Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/540

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. II.

own mental states—is absolutely untenable. The distinctions which Mr. Seth has drawn between psychology, epistemology, and metaphysic thus vanish away. As there is no consciousness of self apart from the consciousness of other selves and things, and no consciousness of the world apart from the consciousness of the single reality presupposed in both, the march of our author's 'victorious analysis' is impeded at the very start.


Since the above remarks were written, my attention has been drawn to the new edition of Hegelianism and Personality, in which one or two notes are added, intended to explain and defend the doctrine set forth in the text. It thus seems incumbent upon me to inquire whether any new light is cast upon that doctrine, which may require a modification or withdrawal of the objections set forth at length above. Of course I am not directly concerned with the epistemology of Mr. Seth, but only with his conception of God and the individual conscious subject.

One of the passages upon which I relied in my statement of our author's position was that in which he said, that "when existence is in question, it is the individual, not the universal, that is real." In the note we are told (2d ed., p. 231) that "there is no attempt here … to fall back upon isolated, self-existent reals. Each finite individual has its place within the one real universe, or the one real Being, with all the parts of which it is inseparably connected. But the universal is itself an individual or real whole, containing all its parts within itself, and not a universal of the logical order containing its exemplifications under it."

Mr. Seth's readers will probably be somewhat perplexed to reconcile this conception of a single universe, in which so-called individuals are merely parts of a whole, with his former assertions that different selves are "absolutely and forever exclusive," and that "the meanest thing that exists has a life of its own absolutely unique and individual." Whether Mr. Seth