Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/500

 484 J. H. MUIRHEAD : must, that is, be a ' what' not in unity with its own 'that/ and therefore, in and by itself, devoid of existence." If, on the other hand, it were to include existence, it would not be thought any longer. " It would have passed into another and a higher reality." 1 To the conclusion therefore that knowledge cannot be the full expression of reality, we must add that it cannot even form an element in the ultimate reality. With regard to these arguments the first thing to be noticed is that they do not go on all fours. The first is directed against the position that knowledge is all reality, the second against the position that knowledge is an element in reality the first is concerned with what we might call the ideal of conscious- ness, only the second with the ideal of knowledge as such. It is admitted on all hands that the ultimate form of experience cannot be exhaustively described in terms of the goal of the scientific or speculative reason. The history of Idealist thought may indeed be said to consist of the suc- cessive steps by which philosophy has arrived at the recog- nition of this truth. Starting from the acknowledgment that reality is to be sought for in the field of Ideas, it is possible to describe these ideas (perhaps Plato sometimes did so) as intelligible essences unrelated to the concrete life of ordinary feeling and action. Going on from this it is a second step (which it is Aristotle's merit to have made) to have shown that the supreme end of the soul as compared with the end or ideal of the speculative intelligence is the rational or intelligent life ; that the truth for which our souls long is not an abstract system of ideas, but a truth which shall harmonise and enrich our lives a truth that shall make us free. Finally it is realised (and this I suppose was the characteristic contribution of Christian thought) that the Ideas which constitute reality have not only to be grasped in thought and realised in life; they have to be loved and adored as the supreme objects of feeling. This is the truth which I take it Hegel meant to express, with whatever success, 2 in his well-known doctrine that the highest expression of spirit is a form of consciousness, which, under whatever name (he called it Philosophy), must be conceived of as including art, morality and religion. But to admit that the highest form of experience must be one in which somehow these three 1 Bradley, p. 162 foU. ; cp. McTaggart, p. 208 foil. 2 Jowett thought he failed : " The problem of ar)6(ia npaKriKrj, truth idealised and set in action, he does not seeni to me to have solved ; the Gospel of St. John does " (Life and Letters, vol. i., p. 92).