MASTER NEGATIVE NO. 91-80409 MICROFILMED 1991 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK a as part of the Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project" Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library' COP^'RIGHT NT The copyright law of the United States - Title 17, United States Code - concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material... Columbia University Library reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. \ U TH O BA\( FRMF-QT m mm m ■ ■■■■■ I m I H ■■■■■i ^tm^ I BELFORT TITLE: ROOTS OF REALITY; BEING ... PLACE: LONDON DA TE : 1907 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT filRFTOCRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record r-°~ ~ ; ' ._ 'ill B3232 Bax, Ernest Belfort, 185^1926. ■ The roots of reality ; being suggestions for a pbilosopk- ical reconstruction by Ernest Belfort Bax ... London; Jii. G. liichards, 1907. . ' 3 p. 1., ix-xi, 331 p. 21'°. 11 MS'Me!l?sm"ni"T?''"'','°'' ~,^- "^'.'^ P^°'''^"' °' consciousness.- •^ ■■ •n- ^n:ii} / Library of Congress 8-9057 Master Negative U Restrictions on Use: TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA REDUCTION RATIO:__iK5:^. FILM SIZE:_5^I^J^. IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA CM^-' IB JIB ^ DATE FILMED: iWlK^ INITI ALS^^^iSC HLMEDBY: RESEARCH' PUBLICATIONS. INC VVOODBRIDGE, CT c Association for information and image iManagement 1 1 00 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1 1 00 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 1111 12 3 4 5 iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiliMiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiniiiii 6 7 8 iliiiiliiiiliiiiliinl H 9 10 iiiliiiiliiiili 11 12 13 14 iiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiil 15 mm u I I I I I I I I I I I I I I TTT Inches 1.0 I.I 1.25 ■ to IS. ^ u 2.8 2.5 1.4 113.2 2.2 13.6 |4£ 2.0 1.8 1.6 MflNUFfiCTURED TO fillM STRNDPRDS BY RPPLIED IMfiGE, INC. V \\\ 3 Bin in th^ ffiittt of |Unr lJ INTRODUCTION 7 attained certain positions that may be regarded as rock bases. These indefeasible results, meagre as they may seem as compared with Results of those of physical science or with the philosophi- details of the philosophical systems ^^^l analysis, that have in some cases illuminated and in some cases obscured them, form foundations, never- theless, on which future thinkers may build. Before proceeding to discuss them, and even at the risk of their not being fully understood at this stage by the reader unversed in these studies, we give them here in brief: — 1. That reality is synonymous with conscious experience possible or actual, that every real is essentially object of consciousness, and that the words ''existence" and "reality" have no mean- ing except as connoting the content of a possible experience — this is, stated in a sentence, the position of Modern Idealism, which is that of philosophy or metaphysic, properly so called. 2. The self-consistency of consciousness as a whole constitutes the ultimate test of truth. This is somewhat clumsily expressed by Herbert Spencer (whose general position is not that of what we here term Modern Idealism) in his well-known formula of "the inconceivability of the opposite." The formula itself may be open to criticism, but in substance it expresses the unimpeachable doctrine as to the test of truth which necessarily follows from the main position of Idealism, as Idealism is understood in the 8 THE ROOTS OF REALITY present day. If reality is co-equal in extension with consciousness potential and actual, being nothing more than consciousness considered from the point of view of content, in a word, nothing more than the what-ness of consciousness, it is plain that truth, which is the formulation of reality in abstract thought, must have as its test its inseparability from the fundamental conditions of consciousness as a whole. These two posi- tions may, it seems to me, be regarded as im- pregnable. 3. An analysis of consciousness discloses that every concrete experience or reality cannot be analysed into less than two elements correspond- ing generally to the Aristotelian distinctions of matter and form, potentiality and actuality, and that in the union or synthesis of these two ele- ments reality or objectivity alone consists. These alternate two elements I here identify with the alogical and the logical. Apart from their syn- thesis, these elements do not exist at all as reality, but merely as distinguished and repro- duced in reflective thought, or, in other words, as abstract notions. 4. That reality in its ultimate expression im- plies a totality of all possible relations of experi- ence, but that the term as commonly used simply means a totality within certain limits, i.e, a rela- tive totality. To these four positions the present writer would be disposed to add the method of contra- 1 INTRODUCTION 9 diction, or Dialectic, if not precisely in the shape it takes in the Hegelian system, yet none the less in a modified form. This latter point, how- ever, would admittedly be disputed by many modern thinkers who otherwise accept the main speculative positions as here given. a. \ m, mm l>i«H>Wn 1.0 li 8 THE ROOTS OF REALITY present day. If reality is co-equal in extension with consciousness potential and actual, being nothing more than consciousness considered from the point of view of content, in a word, nothing more than the wkat-ness of consciousness, it is plain that truth, which is the formulation of reality in abstract thought, must have as its test its inseparability from the fundamental conditions of consciousness as a whole. These two posi- tions may, it seems to me, be regarded as im- pregnable. 3. An analysis of consciousness discloses that every concrete experience or reality cannot be analysed into less than two elements correspond- ing generally to the Aristotelian distinctions of matter and form, potentiality and actuality, and that in the union or synthesis of these two ele- ments reality or objectivity alone consists. These alternate two elements I here identify with the alogical and the logical. Apart from their syn- thesis, these elements do not exist at all as reality, but merely as distinguished and repro- duced in reflective thought, or, in other words, as abstract notions. 4. That reality in its ultimate expression im- plies a totality of all possible relations of experi- ence, but that the term as commonly used simply means a totality within certain limits, i,e, a rela- tive totality. To these four positions the present writer would be disposed to add the method of contra- INTRODUCTION 9 diction, or Dialectic, if not precisely in the shape it takes in the Hegelian system, yet none the less in a modified form. This latter point, how- ever, would admittedly be disputed by many modern thinkers who otherwise accept the main speculative positions as here given. S UttfttM** MUi!lL^*r^. ul'jAu^hib Amt^j PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS ii CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS All science, all explanation, nay, all knowledge whatever, consists in the bringing of a content under a new unity, particularity under universality. Every unification of this kind constitutes what is called an apperception or an apperceptive syn- thesis of knowing, and every " knowing " implies a synthesis. Science is simply a continuation of the same process as common-sense experience on a higher plane, the bringing of particular contents under new unifications. The more comprehensive the unifying thought-form, the higher the point of view as science. This pro- cess is also termed categorisation, since every apperception necessarily means the reduction of the particularity of the given under the thought- form or category.' The sensible impressions immediately given me at the present moment of a certam hardness or resistance, a certain xo ?^i'^7^T'"'T^^'^^ ^'°^'''°' J""^^^ Ward, seem inclined to reserve the word "category" for categories in the Kantian I:n:^^'e*ir :f;'''"'°T ^^^'^"^ ^°"'"'"'- or -co^r ZT ffi ^' "'^' ^ibstance, &c. I cannot see, however any sufficent grounds for limiting the use of the word in th^ ] K *^• limitation in space of this resistance, conjoined to visible extension and colour, with their corre- sponding limitation in space (such limitation in both cases being termed shape or jheapper- figure), are in common experience, eeptive with its practical ends, reduced by synthesis, me under a particular category or apperception, as "writing-desk," for instance. I further identify this synthesis of qualities under the category of " wooden object." Becoming more scientific and overleaping intermediate steps, I still further apperceive the desk as wooden object under a wider category of objects possessing certain chemical properties, to wit, under the category of organic matter. Thus is my knowledge of the desk enlarged. Yet, again, the organic matter, of which the desk is a particular instance, is apperceived by me under the category of matter-in-general, that is, resistant extension or a ** somewhat" occupying space. In physical science this process of the reduc- tion of the manifold to unity reaches its highest point in the bringing of the world of objects making up the content of space and time, under the generalisation matter-in-motion. Recently it has been sought to simplify still further the dual generalisation matter-in-motion by a re- course to the conception of force or to the notion of ether as the root-category in physics. The hypothetical spacial unit of matter, the atom, is conceived by most modern physicists either as 12 THE ROOTS OF REALITY a force-centre or as a focus of vibrations, or, again, as ether-stress, that is, a local concentration of ether. These ultimate physical hypotheses only concern us here as illustrating the direction to- wards which the highest generalisation of science inevitably tends. But the highest possible or conceivable unification arrived at by physical science is not all-embracing. By its very nature physical science, in all its generalisations, from the lowest to the highest, tacitly assumes some- thing which, whilst it is presupposed by these generalisations, is not included in them. Hence The most ^^^ ^^ physical science can never come exhaustive the most exhaustive category of all catefiTOPv. c • . , bcience cannot give us that most comprehensive view of the world which the widest category in its system of articulations should open up to us. This highest and most comprehensive point of view, which science no less than empirical consciousness (common-sense) presupposes, while ignoring it in its judgments, is consciousness as sucL In the last resort, all the objects of science, no less than of *^ common- sense," together with the judgments to which they give rise, are determinations of conscious- ness, possible or actual. In other words, they pre- suppose an apperceiving ego or subjecl at one end, and a somewhat apperceived at the other. When closely viewed, this somewhat discloses itself in the last resort as nothing but a modification of the aforesaid apperceiving ego or subject itself. V PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 13 Now, the totality of the processes of apper- ceiving and apperceived, subject and object, is included under the term consciousness. Con- sciousness may be actual or may be potential merely. In common language it is generally used in the former sense as opposed to the ** unconscious." As a matter of fact, conscious- ness, as concrete, that is, as reality or experience, is a synthesis of potential and actual elements, as we have said.^ It is sufficient here to recognise the truth that the highest, the supreme generali- sation under which all things can be brought, is expressed in the term consciousness, regarded per se. The recognition of this fact does not imply any slur on the terms in which science ultimately unifies all things from its point of view. The claim of philosophy, the branch of human knowledge dealing with the world from the point of view of, and in terms of, conscious- ness as above defined, is not that the formulation of science is wrong as far as it goes, philosophy but merely that the terms under which not bad it formulates reality are not ultimate, science, unimpeachable as they may be within the pur- view of physical science itself, as well as from the standpoint of ordinary experience. Philosophy must not be regarded as science gone wrong. Its method, aim, and subject-matter are radically other than those of science. There is a story ^ In this sense, the unconscious itself belongs to the unity or universe of consciousness — it is the /^/^^//a/Zy conscious (see p. lo). \ 14 THE ROOTS OF REALITY told of a contested election in the old bribery days. Two rival candidates on the eve of the poll were entertaining the electors with the best of their cellars. Port and sherry, we should mention, were then the only wines known to the average Englishman. One of the candidates, finding that his port was becoming exhausted, furnished the constituents with a very fine old Chiteau Lafitte, but this cost him the election, the voters declaring that they would have nothing more to do with a man who fobbed them off with sour port. Men of science, like Hackel, are only too fond of denouncing the methods and results of philosophy as though it were a kind of sour science, and not, as it really is, an altogether different "discipline," as regards which the conventional criticisms of the man of science are as irrelevant and as pointless as the free and independent electors* criticism of the excellent Chiteau Lafitte offered them by their would-be representative. Philosophy maintains that its own outlook, from which the world is viewed as a system of articulations of consciousness-in-general, although it includes that of science, nevertheless differs from it inasmuch as it transcends it, since it is the most comprehensive aspect from which the world can be regarded. *'The world is my presentment" {''Die Welt istmeine Vorstellung'\ says Schopenhauer, at the opening of his Welt als Wille. This is another way of expressing II PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 15 in a few words that the idealist position, in the wider sense of the term, is the one to which the thinker is forced who is not content to rest satisfied with half-thoughts, but who presses forward to a coherent and self-consistent grasp of what we call reality. In addition to what has been above said, it may be desirable in the interests of the reader unversed in these matters to explain once more the sense in which the term Consciousness is employed in philosophic writing. As commonly understood. Consciousness is regarded as the attribute of the individual. Each individual mind is supposed to have its own consciousness over against other individual minds and the world without. But Consciousness, in a philosophical sense, does not mean consciousness conceived as appertaining to this or that individual, which at best constitutes the subject-matter of empiri- cal psychology, but consciousness considered in its essential nature. This is what is meant by consciousness-in-general, or consciousness as such. To say that the whole system of things stands or falls with your, or with my, individual consciousness or psyche (the position of Solipsism), is a palpable absurdity. The ** world" is plainly not '*my presentment" in this sense, nor is it yours. But notwithstanding this, on analysing this ** world," we fail to find that it consists of anything else than a system of facts or, in other words, of possible or actual experiences; and j ^ i6 THE ROOTS OF REALITY experience is only another name for consciousness, as above defined. Hence, although it is absurd to regard reality as exhausted within Conscious^ ^^^ limits of any personal conscious- ness in ness or individual mental experience, ?^it!!i^ • nevertheless, since it is a system of experienced facts and of mferences or judgments from those facts, in short, a system of sensations or feltnesses knit together by thoughts, it is nothing else than, as we have said, a system of affections of consciousness. The non-philosophical reader will say : ** But is not consciousness always particular, always in- dividual?'' In one sense, yes; in another sense, no. Unreflective experience, common-sense as it is termed, itself automatically draws the dis- tinction between those thoughts and feelings that are special to itself, the content and products of one's own mind, and those that constitute reality, independent of the individual's own mind, or, as it is the current fashion to say, those that have an *' objective reference " attaching to them. But common-sense so called, as philosophy shows, falsely ascribes the elements of reality, implicitly or explicitly, to something independent of con- sciousness altogether. The crux of the problem. ^^^ philosophical problem, therefore, may be stated as being the existence within consciousness of a universal and neces- sary element, and the further existence within consciousness of an element apparently foreign I PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 17 to itself, an object as opposed to itself as subject, which element again discloses itself, on analysis, as the subject's own negative determination} The relation of consciousness-in-particular, which concerns the individual mind, to consciousness- in-general, which concerns the system of things, or reality, is the sempiternal mystery, to find an adequate formula for which has been the constantly recurring pre-occupation of philosophy in its wider issues from Plato downwards. The most elaborate of these attempts is undoubtedly the philosophy of Hegel himself, the culmination of the great German philosophical movement taking its rise in Kant. From the foregoing it will be evident how mistaken is the notion of some scientific thinkers that there is any necessary opposition between the conclusions of science and those of metaphysic, using the latter word in its true Aristotelian sense. The standpoint of science is inevitably materialistic, and a scientific or '' cosmic " philo- sophy, that is, an attempted solution of the world- problem on the basis of physical science, will be successful and convincing precisely in proportion to the thoroughness with which the materialistic position is adhered to. The philosopher ptir sang, i,e, the meta- physician, can accept all the conclusions of scientific Materialism in so far as it is not attempted to formulate them dogmatically as ^ Cf. Spinoza's " omnis determinatio est negatioP B i8 THE ROOTS OF REALITY absolute and exclusive. Yet none the less, the standpoint of philosophy is necessarily idealistic Philosophy ^^ ^^^ sense above explained. And as ultima inasmuch as philosophy's highest ratio. generalisations are presupposed in the conclusions of science, no less than in those of ordinary or common-sense experience, philosophy claims to have the last word in the solution of the world-problem, or, to put it otherwise, claims that its problem is the ultima ratio of the world-problem altogether. Metaphysic, ix, philosophy proper, it is almost needless to say, is not what it is popularly supposed to be, that is, is not mere speculation on things in general. It is an inquiry into the truest, the most comprehensive significance of reality. It reduces the world of our common-sense experience in its totality, no less than the same world as metamorphosed by scientific thought, to what is at once its most immediate and most ultimate expression, to wit, to a system of de- terminations of consciousness-in-general. In this way, the radicalness of the opposition between thought and thing is abolished. Were thought and thing utterly distinct from each other, as is commonly supposed, the world of philosophic thought would, of course, and thing. ^^ impossible, but so would be also the world of common-sense reality. A reality containing no thought-element would be unapprehensive, since every apperception II I PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 19 or general term is nothing but a form of thought. This is true from the lowest to the highest. To know a thing, whether in ordinary experience or in science, is the same as to define it under thought-forms or general concepts. All reality is object of either possible or actual knowledge, or it could not be spoken of. An unknown reality, a reality not an actual object of knowledge, may be spoken of, but certainly not an unknowable reality, a something that is not a possible object of knowledge. I do Reality as not mean to say that all knowledge external 4s primarily logical, for, as I shall °^J^^^- endeavour to show later on, undoubtedly the ^logical is not only an element, but a primary element, in all experience. An element, however, qua element, is not a reality, but an abstraction. Reality, as pointed out, necessarily implies a synthesis of at least two elements, and nothing short of reality can be content or object of con- sciousness, the two terms being, in fact, synony- mous. In ordinary consciousness — external perception — the ultimate elements of a reality or thing are an alogical feeling or sensation, and a logical form or category. What, for example, is meant by the terms we use to express the objects of ordinary consciousness — *' table," ** house,'* ** tree," &c. ? We affirm a thing to be a ** table" by virtue of connecting in thought certain sensations under certain universal forms or categories. Its reality as ** table" involves at 20 THE ROOTS OF REALITY once its distinction from other realities that are not "table," and its relational identification with certain other realities or objects under certain universal concepts common to all ob- jects. The empiricists of the Associational school, like the scholastic nominalists, are fond of dilating on the fact that the repeated experience of a par- ticular object builds up in the individual mind the universal notion of the object in question. This may be quite true if it be meant that the individual mind becomes aware of the fact that an object is what it is through reflection on experience, and that it is thus enabled to abstract in reflective thought the universal concept from the object. But this does not prevent this universal concept from forming part of the object in the original perception of it. The thought- element or concept-relation which the mind abstracts, is originally there to be abstracted. All that Empiricism, therefore, has to teach us in this connection resolves itself into the truism that the abstract concept of reflection, or, to apply the scholastic phrase, consciousness in its Pepception "second intention," cannot be identi- and fied precisely with the same concept reflection. ^3 element of the concrete world, or as entering into consciousness in its '' first- intention," to wit, as in the original perception. The universal and necessary element which all reality, all objectivity, involves, is clearly thought PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 21 into the object. Yet although thought into the object, it is as clearly not thought into it by the individual mind, since the latter finds it already there in the object as perceived. If we take it away from the object, the object ceases to be object. In ordinary perception, the individual mind finds the category imbedded in the object presented to it. Now, as to the second element. In an ordinary perception of our common-sense consciousness, if per impossibile we abstract from the thing, the table, tree, or house, all the special categories under which it is apperceived, up to those that are involved in the nature of every object, such as substantiality, causal connection with the universe of objects, &c., we shall find that all that remains over is divers modes of feltness, to wit, the sense-impressions we term cgj^gg. the primary and secondary qualities residuum of matter. Once the universal and pnabstpae- , . I , . tionof necessary element m the synthesis, thought the element of thought-forms, of cate- element, gories, is gone, the reality, the object, has van- ished, leaving the captU mortuum blind sensation or feltness in its place. The formal, the logical element, in the synthesis under which the alogical feltness ^ was apperceived is thus seen to be as ^ I prefer the word " fehness " as representing the sense-element in the object apperceived, since the word " feeling " seems to have too subjective a savour in the psychological sense. Moreover, there is a tendency nowadays to confine it to those personal feelings involving a pleasure-pain reference. 22 THE ROOTS OF REALITY essential an element in the concrete object as the feltness itself. The element of feltness in the object represents the passive and particular side in the primary conscious synthesis, the concept- form represents the active and universal side. The first appears as the contingent, the second as the necessary, element. Further, the felt- ness is primary and immediate in consciousness, while the apperceiving thought is secondary and mediate. Thought presupposes the sense-element as its substratum, its Aristotelian *' first matter." The relations that thought strikes out, are struck out of feltness. Thought reduces the inchoate feltness to definiteness by bringing it under an apperceptive unity. But the form of apper- ception, the concept-form, is always universal, from its highest to its lowest determinations. Universal ^^^ example, the very specialised con- and cept ** Northampton shoemaker" is particular. ^^ i^gg universal than the supremely general concept "pure being," familiar to us in Porphyry's ''tree." From ''being" /^r ^^, that is, " pure being," to " being " as differentiated in the concept " Northampton shoemaker " is a far cry, but in its lowest specialised shape, no less than in its most highly generalised, the concept- form remains equally universal. It is never particular. It has no thisness accruing to it. Another peculiarity of the concept-form is that it is outside number. It ^^-notes a possible PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 23 infinity of particulars, which is tantamount to say- ing that it has no rf(?-notation. Its significance is purely ^^;^-notative.^ Hence it is that the concept- form never touches the thisness of the object. The latter is always distinguished from it as immediate feltness, as its raw material. Thus the logical, or thought /^r^^, is exclusively universal, and never touches the par- ticular at any point. For this reason, language, the empirical sign of thought, can never express anything except through logical universals. The very this of language, like its here and its now^ is necessarily universalised. It has passed through the mill of thought, and has therefore become, as Hegel long ago pointed out in the opening to the Phdnomenologie (pp. 73-80), any thisy any here, and any now. In other words, it has been universalised by the action of reflective thought, and thereby been turned into ^^^ logical a psychological notion. The true this- and the ness or particularity, having thus been ^^^srieal. mediatised by reflective thought, has ceased to be its original self. The true this cannot be ex- pressed in thought or language. It is essenti- ally immediacy, and when mediatised disappears, leaving behind it a mere simulacrum of its former 1 This distinguishes the true concept-form, the true logical universal, from what may be called a false general concept, de- noting a definite congeries of particulars ; for instance, the name of a committee standing for an assignable number of definite persons. This false general concept has no connotation, but merely a denotation. 24 THE ROOTS OF REALITY self. This is at basis the gulf that always sepa- rates thinking from being, or thought from felt- ness. I am here speaking of the abstract thought of the reflecting mind. The mere remembered image has, of course, its own existence as a mental image, even though it has no existence in space in the sense in which the object remembered had existence. The element of feltness which enters into every determinate consciousness is always antithetical to the thought-form. The one is the foundation of the particular, the other of the universal. The one is through and through alogical, the other through and through logical. Yet these two elements, the material, the sense- particular, and the formal, the thought-universal, antithetical though they be, have a common root and presupposition, to wit, the potentiality of all consciousness expressed in the term ** I " (<' ego "), the fathomless "that which," whence all conscious experience, possible and actual, arises, and into which it returns. This ultimate subject of all knowledge and knowability, though always be- coming ^object through its primary negation, felt- ness, and its reaction thereupon, thought, yet is never exhausted in the object {i,e, in the syn- thesis of its sensation and thought), but always maintains itself as the centre in a process out of which these elements well up, and into which they return. Here we come to an important point. In the primary synthesis of consciousness as such, in ■\ PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 25 the ultimate apperceptive unity of knowing per scy we can distinguish, as already pointed out, three elements — (i) a '' Ihat which'' _, , an 'M, feeling or sensating ; (2) mopdial a somewhat felt; ix) a reacting: of conscious 1 - 11 1 synthesis, the former on the latter, termed thought. This last, the logical process of defin- ing, that is, of at once distinguishing and connecting, completes the primary synthesis, implied in the countless subordinate syntheses constituting the woof of experience. Now, in orthodox Hegelianism, represented in England by the late Professor T. H. Green, Mr. Hal- dane, and others, what is called the objective reference, that is, the determination of feltness as independent object accrues solely to the third, the formal, element, that of thought, or logical determination. That the definiteness of the reference is logical is, of course, clear ; but is it not primarily contained in the mere blind alogical feltness — what Fichte termed the *' Anstoss "? In that negative element within the subject of consciousness itself, do we not find the very condition of the determinate objec- tive reference of thought, the original opposition within the subject itself.** Is it not the opposi- tion between the feeling self and the feltness that confronts it as its negation or limitation? The answer to this question given by the school referred to, namely, that out of thought alone is reality constructed, is connected with a wide- I Pallogism. 26 THE ROOTS OF REALITY spread tendency, hitherto dominant in speculation more or less from Plato downwards, to hold that the concept-form, or at least thought as relating activity (of which the concept-form is regarded as the product), is absolute.' In Plato we have the classical expression of the hypostatisation of the concept-form per se, in Aristotle and Hegel that of the activity generating it. This way of re- garding the primary synthesis of consciousness, and hence the complex of reality which is its content, I term Pallogism.' It reappears in various thmkers who have concerned themselves with constructive metaphysic, or theory of knowledge. We find it in the more constructive schoolmen as well as in Spinoza, and considerable traces of It m Kant. In the vov^ ttoi^tiko^ of Aristotle Hegel saw with justice an adumbration of his own theory of the ^^/dee^ which is also nothing else than the hypostatisation of the relating acti- vity of thought.^ The subject, as the presupposition of this reality, Hegel rejected as a relic of the thing-in- itself, treating it as a mere product of thought- activity. With him the ego was a function of thought, and not thought a function of the ego. May we not surely regard the formalism of which eisnf"1oT" ""^ "^^^^^ ^^^^ "^^d the less elegant form "panlo- ^ism to express the same idea. / metaphysical element of a concrete as though it were itself an / independent concrete, i.e. a reality /.r ... ^ PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 27 the Hegelian system bears the impress, and which led to its collapse, as the Nemesis brought upon him by this very hypostasis of thought ? That the apperceptive activity of thought is a necessary element in all conscious experience is plain, but it is quite the reverse of plain that this thought- activity is itself the root-principle of the conscious synthesis. But this assumption, that thought itself constitutes the totality of all things, had become so deeply ingrained in modern specula- tion, that until quite recently to attack it was like desecrating the holy of holies of metaphysic. Yet it amounts to nothing less than the assertion that in the last resort the world of reality is nought but a mere system of thought-forms sub- sisting, so to say, in vacuo. All that is not form, all that is not logical, is ignored or declared to be absorbed in the final synthesis of thought. Viewing the question from another standpoint, the moment of conscious immediacy, the actual, is similarly regarded by this school of thinkers as the only valid element in the synthesis. Yet why this mere moment of immediate apprehension, the mere\ surface of consciousness, should be of such transcendent significance over the infinity of implications it connotes— in a word, over the potential element in which it is imbedded — is ^ never demonstrated, although it is assumed. Why is that vanishing moment, the actual, regarded as absorbing the potential, and as the ultimate factor of all reality ? In every concrete conscious- 28 THE ROOTS OF REALITY ness the vanishing moment is surely the least important factor. The mere look, the actual awareness of any object of external perception, is simply the sign or indication of an indefinite number of potentialities behind the mere present appearance, that is, of elements that are outside actual consciousness. When we consider the conditions of know- ledge rather than its object, a corresponding result of the analysis discloses itself. The sub- ject which knows or is conscious— which consti- tutes its own determinations into a world of objects— knows itself under the form of individua- tion, that is, as a memory-synthesis within which It contmuously becomes realised. This is the self-object, the individual mind or soul of psycho- logy, sometimes termed the - empirical ego." But It may be said that the subject of knowledge is merely a name for the universal element in expe- rience, just as the sense-factor, the feltness therein constitutes the particular element. It may be said that they are correlative, and that neither is more fundamental than the other. My reply to this IS that the categorised feltnesses constituting Pure "ego "^^^ ^^^l^^ of perception, that is, the versjisem- world of common-sense reality, pre- "ego." suppose a subject of consciousness, of Auu u u ^^^y ""'^ ^^^ determinations. Although a bare ego, undetermined even as mere feltness, a subject without object, may be unima- ginable, it IS not therefore self-contradictory and i PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 29 absurd, as is the notion of a bare object cut off from a subject — in a word, a system of con- cious determinations out of relation to any fkal of which they are the determinations. The object is always reducible to an affection of the subject. On the other hand, a conscious subject does not presuppose its own object in the same sense, although it may be quite true that it is unimaginable without object.^ It is clear, then, that the potentiality of consciousness-in-general, which we term Subject or ''pure ego," is not on precisely the same level with its own actualised expression, the object-world. It has a pre- suppositional value, a genetic priority, over the latter. This relation is reproduced within the object-world itself as the infinity of implications contained within this world, in contradistinction to its actuality as perceived, its mere superficial appearance as isolated phenomenon. It is this potential element in the object, its '* permanent possibilities of sensation," to adapt Mill's well- known phrase to a somewhat extended meaning, by virtue of which we intuitively postulate it as a somewhat existing independently of our individual consciousness with its particular acts of percep- tion. Modern Idealism shows us, indeed, that it does not exist apart from ourselves in the sense of apart from that ultimate element in ourselves, the Subject which all knowing presupposes, but 1 We are of course in no way concerned here with the mate- rialistic conclusions of science, legitimate in their own sphere. 30 THE ROOTS OF REALITY that it does nevertheless obtain independently of ourselves as concrete individual minds, that is, apart from the particular memory-synthesis that knits together our experience as a particular whole in time, as "mine" as opposed to ** thine" his." or But if the world resolve itself on analysis into a system of presentments or determinations of a Subject-in-general, the '* I " of self-reference, as it is termed, it follows that this latter assumes the place of a materia prima of consciousness, of which the world of reality is the form. All that exists is referable to this one root, whilst the Subject is not referable to aught beyond itself This ultimate postulate, this ground of all feeling, willing, and thinking, is yet never exhausted in feeling, willing, and thinking, but always main- tains itself as the radiating centre from which these elements of sensation, self-activity, and thought, come, and to which they return. The primary sense-element is related to the subject of con- Ultimate sciousness in a double manner. Firstly, factors of it is related as the mere negation of enee.''^" ^^^ subject, the '' Anstoss'' of Fichte ; secondly, this self-negation is at once distinguished from, and related to, the Subject under certain thought-forms and the sense-forms of time and space, as a connected system of pos- sible and actual feltness, that is, as object-world. In these three terms or momenta— (i) the ab- stract ** r' of self-reference, or subject-in-general ; PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 31 (2) the bare object as such, the mere antithesis within itself of the subject ; (3) the at once dis- tinguishing and unifying action of thought-activity integrating the inchoate feltness, the bare object, as a system or world — in these three terms we have the framework of the trichotomy or dialectic that Hegel attempted to formulate in his own way. It is not our intention in the present work to discuss the question of the special categories that help to make reality what it is. This is a topic upon which much has been, and may be, written on various lines. It is sufficient for our purpose here to point out once more that, of the salient categories of objectivity, viz. substance, cause, and reciprocal action, the last named is pre-eminently the working category at once of the higher sciences and of philosophic thought. The one- sided determination expressed by the thought- form called ** cause-and-effect " inevitably yields when a given department of reality is viewed from a more comprehensive standpoint, to the thought- form called **mutual-determination." The principle of individuation or particularity, and therewith of number, first arises within the object-world inte- grated by thought as a connected universe. The " world " displays itself as numerical infinity. As opposed to this, consciousness-in-general acquires in the individual mind, in the ** object of the internal sense," as Kant terms it, a numerical unity antithetical to this numerical infinity. But it is a pseudo-unity only, in the sense that it is ): 32 THE ROOTS OF REALITY not an absolute unity like the primary Subject, which is conscious of it, just as it is conscious of other objects. There is, moreover, another differ- ence. The world of external objects as content of experience is given immediately as a plurality. My personality or individual mind, on the con- trary, is only indirectly given, as a unit. The immediate apperception of ;;y/^^^ as this and no other memory-synthesis, gives colour to the notion that my individual mind is absolute, and hence, to the time-honoured fallacy of the subjective idealist — Solipsism. But thought revolts against such an assumption as inconsistent with its appercep- tion of the world-system as a whole. It thereby reduces the memory-synthesis or personality, the myself, from the rank of an absolute unity to that of a relative unit, in fact, in one sense to the level of external objects in space, as being a particular sensible, representative of a logical universal, a class or kind, namely, *' minds " or ** personalities." Myself as personality or memory-synthesis is an object, ix. a particular determination of conscious- ness-in-general, just as much as any external object in space. But this psychological object, Kant's " object of the internal sense," in that it is identified in its immediacy with the subject of consciousness-in-general, is unique in its char- acter. The phrase ** I am self-conscious " simply indicates the immediate identification of the Sub- ject of consciousness-in-general with this my par- ticular memory-synthesis, here and now, as object. PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 33 In the consciousness of external objects no such identification is made. In external percep- tion, in common-sense experience, we have a more or less definite unity of possible or actual feltnesses as terms knit together by thought- forms. Such is what we term the external universe. The relations of this same external universe are reproduced in the memory-synthesis of the individual mind as abstract psychological concepts. This fact that objective thought-rela- tions, when reproduced as abstract mental con- cepts within an individual memory-synthesis, are no longer the same as they were in their other capacity as entering into the synthesis of the real world — in other words, as immediate deter- minations of the Subject of consciousness-in- general — has led to the confusion of which Empiricism is guilty, of regarding thought and thing, knowing mind and known world, as radi- cally disparate entities or (if one will) '' series of phenomena." Modern Idealism dis- sipates this confusion in showing that ^^^j^^sions mental and material facts are **cut out Assoeia- of one block," that thinzs are but ^^?.^^\ SCnOOl sense-modifications of consciousness brought into unity in a system of apperceptive syntheses, and that ideas in the mind are but these same apperceptive syntheses reproduced at second-hand, in abstracto, by reflection. But both alike are modifications of conscious ex- perience. That the abstract notion is not the c 34 THE ROOTS OF REALITY same as the corresponding thought-form as entering into the original apprehension of reality, that the one cannot take the place of the other, is obvious, but on their essential identity rests the possibility of our primary concrete consciousness no less than the ** ideas" which the reflective consciousness of the in- dividual abstracts therefrom, and which are so scornfully opposed to ** things," alike by the common-sense Philistine and the empirical philo- sopher. From this it will be clear that philosophy does not impose mental figments on reality, or mistake them for reality. It simply analyses concrete consciousness, or reality as given, and presents the results of this analysis, the elements of which reality is composed, in the form of abstract notions. It is at the point of self-consciousness that the Subject as the eternal possibility of knowing, and the Object, as the eternal possibility of the known, coalesce, and thus proclaim their essential unity. The difficulty of the ordinary man in understanding that reality is nothing else than a system of related impressions of consciousness- in-general, of which his memory-synthesis is simply the temporary determination — the notion he has that his mind truly apprehends a reality subsisting per se — rests upon his inability to grasp the cardinal distinction just indicated. He fails to distinguish between the mental world on the one hand, that is, the sum of thoughts and ?. ; PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 35 feelings knit together by memory and called mind, and, on the other hand, the subject or *' I " to which this mind-object is re- ferred together with all other objects. SbSand Alike the *' mental world" of reflec- personal tion and memory and the ** material ®^°' world" of direct perception are parts of the experience of this latter, i,e, the '' I " of Kant*s "original unity of apperception," termed here the Subject of consciousness-in-general. The assumption of a world outside myself, in the last resort, means nothing but the ascription of a certain section of my sensations to a universal element in my consciousness valid for all alike, that is, an element not peculiar to myself as individual, as is the play of my personal thoughts and feelings, which are given in the synthesis, and which I recognise as belonging exclusively to me and to no one else. We will now sum up the foregoing argument. The central truth that metaphysic has estab- lished is that reality is nothing but a system of modifications of consciousness possible and actual. When we talk of the real world, what we mean is the related and articulated system of these modifications. To speak of an exist- ence that does not belong to the system of consciousness is a self-contradiction — a meaning- less absurdity. On analysis then, as already stated, the primary form of the unity of con- sciousness presupposed in all its modifications 36 THE ROOTS OF REALITY implies three elements— (i) an ^*I" as subject which feels ; (2) an opposing feltness, the nega- tion of this '' I " as such ; and (3) the reciprocal fixation of the feltness by the subject which feels, and conversely. The first two of these elements constitute respectively the possibility of appre- hending and the possibility of apprehendedness. We may term them the matter of consciousness. The third element, that of reciprocal relation, which we call thought, reason, or the logical, as form of consciousness, completes the" primary synthesis — ix, consciousness-in-general — the uni- versal synthesis which all more concrete modifi- cations presuppose. Such, and nothing else, is the ultimate nature of reality. The above synthesis is the eternal framework of reality, and when we postulate reality in any sense Kment whatever, this it is that we wittingly of eon- or unwittingly postulate. On close seiousness. jj^gp^^tjon this primordial synthesis resolves itself, stricdy speaking, into its primary element, as Fichte showed. Feltness is nothing but a modification of " I " as feeling, and thought is, again, nothing but the reaction of the that which feels upon the what of its feltness. That- ness means ultimately bare subject ; wkatnesSy bare object. The function of philosophy as metaphysic is to analyse the conditions of ex- perience, and in doing so it finds a synthetic process eternally passing through the same elements, which elements, though clearly dis- I PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 37 tinguishable in thought, never appear separate in fact. This primary synthesis, implied in all consciousness whatever, and discernible in the immediacy of every conscious moment, furnishes the mould or formula for all reality in its dynamic aspect, that is, for every real process of experience. Throughout the whole system of the universe we have the self-same elements recurring in a transformed guise. Hence the ultimate aim of philosophy is the tracing of these elements in every plane of reality, and their exposition in the forms of reflective thought. The attempt to do this was made by Hegel, but the result was vitiated, in part at least, by the assumption that the formal element, thought or the concept, was ultimate, and that the alogical elements in the real were finally resolv- able into thought-forms. This led necessarily to a hypostatisation of thought or the logical per se. Even time itself has no meaning except within the primordial synthesis of experience above spoken of, the triple momenta of which are eternally translating and re-translating them- selves as time-content. Here we have the true inwardness of causation and evolution. From this it follows that the highest point to which any science can be brought is where its subject- matter can be presented as a dialectical process, that is, where the elements of the original con- scious synthesis referred to are discerned as i 38 THE ROOTS OF REALITY transformed and translated in the various aspects of the real world, and are accurately expressed in the forms of abstract thought. This, though the highest ideal of scientific analysis, has not yet been fully realised in any department. The dialectical method, as it is called, con- tains many pitfalls for the unwary, and simpler if more superficial methods of treat- of the "^ent are in most cases all that we dialectical can aspire to. It is enough for the method. Z ^ ^ r 1 1 j -r present state 01 our knowledge if we never completely lose sight of the crucial truth that all evolution, all existence, the world and all that is therein, is a complex living and moving synthesis, but a synthesis which it may be the task of ages to adequately unravel, and present even as a relatively coherent formula- tion, in the terms of reflective thought. » CHAPTER II MODERN IDEALISM The great achievement of the German classical philosophy from Kant to Hegel is the definite over- throw of the old materialist, spiritualist, ^^^^^^^ and dualist, standpoints respectively, position, by its having made clear once for all, the futility of attempting to explain conscious- ness by any system of its own modifications, by anything that lies within consciousness, an attempt resembling that of Baron Munchausen to pull himself out of the water by his own wig. This should be obvious, since these modifications necessarily themselves presuppose consciousness. All the three standpoints referred to involve the absurdity of subordinating consciousness as a whole to something less comprehensive than itself, to something that is itself a content of con- sciousness, such as physical substance, or mind, in the psychological sense, as particularised in the personality. The gist of the standpoint arrived at by Modern Idealism initiated in the Kant-Hegel movement, as we have seen in the last chapter, consists in the recognition of the fact that existence or reality must mean knowableness and known- 39 40 THE ROOTS OF REALITY ness — in other words, that it obtains only in and for conscious experience — a conscious experience not necessarily limited by any particular memory- synthesis or individual mind, but constituting the eternal possibility of the infinite number of memory-syntheses that co-exist with and succeed each other in the time-order. Now this general position, when conceded, opens up more than one controversial issue. In the first place, there is the question of Thlism.^^^'' ^^^^ ^s k^own as philosophic Theism. The hypothesis of philosophic, as distin- guished from popular, Theism, is that conscious- ness-in-general not merely obtains as a bare poten- tiality realisable in the infinity of individual minds, of whose consciousness it forms the basis, but is realised apart therefrom in a mind that over- shadows all such individual minds, a mind having at least a quasi-individual existence as personality in a manner independent of them. It is main- tained that only by participation in the conscious- ness of this individuo-universal mind is reality apprehended. On this theory two or three suf- ficiently pertinent criticisms may be made. If this divine mind be conceived pallogistically as hypostasis of thought-forms, and nevertheless in some undefined sense as a personality, as by the old Hegelian ^* right," it may be objected that all personality as such involves alogical as well as logical elements. '{Cf. Chapter III. on "The Logical and the Alogical.") A personal mind MODERN IDEALISM 41 composed of pure intelligibles would be a pure abstraction, and no mind at all. But, apart from this, the assumption in any form or shape of the absolute element at the basis of our consciousness obtaining under conditions fundamentally different from those known to us, remains an assumption merely, an assumption which could only be justified if it could be shown to be a necessary postulate involved in the self-consistency of conscious ex- perience as a whole. This, however, is surely not the case. All that the analysis of the condi- tions of our conscious experience discloses to us is that consciousness is realised primarily in a so- called ** external" world or material complex as reflected in a mind or mental complex. The things composing this external world are commonly called **real," a word which in popular discourse is used in contradistinction to the word "ideal," which is used for the feelings and thoughts exclusively pertaining to the mind. Now we submit that no analysis of the conditions of experience can discover this " divine mind " to us, if by a "divin' mind" we are to understand in this connection, an eternally concrete and actual self-consciousness. But apart from the pallogistic difficulty referred to above as regards such a self- consciousness, it is, we must again insist, impos- sible to show, not only that it is a necessary assumption, but that it is an assumption subserving any purpose of explanation whatsoever. It does not do so for the simple reason that an eternally w^»" 42 THE ROOTS OF REALITY MODERN IDEALISM 43 complete and yet personal consciousness must be just' as much independent of our consciousness as one individual mind is independent of another. Where you have concrete personality in whatever shape, you have the element of particularity in- troduced, that very element of individuation that separates one human mind from all others. The conception of one more personality distinct from mine, no matter how much wider and more magnificent the range of its personal conscious- ness might be, cannot possibly add anything to, or subtract anything from, the explanation of my personal consciousness here and now, or serve in any way to elucidate the processes of my con- sciousness. Consciousness-in-general is, qua the actual self-consciousness of the individual, merely potential, and in any other connection it cannot concern us as philosophers (however it may other- wise). The foregoing objection is, of itself, fatal to the claims of philosophical Theism even as a useful hypothesis in philosophic analysis, let alone as a necessary postulate of speculation. Such being the case, our only possible attitude with regard to the question must be the agnostic one. We have already repeatedly insisted upon the fact that all the apperceptive unifications called thought-forms presuppose two alogical factors — a feeling subject, and its oppositional feltness — as their matter or content. Now, with most specu- lative thinkers who have sought to elucidate the main issues of the metaphysical problem, the alogical element in experience is treated as merely an imperfection, a clumsy vehicle, of the logical. According to this view, the alogical, the matter of consciousness, is merely a negation and passing phase of the logical principle ^^^^^ ^^^ itself. The potentiality of the subject paiiogism. and of the blind feltness, which is at once the affirmation and limitation of the former, is equally absorbed and abolished in the logical categories that are necessary to its actualisation as reality (Hegel). The Platonic universalis^ ante rem is the earliest and crudest expression of \ this doctrine of Paiiogism, which would constitute the thought- form as reality. It is also traceable, though in an infinitely less crude form, in Plato's nominal antagonist Aristotle, and through his in- fluence in some of the more important of the Schoolmen. In modern time^ we find it in most of the synthetic thinkers, notably in Spinoza, with' whom, in spite of the initial assumptions of his system, the attribute of thought gradually acquires a position of exclusive predominance. But the man with whom the doctrine of Paiiogism is more intimately connected than with any other is un- doubtedly Hegel. He it was who, coming as the culmination of the line of speculation begin- ning with Kant, pushed the pallogistic position to its farthest extreme, and developed it in every department of philosophic thought, with a con- sistency and wealth of detail unapproached by any (( I 1 1 1 44 THE ROOTS OF REALITY thinker before him. The extreme Pallo^ism of the Hegelian position was met, even during Hegel's lifetime, by a counterblast from one who, like himself, belonged to the main stem of the Modern Idealism that dates from Kant, namely, Schopenhauer. The protagonist of modern Pessimism, whatever else he did, postulated an alogical principle— impulse or will— as the prius of consciousness, and therewith of the reality that is its product. For Schopenhauer, and metaphysicians influenced by him, the alogical is the presupposition of all things, and the logical merely the post-supposition. Herbart also from another point of view undoubtedly represents a reaction against the pallogistic formalism of the Hegelian system. It is to Hegel therefore, and to such followers of Hegel who, like the late Professor Thomas Hill Green, are inclined to accentuate rather than otherwise this side of his system, that criticism' is more especially directed in discussing Pallogism. With Hegel, taking him in his most uniform and consistent attitude, reality is simply thought-process, the timeless evolution of the concept. Hence it is for him merely an eternally evolving system of logic or synthesis of thought-relations. The antithesis of form and matter is unessential. In the last resort, matter is absorbed and abolished in form. The primal elements of consciousness, the subject con- stituting the possibility of knowing and that self- negation or feltness which is the root-principle MODERN IDEALISM 45 of the object as such, are alike for Hegel mere momenta or incomplete terms in the one process of the ** thinking of thought." They are treated as Ansichseyfty Filrsichseyfiy and AnundfUrsichseyn (In-itselfness, For-itselfness, and In-and-for-itself- ness), which are, with Hegel, the triple momenta at the basis of all reality.