The Metaphysics of a Naturalist 
71 
bute is a psychological impossibility. , . . And . . . essence 
must include the past and f uture as well as the present of the thing. 
To return to Lotze’s quibble, the mind is not equivalent to 
the infinitive ^To think/ ^ but is a thinking thing. It would not 
be thinking if it were not a thing, and if it would not be a thing if 
it were not thinking. Indeed, it is the kind of a thing it is because 
of its thinking and the only knowledge we have of a thinker is 
his thinking The tone emitted by a bell when 
struck is the result of activity, and this tone is also a more or 
less constant expression of the constitution of the bell. 
When I say ^^Lo, light!’’ I do not mean ^‘Lo, I recognize light 
out there as an external reality.” I mean Light, a real effect, 
is.” When I go on to say it is something out there, I have 
introduced the substance element. This may or may not be 
true, but so far as light is an experience solely, it has that about 
it which constitutes immediate reality: self-affirming attribute. 
Considered ah extra, as a logician, I discover that it is possible 
to see in this two aspects: (1) the affirming, which is essence 
according to the old logic, and (2) the attribute or mode affirmed. 
Neither of these is real, but the joining of these is the essence of 
reality; it is experience. 
Whether Professor Herrick was a realist or an idealist is a good 
deal the same sort of a question as when asked concerning Lotze. 
Professor Herrick himself says in one of his letters in reply to a 
question of this kind: 
I suppose I am a realist in the sense (say of Fichte) that the phenom- 
enal world has an existence independent of the mind or that there is a 
world of existence independent of the mind corresponding to the phenom- 
enal world. I am an idealist in admitting that my world is phenomenal, 
but I am not prepared to say that being exhausts itself in revealing itself 
to me as real. I may admit that the sun gives light only to the seeing 
eye; nevertheless the sun exists as an active source of the phenomenal 
and by spiritual parallax (judgment) I may ascertain this fact as true. 
The idea is not something archetypal nor does being exhaust itself in 
individual reality The solution of the problem involved be- 
tween realism and idealism seems to be this: Viewed extrinsically the 
universe is real; intrinsically, it is ideal. There is nothing in the world 
that has not a rational basis, and out of this grows the possibility of 
realizing it. To God the world is ideal. To man there is a progressive 
realization. Our limitations make us realists. We shall be pure ideal- 
ists only when individual limitations disappear.^^ 
On this question see further, “ The Law of Congruousness and its Logical Appli- 
cation to Dynamic Realism,’’ Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific 
Methods, vol. 1, no. 22, October 27, 1904, pp. 595-603. 
