LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, %F----'^?ris¥ la. SlieBl._._ UNITED STATES OP AMEEIfA. Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2011 witii funding from Tine Library of Congress http://www.arcliive.org/details/baselconceptsinpOOormo BASAL CONCEPTS IN ^ PHILOSOPHY BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY AN INQUIRY INTO BEING, NON-BEING, AND BECOMING BY / ALEXANDER T. ORMOND, Ph.D. PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY /}C>1¥ -^ / NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1894 ^' 9' COPTEIGHT, 1894, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS TROW DIRECTORY PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK PREFACE The motive of this volume is a desire to restore the primacy of certain conceptions which are in danger of disappearing from our modern thinking-, and to reform others which, as I think, have been wrongly or inadequately conceived. Reflection has led me to dissent from monistic pantheism on the one hand, and from agnosticism on the other, two of the leading tendencies in the thought of our cen- tury, and to seek a metaphysical basis for philos- ophy that may adequately ground a rational theory of knowledge and being. With this end in view, I have sought to reconstruct philosophy upon the trinal categories of being, non-being, and becoming, and also to reform the current methods of meta- physics by showing that a completely rational idea of being can be achieved only when we represent it under our highest and most concrete categories and translate it into self-conscious personal spirit. The result is a spiritualistic metaphysic which leads us to ground the world of reality in an Absolute pos- sessed of supreme intelligence, goodness, and love. The order in which the basal concepts emerged in my own thinking, is substantially as follows : Hav- ing, by historic study and reflection, become con- Vl PEEFACE viuced of the identity of the logos with the principle of conscious personality, I began to see its value as a means of penetrating the opaque absolute of the agnostic creed, and obtaining an intelligible concej)- tion of its inner nature and connection with the rela- tive. The application of the logos-category led di- rectly to the personal construction of being and to the idea of the Absolute as personal, self-conscious spint. It was at this point that the dualistic light came to me in an intuition of the immanent move- ment or dialectic of spirit. For it became clear that the activity of a self-conscious spirit must be first of all intellectual, and that its primal intellection would be dual in its nature, including a positive intuition of "being's self or the logos, and a negative intuition of its not-self or the a-logos. And reflection made it clear also that the logos and a-logos are primal and mutually exclusive opposites, and that while spirit- ual being is to be conceived as exercising internally the activity which intuites the loositive and negative terms, yet the object of the negative intuition, the a-logos, must be excluded from being as its oppo- site; that is, as non-being. The exclusion of non-being from being as its op- posite, never to be identified with it, laid the foun- dations of a dualistic creed, and through it of a reform of spiritual dialectic in the direction of a. non-pantheistic theory of creation and the connection of the Absolute with the sphere of relativity. For it became clear that the primal intuition of non-being would motive an outgo of volitional energy into the PREFACE VU negative sphere for its suppression and annulment and that the nature generated out of it would not be pure being but becoming, a creature including in its constitution opposite moments of being and non-be- ing. Thus, through the conception of the negative datum, I began to see that an answer might be forth- coming to the hitherto unresolved problem, why the creative energy of the Absolute falls short of an ab- solute result and only produces the finite and imper- fect. The book itself must answer the question how far the solution is to be regarded as satisfactory. For the last, but not least important, insight I have to thank the great master of thinking, Aristotle. The identification of his category of self - activity with the nature of absolute and self-existent being, was the " holding turn " that reduced all the ele- ments to final unity and coherence. In the unfolding of these basal concepts a certain use of symbolism has become necessary. But the discerning reader will penetrate the shell to the kernel that it conceals. In conclusion, I wish to dis- claim any jDurpose to add another to existing sys- tems of philosophy, of which the world is already over-full. My ambition is rather, through the em- phasising of certain fundamental ideas, to impart a new spiritual vitality to the body philosophic. It is possible for philosophy to be spiritually dead while it is intellectually alive. But it is only through its spiritual energy that it is able to become an impor- tant organ of truth and to minister to the highest needs of humanity. V Vlll PREFACE I wish to acknowledg-e the great debt I owe to my honored teacher, the venerable McCosh, to the spirit of whose realistic philosophy I hope my own work will be found to be loyal. My acknowledgments are due to Mr. A. L. Frothing-ham, Sr., of Princeton, for important sugg-estions reg-arding- the principle of dualism and for kindness in reading and criticising my manuscript ; also to my colleague, Professor A. F. West, for painstaking and appreciative interest in my work and for many helpful criticisms and suggestions, and to my pupil, Mr. G. A. Tawney, for valuable assistance in reading proof-sheets. There are other obligations which cannot be acknowledged in detail. My indebtedness to the masters, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Kant, Hegel, and Lotze, is too obvious to require special mention. Alexander T. Ormond. Princeton, January 20, 1894. CONTENTS PAGE Introductory, 1 I. The Norm, 9 II. Being and Non-being, 34 III. Becoming, 44 IV. Space and Time, 59 v. Cosmic Nature, 70 VI. Organic Nature, 83 VII. Psychic Nature, 96 VIII, Consciousness, 115 IX. Morality, 135 X. Non-being and Evil, 138 XI. Communal Nature, 155 XII. History, 171 XIII. Religion, 194 XIV. Art, 318 XV. Knowledge, 335 XVI. Logos, 355 XVII. God, 366 XVIII. Spiritual Activity, 393 Conclusion, . » 300 F^ BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY INTEODUCTOEY One of the most striking features of contemporary thought is its weakness in respect to fundamental philosophical concex)tions. The masses of the in- telligent are espousing agnosticism, not as the re- sult of any reasoned conviction, but out of sheer inability to rise above the middle axioms of human thinking. To this weakness is due in great measure the prevalence of sensationalism in Psychology and phenomenism in Philosophy ; the former springing out of a kind of blindness of the soul to its own spiritual nature ; the latter from the inability of the reason of the time to conceive any categories of reality transcending the mechanical and sensible. It is the merit of the transcendental movement, in the thinking of this century, that it possesses an in- sight which leads it to refuse to respect the limits of phenomenism and to insist not only on the exist- ence of realities beyond the sensible horizon but also on the power of human intelligence to embrace these within the circle of knowledge. But tran- 3 BASAL COiS-CEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY scendentalism, although it has the root of the matter in it, has not been able to wage on the whole a suc- cessful warfare against superficial tendencies. Kant- ism has failed on account of its only partial grasp of the conditions of its problem and its consequent aloofness from the processes of experience, while Hegelism, a much more competent theory, and one that has in it the true antidote of phenomenism, fails in part, because of its misconception of the true dialectic of spirit, a misconception that leaves the system XDrisoned in a closed sphere of absolut- ism. The clash of philosophical S3^stems is thus reducible to a conflict between speculative blind- ness on one side, and a kind of speculative aberration on the other, with no competent mediator in sight to heal the breach. Again, the trend of the scientific thinking of the century has been so strong in the direction of evolu- tion that faith in it has come to be a recognized test of scientific orthodoxy ; while, on the other hand, the religious orthodoxy of the time has felt constrained to take toward the evolution theory, if not an atti- tude of hostility, at least one of distrust, on account of its tendency to unsettle religious convictions and its apparent hostility to supernaturalism and the doctrine of final causes. A painful breach has thus arisen between the convictions of science and those of religion, and this breach has contributed still fur- ther to cloud the vision and to trouble the spirit of the time. The following inquiry is an attemjDt to deal with INTRODUCTORY 3 tliese and other scarcely less grave issues in a way that will not be open to the charge of superficial- ity. We are convinced that the only radical cure for the limitations of our thinking is to be found in the discovery of profounder and more adequate categories. Knowledge is founded in categories, and its successive stages arise not primarily, out of the generalization of facts, but rather out of the emergence of new categories under which our generalizations are to proceed. We not only gen- eralize facts, but our reflection rises from categories of space and time to those of substance and cause, and only rests finally in the supreme ideas of unity and ground. Now when we seek to construe the ground of things adequately we are led by a necessary trend of reflection to translate it into the self-existent, and this again into the self-active energy of Aristotle. But self -activity in itself does not afford a final rest- ing-place for thought. Consciousness is either a mere by-product and spectator in the universe, or it is inherent in the lorimal essence of things. But self -consciousness is a form of self-activity and can- not be conceived as a by-product. And all conscious- ness is going on to be self-conscious. The final rest- ing-place of thought is found when self-activity and self-conscious activity are identified, and primal be- ing is translated into conscious self-activity. When primal being is conceived as conscious self-activity its highest category can no longer be the logos construed as abstract intelligence. The re- 4 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY flection of Anaxagoras and Aristotle is not adequate on this point, but we must learn the lesson of the subsequent historic movement which culminated in the idea of the logos as a principle of immanent personal activity. And if the objection be raised that such a conception of the logos could not be completely attained without reference to religious history and literature, we would meet the objection with a plea of confession and avoidance. Philos- ophy must recognize its indebtedness to history, and especially to religious history. The highest spir- itual intuitions of the race have been achieved through channels of religious experience. We claim for philosophy the right to seek light wherever it can be found. If this light should come through the channels of sacred literature, that is no reason why philosophy should not avail herself of it, loro- vided she do not receive it on mere authority, but is able to translate it into rational terms and deal with it according to her own legitimate methods. The logos is the highest category of rational in- sight, and when applied to the primal self-activity renders a conception of its nature possible. In short, the cure of the agnostic blindness is to be found in the logos-category. This renders the immanent nature and activity of absolute being intelligible. In its light we are able to conceive a spiritual move- ment of internal conscious distinction and unity, which translates the Absolute into living spiritual energy and personal being. And this achievement not only intelligizes the ground of reality but sup- INTRODUCTORY 5 plies the clew to its productive and generative re- lations to the world. For it enables us to achieve an intuition of that primal dialectic of spirit out of which the whole gen- erative movement of things proceeds. Here, as we see, one of the primal difficulties of reflection has arisen. The Hegelian insight has seized upon the dialectic, but has misconstrued it at a vital point. We must not only apprehend that the primal ac- tivity of being contains the dual moments of affir- mation and negation, but we must also realize, as Plato did, that primal opposites can never pass into each other. Being, therefore, affirms itself, but it does not deny itself, but rather its opposite. The problem of the negative becomes thus the last and most erudite issue in philosophy. If we yield the point that primal opposites may pass into one another, then the whole dialectic of reality be- comes a process of the self-affirmation and self-de- nial of being, and the distinction between being and non-being vanishes. In that case, however, the dialectic is shorn of its power as an explanatory princi^Dle, for it can never render conceivable the generation of a relative order from the Absolute. Pantheism is thus its logical outcome. If we maintain the position that primal opposites do not pass into one another, we then have the prob- lem of non-being on our hands. For then spirit must be conceived as affirming itself, but as denying, not itself but its opposite. Non-being thus becomes a transcendent opposite to being, that which it ne- 6 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY gates, opposes, and seeks to suppress and annul. Tlie value of this conception as an explanatory prin- ciple, as we find in tlie following- inquiry, consists in the fact that it renders the genesis of a relative and imperfect order from the Absolute conceivable. That modification which difi^erentiates the relative from its absolute ground becomes intelligible when we are able to supply a motive for creative energy and thus conceive a distinction between the immanent movement of spirit and its volitional outgo in crea- tive and generative activity. This motive arises in spirit's intuition of its opposite, and its impulse to go out into what may be symbolically represented as the sphere of non-being, in order to annul the negative and generate positive reality in its place. We admit that the doctrine of non-being thus arrived at is not free from difiiculties. One of these arises from the necessity of conceiving non- being in a purely negative sense, and yet ascribing to it some of the functions of causation. This seems to involve a contradiction. We think, however, that the difficulty is greater in appearance than in real- ity. For it is conceded that effects in being may arise from the non-existence of positive conditions. Now, as the inquiry shows, the essential negative characteristic of the opposite of primal being is the absence from it of a ground or principle of self-existence. In view of this it may be symbol- ized as an abyss in which being has no support. A reality generated in such a sphere would partici- pate in non-being in the sense that it would have INTRODUCTORY 7 no immanent principle or ground of self-existence. In tliis sense non-being- is a cause in a purely nega- tive sense and contradiction does not arise. Tliis absence of self-existence and this depend- ence on that which transcends it is, as St. Augustine profoundly shows, the differentia of relative and gen- erated being. It is that modification which panthe- istic principles are never able to explain, and upon which naturalism is ever stumbling into agnosti- cism. The same principle, as the inquiry shows, enables us to attain a rational conception of the ground pro- cess of relativity, which is that of a passage from immanent potentiality to realized actuality, an evolu- tion whose x3resupposition is a spiritual absolute, and whose stages are mechanism, life, and spirit. In the conception of the world-process thus achieved, there is a ground, we think, for the harmonizing of scientific and religious convictions. For if evolu- tion be real and proceed according to the categories of mechanism and the law of natural causation, the basis of science is established and her intuition is vindicated ; whereas, if mechanism and causality themselves have as their presupposition a spiritual absolute, and as their finality the evolution of spirit, the substantial requirements of the intuition of re- ligion have been met and satisfied. And this satisfaction will be the more complete if it is seen that out of the same grounds on which the whole historic process arises, springs also that prin- ciple of spiritual mediation which is one of the essen- 8 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY tial elements in religion. The whole spiritual his- tory of nature and humanity finds its rationale in the postulate of a transcendent and self-existent being whose creative energy functions in the world as the immanent spiritual principle of its existence and de- velopment. This postulate grounds and rationalizes the whole realm of science and its categories, while in the sphere of the ultimate issues it provides, in the synthesis of immanence and transcendence which it implies, an adequate foundation for a Philosophy of Religion. The spirit of the time is not lacking in scholar- ship or zeal for the truth. What it needs most is a fresh baptism in the fountain of insight. Philos- ophy needs to become more truly historical by escap- ing from the form and entering more into the spirit of the world's thinking. She must also use her own eyes to look up into the heavens and down into the heart of humanity. The organ of philosophy is re- flection, but her highest gift is spiritual intuition. Through this she achieves the primal insight she needs to qualify her for her highest mission, which is to unify knowledge and heal the breaches of the human spirit. THE NORM Meditation on the liistory of thought leads to the conviction that Philosophy has a distinctive and in- dividual norm, and that this norm contains in it the secret of the highest wisdom. But when we essay to search the annals of philosophy for the idea that will express its essence, we find ourselves launched on a perilous voyage over an uncertain sea. The highest point of ancient thinking was that reached in the speculation of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. At the heart of this reflection there functions an idea as the inner motive of its activity and develop- ment. The thought of Socrates is psychologic, and he conceives the idea as a principle of generic activ- ity in the human consciousness. To stimulate this principle and develop from its activity a rational system of truth is the aim of all his teaching. Pla- to's thought transcends the psychologic sphere, and becomes ontologic. To his intuition the idea be- comes transformed into an ontologic archetype, standing objective to conscious reason and energiz- ing as the absolute formative principle in things. Aristotle's thinking is analytic and individual, and 10 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY reacts from the transcendent nniversalism of Plato. The Stagirite attempts, and in a measure achieves, a reconciliation of the iDsychologic and ontologic points of view in his conception of the individual real as including, in one aspect, a synthesis of the universal and particular ; in another, a union of self-activity and i3otence. It is this latter aspect which is of interest here. Socrates had represented the idea as a self-active universal energizing in the consciousness of man, while Plato elevated it into a transcendent ontologic self-activity. Now Aristotle, in his distinction be- tween self -activity and potence, achieves, what Socra- tes and Plato were not able to do, namely, a rational basis for a distinction between the primal ground of things and the nature of things themselves. The primal ground is pure self - activity, pwxis actus, while things are a dual synthesis of self-activity and iDotence. While, therefore, the jarimal ground is complete in itself, and is not moved, things have a history in space and time ; they are not comi^letely self-active but have a movement that depends upon conditions outside of themselves. Their history thus falls into a conditioned series, and evolution is tlieir law. The world's thought presents no deeper insight than this. Aristotle barely misses a final and ade- quate solution of the profoundest issue of philoso- phy. But the Aristotelian chain is not complete. The question still presses, If the primal ground of things be a pure self-active lorinciple, Avhy should THE NORM 11 not all the products of its energizing be the same ? Why should potence and its fruit, imperfection, exist in a system whose creative springs are self-sufficient and perfect ? To these questions this ancient spec- ulation has no coherent answer. The modification of self-activity, which constitutes the differentia of produced things, is brought in by what Hegel would call an " external reflection," and is left without ra- tional ground or explanation. The scene of our meditation changes to the open- ing of modern speculation, and the vision of three epoch-making thinkers rises before our eyes. Des Cartes' thinking, like that of Socrates, finds its start- ing-point in the human consciousness, and the idea it develo^DS is that of the psyche itself as thinking sub- stance. But Des Cartes does not identify his sub- stance with self-activity, conceiving it as relatively inert and motionless. His notion of the psyche turns out, therefore, to be speculatively barren, providing no adequate principle for rationally apprehending either God or nature, whose ideas are, nevertheless, inseparable from the human con- sciousness. The result is a practical failure of his enterprise and the breaking up of his sj^stem into a number of intractable and incommunicable spheres. Spinoza is the Platonizing thinker of this group, who transforms Cartesianism into ontology by rais- ing the uncreated substance of Des Cartes to the plane of absolute being, while he reduces the rela- tive substances, mind and matter, to the ranks as the attributes through which it manifests itself. 12 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY But this ontologic transformation does not fully meet expectations. It yindicates tlie Absolute by swallowing up tlie relative, and with it the individual. Spinoza follows Des Cartes in his failure to identify substance with self-active principle. His absolute does not move, but stands there forever in the same place. Natura natuvans is not a self-active being", apurus actus, nor is the natura naturata a manifes- tation of this self -activity in the forms of relativity. The relation is static, not dynamic. The primal substance is simply a substrate of attributes and modes which rest upon it, but are not rationally grounded in its nature. In Platonism we find a lower and a higher insight. When thinking in the lesser light Plato conceives the archetypes as mere models and patterns which an external demiurge dips into the material, so to speak, and forms created things. Under the influence of the larger insight, he rises to higher views and identifies the arche- types with self-active principles which operate as the formative energies of creation. Spinoza does not rise to this higher insight of the master. His system is Platonism on the lower plane of the archetypes, conceived after the analogy of the Car- tesian substance and reduced to absolute unity. The pit of Spinozism is not pan-theism, but pan- substantialism. Its bane is its bondage to a false idea of substance, and its cure is to be found, not so much in the breaking up of its all-devouring unity as in the reform of its idea of substance. In Leibnitz we find a reincarnation of the individ- THE NORM 13 ualizing- tliouglit of Aristotle. Leibnitz has learned tlie fear of the all-devouring One of Spinoza, and the cure, he conceives, must be brought about by a re- assertion of individualism. In his insight Leibnitz is a true child of Aristotle. He sees that philoso- phy has been bound and paralyzed by a false idea of substance, and he seeks to free her from her bond- age by going back to Aristotle and restoring his doctrine of substance as a self-active principle. Un- der the double insight his reflection breaks up the ontologic unity of Spinoza into a plurality of self- energizing individual monads, potential or active spiritual psyches, each an independent substance in itself, because it contains in it the principle and motive of its own evolution. Leibnitz is also a true child of Aristotle in recognizing the limitations of pure individualism and in seeking to ground the finite, developing individualities in a " monad of mo- nads," the equivalent of Aristotle's purus actus. In other words, Leibnitz's reform of the idea of sub- stance is a revolution ; it roots out the static con- ceptions which had dominated, and in a sense jper- verted, the early period of our modern thinking, and reintroduces into philosophy those dynamic catego- ries under which the highest fruits of ancient spec- ulation were achieved. But in face of the highest problems of philosophy we do not find that Leibnitz is more successful than his master. To the question how the existence of the imperfect and undeveloped is consistent with the existence of a perfect self-active ground, Leibnitz 14 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY has no rational answer. We look in vain in this modern cycle, as we looked in vain in the reflection of the ancient triumvirate, for a datum from which an intelligible reason for this emergence of imper- fection from perfection can be deduced. It is clear that our meditation must still go for- ward. For philosophy, as distinguished from psy- chology, the development from Locke to Hume has chiefly a negative value. It furnishes a natural his- tory of the decline and death of speculation, smoth- ered in a mass of emxjiric details. In Kant, how- ever, the genius of philosophy again reappears. The Socratic thinking, modified by the Cartesian cycle, is again incarnated. Kant applies his ana- lytic to human consciousness in order to rediscover in it those universals the loss of which had plunged British thought into scepticism. The result is the categories, the most important single outcome of modern philosophy. These categories are in the Kantian system the self-active universals which translate ordinary experience into rational knowl- edge and thus lay the foundations of science. But Kant, like Socrates, puts a psychologic limit on his categories ; they are valid only for human cogni- tion, but in the transcendent ontologic sphere are without authority. The result is that i)hilosophy stands like a house divided against itself. Knowl- edge is only of subjective value while the shadow of an objective and transcendent Ileal forever haunts the consciousness of man and destroys his rest. Philosophy stands thus as a propounder of a sphinx's THE NORM 15 riddles and swallows up all her own children because they are unable to solve them. Kant's failure was the motive of subsequent spec- ulation. With a backward Dionysian sweep his negations fostered the ag-nostic tendencies of British thought. The forward impulse is toward transcen- dentalism. The transformation of the psychologic principle of Kant into ontology takes place in Fichte and Schelling. Fichte's reflection seizes on the shadowy noumenal self of Kant, which Kant had endeavored to secure in a moral postulate, and translates it into the idea of an absolute ego ; while Schelling, rightly denying that Fichte ever com- pletely succeeds in reducing the recalcitrant object or A7istoss to subjection to his absolute, conceives the project of enlarging the continent of being so as to embrace both subject and object in the notion of the Absolute. Schelling then completes the onto- logic transformation of Kant in his dual conception of a transcendent absolute, in which subject and ob- ject, ideal and real, stand as parallels with a medial relation of indifference between them. But further reflection taught him at length that such a concep- tion of the Absolute is self -contradictory, and that the real absolute in his system is the point of indif- ference itself ; the evolution of w^hich leads again into the closed circle of Spinoza, a fate from which he escapes only by losing himself in the clouds of theosophic mysticism. In Hegel we have again a return from ontologic universalism to individualism. But the Hegelian 16 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY return is on a higher plane than that of Leibnitz. To Hegel the individual is a category which con- tains in solution the universal and the particular, and from another point of view, the subject and object. Hegel's conception of absolute being is that of a self-active principle which includes the distinction of subject and object, and everywhere leads to individual manifestations. The self-activ- ity of the Absolute expresses itself in a dialectical movement which passes through three stages in its return upon itself and functions everywhere as the inner reality of things. Now Hegel has two modes of conceiving the movement of this dialectic energy, (1) the logical, which starts with the most abstract notion of being and represents the dialectical pro- cession of thought as a perpetual concretion which culminates in the highest and richest idea, that of absolute spirit ; (2) the ontologic, which reversing the logical order starts from the idea of absolute spirit, and represents creation as the going out of absolute spirit into objective self -alienation, through nature and finite spirit back into itself. The pro- cess of relativity is thus conceived as a drama of self-evolution and self-reconciliation of the Abso- lute Spirit in which it is begun, continued, and ended. Overawed by the magnitude of Hegel's idea our reflection might end here ; but the old questions come up and clamor for an answer. We admit that Hegel has touched the highest point of modern speculation, but we are unable to conceive how THE NOKM 17 logically a notion which is, ex hypotJiesi, the thinnest of abstractions (in Hegel being is the last abstrac- tion) can be the bearer of a dialectic that presses on through self-affirmation and self - negation, never staying its footsteps until it has reached the bosom of absolute spirit. The truth is, the logical move- ment is a superinduction. The true dialectic is an external reflection ; it is the movement of the spirit itself refusing to be satisfied until it has reached its own highest category. The normal movement of Hegelism is the on- tologic, the self-uttering of absolute spirit in the sphere of its manifestations. But here we meet a difficulty. How is it conceivable that absolute spirit can evolve or utter from itself anything less perfect than itself ? We cannot conceive how abso- lute being, simply by an immanental dialectic, can generate from itself a sphere of relative and im- perfect nature. There is no datum in Hegelism, as we found none in Aristotle, which makes it possible to ground rationally the distinctive character of the relative, or to justify the Absolute in resting satisfied with a relative and imperfect result of its energizing. And since this ontologic aspect of Hegelism is its side of chief philosophic value, we conclude that Hegel fails, as Aristotle failed and as Leibnitz failed, to discover a rational nexus between the relative and its absolute ground. The chasm still yawns before us, therefore, so that if we start from the relative we fail to reach the absolute ground ; whereas, if we proceed from the Absolute, we are unable to 18 BASAL CONCEPTS IN" PHILOSOPHY find any real passage across to tlie sphere of rela- tivity. In the foregoing" historical survey we have touched only the mountain-x)eaks of speculation, ancient and modern. The great lesson the masters have to teach is that philosophy reaches its highest category in the notion of being as, in its essence, self-activity. The intuition of this is as old as Socrates and Plato. In modern philosophy Hegel is the one thinker whose system has embodied the insight most clearly and adequately ; and for this reason, in spite of all its shortcomings, Hegelism reaches the high-water mark of modern speculation. Its failure, therefore, to ground rationally the sphere of relativity in the Absolute has thrown modern thought back upon it- self in a wave of philosophic despair. If the highest thinking fails to ground knowledge in an absolute principle, the logical inference seems to be that the attempt is vain and that agnosticism is the final out- come of philosophy. Before accepting this conclusion as final, how- ever, some further reflection is necessary. Let us assume that in the idea of self-activity philosophy has achieved its highest category. It is still possi- ble for it to fall short in two distinct directions. It may either fail to conceive adequately the nature and implications of self-activity, or it may overlook some datum that is essential to the solution of its problem. The first of these considerations will oc- cupy the remainder of this chapter. It will be con- ceded, we think, that a cardinal fault of old Platonism THE NORM 19 is its tendency to represent the self-active ideas or archetypes as independent entities, transcendent and objective to the mind of the Creator. And since these archetypes constituted the whole form and structure of rational conception and knowledge, a tendency inevitably arose in later Platonic thinking" to separate the Creator from the world of forms and to regard him as only negatively conceivable, and therefore unintelligible. This tendency was stimu- lated by the contact of Hellenism with the panthe- istic thought of the Orient, which forever oscillates between two poles ; the negative unity of the abso- lute ground of the world and the nothingness of the sphere of plurality and change. An absolute cleft was thus threatened between the world and its cre- ative ground. And for this difficulty there was no cure in the reflection of Aristotle. For while Aris- totle espoused the doctrine of Anasagoras and trans- lated his purus actus into vovroceed from a common ac- tivity in the Absolute, we must note their variant relations to the sphere of non-being-. The dual con- stitution of matter arises, as we saw, from the want of self-supporting ground in the negative sx)here. The XDeculiar constitution of space arises from the di- viduality of non-being-, the absence from it of any principle of continuity ; while that of time finds its negative condition in the chaos of non-being-, the absence from it of any principle of orderly sequence. A cardinal point to be emphasized is that matter, space, and time have a common