Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/18

2 another. Motion in the form of life and mind is self-motion, according to Plato; but, according to Aristotle, life and mind are unmoved producers of movement. Dependent being presupposes independent being as its source and producer. Deny the existence of an independent being and you deny the existence of all that depends on it. The existence of the dependent being is contingent, and may or may not be, but if it is, then the independent being on which it depends must be.

What differences in nature are necessarily implied between dependent and independent beings? It is evident that the independent being contains the explanation of the dependent being: it is its origin, shaper, and mover. It causes it to begin, and to change, and to cease. Fastening the attention of the mind upon these two orders of being, the dependent and the independent, two general characteristics become obvious as essential to describe them. Everything that exists is either determined or made what it is by itself or by some other being. It is clear that the characteristic of dependent being is found in the fact that something else determines or makes it to be what it is. That which determines itself is independent because it possesses existence derived only from itself.

These two orders of being, the self-determined and the determined-through-another, must both exist if dependent being exists.

Independent or self-determined being must be both cause and effect, or causa sui—the cause of its own determinations. It must, too, have the power of modifying its determinations. Its nature, then, must be that of a self as pure subject, which is the general possibility of all determinations, and a self as object, which realizes some or all of those determinations. These traits of character are identified by Plato, Aristotle, and their competent disciples as the phases of subject and object in conscious being. Independent being must have the form of mind; or it must be conscious being. The form of any total or whole being—the form of all independent being, is that of intelligent personality.