^ The logical in its highest form as *' Idee" the eternally complete system of thought-determina- tions, is, in the Hegelian philosophy, the Alpha and Omega of all things. ^^ ^.j^^ There is no subject of thought proper, highest but the mere thought-activity with [^™ ^^^^® Hegel hypostatised as ''Idee'' creates what we call the subject. Subject is its self- determination, just as object is its self-determi- nation, no more and no less. Hence the Hege- lian concept or ''Idee" has been compared to a bridge without ends. It is a system of relations in vacuo without a that or a what, "which is related. We observe throughout in Hegel a dread of the thing'tn-ilself—ih^ thing-in-itself being the absurd guise in which the alogical ^ ^* Anstc/tseyn" represents in Hegel's system the immediacy of the " I " as feeling ; " Fiirsichseyn " represents the self-negation ofthe"I"as feltness; ''''AnundfUrsichseyn^'' represents the com- pleted experience or reality as mediatised by thought, the reciprocal relation of the alogical antitheses. This terminology is of use even for those who do not accept the Hegelian Pallogism. The middle term, the ^^Fiirsichseyn" is the moment of separation and antithesis, or of isolation. This isolation is abolished in the third term and the unity re-affirmed, no longer embryonic as in the first term, but fully-fledged and developed— a unity in difference. 46 THE ROOTS OF REALITY elements in the general synthesis of conscious- ness had appeared in earlier philosophies, espe- cially in Kant. Hegel evidently suffered from noumenophobia. Hence his Pallogism is more uncompromising and thoroughgoing than that of other thinkers. Now, the notion of the thing- in-itself, if by this be meant a reality or object existing outside all possible consciousness, is a manifest contradiction in terms. But though there may be no thing-in-itself, there is undoubt- edly an in-itselfness in the thing, that is, in reality — and not merely as a passing phase, but an ineradicable in-itselfness that is never abol- ished hy for 'itself ness. This stubborn truth at times gives Hegel trouble, and forces him to strange devices of language in order to save the situation for his pallogistic thesis. But in spite of the colossal ingenuity displayed in the attempt to evolve reality out of thought-forms alone, the suspicion that, after all, we are wandering through what Hegel himself calls a '' world of shadows," pursues us as we follow his exposition. The philosophic need, on the other hand, demands an adequate formulation in reflective thought, of reality as such, and not merely of its relational forms. On this rock of Pallogism his system therefore made shipwreck. The conviction that out of thought alone thing can never be deduced, that all thought-determinations are determina- tions of a somewhat y which somewhat, though not distinct from consciousness, is nevertheless dis- MODERN IDEALISM 47 tinguishable from the thought-element in con- sciousness, and that not merely in degree but in kind — this is a conviction against which Pallogism dashes itself in vain, and which in the long run It hopelessly endeavours to circumvent by the devices of exposition. If words have any mean- ing, conceptivity is not co-existent with the whole synthesis of experience. The gist of the standpoint of Modern Idealism dating from Kant is undoubtedly the explicit recognition of the truth that all exist- standpoint ence must mean knowableness or of Modern knownness, or that the universe exists ^d®^^^"^* only as conscious experience. And if, as I have heard certain Hegelian friends contend, this is all that is meant by Hegel's '' Begriff'' or '' Idee^' the criticism resolves itself into one of termi- nology ; but the consequences of the pallogistic abstractness of the Hegelian main position are abundantly evidenced in the working out of the system. Any formulation that makes thought the Alpha and Omega of all things issues in a stasis: ' In its final result it inevitably takes the form of a complete and perfect divine mind composed of pure intelligibles, from which is eliminated all the material element in reality, all that is alogical, all feeling, all particularity, all contingency, all impulse or will as such — in a word, all the dynamical factor in experience. Now, it ought to be at once evident to the practised thinker that this reduction of all things to pure logical / 48 THE ROOTS OF REALITY determination, to a consciousness that is nothing but one vast self-sufficient system of thought- forms, to a consciousness, to put the matter in another way, that is pure actuality, in which consciousness the shadow of the potential is not, means bidding farewell to the concrete, to the real, altogether. For all concreteness, all reality, as such, discloses itself on analysis as presuppos- ing the alogical elements above referred to, and presupposing them not as mere vanishing phases of the logical, but as permanent and necessary elements of every real synthesis, without which elements the reality vanishes, leaving behind an abstraction as its caput mortuum. It is impossible even to conceive of any real synthesis from which elements that are through and through alogical are excluded. An abso- lute thought, if it mean anything at all, must mean a disembodied relation without a that which is related, and no system of such dis- embodied relations can even represent reality for reflection, let alone give us reality. What gives us reality is certain primary alogical ele- ments, of which the logical category, under which they are apperceived, is the mere rela- tional form, and which are hence presupposed by this form as its condition. The postulate of all thought is the feltness of an ** ego " or subject, which becomes realised as experience through this very feltness, which is its own negation (the '' Anstoss'' of Fichte). This subject of MODERN IDEALISM 49 knowledge, which is the primary postulate of all consciousness, may be conceived, as with Fichte, as the eternal possibility of knowing, or, with Schopenhauer and to some extent with Schelling, as the infinite nisus or impulse towards an end, into the attainment of which conscious experience enters. Hegel thought that he was making an advance on Fichte and Schelling (of Schopen- hauer he was probably unaware) in eliminating the material element in the system of experience in favour of the hypostatisation of the formal element. In doing this, he claimed to be getting rid of the last relic of the old Kantian thing-in- itself. What he really did get rid of was, as already said, the material side of experience, thereby taking leave of reality altogether and entrench- ing himself in a castle of abstractions. Get rid of the alogical elements entirely he could not, and therefore he had to fit them into his system and serve them up for reflective thought under the guise of categories, while ignoring their real nature in doing so. Now this may be a juggle, but it is a juggle that is very plausible, as we shall see later on, and it has undoubtedly imposed upon many thinkers of eminence and acuteness. In the modern English Hegelian school, for example, this point is particularly noticeable. The way in which the juggle accomplishes itself is, we submit, as follows : Philosophy as metaphysic is the formulation in the terms of reflective consciousness of the conditions involved D fmm '"■ULS^' 50 THE ROOTS OF REALITY in the constitution of our primary apperceptive consciousness (consciousness-in-general). Now, reflective consciousness always oper- paUogistie ates through abstract thought-forms, juggle. i-i^at is, through thought-forms not as constituting an element of a real apperceptive synthesis, but as reproduced in the mind, crystal- lised as abstract mental notions. In thinking of any objective relation or law it necessarily takes on the form and colour of such an abstract mental notion. It is not the same thing as it was as constituting part of the object-world, but is trans- lated by reflection into its own psychological terms. It is clear, therefore, that the material element, the alogical, the element of blind feltness or sen- sation, by the very fact that it is the antithesis of thought, cannot appear in the reflective con- sciousness (which is nothing if not logical) save as represented by a mental concept as its sign. Hence it seems unimpeachable to treat the alogical groundwork of experience as an attenu- ated concept. *' Being," itself, in this way, becomes merely the poorest and most barren of categories. And this is done by the Hegelians in the case of all such alogical elements as ** being," sense-quality, &c. Being means simply \}ci^ possibility of knowing and knownness as opposed to their actuality, in the last resort the subject as opposed to the object. In this sense it is identical with the bare subject of knowledge and with its ultimate oppo- MODERN IDEALISM 51 sition within itself, Fichte's ''Anstoss,'' or, as we have termed it here, primary feltness, which represents the elementary form of the object as opposed to the subject. (See discussion in Chapter III.) Now these elements, presupposed in every apperceptive synthesis, are certainly alogical. They may be distinguished by reflective thought as components, nay, the very groundwork of reality, but they cannot be expressed by the former save, as above said, in the unsatisfactory guise of a mental notion with a very poor content. The same applies to the attempt to translate the alogical element of sense-quality into the forms of reflective thought. Here logi- cians and psychologists have recognised an anomaly, and endeavoured to explain it away. The outcome of the apparent reduction of alogical elements to the logical notion may be termed pseudo-concepts as opposed to true logical forms. One of the tests of the alogical, it may be here re- marked, is that it always involves infinity as op- posed to the logical, which is always defimi^. {Cf. Chapter III. on '' The Alogical and the Logical.") It may be here not out of place to discuss briefly the attempts that have been made to eliminate the notion of the primary Subject or pure *'ego" from philosophy. JJ®e|J®^|^" If there is anything in the present day that acts as a red rag to the metaphysical critic, it is to talk about the "ego." He bristles up at the bare mention of the word. The metaphysical I m \ **^®^Sfe9*^- THE ROOTS OF REALITY U ■ ! ii \ or epistemological *'ego" is a windmill against which he tilts at once. He will tell you how the idea of an ultimate *'ego," or ground of knowing, is merely based on the grammatical necessity for every predicate to have a subject. Perceptions, therefore, are taken to involve a perceiver, con- sciousness to involve a something that is conscious, and so on ; in other words, it is assumed that this metaphysical postulate is based upon a mere necessity of grammar. In talking thus it never enters into the critic's calculation that he may be putting the cart before the horse, and that this admittedly deep-lying grammatical principle may be itself derivative from a still deeper lying meta- physical principle — that the grammatical require- ment that every predicate shall have a subject does not hang in vacuo, but may itself be the reflection of a fundamental postulate presupposed in all consciousness, and a fortiori in all thought, alike whether expressing itself in grammar, in the terms of ordinary logic, or otherwise. Then again, confusing between the epistemo- logical and the psychological use of the word Question- '*^§^>" ^^ critic will assure you that begging the notion of an **ego" altogether is criticism, traceable to the ensemble of organic sen- sation, a fact which probably does play a part in the notion of the empirical self. (C/*. Chapter IV. on ** The Individual Consciousness.") There are indeed a dozen different ways in which the smart critic will prove to you that the notion of a pure MODERN IDEALISM 53 **ego" is illegitimate, and show you how the fallacy involved therein arises. But if you ex- amine his arguments you will find that they take for granted throughout the very assumption it is their business to controvert. The pure '' ego " has been sometimes described {e.g. Professor Ward, Ency. Brit,, ninth edition, article ''Psychology") as ''an imaginary subject" behind the psycho- logical " ego." This, I take it, is also inaccurate. The " pure subject" is not an imaginary subject in any ordinary sense of the word "imaginary." It is the ultimate postulate of all thought and action whatever. In a word, it is the ultimate postulate involved in the ultimate coherence or self-consistency of consciousness itself. You may disprove its legitimacy in showing its want of justification by a formal process of ratiocination, but rid yourself of implying it you cannot. We may call this ultimate postulate by whatever term we please. We may speak of it as a " somewhat," an " it," if we will, as that which feels and thinks in us. But there is no gain in this. Whatever we may say, what we mean is always an " I " feeling and thinking. Schopenhauer, in terming the pure Subject "will" or "will to live," was in a sense justified, and what is substantially his position we find recently adopted by various writers as the latest word on the philosophic problem. (Cf. F. C. S. Schiller, William James, passim, also Hugo Munsterberg in " Psychology and Life," &c.) When we hear the determina- i^™^.-..i*B(R'-»«fcSP« »^- -«^ i; -ai"^" 54 THE ROOTS OF REALITY tions of consciousness (which we term in their totality the object-world) described as au fond ** practical postulates," when we read of the will as being the real subject, and of object as being act of will, we see plainly that we are following on the lines of the Welt als Wille, and even on those of the Fichtean philosophy in its later form. As above said, whether we use the term "will" for the pure subject as such, or reserve this term for its primary function, what we mean is the same. It is the primordial apperceiving principle that is meant, as opposed to the thought- forms in which its fundamental opposition within itself, the object, becomes realised. It is em- phatically the alogical and the potential which the logical and the actual presuppose, in the com- position of the real world. Those who endeavour to lay before the uniniti- ated the general principle of philosophic Idealism, F 11 1 sof ^hat consciousness embraces all things, popular are usually confronted with some such seientifle popular observations as the following: : CFiticisni ** Consciousness is an attribute of living beings, and is only an incident in the reality of things. A blow on the head will make me un- conscious, but the world goes on just the same." If the interlocutor is a modern up-to-date physio- logist, he will, of course, point out the obvious truism that consciousness, as the attribute of living beings, is indissolubly bound up with the brain and nervous system, and here, confounding I \ ': MODERN IDEALISM 55 the physiological and psychological standpoints, will probably describe consciousness as a func- tion of the brain. He will duly expound how the lobes of the brain " think "-he means, of course, " cerebrate "—and give us the beneht of sundry other established commonplaces of modern science, which, in themselves, no one worth con- sidering calls in question in the present day, whatever exception may sometimes be taken to the phraseology in which they are stated, or to the metaphysical inferences fastened upon them. The non-philosophical man, whether common- sensible or scientific, cannot understand that philosophic Idealism does not in the least im- pugn the premises of scientific Materialism, so long as the latter keeps within the four corners of its own problem and does not make poaching excursions into the domains of metaphysic, theory of knowledge, or psychology, attempting to trans- late its own abstract point of view, its own solu- tion of its own problem, into a solution of the wider problem with which philosophy deals. The representative of the philosophic point of view, after hearing his scientific or common-sense friend's exposition with due respect, might put to him the following : " What, then, are brain lobes, nervous systems, animal organisms them- selves, other than modifications of physical substance, and what is physical substance but resistant extension, and what does resistant ex- tension mean save a modification of perception ; 56 THE ROOTS OF REALITY in other words, the content of consciousness, possible or actual?" The friend may be posed for a moment, but he will probably remain un- convinced that there is anything fundamentally wrong in his initial attitude, which consists in a confusion between consciousness-in-general, the ultima ratio of philosophy, and consciousness viewed as a particular fact, that is, abstracted and isolated as a concomitant of certain physio- logical conditions and functions of living beings. Even the psychological view is, properly speak- ing, abstract. Our own mind is regarded from the standpoint of psychology as object among other objects of a certain class or kind, not as Subject in the true sense of the word. Abstrac- tion is made even in psychology from the con- ditions of consciousness-in-general, and the mind is treated as an independent somewhat or thing. It is torn up from its roots as a particular deter- mination or content of the potentiality of all consciousness per se, and is held in solution as a more or less isolated fact. We have already dealt in the course of the present chapter with the priority of elements constituting this ** permanent possibility of con- sciousness " (to adapt Mill's phrase). This ques- tion is the chief point with those thinkers who take their stand on the only tenable philosophical position, according to which the object-world is nothing other than the content of a possible consciousness, of which position the development MODERN IDEALISM 57 of philosophy in Germany, from Kant to Hegel, is typical. Kant attempted to place these elements side by side. With Fichte it was from the outset uncertain whether the ''ego," which was his fundamental postulate, was conceived as the pure form of thought or as will, that is, as alogical impulse, though in the later period of his system the latter view seems to predominate. With Schelling this position becomes further accen- tuated, and by Schopenhauer it is definitely made the corner-stone of his philosophical construction. Hegel, on the contrary, is the consistent apostle of the thought-form or the logical. Reality is for him nothing but the system of all possible thought-forms, of all logical relations. These various positions we find cropping up at the present day, both in Great Britain and on the Continent. But we may note the fact that, whatever view be adopted on this point, all prominent thinkers are practically at one in occupying the standing-ground that, let the nearer definition be what it may, the absolute is at least identical with consciousness as such. I l\ CHAPTER III THE ALOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL AS ULTIMATE ELEMENTS We have seen in the preceding chapters that the most comprehensive view from which the world can be regarded is that of a system of modifications of consciousness possible and actual. This point of view will be familiar to every one in the least acquainted with the litera- ture of modern philosophic Idealism. Here we have the philosophical standpoint par excellence. It is different, as we have pointed out, alike from the common-sense, and from the scientific, apper- ception of the world, and cannot be reduced to any terms wider than itself. The position occupied by philosophic thought in its strict sense is therefore ultimate, since, while all reality can be formulated in its terms, these terms cannot in the last resort be brought under any higher principle of explanation than themselves. The task of philosophy in its technical application (Theory of knowledge and Metaphysic) is the analysis of the conditions at the foundation of the conscious synthesis, for the latter is the frame- 58 THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 59 work of the system of our experience, namely, of those modifications of consciousness that all others presuppose, and hence that form the warp and woof of the world of our knowledge and a fortiori of its translation into the abstract terms of reflective thought. Now, we have found that conscious experience implies in the last resort (i) a potentiality oi knowing, which we call subject ; (2) a potentiality of known-ness, which we call object ; and (3) a determinate relation in- volving at once the distinction of the one from the other, and the identification of the one in the other. Here we have the elementary syn- thesis discernible in all immediate apprehension or thisness. The object, we can see, is ultimately no more than the subject's own modification, while, similarly, the subject is no more than an abstraction apart from its modification in the object. In this relation of reciprocal distinction and identification we have the primary germ of the logical, or of the form of experience in con- tradistinction to the two previous terms implied therein (its matter), which are therefore non- logical (alogical). The subject as alogical is practically identifiable with what in theory of knowledge and psychology appears as feeling and will. Hence in analysing the above ultimate ele- ments or aspects of consciousness, which, as we have already remarked (p. 37)» reappear in a disguised form on every plane of experience, ; 6o THE ROOTS OF REALITY however complex its conditions may be, we have come upon a salient distinction that interpene- trates the whole of reality. This distinction, which has already been forestalled in the previous chapter, I have expressed by the words the ''alogical" and the ''logical" elements in ex- perience. The antithesis in question coincides in the main, although not entirely, with the Aristotelian antitheses of matter and form, and of potentiality and actuality. Alike in the elements of consciousness and in the content of conscious- ness, be that however far removed in point of concrete complexity from those elements, we can trace this salient antithesis or its derivatives. The history of philosophy in its more vital bearings, as we have seen, mainly hinges upon this antithesis and upon the relative importance assigned to its terms respectively. From Plato downwards the tendency has been to hypostatise the logical at the expense of the alogical. We have criticised this doctrine chiefly with reference to its most thorough-going and consistent ex- pression, namely, in the Hegelian philosophy, that " ballet of bloodless categories," as Professor Bradley has called it. It may be well here, before entering upon any more detailed discussion of the subject, to enumerate the principal modes in which the aforesaid antithesis manifests itself. Quoad the elements of consciousness, we find will and sen- sation or feeling, as the alogical in antithesis to THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 6i the thought-form as the logical.^ Quoad the content of common-sense consciousness we have the same opposition in the shape of the becoming of that which is not, and of a completed reality as given. The primary antithesis of sensation to thought becomes the starting-point of certain leading antitheses in the concrete world that we may term modes of the primary antithesis of the alogical and logical. The chief of these may be enumerated as the antitheses of particular and universal, being and appearance {phenomenon), infinite and finite, and chance and law. In addition to these leading antitheses there are subordinate ones, which are also in the last resort resolvable into the fundamental antithesis of alogical and logical. To take two instances only, and those from psychology, there is the antithesis of instinct and reason, or again of action from blind impulse, and action from an intelligent recognition of means and end. The antithesis of particular and universal lies at the root of all experience whatsoever, of all definite apperception of reality. From particular Plato to Kant the blind "sense-mani- and fold " has been repeatedly opposed to ^^^^ersa . the' intelligible principle ; in Plato to the idea, in Kant to the constitutive category. Recently 1 I am far from regarding the opposition of sensation or feeling to will as ultimate, any more than that of its correlate object to subject. It seems to me that feeling might admissibly be defined as static will, and will as dynamic feeling. -*»%>r9 '•^'Av.1 .•u««M.,^r<> The un- conscious and the extra-con scious. 72 THE ROOTS OF REALITY an undefined way, assumed to involve the prin- ciple of subjectivity within itself. It, of course, essentially involves, as part of its phenomenal reality, also logical categories. This has its bearing on the latest formulation of the Materialism of modern science, which in definite terms attributes '* a subjective side" to all physical substance from the hypothetical atom to the living animal organism. It is common to speak of inorganic physical substance as '* blind unconscious matter." This is, no doubt, all right so far as it goes, but it is apt to be forgotten that the unconscious is not the extra- conscious; unconsciousness is not outside the realm of subjectivity or oi possible consciousness. For example, we speak with perfect correctness of a stone as unconscious ; yet, in so far as we postulate ** being " of a stone, we are postulating, as I contend, a possibility of consciousness in the stone — in a word, the stone is for us un- conscious, but not ^;r/r^-conscious. An abstrac- tion alone is extra-conscious in this sense, to wit, that while it of course enters, as an element, into the object or content of consciousness — otherwise it would be nothing at all— -yet it contains no principle of subjectivity within itself. Being, or subjectivity, cannot be postulated of it. We should not say of an isosceles triangle, of the colour green, or of the virtue magna- nimity, that it was unconscious, as we should of \ THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 73 the stone, for the simple reason that we recognise these abstract notions immediately as in them- selves, not, like the stone, z^^^conscious, but extra- conscious, in the sense that they cannot possibly contain within themselves the principle of sub' jectivity or of potential consciousness. They are simply abstractions (at most, elements of ob- jectivity) within an actual consciousness, deriv- ing their sole validity therefrom. No special reality, no physical object, on the other hand, can be thought of as extra-conscious, namely, as outside the realm of subjectivity or possible consciousness, though it may very well be conceived of as unconscious, that is, as not actually conscious.-^ In the thought and language of common-sense, no less than in that of philosophical speculation, the beins" of a things will be found on . . ^ ° , 1 . 1 • 1 Being and examination to mean the alogical side appearance imputed to it, the potential element further in its constitution, in contradistinction to the logical determinations accruing to it as actualised phenomenon. For example, a delirious patient in the ward of a hospital sees a skeleton Mt is curious to notice, in connection with the above, that the limited and naive language of primitive man scarcely contains the verb " to be," some verb signifying " to live " taking its place. Thus instead of saying, " The axe is in the hut," the savage would say, "Axe live in hut." The so-called verb-substantive is the outcome of a series of distinctions drawn by an instinctive meta- physic. The whole theory of fetichism, common to primitive man, is also in accordance with this view. 74 THE ROOTS OF REALITY l« It ' tf\'. looking over the shoulder of the doctor who is at the foot of the bed. Now, both the doctor and the chair on which he is sitting are said to be rea/ in the sense that *' being " is imputed to them, while the skeleton is called an illusion, since ''being" is denied of it. The distinction here does not lie in the actualised appearance, the phenomenon, for g'ua phenomena the doctor, his chair, the bed-post, and the skeleton may be equally good. It lies in the alogical, the potential, element, which is assumed as at the basis of the one, while it is absent in the other. This element it is which, involving, as it does, an infinity of implications, is meant when the object thought is said to be real. When we speak of the ** being " of a thing, we mean precisely that element in it which is nol appearance. The appearance (phenomenon) is regarded merely as the stg-ft of the ** being" ; it is the latter side to which the infinite implications of all real objects in the world-order are relegated as their ultimate source. Similarly, in the word ''reality," used as in common parlance, in opposition to " illusion," we have the stress laid upon the being-element in the synthesis which the word properly speaking connotes. The reality of the object means that behind any and all its appearances there is an inexhaustible continuum constituting a reservoir of possible manifestations indicated by the word *' being," as postulated with regard to it. The antithesis of noumenon and phenomenon as f THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 75 applied to the object is based on the above distinction. It is often said that the crucial distinction between a reality and an illusion consists in the fact that the former can be assigned a definite place in the articulated gy^em.^^ system of things we call the universe — that it fits into the causal and reciprocal con- nection involved in consciousness-in-general — whereas to the latter no such place can be assigned, since it does not fit into the system of consciousness-in-general, but is the exclusive product of the individual consciousness considered as particular. There is, no doubt, a great deal of justice in this view ; but while conceding all its just claims, I still cannot admit that the assumption of an alogical basis, a being (in the sense in which the word is here used), is any the less necessary to constitute an appearance real as opposed to illusory. To constitute a given perception real as opposed to hallucina- tional we postulate, I should say, that it is not exhausted in the appearance, but that there is an alogical remainder behind, and the fact of our conceding to it this alogical remainder, or beings forces us to separate it from our individual consciousness, and to regard it as defined by the categories that determine the world for all possible experience, that is, for consciousness- in-general. Hence arises the independence of the object. li *i 76 THE ROOTS OF REALITY The antithesis of infinite and finite is an im- portant mode of the cardinal antithesis with which this chapter deals, namely, that between and^nifite ^^ alogical and the logical. Infinity, properly speaking, accrues invariably to the alogical. I am aware that a distinction has been drawn between the true and the false infinite, the latter term being applied to the infinite of the sense-manifold. On the other hand, from Plato downwards, the concept-form, the eternal idea, is supposed to stand for the true infinite. The logical universal, however, is in its very essence ^ THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 87 can not only never overtake the infinity of chance, but, in spite of the illusion of reflection, can never make any real step towards doing so. Viewed abstractly in reflection, time apart, we have only the category before us ; but, as an event immediately given in time and space, we always have an element over s^usen des and above the mere category. The ewigen function of the logical is at once to ^^^ ^eU." combine and to distinguish — in other words, to define the alogical content of conscious- ness. Every concept is a defining, every law a determining, of something previously undefined and undetermined, or imperfectly defined and imperfectly determined. The celebrated tree of Porphyry is but a progressive reduction of the vague infinity of the content of consciousness under progressively determinate concepts, or **finitudes," as we may term them. Similarly, every law of nature and of mind is a reduction of the infinite potentiality or mere agency (lvvdm\ under certain determining forms. It limits the infinite possibility of the agency per se in that it says: ''Thus shall the happening be, and not otherwise." The determining, law-giving, logical, is waging incessant war upon the indeterminate, lawless alogical. It is this eternal process that constitutes the ceaseless movement of existence in space and time — ''das sausen des ewigen Webstuhl der Zeit!' Hence this antithesis of chance and law is a very good test-case of the 88 THE ROOTS OF REALITY \ capacity of Pallogism to establish its position. On the face of things, in every event we can trace an element reducible to law and an element not so reducible. But, on the theory of Pallo- gism, which, as we have said, has in this instance passed over into popular thought, the above is an illusion : law is in truth all in all, and chance is swallowed up in law. When we come to analyse any concrete event, however, we invariably find it to contain an irresolvable chance - element, which thought in vain endeavours to force into the mould of the causal category. This irresolv- able chance - element is the infinite particularity of the happening, the infinite possibility of its thisness in space and time. Most assuredly no concrete event is wholly made up of the chance- element any more than it is of the law-element. There are certain events that apparently show a preponderance of the latter and others of the former, but every event is, in the last resort, an indissoluble unity of both. If we would consider the absurdity involved in the attempt to force the infinite details of Theory of chance into the Spanish boots of law, probabili- we have only to analyse the mathe- matical theory or alleged law of prob- abilities. Put in its simple form, this theory has two sides. It affirms (i) that in the tossing of coins, in the throwing of unloaded dice, or the turning of an accurate roulette wheel, &c., the appearance of the opposed chances is, over a (, X r THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 89 long series, evenly balanced ; but also (2) that in every separate case the probabilities of the appearance of each of the respective chances is equal. Thus, at Monte Carlo, let us say, after a run of ten reds, it is maintained that the chance of an appearance of an eleventh red exactly equals the chance of the appearance of a black. Now, I think that it is not difficult to see that the two sides of this *' law," as thus stated, contradict each other. If, on a long series, the chances must — as the **law" states — equalise each other, it is quite clear that at the end of a long series of one colour we must necessarily be nearer to the reappearance of the opposite colour than at the beginning of such series. In other words, if the first half of the '*law" be correct, the eleventh spin of a red series must necessarily offer us a greater probability of the occurrence of black than of red. Gambling theorists are fond of emphasising that there is no reason assignable why the one should turn up rather than the other after any number of repetitions of the same **even chance." For, say they, after ten reds the red compartments remain as numerous and as capable of receiving the ivory ball as at the beginning of the series. How, therefore, it is asked, can the mere fact of the long repetition by any possibility adversely affect the chances of red again repeating itself.'* Now, it is clear, we again point out, that one of two alternatives must obtain. If there is any 90 THE ROOTS OF REALITY circumstance that, in a long series of wheel-turns, somewhere compels equality in the results of the turns, then the chances cannot be equal at each turn. On the other hand, if they are equal at each turn, then there is no assignable reason why one colour should not turn up to all eternity, for if it has turned up once, there is no assign- able cause why it should not turn up again, and so on to infinity. Furthermore, this so-called law of probabilities defines nothing. A true law always defines some- - , thingf, that is, it proclaims one event as Law of ^' 11 . M , ppobabili- necessary, and another as impossible. ties no true Thus, while affirming that certain events must happen, we likewise affirm that certain other events cannot happen, basing our assertion on the fact that they are contrary to the law of gravity, or to the laws of chemistry, physics, physiology, &c. But no event can, strictly speaking, be affirmed to be irreconcil- able with the 'Maw" of probabilities, as theoreti- cally stated. The turning up of red a hundred times in succession at Monte Carlo, or of any other even chance in any game of chance, may be thought to be in defiance of this law ; but should this improbability take place, the apologist for the '' law " is quite equal to the occasion, for he will tell you that there is no chance, however improbable, that may not turn up. Thus this ** law '' decides nothing and determines nothing, since every conceivable event can, *' with a little : THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 91 shuffling," be made to accord with its theory. It is no true law, because it seeks to reduce the per se alogical element in experience under the logical category. To bring the former under the domain of causation, it would have to show it as the product of some determinate agency operating in a uniform manner. This is always traceable in the real up to a certain point, but also always in conjunction with elements that are not so traceable. Our inability to formulate, without involving self-contradiction, any theory of chance, is revealed by the antinomies we find ourselves involved in, the moment we attempt to do so — the moment we try to formulate the alogical in the relational terms of abstract thought. But there is another argument in favour of the non-existence of chance as such. It is similar in character to that of the ''eternal Law and glance," of which it is indeed another chance version. It is often said that what p^g^j^ we call chance simply implies imper- elements feet knowledge. Were we to know 0^ reality, all things, we are told, we should see them con- forming to a rational plan. There would be no chance, no remainder left over unaccounted for by law ; all things would be seen to happen as through and through determined by the condi- tions of a rational causation. This may be described as a pious opinion, but no ground for it is discoverable by an analysis of the con- 92 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 'fi ditions of reality. We have already pointed out that every event is conditioned in its actual happening by an infinite regress of other events, each of which events is in its turn equally con- ditioned by an infinite regress of yet other events, and so on to infinity. This is a philosophical commonplace if you will, but it is a common- place to the bearings of which much less than due weight is given in philosophical literature, for it involves nothing less than the recognition of chance as a positive principle in the series of events — in the time-movement of the real world. Each of these events, taken separately, our judg- ment tells us, might not have happened, or might have happened otherwise. A law or general principle of causation is, on the contrary, valid apart from all the particulars making up the sensible content of time and space. It is through and through logical. We are justified un- doubtedly — the pedantry of empirical psycholo- gists of the Associational school notwithstanding — in asserting that a causal principle must always obtain, that, for example, oxygen and hydrogen chemically combined according to the recognised formula must necessarily produce water. This is the law, the causal element, in the particular events constituting the exploits of Julius Schmidt on the date and at the time mentioned, in the particular laboratory referred to. But to allege that the matter of fact of the water being pro- duced thus by the person at the place, on the t I THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 93 day, and at the time of day indicated, is equally necessary, that you can reduce these things also under a law or universal causal formula, suggests, I submit, a state of intoxicated Pallogism that ignores the most salient distinctions, and indeed all factors in the analysis that do not suit its preconceptions. It is alleged that, could the whole circumstances be known, we should see the whole occurrence to be necessary, and not partly fortuitous. But herein, be it observed, lies an illusion and a false assumption. It is assumed that the whole circumstances could be known, and it is assumed that the circumstances them- selves are finite, and therefore could be spoken of as a whole. Could we speak of the entire circumstances, we might possibly conceive this whole as known, but when with every step we take we are confronted with ever- fresh vistas of conditioning particulars, each one of which particulars is a terminus ad quern of a similar vista, it is clear that the mass of details with which we are met is infinite (the "bad infinite" of Hegel, if you will), and hence that we cannot speak of it as a whole at all. But a complete knowledge or comprehension of an infinity, we again insist, is absurd. We can only comprehend the determinate or the determinable. All think- ing, being an act of determination, is necessarily a negation of infinity. The understanding or grasping, in the form of complete knowledge, of infinity, or of any content of consciousness in- 94 THE ROOTS OF REALITY •! volving infinity, is plainly, therefore, a contradic- tion in terms. Most persons who rail at the idea of chance, have at the back of their minds the notion of an , „ . absolute pHus in the order of time, Infinity a i r . • i i parte ante ^ complex ot events, either uncaused and a parte or havinpf the will of a Supreme Beingf for its cause, whence all subsequent events are derivable. It is, at basis, the notion of a machine being set going. But if we confine ourselves to the analysis of experience as we find it, and refrain from reading into it gratuitous and even unthinkable hypotheses, we come to see that we can assign no beginning to the flux of events in time, the flux being co- extensive with time itself, and hence with reality (cf, Kant on the ** antinomies"). Once having grasped this, we see the notion of an absolute prius to be absurd and meaningless. Starting from actual consciousness, we have to deal with an infinity a parte ante and a parte post. The domain of the alogical particular is ever invaded by the logical universal. Ever wider generalisations are being made ; continually fresh masses of fact are being reduced to order and law or general cause — in other words, to the logical. But this process, in spite of its cease- less advance, makes no impression on the infinite remainder of chance — on the domain of the alo- gical. The logical, although by its very nature continually devouring the alogical, never gets a THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 95 step nearer towards exhausting it. The above is conspicuously noticeable in the mode of the great antithesis we are just now considering, namely, that of chance and law. The chance-element, which involves infinity, defies our efforts to re- duce it under any logical formula whatever. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, throughout the whole domain of mathematics. The sphere of mathematical science is, as Kant pointed out, the sphere of time and space. In other words, mathematics deals with the realm of the par- ticular — of the alogical. Hence in all the for- mulations of mathematics an antinomy is found to lurk ; every branch of mathematics leads to mutual impossibilities of thought. This is par- ticularly noticeable in the higher mathematics. In the lower branches it is more or less concealed by the utility of the results obtained in their character of *' practical postulates." We have now completed our consideration of the leading modes in which the cardinal antithesis of alogical and logical manifests itself in reality, and translates itself into reflective thought. In the next chapter, which will deal with psycho- logical issues, we shall have occasion to point out other minor modes of this cardinal antithesis. Meanwhile, before concluding the present chapter, it may be worth while for me to forestall certain objections that may be taken to my employing the terms alogical and logical for the two complemen- tary elements discoverable in every synthesis. ■T^emassKKf^m Objections to tepms used for cardinal antithesis. tion ma^ 96 THE ROOTS OF REALITY It may be objected that the word used for one term of the antitheses is purely negative. The answer to this is, that only by a nega- tive can one adequately express for re- flective thought, as notion, the element signified, taken as a whole and in all its bearings. The^ antith.esk, in ques- coincide in many respects with_. thai between^ matter " an d for mJ ToF again between potentraTity and actualityT^But neither the one nor the other expression, it seems to me, so completely covers the ground as that chosen. The antithesis, matter and form, is a sliding relation, as we may term it ; what is material in one relation may h^ for malm another. Hence in the terms matter and form as commonly used, matter may involve the logical element. It is only qua the special form of the logical that is for the moment under consideration, that matter is spoken of as alogical. The irpdrrj vXtj (primary and formless matter) of Aristotle, as against the eiSog, certainly, however, approaches the notion very closely, at least on one of its sides. Then, again, the potential and the actual, although in general coinciding with the great antithesis termed by us the logical and the alogical, is also unsatisfactory if attempted to be used as interchangeable with the latter. For example, particularity, considered as immediacy or l/tts- ness, while undoubtedly falling on the side of the alogical, cannot certainly be regarded or * I THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 97 accurately spoken of as a potentiality. It is, on the contrary, actuality itself, actuality ** of the first water." On the whole, therefore, while not unmindful of a certain clumsiness, if one will, about them, I can find no better terms to designate the distinction meant than those of alogical and logical. This antithesis interpene- trates, down to its innermost marrow, all reality, the elements constituting which, clearly distin- guishable though they be, cannot present them- selves in isolation from each other, even in thought, much less in fact. Let us sum up the results arrived at in the present chapter. We have seen how philosophic Idealism proves that all reality means Summary experience, and that this again implies of chapter, synthesis. Within the primary synthesis of con- scious experience, analysis discloses three funda- mental terms as the ultimate terms to which this synthesis is reducible — an ultimate subject- element, an ultimate object-element within this subject as its otherness or self-negation, and the reciprocal relation between these primary terms. The primary elements themselves we have , for N want of a better word, termed the alogicaT,'"aiTd } the relation "betweeTrtEem 'we~'have"Tndicated' as ' / the ultimate, the most generalised, form^TltTiiE' / logical, or of thought irTlts^stlricr sense. We / have seen that in tHe"antithesis here given of the --/ alogical and logical, as primary terms or elements of all possible consciousness, we have the ultimate G I 98 THE ROOTS OF REALITY aspect of certain important antitheses interpene- trating reality, which I have termed the modes of the alogical. The most salient of these we find to be particular and universal, being and appear- ance, infinite and finite, and chance and law. We have found that life, reality, as such, always bases itself on the alogical, but that thought, with its logical forms, while necessary to the com- pleted synthesis of reality, can never finally com- prehend or explain the ultimate terms of which It is the relation. We have traced this in the salient modes of the antithesis ; we have seen that the universal of thought can never completely grasp or absorb the particular of sense. We have seen that the appearance or phenomenon can never exhaust the being, the infinite possi- bility, of the object. We have seen that the limiting thought-form, the principle of finitude, can never cover the zW-finitude that constitutes MTts material. Further, in the case of chance and I law, we have seen that reality, as process in time, I always involves an irreducible chance-element J which the category of cause in vain endeavours / to reduce to subjection. We have also seen that I the attempts of the logical to absorb or overcome V. the alogical inevitably land us in alternate impos- ^sibilities of thought or antinomies. We have last of all considered the question in what sense re- flective thought, as logical, can even indicate the alogical at all under the form of the concept. That it does so, however imperfectly, is clear, THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 99 since otherwise we could not speak or think of the alogical in any of its modes. We have dis- covered, however, that these concepts are merely symbols, and that the possibility of their standing for that which is per se antithetic to themselves rests on their common ground as factors in the one ultimate synthesis that we call experience or consciousness-in-general. Note on the Infinite. Attempts have recently been made to justify the assumption of an actual infinite under the name of ** self-representative system." A distinction is drawn between the arithmetical infinite, the infinite regress, and the infinite of immanent self-con- tainedness, as we may term it. Hegel, of course, adumbrated a similar point of view in his distinc- tion between the infinite proper and the false infinite {das schlechte Unendliche), It is con- tended that the essential nature of the infinite is self-containedness. An infinite system in the true sense, it is said, must contain within itself its own principle and its own end and comple- tion. Its perfection is not external to itself, but immanent within itself. It is further contended that the numerical infinite, the infinite regress, as it is termed, is unessential to infinity as such. This point has been elaborated recently at great length by Professor Royce in his " The World and the Individual " (of which it forms one of the ■ rKf^yi' ." ; ■; v^ ' :^^. loo THE ROOTS OF REALITY salient positions), following upon the mathema- tician Dedekind and others. The true infinite, on this view, implies at once "a single system and also an endless Kette^ This is termed by Mr. Royce a ** self -representative" or "self- imaged " system. It is illustrated by the idea of a self-reflecting mirror or of an ideally '* per- fect map of England within England." In either case, the self-representation must be postulated as running into infinity and yet as never transcend- ing itself. Mr. Royce bases his thesis also upon the mathematical theory of prime numbers. In this theory, unlike certain of his colleagues, he is prepared to admit the infinite as infinite series or indefinite regress, which, however, he regards not only as not fatal to his notion of positive and actual infinity, but as an integral part of it. Pro- fessor A. E. Taylor, in his ''Elements of Meta- physics" (pp. 150-5), seems to dispose of Mr. Royce's version of the theory. He points out that the fundamental defect in the Royce reason- ing lies '' in the tacit transition from the notion of an infinite series to that of an infinite com- pleted sumy For the criticism itself the reader is referred to Professor Taylor's work. But, apart from the special turn given to the theory by Professor Royce and the mathematicians on whom he bases his doctrine, and reverting to the wider issues, it may fairly be doubted whether by the usage of language or even in itself there is justification for employing the term " infinite " THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL lOI to any self-contained system of immanent deter- minations such as that supposed. We shall come back to this more fully in a subsequent part of the present work. Meanwhile we must content ourselves here with a few further observations. Firstly, as regards language, it can hardly be denied that, except in certain treatises expository of philosophic Idealism, the term *' infinite " always refers, directly or indirectly, to the endless pos- sibility of repetition in time and space. In other words, the indefinite regress always lies at the foundation of the popular notion of the infinite and, up to a certain point, of the philosophical notion of it. Thus the Supreme Being of ordinary theology is said to be infinite, by which is cer- tainly meant, not that he is regarded, in the sense of modern philosophic Idealism, as an all- embracing consciousness, self-determined from within, but simply that he is a being whose knowledge and power are not limited by time or space — not that he is *' irrespective of time and space," but that he apprehends and acts through endless time and space. This notion may be, of course, absolutely self-contradictory, and hence inconceivable, when brought to book, but it is undoubtedly the notion floating before the minds of all theists who are not metaphysicians in the technical sense. Infinity, as an attribute of the self-complete Absolute of Professor Royce, Professor Taylor, and other modern idealists, including even Professor Bradley, certainly has 102 THE ROOTS OF REALITY no warranty in usage, either in popular thought, in science, or, except partially, even in philosophy. Again, looking at the word purely from its philo- logical side, this *' being infinite or without limits " clearly has a time-space reference, as implying the possibility of continuation beyond any given number or any given point. The concept or category, which may be viewed as in itself without reference to time and space — as, so to say, outside time and space — is in its intrinsic essence nothing if not ^^-finite. It can only be spoken of as zVfinite in the sense of covering an endless possibility of sense-particulars. In other words, infinity can only be predicated of the concept with reference to its complementary factor in the synthesis of real experience, and not in itself. It is only as the relation of alogical terms in time and space, and even then only by a violence done to language, that the logical concept can be spoken of as infinite. On the above grounds, I have no hesitation in employing the word ''infinite" in the sense sanctioned by most frequent usage. The term ''infinite" is in the present work exclusively taken as an attribute of the alogical aspect of experience, of the sensible and volitional terms constituting its material, of which time and space are the media. In the fact that time and space are, as such, forms of the alogical, and hence cannot find adequate expression in the terms of reflective thought, we have, I believe, the THE ALOGICAL AND LOGICAL 103 key to the puzzles constantly recurring in all departments of mathematical science. Problems of space and time as such, and of the sensible content of space and time, inevitably give rise to antinomies whenever it is attempted to express them in the logical formulae of the reflective consciousness. It is in vain that we try to solve these problems under the relational form of thought. The ravelled edges of the alogical project awkwardly, and refuse to be fitted into the scheme of our formulations. t From primary synthesis to indi- vidual conscious ness. IV THE INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS We must always bear in mind, as regards in- vestigations into pure philosophy, that although we may, for the sake of convenience, divide our subject up into sections, yet there is, strictly speaking, no break in the conscious process. It is always one indivisible, and continuous. From its ultimate metaphysical elements to the concrete personal consciousness, here and now, the process is unbroken — there is no hiatus. The same elements, constituting the lowest terms to which we can reduce the process by reflective thought, namely, pure subject-object and inter- relating activity, reappear in a transformed guise at every more concrete stage of the process. At every stage of reality we find alogical terms synthetised by a relational activity that we term logical. There is no tendency at any stage, however, as Pallogism assumes, for the syn- thetising relation, in any of its forms, to absorb the terms related ; or, at least, even if we assume such tendency to exist, as tendency, it certainly never completes itself. The alogical, X04 INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 105 notwithstanding the efforts of the logical to absorb it, always remains stubbornly outside. With Hamlet we may say, it is, ''as the air, invulnerable," and the logical's **vain blows" are ''malicious mockery." The above does not apply merely to the activity of thought as the synthetising force of the concrete world in general. Were the alogical, as Hegel contends, a mere sich-selbstaufhebendes moment of the logical, it must ultimately be absorbed completely, with- out remainder left over, in the logical. But this, most assuredly, is not the case. As we have just said, there is no break in the process of concrete consciousness (the "trans- cendental process," as the classical 1-1 1 r i- . A \^\ Continuity philosophy of Germany termed it), of genetic We may divide our point of view process of into metaphysic, theory of knowledge ^^^^^^ °^^' (epistemology), and psychology; but what we have before us is really one subject of investigation. It is, in fact, impossible to keep these several points of view, in the long run, distinct. It is impossible to discuss the ultimate elements presupposed in all conscious experience, or the modes in which these elements appear in the more concrete stages of the pro- cess, without using psychological terminology, since there is no sharp line of demarcation between psychology and epistemology, or be- tween either and metaphysic, as the word is understood by Modern Idealism. Let us take, io6 THE ROOTS OF