Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/236

Rh ing itself in view of a system of conscious subjects, embraces in its living process of self-definition for every self the whole world of other selves, and therein the Supreme Self, or God, and is thus strictly and truly personal, — is in the last analysis that order of intelligence which we call a Conscience.

It is plain, of course, that any proof of this depends upon the validity of the doctrine of a priori cognition; only by our proved possession of such cognition can there be any evidence that we are self-active realities. It is in this reference noteworthy, therefore, that Lange, as defender of agnosticism, sees he cannot afford to admit the theory upon which alone cognition strictly a priori can be established. Of course, to determine that its principles are indeed underived from its sensible objects, consciousness must be capable of an act in which it extricates itself from its world of things, and contemplates its cognitive equipment strictly per se, apart from actual application to objects; an act, accordingly, which transcends experience, and was consequently named by Kant “transcendental reflexion”; an act, moreover, which presupposes the power not only of using the apparatus of judgment upon objects that are not sensible at all, but of making judgments absolutely valid, since the decision that anything is organic in us must be a decision upon our real nature — our nature as it appears to the