The Ultimate Unity for Thought is the Society of Minds
May 1906

William Henry Chamberlin's thesis written in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the Master's Degree of Arts at the University of California.

References:

 Introduction The Ultimate Unity for Thought is the Society of Minds Supplement I The Society of Minds as the Ground of all Phenomena II The Function of the Subjective and the Objective Worlds III The Question of Personal Freedom IV The Nature of Truth V The Society of Minds as a Developing System and its own End

Introduction

All knowing may be characterized as a process of exhibiting a whole in its parts or the recognition of en identity in its differences.[1] A volume of transparent air includes the many points of space through which the same air extends. A man’s character is an identity which manifests itself in all his voluntary acts.

The fact that every mental process is one of manifesting a whole in its parts may be more clearly apprehended through a study of judgment, the typical mental process. For every act of judgment is both analytic and synthetic.[2] The judgment $$7 + 5 = 12$$ makes us aware of the fact that 7 combined with 5 makes a total of 12. The same act that constructs the whole, 12, analyzes it into one of an infinite number of its sets of parts or differences, 7 and 5. In the judgment, “Hannibal crossed the Alps,” Hannibal is an identity, a certain character who was manifesting his nature in one of many deeds which were performed by the same person in a life-time extending from the making of an oath over an altar until the time of his death in exile. In this judgment an identity embraces and manifests itself in a new difference. The whole, Hannibal, made up of all I know of his character and history emerges enlarged and changed in all of its parts by the same act that grasps one of the differences that forms a part of the new whole. Had this whole not manifested itself in this and the other events of the Punic war, it is obvious that the oath made over the altar and the death in exile would have been very insignificant events.

The analysis and the synthesis in an act of judgment must be regarded as two mere aspects of the same process.[3] Each is necessary to the other. The separate parts of a whole for thought cannot be given to us. The parts can only become parts of a whole for us as they are analyzed in the process that synthesizes them into that whole. As long as they are not related by us, they are fragments and an analysis of nothing. Three given lines become parts of a triangle by the same act that completes the construction of the triangle, and the whole or triangle can exist no longer than its parts exist in the relation that constitutes them parts of the triangle.

It makes no difference how minute the section of thought which is taken, in it the same essential character of analysis through synthesis manifests itself. Examine Fig. 2 and notice how quickly the meaning of the figure and each of its parts changes as we view it as an irregular set of lines in a vague whole, the features of a clown, the face of a sleeping feline, or as three symmetrically placed lines in a circle. Notice, also, that when Fig. 1 is removed from its proximity to Fig. 2, it immediately becomes more difficult to see in the latter the face of a clown. Observe in Fig. 3 the head of a bird or a rabbit and how the parts change in meaning as the meaning of the whole varies.[4] In these experiments with each movement of thought all is transformed. Every new identity discerned renews every part, each movement of thought is analytic only as far as it is synthetic.

It follows from the above that the meaning of any fact will vary as the same or different minds embrace it in different unities.[5] In seeing a flower, the farmer, the artist and the botanist will synthesize it in different ways; and the flower will be different throughout all of its parts and so a different flower for each of them. If to a company of people there is uttered the line of poetry,

“Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh,”

to one of them who knows nothing of German these words will be embraced in a confused whole, a mere mass of foreign lingo. To one who is familiar with German, and who is possessed of a lofty, poetic soul, these same words will be embraced in a unity that will pervade them with the profoundest meaning. A sound which at once takes its place as part of a familiar melody in one mind, may be embraced by another in the sublimest symphony. A small patch of color seen as a mere spot when apart by itself, will become possessed of the most deep and lively meaning when in a painting it is made to represent the flowing blood of a pierced and dying hero.

It is also true that as the same figure is embraced in higher unities, it, with all its parts, will be given deeper meanings.[6] A figure of four equal sides enclosing right angles may be regarded simply as a quadrilateral, or it may be viewed as a square and will have its meaning much increased. The more thorough the analysis one makes of a given object, the more profound is the unity which grasps its parts together; and the more elements one joins together by an act of synthesis, the more thoroughly it is differentiated into details. Now, owing to certain defects in the simpler forms of knowledge, the mind itself that knows the object by its very nature is urged on to embrace a given object by means of higher and higher unities.[7]

The defects[8] here referred to affect all of our knowledge since they arise inevitably in the process of synthesis and analysis itself. Every ordinary act of analysis concerns a limited object and separates it into parts. But in reality the thought that unifies the object is not single in the sense of being confined in its reference to the single object, for this is limited and can only be thought of in relation to things beyond itself. This relationship to foreign objects helps to make the object what it is for thought, and so relation to other objects is involved in the given object’s own existence, and its unity ceases. It is not able to make itself complete save through external objects and so it cannot analyze itself. In another respect, also, the analysis is defective, for the parts resulting from it cannot stand alone in the given object as its parts. They can only be defined completely through a reference to their relations to objects outside of the given object. They cannot stand alone as parts related only to the other parts of the same object. And so, on account of its external relations, the analysis of it as an individual is rendered impossible. Its parts are inconsistent with each other through the foreignness which pervades them, and they are also inconsistent with things beyond their encompassing whole and, so, of course, they are alien to the given object as their embracing whole. The analysis reached is, therefore, not the same as the synthesis in the sense of a relating of the parts of the same object together in one whole. The analysis of the given object is impossible.

A similar defect belongs to the synthesis of the given object. Other identities pervade the one with which we start to unify the object. The advance of the synthetic process is not identical with the analysis of the given object. It has brought a strange element into the unity we desired to maintain in the given object, and the whole which we actually reach is not an individual but is an aggregate of objects and cannot be an analysis of a single unity. The various parts are interrelated but these relations are not related. The parts of the given object are so alien to one another that to move from one to another it is necessary to go through relations that carry one beyond the object. The bond between the parts, in other words, is an external one. An identity in a system of its own differences cannot be reached. It is not an identity that holds in itself, as it were, the life of its members, and fills with its own life a body which is its own. Then, too, the whole which we desired to form cannot be completed. Every attempt to complete it is thwarted by the necessity of bringing into it foreign elements that destroy its individuality. The intended analysis is impossible and our synthesis cannot be self-analysis.

These inherent defects manifesting themselves at any given stage of ordinary thinking can allow the mind no rest. Thought by its very nature must go forward, but every step results in failure to arrive at a resting place. The essential fact to notice here is that the very dissatisfaction manifested by the mind shows its awareness of having obtained imperfect results. But the mind which, by its very nature, becomes dissatisfied with the ordinary results of its activity in thought must be implicitly guided by an ideal unity[9] in the use of which it could think and be satisfied. To investigate the nature of this ultimate and ideal unity is the primary object of this paper.

