'■^■'7->>\ii'M'V''>M 
 
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[From the Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol /] 
 
 IDEALISM AND 
 HE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 By Dr. Edward Caird 
 
 London 
 
 Published for the British Academy 
 
 By Henry Frowde, Oxford Univer^ty Press Warehouse 
 
 Amen Corner, E.C. 
 
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i^ urvjfv,.,.-. 
 
 OF 
 
 IDEALISM AND THE THEORY OF 
 KNOWLEDGE 
 
 By Dr. EDWARD CAIRD 
 
 Delivered May 14, 1903. 
 
 Since the publication of Kanfs great work, almost all discussion 
 of the theory of knowledge has turned upon the relation of the object 
 to the subject or of the content of our experience to the formal 
 character of our thinking. In some sense, therefore, we may call all 
 \ modern theories of knowledge idealistic, and most of them have been 
 so called by their authors. But this does not carry us very far : for 
 the word idealism has been used with so many shades of meaning that 
 it is loaded with misleading associations. It has even, it may be 
 feared, led to the confusion with each other of philosophies which have 
 almost nothing in common. It becomes, therefore, a matter of some 
 
 / importance to disentangle the various senses in which the term has 
 
 been employed, /and the attempt to do so may pei'haps furnish the 
 best starting-point for a consideration of the real issues involved in 
 the question. 
 
 Now with Plato, who first brought the word into philosophical 
 
 use, an idea meant something that was primarily and emphatically 
 
 objeptive. The idea of a thing was, as he constantly puts it, the 
 
 >tKing itself. ' The good itself,' ' the beautiful itself,' ' the one itself,' 
 
 are the permanent objective realities to which all our conceptions 
 
 £j2_^\ r of goodness, beauty and unity point, as distinguished from their 
 \}^ phenomenal appearance ; and the thought that they are present to 
 
 [Xr .our minds, or accessible to our consciousness, though never absent, 
 is secondary and dcBiyatiye. yBurt with Locke an idea is primarily 
 a state of mind/^MT^^k^ey!^ doctrine that the esse of things is 
 their percipiiias\o deeply affected our philosophical language that 
 in common usage the name idealism is most often applied to the 
 theory which regards the modifications of our consciousness as the 
 objects, or at least as the primary and immediate objects, of know- 
 ledge, and which treats the existence of the external world only as an 
 
 C 
 
2 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 inference. This usage would not in itself he a matter for regret, but, 
 as I have already suggested, it has not seldom led to a misconception 
 of the meaning of philoso])hical writers who employ the word with 
 something of its old Platonic significance. 
 
 Such a misconception is partly favoured by the way in which tlie 
 so-called idealism of Germany has developed. Kant emphasized the 
 
 _ relativity of objects to the unity of the self, but he stil l maintained 
 the reservation that the obj ects so related are no t in an ultimate 
 gerisg~fcal , ajarnfrom thesubj ectiv ity to which jthey ^ are revea led. 
 'While, therefore7Tie~conten3e3TIiatthe world of experience cannot 
 be regarded as independent of consciousness in general, and, indeed, 
 of the consciousness of man, he still held to the _distinc tion of th e 
 objec ts of exp erience from things in themselves. He thus, after all, 
 seemed to seclude man^in a world ofTits o^vn consciousness, and to 
 sever him entirely from realityi/ Hence when Kant was attacked as 
 a Berkeleian, it gave him no' little trouble to separate his own 
 doctrine from that of Berkeley, and his attempts to work out this 
 distinction are perhaps the obscurest parts of the Critique of Pure 
 Reason. In fact, he was unable to achieve this result except by an 
 argument which — if carried to all its consequences — would have been 
 fatal to the distinction of phenomena from things in themselves, and 
 would thus have transformed the most fundamental conceptions of 
 the Critique. For the point of that argument i s that w e can b g_ 
 co nscio us_of the subject only in disti nction froni^^an d in relation to^ 
 the ob] £rt.. and that, therefore, our consciousness of the external 
 world is as imm ediate as_onc consciou sness of the self, and _ou£_coar 
 sciousness of the "self as77;g<imfg as our consciousne s s of the ex t ernal 
 world. But if this argument be valid, the subjective point of view 
 oFlBerkeley can once for all be set aside. To suppose _that_we are 
 
