Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/502



a former article an attempt was made to show (1) that there can be no absolute opposition between reality as it is in itself and reality as it is for thought, and (2) that the exclusion of reality from the time-process converts the time-process into an illusion, while at the same time it makes reality itself unthinkable, and therefore unreal. In support of the former proposition it was urged that we cannot, as Mr. Bradley seems to do, separate the ‘what’ from the ‘that,’ and thus oppose the ideal to the real. The ideal is the only real of which we can have any knowledge; in other words, reality is constituted for us in the continuous process by which it is determined as a thought reality. Judgment we must conceive, not as broken up into separate judgments, but as a single living self-conscious process, in which the real constitution of the world is revealed in its differentiation and integration.

To this view an objection may be raised, which may be dealt with here. It was admitted that the reality which is thought by us, and which alone we know, is not reality in its completeness, i.e., reality in the fullness of its detail; and it may obviously be objected that, since our knowledge is not complete, we have no guarantee that a further extension of knowledge would be in harmony with what we at present affirm to be reality. In answer to this objection I have already suggested that it ultimately rests upon the assumption that reality may be unintelligible, or, what is the same thing at bottom, that our intelligence may be incompetent to grasp reality. Such an assumption seems to me to be self-contradictory, since the only basis upon which it can be claimed that reality may be in its ultimate nature unintelligible must be that very intelligence the impotence of which is virtually assumed. To this general