root in the Abso- lute ; they spring- simultaneously out of a commoiL activity, and their differential features are the neg- ative results of the medium in which they are en- g-endered. Now, we have seen that space is the form of which matter is the substance. How shall time be related to this complex phenomenon "? In a preceding chap- ter we saw how the serial form of becoming- origi- nates. But the idea of time is also that of a series. Time bears the same relation to the series of becom- ing that space bears to matter. It is the form 5 66 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY of the series, wliile its substance is that inner dy- namic causal connection which, as we saw, consti- tutes the principle of natural evolution. The two ideas are inseparable, and when we say that the order of becoming- is serial, we are also saying- that it is temporal. The form of the series, time, and its substance, causal dependence, are thus inseparable, though not the same, and we are not at a loss to un- derstand a tendency so marked in certain phases of modern thought, to identify the substance with the form, and to conceive causation in terms of pure tem- poral succession. Time thus conceived, we call ontologic, because it has its roots in the creative activities which pro- duce the world. This is to be distinguished from psychologic time, which arises in a way analogous to the rise of psychologic space, and regarding which the same problems have been mooted in mod- em thought. The solution of these problems need not delay us, since it is analog-ous to the solution of the space ]3roblems. It is true of time, that while it is to be conceived psychologically as the formal activity of the serial consciousness which appre- hends events in succession, yet this subjectivity must be qualified by the recognition of time as springing from ontologic conditions, and, therefore, objective. In thinking time we retrace the pathway of the creative energy. Of the modern analyses of time, that of St. Augustine is the earliest and one of the most interesting-. Augustine declines to regard the divisions of time into past, present, and future, SPACE ATSTD TIME 67 as ultimate. There is in reality only the present, and there are three times, only in the sense of " a present of things past, a present of thing-s present, and a present of things future." * Translating this into psychological terms, we have a memory-pres- ent, a sight - present, and an expectation - present. But when he comes to the analysis of this present which subserves everything, Augustine's insight fails and he confesses himself baffled. Oontemioorary psychology is scarcely more suc- cessful in meeting the Augustinian difficulty. It distinguishes between a " specious present," which James picturesquely describes as " a sort of saddle- back with a certain length of its own, on which we sit perched and from which we look in two direc- tions into time," and the real present, which for- ever vanishes to a point. This real present the psychologist finds inexplicable, and no wonder, for it involves a datum, we think, which transcends the temporal series. The objective life of man moves in a series, but there is a point at which it transcends the flowing stream and contemplates it forward and backward from the standpoint of eternity. It at- tains this point whenever it retreats into the citadel of the I. That intangible and indivisible present, which the keenest analysis of empiric consciousness never traces to its source, is the voice of the I, whose function, in relation to the temporal series, is to com- prehend its plurality and change under its own ideal unity. * Confessions, Chap. xi. 68 BASAL COTSTCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY If tliis conception be true, we have an ontologic explanation of the " saddle-back of time " which, from this j)oint of view, is to be conceived as rep- resenting- the mode of this ideal comprehension and the extent to which it has been developed in the human soul. The mode is ideal and original, but the extent is a function of experience and seems to progress in a direct ratio to the growing wealth of man's consciousness. To the child the grasp is small compared with that of the adult man ; to the adult savage it is small compared with that of the adult civilized man ; to the adult civilized rustic it is small compared with the comprehension of a Plato or a Newton. The " specious present " simply measures the triumph of individuality over plural- ity and change ; it is the resultant in the psychic sphere of the perpetual struggle of man's ideal self to overcome the relative formlessness of the actual and bring it into harmony with its own law. And in proportion as man succeeds in the struggle, the flight of the temporal becomes more rapid, its riches are emptied more and more lavishly into the basket of the present, and the circle of his individuality becoming more and more comprehensive, he feels the shackles which have bound him as a thrall to the mere temporal and evanescent, loosening their grasp, and his conscious life taking on more and more the image of the eternal. One of the profoundest of recent thinkers* has * S. H. Hodgson : Time and Space. SPACE AND TIME 69 an intuition of the ontologic character of space and time, which, with matter in the form of psychic feel- ing, he represents as the constituents of all knowable being, and his subtle analytic is tasked in order to show how the constituents may be conceived as complicating- into all forms of organized existence. But they are represented as ultimates floating at large m a universe without any absolute moorings, and when the question of absolute being comes up, as it must to all speculative minds, this thinker can discover no exit from the sphere of relativity, and finds himself confronted with the hopeless problem of developing a rational theory of relative nature out of purely relative data. Time and space and matter are ontological elements of relative being. But they are not self-explanatory. They only sug- gest the problem to be solved, and the principle of the solution can be discovered only by looking be- yond these relative forms to the absolute springs from which they have emerged. COSMIC NATURE Hitherto we seem to have been dealing with the fragments of a world-idea. Now the whole vision begins to dawn, and in this chapter we shall seek to trace its outlines. The vision presents itself as the whole idea of cosmic nature, of the world as a sphere of mechanical activities. And just as in the former chapters we achieved the ideas of matter, space, and time, by applying the law of inversion to the outgo of the creative activities into the sphere of non-being, so here we must apply the same prin- ciple in order to reach a conception of the whole mechanical sphere. If we make a synthesis of space, and time, and matter, we have a concept of a sphere of mechanical forces and energies, and if we realize the connection of this sphere with its absolute ground, we have the concept of a world-spirit as the transcendent ground of the world manifesting itself immanently in the mechanical categories of the world-activities. Now, the inner material princijDle of this sphere of world-activity, as we have seen, is causality. How then is this principle to be conceived? We have COSMIC NATURE 71 seen that it is the inner nerve of that world-series of which time is the form. But what we seek here is to determine the mode of that activity which we call mechanical causation. And in order to reach that determination, we must seek the rationale of the modification which self-activity suffers in the ex- ternal sphere. Self-activity, as we know, moves ever in a circle of return upon self. It is, therefore, self-dependant and self-conserving". The outgo of self-activity into the negative sphere simply breaks this circle and translates it into a series, and the nexus which holds all moments in the grasp of self- dependence is straightened out, so to speak, and becomes a link of dependence upon an antecedent in time. Causality is the activity in which this dependence on antecedents is realized. It has a double aspect. In the first place, it is a principle of external de- pendence. If the link of self-return be broken, then the pulsations of activity will be ever going out from their source in an external succession. Each will go out from and separate itself from each. In this aspect, mechanical causation is a self-alienating, disparate activity, which is ever breaking up unity into isolated moments and parts. But causality has another aspect equally essential, but not so overt and explicit. It is not strictly accurate to say that the movement of self-return is broken by the outgo of creative activity into the negative sphere. It is not broken, but is rather translated into implicit potency. In this form it enters the world-series as 72 BASAL COT>^CEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY a principle of inner contimiity. Let us endeavor to construe this. We say that a is the cause of h, and that involves the distinction and separation of b from a in the series ; h must be out of a in order to be the effect of a. But if h be simply out of a, it is cut off from a's influence and cannot be its effect ; h must al- so be in a in order to be produced by it. In other words, there must be continuity as well as distinction, and the outer procession of the effect must be con- ceived as being- grounded in an inner procession of cause. Modern science is founded on this intuition of the dual nature of causation. It sees that the world- series and the principle of the external mechanical dependence of the parts of this series, can be rational- ized only by conceiving- as implied in it a continuity of the generative activity by which the series is produced. The basal insight of science thus opens to it the grounds and, at the same time, the limits of its own proper categories and principles. Custom sanctions the employment of causation as a regressive principle for the connection of con- sequents with their antecedent grounds. The look of causation is, therefore, backward, and its presup- position is always, the present of the world which it seeks to ground in antecedent conditions that have lapsed. But this regressive employment of causa- tion is merely a convention of science, and it is just as open to a progressive use. It then becomes a principle of forward world-development and evolu- tion. COSMIC NATURE 73 The question then arises, how is world-develop- ment or evolution to be conceived ? If we reflect on the world-series we will be led, in accordance with the previously developed view, to regard it as the real- ization of a modified form of creative self-activity. How this modification arises and the nature of it, we have already considered. The fact to be em- phasized here is that the life of the series depends on its connection with this activity, and that it can be conceived as possessing any degree of relative independence and self-sufficiency, only when the creative springs are included in it. But the in- clusion of the creative springs i7i the series binds it fast to the absolute ground, since it involves the pre- supposition of the creative activity of the Absolute as the immanent source of the world's energy and move- ment. Now, if we include this creative activit}^ in our idea of the world-series, we are enabled to reach the conception of a forward world-movement in which each antecedent section of the world will be regarded as the matrix or spring of production for each section that follows, and in which, therefore, the principle of continuous development reigns su- preme. From this point of view we see that the category of world-development or evolution is vital to the life of science. For science is the intuition of the world-series under the category of causation, and wdiile causation says that every part of the series must have an antecedent condition, its deeper voice says also that in order to be completely explanatory, 74 BASAL COiSrCEPTS IT^ PHILOSOPHY this condition must also include in it the creatiye ground of its being. The idea of world-develop- ment or evolution rests on this deep intuition and embodies, therefore, the ideal which science places before her, just in proportion as her intellig-ence rises out of the mistiness of abstractions into the light of conceptions that are concrete and adequate. The presupposition of evolution is that in the world-series, at any conceivable point, will be found the explanatory conditions of what follov/s. This presupposition is valid, as we have seen, only when in the world-series, at any given point, we include the creative activity out of which the series springs. But it is not obligatory on science, in its ordinary procedure, to make a constitutive use of this presup- position. Whether dealing with nature or human- ity, science may treat the presupposition as latent, and may construct her explanations in view of condi- tions which appear in the series. And this proced- ure is rendered not only possible, but rational, by the fact that the creative energy manifests itself im- manently in the world-series, and thus translates all its realized activity into the forces and agencies of the series itself. The biologist may, therefore, de- termine the life-series in view of natural, mechanical causes, and the student of man may find in the nat- ure of humanity the data of historic science. Each becomes a charlatan only when he grows negatively dogmatic and attempts to eliminate from his prob- lem the latent assumption of the creative gTound on which the rationale of evolution depends. But in COSMIC NATURE 75 science as in religion, it is not as a rule he who keeps noisily crying Lord, Lord, that enters the kingdom, but rather he who, having caught a vision of the Creator in his works, follows in a reverent spirit those mechanical footsteps which symbolize the " hidings of his jjower." How, then, are we to construe the world-series when conceived under the category of evolution ? The starting-point of the regressive use of causation is the present state of the world. But when science adopts the category of evolution she must transjDort herself back to the beginning of the series, and look forward to the present as its goal. Regressive caus- ation is analytic, resolving the present into its past conditions. Progressive evolution is synthetic, con- structing from the conditions of the past the vision of the future. And in order that it may be really explanatory the evolution lorocess must be repre- sented as beginning with a datum that requires no antecedent for its own explanation. This datum has been represented under the category of absolute simplicity and identified with a point in the world- series, from which all distinction and determination have been eliminated. Thus Herbert Spencer postu- lates a condition of absolute homogeneity as the first datum of evolution, and the process of develop- ment consists in the rise and progressive complica- tion of distinction and integration in this undif- ferentiated medium. Such a conception of the world-process is open to a criticism similar to that which has already been made on Hegel's " Logic." It 76 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY starts witli tlie thinnest of abstractions and professes to stow liow, by a species of nature-dialectic, tlie world passes from category to category in the path- way of concretion and complication, until it reaches as its goal, the world with all its present riches. But as in Hegel's " Logic," it is the rich spirit of the reflector himself that supplies the motive and stages of the dialectic, so here we must seek, not in the undifferentiated homogeneous, but rather in the highly organized and developed intelligence of the Spencerian thinker, for the motives and categories of the process he describes. We must do this unless we are prepared to admit that, either implicit in the homogeneous or tran- scending it, there must be assumed as a necessary datum of the process, an activity which contains cate- gories similar to those we have read into the proc- ess. In other words, the alternatives open to us are either a subjective and psychological construction of the evolution-process which reduces the world to an ontologic illusion, or an objective ontologic con- struction which seeks the rationale of the world-pro- cess in its connection with the creative springs. It is only this ontologic conception of evolution that is completely borne out by the investigations of science. Before the principle of evolution could be more than vaguely apprehended, science had to establish her great generalizations known as the laws of the conservation of energy and the correla- tion and transformation of forces. The law of con- servation asserts that, given a certain quantum of COSMIC NATURE 77 energy, that quantum will remain constant, subject to neither increase nor diminution by the processes of nature. The empirical proof of this consists in the discovery that when energy disapi^ears its equiv- alent is always found to reappear in some other form. This, however, is no complete demonstration, and cannot account for the assurance of science, which rests primarily on its refusal to believe in the possibility of annihilation. The law of correlation and transformation contains the same intuition, but it also involves an additional j)ostulate, that of the continuity of nature through all its stages and proc- esses. The changes of nature, therefore, including the apparent superinduction of new spheres of being and new species of force and energy, can be con- ceived only as transformations of forces that already exist. Science speaks with absolute assurance when she saj^s that nature's continuity is unbroken, and that evolution can effect transformations, but is un- able to create any new species or increment of force. What is this but a deep intuition of a necessi- ty that appears also from other points of view ; namely, of the fact that evolution can be rationalized only by a presupposition that connects its process from the beginning with an inexhaustible reservoir of creative activity? Evolution is absolutely shut up to given forces. She can create none, destroy none. She can only work transformations in the materials put into her hands. She can have no voice as to how the forces she employs shall origi- nate, nor how their existence shall be conditioned. 78 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY The vision of evolution is limited absolutely to her own things ; of the things of the creative energy she sees not so much as a glimmer in the dark. Beyond the limits of her vision rest the whole problem of the origination of natural force and the mode of its introduction into nature, the question of its possible increase or diminution in the primal springs, the whole question of the i^ossible teleologic meaning of nature, and the relation it may bear to larger and correlated spheres of being. These problems are only for an intelligence which is able to comprehend evolution as an element in a larger system of real- ity. No philosophy is complete, however, that over- looks the negative side of the world-problem. We have seen how non-being determines that modifica- tion of the world-categories which distinguishes them from absolute spiritual activities. Thus arise the relative and imperfect forms and categories of the world-series and the laws under which it pro- ceeds. We may say that in the positive world-proc- ess, so far as unfolded, negation is held in solution but not suppressed. And that this is true will be apparent when we consider that the categories of evolution have their correlative negative categories which are insei^arable from them. Dissolution, de- cay, and death are as real features of the world as evolution, growth, and life, and although, as will be seen in the chapter on Organic Nature, these are subsidized in a measure by the processes of higher organization, yet this result is accomplished only COSMIC NATURE 79 by a new stride on the part of the positive construc- tive forces of nature. The negative tendencies are only overcome and held in check, and that mod- ern intuition which gives us the clearest vision of the processes and laws of evolution, also gives the clearest presentation of the dissolutive process. Evolution and dissolution, growth and decay, are inseparable, though antithetic categories. In the very heart of the developing process science discerns the seeds of decay in a tendency toward an equilib- rium of forces, the principle of differentiation, which is a negative condition of life in a growing organism, becoming a minister of death to an organism in which- the force of integration has ceased to dominate. Chaos thus confronts nature, dissolution confronts evolution, death confronts life, as an omnipresent issue. Everywhere in nature, as in the sphere of humanity, progress is achieved only throug-h a struggle of organizing forces to overcome and neu- tralize negative tendencies, and the catastrophe threatened by the equilibrium of forces can be averted only by the infusion of a new increment of organizing energy and the transformation of the stagnant mass into the conditions of a new develop- ment. We are ready now to perform the final synthesis through which an adequate conception of cosmic nature may be achieved. The ground of the world is both transcendent and immanent. Its transcend- ent ground is that primal energy which, as we saw, must be presupposed as the root and spring of all 80 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY derivative being. On grounds wliicli need not be restated here, we are led to posit the outgo of tliis primal self-activity into tlie sphere of non-being, where, in accordance with the law of external self- expression, it is translated into the world-energy. The immanent ground of the world is this spring of world-energy or potence which we may call the world-spirit, and which constitutes the unfailing spring out of which its forces and movements emerge. This immanent ground is related to the transcendent ground as potence to actuality, so that the ultimate rationale of the world must be sought in the transcendent activity of the Absolute. Out of the immanent ground of the world arise the forces and categories of the world-series. We have seen how the material force which functions in cos- mic nature must be conceived as dual in order that it may be relatively self-maintaining. The rationale of this duality may be found in the same charac- teristics which determine the series, namely, the struggle of immanent and implicit unity to over- come explicit difference and dividuality. This dual opposition is conceived as constituting in the atomic elements, to which science reduces the material con- stitution of things, a balance of forces which condi- tions the stability and continuity of the world. The immanent ground of the world is also the immediate source of the order in which the categories of de- velopment make their appearance. The primal category is self-activity. But in the sphere of non- being this is inverted and translated into potence. COSMIC NATURE 81 Tlie order in which this potence is translated again into actuality will be an inversion of the primal activity. Its first manifestation will be at the bottom of the scale, as far from self-activity as possible. Instead of self-activity it will be, explicitly, activity that is ever determined by the other than self. Such activity we call, in substance, material force, and in form, mechanical. Cosmic nature is the sphere of material force acting- under the mechanical form. Its proximate spring is the potential world-spirit, which actualizes itself in the v/orld-series and in the forces and cate- g-ories of mechanical evolution. The first stage of world-activity is that sphere of energ-ies which arises from a synthesis of space and time and matter. We call it the inorganic because here mechanism reigns supreme. The unitary and individualizing- force of the world is still implicit and, in a sense, transcend- ent, acting as a restraint on the externalizing- forces, but not entering- as a determinative factor into the constitution of things. In this sphere the world- series is mechanical, each part being conditioned and determined by its other. The inner law of this series is causation in its mechanical form, and the principle of its progress is mechanical evolution, the forward march of differentiation and integration in the course of which the simple homogeneity is transformed into rich and varied heterogeneity. But it has already been made apparent that the whole sphere of mechanical development, if ab- stracted from its ground, becomes irrational. It can 6 82 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY be grounded and the world rationalized only by connecting- tlie whole world- series with the creative fountains out of which it arises, and this leads us, as we have seen, back to the immanent power that is the immediate source of the world-energies, and throug'h this to the transcendent source of all things, the self-active energy of Absolute Being. YI ORGANIC NATURE In tlie preceding- cliapters we have achieved what may be called a deduction of the idea of a world- spirit or spiritual potentiality as the immediate and immanent ground of the world's being and develop- ment. This idea of an immanent world-g-round de- pends, as we have seen, on the postulate of a trans- cendent and absolute self -active spirit whose energy goes out into and operates upon a sphere of nega- tion and non-being, by which it is translated into the inner potentiality of the relative and depen- dent world. The postulate of this potential world-s]oirit not only grounds the series, but also the order of its development. We have seen how the mechanical categories of the cosmic sphere arise as the first entelechies of this potential ground. In these, dis- tinction and difference become overt and active, determining the mechanical series and its laws, while the unitary individualizing force remains im- plicit and latent as a regulative and conditioning principle. But it is the law of potency to gradually pass into actuality, and from the idea of the world- 84 BASAL CONCEPTS IN" PHILOSOPHY spirit, already acliieved, we would be led to antici- pate tliat the next stage in tlie development after the purely mechanical, would be one in which the latent unitary and indiYidualizing- force of the world- ground begins to manifest itself in the series as an active constitutive principle. In other words, we would expect to see a transformation of the form of the series, and the manifestation of a force that pro- duces individual wholes, which will comprehend and unify distinctions and parts. Thus would arise Life or organic nature. What life is, is a question that has puzzled both science and philosophy. The tendency of science is to regard it as a complex product of mechan- ical forces, but how mechanism can produce an individual organism remains a mystery. Defini- tions of life are, as a mle, mere descriptions of its external phenomena. The physicist characterizes a living organism as a machine for generating heat and doing work ; the chemist, as a body composed of highly unstable compounds ; the biologist, as a plexus of organs and tissues which are adapted to the performance of certain functions, or, if he be speculatively inclined, as an inner correspondence to an outer environment. Such definitions, though true and perhaps adequate to their purpose, do not reach the heai-t of the subject, and fail to give any rational insight into the nature of life or its relation to other departments of nature. The cosmic series is coextensive with time, for, as we have seen, time and the cosmic series originate ORGAIS^IC NATURE 85 together out of a common ground. But life is not co-extensive witli time. Life originates in time, and it may also cease to exist in time. The origin of life thus presupposes a section of the world-series from which vital phenomena were absent, and in which, therefore, onl}^ mechanical forces energized. At some point in the series a new phenomenon, which we call life, originates, and this new-comer has no other antecedent conditions among the active forces of the series than the material and mechanical. Nature presents, not a straightforward progress on a plane, but rather a hierarchy of graduated steps in an upward progress from plane to plane. Let us develop this conception a little farther. Joseph Leconte arranges this upward jorogress into four planes : 1, Elements ; 2, Chemical Compounds ; 3, Vegetables ; 4, Animals ; also into the four planes of corresponding force. Physical force. Chemical force. Vitality, and Will.* We thus reach the con- ception of the world-series as passing through three distinctive stages in its upward career ; namely, those of mechanical, vital, and spiritual force, and their manifestations. Now, naturalistic evolution is a theory which denies the necessity of grounding nature in a poten- tial spiritual principle, and which, therefore, seeks in the mechanical antecedents of life the conditions of its genesis and development. More than this, being committed to the postulate of material and mechani- cal force as primordial, it is incumbent on the theory * Conservation of Energy. Int. Sc. Series, p. 194. 86 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY to maintain that all other forces, vital and spiritual, are mere modifications of the material and mechan- ical. Naturalistic evolution has on its hands, there- fore, two main problems : (1) that of the origin of the modification which is called vital force ; and (2) the mechanical explanation of all vital phenomena. In order to solve the first problem, that of the origin of life, it puts forward the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, in which the assumption is made that at some point in the world-series, when all the conditions are supposed to have been most favorable, life was generated from mechanical con- ditions and nature stepped into a new and higher sphere of manifestation. Now, if the fact, or even the possibility, of spontaneous generation could be established, naturalistic evolution would have some ground to stand on. But not only have all efforts failed to induce spontaneous generation under con- ditions which are a real test, but these experi- mental efforts tend toward the establishment of a negative. Not only is this the case, but the uni- versal mode, so far as observation can extend, by which nature keeps up her organic supply, is dead against the hypothesis. If nature is capable at all of generating vital out of mechanical force, by an immediate process, this ought to be a permanent possession after life has once appeared. But, as Leconte and others have pointed out, while physi- cal and chemical forces are being constantly trans- formed into vital force, an essential condition of this change is the presence of living matter. The trans- ORGANIC NATURE 87 formation of force to a higher sphere esemplifies, here and everywhere, the law that like only pro- duces like, and in order that a qualitative difference may arise, its analogue must be presupposed in the conditions out of which it arises. The truth of the matter seems to be that the hy- pothesis of spontaneous generation involves, in ad- dition to its other difficulties, a subtle violation of the logical principle, Ex nihilo nihil ft, which ration- ally signifies that nothing can arise as an effect or manifestation, which has not something akin to it in its conditions and grounds. In the economy of nat- ure, life itself is one of the conditions of life. This is the law of the life-series, and it is therefore regu- lative of the whole sphere of biological evolution. If we deny to naturalistic evolution its right to assert spontaneous generation, we take away from its grasp the whole sphere of origins. For in that case those transformations which an energy under- goes in passing from one sphere of force to another would necessarily be conceived as being mediated in some way by the higher force into which it is trans- formed. And this would clearly mark the limit of the principle of naturalistic evolution. Given any species of force, this may differentiate and distribute itself indefinitely, and thus give rise to a movement of development on its own plane. But it is strictly limited to this plane, and when the problem is, how nature is to rise to another plane and realize another species of force, here the naturalistic principle is powerless ; for, as we have seen, nature only makes 88 BASAL CONCEPTS IIST PIIILOSOPllY this step tlirougli the mediation of the higher force itself, and in order that the first step may be taken into this higher sxDhere, we must jDresuppose the archetype of tlie higher force as an element in the ground out of which the movement arises. And if we generalize this condition, we reach a position from which we can assert that evolution, in order to be possible without limit, must be grounded in a spiritual principle which refers ultimately back to an absolute first cause of the world ; whereas, if this spiritual principle be abstracted from or denied, evolution is limited strictly to the movement of a given force along a single plane. Thus if phj'sical and chemical force be given, the conditions of me- chanical evolution in the sphere of the inorganic are present. Again, if we sup^DOse that vital force has been somehow achieved, the conditions of biologi- cal evolution are then present. But for the genesis of these several species of force through which nature is lifted to successively higher planes of ac- tivity, the principle of naturalistic evolution sup- plies no adequate cause. The second problem which naturalistic evolution has on its hands is the mechanical explanation of vital phenomena. To naturalistic evolution mechan- ical force, that is, physical and chemical, is ihefo7is et origo out of which all other forms of force arise. Every other force must, therefore, be reducible to mechanical elements, and every form of manifesta- tion in the world-series must be traceable ultimately to mechanical antecedents and conditions. This OKGANIC NATUEE 89 necessitates the supposition that life itself is a purely mechanical product ; for, inasmucli as living' matter is one of the conditions of the genesis of liv- ing matter, it follows, if the mythical hypothesis of spontaneous generation be given up, that the vital antecedent itself must be regarded as a form of mechanical force ; for if any portion of living matter, however small and insignificant, can be successfully reduced to a pure mechanical phenomenon, the battle of naturalistic evolution has been won, and it can no longer be conceived as impossible to reach a mechanical explanation of the most complicated forms and manifestations of life. What, then, is the obstacle in the way of the me- chanical theory ? It is simply this, that mechanical force cannot account for individuality. We mean by individuality here, the form of an organized prod- uct. A living organism is a body in which the mechanical