The chief characteristics of the ideal unity should have become manifest to us in our discussion of the defects in our ordinary thinking. The mind’s dissatisfaction was seen to arise because of its efforts to construe completely objects which are limited and dependent and its consequent inability to reach a synthetic unity which in one and the same individual is identical with its analysis. That is, in a perfect individual there must be unity, and that unity must be differentiated into parts. Of greatest importance to us now is the fact that the synthesis of the whole must be identical with the analysis of its parts. Every defect which has been shown to inhere in the usual process of knowledge is due to the fact that the synthesis of a given object cannot be made identical with the analysis of the same object on account of the foreign relations introduced into it by foreign objects. Then, if we can conceive of an object in which the synthesis is identical with the analysis, the mind can rest satisfied in contemplating it and in seeing things in their relationship to it and will not be urged on to a more ultimate view.

For convenience let such a perfect individual be limited to three parts: A, B, and C, and let A-B-C represent the whole. This whole must be differentiated into parts. But each part must also in some way be A-B-C. For the whole must in its entirety pervade or bin in each part so as in no way to be alien to any of its parts. And, on the other hand, there must be nothing in any part but the whole, for if this condition were not fulfilled such a part would have in it that which is alien to the whole. Therefore, A-B-C must be in each part, and each part must contain nothing outside of A-B-C, and so each part must in a sense be identical with A-B-C. This seemingly strange result is in harmony with that reached by Bradley, who says:

If we realized our ideal, we would get a way of thinking in which the whole of reality was a system of its differences immanent in each difference. In this whole the analysis of any one element would, by nothing but the self-development of that element, produce the totality.[10]

The whole of our individual is represented by A-B-C, and A-B-C must represent each of the parts in that whole, and the whole must also, of course, contain all its parts. This result seems paradoxical; but it nevertheless expresses relationships that must maintain in an ultimate unity for thought. We shall have discovered that unity when we have found a unity which is capable of harmonizing the apparent inconsistency. With this general knowledge of the nature of the ultimate unity for thought in our possession we shall next seek for a concrete representation of the same.

In the first place we are led to observe that our ultimate unity can find its concrete embodiment only in absolute reality. There must be absolutely no disturbing influence outside of it. It must connect together its pars and be completely in them. Beyond them there can be nothing. In searching for such a unity, then, we may assume that it lies in an individual which is absolutely self-sufficient, binding together and yet, in a sense, in each of its parts.

In what way can a unity be conceived which binds its parts together and yet can be in each of its parts?

The unity cannot be in each of its parts as separate.[11] If it were in each of its parts as separate it could not unite the parts together and, therefore, could be no unity.

Neither could a unity be in its individual parts as an aggregate, for in an aggregate of individuals the individuals can, of course, be distinguished, else there could be no aggregate. But the unity in an aggregate[12] is too simple to be a means of distinguishing the individual parts from one another. Only so long as the individuals are massed together must the unity be in them. A loose pile of rocks is an example of such a whole. And here the unity, the rock-pile, has no reference to the qualities which make the parts many. But in the ideal unity we saw that the whole nature of the individual parts lies in their being in that unity. So in a mere aggregate, if the unity does not distinguish the individuals, they cannot be distinguished, on our hypothesis that there are no objects outside of the whole which is being investigated, and so cannot form an aggregate. Of course, the ordinary rock-pile is a very simple unity and can easily be seen to exist as an aggregate, but as a unity it cannot be in its parts viewed separately. The rock-pile is not in the individual rocks but in then when taken together and in a certain way. Each rock would exist if it had never formed part of the rock-pile. This is because it is almost entirely determined by relations to what is foreign to the wall. But in the unity we are discussing, no differentiation can exist independent of the unity. The parts are completely determined from within. If the rock-pile had a greater resemblance to such a unity, the rocks would cease to be rocks when the rock-pile is broken up. The unity could not possibly be in the individual parts in isolation, but it must in some way be in each of the united parts and not merely in their sum. The separate qualities which distinguish the individuals can exist only as the unity manifests itself in them.

The difficulty in the way of regarding our ideal unity as being in all the parts when taken together as an aggregate is clear. Let us try to overcome this difficulty by regarding the individual parts of a whole as mutually determining one another.[13] If one part is in relation to all the others, its character will of course be determined by these relations. These will constitute a unity which will embrace all these parts. The nature of each part will here be determined by its relations to the unity of all the parts, and the unity will be manifested in the separate nature of each part. In this case we may first think of the parts as possessing an element of individuality which is not identical with its unity in th system. This, however, would b inconsistent with our ideal unity which requires that the parts have no meaning independent of their unity and, besides, the parts could have no such independent inner qualities,[14] for external and internal relations of an object are determined by each other as inevitably as the inside of an object is related to its outside. How much of an apple would be left if we should abstract from all the effects it has on us and other things? Clearly, nothing would remain of it. The two sets of relations are identical. So, the individual parts of a unity can gain no distinct element of individuality in that way. But if we suppose the parts to have no element of individuality which is not identical with its unity in the system, our difficulty will be as great. Let all the parts completely and reciprocally determine one another. Each part has its character determined by its relation to all the other parts. It is a centre in the midst of a system of objects that influence it. That is, any object depends for its existence upon every other object in the whole system, so that if one object should cease to exist, all the others would vanish. Any unity in such a system would be dependent upon its individual parts as if it were an effect of them. But further, when the whole nature of each part is determined through its relations to other parts, these relations, upon our supposition, do not belong altogether to the part but unite it with the other parts. In the cutting of an apple, the cutting is as much a part of the nature of the knife as of the apple. Then, the only subject of which these relations can be predicated will be the whole embracing the parts related. The qualities will belong to the whole system and it will be the true individual. The relations which give individuality are seen to be common property and so merge their terms together instead of keeping them distinct. The whole which contains these parts and their relations now becomes the reality. The parts are mere relations and cease to exist in themselves and this leaves the relations as a system of adjectives. In this case the individuality of the parts is destroyed in favor of the unity as in the last case the unity was destroyed in favor of the individual parts. As in that case the unity was destroyed, so, here, as the whole is converted into an undifferentiated thing, it also is destroyed.[15]

And so our third effort to discover in what way our unity can be in its individual parts has failed. The unity can not be in each of the parts taken separately, nor in all of them when taken together. Neither can it be in the parts when each of them is regarded as a centre in relation to the unity of all the part which influence it and determine its character, though, in the latter case, the unity will be manifested in the nature of each part since that part will be what it is by reason of the unity of all the individual part. In considering this last case we find that the effort to discover a whole in which the unity can be in each part resulted either in the destruction of the unity in favor of the individual parts, or of these parts in favor of the unity. But both of these must be preserved, so that in some way the whole may be in each of its parts and yet connect them together.

