Jacques Maritain Center :
Theories of Knowledge / by Leslie J. Walker, S.J.§ 135. All objects of human enquiry were divided by Hume into 'Relations of ideas' and 'Matters of fact.' Matters of fact, he said, are learned from experience; but are particular, disconnected, momentary, and so can give no universal propositions. Relations between ideas, such as those we have in mathematics, are universal; but they are universal because they belong to the ideal order and are revealed by the operation of thought itself. As, however, Hume could find no bond of connection between ideas and facts, he came to the conclusion that matters of fact alone are real, relations between ideas being merely mental notions without objective validity.
The unsatisfactory nature of Hume's conclusion is obvious. That ideas are merely mental and have no objective validity is admitted neither by pragmatist nor absolutist. Both have found what Hume sought for in vain, a bond of connection between ideas and facts. The pragmatist observes what apparently escaped the notice of Hume, viz., that whether mathematical notions are objectively valid or not, they are certainly applicable in experience; hence the pragmatic doctrine that such notions are true in so far as they are useful. Kant also took note of this same fact of experience, but observing also that mathematical notions arise first in sense-experiences, was led to a different conclusion. His was a two-fold problem, the problem of origin and the problem of validity. How is it possible, he asked, that we are able to generalise particular perceptive judgments and so obtain laws? And how is it that these general laws are applicable in experience, and that by them we are able to anticipate future events? In order to solve these two problems Kant formulated two hypotheses, first the hypothesis of Apriorism, and secondly that of Immanence.
§ 136. The postulate of Apriorism is made at the very outset of Kant's Critical enquiry, and is made expressly for the purpose of explaining those universal and necessary judgments, the existence of which he recognised as a fact. Let us assume, he says, that in knowledge the object conforms to the mind, and not the mind to the object. Let us assume that there are a priori forms within the mind without which the experience of objects would be impossible, and apart from which for us there would be no objects at all. Let us assume that "the sensible object must conform to our faculty of perception" and that in general our mind "determines the nature of objects a priori, or before they are actually presented;" just as the mathematician "in his definitions brings out what was necessarily implied in the conception that he had himself formed a priori, and put into the figure," and just as the "physicist, if he is to be successful, must himself lead the way with principles and judgments based upon fixed laws, and force nature to answer his questions." Our only escape from the sceptical empiricism of Hume is to assume that "that which reason has itself put into nature must be its guide to the discovery of all that it can learn from nature."{1}
§ 137. Thus the origin of knowledge in Kant is two-fold. It is partly a priori and partly a posteriori; and its validity depends upon its origin. All knowledge is obtained in experience and hence is valid only for experience. But because all knowledge 'begins with experience' it by no means follows that it all originates from experience.{2} It arises partly from the activity of objects upon our senses, but partly also from "the synthetic activity of our minds which by combining and separating the ideas which have thus arisen, converts the raw material of sensible impressions into that knowledge of objects which is called experience." Principles, such as that of Causality, which are universal and necessary, cannot be wholly due to experience. For
experience never bestows on its judgments true or strict universality, but only the assumed or comparative universality of induction; so that, properly speaking, it merely says that, so far as our observation has gone, there is no exception to the rule. If, therefore, a judgment is thought with strict universality, so that there can be no possible exception to it, it is not derived from experience, but is absolutely a priori. . . . And it is easy to show that in human knowledge there actually are judgments that, in the strictest sense, are universal, and therefore purely a priori.{3}
§ 138. Knowledge, then, presupposes as its conditions a certain mental structure on the part of the subject who knows, as well as certain data which come from without and are given in sense-experience. From this dual source Kant obtains three kinds of knowledge properly so-called -- empirical knowledge, a priori knowledge, and pure a priori knowledge; together with a fourth kind of knowledge which is not strictly knowledge at all, but only faith.
'Empirical knowledge' includes the truths of every-day life and all the applied, as opposed to the abstract, sciences. It is due in part to the object, and in part to the mind. It is expressed in propositions involving time and space, which are the a priori forms of perceptual experience. Categories, also, are used in every judgment that we make, and these, again, are a priori, and to them the data of sense-experience must conform. Empirical knowledge is objective, since real objects are, for Kant, the cause of our sensations; but in it we know only objects as they appear, and not things in themselves, which, because of the a priori element involved in all human knowledge, must ever remain, for man, unknowable.
In experience the synthesis in which a judgment consists, is mediated by what is given in sense-perception. The mind makes the synthesis, but the content of the synthesis, what is synthesised, is conditioned a posteriori by sense data. In a priori knowledge, on the other hand, the syntheses which we make are independent of experience, though the ideas between which the synthesis holds are still conditioned by the data of perception. For instance, "the proposition that 'each change has its own cause' is a priori; but it is not purely a priori, because change is an idea that can be derived only from experience."{4} Purely a priori knowledge is entirely independent of experience, both in regard to synthesis and in regard to the ideas that are synthesised, for in it we consider merely the a priori forms or categories (under which, in experience, objects are thoughts) in relation to one another.
