Page:W. H. Chamberlin 1919, The Study of Philosophy.djvu/6

4 And so the awareness of any object, when that awareness is considered apart from its conditioning interest is abstract. It is no more a reality independent of an interest, than is the flavor of an apple independent of an apple. The concreter reality is the interest, and the awareness of objects generated by the interest is a quality of the interest.

But the awareness of any object is not only dependent upon an interest. It is at the same time dependent upon a second reality, a reality which is the objective support of both the awareness and its conditioning interest. Thus, with reference to this still concreter reality, the awareness of objects is doubly abstract, depending both upon our subjective interests and upon an objective reality, a reality which supports both these subjective interests and the awareness of objects which depend upon them. With either the subjective interest or the objective support lacking, the awareness of any object would not exist; it is at one and the same time a quality or aspect of both.

Most of the sciences deal with objects without needing for their purposes to investigate either the subjective or the objective conditions of our awareness of objects. It is sufficient that the objects exist and that uniformities in their ways of appearing can be discovered. In describing objects, then, awareness or cognitive aspects of them are commonly emphasized and there is a strong tendency to regard them as the most fundamental, the concretest realities, realities upon which both interests and objective support are dependent qualities. The true order of dependence is thus-reversed. The physchological [sic] sciences consider carefully our interests, the subjective support of our awareness of objects, and do not commonly investigate the nature of the reality which supports our experience of objects.

Philosophy, the science of the world-whole, can, for its purpose of understanding our lives and their conditioning environment, or the concreter whole of which they are a part, ignore neither, it must be the concretest science of all; although one in persisting in this effort to view things concretely must constantly oppose strong customary tendencies, both in himself as he thinks and in others, to regard abstract or dependent aspects of life as the truly concrete because they are simple, easily reacted to, and, as a matter of historic development, came first to be understood and obvious.

In view of the fact that our interests are aspects of this concretest reality, aspects to which the awareness of objects is subordinate, and in view of the further fact that our interests are correlated with or confluent with the objective support of our experience of things to form this concretest reality, the suggestion becomes strong that a study of interests may be a happy