Page:Idealism and the Theory of Knowledge.djvu/13

Rh theory or practice, be more than provisional. Aristotle has expressed both sides of this ideal in one of his most comprehensive sayings, when he declares that ‘as, in practice, it is our highest aim, starting with what seems good to us individually, to make what is absolutely good our individual aim, so in theory, we have to start with what seems true to us individually, but the object we seek is to make what is really and naturally intelligible or true, true or intelligible for ourselves.’ In other words, we have to learn to look at the world, in ordine ad universum and not in ordine ad individuum, from its real centre and not from the centre of our own individual existence: and the task is not one which is forced upon us externally, but one which is laid upon us by the nature of the reason which is within us. Aristotle, therefore, holds that it is possible for us to make the universal point of view our own, as it is also possible for us to make the absolute good the end of our lives. But we have to add to what Aristotle says that this end is one which is ever being realized, and never is finally realized by us. It is a faith which is continually passing into knowledge, but never becomes complete knowledge.

If however in one sense we must call this idea a faith, we must remember that it is in no sense an arbitrary assumption: rather it is the essential faith of reason, the presupposition and basis of all that reason has achieved or can achieve. We may admit that, as Tennyson this aspect of it our ‘deepest faith’ is also our ‘ghastliest doubt’—the doubt whether the whole system of things to which we belong is not illusive and meaningless. But, apart from this inevitable shadow of our finitude, the real difficulties of knowledge and practice lie not in the idea or ideal of our intelligence, but rather in the application of it to the particulars of thought and life, in carrying out the effort to co-ordinate or affiliate the different appearances as elements of one reality, or, as Mr. Bradley would express it, to determine what is the ‘degree of reality’ that belongs to each of them, when brought in relation to all the rest, and to give it in our practical life the importance which really belongs to it. But to question whether the whole is an intelligible system, is as vain as to question whether any part of our experience, even the most transient and illusive of appearances, has a place in that system.

There is, indeed, a way of escaping from this view of reality as a systematic whole which has often been tried. This is to take our stand upon some particular principle or principles, or upon some particular fact or facts, as self-evidencing or immediately ‘given’ truth, on the fixed certitude of which we can build our further