In both the theories we have now examined, truth is a logical character of ideas. In the correspondence theory there is indeed supposed a non-logical reality, but it is only in the ideas that there is the conformity or correspondence which constitutes their truth. In the coherence theory, reality is itself ideal, and the {28} ultimate ground of everything is logical. This is the theory of truth that accords with the idealist view, and this view finds its most perfect expression in the theory of the Absolute. The Absolute is the idea of an object that realises perfect logical consistency. This object logic itself creates; if it be a necessary existence, then knowledge of it cannot be other than truth. This view, on account of the supreme position that it assigns to the intellect, and of the fundamental character with which it invests the logical categories, has been named by those who oppose it Intellectualism. It is important that it should be clearly understood, and the next chapter will be devoted to its exposition. CHAPTER IV THE ABSOLUTE A comparison of the two theories of truth examined in the last chapter will show that, whereas both rest on a logical quality in ideas, the first depends on an external view taken by the mind of an independent non-mental reality, whereas the second depends on the discovery of an inner meaning in experience itself. It is this inner meaning of experience that we seek to know when asking any question concerning reality. It is the development of this view, and what it implies as to the ultimate nature of reality and truth, that we are now to examine. When we ask questions about reality, we assume in the very inquiry that reality is of a nature that experience reveals. Reality in its ultimate nature may be logical--that is to say, of the nature of reason, or it may {29} be non-logical--that is to say, of the nature of feeling or will; but in either case it must be a nature of which conscious experience can give us knowledge. If indeed we hold the view which philosophers have often endeavoured to formulate, that reality is unknowable, then there is no more to be said; for, whatever the picture or the blank for a picture by which the mind tries to present this unknowable reality, there can be no question in relation to it of the nature and meaning of truth. An unknowable reality, as we shall show later on, is to all intents and purposes non-existent reality. On the other hand, if thinking leads to the knowledge of reality that we call truth, it is because being and knowing are ultimately one, and this unity can only be in conscious experience. This is the axiom on which the idealist argument is based.