Our next effort should be to find a unity in which neither plurality nor unity shall be fundamental but in which these shall be of equal importance. Let us conceive of the parts as very closely united but yet distinct individuals; each individual with a nature of its own but still unable to exist without the unity. In this system one object would be just as able as any other as far as being able to manifest any particular part of the unity is concerned. But here the parts have separate natures apart from the unity which they carry out. Since any one is just as good as any other part for producing the unity, its own particular nature has no relation to the unity and so no relation to the connection between the different individuals. But these connections form the whole of the external nature of the parts which in turn completely determine their inner relations. The individual parts, therefore, have no nature at all and do not exist. We conclude, then, that if the parts have not a kind of adaptation to the whole as a sort of end, they cannot exist at all. The private nature of the individual part is to be like a means and must be simply its fitness to produce the unity as an end. There is nothing else for it to be. Only those parts or means which are fitted for their task by nature can carry out a particular part of the end.[16]

Let us say, then, that the parts are fitted and do help to embody the end as a whole. Let neither be alone. But although the individuals cannot exist apart from the end, yet they are regarded in distinction from each other. Each as a distinguishable part forms a whole. But we have seen that a whole cannot exist without being differentiated into parts. There thus arises another set of parts besides the one we started with. To unite this new set with the old unity would necessitate another set of parts, and so on ad infinitum. But there is a contradiction here, for it should be the whole nature of the parts to be a unity and an infinite process can never unite them. We have already shown that the whole and its parts could not exist save as they are connected and now we must conclude that they cannot exist if there is anything in any of them except the connection with one another.

Then let us regard the entire nature of the whole as an end to be in its power to unify its parts as means, and the whole nature of the parts to be for a means to unify the end. Here the whole and the part could be complementary aspects of each other, and each claims no existence apart from its union with the other. The end must determine the means, for only one particular set of means could express a given end. And so, also, do the means determine the end, and being given can express but one possible end. Finally, the means would reciprocally determine one another, for none of the means could be altered without altering the end and this would alter all the other means. Such a whole is approximately represented by living organic beings. In an organic being the whole meaning of the unity lies in its being differentiated into its particular set of organs, and the entire significance of each set of organs comes from their combination into that particular unity. But even such a profound unity as this is inadequate as an expression of our ideal unity. In the mutual determination seen in an organic being, the individual part can only express a portion of the whole. It cannot express the whole, and so can in no sense be identical with it. The unity is expressed by the mutual determinations of all the individual parts and so these are not to be found within each single individual part. So we must look for some whole still more profound if we are to see in it our ideal unity. It must in some way be in each of its parts. We have shown that it cannot be in the individual parts as isolated, as that would destroy the unity. The unity, nevertheless, must be completely in each individual and at the same time the bond that unites the individuals. We ask once more, then, how can the whole be in each of its parts and yet the whole of which they are the parts? According to Hegel, the only unity which will be adequate to meet the requirement is “a unity which is not only in the individuals, but also for the individuals.”[17] Now there is only one unity known to us in experience or conceivable by us in which the unity can be for the individuals which are its parts, and that is the system of conscious individuals.

If we take all reality, for the sake of convenience, as limited to three individuals, A, B, and C, and suppose them to be conscious, then the whole will be reproduced in each of them. A, for example, will, as conscious, be aware of himself, of B, and of C, and of the unity which joins them in a system. And thus the unity is within each individual. At the same time it is not in the individuals as isolated. For the whole point of saying that the unity is for A, is that it exists both out of him and in him. To recur to our example, the essence of consciousness is that the contents of consciousness purport to be a representation of something else than itself.[18]

Here, therefore, the unity is at once the whole of which the individuals are parts, and also completely present in each individual. And although the whole is not in the individuals in the same way that the individuals are in it, the demand of the ideal unity is fulfilled in that the unity is in the individuals and the individuals in the unity. The unity is now the whole nature of each individual. The whole nature of the individual consists in a conscious reproduction of the whole system of which he is a part. His cognition as far as perfect is nothing but the representation of reality outside his private knowing self. Of course the reality “outside him” has no kind of priority, for although we say that it is the nature of each part to reproduce the nature of the whole, the harmony between them arises from the fact that it is the essential nature of each to be in harmony with the other, and neither of them can be externally determined.

The ideal unity for thought whose nature we have been describing implies individuals possessed of perfect cognition.[19] In the true reality corresponding to this ideal we must only look for individuals which, while potentially perfect are in reality but an approximation to the ideal individual. If we look about us for an approximation to this unity, we find no example nor can we conceive of one save in the concrete state of cognition as it is found in intelligent beings or persons.[20] We know that the ultimate whole or reality must be differentiated into parts of a certain nature. We know of nothing in the entire cosmos which is possessed of the nature of these fundamental differentiations but ourselves and others, and we cannot think of anything else which has such nature but ourselves and others. This fact gives some probability to ourselves being some of those fundamental differentiations.

We are certain that we ourselves have certain characteristics which we ought to have if we are the parts which constitute the ultimate whole, reality. In addition to this there is much to show that we have a nature which we could not have if we were not some of the fundamental differentiations of reality.[21] We as selves each embrace the entire cosmos as far as it is known to us. As far as it can concern us we are capable of embracing it completely. We, of course, can be conscious of nothing that is without us. And if this were not so, and if the world of reality were without us, we could not exist. The pure ego apart from its content is a mere abstraction. Although the world of phenomena is divided into subjective and objective realms, both are equally within each self, the images of the subjective merely representing the things in the objective world. But while we cannot say of any reality that it is outside of us, neither can we say of any reality that it is only inside of us. In thinking about anything in the world a distinction is made between the knower and the object of knowledge. All but the pure ego can thus be separated from it and in that case of separation it is a mere abstraction, or nothing. As I know a thing more perfectly, I have it more completely within myself. But it can also be said that the more thoroughly I know an object the more distinctly contrasted with myself does it become.

The nature of the self, then, seems very paradoxical.[22] But the paradox can be explained and justified if selves are taken as the fundamental differentiation of reality. For each of these differentiations must contain in itself the whole.

Then, from the fact that selves correspond in nature with the fundamental differentiations of reality and that we can conceive of nothing else that does so; and from the fact that selves have certain characteristics which can be understood if they are some of these fundamental differentiations and in no other way, we may properly conclude that the Society of Minds is the Ultimate Reality. It is also true that it is the Ultimate Unity for thought, that unity in terms of which thought gives to all its objects their highest and final meaning.

Supplement

Regarding the ultimate reality as a society of developing minds, there must follow certain conclusions with respect to it which I shall stat in order and briefly discuss.