REALITY 1^' I: / for instance, the ordinary common-sense per- ception of a so-called external world in space. The construction of this world, as it appears complete and fully matured to common-sense consciousness, constituting, as it does, the reality par excellence of the ordinary " man-in-the- street," is an epistemological problem. Common- sense consciousness finds it already there, to all appearance complete. All the changed aspects it assumes above the level of the bare common- sense consciousness are regarded as accruing to the individual mind that apprehends it, and as not, like the world as presented to this common-sense consciousness, pertaining to the external object itself Hence the said aspects are relegated to the domain of psychology. But this distinction, though valid enough from the common-sense standpoint, has no meaning from that of philosophy. Both alike represent articulations or phases in the at once continuous and timeless process of consciousness. To illustrate this, let us say that we enter a town for the first time ; we perceive its houses, Illustration ^^^ streets, and its relative localisations of fore- from the point of view of bare common- going, sense consciousness — of ordinary ex- perience, as we say. In other words, we perceive it in a way in which we instinctively assume it is perceived by every one else. We live in that town a year, passing through the various personal experiences that a year brings with it. By the \ INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 107 end of that time, does the town present the same aspect to us that it did when we first entered it ? Yes, and no. Yes, in so far as there is nothing in our perception of it at the end of the twelve months precisely inconsistent or definably incom- patible with our perception of it at the beginnmg of that period of time ; the solid substratum of common-sense consciousness is there— so much is clear. No, in so far as the original common-sense perception has been transformed by the incre- ment of personal associations, moods, &c., which has entered into it. For my consciousness it is no longer the same. The "He" of the streets, the aspect of the public buildings, have undergone a change, but what this change is I cannot make intelligible to common-sense. I cannot describe it nor define it, since language in this connection has as its standing-ground precisely the conscious- ness or everyday experience common to all, and this will not help me in the present instance. I might perhaps indicate it by art had I the ade- quate genius, in the "atmosphere" of a picture, or a poem, or a musical composition ; but in the language of common life or of scientific definition this is impossible. It is, in short, one of those things that can be indicated, but not expressed. The above is one illustration of how the process of combination and distinction, of the enrichment of content, which characterises the dialectical movement of the elements of consciousness, does not leave off with the attainment of the niveau of \ loS THE ROOTS OF REALITY ordinary experience (common-sense perception), but continues on into the region of psychology, or, in other words, of the individual conscious- ness as such (in this case the perceptive con- sciousness of the individual). There is a side of psychology, of course, that is definitely separated from either metaphysic or Physio- epistemology, namely, that which is logical concerned with the problems raised by psychology, psycho-physical parallelism-the trac- ing of the connection of mental states as the correlative of physiological changes. This de- partment of psychology is, strictly speaking, out- side philosophy altogether. Its method is that of the physical sciences. But, apart from this, there are many psychological problems that un- doubtedly overlap the ground assigned to '' theory of knowledge." It is often very difficult to say where one ends and the other begins. There is, perhaps, scarcely a philosophical problem that cannot, if we will, be stated and its solution for- mulated in the terms of psychology. Where can the individual consciousness be said to begin } What is its specific mark .? The The** in- ^^^^^^^^^1 consciousness (self -con- dividual sciousness) implies, I take it, the re- conscious- cognition of a definite thread of denned. memory knitting together the reflective side of an indefinite series of moments of consciousness into one whole or '' mental ob- ject." With this '' mental object " is associated the INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 109 immediate consciousness of a particular animal (human) body as its instrument. This synthesis of memory is reduced by reflective thought to being itself simply one of the objects of experi- ence, one particular personality as against a world of other particular personalities. It occupies, nevertheless, a unique position as being, so to say, the gate by which every other object of consciousness must enter. The word ** I," as used in common language, ''myself," "me," are expressions denoting a determinate, a particular, memory-synthesis immediately given in conscious- ness, as involved with a determinate, a particular, quasi-external object, my own body. This animal body is postulated by me as external, that is, as existing in space, but it is not immediately given in consciousness as completely external, like other objects in space. Its reality, that is to say, is not exhausted for me in the fact of its being extended in space ; it is thus only quasi-external. My body is hence a middle term between myself as memory-synthesis of feelings, thoughts, and voli- tions, and the world as given, extended in space. Thus the individual consciousness, or self-con- sciousness properly so called, may be defined as the determination of the subject, presupposed in all conscious experience whatever, as this memory-synthesis correlated with this human body. Our conviction that the world does not arise or perish with ourselves, means that we recognise, over and above this memory-synthesis, no THE ROOTS OF REALITY correlated with this human body, the root-principle of knowing, or becoming aware, as being pre- supposed in self-consciousness. We instinctively feel that the that in us which distinguishes between the object self {ix, the thoughts, feelings, and volitions embraced in the memory-synthesis) and the object not-self {ix. the outer world or content of space) is, as subject of consciousness-in-general, intrinsically prior to the distinction of self and not-self, since these latter are its determinations. This, which to the ordinary man is an instinctive feeling that he interprets falsely as implying an existence for the outer world independent of consciousness altogether, receives its adequate formulation in philosophy. Notwithstanding the criticism of Mr. Bradley (** Appearance and Reality," p. 83, sqq), I con- tend that the unbroken continuity of Criticism /1 r 1 o of Mr. memory (lapses of sleep, swoons, cxc, Bradley. being extruded by the waking con- sciousness) is all that the personal identity, or self, implied in the individual consciousness, really means. '' Memory," says Mr. Bradley, ** depends on reproduction from a basis that is present — a basis that may be said to consist of self-feeling." So far as this expression means anything to me, it must either refer to the ulti- mate subject involved in all consciousness — in other words, have a metaphysical reference — or it must refer to the dull background of organic sensation, and have a psycho-physiological signi- INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS in ficance. On the former assumption, memory, of course, would depend on this basis, but that Mr. Bradley does not refer to the metaphysical presupposition of all experience is shown by the fact that he talks about his '' self-feeling '* as remaining the same and changing. As such, I can only assume, since even the dull massiveness of organic sensation could not well be spoken of as changing in this sense, that he must mean the continuity, as series of a given experience, of the thisness or immediacy of every conscious moment. But what is it, I ask, but memory that fixes this experience as one and indivisible in time ? In spite of his best endeavours, Mr. Bradley has not shown that personal identity (or self-sameness as involved in individual con- sciousness) consists in anything else than the fixation of consciousness-in-general, as a particular content of time correlated with a particular human body as its instrument — in a word, by what we call memory. That a definite thread of continuity is requisite for personal identity is admitted by Mr. Bradley, who (in so far as he does so) gives up his case for destructive criticism. If I might say so without offence, Mr. Bradley seems, in Chapters IX. and X. of '* Appearance and Reality," first to raise a dust-cloud, and then to complain that he cannot see. Here, as else- where throughout his book, Mr. Bradley is on the look-out for contradictions. Now, there is nothing' easier than to discover contradictions in .1 V 112 THE ROOTS OF REALITY |. every logical formulation. Mr. Bradley himself rejects, nominally at least, the pallogistic theory of thought-relations in vacuo, that is, without terms to be related. Notwithstanding this, he seems to be surprised that he cannot compress the real into the Spanish boots of the logical. Yet the real, as we have often enough pointed out in the course of these pages, is in the last resort a synthesis of alogical and logical ; and the logical as such can never explain, or furnish an adequate formula for, the alogical as such. Whenever you attempt this, the result is that you are landed in self-contradictions or anti- nomies. But Mr. Bradley's whole procedure consists in the endeavour to find an adequate logical formula for the alogical, to make the logical absorb the alogical without leaving a remainder over. His Absolute, in the last resort, means an ultimate reality that yet lacks the conditions of reality. In spite of his protesta- tions to the contrary, it is, I contend, no more satisfactory in this respect than the old Hegelian pallogistic '' Ideer Personal identity, then, I submit, means nothing more than the knitting together of a particular or personal experience into a memory-synthesis. The continuance of the extended object — our body — is the objective clue in space to the con- tinuance of our personal identity in time. (In some cases of dual personality this clue may prove misleading.) The thread once snapped, INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 113 the synthesis once dissolved, we must regard as gone for ever. The same synthesis can hardly be renewed, since its identity consists simply and solely in the continuity of its tkisness. The in- divisible moment of actual consciousness, its tkis- nesSy is, to use a geometrical analogy, the point that produces itself as line in the memory-synthesis of personal identity. The foregoing may sound paradoxical to those accustomed to ^n^jj^istie think of the human *' soul " as a notion of thing, an existing substance, capable, ^he**soul." it may be, of motion in space, of ascending up to heaven, of descending to the other place, of transmigration into other bodies — in a word, of having an unexplained objectively real exist- ence apart from the thisness of the memory- synthesis. According to the notion of those who conceive the matter thus, no absurdity would be involved in supposing a person now living to be the same (that is, to possess the same ** soul ") as Julius Caesar, Apollonius of Tyana, or Napoleon Bonaparte. If we examine the matter more closely, we shall find that the notion of personal identity is here wholly illusory, and based upon a very crude and primitive analogy. The " soul " or personality is regarded, to wit, as an object in space possessing mental qualities and properties. Just as a skin may hold wine or oil, so the soul is invariably looked upon by the adherents of this order of speculation as in some sense extended in space and containing the H 11 V 114 THE ROOTS OF REALITY personal consciousness. This way of conceiving it, a direct legacy from primitive Animism, is ex- pressed by Shakespeare's Claudio in ** Measure for Measure" (Act iii. scene i). " Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot : This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice ; To be imprisoned in the viewless winds. And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world." Compare also the ** Ancient Mariner" in his description of the passing of his colleagues : — " The souls did from their bodies fly. They fled to bliss or woe ; And every soul it passed me by Like the whizz of my cross-bow." We find the theory, in its latest and most finished literary form, in the late Mr. Myers' book, '' Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death," where the author seems to postu- late the ** soul " as a kind of highly refined ether. This is, of course, au fond the quasi-material " double " or primitive Animism and of modern Spiritism. It is against so crude a survival of early ideas as this that the Materialism of modern science (compare its latest and most complete work- ing-out in the Welt-Rdthsel of Hackel) rightly INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 115 protests in proclaiming that, viewed from the physical standpoint, that is, as objectively real, mentation is nothing but cerebration, that is, matter of some kind in motion. Even if we assume Mr. Myers' theory of Animism (as brought up to date and clothed in modern scientific lan- guage) to be admissible as a hypothesis, nay even as a probable truth, it would not in the least affect the ultimate problem of reality. The latter is, in the true sense of the word, a metaphysical problem, whereas all such hypotheses as that of Mr. Myers do not transcend the Tealm of space, matter, and motion. Hackel postulates the ordinary *' ether " of modern science as the ulti- mate source of brain and nerve changes, as of other physical phenomena. Mr. Myers postu- lates a still more refined special ether of his own as the physical explanation of certain psy- chical phenomena, real or alleged. Hence Mr. Myers is, au fondy as much a materialist as Professor Hackel, though not so scientific a one. [Cf. Haldane's '' Pathway of Reality," vol. ii. pp. 258-269.) That the individual consciousness is not im- mortal necessarily follows, I think, from the fact of its having^ arisen in time, and of its , ,. , , 1 . r 1 r Individual hence partakmg 01 the nature of a conseious- chance-product. All that arises in nessand . . . d6ath time {i.e. the particular) must perish in time, since the fact of its having arisen when before it was not, shows its existence to have ^/ ii6 THE ROOTS OF REALITY no inherent necessity attaching to it. It must, therefore, be contingent upon the infinity of particulars in time, and in the ceaseless change proper to this time-content it is uninterruptedly exposed to the possibility of a collocation of these particulars causally incompatible with its con- tinued existence. Whether the dissolution of the animal body by death constitutes in itself such a collocation, is simply a question for science. The tendency of science, up to date, has, it must be admitted, been towards answering this question in the afifirmative. Consciousness assumes the form of the par- ticular, in contradistinction to the universal, in the memory-synthesis, or individual tationof mind. Consciousness here becomes conscious- self- object— what Kant termed the neSSOUt- ,, i . r i • i ha side our object oi the mternal sense. As own per- such it becomes a particular amone a sona.lity ... possible infinity of other particulars of the same universal class or kind. It becomes a numerical one over against a many. But it is only indirectly, or through reflection, that the individual consciousness, with its continuum of thisness — self-identity — is presented as nume- rical. That there are other *' my selves" or memory-syntheses besides this one (mine) may be a primary inference of reflective thought, but it is, in the last resort, only an inference, and not, like the manifold of particular objects in space, immediately given. It is, if you will, . INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 117 a ** practical postulate" — to use Mr. Schiller's favourite expression — but in any case it is based on an inference arising through reflection. The above is curiously indicated in the earlier stages of empirical reflection, to wit, with primitive man. In this case, the instinctive inference, this neces- sary *' practical postulate," has a tendency to overreach itself, and is applied indifferently, in primitive Animism or Fetichism, to all external objects whatsoever. Primitive m^an, that is, not merely postulated in all external objects, the ** principle of subjectivity " referred to above (pp. 71-73), as the basis of our attribution of being or self-subsistence to them, whether animate or inanimate, but in addition he postulated a self- conscious personality as attaching to them, similar in kind to the self-conscious personality he postu- lated in his fellow-men as attaching to the form of the human body. It is only at a later stage that the inference or postulate becomes narrowed to the human, or at least animal, form. The human body presents itself as one of a possible infinity of instances of its own type in space and time. We are partially conscious of our own body as a phenomenon in space like other phenomena in space. We know that our own body involves a conscious myself as this memory- synthesis. From this conviction the inference is directly made to a plurality of persons, minds, or memory-syntheses like ourself as attaching to objects in space — first, to all objects pretty much ii8 THE ROOTS OF REALITY indifferently (Animism), and later only to objects possessing human or animal form. Yet though we conceive of the conscious personalities in- ferred in other living human bodies as separate from ourself, the separation is in one sense not so complete as that obtaining between objects in space as such. Particular objects in space are absolutely and mutually exclusive ; the particu- larity or individuation of these objects cannot be transcended or reduced to unity except in the logical concept, where their thisness, and their whole alogical presentative aspect, is lost. But the vague conviction that the individuation of intelligences is not so ultimate as that of bodies in space, is borne in upon us in various ways — by the function of language, by the phenomena of sympathy, by the associative principle at the foundation of human society with its ** super- organic " forms. (See below, pp. 126-36.) The individual consciousness, or, in other words, the conscious personality, as deduced by philosophy, we must never forget, dividual is, like everything else in reflective andphilo- thought, of which philosophy is the highest outcome, no more than a uni- versal and abstract formula. For though the individual consciousness represents the fullest or most concrete generalisation of philosophy, yet, none the less, it is not concrete, it is not real. It lacks the thisness^ the alogical im- mediacy, that can alone give it flesh and blood I INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 119 — in a word, life. The individual consciousness, the object, properly speaking, of psychology, is in itself no more than a general type involving the universal conditions, as presented in reflec- tion, of any and all individual intelligences. Hence we, as individual minds, may be viewed from a double standpoint. I myself, now writing, no less than Smith, Brown, or Jones, am outside the scope of philosophy, as, for that matter, of psychology. In this respect I, no less than my friends, am an extra-philosophic, evanescent particular; but we, each and all, on the other hand, presuppose those universal conditions of the individual consciousness, which is the farthest point philosophy with its abstract formulae can reach. This *' universal individual," which philo- sophy deduces as its last word, is the abiding factor in each particular individual mind, but, as already said, it lacks the thisness of a memory- synthesis, which alone can make it real. It is a mere re-reading, in reflection, of what is in- volved in self- consciousness previous to the moment of reflection. In this previous moment reality is given /^r self-consciousness. Here may be the place, perhaps, to return once more to the common form of objection raised by the ordinary man to the irrefutable philosophical truth that reality is nothing apart from conscious experience, that in the last re- sort, we are forced to interpret it as a system of determinations of consciousness, possible or Argrument for Ideal- ism once more stated. I20 THE ROOTS OF REALITY actual. Consciousness per se is here invariably confounded by the man of ** common -sense'* with a particular memory - synthesis. Thus he will tell you that he can conceive of all sorts of things existing or happening without any one being present to see or know of them. He then instances the nebulous period of the solar system, the pre-glacial epoch, the Antarctic seas with their Erebus and Terror, the other side of the moon, &c., as cases in point. He might just as well confine himself to instancing the nearest room that is empty, as regards human or animal occupants, at the moment of speaking, for this homely and commonplace instance is on precisely the same footing as the sensational ones above mentioned. The individual mind, as memory -synthesis, presupposes the general synthesis of consciousness. Its self-conscious- ness is superimposed upon this groundwork. The man-in-the-street, of robust common-sense, who puts the above ** posers" to the philosopher, is really making unwittingly the distinction that the philosopher formulates. Says the man-in- the-street : '' Uninhabited islands exist, rocks are falling, waves are dashing up against the beach." He forgets all the time that these things that he is talking about imply the primary and secon- dary qualities of matter, spacial extension, hard- ness, impenetrability, figure, colour, &c., all of which qualities he will see, if he thinks for a 1 INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 121 moment, to be nothing hut /elhiesses and thought- forms — the. feline sses being reciprocally connected in a systematic order by thought. But feltness and thought presuppose — what? A subject, of course, feeling and thinking. The man-in-the- street, try as he may, cannot get outside the closed circle of consciousness, possible and actual. When he thinks to have shaken it off, he is only the more deeply immeshed therein. All he gets rid of by the process of abstraction is the quan- titative particularity of the individual memory- synthesis, as one among many. But this is philosophically quite unessential. To any given plane of consciousness the other momenta that it presupposes, but which it has superseded, always appears as something outside and over and against itself. Hence comes the illusion of the ordinary man that the object of conscious- ness — the object of external perception — is some- thing radically distinct from consciousness. He finds that the content of his memory-synthesis, his immediate awareness, presupposes conditions other than itself. In a word, he finds that reality is never exhausted in the appearance, in the im- mediate perception. The content of actuality, of the thisness of presentment, is given as the sign of an indefinite potentiality other than itself. The man-in-the-street is implying this when he asks you whether the other side of the moon does not exist merely because no one sees it. He finds that the content of his memory-synthesis \ (i 1 122 THE ROOTS OF REALITY presupposes conditions other than itself; but he has not reached the point of recognising that there is no break in the continuity of these conditions, that the world -process is through and through a conscious process, and that the true distinction between the individual conscious- ness, encased in its memory-synthesis, and the universal synthesis of consciousness it presup- poses, is not the distinction between conscious- ness and something that is not consciousness, but between consciousness as actual and consciousness as merely potential. But it may be asked : Can reality, can self- subsistence, be predicated of the universal, but for us potential, synthesis of conditions which we see to be involved in every moment of our individual consciousness? Is the subject which knows, which becomes aware, realised? Is it object to itself — in a word, is it self-conscious — apart from, and independent of, the infinity of particular memory-syntheses arising and perish- ing in time, which are called finite ''minds" or ** personalities"? This question has already been discussed in Chapter II. as that of philo- sophical Theism, as it is termed, in contradistinc- tion to the theism of the man-in-the-street and of the ordinary theologian. We here offer some further remarks on the subject. The question resolves itself into this : Is the ultimate subject or potentiality of knowledge, which analysis discloses to us, in itself a mere \ INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 123 abstraction, or is it the one self-subsistent reality ? Is it solely realised in the personal mind from which our analysis starts, or rather in the infinite possibility of such minds, which we assume our own mind, our own personal consciousness, here and now, to connote ? Or is it realised as concrete self-consciousness in some mysterious manner, apart from the particular minds known or conceivable to us ? This is a question to which philosophical analysis as such can return no answer. The philosopher, as philosopher, in dealing with it, is compelled to fall back upon the agnostic attitude. The results of his investiga- tion into the conditions of the possibility of knowledge do not afford him any light on this point. The philosopher of theological proclivities will doubtless be tempted to postulate the second of the above alternatives, and he will seek to support his assumption with philosophical argu- ments. The pallogistic doctrine, already criti- cised in these pages, is much affected by him. If he draws his inspiration from the old right wing of the Hegelian school, he conceives his *' God " as the quintessence of the categories, pure thought or reason, in which sensation, feeling, and will, are absorbed and abolished. In this sense " God " is conceived as the Absolute, a ''wound up" and eternally complete form of forms, in which the shadow of matter is not. The possibility of change, of movement towards aught, such as towards fuller perfection, 1,^ f «8 I 4 'fe 124 THE ROOTS OF REALITY is excluded. The absolute in this pallogistic sense must always be the " durchsichtige Ruhe " of Hegel. But, as already pointed out in another connection, Pallogism necessarily issues in an abstraction. It lacks, in this as in other cases, the conditions of reality. Even if we, however, abandon the pallogistic position and postulate an absolute consciousness based on the alogical element essential to reality as opposed to ab- straction, we are still confronted with the diffi- culty that in conceiving the Absolute as reality independent of its realisation in the type of finite individual mind we know, we are none the less perforce compelled to give it a particularity of its own— we are compelled to regard it as indi- vidualised, i.e, as a self-conscious personality. Once, however, we do this, we cease to have an Absolute. What we have is at best one more finite mind, inconceivably wider in scope and richer in content than our finite mind it may be, but still not essentially different. At the same time, we surrender it as a factor in the philo- sophical analysis of that concrete consciousness or knowledge we have to explain. It then be- comes merely one more intelligence over against our own. Now, one more personal will and intelligence over against mine, however wider its range of power and knowledge, cannot pos- sibly, I contend, enter as an element into the explanation of my consciousness here and now. It is, in fact, impossible to formulate the Absolute INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 125 as personality in any sense without becoming involved in a hopeless tangle of self-contra- dictions. At the same time, I am fully pre- pared to admit the difficulties that confront us in what, from a speculative point of view, seems the only alternative, namely, that of regarding the synthesis of consciousness-in-general as in itself a mere abstraction, which becomes realised solely in the finite individual mind. Here again I can only repeat that qua this problem the agnostic attitude seems the sole resource for philosophy. We can only say that, for metaphysical analysis, the ultimate subject of consciousness, which our immediate individual consciousness presupposes, is a pure potentiality, in other words, is no more than an abstraction, distinguishable, but not separable in thought, from the mind of the thinker. For philosophy, therefore, " God " is always a gratuitous hypo- thesis foisted on to the analysis. An abstrac- tion, however, we must not forget, does not necessarily mean a fiction. The problem is the crux of metaphysic, but more concerning it we cannot say. Philosophy, indeed, formulates the problem, but leaves it without any adequate solution. It would, as I conceive it, save much confusion of thought and vague speculation if thinkers would place clearly before themselves the issues here stated. For the rest the theistic problem is mainly ethical, and from this point of view we shall return to it later on. I s \ •- »• 126 THE ROOTS OF REALITY By way of metaphysic then, we are unable to arrive at any data affording us a positive clue to the realisation of the basal condi- Transeen- . ^ . ,. dental- tions 01 consciousness as personahty sociological in any other form than that of the individual finite mind that forms the starting-point of our analysis. Let us see if we can do so analogically by way of the physico- psychical series presented by the order of evolu- tion in time and space. Here it is true that we are also in the region of unverifiable conjecture, but it is a region where, I think, we have at least some data sufficient to give colour to a sugges- tion. The suggestion may be put in the follow- ing form : — From the earliest beginnings of organic life up to that highest realisation of the animal body, the human form, I think it will be generally admitted that we observe, or, to be strictly accurate, we infer, a progressive unfolding of consciousness from the mere sentiency we attribute to the cell and to those animals that are little more than aggregates of cells, towards intelligence, ix, towards thought-determination, culminating in the self-consciousness of the human personality. This we assume to be the final goal of physico-psychical life. Now, is not this last assumption somewhat arbitrary? By what right do we regard the psychical evolu- tionary process that has hitherto advanced pari passu with the physical to stop at this point, while the physical goes on ? But if it does not INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 127 stop here, what reason is there for not assuming it to follow the steps of the physical evolution .^^ If there be no reason, we may surely infer by an obvious analogy that the next higher physical type that succeeds that of the animal or human body shall connote a new psychical type corre- sponding to it. To make my meaning clearer, we will enumerate the chief types involved in physical evolution up to the present. We have the atom (not to go farther back, and not to discuss rival theories concerning it), and this we may take as the physical basis. Next we have, based upon it, the molecule. The atom enters into the molecule as typal element merely. Next after the molecule we have the organic cell. Just as the molecule is based upon the atom as its elementary constituent, so is the cell, the typal element of organic life, based upon the molecule, the typal element of inorganic life. The next great type in the order of evolution, attained through many intermediate stages, is the animal body, which is based upon the cell as its typal element, just as the cell is based upon the mole- cule, and the molecule upon the postulated atom. The animal body reaches its highest perfection in man, and we have no special reason to assume an essentially higher kind of animal body as likely to be evolved in the future than that which, in the highest developed races up to date, exists at present. But there is yet another evolutionary type that has been in process of development ^ t /» . 11 I 128 THE ROOTS OF REALITY from the earliest ages of man's appearance on this planet up to the present time, and it is even now no more than embryonic. I refer to human society. This, which, as evolutionary type, is commonly designated the super-organic, would more correctly be termed the super 'animal ^ seeing that its typal-constituent is directly the animal body as represented by its highest form, the human being. It is clear, and generally recognised in the present day, that in human society we have a new evolutionary type in pro- cess of development towards the highest perfec- tion it is capable of attaining as a type. The late Herbert Spencer, indeed, made this a cardinal position of his system, and did more than any other thinker to enforce and illustrate it. So much for the physical side. Now, Hackel and most modern materialists insist on postulating a rudimentary psychic side, even to the molecule and the atom. They are driven to this by the difficulty they find involved in assuming an ab- solute beginning to psychic life at any point in the course of the process of evolution itself. Whether this be correct or not, all admit the psychical side to be correlated with the physical from the dawn of life, as manifested in the simple organism of the cell onward. Here, indeed, we can inferentially trace the evolution of the psychical side from the bare sentiency of the lowest forms of organic life to the intellectual master-mind correlated with the highest development of the INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 129 animal body, i.e, the human form. But for those who admit that there is another evolutionary type in process of realising itself, based upon the human personality as individual, in other words, based upon ih^ personal units constituted by individual human beings, just as the human being, as animal body, is based upon organic matter with its cellular units, and just as organic matter is based upon inorganic matter with its molecular units for those who accept this view on the physical side, there seems to me no logical halting-ground that stops them from admitting a corresponding pro- cess of evolution on the psychical side. And if this be so, where are we driven to .? Clearly to a recognition of the psychical side as accruing to the super-organic (super-animal) evolutionary type— human society in its corporate capacity. We cannot get over the obvious impossibility that we, animal- human personalities shut up in our respective memory-syntheses, find in con- ceiving of a social-human personality, with its own self-consciousness, as much wider in scope and richer in content than the former, as the human-animal's is wider and richer than the sen- tiency of the lower nerve centres that build up his body. But the lower nerve centre is equally unable to throw itself forward into the position of grasping the perfected psychical side, to which it contributes its quota, of the fully-fledged human being. Should the foregoing be true, it may be that we shall have to seek our ** God," if he is to •I w Mi "i' 130 THE ROOTS OF REALITY be a practical ideal, not so much in the realm of metaphysical analysis as in that of sociological research at its highest, or, as we may term it, in transcendental sociology. Has the foregoing hypothetical suggestion, based as it is upon an analogy furnished by the whole course of the evolutionary pro- tion^from cess, any positive corroboration from soeiologieal the known facts of sociology ? I think facts. j^ j^^g ^\i2X is at the root of the whole ethical consciousness but the conviction that the telos of the individual personality lies outside itself as individual ? Hence arises the introspective form of the religious consciousness which requires a transcendent divinity as a com- plement to the individual soul, with its yearnings for a completion and perfection that is not itself. What is your ** categorical imperative," your ** ought" of consciousness, but the recognition of the fact that the animal-human personality is ultimately not an end to itself, but only a means to an end ? Of course we may adopt a theologi- cal or abstract-metaphysical explanation of these things, but for those who cannot see their way to do this, their explanation on scientific grounds by means of some such hypothesis as that suggested seems natural and almost inevitable. For such, many things that were before a mystery receive an explanation falling naturally into its place in the general scheme of evolution as understood by science. The true significance of ethics, of intro- INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 13, spective religious aspiration, &c., is seen to have Its ground of explanation in the fact that the animal-human personality is tending towards ab- sorption in a higher evolutionary type, based upon Itself indeed, but in the same way as the human body ,s based upon cellular tissue with its low order of sentiency. This fact receives its psychic expression in the sense of the inadequacy of the animal-human personality as end to itself The good man's sense of moral obligation, the mystic's craving for union with some divine conscious- ness, &c., are seen again to be the distorted ex- pression of a truth to which the Materialism of modern science has been long leading up. This truth, if we are right, is to be found in the view above given of the destined supersession 01 the animal-human personality, i.e. the indi- vidual mmd as correlated with an animal body which we know to-day as the last word of Mind altogether, by a social-human personality, i.e. by a self-consciousness transcending that of the animal-human personality, albeit based upon it 1 he perennial ethical contradiction, the self that can only fulfil its own higher destiny by the denial of Itself here finds its explanation in the truth that the death no less than the birth of the animal- human personality, is as necessary a part of the process by which the life of the social-human per- sonahty will become realised, as the disintegration of the organic unit of the animal body, the cell is necessary to the development of the life of ihe \\ t 132 THE ROOTS OF REALITY animal body itself— the disintegration of the organic cell being as necessary to the life-process of the animal system as is the continuous produc- tion and reproduction of such cells. In this way the yearning for the ideal self, the self which throughout history earnest men have sought to realise in the negation of self, acquires a new meaning. On this hypothesis the higher ideal self is identifiable no longer with a transcendent divinity, but with an immanent fact of evolution. The moral impulse, the unsatisfied religious long- ings above referred to, would disclose themselves as, at basis, only the higher expression of that fact which in the world of the primal cellular life of organic nature is termed *' organic irritability." For this also is nothing else than the trieb, the inherent tendency towards realisation on a higher level of development. These unsatisfied longings of the human heart, of which we hear so much, would, on our hypothesis, simply mean the vague and instinctive conviction that, self-conscious though he be, the self-consciousness of the animal- human being is yet not the last word of self-con- sciousness in the order of evolution, but is in its nature subordinate to a higher self-consciousness, its relation to which the individual human mind may dimly feel, but cannot formulate in terms of its own thought. Let us take another fact from the field of sociology — the great fact that seems at once cause and consequence, the fact of language. It INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 133 has often enough been pointed out how the power of abstract thought presumably peculiar to the human animal as against other mammalia, is determined by language, the means of intellectual intercommunication. It is difficult, indeed, to realise how completely dependent — speaking of course from the empirical point of view and con- sidering it as a product of evolution in time — is the perfect emergence of the self-conscious per- sonality upon the fact of language. Without language, feeling or sensation would remain isolated. If we can interpret the alogical per se in terms of the logical, it would seem we have to thank language for it. Sensible quality, for example, which is in itself alogical, is brought under the logical universal by means of language, and is thus rendered capable of treatment by abstract thought. Thus colour, a logically un- determined feeling or sensation, is helped by language into the logical form of the universal, and becomes a fact common to all, and not cir- cumscribed by the memory-synthesis of the im- pression-receiving individual consciousness. But language is through and through social. Its inception is social, and its aim is social. It is, indeed, a means to the full perfecting of the self-conscious human personality regarded as a time-product. But in its power of throwing the aforesaid animal-human mind outside itself and connecting it with a world of minds outside its own individual personality, may we not see an ^ fl '1; J ill 134 THE ROOTS OF REALITY indication that while it has helped to bring the animal-human personality to perfection, it is also one of the signs of the ultimate submergence of the self-consciousness of the antma/'humdin per- sonality in the self -consciousness of a social' human personality, as highly differentiated from it, as it is from the sentiency of its own cellular tissues? A similar line of argument might be adopted as regards aesthetics and the indications to the same effect afforded by the inner meaning of our art-consciousness. Again, take the power of collective suggestion, as shown in the behaviour of nations and other communities, armies, crowds, mass-meetings, &c. Here we find that combined conduct assumes a form indicating a collective mentation distinct from and inconsistent with that of the units, considered as units, of which the mass is com- posed. In this phenomenon of collective sug- gestion we have as yet no actual trace of a self-conscious social-human personality, but in the mental element referred to, as obtaining over and above anything in the individual minds composing the social-human mass in question, may we not perhaps detect the penumbra of this new type of consciousness, destined to realise itself in the fulness of time. Examples of the fact referred to will readily occur to the reader. We all know the wild rush of a battalion into a breach, regardless of death and wounds, accom- plished by men, many of whom in private life INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 135 would doubtless be found wanting in courage to meet infinitely smaller emergencies ; the conduct of masses of men collectively which gives rise to such phrases as the ** cowardice ^^5 ^ of mobs"; or, again, the contagious enthusiasm of the mass-meeting, the self-sacrifice of the revolutionary band, even the esprit de corps of a football team. The influence of collective suggestion is well illustrated by the fanatical devotion of the ** blues " and '' greens " to their side in the Roman and Byzantine circus ; in other words, to what was in itself a meaningless badge. Last, but not least, the results of anthropology and the beginnings of history show us primitive society as essentially based on collective impulse or suggestion, as exemplified in the social group, the clan, tribe, or people. The fact that man as an individual, acts and feels differently from man as a collectivity, that an organised community of human beings is a corporate entity having distinct characteristics from the sum of those of the in- dividuals composing it, meets us in every aspect of human affairs. It furnishes us, I think, with yet another corroboration of the general thesis put forward in these pages. We have not gone into the question of hypno- tism, telepathy and allied phenomena in this con- nection, though it is clear that, in so far as we are disposed to accept them, they constitute a more powerful illustration than even those already given of the extra-individual possibilities inherent I Conditions of self- conscious person- ality. 136 THE ROOTS OF REALITY in the animal - human personality. This is, I think, clear, and there is no need to elaborate it further in this place.^ The above speculation is a digression that has interrupted the main task we set ourselves in the present chapter, namely, that of the metaphysical analysis of the conditions presupposed in the self-conscious per- sonality. We are here confronted with the problem of the identification of the Absolute Subject, that which throughout all time becomes conscious, the *' mot premier et dternel^' as Jaures terms it, with my memory-synthesis here and now — the identification of that power of consciousness which creates the world in and for me, the individual, with this very me which is its latest product, as representing the final term of that metaphysical process on which all pro- cesses in time depend as their prototype. The terminus a quo is the subject presupposed in all possible experience ; the terminus ad quern is the ^ If we reflect on the issues opened up by the foregoing hypo- thesis, some curious speculations present themselves. One is, for example, that— as the consciousness of simple organic life is postu- lated as mere sensation, as that of the animal personality apper- ceives the world under the categories of common-sense reality, so m the highest development of the animal personality (namely, 'the human) reflective intelligence appears and metamorphoses the world of common-sense reality into the world of science, or, still further, into that of speculative thought— we may still further assume that a form of consciousness empirically based on higher and more complex conditions might apperceive immediately the world as it now appears mediately in the reflective intelligence of the man of science. i I Grotesque puzzles of meta- physical analysis. INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 137 relative finite and individual subject-object. Be- tween the two lies the region of the object-world, to wit, the region of the determination of con- sciousness as the content of space and time, irre- spective of its determination as self-consciousness. The impotence of the mere categories of reason, to deal with the purely alogical, is once more cruci- ally illustrated in this question of the self-conscious personality. The cate- gory of cause utterly breaks down here when it is attempted to apply it. All events in the time-series are in some measure or other amenable to the category of cause. The why of them can be asked and answered from the same point of view as that from which it is asked. But if I ask the question why, that is, by what cause, do /, considered as this particular diremption of consciousness here and now, exist at the present rather than at a former or a later period of the world's history, it is seen that the question has no meaning, that the category of cause and effect glances off from it. Let us analyse the question for a moment. It may be paraphrased as follows : Why does my individual consciousness reflect a content taken from that section of filled time called the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, rather than from that of the thirteenth or the twenty-fifth.^ That my psychological personality, that my mind or character, is built up out of material derived from the particular J t 1! 138 THE ROOTS OF REALITY period of history into which I have been born, is a fact for which obvious causes can be as- signed. The question here is not, however, one of concrete personaHty, but of the mere diremp- tion of consciousness as this particular self- hood, of the thisness of my memory-synthesis per se and quite apart from its content. A similar line of argument, of course, applies to space. Why did the particular content of my memory- synthesis originate in London, Berlin, or Paris, rather than in Timbuctoo, Teheran, or Tokio 1 The why, I submit, is in both cases meaningless. The thisness of self-consciousness on which the memory-synthesis is based is outside the time- series, and a fortiori outside the sphere of influ- ence of the thought-categories of which time is the sense-medium. The foregoing query may be variously propounded in the form of curious and even grotesque puzzles, as, for example, the question whether a man would be himself if his father had married another woman, or why he is not his brother. These questions are seen to be absurd, but their absurdity does not lie where it might be expected. Scientific reflection can very well answer the question in one sense, as we have above indicated. It is quite obvious that the substitution, for example, for one of the parents of some one else must give a different offspring. Similarly we may assume that science is capable, were the leading conditions known, of affording / '»'% INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 139 a satisfactory explanation on its own lines, of the obvious fact that one brother, as concrete person- ality, is different from another. But here again the real gist of the question would be passed by. It really means — why is the thisness of my self-con- sciousness, as constituting an apparent continuum in time (what we have termed the memory-syn- thesis of personal identity), although itself outside the content of the time-series, attached to this particular body rather than to another, or to this actual disposition of character, or particular mental constitution, rather than to another ? To ask the why of this matter may be absurd, but its absurdity is to be looked for in the fact that it is a strik- ingly flagrant instance of the attempt to reduce the alogical to the logical. In this case of the diremption of the personal consciousness, we have a unique instance to the point, namely, an immediate determination of consciousness gene- tically outside time and any form of the logical category. Hence it is that any question that assumes its reduction to cause, substance, or any other category proclaims itself straightway as meaningless. The primary subject, which the self-consistency of consciousness posits as an immediate postulate, as that underlying my thisness having its root- principle in all time, becomes particularised as this memory-synthesis. This is all that self- identity or individual consciousness means /^r se. By personality we imply, of course, more than this, m i I40 THE ROOTS OF REALITY namely, a definite content, a particular system of thoughts, feelings, and volitions, in addition. This system, like any other particular combination in time, constitutes an object which arises and perishes, but which is knit together by the par- ticular memory-synthesis in question. The lapse of this particular actualisation of consciousness necessarily carries with it the destruction of the personality as a whole. Needless to say, this destruction in time does not touch the time-less Subject for which time itself is, which, although presupposed in every individual consciousness, is quoad such consciousness a mere potentiality. Psychological personality is the resultant of an infinitely complex and unstable series (or con- verging network of series) of real psycho-physical particulars in time and space. Physically, it is coin- cident with a particular organic system or animal body ; psychically, with a particular memory- synthesis. This content itself, therefore, the suId- ject-matter of psychological inquiry, falls, no less than the subject-matter of physiological inquiry, within the category of cause and effect. It has been calculated that if we trace any given case of this said object of psychological inquiry, any given personality, back for two centuries, we shall find it to be the outcome of some 16,000 more or less direct ancestors, that is, psycho-physical objects of the same kind as itself. Now, the dis- solution of these psycho-physical objects, together with the self-identifying memory-syntheses they . INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS 141 imply, does not affect the principle at their basis. Yet, on the other hand, if the foregoing be ad- mitted, we can hardly view the definite lapse of the self-identifying memory-synthesis, and a for- tiori the dissolution of its content, whenever such takes place, as otherwise than complete and final. In psychology, which deals with the content of the memory-synthesis, the antithesis between the alogical and the logical is shown in the opposition between feeling and ^^^q^^^ thought, between will (viewed as mere impulse) and action following on reflection, between instinct and reason. The first and last word in psychology, as in metaphysic, is an indication of the alogical. The thought-out end presupposes the desire as mere blind im- pulse. The action as directed by reason has for its background the mere nisus of instinct. The feeling of psychology, hedonistic feeling— feeling, that is, which involves a pleasure-pain refer- ence — is the Alpha and Omega of psychology. Thought, reason, is the middle term only, always appearing as the handmaid of feeling in this sense. All human endeavour refers to practical postulates. The first term of all our activity is the nisus following on want, the last is the satisfaction of the want. As middle term we have, of course, the end defined by reason, and the means chosen by reason. Will itself, in psychology, we may regard as a mode merely '! 