Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/371

 THE OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE. 359 II. We have found, in agreement with Transcendentalism, that the experiencing subject must be the sentient agent, the thinker, and therewith itself the veritable forger of the momentarily lapsing particulars of thought. There is no- thing wholly unexperienced and, consequently, wholly un- synthetised and unrecognised in consciousness. To be humanly conscious is to perceive and to conceive, and the things and relations we thus perceive and conceive are through-and-through our own percepts and concepts. More- over, the transitory conscious phenomena are somehow, in spite of their successive evanescence, retained by the experi- encing subject, and go to form our consolidated memory, our logical totality of knowledge, or whatever name we may give to that systematised accumulation of previous experience into which are taken up all casual conscious occurrences. This grand sweep of power on the part of the experiencing subject means really that it is all-efficient, so far as the creation and disposition of its own conscious phenomena are concerned. But and here we have again to corroborate the teaching of Transcendentalism the real significance of all experience, that, namely, which constitutes its truth, must be dependent on its correspondence with a reality not originated by itself. From this fundamental accord of Transcendentalism and Naturalism, as regards the all-efficiency of the subject in the creation of its world of consciousness, and the dependence for truth of its experience on something not itself, from this substantial accord all less thoroughgoing philosophies find themselves excluded. Our conflict the most momentous of all human conflicts turns altogether on the veritable nature of the experiencing subject, and on the kind of reality which experience signifies. The most striking contrast between the nature of the subject of our mental phenomena as conceived by Trans- cendentalism, and of its nature as conceived by Naturalism, is to be found in the fact that to Transcendent alists nothing of their subject of mental phenomena can ever appear in this experienced world of ours ; whilst to the Naturalistic thinker his bearer of mental phenomena, the living organism, is constantly making its appearance among the other con- figurations of nature. Everything hypostatised by Trans- cendentalism and this amounts to all the powers of our being remains for ever hidden from our view, never becomes manifest in phenomenal existence as an abiding appearance