 .Ji:st-€Qii§ci ous of our ideas, as our ideas, and th e n that secondl y we 
 proceed to infer from the m the exis t ence of objects , is to invert the 
 orderofj^m^^in^^ to tear asund e^Jts_constituent 
 
 elements. It is to invert its order : for, though the unity of the 
 self may be implied in all consciousness of objects, yet it is to the 
 object in the first instance that our attention is directed, and we 
 observe the outward world and construe its meaning long before 
 we turn the eye of reflexion upon the inner life. And it is to tear 
 the elements of it asunder : for the outer and the inner life are at 
 every point in close correlation, and there is no experience of ours, 
 theoretical or practical, in which we have not to do with both. The 
 growth of our inner life is just the development of our knowledge of 
 the outer world and of our interests in it, and the attempt to retire 
 
IDEALISM AND THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 3 
 
 into ourselves and in a literal sense to make our mind a ' kingdom ' 
 to itself is suicidal. It would be like the attempt of the abstract 
 pleasure-seeker to get pleasure apart from all interest in anything 
 but pleasure itself. 
 
 Berkeleianism, if we neglect the somewhat artificial expedients by 
 means of which Berkeley tried to find his way back to an objective 
 world or at least to an objective deity, may easily be pushed into 
 the abyss of Solipsism. And, perhaps, there may still be some one 
 who, taking the doctrine in this sense, would repeat the paradoxical 
 assertion of Hume that Berkeley's argument * cannot be refuted,' 
 though it ' carries no conviction.' In truth, it is so far from being 
 incapable of refutation, that in its very statement it refutes itself, by 
 setting up an ' ipse ' or self with no not-self as its correlate, and indeed, 
 by assuming the possibility of the existence of a finite individual, who 
 is conscious of himself in his individuality, and yet is not, ipso facto, 
 aware of his relation to any greater whole in which he is a part. In 
 like manner, in the similar but more developed doctrine of Leibniz 
 the monads ' have no windows,' or, perhaps we might say irreverently, 
 no front-windows, through which they may come into real relations 
 with objects; but the result is that they have to be conceived as 
 under continual illumination by a God, M'ho gives them the apparent 
 experience of a world of which directly they could know nothing. 
 They are isolated from reality in a phantom universe of their own, 
 a sort of spiritual theatre set up in their own souls ; but care is 
 taken that the great drama of existence shall be re-enacted on this 
 private stage. Berkeley, in the end, had accepted nearly the same 
 modified form of Subjectivism, dismissing, what on this theory was 
 superfluous^, the reality of any world but a world of spirits and 
 their conscious states. And in this shape, which is supposed to 
 derive some support from Kant, the doctrine seems still to be accepted 
 by some writers, as the genuine result of idealism, and it has been 
 both attacked and defended on this basis. For, while there are those 
 who find in such a doctrine a recluctio ad absurdum of all idealism, 
 there are others to whom, as to Berkeley, it seems a valuable safeguard 
 against materialism, and a fundamental element in any spiritualistic 
 theory of the world. Fearing the abyss of Solipsism, and reading in 
 a onesided way the truth that all objects as such are relative to the 
 subject, such writers would compromise with the enemy, and abandon 
 to him all parts of the universe in which they cannot find thought 
 and will, or at least some form of consciousness; and they would 
 
 * Leibniz also conceives all the monads as in a sense spiritual unities each 
 having a perception of the whole* 
 
4 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 declare in this sense that 'all reality is spirit,' that is, that reality 
 consists solely of conscious beings and their states of consciousness. 
 But I am afraid that the enemy will not be propitiated even by this 
 sacrifice, and that the denial of the reality of the material world will 
 inevitably lead to the denial of the reality of any world at all. 
 
