234 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



can apprehend Reality at all, and if so, whether it can do so 

 by such methods as we have described. It is clear that 

 our answer to these questions must vitally affect our whole 

 interpretation of the development of Mind, of its drift and 

 tendency. It must also decide our judgment of the rela- 

 tive significance of historical and still more of contemporary 

 movements and controversies. For we are not dealing 

 with a development which is finished, but with one which, 

 however it may have advanced, has left fundamental ques- 

 tions of method still unsettled. As with science and philo- 

 sophy, so with ethics and social relationships. We have 

 traced the development of the ethical order, but we have 

 not discussed whether the phase which we took to be the 

 latest is also in any justifiable sense to be regarded as the 

 highest. We have not enquired whether its principles 

 admit of any rational justification, and whether, in fine, it 

 can claim any validity which should ground it on something 

 more solid than 4 the fluctuations of reeling and opinion. 



But these are the first questions which must be asked if 

 we are to judge of the value and significance, or even of 

 the permanence and probable future of any development of 

 the Mind. A mode of thought, a system of life may be 

 rooted in real conditions which will endure, or it may be 

 forced into existence by some phase of mental climate which 

 will pass and leave it to wither. Which of the two is the 

 case of the evolution here traced ? Is it to be regarded as 

 a process of continued approach to Reality, and do the later 

 stages of criticism carry us further forward in that direction, 

 or are we merely substituting one illusion for another, and 

 possibly one that is less pleasing without being less hollow ? 



Our first enquiry then must be into the validity of the 

 processes of Reconstruction which have been described. 

 We must enquire whether the synthesis of experience gives 

 us knowledge of a real order, and whether the principle of 

 a harmonious development rests on grounds which must 

 be accepted as rational and real. If the answer is in the 

 negative, the movement which has given rise to these con- 

 ceptions loses all ultimate significance. It is a study in 

 the pathology of the human mind. If it is in the affirma- 

 tive, a very different position is reached. The develop- 