I

The Society of Minds as the Ground of all Phenomena

In the first place, minds or persons as a vast Assemblage of First Causes are the absolute Ground[23] of the entire Universe. It follows that all phenomena can only be adequately interpreted in terms of their relationships to the necessities and purposes of all minds as they interact in accordance with t he conditions of interaction made necessary by each of them being one of the fundamental differentiations of reality. They themselves, not being phenomena, can never be apprehended in space and time, the forms of all phenomena; and they have a reality which can only be apprehended through the highest mental processes. In the words of Professor Howison they constitute

a higher and profound kind of reality which reason requires us to assume as the indispensable and sufficient ground for the occurrence and the ceaseless changing of the phenomenal world and above all for those changeless connections of sequence and position which we observe among them and which we designate as the laws of cause and effect or of the uniformity of nature.[24]

This view of reality presents each and every mind as self-existent and spontaneously active. Each has the inherent power of manifesting himself in his experience. This eternal nature of personality and the mind’s creative function ought to have been recognized ever since the time Kant thought his “Copernican thought” and placed persons at the centre of all experience as its unifying agents and its sole originating and organizing causes.

Kant reached the conclusion that gave to experience this anthropocentric basis through an appreciation of the fact that if objects of experience were “things-in-themselves” all truths regarding them must be determined empirically so that they could never have the universality and necessity demanded by science and without which science would not be possible. It is inconceivable that the universality and necessity known to maintain in the world should be derived from mere sensations; they can only be thought of as due to the nature of the mind as it operates upon the matter of sense arising in it. Chaotic masses of sensation can never furnish the laws in experience; they must, therefore, be imposed upon experience by the mind. If the mind lacked this power, we could not realize the world of nature, even if sensations could arise in the mind. A multiplicity of impressions of sense, as certain sensations of color and smell and touch, could never without mind-activity be grasped and so arranged as to present as an external object with velvety petals and rich perfume. Much less could the vast and unitary world of experience exist if the mind did not impose its unity and regularity upon the totality of the elements of sense arising in it. “Undoubtedly nature, as we perceive and think it as a system of unitary, permanent things bearing a reciprocal relation to one another, is not conveyed into our consciousness through the senses but is created by the activity of the understanding. The eyes and ears convey to us separate fragments of perception as they do to animals also. Out of these, the understanding, by reflecting and inquiring, ordering and supplementing, makes the totality of related things that we call nature.”[25] Not even time and space are excepted from the conditioning activity of intelligence. Every act of perception presupposes them and they are the conditions of all possible experience. Sensations cannot be referred to an external object except it be done through the form of space nor can the mind arrange its experiences into an order of succession except through the form of relation called time. Minds, then, by virtue of their inherent powers, are the authors of time and space and of all the phenomena that they embrace of all of what we commonly call experience.

II

The Function of the Subjective and the Objective Worlds

In the second place, it is necessary that each of the minds that constitute the ultimate reality develop itself dichotomously into subjective and objective worlds. Notwithstanding the fact that each individual mind is self-existent, we know from the nature of the unity that characterizes ultimate reality that any mind could not exist in relation to the world of experience except through its relationship to other minds.[26]

The unity in the parts of the individual consciousness is a very profound one. Yet, it cannot render the mind self-sufficient, for the individual mind and its parts are always relative to something beyond themselves and is, therefore, dependent for its meaning and existence. In order that the mind may maintain a permanent existence it must be a member of the ultimate unity, and in order to do so, it must contain within itself the entire system of minds and yet permanently contrast itself with all other members. It must be at once federal and individual.

A mind is commonly viewed as a separate individual because an abstract or partial view of the person is necessary for our practical purposes. So natural is it to regard the mind as a thing inside a body that it becomes for thought very distinctly separated from other minds. But the fallacy of such a view has long been known. A view which would regard each person’s body as co-extensive with the objective world that includes within itself the bodies associated with all other minds would be a proper one and would be far more suggestive of the true connection between minds. The ultimate unity for thought requires that there be an identity of nature pervading all minds far more thorough than was the identity of bodies existing in the case of the famous Siamese twins. But, on the other hand, the same unity requires that each individual have a consciousness absolutely distinct from that of others and far more thoroughly private than is his own body.

Then, in order to exist at all, each mind in the system of reality has had to manifest itself in two different yet similar worlds; one to contain, potentially at least, all the members of the system; and the other, while representing the entire system, to maintain the privacy of the individual.[27] To accomplish the former result all minds have necessarily had to manifest themselves in a common objective world through arranging their experiences in space relations.[28] To secure the privacy necessary to its individuality, each member of the system has necessarily manifested itself in a subjective world through arranging its experiences in time relations.[29]

To secure the required relationship of similarity the facts of the two worlds parallel each other.[30] Any fact or event existing or occurring in the common world tends inevitably to become reflected into the private world; and any fact originating in the mind’s private world as inevitably tends to express itself in the public world, there to be tested and either rejected or confirmed as expressive of the nature of all minds.

The chief function of the common world is to be a medium of communication between the eternal spirits that constitute the ultimate reality. In order to use this world as a means of communication, the “matter”[31] or “potentiality” which his common to all minds, has been made to assume the forms which constitute the contents of the phenomenal world. These phenomena must be regarded as the “effects” (outcome)[32] of the spontaneous activities of the members of the eternal world. Through these phenomena persons express themselves and each one may uncoercively influence or be influenced by the other members of society. The category of cause and effect can have no meaning among the primary realities. Among these every member is thus constituted an end and as such can only be for an aid to the others by means of which they may define themselves.

III

The Question of Personal Freedom

In the next place, provision must be and is made for the substantial freedom of the members of the society of minds. That each mind be free is a fundamental requirement of our system. The whole could not exist save for the free self-developing activity of each of its parts. But self-activity in itself might be compatible with mere capriciousness. To avoid the possibility of this a thoroughly determined world is necessary to the freedom of spontaneously active beings. Think of the futility of action in a world of mere caprice, a world in which there was no law and in which nothing could be looked forward to with certainty. One living in such a world would be most thoroughly hampered and enslaved even if sanity were possible. Then, in order to be free, all minds, in addition to their private worlds, must co-operate in the determination for themselves of a world of phenomena which shall be arranged in an invariable order and governed by laws which they themselves have imposed upon it so that they may express themselves and communicate with one another. The world of phenomena then is one in which all action is necessarily determined in accordance with the category of cause and effect. But that this thorough determination does not rob us of our freedom is clear from the fact that the phenomenal world is only relative to the needs of the persons of the society, a chief one of these needs being the very determinatedness that seems to some to rob us of our freedom. The phenomenal world is only a phase in the existence of the self-active or free beings and can only be fully understood when viewed as a manifestation of the freedom or self-determination of the society of persons.[33] Among these primary realities the category of cause and effect can have no meaning. Because of their eternal natures, coercion of one by another is impossible. Each can influence all or any of the others only as it expresses itself in the recognition of others in the common world and there manifests its ideal meanings. But such is the nature of the ultimate unity that the mutual or reciprocal recognition of its parts or members is necessary to the conscious existence and development of each. Every member is thus constituted an end, as well as an aid to all the others by means of which they can define themselves. But while absolute free-agency is possessed by all, the degree of self-definition or self-realization achieved by each is measured by the effort successfully put forth in the recognition of the other members of the society.[34]

