22/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

4.
THE OUTER WORLD.

Ever since Kant revolutionized modern speculative philosophy by his “Critique of pure reason,” in which he shows that the physical senses can give us no absolutely correct information concerning the essential nature of things, but that the objective world we see, is obliged to conform in appearance to certain conditions of perception existing a priori in the mind, the chief concern of philosophy has centered around the problem of consciousness.

Men are not satisfied merely to ascertain what appears to be; they want to know what is. What can we know of Absolute Reality? What relation do phenomena, appearances, bear to the essential nature of things? Why do they bear such relations? These are questions that have engaged the minds of the profoundest thinkers of modern times. The doctrine, in its various forms, of a Deeper Self is the natural outcome of this introspective study.

Ask a superficial observer of life to state his definition of the term Self, and very likely he will be surprised to find that its meaning is open to question; for it seems to him too obvious to call for a serious attempt at defining. Terms of such universal acceptance as Yourself, Myself and Itself, are commonly supposed to convey exact meanings permanently established beyond a doubt meanings which are unalterable, the same for all people, and which, therefore, do not admit of question.

But terms are intended to indicate real things, and every person has his own peculiar conception of the nature of Reality; hence no two people use any given term to designate precisely the same entity. The current popular thought determines for nearly all persons, within certain pretty definite limits, the meaning they shall attach to it.

But aside from this general agreement, each one must interpret in his own way the reality for which it stands. For example, the thorough-going materialist supposes that his very existence depends on certain definite combinations of physical forces, the proper relations of which are indispensable to consciousness;

while the idealist sees in the visible form only a manifestation of a transcendental, spiritual ego, whose existence is independent of finite conditions. Certainly these two constructions represent a disagreement broad enough to lead one to pause and investigate the subject more fully, before assuming to accurately and conclusively define, in clumsy figures of speech, a reality that admits of such widely different interpretations.