forces are held in subordination to some unitary and co-ordinating principle. When libera- ted from the grasp of this principle, each goes its own way and the organism dissolves ; but while in its grasi3 and under its sway, they subserve some self-centred power which controls their activities and makes them builders of the org-anism. The conten- tion of the mechanical theory is that this so-called unitary and co-ordinating principle is not a princi- ple or a non-mechanical force, but merely a product of the conjunction of mechanical forces. But this is a blind assertion which fails to realize any of the difficulties in its way. For what then is death that 90 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY breaks up the conjunction "? Has some mechanical agent necessary to the combination departed, or have the members of the corporation dissolved partner- ship by mutual consent ? The truth is that, from the standpoint of the me- chanical theory, the existence of a living- organism is inconceivable. Mechanical forces may develop con- tinuous series, and they may form aggregates and compounds, but the production of self-centred in- dividuality is beyond their province. Mechanical forces have no sense for wholes as such. They move straight forward to simple ends, or flow to- gether into united streams. They may be equal to the complexity of an organism, but its unity, its self- centred individuality, is a phenomenon that trans- cends their power. If naturalistic evolution thus fails to answer satis- factorily either of the problems that confront it, it is clear that the origin and nature of life must be dealt with according to some other principle. The weakness of naturalistic evolution as a theory of ori- gin, arises from the fact that it cuts itself off from the spiritual principle which supplies the only rational ground of the world-movement ; while its weakness as a theory of the nature of life is to be found in the necessity it is under of regarding the mechanical forces as alone primordial, and all other forms of energy as modifications of these. In view of both sources of weakness the theory plainly breaks down in its unlimited form, and must be limited in order to possess any value. We have already seen where the ORGAT^IC NATURE 91 limitation must be applied. Naturalistic evolution cannot account for tlie origin of any new form of force, nor for tlie rise of nature from one plane of ex- istence to another. The problem of origins must be dealt with on some other principle. Nor can natu- ralistic evolution give any rational conception of the nature of life. Her mechanical theory commits her to a principle of explanation which regards ma- terial forces as the only primordial forms, and seeks, therefore, to reduce all other forms to the material type. The limit of the principle of naturalistic evo- lution is reached when the limit of mechanical forces and laws is reached. In so far as life and organic nature transcend the scope of these, just in so far do they transcend the limits of naturalistic evolu- tion. The foregoing strictures on naturalistic evolu- tion as a theory of life, are not directed against the principle of evolution. Their aim is simply to clear the ground for a more adequate conception of the idea of world-development. As indicated in the be- ginning of this chapter, no theory of world-evolution is adequate that does not include in it a recognition of the necessity of a world-ground out of which, as from a fountain, shall emerge its forces and phe- nomena. Again, no theory of world-ground is ade- quate that does not identify that ground with a spir- itual principle. Nor is any theory of the spiritual principle adequate that does not connect it as the immanent potency of the world-development, with its tra^nscendent source, in the spiritual self-activity of 92 BASAL CONCEPTS IN" PHILOSOPHY an absolute nature. The world-evolution is tlius grounded immediately in an immanent spiritual potency, and mediately in the self-activity of a transcendent Creator and First Cause. Upon this foundation we are able to conceive a world-evolution that is at the same time completely universal and completely rational. For in this spir- itual g-round, as we have shown, is contained not only the rationale of the existence of a relative and temporal world-series, but also the rationale of its order and the succession of its categories. From this point of view it is rationally necessary that the mechanical forces and categories in which plurality and self-exclusion are most explicit, and the forces of unitary individuality most latent and transcend- ent, should first emerge. The world-series is thus grounded in mechanism. But if the world be grounded in a spiritual princi]ple, a point must come in its development when the latent and relatively transcendent force of unitary individuality will be- gin to show its head above the stream, a jDoint at which it will cease to be merely regulative, there- fore, and will enter into the series as a constitutive agent. Now, it is at this point that a new phenome- non will make its appearance. Just as soon as the unitary force begins to function explicitly, the nu- cleus of an organism will be formed, for, as though a vortical movement had been originated in some part of the series, the particles will begin to whirl and aggregate around some invisible centre, the or- dinary processes of physical and chemical forces ORGANIC NATURE 93 will become tributary to this new movement, and tlie product will be a body that is self-centred and that has within itself the principle of its own unity and conservation. We have been representing- in figure what would haj^pen to the world-series when the spiritual force of unitary individuality begins to function in it as a constitutive agent. Dropping figure, we may say that this presupposition of a spiritual world-prin- ciple is the only basis on which a completely ra- tional theory of organic evolution can be grounded. It places at the heart of the world a principle which, beginning with the mechanical, has in it the poten- tiality of a progressive evolution up to the spiritual. The continuity of the world-movement is thus se- cured. Not only so, but it enables us to understand rationally why there should be a movement at all, and why this movement should be upward. And lastly, it enables us to understand rationally why the progress of the world should lead it from the purely mechanical into the biological sphere. A living organism realizes the form of individu- ality. It is unity overcoming and comxjrehending diversity. It is a synthesis, therefore, of mechanical and extra mechanical forces. On the side of its uni- tary individuality it transcends mechanism, and is the first overt spiritual manifestation in nature. On the side of its diversity it is a plexus of mechanical forces and processes. The mode by which a living organism develops is a species of natural dialectic, a conflict of opposite and antagonistic forces, in which 94 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY the principle of unitary individuality is striving per- petually to bring tlie plexus of meclianical forces into subordination to itself. Tbe life of the organism is the progressive achievement of this subordina- tion. But a living- organism does not completely realize the essence of individuality. There is no return of the unitary force upon itself, and consequently the organism arrives at no consciousness of itself. The reason of this we conceive to rest in the fact that the unity of life is one which the spiritual principle achieves by going out of itself. It is a unity, in other words, which is superinduced upon a plexus or aggregation of mechanical elements which in them- selves, that is, in their atomic constitution, remain unmodified. These elements persist, therefore, in obeying iDurely mechanical laws, and simply, while held in subordination to an alien force, subserve the life of the organism. When this alien force relaxes its grasp or is overcome, the mechanical elements resume their autonomy and dissolution of the organ- ism ensues. The achievement of the essence of individuality would involve a.n additional step in the spiritual evolution ; namely, the completion of the circle of return upon self, and the consequent planting of a germ of siDiritual self-activity in the atomic elements themselves. This would transform mechanism in its roots and ground those modified spiritual activi- ties and categories which we shall come upon at a later stage of our inquiry. But in the stage of liv- ORGANIC NATUEE 95 ing" organisms, this transformation has not been achieved. The unitary force asserts itself in an ex- ternal manner in the aggregation and organization of unmodified mechanical elements. The life-strug- gle is, therefore, an unequal contest between the forces of mechanism on the one hand and an undevel- oped spiritual principle on the other, in which this principle, for a time triumphant, at length succumbs to the mechanical forces, and the organism vfhich has reached the climax of its career as a living body, starts on the downward road of dissolution and death. The continued existence and evolution of life depends not on the individual organism, which perishes, but on the biological series, which is self- perpetuating. For just as we have seen that the world is grounded by the going out of the absolute spiritual energy into potency, so we find that wher- ever spiritual force manifests itself as a principle of individual organization, it carries with it this consti- tutional power to emit its ow^n potential in the form of a germ or norm, and thus establish the nucleus of another organism. Through this going out of self- activity into potency the biological scale is made continuous, and the basis of an evolution is secured ; an evolution which depends formally on the spiritual ground-principle, and which in its process obeys those laws and categories of development and he- redity which it is the business of biological science to discover and formulate. VII PSYCHIC ISTATURE We have followed the evolution of the world- series through the stages of mechanism and life, and have seen how this progress can be rationally understood only in the light of its spiritual ground. The last and highest stage of the world-series is that of Psychic nature, in which soul becomes the protagonist of the drama. In the soul the essence of individuality is realized. We have seen how in the mechanical sphere the effect of the individualiz- ing force of the world-ground appeared in that prin- ciple of continuity which bound the separate parts into one developing series. Individuality proper, however, transcends mechanism both in its essence and its form. In the organic series the form of in- dividuality lifts its head above the stream and em- bodies itself externally in the living body. But here it achieves only a temporary and incomi)lete triumph over mechanism, by which its grasp is soon broken, and its continuity is secured only in a suc- cession of perishing organisms. The defect of individuality as it embodies itself in the life-series consists in its failure to realize a com- PSyCIIIC NATUEE 97 plete circle of return upon self. This, as we have seen, is the type of all complete spiritual activity, and it is the essence of individualit3^ Now, at the point in the world-series where this complete circle of activity is first achieved, and the world-energy is able to complete the cycle of self-return upon self, soul makes its first overt entrance into nature. Soul is that com]plete type of individuality which arises out of this perfected circle, and its roots are to be sought, therefore, not in any form of organism, but in the atomic sphere. The category of soul-activity is elemental, and must be conceived as arising in that sphere of X3rimal forces which antedates all forms of organized existence. Let us consider the modification which the aj)- pearance of this category would introduce into the world-series. If we posit the persistence of the material atoms or centres of mechanical force, then this psychic force will be conceived as arising in conjunction with the material atoms as a principle of spiritual activity. We will thus arrive at the conception of the soul as, in its elemental constitu- tion, consisting of a duad or synthesis of material and spiritual forces ; and this synthesis will be conceived as the primal centre of psychic activity. We adopt this form of psychic dualism as a proxi- mate conception. Its value consists partly in the constitutional basis which it provides for the recog- nized dualism of conscious experience,* and partly * James: Psyclwlogy, vol. i., chaps, ix. and x. 7 98 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY also in the profounder view it opens as to the relation between matter and spirit in the sj^here of the sonl- life. This connection is so close and interpenetrat- ing- as to preclude the common idea that the soul is a pure spiritual activity that is unmodified by mat- ter, and that it comes into contact with the material only in its organized corporeal form. Such a view reduces the psyche, in its relation to matter, to the position of a mere deus ex machina, capable of influ- encing- and of being influenced only in an external and artificial way. If the common theory were the ti-ue one, then the way in which the categories of the material penetrate into the inner circle of con- sciousness and determine the forms of perception, would be inexplicable. No theory of the connection of the material and spiritual will be satisfactory, we think, that does not trace it to its roots in the con- stitution of the soul itself. The statement of psychic dualism above given is not to be taken, however, as final. A profounder view may be achieved by reflection. Aristotle con- ceived the soul to be pure actuality ; but he also con- ceived matter to be potence — ^xn/ajj.iroc- ess of soul-experience is a perpetual struggle of a thinking principle of spiritual individuality to over- come and transform an empirical nature that is dominated by mechanical categories and laws. It also becomes intelligible, that this process should give rise to an evolution of the soul's powers which follows the order of the development of actuality out of potence. This order, as the process of nature indicates, is from mechanism up to spirit. The stages of mental and moral growth will correspond in a rough way to the stages of the natural evolu- tion, and both the intellectual and moral life will be dominated by corresponding categories. Thus in 110 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY tlie sphere of moral growtli, wliicli is fundamentally tlie development of freedom, the child will be domi- nated at first by pure mecha.nical impulses, which determine its actions as the mechanical forces de- termine the movements of nature. At a later stage, the mechanical impulses will be organized under some external unitary principle, like that of author- ity. The command or wish of the xoarent or teacher will be the law which Avill introduce unity into the child's life. Later still, conscience, which is a prin- ciple of internal unity, will emerge, and with the appearence of this principle the child will begin to acquire a free standing-ground of its own as a self- determining and, therefore, responsible personal agent. With the emergence of conscience the plane of free moral self-activity is achieved, and the sub- sequent education of the child will conserve the de- velopment of this principle out of potence into realized free self-activity. Generalizing the above illustration, we may say that all education is, teleologically, a spiritual func- tion, and must have as its end the awakening and development of the free self-activity of the human spirit. This free self-activity exists largely at first in a state of potency, and must be developed by a process which will lead it from the mechanical up to the spiritual. In the stage of mechanism the life will be governed by corresponding categories. At first isolated facts will dominate the budding con- sciousness, and these will be related in the most naive fashion to their most obvious and customary PSYCHIC NATURE 111 antecedents in time. The conceptions of tlie child will be passively determined by a species of natural photography, and its whole mental activity will be largely a reflex of the nature that environs it. But through the mechanical discipline of this period the spiritual potence is gradually struggling into activ- ity. The next important step in its development will be the emergency of a category that will enable it to lift itself partially out of the stream in which it has been engulfed and to impose upon it a prin- ciple of quasi-individuality. This categ'ory is that of causation, which constitutes the inner bond of the series, and thus functions in the mechanical sphere as a latent individualizing function, binding the parts each to each in a developing chain. Causation begins to dominate the growing intelligence of the child as a rational norm, which develops in it the historical consciousness and sends it out in a per- petual search for the efficient and final antecedents of things. In this stage the passive, recipient spirit is subordinated to that of an intellectual curiosity, which cannot rest in the presentations of its experi- ence, but prompts the child everlasting-ly to look inquiringly behind the presentation for the condi- tions that brought it forth. This period of naive rationality, in which the budding si)irit begins to assert itself, leads us i^erhaps to the end of the period of primary education. The great epoch in moral development, as we saw, is tliat in which, conscience lifts its head above the conscious stream. In the general evolution of the 113 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY child's intelligence there is a corresponding- epoch, when the principle of reflection makes its appear- ance. In reflection the spirit completes the circle of its self-activity in the return upon itself. Eeflection contains in it, therefore, the germ of what we may call the ontological consciousness, a consciousness that has apprehended the principle of reason in a higher form than causation. The historical con- sciousness seeks the serial antecedents of things, but the consciousness that has achieved the germ of ontology asks for the grounds or reasons of the series itself. In other words, it only rests satisfied when it has apprehended principles in the light of which things are self-explanatory. The world is self-explanatory if we ground it in a spiritual prin- ciple that is sufficient to rationally explain to us the existence of the world. Now, we conceive that the ground-princiiDle of the secondary and higher education is to be found in this category of reflective reason in which the self- active spirit first achieves a rational standing- ground of its own as a free rational and personal agent ; and the great business of the secondary and higher education will, therefore, be the develop- ment of this rational principle out of potence into actuality. For it must not be forgotten that, while the end of all culture is the quickening of the spirit, its pedagogical methods and the instruments it uses must adapt themselves to the stages of an evolution. And while a common category rests at the basis of the secondary and higher education, PSYCHIC NATURE 113 pedagogy only becomes a science when it acts on tlie insight, as old as Socrates, that the germ of re- flection is at first hidden in a mechanical womb, and that it must practise a maieutic art in helping it to birth and aiding it in its struggle up to the maturity of a fully realized activity. Another consideration is that of the connection between the empirical and rational branches of psychology. We conceive that the real connection arises through the idea of the soul. It is impossible, we think, to develop a psychology without a soul. But if we distinguish, as Bosanquet has done in his great work on Logic, between generalization and ex- planatory theory, it is possible to allow that the work of observation and generalization of psychic phenomena may be performed without the presup- position of any particular conception of the soul's nature. The empirical psychologist may, there- fore, content himself with the general postulate of some unitary subject of experience as a working hypothesis, without troubling himself further as to its nature. This attitude will not justify him, how- ever, either in denying the soul's existence or the importance of determining, so far as possible, its nature. But when the science passes from the stage of gen- eralization to that of explanatory theory, this prob- lem of the nature of the soul immediately and neces- sarily arises. For explanation, as distinguished from generalization, seeks the rationale of things, and this, as we have seen, can be found only in some 8 114 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY principle tlie presupposition of whida renders the l^sycliic sphere self-explanatory. The whole of the preceding- discussion goes to show that the only self-explanatory principle in psychology is the pre- supposition of a soul conceived as a norm of po- tential self-activity, and which stands related to the psycholog-ical sphere as the unitary and indi- vidualizing energy of conscious life and experience. In determining this ultimate principle of explana- tion, psychology passes from the empirical to the rational stage. The connection thus becomes clear, and also the light which may be reflected from the conclusions of rational psychology into the empiri- cal sphere. For we have seen already that a rational doctrine of the soul's nature gives a new in- sight into the real character of the processes of psy- chic experience, and thus supplies important data to pedagogical science ; and reflection will make it equally apparent that the same fountain will supply valuable light to the generalizer of psychic phe- nomena. VIII CONSCIOUSNESS In the preceding- discussions consciousness lias been used as a datum without analysis. In this chapter we shkll examine the posited element in order to determine its nature and relation to being. Consciousness is an underivable element of the real. Naturalistic evolution, which stands committed to the x>rinciple of " deriving- everything- from some- thing else," is obliged here to fall back on the dis- credited hypothesis of spontaneous g-eneration, in order to account for the genesis of consciousness out of the unconscious. There is no conceivable g-round which can produce consciousness, except one that is potentially conscious. Now, potence is an unreal abstraction if it is not connected with a prior actuality. We are thus led to ground con- sciousness immediately in the immanent spiritual potency of the world, and mediately and ultimately in the nature of absolute being-. Consciousness has its primal seat in the activity of absolute being. That perfect self-activity which constitutes the spiritual essence of the Absolute must be conceived as a self-conscious activity. 116 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY This necessity will arise from one of two alternative grounds : Eitlier self-conscious activity and the self-activity of the Absolute are to be identified, or the former is to be regarded as necessarily implied in the latter. We are unable to realize the second alternative, while recognizing its possibility. The former is not only conceivable, but also demon- strable, as we have shown in a former chapter ; the form of self-consciousness and self-activity is the same, a self-return upon self. Their substance is also the same ; namely, pure self-activity. Why then should they not be identified, and why should we not say that absolute being and absolute self- conscious activity are one and the same ? Josiah Royce finds in absolute Thought the point of identity between being and consciousness, and this Thought he names logos. With this mode of conception, provided logos be used to con- strue the thought, we shall have no quarrel. That thought is the logical prius of every other form of spiritual activity, follows by necessity from the logos conception of the self-active spirit. As we shall show more at length in subsequent discussions, the dialectic which constitutes the inner life and movement of spiritual activity rests on a dual in- tuition which is a function of intellection. The absolute spirit must think itself and its opposite, in order that the motives of the generative and unifying energies of creation may be aroused. The danger in the representation of the Absolute as thought is that intellection will be allowed to swal- CONSCIOUSlSrESS 117 low up every other spiritual function ; whereas the activities we call will and love, while presupposing thought as their logical prius, are not derivative from thought. We must rather suppose a synthesis of thought and will in the absolute volition, and a further synthesis of thought, will, and emotion in the absolute love. To return, then, to the main line of reflection, we conceive it necessary to regard self-conscious activ- ity and the self-activity of absolute being as iden- tical. Spirit in its actuality will, therefore, always be self-conscious, and it will be the nature of a spir- itual force, wherever it manifests itself, to become conscious also. Now, if we conceive the self-activ- ity of the Absolute to be essentially self-conscious, it will be necessary, in accordance with the principle developed in the second chapter, to conceive that the same outgo of this energy into non-being which transforms it into spiritual potency, will also change its consciousness into potentiality. The immanent world-ground, while not actively conscious, therefore, will contain in it the potentiality of conscious self- activity. The progress of the spiritual world-principle up to the stage of realized self-activity in the soul of man, will also be a process of the evolution of con- sciousness. In the first stages of this evolution the consciousness in which the world-movement origi- nates is one that wholly transcends it ; namely, the consciousness of the Absolute. In the stage of pure mechanism no consciousness can be posited 118 BASAL CONCEPTS IIST PHILOSOPHY anywhere in the world, except as a latent potenti- ality in its ground-principle. And this is probably true also of the veg-etable stage of organic nature ; for although the plant manifests the form of unitary individuality, there is no evidence that this is not external to the plant itself, or that it has any pres- age, even the vaguest, of its own life. Could the negative of this be established, it would then be reasonable to suppose that consciousness in some form is coextensive with life. So far as we know, consciousness manifests itself in the world-series, for the first time, in the animal organism. It appears here in the form of feeling without ideality, and the animal intelligence is therefore rudimentary. But up to its limit it seems to realize a type that is common to it and the intel- ligence of man. If the animal consciousness differs, not simply in degree, but also in kind, from the human, the rationale of the differential marks must be sought, we think, not in an original distinction of type, but in the various degrees of development of a common type. If we suppose the world to spring out of a spiritual ground-principle, and its stages to represent the development of this principle from potence into actuality, it follows that the first mani- festations of consciousness will be in a rudimental form, and that more adequate manifestations of the same spiritual type will appear later on in the series. Now, this rudimental form that we call ani- mal intelligence is a manifestation of consciousness as feeling without ideality. Such a consciousness is COTSTSCIOUSlSrESS 119 capable of feeling or dimly appreliending- itself and its environment, but it is unable to conceive itself or the environment, and cannot, therefore, make any intellectual distinction between itself and the world- stream in which it is merged. Now, this category of feeling without ideality, or, at least, in which ideal- ity remains latent and potential, is the one under which the evolution of animal consciousness pro- ceeds. There are gradations of animal intelligence from a lowest stage of simplest reaction upon stim- ulus, up to a stage which seems to differ little from the lowest L^anifestations of human intelligence. That these are gradations in the scale of a feeling consciousness that has not yet achieved ideality, is rendered intelligible by analysis. Feeling in com- parison with ideality is relatively passive, and the supreme principle of its development will be associ- ation. For, until a consciousness has achieved a power of reflection which is a true function of self- activity, its processes must be relatively passive and, therefore, associative. Now, analysis has reduced the principles of asso- ciation to two, namely, contiguity and similarity, the former being relatively the more passive, while the latter represents a more active form of mentality and immediately underlies the ratiocinative func- tions proper. James, in Chapter XXII. of his " Psy- chology," takes the ground, and seeks to prove it by numerous illustrations, that the point of differ- ence between the animal mind and the human is the absence from the former of the principle of associ- 120 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY ation by similarity. All cases of animal reasoning in which similarity seems to be present, are resolv- able, he thinks, into cases of contiguity. It is possible that this may be true, but the distinction seems strained, and we conceive a more natural ex- planation of the diiference to be possible. For if we recognize the existence of a rudimental form of con- sciousness in which ideality or the principle of re- flection is yet latent, it becomes possible for us to enlarge the scope of this consciousness in another direction, and to conceive it as capable of feeling the similarities and distinctions of things as well as their mere contiguities in time and space. For ex- ample, when a dog recognizes his master's footsteps or distinguishes them among the footsteps of strangers, he may feel the similarities and differences on which his recognition depends, without intellect- ually apprehending them at all. And when we rec- ognize this extension of the principle of association in animals, we may also admit a corresponding ex- tension in the sphere of what is called the animal reason. In the light of the distinction between feeling and ideality it is possible to distinguish be- tween two species of reasoning; namely, reasoning which ends in volition and action, and reasoning which ends in a conception or logical conclusion. The latter is always reflective, while the former is possible without reflection. To see how this may be it is only necessary to analyze a concrete case. A showman has trained a pony to select out of a series of the first seven digits, coNSciousisrEss 121 arranged in order on separate cards, the one that represents the day of the week, say Wednesday, on which the exhibition is given. He orders the pony to go and bring him the number for Wednesday. The pony goes as commanded and placing his head by the row of figures, seems to hesitate. The show- man repeats, " the number for Wednesday ! bring me the number for Wednesday." Prompted by some- thing in these words, perhaps a peculiar intonation, the pony recovers from his hesitation and picks out the right card. In order to understand the processes involved in this we must connect it with the previous course of training, in which each step in the executive process has been laboriously associated with some word, or gesture, or expression of the trainer. We have onlj^ to suppose now that the pony's conscious- ness has the power of associating these two series and of feeling the connection between their associated parts, in order to reach an explanation of his action. And we have only to generalize the illustration in order to see how, on the presupposition of a feeling consciousness and the associative principles of con- tiguity and similarity, the ratiocinations of animals are explicable without the introduction of ideality. In man the form of consciousness is completed by the appearance of ideality. The soul of man is, as we have seen, a circle of self-activity. The comple- tion of this circle makes the function of reflection, the return of self upon self, possible, and reflection is what we have called ideality, Man's conscious- ness is one that not only feels itself and its environ- 122 BASAL CONCEPTS IIST PHILOSOPHY ment, but also conceives these in themselves and in their distinction. The human consciousness has the power, therefore, of distinguishing- itself from the stream in which its life flows. In this power of self- conception or reflection we find the ground of that distinction between the unitary self and the empiri- cal stream of consciousness which rests at the basis of the manifested life of man. In the human con- sciousness we find also the same principles of as- sociation which also function in the animal. But there lies coiled up in the human soul, however low down in the scale, this principle of ideal reflection which on the theoretic side of man's intelligence lays the foundations of a distinctive development of free intellectual activity ; Avhile on the practical side it leads to the emergence of conscience and the life of free ethical individuality. Consciousness is from the start the potency of both feeling and ideal- ity. But in the animal stage of its manifestation feeling alone is active, while ideality must be con- ceived as existing only as a latent potence. The arousal of this potency into the germ of an active life marks the beginning- of an intelligence that we call human. We have represented the activity of the soul as a perpetual jjassage from spiritual potence to actual- ity. A corresponding representation of conscious- ness will express its truth. In the developed con- sciousness we find a synthesis of feeling and ideality, and this, in view of the nature of the soul of which it is the expression, can be conceived oulj^ in terms CONSCIOUSNESS 123 of perpetual movement as a xjassage from potency to actuality. We have seen that the soul is an ei3it- ome, a microcosm of the world - process through which it is realized. It leaves nothing behind, but embraces the moments of potency through which it has passed on its way to actuality, in the com- pleted circle of its life. In like manner, conscious- ness epitomizes the stages of its evolution. Man is an animal with an animal organism, and his intelli- gence includes in it the animal intelligence, as a point which he must perpetually X3ass through in order to reacla his own standpoint. But this animal intelligence is a stage or moment that is perpetually being overcome and subordinated, and man only reaches the plane of his own true life when he has attained to the standpoint of reflective ideality and thus become a free