IV

The Nature of Truth

In the next place, the ultimate reality being a society of minds each person of which is able to participate in the common world and, yet, at the same time maintain his own privacy and individuality, there arise through their inter-communication certain necessary and universal truths. The relationships in such a system afford also a clear explanation of the fundamental nature of all truth, whether it be scientific, or aesthetical and moral or ethical truths.

The reciprocal recognition of minds has resulted in the formation of a vast number of objects and laws such as we know to obtain in the public world. In the process of constructing[35] our world we seem in the main to be reflectively unconscious of the part taken by the mind in the formation of the world, and, therefore, the impression has arisen that forms and laws are independent of our consciousness. And even when we have become conscious of the true relationship of the mind to the world, it still seems as if the latter had arisen in the main through “unconscious” mental processes. From the nature of interacting minds a person becoming aware of himself and others “unconsciously” puts his objects forth in space relationships long before he can become reflectively conscious of the truths involved in the process he himself through a necessity of his being has put forth. In this “unconscious” way there originates the vast system of truths of which all men and especially the scientifically trained are striving to become reflectively conscious. From the way in which these truths originate, they must be universal and necessary,[36] and each mind—through its own personal experience—is in organic connection with all of them and is, therefore, potentially conscious of the whole common world. The latter facts and the distinction above made between private knowledge or knowledge of which we are reflectively conscious and knowledge of which we are not reflectively conscious finds expression in the De Anima of Aristotle. In the third book of the De Anima he dwells upon the double character of the Nous or Reason, one side of which can perceive and thus become all things, while the other side creates all things. I am at present discussing the latter phase of consciousness and of this he says that

it is in its essential character fully and actually realized, it is not subject to impressions from without for the creative (i.e. our ‘unconsciously’ formed truth) is in every case more honourable than the passive, just as the originating principle is superior to the matter which it forms. And thus, though knowledge as an actually realized condition is identical with its object, this knowledge as a potential capacity is in time prior in the individual, though in universal existence it is not even in time thus prior to actual thought.

So significant was the common world, built up, unconsciously as it were, by interacting minds, to Aristotle, that he hypostatized it as the creative reason in us which is always active and able to abide by itself separate from the body and thus “it alone,” he thought, “is immortal and eternal.” “Of this unceasing work of thought, however, we retain no memory, because this reason is unaffected by its objects; whereas the receptive passive intellect (which is affected) is perishable, and can really think nothing, without the support of the creative intellect.”[37]

Similarly Haldane who also with Aristotle rejects the private sections of mind as unimportant, (though we now know that the private is co-eternal with the public mind) and regards what we have called the objective world as the ultimate reality speaks of this as the “fuller thinking out of what already is potentially there in the individuals of first experience.”[38] This, the potential relation of every mind to the entire world through each experience finds poetical expression in the well known lines of Tennyson:

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies:—
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

Now, when we say that the totality of related things that constitutes nature or the public world has originated through the interaction of minds, we mean by minds all minds that are or ever have been in relation to our world. For certainly the world as we now know it did not entirely have its origin in our own generation, but at least it has required, “the intellectual activity of the generations that are united in the unity of the historical life.”[39] And, further, if the claims of the geologist are true and through vast ages before man and other sentient beings were upon the earth the world was being slowly evolved from more primitive conditions, then still other and perhaps vastly superior minds are required to account for the world as we know it.[40] The world as the geologist knows it could have had no existence save as it served the purposes of reciprocally related minds. Rashdall regards the claims of the geologist as true and from the standpoint of an idealistic philosophy argues for the existence of at least one person who, before the beginnings of man’s existence upon our globe, was in active relation to it.

My own reason making inferences from my own experience, assures me that the world was when I was not—when no human being, or sub-human ancestor of mine was there to contemplate the molten planet or the contracting nebula. I cannot understand my present experience without making that assumption. There must then have been a consciousness for which the world always existed.[41]

And the satisfying of the needs of the geologist by bringing other invisible minds than our own into relation to the world is in harmony with a familiar thought that the vast abysses of space which the telescope reveals to us as “filled with systems of worlds, worlds in every stage of evolution, growing out of nebulous vapour or sinking into eternal coldness,” or the vast lapse of ages revealed to us as we view the bones of some petrified monster and reflect upon the time “during which he was being slowly evolved from some more primitive form, and then slowly decayed, and his species was gradually elbowed out of existence by monsters a degree less preposterous than himself,”[42] all this vastness together with our well-known ignorance and weakness, demand immense supplementing activity to help account for the common world as it is partially comprehended by us.

