300 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



of knowing, if it is immanent in that process." ^ Does Lossky, when he 

 thus revises the representationahstic conception of an object transcendently 

 acting on a subject, really revise away the causal connection ? Berkeley, 

 observing the immanency of the " idea " in knowledge, secured it also for 

 objects of sense by conferring upon them an ideational status. Similarly, 

 Lossky, observing that " the processes of so-called inner perception shows 

 that they are characterised by the presence of the object in knowledge ..." 

 and that " the structure of such knowledge is entirely determined by this 

 condition," concludes that " our perceptions of the external world must 

 possess the same character, and that here, too, the object apprehended 

 must be immanent in the knowing process." 2 A remnant of outerness re- 

 mained with Berkeley's " ideas " which were " imprinted on the senses," ^ since 

 they originated in a superhuman mind ; a remnant of outerness also seems 

 to remain in Lossky 's " objects," which, though immanent in the knowing 

 process, are still objects. It seems, at least, doubtful whether they do not 

 retain their causal agency with their residual transcendency or outerness. 



If knowledge is more complex than its object,* if the object apprehended 

 is an experience which is compared, ^ if the knowing subject obtains material 

 from the object and elaborates it into knowledge,* if the " objects of know- 

 ledge become differentiated," ^ if knowledge " is a process of differentiating 

 the real world by means of comparison," ^ the subject still seems to respond 

 to a call from the outer world. The range of causal action has, so to speak, 

 been shortened : the object enters to stir a differentiating process instead 

 of arousing it from afar. The activity of comparing belonging to the know- 

 ing subject, if its results are determined by the nature of the objects,® 

 seems to be causally related to the reality it compares. If the " law of 

 causality amounts ex hypothesi merely to the conviction that any given 

 event necessarily follows upon a complex of certain other events," i" if 

 causality, descriptively stated, is events succeeding other events within 

 a system, the comparing, difierentiating process which results in know- 

 ledge when the object becomes " immanent " appears to be causally related 

 to it. The greater intimacy between self and not-self obtaining through 

 the latter's immanency in knowledge does not appear to annul their causal 

 relation ; reconciling subject and object by co-ordination instead of by 

 subordination, and retaining their independence in an indissoluble unity, ^^ 

 does not sever their causal bond, nor does it necessarily even reduce it. 



Lossky seems to open himself to a suspicion that he has carefully de- 

 scribed an alternative method of mental copying. Uncompared reality flows 

 before us, he writes, dark, formless, and unrecognised. When attention is 

 attracted, " the intellectual process of discriminating begins " ; 12 form 

 succeeds to formlessness, and the vague becomes definite. Reality, through 

 " a process of diflEerentiating the real world by means of comparison " and 

 retaining its real character, " becomes a known reality, a presentation or 

 an idea." ^^ The final " differentiated appearance," which never exhausts 

 the richness of the reality, " composed entirely of elements present in the 

 object itself,"^* strongly suggests an impression made by a seal, or, to keep 

 the metaphor close to the metaphored, a seal imbedded in its impression 

 upon wax. Reality striking in upon attention, discriminating processes 



* The Intuitive Basis of Knowledge (Duddington's trans.), p. 31. 

 2 Ibid., pp. 75-6. 



^ Principles of Human Knowledge, § i . 



* The Intuitive Basis of Knowledge (Duddington's trans.), p. 76. 

 s Ibid., p. 82. « Ibid., p. loi. ' Ibid., p. 105. 

 ^ Ibid., p. 226. 8 Ibid., p. 262. ^^ Ibid., p. 39. 

 " Ibid., p. 69. 12 75,-^^ p^ 225. " Ibid., p. 226. 

 " Ibid., p. 227. 