intellectual and moral agent. Synthesis of the ideas of the psychic nature and of consciousness here reached, makes possible an- other very important advance in philosophic con- ceptions. A self-activity that unites in it the mo- ments of feeling and ideality, constitutes a fountain out of which spring the intellectual, emotional, and volitional elements of man's actual experience. But the soul is to be conceived also as in a perpetual movement of self -evolution in which it is ever pass- ing from potency to actuality. The complete act- uality at which it aims is not, therefore, a present possession, but an aim that is perpetually being achieved. It is an ideal which embodies the true nature of the soul, and which is constantly pressing 124 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY upon tlie spheres of its activity as the true law of its being". Thus arises an ideal spring of intellectual, moral, and aesthetic elements which stands for the soul's true activity, and which embodies itself in man's sj^iritual ideals of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. The synthesis reached above gives us an insight into the fact that the ideal is no external and visionary element in our conscious life, but that it is immanent and internal, the true goal tow- ard which all normal psychic activity tends. IX MORALITY A metaphysic of morality cannot be developed exclusively from the idea of tlie human soul. It must go back of this to the primal ground out of which the soul has come. The soul is proximately the highest entelechy or actualization of the spir- itual principle which constitutes the immanent ground of the world. But this immanent principle is a potence which presupposes a transcendent ac- tuality. This actuality is the absolute self-active Spirit which energizes as the ultimate ground of all things. The evolution of soul may be conceived as the progressive development of spiritual activity. For the soul is a self-active iDrinciple. But it is not absolute, nor is the consciousness it develops the consciousness of the Absolute. We have seen that the Absolute has its own immanent consciousness, which is that of a being who is perfect self-activity and in whom there is no undeveloped potency. There can be no development, then, in the absolute consciousness. Now the soul, though it realizes at the centre of its being the same category of self- 126 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY activity, yet this process of realization is an evolu- tion or develoi)ment out of potence into actuality, in wliicli the potence and its categories are a con- tained moment. Actuality in such a nature is an ideal which represents its goal, but not its perma- nently secured possession. The ideal of the soul is thus an absolute life. But this ideal is not realized, and in the nature of things never can be. For, as we have seen, the soul carries the moment of po- tentiality ever with it. Its movement is a perpetual struggle up out of the undeveloped potences, a per- petual effort to overcome and transform the activities of this lower life into the complete self-activities of the ideal. Thus arises that dualistic dialectic, which James has described in its psychological aspects, of the ideal self -activity of the human spirit to over- come the empirical self and to absorb it into its own unitary individuality. And the same dialectic be- comes moral when conscience emerges and the free ethical self-activity of the ideal presses upon the empirical will, as a consciousness of the higher law which its activities are to realize. Now, as it is in the ideal ethical activities of the soul that the norms of duty are to be sought, so it is in this same activity that the soul comes into closest relation with the absolute Spirit, its ground. The form in which the absolute Spirit realizes it- self to itself, we have called logos. Now, the coun- terpart of this absolute logos in the psychic sphere is the ideal self which stands ever as the unattained goal of the soul's activity. We shall name this the MOEALITY 127 Psychic Logos, and shall use the term always in the same sense, as a designation for that ideal soul- activity which functions as the ever unrealized end of an infinite sj)iritual evolution. It is through the psychic logos that the norms of morality are introduced into the human soul. But they have their primal springs in the nature of the Absolute. Now, from the theoretic standpoint the absolute activity may be conceived as absolute Thought. But from the ethical point of view it must rather be conceived as absolute Will. Abso- lute will is a free self-activity of choice to which the motives are all internal. Absolute will, there- fore, always and only wills itself. Even when it goes out of itself its motive is self-realization in an outer, negative sphere. But when we say that ab- solute will wills itself, we mean that absolute self- activity wills itself, and therefore wills that its spiritual content shall be realized. The content of anything is the immanent quality or character of its activity. Now, the spiritual dia- lectic will enable us to realize the ethical content of the absolute activity. We must remember that the Absolute is identical with completely actualized spirit, and that all the highest possibilities are realized in it. The absolute Thought, then, in think- ing itself will think absolute truth, and this ethi- cally conceived is absolute Wisdom. The absolute Will in willing itself wills absolute Good, and this ethically considered has two aspects : (1) as a norm of ethical activity it is the Right, which qualita- 128 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY tively conceived is Rigliteousness. (2) As a telos or end of ethical activity it is the Good, which quali- tatively conceived is Goodness. Lastly, the abso- lute Love energizes as the absolute Unity, and this ethically conceived is absolute Holiness, while ses- thetically it is the absolute Beauty. As will be more clearly seen hereafter, the three modes of the activity of the absolute spirit are sim- ply different aspects of its whole or individual life. When the Absolute thinks itself, will and love are immanent in its thought. When it wills, thought and love are immanent in its volition. Now, the form of ethical activity is will, and the absolute will is a function of the whole absolute individuality. The character of the absolute will is its immanent content, and this, as we have seen, comprises the qualities of wisdom, righteousness, goodness, and holiness. The absolute will then, in willing itself, wills perfect wisdom, righteousness, goodness, and holiness. This immanent content is essential to the conception of the absolute will. Otherwise no distinction could be made between it and a de- moniac will. But when we say that morality is intrinsic we do not mean to assert that the absolute consciousness stands in the same relation to it as does the human. A little reflection will show the fallacy of such an assertion. We have shown that the human con- sciousness is ethically, in a sense, divided against itself. Conscience reveals a distinction between an actual and an ideal. On the one hand the psychic MORALITY 129 logos mediates to the human consciousness the norms of absolute morality which function as ideal laws. On the other hand, the empirical self is imper- fect and perhaps also depraved by evil, and its will falls short of the ideal, or perhaps goes dead against it. A dualistic dilemma thus arises out of the natural conditions of finite existence and there is war in the soul's members between the law of the flesh and the law of the spirit. The point we wish to empha- size here, however, is the fact that the law of the spirit or ideal, imposes itself on the empirical self as a transcendent obligation. It feels obliged to obey a law that is objective to and above it. Obli- gation and the Ought are, therefore, in this trans- cendent sense categories of the relative, and can have no place in the absolute nature. It is a dual- istic nature, one in which an ideal law presses upon the actual, that is conscious of morality as trans- cendent, and has, therefore, a duty. The Absolute has no duty. His activity is the activity of free im- manent moral perfection. It is through the psychic logos that the norms of morality work themselves into the human conscious- ness. This does not, however, free them from the law of development. We have seen that the psy- chic logos itself is subject to this law. There is a point in the world-series when the spiritual princi- ple in which it is grounded incorporates itself in a human soul. This soul is dual from the outset, and embodies a dialectic between what it is in realization and what it ideally is in the perfect self -activity which 130 BASAL COlSrCEPTS IIST PHILOSOPHY is the goal of its being. This is the ground out of which conscience emerges, and conscience reveals the struggle as a dialectic between what is and what ought to be. The psychic logos in the ethical sphere is the seat of an ideal law which functions as the standard of duty. But the soul in its unity is a developing real, and as a moral personality it is subject to the same law. The moral consciousness is at first a germinal activ- ity. The moral life is largely potential, but it is going on to actuality and in every stage of its evo- lution there is present in it this sense of a dialectic between an actual and an ideal, between what is and what ought to be. If it be asked how an ideal can be subject to the law of development, the answer is that growth is the law of a being that passes from po- tentiality into actuality. And when this being be- comes conscious ; that is, begins to realize itself to itself, the duality of its nature will be revealed to it and it will not only be conscious of what it is — a be- ing whose self-activity is tangled up in the skein of mechanism — but it will have a consciousness of the true ideal law of its nature, that of unimioeded self - activity which in the moral siDhere is self-determina- tion, and this ideal law will press upon it as the true principle of its being, a law that it is obliged to re- alize. But it is not necessary for an ideal to reveal actually a perfect content in order to become a stand- ard of duty. The moral law of conscience as it re- veals itself is simply a law of trend. It is the recog- nition of the fact that perfection is the only true end MORALITY 131 of our being", and that a perfect law — that is, a law that commands perfection — ^is the only law that can command our nature with unconditional authority. Now, it is obvious that the force of such a law may be clearly recognized, while at the same time it may not be at all clear what content of duty the law enjoins. It is in the sphere of content mainly that the princix)le of development applies, since man must learn through a growing experience and through many different channels, what his duty is. If it be asked further, how this moral develop- ment takes place, we answer by pointing to the whole history of humanity. Everything that con- tributes to or affects human development also affects moral development. The labor of pointing out the successive stages of the evolution, the forces that are active in it, and the conditions out of which it arises, is one that cannot be undertaken here. But it is essential that the movement should be in- terpreted in the light of its true ontological con- ditions. The whole process of evolution springs out of a potential spiritual principle which has its immediate presupposition in the self - activity of absolute Spirit. This spiritual potency, in passing gradually into actuality, realizes the stages of a de- velopment from mechanism up to spirit. On the ethical side of the evolution conscience stands cen- tral, for conscience is simply the ethical form of the conscious self-activity of spirit. Conscience reveals the dualistic dialectic between the realized actual and the ideal Ought which conditions and de- 132 BASAL co:ncepts in philosophy termines the form of all moral experience. Moral evolution is a movement that iDresupposes this dua- listic struggle and the ideal function of conscience. Without this it is nugatory, for it is only through this condition that man can become a subject of moral experience at all. It is conscience or the psychic logos as ethical will, imposing its ideal law upon the human soul as unconditionally obligatory, that supplies the inner motive of ethical evolution. And it is conscience, as containing the ideal norms of character and conduct, that supplies the teleologi- cal force of the movement. Out of the moral dialec- tic which arises between what man has achieved and the urgent sense of something that he ought to achieve sjjrings the spiritual activity through which all his moral riches are acquired. There is a sense in which the whole dialectic of moral jarogress may be represented as the achieve- ment of Freedom. Morality is a function of con- science, but conscience itself is an ideal will. The law of ideal will is free self-determination. Now, we have seen how the empiric will only partially reali- zes this self-activity. It is in partial bondage to mechanical categories. Its life flows along in the world-stream and is subject to its law of causal ante- cedence. While, then, the form of empiric choice is self-determination and, therefore, formal freedom, in fact this freedom tends to lapse into a species of mechanical determinism. The empirical condition of actual choice is character, and character grows largely out of serial antecedents. Why, then, is the MORALITY 133 cleterminist not right when he denies freedom and asserts the choice of the will to be strictly deter- mined ? "We answer that the determinist only blunders through an inadequate conception of the condi- tions of his problem. The freedom he denies is a will-o'-the-wisp, and the necessity he asserts has little more substantiality. It is true that the empiri- cal will belongs to the series in the sense that what a man has been helps to determine what he is, and that what he is is the immediate antecedent of his choice. This is involved in saying that all determi- nation is self-determination. What the determinist insists on is the fact that the self that determines is resolvable into a chain of antecedent selves, and that each antecedent self functions in choice to deter- mine the self that follows. The determinist im- agines that this destroys freedom ; and he is right if the idea of the series be an adequate representation of the moral situation. But it is not, for we must take into account the nature of the soul as a princi- ple of spiritual self- activity, and we must identify this self-activity with fi'eedom. And in connection with this we must exercise our whole insight, and realize that conscience is the organ of this self-ac- tivity in its ideal form, and that out of the moral consciousness arises the intuition of a dialectic be- tween the actual which is caught, so to speak, in the mechanical toils of the series, and the ideal law of self-activity which is revealed and imposed in con- science. We must grasp all this in our intuition. 134 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY and then we will be able to attach a meaning to freedom that will bring* it into vital relations with mechanism without being submerged by it. For we may admit the main contention of determinism ; namely, that the choices of the will have as their im- mediately determining antecedents a series of em- pirical selves, and this will supply one of the essen- tial conditions of the moral problem. We have to recognize in connection with this, that the essence of freedom is self -activity, and that the inner history of the soul is an evolution of self-activity out of po- tentiality. And in addition to this we have to rec- ognize that conscience is the organ of this ideal free activity, and that from the standpoint of conscience the dualistic basis of moral progress is revealed. From these data it will become a^Dparent that mechanism is the handmaid of freedom. For free- dom as self -activity is the inner motive of the whole process. And while the process itself is to be con- ceived as serial and as subject, therefore, to the laws of mechanical determinism, we are able to see that the motive of the process is to be teleologically rather than mechanically conceived. The teleologi- cal standpoint of morality is that of conscience, which is the organ of ideal freedom. And the proc- ess of moral experience can only be adequately grasped when we conceive it as a dualism in which the ideal force of conscience is periDctually operat- ing upon the empirical self, which is the immediate antecedent of choice, in order to modify it, and transform it into harmony with its own law. The MORALITY 135 realization of freedom thus stands as tlie telos of the whole moral drama, and moral evolution is seen to be but an aspect of the larger evolution of the hu- man soul, an unending- process in which the activity of mechanism passes into the comjoleter and freer activity of the spirit without being thereby sup- pressed or destroyed. A sense of the dualistic basis of morality constitutes the richest vein in the Kantian speculations. But Kant fails to realize fully the true character of moral dualism, not from any lack of native insight, but because he has never achieved adequate ideas of being, non-being, and the nature of the soul. "While he has a profound intuition, therefore, his failure consists in weakness in the sphere of its application. Kant draws from his dualistic data an inadequate conception of the ultimate sources of morality and a defective doctrine of moral freedom. He truly conceives that the norms of morality are to be found in man's rational and spiritual nature. He, there- fore, makes the ideal moral reason of the soul self- legislating, and conceives autonomy to be the only true principle of morals. So far he reasons well. But because he has made a cleft between the moral reason and the Absolute, he is forced to regard the principle which finds the ultimate springs of moral- ity in the nature of the Absolute as heteronomous and, therefore, false. The principle of moral auton- omy thus becomes abstractly humanistic and irre- ligious, and a chasm yawns between morality and religion which nothing can bridge over. 136 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY A more adequate conception of the Absolute and of the ideal, rational and spiritual element in man's nature would have enabled Kant to escape this fatal error, without sacrificing the larinciple of autonomy. Had he reached a true conception of the psychic logos and its relation to its primal ground in the absolute nature, he would have seen that the prin- ciple of autonomy is not irreligious, and that when it is thoroughly applied it will lead to the subsump- tion of the moral idea under the idea of religion. Kant also erects upon his dualistic basis an inad- equate doctrine of moral freedom. He truly con- ceives the empiric will to be subject to natural cau- sation, though he does not clearly grasp its form as self-determination in a series ; and since all actual choice and action belong to the sphere of temporal succession, he concludes that freedom has no x)lace in a world like ours. Turning now to the sphere of the noumenon or ideal, he is able to conceive a nat- ure which is not subject to the law of natural causa- tion, and had he been able to fully realize this nature he would have been in possession of the data for a true doctrine. But an unfortunate breach which he has already made between the phenomenal and nou- menal spheres, renders him impotent. He can never reach the intuition of spirit as real, and his sphere of noumena remains empty of reality and is filled with mere possibility. True, he finds grounds of moral necessity for postulating the reality of this sphere, but postulation is not intuition, and his post- ulate remains a virtual abstraction. The law of MORALITY 137 freedom wliicli he conceives as belonging to this sphere is, therefore, of no real effect, and the whole case for morality is left virtually in the hands of natural causation. It is evident that had Kant conceived true ideas of the Absolute and of the psychic nature of man, his fine dualistic intuition would have led him to more adequate results. He would have seen the vital connection between morality and religion, and the true idea of freedom would have been opened to him. For he would have seen clearly that the recog- nition of natural causation as a princi]3le of self- determination in the empirical series is consistent with a true doctrine of freedom. Conscience would have revealed to him the real nature of freedom as an ideal self-activity of the soul, which is ever oper- ating upon and through the empiric will toward its own self-realization. Freedom is, therefore, the in- ner essence of the empirical process, and the tele- ologic law of moral achievement, without which morality would lose all its meaning and value. X NON-BEING AND EVIL The practical working- out of moral experience, and especially the fortunes of the struggle of the spirit to transform the empirical will, is profoundly affected by the presence of evil in the world. Evil is a factor that has been variously treated in our modern thinking. It has been identified with be- ing as positive principle, while good has been con- ceived as negative in its character, and pessimism has been the resulting theory. Again, it has been identified with non-being and non-being with rela- tivity, and a theosophic mysticism has emerged whose ideal is the breaking of the mould of psychic existence and absorption into Nirvana. Lastly, evil has been identified with non-being, and non- being with unreality, and optimism has emerged with its denial of the reality of evil, and its blind adherence to the dogma that the actual and the ideal are one, or that whatever is is right. Now, in order to treat the joroblem of evil with true insight, we must approach it from the stand- point of the fundamental categories, being, non- being, and becoming. For the most serious defects NOlSr-BEING AND EVIL 139 of theories of evil have sprung as a rule either from an oversight of some of these categories, or from a confused identification of evil with some of them. In view of this we lay down the proposition that evil cannot be truly theorized except in the light of the trinal categories of reality, and also that it cannot be identified with either being, non-being, or becom- ing, although it has its roots in non-being. The typical pessimist of modern philosophy is Schoijenhauer. But the roots of his pessimism are to be sought in the depths of his metaphysics. Schopenhauer denies the rationality of the world, conceiving it to be the product of the blind and un- reasoning impulse of a will which strives wholly without intelligence. The reason and intelligence of the world do not spring from its ground-principle, but are an afterthought, a by-product of blindly groping instinct. The rationality and intelligibility of the world are, therefore, appearance and not reality. The only realities are unreason, caprice, chaos, and mal-adaptation. Now, the metaphysical doctrine of the blindness and irrationality of the world, when carried into the ethical sphere, becomes the ground-principle of pessimism. The Schopen- hauerian pessimism does not follow logically from the identification of the world-ground with will, but rather from the disjunction of will from intelligence and the identification of will with non-intelligent instinct. Pessimism does not deny that there are reason and order in the world, but these are late comers, and they find that unreason and caprice 140 BASAL CONCEPTS IIST PHILOSOPHY have been beforehand with them, and have sat, as it were, as the privy councillors of the Creator. The world is conceived as springing out of an irrational and chaotic root. Its tendency to mal-adaptation, to the production of misery instead of happiness, caprice instead of reason, chaos instead of law, con- fusion instead of order, disease and poverty instead of health and riches, is, therefore, constitutional, chronic, and incurable. Now, after Schopenhauer it is no longer possible to rest in the easy-going optimism of Leibnitz and the eighteenth century. Schopenhauer has opened our eyes to the fact that evil is a real and very se- rious factor in the world. We can no longer ignore the existence of evil or treat it as a phase of good in the making. Evil is not good in the making, but always and everywhere the opposite and foe of good. But there is a root of illusion in Schopen- hauer. We have seen that the universe becomes intelligible only when we undo the disjunction of will and intelligence and conceive the first impulse of being to be intelligent and rational. This is what Schopenhauer denies, but his denial carries him too far. In order that the philosophy of Scho- penhauer may be rational the intelligence of Scho- penhauer himself must be rational. The world, then must in Schopenhauer have achieved a stage of rationality and order. Schopenhauer says that this is a by-product, and has no more right against the nature of things than any other epi-phenomenon. Well, if that be true, the standpoint of reason and ISrON-BEING AND EVIL 141 intelligence has no more riglit, claim, or value than any other. It is a passing- phase of existence like the rest, and why should the clay cry out against the potter ? In short, the logic of Schopenhauer's po- sition leaves no ground or motive for the impressive moral which Schojjenhauer draws and which alone clothes pessimism with the dignity of a serious theory. The root of illusion in Schopenhauer is his identification of being and evil. This reduces rationality and good to negativity. If being and evil are one and good, and rationality be negative, then the irresistible and inevitable tendency of the "universe is toward the generation of caprice, un- reason, and chaos, and against that of reason and order. It, therefore, swallows up all standpoints, in- cluding that of Schopenhauer, and leaves no ground for any theory of things whatsoever. For a little man to sit in his study and write, and seriously be- lieve, that caprice and unreason constitute the es- sence of things thus involves a self-contradiction that is little less than ludicrous. The typical optimist of modern philosoiDhy is Leibnitz. The roots of his optimism are to be sought in the metaphysical theory on which it rests. Leibnitz distinguishes three species of evil — metaphysical, natural, and moral. Metaphysical evil he identifies with imperfection, thus commit- ting himself unwittingly to the contradictory posi- tion that all relativity and becoming are evil. Leib- nitz did not mean this, but he falls unwittingly into the mistake because he has overlooked the real 142 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY metapliysical ground of evil. Or rather, lie traces it wrongly to the will of the Creator, who after re- volving an infinite number of world-patterns, some of which, Leibnitz lets us think, Avere perfect, chose the present imperfect pattern as the best practi- cable scheme. Leibnitz was sharp-witted enough to see that his reference of the imperfection of the world to the option of the Creator committed him logically and ethically to a conceiDtion of evil which would deprive it of all serious reality. Other- wise the goodness of the Creator would be im- pugned. He therefore conceives evil in both a neg- ative and an unreal sense, as mere defect of good, as good in the making. Leibnitz shows little signs of any intuition of the fact that evil is the opposite and foe of the good, that it is that which the good must forever suppress and annul. Identifying evil thus with the unreal, Leibnitz is utterly blind to the grav- ity of its nature and to the serious issues in life and destiny to which it gives rise. Like the typical optimist that he is, he confounds and even identifies the actual and the ideal. For though he is not the author of the dictum that whatever is is right, the spirit of his general view is in sympathy with such a sentiment. Leibnitz recognizes evil, it is true, but his recognition is a kind of lip-service, for he cannot for the life of him see that there is anything serious- ly wrong with the world. Evil to Leibnitz is merely a kind of a disciplinary agent, which an optimist Deity employs to train his creatures and lead them to hig'her stages of good. F0T7-BEING AND EVIL 143 Well, the pedagogical aspects of the question should not be overlooked. But it is a shallow view of evil that would seat it in the chair of a Divinity School as a teacher of morals. The truth of the matter is that Leibnitz has missed almost the entire philosophy of evil. It is of no avail to recognize good as positive and identical with being, and evil as negative, if we do not also conceive evil as the opposite of good, and therefore real. If evil can pass into the good, or if it is good in the making or a pedagogical condition of good merely, then it has no reality, but is an appearance, and optimism of the most roseate hue is the true theory. But the whole rationality of a philosophic theory rests pri- marily in its insistence on the cardinal position that real opposites cannot pass into one another, but deny and annul one another. Evil is opposed to good, and must be suppressed and annulled in order that good may be realized. But Leibnitz lacked the philosophic basis from which an intuition of the true relation of opposites becomes possible. Leibnitz had an intuition of be- ing, but none of non-being. We must trace the rela- tion of opposites back into the very root of spiritual activity itself. There we will see that the primal impulse of being which leads to the intuition and conscious assertion of self, leads also by a necessary dualism to an intuition and denial of being's op- posite, or non-being. We must realize how the intuition of this negative or non-being supplies the rational motive for a disjunction of the energy of 144 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY being and a distinction between immanent self-reali- zation and the outgoing energy of voluntary creation. We must realize how the outgo of creative energy into this sphere of negation, in order to annul it by the generation of forms of being, in the very neces- sities of the case generates only the relative and imperfect, not the absolute and perfect. We must realize that this imperfection and relativity has its root in the absence from the creature of the ground and principle of its own existence. The law of the creature is, therefore, that of dependence on other, the self-existent principle on which its own exist- ence depends, transcending it. We must finally realize that this lack of self-existent ground and consequent dependence on other which is the very essence of generated being, is the negative ground of that differentia of the creature ; namely, its muta- hility, which, as Augustine profoundly saw, is the root of the possibility of evil. From this view it becomes evident that a distinc- tion must be recognized between imperfection and evil. We must deny that what Leibnitz calls meta- physical evil is evil at all. No relative being can exist without imperfection. If then imperfection is evil, the relative is evil, and we are led by a short-cut from optimism to the Hindu form of pessimism. For it is the tendency of Hindu thinking to identify all true being with the Absolute, and to carry the idea of the unity of this being so far as to virtually cut off all possible participation of the relative in being. The result is that the two poles of Hindu NON-BEING AND EVIL 145 thinking are, on tlie one hand an unapproachable One which is the sum of all reality, and on the other a sphere of plurality and change which is pure illu- sion. This is the world of relativity and becoming, which the oriental mind reduces to illusion and evil, a defective veil of Make which must be pene- trated in order that true being may be realized. The good consists in the soul's rifting this veil of illusion and losing itself in Nirvana or the absolute One. It is a curiously ironical fact that we find one of the keenest of modern thinkers thus resting opti- mism upon a plank which had ages before been ap- proioriated by one of the extremest forms of pes- simism. The defect in the r)osition, whether subsi- dized in the interests of pessimism or optimism, is its virtual identification of relativity and evil. This renders the conclusion inevitable that the Creator is the immediate and intentional author of evil ; a thought from which the human reason shrinks, and in order to escape the issue chooses rather to bury itself in pantheism or atheism, or, if it still clings to theism, to vindicate the Creator by espousing a theory of evil which identifies it substantially with good. The difficulty is overcome when we make a dis- tinction between imperfection and evil. The law of a created being is development, and a developing being must be imperfect. But an imperfect being may be developing along a true curve toward the realization of its ideal end. Imperfection in such 10 146 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY a being- will be insex)arable from undeveloped po- tence. But normally tliis potence will go on to re- alize itself, and in doing so the creature is achieving the true end of its being. There are then normal types of relative and generated being which must be conceived as good. In a system of relative being, therefore, if evil arise it must arise as something abnormal, as some kind of aberration or departure from the normal types of relativity. We cannot, then, identify evil with any of the three categories being, non-being, or becoming. And that means that evil is not necessary as an element in any system of reality. The question then arises, Avhat is evil ? Well, when Leibnitz identified meta- physical evil with imperfection he simply mistook the contingency or the liability to evil for evil it- self. We cannot do better here than fall back on the intuition of St. Augustine. The creature is imper- fect, and this imperfection, which, as we saw, has its source in the non-self-existence of the creature and its dependence on other, expresses itself in " a cer- tain mutability " through which the creature is sub- ject to conting'enc3^ Now, it is this mutability or contingency in the creative nature that is the nega- tive ground of its fall into evil. Mutability is not in itself evil, for a thing may be, as Augustine says, mutable and yet good. Mutability is inseparable from undeveloped potency, and the capacity for growth and development is inseparable from con- tingency or liability to evil. In what sense, then, is the mutability of the rela- NON-BEIlSrG ATfD EVIL 147 tive the condition of the origin and existence of evil ? We must translate mutability into tendency to non-being-. The normal, that is, the good type of a relative being, is the develoi^ment-type, and its law is the law of growth or progress toward the perfec- tion of the type. But the negative of the