XXXvi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 



of resting this autonomy, witli Kant, on subjective 

 fealty alone, in the delusion that it is independent 

 of knowledge, and that knowledge can be satisfied 

 by a world of "phenomena" necessarily subject to 

 it, while yet that world itself is only "necessary" in 

 the sense of flowing spontaneously from the nature 

 of each isolated self. 



Now it is to the surmounting of this gravest of 

 all dilemmas that the theory of Personal Idealism, 

 as I intend it, is directly addressed. It proceeds by 

 pointing out that the meaning of objectivity, while 

 indeed to be sought in conscious and intelligent be- 

 ing alone, as taught by all idealism, must be found 

 neither (i) in the self-consciousness of the solitary 

 and disjunct self, which in disregarding necessary 

 reference to others reduces morality to simple self- 

 realisation and introversive self-respect, nor (2) in 

 the all-inclusive self-consciousness of the One Ab- 

 solute Mind, in which each "finite" self, as one 

 essential mode thereof, participates in such degree 

 and with such "task" as the One assigns to it by 

 his eternal Will or predestinating and exclusively 

 selecting " Love," but (3) in an absolutely primordial 

 altruism couched in the very logic of the fundamen- 

 tal act of self-definition by any mind, whereby its 

 awareness of itself, demonstrated by Descartes to 

 be the condition of any and all other knowledge 

 whatever, — the condition necessary, no doubt, biit 



