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CHAPTER VI.

THE ULTIMATE REALITIES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.

26. Definition.

By ultimate realities I mean the ultimate kinds or genera of reality which are known in intuition and designated by a common name, and are the objects of human thought. It is conceivable that all the elemental realities known in intuition may be ascertained and named. If this should be done we should have before us and know by name all the ultimate genera or kinds of reality of which it is possible to have knowledge. We may call them for short the ultimate or fundamental realities, and our ideas of them the ultimate or fundamental ideas of knowledge.

Aristotle attempted a classification of the ultimate genera of reality, and called them Categories. Kant, however, has used this word to denote the Root-notions (Stammbegriffe) of the understanding, the pure forms of thought given by the mind itself. Since his day the word has retained the meaning in which Kant used it. Some other word, therefore, must be used to denote the ultimate genera of reality.

27. Matter and Form.

Kant calls the particular reality known in perceptive intuition the "matter" of thought or knowledge; the rational truths and laws which declare its relation to the universal, and which are known in rational intuition, he called the "forms" of knowledge or thought. It has been objected that the latter, as "forms of thought," can have no objective reality; and it has come to pass that any use of the terms matter and forms of thought at once awakens the suspicion that the writer using them denies the reality of knowledge. But in their true significance they carry in them no suggestion of the unreality of knowledge. The "matter" of knowledge is the particular realities known in presentative intuition; its "form" is the truth and laws which express their relation to the universal. Sense-perception and self-consciousness know a par. ticular being in its particular modes of existence. Reason knows the same in its relations to the universal. The "matter" of my knowledge of power is power as I know it in some particular exertion of it; its

"form" is the rational principle that every beginning or change of existence must have a cause. The "matter" of my knowledge of space is extension in its three dimensions; its "form," in which Reason knows it, is the metaphysical principle that space is continuous, immovable within itself and unlimited, and the mathematical principles of geometry. When this true conception has been attained, the controversy about the "matter" and "form" of knowledge passes away, and with it the doubt which it has thrown on the reality of knowledge. The necessary forms of thought are also the forms of things. They are forms of things because originally and eternally they are archetypal in the supreme Reason.

Plato's "ideas" were at once conceptions of the mind and forms or archetypes of things. When we grasp the fact that in intuition we have positive knowledge of self and external being and of universal principles of reason, we necessarily come to the Platonic position that the necessary forms of thought are the forms of things; we grasp in its true significance the principle which has given to Platonism its perennial life, that the truths of reason are at once the laws of thought and the archetypal norms of all existence.

It is the error of Kant that space and time, which he calls forms of sense, and reality, substance, cause, existence and other categories of the understanding, are pure subjective forms of thought, which the mind must necessarily put under phenomena in apprehending them. But we now see that the necessary forms of thought are simply the universal norms or principles of reason; and that these must be the norms or principles regulative not of thought only, but of all existence; because, if not so, reason is false in its constituent elements; what we have taken for reason, the organ of truth, is found to be unreason and an organ of falsehood; and rationality and knowledge are no more.

We return now to the true position. Perceptive intuition is the knowledge of some particular being in some particular mode of existence. Rational intuition is the knowledge of the rational norms of all existence. By reason we know the particular reality as related to truth that is universal, necessary and unchanging, and through this to Reason unconditioned and supreme.

28. Classification.

The Ultimate Realities are of two classes, distinguished by their origin; each of these classes must be subdivided into two:—

Class I.

Intuition :

1. Being.

Ultimate Realities primarily known in Presentative

2. Modes of the Existence of Being.

Class II. Ultimate Realities primarily known in Rational Intuition: 1. Norms or Standards of Reason:- The True, The Right, The Perfect and The Good; or Truth, Law, Perfection and Good.

2. The Absolute.

I mean by "the good" that which Reason estimates by its standards of Truth, Right and Perfection, as having worth, or as worthy of the pursuit, possession and enjoyment of a rational being.

The Absolute is the unconditioned and all-conditioning Being, on which finite beings in all the modes of their existence depend, and in which the norms or standards of Reason are eternal. The intuition of Reason that Absolute being must exist, is a truth. As such it belongs with the True, and is, like every other necessary truth, a law of thought and a norm or standard of judgment. But this intuition opens to us the knowledge of the Absolute or Unconditioned. This properly stands by itself in the classification as the last of all the ultimate realities.

*

Aristotle classifies the genera of reality in ten categories; Being, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Place, Time, Position, Possession, Action, Passion. This is evidently incomplete; and the same may be said of all attempts to complete it. But it was begun on the right principle. His categories are not logical predicates of general notions, but realities of concrete being. The ultimate realities are not found by the methods of abstract thought and formal logic, but by those of concrete or realistic thought attending to concrete beings. Kant, on the contrary, develops his categories from the twelve logical functions of possible judgments, and proceeds throughout to logical products rather than to concrete realities. The result is a grand system of what thought must be, empty of all content of known being.

