XXll PREFACE 



Other mind, has even with regard to Nature a spon- 

 taneous and constant reference to every other, and 

 so to the Divine Mind. In this way, the mutual 

 recognition of all minds which is essential to the 

 very existence of each as a conscious individual^ 

 and which is the cognition that constitutes them 

 ethically rational, becomes also the constitutive prin- 

 ciple in the world of Nature. In fact, its entrance as 

 a principle into the natural order is precisely what 

 raises Nature out of being a mere private show for 

 each mind into a universal experience, with an 

 aspect common to all minds alike. It is this that 

 lifts it out of resilient manifoldness and mere dis- 

 junction, and carries it into unity — the unity of a 

 coimnwial system of experience, in which the dissents 

 of individuals are reduced and harmonised by the 

 deeper principle in their being, out of which their 

 total nature flows by the self-defining act of each. 

 Such an essential reference from each to other and 

 to all, and from all to God, operates, however, and 

 can operate, by no process of efficient causation. 

 The whole operation is ideal; and what is called 

 final causality, the influence of an ideal, which is 

 now generally acknowledged to be the only causa- 

 tion in the moral world, is thus brought to be also 

 the true primary causation in the world of Nature. 

 So much for the divergence from Kant. There 

 is but one other modern philosophical theory with 



