Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/103

Rh METAPHYSIC 93 be simply identified with the one to the exclusion of the other. His finite individuality is regarded by him from a universal point of view, in which it has no less and no more importance than any other individuality, or in which its greater or less importance is determined only by its place in the whole. On this universality of consciousness rests the possibility of science and of morality. For all science is just a contemplation of the world in ordine ad universum and not in ordine ad individuum ; and all morality is just action with a view to an interest Avhich belongs to the agent, not as this individual, but as a member of a greater whole, and ultimately of the absolute whole in which all men and all things are included. In this nature of the conscious subject lies also the possibility of metaphysic in the sense of Aristotle, as that science which goes back to a Trpwrov &amp;lt;ucret, a beginning which is prior to the existence in consciousness of the individual self, and onward to an end in which the divisions of the finite consciousness are transcended, as including, in short, ontology, or metaphysic in the narrower sense, on the one side, and theology, or the philosophy of religion, on the other. In truth, these two extremes of science are necessarily bound together : we can only go back to the beginning if we can go on to the end ; we can only recover the first unity if we can anticipate the last. Or, to free the subject more definitely from the associations of time, we cannot apprehend the unity which is involved or pre supposed in all the differences of our conscious life except in so far as we can look at our individual existence from the point of view of the whole to which it belongs. This will become evident if we consider the nature of the limits which have to be transcended by such a science. The individual conscious subject, as he finds himself at first, is but one being in a world that stretches out, apparently without limits, on every side of him. Of the things by which he is immediately surrounded he sees but a small part, and the influences which he receives from them are, as he knows, like the wave that breaks upon a shore from an unknown ocean, only the last partial expression of impulses that come from regions beyond his ken. Again, he finds himself as one in a changing series of beings, of which he knows only the last preceding terms, and he is aware that in a few years he, as one of this series, will cease to be. He is thus to himself a definitely limited being, and though his knowledge of himself and his world may be gradually widened so as to reach some little way back into the past, and anticipate a little of the future, or may go outwards in space to embrace a widening circle of existences around him, yet he always stops at a limit, of which he is conscious that it is no absolute limit, but simply an arbitrary halting-place where vision grows indistinct and imperfect. When he reflects upon himself from this point of view, he is forced to regard himself as but a fragment, and a fragment of an unknown whole, by which his whole being is determined to be what it is. His highest knowledge seems to be but a consciousness of his ignorance, his highest freedom a determination by motives the ultimate meaning of which is hid from him. So far there seems to be no room for any metaphysical knowledge, any knowledge of ourselves and our world which is other than relative and in ordine ad individuum. But further reflexion shows that in this very consciousness of limit there is implied a consciousness of that which is beyond limit. While we proceed from part to part, beginning with ourselves and our immediate surroundings, and follow ing out lines of connexion that lose themselves in the dis tance, we are guided by a consciousness of the whole as a unity through which the parts are determined. Nay, it is just the presence of this consciousness that makes us capable of what seems the piecework of our knowledge, in which, by the aid of the principle of causality, we connect parti cular with particular, and so gradually extend the sphere of light into the encompassing darkness. For that principle simply means that the limited external object does not sufficiently explain to us its own existence, and that therefore we are forced to explain it by a reference to something beyond it. It means, in other words, that we cannot rest in that which is not a self-bounded, self- determined whole. The application of the category of external determination has therefore an essential reference to the higher category of self-determination. The mere endlessness of space and time has no meaning except in opposition, yet in relation, to the true infinity /&amp;gt;f which we find the type in self-conscious thought. Or, to put it in the Kantian form in which it is already familiar to us, the consciousness of the objective world in space and time stands in essential relation to the unity of self-conscious ness. And if when we regard the former exclusively we are forced to view ourselves as insignificant and short sighted finite beings in an infinite universe, when we regard the latter we are enabled to see that in all this universe there is revealed only that spiritual principle which we find also in ourselves. In this way a new light is thrown on our first consciousness of ignorance. The strivings of our reason after knowledge can no longer be regarded as strivings after an unknown goal, but rather after a goal which it has prescribed for itself. The narrow limits of our individual life are not removed, but they cease to be for us the limits of a narrow circle of definition within a formless infinite. They become the limits of a sphere within a sphere, a sphere which is defined by the idea of knowledge or self-consciousness itself, and in which therefore, however we may wander, we are everywhere at home. In religious language, the sphere is not a mere universe, but God, who is without us only as He is within us, so that &quot; by the God within we can understand the God without.&quot; Again, as this consciousness takes man beyond his immediate existence, and enables him to determine it in relation to an absolute unity of all things in God, so it enables him to go back to a unity which is behind or prior to that existence. For, if the individual can look at himself as he looks at others, and at others as he looks at himself, i.e., from a point of view which is unaffected by his individuality, and in which that individuality is for him only what it is for impartial reason, he can have nothing in him which binds his consciousness to his individuality as mere individuality ; as therefore he can go beyond himself to apprehend the whole in which his individuality has a place, there is nothing to prevent him from going back upon himself, and upon the conditions which are prior to his own individual being. He is not tied to his immediate life, and can go below it just as he can rise above it. &quot;0 God, I think Thy thoughts after Thee,&quot; said Kepler. In reading the &quot;thoughts&quot; written in the planetary system, Kepler was discovering the meaning of that which is simpler and more elementary than the existence of man, as a cycle of mechanical relations are simpler and more elementary than self-consciousness. Yet it was a true feeling that led him to connect this descent into the mechanical world with God. For it is only in virtue of the same faculty which enables us to rise to the absolute life which includes and subordinates our own that we can so free us from the image of our own conscious life as to apprehend and fix in thought the simpler relations of purely physical existence. But the same faculty of going back upon ourselves has a still deeper manifestation. Not only can we abstract from ourselves so as to under stand the inorganic world, we can also abstract from our selves so as to understand the conditions which are prior