obligation or encouragement of a philanthropy, the extent and limitations of which are usually left undefined. I have attempted in this essay to justify, by means of the principle of Vocation, the popular distinction between duties and charitable actions, without detracting either from the imperativeness of duty, or from the claims of a more abounding charity, and to find the basis of that distinction in the principle of Utility itself. Once more, for fear of misunderstanding, let me repeat that by Utility I do not mean Hedonism.

The positions at which I have arrived in the foregoing pages may be summarised by the following definitions:

(1) It is always a man's duty to adopt the course of action most conducive to the general εὐδαιμονία. A man can never do more than his duty, nor can he ever (when he knows his duty) without sin do less.

(2) The name of absolute duties may be given to those rules of conduct which the general wellbeing requires to be observed by all men under given external circumstances,1 irrespective of the subjective conditions of the agent.

(3) Acts or omissions which the general good only requires to be performed under certain internal circumstances or subjective conditions may be termed Duties of Vocation.

I have throughout discussed the subject without direct reference to those theological and religious considerations which originally underlay the employment of the word 'vocation' to denote a man's work or position in life. It might be difficult to continue the discussion without introducing theological postulates were I to undertake to discriminate with any subtlety between those higher aspirations which do and those which do not constitute a genuine call to a particular profession or a particular form of self-sacrifice. But up to the point which has now been reached I do not conceive that the solution of the question turns upon our attitude towards theology except in so far as our ethical position as a whole is necessarily modified thereby. Duty must (I believe) logically be something more to the Christian or the Theist than it can possibly be (however great their personal devotion to duty) in the theoretical outlook of the Agnostic or the Pantheist. That inward impulse which, in conjunction with objective circumstances and a certain subjective capacity, constitutes it for some men a duty to undertake tasks or sacrifices which are not duties to all, will necessarily be invested with a clearer and more commanding authority when it is interpreted as a veritable call of God.

1Including of course the duties of his profession or position when once it has been adopted and so long as it is retained.

IV. THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

By ALEXANDER F. SHAND.

THE analysis of Knowledge, which I attempt in this article, is opposed to certain commonly received principles of modern philosophy. That the Unity of Consciousness is the presupposition of all Knowledge and Reality, or at least of all Phenomenal Reality, is one of the most accepted of these principles. Associated with the name of Kant, and brought into prominence by him, it has been maintained in one form or another by his disciples. Now it is true that unless I have some idea of a thing, and so unite it to my conscious self, I can make no kind of assertion about it; and as to things also, unless I represent them in one consciousness, I can make no statement of their mutual relations. But what I can unite in one consciousness is limited, and when I try to embrace too much I am forced to let go what is in excess. What thus passes out of me becomes dead to me, nor can I think about it again till the idea of it recurs. Then, in company with the reappearance, rises naturally the judgment of Memory, that what I now experience I once. experienced before. The import of the last phrase is to be noted. The reappearance I am conscious of, whether it be only the image of the past object, or that object itself; but that past order in which I was conscious of it I can never again say I am conscious of: it has passed for ever out of the unity of my consciousness-that is, the peculiar judgment of memory involves a wider object, an order of events which is not within consciousness, but without. Can we escape this conclusion? Can I suppose that this past order is nothing but the thoughts which the words suggest in me, which presuppose relation to a subject? There are two insuperable reasons why I cannot. In the first place, I have no such all-sufficient test of the truth of memory. I cannot find anywhere within consciousness the object of remembrance, and so decide in this simple way whether it is really what it asserts itself. In the second place, such an object I am conscious of, but an universal element of Memory is the past order which I am not conscious of, which in distinction I say I was conscious of; and it is not the remembrance which I was conscious of, but its object.

In memory, then, we have an instance of thought as it

were stretching beyond itself, forming judgments about objects without it, which, however far it reaches and whatever its activity, can never be brought into unity with itself. It is when put in this metaphorical way-and thought has a natural tendency to lapse into metaphor-that Ďualism is apt to suggest those difficulties and puzzles which we are presently to consider. On the other hand, we must note that thought cannot make these affirmations about objects without it, unless the representation of these objects is already within it.

