Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/383

DR. WARD'S REFUTATION ov DUALISM. >'.) Common Knowledge (ten men and one sun, e.y.) ? Each; experience is as a whole unique and incommunicable in this individuality consists but for common intercourse there must be some common knowledge. Dr. Ward points out that this intersubjective intercourse probably begins with such a simple procedure as pointing to this or that object, and upon that in the object which is the same or similar for all is based the possibility of communication (ii., 167, etc. Cf. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 2nd ed. pp. 250, 254, 2o5, 258, etc.). As far as practice and history are concerned there is no appearance of discrepancy between individual and common knowledge, since in both we deal with the concrete cases which are real and unique. But it is different in the case of theoretical knowledge, since here intersubjective inter- course leads to dropping all reference to individual subjects. This omission is traced to the working of three conditions which result from this intercourse between individual subjects namely, the notion of the trans-subjective, the hypothesis of introjection, and the reification of abstractions. By Trans- subjective is meant that which is objective from the stand- point of universal experience, the one sun which is the common object of ten men who are looking at it. Since this sun is considered as independent of any one of the ten, it comes to be regarded as independent of every one of them, and so the reference to a subject is eliminated altogether and dualism begins. Introjection (ii., 172, 173) is akin in meaning to Animism, and has been explained in a passage previously quoted. The dualism of Mind and Matter has perhaps been suf- ficiently disposed of. What is to be said of the " dualism " between the empirical and the rational, i.e., between individual and trans-subjective experience ? Dr. Ward refers here to the view of Kant (which he endorses) that " the two subjects must be at bottom the same individual and the two objects must be synthesised into one" (ii., 181; cf. 167, 171, etc.). The Rational is simply universal, collective or conceptual experience, but all reference to a subject is dropped by Science, and so the rational subjectless object comes to be opposed to individual experience, with its perceptual subject. But the Rational and the Empirical cannot be severed. Rational or Universal Experience is only an elaboration of individual experience, and is continuous with it, the sole business of the intellectual forms of the one being to establish relations within the concrete reality of the other. And everywhere for perception as well as for thought Kant's 24