develop- ment-type and its law of growth, is imperfection, mutability, tendency toward non-being. Now, evil, in its most general and unethical sense, arises when the tendency to non-being so far prevails over the development-type and its law as either to arrest growth and initiate the opposite process of decay and dissolution, or when the being falls from its nor- mal path into a kind of aberration. All relativity has in it the contingency of decay or aberration, and when this contingency becomes actual, then evil has originated and become a feature of reality. What Leibnitz calls metax3hysical evil, then, is not evil but the negative potentiality of evil ; that is, it is that which renders a relative creature liable to evil. Evil proper is some property or characteris- tic of the relative which has its root in this negative ground. All evil may be classed as two species, natural and moral. Natural evil in its principle will be departure from the normal type and law of de- velopment either as a process of decay or as aber- ration, and its manifestation throughout nature will be disorder, caprice, destructiveness, mal-adapta- tion, and in the sentient sphere, pain, disease, pov- erty, and death. We can only deal intelligently with natural evil 148 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOrHY wlien we distinguish between the x>rinciple of evil and its manifestations or effects. The term is popu- larly applied to the manifestations such as pain and disease. These are undoubtedly evils. But a phi- losojDhy of evil must emphasize the principle rather than the mere manifestations. Now, it is coming to be a recognized doctrine in the psychology of pain, for example, that it has its root in some departure from the normal type and its law, either in func- tional failure of the life processes, or in failure of the organism to adapt itself to its conditions. Not only does this confirm the theory of evil we are de- feuding here, but it also indicates very clearly the teleological character of the idea of evil. Evil is departure from the good and must have its primal significance in its relation to the good. But for a developing creature good can only be teleological, and it will be expressed in the end or ideal which the law of its being is realizing. The good of a creature will thus be the whole meaning and ration- ale of its existence. It will include its whole posi- tive reality. The evil of a creature will be the op- XTOsite of this, the negative of the positive content of the good, in that it tends to defeat and annul the good end. Whatever tends thus in the negative teleological direction, produces the manifestation of evil in nature and sentient existence — disorder, des- tructiveness, lawlessness, pain, disease, and poverty. Moral evil arises only as a function of the will of an intelligent and personal agent. Moral evil super- adds the element of choice to the generic concept ISrOlSr-BEING AND EVIL 149 of evil. Choice or option is thus the differentia of moral evil. How then shall moral evil be con- ceived ? In the first place it is evident that evil must be chosen in order to become moral. Mere spontaneous aberration from the good can never rise to the gravity of moral evil. But the choice of evil implies an option, and this must be an option that is teleological and in view of alternatives which the dual nature of the agent places before it. This is a vital part of the theory, for if the nature of the agent were monal it could have only one con- stitutional good and the dilemma of choice between good and evil could not arise. The Absolute, whose nature is conceived to be monal, must also be con- ceived as free from temptation. The evil is that to which the absolute nature is opposed, and its choice is essentially an annulment of evil. But the psy- chic nature of the creature is dual, and there is a perpetual dialectic between the empirical will of the actualized or empirical self and the law of con- science or the will of the ideal self. Man's dualis- tic nature thus confronts him with an everlasting option between the ideal and the end to which the empirical will is drawn. This is the cardinal moral situation out of which the whole drama of good and evil arises. Moral evil arises when the empirical will asserts itself against the ideal. It thus cuts itself off from the spring of its rationality and spirituality, and be- comes the organ of capricious impulse and unspir- itual and animal propensity. The negative thus 150 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY gets the upper liand, and the empirical will having broken with reason and spirit, yields itself to the lawless forces of caprice and passion. The result, if the rebellion continues, has been vividly portrayed by Plato. The steeds of the lower nature having overcome their guide, take the bits in their teeth and plunge madly downward with chariot and driver toward the abyss. This figure of Plato's symbolizes the lawlessness and destructiveness of the emiDiric will when it has asserted itself against the ideal, and the fall into depravity and moral ruin that inevitably follows. Again, the negative character of evil comes out clearly in its moral form. There is involved, it is true, the choice of some end which is conceived to be a good. But this does not constitute the act morally evil. It becomes moral evil only as it is a rebellion against the ideal good which is imposed on our nature as a law, and the evil arises out of the fact that we voluntarily annul and negate what we recognize at the same time we ought to choose as our true good. Our choice becomes moral evil when it repudiates the higher ideal good and falls on a lower supposed good. All moral evil is thus in its essence a rebellion against good and the taking* of a negative, destructive attitude toward it. The most aggravated form of moral evil embodies itself in the will that we call satanic. This last stage of moral obliquity is finely embodied in Milton's Satan, who although a rebel against God and fallen into perdition, has still some remains of his former NON-BEIlSrG AND EVIL 151 g-lory in his nature. He does not become a complete devil until, after reflection on his defeat and fall, he deliberately renounces his allegiance to g-ood and chooses evil ; that is, rebellion and warfare against God, as his good. Here the xolace of the ideal good is deliberately vacated of its true occupants, righteousness, goodness, and love, and unrighteous- ness, wickedness, and hate are enthroned in their stead. The normal relations between good and evil are thus completely inverted, and a demoniac will holds the i^lace of the ejected ideal. The Spirit is thus quenched, which is the unpardonable sin of a creature, and the lost soul has before it only the abyss and an everlasting downward progress in evil. What light does this view of evil throw upon its relation to the absolute Author of the world ? It is clear that we cannot affirm unqualifiedly either that the Creator is, or that he is not, the author of evil. We have seen that evil is no necessary part of the relative order. But its root, the mutability and contingency of the relative, is a necessary feature, and this has its presupposition in non-being. The Creator does not generate evil, but he generates con- ditions which have the contingency of evil in them. Why then is the Creator not morally responsible for evil ? and how can the system of things in which the contingency of evil exists be any longer re- garded as good ? It is clear that moral respon- sibility could not be escaped if the option of creation is between a perfect and immutable, and an imperfect and mutable world, both of which are pos- 152 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PIIILOSOPHr sible. If we carry the idea of absolute power to the extent of including' this dual possibility in its scope, then the actual imperfection and evil of the world impugns the goodness of the Creator and leaves no distinctive basis for religion. But if the whole doctrine of being, non-being, and becoming- as un- folded in this treatise be true, then the option sup- posed above is a fiction. The very facts that creative energy is outgoing and not immanent, and that cre- ated being must originate not immanentally, but out of the Absolute, in non-being, carry with them the necessity that created being should be imperfect and mutable. Only the uncreated and self-existent Absolute can be loerfect and immutable in its nature. The option then which really exists and which con- fronts the creative intelligence is a choice between non-being and becoming. The creative energy must forever remain quiescent in face of the intuition of the outer sphere of pure negation, or it must rouse itself volitionally to an effort to generate being where now pure negation exists. If, now, the option is between non-being and no created existence, and created existence which shall be imperfect and con- tain in it the contingency of evil, the moral situa- tion is completely altered. It is better that becom- ing or relative and imperfect being should take the place of pure negation and non-being. The spirit can only assert itself against the negative by letting free the creative energy and generating in the sphere of its opposite its own image. The existence of evil is, therefore, not inconsistent NOX-BEING AND EVIL 153 with the supremacy of good. Tlie development- type and law of a relative creature, as we have seen, is good. Now, if the contingency of evil is insepar- able from this development-type and law, and if this contingency results in actual evil in a given sys- tem of relativity, it is possible for such evil to exist and be real, without thereby vitiating the constitu- tion of things. In other words, it is possible that the evil of the world is a subordinate feature of reality, and that the force and trend of the good tends con- tinually to annul and transcend the evil. The possi- bility of this will become more clear if we view the world from the teleological standpoint in the light of that world-idea which to the Absolute includes within it the whole world-process. If the world- process when comprehended under the world-idea is good, then it stands justified, notwithstanding the negative feature which has been its inseparable accompaniment. It appears then, that the final judgment of evil must be teleologic, and that its nature will be largely determined by the conception we are able to reach of the end and purpose of the world. It is clear then that neither optimism nor pessi- mism supply us with an adequate theory of evil. Optimism treats it altogether too lightly, while pes- simism sacrifices the good to the evil Moloch. A more adequate view than either is meliorism, which while recognizing the reality and gravity of evil, subordinates it to the good and believes, therefore, that the condition of the world is not altogether 154 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY hopeless, but that improvement is xDossible. The meliorist, with a keen intuition of the evils that are eating- into the fibres of the world and humanity, will yet not lose hope but rather find in these a motive for spiritual activity. For although the end and supreme category of things is the good, this can be attained only through perpetual struggle. We must be continually rising above and crucifying our em- pirical selves. This is a universal law of progress, and in its realization man will find that he must not only avail himself of his own most strenuous endeavors, but also of the power that transcends him. XI COMMUKAL NATURE Lucretius pictures man in his primitive state as a naked savage dominated by animal instincts, desti- tute of the arts of civilized life, wandering- over the earth without shelter, or finding a temporary lodg- ing in caves, and subsisting on berries, nuts, and the uncooked flesh of animals. He represents him as anti-social, engaging in a hand-to-hand struggle with his fellows, and making war the chief business of his life. Out of this war of antagonistic interests sociality gradually emerges ; fire is discovered and man becomes the cooking animal ; clothing and habitations are invented, speech is developed, and man becomes the rational animal and evolves grad- ually the varied arts and complex organisms of civilized life. The Lucretian model has served for a whole school of modern publicists, of whom Hobbes is the chief, who represent man as being, in a state of nature preceding the birth of social order, a purely individualistic, anti-social, and warring animal, who in pursuit of his own selfish interests is in a state of perpetual conflict with his fellow-mortals. These 156 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY publicists follow Lucretius in representing the g-erms of sociality and civic order as springing out of these anti-social conditions, and as being, there- fore, a kind of artificial and conventional growth superinduced upon a soil that is primarily alien to them. Another school, of which Aristotle is the first and greatest exponent, takes an opposite view, represent- ing man as by nature a political animal, containing in his nature from the start the germs of sociality and civic order. The representatives of this school do not deny an evolution of sociality and social forms. They in fact assert it as a cardinal doctrine of their creed. What they do deny is that the growth can be regarded as in any sense artificial or conventional, or that man ever existed in a state of pure antagonistic individualism. They maintain that the evolution has as its necessary presupposi- tion a rudimental sociality, and that the social life and order which arise are normal and natural. Now, there is, without doubt, a large measure of truth in the Lucretian view. For, aside from the question whether or not man, historically, began his career as a naked and quarrelsome savage, it must be admitted that there are forces in man's nature which antagonize the social order and which must be overcome, therefore, before the social order can be established. If we name such forces indi- vidualism, it follows that the grounding of the social order will involve a conflict with the individual- istic forces, and that the development which ensues COMMUNAL NATUKE 157 will have its inception in a condition of things in which the individualistic and antisocial forces dom- inate. The primal condition will thus be one that is explicitly and overtly a state of warring- individual- ities, hostile to social organization. What this theory overlooks or ignores, is the pres- ence in human nature of implicit but real social in- stincts and forces, and this oversight blinds it to the real nature of the struggle out of which the social order arises, which is not a mere aimless and fatalistic onset of individualistic forces, but rather a duel between these and their enemy, the developing energy of social order. The deeper intuition of the school of Aristotle realizes this fact, and while admitting the warfare, is able to put a different and more rational construction upon it. Recognizing the fact that social and civic order grows out of a struggle of conflicting forces, they see in this struggle the perpetual effort of a unitary principle to overcome and transform the forces of division and disorder. All theories rest on the common presupposition of an underlying human nature. Frog nature, or in fact the most gifted animal nature, would not serve as a basis for the structure that is to be erected upon it. Lucretius himself recognizes this in the fact that his naked savage dominated by animal instincts, is a very different type of animal from lions or tigers, who also have their unending warfare, but out of it do not obtain the rich result which falls to the lot of man. Lucretius and Hobbes in truth assume 158 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY on the part of tlie human animal, a wealth of capacity which belies their contention that his rationality and civic and social life have emerged out of conditions from which their rudiments were absent. For why, under the stress of antagonism, should all this rich fruitage come if all the parties to the conflict are purely individualistic forces ? The answer will be, of course, that man is a creature who is capable of learning the lessons of experience, and who, seeing that unrestricted antagonism defeats the end he has in view, therefore, calls a halt and sets up a tribunal for the regulation of his lawless tendencies. But this answer contains the very assumption that destroys it. A creature that is capable of drawing such lessons from experience must already have the. germs of rationality in its nature, and in the lull of passion it will be the still small voice of reason that will be heard speaking of a better way. If we assume that man in his original nature is a creature of purely selfish and individual passions, then we are logically committed to the conclusion that any principle of conduct which may arise out of such a soil will be selfish and individualistic also. Men Avill, there- fore, never rise above selfish individualism. The only escape from this conclusion open to the advocate of the theory in question, is the old recourse to spon- taneous generation, which, to use Hume's phrase, can produce anything out of anything. But for that very reason it is worthless. The truth of the matter is that human nature has been slandered and that man is not a purely selfish in- COMMUNAL NATURE 159 dividualist, but lias in his nature a germinating se?ise of Justice, which is the root-i3rinciple of altruism and social and civic order. Even social philosophers of the Aristotelian school have not always ajoprehended all the implications of this truth. They have con- tented themselves, as a rule, with pointing- to the social relations as the soil out of which the social institutions have sprung. But they have overlooked the fact that the social relations presuppose some- thing more ultimate than themselves ; namely, a so- cial nature or consciousness out of which they spring. Otherwise the organic sexual instinct would not lead to the family, nor would there proceed from this the g-erms of the community and the state. Underlying the question of the social relations is the more fun- damental one, as to what kind of creature the bearer of such relations must be. It is evident that social relations cannot rest on the presupposition of a nature endowed only with organic instincts and individualistic passions. To assert that it could, would be to enter the school of Hobbes by the back door. It is necessary, in order to ground solidly an adequate politico-social theory, to postulate a communal principle or force in man's nature as the basis of his social and civic develop- ment. Such a principle is found, we think, in the idea or sense of justice. The old Greek thinkers of the Socratic school mani- fested not only a sound instinct but profound in- sight in the place they assigned to ^Justice in their politico-social speculations. Socrates regards it as 160 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY fundamental and is constantly seeking- its definition. Plato lays it at tlie foundation of his Republic as the principle of all communal life. Aristotle gives it a central place in his political theory, and defines it as a principle of equality in the distribution both of awards and possessions, and Aristotle's definition has been the basis of modern conceptions of what is equitable and rig-ht, as between man and man. What is needed, then, is an analysis of the idea of justice as the basis of communal consciousness and life. The first step in this analysis will be found in the fact that the conception of justice as a principle of distribution is not its ultimate idea. Underlying- distribution must be some criterion or standard, and this the definition includes in the term equal. Equality is then a simpler idea than Justice. Now, equal comes originally from the Greek verb etKw, which means primarily to be like, and then to be fitting, and then to be right, seemly, or reasonable. Justice is from Jus, which means primarily that which binds or constrains. In the light of its der- ivation, then, justice is the idea of equality with the idea of authority attached to it. Terms swing loosely on their etymologies, but these in general indicate the kind of reflection out of which they have arisen. It is clear that the Greek root €t/rofoundly the fountains of love. Literature in its supremest forms of epic and dramatic poetry, is an embodi- ment of this same typal spiritual theme. The epic works out the struggle and achieves its media- tion and unity in the broad field of national or tribal history, while the drama embodies the same theme in the sphere of particular individualities. Comedy presents the lighter phases of the theme, while in tragedy the deepest notes of spiritual ex- perience are struck. The struggle is to the death and mediation can be achieved only by the shed- ding of blood, while the reconciliation and peace which ensues is the attainment of a higher plane of spiritual life and experience. Aristotle has a pro- found insight into the cathartic quality of real tragedy which renders it a means of purification through terror and pity. A profounder and simpler insight will see in it, as its core of spiritual meaning, a drama of love and mediation. Art and religion are very closely allied both in ART 2B1 their history and their essence. It is in the common theme of the hig-hest music and the profonndest literature that their ideas seem to coalesce. In the same theme we seem to discover the inner spiritual idea of art in the light of which the whole develop- ment becomes teleologic. For just as the real tele- ology of cosmic nature manifests itself in soul, and the real teleology of psychic nature reveals itself in the perfect type of religion, so here in the idea of spiritual struggle mediated through sacrifice, and reconciliation and peace achieved on a higher plane, we seem to find the real teleologic ideal of art. Art-appreciation is not a category of the artist, but rather of the spectator and student of art. This appreciation has two branches, the intellectual and the emotional, and it passes through psychological and ontological stages. Ontologically its intellect- ual branch is a species of rational knowledge and consists in the apprehension of the fundamental ideas of art. Rational art-knowledge, in common with other forms, can be completely achieved only in the light of the categories of being, non-being, and becoming-. For the philosophy of art, in common mth all philosophy, must find its start- ing-point in the idea of absolute being. From this idea it is able to deduce the notions of absolute creativeness and absolute beauty. But these ideas cannot, as we have seen, be carried over unmodified into the relative sphere. We cannot truly define human art as the Absolute manifesting itself in sensuous form until by a true conception of non- BASAL CONCEPTS IN" PIIILOSOPIiy being and the dualistic conditions of creation, we liave acliieved a rational idea of tlie form of becom- ing- and its differentia. It will then be possible to conceive the presence and activity of a principle of absolute intelligence in the psychic sphere, pro- ducing manifestations that do not transcend the rel- ative limitations. This is a crucial point in art as it is in all philosophic theory. The psychic intelli- gence contains an absolute principle. But this prin- ciple is embodied in a dualistic and developing type of individuality, and this difference of type de- termines its actual consciousness as relative and dis- tinguished from the Absolute. Art, so far as it is a function of the human psyche, is a manifestation of the dual psychic activity in sensuous form. Psychologic art-appreciation on its intellectual side manifests itself as art-perception. It follows an empirical and genetic order, beginning with the simplest and most sensuous relations whose appre- hensions are accompanied with pleasurable or pain- ful feeling, and passing through stages correspond- ing* pretty well to those laid down to Socrates by the Theban prophetess. In its path upward the psyche first apprehends the beauty of sensuous forms in colors and physical proportions. A higher stage is the apprehension of the mathematical relations of symmetry, harmony, and proportion. The upward footsteps then enter the sphere of teleology, passing through the portal of mechano-teleology into teleol- ogy proper, where the spiritual types of beauty are realized, its highest manifestation being in the ideal AET 233 form of spiritual mediation and unity embodied in the highest conceptions of art and religion. Art-appreciation on the side of feeling is the emotional impulse aroused by the contemplation of the beautiful. It is the Eros of the Greeks and ex- presses not simply x)assive enjoyment, but an active apiDropriation of the object. The art-feeling, like other forms of spiritual activity, however, passes from a potential stage of relative passivity to one of realized actuality. It begins as a feeling of pleasure or pain that is immediately aroused by the contem- plation of sensuous beauty. The development of actuality in the aesthetic emotion accompanies the progress of the ideal element. As the higher ideas and relations of beauty dawn upon the intelligence they constitute the ideal basis of higher forms of fBsthetic emotion. Thus the emotional apiDreciation of the beautiful rises through the categories of moral beauty to that of spiritual beauty proper, the sphere of the religious emotions, and culminates in the ecstatic state of emotion aroused by the beauty of holiness. Art and utility are very closely related in certain deiDartments of art, as for examjole in architecture. But even here art begins where utility leaves off. A homely and even hideous structure will serve the ends of utilitarian comfort. It is the sense for beauty that dictates and motives all the features of architecture that can be called artistic. This is universally true and the only claim utility can have on beauty is that of self-i^reservation. It can justly 234 BASAL CONCEPTS IJST PHILOSOPHY demand that it be not sacrificed in the interest of beauty. Art and morality are more intimately connected. They are one in the sense that the supreme motive of both is love, and so far as morality embodies love, it is beautiful. The relation of the moral law to art, however, is analogous to that of utility. Mo- rality has the right to demand that its law be re- spected and that the good be not sacrificed in the interest of beauty. The relations between art and religion are of the closest kind. The form of the artistic intelligence is the same as that of religion. Both are synthetic and teleologic, operating under the categories of unity and design. Both are spiritual and concrete, appealing with equal power to reason and feeling. And both contemplate in their highest forms the same spiritual ideal, the solution of spiritual strug- gle and the realization of unity and peace on a higher plane through mediational sacrifice. XV KNOWLEDGE Knowledge is not reality, but the conception of reality. The real is, therefore, its presupposition. To deny reality is to abolish the possibility of knowledge. But the denial is not dangerous, for it begins with the denial of itself. If the sphere of knowledge is only a sphere of illusion, then illusion itself becomes real. Illusion is not an ultimate concept. It is the real masquerading in a false dress. The false dress presupposes normal cloth- ing. The illusory is a species within the genus real. Regarding knowledge, four fundamental questions arise : (1) How is knowledge possible ? (2) How is it made actual ? (3) How are the processes of knowledge correlated ? (4) Has knowledge any limit ? The first question involves two considerations : (1) the ]presupposition ; (2) the first principle of knowl- edge. McCosh says the presupposition of knowl- edge is reality, and this we also assert. If the real is not, then knowledge falls into self-contradiction. To say, however, that knowledge presupposes the real is only affirming in other words that philosophy must have a primal datum to start from. A little 236 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY reflection will skew tlie identity of these proposi- tions. The reality assumed cannot be every or any sort of existence. Let us start with some phenom- enon which is a species of reality and we find our- selves forced back of the phenomenon to its ante- cedent in time. But the temporal antecedent is only a passing- stage in a procession of reason which moves on from the idea of antecedent to that of causal nexus as a form of mechanical activity and from this to the idea of g-round or activity that returns upon itself and is, therefore, self -existent. This proves that every assumption is provisional except the last, and that every species of reality ex- cept the last is provisionally assumed and depends upon that last for its justification. The unconditional assumption of knowledg-e, that on which all provisional assumptions depend, is absolute reality. We thus come back to the primal insight of Plato and Aristotle, v/ho saw that philos- ophy must have an absolute foundation. This ab- solute was construed by Aristotle, as we already know, into purus actus, or pure self -activity, in which there is no unrealized potency. The conclusion we reach here is simply a reassertion of the Aristotelian principle which makes absolute reality, that is, absolute self-activity, the first and only uncon- ditional presupposition of knowledge. This first presupposition of knowledge leads us by a few steps to the first principle of knowledge. When Descartes pointed to self-consciousness as the first principle of philosophy and defined mind as KNOWLEDGE 237 thinking substance, he had one foot in the kingdom but was misled by his false notion of substance. Had he learned the lesson of Aristotle and trans- lated the idea of substance into that of self-activity, his whole theory would have been revolutionized. If to the position here asserted, that pure self- activity is the first presupposition of knowledge, we add the position reached in the chajoter on Con- sciousness ; namely, that self -activity and self-con- scious activity are identical, we arrive at the idea of self-conscioitsness as the first principle of knowledge. But so conceived it is a more effective principle than that of Descartes. For the idea of substance has been translated into the idea of self-activity, and when self-consciousness and self-conscious activity are identified the principle of self -consciousness be- comes one with the principle of self-activity. Self- consciousness thus absorbs the idea of substance into itself. The consequences of this are far-reaching. In the first place it reveals the fact that all knoAvledge rests on an absolute first principle. If the pre- supposition of knowledge is pure self-activity, and its first principle self-consciousness, which is con- scious self-activity, then it is clear that no catego- ries short of pure self-activity and the conscious- ness of pure self-activity will serve as primal grounds for knowledge. But pure self-activity is absolute being and pure self-consciousness is the self-con- sciousness of absolute being. The ground and first principle of knowledge are, therefore, absolute. 