The Unity of Being
Part II Section 11
[192]
Section 11
Knowledge
Argument 1. Thesis: Knowledge is not a collocation of objects, nor any relation between them simply. It is not reducible to terms that do not involve knowledge as essential to their being.
The mere statement of the proposition that mind is an arrangement of objects (or a law or “selective” relation between groups of objects or non-mental events) is sufficient to expose its error to most minds. If a certain state of things is exhaustively describable without employing the idea of mind or knowledge, except indeed to the extent of admitting that these words fall upon the air or appear upon paper in connection with the phenomena in question, then the existence of knowledge of objects-in-relation, is nothing over and above the existence of objects-in-relation, — nothing more than this except for a word or two (themselves but objects in relation). The difference between awareness and simply a set or grouping of objects is purely verbal. If the good is dependent upon awareness then the value of the entire grouping of objects is just — that they are so grouped. It is neither better nor worse than anything else that they should be. For the difference between one grouping and another can be adequately dealt with in neutral terms. To call the difference valuable is just to say — the difference, as neutrally described, is — just that difference, and also it is [193] called, good. But good only means that the difference is that difference it adds nothing to the neutral conception except a word. We shall consider this in the following chapter.
But, aside from the good, it is equally impossible to grant the reduction of (so to put it) mere knowledge to a verbal status in reality. Now to call two conceptions (that of a relation between objects and the knowledge of objects) identical implies that there is no evidence of difference between them. The burden of proof, where language and prevailing belief (even among philosophers) agree in perceiving differences, is overwhelmingly upon the identifier. To proclaim two conceptions as one is to suppose that when one is thought in all its meaning, the other will be found to contain no meaning not included. The objects and not the thought of the objects is impossible.
Our present argument is, simply in the main a declaration that where an identity is proclaimed, we at least — in common with most minds who have considered the question — plainly perceive the greatest difference in all the world, and therefore declare the proposed definition of mind as the definition of something quite else — namely the description of the law to which the appearance of objects to the mind is correlated with the states of the organism and the conditions of the environment. This never-questioned correlation (at least as an approximate or [194] relative uniformity) we cannot accent as a substitute for the actual appearance of the objects to an actual mind. If instead of “appearing” to the law in question, we are to be granted only, “being at a certain locus in the environment,” according to that law, we simply object, with for us certain finality, that by being at a locus and appearing there to us, we cannot significantly mean the same thing. Logically such substitution of phrase implies that “to be”1 and “to appear to us” are propositions without difference. If being and appearing are ever one, no non-atomist can find conclusive reason for supposing they are ever different. And if being and appearing were to be identified, the sacrifice of individual identity could not fall to the lot of the appearing. For, as pointed out in the Introduction, whether or not there is being without appearance or mind we cannot at the outset be sure; but that there is not simply being and no mind we must be sure if we are to pretend to philosophize. There may be only mind and its activity, or at least, there may be only minds and their activities, — short of a considerable inquiry the denial of this possibility is mere dogmatism.
But that reality is now composed simply of entities without mind or knowledge is [195] a proposition that immediately convicts its proclaimer of evident absurdity. Hence, in so far as the declared identity of being and appearing in a special case implies such identity in principle or throughout, it implies either nonsense or idealism.2
Argument 2. The principle just adduced, namely the existence of mental reality (not necessarily that of the finite subject by itself, a view leading to solipsism if to anything) as the sole initial certainly, may be used more directly against the materialistic, objective, or neutral view of mind. If the existence of mental being as such is indubitable, and that of neutral being a postulate requiring proof that is not only not immediately evident, but in the opinion of a most influential group of philosophers (including every variety of intellectual ability) has never been satisfactorily given, then it seems a clear inference that mental reality is not identical with any formation of neutral reality. If it were so identical the existence of this particular neutral complex, as such, could not be dubitable. In short the certainty of knowledge would thus be a purely [196] verbal assurance, meaning only that we know there is something real meant by the word “knowledge.”
