An outline of the idealistic construction of experience

AN OUTLINE

OF THE

IDEALISTIC CONSTRUCTION
OF EXPERIENCE

AN OUTLINE

OF THE

IDEALISTIC CONSTRUCTION
OF EXPERIENCE

BY

J. B. BAILLIE

M.A. , D.PHIL.

REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN
AUTHOR OF " HEGEL'S LOGIC "

ILoniron
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
I9O6

All rights reserved

PREFACE

AN idealistic theory of experience generally pre-
sents a somewhat perplexing appearance. It
seems either to go too far, and to make ex-
perience intelligible by merely resolving it into
ideal elements ; or not far enough, and to leave
experience, of which it professes to give the
principle, outside the explanation altogether. The
"explanation" in the first case is little better than
a truism : it means that experience is intelligible if
it is resolved into ideal, i.e. into intelligible elements.
In the second case the "explanation" is a paradox,
since we are unable to read our experience by the
light of the "explanation." Both start from the
duality of subject and object, which is certainly
essential to experience. But the first destroys the
distinction in the process of showing the unity
between the two ; the second destroys the unity of
experience in the attempt to do justice to the
distinction on which it rests. The result is that
neither common sense nor the ordinary scientific
mind is convinced by idealism. The idealistic
argument may seem unassailable, and its ingenuity

VI

PREFACE

may be beyond dispute, but it fails to give the
mental security which everyday thought seems to
possess. Idealism is left to take its own course ;
and common reflection remains within its own
distinctions unaffected by the idealistic analysis.
The concession, granted by idealism, that the truths
of common sense or science are " valid so far as
they go, but are one-sided in character," is accepted
quite readily by both attitudes of mind, because
they only pay attention to the first half of the
statement and ignore the qualification implied in
the second. For a qualification which is not shown
to affect their procedure vitally is rightly considered
irrelevant.

This incongruity between the idealistic argument
and the course of experience is seen in the char-
acter of the argument itself as well as in its results.
The procedure is arbitrary in form and disconnected
in its content. Sometimes, as, for example, in Green's
theory, purely psychological distinctions determine
how the argument is to proceed and what it is to
deal with. No logically necessary unity connects
the analysis of " the spiritual principle in man as
intelligence" with that in "man as moral." Ele-
ments are somehow "given " to man as spirit, which
he manipulates for one purpose " intellectually," for
another "morally." Where they come from, or
what value each has for the totality of man's
spiritual life, is not explained, nor even considered.
Somehow the elements are simply there to begin

PREFACE

Vll

with ; and it is supposed to be sufficient if we can
show that man qua spirit is different from man as
animal. But it seems evident that all distinctions,
even that between man's lower nature and man's
"spiritual principle," must fall within and ^phases
of man's total experience ; and all phases must be
shown to have a necessary place in the activity of
his life. It is not enough to draw the distinction
between man and natural existence ; still less is it
justifiable to regard an explanation of the distinction
between the two aspects as equivalent to a synthesis
of his entire experience.

In order to avoid such difficulties in the idealistic
position we ought to show how experience is from
one end to the other a realisation of a spiritual
principle. We must at once do justice to the
very form and content of experience on the one
hand, and the nature of spirit on the other. We
should be able to feel that, in the result, we
are in touch with actual experience, and also that
we are dealing with a single principle controlling
all its movements. We cannot dismiss any phase
of experience either as illusory or as merely "one-
sided " ; we have to give each a necessary place in
the whole in order to show wherein that "one-
sidedness " lies. We cannot resolve one " aspect "
into another, for that still leaves us without any
explanation of what its distinctive nature involves.
It may be quite true, e.g., that Perception involves
a "universal " principle. But we want to know how

Vlll

PREFACE

that principle works in concrete experience so as to
give us what normally we call Perception. In actual
experience Perception is just Perception, neither
more nor less ; if we " resolve it " into something
" higher " we still must state what it is in itself.
To do anything else is not to explain it, but to
explain it away. To describe it as "undeveloped
reflection " does not show what kind of experience
it gives us as it stands, but what it is from the point
of view of reflection, i.e. another kind of experience.
The same holds good when we consider Science or
Morality, or any other form of experience. " One-
sided " each may be. But that is only from the
point of view of the whole. Yet experience is not
simply the whole ; it is a whole through its mutually
independent parts. Experience lives and moves
through different forms each with a distinctive
nature of its own. The essential factors are the
same all through : a subject in relation to, and
united with, an object. The distinction between
these factors creates the movement of experience,
the life of which consists in the gradual assimilation
of these fundamental elements to one another.

The relation is not sustained everywhere in
the same way ; the end of experience as a living
process is not realised to the same extent in
each special form of experience. A complete
idealistic explanation of experience ought there-
fore to show (i) that each phase of experience
embodies in a specific way the one spiritual prin-

PREFACE ix

ciple animating all ; (2) that each is distinct from
every other simply by the way it embodies that
principle ; (3) that each is connected with the
others and so with the whole in virtue of its realis-
ing that principle with a certain degree of com-
pleteness ; (4) that the whole of experience is a
necessary evolution of the one principle of experi-
ence through various forms, logically connected as a
series of stages manifesting a single principle from
beginning to end. Such an explanation must have
the character of developmental construction.

The attempt is made in the following chapters to
expound the idealistic argument from this point of
view. It has long seemed to the author to be much
the most fruitful line that argument can take ; and
no other seems so completely to avoid the difficul-
ties and ambiguities of the views above referred
to. It is hoped that this attempt at a constructive
exposition of the idealistic principle will, in spite of
the many imperfections of which the author is
very well aware, prove of some value to students
of philosophy, and of some assistance to those who
have felt with Green that the work of the great
idealists must " all be done over again."

The author does not profess to put forward a
view that is altogether new. For the form of this
outline of idealism, more particularly in the case of
the earlier stages in the argument, he is indebted
to the great masterpiece of idealistic reflection
in modern philosophy, Hegel's Phenomenology of

x PREFACE

Mind. More might perhaps have been made of
the analysis of " Sense-experience," " Perception,"
and " Understanding." The point of view from
which they are here treated is capable of throwing
much valuable light on the difficult and intensely
interesting questions suggested by these forms of
experience. The limits of an "outline," however,
could hardly have justified discussion in greater
detail.

The author has sought to bring out the force of
the position here taken up by connecting and con-
trasting it with that of Kant, with which in many
ways it has considerable historical affinities. He
has found this method throughout both useful and
instructive, and believes it may prove so to the
student.

He has also tried as far as possible to bring the
argument to bear on the solution of problems which
are of pressing importance for philosophy at the
present time ; and is not without hope that some
help has been given towards clearing up some of
the dark places of experience.

The importance of the point of view here
adopted has been frequently recognised in recent
reflection. The author would refer in particular to
the work of such different thinkers as Adamson, in
his lectures on "Theory of Knowledge" (in vol. i.
part v. of his Lectures] ; Professor Ward, in his
Naturalism and Agnosticism ; and Professor Laurie,
in the original and illuminating argument developed

PREFACE

XI

in his Synthetica. In each of these we find the
same position insisted upon which is here traced in
outline that subject and object constitute the life
of experience and develop pari passu from the
very first, and in developing give rise to all the
wealth of human experience in its various forms.

It should be mentioned that Chapters 1 1. -VI.
contain the substance of the Shaw Fellowship
Lectures delivered at Edinburgh University during
the winter session 1904-5.

J. B. BAILLIE.

KING'S COLLEGE, ABERDEEN,
August 1906.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Recent idealism starts from Kant The different interpretations of his position
Twofold character of Kant's idealism The emphasis on universal ex-
perience Its result The emphasis on the individual subject Its result
Necessity for further reconciliation " Validity " and " fact " Lotze
The dualism within individual experience The problem thence arising
The solution found in Purposiveness in general Statement of this solution
Pragmatism or Humanism Its idealistic elements Its defects (l)
It confines the unity of experience to the historical or psychological
individual The unity of experience is wider than any and all individual
history or than any collection of individuals and is not a series (2) It
makes the unity arbitrary It is necessary and objective in its control and
the objectivity is not simply that of society The unity is that of an
absolute Single experience Philosophy and Religion, being at the point of
view of this Whole as such, stand for objectivity of all other experience
We must start, in interpreting objectivity and necessity of knowledge,
from this Absolute Individuality as found and expressed in Philosophy and
Religion All restricted forms of experience inadequate, and cannot serve
as a basis for constructing experience The value of this position
Experience both universal and individual Reflective Knowledge a form
of individuation The genetic construction of experience Matter and
form in experience Method of Philosophy self-explaining The position
of Idealism ...... Pages 1-43

CHAPTER II

DUALISM AND THE NEW PROBLEM

The formulation of the problem of Knowledge The factors in knowing (i)
active relation of subject and object, (2) with truth as end The problem
of Knowledge has to consider the relation between these two, between
actual and ideal.

xiii

xiv CONTENTS

Kant's view of the problem His dualistic assumption Limit to Knowledge
determined by the subject Faith Its function Its object Problems of
intellect become postulates of Faith The limit to Knowledge without
significance The conception of it is determined by Kant's Dualism
Significance of " spontaneity " of subject Teleological Judgment Kant's
argument really refutes Dualism Dualism in Locke Its effect on his
"analysis" of the content of the subject's knowledge in Book II. of the
Essay and on the interpretation of existence in Book IV. The issue in
both essentially the same Locke and Kant Berkeley and Hegel.

We must give up Dualism This involves change in conception of Truth and
of the relation of "reality" to "thought" and of " limitation of know-
ledge " Common ways of conceiving the problem of Knowledge Logic
as abstract and as concrete The new problem : it deals with all forms of
Knowledge Knowledge is consciousness of object; and is therefore
coextensive with Experience The psychological distinction of knowing
and willing not an objection to this The problem is to explain the
relation of the ideal in all Knowledge to each and every form of Knowledge
The ideal is the source of necessity in Knowledge . . Pages 44-79

CHAPTER III

TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE

The ideal of Knowledge Subject and object a complete unity through
diversity The ideal is subject completely conscious of self This is
implicit in all forms of experience, as explicit it is the ideal for every
form It contains simply and at once all the substance of experience in its
different forms of expression In it mind answers to complete mind The
ideal is the source and end of all experience Experience is rooted in the
distinction of subject and object Its end is to reinstate the complete unity
out of which it arose and which conditions its "course" in finite
consciousness.

Contrast of this with Kant's view For Kant Knowledge is essentially a
series of relations of individual mind to isolated objects But the mind is
always a continuous whole, and the objective world a continuity His
view of necessity is purely formal, and is determined by the formal
character of the pure ego on the one hand and the equally formal notion of
a "possible experience" on the other and is the same in every case in
which it is found Necessity really due to a relation between the ideal
immanent in all Knowledge and actual Knowledge Necessity in experience
does not mean always the same thing : it varies with the form of
experience, and admits of degrees Illustration from perceptual fact and
conceptual principle Truth is held by Kant to be an agreement between
thought and its object It is limited to thinking experience or "science"
But this overlooks the fact that in all forms of experience there is a
relation of subject and object and therefore truth The relation is distinct
in each case, and the object and the subject are different in each case

CONTENTS xv

The " agreement " conception of truth is not wide enough to embrace
all kinds of truth There is truth, e.g., of Moral Experience Each
form has its own truth and the complete truth is the whole The ques-
tion as to the " possibility of truth " has strictly no meaning, for it can only
be answered by an appeal to another form of truth This seen in the
case of Kant's attempt to answer the question Experience is always
concrete Kant's use of the term "possible experience" It is the
correlation of the formal ego But experience, being concrete, can never
as a whole be " possible" Kant's inconsistency in using the term.
"Selected" experience Experience must be taken as a whole This can be
done by taking as the centre of all experience a typical individual mind
Appeal to experience ; its meaning Characteristics of experience Sub-
ject and object Their distinction and nature Knowledge and experience
Summary The nature of the interpretation . Pages 80-113

CHAPTER IV

PLAN AND STAGES OF THE ARGUMENT

Experience as " self - explaining "; truth and error of this Necessity in
experience: what Systematic connexion by a central principle The
method of procedure Its two aspects, universal experience and individual
finite centre of experience Continuity of all experience It is the logical
connexion of historically discrete experiences of an individual mind The
problem is the same at each stage We begin with the assumption of an
ideal Presuppositions in philosophy Other ways of explaining experience
"Proof" of a philosophical interpretation The end of all experience is
the ideal The ideal is complete experience This is concrete, and a form
of experience Misunderstandings All forms at once positive and
negative The three chief aspects or levels of experience . 114-135

CHAPTER V

THE INTERPRETATION OF SENSE-EXPERIENCE :
AND OF PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE

Sense is simplest form of relation of subject and object Object here is not-
self in general This is source of "externality" of objects Ways in
which this appears at the higher levels of experience "Externality of
object "in philosophical discussion Problem of " External Perception"
starts from this Cannot be the only problem of Philosophy ; it ignores
other phases of experience Forms of opposition of subject and object :
(i) Sensation; (2) Perception; (3) the distinction of a world of appear-
ance from a world of supersensible reality These express opposition

xvi CONTENTS

with varying degrees of fixity and absoluteness ; but are ways of gradually
transcending it altogether.

Sense-experience breaks up into discrete "this," "that," "now," "then"-
But all such terms imply universality The universal is the continuum of
the process of change making up sense-life.

Perceptual experience deals expressly with universals of sense " Seeing" and
"perceiving" The universal is on one side the "thing" (percept) with its
qualities, on the other the act of percipience with its constituent sense-
functions : seeing, touching, etc. Sometimes one side is exclusively
emphasised, sometimes another Perception does not deal with particulars
and does not imply dualism The object in Perception is a " thing "-
For Perception a thing is an "association" of qualities Its unity excludes
and includes When we keep to the sphere of Perception proper there is
no thing-in-itself Perception admits nothing but sense-qualities The
subject in Perception is realised in the process of the discrete functions of
sense (seeing, hearing, etc.) which are "associated" within its life This
process is at once a process of the subject and the object It is the life of
the experience as a unity of the different factors subject and object
Hence percept and percipient necessarily proceed together and vary in
degree and nature the one with the other The opposition of subject and
object in Perception is relative, and is due to the content of sense being
simply not-self ..... Pages 136-175

CHAPTER VI

UNDERSTANDING AND THE WORLD OF NOUMENA
AND PHENOMENA

The need of an advance on Perception The content of Perception contains
elements in unresolved opposition, both as regards the diverse qualities
and the unity of things It is "also arbitrary in its distinction of essential
from accidental aspects of things The step required is that of Under-
standing To take this step means that Knowledge is not to be defeated
The position of Dualism It creates an impassg for Knowledge Its result
The position of Common-sense Realism likewise unsatisfactory Under-
standing is on its subjective side a process of resolving diversity of things
as such into a unity of which they are parts or expressions The objective
side of this is Force, which is a unity in and through its manifestations
These are sides of the same experience The content of Perception falls
within Understanding Kant's view The heterogeneity of Perception and
Understanding These are in reality continuous, and differ in the degree
of realising the same end Process of Understanding (i) Laws Objec-
tive and Subjective Laws neither independent of subject nor dependent
on subject This is a level of experience Manipulation of Laws the be-
ginning of "Freedom of subject" Understanding the "truth" of Per-
ception (2) Phenomena and Noumena The distinction created by the

CONTENTS xvii

elements in Understanding But it is a distinction within experience, and
does not imply a "beyond" to experience Perception "taken up" into
Understanding (3) Elucidating or Explaining This is a relation of the
differences to the unity : it makes the one continuous with the other, the
differences being resolved into the unity of Law and vice versa Ex-
planation not a "function" of Understanding, but the life of Under-
standing The unity it establishes is a self-determined universal A
self-determined universal is a thought or conception This is therefore the
beginning of subject conscious of self in its object Self-consciousness
thus the goal of knowledge of "external objects," and the ground of all
such Knowledge ..... Pages 176-208

CHAPTER VII

SELF-CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE

In Understanding self is implicit in the process of Explanation Self not yet a
conscious object This made possible by the activity of unifying involved
in the process of Understanding To be conscious of the same unity gives
rise to consciousness of subject as the same, as one self Understanding
by overcoming all estrangement of object and subject lays the founda-
tion for this new form of experience, the consciousness of self as such
This passes through various stages towards complete realisation (i)
Desire This is level of consciousness of self in objects implicitly one with
self, but as such selfless Desire falls solely within self-experience Desire
for " things" : its meaning Desire different from Understanding Desire
as such is a determinate mode of experience Its process : Need :
Impulse: Satisfaction Desire implies no "beyond" in experience of
self Desire is only consciousness of self in selfless objects (2) Recog-
nition Here self as such is object for subject This the only way of
knowing self Self not found by Understanding or Perception It is
reflected consciousness of self in another self Its process Forms of
Recognition (a) When mere self recognises mere self Ego = Ego Self-
identity Its significance Abstract freedom (6) When self as particular,
"natural," recognises self as particular Ego distinct from Ego
Mere difference Its significance Contingency of self (c) When self as
mere self recognises itself in self as natural or particular Inequality of
self-recognition Master and Serf Significance in the development of
consciousness of self (3) Final form of consciousness of self Conscious-
ness of self as universal This facilitated by the process of (2, c) Self as
universal gives absolute or universal freedom of self Abstract forms of
this type of self- consciousness Stoicism : abstraction of self from
" nature " Scepticism : abstraction of self from other selves Self-
alienation : abstraction of self from self The further evolution of self-
consciousness Self must be concrete, not abstract . . 209-244

xviii CONTENTS

CHAPTER VIII

THE SPHERE OF REASON SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE

The unity of experience now established is explicit conscious identity of subject
and object This is henceforward the moving principle of all experience
It is concrete in character Difference from Kant His principle of self-
consciousness is formal This due to his dualism of Ego and " Things "
It is incapable of further development Hence the discontinuity between
his critical philosophy as a form of knowledge and the knowledge he
criticises Effect of this on his own theory That theory restricted 'to
mere form, and is external to concrete experience The connection
Philosophical Knowledge must fall within experience itself It is a concrete
expression of self-consciousness, and is shown to be so by the further
development of self - consciousness Self - consciousness contains the
principle of various phases of experience, e.g. Reason, Morality, Religion
First stage of this development is Reason Reason - Knowledge
Reason contains diverse movements because concrete It has a content
of its own " Conceptions," etc. Reason is a level of knowledge, an
experience This agrees with common thought In Reason object and
subject are distinctions within their conscious identity Content is the
same on both sides Identity of Reason : what Moments of the life of
Reason (i) Observation This not subjective even to the ordinary
scientific mind Differences of content in process of Observation due to its
development in experience Its content consists of Conceptions How
different conceptions come of consciousness Illustration from mechanism
and teleology " Reconciliation" of such Conceptions : what Categories
as universal pure unities of Reason Categories are Reason in detailed
expression (2) Conceptions develop into Laws of Reason Thus Obser-
vation passes into Judging and Demonstrative Connexion Difference
of content in Laws Consummation of development of Reason is attain-
ment of Ideal of Science Systematic coherence of life of Reason This
agrees with procedure of Science and with "Logic of Science" Limita-
tions of "Logic of Science" Difference between "Logic of Science"
and Theory of Experience Relation between Reason and preceding
process of Sensation, Perception, and Understanding Pages 245-274

CHAPTER IX

THE SPHERE OF FINITE SPIRIT MORAL EXPERIENCE

Result of Reason It establishes a self-determined universal experience It
makes possible self-conscious individuality Reason does not isolate
It implies a universal self-consciousness "My reason": what Indi-
viduality conscious of itself as universal and existing for itself is Spirit

CONTENTS xix

Its realisation is the Moral Order of Society Illustration from general
conception of "Freedom" "Man alone is capable of Morality": its
meaning Truth of the view that "man is moral because rational"
Spirit not Reason as such Spirit is mediate conscious identity of subject
and object, the identity for itself Reason is that identity in itself,
relation between self and others being implicit Hence process of Reason
not mediated through others, but through its own content That Moral
Life is the outcome of Reason agrees with Kant's position, but is
different from Kant's statements Reason not formal, but concrete
Morality not a formal expression of self -consciousness in general, but a
concrete realisation of Spirit Hence Morality not an individual reality, as
Kant held, but a reality through individuals, and is logically prior to the
individual realisation of it Hence Society not based on a "contract,"
for a " contract " as an ethical fact presupposes a Society Two aspects
of the Moral Order : (a) Universal self-consciousness, (3) specific individual
embodiment of it These imply one another, and while distinct are
inseparable (a) Universal self-consciousness appears as Social Law and
Custom It is the same for all alike It is realised in different forms of
Social Unity : Family, Civic Community, and State It is the source of
Rights, Institutions, Virtues (3) Individual realisation appears as
Responsibility, Duty, Law, Conscience These two aspects of the experi-
ence are treated and described differently in common life Conscience is
the final achievement of Moral Life, completest freedom of individuality
in and through Social Whole "Private" conscience Each aspect
carried out through "natural" conditions, for "nature" is here an
element in individuality In (a) the " natural," " physical " conditions,
Land, Climate, etc., are the material for the civilisation of a People
Substance of "nature" provides content of rights and stability for
Society In (b) the physical and psychical contents of individuality provide
the substance of duty and the content of "moral responsibility" The
assimilation of these two aspects is a process of conflict and reconciliation.
The attainment of the end establishes absolute self-consciousness, and leads the
way to Religion ..... Pages 275-308

. CHAPTER X

THE SPHERE OF ABSOLUTE SPIRIT RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

CONTEMPLATION

The result of the Moral Life establishes Spirit as supreme reality compre-
hending all the preceding content of experience as its moments But there
Spirit is realised by a process of spiritual individualities, a process due to
the distinction between individual and universal self-consciousness Spirit
must, however, be fully actual to itself as a whole, and as a unity contain-
ing all distinctions at once To be conscious of it in this way is to take
up the point of view of Absolute Spirit This is the principle of Religion

xx CONTENTS

It is thus different from Morality It is sui generis, and is both necessary
to the evolution of experience and universal It is a final form of
man's experience and a supreme expression of his rationality It is an
experience, but not specially anthropomorphic Religion deanthropo-
morphises man All experience anthropomorphic Religion does not
involve a process as does morality Its life complete always and at once
Forms of Religion are the result of phases of Absolute Spirit In each
Spirit is experienced in a different way, has a different mode of self-
manifestation (l) Absolute Spirit immediately manifested and imme-
diately experienced Nature gives the content of religious experience
The Religion of Nature Its method of expression Its cult (2) Absolute
Spirit contrasted with the immediate content of nature and withdrawn
into self Here self-conscious purpose is the primary content of Religion
Religion of the Moral Order of experience Its manner of expressing
itself is governed throughout by the idea of purpose This illustrated by
certain prominent features Its cult and ceremony (3) Absolute Spirit
actually present as such to spirit This implies no contrast and no
abstraction Spirit is wholly manifest to Spirit "Revealed" Religion,
or Religion of the Spirit Some characteristic elements of this form of
religious experience Faith, Hope, Love, Sacrifice These three phases
of Religion not absolutely separate Contemplation as a way of expressing
the relation of Spirit to Absolute Spirit . . Pages 309-344

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

IT can hardly be doubted that the Idealistic Inter- Modem

Idealism
and Kant.

pretation of Experience in recent philosophy has Ic

been determined and guided by the results of
Kant's analysis of knowledge. The criticism or
further development of Kant's position has, however,
by no means led to agreement amongst the expon-
ents of Idealism, either as regards their premises
or conclusions. We cannot but feel that this is not
merely due to the many-sided character of Kant's
theory, many-sided to the extent of inconsistency,
but also to the inheritance or reappearance of the
assumptions of Dualism from which he started. So
far has this disagreement gone that it seems almost
necessary for idealism to try to understand itself, to
see what it wants or aims at before it attempts to
carry out its principle. The difficulty of idealism in
any form has no doubt been increased by the growth
of a more intimate and a wider acquaintance with
reality than existed at Kant's time, more particularly
in regard to facts of history and biology. These
have tended to give still greater emphasis to just
the element that Kant tried to surmount the
empirical or temporal character of all human

B

2 INTRODUCTION CH.

experience. The increased weight given to the
methods and results arrived at in these departments
of experience has gradually shifted the focus of
idealism altogether, until in more recent times it
has assumed a form not very far removed from
what used to be called Subjective Idealism.
Kant's The positive outcome of Kant's analysis may be

result. said to have been the justification of the actuality
of a Universal Experience, and the Anthropocentric
^Conception of Knowledge. Now it is the opposition
and the connexion between these two that have
determined the direction of idealistic reflection.
Both are essential to his view ; both must be taken
account of by any interpretation that derives its
principle from him. The one lays stress on the
fact of necessity and universality in experience, the
other on the fact that experience is only for a human
subject.

Develop- In the course of further reflection one or other
theVst in f these two has tended to become primarily em-
two forms, phasised, the other being derived from it. Thus
at the outset stress was laid on the former
the reality of universal experience. This first
took the form of elaborate systematic construc-
tion of the entire content of such experience-
universal experience as Metaphysical Knowledge.
Another but less elaborate development of the
same position lay in the tendency to emphasise the
purely scientific attitude in knowledge, with its
methods of hypothesis and verification, universal
experience as Scientific Knowledge. In the former
the human subject with its processes and apparent
limitations seemed to disappear in the process
of a Whole which contained it, and controlled or

i UNIVERSAL EXPERIENCE 3

corrected its limitations ; the anthropocentric element
in Kant's result, along with its complementary con-
ception of a thing-in-itself, was thereby dropped. In
the latter, the anthropocentric element was brought
in merely to justify the restriction of the range of
universal experience to the scientific mood, and so
to round off the limitation of its content to neces-
sary truth, on which it insisted, by an appeal to an
Unknown or Unknowable beyond human ken.

The two quite distinct developments of the idea Conflict
of universal experience could not long exist side by
side without some conflict arising and some recon-
ciliation being called for. And the demand was
on the whole forced primarily from the side of the
second form. For, while universal experience in the
form of science necessarily tends to the elimination
of the individual, because it claims to present truth
for all independent of any one (and in this respect
the relation of scientific truth to the individual mind
resembles what we find in universal experience taken
as metaphysical knowledge), there is no limit to
the kind of object-matter of actual experience which
it may take up. Science can discuss any object
that falls inside experience, and never doubts that
it can do so with full assurance of achieving universal
results. Its attention therefore, while to begin with
directed primarily to " natural phenomena," was soon
directed to the individual conscious subject itself
and its processes, which are likewise "phenomena."
It may have been driven to consider the subject for
some special reason, but the direction of attention
upon it was in the long run inevitable, both because,
in one aspect, the individual is a part of organic
" nature," and, in another aspect, its processes are

4 INTRODUCTION CH.

part of the historical sequence in time. The analysis
of the development and processes of the conscious
subject as such (Empirical Psychology in all its
forms) leads us to look on everything in experience,
of whatever kind, as having its source and place in
the life-history of the individual. But this primary
emphasis on the individual tended to throw the
whole responsibility for knowledge, in whatsoever
form, on to the subject of knowledge, and thus to
lead to a reinterpretation of the reality of universal
(scientific) experience from that point of view. The
other element in the Kantian result (the anthro-
pocentric conception of knowledge) now came to
be taken as primary and ultimate, and universal
experience as derivative the reverse of what
we found when emphasis was laid primarily on
universal experience. From this point of view
conceptions, which were the universals, and the
principles of necessity, in experience, are themselves
seen to have their origin and place in the history
of individual experience, and the insistence by
science on the "relativity of knowledge," which was
maintained before, is now made with stronger
emphasis than ever. It does justice, and more
than justice, to the anthropocentric element in
Kant's result.

The result But no sooner is this line of development pursued
emphasis to * ts logical issue than a startling result is seen.
on the T ne outcome of such a movement is plain. Exclusive

subjective . 1 11

process emphasis on the subject and its processes leads us

to lk u P on a ^ experience as subjective only ;
knowledge has its source and conditions determined
by the life-history of the individual mind in time.
The result is that universal experience in the

i INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE 5

Kantian sense disappears, or is dissipated, into a
series of processes in time with no "objective"
necessity, and no determinate universality in it.
But if this is so, where then are we to get for
science the universality and necessity on which Kant
insisted, and which are essential if science is to claim
to present "truth"? It is no answer to say that
this analysis merely affects the value of the scientific
interpretation of "nature" and the conceptions
there used. It affects equally the scientific value or
pretensions of the psychological analysis itself.
This, too, can have no value as science (which
it claims to be), if science in general with its
conceptions and universals is dissipated into the I
stream of events of mental history. In other words,
just as primary emphasis on universal experience
tended to eliminate the individual centre of know-
ledge (the individual subject), primary emphasis on
the processes and history of the individual subject
tends to do away with the very idea of universal
experience. Whereas when emphasis was laid
primarily on universal experience we seemed to be
placed in the position of having universal experience
indifferent to or even without the individual subject's
life, here we seem to have the individual subject
without any universal experience at all.

To preserve equally both elements on whicht The next
Kant laid stress now becomes the problem fo
idealism. It must at all costs save the reality of and

1' 1*

universal experience, and it must accept the scientific
facts of the life-history of the individual and its
changing and varying processes, since the statement
of such a history is itself the product of universal
experience (science). To do so, a distinction, hard

6 INTRODUCTION CH.

and fast, but, so far as it goes, satisfactory, is drawn
between the logical or cognitive "worth" and "value "
of a conception, and its " existence " as a " fact," with
historical connexions before and after its immediate
appearance. To the former is assigned all universal
experience ; to the latter all the life-history of the
individual subject. They belong to two distinct
spheres of experience. They run parallel and
" correspond," but have not even a asymptotic
relation to each other.

Lotze. It is at this stage that Lotze 1 has his place in the

history of idealism. He mediates the opposition
between the claims of science to be universal
experience in Kant's sense, with the claims of the
individual subject to be the source and origin of
all experience whatsoever, and does so by drawing
the distinction between "validity" and "origin"
just mentioned. For him, since universal experi-
ence has its rights per se as the sphere of thoughts
and conceptual activity, there is no limit to the
extent of its activity, and hence it is not restricted
to scientific activity but embraces and legitimises
even metaphysical knowledge as well. And there
is no danger of pursuing the analysis of the
individual too far ; for all such analysis contains is
"facts" of mental history, which in themselves are
something apart from the world of " values."
The But the distinction, while it allays conflict, is rather

of^hls Cr f the nature of an eirenikon than a synthesis. For
distinc- th e standing opposition between them is never re-
conciled, and leaves a cleft running through his
interpretation from beginning to end. On the one
hand, the "facts" that "exist" set a boundary to

1 And after him, Bradley.

i LOTZE 7

the sphere of conceptual or universal experience :
"reality is richer than thought," and the achieve-
ment of a complete synthesis is a mere " ideal " for
thought. On the other, while the basis of fact
starts thought, "suggests" it, "stimulates" it, yet,
in the long run, we never get beyond the range of
ideal activity, never reach the reality even of the
"external" world. "This varied world of ideas
within us (started by the external world) forms the
sole material directly given to us for reflection."
In this position, therefore, we find, superadded to the
Kantian dualism between mind and things without,
a dualism between "validity" and "origin," concep-
tion and existence, falling inside the individual
subject itself.

It was impossible that this result should stand as it requires
a final idealistic expression of experience. 1 Hence unity
the further development of idealism consists in an'
attempt to unite, in some form or other, and not
merely to distinguish, these two aspects to which:
Lotze seeks to do justice. Here again emphasis is
still laid on the individual subject and the processes
of his history. It is inside his experience that the
distinction insisted on by Lotze falls. The universal
experience is universal within his experience as a
whole, and the events of his history take place there
also. There is no need and no possibility of going
beyond him. But the distinction mentioned cannot
possibly be an absolute separation or cleft in his
experience. That is inconsistent with the unity of
individual experience, and with the process which
actually takes place in gaining universal experience.

1 I need here only refer to the masterly criticism of Lotze by Prof. Dewey
in his Logical Studies, without working out in detail the main points of
criticism he there emphasises.

8 INTRODUCTION CH.

It is inconsistent with the former, because a unity
which spells dualism or parallelism between ' ' validity "
and " history " is no unity even in name ; and
it is inconsistent with the latter, because universal
experience takes its start from actual events in the
life-history of the subject, varies with the life of the
subject, and is realised in and through such events
only. Events are not the less events because they
have conscious "validity"; and "validity" is not
the less so because it " happens " to be in conscious
experience. Universal experience is not something
per se apart from the process of history : it is in
that process, or rather that process is the way in
which it appears. Even, therefore, if we could and
do speak of universal experience, it is only universal
in the sense of common to individual minds sharing
the same historical conditions of growth. So, too,
when we find it by itself (as we may), this "common"
consciousness within which universal experience
falls, contains precisely the same antithesis within
itself which we find in the individual consciousness
as such. The same antithesis and the same problem
of reuniting the antithesis are presented whether we
take the individual conscious subject, or the conscious-
ness of a group, however large, of individual minds.
The new We have thus to show how these two distinct
problem. phases of truth and { ^ - w hat" and "that,"

"content" and "existence," "thought" and "reality"
can be elements in the life of the individual's
conscious experience. To do so necessarily in-
volves the abandonment of a universal experience
per se. Its reality "per se " is not to be found, and,
if found, would be needless, since all it contains can
be shown to fall within individual experience as

i PURPOSIVENESS 9

such, where it alone exists in any case and on any
view of what it means. We need not therefore regret
the disappearance of a universal experience per se,
for we do not require such an entity for actual experi-
ence at all. With this admission, therefore, we part
not merely with metaphysical knowledge per se,
which threatened the reality of the individual
subject, but with scientific knowledge per se, which
treated the processes of the individual subject as
irrelevant to, or at least as quite immaterial to, its
fixed and final " necessary truths " independent
of any individual mind whatsoever. There is
neither the one nor the other, if the very reality
of universal experience (the concepts, judgments,
etc., which make up its characteristic features)
falls within a process making up the life-history of
the individual's experience.

How then is the union and the distinction of the The unity
two elements to be made? By observing that the [^"ideT of
characteristic feature of self-conscious individual Purpose :
experience is the same in principle as that of all
living individual experience, and is merely a
particular form of it suited to and expressing the
special nature of human experience. That general
feature is Purposiveness. In man, purposiveness is
more developed than in other forms of conscious
animal experience, and more complicated. It con-
sists in activity directed by conscious pursuit of ends,
which are contrasted with what does not contain
them, and can therefore be determined by them.
Man, like other living individuals, has a variety of
ends to realise in order to maintain his plane
of self-preservation. One, but only one of these,
is to order the course and contents of his varied

io INTRODUCTION CH.

presentational or ideal life, put it into coherent
shape. This is only one form of the manifestation
of his purposiveness. There are others concerning
his emotional life, concerning his life amongst other
individuals of the same species, as a part of
"nature," and so on. In every case the result is
the same, the establishing, as a conscious fact, of
the sense of "unity in his individual experience."
What, in particular, subserves this, has achieved
its meaning for the individual subject, and has
significance accordingly, i.e. " significance " with
reference to the one supreme fact the unity spoken
of. Its value lies in that and that only. Moreover,
that is just what "value," "validity," "significance"
means.

it But again, as it is primarily the individual

terminates subject's experience that is here concerned, or

in a feeling >

of satisfac- thought of, the guarantee or indication of the
attainment of that result must lie primarily with
the subject, be a conscious fact, which cannot of
itself be communicated but only shared by a
number in common, if it be shared at all. It
must be a "feeling," a "sense," a "sentiment"
the feeling of "satisfaction," the "sentiment" of
rationality.

The result Hence the double character of the completed
twofold : resu i t Q n t h e one side, t h e reinstatement of the

objective

and unity of experience as a conscious fact, attained
" by and through a process taking place in time,
implies that the process to that end has been
achieved, that the specific adjustment in question
has been " successful," has " worked " out. The test
of "value" lies just in "success" or "efficiency."
That test, and so the "value," or "validity" is objective,

i PRAGMATISM n

in the sense that the unity re-established is secured.
That unity is what is always aimed at ; it there-
fore endures permanently throughout all the ex-
perience of the individual, and merely changes its
form according to circumstances in the life -history
of the individual's experience. Because that unity is
thus permanent and sought after by every individual,
this objective character of every special adjustment
is capable of being communicated to others. From
such communication and inter-relation of individuals
is built up a fabric of mutually recognised and ac-
knowledged forms of adjustment which we call the
general order of experience wherever it is found, in
common Morality, in common Knowledge, etc. On
the other side there is the "sense" peculiar to the
individual consciousness as such, the " feeling of
satisfaction " which is altogether his own, cannot be
communicated, is both underivable and underived.
That is his special test, and is subjective only. The
latter is ultimate not merely in time but in sufficiency
for the individual. Whether other people feel it or
not is a secondary result brought about by the
" significance " which his successful adjustment
possesses. But the " sentiment " and the " success-
ful adjustment " both fall inside the individual's
experience solely. Hence for him there is both
a subjective and an objective side to the result
achieved. That the objective may be communicated
does not make it successful for him : its success
makes it possible for him to communicate it. The
objectivity of the result is not derived from com-
munication to others ; at best it is merely confirmed
by so doing. Its being communicated is derived
from its being objective for him.

12 INTRODUCTION CH.

The case All this applies generally to all the processes of
ed g e W individual experience, and in particular to knowledge
as one process of that experience. In this special
case adjustments, as it happens, take the peculiar
form of connecting and relating and gathering to-
gether the diversity of presentational life. That is
endlessly manifold and varied in character ; per se
indeed a " chaos," * a puzzling multiplicity. What we
have to do here is to secure and keep the unity of
experience at all costs in the midst of this endless
change and variety. The kind of unity required
depends on the "situation" 2 raising the need for it.
That situation is always specific, and the unity
demanded is thus always definite in character. Now
"conceptions," "judgments," etc., are just ways in
which this result is achieved in the case of know-
ledge. They gather together a whole range of
variety into a single form of unity. They sum it
up into a formula which enables us to maintain unity
in multiplicity ; they give a compact or condensed
expression for a number of detailed elements. They
are merely a "conceptual shorthand" 3 "devices for
saving time." Or, to put it otherwise, we seek to
control, in the interests of the unity of our experience,
the variety and opposition of presentational elements
in a given conscious situation ; and conceptions,
judgments, etc., are ways in which we bring about
this result. They are modes or functions adopted
to meet the requirements of the given situation, and
are dictated partly by it as regards the matter,
partly by the unity of experience as regards the
form. Successfully to realise that purpose is to

1 See James, " Humanism and Truth" in Mind, vols. xiii. and xiv.
" Dewey's expression. 3 v. Karl Pearson, Grammar of Science.

i IDEALISM AND HUMANISM 13

do all that knowledge in the given situation
requires i.e. is to attain "truth" as regards that
situation. Conceptions, judgments, etc., are con-
scious " instruments " designedly selected and em-
ployed to work out the unity required in a given
case. They are " truth " if they accomplish this end,
if they " work " successfully. Knowledge is a con-
scious operation whose "validity" lies in its efficiency
to do its work, to control the presentational variety
of conscious experience ; its end lies merely in its
operation being successful, and that end is truth.
Or, finally, since it is one of the many processes for
achieving the essentially purposive character of man's
experience, and is determined, therefore, solely by
his specific purposes and interests, knowledge is a
human means or device for realising a human end.

The above way l of bringing together the different ." Human-
elements in the Kantian result is what has been made p rag .
familiar to us recently under the names of " p ra g- matlsm -"
matism " and " Humanism."

There are certain aspects of this view which any idealistic
thorough idealistic interpretation must regard

satisfactory. We may agree (i) that any kind of matism -
experience must somehow be individual ; (2) that
universal experience does and must in some way fall
within the life-history of the conscious subject ; (3)
that the principle of unity in such a life must be ex-
pressed by a term wider than, and including as one of
its phases, reflective knowledge ; (4) that nothing can
lie " beyond " reflective knowledge so far as its special
activity is concerned ; (5) that there is no possible
separation in experience between truth and fact, at

1 In the above statement of the Pragmatist position I have in mind the
argument of Professor Dewey in his Logical Studies, which seems to me much
the ablest and most forcible exposition of this view.

i 4 INTRODUCTION CH.

most there is only a distinction between them ; (6)
that reflective knowledge as such must always be
concrete, and is never merely formal within the
sphere to which, in experience, it belongs : for it
always works within and with reference to a deter-
minate "situation": hence the distinction of form
and matter falls within the knowledge-situation and
is created by it : there is no thought per se and no
matter per se over against thought ; (7) that reflective
knowledge is a self-contained sphere of experience,
with ends of its own which have to be realised and
satisfied, and which do not conflict with other parts
of experience.

The sole question is whether such a view does or
can do justice to the elements it thus seeks to bring
together the objective universality in conscious ex-
perience and the reality of individual experience.
Can it satisfy what these two require ?

Objections. There are many points of difficulty in the way of
accepting this view as final. Let us confine atten-
tion to a few those by reference to which it will
be possible to throw light on the argument of the
succeeding pages. We may pass by certain technical
difficulties, such as those suggested by the use of the
term " works," as the characteristic qualification of
the idea of "validity"; the "relativity" of "satis-
factions " ; the want of clearness in the use of the
term " satisfaction " as a standard of truth, since it
seems that the kind of satisfaction that is " truth "
is just " true " satisfaction ! These difficulties, how-
ever, are formal in character.

In the long run it will be found that all the defects

tion of the o f fa e position arise from restricting the conception
experience, of the "unity of experience," to the life of the

i UNITY OF EXPERIENCE 15

historical or, as it is sometimes termed, the " psycho-
logical " individual. That conception is essential to
the theory, as it is to every form of idealism. It is
from the unity of experience that the various " pur-
poses" or "ends" are derived which determine the
processes of reflection, for the attainment of which
thinking is "instrumental." Without that we should
never know where or why a thought "worked," we
should never know why it should stop "working"
at one point rather than at another, or whether it
should stop at all. The "working" of thought
would not merely be interminable but futile. The
fact that the result, however varied, is uniformly
registered "satisfying," "successful," implies the
perpetual presence within all the processes of a
single principle which is being realised. And it is
"satisfied" because it ultimately dictates the purpose
for a specific situation, and does so in order to meet
its demand the demand for unity.

But such a unity cannot in the nature of the case The unity
be restricted to the "mere" individual. For how- "
ever large the "span" of the individual's experience
from stage to stage, from moment to moment in its
experience, that unity is always wider than such a
span. For it determines how in each moment and at
each stage the purpose is to be realised, how the
specific unity or the specific "satisfaction" is to be
attained. It does not just arise with the satisfaction
of the moment : if so, it certainly might be regarded
as limited to his experience as this exists from time
to time. It only appears in a series of realisations.
But these, each and all, are attempts to satisfy and
secure one and the same ultimate unity. This unity
is not completely realised in any of its expressions

16 INTRODUCTION CH.

at all : otherwise why does it ever need to be
" satisfied " again ? Why is the problem of getting
" satisfaction " endlessly set to the individual ?
Moreover, that it is not attained by any number of
such expressions is not merely proved by the fact
that it has to be reinstituted, re-established as a
conscious result. It is admitted that it is this unity
which in a given case sets the question in a partic-
ular situation. There could be no sense of "dis-
comfort," of " antagonism of elements " in a given
conscious state, unless on the basis of an implied
unity of these elements. It is because of this, that
it is worth while trying to unite the opposition,
reconcile it, and establish the unity. We could
never feel the opposition unless the unity were
there. That is the only reason why certain kinds
of distinction of elements do demand and lead
us to expect a "solution" of a given problem,
while others do not. Quite different elements may
coexist in conscious life without there being any
sense of the " tension " which we try to remove by
thinking until a successful issue is attained. We
can, e.g., be conscious of a " fourth dimension " and
the " yellow peril " at one and the same moment :
but this never leads us to any attempt to reconcile
or unite them. There is no sense of " tension "
between them as a crying problem. Why ? Because
there is no implied unity in them, no identity of
content between them of such a kind that the
immediate unity of experience is staked on the
explicit fusion of the two in a continuous conscious
result. The unity we demand is always relative to
the situation presented, because it is implied within
that situation, and historically creates it, gives rise

i UNITY OF EXPERIENCE 17

to it. Those incessant attempts to meet situa-
tions are not due merely, or at least so much, to
accretion of " experience " from without, as to growth
from within, an ever - increasing assertion of the
presence of the unity in experience " over against "
different elements consciously presented together.
The unity is itself gradually being made determinate
as experience advances, "laws " are formed, etc., and
this sets up ever new efforts for a fresh reconstitu-
tion of unity in experience. But for the implicit
unity there would then be no problem. The
problem, as a felt question, is the hint that the unity
is there implicitly. The problem would be equally
impossible if we had mere difference of content, as it
would be- if we had clear conscious unity of experi-
ence. It is because the diversity is a clear conscious
fact which the unity is not, and both coexist as
factors in the total experience, that a " problem " can
possibly be felt to arise. Because, then, the unity
awakens the problem of the moment, and because the
unity is ever creating the problems of experience
and cannot be completed or exhausted in any one
realisation of it, the unity of experience must be
something wider than the span of any individual
experience.

If it be said that it is simply the total unity of ltmusti n

.1 T i u i .1 ^ some sense

the individual s total experience that is meant, then be wider,
this is wider than any historically individual experi-
ence. 1 1 then becomes an ideal beyond the moment
of the individual's life " beyond " in the sense that
in some real way it actually is, and is yet wider
than the momentary stages in the individual experi-
ence. But such an unity is universal, if universal is
to have any meaning ; and is not individual in any

c

i8 INTRODUCTION CH.

sense in which the historical individual can be, and is
taken to be so. It then becomes the ultimate unity of
all his experience implicitly present at each moment,
and expressing its existence in his conscious life by
its ceaselessly setting the problem of consciously
attaining and reinstating it. If we do not take
this view, then the ideal becomes a "mere ideal,"
" constructed " and looked on as outside the present.
But if so, it is quite futile because it does not assist
the actual problem of a given situation. It does not
create its specific character ; and hence we cannot
account for the perpetual recurrence of the necessity
for reinstating the unity. Unless that ideal is in
some real sense bound up with the existence of the
demand for unity at each moment, it is ineffective and
useless. But if it is so bound up, then it is not a
"mere " ideal : it is a constitutive element in individual
experience all through its process. The unity is
then not confined to the individual experience from
moment to moment ; it is both prior to it and ahead
of it it is universal. It is that from which the
demand for unity in a given case starts, that in which
its satisfaction terminates. And once it is admitted
to be beyond the unity of the individual's temporal
experience, as this incessantly appears, the degree
of universality, the amount and extent of it, is
merely a further question which does not affect the
principle. The fact that the unity is universal is all
we need here insist on. But since it does and must
govern all the individual's experience, it is plain,
at any rate, that it cannot be short of the totality
of all his experience actual and possible.
The unity Another alternative is to resolve the individual's

not merely . ... r

a scries, experience simply into a series of reinstatements or

i PHENOMENALISM 19

re-establishings of the unity required by specific
problems. We then have a series of unities without
any permanent centre to which to refer the successive
"satisfactions," without any centre from which and
in which the series happens to be an experience at
all, and without which it seems obvious that the
successive demands for unity would not arise. If
this is what the issue comes to, then it seems clear
that, instead of having a subject without universal
experience, or universal experience without a subject,
we have here neither a subject nor universal experi-
ence. It is a reappearance of Hume's position under
the guise of satisfying the claims of science which
Hume rejected. The final criticism of this view,
however, has surely been once for all gained for
philosophy, and need not be repeated here.

It is only by the confusion of the unity satisfied The con-
at each given moment with the unity from which p^eno-
individual experience starts all its problems and in menaiism.
which all are satisfied, that such a position could be
maintained.

It would be merely extending the above argu- Specific
ment into detail to point out that the actuality of a Sj^J?
universal unity in the individual experience is even ^^
historically evident in a concrete way from the
facts of Inheritance, Language, Society, etc., from
the basis of which the individual life starts. These
are themselves merely phases of the comprehensive
universality which that unity, fully interpretated, pos-
sesses. For they, too, are expressions of it which
have grown up historically and been incorporated
in the constitution making up an individual life.

That this unity is not really an individual unity
at all is acknowledged by Humanism in the constant

20 INTRODUCTION CH.

The signi- appeal to "social" consciousness which it makes.
thTsociai That is the only form in which it admits a uni-
factor in vcrsal unity to appear ; so much so that at times

Human- , , ,. - J r , . , . r i

ism. the " truth of knowledge is something confined
simply to the needs of communication required by
and making possible a society. " Rationality "
is held to be just common agreement between
intelligent individuals. Knowledge expresses that,
starts from it, and its special processes and ends
are determined by the general purposes of social
unity and social order. Science is a "social
phenomenon." The general conscious unity of
society necessitates and conditions the formulation
of the "laws," the "conceptions," the "unities," the
" truths " of knowledge. A language is the medium
of such communication, and thought is dependent
on and limited by the character of this medium,
it implies Now if all this is admitted, and if it is granted
y lve " that this social unity precedes and conditions the
kind of unity realised in any individual experience,
then obviously we have given up a purely individual
point of view. We now take the unity "aimed at"
and "satisfied" to be strictly universal, and one
which determines the unity in the individual life.
If we confine it to such a restricted universal as
" social mind," we shall indeed not do justice to the
unity which a Whole of experience implies. But
that is a further question. At any rate such a social
unity is wider than and does contain and determine
the individual unity.

Human- In point of fact, however, the tendency of this
towglurd v * ew ' 1S ra ther to regard the unity of a social con-
the social sciousness as itself derived from the unity of the
derivative, individual life, and to be neither constitutive nor, in

i UNITY OBJECTIVE 21

the long run, as such, regulative of that life, but a
mere product of the activity of individual minds.
In such a case, the "common agreement" as to the
unity established is merely a peculiar characteristic
of what is essentially confined to individual minds.
It is due to a further " use " of the individual unity.
Clearly a unity of different minds obtained by an
agreement which happens to be effected after unity
is secured by the individual, cannot itself be wider
than the individual with whom it starts. For the
" agreement " is an attribute of the individual
unity, and does not extend its meaning, does not
carry the individual beyond himself, is not universal.
And to this view what is said above will strictly
apply. 1

But, further, the unity of experience, which The unity
determines the purposes of all the process o

"thinking," for which thinking is " instrumental," be extra -

111 c , , ....*..-.. individual

cannot possibly be confined to the individual if it is and
to operate effectually at all Every train of thinking ob J ective -
has an end, which is admittedly not arbitrarily fixed.
Selection there no doubt may be, but it is always
selection within a certain range, and the selected
purpose when adopted cannot be tampered with at
will. It carries compulsion along with it, a com-
pulsion which defies all our efforts to put it aside.
The "success," the "satisfaction," carries with it
convincingness, as well as quiescence, of mental
state. However we may express this characteristic

1 The inconsistency of appealing to a social consciousness to confirm the
judgments of the individual mind seems, curiously enough, to have escaped the
notice of Humanists. But it is surely transparent that if Society is created or
derived as a significant fact from intercommunication between individual units,
it cannot be appealed to in order to determine the worth of what individuals
say or do. If the value of social life is derivative, it cannot in any sense be a
standard of value for that from which it derives its own value.

22 INTRODUCTION CH.

of a successfully established unity, whether as the
incapacity to tolerate a contradiction or otherwise,
it is there. And only if it is there can we rest in
the unity when found. Now this means that the
specific unity we realise in a given situation, the
thought which is "true," is not dependent on the
mere processes in the life-history of the individual.
These, being events, merely happen and may be
directed at will. It is because they can be that
certain of these directions are not true, and others may
be. The process which is " true," therefore, is deter-
mined by conditions in some way independent of the
mere presentations of the moment. Moreover, the
very solution is itself a process inside the individual
life, and as such, therefore, can be purely arbitrary.
The characteristic of the unity, however, is that it
is not arbitrarily realised ; it exerts control on all
that takes place. Such control, therefore, cannot
itself be determined solely inside the processes
which are themselves regulated by its action. The
control is brought about by an agency in some sense
independent of all such processes which make up
mere life-history. Such processes from the point of
view of the controlling agency vary with the life-
history of the individual, and fall solely within its
scope. They make up its constitution at a given
moment. They are " subjective." As distinguished
from them, the controlling agency is " objective " ;
it abides through and distinct from the changing
content of the individual, and remains after any
change has run its course. And it does so because
it in some way preceded the change, as the condition
determining one direction and not another. The
agency has "reality," "validity," "objectivity."

i OBJECTIVITY 23

To accept this result does not at all settle where "Objec-
the " objectivity " lies ; least of all does it imply that camfot fail

it is outside all experience. The latter is the position wilhin the

r n ^ TVT i-r-vi- individual.

of " Realism or " Natural Dualism ; but it by no
means follows from the general character of objec-
tivity. The nature of objectivity depends entirely
on how experience as a whole is conceived. But
objectivity, as the control exerted by the unity, does
imply that as such it cannot fall solely and simply
within the life-history of the mere individual. In
some way it must lie beyond its processes, no matter
what their span, or how long they continue. To
let it fall within their processes is necessarily
to make the direction decided on one of the pro-
cesses themselves ; and this prevents us arriving
at any finality in the result. To put it outside
all the processes, but somehow still inside the indi-
vidual life-history, would split up the continuity of
individual life. We should have to put on one side
the processes, on the other the unity that controls
them ; they would then remain for ever apart.
But this would reinstate the dualism of truth
and fact, objectivity and subjectivity, in a form
similar in kind to that found in " realism," which this
view under consideration seeks to overcome. In
a word, either the direction falls absolutely within
the process of the individual life, in which case
there is no selection ; the whole process is neces-
sitated from first to last, and the very peculiar
character of thinking, the realisation of a con-
scious and consciously selected end, is lost : or
else the controlling unity is in some way distinct
from the process, independent of it, in which case
it falls outside the limits of individual life and

24 INTRODUCTION CH.

history, and can be exerted upon it just for that
reason.

The objec- If, however, we grant that this controlling unity
merely 10 * ^ s objective, the range and extent of the objectivity
that of a are such that at least it cannot be bounded by any
whole. form or appearance of finite conscious life. It is,
therefore, impossible to limit it to a ''social unity"
inside which the individual life-history is spent.
For social life has itself a history, itself has a process,
determined likewise by ends and for ends. The
latter may be final for the individuals within it, so
far as concerns their relation to it ; but its own pro-
cesses must be determined by reference to a wider
controlling unity still, if "objectivity " is to be given
to the results of social activity. Moreover, we can-
not draw a sharp line between the control exerted
by the social unity and that exerted on the individual
life as such ; and in some cases they are not separate
at all. We seem bound, therefore, to admit that, in
the long run, the only objectivity which is final is
that in which the unity determining finite processes
within experience is simply the unity of all experi-
ence as such. That is behind all forms in which
objectivity appears, whether in the life-history of the
individual or in that of social process. Its unity
merely gets specified to meet the demands created
by the particular situations arising within the various
spheres of finite conscious process. It remains one
and the same through all. In interpreting the
nature of "truth," of "objectivity," in any form,
therefore, we not merely can but must start from
the unity of experience as a whole.

Now if the unity at work in all finite individual
experiences of whatever kind is a comprehensive

i ABSOLUTE EXPERIENCE 25

universal unity, and if the unity of all experience is The Unity
the ground of all forms of "objectivity" in finite that of an

experience, then, to explain the nature of universality
in Knowledge or in Morality or anywhere, and to ence.
explain the ground of the objectivity which all forms
of finite experience claim to possess, we must start
from the idea of an Absolute Single Experience. It
must be absolute, for nothing less will meet the case
completely ; it must be single, for the experience is a
unity. Being experience it must be the experience
of a conscious life, and being a unity, consciously
referred to as such, it must be the experience of a
single subject, an Absolute Individuality. Universal
experience is not something apart and per se ; it is
universal experience to and in some single life. For
a completely universal experience, therefore, there
must be an individually complete subject. The
"objectivity" of Knowledge, Morality, etc., does
not mean that truth is apart from all minds, or any
minds ; it exists as the truth for a mind an Absolute
Mind. But since experience is wider than reflective
Knowledge as such, or wider than Morality as such,
we must interpret such an experience by a term
which will embrace all forms of experience within
its sweep, and yet refer them to itself as its own, as
belonging to its unity. The term best expressing
such an individuality is Spirit, and the forms of
experience where we most clearly perceive the
possible workings of such a Spirit are Religion and
Philosophy. Hence the real starting-point for the
complete understanding of objectivity in knowledge,
whether in Perception or Morality, or any other
forms, which are modes of finite experience, is in the
self-conscious activity implied in the processes of

26 INTRODUCTION CH.

Religion and Philosophy, where we are at the point
of view of the whole as such, and think in terms of it.
Only the We cannot begin short of this, say, with the
view 1 of validity and objectivity of Perception or Science,
Absolute and thence endeavour to establish or overthrow the
is claims to objectivity which Philosophy or Religion

adequate. ma y p ut f orw ard. Either attempt is futile : for we

We cannot ' r i , ri.

take a cannot establish or destroy the objectivity 01 what
we hld to be a restricted type of knowledge by

enceasour taking as our basis that found in another form. The

base line. . . . _ . . r

process is quite arbitrary ; for the form we nx on as
the basis of objectivity is selected because of our
special interest in it, its power to appeal to us, its
prominence in our experience, or what not. Every-
thing in such a case depends on our specific point
of view. If we happen to regard Perception as
primary and ultimate, then everything else is tested
by an appeal to that, and derives its objectivity ac-
cordingly ; a position we find assumed in the scien-
tific appeal to perceived "fact" as a test of " truth,"
the appeal to " observation " and " experiment," etc.
If, again, we take Moral Knowledge as the primary
reality of experience, the reason and the result are
similar. And so on. The reality of experience
becomes focussed in such a form ; everything else is
referred to it, and all objectivity is derived from
its peculiar conditions. Not merely is the process
arbitrary, but it cannot attain its end, for it assumes
what has itself to be determined, the ground for
the objectivity of that particular form we choose to
regard as ultimate. The only ground we can adopt,
if we do not submit it to examination, is that of
feeling, our "satisfaction " in it, the "compulsion" it
has over us, the "sense" of immediate constraint

i BASIS OF CONSTRUCTION 27

it has over us. This is just what we might have
expected. For the special appeal such a particular
form of experience made to us, was due to our indi-
vidual interest in it, our individual selection of it,
and hence the ground of its value can only be a
subjective one, the "feeling" of necessity it gives to
us. But this is not a "reason"; for it lacks the essen-
tial character of reason universality and defies
communication. Each individual, therefore, is left
to himself ; and one type of knowledge being as good
as another to select as ultimate, human experience is
dissolved into a variety of individual attitudes. The
very principle all professes to accept, the unity of
their experience, is given up straight away, and the
objectivity claimed by one can be at once denied
by another, and no experience is left with any
objectivity at all. In other words, if we start from
a restricted form of experience, and regard that as
supplying the test of objectivity for all others, we
are unable to supply ground for the objectivity
of that one we select, and therefore unable to
guarantee the objectivity of any experience what-
ever. We are not merely able to deny the claim
to objectivity, say, of the philosophical form of ex-
perience, if we take, e.g., Sense-experience or Science
as our base line. That we can do legitimately enough
from such a position. But we are unable to assert
the objectivity of the special form of experience
we take as ultimate. While if we try to prove
the objectivity of all others by reducing them to
terms of this one we adopt, our attempt must fail
from the start, since we are assuming what itself
requires proof that the one we have selected does
supply all the objectivity knowledge claims. Such

28 INTRODUCTION CH.

a claim the others are prima facie entitled to dis-
pute ; and the development of reflection as well as
the process of experience are perpetually putting it
aside in favour of some other form. We can only
demonstrate and establish the objectivity of any
form of knowledge if we are prepared to demon-
strate the objectivity of all forms of knowledge.
We can only show that the unity of experience,
in one particular form of experience, e.g. scientific
thinking, supplies validity, objectivity, to that form of
knowledge, if we are prepared to accept the unity of
experience as a whole as the ground of all objectivity
whatsoever. It is because the unity of experience
as a whole is the source of all objectivity that any
particular kind of objectivity can arise in any par-
ticular form of experience ; for that particular " com-
pulsion," "constraint," which any particular form
possesses, is due to the fact that the unity at work in
its concrete life is a form of the unity at work in
the whole of experience.
Phiio- Now it is in Philosophy and Religion that we

ReHgio^ take U P the P omt f view f the unitv f the whole
at the o f experience. They assert and embody in self-
view of conscious experience the unity of the Whole, and
Absolute O f our individual minds with the Whole. They

Expen- . J

ence. therefore, as modes of experience, stand for the
absolute objectivity of all knowledge whatsoever.
To derive their complete unity from any other
form of experience, e.g. Perception or Science,
is necessarily a varepov Trporepov, even if it have
the semblance of success. It may have a semblance
of success, e.g., where Philosophy is set merely
to " criticise " the conditions or conceptions of
Science, as if Philosophy were a kind of additional

i PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 29

Science. To confine Philosophy to this is futile ;
for all other problems raised by experience itself,
e.g. the place of Morality in experience or the
Aesthetic ideal in experience, become then merely
borderland questions. Indeed, to take as final a
lower form of experience, such as Perception,
leads in general to pure scepticism regarding the
nature and value of all Philosophy. That is in-
evitably so ; for if the limited sphere of interest is
final, the point of view of the Whole is either
impossible or worthless. Scepticism in Philosophy,
however, can never coexist with belief in Science.
In the long run, the distrust of the former passes
into the sphere of interest of the latter, and the
stability and objectivity of any and all knowledge are
imperilled. Even a confessed and acknowledged
ignorance about the unity of experience as a whole,
soon leads to doubt of our knowledge in any form
whatever ; and doubt is a preparatory stage for
silent or open distrust.