A priori knowledge in general is derived from a study of the structure and natural functional activity of the mind itself, and, often enough, we possess and use such knowledge without ever having explicitly formulated it. It is only when conflict of opinion arises that we begin to examine the presuppositions upon which respective claims to truth are based, and so come to the knowledge of the 'a priori' forms which all knowledge implies. Thus the conflict of individual judgments in regard to quantity led to an examination of the presuppositions of our knowledge of quantity, and this to mathematics and geometry; so that from a critical regress upon the universal implicit in our actual concrete judgments, the principle of number was laid down, and, this accomplished, it became possible to anticipate events and foretell relations which must of necessity be true.
§ 139. The fourth kind of knowledge (so-called) is quite difterent from the rest, for it is a knowledge which quits the field of possible experience and claims to extend the range of our judgments beyond its limits by means of conceptions for which no corresponding object can be presented in experience.
"It is in this province," says Kant, "that reason carries on those investigations the results of which we regard as more important than all that understanding can discover within the domain of phenomena. These are the unavoidable problems of God, freedom, and immortality, set by pure reason itself." Such problems as these belong to metaphysics, a science which men have hitherto built upon knowledge which has come to them "they know not how, and in blind dependence upon principles of which we cannot tell the origin." An examination of the sources of knowledge, however, reveals the fact that knowledge is simply experience determined by a priori forms. Hence knowledge pertains only to objects of experience; and God, who is not an object of experience, cannot therefore be an object of knowledge strictly so-called, but only of faith. For Kant, as for the pragmatists, the existence of God is a postulate; but Kant is better of than the pragmatists since he can explain both the origin of the notion of God and the reason why we need to postulate His existence. The notion of God arises from a transcendental use of the categories beyond the sphere of their application in experience, and so far the notion is invalid but when supplemented by the consideration of human demands for an ultimate harmony and reconciliation, notably between good and evil, the notion of God becomes an idea in the objective validity of which we are forced to believe, even though it be impossible to prove it.
§ 140. Thus the argument by which Kant disproves the objective validity of the Ideas of Pure Reason presupposes the doctrine of Immanence, for it rests upon the assumption that sense-data and a priori forms, objective experience and subjective synthesis, are both essential and intrinsic to knowledge, and apart from one another are mere abstractions. Thus object presupposes subject, and subject, object. The unity of the self is the correlate of objective differences. This Kant clearly states in the Critique of Pure Reason. "Phenomena," he says, "do not exist apart from forms of synthesis of which the highest is the Transcendental Unity of Apperception." Indeed, the principles of the understanding are expressly called 'immanent,' inasmuch as they are applicable only within the limits of experience.
Modern representatives of Kant, differing as they do in other respects, all agree in holding Immanence essential to Criticism. Mr. Wallace, for instance, tells us that the philosophy of Kant
is an attempt to get at the organism of our fundamental belief -- the construction, from the very base, of our conception of reality, of our primary certainty. In technical language he describes our essential nature as a Subject-Object. It is the unity of an 'I am' which is also 'I know that I am;' an 'I will' which is also 'I am conscious of my will.'{5}
And Dr. Caird declares that
no one has a key to Kant's Logic, who does not see that the result to which it tends [is the view that] that very consciousness of the particular and the contingent, which Hume had turned against the consciousness of 'necessary connection' is itself dependent upon the 'a priori' it is used to condemn.{6}
§ 141. Unquestionably immanence is essential to Kant's Apriorism, and unquestionably, too, it tends in the direction of Absolutism. But it is, I think, equally certain that Kant stopped short of the ultimate goal. He asserted Immanence, but he asserted it only in so far as the phenomenal object was concerned, and so failed to realise, at any rate in its fulness, the first and last axiom of all Absolute philosophies, that the Universe itself is one and individual. Kant, in fact, never really transcended the human point of view. Knowledge, for him, was always human knowledge, and, human-like, he could not altogether rid himself of a realistic attitude. He believed in noumena, in a real and independent Ding-an-sich which was outside the mind and so beyond the reach of human experience. It is from the Ding-an-sich that the material element in knowledge is derived, but as it is only this element, viz., sensation, which conforms to the a priori structure of mind, things in themselves are left without, and, hence, are declared unknowable.
§ 142. The Kantian theory on account of this dualism is not an Absolutism, but rather a compromise between Absolutism and Realism, or at least it may be so regarded in retrospection. And like all compromises it led to endless difficulties. The separation of matter and form, which was due to the realistic admission of a Ding-an-sich, necessitated the introduction of numerous intermediaries between the lowest faculty sense, and the highest synthesis of all, the 'Transcendental Unity of Apperception,' in the vain hope of bringing them together. To take a single instance the transcendental schematism of the imagination is an attempt to explain how the pure conceptions of the understanding can possibly be applied to phenomena. But the result is, as Dr. Caird has pointed out, that we are placed in a dilemma. For either the syntheses of the imagination are independent of the syntheses of the understanding, and in this case their agreement is either fortuitous or due to a pre-established and inexplicable harmony; or the synthesis of conception is the real source and conscious aspect of the synthesis of imagination, in which case the possibility of converting a formless and serial manifold into definite objects is still unexplained.
