worth even in its own eyes, 
 unless it is either implicitly or explicitly universal, 
 i.e. contains something which others hold good and 
 respect. It is not a principle of distinguishing one 
 individual spiritual life from that of others. It is a 
 principle of deeper union between individual spirits. 
 If its content is universal, it must be because others 
 either can or ought to share in it. Even Conscience 
 cannot be allowed to act inconsistently. But con- 
 sistency of action implies universality of law or 
 principle, i.e. one holding not for each moment, but 
 for all moments, and therefore for all minds. More- 
 over, the very substance of Conscience is obtained 
 through relation to, and through the development 
 in ourselves of, a social consciousness, a universal 
 self, a general will towards a universal end. If we 
 call it a " higher law," it is a " higher law " of union 
 with the general mind, not a higher law to cut us 
 off from it. Otherwise it would not be higher but 
 lower, would isolate us from the whole, turn us 
 into units of nature, not Spiritual Individualities. 
 
296 MORAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 What it contains, and what it " dictates " are modes 
 of action or principles of action in reference to a uni- 
 versal self. But a universal self, is a self including 
 "others." It is not so much that Conscience 
 develops and may vary with individuals. That is 
 true, and is often used as an argument against 
 accepting Conscience as final. But Conscience 
 does not exist except as the Conscience of an 
 individual in a social whole. It arises out of it, 
 not through detachment from it, but through taking 
 into the self the very universality which constitutes 
 the whole, and thus making a moral order within 
 each Spirit. It would not arise but for conscious- 
 ness of self, and consciousness of self is meaning- 
 less apart from consciousness of "others," of a uni- 
 versal self.^ Self-consciousness is a principle of 
 distinction as well as of unity. Conscience lays 
 stress on the fact of self-distinction : nothing more. 
 But distinction, difference, has no meaning except 
 inside a unity. This is borne out by the fact that 
 agreement between "consciences" is not at all 
 held to affect the "unique" reality of "each" 
 conscience, but rather tends to confirm it in its 
 security. In other words, consciences may agree, 
 be universal, and yet be " individual consciences." 
 Hence it is not an argument against the "authority 
 of conscience " that consciences differ, any more 
 than it is an argument against the distinctive and 
 separate validity of each because they may agree. 
 
 ' This is seen in the very term con-science. It is "knowing," "along with" 
 — "self" and "others" being implied. The term lays primary emphasis on 
 the former ; hence the " inwardness " of " conscience." This " inwardness " of 
 "knowledge" gives the "certainty" so characteristic of "conscience." The 
 German word Gewissen lays stress on this aspect of "certainty" alone. The 
 English word brings out rather the element of " knowing," and so emphasises 
 the essential universality of " conscience." 
 
IX INDIVIDUALITY IS CONCRETE 297 
 
 They are not valid simply because they agree ; they 
 agree because each is valid. And they are not 
 invalid because each is distinct ; they only differ 
 because they are somewhere invalid. Distinction 
 lies in the nature of the case, since each is a 
 specific focus of the total life of the universal self- 
 consciousness. 
 
 Again, it must not be supposed that self- con- This 
 scious individuality is something abstract, Experi- ^J'^q"^"'^^ 
 ence is realised as a specific unity in this form, abstract. 
 Just as Reason was a manifestation of experience 
 from a certain point of view, so is self-con- 
 scious individuality. It takes within its life all 
 that has previously been considered to fall within 
 specifically distinct modes of human experience. 
 Hence it does not exclude but includes what 
 is called "nature." It looks at "nature," how- Seif-con- 
 ever, not as an immediate object to be " observed " j"y°^„3"ij 
 and "categorised" by Reason, but as a constituent ^^^^^'^^^^• 
 element in the life of individuality. It must do so, 
 because here consciousness of self does not merely 
 make its own world, but is its whole world. There 
 is nothing opposed to it in the sense of being outside 
 it, beyond it. Everything falls within it in some 
 form or other, and is built into its unity. " Nature," 
 "things," etc., are present here, but present as 
 moments in the complete unity of active self- 
 consciousness. This is seen in the fact that, on 
 the one hand, the material of " nature " as a whole, 
 the physical and organic world, is incorporated into 
 the active life of a People, and appears as the " land " 
 it "inhabits," and "possesses" (the physical basis of 
 " Fatherland "), and, on the other, the climate, 
 physical features, and conditions, etc., determine 
 
298 MORAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 the character which the order of its life assumes. 
 It forms the arena in and by which a People mani- 
 fests its specific level of culture and civilisation, 
 attains its specific concrete individuality as one 
 Nation, a Nationality amongst others. Nature here 
 is not " moralised," as if it were something which 
 was made moral, and yet was something apart from 
 the moral life all the same.^ Its significance here, 
 its very existence, lies in the place it occupies as a 
 moment or phase of universal self-conscious individu- 
 ality. It is built into the substance of its life, and 
 is determined by and exists y^r the ends of self-con- 
 sciousness. It is here treated teleologically, because it 
 literally falls inside a teleological whole. Self-con- 
 sciousness is not consciousness of self, individuality 
 is not self- complete, except in so far as "nature" 
 and "natural conditions" are permeated by its own 
 ends, i.e. by the self universal and all-containing. 
 What "nature" is or may be apart from it, i.e. at 
 a different level of experience from individuality, is 
 not "nature" as incorporated in it. It has become 
 something else. Just as Perception is not mere 
 Perception in the life of Reason, or Reason mere 
 Reason in self-conscious individuality ; so " things " 
 (the content of Perception) are not for and to that 
 individuality what they are for and in Perception. 
 They are "things" for and in the life of individu- 
 ality ; they are constituent conditions of its purposive 
 activity. Hence it is that here, in individuality, 
 
 ' This is the position adopted by Fichte, who thus seems to reintroduce at 
 the end of his theory of experience the very dualism he began by denying. 
 The fact that the "other," " nature," falls inside self-consciousness, which Fichte 
 seeks to demonstrate, does not abolish the difficulties of dualism. Rather if 
 this " other " remains for ever an " other," as Fichte maintains in his view of 
 Duty, dualism is the more firmly established. It becomes a contradiction 
 within self-consciousness itself. 
 
IX EMBODIMENT OF SOCIETY 299 
 
 what is a " thing " for mere Perception becomes an 
 object of " worth," and only that ; it becomes, e.g., 
 a piece of "property" built into and expanding the 
 life of a self. That is the object's meaning at this 
 level of experience. It is no longer a mere 
 " thing " at all ; it is the focus of a purpose of 
 the self, and its whole significance is determined 
 accordingly. And this holds true of all that "nature" 
 is and contains. Hence the reciprocal relation 
 between climate or land and self-conscious life, 
 a relation which appears in the constitution of a 
 kind or level of Civilisation. Earth ceases to be 
 mere " earth " ; it becomes Country, a Home, a 
 centre of local enthusiasm and national patriotism. 
 Self-consciousness is not on one side and " nature " 
 on the other in the life of self-contained individu- 
 ality. They are an indissoluble unity, the one is 
 through the other. An area of the " physical " world 
 on which a Society lives its life, becomes merely 
 the bodily (spatial) expression of the animating 
 spirit, the universal self- consciousness which is 
 there "situated." It bears precisely the same 
 relation to universal self-consciousness as a whole, 
 as a unity, which the individual body bears to the 
 individual soul. Just as we say the body of a self- 
 conscious individual life, of a man as such, is not 
 a mere physical body, but has a value for itself 
 which a natural body has not, and has no meaning 
 apart from that self-conscious unity "animating" 
 it, moulding and directing it ; so the area of the 
 "physical world," within which a universal self-con- 
 scious, a social whole, is actively operative in realis- 
 ing its purposes, is meaningless and inseparable from 
 the self-consciousness shaping its constitution for its 
 
300 MORAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 purposes. If it is looked at apart from that self- 
 consciousness it becomes something quite different 
 altogether, and must, therefore, appeal to a different 
 and a lower level of experience, e.g. Perception or 
 Science ; just as if a human body is " deprived " of its 
 soul it becomes something else — namely, inorganic 
 matter — and so falls within the sphere of another 
 form of experience. It is then interpreted by a 
 mechanical or chemical principle, not teleologically.^ 
 Nature is Thus, then, sclf-conscious individuality is not a 
 expre*L reality apart from " nature " ; it contains " nature " as 
 for spirit, a moment or element in its active unity. It is for 
 this reason that a Society is such a concrete unity 
 as we know it to be. We find that the reality of 
 the State is made actual in and through processes of 
 "nature." It does not, and man in the moral life 
 feels he does not, treat " nature " as something alien 
 to himself Nature is regarded as a part of his self, 
 to do with it as he pleases. Hence, at this stage 
 " nature " is looked at and " used " by spirit as 
 spirit's counterpart and embodiment ; and all that 
 would otherwise be processes of "mere nature" 
 become processes of spiritual life. 
 
 From this simple principle follows, on the one 
 hand, all the varied life and content of a Society, 
 
 ' This is how it comes about that if we once treat " nature " as apart from 
 " man," i.e. apart from man gud spirit, we must grasp its unity and meaning 
 by a non-teleological principle. And this is precisely what constitutes the 
 "mechanical" view of nature. Hence it is not because "nature" is a 
 mechanism that it is alien to spirit. It is _first alienated from spirit and t&en 
 regarded as a mechanism. Hence the absence of the mechanical view of nature 
 in the case of, e.g:. Eastern Peoples. This is corroborated in an interesting 
 manner by the history of the scientific or naturalistic (mechanical) view of" the 
 world " in Western thought. It was the breach between nature and man's 
 spirit, made primarily in the interests of Religion, that created the dualism on 
 which all natural science rests. Nature had first to be put outside spirit before 
 it could be treated per se ; and when it was considered per se it could only be 
 treated as a " brute fact," and construed " mechanically." 
 