1 142 THE ROOTS OF REALITY of the self- identifying memory - synthesis, or, going farther back, we may conceive it from a metaphysical standpoint as identical with the eternal subject of consciousness itself. But, in any case, whether as psychological or meta- physical element, will falls to the alogical. It is the same with feeling. The material of thought, whether in a psychological or meta- physical sense, is feeling. It is a pleasure-pain feeling from which all our actions spring and out of which our active impulses grow. The present work is not a treatise on psychology, and hence we do not propose to pursue in detail the suggestions here indicated. The fundamental problem of ethics, which might conceivably have found a place in this chapter, will be more appropriately dealt with at a subsequent stage. V REALITY AND TRUTH In the foregoing pages we have had much to say on the antithesis of the alogical and the logical as the most salient antithesis within the sphere of conscious reality. In matTer^^ Chapter III. we traced the most im- potenti-' portant modes in which this antithesis ^et^^^^ manifests itself. We also there dealt ^^ ^ ^' with two other antitheses that have played per- haps a more prominent part than any others in philosophy from Aristotle downwards. We refer to the antithesis of matter and form and that closely allied antithesis of potentiality and actuality. Conscious reality is also analysable into these pairs of opposites, and we make no excuse for recurring to the subject here, and amplifying what was there said, before passing on to the main object of this chapter, which is the distinction .of reality itself from truth. The above antithesis (or pair of antitheses) is nearly covered by that between alogical and logical Matter and the potential are usually referable to the alogical; form and the actual M3 144 THE ROOTS OF REALITY usually to the logical. But there are one or two points where the coincidence is not exact, or at least where the usage of philosophic writers would make it undesirable to insist upon a too strict fixation of the terms in this sense. For example, I believe that the logical universal itself has been spoken of by some thinkers as the potentiality of the particulars coming under it. The point of view from which this is said is not difficult to understand, although I cannot myself regard it as justifiable. And this for the simple reason that the logical universal has no potency in it ; it is, as such, a mere form. The potency here lies in the at-once differentiating and unifying subject of consciousness itself, of which the alogical and the logical elements in the object are alike functions, but which nevertheless, in its immediacy, invariably falls to the side of the alogical. Matter and form (and the same may be said of potential and actual), as applied to the object of consciousness, constitute a purely relative pair of opposites that slide up and down the scale of real existence. The antithesis is not fixed throughout consciousness as is that between alogical and logical. The /^formed matter of one stage becomes the matter per se of the next, in which it acquires a new and higher form. Aristotle's irpdyrri vXrj (pure matter), as such, undetermined to anything, is as much outside the synthesis of the real as is pure form, such, for instance, as the Platonic ideas. The nearest Priority of matter and the alogical. REALITY AND TRUTH 145 approach we have to this Aristotelian ** First matter " is in the " I " or subject that analysis discloses as presupposed in all experience. Even this elementary factor of knowledge, however, is at least so far formally determined, that we can say of it that it constitutes the possibility of consciousness} The caput mortuum of absolutely undetermined matter does not enter the purview of philosophy at all. It will be evident, I think, that the time- honoured antithesis of matter and form, as above said, at least roughly corre- sponds with our own antithesis, as formulated in this volume, of alogical and logical. Here also, throughout the history of philosophy, we may notice the working of the pallogistic fallacy, to wit, the disinclination, where not the actual refusal, to give a positive value to the presuppositional ^ When most people hear the word "consciousness," they understand thereby consciousness as actual. They are fond of making it antithetical to the unconrcious. From Leibnitz down- wards we have heard much of the "unconscious perception," &c., but this antithesis of consciousness and unconsciousness is, I take it, a spurious one— or at least, as regards terminology, a clumsy one. What is meant by conscious and unconscious is the dis- tinction between consciousness ii^ its moment of actuality, and consciousness as potential merely. The " unconscious perception " is no less within the sphere of consciousness-in-general than is the conscious perception. The subject or ego /^r which the uncon- scious perception is, has as its sole attribute that of being the potentiality of consciousness ; its what-ness consists in that it is realisable as a conscious synthesis. Perceptibility itself is nothing but a possible mode of consciousness. Save as a mode of K ! i 146 THE ROOTS OF REALITY element, as I might term it, of the synthesis of the real— namely, the material as opposed to the formal. For the majority of constructive thinkers positive significance alone attaches to the thought, or relational, element, as opposed to its alogical terms ; it is the formal element, as opposed to its material basis ; it is the actual, in contra- distinction to its potential implications, which, for the majority of the aforesaid thinkers, has alone had any positive significance. We find com- monly the attempt to argue away the one side of the antithesis. In this attempt more than one system has made shipwreck. For the fact remains that, in reality, not only is the one element of the antithesis as essential as the other, but the material, the potential, no less than the alogical, elements have, metaphysically, the primary value. The thought-relation presupposes relatable terms. Form presupposes matter to be zwformed. The consciousness, the words "perceiving" or "perceived" have no meaning. The point of view we have spoken of as Pallogism, invariably has a tendency to hypostatise form at the expense of matter, the actual at the expense of the potential, no less than the logical at the expense of the alogical. Even Professor Bradley, who is not a pallogist pur sang, falls at times into the error— as it seems to me— of failing to recognise the true philosophic value of the potential as an element of reality. This tendency comes out as much in dealing with the sphere of phenomenality, that is, of the world of ordinary consciousness, as it does with that of metaphysics. For example, in Mr. Bradley's case he speaks ("Appearance and Reality," pp. 332-33. foot-note) of the ab- solutely correct phrase "potential energy" as being, "strictly speaking, nonsense." This is undoubtedly the commonplace philosophic attitude towards the notion of potentiality. {Cf, Chapter III. p. 80 j^^.). REALITY AND TRUTH 147 content of the actual moment only acquires its meaning through the potentiality of which it is the outcome. The purely negative value philosophers have been wont to ascribe to this side of experience is explained by the fact of its priority in value, within the conscious syn- thesis, to the thought, or formal element, or to that of immediacy or actuality; whence it follows that for reflective thought it is only expressible by negatives. The logical can only indicate the relation between the tkat-ness or the what-ness of its terms, but can never touch either the that-ness or the what-ness, in itself. To take our old illustration, feeling, whether as mere sensation or as the pleasure-pain con- sciousness, can never be interpreted in terms of thought, and hence of language. It is merely by means of its relational activity, its categoris- ing function, that thought can express — or rather indicate — feeling, or the modes in which it mani- fests itself, as such. The feeling itself in its own immediate inwardness, remains outside thought, and hence outside language. Reflec- tive thought glances off feeling, it falls away, like the proverbial water off the duck's back. Hence, to reflective thought — the dominant element of our intellectual life proper — feeling obtains merely as a negative otker-ness. Thence arises the plausibility of the pallogistic and for- malistic tendencies hitherto prevalent in philo- sophic thought. These remarks lead up naturally I 2 148 THE ROOTS OF REALITY to the special subject of our present chapter, namely, truth and reality.^ The word ^^ reality," as implying the objective synthesis of experience, actual and possible, is Realit in ^"^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ constantly recurring popular expressions in modern philosophical sense. writings. It has the misfortune, how- ever, which it shares in common with most words in use in philosophy, to have been em- oloyed loosely and in various senses by different /thinkers. As we all know, for Kant, reality / meant mere intensity of sensible quality— the / more intense the qualitative sensation, the greater / the reality, and vice versa. This is a sense, ^— -^TTowever, in which the word is, so far as I am 1 It should perhaps once more be premised here that reality, as opposed to abstraction, is always identical with concreteness, that is, it implies a synthesis. It involves at least two elements. The synthesis cannot be reduced to less than the union of matter and form, of potentiality and actuality ; or to that of the cardmal antithetics, namely, the alogical and the logical, which to me seem more comprehensive than either of the two former pairs. Reality, then, viewed in this connection, means nothing but the inseparable correlation of at least two ultimate terms as factors. We can distinguish those two elements in reflection, but they cannot be presented in consciousness as separate. Each is ^^//j^^ an ab- straction. As Ferrier of the "Institutes of Metaphysics" would have put it, something more than but less than 1. In their synthesis they constitute the real as such, in its barest and simplest expression. » I here use the word "objective," not in the psychological sense as meaning exclusively something outside the individual mind in space, but in the more properly philosophical sense as meaning all that is distinguishable from the perceiving subject. In this sense, of course, an idea or a feltness, recognised as such, is objective. REALITY AND TRUTH 149 aware, not used by any recent philosophic writer. But there are two distinct senses current at the present day which it is important to keep dis- tinguished. The first sense referred to is that which I have in the present work in general termed common-sense reality, that is, reality as ordinary perception of external things. This is emphatically the popular sense of the word ** reality." To the man-in-the-street that is real which exists in time and space as perceived or perceivable, apart from the particularity of his own personal consciousness. Hence for him the typal form of reality is the world of common- sense, the world of perceived and perceivable objects in space, into which he enters as one individual among many. As we pointed out in a former chapter,^ the man-in-the-street is very careful to limit the reality of the sensible world to the horizon of common perception. Any purely psychological or personal element that this common-sense reality may acquire in the course of familiarity with it on the part of the individual mind, is excluded from reality as not answering to the test of being common to all percipients.' This, the reality sans phrase of the ordinary ^ See pp. 106-108. * There is, of course, a difficulty in deciding between the view taken by different individuals, or even by the same individual at different times, or under different circumstances, as to what is predicable of reality. This does not really affect our main argu- ment, but is p>erhaps worth calling attention to at the present juncture. What, for instance, is the reality of a historical period — say, the Middle Ages — as seen through the psychological lens of '« ISO THE ROOTS OF REALITY man, is a perfectly legitimate use of the word also in a philosophical discussion. There is, however, a special philosophical sense, in which Mr. Bradley uses it in his ** Appearance and Reality," although not peculiar to him, which is exceedingly important. This philosophical sense is connected with the popular interpretation of the term reality that we have contemporaries, or of the scholar of a later time ? And of con- temporaries, does it appear the same to the feudal villain, to his lord, to the cleric, and to the burgher ? We have psychological refraction in all these cases ; each sees the period from a different point of view, but which are we to assume as the nearest to reality ? To the mind of a scholar of a later age, again, the period presents itself in a light in which it could never have appeared to any con- temporaries ; and, assuming the scholar to be a man of powerful imagination (a Scott or a Flaubert), are we to regard his recon- struction as in any way nearer the reality than the conception of an ignorant contemporary whose outlook was limited? Is that conception of the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, which is the product of the memory-synthesis of a London costermonger, more real or less real than that of an Oxford graduate, or are they, either of them, more or less real than that of a scholar of a subsequent century will be, who sees our age in the light of the later evolution of events, and whose perspective is naturally modified accordingly? This problem is after all essentially of the same character as the puzzle of one's childhood — what was the real size of any object. Was the real table the table one saw when one's face was pressed against it, or was it the table one looked at twelve inches away, or the table as it appeared from the other end of the hall, or looking down the well of the staircase ? It would be interesting, by the way, to know which of these hypotheses the partisans of the theory of an external world, independent of consciousness, would adopt. To the idealist or the metaphysician the problem offers no special difficulties. For to him reality is something fluid, not fixed ; it contains within it an infinite potentiality, and hence can never become finally definite. REALITY AND TRUTH 151 // already mentioned, but is much wider in scope — in fact, may be said to include the latter. According to the philosophical usage here spoken of, reality means perfec- philoso- tion or completeness, relative or abso- Pliieal S611S6 lute ; the reality of any object in time implies that object at its fullest development. The reality of the individual man is that man in the prime of life and health, neither in childhood, nor in adolescence, nor in senility, nor in illness — the man at the zenith of his powers. Similarly the reality of the flower is not the seed, the shoot, or the bud, nor yet the flower when dropping its petals in decay, but the flower in full bloom. In fact, reality in this sense coincides as nearly as possible with the thing in its ideal perfection. Hence, in metaphysics, the ultimate reality is equivalent to the Absolute, the assumed totality in which all terms and all relations are thought as absorbed, outside which nothing is or can be. But it is obvious that in reality taken in this sense there are degrees, and in this question of degrees the connection between the ordinary common-sense view of reality and the philo- sophical view comes in. From the point of view of theory-of-knowledge (epistemology), the outer world of ordinary consciousness is merely a definite stadium in the genetic synthesis of con- sciousness-in-general, while for practical needs it is the only type or norm of reality possible. Below it in the genetic order of the conscious fi i , 152 THE ROOTS OF REALITY synthesis you have inchoate elements merely, which only attain completion in the world as perceived, that is, in common experience. On the other hand, any synthesis richer in content than that of our common experience, falls from the point of view of the latter to the side of the ideal, as a construction of the individual mind. Philosophy indeed dest/oys the complacent con- fidence of the man-in-the-street in the exclusive claim of this common-sense world to the title of reality ; and, in fact, from both sides it can show that the common-sense world itself is but a synthesis of sensible and intelligible elements. On the other hand, it can also show that this so solid-seeming world that forms the content of everyday experience, only requires to be closely analysed to disclose itself as a mass of contradic- tions — a piece of rubble masonry, in fact. When viewed in this light its reality ceases to be so imposing as it is to the man-in-the-street, not- withstanding that its serviceability as ** practical postulate " for ordinary human purposes remains unimpaired. From the same point of view it is very easy to show, as many thinkers have done, that, being neither consistent, complete, in- dependent, nor an end in itself, it forces us forward to the assumption that it is not ultimate, but simply an imperfect phase of a larger and higher unity than itself. The term reality, in the sense we are discussing, emphasises the fact of the impermanence, as such, of every phase it may REALITY AND TRUTH 153 assume, and this applies as much to any sensible reality in space as to reality viewed from a meta- physical standpoint. The formed matter, the synthesis of one phase, becomes the unformed matter to be carried up into a new synthesis in the next, and here comes in the Hegelian trichotomy, which is essentially the Aristotelian process of matter, form, and their reciprocal synthesis, or (as we may translate it into the at- once more definite and more comprehensive terms suggested in this book) into the alogical and the logical, the unity of which constitutes reality in its most general sense. It is easy to see the temptation to Pallogism that lurks in this trichotomy, whether it take the form of the Hegelian logic or of the Aristotelian metaphysic. The pro- J^eSom gression of the apperceptive syntheses, in each of which these two factors are discover- able, leads to the illusion that the alogical can be finally absorbed and abolished in the logical ; that matter must, in the ultimate reality, be eliminated by being transcended in an ideal- formal synthesis ; that the potential loses its independence and disappears in the actual ; that feeling and will exhaust themselves in an ineffable consciousness of pure intelligibles, in a word, of pure knowledge and final satisfaction. (Compare the ideals of various religious systems, the Ewige Glanze, the Beatific Vision, the ** ecstasy" of the mystic, &c.) An analysis of reality, whether as (! i 154 THE ROOTS OF REALITY a whole or in any one of its infinite partial mani- festations, never discloses any approach to the transcendence of the alogical by the logical, of the matter by the form. What those who, under whatever disguise, adopt the pallogistic attitude fail to see, is that the moment they have transcended, in a word, got rid of, one of the elements of reality, they have got rid of reality itself, seeing that, as used, alike in common- sense and in philosophy, the term reality implies a conscious synthesis, and hence necessarily m- volves at least two elements. Reduced to its simplest expression, we have found these elements in the general synthesis of reality, viewed alike per se or in any of its special phenomenal mani- festations, to disclose themselves as the antithesis of alogical and logical, an antithesis that is in the main rnvf-rpd hy the Aristoteli an 'antitheses o f m^erjaidjform, poifiiJliality^a^^ moment yoi -- — __ these antithetic aspects, the momenT yo u sacrifice^ one of them, yoirTTave"l;he capufmortuum of an abstraction l eft. T he reality, the synthesis, has disappeare d, and this hypostatised abstraction has taken its placelT'Tliis is the case, though often concealed under plausible guises, with all systems of a pallogistic tendency. Such a hypos- tatised abstraction, for instance, was the vov% TToirjTiKog of Aristotle, perhaps the unzca substantia of Spinoza, and certainly the Idee of Hegel, in addition to the classical instance in the history REALITY AND TRUTH 155 of philosophy, the Platonic Idea, universalia ante rem. But although the polarity of the basal anti- thesis is essential to every real, and no less so to ultimate reality itself, if we admit such, yet it may be possible to predicate a certain priority of significance for one pole of this antithesis as against the other. By this priority of significance I mean the stress of presupposition, and here, I contend, from the metaphysical elements of all experience, down or up (as we may choose to term the process), to the most concrete of apper- ceived contents, the logicaUformal element in- variably presupposes the alogical-material element, in a manner in which the converse does not hold good. To take an illustration from the root of all things. The object — the side of the primary conscious synthesis to which logical determination falls — presupposes that mere alogical power of consciousness which we distinguish as the sub- ject per se, in a more thorough and unconditional manner than the subject presupposes the object. A bare subject without object may b^ unimagin- able, but it is not in the same way impossibly absurd as is the bare object cut off from the subject. In other words, a system of felt, thought, and willed det erminations wit hout a fejelerTjHmYer, or^iller, is a sheer contradic- tion in terms. The objecTitself is, in ttar last resort, metaphysically deducible from the subject. The thought -feltness, which we term object. i 156 THE ROOTS OF REALITY clearly has its raison d'etre in the feeling and thinking agency or subject. Hence the alogical (here the primordial subject) has clearly a pre- suppositional value, from the metaphysical point of view, superior to that of the logically-deter- mined object. To take an illustration from the physical world, life or organisation presupposes inorganic physical substance as its basis. The living thing does not exist apart from the form of life itself, apart, that is, from the laws or logical categories determining organisation, but life, apart from living matter, is an impossible absurdity. Life, in short, is an objective fact, having for its pre- supposition physical matter sans phrase. Now, quoad the special category involved in living matter, the mere physical substance at its basis is alogical. The difference, of course, between our metaphysical and the above physical illustration lies in the fact that in the latter the alogi- cality is only relative. The physical substance constituting the ultimate matter of the living organism can be itself reduced as an objective reality under the categories of inorganic matter. You can destroy an animal body and chemically resolve it into its inorganic elements — which elements, nevertheless, have a real existence. When we are dealing with metaphysical principles, the case is otherwise. The ultimate alogical subject at the root of the primary synthesis of consciousness has meaning and value only REALITY AND TRUTH 157 as element of the synthesis itself. Per se it can never become invested with reality. Our point ought now to be sufficiently clear, namely, that the alogical in any real synthesis has always an implicatory priority of value over the logical form that converts it into reality, whether ulti- mate, as in the case of metaphysical principles, or derivative, as in the case, of physical pro- ducts. But it is not merely when considered as elementary factor of reality that this presup- positional priority of value attaches to ppiority of the alogical. Analysing reality by the value of method known as that of the Hegelian ^^^^^^^ trichotomy, we view it as position, negative apposition, and synthetic unity of these two terms, this process obtaining alike in every special case of reality and in reality considered in its widest and simplest aspect as determina- tion of experience in general. In the synthesis itself, viewed as completed whole, we find the alogical again the dominant factor. This is especially noticeable from the point of view of psychology and epistemology. The focus, so to say, of the reality of the thing, rests in its alogical, its felt but inexpressible, particularity. In will, the touchstone of motive is always feeling, and the desire or realised end is always feeling. Reason, the logical determination of the value of motive and end, is the handmaid merely of feeling. We cannot reason feeling N 158 THE ROOTS OF REALITY into existence or out of existence. No logical process can exorcise the given immediacy of feeling, any more than the given particularity of the felt object ; although, of course, this given particularity may evoke the logical pro- cess. This side of the question, however, will fall to be fully dealt with in discussing the ethical and aesthetic consciousness, when the questions of motives, ends, and ideals, can suitably be treated in greater detail. We have thus far, throughout the present chapter, discussed the question of reality from certain points of view, either not at all, or only casually, touched upon, in the previous portions of this work. In the remainder of this chapter we shall have to consider the notion of truth, as to its distinction from reality, as to its inner meaning and significance, and as to its test. The main distinction between truth and reality is that, whereas in reality we are concerned with the alogical as well as with the logical, in truth we are dealing, at least primarily, with the logical alone. Furthermore, while in reality we have the logical in its first intention — to use the scholastic phrase — in truth we have the logical in its second intention, as reflected in the mind. Hence truth can never be identical with reality. Truth is always abstract as being concerned essentially with logical notions, whereas reality is concrete; it represents the synthetic union of the alogical REALITY AND TRUTH 159 Truth not identical with reality. and the logical. In truth, therefore, reality is always transformed. The alogical of the real object disappears, and is replaced by a thought- form — a more or less arbitrary symbol of itself. This symbol works all very well up to a certain point for practical purposes, but beyond that point it breaks down, and we get into the well- known antinomies, insoluble contradictions, or impossibilities of thought, as we may choose to term them. In this connection we may observe that the time-honoured philosophical theory of ^* things- in-themselves," outside all consciousness, may be traced back to the inability of reflective thought to deal adequately with the alogical. All that has to do with relations between alogical terms It can fully master, but, being pure thought, it cannot get inside the alogical terms them- selves. It can compass the relation between subject and object, from its most general meta- physical expression up to its most complex form as relation between individual mind and outer world. It can also compass the manifold and .complex relations between objects themselves. But it cannot penetrate the alogical. It cannot interpret in its own language feeling or feltness (sensation) itself It cannot penetrate the par- ticular or individual as such. It cannot com- prehend that infinity of particulars which its own universals presuppose. Hence these things, the alogical per se, are to reflective thought, of i6o THE ROOTS OF REALITY which philosophy is the highest expression, necessarily a caput mortuMm, outside its own range, and which it can, for the most part, only indicate by negative definitions. Here, I think, we have the fount and origin of the thing-in-itself, the noumenon, the unknowable, &c. These and similar expressions represent simply endeavours to indicate and seize, in thought, the alogical in its inwardness, and apart from its connection with thought as com- plementary element in the synthetic unity we call the real. Just as the word reality is used in different senses, so is truth. To the ordinary man Various truth means the correspondence be- senses of tween the reproduction in imagination, truth. Qj. ^j^g statement in words, of a thing or event and the thing or event itself. Truth is, for him, usually of the nature of a ** practical postulate," and his chief concern is that the correspondence shall be such as shall satisfy his practical needs. This at one end of the scale. . For science, the standard of truth is, that the formulae of reflective thought that it employs, ^ shall be capable of re-translation into terms of reality, and vice versa, in any given case, on demand. This, at least, is the theoretical postu- late of scientific thought. Philosophy demands more of truth than this. Like science, it ex-'*'^ presses truth in the abstract ternft of reflective thought, only more so. It aims at an adequate REALITY AND TRUTH i6i interpretation of universal reality by reflective thought in its own terms, but one that shall correspond to that reality in a manner to satisfy the individual mind. There is one thing com- mon to all senses of the word truth, and that is, that the ultimate test of truth is the self- consistency of consciousness. Where, in every- day life, a report does not tally with the fact reported, the self- consistency of consciousness is violated. Where a scientific formula is con- tradicted at any point by the reality it is supposed to represent, there the self-consistency of con- sciousness is also violated. By the self-consis- tency of consciousness is meant the consistency of consciousness, considered as a whole, with itself, wherever and whenever the test is applied. This does not invalidate the fact that in every process of consciousness a contradiction lies em- bedded, based on the antithetic character of its two ultimate elements, the mark of which we have found to consist respectively in alogicality ^and logicality. This contradiction, as Hegel in his own way has pointed out, belongs to the ^^ife and movement of reality considered as pro- ems, or as incomplete. But the contradiction qua contradiction, nevertheless, disappears in every completed synthesis as such, whether of Consciousness as a whole or of any special organic '•"^hase of consciousness,* for the very essence of such* is consistency within itself. It is important in this connection to distinguish i62 THE ROOTS OF REALITY between the alogical and illogicality. Where you have what is commonly termed a contradictio Adistine- ^^ adjecto, or a ''contradiction in tiontobe terms," within a logical process itself, noted. youihave illogicality. The contradic- tion of the Hegelian dialectic is of quite a different character to this. It is not, like the latter, a contradiction immanent in one side of the real synthesis, but a contradiction arising from the intrinsic disparity between the two sides or ele- ments of the synthesis. This disparity can only be envisaged by reflective thought, working, as it necessarily does, through categories, as an at least continuous, if not endless, process of the surging up and resolution of contradictions. We have defined the test of truth as the self- consistency of consciousness. But neither truth nor its test is something fixed once Gradations ^^^ f^^. ^u Truth, as the represen- of truth. . ,. • 1 u f ^ tative of reality m the sphere ot renec- tive thought, has gradations like reality itself, and corresponding to it. The highest truth stands for the most complete expression of those de- terminations of consciousness we term reality. ^ Truth means, then, the expression in the forms of reflective thought, of the highest realisation ^of a given synthesis, the most perfect expression of the reality of a given plane of consciousness. It is the alogical in every real synthesis that forces forward to a new reality, and thus is perpetually falsifying truth. There is no con- REALITY AND TRUTH 163 ceivable formulation of the nature of things that cannot be transcended by a more adequate formu- lation. Hence a "truth" is only absolute for its own plane and for those below it. Other- wise, by its very nature it becomes, that is, it evolves from within itself, a higher truth, in respect of which it becomes itself falsehood. The " highest " truth, then, if we are dealing with the ultimate nature of consciousness, as in philosophy, would be identical with absolute truth, but below or within this Special all-comprehensive aspect we find in- finite gradations of relative truth. Thus every department of knowledge has its special "truth." The truth of physics is not precisely the truth of chemistry. The truth of chemistry is just as little the truth of physiology. The truth of physiology again differs from the truth of social science. Truth, in this scientific sense, is largely coincident with the system of the laws of a given science. The confusion between these relative truths of science, and their misapplication, have been often recognised as a fruitful source of fallacy. Meanwhile, let us pass in review more closely the three senses in which the word "truth" is used, but for all of which the self-con- ^^^ . ., Tne truth sistency of consciousness affords the of common- ultimate test. Truth in the first sense sense, is bound up with the concrete mental image of sensible reality, and, as such, it is truth in its i64 THE ROOTS OF REALITY lowest meaning. This is truth in the popular sense, the sense in which little boys are told to ** speak the truth." Here we have an instance of simple and crude correspondence, usually speaking, between the psychological order of ideas and the perceptive order of things in space. In the example taken, when we demand that the small boy shall speak the truth, we inculcate upon him that he shall not call up in our minds ideas — using the word ''idea" here, not in the sense of abstract notion, but of con- crete mental image — having no counterpart in the world of spacial perceivedness, while alleging that they have such a counterpart. We mean that he should not call up such a mental image or series of mental images in our mind, coupled with a judgment that these images correspond to a perceptual happening in space. Such is the typical and most common case of truth in this lowest and everyday sense of the term.^ Truth in the scientific sense does not neces- sarily postulate the correspondence between a mental image and something else outside itself, ^ In the illustration given we have referred to a happening in space. We need scarcely say that this is not a sine qua non of the matter. To pursue our illustration, the mental image called up by the boy might be just as well something concerning the workings of his own mind. He might allege that he had forgotten something that he had not forgotten, and vice versa. Here he evokes in us the mental image of acts of forgetfulness within our own mental experience, conjoined with the false judgment by which we identify them with the state of his mind at the juncture in question. REALITY AND TRUTH 165 as does truth in the above popular sense. The essence of scientific truth is that it transforms common-sense reality in the light of abstract conceptions. Any mental of ge^ienee. image that is involved is altogether subsidiary. In fact, the mental image is often rather disturbing than otherwise to the appre- hension of scientific truth. In mathematics it is admitted that no mental image formed, say, of the geometrical configurations of space can correspond with accuracy to the figures postu- lated by geometry (points, lines, circles, &c.). Again, we cannot help, when we speak of a molecule, of an atom, or of ether, forming by analogy some sort of mental image of these ultimate factors of the world of physical science. Yet we are perfecdy well av/are that any mental image arrived at in this way begins and ends with itself, that it corresponds with nothing out- side itself. It is true, of course, that in geometry the clumsy attempts of mental imagery to bring these configurations of pure space before the mind may, properly discounted, be of assistance in dealing with the problems peculiar to this science. But, on the other hand, for the appre- hension of physical truth the mental image involuntarily formed of molecule, atom, or ether, leads undoubtedly to direct misconceptions, and hence, as above said, is a hindrance rather than otherwise to accuracy of apprehension. Scien- tific truth reduces the world of sensible reality V i66 THE ROOTS OF REALITY to a system of abstract categories. The mere pseudo-picture it makes of a transformed sense- world is entirely subsidiary thereto. It is very little more than the tailor's block (so to say) that it uses for the display of its system of categories or laws. Truth, in the highest sense of the word, that is, the truth of philosophy, means the complete apprehension of the world through the philosophy. "^^^^^"^ ^^ thought-forms. The truth of philosophy is the truth common to all other departments of knowledge, inasmuch as it is the truth involved in the conditions of know- ledge itself. Philosophy aims at a perfect for- mulation of reality in the abstract terms of reflective thought ; this aim is, however, im- possible of attainment. However much we may approximate thereto, we can never attain to and grasp truth in its entirety in this manner. No formulation in terms of the abstractions of re- flection can ever correspond exactly to the requirements of the complete self-consistency of consciousness. The ground of this lies in the fact that the alogical element, which is the basis of reality, and which interpenetrates reality, can- not be expressed, but can only be indicated — that is, symbolised — by the forms of abstract thought. It is this alogical element at the basis of reality, this *' power behind the throne" of the transformed world in which philosophic truth consists, that prevents the formulation from ever REALITY AND TRUTH 167 becoming perfect and, so to say, rounded off. The reality of things and of mental processes, their evolution in time, continually forces us on to a readjustment, a re-formulation, of the world- problem and its solution. In a word, philosophic truth must always be relative. In philosophic truth, as in other aspects of truth, the corre- spondence of truth with reality never amounts to more than an approximation. But what in philo- sophy, as in science, we mean by truth is the formula expressing the nearest approximation up to date to the self-consistency of consciousness. Hence no system of philosophy, no formulation -j,^ nor solution of the world-problem, can be final. Absolute truth in the philosophic sense, that is, a formulation adequately expressing, under the notions of reflective thought, reality throughout its complete range, for all time, is an impossible and absurd chimera. A system of philosophy, in the last resort, like a work of art, is the hand- maid of feeling. For, indeed, every metaphysical formulation has as its end the satisfaction of personal feeling. It may wear the guise of a purely logical construction, but its final telos is, no less than that of a work of art, the satisfaction of a certain complex feeling or emotion. It S is a customary convention to term the ideal of philosophy truth, the ideal of art beauty, and the ideal of conduct goodness ; but, in the broadest sense, these are only parts of one ideal, the ultimate harmony or self - consistency of i68 THE ROOTS OF REALITY consciousness with itself, of the form with the content, of the alogical with the logical, of the potential with the actual. Here again the fallacy of Pallogism comes into view. Nothing is more common in philosophy Another ^^^" what is sometimes termed In- phase of tellectualism, by which I understand PaUogism. ^^^ attribution to reason, as such, of an aesthetic or ethical value. In Plato we find it expressed in its baldest form, but the tendency runs through most synthetic thinkers up to modern times. With Spinoza, for example, the constitution of reason, of pure intellect, as the final goal of all things, is very conspicuous. His phrase in this connection, the ** intellectual love of God" {Amor intellectualis Dei) is well known. For Spinoza, the goal of ethics is the raising of the individual consciousness to the standpoint of pure, passionless, intellectual insight. In and • through this, the individual, in proportion as he attains it, achieves one-ness with the Absolute. Yet one would think it was easy to see that this point of view is abstract and one-sided — that, after all, the intellectual insight that leads to a supersession of passion in the lower and more partial sense, is itself only the handmaid of passion or emotion in the higher and fuller sense, which passion or emotion may also receive its satisfaction through other means than the re- lational activity of pure intellect. The aesthetic consciousness with its ideal of REALITY AND TRUTH 169 t beauty, the ethical consciousness with its ideal of goodness, love, or whatever we may choose to call it, have also their parts to play in this connection no less than the reflective consciousness with its ideal of truth. To talk of ** intellectual love," as Spinoza does, is a misuse of language. One might almost as correctly talk of **long depth" or ** broad height." Intellectual insight, con- ceived at its highest, as the complete compre- hension of all possible relations in a systematic logical unity, could never give us, intrinsically, anything beyond itself. The emotional satisfac- tion derived from a completeness of knowledge in this sense has an exclusively intellectual con- tent. If we put aside the sense of symmetry and harmony which an intellectual construction of the universe brings with it, and which, as we have already indicated, places it en rapport with the aesthetic ideal — thereby giving it, in a sense, an aesthetic value — the content per se is not a true aesthetic content, while still less does it possess any ethical value. Mere logical truth, although it may be an essential element in the final goal of experience, can never by itself furnish the com- plete satisfaction that this goal implies. To sum up, we have found that reality, apart from its barest philosophic significance as in- volving a synthesis, is used with two chief meanings as opposed to abstraction, the one its ordinary meaning, and the other more specially philosophical. These two meanings, though 170 THE ROOTS OF REALITY seemingly divergent, are essentially not so. The ordinary sense of the word reality is that of the outer world of sensible objects in space of chapter. ^^^ ^™^ ^^^^ forms the content of our perceptive consciousness. This is the norm, or standard, of reality, for everyday life. The philosophical use of the word is more com- prehensive, and also more elastic. In its more specially technical application, the word means the highest expression of the essence of any given thing or of the world as a whole. In this sense it does not mean mere concreteness as opposed to abstractness, but the highest perfec- tion of any given concrete, or of the universe conceived as a totality. The reality of the flower is in this sense that of the flower at the moment of its fullest expansion, the reality of the man being similarly that of the man in the perfection of his powers. In short, that final stage or condition of anything to which all other stages have led up, or to which they are contributing, is its reality. Thus the Absolute, if it is to be postulated as the highest expression of reality, must be viewed as that infinite consciousness as regards which the content of each and every individual consciousness is but a more or less partial aspect. The latter's full significance could only be apprehended from the point of view of this supreme consciousness. Reality in this sense, therefore, means always fulness or per- fection, whether relative or absolute. But, as REALITY AND TRUTH 171 \ pointed out, this philosophical use of the word reality does not essentially clash with its ordinary use. The man-in-the-street calls the outer world — the content of his waking perceptive conscious- ness, working through the forms of space and time — reality. In so doing he confines the world to that plane or stadium of consciousness that is of most obvious importance (to himself) for everyday life and its practical concerns. This common-sense reality is also a perfection and completion, the perfection and completion of the inchoate sensations and the bare thought-forms of which it is constructed, and which disclose themselves to metaphysical analysis. It is the most salient stadium of consciousness in its self- unfolding, and as such is a degree in reality of the first importance. Hence it will be seen that the common usage of the term and its special philo- sophical sense are not at all at variance. Truth, we have shown, is distinguished from reality in that in truth, considered as truth, the alogical element, the foundation various of life and reality, is absent. Truth forms of has at least three easily distinguish- able connotations. It always involves the notion of correspondence between the psychological order and an order that is more than psycho- logical. The ultimate test of truth, as often enough here insisted on, is the consistency of consciousness with itself. We have truth as to matter-of-fact, which presupposes the corre- 172 THE ROOTS OF REALITY spondence of certain mental images with events in space, or with the inner workings of an indi- vidual mind. We have the ** truths " of science, which in the main coincide (respectively) with the systems of laws or categories peculiar to each department of science. We have also *' scientific truth " as a whole, which means the harmonisa- tion of the laws or categories of special depart- ments under certain wider thought-forms that include them.^ Finally, we have philosophic truth, in the true sense, which aims at em- bracing in reflective thought, under the most comprehensive formula possible, all conscious experience. In this way it seeks, under the forms of reflection, to arrive at the ultimate meaning of reality itself. The immediate test of truth as to matter-of-fact lies in the corre- spondence between a mental image and some form of happening, either in the perceptual world of space, or in the workings of some individual mind. The immediate test of scientific truth is its correspondence with reality at evt/y point to which it is possible to apply it, and whenever we choose to apply it. But the only test of philo- sophic truth (and in the last resort the test of truth also in the other senses named) is the self-consistency of consciousness. The aim of philosophy is the supreme and most intimate ^ Scientific truth as a complete body of doctrine, as distinguished from the respective truths of the diflferent sciences, has been some- times termed " cosmic philosophy." REALITY AND TRUTH 173 satisfaction of aspiration towards the unity and harmony of consciousness in all phases from the lowest to the highest. This necessarily involves the inclusion of the ^e/os of all consciousness in the theory that is designed to embody this harmony for reflective consciousness. But reflective thought is not the only aspect of consciousness under which reality, as primarily given, becomes transformed and ac- ^^^^^ quires a higher value. In the art-con- higher sciousness this is also the case, and ^^^^^^^^^ the emotion of aspiration above spoken of seeks satisfaction here immediately under the forms of sensibility and perception. The aim of art, in its highest manifestations, is to express the unity and harmony of experience, together with its final goal, in the world of immediate feeling — in a word, alogically. As to any ultimate goal of conduct, this also would seem, in the last resort, to have none but an aesthetic significance. Char- acter, if not viewed as a means to some end other than itself, but merely looked at in itself, has a purely aesthetic value. The measure of "goodness" in character is the degree in which it expresses to our moral consciousness, in the forms of conduct (justice, duty, sympathy, &c.), the same unity and harmony of consciousness with itself — considered as process and as end — which philosophy seeks to embody in the logical values of reflective thought, and art in the alogical values of perceptive feeling. VI THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS The philosophic, the aesthetic, and the ethical consciousness have this much in common, that they are severally concerned with the Philosophic, ,, , , ^ , . , iEsthetie, attempt to merge the many m the one, and Ethical the qualitative particular in the uni- ness!^^^"^ versal. The perfection with which this is done is the test of their several ** values." The aim of all three is to eliminate quantitative particularity, to raise consciousness above the mere endlessness of repetition, with the differential imperfection attaching to each instance of this repetition — to raise it to a point at which this quantitative particularity, the salient feature in the reality of common-sense, has disappeared, or at least has lost all significance.^ Their aim is to unite with universality the qualitative side of particularity, its thisness, without which there is no life, but only ** bloodless categories." Science and a fortiori philosophy seek to attain this synthesis in their own medium of the logical rela- tion as transformed by reflective thought. The 1 For the general discussion of the antithesis of particular and universal, see Chapter III. on " The Alogical and the Logical." »74 THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 175 ultimate goal of philosophy is the perfect and most adequate expression of reality in the terms of reflection. But in this attempt, however suc- cessfully universality may be attained, it is so at the expense of the thisnesSy the immediacy, the life, constituting the marrow of the " world and the soul" in their ''first intention." The salient point about a logical relation, a thought-form, is that it is purely discursive — that it has no thisness. Hence the sense of emotional satisfaction accom- panying the contemplation of reality as trans- formed by reflective thought into scientific, and to a still greater extent, philosophic, truth, must be ascribed to the fact that we impart something foreign thereto in our mental attitude, to wit, the feeling of harmony, symmetry, and perfection derived from the aesthetic consciousness with its alogical content of sense. For it is clear, and we hardly need labour the point, that emotional satis- faction can only grow out of the soil of thisness or immediacy — in a word, out of the soil of life. Mere "bloodless categories," scientific or philo- sophic, can never be food for emotion of any kind whatever. But every transformation of reality by the mind into the terms of its own reflective consciousness necessarily means its transformation into abstractions, that is, into some form of the logical universal. We have seen that the latter observation applies even to what are, considered per sey purely alogical elements of the real syn- thesis. These also, as indicated in the reflective \ 1 176 THE ROOTS OF REALITY consciousness, necessarily, so to speak, take on its colour; and are presented, therefore, in the guise of concepts, or, if we prefer to call them so as being more strictly accurate, as pseudo-concepts. For example, if we speak of sensation as a whole or of any special modification of sensation, such as colour, hardness, sweetness, we have thereby transformed what, as originally given, is a purely alogical factor in our experience into a pseudo- concept. All thought and a fortiori all language have to be carried on in universals, that is, under thought-forms. Hence, even when dealing with intrinsically non-ccnceptual, alogical elements, thought cannot choose but indicate them in the terms and under the conditions prescribed by its own relational activity. I say indicate them, for in the nature of the case it cannot adequately express them as it can express a principle, a rela- tion, a law, a formula, &c. From the foregoing, therefore, the reader will clearly see that a philo- sophical construction, as such, is always concerned with thought-forms — if not with concepts that adequately express real relations, then at least with pseudo-concepts that inadequately indicate the alogical terms of these relations apart from the relations themselves. Philosophy may be not inaptly defined as the last word of the logical. It cannot, as we have often enough had occasion to insist, get beyond universals or abstractions. Even when it seeks to deduce the individual, it is always concerned with THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 177 the universalised individual, with the synthesis of those general conditions that the thisness of the particular individual presupposes, -,, ,. .. but is not. The impossibility of the of the logical, as such, expressing the alogi- lo^^^^^- cal, remains, but in philosophy the logical is pushed to its extreme limits, to the point at which it transcends itself. Although philosophy as philosophy cannot touch the alogical, yet it can show us the boundary of the logical, the point of contact, so to say, with the alogical. For the in- strument of philosophy is language, and language is the exponent, where not of true concepts, at least of pseudo-concepts. The aim of philoso- phical terminology is directly to express thought- relations, and not like the language of poetry indirectly to evoke feeling by means of sugges- tion. Yet the analogy between philosophy and poetry, which has often been remarked upon, is undoubted, and rests upon the fact that the last word of philosophy is a hint at conveying that which its proper medium, reflective thought, is incapable, strictly speaking, of expressing. Dis- cursive thought, as we have often said, always glances off from immediate feeling, and hence can never directly express it. The universal can never penetrate the particular. Although it can indicate particularity as a bare principle in con- ceptual form, yet the thing itself eludes it. The problem as regards the future is whether we are destined to attain a mode of knowledge, a con- H The canon of judg- ment in human culture. 178 THE ROOTS OF REALITY sciousness, In which the alogical shall be imme- diately presented as universal. Meanwhile, this is imperfectly attempted in the fine arts. The ** higher consciousness" is concerned with values rather than with facts or abstract relations. The problem of human culture is, as it has always been, to disengage the quantitative particular, the mere many- ness of the world, from the essence of its reality. This applies alike to human culture in its three great branches, philosophic, aesthetic, and ethical, notwithstanding that the value of each is different. Philosophy strives to accomplish this by reason, by the reduction of the world's many-ness to the unity of abstract thought ; art, by its reduction to the unity of abstract feeling. A similar aim appears in the practical department of human culture, namely, ethics. The goal here is the reduction of the many-ness of particular, independent contradic- tory human interests to the universal common interest of humanity. Here also, therefore, the problem is the disengaging of the aim of human conduct from the quantitative particularity of countless aims and its reduction to the unity of a common standard. In all cases, the many-ness of particularity is the enemy with which the intel- lectual progress of mankind is continually battling. The ordinary man is occupied almost exclusively with this many-ness, with the quantitative parti- cular, with the " sense-manifold," as it is com- THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 179 monly termed. The intellectual man, on the other hand, is occupied with the universal, either of thought or of feeling. He has one of two aims, either to transcend the quantitative parti- cularity of events, things, and persons by trans- lating reality directly into thought-unity, or to effect the same purpose by transmuting it directly into feeling-unity. In the latter case, while the quantitative mode of particularity is abolished, the qualitative mode, the thisness, is retained. In the former case, on the contrary, we have, in the first instance at least, to sacrifice both aspects, the qualitative aspect of particularity, its thisness, as well as the quantitative, its endless repetition, by reducing reality to a system of logical abstrac- tions, general principles, or laws. In either case, the concrete reality of ordinary consciousness is changed. In one case, the product of the trans- mutation is termed truth, in the other beauty, employing these terms respectively, of course, in their widest signification. The opposition between particular and universal can never be transcended by the mere reduction of any given reality to logical formulae per se, to laws or uni- versal principles, as is done by science. The aesthetic abstraction, or beauty, in combining the qualitative particular, the tkisness of feeling, with the universal, which in ordinary empirical con- sciousness accrues to the logic-relational side of reality, may be said in a sense to transcend the antithesis of particular and universal. The typal il N i8o THE ROOTS OF REALITY form in art is a particular, but with a purely uni- versal content and significance. {Cf, Schopen- hauer, Welt als Wilky \\\, passim^j This typal form or aesthetic idea represents the attempt of the aesthetic consciousness to disengage reality from the quantitative particular, to pluck it out of the swamp of indefinite numerical repetition, the morass of infinite multiplicity, in which, on the plane of common-sense consciousness, reality is immersed. This attempt is achieved with vary- ing success in all the departments of art. In music, as Schopenhauer has pointed out, the transcendence of the particular is more success- ful than in the other departments, owing to the medium employed. Philosophy proper, from one point of view, may be regarded as an eirenikon between the opposed modes of reducing the many-ness of particularity to unity and univer- sality. In metaphysic, the process of reducing the real world to the unity of the pure forms of thought is carried out to the fullest extent pos- sible. The generalisations and distinctions of metaphysic are infinitely more comprehensive and subtler than those of physical science, or even of mathematics. Hence the difficulty the man working in the atmosphere of common-sense or science finds in appreciating the significance of the problems of philosophy, let alone in under- standing any attempted solution of them. But, notwithstanding its failure to appeal to the ordi- nary mind, the very completeness with which THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS i8i philosophy does the work of logical generalisation and distinction, tends to bring us back again to the immediacy of feeling, but in a higher potency. This being the case, it approaches the art con- sciousness in its final result. In both, the end is so far the same. They both represent the activity of the subject of consciousness in its effort to be rid of, or at least to reduce the significance of, the mode of the alogical, termed in this book quan- titative particularity. In the first case, it has sought to abolish the infinite many-ness of the real world by the complementary factor of that many-ness, to wit, logical universality. In the second case, it has striven to effect this by inform- ing the other, or qualitative, aspect of the particu- larity, its thisnesSy with a quasi-universal content. In art, the thisness or immediacy of mere feeling is sought to be made the vehicle of a universality that is itself based on sensation or feeling. The mode of envisaging the world in which the relational element holds the most undisputed possession of the field, is undoubtedly jy^q the scientific attitude. In philosophy, seientifie the inadequacy of the logical formula ^ ^ ^ ®- becomes apparent, but the scientific mind proper has no vestige of a suspicion that the categories employed by physical science are not ultimate and final. In the infancy of knowledge, man blindly followed his feeling as the interpreter of the world-order for him. At a later age, the results of this interpretation, based on feeling 4 i82 THE ROOTS OF REALITY and the attitude of mind to which those results belonged, became superstition ; the scientific atti- tude assumed the sway of knowledge. The truth of the universe in this scientific sense appeared very different from its truth before the rise of science. The highest truth for most of us means the reduction of the quantitative particular, of the many-ness of the world, to the categories of science. Until all departments of knowledge are as completely reduced to those categories as their nature admits, the truth of science will still await completion ; hence, until this is the case, the scientific attitude must continue to be supreme. But the question then further arises whether, after all, the scientific outlook on the world is ultimate, in the sense that it may not possibly be superseded in its turn by a different one, by one, that is, which, while not necessarily abrogating the results of the modern scientific world-o utlook, will nevertheless present them in such a com- pletely new light that in their present shape they may appear to the man of the future hardly less superstitious than are the naive unreasoned theories of an earlier age to the man of science of to-day. The great antithesis of the ethical conscious- ness is that of freedom and necessity. This, as will be at once apparent to the reader, is only the special form that the cardinal antithesis between the alogical and the logical assumes in the sphere of ethics. The reason, working through the \ THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 183 categories, proclaims that every event is neces- sitated, that is, that it is related indissolubly with previous events according to the ppeedom category of cause and effect. Feel- and ^^_^ ing in its immediacy proclaims spon- leeessi y. taneity of motive and of action on the part of the individual will. In all my action, setting aside, of course, coercion from without, while I know that the action is rigorously necessitated by motives, in their turn strictly determined by preceding events, all of which are deducible from certain laws, physical and psychical, constituting special determinations of the great principle of causation— while I know all this, I nevertheless fed myself to be acting spontaneously or freely. In this antinomy of free will and. necessity, there- fore, we have the alogical and the logical very obviously presented in crass and apparently irresolvable opposition in the individual con- sciousness. Reason, in the form of reflective thought, presents our actions to us as through and through necessitated; immediate feelmg presents them to us as altogether spontaneous. This contradiction cannot be transcended by thought, since it has its ground in those alogical elements that are prior in nature to thought. The activity of thought, in both its forms, whether as constitutive of the objective world or as reflected in the mind, must, by its very nature, reduce the particular under the universal, con- tingency under necessity, spontaneity under law. I !i 184 THE ROOTS OF REALITY Viewed from the standpoint of science, therefore, from the standpoint, namely, that makes ab- straction from the alogical conditions of self- consciousness, necessitarianism is a plain and uncontrovertible conclusion. On the other hand, viewed from the standpoint of self-con- sciousness and its conditions, free-will is an equally irresistible truth. This antinomy can no more be resolved by thought than the infinity of space and time and their quantitative-particular content can be reduced to any thought-formu- lation. Reason holds a brief to reduce all reality to the category, and it always succeeds in doing so whilst its own point of view is retained in the reflective consciousness, and whilst abstraction is made from the other point of view in which the alogical predominates. For the reflective con- sciousness, although it always has before it the empirical consciousness, the object-world as given, from which it draws its content, can, we need scarcely say, always by a voluntary act throw one of the elements constitutive of the empirical consciousness into the background, and fix its attention on the other. The individual, there- fore, may either view his action as an event in time indissolubly connected with other events under the category of causation, or he may strike at once to the bed-rock of all things, through his own self-consciousness to the subject of all consciousness, and view the action as having its source in that of which time itself is the mere 1^ THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 185 form. In the first case, he ascribes action to motive ; he deduces action determinately from character under a hierarchy of laws, the founda- tion of which is the principle that action follows the strongest motive. But, as Schopenhauer has pointed out, he ignores the fact that this character itself, and the relative power of the motives in- fluencing it, emanate from that which is not itself per se, but which is the presupposition, not of it alone, but of the whole world-process of conscious- ness whence it takes its origin. The spontaneity immediately given in the act of will or choice is, in short, not an individual fact, although the act itself may be, but proceeds directly from the primal subject that identifies itself in a special time-con- tent with a particular memory-synthesis. In the antinomy opened up by moral praise and blame we are once more confronted with a salient example of our cardinal anti- Antinomy thesis. No person in the present day of praise with any pretensions to enlightenment ^^^ Wame. doubts that human character is moulded by the circumstances under which the individual has grown up, and by those under which his ancestors have grown up. This character it is that is the source of his motives, and of the actions that follow therefrom. This is the theory of modern scientific psychology. '' But," says its opponent, '' moral judgment on actions, then, can have no meaning ; you cannot praise or blame a man for that which his character necessitated his 'g T^gM.'