250 METAPHYSICS 



be noted here is the fact that these metaphysical categories are led 

 up to positivity by an act of reflection that has for its guiding aim an 

 interpretation of the world that will be more ultimately satisfactory 

 to the knower than that of the physical or natural sciences; while 

 negatively, it is led up to by the refusal of the knowing consciousness 

 to rest in a world alien to its own nature and in which it is subordin- 

 ated to the physical and made a mere epiphenomenon. 



II 



QUESTIONS OF POINT OF VIEW, PRINCIPLE AND METHOD OF 



METAPHYSICS 



It is clear from what has been said that the metaphysical inter- 

 pretation proceeds on a presupposition radically different from that 

 of mathematical and physical science. The presumption of these 

 sciences is that the world is physical, that the physical categories 

 supply the norms of reality, and that consciousness and the psychic, 

 in general, are subordinate and phenomenal to the physical. On the 

 contrary, metaphysics arises out of a revolt from these presumptions 

 toward the opposite presumption, namely, that consciousness itself 

 is the great reality, and that the norms of an ultimate interpretation of 

 things are to be sought in its categories. This is the great transfor- 

 mation that conditions the possibility and value of all metaphysics. 

 It is the Copernican revolution which the mind must pass through, 

 a revolution in which matter and the physical world yields the 

 primacy to mind; a revolution in which consciousness becomes cen- 

 tral, its categories and analogies supplying the principles of final 

 world-interpretation. Let us consider then, in the light of this great 

 Copernican revolution, the questions of the point of view, principle, 

 and method of metaphysics. And here the utmost brevity must be 

 observed. If consciousness be the great reality, then its own central 

 activity, that effort by which it realizes its world, will determine for 

 us the point of view or departure of which we are in quest. This will 

 be inner rather than outer ; it will be motived by interest, will shape 

 itself into interest-directed effort. This effort will be cognitive; dom- 

 inated by an idea which will be an anticipation of the goal of the 

 effort. It will, therefore, become directive, selective, and wil; stand 

 as the end or aim of the completed effort. The whole movement will 

 thus take the form, genetically, of a developing purpose informed by 

 an idea, or teleologically , of a purpose going on to its fulfillment in some 

 aim which is also its motive. Now, metaphysics determines its point 

 of view in the following reasoning: if in consciousness we find the 

 type of the inner nature of things, then the point of view for the inter- 

 pretation of this inner nature will be to seek by generalizing the 

 standpoint of consciously determined effort and asserting that this 