§ 143. The different sources assigned to the a priori and the a posteriori elements in knowledge is fatal; and though Kant tried again and again to overcome this self-imposed dualism, it was always without success. The dialectic in which he discusses the fourth kind of knowledge mentioned above, exhibits clearly the unsatisfactory nature of the synthesis effected between these alien elements. The 'Ideas of Reason' -- God, the Universe as a totality, and the Soul -- have no objective validity, for "since no phenomena can be found to which they can be applied, they cannot be presented in concreto at all."{7} Yet, although we have no perception of the supra-sensuous, it is admitted that the categories have "a wider reach than the perceptions of sense," and that there may be objects independent of sensibility to which, unknown to us, they do in reality apply.{8} Nay, further, reason compels us to transcend the phenomenal and "demands a completeness beyond the reach of all possible knowledge, and a systematic unity with which experience can never be completely harmonised."{9} But this is only an ideal after which we strive, and its function is regulative, not constitutive. Again, if what Pure Reason demands in order to satisfy itself, is confirmed by the postulates of Practical Reason which are necessary for the realisation of moral ideals, the conclusion is not that these ideals are valid, but that the two reasons are independent and their functions distinct. The result of Kant's endeavour to escape from the dualism with which he started is always the same instead of transcending it, other dualisms are introduced.
§ 144. The dualism of the Pure and the Practical Reasons renders necessary a third Critique in which the relation between the postulated noumena and the world of appearances is discussed, and in which Kant approaches nearer to Absolutism than ever before. Here, at last, says Dr. Pfleiderer, " Kant tries to find some connecting link between the intelligible and the sensible world; and he seeks it in a teleology common to them both."{10} The Critique of Judgment is an attempt to transcend the point of view of our discursive intellect, and to look at things from the standpoint of a perceptive intelligence for which the whole is no longer dependent on the parts, but the parts dependent on the whole both in their specific nature and in their interconnection.{11} The universe is conceived as a teleological whole; and this whole
determines the form and combination of all the parts, not indeed as cause, but as the ground on which the thing is known by the person judging of it, in the systematic unity of the form and the combination of all its parts; [while the parts themselves] combine in the unity of the whole, and are reciprocally cause and effect of each other's form.{12}
The Critique of Judgment is undoubtedly an attempt to reconcile the point of view of the Practical Reason with that of the Pure Reason, but Kant seems hardly to have realised the significance of what he was doing. From the point of view of Absolutism, the third Critique is a higher synthesis of those which proceed. From Kant's point of view it was rather a supplement to what had already been said. His teleological whole was an ideal, a suggestion, but nothing more. Nor does he appear to have seen the connection between this teleology and the doctrine of Immanence. The teleology of the Critique of Judgment does not claim to be a development of the doctrine of Immanence. On the contrary, just as Kant never applies the principle of Immanence beyond the sphere of phenomenal objects, but attributes sensation to the causal action of an unknowable Ding-an-sich, so he never gets rid of the duality of the determinant and reflective judgments. Since teleological principles are based on the reflective judgment, they are regulative not constitutive, subjective not objective. Hence, "although there are certain peculiarities of our higher faculty of knowledge which it is very natural to transfer as objective predicates to things, they really belong only to ideas."{13} And the final conclusion which Kant reaches, is that, although we may postulate a Supreme Being as the ultimate Ground of the Universe of which we are an integral part, yet we can have no knowledge of such a Being; for, "to contemplate that Being as he is in himself, the Speculative Reason must assume the form of the determinant judgment, and this is contrary to its very nature."{14}
§ 145. While, then, it may be granted that the thing-in-itself and the dualism which it implies is foreign to the spirit of Criticism, I think that Kant was perfectly sincere and perfectly firm even to the end in his belief in the reality of this dualism. Fichte has said that it was a concession to Locke and the Sceptics, but I cannot so regard it, though it may have been due to the influence of English Empiricism that Kant did not see further than he did or realise more fully the significance of his own philosophy. On the other hand, the human standpoint adopted by Kant undoubtedly has something to do with the question. It may have been that Kant foresaw that to deny the existence of things-in-themselves was to identify knowledge with reality, and if this was so, it is small wonder that he should have refused to renounce a dualism which would have meant Subjectivism and Egoism, since knowledge for him meant human knowledge. But whatever his reasons may have been it is certain that Kant did not transcend the distinction of noumenal and phenomenal, and that in consequence he never got further than the half-way house between Realism and Absolutism. In declining to go further Kant was doubtless illogical. This blending of a mutilated Realism with a half-hearted Absolutism could not but lead, as it did, to many inconsistencies. It meant failure even in the primary aim for which Criticism had come into being. For it can hardly be disputed that, taken as it stands, Kantian philosophy tends rather towards, than away from, Scepticism, precisely because of those realistic Dinge-an-sich which remain for ever unknowable. Yet, notwithstanding all this, and notwithstanding also the fact that within his philosophy were implicitly contained all the principles afterwards developed by Absolutism, it is evident to me that Kant remained to the last, and deliberately chose to remain, a dualist.
