Page:Philosophical Review Volume 5.djvu/339

323 into nature, epistemological logic denies that there can be a reality independent of consciousness, and insists that all determination of the individual must be referred to the transcendental consciousness, which we are compelled to postulate. In the light of this theory, the economic conditions of society can be called 'unconscious' only in one of two senses: (1) that they are not content of the individual mind which is influenced by them (in which case, we cannot explain the fact of influence); or (2) that they are present in the consciousness of the individual, but are at first only dimly recognized. As these are the only two senses in which we can understand the term 'unconscious,' it is evident that the assumption of really unconscious mental activity cannot be allowed.

The great source of reflective Pessimism is the contradiction between the phenomena of nature, as they actually are, and the craving of the heart to believe that behind nature there is a spirit whose expression nature is. Now there are two stages of recovery by which we may emerge from the pessimistic view of things. The first stage is reached when we deny that there is any spiritual being which is revealed in nature. The fact of evil loses all its haunting and perplexing significance as soon as the mind attacks the separate instances of it, and ceases to trouble itself about their derivation from a single Power. As the contradiction which gave rise to the pessimistic view has disappeared, the individual can go through life contentedly taking things as they come, for it is a remarkable fact that suffering and hardship usually serve to give a keener zest to life. The second stage is attained when we deny, not that there is a divine spirit in the universe, but that it is adequately revealed in nature. We have a right to believe that the physical order is only a partial order; we have a right to supplement it by an unseen spiritual order, if only thereby life may seem to us better worth living again. This method of procedure may seem very 'unscientific,' but the scientist can bring nothing positive against it. Whatever else be certain, this at least is sure, that the world of our present natural knowledge is enveloped in a larger world of some sort, of whose residual properties we at present can frame no definite idea. And it is sheer dogmatic folly to say that with the forces which the hidden world may contain the mystical side of our nature can have no connection. That the world of physics is probably not absolute, the converging multitude