IX CONTENT OF MORAL LIFE 301 
 
 of universal self- consciousness. Events cease to be The con- 
 merely " events " ; they become moral realities. Or- ^^ll°i ** 
 ganic functions become moral meanings. Inorganic °'^'^^'^- 
 elements and attributes become the content of 
 moral laws. The routine of events in time and 
 space becomes the routine of a moral order, reliable, 
 predictable, irrevocable from generation to genera- 
 tion — it becomes the embodiment of Custom and 
 Tradition. The " merely natural " organic relation 
 of sex becomes the spiritual unity of the Family 
 as an ethical institution. The " natural law " 
 becomes a humanly spiritual, or spiritually human 
 law; the relation is universal, permanent, as the 
 self - consciousness whose end it subserves. Land 
 and water become "property" "belonging" to 
 selves, and transferred from one to the other, and 
 from generation to generation ; they become em- 
 bodiments of spiritual activity. Events and pro- 
 cesses of nature become, e.£:, marketable commodities 
 on which the whole economic order of a Community 
 rests. Even mere " contingencies " of the world, 
 disaster and accident, are turned into the content 
 of spiritual purpose, determine the course of its life, 
 and the relations of individuals to one another. 
 This we see, e.g:, in a very elementary form, in 
 what we call " Insurance." The stability of "nature," 
 its "uniformity," is the physical counterpart and 
 outer expression of such spiritual facts as, e.g:, rights 
 of property, which always have universality of signi- 
 ficance. The mere events of organic activity become 
 " acts," with an objective significance for all ; they 
 express ends ; their character has a " worth." And 
 whether the "acts " proceed from man's organism or 
 from the organism of any living being, subsidiary to 
 
302 MORAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 man's purpose, does not affect the general character 
 they bear with reference to the self-conscious life of 
 the whole within which they fall.^ In short, it is just 
 by the manipulation of all the sources and resources 
 of natural existence that a Society, the universal 
 self-conscious individuality, embodies its universal 
 life, realises its being. 
 And of the The same holds, on the other hand, of the specific 
 Moraulfe. individuality of each self-conscious unit. His self- 
 conscious life contains, as part of the material of its 
 substance, the physical and psychical elements which 
 make up what we call his " natural " existence. 
 These are summed up under the general idea of 
 bodily activity, the functions of a " natural " or 
 "animal" "soul." The individual, looked at objec- 
 tively like the rest of "nature," is a part of it, respond- 
 ing to environment in all its forms, or, what is the 
 same thing, gets its place " determined " by the 
 pressure exerted on it by all the manifold variety of 
 nature. The individual existence of an object as part 
 of nature varies with the type of its individuality. 
 In a sense, one may say, everything endeavours to 
 respond to the whole, because each is a part of it ; 
 and the degree of its response determines its place 
 and worth in the whole. The lowest individual is 
 that whose responses are lowest — mere position and 
 simple motion : the highest, that which can touch 
 the resources of " nature " in all its forms, — the com- 
 pletest animate existence. Self-conscious individu- 
 ality being the completest, gathers all that makes an 
 individual "natural" into itself; and being self-con- 
 tained is not opposed to or contrasted with " nature," 
 
 ' E.g. a man is held " responsible " for the " acts " of " his " dog, and for the 
 process of growth in " his " plants when, say, they interfere with other people. 
 
IX NATURE AS MOMENT OF SPIRIT 303 
 
 but implies it as a moment of its life. We may say, 
 if we choose, that self-consciousness has a " physical 
 embodiment," if by that we mean, not that self- 
 consciousness is something that "by chance" is 
 embodied and is indifferent to its form of em- 
 bodiment, but simply that it manifests itself physic- 
 ally. We may call this its natural "expression," 
 as we often do ; but the expression is not to be 
 divorced from the self- consciousness expressed. 
 The self - conscious individual is actual by con- 
 taining its natural life. Its "nature" is not some- 
 thing apart from self-consciousness, but the content 
 of it. Nor can we say that he has, qud self-conscious 
 individual, a "natural" aspect and a self-conscious 
 or "spiritual" aspect. To say so is to confuse quite 
 distinct points of view. For in such a case we are 
 looking at the individual as an object before us, from 
 the point of view of scientific experience. But that 
 is only one form of experience. Here we are dealing 
 with another form which has to be taken as it stands, 
 taken as individuality is to itself and for itself, not 
 as it is for some other form of experience. When 
 we treat the individual self-consciousness like any 
 other object, then obviously we may distinguish 
 "aspects" if we choose. They are aspects /i7r us who 
 are looking at it : just as the qualities of a "thing" 
 are qualities for the opposing and contrasted per- 
 ceiving mind. But here we have an experience, 
 which, qvd experience, is on the same level as other 
 forms of experience, and must be taken as experience, 
 as subject -object relation, not simply as object for 
 some other mode of experience. In short, to distin- 
 guish aspects in that fashion is to take up again the 
 attitude of "observing" and "theorising" Reason, 
 
304 MORAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 which by hypothesis we have left behind. There- 
 fore, we must take this experience at the level of 
 the individual self-consciousness as a whole and as 
 stick. No other is relevant to state its content, 
 for no other is adequate ; and no other but itself 
 is needed to state what it contains. To find out 
 its meaning is simply to ask what it does, how its 
 activity is revealed. Now for a self-conscious in- 
 dividuality "nature" does not exist except as a 
 phase or an element in its life. Its self is all that 
 nature, but built into the structure of its self- 
 conscious unity. It does not therefore, when it 
 "acts," carry itself out to nature, and do something 
 in nature. For nature is part of itself to begin, 
 with. In "going out of its self" it cannot think and 
 never thinks of " nature " at all ; it simply acts, and 
 what it does appears to others a "natural" event, but 
 to itself is its own life. Self-conscious individuality 
 does not to itself separate its nature and its " spirit." 
 Its reality is simply and only a unity, a unity 
 which is self-complete and self-contained, and thus 
 cannot, for itself, make such a distinction either 
 practically or otherwise. Hence it is that in " carry- 
 ing out" our ends, obeying our "impulses," perform- 
 ing " acts " as self-conscious individuals, we do not 
 first think of our ideas and then think of bridging 
 the gulf between our self-conscious life and some 
 world of nature " beyond " us. There is merely a 
 continuous process inside the world of self-conscious 
 individuality, from the initiation of the idea to its 
 "realisation." An "act" is not some event which 
 belongs to " nature," while its "end " belongs to us : 
 the whole is "ours," is "us." Nature is wot, for 
 self-conscious individuality, divorced from spirit at 
 
IX INDIVIDUAL MORAL LIFE 305 
 
 all. "Nature" is "spiritualised," "spirit" is 
 "materialised"; and nature is here non-existent 
 except in the life of the individuality itself. It is 
 one continuous whole with which we are in touch 
 from one end to the other, a whole which begins 
 and ends with the self. Our " bodies " are " part 
 of" nature to some one else: but to 02^r self-conscious 
 selves they are " us " ; and nature, being continuous 
 with them, is one with us too. So does self-con- 
 sciousness embrace all reality. 
 
 Hence it is that the activities and processes and Natural 
 events of " nature " become the content and material ^Je moral 
 of the life of the individual spirit, and out of this he processes 
 forms his individual moral experience. Organic dividual. 
 impulses are not merely natural strivings, they are 
 spiritual aims; they are ends of a self-conscious life. 
 The life of Sense becomes the sphere of self-conscious 
 purpose, to be directed by ends and ideals, to be 
 constructed into a self-conscious, orderly whole. Its 
 tendencies become suggestions of a larger purpose. 
 After that purpose has dominated it, it can carry the 
 purpose on in a manner suited to itself, — as we find 
 in that automatic response to environment, which 
 makes up so much of the mature moral life. The 
 varied life of ideas which crowd self-consciousness 
 and of themselves start the possible direction of 
 effort in the form of "desires," "wishes," etc., are 
 made definite and brought to unity and coherence by 
 reference to some end or law which determines the 
 direction or order of this activity. Events in self- 
 conscious history are not natural events, but are 
 "deeds," "acts," which are meaningless apart from 
 the life they express, and must be judged accord- 
 ingly. Thus out of this manipulation of the life of 
 
 X 
 
3o6 MORAL EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 sense and the life of ideas which constitute its in- 
 dividual existence, — a manipulation determined by 
 the one end of explicit realisation of complete in- 
 dividuality in and with others, — self- consciousness 
 builds up by individual effort that structure we call 
 the individual moral life. 
 The From what has been said, it is not difficult to see 
 
 distinction , ^., . ,,^ . 111 
 
 of the how, at hrst sight, universal seli-consciousness should 
 fr(fm"^"^^ appear to each particular individual as something 
 universal simply Confronting him, opposing him, controlling 
 
 sciousness. ^'^^- ^^ ^^^ ^^^' '°°' ^°^ ^^^ ^^^^ form in which 
 the individual manifests his sense of individuality is 
 in following impulses and tendencies just as they 
 come : taking for granted ^Aeir universality because 
 they are his self It is evident also that the 
 way of reconciliation between these two, when the 
 distinction between them dawns, can only be one of 
 struggle between control and adjustment, so that 
 the one universal life shall dominate all explicitly 
 and not merely implicitly. The one seeks to realise 
 universality absolutely in individual form, for apart 
 from that it cannot exist, it becomes an "abstraction" : 
 the other seeks to realise individuality in universal 
 form, for apart from that it is without significance. 
 And both seek to do this because they are both 
 moments in the one form of experience, self-con- 
 scious individuality. 
 The Into the stages through which this process of 
 
 mourf' struggle and reconciliation passes we cannot enter 
 self-con- in detail. They mark both stages in the develop- 
 
 sciousness: r 1 • t • i 1 i-r 1 1 ■ 1 
 
 Freedom: ment oi the individual life, and phases in the 
 History, historical evolution of human Society. Just as 
 the individual struggles towards complete self- 
 dependence by checks and restraints imposed by 
 
IX THE END OF SOCIAL UNITY 307 
 
 the demands of his inherent universality : so the 
 universal life of society secures realisation of its ends 
 in individual lives, not by suppression but by 
 expression of individuality. The starting-point lies 
 in the fact that only in and with self-consciousness is 
 individuality attained. This means that here we 
 have the kingdom of Free Spirit. It is "free," 
 because, in the direction and laws of this world, the 
 self is working with and finds its own self, and no- 
 thing more. Its determination by all is determination 
 by self; its harmony with all is expansion of self; 
 its order is the expression of the self as the unity 
 controlling all. And it is Spirit because it is for 
 itself universal self-consciousness. That is its sphere, 
 its content, its substance. Only as Spirit can our 
 self-consciousness relate itself to another self-con- 
 sciousness. Indeed, the order of Society, the ethical 
 and moral "laws," may be looked on as just the 
 universals of the life of Spirit, which constitute the 
 individuals in Society what they are, which make it a 
 whole, a unity, and give each his worth and place in it. 
 Just as the meaning of a natural fact lies, as we saw, 
 in the law it embodies and realises, so the worth and 
 significance of a self-conscious individual lies in his 
 realisation of the order of the self-conscious whole of 
 Society. The aim of universal self-consciousness 
 being the attainment of absolute freedom of Spirit, 
 and the aim of individual self-consciousness being 
 the same, the results of each must coincide, since the 
 lines they severally follow converge towards the 
 same end. Hence it comes about that the develop- 
 ment of individual self-consciousness, the sphere of 
 what we have called the moral order of Conscience, 
 or "subjective morality," is a development which 
 
