648 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



This method of proceeding had already been resorted 

 to by Fichte. As I have stated it, it appears to be 

 simply a process of applied logic, a merely formal pro- 

 cedure of thought. But this merely formal character 

 is, as it were, relieved and made more significant by 

 bringing in that idea which, as I stated above, is at the 

 root of all idealistic philosophy, forming as it were its 

 deep-seated belief or dogma. This is the conception 

 that everything, the world of nature as well as the 

 world of mind, things as they are and things as they 

 have developed in time, are the manifestations of some 

 underlying reality, of the truly real, which is the ground 

 and root of everything. 



If this conviction be added to the foregoing scheme 

 the latter at once becomes fraught with some deeper 

 meaning. Anything that is now the subject of thought 

 is only a point, as it were, in the great universe, in the 

 totality of things ; it is that upon which, for the 

 moment, the light of thought is thrown, the limited, 

 local, and maybe casual manifestation of the underlying 

 reality. 



In the second process, in the antithesis, light is 

 thrown on that which surrounds the point on which 

 our attention has been concentrated ; our view and com- 

 prehension is as it were enlarged and enriched by 

 looking round at other subjects. The process of 

 differentiation is one of enlargement and enrichment 

 of thought. And lastly, the bringing together of the 

 scattered elements and fragments by a synthesis signi- 

 fies that we reassert that essential unity of everything 

 which had, for the moment, escaped our attention in 