 With such subjectivism the German idealism had no necessary 
 connexion, at least aft<^Fichte had removed the last fragment of it 
 from his philosophy./ The result of Ka nt's teachj ng, Avhen it was 
 freed from the contradictory notion of the 'thing in itself — thftt— 
 ■ — foish Dn41-4n phiiosophyi, -as- -Heirte ^alls. .it — was not to cast any, even 
 the slightest , doubt j)n the reality ofjbh e external world, but only^ to 
 silow that a new ele ment must be added to all that we know^ f ii- »^ pn . 
 ^ternal world, nameh%its rela tion to the subject. No doubt, this 
 new^etemntfe-brings nnportaiit modiflcatiolis into our previous views 
 of objectivity. For, on the one hand, it absolutely precludes the 
 attempt to explain the spiritual by the material, and, indeed, compels 
 us to conclude that there is no material world w^hich is not also 
 spiritual.. And, on the other hand, as the correlation between the 
 self and the not-self is not onesided, it brings with it also the con- 
 viction that there is no spiritual Avorld which is not also material, or 
 does not presuppose a material world. Thus the reality of that 
 which is othe r than the self-conscious intellijceiice is seerTto rest_on 
 *t!ie sam e basTs^with that of the self-conscious intellig ence itself, and 
 the onecannot be denied with out the ot her ^. 
 
 But at this point a new difficulty has arisen. So soon as it is 
 understood that the assertion that all objects are relative to the 
 subject, involves the counter-assertion that the subject as such is 
 relative to the object, we seem to be involved in an antinomy 
 between two f6rms of consciousness, which can neither be reconciled 
 nor separated. We seem, in fact, to be forced alternately to make 
 the subject an adjective or property of the object, and the object 
 an adjective or pro|:erty of the subject; in other words, to set up 
 two opposite theories, materialism and subjectiveidealism, each of 
 which has its own independent value, andlieTElier of which can be 
 put aside in favour of the other. This balancing or dualistie view 
 is substantially the theory adopted by Clifford and Huxley, and it 
 has been fully worked out by Mr. Spencer. These writers, in short, 
 use the double relativity of consciousness and self-consciousness, or 
 
 ^ There is, indeed, a sense in which all that is apprehended by the intelligence 
 must have something of the nature of the intelligence in it. On this subject 
 I may refer to what I have said elsewhere {Evolution of Theology in the Greek 
 Philosophers, vol. i, p. 193 seq.). 
 
IDEALISM AND THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 5 
 
 of matter and niind, as the means of escaping both from the 
 objections to materialism, and from the objections to subjective 
 idealism : but what they set up in place of each of these theories 
 is simply the assertion that, from ar' phenomenal point of view, they 
 are both true, while from the point of view of reality, we cannot 
 establish either of them. Xhusthere are two independent ways of 
 l ooking at-the^^)rld^ each o f whir-h _ciaims the whole field of existen ce 
 for itself a nd is, therefore, absolutely opposed t,o the othei;, Ench 
 of them, indeed, has its usefulness for certain purposes of science, the 
 one as a principle of physics, and the other as a principle of psycho- 
 logy, but neither can finally vindicate itself as the truth to the 
 exclusion of the other. We are, therefore, in the presence of fin 
 immoveable difference which defies reconciliation ; and the absolute 
 reality which lies beyond these opposites, must for ever bafHe our 
 understanding, though, as Mr. Spencer holds, it is presupposed 
 in the very nature of consciousness. Hence we may regard the world i 
 either as a connected system of motions in matter, or as a connected I 
 system of modes of consciousness, and fi'om either of these hypotheses / 
 important scientific results may be derived : but we can neither / 
 decide for one of the alternatives to the exclusion of the other, nor I 
 can we rise to any higher point of view which would embrace them J 
 both. ' See then our predicament,' says Mr. Spencer, ' we can explain . 
 matter only in terms of mind : we can think of mind only in terms 
 of matter. When we have pushed our explanation of the first to the 
 farthest limit, we are referred back to the second for a final answer, 
 and when we have got the final answer of the second, we are referred 
 back to the first ^^ 
 
 There is a superficial plausibility in this view, but it is difficult 
 to conceive one which is fundamentally more incoherent. It ^spli tg , 
 thg_ ^vorld in two wrtha hatchet.'' It breaks up consciousness into ' 
 ' two consciousnesses, wliicR" axQ somehow united, though there is 
 no logical way from the one to the other : and it fails altogether 
 to explain the actual combination of the two in our daily experience. 
 For, just because Mr. Spencer makes the difference of mind and 
 matter absolute, he can admit the unity only in the form of an 
 abstract ' One "* in which all difference is lost. At the beginning 
 of his First Princ'iples, he lays down the logical doctrine, that 
 thought is essentially the limitation of an infinite or unconditioned 
 being, a being of which we have only a ' dim consciousness," as that 
 which is presupposed in all definite apprehension either of the object 
 or of the subject. But the unity thus presupposed is unknowable, 
 ^ Frinriplcs of Psychology , \, p. Q21 , § 272. 
 