3o8 MORAL EXPERIENCE ch. ix 
 
 produces, not isolation of individuals in the whole, but 
 fuller, deeper, and completer unity with the whole ; so 
 that in a perfectly ordered Conscience the individual 
 as a unity is absolutely at peace with himself, self- 
 directing, self-legislating, self-forgiving. His Con- 
 science is developed by contrast with the life of the 
 whole, otherwise it would not be a Conscience ; but it 
 is developed by reference to the life of the whole, the 
 unity of the individual with Society. Without this 
 reference, it would not be worth while to have a 
 Conscience at all ; and without relation to the whole, 
 Conscience would not be created or arise as a factor 
 and function of self- consciousness. Thus, in the 
 long run, the achievement of freedom in a State, so 
 far from being inconsistent with the existence of " in- 
 dividual Conscience," is never completely or safely 
 realised except by means of it. So it comes about 
 that the process of Human History (which is just 
 Society preserving a continuous identity of structure 
 through changing form of expression) is simply the 
 development of the idea of free self-consciousness, 
 free individuality — whether it be in the case of the 
 history of a particular Society, or in the case of the 
 history of Nations which succeed each other in time. 
 It must be so, because the very existence of Society 
 is based on the fact of self-conscious individuality, 
 and this implies unity of self with self, and unity of 
 self through self; and that is Freedom. Further 
 than the achievement of or the struggle towards 
 this end, human spiritual life, as an active relation 
 of free spirits, cannot go. To transcend this attitude 
 is to pass from the region of finite spirit to that of 
 Absolute Spirit. And this is done in a further and 
 final form of self-conscious experience — Religion. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE SPHERE OF ABSOLUTE SPIRIT — RELIGIOUS 
 EXPERIENCE — CONTEMPLATION 
 
 From the result accomplished at the stage of the The out- 
 Moral Life as such, it follows that Spirit is actively thrMoL 
 expressed as, and is actually shown to be, the Life. 
 one Reality. For the Moral Life, Spirit is self-con- 
 tained, self-conditioned, and self-constituted. There 
 is nothing opposing it or contrasted with it ; its pur- 
 poses definitely mould and constitute all that is. 
 " Nature " is reduced to terms of Spirit, is fashioned 
 after its ends, and falls within its living substance. 
 This is seen and maintained in the case of uni- 
 versal self-consciousness, as the life of a Society, 
 which could not extsi as a fact in time and space 
 except on that condition. It is seen by each indi- 
 vidual self-consciousness, when this realises the self- 
 complete moral order of the life of Conscience, and 
 lives and acts within that entirely self-contained 
 realm. There it comes home to the individual that 
 the life of Spirit is and contains all actuality with 
 no " beyond " whatsoever, no other which is not a 
 moment of that life. Its objectivity is not some 
 " external nature " ; there is no externality at all. 
 There is merely the universal content of Spirit mani- 
 fested in concrete existence as a spiritual reality. 
 
 309 
 
3IO RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 It is only there for Spirit, not independent of it in 
 any sense. 
 
 The outcome of Moral Experience is thus to 
 establish consciously the reality of Spirit, or that 
 Spirit is the one Supreme Reality. It could only 
 do so by carrying that out as a definite result ; and 
 the proof that it is so is just the existence of Moral 
 Experience as a process and as a determinate 
 result of active self-consciousness. "Nature" has 
 given way before the purposes of Spirit and been 
 built into its substance by the active process of self- 
 consciousness. The only reality left in experience 
 therefore is Spirit. 
 Moral But, again, Spirit was the culmination of the 
 
 experience development of self-consciousness, and contained in 
 
 contains ^ 
 
 the pre- itself all the various aspects of self-conscious life 
 "ages^as previously dealt with separately as distinct planes 
 moments, of experience. These moments were, in general, 
 Consciousness of objects simpliciter, Consciousness 
 of Self as such, and Reason. All these fall inside 
 Spirit as constituents of Moral Experience, and 
 can, indeed, be rightly regarded as mere abstractions 
 from it. That is the justification for Kant's insist- 
 ence on the " primacy of moral experience." Those 
 moments are, as such, abstract aspects of the con- 
 crete life of Spirit ; they lead the way to it, are its 
 elements treated separately. Spirit therefore is 
 " absolute" in the sense that, being the culmination, 
 it contains as moments of itself what were formerly 
 treated of as stages in the life-history of experi- 
 ence. These stages were really the content of 
 Spirit spread out in detail ; that they are so is 
 only seen when Spirit comes out as their result and 
 goal. Their own true meaning, therefore, is only 
 
X SPIRIT IS ALL REALITY 311 
 
 to be seen in the light of, and from the point of view 
 of Spirit. This is what has been at work all along, 
 constituting them what they were, giving each their 
 "truth," compelling each to surrender before a 
 higher form, and thus making of experience one 
 development. As each stands, it has a completeness 
 and value of its own. When the result is reached, 
 they sink to the level of constituent elements or 
 aspects of the whole, the reality of Spirit. Just as, 
 for a self-conscious experience. Sense-experience (as 
 Kant showed) has only significance in and through 
 the activity of thought (Understanding), and is 
 compelled, as we saw, to give up its claim to finality 
 by the fact that its truth is only found in Under- 
 standing, so all the stages previously traced in 
 the course of the evolution of experience get their 
 real significance when Spirit appears as the final 
 Reality. They become thereby aspects of its self- 
 contained and self-complete " truth." Spirit, there- 
 fore, is strictly all Reality. 
 
 But now, while Morality brings out this result, it Religion 
 does so in a special form which is the characteristic stage'of the 
 limitation of its expression of Spirit. In Morality, cons"o"s- 
 Spirit is actualised by a process involving effort, and spirit. 
 a conflict between the content of individual and 
 universal. It is realised by the activity of self- 
 conscious individuals. But that is not enough to 
 express its nature completely. It must not merely 
 be an object for conscious individuals. Being self- 
 conscious, it must be, as a whole, and in its com- 
 pleteness, conscious of its own self. It must not be, 
 even in part, something merely implicit, an end to be 
 made explicit by a conscious life (an individual moral 
 agent) ; it must have a being in and for itself 
 
312 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 It must not, in short, be broken up into what it is 
 implicitly and what it is actually for finite Spirit, 
 which seeks, in the processes of the Moral Life, 
 continuously to realise its nature. It must be 
 actual as a whole to itself, just as it is complete in 
 itself. This, however, is not accomplished in the 
 sphere of Morality. It is a further and a final 
 stage in the evolution of Spirit. This complete 
 self- consciousness of Spirit, its being Spirit in 
 and to itself as a unity, is only found in its proper 
 form in the Religious Life. Spirit is here the 
 supreme Reality of experience as it is in Morality 
 too. But here it is the absolute Reality conscious 
 of itself as such and operating as such ; independent 
 of individual consciousness and so of the active 
 realisation by individuals ; free and self-contained. 
 The expression of Spirit in this form is the life and 
 movement of Religion. 
 Religion Rightly enough, then, it may be said, that Religion 
 trTa'tedas ^'^^ ^"^^ basis in Morality, or that Religion grows out 
 a form of of Moral Experience ; for without Moral Experience 
 perience. there would be no possible consciousness of the 
 absolute Reality of Spirit which is the central 
 principle of Religion. But as clearly Religion 
 cannot be, as Kant and others have held, mere 
 Morality in another guise. It is more than 
 Morality, and goes beyond Moral Experience alto- 
 gether. It has a special life and peculiar develop- 
 ment of its own. No doubt Religion has a direct 
 relation to Morality : both are the experience of 
 Spirit. But the substance of Religion is not Morality, 
 since it is a different attitude towards Spiritual Life. 
 To regard " moral laws as Divine commands " can- 
 not therefore (as Kant supposed) really constitute 
 
X RELIGION NOT MORALITY 313 
 
 Religion. For it makes no difference to the content 
 or quality of a moral law to call it a " Divine Com- 
 mand " ; it is binding whether or not it is looked 
 at as " Divine." But if this does not constitute a 
 difference at all, it cannot be used as a basis for 
 another attitude of experience. Unless Religion 
 had a further content of its own, it would be a 
 mere point of view from which to look at Morality, 
 with no special significance and value in the structure 
 of experience as a whole. Similarly, the con- 
 ception of Religion as "morality touched with 
 emotion," or "morality become enthusiastic," does 
 not give us Religion as an experience different in 
 kind from Morality : it is at most merely a higher 
 degree of moral experience. 
 
 But in point of fact Religious Experience recon- Religion 
 stitutes all the preceding content of experience, just enceTJ'' 
 as Morality remoulded all that experience had previ- generis. 
 ously revealed. Hence Religion proceeds by pur- 
 poses and ways which are specific for this form of 
 experience. "Nature," e.g., looked at from the 
 point of view of Religion, is not the same as 
 " nature " looked at from the point of view of 
 Morality. In the former it is looked at as, e.g., 
 the " garment " of Spirit, the spoken " word," etc. ; ^ 
 in the latter it is the material substance of moral 
 effort, and gets its significance accordingly from the 
 purposes of the Moral Life. 
 
 ' "Nature" in Religion is of necessity not treated as it is by Science; 
 for they are different levels of experience and have each a different kind of 
 unity to realise and sustain. To Science Nature is, as has been recently 
 said (Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism), a conceptual construction ; to 
 Religion it is, eg., the " Manifestation of Spirit." This religious idea indicates 
 the relation of "nature" to "Spirit" in a philosophical construction; for 
 Philosophy puts the religious idea in speculative terms. Hence the meaning 
 of a "transition" from "Logic" to "Nature." 
 
314 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 Religion is Religion, therefore, is neither the "handmaid" of 
 necessary. ]y[Qj.^]|jy j^qj. ^ mere superimposition on the life of 
 experience. It is a necessary form of the life of 
 self-conscious Spirit, necessary because no other 
 phase of experience expresses the complete life of 
 Spirit in the way Religion does. And all expres- 
 sions are essential if the meaning of Spirit is to 
 be exhausted. 
 Religion In Religious life, then, Spirit is not merely 
 adopts ^jj Reality, but the point of view of the Absolute 
 
 consciously ... 
 
 the point Reality is deliberately and consciously adopted as 
 
 Absolute ^"^ attitude of experience. In Religion man places 
 
 Spirit- himself at the point of view of God's Spirit and 
 
 looks, thinks, feels, and acts in the "sight" or in 
 
 the " light " of it. That is the peculiar note or 
 
 attitude of the Religious Consciousness as such. It 
 
 lives in and acts from that position. Hence the 
 
 absolute self-sufficiency and self-containedness of 
 
 the Religious Life. In it all strife is stilled, all effort 
 
 overcome, all contradictions removed. Death itself 
 
 (which threatens the existence of individual free Spirit 
 
 in Morality) has no victory and brings no bitterness 
 
 of regret to the finite spirit. In that sphere can be 
 
 found and contained the ecstacy of joy, the depths 
 
 of pain. That life contains all opposites of feeling 
 
 and thought ; and in its own completeness can 
 
 reconcile and harmonise all in the peace of the 
 
 Eternal. 
 
