There are, doubtless, hints in Dr. Bosanquet’s pages of a more
“dynamic” view of mind or of a deeper view[347] than this merely
“representational” view, but they are not developed or worked into the
main portion of his argument, which they would doubtless very largely
transform. This is greatly to be regretted, for we remember that even
Hegel seemed to notice the splitting-up of the real for our human
purposes which takes place in the ordinary judgment. And of course, as
we have noticed, all “purpose” is practical and theoretical at one and
the same time.
Then, thirdly, it is persons, and not “minds,” who desire and purpose
things, “mind” being a concept invented by the spectator of activity
in a person other than himself, which (from the analogy of his own
conscious activity and experience) he believes to be purposive.[348]
Dr. Bosanquet’s use, too, of the expression “mind” invariably
leaves out of the range of consideration the phenomena of desire
and volition--intelligible, both of them, only by reference to an
end that is to be understood from within, and not from outside of
the personality, from the point of view of the mere spectator. The
phenomena of desire and volition are just as integral ingredients of
our lives as persons as are our cognitive states.
Fourthly, it is doubtful whether the treatment of teleology as
“wholeness” (or its sublimation in “Individuality and Value” into
“wholeness”) is much of an explanation of this difficult topic, or
indeed whether it is any explanation at all. Dr. Bosanquet, in fact,
confesses that teleology is a conception which “_loses its distinctive
meaning_ as we deepen its philosophical interpretation, and that it has
very little meaning when applied to the universe as a whole” [a thing
that is apparent to any Kantian student]. “It is impossible seriously,”
he says, “to treat a mind _which is the universe_[!] as a workman of
limited resources, aiming at some things and obliged to accept others
as means to these.” And it is equally impossible, he holds, to apply
“to the universe” the distinction of “what is purpose for its own sake
and what is not so.” In fact, Dr. Bosanquet’s treatment of teleology is
thus mainly negative, as including not only this rejection[349] of the
notion in reference to the “universe as a whole,” but its rejection,
too, in reference to the purposes of our human life;[350] although he
admits (as of course he must) that the conception of end or purpose
is drawn from some of the features (“the simplest features,” he says)
of our “finite life,” or “finite consciousness.” If the notion were
“to be retained at all,” he says, “it could only be a name for some
principle which would help to tell us what has _value quite independent
of being or not being, the purpose of some mind_.”[351] Now, of course,
according to the Pragmatism and Humanism that we have been considering
in this book, no intelligent person could take any conceivable interest
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