Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/169

 its realization and regarded as a leading factor in conscious activity. These new problems cannot be treated here at length; but I think I ought not to leave them out entirely, and I shall touch upon them slightly in some concluding remarks on Russian conceptions of consciousness as a whole and on their realization in Russian life.

Every thought which has a pretence to knowledge must be unified knowledge; not merely philosophy but every manifestation of science and learning aims more or less at such an end and tries to attain it in different ways.

This principle of unity of thought must be distinguished from the process of unification; it can be realized by different factors or modes of thought.

Two of these, which, in the main, do not exclude one another, deserve, perhaps, some attention: I mean intuitive and discursive thought. Intuitive thought is a spontaneous, creative and inventive power. Discursive thought is a controlling, methodic and orderly power. They can be associated in one person, and this combination is perhaps one of the most pregnant characteristics of genius; but they can be dissociated and represented by different persons belonging to the same or to different nations.

One of the best writers on the history of modern science has made an attempt to apply this distinction to different types of modern European thought: he identified two logically different factors or modes of