Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/80

 66 HOWARD V. KNOX : exist only for us, in whom the intellectual principle realises itself under special conditions, not in the world as it is in itself or for a perfect intelligence." 1 II. Whatever may be the value of the conclusion which Green finally reaches, the one conspicuous thing about it is the sharp line therein drawn between the eternal object of thought and the temporally conditioned ' states of con- sciousness ' in which that object is progressively revealed to us. In view of this, the least we can ask of Green is that he should make it perfectly clear that his argument as to the ideality of nature is concerned with nature as such ; and not in any way with the content of consciousness under that aspect in which it falls within the special province of the psychologist. And Green admits the justice of this demand.' 2 But even without laying any special stress on that ad- mission one might be apt to suppose that the ambiguity which, on his own theory, " necessarily attends " such terms as "consciousness," must needs entail a corresponding dis- crimination in the application thereof. When, however, we come to examine Green's argument, we find that he is too intent on getting rid of " the antithesis between the real and the work of the mind " to pay particular heed to the sense in which he uses the words. Hence it comes to pass that, to pave the way (as he ex- pressly states) for the inquiry whether the real is the work of the mind, 3 Green asserts that " the work of the mind is real" on the ground that even a mistaken belief " has its own reality. It has its history, its place in the development of a man's mind, its causes and effects ; and, as so determined, it is as real as anything else." 4 In this passage the reality of thought is explicitly made to rest on the fact that thought is in time. Surely then, if all 1 Op. cit., 43. (The italics are mine.) 2 " If thought and reality are to be identified, if the statement that God is thought is to be more than a presumptuous paradox, thought must be other than the discursive activity exhibited in our inferences and analyses, other than a particular mode of consciousness which excludes from itself feeling and will. ... As a follower of Hegel he (Dr. Caird) must and does hold that the objective world, in its actual totality, is thought, and that the processes of our intelligence are but reflexions of that real thought under the conditions of a limited animal nature. But he does not sustain himself at this point of view. It may be that no one can, but till it is done our idealism, though we may wish it to be ' absolute,' remains merely ' subjective ' " ( Works, iii., 142-43). 3 Prolegomena to Ethics, 24. * Op. cit., 22.