We can see this in the present attitude in regard niustra-
to science assumed by many of its exponents. ^' ^ th
" Reality " as a whole, they say, they know nothing science, of
about, and cannot even name. What then is the O f taking
view taken of science? It consists of mere al . ower

point of

"descriptive formulae," a "conceptual shorthand," view,
which we contrive and use to get along in dealing
with this reality. But it seems evident that a
description of what is admitted to be incognis-
able, or at least unknown, is absolutely cut off from
having any import except for the mind describing.
If the reality exercises a check on the character
of the description, it seems illogical to say it is
not known, for the coherence of knowledge just

30 INTRODUCTION CH.

consists in being so controlled ; and that control
must come from the object described, because the
object is so constituted and not otherwise. If it
does not come from the reality, one description is as
good as another, and the very progress of know-
ledge becomes purposeless. When this objection
is put aside by pointing to the fact that we can
prophesy and anticipate by means of our descriptions
what reality will do, the extremity of the dualism
seems given up altogether. For to speak of
calculating an unknown is to use terms without a
meaning. A " shorthand " is surely indecipherable
if we are not in touch with the meaning of the
language we have taken down in symbol. If it be
said that the descriptions are truer, because for us
they are simply " better " descriptions, better fulfil
our needs, then this leaves altogether unanswered,
positively or negatively, the question whether these
needs may not just be a fuller appreciation of reality.
In short, this restriction imposed on science is due
to a prior restriction placed upon knowledge as a
whole, a sceptical attitude regarding philosophical
knowledge. It is typical of every such attempt.
It either compels us to accept two heterogeneous
kinds of knowledge, a descriptive and a non-
descriptive, which have no continuity of purpose
with each other, and yet profess to deal with the
same reality ; or else to make knowledge purely of
presentational "phenomena" hold, and to leave
An " reality " out of account altogether.

absolute If, then, we consciously take up the point of

view' view of the unity of the whole of experience as we
avoids do in Philosophy and Religion we avoid the in-

these . i i r 11 T

difficulties, coherencies into which we must fall if we take

i PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 31

anything less as our TTOU O-TW. For Religion and
Philosophy, in one aspect, simply stand for absolute
objectivity in knowledge. In them the "ideal" at
which finite forms of knowledge "aim," the "unity"
these finite forms seek to establish point by point
and moment by moment, as each stage of experience
calls for it, is established and completely attained,
not as an ideal but as an actuality. All Philosophy
and Religion do is to give it detailed expression and
detailed coherence. They exist solely and simply
within its realisation : in them all other experience
is "completed," "culminates," as we say, because in
them we consciously assert and consciously live
within the complete unity of all experience. They
are the attitudes of which this unity constitutes
the substance. Nowhere else in experience do we
consciously take up such an attitude to this complete
unity. Without them we should never be conscious
of the unity of all experience ; to be conscious of
it is to take up the religious or philosophical attitude.
They therefore embody all that the other modes of
experience aim at. Hence from them, in a real
sense, all the objectivity other forms of experience
possess is derived, because the objectivity of these
other forms is justified in the long run by the absolute
unity realised in Philosophy and Religion. Certainly
but for this absolute unity being realised, we should
not, as we have seen, be able to assert objectivity
anywhere in finite experience.

We do not take up this position of the absolute it is not
unity of experience by choice. Apart from the
historical fact that it has always been adopted by
the human spirit, and that in Religion and Philosophy
the human spirit invariably does obtain the sense

32 INTRODUCTION CH.

of absolute completeness and unity, we must adopt
the unity of all experience as the absolute ground of
all forms of knowledge, for it is the ground of any
kind of " absoluteness " knowledge may and does
claim to possess. For only if any given act or form of
knowledge has an acknowledged place in the whole
can it be said to be " absolutely valid." And we
cannot, by mere choice, put aside all "absoluteness "
from experience, because to do so is to exercise just
an absolute claim. Since we must take some kind
of knowledge as final, even though that knowledge
may be merely the knowledge that no finite form
is final, we thereby create that knowledge into
"absolute" knowledge. We cannot dismiss abso-
luteness from experience by an act of will. If we
do not find absoluteness in one way we are certain
to set it up in another. 1

Quaiifica- But this position must not be misunderstood. It
is not meant to imply that, when we take up the
point of view of the absolute unity of experience in
Religion and Philosophy, everything that Religion
and Philosophy as a matter of fact do express,
reveals everywhere and always all that this unity
contains. The history of Religion and' Philosophy
contains the answer to that claim. In the nature of
the case this cannot be so, because the point of view
of the Whole is conditioned by the detailed character
and contents of the Whole as these appear from time
to time historically. These affect the particular
expression which they will obtain from Philosophy
and Religion. Hence arise the various forms of

1 There is a lack of humour in the antipathy to absoluteness in experience
expressed by Mr. Schiller. It amounts to saying, almost in so many words,
that the term ' ' absolute " must be absolutely eliminated from philosophical
discussion !

i UNIVERSAL AND INDIVIDUAL 33

Religion and Philosophy which the human spirit,
whose complete unity they express, has adopted. All
it means is that this point of view is not simply one
which is aimed at, but is one which can be adopted
and actually developed into detailed coherence.

Now when we admit in this way that, on the one The value
hand, the unity of all experience is self-conscious
Spirit, and that, on the other, we can take up in
Religion and Philosophy the point of view of this
unity and express what it contains, and thus embody
in a distinct mode of experience the final and objective
ground of all knowledge, we can do justice to the
difficulties Humanism tries to meet, without falling
into the relativistic position it adopts. We can also
find a starting-point from which to explain and justify
the "objectivity " attaching to the various forms of
experience. It is quite true to maintain, as Human-
ism does, that there is no universal experience by
itself which either works in vacuo apart from
individual mind, or creates individual minds in its
process. It is quite true to maintain that if this
were so we could never see how it got into the
concrete life-history of the individual, and made his //
knowledge valid. To explain knowledge would be
indeed hopeless if we put on one side an abstract
universal experience, and on the other the historical
conscious individual, and then tried to show how
these two came together in the acts and processes of
knowledge. There is no universal experience which Universal
is not individualised. At the same time it must be

acknowledged that the historical individual, as such, in dividu-

, , r i ate( l-

is also a mere ens rahoms, the creation of abstract
thinking, and a creation of exactly the same kind as
that of a universal experience per se. For it is just

D

34 INTRODUCTION CH.

the thought of a mere universal experience which
makes it possible for us to think its exact antithesis
a mere individual experience ; and the one is as
false as the other, if taken by itself as a starting-
point from which to look at knowledge. Hence,
just as we may very reasonably object to the sugges-
tion that universal experience gives rise, in the
course of its own movement, to the truths which
individual experience contains, creates them so to
say out of itself; so we may very well object to the
attempt to create, justify, or explain, universal
experience from the process of an individual's life-
history. The former tends to treat the individual as
a mere casual embodiment of its processes ; the latter
to treat universal experience as a contingent result
of individual activity. We thereby overlook the
other half of the truth already stated, but left un-
stated by Humanism. As there is no universal
experience which is not individualised, so there is no
individual experience which does not point beyond
itself to universal experience. The truth is we
cannot have individuality at all unless it is consti-
tuted of both universal and specific elements, whether
the individuality be a pebble or a person. The union
of these two elements in individuality gives rise to
all the process of change and variety of which it is
capable, and the way in which they are united
determines the kind and place of the individuality
in question. Experience is individual all through,
and from first to last, no matter where we take it ;
and that means not an abstract isolated individual,
but concretely individual, a unity of universal and
specific factors. All types and forms of experience
contain in them these two elements, and a kind of

i REFLECTIVE KNOWLEDGE 35

experience is just a form of individuation. The
history of experience is the history of self-conscious
individuality Spirit.

Thus the explanation of the nature and validity Reflective
of reflective knowledge or Science is a special case a^oraTof *
of the general problem of showing how experience idividu-
becomes individuated, maintains the stability, the a
unity amid variety, which characterises individuality.
It does not consist, therefore, in relating an abstract
universal experience to an abstract individual ex-
perience, either by way of showing how the former
gives rise to the latter or the latter to the former.
It consists in showing how the individuality of
the experience we call " knowing " is established,
built up, and maintained. The explanation there-
fore assumes a standard, or, as we call it, an
" ideal" of individuality, and this in the long
run, as we have seen, is the complete and single
unity of all experience Absolute Individuality. It
consists, therefore, to put it otherwise, in showing
how the Absolute Individuality which is Absolute
Experience becomes specified and realised in that
special case of individuation, the conscious relation
of particular to universal (conceptual activity), which
constitutes the process of reflective knowledge. The
interpretation of reflective knowledge ("Logic" in
the narrower sense of " Theory of Knowing ") is part
of the larger question of the interpretation of experi-
ence as a whole of the " Logic of Experience." l
There is no break or gap between the special inter-
pretation of reflective thought and that of other
forms of individual experience, just as there is, in
concrete experience as a whole, no gap between, e.g.,

1 Prof. Dewey's term and also Hegel's.

36 INTRODUCTION CH.

reflective thought and " perceiving " or " common
sense." There is continuity from first to last.
The interpretation of the one form of individu-
ality, therefore, must be one which embraces in its
sweep that of every other. Reflective experience
does not arise all of a sudden and constitute an
absolutely new departure in experience. It is
implicit in experience from the start, not in the
sense that that which does precede it in time
contained its results there already, 1 but in the
sense that the Ideal of Individuality at which all
finite forms of experience aim and partly express,
necessitates that it should appear ; and this Ideal is
implied in every mode of experience, because each
mode focusses the Whole at a specific point and in a
specific way.

The inter- What, then, does the interpretation consist in ?

pretation j t j s c ] ear t jj at we canno t get "behind" Experience

Absolute to explain it. That is as futile as it is impossible.
The interpretation itself must fall within the scope

;< of Experience. It is equally impossible to reduce
Experience to terms of any one form, for that cannot
but fail to do justice to the others, since they become
thereby secondary if it is primary ; and yet every
form all the while stands by itself and has a life of

its own with terms and activity sui generis. But if
all forms of experience are pro tanto valid, have
individual significance each by itself, the only inter-
\ pretation that will do justice to this uniqueness of

1 If that were so, then certainly Prof. Dewey's objection (Logical Studies,
p. 46) to the view here advocated would hold. For the moment, however, in
his eagerness to emphasise the significance of the position he is himself defend-
ing that reflective thinking is one type of experience by itself he has over-
looked the fact that it must be continuous with the rest of experience. This,
of course, does not at all assume that " Thought " was "there " before it " arose."

i MODE OF INTERPRETATION 37

value each possesses, and yet be an interpretation
of them all, is one which shows their connexion one
with the other. To connect, however, implies a
unity of significance in all. That unity is found in
the Ideal of a completely Individual Experience, >
which contains them, and of which they are " realisa-
tions " or expressions. The connexion of one form
with another is the same therefore as connecting
them with this Absolute Individual Experience.
To connect them with this, which they all imply, is
to unite them to each other. But this Individual
Experience is, from the point of view of each and all,
an Ideal. Hence the connexion consists in tracing
how they successively and separately embody,
realise, or approximate to this Ideal. From it they
may be separately distinguished, while still being
moments in its own Reality. It remains as the one
complete Individuality ; they focus it in different
ways, ways unique when looked at inter se, but
united in virtue of the common Ideal they all
embody and aim at. This Individuality has, how-
ever, no existence apart from them ; it exists in and
through them. They together make up its own
substance, a substance whose content is expressed
in them. It, per se, so far as we can speak of \(.per
se, is the centralising unity of all, and therefore not
a mere collection of them as parts. The parts are
separate for themselves inter se ; they are together ,
for it and in it. That is possible just because it is
Experience by an Individuality a Subject and not
a mere substance. The connexion of them is thus
from the point of view of the absolutely Individual
Experience, a mere exposition of what it contains,
of what makes up its life. From the point of view

38 INTRODUCTION CH.

of the parts, therefore, the connexion consists in
showing how they successively approximate to 1 the
attainment of Complete Individuality, their Ideal.
Being successive on the one hand, and showing
the various degrees of approximation on the other,
it is a gradual realisation or " development" of what
Complete Individuality is and consists in. From
the point of view of the Whole Unity itself, it is
merely an exposition of what itself contains.
Putting these two aspects together, the interpreta-
tion consists in a genetic exposition of the forms in
which Absolute Individuality appears and is realised.
The forms appear and appear as historically distinct.
As such they are merely scattered and separate,
appear heterogeneously, and as the focus of experi-
ence changes. They have as historical appearances
no connexion but that of mere events. But if we
look on them as realising, even in their merely
successive appearance, the supreme Individuality,
they have not all the same value, nor does the his-
torical individual himself look on them as all attaining
what he aims at Complete Individuality to the
same degree. If he were, therefore, to go through
them successively according to their value for him,
it would still be the history of his experience, for he
would take up each in succession in time, but it
would not be of the zigzag and haphazard character
which his experience, dictated by the needs of
moment, alone adopts. It would be an orderly
realisation of the ideal of Individuality, at which he
all along strives : it would be a " genetic history "

1 It is too apt to be forgotten in looking at experience "genetically" that
we cannot even trace genesis, show development unless we know the end to
which the process tends, as well as the antecedents from which it began.

i INTERPRETATION OF EXPERIENCE 39

of Experience. This is another expression for what
the interpretation consists in.

Every point, therefore, where experience comes A
to a halt, so to say, where the unity of experience is h'i
attained, where the individual experiencing " rests " complete

, . i- i ii i r T Individu-

and is satisfied, is. ., the attainment of a specific a ii ty
iojjividyation, a union of elements in a whole, of e j"^ races
universal in and through particular. The universal ofindividu-
varies with and in the particular ; and the individu- atlon>
ation, the stability which that union secures, differs
accordingly. Each is experienced, is individuality,
but in a different way. The individuality attained ^
in Perceptual Life is one thing, that in Reflective ^
Activity another, in Morality another, and so on ; X.
/ and the processes of securing individuality in the
' several cases differ accordingly. In Perception it
consists in bringing " sense qualities " to a focus
which is called a " thing " ; in the case of Reflection
it consists in bringing " ideas " to a focus called
^ "judgment" in its simplest form, and "inference"
in its highest. In Morality the individuality attained
is different a^ain, and takes different methods to
become established. It is not, therefore, merely in
reflective thinking that we come to "rest," are
"satisfied," but wherever the unity of experience is
realised, wherever individuality is attained. We are
" satisfied" merely in different ways. But because we
are satisfied in each in a specifically different way,
each is specifically distinct from the other ; each
works within a certain range of activity all its own.

There is no clashing therefore, and no "opposition "
between, e.g., Perception and Reflective Thinking.
"Perceptual facts" are not "opposed" to "Reflec-
tion" as something "external": the world of facts as

40 INTRODUCTION CH.

Noopposi- "perceived " cannot therefore stand on one side and

tion of . . T-> n 11 -r-

modes of m opposition to Reflection on the other. Experience
experi- j s individuated in each in a different way, and each

ence : * '

matter" attains its own purpose, the purpose which locates

and

form ,, it in the totality of Experience and fixes it there.

ence.

in experi- Nor does one supply "matter" to the other, as if
the matter were externally "given." Matter and
form in all cases fall inside the individuality of the
experience, whether it be Reflection, or Perception,
or any other. The matter of one, therefore, cannot
be the matter of another, nor the form of one the
form of another. Each has its own matter and
form. The matter of Reflection is " ideas " ; the
form is the construction we impose on them in the
interests of that type of individuation we call re-
flective experience. No doubt the content of Per-
ception may provide the stuff for thought to work
with. But it does not work with it as perceptual fact,
but as thought fact. When we analyse Reflection
into its elements, no doubt we can separate the
matter from the form and speak of the latter as
"given," and, as "given," we may assign it to the
realm of Perception. But to assign it is the act of
thought itself, not the work of Perception, which has
a life and being of its own, just as thought has. In
Perception, similarly, we may analyse it into its
elements and assign the qualities to Sensation, and
keep the form of unity, which Perception gives them
in the "thing," to perceiving itself as such. But
here again the assigning is the work of Perception.
The qualities are not given by Sensation to Percep-
tion, for Sensation has also a life of its own. And
so on through all the forms of individuality experience
assumes.

i PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 41

Thus it is that the exposition of the Whole, the Philosophy
interpretation of Experience as a whole, belongs to Religion,
that type of experience where Absolute Individual-
ity is known as such. We saw that in Religion and
Philosophy the point of view of the Whole is taken
up and becomes an experience for the individual.
Here self-conscious Spirit, as such, is present to
self-conscious Spirit qua finite individuality. Here
the finite individual is consciously one with the
Whole as such. It does so in different ways in
Philosophy and in Religion. The way of detailed \
connectedness of the parts in the Whole, and as V
they are for the whole, is the special attitude of
Philosophy. The genetic exposition we have Phiio-
spoken of, therefore, is the way in which Philosophy sop y ' -4--
brings the forms of individuality together. It is
the method or process by which Philosophy works
out its special individuation : it is the " philo-
sophical method " of realising individuality. Since
Philosophy is at the point of view of the Whole
as such, it is a matter of indifference whether we
say that Absolute Individuality works itself out in
this way, expounds its own life, or that Philosophy
adopts this way of revealing the connectedness of -
the parts in the one Whole. The method is an
"absolute" method, or is the method of Absolute
Individuality. Here the content and form are one,
as in other forms of individuation. We do not make
a separation in the individuality of experience be-
tween what is "perceived" and the "perceiving" of
it, between "thinking" and the "content" of thinking,
between form and matter in " sense " or in any other
type of individuality. We can draw a distinction
inside each, as we do and must ; but we do not

42 INTRODUCTION CH.

separate and put one on one side and the other
on another. This holds similarly of Philosophy.
Matter The matter of Philosophy is Experience as a whole ;
its form the way Experience as a whole is held

sophy. together. And those two are inseparable in the
type of individuation we call the philosophical attitude
in experience. Philosophy, therefore, does not clash
with other forms of Experience : it is a mode by itself.
It does not dissolve other forms into itself: nor does
it determine what they are. It merely, in pursuit

of attaining its specific end, connects these together.
It does not create nor destroy each ; it "explains"

- all by connecting all. And to connect all is to show
the place each occupies in the Whole, and so to
interpret each in relation to the other. Further,
in the course of doing so, it at once connects the
several phases of experience and shows itself to

its method have a place in the plan of Experience. It explains
a ^ others and so explains itself: it is "self-explain-
ing." This "justifies" itself \ and it does so by its
success in achieving its purpose. It thus avoids
the objection that Philosophy requires to get
"behind" experience to "explain" it, by proving
that itself belongs to and holds good of that
Whole it explains. And in doing so, it is not
acting differently from what takes place in other
forms. For every form does this. For example,
Reflective thinking, when operating, "justifies"
to itself the special individuality it (Reflection)
possesses as against Perception or Sensation ;
for it maintains that what it develops, " its conclu-
sions " ''hold good" of the world of Perception and
Sense ; or, to put it in another way, Reflection is the
"outcome" of "perceptual" life and the life of "sense."

i ABSOLUTE IDEALISM 43

But is there only one philosophy and one
method ? For an idealism which takes Absolute Absolute
Spirit to be the Unity of Experience, and which
takes finite self-conscious Spirit to be at the point
of view of the Whole, there can be only one
philosophy and one method of interpretation. The
statement of the contrary lies with its opponents,
just as the defence of it lies with those who uphold
it. And either can only satisfy the other by show-
ing that every other point of view is really included
within the one adopted. Idealism does profess *
that this is the case.

How the process of interpretation is carried
out, what is its starting-point and how it achieves
its end, I have tried to state in the following
chapters, in a form doubtless more summary than
the magnitude of the subject really justifies. But
the types of individuation, or forms of unity of
subject and object, as they are called, which are
here discussed, are sufficiently representative to
enable us to see in outline the character of the
Idealistic Construction of Experience. They are
modes of individual experience with which we are
everywhere familiar, and they represent individu-
ality at different levels of its realisation.

CHAPTER II

DUALISM AND THE NEW PROBLEM

IT will be convenient to lead up to the statement
of the idealistic view of Knowledge, if at the start
we formulate the ultimate question at issue in any
interpretation of Knowledge, and show, by reference
to certain historical theories preceding Hegel, how
their defects arise out of the assumptions which
governed their view of the problem to be solved,
and how again these defects point the way to such
a conception as idealism seeks to establish.
The initial Here we are met by the difficulty involved in
offorami- tr y m g to draw an ultimate distinction within experi-
ating the ence anc j to keep to it throughout succeeding dis-
cussion, a difficulty only lessened but not removed
by the knowledge of successive failures to overcome
it. Perhaps in no part of philosophy is this greater
than in the formulation of the question as to the
nature of knowledge. The result is seen in the
diversity of treatment of the subject which we find
in the history of reflection. No doubt it might be
argued that there is not so much diversity in the
general conclusions arrived at, and, if these are the
same, the consistency of method, it might be said, is
a question of ways and means, and need not greatly
concern us. Each mind, we might hold, must find

44

CH.II FACTORS IN KNOWLEDGE 45

its own way to truth by the avenue that seems
clearest, and the main thing is that the various
avenues should converge towards the same spot.
But while the general rationality of experience may
prevent the human mind being put to confusion
in the final issue, it is still legitimate to maintain
that some ways of reaching the end are safer and
more direct than others. That is the justifica-
tion for attempting at the outset to formulate the
problem we seek to solve.

Knowledge 1 does not merely, as Kant indicated, The factors

. r ' r i r -in Know-

Start from experience ; it is a kind of experience, in ledge

any sense of that term. It will be admitted, too,
that its significance lies in its being an activity with
a certain end in view, the end we call the attain-
ment of truth. These are two distinct phases of
its nature, as is obvious when we observe that the
end may not be always attained, or that knowledge
may go wrong and, as we say, be " false," while yet
truth remains its necessary goal. Were the distinc-
tion between a right and a wrong way of getting to
the end meaningless, knowledge might be looked
on as simply a mechanical process with conscious
events for its content. Now, if the relation be-
tween these two aspects is such that knowledge
is most really knowledge when it attains its end,
it seems clear that what above all things the
interpretation of knowledge has to consider is the
ideal of knowledge. Not that we can separate
actual knowledge from its ideal ; they can only be
distinguished. But any attempt to confine the

1 "Knowledge" is here used primarily in the narrower sense of, e.g., re-
flective knowledge. As the argument proceeds we shall find reason to extend
its significance to include, e.g., Morality. Vide pp. 72-73.

46 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

question to the consideration of actual knowledge
without conscious reference to the ideal of knowledge

* seems bound to lead to error somewhere. On the
other hand, merely to consider the character of the
ideal of knowledge as such, without reference to actual

, knowledge, will equally be one-sided in its result.
The question of knowledge, in short, is one which
must take account of both aspects of this form of
experience. Indeed, unless both are admitted and
acknowledged to stand in this intimate relation to
each other, it is difficult to see how the problem as
to the nature of knowledge could arise. Know-
ledge in finite experience is rooted in the distinction

* between the activity of endeavour and the reality

* of attainment ; and beyond this, knowledge, as a
form of experience, does not go. Within that,
it is an experience sui generis and complete. That
is the only antithesis which is essential to its vitality ;
and the existence of it is the sole condition of its
continuance as a finite process.

The Now if that is its simple elementary constitution as

stated 6 '" presented in experience, what is the ultimate problem
that we must raise regarding it, the problem which
the theory or interpretation of knowledge seeks to
solve ? If we are not to prejudge the answer by
preliminary assumptions, the problem seems capable
of being stated in only one form. We have to show
the way by which knowledge, in the pursuit of its own
end, achieves that ideal it seeks ; or, otherwise, we
have to show how the ideal of knowledge determines
the actual realisation of knowledge in experience.
These ways of expressing the problem are in prin-
ciple the same, for the ideal and the actual are both
implied in knowledge. We have not in this inquiry

ii THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 47

to state the content of ideal knowledge, i.e. of know-
ledge in its ideal form : this would give us the round
of speculative science, an Encyclopaedia of philo- .
sophical knowledge. Still less are we to state the
content of ordinary knowledge in the different spheres '
in which this is exercised, for this would mean
stating all the varied content of Perception, Science,
etc., in each of which we have knowledge of a kind.
What we have to consider is the relation between
knowledge as actual and knowledge as ideal, the
relation, namely, of how, in the life of knowledge, the
one is determined by and in the other. That seems
the simplest way to formulate the question as to the /J
nature of knowledge. No assumptions beyond the
fact of actual knowledge and the ideal of knowledge
are thereby made to start with. We do not by
anticipation hint at either the limits or the range of
possible knowledge, or even the conditions of know-
ledge, for these in a way prejudice the answer. The
question so formulated is, so to say, raised by
knowledge itself. It is the knowing experience
become self-conscious. This way of looking at the
question, while it is to some extent familiar in recent
logical discussion, is essentially the point of view
adopted by Absolute Idealism.

Let us try to bring out the significance of this
conception by considering for a moment the problem
of knowledge as taken up and discussed by Kant.
In what we have to say we shall attempt to show
how the adoption by him of other assumptions led
to errors, the existence and nature of which in-
directly indicate the need for starting from such a
principle as that above stated.

A fundamental assumption from which Kant's

48 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

Kant's view started and which pervades his argument all
assump^ along is the cleavage between the subject " know-
tion. ing," or, as he puts it sometimes, "having experience,"
and the being of things. This was no doubt his
heritage from the Cartesian metaphysic. But it
found support in his early scientific training and in
his keen appreciation of the finite and tentative
character of human knowledge, which contrasted
sharply with the boundless world of independent
fact standing over against it, and setting a limit to
its activity.

Subjective For Kant, however, the reality of things per se

tira'of'the which mark the bounds for Knowing, is so in-

Hmits of effectual to influence the course of knowledge

ledge. that the very function of determining the positive

character of the limit itself is undertaken by the

subject. The limit is a boundary set to the activity

of understanding by the equally subjective activity

of reason. Merely to speak of things imposing a
limit was not enough : if taken thus, the limit would
be merely characterless and obviously inoperative
in itself. A positive significance in relation to
knowledge had to be given to it ; and this from the
very nature of the case could only come from the
subject. Thus the limit, so far as it could be an
effectual limit to knowledge, was imposed and estab-

_,?. lished by that same subject which was held to be

bounded in its activity by things per se. This
exhausted its significance as far as concerned
knowledge, whose activity was thus entirely self-
determined, even in its very limitations.

The But Kant had still in some way to give a sub-

f stantial and independent nature to the being of
things, if not by knowledge, then apart from it : other-

ii DUALISM AND KANT 49

wise they were not merely unknown, but as good as
unreal. Their reality could not be considered in
terms of knowledge without a patent self-contra- ^
diction. Yet their reality must be for a conscious-
ness in some way. Hence we require to appeal to
a special function of the mind for that purpose.
This function is what Kant calls Faith, which is not
knowledge nor strictly reason, but still has its source
in consciousness, i.e. in the subject. Such a function
once more illustrates Kant's difficulty in finding how
a conscious subject can, from the side of the subject,
in any way deal with what to begin with is held to
be beyond it altogether.

Merely, however, to assert the existence of the The object
being of things by an unknowing act of Faith, does
not carry us far in determining the actual nature
they possess. Faith had to do what knowledge
failed to do to deal in a positive way with the
realm of things per se, of which knowledge could
merely state that they were beyond its province.
It had to give local habitation and a name to what
for reason was little better than an airy nothing.
But to give assurances of any kind by Faith alone,
with no reference to knowledge, can only be admitted
either as an endeavour to speak intelligibly in two
mutually untranslatable languages, or as an attempt
to carry on the business of intelligence on a system -
of bare credit. And what do we find ? The world j i
of Faith gets its concrete filling from the activity of
moral will. This at first seems a great deal, even
though it takes no account of, and certainly does not
seem to refer to, that realm of the being of things
which specifically concerned knowledge of nature, and
which, in the Critique of Pure Reason, stood over

E

50 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

against it as an ultimate limit to understanding. But
even this filling is of less significance than it seems,
for we are assured of nothing but the form, i.e. the
bare activity of will. And, moreover, even the reality
of this is merely a matter of Faith. 1 It is not
intellectually impossible, but it is actual solely
for Faith. And why this meagre result ? Simply
because Faith is outside knowledge ; it gives no
determinate content or significant assertion on the
one hand, and is incapable of giving more than a bare

* assurance on the other. Faith is itself characterless,
a mere ungrounded act, and what it supplies must
in consistency have the same indeterminate value.
The mere fact that will is assigned to the sphere of
reason settles once for all that its significance is
intellectually for ever a mere problem ; for reason is
the sphere of the problems of the intellect, or, what
is the same thing, the bounds of understanding. To
gain any information about it is therefore logically
impossible. Kant's Faith is merely a compromise
between the sceptical tendency lurking in the concep-
tion of the " bounds of reason," and the necessity of
doing some justice to the initial assumption regarding

the reality of the being of things. This compromise
could, in the nature of the case, only take the form
of a mere possibility ; and thus Faith gives a bare
assurance. That is all it is able to accomplish for us in
regard to the being of things. Hence the admitted
insecurity of the argument dealing with the so-called
" practical reason," an insecurity which is only saved
from disaster by a thinly-drawn qualification, the
problematical phrase " as if" : " man is free when

|| he acts as tfhe were so."

1 As Kant says, we have no guarantee that " pure duty " is ever " realised."

ii PROBLEMS AND POSTULATES 51

In fact this Faith tells as little about the being Faith
of things as knowledge, which is just nothing in

Kant's view. The thine: per se in the form of will f

, . , , ,. intellectual

has no more to do with actual concrete morality problems.
than the thing per se had to do with the actual
process of knowledge. In both cases it is quite
ineffectual, is outside "experience." The one lies
away beyond knowledge and is consigned to the
" ideas of reason " ; the other lies away behind actual
morality and is assigned to a peculiar act of Faith.
The one is described as a "problem," the other *
is described as a " postulate." The difference >
is merely due to the point of view from which
the same thing is looked at. In the former case
we have in mind the terminus ad quern of an
experience, in the other the terminus a quo ; and
both are identical, because all we can say of each
is, on the one hand, that it is unknown, and on the
other, that it is the "unconditioned condition" or
"limit" of experience. The same character, which
we find in the case of Freedom, is possessed by the
other entities which inhabit this realm of things
per se, and which Kant speaks of as God and
Immortality. Their character is the same, and *
their value the same for exactly the same reasons
as those just mentioned in the case of a "free" will.
They belong^to the sphere of Faith, which merely -
can assert(that)they are; they, too, are and remain
for the sphere of Faith postulates, as they were
problems for the sphere of intellect.

Thus, then, try as Kant will he never succeeds in
carrying the ramparts of " things per se." They for
ever defy assault. The attempt to do so in the
discussion of the Practical Reason merely reveals the

52 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

futility of the task ; for the argument in the Critique
of Practical Reason does not take us a step further
than the result arrived at in the Critique of Pure
Reason. It merely changes the designation of the
The signi- thing we have been considering. The limit is there
fheTmif to begin with, and the limit remains ; and little
to Know- difference seems to be made to actual intelligible
experience whether it is or what it is. For the whole
wealth of the world's significance, what Kant calls
"experience," is still in the possession of the subject
in spite of it. The limit merely asserts itself that
is all. If we start with such an assumption as
Kant (and indeed naive Realism also) adopts, we
are compelled to raise the problem of knowledge in
only one form. We must ask, in some way or other,
" how is knowledge possible " ? ; within what limits
does it work ? ; what is its relation to that over against
which it stands for ever opposed? No other kind
of problem regarding the ultimate nature of know-
ledge is possible ; and that form of the problem is
predetermined simply by the initial assumption re-
ferred to. A boundary is set up at the start to the
very activity of knowledge, and the real .question to
be considered is simply what is the limit, and what
are the conditions which determine that limit, make
it both possible and necessary. The question is
certainly a legitimate one in such circumstances, and
seems indeed at first sight an easy question. At any
rate it seems by no means so ambitious as the
! attempt to give a systematic construction of the
i whole of Being. For we are simply directing upon
the fact of knowledge in general a scientific analysis,
in the same way as we do towards any other fact,
e.g. space. Knowledge is here a perfectly circum-

ii KANT'S PROBLEM 53.

scribed and definable process : it is a process found v_
in a thinking subject, and bounded on this view from
first to last by a reality beyond and independent of
that subject. Hence its very limited character at
once attracts attention and raises scientific curiosity
regarding it. There are no preliminary metaphysical .
difficulties to be faced and overcome. For the
question does not seem to occur to Kant, as it did o
to Berkeley, what that "independence," that "being C
beyond " really means. The very statement of
his question indicates complete assurance of the 4.
substantial worth of his assumption. " How are
synthetic judgments a priori possible," implies that
in his inquiry he is at once compelled to admit the
separation between knowledge and reality, and yet
to explain somehow in what way the perpetual
reference to it from the side of ideas is legitimate.
The term "possible" refers to something actual and
assumed to begin with ; for possibility can only be
decided or considered on a basis of actuality. The
question therefore refers to what is possible in the
circumstances. The term "a priori" merely ac-
centuates the same contrast, brings out still more
clearly the pointed antithesis from which he starts.
While "synthetic " bears on the face of it the marks
of the opposition he is trying at once to accept
and justify. Kant never seeks deliberately to over-
come that initial opposition. His sole question is to
explain, within the limits necessarily imposed on
knowledge, the reference of ideas beyond the im- *-
mediate consciousness of the knowing subject,
an act of reference peculiar to all ideas which
make up the content of knowledge, and one which
falls solely within the subject knowing.

54 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

"Spon- Hence we see the importance laid by Kant on
the fact of subjective spontaneity, or freedom. The
reference is not forced on the mind ab extra (as
Locke seemed to imply) ; for this would mean that
reality invaded the subject bodily, which is just as
illegitimate as to assert that the subject covers by
the act of knowledge the gulf separating it from the
being of things, and which would in any case break
down the opposition assumed at the start. The act
of reference must come from the free, spontaneous
The work activity of the subject. Hence it is, again, that the
ing^sT whole apparatus of knowledge described by Kant
subjective, belongs from beginning to end to the subject only.
Reality has nothing to do with it. That remains
for ever a " beyond." Whether it is taken to be a
" real " " beyond," as in the Aesthetic, or an ideal limit
or " regulative idea," as at the close of the Analytic,
the result is exactly the same. Thus, the being of
things appears at the end of Kant's inquiry still
outside knowledge as it was at the beginning, not so
\V much because his inquiry has led him to that result,
v r but because he has all along worked under the assump-
tion of its being outside ; not because the analysis
has put it outside, but because its being outside has
U determined the analysis. Thus for all theoretical or
cognitive purposes, the being which is beyond know-
ledge might, as far as the apparatus of knowledge is
concerned, be quite as well non-existent. It does
not determine that apparatus, it does not affect the
process of knowledge. It does simply one thing
and one thing only, it decides that a limit shall be
set to knowledge ; but it does not decide what that
limit is, or where it is, nor how it affects knowledge.
From this comes the peculiar result of the Kantian

ii TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT 55

analysis. The being of things remains indifferent
and characterless outside the subject, while all that
gives worth and significance to the life of the subject
is assigned to the subject in virtue of the apparatus of y^
knowledge, which makes its "experience." That is,
the subject surrenders any claim to possess the being
of things by knowledge, and rewards its self-sacrifice
by enriching its life with everything of significance
that can be made into experience. It gives up
any right to knowing things per se, but thereby
merely gives up what it has no interest at all in -
wishing to grasp.

Kant, therefore, goes to the very verge of the The j
apotheosis of knowledge, but recoils from this by lo gj
reminding himself that there_rnust be a limit. ThisJ ud s ment
is seen likewise in the Critique of Judgment, where
Kant (so we may put it) considers another aspect
of the realm of the being of things which falls
outside the sphere of the Critique of Practical
Reason, an aspect which also concerns that limit
set to knowledge referred to in the Critique of
Pure Reason. Everything of value is, in the
Critique of Judgment, allowed to hold good so far !
as experience goes. But in the last resort, i.e. so far
as the being of things is concerned, we must again
qualify our judgments by the otherwise ineffectual
phrase "as if" "nature "must be considered "as t"
if" acting "purposively." This merely expresses
in the milder form of a measure of precaution
precisely what has been present throughout all
Kant's interpretation of knowledge, viz., the reality
of a limit to the subject's activity.

It seems strange that Kant should have laid such
extraordinary stress on the reality of the being of

5 6 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

< things as a limit to knowledge, and yet that this
very reality should have had little or no meaning of its
The own. If the limit it imposes on knowledge had been
assume d to come from knowledge itself, its want of
content might have been inevitable ; for it would
then have been just that beyond which there was no
knowledge and on this side of which all the content
of knowledge lay. But Kant began by assuming that
the being of things, reality with its now substantial
wealth, stands on one side and over against it the
subject's activity in knowledge. We are entitled,
therefore, to expect that the one side would at least
have been as concrete as the other, that in short the
dualism would have been permanent and effective,
and not evanescent and ineffective. So slight a
hold does the substance of things have on know-
ledge in the final form of Kant's view, that it comes
to be little more than a reminder that human know-
ledge is at best finite. The "limit" is a tax which
has to be paid for the privilege of understanding,
and which being quite undetermined in character
can therefore be reduced to the absolute minimum.
Kant gradually reduces the substance of the reality
of things till finally it becomes a mere ghostly
shadow of its earlier self, a ghost which neverthe-
less haunts his theory with all the persistence of
an ineradicable superstition, and with which at all
costs he must somehow make his peace lest it
imperil the security of knowledge. But the very
slightest means are required to lay a disembodied
ghost, for the being alone to be considered is the
subject who fears it. Hence it is enough to call it a
"problem," a "postulate," the "unconditioned con-
dition " or what not, all of them apparently differing,

ii KANT'S DUALISM 57

but with the same identical content, namely, none at
all, their vagueness corresponding completely to
the indefiniteness of what is referred to, and the
expressions themselves being all used merely to win
the favour of the inhabitants of the shadow world
beyond the confines of experience.

It is clear that in all this Kant is doing no more inconsist-
than adhering to the conditions of an assumption encyof

f x dualism

from which his problem started, in spite of the with
necessary results to which the actual course and ar jument.
method of the inquiry itself inevitably ought to lead
him. The inquiry is prosecuted by one principle ;
the assumption remains external to it. Hence it
merely exerts an incessant check on the natural
trend of his own argument. The assumption was
external from the start ; for it had nothing to do
with determining the specific course of the analysis.
It is "regulative," not "constitutive," i.e. external, not
immanent : and regulative and external it remains. ^
Hence the unsatisfactoriness of the relation between
the two at the end of the theory. The view of actual ~
knowledge, which he develops, has changed the whole V
situation : it is inconsistent with the sharp dualism^,
from which Kant started. But, since the theory
must hold at all costs, and the assumption has also
to be maintained in some form or other, the only
solution is to make the antithesis as slight as possible.
This is done by placing, with a kind of ironical con-
sistency, the opposite poles of the antithesis outside
of experience altogether !

Now it seems evident that since all Kant's diffi- Kant's
culty has arisen through starting from the original ^ mp '
assumption, the difficulty would vanish, and his unsatis-
essential theory remain, if the assumption with which

58 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

we are to begin were either dropped altogether or
fundamentally changed. And there is every reason
for doing so, since the assumption is itself unessential,
is merely accepted as apparently self-evident, and
' is not established, by his theory itself, in the form from
which Kant began. In philosophy, to start from a
mere presupposition is to raise a standing objection
against the validity of the result ; but to leave that
presupposition unexplained or refuted, is in a sense
the argumentum ad absurdum of the presupposition.
Now the step taken by the immediate successors of
Kant, and more especially by Hegel, was essentially
this. They refused to admit Kant's assumption,
and if, as with Hegel, a logical starting-point was
accepted, that starting-point was one which found
- its explanation in the theory itself.

Other It is important to notice that it matters little

dualism: what form the initial dualism assumes, the same
Locke. effect is seen in the resulting theory of knowledge
which we have found in Kant's case. Locke, to
refer to him in this connexion, likewise starts his
epistemology from a dualistic presupposition. His
analysis is more "empirical" than Kant's, his view
The of knowledge more mechanical. Knowledge is the
Know f resu ^ f tne interplay of things with the mind
ledge. or spiritual substance. The two substances act and
react on each other. In that sense reality exerts a
more controlling influence on the course of know-
ledge in Locke's argument. But the ultimate issue
is again in all essential respects the same as in
the case of Kant. Locke l is sure of the content of
experience so far as consciousness is concerned, and
hands over to the subject-substance as much of the

1 In Book II. of the Essay.

ii LOCKE ON KNOWLEDGE 59

thing- substance as he possibly can. But being
restrained in so doing by the latter, he divides the
content of experience between the two. And he Secondary
does this in quite an arbitrary way. One part hef mary
assigns to the subject, and calls this " the secondary qualities,
qualities " ; the other part he assigns to the thing,
and names this "primary qualities." Yet they are
both cognisable, i.e. they both fall within the sweep
of the ideal life of the subject. To make the original
opposition still significant he must, therefore, assign
something to the thing-substance which can find no
part or lot in the life of the subject. But, since he
has already taken up so much content, indeed all the
content he can think of, there is nothing intelligible
at all left remaining for the thing-substance. This
he naively acknowledges ; for, he says, the thing is
by itself merely the "something, we know not what"
underlying these primary qualities, an unknown
entity, which does not in point of fact really enter
into experience at all. In other words, the thing-
substance, at the opposite pole of the antithesis from
the subject -substance, is for Locke a mere caput
mortuum. So far as actual experience goes, it is
quite ineffective, a beyond with which experience
has in itself no concern. Its only character is that
it does not enter into the ideal world of knowledge.
This is the result arrived at, and we may say
the only result possible, in Locke's analysis of know-
ledge in Book II. of the Essay. When he does The
face the exact nature of existence in Book IV.
(since somehow he must give an account of the
actual relation of knowledge to that which by
assumption is opposed to knowledge), the result
merely brings out the difficulty of making the relation

6o DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

between knowledge and existence at once con-
sistent with the meaning he gives to knowledge,
and with the need of preserving that existence by
which knowledge is bounded from the start. There,
in Book IV., we find that existence is always an
external existence, and our cognitive relation to it
is at some point necessarily contingent, i.e. external.
Existence is in three kinds, that of the Self, God, and
Things, corresponding, we note in passing, pretty
closely to the content of Kant's ideas of reason. 1
Each appeals to and appears in knowledge in a
different way. The one, Self, is immediately certain
only ; it is as such outside knowledge, but is directly
present to it at a certain point. In other words, it
is an immediate but inexplicable and unexplained
fact, not built into the structure of thinking, but
simply there, and so is a limit to denial. What it is,
cannot be shown, how it is, still less so. It adds
nothing to its content ; it is simply a naked fact,
known by a bare act of certitude. God, again, is an
existence demonstrable by successive acts, each of
which is self-evident, the starting-point being the
immediately certain existence of the subject. The
content of God's nature is gathered from common
thought and handed over to the fact of his existence
gratuitously. Because God's existence is an indi-
vidual fact external to the individual mind and
yet demonstrable, the demonstration of God's
existence is peculiar in kind and distinct from any
other demonstration. For all other demonstration
deals with universal truth, which in Locke's view is
abstract and therefore not real, because the real is

1 That Locke should have divided the reality opposed to knowledge thus
is in itself remarkable.

ii LOCKE'S RESULT 61

essentially individual. So that we have to accept
the external existence of Supreme Reality after a
unique process of mind has brought it to our know-
ledge. If this is not done the existence remains
ever beyond knowledge. But when it is done we
have to allow that a process of demonstration
which holds of universal experience can yet give
a conclusion which is essentially individual. The
externality of the result arrived at is thus made
evident by the very contingency of the method
of achieving it. While as to the last form of
existence (Things) they are only found in the
special acts of sense activity, and at the points
of time to which these acts refer and are opera-
tive. Outside these acts the existence of things
has no significance ; at most it is a " probability."
In other words, the existence of things is essentially
external to the knowing subject, for the knowledge
of it is contingently dependent on the operation,
and, moreover, the success/id operation, of sense
activity, which varies from point to point, from
time to time, and from mind to mind.

Apart from the question of actual consistency Result
between these results and those arrived at in the ^! 16 . .

analysis in

analysis of Book II., we can see that in effect Books n.
the ultimate issue is much the same in the two ar
books. The difference which at first sight appears
to exist is due to the way in which the discussion is
carried on. In Book II. Locke is dealing primarily
with knowledge and its content; in Book IV.
primarily with existence and its relation to knowledge.
The assumption in both cases is the same, viz. the
dualism of knowing-substance and thing-substance.
In the former discussion, therefore, when he is

62 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

dealing with knowledge, emphasis is laid on the
kinds of ideas, on the content of knowledge, and by
the analysis of them the thing-substance is dissolved
as far as he can into ideas. The remainder is
necessarily a mere "we know not what," and this
is handed over to the thing- substance! In the
latter discussion (Book IV.) the weight of his
argument rests on the thing - substance (Reality,
Existence). As much stress as possible is laid
on it, and knowledge is brought as closely into
touch with it as it can come. That is the point of
the emphasis on "immediacy" in Book IV., there
being a special virtue for Locke in " immediate "
" certainties," because by them we touch consciously
an external existence. Where knowledge fails,
existence still remains, and hence knowledge in its
turn now becomes contingent : its pronouncements
regarding existence are no more than "probable"
Probability, of course, implies some ground or resting-
place, and that is found, in Book IV., on the other
side of the antithesis, viz. in existence. In the former
analysis in Book II., therefore, the thing- sub stance
as such becomes so far emptied of meaning as to
be unknown ; in the other (Book IV.) the thinking-
substance as such becomes so far valueless that its
functions are mere probabilities. In the one, the
thing becomes uncertain from the point of view of
knowledge ; in the other, knowledge becomes uncer-
tain from the point of view of existence. Thus the
issue in both cases is for all ultimate purposes the
same. And the issue in both cases is inevitable,
for the dualism is there to start with, and must be
maintained. We can arrive at it or deal with it
either by starting from the one side or the other.

ii LOCKE AND BERKELEY 63

If we start from one side and take it as primary,
it necessarily follows that the other is secondary,
just because it is external to start with. And its
externality is just expressed in the result that the
other can never be completely identified with it. The
result is most clearly seen precisely when we consider
the bounds of the antithesis, i.e. when we ask what
there is beyond knowledge on the one side, and what
of knowledge is left beyond existence on the other.
The one gives us a thing emptied of content, the
other a knowledge emptied of value.

It is very significant thus to note how closely the Locke and
result of Locke's analysis resembles that of Kant. Kant '
Apart from subtleties of method and penetration of
inquiry, the issue in both cases is in all essential
respects the same, and for the same reason. Both
start from the same assumption which lies outside
the process of their analysis, and yet has to be in
some sense admitted into its result, because it directs
the argument as an underlying presupposition. It
was therefore with some good reason that Hegel
described Kant's theory as another expression of
Lockeanism.

It is singularly interesting to observe how the Berkeley.
correction of Locke's argument took almost an
exactly similar line to that adopted by Kant's suc-
cessors. Berkeley's view of knowledge consists just
in denying the necessity for the unknown substratum
of the thing-substance, and in seeking to show how
it was possible to make cognitive experience intel-
ligible without it. That is, just as Kant's critical
successors dropped the thing per se, so Berkeley
dropped the absolutely unqualified, unknown, thing-
substance. Each accepted, the preceding analysis

64 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

of knowledge ; both refused to accept the dualism
within which it worked ; it was an inadmissible and
unnecessary assumption. In both cases, therefore,
the development was in an idealistic direction.
The difference between the ultimate result of the
development in the two cases was due to the kind of
idealism which was made possible by the implicitly
individualistic or psychological view of knowledge
given by Locke on the one side, and the implicitly
universalistic view of knowledge established by Kant
on the other. Locke's theory held of individual
experience primarily, and Berkeley's idealism was
in consequence Subjective Idealism ; Kant's theory
emphasised universal experience primarily, and
Hegel's idealism was in consequence Objective or
Absolute Idealism.

Result. Now if we seem compelled, in view of the

results to which any naive dualism of the kind just
considered inevitably leads, to give up such an
assumption as the starting-point of an interpretation
of the nature and possibilities of knowledge, a number
of important conclusions follow at once. These we
may state by way of introducing the real nature of
the problem to be discussed. To begin with, it will
be necessary to admit a change in the conception of
truth altogether. On any dualistic presupposition

i. Truth, truth must mean some kind of "agreement" between
the opposed factors, which though opposed come into
some relation. This relation is generally spoken of
as a reference of ideas to a reality beyond ideas, the
reference being an act on the side of the knowing
subject. Such a reference carries with it necessarily
the conception of a real, external in some sense,
and remaining external always. Since knowledge

ii THE CHANGED QUESTION 65

consists in such a reference, it is implied that on the
other side reality sustains the act of reference, i.e.
accepts what is referred as warranted by its own
nature and constitution. That is, reality refers back
to knowledge. Knowledge thus being a double-
sided reference, truth is simply an accurate reference
on the one side and an accepted reference on the
other. But this means that the two references
concur; or, as it is said, truth is an "agree-
ment" between knowledge (thinking) and reality.
"Agreement" implies a bargain by two parties,
and is ratified necessarily on both sides. But if, as
we have seen in the case of Kant, the "agreement"
in the long run falls inside the subject-activity alone,
and is found only there as a conscious fact, the other
side being essentially beyond, falling outside, then the
very idea of an " agreement " must be given up ; for
an agreement has no meaning where only one side
can act, where the other side is merely independent
and remains so. Some other conception of truth,
then, must be found and accepted at the very start. 1
Again, for similar reasons, " reality " in the dualistic Reality.
sense cannot be spoken of as furnishing the standard
of accuracy for knowledge. Reality is held to
supply a check which can be put upon the pro-
cess of thinking ; it is what holds knowledge
within certain bounds. It constrains the order
of ideas in knowing. It is that to which thought
" appeals " for the verification of connexions amongst
ideas. It alone can secure or warrant the necessity
which must characterise determinate thought-con-
structions. All such phrases imply the same

1 For a very concise and convincing argument against the "agreement"
conception of truth, cp. Joachim, On the Nature of Truth, c. I.

F

66 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

dualism referred to and the same view of truth.
But if the necessity is determined by the thinking
subject, as Kant shows, if its significance is found
in relation to a possible experience, i.e. an ideal
system of connected conscious elements, then the
appeal to any standard beyond knowledge is mean-
ingless ; for this is both inoperative and inherently
useless. Besides this, the supposition that what is
for ever beyond knowledge can itself control the
order of ideas in a sphere (i.e. the subject's-experience)
outside itself, a sphere which is self- complete by
hypothesis such a supposition is in itself unintel-
ligible. This is made still more evident when the
term " reality " is found to have no one definite
meaning, but to vary with the attitude of the subject
thinking to be one thing in Perception, another in
Understanding, etc. The one "reality" which is to
form the standard, and which is not any of these
specific types of reality, is inevitably, as in the
hands of Kant and Locke it became, a mere
residuum ; and that surely cannot control the course
of the ideas of any subject.

Connected with this view of truth is another prin-
ciple which must likewise be surrendered or modified,
ii. Reality It lies in the nature of an agreement between thought
Thou ht an< ^ reality, that reality, while it can make an agree-
ment, yet has a nature of its own outside this agree-
ment. This must always be the case so long as
agreements are made, and since truth is all that
knowledge achieves and aims at, and since truth con-
sists in such agreements, endless in form and number,
there must always remain a nature peculiar to reality
in order to make such agreements possible. This
nature, therefore, can by no process of knowledge

ii REALITY AND THOUGHT 67

whatsoever be exhausted, otherwise knowledge
itself would cease to exist, for then there would be
nothing to make the agreements which it strives to
attain. This position finds expression in the view
that "reality is richer than thought," to take Lotze's
statement of it ; or that knowledge is unequal to
reality, to use Bradley 's conception of the same
position ; or that beyond the bounds of knowledge
there is a sphere of " faith," to take Kant's interpre-
tation of the same situation. All these expressions
are based, in the long run, on the same principle of
thoughts referring to a real somehow beyond them-
selves. But if reality is in any sense beyond
knowledge it is of no importance where, in the
history of knowledge, the separation is made. To
make knowledge bear an essentially asymptotic
relation to reality is in principle precisely the same
as to separate knowledge and reality absolutely from
the start. The only difference is that the former puts
the separation far away at infinity, " reality cannot
be exhausted by thought " ; the latter plants it down
at our feet, " reality is outside knowledge. " But this
is a difference which is unimportant and meaning-
less : unimportant, since in both cases reality is be-
yond us, and the question of " when " it comes to
be so does not concern knowledge : meaningless,
since in both cases we can never say when knowledge
actually has failed ; the beyond is always a beyond in
either case. The position just referred to is therefore
rooted in dualism, in spite of the apparent conces-
sion of the worth of knowledge up to a certain point.
For it must accept the alternative ; either knowledge
does give the nature of reality, in which case the
question of amount and the time it takes to exhaust

68 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

it is of no significance, since the nature of reality is
explicitly known and implicitly cognisable ; or there
is at the outset a fundamental cleavage between the
two, in which case at no point does knowledge give
reality. This view, then, must likewise be modified
or given up.

If once more reality is not in any sense essentially
in. beyond knowledge, if dualism is abandoned, the
Limits. inquiry into the nature of knowledge cannot take the
form of asking "what are the limits of knowledge,"
"under what conditions does it work," "what is the
relation between thought and reality." For know-
ledge must in some way determine its own conditions,
i.e. must be a self-contained experience. The limits
of knowledge must mean not what lies beyond the
reach of knowledge, what lies outside knowledge when
it has exhausted its utmost resources, but within
what range does a specific form of knowledge hold
good ? ; how do the modes of knowledge limit one
another? ; for knowledge can be limited by nothing
but knowledge. The relation of thought to reality
cannot any longer mean, when does thinking stop and
reality begin? ; how is the sphere of thought adjusted
to a reality outside itself ? The very form of such a
question is due to a kind of comparison between think-
ing on the one side and a real on the other. But such
a comparison is itself impossible without thinking,
and without an identity containing the factors com-
pared. The question, so far as it has a meaning,
is really due to comparing one sphere of thinking
experience with an object belonging to another.
In point of fact, it is mainly due to comparing con-
ceptual thought with the object-world of perceptual
knowledge. Clearly these are separate ; but they

ii THE NEW PROBLEM 69

are only separate inside knowing-experience itself,
as modes of conscious activity. The comparison,
therefore, is a relation of one form of knowing-
experience to another. Hence if the comparison
implies that conceptual activity, as such, is cut off
from all the real, and related to it in some strange
way externally, then it falls into error. Conceptual
thinking has an object world of its own, a real of its
own the world of conceptions ; just as perception
has an object of its own the world of "things."
At no point is thinking divorced from its object,
and hence to speak of an external relation between
thought and reality either has no valid meaning
at all, or else it means the relation of one mode of
conscious experience to another.

Where, then, shall we start the problem of the The new
interpretation of knowledge? If we drop all pre-
suppositions which would condition the nature of
knowledge externally, and, at the same time, if we are
not to inquire into one particular kind of knowledge
(e.g. Perception), nor into a particular sort of relation
amongst forms of knowledge (e.g. between Percep-
tion and Conception), then we can only start from
the fact of the activity of knowledge in general on
the one side, and of a purpose or end arrived at by
knowledge on the other. These are the simplest ele-
ments or factors in the problem as to what knowledge
is and how it proceeds. Without these there would
not be the experience we call knowledge at all. For
knowledge does aim at something, has some purpose,
because it is a human activity ; and that knowledge,
as a conscious experience, exists, not even the most
daring scepticism can deny. But granting this
and this only, then the problem of understanding

70 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

knowledge consists in finding out simply how these
two factors are related. What precisely is it that
knowledge actually aims at ? where does it reach
its goal ? and how does it get to that end ? 1

Observe the generality of the problem. Know-
ledge is found in many forms, but all are forms of
the same attitude, and hence must, in a general
inquiry into knowledge, get consideration. Too
often a different view has been taken of the
other question regarding the nature of knowledge. Some-
tne inquiry is limited simply to the discus-

ofthe sion of the so-called "perception of the external
world." This is in the main what Berkeley, Locke,
and Hume were thinking of when they raised the
problem of knowledge, and we can see how their
form of the question affected Kant. In a way this
seems always to have been thought to be in a
peculiar sense epistemology proper. At other times,
again, the discussion has gathered round the analysis
of the elements and relations of conceptual know-
ledge. Here it has been supposed that we are in
a region away from Perception altogether ; that
we have a world by itself following its own laws
and modes of procedure, so much so that in its
extreme form it is said we hardly need think of
any world of perceptual reality at all. Know-
ledge so treated has been the subject-matter of
the Logicians. Logic had to deal with this sphere
primarily, because here primarily we get "reasoning." 2
This discussion, no doubt, was not always spoken
of as epistemology, because concepts were taken

1 To answer that question is in part the purpose of Hegel's Phenomenology
of Mind.

2 Reasoning, the highest expression of conceptual knowledge, has been in
such a case taken for the whole of it.

ii LOGIC 71

without any necessary filling from Perception, or
from any other form of knowing experience, and
the question of their worth as conveying truth
regarding experience could not therefore readily
arise. The more " empty " they were the better
for the discussion of them ; and hence the form of
such a discussion gradually drifts into the purely
abstract and symbolical treatment of thought which
we find current in so-called Formal or Symbolic
Logic. Reality comes in, if at all, by applying the
results of " reasoning " to any special " universe of
discourse." l When some reference to " truth " and
"experience " is introduced by way of reaction from
this highly abstract and very one-sided view of
thought, the discussions of Logic start from the
nature of Judgment, whose meaning it is the busi-
ness of Logic to develop. In judgment, it is held,
reality is always implied, and hence stress is laid on
the act of so-called " reference to the real " immanent
in judgment. The point of agreement between this
view of Logic and the other is the divorce both
make between "ideas" and "reality." The point
of divergence lies in the insistence, in the second
case, on the worth of ideas as conveying the actual
meaning of the real. But the real, for this second
type of Logic, is nevertheless what lies beyond
ideas so conceived. Hence we get the ambiguous
position that, on the one hand, ideas refer to the
real as an " immediate," the immediate of perceptual
experience; and, on the other, that reality as such
is, not immediacy, but the " ultimate subject " of

1 It seems fair to say that this treatment of thought by "formal logic" is
historically to a large extent responsible for the problem of the "relation
of thought to reality. "

72 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

all experience, what is beyond the immediate, an
indefinite and indeterminate extension of it. In
other words, we are immediately in touch with
reality, and yet reality is mediately " constructed " by
us. This view of Logic is current in the more recent
developments of Logic. 1 It is clear how closely it is
allied to epistemology, for it deals with the nature
of concrete knowledge, knowledge, namely, as this
appears in judgment. But the limits of its con-
ception of knowledge necessarily make it rather an
interpretation of science and scientific procedure
than of knowledge in general. 2 Hence it is that the
only kind of immediate referred to by ideas is the
immediate of external perception, perception of
things as parts of "nature," a limitation of the
range of immediacy which is quite misleading if left
unexpressed.

If, therefore, we are not to discuss simply one mode

of knowledge, and if we refuse to take any one form

as exclusively knowledge, it is manifest that we must

widen our conception of the nature of epistemology

and alter our problem. Not one, but all forms of

The new knowledge will be considered. Wherever we can be

hstha : sa *d to know, be the object what it may, that will fall

acter. under the scope of the inquiry. But this means that

the problem embraces every way of being conscious of

an object. For at the very least it will be admitted

that in all conscious human experience there is a

somewhat present to consciousness to make that

1 It is the view found in Lotze and Bradley, and to a less extent in
Bosanquet.

a It is interesting to notice that the discussion of other forms of knowledge,
e.g. Sensation, or again Morality, is handed over to different kinds of analysis.
For that reason this view of Logic is not really epistemology proper. It is less
so than even Mill's Logic, which does discuss the " Logic of the Moral Sciences."

ii KNOWLEDGE IS EXPERIENCE 73

experience possible, whether the somewhat be a
spot of colour, a planet, a human soul, or the
universe. But the presence of somewhat to con-
sciousness is exactly what knowledge in its widest
and most complete sense really means. It is not
necessary that the two should be clearly and con-
sciously distinguished by a given individual ; this
is irrelevant. If it were necessary, then much of
what passes for knowledge, even in popular speech,
would have to be rejected. These, then, are the lowest
terms in which all knowledge can be described,
and when so described knowledge and conscious
experience are, strictly speaking, co-extensive. It is
impossible to draw hard and fast lines across experi-
ence and arbitrarily say, here is " knowledge," there
is "perception," that is " morality," this in "instinct,"
the other is " intuition," and so on. For in all these
cases one and the same fact is found, a somewhat of
which mind is conscious ; and literally that is all there
is to find in each case. But to be conscious of some-
what is surely knowledge. The precise relation,
which merely determines the special kind of know-
ledge, does not alter the fundamental fact of its
being knowledge. To isolate one form of such
relation and speak of it as exclusively "knowledge"
is unwarranted, if that which makes " knowledge " a
form of experience is exactly the same as we find in
other forms of experience. Thus to say that " know-
ledge " is exclusively confined to statements, to what
can be expressed in words, is not even in agreement
with current acceptations of the term, where we
regard much knowledge as being immediate, and
both incapable of being spoken, and unnecessary to
be expressed. So when it is held that knowledge

74 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

implies a distinction of ideas from things, we are
confronted with the fact that in sense -experience
there is no such distinction; and yet we are "dis-
tinctly aware," i.e. we know, through Sense.
Anobjec- It may be said that such a view would confound
knowledge and conation. In "will," as seen in
Morality, it may be held, we have surely something
different from knowledge, although in "will" also there
is a somewhat for consciousness. In fact, the relation
of something to consciousness, we might say, tells us
nothing of the kind of relation, whether it be one of
action or observation, and cannot be named know-
ledge, which, it might be held, is only one form of
that relation. But to that the reply seems sufficient,
(i) that conation in the sense of activity is certainly
present in "knowing" itself, whatever meaning we
give the term ; yet this does not alter our view that
it is knowledge : and (2) in conation (e.g. in the
case of Morality) there is surely knowledge even
in the narrowest sense ; for we are conscious of
objects.