I do not claim that the classification which I present is complete and open to no objection. I present it only as a classification which I have found helpful to use in attempting to set forth the reality, extent and limitations of human knowledge.

It will be noticed that, according to this classification, knowledge begins as knowledge of particular beings in their several modes of existence, proceeds to the knowledge of them in their relations to the universal principles of reason, and issues in the knowledge of absolute being; this is the order of knowing and thinking. On the other hand, in the order of dependence, the Absolute Being is first, as the ultimate ground of the existence of all particular beings and of the possibility of their unity as a universe. In the Absolute Being all truth, law, perfection and worth are archetypal and eternal, and of these the universe of finite things is the ever progressive expression and realization. * Ουσία, ποσόν, ποιόν, πρός τι, που, ποτέ, κεῖσθαι, ἔχειν, ποιειν, πάσχειν. Topica I. 9. Organon I. Κατηγορίας.

CHAPTER VII.

ULTIMATE REALITIES PRIMARILY KNOWN IN PERCEPTIVE OR PRESENTATIVE INTUITION: BEING AND ITS

MODES OF EXISTENCE.

29. Being.

I. Being is known immediately in presentative intuition and can be defined or described only by referring every man to his own consciousness of it.

A man knows being in his consciousness of himself as existing. The whole idea of being is given in that consciousness. To say I think, is the same as to say, It is I who think. I think, I act, I feel, every affirmation which a man can make of himself carries in it the affirmation, I am; and, without the I am, it is void of all significance and reality. It is here that he has the knowledge of being.

We also have knowledge of being in sense-perception. In one and the same act I know the outward object and myself. And of each I have positive knowledge. I know myself not as a mere negation of the outward object but as positively known being; in this positive knowledge I affirm, I am. I know my own being in all its fullness of life, intelligence and power. I know the outward object, not merely negatively as not-me, but positively; my own body posited in and occupying space, and other bodies impinging on my organism or resisting my energy.

It is impossible to think

Because being is known intuitively it cannot be defined, but can be known only in one's own consciousness of it. We know that a thought, an action, a feeling, a motion is not a being. these as beings. We refer the thought to a thinker, the action to an agent, the feeling and the motion to a being that feels and moves. But we cannot define what a being is; we know what it is in the consciousness of self and the perception of bodies.

Having attained in perceptive intuition the idea of being, we group together all realities known as beings, whether persons or things, in one class and call them beings. And this is the first of the ultimate realities known in perceptive intuition.

II. Being, as known in perceptive intuition, is a particular or determinate being existing in particular properties or attributes.

Being ex-ists (ex-sisto); it stands out in view. It exists or stands out to our knowledge in various qualities or powers; also as one or many; as occupying space or persisting in time; as under limitation; and as in relation. These may be called attributes of being as known in perceptive intuition; and, since in these the being ex-ists, they may be called modes of existence.

III. Being, known by perceptive intuition as existing in various modes, is known by the Reason in rational intuition in the "forms" of its universal principles and laws and in accordance with its unchanging standards or norms.

We know by rational intuition that every quality, attribute or phenomenon is a quality, attribute or phenomenon of a being. There can be no thought without a thinker, no action without an agent, no motion without something that moves, no beginning or change without a cause, no phenomenon without a being that appears in it as well as a being to whom it appears, no truth without a mind to know it.

Conversely, we know by rational intuition that every being exists in some attributes or properties. And this is only saying that every being ex-ists. There can be no being without attributes; there can be no being without power of some kind; and this is only saying there cannot be a being that does not exist. If we attempt to think of Being without attributes, a substance stripped of all properties, we have nothing left. Not only is nothing left, but our thought issues in the contradiction that Being is the same with Nothing. And this is the "Thing in itself” out of all relation to our faculties. It is not an unknowable which we may some time come to know; it is not Nothing, as the mere denial of being; it is the symbol of a hopeless contradiction at the root of all knowledge.

Thus we know being in its deepest reality and significance. While perceptive intuition gives us particular beings existing in particular modes, rational intuition shows us that this being is real being as Reason knows it in its relations to the universal. Thought cannot pass behind this to think of anything more real. Beyond being, as presentative and rational intuition know it, is nullity, into which thought cannot enter nor intuition glance.

IV. Being, in its whole reality as substance and quality, agent and action, is presented in presentative intuition. The reality presented in intuition we apprehend in thought as substance and quality, agent and action; but the reality thus apprehended is given in the intuition. It is so apprehended in thought because it is so in reality. Rational intuition adds that being, thus known, is real being, as reason in the light of

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