Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/400

 386 H. w. CARB: consciousness at any moment. Experience is a whole and the nature of a part can only be fully revealed in its relation to the whole. Apart from its relation to an ideal whole any reality the moment of experience may seem to possess is a pure abstraction. Mr. Hodgson's attitude towards this view of experience is plainly expressed and is best exemplified in his charge against Hegel. The Hegelian system rests, he tells us, on an assumption and that assumption is false. Hegel assumed that thought is agency. This charge is so charac- teristic and throws so much light on Mr. Hodgson's central conception that it is worth while to examine it carefully. The criticism that the Hegelian System is vitiated by the assumption that thought is agency is from Mr. Hodgson's standpoint obvious and just, but from the Hegelian stand- point it is simply irrelevant. The difference is a fundamental difference of standpoint not an imagined failure on the part of Hegel to appreciate an obvious distinction. If Hegel has vitiated his system with an assumption it is a far larger and more important one than that thought is agency, it is not an assumption within experience to be corrected by obser- vation but an assumption about the universe, not about the part but about the whole. It is the assumption of the ultimate rationality of the universe expressed in the saying : " the actual is rational and the rational is actual ". What then is the distinction between thought and agency ? In Mr. Hodgson's analysis it is clear and it is essential. Con- sciousness as a knowing, or experience per se, is mere process content, consciousness as an existent is an object known, discerned by thought not produced by it, and as object known its existence implies that it is part of an order of real conditioning, and agency lies in the real conditions of the existent consciousness, not in the thought that thinks it. I can see no reason why any Hegelian is bound to find this account inconsistent with his theory. No one will, I think, deny that a Hegelian may hold the Newtonian theory of physical force, notwithstanding that Hegel himself thought it nonsense, or the physiological hypothesis in psychology. The crux of the problem lies deeper, it is the question, are we -to regard agency as a true other to thought or is there an underlying identity ? Agency with Mr. Hodgson is otherness to thought and herein lies the difference of stand- point. To the Hegelian knowledge is valid because beneath the distinction of knowledge and object of knowledge lies an identity. It is logical necessity not subjective analysis or scientific research that must justify or fail to justify the Hegelian assumption.