The truth is that in two ways such an objection to
the idealistic interpretation is mistaken. The objec-
tion is raised from the side of psychology only, where
we have in view simply the processes of individual
(i) The mind taken subjectively, and deal with the elements
fogicaT or factors which compose the immediate experiences
analysis o f a subject, and the distinctive attitudes it can take

not an . . . . ,

"expiana-up in its varied experience. from this point ot
view certainly knowledge and conation must be
distinguished. They are generically different phases
of conscious life. But the psychological point of
view is confessedly limited in various ways, in this
way amongst others that it deals solely with the

ii PSYCHOLOGICAL OBJECTION 75

conscious individual life, as a finite unit, and does
not transcend the immediate conditions of that life.
Now even the individual in his actual experience
is not to be fully understood merely from his subjec-
tive side. We cannot by resolving his individual
experience into its ultimate elements and conditions
thereby state the full meaning and content of that
life itself. By resolving a tree into its chemical and
physical constituents and conditions we could not
describe the configuration, the actions, and reactions
which make up its concrete life -history, make up
the full meaning of the tree as it is in itself, and in
relation to others. Hence, for this reason alone, an
objection to a more full and concrete interpretation
of the individual's experience cannot be legitimate if
based on an expressly one-sided and abstract position.
The real individual who lives and moves through-
out his experience has not simply a subjective side
but an objective as well, and at the same time.
But if this be so, then it is not simply one of the
elements of conscious life which is operative now
at one stage of that experience, and another at
another. The self as a unit operates with all its
" ultimate elements " at once, and must do so just
because they are its ultimate elements. Thus in
concrete life we find that actual knowing implies
conation in the psychological sense, actual conation
implies knowing in the psychological sense. Since
these are in concrete experience indissoluble,
it is irrelevant to speak of an interpretation of
concrete experience identifying the two. They
are themselves identified and must be so treated.
Hence we may psychologically look at, e.g., Percep-
tion, either as a manifestation of the conative activity

76 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

of a subject or as presentation ; but in concrete
experience it is both at once. And the only general
expression for that experience is to say that there is
in Perception a somewhat for a consciousness, or
there is consciousness of something. This general
form of awareness characterises all possible modes
of the life-history of the concrete individual, from
the Perception of a tree to the realisation of a Moral
Order, or the Life of Religion. Now to be aware of
anything is, in the widest as well as in the narrowest
sense, to know. Hence the experience of the in-
dividual, which just consists in all the forms of being
aware of something, is to be regarded as consisting
in modes of knowing. The object or the somewhat
may vary according to the plane of experience ; but
there must always be an object and a subject to
make it an object, and for which the object is.
Whether we use the term " experience " or the
term "know" is thus indifferent.

What makes the term " know " seem insufficient is
Reason the fact that in knowing we have in general the object
objection, primarily in view, and not the subject who knows.
The scientist, e.g., does not think about himself at
all in knowing ; he is absorbed in his object, and
tries indeed, as he says, to eliminate the subjective
factor altogether. He, qua scientist, occupies a
trans-subjective or "impersonal" attitude, what has
been called the point of view of " universal
experience." In other forms of activity, however,
this attitude is not deliberately taken up ; the
subjective factor consciously remains a determining
element in the experience. This is seen, e.g., in
Perceiving, or again in Morality and Religion.
Hence the reluctance to admit that a term which is

ii QUESTION TO BE ANSWERED 77

generally appropriated for a mode where the subject -f
is consciously suppressed, should be applied also to
cases where it is consciously emphasised. But it ^
is our whole contention a legitimate contention
that in Science, no less than in every mode of
experience, the subject is operative and cannot be '
eliminated, 1 and that what we have in Science is
merely one special form of the experience of mind.
And thus the " scientific mood " stands, qua ex- ,
perience, on the same footing as all other modes.

The other reason in defence of this more (2) Psy-
general use of the term knowledge, is that con- n o w f n g a
scious awareness is wider than both knowledge and and willing

i 11-1 ' T impty a

conation in the narrow psychological sense. It is wider
wider because it contains both as moments or factors. consc . lous

principle.

It is conscious awareness of content so conceived
that we are dealing with, because this is the con-
sciousness operating throughout experience. Hence
it is inaccurate to assert that we are ignoring one
of those factors by using an expression which
necessarily must contain them both.

We have to take, then, all the forms of awareness, Meaning
of consciousness of something, which make up what
we call our experience. No one is taken to the
exclusion of the other ; all modes of experience
must find a place in it. The question is, What
does the interpretation of knowledge so considered
mean ? how is the significance of knowledge so
understood to be arrived at? If we ask this ques-
tion about any one mode, the answer is to be found
in the actual procedure of the form of knowledge

1 This, indeed, is very evident even to the scientist himself. The existence
of the " personal equation " in Science, the possibility of error in observation
and calculation and assumption, the doubt or, again, the satisfaction and con-
fidence in the final result all testify unmistakably to the subjective factor.

78 DUALISM & THE NEW PROBLEM CH.

itself. Thus, in the case of " perceiving," when
we seek to find out the nature or meaning of Per-
ception, we seek to state the " truth " about percep-
tual experience. This means that when Perception
attains its highest expression, its essential end, we
f have its real nature. Its truth does not lie outside

- it, nor in its constituent conditions (psychological,
physiological, etc.). It is a mode of knowledge,

- and its truth is the end which constrains or
' controls the process of perceiving. It is this end^

which imparts to Perception the necessity which
characterises it as a mode of knowing, for it is to
this it must proceed in order to be Perception. Its
. truth in that sense lies within its very process and
determines it. So of any other mode of knowledge.
And this is the way by which we are to find out the
real meaning of all the modes in which knowledge
appears, and which make up the mind's experience.
Instead of taking one mode, we are here to take
% all the modes together. These are simply diverse
forms in which that fundamental relation of aware-

- ness of a somewhat, which constitutes having ex-
perience, appears. The mind, we may put it, in
experience, when looked at as a whole, is aware of
a somewhat in general, a continuum of objectivity,
which gets differentiated into specific objects, or
"somewhats," according to the kind or plane of
experience, Perception, Science, Morality, etc. 1 To
interpret this general relation as such is exactly
the same problem in principle as to interpret the
meaning of any specific mode of knowing. And just

1 Or, again, we may state the same position by saying that to the one con-

- tinuum of objectivity the one continuum of mind gets differentiated into a
\ variety of specifically distinct conscious attitudes.

ii NECESSITY IN KNOWLEDGE 79

as in the latter case we find the solution in determin-^
ing the ideal or end aimed _at, which controls, the
'relation _between mind and its particular object, so
we find the interpretation of the whole process by
showing what is the ideal aimed at and implied in
all the forms of knowledge, and how and where ^
that ideal is realised. There is only one such ideal,
for it is the consciousness of one and the same
individual in which there is experience. And it
must be operative throughout all the forms of its
experience. The question as to how is precisely
the question as to the method of carrying out this
interpretation.

Here, then, is the significance of the new inter- Necessity
pretation of knowledge. What gives necessity to ^^^
knowledge is not, as dualism holds, some external End -
constraining force exerted by a so-called world
beyond the mind, a world of things, which controls
the order of our subjective ideas. The necessity is
to be found only in what is inherent _in_ _the_yery
essence of knowledge- itself. But that is just the
end or ideal at which knowledge aims, and which it
expresses by its process. The meaning, in other
words, is to be looked for in what is immanent in
knowledge, not what is transcendent. Necessity
there must be, and necessity is a controlling force.
It implies a contrast between what is and what
must be, between a fact and a law, a part and a
whole, a datum and an ideal. .That is all it means
in the last resort. The controlling force in con-
sciousness can only be a conscious Ideal.

CHAPTER III

TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE

The ideal: THE whole stress of the interpretation here rests on

meaning. t ^ ie character of this Ideal. An ideal is, in any

sense, within the limits to which it applies, the

completest unity in the greatest diversity. Thus

an " ideal " of scientific interpretation in the case,

say, of any mechanical system, is one in which we

have a principle regulating or controlling all the

elements, and combinations of these, which make

up the constituent parts of that system. So of

a moral or artistic " ideal " in given relevant cases.

In regard to consciousness of objects, the ideal

will also be that in which we have the deepest

unity with the richest diversity. The diversity

here lies in the two elements distinguished, viz.

consciousness and a somewhat or objects. The

unity is just the presence of the one in and to the

other. The object is not external, nor is it internal ;

for these terms imply a connotation quite alien to

. the character of knowledge, and are in fact the

r creation of experience itself. Nor is the unity one

^ of interaction, for here again we have a mechanical,

and to that extent an external relationship. The

. unity is one in which consciousness only exists in

* and through the object, and the object only in and

80

in UNITY OF SUBJECT AND OBJECT 81

for consciousness. So much is this the case that
we can, and do in actual life, consider one side
as if it were the whole unity. This is what we
find, on the one hand, e.g., in scientific inquiry, in
generalisation, or even classification, when it is
said "we must eliminate the subject altogether, the
object alone is what we have to keep in mind."
On the other hand, when, e.g., in mathematical
analysis, we are said to carry on the process merely
"in our minds" and then "apply" the result to so-
called objective facts, such as motion, here again
one side stands for the whole experience. The
reason for such apparently contrary views is just
the completeness of the identity of subject and -
object in knowledge. The distinction of subject
and object is experience broken up into its diver-
sity ; the active relation of the two, however it
appears, is experience in its unity, withdrawn to its
identity. But neither the diversity nor the unity
has any significance without the other.

The ideal, then, for this consciousness aware of Form of
an object is to be found at that level or mode of 1
experience where mind as subject has its self as
a whole consciously before it, not implied, but
actually expressed. Or, put otherwise, it is the
form where the object is the mind itself; it is that
identity which does not merely make its diversity
"possible" but is its expressed content. And
this is the ideal, because this has been implied
all along. It is not an absolutely new mode of
experience. It is the mode which appears when
that is attained explicitly which was always present
implicitly ; for, as we saw just now, subject only
is in its object. It finds itself there ; while the

G

82 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE CH.

object is only through a subject. We have, there-
fore, merely to get those two sides absolutely
transparent to each other, completely fused as a
. conscious fact, and we have the ideal for all forms

of conscious experience.

Content Now it is clear that such an ideal will be unable
to st P short of a complete mind and a complete
' object. It will not be found in the consciousness of
a special object, a particular object, such as we have
in the consciousness, say, of a " thing " or the world of
" society." These are partial ; there always remains
something outside any one of them ; for they always
remain outside, i.e. different from, one another.
They are, looked at in one way, merely modifica-
tions or specific modes of the one complete objective

continuum which faces consciousness as a whole. 1
Mind in its unity as a whole is aware of objec-
tivity as a whole; "things," "events," "persons,"
etc., are just elements in this continuum, to each of

. which mind takes up a specifically different atti-
tude. Thus the mind's unity as such is not, in the
long run, satisfied by anything short of the whole,
the reason being that only then is its unity com-
pletely found or expressed. But if its unity is com-
pletely found in the whole, there is no distinction

between itself and the whole. The whole is its
unity ; its self is there in its fulness. If the self
only finds itself in its object, it finds its completest
self, its full unity, in the completest object. Or, the
ideal is found when the self is consciously the
objective totality, of which the specific objects of
detailed experience are but parts or elements. In

1 Looked at in another way they are specific attitudes of the one continuous

unity of the subject of all experience.

in THE IDEAL IMPLICIT AT FIRST 83

this ideal mind answers to mind consciously and
completely. This means, to use the familiar phrase,
that mind is satisfied when its object is the Absolute,
and that Absolute is mind. The ideal of experience
is the complete and conscious unity of the subject
with a conscious Absolute.

The importance of such an ideal lies not so much its sig-
in its being a definite mode of experience. It is ni
that. But it is the condition which makes real any \
mode of knowledge whatsoever. It is the logical \\ *
ground of the awareness of anything, even of the
lowest form of awareness. Experience in all its
forms starts with the distinction of consciousness
from objectivity. That distinction is from the first t
implicitly a distinction of mind from itself, and
therefore finds its completion in becoming conscious
that it is so. But explicitly it appears to begin with
as a contrast between mind and objects in general.
How that contrast comes about is a question for that
study which deals with the growth and evolution of
the life of mind. 1 There it is shown that mind
begins in somatic and soul life with its various
qualities. We then have merely a relation of soul
to environment, the soul being one item in the
complex whole of " nature." Only with the dawn of
consciousness does mind begin to be actualised, for
only then does it become aware of its distinction
from the whole. Only at this stage can it have
"experience," can there be "experience" at all.

Experience proper, therefore, begins at that
level of the mind's life where consciousness starts,
for experience means conscious relation to some-
thing ; and with the rise of consciousness comes an

1 This is in part the business of Psychology, whether rational or empirical.

84 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE CH.

object of which mind is conscious, that from which
mind is distinguished. Ultimately, of course, what
consciousness is aware of is the whole of objec-
tivity, which stretches from the immediate present
or focus of consciousness without break to the
totality of objective content. In a sense this whole
is there to start with, for soul becomes mind by
distinction from the whole with which it was
formerly (in soul life) fused. But the whole is at
first explicitly just an immediate whole, that whole
nearest to soul life the life of sense. Hence, as
we shall see, the first stage of experience is sense-
experience. 1 But the whole is for the most part
implicit in the first stage of experience. Being
implicit it forces experience to develop ; and that
creates the "course" of experience. The first form of
an object being "external," inadequate, shot through
with diversity, a development of experience is
demanded to get that unity it really wants, and which
was there from the start of consciousness. Experi-
ence, it may be said, is the great venture of the Spirit
to try to accomplish by its own history, and at its own
level, what is done for soul by the "course of nature."
It is the Spirit's voyage of discovery to find its own
meaning ; the falling of the world in sunder to be
fused by the white heat of thought and spiritual
toil for freedom. Freedom is the goal of the life-
history of experience ; it is there we have at the
higher level of the sphere of Spirit what we had
at the level of soul life. For the distinction re-
ferred to has arisen within finite mind ; and its
having arisen is just the proof of its finitude. To
establish finite consciousness and create such a

1 Cp. Adamson, Lectures, vol. i. p. 290 ff.

in IDEAL OF EXPERIENCE 85

distinction mean the same thing. But that by which
it arose is that in which it finds its completion and
satisfaction ; for it is the unity out of which came
the diverse elements, conscious subject and an object.
Hence the ideal is not merely the goal towards
which the modes of knowledge point, but the
very principle which makes them what they are for
finite consciousness. It is that which makes them
essential modes, and which makes them modes at
all, i.e. forms of experience, of a unity of the diverse
elements, subject and object. Thus to show that
the modes of knowledge have their complete realis-
ation in this ideal is both to prove that Absolute i.
Mind is that in which the nature of knowledge is
satisfied, and also that which makes all modes of "
knowledge at once possible and valid. It is the
ground as well as the goal of all truth whatsoever.

We see at once in all this the character of the
change which has come over Kant's problem.

To begin with Kant considered knowledge to be Kant's
an affair between an individual mind and an in- pos
dividual object. Now this, of course, is in a sense
true, but only in a very limited sense. The mind is
consciously aware for the most part of one object in
every act of knowledge, and hence the conceptions
etc., which it employs, appear, so to say, one at a time,
and as occasion demands. But to regard this as the
whole truth is to confound the psychological process of
knowing, with the content of truth with which know-
ledge is concerned. For it confuses the act of atten-
tion, or the series of such acts, by which, certainly,
knowledge is carried on, with the content on which
mind is engaged. These acts are no doubt discrete,
but the consciousness of objects is continuous and

86 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE CH.

unbroken. The object engaging our mind at a
particular time is isolated, for selection involves
isolation, and attention implies selection. But just
because a content is selected, all the other content
of objectivity is implied, to some extent even con-
sciously, in every act of knowledge. Take, for
example, the knowledge of the sounds filling an
auditorium. We are thinking of, knowing, the
words which comprise these sounds, but we are also
aware of the size, colours, etc., of the room, and our
place in it and so on. The mind, in fact, is never
literally aware merely of what is at the focus of
attention, nor does knowledge consist simply in
such discrete separate acts. The mind is a centre
of varied relations to a whole of objectivity, for this
alone completes its purpose, and only in this as a
whole can it rest satisfied. Hence what we have
to consider in knowledge is not a single relation
of a mind to a single object, but of mind in its
unity to the total objectivity in which alone are

its purpose and nature completed. When this is
taken account of, we shall not take truth to be
realised in specifically different acts each complete

lin itself; nor shall we divorce the finite mind from
the complete whole in which it finds satisfac-
tion. For only in and through the whole is it truly
itself. From the point of view of the complete
interpretation of mind's knowledge, therefore, the

nature of the whole is logically prior to that of the
part, because it makes each phase of knowledge a
moment of the complete truth at which knowledge

in all its various forms aims. It is not, of course,
necessary that we should begin the interpretation
by stating in its entirety what this ideal contains.

in KANT'S VIEW OF NECESSITY 87

For a reason we shall see presently that is not *
essential. Nor is it possible to do so ; it would
mean beginning the interpretation by giving it in
its entirety at the start. But we can and must -
proceed in the light of that ideal.

From this again it will be seen what meaning " Neces-
must be attached to the idea of necessity in know- Kant's
ledge, an idea which played such a large part in view -
determining Kant's theory. For Kant necessity, if
it was to be found at all, had to be essentially a ) 7
priori, because the material of the objective world /
was somehow beyond coherent knowledge, and for ) <
that reason was contingent as regards it. Thus the
conceptions of " necessary knowledge " and " possible x
experience " were in Kant's theory strictly comple-
mentary conceptions. Necessity could only exist in
what was logically prior to experience ; and because
experience was logically posterior, it was, from the
point of view of self-consciousness, dependent, and
per se therefore contingent. This position is merely
another illustration of the dualism with which Kant
worked. Had "empirical contingency" referred to
the validity of a generalisation, e.g. in science, no
doubt the necessity would have been concrete ; it
would have been embedded in experience, even
though the necessity would then have been merely
relative. But Kant's necessity has no part nor lot
in experience at all : it is unconditioned necessity he '
refers to. This, however, can only hold good of the
pure conditions of experience. It is not concrete in
any sense ; it is purely abstract and formal. The
necessity holds only of the sphere determined by the
a priori grounds of experience. But what does
necessity in this case mean ? Necessity in its very

88 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE CH.

principle implies a relation between parts in a
whole. Nothing in particular can be necessary in
itself. Necessity holds between one thing and
something else. The relation may be expressed
hypothetically or otherwise, but a relation it must
be. Now for Kant the relation here in question is
one between the unity of the self and the idea of a
possible experience. Conceptions constitutive of
experience are the functions by which the manifold
is built into this unity. Their necessity lies in
their being the only way of securing the single
unity of the self when dealing with the varied
detail of sense. A " category " is that by which the
manifold can be part of the experience of a single
self. Hence since this is done by specifically
different functions (according to the kind of object),
each is necessary in exactly the same sense. And
each is necessary as it stands ; for on Kant's
view, as we saw, objects are known by separate
acts. Observe what that necessity amounts to.
It is strictly relative to a possibility, viz. a possible
experience. That possibility is purely abstract,
as abstract as the pure self for which it is a
possibility. It does not of itself constitute the
specific character of the conceptions or universals
which give necessity, any more than the pure ego.
Their special nature has therefore to be deter-
mined in other ways. In point of fact it is
determined quite fortuitously, either by the sugges-
tion of sense-facts, which give the hint, so to say,
what conception, i.e. what specific necessity, is
required in a given case ; or the conception is
'obtained by a gratuitous appeal to the structure
"of traditional thought or logical doctrine which, as

in NECESSITY IN EXPERIENCE 89

Kant himself confessed, he drew upon when arrang-
ing the list of his categories. The necessity, in
short, so far as of significance for the interpretation
of the nature of knowledge, is purely and simply of
a formal character, which tells nothing whatsoever
as to the concrete necessity which is alone of value -
in actual knowledge. When it becomes definite we
have to get its nature elsewhere. This is the inevit-
able result of Kant's dualistic assumption, where
at the very best necessity must be of a point by point
character, each special case of necessity being deter-
mined without conscious reference to the single
unity constituting the principle of necessity in every -
case. 1

Now on the above view the necessity in know- Necessity
ledge lies also in a relation ; it is a relation between ^ndTrise
the ideal aimed by all knowledge, and a given mode f rom the
of knowledge. It is the constraining influence of the
ideal which compels acceptance of the validity of a
given act or form of knowledge. It is not a com-
pelling force exerted externally on the course of the
mind's thoughts by a reality beyond knowledge ; -
nor again a controlling abstraction like that of
the unity of a possible experience. The necessity
must lie in the heart of knowledge itself; and
knowledge can only be controlled by an inward
principle when that principle is implicit in the -
very nature of knowledge. The necessity deter-
mining knowledge must then be immanent, not

1 Similarly in Kant's view of morality. Every duty is absolutely necessary,
and necessary to the same degree, because the necessity lies in formal agree- <-
ment with law in general. But when duties become concrete, their matter
comes from experience, which relatively to the law is contingent. The -
necessity of each law therefore stands by itself : there is no determination of -
laws from a central unity.

90 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE CH.

transcendent in any sense ; and that is found in
the contrast between what is potential and what
is actual, between what is a whole and what is
a part. Thus, e.g. in Perception, what compels
us to admit validity in an act of perceptual know-
ledge, such as "there is a tree," is the implicit
presence in that act of the essential unity of
mind and its object. The degree to which that
is realised varies in Perception, a fact seen, on
the one hand, in the vagaries and illusions of
Perception, and, on the other, in the incapacity of
perceptual knowledge, as a whole, to tell the com-
plete truth. But such necessity as it does have comes
from the one principle just stated. And the same is
true of the necessity inherent in scientific knowledge,
or again in a moral judgment. Every form has
necessity, in short, for the reason that in each the
ultimate unity of mind with its objective world is

- both asserted and implied.

This, again, indicates that necessity does not

Necessity require to mean exactly the same thing in all forms

form. 3 1 f knowledge, as Kant seemed to imply. We shall

find this more particularly when we consider the

method. Meantime, it is sufficient to observe here

that variation in the form of necessity lies in the

nature of the case. For if the principle at the root
of necessity is the unity of the whole self with the
object of which the self is aware, the very diversity
of the forms in which the life of the self appears
just means that there are different degrees in which
that unity is explicitly secured, or that it is implicit
to a greater extent in certain forms than in
others. That must be so, because they could not
be different forms on any other condition. Their

in DEGREES OF NECESSITY 91

having necessity at all lies in their nature as modes
of knowledge, and their being different implies a
difference in their necessity. This can be confirmed
by an appeal to everyday experience, though of
course such an appeal is not final for a systematic
interpretation of experience. Thus, for example, we
are familiar with the appeal men make from " prin-
ciples " or " conceptions of thought" to "actual
facts " belonging to Perception, an appeal which is
made in different ways according to the interest at
stake. At one time men will say, "let us give up
ideas and theories, and let us see what the facts
say " : meaning thereby that conceptual knowledge,
generalisation, etc., is looked at as either confusing
or contradictory, while the " facts " are steady and
manifest to the normal operation of Perception.
This appeal is made in spite of the transparent and
admitted truth that Perception is, of all mental pro-
cesses, perpetually open to error and liable to illusion
as is indirectly indicated in the precautions taken
for eliminating sources of error in observation. At
another time we find that just as readily men will,
in other circumstances of mental life, appeal from
"facts" to "conceptions," in those cases especially
where particular facts seem to make against a long-
accepted principle, or even a largely verified hypo-
thesis. Here, it is held, the facts will later on be
shown to fall under the principle, although they seem
at present not intelligible by it. Such an appeal may
be stated in the strongest form ; "if your facts do
not agree with the conception, so much the worse
for your facts." In this case a different and a lower
certainty, or cognitive necessity, is attached to per-
ceptual fact than to conceptual principle, and that in

92 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE CH.

spite of the accepted truth that conceptions easily
lead us astray because of their mere universality. 1
In this opposition, then, between perceptual fact and
conceptual principle, however that opposition be
expressed, we have an illustration of a difference
admitted in ordinary life beween one kind of cogni-
tive necessity and another. And this difference is
not merely one in kind but in worth for our experi-
ence. Some forms of experience are said to be
more necessary to us than others, e.g. moral, or, it
may be, religious experience. By this we mean, not
so much that we can less easily exist without them,
that their absence would impoverish life, but that
' they realise more fully the nature of our experience ;
or, to use our terms, they have a deeper unity of
the diverse elements, subject and object.

It is impossible, therefore, to discuss the question
of the necessity of judgments, as if necessity means
the same thing throughout the whole range of
experience. Yet this seems certainly to have been
assumed, e.g., by Kant and Hume in their inter-
pretation of knowledge.

Nature of Once again we see that the new conception of the
thS view. problem of knowledge involves our giving a definite
meaning to what the very idea of knowledge implies
Truth. Ordinarily understood, truth, as Kant puts
it, means the agreement between thought and its
Kant's object, held by dualism to be separate. Kant's own
theory gave a curious turn to that conception. If
the object is the unity of the matter of experience
with the conception of understanding, the latter con-
taining the function and rule of synthesis which the

1 This second relation between facts and conceptions is not limited to
"scientific " experience. It is the peculiar note of morality and religion.

view.

in ALL EXPERIENCE HAS TRUTH 93

unity of the object implies, it is clear that the object
is not more exclusively matter than form or con-
ception. But if thought in any sense ''makes the
object," " legislates for nature," what comes of the
meaning of truth as just defined ? Thought cannot
"agree" with its object, if thought is itself a deter-
mining condition of the ' nature of the object, for
the very word " agree " implies that the object is
something with an independence of its own. 1

The meaning Kant attaches to truth will hold
only when we deal conceptually with what we may
call perceptual knowledge, i.e. where, as in the case
of science in the narrowest sense of the term,
a sharp distinction is implied between sense per- Its narrow
ception on the one hand, and judgment and infer- Ippffo.
ence on the other. It concerns relations amongst tlon -
ideas, not " matters of fact," and deals with the
connexion between these two factors in the con-
stitution of an intelligible experience. It does not
refer to any other relation between mind and its
object than that in which the object is looked upon
as something " given " from without, and the mind is
regarded as dealing with it by certain generalising -
processes peculiar to itself, as we say " thinking
about" the object. It excludes, therefore, from the
range of truth the sphere, e.g., of Moral Experience,
or again that of Art, and applies essentially to the
harmonious relation between mind and its object
in the sphere of "science." In these other spheres
specifically different expressions are used. Thus, .
on this view, it would probably be held that in the
relation in Art, harmony of feeling was satisfied, in
Morality harmony of will. To speak of forms of

1 The object, of course, is not, in Kant's sense, the " matter " of experience.

94 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE CH.

the moral life as more or less " true," would, on
Kant's view, be probably considered a misapplication
of terms.

Truth is The fundamental principle at work in this con-
moit'^'its ^P^ 00 f truth is no doubt the unity of mind and
mistake, its object. Where this is complete we are said
to have, in intellectual experience, "truth." But a
moment's reflection shows that this narrower mean-
ing is at once inaccurate in its application of that
principle, and too restricted in its range. For it takes
truth to be in reality a relation between two different
forms in which the subject and its object are con-
nected. The subject belongs to one form of
experience, the object to another. It holds truth
to be a relation between, say, the perceived object,
and reflection about that object. But it is trans-
parent that in Perception itself we have a specific
relation between subject and object, for Perception
is a mode of experience : and in reflection likewise
Relativity we have another specific relation between subject
. anc ^ object for the same reason.. And the object
is no more the same in each case than the attitude
of the subject is the same. Both object and subject
are different in the two cases. Object and subject
are correlative to each other, and an alteration in
the one ipso facto means a change in the other.
Thus the object of Perception is not the same as the
object for Reflection ; and it is no more possible to
perceive an object and then think about that same
object as it is in Perception, than it is to see a law
of nature by opening our eyes. "The laws of the
planets," as an astronomer once remarked, "are not
written on the sky."

Hence, the view which supposes that our reflec-

in MIND AND ITS CONTENT 95

tion is "true," because its result "agrees with"
sense-fact, makes a twofold mistake. In the first The error
place, it seeks to identify the object of Reflec- twofold -
tion with that of Perception, and thus implicitly
neglects to note that each has a distinct object of its
own. In the second place, it separates the process of
reflection from its own object, takes that process tc
be something by itself, and looks upon it as dealing
with an object which is external to itself, whereas this
object really belongs to another sphere of experience -
altogether. It is true that Reflection and Perception
are distinct in our experience : hence the attempt to
unify them, which gives rise to the view of truth we
are criticising. But it is not true that the elements
or factors into which each can be resolved can be so
cut loose and separated as to replace one another
indifferently, or be transposed from one sphere to .
another.

On the other hand the view of truth we are This view
opposing is too limited in its range, even if it could 00 n
be accepted as it stands. If the harmonious relation limited.
of mind and its object is the fundamental principle
in that conception of truth, then why should not the
conception apply wherever we have such a relation ?
We can see at once that we must so apply it.
For not merely is it not possible, except arbitrarily,
to limit it to one form of that relation, but the
complete harmony or agreement (as we choose to
call it) cannot be attained at all unless when mind is
taken in its completeness and related to the object
world in its entirety. For what is meant by
"mind" in such a statement? If a particular form
of mind (e.g. in Perception or Morality), then clearly
mind will never be fully satisfied, fully harmonised

96 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE CH.

merely by one such phase of its activity, simply
because no particular form can exhaustively realise
its nature, satisfy its supreme end. Truth would
therefore be unattainable at all if that were meant.
But if we mean, as we must, mind in its entirety,
mind in its complete unity, then it is impossible to
stop short of applying the conception to each and
every way in which mind is related to its object.
The mind is one, and only attains complete con-
sciousness of unity in its relation to the whole of its
content, and every relation in which it stands to
an object, every part of its experience is merely a
partial expression of its completed realisation, a
partial form of its "truth." This is saying no more
than that truth must be the whole, and cannot be
confined to any special form or phase of experi-
ence as the narrow view of truth above given
proposes to do.

The Now this change in the conception of truth is an

idealistic essential characteristic of the above view of ex-
perience, and follows directly from the nature of its
principle. We are no longer to take one form of experi-
ence as furnishing truth, and determine the truth of
others by means of it. Each has a truth of its own ; all
are " truths " for mind as a whole. The Moral Life,
or, again, Religion has its own truth, which differs
from every other, but has a value all its own which
cannot be affected by another phase of experience.
Their claim to be true just lies in their claim to be
at all. And they claim to exist, simply because mind
seeks in each a phase of its complete realisation.
Science is not the only means of presenting truth ;
it only presents a special form of truth. It is not
the only form of knowledge, in the widest sense,

view.

in "POSSIBILITY OF TRUTH" 97

for Morality is also a form of conscious relation of
subject and object.

Such a question, again, as the "possibility of"p ssi-
attaining truth," which is sometimes raised, ceases t ^ ,? f
to have importance from its very indefinite-
ness. If it implies a doubt regarding all truth,
it is at once meaningless and self -contradictory. '
It is meaningless to raise a sceptical question
regarding the possibility of truth in general, for
that question being intelligent implies at least the
possibility of a true answer. Again, the very idea of
" possibility " implies a standard by which to test
something assumed for the moment to be proble-
matical. In that sense the question is self-contra- -
dictory. If, however, it means a particular form of
truth may not be possible, we have to ask, in order
to make the question definite, which form is referred
to by the question. The form of the question seems
to imply that there is a single standard for all truth.
But such a standard must either be purely formal, or,
if it has content, must be a special form of truth
taken as the standard for all other forms. A purely
formal standard is valueless, for truth is essentially
concrete, being the innermost nature of the life of
mind. We cannot separate form from content, unity
between mind and object, which is the general form,
from the actual phase of mind and the actual object
between which the unity holds. While if we take
one particular form of truth as a standard, this will '"
certainly be arbitrary unless it be the whole.

It is just such a limitation of the meaning of truth Kant on

i i -rr . f i limitation

which gives rise, e.g., to Kants conception of the of truth .
range of valid knowledge, or again to the position
taken up by Descartes at the very outset of his

H

98 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE CH.

philosophical inquiry. If, as Kant held, truth is only
possible when we have sense -experience, then we
have restricted the content of truth to begin with,
and the whole argument to establish the limits of
knowledge and the impossibility of knowing things
in themselves apart from sense, is devised to sustain,
/ and is merely a consistent development of, the

initial limitation of the range of truth. Alter the
conception, and the whole construction of Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason has to be revised. The
very problem of " the conditions of the possibility of
true knowledge " is seen at once to be futile, because
it sets up one form of truth as final and yet seeks
to examine the conditions of its truth by another
form of knowledge, viz. a scientific or philosophical
criticism. It is inherently impossible to understand
or examine any knowledge except by knowledge
itself. Such a problem makes a pretence of restrict-
ing truth to one sphere, but is all the while, by its
very examination of that sphere, asserting the equal
validity of another kind of knowledge, viz. criticism
" of knowledge. This gives an air of artificiality

to the whole argument. At the very best it is no
more than an analysis of the conditions of our know-
ledge of the external world, of truth regarding the
world of Perception, not an analysis of knowledge
as a whole. The Critique is, like Locke's Essay or
Berkeley's Principles, a chapter on the philosophy
I of perceptual experience. Beyond this the results
are fruitless. It is transparent, for example, that,
if we restrict knowledge to perceptual experience,
we are bound to fall into inconsistency if we try to
go beyond it ; for to try to go beyond it, and yet not
be able to go beyond it, is precisely the whole of

in KINDS OF TRUTH 99

the inconsistency in question. The ingenuities of
the Dialectic in the Critique of Pure Reason are
merely illustrations on certain fundamental points of
this single inconsistency. So, again, no one in his
senses ever supposed that by Perception we could
know the truth about what, by its very nature, is
assumed to be outside the range of Perception, viz.
a thing in itself. As perceived, it is necessarily a
thing for us, and what it is outside that condition,
i.e. for itself or " in itself" is obviously beyond the
power of Perception to say.

But for Kant's prejudice in favour of one form of
truth, he would have been led to try to justify the
very attempt to gain, by other forms of knowledge,
certainty regarding what lay beyond perceptions.
And this would have involved a change not merely
in his view of truth, but in his very conception of a
criticism of knowledge.

Now if truth cannot be taken in any one-sided Kinds and
way, we are bound to reject all attempts to limit its e f n f t es f
range to one form, or to judge its worth by making and
one special kind absolute. And when we do so, there
is nothing left but to accept every form of relation
between mind and its object as giving, pro tanto, a
certain _mode oC truth. Any realisation of the life
of mind is at once experience and truth ; it contains
subject and object, and is a form in which the unity
of mind with its object is revealed. Such a unity is
what we mean by truth. This view means that the
worth of no phase of experience shall be sacrificed to
the claims of another, and that each will be acknow- j.
ledged as contributing its own amount to the sum-
total of truth. Hence, e.g., from this point of view,
Religion, or Science, or Morality cannot and need

ioo TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE CH.

not surrender their truth in the interest of one
another ; for each simply presents a different truth
for mind, and enriches its life thereby. To set up
Science to judge Religion is just as futile as to examine
the moral life with our five senses. The mind attains
a different satisfaction through each and all of its
forms, and, as forms of experience, they cannot dis-
agree, because the kind of realisation in each case is
different. To take one either as standard for all the
others, or as the only valid form, is deliberately to
impoverish the meaning of the mind's life a result
which the biographies of specialists in all departments
of activity, Art, Science, or Religion, amply testify
in a painfully concrete manner.

The only difficulty, then, which faces this inter-
pretation of what truth means, is, how is truth to be
distinguished from error or illusion in such a view ?
Or, to put it more formally, by what process shall we
criticise and connect these various truths so as to
show an inherent necessity running through them all?
This raises the question of the method of explaining
knowledge. With this we shall deal presently. 1

It is evident, after the foregoing, that we shall
Kant's 1 " a ^ so nave to reconstrue the ordinary use of the term
theory. "experience" in philosophy, if the new problem is
to be understood properly, and its position justified.
To Kant the problem of knowledge was the analysis
of the conditions of what he called a " possible experi-
ence." In whatever way the term be understood, it
implies quite a distinctive conception of the relation
of mind to its experience. The self or ego is looked
upon as a self-complete and self-closed abstract
entity, over against, and in that sense external to,

1 Vide Chap. IV.

in SELF IS CONCRETE 101

which, experience is placed, and with which somehow
it gets connected. We may say that it is the aim of
Kant's theory to give the conditions of such con-
nexion. Experience in this way is confessedly
something contingent, so far as the self (or the self
functioning through understanding) is concerned.
And this Kant states in so many words. It is im-
possible, indeed, to give any meaning to such a
term unless by taking something to be actual.
For a " possible " has only significance by relation
to something definitely secured and fixed. But
such a conception must in that case be essentially
abstract and empty for two reasons. We cannot, in
the first place, divorce the concrete self from its
actual experience ; yet to give meaning to that con-
ception we must do so, for a "possible" experience
implies a self without experience, i.e. a purely inde-
terminate abstract ego, an ego that is not yet realised,
an ego implicitly. Possible experience, when applied
not to a particular content but to the whole, is cor-
relative to and distinguished from an abstract self,
a self that is to be. On the other hand, an
experience which is only possible is itself indeter-
minate, and in that sense empty of content. Such a
conception cannot in itself be effective in determin-
ing actual knowledge as distinct from problematical
assertion. Yet it is only in reference to such a con-
ception that " a priority," which has its source in the
mind apart from such experience, gets its value and
significance for experience. It is easy to see from
this how the a priori conceptions of which Kant
speaks come to be "empty" in themselves. Their
emptiness is simply due to their being functions of
an empty self, an abstract ego, that ego which is

CH.

assumed to be per se divorced from experience, and
is a bare potentiality. They are merely different
phases of that indeterminate functioning entity. 1

Now it seems obvious that the only experience
concrete. we nave to deal with is actual concrete experience,
and that this is not the experience of an abstract ego,
but of a living ego in a perpetual state of activity,
an ego ceaselessly realising itself. If we take the
standpoint of actual life we shall refuse to make
any separation between an ego and its realisation,
between a mind and its " environment " of experi-
ence. For the self is never the mere possibility of
having experience as a whole ; it always is a definite
form or mode of experience. And it is no more
possible to separate experience and self than the
members from the organism : the members are the
organism in its diversity, the organism is its members
in their unity. The term " possible " only has a
meaning on the basis of actual experience. We can,
therefore, never get to the point of view from which
all experience is a mere possibility, not because this
is beyond our capacity, but because it is self-contra-
dictory. The term " possible experience " cannot be
used as a regulative condition by reference to which
certain abstract functions in our minds are to get a
value. The functions (or notions as Kant calls them)
are not there in any sense until there is experience ;

they are only in experience. It is just as true
that experience makes them possible as that they

, make experience possible. Rather, there is no mere
possibility in either case : experience is actual in

them, they are actual in experience. " Possible

1 One would have supposed that at least the diversity of their functions
would imply a certain amount of content in the ego to constitute their difference.

in KANT'S USE OF EXPERIENCE 103

experience " thus can only mean what may fall inside
the range of the life of mind as it is actually con- ^
stituted, something that may come about ^rTThe
basis of the actual. It can only apply to an implicit
but not yet explicit stage of experience, and can
never apply to experience as a whole. Experience
as a whole cannot be contingent, since within ex-
perience both contingency and necessity fall, and
experience itself provides the ground of distinction
between the two. Experience is through and through
actual, and actual by its bare existence. All the
distinctions drawn within experience are the result of
analysing its content and are merely elements of its .
nature. For that reason there is no going beyond >
experience, and no standard or point of reference
external to it, to serve as a ground for determining it.
This would be self-evident but for the ambiguity
of the term itself. It is this ambiguity which created
Kant's position. For him that was primarily an judgment
objective judgment of experience, in which we have ofexpen "
necessary unity of the elements of the sensible or
perceptual world. It is not always easy to say
whether it was the unity or the perceptual content
which was most emphasised in the term experience ;
in any case both were essential to his conception of
the term. But this compelled him to adopt the
paradox that there were large tracts of conscious
life which yet fell outside experience. These were,
e.g., on the one side, what he called judgments of
perception, and on the other, the whole field of
absolute or pure morality. There could be no
reason for excluding these from the scope of the
term except one, viz. that a particular and limited
meaning had been attached to experience. In

104 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE CH.

different systems of philosophy, and in common life

also, one form of experience is often taken as the

Selected standard and type of all experience whatsoever. It

cxpcn* /* . . 1 -

ence. is of no importance which form we take so far as the
ultimate issue is concerned. For in every case we
shall find that much of conscious activity and
conscious life is held to fall outside experience,
simply because it does not fall inside the limited
interpretation we have put on experience at the
start. The mode of experience fixed upon is not
always the same. Sometimes, e.g., in crude em-
piricism, sensuous experience, pure and simple, is
looked upon as experience in the strict sense, and
whatever cannot be expressed in terms of sense is
rejected as either probable or illusion. At another
time scientific law or mechanical order is the type,
and everything else valued accordingly. Or, again,
the moral order or the religious life may be taken
as the primary reality, and the rest of experience
becomes a show or mere appearance, even in
certain cases an illusion. Any of the chief types
of experience may be taken as fundamental and
alone real, from mere sensuousness up to mere
religiousness. Which type is adopted depends on
the kind of mind or spiritual individuality, and
varies not merely from individual to individual but
from race to race. All agree simply in their
rejection of every other mode of experience in
preference to the one regarded as primary. Such
a procedure, what we may call the human selec-
tion of the real in experience, is thus not con-
fined to philosophical systems, but characterises the
whole history of the life of humanity. It may be
looked on as the outgrowth of the universal fact,

in EXPERIENCE AS A WHOLE 105

which is at the same time the universal necessity,
of that selective interest which governs all finite
individual experience. But whereas this is merely
a difference of emphasis in ordinary life, it becomes
a metaphysical principle when the phase selected
is exaggerated into the norm for reality as a
whole.

There seems only one way of escape from the Universal
inconsistency which must arise when one phase of g^ce"
experience is adopted as ultimate. We must take
experience in its most comprehensive meaning as
the starting-point from which to proceed in our
constructive analysis of what it contains. We must
start, in other words, from the whole of experience as
such. This is the only principle from which to pro-
ceed to work. It is necessary to do so if the part is
to be properly interpreted, for any phase can only
be regarded as a specific phase by looking at it
apart from a whole ; the particular form is the
result of analysis of the whole, however that analysis
may be brought about. And it is possible to do so,
if we have a sufficiently comprehensive conception
of what the unity of experience is ; for a whole is a
unity. Every experience is actual and concrete, and The whole
the whole is the absolutely concrete. The unity, e nc e e x F en ~
therefore, cannot be an abstract unity, it must what -
contain that diversity which gives concreteness
and individuality. The principle of unity can thus
be neither an abstract ideal end, nor an abstract
indeterminate basis, but an active ground of differ-
entiation. Now we take experience as a whole
when we look upon the subject-mind, in which alone
experience exists, as the centre to which all forms
of experience refer and round which they gather.

CH.

The wholeness of experience is just the completed
expression for the unity of the subject-mind which
pervades it and owns it. The ground of unity is
thus what we call mind or self-conscious Spirit.
Experience in its concreteness is a manifestation in
time and space; it is embodied, and covers the
whole life of conscious activity wheresoever found.
But this is precisely human history. The experi-
ence of mind is the appearance of mind in time,
is its history, its realised existence. The actual
mind at work in experience is individual mind.
Hence on the one side to analyse and systematise
experience as a whole means to interpret and con-
nect the historical manifestations of human in-
dividuality. On the other side, it is to disclose the
nature of an individual mind taken as the type of all
forms in which individuality may appear in human
history, it is to trace the ways in which a generalised
or typical individual mind would show its activity.
It must be general, because all human experience is
what we are considering ; and it must be individual,
because experience is only concrete in individual
minds. In a sense, of course, all human experience
is every one's experience : but it is equally clear that
all experience is not explicitly so. Much remains
implicit even for the richest mind, though all is in
principle possible for the poorest. Human experience
is the expression of one self-consciousness, but its full
expression requires the entire activity of combined
human effort and struggle. Humanity is in that
sense a unity, and the individual whom we consider
in dealing with experience as a whole must there-
fore be a representative, typical, or generalised in-
dividual mind. Now it is just this comprehensive

in APPEAL TO EXPERIENCE 107

scope which is here given to the meaning of the
term experience; and the actual starting-point for
discussion is the concrete experience of a typical
individual mind as it historically exists in the life of
humanity.

It is clear from this that the "appeal to "Appeal
experience," which every philosophy professes to e ce exp
make, and which all knowledge professes to claim,
whether for verification of conclusions or correction
of the process of reflection upon its meaning, has
quite a different significance on this view from,
e.g., that of Kant. The experience appealed to in
Kant's case must necessarily have a perceptual char-
acter and content. This determines the range of
possibility. This can only be appealed to by what
is accepted as in some way apart from it, outside it.
Conceptions as such are examples of such entities
outside Perception. Yet these have a nature of their
own, a nature not found in perceptual experience alone.
This Kant himself acknowledges explicitly when deal-
ing with Morality, where he states a specific condition
which can give these conceptions a value, viz. self-
consistency. This gives thought as such a necessity
distinct from the necessity which concerns perceptual
experience. This twofold test of worth which Kant
employs, and is forced to adopt, illustrates the im-
possibility of taking one phase of the content of mind
as alone valid, and indicates the limited character of
experience in Kant's view. The very meaning of an
"appeal" to experience implies the existence of some-
thing apart from it, but yet in some way connected
with it. In short, the appeal must be made from one
part to another part, or from one part to the whole as
such. The former is impossible if one part is taken

io8 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE CH.

to be peculiarly experience ; the latter is impossible
if the part is treated as external to the whole. The
only meaning that can be attached to the phrase
"appeal to experience" is that one element finds
somehow a place in the ordered connectedness of the
whole. What that place is depends on the nature
of the element. The appeal is different in each case,
for one form of experience differs from another.
Thus what would be a test of experience in the case
of Morality would not be adequate in the case of
Sense-life or in the case of Scientific Knowledge.
The whole question, therefore, turns on the essential
nature of experience, and of the way in which its
parts are to be connected.

Experi- Experience always implies a relation between

what. two distinct elements : the one is that for which
something is, and the other the something which
is presented. These are the so-called subject and
object. Sometimes the term experience, in ordinary
use, designates this relation along with its factors,
as when we say "such an event was an experience" :
sometimes it means the relation per se, as when we
speak of ourselves "having an experience", or "ex-
periencing something " : sometimes again the objec-
tive aspect is emphasised, sometimes the subjective.
But in every case there is implied or expressed
a duality of elements within the continuity of their
relation. 1

This will be found to hold when the term is applied
derivatively to inanimate things or, again, to living
beings in general. Primarily the term refers to
conscious life where there is a conscious distinction

1 Cp. " The proper unit of our experience from first to last is the total con-
tent of any moment of consciousness." Adamson, Lectures, vol. i. p. 292.

in NATURE OF EXPERIENCE 109

of the object factor from the subject factor. Here
experience is the interrelation of a subject with
what is consciously present to it its object. Object
implies a subject just as subject implies object.
The relation between the two, again, is not external,
as if the one could be without the other. The
being of the one simply implies, because it refers to,
the other ; subject exists through relation to object
and vice versa.

What the nature of the relation between the
two is, cannot be answered apart from experience.
For this implies that we must find a more ultimate The
term than experience to furnish the answer. If this
cannot be given without a contradiction in terms,
then the answer to the question must be furnished by
experience itself. It can only be given when experi-
ence as a whole is developed. What the relation
is, means either of two things : (i) how did it arise,
(2) how is it determined, or what does it aim at?
These are the only ultimate questions about experi-
ence. One is answered by genetic psychology ; 1 the
other is found by tracing the forms through which
experience passes. The nature of the relation will
differ with the sphere of experience we are con-
sidering. In some cases it seems a kind of inter-
action, e.g. in the life of Sense : in other cases the
emphasis seems to rest with the subject, e.g. in the
Moral Life : in others again with the object, as in
the case of scientific knowledge, when, as we say,
the nature of the object ' determines the current of
our ideas.'

The only question we can properly ask regarding Subject
these ultimate factors in experience is what specifically object.

1 On the genesis of the distinction, cp. Adamson, Lectures, vol. i. part v. c. I.

no TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE CH.

distinguishes subject from object. The answer to
that can be best found if we take a typical and
characteristic form in which the terms subject and
object are found. This is found when mind is con-
trasted with nature. Nature is that which is over
against, presented to, mind. Mind is "subject,"
nature is " object." This is the point of view taken
up by all science and ordinary life. The distinguish-
ing feature of subject is here self-determination,
self-sufficiency, or generally reference to self as one
and single. That is subject which can be conscious
of self as such, which can consciously refer to self.
Object here is that which is referred to self, that
whose completeness lies in something beyond the
sphere of its own reality. It is that which in
consciousness is for something else. A subject is
that which in consciousness is for itself. In other
words, in conscious experience a subject is inherently
self-referrent and self-dependent, an object as such
essentially points to and is dependent on something
else. 1 And wherever we have subject and object
constituting experience these will be found to be
their essential characteristics.

Subject and object being the elements in the
unity of experience, subject is that which is for
itself through the object ; in being conscious of the
object it is conscious of self by referring that object
to itself. The object is that which is for the subject
in virtue of the activity of the subject ; it has no
being except for a subject. This is the conception

1 Hence the general character of " objectivity " in experience is " outness,"
" extendedness," i.e. reference of content to what is external to its immediate
existence. This seems a consequence of the above distinction, not the
source of it. Cp. Adamson, lac. cit. ; also Fichte, Bestimmung des Menschen,
Book II.

in KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE in

of the factors of experience with which we start
and with which we work. Here we are concerned
merely to interpret what this implies.

We can see that this conception of experience Know-

must identify experience and knowledge, in the *

general sense of awareness of objects. It is clear ence -
from what has been said that there is no restriction
whatsoever in the content of experience ; wherever \
we have a conscious subject aware of an object,
there we have experience. Everything that can be i
an object enters an experience. And it is equally
clear that the range of the objective world is limited
only by the self- reference of the subject. What-
ever it can refer to itself is ipso facto an object.
But if mere self-reference is all that is required to
constitute subjectivity, it can distinguish itself from
everything and anything, even from itself. Hence
every element and aspect of experience can be made
an object for a consciousness, even what we may call
experience as a whole. This last, in fact, is actually
the case when the mind raises the philosophical
question as to the meaning of experience as such ;
it thereby makes the whole as such its object.
Now in all these possible attitudes in which subject
is related to object, their fundamental characteristic
seems certainly cognitive. There seems no reason
why consciousness of objects should not be de-
scribed as knowledge ; or that all possible modes of
such consciousness should not be called experience.
But it must be noted that here knowledge means
neither more nor less than consciousness of some-
thing, whatever that something be. We are well
aware of the difference between reflective, observa-
tional, or perceptual knowledge when we use the

ii2 TRUTH AND EXPERIENCE CH.

term knowledge as equivalent to experience in
general. Scientific knowledge, for example, is
merely a specific way in which consciousness can
be aware of an object ; but this does not restrict
knowledge specially to Science. It does not involve
a confusion between psychologically distinct pro-
cesses, e.g. those of cognition and willing. These
processes are in any case only abstractly separable ;
the mind always acts as a unity in all. 1 The
essential point is that wherever we have experience,
consciousness must be aware of something. The
way in which it is aware of course differs, and this
makes the difference in the experience. But there
must be awareness of something ; and to be con-
scious of something is, in its universal acceptation,
knowing something. All this, in point of fact,
follows from the difference already noted between
the above view of experience and Kant's.
Summary. Such, then, is how we are to determine the
significance of the various stages of experience in
the light of and by the aid of self-consciousness
as the fundamental principle. The various forms
have all a worth, and each contains a truth. None
is able to exhaust the full meaning of self-conscious-
ness. Hence the only alternative is to regard them
all as necessary modes of its life; and the only
method of arrangement is that of an order according
to degree of realisation of the one principle in all.
In this way we can justify the rejection of all one-
sidedness in experience ; and meet the difficulty,
in the way of any monistic view of knowledge, as
to how truth and falsehood are to be interpreted.
This difficulty is overcome in the case of dualism

1 Vide p. 108, note.

in NATURE OF INTERPRETATION 113

by setting up one form of truth as final, e.g. that
of perceptual experience, or of conceptual connexion,
and then determining every other expression of
knowledge by reference to this as a test. The
denial of dualism, and this interpretation of ex-
perience are thus closely related.

It is to be noted, in conclusion, that we are not The real
concerned here with any such analysis of the quei
machinery of knowledge as is given by Kant or
Locke. There is one and the same question asked
at each stage : how does a given form of knowledge
hold together and relate the ultimate factors deter-
mining and constituting all knowledge, all experi-
ence ? ; how is unity amid the diversity of subject and '
object sustained ? We have, e.g., in dealing with
Perception or Morality to bring out the " truth" of
Perception, the "truth" of Moral Experience. We
reduce the various forms of experience to their uni-
versal constituents, and determine how each realises
its unity in them. When this is done, we have all
the knowledge of the nature of a given mode of ^
knowledge which a theory of experience can
demand.

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CHAPTER IV

PLAN AND STAGES OF THE ARGUMENT

The mode How then is experience so conceived to be inter-
preted? We cannot ask, as we have said, what

are the conditions of the possibility of experience.
There can, in the long run, be no way of finding
how experience is possible except by entering the
field of experience itself. The experience which
is to be is continuous with that which is. What
we must do, then, is to take experience as it is in its
totality, and to find controlling it such a necessity
as an absolute explanation requires. We must try
to bring into connected inner coherence the variety
of experience given as historically discrete. We
can neither rise above experience nor go below it,
if we would explain it as a whole. We must, there-
fore, find the connexion within experience itself.

This does not mean that ordinary experience is
""self-ex- self-explaining, in the sense that we need not think
plaining." about it at all. Ordinary experience is precisely
without "explanation" at all. Its rationality is not
self-evident; it merely is. It can be rational
as well as a conscious fact only if this be made
manifest by the long way of reflective compre-
hension, When it is commonly said " experience
explains itself," what is meant is that experience is

114

iv EXPERIENCE SELF-EXPLAINING 115

the direct and immediate content of a conscious life,
and beyond this we cannot and need not go. That
is of course true ; but it is not an explanation. It
is merely an assertion that we never go beyond
experience, which is to say no more than that
experience is experience. An explanation requires
a special effort to fulfil a special end, an end lying
beyond the range of desire and outside the interest
of many conscious lives. The statement, however,
may be said to be true in the sense that experience
contains within, its scope, and will furnish, the ex-
planation which has to be given. The explanation
merely brings out the necessity inherent within
experience, throughout all its phases. Therein,
too, lies the truth of the statement that "experi-
ence must verify explanation," that "philosophy
must start from and in its result agree with
experience." Such a statement is self-evident if
the explanation given by philosophy is one which
shows how experience connects its various phases
by a law at work in the very nature of experience ;
if, in other words, the explanation has to show that
the necessity of reason, which philosophy seeks, is
the reason of the necessity which experience itself
implicitly contains.

That, then, is the only kind of attitude we can
take up to experience if we would explain it com-
pletely. To answer the question thus will solve the
very problem which Kant and Locke raised about
the nature of knowledge as restricted to the narrow
range of Perception or Science. For the warrant Necessity
for the certainty and necessity in such knowledge | n know -
is given if we show how scientific and perceptual
activity are necessary forms of the experience of con-

n6 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT CH.

scious mind. The question regarding their necessary
validity arises simply because they are different
functions of mind, which can be distinguished,
and which act separately. Their very isolation
creates the problem of their value for experience :
what do they contribute to the whole if they are a
part? what is their necessity if they are separate
and to that extent externally related ? Now ultim-
ate necessity lies with the whole. Experience in its
entirety is in the long run the only principle of
necessity; "necessity of thought" is in the long
run identical with "necessity of fact." Hence to
fit each function into its place in experience is to
give it the necessity belonging to it. And that is
precisely the way we have to answer the problems
of Hume and Kant. There can be no problem
as to how we are to satisfy thought regarding
necessity in Science, or in perceptual experience,
because thought so taken is itself knowledge, and
knowledge is not something on one side and the
criticism of it something on the other. Both are
knowledge, and criticism of knowledge is essentially
self-criticism. Nor again is "knowledge" on one
side and " mere perception " on the other. Both
are knowledge, and both in any case are experience.
Criticism of the necessity in perceptual experience
is therefore again self-criticism of experience.
TO Hence the statement of the connectedness of

experience is at once the satisfaction of rationality
and the expression of necessity in the content of
experience. We cannot get outside it. Our inter-
pretation is itself a phase of our experience, which
experience itself must connect with other phases or
forms. Experience must contain our explanation of

iv EXPLANATION IS CONNECTION 117

it just as much as our explanation construes experi-
ence. That is the only way our explanation can be
true ; and such an explanation must in the nature of
the case be true because it shows our explanation to
be a necessary moment of experience itself. This
means, in a word, that experience is self-explaining if
we can find a way of connecting its diverse moments
which will fit every aspect of it into its place in
the whole. Such a method of explanation must
lie in experience itself, be inherent in the very
life of it. It will not be simply objective, though
it will be so in the sense that the content of experi-
ence is controlled by the method independent of
merely individual selection and subjective caprice.
That is, it will be objective in the sense of com-
pletely universal, holding of each phase and at
each stage, comprehending the whole in its sweep.
It will, again, not be merely subjective, though it
will be subjective in the sense that the subject
mind is involved all along and must find that the
connexion established completely satisfies its con-
sciousness of unity. But that will free the connexion
from the contingency of individual caprice, mere
private interest and demand. In other words, it will
be subjective and universal at the same time, which
means it will be universal mind or mind as universal
whose unity will be expressed. The connexion has
to be both objective and subjective. It will be an
" absolute " connexion. The method of explanation
will have to be an " absolute " method. This is
essential, since experience itself is both subjective
and objective at once, and since beyond experience
there is nothing. Experience is relative to nothing
outside itself, and since it is the absolutely real, the

n8 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT CH.

method of explanation must be absolutely final ; the
connexion is to lie in the very nature of experience.
This is all that is meant by a method being
"absolute." It does not mean that the thinker
himself has given the final truth, but merely that
there is no other way by which complete explanation
can be attained, however successfully or unsuccess-
fully any individual thinker works with it. And
indeed this claim is justifiable and its truth self-
evident. For clearly a method of explanation,
which is not bound up with the contingency of
individual caprice or the contingency of external
objective fact, must be the ne plus ultra of explana-
tion. It is experience "explaining" itself; and that
surely is absolute explanation. The only doubt
which remains is the doubt about any given attempt
to express it, whether it has been in any system,
or can be in general, successfully carried out.
HOW it Now the way by which we may proceed

proceeds to g* ve suc ^ an explanation is shortly this. Ex-
to work, perience is, we saw, realised at once in individual
minds and yet in no given individual mind
completely. It takes all the diversity of finite
mind to experience all that can fall within man's
experience. With man's experience as a whole
we are alone concerned, for this is the only experi-
ence historically realised. The Divine Mind is
a conscious experience for man, and hence the
discussion of it falls within man's province. We
could not think of it unless it fell inside our
experience in some way. The religious aspect of
experience is where most obviously and generally
finite experience specifically and deliberately realises
the life of Absolute Spirit ; and hence the Divine

iv EXPERIENCE IS INDIVIDUAL 119

Mind as such comes up for definite consideration
when the religious experience of finite mind is
discussed. Whatever the real nature of such
experience, it is none the less finite experience
with which we are dealing. The same is true of
the experience called Philosophy. It may tell us
all we really know of Absolute Spirit, but it falls
inside individual experience like everything else,
and must be considered as a phase of it. Even,
therefore, though it should turn out that in certain
moods in experience we consciously seek to over-
come finitude as such, they are still moods of finite
experience in the first instance, and take their place
amongst others. 1 To find, then, all that the experi-
ence of finite mind contains we must deal at once
with individuals, and with the whole of man's ex-
perience as historically revealed. We may look on
human experience as the experience of a compre-
hensive individual, an individual who can or may
live through all finite experience. If we take as
the subject mind of finite experience what we have
called a typical individual mind, we will do justice
at once to the totality of human experience in all
its diversity, and the individual form in which all
finite experience is realised.

Taking then such an individual as the centre i ts two
of experience, we can look on the explanation
experience in two distinct ways. We may try to
show how the one individual mind assumes the
various forms in which experience appears. We may
explain experience as a series of forms which the

1 The distinction of finite mind from finite mind is no doubt a fixed, and
that between fini f " -id absolute mind a vanishing distinction, but in both cases
finiteness has a positive significance.

120 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT CH.

individual mind adopts in the process of realising
itself in experience : or we may regard experience
as the content which fills or can fill the life of the
individual mind. In the one case we look upon
experience from the point of view of concrete
individual mind : in the other from the point of
view of a universal mind. In the former experience
is the expression or manifestation of the essence of
individual mind, and is realised by its self-conscious
activity ; in the other experience is the content so
expressed, the completed result. These two ways
are possible because experience has a subjective
and an objective aspect, it is at once subjective and
objective. And since they are inseparable, the two
ways of dealing with experience are merely aspects
of the same process.

Unity of We must not think of subject and object as two
and things separate and external from one another.
This gi yes us dualism pure and simple. They are
different aspects of a single identity. The object
world is experience all in its diversity, the subject
world is experience focussed in its unity. The real
distinction, therefore, is not between two things
subject and object, but between experience in its
diversity, and experience in its unity. The former
is objectivity pure and simple, the latter is
subjectivity pure and simple. Because of the
distinction between finite individuality and universal
experience, the distinction between experience as
objective and individual mind may assume the form
of a contrast between a particular self, over against
which stands the totality of experience ; and the
one seems outside the other, external to it. But
the whole life of an individual mind is the perpetual

iv COMPLETE EXPERIENCE 121

refutation of this opposition ; it is an incessant
assertion of the identity between a finite individuality
and complete experience. The finite individual
mind has a relation to the content of human experi-
ence as a whole the content of universal mind
exactly similar to that between the momentary
focus of a given individual's attention and the whole
range of his presentational content. As the latter
are continuous and inseparable so are the former.

Because of the contrast between an individual The
mind and its completely explicit experience, the f n ives
relation between the two is necessarily one that is histor y-
realised historically. The individual mind is not
all at once the whole of experience as found in
the life of humanity. It expresses experience in
consciously distinct forms or stages, which are
modes of its own complete life. Experience is
realised in moments which are consciously successive
to one another. From the point of view of the
individual mind experience is a variety of historical
appearances, it is a series of phenomena in the
process of an individual life. To trace these stages
and connect these appearances by constant reference
to the ideal form which, as we said, they all imply,
is to give a connected account of the phenomena
of the life of individual- mind. It is what we may
call a Phenomenology of Mind.

The question to be answered is, how in the in- The
dividual's life is a given special subject- object relation
constituted so as to make a specific experience ? On
the one hand, how does the subject-mind specifically
function in reference to a specific object-content of its
experience ? On the other, how does a determinate
object-content constitute part of the life-history of

122 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT CH.

an individual mind. The inquiry is carried out by
means of a constant implicit and explicit reference
to the ideal of experience. Hence to answer this
question is at once to state the truth a given
experience contains or aims at, and to determine
the plane or level of experience it occupies. It is
precisely the same question that is put from one
end of experience to another, and precisely the
same method of answering the question must
be adopted. The fact that it is of the same mind
that each question is asked ensures that the way of
answering it will merely vary with what the
experience is, and establishes a continuous con-
nexion between all the forms in which the mind
appears.