6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 and that which we know is confined to the phenomenal. Thus each 
 of Mr. Spencer's two conceptions, his conception of the phenoftienal 
 world with its insoluble difference, and his conception of the unknow- 
 able being which alone is real, seems to require the other as its 
 compliment. The abstraction of the unity leaves the duality of 
 matter and mind without any connecting link, and the equally 
 abstract duality of mind and matter cannot be reduced to unity 
 except by the suppression of their distinctive characters. Hence the 
 unity and the difference cannot be regarded as both real, and if, 
 as with Mr. Spencer, the unity is treated as real, the duality must 
 be regarded as merely phenomenal. All our science, therefore, deals 
 merely with appearances, which we cannot bring into relation with 
 reality. The impulse of reason to seek for unity cannot be set aside, 
 but, under the conditions of Mr. Spencer's theory, it can be attained 
 only by the sacrifice of knowledge itself. The result is instructive as 
 pointing to the fate of all theories that set the 'one' against the 
 'many.' Abstract Monism and abstract Pluralism are not, strictly 
 speaking, two philosophies but different aspects of the same 
 philosophy. Polytheism always ends in setting up a fate beyond 
 the gods. 
 
 The Spenccrian philosophy, however, is valuable as a protest 
 against its opposite, against any ' too easy monism.' It is a legiti- 
 mate criticism both upon subjective idealism and upon materialism, 
 though it only puts one one-sided theory against another, and"! 
 maintains that both have equal rights. If we could not do better, 
 it might be well to compromise upon the Spinozistic idea of the 
 parallelism of the two unrelated attributes of extension and thought, 
 or, upon Schelling's conception of the balanced equality of the real 
 and ideal factors of the universe, even though the result, as with 
 Mr. Spencer, were to leave us without any unity which was more 
 than a name. 
 
 We are not however, shut up to such a desperate course ; for the 
 main result of modern philosophy and especiallvofjiindfrn jjlpnlisni- 
 \ias b een to put j ,.XQ ncrete, in place of'anTtbstfact unity, or, in other 
 words, t o vindicate the es sential c orrelation of the self and the not- 
 ,gelf. Idealism in this sense has nothing to object to the strongest 
 assertion of the reality of the distinctions of matter and mind, or 
 of any of the distinctions and oppositions that enter into the 
 theoretical and practical consciousness of man. But it maintains 
 that there are no absolute differences or antagonisms in the intelligible 
 world, no distinctions Avhich do not imply relations, and, therefore 
 also, an ultimate unity between the things distinguished : and, of 
 
 \ 
 
IDEALISM AND THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 7 
 
 course, it must refuse to admit that there is an unintelligible world, 
 a world that cannot be brought in relation to the intelligence. 
 