Whether such minds must be brought in to enable us to account fully for the world as we know it or not, our common world is still of such vast proportions that the process of realizing it and coming to full self-consciousness is a slow and laborious one. The “passive reason” seems very far behind the “creative reason” and it is hard to discover what we ourselves have put into the world. Most of our efforts to know the truth are but tentatively put forth and much of what we call knowledge is but relatively true and but mere “opinion” as Plato would say.[43] We seek to make our reflective knowledge identically represent the truth as it is in the world. While we but partially grasp the nature of the world and strive to grasp it as we are sure it is and can be known, we may be justified in saying provisionally that things are real and true “by virtue of the functions of control”[44] which they exercise upon us, or that “truth represents at best a more or less probable hypothesis”;[45] or that “the ‘meaning’ or idea s such, having been selected and made-up with reference to performing a certain office in the evolution of a unified experience, can be tested in no other way than by discovering whether it does what it has intended to do and what it purports to do.”[46] But while such a test of truth may be useful for our practical purposes, it is, of course, always negative in its results and can never make us certain that we have gained the ultimate truth. For if this were accepted as a test of ultimate truth and really acted upon, we would at once be thrown into confusion and endless contradiction. With such a test, for example, we must say that the earth was flat while at the same time it is a necessity of thought to think it was round, since the former view controlled the activities of the ancients, while the latter view is necessary to the sanity of the modern world. But no matter what controlled the ancients in their acting and thinking, we know that the earth was round in their day and that they were controlled by a relative truth. And just as they were controlled by relative truths in the sense of truths not fully comprehended, so we also are undoubtedly controlled by relative truths as well as by the absolute truths at the heart of experience. But even these relative truths gain their chief power to control our thoughts and actions after having been presented to the public world and after having gained acceptance there. In fact, much of what pertains to the laws and forms of the phenomenal world must originally have been achieved by the process of testing, and its discovered ability to serve well the needs and the purposes of the members composing the society of minds. But perhaps such a view, in order to be safe and to provide for the permanency and determinatedness required by freedom, and able to account for the stability of truth in the phenomenal world as we know it, would need to call in the supplementing aid of many and far more intelligent minds than any we know and such as, it is thought by some, have co-operated in the evolution of the earth and all its forms including our own bodies in order to account for such permanency and stability. At any rate, it would seem that much of the phenomenal world, since it is merely a means for the use of minds, would be capable[47] of modification by them as new and advanced purposes might require a change in its nature or forms. Though much of the phenomenal world has grown out of the essential nature of minds and cannot change, I can see no reason why the forms in which matter appears and many of the laws controlling them, should not be subject to the developing control of the society of minds acting through their common world, especially if our society of minds includes persons of vaster intelligence and loftier moral ideals than those which are manifested by most men and who also in some way participate with us in our common world. But however this may be, we are justified in concluding that at the heart of reality there is a vast system of truths which to us are necessary and universal and that they have derived all their necessity and universality through the interaction of persons in the objective or public world; such necessity may have arisen entirely from our inherent natures and needs as in the case of space relationships, which we found to be necessary to communication in an identical or common world, or it might have been imposed by members of society morally in advance of us and with a desire to help us realize ourselves and such necessity as is suggested by evolutionary hypotheses of the origin of the earth and its surface features and forms including our own bodies in which on this supposition and in their associated environments there would be stored up the rich inheritances accumulated through vast ages of experience among the lower forms of life as well as among our human ancestors in a way which is suggested to us by the familiar facts of instinct and heredity in the lower animals and in man.

Minds not only know, they have feeling, and feeling accompanies all their activities. As truth could not originate save through the common world and the interaction of all minds, so feeling could not objectify itself save for the objects that arise in that world or the eternal minds that manifest themselves in it, and so without it beauty and aesthetical truth could not exist. Beauty comes into being as agreeable feeling wraps itself around external objects.[48] The beauty of the rose is as much a part of it as is its color or form and is mere pleasurable feeling objectivied, or, according to Santayana, its beauty is the pleasure it has awakened regarded as one of its qualities.[48] No matter how ethereal is the content of the aesthetic consciousness or how free it becomes from the dualisms of thought, its existence in the mind is due to external material which has been moulded by the artist to express the joy that fills his soul as he contemplates a beautiful object, though the object may merely be externalized in his own constructive imagination, in the mind of others. No matter how private feeling is thought to be, the feelings for the beautiful receive a kind of universality through their objectification into the common world, and thus the improvement of the aesthetic taste and the deepening and purifying of the feeling for the beautiful as people advance in civilization can be accounted for.

Next, let us consider moral or ethical truth from the standpoint of our theory. All mind activity involves both knowledge and feeling as its chief phases. The unity of these two phases, the activity itself, is called volition. Every act of the mind has moral quality,[49] for every act originating in the mind “reacts back into its originating impulse, and thus has its final meaning in the new significance which it gives to action.” From the point of view of our theory of reality, the reasons for this fact is clear, for there is no act which does not ultimately affect the common world and this is but another way of saying that every act is in relation to every other mind, there to determine motive and be assimilated into character. Action, as we have seen, normally arises in the reciprocal recognition by one another of persons, and this recognition is impossible except as each person expresses himself in both private and public worlds. This is the fundamental moral fact in accordance with which anyone must act in order to be a person at all, or in order to be able to define or realize himself.

The individual cut off from the all-pervasive influence of society has not nature because he is nothing. No doubt, the capacities of the individual are not exhausted in any of the functions which he discharges as a member of the social organism, but his actual nature is none the less developed and made what it is by the functions he fulfils in society.[50]

The constant presupposition of all action is the existence of the actor in the society of persons, so that men, even in the face of false theories put forth in the tentative effort to now the good, tend necessarily to act in reference to the true good which is, of course, the habilitation of each and every member of the society of minds. The greatest good for anyone is found in the recognition and loving service through the means provided by the common world of all the members of society including his own self. Through the public world the good is defined and in the public world the good act is done. Thus the individual and society are advanced in their realization of themselves by one and the same good act. “A man best realizes himself in seeking the good of others, and he cannot truly seek the good of others without seeking to realize himself.”[51]

The society of all selves is not only the Ground of all things but it is our chief Good and those actions which tend to realize it are, of course, right. The good act is organically related to the common world and tends to fulfil the requirements of the reason manifested in it whereas an evil act introduces unhealthy strife into it. This is the idea of the Good which, in spite of false theories of ethics, is potentially at the heart of every act to approve or condemn it. As our Good we are impelled by our very nature to seek to realize it, and the sense of duty and love of the Good are necessary and universal. Moral truths do not wait for their efficacy upon moral theory any more than do other truths. To illustrate the meaning of this view I quote from Martineau who, after having adversely criticized the ethical views of some of the leading philosophers, says,

Were their authors then destitute of moral affections and convictions? What copious indications of the contrary their lives and writings afford. The philosopher’s thought is seldom the exact, and never the colored, photograph of himself: it shows him as he sits still and meditates, not as he lives and moves and has being; and did we see him in the flush of indignation, or the surprise of grief, or the melting of contrition, startling images would pass before us that would seem impossible to emerge from that calm, statuesque figure. He is an intellectual automaton stirred by the wires of speculation; the instincts of nature rush in, and interpolate many a burst of action and affection which the logical reason cannot overtake. With noble inconsistency, all the great writers whose doctrine we have studied—betray the tenacious vitality of the intuitive consciousness of duty, throughout the very process of cutting away its philosophic roots; and Plato in his “divine wrath” at the tyrant flung into Tartarus; Malebrauche, self-extinguished in the Absolute Holiness; Spinoza, lifted from the thraldom of passion into the freedom of Infinite Love; Comte, on his knees before the image of a Perfect Humanity, are touching witnesses to the undying fires of moral faith and aspiration.[52]

But while we must recognize that ethical truths are as necessary as are scientific ones we may also say as we did of scientific truths, that in the case of many of them, while we naturally tend to act upon them as they are, we can only become reflectively conscious of them by a tentative process and after the responsibility to know good and evil reflectively begins to come upon us, we are often compelled to act upon relative knowledge of ethical truth just as we are controlled in our thinking by many relative truths as well as the universal and necessary ones of which we are not reflectively conscious.