Our knowledge that there is knowledge is not however such a verbal affair. It is not merely that when I think something, I am sure of my thinking, as being anything it may happen to be. I am sure of thinking because my assurance itself is a self-recording act of thought — I am thus sure of thinking as a self-verifying activity, the basis of all my knowledge. Anything else I am to be convinced of must be verified upon the same register. Whatever becomes so inscribed is certain only because the register itself is certain to itself, and records other things only in connection with its own self-recording activity — as objects present to or involved in that sphere of self-significance.3
Now if the self-certainty of an experience is the necessary support of all its certainty, it must be directly aware of itself, in its individuality, somehow. But if an experience is individualized only by its organism, it must know this in all its uniqueness in order to know itself as individual. But it cannot so know its organism. If you suppose that the individuality of the latter is a matter of space-time location, the reply you have to meet is that such location is relative to coordinates which in the end cannot be located save as “here” and “now” to mind; so that the knowledge of uniqueness is the support of the knowledge of locus,and not vice versa.
[197] Hence, if a neutralistic mind were aware of the certainty of awareness, it could only be of awareness in general. But from the existence of awareness in general, to which no particular objects could be present, no definite knowledge of details could be inferred.
The apparent duality between mind and objective situation thus proves to be genuine and to cover no pure identity. All objects are known to me only in so far as they become objects-to-me, and since parts of my organism, including the interior of the brain, is not so given — and might for aught I know certainly in any absolute sense be of a very different character than any theory holds them to be — such entities cannot constitute parts of the “my experience,” which, as individual and the basis for all my knowledge of individuality is absolutely certain.
Argument 3. The objectivistic view of Mind removes the only principle capable of consistently rendering reality, of interpreting science or life intelligibly, or of carrying us beyond contradictions on the one hand and agnosticism or an even more destructive position on the other.
In support of this thesis, we may in the first place instance the contradictions we have endeavored to exhibit as inherent in all views inconsistent with an ultimate Being or single Ground of Existence. And aside from mind as the living principle of a living world., as for us the Love which [198] endows all things with worth and value, no common Ground, or Immanent Universal has ever been suggested with any genuine plausibility. As Walter Pater says, the concept of a Universal Mind is in reality — however daring it may seem — “the most conceivable of all hypotheses” about the character of the world as a whole. If this be regarded as meaningless there is strictly no alternative that can be rendered equally definite without becoming far more manifestly false. Certainly no atomistic view, with its plain inconsistencies — as surely identifiable as its highly abstract principles are unambiguous and clear — can stand as a rival. That we suppose our previous discussions to have shown.
Secondly, if the self-differentiation of mind into a richness of contrasted meanings or values appears inexplicable (because it is the presupposition of explanation and of knowledge-being just the latter in its full self- possession, as its own ultimate register and ground) on the other hand the atomism of privately qualified entities is far worse than mysterious. The view that the difference between one meaning and another is to be rendered solely in terms of the nature and life of meaning itself, is to be contrasted with the situation of differences which obtain between objects having no qualities at all from a common or standard point of view — i.e., one not simply confined to each thing in itself. We must behold rational knowledge as knowing entities which remain to it pure thats — without any character that can be [199] revealed to it, certainly without any of which it can give any account. As rational beings we know “blueness” or “relation” or “entity” or “being” or “point” but what these things which we know are we simply do not know at all. Only their external relations are in our grasp — though relation itself remains a mystery, shrouded by the veil of Indefinablism, yet even so leading to contradictions when plain though forbidden questions are put whether affirmatively or negatively answered. Nor can the questions be convicted of irrelevance. If an external property has nothing in common with an internal it is quite fair to ask how both can be yet one, with respect to the property of being a property. “Property” thus becomes another mystery plus a contradiction, at most a word and one uniting two inconsistent or conflicting meanings. At every point then, the very principle of rational explanation, of knowledge in any form, seems squarely opposed to the atomistic view. All knowledge consists in ordering elements which together with the principles of ordering remain wholly opaque to thought, with the exception of a few doctrines which emerge by contrast into a favored position of stark clearness, — and of inconsistency. Aside from these doctrines, all is utter-darkness — since the natures of things remain shut in themselves, incapable of rendition or description or comprehension or even bare existence in any but the barren terms of self-identity or uniqueness-as-such, the thinnest of ab-[200]stractions. If such a view were true, truth were all the same as falsity. Thus radical is the objection of the idealist, of the monist, of all prophecy and poetry, of the chief fruitful currents of human thought, and certainly of the classical conceptions of philosophy, against the pulverizing or aggregate view of matter balanced by a neutral definition of mind.
[In the second place, the impossibility of founding faith in science on a view of entities as not internally or genuinely dependent upon causal relations, has been previously discussed.4 We merely mention it here.]
