The Philosophical Review/Volume 4/Number 4/The Absolute and the Time-Process

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3586221The Philosophical Review Volume 4 Number 4 (July 1895) — The Absolute and the Time-ProcessJohn Watson

Volume IV.
Number 4.

July, 1895.

Whole
Number 22.

THE

PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.


THE ABSOLUTE AND THE TIME-PROCESS.

I.


There are, I think, clear indications that the reign of Agnosticism is almost over. That phase of thought, which is based upon the fundamental contradiction that we know the Absolute to be unknowable, has drawn its main support from a rejection of the preconceptions of traditional theology and an affirmation of the validity of the scientific view of the world as under the dominion of inviolable law. Agnosticism, however, has itself been the victim of a preconception, the preconception that the scientific view of the world is ultimate, or at least that it is the ultimate view of which man, or man at the present stage of his knowledge, alone is capable. It is therefore a hopeful sign that there has recently been so much speculation upon the nature of that Absolute which Agnosticism declares to be unknowable. Such discussions as those of Mr. McTaggart on “Time and the Hegelian Dialectic,”[1] with the criticisms which they have called forth, and, above all, the publication of Mr. Bradley’s Appearance and Reality, show that she who was “of old called the Queen of the Sciences,” still exercises her fascination over men’s minds.

Mr. Bradley, if I rightly understand him, starts from the conviction that the world must be a self-consistent Unity, and must therefore somehow be the reconciliation of all the contradictions which beset our various ways of viewing the world. He is unable to accept as ultimate the self-contradicPage:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/370 Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/371 Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/372 Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/373 Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/374 Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/375 Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/376 Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/377 Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/378 Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/379 Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/380 Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/381 Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/382 Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/383 Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/384 Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/385 reality we can have no knowledge. The Absolute, in other words, must be self-distinguishing and yet self-relating. We are therefore entitled to say that no process of knowledge or action can ever bring the human mind to a stage in which reality will present itself as other than that of the unity of subject and object, which is the only reality we are capable of knowing.

I am well aware that the view which has here been roughly sketched of an Absolute which manifests itself in the time-process, and yet is self-complete, is open to many objections. With some of these I hope to deal in another article.

John Watson.
Queen’s University.