Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/570

 556 CRITICAL NOTICES : growth of such representation in life and mind, Prof. Bead takes- to be a function of the evolution of Nature ; and it is a true know- ledge of Nature, because it is her self-knowledge (p. 135). The real nerve of Prof. Bead's book is a conviction regarding Ultimate Beality, to the exposition of which he gives much space r and to which he always returns, although his theory of Beality is bound to be defective, because it cannot realise his ideal of know- ledge, and because all discussion which excludes the Philosophy of Ideals is radically imperfect. Briefly his position is this : In our own consciousness we have an immediate knowledge of Ultimate Beality, while Empirical Beality, including our own bodies and the external world, " manifests " Ultimate Beality in a system of pheno- mena constructed in consciousness. Beality is universally conscious,, but its whole Being cannot be fully expressed by consciousness, and as to the remainder it is transcendent, to be understood partly from the laws of phenomena which represent it objectively, and partly from the laws of consciousness, which is Beality itself, sub- jectively conditioned, not its representation. In Empirical Beality matter and consciousness are contrasted areas of consciousness itself; in the world as conceived by scientific thought matter is reduced to certain quantitative aspects of objective consciousness ; but in Ultimate Beality matter has no place, being a phenomenon or representation of that Beality, so far as Beality is not conscious- ness. It follows that the concept of Ultimate Beality contains a duality, namely, Consciousness and the Transcendent Being or Idea that is conscious (p. 115). We must then recognise the new- indicative, orective Category Manifestation ; and it is not un- reasonable to transfer to the transcendent term of this one-sided relation some of the forms of Subjective Beality, if not also of those of phenomena in Space (p. 153). As the form and enfoldment of all possible experience, Time is another name for the Universe in its everlasting movement ; although less clear and distinct, it is more comprehensive, more real than Space, for Space is only the form of phenomena, but Time of all consciousness, and conscious- ness is Beality (p. 178). We have no grounds for denying that consciousness may be a continuum rising under special conditions- at points into special fulness, the growth of the body offering the best analogy for the corresponding growth of mind. To explain the individual as self-conscious reason arising in the course of Nature by natural laws is also to guarantee the reality of the World, and to recognise the World as the ground, the measure, the law, the judge, and in every way the superior of human reason (p. 260). As regards the ontological suggestions of this volume where concepts fail, there is an impulse of imagination to supple- ment the quasi-intelligible, which likewise fails, but is, so far as it goes, materialistic. But Material-Spiritual is a crude, strained and indefensible hypothesis. Neither can give any account of per- ception or volition ; whereas, on the hypothesis that there is an intimate parallelism between consciousness, considered as art