238 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY Descartes apprehended, though not very clearly, the force of this reflection when he argued that the existence of an infinite and perfect being is the nec- essary presupposition of the self -consciousness of man, a contention that is perfectly sound, but which rests on its true and irrefragable ground only when the principle in the human consciousness is asserted to be absolute in its essence and, therefore, in its perfect activity, the necessary bearer of an abso- lute consciousness. Absolute being is thus an im- mediate presupposition of self-consciousness. In the second place, this conception of self-con- sciousness enables us to discover and ground the categories of an adequate and comprehensive theory of knowledge. Self -activity is the immediate pre- supposition of self-consciousness, but its primal categories are those of self and the not -self con- ceived as its negative opposite. That both these categories are not categories of being will appear from the following reflection. Absolute being is pure self - activity, and pure self -consciousness is consciousness of pure self-activity. The self then of the dual categories must be self-active. What then is the not-self ? What is it that can be dis- tinguished from self-activity as its negation ? There is no completely rational answer to this possible, ex- cept one that endows being wdtli a primal power to distinguish itself from its negative opposite, non- being. And this non- being cannot, therefore, be conceived as in being but as out of it, as its qualita- tive opposite and adversary. KNOWLEDGE 239 The primal not-self, or object, of pure self-activity or absolute being is not, then, anything internal to being. It is not being (self- activity) going out in self-alienation into its other, for this other would still be the self and the dialectic which leads to it would be only the activity of internal self -evolution. The primal not -self is the negative and foe of all this self-active process. It is something that must be annuled before the universe can contain any other conscious individualities distinct from the self-conscious absolute. How this negative of be- ing is to be conceived and characterized, we have treated at length in the chapter on Being and Non- Being. The point we wish to insist on here is that the primal categories of reality are being and non- being, and that non-being is not the alter ego but the opposite of being. The altei' ego of being is being in some form, but the negative of being is its opposite, non-being. Now, it is to be remembered that while these categories of self and not-self are primal in self- consciousness, there is an immediate presupposition of self-consciousness and that is self-activity. If we call this being, we may then say that the very first step of all is being's consciousness of self. Being becomes conscious of itself. This is the principle of self-consciousness. The second step is that of the distinction noted above. Being becomes con- scious of itself as distinguished from and opposed to non-being ; that is, negation and want. The fact that self-consciousness is the presupposition of this 240 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY distinction between self and not-self, has led some thinkers to the conclusion that self-consciousness is the unity of self and its negative, or as they prefer to say, subject and object. The logic of this position is that the negative is only the other of the self and ultimately identical with it. Self-consciousness is thus made a one-sided principle of comprehension which identifies opposites, and comprehends in being want and negation as well as the plenum of positive reality. But it must be evident that if this ab- solute principle comprehends vacuum, that is, want and negation, its integrity and its absoluteness are destroyed. The Absolute as pure self-activity must exclude want, negation, and imperfection. We must construe the principle of self-conscious- ness as the unity of being and as the principle which, therefore, distinguishes being from its not-self, negation and want, and excludes it as qualitatively outside of and opposed to it. The primal category of knowledge, after its first principle, self-conscious- ness, is the distinction of self from its negative, or as we prefer to say, being from non-being. Now, knowl- edge we have defined as the conception or idea of reality. The two terms of reality here reached are being and non-being. A complete theory of knowl- edge must then embrace conceptions of non-being- as well as conceptions of being. We have seen, how- ever, in the second and third chapters of this book, that no positive idea of non-being is possible. Non- being is the purely negative term in the universe of reality. As pure negative it must be represented KNOWLEDGE 241 by negative conceptions. We have seen that it may be best symbolized as an outer sphere which con- tains the negative oppositesof the energies of being, and which must, therefore, be overcome in order that being may realize itself. The part which non -being plays as a datum in a theory of knowledge enters in those modifications of relativity which cannot otherwise be explained. Postulating the negative, however, it may be said that the chief industry of a theory of knowledge is to be devoted to the discovery and exposition of the categories of being. In fact its sole interest consists in tracing the fortunes of being, non-being playing the part of an adversary that must be warred against and overcome. Those thinkers who adopt the monal concept of reality criticised above, also limit the inner dialectic of being to self-affirmation and self-negation. But the conception of non-being as the antithetic of being cancels the moment of self -negation and makes it nec- essary to distinguish between the internal activity of self-affirmation and the transitive energy by which being goes out upon its op]oosite. We have seen in the chapters on Being and Non -being, and Becoming, how non -being supplies a rational motive for this outgo of energy and thus grounds negatively the whole process of becoming. It is this dual energiz- ing of self-assertion, and negation of the not-self or non-being, that is comprehended in the unity of self-consciousness. The dual activity is a function of being, therefore, but the negated is not included, 16 242 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY but excluded and opposed by the energy of being. The idea of the self -negation of being involves a subtle self-contradiction. The dialectic of self-consciousness begins with the primal distinction between self and not-self. The not-self is non-being, the negation and opposite of the self. The second step is one in which the self is volitionally asserted, and the not-self volitionally denied. But this denial of the not-self is not a pure intellectual activity of the self ; it is rather its volitional activity which is to be construed as the putting forth of creative energy in the process of producing being out of non-being. Of this compound dialectic the first step is domi- nantly a j^rocess of intellection. In the logic of be- ing conception iDrecedes and is presupposed in voli- tion. Else the whole movement is dark and irrational. The position of Schopenhauer and his school is an inversion of the necessary log'ic of being. But they draw the inevitable conclusion from their transposed premises. If we invert the world it becomes irra- tional and absurd, and life becomes a ghastly joke. We agree with the philosophy that identifies the Absolute with absolute thought, in its main con- tention ; namely, that logically the first activity of all must be intellection. The Absolute must tkink in order to vy'ill and act rationally. We only deprecate in such thinking its rationalistic tendency to force every s^Diritual function into the intellectual mould, a tendency which may be cured by the reflection that in the Absolute, Avhich can only be conceived as pure KNOWLEDGE 243 actuality without undeveloped potence, there may be log"ical dependence, but no derivation. If we do not mean then to eliminate volitional function from our idea of the Absolute, we must conceive its depen- dence on intellection in a way that will consist with its originality. This, we think, is possible only on the supposition that self-conscious activity has three perfectly primal and inseparable modes or aspects ; that in one aspect it is intellection ; in another emo- tion ; in another volition ; but that in every move- ment of its activity, intellection is the first i)resui3- position. If in this sense the first act of the spiritual dia- lectic is one of thinking-, we can see how the intel- lectual activity completes its circle, going out from itself in the intuition of the negative outer sphere and returning upon itself enriched with a dual intui- tion of being and non-being. And this will motive, as we have seen, the second act, which is one of will, the volitional activity going out in the energy of creation into the negative sphere, and returning- upon itself enriched with a dual realization of being and becoming, or, in other phrase, of self and the other. This again, to complete the movement, will motive the third act, which is dominantly one of unity, in which the absolute activity, going out in the energy of love upon the other, or becoming, re- turns upon itself enriched with a dual realization of self and the other reconciled. In this dialectic of spiritual activity it is funda- mental to observe that the primal intellectual intui- 244 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY tion which differentiates non-being" from being- is not mediated, but stands ox^en, and that this supplies the motive for the whole consequent dialectic, the will to cancel the neg-ative by producing being in its sphere, which gives rise to the creature, a nature that contains the potentiality of spiritual being", and lastly the outflow of synthetic love which mediates the spiritual evolution of the creature and brings it into harmony with the creative spirit. A clear conception of this, as we think, fundamental truth, will make it plain that non-being cannot be com]3rehended as a moment in the evolution of being, but that it is the opposite of spirit and to be mediated only by being overcome. This medi- ation can be effected only by volition and love, and has for its moments creation and evolution, the pro- duction of potential being out of non-being and the development of this potence toward the ideal of actualized spirit. In grounding a theory of knowledge it is not cus- tomary to go so deep into ontology. The sufficient justification for doing so, however, is its necessity. The first principle of knowledge is self-conscious- ness, and we have seen that this cannot be conceived in any other way than as conscious self -activity. It, therefore, absorbs the idea of substance into it and becomes also the first principle of ontology. It is impossible to develop a rational theory of knowledge without showing the ontologic grounds on which it rests, and since a complete theory of knowledge must include both the Absolute and the relative, its KNOWLEDGE 245 structural ontolog'y will include a rational insight into tlie nature of absolute and relative being. Not only so, but since there is a difference between absolute and relative as well as a sameness, these relations must have their reason for knowledge in real ontological grounds. For it is rationally clear that no theory of knowledge can profess adequacy which does not correlate the world and its absolute ground in such a manner that reflection may find in the ground the rationale, not only of the world's existence, but also of its distinctive nature and evo- lution. From the development of the first principle of knowledge and the presui3position of reality on which it rests, namely, that of self - existence, we reach a structural conception of the system of reality. And this, taken as a whole, is to be regarded as the condition of the possibility of knowledge. For, when the situation has been thoroughly analyzed, the discovery is made that the real presupposition of knowledge is a whole system of reality ; that the assumption of self-existence leads reflection by an inevitable route to the ideas of being and non-being and the sphere of dependent being and relativity. Knowledge confronts this structural system of things and its practical problem is how this sys- tem of reality is to be actualized in the conscious- ness of the individual. This ranks as the second great question in a theory of knowledge. The mode of individual acquisition is grounded in the nature of the human soul. The soul, as we 246 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY have seen, is a developing' spiritual principle. It is, therefore, dual in its constitution, combining in itself both potence and actuality. As a developing- potence it is a flowing stream ; as an actuality it is a self-centred individual. Its life and evolution con- sist in a progressive dialectic between these terms, in which the tendency is to pass from a stage in which the life is dominated by mechanical categories to one in which spirit has realized its free activity. This idea of the soul as a developing spiritual prin- ciple explains two fundamental characteristics of individual knowledge. The first is the possibility of knowledge being an individual iDossession at all when its first principle is a universal. There is a common fund of reality, but there can be no com- mon fund of knowledge. This arises from the fact that man is a develojoing creature. If he were abso- lute there would be a common fund of knowledge, but there would be only one being to enjoy it, for there can be but one absolute consciousness. But, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, the mode of man's spiritual activity as a developing creature, determines his conscious individuality and will as distinct. The human consciousness, therefore, con- tains an absolute principle ; namely, that of spiritual self-activity, but in man, it is a principle of a de- veloping life that is ever passing through potence to actuality in the stages of growth and evolution. The second fundamental characteristic of knowl- edge which the idea of the soul explains is the proc- ess of acquisition. From mechanism to spirit is K]S"OWLEDGE 247 the law of evolution. The process of acquisition will follow this law, and the stag-es in the development of its modes, from sensation up to the highest ra- tional activity, will correspond to and dejDend on the stages in the evolution of the spiritual principle. The fact that in the beginning's of the intellectual activity the categories of space and time determine the form of experience, is not wholly explained by conceiving a budding- soul in a bodily organism ; but a deeper root of this is to be found in the fact that the spiritual jDotence of the soul is itself in that stage of activity when the form of its activity is most dominated by the mechanical categories. This explains why the whole representation - framework of its life is mechanical, so that any truth that aims to reach the inner citadel of apprehension must come thickly coated in the dress of material rejjresenta- tion. As the life progresses the modes of apprehension change ; the merely spatio-temporal forms begin to give place to the dynamic, and the intelligence be- gins to grasp causation, the inner principle of the series. This marks the starting-point of reflection and of the intellectual life proper. For the appre- hension of causation, even in its most mechanical form, leads the mind to look from the fact to the condition out of which it rises. And this marks the transition from mere representation to conception, which is the first term of the life of reflection. The central principle of the conceptive form of intellec- tion is causation conceived as a bond that connects 248 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PPIILOSOPIIY phenomena witli a chain or series of conditions. It is the dominating- category of that middle stage of mentality to which the name understanding has been applied. But the evolution of spiritual activity makes it impossible for the reflective life to stop here. Mechanical causation which holds phenomena in the bonds of conditions external to them is not an ultimate form of activity, but has coiled up in it the suggestion of a mode of activity that transcends it. In other words reflection must progress from the idea of the dependent, or that which has the reason of its being outside of itself, to the idea of ground, or that which has the reason of its being within itself and is, therefore, self-existent. The idea of ground is that of self-activity, and thus in the no- tion of ground spirit has achieved an idea of its own highest category which is self-explanatory. Thus the intellectual life culminates on the ob- jective side in the category of self -existence or absolute being- which we have seen in another connection to be the unconditional presupposition of knowledge. On its inner side the conscious life passes from its representation-form, in which flows the life of the purely empirical self, through the con- cept-form, which embodies the emi^irico-rational self, up to the idea-form, whose principle is self- consciousness and whose embodiment is the purely rational self. On its inner side, therefore, the intel- lectual life culminates in the principle of self-con- sciousness, which we have found to be the ground- principle of knowledge. By following the clew KNOWLEDGE 249 fiirnislied by the idea of a spiritual principle de- veloxDing" from potence to actuality, we are thus able to show how the process of acquisition leads up to that synthesis of ground-principle and presup- position on which the possibility of knowledge de- pends. The third fundamental question is that of the correlation of processes of knowledge. There are two generic methods, the deductive or rational, and the inductive or empirical. These are both founded on what are called the fundamental axioms of thought ; namely, identity and contradiction, or, in Platonic phrase, the same and the different, and suf- ficient reason. Now, these laws when reduced to their primal form resolve into the dialectic of spirit which we have already unfolded. This dialectic is a primal antithetic of thinking by which self-includ- ing being excludes its opposite, non-being. The two antithetic categories, the same and the dif- ferent, constitute the primeval eyes of thinking, and its original constitution, therefore, predetermines it to be ever on the search for the same throughout a chaos of differences. Translating this into terms of self-activity which is the highest category of spirit, v/e may say that the fundamental law of thinking is dual, and that it is of the essence of thought to think itself inclusively, and its opposite exclu- sively and antithetically. This dialectic functions at the heart of all intellectual processes. But it is capable of two different modes of application, and these modes are the two generic methods. If 250 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY we start with a rational presupposition and apply our dual dialectic to it, the method is rational. Here the thought is a two-armed instrument and the move- ment of demonstration is the self -inclusion of the same and the antithetic exclusion of the different. Thought thus cuts both ways, like a double plough- share, and the demonstrated result of the i3rocess is the thought's own self-included offspring. The hackneyed syllogism, " Man is mortal, Socrates is a man ; therefore, Socrates is mortal," illustrates this. The thought has combined humanity and mortality, and wherever it finds humanity it reasserts itself and binds humanity to its fellow, mortality. But this process of inclusion is by itself an abstraction and impossible. The act that connects man and mortality is only half a complete thought. The concrete thought has its negative exclusive side, not-mortal, not-man, which forms the negative back- ground of the intellection and follows it through every step to the end. The dialectic of thought is negative and exclusive as well as positive and inclu- sive. But it never negates or excludes itself, always its opposite. If, however, we start, not with a rational presup- position but a fact or group of facts, the same dia- lectic will proceed in a different manner. In the ra- tional process the dialectic proceeds from an assumed relation, and its business is that of dual inclusion and exclusion under this relation. But here we seem to have isolated facts without any relation. Thought, however, cannot get on without relations. KNOWLEDGE 251 How then does the dialectic of thought apply to the case ? Evidently in this way : In thinking-, reason includes her own, but excludes and negates her op- posite. Now, facts without relations, that is, iso- lated unaccounted facts, are irrational. Thought expels them from her province and then goes out upon them by a volitional act in order to overcome them and create a rational system out of the irra- tional. Here we get at the root of the other great principle of thinking ; namely, sufficient reason. For sufficient reason is not a purely intellectual principle, but contains an element of volition. It is the demand of the human spirit that the irrational shall be suppressed, and that out of it shall be pro- duced a rational system. This demand, which arises in view of the negative, is the motive that leads to the reference of isolated facts or groups to their causal conditions. The result is the emergence of a rational order out of the irrational. And we have only to follow this process through its successive stages of rational genesis until it reaches the high- est category and realizes a spiritual result, in order to see that in this law of sufficient reason we have struck a motive, in substance the same as that which we have been led to attribute to the absolute spirit as the motive of creation. Now, regarding the correlation of these two pro- cesses, rational and empirical, it is clear that they ought to mutually bear out and supplement one another. For whether we start with a rational sup- position and come down to the details of its appli- 252 BASAL COT>J^CEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY cation under the guidance of the dual law of identity and difference, or begin with irrational and isolat- ed facts, or groups, and proceed upward under the imioulse of sufficient reason, we are but traversing the same circle in opposite directions, and ought to come around to some point where the conclusion of one method will bear out the other. That this is the true idea of correlation finds confirmation in the fact illustrated in the first division of this chapter ; namely, that if we start from self -consciousness as the first principle of knowledge, we are led by rational reflection upon it to a structural ontology in which a sphere of relative and created being is grounded on the self-existent absolute. Whereas, if we start from phenomena and follow the demand of sufficient reason, we are led step by step to a point where we find in self-existence the objective ground, and in self-consciousness the inner principle of all rational knowledge. The result here is, on the one hand, the grounding of the empirical sphere by means of the rational method ; on the other, the confirmation of the primal data of the rational method by means of the empirical procedure. That one method should confirm the other is only rational. For whether we start with the principle of identity and difference, or with that of sufficient reason, the procedure is one and the same, the self- assertion of spirit against its negative. If we pro- ceed upon the former principle, spirit asserts itself overtly and exj)licitly, and excludes and sublates its negative ; whereas, if our procedure is under the KNOWLEDGE 253 principle of sufficient reason, spirit overtly and ex- plicitly excludes and sublates the negative, while the implicit motive of its whole movement is its as- sertion of itself. The whole movement, for instance, of the log-ic of Hegel is intelligible and rational if we conceive that here spirit is proceeding under the principle of sufficient reason and asserting itself against the negative in an activity which is continu- ally producing out of the irrational the stages of a rational evolution. On the other hand, Hegel's or- dinary procedure is an application of identity and difiference, the principle of the common logic, and its dialectic when truly understood consists in an overt dualistic movement in which spirit persistent- ly asserts and includes itself, while it just as persist- ently excludes and sublates its negative. As to the limits of knowledge, we have seen that all method is reducible to one formula, spirit's as- sertion of itself. Now, as spirit includes both ab- solute and relative, this formula must include the whole continent of reality. Logicall}^ then, there can be no a2oriori limit of knowledge. The x^rinciple of knowledge is all-comprehensive, and this renders omniscience logically possible. But there is an onto- logical, or rather an onto-psychological, princii3le of limitation Avhich is to be found in the nature of the human soul. We have seen that the soul is not pure actuality, but rather a spiritual principle that is passing continually from potence to actuality. This means that the soul is an imperfect, developing creature. Now, iindeveloped potence is, as we have 254 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY seen, a limitation which determines the distinctive form and bounds of the soul's activity. It is here that we strike the true limit of knowledge. It is a limit of energy, of spirit's power of asserting itself, and rests therefore primarily in the will, and not in the thought or intelligence. The limit of knowledge is, therefore, not fixed but movable. As the human spirit unfolds into actual- ity, its power of asserting itself increases, and as its intelligence unfolds, thought in its self-assertion is able to master progressively higher categories. The highest category is that of spirit itself, and when the human soul is able to realize all things com- pletely under the self-active category of spirit, it is able to say that it apprehends even as it is appre- hended. XVI LOGOS We have seen in the first chapter of this book that the logos-principle is the norm of intelligibility in the sphere of reality. What this logos-principle is we are now able more clearly to determine. His- torically, the principle has its ontologic root in the idealism of Plato. From Plato it gradually worked its way into the heart of philosophic thinking until, under the spiritual impulse of Christianity, it be- came, as the category of immanent self-conscious personality, the constructive norm of theological as well as philosophical conceptions. The unapproach- able One of Neo-Platonism, the unrelated Absolute of Hellenic Judaism, which is connected with the world only through an external logos, becomes the divine logos, the Being who is internally self-conscious and personal and who manifests himself as the Creator of the world out of non-being, and as the mediator who leads the world out of its alienation up to God. Psychologically, we have found this same principle energizing at the centre of modern thinking as the basis of certitude and the ground-category of knowl- edge. In modern philosophy it is the principle of 256 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPIir self-consciousness, which, as conceived by Descartes failed to realize its full jDower. But the tendency of modern thinking has been in the direction of a spe- cies of psychological immanence which conceives the logos as the inner category of substance and thus translates it into living spirit. The principle of self-consciousness becomes thus a norm of conscious self-activity, and conscious self- activity is identical with personal, spiritual being. And combining the ontologic and psychologic intu- itions, the conclusion is reached that all being is in its core spiritual and personal. It is clear, then, that the logos-principle and the principle of pure self-conscious personality are iden- tical ; that when we call God the logos we call him the self-conscious personal being, and that when we call man a self-conscious personal being we thereby conceive him as a being of whose spiritual nature the logos is the immanent principle. There is then a relation of sameness between the absolute spirit and the soul of man in the principle which determines their conscious and personal life. This vital point gives rise to two important con- siderations. The first concerns the function of the logos-principle as enabling us to determine the in- ner natures, respectively, of the absolute spirit and the soul of man. Eegarding absolute spirit, we only need here to summarize the results of former reflec- tions. In the chapter on Knowledge we were able, by conceiving the logos-principle as a norm of spiritual activity, to follow the immanent dialectic of spirit LOGOS 257 and determine the self-conscious personal life of tlie Absolute under three log-ically correlated aspects, as absolute thought, absolute will, and absolute love. And by construing- the negative side of this dialectic in the light of the same principle we were able to see how the intuition of non-being arising in the primal activity of absolute thought, supplies the motive for the out-go of the absolute will in the cre- ation of the world in the sphere of non-being, and how also the imperfect and undeveloped nature of the creature, its distance from the creator, sup- plies the motive for the out-go of the absolute love in the work of evolution and mediation. The principle is equally potent in revealing the inner nature of the human soul. We have seen how the true idea of the creative function leads to a rational conception of becoming and relative nature. It determines the soul as a spiritual potence which is consciously passing into actuality, as a developing creature, therefore, with an infinite spiritual ideal. It leads, therefore, to a rational conception of the dualism of the soul's conscious experience, and ena- bles us to translate it into a struggle of the ideal principle of self-conscious activity, to overcome and comprehend the flowing stream of the empirical life. And it further leads to a rational idea of the con- scious stages which the soul passes through in this dual evolution. For just as the application of the idea of self-conscious dialectic enables us to conceive three logically correlated aspects of the personal life of the Absolute ; namely, absolute thought, absolute 17 258 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY will, and absolute love ; so in tlie psycliic sphere its application reveals to us a corresponding dialectic in which the spirit asserts itself intellectually in the principle of identity and difference, volitionally in the principle of sufficient reason and aesthetically in the principle of unitywhich is the soul of love. But in the human spirit this self-assertion is an ideal that is never completely realized, since the spirit itself is a developing iDotence whose basal movement is an evolution. The second consideration is that of the relation between the absolute logos and the spirit of man. We have seen that in the possession of a common j)rinciple they are the same. But this sameness is only community of essence. It justifies the assertion, that the ideal principle of man's spiritual nature is absolute, and that he may, therefore, be the bearer of absolute ideas and a knowledge of the Absolute. But this only implies community of essence. The modification which constitutes man a creature ; name- ly, the form of his spiritual activity as a growth or evolution from potence to actuality, which also de- termines the order of his progress from mechanism to si^irit, is the basis of his distinction of conscious- ness, individuality, and will. This constitutes him the bearer of a conscious life whose principle is ideally absolute, but whose individuality is relative and distinct. There is thus community and distinction between the absolute logos and the spirit of man. And we have seen in the chapter on Beligion how, through LOGOS 259 this community of spiritual principle embodying- it- self on the one hand in the soul's ideal and on the other in the Divine logos, a medium of interaction and intercommunion is maintained between the soul and its transcendent ground. The log-OS stands thus as a fruitful norm of phil- osophic ideas. It is the principle from which a rational conception of absolute being may be de- duced. Without it only the existence of an abso- lute could be affirmed, while its nature would baffle conception. It is the only principle also that makes a true conception of the dualistic dialectic of spirit possible. "Without the insight it gives the true nat- ure and differentia of relativity would be hidden mysteries, and no adequate conception of the nature of the human spirit and its relation to the Absolute would be possible. On any other i^rinciple agnos- ticism could not be clearly transcended, nor yet pantheism or atheistic individualism. The logos is a principle that intelligizes the whole system of reality, binding absolute and relative each to each in close bonds, without infringing the vested rights of either. The logos also mediates the evolution of the world-process. The categories of its progress are, as we have seen, mechanism, life, and spirit. The mechanical forces are the first actualities of the i^o- tential world-ground. They act without conscious- ness or teleologic motive of their own, but they are not to be conceived, therefore, as blindly working forces, for hidden in them is the will of the logos 260 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY working" under tlie categ-ory unity. Cosmic nature is the sphere of mechanism and of mechanical forces and laws. But her presupposition is a spiritual ac- tivity which can alone su^oply a completely rational idea of her order. The world-process, under the impelling- will of the logos at length transcends the pure mechanical stage and enters that of life, where the spiritual prin- ciple begins to function as an immanent unifying force in the production of organisms. In the plant consciousness is transcendent, but it enters the ani- mal as instinct and feeling, and the animal is able, therefore, to assert itself against a merely mechani- cal existence and to develop a species of imperfect individuality. But to the animal, ideality is still a hidden force. The animal is a blind servant of the logos and represents only a transitional stage in the passage of the world from the cosmic to the psychic sphere. The category of life is that of mechano-teleology. Its overt forces and laws are mechanical, but under the influence of the hidden activity of the logos these forces realize a product which transcends them and points necessarily to a spiritual ground. In the psychic nature, as we have seen, the logos be- comes immanent as a principle of self-conscious activity and experience, not as the logos of God, however, bringing with it an absolute consciousness, but rather as the ideal principle in the conscious- ness of an imperfect and developing creature. Here it functions as the principle of knov/ledge and as the LOGOS 261 org-an that contains the ideal norms of philosophy, science, morality, and art. It is by virtue of the logos-principle also that the soul of man is able to transcend the limits of its particular individuality and to achieve a race-con- sciousness as the arena for a historic experience and common civic life. Here its output is culture and civilization and all that splendid and pathetic record that is embodied in human history. In this sphere the logos also functions as a principle of spiritual freedom motiving and inspiring that teleologic up- ward movement of social, intellectual, and spiritual progress, which through and over all negative oppo- sition and in spite of all subversive and destructive tendencies has made the historic record, with all its obverse side of darkness and disorder, one of splen- did and enduring achievement. But not without the Logos of God. The deepest intuition of philoso]phy is that which beholds the spirit of man in close and living union with its di- vine fellow. The human psyche is never away from the logos of God, but, as the profound Descartes asserted, the conscious principle which gives the soul its idea of self gives it also in insepa,rable fel- lowshi^D its idea of God. The plummet that sounds the profoundest depths of psychic nature touches also the nature of God. That God and the psyche are identical is, and ever must be, precluded by the basal type of psychic nature. But there is unity of principle in diversity of type and distinction of con- sciousness. The psychic logos and the logos of God 262 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY are one in their ground principle. Only, tlie latter is purus actus in the nature and consciousness of the Absolute, while the psychic logos is a germ con- taining the potency of rational and spiritual evo- lution. It is in the light of this potentiality that psychic history transcends the category of mechanism and becomes completely teleologic. For just as the teleologic meaning of cosmic nature is only revealed in the appearance of the psyche, so the teleology of psychic nature, and through it of all relativity, is made clear only in the ideal realization of the psychic type. This, as we have seen, is achieved by gradations in the spiritual movements of humanity and in the medium of historic individuals through whom new increments of spiritual force flow in from the transcendent logos into human channels. Thus humanity travels the toilsome road of a spiritual development through which it is enabled to ap- proach the goal of its aspiration. It is only from the stand-point of religion, how- ever, that the teleology of the world can be com- pletely understood. Religion, as we saw, is founded on a need of mediation which is inherent in the psychic nature. Even though evil had never be- come real the psyche is mutable and needs tran- scendent help to work out its spiritual destiny. Much more, then, is this assistance needful when the psyche has fallen into evil and sin has become a baleful and destructive force. The medial function must in that case also become remedial, and the LOGOS 263 psychic nature must be renovated as well as spirit- ualized. But the remedial function can be no after-thought to the Absolute. For the possibility of evil in the sphere of the relative can be no afterthought. And if no after-thought, then it must be contemplated in the world-idea which underlies creation, and in which the ultimate key to the solution of the problem of evil and all other problems is to be sought. How, then, is this world-idea to be conceived ? What is the highest thought of the Absolute for the relative ? It must be the thought of the absolute religion. It must be a mediation that transcends ordinary his- toric channels although it embodies itself in the su- ]3reme historic individual. The logos of God must come down to us men from God, must enter into the sphere of relativity, into the world of the psychic logos, must achieve a consciousness of the material and corporeal, must achieve an empiric character and consciousness, and a dualistic nature in which a spiritual principle and law dominates the empiri- cal and brings it into harmony mth itself. The logos of God must enter the psychic mould and the psychic consciousness in order that it may pene- trate the whole sphere of relative being with a realiz- ing sense ; in order that it may have a sense of the nature, the needs, the weaknesses, the woes, the sins, and the struggles of psychic existence. For only thus can the ideal good of the race be actual- ized, and only thus can the whole relative order be finallj' justified. 