We have seen that, whether we look upon the subjective or objective face
of personality, we find that personality arises from limitation--or, as
I have previously termed it, circumscription. Now, we have no evidence,
nor are we able to conceive, of the external world as limited;
consequently we are not able to conceive, of the world-eject as
personal. But, inasmuch as personality arises only from limitation, the
conclusion that the world-eject is impersonal does not tend to show that
it is of lower psychical value than conscious personality: on the
contrary, it tends to show that it is probably of higher psychical
value. True, we are not able to conceive actually of mind as impersonal;
but we can see that this merely arises from our only experience of mind
being given under conditions of personality; and, as just observed, it
is possible to conceive symbolically that there may be a form of mind as
greatly transcending personality as personality transcends mechanical
motion.
Now, although we cannot conceive of such a mind actually, we may most
probably make the nearest approach to conceiving of it truly, by
_provisionally_ ascribing to it the highest attributes of mind as known
to ourselves, or the attributes which belong to human personality. Just
as a thinking insect would derive a better, or more true, conception of
human personality by considering it ejectively than by considering it
objectively (or by considering the mind-processes as distinguished from
the brain-processes), so, if there is a form of mind immeasurably
superior to our own, we may probably gain a more faithful--howsoever
still inadequate--conception of it by contemplating its operations
ejectively than by doing so objectively. I will, therefore, speak of the
world-eject as presenting conscious volition, on the understanding that
if _x_ does not present either consciousness or volition, this must
be--according to the fundamental assumption of psychism on which we are
now proceeding--because _x_ presents attributes at least as much higher
than consciousness or volition as these are higher than mechanical
motion. For when we consider the utmost that our conscious volition is
able to accomplish in the way of contrivance--how limited its knowledge,
how short its duration, how restricted its range, and how imperfect its
adaptations--we can only conclude that _if_ the ultimate constitution of
all things is pyschical, the philosophy of the Cosmos becomes a
'philosophy of the Unconscious' only because it is a philosophy of the
Superconscious.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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