 Here, however we must stop to meet a possible misunderstanding. 
 There are many at present who are justly jealous of an easy 
 monism, and some perhaps, who, less justly, carry their jealousy to 
 the point of practically refusing to admit any ultimate unity at 
 all. Hence,when it is stated to be an essen tial result of idealism 
 that_ ther e is a~unity beyond ail diller c ncelindrthroug h_ajj_difference, 
 they are apt to think that_ bhi s involves th e denial o f the reality 
 nt^th£ _ditlRrP7icp sr Thus they seem to hold, as Spencer seems to 
 hold, that we can distinguish without relating, or relate without 
 admitting any unity within which the difference is embraced. And 
 in this they get much support from the ordinary consciousness : for 
 the ' plain man," as he is called, prior to reflexion, is apt to alternate 
 between unity and difference without bringing them together: he 
 is ready, therefore, to take any distinction which he recognizes as 
 absolute: and, on the other hand, if any doubt is thrown on the 
 absoluteness of such a distinction, he is inclined to infer that it ought 
 to be dismissed as altogether unreal. No one who has got beyond 
 this naive state of consciousness, will allow himself to be impaled on 
 either horn of its unreal dilemma. But, if we have once renounced 
 such abstract ways of thinking, I do not see how we can stop short 
 of the result that the one and the many, so far from being opposed, 
 are factors of thought which cannot be separated without contradic- 
 tion. An absolute difference would be no difference at all ; for it 
 would annihilate all relation between the things distinguished, and, 
 in doing so, it would annihilate itself. This is a principle of logic 
 ^/often illustrated by the fate of dualistic systems of thought, which in 
 ./^ \eeking to emphasize the reciprocal exclusiveness of two opposite 
 principles, have ended by depriving them both of the very character 
 in virtue of which they were opposed. Thus Manichaeism, .^vhgjj^it 
 took evil as absolute, as a reality quite separate from good, inevitably 
 made it lose its character as evil; for it thus turned evil into an 
 independent substance, which in itself had no opposition, because no 
 relation, t ogood . We can have opposition only within a unity, and, 
 if we try to stretch it farther, we overreach our object, and end by 
 making the opposition itself impossible or meaningless. Any one, 
 therefore, who thinks that a refusal to admit pure abstract contradic- 
 tion between two terms — say, between truth and falsehood, or good 
 and evil— involves the denial of all validity or reality to the distinction 
 in question, must be reminded that relative opposition is the only 
 real or conceivable opposition, and that distinctions are in effect 
 
8 PROCEEDLVGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 denied whenever they are made absolute. /Thus those who carry any 
 difference to the point of duaHsm do away with that very difference 
 by over-emphasizing it, just as sm-ely as those who disregard or 
 abstract from difference in the interest of unity. The parts of the 
 inteUigible world mean nothing except in the whole, and the whole 
 means nothing except as distributing itself to the parts, and con- 
 stituting their spiritual bond ^ 
 
 If there is any truth in these views, the only reasonable controversy 
 between philosophers must be, on the one hand, as to the nature of 
 the all-embracing unity on which every intelligible experience must 
 rest, and, on the other hand, as to the nature of the differences which 
 it equally involves. To ask whether there is any such real unity, or 
 Avhether it embraces real differences, is to attempt to leap off one's 
 own shadow : it is to try to think, while attacking the only basis on 
 which we can think. We cannot play the game of thought, if one 
 might use such an expression, without taking our stand uponJthe_ 
 
 idea that the Avorld is a self- consistent and intelligible whole : -though 
 of course, this does not mean that any actual attempt to systematize 
 our knowledge can be more than a step towards the attainment of 
 the ideal of a perfect analysis and re-synthesis of the manifold content 
 ^^of^xperience. The problem of knowledge is to find out how the 
 real unity of the world manifests itself through all its equally real 
 differences, and we can show that any abstract view, such as those 
 of Berkeley or Spencer, which w^ould deprive us of any element 
 in it, would make the progressive solution of it by science and 
 philosophy impossible. But we cannot prove these presuppositions 
 of all knowledge directly, or by making the system based upon them 
 complete, if for no other reason, because with our increasing ex- 
 perience the problem itself is always enlarging. In this sense, the 
 work of science, and still more the work of philosophy, must always 
 be a work of faith, meaning by faith, not believing anything merely 
 upon authority, but proceeding upon a principle the complete 
 vindication or realization of which is for us impossible ; for, obviously, 
 nothing short of omniscience could grasp the world as a complete 
 system. It is involved in the very idea of a developing consciousness 
 ch as ours, that while, as an intelligence, it presupposes the idea of 
 the whole, and, both in thought and action, must continually strive 
 to realize that idea, yet what it deals with is necessarily a partial and 
 limited experience, and its actual attainments can never, either in 
 
 ^ Dr. A^^ard, in his able Lectures on Naturalism and Agnosticism, admits 
 frequently the correlation of subject and object ; but he seems to me in effect 
 to withdraw this admission, when he speaks of each individual consciousness 
 as having a subject and object of its own. 
 