 Religion It is Only when this is achieved that the summit 
 
 summit^f of mau's experience is reached, for only at this point 
 
 man's ex- q{ view is Complete unity of self- consciousness 
 
 perience. , . 
 
 attained and all its discords removed. Hence 
 the supreme significance and importance attached 
 to it in the history of human experience. Ex- 
 
X MORALITY AND RELIGION 315 
 
 perience culminates there, because man is self- 
 conscious and demands a supreme realisation of that 
 unity in his life. He is always in some way con- 
 scious of this complete and Absolute Unity in his 
 life ; but in one form of experience he can and 
 does get rid of the antithesis, into which the process 
 of realising his self-conscious life drives him, by 
 deliberately adopting the point of view and position 
 of the Absolute Unity itself. His being Spirit does 
 not necessarily do away with the need to continue 
 the realisation of Spirit through a process of events 
 — the process of the Moral Life above described. 
 Hence he reserves the com,plete conscious union with 
 Absolute Spirit for a unique and separate attitude 
 of experience — his Religious Life. This co-exists 
 with and alongside Morality but is always distinct 
 from it. Thus we find that, in the history of human 
 experience, the conscious adoption of this attitude 
 has come to be associated with special times and 
 seasons, days or weeks, special ceremonies and 
 cults; while all the rest of self-conscious life is 
 carried on in its own way and on its own lines. 
 Hence the separation of the "Hfe of the spirit" 
 and the " life of the world " ; the former being 
 confined to life in and with the Absolute Spirit 
 as such, and the rest with the process of self- 
 conscious life in time. 
 
 Man, then, takes up the religious attitude as a Religion 
 
 .11 ri • i-r • • 1 the highest 
 
 necessary and essential phase of his lite as spiritual, expression 
 Because he is Spirit, he does so ; because the unity JJ 
 of his spiritual life is essentially implied in spiritual ufe 
 existence, he must do so ; because the one Reality is 
 Absolute Spirit with a life for itself, he can do so. 
 Seeing that it does supply man with this supreme 
 
 of the 
 rational 
 
an expeH' 
 ence. 
 
 316 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 consciousness of unity, it is both universal and 
 necessary. If to be conscious of complete unity 
 in experience is a characteristic of a completely 
 rational life, a characteristic of reason in fact, then, 
 so far from Religion being beyond the pale of 
 reason, so far from it being either irrational or 
 non-rational, it is the supreme expression of mans 
 rationality, and without Reason could not arise at all. 
 Religion But be it noted that Religion is an attitude of 
 
 experience, and has, therefore, its roots in experience 
 and in the needs of experience. We must not 
 suppose that in Religion the finite mind suddenly 
 becomes God. To be one with God consciously, to 
 take up the position of Absolute Spirit, is possible 
 without man being God. Man is the religious 
 being, not God. In Religion man merely takes 
 up the attitude in which Spirit, the supreme Reality, 
 is for itself: he is at the point of view of that 
 Spirit : that is all. He can do so because he is 
 Spirit. Hence the source of what has been called 
 the ' ' anthropomorphism " of Religion. The form 
 and substance of Religion depend on the level 
 of spiritual life at which the human Spirit exists ; 
 and this creates the different types of Religion. 
 But the essential principle is that in Religion God 
 is present consciously " in the soul of man," as it is 
 said. Man, as a religious being, thinks of his life 
 from that point of view. Religion takes its stand 
 on the absolute actuality of Spirit, and man's 
 individual life must be looked on as completely real, 
 completely actualised only in that Absolute Spirit. 
 Religion is the attitude in which that Absolute 
 Reality is expressed as it is consciously to itself. 
 Man's reality lies essentially in that Absolute Spirit ; 
 
X ANTHROPOMORPHISM 317 
 
 and that Spirit becomes actual in the spirit of man 
 in the form of Religion. 
 
 This is not anthropomorphism in any sense The "an- 
 except that in which all experience is anthropo- mor^hism" 
 morphic. Strictly speaking, so far from Religion of 
 being purely anthropomorphic in character, it is ^'^°"" 
 the sphere where man is really deanthropomor- 
 phised. His peculiar characteristics as man are 
 even eliminated altogether. Thus his " natural life," 
 his organism, and its cravings in every form (which 
 are constitutive of him as a member of Society, 
 and indeed, as we saw, make the existence of 
 Society possible, make up its substance — property, 
 family life, etc.) are looked on as disappearing 
 altogether when his Spirit is at-oned with Absolute 
 Spirit. As it is put, there are in the " Kingdom of 
 Heaven," in the life of Spirit as Absolute Reality, 
 no distinctions of race, sex, or property, no "natural 
 facts" whatever. "God is all and in all." Spirit 
 is the sole and only reality. Yet it is just these 
 distinctions of race, sex, and property which make 
 up the substance of the Social Order, of all its 
 complex spiritual activity. To regard Religion, 
 therefore, as purely anthropomorphic when its pro- 
 cess involves the elimination of all that specifically 
 makes up humanity, is a mere abuse of language. 
 Moreover, it is truer to regard all x}as. preceding %X3.^t^ 
 in the development of self-conscious experience 
 as anthropomorphic than to regard Religion in that 
 way. For there experience is presented with definite 
 qualifications due to limited aspects of man's life — 
 Sense, Perception, Science, etc. And, indeed, we 
 often do treat them as anthropomorphic, as peculiar 
 to man. For example, this is the case when we 
 
3i8 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 show the limitations of our knowledge furnished by 
 
 Sense, by pointing to the possibility of there being 
 
 other senses, which we do not possess, and the 
 
 possession of which would give us a different content 
 
 in Sense-experience ; or again, when we point to 
 
 the limitations of our "understandings" in the 
 
 pursuit of "truth." 
 
 All But, indeed, when we press the matter, we find that 
 
 fn a^sens" we have either to regard all experience as anthropo- 
 
 anthropo- morphic or else to reject the position that Religion 
 
 morphic. . ,. , . , / i ■ tt 
 
 is peculiarly or entirely anthropomorphic. it we 
 hold the former, then it amounts to saying that self- 
 conscious life being man's is only man's, and is 
 therefore all anthropomorphic. But that is a truism. 
 It is surely not a limitation of either the worth or 
 validity of self-conscious experience to say it is — 
 self-conscious experience ! The suggestion that it is 
 anthropomorphic does, however, carry with it an 
 accusation, a qualification, a limitation of its worth. 
 It is admitted that man's experience is self-contained 
 and self- constituted. For what else can it be ? 
 Who or what is to constitute it except man's own 
 self? But if so, then, there is nothing beyond it 
 to determine what that qualification is to be. For if 
 there were anything beyond it, that would necessarily 
 fall under that experience, be a qualifying object y£>r 
 it} But if it is useless to call all experience an- 
 
 ^ It is sometimes insinuated because man's knowledge is not all knowledge, 
 e.g. is not the kind of "knowledge" animals possess, that it does not give all 
 truth, and therefore its truth is limited to its own level of conscious life, and can- 
 not by the nature of the case give " absolute truth." Assuming it to be tenable 
 that there are other kinds of knowledge to which he is unable to attain, he 
 either knows what that knowledge is or he does not. In the first case the 
 limitation is self-imposed and is not a qualification ; in the second case it falls 
 outside his experience and cannot qualify it. Is man's life less real in any 
 sense because it is not all life at once ? 
 
X AIM OF RELIGION 319 
 
 thropomorphic, it is absurd to call Religion peculiarly 
 so. For this is, in the first place, a phase of that 
 same experience, and secondly, it is neither more 
 nor less than the final expression of the principle 
 present all through experience — that the essential 
 reality of all experience is Spirit. 
 
 In Religion Spirit is present consciously to itself The aim of 
 as Spirit ; and the activity of the religious life is just ex^"^""^ 
 the explicit realisation in self-consciousness of «//ence. 
 that that principle means. It contains all, and is 
 expressed as the all-containing Reality. It starts 
 from that position consciously. Spirit for it is ultimate 
 and alone actual. The aim of Religion is to be 
 what Spirit as absolute means. That can only be 
 done if Spirit is treated, not as something to be 
 merely realised by a process, made objective through 
 the carrying out of the ends and purposes of the 
 self — which is the peculiar position of Moral Ex- 
 perience as the expression of Spirit — but as it is 
 completely reaiy^f- itself. It is no longer something 
 to be achieved, but something which is achieved, is 
 actual. It is no longer Spirit to be attained and 
 maintained, but Spirit which is altogether objective 
 and subjective at once, and therefore already 
 complete. It no longer exists in itself as the truly 
 real : but exists in and for itself as actual. In 
 Religion this self-consciousness of Spirit therefore 
 is the primal fact. 
 
 Hence it follows that in Religion there is no Religion 
 process such as we have in Morality, no active in^jv" a 
 pursuit of ends and purposes. If that were so, God fo^^^ss of 
 would be looked on not as self-complete but as the 
 %€&-completing. God would then be coming to be, 
 and Religion would not carry the movement of 
 
320 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 Spirit further than Morality. God, however, in 
 Religion is taken as the absolutely actual, and so is 
 beyond and above all finite spiritual purpose, contains 
 all process in Himself, because in Religion all activity 
 is only for Himself. God does not come to be in 
 the soul of man. He is there, and man is actual 
 in and by that. To ignore this is to commit the 
 error involved in the idea of a "religion of humanity," 
 Humanity is essentially a process in time, in history; 
 it is always "coming to be," but never is, as such, 
 self-complete. God in Religion is the self-complete, 
 the absolute One. Hence in God all temporal 
 process disappears into and becomes a moment of 
 His One Life. By no possibility could a " religion 
 of humanity " permit what Religion, as such, first and 
 alone seeks to do. By revealing the life of Absolute 
 Spirit as it is for itself. Religion seeks to still the 
 agonies of strife and struggle in the pursuit of ends 
 of all kinds, moral or otherwise, and to realise a 
 complete harmonious oneness of soul in what is 
 Eternal and contains all finite ends as its own. 
 The The only question, therefore, is as to the forms 
 
 this Absolute Spirit adopts, and the forms religious 
 life in consequence assumes. After what has been 
 said, these are not difficult to state. We are not 
 here, be it noted, either constructing a Religion or 
 picturing how man "looks at," "thinks of" Absolute 
 Spirit. In Religion, as was said above, we are at 
 the point of view of Absolute Spirit, conscious of 
 what it is for itself conscious of how its own self- 
 consciousness proceeds. Here, therefore, we state 
 the moments or phases of its life, as the one self- 
 conscious spiritual Reality. These moments, when 
 so stated, form the levels at which the religious life 
 
 forms of 
 religion. 
 