Thirdly, the difference between the goodness of a state of affairs representing the whole human spectacle in neutral terms, and merely that situation in the neutral character which it has, becomes, as we have maintained, simply and entirely verbal. It may be thought that since a situation cannot be more than it is, the goodness of any situation must inevitably be just its character, or some aspect of that character. But the difference is absolute and world-wide between viewing the character or aspect in question as essentially and solely a value-character, and in viewing it as adequately comprehended in other terms than those of value. In the latter case, value is a mere renaming; in the former all supposedly non-value terms are really specifications of degrees and kinds of value. Value is not verbal but is alone the essence of the real. It differs from other concepts [201] only as a more completely self-conscious meaning differs from a less.
On the opposite view life is at once reduced to the level of indifference. Love of the truth becomes love of the neutral. The circle is competed: philosophy is back at its starting point, without any starting point or foundation upon which to build. The value of the course run lies in the exhaustive discovery of alternatives, and of the questions a constructive view must endeavor to meet — questions seldom faced in their full difficulty by any philosophy.
The present conclusion is that we cannot think at all save by actually, whether we know it or not, regarding quality and being as public property, as relative to a unitary reference, and mind on the other hand as the source and measure of all meanings, as their creative principle, and so as just the Concrete Universal which is required. The Good then becomes no isolated meaning standing as shorthand for the merely and neutrally so, but of the essence of mind as in principle a self-realizing or enjoying life, and so of the essence of reality. The worth of life stands as the final foundation and reference of all philosophy, so that to be real is to contribute worth, while to have worth remains infinitely more than to acquire a second name for reality and the bare qualities of relation and sheer self-identity. The love of truth shines forth as the love of the order of things as the expression and self-maintenance of [202] the universal ultimate Good, in enjoyed harmony with or conscious participation in which, consists all finite goods.
Argument 4. Thesis: Objects are known only as objects-of-thought — no other status is knowable of them.
Since everything is known surely only as an object — to the primary self-assurance; since I can not be assured of my knowledge of X except through my assurance that my knowledge itself is real, it seems a warranted inference to conclude that I know X not as an independent entity but as something-given-to me. Take away this qualification and you take away all ground of certainty as to the object. What we know is our knowledge as containing such and such elements or subjects-of-knowledge. These objects, if they have an independent existence, cannot be known in respect to that existence. The being-in-themselves is no possible object of certainty. For the most we can ever infer is that our primary self-certainty includes or implies this or that existent. Now it may seem possible that our experience should imply entities wholly independent of it in their being. But such implication could only constitute a contradiction. What is implied is only necessitated by this implication as that-which-fulfills it.5
As something aside [203] from this relation of fulfillment or being implied it is obviously not implied. Hence anything we can infer from the contents of our knowledge is a certainty only as it is characterized by this relation to that knowledge. Only, therefore, in its character as an object-of-knowledge is anything known. And the consequence of this is that entities as known are defined in terms of the unitary and inclusive fact of knowledge, while this unity cannot therefore be defined as simply the entities in relation. The whole proves here prior to the parts in some sense.
Note. The foregoing argument may be regarded as dependent upon the position that only in so far as a thing is part of another thing can it be implied by that other thing. But we can employ this principle here in a sense more readily defensible. For whether or not A can imply B without including it in its ultimate being, we can certainly not know that this implication holds where we do not know that the inclusion holds. If A can be thought without B, then in knowing A we do not forthwith know B — and how can we know B is implied by A if we do not know B at all but only A, of which B is not an element? Therefore we know only things which are parts or elements in knowledge, in the reality of direct awareness. And we know of things only that they are such elements — we can neither know nor infer objects in any different status of being. What the circle of awareness is like, in all its [204] aspects, we may know or feel — but if such aspects imply any further being it can only be because such being is really a part of that experience-whole as such. (For it is of it as such that we are assured).
In brief, all being implied in awareness and hence all that is inferable from it, is so implied only as a part of its reality. As being-apart-from knowledge, it is not in the least implied, for all we can know.
