Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/234

Rh greater fulness from remoter and remoter confines, to be shed forth again, with increase, and farther and farther.

Consciousness and universe are in truth but two names for the same single and indissoluble Fact, named in the one case as if from within it, and in the other as if from without. Not that in every conscious focus all the contents of this universe are at any temporal moment imaged with the same clearness or reflected forth with the same energy as in every other; only that, dim or bright, strong or feeble, confused or distinct, the same Whole is in somewise always there. Nor is it to be overlooked, that, to the fulfilment of each mind’s universe-consciousness, it is essential that the consciousness be not simply a private but a social, an historic, and, in fact, an immortal consciousness.

The satisfactory and convincing grounds for this conception, it is not in place to enter upon here with any detail. Let it for the occasion be enough to say that the interpretation of the facts of ordinary consciousness into their implying this Social Universal might be the business and achievement of a genuine and completed Critique of Reason. Such a critique would proceed to the adequate explanation not only of the a priori categories, of which since