case. Has objective or transcendental idealism, the idealism of Kant and of those whom he inspired, established or strengthened the general contention of idealism? The New In the first place, it is clear that the cardinal principle of idealism remains what it was with Berkeley. It is asserted that consciousness in some form, especially consciousness in its cognitive form, is the one necessary and universal condition of being. It is idle and misleading for contemporary idealists to slur the fundamental place of the conscious subject in their scheme of reality; to resort, for example, to a seemingly neutral or colorless conception like 'experience.' This conception is used by certain nonidealistic writers' to mean the bare aggregate of entities, not as yet brought under the form of either mind or body. But for idealists experience means the contents of consciousness, construed as such. Thus when Mr. Joachim refers to that "Ideal experience" in terms of which he defines truth, he means not the systematic totality of things merely, but such a totality witnessed and comprehended. This explains why he is not satisfied with the phrase "significant whole." For "if 'experience' tends to suggest the experiencing apart from the experience, 'significant whole' tends to suggest the experienced apart from the experiencing." "We want a term," he says, " to express the concrete unity of both, and I cannot find one." Now I think that Mr. Joachim is mistaken in thinking that the term experience is defective in the respect to which he refers. The danger is rather that, as used by idealists, it shall obscure the fact that they mean content of consciousness, and not merely things. Indeed I strongly suspect that it owes its vogue to its ambiguity; otherwise I cannot account for the abandonment of such downright terms as 'state,' 'percept,' 'idea.' Surely these terms answer perfectly to the demand that things shall be construed as present to consciousness, and consciousness as made up of content. In any case, it 1 By James, for example; cf. below, pp. 364-365. is clear that the "concrete unity" to which this author refers is a unity of consciousness.1 An alternative phrasing of objective idealism is to be found in the writings of Edward Caird. Thus he writes: "The main result of modern philosophy and especially of modern idealism has been to put a concrete, in place of an abstract unity, or, in other words, to vindicate the essential correlation of the self and the not-self."2 Now this does not mean merely that the self and the not-self are in some sense necessarily related; and does not follow from any general proof of the systematic unity of the world. It means that it is essential to everything to stand in the specific relation, for-a-self; that the simplest possible entity is a self with its content, or an object engaged by a conscious mind. The unity to which the idealist refers is not a unity between consciousness and something else, but a unity of consciousness. The New Proof of Idealism from Synthetic Unity § 10. Supposing it to be granted, then, that objective or transcendental idealism, like Berkeleyan idealism, is founded on the assertion of the primacy of consciousness; we may now ask whether this version of idealism has advanced new arguments in support of that assertion. One is compelled to express astonishment at the common failure of idealists to separate this question, and deal with it proportionately to its importance. But the new idealism does urge at least one new argument - the argument from the 'synthetic' function of consciousness. It is contended that consciousness affords the only genuine unity, and that since the world requires unity it must derive it from consciousness. 1 H. Joachim: op. cit., pp. 83-84, note. The same comment will apply to the use which Rickert and others make of the conception of 'immanence' to describe the most universal form of being. 'Immanence' is meaningless except in relation to a subject, and the theory of universal immanence does not really differ except in unclearness from a more explicit theory of universal consciousness. Cf. Rickert: Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, pp. 24-25. Edward Caird: op. cit., p. 6. Green, for example, asserts that reality must be regarded as "an unalterable order of relations." "But a plurality of things cannot of themselves unite in one relation, nor can a single thing of itself bring itself into a multitude of relations." They require the "combining agency' -intelligence. "Either then we must deny the reality of relations altogether and treat them as fictions of our combining intelligence, or we must hold that, being the product of our combining intelligence, they are yet 'empirically real' on the ground that our intelligence is a factor in the real of experience."1 Similarly, Mr. McTaggart asserts that the only intelligible kind of unity is that in which "the unity is at once the whole of which the individuals are parts, and also completely present in each individual." And "this relation between the individuals and the whole . . . . is that particular relation of which the only example known to us is consciousness."2 The only possible justification for this train of reasoning is the supposition that terms must somehow penetrate their