.VCTj ,; .'^; 'ff t ^'^ttggS^^Is S r i86 THE ROOTS OF REALITY doing ; if he is so made that he must do certain things, given the temptation to do them, then it is obviously unjust to blame him for doing them." The solution of this problem on the principles developed in the foregoing pages is, I think, clear. In every moral action, just as in every other event, there is a law-element as well as a chance- element. The general principle of the action can be deduced from the character of the individual performing it, in a word, can be regarded from the standpoint of the category of causation. In so far as this is the case, the individual may be said to be not obnoxious to praise or blame, since his action is determined. But this determination is only general. It represents the categorised and necessitated side of his character, and as such determines the general course of his action, other things being equal. But other things never are quite equal, for every action happening in the real world has not merely a general and logical side to it, but a particular and alogical side, irreducible to cause or to any other category. In a word, every event in the real world has a chance-side as well as a causal side, and this applies to moral actions no less than to other events. It is to the former side of the action that moral praise and blame, in the strict sense of the terms, are alone applicable. The general char- acter of a man may be provocative of either admiration or detestation, but a man cannot properly be praised or blamed for inheriting a THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 187 certain character, or even for having acquired such from the circumstances attending his up- bringing. But the general character is only one element determining individual moral action. There is the other element in moral action as in every temporal event, spontaneous, aleatory, and altogether irreducible to the principle of causation. Either alone is abstract, but their synthesis gives us the concrete character of the man as displayed in his actions. In some cases, the causal element, the mere disposition of abstract character, so predominates as to com- pletely overshadow the other element of personal will in any given moral action. When this is so, we say that the temptation is irresistible to the man. This is best illustrated, perhaps, in the case of certain typical criminals, where the alogical element entering into moral action seems to be entirely absent. Such persons approach the con- dition of mechanical automata (mechanism being the type par excellence of action dominated by the causal category). The spontaneous element that might modify this is practically inoperative. But, in the general way, it by no means follows that because a man has certain elements of bru- tality in his character, or because he is of a strongly erotic temperament, he will ever per- petrate a murder or a rape. A thousand men may have more or less strongly developed brutal or erotic instincts, and yet only one of the num- ber either assault a man or ravish a woman. t * • I \ i88 THE ROOTS OF REALITY Hence it is that the rough test of moral praise or blame is the average of a given com- munity. As a man's action is above or below the average in the moral scale in his community, he is praised or blamed. Poverty, for example, is the condition predisposing to theft, but the man who actually steals is blamed because thousands of others in precisely the same circumstances as he is do not, and would not, commit the act of theft. The moral *' ought" only applies to the particular or alogical element in the action. It is preponderance of this alogical-particular element over the logical-necessitated element in any per- sonality that makes us respect a man personally as having strength of will. The man shows his strength of will especially in resisting his char- acter, that is, the sum of the tendencies built up in him by heredity or by surroundings.^ The basis of moral judgment, that is, of praise or blame, is the same as the basis of sympathy, Self-in- namely, the identification of personal terest and interest with extra-personal interest, of inSSst. self-interest with social-interest. As to what the inner meaning of this iden- tification is, of the impulse to the realisation of self outside self, I have elsewhere offered a sug- gestion. ^ (See pp. 126-136.) Sympathy postulates an identity between one personality and another. 1 We here call attention to the inconsistency of the ordinary Theist, who wishes to eliminate chance from the universe, and at the same time to retain freedom of the will. THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 189 It cries out against the notion that the self- consciousness associated with the animal body is the last word of self-consciousness. Thus much we may affirm, whether the hypothesis referred to above be accepted or not. The pallogistic theory of conduct, from Socrates downwards, has harped upon the antithesis be- tween action dominated by reason and 11- 1 :^« Reason and action dictated by impulse or passion, impulse. The ideal man, on this theory, is a man whose every action is through and through penetrated by reason. The Stoics were the great historical representatives of this view in the classical world. In post-mediaeval philosophy, Spinoza was the thinker who stated the principle most emphatically, and elaborated it most fully. (Cf.'' Ethica," Book V.) If by action in accord- ance with reason be simply meant action accom- panied by a clear view of the end of the action, and by a well-grounded knowledge of the effect of the immediate ends to be attained in relation to the ultimate end, then, obviously, so far, no fault is to be found with the doctrine. The fact remains, however, and has too often been for- gotten by votaries of the foregoing or Stoic doctrine (as we may term it from its most pro- minent representatives in history), that what lies behind all rationality in human action is feeling. It is the felt desire or want that dictates the^ process of all action to the consciousness. / Rationality, the mere knowledge of the rela-J I90 THE ROOTS OF REALITY tion between means and end-in-view, is always subordinate to feeling. The end, the telos, of all activity is immediately determined by feeling, and by feeling alone. The determination is alogical, not logical. Though, in the present stage of the development of consciousness, we may not be able to formulate this telos in its completeness, we are nevertheless immediately conscious, beyond all dispute, that happiness or pleasurable feeling, using these words in their widest sense, is at least an essential attribute of this telos. But you cannot reason a man into happiness. Pleasure or happiness, as an experience, is in the last resort unreasoning and immediate, although it may very well be covered up or embroidered with reason. Intellectual considerations may play an impor- tant part in determining the specific form that the desire for, or the belief in, happiness takes, but this will not alter the fact that happiness belongs essentially to the telos of human action, and that happiness rests au fond upon pleasur- able feeling. You cannot reason a man out of the fact that he experiences pleasure or pain. As a boy, I once heard a quack doctor at a country fair arguing to the guileless swains around his stand that they might, without any hesitation, allow him to draw their teeth, since the pain they feared in the operation could not be really there at all. ** It is unreasonable," said he, **to think that there can be any pain, for THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 191 teeth are of the nature of bone," and taking up a skull and striking it, '' there is no feeling in bone." All that reason can really do is to im- press upon the consciousness the fact that the consequences of certain pleasures are more pain- ful than the pleasures are pleasurable. In this way a man may be reasoned into abstaining from the pleasures in question, but this does not alter the fact that his feeling in the matter is the ultimate arbiter. To take an important example. I cannot demonstrate to a man by any process of reasoning that he ought to prefer the common welfare of humanity to the pleasure of himself as an individual, or to the material benefit of the class to which he belongs. Here, again, his feeling is the ultimate arbiter- of his action. If he says, **What is mankind to me.'* I am going to enjoy myself," there is nothing for us but to pass on to the next question. Thus the ** ought" of conscience is always /^r se alogical, never logical — always per se feeling, never reason. Reason is always the means to the end, and never the end itself In motive, feeling is always the ultimate fact, and reason is purely derivative. If, then, feeling remains alike the starting-point and goal of all human conduct, it follows that the theory that postulates reason as the dominating factor in human motive and action is illusory. Even the crucial distinction between higher and lower in the pleasurableness of feeling is not 192 THE ROOTS OF REALITY rational. One always comes back ultimately upon the bed-rock of a fact, the essential of which is immediate feeling. Reason, in its rela- rat^ional- tion to conduct and elsewhere, always isationof presupposes feeling, the logical the feeling. ^logical, and not conversely. The mere feeling-impulse, the mere blind want or de- sire, is always becoming informed with thought, or rationalised. But, in the resultant synthesis, although the form of the feeling may be changed, even to becoming completely transformed, it remains feeling nevertheless, and becomes in its turn the raw material for further rationality. We start with a vague impulse, a desire, a want, as yet undetermined by thought. It discloses differences within itself. These differ- ences become emphasised by thought as mutually implicatory and antithetical, until at last the inter-relating activity itself often assumes a more prominent position in consciousness than do the terms inter-related. The proximate end, dictated primarily by the reason as means to an end not proximate, becomes mistaken for a true end, and the original end thus disappears from view. But, in the last resort, the telos is found in the completed feeling or realised impulse. Let us take the case of any purpose to be effected. This purpose has its origin in a feel- ing of want or desire, from which springs the primary alogical impulse. The primary feeling differentiates itself into terms, which become THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 193 related and modified by thought-activity. Next arises the question of means. In the reflection on means, the craving- for the ultimate end ,„^, , I fi 1 • r 1. Ultimate becomes obscured by the aesire for the and means which, now wholly or partly, fills proximate the place of the original feeling of desire for the ultimate end. Thought itself in the shape of further reflection then definitely formulates the question of the cui bo7io, and the original desire - feeling reasserts itself, but this time associated with a determinate knowledge of all its implications. This is the dialectic of human practice. Whatever aim, be it low or high, a man sets before himself in life, for example, it is feeling and not reason that dictates that aim. Whether it be the delights of having **a good time," or the aesthetic pleasure derived from the fulfilment of an artistic purpose, whether it be the satisfaction of scientific curiosity or the enjoyment of acquiring the point of view of an adequate philosophic insight into the inner- most depths of **the world and the soul," whether his aim be bread and butter or specu- lative contemplation, it is alike feeling and not reason that dictates his life-purpose. Oftentimes the reason, the reflective faculty of the individual, does not reach the final stage of recognising and bringing to clear conscious- ness the telos prescribed by the desire-feeling or impulse. It stops at the second stage, in which the ultimate end is negated in proximate ends. N and impulse. 194 THE ROOTS OF REALITY It fails to reach the stage at which they are in their turn negated, and in which the alike primary and final end emerges into full con- of^pe^^on sciousness. It aimlessly pursues the means that have become for the nonce ends, perhaps in a purely mechanical manner, like the man who, having made his fortune and sold his business, finding his occupa- tion gone, begs from his successor to be allowed to sit in the old counting-house for a few hours every day. The mere feeling of discomfort at the breach in the mechanical round of what was originally means to an end forces him to do this. But the fact of his feeling it thus shows that he had never brought to a clear conscious- ness the ultimate end of which his business activity was the means. In the view of those who hold reason to be the final principle of the mind, it is opposed to impulse as the dominant to the subordinate. The ''wise man" has always been supposed to act in accordance with the dictates of reason, and not with those of unreflective impulse. But this really means nothing more than that the said ** wise man " does not follow immediate feeling. It does not mean that feeling is not the ultimate arbiter of his action, . but that the feeling that guides him forms the final term in a dialectical process — in short, that it is not raw or crude feeling, but feeling that has already passed through the mill of thought. THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 195 We said a while ago that pleasurable feeling or happiness was an essential element in the telos of all activity. And yet how ^he often do we find that the man who pursuit of consciously and deliberately formulates ^^^PPi^^ss. pleasure as his goal does not arrive at it. This is because he places before him merely the abstract category and no concrete end. The category of happiness as abstract is unreal. It can only become realised as entering into a synthesis, of which the primary elements are other than itself. The man who attains happi- ness does so by postulating as his end some concrete goal irrespective of the happiness or pleasure which, from this point of view, appears as an adjunct, or something incidental to it. But with this question we shall have occasion to deal more fully in the next chapter when discussing the summum bonum, the final teloSy of human life. The term ''will" is used in more senses than one, both by Schopenhauer and in popular discourse. It is used as synonymous ^j^^ sometimes with desire, sometimes with canon of effort, sometimes with the velleitas ^^^^^s* of the Schoolmen, the mere inwardness of spon- taneity, but the will with which the ethical consciousness is concerned implies the actual consciousness of an individual. The spontaneity must be, so to say, conscious of itself to con- stitute will in the ethical sense. For the rest, 196 THE ROOTS OF REALITY will may be defined in general as the tendency of self-consciousness to realise itself completely. The whole system of things is implied in this self-realisation, in the last resort. Kant and Schopenhauer were the first to indicate clearly the true nature of the antinomy of freedom and necessity. But Kant, here as elsewhere, failed to distinguish adequately between the self-con- sciousness of the individual and the ultimate ground of all consciousness. This led him to his famous theory of the doubleness of the individual will— that while as phenomenon it was necessitated, as noumenon it was free. In this distinction Kant doubtless had in his mind the distinction here formulated, between the will in its alogical immediacy, and the will viewed by reflection as subordinate to the category of cause and effect. Will as entering into the ethical conscious- ness implies the per se alogical element of spontaneity as determined by the logical element of deliberation. It further implies the actual consciousness of this spontaneous impulse or velleity as being so determined. A mechanical compulsion, whether it be physical or psychical, is extra-moral; the element of spontaneity is wanting. Similarly, blind unconscious impulse is extra-moral ; the element of actuality, of self- conscious thisnesSy is wanting. In either case, the deliberative or rational element fails. But this thought-element is essential to bring any THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 197 action within the realm of the moral conscious- ness as such. Hence, though that which primarily gives direction to the will may be alogical, the ultimate end is a logical determination of our consciousness. The liking or disliking, the choosing or not choosing, of a purpose may be irreducible to anything but the immediacy of blind feeling. Yet every end that subserves this end, every means to the final end, is logic- ally determined. All subordinate ends which are related to the ultimate end as means, and which are the products of deliberation, are more or less fully determined by thought-activity in its various forms. Thus whilst thought cannot fix any ultimate canon of conduct, yet as soon as the alogical will-content is given, a science of ethics, embodying the most precise formulae, may be built up on a logical foundation. Just as the ultimate canon of ethics is alogical, and therefore not formulatable in thought, so it is with the ultimate basis of the x^e canon aesthetic consciousness. The judg- ofsesthe- ment which in the last resort pro- ^^^^' claims this thing beautiful and that thing ugly is arbitrary, as based upon an alogical postulate that cannot itself be reduced to reason, that is, be resolved into terms connected by thought- relations. But as in ethics, so here, once given this alogical point cCappui, we can build up, on the foundation thus acquired, most undoubtedly a logical system of formulae that will furnish us 198 THE ROOTS OF REALITY with a canon of taste in art. Any such canon of taste, just as any canon of ethics, presupposes the acceptance of a given alogical principle as postulate. A thing is beautiful to me or ugly to me, but in the last resort I can no more convince a man by a process of ratiocination that my view is right and worthy of all accepta- tion than I can convince the other man, before spoken of, that the good of humanity ought to take precedence of his personal pleasure or aggrandisement. In both cases, however, once we have a common basis, I can as a rule readily prove that one particular object is more beauti- ful than another, and why it is so, or that one particular action is more right than another, and why it is so. The alogical standard once ac- cepted, all else is plain sailing. Even in philosophy, the sphere of the logical par excellence, the ultimate postulate is alogical. It is on the acceptance of this as a basis that the whole superstructure of philosophic formulation rests. Hence the study of metaphysic always has as its pre-condition a mind capable of recognis- ing the ultimate in consciousness as such. With- out this capacity, to embark upon philosophical investigation is more futile than ploughing the sands. History and current writing afford us plenty of instances of able and even logically acute minds that stumble about hopelessly in the vain attempt to deal with speculative prob- The canon of philo- sophic truth. \ } >• THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 199 lems, for the simple reason that they fail to find the necessary point cCappui in the ultimate principles of consciousness. They beat about the bush, and show much subtlety, and may even now and then have insight, but, philoso- phically speaking, their whole train of thought is vitiated and worthless. On the other hand, when once we recognise the ultimate principle that all reality, as opposed to certain depart- ments abstracted therefrom, presupposes, we can formulate on this basis the self-consistency of consciousness as the general canon of philo- sophic truth. Having done this, we deduce therefrom the variety of subordinate canons that go to make up the philosophic synthesis viewed as a sytematic whole. All three departments, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, rest ultimately on that unique alogical apprehension which is itself incommunicable just because its immediately given content cannot be formulated in thought, cannot be categorised. In all argumentation a correspondence between my own and other minds in this respect is assumed. I cannot even prove to a man that pain is an evil if he choose to deny it. The uniqueness and im- mediacy of the value-feeling that forms the material of the ethical, aesthetic and philosophi- cal consciousness is not, as with the knowledge- feeling that constitutes the raw material of the external world, differentiated and mediatised under the form of space. Nor is it directly I i 4* h 200 THE ROOTS OF REALITY categorised in any act of perception itself, such as that by which an external world of objects is given as ''common to all." Here also the actual feeling (sensation), hardness, colour, sound, &c., is equally immediate, and therefore incom- municable. It is the space-form and the thought- element alone that give it its objective validity, and hence make it ''common to all" within the sphere of the ordinary "common-sense" con- sciousness. In the ethical, aesthetic, or philoso- phic, consciousness, on the other hand, we have to do with a thisness of feeling that acquires an ohJQCtivQ vaMdity tndzrec^fyy i.e. in reflection alone. Hence, unlike the judgments of common-sense or of science (which have at least their poinl cTappui in the world of common-sense), ethical, aesthetic, and philosophical, value-judgments, primarily have the appearance of being the special product of the individual mind. They acquire by sufferance, as it were, a quasi- objective value, which, however, can be at any moment, at least in appearance, upset by the dictum of any individual. The " ought " in which the objective validity is grounded, re- mains in the case of these higher departments of consciousness formally psychological or sub- jective. There is no logical standard by which formally to compel assent to these values as in the case of the facts of common-sense reality. There is nothing in the last resort by which I can compel a man's assent to the proposition \ \ THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 201 that he ought to perform this duty, that he ought to admire this work of art, that he ought to accept this philosophical postulate. If I attempt to do so, he will always have his answer ready, based on the uniqueness, the particularity, the thisness of the feeling out of which my proposi- tion arises. Of course this may be mere pre- tence on his part, but it is unanswerable as far as it goes. It is unanswerable so long as one remains at the standpoint of common-sense con- sciousness. The only answer is to show that the ethical or aesthetic consciousness involves the postulate in dispute in order to be consistent within itself. But this, to be effective, supposes that the interlocutor is capable of raising himself to the point of view of the ethical or aesthetic consciousness, or, to use a common phrase, that he has a moral or artistic " sense." The case is similar even with the metaphysical conscious- ness, although it may at first sight appear to be different. It is, of course, quite true that metaphysics has for its test the self-consistency of consciousness as a whole, starting from the ordinary empirical consciousness. But here also the man must be able to place himself at the point of view of the philosophic consciousness, ridding himself of the abstractions of common-sense perception and ordinary thought, before he can appreciate the conditions that all consciousness presupposes, and recognise the meaning and value of reality as it 1 1 1 1 200 THE ROOTS OF REALITY categorised in any act of perception itself, such as that by which an external world of objects is given as ''common to all." Here also the actual feeling (sensation), hardness, colour, sound, &c., is equally immediate, and therefore incom- municable. It is the space- form and the thought- element alone that give it its objective validity, and hence make it ** common to all" within the sphere of the ordinary ** common-sense" con- sciousness. In the ethical, aesthetic, or philoso- phic, consciousness, on the other hand, we have to do with a thisness of feeling that acquires an objective validity indirectly, i.e, in reflection alone. Hence, unlike the judgments of common-sense or of science (which have at least their point d'appui in the world of common-sense), ethical, aesthetic, and philosophical, value-judgments, primarily have the appearance of being the special product of the individual mind. They acquire by sufferance, as it were, a quasi- objective value, which, however, can be at any moment, at least in appearance, upset by the dictum of any individual. The " ought " in which the objective validity is grounded, re- mains in the case of these higher departments of consciousness formally psychological or sub- jective. There is no logical standard by which formally to compel assent to these values as in the case of the facts of common-sense reality. There is nothing in the last resort by which I can compel a man's assent to the proposition ■\ THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 201 that he ought to perform this duty, that he ought to admire this work of art, that he ought to accept this philosophical postulate. If I attempt to do so, he will always have his answer ready, based on the uniqueness, the particularity, the thisness of the feeling out of which my proposi- tion arises. Of course this may be mere pre- tence on his part, but it is unanswerable as far as it goes. It is unanswerable so long as one remains at the standpoint of common-sense con- sciousness. The only answer is to show that the ethical or aesthetic consciousness involves the postulate in dispute in order to be consistent within itself But this, to be effective, supposes that the interlocutor is capable of raising himself to the point of view of the ethical or aesthetic consciousness, or, to use a common phrase, that he has a moral or artistic "sense." The case is similar even with the metaphysical conscious- ness, although it may at first sight appear to be different. It is, of course, quite true that metaphysics has for its test the self-consistency of consciousness as a whole, starting from the ordinary empirical consciousness. But here also the man must be able to place himself at the point of view of the philosophic consciousness, ridding himself of the abstractions of common-sense perception and ordinary thought, before he can appreciate the conditions that all consciousness presupposes, and recognise the meaning and value of reality as it ) ft u [|i^ 202 THE ROOTS OF REALITY confronts him in the interpretation of philosophic thought. The philosophic consciousness, while it embraces the common-sense consciousness, does not stop there. The reality of common-sense appears metamorphosed therein. But in this process of transforming reality, philosophic reflec- tion brings into view ultimate elements, which, although implicit, never become explicit within the sphere of any consciousness dominated by com- mon-sense. Hence to determine ethical, aesthetic, or metaphysical values, the categories specially referable to the common-sense consciousness are either not at all, or at best only partially, available. In passing from this our ordinary conscious- ness, with its common-sense values, and, in the narrow meaning, scientific values, to the world of moral practice, aesthetic contempla- tion, or philosophical analysis and construction, with their partially or wholly differing values, we take leave of objectivity in the strict sense of the word, including that form of reflec- tion which is directly based on objectivity. We enter a new region which knows neither the objective nor the subjective (as antithetical to objective), but which nevertheless claims an extra-individual validity notwithstanding that its material is the unmediatised thisness of particular feeling. I can demonstrate to any one the neces- sity of existence of a fact or a law of Nature by bringing him to book with the ultimate categories of the physical world, behind which categories ■ '# THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 203 he cannot go. But I cannot demonstrate to him on the same ground that he ought to prefer intellectual to animal pleasures, that he ought to place the welfare of mankind above his individual welfare, that good art is to be valued above bad, or even that all reality is analysable into con- scious elements, unless he is already within the compass of these several departments of the higher consciousness, and hence stands on a foundation that renders the formation of judg- ments respecting them possible for him. The foregoing distinction is what Kant was obviously endeavouring to formulate as problem and to re- solve in his own way, in the Kritik der Practischen Vernunft, the Kritik der Urtheilskraft, and his other ethical and aesthetic writings. I can assume the recognition within certain very narrow limits of the same external world as existent with corre- sponding determinations by every man, but I cannot postulate in the same way the recognition by another man of the same ethical criterion or the same aesthetic standard as obtains for me. Nevertheless, that there is a "community," a common psychological ground, in these idealistic departments of consciousness, is certain ; other- wise the very notion of forming judgments respecting them would be absurd. For these judgments necessarily imply an ultimate postu- late on which their validity depends. Kant, in the third of his ** Kritiks," speaks somewhat vaguely of a sensus communis at the basis of 204 THE ROOTS OF REALITY aesthetic judgments. The solution of the point as to the extra-individual validity of this ** some- what" — which is grounded ultimately in the im- mediacy of particular feeling — on the lines of the present essay, would seem to lie in the recogni- tion of the fact that it is grounded in the meta- physical elements of consciousness-in-general. As above insisted upon, we have to do here with an alogical factor, will, feeling, sensation, per se, which, though at the root of all conscious- ness, and, a fortiori, of all content of consciousness, does not enter empirical or common-sense con- sciousness, like the feelings or sensations of the objective world, which are already worked up by thought-forms, and thus acquire universality and objectivity. But we become aware of it, so to say, as unmediatised alogicality, and hence (regarded from the psychological antithesis of subjective and objective) as subjective. Here again we see that the ordinary empirical consciousness remains our norm of knowledge. What is below this plane is element merely, and hence unreal. What is above it is either science, in which the alogical in the empirical reality of common-sense sinks into being the mere adjunct of the logical category, or aspira- tion and feeling, in a word sentiment, ethical or aesthetic, where the thought-element is subordi- nated to nisus and sensation. Schopenhauer was not so far wrong after all when he deduced art immediately from his ultimate alogical principle, \ THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS 205 namely, his metaphysical Will. In the content neither of scientific thought nor of aesthetic con- templation can we find that perfect blend of the two ultimate elements of consciousness which we find in empirical reality. One side or the other preponderates. The aim of scientific thought is to obtain logical universality at the expense of the alogical — of feeling and will. The aim of art is to obtain universality of feeling — the particular element in empirical reality — at the expense of the categories of the empirical world, and more or less of thought altogether. Philosophy, while on the one side its aim is to out-science science in the universality of the categories into which it transforms the empiri- cally real world, is led through the very thorough- going character of its operations in this respect to a recognition of the truth that the alpha and omega of thought-forms are after all feeling and will-striving — that out of these alogicals the logical with its categories emerges to make reality possible, and that into them it must return if reality is to be complete. A ■ii w V 'f- I Neo- Sehopen- hauerian- ism. The world as practical postulate. VII THE FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS An attempt, known as Pragmatism, has lately been made in English philosophy to resolve reality into a system of ** practical postulates," of means towards certain ends. Concrete consciousness is thus, with a vengeance, made the mere adjunct of will. We may readily admit that will, as one aspect of the alogical principle in consciousness, is discoverable as element in every conscious reality ; and hence that, from the *' practical postulate" point of view, consciousness as a whole and, a fortiori, every apperceptive synthesis within this whole, may be regarded, in one sense, as contributing to willed ends. But this Neo-Schopenhauerianism, as we understand it, like its predecessor, really goes much farther. It would treat one of its elements, will or purposiveness, as the sole prin- ciple of consciousness-in-general. The fallacy of this way of solving the metaphysical problem is, to my mind, sufficiently evident when we consider that all willing, all purpose, even the blindest Trieb, presupposes a given reality alike as 206 FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 207 its terminus a quo and as its terminus ad quern. It presupposes it, and hence does not create it. We can no more attach a meaning to will or purpose apart from the total conscious synthesis, than we can attach a meaning to pure knowledge apart from the total conscious synthesis. The latter, as we have, often enough, had occasion to point out, is the fallacy of the Pallogist. But the former, that of the Thelemist, as we may term him (sometimes also described as Voluntarist), is none the less flagrant, and is, if anything, less plausible. There can be no doubt that into every conscious synthesis the element of will enters ; it has a purposive side. Yet there is just as little doubt that this side does not embrace the whole synthesis. Reality, existence, we may regard, if we Hke, as subserving a system of ends, but it is not itself mere end or mere means to end ; for if so, it would be nothing but an abstraction. ' The world refuses to be whittled away into mere purpose on the one side, just as it refuses to be whittled away into mere ** bloodless categories " on the other. Can we formulate, in terms of reflective thought, the goal of the world viewed as a system of deter- minations of consciousness possible and actual? In other words, can we '^^®^elos formulate reality from the purposive ° ^^^' side, as such .> If we can, what are the most comprehensive terms in which we can express, or at least indicate, this ultimate purposive goal \ 2o8 THE ROOTS OF REALITY If not, can we attain this goal itself, or at least can it come within the finite and temporal condi- tions of empirical consciousness in a flash of feeling, i.e, in a mode of consciousness in which the feeling element predominates ? The first of these questions, if answered in the affirmative, leads us directly to philosophy— the reasoned analysis of purpose, means and ends — and, no less directly to the search for an answer to our second question. A negative answer to our first question opens up two avenues to us, either that leading to some form of Mysticism, or that leading to Scepticism or Agnosticism. Such an Agnosti- cism frankly renounces any claim to solve a pro- blem which appeals to us as the most vital of all those revealed by metaphysic. The question here, of course, is not of anything less than an ultimate telos or goal. That there are ends to work for— ends, it may be, distant or deep-lying— would be denied by few outside the order of professional cynics ; but the problem of an ultimate telos may well be treated by the most serious thinker as in- soluble. For this question of the ultimate telos of life involves not merely that of human action or endeavour, but the time-honoured problem of the final world-purpose. It thus opens up, from a new point of view, the question of Theism in its various forms, inasmuch as certain formulations of the ultimate yforXd-telos are supposed to in- volve the theistic assumption.^ Starting, as we 1 See Chapter IX. FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 209 necessarily do, from the human point of view, we have to ascertain what is implied therein. We have to ascertain how far purpose can be con- ceived as other than the purpose of a conscious- ness concrete, and therefore involving a thisness (qualitative particularity) — in other words, an individtial consciousness. Further, we must ask whether such a purpose or willed end can only possess meaning in so far as its realisation is recognised as possibly coming within the range of the individual mind itself. We have here to note once more that, in the general problem of reality, the moment we arrive at a stasis, namely, at a mode of the conscious synthesis that has no becoming within it, which is pure actuality, we cease to have reality, in the true sense of the word, before us at all, but are reduced to what is, truly viewed, an abstraction. (Compare the discussion on Pallogism, supra, pp. 4375 1 •) As in the general problem of knowledge, so in the special problem of teleological values, the moment we have arrived at an exhausted willing —the moment purpose is lost in the full fruition of all ends willed— we similarly take leave of teleological reality, and we are confronted with an empty abstraction. In the world of purpose, no less than in the world of knowledge, when we have come to the end of all potentiality— when we^ have no reserve fund left of unrealised pos- sibility in the one case of sensation, in the other of ends— we have nought but the ghost of reality o 2IO THE ROOTS OF REALITY there, a lifeless wraith. In this way, an absolutely )v perfect happiness, in which no streak of desire, of yearning for that which is not, remained, a happiness that afforded no vista of anything beyond itself, would cease to be by that very fact happiness. This truth is illustrated in the world of common life by the phenomenon of ennui V which dogs the steps of the pleasure-seeker. The man who can only appreciate sensual pleasure, after he has rung the changes upon all forms of sensual experience, becomes jaded, and the pleasure attendant thereon gradually vanishes. It must not be supposed that this is merely due to the fact that his delights are sensual, for mutatis mutandis all happiness, if it could become perfect, if it could exhaust all its possibilities in actual attainment, would sooner or later cease to be present as happiness. It would fall flat, monotonous, and prove finally insufferable. The reason why this specially strikes us in sensual enjoyment, is simply owing to the limitation of the latter as to range. Its latent possibilities are sooner exhausted than those of higher and more V comprehensive forms of ''blessedness." Hence the sumnium bonum, if it is to be living and real, must always be regarded as involving a happiness that is not merely everlasting, but likewise ever- increasing {i,e. of course, in so far as we envisage it as content of time, as having a duration). But does a conceivable absolute goal or end- purpose necessarily consist in happiness, or even ! I FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 211 involve happiness ? That an ultimate end must carry within it the highest realisable bliss is, I take it, a postulate necessarily implied Happiness in the self-consistency of the willing itself, consciousness, and indirectly of all con- l^^^filfl, ^ necessary sciousness. For, if we examine the element, matter closely, we shall see that any "je^'^ly 2,n , . r J . . 1. , . element in object oi desire implies the assumption the ulti- that pleasure or happiness is at least niategoal. bound up with it. We cannot conceive it as a goal at all for consciousness unless happiness in some form is to play an essential part therein. No matter under whatever other general concept we may choose to formulate it, such as harmony, completeness, perfection, self-realisation, '* free- dom," or the Platonic a^a^oi/, all these notions remain little more than phrases when taken per se and without further definition. But whatever their content may be, one thing, I take it, is certain, that they cannot be thought as ends of supreme desire without the notion of happiness or self-satisfaction being also thought into them as an essential factor. Yet while this is undoubtedly true, it is no less )( true that, though happiness may be an essential factor in the tebs of reality, it can never in itself, that is, in its naked abstraction, be that telos. Common observation shows us that the man who deliberately and directly places pleasure before himself as his sole end, does not obtain it — not even the sort of pleasure of which he is in search — but • M hi 212 THE ROOTS OF REALITY gets ennui instead. I f happiness, by itself, were the substantial telos, the distinction between ** higher " and *' lower*' in happiness, i,e, in self-satisfaction, would remain unaccounted for. The hog happy, in that case, must be preferable to Socrates miserable. There could be no qualitative dis- tinction recognisable. Satisfaction, whatever form it took, would be equally end. The recognition of the distinction between ** higher " and '' lower " in aim rests upon the assumption of an absolute end, an absolute desirability, which is more than mere particularity of feeling — more than any mere ** subjective sense of pleasure '* (as the psycho- logists would term it). It involves the assump- tion of something extra-individual, something that is not merely particular. The stimimim bonum must have an absolute character of desirability, just as in their own spheres righteousness, beauty, or truth must have it. This character of absoluteness it is that gives the thing its *' categorical imperative," so to speak. We postulate the summum bonum as something that all conscious beings must recognise under normal conditions as such, as the supremely desirable, when once disclosed to them. Just as we assume that a man must admire a great work of art, given sufficient education for him to understand it, or an act of moral heroism, if his conscious- ness be normal ; or again, just as with a still higher degree of certainty we assume that the normal man, '* in full possession of his faculties," FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 213 perceives the same external world as we perceive, substantially in the same manner, so here we assume an ultimate desirability, objective in its own way, as being valid for all, apart from any given particularity that enters into it. If, then, the supreme telos of life cannot be regarded as consisting merely in happiness — even perfect happiness — and, on the other hand, if we cannot think of any telos except as involving, as an essential factor, that supreme satisfaction understood by perfect happiness, what specific place does this factor occupy in the analysis of the summum bonum regarded as living reality ^ Apart from its content, happiness is an abstrac- tion merely, lacking the conditions of a real synthesis. This we see illustrated on the plane of everyday experience in the familiar fact that in the pursuance of mere ''pleasure" we are hunting a will-o'-the-wisp, which vanishes when we think we have got it. It is only as entering into a synthesis as an element merely, however necessary— that is, into a unity com- prising other elements than itself — that it be- comes invested with a definite meaning. It thus acquires a character other than it possesses per se, or in its bare abstractness, the distinction of "higher" and "lower" emerging into view. Per se, happiness is merely subjective and par- ticular ; per aliud, it is objective and universal. As member of a synthesis, by reason of this distinction within itself of "higher" and ** lower," % .1" X 214 THE ROOTS OF REALITY it acts as a criterion, so to say, of ends ; since, although not itself an end, it must enter into all ends — proximate no less than ultimate (in so far, of course, as we regard such purposes as ends in themselves, and not as mere means to other ends). As regards the summum bonum, it is difficult at least to say whether the happiness or some other element in its content is the more im- portant in view of the complete synthesis. We can hardly predicate priority of one over another, since they are reciprocally involved in each other. The other elements, apart from, that of happi- ness, would not constitute the summum bonum, even though they might be concrete from a different point of view, while happiness per se, separated from the content, would, as above said, be a barren abstraction. We may point out once more that this is illustrated, on the plane of common life, by the fact that the man who attains pleasure, whatever form it takes, and however relative it may be, does so only in the pursuance of a definite end, which is not pleasure in itself, but something which appears in his purposive consciousness as desirable even apart from any pleasure in- volved in it. The pleasure indeed seems to enter as a mere accessory into the result in all purposive contents involving the highest pleasures. The telos or summum bonum^ as it has been ) FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 215 shaped in the ideals of the various religious systems of the world that have sprung up during the period of historic civilisa- Historical tion, is represented notably by the ideals of Nirvana of the Buddhist, the e/co-racrl? Mysticism. of the Nco-Platonist, the Beatific Vision of the Catholic, and the union with God of other Christian sects. The ideal of pre-civilised man is utterly different from any of these. His telos is the continuance and ever - increasing glory of the social collectivity to which he belongs— clan, tribe, or people— united, as he conceives it, by a kinship-bond near or remote. Hence came ancestor-worship, &c. For the in- trospective religions, on the contrary, which form so large a part of the moral and intellec- tual history of civilised man, the individual per- sonality, /^r se, is the main or sole factor. Its complement is either the divine spirit of the universe, also conceived of as a personality in some sense, or the spiritual side of the universe considered as a self - subsistent whole. The interest of the.e religions centres in the relation of the finite personality to its infinite source. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that there is no social element in such introspective religions. Without a social element they could not have maintained the hold they have had throughout varying phases of civilisation. But this social side, prominent though it may have been often- times in practical life, has been, from the point of h ^1 'II '^ I 2i6 THE ROOTS OF REALITY view of the doctrine, always subordinated to the aforesaid spiritual individualism. Almsgiving, brotherly love, duties to one's fellow-men gene- rally — all these things, viewed from the point of view of theological doctrine, were merely means to another end, to wit, the great central goal of personal self-realisation in the Divine Being. There is a further point about the ideals of these introspective faiths that deserves notice. In most of them personal consciousness, the indi- vidual soul, is thought of as the ultimate form of the world-principle (Theism). Hence the im- pulse towards the attainment of a world-purpose is supposed to come from within, and the whole process of its attainment to centre in the indi- vidual soul. The same also applies even to those mystical systems, notably Buddhism and Brahmanism, where personality is not regarded as ultimate. For such faiths, one and all, have this in common, that they conceive of the telos of life as attainable through a direct reciprocal con- nection between the individual soul and the ulti- mate world-principle. The operation is supposed to take place in the self-conscious individual, and the means by which it is effected is usually some form of asceticism — the withdrawal of the indi- vidual within himself, his separation from sensuous pleasures, and often his severance from Nature and from society itself. This point of the direct- ness of the communion of the individual soul with the ultimate universal reality is important, or even FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 217 crucial. There is yet another point to be noted about this mode of viewing the telos. The attain- ment of the telos is invariably regarded as imme- diate, or in some way irrespective of time ; it is given in one '' eternal glance " in an " eternal now." Thus, hitherto, throughout the individualist- introspective phase of religious development, the idea of all faiths included in this phase „ N6W con- has been to strike out a short cut by eeption which the telos of life, the goal of of world- reality, can be attained by the indi- vidual soul. But the conviction is becoming ever stronger in the modern world, that the attempt to realise this ultimate ideal by any act of will on the part of the individual must necessarily be futile. The distrust, the waning faith, in any short cut to the ** final goal of all " springing from individual initiative, is ever on the increase, and this want of faith is signally displayed in the change that has gone over the introspective reli- gions themselves, as shown by the attitude of their exponents. The significance of the indi- vidual in this connection has paled, and the con- viction is becoming prevalent, implicitly where not explicitly, that this '' final goal of all " — if such be assumed as attainable — cannot be reached by any short cut based upon personal will and a direct connection of the personal consciousness of the human individual with the world-principle, but that it implies a long and weary course of social development, in which individual initiative \ 1 2i8 THE ROOTS OF REALITY can play only an indirect and, for the most part, a purely subordinate role. Concurrently with this change of attitude as regards the significance of the individual for the world-purpose, we may notice also another, namely, a growing disbelief in the possibility of comprehending this world- purpose itself within the four corners of any definite formula. Both these tendencies alike seem to the present writer to be signs of pro- gress. The ultimate barrenness of the mere introspective attitude, with its doctrine of the all- sufficiency of individual initiative, conjoined with the direct rapport between the individual soul and the world-principle "^whether personified or not), is written on the history and present fortunes of this order of thought. The traditional religious systems embodying it are, one and all, tending to become crystallised, and to lapse consciously or unconsciously into mere politico -economical agencies for the maintenance of the status quo, while with some of those who attempt to galvanise them, the old standpoint is explained away in accor- dance with the newer attitude of thought in these matters. Thus the social side of Christianity gene- rally, especially in the alleged teachings of Jesus, is deliberately exaggerated, and introspective pre- cepts presented with a strong social colouring. The hall-mark of those religious systems that seek to bring the telos within the reach of the individual soul, is their insistence upon one factor in the moral consciousness of the * FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 219 individual, which they sever from its connection as part of the synthesis, and hypostatise. The factor referred to is — self-sacrifice. They are apt to exalt self-sacrifice and constitute it the end-in- itself of moral action, in this way often becoming involved in a vicious circle, which easily leads to a complete perversion of the moral judgment. Approval may thus be given to actions that are viewed concretely (i.e, from the normal stand- point of moral consciousness as a whole), to the last degree immoral. For example, the case has been known of a pigeon-trainer who, becoming a *' converted " character and a member of the Salvation Army, was desirous of showing the bona fides of his conversion by a deed of self- sacrifice. The conduct involving for him the greatest self-sacrifice he could think of was to wring the necks of his favourite birds, which he did accordingly. This dastardly act, his moral sense perverted by the introspective morality with its apotheosis of self-sacrifice, re- garded as meritorious, because, forsooth, it gave him pain to destroy the pigeons. We have all heard of cases of religious mania in which parents have been known to murder their best-loved children in imitation of the story of Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaac. To the introspective morality, and to religious systems based upon it, belongs the antithesis of sin and holiness, together with such notions as that the gravamen of an ethically-wrong action lies in its being an injury I / 220 THE ROOTS OF REALITY to the doer's self— understanding by this his *' higher self." The newer ethical standpoint, the moral tendency, the dawnings of which we see at present, is necessarily opposed to this abstract morality centring in the individual. It does not follow that the antagonism need always be present to the mind of those who take this standpoint, but it is still there. The opposition itself need not even be intrinsically prominent in all cases, though none the less existent. The new point of view, when consistently held, sees moral wrong in no action that has not definite anti-social consequences. It recognises implicitly, where not explicitly, that the meaning and func-' tion of conscience is, in the last resort, the identi- fication of individual interest with social interest. This identification does not, in the long run, imply sacrifice of individual interests, but it does imply undoubtedly for a long time to come the subordi- nation of individual to social interests, and there- fore it does involve self-sacrifice as an incident in the moral action of the individual. But this self- sacrifice is never more than an incident. To be morally admirable from this point of view, the self-sacrifice must always be clearly undertaken as a means to a definite social end. We spoke of another change of attitude as re- gards the ultimate telos of life and its relation to the world-purpose as a whole, namely, the sense of the impossibility of attaining to a satisfactory theoreti- cal formulation of that summum bonunt we deem «. FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 221 the ** final goal of all." When we consider the matter more closely, it is indeed self-evident that any adequate formulation in thought or words of the world-purpose must imply finality. But we have already seen that finality in happiness, i,e, a happiness that has no becoming in it, an actuality of happiness without a potentiality be- hind it, implies an abstraction and not a real, felt, happiness. Yet we have also seen that happiness, although not the whole of the telos, is, nevertheless, an essential element therein. The Beatific Vision, conceived of as completely present in ''one eternal glance," in the very completeness of its finality would reach out to a somewhat beyond itself, and that somewhat, assuming the completeness could but be annihi- lation, the higher nought. What applies to happiness in this connection, applies also to the telos considered as synthesis. The telos viewed thus, and apart from special reference to its hedonic side, means in the last resort neither more nor less than the Absolute as end for the individual consciousness. But the Absolute con- sidered as a final ens realissimum, a wound-up static perfection, a consummated completeness in which all desire is satisfied and all purpose finally liquidated, is after all {pace Mr. Bradley) a monstrosity of abstraction. A being in which all antitheses (including that of being and appear- ance itself) are resolved into one all-embracing unity, is a somewhat lacking the conditions funda- .