[35]. For otherwise the facts which lay outside the purposes or interests of the Absolute would be “foreign” facts “given” from without and not in systematic harmony with its experience as a whole. The complete systematic unity of all facts would thus fall outside what was to be, ex hypothesi, an all-containing experience. Q.E.A.
[36]. For further reflections upon the unsatisfactoriness of such a conception of the Absolute as the “union of Thought and Will,” see Bk. IV. chap. 6, § 1, where it is shown that knowledge and will alike, as actual knowledge and actual will, belong only to finite beings.
[37]. I.e. if will be taken strictly to mean an actual volition, love and a “will to love” cannot co-exist; if we take will improperly to mean a “standing” interest of purpose, the case is different.
[38]. The student of the history of Philosophy will be reminded of the grounds on which Spinoza objects to ascribe “intellect” and “will” in the proper sense of the terms to his God, as well as of the “knowledge of the third or intuitive kind” and the “infinite intellectual love” of God for Himself which are so prominent in the fifth part of the Ethics. Similar considerations have sometimes led to a preference for the term “organic” rather than “purposive”[“purposive”] or “teleological,” as expressive of the ultimate unity of experience. The word “organic,” however, might suggest biological conceptions of growth, dependence on an external environment, etc., which would be out of place. But the student may compare with what has been said of the “purposive” character of individuality Spinoza’s conception of the being of a thing as a conatus in suo esse perseverandi.
[39]. For a full examination of the relation between reality and scientific symbolism, consult Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, part 1. The more clearly it is realised that scientific hypotheses are essentially a system of mathematical symbolism, the more impossible it becomes to suppose that they deal directly with the concrete nature of things.
[40]. In Principles of Human Knowledge, §§ 70-75, Berkeley indeed seems on the very verge of denying that God Himself “perceives” the “ideas” which by His action He excites in us. But at § 139 we find that a “spirit” means “that which perceives ideas, and wills and reasons about them,” and in the third Dialogue it is expressly stated that sensible things are “perceived by God” [Works, Edit. in Bohn’s Libraries, vol. i. p. 368]. In fact, from the psychological standpoint of Berkeleian sensationalism, to deny God’s possession of “ideas” (i.e. sense-contents) would have been tantamount to denying His spirituality.
[41]. Unfortunately Berkeley, like so many philosophers, thought of “activity” as primarily an external relation between a “cause” and the material on which it “works.”[“works.”] This is probably why he failed to realise the “active” character of the perceptual process.
[42]. The reader will do well to compare with the whole of the foregoing section the treatment of perception as essentially teleological in Dr. Stout’s Manual of Psychology,3 bk. iii. pt. 1, chap. 2.
I need hardly observe that recognition of the fundamental significance of purpose and selection for mental life does not of itself entail the adoption of “voluntarist” views in Psychology. What is fundamental for real mental life may perfectly well admit of analysis into hypothetical simpler elements for the purpose of the psychologist. Thus the admission that all mental life is teleological and selective need not involve the adoption of such metaphysical theories of activity as are adversely criticised by Mr. Bradley in his Appearance and Reality, chap. 7, or the introduction of a peculiar “consciousness of activity” as an unanalysable datum into Psychology. The antithesis between the actualities of life and the data of Psychology maintained by Prof. Münsterberg in his Psychology and Life, and Grundzüge der Psychologie, if untenable in the extreme form in which he states it, is important as a corrective of the opposite tendency to treat as ultimate for psychological analysis whatever is of supreme importance for life.[life.]
[43]. Thing-in-itself, i.e. not affected by the—according to this doctrine—extraneous conditions imposed upon it by relation to an experiencing mind.