We have to take account of both subject and
object at once, for the one changes with the other.
The one is relative to the other, because both con-
stitute what we mean by the individual's experience.
And because we are dealing with the individual
mind, the specific experience will imply a specific
attitude of the mind in that experience. Subject
activity and conscious content involve each other.
Thus we can read the meaning of experience in the
life-history of a typical or generalised individual
soul. Completely carried out, then, we have here
the answer to the question as to the nature of
experience. 1

1 When we drop the reference to the individual's experience and cease to
regard the content of experience as phases of the life-history of the individual
mind, experience falls into its component constituents, each separate and self-
contained. What are stages from the point of view of an individual's experi-
ence are distinct areas of reality when taken by themselves. What are
fragments of a single experience are wholes when we eliminate, or treat as a
kind of constant and invariable co-efficient, the individual whose experience
they together constitute. They can therefore be dealt with by themselves as

iv THE STARTING-POINT 123

When we take knowledge or experience, as we HOW to
shall call it, in the sense adopted by Hegel, it is at begm<
first sight difficult to see where and how to begin
the interpretation of it. All ordinary methods of
procedure fail us ; because these in general start by
assuming one phase of experience as ultimate or
primary. To explain experience in such cases con-
sists in finding how other aspects of conscious life
are related to the one we fix upon, whether by way of
derivation from it or reference to it as the source of
validity. In our case no such assumptions are
made, and the task of interpretation is correspond-
ingly greater. When we look at conscious experi-
ence historically, or phenomenologically, and seek
to show its inner coherence, we might in a sense
begin anywhere, with any of the forms in which
experience appears. Since, as we have seen, the
same kind of question is asked at all parts of
experience, the analysis could be carried out from
any point. But clearly this would not tend to
produce the coherent connexion amongst all parts
which is required. For this purpose we must know
both how to proceed and where to begin. Now
while an absolute beginning cannot in the nature of

separate areas of reality, each with diverse content of its own, which can
be rationally connected. Since individual mind must necessarily appear
historically, this way of interpreting experience must differ from that of a
Phenomenology, but only to the extent of making no reference to the modes
of the life of individual mind. Now experience has a varied content : religious
life, art, morality, what we call nature, organic and inorganic, science with
all its various conceptions, etc. All these, then, can be handled from this
point of view. All may be shown to be rationally constituted, resolvable into
terms of reason. The various scientific constructions of these different parts
of experience make up the entire range of the world of universal reason ; and
these appear a^ TMlosophy of Law, Religion, Art, Logic, etc. The method
of procedure will be here determined by the nature of reason itself, a nature
which is of the essence of the self-consciousness.

i2 4 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT CH.

the case be merely assumed, we must assume that
which makes any beginning possible, viz. the end
which is to be attained. This determines not
merely that there is a beginning but what the
beginning must be. To that extent our inter-
pretation of experience rests on an assumption.
But this is inevitable. For we have to establish a
certain result, namely, a connected experience, and
we cannot put this down, so to say, all at once. It
has to be realised by a process, and that process
must have a beginning and a conscious determin-
ing purpose from first to last. Our assumption is
no more than such a determining purpose. From
this the beginning is derived, and by this the con-
nexion is established. It is not as such given by
experience ; for this falls into discrete moments or
modes. The absence of connexion is precisely
what calls for a philosophy of experience.
Assump- No doubt what we may call the "mood" of

tions in 1 ...... . . i r

phiio- philosophy is given in experience ; it is a phase or
sophy. i ts ijf e g ut t h e wav philosophy is to accomplish
its task is not given ; it has to be found and brought
to light. Since it is not there to begin with, it must
be assumed till it is established. And therein lies
the peculiarity of the above assumption. It does
not remain an assumption ; the working out of the
connexion aimed at by philosophy removes from
the assumption the characteristic of contingency and
arbitrariness which would cast an initial doubt on its
validity, and thus gives what was assumed the attri-
bute of necessity. To establish an assumption is to
destroy its nature as an assumption ; it is to " prove "
it. In other words, the assumption is only such at
the outset of the argument, not at the end. The

iv PRESUPPOSITIONS 125

argument itself makes the assumption a truth, or
" proves " it. This is what is meant when it is
said philosophy must do without any presuppositions,
if it is to be accepted. Not that we cannot use
assumptions in any sense ; but all assumptions must
be established by philosophy itself, and so cease to
be simply assumptions. They are merely required
by the conditions of philosophical procedure. Their
content finds its own place in the same system which
they determine. When the system is completed,
therefore, it contains no presuppositions.

In this way we can get over an initial difficulty other
which seems to be avoided, but in reality is not
avoided, by those who take as ultimate a certain
mode of experience, e.g. Sense-experience, and then
proceed to explain all other phases of experience
by reducing or referring them to that one form.
Their procedure is ostensibly simple, and they can
begin with that type of reality which they regard as
ultimate. This is the plan adopted by Sensation-
alism, or by Empiricism generally. Its success
is merely apparent, however, because it fails in
the nature of the case to prove that this type of
experience is itself ultimately valid ; or, again, it
fails to show how other modes of experience derive
all their content from this one type without already
in some way implying their content in that type.
This objection has been repeatedly pointed out in
the history of philosophy, and is the substance of
the objections made against Empiricism by an
idealistic cr ; nc like Green.

The plan proposed, while thus apparently more
difficult than that of other methods of interpretation,
really accomplishes, provided it can be carried out, all

126 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT CH.

that is required by complete philosophical theory, a
theory which establishes its own necessity and pre-
supposes nothing. But it is clear that it rests on a
Phiio- peculiar view of the nature of "proof." Proof, in
S oof Cal general, usually assumes at some stage in its process
a provisional character whether it be in its premises,
or in its results, or in its conditions. And, indeed,
proof without conditions seems a contradiction in
terms, since it is a means of relating incompletely
intelligible parts of a whole to one another. On the
above view, proof, to be complete or absolute, must
be without conditions or qualifications ; for there is
nothing to condition its worth or absoluteness ; it
deals with the whole as a whole. The actual
"proof" that the method is true consists in showing
that its assumption appears as the final outcome of
the experience which is to be connected : that is,
the truth of the method of proof just lies in success-
fully explaining experience by it. The success is
seen not simply in the step- by-step connexion,
but in showing that all experience leads finally
to this end. It is a form of the "transcendental
proof" used by Kant, but without his reserva-
tions, and without the acceptance of the idea of
a "possible" or contingent experience. It is the
transcendental proof not as a regulative method for
establishing necessity, but as a concrete organising
principle.

The end is We ask then what is the end which determines
1 ea ' the beginning and the manner of interpretation ?
We saw that the meaning of experience lay in the
essential unity of subject and object, its component
and mutually related elements. And we saw that
the ideal of such experience lay in the consciously

iv THE IDEAL OF EXPERIENCE 127

complete identity of the two elements. This ideal
is, then, the end at which it aims and from which
the interpretation must start.

Experience will be best realised, if there are what the
to be different forms of its expression, when ldeal 1S>
that unity is most explicit, when the subject and
object are explicitly aspects of the same conscious
unity. For then the subject will consciously be
identical with its object, its object will be its very
self. In this case, the object is self and aware of
the subject, subject is self and aware of object ; or
subject and object are each self-conscious. But this
is only possible when the object is the self of the
subject which has experience, and where this self-
consciousness is absolutely all inclusive. It will be
found in absolute self-consciousness, in that form
of experience which we call the life of Absolute
Mind.

It is clear that this is the final reach of the activity
of experience : it is the ideal of a completed experi-
ence. For there is no opposition here which is not
overcome ; there is no relation between subject and
object (which is the essence of all opposition in ex-
perience) which is not at the same time a conscious
or explicit identity between them. Identity, to be
complete, must be identity of content and not
abstract or formal identity. Hence the consciously
complete identity of subject and object must be
found when the subject has for object its entire
self, or wb~n we have absolute consciousness of
self. But this means no more than, and no less
than, that this form of experience is spiritual life
pure and simple. It is the life of Spirit as such,
complete and self-contained. Conscious spiritual

128 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT CH.

experience is therefore the ideal of all finite experi-
ence.

The Now we must note that this is not merely

an end to which experience points, but one which
j s DO th itself real, and underlies the life of experi-
ence at all its stages. Thus the absolute con-
scious unity of subject and object is implicit in the
lowest form of, say, Sense-experience, and is explicit
as a specific form of experience in, e.g., Religon.
The unity is in most cases of experience only
implicit : but what is implicit is this completely
conscious identity. The unity of subject and object
must be there, otherwise there is no experience :
subject and object would then fall apart and be
sundered by the whole diameter of being. But the
unity itself as a conscious unity only comes fully
to light in certain forms of experience (viz. Re-
ligion and Philosophy). This completely expressed
identity, then, is the controlling or constitutive unity
throughout all experience.

it is not The only alternative to admitting this is to
re g ar d the final goal of experience as a "mere
ideal " at which the individual life aims, but never
reaches, i.e. it remains always a mere "point of
view." This puts it outside the range of actual life ;
it never is a reality, but a possibility, not a fact but
a problem, not a certainty but a " postulate." As
such it can have no constitutive or determining force
on our actual experience. Experience would then
have to be interpreted by a principle which never
transcends the immediate opposition of subject and
object, never reaches the inner nature of that unity
in which they subsist. This unity would in that
case either be simply acknowledged, and called a

iv THE IDEAL IS CONCRETE 129

" mystery " ; l or else it would be denied altogether ; 2
and then we have thorough-going dualism, which
means in the long run scepticism regarding ultimate
things.

The conception of the reality of that unity as The
an actual form of experience, and of its function in concrete.
determining all forms of experience, is thus pre-
cisely the extreme antithesis of both mysticism
and scepticism. It is the deliberate adoption of
the idea of a complete experience as the principle
for illuminating all other forms of experience. It
starts from the actuality of a complete self-conscious
unity, and from that seeks to determine how every
other form of conscious unity is constituted, and
how all are connected through their common im-
plication of this highest form. For these two
steps are connected together. To show how every
form of experience is constituted by this idea of
a completely conscious unity, is also to show
how they are related to each other, because they
are all forms of experience, and therefore different
realisations of the one complete unity dominating all
experience.

Now this is not a startling principle to adopt, import
It really means no more than that we are in of . thl . s .

. . . principle.

earnest with the principle that self-consciousness is
the key to the meaning of experience, a principle
laid down by Kant, and indeed found in different
ways, as Hegel tried to show, throughout the history
of philosophy. Consciousness of self is a relation

1 The position of " Deism."

2 The position of " Agnosticism." It is curious to find dualism at the basis
of these abstract and opposite positions. They are indeed closely allied in
other ways. It is easy to pass from the abstract assertion that the Unity is, to
the equally abstract assertion that we do not know what it is.

K

130 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT CH.

of an object to a subject. It is therefore an
experience. And because the unity of its two sides
is made explicit by their content being the same,
we have there the very idea of all experience fully
and consciously expressed, viz. the unity of subject
and object. To adopt it as a ground of explanation
does not involve, therefore, as is done in so many other
cases, taking an external arbitrary principle of some
kind, fitting experience into it, and then, in virtue of
the coherence or symmetry thereby secured, calling
it "intelligible." The point is that experience in
any and all its forms implies this principle. Hence
to interpret experience by the idea of consciousness
of self is to interpret experience by itself, by what
experience really is when fully expressed.

It does not matter whether this complete
experience is spoken of as the ideal experience of
"finite" mind or as "absolute" mind. It is finite
experience absolutised, finite experience completed.
Whatever more this may mean, and does mean,
that is enough to begin with as an end from
which and by which to look at all finite modes
of experience. We have, in short, simply to deal
with completed self- consciousness as such, as an
explicit identity of subject and object. In what
form of experience the attainment of this is found,
and what that form contains this is itself part of
the inquiry.

Again, it must not be supposed because the
hngs> ideal of experience is actually realised in the
religious life or in philosophical consciousness, that,
relatively to this, other forms are to be so interpreted
and understood as if they were incomplete expres-
sions of the philosophical or religious experience.

iv ALL EXPERIENCE NECESSARY 131

That would commit the error against which the
idealistic interpretation is a protest, the error, namely,
of regarding one type of experience as essentially
real and the other's "appearances" of it as if one
form were in strictness the only form, the others
being unsuccessful attempts to express it, and,
because unsuccessful, erroneous, and therefore to be
merely superseded altogether. This is the mistake
made by those who lay exclusive emphasis on
Religion or on Philosophy. It is the fallacy of
enthusiasm, fanaticism, and over-concentration of
any kind. It is as false as the attempt made by
Empiricism and Sensationalism to reduce all ex-
perience whatsoever to mere manipulation of the
elements of sense-experience ; and is false for the
same general reason. If we take Religion to be the
only real experience, because fully satisfying the
notion of experience, then we proceed to divide
experience into "reality" and "mere appearance";
and thereby fall back on a distinction which brings
in again precisely the dualism we want to get over,
and do get successfully over in the religious life.
Such a division of experience makes the religious
unity itself merely abstract, a bare unity ; and this may
very easily suggest to a mind absorbed in other modes
of experience, e.g. the scientific, that very possibly
this bare unity may itself be "appearance" or even
illusion a development very often found in reac-
tions from mysticism. 1 If, again, Philosophy is taken
as the only valid experience in the same one-sided
way, we ma/ come to look on Science, Perception,

1 Mr. Bradley's conception of Reality and Appearance arises out of such
an over-emphasis as that described, and is in part open to the objection
indicated.

i 3 2 PLAN OF THE ARGUMENT CH.

Morality, etc., as merely incomplete revelations of a
meaning completely realised in Philosophy. We tend
to look on them as imperfect attempts to express
the real nature of experience as a whole, or different
"points of view," as it is sometimes put, from which
we look at "reality." This is more often done in
the case of Religion, which is at times spoken of
as merely figurative or symbolic philosophy. But it
is sometimes carried to other forms of experience
as well. 1

Every Such results are only possible through laying ex-

experience elusive emphasis on the negative significance of the
is positive relation of complete experience to the other forms.
in its It overlooks the fact that all forms of experience
degree. are rea j anc j actua ] j us t because they are experience,

because expressing a relation between subject and
object, no matter what the relation be. Each there-
fore is essentially and fundamentally positive in
character. This indeed is recognised by ordinary
thought, or "common sense," where, while one
form of experience may be allowed to check or
limit another, yet all are given their place. The
question of the worth of any particular form of
experience itself assumes its positive reality, and only
arises because of that positive or " real " nature.
Moreover, the question, as to the value of a given
form, only arises in certain cases and for certain
purposes, which for the most part are of a practical
kind. In practical life the question as to the worth
of all and every form of experience in its entirety,
really never arises. It is only when we make the

1 This is seen, e.g. , in Mr. Mackenzie's view of the forms of experience as so
many different " constructions " of experience, perceptual, moral, aesthetic, etc.
See Outlines of Metaphysics.

iv FORMS POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE 133

connexion amongst all parts of experience our
special problem, viz. in Philosophy, that we attempt
to show in a thorough-going manner the relation
between its various forms. And it is then only that
the danger occurs of pressing too far the negative
effect of comparing higher and lower forms. 1 It
is then, in short, that we are apt to desert the
positive ground on which all experience really
rests, and from which the philosophical problem
itself arises.

All forms, then, are at once positive and negative, Every
and must be so regarded. All are necessary, because ^&~
subject and object must take up all forms of relation negative.
to each other in order to exhaust the possibilities of
experience. In working with the conception of
complete experience we can see more clearly the
sort of question we have to ask and answer regard-
ing each form. That is all it does for us. We
cannot deduce the various forms from it, because
Philosophy is reconstruction not creation. Rather
we deduce it from them by a long process. And
the question it asks is : What in the light of com-
plete self-consciousness does the unity of subject
and object in a given form amount to ? how is the
identity they imply expressed and constituted in The
each case ? By asking this of every form we < i uestion '
shall ultimately show how all finite experience is
determined.

We use, then, the idea of complete experience to
show in what, in the given forms of experience, the The
relation of subject to object consists. By showing ar s ument -
this in ^he case of all forms we shall at once explain
the meaning of every experience, the meaning of all

1 This danger is seen in Mr. Bradley's analysis.

134 STAGES OF THE ARGUMENT CH.

relations of subject to object, and we shall thereby
establish the principle from which we set out, that
complete self -consciousness is the ideal of all ex-
perience. This will show that experience, because
essentially self-conscious, is self- explaining, for the
principle in use all through is itself revealed by ex-
perience. The form of experience in which this ideal
of experience is found is what we call Philosophy
or completed knowledge. Hence the whole argu-
ment is merely a persistent and consistent application
of the essential principle of Philosophy, viz. complete
experience, to explain all experience philosophically.
This may seem a circle or a transparent common-
place, whichever way we please to look at it. It is
enough to remark that it is at least a legitimate
position to take up, and in a sense is so obvious as
to need no comment at all. It is saying no more
than that for philosophy to do its own business it
must justify itself to itself completely, it must be
self-determining from first to last.

This, then, being the end and principle from
which and by which to work, the first step is to find
out where to begin, and what are the main stages
The through which the argument must pass. This is
easily stated. We have, as we have said, subject
and object as the antithetic elements in the concrete
reality of conscious experience, and the key to its
entire meaning lies in the complete explicit unity
of the two, the subject conscious of itself in its object.
Now the individual subject may be aware of an
object as purely and simply other than, opposed to,
itself, have not even a feeling of implicit unity with
it. It may, again, be aware of self as other than
but implicitly one with the subject-mind conscious

iv CHIEF MOMENTS OF EXPERIENCE 135

of it. And, finally, it may have overcome all sense
of otherness in its object, and be fully and explicitly
aware of itself in the object of which it is conscious.
More simply, perhaps, we may say that in the first
stage the individual is conscious of objects which
are prima facie quite alien to and outside the
subject ; in the second, of the self, but as something
which is ostensibly different from, and over against
the subject conscious of it ; in the third, of the self
as transparently identical with the subject.

CHAPTER V

THE INTERPRETATION OF SENSE-EXPERIENCE :
AND OF PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE

Nature THE first stage is found in the simplest and, for con-

and mean- .1 r r

ing of sciousness, the most primitive form of experience
sense-ex- consciousness of objects of the world of Sense. It
is here, as has been recently argued, 1 that the con-
scious relation of self and not-self first dawns. That
is the fundamental or simplest form of experience,
the simplest form of objectivity on the one hand
and of subjectivity on the other. It is here that
objectivity is what is named "external." 1 The
object at this stage is simply the not-self in general,
and the form of experience in which we find it
specifically is what we call Sense-experience, con-
sciousness of objects of Sense. The analysis of
Sense-experience will bear this out.

niustra- Indirectly this epistemological conception is con-
sense as firmed by the familiar everyday fact of the strange-
not-seif. ness> tne unpredictability, the elusiveness of the
world of sense, which in different ways affect the
attitudes of individuals towards it. Thus to the
religious mind it may give rise to the feeling of the

1 By Adamson, Lectures, vol. i. part v. c. I.

2 Objectivity as " external " is just the space- character of this content of
experience.

136

CH. v THE WORLD OF SENSE 137

nothingness of the sense-world, its very variety
being an indication of its inadequacy to reveal the
ultimate One to which that type of mind clings.
Or it may seem the veil of an inner reality, i.e.
its mystery and strangeness are transferred to a
permanent reality which merely shines through the
infinite detail of its pattern, and, because it is a
mere veil, it sinks to the level of a means which
loses its own terrors as such, and may be ultimately
destroyed, burnt up, or, as it is put, " rolled
together like a scroll." Its elusiveness, again,
is for the ordinary mind the source of all the
suggestiveness of sense, of its symbolical character,
of those " obstinate questionings of sense and out-
ward things," of "blank misgivings of a creature
moving about in worlds not realised." So, too, its
unpredictability is the source, e.g., of the perpetual
reserve which guards all our judgments concerning
sense-experience other than what we have lived
through, and even concerning that also a reserve
which pursues empirical knowledge to its utmost
limit of accuracy. It is the source, further, at once
of the contingency found by science, and of its
incessant and necessarily endless attempt to remove
it. All these together make the self-conscious in-
dividual feel himself so detached from the world of
sense as to be able to withdraw from it altogether
into his own inner life, and even to doubt its very
existence. 1

This act of withdrawal has appeared at different
times throughout the history of philosophy, more<os
particularly, however, in modern philosophy, from attitude

towards

1 As is done by the higher "mysticism" an abstract but supreme form of the world
self-consciousness. of sense.

138 SENSE-EXPERIENCE CH.

the time of Descartes' doubt regarding the world
of sense - objects. It is seen in the perpetually
recurring problem as to the " existence," or at least
as to the nature of the existence, of the so-called
" external world " the problem sometimes described
as the nature of " external perception." To the
ordinary concrete mind, and to the scientific con-
sciousness, as well as to absolute idealism, this may
indeed appear a very singular problem to raise.
And when it is looked at as the only problem of
philosophy (as it is, e.g., by Berkeley), it may well be
considered inherently inadequate as an expression
of the whole problem of philosophy, and essentially
incapable of solution under the conditions in which
it is raised. This is partly proved by the result of
Berkeley's own analysis. But it is just as evident
when we look at the amount of experience which it
leaves out of account, and which cannot be ignored
by philosophy. Thus the nature of Moral Experi-
ence, or the Moral World, does not fall inside such
a problem ; and yet it has to be introduced even
in the solution which is offered. We see this in
Descartes' appeal to the moral goodness of God as
a guarantee for the belief in the existence of external
things, and in the way moral ideas are used by
Berkeley throughout his argument. This, again,
comes out in a striking manner in Hume, who was,
for historical reasons, concerned primarily with this
narrow conception of the problem of philosophy.
For him, there seems no doubt at all about the
reality of moral distinctions and the moral life in
general ; for him, any one who treats them sceptically
is looked upon as insincere from the start. This
merely proves indirectly that the external world is

v SENSE-EXPERIENCE NOT ALL 139

not the only object of experience, and cannot
therefore, as his sceptical analysis of perception
seemed to suggest, exhaust the whole problem of
philosophy. For surely the moral life is a reality
just as much as so-called external things. The
same remark holds good in regard to scientific
realities, realities of the scientific consciousness, say,
in the case of mathematics, or, again, as regards the
reality of the religious consciousness. These can-
not be affected by the analysis of the meaning of
the "external world." The application of the same
methods of analysis to these kinds of reality as to the
problem of the external world, reveals, by the very
inadequacy of the result attained, the futility of
confining the question to this one problem. For
the relation of the object to the subject is different
in these cases, and does not appeal to us in the
same way. Thus it never seems to occur to any
mind, still less to the ordinary or the scientific mind,
to doubt the existence of the Moral Order, or Social
Life. No one, for instance, doubts the existence of
his friend, or his family ; at least if doubts occur, he
finds it better to keep his doubts to himself! The
reason is that these simply do not belong to the
world of sense alone, or to the world of perception,
and hence they cannot and do not take up the same
relation of externality or " otherness " to his self, as
is possible in the case of the world of the things
of "sense." They are a different kind of object,
and while they may and do appear in sensuous
form, Sdise, as we are well aware, does not exhaust
their meaning and reality. So much so that even
death, or the negation of their sense reality, is taken
to be no absolute or necessary barrier to their

i 4 o SENSE-EXPERIENCE CH.

continued reality. Hence it is that the appeal to,
or consciousness of, deeper realities, i.e. realities
entering more into the inmost life of the subject,
than we find to be the case with external things,
often provides the arresting point to thoroughgoing
mental uncertainty regarding reality in general, not
merely in the ordinary life-history of individual
minds, but in actual philosophical systems as we
find, e.g., in Hume, or again, in a different way, in
Kant. Such higher or "inward" realities are deliber-
ately or unconsciously used to turn the flank of a
sceptical attack on knowledge even in regard to the
external world.

The signi- But that the doubt can arise at all regarding the
external world of things of sense, shows conclusively

sopincai how thorough and complete the opposition can be

doubt' . \ .

regarding and is between mind and objects at the simplest or
sense-ex- j owest l eve l o f experience. The extremeness of the

penence.

opposition is there always, and merely comes to
light in an extravagant or excessive form when
men doubt either philosophically or otherwise the
existence of external things altogether. Strictly
carried out, such a doubt is bound to lead either
negatively to pure Scepticism, or positively to pure
Solipsism, which, inside the limits within which
it keeps, cannot really be answered, a characteristic
which led Voltaire to remark that Solipsism was
madness, but beyond the reach of argument or
refutation.

We start, then, with this opposition of subject and
object in its unqualified and extreme form, and we
ask how is experience in such a case constituted.
What is the nature of that essential unity which so
relates these opposite elements as to form a concrete

v FORMS OF THIS EXPERIENCE 141

experience ? We put this same question when we
ask what is the "truth" of this experience, truth
here meaning the nature of the specific identity which
unites subject and object.

The opposition here considered appears in differ- Forms of
ent ways. Mere Sense -experience is its simplest
and most obvious form. But we find the same kind (i) Sensa-
of opposition in other phases of experience. When tr
we speak of "perceiving" an object, we draw a firm
line between our perceiving and the object perceived.
We say, e.g., the object is out there, whether we per-
ceive it or not, or even whether anybody perceives
it or not. The object-world as perceived is sharply (2) Per-
separated from the subject-mind experiencing it in ce P tlon -
and through Perception. This is the position of
common sense, and to some extent of the scientific
mind ; so much so that the sphere of independent
" fact " for science and common sense lies generally
in the objects of Perception. " Facts " are taken
to be precisely what instruct and mould the mind,
and so are independent of, "external to," the sub-
ject, whose business it is merely to accept what
he "finds," or "what his senses teach him." So
separate are the objects, that our mind is held
to refer to them by a process of its own which
may err; but, it is held, the "facts" never can.
Hence, since we can refer truly or falsely to this
world, our experience of it takes the form of specific
kinds of judgments, Judgments of Perception. All
our perceptual knowledge takes this form. Our
ideas here " refer to " this object-world which we
perceive, but which is " apart from " our minds. Yet
in spite of this independence, it is also maintained
that the world we perceive seems to depend on, or,

i 4 2 SENSE-EXPERIENCE CH.

at least, be qualified by, the nature of the subject
perceiving. For the variety of our avenues of
Perception suggests the possibility of others in
differently constituted perceiving subjects ; while the
variation of the actual content of the perceivable
world according to the position in time or space,
the condition of the organism, etc., of the perceiving
subject, leads to the recognition of a certain amount
of dependence of the content of objects perceived
upon the subject.

Conse- This contrast between the apparently self-evident

quences opposition or separation of subject and object in
contrast Perception on the one hand, and their undeniable
o" pS- 0886 reciprocal dependence on the other, leads the re-
ception, flective philosophical mind, in the long run, to raise
the question (above mentioned) regarding the mean-
ing of an independent world of Perception. It leads
also to the historic distinction between "primary
sense - qualities " and "secondary sense -qualities,"
the ground of distinction being the accidental or
the necessary character of the relation of subject to
object in the case of any given quality, according as
the quality is primary or secondary. I f it is accidental,
the quality perceived is primary, the subject "makes
no difference " to the object ; if it is necessary, the
quality is derivative or secondary, the subject is
essential to determine the quality. It leads again
to the distinction between the " that " and the
"what" in judgments of Perception, the "what"
referring to the content of the judgment, the " that "
to the existence of the object to which "ideas,"
the media of judgment, are taken to " refer." Here
the separation is limited to the " thatness " of the
perceived object, the "whatness" can belong, or

v SENSUOUS AND SUPER-SENSIBLE i 4 3

does belong, to the sphere of ideas. The " that "
is always immediate, the "what" mediate; and since
the " that " is beyond ideas, it is beyond judgment
and so beyond knowledge. 1 From this again arises
what is called the separation of "reality" and
" thought," a separation implying a dualistic view of
knowledge.

But yet another form of sharp separation between (3) Ap
subject and object is to be found, one which, to l^th
some extent, has still to do with the world as Super-
experienced in sensation, and as perceived. Both
common sense and in part the scientific mind are
accustomed to speak of the world we know as one of
" appearance " ; and what appears in it and through
it is some active force or power at work behind the
screen or veil revealed to Sense and Perception.
This " world of appearance " may be ordered by
"laws." These laws are not found in Perception.
They are construed apart from it ; 2 but, because
unseen, they are referred to an "invisible" "non-
sensuous " world. They are ways in which the
non-sensuous world produces order in the sensuous
world. Similarly, we may refer the varied motions or
processes of the sensuous world to hidden "forces"
of which these motions are the expression. The
"expression" is before consciousness when perceiv-
ing ; it appears : the " force " is beyond what appears.

These distinctions are found in the attitude
of science, and are certainly seen at work in
common thought. Here an abrupt opposition is

1 Hence the "representative" theory of "external perception," where
ideas "intervene" between the subject and the "that" (the existence) of the
object.

2 Le. They are determined in the first instance negatively as regards Per-
ception : they are " not seen," intangible, etc.

144 SENSE-EXPERIENCE CH.

established between the subject-mind on the one
hand, and a non-sensuous object-world on the other.
The sensible manifestations, as such, of this world
create no opposition for the subject to overcome. 1
The opposition is maintained between object and
subject by means 0/"them. Since it does not fall in-
side sensible experience, it is now set up between a
non-sensuous object in a super-sensible world and
the subject. When this is done the opposed factors
(subject and object) are now seemingly further
apart than ever ; 2 for we have all the wealth of
sensible experience between them, separating them
from each other and from ultimate union. All
sensible experience may be said even to be de-
pendent on the subject and its activity ; and if so, it
is then held to be " phenomenal " of a world beyond
the range of Sensation and Perception proper.
The sensible world is epiphenomenal, as regards,
and in contrast with, a noumenal non-sensuous
reality, into which the subject "cannot penetrate."
This may be expressed in the form which Goethe
puts into the mouth of the physicist, " No creature's
mind can pierce within dark nature's inner secret."
Here it is held we only know what " appears," never
what " ultimately exists " ; that remains in permanent
opposition and externality to the subject. Or it
may find a philosophical expression, as, e.g., in the
case of Kant, where the actual life of experience
consists in objects being determined and unified by
functions of the subject on the one side working upon
the matter of sense on the other, the whole lying

1 They are held to be directly present to it, whether as its own ideas or
otherwise.

2 i.e. further apart than they were at the level of, e.g., Perception.

v PHENOMENA AND NOUMENA 145

between two non-experienced, i.e. non-perceivable
noumenal realities, the pure ego-subject and the
mere thing per se. These last are sundered by the
whole diameter of being, and neither known nor
united at any point. They are simply opposed, so
much so that even to say anything regarding them
is to endanger the sacred silence which guards their
being from the invasion of knowledge.

This separation of subject and object by means This is the
of a distinction between phenomena and noumena,
sensible and super-sensible, is an acknowledgment opposi-
at once of their necessary connexion in actual
experience, and yet of their being still opposed
and external to each other. It pushes the factors
in opposition (subject and object) beyond the
bounds of all sensible experience, as if at all costs
it would refuse to surrender the assertion of their
separation. The distinction, which first of all holds
of and constitutes sensible experience, becomes now
a distinction between a sensible and a super-sensible.
world. If this opposition is not to be absolutely
maintained in the case of Perception, as above
described, then it must at any rate hold good of
what is beyond perceptual experience. Yet, since
the two worlds (sensible and super-sensible) must
still somehow be thought of as continuous, experi-
ence being a unity, the difficulty which arises from
setting up something beyond sensible experience,
opposed to the subject of experience, has to be
got over. This is done in some cases by saying
that sensible experience is phenomenal of a nou-
menal world, that objects perceived are "appear-
ances " of an unknown reality. 1

1 All this is clearly the result of an attempt to justify at a higher level of

L

146

SENSE-EXPERIENCE

CH.

These
three are
funda-
mentally
the same
type of
opposi-
tion.

These three ways of taking the relation between
subject and object must be considered together. 1

experience, through a process of reflection, the same kind of separation of
subject and object which we find in the case of sense-experience and percep-
tion. We would see that it is so if we considered how they are specifically
constituted. We should then also discover how ultimately the separation
has to be and is overcome altogether. Science, we find, for example, some-
times falls back on some monistic principle, or, again, on a quasi-religious
intuition into the ultimate nature of things, i.e. into what lies "beyond" in
the super-sensible. Other forms of experience, again, assert, and work in
ordinary life by the assumption of, an essential identity between the two
elements, an identity which may find expression in the so-called rationality of
the world as a whole whose nature the subject shows. In short, actual
experience and reflection upon experience, in the long run, are forced to abandon
the attempt to keep the two factors of experience absolutely apart and
external ; and to put their separation in a super-sensible world is seen to be,
what it is in reality, a mere refuge in the unknown for maintaining the
necessity of an inherently false position.

If they are really separate, why these elaborate devices to establish what,
to begin with, should be obvious : if they are not separate, our aim should
rather be to show that they are distinctions inside a unity. The distinction
between real and phenomenal, sensible and super-sensible, are merely made to
keep the two as far apart as possible. The very failure to make the result
coherent, as in the case of Kant, is evidently an indication that the business
of reflection is also to bring them together and show their place in a single
identity a result which, in fact, is accomplished by carrying experience to a
higher level. This will appear in the sequel.

1 They may, indeed, in a sense be looked at as three different ways of
trying to secure the same result to maintain the conscious distinction between
subject and object as a separation of opposite elements in spite of their unity, a
unity which must and does assert itself somehow in experience in each case, and
which analysis of that experience shows to be there all the while. First, there
is the sensation and the sense-quality, the sense-response on one side and the
sense-stimulus on the other. But the reciprocal variation of the two and the
essential continuity between them breaks down their independence and asserts
their unity as a conscious fact. The opposition failing there, it next takes the
form of a separation of the unity of sense-qualities and the function of uniting
them, of thing and perceiving, percept and perception. But here, again, the
mutual interdependence of the two sides, the dependence of the character and
existence of the " thing " on the selective reaction of the acts of percipience,
and of the function of perceiving on the permanence of the percept, fuses the
separated elements into the continuity of a single unified experience. The
opposition now seems to have failed utterly : sense-experience and perceptual
experience do not exist by opposition of subject and object so much as by their
indissoluble unity. Yet the opposition dies hard, and will not be given up. To
make a last stand it is taken out of mere sense-experience altogether, and is set
up as an opposition between what is sense and what is not sensuous between a
1 ' sensible " and ' ' super-sensible " world. Here the separation, the ' ' externality "

v SENSE-EXPERIENCE 147

Their fundamental characteristic is, that in them
subject and object are held separate from each other.
The special feature in each case is what we may
call the relation to "sensibility" in some form or
other. It lies in Sense-experience proper, it is
present in Perception, it is essential to the distinc-
tion between a Phenomenal and Super-sensible world.
There is a direct connexion between the external
relation of subject and object on the one hand and
this implication of the element of sense. For
sensibility consists essentially in the external rela-
tion of parts to each other indefinitely. The parts
in sense-experience are outside each other : " this "
is "here," "that" is "there"; the "now" is a unit
marked off from a " then." Sensibility is not some-
thing which makes these distinctions and relations
possible ; it just is this relating of parts externally
to each other. Hence to look upon experience as
at all sensuous, bound up with sense, means simply
that we look on subject and object (the final factors

of subject and object, becomes almost a kind of unconscious irony of experience
itself. For what it sets up as utterly opposed and "external" to another as a
fact of experience, an opposition defying the unity of them in experience, has
been itself created by that very unity itself and in its own interests. And this
comes out when we see that the sensible world, which is the typical form of
external opposition, of one thing being "outside" another, is itself put as a
whole outside what is not sensible, what is .r&^r-sensible. This at once stultifies
the very meaning of external opposition, external separation. For what is
" super-sensible " cannot be " external " to what is "sensible," if sense alone
contains " externality" ; and sense as a -whole cannot be " external" to what
is not-sensible, for the same reason. Either, therefore, the super-sensible falls
within what is sensible, or else the relation between them is not that of
"externality." The first is impossible, and naturally enough, therefore, we
find that the relation of " externality" is transmuted altogether, and becomes
one between what "appears" and what "abides," between "phenomenal"
and "noumenal," and the world of sense becomes an expression of (not
external to) the super-sensible. And thus the original professed separation
fails utterly and disappears altogether into the unity of a single self-conscious
experience. The following argument brings this out.

148 SENSE-EXPERIENCE CH.

in experience) as outside each other ; and conversely,
when subject and object are opposed externally
experience is necessarily sensuous. Experience
qud sensible is the specific and concrete way in
which external opposition is felt and spoken of in
ordinary life.

Sense-ex- What we have to do is to show how they are
perience j^y together in an individual mind so as to form

roer . . .

a concrete single experience. 1 his means showing
the unity which relates them, the identity which
holds them within itself as differences. In the case
of mere Sensation or mere Sense-experience this is
comparatively easy. The general quality of all
sense-experience is the simple immediate existence
of a conscious content. It is not a " reference " of
our ideas to sense ; for there is at this level of
mind-life no distinction between ideas and other
" things." Conscious content simply is. Take as
example the sense of colour qud sense, and elimin-
ate all reference to distinct ideas of intensities in
colour, names of colours, etc., all of which imply
comparison and developed thought. The colour
simply fills our sense of sight: it is just the general
sense of sight modified in a specific way at a
specific point. No man is conscious, in sense-
experience, of a distinction between the mere filling
of his eyes with light, and some idea of light in his
mind which is referred to a luminous area, any more
than he is conscious of a distinction at all between
his open eye and light. To open his eye means
exactly seeing. A colour is for sense-experience no
more than a modification of this general luminous
area. So of any other form of mere sense-experience.
This quality of merely being, without further dis-

v "THIS" IS UNIVERSAL 149

tinctions, we express by such terms as "here,"
" now," " then," " there," " this," " that," etc. These
terms are primarily used to convey to ourselves and
others precisely this immediate presence of a sense
content, the mere consciousness of a sense quality.

They do not all have the same specific connota-
tion. "This" is not the same as "here," and
" now " is different from both. But these are merely
variations of the same kind of conscious life. 1

Now whether expressed or unexpressed these sense-
are the only ways in which mere Sense-experience f s x i*
appears. Take from an object of nature, e.g. a tree, sickness.
all the complex notions which make up its full
meaning for science and developed knowledge, sub-
stance, activity, life, laws, etc., and what we have left
ultimately is merely a sense-experience of a this-here-
and-now. The "this" is, say, green here and now. 2
And, again, because any given " this " is opposed to
another " that," which too may come to be looked on
as a "this," Sense-experience as a whole breaks up
into a multitude of parts all outside of, and side-by-
side with, each other. All can be equally named in
exactly the same way, as "this," "that," "here,"
etc. The parts of Sense- experience simply fall
outside each other, have no inner coherence, and
imply no active construction. Hence it is that in
such experience subject and object are looked on
by developed self-conscious life as furthest apart.
How then does a " this " experience, an experience

1 i.e. parts of the same objective continuum of sense the parts being side-
by-side, external. "This," "that," etc., express externality in different ways
and degrees.

2 It is because sense-experience seems thus " found," not made, " picked up,"
not constructed by developed intelligence, that to higher thought it appears so
" external," that the object we are conscious of, the this, seems " outside" us.

150 SENSE-EXPERIENCE CH.

consisting of "thises," "heres," "nows," etc., have a

unity at all, a concrete identity of diverse elements ?

The In the first place, let us observe that the term

"this "is t his," "that," etc., can apply to an indefinite

universal. /

number of parts of Sense-experience. Sense seems
at first to be merely particular, a " this " seems com-
plete in its isolation, and falls outside the subject,
which is merely another particular alongside it, "this"
ego, " this " subject. But just because each is looked
at as a " this," a particular " this " cannot be a mere
term for particularity. It applies to all cases of
Sense-experience, and hence is universal. That is
inevitable, because merely to isolate particulars is to
give all the same character, namely, isolation, and
hence the character of isolatedness is itself universal,
embracing all cases of itself. For that reason " this "
does not express and cannot express merely parti-
cularity at all, it is in some way universal. Particular
" thises " are thus not absolutely external to each
other, they are manifestations of and in a universal,
and so imply each other. A "this" contains in
itself implicitly a "not this," and both fall inside the
universal of thisness in general.

The But that may seem merely an argument based on

is an* ^ e use f wor ds, on tne f act that " this," like every
immediate word, has always at least a potentially universal
application. It implies, however, a deeper truth.
The immediate of sense-consciousness is a totality,
a continuum, compassing in its sweep all the parts
into which it may become differentiated by interest
or attention or otherwise. The total immediate is
alone the "this-now," and the various "thises" or
" nows " are merely selected out of it. They each
mean the totality, because otherwise they would

v SENSE UNITES DIFFERENCES 151

not themselves be, since it alone is the immediate.
Thus if "now" does not mean the total "now," it
makes the rest of the " now," and hence relatively
itself, a " then." Hence a "this," while seemingly
a discrete particular, is really an attempt to con-
centrate into a single point, into a " this-here," the
totality of the immediate which alone is "this-here."
The attempt is no doubt justified, because every
part of the immediate of sense is alike qua immediate,
and hence the same term will apply to any part of
it. This is practically all that is required for the
direct purposes of the ordinary life of every day,
where these terms are perpetually recurring. The
context of fact, and the common understanding of
men, save them from the confusion which analysis
can detect. But none the less the attempt is un-
successful and the position untenable. No particular
" this " can express fully the total immediate, and it
alone is what is present to consciousness. The latter
is always present, but the former is inadequate to it.
We may try to avoid this conclusion by saying we
mean "a this": analysis shows at once that this is
mere redundancy. From this failure arises the
view often put forward that language cannot express
the mere particular " this " at all. That, however,
is not due to the inadequacy of language to deal
with actual experience, but because of the absence
of any experience to which language in such a
case could really refer. " This," for Sense, always
means what is universal, namely, the total immediate
of sense -experience ; and hence language, which
must be universal, is quite equal to what " this "
means, but must necessarily be unequal to what
"this" may pretend^ express but can never mean.

152 SENSE-EXPERIENCE CH.

We never mean this isolated, discrete, dissociated
particular of Sense, because that is inherently with-
out significance of any kind to any mind. " This,"
"now," etc., thus stands for what is universal.
This is There is a further reason, too. Any "this" includes

generic. j n j tse ]f a mu i t ipli c ity of "thises"; "now" contains a
plurality of "nows." This is seen in familiar ways.
We say "now it is day"; but this "now" includes
hours, which again are " nows." " Here is a table."
" Here " includes spaces, points, etc., which again
are "heres," and so on. But a "now" which con-
tains plurality within itself as its own is a universal.
Similarly of " this " and the other terms.
Sense is a We see, then, that the real nature of sense-
consc i usness nes i a universal which contains the
parts of sense-life as differences. That universal is
just the continuity of the process which makes up the
life-history of immediate sense-experience. This may,
by selective interest or otherwise, appear in distinct
phases or parts. But each as readily becomes its
opposite, and this fluent interchangeableness con-
stitutes the identity between them. The incessant
change of sense-life is due to its being a mere varia-
tion of the same simple form of existence, is due
in fact to the interchangeableness of its content ; a
" this " can equally well become a " that," a " now " a
" then," and so on. This incessant change of similar
elements is all that sense-life consists in. Hence
its variability, its endlessly fleeting character, its
instability, its inadequacy to satisfy the desire for
a stable ideal, or constant organising universal.
Hence, so far from being the ultimate touchstone
of reality, as some have held, it is just what is
perpetually slipping from our grasp. Its being is

v SENSE HAS UNIVERSALITY 153

change, its life the death of its moments. As for
constituting a support, which some have tried to
make it, against sceptical attack, it is bound to
prove the best weapon scepticism can use. The
incessant change, which constitutes its life as a
universal, makes it impossible for a " this " or
"that" to maintain a substantial permanent reality
external to the subject. A " this " or " that " has no
reality of its own at all ; its nature falls into the
universal process of change.

On the subjective side, again, Sense-experience Subjective
is likewise dissolved into the series of units of feel-
ing, Sensations, which make up the discrete parts of
the one changing continuum of Sense - life. The
" this " is the objective side, the " feeling " the sub-
jective side of the one experience. Being immediate
the one to the other, it is only by reflection that
the distinction is drawn between a subjective and an
objective side. In the experience itself it is in-
different whether we say " this-feeling " or " feeling-
this." We see in this way why it is impossible
to state whether "sensations" are "objective" or
"subjective." What we have in Sense-experience
is simply a universal process consisting in the mere
awareness of an immediate content, continuous as
change, discrete as moments of it. 1 This makes up the
whole relation, at this stage of experience, between
subject and object. They themselves exist by find-
ing their being simply in this process. Universality
as a continuum of changing elements is thus the
condition of the possibility of Sense-experience.

1 Hence, as a consequence, we see that the individuality or, again, the
uniqueness of a subject-ego can never be established (as some have main-
tained) by appealing to mere Sense-experience, for this shows uniqueness to
have no place in sense-life at all.

154 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE CH.

Univer- But, it must be noted, the universality here is

her? how not a distinct entity for sense-consciousness. It is
found. a continuum of change. Hence the universality is
never ascribed, in Sense-experience itself, to the ego
whose nature is just to be universal. Universality
as such is only presented at a level above sense, and
is known primarily by thinking about Sense. Sense
is merely awareness of "this." The way univer-
sality does appear in Sense is in that feeling of
certainty which accompanies each "this " of Sense-
experience as it comes and as it appears, a feeling
which characterises all Sense-experience in exactly
the same way. When consciousness does become
explicitly aware of the universal, the way is opened
to a further and more developed form of this stage
of conscious life Perception.

Percep- The examination of Perception reveals in the

same way that the object perceived has not as such
absolute independence, that its very nature is to
dissolve into a unity containing it and the subject to
which it stands related. In Perception subject
and object seem to stand opposed. But such an
external relation as appears there cannot be sustained
if the object itself can be shown to dissolve into a
more comprehensive totality, or universal, within
which also the subject- life falls. This is what
analysis of the object and of the process of Per-
ception brings out. The main points in the analysis
can be shortly stated.

Perception In pure Sense-experience the essential reality

the Unl was tne universal ; what was directly conscious at a

versaiof given moment was a certain "this." The universal

as suck is the real centre of interest in Perception.

Hence the meaning of the term; it is "seeing

v THE UNIVERSAL IN PERCEPTION 155

through" or "thoroughly" into the heart of sense-
content, getting hold of its stable unity and universal
nature in spite of the appearing diversity and the
incessantly changing features of Sense. Thus we
distinguish in common life between "seeing" and
"perceiving." Both are knowing in the widest sense,
both are experience in any sense. The difference is
in the way the universal operates. The conscious
presence of a universal in Perception is, again, the
ground of the common view that perceived facts, or
facts of Perception, are the basis of Science, and so
the basis of inference (which is a process of know-
ledge dealing solely with universal relations). It
is for the same reason that much of Perception
can in time be inferred or guessed at, without going
through the actual process of Perception, as, e.g., in the
observation of a series of objects. To this, indeed,
perhaps may also be traced the doubtful doctrine that
Perception is a kind of " unconscious inference."

The universal of Sense, then, is the primary factor The
in Perception. It is double-sided, subjective and
objective at once. That lies in the very nature of of the

^i T >_ r> u '^ Universal.

the case ; Perception is an experience, but it is
exactly the same universal in both cases, the
universal constituting the experience, giving it unity.
The subjective side, perceiving, is simply the process
of the universal, the universal as actively operating.
The objective side, the percept, is the same universal
taken simply as a totality, static and fixed in
conscious experience. At first no doubt the latter
seems the more fundamental in perceptual ex-
perience. As it is said, we cannot alter "facts"
perceived by the way we perceive them ; the
process of Perception, that is to say, neither produces

156 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE CH.

nor alters the object perceived. On this view the
object is taken to be the essential reality ; it is,
"whether perceived or not." But that is really due to
the greater prominence in the experience of Percep-
tion of the permanent controlling unity, not to any
ultimate difference in the content of Perception
between the objective and the subjective side. On
the contrary, the fact that the process does not alter
the object is just due to the presence of the same
universal in both. Indeed we acknowledge, even
in common speech, that perceiving and perceived
qualities are, in certain cases at least, mutually
dependent, such cases being, e.g., the so-called
" secondary qualities." But the important point is
that while we may assert the object to be funda-
mental and the process of perceiving to be dependent
on it, yet examination will show that the process of
perceiving an object just consists in taking the
aspects of the object separately and relating them
so as to form the unity of the object. The object
does not exist outside the process, waiting, so to say,
till the process is correctly done, whereupon it will
become known as the single object for Perception.
The object itself just comes to be in and through the
process which takes place in perceiving. In other
words, tihK. process Q( Perception (the subjective side)
is itself the object in course of fitting its component
elements together. The object as such is the pro-
cess completed, the elements united. There is no
separation between the being of the object and the
perceiving of it a position which Berkeley sought
to establish by another route. For idealism this
is literal truth, and the exposition of this identity,
first in the case of the universal we call the object

v DUALISM AND PERCEPTION 157

perceived, then in the case of the universal we call
the process of perceiving, is all that constitutes the
analysis of the nature of perceptual experience.

The peculiarity of perceptual experience therefore Perception
lies not in its dealing with "particulars," while other ]j^J "^
forms of knowledge, e.g. science, deal obviously with particu-
conceptions or universals. That is a common view,
which analysis indirectly refutes. The peculiarity
lies just in the kind of universal which operates
in Perception, in the way in which the universal
connects the special elements composing it. The
mere opposition of subject to object in Perception is
not the antecedent condition of perceptual experi-
ence, which must be presupposed before Perception
can arise. 1 This would make Perception the result of
bringing together two alien and mutually excluding
substances. Dualism on this view would be the
necessary basis on which this type of experience
would rest ; and the relation between them, which
constitutes Perception, might well be thought of as
purely mechanical and causal.

The latter is no doubt a common interpretation
of it. Its classical expression is found in Locke, and
it is characteristic of the so-called empirical school Perception
generally. Perception on this view arises through realism,
the subject being " impressed " or acted upon by the
object, the subject merely working up these "impres-
sions " or " sensations," as they are sometimes called,
by certain "laws" peculiar to itself. The singular
result of this position is, that the dualism assumed
as the ground of Perception is held to pervade all

1 The opposition is due to the way- in which the universal we are here
dealing with appears. It is a sense-universal, and Sense-experience is side-
by-sideness of parts in the whole continuum.

158 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE CH.

knowledge, even the highest, because "all know-
ledge starts from Perception." Conceptual Science
is explained as due to "abstracting" or "generalis-
ing " from perceived fact, i.e. by eliminating certain
aspects or elements found in Perception. Perception
is held to be the most direct form of contact
between subject and object, the most concrete way of
relating these "substances." Hence the further we
go from it, the more we must drop in our progress,
the more we must eliminate, and therefore the less
accurately do we present the facts arising from
Perception. Hence it is inevitable that conceptual
knowledge should be looked on as less valuable, less
true, should be taken as merely " abstract," a mere
"construction," or whatever other terms are used to
convey the idea that to be further from Perception
is to be less near the "real." Conceptions as such
become "copies," or after- results, due to "mental"
activity ; or at best they merely " correspond " to
the " reality " revealed in Perception. They form
when arranged a world by themselves, parallel with,
and in a way " reproducing," but never realising
the actual course of things found by Perception.
" Reality " then becomes " richer than thought " ;
the " truth " is found in the life of perceptual
experience. When this distrust of the value of
conception asserts itself strongly, we have a recoil
towards empiricism in the crudest of forms. This
result is seen in the history of post- idealistic
philosophy since Kant, where the explanation of
knowledge has been sought simply in a clearer
analysis of the nature and conditions of perceptual
life. When carried to its logical issue, this tendency
means either the frank abandonment of the

v PERCEPTION AND EXTERNALITY 159

philosophical point of view and ideal altogether,
or the strange attempt to find the meaning of
things through experimental psycho-physics and
physiology.

But subject and object must not and need not be Perception
at all thought of in this way to explain Perception, impL" 01
It would be truer to say \h.2& perceptual experience by Dualism.
its very nature puts the object "external to" the
subject, rather than that the externality of subject to
object gives rise to Perception. At any rate, perceptual
experience and the externality of subject to object
are simply different expressions for the same thing.
For subject and object to be opposed as unities
just means that they appear in the form of Per-
ception. The contrast between subject and object
in Perception is simply a particular case of the
relation between the two, a relation which is present
in experience in general. Hence we must proceed
to explain Perception from precisely the opposite
point of view from that of dualism. It is not
this externality of subject to object which is to be
assumed at the start, but the unity of subject and
object. The prima facie externality has itself to
be explained as a distinction inside an identity, a
distinction drawn, in the long run, by the self-
conscious activity at the basis of all experience.
At the level of Perception as such (i.e. as distinct
from reflective interpretation of it by philosophy),
the identity between the two sides is not expressly
known. 1 Because their unity is not explicit, the
elements remain in it, and are accepted, as merely
opposed and mutually exclusive. Hence the

1 At the most, as, e.g., Kant confesses at the end of his analysis of percep-
tion, the identity is merely believed in.

160 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE CH.

characteristic of perceptual experience. Analysis,
therefore, has to bring out this identity by showing
that the different elements imply it. To do this is
to explain Perception. 1

import- Now since it is in the sphere of Perception that

anceof we come across the so-called "external world," that

this view . .

ofPercep- we meet the opposition usually set up between
"mind" and "nature" in its crudest form (in the
form, that is to say, of one substance external to and
acting upon another substance), this analysis of
Perception is of crucial importance for the whole
view of experience. If it is correct, it is difficult to
reject the interpretation to be given of the nature
of Scientific activity, of the life of Morality and
Religion, of the unity of Spirit and Nature, the
refutation of Kant's dualism, and of his concep-
tion of the finiteness and the contradictions into
which human reason necessarily falls. For these
are all developments of the same position, and
follow, one may say, almost inevitably on the
admission of this view of Perception.

Know- It follows also from the same interpretation that

breaks there can be no absolute impasse in the way of know-
down ail ledge. For if, where the contrast between subject
an d object seems greatest, viz. Perception, the object
is still constituted by the same universals controlling

1 Thus the view, here stated, simply takes in a concrete form Kant's principle
of self-consciousness as its starting-point, and shows Perception to be one way
in which it operates in experience. In this sense it is nearer the truth of that
principle than the position of Fichte, who did not show that the distinction of
subject and object in Perception is immanent ly involved in the idea of self-
consciousness, but endeavoured to show how the one produced the other and
put it externally beyond itself by an initial act of spontaneity. So conceived
the externality for ever remains, and is a perpetual ' ' other ' ' to self-consciousness,
never completely reconciled ; or if reconciled, the externalising process becomes
a mere fiction from which the ego never escapes, but which is illusory none
the less.

v THE OBJECT OF PERCEPTION 161

the subject, then knowledge can never be brought
face to face with any kind of thing-in-itself beyond
its power to grasp. The contradictions of experi-
ence will always be resolvable by the power which
created them, and will not be attributed either to
the pretentiousness of finite mind (as Kant held),
or to the fallibility of human reason, but will be
accepted as part of the nature of experience. The
systematic justification of this view is the sum and
substance of Hegel's interpretation of experience.

In dealing with Perception, then, we first analyse object of
the object into its constituent characteristics. I
is the universal of sensibility, the sense-universal.
What, as mere Sense-experience, was taken to be
a series of discrete " thises," must now be viewed as
elements in the universal. They are ways in which
it appears, and hence are themselves a plurality of
sense elements. These are what we call " qualities "
of Sense. 1 They are together in the universal which
is the focus of perceptual experience. This focal
unity is what we call a "thing." A "thing" is just
the unity of the object in Perception. The " thing "
is the universal of Perception when that universal
is viewed as a complete whole. The "qualities" are
the phases or aspects of this universal. They are
as such universal, universals of sense ; and, being
so, they, like all sensuous experience, fall apart
from each other and from the central unity.
Taking the plurality of qualities which together
make up the variety of the object perceived, they
are, because at once together and falling apart

1 Thus what in Sense-experience is a " this-feeling, " a mere variation of
the continuum of immediate experience, 'becomes in Perception a fixed quality
(on the object-side) and a determinate qualification (on the subject-side).

M

162 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE CH.

from each other, held to be merely associated in
an object. Thus colour, sound, and taste may
all be qualities of the same perceived object, but
there is no inherent connexion of a quality " white "
with a quality "sweet" and a quality of "crisp-
hardness," e.g., in the case of sugar. The one
quality is not to be attributed to the other : they
are merely there together at the same time and yet
apart as qualities. Taking the qualities as a whole,
there is nothing more in the object than these
qualities, except the fact of their being associ-
ated together. This indeed was Berkeley's un-
answerable criticism of Locke. Looking, again, at
the unity of the object in its distinction from
the plurality of the qualities, the same apartness
characterises the relation of the qualities to the
unity. They are said merely to " belong to " or
be " properties " of the object. " Belonging to "
and "being properties of" essentially imply that in
some way the qualities have an external relation to
the object. They are " attached to it," or, again, are
said to "inhere "in it, both of which terms indicate
that the " it " is something or other apart from them.
This is seen in a concrete way in ordinary experience,
where it is admitted that a quality may pass away
altogether, or give place to another quality similar
or different in nature, and yet the unity of the object
still remain.

The unity The object in Perception, then, is a universal, a

as wdUs "thing" which breaks up into a plurality of universals,

includes, sense-qualities, existing side by side. These qualities

are the positive content of the object. If they were

absolutely indifferent to each other, existing merely

side by side, it would be difficult to give any meaning

v THINGS 163

to the unity of the object at all. A "thing" would
simply be yellow, and also sweet, and also round ;
nothing more. It would be not a unity but a
conglomerate. But this alone cannot constitute
a "thing." To be a unity it must exclude as well
as include. And what a "thing" excludes is other
"things." To do so is to be "one thing," a con-
crete unity and not a plurality of elements side by
side. This exclusion gives it stability and prevents
it being a mere flux as in pure Sense-experience.
The permanence in the midst of, and in spite of,
the flux of sense is the peculiar mark of a " thing "
as such, as distinct from a quality ; it constitutes
the thinghood of the "thing." But it is a stability
in the sphere of Sense ; its content is Sense.
Hence to be "one thing" means being external to
another ; each is a unit and shuts out or excludes
another from itself. There is no thought here of
a law or force controlling the unity and making it
permanent. Such ideas come later. For Perception
the unity is simply a focus of qualities excluding
other foci of other qualities. Hence their unity, their
stability, is a "here," a " now," a "this" or "that"
"thing" etc. But since its unity consists simply of
sense-qualities, it falls in its entirety as well as in its
qualities into the current of change. Hence the
"disappearance" of "things" lies in their very
nature as "things," and their varying degree of
stability depends on the kind of qualities possessed.
Thus the unity of a "thing" is not something
independent of the qualities, nor something outside
Perception. For Perception, the unity just lies
in the universal, the "thing," excluding other
"things," and being one amongst others; the way

1 64 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE CH.

it specifically does so is simply by those special
qualities it is said to "possess." In perceptual
experience, therefore, the universal, which is the
centre of this experience, breaks up into a variety
of sensuous universals (qualities) which lie apart
from each other and mark off that universal itself,
which is the "thing," from other "things." To
include qualities is thus to exclude other " things " ;
and to do both at once is to be this or that " thing,"
is to be a single or one "thing."

Thus the nature of a perceived "thing" from

first to last is resolvable into elementary universals

The limits belonging to the sphere of sensibility. There

don ercep ls no more ' so ^ ar as Perception goes, than
just this specification of a universal of Sense into
sensuous universals. If we ask for more, or if we
are led to go further, it must be because we are
going beyond Perception proper. At the level of
Perception there is nothing more to be given or
required. That we must go further will be seen
presently. But the point to notice is that Perception
as such does not and cannot contain more than
what has been stated. If mind cannot be satisfied
with that, we thereby confess simply that our mind
cannot be exhausted by perceptual experience, not
that Perception as such contains more than Per-
ception supplies in the above analysis. Perception
as such creates no difficulties it cannot solve ; it is
a higher phase of the life of mind that forces
perceptual experience into contradictions which it
(Perception) cannot overcome. This higher phase
of mind must do so just because it is higher. And
as the difficulties are raised by this higher sphere,
they must be solved by this higher sphere, and not

v KANT ON PERCEPTION 165

by Perception. They can be solved by mind,
because mind has raised them ; and hence mind is
never defeated in pursuing its own purpose of
realising a complete unity. No doubt this higher
sphere beyond Perception seems to be demanded by
Perception. We show (as we shall see presently)
that the very nature of a "thing" is to be at
once a self-contained unity and also a dependent
unity. And when we do this, Perception seems to
call for a further effort of mind to get over the
difficulties inherent in its own nature. But, in point
of fact, what has brought Perception to this pass is
another level of mind which is immediately above
Perception ; and hence the solution of those
difficulties is to be found at that higher level also.

Stated in this way the position is sharply Kant's
distinguished from that of Kant or again of Locke JJJ^?
and Berkeley. Kant, taking a dualistic view of the tion.
conditions of Perception, held the view that "behind"
the thing perceived there was implied for Perception
a thing per se not perceived, a hidden core or focus
of reality not resolvable into sense qualities which
we can know. He did not, like Locke, speak of this
unity as a law of the thing, and thereby bring it
within the range of knowledge. It was simply a
" beyond," something "outside" knowledge, which
no power of mind can get at. Clearly, if Percep-
tion and Understanding are heterogeneous forms of
mind, anything which remains always unrevealed by
Perception, and which yet is not supposed to have
been placed in Perception by Understanding, must
for ever be an unintelligible surd for human
knowledge. Such a surd is the thing apart from
its qualities. On the above view, however, such an

166 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE CH.

idea is the creation of Understanding, the higher
power of mind above Perception. For Perception
there cannot possibly be a thing per se, because
Perception reveals solely universals of sense, and
there is nothing more to be found in perceptual
experience. The " thing-in-itself " is due to the
determination of perceptual experience by a higher
level of the mind's experience, the level, as we shall
see, of Understanding. Hence the thing-in-itself
cannot be an ultimate surd for knowledge, since it
is to start with merely the result of the mind taking
up a point of view in regard to Perception which is
beyond the reach of Perception itself. Certainly
Perception cannot perceive a " thing-in-itself," in
the sense of Kant. But, then, it does not exist for
Perception at all. Hence if it is beyond Perception,
it is not necessarily beyond knowledge at another level.
The mistake of Kant consisted in condemning
human knowledge for not being able to grasp at
one level of experience (Perception) a content
whose very existence is only found at a higher
(Thought). And this in the long run was due to
his making Perception and Understanding hetero-
geneous, which again was the result of his dualism.
Berkeley. Berkeley, again, truer to the nature of Perception,
finds nothing but sense-universals, or " ideas of
sense," as he calls them, in the world of things,
and denies the existence of any unknown somewhat
so far as concerns Perception. True also to the
externality characteristic of sense qualities and
perceived universals (or things), he seeks to establish
a purely contingent or " occasional " relation between
them. They become in his hands "signs" of the
presence of one another, the anticipation of one

v ITS SUBJECTIVE SIDE 167

after the other being the creation of the experience
of perceptual life itself. But while intending to
limit all knowledge in the first instance to per-
ceptual experience, he unconsciously goes beyond
this by introducing the conception of an orderliness
into experience, which he does not really derive from
Perception as such, but from the further nature of
mind. In other words, order is introduced by the
deeper nature of mind, i.e. by self-conscious reason,
into the flow of sense-life. This order has its
source ultimately, or a priori, in the divine-mind,
and derivatively, or a posteriori, in man's individual
mind. But it is, for Berkeley, an order of a sensuous
material ; and hence for him is again of a contingent
kind. Thus causation, e.g., becomes the external
relation of a sign to a thing signified. Hence,
while both regard Knowledge as essentially per-
ceptual in character, Berkeley falls into an opposite
error from Kant. Kant set a limit to knowledge
because Perception implied an element not given
or found by Perception itself. Berkeley set a limit
to knowledge although it did not imply any unper-
ceived element. The limit in Kant's case is really
due to the nature and conditions of Understanding,
which is the source of necessity in experience and
yet is apart from Perception. The limit in Berkeley's
case is determined by the fact that because perceptual
experience does not carry us beyond what is per-
ceived, the connexions of experience must at best
be contingent. Hence in Kant's case the limit is
characterised by a term belonging to the region of
Perception, it is a " thing-in-itself " ; in Berkeley's
case it lies outside Perception, and is called a
" notion."