Argument 5. Unmental Being unthinkable. If we cannot know that anything outside our awareness (in its ultimate Being) exists, then a conception of reality as not included in that awareness is a contradiction. For the concept of “all reality” implies all reality, or it is meaningless. But if we cannot know that our self-certainty of thought implies anything it is not known (in its ultimate Reality) to include, then we cannot know “all reality” implies all reality, unless all reality is included in our spiritual Being. And only as that-which-is-included in this whole, can we know reality is reality. The certainty that the “universe” we mean by this concept is the one we mean is the certainty that the Mind by which we think includes that universe as an element or aspect. It cannot be the certainty that it includes it as an independent reality. From the certainty that A is a whole embracing X and Y you cannot infer that X and Y could exist without [205] the whole. For their existence for us, as an object of certainty, is solely their function in the Mind or Awareness from which we must start. Any other status as existence is not anything we can be sure is what we mean by “status” or “existence” — and hence is contradictory and absurd.
Somehow all that is is present in our awareness, and it has no mode of being not exhaustively represented in terms of this relation.6 For if this were not so, what we mean might not be what we mean. And if the being of things is exhaustively covered by what they are in relation to mind, assuredly there is no independent existence left over to allow for neutralism. What things are to mind is all that they are to mind, and — if we are to speak for mind, and not as automatons, is thus all that they are. And things cannot be more to mind than the fulfillment of its meanings. That our thought should be true of its objects is all that we could ask and expect as that in which thought terminates and finds truth, reality is only a word. It has no further meaning than [206] that recognized by the careful idealist. Any such meaning can only claim more than it claims, and so claims nothing.
Have we, however, committed ourselves to solipsism in holding that our thought of “all reality” sweeps all that can be meant by that thought (as nothing more than what can be known to be implied by it, and so to be a part of its being) into its own reality and so into that of our own awareness? The answer will be indicated in the next Argument, but lies substantially in the recognition that “our awareness” as finite, includes, on the thesis of Monism, the activity of the Infinite Being, so that our thought of “all reality” is a partial realization on our part of the Embracing Thought and a reference to it for the determination of the exact reference of the thought in question. Knowing that the One Mind, in conjunction with our mind as the standard of its ultimate meanings, Includes all, we can be quite sure that our concept of Reality rests at its core upon a Meaning, which does include whatever that concept intends to refer to or imply.
There is really no relevance to the solipsistic except charge. We never in the least conceive a mind except as dealing with at least One other mind, which also is in intercourse with it.
Argument 5. Alternate Statement.
We endeavor to phrase the argument perhaps more clearly [207] as follows:
The mind, in ascribing reality to the objects of its thought, must know it is ascribing something, and something real. Thus we fall into a regress which must be completed if we are to know anything is real, and that this means something. The difficulty is avoided, only by admitting that the reality ascribed is the mind’s self-reality and thus is an essential identity with the ascribing process. “The object is real” becomes, is an expression of the ultimate Reality-Giving Principle or Perfect Mind to which all things (as realizations of value) have their reality (i.e., their worth). This Principle is real because by “reality” is meant its one all recording self-significant Life.7 But a reality independent of mind becomes to mind real in terms of a “realness” itself independent of mind, something more than its own life or being-for-self, and thus a regress is initiated which is evidence of the absurdity of the view. Any external element of “reality” becomes to mind a demand for its own reality, and so on. All thus is seen to be an inward reality — one of self-realization which is real for the mind in terms of this very relation itself — avoiding thus the regress. Since to be real means this relation of significance to mind, and therefore the reality which is [208] ascribed-significance-to the object, is itself real because the mind’s intuition of itself, its self-possession or enjoyment, permeates all its meanings.
The finite mind in recognizing the object as real does not in the least — on our view — endow it with its reality. But in this finite recognition, as dimly grasped and possessed by it in partial identification, is involved the Ultimate Foundation of Meaning, the Ultimate Evaluation according worth to all things in terms of a partial participation allotted to them, in its own final self-realization, which is best conceived as love or all-benevolent interest. Thus the finite recognition of reality is in touch with and employs the universal element of being-for-the-One-self which is reality.8
Argument 6. Mind can qualify objects only in terms of meanings which are relative to itself as their creative principle.
If I am to know X I must know it in terms of some nature or quality. It is a contradiction to know X and yet to be wholly unaware of what sort of a thing it is. Hence the knowledge of X is the knowledge of it as embodying a universal Y. But with respect to this Y, as already [209] pointed out in Section 8, (4) p. 132, the same question arises.