§ 146. It was obvious, however, that Kant's philosophy could not remain long in the state in which he left it. Fichte saw at once that the dualism of mind and the thing-in-itself was incompatible with transcendental philosophy, and proceeded to apply the remedy which Kant himself had suggested. Things-in-themselves must be abolished once and for all from the realm of philosophy. Fichte always refused to believe that Kant had ever meant to attribute causal action to the Ding-an-sich, which would have involved an application of the category of causality beyond the sphere in which alone it had meaning. But, deprived of causal action, things-in-themselves became utterly useless, for their ratio essendi thereby ceased to exist. Hence, things-in-themselves were got rid of, and Kant's apparently illogical restriction of Immanence to phenomenal objects in this way removed. The barrier which Kant had placed between the real Subject and the real Object in knowledge having thus been removed, there was no longer any need of mediating links to connect the one with the other. Both real Subject and real Object were henceforth to be regarded as immanent within knowledge, apart from which they were meaningless abstractions. The object could neither be known nor yet exist apart from the subject, nor could the subject exist or become self-conscious apart from the object.
§ 147. Several consequences followed from Fichte's extension of the doctrine of Immanence. From the assumption that the subject and object in knowledge could not exist apart, it followed that knowledge and reality must at bottom be one and, this being so, knowledge, quâ reality, could no longer be regarded as the exclusive possession of human minds. This latter consequence Fichte hardly realised at first, for he identified reality with a system of 'rational egos;' though later he changed his view and treated the latter as differences which had broken out in an absolute and wholly 'indifferent' Ground. Thus, the primary problem which philosophy presented to Fichte was quite different from that which it presented to Kant. He assumed as the first principle of all philosophy that "nothing can exist which transcends self-consciousness." He had to enquire, therefore, not how subject and object, being distinct, can ever come to be united, but how being at bottom one and the same, they can ever come to be for consciousness distinct, or, in other words, how an Ego which is externally identical with itself can ever attain to the consciousness of itself as an 'other.'
This problem which the immanent interpretation of Criticism had introduced, Fichte failed to solve satisfactorily. He attempted to solve it by means of an 'antithesis,' in which the Ego posits a non-Ego in order that it may attain self-consciousness and so realise itself in a higher synthesis where it is determined by, and at the same time determines, the non-Ego it has posited. But this was to reduce to a mere 'moment' in an eternal act of self-consciousness, to a limit imposed only in order to be transcended. Nay, further, if, as at first conceived, reality is identical with a system of striving Egos, not only is 'nature' merely the material in which these finite egos strive to realise themselves; but the absolute Ego, which in its infinity embraces all reality and constitutes the term of self-realisation, is a mere idea, an eternal Sollen a 'must be' which never wholly is, for, if it were, the Anstoss would cease and with it consciousness. Complete self-realisation would thus involve annihilation.
§ 148. These two defects in Fichte's 'Wissenschaftslehre' demanded an immediate remedy. For to reduce nature to a sort of 'spring-board' for the development of our moral consciousness was to treat the theories and discoveries of the scientist as so many illusions; and to conceive the Absolute as a mere idea or telos, infinite and all-embracing but never fully itself, was to deprive the universe of that unity which the new theory thought to give it. Consequently, Schelling in his Natur-philosophie made nature more real by treating it as the objective expression of an ultimate and rational Ground. Indeed, Fichte himself in his later writings had sought to give Reality a metaphysical basis in the Identity of Subject and Object. This Identity, however, he conceived in the abstract, as something which, itself without determination or individuality, is yet the ground from which all things proceed. And though Schelling, in his earlier work, gave it fuller meaning both as the rational, and also as the dynamical and not merely the teleological, source of all things; yet in his Identitäts-philosophie he returned to Fichte's view and regarded the Absolute as a bare Indifference-point, contentless and meaningless, except in so far as it is the Ground of which Intelligence and Nature are respectively the subjective and objective aspects.
§ 149. Next came Hegel, who, failing to see how an empty and undifferentiated abstraction could be reconciled with, still less account for, the eternal genesis of the rich variety and manifold differences of the universe, protested vigorously against this feature of the philosophy of Fichte and Schelling. Accordingly, generously returning to the Absolute all that his predecessors had deprived it of, he conceived it as at once Ground, organic unity and final end or term. As Ground or Idea it is the source whence flow both self and not-self, intelligence and nature; as organic unity it is the life of the universe in which it progressively realises itself; and as final end or term, it is self-consciousness in which the Absolute Idea recognises itself as one and thus overcomes its own differences.
By thus adopting 'development' or 'evolution' as the central idea of his system, Hegel thought to explain at once the dynamical and the teleological functions of the Absolute, and at the same time to preserve it in its full meaning as the real and rational Ground of a rich and much-differentiated universe. The evolution, as before, takes place viâ thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Reality -- at any rate from our point of view -- is still a never-ending process of self-realisation and self-development. But the evolution is real now. It is the Absolute becoming self-conscious. And the Absolute is not an Indifference-point, nor are nature and spirit collateral or parallel expressions of an empty abstraction. The Absolute itself is real, realising and manifesting itself both in nature and in spirit. Nature and spirit, too, are both real; but they have not the same degree of reality. Nature is thought in extreme alienation from itself, and though independent of the individual mind, it is inferior to it as a manifestation of the Absolute Ground. For in conscious beings, and especially in man, Thought or Spirit manifests itself, first as distinct from the world, then as free, then as an integral part of the world, then as a member of a moral community, till it comes at last to the highest stage of all, in which it knows itself as spirit. Looking back upon the history of mankind, Thought as Spirit recognises there its own self-realisation, and in the history of nature its own self-externalisation; and at the same time it is conscious that these antitheses are reconciled in itself as in a higher synthesis. The Absolute regarded as 'Ground' is by Hegel distinguished -- relatively of course -- from the 'Absolute Idea.' As Ground it is merely the unifying principle of the organic universe, but it is not yet a being for-itself. Only when its evolution is regarded as complete can it strictly be called the Absolute, for only then does it exist for itself and recognise itself as the unity in which the dualism of the self and the not-self is overcome.
