62 THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS- 



kind of relation which subsists between rational facts. 

 Physical phenomena are mutually exclusive, although even 

 here the exclusion is not absolute ; spiritual facts, strange 

 as the expression may sound, are mutually inclusive. We 

 can say of the former, " Lo here," or " Lo there," for 

 relatively they shut each other out, as do the parts of space, 

 the moments of time, the succession of causes and effects. 

 But reason or self-consciousness identifies its content so 

 closely with itself that all its elements interpenetrate and 

 subsist only through one another. The categories of ex- 

 clusion and alternation do not hold in this region. The 

 world in which man lives as a rational being is not merely 

 an outward fact, but itself lives in him. Its phenomena 

 are his thoughts. Rational life consists in internalising its 

 environment. It constitutes, or at lowest converts, it into 

 a subjective, personal possession. The world is the con- 

 tent of knowledge for the intelligence, it is the content of 

 purpose for the will, and for feeling it acquires personal 

 value. It is no exaggeration to say that in apprehending 

 the world we appropriate and transmute it into personal 

 character almost as a living tree converts everything it 

 assimilates into wood. But not quite in that way ; the 

 analogy is not too strong but too weak. It expresses 

 neither the range nor the intensity of the transmuting 

 power of spirit. For there are things in the world which 

 organic life cannot assimilate, and which it must simply 

 exclude ; and what it does assimilate it does not identify 

 completely with itself, for which reason it has not a 

 " self" in the full sense of the term. But there is nothing 

 in the world which is not the potential content of spirit 

 the raw material, as it were, of the intelligence and the 

 purposive will. And this content spirit appropriates and 



