Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/21

 CONTRADICTION AND REALITY. 7 of self in other. We may take as a characteristic case that apparent responsiveness of external Nature to human moods, the perception of which is at least a great part of the appre- hension of the beautiful. The freshness and strength of the feeling which such perceptions bring with them is surely in a great measure dependent on the fact that they come to us as undesigned coincidences. It is for this reason that they seem to bring to us a confirmation of our own sentiments which is rooted somewhere beyond the foundations of our own self. If we were convinced that Nature was somehow just another offshoot of the same principle as ourselves, and not merely convinced of it, but able to see it pretty com- pletely in detail, then we are inclined to think the return upon ourselves would lose in vigour what it gained in per- fection, and the fascinating sense of something beyond would be transformed into a dull feeling that it is all one. Now the case thus stated emphasises the opposite side of the question from that which was insisted on above. The sense of the beyond and of something over against the mind must be immensely greater, it was urged, for Newton or for Dar- win, than for a savage to whom nature is chiefly an incalcul- able interference. Both points of view seem prima facie justified and their contrast just illustrates the parting of the ways. In a word, it seems natural to take the character- istic which distinguishes the other from the self as lying in discrepancy and unfamiliarity, which may be symbolised by Logical Contradiction as described at first. But it is also plain that such a characteristic excludes pro tanto the cor- respondence of the two sides in their full detail and com- plexity, and must be a vanishing characteristic as experience approaches completeness. We must then elect, it would appear, to conclude, that to interpret the beyond or the other which confronts us in experience, as due to our ignorance and defect, and as a vanishing quantity in the progress of the mind, is to confuse the incident with the essence ; and that as in the example of natural knowledge, the otherness becomes more definite as the object becomes more adequate to the subject. It is partly perhaps with the view of con- struing these appearances that many thinkers have embarked on the adventure of treating all the content of life as a translation of the interaction of conscious beings. Then no doubt we have the conception of an ' other ' which is able to maintain its independence its otherness along with almost any degree of transparency or familiarity. And I mention the speculation chiefly for this reason, to make clear, if it does not seem clear, what the particular crux is which I