Page:Philosophical Review Volume 21.djvu/505

487 love will modify our deeds in respect to such matters as time, place, and circumstance of performance, frequency or infrequency of action, together with abstention on occasion. The 'goods' of life are but the tools of love. Equality of opportunity is of real value only as opportunity is ethically interpreted and improved. The ultimate rationale of 'love' appears to be connected with the view that finite selves are dependent upon a common ground alike for their existence and apparent independence, as for the possibility of their interaction. The proper ethical union of men requires not only a metaphysics for its justification, but a religion for its realization.

The forms of thought in Plato have a two-fold aspect: (1) centers of extended connection, (2) bridges and ways which lead to those possible connections and to unification. Reminiscence is a bridge from plurality to unity, from werden to sein, and is thus the ground of the possibility of transition of thought from the unconscious to consciousness. If the question be raised as to the possibility of error, the answer is, it is not possible on the basis of rationalism, but only from the psychological point of view, where the distinction is made between perception and the idea of reminiscence, and the possibility of error lies in the relation between these. Here similarity is the criterion of determination. But to use this criterion is to think, and in this way, Platonism becomes closely related to Hegelianism. Reminiscence is, therefore, immanent in every act of the soul as the organizing element, and is connected with the doctrine of ideas. Knowledge consists of right opinions united by reminiscence, and hence thought leads from the subjectivity of right opinion to the reality of the idea and thus to the security of knowledge. But similarity is not only a function, it is also a content of experience. Whoever compares two things does so as if he applied the concept of similarity to the two things compared, even though he cannot comprehend this concept as such. Hence similarity becomes identity. But reminiscence is also a developing notion. It is the temporal rememberance of a non-temporal thing, and signifies the endlessness of thought. It is the bond which, conscious of itself and its own activity, takes up its past and links it with the future. Memory is a passive principle which continues the past and itself. Reminiscence is the active principle corresponding to memory. It arranges the contents of memory in an orderly way. It first appears in sense perception as the awakener of desire but the purifying activity of reminiscence transforms the impure into the pure. Memory causes us to live again psychic experiences. Reminiscence is the starting point for the transformation of the soul which pure thought makes possible for the philosopher.

The writer of this article undertakes to show that a satisfactory theory of knowledge must be at once realistic, phenomenalistic, and individualistic