264 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY In actualizing this liig-hest good of the relative, the logos of God becomes the ideal mediator and redeemer of an evil-smitten and struggling race. The ideal spiritual life into which man is iierpetu- ally to enter is not finite but infinite and divine. The Christ-idea is thus no product of the mytholog- ical fancy. It springs out of a necessity that is con- stitutional to the psychic nature. It is the spirit- ual ideal, which though but dimly apprehended the relative order has ever had at its heart. The Christ- idea is the true infinite ideal of humanity conceived as actualized in self-conscious and personal form. And as God is the infinite ideal of the soul con- ceived as actual, the Christ-idea, when it has once become a self-conscious and personal being, will embody an ideal synthesis of the human and divine. But such an actualization cannot be the product of speculation or reflective activity. The redemption of humanity cannot be worked out in the closet of the philosopher. It must embody itself in concrete personal form in some historic individual manifesta- tion which philosophy may reflect and translate into terms of knowledge, but which she could never create from her own resources. The logos of God thus becomes the necessary medium of the highest spirit- ual revelation and the highest good to humanity. It becomes the supreme revelation of the divine right- eousness and truth. It embodies the divine pity, the divine love and mercy. Into it the divine help- fulness and the heart of the divine goodness enter in their fulness. It is in the vision of the logos of LOGOS 265 God that the problem of the relative order and the world's destiny finds its most adequate solution, and it is in the light of that vision that science, philos- ophy, art, and relig-ion may clasp hands in the bonds of a common faith and hope. XYII GOD The greatest thought of the human spirit is the thoug-ht of God. The organ of this thought is the logos, and to attain to it the spirit must put forth its supremest effort. The genesis of the divine idea has both subjective and objective roots. Subjec- tively the idea of God arises as the first ]3resupposi- tion of the human spirit. We have seen that this is self-existence. The idea of God arises out of that of self-existence when the spirit construes it under its own highest category, namely, that of personal- ity. The objective genesis proceeds from the idea of the world-ground. The idea of cause has coiled up in it the idea of self-activity, and when this pre- supposition is drawn out the idea of the world ground is born. The last step in the objective sphere is identical with that in the subjective. To the idea of a self-active world-principle the spirit applies its own highest category, and the idea of God emerges as the g-round of the world. A true insight will be able to apprehend the ra- tionale of this process. It is the spirit's assertion of its own ideal-self ; that is, of its infinite and joerfect GOD 267 self, as actual. God is the ideal of spirit, and the idea of God is the idea of a being in whom this ideal is actual. We thus come around again to the Aris- totelian conception of purus actus, but now trans- lated into terms of spiritual selfhood. The idea of God is, therefore, the ideal of the human spirit asserted as actual. * The problem of God's existence, or rather of his actuality, plays a great part in all human thinking. The basis of the problem is the synthesis which we have discovered in the idea of God between the con- cept of the ideal and the assertion of its actuality. This identifies the idea of God as it comes into the human consciousness with the spirit's assertion of its ideal and infinite self. The God -consciousness of humanity, as it may be called, is not, then, a pure intellection. It is not the absolute thought think- ing itself, but it is the absolute will, in which the thought is presupposed, asserting itself. The idea of God is, therefore, the function of the logos, in which there is a synthesis of thought and will. The various attitudes which the human spirit may take toward the problem of God's actually can be most clearly conceived from the stand-point of spirit- * It is not sufficient to say that God is the ideal of the human spirit. The spirit does not leave the ideal floating about us a mere idea. But the self-assertion of its actuality is part of its essence. Spirit either affirms or denies God as an actuality. This is, I think, the real core of Des Cartes' contention that the idea of God involves the predicate of existence. But Des Cartes' argument is only an adumbration of the truth. 268 BASAL COTSrCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY ual dialectic. "We have seen how the primal intui- tion of being and non-being- arises in the intellect and forms the basis of the self-assertion of the spirit tinder the category of will against non-being, in the energy of creation. This self-assertion, as we have seen, is the function of the spirit as logos. Now if we keep the dual dialectic before us we will see that the spirit may (1) deny its ideal self, and this gives rise to atheism ; (2) it may assert its ideal self, which gives rise to positive theism ; (3) it may assert the negative of its ideal self or the a-logos, and this will give rise to negative theism, a theory that finds the negative ground of things in God ; (4) it may assert its ideal-self as the unity of being and non-being, and this will give rise to four species of pan-ontology. Of these two will be negative : (a) the negative pan- theism of the Orient which conceives the jplurality of definite existence as emanating out of a negative and indeterminate one ; (h) naturalism which reverses the process and conceives the cosmos as emerging from a negative and indeterminate plurality. The remaining alternatives are species of positive panthe- ism ; (c) a theory in which non-being is conceived sim- ]ply as the self -limitation of being ; this gives rise to a pantheism of the type of Spinoza in which all de- termination is negation ; (d) a theory in which nega- tion is conceived as a principle of self-diremption and non-being, therefore, as a moment of being. This gives rise to an absolutism of the type that is ordinarily ascribed to Hegel. The insight of the dialectic will also make a very GOD 269 brief criticism of these theories possible. If we penetrate to the heart of atheism we find that it in- volves a self-contradiction, for it is the virtual denial of self-existence, which, as we have seen, is the first presupposition of knowledge. Atheism in thus can- celling- knowledge cancels itself. Negative theism arises, we saw, from the spirit's asserting its ideal as the negative of self ; that is, as a spiritual be- ing whose nature negates spiritual categories and cannot, therefore, be conceived. It is clear that this is self-contradictory, since the assertion of spiritual being carries with it the assertion of spiritual at- tributes. Negative theism is founded on a kind of amphiboly of the spirit in which an oscillation be- tween positive and negative conceptions generates perpetual illusion. In what we have called the pan-ontological theo- ries there is a common fault that vitiates them all. In these theories the spirit asserts its ideal self as the unity of being and non-being. But this reduces dif- ference ultimately to identity, which means stagna- tion and spiritual death rather than life. In assert- ing itself as the unity of being and non-being spirit virtually cancels itself. Now this suicidal movement may be discovered in all the theories which rest on this assumption. The Oriental thinking in its type is a species of negative pantheism, in which from a negative one the all is conceived as proceeding by emanation. But if the one negates plurality it is a contradiction to conceive a plurality as arising out of it. The world is, therefore, cancelled. Natural- 270 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY ism inverts tlie mistake by conceiving the unity of the cosmos as emerging from a negative plurality. Here, however, the negation of unity in the ground contradicts the assumption of unity in the product, and the cosmos is therefore cancelled. The positive theories of the pantheistic type are no better off. In Spinozism difference arises through the self -limitation of being. But being can limit it- self and pass into its opposite only so far as it can- cels itself. Spinoza avoids this pit by asserting the unreality of being's opposite, thus cancelling differ- ence and reducing the universe to the stillness of a moveless identity. In the second species of positive pantheism, the conception of non-being as a move- ment in being identifies it with being. Difference is thus cancelled and the foundation taken away from that living dialectic of spirit the affirmation of which constitutes the princiiDal merit of Hegelism. There remains, then, positive theism, in which the spirit asserts the ideal of its infinite and perfect self as actual. Now, if we scrutinize the logic of positive theism we will find it to be the only religi- ous theory that keeps straight with the inner dialec- tic of spirit. We have seen how this dialectic starts with an intuition of being and non-being, and Iioav this intuition rouses the will and induces the logos to go out creatively into the sphere of non-being as well as to energize internally as a principle of self- realization. This dialectic keeps wholly clear of the confusions of being and non-being, into which the theories criticised above have fallen. The logos GOD 271 acts on tlie dual intuition of identity and difference, tlie former being- tlie principle of an eternal self- assertion by the divine Spirit ; the latter that of an eternal opposition to non-being- in the activity of creation. It is precisely this dialectical being that positive theism asserts. The God of theism is the Logos who asserts himself and creatively opposes non-being-, who loves g-ood and hates evil, who gives light and causes darkness to flee away. The God of positive theism is the God of the spirit whose vision is unclouded and whose intuitions grasp the primal dualism of reality. The ontological jDroof of God's existence is, when reduced to its essence, simply the spirit's assertion of the actuality of its infinite ideal. The force of the proof lies partly in an assumption that under- lies it, namely, that of self-existence. But we have seen that this assumption is the primal datum of phi- losophy, namely, that primal being is self-existent. Now the inner dialectic of the ontological proof is this : self-existent being is self-active, and self-activ- ity is a spiritual category, and, therefore, the primal being is spirit. The proof asserts, if self-existence, then spiritual existence. God can be denied only by denying self-existence, which is tantamount to the spirit's denying itself, which is self -contradictory. The founders of this proof in modern philosophy failed to clearly apprehend the inner nerve of it. Anselm defines God as a being than whom a greater cannot be conceived, and then reasons that to deny his existence would leave him less than the greatest 272 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY conceivable being-, which is contradictory. Had Anselm translated his quantitative conceptions into quality he would have seen the force of his reason- ing- to be that the last presupposition of all think- ing is self-existence, and that this presupposition cannot be construed under other than spiritual categories. The primal being is, therefore, spirit. Des Cartes unfolds three aspects of the same proof : (1) That the idea of God involves the predicate of existence ; (2) that the idea of God involves an ade- quate cause which must be an infinite and XDcrfect being; (3) that the idea of God is the immediate presupposition of man's idea of himself, and, there- fore, God exists. Underlying all these is a common dialectic process which Des Cartes did not clearly apprehend. For the aim of the ontological proof is not to establish mere existence, but rather to identify the idea of God with that of self-existence, which must be assumed. Now self-existence, as we have seen, is identical with self-activity, and self-activity is spirit. But the idea of God is that of a self-active spirit. It is therefore identical with that of the self- esistent, which must be assumed. The idea of God is, therefore, the spirit's assertion of the actuality of its ideal ; that is, of an infinite and perfect self. The Kantian criticism of the ontological proof misses the fact that the relation of ideality on which the iDroof rests is resolvable into the self-assertion of spirit. The idea of God is identical with the idea of self-existent being, because they are both identical with that of spiritual self-activity, and GOD 273 spiritual self - activity is primal reality, Kant's thought had not reached the plane where such re- flection is possible, and his criticism is, therefore, inconclusive. The criticism of Kant rests, however, on the plane where doubt arises. The ontological proof contains, as we have seen, a volitional element of self-asser- tion, the spirit asserting its own infinite ideal as the highest actuality. Now, wherever will enters as a factor in conviction doubt is possible, for thought may abstract itself from will, and the mere abstract concept does not carry the reality of its object with it. From the stand-point of abstract thinking Kant is right and the doubt is natural. The historical proofs from cosmology and final cause are to be regarded, primariljr, as reflections entered ui3on by the spirit for the purpose of restor- ing its lost confidence in its own ideal self-assertion. The proof from cosmology is simj^ly the reassertion in an objective form of the identity between the idea of God and that of self-existent being. Kant's criti- cism of this, that it is incomplete and cannot reach God withoiit having recourse to ontology, is a piece of insight which he misuses ; for, as we have seen, ontology proceeds on the same assertion of identity but finds the clinch which realizes the whole in the idea of spirit as self-activity, and, therefore, primal being. Now, cosmology falls back upon ontology to the extent of borrowing this clinch from her in order to comx)lete its own dialectic. What Kant should have observed is the substan- 18 274: BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY tial identity of the two proofs, since tliey involve the same dialectic in subjective and objective forms. The proof from final cause is founded on a differ- ent principle, namely, that of sufficient reason. It observes in the world-series, mainly in the sphere of living- organisms, certain phenomena, manifesta- tions of a principle of unitary individuality, which it can explain only on the supposition that there is a unitary cause, and when it further analyzes this as- sumption of unitary cause it finds wrapped up in it the presupposition of self -activity, which leads by a further step of reflection to the assertion of self- active spirit. The proof from final cause thus leads to the same goal that is reached by the other two proofs. Kant's criticism of this proof is an act of logical abortion. He sees that it touches points that are common to ontology and cosmology, and assumes that it is compelled therefore to have recourse to these two arguments in order to complete its own case. What Kant fails to see is that the proof from final cause rests on a different principle from the others, that while they proceed analytically on the principle of identity, the argument from final cause proceeds synthetically on the principle of sufficient reason. It is, therefore, homogeneous, and expresses the self-assertion of spirit negatively as its refusal to be satisfied with any explanation that does not rest ultimately on a spiritual principle. The legitimate force of these proofs in removing doubt and restoring conviction may be seen from GOD 275 two considerations. In the first place, they reveal the fact that whether our reflection proceeds syn- thetically or analytically, upon the principle of sufficient reason or upon that of identity, it reaches the same conclusion ; namely, that the ultimate ground of the world must be self-existent spirit. In the second place, they fit into that dialectic which constitutes the spirit's inner activity. This dialectic, as we have seen, is dual, and includes three stages of spiritual life ; first, that of thought, in which spirit thinks itself and its opposite non - being ; second, that of will, in which spirit affirms itself in the principle of identity and denies its opposite in the principle of sufficient reason ; third, that of love, in which spirit mediates the dual activities of iden- tity and sufficient reason in the principle of unity. If this dialectic be conceived as the inner activity of the absolute Spirit, we arrive at the intuition of the absolute intellect as intuiting itself and its oppo- site; the absolute intellect and will as affirming itself and going out creatively upon its negative in the production of the creation ; the absolute intel- lect, will, and love mediating the dual activities of the spirit and bringing the creature into unity with the Creator. If this dialectic be conceived as the inner activity of the human spirit, the same moments will be real- ized as in the absolute consciousness. There must first be the self-conscious thought that thinks itself and its opposite the not-self. This supplies the inner motive to the will, and the second stage arises 276 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY in which the human spirit, as thought and will, as- serts itself affirmatively in the principle of identity, and negatively against its opposite in the principle of sufficient reason. But here the human spirit strikes ujjon the limitations of its creaturely nature. It is largely undeveloped i^otence passing into actu- ality, and its undeveloped potence limits the effec- tive energy of will and leads to a sense of its own impotence. It also limits the spirit in this sphere qualitatively, robbing it of the creative function, for it finds that the creative intelligence has been before- hand with it, and that its function is to rethink the thoughts of the Absolute and to reproduce the crea- tions of its jjower. The spirit finds that the pathway of its knowledge and experience leads it in the foot- steps of a creative intelligence that has preceded it. Now it is in this sphere where the spirit expresses itself in a synthesis of thought and will that the reflec- tions embodied in the lines of theistic proof consid- ered above have their rise. They arise in the human spirit's assertion of the ideal and infinite self, affirm- atively and negatively, under the categories of iden- tity and sufficient reason, as the ultimate ground of being. And they simply indicate trails which the finite intellect and will follow in their effort to make their way from the creature up to the Creator. But these proofs are not final or complete. There is a third stage in spiritual dialectic in which the spirit, as thought, will, and love asserts itself synthetically in the principle of unity. In love spirit asserts itself emotionally as well as intellectually and volitionally. GOD 277 What tlie spirit loves as well as wills and lliinks, is an object of worth or value. Modern thinking proceeding" upon this recognition has shown a ten- dency to sej)arate the possessions of the spirit in- to two groups, labelling them respectively things of knowledge and things of worth or value, the one group catering to the intellectual satisfaction of the human spirit, the other to its aesthetic and moral demands. On the basis of this distinction a further distribution of principles has been made, identity and sufficient reason being assigned to the intellect or theoretic function, while to the aesthetic is allotted the category of unity. Against this division nothing special can be urged. But the unity of the spirit is imiDerilled when a further step is taken and it is proposed to effect a complete divorce of the in- tellectual from the aesthetic and moral spheres. Motives for this divorce s^Dring from two opposite sources : (1) from a species of neo-Kantian thought, which, having despaired of the intellect as an organ of religious truth, aims to found religion exclu- sively upon aesthetic and moral grounds ; (2) from a rationalistic type of thinking, which resents the in- trusion of aesthetic and moral considerations and aims to restrict philosophy to the plane of jaurely intellectual motives. It is to the interest of both these styles of thinking to separate the sphere of the aesthetic off from that of the intellect and to apply to it a different standard of valuation. No such separation is x>ossible. We have seen that the spirit completes itself in the third sjahere of 278 BASAL COINTCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY its dialectic activity in tlie principle of unity. But this third sphere is not purely emotional, it is the completest expression of spiritual activity, a syn- thesis of the intellectual, volitional, and emotional. The principle of unity is not, then, a category of emotional satisfaction simply, but it is a category that embodies the whole demand of the spirit, intel- lectual and volitional as well as emotional. It is the completest and most adequate form of the spirit's assertion of itself. In order, then, to complete the proof of God's existence we must sui3plement the lines of evidence which have been supplied by identity and sufficient reason, by the evidence of the category of unity. The very constitution of the spirit forbids that we should wrest the moral de- mand, as Kant does, from its affiliations with the the- oretic reason, or that we should attempt, with Jacobi and Schleiermacher, to effect the same diremption between theoretic reason and feeling. The insight of the dialectic warns us that we are the rather to conceive the principles and demands of the theoretic reason as achieving their completest and ripest fruitage in the principle and demand of the moral and aesthetic nature. The principle of unity must then be taken as hav- ing the same species of authority as the principles of identity and sufficient reason. They are all modes of spiritual self-assertion. They all embod}^ de- mands of the spirit. And when the principle of unity comes with its demand for moral satisfaction in God, and for aesthetic satisfaction in a being in GOD 279 whom it finds the fruition of the budding" hopes of its own nature, the demands cannot be dismissed as mere vain longings. They are the richest fruitage and the most adequate expression of that spiritual activity which motives the entire fabric of man's knowledg"e and experience. If God is, how is he related to the world ? This question has been virtually answered in preceding chapters. God is, in the first place, the absolute and transcendent ground of the world. The world is the product of an immanent spiritual potence which has as its immediate presupposition spiritual self- activity. This self-activity as the self -existent prius of all being- we have found to be God. God cannot be completely immanated in the world-process. His self-activity is a presupposition of immanent potence and its denial leaves no foundation for any immanent function. God is the Creator of the world. We have already in the earlier chapters of this book endeavored to ground rationally the crea- tive idea. It is only intelligible in the light of that living spiritual dialectic in which a key is found to so many mysteries. God as the Creator is the logos. He is God, conceived as intellect and will, assert- ing his divine energy in the production of the creat- ure out of non-being. We have seen how this neg- ative sphere arises as an intuition of the divine intellect. The logos as the divine intellect and will asserts its energy against non-being, producing out of it creature existence and the order of becoming. Thus the world-process is grounded. The immanent 280 EASAL COISTCEPTS IN PPIILOSOPHY ground of tliis process is a spiritual poteuce wliicli leads it in its evolution tlirougli stages of mechan- ism and life up to tlie soul of man, in which spirit becomes self-conscious. As world-creator God is the logos, the will of the absolute spirit, uttering itself in the energy that an- nuls non-being and produces out of it the creature. But God is also related to the world as its builder and completer. The world as it begins is in its nature far from God ; it originates as unconscious matter and mechanical force and energy. We have seen how this mechanism is rationally grounded only in a po- tential spiritual principle. But it is the lowest po- tence of spirit, unconscious, undesigning, pluralistic, and held in the clinch of necessity. The world is fai from God and must be brought to him. This is the motive of the world-evolution which is a process of development along the j^athway of spirit. Now God as the Creator is the logos, but God as the world- builder and developer is the unifying Spirit. The principle of his activity is unity and his motive is love. The process of evolution is not identical with creation. It presupposes and in a sense includes it just as unity includes all other principles. The proc- ess of evolution is the upward progress of the creat- ure toward unity with the Creator. In the first stages of the world-process the motive of this unification is transcendent. The mediation which it involves is also transcendent, therefore, embodying itself in the unconscious advance of nature to higher planes of activity, the unconscious establishment of stores of GOD 281 potential energy as the basis of nature's advances, and the unconscious sacrifice which is involved in the achievement of higher forms of life. Though tran- scendent, however, the motive must be conceived as immanent in the divine activity that pulsates at the heart of the world-process. God's relation to the world can be adequately conceived only when we combine the ideas of the logos and the unifying Spirit, the one the activity that brings the world into existence out of chaos, the other the activity that moves on the face of the deep and leads the world on the pathway of order and development. God's relations to humanity are closer because they enter more into consciousness. They are, how- ever, generically the same as his relations to the world. God is the Creator, the Father of the human spirit. He plants in man creatively the same sj^irit- ual principle which he immanates in the world. Man is part of the world-process. But this principle in man becomes self-conscious, and thus energizes as the centre of a spiritual life that allies it to its divine author. But man is not God. He is only his image ; that is, he is only a potency whose infinite and perfect actuality is God. God is, therefore, the ideal of the human s^airit. And it is because the spirit is conscious of this ideal that it can call God Father. God the logos is the creative principle of humanity. We have seen how through the ideal consciousness of man an organ of close intercommu- nion exists between God and the human spirit, en- abling God on the one hand to inform the human 282 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY spirit with tlie norms of an ideal life, and the human spirit, on the other, to call God Father and to hold communion with him. God as unifying- Spirit is also the builder and developer of humanity. We have seen that the uni- fying- Spirit works under the category of unity, and that its energizing motive is love. This unity is effected by mediation, and just as we saw in the world below humanity that the mediational function transcends the consciousness of the world-forces, wdiich are its unwitting instruments in leading the world up to God, so in the evolution of humanity there is a stage where the true idea of this mediation is transcendent and its human instruments realize it unwittingly, or with only half consciousness. We have said in the chapter on Religion that the relig- ious prophet or founder of a new dispensation must be conscious of his mission. He must intend to be God's man, speaking the thoughts and doing the will of God, But this is consistent with the exist- ence of only a partial consciousness of the divine idea he is uttering. The prophet is only the organ which the divine energy flows into and inspires, but does not fully enlighten. Devout men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, which had not as yet become immanent, so that it could speak in its own proper voice. But there comes a point in the spiritual evolution of the race when God becomes immanent in the consciousness of humanity. The mode of this has been considered in the previous chapter, and the GOD 283 synthetic unification of the divine and human con- sciousness is effected in an individual soul, and the God-man is born into the world. Not only so, but the God-man consciousness is born into humanity and can no longer be foreign or merely transcendent to it. And this new birth of humanity into the di- vine likeness is the initiation of a new epoch in the mission of the spirit. The unifying- Spirit has been in a sense a transcendent agent in human history. But now the door of a new dispensation has been opened. The logos-ideal has become a conscious possession of humanity, and through and in this lo- gos-ideal the unifying Sx)irit becomes immanent in man's consciousness and functions as the regenera- tor, the illuminator, the sanctifier, the comforter. It performs the mediation of love more effectually than before, because now it is the spirit of the Christ, and through and in the Christ it enters the heart of humanity and leads the race on the pathway up to glory. Thus God as unifying Spirit energizing as the principle of atonement and as the heart of love, perfects the mediational work as God in the Christ reconciling the world to himself. God is free and sovereign in his own world. It is true, as we have seen in the chapter on Non-being and Evil, that the divine option cannot include the possibility of creating an absolute and immutable world. The idea of a created Absolute, to which this is tantamount, is self-contradictory. It is true also that the relative order is one of time and develop- ment, and that not even absolute power could invert 284 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY the laws of growth and development so that the spiritual should be first in the temporal order, and then the material and mechanical. For if creative power could produce at a coup that which is nearest to itself, then the whole labor and process of crea- tion becomes irrational, for it would be unnecessary. Again, it is true that absolute power cannot g'en- erate a creature that shall not be mutable, and, therefore, conting-ent to evil. A creature that has not the conting"ency of evil in it must be immuta- ble, and therefore self-existent, which is contradic- tory. If absolute power be subject to these apparent limitations, how can we say that God is free and sovereign in his own world ? The answer is to be found not in denying the limitations, but in showing- that they are only apparent, but not real, limitations of power. In the first place, power is a function of will, and a limit arises when power falls short of will. Were the creative volition to go forth and no crea- tion be forthcoming", or were the creature to tremble on the verge of being and then drop back into the abyss of non-being, in either case the power of the Absolute would meet a real limit and would no longer be absolute. But the very supposition that the ab- solute volition should contemplate the creation of another absolute outside of itself, or in addition to itself, involves, as we have seen, a monstrous self-con- tradiction. No real limit is involved in the avoid- ance of self-contradiction. There is no rationality, but the opposite, therefore, in conceiving the neces- GOD 285 sary finitiide and nmtability of the creature as im- posing- a limitation on absolute power. But is not the subjection of the creative energy, as it enters into the world, to the orders of time and development, a limitation of the absolute pow- er? Now, there is a sense in which this question becomes identical with the one considered above, and involves the same contradiction. It may mean why does not the absolute creative energy, if it be absolute, produce an absolute world that shall be perfect and immutable and not subject to the finite relation of tipae and development ? We do not need to thrash over again the old irrationality. Avoiding this absurdity the sober question is, whether the necessary subjection of relative and created being to the orders of time and development is any limitation on the iDower of the Absolute ? To this the answer is patent. Not if time and develop- ment themselves are not conceived as absolute. The relation of the creative energy to these categories of relativity is that of their founder. They are the modes in which the energy of the Absolute enters into relative production. Development is a category, therefore, which depends on the Absolute, and in- stead of shutting God out of his world, or limiting his power, its whole rationality rests in its neces- sary presupposition of the transcendent function of the Absolute. We saw in the chapters on History and Religion, as well as in those on Cosmic, Organic, and Psychic Nature, how development necessitates the perpetual inflow of energy from absolute springs. 