* 1 f (I :1 vi^ 222 THE ROOTS OF REALITY mentally presupposed in a true synthesis — in other words, in reality. Since reality can never be viewed as such save under the form of at least two anthithetic elements, the abolition of either side of the antithesis (here no less than in the sphere of knowledge) leaves us with an abstraction and no reality, and the abstraction itself, when closely viewed, evinces itself as meaningless. A light without darkness would indeed be ''the light that never was, on sea or land." It would be a light that was indis- tinguishable from darkness. A good which had completely absorbed evil, and with which no evil was to be contrasted, could not enter into consciousness as a real good. A God ''too pure to look upon iniquity " would be a caput mortuum, no better than a " bloodless category." A beauty with no shadow of ugliness, actual or potential, to set it off, would not enter into any conscious synthesis as beauty. Similarly an absolute truth out of all relation to falsehood or error would be a colourless and worthless platitude, and would forfeit its character of truth in any intelligible sense. The reader will easily see that the fal- lacies here indicated are at basis the same fallacy as that which in theory-of-knowledge we have termed Pallogism, and which we have discussed at sufficient length in the course of the present work. No less than the philosophers in this respect, mystics, theologians, art-theorists, poets, and idealists of all descriptions have occupied FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 223 themselves with the mad chase after abstractions that they have mistaken for higher realities. Well-nigh all our ideals, present and past, are, when closely viewed (in the form at least in which they have been presented to us), no more . than hypostatised abstractions. The seekers after the ideal have hitherto failed to adequately grasp the fact that when one of the cardinal terms of an antithesis is destroyed, the reality itself embodied in their synthetic union is de- stroyed also, leaving a meaningless phrase behind It. They have failed to see that the complete absorption of one term in the other implies, not a higher reality, but no reality at all — in short, stagnation, annihilation, or what I have already alluded to as the " higher nought." The youthful delusion of reflective consciousness, with its cry- ing for the moon of an abstract-absolute, must, in the maturity of reflective consciousness, give place to the conviction that reality — be its plane low or high — lives only in the union in synthesis of what are per se antithetic and contradictory elements.^ We can hardly do better in analysing the nature and conditions of the supreme end of life, no less than those of subordinate ends, than - The above, I need scarcely say, does not traverse the conten- tion that one side of an antithesis may be regarded as the positive, and its opposite as negative. The negative, after all, is only the otherness of the positive. What is meant is that, without this otherness (as its background), the positive disappears from con- sciousness altogether. fl *«■ : t i; 224 THE ROOTS OF REALITY occupy ourselves discussing the question of what is known as Pessimism. While fully recognising that mere abstract happiness, per se, does not constitute the telos, we have seen that it enters, as a necessary element, into it, in such wise that it affords a touchstone by which we may gauge the validity of all attempted formulations of the telos. Now what does the pessimist usually allege? What is the doctrine of some of the most representative exponents of Pessimism? They contend that the sum of misery in the world not only outbalances the actual sum of happiness, but even that it tends to do so in a progressively-increasing ratio as the content of time unfolds itself. In this asser- tion, it may be noted, there are three important questions begged. Firstly, it is assumed that ** happiness" and '* misery" can be quantitatively measured, that it is possible to reduce all quali- tative difference in the content of happiness to the mere abstract category of happiness, /^;^ se, quantitatively considered. Secondly, the pro- blem is stated in terms of individual feeling, the organic individual being assumed as the sole norm and arbiter in the matter. Thirdly, the main trend of human evolution during the his- torical period — the period, that is, during which civilisation has been evolving — up to the present time, is usually assumed as the only possible one. As regards the first of the points mentioned, it will be observed to involve the assumption FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 225 of happiness being an independent entity and not merely element of a synthesis. The content of happmess is continually changing, p. and hence happiness is qualitatively pessimistic changmg. Happiness, as realised, *'a"aey. " broadens down from precedent to precedent." The satisfaction of lower needs forces on the appearance, above the horizon of consciousness, of new and higher needs. For example, for a man in want of food, clothes, or shelter, these are his telos~x\i€\x attainment represents " happi- ness " for him. He can conceive of no happiness apart from them, or (in many cases) beyond them. He acquires these; no longer is he a starving man in the street, but has food, clothing, and shelter enough. His material circumstances become, let us say, affluent. Still he is not happy. Happiness now consists for him in con- genial sexual intercourse, to obtain which now becomes his aim. This once acquired he turns to personal unity in one form or another, or to avarice. If he be a man with no intellectual or social instincts, he continues ringing the changes on these things till his dying day. If, on the other hand, he is normally developed intellectually, a sufficiency of the above neces- saries of life becomes for him merely a vantage- ground for the pursuit of some other goal of intrinsically different quality. He will now find his goal, for instance, in science, in art, in social or political activity. But at each stage, the goal i 226 THE ROOTS OF REALITY once attained, the ideal realised, it takes its place, as a matter of course, in the common level of his life, and a new end, representing a new happiness to be striven for, comes into view. Hence, argues the pessimist, each end attained simply serves to open up a new vista of further wants. The happiness, as realised, says he, is illusory, since, when the end supposed to involve it is reached, it seems simply to remove one obstacle to happiness in order to disclose others. At each stage, therefore, according to the pessi- mist contention, he fails to find happiness. Now this view is at once true and false. At each stage the man undeniably does obtain satisfaction or happiness. This positive happiness, hov/ever, which he has now realised, although in the moment of attainment it may seem complete, soon acquires the character of the commonplace, and tends to vanish proportionately. It is at this point that the new end, involving the new happiness, appears above the horizon of the consciousness. The fact of the exhaustibility of concrete happiness, as involved in any realised ideal, is, on the other hand, a fact the optimist is apt to overlook. Such is the inevitable dialectic of happiness, but the qualitative evolution that it implies, renders nugatory all calculations based on merely quantitative considerations. It is idle, for instance, to discuss whether a greater or less quantum of pleasure is derived by the sensual man from sensual enjoyments, or by FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 227 the intellectual man from intellectual enjoyments. It is idle, as the two things are qualitatively incomparable. The mere sense of unimpeded activity of achievement itself undoubtedly im- plies an element of pleasure common to all forms of happiness in the pursuit of which the will is directly concerned.^ As to the distinction of quality, of the ** higher ** and ** lower" in pleasure, the conviction we have that the former is higher — that it is, so to say, nearer the ysorXdi-telos than the latter — seems to be an ultimate postulate of consciousness, i,e, it is involved in the ultimate self-consistency of consciousness. And this would seem to obtain quite apart from any question of the quantita- tive estimation of pleasure-value. Happiness or pleasure is an element running through every stage, through all momenta, of the world-process, of which no concrete end can be conceived that does not include it. The higher we go in this evolution, the more the other elements in this end come into prominence, the more the content is pursued for its own sake, and less and less for the happiness accompanying it. The foregoing observation, although primarily applying to the individual, may fairly be assumed as having an application to happiness as an element of purpose generally, in whatever relation we may conceive it. * This fact is exprp- ^u physiologically in the unchecked trans- formation of centripetal into centrifugal nerve stimulations, {Cf, Miinsterberg's " Psychology and Life," chapter ii.) I 1 228 THE ROOTS OF REALITY The second fallacy of Pessimism, the assump- tion that the individual is the absolute norm in Second hedonic judgments, is based on the pre- pessimistie vious assumption, that self-conscious- fallacy. ^^^^^ ^g involved with the organisation of an animal body — in other words, the human individual, as unit, is the ultimate natural form in which self-consciousness can be embodied. Now this assumption, I contend, is unjustified, whether or not we accept the hypothesis put forward in an earlier chapter. We have assuredly no justification, in any case, for dogmatically as- suming that the terms of individual feeling — of feeling, that is, as expressed in the self-conscious- ness involved with a particular human body — are the only terms in which pleasure-pain feeling, in which happiness and unhappiness, can be expressed at all. This assumes arbitrarily that the individual, in the sense mentioned, is not merely a metaphysical finality, and hence to be treated as a rounded-off completeness in himself, but also a physical finality in the order of evolu- tion in time. It would be absurd, of course, to deny that the individual consciousness, with its correlative human-animal organism, does re- present a definite stage, alike in the metaphysical analysis of consciousness-in-general and in the order of physical evolution, and hence may be justifiably treated, for special purposes, in ab- straction from all else. We may also regard the individual, considered in himself (apart from the FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 229 social life and progress into which he enters), as a proximate end to himself. But unless we are prepared to commit ourselves to the absurdity of regarding the individual as in the last resort a self-sufficient and isolated entity, we must never lose sight of the fact that when we attempt to treat him, apart from the social organism within which he has developed, and of which he is, in a sense, the result, we are really dealing with an impossible abstraction. This may be con- venient for certain purposes, but is never more than a dialectical makeshift. In the same way we may regard the individual as, from the relative point of view, an end to himself ; but these abstractions, relatively correct and useful though they may be, only disclose their true meaning — often a very different one to their apparent meaning when viewed as abstractions — in their relation to the world and humanity considered as an organic whole. Viewed from this stand- point, the significance of the individual man is seen to reside, not in himself, but in the facts of his entering, as a component, into a continuing social life. He is simply a component unit in the total life of generations past, present, and future. The conception of the individual as isolated, as end to himself, confronts us in its extreme form in the practical world as the criminal type. But in a less extreme form it is also the attitude of the commonplace bourgeois individualist or man of the world. In theory it VA 230 THE ROOTS OF REALITY has been the sole point of view from which the "moral philosopher" has regarded man at all until comparatively recent times. The intro- spective morality, and the so-called universal religions founded upon it, at the head of which stands Christianity, have dealt in their own way with the practical results of this attitude of mind. They have postulated an imaginary higher in- dividual in theory, and have sought to reverse the individualist attitude in practice, with their salient categories of sin and holiness, by means of asceticism. But in the ascetic attitude in- dividualism is not abolished, but merely inverted. Self-denial, for its own sake, or as end-in-itself, is as intrinsically individualistic as self-indulgence as end-in-itself. In either case the point of view is limited to the individual, who is thus converted into an abstraction, but an abstraction that does duty as a self-sufficient entity. The intrinsically higher point of view to that of the self-centred man of the world is not what is usually regarded as its antithesis, namely, the ascetic, but is, on the contrary, one that transcends alike both these standpoints. This latter point of view, while recognising the personality and its immediate purpose of self-interest as constituting a proximate end, sees in it no more than a proxi- mate end, to wit, a stage — necessary, it may be, but still no more than a stage — towards some- thing higher than itself. But, it may be said, this is also the case with the introspective faiths FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 231 above alluded to, with their ascetic ideals of conduct. Yet though apparently this is true, in reality it is not so. The introspective faiths may indeed point to a divinity, the spiritual side of things, or what not, into which the individual, by renouncing his self-interest, may become in some sense absorbed. But this latter is a con- ception, an imagination, special to the individual consciousness as such. As conceived by the individual, this God, or spiritual essence of things, is always a reflection of another — a higher, if you will — aspect of his own spiritual nature. It is the appeal of the natural individual to the spiritual individual. We therefore remain still within the ban of individualism. From the standpoint we are here dealing with, on the other hand, the standpoint which is embodied in what we have termed the newer tendency in moral sentiment, we see clearly that what are termed ** bad," that is, the abstract-personal instincts of men, can only be effectually abolished by their transmutation, that is to say, by the identifica- tion through sheer necessity of circumstances of individual interest (in the narrower sense) with the interest of society as a whole. The abstract- individualistic, the anti-social, impulses thus, and thus only, will finally die out, through a process of self-exhaustion. The higher self, to which the individual subordinates himself, thus is no longer a transcendent divinity holding mystic communi- cation with his soul, but an immanent concrete 'I I 232 THE ROOTS OF REALITY social fact into which the individual now con- sciously enters as a physical and psychical factor. The antagonism, therefore, which seemed from a lower standpoint irreconcilable, has vanished. The pessimistic argument, also, in so far as it is based, as has largely been the case hitherto, on the individual as an abstract entity apart from the general movement of society, falls to the ground. Yet, though we now see the individual in a new light, and can no longer regard him per se as the unconditioned norm of pleasure and pain, good and evil, it still remains open for the pessimist to deny progress in the sense of the movement of human society towards a goal, or in a direction involving progressive increase of happiness as an element. This leads us naturally to the third fallacy of pessimism. The third assumption of the pessimist, which is equally an assumption of ''the man-in-the- Third Street," is that the main trend of pessimistic human progress, which from the dawn fallacy. ^f history up to the present day has been in the direction of the autonomy of the individual, will continue in this course.^ The above assumption underlies most of the 1 We may observe in passing that the fallacy noticed in the last section is the intellectual product, or at least concomitant of this general autonomy of the individual, in its later stages. The loosening of the social bonds of the elder world has given colour to the treatment of the individual, theoretically, as a self-centred and self-sufficient unit. i FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 233 pessimistic theories, at any rate as to the future of human evolution. Yet that this too is a fallacy is becoming more evident every day to one who studies the economic conditions of the modern world. Such an observer can hardly fail to see that the autonomy of the individual is doomed, that it is disappearing under his very eyes. Without discussing the question here in its larger bearings, I contend that few will deny that we are face to face with conditions in the production and distribution of wealth which forebode a vast social transformation in the immediate future. It is enough to refer to the revolution going on in the domains of industrial invention and organisation, and to the growth of state and municipal enterprise in all departments. Each of these things in its own way naturally tends to the abolition of the notion of individual autonomy, and in so far also, to that of any necessary antagonism between individual and community as such. The present work not being specially a treatise on political economy, or any other historical development, it would be out of pkice to dilate much further on these matters. It is necessary, however, to allude to them in connection with our present problem as to the tendency of social evolu- tion towards increase or diminution of human happiness. We are too much accustomed to judge the present question from the relatively short span ;^3S«s;ssi^i-Ks«s. ■ f'f^'^^''^"'^'^-"'- 234 THE ROOTS OF REALITY of time that is included under ** history" — short, that is, in relation to the whole period of man's existence upon this planet. It may be quite true that a study of this limited period might lead us to the conclusion that happiness and misery have not so much positively increased or de- creased in total amount as varied in the relative proportion of their distribution. It seems to be the tendency of misery, as of happiness, to become less acute and more massive, less con- centrated and more widely distributed. The excessive hardships of the most fast-bound and hopeless class of serfs in the Middle Ages, the acute and devastating epidemics of that time, the oubliettes of the feudal castle, the torture- chamber of the criminal court, the perennial imminence of fire and sword, the general violence that characterised the social life — all these belong to a class of evils that have, under the influences of modern civilisation, either passed away entirely, or, at worst, have been mitigated past recognition of their former selves.^ But in the present day, as a set-off against this, we have the ever-widening gulf between poverty and wealth, the volume of poverty growing in mass, if not in intensity. The sense of economic insecurity pervading all classes but the very wealthiest, is a constant ^ Of course we leave out of account here the survivals of a similar condition of things in countries as yet imperfectly touched by modern civiUsation. FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 235 burden hardly compensated for by the increase in physical security of life and formal liberty. The present day shows us a huge agglomeration of coagulated misery in the proletarian quarters of the average modern city, with its ugliness, its filth, and its squalor, all expressing the sordid struggle for existence among the vast majority of the population. We see the dreary hideous- ness of the modern world, with its commercialised production, for profit, consequent on the triumph of machine industry as exploited by the capitalist system, in all departments of industrial activity. With all their drawbacks — drawbacks which the panegyrist of modern times is accustomed to dilate upon with so much impressement — the Middle Ages exhibit to us a careless and joyous life for the majority, free, generally speaking, from over-work, grinding poverty, or carking care, lived for the most part in fresh air and amid healthy conditions. These material ad- vantages were accompanied by a rough-and- rude, if you will, but unaffected natural culture, extending over all classes — a culture from which sprang the noblest products of art and fancy. The sacrifice of most of this is the price which we have, thus far, had to pay for our freedom from the exceptional and acute miseries peculiar to the earlier phase of society. But it would be a mistake to draw from the foregoing data of the conditions prevailing during what was, after all, a very limited period of history, any n J 236 THE ROOTS OF REALITY general conclusion as regards the increase or diminution of the sum-total of happiness in the future, or even as to its distribution. We may well conceive the whole period of civilisation with which history is concerned, as being itself, in a sense, a preparation for something organi- cally higher than itself, for a state of things which may, therefore, well involve a positive increment in happiness such as is not so clearly apparent in the comparison merely of one period of history with another. In this case the whole process of history, with its variations in the proportion of happiness and misery obtaining in different epochs, yet apparently without any definite result in the subordination of the one to the other, could only properly be judged in the light of its outcome in such a remoter future as we have indicated. We can only properly judge the various periods of civilisation in the light of what is to succeed civilisation. For only in the light of this can we see civilisa- tion in its true significance. However we may regard the, for us, ultimate goal of human evolution, whether or not we Good and accept the speculation suggested in ^^^' Chapter V., and conceive it as tending towards a new persona — a corporate conscious- ness, having its material ground in social condi- tions, just as our present individual consciousness has its material ground in organic conditions — the fact remains that the antithesis we comprehen- FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 237 sively term good and evil, including happiness and its reverse, is one of those ultimate oppositions, lying deep down in the nature of things, which cannot be transcended without abolishing reality itself. But let us not be mistaken ; every concrete evil, i,e, all evil as particularised, all evil that is realised, as ** this evil thing," ** this evil institu- tion," *' this evil tendency,*' must necessarily pass away, since arising and perishing are inseparable from all time-content. Every content of reality that has begun in time must necessarily end in time, precisely so far as it has begun. Such necessity is given in the particularity attaching to it This fundamental truth may be formulated in the guise of a reasoned explanation as follows : — Every particular object, by the fact of its having come into existence when before it was not, shows that it had no necessity attaching to it. It is therefore contingent upon the infinity of things in time, and in the ceaseless change proper to the time-content it is uninterruptedly exposed to the occurrence of a collocation of circumstances in- compatible with its existence, which collocation must obtain at some point of time or other, near or remote, time and its content being infinite. Hence all real evil is transitory.^ What does not 1 The transitionness of evil spoken of in the text does not, of course, mean that any particular evil necessarily passes away within the life circle of the given concrete system into which it enters. A disease may pass away from the human organism, or it may destroy that organism. The symptoms of old age, again, accen- tuate themselves till the death of the human being. Even parti- htaato 238 THE ROOTS OF REALITY pass away is the potentiality of evil, or, if we like to call it so, the immanence of evil-in-general. Evil is immanent in all reality as part of its essence. This is what we mean by the pseudo- concept evil into which reflective thought trans- forms the alogical element of evil as present in the object. It is this abstract quality of evil that is eternal, in the sense of present in all time. This abstract quality, evil, runs through all the divers concrete and particular evils that, in the guise of realities, enter and disappear from the time-content. By "good," in the empirical and relative sense, we mean all that content of consciousness that suggests or makes for the supreme good, our ultimate telos of life. But this ultimate telos, how- ever we may conceive it, includes, as we have seen, pleasure or happiness as an essential ele- ment. All pleasure, as such, therefore, is good, cular evils in a given society may destroy that society, and hence cannot be said to pass away from it. Our point is, that if the concrete or real system into which they enter continues itself to exist, all particular evils arising within it must necessarily pass away. The period of developmental existence of the animal or human individual is too short, it is in its nature too precarious for the above principle in many cases to have time to operate. Given a larger and hence more enduring system— say, a given society or a given race— and the truth of the principle, though even still not absolute, will be much more obvious. But in the case of humanity as a whole, to which we are more particularly referring in the text, the principle has, for all practical purposes, a full application, since humanity in its widest sense, as including all possible develop- ments, must be conceived as a continuity without reference to any final term. FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 239 viewed abstractly. This character only becomes modified when treated, not per se, but as a factor in a synthesis comprising other elements than itself. It is the whole wherein it realises itself that determines the value of pleasure or happi- ness, properly speaking, and therewith the ques- tion of preferability, including the solution of the old conundrum of ** the hog happy and Socrates miserable." Abstractly considered, that is, as regards mere quantum of pleasure, sensual de- lights, i,e, those hedonic syntheses, considered as ends, in which pure sensuality predominates, may very possibly outbid those other syntheses in which what are usually classified as the intellectual and spiritual elements are the salient ones. The tendency to self-exhaustion so conspicuous in '' sensuous delights," the obverse side of which is ennui, of itself shows us the unworkability, in the long run, of any hedonistic theory that takes account solely of pleasure in the abstract, con- sidered quantitatively. The new synthesis in- volving qualitatively " higher factors," as we term them, enters the consciousness as purpose, inas- much as the want of a new synthesis involving these higher factors is felt as entailing a greater quantum of pain than the mere satisfaction of the lower or sensual purpose does of pleasure.^ The 1 This apart from another generally perceived fact, that while the lower or sensual pleasures, as well as their hedonic antithesis, are, as a rule, more concentrated or acute, the " higher " (in this qualitative order of value) are more profound, more massive. The emotions of joy and grief, however, in their paroxysmal expressions. flit !i 240 THE ROOTS OF REALITY fulfilment of a higher synthetic purpose, therefore, appeals to the willing consciousness at this stage as more desirable than that of any lower purpose. Compare the cases, for example, of the man who is prepared to sacrifice all the good things of life for an artistic end, a scientific end, or a socio-political end. In dealing with this question we must not expect too much precision. In the reality that we are here analysing, no less than elsewhere, we have before us an entanglement. As in theory-of-knowledge we have an entangle- ment of apperceptive syntheses often difficult to distinguish with precision in reflective thought, so here we have an entanglement of purposive syntheses, of teleological wholes, wreathing within each other and interchanging, of which it is equally difficult often for reflective thought to determine the place of any given one with exac- titude. In these questions generally, sharp boun- dary lines can seldom be drawn, or at best only in their broadest aspects. If pleasure, in its widest sense, is to be regarded as of the essence of all good, whether ultimate or Pain as proximate, and hence in a derivative negative sense, **good" per se (although the value. content of any particular pleasure may be '* evil "), so pain is always an essential con- stituent of evil. Pain as suck can never be partake largely of both these characteristics, being both profound and acute. Hence they are generally and rightly regarded as typical forms of pleasure-pain. ^f FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 241 anything else than evil ; it is, so to say, the hall- mark of concrete evil. It can only lose its character relatively of evil-ness in so far as it enters into a synthesis, which in its totality assumes the form of means to an end in which pleasure inheres. But even as such, pain in Itself remains evil. Neither pleasure nor pain, strictly speaking, lose their good or evil character from their relation to the content into which they enter. They are antithetic alogicals which penetrate consciousness through and through The specific content into which they enter may m Its concreteness, be good or it may be evil ' and hence, in practice, we apply the same epithet to the pleasure or the pain, and for practical purposes rightly so. But, philoso- phically speaking, we are not strictly accurate m thus doing. It remains, before concluding the present chapter, to return to the question raised above as to the tendency and, so to say, the general law of human evolution in ?vii as"** this connection. We have already measured pointed out that the good and evil "Zf^^^Z that are eternal (that persist as basal human elements in the hedonic consciousness ®^°J""on. throughout all its phases), are abstract good and evil considered apart from any specific deter- mination as constituent of any given synthesis in the real world. Every such given synthesis, all incarnated evil, so to speak, as surely as it now 242 THE ROOTS OF REALITY exists so surely will a time come when it will have ceased to exist. The same, of course, mutatis mutandis, applies to every incarnated good ; here also, as surely as the good is here now, so surely will it have perished in a future time-content. But then, it may be alleged, does not this imply an eternal Dualism, a never-ending see-saw of Ormuzd and Ahriman, without either gaining any permanent advantage over the other? To this I answer No! For, though concrete eood and concrete evil are alike tran- sient, yet there is a difference between the two considered as elements of the time-process in its general movement. Concrete or particularised evil appears as the beginning, or as the first term, of a given cycle of evolution in the dialectic of the time-process. The good, on the other hand, acquired by its elimination ^ or through its trans- formation, evinces itself as the telos, the fulfil- ment or completed reality of the cycle in question. Hence it is evident that a ''point" is always given in favour of the good, in the sense that all concrete evil issues in concrete good, and not conversely. Thus the trend of all evolution is towards the good, notwithstanding that we can- ^ I have not yet gone into the question, so interesting from the psychological and other points of view, of the mere negation or cessation of pain itself constituting positive pleasure and vice versa. This point, which plays such a large part in the writings of the pessimist school, falls to be dealt with rather from a more concrete standpoint {i.e. that of the science of Hedonics), than the purely abstract analysis with which we are here chiefly occupied. FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 243 not conceive this good as ever absorbing and exhausting all possibility of evil. The \tter assumption, which would mean not the ending of a cycle but the winding up of the process of reality altogether— in short, the ending of eternity itself— is a reappearance in this sphere of thought of our old friend the pallogistic fallacy, already dis- posed of in connection with theory of knowledge. The moment evil puts on the vesture of reality and is embodied in this evil, here and now— a particular actual evil out of an infinity of possible evil — it has become mortal. Thus every evil falling within human experience is doomed. For example, all ignorance, all un-knownness, once become definite must vanish in knowledge. The fact that it is known as unknown is the first step towards the extinction of its un-knownness. Though the unknown may always be with us, any this unknown, we may rest assured, will soon cease to be unknown. We cannot formulate a problem as unknowable. This I have pointed out elsewhere. '' The fact of your being able to formulate it is sufficient proof that it is not per se incapable of solution. I am here speak- ing of course, of real problems, and not such as have their origin in a misunderstanding or false assumption. We may never be able to explain the process of creation out of nothing, or to form an inventory of the feathers in the wing of the angel Gabriel, to know whether the devil really has a tail or not, but we may reasonably expect 244 THE ROOTS OF REALITY to find a rational formula expressing the essential nature of reality or the concrete world and of man's relations thereto — of thought and being, will and necessity. When I say * we ' I mean, of course, humanity, not necessarily this generation or the next" ("Ethics of Socialism," pp. 217-218). It is similar with other specific determinations of evil. The ugliness that is recognised as ugly has had its death-sentence passed upon it. His- tory affords illustrations enough of the point we have been elaborating. ** The concrete realisa- tion of evil in any given thing has been the signal for its destruction. A physical fact no sooner assumes the character of an evil in the social mind than conscious energy is aroused against it, and sooner or later it disappears. As an illustration take epidemic disease. As soon as zymosis loomed big as an evil in human consciousness, the improved sanitary science began to arise which has found increasingly successful means of checking it with every prospect of its ultimate extinction. The recog- nition by a William Morris, a Burne-Jones, and others of the ugliness of modern English decora- tion ^ has denoted the beginning of its end. But this is particularly noticeable in the moral and social sphere. Any institution, form of society, belief or practice which man has become con- scious of as an evil has speedily disappeared. Three centuries ago, and more or less until the ^ What we should now call Mid- Victorian. , ' FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 245 French Revolution, the evils of feudalism filled the mental horizon of good and thoughtful men. It seemed to them that were the cruelties and abuses of the feudal noble, the tyranny of priest- hoods, the restrictions of the guild system, of local jurisdictions, and the unrestrained caprice of monarchs, abolished or mitigated, all would be well. These evils have been all at least mitigated and some of them abolished. Earnest men to-day see another and totally different set of evils, and the fact of their seeing them as evil is one indication of their disappearance within a measurable distance of time" (** Ethics of Socialism," p. 218). It is a consolation indeed to reflect that every *'evil," physical or moral, within the field of experience at any given moment is in its nature transitory and destined to be overcome by its corresponding '"good." The particular or con- crete evil in question vanishes completely and for ever. What does not vanish is the element or principle of evil in general undetermined and unrealised. Every realised ideal, every concrete good, although it has completely exhausted and vanquished the evil to which it was originally opposed, discloses, nevertheless, in its own com- plete realisation, a vista, gradually increasing in distinctness, of some new evil or set of evils un- dreamt of before — evils specially growing out of itself. These in their turn become the starting- point of a new cycle, in which the same process > 246 THE ROOTS OF REALITY is repeated. The assumption of the absolute triumph of good per se, then, over evil per se, is as much of a chimera as the search for a light in which is no darkness — the assumption involving a pure abstraction lacking the conditions of a real synthesis. We may, however, put the case hypothetically, and say : Did the case not re- semble the relation of the asymptote to the hyperbola — were there a finality to the infinite process — then that would imply the complete absorption of evil by good. The result of an investigation, as the matter stands, can do no more than indicate to us that there is an un- doubted increment of good, with its pleasure, over evil, with its pain, at the conclusion of every cycle — at the moment, that is, when the realised good which was its end has completely supplanted the realised evil to which it was opposed, and before the new evil destined to be disclosed by the time- process (in this realised good itself) has appeared prominently above the horizon. To this process of the absorption of realised evil by realised good, of specific misery by specific happiness, it would seem that we are unable to assign any finality. In our discussion of the telos of life we have referred to the new doctrine, fashionable just now s rv ^^ Oxford, which is called by its pro- of the tagonists sometimes Pragmatism and chapter. sometimes Humanism, but which also might be termed Neo-Schopenhauerianism. This school would regard conscious reality as a system , I FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 247 of practical postulates, i.e, as the creation of will, as the product of purposive activity. We have given reasons for regarding this doctrine as in- valid, since it belongs to that class of theories that would whittle down what should be a real synthesis, to one of its elements merely, thereby resulting in the hypostasis and often apotheosis of what is, truly viewed, an abstraction. We have shown that the end of reality, the ultimate goal to which reality tends, must also constitute a synthesis, a synthesis more perfect, more com- plete, than that of reality in its usual and more limited sense. Happiness itself, though indeed a necessary element in this summuni bonum, is nevertheless not the complete summum bonum but merely a factor therein. Throughout the period of human history this ultimate telos of the world and of life has been formulated in various ways by religious and philosophic thought. But in all these formulations the dual assumption has invariably been made (i) of a direct relation between the individual consciousness (the indi- vidual soul) and the ultimate world-principle; and (2) of a final goal of all, attainable by the individual, by means of this direct relation. This view, we have pointed out, has of late been steadily waning before the notion (whether de- . finitely formulated or only instinctively felt) that the way of destiny towards the telos lies not in any introspective relation between the ''soul" of the individual man and the ultimate principle of 248 THE ROOTS OF REALITY consciousness, but along the more prosaic path of social development. It amounts to this, that the goal of life cannot be attained by the indi- vidual, qua individual — stretch out towards it as he may — but that, however regarded, the realisa- tion of this goal lies on the other side of a long, it may be arduous, cycle of sociological stadia; and we cannot but consider this as a highly significant change of attitude. The former view, that of the great introspective religions — the ** uni- versal " religions, as they are termed — has held the field among earnest-minded thinkers through- out the later phases of civilisation. It is pre- eminently the individualist ideal, which supplanted the at once vague and limited social, or rather kinship, ideals of primitive man. The tribesman of early society thought of himself not as an independent individual, but as member of his tribal society, which was, so to say, his own larger life. The function of civilisation, historically con- sidered, has been the achievement of the inde- pendence of the individual on the economical basis of private property. The speculative indi- vidualism embodied in the great ethical religions of the world, was another facet of the same stage of social development. This individualist stage having done its work in human evolution, it is hardly too much to assume that we are on the threshold of a fresh stage, in which the ethical and speculative view of the telos will wear quite a new aspect to what it has worn heretofore. Of I FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 249 this aspect the change of attitude already spoken of seems to be the precursor. In ethics this change of attitude is marked by the surrender of the ascetic notion of the destruction, the mor- tification, or at least the complete subjection, of the personality, in favour of the formula we have given as the identification of personal interest with social interest. The perfection of the indi- vidual, not through himself — either as such or as mirrored in the God of his imagining — but through society, is the idea underlying the new ethic; and this doctrine involves the complete inversion of the traditional ethical theory as promulgated by all the great historical religions. Hitherto our ideals have been based upon the hypostasis of abstraction, as we have repeatedly pointed out in the course of this chapter. In the department of epistemology we have the pallogist who seeks a reality in which the logi- cal has absorbed the alogical. In the sphere of Hedonics we have the optimist who postu- lates a telos in which good and a fortiori happiness has completely absorbed evil, and, a fortiori, misery ; while in the same sphere we have his converse, the pessimist, who postu- lates evil as having extinguished good. The mystic seeks a spiritual ** light in which there is no darkness." The theologian imagines a being too pure to look upon iniquity. The artist dreams of an ideal beauty that excludes the shadow of ugliness. The speculative philo- • II 250 THE ROOTS OF REALITY sopher seeks the telos of reality in an Absolute which is form without matter, an actuality in which all potentiality is sucked up and ex- hausted. As we have said before, this juvenile superstition of reflective consciousness, crying for the moon of the abstract Absolute, must give way in the maturity of reflective consciousness to the conviction that reality lives only in the union (in synthesis) of antithetic and contradic- tory elements. Taken in conjunction with the modern insight gradually forcing itself upon reflective thought— namely, that there is no short circuit from the individual consciousness here and now to the ultimate ideal, the world- telos, but that the way to this telos leads solely through the unfolding harmony of social rela- tionships—this more mature conviction regarding reality and its goal leads us to a further con- sideration. The latter concerns what we may call the dynamic of reality, to wit, its unfolding in the time-series, taking the evolution of human history as type of this process. Reflection on this process shows us that, though all specific evil passes away, yet in the very good into which that evil is absorbed there is further potentiality of evil— albeit not the same evil ; in other words, that though the particular ^z/z'/ thing passes away, the potentiality of evil in general remains, being coincident with con- sciousness itself. But, it may be said, the same is true of good : the good, as realised, with the FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 251 evanescence of particularity attaching to it also, and just as inevitably, passes away. ** Though the morning shall come, the night shall come also." But there is a difference between the two cases. The good realises itself as the telos of every dialectical cycle through which the process works ; the dynamic of reality always implies a progressive approximation to absolute good — to the summum bonum — although the latter may never be absolutely attained. This approximation and relative realisation of good in all its forms, this appearance of evil as the middle term of a cycle in the dynamical process of reality — a germ only at the beginning of the cycle, and exhausted and done away with at its close {i.e. in its realised form as a definite and particular evil) — is strictly all that we can dis- cover by investigating the conditions of reality. But it is already something, for it shows us plainly that there is always a ** point" given in the process in favour of the good. Realised good, in some sense, appears as the beginning and as the end of every dialectical process, evil being realised in the middle phases alone. This is what we meant by saying that a point is always given in favour of the good. We come now to the question that consti- tutes the innermost core, the true inwardness of the matter under discussion. Can we envi- sage the summum bonuni^ the telos of the real process } Can we give any positive formulation A^^idCSk, »^^^tb » ' M i >a]% *rti «[ffii.ia i i i iHM Wi!ig SB 250 THE ROOTS OF REALITY sopher seeks the telos of reality in an Absolute which is form without matter, an actuality m which all potentiality is sucked up and ex- hausted. As we have said before, this juvenile superstition of reflective consciousness, crymg for the moon of the abstract Absolute, must give way in the maturity of reflective consciousness to the conviction that reality lives only in the union (in synthesis) of antithetic and contradic- tory elements. Taken in conjunction with the modern insight gradually forcing itself upon reflective thought— namely, that there is no short circuit from the individual consciousness here and now to the ultimate ideal, the world- telos, but that the way to this telos leads solely through the unfolding harmony of social rela- tionships—this more mature conviction regarding reality and its goal leads us to a further con- sideration. The latter concerns what we may call the dynamic of reality, to wit, its unfolding in the time-series, taking the evolution of human history as type of this process. Reflection on this process shows us that, though all specific evil passes away, yet in the very good into which that evil is absorbed there is further potentiality of evil— albeit not the same evil; in other words, that though the particular ^i/z/ thing passes away, the potentiality of evil in general remains, being coincident with con- sciousness itself. But, it may be said, the same is true of good : the good, as realised, with the FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 251 evanescence of particularity attaching to it also, and just as inevitably, passes away. '* Though the morning shall come, the night shall come also." But there is a difference between the two cases. The good realises itself as the telos of every dialectical cycle through which the process works ; the dynamic of reality always implies a progressive approximation to absolute good — to the summum bonum — although the latter may never be absolutely attained. This approximation and relative realisation of good in all its forms, this appearance of evil as the middle term of a cycle in the dynamical process of reality — a germ only at the beginning of the cycle, and exhausted and done away with at its close (/>. in its realised form as a definite and particular evil) — is strictly all that we can dis- cover by investigating the conditions of reality. But it is already something, for it shows us plainly that there is always a '* point" given in the process in favour of the good. Realised good, in some sense, appears as the beginning and as the end of every dialectical process, evil being realised in the middle phases alone. This is what we meant by saying that a point is always given in favour of the good. We come now to the question that consti- tutes the innermost core, the true inwardness of the matter under discussion. Can we envi- sage the summum bonum^ the telos of the real process ? Can we give any positive formulation 252 THE ROOTS OF REALITY of it ? Our whole discussion has tended, I think, to show that we cannot; that the Abso- lute, as end-goal of the dynamic of reality, of the process of reality in time, eludes the modes of consciousness in which we *'live and move and have our being." It eludes them, no less than does the Absolute, as the ultimate unity and completion of knowledge as such — of the static of consciousness as we may term it by comparison. This perfected synthesis of know- ledge in which the antithesis knower and known has lost its significance likewise eludes the modes of consciousness actualised in us. But if we cannot divine in feeling, much less formulate in thought, any final, or indeed any but the most proximate, purpose of the time-process, the fact that our analysis has disclosed to us the truth that this process exhibits at every stage an increment of good over evil — a gradual harmonisation of the system within systems of which the world of consciousness consists, over the warring particularity of their components — represents no slight gain. If we seek for more than this then, as the consciousness through which we work is at present constituted, we are seeking after will-o'-the-wisps which cannot be formulated in thought, since they lack the conditions of a real synthesis. In acknowledging this dynamical, this asymptotic perfection, this eternal movement of conscious- ness and of the object-world ''spun out" of FINAL GOAL OF ALL THINGS 253 itself, towards the good, which, if not precisely "ourselves," here and now, is yet still less "not ourselves," we have assuredly seized the highest ideal that lies within our grasp. Such an ideal may surely afford us more inexhaustible hope, and therefore more stimulus to action, than any of those ideals professing to bear upon them the impress of finality, which have served the world hitherto. The mystery of the particular. in many. VIII PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC The problem of the one and the many, has, from the dawn of speculation, been recognised as the crux of metaphysic. There are two forms in which the problem of the one and the many presents itself, that of the one of many and that of the one The one of many, exclusively concerns the alogical, in this case the particular, aspect of reality. The one in many, on the other hand, concerns reality as a synthesis. It was in the latter sense that it interested Plato and the ancients generally. It was the relation of the logical universal to the alogical sense-particular — how the latter participated in the former, how the former was corrupted by the latter — that formed the theme of philosophic speculation in the classical world from Plato to Plotinos. In the first sense of the problem, as we have said, we are concerned with the element of the particular alone. The puzzle is one between its qualitative and quantitative modes. We are not dealing here with the particular sense -term and the thought-universal, we are not dealing with the 254 ¥ ■# PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 255 many-ness of sense and the one-ness of thought, but with a given one of sense as against the infinity of other similar ones of sense actual and possible. We have in Chapter III. analysed particularity in its general bearings. From this it will be evident that, owing to the alogical character of the particular considered per scy a complete knowledge of the particular or indi- vidual aspect of reality is impossible. The self- centred uniqueness of the individual has been more than once remarked upon in recent philo- sophical literature. It is a point that seems to have specially struck Mr. H. G. Wells (see the essay in **Mind," vol. xiii., No. 51). Certain it is that the element of alogical particularity in the real individual thing or person gives it or him uniqueness. This uniqueness extends to all individuals, but in different degrees, from the realm of mechanism to that of organic or psychic life. The higher we go and the more perfectly the individual represents a self-contained system, the more obviously will the uniqueness strike us. The particular as realised, especially as realised in a more or less self-contained or organic syn- thesis, becomes the individual, for the term ** individual " in this sense must j^"^_)[ not be confounded with the mere bare particular. All reality is in a sense individual in so far as it is reality at all, but the word individual usually implies an object or real thing that is also per se an organic whole in some sense or other. / 256 THE ROOTS OF REALITY We do not impute individuality, for example, to mechanically produced things, as a rule. A match or a cannon-ball is not in the true sense of the word individual. Every match or cannon- ball expresses merely a bald synthesis of particular and universal. On the other hand, a plant may exhibit that internal uniqueness which justifies the application in a special sense to the particular instance, of the term '' individual." Individuality implies a special causal efficacy which the mere particular does not possess. In the animal king- dom the tendency of the particular instance to assume individuality becomes more marked than in the vegetable kingdom, while in human beings and in human societies it reaches its highest ex- pression. Now the complete knowledge of this individual aspect of reality is impossible. We can never know the object-world in its uniqueness. Our apprehension of reality in its individual aspect is confined to the imperfect knowledge of a frag-^ ment at most. For the rest, we have to content ourselves with knowing it through symbols merely, o take an instance from one department only, how much does the greatest historical scholar know of the concrete detail of history? How little we comprehend the springs of personal action, even of our contemporaries, is a common- place remark. How much must our ignorance be intensified as regards persons living in a past age. But, apart altogether from this, the detail of fact, of events, of the life of a period, even PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 257 that which we know best, is for the most part submerged in time. What the most persevering scholar can collect is never much more than an insignificant fraction of the whole. We are apt to forget, in our shorthand generalisations, our symbolic conceptions, concerning history, that in all ages, the life, the living reality of a period, is a seething mass of detail, in other words, of in- dividuality — individuality of personal and social factors and individuality of events ; for an event, a happening in time, or a series of such happen- ings, may also possess that internal uniqueness which constitutes individuality. It is difficult for us to realise that in all ages, every social group, every clan and tribe, every town, every village and hamlet, not to mention every individual man and woman, have had more or less unique life- histories of their own. Yet the total amount we know of these life-histories as regards all ages is infinitesimal.^ Thus the bulk of the reality of any given age, of any given country, eludes us. It cannot be taken up into our intellectual system, and hence it is lost to those symbolic conceptions of which our historical knowledge consists, and which are present to our minds when we speak of any historical period — the * The force of what is said here can only be fully realised by the historical student who has worked himself into the detail of a particular period. He alone can fully appreciate the infinite immensity of the particularity, the minutiae, of history in all periods. His very knowledge indicates to him the vastness of his ignorance. f . 