IDEALISM AND THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 9 
 
 theory or prrvctice, be more than provisional. Aristotle ^ has ex- 
 pressed both sides of this ideal in one of his most comprehensive 
 sayings, when he declares that ' as, in practice, it is our highest aim, 
 starting with what seems good to us individually, to make Avhat is 
 absolutely good our individual aim, so in theory, we have to start 
 with what seems true to us individually, but the object we seek is to 
 make what is really and naturally intelligible or true, true or intelligible 
 for ourselves./ In other words, we have to learn to look at the world, 
 in online ad univcrsum and not in ordine ad individuum, from its real 
 centre and not from the centre of our own individual existence : and 
 the task is not one which is forced upon us externally, but one which is 
 laid upon us by the nature of the reason which is within us. Aristotle, 
 therefore, holds that it is possible for us to make the universal point 
 of view our own, as it is also possible for us to make the absolute 
 good the end of our lives. But we have to add to what Aristotle 
 says that this end is one which is ever being realized, and never is 
 finally realized by us. It is a faith which is continually passing into 
 knowledge, but never becomes complete knowledge.y 
 
 If however in one sense Ave must call this idea a faith, we must 
 remember that it is in no sense an arbitrary assumption: rather it is the 
 essential faith of reason, the presupposition and basis of all that reason 
 has achieved or can achieve. We may admit that, as Tennyson says, 
 in this aspect of it our ' deepest faith' is also our ' ghastliest doubt' — 
 the doubt whether the whole system of things to which we belong is 
 not illusive and meaningless. But, apart from this inevitable shadow 
 of our finitude, the real difficulties of knowledge and practice lie not 
 in the idea or ideal of our intelligence, but rather in the application 
 of it to the particulars of thought and life, in carrying out the effort 
 to co-ordinate or affiliate the different appearances as elements of one 
 reality, or, as Mr. Bradley would express it, to determine what is the 
 « degree of reality ' that belongs to each of them, when brought in 
 relation to all the rest, and to give it in our practical life the 
 importance which really belongs to it. But to question whether the 
 whole is an intelligible system, is as vain as to question whether any 
 part of our experience, even the most transient and illusive of appear- 
 ances, has a place in that system. 
 
 There is, indeed, a way of escaping from this view of reality as 
 a systematic whole which has often been tried. This is to take our 
 stand upon some particular principle or principles, or upon some 
 particular fact or facts, as self-evidencing or immediately 'given' 
 truth, on the fixed certitude of which we can build our further know- 
 1 iMct. 1029 b, 5 seq. 
 
10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 ledge. Mr. Andrew Lang in his book upon Myth and Ritual, tells 
 us of a theological child, who described the creation of the world in 
 the following terms : ' God first made a little place to stand upon, 
 and then he made the rest.' So philosophers have often sought for 
 some special criterion of truth, for some basal principle, like the 
 Cogito ergo sjim of Descartes, or for some datum or data of sense, as 
 a foundation on which they might build their system. But the search 
 is a vain one. For, when we examine any such principle we discover 
 that it is only one aspect of things, which has no claim to be taken 
 as prior to the other aspects of them, and which proves the others 
 only in the same sense in which it is proved by them ; and also that 
 in being brought in relation to those other aspects, it is subject to 
 re-interpretation. And, in like manner, when we examine any 
 supposed datum of sense, we find that it is merely one appearance, 
 which helps us to explain other appearances only as it is explained 
 by them, and that its ultimate interpretation depends on the way in 
 which it combines with all our previous consciousness of things. All 
 that is certain about any such datum^ in the first instance, is that it 
 has an indubitable claim to be recognized as an element in the 
 intelligible world ; but how much truth there is in the first present- 
 ment of it we cannot tell, till we are able to think it together with 
 the other elements of our experience. In other words, it must be 
 interpreted so as to cohere with them, and they must be interpreted 
 so as to cohere with it. But whether this will lead to its being 
 explained, or to its being explained away, or, as is more likely, partb 
 to the one and partly to the other, we cannot tell a priori.'^Ye 
 cannot, therefore, take our stand on any one datum or principle taken 
 by itself; for, taken by itself, it cannot be known for what it really 
 is. We can only take our stand on the unity of the whole system, 
 in which everything that claims to be a feet or a truth must find 
 a place. Thus the idea that there are certain intuitions or perceptions 
 which we can take for granted as prior to, and above all criticism, 
 and which remain, in all the discourse of reason, as the fixed and 
 immoveable basis of the whole edifice of science, involves a fundamental 
 mistake. Indeed, the activities of the intuitive and the discursive 
 reason can never be separated without making the former 'blind,' 
 and the latter 'empty.' We always presuppose the unity of the 
 whole in every determination of the parts in distinction from, and 
 in relation to each other: and no element of the whole can be 
 presented apart from the process whereby we distinguish and relate 
 it within that whole. We are thus, throughout all our intellectual 
 life, advancing from a confused, imperfectly differentiated, and there- 
 