§ 150. Thus in Fichte, Schelling. and Hegel Criticism not only develops, but takes upon itself a new form, passing from a theory of knowledge into a theory of reality. Knowledge is identified with reality. To the categories is attributed a kind of logical development by means of which the structure of the universe is evolved. The 'Transcendental Unity of Apperception' is transformed into an Absolute, which is at once the Ground and the higher and self-conscious synthesis of all its differences. The Universe is one, individual, systematic, organic, rational. The Absolute is its principle of unity; nature and thinking beings its differences. All are immanent within the single and individual organism, and the differences apart from their Ground, and the Ground apart from its differences are nothing real, but merely abstractions.
The system of Hegel, as he himself prophesied, underwent much differentiation.
The transformation of the world into objects of consciousness is [says Dr. Wilm] the decisive step of Critical Philosophy. But what, precisely, this consciousness is, from which alone objects have existence, whether it is individual consciousness, the consciousness of the race, or consciousness as such, is a question which admits of a variety of answers, and the particular shade the resulting idealistic system will take on will depend upon whether one or the other of these interpretations be given.{15}
I should have preferred to say that the distinguishing feature of Critical Philosophy was its method; for the transformation of the world into objects of consciousness is characteristic of any idealism, not exclusive of pragmatic idealisms. The peculiar mark of Absolutism, on the other hand, is the transformation of the world into objects (and subjects) of consciousness for a single and immanent Ground or Subject. And here it is true, as Dr. Wilm points out, that the differentiations of Absolutism depend largely upon the view that is taken of the nature of that Ultimate Ground. Hegel lays the emphasis on thought, Schopenhauer on will, the poet-philosopher Schiller on the aesthetic and moral consciousness, and Mr. Bradley on sentience. All these philosophies, however, are Absolutisms. All adopt the doctrine of Immanence. All interpret the Universe as one organic whole, comprising unity of Ground amid structural difference; and all identify the unity of Ground as the Absolute with some form of consciousness. As a rule, too, the method of such philosophers is critical. They argue from the data of experience, and their conditions are presuppositions. But the Critical Method, like Absolutism itself, may take a variety of forms; and of late there has been a tendency to appeal more and more frequently to experience both for data and for confirmation of the theses of Absolutism. This tendency is illustrated in the philosophy of T. H. Green, who, like Mr. Bradley, bases the constructive part of his work on the data of human consciousness. And as the multitudinous differentiations of the philosophy of the Absolute make it impossible to summarise them, I shall content myself with stating in brief the leading characteristics of Green's philosophy as expounded in his Prolegomena to Ethics, supplemented by a short sketch of the metaphysical standpoint of Appearance and Reality.
§ 151. The facts of human consciousness are the data with which Green starts, and the question which he asks himself is, as we should expect, of a critical nature, viz., what do these data presuppose? What do they imply as the 'conditions' without which they cannot be explained?{16} Green, it has been said, starts from the 'Self' and passes thence to the Cosmos and to God, -- a statement which is true, but which must be understood not in the Lockian, but in the true psychological sense already explained.{17} In other words, Green begins by enquiring what we can know about human cognition by introspective analysis, and with this as his starting-point he begins to philosophise, i.e., to enquire into its metaphysical conditions.
Analysing, first of all, the object of knowledge, Green finds that it always consists of relations.