258 THE ROOTS OF REALITY eighteenth century, the Middle Ages, Antiquity, &c. Now the question may be asked how far the truth of our experience would be modified were this mass of detail taken up into it. Our out- look on history, were this the case as regards the human past, would certainly be very different from what it is now. It need not necessarily contradict our present symbolic conceptions, the intellectual shorthand into which we transform our meagre knowledge of the living concrete past, but it would certainly in most cases modify them beyond all recognition. What place, then, has this limitless mass of particularity, of which the above is one illustration only — what place has even the individuality, the uniqueness of content which accompanies it in such profusion — what place has it all, I say, in the system of reality, of conscious experience as a whole ? Are we to assume it as existing in some sense in an absolute consciousness, the complement of our empirical consciousness with its finite centre? The alternative would seem to be to regard the truth of a great part of reality as hopelessly lost. We have here only referred to the particularisation of the object-world, but similar remarks will apply to the particularisa- tion in the subject. Every diremption of con- sciousness as particular, as this consciousness over against the other postulated conscious /^^/, gives rise to another instance of substantially the same problem. Of the problem of the one PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 259 in many, of the universal in the particular, as the main problem of metaphysic, we are all familiar. But here we have a problem the stress of which lies in the opposition of the one to the many, of the particular to the par- ticular, of the qualitative aspect of particularity, which is at the basis of individual uniqueness, to the quantitative aspect which is at the basis of individual futility and transitoriness. This applies, of course, to the individuality of the particular, whatever form it take, whether of personal character as such, or of events, or of artistic products, or of one landscape as con- trasted with others, and so forth. In history as elsewhere, we may remind the reader, it is this alogical element of the particular, the many, which is the driving force of progress and of events. It has, of course, to operate within the frame-work of the logical. There is undoubtedly law in every department of human evolution. These determinate laws can never of themselves exhaust the meaning of the historical process (cf. the discussion on Chance and Law in Chapter III.). The problem here is to determine the inner significance for reality, as a whole— of the element of uniqueness, of individuality, as dis- tinguished from that of mere particularity and of mere universality, in the synthesis of which, the bare real is given. Pluralism as an ultimate formulation of the principle of reality is hardly adopted, at least Ul ^ -ifVtS ^ms»-- «^-,^4«^r 26o THE ROOTS OF REALITY explicitly, by any serious metaphysical thinker in the present day. I emphasise the word '' meta- physical" because there may be certain psycho- Monism logical thinkers who, nominally at any versus rate, profess adhesion to it The most Pluralism, rudimentary metaphysical analysis suf- fices to show us its untenability. The indi- vidual consciousness either comprises the whole universe within itself (the position of Solipsism), or, as Mr. Bradley has shown, it is incomplete and contradictory per se, and thereby proclaims its own want of finality, and this would not be obviated by the postulation of a numerical in- finity. Moreover, we need scarcely remind the reader that metaphysical Pluralism traverses the first of our fundamental postulates, as discussed in Chapter I. That it is incompatible with our ultimate test of truth, that of self-consistency of consciousness, is sufficiently obvious, even from what has just been said, without labouring this point further. In fact, it would seem unnecessary in this place to weary the reader with a recapitu- lation of the well-known arguments, by which the impossibility of Pluralism as an ultimate philo- sophical resting-place has been often enough demonstrated. But there is, nevertheless, a pro- blem connected with the opposition of the one and the many in the subject of consciousness, that, namely, of the relation between the subject con- sidered as absolute prius, and as particularised in the finite conscious centre — the individual ego. I PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 261 It may perhaps here be desirable to review briefly an argument that has already been dealt with elsewhere in the present work, namely, the justification for speaking of the ultimate principle of consciousness as subject. This is largely, I take it, a question of terminology. Mr. Bradley would apparently object to his Absolute being regarded as subject or ego. He is fond of endeavouring to show that ego, self, will, are what he calls "subsequent constructions," and do not represent elemental conditions of con- sciousness or experience at all. This point of view is sure not to lack a certain popularity in the present day. It is all the rage to re- peatedly throw back into the crucible every notion that has hitherto done duty in metaphysic, and the word **ego" has been for long a red rag to the Philistine bull. But I venture to think that we have here to do with a confusion between a principle in its immediacy and the corresponding idea of reflection. The latter, together with the whole of reflective thought for that matter, is, of course, a secondary or subsequent construction. The subject, like the object, is undoubtedly '* contained by experience" in the sense that the primary synthesis of con- sciousness is the condition of its self-recognition, but it is none the less presupposed as element in this synthesis. There is no stage of con- sciousness, I contend, in which the elements of this primary synthesis are not traceable. You '-.•m>sir-'..-.ii,.Mii-'«'.-<.-'^^.. 262 THE ROOTS OF REALITY may ignore them in your language, or even in your thought, but you are implying them all the time. You may readily enough show that subject and object, ego and non-ego, in a developed form, are subsequent constructions. But this is really beside the question. If the antithesis of subject and object in its elementary shape is, as antithesis, primary and ultimate, it is no less true, ie, recognisable, that of these antitheses the subject has primary validity in the sense that on a critical scrutiny the object discloses itself as nothing more than the other-ness of the subject, while this can never be reversed. The subject never discloses itself as the mere other- ness of the object, inseparable from it though it may be within the conscious synthesis. Accepting, then, as we inevitably must, whether we admit it or not, the ultimate subject as the basis of the empirical ** centre of consciousness," as Mr. Bradley would term it, or the personal ego, self, or soul, as others would term it,^ the pro- blem, the perhaps insoluble problem, is as to the meaning of the one with reference to the other. What is the meaning of the subject of conscious- 1 I am perfectly well aware of the fact that the above words are sometimes used not for the empirical ego as centre of conscious- ness, but for the mind or object-self, i.e. the ^ensemble of individual experiences special to oneself as contained within the memory-synthesis. This is Kant's "object of the internal sense," the "object-ego" of some writers. It is important to keep this meaning of the terms ego, self, soul, &c., distinct from that of the personal ego as men particular diremption of the subject of all con- sciousness. PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 263 ness considered per se, on the one hand, and as determined as myself — this particular personality — on the other hand. This problem is more or less directly connected with that of the way in which we envisage the Absolute — whether as a complete self-determined system of unchanging perfection, or as a principle merely of eternal change. To this point we shall return later on. A problem here arises which, however, many would regard rather as psychological than as metaphysical, though it undoubtedly . has a metaphysical bearing. I refer agreement to the determination per se of alogical ^^^ 1 ^ T ^ ^ T . difference, elements. Let us take sensation. Feltness or sensation as such discloses intrinsic differences within itself. We have not merely the apparent disparity between the different senses themselves, e.g, between sight and hear- ing, but we have far-reaching differences of quality within the same sense. Now, this ^igree- ment and difference of quality in sensation may be described as a relation, although certainly not as a logical relation. We may regard the specific distinctions between the several senses no less than the differences of quality within any one sense as derivative, if one will, from an original homogeneous whole of undifferentiated feltness. But none the less the problem remains that these differences arise within this whole, and that they disclose themselves as existent in mere sensation or feltness. Now, the question 264 THE ROOTS OF REALITY arises as to what metaphysical value we are to assign to these alogical determinations, standing in the relation of agreement or contrast to one another. Are we to regard this alogical re- lation as indicating a transition in the sphere of the object, the transition from mere sense to thought? The differentiation as regards quality or intensity of sensation within itself does involve a relation over and above the mere sensation itself, notwithstanding that it is no relation of thought. This point of identity and contrast in the mere feltness of sensation might possibly have a bear- ing on the theory of aesthetics. In any case it should require dealing with in any attempt at a systematic interpretation of the world from the standpoint of philosophy. Mr. Bradley has introduced into philosophical terminology the terms ''adjective," ** adjectival," Subject ^c-' ^s applied to that which is self- and contradictory and unreal per se, but which finds its reality and its mean- ing solely in the completed synthesis of his Ab- solute. It is doubtful, perhaps, whether Mr. Bradley regards his Absolute as subject at all, le, as the ultimate ** centre of feeling" (to use his favourite expression), of which the subor- dinate finite '^ centres of feeling" are but the pale expression. So far as I understand the Bradleyan doctrine, the Absolute remains nothing more than the final and all-embracing synthesis of all the terms given in experience with their PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 265 relations. But if I am correct in so reading the doctrine in question, I would point out that this reduces the Absolute itself to a mere bundle, or, if you prefer it, chemical combination, of ** adjec- tives." We thus, it would seem, do not, even with regard to the Absolute, get out of the region of adjectivity, but at best into a higher and potentiated sphere of the adjectival. Now the question may very well arise whether out of the adjectival, anything but the adjectival can come, and whether Mr. Bradley is not deluding himself in thinking that out of what practically amounts to a sum-total of transmuted ''adjec- tives " he is, properly speaking, getting any nearer the ultimate or the Absolute as such. What, on the foregoing assumption as to the Bradleyan position, is wanting, then, to the ulti- mateness of his formulation of the Absolute ? The recognition, I answer, of that bogey of the modern metaphysician, the basal ego, the ulti- mate subject. To prove the subject, the ego in an epistemological and metaphysical sense (as opposed to a psychological sense) to be a derivative construction is very easy, and in fact cheap. The reason is that, first of all, a con- fusion is made between the ultimate subject per se, that is, as the necessary presupposition of all conscious experience whatever, and the symbol that abstract or reflective thought con- structs to indicate this in its own terms. It is then, of course, easy, by means of the logical ii u 266 THE ROOTS OF REALITY faculty functioning in reflective thought, to prove that the ego is its own creation, since its quasi- logical symbol, which alone directly enters into language, and, a fortiori^ into philosophical formulations, undoubtedly is. But, as I have had already occasion to point out on an earlier page, all the time that the philosopher is showing the fallacy or illegitimacy of the notion of ulti- mate subject, he is himself unawares presup- posing this ultimate subject in all his reasoning. The subject out of which all consciousness wells up — including that objectivity which is no more than the otherness of the subject itself — is in its first intention alogical. Hence it cannot be grasped by the (at once) unifying and differentiating logical, and the logical in its attempt to seize it retains only its simulacrum^ to wit, the pseudo-concept which is indeed its own '' derivative construction." It is a« fond this ultimate principle, to which all else is *' adjectival " — it is this ultimate principle that we imply, as already explained (see Chapter III.), when we speak of ** being," when we postulate a substratum of qualities, in fact, when we find the adjectiva/^;' ^^ abstract, unreal, and meaningless. The reflective consciousness, with its concept of substance, in which concept logical analysis can find nothing but a bundle of attri- butes or '* adjectives," unawares feels, so to say, into the concept this principle. Having dealt with the foregoing point as a preliminary step, PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 267 we will now proceed to discuss certain problems arising out of the ordinary philosophical con- ception of the Absolute, which is shared by the latest modern writers on philosophy, e,g. in the English-speaking world by Messrs. Bradley, Royce, Taylor, &c. The assumption of the old Idealism of the right, the aggressively pallogistic Hegelianism, of which the late Professor T. H. Theabso- Green may be regarded, in his own lute as un- way and with certain modifications, as flnaUty^and the protagonist in this country, is that eomplete- the Absolute, the Idee^ is something °®^^' finally and eternally complete, the durchsichtige Ruhe of Hegel. Such is the Absolute, regarded not in its at best partial manifestations in the processes of the real world, but under its highest and most perfect aspect as in and for itself This view, in the special form it takes in the school in question, is naturally obnoxious to the criticism of Pallogism dealt with in an earlier portion of the present work. But others besides professional pallogists {e.g, Messrs. Bradley, Royce, Taylor, and Mactaggart) adopt some- thing very much like the same position. The Absolute also in their case is wound up and finished, so to say. It is rounded-off totality and completeness, with nothing outside itself, an ens realissimum, existing, but not becoming. Under whatever guise it appears the view in question is at basis pallogistic. It eliminates ii' i. m-i 268 THE ROOTS OF REALITY the alogical, i.e. the factor of which change is the essence. The impossibility of the notion of finality has already been discussed apropos of the v/orld-ie/os {cf. pp. 206-2 10). But if a wound-up Absolute, which inevitably involves this elimi- nation of the alogical factor— and in this case also of the material and the potential in reality —is, when closely viewed, a hopeless postulate, it behoves us surely to reconsider our formu- lation of the Absolute altogether, A return to the inanities of the old Empiricism, for which the base word " absolute " is anathema, is impos- sible for most thinkers of the present day. But the recognition that the notion of the Absolute is implicitly given as a postulate in all con- sciousness does not necessarily mean the accept- ance of the formulation respecting it at present current in the philosophic world. The idea hitherto has been, it would seem, to envisage the Absolute as a concrete fact or thing, in which all other things are contained, in a trans- formed guise it may be, but none the less contained. Now, is this notion of an all-em- bracing concrete workable, or even thinkable.!" Even if the objection raised above to Mr, Bradley's special formulation be obviated, even though we regard the Absolute as a supreme synthesis of experience, as unsurpassable ful- ness of consciousness centring in the ultimate subject, presupposed in our own and in every other limited consciousness, we have still the I PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 269 difficulties just now raised to contend with.^ In addition, we are confronted with the unthinka- bility of an Absolute which is at once a totality and not a totality, in which at once all particulars have their being, and hence which embraces an infinitude and is nevertheless complete. It is to get rid of these and similar difficulties that Professor Royce puts forward his doctrine of **a self-representative system," supported by mathematical theories and illustrations derived from Dedekind. That for most of us these are unsatisfactory, I think I may say without fear of contradiction {cf, the note at the end of Chapter III.). The whole question, to my thinking, turns upon the distinction between regarding the Absolute as a wound-up whole, a closed system, a finally complete synthesis, and regarding it as principle merely, timeless prin- ciple of eternal change in time. If we adopt the latter view, we at once escape the contradictions and inconsistencies raised by the notion of the Absolute as system complete once and for all. The whole course of our investigations in the foregoing pages has tended to show the impos- sibility, nay, the inconceivability, of finality or completion in the world-order. We have seen that this notion is, in the last resort, identical with the fallacy that in theory-of-knowledge I have termed Pallogism. It involves the con- 1 As above pointed out Mr. Bradley, as I read him, would not admit the Absolute in any sense as ultimate subject. 270 THE ROOTS OF REALITY tradiction of confounding what is really an abstraction with a real synthesis. It implies the conversion of an abstraction into a reality. Yet it may be said that our ultimate sanction, the self-consistency of consciousness, presses forward towards unity. It requires unity. It cannot rest satisfied with anything short of final unity, all- absorbing completeness. But surely it may be considered as arguable that the unity that seems demanded by the self-consistency of experience is no more than unity of principle and unity of direction. If we are content with this, we are relieved at once of the unthinkabilities and formal contradictions involved in the favourite theory of the actually complete Absolute. The bare fact of these contradictions would surely seem to in- dicate that we are on the wrong tack in seeking to achieve unity in this direction. We start with the assumption that the self-consistency of conscious experience demands the formulation of the Absolute as an all-embracing unity — as a totality. But yet no formulation in this sense has as yet been suggested that is not obnoxious to the most obvious criticism as involving fallacy at its very core. The moment you pose as your problem a formulation of the Absolute as com- pleteness, perfection, you have started on a road leading to a cul de sac. Be your formulation what it may, you are bound to admit with an apology its difficulties and general unsatisfactori- ness on certain points. You admit, in fact, PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 271 generally speaking, that it is a pis alter. But yet, at the same time, your conviction is, whether you say so in so many words or not, that the self-consistency of experience demands some for- mulation of the kind you have attempted. Now this, I take it, is a delusion. That our test of truth, namely, the self-consistency of conscious- ness, demands unity, that it will not be satisfied with anything short of unity, is undoubtedly accurate. But (and here, I submit, lies the error) this is interpreted by most constructive thinkers of the present day to mean a unity in the sense of an eternally-actual experience, in which all things are gathered up and transmuted. Now, such an interpretation is surely by no means warranted by the original thesis. The unity, I would suggest, to which all experience points, is alogical rather than logical, material rather than formal, potential rather than actual. Its ultimate principle we must surely find in the subject presupposed in all consciousness and in a secondary degree in the this-ness of immediate apprehension. For the latter, being analysed, discloses itself as consisting of the subject of consciousness, of the object that is no more than the other-ness of the subject, i.e, itself under another aspect, and of the reciprocal relation between them called thought. Its ultimate end we may as surely find in perfection (if you will) — perfection in its three kinds, of truth, beauty, and goodness — but a perfection, a harmony, that is I i 272 THE ROOTS OF REALITY eternally changing in such wise that, although every concrete ideal in which it presents itself is attainable, yet once attained the ultimate perfec- tion is seen to lie beyond it. On this view the higher meaning of reality is to be found wholly and solely in the unhindered process of this eternal tendency — in a word, in the potentiality of self-realisation eternally inherent in the world- principle. As it seems to me this is perhaps the crucial problem of constructive metaphysic in the im- mediate future, whether we are to envisage the Absolute as a definite wound-up sum-total of all reality, transmuted or otherwise, or are to think of it as an eternally completing, yet never com- plete, process of the self-realisation of the subject of our consciousness and of all possible conscious- ness. Here we have the true issue. If we regard the Absolute in any form or shape as a completed synthesis or system of experience, look at it as we may and safeguard its formulation by waver-clauses as we will, we are, nevertheless, confronted with a basal duality between my con- sciousness here and now as individual, and the absolute consciousness into which it is supposed to enter, in some sense at least, in the relation of part to whole or of element to concrete. Such an eternally complete Absolute, turn the matter how we will, must necessarily mean a somewhat over against my consciousness here and now. Hence the assumption in question, whatever i 11 PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 273 attempts at verbal accommodation may be made by its advocates, while professing to be a satis- factory and ultimate postulate, leaves us in pres- ence of an unresolved opposition. Let us suppose, on the contrary, that we re- nounce the attempt to arrive at any conception of the Absolute, involving completeness, per- fection, in other words, of the absolute as a wound-up finished system, and are content with the postulation of it as principle merely, treating completeness, perfection, all-embracing harmony, &c., as for us naught but asymptotic tendencies, potencies of the alogical principle at the centre of all experience working through the infinity of apperceptive syntheses involved therein. In this case, we are at once rid of the difficulties that confronted us on the former assumption. While holding fast to the principle, to the recognition of which as ultimate postulate the self-consistency of our consciousness forces us, we nevertheless acknowledge the unworkability of any attempt to formulate this same principle as actualised reality. We recognise it none the less as a problem, but our attitude towards it remains essentially ** agnostic," to use the well-worn term. Its solution in the formulae of reflective thought would seem unattainable, and unattainable owing to the very conditions of that thought. Hence for philosophy it remains formulable as problem merely. In saying this we neither affirm nor deny the possibility of its solution in terms of s 274 THE ROOTS OF REALITY the aesthetic or even the ethical consciousness. As practical postulate the conviction of the realisation as a concrete unity of completeness, perfection, harmony, may affirm itself in what shape it may. We are content here merely to maintain its invalidity, viewed either as postulate or result of philosophical analysis. For philosophy, at least, the Absolute, so far from being the unchangeable eternal, is, on the contrary, the eternal principle of change. It is eternally realising itself under ever new forms to which we can assign no finality. Viewed, if we will, time apart, sub specie eternitatis, then it is surely, so far as metaphysical analysis is concerned, a bare principle and no more. But this question as to the ultimateness of time, as to the validity of the introduction of time-con- siderations into the deeper problems of meta- physic, constitutes a problem in itself. This problem confronts us on the very thres- hold of a thoroughgoing metaphysical analysis. ^^ .., Is duration a basal condition of con- Theulti- . , • •. 1 mateness sciousness per se or is it merely a of time. condition of our consciousness as individuals? That the ultimate principle of conscious experience is presupposed by time, and cannot be regarded per se as itself involved in time, is clear. It is likewise clear that time is a root-form of the individual consciousness. The difficulty arises when we attempt to de- termine the limits within which we are justified PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 275 in importing considerations involving time into the ultimate problem of metaphysic. It is quite true that we can envisage nothing except under the form of duration with its present eternally severing a past and a future. We cannot conceive any one of the dimensions of time as isolated from the rest. An eternal **now" un- related to a past or future moment is the thinnest of all abstractions — a mere poetic phrase in fact. On the other hand, a past or a future out of all relation to the *' now " involved in the immediacy of consciousness would be, if anything, still more vapid. The problem re- mains, then, whether we are to regard time as exclusively pertaining to the particularity of our consciousness, to its limitation as focussed in the finite individual, or whether we are justified, and if so, how far and in what sense, in imput- ing to it an absolute value. This question is answered differently by different thinkers. For M. Jaures time and space are both direct at- tributes of the Absolute ; for Mr. Bradley they are alike mere ** appearance " belonging to the limitations of our consciousness in its particu- larity. It is not within the scope of our present intentions to offer any solution of this difficult question ; it suffices for our present purpose to state it. The notion of an unchanging finished Ab- solute is at the root of what is known as philosophical Theism. But before considering The theistie problem, popular and philo sophic. 276 THE ROOTS OF REALITY this it is necessary to say a few words on Theism, Atheism, and Agnosticism as popularly under- stood. Popular Theism postulates a personality, an individual conscious- ness, with at least its intellectual and conative sides, if not its sensory side. This supreme individual, in- finitely surpassing ourselves in degree if not altogether differing in kind, is assumed, in the manner of Aristotle's *' First Mover," as the Originator or Creator of the world and all things that are therein, including the innumerable finite centres of consciousness represented by human, and possibly in a lesser degree by animal, in- telligences. The former, at least, are made after the pattern of himself as the supreme individual intellisrence — ** after his own image. »> The above, I think, is a fair description of *' God " as conceived by the average man. The atheist, on the contrary, is supposed to profess to be able to bring forward a demonstration of the non- existence of the aforesaid individual Creator and Provider of all things. The agnostic, again — wise man that he is — whilst vehemently repudi- ating the folly and intellectual perversity of the above-described atheist, proclaims the path of wisdom as regards this theistie problem to lie in an equipoise of mere nescience. Now the agnostic I will not deny to be a real character ; but as regards the atheist who believes that he can furnish a conclusive demonstration of the } PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 277 non-existence of God as above defined I am inclined to doubt his reality, and would go so far as to deny positively the existence of any considerable section of persons coming within that category. This is not where the line of demarcation between the theist and the true atheist obtains. The distinction between the atheist and the agnostic as regards their mere intellectual position is purely academical and of no practical interest or bearing whatsoever. The dogmatic atheist, it is said, alleges that he can afford positive demon- stration of the non-existence of a divine person- ality as conceived of by the ordinary theist. The agnostic repudiates the dogmatic atheist's proofs of the negative proposition, but affirms equally stoutly the invalidity of all attempted proofs of the affirmative — nay, in many cases would even deny the possibility of such proofs. But the demon- stration of the non-existence of a fact and the demonstration, not of its non-existence, but of the absence of all grounds for believing in its existence, leaves us, from a practical point of view, in exactly the same position. The scientist can prove to me that basilisks do not exist, being contrary to the laws of Nature. He can also prove to me that thunderbolts or meteoric stones do exist and sometimes fall. But, whilst not impossible, there is no reason whatever for be- lieving that an aerolite is likely to descend upon the south-western district of London this even- 278 THE ROOTS OF REALITY ing. There is, therefore, a theoretical distinction between the two cases — the one is impossible ; the other is possible. But if I am contemplating a walk across Clapham Common the danger of being struck on the head by an aerolite — a pos- sible occurrence — and the danger of being scorched by a basilisk — an impossible one — are, so far as the purpose of my walk is con- cerned, that is, for practical purposes, precisely on the same level. In the same way, quoad the purposes of human life and conduct, the dis- tinction between the position of the assumed dogmatic atheist and that of the agnostic is of no importance whatever. The real, the vital difference between the point of view of the theist and that of the atheist lies not in any theoretical equivoque, but in the prac- tical, that is, the ethical, sphere. The theist, in contemplating the evil and pain of the world, and their apparent incompatibility with the high ethical attributes he ascribes to the personality of its alleged author, is satisfactorily consoled by the reflection that, to use a well-known phrase, '' it will all come out in the washing." He is con- vinced that, whilst his God has created or per- mitted this evil, it is all part of a scheme of ulterior good, and that its creation or toleration is justified by the benevolent end in view. The atheist, on the contrary, finds insuperable diffi- culties in accepting this position. Granting, he says, the existence of your Supreme Being, the PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 279 mere fact of the presence of evil, misery, and pain in the world is incompatible with the moral attributes, if we use the word ** moral" in any intelligible sense, of the Creator and Ordercr of such a world. *' The evil is there," says the atheist; **you cannot get away from the fact." No amount of specious confidence-trick assur- ances of mysterious " divine purposes " behind it will divest it of its character as evil. ** The appli- cation to the Deity of the theory that the end justifies the means," continues the atheist, *' I cannot in any way accept. I will not press the point as to the omnipotence of your personal God, since I am aware that many theologians of the present day do not insist upon it ; but in any case the power you attribute to Him must be transcendently greater than that at the disposition of our finite wills. Yet, necessary though it may be in human affairs not altogether to exclude the admission of the means justifying the end, it is well known that the moralist always does this with reluctance in any given case and with the greatest reservations as a general principle. But if I only admit the principle in question with reluctance as a concession to the weakness of human powers acting in a limited time, how incon- ceivably less is the excuse for a Divine Being whose powers, if not amounting to actual omni- potence, must nevertheless, as compared with human powers, be hardly distinguishable there- from, and who works not in a limited time, but 28o THE ROOTS OF REALITY has eternity to play with ! Such a Being, who erects the principle of the means justifying the end into an integral element of His world-order, I cannot regard as moral in any sense to which I can attach the word, and hence I cannot worship such a Being." The true atheist, the ethical atheist, who insists that the theist's assumption of a personal Deity, even if granted as regards the question of bare existence, is worthless for religious purposes, owing to its incompatibility with ethical principle, might also be described with equal accuracy as an anti-theist. But it may be objected that in an earlier chapter we have ourselves expressly insisted on the cor- relative nature of good and evil in the ethical universe and of truth and error in the scientific and philosophical universe. The atheist's criticism of Theism from the ethical standpoint might, there- fore, seem to be inconsistent with this principle of antithesis. This is, however, not quite the case. Evil may be considered as the mere other-ness, the negative side, of good. Such evil is evil in the abstract, but there is also evil as concrete, evil as embodied in the particular evil thing. The satiation, the ennui, that pleasure engenders is the negative side, the other-ness of pleasure-in- general. But a positive disease or discomfort, a fever or toothache, has no inherent metaphysical necessity attaching to it, nor is it, like the former, deducible from such. As a particularised real it has a positive and independent character of its \ \ PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 281 own. Such positive concrete evils may be dedu- cible from the physical constitution of the world, but they have no metaphysical significance. As matters of fact they are actual but not necessary in this sense, and even the granting of a general physical necessity does not improve the case for the theist's contention. '* It must needs be that offences come, but woe unto him by whom they come! The difficulty involved in the foregoing problem arises from the fact that the moment we envisage the world as in any sense the outcome „ , , J r 1 Ml /• .1. Source and or the product of the will of an mdi- solution of vidual consciousness, hedge the notion ^^® ^^®" round with whatever qualifications we may, we are within the sphere of ethical judgment, within the jurisdiction of the human conscience. But the decisions of the human conscience are very definite in character. The ethical court of appeal claims that its judgments shall extend to, and be respected by, all that wears the aspect of personality, by all that is individual conscious- ness, no matter what the difference may be, quan- titatively or qualitatively, in the content or range of such individual consciousness. Hence the unsatisfactory character, admitted by straight- forward advocates of Theism themselves, of the attempts made to evade or attenuate the dis- tinctive dictates of the moral consciousness con- cerning the responsibility accruing to any Author and Regulator of the world for the evil that obtains 282 THE ROOTS OF REALITY within it. Once, however, we are outside the region of personality, of conscious will, we are outside the jurisdiction of the moral consciousness. An immanent trieb or nisus towards realisation — a subject, if you will, not clothed in personality — is outside the sphere of moral predication. For such subject, viewed as the root principle of all that is, at once the ultimate terminus a quo and terminus ad quern of all conscious process, the moral consciousness is simply a phase or aspect of the realisation itself. Hence from this point of view there is no moral problem in the exist- ence of the world at all. So long as we confine ourselves to it we are outside the jurisdiction of the moral consciousness, which always presup- poses the distinction of " I " and ** thou " ; in other words, a relation between one self-conscious per- sonality and another, or between such personality and a corporate social entity. Abolish this dis- tinction of personality, eliminate the element of individual consciousness and will, and you abolish at once the moral problem. Just as the speculative difficulties attending the assumption of a finished Absolute, which involves, as we have shown, the ascription, in some sort at least, of personality to the Absolute, are got rid of by confining our assumption to a unity of tendency and direction merely, so here the moral difficulties attached to the former view are eliminated by a like pro- cedure. A parallel line of argument as regards the aesthetic sphere, the perfect ideal of beauty, { w PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 283 conceived as eternally realised in the '* Beatific Vision," rests also on the assumption of a personi- fication of the world-principle, and is, therefore, incompatible with the concrete ugliness of the world conceived as the product of a conscious will, whose essence involves aesthetic perfection. When, however, we abandon the position of the eternally complete, self-realised Absolute, and take our stand, not on an absolute self-realised wmly but on a self-realising unity of simple tendency and direction, the problem which is the source of our difficulty has lost all meaning and disappears. There is yet another problem which, although not strictly speaking metaphysical in the sense of the foregoing, yet nevertheless fills a large space in the popular philo- physical sophy of the present day. It is that paraUel- expressed in the theories known on the one hand as Psycho-Physical Parallelism and on the other as the influxus psyckicus. How shall we envisage the dual aspect of phenomena } The real world presents itself as a double series of phenomena — a physical series and a psychical series. Can we apply the category of causation to both these series alike, and especially can we apply it as between the two series ? Can we treat the physical as a cause of the psychical or vice versa, or are we to regard the two as a double series, each with a line of causation strictly independent of the other ; or yet again must we confine the category of causation to . I i I .< (I M If 284 THE ROOTS OF REALITY the physical series alone, treating the psychical as outside causation altogether ? As regards this problem there is, first of all, the position of the older Materialism, according to which the psychical is, strictly speaking, caused by the physical, is a mere epiphenomenon of the physi- cal. This position, which involves metaphysical absurdity, the position of the French Materialism of the eighteenth century, and in the main of Vogt, Biichner, and Moleschott, of the mid- nineteenth cemtury, is now practically abandoned by all serious scientific thinkers as much as by speculative philosophers. The theory of Physical Parallelism in its usual form, as stated, for example, by Fechner, postu- lates a double causal series not causally inter- active but corresponding strictly in the result at every stage. This theory, of course, is prac- tically a resuscitation of one of the sides of Spinoza s system. The causal line of each series is postulated as in itself absolutely independent of that of the other, notwithstanding its precise and invariable correspondence. Hence the phy- sical effect apparently resulting from a psychical cause — an emotion followed by an act of will having as its apparent outcome a modification of the physical world — is really not due to the emotion or the velleity as psychical phenomena, but to the liberation of nerve energy which is their physical accompaniment. The emotion and the velleity followed by the bodily movement PROBLEMS OF METAPHYSIC 285 cannot be regarded as a case of cause and effect in the strict sense of the word. Similarly in the psychical life there is a continuity of cause and effect through the series of psychic states and activities. As Spinoza insisted, ideas can only be determined causally by ideas, just as motions in space can only be determined by motions in space. There is no passing over causally from the one side to the other. This doctrine has been attacked from various points. The difficulty has been pointed out of tracing, even with the most liberal aid of the hypothesis of sub-conscious and unconscious states, any satis- factory continuity on the psychical side. Hence it has been urged that the category of causa- tion in strictness only applies to the physical side of phenomenal reality. Again the doctrine of Psycho-Physical Parallelism has been criticised in a destructive sense in the interests of the influxus psychicus by various philosophic writers, in this country notably by Professor James Ward. While to have omitted all mention of the pro- blem of which Psycho-Physical Parallelism is one of the most popular solutions might have seemed unjustifiable, nevertheless, any detailed examina- tion of the problem and of the current hypotheses respecting it, with the elaborate physiological and psychological discussions therein involved, would lie outside the range of the present work. Speak- ing generally, and in this matter rather as a layman, the present writer cannot but regard I' n * 5 / 286 THE ROOTS OF REALITY the theory of Psycho- Physical Parallelism with all its difficulties and apparent insufficiencies, as notwithstanding less unsatisfactory, viewed as a working hypothesis, than any contra doctrine as yet put forward as a solution. That it is vulner- able to the shafts of criticism at many points is undeniable, but whether these weak spots are fatal to the theory as a whole, in whatever way it may be formulated, is by no means so certain. In any case, since the need for envisaging the real world from this point of view in some way or other is an urgent one to the speculative man, we should hardly be justified in completely throwing overboard an hypothesis, which proves serviceable in so many directions, for anything less than a demonstration of its complete untena- bility on the one hand, or on the other, the establishment of a counter-theory more satis- factory to our speculative intelligence and more serviceable in the working out of psycho-physical results. IX SURVEY OF RESULTS The foregoing pages make no pretensions to embody a new system of philosophy, even in outline. None the less, the analysis we have undertaken of the roots of reality has had for its object to furnish results that might serve as stepping-stones to be utilised in the building up, when the time is ripe, of such a new philo- sophic reconstruction. In this chapter we pro- pose to survey as concisely as possible these general results themselves, and thus aid the reader to understand their inter-connection in a way that was not so easy to effect in the course of the analysis itself. We started with the endeavour to discover certain ultimate postulates, constituting, so to say, the residual certainties arrived at by philosophic thought up to the present time. The ultimate test of certainty or of truth we have defined as the complete self-consistency of consciousness, which is shown in its application when the mere adequate apprehension of a problem carries with 287 I I I. i li It I 288 THE ROOTS OF REALITY it irresistible assent to the solution offered.^ We found, firstly, an absolutely unassailable principle at the basis of what is known as Modern Idealism, namely, that conscious experience, possible or actual, embraces all that is or can be ; that the postulation of existence independent of conscious- ness is meaningless, being in fact a self-contra- dictory absurdity.^ This, the postulate of Modern Idealism, is really the foundation of all the great constructive systems of metaphysic from Plato downward. Whether explicitly recognised or not, it is the assumption underlying all those systems that have attempted to offer a solution ^ As illustration of what is said in the text, I may refer to the statement of G. H. Lewes to the effect that a friend of his alleged that he could conceive that causation might not obtain in the moon, in other words, that an uncaused event might occur in some, to him unknown, part of the spacial universe. Lewes, as a good empiricist, naturally quoted this as an argument against the a priori nature of the category of causation. The real state of the case, of course, was that Lewes's friend did not really appre- hend the problem at all. Similarly I, myself, can remember, as a small boy, calling in question the geometric truism that two straight lines could not enclose a space, and for a precisely similar reason. I had not seized the meaning of the axiom. The moment these propositions are truly understood the assent to them is irresistible, or, as we might say, automatic. 2 The recent so-called refutations of Idealism amount, generally, to its refutation only in the sense of what I have termed in this book Pallogism. This is notably the case with Mr. G. E. Moore's " Refutation of Idealism," which appeared in Mind (vol. xii. p. 143 sqq^^ as was, in fact, pointed out by another writer, Mr. C. A. Strong, who criticised it in a subsequent number of the same periodical (vol. xiv. p. 174 sqq.). Such would-be refuters of Idealism are fond of emphasising the distinction between the actual this-ness of consciousness and its material content, which appears in the concrete conscious synthesis as its other-ness. The latter is, of SURVEY OF RESULTS 289 of the larger problem of existence. Starting, hen, from th.s basis, we next sought to discovS the uU,„ate nature of conscious experience. Analysis disclosed to us that consciousness-in- general, no less than any given determination L^Tr^'T" ^\P^«'^"'-'- object, consists ultimately of a synthesis of two elements or erms in a reciprocal relation. We found further that this relation, constituting a synthetic unity of these two elements, is not, as Hegel would T/'!-'o '?^"'°" '« ''''''''' ^ bridge without ends (c/. Bradley. " Appearance and Reality ") but that It always presupposes these elements.' It !s. in other words, not independent, but is course, only the Fichtean Ansioss in another euise R,„ n. amount of emphasis, either on the distinction bef^een the con sXS-'^noTof'.vrr"'''"-:'''^ p^--"' Tosslbi it^r sensation -nor on that between the immediacy or //4z>-««f Jr apprehension and the potentiality of the content, wilcar^ «' a step towards "refutmg" that Idealism that proclaim conscTous ness-m-general, possible and actual, for the final anT most com." prehensive term to which reality can be reduced. Ad^s ncTion .s sometimes made between the epistemoloeical asJrHnn .i^ we know nothing but "conscious states "and the met "hv2! assertion as it is termed, that the external wo Id eTK'e el v as modifications of consciousness. When closely vewerS objection will be seen to be invalid, and this for the simple reason that, Idealism once admitted as epistemological postulate he IS meaningless. That which, if admitted at all, is ex hv6oth/,i mcapable of entering into any possible experience clearlt?an„o exist for any system of possible experience. It i f^r such a system a nonentity. If its existence cannot be shown "o be involved m the self^consistency of consciousness, it is nothing at a The assertion of the bare posnbility is merely foZal and illusory. It has no real validity. ^ ^ V ■"^ 290 THE ROOTS OF REALITY always the relation of its terms. The primordial synthesis of consciousness-in-general, which is presupposed in all particular consciousness, we have found to consist in (i) a that which feels ; (2) a somewhat felt, and (3) the reciprocal relation termed thought, the reaction of the former on the latter, and vice versa. Treating the interaction of the two basic elements in this primordial synthesis as itself an element, we find that the analysis of consciousness gives us in the last resort three elements. But if we examine the matter more nearly, we further find that they resolve themselves into the first element mentioned, namely, into the that which feels, or the ego which becomes conscious. For the second element, the some- what felt, is seen to be no more than the projection or inversion of the feeling ego. It has no meaning save as a determination of a conscious subject.^ Taking consciousness in its primary synthesis, as above disclosed, we can distinguish clearly the first two elements from the third, the terms related from the relation — feeling, sensating, im- * In the course of the foregoing discussion the objections raised by modem thinkers to the recognition of a primary ego or subject have been answered, especially Mr. Bradley's contention, that the ego is a subsequent construction within consciousness, has been indicated as resting on a hysteron proteron. He is confounding^ as we maintain, the ego in its " second intention," as concept, with the ego as primary datum. The ego as philosophic concept may be even a very late construction, but this does not alter the fact that all consciousness presupposes ego in the former sense. SURVEY OF RESULTS 291 mediacy, from the thought, the essence of which is relation pure and simple. In this way we arrived at the antithesis of alogical and logical as at once the deepest and most wide-reaching antithesis in conscious experience. This anti- thesis, it is necessary to bear in mind, in no sense amounts to a dualism as implying mutual independence of its terms. It is an antithesis within the synthetic unity of conscious experi- ence itself. The very relating activity, the outcome of which is the thought-form, is the activity of the subject of consciousness itself, while it is only relatively and not absolutely distinct from the discrimination of agreement and difference within the region of feltness or of objective sensation (cf, pp. 263-264). This antithesis of alogical and logical, having its ground in the elements at the root of all consciousness, can be traced through- out the whole system of experience, aid^^^^ ix. in every phase of reality. We logical as have been able to distinguish four ^^?JiS^ , • J . 1.1 t .. aiititn6Sls. mam modes m which the antithesis manifests itself, namely, the particular and uni- versal, being and appearance, infinite and finite, and chance and law. There are countless minor antitheses, but these are either deducible from one or other of the above four pairs, or, if not, from some sort of cross-union between two or more of them. We have found that the par- ticular itself has an intensive or qualitative and 292 THE ROOTS OF REALITY an extensive or quantitative character. As in- tensive, particularity is identical with the this- ness of intuition — with the absolute self-centred uniqueness of the content of any given moment of actual consciousness. The tkis-ness or self- centredness of the particular, in this qualitative aspect, is absolute per se and knows no limit. The particular, as ''this thing," seems as if it could never shrink into itself enough — so absolute is its uniqueness. But there is another aspect of particularity, that is, its aspect as infinite repetition in time and space. Thus, in this sense, the time-honoured antithesis of the one and the many is itself contained within the mode of the alogical termed particularity. This second or quantitative character of the particular already touches the antithetic mode, namely, the uni- versal. Just as the particular is through and through alogical, so the universal is through and through logical. The logical universal em- braces three forms, the class-name, the abstract quality, and the relation pure and simple. The universal as class-name, while descending in countless gradations, never reaches the concrete, for the simple reason that however it may come down towards the concrete it always remains universal and hence abstract ; it never touches the particular. The second form of the logical universal quality /^r se, is quite obviously an abstraction — in fact, in some respects the type of abstraction. The third form, the relation- SURVEY OF RESULTS 293 universal, is the basis of those concept-forms termed categories in the technical sense, as enter- ing into the construction of sensible experience itself, the Kantian and Hegelian categories, &c. The second modal antithesis of the alogical and logical referred to, namely, that of being and appearance, so important for speculative thought, is the subject of much confusion in philosophy The word " being" is sometimes used as synony- mous with reality and sometimes not. I have defined ''being," in the sense in which I use the word, as meaning merely the that in the object in contradistinction to the what. The that in the object is alogical ; the what involves some form of relation. Hence I distinguish between being and existence. The term existence, by which I understand the synthesis of being and appearance, is therefore equivalent to the term reality. Being, I have pointed out, when analysed means subjectivity. Thus, when we say that a thing is, when we use the verb- substantive not merely as the grammatical copula but as affirming being of an object, we thereby impute the principle of subjectivity to this object — that is, we impute thereto an ego-nournenon. This is interesting in its bearing on the Materialism of modern science, which would attribute a "subjective side" to all matter. The reference in this connection to physical substance as "blind unconscious matter" opens up a further point of interest to the philosophic ! / «^memmimmmmmm 294 THE ROOTS OF REALITY thinker, namely, the distinction between the ^^«- conscious and the ^;i;/ra-conscious. Conscious- ness and unconsciousness in this connection are both within the realm of subjectivity, that is, of possible consciousness. In so far as we postulate being of a stone, we assume the possibility of consciousness as inherent in the stone ; in other words, although we may assume the stone to be ^w-conscious, we do not assume it to be extra- conscious. An abstraction alone is extra-conscious in this sense. Justice, beauty, weight, height, ideal mathematical constructions have no subjec- tivity imputed to them. They have no being ; they are conceived of d^sper se extra-conscious. The third mode of the alogical and logical is represented by the antithetic elements of infinite and finite. Infinity always falls to the side of the alogical. I am aware, of course, of the distinction drawn between the '* true " and the **false" infinite, the former being applied from Plato downwards, to the universal concept, the latter to the manifold of sense. But, if closely viewed, the infinity attributed to the logical universal, whether hypostatised as the Platonic idea or otherwise, will be found to fall, strictly speaking, not to the logical concept itself, but to the '^limitless repetition of instances " that it covers. This means, of course, that it properly falls to the particular. The logical universal, as such, is necessarily a formal principle of limitation, i.e. of finitude. It is t:(?;^notation, not SURVEY OF RESULTS 295 ^^otation, to use the old logical expressions. It ^^rcludes, by the very fact of its incXudAng, Hence it is clearly per se, not infinite, and infinity can only be predicated of the potentiality of instances falling under it. I am also not unaware of Professor Royce's theory of the infinity of a *' self- representative system," as based upon the number-series, of Dedekind's '' Kette," &c. But I am unable, after careful perusal of Royce's argument as stated in *'The World and the Individual" (vol. i. Ap- pendix), to see that he makes out his case for regarding his so-called self-representative system as anything else than a special instance of the potential repetition to infinity of quantitative particularity (cf. supra, chapter iii., note on Infinity, at end). I contend for the acceptance of the word infinite as far as possible in accordance with current usage, that is, as infinite repetition in time, space, or both. The most popular and sensational of the four chief pairs of modes into which the cardinal antithesis of alogical and logical falls is that of chance and law. This is, perhaps, the solitary instance in which the theory of Pallogism has entered into popular thought. We constantly hear 1 the pseudo - philosophic dictum from the ** half-baked" man of culture, or even from the " man - in - the - street,'' that there is no such thing as chance in the world, the term chance merely being a word denoting our ignorance. ( i w « ri«tt i i M mwtf i B ii wftiiiim li i imiW iiii Mmijii i k 296 THE ROOTS OF REALITY It is unnecessary here to repeat the detailed discussion, in which I have shown the fallacy of this point of view (see pp. 78-94). Suffice it to say that the theory in question would elimi- nate the whole material element in the processes of the real world, with all that it contributes to the total result, and reduce that result to the expression of a formal abstraction. The reality and life of the changing world would be con- verted into a barren abstract formula for an applied category. Let us now turn for a moment to the most popular and historically important form of the opposite fallacy to that which we have just been considering. The doctrine known as ** Empiricism" or '' Associationalism" has at the present time so few defenders within the inner circles of philosophical thinkers that the attempt to criticise it may seem to many like flogging a dead horse. But, if dead within the inner circles of philosophy, it is by no means quite dead in the thought of ^^the average cultured man." It still, consciously or unconsciously, influences his judgments in matters bearing on philosophy and pervades much of the popular literature of the day in such matters. It may, therefore, be as well to point out once more, in relation to the positions forming the basis of the present work, the fundamental fallacy underlying the associational standpoint. The The Associa- tional psycho- logists. \ SURVEY OF RESULTS 297 associational psychologists or empirical philo- sophers, according as we may choose to call them,^ postulate, under one formula or another, that the external perception is a positive given somewhat, accruing to the individual mind from without, apart from the co-operation of any con- scious activity. Their cardinal distinction is between the perceived object and the mental concept, based on the scholastic formula. Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu fuerit. Their position was therefore au fond, that of Dualism. The "impressions and ideas" of Hume were interpreted in the sense of per- ceptions and notions. The first were the source of truth, science, and intellectual soundness ; the second of error, metaphysics, and intellectual rottenness. The notions of the mind were compounded of the memory and association of external perceptions. The external sense— per- ception— was the solid, true, and real particular ; the mental concept was the false, fleeting, and illusory universal. But the empiricist did not see, in making the foregoing assumption, that the sense-perception, constituting the external object for him, was itself neither a simple particular nor a simple sense-impression, but ^ It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that this school claims descent from Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, through Reid and the Scottish school, and has been represented in recent times by Mill and his nominal opponent, Hamilton, by Bain, Lewes, and also, m the main, by Herbert Spencer, Taine, Comte, and epigoni too numerous to mention, of the mid- Victorian era. ( 'J \y -al*^ 298 THE ROOTS OF REALITY a synthesis of particular and universal, of sensa- tion and thought. The content of any external perception, this table, for instance, is not a mere sensation, not even a mere sensation of other- ness {Anstoss)y but as completed object it in- volves a definite synthesis. The undifferentiated ** bundle" of sensations at the basis of my per- ception of this table have to be subsumed under certain apperceptive syntheses or categories, e.g, the relation of substance-accident, existence in space, relationship to and differentiated from other objects, possible or actual, in the same space, &c., before the table is constituted for consciousness as perceived object. When once this is recognised, it becomes evident that the elaborately-constructed house of cards, by which a mere law of empirical psychology is made to do duty for a theory of knowledge, falls to pieces at the touch of criticism. It is seen that the distinction, paraded with so much pomp and circumstance, between sense-object and mental concept has not, after all, quite that cardinal im- portance that the Associational school gives to it — that the sense-perception, as constituting object, already contains a thought-element, that it is no mere uncategorised sensation (sense-impression). It is similar with the distinction between particular and universal in this connection, by which the sense-perception is lauded as the safe and sane particular as against the vain and unreliable universal. Here also, of course, SURVEY OF RESULTS 299 and on the same grounds, an accurate analysis shows the barest perception of the sense-object to be already a synthesis of particular and universal. These mid-Victorian empiricists re- present, in a manner, the antithetic counterpart to the pallogists of the orthodox Hegelian right and its offshoots. While the pallogist would resolve the real world into thought-universals, the empiricist would resolve it into sense-par- ticulars. In so doing they alike abolish the synthesis in which alone reality consists. The sense-particular per se in which the empiricist thinks he finds the only genuine reality (but does not), is, in truth, no more 'reality, per se, than is the logical universal so much despised by him. The real, the object, necessarily implies a union in synthesis of both elements. The truth at the back of Empiricism is simply to be found in the confused recognition of the genetic priority of the alogical over the logical. But this element of truth in the empiricist's position the empiricist himself has succeeded in travestying beyond all recognition. The notion that sense without thought can furnish reality is not a whit less absurd than the notion against which the empiricist inveighs that thought without sense can furnish reality. He is further led into con- fusion and his whole statement vitiated, by his confining the notion of thought to the mental concept of reproductive thought, to the neglect of the thought-element in perception itself. ^ ij f I '^' If n ill Continuity of con- scious process from primapy synthesis to indi- vidual conscious- ness. 300 THE ROOTS OF REALITY When we use the word process in a philoso- phical connection, we do not necessarily mean a process involving a time-series, but an organic or systematic order of elements going to make up a definite synthesis. In this sense I have pointed out that there is no break, no hiatus, in the system of articulations constituting the conscious process. At each stage we find the absoluteness of the alogical elements therein being sucked up and metamorphosed by the relativeness of thought -activity. We see that the individual consciousness, the personal ego or mind, presup- poses a process substantially identical with that which is proceeding on its own psychological plane, as being already complete, and, from its point of view, as it were ready-made. This con- sciousness which the individual mind presupposes, we may — if we do not fear the small wit of the Philistine — term a timeless transcendental pro- cess. Of this process, we have pointed out, the activity of the individual mind is but the con- tinuation. We have also further shown that we have no reason for assuming any finality in the order of the conscious process in the individual consciousness as we know it.^ On the contrary, * The complete synthesis spoken of, I may remind the reader, does not necessarily imply a finality, but may in its turn be looked upon as element in a more advanced synthesis. Its completeness may well be conceived as relative rather than as absolute. //I SURVEY OF RESULTS 301 we have given grounds for thinking that, as realised in organic and psychical evolution in time, we may assume the possibility of a mode of consciousness whose '* organ" should be a sociological or super-organic system based on the human individual as its unit, just as the human individual itself is based on the organic cell as its unit. In connection with the analysis of the individual consciousness, I have pointed out that self-identity simply means the unbroken continuity of a per- sonal memory-synthesis, and this again means the extension of the moment of immediacy, oithisnesSy in time. The word **self'' or "personality" is very often used as meaning the character and disposition {i.e, the concrete sum of tendencies) as well as the particular experience - contents, associated with a given memory-synthesis. Thus, represented by the same human body, as their instrument, you may have various and even con- tradictory dispositions of character, or ** selves," if we like to use this term for them. For example, the personality or self under strong emotion, or during insanity, or in drink, is different from the average self, and yet those varying selves are clearly bound up in the same memory-synthesis. More than this, if we trust the accuracy of results alleged to have been obtained by recent scientific investigators of hypnotism, it would seem that the same objective side, to wit, the human body, which we are accustomed to regard as representing one \ \ \ II ) i « ; 'f f L i Material and formal : potential and aetual. ! 302 THE ROOTS OF REALITY memory-synthesis to the exclusion of all others, may possibly, under exceptional conditions, do duty for more than one. However, this subject — for the present, at least — is in too inchoate a stage of elucidation to be fit for treatment as a part of general scientific psychology. The antitheses material and formal, potential and actual, are nearly, although not quite, coin- cident with the antithesis of alogical and logical. The pallogist, just as he hypostatises the logical at the expense of the alogical, hypostatises the actual at the expense of the potential, and form at the expense of matter.^ That he should do so is only to be expected, for the fallacy of abstraction which he commits is at basis the same in both cases. Yet the attempt to argue away one side of these antitheses would seem to be irresistible to even con- structive thinkers. I have shown in Chapter V. that the purely negative value that philosophers have been wont to ascribe to the first of the anti- ^ In the course of our investigations we have had occasion to discuss the system of Pallogism generally, as embodied in the philosophy of Hegel, its greatest representative. It may be added here that the attempt sometimes made to show that Hegel was au fond not a pallogist by citing his remark that the "logic" was a "realm of shadows" is really no disproof of his Pallogism. Hegel said, in effect : " In the logic I only give you the skeleton of the system of reality — not that the filling-in of the picture, the flesh and blood of the skeleton, consists of something other than categories, consists of something essentially different from the skeleton ; it is only a continuation of the same process, the gene- ration of subordinate categories in an indefinite gradation." SURVEY OF RESULTS 303 thetical terms in question is explained by their priority of value, metaphysically, for which reason the said terms are mainly expressible, in the language of reflective thought, and a fortiori in that of philosophy, by negatives. The philoso- phers in question cannot see that these negative- seeming terms connote a positive element — an element constituting the root and pre-supposition of the logical, the formal, and the actual. They are the warp which the "eternal loom of time" weaves into reality. To take an instance from the potential and the actual (Aristotle's antithesis, for most purposes identifiable with his other anti- thesis of matter and form). The actuality of any given moment of consciousness is the smallest part of the total content of that moment. As I write at the present time, what is actual to my consciousness is limited to the pigeon-holes of the writing-desk before me, but I am potentially con- scious of the whole room, nay, of a whole world outside. But for the practically infinite range of this potential consciousness the mere actuality of the pigeon-holes of the desk before me would have no significance. It is as the actual sign or phenomenon of a potentially objective real out- side themselves that they possess significance for me. The same with every moment of con- sciousness ; the actual side only possesses value or meaning as a token of the vast potentiality beyond itself. There are three chief senses in which the term i ii 304 THE ROOTS OF REALITY reality is used. First of all, we have the ordinary empirical sense of the *'man-in-the-street,'' that reality which is dominated by the «^^^ii^ifh common-sense consciousness and its andtrutn. . r^ n i. *u categories. Secondly, we nave tne acceptation specially consecrated by Mr. Bradley in his ** Appearance and Reality," although often employed before, namely, as the highest possible unfolding or perfection of the essence of a thing, or a for^tort of concrete consciousness throughout its entire range. The third sense of the word reality is that largely employed in this book, and is exclusively philosophical, namely, that of a synthesis of elements to constitute a unity other than themselves. Such a synthesis is, as I have repeatedly insisted upon in the present work, clearly not reducible to less than two antithetic terms without ceasing at once to be a synthesis, and therefore becoming a mere abstraction having no connection with reality. This, when stated in so many words, may seem a platitude, but, if it be so, there are few platitudes the insistence upon which is more necessary in view of the fallacies that its neglect has engendered. The synthesis of reality, viewed as a whole, either as a relative whole as any special reality, or as an absolute whole as conscious experience throughout its entire range, implies an articulated system of synthesis, each involving its own antithesis. The aim of philosophic analysis is to ascertain the ultimate and most comprehensive antithesis dis- SURVEY OF RESULTS 305 coverable in conscious experience, a cardinal antithesis to which all other antitheses may be reduced. This we have found to be the anti- thesis of the alogical and logical. If our analysis be correct, it would appear that the category, using the word in its epistemological, z.e. Kantian and post-Kantian sense, as the thought-element involved in the reality of common-sense percep- tion, is itself derivative from antithetic elements more deep-lying than itself. For example, in Chapter III. we have shown that the salient cate- gory of cause and effect is itself one element of an antithesis of which chance is the other, and that this antithesis itself is but a mode of the antithesis of the alogical and logical that lies at the root of all consciousness. Pallogistic systems of theory-of-knowledge and metaphysic have ignored the alogical side of reality. Their authors have been led Transfor- by the fact that philosophy means a mation formulation in the terms of reflective ^f^*^® thought, and by the fact that the Sfleeutf medium of reflective thought, as such, thought, is necessarily the logical universal, into assum- ing that knowledge generally, and especially that purest form of knowledge represented by philosophic speculation, can never be concerned with aught but logical forms ; that the alogical (sensation, will, being, agency, thisness) must in- evitably be excluded from its domain. They ignore the fact that though the alogical, it is u \ !i 3o6 THE ROOTS OF REALITY true, cannot be expressed in the concepts of reflective thought, yet it can nevertheless be indicated in the concept-form. The true concept is the expression of a relation between terms, and though the terms themselves cannot be ex- pressed in the way the relation between them is expressed, yet they can undoubtedly be indicated conceptually in the form, as it were, of a symbol. This is the case whenever we think or speak of an abstract quality or sensation. The general terms used by abstract thought to express alogicals do not really express them at all, but merely indicate them. Unlike universals proper, they express nothing. The *' universal " as class- name expresses definite relations amongst an assemblage of qualities. A category (in the Kantian sense), such as cause, expresses a pure relation per se. But when it comes to the ultimate termini of these relations, reflective thought, whose medium is necessarily the uni- versal thought-form or concept, can only get at them, so to speak, by means of a concept through which they are more or less arbitrarily symbolised. Reflective thought, however, can and does effect this, and hence the possibility of recognising the alogical in the pseudo-concept that represents it in reflection, and hence again the possibility of its inclusion in a philosophical formula. Reflective thought, as represented in its highest manifestation, as philosophy, is not the only form SURVEY OF RESULTS 307 in which empirical consciousness becomes trans- lated, acquiring a higher value. In the art- consciousness we have this take place other under the form of sense - perception, values of with its standard of beauty, and in the ^®^^^^y* ethical consciousness under the forms of emotion, represented by social sympathy (human love), with its standard of goodness. In both these cases, no less than in the philosophical con- sciousness, with its standard of truth, alike the ultimate test and the ultimate goal is the same, namely, the self- consistency, the harmony, of consciousness-in-general with itself. In all three cases, moreover, the ultimate appeal is to im- mediacy, to feeling. It might be supposed at first sight that, whatever might be the case with aesthetic beauty or moral goodness, philo- sophical truth at least had logical reason for its final arbiter. Such is, however, not quite the case. If we consider the matter closely, we shall see that the conviction of the truth of a given philosophical formulation, or, in other words, the conviction of the adequacy of the formulation as expressing in the terms of abstract thought the self- consistency of consciousness, rests in the last resort upon feeling — namely, the feeling of intellectual satisfaction it affords. Hence here also, no less than in the sphere of art or ethics, we are forced back upon the bedrock of the alogical as our ultimate arbiter. 3o8 THE ROOTS OF REALITY The disengagement of the mere many-ness of the world from the essence of its reality is the main task of human culture, whether problem ^s philosophy, art, or ethics.^ Quanti- of human tative particularity is the enemy arainst culture . , / o which the higher consciousness in all its forms is waging incessant warfare. This point has been dealt with in Chapter VI., as regards philosophy (including, of course, in this connec- tion, science), art, and ethics. In the same chapter we have dealt exhaustively with the question of the ultimacy of the alogical above alluded to. The very important fact of the unique thisness of the ultimate judgment in philosophical, aesthetic, and ethical matters, as opposed to the ** commonness," the necessity of assent for all men, attaching to the judgments of the ordinary empirical consciousness, will also be found discussed in that chapter. As regards this, the '* Pragmatists " would probably maintain that the distinction between the two orders of judg- ments was based upon practical sanction ; that * It may be noticed here that I have given no special place to the so-called religious consciousness. 1 have not done so, since there is nothing in any form of the religious consciousness that cannot be reduced to a combination of factors derived from the aesthetic or ethical consciousness respectively. The values of these latter in their highest potency as referable to the telos of existence give us the whole content of the religious consciousness. The expression "religious consciousness" may be justifiable as denoting the highest potency above referred to, but this has fallen to be dealt with in its proper place, notably Chapter VII., although under other headings. SURVEY OF RESULTS 309 \. the needs of existence up-to-date had produced the *' object common to all," about which all men must be substantially agreed, and that this was not the case with the judgments of aesthetics or ethics, or at least not in the same degree. We have already discussed the validity of this point of view at the opening of Chapter VII., and so need not enter into it again here. We have seen that historically, from the period when civilisation began to break down the group- society of early man, the tendency has views as been towards what I term the mystical to world- ideal — towards conceiving the telos as ®^ °^' a direct relation between the finite soul of the individual and the infinite world-consciousness. With early man, on the contrary, the supreme end presented itself in the form of a glorious life of clan, tribe, or people, conceived as a continuity of deified ancestors, existing tribesmen, and their descendants. In the thought of this state of society the individual only had a meaning in so far as he represented the collectivity to which he belonged. In other words, the ideal of the telos of life for early man was a social and not a personal ideal. This view continued more or less dominant during the earlier stages of civilisa- tion, and hence the ancient world generally is largely coloured by it. The former view, on the contrary, is most fully expressed in what are known as the great ethical religions, as well as in those various cults that arose in the later period 310 THE ROOTS OF REALITY of ancient civilisation. Under the form of Christianity it has dominated western culture up to recent times and nominally does so still. But we see to-day another conception of the world-destiny gradually supplanting the indi- vidualist-introspective one. We see a new con- viction becoming stronger and manifesting itself, implicitly where not explicitly, in various ways. This view no longer finds the solution of the telos in a direct relation of the individual con- sciousness to a world-principle, but comes to regard it as realisable only as the resultant of a long process of social development, in which the individual as such plays a secondary role. With this conviction is connected a doubt as to the possibility of arriving at an adequate theo- retical formula for the summum bonum at all. The latter view, like the former, seems to us a sign of progress, for it is clear that to be able to state the world-purpose within the limits of any formula must imply the notion of finality as attaching thereto. But, as we have pointed out, happiness, if not per se the telos itself, is at least so per aliud, ue. it must necessarily enter as integral element into any life-purpose or world- purpose considered as a concrete reality. Now happiness, to endure as happiness, we have seen, cannot be a finality ; it cannot be something fixed once for all and unchanging. What applies to happiness as element of the telos applies also to the telos itself, viewed as concrete, and to the SURVEY OF RESULTS 311 Absolute, of which it may be conceived as the highest expression. Happiness, though not the whole purpose comprised in the telos, is nevertheless so integral a part of it that it may well be taken as the touchstone of progress, understanding thereby movement towards the telos. In this way hap- piness (pleasure) becomes practically identified with good, and its contrary unhappiness (pain) with evil, the first term being applied to all that makes for the telos and the second to all that hinders its realisation. In this connection we have found that there is a special dialectic of good and evil (pleasure and pain). All good or all evil that has become incarnate in the time-pro- cess, that has become particularised as this good thing or this evil thing, in so doing puts on the vesture of mortality. It makes its appearance with its own death-warrant written upon it. For it then belongs to the essence of the time-content. Now it is the deepest principle of the time-content that all that begins therein must also end therein ; what arises in time must also perish in time. *' There is nothing that comes into being but ceases to be," says Heraklitos of Ephesus. But it might be said that, if realised good and realised evil are, by the very fact of their being realised, alike involved in the same condemnation, the best we can claim is that the one has no ad- vantage over the other. A nearer consideration of the process, however, shows us that this is not Zi2 THE ROOTS OF REALITY the case ; there is a difiference between the two. As we have pointed out (pp. 242-246), concrete evil appears as the beginning or first term of a given cycle of the time-process, whilst the *' good " appears as the termination, as the goal or com- pletion of the process. The -good " attained in the elimination or transformation of the specific *'evir' discloses itself as the goal and purpose of the cycle in question. But if this be so, it is clear that all concrete -evil" issues in concrete ^'good" and not conversely. It is, nevertheless, further true that out of this realised "good" a new *' evil," differing in character from the pre- vious one, begins soon to body itself forth. The new - evil " becomes realised itself, in its turn, as a definite evil thing (institution, &c.). It becomes particularised and the same process begins anew. But each time that the - good '' IS realised and the -evil" eliminated or trans- formed there is a positive gain. In the moment of realisation there is a positive increment of "good" gained at the expense of -evil," of happiness at the expense of its opposite. The antithesis of - good " and - evil " lies deep down in the nature of reality itself, viewed in its Prog-res- pragmatic aspect, and, it would seem cannot be got rid of without abolish- ing reality. The most we can predi- cate as the result of our analysis is a progressive approximation towards the In the same way our analysis of the sive ab sorption of logical and alogrieal. •'good." SURVEY OF RESULTS 313 conditions of reality as knowledge leads us to postulate a progressive absorption or transfor- mation of the alogical by the logical, of matter by form, of the potential by the actual, without, nevertheless, our being able to conceive a point at which this process is completed — a point at which the alogical (or the material or the potential) element has vanished. As we have often said, the moment we have postulated this, we have left reality and sought refuge in an abstraction. We have, in the main and with one or two exceptions only, been concerned in the foregoing pages with a strictly scientific analysis of the conditions of the real, or, which is the same thing, of conscious experience, potential and actual. There are, however, problems raised and indeed forced upon us by this very analysis that go beyond the analysis itself, and are essen- tially speculative in their character. Meanwhile, we may mention that the present work makes no pretension even to a complete analysis of all questions arising out of the conditions of reality themselves, tive differ- For example, the question of qualita- ®°^® ^^ ^' ji'rr ' . 1 1 sensation, tive dinerence in sensation has scarcely been touched upon. This would naturally lead to a consideration of distinction of quality as obtaining in the alogical generally. Distinction of quality is the special formative aspect of the alogical per se. The alogical, ^.^. as sensation, though in its relation to the total synthesis of 314 THE ROOTS OF REALITY reality it falls in general to the side of matter, just as the logical falls to the side of form, never- theless possesses per se in its character of simple element, a formal aspect. This is an interesting point and one well worthy of detailed elucidation. The differentiation of mere homogeneous sen- sation into the widest qualitative distinctions — distinctions that cannot be referred to any logi- cal relation, but are apparently inherent in the sense-element itself— is a significant subject, upon which, doubtless, much remains yet to be written. Similarly, there are many other questions, especially on the border-land be- tween psychology and theory of knowledge or metaphysic, which we have not dealt with or only lightly touched upon. Our object has been to offer suggestions for a future systematic philosophical construction and not to elaborate any completed system. One point, I think, the foregoing chapters have made clear, and that is not merely that Driving ^^ alogical has a certain genetic force of priority over the logical, but that the alogical. driving force of all process in reality resides in the alogical — in sensation, in feeling, in will, and not in reason or pure thought- activity. In the actual course of evolution in time, though we find indeed, viewed in its broader issues, a progression according to law, yet the actual originating force of change in time we find in the spontaneity of the parti- SURVEY OF RESULTS 315 cular. It was in the freak-individual that Darwin saw the prime factor in the differentiation of species. Again, in historical development, though we can discern certain categories or laws, under which social change takes place, when we view the matter abstractly, yet, taken in the concrete, the actual happening, and its initiation, is always due to the actions and passions of individuals and social groups. In dealing with the individual consciousness, it has been pointed out that there is no dis- continuity, no hiatus, between the fundamental conscious process presupposed in consciousness- in-general and this individual consciousness itself. Hence there is no hard and fast line dividing the several departments of philosophy from one another, e.g, metaphysics from theory of know- ledge (epistemology) or theory of knowledge from psychology (i£, from psychology in its philosophical aspect, as opposed to psychology in its relation to physiology). In the same chapter (Chapter IV.) in which the individual conscious- ness is discussed, we have also considered the question at the basis of all Mysticism, and even of all ethical practice, namely, the reach- ing-out of the individual to a realisation of self outside the empirical self actually given. We have discussed this as regards the possible tran- scendence of the empirical self in a Divine per- sonality, and also, supposing any metaphysical hypothesis of this sort to be rejected, as un- 3i6 THE ROOTS OF REALITY satisfactory, we have dealt with the hypothesis of a transcendental-sociological entity as the objective of the realisability of the existing human personality. The highly important distinction between reality and truth has been sufficiently dealt with as throwing light on various problems of knowledge. The analysis of this leads up to a general discussion of the higher consciousness in its three aspects — philosophic, aesthetic, and ethical. The higher consciousness, as being concerned primarily with values, opens up a different world or, if one will, three worlds, all alike differing from the world which they presuppose and on which they are based, namely, the world of common-sense consciousness and of science, at least in its lower and more partial aspects. The value-judgment in all three worlds we have shown to have an alogical foundation, that is, it is based on something outside reason, outside thought and the processes of thought — it is based on immediacy, on apprehension, on the intuitiveness, the tkisness, of feeling, and on will-impulse— (feeling being static will, and will dynamic feeling). This applies even to that which, as a whole, is specially the realm of the logical, namely, philosophic truth. Even this presupposes axioms and postulates that reason is incapable of establishing, notwithstanding that it assumes them in all its operations as the mate- rial with which it works. Hence even truth SURVEY OF RESULTS 317 is grounded in the alogical. Still more obvi- ously may this be seen in the case of esthetic and ethical value-judgments, in all of which the alogical clearly predominates. By no ratio- cinative process can you prove a thing to be beautiful. Immediate feeling is the first and last court of appeal. You may, of course, for- mulate on the basis of this feeling canons of taste which serve to represent it in thought, and thus generalise it. In this way you may bring a certain logical consistency into the realm of aesthetic values, but the alogical asserts its primacy everywhere throughout the world of aesthetic judgment. ^ In moral judgments the alogical root is, if anything, still more plain, but the alogical root in moral judgments is different from the alogical root in esthetic judgments, as both are dis- parate from the pre-eminently logical value- judgments of philosophic truth. The aim of phifosophy is to transmute the immediacy of reality into logical constructions or truths. The function of art is to transmute the pleasure- pain element in the perception of reality into what we call beauty, or, at least, into that which excites aesthetic emotion. The goal oi ethics is again the transmutation of conduct in accordance with a standard or ideal itself based on immediate feeling, and hence on the alogical, akin in some respects to the esthetic value-standard, but totally alien to 3i8 THE ROOTS OF REALITY the philosophical. This last point is seldom recognised.^ We have asked the question what are the most comprehensive terms in which we can, if not define, at least indicate, the goal of reality and a fortiori of human life. Can this » As illustration may be taken the following fact. In a historical work published some years ago by the present writer, an ethical judgment was ventured upon to the effect of describing Prince- Bishop Waldeck, on the ground of the barbarities committed on his fallen Anabaptist foes, as a " monster." In a criticism on the work in question, an evening organ of cultured Liberalism took the author to task for not recognising that it was " unphilosophical " to describe prince-bishops as monsters. The reviewer was evidently unaware of the naive crudity of his criticism. Apart from the fact that the same organ would probably have no philosophical scruples m stigmatising some bomb-throwing anarchist as a monster the absurdity of expecting an ethical judgment to be philosophical needs no demonstration here. An ethical judgment, by the very fact of Its being such, must necessarily be non-philosophical, l^hilosophy means, as we know, the reduction of reality to logical terms, while every ethical judgment, as such, is pre-eminently alogical. The attempt to make a philosophical judgment ethical or an ethical judgment philosophical, is to misconceive entirely Ihe meaning of both the one and the other. In ethics, as in esthetics the predominant note is alogical. Philosophy, in its judgments of actions, knows no praise or blame ; or if it praises or blames it does so merely, so to say, mechanically, as a cold corollary from certain rules with which it starts. Ethical judgments, on the other hand, are exclusively concerned with praise or blame as dictated by the alogical feeling-element in the ethical consciousness-indigna- tion, admiration, &c. To comment upon an ethical judgment there- fore, that it IS " unphilosophical » is to propound a truism To reproach an ethical judgment for not being philosophical indicates a critic m the very last stage of muddle-headedness. Ethical judgments and philosophical judgments are doubtless alike ex- cellent things, but to blame one for not being the other is about as unreasonable as to blame a mastiff for not having the voice of a turtle-dove, SURVEY OF RESULTS 3^9 enter the empirical consciousness in a flash of immediate feeling ? Is this, the solution of Mysti- cism, the right one ? Or can we learn anything concerning the teles by an ^|^®|^|/^^ analysis through reasoned reflection, of means, end, purpose, and happiness ? Or must we again accept the attitude of pure Scepticism or Agnosticism and renounce all attempt at any solution? To do so would seem like burking the most vital of all matters— that of the ultimate meaning and value of consciousness. If we do attempt to analyse the conditions of this problem, we are confronted with the questions how far all purpose is the exclusive appanage of an individual consciousness, of the relation of hap- piness to the telos, and of the possible nature of the telos generally. The groups of problems to which the con- sideration of the telos of human life and all existence, gives rise, have been already r^^^^^ discussed. It has been shown that moving in these ultimate questions of will and ^^^^ ®^ of feeling, human thought has been equally under the ban of hypostatised abstraction as in that of theory-of-knowledge and of metaphysic. It has been shown that the telos must be a synthesis and that not even its most salient element, not even happiness itself, as undetermined abstraction, represents the telos, conceived as realisable. The elucidation of this point has involved a criticism of the religious ideals of the world hitherto .«i«*«»'**4iii^ 320 THE ROOTS OF REALITY obtaining, as well as a criticism of Pessimism considered as a philosophical theory. The issue of this has been to show that Pessimism, no less than Optimism, implies an abstract and one-sided view of the dynamic of progress, a view, moreover, which professedly bases itself upon generalisations drawn from manifestly in- sufficient data. Reflection on the unfolding of reality in the time-series shows us a perpetual passing away of evil and a continuous realisation of good, and, although in a sense the converse is also true, yet there is an essential difference between the two cases, inasmuch as good, and not evil, constitutes the end of every dialectical cycle, through which the process of reality, con- sidered in its relation to good and evil, works. The complete attainment of a summum bonum, the exhaustion of all possibilities of the good in all or in any of its aspects in any realised now, must appear, in the light of our reflective conscious- ness, as a chimera. The infinite and eternal approximation to this, however, is no chimera, but an assumption involved in the self-con- sistency of consciousness itself. This infinite process, conceived as a realisation in time, cannot be regarded in any way as circular, as returning in upon itself Its infinity is that of a forward movement. Each cycle may return up to a certain point upon itself, in so far as it obtains a richer content than it had at the beginning, a content upon a higher plane, but SURVEY OF RESULTS 321 with the general movement, conceived as infinite, this is not the case. It is this alogical notion of infinity that gives us the only clue out of the labyrinth of the whence and the whither. If there be one thing that we must learn to give up, it is the notion of finality. Yet eternal process can never be formulated in ^^^^^ thought. It can be dimly appre- wo.d^ ten- bended in feeling, that is all. The Jential notion of direction, of tendency, must ' take the place of that of complete actualisa lon^ Full realisation is not for us, even as ideal, in . Cosmological theories of world-p-ess oj^^^^^^^^^^ be-e regarded the universe ab er se, 22 meaning of, 50, 70 the potential element of a thing, 73 implies infinity, 80 Being and appearance, the antithesis of, 70, 293 . , r Berkeley, the famous formula of, 4 3«3 < 324 INDEX INDEX 325 Bradley, Professor, his view of in- finity, 101 bis view of memory, no his rejection of the pallogistic theory of thought relations in vacuo, 112 his failure to recognise the philo- sophic value of the potential, 146 special philosophical sense in which he uses the term "reality," his "ego." "self," and "will," 261 his use of the terms ' ' adjective " and "adjectival," 264 the absolute of, 264 his views of time and space, 275 Brahminism, the goal of, 216 Buchner, the position of, 284 Buddhism, the goal of, 216 Categories of Hegel, 5 Categorisation, 10 Category, the most exhaustive, 12 Causation, the true inwardness of, 37 its principle, 92 its category, 137, 283 et seq. Cause and effect , the salient category of, 30s Cell, the, 127 Chance, the element of infinity in, 80 how definable, 81 a positive principle in a series of events, 92 Chance and law, antithesis between, 78, 29s equally positive elements of, 91 Character, in itself, 173 the measure of "goodness" in. 173 the moulding of, 185 the categorised side of, 186 Collective suggestion, the power of, 134 Common-sense, 12, 16 consciousness, 106 the truth of, 163 Concept-form, always universal , 22 the true distinguished from a false general concept, 23 the hypostatisation of, 26 Concreteness, 48 Concrete consciousness, the adjunct of will, 206 experiences, 8 personality, 42 world, the leading antitheses in, 6z Concrete events, irresolvable chance elements in, 88 Condillac, the materialism of, 4 Conduct, the pallogistic theory of, 189 Conscience, decisions of, 281 Conscious experience, 40, 59, 97, 274 existence independent of, 288 ultimate nature of, 289 Conscious synthesis, the primordial, immediacy, 27 process, the continuity of, X04, 300 reality, 143 Consciousness, Kant's, 5 self-consistency of, 7 the problem of, 10-38 as opposed to unconsciousness, 13 how the term is employed in philosophic writing, 15, 16 the potentiality of, 24 the matter and form of, 36 synthetic movement of, 36 the realisation of, 41 ultimate elements of, 59 the now or actual moment, 68, 69 individual, 108, 116, 122 perse, 120 • the ultimate subject of, 125 the progressive unfolding of. 126 the possibility of, 145 the self-consistency of, 161, 271 aim of, 174 common psychological ground in the idealistic departments of, 203 ordinary empirical, 204 the ultimate principle of, 261 the empirical " centre " of, 26a the subject of, 262, 266 and duration , 274 Consciousness-in -general, the prim- ordial synthesis of, 290 Dialectical method, the dangers of. 38 D'Holbach, systematic materialism of, 4 Duration and consciousness, 274 Ego, the, 26 empirical, 28 pure, 28. 29. S3 personal, 35 I i Ego, attempts to eliminate it from philosophy, 51 of Fichte, 57 Professor Bradley's contention as to, 290 er5o5, Aristotle's, 96 Eighteenth century materialism, 3 "Elements of Metaphysics," Pro- fessor A. E. Taylor^s, 100 Emotional satisfaction, 175 Empirical centre of consciousness, the. 262 ego, the, 28 philosophers, the school of. 297 (noU) Empiricism, historical sketch of, 2 postulates of, 2, 296 pure philosophic. 3 negative result of, 6 Empiricist view of the external world, Empiricists of the Associational school, 20 End, an absolute, 212 Erdmann, 26 {note) Esprit de corps, 135 " Eternal glance," an, 79 Ethical consciousness, 169, 307 the aim of, 174 antithesis of, 182 judgment, 199, 317. 3^8 {note) Ethics, the true significance of, 130, 131 the goal of, 317 Evil and good, the antithesis of, 236, 241. 311 Evil, transitory, 237 the potentiality of, 238, 250 concrete, 242 the extinction of, 243, 244 concrete realisation of, 244, 312 the element or principle of, 245 as concrete or in the abstract, 280 the perpetual passing away of, 320 Evolution, the true inwardness of, 37 Evolutionary types. 127 Existence, meaning of. 39. 293 synonymous with reality, 71 ceaseless movement of. 87 Experience, 16 ultimate factors of, 30 conscious, 40 the alogical element in, 43, 50 Hegel's rejection of its material side, 49 Experience, antithesis between the aloglical and logical elements in, 60 External universe, the, 33, 106 Extra-consciousness, 72, 294 Fechner, his theory of physical parallelism, 284 Feeling, how related to the subject of consciousness, 30 the material of thought, 142 impossibility to interpret it in terms of thought, 147 the ultimate arbiter of action, 189 et seq. the nationalisation of, 192 the driving force in, 314 " Feltness," the element of, 21, 24 a modification of '* I," 36 what is presupposed by, 121 Fichte, 5 the "Anstoss" of, 25, 30 his "ego," 57 Final goal of all things, the, 206-253 Finality, impossibility of the notion of, 268, 321 Form, referable to the logical, 144 presupposes matter to be in- formed, 147 Form and matter, the antithesis of, 143 Freedom and necessity, the antithesis of, 182, 196 French school, the, materialism of, 4. 284 Future, the, as time and mode, 69 German classical philosophy, the great achievement of, 39 God, a gratuitous hypothesis, 125 Good, in the empirical and relative sense 2 "^8 its absolute triumph over evil, 246, 320 Good and evil, the antithesis of, 236, 311 as measured by pleasure and pain, 241 concrete, 242 Green, Thomas Hill, 25, 44 pallogistic Hegelianism of, 267 HAckel, his postulate as to the ultimate source of teain changes, ^ postulates a rudimentary psychic side to molecules and atoms, 128 Haldane, R. B. , 25 Happiness, 190 7 « » <■ -« 326 INDEX INDEX 327 Happiness, an essential element in the telos of all activity, 195 an absolutely perfect, 210 in itself only an element in life's goal, 211, 247 a mere abstraction, 213 as member of a synthesis, 213 qualitative changes in, 225 terms in which it can be ex- pressed, 228 as an element in the telos of life. 310 Hegel, his categories, 5 his unique place in the history of thought, 6 his development of pallogism, 43. 46. 302 {note) his view of reality, 44 meaning of his "Begriff" or "Idee," 26, 47, 154 the apostle of thought-form, 57 leading categories of his logic, his distinction between proper and false infinite, 99 Hegelian dialectic, the, contradiction of, 162 system, the, formation of, 26 school, the modern English, 49 logic, the leading categories of, 64 trichotomy, 153 Hegelianism, orthodox, 25 Helvetius, the materialism of, 4 Herbart, his reaction against Hegel's pallogism, 44 Higher consciousness, the, 174-205 concerned with values rather than facts, 178 the three aspects of, 316 the suggestions given to us by, 322 Historical religions, the ethical theory of, 248, 249 Hobbes, the empiricism of, 4 Human culture, problem of, 178 branches of, 178 the main task of, 308 "Human PersonaUty and its Sur- vival of Bodily Death," 114 Human progress, 232, 242 Human society, 128 Humanism, 246 Hume, his view of the soul or mind, 4 the validity of his impressions, 5 his " impressions " and " ideas," 297 Hypnotism, results obtained by in- vestigators of, 301 " I," the word, as used in common language, 109 the nearest approach to Aris- totelian " pure matter," 145 Ideal, popular use of the word, 41 Ideals, our, the nature of, 223 of various religious systems, 215 Idealism, the main position of, 7 modern, 33, 39-57 the argument for, 120 modern, principle at the basis of, 288 so-called refutations of, 288 (note) Ideas, 33 " Idee," Hegel's theory of, 26, 47 as the highest form of the logical, 45 Illogicality, 162 Illusory appearance, 75 Impulse, 194 blind, 196 Individual, the significance of in con- nection with the final goal, 217, 218, 228, 229 the self-centered, 255 meaning of the word, 255 Individual consciousness, 104-142, 315 defined, 108 not immortal, 115 as deduced by philosophy, 118 distinction between it and the universal synthesis of conscious- ness, 122 the meaning oi per se, 139 — — as representing a definite stage in the order of physical evolution, 228 Individual interest, its identification with social interest, 220 personality, the telos of, 130 will, the doubleness of, 196 Individuality, 255 Individuation, the principle of, 31 Infinite, the, assumption of, 99 essential nature of, 99 proper and false, 99 popular notion of, loi an attribute of the alogical aspect of experience, 102 Infinite and finite, the antithesis of, 76, 294 Infinity, what is implied by, 79 a complete knowledge of impos- sible, 93 a. parte ante and 2l parte post, 94 Influxus psychicus, 283, 285 Instinct and reason, 61 f 11. ^s^^ '^.-R,', — *>« «.^ Intellectual ism, 168 Intellectual progress, the enemy to, 178 , Introspective religions, individual personality, the ideal of, 215 J AUR^S, his " moi premier eteternel," 136 his view of time and space, 275 Kant, his "consciousness," 5 his "object of the internal sense," 32 his ' • original unity of appercep- tion," 35 , . ^ his view of "time and space, f ^S. 67 ^ ,. W his view of reality, 148 ' one of the first to indicate the true nature of the antinomy of freedom and necessity, 196 his theory of the doubleness of the individual will, 196 his sensus communis, 203 Knowing, the eternal possibility of, 49 Knowledge, the ultimate subject of, 24, 28 the potentiality of, 122 the world of, 209 La Mettrie, systematic materialism o^ 4 . , Language, the expression of, 23, 132 dependence of the perfect emergence of the self-conscious personality on, 133 social in its inception and aim, 133 Law, the essence of a true, 90 Law and chance, equally positive elements of, 91 antithesis between, 78, 295 Lewes, H. G., 2%% [note) Life, apart from living matter, 156 the goal of, 207, 308, 319 insolubility of the problem, 208 new conception of, 217 not attainable by personal will, 217 viewed as synthesis, 221 not attainable by the individual, qua individual , 248 happiness as an element in, 310 Locke, his views of matter, 3 his empiricism, 4 Logical, the, and alogical, 23 the forms of, 63 the function of, 87 the sphere secondary 144. Logical, the limit of, 177 Logical-formal element, the, 155 Logical universal, 65 a mere form, 144 Manifold, the, reduction of to unity, II Material and formal, the, 302 Materialism of the eighteenth century, 3 — — and sensation, 4 the older, 284 Material world, the, 35 Mathematical science, of, 95 Matter, primary and qualities of, 3 in motion, 11 the potential factor, 65 referable to the alogical, 14s Memory, Professor Bradley's basis of, no Memory synthesis, the, 32 Mental concept, as distinguished from perception, 297 Mental world, the, 35 Mentation, modern science's view of, lis Metaphysic, no opposition between its conclusions and those of science, 17 an inquiry into the truest signi- ficance of reality, 18 the central truth established by, the generalisations of, 180 the problem of, 254-286 Metaphysics, the test of, 201 Modern idealism, 33, 39-57 the standpoint of, 47 materialists, 128 Molecule, the, 127 Moleshott, the position of, 284 Monism, 260 Moore, G. E., his "Refutation of Idealism," 288 {note) Moral actions, elements in, 186, 187 problem, the, 281, 282 Music, transcendence of the particular in, 180 Myers, Mr., his view of the soul, 114 "Myself," 32 Mysticism, historical ideals of, 215 Neo-Schopenhauerianism, 206 Nineteenth century agnosticism, 3 Nouj TroiTjriKis, Aristotle's, 26, 154 L Numerical infinity, 99 ' 4- 328 INDEX Object, the, basis of its reality, metaphorically deducible from the subject, 155 the raison d'iire of, 156 Object-world, the, 29, 54 Objective reference, 25 thought-relations, 33 Objectivity, salient categories of, 31 Optimism, 320 " Organic irritabihty," 132 Pain, 240 Pallogism, 26 traceable in Aristotle, Plato, to establish its and Spinoza, 43 — its capacity position, 88 — its position with regard to con- sciousness, 123 — the tendency of, 146 {note) — its attitude towards reahty, 153 the theory of, 295 Pallogistic juggle, the, 50 Particular, the, the mystery of, 254 the character of, 291 Particular and universal, the anti- thesis between, 61, 179 Particularity, the modes of, 63, 67 the potential factor of matter, 65 ' Plato's idea of, 66 Past, the, as time-mode, 68 "Pathway of Reality," Haldane's, "S Perception, as distinguished from mental concepts, 297 Perception and reflection, 20 Perceptibility, 145 {note) Personal ego, the, 35 identity, iii, 112 consciousness, 216 interest, 249 Personality, 139, 140 use of the word, 301 Pessimism, 224, 320 fallacies of, 225-233 Phenomena, the dual aspect of, 283 Philosophic consciousness, the aim of, 174 Philosophic judgment, 316 Philosophic reflection, 202 theism, 40, 275 truth, the canon of, 198 Philosophical analysis, results of, 7 problem, the, crux of, 16 terminology, the aim of, 177 Philosophy, as ultima ratio, 18 how to be regarded, 13 Philosophy, what it does, 34 aim and task of, 36, 37, 58, 166, 172, 175. 178, 205, 317 definition of, 176 logical generalisation of, 181 Philosophy and metaphysic, function of, 36 Philosophy and poetry, analogy between, 177 Physical science, limitations of, 12 Physical substance, 293 Physico-psychical life, the final goal of, 126 Physiological psychology, 108 Plato, pallogism traceable in, 43 his adumbration of Kant's view of time and space, 65 his idea of particularity, 66 his universalia ante rem, 155 his intellectualism, 161 Pleasure, in the last resort, 190 the distinction of quahty in, V 227 viewed abstractedly, 238, 239 Pluralism, 259 Popular scientific criticism, fallacies of, 54 Potential, referable to the alog^cal, 144 the true philosophic value of, 146 Potential and actual, the terms, 96 ^Pragmatism, 206, 246 Praise and blame, the antithesis of, 185 basis and test of, 188 Primitive man, his views of con- sciousness, 117 the ideal of, 215, 248 Primitive society, the basis of, 135 Probabilities, the theory of, 88, 90 irpuTT} y\i}, Aristotle's, 96, 144 •*■ Pseudo-concepts, 176 Psychology, the alogical and logical in, 141 \he feeling of, 141 Psycho-physical parallelism, 283 "Pure being," 22 Purpose, the origin of, 192 meaning of, 209 the world of, 209 Rationality, subordinate to feeling, 189, 190 Real, popular use of the word, 41 Reality, synonymous with conscious experience, 7, 19, 119 in its ultimate expression, 8 as external object, 19 I INDEX 29 Reality, the ordinary man's difficulty in understanding its meaning, 34 ultimate nature of, 36 what it must mean, 39, 169, 170 Hegel's view of, 44 Hegel's basis of, 45 when analysed, 48 alogical elements of, 48, 166, 305 constitution of, 70 of an object, 74 as system, 75 law and chance in, 91 irreducible chance element in, ultimate problem of, 115 — in the popular sense, 148, 149 — as opposed to abstraction, 148 {note) in a philosophical sense, 150, 98 151 degrees in, 151 — pallogistic attitude towards, 153 — analysed by Hegelian tricho- tomy, 157 — concrete, 158 — transformation of into the terms of its own reflective consciousness, 17s — resolution of into a system of postulates, 206 — neither mere end nor means, 207 — general problem of, 209 — ultimate goal of, 247 — where found, 250 — impossibility of gaining a com- plete knowledge of its individual aspect, 255, 256 in a sense individual, 255 higher meaning of, 272 three chief senses in which it is used, 304 various values of, 307 antithesis of good and evil in, 312 Reality and truth, I43-I73 distinction between, 316 Real world, the, what is meant by, 35 Reason, impotence of the categories to deal with the purely alogical, 137 the handmaid of feeling, 157 the means to the end, 191 as opposed to feeling, 193. 194 Reason and impulse, 189 Reason and will, 141 Reflective consciousness, the opera- tion of, 50, 169 Reflective thought, relation of to feeling, 147 the alogical in, 305 "Refutation of Idealism," G. E. Moore's, 288 {note) Religious consciousness, introspective form of, 130, 308 {note) Royce, Professor, his "The World and the Individual," 99 his " self- representative system," 100, 269, 29s fundamental defect in his reason- ing, 100 SCHELLING, his infinite impulse towards an end , 49 his "ego," 57 Scholastic nominalists, 20 Schopenhauer, his counterblast to Hegel's pallogism, 44 his infinite impulse towards an end, 49 justified in terming the pure subject " will," 53 his "ego," 57 senses in which he uses the word "will," 195 . ,. one of the first to indicate the true nature of the antimony between freedom and necessity, 196 his deduction of art from meta- physical will, 204 Science, the materialistic standpoint of, 17 Scientific outlook on the world, the, 181 Scientific thought, the aim of, 205 Self, the higher ideal, 132 Self-conscious personality, conditions of, 136 Self-identity, per se, 139, 301 Self-interest and social interest, 188 Self-object, the, 28 Self-reference, the " I " of, 30 Self-sacrifice, in religious systems, 219 as an end in itself, 230 Self-satisfaction, . as a goal, 211, 212 Sensation and materialism, 4 primary antithesis of to thought, 61 qualities of, 263, 313 driving force in, 314 Sense, the matter of, 6a 330 INDEX Sense-manifold, 62 Sense quality, the alogical element of. SI Sense-particular, 65 of the Empiricists, 299 Sense-residuum, an abstraction of thought element, 21 Sensible quality, its debt to language, 133 Social development, stages of, 248 Social-human personality, 129 its process of realisation, 131 Solipsism, the position of, 15 Soul, the, animistic notion of, 113 Mr. Myers' view of, 114 Space and time, problems of, 103 Spencer, Herbert, his formula of the " inconceivability of the opposite," 7 a cardinal position of his system, 128 his view of the universe, 321 Spinoza, pallogism traceable in, 43 his unica substantia, 154 his intellectualism, 168 his ideal man, 189 'Stoics, the, 189 Subject, the, 155 without object, 28 created by " Idee," 45 ■ — as ultimate principle of con- sciousness, 261 Subject and object, 34, 59 Subjectivity, the principle of, 71, 293 Summum donum, the, 212 elements of, 214 happiness as a factor in, 247 impossibility of envisaging, 251 the complete attainment of, 320 Supreme Being of ordinary theology, the, loi Taste, the canon of, 197 Taylor, Professor A. E., his "Ele- ments of Metaphysics," 100 Theism, the question of, 208 as popularly understood, 276 Theist, the distinction between his point of view and that of the atheist, 278 Thelemist, the, fallacy of, 207 ••Things," 33 ••Things-in-themselves," the philo- sophical theory of, 159 Thinking, a negation of infinity, 93 Thought, relations struck out by, 22 per se, 23 apperceptive activity of, 27, 76, 183 Thought, what it is, 36 the postulate of, 48, 121 the material of, 142 Thought and being, the gulf between, and thing, opposition between, 18 Thought-form, alogical factors supposed by, 42 Hegel, the apostle of, 57 a salient point of, 175 Thought-relation, presupposes tive terms, 147 in vacuo, 112 pre- rela- Time, modes of, 67 ullimateness of, 274 Time and space, 65 " Transcendental Analytic," Kantian categories of, 64 Transcendental sociology, 130 Truth and reality, 77, 158 Truth, abstract, 158 various senses of, 160, 163 ultimate test of, 161, 171, the, 271, 287 gradations of, 162, 171 absolute and relative, 163, 167 special, 163 scientific sense of, 164 essence of, 165 of philosophy, 166, 167 Unconscious, the, 13, 294 " Unconscious perception," 145 {note) Unconsciousness, 72 Unica Substantia, Spinoza's, X54 Unity, self-realising, 283 Unity of apperception, Kant's original, 35 Universal, the, a formal unity, 63 its inability to penetrate the particular, 177 character of, 292 as class-name, 306 •' Universal individual," the, 119 Universe, the, existence of as con- scious exp)erience, 47 Universal and particular, the, 22 Universalia ante rem, the Platonic, Ultimate and proximate ends, 193 Ultimate subject, the, 35, 265 VoGT, the position of, 284 Ward, Professor James, 10, 62 his destructive criticism of the doctrine of psycho-physical paral- lelism, 285 INDEX 31 Wells, H, G., on the self-centred uniqueness of the individual, 255 Will, 54, 157 spontaneity in the act of. 185 senses in which used by Scho- penhauer and in popular discourse, 195 in general, 196 ultimate and subordinate ends of, 197 Will, as element in every conscious reality, 206 driving force in, 314 Will and reason, 141 "World," the, a system of possible experiences, 15 as numerical infinity, 31 scientific outlook on, 181 "World and the Individual, The," Professor Royce's, 99 Printed by Bai.i.antyne, Hanson &' Co. 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