THi: ABSDLl "IT. OK HKGKUANISM. 887 kuowledge of it.' In other words, the process which we trace in history, and which is still going on, is reality, and nil thcrf is to ivitii/i/. My life and thought is an instrument by which the Absolute attains to a higher consciousness.'- Reality develops in me, 3 not simply in the sense that my life contributes to the life of the world, but in the special sense that the new knowledge which I contribute is actually God's self-enlightenment. The laws of experience experience, i.e.,
- >< the developing, expanding process of increase in know-
ledge and appreciation which it is for us are in all literalness the laws of the Absolute. 4 Philosophy has for its sole func- tion the task of releasing the forms of thought which, in the course of this process, have become crystallised into dogmas, metaphysical concepts, institutions, transforming them back into their fluid state again, and rendering them capable of serving as instruments for a fresh advance. All this gives to the newer phase of Hegelianism a decided positivistic tinge. The value of philosophy is exhausted in its immediate functional use, and it has no reference to ultimate "truth" in the old-fashioned sense. " Of ultimate and absolute reality," Mr. Wallace says, " philosophy will say positively and dogmatically but little, though it may limit much of what ve have to do in temporal and relative service to 1 " A state of consciousness symbolises something which is not origin- ally there to be symbolised, points to an object which does not as yet exist, and indeed becomes that object in the act of pointing to it," Jones, l.<>/;r. p. 111. "The reality is from beginning to end involved in the meaning ; it grows with the growth of the meaning, and it also guides the process of evolving the meaning by means of judgment," p. 365. ' Reality lias no meaning apart from the process of growing knowledge," Browniny, p. 297. " The reality which man sets over against his own inadequate knowledge is posited by him, and it has no meaning whatso- ever except in this contrast," p. 298. Cf. also Nettleship, Phil. Lectures, vol. i., p. 204. - " Knowledge is the self-revelation of reality in thought, and our thought is the instrument of that self-revelation," Jones, Lotze, p. 370. " The effort to know derives its impulse and direction from the reality which is present, and striving for complete realisation, in the thought of man." Jii-n-niiig, p. 30. " " The steps by which reality itself develops in the individual mind," Muirhead, MIND, vol. v., p. 516. 4 Jones. MIND, vol. ii., p. 302. " To comprehend the universe of thought in all its formations and all its functions, to reduce the solid structures which mind has created to fluidity and transparency in the pure medium of thought, to set free the fossilised intelligence which the great magician who wields the destiny of the world has hidden under the mask of nature, of the mind of man, of tin works of Art, of the institutions, of the states and orders of society and of religious forms and creeds such is the complicated problem of Philosophy," Wallace. /,<//'< ,ij //</,/. p. 28. 22