Matter and motion, just so far as known, consist in, or are determined by, relations between the objects of that connected consciousness which we call experience. If we take any definition of matter, any account of its 'necessary qualities,' and abstract from it all that consists in a statement of relations between facts in the way of feeling, or between objects that we present to ourselves as sources of feeling, we shall find that there is nothing left.{18}
And, again, if we "exclude from what we have considered real all qualities constituted by relation, we find that none are left. Without relation any simple idea would be undistinguished from other simple ideas, undetermined by its surroundings in the cosmos of experience."{19} The world, then, as conceived by us, consists of relations, and the order of those relations is unalterable. Indeed, "that there is an unalterable order of relations, if we could only find it out, is the presupposition of all our enquiries into the real nature of appearances; and such unalterableness implies their inclusion in one system which leaves nothing outside itself."{20} Thus the only means which we have of deciding "whether any particular event or object is really what it seems to be" is "by testing the unalterableness of the qualities which we ascribe to it, or which form its apparent nature."{21}
§ 152. [Now] experience, in the sense of a consciousness of events as a related series -- and in no other sense can it help to account for the knowledge of an order of nature -- cannot be explained by any natural history, properly so-called. [For between the consciousness itself on the one hand, and on the other anything determined by the relations under which a nature is presented to consciousness, no process of development, because no community, can he really traced. Nature, with all that belongs to it, is a process of change. . . . But neither can any process of change yield a consciousness of itself, which, in order to be a consciousness of the change. must be equally present to all stages of the change; nor can any consciousness of the change, since the whole of it must be present at once, be itself a process of change. There may be a change into a state of consciousness of change, and a change out of it, on the part of this man or that; but within the consciousness itself there can be no change, because no relation of before and after, of here and there, between its constituent members.[Hence] a form of consciousness, which we cannot explain as of natural origin, is necessary to our conceiving an order of nature, an objective world of fact from which illusion may be distinguished.{22} [Further, nature itself implies a spiritual principle. Relation implies the existence of many in one]. Whether we say that a related thing is one in itself, manifold in respect of its relations, or that there is one relation between manifold things . . . . we are equally affirming the unity of the manifold. . . . But a plurality cf things cannot of themselves unite in one relation, nor can a single thing of itself bring itself into a multitude of relations. . . . There must, then, be something other than the manifold things themselves, which combines them without effacing their severality{23}
Now, a system of unalterably related objects is a system of unalterably related objects in consciousness; otherwise, there would be no experience of it.{24}
If, therefore, there is such a thing as a connected experience of related objects, there must be operative in consciousness a unifying principle, which not only presents related objects to itself, but at once renders them objects and unites them in relation to each other by this act of presentation. . . . [And] if all possible experience of related objects orms a single system; if there can be no such thing as an experience of unrelated objects ; then there must be a corresponding singleness in the principle of consciousness which forms the bond of relation between the objects.{25}
§ 153. Thus the spiritual principle which is implied in our knowledge of a cosmos of related facts is identical with that 'single active self-conscious principle,' which constitutes those facts and is the condition of their existence. A hypothesis which treats the knowable world and the subject capable of knowing it as two independent existences is untenable, for "it renders knowledge, as a fact or reality, inexplicable. It leaves us without an answer to the question how the order of relations, which the mind sets up, comes to reproduce those relations of the material world which are assumed to be of a wholly different origin and nature."{26} The true account of the growth of knowledge is
that the concrete whole, which may be described indifferently as an eternal intelligence realised in the related facts of the world, or as a system of related facts rendered possible by such an intelligence, partially and gradually reproduces itself in us, communicating piece-meal, but in inseparable co-relation, understanding and the facts understood, experience and the experienced world.{27}
How this communication between a human and an eternal consciousness takes place we are not told. Apparently, however, it involves both thought and feeling, for
feeling and thought are inseparable and mutually dependent in the consciousness for which the world of experience exists, inseparable and mutually dependent in the constitution of the facts which form the object of that consciousness so that it is one and the same living world of experience which, considered as the manifold object presented by a self-distinguishing subject to itself, may be called feeling, and, considered as the subject presenting such an object to itself, may be called thought.{28}
Doubtless, at times man does not think: he merely feels. "But just in so far as we feel without thinking, no world of phenomena exists for us."{29} Consequently, although we do not thereby cease to be facts, and facts for an eternal consciousness which is the condition of our existence, nevertheless we are not identical with that consciousness in the sense that it is reproducing itself in us. Indeed, precisely because the reproduction has us for its organ,
it is at once progressive and incapable of completion [and] there can never be that actual wholeness of the world for us which there must be for the mind that renders it one. But though the conditions under which the eternal consciousness reproduces itself in our knowledge are thus incompatible with finality in that knowledge, there is an element of identity between the first stage of intelligent experience -- between the simplest beginning of knowledge -- and the eternal consciousness reproducing itself in it, which consists in the presentation of the many in one, in the apprehension of facts as related in a single system, in the conception of there being an order of things, whatever that order may turn out to be.{30}
Thus the fact that "the unification of the manifold in the world implies the presence of the manifold to a mind, for which, and through the action of which it is a related whole,"{31} together with the fact that that very consciousness of ours, "which holds together successive events as equally present, has itself a history in time . . . can only be explained by supposing that in the growth of our experience, . . . an animal organism, which has a history in time, gradually becomes the vehicle of an eternally complete consciousness."{32}
§ 154. These are, I think, the essential features of the philosophy of T. H. Green, so far as concerns the theory of knowledge; and between this philosophy and that of Mr. Bradley there are many points of resemblance, and still more perhaps of difference. The differences, however, would seem to be due largely to method, for in his main conclusions Mr. Bradley is at one with Green. Reality is one and individual, and is to be identified with some form of consciousness. This is the chief thesis of both Absolutisms, in comparison with which it is of small moment whether that form of consciousness be called 'thought' or 'sentient experience,' since for both philosophers the one term includes the other. Nevertheless, the long and intricate process of reasoning by which Mr. Bradley attempts to establish and confirm his conclusions is wholly different from the line of argument adopted by Green; and of this we must now give some account in order that our sketch of Absolutism may be complete. Fortunately for us, Mr. Bradley frequently sums up his own arguments, and in one place has even devoted a whole chapter to Recapitulation, so that by the aid of these summaries it may be possible to give a sketch of his philosophy, which otherwise one might have hesitated to attempt. Accordingly, I shall, as in Green's case, keep as closely as possible to the author's own words in order to avoid misinterpretations, which, judging from the appendices and notes to the Second Edition of Appearance and Reality, have already been of somewhat frequent occurrence.