1 68 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE CH.

Hegel's The above interpretation avoids both these posi-

correction. t j ons> fi rst by l oo ki n g upon Perception and Under-
standing as both forms of experience at different
levels but continuous with each other ; and, secondly,
by regarding the limitations, difficulties, and con-
tradictions of the one sphere as due to, and hence
to be solved by, mind at a higher sphere of conscious
activity.

The The resolution of the elements of the object of

P erce pti n mto separate conscious parts, and the
conscious relation of these to each other, constitutes
just what we mean by "perceiving." Perceiving is
Perceiv- the subjective side of the same universal which con-
ing - stitutes the object in perceptual experience. The
process of perceiving does not consist in an inner
activity which goes on of itself, and when completed
all at once refers to an object which throughout that
activity was external to it. The process of perceiving
contains the object all along. The development, or
activity, of the process is just the object coming to
consciousness \ entering experience. The completion
of the process is simply the realisation of what
Perception means. There is no "act of reference" to
the object which takes place all of a sudden : it is
there from first to last in the process of coming to
know the object in Perception. No doubt there is
a finality about the completed relation of subject to
the object, i.e. about that stage in the process where
we have all the certainty Perception can give ; and
no doubt that feeling of finality is not found in the
earlier stages. But that is in the nature of the case.
As a process with a definite goal (viz. the attain-
ment of that kind of unity of subject and object
which Perception achieves) it must be less secure

v SENSE-FUNCTIONS 169

and definite in the stages preceding the end. But
this does not mean that the course of our ideas in the
earlier stages is generically different from the final
result. It does not mean that before we have that
final certainty, which Perception gives, the process
is " psychical " or psychological, and that when we
have it, the process suddenly becomes " cognitive " or
logical. It is both subjective and objective all along ;
for it is experience from first to last. The subjective
aspect of Perception just lies in the process of being
conscious of the elements comprising the unity of
the object, i.e. of becoming gradually aware of the
diversity implied or contained in the universal
belonging to Perception. This involves at once
analysis and synthesis, and in this perceiving
essentially consists.

To trace, then, the process of perceiving is merely
to repeat the moments contained in the object of
Perception, and to express the nature and result of
Perception from the point of view of the subjective
side of the experience.

We can see these characteristics of the process The pro-
of Perception exemplified more especially when
we are perceiving new objects, or when dis-
tinguishing a sensuous area into perceptual units,
or, again, when identifying an obscurely presented
whole, say the objects in a misty landscape. Here
we can be distinctly aware of separating and
combining elements, selecting, rejecting, unifying,
and breaking up until a point is reached when, as we
say, we are certain of " perceiving " such and such
an object, after which the process ceases. In
such cases we are all the while inside the subject-
object relation. The difference between the process

i;o PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE CH.

and the conclusion is one between a complete and
an incomplete realisation of the nature of the rela-
tion. The former is described as the subjective
side specifically, the latter is the objective side, but
the difference is not a separation. The objective
aspect is involved all along in the subjective process,
and conversely. When we separate them sharply,
as we can do for practical purposes, and as is done
absolutely by a dualistic view of perceptual know-
ledge, we can put perceiving on one side and the
thing with its qualities on the other. But each
really involves the other, each is merely a phase of
the same unity, the experience we call Perception,
its eie- Hence, then, to trace the steps in the process of

perceiving is merely to relate from another point of
view the factors involved in the nature of the object,
the " thing " perceived. In both cases we have a
plurality of elements at once apart and indifferent to
each other, and yet forming a unity. The elements
on the subjective side are the various ways of appre-
hending by the different sense functions, "hearing,"
"seeing," etc., which are distinct and yet fall within
the one activity of the subject. Thus seeing,
hearing, and touching may be all elements in the
experience of perceiving a given " thing." They are
specifically different, and yet side by side in the life
of the subject, and in that sense are a unity. Their
togetherness just makes up the unity of the act of
perceiving. Each again is subdivided into equal
diverse elements or forms ; seeing " black " being
different from seeing "white," and so on. In all
respects, therefore, we have the same kind of
diversity in unity in the process of perceiving (the
act of Perception) and the product perceived, the

v PROCESS OF PERCEPTION 171

"thing." In analysing the epistemological meaning
of " things," and in stating the nature of perceiv-
ing, we are reaching the same experience merely
from different points of view. Or, to put it more
emphatically, the " thing " just is the content of
the act of perceiving ; the process of perceiving
realises itself in the consciousness of a "thing."
In a "thing" the universal consists in a unity of
various qualities lying side by side : they simply
are together. But this "being together" is also and
in the same sense a form of the activity of perceiv-
ing. "Togetherness" appears within the subject
in the form of specifically discrete functions of
sense-apprehension, seeing, hearing, tasting, etc.,
each qualitatively apart and unique in its operation,
and merely existing together as the activity of the
one subject. The unity of the " thing" perceived is
thus as truly a specific expression of the activity of
perceiving as a determinate character of the objec-
tive world. For the kind of unity is the same on
both sides. Its being a unity is not given to the
self. That is the error of the dualistic view of
Perception. Nor is it simply and solely made by
the self; that is the error of Subjective Idealism.
The unity is the subject itself realised in a specific
form ; when realised we have the objective unity of
the " thing " in experience. What is fundamental is
the subject-object relation constituting the experi-
ence. The unity of that experience on the side of
the subject appears as the perceiving of a "thing" :
the unity of the experience in another aspect is the
percept, or "thing." Thus the relation between
subject and object in Perception is not a bringing
together of static entities each fixed and complete.

i;2 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE CH.

The experience is a continuous process containing
different moments or factors ; it is a unity in and
through difference. When completed the differ-
ences stand apart as distinct phases of the one unity,
because, on the one hand, the process is a process
of Sense-experience, i.e. side-by-sideness, and, on
the other, the differences are here universal, and
therefore maintain a fixity impossible at the level
of Sense as such. Thus the stability of the
opposition of subject and object in Perception is
the product of this single process, not the ground
of it.

Dim. If, then, the two sides are thus to be identified,

cuities. fa ovf are we to accoun t; for the apparent separation,

at least practically formed and ordinarily accepted,
between perceiving and the thing perceived. The
stones or trees, it may be said, are transparently
separated from the mind of the individual percipient.
They are there, it is held, whether any one perceives
them or not ; they are independent, if anything can
be. Is this independence illusory? How is it to
be explained ? In reply to this it has to be pointed
out (i) that if we accept sense-life as a continuum,
then clearly differentiation, relation, unification, etc.,
must operate before we can get even specific objects
like trees or stones. These must be separated out
of the generic whole of the "this-here-now" of Sense
before they get the individuation of " things." Such
separation surely goes to constitute them what they
are, and such separation is the result of experience,
the experience, namely, we call Perception. (2) If
the above analysis of sense-experience is correct, we
cannot regard sense-life as having any independence
of the subject. A sense-experience which implies

v DISTINCTION OF FACTORS 173

no subject of such experience seems meaningless.
But if this be true, and if Perception is a further
development of the very nature, and not simply on
the basis of, sense-life, the essential unity of subject
and object in the experience must be carried forward
and found in Perception as well. To deny this is to
deny the meaning of the development of the one
out of the other. (3) The real question is not as
to the abstract unity of subject and object, but as
to the kind of unity holding between them at the
different stages. No doubt the unity of percipient
and " thing " is not the same as that holding between
feeling and a mere Sense element. The relation is
different because the experience is different. That
lies in the very nature of the case. Development
there would otherwise be none. But difference in
the expression of the unity is something very far
removed from the absence of any unity at all, which
separation of subject from "thing" implies. (4) We
must distinguish sharply between the object in Per-
ception, between the unity of percipient and " thing "
in an individual's concrete perceptual experience,
and what holds good for consciousness in general.
The trees and stones in Mecca are certainly not bound
up with the perceptual life of a specific individual
in Scotland in the way they are connected with an
individual in Arabia. They are matter of inference
to the former, and of direct Perception to the latter.
That is, they belong to a non-perceptiial experience
in the case of the former, and to Perception only in
the case of the latter. In the former the object
belongs to what we may call general or conceptual
experience, the experience of a conceiving subject : in
the latter the object exists for a perceiving subject, a

174 PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE CH.

subject qua perceiving. Hence it is mere confusion
to speak of the object for general experience and
the subject in perceptual experience in the same
breath, as if subjects and objects could be cut loose
and transposed as we please. Subject and object
are always relative to one another and to the
experience which they constitute. It is out of this
confusion that the idea of a separation between things
and the subject arises. We are using object in one
reference and subject in another. (5) It is also to
be pointed out that it is the thing-character of the
object world we are considering, i.e. the content of
Perception only. Thus, for example, a tree or even
a stone is not simply a " thing," any more than a
human being is a mere "thing." They have the
thing-character in so far as they appear in that form
of experience we call Perception. But we cannot
exhaust a tree by perceptual experience, still less a
human being. A tree, e.g., has " life," as we say, it is
governed by "laws." Neither of these categories
belong to Perception ; we cannot perceive " life " or
" law." These imply a further development of mind
and experience ; they imply what, as we shall see, we
call Understanding and Reason. Hence it is utterly
misleading and erroneous to assert a separation
between perceiving and its object, when the grounds
of that separation imply elements of which in the very
nature of the case Perception can take no cognisance.
We must keep within the universe of discourse of
Perception itself, and then ask whether the nature of
perceptual -experience is such that there is or can
be a separation between its object and its subject.
When we do so we shall find, as indicated above,
that the fixity of the opposition of subject and

v IMPORTANCE OF PERCEPTION 175

object in Perception is the result of universalising
moments of the continuous process of sense-elements.
The sense -content, as we saw before, consists
essentially of units side by side ; when universal,
that content gets permanence of character, and this
fixes the side-by-sideness into a stable opposition of
content. Therein lies the difference between Sensa-
tion as such and Perception as such. The oppo-
site elements, however, are none the less moments
of the one continuous process in which the life of
this experience consists ; and they arise out of that
process. That is the only kind of opposition which
exists at the level of Perception as such. 1

The justification for this somewhat lengthy
analysis of Perception is that Perception presents a
crucial problem for any interpretation of experience
such as is here given. It is by appeal to perceptual
experience that dualism for the most part finds
justification ; while Perception seems at first to be a
serious obstacle in the way of any thorough-going
idealism.

1 The kind and degree of opposition varies with the content of the
perceptual experience. Hence the distinction between primary and secondary
qualities on the one hand, and the varying degree of "thinghood" in
perceived objects on the other.

CHAPTER VI

UNDERSTANDING AND THE WORLD OF NOUMENA
AND PHENOMENA

The need THE next question is, how is the content of experience
stag e h ofex- involved in the Perception of things to be brought
perience. into a unity which will completely satisfy conscious-
ness ? It is plain that at the level of Perception
this satisfaction is not attained. In point of fact
nothing is so common as the confession of defeat in
attempting to penetrate completely the life of things.
This refers to the experience we have through
Perception. The limited range of Perception, the
transitoriness of qualities, the alteration of their
arrangement, the disappearance of things themselves
all these in everyday life prevent permanent
satisfaction with this level of experience.
A thing But the very principle of perceptual experience
external 7 ma ^es this inevitable. For it lies in the nature of
relation, qualities and things that they have their peculiar
character through external relation. A " thing" only
is by reference to other "things." Its unity is for
Perception a unity by exclusion. It is, as we may put
it, obtained by selecting a certain area of sense fact,
leaving the rest aside, and looking on the part selected
as a fixed and determinate object. Its determinate
unity just lies in its shutting out the remainder of

176

CH. vi THINGS ARE ISOLATED 177

sense with which all the while it is continuous.
This character also affects the internal unity of the
u thing." For that, as we saw, lies in the qualities
excluding one another and in being simply together,
side by side. That whose nature lies in exclusion
is itself excluded. But complete reciprocal exclusion
means dissolution. Hence the passing away of
"things." So, again, of the qualities. They are
universals, no doubt, but universals of Sense. But
what is of Sense carries its opposite in its very
nature: a "this" is not for ever a "this." It is
no sooner "this" than it becomes a "that." A
universal of Sense, therefore, in spite of its fixity,
carries within it the instability of its own origin.
One quality passes and gives way to another literally
and completely. The colour of a " thing " gives place
to another colour without any internal unity between
them : they simply are there. And, finally, the result
is the same if we take a "thing" with its qualities.
Here we have an object which contains opposite
elements simply existing together within it, but
not coherently connected. They are and remain
apart from each other. The object is looked at as
this object in virtue of a certain quality, its " pro-
perty " ; the distinctiveness of it as one object lies in
that property. The object is a universal because of
its plurality of properties existing side by side ; it is
" this " and also " that," and " this " in spite of " that."
Now all this implies that the nature of a " thing " And is

is not self-contained. Its nature carries with it a theref J e

not seif-
perpetual reference to what is outside it, other than complete.

it. It could not have this quality unless by contrast
with other "thises," other qualities. It could not
be the meeting-place of qualities unless by reference

N

i;8 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING CH.

to other spheres from which itself is distinguished.
Externality, in short, is of the essence of a thing,
and that means that it is not self-contained.
Arbitral!- No doubt these two aspects mentioned seem to
ma ke a " thing " a substantial reality with an inde-
pendent being of its own. But the very fact that in
Perception itself either side indifferently is regarded
as its reality shows the inherent instability of a
"thing." We find that sometimes Perception takes
one quality or more to be the essential being of the
"thing," as when primary qualities are taken to be
more fundamental than secondary; while sometimes
its real being is placed in the combination of certain
qualities, the others being indifferent, as when a
drop of water is regarded as a "thing," even it
may be the same "thing," whether it be coloured
or clear, rounded or flattened, etc. This ambiguity
the perceptual consciousness may try to overcome
by drawing a distinction between "essential" and
"accidental" characteristics of "things"; or, again, by
saying that the "thing" is "independent" in certain
respects, though relative to others in other respects.
But these are easily seen to be subterfuges. For
a distinction between essential and non-essential
characteristics in the case of what owns qualities
in a merely external way, the qualities being for
Perception merely side by side, is clearly quite arbi-
trary. While, again, to assert the independence or
inherent self-identity of things, and yet qualify it by
adding "so far as it is this or that," is obviously an
assertion and a denial in the same breath.

The level of Perception therefore cannot satisfy
the mind's desire for completely coherent unity.
The constituent factors in the "thing," its unity and

vi PERCEPTION INCOMPLETE 179

its diverse elements, are and remain antagonistic to
each other in the very being of " things. " They
are "associated," but disparate: they include by
excluding, they are one merely by being many.
They both fall inside the " thing " ; but for Percep-
tion they stand opposed and unreconciled. Hence to
meet the demand which the mind makes on its
experience, a further stage of experience must be
introduced. This step is made possible because A further
both opposed factors fall within the totality of the
" thing's " nature. In this way they are seen to
be parts of a whole. The step is made necessary,
because the experience of mind cannot be exhausted
so long as the sense of opposition remains within
it ; that opposition must be removed. What we
want is a whole which will not be fettered or con-
ditioned in this purely external way characteristic
of the "thing." In other words, the universal
we want must not be one which is maintained
simply through relation to others ; it must be self-
determined, coherent within itself. To obtain this
in experience, since it cannot be had from Per-
ception, we pass to another attitude of mind. That
attitude is what we call Understanding. Under-
standing is thus the next level of experience required
to realise what is left unsatisfied by Perception.

Before indicating what this form of mind con-
tains, and how experience at this stage works, let us
notice in passing the peculiar significance of this step. Meaning
Stated shortly, it implies neither more nor less than
that the mind of man is on the one hand not to be
defeated in its demand for a completely coherent
experience, or, what is the same thing, complete
consciousness of self in experience, and on the other

i8o SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING CH.

hand is not to be put off by subterfuges or partial
reconciliations, no matter how ingenious. Be the
object and the subject as far removed to all appear-
ance as they may, be the antithesis between the
factors in any mode of experience as great as
possible, this view of knowledge maintains as a
working assumption, which the course of the in-
terpretation of knowledge is to justify to be correct,
that a satisfying unity can and must be attained
by the mind operative in experience. Hence, on
this view, the transparently incomplete sense of
unity arrived at by Perception is not the occasion
for confessing the bankruptcy of knowledge in
TWO regard to the so-called external world ; nor is
it sufficient merely to supplement and guard its
limited form of truth by qualifying expressions or
patch -work apologies. The former is the attitude
often assumed by a thorough -going Dualism, the
latter is adopted by so-called common-sense Realism.
Thus, those who regard Perception as the sole avenue
to knowledge of a world, from which to begin with
the mind is separated by the whole diameter of being,
The and which gets into contact with mind through the
Duaiism. a g encv of our " external senses," find that the opposi-
tion between the two poles assumed at the start
remains at the end of the process of Perception. The
world remains external, and Perception fails to convey
to the mind its " real " nature. The admission of this
takes the form of drawing a distinction between
what the world may be "in itself," what things are
" in themselves," and what they are " for " perceiving
minds. Regarding the former we are said to know
nothing ; regarding the latter we are held to have
a working certainty, a certainty, however, always

vi DUALISM AND PERCEPTION 181

threatened and liable to be overthrown by the un-
known reality behind the veil of sense-experience.
Knowledge beyond perceptual experience is im-
possible, however much we may desire or demand
it. In spite of, perhaps because of, this confession,
the question cannot but be perpetually raised:
what, then, are the things when not perceived ?
what qualities have they ? do they have even
qualities at all when the percipient is removed
temporarily or permanently? And the question
remains as persistently without an answer. This
qualified agnosticism very easily passes into absolute
agnosticism or even pure scepticism. For the
transition from the question, " what are the things
apart from the qualities I perceive " ? to the question,
"are the qualities I perceive really properties of things
at all " ? is too simple to be neglected by the awakened
reflection of the critic of knowledge. When this step
is taken, we can stop at nothing short of the paralysis
of all knowledge of the external world, and total
scepticism is the result. Such, indeed, is the point of
view deliberately adopted by a mind which is frankly
prepared to accept despair rather than cherish
delusion. 1 The way out of these difficulties consists
in accepting the inherent incompleteness of the pro-
cess of perceptual experience as a form of knowledge ;
in asserting, further, that the consciousness of that
incompleteness implies the presence in experience of
another form of knowledge which can extend and
complete our knowledge of the world of "things" ;
and as a consequence in denying the dualism assumed
by the view just stated.

1 I have in mind here the epistemological position of a critic like Huxley on
the famous controversy regarding protoplasm.

182 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING CH.

And of On the other hand, the mere ingenuity, or ingenu-

"Cominon- Q f fa & " pr O od sense " of "ordinary under-

sense

Realism, standing," which professes "to take things as they
are " and not to go further, is not sufficient to secure
the end we seek to attain. For this, while admitting
the insufficiency of Perception, yet at the same time
seeks to make the result seem completely satis-
factory by merely distinguishing between what is
an "essential" aspect of a "thing" and what is
"unessential " ; i.e. it merely qualifies one of its con-
tradictory elements by reference to another. In this
way it never feels the need of transcending the know-
ledge of "things" given in Perception, and never seeks
to bring the contradictory elements into coherent con-
nexion. It considers any attempt to do so as an
endeavour to transcend what it calls " experience,"
meaning by this perceptual experience ; and sees in
the attempt merely the sophistical manipulation of
abstractions. Such procedure, indeed, it may even
identify with philosophy itself, which is said to deal
merely with "bare" thoughts, "pure abstractions."
This is to a large extent the view of "common sense,"
and of much reflection on the nature of " science."

But this is evidently a confession of want of

thoroughness in the application of the idea of

These knowledge. It implies that such terms as essential

unsatis- an d unessential, universal and particular, are not to

factory, be taken too seriously, and do not raise any problems

that require a further solution. It means that the

belief in the coherence of knowledge need not be

applied to conceptions, but must be restricted to

what can be attained by Perception, no matter

what that involves. And it is clearly inconsistent.

For such ideas as essential and unessential are

vi UNSATISFACTORY VIEWS 183

considered necessary to Perception, and yet they do
not themselves belong at all to the level of perceptual
knowledge as such. Perception does not perceive
essentials and non-essentials : it perceives a "thing"
and its qualities. Such ideas are thus treated as
external to perceptual experience and yet as
necessary. But if they are necessary they surely
demand further systematic interpretation ; while if
they are external they may be considered irrelevant
for Perception as such. Then, again, the sheer
sophistry of proceeding in this way is manifest when
we note that in point of fact it is quite indifferent
and arbitrary which aspect is held to be essential
and which not. Everything depends on how in a
special case things are regarded. This must be so.
For the terms essential and unessential, so far as
concerns the content of Perception, are held to be
interchangeable. All the same, what is unessential
is still looked at as necessary. But to hold anything
to be unessential and yet necessary is inherently
contradictory.

There is only one course left if we are to apply
the idea of knowledge, of coherent unity, systematic-
ally. These factors necessarily operative in Per-
ception must be made consistent with the unity The way
they imply. This is the more necessary since the out<
very elements are themselves the life of Perception.
They make Perception as such what it is : the flux
of " things " has its ground just in the fact that what
is essential may be in another aspect the reverse,
what is universal may become particular. Their
significance in this respect is ignored altogether by
Dualism and Realism : and hence they are treated
as being more or less external to "things," and

1 84 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING CH.

calling for no further treatment on their own
account. To secure such treatment the point of
view of mere Perception must be left behind, and
a higher aspect of experience appealed to. This
implies that Perception is not self-complete, as it
is assumed to be, and it implies that the sphere to
which Perception points has a nature and content
of its own demanding separate consideration and
development. This is precisely what is done in
passing to Understanding as that mode of experience
to which we are carried in order to reconcile the
opposite elements of Perception.

Under- What kind of experience this is, and how it

irTits 1 " 2 proceeds, are determined first by the elements which
subjective Perception leaves unreconciled ; and second by the

side. . t . i/-

demand for coherent unity on the part of self-
consciousness, a demand which controls the whole
course of experience. The first, we might say,
prescribes the content, the second prescribes the
form, of this next stage of experience. We may
put the result here attained in the following way.
We saw that the unity present in Perception
was universal, because within it all the discrete
elements in the perceptual world lay together. The
question now is simply how does this universal hold
these different elements together, or in what way
does it show itself a concrete universal ? It is not
something external to the factors present in the
nature of " things ": this would merely restate the
contradiction we are seeking to remove. Nor is it
merely an abstract designation for what is common
to them. It is identified with them, the medium in
which their relation takes effect. They are related to
each other ; " things" and "qualities" mutually imply

vi UNDERSTANDING 185

and refer to each other, in virtue of some identity.
Their differences are the ways in which it appears ;
its unity is the ground of their interrelatedness.
They get their stability from it. It is resolved into
them. They are dissolved into it. The independ-
ence of " things " with their " qualities," which makes
them indifferent to each other, collapses into the
unity of the medium in which they subsist and by
which they affect each other. The unfolding of
this identity is just the realisation of independent
"things" and "qualities." Now, says Hegel, the
process hereby involved is what we call active
"Force" (Kraft). In Force we have an identity On its
containing all that appears as its "expression," and id j gf lve
a diversity of elements different from and inde- Force -
pendent of each other and yet manifestations of the
one fundamental identity. It is just such an idea,
therefore, which can unite in itself the two aspects
which characterise " things " mutual independence
of elements, and a unity which insists on being the
sphere of such independence. For Force, by its
very nature, must express itself without reserve.
Force resolves itself into diverse elements, what
we call its " manifestations," which differ in time,
place, and relation. The unity of Force in that
sense lies in its holding the plurality of manifesta-
tions into which it is resolved : the diversity is that
unity made explicit, "expressed." This, then, is
how the world of things appears at the level of
experience immediately above Perception, and which
is demanded by the incoherence of Perception : for
a world of " things " and " qualities " we have sub-
stituted a world of "forces" and their "expression."
Let us not misunderstand the result. This

1 86 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING CH.

Meaning does not mean that the individual human mind in
osition dealing with perceptual reality makes use of, or
manufactures the notion of Force in order to reduce
to unity the different factors, which Perception
leaves side by side and without connexion. Such
a view is ruled out from the start ; for it rests on a
dualistic basis, altogether alien, as we have seen, to
the idealistic conception of knowledge. The mind
does not first of all find itself in difficulties with
regard to the qualities inherent in " things," e.g.
the colours, sounds, etc., belonging to a perceived
object and then, because unable by Perception to
reduce all this diversity to unity, proceed to "create"
out of the resources of its own consciousness the
idea of Force, and employ it to reduce discord to
harmony. This is meaningless, unless to begin with
we assume that mind is confronted with an objective
world altogether alien to itself, and with which it
endeavours to reconcile itself as well as possible.
Such a view of the process is that taken by Em-
piricism, or again by Pragmatism. The idea of Force
certainly appears later in experience than the content
of Perception, and certainly brings that content into
some deeper unity than Perception can supply.
But this aspect of the case concerns the history and
psychical process of the individual, and does not affect
the place and worth of such an idea in experience.
For the view here adopted, Force is not an idea
"employed'' 1 by, and so external to, conscious mind,
any more than "thing" or "colour" can be looked
at in this way. Force indicates a certain level of
experience to which the mind has come in dealing
with its content. The idea is revealed in man's
experience, it may be with all degrees of clearness

vi CONSCIOUSNESS OF FORCE 187

and precision. As a way in which mind operates, it
appears in the half-conscious or unconscious attitude
of the untutored mind which believes in and sees a
hidden source of power and activity behind the
changing life of sensuous things, as well as in the
definite reflection on the forms of things which we
find in the cultivated intellect. The lowest level
in which it appears is no doubt the source of what
we call crude anthropomorphism and animism,
while the highest may appear as the beginnings of
scientific reflection in the history of man. 1 But
the same attitude is operative throughout. The
difference between highest and lowest lies simply
in the elimination of contingent and chance detail,
and in obtaining the abiding unity. 2

The world as " perceived " gives place, then, to Subjective
a world "understood"; a world of " qualities "

"things" becomes a world of "forces" and their plied in

?/. v -1 i r 1 tne same

"manifestations. <orce simply stands lor the experience
objective aspect, while Understanding is the subjective makes !t
side of experience at the level above Perception ;
just as in the latter perceiving was the subjective
side and " things " the objective. To " understand "
is only possible in experience if and where the
objective world is looked on as the expression of
Force. The consciousness of Force is literally
the content of experience within that stage. The
sphere of Perception and " things " is not outside and
opposed to the sphere of Understanding and Force.
The sphere of Perception as such has itself given

1 Cp. Ward's view of cause, force, etc., as anthropomorphic, Naturalism
and Agnosticism, ii. p. 237 ff.

2 Thus in pure science, such a unity is without "human" qualities of any
kind : it has merely quantitative characteristics. Hence the contrast between
the idea of scientific energy and that of primitive animism.

1 88 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING CH.

place to that of Understanding, has passed away into
it, and hence cannot be opposed to it. When we
are understanding we are no longer perceiving at all :
we have left perceiving behind and are at a higher
level of experience. Hence there is no sense, on
such a view, in asserting that in Understanding we
"apply" the idea of Force to perceptual "facts."
The idea of Force already implies the content of
Perception, and what we do in Understanding is
to develop what that idea itself contains, carry it,
so to say, its whole length, exhaust its value for
experience. And by doing so we come to find in
turn its limitations, and hence pass to a higher stage
of unity still. But we do not take Perception, so to
say, in one hand, and Understanding in another,
and try to reduce the difficulties of the one to the
shape prescribed by the other. The process is a
development, where each stage contains already the
preceding, and is not to be fitted into or connected
with it mechanically.

Kant. And herein, again, lies the difference between this

view and Kant's. For Kant, and indeed many others,
Perception and U nderstanding are generically different
agents of a mind which, as a detached and complete
entity by itself, uses its machinery now in one way and
now another. But since it is all the while one mind,
the two must somehow be brought together ; * and if,
after that, there is still some gap, or again some
residuum, discoverable, another attempt must be made
to get a completer unity, which is the so-called unity
of "reason." Why the mind can or should act in these
different ways, and how a mechanical unity of any
kind can satisfy self-consciousness, is not clear. But,

1 Hence the machinery of " schematism " and " categories."

view.

vi NATURE OF UNDERSTANDING 189

for Kant, it is enough that both Perception and
Understanding seem to deal with the same objective
world, the world of "nature" "outside" the mind.
The one gives so much of the content of that world;;
the other does something quite different to bring its
content within the range of experience. Perception,
so to say, picks it up in fragments and brings those
fragments to be connected by Understanding. The
latter takes them up without alteration and puts them
together by relations all its own, and alien to
Perception.

Hegel's correction is twofold in character. He Hegel's
first rejects the departmental conception of the
organisation of conscious life, which implies that
all departments co - exist and co - operate in the
mind ; and for this conception he substitutes that
of the mind having different levels of experience in
each of which it is realised, and in each of which it is
in a certain degree complete because it is experience.
What has to be expressed and exhausted is,
not the object -world as a res completa, but ex-
perience as a unity of subject and object. In the
second place, he gives up the view that experience at
any stage is composed of mere particulars requiring
a special organ or function to deal with and collect
them together before coherence can begin. Instead
of this he maintains that there is universality at every
stage : that there is never matter without form,
difference without identity. Hence there is no need
for one type of experience to "provide matter" for
another : each has its own form and matter peculiar
to it, its own universals and content. From these
two positions it follows that Perception and Under-
standing are not to be brought together because they

IQO SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING CH.

are external to one another. They are different
attempts on the part of conscious experience to attain
the same purpose, namely, to satisfy the one supreme
end of self-consciousness. The one does not supply
what the other lacks. The one simply does more com-
pletely what both accomplish in different degrees.
Truth of Now reflection will let us see that there is profound
this view, truth j n this interpretation of the nature of Under-
standing. For to " understand " an object assumes
that the mind does not merely see directly the uni-
versal (as in the case of /^r-ception) but penetrates
to its inner meaning, and reveals the inner principle
connecting its elements. 1 It implies that the object
is known as falling in its entirety inside a single
conscious unity, which when resolved into its different
constituents just is the full content of the object.
We cannot profess to understand unless both these
aspects of the situation are consciously present to us.
To seek to understand means either to grasp the
unity holding together the differences of which we
are aware, or it means showing how this unity breaks
up and expresses itself in these various differences.
Any case of scientific or popular "understanding"
of an object will illustrate this. The very effort and
claim to "understand," therefore, implies the presence
of this principle ; or, to put it otherwise, the existence
of such a principle in experience takes the form of
" understanding." Now Force is just the objective
way this effort appears when Understanding works :
it is the principle on which it proceeds. How it
shows itself in detail we shall indicate presently.
Such a conception taken as it stands no doubt is

1 The etymology of our word brings this out : as it does also in German.
Cp. also the Greek didvoia.

vi LAWS 191

abstract. That is in the nature of the case, because
here we are dealing with Understanding in general,
simply as a mode of experience, But the whole course
of Understanding as it "deals with" the various
elements or spheres of objectivity, e.g. trees, rocks, and
clouds, is the detailed application of one and the same
attitude which proceeds by one and the same principle.

How then does this form of experience, Under- Under-
standing, develop, how does it reveal its activity ^ ndm g
more concretely? It takes first the form of what process:
we call Laws connecting the diversity of the
object, and leads to the gradual distinction of a
sphere of Phenomena or Appearance from a sphere
of Noumena or Supersensible reality. Force is
merely the general form of unity of the objective
world as presented to Understanding. When this
takes definite and detailed shape, i.e. when its
meaning develops, as by the process of experience it
must, it becomes more specifically a law-determined
and law-constituted world. 1 At first sight this seems
an unfamiliar way of stating the nature of Under-
standing. But let us clear away misinterpretations.
Ordinarily speaking, Laws are spoken of as being
" made " by Understanding, and at the same time we
look upon these Laws as being not ours but "deter-
mining the object." Now what is meant by Under-
standing, " making laws " of objects, and objects
being "determined" by them? It is clear that the
Laws are held to be in one and the same sense for
Understanding and in objects. The attitude of
reflection and common sense bears this out. But
this surely means that there is a fundamental identity

1 That is, Force and its "expression'" when developed take the form of
laws "constituting" the objective world and controlling their detailed content.

i 9 2 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING CH.

between these two aspects of the experience of
Law? Understanding cannot be cut off from the
object if the Law is the same on both sides. We
do not, of course, raise the question how complete
or true a Law may be, or what are the conditions of
obtaining a true Law, nor again how are Laws applied
and verified all that is the business of psychology,
or, again, of the analysis of the method of reflection
in special cases, to determine. We are dealing with
the ultimate question : what is the very ground on
which the fact of Law rests, and from which it
arises as an experience ? It is \\v\. given. It is not
created. It must therefore be rooted in the very
nature of experience. It first arises at the level of
Understanding. Hence the view often expressed
that Laws are "formed by" and are the expression of
"intellect." But this can only be half a truth. For
Understanding must have an object, and Laws could
not even appear without the object. There must be,
therefore, an objective side to this activity of Under-
standing. That objective side is a unity revealing
itself in diversity, an identity which is one in its
difference and revealed wholly in difference : and
this corresponds to Force. Hence the view also
held that Laws are the nature of the object.
Corrobora- Now reflective activity itself, not to speak of primi-
** ve anthropomorphism from which science comes,

Subjective indirectly corroborates this. For Laws are there
looked on as endowed with a certain "power " which
"manifests" itself in and through them. They are
not static but dynamic. Consciousness of " power "
has been said more than once to give rise to the very
idea of the dynamic relation of "cause and effect." 1

1 See e.g. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, ii. p. 237 ff.

vi CONSCIOUSNESS OF LAWS 193

And this same consciousness of Force is found to
be the beginning in human experience of the demand
for inner coherence amidst change. These facts in-
directly throw light on the above view : but of course
do no more. That explanation goes much further
than empirical considerations can reach. It concerns
the very being of Law in human experience. To
say that Laws have their " source " in human
Understanding requires us also to say that they
are the form which the experience of Understand-
ing takes when its unity specifically determines its
different manifestations. To employ a metaphor,
Understanding can be looked on as a primordial
cell which differentiates itself into distinct units
homogeneous with itself. These units we call Laws :
they are simply ways of Understanding, expressions
of its single activity. Understanding and the Laws
by which it works are related as potential to actual,
function to execution. Laws of arranging the
diversity of things are not artifices contrived by our
mind : they are the mind in one of its phases, its
phase of Understanding. And whether in specific
cases they are correct or not, has nothing to do with
their ultimate significance and nature.

Such Laws, again, are looked on as having an objective
objective existence. The objective side is similarly Slde '
constituted. Force is here the primordial cell corre-
sponding to Understanding on the subjective side.
The breaking up of the unitary activity of Force
into specifically different units means the realisation
of unity in diverse expressions or manifestations of
Force. These various unities pervading diversity
are the Laws which are " at work," as we say, in the
objective world. Hence it is that the Laws of

o

views.

i 9 4 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING CH.

things are looked upon by reflection in ordinary
experience as at once ways of "understanding"
things, and ways in which things "work." These
are just the subjective and objective aspects of the
same concrete experience.

One-sided No doubt we speak of the Laws as being " out-
side our minds " or understandings, and may even go
so far as to say these Laws are merely found by us
and are independent of us. 1 On the other hand,
again, we often speak of the Laws of things as
simply our own devising and having no counterpart
in the actual being of things themselves. 2 The very
fact that such contradictory positions have been held
suggests that each is emphasising some abstraction
and ignoring the concrete experience. And the
history of philosophical criticism has brought out
their one-sidedness repeatedly. Both views imply a
Dualism between subject and object, which, as we
have seen, leads knowledge into an impasse. The
fact that one emphasises the objective nature of
Law, and the other the subjective, does not make
the one view better than the other. It is merely a
difference of stress on the side of the Dualism which
comes into prominence when, on the one hand, we
think of the universal bindingness of Law, or, on
the other, of the process by which we come to be
aware of it, a process which itself necessarily implies
the changeableness of any particular Law. When
we think of the former, Dualism leads us to say
Laws are "external " and " independent " of us: when
we think of the latter, Dualism leads us to say they

1 In this case we are thinking of the objective universal unity of Law as
distinct from its realisation in any particular subject's experience.

2 In this case we think of the process in the individual's mind of coming to
the experience of what Law involves.

vi EXPERIENCE OF LAW 195

are " our own " and dependent on us. But analysis
compels us to admit that the Laws are at once sub-
jective and objective, because experience is both at
once. And this does not leave the necessity or
contingency of Laws unexplained. For (i) when
this refers to particular laws, the question can only be
decided by the course of experience, and to decide it
either one way or another does not affect the ultimate
nature of Law as a principle determining experience :
and (2) the necessity of the element of Law lies
ultimately in the fact that it is one way in which the
ideal of a unified self-consciousness determines that
unity to appear in the course of its experience, a
unity with a subjective and objective side at once.

(i) Now this view has great significance in Results,
other ways. Three points may be here noted.
In the first place, it lets us see that by advancing
to the stage of Law the mind is not leaving the
nature of things behind and setting up a Dualism,
but carrying things, the deeper meaning of things,
with it. And just as objects " perceived" did not
fall outside perceiving experience as such, the same
is true of objects as " understood." Experience
at this stage, as at others, has its own peculiar
content, and, as it stands, is not opposed to
some "beyond," some unknown, and unexperienced
" real " which might for ever cast doubt on the
value of its process. There is no such gulf; and
hence no such doubt can arise. All that is of
significance at the level of Understanding actually
falls inside that experience ; and the mind at that
stage is completely at home with itself and its
object. The Laws are literally Laws of objects.
They have not one significance to Understanding

i 9 6 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING CH.

and something else to the object known. Ex-
perience does not keep its account of truth by
double entry, does not require the services of some
unseen interpreter to translate the course of things
into the language of Understanding, or vice versa.
The Laws which Understanding states are part and
parcel of the whole experience in which they appear.
In point of fact, if we examine common life we shall
find that in spite of, indeed because of, the alteration
or even abandonment of particular Laws of things,
the ordinary mind does insist that the Laws by
which at any time it understands things are actually
constitutive of those objects, and as such it ten-
aciously holds to them while it can. To under-
stand, in short, so far from setting up an opposition
of any kind between mind and objects just means
that these two aspects of experience have come
into a deeper conscious unity than was possible at
the level of Perception.

(2) Again, this activity of Understanding is seen
at once to be the first indication on the part of mind
of that power of manipulation which is one of the
characteristics of freedom. Mind is here at a higher
level than Perception, simply because there is a
clearer contrast and relation between the unity and its
diverse contents. This gives greater possibility of
self-direction, selection, less control by the immediate
content of the moment than we find in the life of
perceptual experience. Hence we find in the sphere
of Understanding the beginning, or at least the pos-
sibility, of what we call "suggestion," "hypothesis,"
"negation," "affirmation," distinction between "real"
and " unreal," and so on all of which, on the one
hand, have a reference to a wider content than the

vi SPONTANEITY 197

immediately present, and, on the other, imply, at
least dimly, a consciousness of the central all-
controlling unity of the self in experience. These
are aspects of the life of freedom. We see this in
everyday experience. A man feels more at home in
the life of Understanding than in the sphere of
Perception. In the latter he feels, so to say, tossed
hither and thither as sense facts dictate ; in the
former he has a control over the course of conscious
events, a power of resistance and adaptation which
make for coherence and definiteness of mental life.
Similarly, again, in common experience "men of
understanding " are looked upon as just those who
manifest and possess, within certain practical limits,
a consciousness of order and law pervading the
things which make up their immediate environ-
ment. And it is just this aspect of Understanding
which, as we shall see, points the way to a still
higher step in the development of self-conscious
experience.

(3) But, in the third place, we see here how this
view of Understanding has at once modified and
gathered together the whole teaching of Kant
regarding the relation of Understanding to the Kant.
objects of Perception. For Kant, Understanding,
in dealing with the content of the perceptual
world, is the parent of the law and order that
pervades it. On the above view, the idea of law is
likewise a principle of Understanding ; but Under-
standing has lost entirely the subjective character
which it has in Kant and which is the direct con-
sequence of the dualistic assumption underlying
his view of knowledge. Understanding, again,
is here, as in Kant, the sphere of necessity and

i 9 8 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING CH.

objectivity in dealing with the content of Perception ;
for in Understanding we find the immanent
universal which is the ground of stable objectivity,
and that essential relation of differences to identity
in Law, which gives necessity to the content of
things. But whereas for Kant this objectivity is
looked on as something derived from and imposed
by Understanding, on the above view the objectivity
is not derived from, but the complementary aspect of,
Understanding. Since subject and object only exist
in the unity of experience, the one is not determined
by the other but with the other. And that, in
substance, we may take to mark at once Hegel's
difference from Kant, and his conception of the
relation between Understanding and Perception
the question which occupies Kant's Analytic in
the Critique of Pure Reason. Understanding is
simply a higher development of the relation between
subject and object than we have in Perception.
In it we have a truer unity of subject and object
than perceiving supplies ; and in that sense this
stage of experience gives both a deeper ex-
pression of the nature of the subject and of the
nature of objectivity than we find in perceptual
experience. This higher truth is higher, not by
lying outside but by containing in itself all that
Perception aimed at. Again, Understanding is not
simply found side by side with Perception in human
experience, and when picked up and contrasted with
Perception found to give a higher unity to
experience. It arises as a necessity, on the one
hand, from an implicit consciousness of a deeper
unity than we find in Perception and, on the other,
from our explicit consciousness of the inherent

vi UNDERSTANDING & PERCEPTION 199

incompleteness of Perception. It is directly related
only to Perception, because it is the immediate
outcome of Perception, is the next level to which
experience rises to try to attain that complete
unity not found at the level of Perception. In
that way the stage of Understanding is " deduced "
from the complete unity of self-consciousness, just
as Kant (though in a different sense) asserted ; and
it is demanded by Perception (which Kant also
asserted).

The further important element which arises in the
course of developing the meaning of this stage of
experience is the distinction between "phenomenal" n.
and "supersensible" reality. This arises simply
from the contrast which comes to be made between

the world of Law and the diversity of content in w
and through which Law is " manifested." We
still have with us the continuous change of content
which we found characteristic of Perception. This
appears now as the ceaseless activity of Forces
in process of manifestation. Objects come and
go, the qualities appearing pass away into one
another ; nothing in the world of things remains
stable. But the world of Law has fixity and
endures. The unity remains and is not destroyed
by the differences into which it is resolved ; rather
it remains by means of and through the changes in
which it is manifested. It would not otherwise be
a unity expressing itself in and through difference.
Hence the antithesis. On the one hand, we have
constancy amid change, which is of the essence
of Law as a principle of unity. On the other,
changing elements which for ever reconstitute but
never destroy the permanence of that unity. Thus,

200 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING CH.

e.g. the Law of Gravitation is held as a principle of
unity, though the things and the qualities of things
in which it is revealed to us pass out of our sight
and disappear altogether. We hold by the unity,
which is the essence of the Law, and not by its
sphere of manifestation. The fact that other
qualities and things take the place of those that are
gone does not prevent us from holding by the unity
as such ; it confirms us in doing so. It proves
that the unity is concrete, and the special differences
do not affect our insistence on it as the vital reality
of things. It is in this way that Understanding
in ordinary life actually does keep its stability
and security amidst the changing manifestations
of a law-constituted world. The consciousness of
unity is of greater significance than that of the vary-
ing elements, and its greater value for experience
leads us to hold to it, be the change as great as it
may. A man's Understanding and the Laws which
constitute it, are thus, in the everyday world of
human experience, the stronghold for the safety, for
the coherence of his conscious life, even when the
shifting array of temporal events, on which he has
come for practical purposes to rely, is scattered in
catastrophe. A being limited to Sense or Percep-
tion does not have that security, not because it
can do without it, or fails to appreciate it (if that
were so, then Understanding would be a question-
able boon to the higher type of mind), but rather
because it is completely under the sway of its infinite
variety.

Nature of Here we see precisely the ground of the distinc-

tinctfon. t ^ on wn ih comes to be made. Understanding,

because it can lay stress on the unity of Law as con-

vi PHENOMENA AND NOUMENA 201

trasted with the diversity of its manifestation, can hold
these two aspects apart as fixed distinctions inside its
experience. It comes to look on the one as a sphere
per se distinguishable, and in that sense separable,
from the other. The manifestations stand on one
side, the system of unities or Laws on the other.
The one is looked on as the outer expression, the
transient realisation, or, if we choose, the "unfolding"
of the nature of the other. The other is looked on
as the inner vital principle, the underlying substance,
the active source of the detail of the world of things.
Hence there are drawn, in the course of experience
at the stage of Understanding, the distinctions with
which we are in everyday life familiar between
" inner " and " outer," the " passing phenomena " and
the " permanent noumena," the " immediate present "
and the "remote beyond." These distinctions we
find in everyday life, as well as in the reflective
procedure of scientific thought which arises from it.

Now this lets us see once more what is meant by Under-
Understanding being the deeper truth of perceptual jJJJ p"f_
experience. It might at first be supposed that we ce P tion -
were here simply reintroducing Perception with its
change and flux of qualities and things, and calling it
"appearance," while professing all the while to have
passed beyond it. It might be supposed that this
distinction between inner and outer, phenomena and
noumena is 1 no more than a way of putting Under-
standing alongside Perception, and allocating one
aspect of things to one function and another aspect
to the other, leaving the two all the while not recon-
ciled. But the truth is that this distinction is only
drawn inside the life of Understanding and cannot

1 Like Dualism.

202 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING CH.

appear at the level of Perception. He is not reviving
Perception, but building Perception into the structure
of Understanding. What is solely present in
Perception, the variety of sensible qualities and
the flux of things, is here merely a moment or
aspect of Understanding, viz. its aspect of diversity,
appearance, phenomena. For Perception there are
no phenomena at all : for they are wholly and only
as they are in Perception. There is no beyond,
no noumena in perceptual experience ; their esse is
their percipi. For Understanding there are pheno-
mena, because there is a deeper unity. They are
phenomena with reference to their inner principles
of unity or Laws. Hence, to use Hegel's expres-
sion, that variety which makes the entire content
of Perception is " taken up " by Understanding
and appears as a moment in its concrete life. It
can be so "taken up" because Understanding, in
virtue of this unity of Law, goes beyond Perception.
And it goes beyond it, because that unity is not
exhausted (as is the content of Perception) in the
momentary present, or the immediately "given."

The supreme importance of this distinction, again,
lies in the fact that thereby it is shown that the
Pheno- distinction between phenomena and noumena is not
Noumena a difference (as Kant asserted) between what is part
both fail of experience and what cannot be so. There is no
perie&ce." beyond to experience at all. The distinction is one
which falls inside experience itself, and is constituted
by the nature of Understanding as a stage of ex-
perience. Here, again, therefore we surmount the
difficulty which was raised by Kant's Dualism. The
Dualism made it logically necessary that there
should be an unknowable sphere beyond experience ;

vi EXPERIENCE CONTAINS ALL 203

hence Kant's noumenal world is a "limit" to experi-
ence. But in truth, the noumenal world arises only
in contrast to phenomena. It is necessary, but only
necessary as a constituent element in experience, not
as a boundary to it. The "beyond," the "inner," is
relative to the "immediate," and the "outer"; just as,
and because, Force is relative to its "manifestation."
As the immediate phenomenon is in experience, so
is the remote noumenon. All experience cannot be
immediate ; there cannot be an absolute whole
immediately manifested, without a contradiction in
terms. Similarly, an absolute "beyond" to all ex-
perience, a noumenal world outside experience as a
whole, is a contradiction in terms. It is thus, then,
that we can do justice to Kant's distinction and
yet dispense with the thing-in-itself.

The final development of the meaning of Under- in.
standing carries us to a further stage in the evolution
of experience. In the process of Understanding,
while we are dealing with universals, yet the unities
or Laws expressly reveal the "inner" life of "things" :
the relation of subject to object has still a certain
relative externality. As we saw, the Laws of things
are looked on by the ordinary mind as having
a being of their own " beyond " the conscious
life of the subject, as "real" whether they enter
it or not ; and these universals may even be
looked on as peculiarly "subjective." It is this
conscious contrast which creates or suggests that
opposition between Understanding and the Laws of
things which was referred to before. The relation,
however, of Law to its manifestation, when fully
realised, carries us beyond this conscious opposition
altogether. The relation of a Law to the phenomena

204 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING CH.

it controls is, when developed, such that the differ-
ence between them loses all its apparent fixity. The
Law is not simply " in " the manifestations or "through "
them ; it is the diversity which makes up its content.
The relation between them is that of continuity ; it
is not external or fortuitous. This immanent con-
tinuity between these elements (the unity of the Law,
and the plurality of the content of what is united)
on its objective side appears as an incessant change
or exchange between the two. The ore slips into
the other ; the two are moments of a single process. 1
On its subjective side this continuity has also a
peculiar character and significance it is what in the
sphere of Understanding is called "elucidating the
nature of" the object. For "elucidating" or "ex-
plaining " is literally reducing or resolving the
variety of the object into the unity of its Law, in
such a way that the manifestation of that unity will
mean the appearance of the variety of the object. 2
" Explanation " is that stage in the development of
the nature of Understanding where the opposite
elements which it distinguishes are through and
through consciously identified, and where therefore
the objective and the subjective side of this experi-
ence are explicitly made a continuous single unity.
Explanation is not strictly a function of Under-
standing ; it is Understanding at its highest stage.

1 As it is put, there is no law without particulars, and no law except in
particulars.

2 From this comes the isolated nature of each " explanation." Each holds
good by itself as it stands, even though we are aware of its limitations. We
keep within the range of the object from which we start, and get at its Law.
Elucidating seeks to go no further. Hence the fixity and apparent " finality "
of the result in spite of its finiteness. This " finality " of what is " limited " is
characteristic of the whole procedure of Understanding. Hence its difference
from Reason.

vi EXPLANATION IS OBJECTIVE 205

Now, in Understanding, we sometimes say that
the necessity in the connexion established by
"explanation" is not the" thing itself" which is
explained. But such a distinction is no sooner
made than it has to be given up. For if this
distinction can be drawn, the "explanation" is not
completely established, while if the explanation is
complete there is nothing left over from which it
can be distinguished. The difference between
" explanation " and the Law, whose meaning is
expressed and realised in the "explanation," is for
knowledge, for experience, merely verbal. To say " we
have the explanation," and to say, "we have con-
sciously elucidated the nature of the object," are one
and the same. " To explain the Laws of a thing " is
a redundancy of speech. The Laws as unities of a
phenomenal world, and the Laws as forms of "explan-
ation " are indistinguishable. But if that be so, then
in the conscious experience which we have at this
highest expression of Understanding, the subject is
not aware of some object over against and contrasted
with it. The subject is conscious, when connecting
the content of phenomena by the Law manifesting
itself phenomenally, of referring the diverse content
to a principle at one with the self of the subject.
The conception of Law may be at first abstract
and separable from the phenomena, fixed in a world
of its own, a " supersensible " world, and on that
account can be, as we saw, consciously contrasted with
and distinct from the subject. That is the im-
portant point. Law is only " outside " the subject
when it is taken as an entity per se. But then it is
inadequate to its own meaning ; and hence may indeed
be thought of as beyond the subject which is concrete.

206 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING CH.

When Law is concrete, i.e. is the controlling unity
of its diversity, we cannot look on the law as outside
the subject. Explanation and Law fall together as
functions of a single experience. That is, when the
experience is fully realised it is consciously a single
unity of which subject and object are sides. The
opposition of the object is now overcome just because
the distinction between the Law and its manifestation
is a transient and vanishing distinction. The con-
ception, with which Understanding works, is therefore
not something of which it is conscious, but in and
through which it is conscious. In "explanation" all
sense of otherness has been removed, and in the object,
subject is conscious of its own unity. Consciousness
of an object has thus passed into Self-consciousness.
To put it otherwise, the unity at work in the experi-
ence of Understanding is a unity which both manifests
itself phenomenally and refers phenomena to itself, a
universal which dissolves into difference and again
resolves that difference into itself. This means it is
a self-referring, self-determined universal, i.e. a self-
complete, self-limited, or infinite universal. That,
however, is a self-conscious universal, for only what
is conscious of self can return upon self with its
diversity. Thus then, according to this view, the
process of Understanding fully realised and expressed
becomes self-conscious experience, and with this we
have arrived at the truest relation of subject to
object. All other possible forms of experiences are
developed from this one general relation.
Results. The significance of such a result is not far
to seek. If the full meaning of Sense-experience
was found in Perception, and the truth or goal of
the relation of subject to object in Perception lay

vi SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS VIEW 207

in Understanding, and if the final issue of this is
Self-conscious experience, then Self-consciousness is
thereby shown to be the very ground of the conscious-
ness of things, the very principle in virtue of which
the consciousness of things becomes an experience.
"Consciousness of an other, of an object other than
subject, is itself," says Hegel, " necessarily self-
consciousness ; it necessarily means being reflected
into a self, consciousness of a self in what is other or
objective." Or we may put it thus. Self-consciousness
is the highest expression for consciousness of objects :
for such a consciousness at once expresses the fact of
diversity between subject and object, and also that of
unity between them. But these two elements or
factors are really implied in all forms of consciousness
of objects. The difference between Self-conscious-
ness and other forms of relating subject and object,
is that the former makes fully explicit both aspects,
the unity and the difference, whereas other forms
express the difference (consciousness of something)
but only bring out the unity imperfectly and in
different degrees. But if Self -consciousness is
the highest expression, it is that at which they all
aim, it is their reXo?, and hence it is the ground of
their being what they are. In Kant's expression
Self-consciousness is " the condition of the possibility
of all consciousness of objects whatsoever." Mind
can be conscious of objects because and when it is
conscious of a Self. And consciousness of self
is logically prior ; it is the ground for our being or
becoming conscious of things. This means that
the consciousness of objects, in those cases where
these factors are distinctly opposed, is an imperfect
realisation (though a necessary one) of the principle

208 SPHERE OF UNDERSTANDING CH. vi

of Self- consciousness. The former arises out of
the consciousness of self- that is its possibility and
justification : it can remain fixed in the distinction
and the contrast found there if it does so it falls
into error, the error which, e.g., creates Dualism in
all its forms : it may rise into complete conscious-
ness of self as its process develops and that is its
" truth."

This, then, in brief is the view of the knowledge
of things of the " external " world on the basis of
absolute idealism. It is a continuous refutation of
Dualism, and is the transformation and re-expression
of a principle which is essentially Kantian from
beginning to end. 1

1 It is worth noting that the position of Dualism is invariably based on and
confined to the lower levels of experience, Sense-experience and Perception
particularly. No one ever seems to think of treating Moral Experience, which
belongs to the level of Self-consciousness, from the dualistic point of view, or
of basing the dualistic position upon Moral Experience. Yet in the latter we
have subject distinct from object as truly as in Perception. But there the two
are so obviously "intimate" and "inward" to each other that it is absolutely
impossible to dissociate them and set up a gulf between them. The
question ought surely to suggest itself why, if this is so here, should there be
really such a gulf anywhere in experience ? Why suppose that experience can
even be, if there is such a gulf anywhere ? If the unity between the two is so
obvious in Morality, may it not exist everywhere else in experience in the same
way ? If we regard Moral Experience as being of higher value than, say, Per-
ception, as we do, the question might suggest itself, may this not be just
because there we have a higher realisation of what experience as such is ? and
if so, should we not start from that point in our interpretation of experience as
a whole ? In point of fact, it is just such an experience as Morality which
enables us to turn the flank of the dualistic position. If Moral Experience is
not dualistically constituted, dualism as a general theory must be given up :
and if Moral Experience is higher than Perception, no matter how much
Perception justifies dualism, experience as a whole must be interpreted from
the higher point of view. This is the essence of the idealistic method of
attack on dualism and "Naturalistic" Realism. It would also be equally
possible to turn the dualistic position by an appeal to such a form of Know-
ledge as that given in Memory, where clearly we have an object, but an object
in no sense "outside the mind." Memory is a highly complex form of
consciousness of self, and cannot be explained at all on the dualistic assump-
tion. The same is true of other forms of Self-consciousness.

CHAPTER VII

SELF-CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE

WHILE the process of " explaining," realised by Under-
Understanding, implies the consciousness of self in

its process, it is not carried out by any direct refer- the way
ence to the self as such. At best it only establishes the

possibility of making self an object of which we may of Self -
be aware directly and explicitly. It is, however, the
only level of experience hitherto considered that
could do as much. For here alone do we have as
object of consciousness a single permanent conscious
unity containing the variety of "things" as its very
expression. We saw how the fact of diversity, so
characteristic of Sense, and the form of all exter-
nality, reasserted itself in spite of the activity of
Perception, through which unity was, at least
partially, introduced into experience by the foci of
Perception called "things." Here in Understand-
ing a unity is at last secured which resists dispersion
into diversity, and maintains itself through all dif-
ference in the world of "things." In virtue of
Understanding experience is always held consciously
together amidst all change of sensible phenomena.
No matter how wide the range of phenomena, the

209 . p

210 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

unity is realised and is maintained in precisely the
same way. The diversity is consigned to pheno-
mena, the unity to what is beyond all phenomena.
The same process of Understanding takes place in
all cases, the same unity is secured (the unity to
satisfy Understanding) wherever the process is
realised. Being thus all-comprehending the subject
finds itself at home throughout its objective world
in the same way.

The result Now the completeness and the sameness of the
standings unity, realised as a conscious result produced by its
to give the own activity, react, so to say, on the subject exer-

subject the . . ... . .....

sense of its cismg the activity, and create within it the con-
own umty. sciousness of the unity of its own action. This
consciousness of the unity of its own action is the
germ of the consciousness of a self. When the
unity is explicitly accepted as its own it becomes
ipso facto self-conscious. So far as Understanding
goes, this step is merely implicit. Understanding
is a mode of the subject's experience, and the
unity arrived at is only implicitly a self-unity.
When that unity is accepted as its own, Under-
standing passes into self-consciousness. The con-
sciousness of the unity of the activity becomes a
consciousness of the unity of the subject exerting
the activity.
Under- T ne possibility of this has been brought about

standing _ i r i i

by its pro- by the character ot the process of Understanding

S S s df ingS which involves manipulation of detailed phenomena,

unity into selection, refusal, affirmation, and negation as its

conditions. All this tends undoubtedly to throw

into relief the consciousness of sameness in the

activity of the process, to bring out, therefore, the

oneness of the subject as a conscious fact, and

vii UNDERSTANDING IMPLIES SELF 211
thereby to set up self as per se an object in experi-

ence. 1

The unconditioned or self-conditioned universal The unity
which is the object of Understanding, i.e. the uni-

versal whose nature is not determined, as in the case of implicitly
Perception, by an external other, but itself determines opposition
all otherness, all phenomena can only be so because
the subject in it is conscious of itself, because the sub-
ject feels no otherness confronting and opposing itself.
The content of its experience is a thought-content, and
a thought-content is essentially a self-content. But

1 It is significant that this result should be arrived at by way of the con-
sciousness, through Understanding, of Law in experience. It lets us see why
a self has no meaning unless as a conscious principle of order. The self
involves the very idea of order or unity, because it arises in experience out of
a consciousness of Law amidst phenomena. A " man of understanding" is at
once one who " knows his way about " amidst the phenomena of his world,
and also sustains the sense of selfhood, never loses his own sense of unity, in
dealing with its ceaseless variety ; for to do the one is ipso facto to do the other.
On the other hand, we can see from this how " mental confusion" involves at
once loss of the sense of unity in experience and dissipation of selfhood in the
diversity of phenomena ; and this confusion can pass through all degrees from
temporary perplexity, where the unity is struggling to assert itself against the
appearances, to permanent derangement, where the unity is altogether lost
amidst them, and the subject falls back to the level of mere Perception. It is,
again, by way of Understanding, that man rises to the levels above brute
consciousness (Reason and Morality) and yet maintains contact with it by imply-
ing those processes of experience, Perception and Sensation, to which brute
consciousness is confined. While, finally, the result throws light on the distinc-
tion between man's understanding and brute "intelligence." Understanding
as such is short of self-consciousness while containing the germ of it. It
may very well be that brutes can rise as high as to understand. Because
they exhibit many of the forms of human Understanding, they are often
thought to have the consciousness of self, while in point of fact they have no
such consciousness at all. For consciousness of self involves Understanding,
but the latter is not per se the former. The fact that the observer of brute
intellect merely ' ' infers " that it has the consciousness of self, looks upon this
as something which may be for the brute intellect but is not a reality for him,
is itself a proof that the consciousness of self is really not there at all. For
the consciousness of self, if it is an experience, is bound to be expressed in
specific ways, e.g. as recognising his own self, as Science, or as Religion ; for
these simply are experience based on consciousness of self. The fact that
these do not appear in brute life means that the consciousness of self is not an
experience for it.