X PHASES OF RELIGION 321 
 
 does and can exist in experience, and are found to 
 exist in historical "religions." We are not discussing 
 these "religions." We are dealing with Religion 
 as such, Religion as an attitude of experience. Only 
 by thus stating the moments of Absolute Spirit as 
 such do we show the necessity in the content of 
 Absolute Spirit, show that it is Spirit at all, with a 
 life and content of its own. And only by doing so, 
 again, do we show the inherent necessity in every 
 type and form of religious life.^ 
 
 We must not suppose, further, that Religion is Religion is 
 one thing and the life of Absolute Spirit another. Absolute^ 
 The life of Absolute Spirit appears just in religious Spirit in 
 
 T , . , ^ . . man's ex- 
 
 consciousness. It shows itselt to consciousness ^««perience. 
 Spirit, because itself is Spirit and that is all Reality. 
 The consciousness of it is Religion. The expression 
 of its content is the active life of Absolute Spirit. 
 These are merely two sides of the same process, 
 the same phase of experience. Hence on this 
 view. Religion does not so much create the idea of 
 Absolute Spirit ; rather Absolute Spirit creates the 
 religious life. It appears to the conscious life of 
 Spirit. 
 
 Experience, we saw, appears at different levels — The forms 
 mere Consciousness of Objects, Consciousness of Self, Religious 
 and Spirit. Absolute Spirit appears in each of these "f^. 
 in its own specifically distinct moments. The different 
 forms of Religion are simply its presence in these 
 
 ' It is important to observe that the various phases of Absolute Spirit men- 
 tioned below are really present in all Religion. In certain cases one aspect is 
 emphasised to the exclusion, it may be, of others, and so determines a type of 
 Religion. But the difference is merely one of emphasis ; the other aspects are 
 really there in some form all the while. Thus we find in the "Religion 
 of Nature" expressions characteristic of "Revealed Religion," just as much 
 as in Christianity ("Revealed Religion") we can see the religious mind 
 adopting the attitude of the " Religion of Nature." 
 
 Y 
 
322 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 different phases of experience. Its own Reality 
 has distinct moments because it is Spirit. These 
 moments are realised separately in the distinct planes 
 of experience already spoken of. The conscious 
 realisation of Absolute Spirit in them constitutes 
 different types of religious attitude. Or, put shortly, 
 Religion is the Consciousness of the Life of God 
 in man's experience. God is Absolute Spirit and 
 is conscious of Himself as Spirit, and is conscious 
 of Himself in Spirit. The ways in which He is 
 conscious of Himself constitute and form the types 
 of Religion. These ways are found in those specific- 
 ally distinct modes of experience. 
 The first To determine these phases of the life of Absolute 
 which'" Spirit we have merely to recall, first, that the Spirit 
 Absolute here in question is just the Reality at work in 
 appears— experience all through, as previously traced ; and 
 immediate secondly, that that Spirit, because completely self- 
 experi- conscious, has three aspects, in each of which it is 
 present in expressed, but expressed in different ways, because 
 Sense— -writh different degrees of completeness. There is 
 Nature, fifst the Unity of its life in implicit form, mere unity 
 without the distinction involved in self-conscious- 
 ness being brought out. Spirit is immediately 
 realised, or its life is there as an immediate fact. 
 Self has not withdrawn into itself, and so created 
 an opposition between itself and an "other." It is 
 simply one in and with that other. It only becomes 
 aware of self by opposition to that other. At this 
 stage we are speaking of, that opposition is not 
 established ; it is implicit, but not explicit. What 
 we have is the simple continuity of a single life. It 
 is Spirit at the level of immediate experience, the 
 immediate experience whose general form we saw to 
 
X RELIGION OF NATURE 323 
 
 be Sense-life, and whose substance for Spirit is the 
 equally immediate reality of "nature." It is not 
 here mere Sense -experience, as we found this at 
 the start of experience. It is Spirit consciously 
 realised at the level of sense-life, or " natural " exist- 
 ence, "natural life." Consciousness of Spirit in 
 this form is the special attitude of Natural Religion 
 — Religion for which God is one with the life of 
 "nature" simply as immediate sense -fact. In it 
 God is "experienced," "felt," as manifested in the 
 process of "nature," working "by" nature, affecting 
 the religious mind by natural facts, agencies, and 
 processes. Here the religious life is one with God's 
 Spirit, as in all Religion. Spirit speaks to Spirit ; 
 only as Spirit is the religious attitude possible at all, 
 as we have indicated. But, here, it is Spirit realised 
 in the form of merely natural life as a whole, touch- 
 ing the religious mind almost in a quasi -external 
 manner through natural portents, signs, wonders, 
 and through the routine of sense-life. 
 
 This is an aspect of all religion, the highest as well This is a 
 as the lowest. But in certain types of Religion it re^f^w^" 
 is the only attitude assumed towards God, and it is |ife, but 
 there we find the full significance of this aspect. God abstractly 
 is there merely the life of nature ; God is the " spirit ^ ^ 
 of nature." The religious mind communicates with type of 
 God in terms of nature and nature only. The self « t^f °" " 
 of the relisfious mind is subordinated to natural religion of 
 
 nature." 
 
 processes, obeys their direction. God does not, in 
 merely Natural Religion, " signify " or symbolise His 
 presence through nature as a means. To take nature 
 as a symbol is a conception which belongs to a higher 
 form of Religion. God in purely Natural Religion 
 is natural life : the "wood," the " grove," the " spring," 
 
324 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 the " river," the " hill," are God's actual manifesta- 
 tion. To come in contact with them is to meet 
 God. The worshipper's life is reduced or rather 
 concentrated into that form too, and he bows before 
 the majesty, the mere "might," of natural forces. 
 He worships the sun, for God is the " Light." God 
 is also the " Darkness," and meets the worshipper 
 there in a different mood from what He is as the 
 Light. Nature is a continuous whole, suppress- 
 ing all individual existence in its vast process ; 
 the individual worshipper is therefore of no moment 
 in comparison. For there is no comparison possible, 
 since there is no distinction allowed. He, the in- 
 dividual worshipper, is of no particular importance, 
 because he is merely a moment or appearance of 
 the Whole, subject to its temporal and spatial con- 
 ditions, and disappearing like the flower of the field, 
 or the cloud in the sky, or the shadow on the hill. 
 He feels God everywhere, yet God is nowhere in 
 particular, and hence He is not specially concerned 
 with the worshipper. "What is man that Thou 
 should'st be mindful of him ? " Nature is the vast 
 process in time going on from everlasting to ever- 
 lasting. Man is merely a vanishing part of it. 
 Man's days are " like the grass " : " he giveth up 
 the ghost, and where is he}" 
 The Man puts himself in absolute unity with Spirit 
 
 ™/the'' here by methods and processes drawn from nature. 
 Religion For the way to be in harmony with God, to be 
 completely real in God (which is essentially the 
 religious attitude) is to avail himself of the life of 
 God, to bring God's life and reality into his own 
 life. Hence the cult and ceremony of worship at 
 this level of Religion are made up entirely of the 
 
X RELIGION OF NATURE 325 
 
 substance and facts of natural life. Conscious unity 
 with the Supreme is secured by various modes 
 of "conciliation," "sympathy," "affinity" between 
 the worshipper and God. Sacrifice, which is one 
 essential way of expressing the unity, takes a 
 physical form — man sacrifices the objects of 
 nature, flesh and blood, wood and stone, or even 
 man himself as a natural object. He detects God's 
 presence in the sounds that fill his ears, the sights 
 that meet his eyes, and in outstanding natural events 
 particularly. He decides his course of action by 
 "propitiating his gods," by consulting "auguries," 
 by listening to " voices." So, in as many forms as 
 the complex multiplicity of nature presents, can man 
 approach and unite himself with God who ts natural 
 life. Hence the variety which we find in the form of 
 Natural Religions lies in the very principle of all 
 Natural Religion. Nature is variety, diversity : 
 hence a Religion, with nature as its content, has 
 endlessly varied forms. Some peoples lay stress on 
 certain elements and " things " of nature, others on 
 other "things." The kind of Religion is largely 
 determined by the character or sphere of nature in 
 which man is living or with which he is in contact. 
 Again, the uniform simplicity, the delight, and satis- 
 faction so characteristic of the Religion of Nature 
 are its inevitable attributes. The object of worship 
 is always there at hand ; an answer to an appeal can 
 be had at once. The individual is never away from 
 his God, is everywhere in touch with God. God can 
 be had for the asking; for God is ever there to 
 be petitioned. The harmony is not to be secured 
 through- some form of "unseen" reality. It is 
 visibly, tangibly there, and perpetual contact with 
 
326 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 it brings its perpetual reward of peace, acquiescence, 
 
 harmonious submission. 
 The Another moment in the life of Spirit is found 
 
 ph^e— when it consciously draws the distinction of self 
 God is implied in its complete unity ; withdraws from the 
 
 present in.'- . J- ii-r ^r 
 
 self- immediate unity of natural life ; sets up self as some- 
 purpos°e"^ thing to be asserted in sptie of nature ; overcomes 
 God as the nature by opposing, or by reducing it to a mere means, 
 Ord«. an instrument for manifesting the life of self and its 
 purposes. Spirit is conscious of self as such, as 
 contrasted with all otherness, with its other. It 
 places the foundations of its real life in the world 
 of subjective activity, purposes, ends, feelings, etc. 
 For it finds its self through nature, in spite of it, 
 and apart from it. Nature is there a moment in the 
 life of Spirit, for Absolute Spirit is all, and the 
 consciousness of self as such implies contrast, and 
 therefore the existence of what the self is contrasted 
 with. But it is merely a moment, subordinate, an 
 "appearance," a "means," an "instrument." God's 
 reality does not lie there primarily, but in conscious- 
 ness of self, self as such, as the unity of the 
 purposes of life, a life carried on through means, but 
 rising above all means, because indifferent to any 
 in particular. Spirit is concentrated into its self- 
 hood as such. 
 God as Here, again, we see what this must be, by looking 
 
 conscious ^ack on the process of experience. Consciousness 
 individu- of Self as objcct Culminated in the form of self- 
 ReUgion of conscious individuality out of which sprang the 
 Moral Ex- Ethical Order of the world. God in this form of 
 
 perience. f-, . . ^ r . . , . 
 
 Spirit appears, therefore, as absolute spiritual in- 
 dividuality as such. The corresponding religious 
 life is the consciousness of God's reality in and 
 
X RELIGION OF ETHICAL ORDER 327 
 
 through the forms, processes, and conditions of 
 Ethical and Moral Experience ; and unity with Him 
 is established in terms of such experience. This, 
 too, is an aspect of all Religion, but is emphasised in 
 certain cases as the primary and only form of religion. 
 