If I know X only but do not know anything about the nature of Y, I really do not know X — and have no idea what I am doing in qualifying X by Y. But if I do not so qualify it, if X does not present itself to me in the light of a definite character which I apprehend, then X is no object so far as I can ever know. But a definite character can shed no light for my seeing if I do not grasp the nature of that character — if for me it has itself no nature. To say, it is rather than has a nature, is not to alter the problem. For to distinguish it as one nature and not another is to behold it as qualitatively different from others, is to distinguish the nature of the nature. That with which we qualify must itself be qualified, if knowledge is to occur. It is useless for the mind to combine universal and particular in the dark, as it were, so that it is utterly ignorant of what it is doing. If it does not combine a known what and a known that it does nothing, and knows nothing as anything in particular.
We face here, from a slightly different angle, the regress indicated in the section on Quality. And in this case also the issue is not closed by the admission of an ultimate quality or Form of forms. If this be regarded as external to the mind in the sense that its nature is conceivable apart from the mature of mind, then the mind in knowing this independent nature can still find no rest [210] without a farther qualification. The Form of forms is no less a that without a what until we grasp it in terms of a what — and then we have this what to grasp, etc. We can not simply grasp the what in terms of itself, for we do not know what the itself-ness or qualitative identity of the what is until we have found its what. The nature of the what cannot be just the what over again, but must be something distinguished from it. But this something again is a quality not quite at one with itself as having the quality.
We see thus that so long as the nature of the object is not defined in terms of its relation to mind, that relation (of meaning) is incapable of supplying knowledge. The object means a given quality to the mind. But this is without value unless the quality means something. So that only if an infinite series is thought through, can anything be thought in its determinate character, — unless the meaning-to-mind is the nature of the object, and if this meaning is what it is in intrinsic terms of self-apprehension or consciousness then the search is ended and knowledge provided for. The mind’s intuition of itself, its self-significance, becomes the final and sole reference for all quality. Ultimately all meaning is in principle fully self-conscious since the essence of meaning is to be what it is to mind, but this need not be so in a finite mental state viewed only in its finite side, or as it is to itself. But the finite apprehension of meaning-to-self reveals the nature of the object [211] because — on our view of reality — it partially realizes in itself the meaning or value which the object bears to a supreme and fully self-discerning Mind, which registers all meanings in comparable terms because all are partial expressions of the riches of its own nature.
No further what is needed to characterize the given what because the seeing which registers it does so in terms of that seeing itself as a self-realizing process, whose qualities are its self-realization — which latter is characterizable or knowable simply by having or being it. Purely from without such a seeing is nothing. All comprehension is embracing as in an identity with ones own life of realization or enjoyment. There is no mere thought from without. Already in having an object as such we have it as fulfilling ourselves. And the noetic vision grasps the essence of things without endless regress of qualification because the manner of self-realization afforded by the object is a self-intuited meaning whose self-intuition is the very nature of that meaning and so is luminous to the mind which pervades and is in an identity with it. Moreover this self-meaning whose nature-to-itself is its nature can embrace the quality of the object as precisely such an instance of self-significance in the fully possessed and inwardly illuminated values or purposes of the Ultimate Mind. And the meaning in question, which as self-intuited is characterizable only by the self involved, is comparable to all other qualities, not as [212] a mere “it” or numerically distinct entity with respect to them, but as qualitatively different in a determinate fashion, because in all qualities or meanings the same Ultimate Self is involved, whose appreciation or enjoyment of its own life is, in its variety of differentiations or manifestations, the absolute fountain and measure of all meanings.
Thus our view compels us to resort to a single principle or Life which qualifies itself and all things by an inward illumination of being-for-self.
Once more, we are led to the Universal Living Ground of Reality as the sole escape from absurdity — this time that of a choice between complete knowledge of an endless series, or no knowledge of the character of anything.
Thesis: Knowledge rests upon a unity of direct awareness inclusive of objects and their actual natures. Objects, not copies or representations of objects, are given or printed.
Historical Resumé.9 In Descartes we have the beginnings of the modern abyss of epistemological dualism. We have given only our own states. Whether these represent any real objects other than just themselves we can only know as a result of a long inquiry. The logical result in Cartesianism was a cumbrous and artificial dualism in conflict with the remaining principles of the system.
In Leibniz, with the windowless monads, we have, in [213] a manner, the same result. All reality is reflected in the monad, but only by way of reproduction, not of actual grasp and possession.
Spinoza, however, suggests at least a return to a saner view in his “two aspect” view, of mind and matter, with the consequent implication that an idea or state of consciousness reaching no object except just itself as such a mental “affection,” is an essential and hopeless absurdity.