The nature of the good as our theory regards it also accounts for a familiar ethical fact, that no number of rules will satisfy the spirit of moral action.[53] For no two individuals can be alike nor have the same environment, and each one with capacities and knowledge different from that of anyone else must evidently have a different set of duties to perform in his effort to realize the Good. The responsibility to govern oneself thus required by the nature of the ultimate reality eventually results in the greatest distinctness and importance of the individual and vastly adds to the possibilities of the society. if one member of the society provided law to govern all the others its possibilities would be indefinitely reduces as well as his own. Hence, the superiority of Jesus’ conception of God as The Greatest Member of the society inviting all the others to fellowship with Himself, and the intelligibility and virtue of the teaching to be perfect as God is perfect.[54]

V

The Society of Minds as a Developing System and its own End

Finally, in considering the Society of Minds with respect to its possibilities and the perfection which characterizes it, we notice as a fundamental fact that our unity or conception of Society requires that each of its members be a developing mind. The infinity of each one provides for the perpetual movement of all the rest. In the process of development one is urged on and guided by certain ideals.

In the beginning of the paper it was observed how from the very nature of the knowing process there arose division and unrest in the mind that urged it on to heal itself. The nature of the ideal truth we have examined. No fact in experience can be fully understood until it is interpreted by us in terms of the purposes of the members of the society which constitutes the ultimate reality. The necessities of the universe of persons has called into being the private and the common worlds. It would seem proper to suppose that a knowledge of the phenomenal world may eventually be achieved by eternal persons, and with respect to such knowledge they can become at ease. But even the phenomenal worlds in order to meet the needs of eternal minds with infinite capacity for progress must be regarded as in at least some ways plastic, as we have indicated above. As a mere means the phenomenal world ought to be capable of modification. Provision is made for such modification in the opportunity for individual unfoldment afforded by the private worlds in their relation to the public one. But how slow any possible change must be is suggested by the needs of freedom as shown above as well as by the arduousness of the task of making any modification of importance in the regular conformation of our present earth or in the relative rules or truths that govern our human society. Such changes can not be capricious and must always be made in accordance with law. But were our activities limited to the gaining of truths regarding the mere means of communication or the phenomenal world, we ought to be able in course of time to cease to put forth effort. For the medium of communication is relatively fixed and finite. The natural sciences ought to become perfect as the methods of the scientist implies they can be. But should all tasks cease, all activity must cease and with it all consciousness and all existence.

But such a state of completed activity is impossible and the complete knowledge of the means of communication is but the perfection of what is necessary to begin to fully enjoy the possibilities of existence. For Persons are our chief ideals and the supreme Good. And since persons have infinite capacities or powers for development and progress in spiritual life, they afford an infinite “means” for the joyous activity of the members of our great system.

Our moral ideals including the Highest Good grow up in reference to the members of society as they interact through the common world. These ideals always present themselves as some good to be attained. if lower things attract us away from them, we can achieve the good only by a struggle which gives to consciousness the sense of duty or the feeling of obligation. But if we fully know the Good[55] we cannot be drawn aside and its pursuit will be uniformly pleasurable. Nevertheless, since we are progressive beings our ideals must change, and change demands a readjustment of habits formed with reference to ideal that should no more control us. The possibility of failing to make the proper readjustment of habits formed with reference to ideals that should no more control us. The possibility of failing to make the proper readjustment is always with us and so the feeling of dissatisfaction with any achievement of ours will always be possible to u urging us on to the good which it should require no urging to seek. The obligation of the moral ideal can never pass away.[56] “For its disappearance would at the same time be the disappearance of self-consciousness.”[57] But though the obligation of the moral ideal can never pass away may not the sense of moral obligation cease practically to arise in consciousness? I think we must conclude that we may be learning the principles of proper interaction of persons learn to modify with ease habits adapted to one set of ends and apply them to new and higher ones as they appear to us. It would seem that action of such a nature ought to be realized by us even in this stage of action. Should such a condition of perfected activity be reached, the disagreeable feelings that attend us in our ignorance of the good and our imperfect efforts to satisfy the sense of duty and achieve the good would vanish. And then the Good which we find it so hard to realize would present itself clearly to our reason as the only good possible to us at a given time and in given circumstances and so there would be only satisfaction in view of it. So the struggle to gain truth and the struggle to do what is right may and ought to cease. And only upon such cessation of these struggles do we begin to enjoy the Good as we may enjoy it. All this means is that free, unhampered communication with eternal spirits is what we desire. They are the Supreme and Abiding Good and in them there is a fountain of everlasting good as a well of water forever springing up to satisfy eternal lives.

While speaking of such possibilities for the members of the society of persons, I ought to briefly consider another set of possibilities, the one in relation to our ideals of the beautiful. The unity in a beautiful object, such as a beautiful work of art, is very near in subtlety to the ideal unity manifesting itself as the ultimate reality. In a great musical composition, the whole enters with all its ideal meaning into each part and each successive measure renews the entire composition. In aesthetic experience of the loftiest kind there comes to us the possibility of transcending the dualism, so very necessary to our existence, of space and time, and all other dualisms set up by thought in its progress in self-development disappear and even the consciousness of self is transcended, and here we achieve the highest realization of our nature “in an all-comprehensive and completely-full experience.”[58]

But the Society of persons is the Supreme Good. No greater good can be discovered by us in the entire universe and no greater good is conceivable by us. In truth, as we have seen, they are the Ground of all things and are the determiners of all value. They set up ideals and have the power to reach them. As Professor Howison says,

They alone will prove supreme, truly organizing, normative; they alone can introduce gradation into truths, for they alone introduce the judgment of worth, of valuation; they alone can give us counsels of perfection, for they alone rise from those elements in our being which deal with ideals and with veritable Idea.[59]

They are the objects to which we may devote ourselves and in whose service losing ourselves we may gain a greater fulness of life. Each member of the society is of infinite worth, and, as Jesus said, the whole world is not to be compared in value to one of them. They are the only objects in the universe that are worthy of our reverence. We are not surprised then that men should have been so loved and honored by Jesus.[60] he respected the judgment of men, ever inviting them to hear not so much what the ancient prophets said as the promptings of their own inherent sense of right and truth. He trusted in the goodness at the heart of men and knew that through it the best would triumph.[61] Above all, perhaps, save in his “laying his life down in order to win the hearts of men” to himself as an ideal Personality, he respected men in appealing to the best that is in man[62] himself in his efforts to reveal the nature of one whom he worshipped and called our Father.

