Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/280

268 Judging the individual by his acts, we may conventionally use the terms in reference to the individual himself. Further, we may also apply them to the object of experience considered in relation to the subject, thus introducing the categories of value. The latter, being categories, are necessarily concerned with the form of facts, thus coming within the scope of philosophy even as limited by the new realists. Moreover, even in application to the acts of the individual, the terms 'good' and 'bad' might be taken to refer to the form of the acts. For example, we might define 'good' as the class of all acts which have as their motive the benefit of others. In any case 'good' and 'bad' are general characterizations, and it is the business of philosophy to define their meaning precisely, and to determine their application.

The ignoration of the subject also leads to the consequence that the results of the scientific method are purely descriptive and not explanatory. It does not seek the ground of the object of experience. Men have always felt that there must be such a ground, regarding sensations, per se, as flimsy and ever-changing manifestations of a more substantial reality. In dealing with sense experience, we find it easy to distinguish and to compare, and generally to construct a complicated network of terms and relations. The facility with which we perform such conceptual gymnastics tends to make us lose sight of the fact that the object of experience, as given, is an indivisible unity. When we turn to the subject, however, the case is different. We come down to bedrock almost at once. Any attempt to analyze the subject into parts and relations, at once shows the futility of regarding it in any other light than as a single unity. In the case of the individual subject, we are therefore concerned with content rather than with form. We find in it a substantiality which the object of experience seems to lack, for we are ourselves individual subjects of experience. We are thus led, with pluralism, to look for the ground of the object of experience in the activity of individuals differing only in degree from ourselves. Our own existence is for us the central fact of the Universe, and any attempt to limit philosophy to enquiry into matters where the existence of the subject may be safely ignored, on the ground