IDEALISM AND THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 11 
 
 fore imperfectly integrated, experience, towards an organic system 
 of knowledge, in which justice shall be done to all the differences and 
 oppositions of appearances, without sacrifice of their essential unity. 
 And it casts confusion upon the Avhole process, when we treat it as if 
 it were confined to the work of building upon fixed foundations, 
 which are given either in sensation or in thought, apart from any 
 process at all. On the contrary, it cannot be adequately represented 
 except as an evolution, in which it is only the last product that shows 
 distinctly the meaning of the germ out of which it sprang. 
 
 The view that has just been stated contains, I think, the essentials 
 of that conception of knowledge which has been maintained by the 
 greatest representatives of modern idealism ; and it is obvious that 
 it has no special kindred with the philosophy of Berkeley, and, from / 
 that point of view, is no less realistic than it is idealistic. At th^/"^ 
 same time, it may be acknowledged that in the process of working 
 towards this result and, especially, in seeking to reply to those who 
 treated knowledge as something given to the mind from without, 
 idealists have sometimes dwelt too exclusively on the subjective 
 aspect of knowledge This was the case, as we have seen, with Kant, 
 and it is apt to be the case with those who go back to Kant and take 
 their start from him. We may add that it is apt to seevi to be the 
 case with such writers, even when it is not really so. Thus the views 
 of T. H. Green are often misunderstood by those who do not 
 recognize how much his language is coloured by opposition to 
 authors like John Stuart Mill, whose philosophy was in the ascendant 
 when Green began to write, but whose views are no longer so 
 prominent in the mind of this generation of philosophers as they 
 were then. Hence difficulty is apt to be caused by Green's constant 
 insistence on the constructive activity of the mind in knowledge, 
 carried, as it necessarily is, to the point of denying that any element 
 of truth can be given to the mind apart from such activity. Such 
 a doctrine seems to many to involve a denial of the objectivity of 
 knowledge, and it has even provoked in some a reaction against 
 all idealism, and a tendency to fall back upon 'the given' in the 
 sense of naive realism, i. e. upon the idea that at least the basis of 
 experience is presented to consciousness without any activity of its 
 own. And even the most conclusive demonstrations that it is 
 impossible to detect any such pure datum have failed of their 
 effect, because of a lurking suspicion that the reality of the objects 
 of consciousness was being undermined. When Disraeli on one 
 occasion was questioned as to the political platform on which he 
 stood for election to a seat in parliament, he answered that he ' stood 
 
12 TROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 upon his head.'' But if that is a sufficient basis in pohtics, it can 
 hardly be admitted to be so in the theory of knowledge. And when 
 an idealist speaks of ' the judgement by which we sustain the world,' 
 however adequate may be his explanation of such language, it is apt 
 to excite a suspicion that his theories, if they were completely carried 
 out, would lead to the individual being regarded as his own universe 
 and his own God. This suspicion, perhaps as much as any other 
 reason, is what drives many to accept some via media, in which the 
 subject and the object are represented as in some way acting and 
 reacting on each other — some such view as is implied in the metaphor 
 of ' impression by,' or ' contact with "* reality, and to substitute it 
 for an organic conception of the relations between the mind and 
 its object. Such a suspicion the idealist is bound to remove, if he 
 expects his theories to be accepted ; yet he must do so, of course, 
 without compromising his fundamental conception of the relativity 
 of the intelligible world to the intelligence. 
 