 Nature has a place here, but quite different from Nature the 
 that found in the case of the Religion of Nature. TSx^o! 
 In the first place, the religious mind is not content 
 merely to find God anywhere in nature as it is. 
 Nature must be determined by and embody a.purpose 
 before God is reached and His life realised. Man 
 therefore does not find his gods in rivers, trees, etc. ; 
 he fashions his God with his own hands; he creates 
 Idols, Images, symbols of His life. As natural 
 Gods were manifold because of the diversity of 
 nature, so idols, images, etc., are manifold because The 
 man's purposes and interests are manifold, and^j^j^pg"^ 
 the material of nature at his hand is endlessly of religion, 
 varied. Hence the diversity of forms the Gods 
 assume, and the variety of substance in which 
 the Gods are enshrined in this second phase of 
 Religion. Again, not every quarter prescribed by 
 nature itself is accepted as a habitation for God. 
 Man must needs make a habitation for God, He 
 builds Temples, Altars, where God is primarily 
 and peculiarly to be found to "dwell," and where 
 alone He can be met, "appeased," "sacrificed 
 to," "lived with," These, of course, are built of 
 natural material, and this natural material gets 
 religious significance accordingly. The temple and " Tem- 
 its material are " blessed " and " consecrated," i.e. P'^'" 
 devoted to the peculiar residence of God. Special 
 reasons or purposes may induce man to build in 
 certain places rather than others. Hence specific 
 
and 
 
 328 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 localities are assigned to temples by different 
 peoples. All the religious life becomes peculiarly 
 concentrated round these "dwellings of God"; for 
 there God is to be met with rather than anywhere 
 else. " God loves the gates of Zion more than 
 all the dwellings of Jacob." This is the place of 
 "His honour," "where He dwells." 
 
 Times Similarly, again, time is no longer a mere process, 
 
 Seasons." as in the Religion of Nature, carrying the individual 
 along its stream. Time becomes purposely divided 
 up into "seasons." " Holy days," " Festivals," etc., 
 are determined purposely, so that the religious life 
 may be gathered periodically round those religious 
 dwellings. God, in short, is not in man's life in 
 the same way everywhere and at every time : but 
 somewhere, and at some times. 
 
 Sacred In the next place, certain objects of nature are 
 
 peculiarly and purposely assigned to God, "dedi- 
 cated" to Him and the worship of Him. In these 
 He has a special interest, and His purposes are 
 realised more clearly through them. Hence the 
 value placed on certain animals to the exclusion of 
 others for purposes of " sacrifice." Man's property 
 and possessions, because embodying his purpose, 
 have a special significance for God, and union with 
 God is established by surrender of possessions, by 
 bequest of property. Or, generally, man, by doing 
 something ybr God, carrying out some end on His 
 behalf, consecrates his self to God. 
 
 Sacred Similarly, self-conscious individuals themselves 
 
 come to have a special significance, are " set aside " 
 as special channels through which to interpret God's 
 will, and to mediate between God and His people, 
 to be His Spokesmen, His Priests. The choice 
 
 objects. " 
 
 persons. 
 
X RELIGION OF ETHICAL ORDER 329 
 
 of such individuals is determined by the character 
 of this phase of Religion. Those individuals, who 
 have clearest insight into the meaning of the pur- 
 poses and ends in life, are best able to guide a 
 people into the best way to appease and gain 
 harmony with God through the avenue of self- 
 conscious purpose. For when this is done properly 
 God is "well pleased," i.e. the acts of the wor- 
 shipper have a value for God Himself \ God is 
 conscious of His own self in and through them. 
 
 In the same way God is bound up with a Nation "Peculiar 
 or a People as an ethical whole. God becomes a ^°p^^- 
 naiional God, guiding by His purpose the progressive 
 life of a Society. He guides its rulers with His 
 wisdom, punishes its enemies with His hatred, 
 directs the course of its life and history for His own 
 glory and His realisation of Himself. 
 
 Further, because Spirit is self, and selfhood God's law 
 is the inner life of Spirit, God is realised and ^^^-^^ ^™ 
 experienced in a very special manner in the heart. 
 purposive activity of the individual soul, in the 
 life of Conscience, the "feelings," "hearts," and 
 "minds" of self-conscious individuals. The very 
 " thoughts of the heart " are read by and known to 
 God. These thoughts are inward to God Himself. 
 An alteration of mood, feeling, thought, is an 
 alteration of the mind and thought of God towards 
 and in the individual life. "With the merciful 
 Thou wilt show Thyself merciful ; with the upright, 
 upright." It is not so much the act that counts, 
 for the act is visible, is a means, a natural fact. It 
 is the " heart " that is everything ; "out of the heart 
 proceed evil thoughts." God does not "delight in 
 the sacrifice of bullocks or rams"; it is "a broken 
 
330 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 and a contrite heart " with which God is " well 
 pleased," i.e. not something external but something 
 internal, purposive, manifesting self. And hence 
 the law of the heart is peculiarly God's concern. 
 The law of the heart is " God's law " ; and God's 
 law is "perfect," because God's. It makes "wise" 
 and " understanding " those who " simply " follow 
 it and " turn not aside." The laws of the inner life 
 of Conscience and the moral will are laws of God 
 in the soul of man. " Duties," as Kant says (who 
 takes this phase of Religion as the only Religion),^ 
 become "divine commands." 
 The cult of The cult and ceremony of this type of Religion 
 
 this phase .... . i -nt i r 
 
 of are similarly constituted. Not sounds of nature 
 
 Rehgion. itself are here voices of God ; but sounds ordered by 
 a certain zonsc\OM& purpose, and conveying definite 
 human thoughts, ends, ideals, — Hymns, Prayer, and 
 Praise. In these Hymns God ^z'^^j-e^ " speaks " : 
 they are "sacred," "words from God." Not any 
 object or place of creation reveals God to man, but 
 specific objects and places. The ceremonious carry- 
 ing out of rites and ritual in the Temple is His delight. 
 God is approached in His Holy of Holies, in the 
 innermost courts of the Temple — and then only but 
 seldom — because He is withdrawn into Himself, and 
 His self dwells in the "innermost." Not every one 
 can consult his God by visiting the object of nature. 
 God is only peculiarly real in purposive human in- 
 telligence, in self-conscious form, in His "divinely 
 ordained " Priesthood. He speaks to man not in 
 nature but through nature, by symbols. Nature 
 is merely a means, a " veil " to conceal, or at best 
 symbolise, God's Self. Because God is self and 
 
 ' This is also Fichte's conception of Religion. 
 
X RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT 331 
 
 universal, He employs a symbol through which to 
 convey this universality to man. This is found in 
 the use of Language. Hence God speaks to man 
 in the spoken, but, above all, in the written tongue 
 of a people — because writing is more permanent 
 than speech. God's life and purpose are therefore 
 peculiarly found embodied in certain written docu- 
 ments, whether in codes, which express orderly ways 
 of satisfying Him, or in statements of His purposes 
 with man. Hence the value placed on documents 
 in this type of religious life, on " Sibylline books,'' 
 "sacred literature," "Scriptures." They convey 
 the very Spirit of God : they are " inspired " by 
 His "Spirit." 
 
 Finally, Absolute Spirit has yet another mode of The third 
 self-realisation. It does not merely exist as ang^f'.!: ., 
 
 J Spirit in Its 
 
 immediate reality, and does not merely withdraw concrete 
 into the inwardness of the fife of self, keeping present to 
 nature as a screen behind which it works, or a Spirit- 
 medium for its expression. It unites these two 
 phases in the one form of Spirit in its concrete 
 totality, becoming conscious of Spirit as a whole ; 
 Spirit as such is aware only of Spirit. Here nature 
 is spiritualised and conscious in Spirit ; Spirit is 
 naturalised and conscious in nature of its own life. 
 The unity of Spirit is in no aspect implicit but 
 absolutely explicit. The difference (involved in 
 consciousness of self) is no longer emphasised by 
 the withdrawal of self from nature, and rising above 
 it; the one side is transparent to the other. 
 Spirit is absolutely at home with itself in all reality, 
 and all reality is manifesting this one self-referring, 
 self-conscious Life. We have here, in fact, so we 
 may put it, at the level of pure spiritual activity, 
 
332 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 an immediacy analogous to what we had in the 
 case of the Religion of Nature. In the latter it was 
 the immediacy of natural life, and it operated 
 accordingly ; here it is the immediacy of purely 
 spiritual life, and its activity is full conscious rela- 
 tion of Spirit as such explicitly to Spirit as such. 
 Spirit here Spirit is in this case not divorced from nature, 
 both*'"^ nor is nature subordinated to, degraded from the 
 Immediate life of Spirit. Spirit is literally manifest in nature 
 
 Existence , ^ . . . , • i i • i 
 
 and Moral- as such. Spirit, again, does not withdraw into the 
 ''y- Moral Life, nor does it degrade moral activity to a 
 
 means. In Morality it expresses its very self, its 
 very life. At every point in the totality of experience, 
 therefore, the one Spirit shows its own presence, 
 its own Reality, because in all it is conscious to itself 
 of itself It does not show it through any aspect 
 of reality as a " medium," but is real just in what 
 it shows, and shows just what is real. What really 
 is, is what appears and is " manifested " to Spirit. 
 Revealed The phase of Religion in which this experience is 
 Religion, typically lived, felt, and realised is that of Religion 
 as the " revealed " or " manifested " life of Spirit — it 
 is Revealed Religion. It is an aspect of all religious 
 experience, but, like the other aspects, is specially 
 emphasised by certain types of mind and becomes 
 a specific form of Religion. It is not Religion 
 "revealed" "through" certain documents and litera- 
 ture. That kind of literature belongs to the second 
 phase of Religion ; for there such literature is an 
 essential constituent of its cult and order. Such 
 literature, in the way indicated, is " inspired." The 
 religion of the Spirit as such, " Revealed" Religion, 
 cannot possibly be " embodied " in any literature, 
 still less confined to it. A literature is necessarily 
 
X RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT 333 
 
 a historical phenomenon contingent upon language 
 and race and type of national mind. The life 
 in the Spirit (Revealed Religion) is from ever- 
 lasting to everlasting, is above historical limita- 
 tions of any sort. It speaks the tongues of all 
 nations, because it is above all race and national 
 limitations. The one Spirit is everywhere to all 
 that call upon It, commune with It, "in spirit and 
 in truth." It is not national ; it is international, 
 absolutely " universal " Religion. It is necessarily 
 so ; for Spirit is here not confined by conditions 
 of time and space or nationality which impose 
 restrictions on its life and activity. It is for all 
 time and all peoples. Spirit contains all, is in all 
 in precisely the same sense ; for it is the self-same 
 Spirit which is present to itself everywhere and 
 at all times. It may be aided and brought to light 
 by literature as well as by natural processes : but it 
 cannot be confined to them. Its religious devotees, 
 therefore, are not of one nation, or tribe, or king- 
 dom, but belong to all and are found every- 
 where. They speak many tongues with many 
 thoughts, commune in as many ways as the Spirit 
 manifests itself They do so of their own right 
 as members of, sharers in, this one Spirit. In 
 doing so they realise completely all their spiritual 
 significance. "Where the spirit of the Lord is, 
 there is liberty," complete self-fulfilment : the law of 
 the Spirit is that of absolute Freedom. Those who 
 in all nations and lands show this freedom of and in 
 the one Spirit form a society independent of national 
 restrictions. They form a kingdom of the Spirit, 
 a "kingdom of saints" (of those devoted to the 
 Spirit), a Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
334 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 It is The religious life here is realised in and through 
 
 thelame— Spiritual terms and conditions as such. Such terms 
 absolute have all the characteristic of Spirit. They express 
 sufficiency, independence of particular time and place and nation- 
 ality ; they all have the same significance everywhere ; 
 and in them Spirit is conscious of itself always and im- 
 mediately. That Spirit is always at one with Itself ; 
 there is no opposition in its life, no contradictions 
 to be removed by any process. All the terms em- 
 ployed here express just that sense of absolute union 
 and absolute self-sufificiency. The Life of the Spirit 
 is an orderly unity ; but it is at the same time a unity 
 focussed into single pulses of life. It is also a com- 
 plete unity, the Spirit is absolutely at the height of 
 its life. Or, as it is put, life in the Spirit is at once 
 " righteousness " (orderly unity), " peace " (simple 
 sense of unity), "joy" (the unity of Spirit at its 
 maximum of life). Such content must be the same 
 for all who share the life of Spirit, for the Spirit is 
 the same everywhere, and realises its life in the 
 same way. 
 J^t 's The relisrious life is carried on simply within the 
 
 •"within." . T . . 
 
 unity of Spirit. It is not confined to, and therefore 
 cannot be summed up in, any act however great or 
 however complex, for this is necessarily bounded by 
 time and natural conditions. Contrasted with such 
 acts the life of the Spirit is " unseen " and " eternal." 
 Or since the totality of external acts is still unable 
 to express the uniqueness of the life of Spirit, the 
 Kingdom of the Spirit is not to be expressed as 
 "without" at all. The "Kingdom of Heaven is 
 within," that is to say, " within " the life and unity 
 of Spirit itself 
 
 Again, since no objective expression, no act or 
 
X RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT 335 
 
 even thought, can exactly express the supreme unity "The Life 
 of the life of Spirit in Spirit, the completeness of this °^ ^^'* ' 
 relation of Spirit to Spirit is established, not by any 
 particular or any number of particular acts or 
 thoughts or feelings at all. It is a universal unity 
 that is to be found ; and it must be a single and 
 complete relation that is always maintained, a rela- 
 tion above and independent of all time, yet one 
 which is lived by Spirit in and through time. 
 The hold on this "eternal life" has to be secured 
 by an attitude of an eternal, a non-temporal kind, 
 with an unique character — the attitude of Faith. 
 The life of the Spirit is the life, not of " action " and 
 "thought" but the Life of Faith. 
 
 The individual who lives this life of the Spirit " Justified 
 has the absolute peace and unity of the Absolute ^ 
 Spirit. He is one in and with that Spirit. But 
 he cannot do so "of himself" by his own deeds 
 and acts and feelings ; and cannot, therefore, show 
 to himself and others that he belongs to and lives in 
 that kingdom by any particular external expression • 
 of even the most universal character. His life in 
 the Spirit, as an actuality, cannot be "justified " 
 by anything he does, by any process of mediation. 
 He is in irnmediate relation with. God. He can 
 only be "justified," get the sense of complete 
 unity of the Life of Spirit, by that which con- 
 nects him immediately with the Eternal. He is 
 "justified "by "Faith." 
 
 Or to put it from another point of view. The justice or 
 life of Spirit, as an orderly totality of universal ends, ^^f J,""" 
 which are being continually realised, is, as we found Faith. 
 before, the Moral Order of experience. Complete 
 realisation of that orderly whole is the complete 
 
336 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 achievement of the " ideal " of Morality, is the 
 attainment of a completely "righteous" or "just" 
 life. Such a life is only possible in and through 
 relationship to Spirit (the Social Order). Now 
 the religious relation of Spirit to Spirit does not 
 annul, but only more fully attains, that relation- 
 ship of Spirit to Spirit found in and forming a com- 
 plete Social Order ; for Spirit lives and moves by 
 universal modes of activity. Absolute union with 
 Absolute Spirit, therefore, implies absolute Right- 
 eousness, Holiness, Justness. That is the reality for 
 the religious life in the Spirit ; and it is therefore 
 an actuality in and for the religious mind, since this 
 union is the cardinal idea of Religion. It is abso- 
 lutely essential for the free intercommunion of Spirit 
 with Spirit, which makes up this religious attitude. 
 There is no opposition between the "justness" and 
 " righteousness " in Social Life and the "justness" or 
 "righteousness" found in Absolute Spirit; rather 
 the former is a ectype of the latter. Hence the 
 "righteousness of God" should be revealed in and 
 through " righteous " dealing with man. But by no 
 possibility can the religious mind accomplish com- 
 plete righteousness in dealing with his fellows, 
 either in its own eyes (for acts and deeds are 
 endless, and the task of the moral life is never 
 completed) or in the eyes of his fellows, or in the 
 eyes of God. He cannot, therefore, be absolutely 
 "just," absolutely at one with Absolute Spirit, by 
 any mediating process of action in time or any 
 actual Social Order.^ He cannot be "justified" by 
 the "works" of the "law." Yet he is in immediate 
 
 ^ This distinguishes the point of view of " Revealed Religion " from that 
 found in the second phase above spoken of. 
 
X RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT 337 
 
 union as Spirit with God as Spirit ; for that is the 
 absolute actuality of his life as a religious being. 
 Therefore, since he cannot get the unity of a com- 
 plete righteous life mediately, by bl process, he gets it 
 immediately and at once. And this is accomplished 
 by a universal, all -comprehensive identification of 
 self with God, by "Faith." He is "justified," 
 "absolutely righteous," by Faith} 
 
 Further, the relation between Spirit and Spirit " Divire 
 here is altogether mutual. Hence, corresponding 
 to the immediate assertion of unity with Absolute 
 Spirit on the part of the individual religious mind, 
 we have an attitude on the part of God as One 
 and All-supreme. Absolute righteousness is claimed 
 by the religious mind as its own in virtue of 
 union with Absolute Spirit through Faith. It is 
 granted, equally spontaneously (for Spirit is free), 
 and equally immediately (i.e. without anything being 
 done or required), by God as a favour and a gift. 
 The Righteousness is of Grace. The Kingdom of 
 Divine Righteousness is thus at once a Kingdom 
 of Faith and a Kingdom of Grace. 
 
 Again, man's life as Spirit is yet continuous in time The Life 
 and is lived, in one of its aspects, under temporal" °^^" 
 conditions. He always has to face the future, and 
 the future contains always the possibility of change. 
 But life in the Spirit is the life that overcomes 
 all change, in the sense that it is one of absolute 
 unity with the Unchangeable. For the life of Spirit, 
 therefore, it is essential to take up an attitude to all 
 
 ^ Where stress is laid not so much on the unity, as such, of Spirit with 
 Spirit, as on the actual domination of the varied and changing process of 
 goodness hy this one unity of " holiness," the condition is not one of ' ' Justifica- 
 tion," but of "Sanctification." The first is unique, single, all-complete— an 
 "act" of God ; the second a continual activity— a " work." 
 
 Z 
 
338 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 possible change by which the religious mind will 
 see it and feel it and think it in the light of the one 
 Absolute Spirit, with which unity is maintained. It 
 must be an attitude which destroys all sense of 
 what change universally brings with it, fear and 
 disappointment. The sense of unity must be so 
 complete as to negate or destroy all that fear abso- 
 lutely. But it must at the same time be 2i positive 
 attitude as well. It must be one which regards the 
 unity as ultimately consummated, as in the long run 
 and in spite of all z.c\vie.we.d. It is thus an attitude 
 continuous with the life of Faith, in which it is claimed 
 to be so. The attitude to the Divine Spirit which 
 expresses all this is the attitude of Hope. It is the 
 attitude of unity with the Whole amidst and in spite 
 o/"that flux and change which necessarily enter into 
 the life of Spirit as a concrete, all-embracing unity 
 of experience. Hence it is a necessary constituent 
 of the religious life of the Spirit. 
 The Life Again, this unity of man's Spirit with God's is 
 not simply an orderly unity — the unity of righteous- 
 ness, which is a whole through parts — and not 
 simply a summary unity, — a unity of change, which 
 is a whole in spite of them. It is a directly pre- 
 sented, a simple, single sense of unity, a unity in the 
 sphere oi feeling, as distinctive from the sphere of 
 order or reason and the sphere of endeavour or will. 
 The supreme unity expressed in terms of feeling 
 is Love. Love is double-sided, but is the same for 
 It is each side. There cannot be Love without distinc- 
 thfr^'" tion, and there cannot be Love unless the distinction 
 Faith." is held by each side in an indissoluble immediate 
 unity. Hence the content for both sides is here 
 precisely the same — a unity of feeling. There is 
 
 of Love. 
 
X RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT 339 
 
 not in this attitude something from the side of the 
 religious mind (Faith), and something else from the 
 Divine Spirit (Grace). It is one and the same for 
 each. The unity is completely continuous and 
 identical for both sides. It expresses, therefore, 
 more completely than Faith that absolute and con- 
 tinuous union of Spirit with Spirit. It is "greater" 
 than Faith. 
 
 In Hope, again, with its contrast between And 
 apparent and real, changeable and • unchanging, fhan" 
 immediate and ultimate, the Life of Spirit has one Hope, 
 aspect for man's Spirit, another for God's. But in 
 Love all such contrasts disappear. There is one 
 and the same Life at the same time for the Spirit of 
 man and of God. It expresses and contains their 
 essential union without a jar of opposition, and is 
 therefore more adequate to the Life of Spirit. Love 
 is "greater" than Hope. 
 