In Locke, Berkeley, and Hume we have the strange circumstance, as Reid says, of a theory (of “ideas” as objects of awareness) invented to explain knowledge of objects by a mind, but employed, first to banish objects, and then to banish also mind.
Kant founds his Critique on an idea in the opening sentence, namely, the notion of perception as provided with no object directly given save that presented to it in the form of an effect or modification exerted upon itself by a real but unintuited object.10 The proper objection is to ask what an effect upon a mind could possibly be except some consciousness or other of the nature of the object, or of its importance for us in terms of our own interests. Kant neglects both the objective and the valuational aspects, which alone are intelligible, and leaves but a sort of outer wall of the mind as its own object — on the whole a monstrous fabrication, an illegitimate though more or less shifting and unconscious metaphor.
The mind must not be assumed as a [214] mere thing, or process, capable of being formed into molds or affections which are neither genuinely objective or noetic nor yet primarily subjective reactions of pain or pleasure, liking or disliking. The idea of “state” or “activity” was left as a mere sort of waterfall, gradually seen to be permeated by organizing principles, but deprived of the two chief characters which intake a mental state mental: namely awareness of an object with some determinate nature, and object not just a piece or operation of the knowledge of it; and the sense of the good it is trying to realize. These two we take to be the grand blindnesses of Kant, paralleling his great insights and perverting them in an almost tragic manner.
The Post-Kantian Absolutists more or less equivocally recovered the noetic and valuational elements. But they did not hold the matter sufficiently clear, especially in the latter of its aspects.
Argument 7. Our contention is that to deny the direct givenness of genuine existents is in principle fatal to knowledge. Locke tried it, Hume tried it. The Critical Realists are trying it. The result has been clearly seen and pointed out on all sides. If only qualities of things are given, not things as having the qualities, then we draw the following inferences:
1. The quality is intuited but not in its essential [215] character as a quality-of-reality. A quality except as a quality of something is really a contradiction. The separate being of universals is a useless and in the end fatal status to pretend for it.
2. Even for thought no object can be given, can be an object. For if thought reaches objects, surely perception, which alone imparts the knowledge of there being any external objects, must reach them. The outcome is the impossibility of qualifying any object in thought because what is given is, in all cases, we suppose, but an essence, not an object as such.
We conclude that consciousness not of objects is either consciousness of its consciousness of . . ., etc., or else consciousness of a quality or nature not however as qualifying anything — i.e., of a quality not as it essentially is not; and that moreover, if knowledge embraces real objects it is highly inconsistent to suppose them excluded from the perceptual given-ness which supplies the knowledge. If they do not bodily enter consciousness then, how should they ever get in? 11
Finally if an awareness or thought of an object does not include the object, then the awareness could be known in all that it is without revealing itself as the awareness-of-the-object — i.e., it could be known in all that it is as less than what it is.
The inclusion of reality as known or thought in mind [216] is thus a primary requirement of knowledge.12 And the idealistic implication of an object of such a nature as to render it capable of forming an element in the living whole of self-meaning which is consciousness and in that very character reveal its own quality, is not to be escaped by any exclusion of the object from the sole realm of being in which it is a subject of reflection — namely the unitary sphere of knowledge.
Such a view of consciousness compels us to ask the question of Berkeley: how an element in our mind can be an object real in other connections than such inclusion in our minds. How even it can reveal anything outside our own awareness.
Our account is, in brief:
Mind is, for us, essentially concerned with valuation. The object’s meaning for us is its contribution to the worth of our existence. But such contribution need not be viewed (we shall argue must not be viewed — Section 12) as a mere subjective effect. The object offers value to consciousness because it possesses value in its own being. As appreciation of a noble character is not a mere subjective reaction or reaping of a pleasant effect upon ones nerves; but rather a sense of a worth which is essentially so in a manner objective to us, so — we hold — all consciousness involves an aesthetic element of disinterested enjoyment of the good because it is good or dislike of the bad because it is bad.
Thus, in Section 12, we shall attempt to account [217] for the dual character of awareness as immediately inclusive of reality yet transcending its merely private being. The known object, we shall try to show, can thus actually enter one’s consciousness, but appears there in its proper character, by virtue of the fundamental capacity of life or spirit to recognize a value realized in another being as of value also to oneself because of its value to that other. Its objectivity or otherness is an essential of its value to oneself. Such is the standpoint of sympathetic interest or love which we take to explain all relationships.
