metaphysical categories are led up to positivity by an act of reflection that has for its guiding aim an interpretation of the world that will be more ultimately satisfactory to the knower than that of the physical or natural sciences; while negatively, it is led up to by the refusal of the knowing consciousness to rest in a world alien to its own nature and in which it is subordinated to the physical and made a mere epiphenomenon. II QUESTIONS OF POINT OF VIEW, PRINCIPLE AND METHOD OF METAPHYSICS It is clear from what has been said that the metaphysical interpretation proceeds on a presupposition radically different from that of mathematical and physical science. The presumption of these sciences is that the world is physical, that the physical categories supply the norms of reality, and that consciousness and the psychic, in general, are subordinate and phenomenal to the physical. On the contrary, metaphysics arises out of a revolt from these presumptions toward the opposite presumption, namely, that _consciousness itself is the great reality_, and that the norms of an ultimate interpretation of things are to be sought in its categories. This is the great transformation that conditions the possibility and value of all metaphysics. It is the Copernican revolution which the mind must pass through, a revolution in which matter and the physical world yields the primacy to mind; a revolution in which consciousness becomes central, its categories and analogies supplying the principles of final world-interpretation. Let us consider then, in the light of this great Copernican revolution, the questions of the _point of view_, _principle_, and _method_ of metaphysics. And here the utmost brevity must be observed. If consciousness be the great reality, then its own central activity, that effort by which it realizes its world, will determine for us the _point of view_ or departure of which we are in quest. This will be _inner_ rather than _outer_; it will be motived by _interest_, will shape itself into interest-directed effort. This effort will be cognitive; dominated by an _idea_ which will be an anticipation of the _goal_ of the effort. It will, therefore, become _directive_, _selective_, and will stand as the _end_ or _aim_ of the completed effort. The whole movement will thus take the form, genetically, of a developing _purpose informed by an idea_, or _teleologically_, of a _purpose going on to its fulfillment_ in some _aim_ which is also its _motive_. Now, metaphysics determines its point of view in the following reasoning: if in consciousness we find the type of the inner nature of things, then the point of view for the interpretation of this inner nature will be to seek by generalizing the standpoint of consciously determined effort and asserting that this is the true point of view from which the _meaning_ of the world is to be sought.