relations and relations their terms, so that some peculiar agency is required to prevent their either fusing or falling apart. This is the so-called 'internal theory' of relations, which is not only contrary to the usage of science and common sense, but incapable even of being expressly formulated. Mr. Bradley is driven in despair to conclude that "a relation always is self-contradictory," and that to find a solution we must "pass entirely beyond the relational point of view." He obtains no illumination of the question from the character of consciousness. For this simply repeats "the old illusory play of relations and qualities," "at a higher level than before." But for some inscrutable reason, Messrs. Green and McTaggart find the intellectual operation of relating, or the consciousness of many in one, more intelli 1 T. H. Green: op. cit., pp. 29–32. 2 J. M. E. McTaggart: Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, pp. 14, 19. Cf. also M. W. Calkins: The Persistent Problems of Philosophy, pp. 378-379. gible than bare relation itself. I can explain their procedure only by attributing it to a willingness, exhibited by modern thinkers in general, and by idealists in particular, to abandon analysis and rigor of thought when consciousness is in question.' If there be any peculiar virtue in consciousness to relieve the difficulty of 'unity in plurality,' it is a miraculous virtue; whose secret, if it has been discovered, has certainly never been successfully communicated. § 11. But the majority of idealists do not even attempt, as do Green and McTaggart, to find a new proof of idealism; The Revival of they are satisfied to rest their case on the old the Berkeleyan Berkeleyan grounds. The fallacy of 'argument from the ego-centric predicament' is precisely the same, whether knowing be construed empirically with Berkeley, or rationalistically with the followers of Kant. Thus the categories cannot be known without being thought; from which it is falsely inferred that they cannot be without being thought. Arguments This fallacy is perhaps less characteristic of the new idealism than the other Berkeleyan fallacy of 'definition by initial predication.' Here one begins by discovering that the categories are conditions of knowledge. But having once taken their place upon the stage in this rôle, they are straightway identified with it. They are defined as what one needs in order to know. They become the instruments of a hypothetical activity governed purely by the cognitive motive. This activity becomes a will to know, which seeks its own by a definite procedure and imposes its conditions on everything with which it deals. The necessities of knowledge are construed as its demands, and the world of science as its conquest and domain. 1 F. H. Bradley: op. cit., pp. 112, 445. Professor Royce, like Mr. Bradley, admits that the difficulty of relations is aggravated rather than relieved in the case of consciousness, but believes that the difficulty may be met by the modern mathematical theory of infinity. Cf. The World and the Individual, First Series, Supplementary Essay. On the 'internal' and 'external' theory of relations, cf. below, pp. 244-246, 319-320; and above, pp. 101-102. But the guise in which things first appear is not to be assumed to be their native dress. It may be in any degree accidental and external. That the categories may be conditions of knowledge only accidentally, is apparent when one reflects that any entity whatsoever may be cast in that rôle. The color red may be used as a danger-signal; a spacial distance, such as a metre or a foot, may be used as a unit of measurement; the weight of water may be used as a standard for the determination of atomic weights. But one does not therefore conclude that these things are essentially conditions of knowledge. There is no difference between these cases and the cases of the traditional formal categories, save the wider generality of the use to which the latter may be put. And the explanation of this may at least as reasonably be found in the nature of things, as in the nature of knowledge. If knowledge must conform to its objects, then every necessity in things is a necessity for true thought about those things. Thus if one is to know right-angle triangles, one must judge that the square on the hypothenuse is equal to the squares on the other two sides. And as spacial implications are necessary for geometrical thought; so, if there are any universal implications residing in the nature of all things, implications belonging to the province of logic, then they are necessary for all thought. But the necessity lies ultimately in the nature of things, and is binding on thought only so far as thought is bound to things. Were all things blue, blue would then be an indispensable condition for the knowing of anything; but it would not on that account bear any closer relation to the cognitive subject than it does now. All things are, let us assume, related. It follows that it is impossible to know anything without knowing it in relation. Not, however, because knowing implies relating; but because being implies relation, and knowing must seize upon the nature of its object. As a matter of fact, objective idealism has deduced the categories from the object and not from the subject. To |