METAPHYSICAL CONCLUSIONS 369 



would be my mind. But there is true causality and true 

 individuality not only in my Ego but in the world as it is. 

 That is to say : sensible or immediate Givenness corresponds 

 to the categorical system most fully. This is a fact, and 

 this fact relates to absoluteness whenever specific Givenness 

 in its contingency and coherence tends to absoluteness. 

 Might we say perhaps that there exists a common meta- 

 physical basis both of immediate Givenness and of our being 

 able to " understand " it by means of the categories ? 



But let us come back to our theme. 



Certainly, individuality does not govern Givenness in 

 every detail. But the contingency of the universe in 

 certain domains does not exclude non- contingency in 

 certain others in the organisms and possibly in some 

 other constellations. 



What does that mean with regard to the Absolute, now 

 that we know that objectified Givenness tends to show us 

 something about the Absolute ? 



In the first place we have a factual right to say : where- 

 ever the reasoning mind finds organic living individuals, it 

 finds objectified active reason or active reason as its object. 

 Absoluteness in this respect therefore must be such as to be in 

 some unintelligible connexion with something like reason. 

 Or, if we prefer to say so : * absoluteness must be such as 

 to be able to become part of our phenomenological Given- 

 ness under the form not only of causality, substance, and 

 inheritance, but also of individuality, i.e. objectified reasoning. 



And in the second place we have at least a hypothetic 



1 The following formulation is probably more "Kantian" than is usually 

 admitted. Kant was not an "idealist" to the extent that Schopenhauer 

 supposed. Comp. Riehl, Der philosophische Kriticismus, i. , 2. Aufl., 1908. 



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