cessible to knowledge, and the definition of be in terms of subjectivity. To avoid scepticis accepted the latter alternative. But among Greeks with whom this theory of perception oric nated, it drew its meaning in large part from distinction between perception and reason. T we read in Plato's "Sophist":

"And you would allow that we participate in gener tion with the body, and by perception; but we particip with the soul by thought in true essence, and essens you would affirm to be always the same and immutabie whereas generation varies."

778

It is conceived that although in perception mar is condemned to a knowledge conditioned by the affections and station of his body, he may nev ertheless escape himself and lay hold on the

66

99 true essence of things, by virtue of thought In other words, knowledge, in contradistinction to “opinion,” is not made by the subject, but is the soul's participation in the eternal natures of things. In the moment of insight the varying course of the individual thinker coincides with the unvarying truth; but in that moment the individual thinker is ennobled through being assimilated to the truth, while the truth is no more, no less, the truth than before.

Plato: The Sophist, 248. Translation by Jowett.

f Subjecti

ism Extend

§ 183. In absolute idealism, the principle of ubjectivism is extended to reason itself. This he Principle extension seems to have been originally due to moral and religious interests. d to Reason. From the moral stand-point the contemplation of the truth is a state, and the highest state of the individual life. The religious interest unifies the individual life and directs attention to its spiritual development. Among the Greeks of the middle period life was as yet viewed objectively as the fulfilment of capacities, and knowledge was regarded as perfection of function, the exercise of the highest of human prerogatives. But as moral and religious interests became more absorbing, the individual lived more and more in his own selfconsciousness. Even before the Christian era the Greek philosophers themselves were preoccupied with the task of winning a state of inner serenity. Thus the Stoics and Epicureans came to look upon knowledge as a means to the attainment of an inner freedom from distress and bondage to the world. In other words, the very reason was regarded as an activity of the self, and its fruits were valued for their enhancement of the welfare of the self. And if this be true of the Stoics and the Epicureans, it is still more clearly true of the neo-Platonists of

the Christian era, who mediate between the cient and mediæval worlds.

Self-con

sciousness in lieved Early Christian

§ 184. It is well known that the early per of Christianity was a period of the most vi Emphasis on self-consciousness. The individual k ̧ that his natural and socia Philosophy. environment was alien to his deepe spiritual interests. He therefore withdrew in himself. He believed himself to have but one duty, the salvation of his soul; and that duty re quired him to search his innermost springs of action in order to uproot any that might compro mise him with the world and turn him from God The drama of life was enacted within the circle of his own self-consciousness. Citizenship, bodily: health, all forms of appreciation and knowledge, were identified in the parts they played here. In ¦ short the Christian consciousness, although renunciation was its deepest motive, was reflexive and centripetal to a degree hitherto unknown among the European peoples. And when with St. Augustine theoretical interests once more vigorously asserted themselves, this new emphasis was in the very foreground. St. Augustine wished to begin his system of thought with a first indubitable certainty, and selected neither being nor ideas, but

lf. St. Augustine's genius was primarily regious, and the "Confessions," in which he reords the story of his hard winning of peace and ight relations with God, is his most intimate book. How faithfully does he represent himself, and the blend of paganism and Christianity which was distinctive of his age, when in his systematic writings he draws upon religion for his knowledge of truth! In all my living, he argues, whether I sin or turn to God, whether I doubt or believe, whether I know or am ignorant, in all I know that I am I. Each and every state of my consciousness is a state of my self, and as such, sure evidence of my self's existence. If one were to follow St. Augustine's reflections further, one would find him reasoning from his own finite and evil self to an infinite and perfect Self, which centres like his in the conviction that I am I, but is endowed with all power and all worth. One would find him reflecting upon the possible union with God through the exaltation of the human self-consciousness. But this conception of God as the perfect self is so much a prophecy of things to come, that more than a dozen centuries elapsed before it was explicitly formulated by the postKantians. We must follow its more gradual de

velopment in the philosophies of Descartes Kant.

§ 185. When at the close of the sixteenth e tury the Frenchman, René Descartes, sought : construct philosophy anew and upon

Descartes's Argument for the Independence of the

cure foundations, he too selected as t Thinking Self. initial certainty of thought the thiri

er's knowledge of himself. This principle n received its classic formulation in the proposition. Cogito ergo sum-"I think, hence I am." Th argument does not differ essentially from that ✅ St. Augustine, but it now finds a place in a system atic and critical metaphysics. In that my think ing is certain of itself, says Descartes, in that I know myself before I know aught else, my self can never be dependent for its being upon anything else that I may come to know. A thinking self, with its knowledge and its volition, is quite capable of subsisting of itself. Such is, indeed, not the case with a finite self, for all finitude is sig nificant of limitation, and in recognizing my limitations I postulate the infinite being or God. But the relation of my self to a physical world is quite without necessity. Human nature, with soul and body conjoined, is a combination of two substances, neither of which is a necessary consequence of the