Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/277

GEDBON GOBY, L'Immanence de la Raison, etc. 261 gives the representation of a limited and determinate space, a figure ; of the instant and the temporal continuum, a limited and determinate time ; of this character are the only real spaces and times, those of experience. Dialectic or antinomy arises only when Eeason employs one side of the relation by itself, the continuum only (the determined principle) or the point only (the determining principle) : it is met by pointing out the necessary implication of the other term of the relation, and so coming back to experience. This is suggestive, and invites comparison with the Hegelian doctrine that the Continuous and the Discrete imply one another. With regard to pure cause and pure effect, their mere synthesis in the causal relation is insufficient : this relation corresponds to nothing real if we exclude finality from it : deter- minate causality, the causality which is real or in experience, is always for an end. Speaking of the Cartesians, M. Gory says : " comme ils ecartaient rigoreusement les causes finales de 1'ex- plication theorique du monde, ils reconnaissaient que, des lors, la causalite dans le monde, loin d'etre absolument determinee, etait absolument indeterminee, ... a cause de 1'independence des moments du temps ; et c'est ainsi qu'ils etaient amenes a la theorie de la creation continuelle " (p. 269). The only real cause, then, is Consciousness. Similarly the determinate realisation of the relation of Substantiality is in the unity of Thought. This important doctrine of the necessary implication of an End in causation springs up suddenly, from nowhere, in the author's system. He might have considered whether End is not itself an Idea of the Eeason ; whether much of the plausibility of his attack upon the " transcendent " use of the Ideas does not arise from the fact that he has taken account only of Ideas derived from the mathematical and mechanical categories ; and, if so, whether he need have concluded that the causality and sub- stantiality of the thinking consciousness are only conceivable in distinction from the Idea of a continuous indeterminate Matter in the representation of the psycho-physical Organism (p. 272). From this point onwards the author's ingenuity becomes more con- spicuous than his insight. The Organism is the individual whole, as such. In experience, in the concrete, the representations we have been dealing with are all united : every substance is itself a cause and fills a determinate space and time : this union constitutes the individual whole. It is an entirely concrete synthesis, embracing all the other syntheses. In experience, whatever is not a psycho- physical Organism is a mere image or sensation without any individuality, reality, or independence (p. 284). Eeason pro- pounds the problem of explaining the organism. It can only do so by means of two correlative Ideas, which must be such that by abstraction all the other Ideas can be discovered in them. These are the Ideas of the Perfect and the Infinite : the former being the determining, the latter the determined. The author then proceeds to give a description of the organism which at once reminds us of