212 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

while in such a universal, absolute difference of sub-
ject and object disappears from experience, in the
first instance this thought-content carries with it the
fixity characterising what is opposed to the subject.
The thought of Understanding claims finality on
its own account, and just as it appears. 1 Hence
arises the need to overcome this independent
stability confronting the subject. The process of
doing so, however, is merely a relation of the sub-
ject to its own content, to its self. It consists in
breaking down that resistance its own content offers
to complete identification with the subject, and estab-
lishing self-consciousness on both sides subject
aware of self in object, object accepting and recog-
nising subject as its self. The whole process takes
place as a movement from implicit to explicit con-
sciousness of self, and is necessitated because the
conscious unity of the two sides (subject and object)
of the experience is at once asserted and yet not
realised completely. That the further development
is to take place is an indication that, while Under-
standing has broken down the rigidity of the oppo-
sition between subject and object characteristic of
the attitude of mere consciousness as such, which
took the forms of Sensation, Perception, and Under-
standing, it does not of itself satisfy the unity which
the disappearance of that opposition implies. In
other words, Understanding is an incomplete ex-
pression for the unity of experience, and at most
prepares the way for a fuller expression of it an
expression which, in the first instance, takes the
form of the subject being aware of self as its object*
instead of "sense-quality" or "thing."

1 Vide note, p. 204.

vii PHASES OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 213

This consciousness of self, even in its simplest Conscious-
and earliest form in experience, assumes different

phases, which indicate the stages through which it has

.. . & r , & , . different

passes to complete realisation 01 the principle it phases and

contains. At the outset, however, it has to b
noted, as the result of what has been said about previous
Understanding, that this self, of which consciousness
is aware, is here not one object amongst other
objects of experience, but the one and only object
for the subject. The self is its world, its whole
objective content. It embraces within it all the
content so far considered, all that made up the
experience of Sense and Perception. These are
now elements in the content of self only, and are
to be treated as such. There is here no world
of "things" and "qualities" in contrast to a sub-
ject ; what was the world of " things," in the former
stages of experience, has passed, by means of Under-
standing, into a content of experience whose char-
acter is self and self only. This level of experience
is, therefore, so far as it goes, complete as it stands,
and all that preceded is now to be re-moulded or
re-interpreted from the point of view of consciousness
of self. We live and move here solely within the
range of consciousness of self. That is our world.

To begin with, then, the content of this world, The object
because merely implicitly self, seeks to retain a Jf^" the
certain being of its own which is at once felt as| nstan ce
distinct, and yet as in truth "belonging to" the Sub-^K
ject. The world of objects presented is mine, but
yet keeps apart from me. It is implicitly mine, but
can only become so by my act. Being implicitly
mine it appeals to me to claim it as such; because
it is implicitly mine I respond to that appeal. It

2i 4 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

seeks to be "me," just as I assert that it is so. J_
can take it and find myself in it ; it surrenders its
content to me. To use a psychological distinction,
it is unconsciously myself and tends to enter con-
sciousness as mine ; I accept or assert this truth
on my side, and lift its unconscious nature into a
conscious result. The only meaning of the object
lies in thus handing its whole being over to the
subject as its own. The very life of the subject
lies in determining that content as its self. The
realisation of this demand and claim means securing
the identity of the two by completely overcoming
the distinction between them and establishing them
as a unity. Now this recriprocal tendency of the
one to the other for the fulfilment of the nature of
both is the phase of experience we call Desire.
Desire. In Desire there is a distinction of the factors

subject and object with a felt identity between them
and required by both sides. The tendency, combined
with the sense of distinction, gives precisely that felt
tension which characterises Desire. The tension
implies at once that this distinction is a conscious
fact, and that the identity of the factors forces itself
through the distinction in order to get their deeper
unity realised. The movement of the process in
this experience is carried through just by gradually
bringing out this identity as a conscious result, and
establishing it as the primary fact in the situation.
If that is not achieved the experience continues as a
felt strain till it is either accomplished, or the Desire
abandoned : the Desire remains unfulfilled, " unsatis-
fied." When it is achieved the tension, and with
it the distinction, disappears : the Desire is fulfilled,
and Satisfaction takes its place as n experience.

vii DESIRE 215

The whole process is thus double -sided from Desire is
beginning to end : it is only possible within the s ided. e
sphere of consciousness of self. The distinction
from which it starts is implicitly felt as a vanishing
distinction, and can only be so felt because it is set
up within, and, indeed, by the type of consciousness
by which it is resolved. The object in Desire is
not really something " external " to the subject.
Its being consists in giving up its distinction from
the subject altogether ; and this it could not do if it
were substantially alien to the subject. The subject
in Desire does not really take the object to be
foreign to its life. On the contrary, the subject seeks
to annul any distinction the object seems to have,
and to make the object's content its own, to break
down the distinction separating it from the self, and
build its content into the very substance of the self.
There is no Desire at all where the object is looked
at as remaining apart from the subject.

At the level of Perception this is possible. For The
in Perception self does not seek to be the object nor p u ^ d sl [ n on
the object to be our self: there we seek to realise a Perce P tion

... .... c i does not

unity which preserves distinction as a conscious fact, exist in
Hence in Desire we do not really desire " things " Desire -
qua "things," for that would leave them still apart
at the end of the process. The Desire would never
be satisfied ; it would never be Desire. We desire
what has a self -significance. When we say we
desire " things," we really mean that we desire
what, while at first distinct from us, is, in the result,
to become consciously part of our own content.

1 Strictly speaking, as we saw, Subject does not even exist for Perception
in the form of Self as such. Hence Perception is not an avenue to Know-
ledge of Self. Vide note, p. 225.

216 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

Or to put it somewhat paradoxically, we "desire
things " in the sense that we desire the disappear-
ance of their "thing" character, and the trans-
formation of them into the substance of the self.
The supposition that we can desire " independent
things " is due to a confusion between the object as
it is for Perception before Desire arises, and the
object as it is after Desire takes place. Perception
may certainly precede Desire. But we do not
desire because we perceive ; and we do not desire
what we perceive. We desire in fact the object
in the experience of Desire, not the object in the
experience of Perception ; and the object for Desire
is just that which loses the " externality " of a
"thing" and fills up the life of the subject. A
" thing " must become content of self before it
enters the sphere of Desire.

Under- Hence it is only so far as the self embraces in

and dms * ts swee P tne content of the world before it, regards
Desire. that content as implicitly its own, as what can
realise its own life as such, that the attitude of
Desire can be assumed. That this content is im-
plicitly its own was, as we saw, established as a
fact by the process of Understanding. Now Desire
just brings out the significance of what Understand-
ing has guaranteed. Understanding establishes
that the world of object finds its meaning in the
unity of the self; Desire carries out further, by the
active life of the subject, the significance of this
result. By Understanding, the subject finds the
world its own : Desire makes it so by actively
identifying all content with its self. Understanding
establishes self as the ground of experience ; Desire
implies in its process the active presence of the self

vii DESIRE 217

as the principle of its mode of experience. With-
out the consciousness of self, there is no Desire.
Desire is its first and simplest realisation as a
distinctive factor in experience.

There is no implication here of a purpose which Desire in
governs Desire, or of an end at which it aims.
That comes later. Here we are dealing with
Desire simpliciter as a general mode of experience.
Desire per se is a conscious actualisation of self,
whatever be the value of the self otherwise. This
ultimate nature of Desire is the basis on which all
other more specific forms of Desire rest, and has
therefore nothing to do with the consideration
whether a desire is "good" or "bad." "Good-
ness " and " badness " imply other forms of experi-
ence which are different from and higher than mere
Desire, and determine the character or worth of
desires. 1 Desire is here merely the way conscious-
ness of self is first consciously realised ; and this
must exist as a form of experience, before a desire
can be called "good " or " bad," for it is the ground
of anything being pursued as "good" or "bad."
From this point of view the statement of Spinoza is
true, that a " thing " is not desired because it is
"good," but "good" because we desire it; i.e.
Desire in general must take place first as a form
of experience : goodness, as a special quality of the
object desired, comes later. To begin with, all the
implicit content of the self is, or can be, desired,
just because the self, which Desire expresses, is, at
this stage, one with all its object world. We can,
as we say, desire "anything." 2 This is so because,
from the point of view where the self is one with all

1 Namely, Society, Moral Order. a As it is said, " Desires are infinite."

218 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

the content of its experience, everything can be
explicitly identified with it. At a higher level of
self-experience, say Morality, certain elements of
the content of self come to be qualified in one way,
others in another, and may come to be selected and
desired for their specific quality (as, e.g., "good" or
"bad"). But to begin with, the distinctive qualifi-
cations which arise from further experience do not
exist. Objects are merely desired because they
implicitly fall within self- consciousness, and are
asserted in Desire to do so. The self is here quite
indeterminate in value and meaning : it is mere self,
mere unity of the subject as such. Hence, on the
one side, the very indeterminateness of the self
makes it possible for it to dominate any or all the
content which is presented, everything that fills
experience, i.e. " we can desire anything " : and, on
the other, that all content should be implicitly one
with such a self is precisely what makes the content
appeal to the self, makes it first " desirable " and
then "desired," i.e. "everything is a possible object
of Desire." If it were absolutely alien to the self
the attraction would not arise : if it were absolutely
one with the self there would be no point in its claim-
ing to be so. The union of attraction and repulsion,
which constitute the tension of Desire, arises simply
from the contrast between an unfilled indeterminate
self and the content with which it is implicitly at
one a contrast, therefore, which falls within the
consciousness of self.

The pro- The process involved in Desire is already in-
Desire. dicated in what has been stated. When the con-
trast between a content which implicitly is, but ex-
plicitly is not, one with the self, becomes a conscious

vii PROCESS OF DESIRE 219

fact, there arises the feeling of a unity unrealised
because of some element opposing its realisation.
This feeling is what we call a Need. Consciousness
of a Need is only possible because of the felt unity
of oneness with self. The felt unity, co- existing
along with the conscious opposition, produces a
movement to do away with the contradiction be-
tween the opposite factors. The conscious neces-
sity compelling the removal of this contradiction
takes the form of an assertion of the unity of the
self, in spite of and through the opposition. Such
a conscious assertion is the active Impulse, which is
an essential element in the process of Desire. This
activity is negative in character by its very nature ;
it .arises because of, and in order to remove, an
opposing content. It consists simply in destroying
the characteristic separateness in the content. Since,
however, that content is implicitly one with the self,
such a process of negation can only issue in the
assimilation of the content to the self. With that
assimilation the opposition is at once removed and
the feeling of self- unity established. This feeling
of self-unity is what we call Satisfaction, and is that
in which Desire terminates. Hence in actual ex-
perience we find that Desire can only work by
destruction of content.

It is this active assertion of self in the process of The result
Desire that makes Desire of such significance in the
development of consciousness of self. For with the
explicit assertion of this oneness between self and
the content before it, with the domination of that
content by the self and for the self, the self comes out
at the end of the process of Desire more truly than
ever the essential principle of experience. Here we

220 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

have no longer a world of Understanding, with its
distinction of elements into phenomena and noumena
a distinction created to sustain, as it were at all
costs, the opposition of subject and object which
mere consciousness adopts. Such a distinction must
disappear in Desire, for the very principle that the
unconditional universal Law or thought is the inner
reality of which phenomena are the outer expression,
has ceased to be merely " inner," and has itself be-
come " outer." There is no longer any contrast
between "inner" and "outer" when the self is all
in all to itself, is consciously the beginning and
the end of its experience. The self, which is essen-
tially thought, has left the inner hidden realm of
noumena " beyond " phenomena, and has become
manifest as at once the inner life of the process of
Desire and the outer embodied result of that process;
for Desire, as we saw, falls wholly within the sphere
of self-experience. It has ceased to be merely that
at which we arrive as the result of Understanding,
it is that from which in Desire we start. The
world of objects making the content of experience
is not merely found to be in union with the subject
by Understanding ; it is now determined consciously
to be so by the subject. The subject no longer, on
the one hand, makes an apparently alien world of
objects harmonious with itself by forcing its way
into the inmost recesses of that world, plays the
role of noumenon in the form of thought, and so
becomes at home with itself in the variety of the
object "understands" it: while yet, on the other
hand, it keeps up the distinction of the object world
from itself by drawing a line between inner truth
and a sphere of appearance. The subject in the

vii DESIRE 221

case of Desire constitutes the very being of the
object both in form and content. The objects are
not simply for the subject ; they are implicitly in the
subject, and claim explicit oneness with it. The
self does not find them "without" and make them
fall " within " itself. They are from the first im-
plicitly within it. Desire can bring this to clear
consciousness, and does so by finding, as the result
of its process, that they fill up its life, "fulfil" or
"satisfy" it. Just as in the case of Perception the
esse of " things " lay in their percipi, so in the case
of Desire the being of objects lies in their being
desired, in their satisfying a self.

In Desire, then, self is the beginning and the end Desire not
of the process ; consciousness of objects is self-con- com P} ete

t J conscious-

sciousness ; the subjective and the objective side of nessofseif.
experience are consciously one. But Desire per se
does not exhaust the full significance of this ex-
perience. It represents rather the simplest form in
which it appears, where objects get their meaning
from the self which claims them as its own, and are
therefore subordinate to its active identification of
them with itself. Such a world of objects is im-
plicitly one with a self, but is not per se a self on its
own account. It has its being only for a self, but
does not claim to be per se a self. The object, in
short, is per se selfless, though claiming oneness
with the self. Moreover, the self, which is here
realised as a conscious result, is, just because of
that character of its object -content, necessarily a
particular self. For we have here in Desire a self
with its indeterminate world of objects referring to
it as their unifying principle ; and what is attained
through Desire is the feeling of this self being

222 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

satisfied by the object. It is the one subject ; all else
is adjectival for this subject. Hence it is that, on
the one hand, Desire is, as we say, always in-
dividual, and the satisfaction of self varies indefi-
nitely, that "the desires of selves differ" ; and, on
the other, that Desire has to do only with objects
which can be subordinate to, assimilated by, a self,
and is not a relation between selves as such. One
self does not desire another self; nor desire along
with another ; but always and only for itself.
Desire, in short, is a relation between a self and
a selfless object.

The higher But the process of Desire makes possible a higher
consci&us- an< ^ completer form of consciousness of self. By
ness of Desire the self is carried out and established

Self

objectively. The self is now not simply the implicit
unity of experience. The subject is conscious of
its self as an objective result. Its self is now for
its self in and through objects. Through Desire
self is therefore on both sides (subjective and objec-
tive) of experience. The way is thus prepared for
an object to be a self on its own account, and still
be for a self. One self may stand over against
another self, be for it, and yet be a self. The
experience of self-consciousness, in other words,
can be sustained and realised by a relation of one
self to another. This is made possible by the result
of Desire. It is, however, an actual experience at
a level above Desire and different from it. It is a
level where a subject is conscious in its object, not
of something without meaning until it becomes its
own, but a self having a being for itself on its own
account: not, however, a self other than the subject,
but in union with its self, its own other. It is the

vii RECOGNITION 223

level where one self " recognises ' ' and ' ' acknowledges
its identity in another self the level of Recognition.

The process of Recognition is simply the form of Recogni-
experience in which consciousness of self takes place

when subject and object each claim to be self. Desire from

. i 1 r i Desire and

implies, as we saw, that only one side is self, the under-
other is selfless, and hence is subordinated to self. standm g-
The fundamental relation between two self-conscious-
nesses can only consist in each being self for itself
and also for the other. But that means that each is
"accepted" by the other in the same sense, since
each just is what the other is self. It can only do
so because it is self. And it must do so, because it
is thus merely asserting self in another form. Hence
it is that we do not desire the self of another. We
necessarily put it from us, for to be one self is just
not to be another. So far as we are conscious of
another self, we, in the first instance, simply allow
it to be there before us. It cannot be ours without
destroying our self. We cannot negate it, we can
therefore only affirm it. Nor, strictly, can we "under-
stand" 1 it, still less "perceive" 2 it. There is no
"understanding" a self, not because it defies "under-
standing" and is therefore "inexplicable," but because
"understanding" is simply not the way to become
conscious of it even in the most elementary form of
its existence, as "mere" self. If we try to "under-
stand " it, we necessarily draw distinctions within
it ; we have to distinguish how it expresses itself
and what it is in itself apart from its expression.
But this cannot give what we want namely, the

1 Kant also insisted on this.

2 Berkeley held that knowledge of .selves is obtained by inference based on
" perception."

224 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

self as such with and in its expression, the self as
a unity beneath all distinction. 1 Understanding
must proceed by such a distinction and cannot rise
above it. Understanding, therefore, is bound to fail
when we seek to become conscious precisely of what
implies the absence of such a distinction. Under-
standing fails to give us the self, because the
unity arrived at by Understanding is lower than
the unity of self-consciousness. 2 The failure does
not prove the self non-existent or unintelligible.
The attempt to accomplish such a task is itself
meaningless. We do not want to " understand " a
self at all : we merely recognise or acknowledge it,
It would be useless, therefore, if in such a case we
could "understand," for the result would not convey
to us what a self is. We can only " understand "
what has no self, what is over against us as an alien
object. We can see the truth of this if we try for a
moment to give a meaning to the expression, " we
can understand what our own self is." It at once
suggests an infinite regress as the only way of
interpreting what is inherently a self-contradictory
statement. If the application of Understanding
to our self fails by its very nature, it fails for
precisely the same reason when we have to deal
with other selves. It is in general only in regard
to the latter that we do make the attempt ; for there
a self is something more than self proper or mere
self. It is an object which in one aspect, its sensible

1 It is only a self if all its content is self, i.e. there can be in its case no
distinction of what it is "in itself" and how it "appears."

2 Hence the failure of analysis, e.g. in Psychology, to discover a self is
inevitable. All analysis is a form of "understanding," and proceeds by
distinctions. But this does not prove, as Hume and his successors
held, that there is no self, and no unity. Such a contention is radically a
petitio principii.

vii RECOGNITION 225

aspect, belongs to the sphere of Perception, and
hence presents the same general character out of
which Understanding arises. But it is meaningless
to try to go beyond that aspect. Hence the illusory
nature of the attempt to carry the process of " under-
standing " the subject higher than the sphere to
which Understanding is strictly applicable as a
form of experience. 1

The experience of being conscious of self in
another self, therefore, is inherently different from tlon ' what:
both Understanding and Desire. It is not merely
" knowledge " in the sense of mere consciousness of
objects, knowledge as found in Perception and
Understanding. It is a consciousness of another
self reflected back upon the subject and becoming
a consciousness of its own self in that other. It is
re -knowledge. re-cognition. And this is made pos-
sible because self, as we have seen, is on both sides
of the experience, is subjective and objective. We
are not dealing at this stage with the more developed
forms of self-consciousness, as these appear at higher
levels of experience still, in, e.g., Morality and the
Social Order. Here we are dealing with the bare
consciousness of self, consciousness of mere self.
And at this level consciousness of self in and through
another self consists in the subject simply accepting
that other self as revealing its self to itself.

It is implied in this process that the relation is The pro-
mutual. What holds for one side holds for the " ss of .

Recogm-

other ; what is accepted by one is admitted by the tion. its

three

1 It is equally futile to suppose that we can "perceive" other selves; or aspects,
that we gain a " knowledge of other selves " through " perception." The self
is admitted not to be a "thing," and is never asserted to be in any sense
" external." But if so, Perception, which has for its content " external things,"
is, ipso facto, not the mode in which consciousness of a self can appear.

Q

226 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

other. "Acknowledgment" 1 means re-affirming
from one side what is asserted by the other ; " re-
cognition" 1 implies the re -appearance in the one
consciousness of the self-content which falls within
another. All this lies in the very principle of a
reciprocal relation between selves. It may be
realised with different degrees of completeness, but
every form of it involves one or other of the
elements implied in the principle. To begin with,
the self on both sides is a particular self, and the re-
cognition is of one self by another single self. Being
self, it is in one of its aspects mere or bare self; it
contains implicitly, but is capable of abstracting itself
from, all its own objective content, the content which
it secures through the process of Desire. Again,
being a particular self objectively present to another
self, it has all the characteristics of a particular
object : it is a " this self," with a " sensible " or
"natural" existence of its own, in virtue of which
it appears to another self as "this particular self."
And, finally, being a self for itself > it is not simply a
self apart from its content, and not simply a parti-
cular self through and in its particular content (as
"object" for a particular self), but a self containing
all its particularity as its own, a self for itself because,
and in the same sense as, it is for another. All these
elements have to be accepted and "acknowledged"
before full Recognition of a self by a self is obtained.
Only in the last is the self completely realised ; for
there it ceases to be merely an object for another,
and to that extent dependent on another, for its

1 The more complex forms of "recognition" and "acknowledgment"
which take place in the Social Order are, in the long run, based on, and are
developments of, this more ultimate form of consciousness of self.

vii SELF-IDENTITY 227

meaning, and becomes independent, self-dependent,
really " free." In this last stage it thus knows itself
to be free and gets that freedom of self " recognised."
Until and unless this is accepted on both sides con-
sciousness of self in another self is not completely
established.

The aspect of self as detached from all sensible Ego as

. i . r -ic T? identical

existence is essential to consciousness ot sell, r or with ego
it means the identity of self with self; and this is
the bare but essential form of self-consciousness,
"ego is ego." It is only obtained by the self
abstracting itself from the contingency of sense.
This self must be "recognised." But when bare
self " recognises " mere self in another, the Recog-
nition is as empty as the selves which constitute
the relation. It consists in merely asserting and
accepting selfhood. The one finds no difference
between itself and the other. The only ground of
distinction is the reciprocal act of Recognition itself.
But for this, our self would be the self of another ;
the ego recognising a self would be aware merely
of its own self. This form of Recognition has a
supreme value, however. It is the formal aspect
of freedom. It is, again, the insistence on the
identity, even though abstract, of all selfhood ; and
this means the implicit universality of all selves.
It implies, too, the essential equality of all selves,
an equality exactly the same as the equality of a
self with itself. And this is the ultimate basis of the
equality of selves in the Moral Order of experience.
Still, on this level of Recognition, no concrete re-
lationship can be established and taken up between
the selves ; for bare identity of self makes all
inter-relation impossible because needless. It is

228 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

the simplest and least complete form of Recognition
on that account.

Ego as The aspect of self, again, as embedded in or

fromego. confined to its sensible existence, is likewise essential
if the self is to be accepted as this particular self, an
object for another self ; and must be so recognised.
Each self may "recognise" the other as "this
particular self." In such a case, what we have is
the bare difference of one self from the other.
Each " recognises " itself as different in accepting
the self of the other, and vice versa. The Recog-
nition is not the asserting of abstract identity, but
abstract exclusion. Each accepts the other, but
as a natural existence, much in the same way as it
accepts the existence of natural beings other than
selves. They establish consciously the existence of
each other as diverse, and in that sense opposed.
They may exist side by side, but that is the only
positive condition of their relation. If they come
into active relationship, at once the difference asserts
itself, and the result is struggle and conflict negation
of self. It is consciousness of self in a "state of
nature," each opposed to each and all. They are
equally selves only by asserting their difference from
one another. This state is only different from the
play of natural forces in being consciously exerted
and consciously directed by self-conscious beings.
This form of Recognition has, however, its value in
emphasising the fact of distinction between selves
in spite qfa.ll identity, and the fact of " contingency "
of particular selves.

between 7 These two aspects are distinct ; and, moreover,
selves in tne y have not the same value as moments of the
don. self, even though they are both essential to it. For

vii INEQUALITY OF SELVES 229

the former emphasises the fundamental element in
self-consciousness, self-identity, abiding unity, free-
dom, self-containedness ; the latter inevitably estab-
lishes the element of variety, diversity, all that is
characteristic, in fact, of "sensible objects." Since
they are thus distinct and of unequal value, and
yet both selves, there can be a Recognition of
the one as such by the other as such. This will
introduce a consciousness of inequality between
the two sides in the experience we are considering.
It may very well happen in the course of the de-
velopment of complete consciousness of self in
another self, complete Recognition, that one self
may emphasise one of those aspects, while the other
emphasises the other aspect. One self may insist
on the abstract self- reference apart from sensible
existence, the other may claim to be, and be content
to remain, bound up with the sensible embodiment
of self. One may assert itself to be, and be "acknow-
ledged" to be, detached from all "natural" existence,
the other may claim to be and be recognised to be,
inseparable from it. One may assert its abstract
" freedom," the other its abstract " contingency."
When this is the case, and a relationship of Re-
cognition is taken up between two such selves, it
takes, by its very nature, the form, not of an equality
of one self before the other, but of inequality. The
one is the higher and superior in value, the other is
lower and inferior in value. The one sees the other
merely as his particular objective self, as his sub-
ordinate self, as his sensible existence ; the other
sees the first as his own true, free self, whose
sensible reality he expresses, but which he himself
is not and does not claim to be. When this

230 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

relationship is set up and constituted as a concrete
experience, we have what appears in the charac-
teristically human relation of Master and Serf. 1
Masterand This relationship is not here considered in its
Serf ' ethical aspect. That introduces other considera-
tions altogether different from what is relevant here.
Its significance in the present connexion lies simply
in its being a specific stage in the realisation of the
consciousness of self, that stage in which there is a
conscious inequality of value between one side (the
subject) and the other (the object), and where that
very inequality becomes a condition of experiencing
selfhood, of " recognising " self. The above argu-
ment does not, therefore, justify the relation of
Master and Serf morally; it "justifies" it epistemo-
logically, by showing that it has a necessary place
in the development of consciousness of self, that it
is a form in which this experience must appear if the
one side is identified with an aspect of self different
from the other. That it can and must appear is
a proof of its necessary value : that it arises out of
an incomplete realisation on both sides of the life of
the self, is a proof that it may be and is trans-
cended at a higher level of consciousness of self.
Be it noted, however, that the relationship does
Serf not a not mean, as is so often supposed, that the Master,
'thing.' Qr consciously free self, is aware of the Serf, or
" natural" self, as a "thing." That is both im-
possible and meaningless. For the Serf constitutes
the Master a free and true self, just as much as the
Master constitutes the Serf an unfree self: for

1 It is one of the earliest forms in which the life of concrete self-conscious-
ness appears, and one of the most enduring and subtle forms in which it is
always maintained, as we can see if we reflect for a moment on the enormous
part it plays in the life of every Society.

vii SERFDOM 231

each recognises and accepts the self of the other.
Moreover, each recognises the other as his own
self, the one his self in the form of natural exist-
ence, the other in the form of free self. The Serf
is to himself free, though only in and by his Master :
the Master has to himself "a natural existence, though
only in his Serf. A "thing" never has such a re-
lationship to a subject, because a " thing," in point
of fact, only has a meaning at the level of Per-
ception, where self- consciousness does not, strictly
speaking, explicitly exist. The only possible at-
titude we can take up to a " thing " is to perceive it :
that is the content of perceiving experience. We
may, if we like, look on the Serf as the "thinghood
of self," in the sense that here the Master treats the
self as an object bound up with the sphere of sensible
or natural, " external," existence. But it is not sensible
existence as such that he deals with, but the self
qua natural existence. And this constitutes all the
difference between a " thing " as such and a Serf as
such. All this difference comes out, indeed, in the
process of maintaining this relationship. For the
Master to commit to the Serf the performances of
his (the Master's) purposes ; to punish him for
failure to execute them ; to allow the Serf even to
" buy his own freedom " by labour or otherwise ; to
set the Serf free these and other conditions of the
relationship indicate the contrast between "things"
and " Serfs." But in fact to identify the two is to
trifle with the nature of the principle involved in
two cases. The one is a relation between conscious
subject and "unconscious" or selfless existence:
the other essentially a .relation between two self-
conscious beings, a relation which in principle

232 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

might very well either change sides in the course
of experience, or disappear altogether, when the full
realisation of self-consciousness is established.
The The maintenance of this relationship in all its

between details ruling on the side of the Master, service on
Masterand the side of the Serf, command and demand on the
one side, and obedience on the other, follows
logically from the fundamental character of this
form of Recognition. Both are selves ; and seek
to maintain themselves as such. The one, the
Serf, in his abstract consciousness of self, gives
up freedom of self as such for the sake of the
bare existence, the natural life of the self, which
is in principle a subordinate moment of self-conscious-
ness. The Serf thereby confesses he is incapable
of asserting his own free self-identity as such. He
must therefore subordinate the self he prefers to
another self, since his own self-consciousness implicitly
demands this for its complete realisation.^ He can-
not be this free self of himself, yet must, because he
is self-conscious, realise it somehow ; hence he does
in through another self. In this way he does get
his full consciousness of self, but does so only at
the expense of a phase of his own real self-con-
sciousness. Since he gives up free selfhood, he
is ip so facto conscious of complete self only in sub-
ordination to that which is free. He can only be fully
self by giving expression to that dependence. This
he does by " obedience " and " service." By doing
so he gets his true self, for only if he does so can he
get what he lacks and must have ; since his complete
self is implicitly and truly also a free self. Hence

1 These two aspects being together the ultimate moments of complete
selfhood.

vii SELF AS UNIVERSAL 233

the Serfs relation to his Master is not arbitrary
but a necessity for the Serf himself. The same
holds good, with the necessary changes, regarding
the position of the Master in this experience of
self -consciousness. The Master can exert his
" authority " over the Serf, because he surrenders
his natural existence and stands for mere freedom of
self, albeit abstract freedom (a freedom which,
because abstract, is, to begin with, contingent upon
greater "force of will," " energy of self," or any ex-
aggeration of a difference which makes abstraction
easy). In exerting it he is performing for the Serf
what the Serf as self-conscious requires and im-
plicitly demands the function of free self : and
he is doing for himself what he also requires the
maintenance of his abstraction from the "natural"
self which is implicitly his own, but is subordinate
to him.

But while such a mode of obtaining conscious- Complete
ness of self can indeed play an important role ness 5 "? self
in the evolution of this experience, and must is onl y

. . . possible

appear to some extent wherever the experience where self
is found, it is inherently inadequate to its full 1 ^ umver -
expression. It rests on an abstraction on the part
of each side of the experience ; and, if sustained,
must perpetuate a fundamental contradiction. 1 It
seeks to maintain an essential inequality of the
self with itself "; and this implies that the self is
not really a unity, that its aspects cannot be ex-
plicitly what they are implicitly a position which
the very relationship above considered denies.

1 A contradiction, however, on which a very large part of the life of a
Society rests, and which is largely the very moving principle of its ceaseless
activity. The "Labour problem," which concerns Society so deeply, is an
instance in point.

234 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

Since on each side in the above experience, one
aspect of the self is implicit and the other explicit,
the complete realisation of consciousness of self is
found where on each side the self, of which each
is conscious, is explicity both aspects at once, and
each sees in the other, not a phase of its self, but
its entire self, where each is for the other what
it is for itself, and is in the other what it is in
itself. This means, however, that each is conscious
of itself, not simply as distinct from but as com-
pletely one with another, conscious of being self in
the same sense as the other. It is then conscious
no longer of simply "my self" and "this self" at all.
In the form of " my " or " this " self it was particular.
Hence in this completer consciousness of self it
becomes conscious of universality of self or of self
as universal.

Universal- This is brought about directly as the result of
mad e fself the very relationship of incomplete self-conscious-
possible by ness above stated. For the Serf, realising its
SYnlquai? natural self for the self of his Master, does so by
ityof carrying out the purposes of the Master (his free
self) through and in his own natural life. This
process is what is called his Toil or Work. In
his "Labour" he moulds and determines natural
existence by conscious purposes, which are in the
first instance his Master's, but are secondarily his
in the own. The Serf makes those purposes his own in
"obeying" his Master. But since these purposes
are at the same time the purposes of his own
true or free self (his Master), in carrying them out
he is really carrying out his own true self. That
true self therefore becomes his own self through
the purposes he adopts in virtue of his "obedience."

vii UNIVERSALITY OF SELF 235

They are directly realised by his will as such, not
by that of his Master. They are, to begin with,
abstractly his, since his true self is abstractly apart
from him, as his Master. But these purposes,
while they remain abstract for the Master (since
he does not carry them out), become concrete forms
of action for the Serf. By carrying them out he
thus becomes concretely possessed of his true self,
no longer as something external but as his own
energy of will. He thus acquires, through " obedi-
ence " to his Master, the self which he had first
of all put from him, or abrogated in favour of
another self. By Labour, therefore, the inequality,
originally set up within his consciousness of self,
is removed altogether, and his complete self is
restored to him as a unity and as his own. When
this is brought about, and comes home to the Serf
as a conscious fact, he is in a position to assert
his freedom, and so claim an equality of self-con-
sciousness with his former Master, claim, that is to
say, to be for the other self (his Master) what he
is thus, as the result of his Labour, for himself. It
is merely a question of time and circumstance when
and how this shall be insisted on and fully realised ;
whether it comes from the side of the Master,
who "lets him go free"; or comes from himself by
" acquiring " it through some means or other ; or is
brought about, it may be, through external agencies
of history compelling its full expression.

Similarly, from the side of the Master the same in the
result has to be brought about. He is abstractly
free ; his concrete freedom is only realised by the
purposes, embodying his freedom, being carried out.
But since they are carried out by another self (the

236 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

Serf), he will remain only abstractly free unless they
are concretely his own as well. If he remain only
abstractly free, while the Serf, by the process above
stated, becomes concretely so, he will be inferior to
the Serf. He is bound, therefore, in the interests
of his own free self to secure, by some means or
other, that his self shall be concretely free. This he
does by embodying his purposes in natural objects
as such, and, on the one hand, subordinating these
to himself, while, on the other, "using" them as a
means of establishing his freedom in the eyes of the
other. This implies, e.g., "hiring" the Labour of
the other, and acknowledging in this the freedom of
the other to give or withhold his Labour. It implies,
in short, the surrender of the relationship of inequality
between his self and that of the Serf, and thus brings
about the transition to a state of equal and complete
consciousness of self between the two sides.
Universal When this is a fully conscious experience, both
self-con- gjdes recognise each his self in the other as it is for

sciousness > *

the basis the self of each. Each acknowledges his self to be
highest in no peculiar or particular self, but to be a self with
human ex- universality of nature. Each sees in the other the
reflex of his true self, of what he is for himself; sees
himself, therefore.no longer as particular and isolated,
but as universal. From the relation of selves as
universal, springs all that is highest in human expe-
rience the certainty man has of secure "rationality,"
out of which comes Science ; the Moral Order of the
world ; his sense of being absolutely at home in the
universe wherever the individual self-consciousness
exists within it ; his Religions, where he claims to
live the life of an eternal self-consciousness. All
these are but further developments of the funda-

vii FREE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 237

mental principle of a consciousness of a universal self,
which, again, means a consciousness of being through-
out all its content absolutely at home with itself, of
being entirely for itself, or completely free. Con-
sciousness of complete freedom and consciousness of
being a self which is universal, are therefore one
and the same experience. All manifestations of
universal self-consciousness are thus phases of free-
dom. Free self-consciousness is, then, the ground
and end of all experience.

At first this complete consciousness of freedom This
takes an abstract form, as we find in the history both

of the individual mind and the human race. To be ness of
conscious of a self which is universal to be con- a t first
scious that, in being for himself, the individual is for abstract -
all selves, that he represents selfhood in general
can very well be asserted in highly abstract ways.
It can become the source of boundless self-assurance
and superb self-exaltation on the one hand, or pro-
found self-abnegation on the other ; and between
theses two extremes lie all the various forms of
exaggerated and self-confident isolation of the self
from the richness of its concrete experience. Taken
in an abstract form, indeed, no mode of experience
is so capable of endless distortion, so fraught with
peril and danger, so liable to pass the bounds set by
the orderly necessity of a rational coherence. For
the very consciousness of a self, which, in abstrac-
tion from all the details of existence of whatsoever
kind, yet carries its universality within it, can dare
to transcend all finite existence, and still find itself
at home with itself, still find its objectivity within
itself. It may so transcend all finite existence that
reflection is unable to distinguish its claim to be

238 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

universal from boundless egoism. It can so think
away all else except itself, that it can claim to be all
that is. It can mistake the mere claim to be all
existence for the claim to be at one with universal
self-consciousness, just as it can mistake the claim
to be free from all existence for the consciousness
of a universal self. The very universality of the
self, in short, is the danger of this experience ; for
that universality has all the indefiniteness of an
abstraction, and all the plenitude of reality. It
may be made so indefinite as to be indistinguishable
from nonentity ; it may be made so definite as to be
indistinguishable from the very opposite of universal
self-consciousness and become an attitude of mere
caprice.

Three In the main the abstract expression of this form

forms of Q f experience m ay appear in three distinct ways.

abstract * *

universal The commonest and perhaps healthiest shape it
scbusTess: takes is that of lifting the self away from all depend-
stoicism. e nce upon, and attachment to, natural existence of
every kind, and of finding, on the positive side, its
life and being in the consciousness of bare universal
self as self. This is the mood of elevation above
all " nature " and natural conditions, of communion
with self in its bare formal universality, with pure
"thought," and of relation to the concrete realities of
existence merely by way of exclusion and denial.
This type is the attitude adopted by the Stoical self-
consciousness in whatever form it appears, whether
in the form historically called by that name or in
the form of Asceticism which is logically allied to it.
There is nothing of worth here but what comes from,
and has the aspect of, the pure self. Only the self
as universal is the truth ; only the thought of the

viz STOICISM 239

self, the pure thought, has any abiding place in
experience. " Things " and " objects " presented
are obstacles in the way of the consciousness of
thought for its own sake ; or, at best, centres and
occasions of reaction and recoil into the region of
thought. They have only significance by being
excluded from self-consciousness, and have no place
in it. Life in connexion with them can only be
endured on sufferance. To give up all connexion
with them is not only no loss, it is positive gain ;
and, in consequence, the world of such things can
be completely and even deliberately abandoned by
the process of justifiable suicide. The positive life
of the self is found in the life of thought, and with
that type of self wherever it is found. Those who
live this life together, in spite of contact with natural
existence, make life in time and space tolerable for one
another, and form a social whole by themselves a
brotherhood of immortals. But such a communion
of pure self-consciousness is only imperfectly realised
here and now, since " here and now " militate against
its consummation. It is independent of every " here
and now " ; it is a whole, whose unity lies not in this
life but only in the life apart from all natural con-
ditions a city of God.

It is easy to see that, since every self-conscious Scepti-
life is actually found only under natural conditions, cism-
only one step requires to be taken to carry the
abstraction of self-consciousness still further. The
self may abstract not only from all natural existence,
but from all specific forms of existing self-conscious-
ness except its own. Here, again, we have con-
sciousness of self as universal ; but the universality
is strictly and deliberately asserted to lie only

2 4 o CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

within the limit of the individual self-consciousness
as such. The whole weight and burden of univer-
sality is lightly assumed by the individual self,
simply in virtue of his being conscious of self. He
can abstract himself from all else, and that very
fact is just the expression of his universality, is just
the manifestation of it. All security and universality
begin and end with his self as this individual self.
But since every self not merely can, but, on this
view, must, take up exactly the same attitude, there
remains no point of identity or common ground
at all for any one self-consciousness to share with
another. And this is deliberately and consciously
asserted to be the case, and is accepted as the true
expression of a consciousness of universal self.
When this position is taken up we have the
attitude of thorough-going Scepticism, of Scepticism,
not as a method, but as a mode of experience.
Here universal self -consciousness is disintegrated
and dissipated into the endless multiplicity of which
it is capable, just because that is, in a certain sense,
universal self- consciousness ; and this endless
diversity is as such identified with the universal
self. In other words, each takes his own individual
self as such to be the one universal self, and ipso
facto takes it to exclude all others. For each,
the truth is his own, is for himself only; therein
lies the positive side of this attitude. For in Scepti-
cism the self must always take at least its own
attitude to be true for itself. But it acknowledges
just as much that the same position can be main-
tained by others equally for themselves. But this
acknowledgment eo ipso so qualifies its own truth,
its own attitude, as to destroy all its positive value

vii SCEPTICISM 241

for that self. The attitude thus carries its own nega-
tion within it, as an integral and essential moment
of it. It is therefore, since it claims of itself to
be true experience, self-destructive. And Scepticism
only achieves its highest consummation as an ex-
pression of abstract free self-consciousness, when it
is not only aware that this is its outcome, but asserts
it to be the only possible form of experience ; when
it not only admits but demands this result. For
this denial of all value in its own position is itself
the supreme achievement of its type of freedom,
the freedom which consists in mere detachment for
its own sake, in detachment not only from natural
existence but from other selves. While Stoicism is
the withdrawal of self from all particularity of
content in order to find its sense of security, its
sense of free universality, in the region of the pure
self, of thought, wherever this may be obtained';
Scepticism is the withdrawal from even this univer-
sal of thought, and hence has nothing left in which
to find its sense of absolute freedom, except this
very power and act of withdrawal itself.

It thus prepares the way for the final and unique Seif-
abstraction into which free universal self-conscious- ahenatlon -
ness may pass. It may not merely abstract itself
from all else other than itself, but in virtue of its
freedom, it may put its very self outside itself, and
attempt to maintain an attitude of detachment from
its own self-consciousness. Nothing could exceed
this degree of abstraction ; and here all the peril,
to which this form of experience is liable, takes
a positive shape. In the previous cases there
was always some region of self in which the self
could feel its security, its sense of being at one with

R

242 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH.

self absolutely ; for in these cases it did not give up
everything. In the first, it did not surrender the
universality of pure self, and had the joy of com-
munion with other selves who shared in pure
thought ; in the second, it did not surrender the
satisfaction of exercising for itself the privilege of
abstract freedom, and that very satisfaction with
itself in doing so kept it at one with itself. But
here it has given up by its very freedom even that
security of self, the security of having a self to
assert for the sake of assertion. The result is, it is
here consciously cut off from all security whatsoever.
It is divided now not against something apart from
itself, but against itself; and is conscious within
itself of its own alienation from itself, with no stable
resting-place either within or without the range of
its self -consciousness. Such an attitude is one
of inherent self-contradiction, a contradiction not
brought about by contrast to what is other
than itself, but by its own self. It is therefore
incapable of being removed by any process of
self- conscious activity at all. It is pure self-
negation, seeking at the same time to maintain
itself as self-negation. The universality here appears
not as something positive, but as the persistence in
the same self of an essentially negative attitude.
For this Self-alienation is itself regarded as necessary,
as the very expression of free self -consciousness.
It cannot therefore be got rid of, but remains as
a permanent state of conscious self-diremption and
self-dissolution. When Stoicism turned in fear or
contempt from natural existence, it had a city of
refuge to which it could flee and be at peace ; when
Scepticism turned in distrust from all that it

vii SELF-ALIENATION 243

regarded as alien to itself, it could still trust in
itself as such. But here there is no place of
refuge, no foothold for trust to rest upon. Hence
there is nothing left but to accept as the
only attitude, a consciousness of self -despair,
self-distrust, self-pity, self-contempt, a sphere of
experience where the very power of freedom has
become a source of terror in having the privilege
and the necessity of exercising it. This sphere of
self-created and self-constituted unrest may take
different forms. 1 It may appear as passive quiescent
self-despair ; or the self may seek to protect its life
from the ruin which lies within it, by the very
struggle to restore the unity of its experience at all
costs, whether through active contact with natural
existence or active communion with other selves ;
or, again, the self may live a life of "gnawing self-
consciousness," only saved from disaster by seeking
some consistency through endless self-analysis. 2 If,
however, the state of self-disruption ceases to be
felt as a conscious whole, and referred to the self as
its own, the self may become divided absolutely into
separate areas altogether, and one partial self set
itself up against another partial self, and each claim
to be the whole. When this, the extreme form of
this self-consciousness comes about as a permanent
condition, the self has lost even an implicit sense of
unity. The universality of the self is reinstated
as a " diseased " state of self-consciousness.

All these abstract forms of consciousness of
universal self, by their very abstractness and the

1 Cp. Sartor Resartus, "The Everlasting No," and "The Centre of In-
-difference."

2 Cp. Amiel's Journal.

244 CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF CH. vn

The uni- results to which they lead, indicate that the self here
must b? must take its freedom not abstractly but concretely,
concrete. Th e se if as universal must be a concrete universal,
must find itself as a whole in its other as a whole.
When this is done, it will not merely insist on the
bare certainty of being universal, a certainty which
is essentially one-sided, but will find its universality
in the concrete content of its life. Its self-con-
sciousness will not be simply asserted subjectively
but objectively as well. It will find its complete
self in its object, and will not seek to assert itself
by withdrawing from objectivity. It will be com-
pletely at home on both sides of experience at once
and in the same sense. This, indeed, it finds when
it develops fully what that principle of universal self-
consciousness really contains.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SPHERE OF REASON SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE

WHEN experience has become explicitly a conscious- The unity
ness of self, when it has been shown that this very
principle of self- consciousness has been all along
involved in its process, even at the lowest stages
at which the mind is conscious of objects at all, it
might be said that our purpose has been achieved.
For thereby it has been proved that the duality in
which knowledge emerges does not destroy, but
involves the unity of the elements in all knowledge,
subject and object ; and hence knowledge is real
and is of reality all along. The whole difficulty
regarding knowledge is just that it seeks to convey
the unity of mind and objects, and yet, at least to
begin with, exists through an opposition between
them. The activity of knowledge would be mean-
ingless, unless it were undertaken to bring out the
unity between those factors constituting it. As we
often say, knowledge must be " true," i.e. the mind's
process must "agree with" the "nature" of the
"object"; or, again, knowledge must, to be know-
ledge, and not mere temporal sequence of events in
conscious life, have "validity," i.e. what is arrived
at must be guaranteed or accepted by the character
imposed on its process by the world to which its

245

246 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE CH.

activity refers. Whatever we may think of such
expressions, they do at least emphasise this funda-
mental aim of knowledge the attainment of a unity
between factors prima facie contrasted and opposed.
Now it has been established so far that the duality
in knowledge, even in its most extreme form, does
involve this inherent unity ; that this unity is what
each stage aims at expressing ; that it is the deter-
mining condition of its activity at any one stage, and
of its process from a lower to a higher stage ; and,
finally, that this unity is proved to be involved by
the fact it is evolved as an explicit result of the
process of knowledge towards its goal. In the
consciousness of self this unity is no longer implicit
but expressed. With the attainment of this result,
therefore, all preceding forms of experience find
their validity ratified, and itself takes its place as
their highest truth and supreme end.
The Why, then, do we not stop there in this inter-

pretation of knowledge? This was undoubtedly
all that Kant aimed at establishing, and, so far, suc-
cessfully established. For he showed that unless
this was involved there could be no unity in know-
ledge at all ; or, stated otherwise, that the possibility
of unity in knowledge rested on the reference to
the self in every act of knowledge. But unity in
knowledge is just truth in experience ; and hence
the attainment of truth at all depended on the
implication in our knowledge of this reference to,
this consciousness of, self. Kant was content to
prove that this must be so, if there is to be a
"possible experience" at all; and being interested
solely in showing that experience was possible, he
was satisfied with the bare fact that this reference

vin FORMAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 247

does or must take place. For him, therefore, this
reference is essentially and necessarilyyw^tf / in char-
acter. This is valuable so far as it goes ; but, after
all, it is merely the beginning of an explanation, not
the working of it out its principle, and not its full
expression. Moreover, that formality, characterising
Kant's principle, limits, or is limited by, his range of
interest in the problem. For Kant the only question
about knowledge arises out of the duality of the
factors involved (subject and object), as this appears
in its extreme and most obvious forms. His problem
is to explain how there can be necessary unity in our
knowledge as we find it at the levels of Perception
and of the Understanding of "things," where quite
clearly the mind seems to stand on one side and
objects over against it on the other. And, no doubt,
that problem is as obvious as the opposition between
the factors which suggests it ; while, again, it is the
form in which common sense and natural science
find it most urgent. If, therefore, he could explain
how unity was possible there, he would satisfy a
serious demand. A formal solution, then, was
sufficient to show how it was possible, and with the
demonstration that those extreme opposites had a
ground of unity, nothing more seemed required.
The knowledge involving such opposition could be
allowed to proceed on its own course with the
validity of its process guaranteed. The mere
justification of its validity could not of itself add
to the amount of that knowledge, nor could any
knowledge resting on that dualism be increased by
deduction from a principle merely establishing its
validity. In short, the demonstration of the worth
of ordinary knowledge could afford to be and remain

248 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE CH.

purely formal, since it lay altogether apart from the
process of that knowledge itself, and was not con-
tinuous with that process. The demonstration
belonged to a different attitude of experience alto-
gether : it was a philosophical theory of knowledge,
and therefore, while it was a kind of knowledge
itself, it was not the same in kind as was the
knowledge dealt with by that theory.

Kant's Hence for Kant there is a sharp distinction

principle between philosophical knowledge and the know-
involves a ledge of ordinary understanding and science,
tinuity There is no continuity between them whatever ;
between j-j^y are s i m pl v different processes. The fact that

philosophy J 7- i -i

and the result of philosophical inquiry is thus purely
experience, formal is in harmony with his whole attitude towards
speculative knowledge. For him ordinary know-
ledge and science could extend our consciousness
of the meaning and content of the world ; philo-
sophical thinking could not. Thus all the extension
of our knowledge of the world was regarded by him
as the object of the former, and was their sole
prerogative. With that philosophy had nothing
to do. But if all knowledge of objects comes from
them alone, what can be left for philosophy to do ?
Clearly nothing but to deal with purely formal
questions regarding knowledge itself. Kant has
in some way to acknowledge the claims of philosophy
to be a necessary attitude of the human spirit, and
must therefore give it some fact to deal with. But
he will not allow that it extends knowledge of objects,
therefore its subject-matter must be knowledge as
such. And since it is excluded from knowing the
content of experience, there is absolutely nothing
left but the pure form of knowledge to discuss.

viii KANT'S FORMAL PRINCIPLE 249

Any kind of content lies beyond its province to
consider. But the pure form of knowledge is
simply the principle involved in all knowledge.
Hence, to show what this is and how it works is all
that a theory of knowledge can give. Here we see
once more the reason for the purely formal character
of his principle of self-consciousness. His problem
was formal by its very character, and his solution is
formal as a result ; even though, so far as it goes, it
is satisfactory. It is thus that he makes the com-
promise between the distrust of speculation which
had arisen in him so strongly after his acquaintance
with the barren metaphysic of preceding philosophy,
and the necessity after all to satisfy the speculative
impulse in man in some way or other. But he
creates, by so doing, an impassable gulf between the
knowledge analysed by philosophy and philosophical
knowledge itself.

The effect on his theory is twofold : all continuity its effect
of principle between ordinary knowledge and
science on the one hand and philosophy on the
other is ignored or rendered impossible, and that
principle above ordinary knowledge, which enables
him to criticise and justify its validity, remains
undeveloped. It cannot be developed by Kant,
for it has no content : it is purely formal. If it
tries to develop itself into knowledge, it merely
shows its ineptitude, Kant holds, by falling into
"antinomy." Yet in some way it is a reality.
Hence Kant hands over its positive reality to
another plane of experience altogether the practical
moral will and leaves the negative results, which
are all it can intellectually attain to, within the
theoretical attitude of experience.

250 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE CH.

Paradox of It is evident at a glance that Kant's result
portion. ls paradoxical. In the interests of what for Kant
were the highest phases of experience those of
Duty and Religion he places Morality in a region
beyond the reach of knowledge ; as if human know-
ledge were something to be either afraid of, on
account of its critical concern for truth, or ashamed
of, because of its incompetence to reveal it completely.
On the other hand, in the interests of knowledge
Kant has been at considerable pains to demonstrate
the inherent necessity and universal validity of
Science. Surely it is evident that if knowledge is
inherently justifiable as a mode of experience, it
cannot be denied the right to extend its activity as
far as it pleases ; and if Morality is similarly a real
aspect of experience, it has nothing to fear from
Science, and nothing is gained by protecting it from
knowledge. It seems a singular defence of the
validity of Morality to relegate it to a sphere which
is unknowable, while the only way of defending it
must be by some form of knowledge itself. In point
of fact, knowledge takes its revenge, as it always
must in such a case, by depriving the result of any
concrete value.

The All this is altered by taking a single step. The

- P rmc iple securing the unity of knowledge and in-

conscious- volved in it all through, does not externally join

concrete subject and object ; it internally fuses them. It does

not formal. not jj n k them; they are phases of it as a living

unity. They are not parts which are fitted into each

other ; but rather parts of a single cell. They are,

in fact, elements derived from its complete reality by

a process of analysis either implicit (in the develop-

ment of experience itself) or explicit (by conscious

viii SELF IS CONCRETE 251

reflection). This interpretation of the principle is
involved in its having been shown to be that truth,
the attainment of which has been the aim of all know-
ledge from the start. Hence, when this first arises
as a conscious form of experience, the outcome of
the preceding stages of experience, where subject
and object were in obvious contrast, the principle is
not a formal unity at all, but a concrete mode of
experience, which, while it contains what preceded
in the sense that it is their truth, has a life and being
of its own whose content has yet to be revealed and
expressed. We cannot, therefore, stop with the
explicit attainment of the mere consciousness of self
involved in all the knowledge that has gone before,
unless that self-consciousness is, as it there stands,
the exhaustive expression of all that self-conscious-
ness means, and experience cannot be further
developed. That this is not so is evident, first, from
the fact that the self is here the most concrete of
all realities ; in the second place, because there is
still a vast amount of experience left untouched by
the preceding phases of experience (Perception, etc.),
and needing, therefore, interpretation by self- con-
sciousness ; and, thirdly, because the conscious-
ness of self being a mode of experience it has
expressly to build all that the preceding phases of
experience (Perception, etc.) contained into the
structure of its life and make them consciously its
own. It has, in fact, to recast experience as hitherto
known into explicit consciousness of self, just as, e.g.,
Understanding took up the content of Perception
and moulded that after its own form. Develop-

Hence, then, the attainment of self-consciousness ment . of

t. . ir . ..... conscious-

as an explicit mode ot experience is the beginning nessof self.

252 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE CH.

of a further advance in the interpretation of experi-
ence and in the deeper consciousness of what the
self contains. 1 But from this point onwards we are
always within the sphere of an explicit consciousness
of self. The self is aware of itself in all its contents
and movements, and of nothing else. The object
world is consciously one with the subject world, and
the course of development consists just in making
this conscious unity more and more complete, more
and more concrete, more and more adequate to all
its content.

what it Now, just as Kant placed Morality and Religion

in the sphere of pure consciousness of self, so here
part of the life of self-consciousness proper is realised
in these forms of experience. And just as Kant
relegated Morality and Religion to the world of
Reason only, so our argument will show them to
arise out of the life of Reason. But these of them-
selves do not exhaust all that self- consciousness
contains, as Kant seemed to hold. There are other
movements as well ; and a complete interpretation
of the principle will show what these are. One
marked divergence from Kant appears in the fact
that a place can be found at one of its stages for the
philosophical attitude, the activity of Speculation.
This in itself may be said to be an obvious
result to secure ; yet Kant's view of knowledge
leaves it unexplained. The question is bound to
arise in Kant's theory, What kind of knowledge
is it in which Kant's own philosophy consists ?
quis custodit custodes ? For Kant, however, as we
have said, there is a gulf fixed between science and

1 This is the way in which actual experience reveals the reality of the higher
forms of self-consciousness.

vui REASON 253

speculation. But by developing the principle which
Kant left purely formal, the principle of explicit
Self- consciousness, we can establish a continuity
between the two, and thereby close the circuit of
human knowledge as the expression, i.e. the ex-
perience, of self-consciousness.

All the forms of explicit consciousness of self
contain and express the conscious union of self with
its object and conversely. Wherever we have a
conscious explicit identity between self and its
object, there we have self-consciousness. The chief
forms of this unity we have still to state. We must
always bear in mind that self-consciousness is not
bare identity of self and its object, and that self-
consciousness takes specifically distinct forms just
because it reveals its reality in different degrees of
completeness.

To begin with, we have the simple certainty on First form
the part of the self that the content known is

merely not alien to itself, but is essentially one with of self in

r^i i r . i . , . 1r . . the world

it. 1 he sen, as we say, is at home with itselt in its O f Reason.
world, in its experience. It is adequate completely
to reveal the object before it; "finds itself" in its
object, and finds the object to be in absolute agree-
ment with its own nature. There is no " beyond "
in the nature of the object which is hidden from the
eye of the self, and hence no distinction between an
" appearance " of the object and the " inner meaning"
of the object, between what the object is for us
and what it is "in itself." This distinction was
formed at the level of Understanding, and created,
as we saw, by the character of Understanding, and
its way of going to work as a form of knowledge.
Here that contrast has disappeared, and the object is

254 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE CH.

through and through transparent to the self as a self,
to the self as a universal and as a unity. But this is
just what we mean by a " rational " experience, by
knowing " rationally," by knowledge in and through
Reason. The first and simplest form, therefore, in
which self-consciousness is adequately expressed is
in the life of Reason as such, in Reason-knowledge.
This Let us explain. We must observe, in the first

pSfpie place, that this is just what Kant's own view logically
with Kant. i m pH e s. For him, too, Reason is higher than Under-
standing, and hence to it is assigned Morality, to the
criticism and knowledge of which Understanding,
which is confined to knowledge in the sense of natural
science, cannot attain. And Reason belongs to the
region of pure consciousness of self proper ; it is, in fact,
that self-consciousness as a purely formal function in
experience. For self-consciousness, on Kant's view,
is just the principle of unity in experience, i.e. the
principle in virtue of which subject and object are
absolutely harmonised. This means that in self-
consciousness subject is one with object, and must
obviously be so, because it is conscious of nothing
but self. But this is as much as to say that in it
mind as a unity is one with its content as unified.
And this is precisely what is found in the life of
Reason as such. Hence it is that absolute unity in
experience is relegated by Kant, in the various forms
in which that unity is demanded (Self, World, and
God), to the sphere of Reason.

The All that is equally true here, with a difference.

?if e Reason ^ e ^ orms ^ unity in which Reason appears are
involves not restricted to those few mentioned by Kant.
These are only particular expressions of the one
fundamental fact that in the life of Reason subject

vin REASON CONCRETE 255

and object are consciously one. Reason is a special
form of experience, and wherever it works at all,
there we have the same sense of unity, the sense
of being at home with our object. It deals, e.g.,
with the " world," the world of " nature " in the sense
in which science and common knowledge speak of
" nature " ; and there it does insist on the unity of
the world (to use Kant's expression), i.e. the inter-
relatedness of all the parts in the whole, and to
make a whole. But to do so is just to insist that the
self is at one with the world, for it is the unity of
that self which is simply expressed objectively in
the "unity" of the "world." Hence the world is
one because we are conscious of the self in the
world ; or, conversely, we are conscious of the world
as one, because we are conscious of the one self in
it. The self at home with the world, or the world
at one with the self, both mean that the world is a
unity as the self is a unity. But whereas Kant
took that unity in a purely formal sense, we
ought to see that unity concretely and all along the
line in dealing with the world. If to be at one with
the world is to find that same unity everywhere in
it, the unity of the self with the world is necessarily
differentiated into as many " forms of unity " or
"conceptions" as are required to exhaust that
sense of unity we have in dealing with it. Or
in other words, the life of Reason does not consist
in simply asserting the bare unity of the world and
the bare unity of the self with it, but in manifesting
that unity in detail. Thus it is that the work of
Reason must be manifested in various forms : as
many forms as are required fully to exhaust the
nature of Reason in dealing with the world before it.

256 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE CH.

(2) Reason This leads to a second point. Kant had restricted
of know- knowledge to Understanding, arfd hence for him
ledge not it was a problem what to do with the unity of
u. m Reason when he could only deal with it by way
of Understanding. The error here lay in restricting
the idea of knowledge to the process-of Understand-
ing. Dismiss that, and his problem is at once
changed and his solution disappears. We then
see that Reason is not some function beyond know-
ledge, working somehow in vacuo, yet working
because it must, since it is an activity of the human
spirit. Reason is literally knowledge, a kind of know-
ledge, still distinct from that of Understanding (and
therein lies the agreement with Kant), but not sub-
ordinate to it, a form of knowledge sui generis and
working on a plane of its own. This follows from
our having taken self-consciousness concretely and
not formally ; but it is evident that at once it
effects a change in the conception of knowledge.
For on this view Reason expresses truths of its own,
works in ways of its own, and works towards its own
ends independent of check or direction from any
other authority whatsoever. No doubt, what it
reveals is final for it alone, not for any other level
of experience : but that is true of any phase of
knowledge. It is true, e.g., of Perception. But
its being a phase of knowledge, while it reserves
its validity to its own special process, does not
surely put it on a level with any other form of
knowledge. It is a higher form than any that have
hitherto appeared, just because it is first of all the
culmination of the movement of knowledge as it has
hitherto proceeded, and, secondly, because it deals
more adequately with experience (i.e. is in greater

vin REASON AND EXPERIENCE 257

harmony with the nature of self-consciousness which
all experience implies) than any other of the preced-
ing forms of knowledge. Thus Understanding does
not criticise it ; it rather (as Kant himself held)
corrects Understanding.

This view of Reason as itself a kind of knowledge This
is nothing novel. It is actually accepted by every-
day experience of a non-philosophical kind. We do thought,
hold that in the life of Reason man is "at home with
the world," in a way he is not, e.g., at the level of
Perception. We consider "a reasonable soul"
the highest expression of human life. We do
maintain that "nothing can resist the might of
reason," that in the long run everything must give
up its meaning to the spirit of reason engaged
seriously in finding out that meaning. This is the
postulate of scientific procedure. It is what we mean
by speaking of the world as "intelligible," as a
"rational" world, which can be "made one with
our own reason," and must give up all claims to be
independent of it. It is the moving principle behind
all scientific effort, urging it on in spite of, indeed
through, all its mistakes in grasping the meaning of
things. We generally hold there is nothing hidden in
the natural world that shall not be made known some
time or other to the eye of inquiry. And we con-
sider that man to be highest as a man who achieves
this end most completely. In all these and other ways
we find in everyday life that the sphere of Reason is
not merely held to be the highest expression of the
knowing consciousness, but that it is itself a form of
knowledge. It is the region of conceptual coherence
and demonstration. It is the principle of deanthro-
pomorphisation, that principle by which we transcend

258 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE CH.

metaphor drawn from Sense (i.e. our senses) and
Perception, and rise to Conceptions. These are not
limited to or by Sense, and so are not restricted by
the specific individuality of the knowing conscious-
ness ; they are universal and not (as all metaphor
is) individual.