 Now, so far as this difficulty arises out of the Berkeleian theory 
 that the mind has primarily to do only with its own ideas, it may 
 be met by the considerations already suggested. As the conscious- 
 ness of the self is correlative with the consciousness of the not-self, 
 no conception of either can be satisfactory which does not recognize 
 a principle of unity, which manifests itself in both, which underlies 
 all their difference and opposition, and which must^therefore, be 
 regarded as capable of reconciling them. When, therefore, we 
 speak of the object as manifesting itself in, and to the subject, 
 determining his perceptions, thoughts and desires, and when, on 
 the other hand, we speak of the subject as constructing his world 
 in knowledge, and making it in action the means of his own self- 
 realization, we are using language that represents two aspects of the 
 truth, which are apparently opposed, but each of which has a relative 
 validity ; and it is important that we should not allow either of these 
 forms of expression to exclude the other. To say that the mind 
 goes beyond itself to become conscious of the world, or to say that 
 the object goes beyond itself to awake consciousness of itself in 
 us, are two extreme ways of putting the fact of knowledge, which 
 have opposite merits and opposite defects. And, in like manner, 
 in regard to our practical life, to say that we are always determined 
 by objects, or to say we are always determined by ourselves, is to 
 utter half-truths. Neither of these statements is quite adequate ; 
 nor can we reach the whole truth merely by putting them together, 
 and saying that we are partly determined from without and partly 
 from within. For, if we accepted this reciprocal determination of 
 
IDEALISM AND THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 13 
 
 subject and object as our final account of the matter, we should 
 be left with a mechanical conception of action and reaction between 
 two things which are external to each other, and we should be driven 
 to deny that there is any unity which transcends the difference and 
 manifests itself in it. Yet that, as I have attempted to show, is just 
 the idea we have to admit, so soon as we realize that we can have no 
 consciousness of the difference and relation of the two terms except 
 on the basis of such a unity. We always presuppose the unity of 
 consciousness in all our experience, inner and outer ; but dualism 
 seems natural to us because in our ordinary modes of thought we 
 only presuppose it, and do not specially attend to it or reflect upon 
 it. Our eyes are directed from the unity we tacitly assume to the 
 differences we openly assert. Yet__tlie whole problem of our lives, 
 tfo blc m of pra eticfi.ji^i^^fegs'Than the problem of the theory, is 
 made insoluble if we begin by assuming the absoluteness of the 
 difference between the self and the not-self, and only then ask how 
 are we to mediate between them. If this were really the question, 
 it could not be answered ; but neither could it ever have arisen 
 for us as a question at all. If, therefore, any one bases his theory 
 on a presupposed dualism of subject and object, we may fairly ask 
 how he comes to believe in it : and this is a question which he cannot 
 answer at all without treating the difference as a relative one. But 
 if it be so, the common notion that the Absolute, the ultimate reality, 
 the Divine, or by whatever name we choose to name it, is a far-off" 
 something, a Jenselts or transcendental 'thing in itself,' involves 
 a fundamental mistake. And it is no less a mistake to suppose, with 
 Mr. Spencer, that it is a mere indeterminate basis of consciousness, 
 of which we can say nothing except that it is. It must be regarded 
 as a principle of unity which is present in all things and beings, and 
 from which they, in their utmost possible independence, cannot be 
 separated. It must be conceived, in short, as that in which they 
 * live and move and have their being.' And in the case of conscious 
 and self-conscious beings such as we are, this unity must show itself 
 as the underlying principle of all their conscious life. It is, therefore, 
 no metaphor or overstatement of religious feeling, when we say that 
 the consciousness of it is the presupposition both of the consciousness 
 of objects and of the consciousness of self, if only it be remembered 
 that, just because it is irpStTov (j)V(rsi, it is vararov yjinv, i. e. that it 
 is the last thing which we make an object of our thought. On the 
 other hand, though it be last in thought, yet it may be maintained 
 that neither the consciousness of the objective world nor the 
 consciousness of the inner life of the self can attain its highest and 
 
14 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 truest form until this presupposition is distinctly realized, as it Is 
 in religion, and also, we may add, until it is made the direct object 
 of reflexion, as it is in philosophy. The greatest task of philosophy, 
 indeed, is just to consider how the constant presence of this unity 
 modifies the contents both of the subjective and of the objective 
 consciousness. How far and how this task can be achieved, I cannot 
 at present consider ; but in any case it seems clear that neither the 
 subject nor the object can be known for what it really is, until their 
 reciprocal correlation is taken into account, and until this correlation 
 is itself seen in the light of the unity which it presupposes. 
 
r-asis^i'Lffi^as^!?;; 
 
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