Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/275

 .rosiAH ROYCE, The World and the Iiulioidual. we have seen, because in fact he is denning a very fascinating and a highly conscious contrast-effect a contrast-effect that, far from being itself anything absolute, or actually unknown and ineffable, is a constantly present character of our human type of finite consciousness. As a fact, our thinking is a search for a goal that is conceived at once as rationally satisfying and as theoretically true. And this goal we conceive as real precisely in so far as we consciously pursue it, and mean something by th<i pursuit. But now this goal, since it is not present to us, in our finite form of consciousness, is first conceived by contrast with the process of this pursuit. So far indeed we conceive it negatively " (p. 180). ..." But when the mystic, defining his goal wholly in negative terms, lays stress upon the contrast as simply absolute, he finds that so far his Absolute is defined as nothing but the absence of finitude, and so as apparently equivalent to nothing at all, since all definite contents are for us so far finite, and since the absence of finitude is for us the absence of contents " (p. 181). Mysticism then must be amended by a recognition that our finite life is no more mere illusion than it is absolute reality. It is too unreal to do more than lead us to something beyond itself, but if it can do even this, it cannot be absolutely unreal. The fifth lecture gives us the transition to the Third Concep- tion of Eeality. If Bealism, while giving up the hopeless task of defining the Beal as absolutely independent of knowledge, wishes still to emphasise the fact that it is outside my particular know- ledge, and that my ideas must conform to it, it is led to the view that the Beal is that " which, if known, is found giving to ideas their validity, that to which ideas ought to correspond " (p. 201). And, again, the mystic only reached his conception of the Absolute by setting aside our finite experiences as contradictory, and not conforming to the ideal of knowledge. It would seem to follow then that true Being resides in the Validity of Ideas. The next lecture begins by tracing the conception of Being as Validity in the philosophies of Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant. The question then arises: " What is a valid or a determinately possible experience at the moment when it is supposed to be only possible ? What is a valid truth at the moment when no one verifies its validity ? " (p. 260). Actual experience is always individual. But merely valid truths appear as mere universals. Can this Third Conception recognise and accept this difference? The seventh lecture considers " the Internal and External meaning of Ideas," and in it Dr. Boyce's own views begin to come to the front. To begin with, he takes the definition of Truth as " that about which we judge ". All judgments, he holds, assert something about a real world. The assertion of hypothetical judgments is a negative one. " In general, the judg- ment, ' If A is B, C is D,' can be interpreted as meaning that there are, in the world of valid objects, no real cases where, at once, A is B, while at the same time C is nevertheless not D "