The pro- We are thus merely doing justice to the claim
Reason which every one makes for the life of Reason.
Know- How, then, does Reason as a process of knowledge
work ? Let it be remembered first that while
Reason is thus knowledge, it is not simply a " func-
tion" 0/~the self; it is the self in a specific mode of
experience. It can only be said to be a "function"
of it in the sense in which any aspect of experience
is one moment of its life amongst others ; not in the
sense that the self "uses" Reason as the "instru-
ment" by which to "know" "things," or is a kind
of activity exercised by the self, " possessing " such
a capacity. Reason is the self-conscious life of mind
in one of its realisations of itself. Reason-knowledge
is self-conscious experience. Hence, in evolving the
process and content of such knowledge, we are all
the while expressing the very nature of self-conscious
life as that appears here. Reason-knowledge is, in
short, just the self qua knowing a content as itself.
The object Again, we must not in this knowledge separate
*" t sl ct the Reason which knows from the object which is
separate, known, as if Reason were on one side and the
object on the other, and each separated from the
other by a gulf which the "process" of knowing
tries to span. The antithesis here implied has been
altogether left behind. It is found at the level of
mere Consciousness certainly, as we have seen ;
knowing does there seem a way of joining subject

vm SUBJECT & OBJECT IN REASON 259

and object. It is just because the antithesis is there
so abrupt, and knowing does seem to come between
them, that we found the distinction arising between
a world of noumena and the sphere of pheno-
mena, already stated in dealing with Understand-
ing. For that distinction is just the reappear-
ance in the result of what was there from the
first as a condition of getting any result at all.
But at the level of Reason that antithesis, as we
have seen, has disappeared as an opposition of
elements. It is merely now a distinction of content
within a conscious unity, not an opposition of elements
demanding a unity. A distinction certainly there is
and must be, otherwise there would be no knowledge ;
for knowledge without diversity has no existence.
We have subject and object here in Reason, as else-
where : Reason is a plane of experience which has
these for its constituents. But in Reason subject
and object consciously fall inside the unity they
imply as moments of the single act of self -conscious-
ness; or, stated otherwise, the single activity of being
conscious of self contains as its ultimate constituents
subject and object, and therefore these are by and in
that unity explicitly identified. But, it may be asked,
in what sense identified? In the sense that the object
is the meaning of the whole in one form, the subject
its meaning in another. The subject is the unity to
the self, the object the unity for the self: the com-
plete act of Reason is just one in which that is to
itself what it is for itself. Only so is it at once a whole
and a self-contained whole ; anything else would be
partial and incomplete. We can see this at once in
any ideal statement, e.g. . " two and two are four,"
" the perpetual motion is untrue of physical energy."

260 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE CH.

Here we are not saying something true for us. It
is, as we say, "the very nature of thought," is "the
very meaning of the thing," "anything else is impos-
sible," i.e. the content of the subject is nothing in
this connexion but what the object reveals. The
object reveals just what the subject reveals ; or,
again, the unity of experience is explicitly realised
in these statements. There is no opposition, no con-
scious distinction between what / think and what the
object is there is absolute identity of both sides.
Subject Hence it is characteristic of Reason that, in dealing

as aspect? w ^ tn ^ ts ^^ e an< ^ activity, we do not start from the
of the same su bj ec t and find what it says "about" the object,
and then compare what it says with the "nature" of
the object to see if it is "true," if they "agree."
Nor, on the other hand, do we start from the object
simply and find out what it contains, and then submit
this for " acceptance " by the subject. There is no
place for comparison when both are explicitly identi-
cal in content and process to begin with ; and there is
no meaning in " acceptance " when the subject is
consciously there in the very being and nature of the
object all along. Wherever this is the case we have
the life of Reason, and conversely. The being of the
object is the content of the subject, the process of the
subject is the life of the object. To use a familiar
but somewhat misleading expression, " thought "
and "being" are in Reason consciously one through
and through, in form, process, and content. It is
therefore immaterial whether we speak of the
content of Reason as the nature of the subject or
the reality of the object.

At the same time, it must be noted that while
all the phases in the development of explicit self-

vin PROCESS OF REASON 261

consciousness have this characteristic of Reason, all
are rational, they are not all mere Reason. Thus Reason
one such development of self-consciousness is what pJ^ e JJ
we call Spirit and spiritual life phases which appear conscious-
as Morality and Religion. These are rational, but se if.
they are not Reason as such : they are developments
from Reason, but with a characteristic distinction of
their own, the nature of which will appear presently.

What, then, are the forms in which the life of
Reason, as such, appears ? It is the simplest expres-
sion, as already said, of the explicit conscious unity
of subject and object. Experience operates in this
way, it is a form in which experience is realised,
a " language," so to say, in which experience may
be expressed. This was true of the level of Per-
ception there was a perceptual world, a world
of Perception ; so, again, of " Understanding."
And it is because all these " worlds " are phases
of self-conscious life (which is always a whole, a
unity] that this is possible, that each is different,
and all are necessary. The life of Reason is one
such distinctive expression of experience.

Now the way the life of Reason appears is first Forms of
of all the activity of what we call Observation^ ^
in its various forms, Observation of " nature," Observa-
of "physical" objects, and of "organic" life, Ob-
servation of the self-conscious individual as such
(in Psychology), Observation of the self-conscious
life in relation to its organic embodiments (Psycho-
physiology). In all these cases we have no sense
of an antithesis, an opposition between the " observ-
ing mind " and the " observed object " ; we are in
immediate touch with the object, the object is the
content of the subject's life. We " describe " what

262 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE CH.

the object is, not " in terms of" our individual
life, but as it is in itself. There is no distinction
between what it is in itself and what it is for us.
In Reason what we say is what the object means ;
what the object is, is the meaning expressed in
the process of " describing" it and stating the " con-
ception " it " embodies." It is only when there
appears to be opposition between subject and object
(as e.g. in Perception) that we can in ordinary life
even speak of the object having a being of its own
with which what we say "agrees." For then the
object is said to be something "in itself" as the
subject is something in itself, and this " agreement "
between the two indicates and preserves that extern-
ality implied in the opposition. But when that oppo-
sition is consciously given up, the object has no "in
itself" which is not to us, which does not "appear,"
and no appearance which is not its very nature and
meaning. This is just what we find, assume, and
express in "observing" an object, and in stating its
content. The scientist does not ask, when "observ-
ing," whether his way of proceeding is justifiable,
whether his attitude is a "true" one, whether it
"gives" the object, and so on. To do so would
stultify and render impossible his whole procedure.
He may and does ask whether his " observation " is
"true," i.e. whether, when observing, he is eliminat-
ing what might render the results invalid, or not a
complete expression of the object. But to ask such
a question assumes that in Observation itself he is
at one with the object observed. A "correct" or
" incorrect " Observation is only possible, even as a
distinction, if Observation as such is a specific mode
of having experience. For " correctness " implies

vni DIFFERENCE IN CONTENT 263

a standard imposed on Observation, and therefore
assumes the nature of the observing process as a
process of self-conscious life, but does not determine
what that nature is. Now all science rests on that
assumption and is the outcome of that attitude.

Moreover, it is because of this fusion of subject Differ-
and object in the process of Observation that he content of
can and does distinguish different objects, that he has Reason the

,. rr . . , ,, .. . ,, result of

different principles and different "conceptions observa-
to state the nature of the " object -world." How tlon -
is it that we do not confound, e.g., inorganic and
organic, organic and self-conscious individuality ?
It is not simply because we have a variety of different
"objects" and require different "ideas" to express
them. It is not because, in point of fact, we do
" find " them different, and the mind has to bring out
of its inner consciousness different "thoughts" to
express their difference. Where is the necessity
for and the satisfaction in the different " thoughts " ?
It is because, all along the line in the activity of
Reason, subject and object are so fused that certain
" notions " are alone adequate to express the unity of
Reason in one case, and other " notions " in another.
And it is because this unity is realised at different
levels of coherence that, e.g., "mechanism" ade-
quately expresses one form of that unity, and
" teleology," or the idea of end, another. It is not
that the object " suggests " (as Kant seemed to imply)
the notion which the mind is to "employ"; but
that the life of Reason contains the different notions
as modes of the unity of subject and object. The
essential point is that the absolute unity of Reason
can arise neither from one side only nor from the
other side. It is not the subject which "imposes"

264 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE CH.

its content of the object, nor the object which " pre-
scribes" or furnishes its nature to the subject. It is
the one activity of Reason which realises its unity
in the different notions. But why different ? why
not always the same conception expressing the unity
of Reason ? Because Reason is concrete self-con-
sciousness ; and just as the activity of self-conscious-
ness expresses its life through the variety of modes
of experience as a whole, so in each particular mode
that activity can only be exhausted by appearing in
different shapes and forms peculiar to, and revealing
in each case, the characteristic nature of that special
mode. Self-consciousness as Reason, therefore,
reveals the process of its activity precisely in the
fact that the unity appears in diverse forms, in this
case diverse Conceptions. Or, again, all these are
required to exhaust the full meaning of that unity,
simply because experience is being read or "ex-
pressed " in terms of the unity of Reason ; and
experience has variety because self-consciousness
must appear in many ways to reveal its full life.
The " But why a particular one at one time and

specific another at another ? " Again we answer because

difference , ... r . . ,_, ,

between there are various forms of the unity (Conceptions) ;
Concep- anc | wn i c h is to be expressed depends on the level of

tions e r . . .

necessi- unity to be realised. What in particular the form of
Reason 7 t ^ lat un ity shall be at a given time is a matter for the
history of the individual observer, and does not affect
the epistemological question regarding the necessity
inherent in the general process involved throughout.
Reason, for example, takes Teleology as the special
conception in dealing with organism, 1 instead of, say,

1 i.e. Teleology is the subject-side, Organism the object-side of the experi-
ence of Reason in one of its forms.

vm MOMENTS OF REASON 265

Mechanism, because the unity of Reason requires
both in order fully to reveal its activity, and certain
aspects of the content of Reason are exhausted by
one notion, others require another. Or, to put it
otherwise, Reason in working out its full significance,
realising all it contains, passes from one form of unity
to another. One of these is mechanism, another tele-
ology. They are not so much imperfect attempts to
express the complete unity of Reason as definite and
necessary moments in which that unity must appear in
order to express its complete nature. 1 Mechanical
law is not an imperfect teleological principle ; it is
one form of the unity of Reason, but less complete
than teleology. Both are derived from the same
source, and both are required to exhaust the life of
the process. We cannot interpret the same thing
ideologically and mechanically. That would be a
superfluity, an absurdity, if both were complete in-
terpretations. What we do in using them is to
reveal the unity of Reason in these different ways,
because only so do we exhaust the activity of Reason.
Hence it is needless to propose (as is so often at-
tempted) to "reconcile" mechanism and teleology,
as if, to begin with, they "conflicted." They are
different to begin with, and in order to reconcile them
we would either require a higher notion, or we must
sink their differences altogether. But a higher notion
is still another notion of Reason, and hence the same
difficulty would arise again, viz. what to do with the
differences we are "reconciling"; while if we sink

1 We have merely to ask ourselves why, on the one hand, we are not con-
tent to use only one conception in rational experience, and why, on the other,
we feel compelled to go further than a- given conception carries us, to see that
this must be so. We cannot appreciate the above view unless we see that
it seeks to answer this question.

266 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE CH.

their differences we are ignoring their value as
moments of Reason, and making the problem of
" reconciliation " meaningless. They are " recon-
ciled," in the only way necessary, by the very fact
that they are essential moments of the life of the
one Reason. The coherence and unity of the life of
Reason is itself the guarantee that the conceptions
do not really conflict. And this coherence is mani-
fested just because it does not "apply" these concep-
tions to precisely the same identical content. Hence
it cannot conflict with itself. It is realising its unity
in a different way in each content, and therefore
they are diverse. Its unity is expressed in each of
them, hence they do not need to be reconciled. We
do not look at the same thing with each conception
as it occurs : that would be confusion. A difference
of Conception is (for Reason) a difference of content,
and a variety of content is variety in the life of
Reason. The only " reconciliation " the Conceptions
need is obtained by connecting them all as phases
in the realisation of the life of Reason, which is the
underlying principle determining each as it stands,
and the variety of form they severally possess.
The But we have already anticipated the development

develop- ^ t " le activity of Reason as a specific attitude of
ment of the experience. It starts as we saw with Observa-

activity of . _. , . , r . . .

Reason: tion. But that is the form the activity assumes.

Categories. What is its content ? This is easily determined.
We have here consciousness of self, the expression
of a unity through and in differences (subject
object). But the self is by its very nature a
universal, the universal in experience. The different
specific ways in which that self, when it is explicit,
appears, must therefore be through universals. To

viii CATEGORIES 267

be conscious of self is thus to be conscious of uni-
versals, and to be conscious of universals is to
be conscious of self in one or other of its specific
manifestations, i.e. its detailed content. But again,
at this stage we have explicit unity of self and
object in its simplest form, in its ultimate irreducible
elements. All of them are expressions of that
unity, but as mere unity ; all of them are universal,
but pure universals as such. There must be a
plurality, because the self is a "realised" unity, not
a formal unity. As a formal unity there is, as Kant
said, but one universal, viz. the pure unity of self-
consciousness. But as a "realised" "concrete"
unity it must be manifold, break up or evolve into
diverse functions of uniting activity. But a universal
which is a pure universal, a unity that is a mere unity
is a Conception, a Category. Hence the content of
Reason, the substance of Observation, consists of
Categories. With these Reason "works"; in these
it expresses its active function as the unity of
subject and object in its simplest form.

Here, again, this view is at one with Kant, but Categories
instead of taking the Categories to be connected ^ ^ a
with the formal unity of self by the quasi-external act specific.
of judgment, " I think," the Categories are the /
thinking functioning as the explicit unity of subject
and object. Instead of the unity of the self making
an experience "possible" through the "application" of
the Categories, the Categories make the unity of the
self actual in experience. Instead of the Categories
requiring to be picked up externally and contingently
by reference to the history of thought and logical
doctrine, the Categories are simply the necessary
elements into which the unity of the experience is

268 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE CH.

resolved. The Categories are not limited to a certain
formal and arbitrary number ; the Categories are in-
definite in number, are, if we choose, endless in number,
for Reason is not to be exhausted in any detail of
experience. The Categories, again, are not to be
deduced by showing that experience is impossible
without their use and application ; they are derived
from the unity of Reason, evolved from it in and
through its activity in experience. Instead of the
Categories being necessary because they are all con-
nected in the same sense with the unity of self, and
have the same degree of significance and validity
accordingly, they are necessary because the unity of
Reason must in exercising its activity express itself
in each, and they have a different significance and
value according to the degree in which they realise
this type of unity of subject and object. Finally,
the self is not, as Kant held, a principle above the
Categories simply, it is the principle in them ; it is
the Category of all the Categories, the Conception of
all Conceptions.

Concep- With Conceptions, then, the determinate activity
develop of Reason begins. They vary in character according
mto Laws. to t h e um ' t y expressed, and vary because the unity is
concrete, as already stated. They become what in
Observation are called the " marks " or " aspects "
of an object, and correspond on the plane of Reason
to the " qualities " spoken of in the case of Perception,
or the "appearances " which we have in the case of
Understanding. By these " marks " or attributes we
" describe " the object and differentiate one object,
e.g. in physical nature, from another. But this is
merely the beginning of the evolution of the content.
The Conceptions employed are isolated, separate.

vm JUDGMENT AND SYSTEM 269

The complete unity on the other hand must be all-
pervading, must control the diverse elements, show
the inner Principle connecting the various Concep-
tions (attributes), and show these elements to be
merely differences inside a further unity, a deeper
unity of Reason. This deeper unity will contain them
as moments, control their relation to each other, their
place in the whole, order their situation and mode of
appearing, and so give them the special significance
they have as "marks," "aspects" of the object.
They will get their special meaning and value from
it. Relatively to them it will be more fundamental,
because determining what they are and how they
are. But this is precisely what we mean by a
governing Principle or Law in the sphere of
Reason. With the formulation of Laws, Observa-
tion (Conception) passes into Judging and De-
monstrative or Systematic Connexion. These Laws
are Laws of Reason, just as the Conceptions which,
because of their variety, demand them, are Con-
ceptions of Reason. And these Laws are in principle
the complete expression of what Reason realises in
its activity as a unifying principle. They are not
static unities, but dynamic agencies, ways in which
the life of Reason functions. They are " operations "
of the active unity of Reason. They do not regulate
objects ; they constitute objects ; for they are phases
of the world of Reason inside the unity of which, as
we saw, its objects fall. They are not the forms of
Reason but its substance ; and so are not the " forms
of the object," but the reality of the object. They are
not imposed by the subject; they are the very content
of Reason, which is at once subjective and objective
in the same sense. They are not "discovered"

270

SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE

CH.

Laws.

by Reason; they are expressions, evolutions of
the content of Reason. They are the culminating
point of its movement as Reason, because in them
we have the full expression of Reason as unity in
diversity, the principle uniting the various Concep-
tions, the unity of the unities (concepts) characterising
the world of Reason. Further than that Reason
qua Reason, mere unity of subject and object, does
not go. When a further stage is taken, Self-con-
sciousness passes beyond the stage of mere Reason
to another mode of self-conscious life.

Differ- The various Laws differ as the Conceptions

concre" e d differ, and the Laws of the inorganic world differ
ness of from those of the organic, as these again differ from
those of conscious life. But the Laws are in all
cases necessary developments of the very nature of
Conceptions, of Categories. They derive the uni-
versality they possess from the same function of
Reason. But they are at once a more comprehensive
and a more concrete universality ; they have a
greater degree of individuality, with a greater degree
of specification. They are a deeper unity because
they are connexions of Conceptions. They make
Conceptions coherent which appear to begin with as
separate. What we said of the "reality" of Con-
ceptions holds with a similar and a greater force of
Laws, which develop out of the function of unity
implied in Conceptions. The Laws are not obtained
by piecing Conceptions together externally, but by
deepening the unity of Reason which Conceptions
themselves express. In that sense these Laws are
literally the evolved expression of the Conceptions
which we found to be the simplest content of
Reason. Just as a given Law of an object is higher

viii SCIENTIFIC PROCEDURE 271

than a given Conception determining an object, so
there may be and are wider and wider Laws, embrac-
ing in them Laws less wide in extent. What these
are it is the business of rational scientific procedure
in given cases to determine. That the attainment of
them is possible, is both guaranteed and necessitated
by the one function of Reason operating all through.
The achievement of the end of Reason is the estab-
lishment of a completely articulate intelligible world
of Reason the Ideal of Science. 1

It will be seen from all this how closely this view This view

i

is in touch both with the process of Science in the atedby r
strict sense of the term, and with the ordinary treat- actual

r . , r , . .,. Scientific

ment of scientific procedure in treatises on scientific procedure
method. Science begins by "observing" the ^f . th * f
"facts," determines their "characteristics," connects Science,
their constituent elements together, and finds the
"laws" or "principles" "governing" their connexions.
All along it is working with universals, its primary
elements are conceptions. It is said no doubt to
start horn particulars', and this is true. But it is
particulars as "instances" of a type, of a "class," of a
general conception, not bare particulars (which indeed
are strictly non-existent for Science). The whole
process of Science just consists in developing the
nature and inner unity at work in these elementary
conceptions. 2 Its "judgments," " inferences," its

1 Hence the difference between the consummation of Understanding (Ex-
planation) and that of Reason (Systematic Connexion). Whereas in the former
each " explanation " was complete by itself and had a finality all its own ; in
the latter nothing short of complete system can have finality. Anything less
is consciously a fragment of a whole with only a " partial validity " on that
account. This is because the unity of Reason works all through in the light
of its absolute unity.

2 Hence the view, which has been so fully worked out by, e.g. , Lotze and
Bosanquet, that Conception is simply implicit Judgment, Judgment is implicit
Inference, Inference is implicit Systematic or absolute Connexion.

272 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE CH.

" theories," its " laws " are simply the evolution of
the conceptual substance in and with which it works,
and are universal from beginning to end. They
are universal because all are phases of the life of
Reason, and they form a continuous process gradu-
ally evolving a deeper, more comprehensive univer-
sal, a unity with greater complexity in it, and
greater control over its elements, simply because
it is the one movement of Reason operating all
through, and this aims at a single result complete
self-expression.

The ordinary discussions of scientific method
(Logic in the narrow historical sense) are, again,
merely statements of what this process consists in,
how it takes place and achieves its result, the
kind of certainty obtained in different forms of the
process, the different ways of expressing unity
(different judgments and inferences), etc. The
The Logic difference between such a treatment of scientific
wf the"* method, and the present statement of the nature of
theory of the scientific mood of experience, is that the former
erTce?" takes for granted the general character and validity
of scientific process as an empirically recognised fact ;
while the latter raises and answers the very question
as to what place Science and scientific activity have
in the life of self-conscious experience as a whole,
where it appears, and what it essentially is, i.e. what
it is as a mode of the one ultimate principle at
work in all experience. The former, no doubt,
by starting, as it does, with an assumption, cannot
escape this other problem, and really introduces into
its interpretation some implicit or explicit conception
of the general aim, worth, character, and significance
of scientific process. So important, so fundamental

viii LOGIC OF SCIENCE 273

indeed, is this underlying theory of the purport
of Science as the phase of experience, that it is
found impossible to discuss scientific procedure
apart from it. The discussion, in its limits and
in its form, is shaped by that conception as to
what place Science occupies in experience. Hence
the totally diverse treatments of the character and
process of Science which we find in different text-
books of what is commonly called Logic. It has
therefore to be acknowledged, and is in point of fact
admitted, that the kind of treatment of the Logic of
scientific knowledge given in ordinary treatises on
Logic, depends in the long run on some underlying
but unexpressed " theory of knowledge," and has
only an approximate value till that theory is made
evident. In Hegel's System the treatment of Logic
is literally nothing more than the connected exposi-
tion of the content of pure Reason. Thus he does
justice to the ordinary view of Logic, and yet
mends its defects by stating what place Reason
has in experience as a whole.

Finally, it will be seen that the development Reason
of the activity of Reason works up in its own special ^^3
medium the stages we formerly found in the sphere functions
of consciousness as such (as distinct from self-
consciousness). These moments were Sensation,
Perception, Understanding. To these on the level
of Reason correspond the forms of Conception
proper, Judgment (the relation of conceptions, or the
distinction of conceptions inside a unity holding both
these expressions mean the same so far as we
are concerned), and the interconnexion of different
conceptions through the Law or Principle deter-
mining all as its elements, the phase of inferential

T

274 SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE CH. vm

Demonstration. Reason thus completely exhausts
through processes of its own activity the substance
of knowledge formerly assigned to uniquely distinct
attitudes of experience (Perception, etc.). For
all these phases spoken of (Conception, etc.) are
merely stages in the development of Reason alone.
Hence the ease of transition from one to the other;
and hence the certainty of the work of Reason at
every stage.

CHAPTER IX

THE SPHERE OF FINITE SPIRIT MORAL EXPERIENCE

THE complete realisation of the life of Reason has Twofold
a twofold result. Let us bear in mind again that the aat*re
Reason is not an abstract adjective of human ex- ofReason:

, , r . vr T- , . Experience

penence, but a concrete mode of its life, b urther, its seif-deter-
life is individual from beginning to end, just because mmed -
experience is one, a whole, concrete. To become
conscious, then, of self in and through the object is
not merely to have the form of unity, but to have the
content and substance of that unity, to have a world
which is not merely consciously moulded by, but
consists in, the self. There alone does it realise an in-
dividuality which is absolutely self-contained in each
individual, where Reason is actively and consciously
the moving principle. Its world is not so much its
own : it is that ; for it is "at home" in that world.
But it is its very self. What it is conscious of and
what is consciously at work is self. Nowhere can it
find anything but the self-same substance of its own
life. There is nothing "beyond" it to oppose it;
everything falls within it, is identified with it, made
part and parcel of it. What it touches recalls its own
nature, responds to its own impulse ; what it does is
the revelation solely of that nature. To use of the
world of Reason a phrase employed by Hume after

275

2 ;6 MORAL EXPERIENCE CH.

Berkeley, there is nothing to be met with in heaven
or earth but the mind's own ideas. This is the in-
evitable result of the life of Reason within which
subject and object are consciously identified. All
this means is that individual experience is here
self-completed, self-determined, self- constituted, not
implicitly but explicitly. It is "independent"
because there is nothing beyond it to limit its
activity : it is " self-dependent " because its move-
ment is self-initiated and self-constituted. It begins
from and ends in its self. That is one result.
The self is The other result is that, because the content is
universal. so ] e iy se i anc j t h e se jf (f or tne re ason before indi-
cated) is essentially universal, the attainment of self-
contained individuality is ipso facto the explicit
realisation of what is consciously not mine in par-
ticular but is universal. But to realise this level of
self-consciousness is to attain to and establish as a
factor of experience Universal Self-conscious in-
dividuality. If the world it realises is its own, and
yet, from one end to the other, self, this must be so.
The substance of this world is a single universal
self-consciousness. It is not simply a number of
discrete selves, all of them conscious ; it is one
universal self- consciousness. If universality were
merely numerical plurality, its world would not be
a unity, and could not fall within a single experi-
ence at all. It is a collective, a comprehensive
unity, not a numerical aggregate of units.

The individuality attained in the life of Reason
is not, therefore, a particular isolated existence.
Isolated existence is transcended by the fact that the
substance of its life is universal. The expression,
"my own" self -consciousness, "my" Reason, is,.

sciousness.

ix RATIONAL INDIVIDUALITY 277

properly understood, a contradictio in adjecto. I am Distinc-
only truly self-conscious by implying a consciousness |J[|Jjdiiai
of a self beyond my existence. The distinction selves fail
between a "me" and a "thee" falls inside this world of universal' 5
completed self-consciousness, and is generated by it. se } f - con -

Cf*irviicn-->c<

I am conscious of self by reference to a self- world, a
world realised and constituted by self. My self-con-
sciousness is mine by relation to a self beyond me in
particular, by contrast with a wider self-consciousness.
I "possess" it, because what I possess has a reality
containing me in particular, and on which I can lay
hold, and in living in and by which /am absolutely
self- contained and complete, as Reason requires.
Even in the case of some particular " property "
which /possess, I cannot call this "mine" unless there
is a wider whole of property in which I am merely
sharing, and on which I in particular lay hold. I may
distinguish "my" property from "yours," but I do not
separate, cut off my property from yours. For if each
did this there would be no "property"; there would
be merely an external relation of one exclusive entity
to another. But to say my property, is to make
something literally a part of me, a quality of me, a
" proprium" a determination (internal), and not an
" accidens" (external) to me. Similarly, but in
an infinitely deeper sense when I speak of " my "
self-consciousness. I am / (universal) through a
universal self which I am conscious of as one with me,
but which is wider than "me," and by being in which
I live in a self-complete and self-contained world
the world of explicit concrete self-consciousness.

The sphere, where we begin and end with self-
conscious individuality and with that only, is the
world of Spiritual life, which exists in the definite

of this self-

conscious

278 MORAL EXPERIENCE CH.

historical form of the Moral Life and the order of
f- s oc j ety! The attainment of rational individuality, of

- J

ness is the individuality constituted by the activity of concrete
Lif self-consciousness, is the foundation of Morality.

If we take any of the general characteristics
ordinarily regarded as belonging to Morality, we
This uius- shall see this at once. The moral life is said
to im P J y "Freedom." To be free is to be "at
home with ourselves along with others," to realise
ends which are ends of our own choosing, and
in which, when realised, we shall both find our-
selves and have our self acknowledged by others.
But that result does not merely imply Society
as if our moral life were our own individual
affair, and Society were there simply to confirm
us in our purpose. It is literally the activity
of a social, of a universal self -consciousness, at
every point. The end is "ours," we "choose" it:
i.e. it is the expression of our self, of the self we
are conscious of. But this means that it is ours as
distinct from the end of some other self, whose exist-
ence and reality are therefore essential to make it
possible for us to call it "ours" in particular. We
find ourselves in the end itself as well as in the
choosing of it. But the end achieved is a self
attained, just as the process of achieving it is self-
expression. The end achieved, again, is, because
achieved, no longer merely particular but a self
"objectified" universalised, with a significance not
merely for me, but for all who know it. We demand
that the end shall be acknowledged as " ours."
This means that the end is "accepted" by others
(or " rejected " as the case may be), i.e. the end is
not merely "my" end, but the end for a universal

ix SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 279

self-consciousness. "My" self therefore is not
merely mine at all, but one with that universal.
A negative confirmation of the same principle is
seen when we pursue an end outside a social
whole, and without the slightest reference to it.
The end is said to be mere isolated " impulse,"
and the life directed by impulse is on the plane of
merely organic activity, or is " the life of an animal,"
whose activity is without any significance beyond
the moment of realisation, because not implying a
self which endures consciously beyond the moment.

If we examine any other characteristic aspect So of other
of Morality, e.g. "responsibility," "duty," "virtue," MoraHty.
etc., precisely the same result will be brought to
light. The very terms connote universal self-
consciousness ; so completely does man, by his
thoughts and procedure in the moral life, recognise
that Morality is without significance apart from this
implication of universal self-consciousness. Morality
is in fact its detailed explicit actualisation.

Hence the view so often put forward on other "Man
grounds that man alone is capable of Morality, clmbkof
This is a distorted way of stating the case, because Morality."
it seems to imply that Morality is a thing per se up
to which certain creatures may "rise," and by chance,
as it were, this creature, or one of these creatures,
happens to be man. The truth rather is that
Morality has no existence at all anywhere except
as the realisation in detail of universal self-conscious-
ness. This universal self-consciousness is a mode
of human experience, and Morality emerges with it,
is its result.

It is said, again, that man is a moral being
because he is essentially a rational being : that

2 8o MORAL EXPERIENCE CH.

Morality is, the principle of the moral life is to be found in
the nature of Reason. With this view the course
aiity." of the above argument agrees : for Reason is the
basis of self-complete individuality, and such in-
dividuality has all the functions and characteristics
of Reason from the beginning to the end of its
activity. But self-conscious individuality is some-
thing more than mere Reason ; it emerges after the
completion of the life of Reason. Morality is not
Reason pure and simple (as pure Science can be
said to be) ; nor is the moral life explained merely
by referring it to Reason. It is rather the self-
differentiation of a universal self-consciousness into
specific individualities, each having substantial ex-
istence for itself. It is not an adjective of individual
life, but the substance of individual life. In short,
it does not consist in Reason as bare Reason, but in
Spirit, of which Reason provides the basis, but
is not the exhaustive expression. Morality is the
expression of spiritual activity, and Spirit is just self-
conscious individuality, which only is a self in and
through universal self. If we draw the distinction
between Reason and Spirit formally, it would be
that Reason is the consciousness of the immediate
identity of subject and object, the consciousness of
that identity as it is in itself, whereas Spirit is the
consciousness of that unity as it is for itself. 1 It is

1 The distinction between the two is parallel to that between " Under-
standing" and "Desire." In the former, as we saw, the consciousness of
self was implicit, in the latter the explicit principle of the process : in the
former the- self was "found" ; in the latter "carried out" : in the former we
had the "intellectual" attitude, in the latter the "practical." So here in
Reason "other selves" are implicit: hence the possibility of speaking of "my"
Reason : in Spirit they are explicit and their unity therefore established by a
process of mediation. Hence arises the "practical" activity of realising the
unity of Spirit through selves, each universal and for itself: and this is the
Moral Life.

ix KANT'S POSITION 281

therefore at a higher level of experience than Reason.
The identity of self with its object, which constitutes
the life of Reason as such, is implied in the life of
Spirit, for its world is also self-determined. But
Spirit rests on the consciousness not so much that I
am in myself all in all, am one with my immediate
content, the world of " nature " certainly a great
achievement ; but that I am one with, i.e. am for
myself, universal self- consciousness which is a
supreme triumph of experience. Out of that sense
of unity, surely one of the most marvellous and pro-
foundly significant of all the attitudes of experience,
Morality arises, and appears as a historical experi-
ence in time.

It will be seen how this conception of the place similarity
of the moral life in experience both agrees with
and is different from that of Kant. For Kant moral
experience was realised on a higher level of con-
scious life than Science, and belonged to the sphere
of Reason. Moreover, Morality was only truly
Morality in the form of "pure will," "pure practical
reason " ; i.e. it had its source in and expressed the
essentially universal principle of experience. Again,
the realisation of the moral life consisted in carrying
out an end whose very meaning was universal, a
"maxim" or "law" of "duty." Such a universal
carried the individual beyond his particular existence,
and only had a moral significance if it did so. But
it did not merely carry him beyond, it built him into
a rational whole of reason in which others shared.
It was by reference to this whole that his action
was to be determined, and that his action became
really moral. This whole was a whole of rational
beings qua rational. He was to act as a typical

282 MORAL EXPERIENCE CH.

rational being, i.e. in a way other rational beings
would act. Only so, obviously, could there be a
whole of rational beings, and by doing so ipso facto
there was established a whole of such beings. His
action therefore presupposed, implied, and bound
him up with other rational beings. His moral action
was action in and for a universal reason. This Kant
expressed consistently enough by saying that a
moral action was one which was done in and for a
"kingdom of ends," a kingdom of rationals, a social
whole, in short, of rational beings.
The differ- All this is contained in the above argument.

en from g^ there j g & d j fference For Kant this wor ld of

Kant's reason was, like its source in pure self-conscious-
formal S a nd ness, formal only. Hence his social whole had
external. a un jt v> DU {; a formal unity. The universality
was an adjective of the individual action, a char-
acteristic of his will -act, not the substance of his
concrete practical life. This was true of all the
individuals who acted morally. They remained
individuals separate, unique, isolated qua individuals.
Their connexion was through their common obedience
to what was universal : they all aimed at universality,
and in this universality therefore they all shared. It
regulated them and bound them together as in-
dividuals ; but it, as such, did not constitute their
very substance. Their moral reality was not deter-
mined by the unity of the universal ; the unity was
derived horn them and their common action in follow-
ing it. It was thus external to them. They remained
unique, impenetrable units of moral activity through,
and, in a sense, in spite of, their following the same
moral law. Hence in analysing Society in the Meta-
phystc of Morals, Kant takes the view that Society

ix KANT'S VIEW OF SOCIETY 283

is the result of a " contract " a logical result of his
conception of the place of universality in the moral
life. For " contract " is an external relation between
individual wills agreeing to certain common con-
ditions. Thus, like the universality of his law of
duty, Kant's social whole, his whole of rational wills,
is a purely formal unity. The formality of the social
whole is, indeed, another expression of the formality
of the principle of the law of moral action. They
can be only connected externally if the universal is
an adjective or attribute of each individual's will-act.
The order, the unity of society, is above the concrete
wills, in a " supersensible world " : actually in experi-
ence, they are unique, sensibly separate units. Their
unity is due to each uniquely, and per se aiming at
universality in action. The fact that they all do so
is the only identity holding them together. And
such a unity is not merely formal, it is as good as
contingent. For if universality is an attribute pf
the individual's will-act, an attribute which, because
it ought to be, either may or may not, as a matter
of fact, exist, the universality is separable, not
essential. It may or may not be possessed, and the
connexion with others, which depends solely on that
kind of universality, becomes a mere accident of
individual endeavour. Indeed, just as, on Kant's
admission, an act of pure duty can never be found
really in experience at all, so the contingency of the
existence of a real society of personal wills is a
logical issue from the contingency of the realisation
of all true duty.

The position of absolute idealism is sharply con- The
trasted with all this. The universality of moral
action is not an attribute of it, but its very essence,

284 MORAL EXPERIENCE CH.

because Morality does not have any being at all
until the self has achieved conscious universality
and actively lives in and for it. The universality
is not made by the act being moral. The uni-
versality is there, and thence comes the possibility
of Morality. The universality is not a quality
which may or may not be ; for the self which is
realised in the moral life is inherently universal to
start with, and is logically prior to the realisation of
that life. Morality comes from the existence of
self- conscious individuality, expresses the content
and movement of a universal self- consciousness.
And the universal self- consciousness, while it does
not exist apart from self-conscious individuality, is
per se as real, as actual to start with, and all along, as
the latter. There is logically no separation possible
between the two. A distinction there is, as we shall
see, but that is not separation. Hence Society
is not derived from individual activity as directed
by universal ends. It is merely maintained by that
process, and is as much a "fact" as the individual's
activity. Individuals as distinct entities are in
Morality differentiations of the universal self-con-
sciousness which they all imply, and which they live
by maintaining. Hence Society is not contingent on
individual action. It is essential to the real concrete
existence of its individuals ; it draws out their true
nature. The universal, the Social Unity, is, like
the self, not regulative but constitutive. Society is
therefore not the result of a "contract" between
separate wills; this universal self-consciousness just is
a Society, a whole of wills. Moreover, it is logically
impossible for it to be the outcome of a contract.
For any contract, to have the ethical significance

ix SOCIETY NOT A CONTRACT 285

of a contract at all (something which is binding on
wills), can only arise if Society exists, or if it is
assumed to exist in order to determine the place
of the ethical fact of contract in the moral life of
individuals. To explain Society by the notion of a
" contract " is therefore a vo-repov irporepov. Again,
the content of the moral life, properly understood, is
not, and cannot be, limited simply to the individual
realisation of the idea of duty. If it were, then the
moral life would be, as Kant admits, a perpetual
failure, and Society could never really exist at all.
But Society, a universal self-consciousness, does
exist, as an order of self-conscious individual wills.
Hence its substance must comprehend a wider range
of content, and a more concrete system of detailed
acts of will, than can be gathered under the notion
of duty. It must, as we shall see, comprehend, e.g.,
rights and institutions, all, in fact, that is concerned
with the concrete relation of self-conscious will to
self-conscious will ; while this again, in itself, implies
man's relation to and connexion with nature and
natural conditions of existence. In short, whereas
Kant starts from uniquely separate individuals, and
regards these individuals as setting up a moral
order by coming into relation to each other, it is
really the attainment in experience of universal self-
consciousness that makes possible the co-existence
and co-operation of self-contained individuals for the
maintenance of a single social whole. They can only
have this completeness found in morality because
of their consciousness of being universal selves.
The detailed development of all that this individu-
ality contains, a development carried out in the light
of, by constant reference to, and by implication of,

286

MORAL EXPERIENCE

CH.

The

develop-
ment of
this form
of experi-

that universal self-consciousness, is itself the attain-
ment of what the moral life means?

The road of development of this plane of experi-
ence is already indicated by what has been said.
Self-consciousness appears as self-sufficient in and
through individuality, and does so in virtue of the
fact that universality here is not an attribute of
separate centres of self-conscious life, but a sub-
stantial universal self, constituting the very basis
for the completeness and sufficiency any particular
individual feels. There are thus two opposed or con-
trasted factors involved in this mode of experience.
These are the life of the universal self-consciousness,
substantial and actual universality ; and the life of
each moment of it, the distinct individual centres
sharing in and living by that universality. We can-
not cut these two asunder. The difference between
them is rather one of emphasis on an element of
what is precisely the same concrete reality in both
cases. The specific individuality has a twofold char-
acter by its being consciousness of self by self; one
self is what we have called the substantial universal,
the other is the determinate limited individuality
each possesses, and which makes each distinct from
another. The first is the same for all and in all ; the
second is restricted to a certain area or sphere of that
totality. Similarly, the universal substance "dupli-
cates " its self in virtue of its being a self-conscious
whole, a whole in and through consciousness of

1 This conception of the essentially social character of self-conscious in-
dividuality is also maintained by Fichte, whose development of Kant's principle
preceded Hegel's. Fichte, however, by separating the sphere of rights from
that of duty, and by assigning to duty an "infinite " or endless task, fails to
work out the essentially concrete nature of the conception, and seems, in fact,
to reinstate isolated individuality at another and a higher plane of existence.

ix CUSTOM AND CONVENTION 287

self; the one self being the universal self as such,
which is the same for and in all, and the other the
specifically distinct forms in which its concrete life
appears the determinate individualities. This
mutual implication of each side in the other is what
is meant in the general statement, "there is no
society apart from the individuals," a statement
which has to be supplemented by another, "there
are no real individuals apart from society." But
though the distinction is thus one of emphasis, it is
not merely a logical but a living distinction, 1 because
self-consciousness is an active unity, for which each
element is an essential moment.

Now the process involved in the complete realisa- TWO
tion of the unity of these two phases is just the fh

whole activity of what we call Moral Life. On the Life . : < r )
one side we have the process of the universal sub- an d
stance moulding and determining the inter-relations Custom -
of its parts by uniform conditions of regular order.
It must act thus, and can only act thus, because its
substance is purely universal. The result of its
activity must, therefore, appear simply as "uni-
formity," " order," " law." It appears in the
form of what we call Social Law and Custom, the
Ethos of a People. With this the individual in
a People is at home ; in this he participates. A
People is a self-conscious unity maintaining its equi-
librium by certain uniform or habitual ways of acting.
The totality of these constitute an "ethical," i.e.
"habitual," "order" all its own. In virtue of being
in accord with it the individual finds guaranteed the

1 Out of the distinction in fact arises the process in which Social Life con-
sists ; for the process consists simply in adjusting the two factors so as to form
a stable and permanent whole.

288 MORAL EXPERIENCE CH.

security, permanence, and uniformity of purpose in
his own individual existence, and with these, there-
fore, the happiness and peace that come from efficient
and successful realisation of those universal purposes
which make it possible for him to possess the self-
sufficient individuality above spoken of. It is not
something attached externally to or aimed at by a
People, as if it were outside the life of a People.
It is the methodical working out of the life and
destiny of a People as a self-conscious substantial
reality of history. It is not "made" by individuals
as their "effect." Once established at all, it is prior
in time to each individual within its life. But it is
logically prior in any case to his individuality ; for
it is the ground of his being what he is, the goal
or end at which he aims. Without aiming at
that universal end he would not be a self-conscious
individual. For the very essence of the individual
lies in identifying himself with that universal,
which is a substantial concrete self, not something
away beyond him, but actual and living, and
therefore exerting its power and claims directly
upon him. It makes him real, makes him an
individuality complete in it and self-contained by
it. This active, universal, spiritual substance carries
on its own ends through individuals as its moments.
They are its "speech," its "expression," as, for
example, to take a prominent case, when it speaks
its purpose through a judge or a monarch. It is the
operative principle determining the position of indi-
viduals in the whole, the relation of their several
positions to one another, the bounds set to each, and
the claims exerted by one on another, i.e. it is the
source of Rights in every concrete form. It breaks

ix FORMS OF SOCIAL UNITY 289

up its supreme concrete unity into specifically distinct
spheres of universal activity, forms of universal
self-consciousness. While remaining the all-per-
vading unity throughout, connecting the one with
the other, in each of these forms it lives in a
different way, realises a distinct mode of universal
self-consciousness. The spheres which are usually
distinguished in this whole are the life of the
Family, Civic Life, and the life of the State. These
are, in the actual realisation of the whole, confined
within certain limits. 1 Each implies the others in
a fully realised universal spiritual existence, and
implies the others through the one substance within
which they all fall. They have different degrees
of universality ; the self in each is more or less
universal. Thus the Family is less wide than, and
can in that sense be said to fall within, the Civic
Life. The Civic Life stands in a similar relation
with regard to the State. But this is not to be under-
stood as if the Family were a part of the Civic Life
simply : it is a part of the one Whole containing all.
The Civic Life is not simply a unity of Families : it
is a unity through Families. Similarly of the State.
It does not strictly contain the others ; for itself is
contained in that complete unity of self-conscious
life which comprehends all. But it has specific
functions with reference to the others, which these
others per se could not exercise, and which constitute

1 It is important to observe that the State is an aspect or form of this self-
conscious whole. We are apt to confound the "State" with a "Society."
But Society, Social Unity, is the genus of which "state," "family," and
"communal life" are merely species. The "State" is an ethical function of
a social whole, with a definite activity or " will " of its own, having limitations
as regards other "wills" in the social whole. Hence, e.g. , the question of the
"limits" of "state interference." But all "wills" fall inside the social
unity and are exerted in the interests of that social whole.

U

2 9 o MORAL EXPERIENCE CH.

it a special mode in which the self-conscious Whole
appears.

This universal, self-conscious life is the source of
Law, or realised Order, and fully expresses and
contains all the ends which are implied in the
realisation of self-conscious individuality in human
history, the ends of self-conscious life in relation
to self-conscious life, the relations of Persons to
Persons. Its purpose in experience is actually to
reveal and maintain all these ends, and so to make
possible self-complete individuality.

(2) The On the other hand, again, there is the process
ofTecifi? ky which the activity of every specific focus of self-
mdividu- consciousness draws into his own life the universal
life of the Whole just spoken of. He focuses
the Whole because he is self-conscious, and his
self is essentially and implicitly universal, i.e. aims
at being a whole. From this point of view, all
that the Whole actually contains is potentially in
each. Each does not merely reflect the Whole. It
consciously aims at being the Whole, getting all its
universal content within its own active individual
life, making the substance of the general mind and
will its own mind and will. To make all its own
purposes universal as that is universal, and to feel
its self in its individual existence not merely one
with the Whole, but a whole all by itself that con-
stitutes for it a world of self-consciousness all its
own achievement. It is, in a way, to make itself
independent of the Whole, by taking into itself
all that makes the Whole self-complete. It is a
process of destroying distinction by becoming self-
sufficient, and, on becoming self-sufficient, to be,
in a sense, independent of the tutelage, care, and

ix CONSCIENCE 291

guidance of the Whole. To do so is to set up an
authority, a guide, or controlling agency within its
own individual life, and make itself complete as it
stands, to judge for itself, act for itself, and find its
actions ratified and approved by the " sanction "
within its own bosom. In doing so, it may come
even to regard the Whole as external to itself. It
can do so, because it is self-conscious, and can
withdraw into the recesses of its own individuality
and put everything else "outside" it. If it makes
this distinction an opposition, conflict or struggle
may arise between the separate focus of active
self- consciousness and the concrete totality of
spiritual self-consciousness above spoken of. Such
conflict is an imperfect and necessarily inadequate
form to which its process may lead it, and often
does historically lead it. Its true aim and com-
plete realisation, however, are found where its own
universal content is absolutely in harmony with
that Whole, and yet is entirely explicit to itself, con-
stituting a self-contained world. With the attain-
ment of this as a conscious attitude it has ipso
facto exhausted (to itself as a conscious fact), the
substance of this universal life, and has lost its
individual self in the Whole. It has risen to
absolute Self-consciousness. And through this it
passes beyond the sphere of the Moral Order
as such and enters another mode of self-conscious
experience the mode, as we shall see, called
Religion.

The process, by which each aims at attaining Morality
this separate world of self-guiding, self-controlling ^ >er :
universality, constitutes quite a distinct plane of the science.
moral order from that spoken of as Custom and

292 MORAL EXPERIENCE CH.

Law or the Ethos of a People. It is the world of
individual self-legislation, the world of Conscience,
the sphere of " Individual Morality." As the former
is the ethical sphere of universal Custom, Right,
Virtue, this is the sphere of Individual Principle,
Sentiment, Duty. The former is the operation of
general order in and through all explicit Law
and Convention ; the latter that of specific Choice
and Responsibility. In both cases it is a universal,
self-conscious life : in the one case realised by all,
for all, and through all in the same sense ; in the
other realised by each for each and through each
in the specific way characteristic of the different
self-conscious individualities into which the Whole
falls. We are merely reading the same type of
experience (unity of self-conscious individuality) in
opposite ways, the one from the point of view of
the Whole as such, the other from the point of
view of the specific focus as such. To use Plato's
metaphor, it is like writing the same truth in larger
and smaller letters. The Whole concentrates the
life of every one into moments of its own activity ;
the specific focus concentrates the life of the Whole
into processes and moments of its own special
self-conscious individuality. Hence, e.g., as we
have Law in the former case, so we have it in the
latter ; and in both cases Law expresses a relation of
self-conscious life to self-conscious life. In the former
it is expressed openly, written down, and carried out
publicly (after the manner of a universal self-con-
sciousness per se] ; in the latter it is not expressed
in words, it is known by the individual "immedi-
ately," it controls the impulses, etc., of the individual
will, and is not recognised by any one but himself.

ix SIGNIFICANCE OF CONSCIENCE 293

Just as, further, in public or social Law, the
authority and compulsion of the unity of the Whole
are exerted on each through force, physical it may
be, or in the quasi-automatic routine of " conven-
tional understanding"; so in the individual soul we
find authority exerted on the course of the individual
will through the power of Conscience the universal
which shapes the unity in the individual life.

Different terms have been employed to express Different
these distinct phases of the realisation of self-con- sJJ^for
scious individuality ; but they are merely distinctions these
of aspect of what is fundamentally one type of experi- objective
ence. We may call the first objective self-conscious "V*.

/ J m _ subjective.

unity, the latter subjective self-conscious unity.
But it must be understood that these are not
separate but only distinct aspects of what is all
the while one and the same. It is right to call
the former objective, if we mean that objective is
one and the same for all in the same sense, much
as, e.g.> when we call 2 + 2 = 4 an "objective truth."
It is not true if we mean that there is no objective
element in the latter : for without such an objective
aspect there would be no experience there at all.
Similarly with the necessary changes regarding the
term " subjective."

We may speak, again, of the first as the sphere "Free-
of universal "freedom," "free Society," the latter as dom '"
the sphere of individual "freedom." But the very
idea of freedom implies that it is both universal and
individual. A freedom which is not the freedom of,
and in individuals is a form of, bare necessity.' Hence
the fallacy of "state socialism " in the interests of the
moral life. And a freedom which is not freedom
in and through universality, i.e. through a whole of

294

MORAL EXPERIENCE

CH.

through
Con-
science.

other self-consciousnesses, is not freedom but caprice,
and cannot produce order. 1

The final When each individual self-consciousness absorbs
mentor the life of universal self-consciousness, and makes its
Moral EX- un i v ersal content the very substance of its own life,
Freedom we have the final stage in the development of this level
of experience. Spirit is only spirit in individualised
form, for the aim of spirit is a unity conscious of its
unity in all the differences that enter its life and
determining such differences by its self as a unity.
Hence the very idea of complete self-consciousness,
which dawns after the development of Reason,
only becomes realised when every individual form
in which it appears manifests its whole meaning and
purpose, is constituted by universality as its very self,
and is a self-determined whole. Spirit is the sphere
of Freedom, because in it we have conscious deter-
mination of a self by an order, a universality, which
is its own nature. Spirit is not free by means of
individuals, but in and through individuals. Hence
the complete achievement of spiritual existence is
found when Freedom is expressed fully in every
self-conscious life, in every spiritual individuality.
Thus the goal of self-conscious individuality is
found where specific individuality is at once specific,
and contains within it the universal life of self-
consciousness. It cannot be free and complete
if it contains less, for only in complete univer-
sality of self- consciousness lies freedom and self-
sufficiency, and only in that universality is its true
significance found. On the other hand, it is in

1 We find the distinction between these aspects also expressed in the con-
trast between the "general will" and the "individual will," or, in plural
form, "the will of all."

ix CONSCIENCE IS SOCIAL 295

specific individualities that the whole is actualised.
Only, therefore, when each absorbs the meaning of
the whole, is the whole truly itself and truly
expressed, is it free self- consciousness completely
developed. Hence it is only in the stage at which
individuality appears in the form of Conscience
working through duties, etc., that self-conscious
individuality gets its full realisation.

But this must not be misunderstood. It is not Quaiifica-
meant that the goal of self-consciousness lies in the i?i va te
maintenance of the "rights," the "position," of Con -

, r 2,, . science.

"private conscience. 1 he very term "private
conscience " is an unconscious irony. Conscience
has no significance, no worth even in its own eyes,
unless it is either implicitly or explicitly universal,
i.e. contains something which others hold good and
respect. It is not a principle of distinguishing one
individual spiritual life from that of others. It is a
principle of deeper union between individual spirits.
If its content is universal, it must be because others
either can or ought to share in it. Even Conscience
cannot be allowed to act inconsistently. But con-
sistency of action implies universality of law or
principle, i.e. one holding not for each moment, but
for all moments, and therefore for all minds. More-
over, the very substance of Conscience is obtained
through relation to, and through the development
in ourselves of, a social consciousness, a universal
self, a general will towards a universal end. If we
call it a "higher law," it is a "higher law" of union
with the general mind, not a higher law to cut us
off from it. Otherwise it would not be higher but
lower, would isolate us from the whole, turn us
into units of nature, not Spiritual Individualities.

296 MORAL EXPERIENCE CH.

What it contains, and what it " dictates " are modes
of action or principles of action in reference to a uni-
versal self. But a universal self, is a self including
"others." It is not so much that Conscience
develops and may vary with individuals. That is
true, and is often used as an argument against
accepting Conscience as final. But Conscience
does not exist except as the Conscience of an
individual in a social whole. It arises out of it,
not through detachment from it, but through taking
into the self the very universality which constitutes
the whole, and thus making a moral order within
each Spirit. It would not arise but for conscious-
ness of self, and consciousness of self is meaning-
less apart from consciousness of "others," of a uni-
versal self. 1 Self-consciousness is a principle of
distinction as well as of unity. Conscience lays
stress on the fact of self-distinction : nothing more.
But distinction, difference, has no meaning except
inside a unity. This is borne out by the fact that
agreement between " consciences " is not at all
held to affect the "unique" reality of "each"
conscience, but rather tends to confirm it in its
security. In other words, consciences may agree,
be universal, and yet be " individual consciences."
Hence it is not an argument against the " authority
of conscience " that consciences differ, any more
than it is an argument against the distinctive and
separate validity of each because they may agree.

1 This is seen in the very term con-science. It is " knowing," ' ' along with "
"self" and "others" being implied. The term lays primary emphasis on
the former ; hence the " inwardness " of " conscience." This " inwardness " of
"knowledge" gives the "certainty" so characteristic of "conscience." The
German word Gewissen lays stress on this aspect of "certainty" alone. The
English word brings out rather the element of " knowing," and so emphasises
the essential universality of ' ' conscience. "

ix INDIVIDUALITY IS CONCRETE 297

They are not valid simply because they agree ; they
agree because each is valid. And they are not
invalid because each is distinct ; they only differ
because they are somewhere invalid. Distinction
lies in the nature of the case, since each is a
specific focus of the total life of the universal self-
consciousness.

Again, it must not be supposed that self- con- This
scious individuality is something abstract. Experi- f
ence is realised as a specific unity in this form, abstract.
Just as Reason was a manifestation of experience
from a certain point of view, so is self-con-
scious individuality. It takes within its life all
that has previously been considered to fall within
specifically distinct modes of human experience.
Hence it does not exclude but includes what
is called "nature." It looks at "nature," how- Seif-con-
ever, not as an immediate object to be " observed " ^duality
and "categorised" by Reason, but as a constituent and nature.
element in the life of individuality. It must do so,
because here consciousness of self does not merely
make its own world, but is its whole world. There
is nothing opposed to it in the sense of being outside
it, beyond it. Everything falls within it in some
form or other, and is built into its unity. " Nature,"
"things," etc., are present here, but present as
moments in the complete unity of active self-
consciousness. This is seen in the fact that, on
the one hand, the material of "nature" as a whole,
the physical and organic world, is incorporated into
the active life of a People, and appears as the " land "
it "inhabits," and "possesses" (the physical basis of
" Fatherland "), and, on . the other, the climate,
physical features, and conditions, etc., determine

298 MORAL EXPERIENCE CH.

the character which the order of its life assumes.
It forms the arena in and by which a People mani-
fests its specific level of culture and civilisation,
attains its specific concrete individuality as one
Nation, a Nationality amongst others. Nature here
is not " moralised," as if it were something which
was made moral, and yet was something apart from
the moral life all the same. 1 Its significance here,
its very existence, lies in the place it occupies as a
moment or phase of universal self-conscious individu-
ality. It is built into the substance of its life, and
is determined by and exists for the ends of self-con-
sciousness. It is here treated ideologically, because it
literally falls inside a teleological whole. Self-con-
sciousness is not consciousness of self, individuality
is not self- complete, except in so far as "nature"
and " natural conditions " are permeated by its own
ends, i.e. by the self universal and all-containing.
What "nature" is or may be apart from it, i.e. at
a different level of experience from individuality, is
not "nature" as incorporated in it. It has become
something else. Just as Perception is not mere
Perception in the life of Reason, or Reason mere
Reason in self-conscious individuality ; so " things "
(the content of Perception) are not for and to that
individuality what they are for and in Perception.
They are " things " for and in the life of individu-
ality; they are constituent conditions of its purposive
activity. Hence it is that here, in individuality,

1 This is the position adopted by Fichte, who thus seems to reintroduce at
the end of his theory of experience the very dualism he began by denying.
The fact that the "other," " nature," falls inside self-consciousness, which Fichte
seeks to demonstrate, does not abolish the difficulties of dualism. Rather if
this "other" remains for ever an "other," as Fichte maintains in his view of
Duty, dualism is the more firmly established. It becomes a contradiction
within self-consciousness itself.

ix EMBODIMENT OF SOCIETY 299

what is a " thing " for mere Perception becomes an
object of " worth," and only that ; it becomes, e.g.,
a piece of "property" built into and expanding the
life of a self. That is the object's meaning at this
level of experience. It is no longer a mere
41 thing " at all ; it is the focus of a purpose of
the self, and its whole significance is determined
accordingly. And this holds true of all that "nature"
is and contains. Hence the reciprocal relation
between climate or land and self-conscious life,
a relation which appears in the constitution of a
kind or level of Civilisation. Earth ceases to be
mere " earth " ; it becomes Country, a Home, a
centre of local enthusiasm and national patriotism.
Self-consciousness is not on one side and " nature "
on the other in the life of self-contained individu-
ality. They are an indissoluble unity, the one is
through the other. An area of the " physical " world
on which a Society lives its life, becomes merely
the bodily (spatial) expression of the animating
spirit, the universal self-consciousness which is
there "situated." It bears precisely the same
relation to universal self-consciousness as a whole,
as a unity, which the individual body bears to the
individual soul. Just as we say the body of a self-
conscious individual life, of a man as such, is not
a mere physical body, but has a value for itself
which a natural body has not, and has no meaning
apart from that self-conscious unity "animating"
it, moulding and directing it ; so the area of the
" physical world," within which a universal self-con-
scious, a social whole, is actively operative in realis-
ing its purposes, is meaningless and inseparable from
the self -consciousness shaping its constitution for its

300

MORAL EXPERIENCE

CH.

purposes. If it is looked at apart from that self-
consciousness it becomes something quite different
altogether, and must, therefore, appeal to a different
and a lower level of experience, e.g. Perception or
Science ; just as if a human body is " deprived " of its
soul it becomes something else namely, inorganic
matter and so falls within the sphere of another
form of experience. It is then interpreted by a
mechanical or chemical principle, not ideologically. 1
Nature is Thus, then, self-conscious individuality is not a
expression reality apart from " nature " ; it contains " nature " as
for spirit. a moment or element in its active unity. It is for
this reason that a Society is such a concrete unity
as we know it to be. We find that the reality of
the State is made actual in and through processes of
"nature." It does not, and man in the moral life
feels he does not, treat " nature " as something alien
to himself. Nature is regarded as a part of his self,
to do with it as he pleases. Hence, at this stage
" nature " is looked at and " used " by spirit as
spirit's counterpart and embodiment ; and all that
would otherwise be processes of " mere nature "
become processes of spiritual life.

From this simple principle follows, on the one
hand, all the varied life and content of a Society,

1 This is how it comes about that if we once treat " nature " as apart from
" man," i.e. apart from man qu& spirit, we must grasp its unity and meaning
by a non-teleological principle. And this is precisely what constitutes the
" mechanical " view of nature. Hence it is not because " nature " is a
mechanism that it is alien to spirit. It is first alienated from spirit and then
regarded as a mechanism. Hence the absence of the mechanical view of nature
in the case of, e.g., Eastern Peoples. This is corroborated in an interesting
manner by the history of the scientific or naturalistic (mechanical) view of " the
world " in Western thought. It was the breach between nature and man's
spirit, made primarily in the interests of Religion, that created the dualism on
which all natural science rests. Nature had first to be put outside spirit before
it could be treated per se ; and when it was considered per se it could only be
treated as a " brute fact," and construed "mechanically."

ix CONTENT OF MORAL LIFE 301

of universal self -consciousness. Events cease to be The con-
merely " events " ; they become moral realities. Or- moral
ganic functions become moral meanings. Inorganic order -
elements and attributes become the content of
moral laws. The routine of events in time and
space becomes the routine of a moral order, reliable,
predictable, irrevocable from generation to genera-
tion it becomes the embodiment of Custom and
Tradition. The " merely natural " organic relation
of sex becomes the spiritual unity of the Family
as an ethical institution. The " natural law "
becomes a humanly spiritual, or spiritually human
law ; the relation is universal, permanent, as the
self -consciousness whose end it subserves. Land
and water become " property " " belonging " to
selves, and transferred from one to the other, and
from generation to generation ; they become em-
bodiments of spiritual activity. Events and pro-
cesses of nature become, e.g., marketable commodities
on which the whole economic order of a Community
rests. Even mere " contingencies " of the world,
disaster and accident, are turned into the content
of spiritual purpose, determine the course of its life,
and the relations of individuals to one another.
This we see, e.g., in a very elementary form, in
what we call "Insurance." The stability of "nature,"
its " uniformity," is the physical counterpart and
outer expression of such spiritual facts as, e.g., rights
of property, which always have universality of signi-
ficance. The mere events of organic activity become
" acts," with an objective significance for all ; they
express ends ; their character has a "worth." And
whether the " acts " proceed from man's organism or
from the organism of any living being, subsidiary to

302

MORAL EXPERIENCE

CH.

man's purpose, does not affect the general character
they bear with reference to the self-conscious life of
the whole within which they fall. 1 In short, it is just
by the manipulation of all the sources and resources
of natural existence that a Society, the universal
self-conscious individuality, embodies its universal
life, realises its being.