§ 155. In our First Book [says Mr. Bradley] we examined [under the headings Primary and Secondary Qualities, Substantive and Adjective, Relation and Quality, Space and Time, Change, Causality, Things, the Self] certain ways of regarding Reality, and we found that each of them contained fatal inconsistency. Upon this we forthwith denied that, as such, they could be real. But upon reflection we perceived that our denial must rest upon positive knowledge. It can only be because we know, that we venture to condemn. Reality, therefore, we are sure, has a positive character, which rejects mere appearance and is incompatible with discord. On the other hand it cannot be something apart, a position qualified in no way save as negative of phenomena. The Reality, therefore, must be One, not as excluding diversity, but as somehow including it in such a way as to transform its character. There is plainly not anything which can fall outside of the Real. That must be qualified by every part of every predicate which it rejects; but it has such qualities as counterbalance one another's defects. It has a superabundance in which all partial discrepancies are resolved and remain as higher concord.{33}
§ 156. The metaphysical proof that Reality is One, rests upon Mr. Bradley's theory of relations. Mr. Bradley does not, as does Green, assert that the cosmos is merely a system of relations to which 'quality,' in inorganic beings at any rate, is ultimately reducible. On the contrary, though qualities imply relations, relations also imply qualities both of which exist upon the same level of appearance. They are never found apart, and separation by abstraction is no proof of real separateness. There are no purely external relations, for all relations make a difference to their terms, and hence must belong to a whole which they qualify. Logically and really, as well as psychologically, "all relations imply a whole to which the terms contribute and by which the terms are qualified."{34} Hence, since all things are distinguished and related,
nothing in the whole and in the end can be external, and everything less than the Universe is an abstraction from the whole, an abstraction more or less empty, and the more empty the less self-dependent. Relations and qualities are abstractions, and depend for their being always on a whole, a whole which they inadequately express, and which remains always less or more in the background.{35}
The transition from this theory of relations to the doctrine that Reality is one is logical enough. "Reality is one. It must be single, because plurality, taken as real, contradicts itself. Plurality implies relations, and, through its relations, it unwillingly asserts always a superior unity. To suppose the universe plural is therefore to contradict oneself and, after all, to suppose that it is one."{36}
In order to determine the nature of the unity which underlies the universe, Mr. Bradley appeals again to sense-perception. The unity in question cannot be the unity which in thought we contrast with plurality, for this, like plurality itself, is the result of analysis, and is therefore appearance. It is the fact that at any given moment "we may be truly said to feel our whole psychical state as one" that furnishes "the positive idea of unity which we seek."{37} It is true that this unity is given only in "finite centres of experience" (i.e., in the 'this' and the 'mine'), but none the less,
in our first immediate experience the whole Reality is present. This does not mean that every other centre of experience, as such, is included there. It means that every centre qualifies the Whole, and that the Whole, as a substantive, is present in each of these its adjectives. The self and the world are elements, eacb separated in, and each contained by experience.Experience . . . . as a centre of immediate feeling, is not yet either self or not self. . . . Then through its own imperfection it is broken up. Its unity gives way before inner unrest and outer impact in one. And then self and Ego, on one side, are produced by this development, and, on the other side, appear other selves and the world and God. These all appear as the contents of our finite experience, and they are genuinely and actually contained in it. They are contained in it but partially. . . . [Nevertheless] the total universe, presented imperfectly in finite experience, would, if completed, be merely the completion of this experience.{38}
§ 157. In a previous chapter we saw how, by a somewhat similar argument to this last, Mr. Bradley seeks to establish his thesis that Reality is Sentient Experience. It remains now to say something as to the nature of this Sentient Experience, and as to the relation of the Absolute to its appearances.
Again let us quote from the chapter headed 'Recapitulation,' for beyond this in the matter of positive and constructive theory Mr. Bradley makes little advance.
This Absolute is experience, because that is what we really mean when we speak of anything. It is not one-sided experience, as mere volition or mere thought; but it is a whole superior to and embracing all incomplete forms of life. This whole must be immediate like feeling, but not, like feeling, immediate at a level below distinction and relation. The Absolute is immediate as holding and transcending these differences. And because it cannot contradict itself, and does not suffer a division of idea from existence, it has therefore a balance of pleasure over pain.{39}
Thus Mr. Bradley regards the Absolute not only as "immediate," but also as "in every sense perfect." Various forms of the finite all "take a place within this Absolute." " Nothing can be lost," yet "everything must be made good so as to minister to harmony." How this takes place is inexplicable, nor is it necessary to explain it since we have a general principle which seems certain. The only question is whether any form of the finite is a negative instance which overthrows this principle.{40}
§ 158. The chapter entitled 'Recapitulation' occurs about half way in Appearance and Reality, and the rest of the volume is devoted almost entirely to the enquiry whether there is anything which 'imports discord' when admitted to a place within the Absolute; for, if not, the Absolute is possible and "this is all we need to seek for. For already we have a principle upon which it is necessary; and therefore it is certain."{41} For the rest, the result of this further enquiry is largely negative. Nothing is found to be contradictory when predicated as an adjective of the Absolute; yet nothing has reality in itself and apart from the Absolute.
