THE DATA OF PHILOSOPHY. 159 



is held by the natural realist, an inexplicable intuition; but 

 that it is a legitimate deliverance of consciousness elaborat- 

 ing its materials after the laws of its normal action. While, 

 in order of time, the establishment of this distinction pre- 

 cedes all reasoning ; and while, running through our mental 

 structure as it does, we are debarred from reasoning about 

 it without taking for granted its existence; analysis never- 

 theless enables us to justify the assertion of its existence, by 

 showing that it is also the outcome of a classification based 

 on accumulated likenesses and accumulated differences. In 

 other words — Reasoning, which is itself but a formation of 

 cohesions among manifestations, here strengthens, by the 

 cohesion it forms, the cohesions which it finds already ex- 

 isting. 



So much, then, for the data of Philosophy. In common 

 with Religion, Philosophy assumes the primordial implica- 

 tion of consciousness, which, as we saw in the last part, has 

 the deepest of all foundations. It assumes the validity of a 

 certain primordial process of consciousness, without which 

 inference is impossible, and without which there cannot 

 even be either affirmation or denial. And it assumes the 

 validity of a certain primordial product of consciousness, 

 which though it originates in an earlier process, is also, in 

 one sense, a product of this process, since by this process 

 it is tested and stamped as genuine. In brief, our postu- 

 lates are: — an Unknowable Power; the existence of know- 

 able likenesses and differences among the manifestations of 

 that Power; and a resulting segregation of the manifes- 

 tations into those of subject and object. 



Before proceeding with the substantial business of Phi- 

 losophy — the complete unification of the knowledge par- 

 tially unified by Science, a further preliminary is needed. 

 The manifestations of the Unknowable, separated into the 

 two divisions of self and not-self, are re-divisible into certain 

 most general forms, the reality of which Science, as well as 

 Common Sense, from moment to moment assumes. In the 