Since we are among the members of this great Society of Persons we ought not to be prejudiced in regard to another question in considering which a low view of man’s nature is apt to bias us. No one can possibly have a nature greater than our unity shows man to have, for no one can exist who is not in relation to the common world. Inside the circle of the eternal minds, then, we must seek, if anywhere, for One whom we may call God. And from the nature of reality his pre-eminence must be determined by the superiority of his intelligence and the intensity of his love for others and his achievements in their service. But although from his nature He would be the most potent factor in the formation (Cf. the Hebrew bara) of our common world, He could only co-operate with others and with us in its formation; and so the “heavens” could not decisively reveal his handiwork or his existence. He could only reveal Himself to us as we reveal ourselves to each other, by operating in accordance with laws of nature through the common world. Our ideal unity requires a common world, common in some way to all the invisible spirits or persons in the vast society of minds, among which invisible spirits are we ourselves. We do not yet understand the full nature of the world that unites us to the men of past ages nor with those, if the geologists view of the past of the earth is right, who co-operated in the benevolent purpose of forming the schemata of a world for our needs. But our unity demands such a common world and suggests that it is only in harmony with the moral purposes of beings in advance of us, such as might arise from the needs of our freedom, that they do not interfere with us in the ways we might expect.

But though He cannot thus decisively reveal Himself in the work of world-formation or world controlling, it is conceivable that he might be able to reveal Himself through men. Now those who believe that his character is revealed through the lives of Jesus and other good men or who have come in some way to believe in his existence have the possibility of a kind of realization not possible to others, at least to such an extent. Although by our interest in the lives and deeds of good men we may be able to define ourselves and find great satisfaction, we cannot realize ourselves through tour love for them in the highest experience. To those only who believe in a personal God can there come this richest experience. We may lose ourselves in our love for our fellowmen and define ourselves in a joyful experience. But to lose oneself in the loving adoration of a Perfect personality is certainly to achieve one’s completest fulfilment in the most ecstatic experience.

In the religious experience which arises through our reverence for our fellow-men and especially in the contemplation of the One who has achieved the perfection our society calls for, man reaches and manifests the greatest depths and heights of his spiritual nature. Such an One is supremely True and Good and the highest object for aesthetic contemplation and satisfaction. This adds, then, still to the vast possibilities I have already suggested for the satisfaction of those who have achieved the perfection of action suggested above. Another source of satisfaction there will be the fulfilment of duties to immature and developing spirits and this can, perhaps, afford us the most satisfaction and joy that will be possible to us.

The Society of Minds, which has been shown to be the Ground of all phenomena and truth, the Author of all our ideals of Truth, Beauty and Goodness, is now clearly exhibited as the Supreme End or Good, an everlasting Source and never-failing Supply for life and happiness. We can conceive of nothing greater or more soul-satisfying than this ideal stage of society, a stage freed from the struggle and failure to adjust ourselves to the requirements of truth, beauty and goodness and one which provides us with a perfect means of communicating with eternal beings and the opportunities of observing and aiding minds in the process of development. Such a stage of society fulfils the ideal which Jesus held forth as the Kingdom of God. For “by the Kingdom of God” Jesus meant an ideal social order in which the relation of men to God is that of sons, and (therefore) to each other, that of brothers.[63] This is the perfection of our ideal unity for thought and the highest vision we shall ever be capable of, the Vision Beatific.

Footnotes

1. Francis Herbert Bradley, The Principles of Logic, p. 430 f.

2. Bernard Bosanquet, The Essentials of Logic, Vol. I, p. 100.

3. Lightner Witmer’s Psychology, p. 12.

4. Cf. Bosanquet, Essentials of Logic, p. 54 ff.

6. Bosanquet, Essentials of Logic, p. 53.

7. Bradley, Logic, p. 447 ff.

10. McTaggart, Article in Mind, 1900, p. 146.

11. Mind, 1900, p. 147.

12. Cf. Mind, 1900, p. 147.

13. Cf. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, Book I, Ch. II.

14. Cf. Mind, 1899, p. 48 ff.

15. Cf. Mind, 1899, p. 52 ff.

16. Mind, 1900, p. 149.

17. McTaggart, Mind, 1900, p. 150.

18. McTaggart, Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, p. 14.

19. Ibid, p. 20.

20. Ibid, p. 21.

21. Ibid, p. 23.

22. Howison, Limits of Evolution, p. 13.

23. Paulsen, Immanuel Kant, p. 175, Cf. Busanquet’s Essentials of Logic, Ch. I.

24. Howison, Limits of Evolution, p. 352f.

25. McTaggart, Mind, 1900, p. 150.

26. Caird, Critical Philosophy of Kant, p. 88.

27. Howison, Vol. I., International Congress of Arts and Science, p. 187.

28. Wundt, Outlines of Psychology, p. 360.

29. Schiller, Personal Idealism, p. 55.

30. Howison, Vol. I., International Congress of Arts and Science,

31. Caird, The Critical Philosophy of Kant, Vol. II. p. 83 ff.

32. Howison, Limits of Evolution, p. 322 ff.

33. Cf. Bosanquet, Logic, Vol. I. Ch. I.

34. Bosanquet, Essentials of Logic, Ch. II.

35. Aristotle, De Anima, Wallace’s Translation, p. 161.

36. Haldane, The Pathway to Reality, p. 101.

37. Paulsen, Immanuel Kant, p. 175.

38. Haldane, The Pathway to Reality, p. 21f.

39. Rushdall, Article in Personal Idealism, p. 376.

40. See Social Rights and Duties by Leslie Stephen, p. 184f.

41. Plato, Theaetetus et passim.

42. John Dewey, Study in Logical Theory, p. 76.

43. Rogers, Modern Philosophy, p. 349.

44. Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory, p. 76.

45. Shiller, Article on Personal Idealism, p. 59 f.

46. Santayana, Sense of Beauty, Part I.

47. Cf. Dewey, Study of Ethics, p. 35.

48. Watson, Hedonistic Theories, p. 85.

49. Ibid, p. 158.

50. Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. I, p. 512.

51. Cf. The Teachings of Jesus, passim.

52. Matt. Ch. 5. Cf. Howison, Limits of Evolution p. 52, et passim.

53. Plato, in his dialogues passim.

54. Cf. Watson, Hedonistic Theories pp. 132, 225.

55. Ibid. p. 225.

56. Article by Baldwin, Psychological Review, 1903, p. 245.

57. Howison, International Congress of Arts and Science, Vol. i.

58. Stephens, The Teachings of Jesus, Ch IX.

59. Cf. the Parables, The Mustard Seed & the Leaven.

60. Cf. The Prodigal Son.

61. Mathews, The Social Teachings of Jesus, p. 54.