And of the The same holds, on the other hand, of the specific
Moral life individuality of each self-conscious unit. His self-
conscious life contains, as part of the material of its
substance, the physical and psychical elements which
make up what we call his " natural " existence.
These are summed up under the general idea of
bodily activity, the functions of a " natural " or
"animal" "soul." The individual, looked at objec-
tively like the rest of "nature," is a part of it, respond-
ing to environment in all its forms, or, what is the
same thing, gets its place "determined" by the
pressure exerted on it by all the manifold variety of
nature. The individual existence of an object as part
of nature varies with the type of its individuality.
In a sense, one may say, everything endeavours to
respond to the whole, because each is a part of it ;
and the degree of its response determines its place
and worth in the whole. The lowest individual is
that whose responses are lowest mere position and
simple motion : the highest, that which can touch
the resources of " nature " in all its forms, the com-
pletes! animate existence. Self-conscious individu-
ality being the completest, gathers all that makes an
individual "natural" into itself; and being self-con-
tained is not opposed to or contrasted with " nature,"

1 E.g. a man is held " responsible " for the " acts " of " his " dog, and for the
process of growth in "his " plants when, say, they interfere with other people.

ix NATURE AS MOMENT OF SPIRIT 303

but implies it as a moment of its life. We may say,
if we choose, that self-consciousness has a "physical
embodiment," if by that we mean, not that self-
consciousness is something that " by chance " is
embodied and is indifferent to its form of em-
bodiment, but simply that it manifests itself physic-
ally. We may call this its natural "expression,"
as we often do ; but the expression is not to be
divorced from the self -consciousness expressed.
The self - conscious individual is actual by con-
taining its natural life. Its "nature" is not some-
thing apart from self-consciousness, but the content
of it. Nor can we say that he has, qua self-conscious
individual, a " natural " aspect and a self-conscious
or "spiritual" aspect. To say so is to confuse quite
distinct points of view. For in such a case we are
looking at the individual as an object before us, from
the point of view of scientific experience. But that
is only one form of experience. Here we are dealing
with another form which has to be taken as it stands,
taken as individuality is to itself and for itself, not
as it is for some other form of experience. When
we treat the individual self-consciousness like any
other object, then obviously we may distinguish
"aspects" if we choose. They are aspects for us who
are looking at it : just as the qualities of a "thing"
are qualities for the opposing and contrasted per-
ceiving mind. But here we have an experience,
which, qua experience, is on the same level as other
forms of experience, and must be taken as experience,
as subject -object relation, not simply as object for
some other mode of experience. In short, to distin-
guish aspects in that fashion is to take up again the
attitude of "observing" and "theorising" Reason,

304 MORAL EXPERIENCE CH.

which by hypothesis we have left behind. There-
fore, we must take this experience at the level of
the individual self-consciousness as a whole and as
siich. No other is relevant to state its content,
for no other is adequate ; and no other but itself
is needed to state what it contains. To find out
its meaning is simply to ask what it does, how its
activity is revealed. Now for a self-conscious in-
dividuality " nature " does not exist except as a
phase or an element in its life. Its self is all that
nature, but built into the structure of its self-
conscious unity. It does not therefore, when it
"acts," carry itself out to nature, and do something
in nature. For nature is part of itself to begin
with. In "going out of its self" it cannot think and
never thinks of " nature " at all ; it simply acts, and
what it does appears to others a "natural" event, but
to itself is its own life. Self-conscious individuality
does not to itself separate its nature and its " spirit."
Its reality is simply and only a unity, a unity
which is self-complete and self-contained, and thus
cannot, for itself, make such a distinction either
practically or otherwise. Hence it is that in " carry-
ing out" our ends, obeying our "impulses," perform-
ing " acts " as self-conscious individuals, we do not
first think of our ideas and then think of bridging
the gulf between our self-conscious life and some
world of nature " beyond " us. There is merely a
continuous process inside the world of self-conscious
individuality, from the initiation of the idea to its
"realisation." An "act" is not some event which
belongs to " nature," while its "end " belongs to us :
the whole is "ours," is "us." Nature is not, for
self-conscious individuality, divorced from spirit at

ix INDIVIDUAL MORAL LIFE 305

all. " Nature " is " spiritualised," " spirit " is
"materialised"; and nature is here non-existent
except in the life of the individuality itself. It is
one continuous whole with which we are in touch
from one end to the other, a whole which begins
and ends with the self. Our "bodies" are "part
of" nature to some one else: but to our self-conscious
selves they are " us " ; and nature, being continuous
with them, is one with us too. So does self-con-
sciousness embrace all reality.

Hence it is that the activities and processes and Natural
events of " nature " become the content and material aJe^orai
of the life of the individual spirit, and out of this he processes
forms his individual moral experience. Organic dividual.
impulses are not merely natural strivings, they are
spiritual aims ; they are ends of a self-conscious life.
The life of Sense becomes the sphere of self-conscious
purpose, to be directed by ends and ideals, to be
constructed into a self-conscious, orderly whole. Its
tendencies become suggestions of a larger purpose.
After that purpose has dominated it, it can carry the
purpose on in a manner suited to itself, as we find
in that automatic response to environment, which
makes up so much of the mature moral life. The
varied life of ideas which crowd self-consciousness
and of themselves start the possible direction of
effort in the form of "desires," "wishes," etc., are
made definite and brought to unity and coherence by
reference to some end or law which determines the
direction or order of this activity. Events in self-
conscious history are not natural events, but are
"deeds," "acts," which are meaningless apart from
the life they express, and must be judged accord-
ingly. Thus out of this manipulation of the life of

3 o6 MORAL EXPERIENCE CH.

sense and the life of ideas which constitute its in-
dividual existence, a manipulation determined by
the one end of explicit realisation of complete in-
dividuality in and with others, self -consciousness
builds up by individual effort that structure we call
the individual moral life.

The From what has been said, it is not difficult to see

of S the 1( how, at first sight, universal self-consciousness should
individual a pp ear to each particular individual as something
universal simply confronting him, opposing him, controlling
him. We can see, too, how the first form in which

sciousness.

the individual manifests his sense of individuality is
in following impulses and tendencies just as they
come : taking for granted their universality because
they are his self. It is evident also that the
way of reconciliation between these two, when the
distinction between them dawns, can only be one of
struggle between control and adjustment, so that
the one universal life shall dominate all explicitly
and not merely implicitly. The one seeks to realise
universality absolutely in individual form, for apart
from that it cannot exist, it becomes an "abstraction" :
the other seeks to realise individuality in universal
form, for apart from that it is without significance.
And both seek to do this because they are both
moments in the one form of experience, self-con-
scious individuality.

The Into the stages through which this process of

menfoT stru ggle an ^ reconciliation passes we cannot enter
self-con- in detail. They mark both stages in the develop-

sciousness: / i _* t ir i i i

Freedom: ment of the individual hie, and phases in the
History, historical evolution of human Society. Just as
the individual struggles towards complete self-
dependence by checks and restraints imposed by

ix THE END OF SOCIAL UNITY 307

the demands of his inherent universality : so the
universal life of society secures realisation of its ends
in individual lives, not by suppression but by
expression of individuality. The starting-point lies
in the fact that only in and with self-consciousness is
individuality attained. This means that here we
have the kingdom of Free Spirit. It is "free,"
because, in the direction and laws of this world, the
self is working with and finds its own self, and no-
thing more. Its determination by all is determination
by self\ its harmony with all is expansion of self;
its order is the expression of the self as the unity
controlling all. And it is Spirit because it is for
itself universal self-consciousness. That is its sphere,
its content, its substance. Only as Spirit can our
self-consciousness relate itself to another self-con-
sciousness. Indeed, the order of Society, the ethical
and moral "laws," may be looked on as just the
universals of the life of Spirit, which constitute the
individuals in Society what they are, which make it a
whole, a unity, and give each his worth and place in it.
Just as the meaning of a natural fact lies, as we saw,
in the law it embodies and realises, so the worth and
significance of a self-conscious individual lies in his
realisation of the order of the self-conscious whole of
Society. The aim of universal self-consciousness
being the attainment of absolute freedom of Spirit,
and the aim of individual self-consciousness being
the same, the results of each must coincide, since the
lines they severally follow converge towards the
same end. Hence it comes about that the develop-
ment of individual self-consciousness, the sphere of
what we have called the moral order of Conscience,
or "subjective morality," is a development which

308 MORAL EXPERIENCE CH. ix

produces, not isolation of individuals in the whole, but
fuller, deeper, and completer unity with the whole ; so
that in a perfectly ordered Conscience the individual
as a unity is absolutely at peace with himself, self-
directing, self-legislating, self-forgiving. His Con-
science is developed by contrast with the life of the
whole, otherwise it would not be a Conscience ; but it
is developed by reference to the life of the whole, the
unity of the individual with Society. Without this
reference, it would not be worth while to have a
Conscience at all ; and without relation to the whole,
Conscience would not be created or arise as a factor
and function of self -consciousness. Thus, in the
long run, the achievement of freedom in a State, so
far from being inconsistent with the existence of " in-
dividual Conscience," is never completely or safely
realised except by means of it. So it comes about
that the process of Human History (which is just
Society preserving a continuous identity of structure
through changing form of expression) is simply the
development of the idea of free self-consciousness,
free individuality whether it be in the case of the
history of a particular Society, or in the case of the
history of Nations which succeed each other in time.
It must be so, because the very existence of Society
is based on the fact of self-conscious individuality,
and this implies unity of self with self, and unity of
self through self; and that is Freedom. Further
than the achievement of or the struggle towards
this end, human spiritual life, as an active relation
of free spirits, cannot go. To transcend this attitude
is to pass from the region of finite spirit to that of
Absolute Spirit. And this is done in a further and
final form of self-conscious experience Religion.

CHAPTER X

THE SPHERE OF ABSOLUTE SPIRIT RELIGIOUS
EXPERIENCE CONTEMPLATION

FROM the result accomplished at the stage of the The out-
Moral Life as such, it follows that Spirit is actively
expressed as, and is actually shown to be, the Life -
one Reality. For the Moral Life, Spirit is self-con-
tained, self-conditioned, and self-constituted. There
is nothing opposing it or contrasted with it ; its pur-
poses definitely mould and constitute all that is.
" Nature " is reduced to terms of Spirit, is fashioned
after its ends, and falls within its living substance.
This is seen and maintained in the case of uni-
versal self-consciousness, as the life of a Society,
which could not exist as a fact in time and space
except on that condition. It is seen by each indi-
vidual self-consciousness, when this realises the self-
complete moral order of the life of Conscience, and
lives and acts within that entirely self-contained
realm. There it comes home to the individual that
the life of Spirit is and contains all actuality with
no "beyond" whatsoever, no other which is not a
moment of that life. Its objectivity is not some
"external nature"; there is no externality at all.
There is merely the universal content of Spirit mani-
fested in concrete existence as a spiritual reality.

309

3 io RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CH.

It is only there for Spirit, not independent of it in
any sense.

The outcome of Moral Experience is thus to
establish consciously the reality of Spirit, or that
Spirit is the one Supreme Reality. It could only
do so by carrying that out as a definite result ; and
the proof that it is so is just the existence of Moral
Experience as a process and as a determinate
result of active self-consciousness. "Nature" has
given way before the purposes of Spirit and been
built into its substance by the active process of self-
consciousness. The only reality left in experience
therefore is Spirit.

Moral But, again, Spirit was the culmination of the

experience development of self-consciousness, and contained in

contains r , .

the pre- itself all the various aspects of self-conscious life
Sags-fas previously dealt with separately as distinct planes
moments. o f experience. These moments were, in general,
Consciousness of objects simpliciter. Consciousness
of Self as such, and Reason. All these fall inside
Spirit as constituents of Moral Experience, and
can, indeed, be rightly regarded as mere abstractions
from it. That is the justification for Kant's insist-
ence on the " primacy of moral experience." Those
moments are, as such, abstract aspects of the con-
crete life of Spirit ; they lead the way to it, are its
elements treated separately. Spirit therefore is
"absolute" in the sense that, being the culmination,
it contains as moments of itself what were formerly
treated of as stages in the life-history of experi-
ence. These stages were really the content of
Spirit spread out in detail ; that they are so is
only seen when Spirit comes out as their result and
goal. Their own true meaning, therefore, is only

x SPIRIT IS ALL REALITY 311

to be seen in the light of, and from the point of view
of Spirit. This is what has been at work all along,
constituting them what they were, giving each their
"truth," compelling each to surrender before a
higher form, and thus making of experience one
development. As each stands, it has a completeness
and value of its own. When the result is reached,
they sink to the level of constituent elements or
aspects of the whole, the reality of Spirit. Just as,
for a self-conscious experience, Sense-experience (as
Kant showed) has only significance in and through
the activity of thought (Understanding), and is
compelled, as we saw, to give up its claim to finality
by the fact that its truth is only found in Under-
standing, so all the stages previously traced in
the course of the evolution of experience get their
real significance when Spirit appears as the final
Reality. They become thereby aspects of its self-
contained and self-complete " truth." Spirit, there-
fore, is strictly all Reality.

But now, while Morality brings out this result, it Religion
does so in a special form which is the characteristic stage*? the
limitation of its expression of Spirit. In Morality, conscious-
Spirit is actualised by a process involving effort, and spirit.
a conflict between the content of individual and
universal. It is realised by the activity of self-
conscious individuals. But that is not enough to
express its nature completely. It must not merely
be an object for conscious individuals. Being self-
conscious, it must be, as a whole, and in its com-
pleteness, conscious of its own self. It must not be,
even in part, something merely implicit, an end to be
made explicit by a conscious life (an individual moral
agent) ; it must have a being in and for itself.

312

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

CH.

It must not, in short, be broken up into what it is
implicitly and what it is actually for finite Spirit,
which seeks, in the processes of the Moral Life,
continuously to realise its nature. It must be
actual as a whole to itself, just as it is complete in
itself. This, however, is not accomplished in the
sphere of Morality. It is a further and a final
stage in the evolution of Spirit. This complete
self- consciousness of Spirit, its being Spirit in
and to itself as a unity, is only found in its proper
form in the Religious Life. Spirit is here the
supreme Reality of experience as it is in Morality
too. But here it is the absolute Reality conscious
of itself as such and operating as such ; independent
of individual consciousness and so of the active
realisation by individuals ; free and self-contained.
The expression of Spirit in this form is the life and
movement of Religion.

Religion Rightly enough, then, it may be said, that Religion
trTa'tedas has ^ ts Das is in Morality, or that Religion grows out
a form of of M oral Experience; for without Moral Experience

Moral Ex- , ... ... . r .

perience. there would be no possible consciousness of the
absolute Reality of Spirit which is the central
principle of Religion. But as clearly Religion
cannot be, as Kant and others have held, mere
Morality in another guise. It is more than
Morality, and goes beyond Moral Experience alto-
gether. It has a special life and peculiar develop-
ment of its own. No doubt Religion has a direct
relation to Morality : both are the experience of
Spirit. But the substance of Religion is not Morality,
since it is a different attitude towards Spiritual Life.
To regard "moral laws as Divine commands" can-
not therefore (as Kant supposed) really constitute

x RELIGION NOT MORALITY 313

Religion. For it makes no difference to the content
or quality of a moral law to call it a " Divine Com-
mand " ; it is binding whether or not it is looked
at as " Divine." But if this does not constitute a
difference at all, it cannot be used as a basis for
another attitude of experience. Unless Religion
had a further content of its own, it would be a
mere point of view from which to look at Morality,
with no special significance and value in the structure
of experience as a whole. Similarly, the con-
ception of Religion as "morality touched with
emotion," or "morality become enthusiastic," does
not give us Religion as an experience different in
kind from Morality : it is at most merely a higher
degree of moral experience.

But in point of fact Religious Experience recon- Religion
stitutes all the preceding content of experience, just
as Morality remoulded all that experience had previ-
ously revealed. Hence Religion proceeds by pur-
poses and ways which are specific for this form of
experience. " Nature," e.g., looked at from the
point of view of Religion, is not the same as
" nature " looked at from the point of view of
Morality. In the former it is looked at as, e.g.,
the " garment " of Spirit, the spoken " word," etc. ; *
in the latter it is the material substance of moral
effort, and gets its significance accordingly from the
purposes of the Moral Life.

1 "Nature" in Religion is of necessity not treated as it is by Science;
for they are different levels of experience and have each a different kind of
unity to realise and sustain. To Science Nature is, as has been recently
said (Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism}, a conceptual construction ; to
Religion it is, e g., the " Manifestation of Spirit." This religious idea indicates
the relation of "nature" to "Spirit" in a philosophical construction; for
Philosophy puts the religious idea in speculative terms. Hence the meaning
of a "transition" from "Logic" to "Nature."

314 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CH.

Religion is Religion, therefore, is neither the "handmaid" of
Morality nor a mere superimposition on the life of
experience. It is a necessary form of the life of
self-conscious Spirit, necessary because no other
phase of experience expresses the complete life of
Spirit in the way Religion does. And all expres-
sions are essential if the meaning of Spirit is to
be exhausted.

Religion In Religious life, then, Spirit is not merely
adopts a jj R ea li t y b ut th e p { n f O f v { ew o f the Absolute

consciously ...

the point Reality is deliberately and consciously adopted as
3 an attitude of experience. In Religion man places

Spirit. himself at the point of view of God's Spirit and
looks, thinks, feels, and acts in the "sight" or in
the " light " of it. That is the peculiar note or
attitude of the Religious Consciousness as such. It
lives in and acts from that position. Hence the
absolute self-sufficiency and self-containedness of
the Religious Life. In it all strife is stilled, all effort
overcome, all contradictions removed. Death itself
(which threatens the existence of individual free Spirit
in Morality) has no victory and brings no bitterness
of regret to the finite spirit. In that sphere can be
found and contained the ecstacy of joy, the depths
of pain. That life contains all opposites of feeling
and thought ; and in its own completeness can
reconcile and harmonise all in the peace of the
Eternal.

Religion It is only when this is achieved that the summit
summit of f man's experience is reached, for only at this point
man's ex- o f v j ew j s complete unity of self -consciousness

DcricncG.

attained and all its discords removed. Hence
the supreme significance and importance attached
to it in the history of human experience. Ex-

x MORALITY AND RELIGION 315

perience culminates there, because man is self-
conscious and demands a supreme realisation of that
unity in his life. He is always in some way con-
scious of this complete and Absolute Unity in his
life ; but in one form of experience he can and
does get rid of the antithesis, into which \h& process
of realising his self-conscious life drives him, by
deliberately adopting the point of view and position
of the Absolute Unity itself. His being Spirit does
not necessarily do away with the need to continue
the realisation of Spirit through a process of events
the process of the Moral Life above described.
Hence he reserves the complete conscious union with
Absolute Spirit for a unique and separate attitude
of experience his Religious Life. This co-exists
with and alongside Morality but is always distinct
from it. Thus we find that, in the history of human
experience, the conscious adoption of this attitude
has come to be associated with special times and
seasons, days or weeks, special ceremonies and
cults ; while all the rest of self-conscious life is
carried on in its own way and on its own lines.
Hence the separation of the "life of the spirit"
and the " life of the world " ; the former being
confined to life in and with the Absolute Spirit
as such, and the rest with the process of self-
conscious life in time.

Man, then, takes up the religious attitude as a Religion
necessary and essential phase of his life as spiritual, expression
Because he is Spirit, he does so ; because the unity of * he
of his spiritual life is essentially implied in spiritual Hf e .
existence, he must do so ; because the one Reality is
Absolute Spirit with a life for itself, he can do so.
Seeing that it does supply man with this supreme

ence.

3 r6 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CH.

consciousness of unity, it is both universal and
necessary. If to be conscious of complete unity
in experience is a characteristic of a completely
rational life, a characteristic of reason in fact, then,
so far from Religion being beyond the pale of
reason, so far from it being either irrational or
non-rational, it is the supreme expression of mans
rationality, and without Reason could not arise at all.
Religion But be it noted that Religion is an attitude of
experience, and has, therefore, its roots in experience
and in the needs of experience. We must not
suppose that in Religion the finite mind suddenly
becomes God. To be one with God consciously, to
take up the position of Absolute Spirit, is possible
without man being God. Man is the religious
being, not God. In Religion man merely takes
up the attitude in which Spirit, the supreme Reality,
is for itself: he is at the point of view of that
Spirit : that is all. He can do so because he is
Spirit. Hence the source of what has been called
the "anthropomorphism" of Religion. The form
and substance of Religion depend on the level
of spiritual life at which the human Spirit exists ;
and this creates the different types of Religion.
But the essential principle is that in Religion God
is present consciously " in the soul of man," as it is
said. Man, as a religious being, thinks of his life
from that point of view. Religion takes its stand
on the absolute actuality of Spirit, and man's
individual life must be looked on as completely real,
completely actualised only in that Absolute Spirit.
Religion is the attitude in which that Absolute
Reality is expressed as it is consciously to itself.
Man's reality lies essentially in that Absolute Spirit ;

x ANTHROPOMORPHISM 317

and that Spirit becomes actual in the spirit of man
in the form of Religion.

This is not anthropomorphism in any sense The "an
except that in which all experience is anthropo- J^dhis
morphic. Strictly speaking, so far from Religion of
being purely anthropomorphic in character, it is
the sphere where man is really deanthropomor-
phised. His peculiar characteristics as man are
even eliminated altogether. Thus his " natural life,"
his organism, and its cravings in every form (which
are constitutive of him as a member of Society,
and indeed, as we saw, make the existence of
Society possible, make up its substance property,
family life, etc.) are looked on as disappearing
altogether when his Spirit is at-oned with Absolute
Spirit. As it is put, there are in the " Kingdom of
Heaven," in the life of Spirit as Absolute Reality,
no distinctions of race, sex, or property, no " natural
facts" whatever. "God is all and in all." Spirit
is the sole and only reality. Yet it is just these
distinctions of race, sex, and property which make
up the substance of the Social Order, of all its
complex spiritual activity. To regard Religion,
therefore, as purely anthropomorphic when its pro-
cess involves the elimination of all that specifically
makes up humanity, is a mere abuse of language.
Moreover, it is truer to regard all the preceding stages
in the development of self-conscious experience
as anthropomorphic than to regard Religion in that
way. For there experience is presented with definite
qualifications due to limited aspects of man's life
Sense, Perception, Science, etc. And, indeed, we
often do treat them as anthropomorphic, as peculiar
to man. For example, this is the case when we

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

CH.

AH

morphic.

show the limitations of our knowledge furnished by
Sense, by pointing to the possibility of there being
other senses, which we do not possess, and the
possession of which would give us a different content
in Sense-experience ; or again, when we point to
the limitations of our " understandings " in the
pursuit of "truth."

But, indeed, when we press the matter, we find that
we have either to regard all experience as anthropo-
anthropo- morphic or else to reject the position that Religion
is peculiarly or entirely anthropomorphic. If we
hold the former, then it amounts to saying that self-
conscious life being man's is only man's, and is
therefore all anthropomorphic. But that is a truism.
It is surely not a limitation of either the worth or
validity of self-conscious experience to say it is
self-conscious experience ! The suggestion that it is
anthropomorphic does, however, carry with it an
accusation, a qualification, a limitation of its worth.
It is admitted that man's experience is self-contained
and self -constituted. For what else can it be ?
Who or what is to constitute it except man's own
self? But if so, then, there is nothing beyond it
to determine what that qualification is to be. For if
there were anything beyond it, that would necessarily
fall under that experience, be a qualifying object for
it. 1 But if it is useless to call all experience an-

1 It is sometimes insinuated because man's knowledge is not all knowledge,
e.g. is not the kind of " knowledge " animals possess, that it does not give all
truth, and therefore its truth is limited to its own level of conscious life, and can-
not by the nature of the case give " absolute truth." Assuming it to be tenable
that there are other kinds of knowledge to which he is unable to attain, he
either knows what that knowledge is or he does not. In the first case the
limitation is self-imposed and is not a qualification ; in the second case it falls
outside his experience and cannot qualify it. Is man's life less real in any
sense because it is not all life at once ?

x AIM OF RELIGION 319

thropomorphic, it is absurd to call Religion peculiarly
so. For this is, in the first place, a phase of that
same experience, and secondly, it is neither more
nor less than the final expression of the principle
present all through experience that the essential
reality of all experience is Spirit.

In Religion Spirit is present consciously to itself The aim of
as Spirit ; and the activity of the religious life is just Expert" 8
the explicit realisation in self-consciousness of #// ence -
that that principle means. It contains all, and is
expressed as the all-containing Reality. It starts
from that position consciously. Spirit for it is ultimate
and alone actual. The aim of Religion is to be
what Spirit as absolute means. That can only be
done if Spirit is treated, not as something to be
merely realised by a process, made objective through
the carrying out of the ends and purposes of the
self which is the peculiar position of Moral Ex-
perience as the expression of Spirit but as it is
completely real for itself. It is no longer something
to be achieved, but something which is achieved, is
actual. It is no longer Spirit to be attained and
maintained, but Spirit which is altogether objective
and subjective at once, and therefore already
complete. It no longer exists in itself as the truly
real : but exists in and for itself as actual. In
Religion this self-consciousness of Spirit therefore
is the primal fact.

Hence it follows that in Religion there is no Religion
process such as we have in Morality, no active ^oiva
pursuit of ends and purposes. If that were so, GodP r c p ssof
would be looked on not as self-complete but as the ]
^{-completing. God would then be coming to be,
and Religion would not carry the movement of

3 2o RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CH.

Spirit further than Morality. God, however, in
Religion is taken as the absolutely actual, and so is
beyond and above all finite spiritual purpose, contains
all process in Himself, because in Religion all activity
is only for Himself. God does not come to be in
the soul of man. He is there, and man is actual
in and by that. To ignore this is to commit the
error involved in the idea of a "religion of humanity."
Humanity is essentially a process in time, in history;
it is always "coming to be," but never is, as such,
self-complete. God in Religion is the self-complete,
the absolute One. Hence in God all temporal
process disappears into and becomes a moment of
His One Life. By no possibility could a. "religion
of humanity " permit what Religion, as such, first and
alone seeks to do. By revealing the life of Absolute
Spirit as it is for itself, Religion seeks to still the
agonies of strife and struggle in the pursuit of ends
of all kinds, moral or otherwise, and to realise a
complete harmonious oneness of soul in what is
Eternal and contains all finite ends as its own.
The The only question, therefore, is as to the forms

*kis Absolute Spirit adopts, and the forms religious
life in consequence assumes. After what has been
said, these are not difficult to state. We are not
here, be it noted, either constructing a Religion or
picturing how man "looks at," "thinks of" Absolute
Spirit. In Religion, as was said above, we are at
the point of view of Absolute Spirit, conscious of
what it is for itself, conscious of how its own self-
consciousness proceeds. Here, therefore, we state
the 'moments or phases of its life, as the one self-
conscious spiritual Reality. These moments, when
so stated, form the levels at which the religious life

x PHASES OF RELIGION 321

does and can exist in experience, and are found to
exist in historical "religions." We are not discussing
these "religions." We are dealing with Religion
as suck, Religion as an attitude of experience. Only
by thus stating the moments of Absolute Spirit as
such do we show the necessity in the content of
Absolute Spirit, show that it is Spirit at all, with a
life and content of its own. And only by doing so,
again, do we show the inherent necessity in every
type and form of religious life. 1

We must not suppose, further, that Religion is Religion is
one thing and the life of Absolute Spirit another. Absolute
The life of Absolute Spirit appears just in religious s P irit in

T , r . rr J man's ex-

COnSClOUSneSS. It shows itself to consciousness ^# pe rience.

Spirit, because itself is Spirit and that is all Reality.
The consciousness of it is Religion. The expression
of its content is the active life of Absolute Spirit.
These are merely two sides of the same process,
the same phase of experience. Hence on this
view, Religion does not so much create the idea of
Absolute Spirit ; rather Absolute Spirit creates the
religious life. It appears to the conscious life of
Spirit.

Experience, we saw, appears at different levels The forms
mere Consciousness of Objects, Consciousness of Self,
and Spirit. Absolute Spirit appears in each of these life -
in its own specifically distinct moments. The different
forms of Religion are simply its presence in these

1 It is important to observe that the various phases of Absolute Spirit men-
tioned below are really present in all Religion. In certain cases one aspect is
emphasised to the exclusion, it may be, of others, and so determines a type of
Religion. But the difference is merely one of emphasis ; the other aspects are
really there in some form all the while. Thus we find in the "Religion
of Nature " expressions characteristic of " Revealed Religion," just as much
as in Christianity ("Revealed Religion") we can see the religious mind
adopting the attitude of the " Religion of Nature."

Y

322 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CH.

different phases of experience. Its own Reality
has distinct moments because it is Spirit. These
moments are realised separately in the distinct planes
of experience already spoken of. The conscious
realisation of Absolute Spirit in them constitutes
different types of religious attitude. Or, put shortly,
Religion is the Consciousness of the Life of God
in man's experience. God is Absolute Spirit and
is conscious of Himself as Spirit, and is conscious
of Himself in Spirit. The ways in which He is
conscious of Himself constitute and form the types
of Religion. These ways are found in those specific-
ally distinct modes of experience.

The first To determine these phases of the life of Absolute
whkii in Spirit we have merely to recall, first, that the Spirit
Absolute here in question is just the Reality at work in
appears experience all through, as previously traced ; and
nediate seconc My> that that Spirit, because completely self-
experi- conscious, has three aspects, in each of which it is
present in expressed, but expressed in different ways, because
Sense with different degrees of completeness. There is

God as _ . . P ... . . *. . r

Nature, nrst the unity of its life in implicit form, mere unity
without the distinction involved in self-conscious-
ness being brought out. Spirit is immediately
realised, or its life is there as an immediate fact.
Self has not withdrawn into itself, and so created
an opposition between itself and an "other." It is
simply one in and with that other. It only becomes
aware of self by opposition to that other. At this
stage we are speaking of, that opposition is not
established ; it is implicit, but not explicit. What
we have is the simple continuity of a single life. It
is Spirit at the level of immediate experience, the
immediate experience whose general form we saw to

x RELIGION OF NATURE 323

be Sense-life, and whose substance for Spirit is the
equally immediate reality of "nature." It is not
here mere Sense -experience, as we found this at
the start of experience. It is Spirit consciously
realised at the level of sense-life, or " natural " exist-
ence, " natural life." Consciousness of Spirit in
this form is the special attitude of Natural Religion
Religion for which God is one with the life of
"nature" simply as immediate sense -fact. In it
God is "experienced," "felt," as manifested in the
process of " nature," working " by " nature, affecting
the religious mind by natural facts, agencies, and
processes. Here the religious life is one with God's
Spirit, as in all Religion. Spirit speaks to Spirit ;
only as Spirit is the religious attitude possible at all,
as we have indicated. But, here, it is Spirit realised
in the form of merely natural life as a whole, touch-
ing the religious mind almost in a quasi -external
manner through natural portents, signs, wonders,
and through the routine of sense-life.

This is an aspect of all religion, the highest as well This is a
as the lowest. But in certain types of Religion it

is the only attitude assumed towards God, and it is Hfe >
there we find the full significance of this aspect. God abstractly
is there merely the life of nature ; God is the " spirit as a

, . . . . . separate

of nature." The religious mind communicates with type of

God in terms of nature and nature only. The sel
of the religious mind is subordinated to natural religion of
processes, obeys their direction. God does not, in
merely Natural Religion, "signify" or symbolise His
presence through nature as a means. To take nature
as a symbol is a conception which belongs to a higher
form of Religion. God in purely Natural Religion
is natural life: the "wood," the " grove," the " spring,"

324

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

CH.

The

method
of the
Religion
of Nature.

the " river," the " hill," are God's actual manifesta-
tion. To come in contact with them is to meet
God. The worshipper's life is reduced or rather
concentrated into that form too, and he bows before
the majesty, the mere " might," of natural forces.
He worships the sun, for God is the " Light." God
is also the " Darkness," and meets the worshipper
there in a different mood from what He is as the
Light. Nature is a continuous whole, suppress-
ing all individual existence in its vast process ;
the individual worshipper is therefore of no moment
in comparison. For there is no comparison possible,
since there is no distinction allowed. He, the in-
dividual worshipper, is of no particular importance,
because he is merely a moment or appearance of
the Whole, subject to its temporal and spatial con-
ditions, and disappearing like the flower of the field,
or the cloud in the sky, or the shadow on the hill.
He feels God everywhere, yet God is nowhere in
particular, and hence He is not specially concerned
with the worshipper. "What is man that Thou
should'st be mindful of him ? " Nature is the vast
process in time going on from everlasting to ever-
lasting. Man is merely a vanishing part of it.
Man's days are "like the grass": "he giveth up
the ghost, and where is he ? "

Man puts himself in absolute unity with Spirit
here by methods and processes drawn from nature.
For the way to be in harmony with God, to be
completely real in God (which is essentially the
religious attitude) is to avail himself of the life of
God, to bring God's life and reality into his own
life. Hence the cult and ceremony of worship at
this level of Religion are made up entirely of the

x RELIGION OF NATURE 325

substance and facts of natural life. Conscious unity
with the Supreme is secured by various modes
of "conciliation," "sympathy," "affinity" between
the worshipper and God. Sacrifice, which is one
essential way of expressing the unity, takes a
physical form man sacrifices the objects of
nature, flesh and blood, wood and stone, or even
man himself as a natural object. He detects God's
presence in the sounds that fill his ears, the sights
that meet his eyes, and in outstanding natural events
particularly. He decides his course of action by
"propitiating his gods," by consulting "auguries,"
by listening to "voices." So, in as many forms as
the complex multiplicity of nature presents, can man
approach and unite himself with God who is natural
life. Hence the variety which we find in the form of
Natural Religions lies in the very principle of all
Natural Religion. Nature is variety, diversity :
hence a Religion, with nature as its content, has
endlessly varied forms. Some peoples lay stress on
certain elements and " things " of nature, others on
other " things." The kind of Religion is largely
determined by the character or sphere of nature in
which man is living or with which he is in contact.
Again, the uniform simplicity, the delight, and satis-
faction so characteristic of the Religion of Nature
are its inevitable attributes. The object of worship
is always there at hand ; an answer to an appeal can
be had at once. The individual is never away from
his God, is everywhere in touch with God. God can
be had for the asking ; for God is ever there to
be petitioned. The harmony is not to be secured
through some form of " unseen " reality. It is
visibly, tangibly there, and perpetual contact with

326 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CH.

it brings its perpetual reward of peace, acquiescence,

harmonious submission.

The Another moment in the life of Spirit is found

phase when it consciously draws the distinction of self
God is implied in its complete unity ; withdraws from the

present in ... . Jf * tr ir

self- immediate unity of natural lite ; sets up sell as some-
conscious t hi n gr to be asserted in spite of nature ; overcomes

purpose : *

God as the nature by opposing, or by reducing it to a mere means,
Order. an instrument for manifesting the life of self and its
purposes. Spirit is conscious of self as such, as
contrasted with all otherness, with its other. It
places the foundations of its real life in the world
of subjective activity, purposes, ends, feelings, etc.
For it finds its self through nature, in spite of it,
and apart from it. Nature is there a moment in the
life of Spirit, for Absolute Spirit is all, and the
consciousness of self as such implies contrast, and
therefore the existence of what the self is contrasted
with. But it is merely a moment, subordinate, an
"appearance," a "means," an "instrument." God's
reality does not lie there primarily, but in conscious-
ness of self, self as such, as the unity of the
purposes of life, a life carried on through means, but
rising above all means, because indifferent to any
in particular. Spirit is concentrated into its self-
hood as such.

God as Here, again, we see what this must be, by looking

conscious t> ac ^ on tne process of experience. Consciousness
individu- of self as object culminated in the form of self-
Ketigion of conscious individuality out of which sprang the
Moral EX- Ethical Order of the world. God in this form of

penence. . . ....

bpint appears, therefore, as absolute spiritual in-
dividuality as such. The corresponding religious
life is the consciousness of God's reality in and

x RELIGION OF ETHICAL ORDER 327

through the forms, processes, and conditions of
Ethical and Moral Experience ; and unity with Him
is established in terms of such experience. This,
too, is an aspect of all Religion, but is emphasised in
certain cases as the primary and only form of religion.

Nature has a place here, but quite different from Nature the
that found in the case of the Religion of Nature.
In the first place, the religious mind is not content
merely to find God anywhere in nature as it is.
Nature must be determined by and embody ^.purpose
before God is reached and His life realised. Man
therefore does not find his gods in rivers, trees, etc. ;
Refashions his God with his own hands; he creates
Idols, Images, symbols of His life. As natural
Gods were manifold because of the diversity of
nature, so idols, images, etc., are manifold because The
man's purposes and interests are manifold, and J^ s th a S p e c f t
the material of nature at his hand is endlessly of religion.
varied. Hence the diversity of forms the Gods
assume, and the variety of substance in which
the Gods are enshrined in this second phase of
Religion. Again, not every quarter prescribed by
nature itself is accepted as a habitation for God.
Man must needs make a habitation for God. He
builds Temples, Altars, where God is primarily
and peculiarly to be found to "dwell," and where
alone He can be met, "appeased," "sacrificed
to," "lived with." These, of course, are built of
natural material, and this natural material gets
religious significance accordingly. The temple and<<Tem-
its material are "blessed" and "consecrated," i.e. ples '"
devoted to the peculiar residence of God. Special
reasons or purposes may. induce man to build in
certain places rather than others. Hence specific

328 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CH.

localities are assigned to temples by different
peoples. All the religious life becomes peculiarly
concentrated round these "dwellings of God"; for
there God is to be met with rather than anywhere
else. " God loves the gates of Zion more than
all the dwellings of Jacob." This is the place of
" His honour," "where He dwells."

"Times Similarly, again, time is no longer a mere process,

Seasons." as in the Religion of Nature, carrying the individual
along its stream. Time becomes purposely divided
up into "seasons." " Holy days," " Festivals," etc.,
are determined purposely, so that the religious life
may be gathered periodically round those religious
dwellings. God, in short, is not in man's life in
the same way everywhere and at every time : but
somewhere, and at some times.

"Sacred In the next place, certain objects of nature are
peculiarly and purposely assigned to God, "dedi-
cated" to Him and the worship of Him. In these
He has a special interest, and His purposes are
realised more clearly through them. Hence the
value placed on certain animals to the exclusion of
others for purposes of " sacrifice." Man's property
and possessions, because embodying his purpose,
have a special significance for God, and union with
God is established by surrender of possessions, by
bequest of property. Or, generally, man, by doing
something for God, carrying out some end on His
behalf, consecrates his self to God.

"Sacred Similarly, self-conscious individuals themselves
come to have a special significance, are " set aside "
as special channels through which to interpret God's
will, and to mediate between God and His people,
to be His Spokesmen, His Priests. The choice

x RELIGION OF ETHICAL ORDER 329

of such individuals is determined by the character
of this phase of Religion. Those individuals, who
have clearest insight into the meaning of the pur-
poses and ends in life, are best able to guide a
people into the best way to appease and gain
harmony with God through the avenue of self-
conscious purpose. For when this is done properly
God is "well pleased," i.e. the acts of the wor-
shipper have a value for God Himself \ God is
conscious of His own self in and through them.

In the same way God is bound up with a Nation "Peculiar
or a People as an ethical whole. God becomes a Pe P les -
national God, guiding by His purpose the progressive
life of a Society. He guides its rulers with His
wisdom, punishes its enemies with His hatred,
directs the course of its life and history for His own
glory and His realisation of Himself.

Further, because Spirit is self, and selfhood God's law
is the inner life of Spirit, God is realised and J^ taw
experienced in a very special manner in the heart,
purposive activity of the individual soul, in the
life of Conscience, the "feelings," "hearts," and
"minds" of self-conscious individuals. The very
" thoughts of the heart " are read by and known to
God. These thoughts are inward to God Himself.
An alteration of mood, feeling, thought, is an
alteration of the mind and thought of God towards
and in the individual life. "With the merciful
Thou wilt show Thyself merciful ; with the upright,
upright." It is not so much the act that counts,
for the act is visible, is a means, a natural fact. It
is the " heart " that is everything ; " out of the heart
proceed evil thoughts." God does not "delight in
the sacrifice of bullocks or rams"; it is "a broken

330 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CH.

and a contrite heart " with which God is " well
pleased," i.e. not something external but something
internal, purposive, manifesting self. And hence
the law of the heart is peculiarly God's concern.
The law of the heart is " God's law " ; and God's
law is "perfect," because God's. It makes "wise"
and "understanding" those who "simply" follow
it and " turn not aside." The laws of the inner life
of Conscience and the moral will are laws of God
in the soul of man. " Duties," as Kant says (who
takes this phase of Religion as the only Religion), 1
become "divine commands."

The cult of The cult and ceremony of this type of Religion
are similarly constituted. Not sounds of nature

Religion, itself are here voices of God ; but sounds ordered by
a certain conscious purpose, and conveying definite
human thoughts, ends, ideals, Hymns, Prayer, and
Praise. In these Hymns God Himself " speaks ":
they are "sacred," "words from God." Not any
object or place of creation reveals God to man, but
specific objects and places. The ceremonious carry-
ing out of rites and ritual in the Temple is His delight.
God is approached in His Holy of Holies, in the
innermost courts of the Temple and then only but
seldom because He is withdrawn into Himself, and
His self dwells in the "innermost." Not every one
can consult his God by visiting the object of nature.
God is only peculiarly real in purposive human in-
telligence, in self-conscious form, in His "divinely
ordained " Priesthood. He speaks to man not in
nature but through nature, by symbols. Nature
is merely a means, a " veil " to conceal, or at best
symbolise, God's Self. Because God is self and

1 This is also Fichte's conception of Religion.

x RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT 331

universal, He employs a symbol through which to
convey this universality to man. This is found in
the use of Language. Hence God speaks to man
in the spoken, but, above all, in the written tongue
of a people because writing is more permanent
than speech. God's life and purpose are therefore
peculiarly found embodied in certain written docu-
ments, whether in codes, which express orderly ways
of satisfying Him, or in statements of His purposes
with man. Hence the value placed on documents
in this type of religious life, on " Sibylline books,"
"sacred literature," "Scriptures." They convey
the very Spirit of God : they are " inspired " by
His "Spirit."

Finally, Absolute Spirit has yet another mode of The third
self-realisation. It does not merely exist as an| h ^: nits
immediate reality, and does not merely withdraw concrete
into the inwardness of the life of self, keeping p^^nt to
nature as a screen behind which it works, or a s P irit -
medium for its expression. It unites these two
phases in the one form of Spirit in its concrete
totality, becoming conscious of Spirit as a whole ;
Spirit as such is aware only 'of Spirit. Here nature
is spiritualised and conscious in Spirit ; Spirit is
naturalised and conscious in nature of its own life.
The unity of Spirit is in no aspect implicit but
absolutely explicit. The difference (involved in
consciousness of self) is no longer emphasised by
the withdrawal of self from nature, and rising above
it ; the one side is transparent to the other.
Spirit is absolutely at home with itself in all reality,
and all reality is manifesting this one self-referring,
self-conscious Life. We have here, in fact, so we
may put it, at the level of pure spiritual activity,

332 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CH.

an immediacy analogous to what we had in the
case of the Religion of Nature. In the latter it was
the immediacy of natural life, and it operated
accordingly ; here it is the immediacy of purely
spiritual life, and its activity is full conscious rela-
tion of Spirit as such explicitly to Spirit as such.
Spirit here Spirit is in this case not divorced from nature,
bo"h am nor is nature subordinated to, degraded from the
immediate Hf e o f Spirit. Spirit is literally manifest in nature

Existence

and Moral- as such. Spirit, again, does not withdraw into the
Moral Life, nor does it degrade moral activity to a
means. In Morality it expresses its very self, its
very life. At every point in the totality of experience,
therefore, the one Spirit shows its own presence,
its own Reality, because in all it is conscious to itself
of itself. It does not show it through any aspect
of reality as a " medium," but is real just in what
it shows, and shows just what is real. What really
is, is what appears and is " manifested " to Spirit.

Revealed The phase of Religion in which this experience is
. t ypj ca iiy Jived^ felt, and realised is that of Religion
as the " revealed " or " manifested " life of Spirit it
is Revealed Religion. It is an aspect of all religious
experience, but, like the other aspects, is specially
emphasised by certain types of mind and becomes
a specific form of Religion. It is not Religion
"revealed" "through" certain documents and litera-
ture. That kind of literature belongs to the second
phase of Religion ; for there such literature is an
essential constituent of its cult and order. Such
literature, in the way indicated, is "inspired." The
religion of the Spirit as such, "Revealed" Religion,
cannot possibly be " embodied " in any literature,
still less confined to it. A literature is necessarily

x RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT 333

a historical phenomenon contingent upon language
and race and type of national mind. The life
in the Spirit (Revealed Religion) is from ever-
lasting to everlasting, is above historical limita-
tions of any sort. It speaks the tongues of all
nations, because it is above all race and national
limitations. The one Spirit is everywhere to all
that call upon It, commune with It, "in spirit and
in truth." It is not national ; it is international,
absolutely "universal" Religion. It is necessarily
so ; for Spirit is here not confined by conditions
of time and space or nationality which impose
restrictions on its life and activity. It is for all
time and all peoples. Spirit contains all, is in all
in precisely the same sense ; for it is the self-same
Spirit which is present to itself everywhere and
at all times. It may be aided and brought to light
by literature as well as by natural processes : but it
cannot be confined to them. Its religious devotees,
therefore, are not of one nation, or tribe, or king-
dom, but belong to all and are found every-
where. They speak many tongues with many
thoughts, commune in as many ways as the Spirit
manifests itself. They do so of their own right
as members of, sharers in, this one Spirit. In
doing so they realise completely all their spiritual
significance. " Where the spirit of the Lord is,
there is liberty," complete self-fulfilment : the law of
the Spirit is that of absolute Freedom. Those who
in all nations and lands show this freedom of and in
the one Spirit form a society independent of national
restrictions. They form a kingdom of the Spirit,
a " kingdom of saints " (of those devoted to the
Spirit), a Kingdom of Heaven.

334 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CH.

it is The religious life here is realised in and through

"helame spiritual terms and conditions as such. Such terms
absolute have all the characteristic of Spirit. They express
sufficiency, independence of particular time and place and nation-
ality ; they all have the same significance everywhere ;
and in them Spirit is conscious of itself always and im-
mediately. That Spirit is always at one with Itself ;
there is no opposition in its life, no contradictions
to be removed by any process. All the terms em-
ployed here express just that sense of absolute union
and absolute self-sufficiency. The Life of the Spirit
is an orderly unity ; but it is at the same time a unity
focussed into single pulses of life. It is also a com-
plete unity, the Spirit is absolutely at the height of
its life. Or, as it is put, life in the Spirit is at once
" righteousness " (orderly unity), " peace " (simple
sense of unity), "joy" (the unity of Spirit at its
maximum of life). Such content must be the same
for all who share the life oi Spirit, for the Spirit is
the same everywhere, and realises its life in the
same way.
Tt is The religious life is carried on simply within the

" within."

unity of Spirit. It is not confined to, and therefore
cannot be summed up in, any act however great or
however complex, for this is necessarily bounded by
time and natural conditions. Contrasted with such
acts the life of the Spirit is " unseen " and " eternal."
Or since the totality of external acts is still unable
to express the uniqueness of the life of Spirit, the
Kingdom of the Spirit is not to be expressed as
"without" at all. The "Kingdom of Heaven is
within," that is to say, " within " the life and unity
of Spirit itself.

Again, since no objective expression, no act or

x RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT 335

even thought, can exactly express the supreme unity "The Life
of the life of Spirit in Spirit, the completeness of this
relation of Spirit to Spirit is established, not by any
particular or any number of particular acts or
thoughts or feelings at all. It is a universal unity
that is to be found ; and it must be a single and
complete relation that is always maintained, a rela-
tion above and independent of all time, yet one
which is lived by Spirit in and through time.
The hold on this " eternal life " has to be secured
by an attitude of an eternal, a non-temporal kind,
with an unique character the attitude of Faith.
The life of the Spirit is the life, not of ''action " and
"thought" but the Life of Faith.

The individual who lives this life of the Spirit "Justified
has the absolute peace and unity of the Absolute by F
Spirit. He is one in and with that Spirit. But
he cannot do so "of himself" by his own deeds
and acts and feelings ; and cannot, therefore, show
to himself and others that he belongs to and lives in
that kingdom by any particular external expression
of even the most universal character. His life in
the Spirit, as an actuality, cannot be "justified "
by anything he does, by any process of mediation.
He is in immediate relation with God. He can
only be "justified," get the sense of complete
unity of the Life of Spirit, by that which con-
nects him immediately with the Eternal. He is
"justified" by "Faith."

Or to put it from another point of view. The justice or
life of Spirit, as an orderly totality of universal ends,
which are being continually realised, is, as we found Faith.
before, the Moral Order of experience. Complete
realisation of that orderly whole is the complete

336 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CH.

achievement of the " ideal " of Morality, is the
attainment of a completely "righteous" or "just"
life. Such a life is only possible in and through
relationship to Spirit (the Social Order). Now
the religious relation of Spirit to Spirit does not
annul, but only more fully attains, that relation-
ship of Spirit to Spirit found in and forming a com-
plete Social Order ; for Spirit lives and moves by
universal modes of activity. Absolute union with
Absolute Spirit, therefore, implies absolute Right-
eousness, Holiness, Justness. That is the reality for
the religious life in the Spirit ; and it is therefore
an actuality in and for the religious mind, since this
union, is the cardinal idea of Religion. It is abso-
lutely essential for the free intercommunion of Spirit
with Spirit, which makes up this religious attitude.
There is no opposition between the "justness" and
" righteousness " in Social Life and the "justness" or
"righteousness" found in Absolute Spirit; rather
the former is a ectype of the latter. Hence the
"righteousness of God" should be revealed in and
through " righteous " dealing with man. But by no
possibility can the religious mind accomplish com-
plete righteousness in dealing with his fellows,
either in its own eyes (for acts and deeds are
endless, and the task of the moral life is never
completed] or in the eyes of his fellows, or in the
eyes of God. He cannot, therefore, be absolutely
"just," absolutely at one with Absolute Spirit, by
any mediating process of action in time or any
actual Social Order. 1 He cannot be "justified" by
the "works" of the "law." Yet he is in immediate

1 This distinguishes the point of view of "Revealed Religion" from that
found in the second phase above spoken of.

x RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT 337

union as Spirit with God as Spirit ; for that is the
absolute actuality of his life as a religious being.
Therefore, since he cannot get the unity of a com-
plete righteous life mediately, by a. process, he gets it
immediately and at once. And this is accomplished
by a universal, all -comprehensive identification of
self with God, by " Faith." He is ''justified,"
"absolutely righteous," by Faith. 1

Further, the relation between Spirit and Spirit " Divi ne
here is altogether mutual. Hence, corresponding
to the immediate assertion of unity with Absolute
Spirit on the part of the individual religious mind,
we have an attitude on the part of God as One
and All-supreme. Absolute righteousness is claimed
by the religious mind as its own in virtue of
union with Absolute Spirit through Faith. It is
granted, equally spontaneously (for Spirit is free),
and equally immediately (i.e. without anything being
done or required), by God as a favour and a gift.
The Righteousness is of Grace. The Kingdom of
Divine Righteousness is thus at once a Kingdom
of Faith and a Kingdom of Grace.

Again, man's life as Spirit is yet continuous in time The Life
and is lived, in one of its aspects, under temporal
conditions. He always has to face the future, and
the future contains always the possibility of change.
But life in the Spirit is the life that overcomes
all change, in the sense that it is one of absolute
unity with the Unchangeable. For the life of Spirit,
therefore, it is essential to take up an attitude to all

1 Where stress is laid not so much on the unity, as such, of Spirit with
Spirit, as on the actual domination of the varied and changing process of
goodness by jjpis one unity of " holiness," the condition is not one of "Justifica-
tion," but of " Sanctification. " The first is unique, single, all-complete an
"act" of God ; the second a continual activity a " work."

Z

338 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CH.

possible change by which the religious mind will
see it and feel it and think it in the light of the one
Absolute Spirit, with which unity is maintained. It
must be an attitude which destroys all sense of
what change universally brings with it, fear and
disappointment. The sense of unity must be so
complete as to negate or destroy all that fear abso-
lutely. But it must at the same time be a positive
attitude as well. It must be one which regards the
unity as ultimately consummated, as in the long run
and in spite of all achieved. It is thus an attitude
continuous with the life of Faith, in which it is claimed
to be so. The attitude to the Divine Spirit which
expresses all this is the attitude of Hope. It is the
attitude of unity with the Whole amidst and in spite
0/"that flux and change which necessarily enter into
the life of Spirit as a concrete, all-embracing unity
of experience. Hence it is a necessary constituent
of the religious life of the Spirit.

The Life Again, this unity of man's Spirit with God's is
ove ' not simply an orderly unity the unity of righteous-
ness, which is a whole through parts and not
simply a summary unity, a unity of change, which
is a whole in spite of them. It is a directly pre-
sented, a simple, single sense of unity, a unity in the
sphere of feeling, as distinctive from the sphere of
order or reason and the sphere of endeavour or will.
The supreme unity expressed in terms of feeling
is Love. Love is double-sided, but is the same for
it is each side. There cannot be Love without distinc-
t'hST 11 ^ on an d tnere cannot be Love unless the distinction
Faith." i s held by each side in an indissoluble immediate
unity. Hence the content for both sides is here
precisely the same a unity of feeling. There is

x RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT 339

not in this attitude something from the side of the
religious mind (Faith), and something else from the
Divine Spirit (Grace). It is one and the same for
each. The unity is completely continuous and
identical for both sides. It expresses, therefore,
more completely than Faith that absolute and con-
tinuous union of Spirit with Spirit. It is "greater"
than Faith.

In Hope, again, with its contrast between And
apparent and real, changeable and unchanging, fjjjjf"
immediate and ultimate, the Life of Spirit has one H P C -
aspect for man's Spirit, another for God's. But in
Love all such contrasts disappear. There is one
and the same Life at the same time for the Spirit of
man and of God. It expresses and contains their
essential union without a jar of opposition, and is
therefore more adequate to the Life of Spirit. Love
is "greater" than Hope.

Love, moreover, because feeling necessarily exists Love is the
in the present, is a present reality. Since the union

is an eternal union, the Love in which it is expressed the Life of

-r- i T r i .the Spirit.

is an Jbternal Love, not confined to one moment but
constant and enduring as Spirit itself. The Life of
Love is an eternal Now. But Faith takes its stand
on what God has been, on what is behind the seen
and temporal, while Hope takes hold of what is to
be, of what is beyond the visible and changeable.
These are, therefore, conditions of man's finite
spiritual existence, are required essentially because
of man's conscious finitude ; and would disappear
with the absolute sense of continuous union with
God. They would in that case simply not be
required. Because Faith and Hope have that
character, they are rather conditions than the

340 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CH.

consummation of Spiritual Life. But Love being
eternal is a final achievement, is absolute union
with God. For that reason also, therefore, Love is
"greater" than Faith, "greater" than Hope.
The three The essential attitudes of Spiritual, or Revealed

ScttrTof a Reli g ion > ma 7 be said to be Faith, Hope, Love. All
Revealed are forms of the one unity of Spirit with Spirit, and
ellglon ' are continuous with each other. They express that
unity in its different aspects. The first the unity of
order, or "intellect"; the second that of anticipa-
tion, or active endeavour ; the third that of feeling.
The first is a unity embracing all the past of man's
life ; the second, all the future ; the third, all the
present. These are moments or phases of the
complete realisation of Spirit, because this is con-
crete and embraces all forms of its life. And all are
related and connected inside the one life of Spirit
in union with Spirit. These attitudes, then, seem to
exhaust the moments of a Spiritual or Revealed
Religion as actually realised.

Symbol It has its cult. But here symbol plays a secondary

Reality anc ^ ancillary part, and the reality symbolised is

never confounded with it for any length of time.

That reality just lies in its spiritual content, in the

" fruits of the Spirit." 1

1 The life of the Spirit, as St. Paul, an apostle of the Religion of the Spirit,
pointed out, is to be found in its "fruits," in the spiritual content realised,
such as "Love," "Joy," "Peace," "Long-suffering," etc. each of them
expressing that Spirit is in union with Spirit.

It is important to bear in mind that the realisation of this form of religious
experience lies in these states, these "fruits of the Spirit," which are the out-
come of the essential attitudes above mentioned.

When this is grasped, it is at once seen that all else must have a merely
derivative and conditional significance. In particular we can see how this
throws light (i) on the relation of this type of Religion to its Doctrines, dogmatic
or otherwise ; and (2) on its connexion with the great organisation of man's
spiritual purposes the Ethical Order of Society. As to the first, doctrines no

x RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT 341

This phase of Religion, like other forms of Sacrifice in

^5 .\ f

Religion, can also be realised by Sacrifice : but the Sp e ir " se
sacrifice in this case is characteristically different.
In the Religion of Nature it is the sacrifice or break-
ing up of a natural object. In the second type of
Religion it is sacrifice of the inner self a " broken
and a contrite heart." In the third the end can be

doubt are essential, in the sense that they are required to help the maintenance
of the Spiritual Life. They do so by taking its intensely concrete Unity in its
various aspects, expressing these in universally intelligible terms, and thereby
at once steadying and focussing the content it possesses. They are devised by
reflection for this end, and are subsidiary to its attainment, whether the doctrine
be general, like that of the " Trinity," in itself a profound speculative analysis of
Absolute Spirit, or special, like that of the relatively insignificant doctrine of
"Infant Baptism." When the doctrines are taken, not as aids, but as ends,
conflict is sure to arise sooner or later the old conflict between the Spirit, which
" quickens," and the letter which "kills," and kills because it confines, restricts,
suppresses the universal life of Spirit. As to the second, there must be direct
relation between a Spiritual Religion and the Order of a Society ; for both are
Spirit in substance, and the former must have its cult in the latter, as the
historical organisation in time of the human Spirit. The former must be
established in the latter to gain definite security. But what is set up is not the
Spiritual Religion as such, for that is absolutely universal and cannot be con-
fined, like the second type of Religion, to any specific historical Society ; it is
the cult or Institution, Spiritual Religion as cultivated by a nation with definite
traditions and ideals, that is " established " by a Society. It must be established
to get its position recognised in a Society ; but it can never be confined to such
a cult, for this is specific and must vary. There is certain, therefore, to arise
a conflict between the Religion and the Institution, owing to the perpetual
necessity for adjusting the whole truth to a partial realisation of it. Hence the
endless problem of "the relation of Church and State" endless, because the
State is progressively realising itself, whereas the Religion of the Church is a
universal Religion of the Spirit, the same for ever and everywhere. The establish-
ment of this Religion in a Society, while it is a necessity (since it must take
root in a Society to live at all), is at best a standing alliance of incompatibles.
The alliance may be maintained with varying degrees of success, but the incom-
patibility is there all the while, and is sure to come out as the development of
the relationship between the two proceeds. Then the incompatibility will
appear as an open conflict of authority between the claims of the Spirit to
eternal recognition and the claims of the State to temporal power. In such
a conflict sometimes the former will carry the day, as happened in the Scottish
Church in 1843 ; sometimes the latter, as took place in the same Church in
1904. In principle, the conflict between Church and State in the sphere of
historical organisation is precisely the same as that between "spirit" and
" letter " in the sphere of Doctrine.

342 RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE CH.

achieved, not by a sacrifice of what is a part, but
by the surrender of the whole the absolute giving
up of Spiritual Life to Spiritual Life, the absolute
sacrifice of Spiritual Individuality. But such a
sacrifice cannot be simply negative as in the former
cases. It is the conscious surrender of all because
of, and therefore in order to realise, the complete
union with all Spirit. To give up Spirit to Spirit,
the eternal to the eternal, is still to be Spirit
absolutely. The sacrifice is not annihilation but
achievement ; not destruction and defeat, but
triumph triumph, not merely over the limitations
of " nature " (Death), but over the very limitations
of Spiritual Individuality. To give up Spirit is
thus a supreme accomplishment of the Life of
Spirit, the triumphal end of Faith, the joyful act
of Love, the absolute realisation of Hope. Hence
it is the supreme sacrifice of human history. As
such, its completeness is acknowledged to have
been accomplished by one Spirit the founder of
a Religion of the Spirit, Christ. It is maintained
that to do this as a historical fact, is to do it once
for all, for all men. And, being done, it is held to
ensure the triumph of Spirit in the history of the
human race. It "saves" man's Spirit from the
ruin of nature and the negations of moral evil it
" redeems " mankind from all his finitude. 1
These We must not suppose that these three forms

phases of f Religion are merely historically apart. 2 We may

Religion ft nc j expressions of the higher forms in the lower,

imply one l . .

another, and we do rind the lower forms coexisting with

1 To work out this in detail is impossible here. The above is merely a
partial outline of the life of Spiritual or Revealed Religion.

2 See p. 321, note.

x CONTEMPLATION 343

and appearing in the higher. Thus while religious
life in Western Europe is ostensibly " Christian,"
i.e. Religion of the Spirit, in point of fact much of
it, perhaps the greater part of it, is in actual experi-
ence Religion of Nature, or at most Religion of the
Moral Order. 1 The religious life in the Spirit is
only realised in very few individuals, and by the
remainder is frankly looked on as an "ideal," to be
aimed at rather than actually fulfilled. Still, even
if it is looked on as an ideal, it is of profound
significance. For the cult of Spiritual Religion has
enormous value in the history of religious life, if
only as a way of ever keeping before the religious
mind what is its highest achievement, and of train-
ing the worshipper up to that individual self-
abandonment to the life of Spirit, which is man's
supreme achievement on earth.

In conclusion, it remains to be added that while Contem-
Religion is certainly the most general way in which p a
Absolute Spirit is realised in experience, it is not
the only form in which its natgre can be revealed.
The Life of Spirit for its own sake, Spirit self-
complete and self-contained, is experienced, though
doubtless by a limited number of mankind, in the
mood of Contemplation, Philosophical or Artistic.
There are some few elect Spirits to whom the
activity of 1/0770-49 yo^o-ews is the way to the Eternal
rather than the life of religious Love. There are
also some for whom Spirit greets Spirit through the
harmonies of sense more readily than by either
Religion or Philosophy. With these, however, we

1 The reason of this is doubtless to be found in the limited outlook of the
general mind. It wants to see definite results, specific acts, "something
done." The State and Family come home to the individual with greater
fulness of reality than the wider life of an " Absolute Spirit."

344 PHILOSOPHY CH. x

shall not deal here. Within the limits we have set
ourselves we seem justified in confining our attention
to the most prominent and historically the most
universal mode in which the "typical individual,"
whose experience we have been considering, realises
the life of Absolute Spirit. That mode is un-
doubtedly Religion. Contemplation does not realise
complete experience in the same way as Religion,
nor is Artistic Activity the same in character or form
as Philosophy. For the reason indicated, however,
we need not deal here with those ways of realising
Absolute Spirit. 1 Suffice it to say that in Contem-
plation as well as in Religion we have the realisa-
tion of a spiritual world complete and self-contained,
where man's spirit works with a sense of freedom
only possible when it is consciously one with the
very life of Absolute Spirit. Hence the claim of
knowledge to attain to Absolute Knowledge or
Philosophy is in itself perfectly valid. Moreover,
it is necessary that this should be so : for it is by
Philosophy that all the processes of experience
(Religion among them) are constructed. The
development of experience as a Whole attains its
end in the realisation of that mode of experience
(Philosophy) by which all experience has been
evolved. The culmination of an Absolute Idealism
is the justification of the idealistic position itself, as
the ultimate form of knowledge. 2

1 A discussion of part of the question the distinction and relation of
Philosophy and Religion will be found in the writer's previous volume (v.
Hegel's Logic i chap. xii. )

2 This I have worked out in more detail in Hegel's Logic, chaps, vi. and vii.

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