Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/114

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100 CRITICAL NOTICES : but merely denies that any prejudice or caprice of the philo- sopher interferes with his accurately stating the objective processes of the manifestation of the Absolute. Whether this denial is tenable or not we cannot here inquire ; but at any rate the denial has not the reach that Dr. Baillie attributes to it. The problem of the Phenomenology being to do justice to all concrete experiences, no sooner is it solved ' ' than another problem will present itself for solution, a problem already implicit in the Phenomenology all along, but only becoming prominent at the end of that inquiry. If the unity of subject and object is the one essential reality in all experience, and if the modes of this unity are just the modes of experience, then does not the problem suggest itself to state in systematic connectedness the inner identities as such, the modes of unity qua unity, which have been the ground reality throughout the whole of the Phenomenology ? We have these various concrete relations of subject and object in experience ; can we not proceed further to extract or abstract the inner kernel of ultimate truth exhibited and preserved by all the several moments of experience, by each relation of subject to object, and constituting it a necessary pulse in the life of the Absolute ? There is in every mode such a vital essence, namely, the identity or unity, which is the ground of the connexion of subject and object in each case. And each such unity will be a specific truth, the ultimate truth, namely, of each mode. The complete system of such unities will of course cover the same area as that of the Phenomenology, namely, the whole of experi- ence, the content of the Absolute. The only difference will be that whereas in the Phenomenology we have the concrete, actual embodiment of experience, in the other inquiry we shall have nothing else but the abstract, 'formal,' conceptual, 'pure' essenti- alities stripped of all direct reference to the diversity and tangibility of existent experiences, and expressed and connected in the form determined by their own character. The content of this new science being the inner reality of each mode of experience, and this inner reality being, as we saw, the principle of connexion of the va- rious modes, it is further evident that the method which this new science will follow will be none other than that of the Phenom- enology itself ; it needs no other, and it can find none other. The only difference will be that the method will in this new science be exhibited in its ultimate and purest form ; for here it is operating with and through a content which is itself ' simple ' and ' pure '. But what else can this new science be but just what has been hitherto known as Logic ? It will appear, and is indeed evident, that these vital essences can only be thoughts, notions as such ; and these have been, and are always, the matter of Logic " (pp. 155-157). In this passage we have a very clear statement of the relation of the Phenomenology and the Logic, and one that is borne out by a close study of these two works. The statement could hardly be