Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901).djvu/35

10 "forms of consciousness," than our human type, as at least possible. By contrast with such ideally definable higher types of insight we constantly become aware of our own limitations as human seekers for truth. We shall, accordingly, try to characterize in general terms some of the most marked limitations and powers of man's intellect. As we do so we shall be led to state the first principles of a theory of the Organization of Human Experience. Kant's problem of the Categories, which determine in what way we conceive the objects of human knowledge, and which also, in giving form to our experience, define the unity that we ascribe to Nature and to our own life, is one that we can only touch upon very briefly. But so far as our time permits, we must outline our view as to the essential forms in terms of which we conceive concrete facts and their connections. Upon the basis of the general theory of human knowledge thus broadly sketched, we shall next pass to a study of the questions offered to our scrutiny by Nature, when viewed in its relation to Man. Here our main purpose shall be to apply our general idealistic doctrine, concerning what is meant by Reality in general, to the problem as to the sense in which Nature and Man are real.

In case of Nature we have to deal with a realm whose material seeming, whose unchanging laws, and whose apparent indifference to all individual interests, and to all ethical ideals, constitute a formidable obstacle in the way of every interpretation of Reality in the interest of the religious consciousness. It will be our task to scrutinize the reasons that make Nature wear, to our vision, this forbidding aspect. Hereby we shall be led especially to consider