But the point here is the historic and notorious difficulty of preserving the directness of knowledge together with the objective existence of the object, — objective, that is, and transcendent to any finite mind considered in its finiteness, or leaving out of account the ultimate content of the Immanent Mind. The difficulty is better avoided, we will try to show; on a valuational view, than upon any other.
Conclusion. We have endeavored, first of all, to refute the reduction of mind by definition to objective or neutral categories. Such an attempt seemed to imply a non-existent certainty of the existence of the organic or bodily complex in its entirety, to parallel or represent the meaning of, the certainty of knowledge or awareness itself. It contradicted the fact that all knowledge is of [218] elements only as implications or elements in the self-registering consciousness aware of them. It asserted an identity of two conceptions, relation and mind, and thus implied that if one type of relation is a certain degree and type of mind, any type of relation is some corresponding manifestation of mind. And finally the atomistic or objectivist view abstracted from the true intuition of mind as essentially — self-intuition or self-realization, and in doing so ignored and failed to employ the sole fruitful principle of explanation orsynthesis, and the sole idea capable of giving a non-contradictory account of the fundamental relations of our ideas and of the aspects of reality.
Secondly we endeavored to prove the idealistic thesis that what is thought is thought as neither more nor less than such and such a something for thought — that the real is conceivable only in terms of what it is to mind, and as the successful termination and fulfillment of a thought.
In the third place we argued for the same conclusion from the endless regress which must be completed unless, either: we are to know things in terms of qualities that have themselves no known nature or character for us; or we are to admit that the quality of the object is known in an apprehension which qualifies the object and itself at once and in the same terms — i.e., of self-meaning. We suggested that the idea of self-realization or enjoyment of value, provides the best clue for conceiving such self-meaning as [219] the characterizer of all things.
Finally we surveyed at a glance the fortunes of the view of perception or knowledge as only indirectly attaining its objects, and summarily formulated its radical defects — adding the immediatist view appeared reconcilable with the transcendence of knowledge with respect to mere states of the knowing subject, on condition that the view of knowledge as appreciation or evaluation, be conceded. The necessity for this concession and its advantages are deferred for further discussion, to the following Section.
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Endnotes
1. In conjunction with the fact that our body is in such and such a manner. To coexist with a body according to a rule of correlation. and to be known are in every way distinguishable in conception.
2. Thus instead of banishing mind, new-realism really implies its universality. If a certain kind of grouping of objects is a certain kind of mind, then any such grouping should be some sort of a mind, and the whole universe as a functioning system of entities should perhaps be taken as an inclusive mind.
3. See A. Dorward on B. Russell’s “Analysis of Mind” for an analysis of Russell’s “Feeling of Belief” as implying a judgment in its very texture, thus — as a mere part of the mind — repeating the whole principle of mind and destroying itself as a mere part or atomic constituent. Mind, 1922.
4. The discussion has been omitted. The point is, of course, that the character of a whole of externally related parts is on the pluralist’s view just the parts in whatever relations — fortuitous to their being and nature — they happen to be. Therefore we cannot know the character of the whole as inclusive of future events until we know just those future events themselves. Hence the latter cannot be know beforehand.
5. As that which constitutes part of its meaning.
6. It may be objected that of course everything thought is thought, but that things may exist before and after they are thought outside of any mind. But in so saying we think the “before” and “after” states of the object and include them in our consciousness. Thus “all reality” proves from all time to be nothing for us except as object-of-thought. If our thought does not embrace the past in its very pastness, we do not think the past.
7. Real to itself because self-realized.
8. This mode of statement may perhaps appear too close to that of the following argument to deserve differentiation.
9. See Lossky’s “Intuitive Basis of Knowledge” for a brilliant and to our minds exceptionally fruitful analysis of historical epistemologies.
10. Cf. also on p. 762 (M. Müller. New York 1920) “I exist as intelligence which is solely conscious of its faculty of combining or synthesizing.” Combining what? What we deal with we do not see, — only our dealing with it, — a strange view of a conscious or intelligent synthesizing.
11. See J. E. Turner, “The Failure of Critical Realism,” Monist, 1922. Also Bosanquet — “Contemporary Philosophy.”
12. Cf. Lossky: “The validity of all knowledge depends upon the presence in the judgement of the reality to be known.” Lossky, op. cit., 388.