Page:Calcutta Review (1925) Vol. 16.djvu/245

230 to understand by Idealism? Ideas are commonly regarded as merely subjective reflections or shadows of realities—of all things the most fleeting and unreal. But Idealism gives to ideas a degree of reality and importance quite foreign to the common ways of thinking. In common thought we distinguish two stages of idea, lower and higher: Thus (a) we receive passing experiences of the surrounding world into our mental system, preserve them there sub-consciously in the form of mental ‘traces’ (in some way not clearly understood), and revive them into consciousness when wanted, as “representations” of past experiences, and call them ideas of memory; and by intellectual elaboration, we derive from them ideas of things never experienced—ideas of past distant and future things, beyond the reach of experience—and call them ideas of imagination. These are theoretical ideas, constituting our knowledge of the world. But (b) again from knowledge of past experience, we come to understand what things are good and not good for us, and thereby form ideas of what will be for our own highest good in the future, and of the lines of action by which we may realise our highest good. These we may call practical ideas, being those by which we regulate our actions. But this common way of using the term idea may seem to have nothing to do with Idealism. What is the meaning of the ism?

Its uses in Philosphy.—We may put aside from the outset the question of Idealism in perception with its unprofitable controversies, and the subjective Idealism of Kant. And it is not enough to say in a general way that the world and its history consist in the realisation of ideas. This might be true in different senses. Thus in every work of art, the maker first devises in his own mind an idea of what is wanted, as a mental picture; and then makes a copy of it in some material substance. This is the common way of applying ideas practically. But Idealism gives more reality to ideas than this way of thinking. Thus the highest ideas may be held to be—