appears at every stage in our thinking-though with very varied aspect and very variously elaborated-as that on which our thinking proceeds. It is in this sense, and in this sense only, that one would accept so far what Kant has to say in respect to these abstract categories of thought: that they render experience possible, and are therefore presupposed in every concrete or special fact of experience. But, from our point of view, these ultimate conditions are not abstract, but characteristics of the concrete material of experience, and are therefore capable of undergoing a transformation by increase of experience itself: a transformation in which the opposition is established, and becomes distinct for thought, between the abstract, the form of experience, and its matter.1

V. Thought and Reality.-From the point of view here taken the problem often raised with respect to the relation. of Thought to Reality must appear as of quite subordinate interest. It cannot for a moment be supposed that any view proceeding on such principles could identify thinking with the structure of reality. Rather, our view makes us regard thinking as one form in which reality is manifested-a form, moreover, limited to one special type of real existence, that of minds capable of becoming conscious of themselves, capable, therefore, of a certain development.

There is, however, another significance of this question. respecting the relation of thought to reality which may seem still to retain its importance. The characteristic of the content of thought is no doubt generality or universality; and, it may be asked, To what extent is the structure of reality adequately apprehended? or, putting the question otherwise, Is there in reality, in the nature of the real, some

1 This is a derivative distinction. Form and matter are not, as Kant thinks, originally distinct.

thing which must always evade thought? In the Aristotelian metaphysic, for instance, there appears throughout a factor of this kind in the world of generation—namely, matter, the indeterminate substratum, that which is at least the condition without which plurality of individual forms is impossible. It must be noted, in respect to this feature of the Aristotelian doctrine, that it is an erroneous, though very common, exaggeration of what is there said, to represent the element of matter as that which constitutes the individual in opposition to the universal. Aristotle does

not mean by 'individual' the numerical unit: he means that which is so completely determined that it constitutes a fact for knowledge or experience, a completely definite type of that which exists in the world of generation. Such a type is presented in the form of an unending series of numerically distinct units; but its individuality is not identical with numerical unity. It must therefore be said that Aristotle did not regard the presence of the material factor as constituting an absolute barrier to complete comprehension. It is indeed the burden of his continued criticism of the Platonic view that there the universal as such was taken to be the only intelligible, whereas from his point of view the intelligible is the universal individualised in concrete fashion. Whoever, indeed, retains, as Aristotle attempts to do, the genetic connexion between perceiving and intellect or understanding, cannot regard the universal aspect of thought as lying apart from the concrete, or hold that the latter is beyond the range of thought and unintelligible.

On this account, then, one cannot regard as constituting a ground for limiting the function of thought as the interpreter of reality, that distinction which presents itself throughout the actual procedure of thinking, the distinction which in Mr Bradley's Logic1 is fixed in the terms That and What.

1 [Principles of Logic, pp. 4, 64.]

That our thinking is always the determination of something presented, that it takes, therefore, the discursive form in which the predicates are distinct from the subject, cannot be regarded as the indication of a final divorce between the subject and that which is apprehended as its nature in and by thought. It is just as necessary to recognise the unification involved in the process of thinking as to recognise the discrimination which is perhaps its more obvious external feature.

Wherefore it must be concluded that not by reason of anything either in the character of the process or in the general nature of its content does thought fall short of expressing the constitution of reality. If such falling-short is to be recognised, it must be on other grounds: not by reason of the formal character of thought, but in consequence of the concrete nature of what is apprehended in thought as expressing reality. Indeed, there is a contradiction in supposing that thought-which is but the methodised fashion of reaching self-consciousness, of defining, therefore, in their relation to one another the parts of reality within our experience, that is to say, ourselves and our surroundings-should by its own nature be incapable of solving problems which it must put to itself: even although, as a continuous process, it has still much to achieve.

Is it then to be understood that the development of thought, which is here referred to, enables us to express in a complete fashion the whole structure of reality? This question brings before us again, in another way, the fundamental difference in interpreting this difficult notion of Development.

VI. The Notion of Development.1-In Hegel's view, as in that of Aristotle, development is but the unfolding of what 1 [Cf. above, p. 185 ff.]

is already contained. Thus the system, the connected series of the notions which present themselves as developing from one another, must be regarded as already in some way contained in the absolute idea, and that again as being in some way contained in the Absolute Spirit which is the final and all-comprehensive reality.

In such a representation of development it is implied, negatively, that nothing new makes its appearance; and Hegel takes occasion, when referring to certain anticipations of the scientific theory of Evolution, to express himself definitely as opposed to any representation of natural types as being evolved, the higher from the lower. "All explanation of the higher by the lower, such as the naturalist theories attempt, is philosophically a ὕστερον πρότερον, a precise inversion of the true account. Development or progress is not the making of something out of nothing, but the unfolding or manifestation of that which in another aspect eternally is. When that which is being developed is itself a self-conscious subject, the end of its becoming must really exist not merely for, but in or as, a self-conscious subject."

Evidently so large a conception as that of development must apply not merely to the theoretical but to the practical side of human experience, must therefore be extended not only so as to include the theoretical views or generalised notions, whereby we make nature intelligible to ourselves, but also so as to take in all that falls within the practical culture of human nature. And yet the difficulties which the notion undoubtedly involves become insuperable when such extension of its application is made. It is perhaps only within the practical sphere that the notion of End has in truth any justification. At all events in that sphere it is the most significant, the fundamental, notion. Is it, then, possible to represent the gradual development in human consciousness of conceptions of an end as the manifestation

of what already is realised not only for, but in or as, a self-conscious subject? What is the realisation of an end in human practical experience? Is it anything other than a form of self-conscious activity, what Aristotle called évépyeta Yuxis? and in what sense can it be supposed that this, which, as realisation, only exists in process, can exist as already realised?

No doubt we may be beguiled by the analogy of theoretical notions, and represent to ourselves the idea of the end which is to be realised as somehow existing; but that, we must note, is in no way the realisation of the end. Within the practical sphere realisation has but one meaning: it is an actual form of life, a mode of the concrete existence of a reflective subject. To use quite inadequate metaphors, it is not a state, a condition of rest, but a process, and cannot be conceived except as a process.

On the practical side, then, there undoubtedly presents itself to us a hopeless contradiction as emerging from this interpretation of development. Whatever significance the actual facts of the moral consciousness may have, however difficult it may be to understand that direction of effort towards the attainment of a result which is yet only in idea, the interpretation we give must not imply that in any sense or aspect the realisation already exists.

But, although the difficulty is more obvious on the practical side, it is not less involved in the theoretical. Our theoretical activities very closely resemble the practical: in them, too, the general feature is the effort to work out a complete representation, which itself changes its character with each step in our advance. If we try to represent to ourselves the content of that changing ideal as being already realised in a consciousness, we shall find the same difficulty of reconciling therewith the real character of our apprehension of truth: we shall find in fact that we are erroneously