Not only do we need these objects in all judgments of the past and memory, but in all judgments of the Future. The anticipation of a possible future object is not that object; it certainly is and is certain, while the other is uncertain and is not. Whenever judgment does not concern itself with contents embraced in one consciousness and only these, a transcendent object is a condition of their possibility. Even in Desire and Will, which are more than our judgments about them, the case is the same. There are three points to notice concerning them. They must have an object or end. This object or end must transcend consciousness. A representation of this object or end must be in consciousness. The latter they have, and do not strain after; but they strain after the object of it, which they have not. This object is peculiar. In one sense it may have reality beyond consciousness, but in the sense in which desire and will strain after it it has no actual reality; only in the future it may have reality. Then when it is accomplished and no longer the object of desire or will, but not while it is, it may be a reality for consciousness and conditioned by it. In vain we seek to avert this conclusion by falling back on the thought of a possibility being realised as the only object of desire and will; by reiterating that whatever distinction consciousness sets up it must also transcend and bring back into unity with itself: but this object will always escape it. The image of what I want rises before me, taking real shape, but it is not this image which satisfies my want, nor is it the thought of this image becoming realised, but it is the realisation itself, which each fresh endeavour to bring within consciousness only shows me to be inevitably without.

Another fundamental kind of Knowledge which discloses the same necessary characteristic is Probability, which, however practically certain, contains for thought the possible truth of its contrary. The judgment asserts in the abstract that between A and B there is some relation I judge possible or probable. In alternating between belief and doubt, I

at one time represent this relation as actually existent, at another non-existent. If I look closely at what this image or thought contains, I find a subjective actuality, no possibility, which, after remaining a longer or shorter time what it is according to the firmness of my belief, actually becomes something else, there resting, or returning to its first state, or taking upon itself others, as alternatives suggest themselves to the doubting mind. This is the characteristic of all consciousness which is actually what it is, or actually becoming something else, possibly nothing. It is because the relation doubted about is beyond the unity of consciousness that possibility or probability belongs to it; for the possible arises when the subject is concerned with an object not at unity with itself and which it cannot determine actually by any necessary and universal rule. When we are doubting whether A is B, or not B, we still affirm that A is actually one or the other, thus implying that possibility no more obtains in the world without than in the world within in themselves, but only when the subject is separated from an object which it is concerned about, and which it cannot necessarily, but only possibly, determine.

In considering the object of the Possible Judgment, I have meant by its 'object' that which the judgment is concerned about. Now, this special object is abstract, and forms part of a more concrete object, the rest of which is determined, not possibly, but necessarily. If a part of this remainder is within consciousness, it may be only necessary here and now, or actual. This is the part which, being without consciousness, is possible. But the rest, whether it is within or without, has a necessity which can be deduced from an universal and eternal rule. Now, the special object of this universal rule or universal judgment is not merely this remaining portion, but the same eternal element of all objects. This special and abstract object of the Universal Judgment must be without consciousness. For the manifold which the individual subject can unite is finite, but the object of this judgment infinite. However I strive to sum up this-what Hegel calls false infinitude-and embrace more and more of it within consciousness, more remains without. This is why Kant and others considered that universality could not be proved inductively by experience, but only a priori. For no single experience, and no combination of experiences, can complete it.

It is an obvious deduction that Space and Time, so far as infinite, cannot be contained within the finite consciousness. But they are such important realities, so peculiar, and in

volve so many difficulties, that I may be allowed to consider them separately on another occasion, independently and not deductively.

We will now sum up the results at which we thus have arrived.

1. Knowledge presupposes an object out of, and not in relation to, the finite consciousness.

2. This Dualism-this divorce between subject and object -does not confine the subject to the knowledge of its finite states, and set over against it an unknowable thing-in-itself. On the contrary, the Subject knows this Object, and though not completely, yet in part with necessary certainty, in remainder with probability or possibility.

3. Though Consciousness and Experience are necessarily finite, Knowledge is possibly infinite.

So far I have considered the finite consciousness; and as there is no necessity of thought, but quite the contrary, to refer all objects, and all relations of objects, to it as the ultimate ground of their possibility, no more is there when we substitute for it the Infinite Consciousness. I deny that knowledge involves this reference as a necessary factorthat the principles of unity and relation in the world are the result of the synthetic activity of the subject. We may agree that these forms of relation are necessary to the world and to all objects, and yet contend that they do not imply this subjective reference; therefore I avoid calling them thoughts or conceptions, as these terms at once dispose us to accept it. Now this doctrine asserts that not merely all consciousness, but all reality which has any meaning for us, is based upon thought, and would not be real without. Those who hold it look upon this distinction as made, and therefore transcended, by thought. In reality they discern nothing but the thought of it, and in the thought of it all the elements which can enter into knowledge, and all the objects which it is concerned about. It is otherwise with those who cannot accept this monistic doctrine. They will find that any common piece of knowledge contains judgments which affirm as the condition of their possibility objects which are not in consciousness, or due to it; furthermore, that these judgments are quite silent as to any further reference of these objects to an infinite consciousness. They will see no necessity why the world, withdrawn from the organising presence of thought, should relapse into a chaos of fleeting and unrelated sensations, as it has an organisation apart from thought, or at least not of necessity involving it. But this point I can only justify later on, when