re known to us as the possible
objects of an insight which we conceive to be virtually one, as the
insight of our own truly knowing Self, and as the insight without
reference to which no opinion of ours has any sense whatever. This one
cognitive Self is, according to Kant, the conceived virtual subject or
possessor of all that we view as our experience. And this presupposed
unity is the condition of all our knowledge.

But Kant's doctrine, as he stated it, is in many ways problematic and
dissatisfying. The form of philosophical idealism which I myself
defend goes in certain respects far beyond Kant's position. The "one
experience," in which, according to him, we find a place for any fact
which we conceive as knowable at all, is defined by Kant as a virtual
insight, not, so to speak, a live and concrete consciousness. He
regards it also as purely human, as a knowledge of appearances--not of
any ultimate realities. The form of philosophical idealism which, at
the last time, I outlined depends, however, upon simply
universalising, and rendering live and concrete, Kant's conception of
the Self, of the united experience, to which we appeal, and in the
light of which our opinions get all their sense--all their character
and value as true or as false opinions. {123} This one Self, this
unity of experience, to which we always appeal, cannot consistently be
viewed by us as merely our own individual or private self, or as
merely human; and its insight cannot rationally be interpreted merely
as an insight into what is apparent, that is into what is not really
real. Nor can it be viewed merely as something virtual--a possible
unity of experience, to which we would appeal if we could. In my
opinion it must be conceived as more live and real and concrete and
conscious and genuine than are any of our passing moments of fleeting
human experience. It must be viewed as an actual and inclusive and
divinely rational knowledge of all facts in their unity. And the very
nature of facts, their very being as facts, must be determined by
their presence as objects in the experience of this world-embracing
insight. This was the philosophical theory that I sketched in my
former lecture. This is my view of what reason teaches.

Now this thesis, this somewhat remote descendant of the Platonic
doctrine of the function of reason, this modern version of the concept
of the "Logos" as the light that "shineth in the darkness" of our
ordinary human experi