Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/173

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ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY

All, instead of being merely subjective, are objective also.

The Kantian doctrine — that Space, Time, and Causation are merely subjective — being thus disposed of, its corollary of the empirical limitation of knowledge likewise falls away, and Hartmann assumes he may proceed with his metaphysical programme. First, however, the method of philosophy must be more precisely accentuated. How can knowledge of the Absolute, which (as the Unconscious) lies wholly beyond our consciousness, ever arise? By virtue of two facts, replies Hartmann: our “mystic sense of union with the Unconscious,” and that uniformity of Nature which constitutes the basis of induction. The organon of philosophy has thus two factors, Mystic and Induction. From the former come all the clues to knowledge, the mysterious “suggestions” of the Unconscious itself; from the latter, the verification of the clues, as they are followed into the complicated system of experience. It is by induction alone that philosophy distinguishes itself from religion; for religion and philosophy both alike take their origin from the mystic of the “suggestions,” though religion keeps these mysterious whisperings in the obscure but kindred form of myth, while philosophy, following the self-revelation of Nature in induction, lays them bare in their clear and literal truth.

By the light of this method, now, the Unconscious