286 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY If development is God's creature and rests directly upon the divine energy it can contain no real limit of the divine power. Analogous considerations bear on the problem of the temporal order. If we make time absolute, then God must work in time, and the accomplishment of his purposes will have to wait. And so between the creative fiat and the completion of the world seons must elapse sufficient to tire, if possible, even the divine patience. " God spake and it Avas done " thus becomes a poetic fiction, and the true idea of the deity is that of one who must wait through all the ages for the accomplishment of his purposes, while in the meantime rack and ruin are threatening the world. Such a view is irrational. Time can be conceived as only relative, and, as such, a creature of the Absolute. Lotze argues this question very subtly in his " Dic- tata on the Philosophy of Religion." God, he says, cannot be conceived as being hi time. His relation to time is that of its founder. Now if God founds time, "its free ends" — this is Lotze's phrase — must con- verge in God. The consciousness of God will there- fore be related in the same way to all the parts of time. There will be no vanishing past or oncoming future, but the whole temporal order will be what the psy- chologists call a " specious present." This view of time brings God into immediate relation with every part of the world. It closes up the chasm between the divine purpose and its fulfilment. It brings the world-idea in God's mind, and the world-end as it embodies itself in the far-oif divine event, into im- GOD 287 mediate relation. It restores tlie old sublime con- ception of God's free sovereignty over his own world. God speaks and it is done. God does not have to wait through the long ages for the fulfil- ment of his designs. To God the end and the be- ginning are one. The weary waiting, the long ages of gradual evolution, the purpose back in eternity, and the fulfilment yonder, are ours. These things are true for us, they are necessary categories of the relative, but to God all things are present, open and immediate. God's life is immutable and eternal. Therefore the soul's faith in God creates in it a divine thirst for immortality. The synthesis between belief in God and belief in immortality is normal and natu- ral. Belief in God may be eclipsed, and then the rose of immortality begins to fade. But the resto- ration of the spirit's belief in the actuality of its own infinite ideal brings with it a revival of faith in an infinite progress of the spirit toward the ideal. The law of the soul's life, as we have seen, is that of progress toward the ideal. Whatever vivifies the ideal, therefore, and makes it real, will stimulate the ideal aspirations of the soul and gender in it the idea of a life that is commensurate with their reali- zation. In the olden time, before the Christ-idea became a possession of humanity, when the abso- Ivite Spirit was wont to work in a transcendent manner, the idea of an immortal life could not "be fully apprehended. But when the Christ-idea be- came immanent, then the thought of the immortal 288 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY life came into tlie foreground, and as it grew clear and definite man's faitli in it became a firm and liv- ing conviction. There are two species of difficulty which, the faith in immortality has been obliged to meet, one phil- osophical and the other scientific. The former takes various forms, but here, since our conception of the human soul is generically the same as Aristo- tle's, the difficulty will be also of the Aristotelian type. Aristotle distinguishes between the active and passive reason (vov? TrotT^TtKos and vov^ Tra^r^rtKo?), and connecting the latter with the corporeal X3rin- ciple, as a function is related to its organ, conceives that at death it perishes, and that the active reason alone is the immortal principle in the soul. Aris- totle teaches the doctrine of immortality, but inas- much as the root of personality is by him located in the passive reason, the difficulty has been to conceive the survival of any principle of personal and indi- vidual consciousness. This difficulty led the Ara- bian commentators on Aristotle in the middle ages, as a rule, to pronounce against the personal immor- tality of the soul, and this was one of the chief points of controversy between them and the later schoolmen. We avoid the difficulty, however, when we conceive the soul itself to be a developing spirit- ual principle which is continually passing from po- tence to actuality, and thus as including a synthesis of the passive and active rationality in its own con- stitution. This dual constitution also, as we have seen, involves the possibility of a conscious individ- CxOD 289 ual life distinct from tliat of the Absolute. It is clear that Aristotle did not realize to the full the signifi- cance of his own principle, or if so, that his com- mentators have not fully understood him. For if we conceive the soul as containing- in its constitution the dual moments of potence and actuality, we have an idea of its nature which renders the persistence of its distinctive life both conceivable and rational. The scientific difficulty may be stated as follows : Modern science has come to regard the brain as the organ of conscious life, and our modern thinking finds it hard to conceive any idea of conscious psychic existence apart from a brain. The diffi- culty seems to increase as physiological knowledge grows in accuracy and detail. Not only do we always find psychic consciousness in connection with a brain, but the method of difference seems to demonstrate that where there is no brain there can be no consciousness. A blow on the head causes a cessation of consciousness ; a lesion of a particular part interrupts the flow of some portion of the con- scious stream. Brain conditions seem to determine conscious states, and as an organized whole as well as in its molecular constitution nerve-tissue seems to constitute an indispensable condition of psychic life. This difficulty would be insurmountable, we think, if the relation between the human soul and its corporeal organism were conceived as one of mutually exclusive entities. The fact that it is ordi- narily so conceived simply testifies to the survival 19 290 BASAL COjS-CEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY of the Cartesian dualism. The whole theory of this treatise is, however, a denial of that view and an assertion of a merely relative distinction between them, one that is mediated by a spiritual j)rinciple. Matter is the first potency of spirit, and mechanism and its laws are spiritual in their foundations. Now as the soul is not only a part of the world-energ-y, but also an epitome and synthesis of it, there is log-- ically involved in the idea of the soul that of a prin- ciple which holds in it a duality of potencies, mate- rial and spiritual. We thus transfer the bond which binds the material and spiritual together from an external position to its seat in the soul itself. And by so doing we arrive at the conception of a dual psychic constitution, which contains in itself the germs of both material and spiritual organiza- tion. The corporeal organism may dissolve, then, and the basal constitution of the soul will still re- main intact as the norm of a continuous life of conscious growth and activity. And when the idea of an ultimate Psychic constitution has once been achieved, the presumption of science changes, for it is then seen that the dissolution of the body does not necessitate the destruction of the soul. Thus the negative presumptions of philosophy and science are overcome, and the spirit is left free to assert its own ideal life. It is the same voice of the spirit under the same category of unity that de- mands both the divine ideal and the unending life. It is in this dual synthesis of God and immortality that the soul finds the satisfaction of its thirst for GOD 291 unity and completeness. In the same synthesis is found an unfailing- well-spring of joyous and hope- ful activity both for the individual soul and for hu- manity. Man is born an heir to immortal existence. The voice that cries out in him for an unending life is the utterance of his deepest nature. But the soul tragedy of modern life is that the intellect has grown sceptical and contradicts the deeper voice of the spirit. The spirit cries out for immortality, but the intellect says, Cease your striving, nor vain- ly imagine that the universe exists only for your delectation. But the soul's demand is vital and its disappointment means death. So the waters of existence become bitter to the palate, and the fine spiritual nature, robbed of its holiest birthright, plunges into pessimistic despair and longs for some Lethe stream in which to forget its troubled dream. Or, if it wills to live bravely on and work, the joys of life become apples of Sodom in its mouth and the solid structure of the world that surrounds it shrinks into a mere veil of illusion behind which stalks, not Nirvana, but the gaunt spectre of Abad- don. For when the immortal hope is gone, life shrinks into a thing of shreds and patches and all philosophy becomes in truth " a meditation on death and annihilation." XVIII SPIKITUAL ACTIVITY We have seen that primal bemg" can be conceived only as self-activity. Self-activity is activity that contains its primal impulse within itself. Self- ac- tivity is also self-conscious activity. And we have seen that self - conscious activity is self -asserting- and self-realizing". We mean this when we say that primal being is spirit. The dialectic of spirit is the form of its activity. The dialectic presupposes the primal motive. Why being should be active is a question that transcends all answer. We assume it when we say primal be- ing- is self-activity. Its first impulse to action is identical with itself. Now this first impulse is the initial step of the dialectic. The moments of it are all pulsations of self-assertion. The initial pulsa- tion, as we have seen, is one of intellection. Being is primally intelligent and rational. Its first activ- ity is thought, a thought in which the primal im- pulse embodies itself. It thinks itself. But the primal impulse reveals the primal distinction. The thought that thinks itself also thinks its opposite. It is as impossible to derive difference as it is to de- SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY 293 rive identity. They are involved in the primal im- pulse of being. It is the essence of spirit to think the same and the different. The result of the primal impulse is the dual intui- tion of being's self, and being's not-self, or of being and non-being. It is here that we strike upon the crucial point of the whole dialectic of spirit. When in this primal activity being- thinks the not - self, does it simply negate itself and then by another act negate the negation, and thus reach self-affirma- tion through negation? Or, putting it in another form, is it being that goes out as the nothing and then returns again as a higher form of being ? This is the ordinary Hegelian interpretation. We think a radical reform is needed at this cardinal point. Be- ing never denies itself except in a relative sense. Its negation is directed against its opposite. We would then construe the movement of the primal impulse as follows. When in accordance with the original dual category being thinks the not-self, it thinks objectively, and its intuition is of that which negates self ; that is, the opposite of self. Now the intuition of that which is ojoposite to self is a point of reaction for what is called the return upon self, which means the reassertion of the self against its opposite, or the reassertion of identity against differ- ence. We may speak by a species of dialectic license of this movement as a return of being out of nothing upon itself, or as a return of identity out of differ- ence, if we avoid the contradictory assumption that being has ever lost itself in nothing, or identity in 294 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY diflference. The distinction here is just as primal as the thinking- itself, for it is constitutional to it. The primal movement of spirit, as we have said, is self- assertion, and in this primal intellection it is self-as- sertion through identity and difference. This does not mean, however, that spirit thinks itself as the same and then thinks itself as the different ; that is, as the not-self. Spirit is not the arch-jug-gier of the universe. What is meant is something- simpler. Spirit thinks itself as the same ; that is, the self be- comes conscious of itself. Spirit thinks the not-self as different ; that is, the self becomes conscious of a not-self, as its different or opposite. The primal dialectic of thinking is between the same and the different. But they are never identified. The intel- lectual impulse has nothing erudite about it. To it being and nothing are not identical but opposite, and the true genius of intellection is sacrificed when- ever this distinction is obscured. To be clear on this cardinal point settles the whole dialectic of spirit. The other moments fol- low from the nature of spirit as self-conscious activ- ity. The intuition of the negative or non-being constitutes a motive that determines the procession of the spirit. The primal imx)ulse to self-assertion in view of this intuition becomes self - assertion against the negative, in a volitional form ; that is, as the will to suppress and annul the negative. Now, absolute will is self -active and moves upon the nega- tive or non-being as energy of creation. The crea- tive impulse is not primal, if we use the term in a SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY 295 logical sense, but has as its presupposition the ac- tivity of absolute intellection which reveals the negative sphere. Creation is thus both rational and volitional and may be conceived as the will to annul non- being by the production of forms of being. But here again our thinking must avoid entangle- ment. In creation the distinction of being and non-being is not annulled. Creation is not a proces- sion of the Absolute in a relative and finite dress. Relativity and finitude are more than appearances ; they are constitutional to the creature. The abso- lute will does not finitate or limit itself in the crea- tion. The idea of absolute self-limitation involves that of the annihilation of energy and is self -contra- dictory. The only possible concept of a creature is that of a nature that contains opposite momenta of being and non-being. Plato in the Timseus clothes a true intuition in symbols. The Demiurge compounds opposite ingredients, the same and the other, into a third existence, in which the intractable nature of the other is compressed into synthesis with the same. The creative energy annuls non- being by generating a created nature into which non-being, while it enters as a dividual, separative, dissolutive condition, is held in subordination by the unitary principle of being ; that is, the principle of self-con- scious spiritual activity. The dual nature of the creature thus originates, a nature that is ever in a state of flux, as Plato says, and that is ever oscillating between the opposite 296 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY poles of being and non-being. And it is this dual nature of tlie creature, as we saw in the first chapters of this book, that renders it open to change and evolution. Being does not limit itself in the crea- tion, but the negative element is the limit that re- duces sjoiritual energy to potence and thus makes development essential. Now, it is in connection with the evolution of the creature that the third movement in the dialectic of spirit arises. Evolution is to be conceived as the gradual development of the principle of being in the nature of the creature, from potence to actual- ity, through a progressive suppression or transcen- dence of the negative. Being can grow only through the transcendence, the annulling of non-being. And non-being can be completely transcended only in the unification of the creature with the Creator through an infinite approximation. Spirit's primal impulse of self - assertion, in view of the negative char- acter of the creature, its distance and alienation from actualized spirit, is to go out in the energy of love as a developing and mediating force of unifica- tion. But here again our thinking must keep clear of entanglements. It is not the unity of being and non-being that is conserved in this developing proc- ess. Non- being is annulled and suppressed from the beginning to the end of it. It is the unity of being and becoming, the creature and the Creator, that is conserved. And the negative side of this con- serving process is the war against and the suppres- sion of non-being. SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY 297 TJiis dialectic of spirit wliicli thus passes tliroug-li the moments of negation, creation and unification is completely realized only when we conceive it in a twofold manner, (1) on its subjective side as a logical self - completion of spirit in the unity of thought, volition, and love ; (2) on its objective side as the progressive completion of the creature through the momenta of creation and evolution, culminating in the final mediation and unity of creature and Creator. Thus we conceive the movement of absolute spirit under its own categories. Subject to the limita- tions of its finite nature the dialectic of the human spirit is to be conceived under the same categories. We have already in the chapter on Knowledge de- veloped the process of the intellectual life in which it travels through the categories of identity and dif- ference and sufiicient reason up to that of unity, under which it realizes the rational ideal of knowl- edge. We have only to translate the stages of this progress into volitional terms in order to see how the whole practical life of man becomes a battle with the negative, a struggle to overcome the world. The life of the spirit is a conflict waged positively, as the spirit's assertion of itself in the progress of its own inner evolution and the development of its spiritual potences, negatively as a battle against negation and evil, and as a refusal to be satisfied with anything short of the highest good. And this ideal is realized only through the unify- ing activity of love. In the absolute sphere unity 298 BASAL CONCEPTS IIST PHILOSOPHY of the Creator and his world is effected, as we have seen, only throug-h the activity of love manifesting- itself on the broad arena of nature and humanity and realizing itself throug-h mediation and sacrifice. This is also the law of the human spirit. In the unifying- activity of love the spirit asserts itself negatively in the progressive annulment of the negative forces that hinder spiritual develoiiment ; in its progressive triumph over sin and evil in the individual and common life of humanity ; in the war of extermination that it perpetually wages against selfishness and falsehood. It asserts itself positively in the rise of the spirit's activity, through comprehension, into ever larger and larger spheres of life. Thus, for example, the life of the individual is transcended and comprehended in the larger life of the family. That of the family is transcended and comprehended in the larger life of the commun- ity and the institutions of church and state, while the supreme unification is reached in the sphere of religion where the larger life of humanity is brought into ideal harmony with God. Thus the larger life of the human spirit realizes itself, but not without renunciation. The supjDres- sion of the negative is an inseparable accompani- ment of positive growth. The spirit, in order to enter into the higher and broader life, must deny its lower and less developed self by throwing oif restrictions and hinderances. In order to enter into the larger life of the family, the state, the church, or the race, the old man must be put off and the SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY 299 new man must be put on. And that larg-est and su- premest life of tlie spirit, whicli it enters into in the religious sphere, the life with God, is conditioned on the supremest act of self-renunciation. Here the war with the negative reaches its final stage, where on the one side the demand for self-renuncia- tion and annulment is most absolute, while on the other the comprehension and unification is most complete. For through all its renunciations the spirit carries its true self with it ; only the nega- tive, the imperfect, the evil is progressively cast aside, while the real self ever increases its riches as it merges into larger and more comprehensive spheres of activity. We have only to complete this idea of the strug- gle of the human spirit with the idea of its depend- ence upon its absolute ground, in order to obtain a key to the whole life of humanity. The human spirit cannot conserve its own development, but in unity with the absolute source of its being it may, through constant accessions of transcendent strength and grace, be able to overcome all the forces of negation and evil and to advance continu- ally in the progressive stages of an endless life. CONCLUSION Looking back over the path we have travelled in this inquiry several reflections suggest themselves in conclusion. In the first place, we have found in personality the highest category of interpretation in the spheres of both the relative and the Absolute. Now personality is first known as a psychological fact in the soul's experience, and the inference would seem to follow that all philosophy rests on psychol- ogy. This we shall not attempt to deny. The spirit of the knower must be able to find in itself the clews to all the mysteries of being, so far as they may be resolved. At the same time the dependence of phil- osophy on psychology cannot be construed in any narrow or exclusive sense. Philosophy is not simply an extension of psychology. An inquiry such as the present one has been, is fitted to open our eyes to the fact that our psychological categories only become philosophically competent after they have, so to speak, passed through the historic medium and em- bodied themselves objectively in the experience of humanity. The psychological categories must, in short, be translated from subjective to objective universals. The fact that only history is compe- tent to this translation renders that insight which CONCLUSION 301 only comes from a real knowledge of the historic evolution of thought indispensable to philosophy. The true organ of philosophy is constituted by a syn- thesis of the spiritual insights of both psychology and history. The truth of this is demonstrated in the instance of personality. The riches of this category never would yield themselves to introspective and sub- jective analysis alone. Far less would they give up their secrets to the exclusive analysis of the individ- ual consciousness. The full significance of personal- ity emerges only in the objective thinking and the spiritual experience of the race, and it is only when the spirit finds its subjective categories embodied for it in these objective forms that they become ad- equate to the demands of philosophy. There may be some who will think that in the attempt to break the agnostic limitations we have gone too far toward the gnostic extreme. But such persons may be reassured. The intelligence of the creature will always find that the Creator has been beforehand with it, so that, penetrate as far as it may, it will find itself only tracing the footsteps of an absolute intelligence that has preceded it. Besides, the aim of this whole inquiry has been to penetrate the mysteries of the Absolute only so far as may be necessary in order to discover how it rationally grounds the relative order. The category of per- sonality conceived as an immanent activity of being gives us this insight, but we know not, and doubt- less can never know, what abysses of the Absolute 302 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY still remain unpenetrated. The category of person- ality does not abolish mystery, but simply lifts the veil a little way and reveals a glimpse of the cre- ative energ-y in its relation to the world. Our inquiry has also tested the value of the dual categories being and non-being in solving phil- osophic problems and in developing the outlines of a coherent and comprehensive theory. Whatever speculative difficulties may yet remain, the working power of these conceptions can no longer be ques- tioned. It may be maintained with Hegel that the highest category is an absolute idea which compre- hends the dual moments, being and non-being, within itself. To this we may yield a qualified as- sent, provided this idea be translated into spirit and its dialectic be conceived as on its affirmative side, self-affirmation, but on its neg'ative side the denial of its opposite. The reform in Hegelism, which has been urged throughout this inquiry, may be ex- pressed in the following statement : being must be identified with spirit. The inner movement of spirit is a dual dialectic in which spirit asserts itself and denies its opposite. The dual movement is thus im- manent in being. But the negative which spirit denies is not in being. It is an oppositive excluded conception, which spirit forever wars against and suppresses, but which never passes into its opposite. The negative activity of spirit thus becomes from one point of view an outgoing oppositive energy, as distinguished from the immanent activity of self-af- firmation, while from another point of view it is the CONCLUSION 303 volitional energy of creation and development. This conception of absolute spirit in its dual activity ren-^ ders its whole relation to the relative order, includ- ing- evil and negation, botli intelligible and rational. The current thinking of our time can find no better answer to the question how it happens that an absolute energy x3roduces only a relative and imperfect creature, than the assertion that the Ab- solute imposes a limit upon itself and voluntarily restrains its creative energies within finite bounds when otherwise the result would have been infinite and perfect. Now it is clear that no theory of ar- bitrary self-restraint can supply the ground of a rational explanation, and if the conception is to be saved from becoming positively irreligious it must be subsumed under the category of the good. The only motive, in other words, that can make such self-restraint reasonable must be derived from the absolute goodness. But in view of the actual evil that has arisen out of the finitude and imperfection of things the goodness of the Absolute cannot be vindicated, if, as the theory in question implies, the creative will had before it an option between the generation of an infinite and perfect world, and one that is finite and imperfect. For the fact remains, on this suiDposition, that a world-scheme which in- volves the contingency and actuality of evil has been preferred to one from which these features are absent. A rational insight into the negative cuts the knot of the difficulty by helping us to see that the suppo- 304 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY sition of such an option is irrational and that tho only option conceivably before the absolute will is a choice between x)ure negation and a finite and rel- ative order of being-. It is no impeachment of abso- lute power that its outgoing energy does not gener- ate another absolute alongside of itself, nor is it any impeachment of the absolute goodness that it pre- fers to non-being a relative and finite order of being which involves the contingency of evil. We have seen that the true significance of the world-order can be seen only in the light of the highest concep- tions of religion, and that from the stand -point of religion evil becomes a subordinate though real feat- ure of the world, while the good stands supreme as the end and rationale of its whole history and devel- opment. Furthermore, our reflection enables us to conceive a rational solution of the issues between monism and dualism, on the one hand, and idealism and realism on the other. A monistic theory of reality which identifies it with being must always be in- adequate since the real must include the opposite of being, which can never be identified with being with- out transgressing basal principles. Also any mon- istic theory must be inadequate which ignores the distinction between the Absolute and the relative and seeks to apply a unitary principle, let it be spiritual or material, without regard to that distinc- tion. For in that case, if we start from absolute being, we will miss the actual duality of the relative, whereas if we take our departure from the relative we CONCLUSION 305 will never be able to conceive any point where a tran- sition of the real from relative to absolute is possible. And this inability will carry with it the impossibility of assurance as to the existence of the Absolute. A rational metaphysic will admit the distinction between being and reality, and while asserting- the unitary character of the one will acknowledge the duality of the other. The real includes the negative of being. It will also admit the distinction between being and becoming, and while asserting the unitary character of being wdll admit the duality of becoming. In short, a rational metaphysic is identical with a spiritualistic theory of reality, which, postulating an absolute spirit as the self-existent principle of things, is able to see not only how the necessity of non- being springs from this postulate, but also how the negative supplies a necessary datum of the rel- ative, accounting for its modified and dualistic char- acter. Monism is right when it says there is only one principle of being, but it is mistaken when it identifies being and reality, and on that basis denies the reality of the negative. The issue between idealism and realism is not so stringent. There are several types of theory which a spiritualistic metaphysic will reject. One of these is a type of ontologic idealism which suppresses volition and feeling in the interests of abstract thought. Another is a species of subjective psy- chological idealism which ignores the ontologic as- pect of reality and completely identifies the object of knowledge with the subjective psychic process 306 BASAL COlSrCEPTS IlSr PHILOSOPHY tlirough which it is apprehended. Still a third type is a species of realism which assumes the distinction between spirit and matter to be absolute, thus, by implication at least, carrying- the duality of sub- stances up into the nature of the Absolute. The truth which metaphysics is chiefly concerned to assert is that the real is primally spiritual. A spiritualistic theory leads, as we have seen, to the recognition of a distinction between the Absolute and the relative and the inclusion of both in the synthesis of reality. This makes it impossible to reduce the relative to mere appearance. The rela- tive is real. It has its roots in the Absolute, but it is not a mere schein of the Absolute. We have seen that relativity has a distinctive constitution and type which make it analogous to a word that, once ut- tered, cannot be recalled. The word of the Absolute endureth forever. Moreover, in the relative sphere the material is not a mere schein of the spiritual. We have seen that the law of relativity is, first the material, then the spiritual ; that the spiritual cate- gories are the highest. But this does not mean the suppression of the material or its reduction to un- reality. In achieving the spiritual, the material and mechanical are gone through but not left behind. The material stands there hard and durable, and the moment of mechanism is ever present in the highest manifestations of spirit. The world is a solid and firm -jointed reality which confronts the knower and fills his categories with objective con- tent from the beginning to the end of the process of CONCLUSION- 307 experience.* A theory which thus asserts a system of reality at the heart of which pulsates the personal energ-y of spirit may be idealistic in its concej^tion of the mode of knowledge, since knowledge and re- ality must be distinguished, but it will be realistic in its metaphysic. Not the idea, but concrete spirit is the primal unit of being. If, however, the idea should be identified with concrete spirit and en- riched with a content of volition and love, and then its exponent should cling to idealism as the best designation of his creed, the issue is not one over which philosophy need go to pieces. Ag'ain, in view of conclusions already established, we think a settlement of the issue between natural- ism and supernaturalism becomes practicable. Hux- ley points with some concern to the victorious march of naturalism in our modern thinking. Everywhere the supernatural is falling into discredit, and even religion, if it would avoid the charge of superstition, must assume a naturalistic garb. Now there is a scientific naturalism which is sound and, in fact, necessary. Science deals with causation and de- velopment, and we have seen that these are categories of the natural series. Not only the sciences of nat- ure but psychology and history are obliged to be naturalistic in this sense. Now between such nat- uralism and spiritualism there is no issue. The cause and the movement may be both spiritual and material. Wlien, however, naturalism is carried over * In this we simply reassert the position which McCosh and the Scottish thinkers maintain against what may he called phenomenal idealism. 308 BASAL CONCEPTS IN PHILOSOPHY into metaphysics as an exclusive category it becomes false. The first presuiDposition of metaphysics is the Absolute, which is both transcendent and super- natural. The metaphysical ground of an adequate world-theory is a synthesis of the natural and phe- nomenal with this supernatural ground. Metaphy- sics must affirm a synthesis of natural and super- natural, and this synthesis must also be found at the heart of every adequate philosophy of religion. The suppression of the supernatural carries with it the death of true naturalism. Lastly, we have in our inquiry been led to see how a rational solution of the modern antinomy be- tween the ideas of immanence and transcendence is possible. We do not any longer need to work the old treadmill of annulling one in the supposed in- terest of the other, for we have seen that they are not contradictory, but rather complementary con- ceptions. The first presupposition of all being is a self -existent Absolute which stands as the transcen- dent ground and principle of the world. The Avorld is generated by the outgoing volitional energy of this Absolute. But the creative energy itself enters into the world as the immanent spring of its exist- ence and development. The Creator is in his world, but he is not wholly swallowed up by it. A synthe- sis of immanence and transcendence is necessary in order to rationalize the world. We are not oblig'ed, then, to be either deists or pantheists, but true philosophic insight will lead us to a religious posi- tion in which the shortcomings of both are escaped. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Sept. 2004 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724) 779-21 1 1 r-\