 Love, moreover, because y^^/m^ necessarily exists Love is the 
 in the present, is 2i present reality. Since the union ^^Uon of 
 is an eternal union, the Love in which it is expressed a^ Li(e of 
 
 *■ , the Spirit. 
 
 is an Eternal Love, not confined to one moment but 
 constant and enduring as Spirit itself. The Life of 
 Love is an eternal Now. But Faith takes its stand 
 on what God has been, on what is behind the seen 
 and temporal, while Hope takes hold of what is to 
 be, of what is beyond the visible and changeable. 
 These are, therefore, conditions of man's finite 
 spiritual existence, are required essentially because 
 of man's conscious finitude ; and would disappear 
 with the absolute sense of continuous union with 
 God. They would in that case simply not be 
 required. Because Faith and Hope have that 
 character, they are rather conditions than the 
 
340 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 consummation of Spiritual Life. But Love being 
 eternal is a final achievement, is absolute union 
 with God. For that reason also, therefore. Love is 
 "greater" than Faith, "greater" than Hope. 
 The three The essential attitudes of Spiritual, or Revealed 
 feitos^of a Religion- inay be said to be Faith, Hope, Love. All 
 Revealed are forms of the one unity of Spirit with Spirit, and 
 e>gion- ^j.g continuous with each other. They express that 
 unity in its different aspects. The first the unity of 
 order, or "intellect"; the second that of anticipa- 
 tion, or active endeavour ; the third that of feeling. 
 The first is a unity embracing all the past of man's 
 life ; the second, all the future ; the third, all the 
 present. These are moments or phases of the 
 complete realisation of Spirit, because this is con- 
 crete and embraces all forms of its life. And all are 
 related and connected inside the one life of Spirit 
 in union with Spirit. These attitudes, then, seem to 
 exhaust the moments of a Spiritual or Revealed 
 Religion as actually realised. 
 Symbol It has its cult. But here symbol plays a secondary 
 
 Reality. ^^^ ancillary part, and the reality symbolised is 
 never confounded with it for any length of time. 
 That reality just lies in its spiritual content, in the 
 " fruits of the Spirit." ^ 
 
 ^ The life of the Spirit, as St. Paul, an apostle of the Religion of the Spirit, 
 pointed out, is to be found in its "fruits," in the spiritual content realised, 
 such as "Love," "Joy," "Peace," "Long-suffering," etc. — each of them 
 expressing that Spirit is in union with Spirit. 
 
 It is important to bear in mind that the realisation of this form of religious 
 experience lies in these states, these "fruits of the Spirit," which are the out- 
 come of the essential attitudes above mentioned. 
 
 When this is grasped, it is at once seen that all else must have a merely 
 derivative and conditional significance. In particular we can see how this 
 throws light (l) on the relation of this type of Religion to its Doctrines, dogmatic 
 or otherwise ; and (2) on its connexion with the great organisation of man's 
 spiritual purposes — the Ethical Order of Society. As to the first, doctrines no 
 
X RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT 341 
 
 This phase of Religion, like other forms of Sacrifice i 
 Religion, can also be realised by Sacrifice : but the ?^. T^ ' 
 sacrihce in this case is characteristically dififerent. 
 In the Religion of Nature it is the sacrifice or break- 
 ing up of a natural object. In the second type of 
 Religion it is sacrifice of the inner self — a " broken 
 and a contrite heart." In the third the end can be 
 
 doubt are essential, in the sense that they are required to help the maintenance 
 of the Spiritual Life. They do so by taking its intensely concrete Unity in its 
 various aspects, expressing these in universally intelligible terms, and thereby 
 at once steadying and focussing the content it possesses. They are devised by 
 reflection for this end, and are subsidiary to its attainment, — whether the doctrine 
 be general, like that of the "Trinity," in itself a profound speculative analysis of 
 Absolute Spirit, or special, like that of the relatively insignificant doctrine of 
 "Infant Baptism." When the doctrines are taken, not as aids, but as ends, 
 conflict is sure to arise sooner or later — the old conflict between the Spirit, which 
 " quickens," and the letter which ' ' kills," and kills because it confines, restricts, 
 suppresses the universal life of Spirit. As to the second, there must be direct 
 relation between a Spiritual Religion and the Order of a Society ; for both are 
 Spirit in substance, and the former must have its cult in the latter, as the 
 historical organisation in time of the human Spirit. The former must be 
 established in the latter to gain definite security. But what is set up is not the 
 Spiritual Religion as such, for that is absolutely universal and cannot be con- 
 fined, like the second type of Religion, to any specific historical Society ; it is 
 the cult or Institution, Spiritual Religion as cultivated by a nation with definite 
 traditions and ideals, that is " established " by a Society. It musi be establis/ied 
 to get its position recognised in a Society ; but it can never be confined to such 
 a cult, for this is specific and nmst vary. There is certain, therefore, to arise 
 a conflict between the Religion and the Institution, owing to the perpetual 
 necessity for adjusting the whole truth to a partial realisation of it. Hence the 
 endless problem of "the relation of Church and State" — endless, because the 
 State is progressively realising itself, whereas the Religion of the Church is a 
 universal Religion of the Spirit, the same for ever and everywhere. The establish- 
 ment of this Religion in a Society, while it is a necessity (since it must take 
 root in a Society to live at all), is at best a standing alliance of incompatibles. 
 The alliance may be maintained with varying degrees of success, but the incom- 
 patibility is there all the while, and is sure to come out as the development of 
 the lelationship between the two proceeds. Then the incompatibility will 
 appear as an open conflict of authority between the claims of the Spirit to 
 eternal recognition and the claims of the State to temporal power. In such 
 a conflict sometimes the former will carry the day, as happened in the Scottish 
 Church in 1843 ; sometimes the latter, as took place in the same Church in 
 1904. In principle, the conflict between Church and State in the sphere of 
 historical organisation is precisely the same as that between "spirit" and 
 " letter " in the sphere of Doctrine, 
 
342 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ch. 
 
 achieved, not by a sacrifice of what is a part, but 
 by the surrender of the whole — the absolute giving 
 up of Spiritual Life to Spiritual Life, the absolute 
 sacrifice of Spiritual Individuality. But such a 
 sacrifice cannot be simply negative as in the former 
 cases. It is the conscious surrender of all because 
 of, and therefore in order to realise, the complete 
 union with all Spirit. To give up Spirit to Spirit, 
 the eternal to the eternal, is still to be Spirit 
 absolutely. The sacrifice is not annihilation but 
 achievement ; not destruction and defeat, but 
 triumph — triumph, not merely over the limitations 
 of "nature" (Death), but over the very limitations 
 of Spiritual Individuality. To give up Spirit is 
 thus a supreme accomplishment of the Life of 
 Spirit, the triumphal end of Faith, the joyful act 
 of Love, the absolute realisation of Hope. Hence 
 it is the supreme sacrifice of human history. As 
 such, its completeness is acknowledged to have 
 been accomplished by one Spirit — the founder of 
 a Religion of the Spirit, Christ. It is maintained 
 that to do this as a historical fact, is to do it once 
 for all, for all men. And, being done, it is held to 
 ensure the triumph of Spirit in the history of the 
 human race. It "saves" man's Spirit from the 
 ruin of nature and the negations of moral evil — it 
 " redeems " mankind from all his finitude.^ 
 These We must not suppose that these three forms 
 
 ph^M of of Religion are merely historically apart.^ We may 
 Religion flnd expressions of the higher forms in the lower, 
 another, and we do find the lower forms coexisting with 
 
 ' To work out this in detail is impossible here. The above is merely a 
 partial outline of the life of Spiritual or Revealed Religion. 
 "^ See p. 321, note. 
 
X CONTEMPLATION 343 
 
 and appearing in the higher. Thus while religious 
 life in Western Europe is ostensibly "Christian," 
 i.e. Religion of the Spirit, in point of fact much of 
 it, perhaps the greater part of it, is in actual experi- 
 ence Religion of Nature, or at most Religion of the 
 Moral Order. ^ The religious life in the Spirit is 
 only realised in very few individuals, and by the 
 remainder is frankly looked on as an "ideal," to be 
 aimed at rather than actually fulfilled. Still, even 
 if it is looked on as an ideal, it is of profound 
 significance. For the cult of Spiritual Religion has 
 enormous value in the history of religious life, if 
 only as a way of ever keeping before the religious 
 mind what is its highest achievement, and of train- 
 ing the worshipper up to that individual self- 
 abandonment to the life of Spirit, which is man's 
 supreme achievement on earth. 
 
 In conclusion, it remains to be added that while Contem- 
 Religion is certainly the most general way in which ^ **'°°' 
 Absolute Spirit is realised in experience, it is not 
 the only form in which its nature can be revealed. 
 The Life of Spirit for its own sake. Spirit self- 
 complete and self-contained, is experienced, though 
 doubtless by a limited number of mankind, in the 
 mood of Contemplation, Philosophical or Artistic. 
 There are some few elect Spirits to whom the 
 activity of voi^crt? vo^o-eo)? is the way to the Eternal 
 rather than the life of religious Love. There are 
 also some for whom Spirit greets Spirit through the 
 harmonies of sense more readily than by either 
 Religion or Philosophy. With these, however, we 
 
 1 The reason of this is doubtless to be found in the limited outlook of the 
 general mind. It wants to see definite results, specific acts, "something 
 done." The State and Family come home to the individual with greater 
 fulness of reality than the wider life of an " Absolute Spirit." 
 
344 PHILOSOPHY ch.x 
 
 shall not deal here. Within the limits we have set 
 ourselves we seem justified in confining our attention 
 to the most prominent and historically the most 
 universal mode in which the "typical individual," 
 whose experience we have been considering, realises 
 the life of Absolute Spirit. That mode is un- 
 doubtedly Religion. Contemplation does not realise 
 complete experience in the same way as Religion, 
 nor is Artistic Activity the same in character or form 
 as Philosophy. For the reason indicated, however, 
 we need not deal here with those ways of realising 
 Absolute Spirit.^ Suffice it to say that in Contem- 
 plation as well as in Religion we have the realisa- 
 tion of a spiritual world complete and self-contained, 
 where man's spirit works with a sense of freedom 
 only possible when it is consciously one with the 
 very life of Absolute Spirit. Hence the claim of 
 knowledge to attain to Absolute Knowledge or 
 Philosophy is in itself perfectly valid. Moreover, 
 it is necessary that this should be so : for it is by 
 Philosophy that all the processes of experience 
 (Religion among them) are constructed. The 
 development of experience as a Whole attains its 
 end in the realisation of that mode of experience 
 (Philosophy) by which all experience has been 
 evolved. The culmination of an Absolute Idealism 
 is the justification of the idealistic position itself, as 
 the ultimate form of knowledge.^ 
 
 * A discussion of part of the question — ^the distinction and relation of 
 Philosophy and Religion — will be found in the writer's previous volume (v. 
 Hegel's Logic, chap. xii. ) ^ 
 
 * This I have worked out in more detail in Hegel's Logic, chaps, vi. and vii. 
 
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