Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/272

256 of the "arguments for the existence of God" would be in order here, but out of proportion. Where then shall we begin? Rather where shall we not begin? For every bit of experience and every act of mind and will implicitly contains this First Principle. Let us begin with the simplest form of our consciousness and rise into that self-consciousness which is the magic and universally elastic and yet adamantine circle which embraces all reality. Even Professor Huxley makes the confession for science "that all the phenomena of nature are, in their ultimate analysis, known to us only as facts of consciousness."

(a) The simplest phase of consciousness is that of indefinite otherness which becomes qualified into something distinct and separate from the self. Qualified sensations run into masses. We have a quantity of existence. Here we are in the realm of common sense, which sees definite isolated things. But it sees them in infinite time under the forms of quality and quantity. If we stop at this stage we only have a chaos of atoms in an empty void. But the mind which has already thrown its unifying power over isolated transient sensations to give us these atoms and the void, will not stop here.

(b) After quantifying sensations in definite aggregates, it goes on to distinguish, relate, and correlate them. Here the environing relations become the chief object of interest. Nothing in the world is single. Endless series of relations embrace and constitute anew what was at first separate and distinct. Environment is the fate which submerges isolated things. These relationing conditions are named ground, force, law, substance and properties, cause and effect, and finally reciprocity. These are categories or thought-forms through which the mind knows things together. They are the categories which science uses in its work of correlating endlessly diverse phenomena into system. Each thing is, only as it is determined by others as its cause. It is the realm of impersonal law, or of pantheistic matter, substance or force.

(c) But this is not ultimate. Thought still demands an Urgrund of this realm of relations. It demands a lawgiver for the law. It passes from causality to causa sui. That is, relativity demands