Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/259

240 The disciples of the new definition I have already called, as they appear at the present day, Critical Rationalists. As a fact, they are critical rather than dogmatic, but they are rather seldom of the extreme Left. Very often they belong to what one might venture to call the left centre of the parliament of thought, — to the moderate Liberals of doctrinal discussion, although the converse of this proposition does not hold true. For there are moderate liberals who are either mystics or constructive idealists.

The characteristics of the ontology of our critical rationalists can now easily be summed up. The Real for the metaphysical Realist, in case he attempts to be thoroughgoing, has to be, if anything, the Independent Individual, for, since it is beyond all our ideal determinations, it has to be in itself absolutely determinate. That the controversy of Aristotle with Plato proved. The Platonic Ideas, as universals, early perished from among the entities of the realistic world, to transmigrate, as it were, to this new realm, or also to reappear, with their own immortal vitality, in that realm of genuine Idealism which we shall later explore. The One Being of the mystic is as One, an Individual, although, as the ineffable goal of all desire, it enjoys all the advantages of a Universal, and is indifferent to all our distinctions. But the present, the Third Conception of Being, has amongst all the four conceptions the unique character that it alone, so far as it has more fully come to understand itself, consciously attempts to define the Real as explicitly and only the Universal.

Those who have imagined that the controversy about the