We have found [for instance] that Nature by itself has no reality It exists only as a form of appearance within the Absolute. . . . It has its being in that process of intestine division, through which the whole world of appearance consists. And in this realm, where aspects fall asunder, where being is distinguished from thought, and the self from the not-self, Nature marks one extreme. It is the aspect most opposed to self-dependence and unity. . . [It is but] 'one element within the Whole.'{42}
In the same way "no one aspect of experience, as such, is real. None is primary, or can serve to explain the others or the whole. They are all alike one-sided, and passing away beyond themselves." Hence they are called "appearances," for "anything which comes short when compared with Reality gets the name of appearance."{43} This does not mean, however, that "the thing always itself is an appearance;" but "that its character is such that it becomes one as soon as we judge it."
This character [of things] . . . is ideality. Appearance consists in a looseness of content from existence ; and, because of this self-estrangement, every finite aspect is called an appearance. And we have found that everywhere throughout the world such ideality prevails. Anything less than the Whole has turned out to be not self-contained. Its being involves in its very essence a relation to the outside, and it is thus inwardly infected by externality. Everywhere the finite is self-transcendent, alienated from itself, and passing away from itself towards another existence. Hence the finite is appearance, because, on the one side, it is an adjective of Reality, and because, on the other side, it is an adjective which itself is not real.{44}
§ 159. In conclusion, then, "All is appearance, and no appearance, or any combination of these is the same as Reality." Yet, on the other hand, "the Absolute is its appearances, it really is all and every one of them." "The Absolute is each appearance, and is all, but it is not any one as such. And it is not all equally, but one appearance is more real than another." There are in appearances degrees of reality.
Everything is essential, yet one thing is worthless in comparison with others. Nothing is perfect, as such, and yet everything in some degree contains a vital function of Perfection. Every attitude of experience, every sphere or level of the world, is a necessary factor in the Absolute. Nowhere is there even a single fact so fragmentary and so poor that to the universe it does not matter. There is truth in every idea however false, there is reality in every existence however slight and, where we can point to reality or truth, there is the one undivided life of the Absolute. Appearance without reality would be impossible, for what then could appear? And reality without appearance would be nothing, for there certainly is nothing outside appearances. But on the other hand reality is not the sum of things. It is the unity in which all things, coming together, are transmuted, in which they are changed all alike, though not changed equally.{45}
It is the unity of the Absolute immanent within the whole, re-uniting and re-absorbing its relational appearances, and giving to each its degree of truth, reality and perfection, which, as such, can belong only to the whole.
{1} Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason (passim).
{2} Ibid., introduction, p. 1.
{3} Introduction to Critique of Pure Reason, p. 3.
{4} loc. cit., Introduction, p. 3. (On p. 5, Kant calls the principle of causality 'pure a priori;' but here, I take it, he is speaking either of the synthesis which the principle involves, considered in abstraction from its terms, or he is thinking of the tautological form of the principle, viz., 'every effect must have a cause.')
{5} Hegel's Philosophy of Mind, p. cx.
{6} The Critical Philosophy of Kant, vol. i., p. 250.
{7} Critique of Pure Reason (2nd edit.), p. 595.
{8} Ibid., p. 309.
{9} Ibid., p. 596.
{10} Development of Theology, bk. I., c. 1.
{11} Critique of Judgment, pp. 419, 420.
{12} Ibid., p. 385.
{13} Critique of Judgment, p. 417.
{14} Ibid. p. 470, concluding paragraph. 219
{15} Wilm, Philosophical Review, May, 1906, p. 349.
{16} Prolegomena to Ethics, § 14.
{17} Ibid., § 9.
{18} Ibid., § 9.
{19} Ibid., § 20.
{20} Ibid., § 26.
{21} Ibid., § 24.
{22} Ibid., §§ 18, 19.
{23} Ibid., § 28.
{24} Ibid., § 31.
{25} Ibid., § 32.
{26} Ibid., § 34 and cf. § 39.
{27} Ibid., § 36 and cf. § 43.
{28} §50
{29} § 49.
{30} Ibid., § 72 (italics mine).
{31} Ibid., § 82.
{32} Ibid., §§ 66, 67.
{33} Appearance and Reality, chap. xx., p. 241.
{34} loc. cit., p. 581, cf. chap. iii. and the whole of Note B in the Appendix to the 2nd edition.
{35} Ibid.
{36} Ibid., pp. 529, 520.
{37} Ibid., p. 521.
{38} Ibid., pp. 524, 525.
{39} Ibid., pp. 242, 242.
{40} Ibid., p. 242.
{41} Ibid., p. 242.
{42} Ibid., pp. 293, 294.
{43} Ibid., p. 485.
{44} Ibid., p. 486.
{45} Ibid., pp. 487, 488.