Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/221

 PROF. Ml'NSTKKHKBQ AS CRITIC OF CATEGORIES. 207 l>ring us to anything which we can, attaching a definite meaning to the words, call absolute intelligence, it does bring us to something of which we appear to have direct and simple consciousness as final and irresoluble. This is the act of volition, an act not known as psychological object, as a process of this or that individual, but as a final reality for which all else is, ' the bearer of all science and thought '. For those who hold that it is in the consciousness of practical rather than theoretical activity that we must look for the real meaning of reality, the term existence imports to be object or end for the will, just as for the Hegelian it signifies to be object for intelligence. It is, therefore, to mistake what is but of a secondary nature, the outcome of abstraction, for final reality, to speak of either will or in- telligence as existing. They indicate, do such names, not anything in the object world, but what makes the object world possible. In his recent volume of essays on Psy- chology and Life, Prof. Miinsterberg puts very clearly the point of view of one who finds in what he calls will rather than intelligence ultimate reality. It is worth while to quote on this point a few sentences from his book: " We have asked the question whether the psychical objects or the physical objects, or both, represent the last reality ; we say that dualistic realism and materialism de- cided for the last two interpretations, while psychology voted for the first. It seems that one of these three decisions must be correct, and here is the great misunderstanding. No, all three are equally wrong and worthless ; a fourth alone is right, which says that neither the physical objects nor the psychical objects represent reality, but both are ideal constructions of the subject, both deduced from the reality which is no physical object, no psychical object, and even no existing object at all, as the very conception of an existing object means a transformation of the reality. .Such trans- formation has its purpose for our thoughts, and is logically valuable, and therefore it represents scientific truth ; but this truth nevertheless does not reach the reality of the untransformed life " (p. 19). He goes on a little later to explain that reality in the final meaning of the word signi- fies something quite different from existence: "Existence of an object means that it is an object of mere passive per- ception ; in real life there is no passive perception but only active appreciation, and to think anything as object of perception only means a transmutation by which reality evaporates. Whatever is thought of as existing cannot have a reality. Our real will does not exist, either as a substance