Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/361

 THE ABSUM'TK OK HK<; KU  ISM. 847 There must be, however, something of positive value back of the Hegelian's contention, and I think it is possible to hat this is if we try for a moment to think of the world as a whole of connected activities. My act, as the expression of my life, is not an isolated fact which is mine alone, but at the same time that it is mine, it has a meaning for the whole ; and so there is a sense in which it is perfectly true that, in each particular conscious act, the entire universe is expressing itself. This, I say, is true, and I think it is of very great importance, as against any extreme individualism. But it requires a good deal of explanation in order to serve as an ultimate statement. In the first place, when we speak of an act, do we mean the physical movement? or the conscious intention to perform it, and conscious realisation of its accomplishment and meaning? or do we propose to identify the two ? In accordance with the notion of common sense, which I have contended is essentially true, the act as physical, and the act as a conscious experience, are two distinct things, however closely they may be connected. The first is a movement in the outer world, of which I get a knowledge through the senses, just as any one else might do, 1 and which is a fact other than the consciousness through which I apprehend it. The act as a conscious experience, on the contrary, which includes my knowledge of the physical act not the physical act itself as only an element, and usually a minor element, in its own make-up, is solely my consciousness. I am aware of it with an immediateness which no one else possibly can be ; others cannot perceive it even, through the senses, but must learn about it, if at all, only indirectly, by interpreting some bodily movement of mine. Now, if the physical world be regarded, in its reality, as a conscious unitary experience, this physical act is, directly, an element in such an experience. It is now, however, no longer a single act, as it purports to be for our experience, but only an infinitesimal part of the whole world activity at some particular moment ; and accordingly, it there is anything which can be explained as a function of a world experience, it would be this entire world activity, not what we know as the act of a particular self. But I think it would be granted 1 There are, of course, certain muscular sensations which only I myself can feel, and the Hegelian appears to identify these sensations which accompany the movement with the movement itself (see Ritchie, /'A/7. Rev., vol. iii., p. 19). From the natural standpoint, however, even these sensations are nothing but effects of the movement, while in the matter of visual and tactual sensations we are entirelii on an equality, as regards the knowledge of our movements, with any one el-'-.